They were both smoking—Downing an old-fashioned pipe, and his visitor one of the small French cigarettes of which he always carried a store about with him, and which had been the most tangible sign of his release from thraldom, the great Lord Wantley's horror and contempt of smoking and of smokers having been only equalled by his abhorrence of drinking and of drunkards.
The early afternoon light, reflected from the sea and sand outside, flooded the curious cavernous room with radiance, throwing the upper half of Downing's broad, lean figure in high relief. Wantley, himself in shadow, looked at him with renewed interest and curiosity, and as he did so he realized that there must have been a time when the man before him would have been judged singularly handsome. Now the large features were thin to attenuation—the brown skin roughened by much exposure to heat and dust; the grey eyes, gleaming under the bushy eyebrows, sunken and tired; while the thick moustache, streaked with white, hid the firm, delicately modelled mouth, and gave an appearance of age to the face.
'If you do not find the farm comfortable,' said Wantley, breaking what had begun to be an oppressive silence, 'I hope you will return here for awhile. There won't be a soul in London yet.'
'Excepting my old friend, Mr. Julius Gumberg,' objected Downing. 'I believe he has not been out of town for years, and I sometimes think that in this, at any rate, he has proved himself wiser than some of his fellows.'
'Mr. Julius Gumberg,' said the other, smiling, 'has always seemed to me, since I first had the honour of his acquaintance, to be the ideal Epicurean—the man who has mastered the art of selecting his pleasures.'
'True!' cried Downing abruptly. 'But you must admit that not the least of his pleasures has always been that of benefiting his friends.'
'But that, after all, is only a refined form of self-indulgence,' objected Wantley, who had never been in a position so to indulge himself.
An amused smile broke over the other's stern mouth and jaw. 'That theory embodies the ethical nihilism of the old Utilitarians. Of course you are not serious; if you were, your position would be akin to that of the Persian mystics who teach the utter renunciation of self, the sinking of the ego in the divine whole. But then,' added Downing, fixing his eyes on his companion, and speaking as if to himself—'but then comes the question, What is renunciation? The Persian philosopher would give an answer very different from that offered by the Christian.'
'Renunciation is surely the carrying out of the ascetic ideal—something more actively painful than the mere doing without.' Wantley spoke diffidently.
'Undoubtedly that is what the Christian means by the word, but is there not the higher degree of perfection involved in the French saint's dictum?' Downing stopped short; then, with very fair, albeit old-fashioned, accent, he uttered the phrase, 'Rien demander et rien refuser. Of course, the greatest difference between the point of view held by the Persian sages and, say, the old monkish theologians is that concerning human love.'