________________________________________________
_ The partition which separated my own office from our general outer
office in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could see through
it what passed in the outer office, without hearing a word. I had
it put up in place of a wall that had been there for years, - ever
since the house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did
not make the change in order that I might derive my first
impression of strangers, who came to us on business, from their
faces alone, without being influenced by anything they said.
Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that account,
and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be
practised upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human race.
It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman
whose story I am going to tell.
He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat and
umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some
papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty or so, dark,
exceedingly well dressed in black, - being in mourning, - and the
hand he extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting
black-kid glove upon it. His hair, which was elaborately brushed
and oiled, was parted straight up the middle; and he presented this
parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said,
in so many words: 'You must take me, if you please, my friend, just
as I show myself. Come straight up here, follow the gravel path,
keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing.'
I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I thus saw
him.
He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was
giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and agreeable
smile was on his face, and his eyes met those of the clerk with a
sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked
about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that
conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of
countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by
it.)
I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my
looking at him. Immediately he turned the parting in his hair
toward the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet smile,
'Straight up here, if you please. Off the grass!'
In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella,
and was gone.
I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, 'Who was that?'
He had the gentleman's card in his hand. 'Mr. Julius Slinkton,
Middle Temple.'
'A barrister, Mr. Adams?'
'I think not, sir.'
'I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no
Reverend here,' said I.
'Probably, from his appearance,' Mr. Adams replied, 'he is reading
for orders.'
I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty
linen altogether.
'What did he want, Mr. Adams?'
'Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference.'
'Recommended here? Did he say?'
'Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of yours. He
noticed you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your
personal acquaintance he would not trouble you.'
'Did he know my name?'
'O yes, sir! He said, "There IS Mr. Sampson, I see!"'
'A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?'
'Remarkably so, sir.'
'Insinuating manners, apparently?'
'Very much so, indeed, sir.'
'Hah!' said I. 'I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams.'
Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a friend of
mine, a merchant, a man of taste, who buys pictures and books, and
the first man I saw among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton.
There he was, standing before the fire, with good large eyes and an
open expression of face; but still (I thought) requiring everybody
to come at him by the prepared way he offered, and by no other.
I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and my
friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me. Not too
happy; there was no over-doing of the matter; happy in a thoroughly
well-bred, perfectly unmeaning way.
'I thought you had met,' our host observed.
'No,' said Mr. Slinkton. 'I did look in at Mr. Sampson's office,
on your recommendation; but I really did not feel justified in
troubling Mr. Sampson himself, on a point in the everyday, routine
of an ordinary clerk.'
I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our
friend's introduction.
'I am sure of that,' said he, 'and am much obliged. At another
time, perhaps, I may be less delicate. Only, however, if I have
real business; for I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time
is, and what a vast number of impertinent people there are in the
world.'
I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow. 'You were
thinking,' said I, 'of effecting a policy on your life.'
'O dear no! I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the
compliment of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I merely inquired
for a friend. But you know what friends are in such matters.
Nothing may ever come of it. I have the greatest reluctance to
trouble men of business with inquiries for friends, knowing the
probabilities to be a thousand to one that the friends will never
follow them up. People are so fickle, so selfish, so
inconsiderate. Don't you, in your business, find them so every
day, Mr. Sampson?'
I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his smooth,
white parting on me with its 'Straight up here, if you please!' and
I answered 'Yes.'
'I hear, Mr. Sampson,' he resumed presently, for our friend had a
new cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, 'that your
profession has recently suffered a great loss.'
'In money?' said I.
He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and replied,
'No, in talent and vigour.'
Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a moment.
'HAS it sustained a loss of that kind?' said I. 'I was not aware
of it.'
'Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don't imagine that you have
retired. It is not so bad as that. But Mr. Meltham - '
'O, to be sure!' said I. 'Yes! Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of
the "Inestimable."'
'Just so,' he returned in a consoling way.
'He is a great loss. He was at once the most profound, the most
original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected
with Life Assurance.'
I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for
Meltham; and my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some
suspicion that he wanted to sneer at him. He recalled me to my
guard by presenting that trim pathway up his head, with its
internal 'Not on the grass, if you please - the gravel.'
'You knew him, Mr. Slinkton.'
'Only by reputation. To have known him as an acquaintance or as a
friend, is an honour I should have sought if he had remained in
society, though I might never have had the good fortune to attain
it, being a man of far inferior mark. He was scarcely above
thirty, I suppose?'
'About thirty.'
'Ah!' he sighed in his former consoling way. 'What creatures we
are! To break up, Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of business at
that time of life! - Any reason assigned for the melancholy fact?'
('Humph!' thought I, as I looked at him. 'But I WON'T go up the
track, and I WILL go on the grass.')
'What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton?' I asked,
point-blank.
'Most likely a false one. You know what Rumour is, Mr. Sampson. I
never repeat what I hear; it is the only way of paring the nails
and shaving the head of Rumour. But when YOU ask me what reason I
have heard assigned for Mr. Meltham's passing away from among men,
it is another thing. I am not gratifying idle gossip then. I was
told, Mr. Sampson, that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his
avocations and all his prospects, because he was, in fact, broken-
hearted. A disappointed attachment I heard, - though it hardly
seems probable, in the case of a man so distinguished and so
attractive.'
'Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death,' said I.
'O, she died? Pray pardon me. I did not hear that. That, indeed,
makes it very, very sad. Poor Mr. Meltham! She died? Ah, dear
me! Lamentable, lamentable!'
I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still
suspected an unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said, as
we were parted, like the other knots of talkers, by the
announcement of dinner:
'Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of a
man whom I have never known. I am not so disinterested as you may
suppose. I have suffered, and recently too, from death myself. I
have lost one of two charming nieces, who were my constant
companions. She died young - barely three-and-twenty; and even her
remaining sister is far from strong. The world is a grave!'
He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the
coldness of my manner. Coldness and distrust had been engendered
in me, I knew, by my bad experiences; they were not natural to me;
and I often thought how much I had lost in life, losing
trustfulness, and how little I had gained, gaining hard caution.
This state of mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself more
about this conversation than I might have troubled myself about a
greater matter. I listened to his talk at dinner, and observed how
readily other men responded to it, and with what a graceful
instinct he adapted his subjects to the knowledge and habits of
those he talked with. As, in talking with me, he had easily
started the subject I might be supposed to understand best, and to
be the most interested in, so, in talking with others, he guided
himself by the same rule. The company was of a varied character;
but he was not at fault, that I could discover, with any member of
it. He knew just as much of each man's pursuit as made him
agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as little as
made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when the
theme was broached.
As he talked and talked - but really not too much, for the rest of
us seemed to force it upon him - I became quite angry with myself.
I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it
in detail. I could not say much against any of his features
separately; I could say even less against them when they were put
together. 'Then is it not monstrous,' I asked myself, 'that
because a man happens to part his hair straight up the middle of
his head, I should permit myself to suspect, and even to detest
him?'
(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense. An
observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some
apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great
weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two
will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a
very heavy door.)
I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and we
got on remarkably well. In the drawing-room I asked the host how
long he had known Mr. Slinkton. He answered, not many months; he
had met him at the house of a celebrated painter then present, who
had known him well when he was travelling with his nieces in Italy
for their health. His plans in life being broken by the death of
one of them, he was reading with the intention of going back to
college as a matter of form, taking his degree, and going into
orders. I could not but argue with myself that here was the true
explanation of his interest in poor Meltham, and that I had been
almost brutal in my distrust on that simple head. _
Read next: CHAPTER III
Read previous: CHAPTER I
Table of content of Hunted Down
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
