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Title: Jack Carstairs of the power house
        A tale of some very young men and a very young industry

Author: Sydney Sandys

Illustrator: Stanley L. Wood

Release date: April 14, 2024 [eBook #73393]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Methuen & Co, 1909

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACK CARSTAIRS OF THE POWER HOUSE ***







[Frontispiece: HE PASSED HIS FOREARM ACROSS THE GIPSY'S THROAT PAGE
21]



  JACK CARSTAIRS
  OF THE POWER HOUSE

  A TALE OF SOME VERY YOUNG MEN
  AND A VERY YOUNG INDUSTRY


  BY

  SYDNEY SANDYS



  WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  STANLEY L. WOOD



  SECOND EDITION



  METHUEN & CO.
  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
  LONDON

  _Colonial Library_




_First Published ... October 14th, 1909_

_Second Edition ... November 1909_




  DEDICATED

  IN ALL DEFERENCE
  TO
  THE MEMORY OF THAT VERY GREAT ENGLISHMAN

  GEORGE STEPHENSON

  ENGINEER
  INVENTOR OF THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE, AND OF
  THE TOOLS TO CONSTRUCT IT
  FIGHTER OF MEN AND CIRCUMSTANCES
  PIONEER OF THE RAILWAY




PREFACE

I have endeavoured to show you the engineer, in two phases, as I have
met him: it is for you, gentlemen with the votes, to decide which you
prefer; for you have to have one of them, and his numbers are
increasing at a high rate of acceleration.




  JACK CARSTAIRS
  OF THE POWER HOUSE



CHAPTER I

A young engineer stood at the gates of the electric power house yard
watching the sun set.  It was the middle of June, in the north of
Scotland, where the summer days are very long and very beautiful.

The sun sank slowly behind a little wooded hill, throwing into strong
relief a clump of fir trees at the summit, and making lanes of golden
light along the sparkling rushing river where the silver salmon leapt
in sportive joy.  As the last edge of the sun disappeared behind the
hill, a sudden hush seemed to descend on all the land.  The power
house was about a mile from the little town that nestled at the foot
of the hills.  It was a bare, brick building standing alone on the
river-bank in the middle of a large tract of waste moorland.  Inside,
a stalwart, bearded highlander sat on a box eating his "piece," and
drinking tea from a can; he and the young engineer at the door were
the only occupants of the place.  There was no machinery running, a
battery was doing the work, for the needs of this little town in
summer time were very small.

The young man at the door gazed around him enchanted with the beauty
of the evening; the sudden hush that fell on everything seemed to
strike him too.  He felt subdued with a great awe, the great and
awful majesty of Nature seemed thrust upon him suddenly; only the
faint rustle of the long grass near the water served to make the
stillness more intense; some crisis in Nature seemed impending.

Suddenly a strange note struck his ear, and immediately afterwards
all the usual sounds of life started afresh; a robin and a thrush
commenced to sing simultaneously, several birds started chirping all
around, a salmon splashed heavily in the river, the distant moo of a
cow was borne in upon his ears, the Scotsman inside moved his box
with a harsh creak: all these things seemed to start off at once, as
though some tension were removed, some crisis past.

The engineer looked in the direction of the sound that had at first
broken the stillness and perceived a young girl, with a basket on her
arm, raking over the heaps of ashes outside the boiler-house in
search of stray bits of coal or coke.

He looked at her intently, with an unusual interest.  There was a
gipsy camp not far off, and some members of the tribe were usually
hovering round the works for what they could pick up; as a rule they
were very young and very dirty.  This girl seemed about seventeen,
and somewhat clean; every movement showed graceful, even lines.  He
strolled towards her.

"Looking for coal?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she answered.

She stood up and looked him in the eyes steadily.

He looked at her steadily too, and so they stood; brown eyes gazing
into grey.  He wondered greatly at the singular clearness of hers,
big, and of a marvellous shade of dark brown, the white absolutely
clear; the colour like some beautifully tinted crystal.  He noticed
eyes, and he gazed into hers for some time, dispassionately, as
something inanimate, noting their marvellous perfection.

He smiled with pleasure, and instantly noted a gleam of pleasure in
her eyes also.  Then he shifted his gaze and took in a general
impression of the face.  It was remarkably beautiful, every feature
was even and in perfect harmony.  The eyebrows were delicately
pencilled lines of deepest black.  The eyelashes unusually long, they
drooped downwards, and as he looked at her, the whole head took a
gentle bend downwards in natural and graceful modesty before the open
admiration in his eyes.

"You won't find much there.  Come over here," he said.  He led the
way to the coal heap.  She followed in silence.

"Help yourself," he said grandly, with a wave of the arm, giving away
what didn't belong to him.  As a general rule he was consistently
conscientious in these details, but under the influence of those eyes
he cast honesty to the four winds of heaven.

"Thank you, sir," she said, and stooped to fill her basket.

The graceful movements and even poise of her figure appealed to him
immensely.  He was somewhat of an athlete, and he noted with pleasure
the firm fulness of the arms (which were bare to the elbow), and the
throat and neck (which were quite unprotected).  Her jet black hair
hung down below her waist in heavy, wavy tresses.  Her short black
skirt (faded to almost a light green) showed a neat ankle and fair
proportion of shapely leg.  He stood back and watched her closely.
The skin, where it was visible about the face and throat, was rather
dark, probably dirty, he thought, yet it did not seem offensive,
though he was usually fastidious in such things.  He took life very
seriously did this young man, very seriously indeed; he was bent on
making his fortune, his fortune and a name--nothing less.  He was
nineteen; older than his years in many things, younger in a lot.

The gipsy girl stood up.  "Thank you, sir," she said again, and moved
haltingly towards the gate, glancing up at him with her big brown
eyes and dropping them again as she caught his.

"Don't go!" he said, stepping forward.  "Put that basket down and
come in and have a look at the engines.  Have you ever seen a dynamo?
An electric machine, you know.  Thing that makes the light for those
big lamps in the street."

"I've seen them at the shows."

"Shows?" he repeated, questioningly.

"Roundabouts," she explained.

"Oh!" he said.  "That's nothing.  Come in here!"

She put down the basket and followed him with a look of pleasure.
She glanced furtively at the roof as they passed through the doorway,
and stepped quickly close up to him, her eyes rolled widely round in
obvious apprehension.  He looked at her with amusement.

She caught his eye and smiled too.  "Lovely," she said, as she
glanced round the clean and well-kept little engine-room.  "Lovely,"
she repeated, as her eyes were held by the bright lacquered copper
switches and instruments set on the enamelled slate switchboard.

"It's like a church."

He looked at her quickly.  "Have you ever been to church?"

"I've been inside and I've looked in through the windows," she
answered.

"What do you do on Sundays?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"I work on Sundays, the same as any other day," he said.

"It's wicked to work on Sunday," she said.

"Or any other time," he added, smiling.

"Gipsies don't do much work," she admitted, smiling too.

"I think I'll turn gipsy."

"You'll go a long way before you see gipsies your colour," she said,
glancing at his fresh face and light brown hair.

He held out his hand suddenly.  "Look here!  Tell my fortune, will
you?"

She took him by the wrist and gazed at his palm earnestly for some
minutes seeming to feel his pulse all the while.

"Good," she said, "very good," and dropping his hand, moved to the
door.

He looked at her curiously, the fun had faded from her face, the
liquid eyes seemed heavily shaded with sorrow.  He stepped after her.

"Do you people really believe what you say?" he asked.

"Yes.  Good, very good--for you," she answered, and passed through
the door.  With the sky overhead and the air of heaven on her face,
she altered at once.  "Thank you, sir, for the coal."  She smiled
brightly.

"Don't mention it," he said.  "Come over again, will you?  I want to
talk to you."  He looked into her eyes and she flushed with pleasure
under the tan, or dirt, whichever it was.

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a cake of chocolate
(that was one of the things in which he was younger than his years).
"I say, do you eat chocolate?"

She took it shyly.

He watched her bite a piece off and noticed the even regularity of
her teeth, and the perfect shape of her mouth, though the lips were
somewhat full.

"When will you come again?  To-morrow?  Oh!  I forgot!  To-morrow I
shall be on all night.  Will you come over early in the morning, or
any time between midnight and eight o'clock in the morning?  I'll
bring you down some chocolate, if you like it."

"Thank you, sir."

"Will you come?"

"Yes," she answered, and her head took a gentle droop downwards, half
averted, the long lashes swept her cheek and a rich red flushed
beneath the russet brown of her skin.

He looked at her with pleasure, he felt his own colour rising a
little too.  He experienced a strange thrill, he felt older somehow,
a sense of responsibility, of protection.

She turned and went away, glancing back over her shoulder as she went.

He went inside, and spoke to the Scotsman.  "We'll put the engine on
now, Mac."  He busied himself with the engine and the switchboard.
The girl was lost to sight and memory, but a sense, a something
remained.

Next day the young engineer went on duty at midnight; he passed the
gipsy camp on his way; four caravans stood silent and dark, and five
ragged tents showed faint and ghostly in the moonlight, a fire
smouldered in one corner.  At the works he relieved another young man
like himself, and the bearded highlander.  They put on their hats and
coats and bade him good-night, and he was left alone, all alone in
the dimly lighted engine room with nothing running, everything still,
except for the ghostly, uncanny rattle of the steam condensing in the
now idle steam pipes.

Going into the little room which served as office, mess room, and
test room combined, he took off his hat and coat and rolled back his
shirt sleeves.  He was a well built young man, standing just on six
feet in his boots, with regular, handsome features and strong,
prominent chin and nose; the arms that he exposed to view were
substantial and very muscular, the hands were spread by the use of
hand tools, they were not pretty, but very strong and serviceable.
He walked briskly out and carefully looked all round--the plant, the
switchboard, the engines, the recording instrument, the battery and
boilers; he opened the furnace doors and gazed in at the fires to see
that they were properly "banked;" then he went round with a
scribbling block and took the meter readings, carefully entering them
in the log book; then he opened the door and stepped out into the
northern summer night.

He looked round on the fair prospect with extreme pleasure, the hills
all round with the mountains in the background, the irregular patches
of wood, the few straggling houses showing white and distinct in the
moonlight, the little town close by with its few twinkling lights;
all spoke to him of peace and pleasure yet strangely, too, of
ambition.  He would own one of those houses on the hillside as a
summer resort.  Time would tell, he had no doubt, he was quite
confident, he felt it in him.  He worked while other fellows played.
Worked!  Lord!  Yes! he stoked boilers and drove engines, he cleaned
brass work and did navvies' work, all for ten shillings per week.  He
smiled, the idea did not depress him in the least.

Suddenly the figure of a girl appeared round the corner of the
building.  The gipsy girl, he knew her figure at once.  He knew she
would come, but he had not expected her at this hour.

She advanced slowly, shyly; as she turned the corner she had been
active, full of life; she seemed to droop as she caught sight of him
standing alone in his shirt sleeves in the moonlight.  She came close
up and stood before him.

"I've come," she said.

She raised her eyes and looked into his--they seemed all alight,
veritably to sparkle like gems.

He was rather taken aback, but did not show it; his features were
impassive, he also felt a tingling of the pulses, and his eyes showed
that as he looked into hers.

"Come inside," he said; he led the way, he wanted time to think.

"This way," he continued.  She followed him, a pace to the rear.

He led the way into the little office and pulled out a chair.  "Sit
down," he said.

She sat down, somewhat uncomfortably, somewhat nervously, as one who
was not used to it.

Going to his coat hanging on the wall he took a packet of chocolate
from it.  She watched him with a sort of dog-like observance.

"Here you are," he said.  He handed her the chocolate, drew another
chair out, and sat down facing her.

"What have you been doing all day?"

"Gathering sticks," she answered.  He noticed that she did not speak
with her mouth full, it seemed a natural refinement, perhaps because
she observed him carefully finish munching a piece of chocolate
before he put the question to her--anyhow she did the same.

They sat and looked at each other in silence for some minutes.  He
was observing her very closely; he noticed that her hands were clean,
comparatively; they were not large and very well shaped, it was
obvious that she did not do much work; everything about her denoted
natural grace and, it seemed to him, refinement; but ever and anon
her eyes rolled widely round, taking in everything; in this confined
atmosphere, sitting on this made-to-order chair, she was obviously
not at ease.

He drew his chair up closer to her and looked into her eyes.  "You're
very beautiful.  Are all gipsy girls beautiful?"

She flushed, gave her head a little toss, slightly imperious.  "My
mother is the Queen of the gipsies."

"Then you are a princess.  You look it.  Tell me what you do all day."

"Nothing," she answered, simply.

"That's good," he laughed.

"What do you do?" she asked.

"Everything," he said, and laughed again.

"Where do you come from?"

"England, the south of England, Gloucestershire.  Have you been
there?"

"Yes," she answered.  "I've been through Gloucestershire and
Somersetshire and Devonshire and Warwickshire and Staffordshire.
I've been all round England and Scotland."

His eyes lighted up.  "Have you been to Cheltenham?"

"Yes," she said, and told him about it and the country round; she
seemed to have observed everything.  They talked of the counties and
the people, the fields and the woods, the birds and beasts, till she
stood up and pushed the chair back.

"I don't like this--let's go out and sit on the wall by the river."

So they went outside and sat on the little low wall with the smooth
cement top that marked the tunnel where the water pipes went into the
works.

They sat down side by side, eating chocolates and saying nothing,
looking at the east and watching the sky begin to lighten with the
first faint indication of dawn.  All was hushed, and silent the river
at their feet swirled past in glassy, rapid smoothness, on the
opposite bank the sedges stirred and rustled stealthily, just moved
by the scarcely perceptible breeze.

They sat there for a long time, exchanging occasional remarks and
lapsing long between replies.  The spirit of the night, the silent,
pensive night, seemed on the girl and he did not want to talk.  The
cloak of peace was around her; she was at one with nature; she
laughed in the sunshine and wept in the rain.  To the young engineer
the silence of the night had a very different message; this universal
peace and stillness spoke to him, somehow, of strife, vigorous
strife, of great difficulties attempted and overcome, of progress,
eternal progress; he made many resolves of what he would do, and the
more he had done, the more, he felt, he would be able to enjoy these
moments of rest and reflection.  Some day he would marry, and this
was the sort of girl he would like, a refined and educated edition of
this; some one with a soul, a mind, and a body, not a mere
clothes-horse.  Her remarks had shown a natural refinement, a depth
of feeling and thought that exactly suited his own, she appreciated
nature and that was the foundation of all things to him.

The dawn was rapidly brightening; on the opposite side of the river a
stoat poked an inquiring nose through the long grass at the top of
the bank.  Silently the girl gripped his arm and pointed to it,
together they watched it come cautiously into full view sniffing the
air; very slowly, very cautiously, it made its way, its head
upraised, moving with a graceful swaying motion from side to side; it
was the caution of the pursuer and not of the pursued, there was no
terror in it.  The young engineer watched it in fascination, then it
disappeared again in the grass.

"The stoat gets a better time than the rabbit," he propounded, after
a thoughtful pause.

"Rabbits!" she said, in disgust, "rabbits are good to eat, that's
all.  Everything kills rabbits, they play and play and never
think--I've watched them for hours and hours."

He jumped up.  "I must go and have a look round inside now."  He
looked at her steadily with approval, and more; there was a light in
her eyes as she looked up at him too.

"Will you come over to-morrow night?" he asked.  There was a touch of
suspense in his voice.

"Yes," she said.

"Good-bye then," he held out his hand.

She took it somewhat shyly.

He held her rather long, looking at her thoughtfully, he seemed in
doubt, then he slowly released her hand and turned away.  "Good-bye
till to-morrow then," he said.

"Good-bye," she answered.

Next night he was outside before half-past twelve, waiting.  He saw
her leave the camp and come towards him springing lightly from tuft
to tuft over the rough ground.

"Hullo!" she said, and looked up at him, her wondrous eyes beaming
pleasure.

"How are you?" he answered, gravely, shaking hands.  The limitations
of the Englishman bound him fast.  "Come inside," he continued.

She drew back with a little expression of repugnance.  "I don't like
houses," she said.

"I've got some sweets in there.  Come in and get them, and then we'll
go outside again."

She followed him meekly, and he took her into the little office and
tilted the contents of four different little bags on to a clean
newspaper.

"There you are!" he said.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with childish glee.

He shovelled them into the bags again and handed them to her.

"There you are, those are for you; now we'll go outside."

"You take some too."  She opened the bags and held them out to him.

"Thanks," he answered, gravely selecting two or three from each
packet.

They walked in silence to the door, then he paused under the lamp.
"Look here, you never told my fortune.  Finish it, will you?"

She stopped and looked at the hand he held out under the light.  "I
don't know very much yet.  You're very strong."

"Fairly," he agreed, doubling up his biceps.  "You said I had a good
fortune.  How do you know that?"

"By the feel," she answered.  She took him by the wrist again and
seemed lost in wonder.  "Think of what you'd like," she said.

He shut his eyes and conjured up his favourite vision.  A great
industrial centre; a huge machinery shop; teeming workmen, strong and
greasy; and himself in the centre, thinking, feeling, living for it
all.

"Oh!" she said.

He opened his eyes to find her gazing at him in open wonder and
astonishment.

"Have you ever had a wild rabbit in your hands and felt its heart
beat?"

"Can't say that I have."

"I have.  And a weasel and a stoat with their heads tied.  And cats
and dogs and birds and all sorts.  You feel like a dog, a trained
fighting dog when he's going to fight--and win."

He smiled, somewhat indulgently.  "Very probably," he said.  "I'm a
bit of a sportsman, football, and that sort of thing, you know.  I've
got a pistol in there; I put in time shooting rats along the river
bank when I'm by myself and not reading."

"Come on down by the river bank now and I'll show you some birds'
nests.  I found them to-day."

"Wait till it gets lighter," he answered.  "We'll climb up that hill
and watch the sun rise."

So they started off together across the intervening space of
moorland, the tall athletic young man and the slender graceful girl,
and the great silver moon looked down at it all with a parental
smile, as he has on countless such scenes since the birth of man.

"I'll race you," the engineer said.

"All right," she answered, and broke into a run, bounding lightly
over the rough ground like a young deer.  But the trained athlete
kept pace with her easily, he did not pass her, but kept a pace
behind; she glanced back and sprinted faster; still he hung on her
rear till they were within a hundred yards of the hill.

"A final spurt," he said, and she bounded away again.  He could have
passed her then, too, but he did not.

"I won," she said.

"Yes, you won," he agreed, looking at her with marked approval.  Her
head was thrown back a little and her breast heaved steadily, taking
great deep long, breaths.  She was slightly flushed and her eyes
sparkled brightly.  They had run a quarter of a mile, and without a
pause they went straight up the hill taking it quickly and easily.

It took them a quarter of an hour to get to the top, up the zigzag,
stony pathway through the pine wood.  She led the way and brought him
out to a little clearing at the head of a miniature precipice.

"There!" she said, and pointed up the valley of the river straight at
the lightening dawn.

"Grand!" he ejaculated, and they sat down side by side on the bed of
soft brown pine needles where the ground sloped gradually towards the
cliff.  The deep gloom of the pine wood closed behind them like a
curtain; down below, at their feet, they could see the tops of the
trees in the gorge; out in front spread the beautiful valley with the
silent river threading its way down the heart of it.

They sat and gazed in silence, listening to the indistinct rustle of
nocturnal life in the wood behind them, and the air above: a rustle
of leaves, a faint crackle of twigs, a little scream, and some
woodland tragedy was past and gone, some tiny life was sped.

An owl hooted above them many times, long-drawn, awe-inspiring,
suited to the night.

"That's a brown owl," she said.

"How do you know it's not a barn owl?" he asked.

She looked at him in wonder.  "Why! it's a different tune."

"Tune?" he repeated, in amusement.  "I didn't know there was any
difference," he added, apologetically.

"Listen!" she commanded, holding his arm suddenly.  There was a
flutter of wings in a tree not far away, a little agonized scream,
then all was silent.  "That's a weasel, or a stoat got a bird," she
explained.

"Weasels don't climb trees," he said.

"Don't they?" she asked, in amused sarcasm.

"I didn't know," he admitted, meekly.

The dawn was brightening rapidly, lighting up all the valley, turning
the sombre river to a thread of silver, throwing out the white
farmhouses into strong relief, stirring birds and beasts to a new
life.

They stood up and gazed over it enchanted.

"Look at that man!" she said.

He followed the direction of her finger.  "I can't see a man."

"There in the yard, carrying a pail."

"Good Lord!  I can see a bit of a black dot, that is all."

She laughed with amusement.  "A black dot," she repeated.  "What's
the matter with your eyes?"

He looked into her marvellous orbs with wonder and admiration.  "I'm
usually considered to have good eyes," he said, "but they're not in
it with yours.  You must be related to the golden eagle."

"I've seen a golden eagle's nest, and killed one too."

He pulled out his watch.  "By Jove!  I must get back to the works,
somebody will be stealing the dynamos, or the coal," he added,
looking at her with a sudden smile.

She smiled too and they disappeared into the wood, down the stony
paths and across the bit of moorland.  He stopped at the gate of the
works and held out his hand.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

He held her hand, looking into her eyes.  "You'll come again
to-morrow?"

"Yes," she answered, steadily looking at him with her wonderful eyes.

Still retaining his grip of her hand, he pulled her gently towards
him.

She came, somewhat reluctantly; the colour overspread her face.
There was doubt in her eyes.  He passed his disengaged arm round her
neck and kissed her on her full red lips.

A wild wonder sprang to her eyes.  "Gipsies don't kiss," she said, as
she gazed at him.

"Don't they?" he said, "then I'll do it again in case you forget,"
and he did, a long kiss.  He looked at her in astonished admiration,
the deep colour that mantled on her cheek, and the vivid light in her
eyes made a picture the like of which he had never seen.

She turned away and bounded off across the moorland to her people's
camp.  He watched her with bright eyes, she turned and waved a hand
to him then disappeared among the caravans.  He went into the little
works very thoughtful for he knew that he was violently in love with
this beautiful girl--this child of nature, and he seemed up against a
blank wall.

He paced the little engine room slowly, chin on breast, gazing
unseeing at the tiles on the floor.  "I'll tell her not to come
again," he said to himself.  For he was a very conscientious and a
very ambitious young man.

That was decided.  He threw back his shoulders and raised his head
with a feeling of relief.  Going out into the boiler house, he opened
the furnace doors, and taking a fire rake in his hands, pushed back
the banked fires and spread them over the grates, he sprinkled a few
shovels full of coal over them, opened the dampers, blew down the
gauge glasses, and went into his little office again to read.

Mostly he read technical works, but the book he picked up now
contained the life story of George Stephenson.  There was a full page
portrait in it too: this fascinated the young engineer--he gazed at
it long and earnestly.  To him it seemed the face of the greatest of
all Englishmen, of all men; statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, none
of them had left such a monument behind them, none had done so much
for civilization as this great man whose features he gazed upon.
"And he was a fighter, too," he said to himself.  "Beat the prize
fighter bully of his village, and without training.  He must have
been always fit and lived very straight and clean."  He put down the
book and went outside.

The sun was now bright and powerful, but still low down in the sky.
The young engineer gazed all around at the fairy scene, enchanted
with the beauty of the landscape; yet he carried in his mind's eye
still the frontispiece of the book, a strong, sturdy figure, and a
firm, composed, yet kindly face.  The picture seemed to haunt him.
"The ideal engineer," he said to himself, "would never get angry,
only think, think, deeper and deeper.  He would be absolutely firm,
but not a brute.  The engineer must handle men as well as material,
and this north country collier did it!"  He felt his biceps.  "A
great engineer of to-day has laid it down that physical fitness is
the essential ground work of engineering success."

"Why not me too?" he asked himself.

Next night the gipsy girl appeared earlier than usual, he was not
outside, and she ventured timidly in, walking on tip-toe, her eyes
glancing quickly all round her.  She advanced to the foot of the
switchboard steps and stayed there.

He saw her then and went down to speak to her.  She held out her
hand.  He took it gravely.  She looked up at him underneath her long
lashes, then her eyes drooped, the colour mounted to her cheek, she
let her hand rest limply in his.  He looked at her steadily for a
minute, holding her hand, then he drew her towards him and kissed her.

"You like kissing," he said.  She looked up at him with all her soul
in her wonderful dark eyes.

"Yes--you," she said, simply.

"Go and sit down, I've got some work to do yet.  My coat's hanging up
in the office there.  There's some sweets in the pocket, take them
out."

She went like an obedient child.

In ten minutes' time he went to her.  "We'll go up on the hill
again," he said, "and you shall tell me what all the sounds and
squeaks and all that we hear in the wood mean."

So they started off, and at the edge of the wood a dusky shape
scampered off from the grass and disappeared into the gloom.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Badger," she answered, promptly, in some surprise.

They commenced the ascent of the steep, stony path.

"Supposing I broke my leg, what would you do?" he asked.

"Carry you," she said.

"Think you could?"

She laughed, and going close up to him, put her arms round him and
lifted him easily.

"Well done," he said.

They went to the top and sat down again in the old place, the little
clearing, overlooking the valley.  They sat for some time in silence.

"Who are you going to marry?" she asked.

He looked at her sharply.  "Poor little devil," he thought, "is it
possible--"  Then he looked into her eyes very steadily, rather
sadly.  "I haven't any idea who I shall marry, yet," he said.
"Probably some girl that I shall meet at home, some girl who lives in
a house about the same size that my father lives in.  A girl who
reads and writes, and perhaps plays the piano and sings, who can look
after a house and manage servants and see that everything is looked
after properly.  That is," he added, thoughtfully, "if I can ever
make enough money to keep such a girl."

She was silent, and he thought perhaps he had been too brutal.

"I hope that she will be as beautiful and graceful as you, but one
can't have everything."

"What does your father do?" she asked, and her tone was one of
interested inquiry simply.

"He's a parson."

"Keeps a church?"

"Exactly, or the church keeps him."

"I can play the fiddle and concertina and sing," she said.

"Can you?" he asked, in surprise.

"Yes, father says I'm good."

"I've no doubt you are," he said, with some amusement.  He wondered
what the gipsy standard of music was.

Suddenly he noticed her raise her head, listening intently, he
watched her with interest; the delicate nostrils quivered, she seemed
to be smelling something.

"There's someone in the wood," she said.

"All right.  Let 'em stop there."

"Come into the dark," she whispered.  She moved silently into the
shadow of the pine trees.

He was getting up to follow her when a rough looking man in a round
fur cap, a suit with big poacher pockets to the coat and gaiters
protecting his trousers, and carrying a big stick under his arm, came
out into the moonlight.

"So I've caught you, have I?"

"What do you mean?"  The young engineer's tone was angry, imperious.

"You knows, you an' that girl.  I seen her go away."  Without more
ado, he rushed viciously at the engineer and lashed out a sweeping
blow with his bludgeon.

The young athlete sprang nimbly aside, and as the gipsy turned to
make a second onslaught, the girl came out of the darkness of the
wood behind and sprang on his back like a wild cat, pulling him over
backwards and wrenching the stick from his grasp.  She threw it to
the engineer.  "Take that," she said, "and watch him."

The gipsy, cursing and spitting like an angry cat, lashed out with
his feet and caught the girl in the ribs.

With a little sob, like a punctured balloon, she sank down, a
huddled, helpless heap.  The gipsy lashed out again at her and then
scrambled to his feet.

The engineer stood over him.  "You swine," he said, and he brought
the stick down over the man's shoulders for all he was worth.  It was
ash and very stout; there was not much "give" in it.  He gave a
coughing gasp, then closed with his assailant.

They wrestled fiercely.  The gipsy was shorter and not so heavy, but
exceedingly strong; he strove to work the engineer backwards towards
the cliff, his hands sought his throat.

The girl sat up.  "Mind the edge," she screamed.  "Throw him over."

The engineer had dropped the stick, he passed his forearm across the
gipsy's throat and forced his head backwards so that to save his neck
or his back the man had to relax his grip.  Instantly the engineer
dealt him a severe blow on the chin with his fist.

The gipsy staggered backwards.

The latent savagery of the chimpanzee and the fierce deep passion of
the sportsman who had been "fouled" were aroused side by side in the
breast of the young engineer.  He sprang forward again and struck the
falling man another furious blow; he seemed to yield easily; it was
almost like striking the empty air.  There was not that sense of
springy resistance which is the whole source of pleasure in a blow
well delivered and reaching well home.

With a sudden chilling of the blood he realized that the man was over
the edge, falling downwards on to the trees.  He felt sick with
horror and tried to throw himself back, only to discover that the
impetus of his own forward progress was too much for him.  He slowed
up and hung for (it seemed to him) many minutes just balanced, then
gradually tilted forwards towards the tops of the trees that showed
down below in the faint light of the rising dawn.  He seemed to be
moving very slowly--slowly, forwards.  He glanced out over the valley
below him and got a clear impression of the view; he saw an owl flit
past between himself and the tree tops; he heard it hoot, its long
drawn, melancholy hoot.  Then he felt a sudden jerk behind, something
pulled him backwards, he felt his centre of gravity shift till his
legs had control of his body again.  Then the blood rushed from his
heart with a mighty bound; he sank down on the soft bed of the
weather-browned pine needles.

"Good God!"

The girl leaned over him, her eyes alight.  "I thought I was over
too," she said.

"I thought that brute had killed you," he said.

She stretched herself and suddenly relaxed with a little gasp.  "I'm
all right.  I've got a pain, that's all."

The horror of the whole situation was suddenly borne in upon him.

"Holy God!" he said.  "That's man killed."

"I hope so," she said.

"Hush!" he said, "you mustn't say that.  If he is, I'm a murderer."

"Then I hope he's not."

"Who is he?" he asked.

"My sweetheart--the man I'm going to marry--if he's alive," she
answered, simply.

"Oh!  Great God in heaven!" he said, and he held out his hands to the
rising sun, gazing out on the smiling valley and beautiful hills in
the peaceful stillness of the early dawn.




CHAPTER II

They wended their way slowly down the steep path, the girl giving
little gasps of pain at every few steps.

"Look here!" he said, "you're damaged.  Let me carry you."

"I'm all right.  I've got a pain, that's all."

"Rot!" he said, and without more ado he picked her up in his arms.
She was very light considering the strength she had displayed.  "Say
how you are easiest," he said.

"Quite easy like this," she answered.

So they proceeded slowly down the stony, rocky hillside, the girl
cradled in his arms with her arms round his neck easing her weight as
much as possible.

He had to stop and rest frequently, laying her gently on a bed of
pine needles or moss.

"You're very strong," she said.

"Yes, by God, too strong sometimes," he said, bitterly.

She put her fingers gently on his wrist and felt his pulse.  "You're
a winner," she said.

"Meaning that I shall out distance the constable," he asked with a
grim humour.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Carstairs.  Jack Carstairs.  It'll be in all the papers soon.  Can
you read?"

"No."

"Lucky girl."

So carrying on a disjointed conversation they worked their way round
to the foot of the cliff.

"Shall I take you back to the camp or shall I have a look for
the--man, first?"

"We'll have a look for Sam first.  I'm all right on level ground."

"No, you're not.  You stay there."  He put her down on the ground,
and made his way through the trees to the cliff.

He searched up and down; there was no sign of a body dead or alive,
no sign of derangement, nothing to indicate tragedy.  There was a
rustle of bird life all round him and a cheerful chorus of early
morning song in the bushes outside, for this was just on the edge of
the wood.  He went up and down gazing over head and under foot; the
trees here were mostly firs, young spruce firs with heavy, carpety
foliage interlocking, shutting out the light.

He went back to the girl.  "I'll take you back and go for a doctor
while your people come and look for him."

"He's gone home," she said.

That one word "home" is used to describe a vast number of widely
differing places.

"I hope to God he has--to the camp, I mean."

Picking her up in his arms again, he carried her out across the strip
of moorland to the camp.

The gipsies were out and astir, there seemed to be a sort of meeting
going on among the tents and caravans.  Jack Carstairs walked into
the centre of them and deposited his burden on the ground.

The girl sat up.  "There's Sam," she said, pointing to a young gipsy
sitting propped up against the wheel of a caravan.  His face was
deathly pale, and one eye was bulged out like a small balloon.

The young engineer's heart gave a great bound at the sight of him.

"So you were not killed," he said.

"'Taint no fault of yours," the man growled.  The gipsies gathered
round.

"Where's mother?" the girl asked.

A woman of about fifty, eagle-eyed, black-haired, descended the steps
of a particularly well-appointed caravan and went over to the girl,
and felt her carefully all over.  "Who did it?" she asked.

"Sam kicked me," the girl answered.

The gipsies made no sound, but dark glistening eyes rolled from the
recumbent gipsy to the tall, fair-haired young Englishman.

"Who's this?" the mother asked.

"The man at the electric light, that gave me the coal."

The young man felt a pair of piercing black eyes gazing searchingly
into his, they seemed to see right into his brain: he was aware of a
strange tingling sensation in his blood as the woman looked at him.

"Are you going to marry the girl?" she asked,

"No!" he said, simply.

The gipsies gathered in closer.

"Come here," the woman said.

He advanced and looked her squarely in the eyes.

She caught hold of his wrist, and lifting his hand examined his palm.
She gazed at it long and earnestly, ever and anon glancing up into
his eyes.  She dropped it suddenly.

"Alright!  Go away," she said.

The little circle of gipsy men fell back and opened out for him to go
his way.

"What's the matter with that man?" he asked, pointing to Sam.

"Broke his leg," a gipsy man answered.

"What saved him?"

"The trees--he fell on the fir trees."

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out all the money he had,
about seven shillings.  "Here, get the girl whatever you can.  Shall
I send a doctor?

"Doctor?" the woman repeated in scorn, "no!"

"Alright," he said, and made his way unmolested past the silent,
fierce-eyed men.

He went back to the little works and fired up the boilers and got
steam ready for the day man to start the engine when he came in.

That night he went down about ten o'clock and crossed over to the
gipsies.  The whole camp was gathered in a circle round the embers of
a fire.

He stopped on the outside edge.  "How's the girl?" he asked.

"Alright," the old woman answered.

"And the man?"

"Alright," she repeated.

He was turning to go away when she spoke again in singularly sweet
and winning tones.  "Won't you come and sit down, sir?"

"Thanks," he answered, stopping in doubt.

"And father'll play."

A young gipsy immediately got up and disappeared into the flashy
looking caravan, to reappear with a violin and bow in his hands.

An old man who had lain stretched out before the fire arose and took
the instrument; he fingered it lovingly.  Carstairs looked at him
with curiosity; he was attired in an old frock coat, green with age,
and the silk facings threadbare; straightened out he would have been
as tall as Carstairs himself, but he was bent and bowed, his knees
tottered, his face was the uniform purple-red of the confirmed
drunkard.  He tried the strings with his fingers, tuning up.  They
brought forward a chair, and he sat down.  The face, Carstairs
thought, showed something of refinement and good breeding even in its
bloated, blotched condition.  He pushed back his greasy cap and
showed a head of fine silver-grey hair; the mouth was in constant
motion, twitching, compressing, relaxing.  He passed the bow across
the strings, making a harsh, jarring scream; then he seemed to settle
down, and Carstairs was entranced.

He dropped down beside one of the gipsies and sat silent, lost in
beautiful, entrancing thought.  All that was best in his life came
back to him, his highest thoughts and loftiest ambition were stirred
and enlarged, his resolution strengthened, his soul uplifted.  He
glanced round the circle of rough, mahogany-coloured faces.  Dark
eyes glistened like precious jewels in the flickering firelight, the
rough lines of the features seemed softened.

And all this achieved by a tottering, degraded old drunkard.

The player passed on from tune to tune, only pausing to take a drink
from a bottle that the old woman handed him.  Many of the strains
were familiar to the young engineer; he understood they were
"masterpieces" difficult to render.  And wonder and a great pity
stirred in him side by side at the awful contrast, the inexpressible
beauty of the music and the despicable condition of the player.  But
he, too, seemed to straighten out and grow taller; he stood up, the
mouth became steadier, the bleared eyes seemed quite brilliant in the
dim light.

Slowly dying down, growing gradually less, the music stopped.  Then
dropping bow and fiddle the musician made straight for the
brass-finished, leather-upholstered caravan, and disappeared inside.

There was silence round the little circle of the gipsies, no one
stirred; Carstairs was lost in reverie, ideas thronged through his
brain; he was lost to the present, his soul seemed free of his body,
delving about in the unknown depths of the future.

A young gipsy started up from the circle and picked up the fiddle and
bow.  For Carstairs that broke the spell, he looked up and found the
gipsy woman's eyes upon him.

He arose and went over to her.  "What lovely music," he said.  "Who
is he?"

"My husband," she answered.

"Oh!" he said.  He held out his hand.  "Good-bye! you must thank him
very much for me."

She took his hand and looked into his eyes in the fixed firelight.
"You like music?" she asked.

"Very much," he answered.

He felt a strange feeling of friendliness for this woman, her
presence seemed to give him a sensation of comfort, of hope.

Wending his way out of the gipsy camp he crossed to the little works.

"Sorry I'm late."

"Oh, it's alright."

They passed the technical news of the day, then the bearded Scotsman
and the other young engineer departed.

Carstairs stood at the door watching them go away along the winding
path beside the river, towards the little town.  He hadn't altogether
shaken off the reverie induced by the music; he gazed out into the
silence of the night; in the beautiful half light of the northern
night, he could see far up the valley.  Long after his companions had
disappeared from view he stood there gazing out over the silent
landscape, and for once his thoughts were not entirely of himself, of
his ambitions and resolves: he wondered at the old man who played the
beautiful music, the old woman and the girl, their offspring; it
seemed incredible, the girl was so different from either of them.  He
went inside, closing the wicket gate in the big doors behind him,
then going into the little office he produced a drawing-board and
instruments and settled down resolutely to work; for he had ideas,
many of them, and his occupation gave him ample time for thought.

Next night he went down early to call at the camp again, but when he
got there, he found, with a disappointment he was astonished at, the
gipsies were gone.

"Cancelled out," he said to himself, for Carstairs thought
mathematically.  Still, as he spoke, he felt a doubt if the factor
were really eliminated.

So time, relentless time, passed away, and Carstairs went his daily
round, working and studying, planning and dreaming.  Very often in
the early summer mornings when he had been on all night, and found it
impossible to study any more, he would take his pistol and wander out
along the river bank looking for rats or water voles.  Always the
vision of the gipsy girl came back to him.  Her verdict "you're a
winner," occurred to him as he fired at the rats or selected some
inanimate mark to aim at, and always hit, for his hand was strong and
steady and his eye very keen.  One day as he wandered so, pistol in
hand, there was a sudden swirl in the water, a gleam of silver shot
heavenwards, he pointed the pistol and pulled just as the salmon
touched the water again, it dived instantly, but there was something
wrong with it, the white belly seemed unduly prominent, it was
obviously impeded by something.

"Hit! by Jove!" Carstairs said, as the big fish came to the surface
and lay quite still floating down with the stream.  "A winner," he
said, and he wondered thoughtfully if it would always be so.

Then he went on holiday, ten days, back to his home in
Gloucestershire, the country vicarage and the Cotswold hills, where
the pick of the old prize fighters came from; and there was much of
the prize fighter in Carstairs' composition, perhaps it was in the
air.

The Reverend Hugh Carstairs was tall and well built, silver haired
and clean shaven; his religion was of the comfortable order; he did
not consider it necessary to be miserable in order to be good.  He
was clean in mind and body, rather sporting and rather intellectual.
His good lady was somewhat similar, less sporting and less
intellectual, more homely and more pious.  The product of the union
was six well-grown, healthy Englishmen.  Jack was the youngest.

His parents received him with undemonstrative but deep-felt pleasure.
Up to the present Jack had been, if not the most prosperous, the
least expensive of the six; engineering to him had been more or less
compulsory because cheap, or comparatively so.  The other five had
absorbed large sums in their education, and up to the present made
small return on capital invested.  Jack didn't gamble or drink
expensive drinks; he didn't paint pictures or play any musical
instrument.  As far as his parents knew he had had no love affairs.
He was a very sober young man.  His mother said he feared God.  His
father, that he respected himself.  The truth was that he had an
ambition to bulk very big at some future date, and so had not the
time for indulgence in the ordinary common or garden vices and
pastimes.

He kissed his mother and shook hands solemnly with his father.

"I want to take some of your books away with me when I go, guv'nor,"
he said.

His parents looked at him with approval.  "What sort of books?"

"Oh! 'maths.'  I find I don't know as much mathematics as I thought I
did."

His mother looked somewhat disappointed, his father pleased.  The
dividends on classics did not pan out very well in his experience.

"I'm working out an idea, you know; rather good thing if it's
workable.  Want some more 'maths,' to read up the authorities on the
subject."

"A patent?"

"Yes."

"Ah," his mother sighed, something seemed to touch a sensitive chord.
"You know Phillip is going out to India?"

"Yes.  Plantation, isn't it?"

"Yes, in a very nice part of the country, I believe."

"What's he going to get?"

"Twenty pounds a month," his father answered.

"That isn't much for a man twenty-four years old, is it?  Fitters get
that out there."

"My dear boy!"  His mother was grieved.

"What's the matter, mater?"

"You have such a sordid way of looking at things."

"Have I?  I'm sorry.  The aim and object of life at present is to
make money."

The Rev. Hugh regarded his son with quiet approval.  "It keeps you
occupied," he said, "and as long as you're honest."

Jack was silent.  "As a general rule I am," he said, at length.
"Stole a basketful of coal the other day, though."

"Coal?  Whatever for?"

"Gave it away to the poor."  He waved his arm lightly with a smile.

His father smiled too, he had Jack's eyes, grey and shrewd.  "To a
certain extent the end justified the means," he said, "That is, in
the common court of our conscience.  I suppose it was very cold up in
Scotland?"

"On that particular day it was, I think, if anything warmer than it
is down here to-day.  I should like to be whitewashed, but--the end
was a very pretty gipsy girl, whom I afterwards kissed, and punched
her affianced husband--broke his leg."

"Good gracious! you're joking."

"Not a bit, mater.  I'm going to shine as the villain of the family;
it's in me, for under the given circumstance, I'd do the same again."
He gave them the main outlines of the case, concisely, hiding nothing.

"I think you'd better leave Scotland," his mother said.

"So do I, mater," he agreed.  "I want more money."

The Rev. Hugh's grey eyes twinkled merrily.  "Everything comes to him
who goes and fetches it," he said.

"That's an engineering precept, guv'nor.  An engineer is a man who
fetches things.  You ought to have been an engineer, not a bally old
parson."

"Jack!"

"Sorry, mater, that's a _lapsus fungus_, or words to that effect."

"_Lapsus linguæ_, you mean."

"Is it?  Oh! fungus seemed to me rather suggestive of the tongue."

Jack was standing up with his back to the mantel-piece.  His father
smiled, then he stood up, too, and, laying a hand on his son's broad
shoulder, looked with solemn, benevolent eyes into the eyes that were
level with, and so like, his own.  "Go on fetching things, my boy,
but never forget that the object of life is happiness.  And happiness
is only possible to an easy conscience.  It is nice to win the match,
but better to lose than cheat.  I should leave these gipsy girls
alone, if I were you."

"Singular, if you please, guv'nor, it's only one, and she's gone
away."

"Quite so.  I was generalizing."

Jack was thoughtful.  "Up to the present," he said, "it is not
necessary to generalize, but thanks all the same."

The Rev. Hugh looked at his son, at the steady eyes and close, firm
mouth; the lines were very definite, almost cruel; such men do not
have many love affairs.  "I think you can take care of yourself," he
said.

Jack was perfectly sober.  "I think so, too," he agreed.




CHAPTER III

The vicarage at Chilcombe, Jack's home, was a fairly large,
well-built house with plenty of ground round it, forming a complete
rectangle.  Two sides of it (bordering the road) were bounded by
seven-foot walls, a third side was a thick, tall hedge, and the
fourth (furthest from the house) was a brook, or river--a sort of
cross, a big brook or a small river--deeply bordered with willow
trees and blackberry bushes.  Two close wooden gates in the
seven-foot wall opened on to a small brown-gravel drive, which led by
a single short curve through a shrubbery of laurel bushes to the
front entrance porch.  A big room at the other side of the house
opened out by French windows on to a lawn.  There was a big chestnut
tree in one corner of this lawn, with a seat round it; in the summer
there were usually two or three hammock chairs spread out in the
shade of it also.  Jack was lounging in one of these latter the
morning after his arrival, while his mother did knitting in a more
sedate-looking but less comfortable chair at his side, when Mrs
Bevengton and Bessie came round the corner of the house.  Mrs
Bevengton was the doctor's wife, and Bessie was her daughter.  Bessie
was fairly tall and distinctly plump--"fatty" Jack used to call her
when he was younger; she was not really fat, though not angularly
hard; there was no superfluous tissue about her.  She could play
tennis all day long, run with the beagles, or row two or three miles
on the river without getting "done up."  She had a good pink colour
and dimples on each cheek which were nearly always in evidence, for
she smiled at most things.  Her hair was light brown and curly; it
was always straying out of place and framing her happy, smiling face
in little light brown curves.

Bessie said, "How are you Jack?" and Jack answered, "First-class.
How are you?"

Mrs Bevengton looked at him critically.  "What are you doing now,
Jack?" she asked.

"Earning ten bob a week, Mrs Bevengton," he answered, with just a
flicker of a smile.  The doctor's wife was inclined to be a
materialist in worldly matters.

Bessie's dimples burst into renewed prominence, and a frizzy curl
strayed out from over her forehead.  She said nothing, but her blue
eyes danced in the sunlight as she glanced round the three faces in
front of her, and endeavoured to suppress the rebellious curl.

Mrs Carstairs looked severe.  "How absurdly you talk, Jack."

"The truth is usually absurd, mater."

Mrs Bevengton continued to regard him with a critical, calculating
eye.

"That's just a start, of course?" she said.

"Well, I hope it's not the finish, Mrs Bevengton."

Mrs Bevengton looked at Bessie, then back again at Jack.  He seemed
very steady-looking and confident; she had only a vague notion of
what he was doing, but had an impression that electrical engineering
was a safe sort of thing, displacing the Church as the thing to put
the fool of the family into.  Still, the Carstairs so far had not
"got on."

"I suppose it's a good er--profession, isn't it, Jack?"

Jack looked at his hands which would have compared favourably with a
young carpenter's.  "Fairly good, I think," he said, "for the right
men.  About the same as doctoring, only more pleasant--to the young
mind at least."

Mrs Carstairs smiled approval.

The doctor's wife was puzzled.  He spoke too soberly for a
Carstairs--and nineteen.  She looked at Mrs Carstairs.  "When does
Phillip leave?"

"Oh, not for six weeks yet."

Jack looked at Bessie.  "Come on, Bessie!  I'll give you a game of
tennis.  Expect you'll beat me easily now.  Haven't had a game since
last summer."

"Don't they play in Scotland?"

"Oh, yes, they play, but I don't."

So they played, and it was very close, but Bessie did not win.

"I believe you've been practising," she said.

"No, I haven't," he answered.  "Come on down to the brook and see if
that old trout is still there."

"That old trout," was an ancient retainer of the Carstairs family,
weighing some two to two and a half pounds.  Six successive sons had
tried to catch him: bright red worms, "dopping" blue bottles,
artificial flies, gentles and green caterpillars had been tried in
vain; the veteran shook his head and slowly winked the other eye as
he lazily flapped his tail in the gentle current, regarding the
tempting baits and eager faces peering over the blackberry bushes
with easy unconcern.  Twice they had waded through the shallows,
three abreast, with butterfly nets, after frightening him from his
deep hole, but without success: once, indeed, with the aid of wire
netting, was the speckled warrior landed, high and dry; but after
performing a joyous war-dance, hand in hand, round the panting,
kicking champion, the means were voted underhand and mean--not
sporting--so by unanimous consent he was consigned to the deep again,
never afterwards, by fair means or foul, to be lured thence.  In
later days he reigned supreme, monarch of all he surveyed, for many
yards on either side of the willow tree, his seat.  It was considered
the correct thing, when on holidays, to feed him with worms and
gentles and other tit-bits.

So, rackets in hands, they strolled down to the brook and peeped
cautiously over the top of a blackberry bush, down into a deep hole
under the roots of an overhanging willow tree; silently they pressed
forward, for the bush had grown and obscured the view more than it
used to.  Suddenly there was a slip, a little scream, a sound of
tearing dress material, a splash, and Bessie was in the stream.

Jack knew that Bessie could not swim, one of the few athletic
accomplishments she had not acquired.  The water was six or seven
feet deep for two or three hundred yards on either side of the hole,
which was nine or ten feet deep, the banks were very steep.

Without a second's pause, Jack burst his way through the bushes and
into the stream; the brambles clung to him and let him down gently.
He found Bessie floundering hopelessly, head under water, one leg
elevated in the air, held securely by a tangle of brambles, so
keeping her in an inverted position.

He grabbed an overhanging branch of the willow tree with one hand and
reached down for Bessie's hair with the other.  He succeeded in
raising her head above water.  She clutched his arm frantically,
half-unconscious, she had quite lost her reason.

"Steady!  Steady!" he said, soothingly.  "Kick your leg free."

She was unable to comprehend, so he gave a vigorous tug at her; the
brambles yielded pliantly, but did not let go.

"Damn the thing," he said.  He tugged again, and the fresh green
willow branch broke off short at the rotten old trunk.  Bessie's head
sank under water again, and she clutched him in a despairing grasp;
he "trod water" vigorously and tried to pull her clear of the
bramble; then he tried to get free of her grasp so that he might get
at the bramble at close quarters, but she clung to him in despairing
energy, and she was very strong.  Twice he lifted her head out of
water and let her get a breath, but the effort drove him very deep
down himself, and he was beginning to feel the strain.

He looked round him in search of inspiration.  The water was running
very placidly and calmly past him, all dappled with round spots of
sunlight coming through the leaves of the trees.  A little way off,
his mother and Bessie's mother sat quietly chatting in the shade of
the chestnut tree, a cow grazed peacefully very near the opposite
bank; he could hear the steady "munch" of her jaws; a willow wren
trilled out a pretty little warble on a tree near by; and Bessie was
drowning.  Jack wondered what to do.  It never occurred to him to
shout for help, he never shouted for help--he was not built that way.

"Her grip will relax when she gets unconscious," he said to himself,
and thinking so, he pulled her head deeper under water and tugged to
get free of her grip.  This time he succeeded, and instantly hauled
himself up the bank by means of the entangled leg and set it free.
It was very simple; two interlaced briars formed a stirrup, that was
all.  He raised the foot and it was free at once.  Then he dropped
back into the water and getting under her, raised her head, and swam
with her down stream where the bank shelved down; getting out and
laying her on the grass, he applied his rudimentary knowledge of
artificial resuscitation; he saw a gentle heaving of the breast, then
picked her up and hurried towards the house.

Mrs Bevengton saw him coming and ran to meet him.

"Whatever is the matter?" she said.  She was very pale, but not
hysterical.  Jack noted her behaviour with approval.

"Bessie fell into the brook, got her head fixed under water for some
time; she's breathing alright."  He hurried on into the house with
her.

The doctor was immediately sent for while Mrs Bevengton administered
all she knew, and in half an hour Bessie was sitting up in bed,
Jack's bed, drinking hot beef tea.  She smiled genially.  "I'm sorry
to give you all this trouble, Mrs Carstairs," she said.

That evening Jack's sailor uncle paid a surprise visit--his were
nearly always surprise visits; he came and went like the sea breeze,
fresh, boisterous, and invigorating.  As they sat smoking after
dinner and commenting on the morning's catastrophe, Commander John
Carstairs, R.N., looked across at his nephew and namesake through the
smoke.

"You didn't shout?" he asked.

"It didn't occur to me."

"Like to bully through on your own, eh?

"That's it, I suppose."

"You ought to have put that boy in the service, Hugh."

"Er--yes, perhaps so."

"How would you have liked it, Jack?"

"Oh, first-class, I think.  However 'what is, is best,' you know,
'the moving finger writes,' etc.  I'm going to make money."

The sailor's merry blue eyes became thoughtful, and so, even the
casual observer must have been struck by the sense of power the whole
man conveyed.  The face was clean shaven and of an even pink-red all
over, the jaw very strong and square, the cheek bones high and the
nose prominent, the mouth a straight line, the eyes deep set and not
too close together as deep-set eyes usually are; in repose they
looked stern and hard, when he smiled they were the most kindly
looking in all the world; his figure, particularly the shoulders and
chest, gave one the impression that he swung heavy-weight Indian
clubs for many hours each day.

"The service makes men, but not millionaires," he remarked, and his
own personality seemed the proof of the assertion.

The Rev. Hugh chimed in.  "It's better to be a man than a
millionaire."

The sailor smiled again.  "Nature has done that for Jack," he said.

Dr Bevengton (who stayed to dinner) broke in.  "It's possible to be
both, I imagine."

