And it had its reward, for after fourteen years of Mexican life, Cyril was almost exactly what he would have been had he never seen the place; and Cyril was the Trawnbeighs’ one asset of immense value. He was most agreeable to look at, he was both related to and connected with many of the most historical sounding ladies and gentlemen in England, and he had just the limited, selfish, amiable outlook on the world in general that was sure (granting the other things) to impress Miss Irene Slapp, of Pittsburgh, as the height of both breeding and distinction.
Irene Slapp had beauty and distinction of her own. Somehow, although they all needed the money, I don’t believe Cyril would have married her if she hadn’t. Anyhow, one evening in the City of Mexico he took her in to dinner at the British Legation, where he had been asked to dine as a matter of course, and before the second entrée Miss Slapp was slightly in love with him and very deeply in love with the scheme of life, the standard, the ideal, or whatever you choose to call it, he had inherited and had been brought up, under staggering difficulties, to represent.
“The young beggar has made a pot of money in the States,” Trawnbeigh gravely informed me after Cyril had spent seven weeks in Pittsburgh—whither he had been persuaded to journey on the Slapps’s private train.
“And, you know, I’ve decided to sell the old place,” he casually remarked a month or so later. “Yes, yes,” he went on, “the young people are beginning to leave us” (I hadn’t noticed any signs of impending flight on the part of Edwina, Violet and Maud). “Mrs. Trawnbeigh and I want to end our days at home. Slapp believes there’s gold on the place—or would it be petroleum? He’s welcome to it. After all, I’ve never been fearfully keen on business.”
And I rode away pondering, as I always did, on the great lesson of the Trawnbeighs.
Charles Macomb Flandrau.
THE LIFE BELT
Out of doors, darkness and sleet; within the cottage parlor, a grand fire and a good supper, the latter, however, no longer in evidence.
Four people sat round the hearth: a woman not so old in years as aged in looks by what the war had done to her; a burly, bearded, middle-aged man, her brother; a young, rather stern-visaged fellow, the last of her sons; and a girl of twenty or so, with a sedate mouth and bright eyes, her daughter-in-law to be. The two men were obviously seafarers. As a matter of fact, the uncle was skipper of an ancient tramp which had somehow survived those three years of perilous passages; the nephew, a fisherman before war, afterwards and until recently in the patrol service, was now mate on the same old ship, though he had still to make his first trip on her.
Said Mrs. Cathles, breaking silence, to her brother: “Did ye see any U-boats comin’ home, Alick?” Possibly she spoke then just to interrupt her own thoughts, for it was not like her to introduce such a subject.