"It's the company he keeps," he said—"a lot of fast men—fast enough to be talked about, fashionable enough to be tolerated—Jack Casson is one of them, and that little ass, Arthur Wye. That's the crowd—a horse-racing, hard-drinking, hard-gambling crew."
"But—he is—Mr. Berkley's circumstances—how can he do such things——"
"Some idiot—even Berkley doesn't know who—took all those dead stocks off his hands. Wasn't it the devil's own luck for Berkley to find a market in times like these?"
"But it ended him. . . . Oh, I was fond of him, I tell you, Ailsa!
I hate like thunder to see him this way——"
"What way!"
"Oh, not caring for anybody or anything. He's never sober. I don't mean that I ever saw him otherwise—he doesn't get drunk like an ordinary man: he just turns deathly white and polite. I've met him—and his friends—several times. They're too fast a string of colts for me. But isn't it a shame that a man like Berkley should go to the devil—and for no reason at all?"
"Yes," she said.
When Stephen, swinging his crimson fez by the tassel, stood ready to take his leave, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
After he departed Colonel Arran came, and sat, as usual, silent, listening.
Ailsa was very animated; she told him about Stephen's enlistment, asked scores of questions about military life, the chances in battle, the proportion of those who went through war unscathed.