"And so once more I came to London, a wanderer, noting what had been

built and what pulled down. London! Never for a single day will they let

it alone. It is like some vast cellular organism asprawl on the Thames

mud, forever heaving and sweating and rotting and growing. A fungus, a

sponge, sucking in the produce of continents, sending out the wealth of

empires. I used to stand on London Bridge and watch the steamers loading

and discharging from the grimy overhanging warehouses. A busman's

holiday, you say. But there didn't seem anything else to do while I was

waiting for a ship. I found my old British Museum Reading Room pass

among my papers at home and I used it one day to look in upon my bygone

haunts. It gave me a shock to see some of the same old grey-haired men

and women reading out of the same silly old tomes. Yes! I was almost

ready to swear one old girl was at the same page as I left her years

before. And the suggestions in the manuscript complaint book! Good Lord!

I glanced at it as I wandered round, for it had often amused me in the

past to see the weird and wonderful volumes the authorities were asked

to procure. And here I found some crazy soul had demanded the first

volume of the Chinese Zetetic Society's proceedings. Another complained

of a lack of text-books treating of secret societies in the Tenth

Century. And the world was going round outside all the time! I looked at

them, these men and women--their shoulders humped as they scratched with

their absurd quill-pens, their faces pallid with the light reflected

from the pages. Some few, as though to show what a farce the whole

business could be, had got out a perfect library of books, bastions of

them, and lay back in their chairs, snoring. I couldn't bear it. I had

to get out. The air was stifling me after the open sea, so I left that

subsidized lunatic asylum and took the steamboat up the river to

Hammersmith. It was spring, late spring, and there was a whisper in the

air that meant, if I read it rightly, love and romance and youth. It was

all round me as I walked out to Ealing. It was in the orchards as I rode

on that old horse-omnibus that used to run between Ealing and Brentford.

And next day I left the hotel and went out to where we used to live, on

the Northern Heights, Gentility's last ditch before they succumbed to

the onward rush of the street car and the realty agent! Spring was

whispering there too, creepers were growing over new villas, new streets

were scored across our old cricket and tennis ground by the church, an

old tavern had been rebuilt in the very latest Mile-End-Road style. Our

old house had a motor garage built on one side of it, a green-roofed

shack. Many of our neighbours had For Sale boards over their gates. Some

had gone. A couple of brick pillars with stone pineapples on top of them

had been put up at the entrance to a farm on the other side of the

railway and a board said it was the site of Ashbolton Park, a high class

residential estate. Some residents, I observed, were making a stand. One

old lady, who had lived all her life on the Great North Road, and who

was resolved to die there, had built a brick wall right round her little

estate, a brick wall with a high, narrow iron gate in the middle,

through which you could see the sullen Georgian house crouching at the

back, like a surly old bear. Must have been a joyous household. I looked

for my old sweetheart's home. It was there, but strangers lived in it. A

servant I spoke to on her way to the post told me they had been moved to

Chislehurst some time. The last ditch! In a way I felt it, this

crumbling and withering of the old order, the order of which my parents

had vainly tried to become companions. For it was typical of England. I

felt it most when I walked out on the Great North Road through Barnet

and saw the huge notice-boards up over the walls of princely domains,

telling me how this desirable property and that magnificent country seat

was to be sold at auction at Tokenhouse Yard on such and such a date. It

was hitting the seats of the mighty, you might say, this insidious

growth and crumble and decay. Nothing could stand against it. The

strong, stark virtues, the high courage and honour and fine courtesy,

the patronage of arts and letters and religion which was the spirit of

that old order, were all gone, and now the very shell and imitation of

it was going, and we must prepare for the new people and their new ways.

A new world. Only the road, the Great North Roman Road, seemed never to

alter. A few inches more metalling, perhaps, another generation of

menders, and so on. The traffic, of course, was different, for the

traffic is the world. Indeed, when you stop and reflect, you will see

that a great road like this one I was walking on that warm spring day,

is a pulsing artery. London, that immense heart, with its systole and

diastole, its ebb and flow and putrefying growth, lay beating behind me.

Ahead lay that grey, brooding North, that vast coal-field whose output

had made us masters of the world. Take it how you will, you must have

roads. That is America's need to day--roads. Without roads no art, no

literature, no real progress. No canals or railroads will do. Canals are

too slow, railroads too fast. It is true they have brought trade and

prosperity to the Great North West and the Great South West and the

Great Middle West and all the other wests; but you cannot build up a

great civilization on railroads. You must have roads, with pilgrims, or

hoboes if you like, and artists and poets on foot, and taverns and talk.

Railroads are the tentacles of plutocracy. Roads are democratic things.

"I was thinking very much on these lines that day and I was in the

little hollow just beyond the Kingmaker's obelisk. The sun had gone

down behind Mill Hill and the evening was full of blue shadows, full of

the odour of smoke and sap, full of mysteriously comfortable silences.

For a few moments that particular rod, pole or perch of the great road

was empty save for me and a lamplighter on a bicycle, who was coming

towards me, riding one hand, his torch over his shoulder, a sort of

elderly Mercury illuminating an empty world. On the left the great trees

stood up close to the road, great shafts, the children of those who had

stood there when the legions came up out of the Thames valley and

marched north into the jungle. On the right the meadows rolled away

eastward towards Enfield and Cheshunt and Broxbourne, meadow and copse

and cornland. The lamplighter passed me with a soft buzz and click of

sprocket wheels, and looking back at him idly, I caught the sound of the

church-clock at Barnet striking the hour. The chime focussed my thoughts

on the great peace of the land. Here at any rate, I thought, man has

topped the rise. He has accomplished all he set out to do and the result

is peace and happiness. I was sentimentalizing, no doubt, for I have

never been able to live in the country. But as I stood there, looking

back, the spell was broken. I heard a roar of a horn, one of those

ear-shattering inventions that paralyze one's faculties, a grinding of

gears and a slither of rubber tyres, and then the yell of a human voice.

As I turned to jump I was nearly blinded by two enormous headlights. And

the voice that had yelled, a half-familiar voice, shouted, 'What the

blazes do you go to sleep in the middle of the bally road for, eh?' I

couldn't see anything at all until I had reached the grass at the side

of the road, when I made out a long automobile standing askew across the

road and panting. There was a low, semicircular seat with a man in it

behind a large steering wheel, a seat so slanted that its occupant was

practically recumbent. He had ear-flaps and monstrous goggles. I had a

momentary mental picture of him as some Roman staff-officer rushing back

to the base in his chariot. He had an imperious air as he glared at me

and backed his machine with one hand to straighten it. I found my voice.

I said, 'I have as much right to the road as you.' 'What?' he said, in a

high note. 'To stand in the middle and block the traffic. What are you?

An escaped lunatic? Have you made your will, hey?' 'Oh,' I retorted, 'If

you've bought the road, or the earth, I'll get off it, of course. I

should have said _you_ were the escaped lunatic going along at that

pace.' He laughed, a high, reedy cackle that seemed familiar, rose

stiffly out of his place and stepped down as though he had cramp.

'Ouch!' he said, bending and straightening to unlimber himself. 'Where

are we, hey? Barnet? Taking an evening stroll after the office?' And he

took off his goggles and I saw my young brother's bright dark eyes and

high-bridged nose and sarcastic mouth. He shouted with laughter, went

off again into his reedy cry, and screamed, ''Pon my soul, it's Charley!

Well, I'm ... Where in the wide, wide world did _you_ spring from?

Revisiting the glimpses of the moon? Good heavens!' And he gripped my

shoulder.

"That was how we met in after years. He was at his ease at once. I was

bewildered. 'By Jove, I nearly did for you that time. Nobody but a

madman would stand in the middle of the Great North Road to admire the

scenery, old chap. It's suicide. An amateur would have had you in

mince-meat.' He stooped to examine his brake. 'Charred, by Jove! And I

expect some of the gears are stripped too. Get in.'

"'Get in!' I said in astonishment. 'What for?'

"'Why, come up to town and have dinner with me, of course,' he laughed.

'The Prodigal Son. Which of us two is the Prodigal, Charley? 'Pon my

soul, I believe you are. You've been wandering all over the world, I

believe. I went to the funeral--you know.' I nodded. 'And the old chap

said you were in some frightful hole or other. Well, let me get in and

you can sit on the step. I'll take you up to my digs.'

"And that is what he did do, at a speed I could scarcely realize save by

the wind that roared past my ears. We dropped down Barnet Hill like a

bullet, we rushed through the gloaming with those blinding white beams

cleaving the quiet gloom ahead of us and throwing preternaturally sharp

shadows that reeled into oblivion like drunken goblins. It seemed to me,

after my quiet meditative stroll, a monstrous invasion. We would flash

round a curve with a whoop of the horn, and those pitiless rays would

suddenly reveal in stark loneliness a man and a girl, clasped in each

other's arms. Or they would loom up ahead, walking and lovemaking, and

the sound of the horn would strike them to attitudes of paralyzed fear.

Once we overtook a party in a trap, jogging pleasantly homeward, and we

left them holding for their lives and the horse rearing with terror. I

was holding on for my own dear life, for that matter. My brother lay

back in his seat and carried on a loud monologue directed at me. He said

he had to go to Southampton that night on urgent business, but must dine

first. Was going to motor. This was a Stromboli, hundred horse-power

racing machine. He was agent for Stromboli's. Had sold a lot of cars at

twelve hundred guineas each. Had been up in Scotland staying at a

country-house. And so on. I listened, but had nothing to say. He had no

interest in my affairs, and every word he said showed me we were nothing

and could be nothing to each other. And yet it had so happened that he

had been to our mother's funeral, he had played the proper part while I

was away on the ocean, a wanderer and a prodigal. He even had, as I saw

later, a band of crape on his arm, which somehow I had forgotten to

wear. He made me feel insignificant and hopelessly inferior. And

suddenly, as I clung there, another thought sprang up in my mind, the

possibility that I might even now be on the way to a meeting with Gladys

again. Not that I had any rational reason to dread such a meeting.

