From One Generation to Another | Page 3

was there hesitation in turning accident ruthlessly to his own advantage. There was only a steady pressing forward--an unceasing, unwearying attention to his own gain.
In those days news travelled slowly, and the personal had not yet taken precedence in journalism. In the anxiety for the State, the Individual was apt to be overlooked. Seymour Michael counted on six months of oblivion at the least--he hoped for more, but with characteristic caution acted always in anticipation of the worst.
He had scarcely thrown the newspaper aside when a comrade entered the bungalow carrying another copy of the same journal.
"I say, Michael," exclaimed this man, "do you see that you're put in among the killed?"
"Yes," replied Seymour Michael, without haste, without hesitation. "I have already written to contradict it. Not that there is any one to care whether I am dead or alive. But it might do me harm in Leadenhall Street. I can't afford to be dead even for a week when so much promotion is going forward."
This was artistic. Most of us forget to preserve our own characteristics in diverging from the truth. The tangled web is only woven when first we practise to deceive. Later on the facility is greater, the handling superior, and the web runs smooth and straight. Seymour Michael was apparently no novice at this sort of thing. He was even at that moment making mental note of the fact that up-country mails were in a state of disorganisation, and a letter which was never written may easily be made to have miscarried later on.
But even he could not foresee everything--no one can. Not even the righteous man, much less the liar.
"Do you mean to say," pursued the newcomer, "that you are not writing to your family about it--only to the Company?"
"That is all."
"Rum chap you are, Michael," said the other, lighting a cheroot. "Heartless beggar I take it."
"Not at all. The simple fact is that I have no one to write to. I only possess one or two distant relatives, and they would probably be rather sorry than otherwise to have the report contradicted."
The younger officer--a mere boy--with a beardless, happy face, walked to the door of the bungalow.
"Of course there is always this in it," he said carelessly. "By the time the contradiction reaches home the news may be true."
Seymour Michael laughed lamely. A joke of this description made him feel rather sick, for a Jew never makes a soldier or a sailor, and they are rarely found in those positions unless great gain is holden up.
With this pleasantry the youth departed, leaving Michael to write the letter which he had advised as written. As he drew the writing materials towards him he cursed his brother officer quietly and politely for a meddling young fool. He wrote a formal letter to the Company--the old East India Company which administered an empire with ledger and daybook--calling their attention to the mistake in the newspaper, and begging them not to trouble to give the matter publicity, as he had already advised his friends.
This done, he proceeded with the ordinary routine of his daily life. Such men as this are case-hardened. They carry with them a conscience like the floor of an Augean stable, but they know how to walk thereon. Moreover, he was one of those who assign to their dealings with men quite a different code of morals to that reserved for women. His was the code of "not being found out." Men are more suspicious--they find out sooner: ergo the morals to be observed _vis à vis_ to them are of a stricter order. Railway companies and women are by many looked upon as fair game for deception. Consciences tender in many other respects have a subtle contempt for these two exceptions. Many a so-called honest man travels gaily in a first-class carriage with a second-class ticket, and lies to a woman at each end of his journey without so much as casting a shadow upon his conscience.
Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna Hethbridge from his path to prosperity. He served his country and the Company with a keenness of foresight and a soldierly exposure of the lives of others which did not fail, in the course of time, to bring him in a harvest of honours and rewards. Neither did he put his candle under a bushel, but set it in the very highest candlestick available.
But, as has been previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern--a youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go together--possessed a memory like a dry-plate.