“The theory of consequence”—Leonard was arranging his thoughts on paper for better clearness—“while it answers most of the difficulties connected with hereditary trouble, breaks down, it must be confessed, in some cases. Given, for instance, a case in which a boy is carefully educated, has no bad examples before him, shows no signs of vice, and is ignorant of the family misfortunes. If that boy becomes a spendthrift and a prodigal, or worse, when there has never before been such a thing in the family, how can we connect the case with the faults or vices of a grandfather altogether unlike his own, and unknown to him? I should be inclined rather to ascribe the case to some influences of the past, not to be discovered, due to some maternal ancestry. A man, for instance, may be so completely unlike any other member of the family that we must search for the cause of his early life in the line of his mother or his grandmother.”

He was just then thinking of his uncle—the returned Colonial, in whom, except for his commanding stature and his still handsome face, there was nothing to remind the world of the paternal side. Whenever he thought of this cheerful person, with whom life seemed a pleasant play, certain doubts crossed his mind, and ran like cold water down his back. He had come home rich—that was something. He might have come home as poor as when he started. Rich or poor, he would have been the same—as buoyant, as loud, as unpresentable.

In fact, at this very moment, when these reflections were forming a part of Leonard’s great essay on the after-effects of evil—an essay which created only last month so great a stir that people talked of little else for a whole evening—the rich Australian was on his way to confess the fact that things were not exactly as he had chosen to present them.

He did confess the truth, or as much of the truth as he could afford to express, but in an easy and irresponsible manner, as if nothing mattered much. He was a philosopher, to whom nothing did matter. He came in, he shook hands and laughed buoyantly; he chose a cigar from Leonard’s box, he rang the bell for whisky and a few bottles of soda; when the whisky and the soda had arrived and were within reach, he took a chair, and laughed again.

“My boy,” he said, “I’m in a tight place again.”

“In what way?”

“Why, for want of money. That’s the only possible tight place at my age. At yours there are many. It is only a temporary tightness, of course.” He opened the soda-water and drank off the full tumbler at a gulp. “Temporary. Till the supplies arrive.”

“The supplies?” Leonard put the question in a nasty, cold, suspicious manner, which would have changed smiles into blankness in a more sensitive person. But uncle Fred was by no means sensitive or thin-skinned. He was also so much accustomed to temporary tightness that the incongruity of tightness with his pretensions of prosperity had not occurred to him.

“Supplies?” he replied. “Supplies from Australia, of course.”

“I thought that you were a partner in a large and prosperous concern.”

“Quite true—quite true. Barlow Brothers is both large and prosperous.”

“In that case it is easy for you to draw upon your bankers or the agents for your bank or some friends in the City. You go into the City every day, I believe. Your position must be well known. In other words, I mistrust this temporary tightness.”

“Mistrust? And from you? Really, Leonard——”

“I put things together. I find in you none of the habits of a responsible merchant. I know that everywhere character is essential for commercial success——”

“Character? What should I be without character?”

“You come home as the successful merchant: you drink: you talk as if you were a debauched youngster about town: your anecdotes are scandalous: your tastes are low. Those are the outward signs.”

“I am on a holiday. Out there—it’s very different. As for drink, of course in a thirsty climate like that of New South Wales—and this place—one must drink a little. For my own part, I am surprised at my own moderation.”

“Very well. I will not go on with the subject, only—to repeat—if you are in a tight place, those who know your solvency will be very willing to relieve you. I hope you are not here to borrow of me, because——”

The man laughed again. “Not I. Nobody is likely to borrow of you, Leonard. That is quite certain—not even the stoniest broke. Make your mind quite easy. As for my friends in the City, I know very well what to do about them. No; I am here because I want to throw myself upon the family.”

“The family consists of your brother, who may be able to help you——”

“I’ve asked him. He won’t—Christopher was always a selfish beast. Good fellow to knock about with and all that—ready for anything—but selfish—damned selfish.”

“And your aunt Lucy——”

“I don’t know her. Who is she?”

“She is not able to assist you. And of myself.”

“You forget the Head of the Family—my old grandfather. I am going to him.”

“You will get nothing out of him—not even a word of recognition.”

“I know. I have been down there to look at him. I have been to see his solicitors.”

“You will get nothing from them without their client’s authority.”

“Well, you know the family affairs, of course. I suppose that a word from you authorising or advising the transfer of a few thousands—or hundreds—out of that enormous pile——”

“I have no right to authorise or advise. I know nothing about my great-grandfather’s affairs.”

“Tell me, dear boy, what about those accumulations? We mentioned them the other day.”

“I know nothing about them.”

“Of course, of course. I’m not going to put questions. The bulk of everything will be yours, naturally. I have no objection. I am not going to interfere with you. Only, don’t you think you could go to the people, the agents or solicitors, and put it to them, that, as a son of the House, I should like an advance of—say a thousand pounds?”

“I am quite certain beforehand they will do nothing for you.”

“You’re a better man of the world than I thought, my boy. I respect you for it. Nobody is to have a finger in the pie but yourself. And you look so damned solemn over it, too.”

“I tell you that I know nothing.”

