It was obviously unnatural to him to be enthusiastic. It is to most very honest people. He came into the gardener’s room like an actor emerging from stage fright on to the stage.
“You saved my children from being crushed to death,” he said, and seized the gardener’s hands. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Oh, not at all,” murmured the gardener. “I pretty nearly crushed them to death myself. Have a whisky and soda.”
This last is the Trinity Island retort to everything, its loophole, its conversational salvation. The average Englishman takes several weeks to acquire the habit in the real Island style, but the gardener was always more adaptable than most.
Privately he did feel unreasonably conceited about the rescue. He would have admitted that the impulse to gather Aitch and Zed beneath his prostrate form had been unconscious, but he considered that unconscious heroism proves heroism deeply ingrained. Nevertheless, the people who voice your conceit for you are only a little less trying than the people who relieve you of the duty of being humble. One must do these things for oneself.
Mr. Dallas Tring was glad to have accomplished his duty, which was not spontaneous, but had been impressed upon him by his wife. Left to himself he would have said: “Say, that was good of you. I’d have been cut up if anything had happened to the kids.”
His wife not having warned him how to proceed, he began now to talk about the banana crops. It was only towards the end of the interview that he risked himself once more upon the quicksands of emotion.
“Look here, you know, it’s altogether unspeakable—what I owe you. Those are the only children we have. Aitch is a fine boy, don’t you think?”
“Fine,” agreed the gardener, relieved to be allowed a loophole of escape from, “Not at all.”
“You’re a fine boy yourself,” added Mr. Tring. “When you get well, will you come and help me?”