Only a short hour ago, and I had counted Chlorine's fortune and Chlorine as virtually mine; and now I saw my golden dreams roughly shattered for ever! And, oh, what a wrench it was to tear myself from them! what it cost me to speak the words that barred my Paradise to me for ever!
But if I wished to avoid confronting the Curse--and I _did_ wish this very much--I had no other course. 'I had no right to pledge myself,' I said, with quivering lips, 'under all the circumstances.'
'Why not,' they demanded again; 'what circumstances?'
'Well, in the first place,' I assured them earnestly, 'I'm a base impostor. I am indeed. I'm not Augustus McFadden at all. My real name is of no consequence--but it's a prettier one than that. As for McFadden, he, I regret to say, is now no more.'
Why on earth I could not have told the plain truth here has always been a mystery to me. I suppose I had been lying so long that it was difficult to break myself of this occasionally inconvenient trick at so short a notice, but I certainly mixed things up to a hopeless extent.
'Yes,' I continued mournfully, 'McFadden is dead; I will tell you how he died if you would care to know. During his voyage here he fell overboard, and was almost instantly appropriated by a gigantic shark, when, as I happened to be present, I enjoyed the melancholy privilege of seeing him pass away. For one brief moment I beheld him between the jaws of the creature, so pale but so composed (I refer to McFadden, you understand--not the shark), he threw just one glance up at me, and with a smile, the sad sweetness of which I shall never forget (it was McFadden's smile, I mean, of course--not the shark's), he, courteous and considerate to the last, requested me to break the news and remember him very kindly to you all. And, in the same instant, he abruptly vanished within the monster--and I saw neither of them again!'
Of course in bringing the shark in at all I was acting directly contrary to my instructions, but I quite forgot them in my anxiety to escape the acquaintance of the Curse of the Catafalques.
'If this is true, sir,' said the baronet haughtily when I had finished, 'you have indeed deceived us basely.'
'That,' I replied, 'is what I was endeavouring to bring out. You see, it puts it quite out of my power to meet your family Curse. I should not feel justified in intruding upon it. So, if you will kindly let some one fetch a fly or a cab in half an hour----'