‘My dear Hawthorn, like Paul, you are beside yourself. Much learning has made you mad, I solemnly assure you. The place isn’t worth your taking.’
‘Nevertheless, if I can get it, Harry, I mean to take it.’
‘If you can get it! Fiddlesticks! If you can get a place as crossing-sweeper! My good friend, this is simple madness. A young man of your age, a boy, a mere child’—they were both the same age to a month, but Harry Noel always assumed the airs of a father towards his friend Hawthorn—‘why, it’s throwing up an absolute certainty; an absolute certainty, and no mistake about it. You’re the best Arabic scholar in England; it would be worth your while stopping here, if it comes to that, for the sake of the Arabic Professorship alone, rather than go and vegetate in Trinidad. If you take my advice, my dear fellow, you’ll have nothing more to say to the precious business.’
‘Well, Harry, I have two reasons for wishing to take it. In the first place, I want to marry Marian as early as possible; and I can’t marry her until I can make myself a decent income. And in the second place,’ Edward went on, ‘I want to go out as soon as I can and see my father and mother in Trinidad. If I get this district judgeship, I shall be able to write and tell them positively I’m coming, and they won’t have any excuse of any sort for putting a stopper on it any longer.’
‘In other words, in order to go and spy out the hidden wealth of the old governor, you’re going to throw up the finest opening at the English bar, and bind yourself down to a life of exile in a remote corner of the Caribbean Sea. Well, my good friend, if you really do it, all that I can say is simply this—you’ll prove yourself the most consummate fool in all Christendom.’
‘Noel, I’ve made up my mind; I shall really go there.’
‘Then, my dear boy, allow me to tell you, as long as you live you’ll never cease to regret it. I believe you’ll repent it, before you’re done, in sackcloth and ashes.’
Edward stirred the dead fire nervously once more for a few seconds and answered nothing.
‘Good-night, Hawthorn. You’ll be ready to start for the boatrace at ten to-morrow?’
‘Good-night, Harry. I’ll be ready to start. Good-night, my dear fellow.’