My Lady Nicotine | Page 5

if my wife has left me, I wander about the room
restlessly, like one who misses something. Usually, however, she takes
me with her to the drawing-room, and reads aloud her delightfully long
home-letters or plays soft music to me. If the music be sweet and sad it
takes me away to a stair in an inn, which I climb gayly, and shake open
a heavy door on the top floor, and turn up the gas. It is a little room I
am in once again, and very dusty. A pile of papers and magazines
stands as high as a table in the corner furthest from the door. The cane
chair shows the exact shape of Marriot's back. What is left (after
lighting the fire) of a frame picture lies on the hearth-rug. Gilray walks
in uninvited. He has left word that his visitors are to be sent on to me.
The room fills. My hand feels along the mantelpiece for a brown jar.
The jar is between my knees; I fill my pipe....
After a time the music ceases, and my wife puts her hand on my
shoulder. Perhaps I start a little, and then she says I have been asleep.
This is the book of my dreams.
[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.

MY FIRST CIGAR.
[Illustration]
It was not in my chambers, but three hundred miles further north, that I
learned to smoke. I think I may say with confidence that a first cigar
was never smoked in such circumstances before.
At that time I was a school-boy, living with my brother, who was a man.
People mistook our relations, and thought I was his son. They would
ask me how my father was, and when he heard of this he scowled at me.
Even to this day I look so young that people who remember me as a
boy now think I must be that boy's younger brother. I shall tell
presently of a strange mistake of this kind, but at present I am thinking
of the evening when my brother's eldest daughter was born--perhaps
the most trying evening he and I ever passed together. So far as I knew,
the affair was very sudden, and I felt sorry for my brother as well as for
myself.
We sat together in the study, he on an arm-chair drawn near the fire and
I on the couch. I cannot say now at what time I began to have an
inkling that there was something wrong. It came upon me gradually and
made me very uncomfortable, though of course I did not show this. I
heard people going up and down stairs, but I was not at that time
naturally suspicious. Comparatively early in the evening I felt that my
brother had something on his mind. As a rule, when we were left
together, he yawned or drummed with his fingers on the arm of his
chair to show that he did not feel uncomfortable, or I made a pretence
of being at ease by playing with the dog or saying that the room was
close. Then one of us would rise, remark that he had left his book in the
dining-room, and go away to look for it, taking care not to come back
till the other had gone. In this crafty way we helped each other. On that
occasion, however, he did not adopt any of the usual methods, and
though I went up to my bedroom several times and listened through the
wall, I heard nothing. At last some one told me not to go upstairs, and I
returned to the study, feeling that I now knew the worst. He was still in
the arm-chair, and I again took to the couch. I could see by the way he
looked at me over his pipe that he was wondering whether I knew

anything. I don't think I ever liked my brother better than on that night;
and I wanted him to understand that, whatever happened, it would
make no difference between us. But the affair upstairs was too delicate
to talk of, and all I could do was to try to keep his mind from brooding
on it, by making him tell me things about politics. This is the kind of
man my brother is. He is an astonishing master of facts, and I suppose
he never read a book yet, from a Blue Book to a volume of verse,
without catching the author in error about something. He reads books
for that purpose. As a rule I avoided argument with him, because he
was disappointed if I was right and stormed if I was wrong. It was
therefore a dangerous thing to begin on politics, but I thought the
circumstances warranted it. To my surprise he answered me