LITERA SCRIPTA MANET
"Mr. Marrable, did ever ye see a drookit craw?"
"No."
"Well, see me!" announced Mr. Goble complacently.
He crawled out of the engine-room companionway and sat down on the deck. Excessive spruceness had never been a foible of his, but now he was an unrecognisable mass of coal-dust, oil, and rust. He was dripping wet, for he had spent the last hour in an exhaustive examination of the Orinoco's waterlogged internal economy. The morning sun was warm, and he steamed comfortably as he detailed the result of his investigations to Hughie, who in some imperceptible but inevitable manner had taken command of the tiny ship's company.
Shorn of technicalities and irrelevant excursions into the regions of pawky philosophy, Mr. Goble's report came to this.
Mr. Angus had pumped out the after ballast-tank during the night, allowing the water, by means of a specially rigged return-pipe, to flowinto the bilges of the ship instead of escaping overboard. By this device he had altered the Orinoco's centre of gravity in such a manner as to produce the afore-mentioned down-hill slant of her decks—a corroborative detail, as Pooh-Bah would have observed, which gave a little much-needed artistic verisimilitude to the Bimbo Brothers' bald and unconvincing narrative of disaster. Incidentally he had flooded the forehold and engine-room with sufficient water to give those members of the ship's company who were not in their employer's confidence the impression that she was sinking, and to furnish those who were with aprima facieargument for deserting her.
But these thoughtful precautions, though sufficient to procure the abandonment of the Orinoco, were by no means sufficient to send her to the bottom, a consummation to be achieved at any cost; for to leave your ship lying about in mid-ocean, to be picked up by the first chance-comer, while you go hurrying home to extract a cheque from the insurance company, savours of slipshod business methods; and Mr. Noddy Kinahan was nothing if not thorough.
Now every steamer which plies under Lloyds' ægis is fitted, below the water-line, with a set of what are called bilge-valves. Through these it is possible to expel any water which may havefound its way into the body of the vessel. As it is even more desirable to prevent the entrance of water into your ship than to assist its exit, these valves are of a strictly "non-return" variety, and no amount of pressure from the outside should ever prevail upon them to play the part of Facing-Both-Ways. The very life of the ship depends upon them; and the enterprising individual who tampers with their mechanism in such a manner as to convert what is meant to be an Emergency Exit into a sort of Early Door for the rolling deep, does so at the risk of coming into immediate and painful collision with the criminal laws of his country.
Mr. Angus, it appeared, had been employing some of his spare time during the voyage in reversing one of these bilge-valves, with such skill andfinessethat, as we have seen, one had only to give a turn to a worm-and-wheel gear in the engine-room to admit the Atlantic Ocean in large quantities.
"Oh, he has a heid on him, has Angus!" commented Mr. Goble with professional appreciation, "even when he's fou'. He made a rare job o't. But how he managed to contrive that imitation o' a collision, merely through some jookery-packery wi' the reverse-gear and throttle, wi'oot tearin' the guts oot o' her, I div not ken. Man, it was a fair conjurin' trick! By rights the link motionshould be twisted intil a watch-chain and the cross-heids jammit in the guides. But they're no. It's jist Providence, I doot," he added rather apologetically, with the air of one who should have thought of this sooner.
Then he uprose from his seat on an inverted bucket.
"Before I gang ben, sir," he concluded, "tae change ma feet and ma breeks, I'll tak' the liberty tae inquire of you what you propose tae dae next. Maircy me! Yon's Walsh."
Two figures had appeared round the corner of the chart-house, their presence on the far side thereof having been advertised for some time by the clanking of the deck-pumps. (Mr. Angus's precaution of blowing off steam before leaving had put mechanical assistance in getting rid of the water out of the question for the time being.)
"Yes, it's me," said Walsh, who, it will be remembered, was the second engineer, to whom Hughie had recently been acting as deputy. "I should have come on duty at eight bells to relieve Angus, but I slept right through everything till Mr. Marrable found me in my bunk an hour or two ago. I expect they put something in my grog last night."
"It's quite a hobby of theirs," said Allerton drily. "Mr. Marrable, I have found something that may be useful to us."
He handed his superior officer a damp but undamaged little packet of papers.
"Where did you find them?" asked Hughie. "I thought I had gone through Kingdom's kit pretty thoroughly."
"They were sticking in the falls of the davits belonging to the boat Kingdom went off in," replied Allerton. "I saw him hurrying along the deck from his cabin just before his departure, carrying the log-book and some papers and instruments. I expect he dropped these as he went over the side."
"Sit down, everybody," said the commander, "we'll see this through. It may concern us all."
The packet contained two letters, together with some invoices and bills of lading referring chiefly to the Orinoco's cargo of astringent claret.
Hughie glanced through the letters. Then he re-read them with some deliberation. Then he whistled low and expressively. Then he sat up and sighed, gently and contentedly.
"Mr. Noddy Kinahan," he said, "is shortly going to wish, with all his benevolent and philanthropic little heart, that he had never been born. And we are the people that are going to make him wish. Listen!"
He read the two letters aloud. They were brief, but explicit. One contained Kinahan's orders to Kingdom as to the disposal of the Orinoco. Theother was a sort of invoice, or consignment note, relating to the person of one Marrable, who had apparently been shipped on board the night before the ship sailed. Each of these documents, it may be added, contained sufficient matter to ensure penal servitude for their author.
Hughie stopped reading, and there was a long and appreciative silence. Then Allerton said:—
"What beats me is to understand how Kinahan could have been such a mug as to commit these schemes to paper, and how Kingdom should have been such a fool as to want to keep them.I'dhave let them go down in the Orinoco."
"I expect one explanation covers both cases," said Hughie. "Kingdom probably demanded his orders in black and white, as a guarantee that he would get his money when he had done his job. Otherwise he had no claim on Kinahan for a penny, beyond his ordinary wage as skipper. Kinahan probably agreed, stipulating that the letters should be handed back to him when they squared accounts. It was a risky thing to do, but when two thieves can't trust each other, and go dropping about documentary evidence to that effect—well, that's where poor but deserving people like ourselves come in. No, I shouldn't think Kingdomwouldwant to leave these behind; and I opine that he's a pretty sick man by this time if he has missed them."
He folded the letters up, and put them away carefully.
"Now, gentlemen," he said briskly, "I propose that we go below and see if there is sufficient steam on the Orinoco to pump the rest of the water out of her and get the propeller revolving again. We'll have to damp down most of the fires, because we can't run too many firemen, but I think we ought to knock four or five knots out of her in ordinary weather. Luckily, seventy-fiveper centof the ship's company are competent engineers. After that we'll have some breakfast, and after that we'll make tracks for home. We'll work"—he smacked his lips cheerily, like an energetic pedagogue on the first morning of term—"in shifts of three. Two men will run the engine-room and stokehold, and the third will take the wheel. The fourth can sleep. That will give us each eighteen hours on and six hours off. I don't know where we are, and I have no means of finding out, as Captain Kingdom has walked off with the chart and most of the proper instruments. But we must be near land, or they would not have taken to the boats yet. If we keep steaming steadily east (with a little north in it), at about a hundred miles a day,—which I fancy is about our limit,—we should knock up against something sooner or later. And when we do, we'll get hold of the proper authorities, and I venture tothink that with the help of these two letters and that doctored bilge-valve down below we shall be able to prepare a welcome for those three boat-loads of shipwrecked mariners, when they arrive, that will surprise them. Also, I fancy there will be pickings for you in the way of salvage. What a game!" Hughie stood up, and inhaled a great breath. This was real life! "Are youon, boys?" he cried suddenly. "Is the old Orinoco going to the bottom this journey?"
The crew rose at him and gave three cheers.
Later that afternoon, as the Orinoco pounded along at a strictly processional pace through the ruffling waters,—the glass was falling and a breeze getting up,—Deputy-Quartermaster Lionel Hinchcliffe Welford-Welford Allerton, late scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, sometime Assistant Deck-Hand in the mercantile marine, descried from his post on the bridge a small moving object upon the starboard bow.
