“How do you do, Roderick?” said Sylvester, rising and formally shaking hands.
“Oh, I'm bursting with fatness, which is more than I can say for you. But what are you doing in this galley?”
“Why shouldn't I be here?”
“The eternal fitness of things. One doesn't as a general rule, for instance, meet the Archbishop of Canterbury at a Covent Garden ball.”
He spoke in a hearty voice, with somewhat exotic gestures. Roderick Usher had spent part of his schooldays in France, and was fond of insisting on his cosmopolitan training. He was dressed in the most perfectly fitting of frock-coats and patent leather boots, and wore faultless grey suede gloves. His only departure from the commonplace severity of fashionable attire was a yellow Indian silk bow whose ends spread over the front of his coat. He had light fuzzy hair that protruded bushily behind his glossy silk hat, and his yellow beard was pointed in the Vandyke pattern. He was of medium height, rather stout; his face was broad and ruddy, at first sight giving the impression of frank good humour; but his eyes, small and somewhat shifty, although hidden behind gold pince-nez, detracted from the general air of handsomeness that he was pleased to cultivate. Besides, the deep lines of nearing middle age were growing troublesomely obvious.
Sylvester replied in a matter-of-fact way to his last remark,——
“I was working in my laboratory all the morning, and I felt the need of air. Weymouth Street is not far. I don't come here as a rule.”
“Bless you, my friend, there's no need to apologise. The place belongs to you just as much as it does to me. How's the old man?”
“Which old man?” asked Sylvester.
“Your old man, my old man, both our old men. Our antique but venerated old men.”