This habit, as it became his unique preoccupation, cost him not a little. He lost his old friends who had seen his slight adventure, and he wasted much time in spinning these yarns, and much money in buying books of derring-do and wild ’scapes at sea. He loved those who believed his stories to be true, and shocked the rare minds that seemed to catch in them a suspicion of exaggeration. He could not long frequent the same society, and he strained his mind a little out of shape by the perpetual necessity of creative effort. None the less, I think that, on the whole, he gained. It made him an artist: he saw great visions of heaving waters at night; he really had, in fancy, faced death in a terrible form, and this gave him a singular courage in his last moments. He said to the doctor, with a slight calm smile, “Tell me the worst; I have been through things far more terrifying than this;” and when he was offered consolation by his weeping friends, he told them that “no petty phrases of ritual devotion were needed to soothe a man who had been face to face with Nature in her wildest moods.” So he died, comforted by his illusion, and for some days after the funeral his sister would hold him up to his only and favourite nephew as an example of a high and strenuous life lived with courage, and ended in heroic quiet. Then they all went to hear the will read.
But the will was the greatest surprise of all. For it opened with these words:—
“Having some experience of the perils they suffer that go down to the sea in ships, and of the blessedness of unexpected relief and rescue, I, John Curtall Thorpe, humbly and gratefully reminiscent of my own wonderful and miraculous snatching from the jaws of death ...”
And it went on to leave the whole property (including the little place in Surrey), in all (after Sir William Vernon Harcourt’s death duties had been paid) some £69,337. 6s. 3d. to the Lifeboat Fund, which badly needed it. Nor was there any modifying codicil but one, whereby the sum of £1000, free of duty, was left to Sylvester Sarassin, a poetic and long-haired young man, who had for years attended to his tales with reverent attention, and who had, indeed, drawn up, or “Englished” (as he called it), the remarkable will of the testator.
Many other things that followed this, the law-suit, the quarrel of the nephew with Sarassin, and so forth, I would relate had I the space or you the patience. But it grows late; the oil in the bulb is exhausted. The stars, which (in the beautiful words of Theocritus) “tremble and always follow the quiet wheels of the night,” warn me that it is morning. Farewell.
THE SHORT LYRIC.