How long this interchange of language might have gone on I cannot say, had not Doubleday opportunely interposed. “There you are, at it again, you two, just like a couple of bargees! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Look how you’ve shocked the young ’un there! You really shouldn’t!”
I coloured up at this speech. From the bantering tone in which Doubleday spoke it seemed as if he half despised any one who was not used to the sound of profanity; and I began to be angry with myself for having looked so horrified.
The quarrel was soon made up with the help of some of the twopenny cigars, which were now produced along with the beer-bottles. By this time I had been sufficiently impressed by my company not to decline anything, and I partook of both of these luxuries—that is, I made believe to smoke a cigar, and kept a glass of beer in front of me, from which I took a very occasional sip.
My mind was thoroughly uncomfortable. I had known all along I was not a hero; but it had never occurred to me before that I was a coward. In the course of one short evening I had forsaken more than one old principle, merely because others did the same. I had joined in a laugh against my best friend, because I had not the courage to stand up for him behind his back, and I had tried to appear as if bad language and drinking and gambling were familiar things to me, because I dared not make a stand and confess I thought them loathsome.
We sat for a long time that night talking and cracking jokes, and telling stories. Many of the latter were clever and amusing, but others—those that raised the loudest laugh—were of a kind I had never heard before, and which I blush now to recall. Any one who had seen me would have supposed that talk like this was what I most relished. Had they but heard another voice within reproaching me, they might have pitied rather than blamed me.
And yet with all the loose talk was mixed up so much of real jollity and good-humour that it was impossible to feel wholly miserable.
Doubleday kept up his hospitality to the last. He would stop the best story to make a guest comfortable, and seemed to guess by instinct what everybody wanted.
At last the time came for separating, and I rose to go with feelings partly of relief, partly of regret. The evening had been a jolly one, and I had enjoyed it; but then, had I done well to enjoy it? That was the question.
“Oh, I say,” said Daly, as we said good-night on the doorstep, “were you ever at a school called Stonebridge House?”
“Yes,” said I, startled to hear the name once more. “You weren’t there, were you?”