It was the Orinoco's whale-boat, which was proceeding under two lugsails on a course parallel with the steamer's.
Allerton, who in the excitement of salving the Orinoco had almost forgotten the existence of the gang of buccaneers who had scuttled her, excitedly rang the telegraph bell and summoned the rest of the ship's company to his side.
The emotions, however, aroused in the Orinoco by the sight of the whale-boat were mild in comparison with those excited in the undutiful whale-boat by the spectacle of her resuscitated parent. Mr. Angus, on beholding the steamer, kept discreetly silent. He had given himself away by seeing things which were not there once or twice in his life before. But Captain Kingdom turned a delicate apple-green.
"Look there!" he gasped, pointing.
"Yon bit cloud, ye mean?" said the cautious Angus.
"No, no, man—the Orinoco!" cried the frantic skipper.
"Oh—the shup! Aye, aye!" replied Mr. Angus, rather pleased than otherwise.
"There's a crew on board her," continued Kingdom shakily. "And she's got steam on her, too!"
"Aye," said Mr. Angus. "I doot somebody will have closed yon sea-cock again."
"Who can it be?" demanded the captain feverishly. "Surely we left no one on board. I told Dingle to take that fellow Marrable in his boat."
"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Angus, "yin of the other boats cam' back."
Kingdom pointed impatiently to two small specks upon the horizon.
"They're there," he said.
"Maybe some liner has come across her and left a bit crew on board her," continued the fertile Mr. Angus.
"If so, we'd have seen the liner," replied Kingdom irritably.
He took up his binoculars and began to scrutinise the Orinoco, which had altered her course a few points in their direction.
Mr. Angus had a fresh inspiration.
"Did ye mind tae wauken Walsh?" he whispered. "If not, ye ken he micht weel—"
The captain lowered his glasses, and nodded.
"He might be one," he agreed; "but there are four men on deck." He raised his binoculars again. "Yes, there they are. Well, whoever they are and whatever the game is, we must get on board again and do the job properly this time.—Hallo, one of them is running below!—Here he is again!—He's carrying something—flags, I reckon. They're going to signal us."
He was right. Up to the topmost summit of the Orinoco's grimy foremast travelled a signal—a banner with a strange device indeed, but conveying a perfectly intelligible message for all that. It consisted of the nether or unmentionable portion of a ragged suit of orange-and-red striped pyjamas.
Having reached its destination, it inflated itself in the freshening breeze and streamed out, defiantand derisive, in the rays of the setting sun; flinging to the fermenting couple in the whale-boat the simple but comprehensive intimation—"Sold!"
Then, with one single joyous toot from her siren, the Orinoco altered her course a couple of points and wallowed off in a north-easterly direction, leaving the crew of the whale-boat to listen in admiring silence to a sulphurous antistrophe in two dialects proceeding from the stern-sheets.
THE END OF AN ODYSSEY
Hughiereckoned that they might have to steam eastward for quite three or four days before they sighted land.
This was an underestimate.
The history of the Orinoco's last voyage will never be written. In the first place, those who took part in it were none of them men who were addicted to the composition of travellers' tales; and in the second, their recollections of the course of events when all was over, were hopelessly and rather mercifully blurred. Not that they minded. One derives no pleasure or profit from reconstructing a nightmare—especially when it has lasted for sixteen days and nights.
Some events, of course, were focussed more sharply in their memories than others. There was that eternity of thirty-six hours during which the Orinoco, with every vulnerable orifice sealed up or battened down, her asthmatic engines pulsing just vigorously enough to keep her head before the wind, rode out a north-easterly gale which blew her many miles out of her reckoning. ("Not that that matters much," said her philosophiccommander. "We don't know where we are now, it's true; but then we didn't know where we were before, so what's the odds? We'll keep on steering away about north-east, and as we are aiming at a target eight hundred miles wide we ought to hit it somewhere.") Then there was a palpitating night when the faithful engines, having wheezily but unceasingly performed their allotted task for a period long enough to lull all who depended upon them into an optimistic frame of mind, broke down utterly and absolutely; and the fires had to be banked and the Orinoco allowed to wallow unrestrainedly in the trough of the sea while the entire ship's company, with cracking muscles and heart-breaking gasps, released a jammed crosshead from the guides and took down a leaky cylinder.
They were evidently out of the ordinary sea-lanes, for they sighted only one steamer in ten days, and her they allowed to go by.
"None of us understand proper signalling," said Hughie, "so we can't attract her attention without doing something absurdly theatrical, like running up the ensign upside down; and I'm hanged if we'll do that—yet. After all, we only want to know where weare. We may be just off the coast of Ireland for all I can say, and it does seem feeble to bring a liner out of her course to ask her footling questions. It wouldbe like stopping the Flying Scotsman to get a light for one's pipe."
"Or asking a policeman in Piccadilly Circus the nearest way to the Criterion bar," added Allerton. "I'm with you all the time, captain."
And so these four mendicants allowed a potential Good Samaritan to pass by and sink behind the horizon. It was an action typical of their race: they had no particular objection to death, but they drew the line at being smiled at. Still, there were moments during the next ten days when they rather regretted their diffidence.
But events like these were mere excrescences in a plane of dead monotony. The day's work was made up of endless hours in a Gehenna-like stokehold, where with aching backs and bleeding hands they laboured to feed the insatiable fires, or crawled along tunnel-like bunkers in search of the gradually receding coal; spells at the wheel—sometimes lashed to it—in biting wind or blinding fog; the whole sustained on a diet of ship's biscuit, salt pork, and lukewarm coffee, tempered by brief but merciful intervals of the slumber of utter exhaustion.
Still, one can get used to anything. They even enjoyed themselves after a fashion. High endeavour counts for something, whether you have a wife and family dependent upon you, like Walsh,or can extractla joie de vivreout of an eighteen-hour day and a workhouse diet, like Hughie.
And they got to know each other, thoroughly,—a privilege denied to most in these days of restless activity and multifarious acquaintance.
It was a lasting wonder to Hughie how Allerton could ever have fallen to his present estate; for he displayed an amount of energy, endurance, and initiative during this manhood-testing voyage that was amazing. He himself ascribed his virtue to want of opportunity to practise anything else, but this was obviously too modest an explanation. Perhaps blood always tells. At any rate, Allerton took unquestioned rank as second in command over the heads of two men whose technical knowledge and physical strength far exceeded his own. But in his hours of ease—few enough now—he was as easy-going and flippant and casual as ever.
Walsh in a sense was the weakest of the quartet. He was a capable engineer and an honest man, but he lacked the devil-may-care nonchalance of the other three; for he had a wife and eight children waiting for him in distant Limehouse, and a fact like that gives a man a distaste for adventure. He was a disappointed man, too. He had held a chief engineer's "ticket" for seven years, but he had never held a chief engineer's billet. He could never afford to knockoff work and wait until the right berth should come his way: he must always take the first that offered, for fear that the tale of boots and bread in Limehouse should diminish. As a crowning stroke of ill-luck, he had been paid off from his last job because his ship had collided with a New York lighter and been compelled to go into dry dock for three months; and by shipping in the Orinoco he was barely doing more than work his passage home. His ten-year-old dream of delivering Mrs. Walsh from her wash-tub for all time, and exalting her from theres angustæof Teak Street, Limehouse, to a social environment reserved exclusively for the wives of chief engineers, seemed as far from fulfilment as ever. Still, he maintained a stiff upper lip and kept his watch like a man, which is more than most of us would have done under the circumstances.
But it was Goble who interested Hughie most. In the long night-watches, as they swung the heavy fire-shovels in the stokehold, or heaved the ever-accumulating clinkers over the side, or took turn and turn about to gulp tepid water out of a sooty bucket, or met over a collation of coffee and ship's biscuit—the supper of one and the breakfast of the other—in the galley, Goble would let fall dry pawky reflections on life in general, with autobiographical illustrations, which enabled Hughie to piece together a fairly comprehensiveidea of his companion's previous existence.
John Alexander Goble had played many parts in his time, like most vagrants. He had been born a gamekeeper's son in Renfrewshire, and had lost his father early, that devoted upholder of proprietary rights having been shot through the head in a poaching affray. After this catastrophe the widow, who had openly pined for her native Glasgow during the whole of her husband's lifetime, had returned to that municipal paradise; and the ripening youth of John Alexander Goble had been passed in a delectable locality, known as "The Coocaddens," to which he could never refer without a gleam of tender reminiscence in his eyes.
Why John Alexander had ever deserted this Eden Hughie could never rightly ascertain. His references to that particular epoch in his career were invariably obscure; but since he darkly observed on one occasion that "weemen can mak' a gowk o' the best man leevin'," Hughie gathered that Mr. Goble's present course of life owed its origin to a tender but unsatisfactory episode in the dim and distant days of his hot youth.
"After that," John would continue elliptically, "I went tae Motherwell. D'ye ken Motherwell? A grand place! Miles and miles of blast-furnaces, and the sky lit up day and nicht, like the LastJudgment. I did a wheen odd jobs there. Whiles I would hurl a trolley wi' coke, whiles I would sort coal wi' some lassies, and at last I got a job as a moulder."
"What's that?" inquired the ever-receptive Hughie.
"What else but a body that makes moulds?"
"Yes, but how does he do it?"
"Weel, there's a sort o' sandy place at the fit o' each smelting-furnace—like a bit sea-shore, ye'll understand—and every four-and-twenty hours they cast the furnace. They let oot the melted ore, that is, and it rins doon intil moulds that hae been made in the sand. (Ye dae it by just buryin' baulks o' timber in rows and then pickin' them oot again, and the stuff rins intil the hollows that have been left. When it's cauld they ca' it pig-iron.) Well, I stuck tae that job for a matter o' sax months. But it was drouthy work, besides bein' haird on the feet,—you go scratch-scratching in the sand wi' your bare soles makin' the moulds,—and presently I gave it up and took tae daen' odd jobs among the trucks and engines in the yairds. I liked that fine, for machinery is the yin thing that really excites me. First I was a coupler, then I was a fireman, then I got tae drivin' a wee shunting engine, dunting trucks about the yaird. And at last I was set in charge o' a winding-engine at a pit-heid. That was a grand job; but itdidna last long. I was drinkin' haird by this time—I'd stairtit after I left the Coocaddens—and yin' day I was that fou' I let the cage gang doon wi' a run tae the bottom o' the shaft."
"Was there anybody in the cage?" inquired Hughie, as Goble paused, as if to contemplate some mental picture.
"There was not, thank God! But therewasa bit laddie doon ablow in the pit, that was sittin' on his hutch—his truck, that is—at the fit o' the shaft, waitin' on the cage. He wasna expectin' the thing tae fall doon like a daud o' putty, so he was no' sittin' quite clear; and the cage cam' doon and took off baith his feet. Man, I hae never forgotten his mither's face when they brought him up. I lost ma job, and I hae never touched a drop since. For seven-and-twenty years have I been on the teetotal—seven-and-twenty years! It'll shorten ma life, I doot," he added gloomily; "but I'll bide by it!"
"What became of the boy?" inquired Hughie.
"He's gotten twa wooden feet the noo," replied Goble more cheerfully, "and he's been minding the lamp-room this twenty year. I've heard frae him noo and again, and we've always been freens; but his auld mither has never forgiven me. She's ower seventy the day, but Jeems tells me she aye lets a curse every time he mentions ma name."
A further instalment of Mr. Goble's adventures explained how he took to the sea.
"After I cleared oot o' Motherwell I went to the Clydeside. I was a fair enough mechanic by this time, but I had tak'n a sort o' skunner at machinery—no wi'oot some reason—and I tried for to get taken on as a dock-hand. I had no luck there, and I was fair starvin' when yin day I met a freend o' min' on the Dumbarton Road, and he asked me would I like tae wash dishes and peel potaties on a passenger steamer. I would hae been pleased tae soop the lums o' muckle Hell by that time, gin it was for a wage, I was that thrawn wi' hunger; so I jist said, ''Deed ay!'
"For a hale summer I sat peelin' potaties and washin' dishes on board the Electra, her that has done a trip doon the watter, roond about Arran and Bute, and hame by Skelmorlie ilka day o' the summer season for twenty-twa years. When the winter cam' on I dooted I would be oot o' a job again; but bein' nowadays permanently on the teetotal, and varra dependable, I was shifted tae the auld Stornoway, o' the same line, carryin' goods, cattle, and passengers tae the West Highlands—Coll, Tiree, Barra, Uist, Ullapool, and a wheen places in and oot o' sea-lochs up and doon that coast. She loused frae the Broomielaw every Thursday at three o'clock in the afternoon, and she was back there, week in week out, summerand winter, by eleven in the forenoon o' the following Wednesday. The folk along by Largs, where her cap'n lived, used tae set their watches by her. She was a fine auld boat, the Stornoway: she piled herself up on the rocks below the Scuir of Eig, where she had no call tae be, in a snowstorm seven winters syne. I was a cabin steward nowadays, ye'll unnerstand; and once we were roond the Mull and the passengers had thrawn up what they'd had tae their tea off Gourock and tak'n a dander ashore at Oban, appetites was big and I was busy. It was the first time I had seen the gentry at their meals, and it improved my mainners considerable. Never since then have I skailed ma tea intil ma saucer: I jist gie a bit blow on it noo. Yon's Mr. Allerton roarin' for to be relieved at the wheel."
On another occasion Goble explained how he came to forsake the fleshpots of the Stornoway and take to the high seas.
"I was aye hankerin', hankerin' after the machinery," he explained. "A body canna serve tables all his life. So after twa years on the Stornoway I shippit as a fireman on a passenger steamer outward bound frae Glasgow tae Bilbao. There I left her, tae be second engineer on a wee tramp carrying iron-ore tae the Mediterranean. That was nigh twenty years ago, and I've never set fit in Scotland since. Weel, weel! Aha! Mphm!" (Ad lib.andda capo.)
So he would discourse, in a manner which passed many a weary hour for both, and added considerably to Hughie's stock of human knowledge.
The days wore on. The work and long hours were beginning to tell their tale, but the entire crew kept grimly to it. Their nerves were in good order too. Even when, on the morning of the sixteenth day, as they groped their way through a streaming wet fog, a great ghostly monster of a liner suddenly loomed out of the wrack, and, as she shouldered her way past them, actually scraped the starboard counter with her stern, while the look-out on her forward deck yelled frantically, and a frightened man up aloft on the bridge flung his wheel over with great rattling of steam steering-gear to avoid a collision, the sole occupant of the Orinoco's deck—it was Goble: he was steering while Hughie and Walsh took their turn in the stokehold and Allerton slept—did not deem the occasion sufficiently important to merit a report until he was relieved from duty two hours later.
But this encounter provided that pawky philosopher with a valuable clue as to their whereabouts.
"She was a Ben liner," he intimated to Hughie in describing the event. "I saw the twa bit stripes roond her funnel, and her name, Ben Cruachan, on her stern. They're Glasgow boats, and sailevery other Thursday tae Buenos Ayres, calling at Moville on Lough Foyle tae tak' up Irish passengers. It's no' near Cape Clear we are, anyway. We're somewhere off the north coast o' Ireland, sir. I kenned fine we were near land: this is a ground swell that's throwin' us aboot noo. Aiblins we'll be gettin' a dunt against the Giant's Causeway if we're no' canny."
There was something in Goble's conclusions, for after they had steamed dead slow all night the rising sun licked up the fog; and there, ten miles to the south of them, lay a long green seacoast; and straight before them uprose what looked like a rocky island, with a homely-looking white lighthouse perched half-way up its rugged face.
"If that land to the right is Ireland," said Hughie, "we can't be very far from Scotland. I wonder what that great rock ahead of us can be. Lucky we didn't reach it a couple of hours ago!"
"Don't you think," suggested Allerton, putting his head out of the engine-room hatchway, "that as we have apukkaScot on board, we had better rouse him up and see if he can identify his native land?"
It was Goble's turn for sleep, but Allerton's suggestion was adopted, and he was haled on deck.
"Do you happen to recognise that island straight ahead, Mr. Goble?" inquired Hughie.
Goble surveyed the rock and the lighthouse, and though his countenance remained unmoved, his eye lit up with proprietary pride.
"Island? Yon's no' an island," he replied. "'Tis Scotland hersel'. Sir, 'tis the Mull o' Kintyre! It rins straight awa' back tae Argyllshire. We're at the varra mouth o' the Clyde. We micht hae been drawed there across the Atlantic by a bit string! God presairve us, it's a miracle!"
"The Clyde?" shouted Hughie. It seemed too utterly good to be true. "Are you sure, Goble? Is that really the Mull?"
"Sure?" Goble's expression was a mixture of pity and resentment. "Man, I'm tellin' ye I sailed roond it twice a week for the best pairt o' twa years. I was awfu' sick the first time. The second—"
All this time the Mull of Kintyre was growing nearer.
"What's the course?" queried Walsh, leaning over the bridge. "Do I turn up New Cut, Mr. Goble, or keep straight along the Blackfr'ars Road?"
Everybody's spirits were soaring marvellously at the sight of the blessed green land. Walsh's wife was within twenty-four hours of him.
"Keep yon heap o' stanes on your left hand, ma mannie," replied the greatly inflated Goble, facetiously indicating the towering headland beforethem, "and then straight on Ailsa Craig. You're daen' fine. Mr. Marrable, will you rin her up tae the Tail o' the Bank, off Greenock, or gi'e a cry in at Campbeltown Bay? It's jist roond the corner."
"Hang it! we'll take her all the way, now we have got so far," said Hughie. "We'rehome! Iwasreckoning on bringing up in Plymouth Sound; but that's a detail. Come on, Allerton, let's go below and fire up for the last time. We'll bring her in in style!"
And so it came about that not many hours later the Orinoco, a rotting hulk, clogged with weed, corroded with rust, caked with salt, feebly churning up the water with her debilitated propeller, steamed painfully but grandly past the Cloch Light and into the mouth of the Clyde. A sorry object she may have seemed to the butterfly host of natty paddle-steamers which was pouring down the river under the forced draught of triple competition, carrying the Glasgow man, released from office, to Dunoon and Rothesay and other summer repositories for wife and family. But to those whoknew, she was no uncleanly tramp, but a battle-scarred veteran,—a ship that had deserved well of the Republic of the high seas,—another little Golden Hind, though laden with nothing nearer to Spanish ingots than bottles of imitation French claret. Everyscar on her sides was an honourable wound; every groan and creak that rose from her starting timbers a pæan; every cough and wheeze that proceeded from her leaky cylinders a prayer of joyful thanks. The Orinoco had graduated high in the nameless but glorious band of those who have illustrated, not altogether without profit and pride, the homely truth that
Life ain't holdin' good cards;It's playin' a poor handwell!
Life ain't holdin' good cards;It's playin' a poor handwell!
And so she turned the last corner of her long and painful Odyssey, and came home to lay up her bones by the Clyde, which had given them birth. And by a happy chance the unconscious Hughie, instead of navigating her to the Tail of the Bank as he had intended, changed his mind, put over his helm, and conned her up to the head of that beautiful Gareloch which, many many years ago, had given the little ship her maiden name.
There, swinging at her rusty cable, with the clear green water laving her weary forefoot, and the hills above Roseneath and Shandon smiling reassuringly down upon her in the glow of the evening sun, we will leave her.Molliter ossa cubent!
The law's delays are proverbial, and the task of getting even with Mr. Noddy Kinahan involvedHughie in endless encounters with those in high places, several appearances (with suite) in the abodes of the Law, and another trip to New York—by Cunarder this time.
However, grim determination will accomplish most things; and when some months later Hughie finally sailed from New York for his native land, the labour of love had been completed, and Mr. Noddy Kinahan was duly regretting, for a term of years, the fact that he had ever been born.
This consummation was followed by another, depressing but inevitable. The Orinoco Salvage Company, having served its purpose, paid Nature's debt and ceased to exist. The circumstances connected with its demise, together with the respective fates of Hughie's little band of Argonauts, will best be gathered from the following epistolary excerpts:—
No. I (N. B.Spelling corrected)
℅Mistress Howieson,17Candlish Street, Greenock.ToH. Marrable, Esq.:—Sir,—I thank you for cheque, and have disposed of same. I also thank you for offer to find a job for me. But I would prefer to bide by you, as I feel I will not get a better job than that. I would like fine to be your servant. You will be needing some one to redd up your quarters andkeep your clothes sorted, now you are ashore. (Women is no' to be trusted.) Of course I would not want a big wage: the siller from the Orinoco will do grandly for a long time. I ken fine the way to wait at table and clean silver, having been steward, as I once telled you, on the old Stornoway, where they had a cuddy full of gentry every trip.—Your servant (I am hoping),Jno. Alex. Goble.No. II(Extracts. No date or address, but obviously written in a public-house)... So you must take the money back. It is no use to me: all I should get out of it would be a d—d bad headache. Also, it might give me ideas above my station, which is bad for the lower orders at any time. Give it to Walsh; but don't let on, of course, that it comes from me: let him believe that it is part of his natural share of the salvage. I have kept back enough to pay for a new suit (which I am now wearing) and one big bust before I sail next week as deck steward on an Aberdeen liner.... Well, it was a great trip. We have all got something out of it. You have got an adventure and incidentally done a big thing, and I have spent a month of absolute happiness in the society of men who regarded me neither as an objectof pity nor as a monster of depravity, but were content to let me go my own way as a man who prefers to live his own life and be asked no questions.... Your offer to set me on my legs again and make me a respectable member of society is friendly and, I suppose, natural; but it threatens a happy episode with a sad ending. I'm not cut out for conventionality, and (paceyour kind references to my "sterling merit and latent force of character") I am not of the stuff that successful men are made of. I have only done two big things in my life. One was getting elected to Pop at Eton, the other was helping you to bring the old Orinoco home. I think I'll rest on my laurels now. I suppose I was born a rotter, and if you were to endeavour to raise me to your giddy heights I should only fall down again, and the bump at the bottom might hurt. I am safer where I am: the beauty of lying on the floor is that you can't fall off.... Well, chin, chin! If I may be permitted to gush for a moment, I should like to tell you that you are a good sort.—Yours ever,Lionel Allerton.No. IIINo. 4Teak St., Limehouse.Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge with thanks your cheque for share of salvage. It was far morethan I expected, and the Adm'ty C'ts have certainly done well by us. At the best, I had hoped for suffic'nt to rig out the nippers with boots and duds for the winter and give the missis a week or two off the laundry work. We have all been fair barmy the last few days. Square meals and a big fire, and you can't hear yours'lf talk for the squeaking of the new boots. We are settling down a bit now, and I have put the rest of the money in the bank and told the old woman she is to burn her wash-tubs. Catch her: I d'n't think! With my new clothes I have obt'd a berth as Chief on board s.s. Batavia, of the Imperial Line, and sail on 21st inst. Her engines are (several lines of hopeless technicalities omitted). It was a lucky day for me when I struck the Orinoco, and luckier when Angus doctored my grog.On returning from voyage will take the lib'ty of calling on you in London at the address you gave.—Yrs. respect'fly,Jas. Walsh(Chief Engineer s.s. Batavia).Postscript(In a larger and less educated hand)Mr. Marrable, Dear Sir,—The children and me begs to thank you for all your kindness to father. Father he is very greatful himself, but would rather leave it to me to tell you, as he don't like. Mr. Marrable, sir, if you could only see thediff'nce in the children, espec'y little Albert, what was always sickly, since they got good boots and food inside them you would feel well paid for your kindness. I know the money did not come from you, but it was through you we got it. God bless you, sir.—Yours resp'fly,Mrs. Martha Walsh.P. S.—Our ninth, which has just come, we are taking the liberty to call by your name.
