"You don't regard it as extra ... Stop a minute!" A pause ensued, during which the vague-eyed gentleman waited, clutching his stick with both hands, and holding his swollen mouth ajar. And when he shut the mouth to shake his head, and looked at P. C. Breagh in the act of doing this, the perspiration shone upon his puffy cheeks and stood in beads upon his reddened forehead, as though it had been July instead of a foggy afternoon in January, and the pink-bordered cambric handkerchief with which he wiped his worried face became, after this usage, a very rag. And a queer, unwillingly-yielded-to sense of commiseration prompted Carolan to suggest:
"'Extraordinary' was the word you wanted, wasn't it?"
"Much obliged! The word, unnoutedly! 'Stror'nary how words do dodge one on occasion!" returned the uncertain gentleman in the large-patterned tweeds. He added, pulling at the ragged light mustache, with a gloved hand that was decidedly shaky: "I don't know that it matters parricurarly—but I'd prefer you to know that I'm not runk!"
"Not—what?..."
"Not runk!" repeated the vague-eyed gentleman emphatically. "Not cut, foozled, miffed, fizzed, screwed! Not that it's oblig—that's another of the words that perretually queer me!—or incumment on me to isplain, but I regard it as due to myself, by Gad! that you should clearly unnerstand the case. As I said to the manuscript upon the Bench when the bobby ran me in on Thursday—or was it Friray? ... Appearances are sally against me, but I have never been a rinking man! The doctors have a crajjaw name for my connition, which under the exissing circ—and that's another of the words that play the deuce and all with me! ... Look at my westick, buttoned all wrong!"
He slewed round upon the seat, and throwing back the large-patterned, fashionably cut-away coat, exhibited the garment mentioned, every buttonhole of which afforded hospitality to a button not its own. His necktie, the ample, sailor-knotted necktie of the period, was under his left ear, and his shirt had come unstudded. Being appealed to, P. C. Breagh admitted that the existing condition of things left something to be desired!
"When a man entirely ripends on valets and domessicks," explained his incoherent neighbor, "a man is apt to be neglected and so on. As a marrer of fact I live in that little joppa cottisit!" He waveringly pointed to a large, handsome private dwelling with an ornate portico, situated nearly opposite, and sandwiched between two Clubs. "An' as a narrural conquicense of my temorrary irrability to pronounce words of the most orinary nature, I am——" He drew an aimless figure in the muddy gravel with his ivory-topped, ebony stick, and went on with a weak laugh, "I am absoluly neglected by my own househol'. My own children seem ashamed or afray of me—all but Little Foxhall—splendid little chap is Little Foxhall! But his mother—my wife——" He broke off to say—"You will escuse my touching on these priva' matters in conversation with a perfec' stranger. I am quite conscience I trepsass against the orinary usages of propriety, especially in speaking of my wife! ... But—the fact is, sir! I am most desperately wretched. Six people imagine me runk—out of every half-dozen. While the other six—the irriots whisser it when they think I'm out of earshock—suppose me to be suffrig from Sofrig of the Bray!"
He began to tremble and shake, and put his stick between his knees to hold on to the edge of the seat with his lemon-kidded hands—and couldn't hold the stick in that position, and it fell, and P. C. Breagh picked it up and put it back.
"I am murrabliged," said the owner of the stick, "by your kind attention!" Something struggled and fought in the vague blue eyes that he turned upon Carolan,—it seemed as though in another moment Fear and Terror might have leaped glaring into sight. "And while I am boun' to ajopolize for thrussing my privarrafairs upon a stranger—I feel bound to put the quession; Why should thissorathing happen to ME? Goolor'! I've been no worse than lossa urra fellers!" He rose up shaking, and shakily sat down again, nearly missing the bench.
"Bessaran loss of 'em—if you come to that!" He turned to Carolan, and the vague eyes were piteous and desperate.... "You see the sort of chap my luck—my damble luck—has made o' me! Yet I used to be envied—envied ... you unnerstand! I have belonged to the best regiment in the Brigade of Guards—the devil another! I have played the bes' cards, driven the bes' turnouts, smoked the bes' cigars and had the most stunnin' women! Do you unnerstand me?—Have!" He brought down the uncertain hand in an attempt to strike his knee emphatically, and missed it; and tried to look as though he had not, and went on: "And I have belonged to the best gloves, by Gad! an' put on the clubs with the most celebrarred li'-weights! And I rode my steeplechase at York, and romped in first, and they toasted and speechified me at the Gimcrack dinner. And I won my Oaks and my Derby—and led in the winner, with all the cheeple reering;—the seeple peering—the—Goolor'! Goolor'! And the horse was Gladianor—and the victory was a popular one—and my name was a household word through the Unirred Kingom. A household word!..." He broke off, trembling and sweating, as the horse might have done after the race, and put the wavering hand to his head, and turned his empty blue eyes from Carolan's as though they hurt. "What was my name?" he asked himself in a dull, thick, shaky whisper, "Goolor'! Goolor'! What was my name? ... That you, Murchison?"