FOREORDAINED

“I’ve never worn it again,” she murmured.

So I suppose it was ruined—unless she has some other reason. But she would be right to treat it differently from other frocks; it must mean a good deal to her, although it failed to mean anything except its own pretty self to Mr Jackson.

“IDON’T say,” observed the Colonel, “that limited liability companies haven’t great advantages. In fact, I’m a director myself—it’s a big grocery—and draw three hundred a year—a very welcome addition to my half-pay—and, for all I know, I may supply some of you fellows with your morning bacon. If I do, it just exemplifies the point I was about to make; which is this—When it comes to limited companies, you never know who anybody is. I could tell you a little story to illustrate that; it’s rather a sad one, though.”

The club smoking-room was cheerfully lighted, the fire burned brightly, we each had a cigar and a drink. We intimated to the Colonel that we felt in a position to endure a touch of tragedy.

“It’s some years ago now,” he said, “but it affected me considerably at the time. Do any of you go to Stretchley’s for your clothes?”

Three of us shook our heads wistfully. The fourth—a young man, and a new member, whom none of us knew, but who had a legal look about him and wore admirable trousers of a delicate grey—answered the Colonel’s question in the affirmative.

“If I may say so, you and Stretchley do one another credit, sir,” said the Colonel, with an approving glance at the new member’s trousers. “And I needn’t tell you that Stretchley’s have few equals—and no superiors. When you say Stretchley’s, you say everything. I have never gone to them myself: partly because I couldn’t afford it, more perhaps from motives of delicacy—from consideration for poor George Langhorn’s feelings.He has always preferred not to act professionally for his personal friends, even though he lost money in consequence.”

“How does George Langhorn come in?” I ventured to ask.

“He is Stretchley’s, to all intents and purposes. It’s a small family company. The business was founded by George’s maternal grandfather, and carried to greatness by his mother’s brother, Fred Stretchley, whom I used to see at Brighton years ago. Fred made it into a company, but of course kept the bulk of the shares to himself, besides the entire control; and when he died he left all he had to George, on condition—mark you, on condition—that George remained in the business, and in active control of it. He did that because he knew that George hated it, and, at the same time, had a wonderful turn for it.”

“Rather odd, that!” the new member observed.

“I don’t think so, sir,” said the Colonel. “He had a knack for it, because it was in his blood; and he hated it, because he’d had it crammed down his throat all his life. He’d been right through the mill from a boy; the only holiday he’d ever had from it was a year at Bonn—and that was to learn German, with a view to business. It was at Bonn that I became acquainted with him, and a very nice fellow he was—quite a gentleman, and extremely well-informed. We became great friends. His only fault was his exaggerated dislike of his own occupation. On that subject he was morbid—and, I’m afraid I must add, a trifle snobbish. All the same, he was unmistakably proud of Stretchley’s. He was quite alive to the fact that, if he had to be a tailor, it was a fine thing to be Stretchley’s, and in moments of confidence he would thank Heaven that he hadn’t been born in the ready-made line—‘reach-me-downs,’ he called it. ‘It might have been worse,’ he would say manfully. At those times I felt a great respect for him.”

“They do know how to make a pair of breeches,”murmured the new member, regarding his own legs with pensive satisfaction.

“Nobody better, nobody better,” the Colonel agreed, with a solemn cordiality—and we all looked at the new member’s legs for some moments. “Well, as I was saying,” the Colonel then resumed, “George Langhorn and I became real friends; but I was abroad on service for two or three years after he came back from Bonn and got into harness in Savile Row, and so I lost sight of him for a bit. But after I’d been home a few months, I was passing through town on my way to the Riviera, on six weeks’ leave, and I dropped in at his place and saw him. I found him in a sad way—very depressed and down in the mouth, railing against the business, utterly sick of it. He told me he couldn’t endure the sight of a frock-coat, and spent all his time at home in pyjamas and a dressing-gown—just because those were portions of apparel not supplied by Stretchley’s. Morbid, of course, but sad, very sad! It looked to me as if he was on the verge of a breakdown, and I took a strong line with him. I told him that he owed it to himself to take a complete holiday—to get right away from the shop for a bit, to forget all about it, to put plenty of money in his pocket, and give himself a real holiday—he told me he hadn’t taken more than a week here and there for two years. I said: ‘I’m just off to Monte Carlo. You come with me. Sink the shop—dismiss it from your mind—and come along.’ Well, he saw how wise I was, made his arrangements, and joined me at Charing Cross three days later. Off we went, and a very good time we had of it. George was a handsome young fellow of four or five and twenty, with lots to say for himself, and a very taking way with women. Nobody knew who he was, but I and my friends gave him a good start, and he could take care of the rest for himself. In point of fact I received a great many compliments on the good taste I showed in choosing my travelling companion. Ah, yes, we had verygood fun!” The Colonel leant back in his chair for a moment, with a smile of pleasant—possibly of roguish—reminiscence.