“Just so—just so. Well, you know nothing. I’ve made a rough calculation—but never mind. Let the accumulations be. Very good, then, I shall not interfere. Meantime, I want some money. Get me from those lawyers a thousand.”

“I cannot get you anything. As for myself, I have not got a thousand pounds in the world. You forget that all I have is my mother’s small fortune of a few hundreds a year. It is not in my power to lend you anything.”

He laughed again in his enjoyment of the situation. “Delicious!” he said. “And I said that I wasn’t going to borrow anything. This it is to be a British swell. Well, I don’t mind. I will draw upon you at six months. Come. Long before that time I shall be in funds again.”

“No. You shall not even draw upon me at six months,” Leonard replied, with some vague knowledge of what was implied. “You told me you were rich.”

“Every man is rich who is a partner in a going concern.”

“Then, again, why are you in this tight place?”

“My partner, you see, has been playing the fool. Barlow Brothers, General Stores, Colonial Produce, will be smashed if I can’t raise a few hundreds.”

“Your going concern, as you call it, is going to grief. And what will you do?”

“You shall just see what I wanted. Barlows’ is a General Store in a rising town. There are great capabilities in Barlow Brothers. I came over here to convert Barlow Brothers into a Limited Liability Company, capital £150,000. Branches everywhere. Our own sugar estates, our own tea and coffee plantations. That was my idea!”

“It was a bold idea, at any rate.”

“It was. As for Barlows’ General Store, I confess, between ourselves, and considering that you don’t belong to the City, I don’t mind owning up to you that it is little better than a shanty, where I sold sardines and tea-leaves and bacon. But the capabilities, my dear boy—the capabilities!”

“And you brought this project to London! Well, there have been greater robberies.”

Uncle Fred took another glass of whisky-and-soda. He laughed no more. He even sighed.

“I thought London was an enterprising city. It appears not. No promoter will so much as look at the Company. I was willing to let my interest in it go for £40,000. If you’ll believe me, Leonard, they won’t even look at it. A few hundreds would save it, a few thousands would make it a Colossal Success. For want of it we must go to the wall.”

“You were hoping to sell a bankrupt business as a flourishing business.”

“That is so. But it hasn’t come off.”

“Well, what shall you do?”

“I shall have to begin again at the bottom. That’s all.”

“Oh!” Leonard looked at him doubtfully, for he seemed in no way cast down. “You will go back to Australia, then.” There was some consolation in the thought.

“I shall go back. I don’t know my way about in London. I will go back and begin again, just as before, at the bottom rung. I shall have to do odd jobs, I dare say. I may possibly have to become a shepherd, or a night-watchman, or a sandwich-man. What does it matter? I shall only be down among the boys who can’t get any lower. There’s a fine feeling of brotherhood down there, which you swells would never understand.”

“Have you no money left at all?”

“None. Not more than I carry about with me. A few pounds.”

“Then the fine show of prosperity was all a sham?”

“All a sham. And it wouldn’t work. Nobody in the City will look at my Company.”

“Would it not be better to try for some definite kind of work? You can surely do something. You might write for the papers, with all your experience.”

“Write for the papers? I would rather go on tramp, which is much more amusing. Do something? What am I to do? Man, there isn’t on the face of the earth a more helpless person than a bankrupt trader at forty-five. He knows too much to be employed in his own trade. He’s got to go down below and to stay there. Never mind. I can turn my hand to anything. If I stayed at home I should have to be a sandwich-man. How would you like that? Even my old grandfather would come back to the present life, if it were only to burst with rage, if he met his grandson walking down Regent Street between a pair of boards. You wouldn’t like it yourself, would you? Come out to Sydney next year, and very likely you’ll see that, or something like it.”

“Then you go out to certain misery.”

“Misery? Certain misery?” The Colonist laughed cheerfully. “My nephew, you are a very narrow-minded person, though you are a scholar and a Member of Parliament. You think that it is misery to take off a frock-coat and a tall hat, and to put on a workingman’s jacket and bowler. Bless you, my boy! that’s not misery. The real misery is being hungry and cold. In Australia no one is ever cold, and very few are ever hungry. In my worst times I’ve always had plenty to eat, and though I’ve been many times without a shilling, I’ve never in all my life been miserable or ashamed.”

“But there is the companionship.”

“The companions? They are the best fellows in the world. Misery? There isn’t any with the fellows down below, especially the young fellows. And, mind you, it is exciting work, the hand-to-mouth life. Now, by the time I get out, the business will be sold up, and my partner, who is a young man, will be off on another lay; they always put out the old man as soon as they can. What shall I do? I shall go hawking and peddling. I shall become Autolycus.”

“And afterwards?”

“There is no afterwards, till you come to the hospital, which is a really pleasant place, and the black box. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.” He mixed another soda-and-whisky and drank it off. “It’s thirsty work along the roads under the sun—a red-hot burning sun, not like your red frying-pan skulking behind a cloud. Wherever you stop you get a drink. Then you bring out your wares. I’ve got a tongue that runs like an engine newly oiled. And where you put up for the night there are the boys on the road, and there are songs and stories. Respectability go hang!”

He laughed again. He put on his hat and swung out of the room, laughing as at the very finest joke in the world—to come home as a gentleman, and to go back as a tramp.