He heard them laughing round him, but with his head bowed and eyes shut, he tried to bring back that vanishing image. Good God, he thought, I can’t even remember how her hair curls. I must be drunk.
“Never mind, I’ll stay, dearie,” said the fat woman, bending over him with a giggle, her whisky-laden breath driving like a fume of smoke between his eyes and what he sought.
Andrews jumped to his feet. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said unsteadily. “Haven’t had anything to eat today,” he swayed a little on his feet. “Bring me some sandwiches.” He felt in his pockets and found nothing there. He had spent his last penny. “No, don’t,” he said and moved towards the door. A vague feeling of shame suffused his mind. He had tried to bring Elizabeth into this company and he had been fittingly punished. This laughter soiled the thought of her. “Be quiet, damn you,” he cried.
The cool air of the streets went to his head as though it were another glass of spirits. The pavement surged under his feet and he leant back against a wall, feeling sick and tired and ashamed. He closed his eyes and shut out the vision of the rolling street.
Mr. Farne’s quiet, sedate voice spoke through the dark. “You are a very foolish young man,” he said, “to drink on an empty stomach.”
“O leave me alone,” Andrews flung out his hand in the direction of the voice.
“You had better go and have some food,” Mr. Farne said.
“All right, but leave me.”
“Have you any money?” Mr. Farne persisted.
“No, damn you. Mind your own business.” Andrews opened his eyes and scowled at Mr. Farne, who stood watching him with a puzzled face.
“I meant no harm,” said Mr. Farne. “Will you dine with me, Mr. Absolom?”
Against his own inclination Andrews laughed. The gullible fool really believes, he thought, that I am Absolom. “I’ll come,” he said, “if you don’t mind holding my arm, my legs are weak. Hunger takes me like that.”
He found himself walking down the High Street, held upright by a steady arm. Outside a public house three Bow-street runners in red waistcoats watched their passage with superior contempt. “This town’s full of robin redbreasts,” he commented with a grimace.
“The Assizes,” said Mr. Farne. They stayed for a moment outside a square building above the window of which a fat female justice held the inevitable scales. “Here,” Mr. Farne said, “is where your friends the smugglers will be dealt with.”
Andrews shook off his arm and turned to face him. “What in hell do you mean,” he said, “by my friends? They are no friends of mine.”
“A figure of speech only,” Mr. Farne protested.
“You may hang the lot for me,” Andrews exclaimed, sobered for the moment by suspicion.
“We hope to,” said Mr. Farne gently. He put his arm round Andrews’s shoulder. “I am lodging just opposite at The White Hart,” he said. “Will you dine with me there?”
Andrews looked down at his muddy clothes. “Drunk and dirty,” he said, and added with a laugh a little self-consciously forlorn, “and damnably hungry.”
“I have a private room,” Mr. Farne encouraged him. “They do a good steak,” he added softly.
“Take me to it,” Andrews said. He put his hand to his head in a sudden longing to clear it. What was he doing dining with this Mr. Farne? Who was Mr. Farne? What had he said to him? “I must be careful,” he thought, and at the sound of that word, which seemed to have haunted him for weeks, his desperate longing for peace returned, a peace which would be empty of caution and deception and in which he could draw back to him that image which drink had obscured. “I’m tired,” he said aloud.
“You can sleep here,” Mr. Farne said, nodding towards the inn on the other side of the road.
In a despairing dream Andrews was led across the road and into a dimly lighted hall. “If they’ll let me sleep here tonight,” he thought, “tomorrow I’ll return over the downs.” He remembered the afternoon sun and the blue dew-pond at which he drank watched by the lazy cows and on the other side of the downs Elizabeth sat alone before a fire mending a dead man’s stocking. Mr. Farne was leading him up a dark staircase, and in the ancient mirror at its head he saw a dirty, bedraggled youth stagger towards him. “What charity to shelter that,” he thought.
Mr. Farne gently turned the handle of a door and ushered Andrews in. The door closed behind him. “Forgive my disturbing you, Sir Henry,” Mr. Farne said.
VII
A tall, thin man with sharp pointed face sat at a table laid for dinner. He had been at most picking at the food, for he raised, not from his plate but from a stack of papers beside it, a pair of dark, tired eyes. From a high forehead the hair receded in a grey curling wave.
It was not at him that Andrews stared, but at the lady who sat with him and who now gazed at Andrews with a particular challenging air that he knew well from pothouse women. She was pretty and richly dressed with a small red pouting impertinent mouth and curious eyes.
“What is it, Mr. Farne?” the man said, while the woman, resting a round chin on two small fists, stared steadily at Andrews in frank amazement.
Andrews put a hand on Mr. Farne’s shoulder and steadied himself. “Invited to dinner,” he said, “but I really thought Mr. Farne would be alone. Not dressed for company. I’ll be going,” and removing his hand, he turned to the door.
“Stay where you
