“And what about me?” he asked at last.
Quixtus drew away his hand with a despairing gesture, but made no reply.
“I suppose you’re right in classing me with the others,” said Huckaby. “Heaven knows I oughtn’t to judge them. I was in with them all the time”—Quixtus winced—“but I can’t go back to them.”
“My treating you just the same as them won’t necessitate your going back to them.”
Huckaby bent forward, quivering, in his chair. “As there’s a God in Heaven, Quixtus, I wouldn’t accept a penny from you on those terms.”
“And why not?”
“Because I don’t want your money. I want to be put in a position to earn some honourably for myself. I want your help as a man, your sympathy as a human being. I want you to help me to live a clean, straight life. I kept the promise, the important promise I made you, ever since we started. You can’t say I haven’t. And since you left I’ve not touched a drop of alcohol—and, if you promise to help me, I swear to God I never will as long as I live. What can I do, man,” he cried, throwing out his arms, “to prove to you that I’m in deadly earnest?”
Quixtus lay back in his chair reflecting, his finger-tips joined together. Presently a smile, half humorous, half kindly, lit up his features—a smile such as Huckaby had not seen since before the days of the hostless dinner of disaster, and it was manifest to Huckaby that some at least of the Quixtus of old had come back to earth.
“In the last day or two,” said Quixtus, “I have formed a staunch friendship with one who was a crabbed and inveterate enemy. It is Miss Clementina Wing, the painter, whom you saw, in somewhat painful circumstances, the other day at the tea-room. I will give you an opportunity—I hope many—of meeting her again. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, my dear Huckaby—but so many strange things have happened of late, that I, for the present, mistrust my own judgment. I hope you understand.”
“Not quite. You don’t mean to tell——”