Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/111

Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit and yet somehow, with all his moral palsy, he rose to the dignity of his age and his office.

"I have no right, Mr. Swinburne—I have no right at all," he said. If you have to go out to dinner, you have, of course—a perfect right—of course, a perfect right. But when you come back—a man will be dead."

And he sat down, quaking like a jelly.

The triviality of the dinner had been in those two minutes dwarfed and drowned in my mind. I did not want to go and see a political widow and a captain who collected apes; I wanted to hear what had brought this dear, doddering old vicar into relation with immediate perils.

"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 95