How queer was the sound of that jerky talk!

“You ever see old Fookes now?  Been racin’ at all?  You live in Town?  Remember good old Blenker?” And then silence, and then another spurt:  “Ever go down to ‘Bambury’s?’ Ever go racin’? . . .  Come on up to my ‘digs.’  You’ve got nothin’ to do.”  No persuading Johnny Dromore that a ‘what d’you call it’ could have anything to do.  “Come on, old chap.  I’ve got the hump.  It’s this damned east wind.”

Well he remembered it, when they shared a room at ’Bambury’s’—­that hump of Johnny Dromore’s, after some reckless spree or bout of teasing.

And down that narrow bye-street of Piccadilly he had gone, and up into those ‘digs’ on the first floor, with their little dark hall, their Van Beers’ drawing and Vanity Fair cartoons, and prints of racehorses, and of the old Nightgown Steeplechase; with the big chairs, and all the paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks and stags’-horns, and hunting-whips.  And yet, something that from the first moment struck him as not quite in keeping, foreign to the picture—­a little jumble of books, a vase of flowers, a grey kitten.

“Sit down, old chap.  What’ll you drink?”

Sunk into the recesses of a marvellous chair, with huge arms of tawny leather, he listened and spoke drowsily.  ‘Bambury’s,’ Oxford, Gordy’s clubs—­dear old Gordy, gone now!—­things long passed by; they seemed all round him once again.  And yet, always that vague sense, threading this resurrection, threading the smoke of their cigars, and Johnny Dromore’s clipped talk—­of something that did not quite belong.  Might it be, perhaps, that sepia drawing—­above the ‘Tantalus’ on the oak sideboard at the far end—­of a woman’s face gazing out into the room?  Mysteriously unlike everything else, except the flowers, and this kitten that was pushing its furry little head against his hand.  Odd how a single thing sometimes took possession of a room, however remote in spirit!  It seemed to reach like a shadow over Dromore’s outstretched limbs, and weathered, long-nosed face, behind his huge cigar; over the queer, solemn, chaffing eyes, with something brooding in the depths of them.

“Ever get the hump?  Bally awful, isn’t it?  It’s getting old.  We’re bally old, you know, Lenny!” Ah!  No one had called him ‘Lenny’ for twenty years.  And it was true; they were unmentionably old.

“When a fellow begins to feel old, you know, it’s time he went broke—­or something; doesn’t bear sittin’ down and lookin’ at.  Come out to ‘Monte’ with me!”

‘Monte!’ That old wound, never quite healed, started throbbing at the word, so that he could hardly speak his:  “No, I don’t care for ‘Monte.’”

And, at once, he saw Dromore’s eyes probing, questioning: 

“You married?”

“Yes.”

“Never thought of you as married!”

So Dromore did think of him.  Queer!  He never thought of Johnny Dromore.