C3 CHAPTER III

DINNER AND AFTER

A small bottle of Böllinger was the means, and the celebration was mostly done by Jones, for it came about that this stranger, Rochester, whilst drinking little himself, managed by some method to keep up in gaiety and in consequence of mind with the other, though every now and then he would fall away from the point, as a ship without a steersman falls away from the wind, and lapse for a moment into what an acute observer might have deemed to be the fundamental dejection of his real nature.

However, these lapses were only momentary, and did not interfere at all with the gay spirits of his companion, who having found a friend in the midst of the loneliness of London, and his twin image in the person of that friend, was now pouring out his heart on every sort of subject, always returning, and with the regularity of a pendulum to the fact of the likeness, and the same question and statement.

“What’s this, your name? Rochester! well, ’pon my soul this beats me.”

Presently, the Bollinger finished, Jones found himself outside the Savoy with this new found friend, walking in the gas lit Strand, and then, without any transition rememberable, he found himself seated at dinner in a private room of a French restaurant in Soho.

Afterwards he could remember parts of that dinner quite distinctly. He could remember the chicken and salad, and a rum omelette, at which he had laughed because it was on fire. He could remember Rochester’s gaiety, and a practical joke of some sort played on the waiter by Rochester and ending in smashed plates—he could remember remonstrating with the latter over his wild conduct. These things he could remember afterwards, and also a few others—a place like Heaven—which was the Leicester Lounge, and a place like the other place which was Leicester Square.

A quarrel with a stranger, about what he could not tell, a taxi cab, in which he was seated listening to Rochester’s voice giving directions to the driver, minute directions as to where he, Jones, was to be driven.

A lamp lit hall, and stairs up which he was being led.

Nothing more.