第3章

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.Inever 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 Ihave 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.Ihave 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.