Indeed, it was she who had left me and gone to him. But I did dread it

all the same. I knew it would find me tongue-tied and foolish. I could

not rise to it and do myself justice. I am, I suppose, too

self-conscious and shy.

"And soon we roared into lights and asphalt pavements and the heavy

traffic. We crossed Marylebone Road and flew down Baker Street. Even I,

ignorant as I was, had to admire the way my brother manoeuvred his

huge machine round the buses and cabs. It was skill, sheer skill, with a

dash of luck that was very like genius. We were in Piccadilly soon after

and then, turning into a quiet street, we stopped and the engine stopped

too. A man in livery came running down from the house and I followed my

brother up the steps into a richly furnished hall, with Sheraton chairs

and Persian rugs and oriental vases. Frank took several letters and a

telegram from a green-baize board with pink tape bands cutting it into a

diamond-pattern, and beckoned me to follow him upstairs. I did so, and

we went into what he had called his 'digs.'

"You must understand, of course, that I am no judge of the way the rich

live. I can say truthfully that my tastes are simple. If I had millions

I really don't know that I should buy very much. Most probably I should

be a miser as regards my own personal expenses. But for all that I could

see that my brother's apartment was extraordinarily rich in its

appointments. There were so many details you could not imitate cheaply.

A man could sit in those rooms, and eat in those rooms and go to bed

there and feel that he was rich. He might even feel happy, for they were

not only rich and convenient, but comfortable. I was left in a deep

leather chair by a wood fire burning in a bronze grate, in a room with

chocolate-distempered walls hung with prints in black frames and one or

two water-colours in white frames. I looked across at a small cabinet of

books just above a writing table covered with many implements in bronze

and ivory. For a moment I was reminded of those model rooms in

department stores. I suppose that was unfair, but my sea-training had

taught me that many tools generally mean a bad workman. Somehow, the

moment the rich man blunders into any department of the world's labour,

his wealth shows at a disadvantage. And gold pens and silver inkpots and

jade paper-weights are as incongruous as ivory-handled sledge-hammers

and rose-wood jack-planes, when you come to think of it.

"And if I were to judge such ways of living by that one experience, I

should say that a man would eventually lose his sense of interior

values. All these beautiful, useful and convenient things would assist

him to greater achievement and finer virtue, but it would not be the

same achievement and virtue that would emerge if he had stayed down in

the arena and lodged with the gladiators in the back-streets. It

couldn't be. Perhaps the men who could get the most out of wealthy

environment are those like my brother, who simply care nothing for

achievement or virtue as such, who live unconsciously for themselves and

never have any sense of interior values, as I call them, at all. Their

lives are like an exquisite design of nymphs and fauns and satyrs on an

Etruscan jar--beautiful, rounded, complete. And inside the jar is

nothing but a handful of rubbish....

"So I reflected as I sat in that deep chair and watched the wood-fire

burning in the bronze grate. A silent man in a black suit came in and

put a decanter and siphon at my elbow and went out again. Suddenly a

phrase I had heard at sea came back to me, sharp and resonant. I was

talking to old Fred Tateham, the mate, one day, he who had had a

collision and lost his command, and he had been telling me his plans for

his younger boy. He was going to put him in his brother's office. 'You

know,' said he, 'I've a very successful brother.' I forget what this

successful brother had succeeded in--some genteel profession like

accountancy or attorney. It struck me as amusing at the time, a man

boasting of the possession of a successful brother, just as he might

proclaim his pride in a clever child or a fine garden or a good terrier.

And now the phrase came back as one I could use myself. I had 'a very

successful brother.' To confirm this whimsical notion, the successful

brother entered the room in evening dress, with a band of crape on the

arm and a black tie. He was irreproachable as he stood on the rug

snapping black amber buttons into his cuffs and settling his

shirt-front. He was so irreproachable that I lost my feeling of

discomfort and inferiority in his presence. He leaned his head on the

carved stone frame of the fire-place and stared at the flames

thoughtfully.

"'You live here alone?' I asked, and he nodded.

"'For long?' He shook his head. 'I never stop long in digs,' he

remarked, 'I get sick of them, don't you know, and try fresh.'

"'Where's Gladys?' I inquired, almost without knowing what I said. I was

as surprised as he was at such temerity. For an instant he did not know

what I meant. 'Gladys,' said he. 'Who the----Oh! now I remember----I

don't know. Yes,' he went on, turning back to the fire, 'I remember now,

Charley. I don't suppose I looked very well from your point of view, but

all the same you haven't come home with a dagger in your sleeve, have

you?' He laughed. 'By Jove, you weren't prowling along that road

to-night waiting to stab me, were you, Charley? Like some bally

foreigner.'

"'You know I wasn't,' I said. 'And besides, I had no selfish reasons for

asking. I thought you might be engaged.'

"'I engaged?' he said, and shook his head. 'I'm not a marrying man. I

wonder if we're going to die out, we Carvilles. Rotten race, anyhow. We

seem to have no luck with our women. The mater was the only one. You

should have seen them at the funeral. My God! No luck with our women,

Charley. A natural tendency towards the lower middle classes. Don't you

ever feel it? Like splashing through mud in dress pumps. I do. It's our

curse, I believe. The Curse of the Carvilles!'

"I was so dumfounded at this unexpected piece of gratuitous slander that

I sat perfectly still, although the silent servant in black had come in

and announced dinner, and my brother was telling me to go and have a

spruce-up in his dressing room. It was like being knocked on the head

with a wooden mallet. I was stunned. Even when I found myself in a small

room full of bureaus and wardrobes and had nearly walked into a double

full-length mirror, I still felt stunned. He wondered if we were going

to die out, did he. And he assumed, with a blood-freezing fatalism, that

we both had a depraved taste in women. I looked round helplessly for a

wash-stand and caught sight of a bath-room beyond a blue portiere. A

natural tendency towards the lower-middle class, if you please! And I

was just on the point of telling him about my sweetheart in Genoa! Going

into the bath-room, I almost fell into a porcelain bath set in flush

with the floor. A huge basin full of hot water stood ready under the

nickelled faucets. Soaps of many colours lay at hand. Nail-scrubbers,

manicuring tools, towels, sponges, creams, talcum powders, dentifrices,

hair-lotions, blue bottles (with vermilion labels marked poison), green

bottles marked ammonia, bottles with bulbs and sprays, cases of razors,

festoons of strops--all these stood or lay on shelves at my elbow as I

proceeded to wash my hands and face with a piece of yellow primrose soap

that by some chance was among the welter of expensive brands. No luck

with our women, observe. I certainly had had no luck with Gladys. But

he, he, to whom women ran as though he were a necromancer, as though he

had the secret of some spell that would make them forever youthful and

lovely and happy--what complaint dared he make against them? Yet he had

formulated the monstrous theory that 'our family' must either succumb to

the lower-middle class or die out because of our unfortunate luck with

our women. It was one of those propositions which are simply

preposterous in theory, but perfectly true in fact. As I washed my face

in that expensive basin and rubbed it with the expensive towels and

brushed my hair with the expensive ivory-backed brushes, I lighted upon

this interesting feature of my brother's thesis. It was true. What I

could not get over was how the dickens he had discovered it, living as

he did. It struck me as a good example of the cleverness that is so much

more useful than either genius or industry. I doubt if he had any clear

notion of what was meant by psychology, but he had intuitively divined

an obscure flaw in our complicated mentality, a flaw searching back to

some unsavoury interlude in our history. Of course, by lower-middle

class he meant servants. This silent chap in black, with the hair

growing low by his ears, would be of that class, the lower-middle.

And--here I put the ivory-backed brushes down carefully and looked at

myself as though I saw a stranger in the glass--and what was more, by

the same token, was not I, a seafaring man, also one of the

lower-middle? Good heavens! I became so tangled up in the new points of

view suddenly illuminated by my brother's outrageous remarks that I

nearly stepped into his expensive porcelain bath again. And then I heard

him calling to me that the soup was getting cold, and I followed the

servant into a small dining room singularly bare of everything save the

indispensable belongings of a meal. Even the pictures were limited to

one on each wall, as though more might distract the diner from his food.

Except for a light over the lift opening there were only two electric

candles with lemon shades on the table, where my brother sat, bolt

upright, eating soup.

"Now, you know, I laughed as I sat down, because I would not have lived

in this fashion at all. My idea of comfort, I reflected, was probably

lower-middle. It included a high tea, with real food to eat, and a book

propped up against the tea-cosy while I ate. Once or twice in my life I

have been at the mercy of a _table d'hote_ and I was not happy.

Passenger ships, for example. They have all sorts of _purees_ and

_consommes_ and _entrees_ and _fricassees_ and _souffles_, but very

little nourishing food. For some mysterious reason they serve you with a

homeopathic dose of each course and then pitch about half a ton of all

sorts of things down the garbage shoot into the sea, for the gulls and

fishes to gorge themselves on. No doubt, as I say, my notions were wrong

and my brother's were right. No use quarrelling about tastes.

