"Isn't it telling you we are?" protested Culling. "It started on the day you returned from your godless wanderings and prowled through London like a lion seeking whom you might devour. 'Portrait of a Gentleman—well known in Society—seeking whom he may devour,'" he murmured to himself, stretching forth a hand for fresh foolscap. "And it's been going on ever since. And nobody's had the courage to speak to him about it. There you have the thing in a nutshell."
I turned despairingly to Gartside, and in time was successful in extracting and piecing together an explanation of his dark references to the Seraph. "Once upon a time," he began.
"When pigs were swine," Culling interrupted, "and monkeys chewed tobacco."
"Shut up, Paddy! Once upon a time a girl named Elsie Davenant married a man called Arnold Wylton. Perhaps she knows why she did it, but I'm hanged if anybody else did. She was a nice enough girl by all accounts, and Wylton—well, I expect you've heard some queer stories about him, they're all true. After they'd been married—how long was it, Paddy?"
"Oh, a few years—by the calendar," said Culling, eagerly taking up the parable. "It's long enough she must have found 'em! Wylton used to work in little spells of domesticity in the intervals of being horse-whipped out of other people's houses, and disappearing abroad while sundry little storms blew over. Morgan and Travers took in a new partner and started a special 'Wylton Department' for settling his actions out of court...."
"This is all fairly ancient history," I interposed.
"It's the extenuating circumstance," said Gartside.
Culling warmed oratorically to his work.
"In the fulness of time," he went on in the manner of the Ancient Mariner, "Mrs. Wylton woke up and said, 'This is a one-sided business.' Toby, ye're a bachelor. Let me tell you that married life is a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite week-ends. While Wylton dallied unobtrusively in Buda Pesth, giving himself out to be the Hungarian correspondent of the Baptist Family Herald, Mrs. Wylton spent her exquisite week-end at Deauville."
He paused delicately.