Читать книгу Prodigals of Monte Carlo - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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The party broke up early. Pellingham was attending a farewell supper to a bevy of beautiful damsels from the other side, whom Broadway was once more claiming for its own, and Marston had to see a Colonial client at his hotel. Philip Gorse lingered.

“Going on anywhere, Hargrave?” he asked. “Or have you time for a pipe and a whisky and soda?”

“I’m your man,” the other agreed promptly. “I was just wondering whether it was worth while going round to the Club. Come along to my den.”

The two men left the very correct but somewhat severe atmosphere of the Georgian dining room, with its odour of choice exotics and Havana cigars, and made their way to a comfortable room at the back of the house where the walls were lined with books and sporting prints; gun cases, tennis racquets and golf clubs were stacked in the vacant corners and a general atmosphere of warm comfort prevailed. Philip Gorse lit his pipe with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Best hour of the day,” he observed, settling himself in an easy-chair. “Chuck me out when you’ve had enough though. I don’t want to keep you up.”

“Stay just as long as you like,” Hargrave invited, throwing himself into an easy-chair opposite his guest. “I’ve a few letters to write before I go to bed—nothing of any importance—and I hate going too early.”

“Any particular reason for your putting that problem to us to-night?” Philip Gorse enquired, looking across at his friend through the cloud of tobacco smoke.

Hargrave continued for a moment to smoke meditatively.

“In a way,” he admitted. “I took a nasty toss about a fortnight ago and I went to see a doctor this afternoon. He gave me—well, rather a shock.”

“Nothing really serious, I hope?” the other asked anxiously.

“May not be,” Hargrave replied. “He said he would know better in six months. These fellows won’t tell you outright, you know, Philip, but between you and me I pretty well got my marching orders.”

Philip Gorse laid down his pipe. His eyes were filled with sympathy but his expression at first was more incredulous than grave.

“But, my dear fellow!” he exclaimed. “You have the constitution of an ox. Did he examine you properly?”

“Pretty well stripped me,” Hargrave acknowledged. “But the trouble of it is that my local man who sent me to him evidently thought there was something wrong, and he’s no fool.—Don’t talk about this, there’s a good chap,” Hargrave went on, after a moment’s pause. “It’s been rather a shock, of course, but, dash it all, it might have happened at any moment during the War, and it’s got to happen some day to all of us. It’s only the unexpectedness of it that takes one’s breath away just at first.”

Andrews, the butler, entered the room, with the whisky and soda. His quiet, stereotyped movements and deferential speech seemed to restore to normality an atmosphere which a moment before had been charged with tragedy. Hargrave’s tone was almost matter-of-fact as the door closed behind him.

“You understand now, Philip,” he went on, “what was in my mind this evening.”

Philip Gorse knew his friend too well even to try to express the sympathy which was in his heart. Nevertheless his eyes were a little dim and his voice was not quite steady.

“I shouldn’t take this too seriously, Hargrave,” he begged. “These fellows often make mistakes.”

“I don’t think Horridge does,” was the somewhat grim reply. “However, let’s put that behind us for the time. Consider the problem which I propounded now applied to myself. Give me your advice.”

Philip Gorse relit his pipe with trembling fingers.

“Very well then, Hargrave,” he said. “I’ll try. First of all, I’d wipe out from your mind all that Pellingham said. You are not and never could be a man of Pellingham’s type. You have sought for pleasure and found it, I presume, as you have a perfect right to, when it is not at the expense of others, but you have done it with restraint—if one can use such a word, with taste. Don’t think that because I’m a clergyman, old chap, I don’t understand and appreciate these things. I have kept one foot in either world and I peer into many. For a man of your world, Hargrave—if you don’t mind my saying so—I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for you. You’ve never been blatant. There has always been a flavour of epicureanism about the way you have sought the best, the healthiest things in life. Don’t let go of that just because of this crisis. Even though what the doctor told you might come true, you won’t gain anything in a mad search for new sensations. You’ll only lose the most admirable thing in your life.”

Hargrave nodded approvingly.

“Good advice,” he admitted. “I may step out a little but I don’t think I shall lose my head. Get on with it. Remember that I am a very wealthy man, wealthier even than any one of my friends imagines.”

“Notwithstanding that,” Gorse said, “I certainly shouldn’t suggest for an instant that you tried to make a bargain with the Almighty by giving huge sums to charity, or anything of that sort.”