"'Why do you laugh, Charley?' he inquired. 'I was thinking of what you

said about our unfortunate instincts,' I replied. 'No doubt it is true,

but I was wondering how you discovered it.'

"'I should say it was obvious in the past,' he answered gravely. 'As for

the present--you and I you know--one has intuitions, what? And I have

talked with men of old family, and they have told me of cases they know

of.'

"'And you think,' I said, 'that it is a real danger, to marry beneath

you?'

"'Yes,' he said, finishing his soup. '_You_ aren't contemplating it, are

you, Charley?'

"'I don't look at life as you do,' I observed. 'I have become rather

tired of all this talk about classes. I don't feel myself to be a

blue-blooded person at all. I am a seafaring man. Plenty of my shipmates

marry into their own class--the lower-middle class.'

"The silent person in black came in with a bottle in a basket, and

filled our glasses with a white wine. My brother turned his glass round

as he looked at me solemnly. 'I see,' he said, and began to eat his

fish.

"'Of course,' I went on, 'your intuitions, as you call them, are quite

correct as regards me, because when I marry, she will probably be just

what you say. She would be as uncomfortable in a place like this as--as

I am.'

"'Good God!' he muttered, staring at me. 'Is it as bad as that? I should

have thought you would be glad to live decently when you get the

chance.'

"'I have simple tastes,' I answered.

"'So have the beasts of the field,' he retorted, and fixed his eyes

moodily upon his wine. I laughed.

"'Far better,' I said, 'to go each his own road and do the best he can.

I've been through a good deal, Frank, since I saw you, and I dare say

you've been through a lot too, only different. I've worked and been

worked upon, and I've come to certain conclusions. There is no place for

me in all this ordered English life, with its classes and masses and so

on. I was thinking about it this afternoon when you nearly ran over me.

Pride is at the bottom of half the misery in England. Personal integrity

is all I ask of a man, modesty what I admire most in a woman. As for

what you call splashing through mud in dress-pumps, I know what you mean

and I avoid it. _Worthless_ women are to be found in all grades.

Marriage, no doubt, is a lottery, not only for us, but for the women. I

doubt if taking thought ever makes it any less of a lottery. You say we

Carvilles have no luck with our women. I wonder what 'our women' would

say if they heard you. Are we the last word in humanity? Are we flawless

in our integrity and purpose and achievement?'

"My brother shook his head without looking up from his plate.

"'That's not what I meant at all,' he remarked sullenly. 'That sort of

thing doesn't apply to women. I was referring to breeding. Women of

breeding would not trust themselves to us.'

"'Well,' I said, 'I shan't lose any sleep about it. If I were chief of a

passenger ship, the lady-passengers of breeding----'

"My brother waved his hand. 'Let us dry up,' he said. 'You don't

understand.'

"But I did! I knew exactly what he meant and many a bitter hour it had

cost me when I was infatuated with the convent-bred miss who had

trotted after him as soon as he had whistled 'come!' Breeding! The cant

of it. The silly dishonesty of it! It is like those little three-by-two

front yards you see in suburban streets, the last contemptible vestige

of the rolling park-lands and fair demesnes of a far-off feudal time. It

is like the silly Latin mottoes and heraldic crests you see on the doors

of automobiles. It is a fetish in England. The boy from the great public

schools sets the fashion, and all the little tinpot grammar-schools and

academies follow suit and ape the clothes and the manners and the

speech, the mincing speech, of people of breeding. And the little

professional people who live in suburban villas do the same. They all

worship and fear the fetish, the Collar-and-Tie god. You had better

fasten a mill-stone about your neck and be drowned in the depths of the

sea than say or be or do anything their despicable little code considers

ill-bred. Oh yes, I knew what my brother meant by breeding, but my

experience had not tallied with what I had been taught. Sometimes I have

fancied that some strain of chivalry had kept him under the illusion of

birth and gentility. And then I have come to the conclusion that he was

one of those who see things so objectively that they impress one as

automatons. They don't learn, they know. They live in the world as if it

was their home. They use their passions and desires as animals use their

instincts. They have no diffidence before the great facts of life. And

having this franchise in their pockets, so to speak, this permanent pass

to every quarter of the City of the World, having this animal candour

of outlook, they are naturally inarticulate. They are easily

misunderstood because self-expression is foreign to them and they have

no interest in abstract propositions as such. They pick up a phrase and

play with it for a while, just as a kitten will play with a ball, or a

puppy will walk round with a piece of wood in his mouth, pretending it

is a bone. My brother was a good example, I thought, of this. What he

said sounded true, and as far as he knew was true, because he had not

got it out of books. A man of 'good family' had put the idea into his

head. No doubt he would forget it in a month or so. And whatever he

might think or hear or say, he would go on living his very untrammelled

life, unabashed by Time or the perplexities of existence, until....

"And here I stopped in my reflections, for I am giving you now my

thoughts as I walked back to my lodgings in Bloomsbury. I stopped, for

it occurred to me that a man whose course is untrammelled may easily get

beyond the bounds set by the unimaginative laws of the community. In

plain words, I stopped to wonder admiringly what would become of him,

supposing he didn't break his neck in his own motor-cars. I had seen him

start, the eight cylinders of his monstrous and ridiculous machine

thundering their unmuffled exhaust into the night and scaring the

passing cab-horses. He had moved off with a wave of the hand, rather

preoccupied with a portmanteau that was strapped beside him, moved off

down Piccadilly towards Chelsea and Clapham. I reflected, as I passed

the sombre, crouching shadow of the Museum, now he was flying under the

stars along the Surrey roads, the great beams splitting the darkness

ahead of him, the dust of his passing settling on the hedgerows and

soiling the wayside turf. And to what end, I wondered, did my successful

brother rush headlong through the night? To achieve greater success? To

preach his gospel of breeding? To succour Gentility in distress? I

wondered and went to bed.

"No, I did not see him again until long afterward, and in very altered

circumstances, as they say. The harm he did me on this occasion did not

come home until later, when in Italy again, I read in an Italian journal

some of the details of the affair. A wave of anger swept over me then, I

remember, at having been so far fooled as to preach to him my gospel of

integrity in men and modesty in women, while he was deep in tortuous

finance and unprofitable intrigues. Mind you, I don't know now the

rights of the affair. The counsel for the defence made a brilliant

effort to establish a case of the chivalrous shielding of a lady. He

claimed that the accused had been lured to destruction by the voices of

sirens. A man of brilliant social gifts, he had been carried away,

intoxicated, by his success and had promised more than he could perform.

The very fact of the lady (of rank) not coming forward, but leaving the

prosecution in the hands of the trustees, was a proof that the accused

was more sinned against than sinning. And so on and so forth. It was all

in the _Weekly Times_. I walked up to the Galleria Mazzini one fine

evening and sat in the Orpheum reading the latest performance of my

successful brother. But the Italian paper which first told me about it

dealt with the incident from the artistic side. There are a good many

Italians in Egypt, as you know, and this paper had a correspondent in

Cairo with a sharp pen that cut little cameos of the cosmopolitan life

that centres round the Esbekiah Gardens. For my brother had gone to

Southampton on urgent business. His business was so urgent that he

crossed to France that night and went straight to Marseilles, where he

sailed in a Messageries Maritimes boat to Egypt. The article in the

paper was called The Flight into Egypt. The new arrival at Shepheard's

Hotel was the life of the English visitors still staying on in Cairo.

Parties who had been living among the Beduin in the desert came back for

a week at Shepheard's and were entranced with him and his

hundred-horse-power car. The daughter of a Beyrout ship-chandler who had

retired and built a house at Heliopolis was infatuated with him and

tried to monopolize him at the dances. Incidentally we learned that his

hotel expenses were five pounds a day. This interested me keenly,

because at the same time I was living in ample comfort on exactly five

shillings a day. I suppose, I don't know, for I've never had the money

to try it--but I suppose there is a snap and a tang about a life that

costs five pounds a day, which is irresistible to some souls. Or is it

that the _cost_ of things never enters into these untrammelled people's

heads at all? I wonder.

"But for all my personal interest in that Italian article and the black

ending in Bow Street and a sentence of three years, I appreciated the

author's treatment of his subject. He made a short story of it in the

manner of Flaubert, minute, vivid and grim. He showed the weekly dances

wearing thin at the end of the season, the daughters of the Levantine

ship-chandlers, and Greek tobacco merchants, and Maltese petty

officials, looking rather bleak at the prospect of another barren summer

in Alexandria, when a new planet suddenly swims into their ken, young,

rich, handsome, fascinating. They wake up again and the fight begins.

You can see the Italian journalist, small, dark, with a pointed beard,

pointed shoes, and sharp points of light in his dark eyes, hovering on

the edge of the dance or perhaps taking a turn with the Levantine lady,

observant and urbane. Things go on like this for a week or so when, the

P. and O. boat from Brindisi having arrived at Port Said the day before,

two English strangers arrive at the hotel. There is a dance that

evening. I don't suppose this was strictly true, but I can understand

the artistic pleasure it would give the Italian journalist to make

little changes like that in his story. You remember Sir Walter Scott's

confessed passion for giving a story 'a new hat and stick.' Well, there

was a dance that evening, let us say, and the ladies, tired of the

eternal English officer who never intends to let matters come to a head;

tired of the French Canal clerk with his little friend in Alexandria;

tired, perhaps, even of the witty and urbane Italian journalist, who I

imagine loved his _Genova la Superba_, his Chianti and the keen air and

heavenly blue of his Ligurian Apennines far more than he did that flat

Delta full of all the half-breeds of the world--the ladies waited

expectantly for the return of their new inspiration from Heliopolis,

where he was gone with a party in his hundred-horse-power car. They wait

in vain. Later the party return, somewhat puzzled themselves, explaining

that two gentlemen had come out and interrupted the affair by drawing

Mr. Carville aside and conversing with him inaudibly. And Mr. Carville

makes his excuses. He apologizes to the Beyrout ship-chandler and

everybody else, but he must leave with his friends for Port Said at once

and catch the homeward-bound mail-boat. His presence is urgently

demanded on business in London. The company gape. But our friend, the

Italian journalist, doesn't go in for gaping. His business is, after

all, news, and he burrows round, interviewing and telegraphing brothers

of the craft until he lays bare the rather pathetic story. He doesn't

tell it among his friends in the Land of Egypt. At any rate, he says he

doesn't. He saves it for his home paper and lavished a lot of literary

skill upon it. I imagine he got a good deal of fun out of my brother

while he stayed in Cairo.

