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FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
By Henry Seton Merriman
CHAPTER
I. THE SEED
II. SUBURBAN
III. MERCURY
IV. FREIGHTED
V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS
VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY
VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
VIII. RELIEVED
IX. RE-CAST
X. A LAST THROW
XI. A CARPET KNIGHT
XII. BAD NEWS
XIII. ON THIN ICE
XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION
XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE
XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY
XVII. TWO MOTIVES
XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA
XIX. AT HURLINGHAM
XX. IN A SIDE PATH
XXI. ALONE
XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK
XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH
XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS
XXVII. AT BAY
XXVIII. THE LAST LINK
XXIX. SETTLED
FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER
CHAPTER I
THE SEED
Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
toujours honnétes.
“Dearest Anna,--I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that I am
reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
and was slightly wounded--a mere scratch in the arm--but nothing more. I
have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning
something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being
in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon
me ...”
This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
high and strangely rounded.
“By George!” he said, “suppose I do it that way!”
He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
merely looked at things from force of habit.
He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping
nose--the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin
running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct
vice--heartless. Here was a man with a future before him--a man whose
vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency.
Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If
expediency prompted he could be a very depôt of virtues; for his body,
with all the warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect
control. On the other hand, there was no love of good for goodness'
sake--no conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was
written in the face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some
moments before on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.
He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs--not the
result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
daily habit--but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand from
remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay side by
side--not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience and
temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not wondering
what was best to do, but what the most expedient.
Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled,
and each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days
when men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to
be in Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No
large wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded
fortunes.
Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.
At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.
Anna--dearest Anna--to whom this half-completed letter was addressed, was
a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At the outset of
his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved to make use
of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been annexed
_en passant_. In person she was youthful and rather handsome--her fortune
was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India engaged to
be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.
In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless--nay, more, she was a
burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
bungalow.
He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con--carefully withholding
from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong. Then he took
up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had decided to leave
the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five
weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed
column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in ignorance of its
falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish man. All that he
did at this time, and later in life--all the lives that he ruined--the
hearts he broke--the men he sacrificed were not offered upon the altar of
Self (though the distinction may appear subtle), but sold to his career.
Career was this man's god. He wanted to be great, and rich, and powerful;
and yet he was conscious of having no definite use for greatness, or
riches, or power when acquired.
Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse
had reached him--in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain--gain of
any sort--filled his heart, and _ennui_ secretly nestling in his soul
said: “Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy.”
He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
was not quite alone--with him in his error are all men and women. And so
we talk of Love coming after marriage--and so women marry without Love,
believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes afterwards
is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the spirit of
Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a vague
ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
them--not to value them.
There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the
encumbrance of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither was there
hesitation in turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was
only a steady pressing forward--an unceasing, unwearying attention to his
own gain.
In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken
precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual
was apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of
oblivion at the least--he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution
acted always in anticipation of the worst.
He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the
bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
“I say, Michael,” exclaimed this man, “do you see that you're put in
among the killed?”
“Yes,” replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. “I
have already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care
whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street.
I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going
forward.”
This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics
in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when _first_
we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling
superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was
apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment
making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of
disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made
to have miscarried later on.
But even he could not foresee everything--no one can. Not even the
righteous man, much less the liar.
“Do you mean to say,” pursued the newcomer, “that you are not writing to
your family about it--only to the Company?”
“That is all.”
“Rum chap you are, Michael,” said the other, lighting a cheroot.
“Heartless beggar I take it.”
“Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only
possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather
sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted.”
The younger officer--a mere boy--with a beardless, happy face, walked to
the door of the bungalow.
“Of course there is always this in it,” he said carelessly. “By the time
the contradiction reaches home the news may be true.”
Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel
rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are
rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the
letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials
towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a
meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company--the
old East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and
daybook--calling their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and
begging them not to trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had
already advised his friends.
This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such
men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the
floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover,
he was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a
different code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of
“not being found out.” Men are more suspicious--they find out sooner:
_ergo_ the morals to be observed _vis à vis_ to them are of a stricter
order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game
for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle
contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels
gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a
woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon
his conscience.
Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All
through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear
conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna
Hethbridge from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the
Company with a keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the
lives of others which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him
in a harvest of honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under
a bushel, but set it in the very highest candlestick available.
But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He
did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern--a
youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go
together--possessed a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a
passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph
itself on the somewhat sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be
reproduced at the wrong moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead
in the womb of time.