“Hello, Sinclair!”
It happened to be Alphonse Beck, the senior boy of the house. I was always glad to see him and had nothing against him, except that he always treated me as he did all the younger boys, in an ironical and grandfatherly manner. He passed for being as strong as a bear, was said to have great influence on the house master, and was the hero of many school stories.
“What are you doing here?” he asked affably, in the tone the seniors always used when they condescended on occasion to talk to us. “Composing verse, I bet?”
“Shouldn’t dream of it,” I disclaimed gruffly.
He laughed, came up to me, and we chatted together in a manner to which I had not been accustomed for some time past.
“You needn’t be afraid, Sinclair, that I shouldn’t understand. I know the feeling, when one goes for a walk on a foggy evening—the thoughts autumn inspires in one. And one writes poetry about dying nature, of course, and spent youth; which is very much like it. Read Heinrich Heine?”
“I am not so sentimental,” I said in self-defense.
“Oh, all right. But in this weather, I think, it does a man good to find a quiet place where one can take a glass of wine or something. Are you coming with me for a bit? I happen to be quite alone. Or wouldn’t you care to? I wouldn’t like to lead you astray, old man, if you are one of those model boys.”
A little while after we sat clinking our thick glasses in a little tavern in the suburbs, drinking wine of a doubtful quality. At first I wasn’t much pleased, still it was rather a novelty for me. But unaccustomed to wine, I