“Still at Kuala Simur. He had a great opinion of you—especially after that small-pox epidemic.”
“Oh, that wasn’t much.”
Farington laughed. “It’s too conventional to say that, surely? I wish you could sec some of Richmond’s letters about you, anyway—he almost hero-worshipped.”
“I hope not.”
“He did. His great dream, I think, was to convert you some day.”
“Well, he didn’t come far short of doing so.”
“Oh?”
“We used to argue a good deal about religion and so on—and I used to joke with him and say I should end by becoming a Catholic. At least, perhaps he thought I was joking, but all the time, in a sort of way, I meant it. Then my brother died and all the rubber estates fell to me, and I got suddenly fed up with everything and sold out. That just happened to be right at the top of the rubber boom in ’twenty-five, which is why I’m more or less a rich man now. I sold out to an Anglo-Dutch syndicate, packed up, and pottered about Europe from then till now. The syndicate, incidentally, paid me about five times what the place is worth to- day.”
“That must have been very good for your bank account.”
“Better than for my soul, perhaps, eh? To come back to that, the rather curious thing is that all the time I was at Kuala Simur I felt a sort of conversion going on—if you can call it that—I know of course that nothing really counts until you’re definitely over the line. Probably if I’d had much more to do with your friend Richmond, whom I liked exceedingly, he’d have pushed me over.”
“I wish that had happened.”
“Oh well, I pushed myself over a year later, so perhaps it didn’t matter.”
“So you are a Catholic?”
“I was received into the Church in Vienna three years ago. I’m not sure that I’m entitled to call myself a Catholic now, though. Slackness, I suppose. All very unsatisfactory from your point of view, I’m afraid.”
“And from yours too, surely?”
“Well, perhaps—perhaps.”
They talked on for some time, and Fothergill found it strangely and refreshingly easy to be intimate with the young man. Farington’s train was due to leave at midnight, and towards nine o’clock Fothergill suggested that they should adjourn to his hotel for a smoke. They walked along the crowded Strand to the Cecil and were soon snugly in the lounge. There and then conversation developed as if all barriers had suddenly been destroyed. Fothergill said: “You know, Farington, there was one thing I never told Richmond and that was the whole truth about my life.”
“I know. He used to grumble about that in his letters to me. He said he was sure you had some mysterious and grisly past which you never breathed a word about to anybody.”
“Really? He guessed that? How curious!”
“Well, we priests aren’t such simpletons, you know.”
Fothergill laughed. “I’ll bet he never guessed the sort of past it had been, though. I daresay I’d have told him if I hadn’t known him so well. As a matter of fact, I knew he liked me and I liked him to like me, and I didn’t want to see my stock going down with a bump…You see, I seem to have broken so many of the commandments.”
“Most of us have.”
“Yes, but I’ve gone rather the whole hog. I’ve killed men, for instance.”
“If you walked out now into the Strand you could find hundreds of middle-aged fellows who’ve done that.”
“Oh, the war—yes, but my affairs weren’t in the war—at least, hardly. One of them was pretty cold-blooded murder. And then there are other matters, too. I never married, but I lived with a woman—once.”
“That, again, is nothing very unusual.”
“I daresay not, but if my soul depended on it, I couldn’t say I was sorry. It’s the one thing in my life which I feel was fully and definitely right.”
“Of course, without knowing the circumstances—”
“If You’ve time, and if you think you wouldn’t be bored, I’ll tell You how it all happened.”
“I wish you would.”
“Splendid.” And he began at the day he left England twenty- three years before. About three-quarters of an hour later, when he came hoarsely to an end, Farington said: “Well, that’s really a most astonishing story. How relieved you must be to have told it to somebody!”
“Yes, that’s just what I’m feeling. Relieved and rather tired.”
“Not too tired to continue our chat for another half-hour or so. I hope?”
“Provided you do most of the talking.”
“Oh, I’ll engage to do that.” He kept his word, and the conversation continued until it was absolutely necessary for him to leave to catch the train. Fortunately his bag was at the station, so that he could proceed there directly. Fothergill, strangely eager despite his tiredness, accompanied him in the taxi, and their talk lasted until the moment the train began to move. “We probably shan’t meet again,” Fothergill said, as they shook hands, “but I shall never forget how—how reasonable you have been. Does that sound a rather tepid word in the circumstances?”
“Not at all. Just the right one, I should like to think. Though there’s no reason why we shouldn’t meet sometime—you have my address—it’s only a train-ride out of Manchester.”
“I hate tram-rides and I’m sure I should hate Manchester.” He laughed excitedly, and was aware of the silliness of the remark. He added, more soberly: “In my old age I’m beginning to attach great value to comfort—just comfort.”
“Old age, man—nonsense! You’re not fifty yet!”
“One is made old, not by one’s years, but by what one has lived through. That’s sententious enough, surely—another sign of age.” The train began to move. “I shan’t forget, however. Good-bye.”
“I must make the most, then, of your rubber articles in The Times. Good-bye then.” They laughed distantly at each other as the train gathered speed.
He drove back to the hotel with all his senses warmed and glowing. On what trifles everything depended—if he had not made for Rule’s that evening and been those few minutes too early!
In a corner seat of a first-class compartment on the Irish Mail the next morning, he had leisure to think everything over. So much had happened the day before. But the interview with the Harley Street man hadn’t surprised him; he had been suspecting something of the sort for several months, and wasn’t worrying; there was no pain—at worst a sort of tiredness. He would take a few but not all the precautions he had been recommended, and leave the rest to Fate.
He opened a small attaché-case on the seat beside him and took out letters and papers. The proofs of his first Times article—how well it looked—’by Ainsley Jergwin Fothergill, author of Rubber and the Rubber Industry’! He seemed to be staring appreciatively at the work of another person—the hardworking, painstaking person who had spent five years in Kuala Simur. Five years of self- discipline and orderliness, with the little rubber trees all in line across the hillside to typify a certain inner domestication of his own soul. He had liked the plantation work; it had given him grooves just when most of all he had wanted grooves. To save himself he had plunged into rubber-growing with a fervour that had startled everybody, especially poor William; he had worked, read, written, thought, and lived rubber for five years. And the result, by an ironic twist of fortune, had come to be two things he had never known before—a status and a private income.
He turned over a few letters. One from his publisher, enclosing a cheque for six months’ royalties and suggesting a small ‘popular’ book in a half-crown series to be called just ’Rubber’—something rather chatty and not too technical—could he do it?…It would be rather interesting to try, at any rate…A letter from Philippa, thanking him for his subscription to her slum children, and hoping he would manage a visit soon—he could come any time he liked and stay as long as he liked—“both Sybil and I are looking forward so much to seeing you again.”