Jack Carstairs puffed slowly at one of his father's cigars.  "The
line of demarcation between a man and a fool is rather hard to draw,
I think."

The sailor laughed uproariously.

The parson's eyes twinkled merrily.

Dr Bevengton seemed more surprised than amused.  "How?" he asked.

"Well, I've heard both a man and a fool defined in so very many
different ways.  One of our Scotch labourers assured me that a man
who couldn't take a half tumbler of whisky neat was 'nae man at a'.'
Then one frequently hears such terms as 'an ass who plays football,'
or 'a fool who reads Shakespeare.'"

The three older men regarded the solemn-faced youngster with much
amusement.

"What do you propose to do about it then, Jack?" the sailor asked.

"Please myself," Jack answered.

The sailor slapped his knee.  "Well done!" he said.  "By Jove, that's
good!  What about the girl?" he asked, suddenly.

"What girl?"

Commander Carstairs looked towards the ceiling.  "Upstairs," he said.

"Oh, she'll be alright, thanks," the doctor answered.

"Be about again soon, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes.  To-morrow."

"Then you'll have a chance before you go back, Jack, to prove
yourself a man or a fool."

The sailor smiled genially at his nephew, and his nephew regarded him
in solemn silence.  The doctor coughed, so did the parson.

The sea develops to a remarkable degree the English trait of
persistence.  Nothing short of a twelve-inch shell would have
diverted Jack's uncle from his "chaff."

"In these cases, Jack, there's nothing like striking when the iron's
hot," he continued.

The doctor and the parson were distinctly ill at ease, the sailor was
happy, the young engineer quite calm.  He puffed away slowly at his
cigar while the sailor looked laughingly into his eyes.

"I perceive, uncle," Jack said, at length, "that it's possible to be
a fool and a man at the same time."

All three men burst into a hearty laugh, the sailor leading.

Next day Bessie was about again, and Jack met her on the lawn.  Her
dimples were as deep as ever and her hair as rebellious.  She held
out her hand, "Thanks very much for pulling me out, Jack," she said.

"Oh! it's alright," he answered.

God, in His wisdom, has denied speech to the English, but has
specially endowed them with feeling.

They played tennis again and went down and looked at the place where
she fell in.

"Did you have a job to get me out?" she asked.

"Oh, fair!" he answered.

So time passed away and the ten days were soon gone.  Jack visited
all his old haunts and friends and saw a good deal of Bessie.  Their
relations were changing, they were merging into man and woman, the
incident of the brook seemed to have hastened it.  Jack saw a
difference in her; she seemed a trifle shy at times, and he never
failed to notice it.  He noticed, too, that she seemed to defer to
him more, and not dispute, as they always used to.  When he was going
away, he said good-bye to her alone, and as he shook hands he noticed
a look in her eyes that surprised him.  She blushed slightly.

"I'm sorry I'm going back," he said.

"So am I," she answered.  She seemed distinctly sad.

One evening, before his uncle had left, they had all spent the
evening with the doctor.  As the men sat alone smoking, his uncle had
questioned Jack about his work.  Jack remembered that the doctor had
listened with marked interest.

"They call me an Improver," Jack had explained.  "Certainly, I've
improved lots of things since I've been there, and wrecked others.
'Improver wanted for Central Station in Scotland, must have workshop
training and theoretical knowledge, good opportunity to gain a
thorough insight into Central Station work.  Salary (they called it
salary) ten shillings per week.'  That's how the advertisement ran.
They are correct in describing the insight to be gained as
'thorough.'  My first job was to sweep out the engine room and to do
it thoroughly, then I had to clean the switchboard, thoroughly too,
then, as I had shown my ability, I was allowed to wipe down the
engine, thoroughly.  Now I stoke boilers and drive engines and
operate the switchboard--all for the same pay, while the latest comer
sweeps the floor, etc."

The doctor, Jack had noticed, looked considerably down in the mouth.
The sailor only laughed.  "That'll do you good," he had said.

All these things Jack thought over after he had left Bessie, and the
train was speeding him northward.




CHAPTER IV

Back in Scotland, Jack Carstairs took up the thread of his work where
he had left off, stepped into the old routine again.  He had "started
applying," that is to say he carefully scanned the advertisement
columns of the _Electrical Review_, and then in dignified and
appropriate language submitted a list of his qualifications to those
people (and at this time their name was legion) who required the
services of junior station engineers.  Nearly all of these were
municipalities, and they set out gaudy, lengthily worded
advertisements occupying about a quarter of a column, with elaborate
specification of duties and qualifications.  They finished up with
the mild and modest statement that the salary (?) would be at the
rate of one pound (or perhaps twenty-five shillings) per week.

Jack answered dozens of these; sometimes he received a little printed
slip to inform him that his application had not been successful,
which usually arrived by the time he had forgotten all about it, or
else he heard nothing whatever.  He usually wrote out these
applications at the works and posted them on his way home.  His
route, via the post-box, lay along a road deeply shaded with big
beech trees on one side and an open space on the other, the footpath
ran along under the trees.

One night, coming off duty at midnight, as he pursued his usual way
home, enjoying the deep peace of the night, carrying a bundle of
letters in his hands, he felt a sudden, violent blow on the back of
the head, and the next thing he knew was that he woke up with a
violent headache, and found himself lying on his back, under the
shade of one of the big trees.  He put his hand to the back of his
head and felt a big lump there.  He staggered to his feet and
searched his pockets; everything was intact, nothing gone or
displaced; his letters were lying scattered on the ground; painfully
and slowly he gathered them up, the stooping made his head seem about
to burst.  Then he staggered home to his diggings, posting his
letters on the way, and wondering with the vague and painful
persistence of the fevered brain who or what had struck him and why.

He let himself into his diggings, and going to his bedroom, carefully
sponged his head with water.  Then he wiped it dry, sat down and ate
his supper, and went to bed.

His sleep was somewhat fevered and disturbed, but he woke up in the
morning feeling only a bad headache.

"Damn funny thing," he said to himself, then he turned over and went
to sleep again.  His landlady knocked at his door and told him it was
very late, so he got up and felt fairly fresh.

"You're looking pale, Mr Carstairs," his landlady remarked.

"Yes, I'm feeling a bit pale," he answered.

She looked at him searchingly.  Scottish women have an equal
curiosity with other women but less tongue; she said nothing, and he
volunteered no further information, partly because he was naturally
uncommunicative, and partly--well, he could not say why exactly, but
he did not.

There are so many things which one does not quite know why one does,
which afterwards prove of vast consequence, which is probably why
most men who observe and think are superstitious, religious, or
fatalistic.  The man who can only read plain print does not believe
in these things.

Jack Carstairs said nothing, but he went down to the works as usual,
and they remarked there that he looked pale and had a lump on the
back of his head.

"What's up?" the vociferous young English engineer asked (it is
astonishing what a number of English electrical engineers there are
in Scotland).

"The sky," Jack answered, laconically.

"Alright!  Go to the devil!" the other man answered, and went away.

The bearded, blue-eyed Scotsman looked at him in solemn seeing
silence; he said nothing, and his gaze was not obtrusive.  The Scotch
are a pleasant people to live with because they have grasped, above
all others, the art of minding their own business, which possibly
also explains why Scotsmen occupy high places all over the world.

Carstairs went back the same way that night again, but he took a
handy piece of light, strong iron piping with him.  He walked clear
of the trees and looked carefully all around, but saw no one.

He walked on and had just reached his diggings when he heard a light
step behind him; he turned and saw a tall girl quite close to him.

"Good evening, sir," she said.  It was the gipsy girl.

Carstairs face brightened with pleasure and surprise.  "What are you
doing here?" he asked.

Her eyes seemed to glow as she looked into his.  "Following you," she
answered.

Suddenly he noticed she carried a substantial ash cudgel.  A great
wave of wonder passed over him.  "Good God, was it you who flattened
me out last night?

"No, that was Sam."

His face relaxed with a look of relief.  "Were you there, then?"

There was an involuntary twitch of the cudgel in her hand.  "He
wouldn't have done it if I'd been there."

Carstairs' look showed admiration and appreciation.  "That's jolly
good of you," he said.  "Where are you--er--where is the camp?"

She mentioned a place twenty miles away.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise.  "How did you get here, then?"

"Walked," she answered, simply.

"How'll you get back?"

"Walk," she said, again.

"But you can't walk all night--all that distance."  He glanced
helplessly up at the window of his little sitting-room.

She followed his glance.  "I'll have a sleep out in the fields before
I start," she said.  She stepped up closer and looked into his eyes.

"Sam's going to 'do' for you."  She watched him intently.  The grey
eyes hardened down till they glinted like steel in the moonlight.

"That's very kind of him," he said.

"But he won't do it," she added.  "You'll do for him."

"Perhaps," he admitted, slowly.  "I rather hope not.  Are
you--er--married yet?"

"No!  Not going to be."

"Oh!"

"Mother said I needn't, and I don't want to.  I'm going to work in a
house, a farm," she watched him closely, "not far from here."

With a spontaneous movement he held out his hand.  "Good, then I may
see you sometimes.  Good-bye."

She held up her face expectantly and he kissed her on the lips.

"Good-bye again.  You're quite alright now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Dash it!  Drop the sir.  Can I bring you out some food?"

"No, thank you."

"Well, good-bye.  Come over and look me up at the works when you've
time, will you?"

"Yes," she answered.  She turned and went away.  He stood looking
after her as she went away down the long moonlit street.  He stood at
the mouth of the "close" (the common entrance to a number of flats),
his latchkey at his lips, whistling softly, in doubt.  Suddenly he
started off at a run after her.  She turned quickly, grasping her
cudgel, at the sound of his footsteps.

"Look here, I'll let you into my digs, my rooms, you know, and you
can stay there till the morning.  I'll stroll around."

"No!" she answered, not aggressively, but quite decisively.

"Alright!  I'll stay out with you then, till it's light."

She laughed in real amusement.  "I'm going to sleep," she answered.

He looked at her and saw she meant it; doubt again assailed him.  "I
suppose you're used to it?" he asked.

She laughed aloud.  "I've never slept in a bed," she answered.

He laughed too.  "I've never slept out of one," he said, "good-bye."
He went back again and let himself into his diggings, and went to bed.

Next morning there were two letters waiting for him, both with the
city arms of a municipality embossed on the flap of the envelope.
"The mayor and corporation, or the City Electrical Engineer regret,"
he said to himself with a smile as he opened them.  In the first, the
city electrical engineer of a municipality in the north of England
had to inform him that his application for the post of switchboard
attendant at a salary of one pound per week had been successful, and
would be pleased to know the earliest date on which he could take up
his duties.

Carstairs read over the short, concisely worded document a second
time.  With a little thrill of pleasure he repeated the name of the
town to himself.  "That's a big job," he said, "and likely to grow."
He opened the other letter.  Another Borough Electrical Engineer in
the Midlands had pleasure in offering him an appointment as
switchboard attendant at a salary of one pound per week, and desired
that he start as soon as possible.

He smiled over his lonely breakfast table, at the soup plateful of
porridge, at the fried bacon and eggs, at the brown bread and the
coffee-pot.  It was the sort of smile one must share with somebody or
something, or burst; for Jack Carstairs was nineteen.  He ate his
breakfast with much zest, but before it was over he got up and fished
out directories and lists of Central Stations from a pile of books
and papers in a cupboard; with these spread out on the table before
him, or propped up against the sugar basin, he took intermittent
mouthfuls of food while he carefully scanned the lists.  Then having
found both the towns and noted the capacity and peculiarity of their
plant, the population, etc., he gave his whole attention to his
plate, thinking deeply as he ate.  "Not much to choose between them,"
he said to himself.

Then he went out for a walk and walked along, deep in thought.  "I
think," he said to himself, at the end of his stroll, "I think
Muddleton (the town in the Midlands) will be the better experience."

He went down to the works to see his chief and find out if he could
get away earlier than his legal agreement allowed him to.  Then he
went back to his digs and wrote accepting one and refusing the other.

In after life he often wondered what would have happened had he
chosen the other.  This seeming free choice, is it really free, and
if so, how far?

Next day he hired a bicycle (he did not own one, could not afford the
time to use it and look after it, he said) and cycled over to the
place where the gipsy girl had told him their camp was pitched.  He
tried every road that led out of the little Scotch village, but could
find nothing of the camp.  He made inquiries, and the dour highland
policeman looked at him with open suspicion.

"Gipsy camp," he repeated, "na, there's nae gipsy camp around here."

So Carstairs went back the way he had come, and in a week was in the
train for England.  He was hurried out of Scotland, over the
moorlands and southwards through the wilderness of little towns that
cluster, thick as blackberries (and about the same hue), all about
the heart of England.  At four o'clock in the morning, he was turned
out, bag and baggage, in a great industrial centre, on the middle
platform of a vast and gloomy station.  By eight o'clock a.m. he had
reached his destination.

He got out at the dirty little station with somewhat of the edge
taken off his enthusiasm.  Leaving his luggage in the cloak-room, he
went out and wandered round the town, looking at the smoke stacks and
the factories, the squalor and the dirt.

He located the works in the lowest and dirtiest part of the town, and
next to the gas-works, as usual.  The extent of the buildings and the
two towering chimney stacks acted like a tonic on his somewhat jaded
spirits.  At ten o'clock he went round again and interviewed his new
chief, a tall clean-shaven young man of twenty-six, who drew a modest
salary of £400 per annum; he was very affable and pleasant, but not
in the least impressed by the gravity of the situation.

"Oh, yes! you're the new switchboard attendant.  Have you had a look
round?  No?  Oh, go out and stroll round the works, then.  Mr Thomson
will be in shortly."

Carstairs went out into the engine room and wandered in and out
amongst the big engines, till another very young man, in his shirt
sleeves, came up and asked him what he wanted.

Carstairs explained.

The young man smiled a pleasant smile, and held out his hand.  "I'm
the Shift Engineer.  My name is Smith.  Come on upstairs."  He took
Carstairs up the switchboard steps, along the gallery, and into a big
room at the end.  It was very light, with large windows and glass
doors, and numerous lights, all burning.  Five other young men, very
young (the eldest of them not over twenty-two), were lounging around
on tables and chairs.  All had their coats off, and some their
collars as well.  One had a piece of flexible wood with a large piece
of cardboard fastened across the end; with this instrument he gravely
hunted flies, squashing them flat on walls or window panes, remarking
"exit," in a mechanical sort of voice at every stroke.  A long
sloping-topped drawing table occupied the whole length of the room
under the windows, another large drawing board was supported on light
trestles in another part, an ordinary writing table occupied the
centre.  Instruments, paper, pencils, ink, technical journals, and
pocket books, were scattered about broadcast.

Seated on the table in the middle, idly swinging his legs, a young
man was telling a story; all the others, except the fly hunter,
listened attentively.  He was tall and dark, with a small neat
moustache and marvellous large brown eyes.

The Shift Engineer introduced them.  "Darwen, this is Carstairs, the
new switchboard attendant."

The dark young man reached out a hand--a strong, sinewy hand, with
long, taper, artistic fingers; he smiled, such a genial, winning
smile, that Carstairs felt friendly towards him at once.

The Shift Engineer continued the introduction with a light wave of
the arm.  "Green, Brown, Jones, Robinson."  Then he perched himself
on the table.  "Go on with the yarn, Darwen," he said.

The dark man smiled, and Carstairs noted the remarkable perfection of
his face; the forehead was broad and not too high; the nose strong
but delicately chiselled; the chin, well moulded and firm but not
aggressively prominent; the mouth was almost perfect.  The whole man
presented a striking picture: the head was perfectly shaped, and the
figure gave every indication of great strength and activity; the
deltoid muscles at the angle of the shoulder showed very prominently,
the neck was big and firm.  The pectoral muscles were clearly defined
under the tight-fitting waistcoat, the leg, bent over the table,
showed a well-developed thigh and knee.

Carstairs eyed him with pleasure, he had a keen appreciation of a
well-built man.  Darwen's brown eyes seemed continually to meet
Carstairs' steady grey ones, and always there was the light of
pleasure in them.  He went on with his tale, and the others listened
and laughed at the right place, which was the end.  Carstairs smiled
a solemn sort of smile, The story did not appeal to him very much.

Darwen caught the smile, and his own eye seemed to kindle with an
appreciation, though it was his story.  "What shift are you on?" he
asked.

"I don't know yet.  I've got to see Mr Thompson."

"He'll be in now, I expect."  With a sudden spring he threw himself
off the table and went to the glass door.  "There he is, down in the
engine room now," he said.

Carstairs went out and perceived another very young man talking to an
engine fitter down below.  At that time Central Stations were very
young and most of the staffs were very young also.  When
municipalities were putting up electric lighting stations faster than
men were being trained to fill them, young men passed quickly from
charge engineer to chief engineer, and from that to bigger chiefs.
All sorts and conditions of men drifted into station work.  Now they
are drifting out again; sick of councillors and contractors; sick of
mayors and corporations; sick of red tape and Bumbledom; sick of life.

Mr Thompson was smartly, rather horsily dressed.  He eyed Carstairs
over somewhat in the manner of a horse fancier.  He let it be evident
also that he was satisfied.

"Have you been round yet?" he asked.

"No, not all round," Carstairs answered.

"Alright, come round with me."

"Thanks," Carstairs said.  Thompson, he thought, was probably only
about three or four years older than himself, and he looked less.
They walked round together, Thompson explaining and pointing out
peculiarities, Carstairs listening and asking questions.  In ten
minutes they were as chummy as school boys.

"Have you got digs?" Thompson asked, suddenly, pulling out his watch.

"No, not yet."

"Well, look here, you'll be on the day shift this week; you can go
out now and get fixed.  Some of the other fellows will perhaps be
able to give you some addresses."

"Thanks, I'll try."  Carstairs went up to the drawing office again.
"I say, can any one put me up to some digs?"

Darwen was leaning over a drawing board doing some fine work,
whistling softly to himself.  "I can," he said.  "Half a minute."  He
put in one or two more strokes, then he looked up.  "I've got pretty
decent digs; there's another bedroom empty in the house I know.  You
can share the sitting room with me, if you like."

"Right you are!  What's your address, and how do I get there?  I'll
go round and fix it up at once.  Thompson said I could."




CHAPTER V

Carstairs and Darwen were on the same shift together, that is to say,
they put in the same eight hours of the day at the works, day,
evening, or night; and they shared diggings.  They were about the
same height and the same weight, they were both extremely interested
in their work, both came from the south of England, and consequently
both felt like strangers in a strange land.  The first evening they
were off, Darwen showed Carstairs round the town.

"That's the theatre," he said, with a smile, pointing to a
dingy-looking building in a dingy-looking street.  He watched
Carstairs' face curiously as he spoke.

"I thought it was the prison," Carstairs answered, with his sober
smile.

Darwen laughed outright.  "This is the last place God made," he said.

They walked round the dingy main streets with their surging crowd of
factory girls and factory men, flashily dressed in their evening
attire, of poor physique and unhealthy looking.

"Is it possible," Carstairs asked, "to get out into the country?"

"Oh, yes!" Darwen answered.  "Can you walk?"

"Pretty fair."

"Come on then.  I'll show you a field."

Carstairs looked pained.  "The landlady," he remarked, "described
that acre or so of bare earth opposite our window, as a field."

"I know, but this is a real field with grass and all that."

"Come on then," Carstairs said, briskly.

Darwen stopped and looked at him impressively.  "Mind, I promise
nothing!  But last time I was there, there were three cows in it."
He suddenly relaxed into a sunny smile.  "Come on," he said, and
started off briskly.

They walked about five miles, past endless rows of symmetrical,
dingy, box-like, red brick houses.  It was getting dark when they
reached the field, but the cows were there--three sorry specimens,
grazing on the smoke-grimed, subdued-looking grass.  The young
engineers sat on the gate and looked at them in amused pity.

"We've come through one town, and we're on the borders of another,"
Darwen remarked.  "It's hard to say just what town you're in at any
given moment, about here."

"It seems very bracing although it's so smoky," Carstairs said.  "I
wonder why any one lives here who could live anywhere else."

"Lord!  Don't tell 'em that.  I nearly got mobbed for making a
similar remark last week.  They think these places are very fine
towns.  When they've made their pile they still stay here."

"How long have you been here?"

"A month."

"How long are you going to stay?"

"Oh, I shall start applying when I've put in four months.  Might get
away at the end of six, then."

"That's my idea, too.  They've got some good plant here, though."

So they lapsed into technicalities; and as they strolled back, the
dingy houses and the smoke and grime were all forgotten.  Community
of interest was drawing these two young men very close together.
They sat up late into the night smoking and comparing notes of what
they had seen and wished to see in the engineering world.  As they
went to bed, Carstairs passed Darwen's door.

"Oh! if you come in half a minute, I'll show you those drawings," he
said.

He went in, and while Darwen rummaged about in a big trunk, Carstairs
glanced round his bedroom.  The walls were hung with framed
photographs of football teams and cricket teams, school teams and
town teams; Darwen's handsome features and sturdy limbs were
prominent in all.  Carstairs examined them with keen interest.
"You're a rugger man, I see," he said, with great appreciation.

"Yes, are you?"

"Oh, yes.  I play, but I haven't got an international cap, or--"
Carstairs mentioned the name of one of the teams on the wall.  Darwen
stood up with a roll of engineering drawings in his hand.  He flushed
slightly with pleasure.  "I only played for them one season," he
explained, "left the town at the end of it."

Carstairs looked at the drawings and Darwen explained.  They sat down
together side by side on the bed; for half an hour longer they
discussed technicalities, then Carstairs went out.  He noticed two
photographs on the mantelpiece as he passed, both of girls, both
pretty.  He noticed also that both of them were autographed across
the corner.  One of them he thought had "with love" written on it
too.  "Shouldn't have thought Darwen was the sort of ass to get
engaged," he said to himself as he went into his own room and glanced
round at the landlady's wishy-washy prints and cheap ornaments.

At the works Carstairs and Darwen were always on together, with Smith
as charge engineer.  On the night shift (that is, from midnight to
eight in the morning), Smith spent most of his time in the drawing
office reading novels or newspapers, and sleeping; he took periodical
walks round to see that the others were awake, then he went back into
the drawing office and reclined peacefully in a chair, his head
thrown back against the wall (cushioned by a folded coat), and his
feet supported by a small box.  During the first two or three hours
the two juniors spent their time tracing out connections behind the
switchboard, making diagrams, and clambering about on the tops of
engines or boilers; later on, they too, usually dozed off, sprawling
over the switchboard desk, or stretched out on the floor somewhere
out of sight.  After about two o'clock a.m. the whole works, in fact,
became a sort of temporary palace of sleep; the stoker dozed on his
box in the boiler house, the engine driver made himself snug on the
bed plate of an engine, the fires in the boilers died gradually down
from a fierce white to a dull red glow, the steam pressure gauge
dropped back twenty or thirty pounds, the engines hummed away
merrily, with a rather soothing sort of buzz from the alternator, and
a mild sort of grinding noise from the direct current dynamos, with a
little intermittent sparking at the brushes.  On the switchboard, the
needles of all the instruments remained steady, the pressure showing
perhaps a little drop.  At irregular intervals the driver would get
up and slowly oil round his engines, feeling the bearings at the same
time; the stoker would arise and throw a few shovelfuls of coal on
his fires, glance up at his water gauges and regulate the feed water,
perhaps putting the pump on a little faster, or stopping it off a
bit; a switchboard attendant would open one eye and glance sleepily
at the big voltmeter swung on an arm at the end of the switchboard,
note that the pressure was only a little way back, and close his eyes
again in quiet unconcern.

One night Smith had been drinking a lot of strong tea and couldn't
sleep; he strolled round at an unaccustomed hour and surveyed the
sleeping beauties with a little smile of glee, for Smith was
twenty-three years old, and to the healthy young man at that age many
things appear humorous which a few years later take on a hue of
tragedy.

Going through the boiler house, he carefully examined the steam and
water gauges.  Then he stood for some moments gazing interestedly at
the recumbent stoker; he was rather a ferocious-looking man in
ordinary wakeful moments, but thus, with his big jaw dropped to its
full extent, his eyes closed, and every feature relaxed, he seemed
singularly feeble.  Smith took a shovel and threw it with a clatter
down on the iron checker plates.

It was quite an appreciable number of seconds before the man moved,
then he sprang bolt upright, with his eyes wide open, both arms
extended above his head, and every expression of alarm on his
countenance; he saw Smith standing there smiling, but it was some
moments before his face resumed its normal expression; he looked at
the shovel on the iron plates.  "Did you drop that, sir?" he asked.

"Yes," Smith answered.

"I must a' dropped off," the man said, half apologetically, half
humorously.

"I think you must have," Smith agreed, smiling broadly.

A joke loses more than half its zest if there's no one to share it
with.  "I'll have those chaps in the engine room now.  Come in and
see," Smith said, as he led the way to the engine room door.  The
heavy stoker followed; he was a man over forty, but he grinned like a
boy of twelve.

"Half a minute," the engineer said, in a whisper.  Leaving the
expectant stoker at the door, he carefully surveyed the engine room
and switchboard, then he returned with an oil bucket in his hand.
"Shut the door, and when I switch the lights out, rattle that like
blazes."  He handed over the bucket and crossed the engine room again
to the station-lighting switchboard, picking up two more buckets as
he went.  Then he switched off the main switch, putting the place in
inky darkness; instantly the stoker rattled his bucket with great
vigour.  Smith bowled one of his along the iron checker plates on top
of the pipe trench, and rattled the other vigorously in his hands.

From the security of their corners they heard voices shouting in the
darkness, and the sounds of men in anger swearing.

"What the hell's up?"

"Stand by your engine, Jones!"

"Got a match?  Let's have a look at the blooming volts."

Smith heard a bump above his head on the switchboard gallery as
though some one had fallen, a match was struck down in the engine
room and another on the switchboard, then he heard Darwen's voice
say, "Good God!  Smith!  Hullo!  Smith!"

He switched on the lights and ran up the switchboard steps.

Carstairs was lying limp and helpless on his back with Darwen bending
over him.  Smith turned as white as a ghost.

"What's up?" he asked, in an agitated voice.

"I don't know.  Got a shock, I think.  Look at his hands, got across
the contacts in the dark somehow."

They stretched him out on his back with a folded coat underneath him,
and put him through the motions for artificial respiration.  The
driver and stoker waived ceremony and mounted the switchboard steps
to see what was wrong; they stood leaning over the prostrate form
watching the anxious efforts of Smith and Darwen in silent,
interested sympathy.  "Shall I have a spell, sir?" the brawny stoker
asked, as the agitated Smith paused for a moment in his efforts.

No one present was ever able to say precisely how long they worked at
Carstairs, probably not many minutes before his chest began to heave
in a natural breathing motion.  They carried him out into the yard,
and the fresh air so revived him that in half an hour he walked
through the engine room unaided, and lay down on the floor of the
drawing office, made comfortable with coats and newspapers, and dozed
off into a sleep.  When he woke up, and had had a wash, he seemed
quite normal again.

Smith was profuse in his apologies.  "I'm beastly sorry.  I never
dreamt of anything of that sort, etc."

"Oh, it's alright," Carstairs answered, with a sincere desire to let
the matter drop.  "I ought to have stood still, went shoving my hands
out, knew I was somewhere near the machine switch, too.  Got right
past the guards and touched the bare metal first go off, wouldn't
happen once in a thousand times.  Not your fault at all."

So the incident passed, and remained a secret in the bosoms of those
five men till years later, when, Carstairs and Darwen were dim and
distant memories at those works, a driver or a stoker would sometimes
tell wondering pupils a tale of how a man was nearly killed on the
night run through the Shift Engineer "skylarking."

Things went very smoothly for a bit.  Darwen and Carstairs got more
chummy than ever.  They were leaning over the switchboard rail
together, it was not quite a week since Carstairs had got the shock.
"I rather wanted to see a chap get a shock, not killed, you know,"
Darwen was saying.

"I was rather curious on the point myself, too."

"What was it like?  Just a two hundred shock magnified?"

"Very much magnified.  It was devilish."

They drifted off.  "I've never seen an alternator burn out yet, have
you?"

"No!  Wish number three would go now."

They separated to take reading; it was half-past nine in the evening;
Carstairs stood looking at an ammeter which was set some way above
his head.  The divisions on the scale were small and indistinctly
figured; Carstairs stood very close in, on tip-toe, straining his
neck upwards; the high tension fuses were at the bottom of the board,
about level with his knees (carefully calculated as the most awkward
possible position), they were seven inches long and enclosed in
porcelain pots, which invariably shattered when a fuse blew.  As
Carstairs stood there taking feeder reading, with what he afterwards
learnt was unnecessary accuracy, the needle of the instrument he was
looking at gave a sudden violent plunge, the fuse pot, almost
touching his trousers, was shattered into a hundred pieces with a
report like a miniature cannon, and a vivid arc blazed away under his
eyes with a rattling, screaming roar.  Carstairs jumped back in an
instant, to the furthest limit that the width of the gallery would
allow.

Darwen came along from the low tension switchboard; he was all
eagerness, his eyes were bright.  He stopped and looked at his new
friend in amazement.  Carstairs cowered against the handrail,
gripping his scribbling block and pencil, palpitating, useless.

For two or three seconds Darwen gazed at him in astonishment.  Then
he fetched the long, insulated crook kept for that purpose, and
himself pulled out the feeder switch.

"Bring down your volts, Carstairs," he said, in a kindly, soothing
voice, avoiding his eyes.

With a deep, gasping sigh Carstairs pulled himself together, and with
an unsteady hand adjusted the rheostat.

They looked down into the engine room and saw Thompson, the chief
assistant, looking up, watching them.  He came up the steps and
looked at the shattered fuse pot and burnt slate; he expressed no
surprise, nor even anger; in those early days sparks and blinding
flashes were the daily fare of the electrical engineer, very much
more than they are now.  Thompson picked up one or two of the pieces
of partially fused porcelain and examined them with interest, then he
glanced at Carstairs with a great wonder in his eyes, but he spoke to
Darwen.

That night, as they walked home together, Carstairs was more than
usually silent, and the remarks of Darwen were choppy and abrupt.
They ate their supper almost in silence, then they lit their pipes
and smoked, in easy chairs, one on each side of the fireplace.  They
puffed in silence for some time, then Carstairs spoke.

"I'm going to start applying," he said.

"Why?  You haven't been here three months yet!"

"No!  Quite so!  But I'm going to look out for a nice, quiet little
job in the country with two low tension machines, where the wheels
are very small, and fuses never blow."

"My dear chap, you'll get over that; the first one I saw go knocked
me all in a heap."

Carstairs appreciated Darwen's sympathetic lying, but it cut him more
than all.  "Don't give me silly lies, for God's sake," he said,
letting his temper get the better of him.  "I have found out that I
am a skunk with no nerve, not a ha'porth, so I drop behind, into my
place, the place of the cur.  And the bottom is knocked out of my
universe."  He puffed vigorously at his pipe, blowing great clouds of
smoke.

Darwen was silent, too, for some time, then he spoke slowly,
thoughtfully, punctuating his remarks by blowing softly at the
wreaths of smoke about him.  "I must say (puff), honestly (puff), I
was never more surprised in my life (puff).  You're such a
deliberate, cool sort of chap (puff).  Thought earthquakes wouldn't
upset you."

"Damn it!  I thought so too."

Darwen proceeded: "Surely must be something abnormal (puff).  I mean
to say, a fuse going is startling, and all that--but (puff), damn it!
(puff) you haven't got over that shock, you know, that's what it is."
He sat upright with a sudden vigour and a light in his expressive
eyes.  "That's it, man.  You want to go slow for a bit.  Dash it! two
thousand volts, that usually 'corpses' a chap, you know."

Carstairs brightened somewhat.  "Yes," he said, "I'm convinced that's
it, too, but how long will it take to get over it?  If ever?"  He
stood up excitedly; it was obvious he was not himself even then.  His
hand was unsteady as he held his pipe outwards, pointing with the
stem at Darwen.  "That shock was devilish, Darwen.  A nightmare.
Devilish.  I could feel you chaps working at me, for hours it seemed
to me, working so damn slowly.  And I wanted to tell you to get on,
to keep it up, to go faster, and I couldn't, couldn't budge, couldn't
get out a word.  Did I sweat?  You didn't notice if I sweated.  Think
I must have.  There was a sensation of something fluttering round me,
something like a damn great moth in the dark.  I could hear it, and I
was frightened of the thing, frightened as hell.  I wanted to put my
arm up to shield my eyes, to beat the thing off, to lash out in sheer
terror, and I couldn't budge.  God!  It was awful!  I had no idea
terror was so really terrible.  Wonder what the moth thing was?"

Darwen looked at him steadily with bright eyes, a world of sympathy
in them, sympathy and interest.  "Your face was very drawn, I noticed
that.  You looked terror-stricken."

"I was.  And when that fuse went to-night, the bang and the flash and
roar brought it all back.  I lost control of myself.  I wanted to be
steady, but I couldn't, I shook like a leaf; you saw it, and Thompson
saw it.  You'd hardly believe how angry I was, how I was cursing
myself."  He broke off suddenly and shook his clenched fist in the
air.  "Curse that blasted silly Smith and his blasted monkey tricks."
It was almost a scream.

"Sit down, old chap.  You want a rest, that's what it is--shock to
the system and that sort of thing, you know.  I'll go round with you
in the morning and see a doctor."

Carstairs sat down, he seemed almost himself again; calm, discerning,
calculating.  "Can't do that!  What am I to say?  Sure to get old
Smith into a row.  These bally doctors and councillors they're all
mixed up, you know, sure to get round."

"My dear chap, damn Smith!  You have yourself to consider."

"He'd get the sack; it would wreck him.  His people are not very well
off; he told me once that before he came here he was getting a quid a
week in London--and living on it."

Darwen spread out his hands with an almost continental gesture.  "My
dear chap, you're following quite an erroneous line of reasoning,
it's rather a pet theory of mine, as an engineer.  However, tell the
doctor you had an accident in the execution of your duty, etc., etc.
No need for it to get round at all.  He'll forget all about you as
soon as you've paid him his fee."

Carstairs was thoughtful, he puffed his pipe in silence for some
minutes, then he stood up.  "Alright, let's go to two while we're
about it, then we can check 'em one on the other.  I'm going to bed."




CHAPTER VI

In the morning Carstairs and Darwen went together to first one doctor
and then another.  Their verdicts were remarkably alike.  "Shock!
you'll feel the effects for some time.  You really want a month's
rest."

"Shall I get alright again in a month?" Carstairs asked.

"Probably, most probably."

"What are you going to do?" Darwen asked when they got outside.  "Ask
for a month?"

"No!" Carstairs answered, definitely.  "Smith's the sort of chap
who'd own up at once if the subject were brought up; I'll sit it out,
now I know it's only temporary, I don't mind.  The thought of it
otherwise fairly took the stuffing out of me."

Darwen reasoned with him.  "My dear chap, you fly in the face of
providence all the way round.  As an engineer you should have learnt
to pursue truth relentlessly."

"That is my desire," Carstairs grunted.

"Well, the elementary truth underlying all things is that a man's
first duty is to himself.  When you introduce sentimental side
issues, you overload yourself and consequently shorten the run of
your existence.  You also render it less pleasant."

"What are my sentimental side issues?  I'm not engaged on anything of
that sort."  Carstairs shot a quick glance at Darwen.

He was quite unmoved.  "Your idea about screening Smith, etc.  The
fool must pay the penalty of his folly.  Smith is a fool.  In the
great scheme of the Universe all things are interdependent.
Naturalists say that if there had been no worms there would be no
men, and an engineer is a man who uses this interdependence to his
own advantage."

Carstairs gave a grudging assent.  "Where is the limit?" he asked.

"I see no limit," Darwen answered.

"Then you're a common or garden rogue."

"Perhaps!  Rogue is so often simply a term applied by fools to men
smarter than themselves.  However, I said, 'I see no limit'; I should
add 'as yet.'  My theory is incomplete, I am expanding it as I grow
older."

"You'll expand yourself into prison if you don't look out."

Darwen laughed.  "Have you read 'The Prince'?" he asked.

"No."

"You're an ignorant chap, Carstairs.  I'll lend it to you."

"Thanks.  What's it about, engines?"

"No--men."

"Then I won't borrow it, thanks all the same."

"It's part of my theory that every man should be a sort of little
Prince, as far as his intellect, etc., will allow him."

"Hear, hear!  Go on."

"Well, the essential part of a prince's job is handling men."

"So is an engineer's."

"Hear! hear! to that.  Now our views begin to converge.  The engineer
is essentially analytical and mathematical.  Why not apply his
abilities to men as well as engines, eh?"

"No reason at all."

"Good! then as in engineering it is necessary not only to have
theory, but practice as well, practise, practise, practise, eh?  We
will experiment so that we may know the limit of the truth of our
theories, so that we may know and recognize the little difficulties
that crop up in the application of all theories.  On the night shift
next week we'll experiment on Smith and Jones and Foulkes."

The following week as they were preparing to go on night shift
together, Carstairs noticed that the landlady put up a bag of large
onions for Darwen.  "What in thunder are those things for?" he asked.

"The experiment.  We'll see if we can persuade those other chaps to
eat raw onions.  I believe you can make most men do anything if you
have observed them closely and drawn accurate deduction from your
observations.  Now Foulkes, the stoker, is a strong, hard-headed sort
of chap, but he's immensely impressed with his own hardihood.  We'll
attack him on that side.  Twig?"

"I think a sledge-hammer would be a more appropriate weapon to tackle
old Foulkes with."

"That's the good old masculine idea.  In these things you want to
take a line from the feminine."

"Alright.  I'll be a spectator."

So shortly after midnight Carstairs and Darwen repaired to the boiler
house.

"Hullo, Foulkes," Darwen said, cheerily.  "How did you sleep to-day?"

Foulkes was gruff and hearty.  "I can sleep any time," he said.

"Lucky dog! wish I could.  My landlady recommended me to eat onions.
Jolly good things, but they burn my mouth out."

Foulkes laughed, a great guffaw.

Darwen laughed too.  "I suppose," he said, "that they don't have any
effect on you.  I daresay you could eat 'em like apples."  He pulled
an onion from his pocket and threw it up and caught it.  "I've heard
of chaps with very strong heads being able to do it," he remarked,
gazing at the onion in his hand tentatively.  "I couldn't tackle 'em
like that.  No more could you, Foulkes."

Foulkes stretched out a big, black paw.  "Give me ta onion," he said.

Darwen handed it over.  "I bet you'll soon chuck it."

They stood and watched.  Carstairs very solemn, Darwen with just a
flicker of a smile of satisfaction, as the big stoker ate the best
part of a raw onion till the tears ran down his cheeks and he almost
gasped for breath.  Darwen kept him at it.  "That's beaten you,
Foulkes, you can't go on with it."  But he did, and finished it.

As they turned to the engine room Darwen said: "How's that for an
experiment."

"I call it underhand, unsporting."

"My dear chap, you don't give sporting chances to an engine."  He
looked at Carstairs curiously.  "We have different methods of looking
at things; I wonder who will prove most successful in the end."

"Your experiment would have failed any way if Foulkes hadn't been a
plucky, obstinate sort of chap."

"Exactly.  That goes to prove the correctness of my observations.  I
had placed Foulkes rightly as the man to eat onions.  That is to say,
to eat an entire onion.  The successful man is the man who can make
others eat onions, and also pair up the right man with the right
onion.  I have an ambition to be a successful man."

"So have I, but I also wish to play the game."

"Again we disagree, I wish to collar the stakes."

Carstairs was silent for some time.  "Let us agree to differ.  You
don't mean all you say, or all that your words convey to me.  You're
a sportsman."

"That's true.  I'm somewhat hampered by a sporting instinct, and if I
followed my theory to its logical conclusion, I should not now be
reasoning with you."

They sat down on the switchboard and glanced over the technical
papers that were just out that day.

Two months passed away and Carstairs found to his very great pleasure
that his nerves had regained their normal steadiness.  He and Darwen
were both scanning the advertisement columns of the technical press
with great anxiety and interest; they were both answering
advertisements, and they had come to an agreement not to both apply
for the same job.  They were watching with eager interest a town in
the south of England.  They had both seen tenders out for plant about
a year ago; then they saw an advertisement for a chief engineer.

"In about a month he'll want shifts," Carstairs said.

Now the advertisement was before them, set out with much pomp and
ceremony among a long list of other stuff.  Three shift engineers at
a salary of £104 per annum.

Carstairs felt a singular sense of satisfaction as he surveyed the
advertisement.  "We'll toss for first choice as usual, I suppose," he
said.

"Of course," Darwen answered.  "They'll never select two chaps from
one station, and I'm certain it reduces the chances of both."  He
threw a coin in the air.

"Tails," Carstairs said.

Darwen turned it up.  "Tails" it was.  "There you are," he said, with
a genial smile, pocketing the coin.

Carstairs wrote out his application, and copied his testimonials with
great care on unruled foolscap.  About a fortnight later, Thompson,
the chief assistant, called him into his office.

He picked up a letter from his desk.  "I've got a letter from
Southville in reference to your application for Shift Engineer.  The
chief there asks my recommendation between you and Darwen."

"Darwen?" Carstairs repeated in astonishment.

Thompson glanced at the letter.  "Yes, Darwen," he said.  He hummed
and hesitated a minute, while Carstairs was turning over various
thoughts and reasons in his mind.  "You see it's a new job,
Carstairs.  I have a very high opinion of your abilities.  The
testing and that, that we have done together, but--er--things are
always going wrong in a new job, you know.  I think it will be better
for you if you stay here till you get more accustomed to fuses, etc.,
going."

Carstairs flushed; from his neck to the roots of his hair he was a
vivid red.  Thompson looked down at the letter he held in his hands.

"Then you're recommending Darwen?" Carstairs asked.

"Ye-es, I think, for a new job, you understand.  Darwen would be
rather more suitable.  I tell you this because I thought probably
Darwen would tell you, and you might misinterpret my action."

Thompson was a sportsman, he liked to have things square and
aboveboard.

"Thanks!  I understand," Carstairs said, and went out.  He crossed
the engine room and looked for Darwen.

"So you're putting your theory into practice," he said, looking
Darwen sternly in the eyes.

"What do you mean?" he asked, flushing angrily, and Carstairs
couldn't help thinking what a remarkably handsome fellow he was.

"Why, you've got Southville."

"Yes, I know.  Thompson told me just now.  What about it?"

"You're a damn skunk, that's all.  I won the toss."

"You're a liar or a fool, and I'll punch your head if you call me a
skunk."

Carstairs looked at him in astonishment, his anger seemed so genuine
and righteous.  "You're welcome to try any time you like," he
answered.

Darwen gazed at him a moment, then he suddenly smiled.  "Look here,
old chap, I can see you believe you're in the right, but I assure you
you're not.  I'm positive I won the toss."

"And I'm equally positive I won it."

"My dear chap, I held the coin right under your eyes, and I remember
distinctly it was a tail."

"Precisely; that's what I guessed."

Darwen's face seemed to lighten with a sudden comprehension.  "I'm
devilish sorry," he said.  "I remember now.  I didn't notice
particularly at the time what you said.  I was watching the coin.
"Head" is so often the choice that I assumed it was head.  Look here,
I'll withdraw my application.  I'll tell Thompson."  He started off.

Carstairs followed, and stopped him at the office.  "Let it go now,
Darwen," he said.

Thompson looked from one to the other inquiringly.  Darwen explained.

"It's too late now, any way," Thompson said.  "The letter's gone.  I
think it's best as it is, too."

They went out into the engine room again together.  Darwen was
profuse, more than profuse, in his apologies.  "I'd sooner almost
anything had happened than this," he said.

Carstairs watched him closely.  "Oh, it doesn't matter.  Let's drop
it," he said.

In a week Darwen left for Southville.  They parted excellent friends,
almost the same as before the unpleasant incident, but not quite.
There was a "something."

The new man who came to fill Darwen's place was very bumptious and
very conceited, the son of a large shopkeeper.  He would have been a
decent fellow if he had not been so conceited.  For his first time on
night shift he was as lively as a cricket for the first two hours,
singing and whistling and trying to startle the stoker and driver by
dropping heavy spanners on the checker plates unawares, etc.; then he
announced loudly that he'd "keep the beggars awake."

At three o'clock Smith found him tilted back in his chair, mouth wide
open, fast asleep.  Smith's eyes sparkled, he gently called
Carstairs; they both repaired to the drawing office and came back
with bottles of ink of various colours--red, green, black, and
purple--and two fine camel-hair brushes: delicately and with great
care they painted his face with streaks and circles and elaborate
scrolls of many colours; every now and again during the process the
sleeper raised a hand to brush away the flies.  He turned his head
uneasily occasionally too, but they finished it in style, and stood
back to regard their masterpiece with keen satisfaction; he looked a
most fearsome warrior.  Then they stood back and dropped a heavy book
with a bang on the floor.  He jumped up startled, but saw them
laughing.

"I wasn't asleep," he said, with a self-satisfied pomposity.

"Pretty nearly, though," Smith suggested.

"Oh no, I wasn't.  I bet you don't catch me asleep."

Smith smiled.  "Alright, don't get your hair off," he said; he
strolled towards the steps, Carstairs followed, and the new man
dropped in behind.  They strolled across the engine room in solemn
procession, and the engine driver, catching sight of the new man's
face, went off into shrieks of hysterical laughter.  Smith and
Carstairs took no notice, but the new man hurried up alongside,
frowning severely, which added exceedingly to the comic effect of his
countenance.

"That chap's mad, I think," he said.

The other two turned and looked at the driver with a sort of tolerant
good humour.  "He is a bit touched, I think," Smith observed.  "He's
been in India for a long time--in the army, you know."

"Cheeky brute, he broke out like that when he saw me.  I'll ask him
what the hell he's laughing at if he doesn't shut up."

"Never mind him," they said, "he can't help it, he'll be alright in a
minute."  They went out into the boiler house and the new man
followed; the stoker was asleep on his box against the wall; they
paused, all three, and stood looking at him.

"They are a drowsy lot, these chaps," the new man remarked.  "See me
wake him up."  He picked up a heavy firing iron, and, standing in
front of the stoker, dropped it on the iron plates with a huge
clatter.

The stoker--he had been in a very light doze--jumped up instantly and
stood fronting the new man, face to face, directly under a lamp; for
fully half a minute he stared, in speechless, motionless, wonder,
then he burst forth into mighty guffaws that shook the very building.
He caught sight of the others standing a few yards off.

"Strike me pink!  Take 'im away.  Take 'im away," he moaned in
piteous appeal, squirming painfully with his hand on his stomach.

The new man stared at him in petrified rage and astonishment.  "What
the hell is the matter with you?" he asked.  "You were asleep," he
said, severely, "and it's no use trying to pass it off by laughing."

"Oh, go away, go away."  The stoker motioned with brawny hand and
averted face.  He took a sideways glance out of one eye, and burst
forth into fresh paroxysms.

Smith and Carstairs retired somewhat precipitately into the yard, and
under the friendly shade of night, behind a big cable drum, they
screamed in unison.

The new man after vainly endeavouring to quell the stoker with a
frown, went back to the engine room again; as he opened the door the
driver, who was just mopping his eyes with a red cotton handkerchief,
caught sight of him and burst forth anew.

Smitten with a sudden suspicion, the new man glanced hastily over his
clothing and passed his handkerchief over his face, but the ink was
quite dry and gave no evidence.

"Everybody in this place seems to be mad to-night," he said, and the
driver screamed louder.

With increased suspicion, the new man went off to the lavatory and
looked in the glass.  What he said is not known, but later, when
Smith and Carstairs returned to the drawing office, they found him
with a clean face.  He didn't look up when they entered, but
continued to read in moody silence.  They sat down and read too,
while the stoker and driver at the door of the engine room conferred
notes with much laughter.

Not very long after the stoker appeared at the glass door of the
drawing office.  He knocked and came inside; his face was pale
beneath its grime, and his eyes were full of apprehension, which he
endeavoured not to show.

"Low water in number five boiler, sir," he said.

All three were on their feet in an instant.

Probably eighty per cent. of boiler explosions are due to low water.
Smith's merry, boyish face grew pale and stern, as he moved quickly
to the door.  "How the devil is that?" he asked.

"Dunno, sir.  Check valve hung up, I think."

"Have you lost sight of it altogether?"

"Yes, sir."  The gruff, hearty man was very meek.

They arrived at the boiler house, all four.  Smith looked at the
water gauge glasses and blew them through.

"How long have you lost it?"

"Only just noticed it, sir."

Smith stood for a moment, his hand on the check valve, his eyes far
away.  The weight of responsibility comes early on these young men,
especially if they have a tendency to skylarking and letting things
drift occasionally; as a rule they look old beyond their years.

Only for a moment Smith hesitated.

"Damp your fires!  Get some of those wet ashes and cover them over!
Let the stream drop and shut this one in as soon as it's back twenty
pounds!"  He stood in front of the boiler and watched the stoker
throw ashes on the fires; he looked a different man; he was very
steady and calm.  This young man with the vulgar name of Smith had
some excellent British blood in his veins, as who shall say in
England here, that any navvy in the street has not?

Carstairs stood behind him, his heart beating considerably faster;
only the day before he had been reading a detailed account of a
disastrous boiler explosion.  He felt a tingling, pricking sensation
in his blood; afterwards he learnt to look for this tingling of the
blood, it was one of his chief sources of enjoyment.

The big stoker watched Smith very intently with a sort of child-like
dependent observation.  He obeyed his instructions quietly but
quickly, very quickly.  He was very silent, and very meek, but there
was a tinge almost of fever in his movements.

The new man watched them for a moment, then with every assumption of
languor he strolled off--and he did not come back till the boiler was
shut in and the pressure very low.

When, after about half an hour, everything seemed safe again, Smith
gave a sigh of relief as he and Carstairs returned to the engine
room.  "I don't mind sparks, but I'm darned if I like steam," he
said.  He looked at Carstairs with approval.  "You didn't seem to be
very much impressed."

Carstairs smiled, his slow, steady smile.  "As a matter of fact, I
felt like a chap who's found a bomb and doesn't quite know whether
it's exploded or about to explode, or whether it really is a bomb."

That night as Carstairs went home his ambitions began to soar very
high again.




CHAPTER VII

At the end of a month Darwen wrote a rather long letter, giving a
detailed description of the station and staff.  "The plant is good,"
he wrote, "all brand new and full of possibilities.  The chief
assistant is a delightful thickhead, and the chief--words fail me to
describe him.  The possibilities and probabilities of this job are
immense."

Carstairs read it through twice carefully and thoughtfully; he penned
a brief reply.  "No news here.  New man an utter ass, blown out with
conceit, impossible to share digs with him."  That was about all, it
was almost telegraphic.

At the works things went on much as usual.  Thompson made more than
usual overtures of friendliness; he wished to impress on Carstairs
that it was through no feeling of personal bias that he had not
recommended him for the Southville job.  Frequently when they were
testing with high tension currents he caught Thompson looking at him
with a sort of wonder and distinct approval.

One day when there was a fault on the mains, and Thompson had been
out all night in the rain testing and digging out cables and opening
junction boxes till he was tired and weary of all the world, he came
into the works in a fine spirit of irritation.  "We'll have to burn
the damn thing out," he said.  "Run up a machine on it."

By a specially complicated arrangement of the already complicated
switchboard, it was possible to run any machine on any feeder.  The
Shift Engineer signalled for another machine, and Carstairs plugged
her in on the faulty circuit.  The fuse held for about one minute,
then it blew with a flash and a bang right in Carstairs' face.
Promptly and coolly he switched out and went through the complicated
operation necessary to isolate that section.

Thompson watched him in some surprise.  "You've got used to fuses,
then," he said.

Carstairs flushed.  "Er--" he hesitated a moment.  Thompson waited in
expectant silence, which is the severest cross-examination to a very
young man.  "I got a shock some time ago and it upset my nerves a
bit.  I'm alright now."

"It does upset you if you get it badly.  What did you get, four
hundred?"

"Two thousand."

"Good Lord.  That's usually fatal.  How did you manage it?"

Carstairs was silent for a moment; he looked at Smith who was down
below in the engine room, then he turned and faced Thompson.

"It was my own fault.  I was fooling about, trying some experiments,
you know--and tired.  It knocked me over.  Smith and Darwen brought
me round; Smith was jolly decent.  You needn't say anything to him
about it if you don't mind, it was his request."  He looked Thompson
steadily in the eyes like a practised liar.

Thompson smiled with a sort of admiration and pleasure.  "You'll be
more careful next time," he said.

"I shall, very careful," Carstairs answered, and Thompson smiled; he
started to go away, but turned at the head of the steps.

"I shouldn't be in a hurry to leave this job if I were you.  If a
vacancy occurs, I think I can promise you a Shift Engineer job here."
He went down the steps.

Carstairs felt a glow of exultation.  "Thanks very much," he said.

It has been observed that misfortunes never come singly, it is
equally true that good fortune comes in lumps also.  The observant
man like the successful gambler may gain much profit by regulating
his actions to the ebb and flow of fortune.  What appears to the
casual or timid observer to be a particularly "long shot" is often
the outcome of close observation, and not the mere freak of a
desperate plunger.  The tide of affairs never sets either way without
warning.  The watchful man, like the careful mariner, knows fairly
well what to expect.  Carstairs was a particularly close observer,
and after Thompson's remarks and other things, he had an idea that
the luck was flowing his way again; he was not much surprised
therefore to find a letter waiting for him next morning from Darwen
telling him of a vacancy at Southville, and urging him to run down
and see the chief.  "I have so strongly recommended you that I think
the job is yours," he said.

Carstairs felt a singular satisfaction that he had gauged the trend
of his luck so accurately.  He went down to the works to see Thompson
and get a day off.  Thompson looked rather disappointed.  "You'll get
that alright," he said, "but I'm rather sorry.  I've had an inquiry
about Smith here (he held up a letter), there'll probably be a
vacancy soon.  I suppose you don't think it worth while waiting?"

Carstairs stood for a few minutes in deep thought.  "I think it would
be rather stemming the tide of my luck, wouldn't it?" he remarked,
quite seriously.

Thompson smiled.  "Alright.  I'll write to the chief at Southville
telling him I have had reason to considerably improve my opinion of
you."

A slightly increased colour mantled on Carstairs' cheek.  "Thanks! if
you will," he said.  Next day he went to Southville.  He saw the
chief and was appointed there and then.  He spent the rest of the day
with Darwen who showed a somewhat un-English effusion in his
greeting.  They strolled round the pleasant southern town together.

"This is civilization," Darwen said.

"That's so," Carstairs agreed.

In a week he left the grimy, little midland town, but before he went,
there was a solemn gathering of the shift engineers and switchboard
attendants in the drawing office for the purpose of presenting him
with a standard work on electricity (Darwen had had a silver
cigarette case).  Smith made the presentation.  In a somewhat nervous
little speech, he expressed regret at Carstairs' departure, and rosy
hopes of his future, with a few glowing tributes to his personal
qualities.  Carstairs thanked them very solemnly, and deflected the
glowing tributes on to the assembled company.  These little
gatherings were a recognized institution in Central Stations; about
every three or four months there would be a "whip round" of half a
crown or so each to present some man who had been there about six
months with a small token of esteem on the occasion of his departure
to a better job.  Some men have quite a collection of pipes,
cigarette cases, walking sticks, slide rules, books, etc.

Just before he left the works for the last time, Foulkes, the stoker,
accosted him.

"There was some gipsy-looking bloke asking if a man called Carstairs
worked here, yesterday," he said.

"Did he say he wanted to see me?"

"No, sir, just asked if you worked here."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said you'd just got another job at Southville."

Carstairs was very serious.  "What was he like?" he asked.

"Not quite as tall as you, sir.  A rough-looking cove.  Walked with a
bit of a limp, like as though he'd bin shot or something sometime."

"A young man?"

"'Bout the same age as yourself."

"Ah.  Poor devil!  Limp, eh?"

"Not much, sir."

"Still quite enough, I expect.  Poor devil!  Well, thanks very much,
Foulkes, good-bye."  Carstairs held out his hand.  "May bump up
against you again some day.  Good-bye!"

He turned and walked out across the yard, and the burly stoker looked
after him with interest and curiosity.  "They comes and goes," he
soliloquized.  "Rum thing about that gipsy bloke, still it ain't no
business o' mine."  Which was a point of view he had acquired in the
army.

Darwen met Carstairs on the platform at Southville station.

"You're on with me for the first week," he said.  His marvellous eyes
sparkled with delight.  "Where's your luggage?  I've got a cab
waiting.  The new digs (I swopped this morning) are about two miles
out, first-class place; thirty bob a week each.  You don't mind that,
do you?  Piano too.  Do you vamp?  Never mind, I can do enough for
two."

He seemed unusually excited.  Carstairs couldn't help feeling
flattered at the obvious pleasure his arrival caused.

As they rattled away in the cab, Darwen explained: "I'm jolly glad
you've come, sort of levels up over that misunderstanding about this
job."

"Oh! that's all right."

"Yes, it is now.  You're a damn good sort, you know, Carstairs.  You
and I ought to run this job.  Chief and chief assistant.  How would
that suit you?"

Carstairs smiled, a steady smile.  "First-class," he answered.

Darwen was watching him closely, he seemed quite exultant at
Carstairs' reply.  "I knew it would.  You wait till you see the chief
and chief assistant here, they're not fit to run a mud dredger."

"Why don't you sack 'em then?" Carstairs laughed.

Darwen's eyes glittered strangely.  "By Jove, that's it, they can't
stick it much longer.  Don't you see.  Damme!  I wouldn't give either
of 'em a shift engineer's job."

"He seemed alright when I interviewed him."

Darwen snapped his fingers impatiently.  "Bah!  He's civil and all
that, but he'll never be an engineer."

They pulled up at the diggings, a nice-looking semi-detached villa,
with big, bay windows, and a well-kept front garden.

"This is alright," Carstairs commented, "if the grub's any good."

"Leave that to me, old chap.  There's a daughter in the house, not
bad looking."

"Go steady, Darwen."

"I'm as safe as houses, old chap!  She's engaged to a grocer's
assistant in the town here, and describes herself as 'a young lady';
'me and two other young ladies,' you know the sort."

"H'm--ye-es."

They got the luggage stowed away and sat down in the sitting-room, a
large room on the second floor with a big, bay window looking out on
the quiet tree-shaded road.  Some of Darwen's technical books and
papers were scattered on the table; there were two big easy chairs
and a comfortable-looking couch with numerous cushions scattered
about; the carpet was light-coloured and thick.  The general tone of
the room was light, a sort of drawing-room effect.  Probably to the
expert feminine eye the curtains and other things were old and cheap,
and dirty, and everything dusty.  To Carstairs, straight from the
dingy north, it appeared a palace.  He threw himself into an easy
chair and putting his legs up on another, sighed with content.

"This is jolly good, after that grimy hole!"

Darwen looked at him with sympathy.  "That's so," he agreed.  He sat
down at the piano.  "This isn't a bad instrument," he observed, "it
is stipulated that the daughter may be allowed to play on it when she
likes."

"Oh; the devil!"

"Not at all."  He sounded one or two notes thoughtfully, then he
glided off into something slow and soothing with a tinge of
melancholy in it too.  He stopped and looked at Carstairs critically.
"That's how you feel," he said.

"Precisely," Carstairs answered.  "What is it?"

"Chopin's Nocturne."

"Never heard of it."

"No?  It's not supposed to appeal to the vulgar mind," Darwen laughed.

"Well, do it again.  I like it."

Darwen swung round on the stool and "did it again," and went on and
on, seeming to lose himself; his long, artistic fingers moved with a
graceful, loving poise across the white keys.  He stopped abruptly
and wheeled round.  "How's that?" he asked.

"First-class," Carstairs answered.

"What did you think of while I was playing?"

"What I want to do.  As a matter of fact I elucidated a knotty point
in connection with an idea I'm working out."

Darwen's dark eyes lighted up into a positive gleam.  "It's curious,"
he said.  "I bet when old Chopin composed that thing he had no ideas
of electrical machinery in his head.  What's the line of the
invention?"  He swung round and toyed with the keys; a low, sweet
strain welled out, pleading, winning.

"Well, it occurred to me one day that there was no adequate reason
why--"  Carstairs stopped, seemingly interrupted by his own thoughts.
"No," he said, as if speaking to himself.  "It's not quite right
after all."  He laughed aloud suddenly.  "The reasons," he said in
his normal voice, "appear more and more adequate as I investigate the
case, still----"

Darwen waited in expectation for some time, but Carstairs remained
silent, lost in thought.  Suddenly Darwen burst into life and rolled
out an immense volume of sound from the piano.

A look of pain crossed Carstairs' features.  "What the devil do you
make that row for?"

"That row, as you call it, is from Wagner's 'Lohengrin.'"

"Is that so?  Well, it's a jolly good imitation of a breakdown in the
engine room."

Darwen laughed.  "You have a vulgar mind, old chap."  He branched off
into an Hungarian waltz.

"That's better."

"Suited to your taste, you mean."  He wandered on through numerous
scraps of dance music.  "Do you dance, Carstairs?"

"Not much."

"Oh, you must.  You and I are going strong this winter."

"I'm going to work."

"Quite so, so am I.  So much that the average man considers work is
painful, misdirected effort.  Do you want results, financial results?"

"You can bet your boots on that."

Darwen's fingers moved very slowly, it was a slow waltz tune, very
slow; his gaze was far away.  "The whole world is a shop," he said,
speaking very slowly.  "Everything is bought and sold; the most
successful salesman is not the man who has the best goods, but he who
shows them most advantageously.  We sell our brains, you and I, our
brains and nerves.  The buyers are the Corporation; this collection
of greengrocers, drapers, lawyers, doctors, and one navvy.  They are
entirely incapable of judging our technical abilities, they rely on
the opinion of a fool; a sort of promoted wireman, the chief."  The
music ceased altogether, and he wheeled round facing Carstairs.  "And
however much you grind, and swot, and work, this fool (who only got
his job because these people are unable to distinguish between a man
who can use his hands and one who can use his head) will always fix
your market value, and by his own little standard.  The obvious
conclusion is to get a better place in the shop window than the fool
occupies."

Carstairs was silent.

"Do you agree with that?"

"Conditionally; depends on the method adopted."

Darwen blazed out into a sudden anger.  "You're a fool, Carstairs.
You and your methods.  It doesn't matter a curse to you how you
generate your electricity, does it?  You want results, that's all!
The correct methods are the most successful, the most economical."
He sobered down again suddenly and smiled.  "Look here, Carstairs, I
want to make this job, yours and mine, worth more than it is.  I like
this town and I want to stay here, but I must get some bally pay."

"Hear, hear!"

"Well, I'm going to work the oracle.  I'm going to know every man on
the council, then I'm going to apply for a rise."

"I'm with you entirely."

"These things are easily worked.  A man who's not handling his own
money is very generous to his friends.  Can you lie?"

"I'm an expert."

"Well, we shall want to lie sometimes.  The age of truth has not yet
arrived, and the man who sticks to the truth is before his time,
consequently he's not appreciated, which means, he's not paid.  I
want pay.  How's that?"

"Very good."

"I think so too.  The mistake most people make is not knowing when to
lie.  To be a good liar requires more brains and just as much pluck
as to tell the truth."

A slow smile flickered round Carstairs' face.  "You introduce me to
the proper people, and I'll tell 'em unblushingly that we're two
jolly smart engineers very much underpaid."

"That's the idea!  And they'll believe you, such is the paradox of
this lying and trustful generation."

These young men, it will be seen, were very young, but their wisdom
was much in excess of the pig-headed obstinacy of the average
greybeard.




CHAPTER VIII

The works at Southville were rather larger than the works he had just
left in the Midlands, and Carstairs felt a delightful sense of
exaltation as he first took charge of a shift by himself.  For eight
hours he was entirely responsible for the efficient, economical, and
safe working of about 6000 horsepower of plant.  He felt a sense of
responsibility, of age; he felt uplifted and steadied.  He was very
thoughtful, but very confident; he had taken great pains during the
week he was on with Darwen to make himself thoroughly acquainted with
everything about the station.  His confidence was the direct outcome
of his knowledge; he looked at the various engines, dynamos, boilers
and switch gears, and felt that he fully grasped the why and
wherefore of it all; he reviewed the possibilities of what might
happen, what might break down, in the various component parts of the
complicated whole, and what he would do to tackle it.  He considered
it all very solemnly and felt very confident; he knew he would not
scare.  Physically he was in the pink of condition, his head was very
clear and his technical knowledge very bright from constant use.

The chief, an awkward-looking, flabby man, came down to see him on
his first shift.  "Well! do you think you can manage it?" he asked.

"Yes," Carstairs answered, looking his chief steadily in the eyes;
the eyes were lack-lustre and heavy, they shifted uneasily and roamed
round the engine room: he stepped up to a bit of bright brass work
and rubbed his finger across it.  "That won't do," he said, holding
up a finger soiled with greasy dirt.  "Make that man clean that."  He
turned and went away abruptly.

Carstairs called the engine driver, a little man of herculean build.
"I knowed he'd spot that," the man said, in a tone of protest.  "Got
a eye like a hawk, he have."

It was the first time Carstairs had noticed this man particularly;
they had been on different shifts before.  He looked him over with
approval; the arms, bare to the elbow, were astonishingly big and
sinewy-looking; the chest was immensely deep, it arched fully outward
from the base of the full, white throat; the top button of his shirt,
left undone, showed a glimpse of a very white skin and the
commencement of a tattoed picture ("Ajax defying his mother-in-law,"
the man called it); his eyes were a bright hazel brown, singularly
piercing and steady.

"What's your name?"

"Bounce, sir."  He stood up very straight, his piercing eyes resting
with steady persistence on Carstairs' face.

The name seemed remarkably appropriate.  The whole man was suggestive
of indiarubber.

"Been a sailor or soldier, haven't you?"

"Sailor, sir.  I done twelve year in the navy."

"Did you?" Carstairs looked at him, thoughtfully.  "I've got an uncle
in the navy."

"What name did you say, sir?"

"Carstairs."

"Carstairs, I knows him.  Commander Carstairs.  I was with him in the
'Mediterranean.'  Nice bloke he was.  You ask him if he remembers
Bounce, sir, Algernon Edward Bounce, A.B., light-weight champion
boxer of the Mediterranean Fleet.  He was there when I won it at
Malta."

The man's manner was exceedingly civil and respectful, but there was
something about it that kept irresistibly before your mind all the
time that he was an independent unit, a man.  After twelve years of
the sternest discipline in the world this man was as free as the air
he breathed, there was no sign of servility.  The thought passed
through Carstairs' mind, as he looked at him, that this breed, truly,
never could be slaves.

"I'll ask him when I see him.  So you're a boxer, are you?"

"Yes, sir.  Light weight, though I ought to go middle; eleven stone
two pounds, that's my weight.  I can get down to ten, but I ain't
comfortable, though I 'ave a done it."

Carstairs measured him with his eyes.  He seemed very little over
five feet.  Later on, he ascertained that he was exactly five feet
three inches.

"I see.  Just wipe over that brass work, will you?"

With remarkable alacrity, and a peculiarly prompt and decisive
manner, the man saluted and set about his work.

Carstairs watched him in silence for some minutes, struck more than
ever by the appropriateness of his name; he marvelled too at the
singularity of his chief.  In all that clean and bright engine room
there was only that one bit of obscure brass work uncleaned, and the
chief had spotted it.  "An acutely observant man, evidently,"
Carstairs meditated.

Later on in the evening, the chief assistant dropped in.  He was a
big, heavily-built man with a well-shaped, massive head and handsome,
even features with general indication of great strength--mental,
moral, and physical; the sort of man many women go into ecstasies
over: the element of the brute seemed fairly strong in him.  To
Carstairs' critical eyes and slow, careful scrutiny, he appeared,
however, somewhat flabby.  He stood behind Carstairs on the
switchboard and watched him parallel machines.

Now the process known as "paralleling" or "synchronizing" alternating
current dynamos or "alternators" is somewhat critical; the operator
has to watch two voltmeters and get their reading exactly alike; he
also has to watch two lamps (now usually supplanted by a small
voltmeter) which grow dull and bright more or less quickly, from
perhaps sixty times a minute to ten or twelve times per minute, as
the engine drivers slowly vary the speed of the engines.  When the
voltmeters are reading alike, and during the small fraction of a
minute when the lamps are at their brightest, the operator has to
close a fairly ponderous switch; if he is too late or too early, but
particularly if he is too late, there are unpleasant consequences:
the machines groan and shriek with an awe-inspiring sound, keeping it
up very often for a considerable time; all the lamps on the system
surge badly, and the needle of every instrument on the switchboard
does a little war dance on its own, till the machines settle down.
Sometimes the consequences of a "bad shot" are even more dire.  There
once appeared in one of the technical journals a pathetic little poem
about a pupil's "first shot," how "he gazed severely at the
voltmeters," and "looked sternly at the lamps," then he "took a
howler," and "switched out again," "wished he hadn't," "Plugged in
again and--bolted."  In a similar journal there was another sort of
prose poem, too, written in mediæval English which finished up a long
tale of woe thus: "He taketh a flying shot and shutteth down ye
station."

This was the operation then (in which every man needs all his wits
and some more than they possess) in which Carstairs was engaged at a
critical period of the load (for be it remembered the time available
is always strictly limited) when the chief assistant stood behind
him.  He remained calm and impassive, as behoved his countenance, for
some time, then, just when the phases were beginning to get longer,
and Carstairs took hold of the switch handle in readiness to plug in;
the chief assistant stepped excitedly up behind him.  "Now!  Be
careful!  Watch your volts!  There!  There!  You might have had that
one!  Look out, here she comes!  Watch your volts, man, watch your
volts!"

Carstairs felt like knocking him down, he missed two good phases that
he might have taken, then he "plugged in" rather early.  The machines
groaned a little, but soon settled down.

"Too soon!  Too soon!" the chief assistant said,

In angry silence Carstairs turned and signalled the engine driver to
speed up the machine.  The chief assistant left the board, and went
out without further comment.

"Does that ass always play the mountebank behind a chap when he's
paralleling?" Carstairs asked his junior.

"Sometimes, he gets fits now and again: Fitsgerald, the chap that's
just left, turned round and cursed him one day.  I nearly fell off
the board with laughing.  Old Robinson looked at me.  'What the devil
are you laughing at?' he said.  I might have got your job if it
hadn't been for that.  Fitsgerald got the sack over it."

"Apparently I shouldn't have missed much," Carstairs said as he went
away.

When he got home at about half-past twelve, Darwen was sitting up for
him.  "How did you get on?" he asked, with his genial smile.

"Oh, first-class."  They sat down to supper.  "Took rather a howler,
paralleling six and seven.  That ass Robinson was jigging about like
a monkey-on-stick behind me, telling me what to do.  Next time I
shall stand aside and ask if he'd prefer to do it himself."

"Don't do that, old chap, he's a malice-bearing beast.  Funks always
are!  Don't take any notice of him.  Forget him, or send him away;
ask if he'd mind watching the drivers, as they brought her down too
quick, or something, last time."

Carstairs was silent.

"Fitsgerald got the sack for cursing him over the same thing.  He was
a red-headed chap.  We were talking about Robinson's unpleasant ways
(he'd had a go at me the day before).  I said he wanted a good
cursing to cure him of it, and I'm blowed if Fitz didn't curse him
about a couple of days later."  Darwen's eyes seemed to flicker with
an uncanny sort of light, his voice dropped into a reflective tone.
"Threatened to chuck him over the handrail if he didn't go off the
switchboard.  Hasty chaps those red-headed fellows are.  We had a
chap at school--what school were you at, Carstairs?"

"Cheltenham."

"Were you?  I was at Clifton, went to Faraday House, after."

Pushing back his chair, Darwen, got up and went to the piano, he
played some very slow, soft music, slow and soothing, it breathed the
breath of peace into Carstairs' troubled soul.

"Robinson is only a fool," Darwen said over his shoulder.  "I feel
rather sorry for him--hasn't got the heart of a mouse--gets in a
frightful stew when he's got to parallel himself--he's not a
bad-hearted chap--done me one or two rather good turns."

"I thought he was alright too, at other times." Carstairs felt the
spirit of peace stirring within him.

"It's kinder to him to let him drift, he doesn't mean anything--can't
help himself--nervous, you know.  I just smile at him."

"Suppose that is the best way.  I'll have a shot next time, anyway.
Made me rather ratty to-night."

Darwen played for some time in silence.  "Chief come in at all?" he
asked, at length.

"Yes.  Came in and groused about a bit of brass work being dirty."

"That's like the chief.  He'll never express an opinion on anything
except its external appearance; very safe man, the chief, extremely
safe, but stupid: he'll fail, not through what he does, but what he
leaves undone."  He ceased speaking, but the music went on slowly
welling out, breathing good will and trust to all mankind.  It died
slowly away leaving the tired listener in a blissful state of rest.
Darwen got up and looked at him with sparkling, observant eyes.

"Good-night, old chap.  I'm going to bed."

Carstairs arose slowly from the big, easy chair, "Wish I could play
like you, Darwen."

The rest of the week passed (at the works) with singular
uneventfulness, in fact never afterwards did Carstairs have such an
uneventful week on load shift; but all the same the memory of his
first week on shift by himself remained always clear and distinct
above all other experiences; never afterwards did he feel the
delightful thrill of responsibility, of excitement, of awe almost, as
he walked round the engine room and boiler house surveying the men
and plant, for those first few days, and felt that for eight hours he
was monarch of all he surveyed; with all the other men far out of
call, spreading out in different parts of the town, reading their
papers, at the theatre or music halls, while he was responsible for
the lightening of their darkness, and the safe keeping of the men and
plant around him.  In after life he often reflected that the princely
salary of £104 per annum was singularly inadequate for the kingly
nature of his office; but the greengrocers, the doctors, and
publicans thought it was remarkably good for a man who spent most of
his time walking about with his hands in his pockets.  These works
had been making a financial loss of from £100 to £2000 every year
since they started, with the exception of one year, when, by careful
manipulation of the accounts, they managed to show a profit of £20,
which, under the expert examination of a proper accountant, would
probably have been converted to a loss of £500.

Darwen watched the finances with a keen interest.  He was very chummy
with Robinson; they studied the reports of the various stations
together with great earnestness.  "A loss or a profit doesn't matter
much to a corporation as long as they have continuity of supply."
Darwen laid it down as a law, and Robinson heartily agreed.  That
axiom was only a half truth, but the foundation of all municipal work
is only a half truth, so it did not matter much.

Robinson was very proud.  "We never have the lights out here," he
said.  And Darwen smiled approval.  "That's so," he agreed, and on
his shift he took care that it always should be so; he had every
engine in the place warmed up, ready for instant use, and two boilers
always lighted up and under pressure in case of necessity.  Robinson
approved of his method, and the chief--the chief grumbled about the
boiler house being dirty, but on Darwen's shift it was cleaner and
more tidy than on any other shift; also the engine room was brighter
and more spotless, so much and so persistently so, in fact, that the
cautious chief was drawn out of his shell to express a decided
opinion to the chairman of the electricity committee (who remarked on
it).  "Yes," the chief said, with a little flicker of enthusiasm,
"that man Darwen is decidedly the best engineer I've ever had."
Which remark was not overlooked by the chairman, a doctor, a large
man with a large imposing black beard, who had been struck, as who
could fail to be, by the remarkable beauty of face and form and
general impression of intelligence of the athletic young engineer.

It was not very long after Darwen had observed the chief and chairman
in conversation and looking pointedly at him, that he developed
certain symptoms which, in his opinion, necessitated medical advice.
Common sense, he explained to Carstairs, pointed out the chairman as
the man to go to.

The doctor recognized him at once.  "Hullo!" he said, looking him
over with distinct approval, for Darwen's winning, frank smile
captivated him at once.  "Has the electricity got on your system?"
The doctor was a jovial, hearty man.

Darwen laughed.  He showed precisely the right amount of amusement at
the joke, then, shortly and precisely, he stated (almost verbatim
from a medical book he had looked up in the reference library) the
symptoms of a more or less minor complaint.

Recognizing it at once, "I'll soon put that right for you," the
doctor said, in his hearty, jovial way.  His extensive practice was
largely due to his jovial manner; he appreciated the clear and
precise statement of the symptoms.

"It's nothing serious then, doctor?"

"Oh, no!--no!  It might have been, of course, if you'd let it go on."

"Ah! that's just it; it's the same with an engine, you know, 'a
stitch in time.'  I like to get expert advice at the start."

This was business from the doctor's point of view.  He became
serious.  "Most true," he said.  "Still, people will aggravate their
complaints by so-called home treatments."

"The penny-wise policy, doctor, the results of combined ignorance and
meanness."

"I wonder," Darwen said, later on, as he poured the contents of a
medicine bottle down the bathroom waste pipe, "I wonder what in
thunder this is, a sort of elixir of life served out to most people
for most complaints at a varying price.  Funny what stuff people will
pour down their necks."

Some hours later, as they sat facing each other in their big easy
chairs, Darwen said: "Didn't you say your guv'nor was a parson,
Carstairs?"

"Yes.  Why?"

"Because the time has arrived to trot him out."

"What do you mean?"  Carstairs flushed rather angrily.

"I have not got a guv'nor," Darwen observed, sadly; "haven't any
recollection of my guv'nor.  He went down with the Peninsula coming
home from Australia.  He was a mining engineer."

Carstairs was softened.  "Hard lines," he said, and there was much
sympathy in his tone.

"It is," Darwen agreed.  "A guv'nor helps one so much.  I want you to
get your guv'nor to come down and stay with us for a few days.  What
College was he at?"

"Christ Church, Oxford."

"Then it's almost a cert he'll bump up against some one he knows down
here, some other parson, or somebody.  I want to get into the
chairman's crowd, he's churchwarden at St James'.  I'm going there."

Carstairs removed his pipe slowly from his lips and stared more or
less blankly.  It was the limit of surprise he allowed himself ever
to express.

"Yes, and I'm joining St James' Gym. and the Conservative Club.
Robinson has introduced me to one or two rather decent people, too;
Robinson belongs here, you know.  To-morrow you and I are going to
sign on for a dancing class; Robinson's people put me on to it;
Robinson doesn't dance.  I'm pretty good, and you'll be good with
practice.  Every fit man can dance well with practice."

Carstairs puffed silently at his pipe for some minutes.  "Will the
dividends on dancing, gymnastics, church-going, etc., pan out better
than working?" he asked at length.

"Do you think you are getting the full value of your present stock of
knowledge?"

"Not by chalks, but one never does."

"I beg to differ; some men get paid considerably over the value of
their knowledge."

"Perhaps you're correct," Carstairs admitted, after a pause.

"Well, I want to join the happy band.  Shove your knowledge forward,
having due regard to the manner of your doing so, that it does not
defeat its own ends.  And that is wisdom; you're paid for the
combined product of your knowledge and your wisdom.  Wisdom is the
most scarce, the most valuable, and the most difficult to acquire: it
is the knowledge of the use of knowledge.  Do you see?"

"They bear the relation to each other of theory and practice in
engineering."

"Not quite.  Theory is an effort of the imagination, either a
spontaneous effort of your own, based on known facts, or an
assimilation of the results of other men's practice as recorded by
them in books.  The sources of error are twofold; the limits of your
own imagination, your own conception of the other man's description,
and the limit of the other man's gift of expression and explanation.
Practice is your own conception and remembrance of what you yourself
have personally experienced.  Both are knowledge; wisdom is distinct
from either."

Carstairs smiled.  "Well, it's your wisdom I doubt, not your
knowledge.  I mean to say, that my application of my knowledge to my
conception of your application of your knowledge, as expressed by you
in the present discussion, leads me to doubt the accuracy of your
application of your knowledge to the case under discussion.  The
possible sources of error being in my imagination or your expression,
and as my imagination is a fixed quantity, unless you can improve
your expression, I shall fail to coincide with you.  How's that?"

"That's very good."  Darwen took a deep breath and laughed.  "Let me
have another shot.  Who gets the most money, the successful professor
or the successful business man?"

"The successful business man."

"Hear, hear!  That's because he's selling wisdom, while the professor
is selling knowledge."

"I disagree, on two points.  Number one, the business man sells
necessities, boots for instance; the professor sells luxuries,
quaternions, for instance."  Carstairs paused and quoted, "'What I
like about quaternions, sir, is that they can't be put to any base
utilitarian purpose.'"

"Quaternions, my dear chap----"

"Half a minute!  Number two, the business man sells knowledge of men
and affairs as opposed to the professor's knowledge of things only."

"The Lord has delivered you into my hands, Carstairs."

"I saw it as soon as I'd spoken."

"Well, let us acquire knowledge of men and affairs, instead of merely
of things--engines."

"I admit that my conception of----"

"Chuck it."

"Well, you've made a good point."

"You're Harveyized steel, Carstairs, and it gives me immense
satisfaction to see that I'm making some impression on you.  Well,
you may go on grinding away all your life, and if nobody knows of the
knowledge you possess, you'll never get paid for it."

"But I will show it by the application of it in my work.  The chief
is bound to see it."

"Not a ha'porth, my boy.  And if he does, the chances are that he'll
depreciate it in the eyes of the world, or get you the sack, because
he'll be afraid of you."

"I admit the probability of those possibilities."

"As an engineer you must never forget the interdependence of parts:
as a successful man you must never overlook the interdependence of
everything in nature.  Smile at men as if you were overjoyed to see
them and they'll give you anything, as long as it's not their own
property."

"Hear, hear!"

"Our object in life is to persuade the councillors to dole us out an
extra dose of the ratepayers' money."

"I admit the correctness of the conclusion."

"Then let us, with all circumspection, smile on the councillors and
their wives and daughters, particularly the daughters."

"Nothing would please me more, provided the daughters reciprocate the
smile."

"They'll do that alright, old chap, if you only do it the right way.
The most potent force in nature is the love of women; it behoves us
as engineers to utilize this force.  There is nothing much that a
woman in love won't do, and there is even less that she won't make
the poor fool, who imagines she is in love with him, do."

"It's supposed to be specially dangerous to run two girls in
parallel."

"You may take it as proved that, 'In the same town and on the same
side of it, there cannot be two girls in love with the same man,
etc.'  All the same, the idea of it is rather fascinating."  Darwen's
eyes sparkled.

"We are wandering from the point."

"Quite so.  Are you going to get your guv'nor down?"

"Look here.  Have you got any money?"

"Well, I'm not absolutely stony."

"Then lend me two quid and I'll go home for a week-end and bring him
back."

Darwen fished out his purse with a smile.  "The seeds of wisdom are
in you, I perceive," he said.

Suddenly the strains of music were wafted in to them through the open
window.  "What in thunder is that?" Darwen asked, getting up with a
puzzled look and gazing out into the street.  "By Jove, it's a kid
with a mouth organ, looks like a gipsy kid."

With a serious face Carstairs got up and looked out of the window
too.  The boy was looking directly up at the window; as soon as he
caught sight of Carstairs, he changed his tune abruptly.

"What's that tune, Darwen?  I seem to know it."

"That's 'The Gipsy's Warning.'  The kid plays very well, too, for an
instrument like that.  I thought it was a violin for a minute."

They stood up at the window and watched.  The boy played the same
thing twice over, then he played a Scotch tune.  Then he opened the
gate and walking across the little lawn stood under the window and
touched his cap.

Carstairs put his hand in his pocket and pulled out sixpence.  "Wait
a minute," he said to the boy.  He went downstairs and spoke to him.
"Do you come from Scotland?"

"Yes, sir; I seen you there.  Sam's down here and he's after you."
He turned and went out into the road again and disappeared.

Carstairs looked after him with a troubled frown, then he returned to
the sitting-room.

Darwen looked at him with observant, surprised eyes.  "Did you know
that kid?" he asked.

"No, but he knew me.  I once had a row with a gipsy in Scotland;
flattened him out, broke his leg; he's been after me ever since.
That kid came to tell me he's in this town now.  Next pay day I shall
invest in a young bull dog."

Carstairs sat down again in the big easy chair and gazed at nothing.
His thoughts were far away; he had no doubt who had sent the gipsy
boy to warn him.  "The most potent force, the love of women."  Good
God! and what of the love of men?  A gipsy girl.  It was quite
impossible.

Then Darwen played--pleading, soothing music--and Carstairs told him
the whole story.

"You'll have to remove that gipsy, that Sam--in self-defence, mind,
of course.  And the girl--you couldn't marry a gipsy, of course, but
it's not necessary."

And Carstairs listened in silence.




CHAPTER IX

Time passed, and although Carstairs kept a good look out, he saw
nothing of Sam, the gipsy; he bought a substantial ash walking stick
which he kept constantly by him.  On the night shift he tackled
Bounce, the ex-sailor.  "Can you fence?"

"Yes, sir, I'm very good at fencing."

Carstairs smiled, but he knew all the same that it was a simple
statement of the truth without any affected modesty or blatant
boasting.  "I'll bring down a couple of sticks, and you can give me a
little instruction if you will."

"I shall be very pleased, sir."

He had a manner all his own of making even this simple statement; it
suggested an equality of manhood while admitting an inferiority of
station; every word and action showed a confident, self-contained,
self-respecting man.

So in the wee sma' hours of the morning, when everyone else was in
bed, Carstairs and Bounce fenced with single sticks in a clear space
in the engine room.  They got very chummy over these contests.
Carstairs had frequently had long yarns with Bounce before in the
quietness of the night watch, but now as they smote each other good
and hard (for they wore neither helmets, jackets, nor aprons) and
Carstairs smiled and Bounce grinned like a merry imp, and
occasionally apologized for an "extra stiff un," they seemed to draw
very close together, so much so, that one night Carstairs told him
the tale of Sam the gipsy.

Bounce shook his head seriously.  "Gipsies is nasty blokes," he
observed, pondering deeply.  "Some good fighting men amongst 'em,
too."  He pondered again.  "I should think now that a bit of boxing
would be more useful to you than fencing.  Or--have you got a pistol?"

"Yes, and a set of gloves.  I'll bring them both down to-morrow."

Next night Bounce's eyes scintillated light as he fingered the
well-made brown leather boxing gloves, and examined the beautiful
little American target revolver.  "This is fancy," he said, in regard
to the latter.  "It wouldn't stop a man, though."

"Depends where you hit him," suggested Carstairs.

"That's true, sir."

They retired to a secluded corner of the boiler house, and Bounce
fastened a piece of board on the wall and stuck three tin tacks in
it, then he drew back as far as the dimensions of the place would
admit, which was about fifteen yards.  "Shall I have first shot,
sir?" he asked.

Carstairs handed him the revolver, and then a box of cartridges.  He
loaded, then raised his arm, and, taking a fairly long sight at the
board, fired.  "That's a miss," he observed.  "I'll get a bit of
chalk."

Stepping up to the board, Carstairs saw that he had missed the head
of a tin tack by about a sixteenth of an inch.

Bounce returned from the engine room with a piece of chalk and
whitened over the heads of the tin tacks.  "I ain't had a shot with a
revolver for two years, or more," he observed, apologetically.  Then
he took another shot and burst the head of one tin tack; his next
shot bent the second tin tack over on one side.  The third shot drove
the remaining tack right home.  "There you are, sir," he said, with
some pride, handing Carstairs the revolver.

"Look here, Bounce!  Is there anything much in the way of offence and
defence that you can't do?" Carstairs asked with open admiration.

"Well, I don't think there is very much, sir.  I've fired everything
up to a six-inch gun, over that I ain't quite sure.  Mind, I have
afired a twelve-inch, but I ain't quite sure.  A twelve-inch takes
some handling, see."  He stood up very straight, looking Carstairs
steadily in the eyes as he made this simple statement.

Then they boxed, and the applicability of his surname struck
Carstairs more than ever; he seemed literally to bounce out of the
way, just when Carstairs was going to hit him, and he bounced in
again with singular directness and precision immediately Carstairs
had missed him.  Every night for the rest of the week they boxed for
half an hour at a time, and Carstairs, with his clear head and steady
nerves, soon began to make progress.

"What you wants, principally, is to hit hard, an' quick an'
straight."  Bounce laid it down as a law, and suiting his own actions
accordingly, he bounced in and hit Carstairs in the eye, so that it
afterwards turned a lively shade of deep, blue-black.

Bounce apologized, then he grinned like a healthy fiend.  "It do show
up," he observed, "but a black eye ain't near so painful as a good un
on the nose."

Carstairs smiled too.  "Oh! it doesn't matter in the least," he said.
"It's part of the game.  Unfortunately I'm going home to see my
people to-morrow."  He gazed at it thoughtfully in the looking-glass
in the lavatory.  "The guv'nor'll understand, but the mater----"

"I knows, sir."

Next day Carstairs went home to the little vicarage of Chilcombe, and
on his way to the station he caught sight of a rough-looking man in
well-worn gaiters, a fur cap and a heavy coat with big poacher's
pockets, limping down a side street.  Carstairs felt angry.  "That's
the swine," he said, to himself.  Then a sudden surge of pity
overwhelmed him.  "Poor devil! he does limp."

He got a seat in the corner of an empty third-class carriage and
opened a paper he had purchased, but he did not read, he thought of
the rough-looking man with the limp, of the beautiful girl in
Scotland and Darwen--the three seemed inextricably mixed up, somehow.
"Darwen's a skunk," he said, but that was the only definite
conclusion at which he could arrive.

Meanwhile the train hurried him homewards, and very soon he arrived
at the main line junction, and changed into the crawling local.  He
had written to say which train he would arrive by, and as the train
drew up at the pretty country station, he saw the tall, black-garbed
figure of his father on the platform.  They shook hands solemnly, and
eyes so much like his own beamed approval and pleasure as the strong
brown cricketer's hand gripped his.  Suddenly they sobered down into
a look half amusement, half pain, as they rested on the discoloured
skin (by careful doctoring reduced to a bright yellow) round his eye.

"What's the matter with the eye, Jack?"

"Oh, that's boxing."

"Ah!"  It was a sigh of relief and distinct approval.

"Yes; a man at the works, engine driver, you know, ex-sailor,
light-weight champion of the Mediterranean Fleet, he's coaching me."

"Ah, very good, excellent sport.  Suppose you don't lose your temper?"

"Oh, no!  Not with Bounce."  He laughed.  "How's the mater and all
the rest of them?"

"Your mother's very well, very well indeed.  Phillip is going on very
well in India."

"Got a rise yet?"

"Rise?--er--no.  In fact, you're doing the best of any, so far.  Mrs
Bevengton was inquiring about you; she and Bessie are coming over to
tea to-morrow."  He shot a sudden, keen glance at his son.  "Very
nice girl, Bessie, extremely nice."

"That's so," Jack admitted.

"Have you seen anything more of your gipsy maiden?"  There was a note
of anxiety in his father's voice.

"Yes; seen her once for a few minutes."

"Ah!"  It seemed as if Jack had explained something, some obscure
point.

"Her fancy man flattened me out."

"Flattened you out?"

"Hit me on the back of the head with a stick."

"Nothing very serious, I suppose; still it's a pity you got mixed up
with those people."

"Yes; the girl came down next night with another stick to flatten out
her fancy man."  Unconsciously there was a note of pride in Jack's
voice.

"Dear me, what terrible people!  It's a very great pity you got mixed
up with them at all--a very great pity."

"Yes, it is a pity," Jack agreed.  He seemed so pensive that his
father regarded him in some concern.

"Many young men entirely wreck their lives by these youthful
entanglements," he said.  "Those sort of girls, who appear beautiful
and fascinating at your age, usually strike one as coarse and outré a
few years later."

"That's very possible," Jack admitted, and he smiled as though a
weight had been lifted off his mind.

They turned in at the big double gates.

"By the way, there is--er--no necessity to mention that little affair
to your mother.  Women brood over these things, and build up all
sorts of vague horrors and possibilities of their own."

"Quite so," Jack admitted, very soberly, so that his father glanced
quickly at him again.  But they were at the house and there was no
time for further questioning.

Jack's mother noticed his discoloured eye at once.  "Oh, Jack,
whatever have you been doing?"

"Only boxing, mother."

"I wish you'd be more careful; you're so violent.  I'm sure cricket
and lawn tennis are much nicer."

"They're nice enough, mater, but not nearly so useful."

There was a seriousness in the way he said it that made both father
and mother look at him sharply.  "Useful?"

He smiled, his calm, easy smile.  "I mean to say, stokers and so on
sometimes get abusive, you know, and in the interests of real peace
it is best to know how to flatten 'em out if necessary."

"I wish Jack, you wouldn't use such slangy expressions."

"Very sorry, mater."

But his father's keen, blue eyes continued to watch him steadily, and
after Mrs Carstairs had gone to bed, he stayed down for half an hour
chatting with his son.  "I suppose," he said, "there is no
possibility of those gipsies molesting you further?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders.  "Can't say," he drawled.  "I left them
in Scotland."

"They wander, these people, you know."

"That's true; however, there is always the police, you know."  Jack
was very unconcerned.  "By the way, guv'nor, could you come back and
stay with me for a few days?  Another fellow and myself are digging
together, you know.  He's a jolly decent sort; opens his mouth rather
wide at times, says more than he means, you know, but he's a good
sort.  Got me my job, as a matter of fact.  He wants you to come too.
Wants to get to know some decent people; he's a dancing man and that
sort of thing.  Thinks you'll probably bump up against some one you
know, give us a lift in our jobs besides making things more pleasant.
You understand."

The Reverend Carstairs' shrewd eyes twinkled merrily.  "You want to
utilize your old father, eh?  What about this young man's father?"

"He hasn't got one; drowned at sea when he was a kid."

"Ah!"  The grey eyes softened into sympathy at once.  "Of course I'll
come.  It's quite the right view to take; young men cast adrift in a
strange town usually get acquainted with quite the wrong people.
Southville?  Southville?  Ah, yes.  I think the vicar of St James'
there is an old Christ Church man.  Let me see."  He got up and
reached down a book of reference.  "Here we are.  Southville, St
James.  Yes!  Moorhouse.  Ah!  I thought so.  He was not exactly a
chum, but a friend.  I've no doubt he'll be pleased to see me.  What
is your friend like?"

"Oh, about the same as myself, but exceedingly handsome, striking,
you know.  Sort of chap you turn round to look at.  Very dark, almost
Italian looking."

"Ah!  You ought to be able to make things very pleasant for
yourselves down there.  I'll go back with you on Monday."  His father
stood up.

"Thanks very much.  Shall I turn out the light?"

"Thanks, if you will.  Good night."

So Jack turned in once more in the old familiar bed in the old
familiar room at the corner of the house, with windows overlooking a
wide sweep of the rolling Cotswold Hills.

Next morning after church he met Mrs Bevengton and Bessie; she
coloured slightly as she shook hands with him, and her dimples sprang
into prominent evidence in a smile that expressed more than pleasure.

Jack regarded her thoughtfully, with very great pleasure too.  She
seemed the personification of beauty, not so much in the physical as
the moral sense; as he walked by her side slowly down the
brown-gravel path in the warm light of an autumn sun, countless
little incidents of his childhood's days returned to him, bearing a
fuller and a newer meaning; this girl had always been clean, clean as
it is understood in England, honest and unspiteful, she never
cheated.  When he parted at the gate it was with a distinct sense of
pleasure that he was to meet her again in the afternoon.  She
laughed, a jolly, happy laugh, when he explained the discolouration
of his eye.

Mrs Carstairs and Mrs Bevengton coming behind had observed them with
mutual approval: "Don't you think Bessie's improved?"  Jack's mother
said to him as they walked home together.

"She's better looking if that's what you mean, otherwise she was
always a jolly decent girl."

"Yes, there are not many girls like her."

"In that, mater, your opinion should be of considerably more value
than mine, I haven't met very many girls."

"You're getting old enough to think about these things now."

"Yes, mater, to _think_ about them."

About three o'clock in the afternoon, Dr and Mrs Bevengton and Bessie
arrived.  After half an hour's exchange of family greetings, Jack and
Bessie went out into the garden, leaving the old people indoors.

"Shall we go for a stroll through Cleeve woods?" Jack asked,
presently.

"Yes, I haven't been there for a long time."

Cleeve woods were the private property of Lady Cleeve, but Jack and
Bessie were privileged persons, allowed to trespass whenever they
liked.  They wandered along the well-known paths, going very slowly;
every tree and bush held its own secret for them, recalling each its
own little tragedy or comedy of their early lives.

Bessie stopped in front of a tall pine tree.  "Do you remember when
you climbed up there and took the kestrel's eggs?"

"I remember curly-haired 'Fatty,' and Jim down below keeping 'cave,'
in case the keeper came."

The dimples burst out anew.  "I was a fatty then, wasn't I?  You came
down all the way without a word.  I knew you'd got eggs by the
careful way you were watching your pockets.  I thought it was only a
magpie's, then you glanced round like a burglar and just showed one
eye over the top of your pocket, I knew it was a hawk's because it
was red."

"A kestrel is a falcon, Bessie, not a hawk.  You said, 'O-oh,' under
your breath, and Jim whispered 'what is it?'  Jim never could tell
one egg from another."

"We all felt like desperate poachers and crept out of the wood in
breathless haste, and you blew them under the chestnut tree on your
lawn."

Jack looked at her with a sudden admiration.

"You were always a pal and full of pluck," he said.  "When I was up
old Giles' apple tree and he came out with his dog, Jim bolted like a
rabbit, but you stayed behind like a brick and waited for me."

"Yes, I remember, my knees were knocking together with fright."

"Oh, you crammer, you threw an apple at the dog."

Bessie laughed.  "Old Giles was a good sort.  He knew who we were
right enough, but he never told father."

Talking thus they strolled on till they came out on the trimmed
laurels and well-kept lawn that surrounded Lady Cleeve's house.  Jack
stopped.  "I expect the footman will come out and ask impertinent
questions if we go over the lawn, won't he?"

"Oh, no! he knows me very well."

Still they stopped for some time admiring the house and the well-kept
grounds.  It was just getting dusk and lights were already beginning
to appear in some of the windows of the big old house.  "I should
like to own a place like this some day," Jack said.  He stepped on to
the lawn.  "By Jove! these lawns are grand, aren't they?  Do you
remember that time I was on holidays from Cheltenham, when they gave
a sort of tea fight to the whole village?  And the yokels were
playing kiss-in-ring on the lawn?"

Bessie coloured a good red and looked down at the smooth carpet-like
grass, poking aimlessly with the point of her umbrella.  They were
fairly close to the house.  Suddenly one of the near windows sprang
into a glare of light, showing up everything within with great
distinctness.  A female servant, in cap and apron, was lighting the
gas.  Her profile showed clear and distinct against the light.

"Oh! there's that new maid who's just come to the Hall.  Don't you
think she's remarkably handsome, Jack?"

Carstairs looked up, the girl in the room turned, so that the light
was full on her face, and every feature was distinct: the blood
seemed to bound in his veins, he was astonished at the thrill he felt.

It was some seconds, perhaps a minute, before he answered, then it
was a very slow drawl.  "Yes, exceedingly handsome."

Then they went home almost in silence, for Carstairs had recognized
in Lady Cleeve's new housemaid, his gipsy girl from Scotland.




CHAPTER X

Early on the Monday morning the Reverend Hugh and his son Jack
entrained for Southville.  Jack was pre-occupied with some deep
thought, and his father noticed it.

"Sorry to leave the old place, Jack?"

"Er--yes.  Nothing touches this place for me."

"You must get to know some nice people at Southville."

Jack pulled himself together; he had been gazing earnestly at Lady
Cleeve's house nestling in among the pine trees; the slope of a hill
suddenly shut out the view, and Jack turned to his father with
attention undivided.  "You know I'm not so keen on the people as the
work, but Darwen seems to think that in municipal work you can't get
on at all without friends."

The parson's eyes lighted up with approval as he listened to his son.
"Work is the thing that makes life enjoyable, but you must have
friends, you know."

Jack was silent for some time.  "It seems a rotten state of things,"
he observed at length, and his father laughed aloud.

Darwen was on shift when they arrived, but Jack took his father to
their diggings, and very soon after Darwen came in; his handsome face
lighted up with a beaming smile as he shook hands with the Reverend
Hugh.  "I say," he said, "I should have known you for Jack's father
if I had met you in the street alone."

The old parson smiled with approval as his shrewd grey eyes took in a
complete impression of face and form and expression.  He succumbed at
once to the charming manner and charming personality of the tall,
clean-looking young engineer.  "Wholesome, athletic, happy-go-lucky,
but intelligent," was his mental summing up.  Such were the sort of
friends he expected his son to make; he looked from one to the other
with keen approval.  They pushed forward the easiest chair and plied
him with cushions and tobacco.  They took him back to his own college
days.

"You fellows seem very comfortable here," he said.

"Not bad," they agreed.

He smiled.  "It was always 'not bad,'" he said.  "Hullo!" he glanced
along the backs of the books on the shelf at his side.  "Tennyson,
Keats, Dante, Shelley, 'Hamlet,' 'Julius Cæsar,' 'Barrack Room
Ballads,' 'The Prince'!  I didn't know you had a fancy for poetry,
Jack."

"Not guilty!  Those are Darwen's."  Jack was stretched out, six feet
of muscularity, full length on a slender-looking couch.  He puffed
slowly at his pipe.  "Those are mine"--he pointed to a shelf on the
other side.

His father glanced along the backs of them, reading the names aloud.
"'Dynamo, Electric Machinery,' h-m, bulky volume that!  'Manual of
the Steam Engine'; 'The Steam Engine,' h-m, three volumes.
'Polyphase Currents,' ah!  'Text Book of Heat,' 'Theoretical
Chemistry,' 'Trigonometry,' 'Integral Calculus,' 'Differential
Calculus' (Todhunter).  That's mine, I think.  I thought Edwards was
the man on the Calculus nowadays."

"Ye-es, Darwen's got him somewhere.  I prefer Todhunter, leaves more
to the imagination, you know."

"Ah, the imagination.  Quite so."

"Seems to me the limit of a man's possibility in anything is the
limit of his imagination."

"And his control of it, Jack."

"Exactly."

Darwen had his chair tilted back wards, blowing clouds of smoke
vertically upwards to the ceiling.  He spoke slowly between the
puffs.  "Carstairs--Jack, has got no soul above machines, inanimate
lumps of iron; the hum of a smoothly running engine is the only
poetry that appeals to him, so it does to me, but I like a change;
little bits of Shelley, little drops of Kipling----"

"I admit that 'M'Andrews' Hymn' is a real poem."

"Shut up!  You reek of the engine room.  I like a change.  Variety is
the soul of amusement."  He dropped his chair on to its front legs
again and looked at Jack's father.  "Hasn't some one said that?" he
asked.

"I really couldn't say, perhaps so."  He smiled with amusement.

Darwen looked at him steadily, thoughtfully, for a moment.  "Do you
know I think there's a touch of the Dago in me--or perhaps it's Celt.
Do you think I'm Irish?"

"My dear boy, you should know that best."

"That's so!  English, the mater says, pure English, but I don't know.
I'm a bit of a rogue, you know; the instinct of dishonesty is very
strong at times."

The Reverend Hugh laughed, and Darwen jumped up.  "I'll play you a
tune, if you'll stand it," he said.  He sat down and played,
wandering on from one thing to another, ever and anon glancing at the
old vicar, then he got up.  "Does that bore you?" he asked.

"Bore me?  My dear fellow, you are an accomplished musician."

He flushed slightly with pleasure.  "I like music.  Let's have a trot
round the town and show your guv'nor the sights, Carstairs."

"The guv'nor knows the vicar of St James."

"Does he?  By Jove! that's good."

So they went avisiting.

The Reverend Moorhouse was short and very broad, he had more the
legal than the clerical type of face; an old international Rugby
footballer, the impress of the game was still strong on him,
vigorous, keen, bluff.  It was evident he was pleased to see his old
friend, he said so, and invited all three of them to dinner the next
night.

The dinner was good; Mrs Moorhouse was plain, stout, chatty, and
exceedingly kind; the Misses Moorhouse, two of them, were tall,
athletic, and pretty.  They talked about hockey and tennis and
swimming; the two young men were charmed.  Carstairs was quite
vivacious, Darwen seemed to scintillate; Mrs Moorhouse watched him
with approving eyes, and later on, when he played and sang with the
elder Miss Moorhouse, she took possession of him; crossing the room
she sat down beside him.  "You must come and help us at the church,"
she said.

"I shall be delighted," he answered, with real pleasure shining in
his eyes.

The vicar's wife was business-like and decisive, she fastened him
down by compact and contract at once.

Altogether it was a merry and delightful evening, and when they at
length departed it was in a particularly bright and happy mood.  They
walked back; it was not very far and a beautiful starry night; there
was a tinge of frost in the air; Jack Carstairs threw his chest out
and took a deep gulp of the fresh, crisp air.

"I believe these little diversions do improve one's form, you know, I
feel like a sprint."  He looked up and down the long silent street of
semi-detached, shrubbery-enclosed villas.  As he looked back his face
suddenly hardened into a fierce look of anger, his mouth shut like a
steel trap, and his grey eyes took on a cold, steely glitter; for
just as he glanced round, a rough-looking man, carrying a big stick
had limped past a lamp light on the other side of the road.
Carstairs said no word, but there was an abruptness in his manner
that attracted his father's attention.

"What's the matter, Jack?"  He glanced round and Darwen followed
suit, but the man was now in the shade and hardly noticeable.

"Nothing," he answered, staring straight ahead; but out of the corner
of his eye he caught a meaning look from Darwen, and in response
jerked his head ever so slightly backwards and to one side.

Promptly Darwen dropped back to do up his bootlace.  A few seconds
later, the man with the limp, who had crossed the road and was now
directly behind them, quickened his pace and limped past.  Carstairs
stopped and faced round as the limping step drew near, but the man's
face was averted and he went on without a word or sign; some way
ahead they saw that he was joined by another man, hitherto
unobserved, who, without any word of greeting, stepped out of the
shadow and walked along with him; he seemed exceptionally short, but
his hands hung down below his knees--probably a hunchback.

"Those men are after no good," the Reverend Hugh observed.

"No.  I expect not.  There have been several burglaries round here
lately."

Darwen held out his walking-stick.  "Do you notice the sticks we
carry?  Guaranteed to kill at one smite."  He laughed lightly.
Something of the spirit of the party returned to them, and they went
home more or less lighthearted.

After the old vicar was safely in bed, Darwen went along to Jack's
bedroom.  He was half expected; he sat down on a chair while
Carstairs stretched himself, half undressed, on the bed.

"That was Sam?" Darwen asked.

"Yes, I'm sure of it!  Don't know who the other chap is, seems as if
he's rounding up a gang.  What do you think of putting the police on
it?"

"Don't see how you can!  Anyhow the scandal of it, if there was an
exposure, would wreck your rosy prospects in this town.  A young man
with a fancy for spending his nights in the woods with charming gipsy
maidens is not the sort that the wife of the vicar of St James can
allow to associate with her daughters."

Carstairs swore volubly.  "Do you know she's got a slavey's job at
Lady Cleeve's, the local big bug's at home."

"Did she know where you lived?"

"Yes, I told her."

"You were a fool."

"I don't know."  Carstairs was very thoughtful.  "Damn it, she knocks
spots off any girl I've seen yet.  She's improving, too."

Darwen's eyes glistened.  "I like playing with fire myself," he said.

"It's our job," Carstairs answered, cynically.  "We're paid to do it."

"It is damn rotten for you, I admit.  Have you got a revolver?"

"Yes."

"Oh! but that's no good either, you mustn't attract attention in that
way.  I tell you what, we'll set a trap and collar the brute.  You'll
have to be the bait.  And--say Bounce and I, we ought to be able to
effect a capture."

"That's so, but what then?"

"Oh, anything.  Bribery, threats, or we might shanghai the beast off
to Australia."

Carstairs was dubious.  "They'll give it a rest for a bit now.  He's
as cunning as a fox, that gipsy, he knows I recognized him.  Damn
him!  I'd have hit him over the head with my stick as he passed if
the guv'nor hadn't been there."

"Well, anyway, shall we call in Bounce?  You've already told him the
story, haven't you?"

"Yes.  Bounce's great idea is a heavy right on the jaw.  'Get in
close and hit hard,'" he said.

"That's very sound, too.  After your guv'nor's gone, we'll hold a
council of war.  Bounce may have some reliable pals.  Good night, old
chap, keep your pecker up."

"Thanks.  It's jolly good of you to lend me a hand over a rotten
business like this."

"That's alright.  As I observed before, I like playing with fire."

"Well, I hope you won't get burnt over this.  Good night."

"Good night."

Next day the old vicar went back to his flock again leaving a cordial
invitation for Darwen to come and see them.  Jack saw him off.

"A very fine young fellow that.  I'm glad you've made friends with
him."

"Yes!  he's a jolly good sort," Jack answered, enthusiastically,
having fresh in his memory Darwen's offer of assistance.

The same night, Carstairs, Bounce, and Darwen held a council of war
in the shift engineer's office.  "What we wants to do," Bounce said,
"is to find out what 'e wants.  If it's murder 'e's after, we'll
shanghai 'im, if it's only a row, we'll give 'im that, but the first
thing to do is to capture 'im."

Carstairs sat on the side of the table puffing slowly at his pipe.
"Thanks very much for the suggestion and offer of assistance, Bounce,
but I don't want to shanghai him, I only want to get a fair show,
also I don't mind giving him a fair show if that will satisfy him."

The Quixotic strain of the Englishman was coming out in him.  They
observed him in wonder.  "Giving him a fair show?" they queried in a
breath.

He drawled very slowly.  "I mean to say," he said, "I broke his leg.
I beat him once, but I had some assistance; if he fancies he can give
me a licking fair and square, I don't mind giving him a trial,
provided, of course, that that is really what is worrying him, you
understand."

Bounce nodded, a compound now of comprehension and disapproval, his
face expressed a keen appreciation of the principle involved, but a
strong objection to the practice suggested.  "It's revenge 'e's
after, 'e don't want no fair play.  Them sort o' blokes don't
appreciate fair play.  You give 'im a licking once, 'e wants to give
you one in the back now.  Most like you could buy 'im off."

"A mixture of threats and bribes," Darwen suggested.  "We'll capture
him and frighten the wits out of him; say that we're going to give
him in charge for attempted murder.  Then you can offer him a small
sum to go away and stay away.  We'll explain that if he ever gets
within speaking distance of you again, you'll promptly have him
arrested."

"That's it," Bounce agreed.

"I suppose that is the best," Carstairs said, thoughtfully.  "Do you
know I feel when I think of him that a damn good licking is the only
thing I can offer him.  Yet when I consider that the poor devil is
permanently lame because--well, because I went off with his girl,
well, dash it, he has my entire sympathy.  In my case I remember
distinctly that it gave me a sensation of extreme pleasure to think I
was whacking that brute for the sake of the girl.  I'm not exactly
pugilistic, but I've never experienced anything so pleasureable as
the one or two smites I got home on him with the idea that they were
for the girl.  I can understand the persistence with which he is
following me.  She's the finest girl in all the world."  His keen
grey eyes seemed to glow with a fierce ardour.  At that moment he was
violently in love.

They looked at him in open wonder.

He stood up and stretched himself.  "I should feel a better man if I
went out now and searched out that gipsy and bashed him, and then
went straight across to the girl and married her.  What the devil are
these wishy-washy dances, these tuppenny ha'penny jobs, this sham
respectability?  Simply a drag on a man's actions.  I want to do
something."

Bounce nodded vigorously.  "You're fit," he said, "trained fine.  In
the pink of condition.  That's how you feels when you comes ashore
after a three months' cruise.  'To hell with everything.  Let's do
something.'  That's it, ain't it?"

"That's it precisely."

"How you feel at the end of the 'footer' season," Darwen chimed in.
"Or when a match is postponed and you've got to dissipate your
energies on the desert air.  Usually you make a thundering idiot of
yourself."

"I suppose that is so, but you enjoy it."  Carstairs became
thoughtful again.  "There are only certain times, practically
moments, when you can do these things; you do not appreciate them in
your normal condition, besides there's the guv'nor and the mater, and
really I know very little about the girl."

Darwen clapped him on the shoulder.  "Wake up, old chap!  You're
dreaming.  You can't marry a gipsy girl; she'd want to feed you on
gipsy stew and half-hatched pheasant's eggs."

"When you goes off to-night at twelve o'clock, me and Mister Darwen
will shadow you like, and catch this yer Sam if he's knocking about.
I'll have a line in my pocket so's we can tie him up."  Bounce was
very serious; he turned to Darwen.  "When shall I meet you, sir?"

"Oh, at the corner, at five minutes to twelve."

"Five minutes to twelve at the corner?  Very good, sir.  Good night."
Bounce was just going when a boy came in to say that a policeman had
come to report some street light out.  Darwen went out to see him.
"Half a minute," he said.  He was back in a few moments with glowing
eyes.  "By Jove! that's a whacking great chap, somewhere near seven
feet, I should think."

Bounce snorted.  "Them big blokes ain't much use," he observed.

"Would you like to take him on for a few rounds, Bounce?"

"Well now, maybe 'e'd be mistook if 'e was to try to 'lift' me an' I
didn't want to go."

Darwen clapped his hands.  "Well done.  I'll tell you what.  We'll
put down five bob for the winner and half a crown for the loser, and
you shall mutually arrest each other.  Start at the boiler house and
you chuck him into the street, or he lugs you into the engine room.
How's that?"

"Very good, sir.  If 'e'll take on, that five bob's mine."  The
little sailor was very confident.

"Hurray!"  Darwen rushed out to the door to interview the policeman
and explain the terms to him.  The big man's eyes glistened.  "There
ain't no man in this town as I can't arrest," he said.  He glanced up
and down the street.  "You'll make it all right if the sergeant
comes, sir?  You wanted my assistance to eject a drunk bloke or
something, eh?" he winked, knowingly.

"That's alright.  We'll put a boy to watch for the sergeant."

"Right you are, sir."  The big man followed Darwen into the engine
room with long, stately strides and easy, confident air.  He towered
a good six inches over Darwen's head.

Bounce stood up and eyed him up and down, then he put his hands to
his mouth and gave a mock hail.  "Main top there!" he yelled.

The policeman smiled.  "Don't you come talking to growed-up men," he
said.  "Shall I take 'im now, sir?"

"Half a minute," Carstairs said.  "Let's weigh the combatants."

So they proceeded in solemn procession to the coal scales.

Bounce was eleven stone eight and a half pounds.  "'E oughtn't to be
out without his p'rambulator," the guardian of the law remarked, as
he stepped into the scales, and brought them up with a bang.  They
shifted the weight along the rod till at nineteen stone eight and a
half pounds it balanced.

Bounce nodded approval.  "'E'd go near ten stone with 'is boots off,"
he said, with conviction.

"How tall are you?" Darwen asked.

"Six feet and a half.  I was the tallest man in the Grenadier Guards
when I was in it."

They went back to the boiler house and stood in a clear space under
an arc lamp.  The policeman took off his long coat and helmet, "In
case 'e wipes 'is boots in it while I'm carrying of 'im."

"Open them big doors," Bounce requested, "so as I won't 'ave to push
'im through the window."

The two men stood facing each other with smiling, confident faces.
The big man stretched out a hand that would have supplied a whole
cannibal tribe with a substantial meal.  "Are you coming quiet?" he
asked.

"No!  I ain't," Bounce answered, circling slowly round him.

The whole works watched in eagerness.

Suddenly the big man made a short rush and a grab, but Bounce was not
there; instead he had dived at the policeman's legs and pulled him
down.  He made another grab as he was falling, but the sailor was
like an eel.  He dodged, and slipping round to the back of him, took
a grip with both hands on the policeman's collar.  "Open them doors,"
he shouted, shuffling backwards and dragging the big man all along
the dirty floor.

The entire staff, on the broad grin, lined the doorway, as Bounce
dragged his burden through and deposited it on the pavement.  Then he
stood up and tossed his shoulders with a jaunty, nautical air.  "Now,
my lad, you run away, and play with the nurse-maids," he said.

In angry silence the policeman reached out for his helmet and coat;
Darwen slipped half a crown into his hand, and he went out into the
night, tramping sullenly along his beat.

Bounce beamed and pocketed his five shillings.  "Them big blokes
ain't never no use," he said.  "Five minutes to twelve?  Good night,
sir!"  He departed.  But Darwen sat down on the edge of the table.

"Wonderful chap, Bounce."  They chatted for some minutes, then
dropped into silence.  Darwen broke it.

"For God's sake, Carstairs, don't go and do anything silly over that
gipsy girl.  It would break your poor old guv'nor's heart; he was
holding forth to me, when you were out, about how very careful a
young man ought to be to avoid awkward entanglements: you were so
very steady, he said.  I think he rather fancied I was not so steady.
'Young men fly into an engagement with a girl because she sings
nicely or something superficial like that.'  Does the gipsy sing?"
Darwen laughed.

"Yes, said she sang very well."

"Did she?  What becoming modesty."

"She was natural, that's all.  Her father told her she was good, and
she repeated it."

"Her father?  I didn't know that gipsies were always certain on these
points.  Did you see him?"

"Oh, yes, spoke to him; at least, listened to his music."

"His music?"  Darwen made a motion of turning a handle.

"Oh, no; the violin.  I'm not much of an authority on these things,
but it seemed to me good, exceedingly good, the best I'd heard."

"This is interesting.  Couldn't you introduce me to the family?"

"No.  For the sake of my peace of mind I shall have to avoid that
girl like the very devil."

"My dear chap! probably St James, the footman, has already supplanted
you in the lady's affections.  Wonderfully fascinating chaps, those
footmen.  By the way, it's not usual for gipsies to go into domestic
service, is it?"

"No, I don't think it is."  Carstairs pulled out his watch.  "I must
go and have a look round; the load is heavy to-night."  He opened the
door and Darwen followed him.

They went out through the engine room into the boiler house.
Carstairs brightened up at once, the hum of running machinery, and
the bustle of working men, was the breath of life to him; his face
hardened and his eye brightened with the "splendid purpose."  Darwen
observed him closely.

"You're a born engineer, you know, Carstairs."

"Do you think so?  Sometimes I think so myself."  He looked around
him with keen appreciation at the long row of boilers under steam,
with the furnace-doors red hot, "a beautiful orange glow" he was wont
to describe it as; at the coal-grimed, brawny men, with the sweat
running off them as they sliced up the dazzling white fires.  He
gazed critically into the blinding glare as they opened the red hot
doors, the radiant heat scorched his face and the intense light
dazzled his eyes, so that for some minutes afterwards everything was
green and blue to him.  He looked at the men with their hard, strong
faces and their bare muscular arms and chests, the whole scene gave
him a sensation of extreme pleasure.  To him it was more than
beautiful, it was sublime.  A sensation of majestic force, of
overwhelming power, such as a towering mountain, the limitless ocean,
or a vast moorland conjure up.  This sensation was his now, and it
was uplifting, artistic; he felt beyond the earth; yet in many ways
there was little of the artist in him, he was essentially of the
earth, earthly.  Such is the best type of that modern product, the
Engineer.

And that you may know him when you meet him, I will tell you that he
is rather a rare bird.  At the present time, probably, no profession
contains more "wasters" than electrical engineering; this is because
any man who can persuade a mayor and corporation or a chief engineer
to give him the job, can take charge of many thousands of horse-power
in boilers, and engines and dynamos, with infinite possibilities of
damage, and the lives of many men resting on his direction, nerve and
knowledge.  Those dear men, who scorn to take an interest in their
work, are not the breed I mean; nor are those greasy individuals who
have arrived, oilcan in hand, from the engine bed: they are practical
they say, which means that their minds are a storehouse of
undoubtedly useful facts, they have a fairly clear recollection of a
great number of engineering possibilities which they have actually
witnessed; but, their reasoning powers are undeveloped, and their
methods of procedure on new lines are particularly hap-hazard trial
and error.  The engineer to whom I refer is essentially a man of
science; he is mathematical, theoretical, and practical; he holds an
engineering degree and has been through the "shops"; he understands
both men and materials and the methods of handling them; frequently
he is a lonely sort of savage.  He knows little of billiards, cards,
or dancing; his work precludes him from much intercourse with other
men except in business hours; often he is silent and somewhat shy
with women; usually he is of good physique and logically minded; his
life-work is the pursuit of truth; in the "shops" he learns to file
"truly," then he learns to set a thing in the lathe "truly."  He
tests his finished work carefully to see that it runs "true," and on
the test plate he learns to measure accurately, in the drawing office
to calculate exactly; he works under, with, and over the working man,
and learns to know him better than anyone else; he does not shine at
football or cricket, but is often a particularly useful man in a
rough and tumble fight, an accomplishment he acquires in his progress
through the "shops"; he is an individual; he thinks and sees things
as they are, for that is what his work teaches him; he regards things
carefully, observing their quality, and speculating on the process of
their manufacture; he sums up men quickly.  In my opinion, he is only
inferior to the sailor.

The æsthetic soul of Darwen was moved, too.  "You're making 'em do
their damnedest," he observed.

Carstairs nodded.  "That's what I like; you know the Yankee
definition, 'An engineer is a man who can do for one dollar what any
fool can do for two.'  It's not bad, but like most Yankee things,
it's cheap and incomplete."

"The taint of the cheapness, old chap, is passing from the Americans
to us.  You can get quality in the States, if you pay for it, now."

"That is so in some things, and to my mind that's the most marked
sign of progress; the nation without quality is as a house built upon
the sand.  The moral effect on the workman who manufactures cheap
articles must be disastrous."

"The workmen, dear boy, are the people, and the people are mud.  That
is the one point upon which I disagree with dear old Nick
Machiavelli."

"And probably, as far as I know, the one point on which I agree with
him, if he says the people are not mud."

"He does.  He quotes a proverb, 'He who builds on the people, builds
on mud,' and disagrees with it.  Personally, I think the people, the
mass, don't matter tuppence.  Our officers have made the riff raff of
all nations fight like tigers."

"That's not correct.  A relative of mine was in Ashantee, and the
coast niggers there ran like sheep.  They had to give them up as
fighting material."

"Perhaps so, but it's only the exception that proves the rule, and
that was because we were hampered by sentiment.  A coward rightly
handled, that is to say, brutally handled, will achieve more than
many really brave men."

"I very much doubt that too.  I get good results by giving the
stokers a drink occasionally."

"Also you curse them occasionally."

"Well, not exactly curse them; you can't listen to all their
complaints; some of 'em would never do any work at all if you did."

"Quite so!"  They passed on into the engine room.  "I observe again,
Carstairs, that you make them do their damnedest."

"Again, I explain that I like doing so."

"Your coal costs are always points below mine."

"I am aware of it."

"Yet I bet the chief and old Robinson don't think any the more of you
for it."

"I have heard that the chief so far committed himself as to say that
you were the best engineer he'd ever had."

"I heard so too, which goes to prove my point.  You are paid in this
world, not for pleasing yourself, but pleasing others.  I believe I
could get my costs down to yours, but the chief and Robinson are
eminently 'safe' men.  I shall never get a shut-down.  Old Robinson
is on tenter hooks whenever you are on evening shift.  'That chap
cuts things too fine,' he told me the other day."

"Did he?  Well! he always leaves me severely alone on the evening
shift."

"Of course, because if you get a shut-down it will be 'in the
unavoidable absence of Mr Robinson or Mr Chief.'  See?"

"Yes; I see and comprehend, but don't care."

Darwen's eyes glistened with honest admiration.  "There is much of
the aboriginal Saxon in you, Carstairs, with your grey eyes and light
hair and that big, bull-dog jaw.  Rightly, you should worship Thor
and Odin, the gods of force.  It's absurd for your guv'nor to be a
minister of the Christian religion."

"I agree with your last point; we're a family of seamen, really.  We
worship Neptune."

"Ah! the sea, water, steam, electricity.  Hence Jack Carstairs,
electrical engineer, seaman twice removed, eh?"

"About that."

"These things are always interesting.  It is essential to understand
the machine you work with, and the people you live with.  To properly
grip the bent of a man's mind, it is necessary to know his
antecedents.  The seaman, we observe, has a natural aptitude for
engineering, coupled with great tenacity and self-reliance, a
particularly good friend, a just, but particularly unpleasant enemy;
a touch of sentiment and superstition, the results of much battering
and erratic favours from Father Neptune.  The gipsy, on the other----"

"Oh, damn that gipsy," Carstairs flushed an angry red.

"Here we have a most interesting relic of the Berserk rage of the
Norseman.  If within reach, that gipsy would have a particularly
rough time just at this moment."

"Oh, go to the devil, Darwen."

"Thanks very much for the advice, but I will return to the gipsy,
who, as I was about to observe, is, on the other hand, naturally a
poacher and very vindictive, and will therefore have to be poached,
that is to say, captured by stealth which----"

A sudden flash like miniature lightning illuminated the engine room,
followed immediately by a loud report.

Carstairs' big jaw tightened.  Darwen's eyes glittered with an
æsthetic sort of joy.  "Breakdown," he observed, "and I'm a
spectator."

A circuit fuse had blown, and was instantly followed by a continuous
flash and bang of some half dozen fuses, going one after the other,
like a straggling volley of small artillery.  By an ingenious
inter-connection of the network of main supply cables it is arranged
that if one circuit fuse goes half a dozen immediately follow suit.
This is one of the many diabolical devices on which mains
superintendents particularly pride themselves.  Carstairs strode up
on to the switchboard, very alert, but very cool.  He switched out
all the switches, replaced the fuses by bigger ones, and switched in
again, the switchboard attendant assisting him in a high state of
nervous excitement.  Now there is a piece of apparatus known as a
magnetic automatic circuit breaker.  It is carefully designed to come
out at the wrong time and stay in at all other times; the good chief
of Southville, in the simplicity of his trust in catalogues, had,
"for safety," as he expressed it, two of these devices fixed on every
machine; when, therefore, Carstairs plugged in again on the heavier
fuses, these "safety" devices promptly opened, one after the other,
all except one small one, which hung in with a tenacity worthy of a
better cause.  The station was plunged into instant inky darkness,
relieved only by fitful flashes from the commutators of the idle
machines, the governor of one of which having stuck, it raced away in
a frantic effort to burst its fly-wheel and wreck the engine room;
the one small machine, left all alone struggling valiantly with a
load four times too big for it, first of all stopped dead till its
field died away, then pounded into the work with little spurts and
pauses, being helped out with a little juice from the kindly, helpful
battery (which was ruining itself in the process).  All the boiler
feed pumps, fans, and condenser pumps stopped.  (The chief, being a
wireman, liked to have all the accessories electrically driven.)
Pandemonium at once reigned.  There was much shouting in the
darkness, an engine-driver and a stoker, in their frantic efforts to
do something, collided violently, and collapsed on the floor,
groaning, to the accompaniment of soft nothings, whispered sweetly to
the empty air; the boilers blew off, the steam roared and shrieked
out of twelve safety valves like ten thousand fiends let loose; they
were blowing off for high steam first of all, and very shortly
afterwards for low water as well.  In the middle of it all, the
alternators (which were unaffected) hummed merrily in the darkness,
while the telephone bell screamed an angry protest from an adjacent
wall.  At such moments the meek and lowly Shift Engineer feels that
he is really alive; his only wish is that his chief may happen to
drop in and share his happiness with him, or one or two of the
councillors; he could accommodate them all with comfortable seats on
the safety valves, and the possibility of a quick passage to heaven
by the shortest route, straight upwards.  Most chiefs are worse than
useless on a switchboard during a breakdown; the Shift Engineer,
handling the switches every day of his life, sometimes makes mistakes
when he is in a hurry; the chief, who handles them once a year,
always does; usually his nerves are not as steady as they should be;
he wants to know what the Shift Engineer is going to do, and why he
doesn't do it at once, then, just to add to the general concert, he
plugs in a wrong switch.  Councillors generally stand like fools, and
wonder what it's all about, or else button-hole the Shift Engineer
and demand an immediate explanation.  In this case, no one appeared
to hinder him, and Carstairs proceeded all alone.  Striking a match,
he went along the switchboard and pulled out all the circuit
switches; the little machine and the battery, pulling together, then
raced away joyously and lit up the station with a superabundant
light; the switchboard attendant soon altered that, however, and
Carstairs went quickly round the boiler house, switching out all the
pumps, etc., as very few of them had "no load releases" on, and some
that had were tied in; he glanced up at the boiler water gauges as he
passed, for he did not want cold water to be suddenly pumped into
empty boilers.  It took him precisely one minute before he returned
to the switchboard and put in the circuit breakers one by one, tieing
them in with a piece of insulated wire.  "Now!" he said, "we'll start
again, more or less in comfort."

He plugged in a circuit and the fuse held though the lights grew dim,
and the machines flashed and groaned.  The switchboard attendant
plugged in another, and the fuse blew in his face.  He stood
shielding his eyes in a dazed sort of way, the flash had temporarily
blinded him.  In those days things in central stations were carefully
designed to kill and maim as many as possible; men have become more
expensive since and a little more care is taken of them, almost as
much, in fact, as of the machines.  The fuses on this low tension
switchboard were accurately adjusted to the level of an average man's
eyes and the instrument placed just beneath, as a sort of bait, so
that as he took a reading he got the full benefit of the flash and
the molten metal flying about if a fuse went, which they did
frequently.  Carstairs stood up and pulled the switch out, he then
replaced the fuse and switched in again.  The machine gave a groan,
and a fuse at the other end of the board blew simultaneously with the
one he had just replaced.

Ejaculating a little word that went in rhyme with 'jam,' he brought
the volts down again.  "Here, shove in that other fuse, will you?
Put a bigger one this time."

The switchboard attendant was dancing round like one possessed,
fumbling and twitching.  Carstairs replaced his fuse and went along
to look at his assistant.  He watched him fumbling for a few minutes,
then took it out of his hands.  "Go and sit down," he said.  He
finished the job himself.  "Stand clear there!"  He motioned the
switchboard attendant back.  "Stand by those engines.  Watch the
brushes and bring them forward when they spark, far forward.  Do you
hear?"

"Yes, sir," the engine drivers answered.  They stood in expectant
attitudes by their respective engines just below the switchboard
gallery.

"Alright!"  He plugged in, one after the other, ducking his head out
of the way of the possible flash.  The fuses held.  "Bring her up
there!  Steady, not too quickly!  Whoa!"  He held up his hand with
the fingers outspread, then made a circular motion.  "Get round
number five," he shouted.

Promptly the driver ran up another engine, and Carstairs put her on.
He leaned over the railing and shouted down to Darwen, "I say, would
you mind ringing up Farrell and telling him I'm pumping 500 amps
extra into something on the Moorfields Road?"

Darwen laughed.  "Right you are, old chap."

Farrell was the mains superintendent; it was his pleasant duty to
turn out of his bed, round up a gang of navvies, and dig holes in the
street all night to ascertain what that "something" was, and remove
it.  The only consolation a Shift Engineer feels for the arduousness
of his existence is that sometimes the mains man (whose life is
usually cast in pleasant places) has even a rougher time than he has.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how electricity is "made"--the
same as everything else that is any good--by the sweat of men.  And
as men woo nature, and she reveals her secrets to them, she demands,
in return, ever better and better of their best.  Man moves, not to
peace and plenty, to cowardice and luxury, but to sublime courage and
arduous, soulful work, and he may not look back.

Half an hour later, Farrell, a fat, prosperous looking individual,
rode up on a bicycle.

"Is it still on?" he asked.

"No, cleared itself some time ago."

"Damn!  Just my luck!  We shall have the devil's own job to find it
now."

The two Shift Engineers laughed.  "Sorry it's not raining, Farrell,"
Darwen observed.

"It's all very well for you chaps to laugh."  Farrell went away in
disgust.

Soon a little stream of men filtered in; jointers, half awake and
surly; navvies, limply, subdued, bearing pick and shovel; it meant
overtime for them.

Darwen and Carstairs stood on the doorway and watched them disappear
into the night with a hand-cart full of tools and instruments.

They had been gone some time, Carstairs was preparing to go home,
when the telephone bell rang violently.  It was Farrell, very
excited.  "What do you think?" he asked.  "Got it first shot, just
outside that big house at the corner.  When the lights went out, the
footman was rushing about to get candles and lamps and unearthed a
burglar, the burglar they think, skulking in the shrubbery.  He
bolted at once and the footman chased him all down the road.  He'd
have got away too, but a paving stone blew up right under his feet
and tripped him up.  Of course, that's the fault we were looking for."

"Of course; but how do they know he's a burglar?"

"Oh, he had a bludgeon with him and a big knife.  One of the windows
had been forced, and they found some jewellery in his pockets."

"Have you seen him?  What's he like?"

"A rough looking handful, they say, sort of a gipsy, a bit lame in
one leg, but he ran like a hare.  Strong as a tiger too, nearly
strangled the footman before help arrived.  The police have noticed
him skulking round that neighbourhood for some time."

"Is that so?  Well, he's done us a good turn, anyhow."  Carstairs was
very casual, very slow, there was no emotion whatever in his voice;
he said, "good night," and rang off.  "Ye gods," he ejaculated to
himself.  "That's my way home, of course.  Wonder what he'll get?
Jewellery in his pockets, too, those great big pockets, built for
hares and pheasants.  'To what ignoble uses,' etc., as Darwen would
say.  Still 'living on the country,' I suppose, as they call it in
warfare."

About a quarter of an hour afterwards he saw Darwen and Bounce.  It
was with a keen sense of amusement that he observed them "shadowing"
him.  He slipped into a gateway and waited unobserved till they
approached, and then sprang out on them unawares.

"What the devil are you chaps following me for?" he demanded with
mock severity.

"Hang it all, Carstairs, you fool.  Play the game!  You've probably
spoilt the whole show now."

"I'm sorry, but it's not necessary now, the man's in 'quod' for
burgling."

"What!"

Carstairs told them the tale.

"Well, I'm blowed, these 'ere police are always shoving their noses
into somebody else's business," Bounce growled.

That night Carstairs slept with singular peacefulness.




CHAPTER XI

With keen curiosity Carstairs turned up at the police court to watch
the trial of "Sam Lee, of no fixed abode," on a charge of burglary.
The prisoner pleaded not guilty, but the evidence was too damning,
and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

Carstairs came away with a feeling of relief like a schoolboy on
holidays.  Any lingering feeling of pity that he had entertained for
the man he felt he had wronged, was dispelled by the sight of the
hard, savage face in the dock.  He studied it closely at his leisure
and in the daylight, as the man stood there on his defence, the beau
ideal of the Bill Sykes of fiction.  A face of very great animal
strength, showing extreme tenacity of purpose, and unrestrained
passion, in every line of the features; he was considerably thicker
and heavier about the chest and shoulders than when Carstairs had met
him face to face in the dim light of the dawn in Scotland; the eyes
had not the shifty, suspicious expression that one associates with
the habitual criminal; they were dark and deep set, protected by
massive bony projections all round; eyebrow and cheek bone rose in
strong relief above and below; the eye itself was steady and slowly
moving, it glowed with a sort of slumbering, malignant hatred; he
looked the magistrate and the police and everyone else steadily in
the eyes with a surly defiance.  This was the child of the moorland
and the wood transplanted to the slums, absorbing into the depths of
his strong, deep nature the terrible germs of the diseased life of
the city.  Apparently he didn't see Carstairs, or if he did, he gave
no sign of recognition.

The following Sunday Darwen was on shift, but Carstairs went to
church all alone, to St James'.  On the way out the vicar's wife and
two daughters met him.  The good lady greeted him effusively.

"And where's Mr Darwen?" she asked.  Carstairs observed that both the
daughters' eyes seemed to light up with super-added interest as they
awaited his reply.  "He's on shift," he said.

"How horrid," the elder daughter remarked, "to have to go
to--er--business on Sunday."

Carstairs laughed.  "Call it work," he said, "sort of thing you take
your coat off to."

"But not on Sunday?"

"Well, perhaps a little less than on other days.  As a matter of fact
it's mostly pretence, just to show you are really ready if necessary.
But what you really do is to walk about with your eyes and ears as
wide open as they'll go, like the officer of a ship, you know."

"Oh, but the officers do more than that.  I've seen them."

"So do we sometimes; in fact, in some of the cheap and nasty
stations, where the chief is an ex-ironmonger, and the councillors
are labourers out of a job, we have to do quite a lot with our hands,
and so, of course, do less with our heads."

"Why! the chief here is an ex-ironmonger, isn't he?"  Carstairs
raised his eyebrows.  "Not exactly an ironmonger, was he?"

The vicar's wife intervened.  "Do you think he is really competent?
There has been a lot of dissatisfaction in the town, you know."

"Well, we caught a burglar for you the other night," Carstairs evaded
the question.

"Yes, I'm so glad!  Oh!  I hope you and Mr Darwen will come to our
little dances; we hold a series every winter, you know.  They're
rather nice.  Mrs Mellor is the moving spirit and men are so scarce.
They start soon now."

"Thanks very much, I shall be very pleased to, and I know Darwen
will."

Talking thus, Carstairs accompanied them till their ways divided,
then he proceeded thoughtfully by himself to his diggings.  He sat
down in the big easy chair.  Darwen's book-shelf was at his elbow; he
glanced idly along the names on the backs.  "Curious taste for an
engineer to read poetry," he mused.  His eye rested on "The Prince"
by Machiavelli.  "Darwen's favourite," he thought.  He took it down
and glanced through it.  It was a dainty, leather-covered volume with
gilt edges.  Three hours later when Darwen returned, he found
Carstairs deeply immersed in the last chapter of his favourite book.

He looked at him curiously.  "Hullo!  Got 'The Prince,' have you?
How do you like it?"

"Well, I want to think about it.  He seems to point out that you
mustn't do things by halves.  By the way, I went to church this
morning."

"Good man."

"Had a long yarn with Mrs Moorhouse and the little Moorhouses."

"What had they got to say for themselves?"

"Said the lights were bad."

"Good."

"And that the chief was an ironmonger."

"Good."

"And they've got some dances coming off which they hope we'll attend."

"You said we would, of course."

"Yes, and to-morrow I'm going to look up a dancing expert and take
lessons.  It's as well to do the thing well while you're about it."

"I say again, Carstairs, there's much of the original Saxon in you.
How long did it take you to come to this decision?"

"About half an hour--that is to say, it took me that time to decide
that I would go in for dancing.  The rest followed as a sort of
corollary."

Darwen's eyes gleamed with approval.  "I'll play you a tune," he
said; he struck a note idly and listened to the vibrations
tentatively for a few moments.  "The foundation of engineering
science is a knowledge of the strength of material," he observed
thoughtfully.  "Before one builds a bridge or an engine it is
necessary to correctly apportion the size and quality of the various
parts."  He struck up into a lively dance tune.

"That's a waltz, isn't it?"

"Yes, why?"

"I want to get the hang of the tune, that's all."

Darwen laughed, and rattled on waltz after waltz, till he was tired.

Next day Carstairs consulted the local directory and made a note of
all the teachers of dancing, and for the following three weeks, he
waltzed for an hour a day, as regular as clockwork.  Darwen
alternately chaffed and encouraged him, but he took it all alike with
a steady, tolerant smile, puffing slowly at his pipe.  Then the first
of the little dances came off; a select gathering of about sixty
dancers with two dear old ladies to see that the proprieties were
observed.  It was a suite of rooms in a comparatively big house which
had once been the residence of wealthy gentlemen, but had now dropped
into the professional quarters of a dancing master.  Carstairs
acquitted himself with credit, and Darwen with distinction.  He
spotted the elder Miss Jameson (daughter of the chairman of the
electricity committee) and asked to be introduced; he danced three
times with her with great success.

She was rather small, distinctly pretty, of the doll type; with
innocent, wide-open, blue eyes, and a perfect little mouth.  She was
a good talker in a slightly affected juvenile sort of way; her brain,
however, was more active than it appeared; she had a lively sense of
precisely what was best for Miss Jameson.  Darwen was a good talker
too, so they rattled on brightly and humorously from one subject to
another.  She had a fine sense of humour, which he appreciated
immensely.  He brought the subject round to the electricity works.

"I'm assisting the corporation on its way to bankruptcy," he
remarked, laughing lightly.

"How?" she enquired, and he observed by the solid interest in her eye
that she had swallowed the bait.

"Oh!  I'm not doing it maliciously, of course, only following my
instructions, which are, to waste coal."

"Really?" she asked, in doubt how to take him.

He laughed again.  "I'm not giving it away to the poor, or anything
of that sort, you know.  But we're very, very safe here, safe from
possible failure as far as steam goes, and the price we pay for our
safety is high, excessive, it seems to me, in the matter of coal."

"Oh, but it's better to be safe, isn't it?"

"I don't know!  Life is run on sporting chances, you know.  It's the
ultra-cautious man who makes a mess of things and dies young."

She laughed.  "I went over the electricity works once with father and
Mr Jones."

"What did you think of it?"

"Just nothing at all.  Father and Mr Jones were explaining one
against the other.  I don't think either of them knew much about it."

"Poor Jones! he's not really an engineer, you know."

"No, I know; he used to keep an ironmonger's shop."

"So I've heard.  Would you care to come round again under--h'm--more
competent guidance?"

She laughed lightly and fixed him at once.  "Thanks, very much, I
will, and I shall bring a friend, an awfully clever girl, a B.Sc.
She's interested in these sort of things, and mother."

"I shall be really delighted; as long as you come, I don't care who
you bring."

On their way home after it was all over, Darwen said to Carstairs,
"Truly, fortune favours the bold.  Do you remember that passage of
old Nick's about fortune and women, that they both favoured the
young?  Youth is simply a matter of indiscretions; many old fools of
sixty ought to be wheeled round in perambulators."

Carstairs paused to light a cigarette, his face illuminated by the
fitful flare of the match, was pre-occupied, absent.  "From which I
conclude," he observed between the puffs, "that you have been
indiscreet."

"Not indiscreet, simply bold, and you, you seem to have something on
your mind."

"Ye--es!  It's being borne in upon me very forcibly that there is no
girl that I have met yet to compare in face or form or intelligence,
that is to say, my idea of intelligence, with a certain gipsy maiden
in Scotland, or at least, Chilcombe."

Darwen's eyes gleamed--the thrill of the waltz, the excitement of the
evening, was in his blood.  "Damme!  I must see this girl.  I observe
that in many things our tastes agree, perhaps I may be able to
relieve you of her."

"No!  By Jove! you won't!"  Carstairs faced round abruptly and looked
him in the eyes.

They looked at each other for some moments, then Darwen smiled.  "By
Jove, Carstairs, you are badly hit."

"Well, perhaps I am.  But, you know, none of those girls to-night
gave me an impression of genuineness; artificial and superficial,
stereotyped, unoriginal, like the pawns on a chess-board, only
capable of moving (intellectually) in one direction; they all held
precisely the same views on precisely the same subjects, and they had
absolutely no reasons for holding them, and yet they are so
superlative."

"Dear boy, they're young."

"So was the kid.  Seventeen, I think she said.  Yet she gave me the
impression of having thought about things."

"You're Saxon, Germanic, heavy.  Have you read any German philosophy?"

"No!  Why?"

"It suggests lager beer and sausage, many generations of 'em.  Flat,
ponderous, indigestible.  I prefer champagne, and--er--some of those
French dishes, you know."

"No, I don't know."

"Well! damn you for a Saxon, I don't either, but I've heard of 'em.
You ought to have said you knew!  Don't you see how you prick the
effervescing bubbles of conversation?"

"Not at all!  It seems to me I'm keeping it going."

"Yes, with a sledge hammer."

"Alright.  England was built with the sledge hammer.  I admit that
I'm naturally a slogger."

"Precisely; you prefer the cutlass to the rapier."

"Not a bit, I prefer the twelve-inch gun.  Which brings me naturally
to Bounce.  Do you admire Bounce?"

"I do."

"Then I can explain.  Bounce bears the same relation to the other men
that the gipsy kid bears to other girls."

"Then I admit that she must be good."

They let themselves into their diggings, and Darwen sat down in an
easy chair, and whistling softly to himself one of the tunes he had
just been dancing to, he gazed absently in front of him, but there
was a happy light in his eyes; he stopped whistling suddenly and
addressed Carstairs, who was mixing himself a whiskey and soda.

"Do you know I have an idea that our respected chief will not be with
us much longer?"

"Why?"

"He'll get the sack, or have to resign."

"In that case he'll get his deserts.  Can't understand how he got the
job."

"No, you have no comprehension whatever of the rapier, or perhaps we
should say the stiletto, or the back stairs."

"Suppose Robinson will get the job."

"Robinson will go first, I'm afraid."  There was a touch of real
sorrow in Darwen's voice.

"You're a funny chap, you know, Darwen.  Who's going to get it, then?"

"Well, I shall have a shot for it, of course.  How would you like
Robinson's job?"

"First class, for a time."

"Precisely.  'For a time.'  I don't imagine that either of us will
petrify here."  Darwen's eyes had a strangely humorous glitter, he
arose and stretched his arms above his head and yawned.  "Good-night,
old chap!"

"Good-night."

A few days later Darwen showed Mrs and Miss Jameson and their clever
friend (who was also exceedingly plain, such is the balance of
nature) round the works.  Carstairs was on shift.  His coat was off,
his hands grimy.  Darwen introduced him, the old lady and the clever
girl took possession of him.  The clever girl catechised and examined
Carstairs like a police court lawyer.  The old lady listened with
dignity and entire mental oblivion.

Darwen and Miss Jameson wandered off by themselves.

While the clever girl was asking Carstairs for precise chemical
information as to the residual scale left in the boiler, Darwen was
explaining in an obscure corner of the works that that collection of
big tanks was a water softener, where there were great big hammers
going round to crack up the lumps in the water.

Carstairs and the clever girl argued about "ides" and "ates."  Darwen
and the pretty girl laughed and joked and made ribald remarks in the
face of dignified 1000 H.P. engines.

A week later the second of the little dances came off.  Carstairs
took it seriously, and Darwen lightly.  One of the dear old ladies
who acted as chaperone this time was Mrs Jameson.  Darwen was most
attentive.  He fetched her wraps when she got cold, and saw that she
had a liberal supply of the best refreshments going.  He was asked to
call on Sunday.

He did so.  The old doctor and he discussed the electricity works.
"The place ought to pay, you know," Darwen said, and the doctor shook
his head.

Then a big dance came off, and Darwen sent Miss Jameson a spray of
flowers, white roses.  He was a regular caller at the house now.

It was well into December and the mayor was holding a huge reception
at the Town Hall, when the electric light failed and could not be got
on again.  Darwen was on shift.  The entire switchboard was burnt
down.  The mayor in his robes and the other councillors in evening
dress, descended in anger upon the works, which were not far from the
Town Hall.  The chief was away, but Robinson was sent for in a cab.
He came, he saw, and remained helpless and useless.

Darwen was very cool and very civil, but the councillors did not
bully him, he stood inches taller than any one of them, and there was
a sort of snaky glitter in his eye; he did not seem the sort of man
to be bullied.  It was obvious he was master of the situation, the
massive-looking Robinson was in a pitiable state of collapse.

Next day in answer to a wire the chief returned.  The gods (which is
the press) called for a human sacrifice.  The local influence of
Robinson was big, but the chairman seemed unaccountably heavy in
favour of Darwen; then the mayor and several aldermen had seen that
Darwen knew his work, while apparently Robinson did not.  The chief
sacked Robinson, and Darwen, as next in seniority, was promoted in
his stead.

A month later the engagement of Darwen to Miss Jameson was publicly
announced.

All this time Carstairs had pursued the even tenor of his way
undisturbed.  He grew more silent and thoughtful than ever; of Darwen
he saw very little, except when they met at the works, or at dances,
which Carstairs still consistently attended.  There was a light of
triumph continually in Darwen's eyes; he seemed very happy over his
engagement.  After he was made chief assistant he and Carstairs saw
more of each other at the works; they spent long hours in
consultation about the work, a common bond seemed to be drawing them
even closer together.  One day Carstairs remarked, "I'm going home
for a week end next week.  Would you and Miss Jameson care to come
with me?"

"Thanks, old man, I should like to go, and I think the girl would
too."

On the Saturday afternoon the three of them set out for Chilcombe.
When they arrived there was quite a house party.  Stephen, Jack's
artist brother, was at home, and Commander John Carstairs and the
Bevengtons were invited to spend Sunday.  As the five big men sat
smoking after dinner, the old vicar repeated his congratulations to
Darwen.  "I hope Jack will be as lucky," he observed.  "Hasn't he
shown any decided preference at any of those dances yet?"

"No! honestly I can't say that I've observed it."

"Oh, but Jack's booked," Commander Carstairs remarked.

"How?  To whom?"

"Why! the girl he pulled out of the river, of course.  You can't get
out of that, Jack."

"Pulled out of the river?" Darwen asked in surprise.  "You never told
me, Jack."

"No.  I don't think the subject ever arose, did it?" Jack puffed
solemnly at his pipe.

"There's no need to talk about it, it's a settled thing, eh, Jack?"
the sailor would not be denied his chaff.

They looked expectantly at him, but he continued to puff away in
silence, there was just a suspicion of a twinkle in his eye.

"What's her name?" Darwen asked.

"Bessie Bevengton.  She's coming here to-morrow."

"That's alright, Jack; I'll see that you're not disturbed," Commander
Carstairs said boisterously.

"Jack'll have to make up his mind soon then; she's a catch in the
marriage market now.  Her uncle left her ten thousand pounds the
other day."

"Ten thousand pounds!  Why, that would cover a multitude of sins,"
Darwen observed.

The Reverend Hugh smiled.  "Oh, but I'm sure she doesn't want any
gilding.  She's a very nice girl and good looking."

The budding artist opened his mouth languidly, he was going to speak.
They paused to listen, it seemed that he had something weighty to
say.  "She's--ah!--somewhat obese, don't you know."  They laughed.
This young man had been budding for a very long time, but as yet he
had produced no appreciable flower.  Cheltenham and Oxford had made
him a finished gentleman, but not apparently able to earn his own
living.  He was a taller edition of Jack, rather better looking, but
he lacked the steadiness of eye and firmness of mouth.  "If I had ten
thousand pounds I'd go to Paris and settle down."

"What should you do, Jack?"

"Jack and I are working out a patent in the corporation's time."
Darwen looked at the Reverend Hugh with bright, hopeful eyes.

"Ah! is that the thing you told me about, Jack?" his father asked.

"No--o, this is another."

"Something better?"

"Well, hardly as valuable I expect."

"Is that the----"  Darwen paused, but Carstairs said no word, so he
proceeded.  "The thing you're working out on the night shift?"

"Was working out.  It's finished now, or very nearly."

"Finished!"  Darwen's eyes grew abnormally large and bright.  "Have
you patented it?"

"No.  It's in the rough yet.  Quite a secret still."

"At the works?"

"No--o."

"Going to make more than ten thousand out of it, Jack?"  The sailor
had been watching Darwen intently.

"I rather hope so."

Next day the Bevengtons came back from church with them, and spent
the entire day at the Vicarage.  They were a jolly party.  Darwen, as
usual, was the life and soul of it.  He was very attentive to Miss
Jameson, but he often caught Bessie Bevengton's eye.  Jack and she
were never left alone, they exchanged common-places and chaff.

"Oh, Jack!" she said, and she seemed to watch him closely.  "You know
that handsome housemaid at Lady Cleeve's?"

"Yes!" Jack answered, and Darwen gave him a quick glance that Bessie
saw.

"Well, a little while ago she horsewhipped the footman; he offended
her somehow.  They say she's stronger than a good many men."

Again Darwen shot a meaning glance at Carstairs, and again Bessie saw
it.

"Bully for the girl," and there was a thrill of admiration in his
voice that was apparent to all.

"Personally, I don't like amazons," the artist remarked.

"I suppose she got the sack?" Jack asked.

"Oh no.  Lady Cleeve is quite interested in her.  The footman was
discharged."

"Serve him right."

There was an awkward pause in the conversation, then Jack spoke
again.  "Do you remember a man called Bounce sailing with you, uncle?
A sailor, an A.B., a boxer."

"Bounce?  Bounce?"

"He was on the 'Mediterranean.'"

"Ah!  Yes!  I remember.  Bull-dog Bounce, they called him; he had
half a dozen other nicknames, too.  I remember one night hearing a
voice on the lower deck, 'Halgernon Hedward, I shall tell your ma'ma
of you.'  He was a splendid fellow, great pity he left the Service."

"Yes.  He's sorry himself now.  He's an engine-driver with us."

"A pity, a great pity!  He dived overboard once in the Indian Ocean,
swarming with sharks, to get his straw hat which had dropped over.  I
had to reprimand him for quitting the ship without leave."

They all laughed, and the sailor launched into a host of anecdotes.

On the following Monday as they went back together, Miss Jameson
said, "What an exceedingly nice girl Miss Bevengton is."

Jack answered "yes," so that when they were alone together, his
fiancée told Darwen that Carstairs was not in love with Bessie
Bevengton.

Meanwhile things at the electricity works had progressed, there had
been another failure of the supply.  All the churches in the town
were in darkness on Sunday night, and a steam pipe had burst and
scalded a man to death.  The papers were frantic.  Some demanded a
complete review of the staff of the electricity works, others
suggested that the chief be asked to resign.  All agreed that
something would have to be done.

The committee sat in solemn conclave.  "Who shall we sacrifice?" they
asked, and the heavy weight of Dr Jameson made it the chief.  He
pointed out that during the short time Darwen had been chief
assistant, the coal costs had gone down enormously, and he was in a
position to say that still further sweeping reductions could be made
if that brilliant young engineer were allowed a free hand.  Dr
Jameson was known as the strong man of the council; he usually had
things his way, and he did so now.

So Mr Jones was asked to resign, and Mr Darwen promoted in his stead
at a salary of £350 per annum.  Jones had had £500, but this was only
to commence.  It was probable, the doctor said, that if he made it
pay, he would have no difficulty in getting £750 in time.

Carstairs was made chief assistant at £200 per annum to commence.

"I suppose you'll get married soon now," Carstairs asked.

Darwen smiled happily.  "Not very long I expect.  I'm giving up these
diggings, though, of course.  The mater is coming over to live with
me," he said.




CHAPTER XII

For the next month Carstairs saw little of Darwen except at the
works; he was busy with his mother, getting a house and supervising
the moving.  At the works they talked simply "shop."  Carstairs was
absolutely lost to everything except engines, boilers, dynamos, etc.
For twelve hours a day he was at the works planning, improving,
overhauling.

"We'll mop off that £1000 debt, and show a profit in the first year,"
he announced to Darwen enthusiastically.

"Yes," Darwen agreed, and his marvellous eyes shone with an even
greater enthusiasm.  "We'll show 'em how to run things on this job,
eh?"

"I think so."

"Rather, not a doubt of it."

In three months they knocked £1000 off the coal bill, in spite of the
strenuous opposition of certain members of the council.

"Rummy things, those chaps making such a row about our getting
different coal and weighing it ourselves, isn't it?" Carstairs asked.

Darwen smiled.  "The application of a little oil," he observed, "but
they've got up against the wrong men this time, eh?  We have the
doctor solid behind us, too."

A sudden light seemed to break in upon Carstairs.  "Oh!" he said,
almost in horror.  He was honest to the core, every fibre in his body
vibrated in disgust at such treacherous roguery laid bare under his
very eyes, as it were.

"Didn't you really tumble to it?"  Darwen seemed genuinely astonished.

"No, I'm blowed if I did! but I shall know where to look in the
future."

"Ah, quite so!"  Darwen was thoughtful, he knew that Carstairs was a
particularly keen observer.

They reconstructed switchboards and overhauled engines.  They tested
and calibrated all the consumers' meters; some had been paying for
juice they had never used; others, and the great majority, had been
using current far in excess of that for which they paid.  Carstairs
found a meter in a councillor greengrocer's shop that must have been
entirely stopped for months.

The genial representative of the people descended into his cellar and
watched the new meter being installed.  "Are you going to make my
bill lighter, Mr Carstairs?" he asked, with an anticipatory smile.

"No, heavier, I'm afraid, Mr Green."

"What!"  The smile faded at once.  "Very well, I shall have it taken
out."

Carstairs looked at him calmly, searchingly.  "Just as you like, of
course, Mr Green.  We can't afford to give the juice away, you know."

"You can't afford!  What do you mean?  That's not the way to talk to
consumers.  I'm afraid you don't know your business, Mr Carstairs."

"On the contrary, I think I know it very well, Mr Green."

"Very well, I shall bring the matter up at the next committee.
Things are going from bad to worse."

"I think not!  However, I hope you'll do everything possible to
satisfy yourself on that point Mr Green."  Carstairs spoke very
slowly and very quietly, it was a way he had when his anger was
rising.

"That man," Darwen observed, when Carstairs told the story, "is a
little rogue.  It never pays to be little in anything.  It's a sign
of intellectual incompetence, lack of courage and general feebleness.
I'm glad you told me; we'll have this out in committee.  I'll break
that man just to encourage the others, eh?"  There was a glitter in
his eye that Carstairs could not quite understand.  Carstairs' brain
was somewhat heavy and ponderous, but once on the move in any
direction, it rolled onwards with an irresistible sweep; he was a
ruthless searcher after truth according to his light.  Darwen himself
had set the wonderful mechanism of his brain moving in the direction
of suspicion, he now began almost unconsciously to suspect his friend.

At the next committee meeting Darwen awaited the attack of Mr Green
in smiling affability, but it never came.  The little rogue had
thought better of it.  However, Darwen was not to be baulked.
Producing a number of bills, consumers' meter reading, calculations
of probable consumption, etc., he attacked Mr Green.  The little man
arose in his wrath, lost his head and shouted.  Darwen smiled and
smiled, and played with him, as a cat plays with a mouse; then he
squashed him with overwhelming evidence and demanded an apology for
personalities.  The little man gave in, he almost wept; Darwen was so
big, so suave, so very acute, so merciless and so cool; it almost
broke his heart; he got up, a shattered, nerveless wreck, and left
the room.

"Now, gentlemen, I think we may proceed to business."  The talons
were sheathed, he was so genial, so pleasant, that it was scarcely
possible to grasp the fact that this was the same man who had just
crumpled up the little greengrocer like an empty paper bag.  Many of
the other councillors shifted uneasily in their seats and fear gnawed
at their hearts; they cast shifty, uneasy glances at the young
handsome engineer.  What was this awful thing they had raised up in
their midst?  Even the massive, grand old doctor at the head of the
table was subdued; he gazed straight at Darwen in solemn thought;
perhaps he was wondering whether this was, after all, the sort of man
he ought to entrust his daughter's happiness to.

That evening the proceedings in the committee room were reported
verbatim in the local papers, and more than that, some of the London
papers had a short pithy paragraph exaggerating the event.  Of course
there was nothing for it, the little councillor had to resign.

Darwen's mother had taken a nice house, small, but in a good part of
the town, and the day after the eventful committee meeting, Carstairs
went there to dinner.  The rooms were tastefully furnished.
Carstairs commented to himself that the feminine eye and hand were
apparent everywhere; he went in with Darwen, and, as he was left in
the drawing-room alone for a few minutes while Darwen went to look
for his mother, he looked round at the water colour paintings on the
walls, the cabinet of old china, the frequent ornaments, statuettes,
bronze and marble: he felt somehow that it had a Frenchy tone; at any
rate, was unlike any other room he had ever been in; it was the sort
of thing he felt that his brother Stephen, the artist, would admire.
Darwen's mother he imagined as tall, artistic, graceful (bearing in
mind Darwen's face and form), beautiful and brilliant.  The poets,
that he remembered in their diggings, were scattered over the table;
he noted that the bindings of all were beautiful and expensive, too.
"The Prince" was not among them.

He heard voices outside, Darwen's he knew; and another, full, rich,
contralto.

The door opened.  "Let me introduce you to the mater, Carstairs."

Carstairs stood up and held out his hand.  His face showed no emotion
whatever, but in his brain was deepest wonder.  The woman who stood
before him, the mother of that graceful, accomplished son, the
designer of these rooms, was almost short and very broad, full
chested, broad hipped, her hair was light brown and very luxuriant.
But the face--probably at one time it had been handsome in a
masculine sort of way, now--the skin was of an exceedingly coarse
texture, lined with innumerable small wrinkles and of a uniform
weather-beaten red; the eyes were bloodshot, clouded; the eyes of a
drunkard, or at least a heavy drinker.

"How do you do, Mr Carstairs?  Do sit down."

The manner was distinctly "loud," and looking at the speaker, the
voice seemed to lose half its charm.

"How do you like our home, Mr Carstairs?"

"Very much indeed.  I was admiring this room when you came in!"

The clouded eyes seemed to light up with a flash of pleasure.
"Charlie does all this.  I haven't got any taste in these things."
Carstairs was more astonished than ever, but he made a remark which
occurred to him as suitable, then they drifted into generalities.
She asked Carstairs about his home.  "I know that part fairly well,"
she explained.  "I've hunted over a good bit of it."

"Have you?"  Carstairs was genuinely surprised.  Darwen had never
told him.

Mrs Darwen laughed, rather a coarse laugh.  "That is to say, I
followed the hounds, while Charlie was at school at Clifton.  I used
to have a day out occasionally, just to remind me of old times."  She
sighed deeply.  "I was brought up in the Quorn district, you know."

"That's Leicester way, isn't it?"

"Round there.  That was where I met Charlie's father.  Poor dear Tom,
he wasn't much of a horseman."

"I used to follow them sometimes when I was a kid," Carstairs
observed.

"Did you?  I suppose you would."  She looked him over with approving
eyes, somewhat, he felt, as a groom looks over a nice horse; and
there was no doubt Carstairs was a very fine animal.

A gong sounded in the hall, and Mrs Darwen rose.  "That's dinner,"
she said, "come on in."

She led the way and Carstairs followed, lost in wonder, as he
contemplated a rear view of her squat, ungainly figure.  At dinner
she drank a stiff glass of whisky and soda.  Carstairs carefully
avoided looking at it; he knew Darwen was watching him closely.  Both
the young men were rather silent, but the old lady rattled away.

"Do you play football--rugby?  Yes, you would of course!  Charlie's a
splendid player.  I used to turn out and watch him, stood about in
the damp grass and got the rheumatism thoroughly into my old bones,"
she laughed again, a louder, coarser laugh.

"Not so very old, I expect, Mrs Darwen," Carstairs was trying his
'prentice hand at a compliment.

She laughed aloud.  "Ha, ha!  Charlie'd do better than that, he can
pay compliments like his father.  Ah! his father was a rare hand at
that game, or any other game.  So's Charlie, he's a thorough
sportsman.  'Always go straight, boy,' that's what I taught, 'over
hedges and ditches, straight ahead.'"  She gesticulated with her arms.

Carstairs felt rather embarrassed.  Darwen was unusually silent, but
his mother talked away and laughed and joked.  After dinner they
smoked a cigar apiece and Darwen seemed to wake up, but still he was
serious.  "From your description, mater, I imagine the guv'nor was
something like Carstairs here."

"Well, yes, something."

"But dark, I suppose?" Carstairs asked, looking at Darwen's almost
swarthy complexion.

"Oh, dear no!  He was fair, quite as fair as you."

"Was he really?"

Perhaps it was in answer to Carstairs' puzzled look, or perhaps just
as the wayward fit took her.  Anyhow, she volunteered an explanation.

"The Darwens were French," she said, "a good French
family--Huguenots.  They came to England about six generations ago.
They were fair, but there was once an inter-marriage with a noble
Florentine lady, and ever since then there have been occasional dark
Darwens.  Charlie is one."  She threw back her head.  There was much
pride and something of defiance in her tone.

"Mater, you never told me before."

"My boy, you never asked me."

"No, that's true."  Darwen was very silent for some minutes, and
Carstairs could find nothing to say.  "Then it's possible that I may
have some of the blood of Old Nick in me."  It was said quite
seriously.

Mrs Darwen burst into a harsh scream of charwoman laughter.  "My boy,
you've got a touch of the devil in you right enough."

"I meant Machiavelli," Darwen explained.

"Who is he?"

"Oh, mater!  He was an exceedingly clever Italian.  He stripped the
common facts of human existence of their halo of sentiment and showed
things as they are; here in England we suffer from the despotic sway
of a fetish called 'fair play.'"

"Fair play is a jewel," Carstairs observed, doggedly.

"There you are!  Look at that!"  Darwen pointed excitedly at
Carstairs.  "Behold the Saxon, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, clasping his
gilded idol frantically to his bosom."

"He's not yellow-haired and he's not blue-eyed, and he's clasping his
own big biceps across his bosom," Mrs Darwen observed laughing.

Carstairs, leaning back with folded arms, laughed too.

Darwen shrugged his shoulders helplessly.  "I'm in a strange country,
I cannot comprehend.  'Don't hit a man when he's down,' you say.
Why! that's the only time you've got a chance to really punish him.
Oh, the fearful and wonderful Saxon brain!"  He stood up, and
stretching both arms above his head, gazed upwards at the ceiling.
"Surely, surely, the Saxon is the devil personified.  The Lord, the
great Lord Nature, has endowed the Saxon with mighty biceps and a
head of surpassing density.  The yellow-haired son of darkness has
spread himself over the globe.  'I cannot think: thou shalt not
think,' has been his maxim and his passport, and, because of the
magnitude of his biceps and the paucity of his ideas, he has cramped
the intellect of the world.  With his biceps the Lord endowed the
Saxon with one idea, one commandment, 'Thou shalt not yield.'  And
the races of mankind, the multitudes of humanity, have spent
themselves in vain endeavours to combat this idea.  He has driven the
Red man from America, the Black man from Australia.  He stole the
very country he lives in from a more intellectual, more civilized,
and more refined race.  Not once but many times has he been beaten,
well beaten and rightfully beaten, but he could not see it."  Darwen
let his arms drop listlessly to his sides.  "The Saxon has broken the
heart of the world."

His mother went over to him and put her hand affectionately on his
shoulder; she seemed rather concerned.  "My boy!  You were always a
sportsman, always clean; many's the time I turned out in the rain on
the wet grass, in the wind or the frost to watch you play, and you
were always straight, always clean; I knew the game and I watched
you."

He looked into his mother's eyes.  "I was, mater, always straight,
never cheated."

She looked proud and happy.  "I know, I know!" she said.  "You got
that from me, from my side, your grandfather was a splendid
sportsman.  He rode right across country, straight as the crow flies,
over hedges and ditches and walls, always straight, quite straight."

"Yes," he agreed, "that's how I played, always straight.  But I
never, for the life of me, could see why."

She shook her head.  "Because it's not right, you wouldn't feel the
same if you won by cheating."

"You're the best mater in all the world."  He smiled at her
affectionately.  "But you have the intellectual limitation of the
Saxon; history teaches me that it's useless to argue with you."

Carstairs had been sitting still, staring straight ahead; he arose
and looked at his watch.  "I'm afraid I must be going.  I want to get
out those figures----"

"Nonsense, my dear chap," Darwen took him by the arm.  "Come on into
the other room, and I'll play you a tune."

"What do you say, Mrs Darwen?"  Carstairs looked at her quite
seriously.

"Oh, you'll stay, of course."

So he stayed.

"You and the mater," Darwen remarked, as they made their way into the
other room, "ought to get on as thick as thieves, you're both so very
Saxon."

Carstairs laughed.  "In the light of your recent little oration, I'm
sure we're both highly flattered," he said.

On his way home late that night, Carstairs was very thoughtful.  "So
Darwen was right, there was a touch of the Dago in him; the subtle
Italian diplomatist, crossed with the dashing English-French
sportsman, a strange mixture."  He pondered deeply.

Next morning on his way to the works, a policeman, an acquaintance
made in the dark days of his shift engineering career, stopped him.
"Have you heard the news, sir?"

"No.  What news?"

"Mr Darwen's house was burgled last night."

"Last night?  Why I was there up till half-past eleven.  Did they get
away with much?"

Policeman X19 smiled.  "More than they wanted, sir.  Mr Darwen heard
a noise and come down with a bull's-eye lantern and a revolver.  They
fired almost together; 'e hit Mr Darwen in the arm, and Mr Darwen
plugged 'im through the chest.  Our men's on his track, now."

"Good Lord, I must go along and see him."  Carstairs turned off
towards Darwen's house.  As he went up the garden path, he passed a
rather pretty girl, neatly dressed, going out.  He raised his hat and
also his eyebrows at the same time.

She stopped and blushed slightly.  "Oh, Mr Carstairs, I heard Mr
Darwen was shot and came round to inquire if it was serious."

"You didn't tell me," he said.

"No, I didn't know till you'd gone."

He found Darwen having breakfast with his mother.  His left arm was
bound up, but he seemed jubilant and happy.  His mother also seemed
the same.  "It was most exciting.  Something woke me up just about
two o'clock.  Don't know what it was, but while I lay awake I thought
I heard somebody, the noise was very slight.  Anyhow I went down to
see, accompanied by a bull's-eye lantern, which I'd only bought the
day before, and a small bore revolver.  I located the disturber just
coming out of the drawing-room, I was on the stairs.  I hadn't made a
sound, but he had a revolver in his hand, and as soon as he saw the
light he let fly."

"I heard two shots, one just after the other, nearly frightened me
out of my life--"  Mrs Darwen took up the tale.  "The brute tried to
kill him, and now he won't prosecute him.  You remember the way he
was talking about fair play last night, Mr Carstairs."

Darwen smiled apologetically.  "The poor devil has had enough, though
it's not a very serious wound.  I tied him up, gave him some brandy
and a pipe of tobacco.  He's a unique specimen, born in the woods,
and bred at sea, on sailing ships; hardly civilized, but quite a
decent chap, very susceptible to music; only he's deficient in moral
sensibilities.  Like me."  He looked at his mother and laughed.

She looked triumphantly at Carstairs.  "And he won't give him up to
the police.  He's upstairs in Charlie's bed, and he wants me to nurse
him and keep it dark.  What do you think of it, Mr Carstairs?"

"Well, if the wound should prove serious----"

"Oh, there's no fear of that."

Carstairs smiled.  "It's an interesting experiment," he remarked.

Darwen pushed back his chair and stood up.  "I'll come down to the
works with you," he said.  He got his hat and they went out together.

"By the way," Carstairs remarked as the front door banged behind
them, "I met my landlady's daughter as I came in."

"Yes.  I know.  Came to ask if it was anything serious.  Jolly decent
of her."

"That's so.  I think Mrs Hughes took quite a motherly interest in
you.  The grub's not half as good since you left."

"Is that so?  I used to give the girl a little instruction on the
piano occasionally you know, perhaps that made the difference."

"Ah, I see.  I didn't know that."

"No-o.  It was only occasionally you know, when you were out, and
there was nothing else to do.  She's rather an intelligent girl."

"Yes, she looks that."

They arrived at the works.  Carstairs was proceeding to his own
office, but Darwen stopped him.  "Come into my room for a minute and
have a chat."  They sat down in the comfortable, almost luxurious
office.

"Who do you think that burglar was?"  Darwen looked at Carstairs with
a humorous light flickering round his big brown eyes.

"Haven't any idea.  Sam's in quod, still----"

"Yes--but this is Sam's mate."

A heavy frown gathered on Carstairs' brow.  "How's that?  Did he make
a mistake?  Was it me he was after, or----"

Darwen did not answer for a minute; he watched Carstairs' face
thoughtfully, he seemed to be speculating on something.  "No," he
said, at length.  "He made no mistake, not a single one; for a man
who can neither read nor write he's very intelligent, but the fates
were against him.  Do you believe in Fate?"  Darwen had a way of
digressing at critical points which always jarred on the
mathematically direct mind of Carstairs.

"Oh, hang Fate!"

"My dear chap! you can't.  I say he made no mistakes.  He came there
to kill, to kill me, and he'd have done it, but I happened to be
awake and I fancied I heard a noise.  It was pure fancy, mind,
because he was in his bare feet, and silent as a mouse.  It was so
much fancy, in fact, that I lay in bed debating with myself whether I
should go down.  I reasoned thus: Everything is quite still, but it
may have been a noise that woke me.  I am awake, why should I not go
down?  If I go down to look for burglars, I ought to be prepared to
receive them, therefore I will take a loaded revolver and my nice new
bull's-eye lantern.  Do you know I felt quite a childish pleasure in
lighting up that new bull's-eye lantern."

"How do you know he came to kill you?"

"He said so."

"He said so?"

"Yes.  I told him I had a pretty good idea of the plot.  The Irishman
had given it away, I said."

"The Irishman?  What Irishman?"

Darwen smiled.  "That's precisely what I wanted to know.  There are
on the electricity committee, three Irishmen, two Welshmen, four
Englishmen, and one Scotsman."

Carstairs remained silent.

"Would you like to make a guess?" Darwen asked.

"Mr Pat Donovan."

"Right in once."  Darwen's eyes sparkled.  "You know a devilish lot
about machinery, but I admit I thought you were rather a fool as far
as men were concerned."

"Thanks.  What's the rest of the yarn?"

"Well, let me go back a bit."

Carstairs sighed.

Darwen laughed.  "When we had that unpleasant incident in the
committee the other day, I watched 'em all, carefully, as I made my
points.  When Green called me a rogue and a liar, I watched 'em all.
They didn't seem to think it a very grave charge.  But when I
answered him, when I said, 'You've called me a rogue and a liar, Mr
Green, but I think you'll find if you carefully analyse your feelings
on the matter, that it's my honesty and not my roguery, that annoys
you.  I'm sorry I can't see things as you do, Mr Green, but I'm a
sportsman, and anything that appears to me unfair, or that I can't
fully grasp, I invariably expose to the daylight, and turn and twist
it till I can understand it, or till I let daylight into it.  That's
my method, Mr Green, and I may assure you that it is as unalterable
as the laws of the Medes and Persians.'"

"How's that for eloquence?  We used to run a sort of parliament at
school, rather good practice, you know."  Darwen laughed lightly.

"Very good," Carstairs observed.

"So they all agreed, and Mr Pat Donovan (publican and bookmaker) made
a most vehement speech in support of it.  But when I was making it,
and several other little points, I observed that the majority of them
looked a sort of pea-green colour.  Have you ever been sea-sick?"

"Heaps of times."

"Then you'll appreciate how they felt.  They wanted to get out and
walk but they couldn't, and the way Donovan and M'Carthy rubbed it
into poor old Green was astonishing.  The Irish are really a
wonderful people.  I summed it up that there were two honest men in
all that committee; one was Dr Jameson at the head of the table, and
the other was Mr John Brown, navvy, at the foot of the table.  I
observed them with the greatest possible interest; the study of
mankind is all-enthralling.  Those representatives of the several
parts of these tiny little islands were as distinct as possible; the
Irish, loud and violent; the Welshmen, quiet and sly; the Englishmen,
two of them justly indignant, and two just a trifle uneasy; the
Scotsman, like an owl, very wise.  Now I'll bet if there were a
public inquiry on those men, the two Englishmen who have made perhaps
£20 each, would come off worst.  The Irishmen, who have made perhaps
£50 or £60 per annum, would be next.  The Welshmen, who have made
about the same, would be let off lightly.  The two honest Englishmen
would have a stain on their characters till their dying day, and the
Scotsman, who has probably been making a steady £500 per annum, would
leave the court without a stain on his character.  People would cheer
wildly in the streets, and frantic fools would rush forward to shake
him by the hand--then he'd reluctantly accept a modest salary of £200
per week to show himself on the music-hall stage, and send a few
simple manly letters to the papers acknowledging the receipt of a
large public subscription to keep his old mother (who'd been dead
years) out of the workhouse."

Carstairs laughed. "You seem down on the Scotch.  Personally I liked
them when I lived there."

"My dear chap, Scotsmen in Scotland and Scotsmen in England are two
different things.  Besides, I'm not down on them a bit.  The Scotch
are a supremely intellectual race, they are eminently gilt-edged.  I
knew that the Scotsman would never attack me, he'd rely on other
people doing that.  The Englishmen, hampered by their ingrained ideas
of fair play, would have sent anonymous letters, warning me to be
careful.  The Welshmen would be very cautious.  Only the Irishmen
would act so promptly.  This, of course, is only the opening of the
ball.  I'm going to stir up this hornet's nest properly, the place
simply stinks of roguery, and I want your help.  You'll stand by me,
old chap?"

"Of course I will."

Darwen held out his hand, he looked at Carstairs with great
admiration.  "You're a pure Englishman, Carstairs, and I honestly
believe the Englishman is the salt of the earth; he's a bit slow in
the top story, but he's hard and fit, and he's a pal all the time,
which I think is the real keynote of why he owns such a large section
of the earth."

There was a knock at the door and the office boy entered.

"Councillor Donovan to see you, sir."

"Alright; show him in."

A tall, heavy-shouldered, large-headed man with a short nose and a
long, clean-shaven upper lip, red-haired, and with a slight squint,
rushed enthusiastically up to Darwen and shook him by the hand.
"It's right pleased I am to see ye looking so well and fit after the
dastardly outrage on ye last night, Mr Darwen."

Darwen smiled cordially, and returned his grasp warmly.  "It's very
kind of you, Mr Donovan, but it's the sort of thing that's only
likely to occur once in a lifetime, thank God."

"Oh, yes, yes.  Shure, an' such a thing cud niver happen again in a
civilized town like Southville.  I'm just off to call a special
meeting of the police committee this minute, Mr Darwen."

"Ah! that's like you, Mr Donovan!  So energetic.  There's no fear of
their going to sleep while you're on the council.  I'm just off to Dr
Jameson myself."

Carstairs watched them for a minute as they stood hand in hand,
smiling compliments into each other's faces, then he opened the door
quietly and went out into the engine room.  He looked round on his
smoothly-running, even-turning friends; he had been wont to remark
that the applied logic of a running steam engine was the thing that
appealed to him most, but now--

"They do seem rather tame after men, somehow," he said, to himself.




CHAPTER XIII

For a month things went on quite smoothly.  The police, although
spurred to strenuous efforts by the glib tongue of Pat Donovan, J.P.,
absolutely failed to discover any trace of Darwen's assailant.
Something seemed to be on the mind of Mr Donovan too, but Darwen
still smiled.  "I'm taking that man into my service when he's able to
get about again, he's going to take on the job of gardener, etc."

"What will Mr Donovan say?"

"He won't know.  That's what's worrying him now, he can't make out
what has become of his man.  Mr Donovan will move again shortly.  The
Irishman can never wait."

They were carrying out extensions at the works, adding a wing to the
engine room, and one day, a few weeks later, Carstairs and Darwen
were standing in the new part, just underneath some scaffolding where
some men were working under the roof; they were discussing an
important point, but Carstairs noticed that Darwen seemed a trifle
absent-minded.  He kept looking away, up at the men working.
Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled Carstairs aside, next moment
a heavy iron bar crashed down on the concrete at their feet, just as
a man's voice sang out, "Look out below."

"By George, that would have corpsed us," Carstairs said.

"Our friend above there was a little late in warning us," Darwen
observed.  There was a sort of pleased light in his eye, he seemed
strangely buoyant.  "He's drunk," he continued, "I've been watching
him, he's a new man, on to-day.  I'll go up and tell the foreman to
send him home."  He walked over to the ladder, then he stopped, and
picking up the iron bar stood it carefully upright in a bolt hole.
"You might go into my office and get those papers, will you?  I'll be
with you in a minute," he said over his shoulder as he mounted the
ladder.

Carstairs went away, leaving the engine room empty.

There were three or four men on the scaffold, all working with their
faces to the wall, only one man was out further than the rest.
Darwen walked along the planking, balancing easily and gracefully;
the men bustled ahead with their work as they saw him coming.  He
stopped at the man who was furthest out, the man who had dropped the
bar.

"My friend," Darwen asked, quietly, "have you anything to say?"

The man looked up with a piteous appeal.  He was a sickly white and
as sober as a judge, he trembled in every limb.

Darwen watched him in silence for some minutes as his quivering lips
moved inarticulately.  He was a tough-looking citizen with a low,
unintelligent forehead, and strong, brutal jaw; his imagination was
so dull that cruelty had to be brought very near home before his
sluggish mind began to move.  A sort of instinct, apparently, seemed
to warn him that he was in danger; he seemed fascinated by Darwen's
eyes, he gazed hopelessly and fixedly into them.  He made a movement
to edge away.

Darwen was gripping a tie rod over his head and standing very close
to the man, who was sitting on the plank.  He glanced round, no one
was looking.  "Fortune favours the bold," he said.  Next minute his
foot shot out, and the man was off the plank.

"Oh, Christ!" he screamed, as he fell through the air.

Darwen shouted for help and clung to his tie rod with both hands.
"That man's killed," he said.  "He was drunk.  He'd got no business
to be on a scaffolding in that condition.  Where's the foreman?"

They went below.  A little crowd gathered and looked at the man; he
was quite still, his head had struck the iron bar and his brains were
scattered over the new concrete engine bed.

Carstairs stood by in solemn silence, looking at the thing which had
been a man.  "That's the chap that dropped the bar, isn't it?" he
asked, at length.

"Yes!" Darwen answered.  "He was helplessly drunk.  Where's the
foreman?" he looked round.

"Here, sir."

"Why did you allow that man to go up there when you saw he was
drunk?"  Darwen was very stern, his eyes seemed to look through the
man.

"I didn't notice that he was drunk, sir."

"Didn't notice!  What do you mean?  That's your job, isn't it?"

"Well, sir----"

"That'll do!  How long has he been with you?"

"Only this morning, sir.  He came down with a note from Councillor
Donovan asking to give him a start."

"Ah! well, I suppose you can't be responsible for every strapper that
you have to put on."

"No, sir."

Two of his mates reverently covered the remains with an engine cloth,
and Darwen and Carstairs went away together.  Carstairs was very
thoughtful.

"Did you hear what he said?" Darwen asked, when they reached his
office.

"Yes, Councillor Donovan."

"Exactly.  He seems unfortunate in the choice of his tools."

"You were up by him when he fell, weren't you?"

"Quite close, but, of course, I hadn't a chance to save him."

"No, of course.  It's a very awkward job."

"Very.  I say old chap, come on home and spend the evening with me,
will you?  The girl's away, and I know the mater will be pleased to
see you."

"Thanks.  I--er----"

"Come on, old chap, you've got nothing to do, I know."

"Well, I have really got a lot to do, but still--it will keep."

As they went out together, a girl passed them.

"That's rather a nice-looking girl," Darwen remarked.

"Ye-es; I didn't notice her very particularly."

"Dash it, Carstairs, it's time you did.  Why don't you get engaged,
give you something to do in your evenings."

"My dear chap----"

"Yes, I know, there's that girl over at your place.  She struck me as
being a particularly nice girl."

"You mean Bessie Bevengton.  She is jolly decent--but----"

"There is some one else?"

"Exactly."

"But you can't marry her."

"I don't know."

"What!  Don't be an ass!"  Darwen turned and gazed at him in
amazement.

"You see she appeals to me in so many ways."

"How?  She's handsome, that's all!"

"That's only the beginning, she's so very fit, and so full of pluck.
You see, if I have any kids I want 'em to be sportsmen, to play
rugger and that sort of thing."

Darwen laughed aloud.  "How old are you, Carstairs?"

"Twenty-three."

"I thought you were fifty."

"Alright, but you've got a lot to thank your mater for."

"By Jove, you're right!"  Darwen was very thoughtful for some
minutes.  "Yes," he said at length.  "I keep myself fit because the
mater brought me up that way, and fitness means so much."

"To a station man it usually means all the difference between success
and failure; you remember how that shock I got upset me, for some
time Thompson thought I was no good."  Carstairs was thinking that if
it had not been for that shock their positions at that moment might
have been reversed.

"That is so, particularly if he's got a crowd like Donovan and Co. to
deal with.  Do you know, honestly I never in all my life experienced
such a thrill of exquisite pleasure as when I exchanged pistol shots
with that poor devil on the stairs that night; that's fitness, you
know, simply fitness.  I'm in the pink of condition."  His eyes
sparkled like living jewels.

Carstairs looked at him with open admiration.  "You are fit," he said.

They were passing St James' gymnasium, a sudden idea seemed to seize
Darwen.

"Come on in," he said, "and let's have a turn with the gloves.  I've
never had a turn with you."

"Alright," Carstairs answered.

So they went inside.  The place was empty, so they had it to
themselves; they changed and donned boxing gloves.  They looked a
superb pair of men as they stood up facing each other, in long
flannel trousers and singlets; Carstairs was a trifle shorter and a
trifle heavier; neither of them was an inch under six feet.  For half
an hour they boxed, hitting fast and furious, and although Carstairs
was as quick as a panther, Darwen was quicker, and had distinctly the
best of the bout.

"By Jove, old chap!  You do put 'em in," he observed, as Carstairs
landed a heavy right hander.

"Yours are fairly hefty, too," Carstairs answered, as Darwen knocked
him against the wall.

Then they had a cold shower, dressed, and went back to Darwen's home,
feeling at peace with all the world, forgetting Councillor Donovan
and the dead man in the engine-room and all other troubles.

Darwen let himself in and took Carstairs into the drawing-room.  "Sit
down in that big chair, old chap, and I'll play you a tune.  The
mater'll soon come in when she hears the music."

Carstairs threw himself back in the deep padded chair with a sigh of
content.  "I envy not in any mood," he started and stopped.  "Where's
that from, Darwen?"

"Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.'"  Darwen was turning over some music
folios.

"Yes, that's it.  I remember.  I picked it up one day in the digs and
that caught my eye.  It goes on to say something else about noble
rage and linnets, or something, but what I 'envy not' is the man
who's never been tired."

"I agree with you.  Being tired, with the pleasant contemplation of
work well done and sitting in a comfortable chair, is heaven."

"Precisely.  And you never get tired, really, pleasantly tired,
unless you're fit.  The man who's not fit, doesn't appreciate comfort
or discomfort, he's only half alive."

"That is so.  I think this is your favourite."  Darwen commenced to
play, lightly and slowly.

"That's that nocturne business, isn't it?"

"One of them.  There's a book full."

"Well, they're jolly good."  He lay far back in the chair and spread
his legs wide in front of him, his thoughts wandered pleasantly under
the slow stimulation of the music.  Darwen himself seemed to revel in
it too, they were silent for some time; when the door opened and Mrs
Darwen came in.  Carstairs, sitting motionless in the chair, turned
his head at the sound, and then suddenly sprang up.

"Ah! why did you do that?  I wouldn't have disturbed you for worlds."
She held out her hand.  "How are you?"

"First class, thanks."

"I could see that from the way you were sitting, men only sit quite
still like that when they've had a good day at something.  When
Charlie used to come home--why, what have you been doing?" she looked
closely at one of his eyes.

Carstairs rubbed it thoughtfully.  "I don't think it'll get black,"
he said.

"He's knocked my mouth all side ways, too, mater!" Darwen said over
his shoulder.

Mrs Darwen laughed.  "What would the councillors think if they saw
you two knocking each other about like that?"

"The councillors, dear mater, are beneath contempt.  Let's talk about
something pleasant.  I've been urging Carstairs to get married."

"Who to?"

"Oh, anybody."

"Is he in love?"

"That's just it, he thinks he is."

"Well, you marry the girl you're in love with, Mr Carstairs, and
don't take any notice of anybody."

"But she's impossible, mater."

"What do you mean by impossible?  I don't believe in impossibility.
If you're in love with the girl and she's in love with you, marry
her, Mr Carstairs, and snap your fingers at everybody.  It's better
for you and for the girl and for everybody concerned.  I hate those
busy bodies who talk about 'impossible marriages.'"  She seemed
strangely excited.

Carstairs looked steadily into her excited, inflamed eyes.  "I agree
with you entirely, Mrs Darwen.  The girl I'm in love with is a gipsy.
She's a servant in a big house near my home."

"A servant?"  Mrs Darwen seemed in doubt for a moment.  Then the look
of resolution again hardened in her eyes.  "It doesn't matter what
she is.  Are you really in love?"

"I was."

"Ah!  I see you're not.  Once in love, always in love.  Very few
people really fall in love.  They haven't got it in them.  It's a
matter of pluck.  You've got it in you.  When you're in love, you'll
know it, and so will the girl, or I'm very much mistaken."  She
looked at Carstairs' steady eyes and firm mouth with a sort of
motherly admiration.

"I was nineteen then, and I met her quite by accident."

"One always does," she interposed.

"I have not seen her since, except once, through the window,
and--well, it was very bad indeed for some time after that."

She laughed.  "That's it.  That's it."  she said.  "How long ago was
that?"

"About two years."

"And you still think of her?"

"Well--occasionally."

"Ah, Mr Carstairs, you're badly hit."  She leaned towards him in an
affectionate, motherly manner.  "You're badly hit," she grew pensive
all of a sudden.  "It may be good, or it may be bad.  'Tis a
Providence, I suppose.  You know you're very selfish, Mr Carstairs."

"Me?  Mrs Darwen!"  Carstairs was amazed.

"You needn't be so surprised, it's a universal masculine attribute.
Charlie can explain it, he understands it."

"Result of heredity, relic of the chimpanzee," Darwen remarked
casually.

"What is she like?  Handsome?" Mrs Darwen asked.

"Very; and full of pluck."

"Full of pluck!  Ah!" she gave a deep sigh.  "They feel it most,
always."  She seemed very sad all of a sudden.  "What's that bit of
poetry, Charlie, about the strongest and the wisest, you know."

  "Is it true, O Christ in Heaven, that the wisest suffer most,
  That the strongest wander farthest, and most hopelessly are lost."


"That's it.  You're very strong, Mr Carstairs.  Brutal almost, and
wise."

"I should like to be, but I'm afraid I'm rather weak and silly at
times."

She gazed at him steadily with a puzzled air.  "You're different,"
she said, "you're not like the men of my generation.  Are you a
horseman?"

"No, I'm an engineer."

"That's the difference, I expect.  It's a new type to me."

Darwen swung round on his music stool.  "It's a new type to the
world, mater; a sort of thinking machine, getting the human emotions
thoroughly under control; the horseman was a sort of embryo engineer,
he utilised the forces of nature according to his lights, but he was
essentially a passionate man, he opposed his will to the brute's
will.  The engineer has to do with inanimate lumps of metal, and it's
no use hitting them.  Have you ever observed, Carstairs, the old type
of fitter let go with his hammer at a job that's baffling him, the
younger generation is much less so, he thinks.  Nowadays every one is
becoming more or less of an engineer, and it's good, it makes
necessary a higher standard of intelligence, of self-reliance, and
self-control.  The nation of the future is the nation with the best
engineers."

"It seems to me," Mrs Darwen remarked, "that you are substituting a
coldly brutal type for a passionately brutal type.  Men are very much
nearer animals than women."

"The engineer has also to deal with men as well as engines, which has
a humanizing effect on him, Mrs Darwen," Carstairs said.

"Yes!  Fortunately Providence has provided a safety valve for his
pent up emotions; you can't possibly imagine the intense mental
relief of growling at a stoker because the steam's low, when it's not
really the man's fault at all."

Carstairs laughed.  "I rather like stokers myself, they're a rough
and ready crowd, they'd knock you down for the price of a drink.  And
the language--Shakespeare isn't in it."

"They do swear, but if you think a minute you'll admit that the
average stoker isn't in it with the average engineer; it's the same
as everything else, it takes brains and feelings to swear well."

"I wonder if women will ever be engineers."

"My dear mater!  Women are the finest engineers in the world now,
they engineer us poor men, first to the altar, then to the graveyard
or to the work-house.  Men run engines, business, etc., women run
men.  The world is run by women, not by men.  I remember talking to a
stoker once about matrimony.  'It's alright for a change,' he said,
'but it ain't no use permanent.'  I suggested that a little kindness
might improve matters.  ''Taint no use,' he said.  I then ventured
the opinion that to go home drunk and break up the furniture,
sometimes has a conciliatory effect.  ''Taint no use,' he repeated
again.  'Stop supplies for a bit,' I suggested.  ''Taint no use,' he
repeated.  'Well, clear out.'  ''Taint no use,' he answered.  'I've
stayed home and helped 'em in the house, I've give 'em all my pay.
I've come home drunk and broke things, I've chucked boiling water
over 'em, and beat 'em with the poker, but ''tain't no use,' he shook
his head with infinite sadness, 'you always gets had,' he said.  He
was a thoughtful, intelligent sort of man, and he'd had three wives,
so he ought to know."

Mrs Darwen laughed.  "He was a thorough sort of man, anyway, and
women like a thorough man."

"So do men, Mrs Darwen.  Personally my daily prayer is to be
preserved from the wishy-washy fool who does what he's told in
unquestioning obedience."

"Listen to the Saxon expounding his creed, mater.  'Oh God, give me
some one to have a row with.'"

Carstairs smiled.  "If you'd lived in Scotland you'd know that the
first thing the Scotch working man does is to flatly contradict you
to your face; then he argues the point, if you let him.  The
Scotchman is naturally mathematical, he is not willing to accept your
word that you're the boss, he wants proof.  I like the Scotch."

"They offer unlimited possibilities of a row."

"I don't like rows; I like to appeal to a man's reason."

Darwen drove one fist with a bang into the palm of his other hand.
"The logic of the Englishman," he said.

"It seems to me that's the bed rock of all logic.  I think that it
was you who told me that Herbert Spencer and Ruskin both arrived at
the same conclusion."

"Perhaps I did; I forget.  But anyway, all of you people make the
mistake of dividing people into types, classes and creeds.  'Nature
recognizes neither kingdoms nor classes, no orders, no genera, no
sub-genera, nature recognizes nothing but individuals.'  That's
Lamarck."

"Is it?  Well, I hope he won't do it again, because he upsets all
your elaborate theories about Saxons, Celts, and so on."

"Not at all; he doesn't say that they don't run in types, that large
classes and races of men are not as like as two peas in almost all
respects, he simply says that nature makes no effort to preserve them
as they are, or, because of their numbers, to save them from
annihilation.  A whole class, a whole creed, or a whole race may
exist simply for the benefit, and to assist in the development of,
one individual, and when he ceases to have need of them, puff! they
are wiped out."

"A creed formerly known as Kingcraft, I think."

"Exactly.  'The King can do no wrong' simply means that if he does
wrong, he ceases to be a king, and the only proof that he has done
wrong is the fact that he has failed to keep his crown.  That is the
teaching of old Nick, and personally I expand the theorem to embrace
all humanity, every man should be a little king unto himself.  That
is to say, he must use his brains and control his passions."

Mrs Darwen sighed.  "The inward passions are sometimes the voice of
God, and sometimes the voice of the Devil," she said.

"There you are! and how are you to distinguish?  Tennyson tells us
that 'doubt is devil-born,' and certainly constant doubt and
hesitation play the devil with a man's mind and body.  My theory is
'never analyse an impulse.  Act on it with the best conjunction of
your reason.'  Here's old Carstairs, analysing, theorizing,
vacillating, hesitating as to whether he's in love or not."

Mrs Darwen stood up.  "It's hard to say which is best," she said.
"You're like, and yet very unlike, your father, Charlie."  She went
over to a small table and picked up a large album.  "Have you ever
seen Charlie's father, Mr Carstairs?"

"No, I don't think I have."  He took the volume on his knees, and she
leaned over his shoulder as he turned the pages.

Darwen swung round again on his stool and played low, soft music on
the piano.

"There!  That's me when I was a girl," she said, arresting Carstairs'
hand.

He looked closely and intently at a full length portrait of a
remarkably handsome and well built girl, dressed in a riding habit,
sitting on a saddle.  The features were clear-cut and regular,
nothing harsh and nothing coarse; the mouth was firm, and the eyes
bold and defiant.  It seemed the portrait of a happy, rollicking
tom-boy.  The resemblance to the woman at his side seemed rather
faint.

"You were beautiful," he said, "that's the type I admire."

"Ah! well, perhaps not a beauty, but I was usually considered good
looking."

On the opposite page was a tall man, handsome, big-nosed, but he
seemed deficient in chin.

Carstairs looked at him closely for some time.  "He's handsome too.
Not very much like Charlie, and yet--the face seems familiar.  I seem
somehow to have met that man, sort of family resemblance to Charlie,
I suppose.  You cannot say that any individual feature is like, and
yet--you know.  Was he musical?"

"Oh very.  He had a music degree, at Oxford, you know."

"Had he really?  A sort of brilliant, all round man, like Charlie."

Suddenly the little gong sounded outside in the hall, and Mrs Darwen
stood up.  "There's dinner.  Let's go in," she moved out, and they
followed.

Darwen sat down opposite Carstairs, he caught hold of his chin with
both hands.  "Old Carstairs gave me such a whack on the jaw that I'm
afraid he's jammed the hinges, mater.  I hope you've got something
nice and not tough.  How's the new maid?  Hullo!"

Carstairs had half risen from his chair and stood staring like a man
transfixed.  Following the direction of his gaze, Darwen's eyes
rested for the first time on his mother's new maid who was bringing
in the dinner.  She was tall and beautifully proportioned, every
movement showed a lissome supple grace, and the features were equal
to anything he had ever seen carved in marble; the jet black hair and
deep brown eyes gave him the clue.  This was Carstairs' gipsy maid.

Her face was the colour of a boiled beet as she bent down and placed
a dish in front of Mrs Darwen.

Carstairs watched her for a minute with a sort of amazed frown.  Her
colour faded to the normal again, and as she raised her head she
looked into his eyes for a second without a vestige of recognition.

Darwen observed them both, his eyes were supernaturally bright.

Carstairs subsided into his chair and bent over his soup.

Mrs Darwen glanced from one to the other and glanced at the maid.
Then she smiled.

The conversation went on in spasmodic jerks till the maid left the
room.

"Don't you think I've got a nice-looking maid, Mr Carstairs?"

"I do.  In fact she's the girl I was telling you about."

"I thought so, the fates arrange these things.  She's lovely; I
thought when I was engaging her that it was a good job Charlie was
shortly going to get married."

"You're mistaken, mater.  Charlie is not shortly going to get
married."

"Not!  What do you mean?"

"It's broken off."

"You haven't jilted her, Charlie?"

"No, dear mater, she's jilted me."

"Nonsense."

"Well, she broke it off.  You see--you remember that girl at the
diggings, Carstairs, I used to give her a few music lessons and that
sort of thing.  Well, she got hold of Isabel and told her all about
it; of course I couldn't deny it.  It seemed to me she took a very
narrow-minded view of it.  So we broke off the engagement.  Anyway, I
could never have run smoothly with her, besides, the old Doctor's too
much of an autocrat."

"Oh! but you could have pacified her surely, she'll forget that."

"I'm afraid not, mater.  The more we talked, the further apart we
seemed to get.  I said I was sorry and all that, but this has been
coming on for some time.  We haven't been hitting it at all well for
months past."

Mrs Darwen and Carstairs were silent.

"As a matter of fact," Darwen proceeded, "I'm getting sick of this
place and all the people in it, I want a change.  Your people were
good enough to ask me to come and see them whenever I liked.  Do you
think they could put me up next week-end, Carstairs?  I like having a
chat with your guv'nor.  I must admit I'm rather sick over this
business--disappointed, you know.  I had built up an idol--you don't
understand these things, Carstairs.  If I stopped to think now I
should feel suicidal."

"Don't talk nonsense, my boy.  Can't you and Mr Carstairs go away for
the week end?"

"Not together, mater, we mustn't both leave the works.  If Carstairs'
people could do with me for the week end----"

"I can understand these things better than you think, Darwen.  The
people will be very pleased to see you, I know."  Carstairs was very
sober.  "The feminine mind is incomprehensible."

Mrs Darwen leaned over towards him.  "I'll help you, Mr Carstairs.
Come and spend Sunday with me when Charlie's away.  Perhaps if I
called on Isabel, Charlie--

"You can't restore a shattered idol, mater.  It's my fault, I know,
but a fellow expects----"

"Everything," Mrs Darwen said sadly, "and some women give it, ah!
yes, some women give it."




CHAPTER XIV

A few days later, the inquest on the man who had been killed at the
works was held.  Darwen gave evidence that he was going up to tell
the man to be more careful as he had just dropped an iron bar, when
he tried to get up on his feet and slipped off the plank.  Several
men who had been working there at the time corroborated his evidence,
and a verdict of 'accidental death' was brought in--with a censure on
the foreman for allowing an intoxicated man to go up on high
scaffolding.

Councillor Donovan met Darwen afterwards.  "You seem to be having a
run of bad luck, Mr Darwen."

"Yes, we have been rather unfortunate lately; still 'tis a
Providence' you know, Mr Donovan.  If men will get drunk----"

"Sure!  Yes!  Will you come and have a whisky yourself, Mr Darwen?"

"Thanks, I will."

They adjourned to a saloon bar near.

"You're puttin' down a lot of plant, Mr Darwen, making quite a new
place of it."

"Yes, the old stuff is quite inadequate for our increasing load,"
Darwen leaned forward confidentially and spoke very low.  "Do you
know, Mr Donovan, I'm bringing to light some very funny things in
these works."

"You don't say--"  Mr Donovan's eyes were wide and his cheek was pale.

"Between ourselves, I've got almost clear proof that a considerable
number of men who didn't exist were drawing regular weekly pay, and
the plant--" he shrugged his shoulders.

"Never!  Mr Darwen."

"Not a word!  I don't want to make a scandal, but I can't have any
unpleasantness on the council, so! of course, if it becomes necessary
in self defence--"

"True for ye.  True for ye."

"I want a friend on the council, Mr Donovan.  I've broken off my
engagement with Dr Jameson's daughter--and there's no knowing how
he'll take it.  I must have a friend, a really stalwart friend, or
else I shall perhaps be compelled to take unpleasant action, which
would be very regrettable, very regrettable indeed I'm going to apply
for a rise, a £100 rise."

"Ye'll have a friend, Mr Darwen, a rale good friend.  I can promise
ye that."

They walked out together and down the street; they stopped at the
corner where their ways divided.

"Good-bye, Mr Donovan.  I'm going away on Saturday to spend a
week-end with my friend, the Vicar of Chilcombe, on the Cotswold
Hills, you know.  My nerves are rather run down, unpleasant incidents
seem to be dogging me; the air there is very fine, I shall take some
good country walks."

"Ah! ye need a rest.  Ye've been working very hard, Mr Darwen.  And
may the devil take ye," Mr Donovan added under his breath as he
turned away.

Similar interviews Darwen had that day with several other
councillors, and impressed on them all that he needed a friend on the
council.  Two days later he left for Chilcombe; Carstairs saw him
off.  "Remember me to all the people," he said.

"I will, old chap, and you'll hustle 'em on with the work, won't you?"

They shook hands cordially.

On Sunday Carstairs called on Mrs Darwen.  She was watching for him
at the window, and came out to open the door herself.

"Oh, Mr Carstairs, she's gone, she left last night."

"Gone!" Carstairs repeated with a disappointment he made no endeavour
to conceal.

"A small boy came and called her away to her people.  They're
encamped about ten miles away from here, and her mother is very ill."

Carstairs sat down.  "Her mother," he repeated absently.  "That old
gipsy woman, the Queen of the gipsies, she told my fortune, no, it
was the kid.  She said, 'You're a winner, you'll always win.'  Lord,
I haven't won much yet.  I'm too slow.  Mrs Darwen, I shall have to
hustle."

She watched him with sympathy and admiration.  He wasn't knocked
down, he was spurred to further energy; she liked that sort, it was
the breed she was used to--the thorough bred.

"Where is this place, Mrs Darwen?  I'll walk over there to-day."

"It's over by the new water works.  I forget the name of the place."

"Dash it!  I can't go to-day, and leave the works while Charlie's
away."

"Would it really matter?" she asked.

"Probably not, but you never can tell, and he asked me not to leave."

"You know, Mr Carstairs, Charlie has got a very true friend and
assistant in you; he thinks a lot of you, he told me that you had
done more towards making the works pay than any man."

"Charlie's a jolly good sort, Mrs Darwen!  We were chums from the
start.  He's given me a tremendous leg up too."

She smiled with infinite pleasure; she could listen to such remarks
all day long.  "I don't like his being mixed up with that
lodging-house girl, though.  Do you know her?"

"Oh, I see her once or twice a day when she brings in the grub and
that sort of thing.  She seems alright.  You know, Charlie's such a
handsome chap that the girls won't leave him alone."

Mrs Darwen smiled again, then sighed.  "His father was the same," she
said.

Carstairs changed the subject.  "What do you think of your maid, Mrs
Darwen?"

"She's superbly handsome."

"Yes, she's improved.  She knows it too, I think."

"She'd be a fool if she didn't; the postman, the butcher's boy, the
milkman and all the lot are simply wild about her."

Carstairs frowned unconsciously.

"But she takes no notice of them.  I sit and watch them at this
window.  It's very amusing.  They try all their time-honoured wiles,
whistling and winking, etc.  She quells them easily.  The butcher boy
blushed as red as a piece of his own beef.  She's got quite the
drawing-room manner."

"Why did she leave Lady Cleeve's, do you know?"

"She gave no explanation, simply that she wanted to leave.  She has
exceptional characters."

Carstairs frowned again.  "Dash it!  It does jar on one."

"I suppose it does, but no man need ever be ashamed of that girl.
She speaks perfectly correct English."

"She did before, I think."

"Do you know, I rather believe she has some idea of going on the
stage."

"On the stage!  Why?"

"Well, she reads Shakespeare and she sings very well indeed."

"Er--have you heard her?"

"Oh yes.  I asked her to come into the drawing-room one evening,
bearing in mind her possible relation to you, you know.  Charlie says
she's very highly gifted that way, and he's going to give her a
little instruction on the piano."

Carstairs stood up suddenly.  "Charlie and I are going to quarrel,"
he said with a little laugh, but his eyes flashed fire.  He sat down
as promptly as he had got up.

She came over and put a hand on his arm; she was very serious.  "You
don't like that business of the lodging-house gin, any more than I
do.  I shall make a point of always being in the room when Charlie's
teaching her."

Carstairs looked gloomily at the carpet.  "Charlie's such a handsome
chap, he plays and sings and does everything so well; he's got all
the luck."

She looked at him very sadly.  "You're a better man than Charlie, Mr
Carstairs.  I'm his mother, and it goes to my heart to say it, but I
can't help it.  I suppose I spoilt him.  He's had his own way so
much.  I shall tell that girl so, it if seems necessary."

"It's no use, Mrs Darwen."

"You won't quarrel with Charlie, Mr Carstairs?"

He sat silent.  "I can't promise," he said after a pause.

"Ah!  I was afraid so.  The only friend he's got, the only chum he
ever had; plenty of acquaintances, but no friends, no real friends.
Don't you quarrel with him, Mr Carstairs, please don't.  I feel you
do him so much good, I know it, he says so himself and I'm afraid
he'll get wild and go to the bad.  Promise me you'll always be his
friend."

Carstairs stood up and looked steadily into her eyes.  "I can't
promise, Mrs Darwen, because I may not be able to keep it, but I'll
try."

"Ah!" she said, "if only Charlie were like you."

"When is she coming back?" he asked.

"To-morrow, she said, but I told her not to hurry if her mother were
really ill."

"Can you send her out somewhere--say to the general post office, at
eight o'clock in the evening.  I'll meet her and tackle her alone."

"Yes, I will, at eight o'clock."

"Thanks very much," he said, and took up his hat to go.

"You'll not say anything to Charlie--yet?"

Carstairs stopped to consider.  He liked to have everything above
board; this secrecy rather savoured of double dealing to him.

"No-o," he said at length.  "I shall tell him as soon as I get an
opportunity that I'm going to make the running with that girl if I
can."

"Oh, you can, I know you can."

"By the way, what's her name?"

"Darkey--Edith Darkey."

"Good Lord, what a name!"

"The relic of a nickname, I expect.  She may not really be a gipsy at
all."

"Perhaps not.  It doesn't matter anyway."  He shook hands and left.
He went down to the works and sat in the little watch office chatting
with the shift engineer for half an hour, then he strolled round and
looked at engines and boilers and had a few words with stokers and
engine-drivers.  Sunday in an electricity generating station is a
particularly doleful time; when half the place is dark and three
quarters of the plant idle, and the staff, a mere ghost of its normal
week-day number; when men with unusually clean hands and faces and a
general semi-Sunday appearance flit silent and spectre-like across
the dreary, empty engine-room, and silent, idle machines cast uncanny
shadows in the unlighted parts of the building.  It was rather
pleasant to Carstairs, as he wandered round, to contemplate the bad
old days when he himself used to be tied by the leg as it were, to
this place for eight hours at a time.  He was just going out when he
almost ran into Mr Donovan and another councillor, resplendent in
frock coats, white waistcoats and silk hats.

"Ah, Mr Carstairs, is Mr Darwen about?"

"No, he's gone away for a week-end."

"Is he now!  That's disappointing, we'll just have a look round
anyway.  Ye might come with us and explain, Mr Carstairs."

"Er--yes.  Certainly."

Mr Donovan became enthusiastic.  "He's a clever chap is Mr Darwen, a
wonderful clever chap.  Look at this, Mr Jenkins" (as Carstairs
switched on the arc light in the new part).  "An' all out of his own
head.  Ah! he's a clever chap.  We mustn't lose him, Mr Jenkins."

"No, indeed, Mr Donovan."

"Ah! an' is that the place where the poor fellow was killed?"

"Well!  Well!  Indeed now, Mr Donovan, the Lord takes us all in His
own good time."

"True for ye.  An' Mr Darwen tried to save him, so he did.  Look at
this, Mr Jenkins! engine beds, see! one, two, three.  Three new
engines, is it, Mr Carstairs?"

"Indeed now!  Three!  It's a lot of work for one man, too."

"So it is, Mr Jenkins, an' he deserves more pay for the doing of it."

"Indeed and he does, Mr Donovan."

So they went on these two Celts, the small built, swarthy, insidious,
oily Welshman, and the brawny, hearty, crafty Irishman; till
Carstairs felt an actual physical nausea creeping over him.  He had
drawn out most of these plans himself, working night and day,
calculating, measuring, thinking.  And Darwen was going to get a
rise.  Darwen who had done nothing but stick out for considerably
larger engines than Carstairs thought necessary.  Darwen who had
everything and was even now ensnaring the only girl that Carstairs
ever cared for.  Jack Carstairs with the great, big, English heart,
felt really sick.

At last they went and Carstairs wished them good-night at the door.
Shortly after he walked home alone by himself, ruminating on many
things.

Next day Darwen returned late in the afternoon.  He could read
Carstairs like a book, and as he shook hands he saw that something
was on his friend's mind.

"What's up, Carstairs?" he asked.

"I called on your mater yesterday, and the girl was gone."

"Ah, the new servant!"  Carstairs noted that Darwen was really
interested.

"Yes, the new servant.  I intend to marry that girl, if she'll have
me."

"Do you really?  It'll rather wreck your prospects in this town.  I
mean to say, I shan't be staying very much longer, I expect."

"Oh, rats to this town, I'm sick of it anyway.  But why are you going
to leave just when you're going to get a rise?"

"How do you know I am going to get a rise?"

"Donovan and Jenkins were in here last night, and I gathered so from
their remarks."

"Aha!  Mr Donovan, was he?  Come on down to old Donovan's pub and
have a drink and see me chaff him, he can't for the life of him make
out what's become of the hired assassin he sent to shoot me.  Do you
know, I often wonder what would become of 'em if they brought off the
event."

Carstairs was moody.  "Why are you going to leave just when your
mater's got settled?"

"Dear boy, I want more money.  The maximum of this job is about £500
or £600 per annum.  You don't imagine that's going to hold me!  I
want a rise simply as a testimonial, don't you see?  London's my
place!  One of the big London jobs is what I'm after.  Get your hat
and come on down to old Donovan's pub, and I'll tell you all the news
about your people as we go."

Silently Carstairs got his hat and they went down the street together.

"Well, I had a jolly good time," Darwen started.  "One of your
brothers was home--Stanley.  He's going in for the law, isn't he?"

"Yes; been going in for it a long time now."

"Is that so?  It's a long job, the law.  Anyway, they were all very
fit and well.  Your mater was very sympathetic over my engagement
being broken off.  I saw the Bevengtons.  Jolly decent girl that
Bevengton girl.  Can't understand why you don't fix it up there."

"I explained the reason just now."

"Quite so, so you did.  By the way, the girl's not gone away
altogether, has she?"

"No, her mother's ill, be back to-day possibly."  Carstairs was
watching him closely and he saw the old, old light that he knew
flicker up into Darwen's eyes.

They reached Councillor Donovan's hotel: a not very high class place
near the docks.  Darwen called for drinks.  "Is Mr Donovan about?" he
asked.

"Yes, sir."

"You might tell him that some one would like to speak to him, will
you?"

"What name, sir?"

Darwen paused.  "Er--Carstairs," he said.  Carstairs looked at his
chief in questioning surprise.

"Wait a minute," Darwen said in answer to his look.  "Keep your eyes
wide open and your mouth shut."

Next minute Mr Donovan appeared, jovial and hearty, his waistcoat of
many colours expanded to its utmost limit.  He stopped dead and
turned a sickly light purple hue when he caught sight of Darwen.  He
pulled himself together in an instant, however, and advanced with
outstretched hand.  "How do you do?  I thought it was Mr Carstairs."
Surprise and apprehension were still in his eyes.

Darwen took him by the hand and smiled into his face, his delightful,
winning smile.  "What are you going to have, Mr Donovan?  Whisky?
Have a brandy, you don't seem quite up to the mark.  Sit down, my
dear chap."  He pushed him into a chair facing them.  "That's better;
you were surprised to see me, Mr Donovan?"

"Pleased, Mr Darwen; I'm always pleased to see a friend."

"That's like you, Mr Donovan.  Here's your health, your very good
health, and may you live a very long time and be very happy."

"Same to you, Mr Darwen, and you, Mr Carstairs."

Carstairs raised his glass without a word.

Darwen carefully wiped his small, neat moustache with a snowy white
pocket handkerchief.  "I had a most pleasant week-end, but--" he
leaned confidentially forward across the little round table--"Now,
don't be alarmed, Carstairs--it was marred by a somewhat unpleasant
incident."  He paused and looked at Mr Donovan in silence for about
half a minute.  Carstairs watched them both, calmly observant.
Darwen took another drink.  Mr Donovan seemed in painful suspense.

"Ye're not hurt, are ye?" he blurted out at length.

"Me!  Mr Donovan?  Oh no, not a scratch.  But they found a poor devil
under my window, your window, Carstairs."

"Get on wid yer story, man!  What was the matter with him?"

Darwen turned to Carstairs.  "He was a red-headed man, a sailor or
marine fireman.  Lord knows how he came to get up there among the
sheep and the shepherds."

"But what was the matter with him?"

"He was dead!"  Darwen looked Mr Donovan steadily in the eyes.  "His
ribs were crushed in like an egg shell, and his neck was broken."

"Good God!  Did he fall from the roof, or what?"

"Well!"  Darwen shrugged his shoulders.  "It seemed almost as though
he had been hugged by a polar bear.  In fact, that's the local
theory, that he had a performing bear or animal of some sort which
turned on him.  They are searching the woods now; there's quite a
reign of terror in the neighbourhood."

Carstairs stood up.  "I say, I think I had better run home and see
the old people."

Darwen caught him by the coat and pulled him into his seat.  "It's
alright, old chap, your brother's there, and they've got a lot of
extra police from Gloucester and other places."  Carstairs sat down
again with an undecided air.  He hadn't much confidence in his
brother.

"It's alright; he's got a gun and a heavy service revolver, and Lord
knows what."  Darwen was speaking to Carstairs about his brother.  He
always admired the superb confidence Carstairs had in himself; he
placed no reliance on other people.  He still seemed unsatisfied.
"Look here, old chap, I'm convinced that your old people will be
alright."

Carstairs considered.  "The guv'nor can take care of himself as a
rule," he said thoughtfully, "and Stanley's alright, but too
theoretical--you can't theorise with bears.  I say, we can spare
Bounce for a few days; I'll stand the expense and send him over with
a revolver to sleep in the house for a bit.  He can drive in tin
tacks at twenty yards--and I've seen Bounce on breakdowns."  He
seemed quite relieved and sat down again in peace.

"Who's Bounce?" Mr Donovan asked with interest.

"Oh, an engine driver at the works."

"Ah!"  Mr Donovan made a mental note of the name and address of the
man who could drive in tin tacks at twenty yards.

Darwen took a drink.  "This is the third occasion on which I have had
a narrow escape of my life!" he observed.

Mr Donovan started like a frightened horse.  "What do you mean?" he
asked.

"I'm a great believer in luck, that's all.  A new servant of my
mother's, a gipsy girl, told my fortune the other day.  'You'll have
several exciting adventures, but you'll always be very lucky,' she
said."

"She told me I should always be a winner," Carstairs remarked.

Mr Donovan looked from one to the other.  He was very superstitious
himself, but he didn't know whether they were in jest or earnest.

"Yes," Darwen continued, "this is the third and last attempt.
There'll be no more."  He rose and held out his hand with a smile.

Mr Donovan's face was like a lump of dough.

"By the way," Darwen said, "I was forgetting what I came for.
Carstairs is putting in for a rise too, a £50 rise.  I suppose I can
rely on your assistance, Mr Donovan?"

"Ye can that, Mr Darwen."  A little colour came back into his face.
"The meeting's on Wednesday," he said.

Outside Darwen clapped Carstairs on the back.  "There you are, old
chap!  Now we'll go and compose your letter to the committee asking
for a £50 rise."

"Thanks very much, but what's the bottom of this devil's business,
Darwen?  How was that man killed, and why isn't that beast in there
in prison?"

"My dear fellow, 'that beast' has got brains.  I consider Donovan a
distinctly clever man.  It's only the fools who go to prison.  I wish
you could come into the committee to hear old Donovan speak, Irishmen
are born orators."  Darwen spoke quite affectionately.  They passed a
policeman; he saluted Darwen respectfully.

"Fine, big, brawny chap, isn't he?  Gets about thirty shillings a
week, and what he can pinch.  Truly the English are a mighty people.
'Set a fool to catch a fool.'  That man touches his hat to the rogues
and yanks honest simpletons off to gaol.  I can't understand how you
can be so wrapped up in simple, silly engines, when these great,
complicated human machines called towns and cities are so vastly more
interesting.  They follow the same rules, it is well to study engines
before you study men: the interdependence of parts, the distribution
of stresses, and the vast invisible force which you call steam or
electricity, and I call morals and sentiments.  I never cease to
wonder at the vastness and complexity of nature.

  "Our little systems have their day.
  They have their day and cease to be.
  They are but broken lights of Thee,
  And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."

Tennyson was essentially the modern poet.  Nature, to him, meant the
universe and the controller of the universe.  So it does to me.  I'm
what you would call a truly religious man, Carstairs.  Life is full
of pleasure to me.  I very seldom feel what you call anger.  My
emotions are well under control.  The misery of the world is due to
uncontrolled emotion.  I had a most pleasant conversation with your
guv'nor and Dr Bevengton on Sunday about the same thing."  He turned
and faced Carstairs suddenly.  "You know I was never really in love
with Isabel Jameson: the only way I could convince Pa, who was
chairman of the electricity committee, that I was a good engineer,
was by getting engaged to his daughter.  She was simply a cog in the
gearing that linked his intellect with mine.  These things are
necessary for universal peace."

"Quite so.  And you're going to marry Bessie Bevengton for a similar
reason."

Darwen laughed.  "The Saxons used to fight with sledge hammers," he
said.  "They're still adept with the weapon.  A woman is simply a
ragged bundle of emotions badly tied up, with the ends trailing out
in all directions, and it's those trailing ends that upset half the
world.  A man never loves as the men in books do."

"I think your remark about the policeman touching his hat to the
rogues was most appropriate."

Darwen laughed aloud.  "The Saxon could never handle the rapier," he
said.  "You're built for a slogger, Carstairs, and I expect you'd
break most men's hearts at that game, but not mine, I can avoid you,
I'm too nimble.  Will you come home and spend the evening with me?"

"No, thanks, not to-night."

"Oh yes, you will, you're not busy."

"No, I have an engagement."

Darwen raised his eyebrows and shot a quick glance at him.  He
wondered whether Carstairs was trying his prentice hand at lying.

"In that case of course--" he said, and they walked back to the works
in silence.




CHAPTER XV

That evening Carstairs hung round the post office from half-past
seven to half-past eight, he was thinking of going away when Mrs
Darwen's new maid turned the corner at the end of the street, he
waited under the big arc light outside the main entrance.  As she
came into the light, he stepped up and raised his hat.

"Good evening, Miss Darkey," the name almost stuck in his throat.

"Good evening, Mr Carstairs," she gave him a polite bow.

"How is your mother?" he asked.

"Better, thank you."  She hardly seemed inclined to stop.

"What was the matter?" he asked.  He was rather at his wits' end for
something to say to detain her.

"I don't know," she answered.  She looked at him, he thought, with a
little amusement.  "We gipsies never give names to our complaints.
It may have been appendicitis, or fever, or a cold.  Mother took herb
tea, and she's better now."

"I'm glad of that," he said and stuck.

She passed on into the post office.

"Well, I'm damned," he said to himself.  He was beginning to lose his
temper.  He watched her purchase some stamps at the counter--her
profile seemed even better than her full face; the contemplation of
her beauty cast a spell over him, for once in his life Carstairs felt
rather hopeless.  She did not look like a servant in her best
clothes, but like a lady in poor circumstances.  He noticed the
obsequious civilities of the clerk at the counter, and thought what a
pitiful ass the fellow was.  He stepped up to her again as she came
out, a little blaze of anger in his eyes.

"Look here!  What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," she answered, gazing at him in cold surprise.

"Well, why didn't you speak to me the other evening?"  He was rather
flabbergasted, he could not realize that this was the meek little
girl he had known in Scotland.

She raised her eyebrows in mild surprise.  "It's not usual for
servants to speak to guests, unless they are spoken to," she said.

"No, er--may I walk home with you?"  As he looked into her eyes he
thought for a moment, he saw some resemblance to Darwen.

She hesitated a second, and he, watching closely, caught the light of
a little look that made him feel very happy.  "Yes, if you like," she
said, and just for a moment the long black lashes swept the cheek as
he had seen them once before.

With much alacrity he stepped on to the off side, and they proceeded
down the street.

"You've changed wonderfully since I saw you last," he said.

"Have I?" she asked.

"Improved," he said, "wonderfully!  I had no idea that much
improvement was possible, but I see it was."  Carstairs was not
usually a man of many words, yet that glimpse of the 'something' in
her eye seemed to have loosened his tongue.  He noticed that she
flushed slightly with pleasure.

"You're improved, too," she said, "you're older.  How's Miss
Bevengton?"

They were just turning the corner.  A long vista of electric lamps
and lighted shops opened out before their gaze.  He was just about to
answer her question (which had struck a jarring note) when the whole
long perspective of light suddenly became eclipsed, went out, as if
by magic.

"Confound it!  That's a breakdown at the works.  I shall have to go.
I'll put you on your road home, and then, if you'll excuse me, I'll
make a bee line for the works."

"You need not trouble about me," she said.  "You seem to forget that
I piloted you through the woods when you couldn't see your hand
before your face."

He hesitated; the trouble at the works called to him like a siren.
As a result of many years of habit, other things seemed to fade into
temporary insignificance.

"Are you quite sure you don't mind?" he asked.

"Quite," she answered.

Something in her tone seemed to warn him, but he didn't quite grasp
the situation.  His brain seemed clogged, the siren of groaning
engines and flashing fuses seemed to hold his mind enthralled.  He
held out his hand.

"Good-bye."

She took it coldly.  "Good-bye," she said, and turned and was
swallowed up in the darkness.

At the bottom of the street Carstairs jumped into a hansom and dashed
up to the works shortly after the breakdown had occurred.  He found
the shift engineer (a very young man with a very young moustache)
trying to do fourteen different things at once, and incidentally, by
vigorous tugging, endangering the very existence of the moustache.
When a breakdown happens at an electric lighting station, it is the
lot of the shift engineer to be called upon to do fourteen different
things at once.  In the first place, various fools, in various parts
of the town, ring up on the telephone to tell him the lights are out:
as if he were not painfully aware of it at the start, for it may be
taken as an axiom, that when the lights are out in the town, they are
very much in in the works; then the engine-drivers get flurried at
the unusual display of fireworks around their engines; the
switchboard attendant (who is usually a budding shift engineer) makes
a frantic grab for the wrong switch and jerks it out, making
confusion worse confounded; then the stokers get excited because
their boilers are blowing off like to burst and they can't see the
water in them; and at the finish of all when the poor shift (usually
a very young man) is priding himself on getting rather well out of a
tight place, the chief (usually also a very young man) rings up to
ask why in thunder he did not do something altogether different, or
why he did not do what he did in much quicker time, or else waits
till next morning and harshly asks why the shift engineer had not
arrived, in a small fraction of a minute, at the same idea of what
was best, that he, the chief, had, after a night's rest and a few
hours' consideration.

When Carstairs arrived the very young man in question had just
decided to cut all the other thirteen things and stick to the one
vital point.  He was getting another machine ready as Carstairs
mounted the switchboard steps.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Pump juice into it," the very young man answered with a little
joyous gleam in his eyes.  'Pumping juice into it' is theoretically a
rotten way of treating a fault, but practically the act operates as a
soothing balm to the troubled and revengeful soul of the junior
engineer.

Carstairs, although a capable and careful engineer, was very youthful
himself.  "Alright.  Let it go," he said.  "Old Farrell will take all
night to locate it probably, otherwise."

So they "pumped juice into it" for some time, and burnt out several
yards of expensive cable, till almost simultaneously with the mains
superintendent and his gang of disreputable looking labourers, a
policeman arrived to report "smoke issuing from between the paving
stones at the corner of High Street."

"There you are!" Carstairs said, triumphantly.  "There's your fault
accurately located for you right away.  I don't know what you mains
chaps want Wheatstone Bridges and Potentiometers, etc., for."

"It's all very well," grumbled Farrell.  "But who is going to locate
the other faults you've started in the process."

"My dear chap, you must do something for your living."

The mains superintendent grunted, and went away.

Carstairs got on the station "bike," and cycled out to Darwen's.  The
cook opened the door to him.  He was rather disappointed, but he did
not dwell on it long.  He was ushered into the drawing-room.  He
shook hands with Mrs Darwen.

"Breakdown in High Street," he announced bluntly.

Darwen was sitting at the piano, he had swung round to face Carstairs
as he entered.  "Hurray!" he answered in an unemotional voice at the
announcement of the news.

"I was just turning the corner of High Street with--a friend."  He
caught Mrs Darwen's eye as he hesitated slightly on the word, she
smiled delighted approval.  Darwen's eyes gave a little flicker from
his mother to Carstairs, and unnoticed, he smiled, ever so slightly,
too: Carstairs continued.  "I had just turned the corner when the
lights went out.  I--er--jumped into a hansom--"

Mrs Darwen looked at him in pained surprise, so that he stopped in
wonder.

"What about your friend?" Darwen asked, and his eyes were very bright.

"I--er--I left her in the street."  For three generations or more,
the Carstairs had spoken the truth (mostly), this, the youngest scion
of the sturdy old stock, could not easily bend to deception.

Darwen laughed aloud.  "Carstairs has got a girl, mater," he said
with much amusement.  "He was just regaling her with a little light
converse about volts and engines when the lights went out, and he
forgot all about the girl, and hurried off to the works."  He paused
and looked from his mother to Carstairs with brilliant sparkling
eyes.  "What's her name, Carstairs?"

Carstairs looked helplessly at Mrs Darwen and remained silent.

She looked perplexed, angry, and sorrowful, all at once.

Darwen laughed again.  "Oh, mater!" he said.  "I didn't think it of
you!  Accessory before and after the fact.  Aiding and abetting old
Carstairs to break a poor girl's heart: he was getting on so nicely
too, just about to propose, when something distracted his attention
and he forgot all about it, and the girl and everything else, so that
she came in here half way between tears and chucking the pots and
pans about.  And now, two hours afterwards, old Carstairs turns up to
finish the remark he was about to make.  And it's lucky for you, old
chap, that she's not in, because she'd either have gazed at you as if
you were an unclean reptile, or else she'd have chucked the furniture
at you."

Carstairs sat down limply.  "Has she gone away again?" he asked
helplessly.

"Yes.  The same boy came and fetched her, her mother is worse.  She
thinks nothing of walking ten miles across country at this time of
night.  I offered to pay for a cab or something, but she wouldn't
hear of it."

"That's very kind of you, Mrs Darwen.  D'you--d'you think she was
really offended?"

"Of course she was.  I passed her in the hall as she came in, but
don't let that worry you, old chap.  The course of true love never
did run smooth, you know if there were none of these little
obstructions and full stops and side issues, the real thing would
never be awakened.  You may take it as an axiom that if a girl never
feels she'd like to chuck the fire-irons at you, she doesn't care
tuppence about you; at least, that sort, with those eyebrows and
eyes, and that free, swinging carriage.  I'm in love with that girl
myself."

Carstairs sighed somewhat heavily.  "Then you'd better get out of
love as soon as you can," he said, with a little laugh, "or we shall
fight.  I begin to appreciate the spirit of the duelling age, I think
it would give me real pleasure to scrap with somebody just now."  He
laughed again, but there was a gleam in his eyes that both Darwen and
his mother noticed.  Darwen's face lighted up with appreciation, but
his mother looked very sad.

"I wonder how this shut-down will affect our chances of a rise?"
Carstairs remarked.

"Oh, that's alright, old chap.  I have so many good friends on the
council now, that I'm not a bit afraid: There's going to be a duel
between old Donovan and the doctor.  It'll be rather good, I expect,
pity you can't come to see the fun: they're going to rebel against
the iron rule of Dr Jameson, the whole council is sick of his
autocracy.  Donovan will open the ball with a sledge-hammer attack;
Jenkins will back him up with some nasty hits below the belt; the old
Doctor will roar like a bull in pain, but I think he'll be beaten
this time.  I shall enjoy it anyway."

He swung round to the piano again, and dashed into a lively waltz
tune.  "That's the first dance I ever danced with Isabel Jameson," he
said over his shoulder.  "This is ours, I believe!"  "Thanks very
much."  "Very nice floor."  "Yes."  "Rotten weather!" etc., etc., he
quoted, laughing lightly.  "Then, three months later, behind those
imitation palms at the foot of the stairs, to the strains of this
tune in the distance (he changed to a very slow dreamy waltz) I
proposed to her.  If it hadn't been for this tune, I shouldn't have
done it that night.  But it was so appropriate, the opportunity
seemed unique, so I spoke up.  Isabel, (I never really cared for the
name of Isabel, you know), Isabel, may I call you Isabel?  I love
you.  Then--"

His mother stepped up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Hush, Charlie!  You don't know what you're saying."

"I assure you, mater, I remember it quite distinctly.  It was one of
the most exciting events--"

"My boy, the girl's going round the town looking like a shadow since
the engagement was broken off."

"Is she?  I'm very sorry, I haven't seen her."  He seemed thoughtful
for a minute.  "She was alright, you know, jolly decent in fact, but
we could never have paired--she was silly.  There is a Providence,
mater.  ''Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved
at all,' you know; these little afflictions sort of temper our
natures, accentuate and harden the good qualities we possess."

"And the bad."

"That's so, of course.  Good and bad, simply a matter of opinion.
I'm an optimist, I see no bad in the world, it's all good.  Carstairs
there is a grumpy old pessimist, he hasn't got time to smile, he's
too busy trying to decide what's good and bad, and honest and
dishonest, etc.  And he don't know at the finish.  Comes round here
trying to steal my girl and talks about fighting when I expostulate
with him.  I tell you the more you think about honesty, the more
fogged you get."

"My dear chap, in that respect I'm not fogged in the least."

Darwen strode over to him and clapped him on the shoulder, "Buck up
then, and go in and win, I surrender all rights.  Take a day off
to-morrow and drive over to this place in a cab.  Take a nice little
gold watch or something, as a peace offering.  Then, if I were you,
on the strict Q.T., I should give her a punch in the eye; her ma'mas
for generations past were probably wooed that way, and it would
appeal to her in spite of herself."

His mother laughed and looked at Carstairs.  "Really I should go over
if I were you."

"Can't go to-morrow," Carstairs said definitely.  "Got to see the
test of that new engine."

Darwen drew himself up and threw out his chest with mock gravity.
"I'm the chief, and I tell you you can go."

"You can say what you like, I'm not going unless you give me the
sack."

"I'd do that for two pins.  Shall I, mater?"

"No, not now.  She'll be back in a few days."

"Perhaps.  Oh, these consciences.  Thank God, I haven't one."

His mother stood up and looked at him sorrowfully.  "I don't believe
you have very much, Charlie, but pray God you may get one."

Darwen laughed.  "That's alright, mater.  I've got a jolly good
conscience, but I keep it in the background," he said.

Carstairs stood up and held out his hand to Mrs Darwen.  "Good night.
I'm afraid I've kept you up."

"Oh no," she said.  "Drop in whenever you can."

"Thanks, I will."  He went out into the night and wended his way
slowly home.  As he turned the corner of the long tree-shaded street
in which his diggings were, a man sprang out of a shrubbery behind,
and rushed at him with a heavy bludgeon.  Carstairs, lost in reverie,
pivoted on his heels at the sound, and ducking mechanically as the
stick descended, shot out a straight left for the man's face.  It was
not a heavy blow, but now thoroughly awakened, he stepped in and
followed up with a terrific right hand drive on the chin.

He dropped like a log, and Carstairs bent over him, looking into his
face.  Even by the dim light of the distant gas lamp, he recognised
his old acquaintance Sam Lee, the gipsy.  He was not knocked out, but
only partly dazed by the blow, and as Carstairs bent over him, he
suddenly lashed out with a huge hobnailed boot and caught him a
vicious kick in the stomach.  Writhing in pain, Carstairs collapsed
in the gutter, helpless.

The gipsy staggered to his feet, and picking up his bludgeon made
towards him.  Just then a large, dark form loomed suddenly into view
round the corner.  A bull's-eye lantern flashed a sudden light on the
scene, and Sam Lee sprinted off down the road with a particularly
limping shuffle, but at a good speed.  The policeman started in
pursuit, but gave it up as hopeless before he had gone very far; he
stopped, blew a shrill call on his whistle, and returned to Carstairs
who had now got upon his feet, still bent double with pain.

"What is it, sir?" he asked.  "Robbery with violence, or what?"

"Brutal assault, or attempted murder, God knows which," Carstairs
groaned.

"Ah!" the policeman said, producing a note-book.  "It's Mr Carstairs
of the electric light, ain't it, sir?"

"That's it, and the other man is Sam Lee, gipsy who was condemned for
burglary about two years ago."

"Oh, that's it, is it?  He was only let out a week ago.  'As 'e got
anything agen you, sir?"

Two other policemen were already in view.  Carstairs, almost himself
again, waited till they arrived, and told all three the tale.  They
listened with no sign of surprise, (the English policeman is never
surprised), but they took profuse notes.

"We'll soon 'ave 'im," they said.

Next morning at the works, Carstairs sat in Darwen's office, and told
him the tale of his adventure.

"Well, it doesn't matter a curse if it all comes out now, old chap,
your position here is firmly established."

Carstairs was thoughtful.  "My people won't like if it gets into the
papers.  I wonder what the girl thinks about it."

"Oh, you may bet your boots she's used to that sort of thing.  I'm
going off to the meeting now.  Wish you could come too, sure to be
some fun.  However, you'll see that engine tested?"

"Yes.  I'll put 'em through their paces.  The contractor's men are
downstairs now."

"Ah, well, ta ta.  You'll be worth £50 more per annum when I see you
again."  Darwen laughed and disappeared through the door.

Carstairs went down into the engine-room, and looked all round the
new engine and dynamo.  "Seems to me damn small for the power," he
said to himself.

Late that evening they met again in the office.  Darwen was beaming.
"You've got your fifty quid, old chap, and I've got my hundred.  It
was grand, never had so much sport in all my life.  Donovan opened
the ball: I tell you I hardly recognized myself under his glowing
eulogies.  The Doctor objected.  Then Donovan went for him.  By Jove!
old Donovan _can_ talk.  But the old Doctor was grand, he stood up at
the head of the table with his great chest heaving and his beard
seemed to quiver with anger.  'Retract,' he roared, when old Donovan
got personal, I tell you he fairly frightened 'em.  If I hadn't been
there, he'd have crumpled 'em all up.  I'll swear they each and every
one of 'em shivered when the old man glared at 'em.  Bull baiting's
not in it.  Donovan was about collapsed when I caught his eye and
frowned at him, then we went for the Doctor like a tiger.  The others
seemed to buck up then, till the old man roared.  'Get outside, sir,
you're not fit to speak to a decent assembly,' he said.  Then I put
my spoke in, I swear Donovan would have gone if I hadn't.  'Come!
Come!  Doctor,' I said.  'Hold your tongue, sir,' he roared.  'You've
no right to speak at all.'  That old man thinks he's the schoolmaster
of this town.  Then Jenkins gave him a hit below the belt.  'This is
Mr Darwen, not Mr Wakeley,' he said.  That's a patient of the
Doctor's, who died the other day with something the matter with his
tongue.  The old man took no notice.  Then Evans gave him another
dig, and Smith had a rap at him.  Little Winter got up to speak to
him too, but when the old man wagged his beard at him, his knees gave
way, and he sat down suddenly without saying a word; I never saw
anything funnier.  Then Sullivan got up and screamed like a man with
the devil behind him.  (I was the devil, most pleasant sensation I've
ever experienced).  Donovan capped it, and John Brown put a word in
for us, too.  I like that navvy, and I think the Doctor does too, he
very seldom bullies him, and gets as good as he gives him.  They
ought to put up a grand scrap, those two, if they ever got going,
just about a weight.  Anyhow it's passed alright, and there's no
mistake Donovan worked like a Trojan.  How did the test pan out?"

"Oh, it's off.  The damn thing wouldn't do much more than three
quarters of its load.  I knew it wouldn't."

"Go on!  Is that right?"  Darwen's face expressed incredulous
surprise, there was a sort of smile there too, with a strange little
flicker of the eyelids whose long lashes were drawn down till they
almost completely shaded the brilliant, beautiful eyes.

"That's quite correct."

"This is serious.  We must have another test to-morrow.  I'll be in
myself."

"Alright, but I know she can't do it.  She hasn't got the dimensions,
anywhere."

Darwen laughed suddenly.  "You're such a stickler.  We mustn't be too
hard on them, you know, Peace on earth, etc., you know.  And we've
just had a rise."

"That's alright, of course, but I imagine we want what we pay for."

"Yes, yes, of course," Darwen said, picking up his hat.  "Good
night."  He went off rather suddenly.




CHAPTER XVI

That evening Carstairs went to call on Mrs Darwen to ascertain if the
girl had got back again.  She had.  He almost ran into her just
outside the house, she was going towards the town.

He turned and walked beside her.  "How's your mother?" he asked.

"Better," she said coldly.  She kept very far away from him.

"I'm sorry I had to run away and leave you the other night."

"It didn't matter in the least.  I was rather glad."

Carstairs had a momentary impulse to turn on his heel and leave her
for good and all without any more words, but he was by nature an
inquirer, he liked to get to the bottom of things, besides he was in
love with this girl and he felt there must be some vital
misunderstanding somewhere.

"I see," he said, "that sweep has been telling you some of his cursed
lies with his music lessons."

She stopped and faced him.  "Will you kindly tell me which way you
are going?  Because I'll go a different way.  Or is it necessary to
make a fuss?"

He stared at her in amazement for a moment, then he stepped a little
closer and looked into her eyes.  "I am going back to my diggings in
Clere Road.  I shall never come this way again.  I wish I could leave
this rotten town and these rotten people for ever.  But let me tell
you that that man is a rogue, how great a rogue only God knows.  And
if you think he's going to marry you, you're greatly mistaken.  He's
deceived two girls in this town, and the Lord only knows how many
more elsewhere.  He could paper his room with girls' photographs and
girls' letters."

"Thanks," she said in icy politeness; she had studied the manners of
her superiors to some purpose, but in her they did not seem a
burlesque as is usually the case with the superior servant.

He looked at her steadily for some moments in silence, and she
returned his gaze quite calmly.  "I was in love with you," he said,
"and I felt I had done your friend Sam Lee an injustice.  Now I feel
that I have done him a kindness in saving him from a very exceptional
fool."

"I am honoured," she said.  "Your friend and benefactor, Mr Darwen,
has at least the manners of a gentleman."

"I'll take your word for it.  I imagine you know, the penny
novelettes describe the article very minutely."  He looked into her
eyes and saw that they blazed with anger; the sight reminded him of a
similar occasion in Scotland when she carried a big stick and they
stood facing each other at the door of his diggings.  His anger faded
at once.  "I'm sorry, I've behaved like a cad, but the issues were so
important, to me.  An apology, I suppose, is all the reparation I can
offer."  He turned and walked away, leaving her there.

She stood and watched him till he was out of sight, but he never
looked back.  He was not built that way.  On his way to the works
next morning, Carstairs heard the news-boys shouting, "mysterious
murder of Councillor Donovan."  He bought a paper and read the
account.

"At an early hour this morning Police Constable Garret observed a
body floating down the river near the High Street Bridge.  On being
dragged ashore, it was at once recognized as that of Councillor
Donovan, proprietor of the Blue Anchor Hotel, Dock Street.  The
unfortunate gentleman's neck was dislocated, and his ribs squashed in
as though by some powerful animal."

Carstairs did not read any more, but hurried on down to the works; he
searched out Bounce in the engine-room.

"You saw that man who was killed in the garden at Chilcombe, didn't
you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that looks like the same thing, doesn't it?" Carstairs handed
him the paper.

Bounce read it with a serious face.  "Looks like the same," he said.

"Look here," Carstairs looked at his watch.  "Come on down to the
mortuary with me, we'll have a look at it, and you can tell the
police what the other chap was like."

So they went off together, and on the way Bounce explained.  "When we
was on the China station, we called at Borneo once, some of our chaps
went ashore and went up country a bit.  They seen the niggers come
running out of the woods, shouting like hell, so they goes in to see
what the trouble was.  There was a monkey there.  He wasn't so very
big, an' one of our chaps went in to capture him--well, when they
brought 'im back to the ship, 'e looked just like that bloke I seen
at Chilcombe."

A policeman let them into the mortuary, and as Bounce gazed on the
dead body of Councillor Donovan, he shook his head in mystification.
"Just the same," he said.  "Exactly the same."

Carstairs was very serious.  "This is damnable," he said.  "I must
see Darwen."

The policeman took profuse notes from Bounce, and then they returned
to the works together.  Carstairs proceeded at once to Darwen's
office.

He held out a paper.  "Have you seen that?" he asked.

Darwen read it thoughtfully and slowly, then he whistled softly.
"Poor old Donovan," he said.  He seemed lost in thought for a moment
or so, then he repeated, "Poor old Donovan.  And only yesterday he
got us our rises, Carstairs."

"What do you make of it?"  Carstairs was watching him closely.

"Oh, murder, of course.  Singular resemblance to that chap who was
killed over at your place."

"That's what struck me."  He caught just a quick glance from Darwen's
dark, penetrating eyes.

"There's no doubt, of course, between ourselves, that Donovan got
entangled in his own web, some of the particularly sharp tools he
employed have eventually cut him."  He looked Carstairs steadily in
the eyes as he spoke.

"Ye--es, I suppose that's it.  This is a damn funny place.  I don't
like it a bit."

"You're right, old chap.  It is funny.  The world's funny.  Old
Donovan lived down among the docks with sailors and foreigners; all
sorts, Lascars, Chinamen, and niggers frequented his pub; besides, he
was a bookmaker.  God only knows how he met his end.  Poor devil!"

"He's not much loss to civilization, that's a certainty, but it seems
to come rather near home, somehow."

"Don't let that worry you, old chap.  How about this test?"

"Well, the engine's running, but she won't do her load.  That little
fool from the contractors calmly opened the emergency valve, letting
high pressure steam into the low pressure cylinder, when I wasn't
looking.  'How's that?' he said, triumphantly.  Of course I knew what
he'd done at once."

Darwen smiled.  "You must give 'em a bit, old chap."  He leaned back
in his office chair, and looked up at Carstairs, who was standing.

"A bit.  By George!  If she passes on load, she can't pass, by
pounds, on the steam consumption.  However, you're the chief.  It's
for you to pass it, not me."

"You mistake, old chap."  Darwen's voice was remarkably suave and
silvery.  "That's part of your job, to test all the engines."

"Very well, then I don't pass it.  I'll stop it at once and tell them
to start taking it down to return to the makers."

"That won't do, old chap, we must have the engine, can't get on
without it much longer.  You know that better than I do."

"Alright, then let us take it at three quarters its specified power.

"That's absurd, old chap."

"Well, I have nothing further to suggest, unless you test the engine
and pass it yourself."

"No, I shan't do that.  Perhaps--er--perhaps some other chief
assistant would do it."

"Quite so."

Darwen stood up and going over to Carstairs placed a hand
affectionately on his shoulder.  "Look here, Carstairs, we must have
that engine.  I'm going to have it, and you're going to pass it.
I'll come down and have a look at it while he's got the by-pass open,
so that I shall be able to say that I saw it doing the load alright,
then you can give me the steam consumption figures for the run.  See?"

"Yes, I see very clearly, but I'm not going to do it."

"My dear chap," Darwen beamed with the best of good nature.  "Think
what it means!  In your position I'd have done it.  I've got past
that now.  You're getting £250, or you will be next month, and just
waiting to step into my job when I leave, which I can assure you
won't be long.  Don't be an ass, Carstairs.  I'm going to have that
engine."

"That, of course, is for you to say."

A momentary gleam of anger like a flash of forked lightning shot
across Darwen's face, but he smiled again banteringly.  "I can't
understand how such a clever chap as you can be such a fool.  You
don't seem able to grasp the fact that the cleverness one is paid for
in this world, is the cleverness to outwit other people, not the
ability to disentangle abstruse problems in the higher mathematics.
Trot on down and get me out the figures for the steam consumption
like a good chap."

"Look here, Darwen, I'm not going to do your dirty work.  I'm sick
and tired of you and your roguery.  You're a liar, and a cheat and a
thief.  God only knows if you aren't worse!"

"Dear boy!  The elite of mankind is composed of such people.  As long
as you don't call me a fool, you won't offend me.  Are you going to
pass that engine?"

"No."

"Alright.  Good-bye.  Call at the office for a month's screw
to-morrow morning."  He sat down again in his chair and leaned over
his table.

Carstairs laughed.  "You're calling me a fool," he said, "but I'm not
a bit offended.  I know it's the reflection entirely of your own
intellectual shortcoming.  What do you think Dr Jameson would say?
What would the council? the whole blooming town say?  If I told them
I'd got the sack because I refused to pass an engine which wasn't up
to specification.  I imagine, Mr Darwen, you're prepared to
reconsider your decision, for a start, eh? just for a start."

"By Jove, Carstairs, I'm proud of you, and it's all my teaching,
every bit.  'Ye ponderous Saxon swingeth ye sledge hammer.'"  Darwen
smiled like the rising sun in June.  "God! what glorious weather
we're getting.  Look at the sky, Carstairs!  Did you ever see a sky
like that in October?"

"The sky's alright.  I should have thought the the earth beneath your
feet had more concern with you."  He pointed downwards with his
finger.  He was feeling rather well pleased with himself.

"Well done, Carstairs.  The earth is good.  I adore the earth, that
is nature.  Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood.  It's a pity you
don't ready poetry, Carstairs."  He smiled, genially.

Carstairs remained silent, impassive.  He watched him as he watched
an engine when he tested it; looking at everything, expecting
anything.

"When I was taking my before-breakfast walk this morning, I came
across a slow-worm; rather late for a slow-worm in October, isn't it?"

"Couldn't say."

"Ah!  I thought you were an observer of these things.  It's rather a
pity.  Still, I'll proceed.  I touched his tail with my stick,
and--you know the usual result--he promptly waggled it off and left
it on the footpath while the rest of him disappeared in the long
grass.  Now the slow-worm thought that was smart, but it was really
only silly.  I didn't want his tail, or the rest of him; he thought I
did, he was used to people who did, he thought I was a common or
garden fool.  So do you, Carstairs.  You can go right now to Dr
Jameson or to the devil himself; in fact, you can do what you damn
well please.  I have no further use for you, and that being the case,
I don't intend to carry you around on my back any longer."

"Very well."  Carstairs turned without another word and opened the
door.

"Stop a minute."

Carstairs turned.

"Shut the door half a minute.  Won't you sit down?"

"No, thanks."

"Ah! the strange uncouth ways of the Saxon.  However, it doesn't
matter.  You don't want to hit a fellow when he's down, Carstairs?"

"No, but I want to knock him down."

"Ah! the incomprehensible Saxon.  You wouldn't see a poor devil with
an old mother and a wife and family chucked out on the streets, or
sent to quod?"

"What are you pulling my leg about now?  You haven't got a wife and
family."

"Me!  Oh dear, no.  I'm not down.  Ha! ha!  You can't touch me, old
chap.  I haven't passed the engine.  As a matter of fact I told the
contractor's man yesterday I was afraid she wouldn't do, and I
drafted a letter to the firm, telling them so.  It's not sent yet;
the clerks are awaiting my signature to the typed copy."

"Then what have you been playing all this game about?"

"This is the game of life, dear boy, a sort of universal high jinks.
Let me explain.  I'm going to have that engine, and if you kick up a
row, either before or after, you won't touch me.  All that will
happen will be that half a dozen poor fools, who are at present
earning a precarious living as tools, tools of the inexpensive order,
will be chucked aside."

Carstairs stepped to the door again.  "Alright, we shall see."

"Don't be in such a beastly hurry.  Sit down."

"No, thanks."

"Alright.  In case of a rumpus, the first man to go overboard would
be Winter, poor little helpless Winter.  He was rushed into the
council because he was a fool, he accepted a five-pound note because
he was a thundering fool, and his wife was ill and the kids hadn't
got togs, and because everybody else was having five-pound notes.
He'd be the first sacrifice.  Poor old Winter, he looks like a thief;
really, he's got a better (or worse) conscience than a nonconformist
minister; that five pounds has pulled him down astonishingly, I've
watched him wither away.  And his kids, poor little mites!  All
through nature one observes that the small units increase at an
astonishingly high ratio.  He only got one five quid."

Carstairs was silent as a carven image.

"You're damned hard, you know, Carstairs.  Then there's the
contractor's man there.  He'd get the bullet, and two or three
fitters also.  Possibly a clerk or two and my chief assistant would
go to quod, even the honest and highly virtuous Mr Carstairs, son of
the vicar of Chilcombe, who would die, with his wife, broken-hearted."

"That'll do, Darwen.  I'll go and see Dr Jameson and a solicitor at
once."

"Carstairs, the mater's taken a fancy to you, and I'll admit you
appeal to me more than any man I've ever met.  So damned ponderous.
Your moment of inertia must be simply enormous.  Isn't it possible to
save you in your own despite."  He touched an electric bell.  An
office boy appeared.

"Ask Mr Slick if he'll come up here a minute, will you, please."
Darwen was invariably excessively polite, even to the minutest and
most sub-divided portions of humanity.

"Slick and I will endeavour to show you, Carstairs, that you've got
'no case,' as I believe they say in law."

Mr Slick appeared.

"Ah!  Here you are!"  Darwen shook hands cordially.  "Mr Carstairs is
not satisfied with your engine, Mr Slick.  Won't come up to
specification, he says."

Mr Slick raised his eyebrows; he was a hard-looking citizen, with
strong prominent jaw and piercing blue eyes.  "I understood that he
expressed himself as quite pleased yesterday."

"That's absurd, Slick, you know very well----"

Darwen held up his hand.  "Don't wrangle in my office, please,
gentlemen!  You have some support for your statement, of course, Mr
Slick?"

"Of course; my two erectors heard him say it."

"Yes.  I think I understand the Shift Engineer to say he was present
also.  The fact is I've written to your firm expressing approval of
the engine, on, as I understand, Mr Carstairs' advice.  Now there
seems to be some hitch.  However, we will come down and see to that
presently, Mr Slick.  Thanks very much for coming up."

The contractor's engineer looked inquiringly at Darwin, then he
disappeared through the door again.

Darwen turned to Carstairs.  "Do you comprehend that you're bowled
out, yet."

"No.  By Jove!  I don't."

Darwen's eyes were wide with admiration.  "Ye gods!  Ye gods!" he
said.  "Look here, Carstairs, you and I must continue to be pals,
I'll share with you.  When I came here, the councillors were sharing
the 'profits,' and old Jones was getting an occasional five quid.
Now, I get the profits and the councillors get the occasional five
quid.  See?  Will you go halves?  And I tell you halves is something
pretty good, too!"

"No, I won't.  I'll have my market price as an engineer--no more and
no less.  I can do for one dollar what any fool can do for two.  I
want my share of the dollar I save."

"You won't get it, old chap."

"But I will!  I'll tell you what I'll do.  If you chuck this sharp
practice and send those engines back, we'll make this place pay well,
and the council shall give us our whack."

Darwen was thoughtful for a minute.  "They won't do it," he said.
"The fool in the street, the voter, whose mind runs in shillings per
week, wouldn't let them.  In municipal work it doesn't pay to be
honest."

Carstairs stroked his chin in perplexity.  "You're an enigma to me.
You seem such a sound sort of chap in most things.  Damn it!  One
doesn't expect a Clifton man to be a blasted rogue.  Can't you run on
straight lines?  You know you're bound to get bowled out sooner or
later."

"Don't be such a pessimist, Carstairs.  I hate pessimists.  Let me
assure you, you are equally an enigma to me.  I fail entirely to
comprehend your mind.  Why do you worry and dissipate your energies
deciding what is right and what is wrong?  What you really want to
know is, what is best.  There is nothing wrong in this best of all
worlds, only degrees of rightness.  All effort that produces no
tangible personal benefit is so much wasted energy.  You're not an
Atlas, you can't carry the world on your shoulders.  The whole scheme
of nature was evolved for the benefit of individuals, not classes, or
masses, or groups.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating: I'm
always happy, and the keenest source of my pleasure is in out-witting
my fellow-men.  Life is a perpetual game of skill, and like the
integral calculus there are no rules.  You're a mathematician, you
like mathematics.  I've seen you grubbing your snout into 'Salmon's
Conic Sections' just on top of a Sunday's dinner.  Why don't you step
up with me into the higher planes of really applied mathematics;
applied as all such things should be, to men and women?  We'd have a
rare time, you and I.  When we boxed the other day we agreed at the
start that we would slog; we started out to bump each other for all
we were worth; we both got several severe punches; I got a split lip
and you got a black eye, but we enjoyed it, didn't we?"

Carstairs sat down with a heavy plump into a chair.  "You ought to be
put in an asylum, not in prison," he said, wearily.  "I wonder if I
gave you a good hammering if it would do any good."

"Not a bit, old chap.  Besides, I rather doubt your ability to do it."

"There's an element of uncertainty," Carstairs admitted.

They regarded each other with measuring eyes.  Carstairs allowed his
gaze to roam slowly over the thick, clean neck, the well-developed,
lissom-looking shoulders, and last of all rested on the clean-cut,
patrician face with the small, neat moustache just shading the
well-moulded, full red lips, quite closed; and the brilliant, clear
eyes that sparkled with a bold, clear intelligence.  They were two
splendid animals, these two young men, spotlessly clean, well groomed.

"I tell you what, Darwen.  I'll fight you now, to a finish, whether
you keep those engines or whether I get the sack."

"Thanks, old chap, that's a new form of the gamble of our early
youth--'heads, I win; tails, you lose.'  But we shall come to a scrap
all the same some day, I know."

"That's so; I'm going away to open the campaign now."  Carstairs
picked up his hat.  "I'll call for my screw, Monday.  By the way, I
suppose it will be at the increased rate?"

"Well, I'm damned."

"It's all in the game, you know.  No need to lose your temper over
it."

"Good, jolly good.  I see I'm converting you.  By Jove, you shall
have it."

"Thanks.  Good-bye."

"I say!"

"Hullo!"

"Mind!  There are no rules.  No rules whatever."

"Thanks for the tip.  I see I'm converting you."

"Not at all, old chap.  I want a run for my money, that's all."

"Well, I'll do my best.  Ta-ta."  Carstairs disappeared.




CHAPTER XVII

Carstairs went straight from the works to Dr Jameson's private house.
The Doctor was seriously ill and could not be seen, so he went back
to his diggings in deep thought.  "Better go home and see the guv'nor
before I do anything now.  Oh, the fearful and wonderful British
law," he thought to himself.  He saw the landlady and gave notice.

"Have you got another appointment, Mr Carstairs?" she asked.

"No, I've got the sack," he answered.

"Oh!" she said.  "Has Mr Darwen--" she stopped; she wanted to know
all about it, but did not know how to ask.

"Mr Darwen has sacked me, yes," he said; Carstairs was a most
unsatisfactory subject for a woman to tackle, he left so much to the
imagination.  "I shall leave about three o'clock on Monday
afternoon," he explained, as a conclusion to the subject.  He
produced his drawing board and settled down to do a good afternoon's
work on his slowly evolving patent.  As he bent low over the board,
scrutinizing some fine detail work, his eye caught an extra pin-hole
on the edge of the clean white board.  He dug the point of his pencil
thoughtfully into it.  "That's funny," he said to himself.  "I don't
remember to have done that."  He looked around at the three other
corners and saw pin-holes in all of them.  It was a new board and he
had never had a sheet of paper on it of the size indicated by the
pin-holes.  "Some devil has been taking a tracing of this, our
esteemed friend, Darwen, or his agents, no doubt."  He leaned back in
his chair in deep thought for a time, then he bent forward and set to
work vigorously again.

He was still busy when the landlady's daughter brought in his tea.
He looked up casually and caught her eye bent on his work with
extreme interest.  "Good evening, Miss Hughes," he said.

"Good evening, Mr Carstairs," she answered, and she had summoned up a
defiant sort of air to meet his eye.

Carstairs' face was like the Sphinx.  "I'm going up to London
to-morrow.  Would you mind letting me have breakfast at half-past
six?  I shall come back by the eleven twenty, but I've got a very
important piece of work here I want to finish before I go, so please
don't let me be disturbed for the rest of the evening."

"Certainly, Mr Carstairs.  Half-past six, and I'll see no one
disturbs you."

"Thanks very much."  Carstairs regarding her steadily with his calm,
inquiring eyes, caught a gleam in hers that she did not want to be
seen; he gave no sign, and she went away quite oblivious of the fact
that he had read her like an open book.

Next day he went off to London and saw his lawyer brother; they
talked over his case against Darwen, and his brother very quickly
decided that he had "no case."  So Carstairs returned, and in the
stillness of the wee sma' hours he examined the drawing again, and
found, as he expected, four more pin-holes.  He did not smile; when
in company his mirth was seldom excessive, when alone, his features
never for one second relaxed their attitude of calm seriousness.  He
replaced the drawing board in its position, leaning against the wall
behind the piano, and went to bed.

The following Monday he called at the office for his month's pay.  He
waited at the little shutter that the men were paid at, while the
office boy went to fetch a clerk who fetched another clerk, who
consulted with the first clerk, and called a third clerk and sent the
office boy for a book and a pen, then they all three consulted
together again and reprimanded the office boy before handing the
cheque through the little shutter.  Which entire rigmarole was the
outcome of insufficient work, and too sufficient pomposity.  While
Carstairs waited, Darwen opened the door of his office.

"Hullo, old chap, come inside.  Here, Morris, bring that cheque along
with you."  He held out his hand.

Carstairs ignored it.  "Thanks, I won't stay, I'm just going off to
Chilcombe."

Darwen laughed.  "A Saxon," he said, "is an individual who proceeds
along 'strait' lines.  I was going to ask you to come home with me
this evening.  The mater would like to see you."

"Thanks very much.  I should like to see your mother, but I'm afraid
I can't stop this evening."

The clerk brought out the cheque.  Darwen took it and, glancing over
it, handed it on to Carstairs.  "There you are, old chap.  I'm sorry
it's the last."

Carstairs took it.  "Thanks," he said.  "Good-bye," and turning on
his heel he went out for the last time.

Darwen watched him through the window as he walked down the street
with his long swinging stride.  "The reason, personified, of why
England owns half the earth," he said, to himself.  "And equally the
reason that she doesn't own the whole of it," he added, thoughtfully.

He lay back in his chair and gazed far into the future, mental
pictures in many colours shaped themselves in kaleidoscopic
procession across the white expanse of ceiling.  For half an hour he
sat thus, then sitting suddenly upright, and drawing in his
outstretched legs, he plunged back into the present among the papers
on his table.

Some six months later, in the dining-room at Chilcombe Vicarage,
there was held a family council of war.  The old vicar was there,
Commander Carstairs was there, Phillip and Stanley Carstairs were
there, and they all looked serious.  For six months Jack Carstairs
had been applying for each and every one of the multitudinous
appointments advertized in the technical papers, with no results; he
had learned through the same medium that Darwen had been appointed to
one of the London stations at £750 per annum, to start; and that
evening he had returned from making personal application for a very
junior appointment at £1 per week in a neighbouring town.  The chief
(of German antecedent), the personification of ignorance and bombast,
had catechized and bullied him, cross-examined and contradicted him,
and finally abruptly refused him the billet.

Jack was speaking, and they all listened attentively.  "When a German
ex-gasfitter, with a little elementary arithmetic and less electrical
catalogue information, talks to me as though he were a miniature
Kaiser and I the last-joined recruit of his most unsatisfactory
regiment, and then refuses me a switchboard attendant's job on
technical grounds, then, I admit, my thoughts lightly turn to robbery
with violence as a recreation and means of livelihood.  He'd have
liked me to say 'yes, sir,' and 'no, sir,' and 'please, sir,' and
touch my cap and grovel in the dirt.  I'd see him in hell first."

"I always said, Hugh, you ought to have put that boy in the Service,"
the sailor interjected, quite seriously.

The others smiled, a wry, sickly sort of smile.

"Can't we--er--don't we know somebody with some influence on these
councils who would use it on Jack's behalf."  It was the artist who
spoke.

The young engineer stood up suddenly with unwonted passion.  "Damn
it!  I'm not a blasted mendicant!  I'm a competent engineer!  It's no
use talking rot about modesty.  I know what I have done and can do
again.  I say I'm a competent engineer.  I've been getting two
hundred and fifty quid a year, and earning it, saving it for the
people who paid me.  And I am willing to take a quid, one blasted
quid a week, and I can't get it.  I'm not going to beg for my own
cursed rights.  In all those hundreds of jobs I've applied for, I
must have been the best man on my paper form alone.  If I can't live
as an engineer in my own cursed country, then, by God!  I'll steal."
He turned on his father with blazing eyes.  "I say, I'll steal, and
if any blundering idiot or flabby fool tries to stop me, I'll kill
him dead.  The first law of life is to live.  What do you say to
that?  You preach platitudes from the pulpit every Sunday, what have
you to say to the logic of the engine room?"

The old vicar smiled, somewhat sorrowfully.  "I might say that you
are possessed of a devil," he said, with quiet humour.  "Your
engineering experience ought to tell you that it's no use ramming
your head against a brick wall."

Jack sat down.  "That's so," he said, "there's an obstruction
somewhere; the thing to do is to find it out and remove it."

"I tell you, Hugh! the initial mistake was in not putting that boy
into the Service; though there's a maxim there that promotion comes
80 per cent. by chance, 18 per cent. by influence, and 2 per cent. by
merit."

"That's rot, you know, unless you mean to say that 18 per cent. of
the men in the Service are snivelling cheats."

The sailor was thoughtful.  "There are some cheats in the Navy, but
not many; as a rule it's not the man's own fault that he is promoted
by influence.  At the same time you can't afford to get to loo'ard of
your skipper, much depends on one man's word, but that man is usually
a----"

"Sportsman," Jack interrupted.