"And so, you see, my successful brother had experienced a serious

set-back. I had a grim feeling that the women, 'our women,' as he had

called them, would feel it far more in their seclusion in Surbiton than

he would in his seclusion in--wherever he was. My feelings, in fact,

were so grim that Rosa was perplexed, but I told her how my mother was

now dead and I had no one in the world save herself. But at times I

thought of our affairs gloomily. It seemed a poor end to our parents'

fine dreams for the future--him so seriously set back, you may say, and

me ploughing the ocean....

"And then it so happened that I got a chance of promotion on the spot.

I'd been Second of the old _Corydon_ a good while, when the _Callisto_,

a cattle-boat, came in from the Argentine. The chief had taken sick and

been buried at sea. The owners telegraphed I was to take the post, and

they would send out another Second. It was very exciting, of course,

getting in charge at last. It is extraordinary, the weight of

responsibility that settles down on you all at once. Matters that you

used to settle out of hand assume a new aspect when you yourself become

the ultimate authority. It doesn't matter how hard a man has to work as

Second, or what his troubles may be, he's always got the Chief behind

him. He can sleep easy and deep, as he generally does, poor chap. But

the Chief is different. He becomes a fatalist. He can't sleep. He has to

make his decisions and keep his forebodings locked in his own breast. He

becomes preoccupied with an absurd weight of care. He realizes that he

cannot step round the corner and get the overlooker's advice. He is

alone on the wide sea, and if he cannot solve his own problems, none can

help him. And that is good spiritual discipline for a young man. He

finds out then what he is really made of.

"And Rosa was excited too, for it meant we could soon get married and

live in passable comfort almost anywhere we liked. It was a happy time

for us. You see, we had grown accustomed to each other's ways and

habits. We had struck a sort of average, and knew pretty well what

pleased and what jarred each other. That, I imagine, is one of the

secrets of living with a woman. Being simply considerate won't do,

though, of course, it is necessary. But what a woman does hate is being

startled with some fresh habit or idea. It spoils her illusion, her

necessary illusion, that she knows all about you.

"I did not tell her anything of my successful brother's performances,

though I have heard that a man always tells his sweetheart all the

disreputable side of his family history. What he forgets to tell her she

worms out of him after they are married. It may be so. I must be an

exception, then. As I have said, Rosa was curious about England, and in

trying to answer her questions I discovered I didn't know very much

about England myself. But I said nothing about our family and their poor

luck with their women. Perhaps I divined what an attractive tale my

successful brother's escapades would seem to a romantic girl. There was

a dare-devil glamour about everything my brother did that fascinates

some minds. Indeed, it fascinated mine. But I was cured of glamour. My

early love affair had left me a feeling of panicky fear of romance.

Perhaps there is Puritan blood in us; but I feel that passion in itself

is evil. I wanted no more of it. I looked forward to domestic life, my

own vine and fig tree. Some day, I dreamed, I might write another little

book. At night, when all was running smooth, I'd put down odds and

ends.... Some day, perhaps. I don't think I shall fret, though, if

nothing comes of it.

"I liked my new job. The _Callisto_ was a much bigger ship than the

_Corydon_, and more modern. Certainly cattle are very unpleasant cargo,

and when we came into Genoa Harbour and the ship was being cleaned up,

you could smell her clear away to the Galleria Mazzini! But at sea, on

the long run south to Buenos Ayres, it was none so bad. I was looking

forward to my marriage, you see. I was saving money and I was beginning

to forget the past. It is easier for a seaman to do that than for anyone

ashore. A sailor's past is all in pieces, so to speak. He can drop it

bit by bit. But when you live ashore in one place, your past is like a

heavy log that you're tied to and can't quit.

"Anyway, one night in Buenos Ayres, when I went ashore to mail a letter

to Rosa, I was in good spirits. I reflected that, after all, my father's

dreams of founding a family were not necessarily impossible. My

brother's behaviour had nothing to do with it. I was going to marry

Rosa. If we had children they would have a chance. But just as Rosa

would not hear of Italy, so I was resolved with all my might against

living in England. My children should never come under the influence of

that gentility that had spoiled our early lives. For the old families in

England who have been steeped in it for centuries, for men like

Belvoir, for instance, I dare say it is an admirable plan. But not for

me nor for mine. I had been writing about it to Rosa and I'd put at the

bottom, 'America?'

"Another thing I wanted to do ashore was to call at the Sailors' Home

and see if they could give us a Mess-room Steward. The young fellow who

had shipped that voyage had deserted. They are always doing it in the

Argentine. Wages are very high and they all think that they can do well

up country. They sign on just to get their passage free. The ship was in

Number One Dock, loading grain, and I walked across the bridge, up San

Juan and took a trolley car along _Balcarce_ to the _Plaza de Mayo_. It

was a fine evening in September, quite cool after dark. I was rather

pleased with myself, too. The boilers had opened up uncommonly well; the

Second knew his work, and I had nothing to do but keep an eye on things

in general. I posted my letter, and after walking up and down the

_Avenida de Mayo_ for a while, went down to the _Parque Colon_ to get a

car back. The trolleys of Buenos Ayres are a bit puzzling to a stranger

because the routes go by numbers. I knew nothing about the car I wanted

except that it had the number 'Forty-eight' on the bows.

"The _Parque Colon_ is a large place running parallel with the Number

Three Dock, full of big trees, and the avenues through it are rather

dark. Considering how close it is to the busy part of the city it is

lonely. Men have been found on the seats--dead! I daresay you have heard

of Buenos Ayres. Like any other city where money can be made quickly,

like London, like New York, Buenos Ayres is full of crooks. I believe

they do their best to keep the place clean, but at that time it was

pretty bad. The Skipper warned me to carry a revolver whenever I went

ashore. Personally I'm against firearms. You generally find, after a

row, that the dead man had a revolver in his hand. Unarmed strangers are

not often touched.

"Number Forty-eight was a long while coming. Car after car came down the

steep incline of _Victoria_ and turning round eastward rumbled off along

_Paseo Colon_. I walked a few steps down one of the dark avenues and sat

down on a seat to finish my cigar. It was like walking into a dark room.

I could hear the roar of the city, yet at the same time I could hear

some local sounds plainly. A musty smell came up on the breeze from the

river. Suddenly I heard the long deep note of a steamer's whistle: the

Mihanovich Mail Boat leaving for Monte Video. I sat there quietly,

thinking of nothing in particular, just glancing up now and then to note

the numbers of the trolleys. At the sound of the whistle, though, I fell

to thinking of Mihanovich. What a romance that man's life must have

been! They tell me that about forty years ago he'd landed in that place,

a Russian Pole, ignorant of the language, without any money or friends,

a low-down beach-comber. And here he was, a millionaire. Every tug on

the river has his big M on the funnel. He had fleets of steamers, mines,

railways, banks; and he was even tendering for the contract of the new

docks the city wanted. No wonder others came to make their fortunes. No

gentility needed to make _him_ succeed. And thinking of him, somehow I

began to wonder if my brother might not make good out in the colonies

say, some distant part of the world. Some time before this my uncle had

told me that Frank had been released. Good behaviour had reduced his

time to about twenty months. Surely, if he started in some place where

they didn't ask too many questions he might get another chance. And I

hoped so. I had no malice against him. He was one of those who can't

keep their nature down; women were the curse of him. Well, perhaps

prison had changed him. My uncle had said that he was 'changed,' but

that might be for the worse. And just when the old chap was deciding to

pay the passage out to New Zealand--buy him a ticket and see him on

board--my brother had vanished again.

"Mind you, the interest I took in the matter was, you might say, purely

dispassionate. I turned the case of my brother over in my mind as you

might turn over the problems of a book you are half through. I'm not

sure that at the moment when I was interrupted I was not smiling at the

insane life he had led. For me, in spite of my sea-going business, life

was settled, sedentary, monotonous. You can talk if you like of the

romance of the sea, you may call it picturesque, but you cannot call it

melodramatic. Personally I dislike melodrama. I dislike violent passion

of any sort. I was thinking of all this and, as I say, smiling, when I

heard tip-toes behind me, and before I could turn round I felt my throat

held between two hands and my head pulled sharp over the back of the

seat."

Once again Mr. Carville paused, opened his little brass box and took

therefrom his piece of twist. With meticulous precision he pared and

pared the required amount for his pipe, and began to roll it between his

palms, his eyes fixed reflectively upon the geranium tubs. He had pushed

his hat back a little, and above his steady grey-blue eyes there shone a

pink unruffled brow.