℅Mistress Howieson,
17Candlish Street, Greenock.
ToH. Marrable, Esq.:—
Sir,—I thank you for cheque, and have disposed of same. I also thank you for offer to find a job for me. But I would prefer to bide by you, as I feel I will not get a better job than that. I would like fine to be your servant. You will be needing some one to redd up your quarters andkeep your clothes sorted, now you are ashore. (Women is no' to be trusted.) Of course I would not want a big wage: the siller from the Orinoco will do grandly for a long time. I ken fine the way to wait at table and clean silver, having been steward, as I once telled you, on the old Stornoway, where they had a cuddy full of gentry every trip.—Your servant (I am hoping),
Jno. Alex. Goble.
No. II
(Extracts. No date or address, but obviously written in a public-house)
... So you must take the money back. It is no use to me: all I should get out of it would be a d—d bad headache. Also, it might give me ideas above my station, which is bad for the lower orders at any time. Give it to Walsh; but don't let on, of course, that it comes from me: let him believe that it is part of his natural share of the salvage. I have kept back enough to pay for a new suit (which I am now wearing) and one big bust before I sail next week as deck steward on an Aberdeen liner.
... Well, it was a great trip. We have all got something out of it. You have got an adventure and incidentally done a big thing, and I have spent a month of absolute happiness in the society of men who regarded me neither as an objectof pity nor as a monster of depravity, but were content to let me go my own way as a man who prefers to live his own life and be asked no questions.... Your offer to set me on my legs again and make me a respectable member of society is friendly and, I suppose, natural; but it threatens a happy episode with a sad ending. I'm not cut out for conventionality, and (paceyour kind references to my "sterling merit and latent force of character") I am not of the stuff that successful men are made of. I have only done two big things in my life. One was getting elected to Pop at Eton, the other was helping you to bring the old Orinoco home. I think I'll rest on my laurels now. I suppose I was born a rotter, and if you were to endeavour to raise me to your giddy heights I should only fall down again, and the bump at the bottom might hurt. I am safer where I am: the beauty of lying on the floor is that you can't fall off.
... Well, chin, chin! If I may be permitted to gush for a moment, I should like to tell you that you are a good sort.—Yours ever,
Lionel Allerton.
No. III
No. 4Teak St., Limehouse.
Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge with thanks your cheque for share of salvage. It was far morethan I expected, and the Adm'ty C'ts have certainly done well by us. At the best, I had hoped for suffic'nt to rig out the nippers with boots and duds for the winter and give the missis a week or two off the laundry work. We have all been fair barmy the last few days. Square meals and a big fire, and you can't hear yours'lf talk for the squeaking of the new boots. We are settling down a bit now, and I have put the rest of the money in the bank and told the old woman she is to burn her wash-tubs. Catch her: I d'n't think! With my new clothes I have obt'd a berth as Chief on board s.s. Batavia, of the Imperial Line, and sail on 21st inst. Her engines are (several lines of hopeless technicalities omitted). It was a lucky day for me when I struck the Orinoco, and luckier when Angus doctored my grog.
On returning from voyage will take the lib'ty of calling on you in London at the address you gave.—Yrs. respect'fly,
Jas. Walsh(Chief Engineer s.s. Batavia).
Postscript(In a larger and less educated hand)
Mr. Marrable, Dear Sir,—The children and me begs to thank you for all your kindness to father. Father he is very greatful himself, but would rather leave it to me to tell you, as he don't like. Mr. Marrable, sir, if you could only see thediff'nce in the children, espec'y little Albert, what was always sickly, since they got good boots and food inside them you would feel well paid for your kindness. I know the money did not come from you, but it was through you we got it. God bless you, sir.—Yours resp'fly,
Mrs. Martha Walsh.
P. S.—Our ninth, which has just come, we are taking the liberty to call by your name.
SEALED ORDERS
Ona bright morning in April Hughie emerged from the offices of Messrs. Slocum, Spink, and Slocum, Solicitors, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and made for the Strand.
Like most men who have been abroad for a long time, he trod the streets of London with an oddly mingled sensation of familiarity and strangeness. At one moment he felt that he had been living in London for years, at another he felt that he was exploring a new city. The Strand itself, save for the old congested stretch in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, was almost unrecognisable. Gone for ever were the various landmarks of his youth, such as the Old Gaiety and the Lowther Arcade. Holywell Street and Wych Street, with their delectable environs, had vanished like a bad but interesting dream, leaving room for a broad and stately thoroughfare, in the midst of which the churches of St. Mary and St. Clement Danes split the traffic like boulders in a Highland spate, and the Law Courts acquired an unfamiliar prominence. A new fairway of uncanny width and straightness clove itscourse to Holborn, blocked at its mouth by a dismal patch of excavated territory resembling nothing so much as what Scotsmen term a "free toom," and proclaiming to all and sundry, by means of a gigantic notice-board, that This Site was To Let as a Whole.
The traffic had developed too. There were countless motor-buses, which shook the earth and smelt to heaven; and taxicabs, which skipped like rams and quacked like ducks.
But after all, though landmarks change their bearings and banks be washed away, the stream flows on unchanged. The people were the same, and Hughie felt comforted. The smell of asphalt was the same, and he felt uplifted. And when he beheld the torrents of traffic that converge on the Wellington Street crossing arrest their coursesseriatimand pile themselves up in a manner that would have done credit to the waters of Jordan, all at the bidding of an imperturbable figure in a blue uniform, he felt that he was indeed home once more.
Presently he hailed a taxicab, and whizzed along, exulting like a child with a new toy, to a railway station, where John Alexander Goble, having previously superintended the placing of his master's luggage in the train (with a maximum of precaution on his part and a minimum of profit on the porter's), was waiting to see him off.
Hughie dismissed his retainer to take charge of his newly acquired flat until his return, and having secured his seat, followed his invariable custom and went forward to view the engine. He noted with interest that compound locomotives seemed to have made little or no progress in the country's favour, but that the prejudice against high-pitched boilers and six-coupled wheels had disappeared.
He then made his way to the refreshment room,—where alone, he noted, Time's devastating hand appeared to have stood still,—and having lunched frugally off something from under a glass dome which the divinity behind the counter, in response to a respectful inquiry, brusquely described as "fourpence," together with as much bitter beer as remained after the same damosel had slapped its containing vessel playfully down on the fingers of a pimply but humorous youth who was endeavouring to tempt the appetites of two wizened sardines, exposed for sale on a piece of toast, with a hard-boiled egg from a neighbouring plate, returned to his seat in the train; where he was duly locked in by a porter, who displayed an amount of cheerful gratitude for sixpence that an American baggage-man would have considered excessive at a dollar. Here, with a rug, a pipe, and a quantity of illustrated papers, most of which had come to birth since he hadleft England, and all of which appeared to depend for their livelihood on the exploitation of the lighter lyric drama, Hughie settled himself for a comfortable run along the Thames Valley.
This done, he took two letters from his pocket. One had been opened already. It was an obviously feminine production, and said:—
"Manors,Monday."Dear Hughie,—We are all thrilled to hear that you are home at last. You must come down hereat onceand be our guest until you have looked round, and then you can renew all our acquaintances at one go. There are lots of nice people with us just now, so come! You will be feeling lonely, poor thing, landing in this country after so many years, and of course you will miss poor Mr. Marrable sadly. I suppose you have heard all about his death from the lawyers by this time, or perhaps you saw it in the papers two years ago."Mr. D'Arcy is here; also Joan, of course. My husband, too, wants to have the pleasure of entertaining you—that is, if you are prepared not to shoot him on sight! I don'tthink, though, that I shall be able to command your regretful affections any more. One look at me will be sufficient for you. Alas, I have two chins and three babies!"However, come down on Saturday, and you can size us all up. I suppose you know that Mr. Marrable asked us to take Manors and look after Joan until you or he came home again; so you won't play the heavy landlord and evict us on the spot, will you?—Yours ever,"Mildred Leroy."
