Robert! I’m stopping at Washington! Look in for a moment, won’t you, if you’re up!”
Something in his tone and manner plainly and definitely said that the young man’s company was no longer wanted for the evening, but the youth immediately nodded his head energetically and decisively, saying in a satisfied manner:
“Good! Good! I’ll do that! I’ll be in to say good-bye to-morrow morning.”
“Right!” the Englishman said curtly. “Good night!… Good night!… Good night!” he blurted out, turning round and addressing every one, yet seeing no one, in a series of toothy grimaces. “Oh—good night!” he said suddenly, before going out, grinning and shaking hands briefly, in a gesture of permanent dismissal, with the other young man, who was a blond insignificant-looking youth, obviously a “hanger-on,” with whom the Englishman evidently cared to have no further acquaintance. Then, pushing his companion before him through the green curtain, he went out suddenly with the same desperate shy abruptness, and in a moment the other men, saying good night all around, had followed him, and the three young men were left alone in the compartment. It was now after one o’clock. Outside, the moon was up, flooding the dark earth of Virginia with a haunting light. That grand, moon-haunted earth stroked calmly past and, through the media of its changeless and unceasing change, the recession and recurrent movement of the enchanted scene, the train made on for ever its tremendous monotone that was itself the rhythm of suspended time, the sound of silence and for ever.
For a moment, after the men had gone, Robert stared down sternly and quizzically at the boy, with an expression of mock gravity, and then, in his rapid, eager, deep-toned and rather engaging voice, said:
“Well, Colonel?… What have you to say for yourself?… Was there grass on the back of her back, or was the foul deed perpetrated in your Hudson Super Six?… Come, sir! Explain yourself! Were you drunk or sober?” And suddenly lifting his thin, young, yet almost tortured-looking face and his restless eyes, which were inflamed with drink, and in whose haggard depths the incipient flashes of the madness which later would destroy him were already visible, he laughed suddenly, a strange, small, hoarsely falsetto kind of laugh, jerking his head towards the boy, and saying in an annoying and indefinite way:
