Frank Mannix, seventeen years old, prefect and hero, stretched himself with calm satisfaction in a corner of a smoking carriage in the Irish night mail. Above him on the rack were his gun-case, his fishing-rod, neatly tied into its waterproof cover, and a brown kit-bag. He smoked a nice Egyptian cigarette, puffing out from time to time large fragrant clouds from mouth and nostrils. His fingers, the fingers of the hand which was not occupied with the cigarette, occasionally caressed his upper lip. A fine down could be distinctly felt there. In a good light it could even be seen. Since the middle of the Easter term he had found it necessary to shave his chin and desirable to stimulate the growth upon his upper lip with occasional applications of brilliantine. He was thoroughly satisfied with the brown tweed suit which he wore, a pleasant change of attire after the black coats and grey trousers enjoined by the school authorities. He liked the look of a Burberry gabardine which lay beside him on the seat. There was a suggestion of sport about it; yet it in no way transgressed the line of good taste. Frank Mannix was aware that his ties had set a lofty standard to the school. He felt sure that his instinctive good taste had not deserted him in choosing the brown suit and the gabardine.
Of his boots he was a little doubtful. Their brown was aggressive; but that, so the gentleman in Harrod’s Stores who sold them had assured him, would pass away in time. Aggressiveness of colour is inevitable in new brown boots.
At Rugby he lit a second cigarette and commented on the warmth of the night to an elderly gentleman who entered the carriage from the corridor. The elderly gentleman was uncommunicative and merely growled in reply. Mannix offered him a match. The gentleman growled again and lit his cigar from his own matchbox. Mannix arrived at the conclusion that he must be, for some reason, in a bad temper. He watched him for a while and then decided further that he was, if not an actual “bounder,” at all events “bad form.” The elderly gentleman had a red, blotched face, a thick neck, and swollen hands, with hair on the backs of them. He wore a shabby coat, creased under the arms, and trousers which bagged badly at the knees. Mannix, had the elderly gentleman happened to be a small boy in Edmonstone House, would have felt it his duty to impart to him something of the indefinable quality of tone.
Shortly before reaching Crewe, the old gentleman having smoked three cigars with fierce vigour, left the carriage. Mannix, feeling disinclined for more tobacco, went to sleep. At Holyhead he was wakened from a deep and dreamless slumber. A porter took his kit-bag and wanted to relieve him also of the gun-case, the fishing-rod, and the gabardine. But Mannix, even in his condition of half awakened giddiness clung to these. He followed the porter across a stretch of wooden pier, got involved in a crowd of other passengers at the steamer’s gangway, and was hustled by the elderly gentleman who had smoked the three cigars. He still seemed to be in a bad temper. After hustling Mannix, he swore, pushed a porter aside and forced his way across the gangway. Mannix, now almost completely awake, resented this behaviour very much and decided that the elderly gentleman was not in any real sense of the word a gentleman, but simply a cad.
Indignation, though a passion of a harassing nature, does not actually prevent sleep in a man of seventeen years of age who is in good general health. Mannix coiled himself up on one of the sofas which line the corridors of the Irish mail steamers. He was dimly conscious of seeing the old gentleman who had hustled him trip over the gun case which lay at the side of the sofa. Then he fell asleep. He was wakened—it seemed to him rather less than five minutes later—by a steward who told him that the steamer was rapidly approaching Kingstown Pier. He got up and sought for means to wash. It is impossible for a self-respecting man who has been brought up at an English public school to begin the day in good humour unless he is able to wash himself thoroughly. But the designer of the steamers of this particular line did not properly appreciate the fact. He provided a meagre supply of basins for the passengers, many of whom, in consequence, land at Kingstown Pier in irritable moods, Frank Mannix was one of them.
The elderly gentleman, who appeared less than ever a gentleman at five o’clock in the morning, was another. Mannix retained, in spite of his sleepiness and his sensation of grime, a slight amount of self-control. He was moderately grateful to an obsequious sailor who relieved him of his kit bag. He carried, as he had the night before, his own gun-case and fishing-rod. The elderly gentleman, who carried nothing, had no self-control whatever. He swore at the overburdened sailor who took his things ashore for him. Mannix proceeded in his turn to cross the gangway and was unceremoniously pushed from behind by the elderly gentleman. He protested with frigid politeness.
“Don’t dawdle, boy, don’t dawdle,” said the elderly gentleman.
“Don’t hustle,” said Mannix. “This isn’t a football scrimmage.”
In order to say this effectively he stopped in the middle of the gangway and turned round.
“Damn it all,” said the elderly gentleman, “go on and don’t try to be insolent.”