"Once or twice in my life," he went on, "I have had a severe shock. Let

me explain what I mean. A man brought up as I had been, in a genteel

way, gets unaccustomed to physical violence. At school fighting was

barred very strictly. In the works we pupils had no need to speak to the

men at all. The first time I was ever struck was when I was a pupil. One

of the apprentices thought I had been at his tools, came up and hit me a

terrific blow on the chin. To anybody used to fighting it would have

been nothing. It made me ill for a week. Of course, at sea I'd grown a

good bit harder, but I'll never forget the first time a fireman went for

me. There was always with me a feeling of outrage so to speak, a feeling

not at all towards the man who struck me, you understand, but against

myself, against a world that had made me what I was, soft and unskilled.

That seems to me a peculiar weakness in our genteel civilization. You

go along, for years perhaps, living a quiet, orderly, intellectual

life, protected by law, by the Army and Navy, by the Police and by all

'the conventions of good society,' and then suddenly a man comes up and

gives you a punch on the jaw! A very weak place in our civilization, I

think?

"And, moreover, it brings into sharp relief another feature of our

civilized life and that is our impotence to utilize our total

experience. With a dog, a tiger, or a savage at the moment of attack,

all his instincts, all his habits, all his intuition and ingenuity and

physical advantage are automatically rushed to the front and flung upon

the enemy in the most effective way possible. But the civilized man is

'all abroad.' His glasses fall off his nose, he loses his balance and

his breath, he flinches, goes blind with helpless rage and indignation,

and is held in contempt by the very policeman he pays to take the job

off his hands and lock his enemy up. It's no exaggeration to say that

some of us lack that power of instantly marshalling our faculties,

maintaining a clear view and keeping the blood out of our eyes, which is

called 'presence of mind.' It is a good phrase, that, because an

intellectual person, when he is attacked with sudden violence, hasn't

for the time being any mind at all. He is just a heap of nerves, a

compound of puerile passion and hysterical protest.

"It seemed to me that my throat was held for a long time, in that grip.

As a matter of fact it could not have been more than a couple of

seconds. But it seemed long. It seemed to me as though the pressure,

which was choking me to begin with, increased and increased. The power

of it was not like the power of a machine, but evil, personal, spiteful.

I remember I shut my eyes. I remember hot breath on my face. And then I

remember a blank. In my memory it is like a space between inverted

commas, without anything written. A blank....

"My head had slid down against the back of the seat, my knees were all

cigar-dust, and my hat had fallen off, when I opened my eyes. I heard

someone say, 'Sit up, for God's sake!' and I tried to do as I was told,

to 'sit up for God's sake.' Somebody was sitting beside me, pulling at

my shoulder. Now and again I heard him say, 'You damn fool!' He was

angry with me then. I wondered what I'd done to make anybody angry. I

tried to think. I'd been sitting on a seat in the _Parque Colon_. Very

good. Why was I a damn fool? I decided to argue the point with this

chap. I struggled up and felt for my hat. I heard him say, 'Listen, you

fool!' There he was again. Always a fool. Then he said, 'Well, _look_

then, if you can't hear,' and he struck a match and held it before his

face. Humph!

"He pinched the match between his fingers and we were in the dark again.

He said, 'Well, Charley, old man, that was a near squeak for you, a damn

near squeak. What the devil d'you go sitting round a place like this

for?'

"I remember being very much amused at this. He was actually angry with

me! He had nearly choked the life out of me, and he was angry with me! I

had nothing to say. My tongue seemed glued to my teeth. I brushed my

hat and began to look for my cigar. What I was really looking for was my

wits.

"He went on talking. 'Charley,' he says, 'I'm desperate. I'm down and

out. For God's sake give me some money? What are you?' he says, 'what

are you doing here? I thought you were a sailor. You look prosperous.

Give me--lend me some money, or I'll have to take it.'

"While he went on like this, sometimes threatening, sometimes whining, I

was collecting my faculties. The feeling that some one had wrapped

copper wire tight round my neck was going away. I found my cigar. I

struck a match, and by the light of it I saw my brother again.

"Yes, he was down and out. He had not had a shave for a week, his hat

had been picked off a rubbish-heap, his trousers were muddied and torn

at the knees, his coat was buttoned up to hide his black, hairy chest.

He had no shirt. He was down and out.

"I settled in my mind what had happened before I spoke. This brother of

mine had apparently made an exception in my favour. He had crept up

behind me with the deliberate intention of strangling me and picking my

pocket. Seeing my face he had decided that he could pick my pocket

without strangling me.

"The curious thing was that I had no feeling of anger towards him. What

filled me with a sort of panic was the fact that my brother had come

back into my life. I hadn't realized it so plainly before, but he

scared me. I suppose he saw something of this in my face, for he says,

'Charley, let bygones be bygones, old man. Help me make a fresh start!'

"'Hold on,' I said. 'The last time I saw you, Frank, you had bags of

money. You had my place in the house----.' 'Oh, dry up!' he says, 'never

mind what I had, look at me now. Charley, look at me. I've walked every

foot of the way from Rosario. I'm broke, cleaned out, desperate. I've

nothing to lose.'

"'You never had,' I told him. 'What do you want me to do?'

"Well, what do you think he asked me for? Nothing less than fifty

pounds. He seemed to have a mania for fifty pounds. He couldn't demean

himself, even in that state, to make it less. You might say he thought

in fifties. 'Good God, man!' I said, 'do you think I'm made of money?'

'You look prosperous, Charley. Give me what you have and I'll take the

rest to-morrow.' 'I'll do nothing of the sort,' I said. 'Here's my car.'

And a Number Forty-eight came down _Victoria_. 'Is it?' says he. 'It's

mine too, then,' and he follows me up to the track.

"When I had sat down in the car I began to think. I didn't know what to

do. Evidently my brother had been so absorbed in his own life, so

indifferent to anything that had happened to me, that he didn't even

know what I was. That didn't prevent him asking nearly three months'

wages of me, though! Now, if he saw me go down to the ship he would

never let me alone. He sat there in the car near the door, his hands

hanging over his knees, his head bowed to hide his chest, the paper

ticket twisting in his fingers. That my brother! It came to me with a

sudden shock, a spasm, that, as usual, right was on his side. I

_couldn't_ leave him like that. And yet what could I do? If I gave him

money he would only prey on me again. Never mind: it was my duty to aid

him. When the car stopped at the end of _Paseo Colon_ I had made up my

mind. I dropped off and waited in the dark shadow of the buildings

opposite the _Parque Leyema_. He came up to me. I could see his lips

trembling and his hands clutching. 'Charley, don't you play me false,

don't you play me false! My God, Charley, I'll kill you--I'll do

something with you, if you play me false.' It was like a child in

hysterics. I didn't realize it immediately, but that was just what was

the matter with my brother--hysteria. 'Easy,' I said, 'where can I take

you? I'm not known here.' 'Take!' he says, 'to your own house, of

course.' 'Listen,' I said. 'Do you hear what I say?' He nodded. 'Well,'

I went on, 'I'm the chief engineer of a steamer in yon dock. If you come

down with me, don't forget there's a sentry with a rifle on that bridge

we've got to cross, there's two more patrolling the quay, and there's

another armed watchman on board. And, Frank,' I added, 'when a man runs

here, they shoot. They find out if he was a criminal afterwards.

Understand?' He looked down on the ground, his shoulders moving in a

sort of convulsion. 'Come on,' I said.

"He followed me like a shadow over the bridge, along the quay and up

the gangway. The watchman saw us come aboard, but otherwise the dock was

deserted. My room was on the starboard side, the second door in the

alleyway. I looked along and down in the engine-room. The Fourth was

down below reading a novel on the bench by the dynamo. All the rest were

still ashore--up at the _Bier Convent_ or the _Apollo_, I suppose. I

opened my door and Frank stepped inside.

"'Now,' I said, shutting the ports, 'you're safe.'

"He sat side-ways on the settee, shading his eyes with his hands. Now

that I saw him in the cold glare of two thirty-two candle-power lamps,

he was awful. I took off my coat and set to work. From a drawer I took

out a suit of underwear, socks, a suit of blue dungarees, a flannel

shirt, an old cap and a pair of bluchers. I rolled these up in a big

bath towel and handed them to Frank. 'Frank,' I said, 'listen.' He

nodded. 'See this key? It fits the bath-room. The bath-room is the last

wooden door in this alleyway. Go down there, open the door, take the key

with you, lock yourself in, switch on the light, have a bath from head

to foot, put these clothes on, roll up those rags in the towel and bring

them back. If you meet anybody take no notice, act as if you belonged.

Here's some soap.'

"I looked up and down the alleyway--no one there. Up and down outside

the watchman slouched on the iron deck. Down below was the drone of the

dynamo and the wheeze and whine of the Weir pumps. 'Go on,' I said.

'Mind, the last wooden door on the right. Don't go round the corner.

Understand?' He looked at me for a moment and then flitted away down the

long iron tunnel. I saw him poke about with his key, his body all

crouched, the white bundle sticking out behind him. And then he

vanished, and the door, heavy teak, slammed.

"I went into the mess-room then, to get some food. The steward as a rule

left supper out for the juniors on duty, but as our young fellow had

deserted I had to get the joint out of the pantry and carve some cold

meat myself. I remember wondering what the Fourth would think if he came

up and found the Chief nosing round the provision locker. There's a

certain dignity, you see, that you mustn't lower before subordinates.

However, he was too busy reading down below. I got a big plate of

sandwiches and a slab of currant cake and went back to my room. I had a

neat little mahogany dumb-waiter near the settee and I put it up and

covered it with a linen towel. I spread the grub on it, and alongside of

it I put a flask of whisky and a syphon of soda. I got quite interested.

