Brancepeth gave a little laugh, and kissed the hand which was resting on the back of his chair.
“When Cocky goes to glory,” he answered.
“Cocky!” said Cocky’s wife with fierce contempt. “He will never die. Men like him never do die. They drink like ducks and never show it. They eat like pigs and never feel it. They cut their own throats every hour and are all the better for it. They destroy their livers, their lungs, their stomachs and their brains, and live on just as if they had all four in perfection. Nothing ever hurts them though their blood is brandy, their flesh is absinthe, and their minds are a sink emptied into a bladder. They look like cripples and like corpses; but they never die. The hard-working railway men die, the hard-working curates die, the pretty little children die, the men who do good all day long and have thousands weeping for them, they die; but men like Cocky live and like to live, and if by any chance they ever fall ill, they get well just because everybody is passionately wishing them dead!”
She spoke with unusual intensity of expression, her transparent nostrils dilated, her red lips curled, her turquoise eyes gleamed and glittered; Brancepeth looked at her in alarm.
“On my word, Sourisette,” he murmured, “when you look like that you frighten a fellow. I wouldn’t be in Cocky’s shoes, not for a kingdom.”
“I thought you were longing to replace Cocky?”
“Well, yes, of course, yes,” said Brancepeth. “Only you positively alarm me when you talk like this. I’m not such an over-and-above correct-living fellow myself, and Cocky isn’t so out-and-out bad as all that, you know. After all, he’s got some excuse.”
“Some excuse!” she repeated, her delicate complexion flushing red. “Some excuse! You—you, Harry—you dare to say that to me?”
“Well, it’s the truth,” murmured Brancepeth sulkily. “And don’t make me a scene, Mouse; my nerves can’t stand it; I’m taking cocaine and I ought to keep quiet, I ought indeed.”
“Why do you take cocaine?” asked Lady Kenilworth, changing to inquietude and interrogating his countenance anxiously.