“No signs of the tragedy yet, Colonel,” said I.

“Wait a bit; I’m just coming to it. When we’d been there about a fortnight, a young lady appeared on the scene. She was one of the prettiest creatures I ever saw—and I’ve seen some in my day—and as merry as she was pretty. Besides that, she was evidently uncommonly well off; she travelled with a companion, a maid, and a toy-poodle, and threw away her money at the tables as if she were made of it. I needn’t tell you that such a girl didn’t want for attentions at Monte Carlo, of all places in the world. The fortune-hunters were hot on her track, besides all the young fellows who were genuinely smitten with her. If I’d been ten years younger, I’d have had a shot myself. But it wouldn’t have been any use. From the very first George was the favourite, just as from the first George had been drawn to her. There seemed really to be what they call an affinity between them. I never saw an affair go so quickly or so prosperously. Yes, there seemed to be an affinity. George was carried right off his feet, and I was intensely pleased to see it. He wasn’t thinking of Stretchley’s now, and he was putting on weight every day! My treatment was being a brilliant success, and I didn’t mind admitting that more than half the credit was due to pretty Miss Minnie Welford—that was her name.

“I was only waiting to hear the happy news when one morning George came down looking decidedly pale and with a face as long as your arm. I made sure he’d received a telegram calling him back to Savile Row. But it wasn’t that. This was it. In conversation, in the garden of the Casino the evening before, somebody had begun talking aboutmésalliancesand that sort of thing. One took one side, and one another—the people who had nothing in particular to boast about inthe family way being the loudest in declaring they’d never make a low marriage, as they generally are. Minnie, who was sitting next George, took the high romantic line. She said that if she loved a man (George told me she blushed adorably as she said this—you can believe that or not, as you like) neither family nor fortune would weigh for a minute with her. That made George happy, as you can imagine. Then some fellow said: ‘You’d marry the chimney-sweep, would you, Miss Welford?’ ‘Yes, if I loved him,’ says she. ‘Absolutely nobody barred?’ the man asked, laughing. She blushed again (or so George said) and laughed a little and said: ‘Well, just one—just one class of man; but I won’t tell you which it is.’ And no more she would, though they all tried to guess, and chaffed her, and worried her to tell. When the talk had drifted off to something else, George seized his opportunity—he told me he had a horrid sort of presentiment—and whispered in her ear: ‘Tell me!’ She looked at him with eyes full of fun and said: ‘Well, I’ll tell you; but it’s a secret. Swear to keep it!’ George swore to keep it, and then she leant over to him, put her lips close to his ear, and whispered—— Well, of course, you’ve guessed what she whispered?”

“Tailors!” said the new member in a reflective tone.

“Yes, ‘tailors,’ ” said the Colonel mournfully. “She just whispered ‘Tailors!’ and ran off with a merry glance (so George said)—a merry glance. And he hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night, and came to tell me the first thing in the morning. I never saw a man so broken up.”

“Had she found out about him?” I asked.

