“Who would have thought—” his voice was unnaturally smooth as he repeated the sentence for the twentieth time, lingering over the irony of each phrase, “—who would have thought that I should have the honor of bringing home Captain Hastings, of the Helen of Troy!” Then he laughed shortly.
Hastings raised his glass, as if unaware that he had been addressed.
“Such an honor!” Widmer continued. “Think of it. More than once I’ve raced the Helen of Troy and been beaten. And a good many times more than once I’ve seen Donald Hastings sitting in the garden by the white house, and have gone away and left him there. But there was a time when Donald Hastings found the gate open and the garden empty. And now the time is come when all that is left of the crew of the Helen of Troy is right glad of passage on the Winnemere.”
If there was any indication that Hastings was listening to the other’s words, it was only in the tension of his fingers as they pressed the table top, and in the whiteness of his knuckles.
But Widmer, speaking at intervals as if to probe for some most sensitive nerve center, went on, his eyes fixed on Hastings’ forehead: “An empty garden—and now the Helen of Troy is gone—it would be an honor indeed to bring him home, but an empty honor, after all—what if he never came home—if—!” Suddenly he lowered his eves until they looked into Hastings’ own. “My wife, sir,” he said with fierce intensity, “cried the day I married her, cried at her wedding, shed a bucket of tears. Tears are no wedding flummery, sir. I didn’t know then why it was. But I know now. Do you hear? I _know_, damn it, _know_.”
Once again Hastings felt the rasp of steel, and closed to the combat in a manner worthy of his opponent’s saner moments. “If you mean to imply—”
Before his slow speech was past his lips, Widmer interrupted him, changing his expression so facilely that Hastings felt again that sense of losing all touch with the blade that maneuvered for his weakness: “I beg you to pardon me. I was excited. Of course I imply nothing. Nothing that you would be guilty of.”
And Hastings, quicker of hand than of brain, tried again to follow that baffling change of front. He was gaining experience in that other school of fence, and was not so easily evaded now.