Knight Without Armour

“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.”

He would never, in all probability, see either of them again.

A letter from a firm of enquiry agents in New York City, dated several months back and addressed to him in Paris: “With reference to your recent enquiry, we regret that up to the present we have found it impossible to obtain any information. We are, however, continuing to investigate, and will report to you immediately should any development occur.”

Another letter, some weeks later: “Re Mary Denver, we are at last able to report progress. It appears that the child was adopted by a family named Consett, of Red Springs, Colorado, middle-class people of English descent, moderately well-off. Mr. Consett died in 1927. We have had difficulty in tracing the rest of the family since then. They left Red Springs, and are believed to have gone to Philadelphia. We are continuing our enquiries.” A third letter, dated three weeks back: