"There! Sit on the bed.
Different from Wilderling's, isn't it? Poor devil.... I'm going to have
a bath if you don't mind--I've got to clear my head."
He dragged out a tin bath from under his bed, then a big can of water
from a corner. Stripped, he looked so thick and so strong, with his
short neck and his bull-dog build, that I couldn't help saying,
"You don't look a day older than the last time you played Rugger for
Cambridge."
"I am, though." He sluiced the cold water over his head, grunting. "Not
near so fit--gettin' fat too.... Rugger days are over. Wish all my other
days were over too."
He got out of the bath, wiped himself, put on pyjamas, brushed his
teeth, then his hair, took out a pipe, and then sat beside me on the
bed.
"Look here, Durward," he said. "I'm desperate, old man." (He said
"desprite.") "We're all in a hell of a mess."
"I know," I said.
He puffed furiously at his pipe.
"You know, if I'm not careful I shall go a bit queer in the head. Get so
angry, you know," he added simply.
"Angry with whom?" I asked.
"With myself mostly for bein' such a bloody fool. But not only
myself--with Civilisation, Durward, old cock!--and also with that swine
Semyonov.
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