He had the gentleman’s card in his hand. ‘Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle
Temple.’
‘A barrister, Mr. Adams?’
‘I think not, sir.’
‘I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no Reverend
here,’ said I.
‘Probably, from his appearance,’ Mr. Adams replied, ‘he is reading for
orders.’
I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty linen
altogether.
‘What did he want, Mr. Adams?’
‘Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference.’
‘Recommended here? Did he say?’
‘Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of yours. He noticed
you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your personal
acquaintance he would not trouble you.’
‘Did he know my name?’
‘O yes, sir! He said, “There _is_ Mr. Sampson, I see!”’
‘A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?’
‘Remarkably so, sir.’
‘Insinuating manners, apparently?’
‘Very much so, indeed, sir.’
‘Hah!’ said I. ‘I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams.’
Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a friend of mine, a
merchant, a man of taste, who buys pictures and books, and the first man
I saw among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton. There he was, standing
before the fire, with good large eyes and an open expression of face; but
still (I thought) requiring everybody to come at him by the prepared way
he offered, and by no other.
I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and my
friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me. Not too happy;
there was no over-doing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly well-bred,
perfectly unmeaning way.
‘I thought you had met,’ our host observed.
‘No,’ said Mr. Slinkton. ‘I did look in at Mr. Sampson’s office, on your
recommendation; but I really did not feel justified in troubling Mr.
Sampson himself, on a point in the everyday routine of an ordinary
clerk.’
I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our friend’s
introduction.
‘I am sure of that,’ said he, ‘and am much obliged. At another time,
perhaps, I may be less delicate. Only, however, if I have real business;
for I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, and what a vast
number of impertinent people there are in the world.’
I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow. ‘You were thinking,’
said I, ‘of effecting a policy on your life.’
‘O dear no! I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the compliment
of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I merely inquired for a friend. But
you know what friends are in such matters. Nothing may ever come of it.
I have the greatest reluctance to trouble men of business with inquiries
for friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thousand to one that the
friends will never follow them up. People are so fickle, so selfish, so
inconsiderate. Don’t you, in your business, find them so every day, Mr.
Sampson?’
I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his smooth, white
parting on me with its ‘Straight up here, if you please!’ and I answered
‘Yes.’
‘I hear, Mr. Sampson,’ he resumed presently, for our friend had a new
cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, ‘that your profession has
recently suffered a great loss.’
‘In money?’ said I.
He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and replied, ‘No,
in talent and vigour.’
Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a moment.
‘_Has_ it sustained a loss of that kind?’ said I. ‘I was not aware of
it.’
‘Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don’t imagine that you have retired. It
is not so bad as that. But Mr. Meltham—’
‘O, to be sure!’ said I. ‘Yes! Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of the
“Inestimable.”’
‘Just so,’ he returned in a consoling way.
‘He is a great loss. He was at once the most profound, the most
original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected with
Life Assurance.’
I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for Meltham; and
my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some suspicion that he
wanted to sneer at him. He recalled me to my guard by presenting that
trim pathway up his head, with its internal ‘Not on the grass, if you
please—the gravel.’
‘You knew him, Mr. Slinkton.’
‘Only by reputation. To have known him as an acquaintance or as a
friend, is an honour I should have sought if he had remained in society,
though I might never have had the good fortune to attain it, being a man
of far inferior mark. He was scarcely above thirty, I suppose?’
‘About thirty.’
‘Ah!’ he sighed in his former consoling way. ‘What creatures we are! To
break up, Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of business at that time of
life!—Any reason assigned for the melancholy fact?’
(‘Humph!’ thought I, as I looked at him. ‘But I WON’T go up the track,
and I WILL go on the grass.’)
‘What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton?’ I asked,
point-blank.
‘Most likely a false one. You know what Rumour is, Mr. Sampson. I never
repeat what I hear; it is the only way of paring the nails and shaving
the head of Rumour. But when _you_ ask me what reason I have heard
assigned for Mr. Meltham’s passing away from among men, it is another
thing. I am not gratifying idle gossip then. I was told, Mr. Sampson,
that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his avocations and all his
prospects, because he was, in fact, broken-hearted. A disappointed
attachment I heard,—though it hardly seems probable, in the case of a man
so distinguished and so attractive.’
‘Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death,’ said I.
‘O, she died? Pray pardon me. I did not hear that. That, indeed, makes
it very, very sad. Poor Mr. Meltham! She died? Ah, dear me!
Lamentable, lamentable!’
I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still suspected an
unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said, as we were parted,
like the other knots of talkers, by the announcement of dinner:
‘Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of a man
whom I have never known. I am not so disinterested as you may suppose.
I have suffered, and recently too, from death myself. I have lost one of
two charming nieces, who were my constant companions. She died
young—barely three-and-twenty; and even her remaining sister is far from
strong. The world is a grave!’
He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the coldness of
my manner. Coldness and distrust had been engendered in me, I knew, by
my bad experiences; they were not natural to me; and I often thought how
much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and how little I had
gained, gaining hard caution. This state of mind being habitual to me, I
troubled myself more about this conversation than I might have troubled
myself about a greater matter. I listened to his talk at dinner, and
observed how readily other men responded to it, and with what a graceful
instinct he adapted his subjects to the knowledge and habits of those he
talked with. As, in talking with me, he had easily started the subject I
might be supposed to understand best, and to be the most interested in,
so, in talking with others, he guided himself by the same rule. The
company was of a varied character; but he was not at fault, that I could
discover, with any member of it. He knew just as much of each man’s
pursuit as made him agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as
little as made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when
the theme was broached.
As he talked and talked—but really not too much, for the rest of us
seemed to force it upon him—I became quite angry with myself. I took his
face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it in detail. I
could not say much against any of his features separately; I could say
even less against them when they were put together. ‘Then is it not
monstrous,’ I asked myself, ‘that because a man happens to part his hair
straight up the middle of his head, I should permit myself to suspect,
and even to detest him?’
(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense. An observer of
men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing
in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to
the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A
very little key will open a very heavy door.)
I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and we got on
remarkably well. In the drawing-room I asked the host how long he had
known Mr. Slinkton. He answered, not many months; he had met him at the
house of a celebrated painter then present, who had known him well when
he was travelling with his nieces in Italy for their health. His plans
in life being broken by the death of one of them, he was reading with the
intention of going back to college as a matter of form, taking his
degree, and going into orders. I could not but argue with myself that
here was the true explanation of his interest in poor Meltham, and that I
had been almost brutal in my distrust on that simple head.