It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.
‘Romaine?’ I cried. ‘Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and a big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!’
‘Keep back, I say!’ said Dudgeon weakly.
I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that he carried with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my advance.
‘Keep back, or I declare I will fire,’ he was crying. ‘Have a care, for God’s sake! My pistol—’
He might scream as be pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all’s well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing and whistling on the streets:—
‘There’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
And looks out for the life of poor Jack.’
‘There!’ said I, releasing him a little, but still keeping my hands on his shoulders, ‘je vous ai bel et bien embrassé—and, as you would say, there is another French word.’ With his wig over one eye, he looked incredibly rueful and put out. ‘Cheer up, Dudgeon; the ordeal is over, you shall be embraced no more. But do, first of all, for God’s-sake, put away your pistol; you handle it as if you were a cockatrice; some time or other, depend upon it, it will certainly go off. Here is your hat. No, let me put it on square, and the wig before it. Never suffer any stress of circumstances to come between you and the duty you owe to yourself. If you have nobody else to dress for, dress for God!
‘Put your wig straight
On your bald pate,
Keep your chin scraped,
And your figure draped.
Can you match me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark, I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are the outpourings of a dilettante.’