"Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man
can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might
have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was
cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a
pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to
be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my
senses. I ask myself why I should commit such lurid folly. Last night I
was sitting over the fire with a book--for it was cold, though not so
cold as this," the speaker shivered and dragged the collar of his
overcoat still higher--"at peace with all the world, with Omar purring
placidly by my side, and my soul wrapped in that serenity which belongs
to a man who has long since rid himself of that inconvenient
appendage--a conscience, and has hit upon the right brand of
cigarettes, and now--"
He paused to sigh, to groan indeed, and shifted himself uneasily in the
well-padded seat of the luxurious mail-phaeton.
"When Williams brought me your note, vilely written--were you sober,
Stafford?--blandly asking me to join you in this mad business, I smiled
to myself as I pitched the note on the fire. Omar smiled too, the very
cigarette smiled. I said to myself I would see you blowed first; that
nothing would induce me to join you, that I'd read about the lakes too
much and too often to venture upon them in the early part of June; in
fact, had no desire to see the lakes at any time or under any
conditions. I told Omar that I would see you in the lowest pit of
Tophet before I would go with you to--whatever the name of this place
is. And yet, here I am."
The speaker paused in his complaint to empty a pool water from his
mackintosh, and succeeded--in turning it over his own leg.
He groaned again, and continued.
"And yet, here I am. My dear Stafford, I do not wish to upbraid you; I
am simply making to myself a confession of weakness which would be
pitiable in a stray dog, but which in a man of my years, with my
experience of the world and reputation for common sense, is simply
criminal. I do not wish to reproach you; I am quite aware that no
reproach, not even the spectacle of my present misery would touch your
callous and, permit me to frankly add, your abominably selfish nature;
but I do want to ask quite calmly and without any display of temper:
what the blazes you wanted to come this way round, and why you wanted
me with you?"