The signs of desperate illness in Richard Watson were indeed plainly visible. His shaggy hair and thick, unkempt beard brought into relief the waxen or purple tones of the skin. The breath was laboured and the cough frequent. But the eyes were still warm, living, and passionate, the eyes of a Celt, with the Celtic gifts, and those deficiencies, also, of his race, broadly and permanently expressed in the words of a great historian—'The Celts have shaken all States, and founded none!' No founder, no achiever, this—no happy, harmonious soul—but a man who had vibrated to life and Nature, in their subtler and sadder aspects, through whom the nobler thoughts and ambitions had passed, like sound through strings, wringing out some fine, tragic notes, some memorable tones. 'I can't last more than a week or two,' he said, presently, in a pause of Fenwick's talk, to which he had hardly listened—'and a good job too. But I don't find myself at all rebellious. I'm curiously content to go. I've had a good time.'
This from a man who had passed from one disappointed hope to another, brought the tears to Fenwick's eyes.
'Some of us may wish we were going with you,' he said, in a low voice, laying his hand a moment on his friend's knee.
Watson made no immediate reply. He coughed—fidgeted—and at last said:
'How's the money?'
Fenwick hastily drew himself up. 'All right.'
He reached out a hand to the tongs and put the fire together.
'Is that so?' said Watson. The slight incredulity in his voice touched some raw nerve in Fenwick.
'I don't want anything,' he said, almost angrily. 'I shall get through.'
Cuningham had been talking, no doubt. His affairs had been discussed.
His morbid pride took offence at once.