knew Murgatroyd's history, and why he spoke feelingly. But that, as Kipling would say, is another story.
"Divorce is a filthy business," he continued. "Surely to Heaven if a marriage is a mistake and both parties know it, they should be able to make other arrangements without screaming stinking fish to the world at large! Instead of that they have to employ lawyers and intermediaries and pay through the nose for doing so."
"You're talking rot, old man." said the doctor, who did not know Murgatroyd's history. "You must have some basis for society which can't be broken just because a man dislikes his wife's face in the morning."
Murgatroyd laughed. "Don't be a fool. Doc. But if two married people have ceased to care about one another, and the woman meets another man whom she does love, surely they should be able to fix things between them a little less vulgarly than they can at present. To me it's inconceivable that once a man realises he has lost his wife he should want to keep her."
And then Sinclair spoke for the first time. He was a tall, spare man, with that hardbitten look about him that tells of a life most certainly not spent behind an office desk. A quiet sort of customer, through natural inclination and not from lack of material, one felt sure. I had had one or two short ones with him since leaving Tilbury, but had got no further.
"You suggest," he said, "that the three of them should discuss things as amicably as possible in the circumstances?"
"Emphatically," cried Murgatroyd.
"Without any lawyer to act as go-between?"
"Even more emphatically."
Sinclair leaned forward and tapped out his pipe, while a faint smile twitched round his lips. "And yet at times an intermediary has its advantages."
The Doctor held up his hand.
"Sinclair, that smile bewrayeth thee. I scent a story. The night is yet young; the horde of horrors will not be back for an hour at least. Steward, remove these dead men, and repeat the dose. Now, sir..."
You must go back twenty years (Sinclair began, when his pipe was drawing to his satisfaction) for the beginning of my tale. The madness had not then come upon Europe, and the world to most youngsters in their twenties seemed a pretty good place. Particularly the colonies. There was hope in a man's breast then—not the dry-rot that exists today. And if money was burned quicker, it was more quickly replaced.
I don't suppose I need waste my breath describing the Rand Club at Jo'burg to any of you fellows. And then, even as now, that big three-sided bar was as fruitful a spot for the burning as is to be found on any map. The millionaire of the day before rubbed shoulders with the millionaire of the moment. The man who was down and out bought a book of chits with his last remaining half-sovereign. And in that atmosphere there met two men.
They were of a type: both young, both as hard as nails. Both had been in the country for three or four years; both had tried their hands at a good many different things before finally settling down to farming down White River way. They were introduced to one another by a friend and found at once that they had a certain amount in common. Their farms were some thirty miles apart, and blasphemy against the Government on the water question formed one mutual grouse. But though, during the ten days they were in Jo'burg, they saw quite a lot of one another, they never became really intimate. Their characters and their outlook on life generally were too widely divergent.
Robert Caterham was slightly the elder of the two. He was a good-looking, powerfully built man, and very good company when he chose. But he had a violent temper, and was apt at times to become morose and surly. Especially if he had a little drink in him. Not that he drank—he didn't; in fact, he was rather abstemious. But if he did get one or two inside him he was liable to get angry if anyone contradicted him.
The other man's name was—er—Jack Somerset. (And if Sinclair paused slightly as he came to that name—well, it saves a lot of trouble not to tell a story in the first person.) Jack Somerset was a much more cheerful kind of customer; the sort of fellow who was in his element in a mess on a guest night when horse-play tricks demanding strength and a disregard of clothing are the order of the day. And it was during just such an evening with the regiment in Pretoria that one of the fundamental differences between the two men revealed itself.
Have you ever stood with your back to the edge of an open door and your hands clasped together over the top? The trick is to draw yourself up from that position until you are sitting astride the door. Now it is not a particularly easy thing to do. It requires considerable strength and knack; moreover, it can be distinctly painful to certain portions of one's anatomy.
Ragging about after mess one of the officers did the trick and then challenged the guests to go and do likewise. And to cut a long story short, Somerset succeeded and Caterham didn't. There was nothing to it: in five minutes the thing was forgotten and everyone was cock fighting. Forgotten, that is, by everyone except Caterham. He didn't say anything, naturally, but you could tell it by the expression on his face. He was furious at having been beaten even over such a trifling thing as that; and the fact that only two of the other officers managed it didn't alter the fact that Somerset had done it and he hadn't.
"Entirely knack, that fool door trick, I suppose," he said in the car, when they were motoring back to Jo'burg four hours later.
"What door trick?" answered Somerset, who had forgotten all about it.
"You must have done it before," persisted Caterham.
"Never seen it in my life till tonight," said Somerset.
"That's a good 'un," sneered Caterham, and Somerset sat up with a jerk.
"What the devil are you getting at?" he said quietly. "I repeat that I have never seen that trick before tonight."
Caterham mumbled an apology, and Somerset said no more. The thing was too small to quarrel over. But it revealed a certain angle in Caterham's composition that, up till then, Somerset had not suspected. And not a very pretty one.
The months passed by, and the two men—who had returned to White River two days after the guest-night episode—met fairly frequently at a club half-way between their farms. It was a typical small club which automatically forms itself in districts where white men are widely scattered. All right and excellent in their way: admirable meeting places to ventilate the eternal grumbles which men who farm give tongue to against everything in heaven and earth: absence of water; presence of locusts—and that hardy annual, the Government.
But they are dangerous places for men who have not got the essential gift of give and take. Tempers are apt to get a bit soured with a lonely life, and it is well to remember that though the man next to you has temporarily lost his, you, in all probability, were in the same condition yourself a week before. And that was the trouble with Caterham. As I mentioned before, he was a man who did not like argument when he'd had a couple, and the net result was that gradually he quarrelled with practically every member of the club. Except, funnily enough, Somerset.
The quarrels never amounted to anything serious, you'll understand; but after a while other fellows began to avoid him. They would pass the time of day if they met him in the bar, but you never saw him forming one of the cheery bunch dicing for the next round in a corner. Which was not for the good of Caterham's soul. And it was, therefore, with a feeling of real relief that Somerset heard one day that Caterham had gone to Durban to meet a girl who had come out from England to marry him.
"I never even knew he was engaged," said Somerset to the man who told him.
"Funny-tempered devil," grunted the other. "Can't say I envy the wench. Still, I shan't grumble if she keeps him away from the club a bit more. He's not my idea of a pleasant evening."
"He's not a bad fellow really," said Somerset. "And she may improve him. It's only when he gets a bit ginned up."
"Ginned up be blowed! You can't call three sundowners ginned up. And that's all he'd had a few nights ago when he was pulling out that darned sarcastic stuff of his with little Bill Taunton. What he wants is a cauliflower ear, and if he don't watch it, he'll get it one of these days."
It was