I had no idea of what to do with the man when he was washed and fed and

clothed. I got down a box of cigars and set them alongside of the

whisky. After all, he was my brother. I thought of the 'lady of high

rank.' If she'd seen him as I saw him, she would have been satisfied.

What would Gladys think of him? It may have been wrong, but I was rather

pleased with myself. I was tickled to be able to help my brother. I knew

that it was risky. I had no right to bring him aboard. I sat down to

wait, when I saw that I'd forgotten to tie up my canary, and I was

hunting for the calico I used at sea when the door opened and my brother

came in with a rush.

"It almost seemed as though soap and water had had a magical effect on

him. Literally, he wasn't the same man. His arms and legs stuck out of

the dungarees, his hair was still damp and hung between his eyes, and

his big hooked nose was dark red with towelling. He stood there, his

hand on the brass knob, looking at me pinning a piece of calico round my

canary.

"He looked at the little dumb-waiter spread for his supper and passed

his hand over his face. 'Charley,' he says, 'I must have a shave first.

The pangs of a guilty conscience,' he says, 'are piffle compared with

the miseries of a beard. Have you a good razor?'

"I had in my room a fold-up wash-stand and shaving-glass. I opened it

and pointed to the razors. 'There's no hot water,' I said. 'No hot--Why,

Charley, you don't expect a chap to shave in cold, do you? Good God,

man!'

"I give him credit for any amount of admiration for my little

arrangements. I got out a little tripod spirit lamp with a copper-kettle

that Rosa had given me; he was delighted. ''Pon my soul, Charley, you're

an ingenious devil! Fancy you living here all so snug and I knowing

nothing about it! Like Noah in his Ark, 'pon my soul.' When he began to

lather he kept up a running fire of remarks, mostly insulting. 'And what

are you here, old man? Admiral? Lord High Muck-a-Muck? They put you up

a jolly sight better than they did me in the second cabin of that

infernal liner I came over in. Heavens! Old Uncle Christopher wanted me

to go to New Zealand. He was cracked about New Zealand; dippy, 'pon my

soul. When I asked to see the manager of the affair, you know, the

Skipper, they showed me an underbred brass-bound official called a

_Purser_, who said he'd put me in irons if I wasn't civil. Oh, this

world has some bounders in it, Charley, my boy. What do you get here,

Charley? Pretty good screw, I suppose?' And so he ran on. When he had

finished spilling the talcum powder all over the floor, using my brushes

for his hair, he turned round and looked over the provisions.

"'Frank,' I said, 'when you've had something to eat and drink, I'll have

a talk with you.' 'With pleasure, my dear chap,' says he. 'But what a

meal! Mutton and sandwiches, cake and whisky. Is this your usual feed,

Charley, may I ask? No wonder you look dyspeptic.' 'We're out of

pheasant,' I said. He looks at me and bursts out laughing. 'Charley, my

boy, I wonder how much you really will stand.' 'I'll tell you

presently,' I said, and went on smoking.

"Dyspepsia didn't scare him much. He went across my dumb-waiter, eating

every crumb, drinking every drop of the whisky and soda. Then he took a

cigar, snipped it in his big teeth and held out his hand for a match.

And then--he was sitting on my red plush settee, while I was in my arm

chair--he swung his feet up and lay back on the cushions, puffing the

smoke up in great clouds. 'Quite a reader!' he says, waving his cigar

towards my book-case. 'You were always a chap for worming.'

"'Frank,' I said, 'we've a long account to settle. Somehow or other

we've always been antagonistic. Why?'

"'How do you mean?' he says.

"'What have I done to you, that you should be always turning up and

queering my pitch?'

"'Oh, you mean Gladys,' he says laughing. 'No,' I said, 'I don't mean

Gladys particularly. I mean everything. Every time we come together you

do me a bad turn.'

"'How can I do you a bad turn now?' he inquires blandly. 'I don't know,'

I said, 'I don't know.'

"'I can tell you how you can do me a good turn, old man,' he says,

sitting up. 'Can't you get me a billet, here? Just to get home, you

know.'

"'We don't go home,' I said. 'We're on a time charter between here and

Genoa.' 'Oh, that'll do,' he says. 'I can go home from there easily

enough.'

"'I can give you a fireman's job,' I said, 'or a greaser's.'

"'A greaser's!' he says, his eyes sparkling at me. 'You say that to me,

Charley----' 'Easy,' I said, 'if you shout you'll have some one in here.

All the jobs I can give you are inferior. You have no rating on a ship,

Frank. I've had to work five years or more for this job. Your automobile

engineering is no use to you here, you know. You're down and out, you

said just now.'

"'Yes,' he said, 'that's a fact. I must be humble and take anything.

Anything, Charley.' 'Well,' I said, 'I can give you a light easy job as

steward here for the engineers. If you hustle round you can pick it up.

You'll have to swallow all your pride, you know, as I did when I came to

sea. You'll have to make beds, tidy up the rooms, lay the table, wash

dishes. Will you do it? The last one has just deserted. I was going to

get one to-night if I hadn't met you.'

"He lay on the settee a long while, smoking and looking angrily at the

books in the case.

"'Mind,' I said, 'this is on condition that in Genoa you clear out and

leave me in peace. It's on condition you sign on under an assumed name.

I've a position here. If it was known--you understand. I'm the chief

engineer and it might cause trouble.'

"'Charley,' he says at last, 'you're a good chap and I'm a rotter. I'm a

bad egg, a rolling stone, flotsam, garbage, punk, anything you like that

smells to heaven. I hate myself sometimes. It's hate of myself that

makes me desperate. But, give me this chance. Perhaps a sea-voyage will

brace me up. Genoa, you say? They speak French there, don't they?'

"'No,' I said, 'they speak Genoese.' I couldn't help being a little

sarcastic about that. 'But you'll find they speak English at Cook's

office.'

"He looked at me for a while, his big eyes blinking through the smoke.

He was thinking, I suppose. There's no doubt he has a remarkably active

mind. I could feel he was taking in the situation. Suddenly he put his

arms up and stretched, his feet crushing against the end of the settee.

"'Charley, my boy,' says he, 'I'll winter in Italy, that's what I'll do.

It'll be a change after Rosario,' he says.

"'You can do as you please,' I told him, 'when you're paid off.' 'Until

then, you'll have to do what the Second Engineer tells you. Understand?'

"'Oh, yes, Charley, I'll be as humble as dirt,' he says.

"Well, he was. I sent him ashore with a few Argentine dollars to get a

bed for the night, and the next morning he comes down to the ship, as

meek as milk, and asks the Second for a job. I'd told the Second about

him, saying he's been recommended to me by people ashore and so on. I

can't say I was very sanguine about the experiment. About the time in

port I mean. At sea I had no fears. I knew that the discipline of the

sea would be more than a match for any brother of mine.

"I began to wonder, as the days went on, what had become of the man who

had sprung up and nearly strangled me that night. It almost seemed as

though there was some mistake, as though my brother had vanished into

the night and some other beach comber, with a big nose and dark eyes,

had applied for the job. Never by any sign did he let on that he had

seen me before. When I took him to the cabin for the Skipper to sign him

on he gave the name of Frank Freshwater, without batting an eyelid you

might say. When he'd gone out again the old man says to me, 'Looks as

though he'd been a gentleman, years ago.' I said I believed that was the

case, which was the reason folks ashore wanted to help him. 'Ah,' says

he, blotting the articles, 'I'll expect he'll run off before we sail,

Chief. These gentlemen are slippery customers.'

"My brother didn't run off. He soon got into the way of doing the work

of Mess-room Steward. It was wonderful acting. 'More tea, Frank,' I'd

say, and he'd jump for my cup--'Yes sir, yes sir.' It got on my mind.

Sometimes when I was sitting in my room smoking and reading, I would

hear him behind me setting something straight, making the bed perhaps,

filling the water bottles, or cleaning the brass-work on the door. He'd

never speak to me unless spoken to. If I said, 'Frank, how are you

getting on?' he'd say, 'Very well, thanks,' and go out. I would sit

there, wondering what had got hold of him. Was he pulling my leg?

"And at sea it was just the same. I expected a change at sea. Not a bit

of it. In a way, you know, it's a lonely life I had at sea. It must be,

on a ship where there's brass-edging and rigid discipline. The Skipper

would take his walk up and down the bridge deck, and I would take mine

up and down the awning-deck aft. And having the curious thing locked up

in my breast, so to speak, it got on my mind. It sounds strange, but I

began to wish my brother would speak to me. I began to recall how, when

he was a little chap with long brown curls, he would bawl and storm

because his bricks fell down. After all, we were brothers, eh? This

politeness of his was too glaring. I felt that if he were to drop in in

the evening, after eight bells say, I would let discipline slide enough

to have a chat. But no! It was he who stood on his dignity. He would

stand there at meals, watchful of my slightest want, watchful of

everybody's wants, never saying a word, rigid as a statue. When his work

was done he'd disappear into his own room, which he shared with the

Second Cabin Steward in the port alleyway, and I wouldn't see him again

until seven bells in the morning, when he'd come in with my tea, open

the wash-basin, draw the water, set the towel, light the spirit-lamp,

lay out my razors and say, 'Twenty past seven, sir.' Me, his brother!

