"The captain," said Hicks, "won't be back till to-night, sir, and he told me to ask you if you would kindly pay these for him."
This was the last straw. To be sneered at by a man who was living under my roof, and then to be expected to pay his tailor and bootmaker, was more than I could stand. With as much composure as I could command, I told Hicks that Captain Wyngate would settle the accounts when he returned. I then sat down and wrote my guest a note, in which I told him what I thought of him, and added that, as he would probably prefer other quarters, Hicks would pack up his things as soon as he pleased. After this I went out, spent the afternoon watching a cricket match at Lord's, and did not return home until late, when, to my great relief, Captain Wyngate's room was vacant.
"What did the captain say when he read my note?" I asked Hicks.
"He only laughed, sir," was the reply, "and said he was going away for a change of air."
It was a relief to find that my Old Man of the Sea, as I had now come to regard the fascinating captain, had been unseated so easily, and I went to bed feeling decidedly pleased with myself, and quite convinced that I had heard the last of him. This fond delusion, however, was shattered the very next day by the arrival of a crop of his bills, including those of the day before, all brought by men with instructions to ask for payment. I was for indignantly repudiating all liabilities, but Hicks deferentially suggested that this might create a bad impression; and on reflection I saw that a blunt refusal might bring some of my own creditors about my ears rather sooner than I had bargained for. I therefore told Hicks to say the accounts would be settled next day, and meanwhile sent him to the hotel at which Captain Wyngate was staying before he joined me, with a chillingly polite note requesting him to settle with his tradespeople. Hicks came back with the cheerful information that the captain had gone away and left no address. Not knowing what else to do, I paid. The amount was not large—some fifty pounds, in fact—but signing the cheques was a very bitter pill.
Being now left to my own resources, it occurred to me to look into my finances, and I discovered to my amazement that I had run through more than four thousand pounds in two months! There were also accounts owing, and it dawned upon me that at my present rate of living I should be without a penny long before my twenty-first birthday arrived.
"Bah!" I said to myself. "I can always borrow again if I run short." And I tried to dismiss the matter from my mind. I suppose, though, there must have been a thin strain of caution, probably inherited from a Scotch grandfather, underneath my foolishness, for I could not shake off a feeling that I was drifting on to the rocks. I went to see Violet Alexander, with a vague hope of getting sympathy, but was told she had gone out. I called again and again, with the same result. Could it be that she did not want to see me?
In this position, ashamed to make it up with my father, and not having a single friend to whom I cared to turn, I did what I ought to have done long ago. I went to Lincoln's Inn Fields to lay my case before the family solicitors.