CHAPTER II

Edward Mannix, Esq., M. P., father of the fortunate Frank, holds the

office of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the War Office, a position

of great importance at all times, but particularly so under the

circumstances under which Mannix held it. His chief, Lord Tolerton,

Secretary of State for War, was incapacitated by the possession of a

marquisate from sitting in the House of Commons. It was the duty,

the very onerous duty, of Mr. Edward Mannix to explain to the

representatives of the people who did not agree with him in politics

that the army, under Lord Torrington’s administration, was adequately

armed and intelligently drilled. The strain overwhelmed him, and his

doctor ordered him to take mud baths at Schlangenbad. Mrs. Mannix

behaved as a good wife should under such circumstances. She lifted every

care, not directly connected with the army, from her husband’s mind.

The beginning of Frank’s holidays synchronised with the close of the

parliamentary session. She arranged that Frank should spend the holidays

with Sir Lucius Lentaigne in Rosnacree. She had every right to demand

that her son should be allowed to catch the salmon and shoot the grouse

of Sir Lucius. Lady Lentaigne, who died young, was Mrs. Mannix’s sister.

Sir Lucius was therefore Frank’s uncle. Edward Mannix, M. P., worried

by Lord Torrington and threatened by his doctor, acquiesced in the

arrangement. He ordered a fishing rod and a gun for Frank. He sent the

boy a ten-pound note and then departed, pleasantly fussed over by his

wife, to seek new vigour in the mud of Germany.

Frank Mannix, seventeen years old, prefect and hero, stretched himself

with calm satisfaction in a corner of a smoking carriage in the Irish

night mail. Above him on the rack were his gun-case, his fishing-rod,

neatly tied into its waterproof cover, and a brown kit-bag. He smoked

a nice Egyptian cigarette, puffing out from time to time large fragrant

clouds from mouth and nostrils. His fingers, the fingers of the hand

which was not occupied with the cigarette, occasionally caressed his

upper lip. A fine down could be distinctly felt there. In a good light

it could even be seen. Since the middle of the Easter term he had found

it necessary to shave his chin and desirable to stimulate the growth

upon his upper lip with occasional applications of brilliantine. He was

thoroughly satisfied with the brown tweed suit which he wore, a pleasant

change of attire after the black coats and grey trousers enjoined by the

school authorities. He liked the look of a Burberry gabardine which lay

beside him on the seat. There was a suggestion of sport about it; yet

it in no way transgressed the line of good taste. Frank Mannix was aware

that his ties had set a lofty standard to the school. He felt sure that

his instinctive good taste had not deserted him in choosing the brown

suit and the gabardine.

Of his boots he was a little doubtful. Their brown was aggressive; but

that, so the gentleman in Harrod’s Stores who sold them had assured him,

would pass away in time. Aggressiveness of colour is inevitable in new

brown boots.

At Rugby he lit a second cigarette and commented on the warmth of

the night to an elderly gentleman who entered the carriage from the

corridor. The elderly gentleman was uncommunicative and merely growled

in reply. Mannix offered him a match. The gentleman growled again and

lit his cigar from his own matchbox. Mannix arrived at the conclusion

that he must be, for some reason, in a bad temper. He watched him for a

while and then decided further that he was, if not an actual “bounder,”

at all events “bad form.” The elderly gentleman had a red, blotched

face, a thick neck, and swollen hands, with hair on the backs of them.

He wore a shabby coat, creased under the arms, and trousers which bagged

badly at the knees. Mannix, had the elderly gentleman happened to be a

small boy in Edmonstone House, would have felt it his duty to impart to

him something of the indefinable quality of tone.

Shortly before reaching Crewe, the old gentleman having smoked

three cigars with fierce vigour, left the carriage. Mannix, feeling

disinclined for more tobacco, went to sleep. At Holyhead he was wakened

from a deep and dreamless slumber. A porter took his kit-bag and wanted

to relieve him also of the gun-case, the fishing-rod, and the gabardine.