"It gave me an insight, more than anything else could have done, into my

brother's character. I saw that his failure was not due to weakness, but

to strength. He went his own road. He had his own morality, his own

code. Indeed, he almost convinced me that perhaps for _him_, Good and

Evil didn't exist. I used to wonder what he was thinking about while he

stood waiting on us, listening to our engine-room gossip, our talk of

ships and the sea. Most of it must have been Greek to him, of course. If

I stole a look at him, he would glance round the table, as though I had

asked for something. It got on my mind.

"And a better mess-man never stepped, they said. Nothing was too much

trouble. The Second, a very typical man, without much imagination as far

as I could detect, quite startled me by saying, with his eyes wide open

and a curious, proud expression on his face, that in _his_ opinion, if

the truth were known, 'our new mess-man' was a lord. What amused me was

I never could get out of him what made him think so. I said, 'Go on with

you. _You_ wouldn't know a lord if you fell over one.' 'Oh, wouldn't I,'

he said, turning sulky. I laughed. It just showed you what a tremendous

power my brother had over people. And as the days went by, stories came

up from various quarters, fabulous stories of 'that new mess-man.' They

came up and went down again, and then came up again more fabulous than

ever. He knew what he was doing perfectly well, and he showed a

remarkable insight into the silly, credulous nature of seamen by the way

his adventures were coloured. He never told _me_ anything beyond that

he'd had a fierce time. The legends were legends. The second cabin

steward, who roomed with him, and a couple of impressionable

apprentices, were forever bringing up new variations of the doings of

'that new mess-man.' They told a tale of how he had run through a

fortune in no time and had been compelled to run away from his

creditors. How? Oh, horses, you know, Newmarket and Epsom, supper

parties, going everywhere first class, cigars ... champagne ... and so

on. The second cook told the pantry-man 'that new mess-man' was a marvel

on the mandolin; had been in an operatic orchestra ... studied abroad.

Where? Oh, on the continent. And the old man himself heard a fantastic

yarn from somewhere or other and handed it on to me, that 'your new

mess-man' had been in the diplomatic service and had been broken 'on

account of a woman' at one of these here embassies. 'No!' I said. 'Oh,

quite likely,' says the Old Man, though I doubt if he knew any more of

embassies than of metaphysics. The story gave an aristocratic sort of

tinge to the ship, I suppose. As I say, I didn't know what had been

happening in my brother's life of late and I had no great desire to

know. Whatever he had done did not prevent him looking after his work.

The Second was quite disturbed over the indefatigable way 'that new

mess-man' tidied up his room. It was what the newspapers call 'an Augean

task,' for the Second was not very neat in his habits. Boots, matches,

cigarette-ends, pieces of waste, dirty boiler-suits and torn newspapers

and magazines all over the floor. He never would put away his

shore-clothes until we'd been at sea a week or two, and he kept a good

many small tools under his mattress. Sailor fashion, you know. He had an

electric fan, which for want of screws had tumbled into his wash-basin

and cracked it. 'That new mess-man' had taken the fan away and jiggered

with it until it ran as sweet as ever, and he'd got some cement and

fixed the basin, and made a fine job of it! This was the Second telling

me all about it. And he thought this paragon was a lord. He seemed to

think a lord was an ingenious kind of plumber.

"Of course, as I've tried to explain to you shore folks, I stood too

far above the common gossip of the ship to hear everything. Only now and

again I was made to realize that my brother was still the same

fascinating illusionist. It is a great gift. Don't think I'm not

appreciative of it. Indeed, I envied him his power of mixing, as they

say, his knack of 'setting the table in a roar.' A great gift! Once,

coming along past the galley, where he was talking to a little crowd of

cooks and scullions and cattlemen, I saw the bent heads, the eager,

sparkling eyes, the parted lips, hanging expectantly on his every word.

And, when the joke came, the quick rush of breath, the slapping of

thighs, the explosions of laughter, the barks of the cattlemen and the

high windy cackle of the young fellows. Gift? It is one of the gifts of

the gods, I think. And one night, coming down the port alleyway from the

chief mate's room, I passed my brother's quarters. There was a ragged

curtain across the doorway, and as I passed in my rubber-soled shoes I

caught a glimpse through a rent in the fabric. Three young chaps, the

second-cabin steward and the two apprentices, were sitting on the

settee, their eyes rapt, their mouths open. The Third Mate, an officer,

of all the people in the world, was leaning against the wash-stand, his

hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed in the same attentive way. I moved

a little and saw my brother on the drawer-tops, smoking a cigarette, his

eyes cast down, speaking in a low voice. As I watched he raised his eyes

and gesticulated, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. And the audience

nodded and smiled too. He was taking them along with him. He was

telling them a story, the oldest trick in the world. I realized with a

start that I had no business there, and went along and round to my own

room. But I envied him, for with all his waywardness he had the gift of

gifts. He could charm the hearts of men and women, and hold them with

his words.

"As we came up the Gulf of Lyons I was thinking of seeing Rosa again,

and so perhaps I gave less attention to Frank. But just as usual, the

morning we arrived, as I was sitting in my room about five o'clock,

waiting for the stand-by gong, he came in with coffee and toast. 'I

suppose you're for the beach now, Frank,' I said. 'Oh yes,' he says, 'as

soon as I'm paid off!' 'You've done a damn sight better than I

expected,' I said, and then I stopped because he was looking at me in a

peculiar way. He drew the bunk-curtains close, shifted the mat straight

and went out.

"I was busy for a good while down below after we were tied up, for the

Second was scared of a bad place in one of the furnaces. When I came up

and sent the Third to call Frank, he came back and said he'd cleared

out. 'Went ashore with the Old Man, sir.' Well, I thought, he'll be down

to say good-bye, I suppose. I turned in, so as to be fresh in the

evening for Rosa.

"It was a beautiful night at the end of October. Genoa is always

beautiful to my mind, but that evening she was _la Superba_, as the

citizens love to call her. Right round the bay the harbour lights

twinkled, and above them the lights of the city seemed like a necklace

of diamonds, hung against the night. As the boatman rowed me ashore I

felt satisfied with myself. I was going to see my girl, and if I thought

of my brother at all--well, I'd done the right thing by him. I wished

him well. I intended, since he had made good, to give him some money to

get home to England in comfort, if he wanted to go. Yes, I was very

pleased that night.

"It wasn't long before Rosa and I were in the trolley car that runs

along the _Via Milano_ up to the _Piazza de Ferrari_, where all the

cafes and theatres are. I bought tickets for the _Verdi_ and then we

went to _Schlitz's_, a big German restaurant in the _Via Venti

Settembre_. I like restaurants, you know. Old Sam Johnson wasn't so far

out when he voted for a tavern. That's one thing this country can't

either import or invent--a tavern. They have the same name; every public

house is called a cafe; but what are they? Simply _pubs_.

"We were coming up the _Via Venti Settembre_ again to the _Verdi_, under

those arches, when I saw my brother. He was standing by a little table

set out by the kerb where an old woman was selling lottery-tickets. It

used to be as much to the Italians as horse-racing is with English

people. The evening papers had the winning numbers in the stop-press

column. I saw my brother put down a bill, and the old woman gave him a

bunch of tickets. And then he looked up and saw us.

"I ran right into trouble, you know, this time. Somehow or other, I'd

forgotten Rosa. I didn't simply not try to avoid him, I waited for him

to come up. It seemed only the right and proper thing. He came up,

lifting his cap. He'd bought a suit of clothes and a pair of those

long-toed foreign boots, but he still had the old cap I'd given him.

Those clothes fitted him well, I remember, but he was a well-made man

and easy to fit. The coat had a waist to it, and he was a fine figure of

a man as he came up.

"I got a sort of panic at the moment he spoke. 'I'll see you to-morrow.

I'll see you to-morrow,' I said, and tried to draw Rosa away. She looked

at me in surprise. 'Who is it?' she asked me in Italian. 'Never mind,' I

said. 'Come away.' 'I'll see you to-morrow.'

"'Why, Charley!' he says. 'You aren't going away without introducing me,

surely.'

"I was in a cleft stick. All of a sudden the memory of what he had done

with Gladys had rushed over me. I pulled Rosa away. 'To-morrow,' I kept

saying to Frank. 'See you to-morrow.' He didn't understand, apparently;

kept up with us, his lottery tickets in his hand, trying to look into

Rosa's face, and she hanging back looking at him. In this way we came up

to the _Verdi_ doors, and I started to go in.

"Women are obstinate sometimes. Rosa kept looking at him as he walked

beside her, and before we were inside the vestibule he had explained

that it was strange I wouldn't introduce him, seeing we were brothers.

She looked at me. I couldn't deny he was my brother. All I could do was

to say, 'Go away, Frank, go away!' But he didn't go away. He stood

beside us in the crowd in the vestibule looking down at us, laughing,

and talking, absolutely at his ease. As usual he was putting me in wrong

before some one I knew. 'Why,' he says, 'even that silly blue-nosed old

bounder of a captain of yours has given me a good character. Come on,

Charley, be a sport. 'Pon my soul, Charley, I never knew you were much

of a man with the girls. Sly old dog, eh? Going to sea all this time and

spotting all the hot-house fruit, eh?'

"'Frank,' I said, 'this lady is my future wife.'

"He fell away from us in his surprise, looked from Rosa to me and back

again, quick, like a bird, and then burst into a roar of laughter.

"My brother Frank is one of those men who simply cannot believe in

women. They honestly do not believe a virtuous woman exists. They strike

you as vicious and coarse, these men, just when they are trying to be

most charming. To my brother women were hot-house fruit. You can't blame

such men altogether, because women themselves foster the idea. They act

more like lunatics than sane people. Their heads are turned. No, you

can't blame the men entirely.

