From One Generation to Another by Henry Seton Merriman

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FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER

BY

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN

CHAPTER

I. THE SEED

II. SUBURBAN

III. MERCURY

IV. FREIGHTED

V. AFTER NINETEEN YEARS

VI. FOR HIS COUNTRY

VII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

VIII. RELIEVED

IX. RE-CAST

X. A LAST THROW

XI. A CARPET KNIGHT

XII. BAD NEWS

XIII. ON THIN ICE

XIV. THE CURSE OF A GOOD INTENTION

XV. THE TOUCH OF NATURE

XVI. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

XVII. TWO MOTIVES

XVIII. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA

XIX. AT HURLINGHAM

XX. IN A SIDE PATH

XXI. ALONE

XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS

XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW

XXIV. A STAB IN THE DARK

XXV. FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH

XXVI. BALANCING ACCOUNTS

XXVII. AT BAY

XXVIII. THE LAST LINK

XXIX. SETTLED

FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER

CHAPTER I

THE SEED

Il faut se garder des premiers mouvements, parce qu'ils sont presque
toujours honnetes.

"Dearest Anna,--I see from the newspaper before me of March 13, that I am
reported dead. Before attempting to investigate the origin of this
mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this
must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair,
and was slightly wounded--a mere scratch in the arm--but nothing more. I
have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning
something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being
in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon
me ..."

This letter, half written, lay on a camp table before a keen-faced young
officer. He ceased writing suddenly, and, leaping to his feet, walked to
the door of his bungalow, which was open to the four winds of heaven. In
doing this he passed from the range of the lazy punkah flapping
somnolently over table and bed. It may have been this sudden change to
hotter air that caused him to raise his hand to his forehead, which was
high and strangely rounded.

"By George!" he said, "suppose I do it that way!"

He walked rapidly backwards and forwards with the lithe actions of a man
of steel, a light weight, of medium height, keen and quick as a monkey.
His black eyes flitted from one object to another with such restlessness
that it was impossible to say whether he comprehended what he saw or
merely looked at things from force of habit.

He was dark of hair with a sallow complexion and a long drooping
nose--the nose of Semitic ancestors. A small mouth, and the chin
running almost to a point. A face full of interest, devoid of distinct
vice--heartless. Here was a man with a future before him--a man whose
vices were all negative, whose virtues depended entirely upon expediency.
Here was a man who could be almost anything he liked; as some men can. If
expediency prompted he could be a very depot of virtues; for his body,
with all the warmer failings of that part of humanity, was in perfect
control. On the other hand, there was no love of good for goodness'
sake--no conscience behind the subtle eyes. All this, and more, was
written in the face of Seymour Michael, whose handwriting had dried some
moments before on the half-filled sheet of letter-paper.

He returned and stood at the table with slightly bowed legs--not the
result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of
daily habit--but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand from
remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay side by
side--not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience and
temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. He was not wondering
what was best to do, but what the most expedient.

Those were troublesome times in India, for the Mutiny was not quelled,
and each mail took home a list of killed, slowly compiled from news that
dribbled in from outlying stations, forts, and towns. Those were days
when men's lives were made or lost in the Eastern Empire, for it seems to
be in Fortune's balance that great danger weighs against great gain. No
large wealth has ever been acquired without proportionate risk of life or
happiness. To the tame and timorous city clerk comes small remuneration
and a nameless grave, while to more adventurous spirits larger stakes
bring vaster rewards. The clerk, pure and simple, has, within these later
years, found his way to India, sitting side by side with the Baboo, and
consequently it is as easy to make a fortune in London as in Calcutta and
Madras. The clerk has carried his sordid civilisation and his love of
personal safety with him, sapping at the glorious uncertainty from which
the earlier pioneers of a hardier commerce wrested quick-founded
fortunes.

Seymour Michael had come into all this with the red coat of a soldier and
the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at
once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who
took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with
coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk,
namely, his life; and true to his racial instinct, he valued this very
highly, looking for an extortionate usury on his stake.

At this moment he was like Aladdin in the cave of jewels: he did not know
which way to turn, which treasure to seize first.

Anna--dearest Anna--to whom this half-completed letter was addressed, was
a person for whom he had not the slightest affection. At the outset of
his career he had paused, decided in haste, and had resolved to make use
of the passing opportunity. Anna Hethbridge had therefore been annexed
_en passant_. In person she was youthful and rather handsome--her fortune
was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India engaged to
be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him.

In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young
lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young
officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string
of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless--nay, more, she was a
burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his
bungalow.

He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the
perpetration of a greater. He weighed pro and con--carefully withholding
from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong. Then he took
up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had decided to leave
the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five
weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed
column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in ignorance of its
falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish man. All that he
did at this time, and later in life--all the lives that he ruined--the
hearts he broke--the men he sacrificed were not offered upon the altar of
Self (though the distinction may appear subtle), but sold to his career.
Career was this man's god. He wanted to be great, and rich, and powerful;
and yet he was conscious of having no definite use for greatness, or
riches, or power when acquired.

Here again was the taint of the blood that ran in his veins. The curse
had reached him--in addition to the long, sad nose and the bandy legs.
The sense of enjoyment was never to be his. The greed of gain--gain of
any sort--filled his heart, and _ennui_ secretly nestling in his soul
said: "Thou shalt possess, but not enjoy."

