Part 48 (1/2)
your ears for?”
”I'm not,” says a m.u.f.fled, surly voice. ”It's a--twinge of toothache.”
”All I've got to say is,” declares Captain Bingo, ”that marriage with one's equal in point of breedin' is sometimes a blank draw, but marriage with one's inferior is a howling error. And if you had done as I'd stake my best hat you would have done, supposin' you'd been left to loll in the lap of the lovely Lessie----”
Beauvayse jumps up in a rage.
”Wrynche, how much longer do you think I can go on listening to this?
You're simply maundering, man, and my nerves won't stand it.”
”Oh, very well! But you haven't the ghost of a right to lay claim to nerves,” Captain Bingo obstinately a.s.severates. ”Now look at me.”
”I'm hanged if I want to!” declares Beauvayse. ”You're not a cheering object.” He drops back into the bamboo chair again.
”Flyblown, do I look?” inquires Bingo, with dispa.s.sionate interest.
”Well, yes, decidedly,” Beauvayse agrees, without removing his eyes from the whitewashed verandah-pillar at which they blankly stare.
”Streaky yellow in the whites of the eyes, and pouchy under 'em?” Captain Bingo demands of his young friend with unmistakable relish. ”'Yes' again?
And I grouse and maunder? Of course I do, my dear chap! How can I help it? A married man who, for all he knows, may be a widower----”
”I wish to G.o.d I knew I was one!”
”My good fellow?”
”You heard what I said,” Beauvayse flings over his shoulder.
Captain Bingo, his hands upon his straddling knees, regards his junior with circular eyes staring out of a large, kind, rather foolish face of utter consternation.
”That you wished to G.o.d you were a widower?”
”Well, I mean it.”
x.x.xIV
”Good Lord!”
There is a gap of silence only broken when Captain Bingo says heavily:
”Then you did marry the Lavigne after all? When was it----”
”We'd pulled off the marriage at the local Registrar's a fortnight before you came down with--_his_ wire.”
”By the Living Tinker, then it _was_ a genuine honeymoon after all!” A faint grin appears on Captain Wrynche's large perturbed face.
”Don't be epigrammatic, Wrynche.” The dull weariness in the young voice gives place to quick affront. ”And keep the secret. Don't give me away.”
”Did I ever give you, or any other man who ever trusted me, away? Tell me that.”