"Will you have a cigar?" I said.
"No, thank you," he said, with indescribable embarrassment, as if
not smoking cigars was a social disgrace.
"A glass of wine?" I said.
"No, thank you, no, thank you; not just now," he repeated with
that hysterical eagerness with which people who do not drink at
all often try to convey that on any other night of the week they
would sit up all night drinking rum-punch. "Not just now, thank
you."
"Nothing else I can get for you?" I said, feeling genuinely sorry
for the well-mannered old donkey. "A cup of tea?"
I saw a struggle in his eye and I conquered. When the cup of tea
came he drank it like a dipsomaniac gulping brandy. Then he fell
back and said:
"I have had such a time, Mr Swinburne. I am not used to these
excitements. As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex'--he threw this in
with an indescribable airiness of vanity--'I have never known
such things happen."
"What things happen?" I asked.
He straightened himself with sudden dignity.
"As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex," he said, "I have never been
forcibly dressed up as an old woman and made to take part in a
crime in the character of an old woman. Never once. My experience
may be small. It may be insufficient. But it has never occurred
to me before."
"I have never heard of it," I said, "as among the duties of a
clergyman.
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