He looked puzzled for a moment, and then stooped quite naturally to pick it up.
"I forgot it altogether.It's gone out," he remarked.
"Have another," suggested Tembarom, moving the box nearer to him.
"No, thank you." He rose and crossed the room to the wall of book-shelves.And Tembarom's eye was caught again by the fineness of movement and line the evening clothes made manifest."What a swell he looked when he moved about like that! What a swell, by jings!"He looked along the line of shelves and presently took a book down and opened it.He turned over its leaves until something arrested his attention, and then he fell to reading.He read several minutes, while Tembarom watched him.The silence was broken by his laughing a little.
"Listen to this," he said, and began to read something in a language totally unknown to his hearer."A man who writes that sort of thing about a woman is an old bounder, whether he's a poet or not.There's a small, biting spitefulness about it that's cattish.""Who did it?" Tembarom inquired softly.It might be a good idea to lead him on.
"Horace.In spite of his genius, he sometimes makes you feel he was rather a blackguard.""Horace!" For the moment T.Tembarom forgot himself."I always heard he was a sort of Y.M.C.A.old guy--old Horace Greeley.The Tribune was no yellow journal when he had it."He was sorry he had spoken the next moment.Strangeways looked puzzled.
"The Tribune," he hesitated."The Roman Tribune?""No, New York.He started it--old Horace did.But perhaps we're not talking of the same man."Strangeways hesitated again.
"No, I think we're not," he answered politely.
"I've made a break," thought Tembarom."I ought to have kept my mouth shut.I must try to switch him back."Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his hand.
"This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B.C.You know him," he said.
"Oh, that one!" exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief."What a fool I was to forget! I'm glad it's him.Will you go on reading and let me hear some more? He's a winner from Winnersville-- that Horace is."
Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong thing.Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before turning to his book again.It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings.And T.Tembarom, lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe and listening intently to "Satires" and "Lampoons," read aloud in the Latin of 65 B.C.
"By gee!" he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader's face that the moment was ripe."He knew it all-- old Horace--didn't he?"
He had steered his charge back.Things were coming along the line to him.He'd learned Latin at one of these big English schools.Boys always learned Latin, the duke had told him.They just had to.Most of them hated it like thunder, and they used to be caned when they didn't recite it right.Perhaps if he went on he'd begin to remember the school.A queer part of it was that he did not seem to notice that he was not reading his own language.
He did not, in fact, seem to remember anything in particular, but went on quite naturally for some minutes.He had replaced Horace on the shelf and was on the point of taking down another volume when he paused, as if recalling something else.