“All right. I figured out you were going to high-hat me. Of course I haven’t got a rich wife to slip me money. I’m just a plain old hobo. I don’t belong in a place like this. Not smooth enough to be a butler. You are. All right. I wish you luck. And meanwhile you can go plumb to hell, my young friend!”
Martin did not pursue him into the hall.
As he sat alone he groaned, “Thank Heaven, that operation’s over!”
He told himself that Clif was a crook, a fool, and a fat waster; he told himself that Clif was a cynic without wisdom, a drunkard without charm, and a philanthropist who was generous only because it larded his vanity. But these admirable truths did not keep the operation from hurting any more than it would have eased the removal of an appendix to be told that it was a bad appendix, an appendix without delicacy or value.
He had loved Clif—did love him and always would. But he would never see him again. Never!
The impertinence of that flabby blackguard to sneer at Gottlieb! His boorishness! Life was too short for—
“But hang it—yes, Clif is a tough, but so am I. He’s a crook, but wasn’t I a crook to fake my plague figures in St. Hubert—and the worse crook because I got praise for it?”
He bobbed up to Joyce’s room. She was lying in her immense four-poster, reading “Peter Whiffle.”
“Darling, it was all rather dreadful, wasn’t it!” she said. “He’s gone?”
“Yes.... He’s gone.... I’ve driven out the best friend I ever had—practically. I let him go, let him go off feeling that he was a rotter and a failure. It would have been decenter to have killed him. Oh, why couldn’t you have been simple and jolly with him? You were so confoundedly polite! He was uneasy and unnatural, and showed up worse than he really is. He’s no tougher than—he’s a lot better than the financiers who cover up their stuff by being suave.... Poor devil! I’ll bet right now Clif’s tramping in the rain, saying, ‘The one man I ever loved and tried to do things for has turned against me, now he’s—now he has a lovely wife. What’s the use of ever being decent?’ he’s saying.... Why couldn’t you be simple, and chuck your highfalutin’ manners for once?”