Page:Stevenson - The Wrecker (1892).djvu/358

328 company. Yet he had made himself at home, and seemed to enjoy a certain quiet popularity among the noisy boys of the table d'hôte. He had an odd, silver giggle of a laugh, that sounded nervous even when he was really amused, and accorded ill with his big stature and manly, melancholy face. This laugh fell in continually all through dinner like the note of the triangle in a piece of modern French music; and he had at times a kind of pleasantry, rather of manner than of words, with which he started or maintained the merriment. He took his share in these diversions, not so much like a man in high spirits, but like one of an approved good nature, habitually self-forgetful, accustomed to please and to follow others. I have remarked in old soldiers much the same smiling sadness and sociable self-effacement.

I feared to look at him, lest my glances should betray my deep excitement, and chance served me so well that the soup was scarce removed before we were naturally introduced. My first sip of Château Siron, a vintage from which I had been long estranged, startled me into speech.

“O, this'll never do!” I cried, in English.

“Dreadful stuff, isn't it?” said Madden, in the same language. “Do let me ask you to share my bottle. They call it Chambertin, which it isn't; but it's fairly palatable, and there's nothing in this house that a man can drink at all.”

I accepted; anything would do that paved the way to better knowledge.

“Your name is Madden, I think,” said I. “My old friend Stennis told me about you when I came.”

“Yes, I am sorry he went; I feel such a Grandfather William, alone among all these lads,” he replied.

“My name is Dodd,” I resumed.

“Yes,” said he, “so Madame Siron told me.”

“Dodd, of San Francisco,” I continued. “Late of Pinkerton and Dodd.”