“No, no, sir; not a hint—not an idea. You’ll see later on that she couldn’t have had the least idea. But there it was—tailors! And what the dickens was poor George Langhorn to do? He took one view, I urged the other. His was the high-flying line. He must tell her the whole truth before he breathed asmuch as a word of love to her! Fatal, of course, but he said it was the only line an honourable man could take. I denied that. I said: ‘Tell her you love her first. Get her consent—because you will get it. Let the matter rest for a week or two—let her love grow, let the thing become fully settled and accepted, so that to break it off would cause talk and so on. Then, when it’s all settled, just casually observe, in a laughing kind of way, that you’re sorry she has a prejudice against a certain estimable occupation, because you happen to be indirectly connected with it.’ Machiavellian, you’ll say, no doubt; but effective, very effective! ‘Indirectly connected’ I consider was justifiable. Yes, I do. I am, as I said a little while ago, a director of a grocery business, but I don’t consider myself directly—not directly—connected with lard and sugar. No, I didn’t go beyond the limits of honour, though possibly I skirted them. In helping one’s friends, one does. However, George wouldn’t have it, and at last I had to be content with a compromise. He wasn’t to speak of the business before he spoke of love, nor to speak of love before he spoke of the business. He was to speak of them both at once. That was what we decided.”

“Rather difficult,” commented the new member, with that reflective smile which I began to recognise as habitual.

“Pray, sir, would you expect such a thing to be easy?” demanded the Colonel, with an approach to warmth. “We did the best we could, sir, under exceptionally awkward and delicate circumstances.” The Colonel leant back again and took a sip of barley-water. That is his tipple.

We all waited in silence for the Colonel to resume his narrative. I remember that, owing perhaps to the associations of the subject, my regard was fixed on the new member’s grey trousers, to which he himself continued to pay a thoughtful attention. The Colonel took up the tale again in impressive tones.

“It has been my lot,” he said, “to witness many instances of the perverse working of what we call fate or destiny, and of the cruel freaks which it plays with us poor human creatures. I may mention, just in passing, the case of my old friend Major Vincent, who, himself a vegetarian, married a woman whom he subsequently discovered to be constitutionally unable so much as to sit in the same room with a cabbage. But neither that case nor any other within my experience equals the story which I am now telling you. You will agree with me when you hear thedénoûement, which is of a nature impossible for any of you to anticipate.”

“I think I know it,” observed the new member.

“It’s impossible that you should, sir,” said the Colonel firmly, though courteously: “and when you have heard me out, you yourself will be the first to admit as much. Where was I? Ah, I remember. Well, George Langhorn left me in the condition which I have attempted to describe, and with the understanding which I have mentioned. How, precisely, he carried out that understanding, I am, of course, unable to say, as his interview with Miss Welford was naturally a private one, and he never volunteered any detailed account of it, while it would have been absolute cruelty to press him on the subject; for if his state of mind was lamentable when he left me, it was as nothing to the dismay and horror which held possession of him on his return some two hours later. He rushed into my room really like a man distraught—I am in the habit of measuring my words, and I don’t use that one unadvisedly—plumped himself down on my sofa, and ejaculated: ‘Merciful heavens, she owns half the Sky-high!’ ”

At this climax—for such his manner obviously indicated it to be—the Colonel looked round on us in sombre triumph. We were all gravely attentive (except the new member, who still smiled), and the Colonel continued, well satisfied with the effect which he had produced.

“There’s fate for you, if you like!” he exclaimed, with uplifted forefinger. “There’s the impossibility of evading destiny or escaping from a foreordained environment! Out of all the girls in the world, George had fixed his affections on that particular one; he had gone straight to her, as it were; and, for my part, I can’t doubt that the very thing he hated, and she hated too, had, all the same, served in some mysterious way to bring them together. And there was the situation! Not only was George, as a man, forbidden the escape which he had prayed for, but Stretchley’s was brought into contact with the ‘Sky-high Tailoring Company’! No doubt you are all familiar with its advertisements—chubby boys in sailor suits, square-legged little girls in velveteen, dress-suits at thirty-seven and sixpence! I need not enlarge on the subject; it’s distasteful. It is enough to say that any connection between Stretchley’s and the Sky-high was to George’s mind almost unthinkable. Observe, then, the curious and distressing psychological situation. As a man, he hated Stretchley’s; as Stretchley’s, he loathed and despised the Sky-high. His love—his most unfortunate love—was in conflict at once with his personal feelings and with his professional pride. And what of her? When he grew calmer, George entered on that subject with some fulness. She had suffered, exactly as he had, from the obsession of the family business, in the shadow of which she had been bred, to a half-share in which she had succeeded on her father’s death. In early days, before fortune came, she had even been dressed from the stock! Like George, she had looked to marriage for a complete change of life and associations. It was not to be. And, more than that, she was acutely conscious of what George must feel. Her training and the family atmosphere had not failed to teach her that. She knew only too well how Stretchley’s would feel towards the Sky-high. And George was Stretchley’s, and she was the Sky-high! One sometimesreads ofmésalliancesin the papers or meets them among one’s acquaintance. Never have I met one like this. The very fact of the occupation being in essence the same intensified the discrepancy and the contrast. Which, gentlemen, would surprise and, I may say, shock you more—that a duke should marry oil or soap, or that a really first-class purveyor should take his bride from a fried fish shop? No man of perception can hesitate. It is within the bounds of the same occupation that the greatest contrasts, the greatest distance, the greatest gulfs of feeling are to be found. I value an otherwise painful experience because it exhibited that philosophic truth in so vivid and striking a manner. You would sooner ask the Commander-in-Chief to lend a hand with a wheelbarrow than propose to him to take command of a corporal’s guard. Yourchefwould no doubt put on the coals to oblige a lady, but not to oblige a thousand ladies would he wash the dishes!”

