"'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.



CHAPTER X

ANOTHER LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH

For a few moments we sat still, oblivious of the flight of time. The afternoon sun threw long shadows across the road. Mrs. Wederslen flew past in her automobile, inclining her haughty southern head as she sat, erect and dominant, behind the steering-wheel. The rumble of the trolley-cars came up on the still air from the valley. My friend and I looked at each other and knocked out our pipes.

I do not think that, had we been left to ourselves, we would have broken the silence for a long time. Mr. Carville's retreat had been so sudden that we could scarcely realize he was gone, that we might not see him again for perhaps two months. Time was needed, moreover, for us to adjust our feelings towards him, to comprehend fully the peculiar circumstances that, while we had been listening to the story of Rosa, she herself had been in the next house. We had to connect the Genoese maiden with the reserved and taciturn neighbour who had given us food for so many conjectures. Nor would our resentment against Mr. Carville, for breaking off so abruptly, have taken the form of speech all at once. We were too dazed. We wanted to think. We would not, I say, have broken the silence for a long time ourselves. But Miss Fraenkel's temperament was different, and in this case surprising.

With Miss Fraenkel silent thought, I imagine, is not a habit. With her to think is to speak. The effervescent enthusiasm of her nature makes speech indispensable. I do not believe that, during the two-and-a-half-hour recital of Mr. Carville, Miss Fraenkel had any coherent thoughts. More than any other women the American woman avoids the cooler levels of intellectual judgment. In one moment she stands, nude of the commonest knowledge of a person or a thing. In a moment more, and she appears before your astonished eyes, panoplied in all the glittering harness of a glowing conviction. Minerva-like, her opinions and beliefs spring full-armed from the head and front of her great Jove Intuition. Logic, says the ancient platitude, hangs by the end of a philosopher's beard; and an American woman would as soon grow hair on her face as admit reason to her soul. Therein, doubtless, lies her charm, her artless allurements, her enigmatic manner, her astonishing success.

Something of this was apparent in Miss Fraenkel as she leaned out of the window and met our gaze with delighted eyes.

"Isn't he just won-der-ful?" she exclaimed.

"You enjoyed it?" I asked.

"Oh sure! But listen. I've got a plan. Why can't you two make it into a book? It 'ud be perfectly lovely! You know, Mr. Legge, you're quite an artist, aren't you? And Mr. Pedderick here, he does some writing. Oh I'm sure you could do it! You know...." Miss Fraenkel made a pause luminous with bright glances, "a picture of those two, in the cafe having a dinner; a real kissing picture. I'm sure she would look so sweet!"

"Ah!" said Bill, "but what's the end of the story?"

"Why sure!" faltered Miss Fraenkel. "They get—get married! That's the end of every English story, isn't it?"

Bill cackled from the kitchen, artlessly and shrill. "——and lived happy ever after!" added Miss Fraenkel, with radiant unwinking hazel eyes.

She went away after tea, to her pew in the gaunt wooden Episcopal Church in Chestnut Street, rapt in a felicitous dream of romanticism. It was nothing to her that Mr. Carville had poured diluted vitriol upon some women who clamoured for the vote, nothing that he had barely deigned to notice her existence. Once aware that he essayed to be a spell-binder, she accepted him with utter abandon in that role. She permitted him to bind the spell; and as she walked with short quick steps along Van Diemen's Avenue, her brown head held high and unswerving, I could not refrain from the fancy that she moved as one in a trance.

It was a disappointment to us that we heard the whistle of the five o'clock train before we realized that Mr. Carville was on board. The sound was the one thing needful to set our mind and tongues free to talk of him. So potent had been his atmosphere that, to be honest, we had been unable to apply judgment to his case. When we gathered at dinner the discussion was in full and amiable swing.