Dryden shook his head. “You didn’t know him well enough. It was like the delicacy of the rose—finger it and it falls to pieces. No offence to you, of course. I doubt my own ability to do him justice, well as I knew him. But you put a stopper on that—and you were right. My kind regards,” he said, draining his second glass of claret. “The laborer is worthy of his hire, the artist must not be interfered with. It was an impertinence of me to ask to do your work.”
Harrington’s eyes gleamed. “It’s pleasant to be appreciated—to have one’s point of view comprehended. It isn’t pleasant to butt in where you’re not wanted, but there’s something bigger than that involved, the——”
“Quite so; it was a cruel bribe; and many men in your shoes would not have been proof against it.”
“And you were in dead earnest, too, though for a moment I couldn’t believe it. But the point is—and that’s what I mean—that the public—gentlemen like you and ladies like the handsome one who looked daggers at me this morning—don’t realize that the world is bound to have the news on its breakfast-table and supper-table, and that when a man is in the business and knows his business and is trying to do the decent thing and the acceptable artistic thing, too, if I do say it, he is entitled to be taken seriously and—and trusted. There are incompetent men—rascals even—in my calling. What I contend is that you’d no right to assume that I wouldn’t do the inevitable thing decently merely because you saw me there. For, if you only knew it, I was saying to myself at that very moment that for a funeral it was the most tastefully handled I ever attended.”
“It is the inevitable thing; that’s just it. My manners were bad to begin to with, and later—” Dryden leaned forward with his elbows on the table and his head between his hands, scanning his eager companion.
“Don’t mention it. You see, it was a matter of pride with me. And now it’s up to me to state that if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to mention about the deceased gentleman or lady——”
Dryden sighed at the reminder, “One of the loveliest and most pure-hearted of women.”
“That shall go down,” said the reporter, mistaking the apostrophe for an answer, and he drew a note-book from his side pocket.
Dryden raised his hand by way of protest. “I was merely thinking aloud. No, we must trust you.”
Harrington bowed. He hesitated, then by way of noticing the plural allusion in the speech added: “It was your young lady’s look which wounded me the most. And she said something. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what she said? It wasn’t flattering, I’m sure of that, but it was on the tip of her tongue. I admit I’m mildly curious as to what it was.”