"Do you think so, Jack? Well, I didn't look at it in that light. Perhaps it wasn't, after all. She might have been afraid that I would go down to her house in Yorkshire and try to see her. She might have done so—and, of course, it wouldn't have done; would it, Jack?"
Jack sat up in bed again. He was used to this kind of talk, and it never failed to anger him.
"Why wouldn't it have done? Aren't you good enough for her? You're always crying us down, Benny. Wasn't our grandfather a Brerton, and wasn't he a d——d sight better than any Kennaird in Yorkshire? Why shouldn't you call on her if you wanted to?"
Benny threw himself into a chair and took a very black briar pipe from his pocket.
"Oh," he said almost impatiently, "the world's a funny place. The cannibals get on best, Jack—those who live on their dead ancestors. You can't draw bills on futurity nowadays; no one honours them. A man's either up or down; there's no middle course. If I were to make a hit, people would remember that I had a history. If I fail, they won't even say 'Poor devil.' Birth and breeding are all right, but you must have the trappings if they are to be any good to you. While I'm just Benjamin Benson, engineer, the little woman in violet will regard me as she does her motor driver or the man who works the lift in the hotel. She wouldn't remember that she had done it if I made my mark—they never do."
He spoke with an intensity of feeling quite beyond the circumstance, and Brother Jack was altogether puzzled.
"I never heard you talk like this before," he said questioningly; "surely to Heaven, Benny, you're not bitten with the society craze? For goodness' sake don't tell me you're going to buy a new silk hat!"
Benny laughed.
"The old one will do yet awhile, Jack. It's up in London, packed away with the cylinder castings we had from Anzini. No, I'm not going in for that line, old boy; but when a man does meet a pretty woman, one he's likely to remember, why then, I suppose, these thoughts will come. That's what old Shakespeare says, and he knew women better than most of us. Wasn't it the same old Billy who told us to fling away ambition, for by that sin fell the angels? Well, I hope I shan't fall to-night, for I'm going to try the Zaat again."
"The Zaat—but you never told me!"