“But what about your own poor?”

“All well taken care of. No one with my experience could say that this was not a charitable age. Why, I have offers nearly every day from all sorts of people, and the offertories, considering the class of my congregation, are enormous.”

“You’ve done a great work, Philip,” Hargrave acknowledged sympathetically. “You’ve done what so few of us accomplish—you’ve done a great work for others. It makes one thoughtful, you know, to think of the difference between your life and mine. I haven’t any unwholesome craving to make, as you say, a bargain with the Almighty, but I should like to feel that I had done something that was worth while, given some poor devils a lift, or something of that sort, before I passed in my checks.”

Gorse sipped his whisky and soda.

“If I were in your position, Hargrave,” he advised gently, “I don’t believe I’d worry so much about the poor. The hospitals need help, of course, but the very poor have never been so well cared for as to-day, and I’m afraid, as a practical Christian, I must admit that those who remain down and out do so more from lack of character than absence of help. If I were you, I should try the other class. It is more difficult, of course, because they are more sensitive, but I’ve come to the conclusion that since the War there’s more real suffering amongst what are called the ‘lower middles’, the shopgirls and shopmen, clerks and people like that, who have a certain position to keep up, than the very poor. They can’t accept charity, and who is there to help them?”

“But how do you come across them?” Hargrave demanded.

“A matter of chance, I suppose,” Gorse admitted. “I have had one or two cases amongst those who came to ask my advice in the vestry. I have no one on my list just now, thank goodness. You’ll find some one, if you’ll keep your eyes open. And there’s another thing, Hargrave, keeping your eyes open in such a quest is in itself a good thing. It prevents a man from becoming selfish and self-centered. Go about for the next few days or weeks, looking for some one who seems unhappy. If you don’t happen to find any one with whom you can get into touch the very attitude of mind takes your thoughts off your own troubles and does you good.”

Hargrave smiled a little whimsically.

“It’s all very well for you,” he pointed out. “You’ve brought yourself into such sympathy with your fellow creatures that you can tell instinctively when they need help, and you’d approach them also in such a way that no one could possibly resent a question from you. I couldn’t go up to an anæmic-looking young woman, with a hole in her shoe and a shabby frock, and take off my hat and say, ‘Madame, I fear you are in distress. Can I be of any assistance?’ She’d probably hand me over to the nearest policeman, if she was honest, or try to march me down to Pimlico if she wasn’t.”

Philip Gorse laughed softly. He glanced at the clock and knocked out his pipe.

“Hargrave, old chap,” he said, “I am glad we’ve had this talk. I’m not going to believe the worst part of it, and I wouldn’t let my thoughts dwell upon it myself, if I were you. You can send me a moderate-sized cheque for my shelter scheme, if you like—not more than a hundred pounds—but keep your eyes open for the other things, and something will come along. Perhaps you’d better leave the young ladies alone, but sometimes one comes across really human trouble in the most unexpected places. And listen,” he went on earnestly, “it isn’t always pounds, shillings and pence that count. It’s the greyness of life that’s so horrible to some of these people who have a little imagination and slender means. There’s nothing of the Calvinist about me, you know. I believe in pleasure, and I believe people have a right to it. You can do just as much good in the world by bringing a little brightness into the lives of people who can’t find it for themselves as you can by supporting soup kitchens or any other form of charity. There’s real human charity, for instance, in cinema tickets for the young people who have to give up all their earnings to keep the home going—one can always pretend they are complimentary—or the loan of a car for the day to a man who would give anything to take his wife and family into the country and can’t. These little things will come your way, if you keep on looking out for them.”

Hargrave smiled ruefully as he walked down the hall and lingered by the lift with his guest.

“You’ve the gift of finding these people, Philip,” he remarked.

“Easily developed,” the other assured him cheerfully. “You often don’t need to give to complete strangers either. Just keep your eyes open amongst the people you meet casually in one day, and see for yourself who there is missing the sunlight.”

The lift came noiselessly up. Almost for the first time there was a note of real seriousness in Gorse’s tone as he clasped hands with his friend.

“Don’t brood about that other matter, old fellow,” he begged. “It may be right, or it may be wrong. You and I can’t alter it. Get off somewhere and enjoy yourself—Monte Carlo, I should say. We each have our time fixed, and when it comes we were both born men.”