20
In the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby's house, chewing the dead
stump of a once imposing cigar, Dudley Pickering sat alone with
his thoughts. He had been alone for half an hour now. Once Lord
Wetherby had looked in, to withdraw at once coldly, with the
expression of a groom who has found loathsome things in the
harness-room. Roscoe Sherriff, good, easy man, who could never
dislike people, no matter what they had done, had come for a while
to bear him company; but Mr Pickering's society was not for the
time being entertaining. He had answered with grunts the
Press-agent's kindly attempts at conversation, and the latter
Had withdrawn to seek a more congenial audience. And now Mr
Pickering was alone, talking things over with his subconscious
self.
A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for
the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden
away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery
of a miserable hour. Mr Pickering's rare interviews with his
subconscious self had happened until now almost entirely in the
small hours of the night, when it had popped out to remind him, as
he lay sleepless, that all flesh was grass and that he was not
getting any younger. To-night, such had been the shock of the
evening's events, it came to him at a time which was usually his
happiest--the time that lay between dinner and bed.
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