“The good of your soul?” I quizzed.
“Yes, I visit you here and then go away deuced thankful for my mercies. I’m not to be hanged next week, you know. I live to marry the girl.”
“Still, I should think you might find more interesting spots than this.”
“I am a student of human nature, Montagu.”
“A condemned prisoner, never a wit at the best of times, full of fears and agues and fevers! One would scarce think the subject an inviting one for study.”
“There you do yourself injustice. Y’are the most interesting man I know. A dozen characters are wrapped up in you. You have the appearance of being as great a rip as the rest of us, and I vow your looks do not belie you, yet at times you have the conscience of a ranting dissenter. I find in you a touch both of Selwyn’s dry wit and of Balmerino’s frostly bluntness; the cool daring of James Wolfe combined with as great a love of life as Murray has shown; the chivalry of Don Quixote and the hard-headedness of Cumberland; sometimes an awkward boy, again the grand manner Chesterfield himself might envy you; the obstinacy of the devil and——”
“Oh, come!” I broke in laughing. “I don’t mind being made a composite epitome of all the vices of the race, but I object to your crossing the Styx on my behalf.”
“And that reminds me of the time we came so near crossing together,” he broke out, diverting the subject in his inconsequent fashion. “D’ye remember that Dr. Mead who dressed our wounds for us after our little argument? It appears that he and a Dr. Woodward fell into some professional dispute as to how a case should be treated, and Lud! nothing would satisfy them but they must get their toasting forks into action. The story goes that they fought at the gate of Gresham College. Mead pinked his man. ‘Take your life,’ quoth he. ‘Anything but your medicine,’ returns Woodward just before he faints. Horry Walpole told me the story. I suppose you have heard Selwyn’s story of Lord Wharton. You know what a spendthrift Wharton is. Well the Duke of Graftsbury offered him one of his daughters in marriage, a lady of uncertain age and certain temper. But the lady has one virtue; she’s a devilish fine fortune. A plum, they say! Wharton wrote Graftsbury a note of three lines declining the alliance because, as he put it, the fortune was tied up and the lady wasn’t.”
“Not bad. Talking of Selwyn, I suppose he gets his fill of horrors these days.”
“One would think he might. I met him at the Prince’s dinner yesterday, and between us we two emptied nine bottles of maraschino. Conceive the splitting headache I’m wearing to-day.”