“The dog, Sir?—oh, the dog is getting on all right so far as I am
aware.”
“How do you mean—so far as you are aware?”
“Well, Sir, I don’t see much of it. That’s a fact.”
“Really. How’s that?”
I was pumping the man, I acknowledge it. I can make no excuse for it.
I was driven by something that seemed to me then more than an ignoble
curiosity.
“Well, Sir, Mr. Kersteven keeps the dog shut up mostly. I suppose he
thinks that till it gets accustomed to the place and to us it’s better.”
“But if it’s always shut up, how can it get accustomed to you?”
“That’s more than I can say, Sir.”
I could see that the man was constrained, was not telling me something
of which his mind was full. We had now reached my door, and I had no
further excuse for keeping him with me.
“Well, Cragg,” I said. “Good-night.”
“Good-night, Sir.”
“I hope the dog will settle down and be friendly with you.”
“Friendly with me, Sir! That dog! The Lord forbid!” cried Cragg.
He seemed startled by the sound of his own lamentable exclamation,
looked at me as if asking pardon, lifted his hat, and walked quickly
away into the darkness. I stood staring after him. I longed to follow
him, to question him, to find out what he meant. But how could I?
That night it was late before I went to sleep. The black spaniel seemed
to be crouching at the foot of the bed. I seemed to see its yellow eyes
fixed upon me, trying to tell me what I longed to know.
Late in the afternoon of the next day I received a very unexpected
visit from Arthur Gernham. When I saw him come into my room, dressed in
a suit of homespun, with a flannel shirt and a red tie, and holding a
soft brown wideawake in his hand, I jumped up from my chair eagerly.
I guessed at once that he had something to say with reference to our
conversation of the previous night.
“How are you?” he said, in his rasping, energetic voice. “I got your
address from the Red Book.”
He sat down and stretched out his long legs.
“I’m delighted to see you,” I said. “You’ve been at work with Vernon?”
“I’ve been with him.”
He ran one hand over his tufts of scanty hair.
“I’m disappointed in Kersteven,” he said. “I never should have thought
he was a shifty fellow.”
The word shifty, applied to Vernon, roused my sense of friendship.
“Oh, you’re mistaken,” I exclaimed. “Vernon’s not a shifty man.”
“I beg your pardon—he is.”
I waited in silence for him to explain himself. I saw plainly that he
was going to. There was a sledge-hammer honesty about Gernham that was
startling but rather refreshing. He now proceeded to give me a specimen
of it.
“I can’t stomach a friend who isn’t perfectly straight with me,” he
said; “and what’s more, I’m bound to tell him so. I can’t keep anything
in. Whatever I feel I have to out with it. That’s my nature. It’s got
me into plenty of trouble, and it will get me into plenty more. Fights
were my lot at Eton, and fights have been my lot, more or less, ever
since.”
He unbuttoned one of the cuffs of his flannel shirt, pushed the flannel
higher up his arm, and went on:
“With Kersteven I got on magnificently until to-day.”
“Have you had a wordy fight with Vernon to-day, then?” I asked.
“I went straight to him this morning and told him I’d met you last
night. He asked me how I liked you, and I told him, ‘Very much.’ Then I
said, plump out, ‘You’ve been tricky with me, Kersteven.’”
“Oh!” I exclaimed.