All the same, Simon, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two, had raked the town vigorously more than viciously, haunted Evans' supper-rooms, fallen madly in love with an actress, enjoyed life as only the young can enjoy life in the gorgeous, dazzling, deceitful country of Youth.
Driving in hansom cabs was then a pleasure! New clothes and outrageous shirts and ties a delight, actresses goddesses. Then, one day his actress turned out an actress, and the following night he came out of the Cocoa Tree owing a gambling debt of a thousand pounds that he could not pay. His father paid on his promising to turn over a new leaf, which he did. But his youth was checked, his brightness eclipsed, and arm-in-arm with common sense he set out on the long journey that led him at last to the high position of a joyless, loveless, desolate, wealthy solicitor of sixty—respected, very much respected. In fact, less a man than a firm. Yet there still remained to him as a legacy of his youth, a very pretty wit of his own, an irresponsible turn of talk when he gave himself away—as at dinner-parties.
CHAPTER II MUDD
Mudd was Simon's factotum, butler, and minister of inferior affairs. Mudd was sixty-five and a bit; he had been in the services of the Pettigrew family forty-five years, and had grown up, so to say, side by side with Simon. For the last twenty years every morning Mudd had brought up his master's tea, drawn up his blinds and set out his clothes—seven thousand times or thereabouts, allowing for holidays and illnesses. He was a clean-shaven old man, with rounded shoulders and a way that had become blunt with long use; he only "sirred" Simon in the presence of guests and servants, and had an open way of speaking on matters of everyday affairs verging on the conjugal in its occasional frankness.
This morning, the third of June, Mudd, having drawn up his master's blinds and set out his boots and shaving things, vanished and returned with his clothes, brushed and folded, and a jug of shaving water which he placed on the wash-handstand.
"The arms will be out of this old coat if you go on wearing it much longer," grumbled Mudd, as he placed the things on a chair. "It's been in wear nearly a year and a half; you're heavy on the left elbow—it's the desk does it."
"I'll see," said Simon.
He knew quite well the suggestion that lay in the tone and the words of Mudd, but a visit to his tailors was almost on a par with a visit to his dentists, and new clothes were an abhorrence. It took him a fortnight to get used to a new coat, and as to being shabby, why, a decent shabbiness was part of his personality and, vaguely perhaps, of his pride in life. He could afford to be shabby.