Part 19 (1/2)

Chase knew well what weight to give to that short sentence. Had it been more elaborate it would have meant less. It needed no other commentary than the quiet sincerity with which it was uttered.

”Yes, I understand,” he said.

Stretton seated himself again in his chair and took out a briar pipe from his pocket. The pipe had an open metal covering over the bowl.

”I need that no longer,” Stretton said, with a laugh, as he removed it. Then he took out a pouch, filled his pipe, and lighted it.

”Have a whisky and soda?” said Chase.

”No, thanks.”

Chase lighted a cigarette and looked at his friend with curiosity. The change which he had noticed in Stretton's looks had been just as noticeable in his words. This man sitting opposite to him was no longer the Tony Stretton who had once come to him for advice. That man had been slow of thought, halting of speech, good-humoured, friendly; but a man with whom it was difficult to get at close quarters. Talk with him a hundred times, and you seemed to know him no better than you did at the moment when first you were introduced to him. Here, however, was a man who had thought out his problem--was, moreover, able lucidly to express it.

”Well,” said Chase, ”you are determined not to go back?”

”Not yet,” Stretton corrected.

”What do you propose to do?”

The question showed how great the change had been, begun by the hard times in New York, completed by the eight weeks in the North Sea. For Chase put the question. He no longer offered advice, understanding that Stretton had not come to ask for it.

”I propose to enlist in the French Foreign Legion.”

Stretton spoke with the most matter-of-fact air imaginable; he might have been naming the house at which he was to dine the next night.

Nevertheless, Chase started out of his chair; he stared at his companion in a stupefaction.

”No,” said Stretton, calmly; ”I am not off my head, and I have not been drinking. Sit down again, and think it over.”

Chase obeyed, and Stretton proceeded to expound that inspiration which had come to him the night before.

”What else should I do? You know my object now. I have to re-establish myself in my wife's thoughts. How else can I do it? What professions are open to me in which I could gain, I don't say distinction, but mere recognition? I am not a money-maker; that, at all events, is evident. I have had experience enough during the last months to know that if I lived to a thousand I should never make money.”

”I think that's true,” Chase agreed, thoughtfully.

”Luckily there's no longer any need that I should try. What then? Run through the professions, Chase, and find one, if you can, in which a man at my age--twenty-nine--with my ignorance, my want of intellect, has a single chance of success. The bar? It's laughable. The sea? I am too old. The army? I resigned my commission years ago. So what then?”

He waited for Chase to speak, and Chase was silent. He waited with a smile, knowing that Chase could not speak.

”There must be an alternative,” Chase said, doubtfully, at last.

”Name it, then.”

That was just what Chase could not do. He turned in his mind from this calling to that. There was not one which did not need a particular education; there was not one in which Stretton was likely to succeed.

Soldiering or the sea. These were the two callings for which he was fitted. From the sea his age debarred him; from soldiering too, except in this one way. No, certainly, Stretton was not off his head.

”How in the world did you think of the Foreign Legion?” he asked.

Stretton shrugged his shoulders.

”I thought of most other courses first, and, one by one, rejected them as impossible. This plan came to me last of all, and only last night.