Up the drive George came bounding with huge strides. The fires of tremendous joy that roared within him impelled him to enormous energy.
Upon the journey from Waterloo to Paltley Hill he could with difficulty restrain himself from leaping upon the seat; bawling “I've passed! I've passed! I'm qualified!” He could not sit still. He fidgeted, wriggled; thrust his head first from one window, then from the other. Every foot of the line was well known to him. To each familiar landmark his spirit bellowed: “Greeting! When last you saw me I was coming up in a blue funk. Now! Oh, good God, now—” and he would draw in, stride the carriage, and thrust his head from the other window.
His four fellow-passengers regarded him with some apprehension. They detected signs of lunacy in the young man; kept a nervous eye cocked upon the alarm cord; at the first stopping place with one accord arose and fled. One, signing herself “Lady Shareholder,” had her alarming experience in her daily-paper upon the following morning.
At his station George leapt for the platform a full minute before the train had stopped. Up the lanes he sent his bursting spirits flying in shrill whistlings and gay hummings; slashed stones with his stick; struck across the fields and took gates and stiles in great spread-eagled vaults.
So up the drive, stones still flying, whistlings still piping.
Upon the lawn he espied Mr. Marrapit and his Mary. She, on a garden seat, was reading aloud from the Times; Mr. Marrapit, on a deep chair stretched to make lap for the Rose of Sharon, sat a little in advance of her.
George approached from Mr. Marrapit's flank; soft turf muffled his strides. The warm glow of kindliness towards all the world, which his success had stoked burning within him, put a foreign word upon his tongue. He sped it on a boisterous note:
“Uncle!” he cried. “Uncle, I've passed!”
Mary crushed the Times between her hands; bounded to her feet. “Oh!” she cried. “Hip! hur—!”
She bit the final exclamation; dropped to her seat. Mr. Marrapit had twisted his eye upon her.
“You are in pain?” he asked.
“No—oh, no.”
“You have a pang in the hip?”
“Oh no—no.”
“But you bounded. You cried 'hip'! Whose hip?”
“I was startled.”
“Unsatisfactory. The brain, not the hip, is the seat of the emotion. Elucidate.”
“I don't know why I said 'hip.' I was startled. Mr. George startled me.”
“Me also he startled. I did not shout hip, thigh, leg nor knee. Control the tongue.”
He turned to George. “Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has projected this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you repeat it.”
Sprayed upon between mortification and laughter at the manner of his greeting, George's enthusiasm was a little damped. But its flame was too fierce to be hurt by a shower. Now it roared again. “I've passed!” he cried. “I'm qualified!”
“I tender my felicitations. Accept them. Leave us, Miss Humfray. This is a mighty hour. Take the Rose. Give her cream. Let her with us rejoice.”
Mary raised the cat. She faced about so that she directly shut Mr. Marrapit from his nephew; with her dancing eyes spoke her happiness to her George; passed down the lawn.
Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright. “Again, accept my felicitations,” he said. “They are yours. Take them.”
With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: “It is a mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to port, through hurts to harbour.”
He paused.
“You mean—” George said, groping.
“Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our minds and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand. Westward the setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows. Between us the horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer stands. It is banished by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is ended. The vow which I swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept. I would nourish you, I declared, until you were a qualified physician. You are a qualified physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the future, upon a written invitation, I trust you will visit this home in which your youth has been spent. When do you leave?”
The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He had not anticipated it. He jerked: “When do I—leave?”
“Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness and waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When does it fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope, spend beneath my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?”
George flamed. “You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me.”
Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:
“Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood.” He became stern. “Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you Godspeed.”
George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became humble. “I am sorry,” he said. “I see what you mean. I appreciate your kindness. You ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them before you.”
Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one waiting a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some kind would be necessary. “Proceed,” he said.
George said: “My plans—” He swallowed. “My plans—” Again he swallowed. His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought despairingly for one that would not at the very outset turn Mr. Marrapit into screams. “My plans—” he stammered.
“My God!” Mr. Marrapit groaned. “My God! What is coming?”
George said on a rush: “These are my plans. I intend to marry—”
Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.
“Then—then—” said George, floundering. “After that—then—I intend to marry—I—”
“Bigamy,” Mr. Marrapit murmured. “Bigamy.”
“Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little seaside practice that is for sale.”
Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes half closed, face working upon some inward stress.
“Those are my plans,” George summarised: “to marry and buy this practice.”
A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face ceased; he opened his eyes, sat up. “When?” he asked.
“At once.”
“This practice—”
“I have it in my eye.”
“Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?”
“You mean the price?”
“I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes.”
“Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you.”
“To me?”
“Yes. I wanted to ask—”
“You intend to ask me for money?”
“I want to suggest—”
“How much?”