But Mannix, even in his condition of half awakened giddiness clung

to these. He followed the porter across a stretch of wooden pier, got

involved in a crowd of other passengers at the steamer’s gangway, and

was hustled by the elderly gentleman who had smoked the three cigars.

He still seemed to be in a bad temper. After hustling Mannix, he swore,

pushed a porter aside and forced his way across the gangway. Mannix, now

almost completely awake, resented this behaviour very much and decided

that the elderly gentleman was not in any real sense of the word a

gentleman, but simply a cad.

Indignation, though a passion of a harassing nature, does not actually

prevent sleep in a man of seventeen years of age who is in good general

health. Mannix coiled himself up on one of the sofas which line the

corridors of the Irish mail steamers. He was dimly conscious of seeing

the old gentleman who had hustled him trip over the gun case which lay

at the side of the sofa. Then he fell asleep. He was wakened--it seemed

to him rather less than five minutes later--by a steward who told him

that the steamer was rapidly approaching Kingstown Pier. He got up and

sought for means to wash. It is impossible for a self-respecting man who

has been brought up at an English public school to begin the day in good

humour unless he is able to wash himself thoroughly. But the designer

of the steamers of this particular line did not properly appreciate the

fact. He provided a meagre supply of basins for the passengers, many of

whom, in consequence, land at Kingstown Pier in irritable moods, Frank

Mannix was one of them.

The elderly gentleman, who appeared less than ever a gentleman at five

o’clock in the morning, was another. Mannix retained, in spite of his

sleepiness and his sensation of grime, a slight amount of self-control.

He was moderately grateful to an obsequious sailor who relieved him of

his kit bag. He carried, as he had the night before, his own gun-case

and fishing-rod. The elderly gentleman, who carried nothing, had no

self-control whatever. He swore at the overburdened sailor who took his

things ashore for him. Mannix proceeded in his turn to cross the gangway

and was unceremoniously pushed from behind by the elderly gentleman. He

protested with frigid politeness.

“Don’t dawdle, boy, don’t dawdle,” said the elderly gentleman.

“Don’t hustle,” said Mannix. “This isn’t a football scrimmage.”

In order to say this effectively he stopped in the middle of the gangway

and turned round.

“Damn it all,” said the elderly gentleman, “go on and don’t try to be

insolent.”

Mannix was a prefect. He had, moreover, disposed of the captain of the

Uppingham eleven by a brilliant catch in the long field at a critical

moment of an important match. He had been praised in public by no less

a person than Mr. Dupré for his excellent influence on the tone of

Edmonstone House. He was not prepared to be sworn at and insulted by

a red-faced man with hairy hands at five o’clock in the morning. He

flushed hotly and replied, “Damn it all, sir, don’t be an infernal cad.”

The elderly gentleman pushed him again, this time with some violence.

Mannix stumbled, got his fishing-rod entangled in the rail of the

gangway, swung half round and then fell sideways on the pier. The

fishing-rod, plainly broken in pieces, remained in his hand. The

gun-case bumped along the pier and was picked up by a porter. Mannix was

extremely angry. A tall lady, apparently connected with the offensive

red-faced gentleman, observed in perfectly audible tones that schoolboys

ought not to be allowed to travel without some one in charge of them.

Mannix’s anger rose to boiling point at this addition of calculated

insult to deliberate injury. He struggled to his feet, intending

then and there to speak some plain truths to his assailant. He was

immediately aware of a pain in his ankle. A pain so sharp as to make

walking quite impossible. The sailor who carried his bag sympathised

with him and helped him into the train. He felt the injured ankle

carefully and came to the conclusion that it was sprained.

Between Kingstown and Dublin Mannix arranged plans for handing over his

assailant to the police. That seemed to him the most dignified form of

revenge open to him. He was fully determined to take it. Unfortunately

his train carried him, slowly indeed, but inexorably, to the station

from which another train, the one in which he was to travel westwards to

Rosnacree, took its departure. The elderly gentleman and the lady with

the insolent manner, whose destination was Dublin itself, had left

Kingstown in a different train. Mannix saw no more of them and so was

unable to get them handcuffed.

