Once Aboard the Lugger Part 54

III.

Mr. Marrapit drew in the lap he had been making. He sat upright.

"Again, accept my felicitations," he said. "They are yours. Take them."

With fitting words George took them. Mr. Marrapit continued: "It is a mighty hour. Through adversity we have won to peace, through perils to port, through hurts to harbour."

He paused.

"You mean--" George said, groping.

"Do not interpose. It is a mighty hour. Let this scene sink into our minds and march with us to the grave. Here upon the lawn we stand.

Westward the setting sun. Creeping towards us the lengthening shadows.

Between us the horrid discord which has so long reigned no longer stands. It is banished by a holy peace. The past is dead. My trust is ended. The vow which I swore unto your mother I have steadfastly kept.

I would nourish you, I declared, until you were a qualified physician.

You are a qualified physician. I have nourished you. Frequently in the future, upon a written invitation, I trust you will visit this home in which your youth has been spent. When do you leave?"

The query towards which Mr. Marrapit had been making through his psalm came to George with a startling abruptness that was disconcerting. He had not antic.i.p.ated it. He jerked: "When do I--leave?"

"Certainly. The hour of your departure, unduly deferred by idleness and waywardness upon which we will not dwell, is now at hand. When does it fall? Not to-night, I trust? A last night you will, I hope, spend beneath my roof. To-morrow, perchance? What are your plans?"

George flamed. "You're in a mighty hurry to get rid of me."

Mr. Marrapit cast upward his eyes. He groaned:

"Again I am misunderstood. All my life I have been misunderstood." He became stern. "Ingrate! Is it not patent to you that my desire is not to stand in your way? You have earned manhood, freedom, a charter to wrest money from the world. I might stay you. I do not. I bid you G.o.dspeed."

George remembered his weighty purpose. Making for it, he became humble. "I am sorry," he said. "I see what you mean. I appreciate your kindness. You ask what are my plans. I have come specially to lay them before you."

Mr. Marrapit clutched the seat of his chair with the action of one waiting a dentist's torture. He had a premonition that support of some kind would be necessary. "Proceed," he said.

George said: "My plans--" He swallowed. "My plans--" Again he swallowed. His plans were red-hot within him, but he sought despairingly for one that would not at the very outset turn Mr.

Marrapit into screams. "My plans--" he stammered.

"My G.o.d!" Mr. Marrapit groaned. "My G.o.d! What is coming?"

George said on a rush: "These are my plans. I intend to marry--"

Mr. Marrapit gave a faint little bark.

"Then--then--" said George, floundering. "After that--then--I intend to marry--I--"

"Bigamy," Mr. Marrapit murmured. "Bigamy."

"Not twice. I am nervous. I intend to marry. I want to buy a little seaside practice that is for sale."

Mr. Marrapit repeated the faint little bark. He was lying back, eyes half closed, face working upon some inward stress.

"Those are my plans," George summarised: "to marry and buy this practice."

A considerable pause followed. The workings of Mr. Marrapit's face ceased; he opened his eyes, sat up. "When?" he asked.

"At once."

"This practice--"

"I have it in my eye."

"Immaterial. Have you it in your pocket?"

"You mean the price?"

"I mean the money wherewith to finance these appalling schemes."

"Not exactly. It is about that I wish to speak to you."

"To _me?_"

"Yes. I wanted to ask--"

"You intend to ask me for money?"

"I want to suggest--"

"How much?"

"Four--five hundred pounds."

"Great heaven!" Mr. Marrapit wildly fingered the air. Margaret, at the end of the lawn, crossed his vision. He called huskily: "Margaret!"

She tripped to him. "Father! What is it?"

"Barley water!" Mr. Marrapit throated. "Barley water!"

While she was upon her errand no--words pa.s.sed between the two. Mr.

Marrapit took the gla.s.s from her in shaking hands. "Leave us," he said. He drank of his barley water; placed the gla.s.s upon the bench beside him; gave George a wan smile. "I am stricken in years," he said. "I have pa.s.sed through a trance or conscious nightmare. You will have had experience of such affections of the brain. I thought"--the hideous memory shook him--"I thought you asked me for five hundred pounds."

George said defiantly: "I did."

Mr. Marrapit frantically reached for the barley water; feverishly gulped. "I shall have a stroke," he cried. "My hour is at hand."

My poor George flung himself on a note of appeal. "Oh, I say, uncle, don't go on like that! You don't know what this means to me."

"I do not seek to know. I am too fully occupied with its consequences to myself; it means a stroke. I feel it coming. My tomb yawns."

George gripped together his hands; paced a few strides; returned. "Oh, for heaven's sake, don't go on like that! Won't you listen to me? Is it impossible to speak with you as man to man? If you refuse what I ask, you have only to say no."