“Four—five hundred pounds.”
“Great heaven!” Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the end of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: “Margaret!”
She tripped to him. “Father! What is it?”
“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit throated. “Barley water!”
While she was upon her errand no—words passed between the two. Mr. Marrapit took the glass from her in shaking hands. “Leave us,” he said. He drank of his barley water; placed the glass upon the bench beside him; gave George a wan smile. “I am stricken in years,” he said. “I have passed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had experience of such affections of the brain. I thought”—the hideous memory shook him—“I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds.”
George said defiantly: “I did.”
Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly gulped. “I shall have a stroke,” he cried. “My hour is at hand.”
My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. “Oh, I say, uncle, don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me.”
“I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns.”
George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. “Oh, for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask, you have only to say no.”
“You promise that?”
“Of course; of course.”
“I say it now, then. No.”
“But you haven't heard me.”
“Unnecessary.”
The tortured young man raised his voice.
“It is necessary! You shall! You must!”
“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. “Barley water! I am going to be murdered.”
“Oh, this is insupportable!” George cried.
“I endorse that. A double death threatens me. I shudder between a stroke and a blow. I shall be battered to death on my own lawn.”
“If you would only listen to me,” George implored. “Why can we never be natural when we meet?”
“Search your heart for the answer,” Mr. Marrapit told him. “It is because your demands are unnatural.”
“You haven't heard them. Listen. I am on the threshold of my career. I am sure you will not ruin it. The real price of this practice is 650 pounds—the value of a year and a half's income; that is the usual custom. I am offered it for four hundred. Then I want to marry and to have a little balance with which to start—say 100 pounds for that. That makes 500 pounds altogether. I implore you to lend—lend, not give—that sum. I will pay you back 50 pounds at the end of the first year and a hundred a year afterwards. Interest too. I don't know much about these things. Any interest you like. We would get a solicitor to draw up an agreement. Say you will lend the money. I feel sure you will.”
“You delude yourself by that assurance.”
“Oh, wait before you refuse. My prospects are so bright if only you will help me. I have no one else to whom I can turn. It is only a loan I ask.”
“It is refused.”
George stamped away, hands to head. The poor boy was in agony. Then returned:
“I won't believe you. You will not be so heartless. Think over what I have said. Tell me to-night—to-morrow.”
“My answer would be the same.”
“You absolutely refuse to lend me the money?”
“I refuse. It is against my principles.”
My frantic George clutched at a shimmering hope. “Against your principles to lend? Do you mean that you will give—give me 500 pounds?”
“Barley water!” Mr. Marrapit gasped. He drank; gasped: “Give 500 pounds! You are light-headed!”
“Then lend it!” George supplicated on a last appeal. “Make any conditions you please, and I will accept them. Uncle, think of when you were a young man. Remember the time when you were on the threshold of your career. Think of when you were engaged as I am now engaged. Imagine your feelings if you had been prevented marrying. You won't stand in my way? The happiest life is before me if you will only give your aid. Otherwise—otherwise—oh, I say, you won't refuse?”
“I implore you to close this distressing scene.”
“Will you lend me the money?”
“My principles prevent me.”
“Then damn your principles!” George shouted. “Damn your principles!”
While he had been battering his head against this brick wall he had been saved pain by the hope that a last chance would carry him through. Now that he realised the futility of the endeavour, the stability of the wall, he had time to feel the bruising he had suffered—the bitterness of failure and of all that failure meant. The hurts combined to make him roar with pain, and he shouted furiously again: “Damn your principles!”
“Barley water!” throated Mr. Marrapit on a note of terror. He reached for the glass. It was empty.
He struggled to his feet; got the chair between George and himself; cried across it: “Beware how you touch me.”
“Oh, I'm not going to touch you. You needn't be afraid.”
“I have every need. I am afraid. Keep your distance. You are not responsible for your actions.”
“You needn't be afraid, I tell you. It is too ridiculous.”
“I repeat I have need. Keep your distance. My limbs tremble as one in a palsy.” Mr. Marrapit gripped the chair-back; his shudders advertised his distress.
“I only want to say this,” George declaimed, “that if you refuse what I ask, you are refusing what is lawfully mine. My mother left you 4000 pounds for my education. At the outside you have spent three. The 500 pounds is mine. I have a right to it.”
“Keep your distance, sir.”
My furious George took three steps forward.
“Can you answer what I say?” he shouted.
Mr. Marrapit gave a thin cry: turned, and with surprising bounds made across the lawn. A slipper shot from his foot. He alighted upon a stone; bounded heavenwards with a shrill scream; and hopping, leaping, shuffling, made the corner of the house.
George swung on his heel. It occurred to him to visit Bill Wyvern.
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