"Manors,Monday.
"Dear Hughie,—We are all thrilled to hear that you are home at last. You must come down hereat onceand be our guest until you have looked round, and then you can renew all our acquaintances at one go. There are lots of nice people with us just now, so come! You will be feeling lonely, poor thing, landing in this country after so many years, and of course you will miss poor Mr. Marrable sadly. I suppose you have heard all about his death from the lawyers by this time, or perhaps you saw it in the papers two years ago.
"Mr. D'Arcy is here; also Joan, of course. My husband, too, wants to have the pleasure of entertaining you—that is, if you are prepared not to shoot him on sight! I don'tthink, though, that I shall be able to command your regretful affections any more. One look at me will be sufficient for you. Alas, I have two chins and three babies!
"However, come down on Saturday, and you can size us all up. I suppose you know that Mr. Marrable asked us to take Manors and look after Joan until you or he came home again; so you won't play the heavy landlord and evict us on the spot, will you?—Yours ever,
"Mildred Leroy."
Hughie put this epistle away with a slightly sentimental sigh. It did not seem so very long since he had been organising May Week festivities in Miss Mildred Freshwater's honour. Now—two chins and three babies!Eheu, fugaces!
The other letter had not yet been opened, and Hughie broke the seal. The envelope looked blue and legal, and its contents consisted of several pages of Jimmy Marrable's stiff upright handwriting. The date was nearly three years old.
"I am leaving England again"—it began—"next week, and I doubt very much if I shall ever come back. It is not in the breed to die in bed of something stuffy. The only tie that keeps me here is Joey, and she is too much occupied at present in collecting scalps to pay much attention to the old ruin who brought her up. In about four years' time she may be fit to live with again: at present she is not; and I refuse point-blank for the time being to play second fiddle to any youngcub who ever wore magenta socks and a pleated shirt. I think it quite time that you came home and took her in hand. Indeed, if you don't appear on the scene within two years, I have given instructions that you are to be ferreted out and asked to do so. When you do return you will receive this letter, in which I am going to set down the manner in which I wish my estate to be administered on Joey's behalf if I don't come back."In the first place, I must tell you that Manors goes to you by entail, but that all the rest is Joey's, and you will be her sole trustee and guardian. Lance is of age, and independent, and I have disposed of things in such a way that he can't possibly interfere with the management of Joey's affairs. Secondly, I want to tell you something about the children themselves."I am not their father, though I very nearly was, and though every old shrew in the neighbourhood thinks I am. Their mother was the most beautiful and lovable girl I have ever known, and the only woman in the world I ever cared a rap for. Ours was a boy-and-girl idyll, though I was ten years her senior. I had known her ever since I could carry her on my back, and it was always a sort of understood thing between us that we were to marry each other when the time came."Till she was nineteen and I twenty-nine, I suppose we were the happiest couple under thebroad heaven. Then she let down her skirt and put up her hair and made herdébut. (I should say that she lived alone with her old father, a retired East Indian of the time of John Company.) To her own surprise and my great pride—at first—she caused quite a sensation, for besides her face she had the prettiest manners possible. If you want to know what she was like you will find a miniature of her among my papers. Or perhaps it would be simpler to look at Joey."But now the trouble began. Irene—that was her name—soon discovered an immense appetite for admiration, which was quite natural and excusable. (One can't blame a girl for making all the runs she can while her innings lasts; God knows, it is short enough!) But presently she could not do without it. She was always 'asking for it,' as they say nowadays. Sometimes she made herself rather conspicuous, and people began to smile at her. I ground my teeth, and, finally, at the least suitable moment, I put my oar in. I expostulated. No, Ididn'texpostulate: I simplyorderedher to mend her ways, and generally acted the Grand Turk and proud proprietor rolled into one. My word, Hughie, she was furious! There had never been any definite engagement between us, and she opened her defence by saying so, pat. It happened at a ball, where she had been making herself rather noticeable witha seedy ruffian—half actor, half poet—called Gaymer, against whom I had been fool enough to warn her. She informed me that she was her own mistress, and that I was an officious busybody. If I had had the sense to tell her there and then that I loved her more than all the world, and that I was jealous of the very ground she walked on,—let alone the people she spoke to,—she would have melted at once, I swear; for she was as impulsive and generous as a child, and she loved me, too, Iknow. If I had even lost my temper and called her a brazen hussy, she would have forgiven me in time: a woman regards a remark like that as a sort of compliment.But—I smiled indulgently, shrugged my shoulders, and said that she would look at these things differently when she was older."That did it. Apparently there is only one crime in this world more heinous than telling an old woman that she is old, and that is to tell a young woman that she is young. Irene got straight up and left me sitting, and went home without ever looking in my direction again that night."Next day I called at her father's house to make my peace. I was prepared to admit that I had been an irritating young cub, and eat humble pie generally. But I was too late. She was gone! She had bolted, in some wild fit of pique or sentimentalism, with that long-haired exponent ofByronism-and-water, Lance Gaymer, and had married him at a Registry Office that very morning. Probably she had fallen in with his proposals at the ball—after her interview with me."Well, Hughie, I would rather pass over the next few years. I cut her out of my scheme of things as completely as I could, and went on my way. Fortunately you began to engage my attention about that time, and I rubbed along somehow, and finally developed into the fine old crusted fogey that you know me to be."Ten years later I heard from her. She sent for me. I had never known where she was, nor tried to find out. But I did not expect to find her where I did. She was in a miserable dingy house in Bloomsbury—dying, Hughie! Her ruffianly husband had left her after her second baby was born,—our Joey, that is,—and her old father had been dead eight years. She had not a friend in the world, and yet she would not turn to me till it was too late. Pride, pride, pride! For some years she had been struggling on with a little money her father had left her, and which her husband had not been able to get hold of, and she had also taken in lodgers.Lodgers, Hughie! It was only when she realised that she was going out for good that the thought of the kiddies' future began to frighten her, and she sent for me—at last!"I was with her during most of the remaining three months of her life, to the scandalisation of virtuous Bloomsbury. I wanted to bring her to Manors, which she had often visited in her childhood, but she said she preferred to die in London; and as she was obviously going to die somewhere pretty soon, I did not press the point. During that time we lived a life of almost perfect happiness; and when she finally slipped away, quite peacefully,—poor child! she was barely thirty-two,—and I took the youngsters home with me, the long waste of years behind us seemed almost as though it never had been, so completely had the recollection of it been wiped out by the intervening three months. Love can work marvels, Hughie, even though it come to a man at the very last."I may add that during the closing weeks of her life I had the supreme satisfaction of marrying her, as we received undeniable proof that her accursed husband had died in South America. This gives me a sort of additional hold over Joey, though I have never mentioned it to her; nor do I think it necessary, for I had rather that her attachment to me remained a purely sentimental one, for the present at any rate."And now, as regards the future. As I said at the beginning of this letter, I don't know whether I shall ever come back from this trip.If I don't, well and good: Joey can take my money. If I do, I am afraid I must request the use of it for myself for a little while longer. However, you will naturally want me to fix some sort of time-limit, and the question has been occupying my attention a good deal. My original idea was to make a kind of provisional will, leaving all my property to Joey, and entitling her to come into possession automatically in the event of my not returning within five years; but the lawyers tell me this arrangement won't work, as I have to bepukkadead before they can shell out. So I have fixed it this way. For the present Joey will want nothing but her daily bread and her fallals and a roof to sleep under, as her so-called education is now completed. I have therefore let Manors to the Leroys, on the understanding that the child is to live there with them for the present. (Not that they required much persuasion.) She is eighteen at the time of writing this letter."Further, I have realised practically all my personal estate, and placed the cash to your credit (on Joey's behalf) at the Law Courts Branch of the Home Counties Bank. When you come