The Curate was tired, heated, and indignant. He lifted the candles away from the table, and then put them back again, too much excited to think of the moth. “Your arrival must have been very sudden,” he said, throwing himself into the nearest chair. “I was very much surprised by your message. It looks inhospitable, but I see you make yourself quite at home—”
“Perfectly,” said the elder brother, resuming his cigar. “I always do. It is much more agreeable for all parties. But I don’t know how it is that a man’s younger brothers are always so rapid and unreasonable in their movements. Instead of saving that unhappy insect, you have precipitated its fate. Poor thing—and it had no soul,” said the intruder, with a tone of pathos. The scene altogether was a curious one. Snugly sheltered from the draught, but enjoying the coolness of the atmosphere which it produced, lay the figure on the sofa at perfect ease and leisure, with the light shed brightly upon him, on his shining beard, the white cool expanse of linen at his breast, and the bright hues of his dressing-gown. Near him, fatigued, dusty, indignant, and perplexed, sat the Curate, with the night air playing upon him, and moving his disordered hair on his forehead; while at the other end of the room hovered the stranger who had followed Mr. Wentworth—a broad, shabby, indistinct figure, who stood with his back to the others, looking vaguely out of the window into the darkness. Over these two the night air blew with no small force between the open windows, making the candles on the centre table flare wildly, and flapping the white tablecloth. An occasional puff from the cigar floated now and then across the room. It was a pause before the storm.
“I was about to say,” said the Perpetual Curate, “that though it might seem inhospitable, the first thing I had to ask was, What brought you here—and why did you send for me?”
“Don’t be abrupt, pray,” said Jack, taking his cigar from his mouth, and slightly waving the hand that held it. “Don’t let us plunge into business all at once. You bring a sense of fatigue into the room with you, and the atmosphere was delightful a little while ago. I flatter myself I know how to enjoy the cool of the evening. Suppose you were to—ah—refresh yourself a little,” he said, with a disapproving glance at his brother’s dusty boots, “before we begin to talk of our affairs.”
The Curate of St. Roque’s got up from his chair, feeling that he had an unchristian inclination to kick the heir of the Wentworths. As he could not do that, he shut the window behind him emphatically, and extinguished the flaring candles on the centre table. “I detest a draught,” said the Perpetual Curate, which, unfortunately, was not a statement entirely founded on fact, though so far true in the present instance that he hated anything originated by the intruder. “I have hurried home in reply to your message, and I should be glad to know what it means, now that I am here—what you are in trouble about—and why you come to me—and what you have to do with him?”
“But you need not have deranged the temperature,” said Jack. “Impetuosity always distresses me. All these are questions which it will take some time to answer. Let me persuade you, in the first place, to make yourself comfortable. Don’t mind me; I am at the crisis of my novel, which is very interesting. I have just been thinking how it might be adapted for the stage—there’s a character that Fechter could make anything of. Now, my dear fellow, don’t stand on ceremony. Take a bath and change your dress, and in the meantime there will be time to cook something—the cookery here is not bad for the country. After that we’ll discuss all our news. I daresay our friend there is in no hurry,” said the elder brother, opening his book and puffing slowly towards the Curate the languid smoke of his cigar.
“But, by Jove, I am in a hurry, though,” said that nameless individual, coming forward. “It’s all very well for you: you put a man up to everything that’s dangerous, and then you leave him in the lurch, and say it don’t matter. I daresay it don’t matter to you. All that you’ve done has been to share the profit—you’ve nothing to do with the danger; but I’m savage tonight, and I don’t mean to stand it any more,” said the stranger, his great chest expanding with a panting breath. He, too, looked as if he would have liked to seize the languid spectator in his teeth and shake some human feeling into him. Jack Wentworth raised his eyebrows and looked at him, as he might have looked at a wild beast in a rage.
“Sit down, savage, and be quiet,” he said. “Why should I trouble myself about you?—any fool could get into your scrape. I am not in the habit of interfering in a case of common crime. What I do, I do out of pity,” he continued, with an air of superiority, quite different from his tone to his brother. But this look, which had answered before, was not successful tonight.
“By Jove, I am savage!” said the other, setting his teeth, “and I know enough of your ways to teach you different