“I daresay that’s all true,” I made bold to observe, “but, nevertheless, your pair of lovers seem to me rather ridiculous.”

“Exactly, sir,” said the Colonel—and I was relieved that he took my interruption so well. “They would seem to you ridiculous. Probably thechefseems ridiculous too? A man of another profession can’t have the feeling in its full intensity. It seems ridiculous! But think—doesn’t that very fact increase the tragedy? To suffer from a feeling deep and painful, and to be aware that it is in the eyes of the world at large ridiculous—can you imagine anything more distressing?”

“Your story illustrates more than one great truth, I perceive, Colonel.”

“If it did not, sir, I should never have troubled you with it,” he answered with lofty courtesy.

“And what happened? Did love triumph over all?”

“I hesitate to describe the issue in those terms,” said he, with a slight frown. “They are conventional—designedly, no doubt—and I don’t think that they fit this particular case. George and Miss Welford were, beyond question, deeply attached to one another, and they got married in due course—nor am I aware that the marriage has turned out otherwise than well in the ordinary sense. Mrs Langhorn is a very charming woman. But was it a triumph of love? I look deeper, gentlemen. In my view love was but an instrument in the hands of Fate. The triumph was the triumph of Fate, and I am persuaded that, when they went to the altar, resignation to destiny was the most prominent feeling in the minds of both of them. That is why I said at the beginning that the story was rather a sad one. The very night before the wedding I found George poring over the Sky-high’s illustrated catalogue! What does that fact carry to your minds?”

“It looks bad,” I admitted, with a sigh.

“It speaks volumes,” said the Colonel briefly, and he finished his barley-water.

The new member flung the end of his cigar into the grate and rose to his feet. His face still wore the reflective smile which had decorated it throughout the Colonel’s story.

“And what,” I asked the Colonel, “are the present relations between Stretchley’s and the Sky-high?”

“It would be curious to know,” he answered; “but as to that I have no information. I’ve never ventured to interrogate George Langhorn on the point.”

“I think I can answer the question,” said the new member, flicking an ash off his trousers. “The two companies were privately amalgamated last week. I drew the articles of association myself. Mr Langhorn is to be chairman of the joint concern.”

The Colonel might plausibly have resented a silence so long maintained as to border on deceit. He showedno anger. He nodded his head gravely, as though to say: “Here is the Epilogue! Here is the Catastrophe complete!”

“Stretchley’s and the Sky-high!” he murmured. “Poor George Langhorn! Poor George!”

I went home to dinner really quite depressed.

MISS PRUDENCE was astonishingly pretty; it was far from tedious to lie on the bank of the stream and watch her, while her second brother—a lanky youth of fifteen—fished for non-existent trout with an entirely unplausible fly.

“So Clara Jenkins said that about me?”

I nodded. “Just let it fall, you know, Miss Prudence, in the give-and-take of conversation.”

“If you weren’t a stranger in our neighbourhood, you wouldn’t pay any attention to what a girl like that says.”

“Oh, but it was about you,” I protested.

Prudence looked at me as if she were thinking that I might have been amusing when I was young.

“What was the word Clara used?” she asked.

“There were two words. ‘Calculating’ was one.”

“Oh, was it?”

“Yes. The other was ‘heartless.’ ”

“I like that! It’s only what mamma tells me.”

