The Mark of Cain | Page 2

her. She is a lively widow, isn't
she?"
"She is a practical philanthropist," answered Maitland, flushing a little.
"Pretty, too, I have been told?"
"Yes; she is 'conveniently handsome,' 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