was not quite sure that Victor Sutton had any business to call him “Merceron.” He was nearly twenty years older than Victor, and a man of considerable position; nor was he, as some middle-aged men are, flattered by the implication of contemporaneousness carried by the mode of address. But it is hard to give a hint to a man who has no inkling that there is room for one; and when Mr. Vansittart addressed Victor as “Mr. Sutton” the latter graciously told him to “hang the Mister.” Reciprocity was inevitable, and the elder man asked himself, with a sardonic grin, how soon he would be “Van.”
“Coming to bathe, Merceron?” he heard under his window at eight o’clock the next morning. “We’re off to the Pool.”
Mr. Vansittart shouted an emphatic negative, and the two young fellows started off by themselves. Charlie’s manner was affected by the ceremonious courtesy which a well-bred host betrays towards a guest not very well-beloved, but Victor did not notice this. It seldom occurred to him that people did not like him.
“Yes,” he was saying, “I’m just twenty-nine. I’ve had my fling, Charlie, and now I shall get to business.”
Charlie was relieved to find that according to this reckoning he had several more years “fling” before him.
“Next year,” pursued Victor, “I shall marry; then I shall go into Parliament, and then I shall go ahead.”
“I didn’t know you were engaged.”
“No, I’m not, but I’m going to be. I can please myself, you see; I’ve got lots of coin.”
“Oh, yes, but can you please the lady?” asked Charlie.
“My dear boy,” began Victor, “when you’ve seen a little more of the world”
“Here we are,” said Charlie. “Why, hullo! Who’s that?”
A dripping head and a blowing mouth were visible in the middle of the Pool.
“Willie Prime by Jove! ’Morning Willie;” and Charlie set about flinging off his flannels, Victor following his example in a more leisurely fashion.
Willie Prime was a little puzzled to know how he ought to treat Charlie. “Charlie” he had been in very old days—then Master Charlie (that was Willie’s mother’s doing)—then Mr. Charles. But now Willie had set up for himself. He had played billiards with a lord, and football against the Sybarites, and, incidentally, hobnobbed with quite great people. It is not very easy to assert a social position when one has nothing on, and only one’s head out of water, but Willie did it.
“Good-morning—er—Merceron,” said he.
Victor heard him, and put up his eyeglass in amazement; but he, in his turn, had only a shirt on, and the hauteur was a failure. Charlie utterly failed to notice the incident.
“Is it cold?” he shouted.
“Beastly,” answered Willie. The man who has got in always tells the man who is going to get in that it is “beastly cold.”
“Here goes!” cried Charlie; and a minute later he was treading water by Willie’s side.
“Miss Wallace all fit?” he asked.
“Thank you, yes, she’s all right.”
“And her friend?”
“All right, I believe.”
“And when is it to be, old fellow?”
“Soon as I get a rise.”
“What?” asked the unsophisticated Charlie, who knew the phrase chiefly in connection with fish.
“A , you know.”
“Oh, ah, yes—what a fool I am!” and Charlie disappeared beneath the waves.
When they were all on the bank, drying, Willie, encouraged by not being discouraged (save by Sutton’s silence) in his advances, ventured further, and asked in a joking tone:
“And aren’t you marked off yet? We’ve been expecting to hear of it for the last twelve months.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, you and Miss Bushell.”
Charlie struggled through his shirt, and then answered, with his first touch of distance:
“Nothing in it. People’ve got no business to gossip.”
“It’s damned impertinent,” observed Victor Sutton in slow and deliberate tones.
Willie flushed.
“I beg pardon,” he said gruffly. “I only repeated what I heard.”
“My dear fellow, no harm’s done,” cried Charlie. “Who was the fool?”
“Well—in fact—my father.”
The situation was awkward, but they wisely eluded it by laughter. But a thought struck Charlie.
“I say, did your father state it as a fact?”
“Oh no; but as a certainty, you know.”
“When?”
“Last night at supper.”