Widdershins Part 26

"Health," he said.

"Thanks," said Romarin--instantly noting that the monosyllable, which matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had intended. "Thank you--yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in which fish was brought.

This was not what Romarin had hoped for. He had desired to be reconciled with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner. Yet if Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish.

It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely for the sake of something to say; but Marsden's prompt pointing out of this was not encouraging. Now that he came to think of it, he had never known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word "Romance" he had so frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other. And it had seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been maintained ... But that was neither here nor there. The point was, that the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once if at all. To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.

"Be as friendly as I am, Marsden," he said. "I think--pardon me--that if our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help that I have, I'd take it in the right way." Again Marsden looked suspiciously at him. "To help? How to help?" he demanded "That's what I should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?"

"Oh, my work!" Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. "Try again, Romarin."

"You don't do any?... Come, I'm no bad friend to my friends, and you'll find me--especially so."

But Marsden put up his hand.

"Not quite so quickly," he said. "Let's see what you mean by help first.

Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That's help as I understand it nowadays."

"Then you've changed," said Romarin--wondering, however, in his secret heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.

Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.

"You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin--rather a mistake," he said.

"What is?"

"This--our meeting again. Quite a mistake."

Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said.

Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered very well--dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating and expounding with the point.

"I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You can't reopen things like this. You don't really _want_ to reopen them; you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike--I can't for the life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink."

He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the waiter.

There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having adopted a superior att.i.tude. But again he told himself that he must make allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he desired to be at peace.

"Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice.

Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.

"Yes, I am," said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. "You know you've done well, and I, to all appearances, haven't; you can't look at that gla.s.s and not know it. But I've followed the line of my development too, no less logically than you. My life's been mine, and I'm not going to apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I'm proud of it.

At least, there's been singleness of intention about it. So I think I'm strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me."

"Perhaps so, perhaps so," Romarin agreed a little sadly. "It's your tone more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me, I've no end in my mind except pure friendliness."

"No-o-o," said Marsden--a long "no" that seemed to deliberate, to examine, and finally to admit. "No. I believe that. And you usually get what you set out for. Oh yes. I've watched your rise--I've made a point of watching it. It's been a bit at a time, but you've got there. You're that sort. It's on your forehead--your destiny."

Romarin smiled.

"Hallo, that's new, isn't it?" he said. "It wasn't your habit to talk much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn't this more your style--'will, pa.s.sion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says,' et cetera--and so forth? Wasn't that it? With always the suspicion not far away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real impulse after all?"

A dispa.s.sionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere near home. Marsden was sc.r.a.ping together with the edge of his knife the crumbs of his broken roll. He sc.r.a.ped them into a little square, and then trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking did he look surlily up.

"Let it rest, Romarin," he said curtly. "Drop it," he added. "Let it alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another up. Clink gla.s.ses--there--and let it alone."

Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed.

"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated.

"Yes. Let it alone."

"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated once more. "You puzzle me entirely."

"Well, perhaps I'm altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I've dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it."

Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard.

"Drop it?" he said slowly ... "No, let's go on. I want to hear more of this."

"I'd much rather have another drink in peace and quietness.... Waiter!"

Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other. "You're a perverse devil still," was Romarin's thought. Marsden's, apparently, was of nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch.

Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair.

It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself another stiff peg.

"Well," he said, "since you will have it so--to the old days."

"To the old days," said Romarin, watching him gulp it down.

"Queer, looking back across all that time at 'em, isn't it? How do you feel about it?"

"In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret mingled."

"Oh, you have regrets, have you?"

"For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,"

he laughed. "That's why I chose the old place--" he gave a glance round at its glittering newness. "Do you happen to remember what all that was about? I've only the vaguest idea."

Marsden gave him a long look. "That all?" he asked.

"Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That 'Romantic' soap-bubble of yours was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me," he smiled, "did you really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay down?"

"My life," said Marsden calmly, "has been."

"Not literally."