home, which I hope will be soon, I want you to take this money and administer it for her benefit. The rest of my property—nothing to speak of in comparison—is set down and duly disposed of in mywill (which I have left in the hands of Slocum, Spink, and Slocum, Lincoln's Inn Fields), and cannot be touched until my death is authenticated. I have made you Joey's sole trustee and guardian, and you will enter upon your duties as soon as you get home. She is not to come of age, financially speaking, until she is twenty-four."That's all, I think."Good luck to you in life, Hughie! I can't, I fear, take my stand on the pinnacle of a successful career and shout down advice to you on your way up; neither will I presume to counsel you as to your future. My only piece of advice to you is not to expect much in this world, and then you won't be disappointed. Roughly speaking, there are only three things in life that matter—health, money, and friends. A woman once told me that the recipe for perfect happiness is a million pounds and a good digestion. The last, I admit, is indispensable. Well, you have it: the Marrable interior is dyspepsia-proof. The million pounds you have not got, and don't want. Wealth, after all, is a purely relative affair. You can measure it either by the greatness of what you have or the smallness of what you want. All that a man needs is enough of the first to ensure his getting the second, and I am inclined to think that in your case this should not be a matter of much difficulty."Besides, it is in thesmallneeds of life that money really counts. The yacht, the house in town, the grouse moor—who wants 'em? But the cab home in the rain; the occasional bottle of Pommery; the couple of stalls when an old friend looks you up, or the furtive and sympathetic fiver when his widow does,—these are the things that make money really worth having. Besides, the greatest joys are those you have to save up for, so a millionaire can never know them."As for friends—well, there are two classes, men and women. Men I need not trouble you about. If you haven't acquired the knack of handling them during the last ten years you never will, and are no Marrable. Women? I give it up! You can't standardise them. Men are fairly normal as a class. If you deal straight with a man he will realise and appreciate the fact, and though he may not respond by dealing straight with you, he will at any rate recognise you for what you are—a white man. But you can't depend on a woman to do that. They are far stronger in their likes and dislikes than we are, and are hopelessly capricious into the bargain. My general experience—and it has been wider than you might think—has been that, once a woman takes a fancy to you, you may run counter to every canon of honesty, sobriety, and common decency, and she will cleave to you—probably,I fancy, because you arouse all the protective maternal instinct in her. On the other hand, once you get into her bad books,—it may be because you deserve it, but as often as not it is because you have hot hands or once trod on her skirt in a waltz,—nothing that you can do will prevent her shuddering at the very mention of your name. Perhaps, from the point of view of the greatest good of the greatest number, a woman's method of sizing up the male sex is the best possible, but it comes hard on well-meaning but heavy-handed men like us."We Marrables have always been men's men, although we have the profoundest reverence for women. (Perhaps that is the reason: a woman never wants you to reverence women; she wants you to reverenceher.) What sticks in our throats is the enormous amount of make-believe and shilly-shallying that has to go on between the sexes before any definite business can be accomplished. Whenever I see a Marrable in a drawing-room, sitting on the edge of a chair and balancing a teacup, I always know exactly what he is there for, and I also know that he is dumbly resisting man's primitive instinct to pick up the right girl andrun. When that feat, or its equivalent, has been accomplished, all is well: I have never known a Marrable who was not a complete success as a husband. But they are bad starters."Your father was an exception. He had the good luck to meet a girl who knew a man when she saw one, and was willing to accept the will for the deed when she found him unable to express articulately what she would have loved to hear. By a further stroke of good luck her parents objected to him, so he had a comparative walk-over."And therefore, Hughie, I counsel you to escape all future unhappiness by marrying Joey as soon as you get home—a consummation to which, as you will probably have gathered by this time, the whole of these laboured and transparent testamentary dispositions of mine are directed. I have left the child entirely in your hands. Marry her as quickly as you can, and then I shall know for certain, whatever my state of existence at the time, that the two people whom I care for most on earth are both booked for a life of perfect happiness. I could not wish a man a sweeter wife or a woman a better husband."Forgive my clumsy methods, but you know I mean well.—Yours,"James Marrable."
"I am leaving England again"—it began—"next week, and I doubt very much if I shall ever come back. It is not in the breed to die in bed of something stuffy. The only tie that keeps me here is Joey, and she is too much occupied at present in collecting scalps to pay much attention to the old ruin who brought her up. In about four years' time she may be fit to live with again: at present she is not; and I refuse point-blank for the time being to play second fiddle to any youngcub who ever wore magenta socks and a pleated shirt. I think it quite time that you came home and took her in hand. Indeed, if you don't appear on the scene within two years, I have given instructions that you are to be ferreted out and asked to do so. When you do return you will receive this letter, in which I am going to set down the manner in which I wish my estate to be administered on Joey's behalf if I don't come back.
"In the first place, I must tell you that Manors goes to you by entail, but that all the rest is Joey's, and you will be her sole trustee and guardian. Lance is of age, and independent, and I have disposed of things in such a way that he can't possibly interfere with the management of Joey's affairs. Secondly, I want to tell you something about the children themselves.
"I am not their father, though I very nearly was, and though every old shrew in the neighbourhood thinks I am. Their mother was the most beautiful and lovable girl I have ever known, and the only woman in the world I ever cared a rap for. Ours was a boy-and-girl idyll, though I was ten years her senior. I had known her ever since I could carry her on my back, and it was always a sort of understood thing between us that we were to marry each other when the time came.
"Till she was nineteen and I twenty-nine, I suppose we were the happiest couple under thebroad heaven. Then she let down her skirt and put up her hair and made herdébut. (I should say that she lived alone with her old father, a retired East Indian of the time of John Company.) To her own surprise and my great pride—at first—she caused quite a sensation, for besides her face she had the prettiest manners possible. If you want to know what she was like you will find a miniature of her among my papers. Or perhaps it would be simpler to look at Joey.
"But now the trouble began. Irene—that was her name—soon discovered an immense appetite for admiration, which was quite natural and excusable. (One can't blame a girl for making all the runs she can while her innings lasts; God knows, it is short enough!) But presently she could not do without it. She was always 'asking for it,' as they say nowadays. Sometimes she made herself rather conspicuous, and people began to smile at her. I ground my teeth, and, finally, at the least suitable moment, I put my oar in. I expostulated. No, Ididn'texpostulate: I simplyorderedher to mend her ways, and generally acted the Grand Turk and proud proprietor rolled into one. My word, Hughie, she was furious! There had never been any definite engagement between us, and she opened her defence by saying so, pat. It happened at a ball, where she had been making herself rather noticeable witha seedy ruffian—half actor, half poet—called Gaymer, against whom I had been fool enough to warn her. She informed me that she was her own mistress, and that I was an officious busybody. If I had had the sense to tell her there and then that I loved her more than all the world, and that I was jealous of the very ground she walked on,—let alone the people she spoke to,—she would have melted at once, I swear; for she was as impulsive and generous as a child, and she loved me, too, Iknow. If I had even lost my temper and called her a brazen hussy, she would have forgiven me in time: a woman regards a remark like that as a sort of compliment.But—I smiled indulgently, shrugged my shoulders, and said that she would look at these things differently when she was older.
"That did it. Apparently there is only one crime in this world more heinous than telling an old woman that she is old, and that is to tell a young woman that she is young. Irene got straight up and left me sitting, and went home without ever looking in my direction again that night.
"Next day I called at her father's house to make my peace. I was prepared to admit that I had been an irritating young cub, and eat humble pie generally. But I was too late. She was gone! She had bolted, in some wild fit of pique or sentimentalism, with that long-haired exponent ofByronism-and-water, Lance Gaymer, and had married him at a Registry Office that very morning. Probably she had fallen in with his proposals at the ball—after her interview with me.
