Once Aboard The Lugger | Page 6

was wrath he swallowed; and bitter as the pill was, rarely did he fail to force it down. Mr. Fletcher spoke to him as no other member of his establishment dared speak. The formula of dismissal would leap to Mr. Marrapit's mouth: knowledge of the unusually small wage for which Mr. Fletcher worked caused it to be stifled ere it found tongue. Thousands of inferiors have daily to bow to humiliations from their employers; it is an encouraging thought for this army that masters there be who, restrained by parsimony, daily writhe beneath impertinences from valuable, ill-paid servants.
Mr. Marrapit swallowed. He said: "To the smell of which I complain my cats are no party. It is tobacco. The air reeks of tobacco. I will not have tobacco in my garden."
Twice, with a roaring sound, Mr. Fletcher inhaled. He pointed towards an elm against the wall: "It comes from over there."
"Ascertain."
The gardener plunged through the bushes; nosed laboriously; his inhalations rasped across the shrubs. "There's no smoking here," he called.
"Someone, in some place concealed, indubitably smokes. Yourself you have noticed it. Follow the scent."
Exertion beaded upon Mr. Fletcher's brow. He drew his hand across it; thrust a damp and gloomy face between the foliage towards his master.
"I'd like to know," he asked, "if this is to be one of my regular jobs for the future? Was I engaged to 'unt smells all day? It's 'ard-damn 'ard. I'm a gardener, I am; not a blood-'ound."
But Mr. Marrapit had passed on.
"Damn 'ard," Mr. Fletcher repeated; drew the snail from his pocket; plunged to consolation.

V.
A short distance down the garden Mr. Marrapit himself discovered the source of the smell that had offended him. Bending to the left he came full upon it where it uprose from a secluded patch of turf: from the remains of a pipe there mounted steadily through the still air a thin wisp of smoke.
Outraged, Mr. Marrapit stared; fuming, turned upon the step that sounded on the path behind him.
The slim and tall young man who approached was that nephew George, whose coming into Mr. Marrapit's household had considerably disturbed Mr. Marrapit's peace. Orphaned by the death of his mother, George had gone into the guardianship of his uncle while in his middle teens. The responsibility had been thrust upon Mr. Marrapit by his sister. Vainly he had writhed and twisted in fretful protest; she shackled him to her desire by tearful and unceasing entreaty. Vainly he urged that his means were not what she thought; she assured him--and by her will bore out the assurance--that with her George should go her money.
And the will, when read, in some degree consoled Mr. Marrapit for the sniffling encumbrance he took back with him to Herons' Holt after the funeral. It was a simple and trustful will--commended George into the keeping of her brother Christopher Marrapit; desired that George should be entered in her late husband's--the medical--profession; and for that purpose bequeathed her all to the said brother.
George was eighteen when Mr. Marrapit entered him at St. Peter's Hospital in mild pursuit of the qualification of the Conjoint Board of Surgeons and Physicians. "I am entering you," Mr. Marrapit had said, consulting notes he had prepared against the interview--"I am entering you at enormous cost upon a noble career which involves, however, a prolonged and highly expensive professional training. Your mother wished it."
Mr. Marrapit did not add that George's mother had expressly paid for it. This man had the knowledge that Youth would lose such veneration for Authority as it may possess were Authority to disclose the motives that prompt its actions.
He continued: "For me this involves considerable self-denial and patience. I do not flinch. From you it demands unceasing devotion to your books, your studies, your researches. You are no longer a boy: you are a man. The idle sports of youth must be placed behind you. Stern life must be sternly faced."
"I do not flinch," George had replied.
"For your personal expenses I shall make you a small allowance. You will live in my house. Your wants should be insignificant."
In a faint voice George squeezed in: "I have heard that one can work far better by living near the hospital in digs."
"Elucidate."
"Digs--lodgings. I have heard that one can work far better by living near the hospital in lodgings."
"Adjust that impression," Mr. Marrapit had told him. "You are misinformed."
George struggled: "I should have the constant companionship of men absorbed in the same work as myself. We could exchange views and notes in the evenings."
"In your books seek that companionship. With them compare your views. Let your notes by them be checked. They are infallible."
George said no more. At that moment the freedom of hospital as against the restraint of school, was a gallant steed upon which he outrid all other desires. The