“Your mother tells you?” My tone indicated great surprise: her mother is the vicar’s wife, and the alleged counsel seemed unpastoral.

“Yes—and it’s quite right too,” Prudence maintained. “You know how poor we are. And there are eight of us!”

“Five and three?”

“Yes: Johnny at Oxford, Dick at school, and Clarence to go soon! And the girls—you know what girls cost, anyhow!”

“They vary, I suppose?”

“Just you talk to mamma about that!”

That didn’t seem urgent. “Another time,” I murmured, “I shall be pleased to exchange impressions.”

I don’t think Prudence heard. She was looking very thoughtful, a minute wrinkle ornamenting her brow.

“The boys must have their education; the girls must have justice done to them.”

“To be sure! And so——?”

“And why shouldn’t one fall in love with a man who—who——”

“Would be delighted to do all that?”

“Of course he’d be delighted. I mean a man who—whocoulddo it.”

“Rich?”

“Papa says differences in worldly position are rightly ordained.”

“No doubt he’s correct. Your man would have to be quite rich, wouldn’t he? Seven besides you!”

“Oh, we aren’t accustomed to much,” said Prudence, with a smile at me which somehow made me wish for a cheque-book and an immense amount of tact; a balance at the bank we will presuppose.

“And may I ask,” I resumed, “why you are selected out of all the family for this—er—sacrifice?”

She blushed, but she was wary. “I’m the eldest girl, you see,” she said.

“Just so,” I agreed. “I was very stupid not to think of that.”

“The others are so young.”

“Of course. It would be waiting till it was too late?”

“Yes, Mr Wynne.”

I interpolate here a plain statement of fact. The other girls resemble their mother, and the vicar’s type, reproduced in Miss Prudence, is immeasurably the more refined—not to say picturesque.

“Oh, if you won’t be serious!” sighed Prudence—though, as has been seen, I had said nothing.

“It certainly is not a laughing matter,” I admitted.

“How difficult the world is! Was Sir John at the Jenkins’s?”

“Sir John?”

“Sir John Ffolliot—of Ascombe, you know.”

“Tall red-faced young man?”

“Yes, very—I mean, rather. Rather tall, anyhow.”

“Oh yes, he was there.”

“When Clara talked about me?”

“So far as I recollect, he was not in earshot at that moment, Miss Prudence. But then I wasn’t in earshot while she talked to him. So possibly——”

“Now she really is a cat, isn’t she?”

“I haven’t the smallest doubt of it. But you must make allowances.”

“I do. Still I can’t see why plain people are to say just what they like!”

“Nobody minds them,” I observed consolingly.

The conversation flagged for a moment or two. That didn’t matter; one can always look at the view.

“Is my hat crooked?” asked Miss Prudence with affected anxiety.

“I should say you’d get him, if you really want him,” I remarked.

My thoughts were switched off in another direction by Miss Prudence’s next utterance. I don’t complain of that; it was probably rightly ordained, as the vicar would have said; there’s something in a meadow and a river that resists middle age—and I don’t know that a blue frock, with eyes to match, and hair that——

“Do you happen to know how much a bishop gets?” asked Prudence.

“Not precisely, Miss Prudence. It varies, I believe—like what girls cost. All I know is that it’s never enough for the needs of his diocese.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” She looked rather troubled over this information.

“So the papers say—and the bishops too sometimes.”

“Still you wouldn’t call them exactly poor, would you?”

“Icall them poor! Good Lord!” was my observation.

“You know our bishop’s Palace?”

“A charming residence, Miss Prudence—even stately.”

“And Sir John says he drives awfully good horses.”

“Let us rely on Sir John where we can.”

“And Mr Davenport says he gives away a lot.”

“Mr Davenport?”

“So he can’t be poor, can he?”

“Mr Davenport?”

“Oh, I beg pardon! But you’ve met him. How forgetful you are! Papa’s curate!”

“Dear me, dear me! Of course! You mean Frank?”

“Papa calls him Frank.”

“You all call him Frank.”

“I suppose we do—yes.”

“So I forgot his surname just for the minute. Does he call you Prudence?”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Roughly speaking, it ranges from three to seven thousand a year. More for archbishops, according to scale, of course.”

“Well, that sounds plenty,” said Prudence.

