Edward turned to the right, and went towards Holborn. Accident favoured him. At the corner of Long Acre he saw Chicot, the artist, buttonholed by an older man, of somewhat raffish aspect. That Chicot was anxious to get away from the button-holey was obvious, and before Edward could reach the corner he had done so, and was off at a rapid pace westward. There would be no chance of overtaking him, except by running; and to run in Long Acre would be to make oneself unpleasantly conspicuous. There was no empty hansom within sight. Edward looked round despairingly. There stood the raffish man watching him, and looking as if he knew exactly what Mr. Clare wanted.
Edward crossed the street, looked at the raffish man, and lingered, half inclined to speak. The raffish man anticipated his desire.
“I think you wanted my friend Chicot,” he said, in a most insinuating tone.
He had the accent of a gentleman, though his degradation from that high estate was patent to every eye. His tall hat, sponged and coaxed to a factitious polish, was of an exploded shape; his coat was the coat of today; his stock was twenty years old in style, and so frayed and greasy that it might have been worn ever since it first came into fashion. The hawk’s eye, the iron lines about the mouth and chin, were warnings to the man’s fellow-creatures. Here was a man capable of anything—a being so obviously at war with society as to be bound by no law, daunted by no penalty.
Edward Clare dimly divined that the creature belonged to the dangerous classes, but in his excellent opinion of his own cleverness deemed himself strong enough to cope with half a dozen such seedy sinners.
“Well, yes, I did rather want to speak to him—er—about a literary matter. Does he live far from here?”
“Five minutes’ walk. Cibber Street, Leicester Square. I’ll take you there if you like. I live in the same house.”
“Ah, then you can tell me all about him. But it isn’t the pleasantest thing to stand and talk in an east wind. Come in and take a glass of something,” suggested Edward, comprehending that this shabby genteel stranger must be plied with drink.
“Ah,” thought Mr. Desrolles, “he wants something of me. This liberality is not motiveless.”
Tavern doors opened for them close at hand. They entered the refined seclusion of a jug and bottle department, and each chose the liquor he preferred—Edward sherry and soda water, the stranger a glass of brandy, “short.”
“Have you known Mr. Chicot long?” asked Edward. “Don’t suppose I’m actuated by impertinent curiosity. It’s a matter of business.”
“Sir, I know when I am talking to a gentleman,” replied Desrolles, with a stately air. “I was a gentleman myself once, but it’s so long ago that the world and I have forgotten it.”
He had emptied his glass by this time, and was gazing thoughtfully, almost tearfully, at the bottom of it.
“Take another,” said Edward.
“I think I will. These east winds are trying to a man of my age. Have I known Jack Chicot long? Well, about a year and a half—a little less, perhaps—but the time is of no moment, I know him well!”
And then Mr. Desrolles proceeded to give his new acquaintance considerable information as to the outer life of Mr. and Mrs. Chicot. He did not enter into the secrets of their domesticity, save to admit that Madame was fonder of the brandy bottle—a lamentable propensity in so fair a being—than she ought to be, and that Mr. Chicot was not so fond of Madame as he might be.
“Tired of her, I suppose?” said Edward.
“Precisely. A woman who drinks like a fish and swears like a trooper is apt to pall upon a man, after some years of married life.”
“Has this Chicot no other income than what he earns by his pencil?” asked Edward.
“Not a sou.”
“He has not been flush of money lately—since the new year, for instance?”
“No.”
“There has been no change in his way of life since then?”
“Not the slightest—except, perhaps, that he has worked harder than ever. The man is a prodigious worker. When first he came to London he had an idea of succeeding as a painter. He used to be at his easel as soon as it was light. But since the comic journals have taken him up he has done nothing but draw on the wood. He is really a very good creature. I haven’t a word to say against him.”
“He is remarkably like a man I know,” said Mr. Clare, musingly; “but of course it can’t be the same. The husband of a French dancer. No, that isn’t possible. I wish it were,” he muttered to himself, with clenched teeth.
“Is he like someone you know?” interrogated Desrolles.
“Wonderfully like, so far as I could make out in the glimpse I got of his face.”
“Ah, those glimpses are sometimes deceptive. Is your friend residing in London?”
“I don’t know where he is just at present. When last I saw him he was in the west of England.”
“Ah, nice country that!” said Desrolles, kindling with sudden eagerness. “Somersetshire or Devonshire way, you mean, I suppose?”
“I mean Devonshire.”
“Charming county—delightful scenery!”
“Very, for your Londoner, who runs down by express train to spend a fortnight there. Not quite so lively for your son of the soil, who sees himself doomed to rot in a Godforsaken hole like Hazlehurst, the village I came from. What! you know the place!” exclaimed Edward, for the man had given a start that betokened surprised recognition of the name.
“I do know a village called Hazlehurst, but it’s in Wilts,” the other answered coolly. “So the gentleman who resembles my friend Chicot is a
