What on earth were we to do? It was evident they didn’t care about receiving us at the hotel; I was exceedingly dirty, with the remains of the spirit-gum on my cheeks and the lines of the old-age pencil alongside my nose; and poor Teddy’s puffs and scars were all the more noticeable now they were just beginning to heal. We looked, in short, like a couple of broken-down sea-side entertainers, who had had a row at the last hall about returning the money. We had no luggage, not even a sponge-bag, and I had talked grandly about the yacht until I found the telegram, when I had to admit it wasn’t coming; at which the manager had merely bowed with sour and silent politeness. “Then you don’t stay here!” I read as plainly as possible in his watchful eye.
We went on down to the Piazzetta, to the harbor side, to see if we could by chance hear of a vessel sailing for Athens.
“Yes,” grumbled Teddy, “and when we get to Athens we shall find another wire, with ‘Come Timbuctoo!’ Let’s cut it short and go home by rail. I don’t feel safe in these foreign parts. Oh, how glad I shall be to get back to Southport again!”
“Strolling up and down Lord Street, eh? in those eternal breeches and gaiters.”
“Well, why not? Come, let’s be off. I don’t know why we need follow them half over Europe.”
“Certainly, let’s be off,” said I, “if you don’t mind paying for the tickets.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say you haven’t got enough money?”
It was true, I hadn’t. What with the thousand francs for the defence, the thousand for the croupier who told me about Madame Vagliano (what the deuce did I care about Madame Vagliano!), the buying of the bicycles, the clothes for Teddy, the tickets, and one thing and another, I had only two or three hundred francs left; and Teddy had merely a couple of louis, having spent the rest in bribing the Monte Carlo police to carry his letter to Mrs. Wingham and put him in a better cell.
Nothing, I think, tries a man’s nature more truly than travelling and the contretemps arising therefrom; nothing more surely discovers his selfishness, his meanness, his want of even temper. We were certainly rather in a fix, but scarcely to warrant Teddy’s outburst of anger and ill-humor. If I was amused at it all and kept my equanimity, why couldn’t he? But no! he kept on fuming and fretting to such a degree that I was within an ace of decoying him up a piccolo canal and beating him soundly about the head and ears, so much did he grate upon my nerves.
At last we did manage to secure passages in a dirty Italian boat, Il Principe Umberto, sailing that night down the coast to Ancona and Brindisi, and thence across the Adriatic, viâ Corfu, to Patras. It was rather a tight fit, financially speaking, for after paying for our berths and allowing something for food on board, we had only just about enough left for the tickets from Patras to Athens. If the yacht didn’t turn up there, then we should be in a fix indeed.