The Mark of Cain | Page 2

as Izaak Walton says."
"I say, Maitland, here's a chance to humanize you. Why don't you ask her to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich--what better would you ask?"
"I wish everyone wouldn't bother a man to marry," Maitland replied testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was pale and unwholesome.
"What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what's the matter with you? Here you are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements say, no relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what you make by writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with you?"
"Well, you should know best What's the good of your being a doctor, and acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what there is of it), if you can't tell what's the nature of my complaint?"
"I don't diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side of the water, among the hardy patients of Mundy & Barton, general practitioners. There is plenty of human nature there!"
"And do you mean to stay there with Mundy much longer?"
"Well, I don't know. A fellow is really doing some good, and it is a splendid practice for mastering surgery. They are always falling off roofs, or having weights fall on them, or getting jammed between barges, or kicking each other into most interesting jellies. Then the foreign sailors are handy with their knives. Altogether, a man learns a good deal about surgery in Chelsea. But, I say," Barton went on, lowering his voice, "where on earth did you pick up----?"
Here he glanced significantly at a tall man, standing at some distance, the centre of half a dozen very youthful revellers.
"Cranley, do you mean? I met him at the Trumpet office. He was writing about the Coolie Labor Question and the Eastern Question. He has been in the South Seas, like you."
"Yes; he has been in a lot of queerer places than the South Seas," answered the other, "and he ought to know something about Coolies. He has dealt in them, I fancy."
"I daresay," Maitland replied rather wearily. "He seems to have travelled a good deal: perhaps he has travelled in Coolies, whatever they may be."
"Now, my dear fellow, do you know what kind of man your guest is, or don't you?"
"He seems to be a military and sporting kind of gent, so to speak," said Maitland; "but what does it matter?"
"Then you don't know why he left his private tutor's; you don't know why he left the University; you don't know why he left the Ninety-second; you don't know, and no one does, what he did after that; and you never heard of that affair with the Frenchman in Egypt?"
"Well," Maitland replied, "about his ancient history I own I don't know anything. As to the row with the Frenchman at Cairo, he told me himself. He said the beggar was too small for him to lick, and that duelling was ridiculous."
"They didn't take that view of it at Shephard's Hotel"
"Well, it is not my affair," said Maitland. "One should see all sort of characters, Bielby says. This is not an ordinary fellow. Why, he has been a sailor before the mast, he says, by way of adventure, and he is full of good stories. I rather like him, and he can't do my moral character any harm. I'm not likely to deal in Coolies, at my time of life, nor quarrel with warlike aliens."
"No; but he's not a good man to introduce to these boys from Oxford," Barton was saying, when the subject of their conversation came up, surrounded by his little court of undergraduates.
The Hon. Thomas Cranley was a good deal older than the company in which he found himself. Without being one of the hoary youths who play Falstaff to every fresh heir's Prince Harry, he was a middle-aged man, too obviously accustomed to the society of boys. His very dress spoke of a prolonged youth. à large cat's-eye, circled with diamonds, blazed solitary in his shirt-front, and his coat was cut after the manner of the contemporary reveller. His chin was clean shaven, and his face, though a good deal worn, was ripe, smooth, shining with good cheer, and of a purply bronze hue, from exposure to hot suns and familiarity with the beverages of many peoples. His full red lips, with their humorous corners, were shaded by a small black mustache, and his twinkling bistre-colored eyes, beneath mobile black eyebrows, gave Cranley the air of a jester and a good fellow. In manner he was familiar, with a kind of deference, too, and reserve, "like a dog that is always wagging his tail and deprecating a kick," thought Barton grimly, as he watched the other's genial advance.
"He's going to say good-night, bless