The Complete Novels of J. M. Barrie - All 14 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). J. M. Barrie

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      Chapter III

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      Lost in reverie, the stranger stood motionless on the Embankment. The racket of the city was behind him. At his feet lay a drowned world, its lights choking in the Thames. It was London, as it will be on the last day.

      With an effort he roused himself and took Andrew's arm.

      "The body will soon be recovered," he said, in a voice of great dejection, "and people will talk. Let us go."

      They retraced their steps up Arundel Street.

      "Now," said Andrew's companion, "tell me who you are."

      Andrew would have preferred to hear who the stranger was. In the circumstances he felt that he had almost a right to know. But this was not a man to brook interference.

      "If you will answer me one question," the young Scotchman said humbly, "I shall tell you everything."

      His reveries had made Andrew quick-witted, and he had the judicial mind which prevents one's judging another rashly. Besides, his hankering after this man had already suggested an exculpation for him.

      "You are a Radical?" he asked eagerly.

      The stranger's brows contracted. "Young man," he said, "though all the Radicals, and Liberals, and Conservatives who ever addressed the House of Commons were in ——, I would not stoop to pick them up, though I could gather them by the gross."

      He said this without an Irish accent, and Andrew felt that he had better begin his story at once.

      He told everything.

      As his tale neared its conclusion his companion scanned him narrowly.

      If the stranger's magnanimous countenance did not beam down in sympathy upon the speaker, it was because surprise and gratification filled it.

      Only once an ugly look came into his eyes. That was when Andrew had reached the middle of his second testimonial.

      The young man saw the look, and at the same time felt the hold on his arm become a grip.

      His heart came into his mouth. He gulped it down, and, with what was perhaps a judicious sacrifice, jumped the remainder of his testimonials.

      When the stranger heard how he had been tracked through the streets, he put his head to the side to think.

      It was a remarkable compliment to his abstraction that Andrew paused involuntarily in his story and waited.

      He felt that his future was in the balance. Those sons of peers may faintly realise his position whose parents have hesitated whether to make statesmen or cattle-dealers of them.

      "I don't mind telling you," the stranger said at last, "that your case has been under consideration. When we left the Embankment my intention was to dispose of you in a doorway. But your story moves me strangely. Could I be certain that you felt the sacredness of human life—as I fear no boy can feel it—I should be tempted to ask you instead to become one of us."

      There was something in this remark about the sacredness of human life that was not what Andrew expected, and his answer died unspoken.

      "Youth," continued the stranger, "is enthusiasm, but not enthusiasm in a straight line. We are impotent in directing it, like a boy with a toy engine. How carefully the child sets it off, how soon it goes off the rails! So youth is wrecked. The slightest obstacle sends it off at a tangent. The vital force expended in a wrong direction does evil instead of good. You know the story of Atalanta. It has always been misread. She was the type not of woman but of youth, and Hippomenes personated age. He was the slower runner, but he won the race; and yet how beautiful, even where it run to riot, must enthusiasm be in such a cause as ours!"

      "If Atalanta had been Scotch," said Andrew "she would not have lost that race for a pound of apples."

      The stranger regarded him longingly, like a father only prevented by state reasons from embracing his son.

      He murmured something that Andrew hardly caught.

      It sounded like:

      "Atalanta would have been better dead."

      "Your nationality is in your favour," he said, "and you have served your apprenticeship to our calling. You have been tending towards us ever since you came to London. You are an apple ripe for plucking, and if you are not plucked now you will fall. I would fain take you by the hand, and yet—"

      "And yet?"

      "And yet I hesitate. You seem a youth of the fairest promise; but how often have I let these impulses deceive me! You talk of logic, but is it more than talk? Man, they say, is a reasonable being. They are wrong. He is only a being capable of reason."

      "Try me," said Andrew.