Two porters helped him along the platform at Broadstone Station and

settled him in a corner of the breakfast carriage of the westward going

mail. A very sympathetic attendant offered to find out whether there was

a doctor in the train. It turned out that there was not. The sympathetic

attendant, with the help of a young ticket-collector in a neat uniform

offered to do the best he could for his ankle. The cook joined them,

leaving a quantity of bacon hissing in his pan. He was a man of some

surgical knowledge.

“It’s hot water,” he said, “that’s best for the like of that.”

“It could be,” said the ticket-collector, “that it’s broke on him.”

“Cold water,” said Mannix firmly.

“With a sup of whiskey in it,” said the attendant

“If it’s broke,” said the ticket-collector, “and you go putting whiskey

and water on it it’s likely that the young gentleman will be lame for

life.”

“Maybe now,” said the cook derisively, “you’d be in favour of soda water

with the squeeze of a lemon in it.”

“I would not,” said the ticket-collector, “but a drop of sweet oil the

way the joint would be kept supple.”

“Get a jug of cold water,” said Mannix, “and something that will do for

a bandage.”

The attendant, with a glance at the cook, compromised the matter. He

brought a basin full of lukewarm water and a table napkin. The cook

wrapped the soaked napkin round the ankle. The ticket-collector tied it

in its place with a piece of string. The attendant coaxed the sock over

the bulky bandage. The new brown boot could by no means be persuaded to

go on. It was packed by the attendant in the kit bag.

“It’s my opinion,” said the ticket-collector, “that you’d get damages

out of the steamboat company if you was to process them.”

Mannix did not want to attack the steamboat company. He felt vindictive,

but his anger was all di-rected against the man who had injured him.

“There was a fellow I knew one time,” said the ticket-collector, “that

got £200 out of this company, and he wasn’t as bad as you nor near it.”

“I remember that well,” said the attendant “It was his elbow he

dislocated, and him getting out at the wrong side of the carriage.”

“He’d have got more,” said the ticket-collector. “He’d have got £500

instead of £200 if so be he’d have gone into the court, but that’s what

he couldn’t do, by reason of the fact that he happened to be travelling

without a ticket when the accident came on him.”

He gazed thoughtfully out of the window as he spoke.

“It might have been that,” said the attendant, “which was the cause of

his getting out at the wrong side of the carriage.”

“He tried it,” said the ticket-collector, still looking straight in

front of him, “because he hadn’t a ticket.”

No one spoke for a minute. The story of the fraudulent traveller who

secured £200 in damages was an affecting one. At length the cook broke

the silence.

“The young gentleman here,” he said, “has his ticket right enough

surely.”

“He may have,” said the ticket-collector.

“I have,” said Mannix, fumbling in his pocket “Here it is.”

“I’m obliged to you,” said the ticket-collector. “It was it I wanted to

see.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me for it?” said Mannix.

“He wouldn’t do the like,” said the attendant, “and you with maybe a

broken leg.”

“I would not,” said the ticket-collector. “It would be a queer thing for

me to be bothering you about a ticket, and me just after tying a bit of

cord round as nasty a leg as ever I seen.”

“But when you wanted to see the ticket--” said Mannix.

“I drew down the subject of tickets,” said the collector, “the way you’d

offer me a look at yours, if so be you had one, but as for asking you

for it and you in pain, it’s what I wouldn’t do.”

There are travellers, cantankerous people, who complain that Irish

railway officials are not civil. Perhaps English porters and guards may

excel them in the plausible lip service which anticipates a tip. But

in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling which expresses

itself in lofty kinds of courtesy. An Englishman, compelled by a sense

of duty to see the ticket of a passenger, would have asked for it with

callous bluntness. The Irishman, knowing that his victim was in pain,

approached the subject of tickets obliquely, hinting by means of an

anecdote of great interest, that people have from time to time been

known to defraud railway companies.