(I have ascertained fromCrockford’s Directorythat the value of the vicar’s living is three hundred and twenty five pounds per annum.)

“Don’t be calculating, Miss Prudence!”

“And heartless?” The little wrinkle was on her brow again.

“That remark of Miss Jenkins’ seems to rankle!”

“I wasn’t thinking—altogether—of Clara.”

It seemed hard if somebody else had been calling her heartless too—or even thinking it. And all for listening to her mother! I tried to administer consolation.

“The thing is,” I observed, “a judicious balancing of considerations. Here, on the one hand, is justice to be done to the girls—in the way of accomplishments and appearance, I may presume?—and education to be givento the boys—it would be no bad thing if someone taught Dick how to make a fly, for example; on the other hand lie what I may broadly term your inclinations and——”

I awoke to the fact that Miss Prudence had not been listening to the latter portion of my remark. She was rubbing the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, and frowning now quite heavily. Then she twisted one little hand round the other; and almost inaudibly she said: “How can one balance considerations”—(She infused a pleasant scorn into her intonation of these respectable words)—“How can one balance considerations when——?”

Primâ faciethat “when——” admitted of various interpretations. But I chose one without hesitation.

“Then why this talk about how much a bishop gets, you calculating heartless girl?”

She darted at me a look of fearful merriment.

“And they make them quite young sometimes in these days,” I added. And I rounded off my period by remarking that Sir John Ffolliot seemed a stupid sort of dog.

“Yes, isn’t he?”

“Might do for Clara Jenkins?”

“If I thought that——” Miss Prudence began hotly.

“But the idea is preposterous,” I added hastily. “One of your sisters now?”

“That’s really not a bad idea,” she conceded graciously.

In fact, she had suddenly grown altogether very gracious—and I do not refer merely to the marked civility of her manner towards myself. The frown had vanished, the wrinkle was not: the hands were clasped in a comfortable repose. She looked across to me with a ridiculously contented smile.

“It’s such a good thing to have a talk with a really sensible man,” she said.

I took off my hat—but I also rose to my feet. To present me as a future bishop was asking too much ofthe whirligig of time. Not a kaleidoscope could do it! Besides, I wasn’t serious about it; it was just the meadow, the river—and the rest. In order to prove this to myself beyond dispute, I said that I had to go to the post office and despatch an important letter.

“To the post office?” said Prudence, displaying some confusion at the mention of that institution. “Oh, then, would you mind—it would be so kind—would you really mind——?”

“Calling in at the parlour window and telling Mr Davenport that you’re going to have some tennis after tea? With pleasure, of course.”

“I didn’t know you knew he lodged there!” she cried.

“Pending promotion to the Palace, yes.”

I made that last remark after I had turned my back, and I didn’t look round to see whether Miss Prudence had heard it; it was, in fact, in the nature of an “aside”—a thing which may be heard or not at pleasure.

“Won’t you come too?” she called.

“Certainly not. I propose to meditate.” On these words I did turn round, and waved her farewell. I think she was indulging in a most proper forgetfulness of her brothers and sisters—and, incidentally, of myself. So I proceeded to the post office, although of course I had no letter at all to send.

I found Mr Davenport in flannels, sitting with his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe and reading. He was an engaging six-feet of vigour, and I delivered my message with as little rancour as could be expected under the circumstances.

“I think I’ll go,” he said, briskly knocking out his pipe.

It was some satisfaction to me to remind him that it was only half-past three, and that tennis didn’t begin till after tea. He put his pipe back between his teeth with a disappointed jerk.

“What are you reading?” I inquired affably. Imust be pictured as standing outside the post office parlour window while conducting this colloquy.

He looked a trifle ashamed. “The fact is, I sometimes try to keep up my Latin a bit,” he explained, conscious of the eccentricity of this proceeding. “It’s Juvenal.”

“Not so very clerical,” I ventured to observe.

“A great moralist,” he maintained—yet with an eye distantly twinkling with the light of unregenerate days.

“I suppose so. That bit about prudence now——?”

“About who?” cried he, springing to his feet and dropping his poet on the floor.

“Evidently you recollect!Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia——”

“Curiously enough, I’ve just been having a shot at a rendering of that couplet,” said Mr Davenport. As he spoke he approached the window: I sat down on the sill outside and lit a cigar.

