From time to time he paused to inhale the gross little cigarettes he affected. Their tobacco was black, their paper was yellow, and they came from an unpropitious island where, as Brockett declared, the inhabitants died in shoals every year of some tropical fever. He drank a good deal of the Rose’s lime-juice, for this strong, rough tobacco always made him thirsty. Whiskey went to his head and wine to his liver, so that on the whole he was forced to be temperate; but when he got home he would brew himself coffee as viciously black as his tobacco.
Presently he said with a sigh of repletion: ‘Well, you two, I’ve finished—let’s go into the study.’
As they left the table he seized the mixed biscuits and the caramel creams, for he dearly loved sweet things. He would often go out and buy himself sweets in Bond Street, for solitary consumption.
In the study he sank down on to the divan. ‘Puddle dear, do you mind if I put my feet up? It’s my new bootmaker, he’s given me a corn on my right little toe. It’s too heart-breaking. It was such a beautiful toe,’ he murmured; ‘quite perfect—the one toe without a blemish!’
After this he seemed disinclined to talk. He had made himself a nest with the cushions, and was smoking, and nibbling rich-mixed biscuits, routing about in the tin for his favourites. But his eyes kept straying across to Stephen with a puzzled and rather anxious expression.
At last she said: ‘What’s the matter, Brockett? Is my necktie crooked?’
‘No—it’s not your necktie; it’s something else.’ He sat up abruptly. ‘As I came here to say it, I’ll get the thing over!’
‘Fire away, Brockett.’
‘Do you think you’ll hate me if I’m frank?’
‘Of course not. Why should I hate you?’