“A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly be solemnised, between Mr. George Wright, of Thoresby Manor, Lincs, and Eleanor, only child of the Very Reverend Archdeacon St. Clair, of Caistorholm Vicarage, Lincs.”
“Ah, well!” said Mr. Denis; “there’s an end of that chapter anyway.”
“With your permission we’ll drop these precious letters carefully into that not very cheerful fire of yours. It’s simply mawkish sentimentality keeping them by you to gloom over. I don’t know the lady, but it seems to me she knew what she was talking about when she said she wasn’t quite the kind of wife you want. A fair-weather sort of mate isn’t quite the sort of mate for a shipwrecked mariner. And so, because you’ve got two nasty slaps in the face from that fickle jade, Dame Fortune, you coop yourself up in this dingy hole, read Omar Khayyam and that rot, and drink yourself into a fool’s paradise or a sot’s oblivion, by way of mending matters. I thought you were made of better stuff, Beaumont, and that’s a fact. Why, man alive, if you’ve no more backbone in you than that comes to Eleanor St. Clair’s well rid of you, or any other decent woman for that matter.”
“Oh, yes, I’m down, jump on me,” said Beaumont, savagely.
“It’s time somebody did jump on you to some purpose. I’ve no patience with you, man. Why, it’s just such nasty knocks as those that test a man. Life’s a fight for the best of us, a stand-up fight, shoulders squared, knees braced, fists clenched, lips tight-pressed, and eyes intent and steadfast. A fight not with your fellow-man, to see which can down the other, that’s a poor business, but with the world, the flesh, and the devil. What sort of a fighter do you call the man who, on the first knockout, lies grovelling in the saw-dust, bleating for mercy? he’s not the man you put your money on. No, it’s the little game one who never knows when he’s beaten, that takes his gruel kindly, and is up on his feet after a breathing space, bruised and stricken, if you like, but eager for another round, and another, and still another, so long as he’s a leg to stand on. Now, you’ve had your breathing space. Look on me, if you like, as the man who brushes the saw-dust off your clothes, sponges your brow, gives you a knee, and bucks you up generally for another set-to. I want to see you in the ring again. Are you willing, or is it to be whiskey and Omar Khayyam, till the inevitable end, a leap over Westminster Bridge into the Thames, or the Workhouse? I could almost quote Scripture to you: ‘See, I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil. Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’”
For a long time there was silence between the men. Edward leaned with his elbows upon his knees, gazing into the dull embers of the fire, the minister watching him anxiously. Then Beaumont rose and stretched out his hand.
“I choose life,” he said. “Show me the way.”
“There is only one way, Beaumont. There never has been, never will be, anyway but one. It is the Via Crucis—the way of the Cross. It is a way that was before Gethsemane, though men knew it not as they may know it now, if they but will. And you may put your foot on that way to-night, this very moment. What are you going to do with that whiskey bottle? You can’t carry that sort of luggage on the Via Crucis?”
“There’s the sink,” said Edward.
“Precisely, there’s the sink, and here goes for the sink and the sewer and the rats. And those letters?”