“Curiously enough indeed!” said I. “May I be privileged to hear it?”

He threw out one arm and recited—

“ ‘All Heaven’s with us, so we Prudence win:If Fortune’s hailed a goddess, ours the sin!’ ”

“Pretty well for the spirit, but none too faithful to the letter,” I remarked critically. “However, Dr Johnson is open to the same objection. You remember—

“ ‘Celestial Wisdom calms the mind,And makes the happiness she does not find.’ ”

“I call that pretty bad.”

“Not much to the present point, anyhow,” I agreed.

“I had another rhyme—and after all the rhyme’s the difficulty. How about this?—

“ ‘All Heaven’s ours if Prudence we can gain,Our silly hands build Fortune’s empty fane!’ ”

“Really you fire me to emulation,” I said. “I think I’ll try my own hand at it—

“ ‘If Prudence loves, what other boon need I?’ ”

“Splendid!” he cried, puffing at his empty pipe.

“ ‘Unless a bishop’s palace by-and-by?’ ”

This audacious departure from the original affected him powerfully. He laid a hand like a pair of tweezers on my wrist and cried excitedly—

“You’ve been talking to her!”

“So have you,” said I, “and to better purpose.”

By a subtle and rapid movement he was, in a moment, outside the door and stood facing me in the little front garden of the post office.

“I shouldn’t wonder if they began tennis before tea,” he remarked.

“You’ll find somebody to play a single. Good-bye!” He was turning away eagerly when something occurred to me. “Oh, by the way, Mr Davenport——”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you’ll ever be a bishop really?”

“Only when I talk to her,” he said, with a confused yet candid modesty which I found agreeable.

“Go and do homage for your temporalities,” I said.

“I say—her mother!” whispered Mr Davenport.

“She probably thought the same when she married the vicar.”

He smiled. “That’s rather funny!” he cried back to me, as he started off along the road.

“So your son-in-law may think some day, my boy,” said I with a touch of ill-humour. No matter, he was out of hearing. Besides I was not, I repeat, really serious about it—not half so serious, I venture to conjecture, as the vicar’s wife!

To her, perhaps, Dr Johnson’s paraphrase may be recommended.

“WE may float for ten minutes,” said the Second Officer.

After a pause the passenger remarked:

“I’m glad of it, upon my word I am.”

“You’re thankful for small mercies,” was the retort.

The passenger did not explain. He could not expect the Second Officer, or the rest of them, to sympathise with his point of view, or share the feelings which made him rejoice, not at the respite, but at the doom itself. Those who were not busy getting the women and children into the boats, and keeping the ship above water, were cursing the other vessel for steaming away without offering aid, or clutching in bewildered terror at anyone who could tell them how the collision had happened and what hope there was of salvation. The boats were got safely off, laden to their utmost capacity; lifebuoys were handed round, and, when they ran short, men tossed up for them, and the losers ransacked the deck for some makeshift substitute. The passenger took no part in the competition or the search. He stood with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips, waiting for the ten minutes to wear themselves away. His only grudge against fate lay in those superfluous ten minutes.

Left to himself, he began to think, lighting a cigarette. He had to use a fusee, which was a pity, especially for his last cigarette, but the wind blew fiercely. It was strange how much harm a man could do without being a particularly bad fellow, and what animpassehe could get himself into. He had drifted on, and things had fallen out so maliciously that, because of him whohated hurting anybody, women were weeping and children smirched, and an old man hiding an honoured head in shame. He had even been required to be grateful to the man he hated most in the world, because he had not been put in the dock. That stuck in his throat more than all the rest. He had been ready to pay his shot and go to gaol—he would rather have done five years than owed the thanks for escaping them—but in very decency he couldn’t insist on going; the trial would have killed the old man. So they had concocted a plan—a chance of a new life, they called it—and shipped him off to the other side of the world with fifty pounds in his pocket—the gift of that enemy. At least he could get rid of the money now; and, still smiling, he dropped his pocket-book over the side into the great heaving waves. He had always meant it to go there—God forbid he should use it—but he had hardly hoped to go with it. He would follow it soon now. The door whose handle he had shrunk from turning had opened of its own accord in a most marvellously convenient way. To throw oneself overboard is a cold-blooded impossible sort of proceeding; the old man and the women would have heard of it, and he really didn’t want to give them any more pain. But this catastrophe was—from a selfish point of view—incredibly opportune. Such an exit had the dignity of the inevitable, and left the “new life” an agreeable hypothesis from which he doubted not that much comfort would be sucked by those dear, loving, foolish folk at home. Much “new life” he would have led! But let them think he would. And hurrah for a collision in deep water!