"My brother was perfectly sincere when he burst out laughing at me. He

didn't believe me for a minute. The idea of my 'walking-out' with a

young lady in Genoa was comic. It was of a piece with all the rest of my

damn foolishness. I never attempted to explain my feelings to him, and I

don't suppose he understands to this day the terrible pain his laugh

gave me. You can realize, when I'd been known to Rosa so long, that it

would.

"My brother, somewhat to my surprise, left it at that. He threw up his

hands, still holding the lottery-tickets, and turned away. We went into

the theatre, and when we were fixed in the _poltrone_, seats where you

can have a little table brought to you for the drinks and ices, I was

able to explain something of my brother's record to Rosa. Every thing I

told her about him interested her. Compared with my own history it was a

story of adventure indeed. She would ask questions to lead me on. 'What

did he do then?' When I told her simply that I'd met him 'down and out'

at Buenos Ayres, she was so sorry. The mere trifling fact that he'd

robbed one woman and swindled half-a-dozen others didn't matter. Of

course, I couldn't tell her the details of Gladys' story--he had me

there! And I wouldn't lower myself to speak of how he tried to choke me.

After all, I believe that was a mistake. He wouldn't do that to me

knowingly. So that you see, when you come to look at the tale I told

Rosa, what wasn't downright pathetic and unfortunate was romantic and

daring. Rosa was a quiet girl. We didn't quarrel over the matter, but I

could see she was thinking of my brother, a fine figure of a man, by the

way.

"I am quite sure now, after all these years, that it was what we would

call just a passing interest. All women have their sudden romantic

likings for strange men who catch their imaginations. I remember taking

tea one afternoon in the house of a friend on Clapham Common. His

sister, a middle-aged woman, and a friend of hers, middle-aged too,

entertained me until my friend came in. These two women, fat and forty,

could talk of nothing else for some time but a wonderfully nice

'bus-conductor they had spoken to coming back from Richmond. 'Oh, he

_was_ such a nice man!' they said, and then they'd look at each other. I

was younger then and slightly scandalized. Women are queer. I suppose in

a week they'd forgotten his very existence; but at the time, 'Oh, he

_was_ a nice man!' So it was with Rosa. Frank had filled her

imagination, as he always did; but if she had not seen him again it

would have passed like a mist.

"I don't blame her, nor even Frank, now. It was a tragical accident, and

very nearly wrecked my happiness. You may say I ought to have left him

in Buenos Ayres. I thought so at one time; but I believe now it would

have made no difference. We were bound to meet some day. It was fate.

"I saw Rosa home and went back to the ship. The Old Man was going aboard

just as I came to the gangway and asked me to go down and have a drink

in his room. He was very excited about some lottery-tickets he had

bought. Skippers and chiefs go in for these things a good deal. One

captain in that employ won a cool ten thousand dollars in Bahia Blanca.

It was the thing to do. Up in the agent's office the clerks would talk

over the lottery drawings, and each skipper would be anxious to do the

same as the others--you see? Well, my Old Man had bought fifty tickets.

He was full of a system by which he picked them. Every third one, then

every third one again. A mad idea! I thought of my brother waving his

bunch, thought of his picking them up without even looking at the

numbers. I said to the Old Man, 'Cap'n, you haven't a single good

number. I expect the man who's got the lucky one is up in the city now.'

'Why, how do you know?' he said, passing the soda. 'I just feel it,' I

said. He was worried about that. Gamblers have the most peculiar

notions.

"Well, he sent the third mate ashore just before tea to get the _Sera_.

'Come on, Chief,' says he, coming into my room where I was washing,

'let's go through the numbers. I'm just crazy to prove you wrong.'

'Where did you buy them?' I asked. 'Outside the _Verdi_,' he told me. We

went through them. I read out the numbers of his tickets while he

compared them with those in the paper. His highest number was some two

hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty-one, I remember. And the last

winning number in the paper was that same number of thousands, two

hundred and fifty-two. He dashed the paper on the floor. 'Darn!' he

says, 'why didn't I take one more. Think o' that, Chief!' What was the

use of thinking of it? 'I'm not surprised,' I said, 'though it is

aggravating.' Humph!

"Half way down that splendid new street, one of the finest in Europe,

the _Via Venti Settembre_, and not far from Schlitz's Restaurant, is

Bertolini's Bristol Hotel. Rosa and I were walking down past it that

night, on our way to _Acquasole_, where there was a band, when Frank

came out. A cab stood at the kerb, and he was making for it when he saw

us and bore down on us. He was dazzling. He had a big ulster and he was

in evening dress. 'Now, Charlie, my boy, this is the limit. I was coming

to see you. Come and dine with me at the _Roma_,' and he dragged us to

the cab.

"Yes, his luck was back. He'd picked up the winning number, the one the

Old Man had left. Ten thousand francs! He wasn't going to wait for the

State to shell out. He just went to the Russian Bank in the _Piazza

Campetto_ and discounted the ticket for cash. In one flash he'd won more

than I earned in a couple of years. Yes, he was going to winter in

Italy, he said. Naples, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Venice; then Paris and

London. Before I knew what I was doing I was standing outside of the

_Roma_ watching him help Rosa out of the cab. He carried things with a

rush. Nothing too good for him. This was his natural element, luxury,

excitement, whiz and snap. What a man!

"Again, I say, I don't blame Rosa. What girl wouldn't be fascinated by

such a man? I had never realized before how charming a man could be.

What had I to offer a woman to compare with him? In a few hours he had

picked up enough Italian to patter with. Rosa spoke English, it is true,

but what jokes he got out of his Italian! How he talked! There was I,

just as I am now, blue serge and rather a plain little man, nothing

special anyway. I was forgotten. The waiters took no more notice of me

than if I'd been a portmanteau. And yet in the bank I had much more

money than Frank. Ah! but he was flashing it. Didn't they run!

"I tried to have it out with Rosa as we went down to the _Via Milano_

that night. Perhaps I was unreasonable. Perhaps I showed jealousy--a

foolish thing to do. We parted rather cross with each other. You see,

I'd never spent money like water on her. I was saving to have a home.

"I had rather a hard day following. The boilers had to be gone through,

and that's a job I never leave to the Second. The boilers are the vitals

of a ship. I don't care what happens in the engine-room so long as my

boilers are all right. And so I was a bit late getting away at night. I

went along to Rebecca's. Rosa was serving in the cafe, and I began to

grumble to Rebecca. I told her that if necessary I would pay for some

one else to do that work until we were married. Not that the chaps

annoyed Rosa now that she was engaged, but I didn't like the idea of it.

Rebecca said Rosa was doing it of her own accord. She said she didn't

know what had come over the girl. Rosa came upstairs, and when I told

her not to go into the cafe, she said she'd do as she liked. She said

she didn't want to go out that evening; would rather stay at home. We

had words....

"I left in a huff, I suppose, and went back to the ship. I felt badly

used. The Old Man came along to my room and spent a couple of hours

telling me how that new mess-man had won ten thousand francs. There were

all sorts of frills to the story as he knew it. One of the clerks at

the agent's had told him that the man was an English milord. That was a

bit of my brother's cleverness. He had registered at the _Bristol_ as

Francis Lord. Of course, the papers had made the most of it.

"For two days I never went ashore. I was annoyed at Rosa. You know,

these little tiffs are inevitable, though I must say we'd managed

without them up to this. I said to myself that when she wanted me again

she could have me. The mood lasted two days. I began to get anxious. I

couldn't rest. After all, we were engaged. The ship went home for survey

next voyage, it was rumoured, and I had promised Rosa we should go

together. I put on my shore-clothes and went up to Rebecca's. I went in

to have a drink first, intending to go round to the private door

afterwards. Just as I sat down Rebecca came in and saw me. She beckoned

me to come inside. We went upstairs. 'What's the matter?' I said.

'Rosa!' says Rebecca. 'She went out this evening to meet you, she said,

and she's not back yet.'

"For a moment I couldn't quite see the drift. Perhaps I'm slow. But then

I realized what might have happened. I took my hat and ran downstairs.

Outside a carriage was crawling past. I jumped into it and told the man

to drive all he knew to the _Bristol_. It's a stiff climb, but those two

horses tore along the _Principe_, past the station, through _Piazza

Caricamento_, up _Via Lorenzo_, full tilt. I jumped out and ran into the

hotel and asked for the manager. I described my brother as well as I

could. 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'that would be _Signore Lord_.' He had just

paid his bill and gone. He was to get the Twenty-fifteen for Milan. The

commissionaire said the _Signore Lord_ had driven to the _Brignole_

station, though he had been advised to go to the _Principe_, where he

could get a better seat. I gave the man a franc and bolted out again.

'_Stazione Brignole_,' I told the man, and away we went. The

'Twenty-fifteen' would be there in about ten minutes. Five minutes later

I was in the dreary, half-lighted, bare-looking waiting-room. There was

only one person in sight. It was Rosa."

* * * * *

Mr. Carville paused and raised his head. We became aware of some one

calling. I turned and beheld Mrs. Carville standing, her hands on her

hips, at her door. She was calling to her husband in a clear, strong,

vibrant voice. With a slight shrug, he rose.

"_Si, si, Rosa_," he replied equably, and then to us he smiled and,

raising his hat, set it well over his eyes. He looked at his watch.

"Gee!" he said, "I must be off. I'll have to finish the yarn another

time. Good day to you."

Looking down at his boots for a moment reflectively, and pocketing his

pipe, he stepped down and walked sedately towards his house.