"My mother thought at once of one of my uncles, who had retired from the sea and was now a marine superintendent in Fenchurch Street. I called to see him; but he was abroad attending to a damaged ship. I think it was a month before I happened to meet the Winchester boy who had been in the works with me. Quite by accident it was. Let me see now----"
Mr. Carville paused again, and leaning over to one of the geranium tubs knocked his pipe out. Suddenly he laughed.
"Why," he said, "I'm telling you the whole story."
"That's what we want you to do," I said, and the others nodded.
"The trouble is, you know," went on Mr. Carville, "one thing leads to another. You can't understand what I am without knowing how my brother and I came to be so--antagonistic. And to explain that it's necessary to show you how I grew up in this professional, easy-going, snobby atmosphere and took it all in, while he, my brother, cut out his own course and went his own way in defiance of everything. I remember now! I saw that Winchester chap--his father was a wine-merchant and Master of the Tinkers' Company--at Lord's. I had nothing to do, and instead of hunting round to get a job, I went to Lord's to see the cricket. There was old Belvoir clumping away at the nets. Engineering! Pooh! He had eight hundred a year his aunt left him--catch him practising as an engineer. He was going on a tour of all the Mediterranean watering-places with an M.C.C. team. Well, we had lunch in the pavilion, and I mentioned in a jolly sort of way that I'd been jounced out of the office. He said it was 'a bally shame,' Oh, I did envy that chap his eight hundred a year! Life seemed to him one grand, sweet song. Cricket, Riviera, dances, clubs, country houses, everything. He was fenced in on every side, safe from the vulgarity of the world. He was hall-marked--a public-school man. He was a citizen of his world, I was an alien. He was rich. I had not even a savings-bank book.
"I was going away after the match when I discovered he had been thinking about me. That was Belvoir all over. He was a gentleman, and a gentleman to my mind is like an artist in one thing only, he is born--and then made. That was Belvoir. He had privileges as an English gentleman, but he had also duties. We had been together in the shop as pupils; that gave me a claim on him. He said he had an uncle in Yorkshire who was chairman of an engineering firm, and he would write to him. More than that, he did write and I got an appointment in their London office in Victoria Street. Good old Belvoir! Remember Spion Kop? That was the last of Belvoir. Lord's, Riviera, clubs--Spion Kop....