"I’ve been up to Vermala on a luge," he said as though the idea tickled him immensely; "imagine me at the game! Well, I’ve been there sure enough, Jack. Do you remember the pretty little woman in violet—the one with the sad face and the dreamy eyes? You do remember her; well, then, that’s all right, for I brought her down. She was a derelict, and the hee-haw man, who went up with her, had an engagement on a drift. He was getting the snow out of his neck as I went by—so, you see, I brought her down—and, well, it makes me laugh to think about it, that’s all."
Jack stared as though he had seen the ghost of whom the peasants spoke. He was almost tempted to prescribe hot blankets. "Benny," he exclaimed at last, "what’s the matter with you? What are you going on like that for? Is it something they said to you—was it the woman, Benny?"
Benny became serious in a moment. No oyster shut his shell more surely.
"No, she’s not in it, Jack," he rejoined hastily. "I was just thinking that it was odd I should have brought her down, that’s all. She’s Mrs. Kennaird, one of the Yorkshire lot, I guess, though she wouldn’t own up. I suppose she didn’t want anyone to know too much about her—that would be very natural, eh?"
"But it wasn’t much of a compliment to you, Benny."
"Do you think so, Jack? Well, I didn’t look at it in that light. Perhaps it wasn’t, after all. She might have been afraid that I would go down to her house in Yorkshire and try to see her. She might have done so—and, of course, it wouldn’t have done; would it, Jack?"
Jack sat up in bed again. He was used to this kind of talk, and it never failed to anger him.
"Why wouldn’t it have done? Aren’t you good enough for her? You’re always crying us down, Benny. Wasn’t our grandfather a Brerton, and wasn’t he a d——d sight better than any Kennaird in Yorkshire? Why shouldn’t you call on her if you wanted to?"
Benny threw himself into a chair and took a very black briar pipe from his pocket.
"Oh," he said almost impatiently, "the world’s a funny place. The cannibals get on best, Jack—those who live on their dead ancestors. You can’t draw bills on futurity nowadays; no one honours them. A man’s either up or down; there’s no middle course. If I were to make a hit, people would remember that I had a history. If I fail, they won’t even say ’Poor devil.’ Birth and breeding are all right, but you must have the trappings if they are to be any good to you. While I’m just Benjamin Benson, engineer, the little woman in violet will regard me as she does her motor driver or the man who works the lift in the hotel. She wouldn’t remember that she had done it if I made my mark—they never do."