Five minutes gone—and they were deep in the water. The skipper was on the bridge; the engineers had come up and, together with the crew and such of the passengers as had not got away in the boats, were standing ready to jump at the word. Some were praying, some swearing, most discussing the matter in verymuch the same tones as they used in speculating about the weather on deck after dinner; but they all kept their eyes on the skipper.

“I shall just,” said the passenger, peering over the side, “go straight down. It oughtn’t to take long,” and he shivered a little. It had just struck him that the process might be very unpleasant, however satisfactory the result.

There was a sudden movement of the deck under him. The skipper seemed to shout, and, waving his arms, began to run down from the bridge. Then everybody jumped. The passenger dropped his finished cigarette, kicked off his deck shoes—a purely instinctive action—and jumped too. “Here goes!” he said.

When he came up again, he found himself swimming strongly. His arms and legs were not asking his leave about it; they were fighting the water as they had been taught, and they promised to make a long bout of it. He had never felt so vigorous. It was great nonsense, prolonging the thing like this. If he had thought of it, he wouldn’t have jumped so clear, then he would have been sucked down. He saw heads bobbing here and there about him; one man shrieked aloud and disappeared. It was—less the shrieking—just what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t. It was all very well to want to die, but this strong body of his had a word to say to that. Its business was to live, and it meant to live if it could. Well, it had always been a rebellious carcass—that was the cause of a great deal of the trouble—and it evidently meant to have its own way for this last time.

And it began to infect him. For the life of him, he couldn’t give in now. It was a fight between him and the water. He might have been a brute, and a rogue, and all the other pretty names that had come as sauce to that wretched fifty pounds, but he had never been a coward or shirked a fight. It was all right—he must be drowned in the end. But he would keep it up aslong as he could; he would see it through; and with strong strokes he met and mastered and beat down wave after wave, outlived head after head that sank round him, and saw the old ship herself go under with a mighty pother.

All at once he found himself within reach of a spar. He was getting tired, though full of fight still, and he clutched at it for all the world as though he were in love with life. Hallo! There was a boy clinging to it—one of the ship’s boys, whom he knew well.

“Get off!” shrieked the boy. “Get off! It’s mine.”

“All right, Johnny, we’ll share it.”

“It won’t take us. Get off. It’s not fair. Oh, it’s going under!”

It was. The passenger let go, but kept close to it. It wouldn’t bear Johnny and him, but it would bear Johnny alone; it would also, probably, bear him alone. And he was getting very tired. Johnny saw his face and, clinging tight, began to cry. The passenger laid hold again. How jolly it was to have something under one’s chest! Johnny had had it for a long while. And what’s a ship’s boy? Besides, it’s every man for himself at such a time.

Johnny’s end ducked and Johnny’s head dipped with it. Johnny came up whimpering piteously, and swore in childish rage at the intruder. He was not a pretty boy, and he looked very ugly when he swore.

“You’ll drown us both, you——!” he gasped.

“It would bear me,” replied the passenger, “and you shouldn’t swear, Johnny.”

Johnny blubbered and swore again.

For an instant the passenger, resting as lightly as he could on the spar, watched Johnny’s face.

“You’ve kept afloat some time,” he observed, with an approving air. He liked pluck in boys—even ugly whimpering boys. His end went under, and he came up gurgling and spitting. He felt now as if he had no legs at all.

Johnny had stopped swearing, but was blubbering worse than ever.

“Damn it,” said the passenger, “haven’t I made enough people do that?” And he added, “Ta-ta, Johnny,” and let go the spar.

His legs were there, after all, and they let him know it. For time unmeasured he battled for the life he was weary of, and would not let himself be pushed through the open door. But at last he crossed its threshold.

Johnny was drowned too. But then the passenger had always protested against his acts being judged by their consequences; and it doesn’t seem fair to take it against him both ways.

Back to Index Next