Foe-Farrell Part 24

"To do him credit--and it makes me hopeful for him--Farrell has a certain instinct of self-preservation. Let us never forget that he is a widower. Amid these Amazons he had fenced a bachelor table. I walked up to it straight and said, with a glance around, 'Farrell, you're lonely.'

"He pa.s.sed a hand over his forehead and murmured, 'Oh, for G.o.d's sake--don't drive me like this! . . .'

"'Nonsense,' said I. 'Forget it, man. Look around you and say if there's one of these spinsters you'd rather have for companion. Don't raise your voice. You started in admirable key. . . . Let's keep to it and understand one another.

I'm dining with you. If you like, we'll toss up later for who pays: but I'm dining with you. I promise not to hurt you to-night, if that helps conviviality.'

"'It does,' said he in a queer way. 'Let's talk.'

"'Well then,' said I confidentially. 'You're a solid man.

You've made your way in the world, and I suppose the sort of success you've won implies some grit. . . . What makes you afraid of me, Farrell?'

"He drank some wine and stared down on the table-cloth, knitting his brows. 'Well,' he answered, 'I might tell you it's because you're mad.'

"'That's nonsense,' I a.s.sured him.

"'Oh, is it?' said he. 'I'd like to be sure it is.'

"'My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time," I quoted.

'Feel it, Farrell.'

"I stretched out my wrist. He started back as though it had been a snake.

"'On the whole you're right,' said I, drawing back my hand slowly, watching his eyes. 'If they saw you feeling my pulse the ladies around us would at once solve the doubt they have discussed in the drawing-room. All _table-d'hote_ ladies speculate concerning their fellow-guests in the hotel. . . . .

Thirty pairs of eyes were on the point of detecting you for a fas.h.i.+onable physician, and by this time to-morrow thirty ladies travelling in search of health would have found means to make your acquaintance and pump you for medical advice on the cheap. . . . Yes, Farrell, you have a lively instinct of self-preservation. I will note it. . . . Now tell me.--When I walked in just now, that same instinct prompted you to get up and run; to run as you did along the foresh.o.r.e this afternoon.

What restrained you?'

"'Why, hang it all,' he blurted with a look around; 'a fellow couldn't very well show up like that before all these ladies!'

"He meant it too, Roddy. It came out with a flush, plump and honest.

"It makes the chase more interesting. But I am annoyed with myself over the miscalculation. . . . I could have sworn he was a coward in grain. I marked all the _stigmata_. . . .

And behold he can show fight!--at any rate in presence of the other s.e.x. . . . Can something have happened to him, think you, since our talk at Versailles? Is it possible that I am _educating_ the man?

"On top of this complicating discovery I made a simplifying one.

"You know that I have a knack with animals, in the way of handling their pa.s.sions. I've never tried it on humans: for I've never laid down any basis of knowledge, and I've always detested empiricism. That study, as you remember, was to come.

"Well, I'll write further about it some day. . . . But I believe I have _something like_ this power over Farrell. . . . I put out a feeler or two--to change metaphors, I waved a hand gently over the lyre, scarcely touching the strings; and it certainly struck me that they responded. You will understand that a _table-d'hote_ was no place for pus.h.i.+ng the experiment.

And there were one or two men in the smoking-room when we sought it.

"Farrell found himself; talked, after a while, quite well and easily. In the smoking-room he told me a good deal about his early life: all _bourgeois_ stuff, of course, but recounted in the manner that belongs to it, and quite worth listening to.

"He never wilted once, until I got up to go and drank what remained of my whisky-and-seltzer 'to our next merry meeting.'

He followed me out to the hotel doorway to say Good night.

We did not shake hands.

"There are indications that he will travel back north to-night.

He has left for Pau, to play golf. At Dax this evening--mark my words--a solitary traveller may be observed furtively stealing on board the night express for Paris. He will be observed: but he won't be a solitary traveller.

"Your lawyer's letter--as I started by remarking--has arrived opportunely. If Farrell, as I suspect, intends to go through to London, I may reach you almost as soon as this letter, and shall add a piece of my mind for a postscript.--Yours,"

"J. F."

I slept the night at Biarritz and started back early next morning for London.

I found Jimmy rec.u.mbent in what he called his Young Oxford Student's Reading Chair, alone with the racing news in the evening papers.