"Well, Hughie, I would rather pass over the next few years. I cut her out of my scheme of things as completely as I could, and went on my way. Fortunately you began to engage my attention about that time, and I rubbed along somehow, and finally developed into the fine old crusted fogey that you know me to be.
"Ten years later I heard from her. She sent for me. I had never known where she was, nor tried to find out. But I did not expect to find her where I did. She was in a miserable dingy house in Bloomsbury—dying, Hughie! Her ruffianly husband had left her after her second baby was born,—our Joey, that is,—and her old father had been dead eight years. She had not a friend in the world, and yet she would not turn to me till it was too late. Pride, pride, pride! For some years she had been struggling on with a little money her father had left her, and which her husband had not been able to get hold of, and she had also taken in lodgers.Lodgers, Hughie! It was only when she realised that she was going out for good that the thought of the kiddies' future began to frighten her, and she sent for me—at last!
"I was with her during most of the remaining three months of her life, to the scandalisation of virtuous Bloomsbury. I wanted to bring her to Manors, which she had often visited in her childhood, but she said she preferred to die in London; and as she was obviously going to die somewhere pretty soon, I did not press the point. During that time we lived a life of almost perfect happiness; and when she finally slipped away, quite peacefully,—poor child! she was barely thirty-two,—and I took the youngsters home with me, the long waste of years behind us seemed almost as though it never had been, so completely had the recollection of it been wiped out by the intervening three months. Love can work marvels, Hughie, even though it come to a man at the very last.
"I may add that during the closing weeks of her life I had the supreme satisfaction of marrying her, as we received undeniable proof that her accursed husband had died in South America. This gives me a sort of additional hold over Joey, though I have never mentioned it to her; nor do I think it necessary, for I had rather that her attachment to me remained a purely sentimental one, for the present at any rate.
"And now, as regards the future. As I said at the beginning of this letter, I don't know whether I shall ever come back from this trip.If I don't, well and good: Joey can take my money. If I do, I am afraid I must request the use of it for myself for a little while longer. However, you will naturally want me to fix some sort of time-limit, and the question has been occupying my attention a good deal. My original idea was to make a kind of provisional will, leaving all my property to Joey, and entitling her to come into possession automatically in the event of my not returning within five years; but the lawyers tell me this arrangement won't work, as I have to bepukkadead before they can shell out. So I have fixed it this way. For the present Joey will want nothing but her daily bread and her fallals and a roof to sleep under, as her so-called education is now completed. I have therefore let Manors to the Leroys, on the understanding that the child is to live there with them for the present. (Not that they required much persuasion.) She is eighteen at the time of writing this letter.
"Further, I have realised practically all my personal estate, and placed the cash to your credit (on Joey's behalf) at the Law Courts Branch of the Home Counties Bank. When you come home, which I hope will be soon, I want you to take this money and administer it for her benefit. The rest of my property—nothing to speak of in comparison—is set down and duly disposed of in mywill (which I have left in the hands of Slocum, Spink, and Slocum, Lincoln's Inn Fields), and cannot be touched until my death is authenticated. I have made you Joey's sole trustee and guardian, and you will enter upon your duties as soon as you get home. She is not to come of age, financially speaking, until she is twenty-four.
"That's all, I think.
"Good luck to you in life, Hughie! I can't, I fear, take my stand on the pinnacle of a successful career and shout down advice to you on your way up; neither will I presume to counsel you as to your future. My only piece of advice to you is not to expect much in this world, and then you won't be disappointed. Roughly speaking, there are only three things in life that matter—health, money, and friends. A woman once told me that the recipe for perfect happiness is a million pounds and a good digestion. The last, I admit, is indispensable. Well, you have it: the Marrable interior is dyspepsia-proof. The million pounds you have not got, and don't want. Wealth, after all, is a purely relative affair. You can measure it either by the greatness of what you have or the smallness of what you want. All that a man needs is enough of the first to ensure his getting the second, and I am inclined to think that in your case this should not be a matter of much difficulty.
"Besides, it is in thesmallneeds of life that money really counts. The yacht, the house in town, the grouse moor—who wants 'em? But the cab home in the rain; the occasional bottle of Pommery; the couple of stalls when an old friend looks you up, or the furtive and sympathetic fiver when his widow does,—these are the things that make money really worth having. Besides, the greatest joys are those you have to save up for, so a millionaire can never know them.
"As for friends—well, there are two classes, men and women. Men I need not trouble you about. If you haven't acquired the knack of handling them during the last ten years you never will, and are no Marrable. Women? I give it up! You can't standardise them. Men are fairly normal as a class. If you deal straight with a man he will realise and appreciate the fact, and though he may not respond by dealing straight with you, he will at any rate recognise you for what you are—a white man. But you can't depend on a woman to do that. They are far stronger in their likes and dislikes than we are, and are hopelessly capricious into the bargain. My general experience—and it has been wider than you might think—has been that, once a woman takes a fancy to you, you may run counter to every canon of honesty, sobriety, and common decency, and she will cleave to you—probably,I fancy, because you arouse all the protective maternal instinct in her. On the other hand, once you get into her bad books,—it may be because you deserve it, but as often as not it is because you have hot hands or once trod on her skirt in a waltz,—nothing that you can do will prevent her shuddering at the very mention of your name. Perhaps, from the point of view of the greatest good of the greatest number, a woman's method of sizing up the male sex is the best possible, but it comes hard on well-meaning but heavy-handed men like us.
"We Marrables have always been men's men, although we have the profoundest reverence for women. (Perhaps that is the reason: a woman never wants you to reverence women; she wants you to reverenceher.) What sticks in our throats is the enormous amount of make-believe and shilly-shallying that has to go on between the sexes before any definite business can be accomplished. Whenever I see a Marrable in a drawing-room, sitting on the edge of a chair and balancing a teacup, I always know exactly what he is there for, and I also know that he is dumbly resisting man's primitive instinct to pick up the right girl andrun. When that feat, or its equivalent, has been accomplished, all is well: I have never known a Marrable who was not a complete success as a husband. But they are bad starters.
"Your father was an exception. He had the good luck to meet a girl who knew a man when she saw one, and was willing to accept the will for the deed when she found him unable to express articulately what she would have loved to hear. By a further stroke of good luck her parents objected to him, so he had a comparative walk-over.
"And therefore, Hughie, I counsel you to escape all future unhappiness by marrying Joey as soon as you get home—a consummation to which, as you will probably have gathered by this time, the whole of these laboured and transparent testamentary dispositions of mine are directed. I have left the child entirely in your hands. Marry her as quickly as you can, and then I shall know for certain, whatever my state of existence at the time, that the two people whom I care for most on earth are both booked for a life of perfect happiness. I could not wish a man a sweeter wife or a woman a better husband.
"Forgive my clumsy methods, but you know I mean well.—Yours,
"James Marrable."
Hughie folded up this characteristic document and put it carefully back in his pocket. Then he lit his pipe and reflected.
He did not altogether agree with the tone ofhis uncle's letter, but he knew in his heart that it contained a good deal of truth. He was ready to marry and settle down, but like most of his race he contemplated the preliminary reconnoitring, the manœuvring for position, and the elaborate enveloping movements which seem inseparable from a modern matrimonial engagement, with something akin to terror. At the same time, it seemed a tame thing to come home and marry a bread-and-butter miss out of the schoolroom to gratify the shade of a departed relative.
The train slowed down. They were approaching Midfield Junction, where he must change. Hughie took his feet down from the opposite cushions and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
"We'll see," he said. "I must have a look at Joey first. Pretty children so often grow up plain. Perhaps it would be simplest to marry her, but there's no hurry. I'm home for a rest, and I'm not going to bother myself. I have roughed it for nine years. Now I'm going to settle down and have an easy time of it."
He was never more mistaken in his life.