"Not a word!" said I. Mr. Beverley glanced at me with a faint
mingling of pity and surprise. "My life," I explained, "has been
altogether a studious one, with the not altogether unnatural
result that I also am bound for Nowhere-in-Particular with just
eight shillings and sixpence in my pocket."
"And mine, as I tell you," said he, "has been an altogether riotous
one. Thus each of us, though by widely separate roads--you by the
narrow and difficult path of Virtue, and I by the broad and easy
road of Folly--have managed to find our way into this Howling
Destitution, which we will call Nowhere-in-Particular. Then how
does your path of Virtue better my road of Evil?"
"The point to be considered," said I, "is not so much what we now
are, but rather, what we have done, and may ultimately be, and do."
"Well?" said he, turning to look at me.
"For my own achievements, hitherto," I continued, "I have won the
High Jump, and Throwing the Hammer, also translated the works of
Quintilian, with the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, and the Life,
Lives, and Memoirs of the Seigneur de Brantome, which last, as you
are probably aware, has never before been done into the English."
"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Beverley, sitting up suddenly, with his
ill-used hat very much over one eye, "there we have it! Whoever
heard of Old Quin--What's-his-name, or cared, except, perhaps, a
few bald-headed bookworms and withered litterateurs? While you
were dreaming of life, and reading the lives of other fellows, I
was living it. In my career, episodically brief though it was, I
have met and talked with all the wits, and celebrated men, have
drunk good wine, and worshipped beautiful women, Mr. Vibart."
"And what has it all taught you?" said I.
"That there are an infernal number of rogues and rascals in the
world, for one thing--and that is worth knowing."
"Yes," said I.
"That, though money can buy anything, from the love of a woman
to the death of an enemy, it can only be spent once--and that is
worth knowing also."
"Yes," said I.
"And that I am a most preposterous ass!--and that last, look you,
is more valuable than all the others. Solomon, I think, says
something about a wise man being truly wise who knoweth himself a
fool, doesn't he?"
"Something of the sort."
"Then," said he, flinging his hat down upon the grass beside him,
"what argument can you advance in favor of your 'Narrow and
Thorny'?"