Part 51 (2/2)
”What makes you think I should do that?”
”Because--because--hang it all! If I let this fellow keep ahead of me--why, I _should_ come in second best.”
”You say _keep_ ahead of me. Do you think he's ahead of you now?”
Ashley straightened himself. He looked uncomfortable. ”He's got a pull, by Jove! He made that journey to France--and cracked me up to the Marquise--and wheedled her round--when all the while he must have known that he was hammering nails into his own coffin. He did it, too, after I'd insulted him and we'd had a row.”
”Oh, that's nothing. To a fellow like him that sort of thing comes easy.”
”It wouldn't come easy to me, by Jove!”
”Then it would be all the more to your credit, if you ever did anything of the kind.”
The Englishman bounded away. Once more he began to pace the floor restlessly. The old man took his pipe from a tray, and his tobacco-pouch from a drawer. Having filled the bowl, with meditative leisure he looked round for a match. ”Got a light?”
Ashley struck a vesta on the edge of his match-box and applied it to the old man's pipe.
”Should you say,” he asked, while doing it, ”that I ought to attempt anything in that line?”
”Certainly not--unless you want to--to get ahead.”
”I don't want to stay behind.”
”Then, it's for you to judge, my son.”
There was something like an affectionate stress on the two concluding monosyllables. Ashley backed off, out of the lamplight.
”It's this way,” he explained, stammeringly; ”I'm a British officer and gentleman. I'm a little more than that--since I'm a V.C. man--and a fellow--dash it all, I might as well say it!--I'm a fellow they've got their eye on--in the line of high office, don't you know? And I can't--I simply _can't_--let a chap like that make me a present of all his chances--”
”Did he have any?”
Ashley hesitated. ”Before G.o.d, sir, I don't know--but I'm inclined to think--he had. If so, I suppose they're of as much value to him as mine to me.”
”But not of any more.”
He hesitated again. ”I don't know about that. Perhaps they are. The Lord knows I don't say that lightly, for mine are--Well, we needn't go into that. But I've got a good deal in my life, and I don't imagine that he, poor devil--”
”Oh, don't worry. A rich soil is never barren. When nothing is planted in it, Nature uses it for flowers.”
Ashley answered restively. ”I see, sir, your sympathies are all on his side.”
”Not at all. Quite the contrary. My certainties are on his side. My sympathies are on yours.”
”Because you think I need them.”
”Because I think you may.”
”In case I--”
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