"Why, my dinner, my dear boy, I'm starving."
"Oh," you grunt in reply. "Well, you go and get it somewhere else, then. You're not going to have it here."
"What the devil do you mean?" he says. "You asked me to dinner."
"I did nothing of the kind," you tell him. "I asked you to dinner on Thursday, not on Friday."
He stares at you incredulously.
"How did I get Friday fixed in my mind?" inquiringly.
"Because yours is the sort of mind that would get Friday firmly fixed into it, when Thursday was the day," you explain. "I thought you had to be off to Edinburgh to-night," you add.
"Great Scott!" he cries, "so I have."
And without another word he dashes out, and you hear him rushing down the road, shouting for the cab he has just dismissed.
As you return to your study you reflect that he will have to travel all the way to Scotland in evening dress, and will have to send out the hotel porter in the morning to buy him a suit of ready-made clothes, and are glad.
Matters work out still more awkwardly when it is he who is the host. I remember being with him on his house-boat one day. It was a little after twelve, and we were sitting on the edge of the boat, dangling our feet in the river—the spot was a lonely one, half-way between Wallingford and Day's Lock. Suddenly round the bend appeared two skiffs, each one containing six elaborately-dressed persons. As soon as they caught sight of us they began waving handkerchiefs and parasols.
"Hullo!" I said, "here's some people hailing you."
"Oh, they all do that about here," he answered, without looking up. "Some beanfeast from Abingdon, I expect."
The boats draw nearer. When about two hundred yards off an elderly gentleman raised himself up in the prow of the leading one and shouted to us.
McQuae heard his voice, and gave a start that all but pitched him into the water.
"Good God!" he cried, "I'd forgotten all about it."
"About what?" I asked.
"Why, it's the Palmers and the Grahams and the Hendersons. I've asked them all over to lunch, and there's not a blessed thing on board but two mutton chops and a pound of potatoes, and I've given the boy a holiday."
Another day I was lunching with him at the Junior Hogarth, when a man named Hallyard, a mutual friend, strolled across to us.
"What are you fellows going to do this afternoon?" he asked, seating himself the opposite side of the table.
"I'm going to stop here and write letters," I answered.
"Come with me if you want something to do," said McQuae. "I'm going to drive Leena down to Richmond." ("Leena" was the young lady he recollected being engaged to. It transpired afterwards that he was engaged to three girls at the time. The other two he had forgotten all about.) "It's a roomy seat at the back."
"Oh, all right," said Hallyard, and they went away together in a hansom.
An hour and a half later Hallyard walked into the smoking-room looking depressed and worn, and flung himself into a chair.
"I thought you were going to Richmond with McQuae," I said.
"So did I," he answered.
"Had an accident?" I asked.
"Yes."
He was decidedly curt in his replies.
"Cart upset?" I continued.
"No, only me."
His grammar and his nerves seemed thoroughly shaken.
I waited for an explanation, and after a while he gave it.
"We got to Putney," he said, "with just an occasional run into a tram-car, and were going up the hill, when suddenly he turned a corner. You know his style at a corner—over the curb, across the road, and into the opposite lamp-post. Of course, as a rule one is prepared for it, but I never reckoned on his turning up there, and the first thing I recollect is finding myself sitting in the middle of the street with a dozen fools grinning at me.
"It takes a man a few minutes in such a case to think where he is and what has happened, and when I got up they were some distance away. I ran after them for a quarter of a mile, shouting at the top of my voice, and accompanied by a mob of boys, all yelling like hell on a Bank Holiday. But one might as well have tried to hail the dead, so I took the 'bus back.
"They might have guessed what had happened," he added, "by the shifting of the cart, if they'd had any sense. I'm not a light-weight."
He complained of soreness, and said he would go home. I suggested a cab, but he replied that he would rather walk.
I met McQuae in the evening at the St. James's Theatre. It was a first night, and he was taking sketches for The Graphic. The moment he saw me he made his way across to me.
"The very man I wanted to see," he said. "Did I take Hallyard with me in the cart to Richmond this afternoon?"
"You did," I replied.
"So Leena says," he answered, greatly bewildered, "but I'll swear he wasn't there when we got to the Queen's Hotel."
"It's all right," I said, "you dropped him at Putney."
"Dropped him at Putney!" he repeated. "I've no recollection of doing so."
"He has," I answered. "You ask him about it. He's full of it."
Everybody said he never would get married; that it was absurd to suppose he ever would remember the day, the church, and the girl, all in one morning; that if he did get as far as the altar he would forget what he had come for, and would give the bride away to his own best man. Hallyard had an idea that he was already married, but that the fact had slipped his memory. I myself felt sure that if he did marry he would forget all about it the next day.
But everybody was wrong. By some miraculous means the ceremony got itself accomplished, so that if Hallyard's idea be correct (as to which there is every possibility), there will be trouble. As for my own fears, I dismissed them the moment I saw the lady. She was a charming, cheerful little woman, but did not look the type that would let him forget all about it.
I had not seen him since his marriage, which had happened in the spring. Working my way back from Scotland by easy stages, I stopped for a few days at Scarboro'. After table d'hote I put on my mackintosh, and went out for a walk. It was raining hard, but after a month in Scotland one does not notice English weather, and I wanted some air. Struggling along the dark beach with my head against the wind, I stumbled over a crouching figure, seeking to shelter itself a little from the storm under the lee of the Spa wall.
I expected it to swear at me, but it seemed too broken-spirited to mind anything.
"I beg your pardon," I said. "I did not see you."
At the sound of my voice it started to its feet.
"Is that you, old man?" it cried.
"McQuae!" I exclaimed.
"By Jove!" he said, "I was never so glad to see a man in all my life before."
And he nearly shook my hand off.
"But what in thunder!" I said, "are you doing here? Why, you're drenched to the skin."
He was dressed in flannels and a tennis-coat.
"Yes," he answered. "I never thought it would rain. It was a lovely morning."
I began to fear he had overworked himself into a brain fever.
"Why don't you go home?" I asked.
"I can't," he replied. "I don't know where I live. I've forgotten the address."
"For heaven's sake," he said, "take me somewhere, and give me something to eat. I'm literally starving."
"Haven't you any money?" I asked him, as we turned towards the hotel.
"Not a sou," he answered. "We got in here from York, the wife and I, about eleven. We left our things at the station, and started to hunt for apartments. As soon as we were fixed, I changed my clothes and came out for a walk, telling Maud I should be back at one to lunch. Like a fool, I never took the address, and never noticed the way I was going.
"It's an awful business," he continued. "I don't see how I'm ever going to find her. I hoped she might stroll down to the Spa in the evening, and I've been hanging about the gates ever since six. I hadn't the threepence to go in."