"No, Mr. Chester, I am not--in a drinking humor," answered Sir
Jasper, without turning round, or taking his eyes from the window.
"Sir Jasper?" said I to myself, "now where, and in what connection,
have I heard such a name before?"
He was of a slight build, and seemingly younger than either of
his companions by some years, but what struck me particularly
about him was the extreme pallor of his face. I noticed also a
peculiar habit he had of moistening his lips at frequent intervals
with the tip of his tongue, and there was, besides, something in
the way he stared at the trees, the wet road, and the gray sky--a
strange wide-eyed intensity--that drew and held my attention.
"Devilish weather--devilish, on my life and soul!" exclaimed the
short, red-faced man, in a loud, peevish tone, tugging viciously
at the bell-rope, "hot one day, cold the next, now sun, now
rain-- Oh, damn it! Now in France--ah, what a climate--heavenly
--positively divine; say what you will of a Frenchman, damn him
by all means, but the climate, the country, and the women--who
would not worship 'em?"
"Exactly!" said the languid gentleman, examining a pimple upon
his chin with a high degree of interest, "always 'dored a
Frenchwoman myself; they're so--so ah--so deuced French, though
mark you, Selby," he broke off, as the rosy-cheeked maid appeared
with the brandy and glasses," though mark you, there's much to be
said for your English country wenches, after all," saying which,
he slipped his arm about the girl's round waist. There was the
sound of a kiss, a muffled shriek, and she had run from the room,
slamming the door behind her, whereupon the languid gentleman
went back to his pimple.
"Oh! as to that, Chester, I quarrel only with the climate. God
made England, and the devil sends the weather!"
"Selby," said Sir Jasper, in the same repressed tone that he had
used before and still without taking his eyes from the gray
prospect of sky and tree and winding road, "there is no fairer
land, in all the world, than this England of ours; it were a good
thing to die--for England, but that is a happiness reserved for
comparatively few." And, with the words, he sighed, a strange,
fluttering sigh, and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets.
"Die!" repeated the man Selby, in a loud, boisterous way. "Who
talks of death?"
"Deuced unpleasant subject!" said the other, with a shrug at the
cracked mirror. "Something so infernally cold and clammy about
it--like the weather."