“Do you want to cut me, Warburton?”

CHAPTER 16

Warburton stopped, and looked into the speaker’s face, as if he hardly recognised him.

“You’re going out,” added Franks, turning round.  “I won’t keep you.”

And he seemed about to descend the stairs quickly.  But Will at length found voice.

“Come in.  I was thinking of something, and didn’t see you.”

They entered, and passed as usual into the sitting-room, but not with the wonted exchange of friendly words.  The interval since their last meeting seemed to have alienated them more than the events which preceded it.  Warburton was trying to smile, but each glance he took at the other’s face made his lips less inclined to relax from a certain severity rarely seen in them; and Franks succeeded but ill in his attempt to lounge familiarly, with careless casting of the eye this way and that.  It was he who broke silence.

“I’ve found a new drink—­gin and laudanum.  First rate for the nerves.”

“Ah!” replied Warburton gravely.  “My latest tipple is oil of vitriol with a dash of strychnine.  Splendid pick-me-up.”

Franks laughed loudly, but unmirthfully.

“No, but I’m quite serious,” he continued.  “It’s the only thing that keeps me going.  If I hadn’t found the use of laudanum in small doses, I should have tried a very large one before now.”

His language had a note of bravado, and his attitude betrayed the self-conscious actor, but there was that in his countenance which could only have come of real misery.  The thin cheeks, heavy-lidded and bloodshot eyes, ill-coloured lips, made a picture anything but agreeable to look upon; and quite in keeping with it was the shabbiness of his garb.  After an intent and stern gaze at him, Will asked bluntly: 

“When did you last have a bath?”

“Bath?  Good God—­how do I know?”

And again Franks laughed in the key of stage recklessness.

“I should advise a Turkish,” said Will, “followed by rhubarb of the same country.  You’d feel vastly better next day.”

“The remedies,” answered Franks, smiling disdainfully, “of one who has never been through moral suffering.”

“Yet efficacious, even morally, I can assure you.  And, by the bye, I want to know when you’re going to finish ‘The Slummer.’”

“Finish it?  Why, never!  I could as soon turn to and build a bridge over the Thames.”

“What do you mean?  I suppose you have to earn your living?”

“I see no necessity for it.  What do I care, whether I live or not?”

“Well, then, I am obliged to ask whether you feel it incumbent upon you—­to pay your debts?”

The last words came out with a jerk, after a little pause which proved what it cost Warburton to speak them.  To save his countenance, he assumed an unnatural grimness of feature, staring Franks resolutely in the face.  And the result was the artist’s utter subjugation; he shuffled, dropped his head, made confused efforts to reply.