I dined with my old friend and schoolfellow, Jack Withers, oneday last September. On the previous morning, on my way to the IndiaHouse, I had run up against a stout individual on Cornhill, and onlooking in his face as I stopped for a moment to apologise, anabrupt “This is surely Jack Withers,” burst from mylips, followed by—“God bless me! Will Bayfield!”from his. After a hurried question or two, we shook hands warmlyand parted, with the understanding that I was to cut my mutton withhim next day.
Seventeen years had elapsed since Withers and I had seen orheard of each other. Having a good mercantile connexion, he hadpitched upon commerce as his calling, and entered a counting-housein Idollane in the same year that I, a raw young surgeon, embarkedfor India to seek my fortune in the medical service of the EastIndia Company.
Things had gone well with honest Jack; from a long, thin, weazelof a youngster, he had become a burly ruddy-faced gentleman, withan aldermanic rotundity of paunch, which gave the world assurancethat his ordinary fare by no means consisted of deaf nuts; he hadalready, as he told me, accumulated a very pretty independence,which was yearly increasing, and was, moreover, a snug bachelor,with a well-arranged residence in Finsbury-square; in short, it wasevident that Jack was “a fellow with two coats and everythinghandsome about him.”
As for me, I was a verification of the adage about the rollingstone; having gathered a very small quantity of “moss,”in the shape of worldly goods. I had spent sixteen years inmarching and countermarching over the thirsty plains of theCarnatic, in medical charge of a native regiment—salivatingSepoys and blowing out with blue pills the officers—until theeffects of a stiff jungle-fever, that nearly made me proprietor ofa landed property measuring six feet by two, sent me back toEngland almost as poor as I had left it, and with an atrabilariousvisage which took a two-months’ course of Cheltenham water toscour into anything like a decent colour.
Withers’ dinner was in the best taste: viandsexcellent—wine superb; never did I sip racier Madeira, andthe Champagne trickled down one’s throat with the samefacility that man is inclined to sin.
The cloth drawn, we fell to discoursing about old times, things,persons, and places. Jack then told me how from junior clerk he hadrisen to become second partner in the firm to which he belonged;and I, in my turn, enlightened his mind with respect to AsiaticCholera, Runjeet Sing, Ghuzni, tiger-shooting, and Shah Soojah.
In this manner the evening slid pleasantly on. An array of sixbottles, that before dinner had contained the juice of Oporto,stood empty on the sideboard. Jack wanted to draw another cork,which, however, I positively forbad, as I have through life made ita rule to avoid the slightest approach towards excess in tippling;so, after a modest brace of glasses of brandy-and-water, I shookhands with and left my friend about half-past nine, for I am anold-fashioned fellow, and love early hours, my usual time forturning in being ten.
When I got into the street an unaccustomed spirit of gaiety atonce took possession of me; my general feelings of benevolence andgoodwill towards all mankind appeared to have received a sudden andmarvellous increase. I seemed to tread on eider-down, and, cigar inmouth, strolled along Fleet-street and the Strand, towards mydomicile in Half-Moon street—“nescio quid meditansnugarum”—sometimes humming the fag end of an Irishmelody; anon stopping to stare in a print-shop window; and then Iwould trudge on, chewing t