"Hallo!" he greeted me. "I rather expected you just now. Let's go and dine somewhere."

"Has Jack turned up here?" I asked.

"'Course he has: Farrell too--Farrell first by a short head.

Rather a good idea, my stopping at home to keep goal. Hard lines on you, though; all that journey for nothing. . . . If it's any consolation, the Professor was much affected when I told him of all the trouble you were taking, out of pure friends.h.i.+p, to fit him with a strait-waistcoat. 'Good old Roddy!' he said."

"No, he didn't," I interrupted. "And if he did, we'll cut that out.

Tell me what happened."

"He said he had posted a letter to you from Biarritz: that it ought to have arrived by this time. I told him it hadn't, and it hasn't.

If it had, I warn you I should have opened it."

"That's all right," I said. "I extracted it from the post-box at Biarritz, and have it here. You shall read it by and by. Go on."

"Well, in my opinion, the Professor's pulling your leg--or he and Farrell between 'em. If either's mad, it's Farrell; or else--which I'm inclined to suspect--Farrell's a born actor."

"Now see here," I threatened, "I've travelled some thousands of miles: I've spent two nights in the train and one in a French bedstead haunted by mosquitoes: I've had the beast of a crossing, and I'm in the worst possible temper. Will you, please tell me exactly what has happened?"

"You shall have the details over dinner," he promised affably.

"For you've omitted the one observation that's relevant--your stomach is crying aloud for a meal. The Cafe Royal is prescribed."

"Not until I've had a tub and dressed myself. The dust of coal-brick--"

"That's all right, again. . . . I admonished Jephson. You'll find the bath spread and your clothes laid out in your bedder, and in five minutes or so Jephson will bring hot water in a lordly can. I, too, will dress. . . . But meantime, here are the outlines:

"Farrell knocked in early this morning. He was agitated and he perspired. He wished to see you at once. I pointed out that it was impossible and, as they say in examinations, gave reasons for my answer. Hearing it, he showed a disposition to shake at the knees and cling to the furniture. When he went on to discover that I might do in your place, and the furniture's place, and started clinging to me--well, I struck. I pointed out that he was apparently sound in wind and limb, inquired if he owed money, and having his a.s.surance to the contrary, suggested that he should pull himself together and copy the Village Blacksmith.

"While we were arguing it, the Professor b.u.t.ted in. I'll do him the justice to say he wasn't perspiring. But he, too, was in the devil of a hurry to interview you. So I had to play band as before.

"The position was really rather funny. There, by the door, was the Professor, asking questions hard, and seemingly unaware that Farrell was anywhere in the room. Here was I, playing faithful Gelert life-size, but pretty warily, covering Farrell--who, for aught I knew, had gone to earth under the sofa. I couldn't hear him breathing--and he's pretty stertorous, as a rule.

"I kept a pretty straight eye on the Professor, somehow, and told him the facts--that you had sent the money ('Yes, I know,' said he: 'I got it before leaving Biarritz'): that you had actually gone to that health-resort in search of him. ('Good G.o.d!' said he. 'That's like old Roddy'--or some words to that effect. You wouldn't let me repeat 'em, just now.) Then he started telling me about this letter he'd posted at Biarritz, and that it should have arrived, by rights.

'Well, it hasn't,' said I, feeling pretty inhospitable for not asking him to sit down and have a drink. . . . But, you see, I wasn't certain he wouldn't sit down somewhere on top of Farrell. . . .

'Think he'll be home tonight?' asked the Professor. 'That's what I'm allowing, in the circ.u.mstances,' said I. '--But you owe him some apology, you know, because you've led him the devil of a dance.'

'Don't I realise _that!_' says he, like a man worried and much affected. 'We'll call around to-night, on the chance of his turning up to forgive us. Come along, Farrell!' says he.

"I whipped about; and there was Farrell, seated in that chair of yours, bolt upright, smirking as foolish as a wet-nurse at a christening! I couldn't have believed my eyes. . . . But there it was--and after what I'd been listening to, five minutes before!

"As I'm describing it, it staggered me--and the more when the Professor, looking past me, said, 'If you're ready, Farrell?' and Farrell stood up, smiling and ready, and moved to join him.

But I kept what face I could.