“I wish he’d tried what starvation’s like, that’s all.”
“Have you?”
“Have I? I was a thousandaire till I was four-and-twenty,” said Lucian, clasping his lean, brown hands behind his head—“but since then, devil a penny have I had to spend! My head is bloody but unbowed beneath the bludgeonings of Fate—W. E. Henley. I’m proud to say I could take the shine out of Orestes.”
Farquhar sat down by the fire and pulled the tea-table towards him. He was very useful at an afternoon party: could always remember the precise formula for every person’s several cup. “How did you lose your money?” he inquired, flavoring his own tea with lemon, in the Russian style.
“Sixteen thousand in one night playing écarté, sonny. No, don’t preach; I never gamble now I’ve got no money. Besides, on that memorable occasion my circumstances were exceptional.”
“Exceptionally bad, I should think. What did you do?”
“What did I do? Commenced author, and I flatter myself I should have made a decided hit, only I was overtaken by what another distinguished author calls Bluidy Jack. The medico swore it was the writing brought it on. I also swore, in many tongues, and had a second go; I held on gallantly for three months, and then went to a hospital, and a nurse fell in love with me. ‘Those lips so sweet, so honey-sweet—’ We swore fidelity. I shared with her my fortune—we broke a sixpence. She had three hundred a year and a large soul. Inconstant creature! On getting my ticket-of-leave from the hospital I introduced her to my chief pal; and would you believe it? the base villain borrowed my first fiver to elope with her with.”
“Good Heavens, de Saumarez!” said Farquhar, laughing against his will, “you don’t mean to tell me that all this is true?”
“True? True? Every blessed word of it. I then tried to ’list, but couldn’t pass the medical. So I got another pal and started as a tomato-johnny in Guernsey. We’re Guernsey people, you know,” he added, his voice taking a different intonation. “I’ve a certain affection for it, too; there I’ll hope to lay these carious old bones of mine when I’ve done with them. Mighty poor crops they’ll make, too. Well, I thought Guernsey, being my own, my native land, might be a sort of all-inclusive mascot for me. But, Lord bless you, sonny, it rained thunderbolts! Give you my word, no sooner were our glass-houses up than there arrived a record shower of aerolites; sticky, shiny, black things they were, for all the world like liquorice. Two-thirds of the panes went. As I didn’t want to wreck the bosom friend’s boat, we dissolved partnership, and Jonah went off on his own.”
Farquhar could himself corroborate this story; he remembered the meteoric shower, which had attracted some attention.