It is a righteous thing that men of such achievements should have their reward, where it is sweetest. Fame they may never get, for that is all a fluke; gold they scarcely ever gain, because they are no grubbers; love they cannot stop to grasp, and see but savage frames of it; rank they laugh at, having found it the chief delight of black boys; but to get his grog for glory, and his victuals for victory, is the utmost any English pioneer can hope of England.
"Cranleigh, you can go," said Strogue, for his manners were not perfect; "you are involved in this little shindy, and you want to know all about it. These thieves shut shop at one o'clock on a Saturday, some one told me. But if you will come back by two, I shall have set this rib by then, and have rump-steak and oysters. Join me, without any ceremony. I owe you a debt, and you shall have it."
I had seen too many strange things now to be surprised at anything, as I might have been six months ago; and it was plain that this companion of the hateful Hafer meant to do me some good turn at a private opportunity. So I promised to return by two o'clock, and hurried to Stoneman's business place, avoiding the crowd that still was yelling at every approach to the House of Mammon. "Bless you, sir; it is nothing at all compared to what it was yesterday. Ah, that was something like a row!" a big policeman told me; "there was fifty taken to hospital, and the barriers snapped like hurdles. Why, there ain't been half-a-dozen ribs to-day. You can't call that no panic."
Neither did I find any panic at Jackson Stoneman's offices. A stolid old clerk was putting things away, and evidently anxious to get home to early dinner. He told me that his principal had been disappointed at not meeting me, and concluded (as the train had been in long enough) that something had occurred to stop me, and so had departed on his own account. When I asked how things had gone that morning, old Peppersall eyed me with some indignation, as if it were impossible for anything to go wrong with a firm so stable and majestic. "Well, how did the senior partner look?" I asked; and Peppersall replied: "He was a bit put out about a sixpence that rolled off a desk in room No. 8, till it turned up under the wainscoting."
"You'll do," I said rather rudely, for this rebuff was not too courteous, and he stared at me as if there could be any doubt about his doing. "That is the sort of fellow for a business-man, instead of any new young manager"—was my reflection, as I strode with good heart towards the rump-steak and oysters.
Captain Strogue had been sponged and darned and brushed and polished up—so far as he was capable of polish—by skilful and tender hands, and was sitting in a brown arm-chair, as bolt upright as if his ribs had thickened, as a barn-floor does, by the flail of many heels upon them. "Keep 'em like that," he said, "for about two hours, and fill up well inside, and it stands to reason that they must come right—can't help themselves. Doctors? None of them for Bat Strogue. The only doctor I ever knew was any good is down your way now, a queer German cove. Say grace for me, and carve for me, and fall to, my son. Take me for your guest; and you might have a more squeamish one."
CHAPTER XL TWAIN MORE THAN TWIN
In spite of all anxiety, it was impossible to be anxious for the moment, in the company of this extraordinary fellow. Doubt is the most hostile and hateful element to all human pleasure; and doubt was at once kicked out from the society of Captain Strogue. Certainty stood in its place, as firm as—well, I might say as firm as Strogue's own nose, for I can think of nothing firmer. Short and thick and straight it was, like a buttress to support his bulky forehead, and keep his bright and defiant eyes from glaring into one another; for they had a little cast towards it. Certainty also in the strongest point of all—that whoever you might be, or wherever you had been, never till now had you come into contact—or collision, if you liked that sort of thing—with a member of your race so far above all little weakness, and yet so ready to participate in it, if you would pay the bill for him, as your new but true friend, Bartholomew Strogue.