“Let me see,” said Mr Wallis. “I suppose you go to Sydney first?”
“Sydney and then Auckland. Might go on by one of the Union boats from there. But I want to get a little off the usual lines, and I think that I should do better to buy or hire a schooner there. I know very little about such things, but I have friends at Auckland who would help me. I’m fond of sailing.”
“You’re to be envied,” said Grice. “No business, no House of Commons. Nothing to do but enjoy yourself.”
Lechworthy fixed his rather fanatical eyes on him. “Nothing to do but enjoy myself? That would be a poor kind of life, Grice. No, no. Let me use my holiday as I have tried to use politics, journalism, and even the business with which I have just disconnected myself—to the highest service of all.”
“Quite so,” said Hutchinson. “The rest—the gain in health and strength—will be valuable to you, because they will enable you to resume that service.”
“Yes, yes. True enough. But I had thought of something beyond that. A voyage without an end in view would not greatly interest me, and even if one does not work one must at least have some sort of occupation. Our friend, Mr Harmer, will laugh at me, but I am proposing to write a pamphlet—it may even be a little book.”
It should surely be abhorrent to a leader-writer to laugh at his proprietor’s ambitions. Mr Harmer did not laugh. He left his taciturnity and his brandy-and-soda to observe that he was convinced that Mr Lechworthy already possessed materials for a dozen books—interesting books too. If there was any difficulty about getting the thing into literary shape Mr Harmer would only be too happy, etc., etc.
“Thank you very much. If I don’t ask you, it won’t be because I don’t know your capabilities in that way. But, you see, Mr Harmer, I’m not going to try to do anything literary. I couldn’t. And if you did it for me under my name, I should be wearing borrowed plumes. Tell you what I’m going to do—I’m going to make notes of the different missions in the islands I visit. I can only touch the fringe of the subject, of course. Goodness knows how many inhabited islands there are where I’m going—Eastern and Southern Pacific—and I shall only have six or eight months there. Still I want to wake up our people about South Sea Missions. The ordinary man knows nothing about the islands. What could you, Tommy, for instance, tell us about them?”