He was conscious of this voice, but did not understand it then. He only
burned to possess; looking to possession to provide enjoyment. In this he
was not quite alone--with him in his error are all men and women. And so
we talk of Love coming after marriage--and so women marry without Love,
believing that it will follow. God help them! That which comes afterwards
is not even the ghost of Love, it is only Custom. This was the spirit of
Seymour Michael. He had already acquired one or two objects of a vague
ambition; and, possessing them, had only learnt to be accustomed to
them--not to value them.

There was no elation in the thought that he was freed from the
encumbrance of Anna Hethbridge by a chance misprint. Neither 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 a 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. He did not foresee that a
passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph
itself on the somewhat sparsely covered tablets of a man's mind, to be
reproduced at the wrong moment with a result lying twenty-six years ahead
in the womb of time.

CHAPTER II

SUBURBAN

_L'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut etre bien sur qu'il y a de i
amour._

Miss Anna Hethbridge loved Seymour Michael with as great a love as her
nature could compass.

When the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden
breakfast-table at Jaggery House, Clapham Common, her first feeling was
one of scornful anger towards a Providence which could be so careless.
Life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy
way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. She had always had servants at
her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an
utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. She had been the spoilt child
of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out
of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.

Three months after the receipt of the news Anna Hethbridge went down into
Hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at Stagholme Rectory, she
met and became engaged to the Squire of Stagholme, James Edward Agar.

A month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country
gentleman. It would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this
apparently heartless action. Some women are heartless--we know that. But
Anna Hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given to
pleasure to be devoid of heart. Behind her action there must have been
some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in
every move--one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine
comprehension. One notices that when a woman takes action in this
incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to
have some subtle sympathy with her. It is only the men who look puzzled,
as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. Therefore there must
be some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different
forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which
their lives are rendered miserable. Men have not found it out yet.

Anna Hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty,
with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more
thoughtful of her acquaintances. The idea of her marrying old Squire Agar
within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, Seymour
Michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental Mrs.
Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact,
it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her
arrival at the rectory.

"Confound it, Maria," exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information
was passed on to him later in the evening. "Why could you not have
foreseen such an absurd event?"

Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed. She was a thin little woman, with an
unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of
heart, sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike
commodities. Her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn
complexion--as if she had, at some early period of her existence, been
left out all night in an east wind--was puckered up with a sense of her
own negligence.

She tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and Christian interest
in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of
failure. She knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her
small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were
absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink
humanity in a cradle upstairs.

The Rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring
at her angrily.

"I really can't tell," he continued, "what you can have been thinking
about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. What are you thinking
about now?"

"Well, dear," confessed the little woman shamedly, "I was thinking of
Baby--of Dora."

"Thought so," he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper
with a keen interest. But he did not seem to be following the printed
lines.

"I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!" he said
carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.

"Yes, dear," the lady replied. "She was asleep."

And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
recollection.

This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that school
which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those
sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this time
was an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness--a matter which she
might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.

Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
chair.

"Are you going upstairs, dear?" inquired his tactless spouse.

"Um--er. Yes! I am just going up to get--a pocket-handkerchief."

Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board
in the room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the
Rector had either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the
ordained finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle
stood.

It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no way
hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes--one might
almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.

The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be
the happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to
want the marriage, and so it came about.

If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to
telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
mind.

The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for
that same reason.

The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was
introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up
Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter "h."
The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the
ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of
their respective husbands.

Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.

The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course
of a few days a copy of the _Times_ containing the insertion started
eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.

Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which
peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she
had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is
terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.

But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life--no
centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time
she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it--sometimes the time
has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find
itself changed into Hatred.

Little Jem, her stepson--sturdy, fair, silent--was her first failure.

"Come to your mother, dear," she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
afternoon when there were callers in the room.

"I cannot go to my mother," replied the youthful James, with his mouth
full of cake, "because she is dead."

There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second
Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent
upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she
persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme,
that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack
of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat
crooked ways of her social creed.

"And when," she added, "I tell you to come to your mother, you must come
and kiss me."

This last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange,
and then asked him if he understood.

After scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into
her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:

"I don't think so--not quite."

"Then," replied his stepmother angrily, "you are a very stupid little
boy--and you must go up to the nursery at once."

This puzzled Jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply.
Years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall
through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back
that moment to him--a moment when the world first began to open itself
before him and to puzzle him.

It happened that at that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring
To teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small,
keen-faced man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the
Hotel Wagstaff at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying
there in the hopes of finding something comparatively recent in date.

Presently he came upon a copy of the _Times_, with which he repaired to
one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which some
of us know only too well.

After idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and
marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church
of Clapham.

"D----n it!" he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive which
makes a Jew a profane man.

In addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that Anna Hethbridge
should so soon have forgotten him, Seymour Michael was distinctly
disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. The
truth was, that the young lady in India had transferred her valuable
affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young
officer in the Navy who had been invalided at Calcutta.

To men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world
the first failures are usually very bitter. It is only those who press
stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. Seymour
Michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. He
was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another
the very fruitful pleasure of giving.

In India his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he
himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. He
had cruelly thrown aside Anna Hethbridge when a richer marriage offered
itself. Now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a
smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.

CHAPTER III

MERCURY

_The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet come._

James Edward Makerstone Agar was not at the age of five the material
from which the heroes of children's stories are evolved. He was not a
good boy, nor a clean, nor particularly interesting. He was, however,
honest--and that is _deja quelque chose_. He was as far removed from the
"misunderstood" type as could be wished; and he was quite happy.

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