Chapter 2

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.