This etext was produced by Pat Castevans <patcat@ctnet.net>
and David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
By George Meredith
Edward's engagement at his Club had been with his unfortunate cousinAlgernon; who not only wanted a dinner but 'five pounds or so' (the hazymargin which may extend illimitably, or miserably contract, at thelender's pleasure, and the necessity for which shows the borrower to bedancing on Fortune's tight-rope above the old abyss).
"Over claret," was to have been the time for the asking; and Algernonwaited dinnerless until the healthy-going minutes distended and swelledmonstrous and horrible as viper-bitten bodies, and the venerable Signior,Time, became of unhealthy hue. For this was the first dinner which,during the whole course of the young man's career, had ever been failingto him. Reflect upon the mournful gap! He could scarcely believe in hisill-luck. He suggested it to himself with an inane grin, as one of thefar-away freaks of circumstances that had struck him—and was it notcomical?
He waited from the hour of six till the hour of seven. He comparedclocks in the hall and the room. He changed the posture of his legsfifty times. For a while he wrestled right gallantly with the apparentmenace of the Fates that he was to get no dinner at all that day; itseemed incredibly derisive, for, as I must repeat, it had never happenedto him by any accident before. "You are born—you dine." Such appearedto him to be the positive regulation of affairs, and a most proper one,—of the matters of course following the birth of a young being.
By what frightful mischance, then, does he miss his dinner? By placingthe smallest confidence in the gentlemanly feeling of another man!Algernon deduced this reply accurately from his own experience, andwhether it can be said by other "undined" mortals, does not matter in theleast. But we have nothing to do with the constitutionally luckless: thecalamitous history of a simple empty stomach is enough. Here the tragedyis palpable. Indeed, too sadly so, and I dare apply but a flash of themicroscope to the rageing dilemmas of this animalcule. Five and twentyminutes had signalled their departure from the hour of seven, whenAlgernon pronounced his final verdict upon Edward's conduct by leavingthe Club. He returned to it a quarter of an hour later, and lingered onin desperate mood till eight.
He had neither watch in his pocket, nor ring on his finger, nordisposable stud in his shirt. The sum of twenty-one pence was in hispossession, and, I ask you, as he asked himself, how is a gentleman todine upon that? He laughed at the notion. The irony of Providence senthim by a cook's shop, where the mingled steam of meats and puddingsrushed out upon the wayfarer like ambushed bandits, and seized him anddragged him in, or sent him qualmish and humbled on his way.
Two little boys had flattened their noses to the whiteness of winklesagainst the jealously misty windows. Algernon knew himself to beaccounted a generous fellow, and remembering his reputation, he, as tohint at what Fortune might do in his case, tossed some coppers to theurchins, who ducked to the pavement and slid before the coun