"As Mr. Brock, Jim, there should be inscribed upon his tomb the couplet of some Byronic imitator--
He settled with a little pious leaven
To give the fag-end of his life to Heaven."
Jeremiah did not attend the funeral. Mallow induced him to remain at home, lest in his grief his tongue might get the better of him. So he sat in his room and painfully translated the rascalities of Michael into plain English--and he taught Laurence the cipher, and Laurence toiled likewise. It was an affair of many weeks--indeed, it lasted until Mrs. Purcell announced her determination to take Olive abroad. At the same time Tui received a cablegram announcing that her delighted parents were on their way to England.
Much of the diary has no bearing on this story, but in the last volume or so there were notes which shed a flood of light upon much that was before hopelessly obscure. One discovery in particular was of the greatest satisfaction to Mallow. Indeed, it led him to communicate the latter portion of the diary to Olive, Miss Slarge, and Mrs. Purcell. Tui the matter did not concern.
It must not be supposed that Laurence gave this information in the precise words of the diary, for this proved to be a hastily compiled composition, thrown together at odd moments--Heaven knows what for, unless for the sheer egotistical gratification of its author. He shifted all extraneous matter, translated the notes of the earlier to the later years, and in one way and another drew together the story of the Carsons and the events at Kikat into a concise narrative. This he wrote out carefully, and one evening, when Tui and Aldean were love-making over the billiard-table, he read it out to an audience of three. So it is that the following narrative must be regarded strictly as Mallow's version--compiled by him from the materials supplied by the twenty-one volumes of the diary, and told by him, in the first person, from its author's point of view.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
"A ROGUE'S MEMOIRS."
"Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck--there's my life's history in one word. The day I launched myself on the world misfortune established herself at my elbow, and my most persistent endeavours have failed to oust her from that position. Only so far as to allow me perfect health from first to last has she relented. Yet even that has had its disadvantages. It has whetted an appetite, already omnivorous, for the luxuries of life--luxuries for the acquirement of which the means have ever been withheld. How I have pursued them--how they have eluded me! It is this quest for luxury, this craving to satisfy an appetite abnormal and insatiable, that has brought upon me so much of trouble. I have had the worst of luck. Ten thousand a year might have made an honest man of me. But I defy St. Paul himself to have stood in my place with my mind, my body, my soul, and not have done the things that I have done. He would have been another Michael Trall. I do not say I could ever have been like St. Paul. That is another matter. My passion has been the cakes and ale of life--I have never had enough of them; I could not have enough of them. But I was not gifted even with the means for their procuration in a moderate degree. So I don't blame myself. I cannot blame myself. No one can justly blame me. It is nature that is responsible for what I am--for what I have done. Blame her, or whosoever, or whatsoever inspires her to bestow upon a luckless man passions strong and undeniable--passions overwhelming and senses insatiable, while denying him the wherewithal to gratify them. That is the most refined torture. I can conceive nothing more ubiquitous, nothing more merciless.
"Well, that is what has ruined me.
"I was unlucky at the start. I was the second son of a Pharisee, provincial but respectable. So I suffered from the amiable custom of primogeniture. My brother Jerry, two years only my senior, received a home and lands and a thousand pounds a year. He did not receive over much in the way of brains. I, in this latter respect, received, perhaps, more than my share, with senses to match. With such gifts, and some five hundred pounds all told, I was pushed off to sink or swim. I just kept afloat. First of all I lost all my money in a most determined--and, I think, thoroughly well conceived--attempt to double it on the card-table. It was pure misfortune that it proved inferior in practice. I was obliged then to borrow from Jerry. He was a stay-at-home ass. I did not approve of his way of life at all; but I had no option but to borrow from him. Again misfortune dogged me, for somehow or other--it passes my recollection now--I got into trouble about somebody else's name on a cheque. I remember those concerned made a great fuss about it, altogether out of proportion to the circumstances; and I remember distinctly how disgusted I was at the puritanical island upon which it was my lot to be cast, so I decided to leave it. For some time after that I lived on the Continent--upon my wits, which were duly sharpened in the process. It was hard that this should prove to my disadvantage, but it did, for at Baden-Baden my misfortune culminated in a row at the tables. I was utterly disgusted, but it was wiser that I should leave so I dropped South over the Equator and turned up at the Cape in a new character, and with a brand new name. Those were prehistoric days, and the South African millionaire had not yet invented himself. The Boers disapproved of my more civilized ways with the ace, and, as I could not repress my repugnance for their psalm-singing barbarisms, I could not make myself at home there. It seemed as if a resting-place was ever to be denied me. But I plucked up courage, and in a rackety ocean tramp, carrying a cargo of rats and cockroaches, I sailed for Bombay. I had a very few pounds, but no little experience. Arrived there, I was obliged to make my living somehow. It was a hand-to-mouth existence, and I saw no prospect before me. I had a certain amount of luck with my dice, though on one or two occasions aspersions were cast upon their equilibrium. 'Give a dog a bad name, and hang him!' seemed to hold good even here. I was driven North. Then, Heaven knows why, Fortune gave me her hand for once and led me to Kikat, the kingdom of one Rao Singha.