“So your son-in-law may think some day, my boy,” said I with a touch of ill-humour. No matter, he was out of hearing. Besides I was not, I repeat, really serious about it—not half so serious, I venture to conjecture, as the vicar’s wife!
To her, perhaps, Dr Johnson’s paraphrase may be recommended.
THE OPENED DOOR
“WE may float for ten minutes,” said the Second Officer.
After a pause the passenger remarked:
“I’m glad of it, upon my word I am.”
“You’re thankful for small mercies,” was the retort.
The passenger did not explain. He could not expect the Second Officer, or the rest of them, to sympathise with his point of view, or share the feelings which made him rejoice, not at the respite, but at the doom itself. Those who were not busy getting the women and children into the boats, and keeping the ship above water, were cursing the other vessel for steaming away without offering aid, or clutching in bewildered terror at anyone who could tell them how the collision had happened and what hope there was of salvation. The boats were got safely off, laden to their utmost capacity; lifebuoys were handed round, and, when they ran short, men tossed up for them, and the losers ransacked the deck for some makeshift substitute. The passenger took no part in the competition or the search. He stood with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips, waiting for the ten minutes to wear themselves away. His only grudge against fate lay in those superfluous ten minutes.
Left to himself, he began to think, lighting a cigarette. He had to use a fusee, which was a pity, especially for his last cigarette, but the wind blew fiercely. It was strange how much harm a man could do without being a particularly bad fellow, and what an impasse he could get himself into. He had drifted on, and things had fallen out so maliciously that, because of him who hated hurting anybody, women were weeping and children smirched, and an old man hiding an honoured head in shame. He had even been required to be grateful to the man he hated most in the world, because he had not been put in the dock. That stuck in his throat more than all the rest. He had been ready to pay his shot and go to gaol—he would rather have done five years than owed the thanks for escaping them—but in very decency he couldn’t insist on going; the trial would have killed the old man. So they had concocted a plan—a chance of a new life, they called it—and shipped him off to the other side of the world with fifty pounds in his pocket—the gift of that enemy. At least he could get rid of the money now; and, still smiling, he dropped his pocket-book over the side into the great heaving waves. He had always meant it to go there—God forbid he should use it—but he had hardly hoped to go with it. He would follow it soon now. The door whose handle he had shrunk from turning had opened of its own accord in a most marvellously convenient way. To throw oneself overboard is a cold-blooded impossible sort of proceeding; the old man and the women would have heard of it, and he really didn’t want to give them any more pain. But this catastrophe was—from a selfish point of view—incredibly opportune. Such an exit had the dignity of the inevitable, and left the “new life” an agreeable hypothesis from which he doubted not that much comfort would be sucked by those dear, loving, foolish folk at home. Much “new life” he would have led! But let them think he would. And hurrah for a collision in deep water!
Five minutes gone—and they were deep in the water. The skipper was on the bridge; the engineers had come up and, together with the crew and such of the passengers as had not got away in the boats, were standing ready to jump at the word. Some were praying, some swearing, most discussing the matter in very much the same tones as they used in speculating about the weather on deck after dinner; but they all kept their eyes on the skipper.