"Well! 'an officer and a gentleman' they call him.  The Service would
have suited you."

"My dear uncle, I have all respect for the Service, but at the same
time I should not wish to be anything but an engineer, and engineers
in the Service at the present time are somewhat small beer.  Anyway,
as a money-making concern, the Service don't pan out anything great.
Bounce told me that the seamen haven't had a rise in pay since
Nelson's time."

The sailor laughed.  "That's a good old A.B.'s growl," he said.  "I
gather, too, that engineering is not panning out so very great as a
money-making concern just now."

"No! you're right.  I'm a bit sick when I think of it, too, it's
rather sickening.  I've got a model upstairs of an engine that would
make any man's fortune, and I can't get the fools to take it up.  I
think I shall have to break away for the States."

They were all silent for some minutes till the old vicar rose.
"Shall we go to bed?" he said, and they proceeded upstairs, solemnly,
silently, in single file.

The weeks passed away and Jack's uncle went back to sea, and his
brothers returned to London, and another brother came and went.  The
winter changed to spring, the days lengthened out and grew brighter,
and still Jack Carstairs could get nothing to do, nor get any one to
take up his patent.  Then one morning amongst the two or three
letters awaiting him was one with a penny stamp: the ha'penny ones he
knew were the stereotyped replies of the various municipalities to
the effect that they "regretted" his application had not been
successful; it was a way they had, they sent these things with a sort
of grim humour about a month after he had seen by the papers that
some one else had been appointed; it wasn't very often they went to
the extravagance of a penny stamp for a refusal, so he opened that
first, glancing casually at the city arms emblazoned on the flap of
the envelope; enclosed was a typewritten letter, he was appointed
switchboard attendant at £1 per week.

Carstairs gazed at it sternly with bitter hatred of all the world in
his heart.  "A blasted quid," he said, aloud.  "Ye gods! a quid a
week!  And Darwen, the cheat, is getting £750."  He hadn't fully
realized when he was writing his applications for these small
appointments, exactly the extent of his fall; but now, as he had it
in typewritten form before his eyes, and signed, he looked again,
signed by a man who had served his time with him.

Mrs Carstairs was humbly thankful for small mercies, but the old
vicar, whom Jack found alone in his study, looked into his son's eyes
and read the bitterness of soul there.  "Do you think it would be
wise to refuse and wait for something better.  This is your home you
know.  You can work on your patent."

"I thought of all that before I applied," Jack answered.  "The
patent!  The path of the inventor seems the most difficult and thorny
path of all."

The old man's eyes brightened; he liked the stern definiteness of his
youngest son.  "It does seem hard," he said.  "I don't understand
these things, but I think you are wise to take this appointment."

"Oh, yes!  I have no idea of refusing, but when I think that that
lying cheat, Darwen, is getting £750 a year, it makes me feel pretty
sick."

"I know, Jack; we see these things in the Church the same as
everywhere else; the cheat seems sometimes to prosper.  Why it should
be so, I cannot comprehend; the cheat must inevitably cheat himself
as the liar lies to himself, so that they both live in a sort of
fool's paradise; they both unaccountably get hold of the wrong end of
the stick; they imagine that they are successful if they satisfy
others that they have done well, while the only really profitable
results ensue when one satisfies oneself that one has done well; then
and only then, can real intellectual, moral, and physical, progress
follow.  It is possible to imagine a being of such a low order of
morality that he could feel a real intellectual pleasure in
outwitting his fellow-men by cheating; such an one, it seems to me,
must be very near the monkey stage of development.  As man progresses
intellectually he sets his intellect harder and harder tasks to
perform, else he declines.  It is possible that the cheat may
occasionally reap very material and worldly advantages by his
cheating.  Some few apparently do, though the number must be
extremely small and the intellectual capacity exceedingly great, for
they are constantly pitted, not against one, but against the whole
intellect of the world, including their brother cheats.  The rewards
and the punishments alike, in the great scheme of the Universe, are
spread out unto the third and the fourth generation; the progeny of
the cheat, in my experience, decline in intellect and moral force
till probably the lowest depths of insanity and idiocy are reached.
This great law of punishment for the sins of the fathers is beyond my
mental grasp, but that it is so I cannot doubt; it is in fact, to me,
the greatest proof that there must be something beyond the grave.
You understand, Jack, I'm not in the pulpit, this is worldly wisdom,
but I want to set these things before you as they appear to me.  You
must forget Darwen; you reap no profit from his success or failure,
but you expend a large amount of valuable energy in brooding over it.
'Play up, and play the game,' Jack.  Don't cheat because others are
cheating, if you do you are bound to become less skilful in the real
game.  Think it over, Jack, 'Keep your eyes in the boat,' don't think
about the other crew or the prize, simply 'play the game.'  Have you
told your mother you're going?"

"Yes."

"Did you say you wanted to borrow some of my books?"

"No, thanks.  I've got all the books I want.  You've seen my two
packing cases full."

"Ah, yes!  I'd forgotten.  So you're going to-morrow.  That's rather
soon, isn't it?"

"I told them that if appointed I'd start at once.  I'm going to pack
and then whip round and say good-bye to my friends."

"Ah, of course.  I'll see you off in the morning; six o'clock, did
you say?"

"Yes, six ten at the station."

So Jack took his hat and stick and strolled round to his few friends
in the village to tell them he was going.  The Bevengtons were
furthest away, and he called there last.  Bessie had been away in
London and other places, nearly all the time he had been home, when
he called now she was home.  He had heard she was coming.

"I've come to say good-bye, Mrs Bevengton.  I've got a job, and I'm
going up north again."

They both looked pleased; Mrs Bevengton really liked Jack.  "When are
you going?" she asked.

"To-morrow morning."

Bessie's jaw dropped, she was keenly disappointed, and she looked,
Jack thought, in the pink of condition, more so than usual.

"I hope it's a good appointment, Jack," Mrs Bevengton said; she was
disappointed too.

"A quid a week," he answered, bluntly, looking at her steadily.

Her jaw dropped also.  "Oh, but I suppose it will lead on to better
things."

"Twenty-five bob at the end of six months," he said, with rather a
cynical little smile.  Out of the tail of his eye he regarded Bessie,
she had flushed a deep red at the mention of his microscopical
salary.  She seemed more matured, her manner impressed him with a
sense of responsibility, an air of definiteness that appealed to him
immensely; he saw now that her lips closed suddenly.  She had made up
her mind to something.

"Come on out for a walk, Jack," she said.  "I haven't had a look
round the old place for nearly a year.  We shall be back to tea,
mother."

She got her hat and they walked briskly down the pleasant village
street in the glorious spring sunshine; every one they passed greeted
them with civility and respect.  Jack regarded them with pleasure; he
told Bessie they were the stiffest, hardest, and most genuinely civil
crowd he had ever encountered.  "Perhaps I'm biassed," he said, "but
I like men and these chaps appeal to me more than any others I've met
so far."

They turned across the fields and went more slowly.  "I've been
having a good time, Jack, while I've been away."

"So I expect," he answered.

"Well, I've been to a lot of dances and parties and theatres, etc.  I
suppose I've enjoyed it--in a way."

"Yes, I should think you would--in most ways."

"Jack!" she was walking very slowly.  "Two men--three men, asked me
to marry them."

"Ah!  I suppose they were not the right ones."  He did not quite know
what to say.

"Well, two of them were not--but one of them--it was Mr Darwen."

"Good Lord!"  Jack turned as though he had been shot.  "Are you going
to marry him?"

"I don't quite know.  I've come home to decide.  I don't think I care
for him in quite the right way.  Why did he break off his engagement
to Miss Jameson?"

"Ah--er--I--"  Carstairs was thinking, thinking, thinking.  He
wondered what to do and what to say.

"He told me that he thought he was in love with her till he saw me,
then he knew he wasn't."

"Er--yes."

"He's very nice and very handsome, still I know I don't care for him
as--as I do for some one else."

Carstairs was silent, he was trying to think.  The situation was
getting beyond him, he had a fleeting idea of trying to change the
subject, of closing the matter; but he knew that once closed it could
never be re-opened, and he wanted to do the right thing.  They were
silent for some minutes.

"Jack?" she asked, and the struggle was painful.  "Has my money made
any difference to you?"

"Half a minute!" he said, hastily.  "Don't say any more, please.  Let
me think"--he paused--"Five years ago I met a girl in Scotland."

"And you love her, Jack?"

"Yes.  I thought not at one time, but I know now that I do."

They walked for a long time in silence, then she spoke.

"I'll write to Mr Darwen to-night and tell him that if he likes to
wait a long, long time, I'll marry him," she said.

Carstairs was silent; the great big English heart of him was torn
asunder.

"Why don't you speak, Jack?  Mr Darwen's your friend, isn't he?  He's
handsome and so kind and attentive, and if he cares for me as--as he
says he does, I think I ought to marry him.  I couldn't before, but
now--don't you think I ought?"

"Well, er--it's more a question for the guv'nor.  Will you let me
explain the situation to him, and then he'll see you.  The guv'nor's
very wise, in these things, and it's his province, you know.  I
should like you to talk to him."

"Thanks--thanks.  I will."

That night Jack Carstairs sat up very late with his father in his
study.  And next morning the train whisked him north, to the dim,
grey north, and the engines, and the steam, and the hard, hard men,
mostly engineers.  Jack was very sad and silent in his corner of a
third-class carriage all the way.




CHAPTER XVIII

For three months Carstairs worked steadily at the beginning of things
electrical; he cleaned the switchboard and regulated the volts; he
took orders from a youth, rather younger and considerably less
experienced than himself.  For those three months the world seemed a
very dull place to him.

Then, quite by accident, as these things always happen, he met a man,
a casual caller, who wished to see round the works; the shift
engineer told Carstairs off to show him round, because it was "too
much fag" to do it himself.

He was an oldish man with whiskers and heavy, bushy eyebrows, just
turning grey; his questions were few and to the point, and Carstairs
seemed to feel he had met a kindred spirit at once.  He listened
attentively to Carstairs' clear and concise explanations, and when it
was over he did not offer him a shilling as sometimes happened, but
in the casual, unemotional, north-country way, he handed him his card
and asked if he would like to see round his works "over yonder."

Carstairs glanced from the card in his hand to the rather shabby
individual, with the "dickey," and slovenly, dirty tie, in front of
him.

"Thanks, I'll come to-morrow," he said.

"Will ye?  Then ye'll find me there at nine."

"I'll be there at nine, too."

"Then I'll see ye."  He held out his hand and gave Carstairs a
vigorous grip.  The name on the card was the name of a partner of a
very prominent firm of engine builders.

Carstairs felt a singular sense of satisfaction for the rest of the
evening; his perturbed mind seemed at peace, somehow.

Next morning, punctually at nine, he called at the office and was
shown round the extensive works by the old man in person.  He
explained and Carstairs listened and made occasional comments or
asked questions.  And ever and anon he felt a pair of keen eyes
regarding him in thoughtful, shrewd glances.  When they had finished
the circuit of the works, Carstairs broached the subject of his
patent, he felt an extreme friendliness towards this rough, shrewd
man, and he knew that his labours on the patent were at last going to
bear fruit.

The old man listened.  "You have a model?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I'll come round and see it."  And so he did there and then.

In the dingy little back room of Carstairs' diggings, he examined
critically and minutely the small model.

"Ye made this yerself?"

"I did."

"Ay!"  It was a grunt of distinct approval.

They took it to pieces and spread the parts out on the table, the old
man examining them one by one.  He offered no comment, and Carstairs
put it together again and turned it with his hand, showing the
beautiful smooth running of it.

"Yon's well made!  Are ye a fitter?"

"Oh, no!"

"Are ye not?  I was.  Will ye bring it round to the office?"

"Certainly."  Carstairs dismantled it and wrapped the various parts
up in paper.

"I'll take those," the old man said, and seizing two of the heavier
parts, he tucked them under his arm.  And thus, carrying it between
them, they returned to the big works.  There a long consultation was
held.  The junior partner (an ex-officer of the Royal Engineers) was
called in, and the final result was that the firm undertook to
manufacture the engine and pay royalties to Carstairs.

"I must see a lawyer and get advice as to the terms of the
agreement," Carstairs said.  "I'm only free in the mornings this
week.  Will that suit you?"

"What are ye getting yonder?" the old man asked, bluntly.

"A pound a week?"

"Well, ye can start here in the drawing office on Monday at £2.  Will
that do ye?"

"Thanks, I'll give notice to-day."

The next six months passed like six days to Carstairs; he hadn't time
to write to any of his friends and only an occasional scribble to his
mother.  At the end of that time the first engine built on his model
was finished and had completed a most satisfactory run.  Then he took
a holiday, and went home.

He had entirely lost track of all his friends and station
acquaintances.

"Bessie is not engaged," his father told him, "but Darwen still
pesters her with his attentions."

Jack was thoughtful.  "She's a jolly decent girl, Bessie!  If Darwen
were only honest!  I shall go up to London, I want to see his
mother."  So next day Carstairs went off.

He called at Darwen's office.

"Hullo, old chap!  How's the Carstairs' patent high-speed engine
going?  Eh?"

It was the same old, handsome, healthy Darwen; bright-eyed,
pink-cheeked, lively.

"Oh, alright.  Is your mother in London?"

"Well, I'm blowed!"  There was that little flicker of the eyelids
that Carstairs knew so well.  "Yes, there you are," he handed him a
card with an address on it.

"Thanks!  When will you be out?"

"Ye gods.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  Good old Carstairs.  The northern air is
simply wonderful for the nerves.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  I tell you what.
I'll go out this evening, just to oblige you.  I'll go to the
theatre.  I haven't seen the new thing at Daly's yet."

"Thanks!"  Carstairs turned and went away.  He made his way to the
address in South Kensington that Darwen had given him.  It was a
boarding-house; he asked for Mrs Darwen and sent in his card.  The
German page-waiter sort of chap showed him up to their private
sitting-room.

She entered almost immediately, looking older and whiter, her eyes
more bleared and her cheeks deeply furrowed.  She looked him sadly in
the face.

"I knew you'd quarrel," she said.

"I'm sorry," he answered.  "It couldn't be helped; we didn't really
quarrel, I called on him to-day."

"Ah!"  There was a gleam of pleasure in her eyes.  "Why didn't you
call on me before you left Southville?"

"I couldn't--then, he'd just broken me--chucked me aside like a
broken chisel.  I sent you my best respects."

"Yes, so he said: I wondered if he lied.  You're--so--I thought you
would have called--about the girl."

"I couldn't, I was broke, that was why."

"You don't usually shirk."

"No, I try not to.  It didn't occur to me in that light."

"Ah!"  She gave a deep sigh.  "You're the best man, I think, I've
ever met.  You want to know where she is?"

"Yes."

"Then you have a good appointment?"

"Well, a firm is manufacturing my engine.  We think it's bound to go."

"Charlie's got an engine, too."  She was watching him very closely.

"Has he?"  Carstairs was rather interested.

"The drawings are in his room.  I'll go and get them."

He put out a hand to stop her.  "I don't expect he'd like me to see
them," he said.

"Oh! but I want you to.  I can trust you."

"You think I mightn't be tempted to get revenge by cribbing his
ideas?"

"No.  I know you.  Besides yours is finished."

He was very serious.  "That's so, but I'm full of ideas for
improvements and other things, and it is most difficult, when one
sees a thing that is appropriate, not to assimilate it consciously or
unconsciously into one's own ideas."

"Still, I'll get them," she answered.  She went out and came back in
a minute or two with a drawing board and a roll of tracings.

Carstairs glanced over the drawing, and allowed just a slight smile
to pucker up the corners of his eyes.

"Ah!  I knew," she said, "that's your engine."

"Oh, no!" he answered.  "It's not my engine."

She looked at him and saw he was speaking the truth.  She spread out
the tracing.  "That girl from your lodgings in Southville brought
that round one day when he was out; he never gets angry, but I know
he was annoyed because she'd left it."

Carstairs bent down and examined it.  "It's done rather well," he
said; "girls are good tracers.  I left that for her to copy."

"Oh!  I didn't think you--I didn't know you knew.  I wanted to warn
you."

"Thanks very much, but it wasn't necessary."

She heaved a very deep sigh of relief.  "That's been on my mind like
a ton weight.  I was afraid my boy was a thief.  Very often I was on
the point of writing to you, but--you hadn't called."

Carstairs was bent low over the drawing examining some fine work very
closely, he was so deeply interested he did not look up as she spoke.
"That's excellent work!  Darwen was always an artist, in everything,"
he said.

"Yes," she answered, proudly, "he's very clever.  I'm so sorry you
quarrelled.  I knew that girl would come between you."

He looked up, impassive as usual.

"Yes," she repeated, "but you're the one she really likes, I know."
Mrs Darwen seemed to have grown visibly younger.

Carstairs straightened himself and stood looking down at her with his
calm steady grey eyes.  "Ye-es," he said, he was thinking rapidly.
"Yes, I hope that's true.  Will you give me her address; has
she--er--got a situation?"

"Oh, no! she's been in London, having her voice trained.  She's got a
magnificent voice."

"Where did she get the money from?" he asked, he was quite pale, and
his grey eyes glittered like newly fractured steel.

She looked at him aghast, frightened; she put an imploring hand on
his arm.  "The girl's honest.  I know she is.  I'm sure of it; she
was saving.  I know she was saving.  Perhaps Lady Cleeve----"

"Perhaps Charlie----"

"No, no!  I know she wouldn't take anything from him,
because--because that was why she left."

Carstair's face lightened.  "Will you give me her address?" he asked.

"She's gone down to her people again, she came to me yesterday.
They're encamped down at the old place near Southville; it suits her
father down there, he's getting old and Scotland was too cold for
him."

The words brought back a luminous vision to Carstairs; his eyes took
on a far-away look.  "My word! she was full of pluck," he said,
aloud, but really to himself.

Mrs Darwen smiled with great pleasure.  "If--when you've married her,
you'll be friends with Charlie again----?"

He came to earth suddenly and considered.  "We shall be friends," he
said, "from now onwards, but I'm afraid we can never again be chums.
I'll call and see him before I go to the station."

"Thank you," she said.  "Thank you, I'm so glad."

He shook hands and left her, and half an hour later he called at her
son's office.  The office boy showed him in and he held out his hand.
Darwen grasped it with a warm friendly smile.

"In the presence of other people," Carstairs said, as the door closed
behind the office boy, "we are friends, because your mother is one of
the best women on this earth.  How she came to have such a whelp as
you, Lord only knows.  Do you agree?"

"My dear chap, I am honoured and delighted.  It is not often one gets
an opportunity of shaking an honest man by the hand, even though the
excuse for doing so is a lie."  He smiled his most charming smile.
"You're putting on weight, Carstairs."

"Yes, but I'm in the pink of condition."

"So am I."

"That's good.  Your mother isn't looking so well."

"No, I've noticed it myself."  A shade of real anxiety passed across
Darwen's face.

Carstairs noted it, and his opinion of Darwen went up; he stepped up
close.  "Look here," he said, "she was worried because she thought
her son was a damned rogue.  I've told her--at least given her to
understand, that he is not, and you'll find her looking a different
woman.  Do you see?"  He turned and went out.

Darwen sat back in his chair lost in thought.  "That man always makes
me think.  Wonderful man, wonderful man.  Damn him!"  He sat up
suddenly and went on with his work.

That night Carstairs reached Southville; he got out and put up at a
hotel for the night.  Before going to bed he went out and strolled
round the town in the silence of the late evening.  Old memories
crowded back on him, and although they were not always of pleasant
happenings, the taste of them was sweet; he had progressed since
then, and he felt, in the bones of him, he knew, that he was going
forward.  His steps turned mechanically towards the electric lighting
works, and before he quite realized where he was going, he found
himself facing the old familiar big gates with the little wicket at
the side.  He looked at his watch.  "Eleven o'clock!  Wonder who's
on."  He paused a minute, then opened the wicket and went in.
"Probably some of the men who knew me are still here," he thought.

The engine room was just the same.  The hum of the alternators and
the steady beat of the engines thrilled his blood.  He stood in the
doorway for some minutes in silence.  The sight of running machinery
was meat and drink to him.  A little square-shouldered man wandered
up to ask him what he wanted.  Carstairs held out his hand.  "Hullo,
Bounce, have you forgotten me?"

"Well, I never.  Mister Carstairs!  I ain't forgotten you, sir, but
you was in the dark."

"Any one I know left on the staff?  Who's in charge?"

"A new engineer, sir.  They be all new since your time."

"All new!  Ye gods, how fellows do shift about."

"They do, sir.  I've seen hundreds come and go since I've been here."

So they stood talking for some time.  "I suppose you're off at
twelve, Bounce?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's nearly that now.  I'll wait.  You can come round to my hotel
and get a drink."

"Thank you, sir.  I'll go and wash and change.  Would you like to see
the engineer?"

"No, thanks, I'll just sit on this box and watch the wheels going
round: same old box, same old wheels.  How many hours of the night
have I spent sitting on this box listening to your damn lies, Bounce?"

"God only knows, sir."

Carstairs sat and waited, and all sorts of fresh fancies and ideas
thronged through his brain as the wheels went round and the
alternators hummed and the corliss gear clicked.  A distinct and
complete idea for a valuable improvement shaped itself in his mind as
he watched and listened.  He stood up and stretched himself with a
sigh of great content.  "By Jove, if old Wagner composed music like
that, he'd have done a damn sight more for humanity," he said to
himself, with a smile at the sacrilege of the thought.  To Carstairs,
Wagner was a drawing-room conjurer, not to be thought of at the same
instant as men who designed engines.  Bounce came down the
engine-room towards him with his wide-legged sailor's roll.  He was
attired in a blue-serge suit, spotlessly clean and neat.  His strong,
clean-cut features and steady, piercing eyes showed to great
advantage in the artificial light and against the dark background of
his clothes.

"By Jove, Bounce, I can't understand why it is you're not Prime
Minister of England."

The little man's bright eyes twinkled, but his features never
relaxed.  "I can't understand it myself," he said.

They went off together to the hotel, where Carstairs drank whisky and
Bounce rum.  The waiter looked at him somewhat superciliously, till
he met Bounce's eye fair and square, then he seemed impressed.

"Dr Jameson is dead.  Mr Jenkins is chairman of the committee now."

"Yes, I know."

They were silent for some minutes.

"Do you know this county well, Bounce?"

"Pretty well, sir."

"Ah--do you remember my telling you about a gipsy girl?"

"Yes, sir."

"I want to find her; she's round here somewhere, near the new
water-works."

"I know, sir."

"Good man.  Can you drive--a horse I mean?"

"Yes, sir."

Carstairs stood up.  "Now, look here, Bounce, I really cannot
understand--what the devil is there you can't do?"

"I dunno, sir."

"Can you drive a perambulator?"

"Yes--an' nurse the baby."

"Go on.  Tot up what you can do.  Honest.  No lies, mind."

"Alright.  Here goes.  I can walk and run and swim; box and wrestle
and fence; shoot a revolver, rifle, or big gun; push a perambulator,
hand cart, or wheel barrow; drive a steam engine, horse, or a motor
car; stroke a boiler, feed a baby, the missus, an' the kids; scrub a
floor, table, or furniture; make and mend and wash my own clothes;
light a fire, make tea, coffee, or cocoa; make the beds and clean the
rooms; wash up dishes, lay the table and wait at same; clean the
windows, paint a house, and walk along the roof."  Here he started to
digress.  "I remember once in Hong Kong----"

"That'll do, I've heard all about Hong Kong.  Let's hear about
Bounce."

"There ain't much more that I can do," he said.

"Nonsense! you sing."

"Oh, yes!  Sing a song, play the mouth organ.  Catch fish (when they
bite), dance the waltz, polka, hornpipe, quadrilles, lancers, and
schottische."  He paused.

"Go on."

"There ain't no more.  Oh, yes! read an' write an' do sums."  He
scratched his head.  "Sometimes," he added.

"I said no lies."

"Alright, cross out sums."

"What about ropes?"

"Oh, yes!  I can splice, reave, whip, knot, bend, an' gen'rally
handle ropes."

"Can you shave yourself and cut your own hair?"

"Yes an' no, but mind, I have 'ad a try at that.  I come aboard drunk
once in----"

"Shut up.  What else can you do?"

"Drink a bottle of rum, brandy, whisky, gin, port, sherry, champagne,
beer, or any alcoholic liquors, with anybody; and spin a yarn with
the best."

"Very good.  I give you a first-class character.  Will you come out
for a drive with me in the morning and look after the horse while
I--while I'm engaged?"

"Yes, sir, I will.  I knows all about it.  I courted my missus
between the spells of three-year cruises."

"Alright.  Half-past eight, here."

"Yes, sir."

Carstairs tossed him his tobacco pouch.  "You can take all that's in
that."

"Thank you, sir.  I forgot as to mention as I could smoke and chew
any baccy on the market.  This yer--this yer," he reflected,
thoughtfully, as he emptied the pouch, "is what we calls boys'
terbaccer."

"Go on home, Bounce."

"Yes, sir."  He doubled up with violent mirth.

"You should have added that you could laugh like a baby elephant."

"Yes, sir."  He doubled up again, then, suddenly straightening
himself, saluted in all solemnity.  "To-morrow morning at half-past
eight, sir."  He turned and made his way out.

Next morning punctually at half-past eight Carstairs and Bounce set
off in a hired dog-cart for the gipsy camp.  They drove along the
beautiful country side chatting lightly till they came (over the top
of a hill) into sudden view of a torn and trampled valley, teeming
with men; little locomotives steamed fussily in all directions;
gantry cranes wheeled and pivoted and travelled with large blocks of
stone from one place to another.

"That's the new water-works," Bounce said.

"Alright, let's go down, some of the men will be sure to know where
the camp is."  They drove down to the deeply rutted, slushy,
entrance, a five-barred gate was kept permanently open by the furrows
of rick brown earth turned up by the heavy cart wheels.  A strongly
built, healthy looking individual dressed in a tweed suit and yellow
leggings and a cloth cap, was picking his way carefully through the
deep mud of the gateway: he was the resident engineer.  Carstairs
pulled up and shouted to him across the hedge, "I say, is there a
gipsy camp near here?"

The young man carefully balanced himself on a flat stone in the
middle of the sea of mud, then he looked up and pointed with his
hand.  "Yes, over there!  Go down to the bottom of the hill and turn
to your left, there's a bit of a common there.  Light green common,
they call it."

"Thanks!"  Carstairs whipped up and drove away.  "Healthy chaps those
'civils' always are," he remarked.

"'Civils'?" Bounce asked.

"Civil Engineers."

"Oh!"

They drove in silence till they reached the bottom of the hill and
turned to the right.

"Ah, there it is.  Fancy that girl walking out here by night."

"That's one thing I don't like--walking," Bounce answered.

"No?  Here!  Catch hold! while I get out and go over there."

The common was a triangular piece of land between the forks of two
roads; in one place it was fairly flat most of the rest of it was
composed of miniature hills and dales, with steep sloping sides and
flat bottoms, inclined in places to be marshy.  It was on the flat
portion, under the shelter of one of these miniature hills, that the
caravans were drawn up in a scattered group.

Carstairs walked up to the one he recognised, with the little brass
handled stairway, the bright paint and fancy leather work; a little
crowd of ragged urchins and mongrel curs trailed after him.  He
mounted the steps and rapped at the little door.  It was promptly
opened and a woman looked out; although she was much more haggard and
worn looking he recognised her at once, and he saw that she
recognised him.

"She's not here, she's gone into the town to buy things for father."

"Which town?  Not Southville?"

"No,----."  She mentioned a little country town about four miles
away.  "She'll be back this evening."

He stood on the step and stroked his chin in thought.  "I've driven
over from Southville, but my man can go back with the horse.  Where
do you think I could get lodgings near here?"

"There's a public house in the village."

"Where's that?"

"Back along the road you came, only turn to the left."

"Thanks.  I'll call again to-morrow.  You're sure she'll be here?"

"Yes, father's ill."

"I'm sorry to hear that.  What's the matter?"

"He's dying."

"Dying!  Don't say that."

The woman shook her head.  "Would you like to see him, sir?"

"Ah!  Er--"  Carstairs stood still a moment.  "Yes, I should.  Can I
talk to him?  Something important?"

"Oh, yes.  He knows he's going, and it would do him good to hear what
you've got to say."

He stared at her in quick surprise for a moment, and then stepped
after her into the caravan.  It was scrupulously clean and
expensively upholstered; the sides were partitioned off horizontally
into little bunks with neat brass rods and curtains to shut them in;
there were windows along the front and back and sides with snowy
white lace curtains to them; it was not at all dingy, but very light
and bright.  The woman drew aside a curtain and showed the
silver-haired old man supported in a half-sitting position in the
bunk.

Carstairs could see at once that he was very weak, and also that he
was very well attended to.

The old man looked him steadily in the eyes.  "I've seen you before.
How are you?" he said.  The voice was very low.

"I'm first class, thank you.  I'm sorry to see you're not so well."

"Yes, I'm dying.  We've all got to die some time.  You want to marry
my daughter?"

[Illustration: "YES, I'M DYING"]

"Yes," Carstairs answered, in some surprise, nevertheless.

"Oh!  She told me," the old man nodded feebly towards the gipsy
woman.  "She knows everything."

Carstairs was silent.

"Who are you?" the old man asked, after a pause, during which he had
closed his eyes and remained quite still.

"My name is Carstairs--Jack Carstairs.  I'm the son of the Reverend
Hugh Carstairs, Vicar of Chilcombe in Gloucestershire."

There was a short silence, then the old man spoke again.  "Who was
your grandfather?"

"He was a captain in the navy."  Carstairs was rather surprised.

"That's alright.  I suppose we can't expect anything better.  Get
those papers!"  His last remark was addressed to the woman.

Carstairs stood silently wondering--mystified.  He heard the woman
unlocking something at the back of the caravan, then she came up and
held out some parchment-looking papers.  The old man took them in a
feeble thin hand and laid them on the bed clothes in front of him.

"I am Sir Thomas D'Arcy," he said.

Carstairs was astonished beyond measure, but his countenance showed
very little of it.

"Yes," the old man continued, slowly, "I am Sir Thomas D'Arcy, one
time plain Thomas D'Arcy, Professor of Music at Oxford, profligate
and drunkard.  This gipsy woman is my legally married wife, and that
girl is my daughter; there is no estate, and the money is all spent.
You can marry the girl when you are getting £400 a year."

"Well, I'm damned."  Carstairs thought it so fervently that for a
moment he feared it must be visible on his face, but the old man was
resting with closed eyes.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked, at length.

"Quite," Carstairs answered.

"What are you getting now?"

"£150 a year."

"Ah--that's not much."

"No--but I expect in the next six months to receive royalties on
patents to the extent at least of the other £250."

"Very good--expectations do not always materialize.  However, those
are the conditions.  You can go now."

He was moving away when the old man held up a feeble, detaining hand.
Carstairs stayed in silence.

"There are other D'Arcys, but no relation to us.  I am the last.  We
were really French, a French noble family--with a strain of Italian
running in us too----"  He rested again.

Carstairs pondered deeply while the old man paused.  Something of the
outlines of the features in their deathly pallor seemed familiar to
him.  He gazed hard at the face as it lay with closed eyes on the
pillows, then he asked, speaking slowly.  "Do you know a Mrs Darwen?"
The resemblance he had traced to the portrait in Mrs Darwen's album.

"Miss Darwen!"

"No; Mrs Darwen, she has one son."

"Exactly.  My son.  She's Miss Darwen.  Do you know him?"

"I've met him."  Carstairs' face was like a carven stone.

"Ah!  She was the daughter of a yeoman farmer in Oxfordshire, rather
well to do, but of course I couldn't marry her--then; the boy--is he
any good?"

"He's very clever."

"He would be that, of course."

"Your daughter knows him."

"Does she?  I don't know who she knows.  You must marry her.  She
mustn't--mustn't know."

The old man sank back on his pillows and closed his eyes.  Carstairs
watched him for a minute or so, then turned and looked
interrogatively at the woman.  "Asleep?" he asked, quietly.

She nodded.  "Resting," she answered, and Carstairs made his way very
quietly out of the caravan.

"I'll come again to-morrow," he said.




CHAPTER XIX

Lost in thought, Carstairs made his way back to the dogcart and
Bounce.  He climbed in.  "Let's go to the village, Bounce, over
there."

"Yes, sir."  Bounce was all attention to business; he asked no
questions, and looked no questions, but his mind was active in a very
great wonder.

They drove in absolute silence till the village was reached, then
Carstairs spoke.

"I'm staying here the night.  Will you take the horse back and come
over again in the morning?"  He took out his purse and handed Bounce
some money.  "I haven't seen the girl, I shall see her to-morrow.
I've seen her father and her mother.  Her father is dying."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir."

"So am I.  Good-bye."  Carstairs went into the village inn, arranged
for a room, got something to eat, and set off to walk to the little
town where the girl had gone.

It was a beautiful day and the country was lovely, but Carstairs had
no spare thoughts to give to it; he strode on and at a fast pace,
observing nothing, till long before he had disentangled the
complicated skein of his thoughts he found himself in the little town.

"What the devil am I to do now?" he asked himself.  "I'll walk right
through the bally show till I come out on the other side, then I'll
turn round and come back a different way," So he walked on again and
spent the whole afternoon to no purpose except as far as exercise was
concerned.  It was quite late when he returned to the inn.  He got
something to eat and then sat in the little private bar smoking and
sipping a whisky and soda.  Through the thin partition, from the tap
room, he heard a huge uproar of gruff voices.  It was pay night, and
a great concourse of navvies from the water-works were taking their
evening beer.  Carstairs caught scraps of conversation, and
occasionally references to a "toff" who had been "standing" them beer.

He got up and wandered along the country lanes in the dark, then he
turned in and went to bed.

Early in the morning, just after he had finished breakfast, Bounce
arrived with the dogcart.  Carstairs saw him, through the little
lattice window, walking the horse up and down the village street.  He
went out to him.

"Good-morning, Bounce.  You're early."

"Yes, sir."

Carstairs got into the cart.  "Drive over to the camp," he said.

So they drove away, Bounce enlivening the journey with little
anecdotes of his travels.

"I picked up a 'bob' yesterday, sir."

"You're lucky."

"Yes, awful lucky chap I am; always picking up something.  Picked up
a barrel of beer once, me and a mate."

"Yes, a hogshead, I suppose; been lying on the pavement for hours and
nobody happened to notice it till you came along."

Bounce laughed.  "Well, there was some other blokes as reckoned they
saw it first, but we didn't take no notice of them, furriners, they
was, see?"

"I see, didn't you give them a drink?"

"We offered to share out, but they wasn't satisfied with that, so we
took the lot.  Mind, there was a row about it afterwards."

"I suppose there would be."

"Yes.  'Asty blokes, them furriners.  We 'ad to flatten 'em all out
before we 'ad any peace.  Stiff blokes they was too, some on 'em, but
very soft about the ribs, like punching a bladder of lard it was,
sort of unsatisfactory like."

"Ah."

"Yes.  An' another time we picked up an old toff with a bullet in
'im, that was in Rio.  Fine harbour, Rio.  Give us ten dollars each
'e did, three on us."

"How did he get the bullet in him, Bounce?"

"Oh, 'aving a bit of a spree, I s'pose, 'e never told us.  'Nother
time I picked up a bloke's 'and, cut off at the wrist.  In Port Said,
that were."

"Nothing in it, I suppose?"

"No, there wasn't, worse luck.  It weren't an English 'and, you could
see that."

By this time they had reached the camp, and Bounce stopped the
recital of his "lucky" incidents.  Carstairs got down.  "If I'm long,
you can drive by yourself to Southville.  I don't want to make you
late."

"That's alright, sir.  I changed-over with my mate to-day.  I don't
go on till midnight."

"That's very kind of you, Bounce."

"Don't mention it, sir."

Carstairs went across to the caravan.  The gipsy woman saw him coming
and opened the door to greet him.  "She came back and went away again
first thing this morning.  She'll be back this afternoon."

Carstairs frowned and stared at the woman very severely.  He thought
she was not telling the truth, but he saw by the light of genuine
anger that sprang to her eyes at his frown, that he had misjudged her.

"I'm sorry," he said.  "How is your husband?"

She smiled again at once.  "About the same.  Will you wait?" she
asked.

"No thanks, I'll explore the country a bit, and call back again."  He
was going away when the woman stopped him.  "Will you come in just a
minute?  I'd like to try you with the cards!"

He looked at her enquiringly.  "Do you really believe your cards?"

She did not answer, but stepped inside the caravan and produced a
pack of cards, quite new and clean.  "Shuffle and cut," she said,
handing them to him.

He did so, and cut the ace of hearts.

"You're thinking of her."

"That's true.  I was thinking of her prophesying in Scotland that I
should be a winner."

She looked into his eyes.  "So you will," she answered.

Carstairs felt his pulse tingle with an added determination as she
spoke.

Taking hold of him by the right wrist, she turned the palm upwards
and looked at it intently for a few seconds.  "My word! you are a
strong man," she said.

"That's piffle," he answered, "those lines are accentuated by
gripping a hammer shaft."

She smiled.  "Oh no!  Cut again, please."

He cut twelve times, and cut hearts every time.

The old woman positively laughed.  "Now do you believe?" she asked.

"It's certainly rather a curious coincidence.  Hearts infer love, I
suppose, and I'm in love, that's true."

"Yes, that's true, but you have a rival, I know.  A dark man,
perhaps--if he----"

Carstairs frowned.  "Good God, that's impossible.  Didn't you hear
what the old man said? he's her brother."

The old woman looked steadily into his eyes.  "You don't know.
That's only what you think."

"Lord!  Perhaps you're right.  By Jove----"

"Cut the cards," she interrupted.  "Again and again."

He cut six times, spades every time, the knave four times.

The gipsy was very serious.  "There!" she said.

"It's certainly rather curious," he admitted.

"That dark man's very close, closer than you think.  Watch him!
Watch him!" she repeated, and retreated into her caravan in a
strangely perturbed state.

Carstairs returned to Bounce.  "No luck," he said.

"Well, Patience is a virtue, sir, so they says.  An' you've got to
'ave it with the women, though they ain't got none theirselves."

"You're a man of experience, Bounce."

"Well, I ain't got no more than one missus, an' that's enough for any
man, too much for some on 'em."

"You're very virtuous, I'm sure, I hope you get your reward."

"That's true.  I do, sir.  Not but what I 'ave a' done a bit o'
courting now an' then in other parts--before I was married, o'
course."

"Of course."

"Yes.  An' now my missus gets the benefit of all that experience.  I
come to 'er efficient, thoroughly efficient, as I sez to 'er on the
day that we was married."

"You are a thorough believer in efficiency, Bounce."

"Yes, sir.  Do it now, an' do it proper.  That's the motto of the
navy.  Only 'steady,' too.  'Steady does it,' is another motto.  The
man as ain't never done no courting before 'e gets married, ought to
be buried an' not married at all."

"I've just had my fortune told by that gipsy woman."

"That ain't nothing, sir.  I've 'ad it done 'undreds of times, an'
all different," the little sailor remarked, cheerfully.  "When I was
in Calcutta----"

So listening to Bounce's wonderful adventures, Carstairs had a very
pleasant morning drive.  They stopped at a little country public
house and got some bread and cheese and beer; Bounce, meanwhile,
enlarging on the virtue of beer in general, and that beer in
particular.

Then they got into the trap again and completed a circuit of the
locality, bringing up finally at the far side of the little common.

"Hullo!" said Bounce.  "What's up there?"

They could see a dense crowd of navvies from the water-works moving
in the direction of the gipsy camp.

Carstairs looked, anxiously.  "Hope there's no row on with the
gipsies," he said.  They could hear much shouting and singing, but
could not distinguish the words.  A turn in the road brought the camp
full into view: there was much commotion going on, the gipsies were
pulling their caravans up together as if to withstand an assault.

"We must stop those chaps, Bounce," Carstairs said, as he whipped up
the horse and tore along the road at a furious gallop.  They cut
across the level strip of green at the acute angle of the common, and
raced along the other road.  They reached the navvies some three
hundred yards from the camp.  As they got within earshot they could
distinguish what the men were shouting.  Carstairs flushed an angry
red and set his big jaw tight.  "And this is England," he said.
"England, in the year of grace 1896, 'England, the eye, the soul of
Europe,' as Darwen used to quote."

"What's started them on this devil's game, Bounce?"

"Drink, I expects!  Men gets like that sometimes."

Carstairs pulled the horse up dead in front of the advance guard of
the men.

"I say, where are all you chaps going?" he asked.

"Women," they shouted.  "Bring out the gipsy women."

"That won't do," he said, sharply.  "Go on back about your business."

"Ho, ho, 'ere's Lord Muck," a cockney voice shouted in derision.

"The Earl o' Hell," another one corrected.

They swarmed round the dogcart, and the others coming up stopped to
listen.

"How is it you are not at work?" Carstairs asked.

"Saturday afternoon, mister," a gruff, but civil voice replied.

"Well, you'll all get the sack, you know, besides imprisonment, if
you go on with this game."

"The sack!  Ha!  Ha!  'Ere's a bloke going to give us the sack,
mates."

"That'll be nine 'undred and ninety-nine times wot I've 'ad the sack,
then."

"S'pose we'll 'ave to starve, that's all."

"Same as we did afore, eh, mates? Ha! Ha!"

A man climbed up on to the step.  "What say we goes for a drive?" he
asked.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when Carstairs' fist took him
in the face and knocked him backwards among his fellows.

"Hurray!" they shouted.  "Hip, hip, hurray!"  Five hundred of them
roared it out in chorus.

"That's one for Charlie."

"You ain't going to take it lying down, Charlie?"

"'E's 'ad enough.  I allus said Charlie ain't got no guts in 'im."

"'Old the 'orse while I gets at 'im," the man answered.

Two navvies promptly seized the horse, one on each side of his head.

"Up you get Charlie."

Carstairs stood up.  "Wait a minute," he said.  "I'll come down.
Will you give me fair play?"

"That's honest, 'e couldn't say no fairer than that."

"Make a ring, mates."

"I'll 'old yer coat, Charlie."

"'Go's going to second the toff?"

Bounce stood up.  "Is there any blokes 'ere wot bin in the navy?" he
asked, with great dignity.

"'Blue Marines,' mate," a big, burly man on the outskirts of the
crowd answered.

Bounce looked at him closely.  "Is that you, Scrapper Hiscocks?"

"That's me, mate."

"Don't you remember Jack Bounce, of the 'Mediterranean'?"

The big man pushed his way up to the trap and held out his hand.
"How do! old chum.  I thought you was still in the Service."

"So I ought a bin if I 'adn't bin a bleeding fool.  This 'ere
gentleman is Mister Carstairs, 'e's good, I trained 'im myself.  'E's
nephew of Lootenant Carstairs wot was on the 'Mediterranean' with us."

The man promptly saluted, and Carstairs nodded to him.  "I shall get
a fair show?" he asked.

The ex-marine nodded towards Bounce.  "Me an' Bull-dog'll see to
that, sir."

"Thanks!"  He stood up and addressed the crowd with a smiling
countenance.  "Look here, you chaps, I'm going to take on your mate
here for as many rounds as you like, or to a finish."

"To a finish," they shouted in chorus.

"Alright; to a finish, then, but we may as well have a gamble on it."

"'Ear!  'Ear!  That's sporting."

"Well, look here.  I'll put my purse containing five pounds in the
hands of this gentleman.  (He pointed to the marine, who blushed.)

"Mister Hiscocks," some one remarked.

There was a general titter, the navvy is unaccustomed to any sort of
a handle to his name.

"That's it.  If I lose, that five pounds will be yours to buy drinks
with.  If I win, will you promise to go back and leave those women
alone?"

"That's fair, mates.  'E couldn't say no fairer than that," the
marine remarked.

"Ay.  'O's going to watch you an' the five pounds, Bill?"

There was a general laugh.

"What do you say?" Carstairs asked.

"What does Charlie think on it?" a voice asked.

"Yes, let Charlie decide," they chorused.

"Well, mates," Charlie spoke up, "I thinks wot the bloke sez is fair.
I'll do my best for you, mates."

Carstairs climbed out of the trap.  "That's settled then," he said.

Bounce led the horse on to the green, and tied him up to a little
tree.  "Let's have a proper ring, and half a dozen stewards to see
there ain't no crowding."

They selected a level spot in a little dell surrounded by miniature
mountains.  "'Cos then everybody can see without shoving," a navvy
observed.  The six stewards, with an air of very great seriousness,
took off their coats and rolled up their shirt sleeves, exposing
brawny, sunburnt arms to the daylight.  They formed a circle and
roughly measured with their eyes.  "How's that, Charlie?  How'll that
do, sir?"

"Alright, mates," Charlie said.

"Very nicely, thanks," Carstairs replied.

They stepped inside the circle, and Bounce and Hiscocks assisted
Carstairs to disrobe, while five hundred statuesque navvies crowded
round the tiers of the natural theatre, five hundred hard, strong
faces; high cheek-boned, square-jawed, steady-eyed.  Many of them
were exceedingly handsome, in a massive, rough-hewn sort of way;
mahogany browned, ear-ringed, coarse skinned.  They were gathered
there for a brutal, coarse purpose, perhaps, but the dawning of a
great truth was uppermost, resolute and steadfast, in the minds of
most.  They were going to see fair play, "fair play" with all it
meant when all the passions of envy, hatred, fierce anger, and the
lust of gain were aroused.  They were sportsmen, these men, and the
term always seems to me synonymous with gentlemen as understood in
England.  The germ of a desire to do right was firmly fixed in their
hearts, and this absorbed through many generations from the force of
the precept and example of their leaders, the aristocrats of England.
They had no religion, these men, and no politics, but the spirit of
the prize ring and the Queensberry rules was deeply implanted in
their souls.  Their fathers before them had imbibed these rules from
constant practical demonstration.  Those drunken, dissolute, Georgian
noblemen had given these men a code of morals that they could
understand, and firmly rooted it in their breasts by consistent
example.  And every day England reaps the fruit of that seed.  Truly
it seems to me that England owes more to the sportsman than to the
statesman: and although the middle class swamp, by a vast majority,
all other classes in the number of great men they have produced: yet
the aristocracy, like the head boys of a school, are responsible for
the "tone" of the nation, and the "tone" of England is surpassing
good.  What these men had started out to do that day was due to their
mental limitation, not to their wilful vice.  Woman, particularly
that type of woman, was to them an inferior animal, as she is to most
working men; yet the majority treat their female relations, and the
women they consider worthy of it (and the working man is not easily
deceived by fine clothes and fine manners), with astonishing respect,
real and true respect, not superficial mannerisms.  The big majority
of English working men, in my experience, are sportsmen, and
possessed of the instincts of gentlemen, ineradicably stamped into
their hard, true natures.  And you young men, the budding engineers,
who are lost in the intricacies of elementary algebra, or unravelling
those painful problems in strength of material; the Tensile stresses
in the rims of flywheels, and the elastic limit of steel plates,
etc.: it is yours to see that you also understand the elastic limit
of human nature, the inherent instincts of the working man, and the
durability of your own emotions; this is what you learn in the
"shops": it is yours to solve the unemployed problem and see that the
English workman gets a chance to develop the fine qualities that are
in him; for this (unemployment) is an engineering problem; the
reduction of a sine curve to a straight line, the modification of a
wave, the control of a tide: it is yours to know that the working man
does not want a mouth in Parliament, but a fair show at his work.
Watch what he _does_, and not what he _says_, as he will watch what
you do, and not what you say; then you will see that he is (mostly) a
sportsman, and you will learn to understand that it is better that
the accent should be on the "_man_" than on the "gentle"--yet do not
forget that a clean mind is the basis of all true force of character,
and is inherently respected by every Englishman, foul-mouthed though
he be.  And you, fond Mammas, who desire your dear boys to be
engineers, see to it that their biceps are good, for this is the
underlying principle of all work; and when dear Willie comes home
from the "shops" with his face punched into a many-hued polyhedron,
be not alarmed, this is no doubt the result of scientific research
into the specific resistance of the fitter's mate; it is also
conceivable that occasions may arise when it is good that Willie
should stand in the police court dock, charged with breaking a man's
head with a hammer.  All these things must come to pass before the
steel enters thoroughly into Willie's soul; then he will take a very
high polish and be very reliable, yet he will be very flexible and
very keen; for this is the age of steel--hard, keen, true steel.

Carstairs stripped to the waist and tied his trousers round with a
scarf that Bounce lent him.  He stepped into the middle of the ring
and looked at his opponent: slightly shorter, but more massive than
himself, his face was remarkably hard looking, with a short, clipped
moustache, and light china blue eyes with a roving, happy-go-lucky
look in them; even now, as Carstairs faced him, there was an element
of a grin on his face.  (It is written somewhere in the Book of Fate
that the British navvy shall fear no man on this earth.)  His neck
was like the trunk of an oak tree and sloped grandly on to his
massive shoulders; in his hands, Carstairs observed, Nature had
endowed him with a pair of very formidable weapons, the knuckles were
enormous.  Altogether Jack Carstairs recognised that he was up
against one of the stiffest propositions he had ever tackled in his
life.

"Are you ready, sir?" he asked, with quite a genial smile.

"Yes," Carstairs answered.

"Three minute rounds," Bounce said, taking out the fine, half-hunter
watch that had been presented to him for rescuing a drowning man.

The two combatants agreed.

"Shake hands, then."  They reached out and gripped each other with a
strong, hearty grip, and five hundred heads nodded grave approval.

"Now!  Time!"

As soon as the word was out of Bounce's mouth, the navvy sprang at
Carstairs like a tiger.  The royal light of battle was in his eyes,
there was positive joy written large and bold over all his
countenance.

Carstairs was serious, very serious, and quite calm; he ducked the
man's furious left and right straight drives, and got in a useful
stop hit with his left in the face, then broke ground.  But the navvy
was on him again like a whirlwind, while five hundred gruff voices
shouted.

"One for the toff.  First blood for the toff.  'Is nose is bleeding.
Don't forget that five pound, Charlie.  Mind, your mates is watching
you."

Carstairs felt the huge, bony fists whistle past his ears, and he
ducked and ducked again to the furious straight drives.  He began to
smile, too; the pleasure of it was entering into him, the important
issue was slipping away from his mind.  He hit the navvy heavily
about the face, and received one or two glancing blows himself.

When time was called, they stood and looked at each other for a
second or so like two newly found friends.

"That was good, wasn't it, sir?" the navvy said.

"You do make the pace," Carstairs answered, with genuine admiration.

The man stroked his nose tenderly.  "Same to you, sir," he said, with
a grin.

Their seconds came and took them away to their corners and sat them
down on one man's knees while another fanned them with big, red
pocket handkerchiefs.

"'It 'im in the body," Bounce whispered.  "You could 'it 'im in the
clock all day, an' 'e'd on'y think you was tickling of 'im."

"Time" was called, and the navvy held out his hand again just to show
that they were still on the best of good terms.  Carstairs grasped it
warmly, and again the five hundred heads nodded strong approval.
They stepped back a pace and the navvy said: "Are you ready?"

Carstairs said "Yes," and promptly the man sprang in, letting drive
furiously right and left.  There was a sameness about his methods,
and he swung his shoulders freely and openly before each hit, so that
Carstairs knew exactly where and when they were coming, and dodged
them easily; he ducked low to the left, and got in a swinging right
on the short ribs.  The man grunted, his breath had been short
before.  He stopped and took a deep breath, Carstairs magnanimously
standing clear of him; then he rushed again, and Carstairs got him in
the same place; again he took a deep breath and rushed, exhaustion
was making him slower.  Carstairs ducked to the right this time, and
got in a beautiful left, fairly and squarely on the solar plexus.
The man dropped like a log, and lay gasping.

[Illustration: THE MAN DROPPED LIKE A LOG]

There was a wild uproar, several of the men tried to break into the
ring to pick him up, but the stewards thrust them roughly back.
"Don't break the ring," they said.  Bounce stood over him, watch in
hand, and counted out the seconds.  "He's beat," he said at the end
of the tenth, as the man lay there helpless.

Carstairs picked him up.  "Never mind," he said.  "That five pounds
is yours, anyway."

The navvies shouted uproariously, and crowded round Carstairs
congratulating him in their rough but sincere fashion.  In the midst
of it all he heard an old familiar voice that drove the smile from
his face.

"That really was damn good, old chap."

He turned and beheld Darwen, smiling, genial, standing at his elbow.

"How the devil did you get here?" he asked, frowning severely.

The navvies near listened in open curiosity and wonder.

"'E bin down 'ere weeks, off an' on, standing us beer down at the
village," a navvy explained.

"So this was some of your devil's work, eh?  You were going to resort
to force when fair means failed, you damned skunk."

The navvies listened in silent wonder.

Darwen shrugged his shoulders with easy unconcern.  "The forces of
Nature, dear boy," he answered.  He turned to the navvies.  "I came
down to see the fun," he said.  "The gipsies are going to put up a
scrap, I see, they're out with sticks and guns and God knows what."

"That's off, Mister," a navvy answered.

"Off?  Ha!  Ha!  You've let this chap with his little fight divert
you?"

"That was part of the stakes," Carstairs said, shortly.  "And these
men will stick to their bargain."

They gave a low murmur of assent.

Darwen laughed.  "Well, you are mugs, you've let this chap diddle
you.  This skilled fighter against poor old plucky, but unskilled
Charlie."

They began to cast suspicious glances at Carstairs.

"Charlie didn't get one good one on him.  You could see that for
yourselves."

"It was a fair fight," they said, gruffly.  "An' a bet's a bet."

"That's right; fair is fair all the world over," he was talking to
them in their own language, "but it isn't fair for a trained man,
practising every day, to take advantage of a plucky sort of chap like
Charlie, now is it?"

There was silence.

"A bet is a bet," he repeated, "but it's not sporting to bet on a
cert.  'All bets off' in that case is the rule," he said.

Carstairs was slowly dressing; he stopped with his collar in his
hand.  "That man is a rogue and a liar," he said, "he doesn't know
the meaning of the term sport."

"Ha!  Ha!  Hear that.  Ask him if he'd take me on the same terms that
he took Charlie on?"

"Yes, here and now," Carstairs answered, starting to undress again.
"And glad of the chance."

The navvies cheered.  "'Ear.  'Ear.  That's a toff, that's sport.
Clear the ring, mates.  Let the two toffs set to."

The stewards cleared the ring again, the navvies stepped back in
expectant silence, they expected something exceptional this time.
Charlie stepped up to Carstairs.  "I'll be your second, mister.  Let
this yer bloke (pointing to Bounce) be referee."  He was as brisk and
lively as ever again.

"Thanks," Carstairs said.  "You and I must have a drink together
before I go back."

Charlie grinned with real pleasure.  "Thank ye, sir," he said.

Darwen stripped with alacrity, his big brown eyes gleamed with
abnormal joy: there was sufficient of the Gaul in him to make him
"More than man before the fight.  Less than woman afterwards."  He
was attended to by two navvies; a tall red-headed man and a slender
dark man with rather a thoughtful, melancholy cast of countenance.  A
young gipsy youth, slouch-hatted, slovenly, wandered up to the group,
and stood beside Darwen for a minute or two; his piercing eyes moved
with a quick alert expression under the wide drooping brim of his
hat; his face was very dirty and his hands thrust deep into his
trousers' pockets.  The navvies took no notice of him, and he
wandered nonchalantly across the ring and took up a position near
Carstairs.

"How many rounds?" he asked.

"To a finish," Bounce answered.

"I'll put a bob on this 'un, he's got the look of a winner," he
growled out in a surly, gruff voice.

Carstairs glanced up at him quickly, but he turned round and
sauntered off.

"Get ready."

They stepped out into the ring, two splendid specimens of English
manhood.  Darwen six feet in his socks, and Carstairs half an inch
shorter.  They were in the pink of condition, and both of them full
of steam.  Somewhere near at hand was the girl they both wanted, and
they had this in mind.  Darwen, for the first time in his life, was
in love, really in love, with all the ardour of his passionate nature.

"Shake hands," Darwen's seconds called, but Carstairs took no notice,
and the five hundred spectators settled themselves to witness a
battle of real hatred.

"Time," Bounce called.

Promptly Darwen sprang in with a realistic feint, then, smiling,
broke ground and worked round his antagonist.  Carstairs watched him,
keeping the centre of the ring, pivoting slowly on his own axis.
Darwen sprang in again with another feint, but still Carstairs gave
no opening, then quick as a flash Darwen gave a left lead and
followed up with a heavy right swing; both got home, though not with
their full effect.

Darwen was at the zenith of a strong man's powers; his head was
singularly clear, and his speed almost supernatural.  There was a
sort of feline fascination about him, his eyes, too, were something
catlike, or snakey; there was an undulating ease in his movements
that was beautiful, fascinating; he had risen to the sort of
hysterical height which the Latins seem capable of, and still the
English blood in him kept him cool.  As he stood, that day, he was
almost the perfect, scientific fighter.  He feinted with wonderful
expression, he "drew" Carstairs' leads with extremely skilful acting,
and timed his counters marvellously.  At the end of the round,
Carstairs was battered and bruised, but Darwen was as fresh as a
daisy.

The navvies maintained a glum silence; this feinting and drawing
savoured, to them, of deceit, and the way Carstairs took his
punishment, melted their hearts.  The ex-marine whispered in his ear:
"steady does it, stick to 'im."

The young gipsy reappeared from the crowd.  "My money's still on this
'un," he said.

Next round, Carstairs attacked, persistently, all the time; his wind
was good and he knew it; from his earliest infancy he had led a
spotlessly clean and wholesome life, and he was sound as a bell from
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; he was alert and quick
too, but it was the staccato briskness of the terrier, and his eyes
were the eyes of an Englishman, an engineer.  With a fine disregard
of punishment, he hustled Darwen through the whole of the round.

The navvies buzzed with excitement, and the young gipsy had to be
turned out of the ring by the stewards.

Darwen's seconds performed their office enthusiastically, but their
sympathies were really with the other man.

For four rounds Carstairs took all the punishment steadily.  He bored
in all the time, attacking persistently, never once had he feinted or
tried to keep away.  Darwen's smile began to fade, he was getting
angry.  This man was such a fool that apparently he could not see
that he was beaten.  There was a devilish gleam of temper in his eyes
as they faced each other for the fifth round.

Carstairs' left foot and left fist moved in the old, old way.
Instead of steadily countering as he had been doing, Darwen dashed in
to hustle matters to a close.  Next minute Bounce was standing over
him counting out the seconds.  For the first time in the fight
Carstairs had feinted--and successfully.

The navvies cheered fervidly.

At the seventh second, Darwen jumped up furiously and sprang at
Carstairs like a fiend incarnate.  "You devil," he screamed, "I'll
kill you."

But he didn't.  Carstairs knocked him down again, and he lay like a
log.  Still he was up again before the last second was counted.  It
was astonishing where he got the power from, but he rushed in again
like a whirlwind.

Carstairs, cool and precise, but very quick, his grey eyes hard as
steel, jabbed him off, and off, and off, till he saw what he wanted,
then his wide shoulders swept a half circle in the air, swinging
cleanly from the hips; his great, strong, right leg, trailing to the
rear like a stay, braced itself suddenly rigid; and the right fist,
tightly clenched at the moment of impact, shot out clean and true in
a perfectly straight line to the point of Darwen's eagerly extended
jaw: it was a perfect blow, showing a beautiful, smooth ripple as one
muscle after the other took up its task; then remaining rigid like a
statue for one second, with lips firmly closed, and the eyes--the
entire expression of the face, full of definite, resolute purpose;
Carstairs for that second seemed more than a man.  None but a man
with his long record of clean living and strict training could have
risen to such a blow after receiving such a pounding as he had.

Darwen dropped for the last time.

There was a tense silence as Bounce stood over him, the tenth second
was called and still he lay there; his seconds picked him up and
dabbed his face with a wet handkerchief; slowly the light of
intelligence returned to his eyes.  He sat up and looked round.
There was a subdued cheer; the navvies were unusually moved, they
felt, somehow, that this was more than an ordinary fight, every one
was still for fully a minute, the silence was oppressive.  God knows
what was passing in those five hundred rugged minds.  Carstairs
himself was strangely impressed; in after life he never forgot it.
He felt, he said, as though he had come suddenly to the last peak of
a majestic mountain, and saw a wondrous valley spread out below him.

Darwen's seconds stood behind him holding up his shoulders.  They
were quite still, they said no word as he looked slowly and vacantly
round; then, without warning, he bent his head forward into his hands
and wept like a child.

A beaten man is the most pathetic sight in all Nature: these men were
used to death, they had seen their bosom chums killed, squashed flat
by falling rocks, buried alive in the earth, mangled by machinery;
but when Darwen wept they turned their heads.

The young gipsy moved up to Carstairs, as he stood alone, and
whispered in his ear: "I knew you'd win.  You'll always win, win
whatever you want."  A small hand reached out and dropped an emerald
ring on to the little heap of his clothes over which he was bending;
as he put out his hand to pick it up, he felt the pressure of warm,
soft lips on his cheek.  He started up in amazement, but the gipsy
had melted into the crowd like a shadow.  One or two of the navvies
who had seen it grinned from ear to ear, and Carstairs blushed from
his forehead to his neck.

"That was a girl," a navvy said.  "I thought he was slim like, too."

Carstairs said nothing, but dressed very quickly.




CHAPTER XX

Bounce had seen that little incident, too.  He crossed the ring and
helped Carstairs to dress.  He said nothing, but his peculiar hazel
eyes were alight.

While they were still busy, the little civil engineer from the
water-works appeared on the scene.  He looked round in surprise.
"What the blazes are you chaps doing here?" he asked.

A navvy answered from the crowd.  "A fight, sir."  The whole assembly
had the air of school boys caught breaking bounds.

The little man blazed with anger.  "Damn it," he said, "why didn't
you tell me?  You know I like to see that everything is above board
at these little gatherings."  He stood on the top of the little hill
clear to the view of all.

"Beg parding, sir.  This 'ere were sort of impromptoo."

"Impromptu!  By Jove--you know I don't like impromptu fights."

"Very sorry, sir," the spokesman muttered, and they all looked it.
By sheer force of character and unswerving fairness of treatment,
this little man had obtained, in the course of two years' constant
association, a complete ascendency over these wild, strong men.

"Who's been fighting?" he asked.

"Charlie Moore an' a toff bloke, then two toff blokes."

"Oh," he said, in a completely changed tone, and made his way quickly
to where Carstairs was.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Carstairs was dressed and just moving off, "My name is Carstairs.
I'm an engineer too, electrical and mechanical.  I'm staying at the
Blue Boar in the village, I have an engagement now.  If you will call
there this evening, I shall be pleased to have a talk with you."

"But what's the fight about?  Have my men been molesting you?"

"Oh no."  Carstairs looked round, the navvies were beginning to move
off hurriedly.  He did not want to get them into trouble, still he
was not good at lying.  "I was to blame," he said.  "We had a
difference of opinion and settled it in the time-honoured way; they
behaved like gentlemen."

The little man's eyes sparkled.  He looked round, but the last of the
five hundred was disappearing hurriedly, like a cart horse colt over
the hillock.  He laughed aloud.  "They're just damn great kids! those
chaps, but the very best.  I shan't be able to get within earshot of
one of 'em till Monday morning now.  They'll shun me like the
plague."  He laughed again.  "By George they are rum chaps.  About
the first week they were here there was a violent row with the old
farmer on the hill there."  He pointed to a farm house in the
distance.  "They went rabbiting with dogs and ferrets right in front
of his house; when he expostulated, they were going to pull his place
to pieces.  He sent for me.  I couldn't stop their poaching, of
course, nobody could; but I objected to their threatening the man.
'Well, sir,' they said (it was that man Moore by the way), 'what beat
us was the cheek o' the beggar coming an' talking to _three_ on us.'
He didn't speak to _one_ of them afterwards, poor chap, he was
frightened out of his wits; they're a mean sort of swine, farmers.
Fancy grousing about a blooming rabbit."

Carstairs laughed.  "How about the woods over there?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't think there's much left in 'em now.  The keepers keep
away when my chaps are about."  The little man laughed.  "They have
elaborate shooting parties with plenty of beer, and about six old
guns between 'em.  Take it in turns for a shot.  Gravely presented me
with a pair of pheasants once, and got quite shirty when I wouldn't
have 'em; couldn't understand that they were stolen.  'Why!  the
keeper seen us,' they explained.  'If he'd been a wise man he would
have not seen you,' I said.  'Will 'e 'ave a trout then, mister?'
'No thanks,' I said.  'Well, I'm beggared,' they answered, and went
away growling.  They still think I'm a bit mad."

They laughed together and strolled on.  Carstairs was obviously
impatient, but the little man did not see it.  He only met men with a
soul above beer at very rare intervals.

"Damn funny chaps, you know, but the best, the very best, at heart.
Don't care tuppence for anybody, and quite fail to see why they
should.  'When my 'at's on, my roof's on, an' off I goes,' they say.
They wander up and get a start, work for a day, 'sub' a 'bob,' and
slope off.  Sometimes a man will start one day, and next a policeman
arrives, and the man is missing, two or three more with him very
likely.  Damn funny chaps.  What for?  Oh, nothing serious as a rule,
pinching a pair of boots from a shop window, or something like that,
you know; I had a man murdered once, though; not here--up in the
midlands, had a hole knocked in his head with a pick axe, never found
out who did it.  There are black sheep in every flock, of course."

"Men are about the same as any other machine, I think, you get out
rather less than you put in.  Breed simply means efficiency and
reliability."

"Yes.  By Jove, that's so.  Look here, come up to my digs, will you?
What! an engagement.  Oh, I see.  Well, ta-ta for the present."

They were quite close to the caravan, and the little man looked at
Carstairs curiously as he saw where he was going.  He made no
comment, but turned and made his way back to the village.

The camp was quite silent, the vans were all drawn up together in the
form of a square.  The dogs and children all seemed to have
disappeared.  Carstairs went up the steps of the caravan, and knocked
at the little door.  He began to wonder vaguely if the gipsies had
all deserted the place, till he caught sight of the crown of a hat
and the muzzle of a gun on the roof of a caravan.

The door was very quietly opened by the old woman (she was in ragged
male attire), and her eyes gleamed like an eagle's in the sunlight as
she looked at Carstairs.  She put a hand on his shoulder.  "Well
done, well done," she said.

He put her hand gently aside.  "Where is your daughter?" he asked.

"Gone to London," she answered.

Carstairs frowned like a thunder-storm.  "Confound it!  She gave me
this ring about two minutes ago."

The woman smiled and looked at the ring.  "Yes, that's her mother's.
Don't lose it."

"Yours?" he said.  "What's she bolted away again for?"

She positively laughed, and Carstairs turned to go away.  She stopped
him with a hand on his shoulder.  "I'm not her mother," she said.

"What!  Then who is?"

"Lady Cleeve's sister.  She's dead."

"Holy God!  But that man--Sir Thomas, said----"

"He didn't know and didn't care much.  She's his child, but not mine;
mine died, and we stole this one.  God forgive me!  She's been more
than a daughter to me.  And he--he was always drunk, always drunk
when he wasn't playing the fiddle, always drunk.  And now he's dead."

"Oh!" Carstairs said; it was all he could think of at the time.

The gipsy woman sat on the top step of the little ladder, her head in
her hands, crooning to herself.  "My God!  My God!  And now he's
dead!  He charmed me with his singing and his playing, and he was in
the gutter playing for coppers and drink, while his lawful wife lay
dying in her mother's home.  Oh, my God! my God!"

Carstairs stood in wonder; he did not know whether to stay or go.
She took no notice of him, but crooned on, rocking herself from side
to side.  "And now he's dead.  Dead!  Him that opened the gates of
Heaven with his fiddle! dead and along with her, but I shall have
him; he's mine, mine, and there's another.  O my God!  My God! but
I'm going too!  I shall be the first."

Carstairs tapped her on the shoulder.  "Pull yourself together," he
said.  "Shall I get you some brandy?"

"Brandy?  No! that's been the curse of it all."  She raised her head
and glared at him with eyes like live coals.  "I stole this child,
his child, that ought to have been brought up in the lap of luxury, I
stole her and brought her up like a gipsy to try and bring him back."
She dropped her head into her hands again and wailed.  "God forgive
me!  God forgive me!"

He shook her quite roughly.  "It's no use groaning now," he said,
"try and make amends.  Have you told the girl who she is?"

"Yes, to-day, and gave her the ring.  All there is to prove it."

"Is that why she left you, then?"  Carstairs could hardly believe it,
remembering the affection the girl had always shown for this woman
whom she believed to be her mother.

"No, no, she kissed me like an angel from heaven.  It's you, you who
made her leave."

"Me! but she's just given me this ring, and--and she kissed me too."

The woman looked up at him again, but her eyes were now dim with
tears.  "You don't understand, she's very proud, prouder than that
old man who's just dead.  She'll come for that ring some day."

"No!  By God, she won't.  I'll find her, and take it to her."  He
pulled out a card.  "Look here, that's my address.  If I don't find
her before I go back next week, will you send me her address, or any
news of her you may have?"

"I shall be dead in a month; it's no use leaving me this."

"What's the use of talking rot like that?" he said, angrily.  "Are
you going to help me?"

"No," she answered simply.

He turned and left her without another word.  "Bounce," he said, as
he climbed into the dog-cart, "you've had some experience.  Are all
women mad?"

"Every one on 'em, sir.  That is, them wots any good."

"Ah!  Well, let her go like hell for Southville."

On the way they passed the little civil engineer.  "Hullo!" he
shouted, "are you off, then?"

Carstairs pulled up.  "Yes, jump up and come on into Southville with
me, I want some one to swear at."

"Ha!  That's it, is it?"  He climbed in.  "What else are you going to
do with me?"

"Put you up for the week-end, swear at you all day, Sunday, and send
you back about your business on Monday."

"Well, half a minute; let's go via my digs--that farm over there--and
I'll collect some togs."

"Not a sock or a pyjama.  Come as you are, and we'll go to church
to-morrow, yellow leggings, and all.  I want you to be best man."

"This is rather sudden, isn't it?"

"Not at all, the only obstacle is whether I can catch the bride in
time."

"Ah, I see, but there's some formality about banns, and living in the
parish, and so on."

"My dear fellow, I'm a parson's son."

"I might have known that by your command of swear words.  So am I."

"Is that so?  I might have known that too by your perverted morals.
Never saw such an indignant chap as you when you thought those
navvies had cheated you out of a fight."

"Yes.  By Jove, I shall wake those chaps up about that on Monday."

They all three laughed.

"The bride is along this road somewhere; she's only got about twenty
minutes or half an hour's start.  We're bound to catch her, and then,
by Jove!  I'll gag and bind her if she won't come quietly."

"They never do that," Bounce said, wagging his head sagely.

"Look here, Bounce, if you sit up there croaking away like some old
raven, I'll chuck you out of the cart."

"Very sorry, sir, but fax is fax, ain't 'em?"

Carstairs turned to the civil engineer.  "They call him Bull-dog
Bounce," he explained, "it's no use arguing with him.  By the way, I
don't know your name.  Mine's Carstairs."

"Whitworth.  Jack Whitworth."

"Jack.  I'm a Jack, too.  So is Bounce here.  That's strange."

"No, sir.  Beggin' your pardon, sir.  A. E. Bounce, sir.  Algernon
Edward Bounce, A.B.  That's how it's writ down in the Service books."

"Yes, of course, so you told me before.  I'd forgotten.  I'm sorry."

The little civil engineer was inclined to smile till he glanced at
Bounce's perfectly serious face, then he stared straight ahead, and
they drove in silence for some time.

As they neared the outskirts of Southville and still saw no signs of
the girl on the road, Carstairs got angry.  "I wonder if that woman
lied to me," he muttered.

They drove on till they reached the hotel.  "No luck this journey,"
he said, with a resigned smile.  "Come on in and have a drink,
Bounce."  They held a council of war in the smoking room.  Whitworth
raised his brows in wonder at the tale which was partially disclosed
to him.

"The curse of it is, I've got to go up north again on Wednesday,"
Carstairs said.

"Ah, that is awkward.  I'll keep an eye on the camp for you, and let
you know if the girl's there, or if that dark chap is hanging around."

"Mister Darwen's 'ad enough I expect, sir."

"Not he, Bounce.  He'll turn up smiling again."

Bounce left them shortly afterwards, and the two engineers, after
partaking of a substantial meal, strolled round the town,
particularly the railway station part of it, in the hope of meeting
the girl.  At about ten o'clock they went home and went straight to
bed, they had both had a busy day, particularly Carstairs.

The hotel was old fashioned and very comfortable, but the resources
in the way of bedrooms were strictly limited, partly due to the
reputation of the place.  Anyhow that evening the only bedroom they
had to offer for Whitworth was a small one right at the top of an
obscure wing of the building.  Carstairs said nothing, but had his
own luggage taken up there, and gave Whitworth his room, fairly
large, close to a bathroom and over-looking a nicely kept lawn and
shrubbery.  He saw him installed in it, supplying his wants as much
as possible from his own portmanteau.

"I'm sorry I brought you away in such a hurry."

"That's alright, I'm used to roughing it.  It's quite a treat to me
to have the electric light in my room and listen to the traffic
outside.  I feel like a kid on a holiday in London."

"Hope you'll sleep alright.  Good night."

"Trust me for that.  Good night."

Carstairs was soon in bed and asleep, but it was still dark when in
his obscure corner of the building he became aware of some sort of
commotion going on downstairs; he had a sort of vague impression that
he had been awakened by a cry.  He lay for a moment and heard a
police whistle blown violently, and a voice shouting, "Police!
Police!"

He sprang out of bed, hurriedly donned a few garments, and wound his
way along tortuous passages to the entrance hall.  Whitworth was
standing there (the centre of a group) in shirt and trousers, with a
small bedroom poker in his hand.

"What's the trouble?" Carstairs asked.

"Trouble!  By Gad!"  The little man was red as a turkey cock and
furiously angry.  "Some damned swine tried to rob me, came in through
the window.  I was awake and heard him climbing up, wondered what it
was.  The window was open--I always sleep with it open--he pushed up
the bottom sash and got inside, then I switched on the light and went
for him.  Look here!" he stretched his neck and pulled down the
collar of his shirt showing finger marks still there.  "He had no
boots or stockings on; he took me by the throat and held me off, with
one foot shoved into the pit of my stomach.  I was as helpless as a
kid.  His arms were so long I was quite clear of him, and he was as
strong as a tiger.  Then--what do you think? he looked in my face a
minute, and chucked me across the room.  Look here," he exposed a
bruised elbow.  "I grabbed the poker, and he hopped out of the window
like a monkey.  I'll swear he was more like a monkey than anything
I've ever seen; he was doubled up, hunchbacked, and his head tilted
upwards all the time.  His hands were below his knees; he jumped from
all fours.  Most hideous brute I've ever seen.  I ran to the window,
intending to chuck the poker at him, but he was gone; whether up or
down, I couldn't say."

Carstairs listened in silence, his face was very grave.  A policeman
arrived, and took profuse notes.  "Hunchback," he said.  "There was a
gang here about three year ago with a hunchback bloke."

Then the excitement abated, and the few male visitors who had come
out half dressed, to ascertain the cause of the trouble, wandered
back to bed.  The engineers did likewise.

Carstairs, before getting into bed, carefully examined the room; he
locked the door, wedged the window, and put his big pocket knife
under his pillow.  Then he slept like a top, for he was at heart a
fatalist, and felt that nothing would happen that night, and he was
right.  The morning broke bright and clear, and he and Whitworth were
down to breakfast early.

The little man chatted away merrily about his adventure as he
disposed of a very liberal breakfast.  "The cheek of the swine, to
try and rob me!" he said, with unbounded astonishment and
indignation, so that Carstairs smiled.

"You seem to have imbibed the spirit of your navvies pretty well."

Whitworth laughed.  "By Gad, if I'd got that poker a second or two
sooner, I'd have flattened him out.  Wish old Hiscocks had been
there.  He's my sort of body servant, chain-bearer, carries the
instruments, and that sort of thing, one of the finest men on top of
this earth, sixteen stone odd, and no stomach; he'd have flattened
that chap to a pulp, he's been in the marine artillery."

"Yes, I know.  Bounce knocked him out in a ten-round contest in
Japan."

"What!"  Whitworth dropped his knife and fork in astonishment.

"That's right, because I remember my uncle telling me about it."

"Good Lord!  That little Bounce.  Well, I'm hanged."

"My dear chap, Bounce is invincible.  You ought to have seen him
chuck a seven-foot policeman out of the works in this town one night."

Whitworth went on with his breakfast with a business like air.  "I
must find a job for Bounce," he said, decidedly.  "What's his pay
now?"

"That's been arranged; he's coming up north with me, driving on the
test plate.  He's worth his weight in gold there, so prompt,
clear-headed, and reliable."

"Mean swine!  Fancy keeping a man like that indoors driving dirty
engines, he ought to be outside in the sun and the rain with the
birds and the flowers."

Carstairs laughed.  "When you've finished grubbing we'll get outside
with the flowers and the birds," he said.

Shortly after they sallied forth together and went for a brisk walk
in the country.  Coming back they were just in time for the people
trooping out of church, and who should they meet but Darwen, prayer
book in hand, smiling, gay, as usual.

"Hullo, there's that chap--" Whitworth commenced.

"Yes.  He's probably the biggest sweep unhung, but I know his mother,
and I must have a word with him."

Darwen held out his hand.  "May I presume to congratulate you on a
good score yesterday?" he said.

"I was lucky," Carstairs answered, ignoring the hand.  Whitworth
strolled on.

Darwen still smiled.  "I can't allow that, my dear chap.  You were
good, scientific.  I ought to have known you were not such a fool as
you look."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it, old chap, honestly I consider you a smart chap; in
fact, it begins to seem as if there's not room on this earth for both
you and I."  He smiled in his happy, genial way, but his eyes were
taking in every movement of Carstairs' features.

"Oh, the earth is a big place, we can avoid each other.  I'm going to
Chilcombe to-morrow, and next day up north again, I expect, but can't
say for certain till I get my letters.  I shall call to see your
mater when I'm that way."

"Yes, do!  Of course she need never know of our little scrap, eh?"
Darwen's eyes had the same old sparkle in them, and Carstairs with
immobile face and calm eyes was watching him as he watched an engine
under test.

"No, of course not!"

"By the way one of my old friends in the force told me there was a
burglary at some hotel here last night."  His eyes flickered with a
sunny smile as he watched Carstairs' face.

"Ye-es, my hotel.  A drunken sailor climbed in at one of the windows
and left by the same route."  Carstairs' face was almost
expressionless.

"Ah!  You didn't see the fun, then?"

"No, there wasn't much to see, I understand."

Darwen stepped up close and looked intently into his eyes.  "Do you
ever lie, Carstairs?"

"Oh, yes! not, I think, frequently; as often as you, for instance."
His face was sphinx-like still.

"No, by God, I don't believe you could!  Decently!"  He stepped back
and laughed aloud.  "You've neglected the most vital accomplishment
of modern life--to lie well.  Ta, ta, old chap, I wish we could be
pals."  He passed on with a happy smile and looked up to the sun.
"The Lord has delivered him into my hands," he said, to himself.

Carstairs rejoined Whitworth, and they returned to the hotel.  After
dinner, as they sat smoking, he said, suddenly: "Would you like to
catch that chap who tried to rob you last night?"

"By Gad, I should like to give him a hiding."

Carstairs puffed his pipe in silence for a few moments, his steady,
shrewd eyes observing Whitworth closely.  "That man came to murder
me, not to rob you," he said, at length.

"Good God, man!  What are you talking about?"

"What I believe to be the truth.  Can you get to-morrow off, and come
home to my place with me--that is, if you're game for a man hunt."

"Rather!  But I say--are you sure?"

"Well, er--reasonably.  The solution I have in mind seems to satisfy
most of the conditions of the problem; we are up in the clouds
somewhere, beyond all rules.  The only methods for such problems are
trial and error.  Will you come?"

"You bet, but I must get a change of togs, first.  What time do you
want to go?"

"Oh, in the afternoon some time.  You can slip over to your digs in
the morning, and you might bring your man, Hiscocks, if you can.
I'll get Bounce."

So it was settled, and at half-past three on Monday afternoon, a
select-party of four got into a third-class carriage en route for
Chilcombe.  Carstairs explained the situation.  "We're going to catch
a burglar, that's all, but I want to keep him myself, that's why I
don't want the police brought into it.  I hope that they'll come into
action later for a double bag."

Bounce and the ex-marine nodded and asked no questions.  They were
trained that way, but Whitworth leaned forward and spoke.  "I say,
it's a ghastly business you know, that--that _thing_ was half an
animal, I'll swear it, he didn't speak a word, only gave an animal
sort of snarl, and his eyes as he looked into my face were the eyes
of a wild beast."  He gave a little shudder.  "By God, we ought to
kill it on sight."

"We can't do that, you know, but we can stun it.  You saw that man
who was killed at the vicarage before, Bounce?"

"Yes, sir; mangled 'e was."

"I know.  I saw Donovan."  Carstairs puffed at his pipe.  "Must be as
strong as an elephant.  We'd better stun him for a start."

They arrived at Chilcombe and Bounce and Hiscocks put up at the
village inn, while Carstairs took Whitworth home.  It was a merry
gathering that night at the vicarage; Stanley Carstairs was there,
and the Bevengtons came in.  Whitworth was as lively as a cricket, he
kept the whole company continually on the smile with his humour and
endless anecdotes of his navvies and other people he had met.  Jack
Carstairs lay back in his chair and listened with a steady smile.  He
was watching Bessie Bevengton and Whitworth and was rather glad he'd
brought the little man home.

It was after eleven when the party broke up, and Jack took Whitworth
to his bedroom.  "Here you are," he said, handing him a heavy cudgel.
"I'll meet you in the hall in half an hour's time."

"Alright.  I say, jolly evening.  Who's that girl?  Is she--engaged?"

"Oh, no, one of the best, too.  We've been chums since we were kids,
so I know."

The little man whirled his cudgel round his head thereby seriously
endangering the furniture.  "We'll flatten that beast out," he said,
with extraordinary fervour.

Carstairs laughed.  "In half an hour," he said, and went to his room.
He turned the gas full on and stood by the window for some minutes
with the blind up, in full view of the lawn and shrubbery below.  The
sky was quite clear, and a full moon was climbing up behind the
distant Cotswold Hills.  The beauty of the night enchanted him, this
was his home, and many memories thronged his brain as he gazed out at
the old familiar landscape silvered over with the soft, romantic
light of the moon.  For a moment he forgot his mission, but a rustle
of leaves among the evergreens below and the hoot of an owl quite
close at hand, brought him back from the dim and distant past to the
pressing, urgent present.  He pulled down the blind, picked up a
book, and lay on the bed reading for half an hour; then he got up,
lighted a bull's-eye dark lantern, turned out the gas, and crept
softly downstairs; a dark figure was sitting quietly on one of the
hall chairs, a big stick across its knees.  It was Whitworth.  "This
way," Carstairs said, softly, and together they climbed quietly out
of the back kitchen window; they stood in the shadow of the wall for
a minute and looked round.  The lawn was flooded with the soft
moonlight, and the big chestnut tree cast a shadow over the clump of
laurel bushes near where they stood.  Silently they flitted across
the narrow strip of moonlight and disappeared into the dense shadow
of the evergreens.  A hand stretched out in the darkness and touched
Carstairs on the arm.

"Is that you, Bounce?" he whispered, very low.

"Yes, sir; nothing in sight yet."

"Alright.  Get along a bit further where you can see my window.  Is
Hiscocks there?"  Something that seemed part of the wall murmured,
"Yes, sir."

"This way then."  Carstairs moved forward and stepped on a dry twig
which snapped with a report loud enough to wake the dead, so it
seemed to their tensed nerves.  Bounce stepped to the front.  "I can
see," he whispered, "used to the dark at sea."  They moved round the
shrubbery in single file, very slowly, till they came to a point
where they could see the bedroom window, full in the moonlight, just
missed by the shade of the big chestnut tree.

They stood there for half an hour, peering out from the darkness into
the moonlight.  Suddenly they heard something stirring in the big
tree, and next instant Whitworth gripped Carstairs by the arm.  "Good
God!  Did you see that?"  Something, a man or an animal, had shot out
from the high branches of the tree, and landed on the sill of
Carstairs' bedroom window.  They stood there motionless, gazing at
the thing on the window ledge, astonished, paralysed; all except
Bounce.  For one second only was he held motionless, the next he was
on the lawn throwing his heavy stick at the window sill.  The thing
turned as the stick struck it, and looking down, snarled like an
angry dog; next minute it sprang on to the tree again and
disappeared, from sight.  That broke the spell, and they all ran out.
"Don't shout!" Carstairs whispered, hoarsely.

Before they were there the thing was down the tree and racing across
the grass on all fours.  They saw Bounce fling himself on to it, and
the next thing was an indistinguishable tangle whirling about the
lawn.  As they raced up the little sailor sprang clear and lashed out
with his fist.  The thing stood erect, and they saw it was a
hunchbacked man.  He rushed at Bounce who stepped aside.  "Stand
back!" he commanded the others in a hoarse whisper.  "I'll tackle
'im."

He closed in and they heard the dull thud of a body blow as the
hunchback reeled back.  He charged again, snarling angrily.  And
again they heard a thud as Bounce's bony knuckles came in contact
with the man's deformed breast bone.

Hiscocks raised his stick and rushed forward, but the sailor motioned
him back.  They circled round each other in the moonlight, while the
other three stood silently by.  The weirdness of it seemed to have
cast a spell over all of them.  They saw the sailor step in, they
heard a gasping pant, and next minute the hunchback dropped limply to
the ground.  At once Bounce bent over him, and pulling some cord from
his pocket tied up his wrists and ankles in his masterly, definite
manner.  "Quick," he whispered, "'e's such a funny built bloke, I
couldn't get at 'im afore."  He stood up and putting his hand to his
mouth sucked it and spat.  "Bit me, 'e did," he observed.

"That's nasty."

"Yes!  Any'ow now we'll pack 'im up.  'Ave you got the sack, sir?"

Next day, at half-past two in the afternoon, Carstairs called at
Darwen's office in London.  As soon as they were alone, he produced a
revolver.

"We captured a bit of property of yours last night, Darwen."

"Ha!  Is that so?"  He sat down calmly in his chair, toying with an
ebony ruler, watching Carstairs carefully, and smiling all the time.

"Put that ruler down; it's no use, your man has gone back on you.
I'll give you twenty-four hours to corpse yourself, however you like,
otherwise I put the police on you.  Before I leave this office I want
a written confession."

The brilliant eyes sparkled with amusement.  "Dear old Carstairs!
It's not bad for a first attempt, but you were not built for a liar.
It needs practice, Carstairs!  Constant practice.  That man is dumb.
I cut his tongue before I utilized him for these little missions.
Ha!  Ha!  I'm always willing to learn from the experience of others.
Old Donovan was bowled out by a tongue, I removed it; swotted up the
literature on the subject, and removed it myself; the human body is a
fascinating machine, better than greasy engines.  What's the next
move, old chap?"  His smile was the most charming he had ever worn.

Carstairs toyed with the revolver, keeping his eye on him all the
time.  "I think," he said, at length, "that as a duty to civilization
I ought to wipe you out here and now."

"My dear chap, how absurd!  What's civilization done for you?
Nothing!  Yes, by Jove, it has though, a service of a negative value.
Civilization has made you a poor man!  As a savage, you would have
been a chief!  Don't make yourself a bigger ass than nature intended,
Carstairs, old chap!  If I go, you go too, and there's the girl, eh?
The girl we scrapped over.  The girl who kissed you on the cheek; I
saw her do it, and you blushed like a kid.  She'd be left all alone.
Now let's talk this matter over quietly."

Carstairs looked him steadily in the eyes, toying meanwhile with the
revolver.  "Do you know," he said, "that that girl is your sister?"

[Illustration: HE LOOKED ROUND, TO MEET THE GRIM GREY EYES OF
CARSTAIRS]

Darwen doubled up with sudden laughter; in the intensity of it he
almost rolled into the fireplace.  A sudden click pulled him up; he
looked round solemnly to meet the grim, grey eye of Carstairs gazing
at him along the revolver barrel; he had cocked it with his thumb.

"Damn it!  You're not going to assassinate me, old chap."

"Come away from that poker!  This is a six shot, a Colt's forty-four,
and every shot means a dead man.  With it cocked as I have it, I
can't miss at this distance."

"By God, old chap, I'm proud of you.  You're a credit to my
up-bringing!  Impossible as it may seem you are becoming day by day
less and less of the fool that you look."

"I tell you again that girl is your sister."

"Well, what the devil am I to do!  You won't let me laugh."

"Then you don't believe it?"

He spread out his hands in a deprecating gesture.  "My dear
Carstairs!"

Carstairs was thoughtful.  "No!  I suppose I shouldn't believe it
myself," he said.  "The man's dead, I have no proof except my word.
Your mater might----"

"Leave the mater out of it, Carstairs."

"Ye-es.  I think so too.  You're not fit to live anyway, and you know
my life won't be much to me as long as you're alive."

"Quite so.  Quite so.  Still there's no need to get personal over it.
There is not room for you and I on this little globe.  That's it in a
nutshell, isn't it?  One has to be eliminated, that's obvious; I'm a
generous sort of chap, but I can't oblige you in this.  I'm in love,
yes, by God, in real love for the first and only time.  I want that
girl, also you want her!  We have fought with fists, and you won, but
that is not the finish.  I'm a sportsman; I'll go back a hundred
years with you and we'll fight a duel, eh?  A fair and square
duel--to a finish."

Carstairs considered, watching him all the time.  "What with?" he
asked.

"Anything you like.  I suggest rifles, magazine rifles, to make a
clean and engineering job of it."

"Well, I may as well tell you that rifle shooting has been my hobby
for the past two years."

"Noble savage!  I won the Gascoign Cup myself."

"Alright, I'll take it at that.  Where shall it be?"

"Oh, France! of course.  We'll cross to-morrow, and open at a
thousand yards.  We'll stalk each other among the sand hills, just
below Havre there.  How's that for real sport, eh?"  He looked at
Carstairs' steady, thoughtful face with genuine admiration.  "By God,
Carstairs, you're one of the best!  The best.  It's a pity we
crossed.  I suppose you're not prepared to give up the girl?"

"Only to a better man, not to a blasted sweep like you."

"No, quite so!  I should never under any circumstances fight you with
sledge hammers, Carstairs.  We'll cross to-morrow, or this evening
then.  I think the Havre boats only go at night.  Shall we go round
to Cook's together and book now?  Then we'll buy a couple of rifles."
He was like a school boy at the prospect of a holiday, the sporting
spirit had bitten very deeply into him.  "Come on, old chap," he
said, in the height of good humour, and they went out together.  They
had dinner together and journeyed to Southampton together.
Carstairs, his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket, never for one
minute taking his eyes off him.  They got aboard the little steamer,
and she cleared the dock at midnight.  They paced the deck together,
watching the receding lights of the town; the sky was sprayed and
flecked with numberless little clouds, the moonlight shining through
the cracks, and ever and anon breaking out into full power between
the larger gaps.

As they walked together, and the Solent widened out into the broad
English Channel and the Island faded from view, Darwen grew strangely
pensive and poetical.

"By Jove, there's nothing like the sea, you know! the sea, by
moonlight!  Look at that!"

They stood together at the rail, and gazed out over the tossing,
tumbling waste of waters, Carstairs still watchful, still suspecting
treachery at any minute.  Darwen stood silently for some moments,
then he burst forth into poetry.

  "Weary of myself and sick of asking
  What I am, and what I ought to be,
  At this vessel's prow I stand which bears me
  Forwards, forwards o'er the star-lit sea.

  And a look of passionate desire
  O'er the sea and to the stars I send.
  Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
  Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!

  'Ah,' once more I cried, 'Ye stars, ye waters,
  On my heart your mighty charm renew;
  Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
  Feel my soul becoming vast like you!'

  From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of Heaven,
  Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
  In the rustling night air came the answer:
  Wouldst thou _be_ as these are?  _Live_ as they."


"Do you hear that, Carstairs."

"Yes, I like it."

"Ah, I always knew you had a soul somewhere, deep down the abysmal
depth of that great carcase of yours.  Listen!  I'll finish it.

  'Wouldst thou be as these are?  _Live_ as they?'

  'Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
  Undistracted by the sights they see,
  These demand not that the things without them
  Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

  And with the joys the stars perform their shining,
  And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
  For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
  All the fever of some differing soul.'

Mark that, Carstairs.

  'All the fever of some differing soul.'"


"Yes.  It's good."

"That is so.  It goes on:--

  Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
  In what state God's other works may be,
  In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
  These attain the mighty life you see.

  O air-born voice! long since severely clear,
  A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear.
  'Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
  Who finds himself, loses his misery!'"


He had spoken softly and slowly, but quite distinctly; the silver
cadence of his rich, cultured voice died away, and they stood
together in silence for some minutes.

"In my opinion, Carstairs, that's one of the finest things in the
English language.  When I read that, it seemed to express exactly
what I had been vaguely feeling for years past.  It contains the
germs, the kernel, of all the philosophy in the world.  'Resolve to
be thyself.'  Ye gods, think of that!  Define 'yourself,' Carstairs!
A German professor would fill six volumes and then not do the job.
Matthew Arnold does it in one.

  'Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
  Undistracted by the sights they see,
  In their own tasks all their powers pouring.'

There you are.  Take that to heart, Carstairs.  God knows how much
energy you've dissipated uselessly, in thoughts on other people,
hopes and fears.  Lord!  I've been as happy as a bird all my life.
That's true religion, Carstairs.  I should like to have a talk with
your guv'nor on that.  He's a sound man, your guv'nor, but with a
weakness for worrying over other people's troubles.  I never do, or
very seldom.  'Keep fit, and answer the impulses of your reason.'
That's my motto."

Carstairs said nothing, but watched him closely.  He continued.  "I
say 'I never worry over other people's troubles,' you're the only man
I've ever worried over; honestly, Carstairs, you appeal to me
exceedingly.  I've often wondered whether you're before your time or
after, there is much of the noble savage about you.  I regard you
with awe, yet you can think.  You use steam, and coal, and
electricity; but you totally disregard men and women.  This little
globe is just a box of bricks, you and I are part of them--everything
fits in--your duty here below is to look after yourself, to fill your
little niche efficiently."

Carstairs spoke.  "You do that best by considering carefully your
true relation to other people, the real interdependence of every one,
and the lubrication of sentiment.  As an engineer you must know that
only the truth endures."

"By Jove, that's true.  'Because right is right,' etc.  As an
individual you would shine, your conception of the truth is very
exact and your ability to act up to it high.  As an engineer you are
good, but this is the age of states and municipalities, of diplomacy
and intrigue; when men are judged for what they say, and not for what
they do.  Had my lot been cast among companies, instead of
municipalities, I should have had to entirely alter my tactics.  You
can talk to a man and smile at him till you're blue in the face, but
if he sees that your work don't pan out into tangible dividends,
you've got to go.  Municipalities don't put much on dividends, they
like a smile and a loud voice.  If socialism comes to pass, your type
will die out and my type will flourish."

"God forbid."

"My dear chap, happiness is a condition of the mind, not of the body.
I bet I've made more people happy by my smile, than you have by your
work.  Socialists are of two classes; wise men and fools (the same as
everybody else), the wise men want to develop and get a good price
for their natural powers of persuasion, the fools are sentimental
idiots who propose to do away with misery by doing away with
individuals and the slums.  By Jove! the slums are about the happiest
places, slum-bred people never commit suicide, when they feel
depressed, they go in for murder, a much more healthy occupation.
Garden mould is rotten-looking stuff, but the worms enjoy it, and if
you take 'em out and put 'em in nice, clean cotton wool, they'll kick
the bucket, and if there were no worms, there'd be no men, you know.
At the present time, England is overflowing with people who want to
put the worms in cotton wool.  It's a question of religion; they have
forsaken their Gods.  I suppose there are some Christians in England,
I haven't met them, probably they could be counted on the fingers of
one hand.  England is a pagan country still; your guv'nor is one of
the best men I've met, but he's a pure pagan: I'd give a hundred to
one in quids that if I slapped him on the right cheek, he'd instantly
plug me in the left eye--and his entire congregation, also his
Bishop, would back him up.  The Englishman worships Thor, the
magnified man with the sledge hammer; I'm a Dago, I worship those
brainy old chaps who lived in the Pantheon; they took life easily in
the sun, and hadn't a moral amongst them; I've rather a contempt for
Thor, he never showed any great brain capacity, but simply slogged
around blindly with a sledge hammer.  It's a question of my Gods
versus your Gods: A man's religion is what he bases the conduct of
his life on, not which church he attends on Sunday: our stars were in
opposition from the start, Carstairs, and the moving finger of Fate
is approaching very rapidly to a blot--the elimination of a unit,
with large-bore magazine rifles--and I don't think it'll be me."

He paused and gazed out over the sea.

Carstairs, watching him closely, was lost in admiration of the beauty
of his profile silhouetted against the moon.

"The whole blooming world," he continued, "seems to be slopping over
with a sticky sort of sentiment.  The centre of gravity of
civilization is becoming too high, it'll topple over presently.  We
have a new God 'The people' and the people are those thick-headed
fools one passes in the street: the artizan, who makes things by the
'piece' (cheap and nasty), because he can't be trusted to act on the
square otherwise; he gets more than his whack of the good things of
life, and puts the surplus into beer and baccy; his 'missus' would
like to keep a servant, and objects to bringing up kids.  Then
there's the middle class man, brought up with the ideas and the
ambitions of an aristocrat, the physique of a clerk, and the ability
of a navvy; his recreation is suicide: and the aristocrats, I
suppose, are those wishy-washy young men, all nose and no chin, who
loaf about the West End, and die of ennui.  All due to excessive
sentiment!  Sentiment is far more dangerous than drink or drugs: in
exceedingly small doses it adds to the flavour of life.  Sentiment
will get you out of a job quick enough, but it'll never damn well get
you into one.  You're my best friend, I honestly like you and admire
you, but to-morrow I'm going to shoot you, afterwards I shall be
intensely sorry--for precisely five minutes.  Hullo!  Who the devil
is this?"  His voice changed to a note of anger.

Carstairs turned and saw something crawling, creeping, sidling
cautiously along the deck, like a dog that knows he's done wrong.  It
was the hunchback.  He got close up to Darwen, crouching down, and
held up his hands to view; the moon shone out suddenly from behind a
cloud, and they saw in the sudden burst of light that the flesh was
riven from hands and wrists as though they had been wrenched through
something which was too small for them.

Darwen looked at him a moment, then, stooping down, struck him across
the face with his flat hand.  "You failed, and I have no use for
failures; as an intelligence department Sam failed--and he's gone; as
an executive, you have failed, too.  What use are you?"

Carstairs listened spellbound.

The hunchback gave a piteous moan and looked up in Darwen's face with
a singular, dog-like, appealing look.  He stooped and struck him
again in the face.  "You're a fool, I tell you, a useless fool."

With a sudden bound the thing leaped on to the railing and over into
the sea.

Carstairs sprang to the side, Darwen was looking over like an eager
boy.  "By Jove!" he said, "the poor devil can't swim a stroke."  He
vaulted lightly on to the top of the broad handrail and stood for one
second balancing with the graceful ease of the practised gymnast,
then he dived after him.  "Stop the ship, Carstairs," he said, as he
went.  A sailor on the poop threw a life belt overboard, and raised
the alarm.  The ship was turned about, and went round in a circle
three times, but nothing was to be seen of either of them, so she
turned to her course again.

Carstairs leaned long over the side, gazing into the dark water
swirling past.  A great big "Why?" confronted him.  "Why?  Why?
Why?" he asked himself, and the answer was locked away, with many
another mystery, deep down in the depth of the water at his feet.

For the rest of the night he paced the deck.  Next day he gave all
the information he could to the authorities: the other passenger,
they said, must have been a stowaway, Carstairs thought so too.  He
took the train to Calais, and returned as quickly as possible to
break the news to Darwen's mother.

She had been up all night and was very haggard.  "Where's Charlie?"
she asked, as soon as she saw him.

"He's had an accident----"

"He's dead!" she screamed, seizing him by the hand and looking into
his eyes.  "Dead!  Dead!  I knew it."

"I'm afraid he is."

"Oh, my God!  My God!  Tell me, how was it?"

"We were going to Havre, he and I; he jumped overboard in the night
to rescue a stowaway."

She drew herself up with pride, the bleared eyes shone with an
unnatural light.  "There!  He was a sportsman to the last!  He played
wing three-quarter for England when he was nineteen, and the same
year he scored fifty-six against the M.C.C.  I was so proud, he was
so handsome!  And now he's gone!  Oh, my boy, my boy, my lovely boy!
Oh God, take me too."  She fell forward on her face.

Carstairs picked her up and threw water over her; he called a
servant, and hurried out for a doctor.

She was dead--quite dead--her heart, the doctor said.

Carstairs went away and hurried north, he was a day overdue as it
was.  He explained the matter as much as he could to the hard-headed
ex-fitter.

"Ay!" the latter said, shaking his head, and there was a world of
sympathy in that shake of the head.  "It's a bad business, lad, a bad
business."  He had a commercial head equal to the best in the world,
this man, but his heart was exactly in the right place, too.  He
broached the subject then to Carstairs that he was going to retire,
and offered him a much more important position in the firm, which
ultimately led (with the great success of his many patents) to a
partnership.

For six months or so he was kept hard at the grindstone, external
affairs troubled him not at all; he heard that Bessie Bevengton was
engaged to Whitworth, who had got a good appointment on the staff of
Sir Donald Cox of Westminster; Bounce never ceased to marvel at the
manner in which the hunchback had broken out of the double lashing he
had put round his wrists; his brother Stephen had got a picture hung
in the academy: all these things seemed to affect Jack Carstairs like
vague unimportant rumours, for he knew, in his soul, that the girl
was his, waiting for him, and he wanted to go and fetch her: only,
sometimes, in the early morning, when the atmosphere outside was some
ten or fifteen degrees below freezing point, and he wallowed in his
cold bath, breathing deeply and steadily through the nose, then with
the exhilarating reaction of his blood as he briskly wiped down with
a rough towel, these whispers from an external world would find an
echo in his brain.  "By Jove, I must write and congratulate old
Whitworth," or "Jolly glad Stephen's done something at last."

Then he got a spell, and went to London.  He stayed with his artist
brother.

"We'll go to the opera, and hear the new singer," the latter said on
their first evening together.

"Who is she?" Jack asked.

"Madame Edith D'Arcy, daughter of the late Sir Thomas D'Arcy, you
know.  She's wonderful.  Perfect statue, and a marvellous voice."

"Let us go by all means.  Do you know her to speak to?"

"Well, not exactly.  She's a protégée of Lady Cleeve's, you know."

"Is that so?"

Before the performance was half over, Jack surprised his brother by
getting up and leaving his seat.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To see Edith."

"Who?"

"Madame Edith D'Arcy.  I'm going to marry her."

"Good Lord!"

"That's what I think, too; she's been dodging me for years."
Carstairs was quite confident, his income for the year had totalled
considerably nearer £4000, than the £400 stipulated by the autocratic
old aristocrat.

He sent up his card and was admitted to her dressing-room.  She was
dressed in magnificent robes for the part she was taking; he looked
at her for some moments, in silence, fascinated; she had attained the
full perfection of her beauty, and it was exceeding rare; her eyes
looked into his with a wondrous light.  Still in silence he stepped
up close and took her hand, then, much to his own astonishment, his
great shoulders bent forward, and he kissed the back of her fingers;
he had never imagined himself doing such a thing, it was quite
spontaneous.  He raised his head and looked into her eyes.  "You are
my queen," he said, with a smile, and then he took her in his arms
and kissed her on the lips.

"So you've come," she said, "you've been a long time--I--I wanted to
do something."

"Ye-es!  That is the external--paradox, I imagine," he answered,
gazing steadily into the depths of her eyes.  They were silent for
some minutes.  The full tide of his deep, strong nature set to this
beautiful woman; the splendid purpose of life tingled in his blood
and shone out through his eyes as he gazed into hers.  Only men like
Carstairs feel such a tide.  He felt that this was the summit of his
life.  "The world was made for you and me," he said.

"There's the call," she answered, suddenly releasing herself.  "I
must go."

He stepped to the door and stood with his back to it, the big bulk of
him nearly filled it.  "No!  By Jove, you won't!  Not this time."

"But I must," she said, "the manager will be frantic."

"Show me the manager, and I'll flatten him out."

"Please let me go."

"Not till you promise to marry me to-morrow."

"To-morrow!  I can't."

"Alright, then, I'll burn this place down," he produced a box of
matches from his pocket.

"Don't be silly.  Let me go, please."

"Never again!"  He held a lighted match in his hand.  "I'm willing to
compromise; will you name the day?"

"This time next year."

"Absurd!"  He held the match to some drapery stuff near, and watched
it slowly kindle.  "I'll give you till this time next month."

"Two months?" she pleaded.

"Alright," he said, crumpling up the cloth in his hands.  He produced
her mother's ring from his waistcoat pocket, and slipped it on her
finger.  "That's sealed then.  What's the price of the curtain?"

"Five pounds," she said, as she disappeared through the door.

"Dirt cheap," he answered.  "I'd buy a hundred at the same price."
And the audience, who were competent to judge, said that Madame Edith
D'Arcy had never sung as she sang that night.




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