I put the paper in my pocket, and turned my attention to the sardines and potato salad which the waiter had just dumped down in front of me. Billy's two bottles of wine, which arrived immediately afterwards, soon put us into a cheerfully reminiscent mood, and throughout dinner we yarned away about old friends and old days in the Argentine, where five years before we had first run across each other.
I suggested winding up the evening at a music-hall; but Billy, unfortunately, had some appointment connected with his job, which prevented him from coming. However, he not only paid for dinner, but insisted on lending me a couple of sovereigns, which, to tell the truth, I was very glad to accept. But for this, by the time I had paid my bill the next morning, I should have been practically penniless.
I said good-bye to him regretfully at the bottom of Gerrard Street, and then, walking across Leicester Square, made my way slowly down to the Embankment. I was lodging in Chelsea, and I thought I might just as well stroll home as waste threepence on a bus.
It was a fine, soft summer evening, with a faint breeze stirring the trees, and now and then lifting a scrap of paper from the roadway and dropping it again languidly after it had tumbled it a few yards. There were not many people on the Embankment; those that were there consisting chiefly of engaged couples, with here and there a tattered piece of human wreckage apparently on the look-out for a comfortable open-air lodging for the coming night.
I sauntered slowly on, clinking Billy's two sovereigns in my pocket, and pondering idly over my own affairs. I had left Bolivia four months before in high spirits, thinking that for the first time in my life I had the chance of making some money. That I had found gold in richly paying quantities I had no shadow of doubt, and I felt confident that in London I should be able to raise sufficient capital to get together a proper expedition for penetrating the interior. I knew enough of the Bolivian authorities to be sure that, as far as State permission went, a generous measure of bribery was the only thing necessary.
Seven or eight weeks in England had been enough to dash all my high hopes. I suppose English business men are naturally cautious—requiring to know a great deal about a stranger's record before they care to accept his statement. Now my record, though highly interesting to myself, had been of a little too chequered a nature to inspire confidence in the breast of a capitalist whose ideas of life are bounded by Lombard Street and, shall we say, Maidenhead. At all events, I had failed dismally in my purpose, and, as I had told Billy, had reached the end of my resources without getting any further in my quest than when I had started.
I was not sorry to feel that it was all over. My restless life had ill fitted me for the humdrum respectabilities of London, and I was beginning to regard the streets, the people, and indeed everything about me, with an intense and ever-growing distaste. It is true, that New York would be as bad or even worse, but I had no real intention of wasting much time in that shrieking inferno. To start with, my funds would not allow it; and, in any case, I was beginning to get a bit tired of this dreary chase after wealth. If I could find a sympathetic capitalist in a few days, well and good—otherwise, I had quite made up my mind not to worry any more about the matter. Let the gold stop where it was until some traveller more suited to the job than I stumbled across it. Life, after all, is the first thing, and I was not going to waste mine hanging round office doors, and interviewing fat gentlemen in frock-coats, when the whole world with all its fun and adventure lay before me.
Stopping under a lamp, and leaning over the Embankment, I gazed at the lights of a small steamer, puffing its way busily down the Thames. A great desire to get out of this choking atmosphere of so-called civilisation suddenly gripped me with irresistible force. I seemed to taste the smack of the salt sea upon my lips, to smell again the warm, sweet breath of the open pampas. My heart beat faster and stronger, and I found myself muttering some lines of Kipling—the only poet I've ever cared two straws about—
"The days are sick and cold, and the skies are grey and old,
And the twice breathed airs grow damp;
And I'd sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll
Of a south Bilbao tramp."
Yes, that was what I wanted: the sea, and the sun, and the plains, and, above all, life—raw, naked life, with its laughter and its fighting, far away from these stifling streets where men's hearts grow smug and cold. I threw back my arms, and took in a deep breath.