“Yes. I’ve got the most damned attack of indigestion.”
The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and became immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of the Rookes was a good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who suggested that Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night chemist’s and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after a surfeit of soda-water bottles; Freddie who mixed and administered the dose.
His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass. Derek recovered.
One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of gentle remorse which came upon him as he lay in the arm-chair was one so foreign to his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He was like a convalescent child. Between them, the all-night chemist and the Dry-Salters seemed to have wrought a sort of miracle. These temporary softenings of personality frequently follow city dinners. The time to catch your Dry-Salter in angelic mood is the day after the semi-annual banquet. Go to him then and he will give you his watch and chain.
“Freddie,” said Derek.
They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece, beside which Jill’s photograph had stood, pointed to ten minutes past two. Derek spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right after all, and two o’clock is the hour at which our self-esteem deserts us, leaving in its place regret for past sins, good resolutions for future behavior.
“What do Algy Martyn and the others say about … you know?”
Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.
“Oh, I know,” went on Derek. “They say I behaved like a cad.”
“Oh, well …”