FullReads

“I see.” Mr. Olstein pulled out a sovereign. “I don’t put this on you, mind; I can tell a consumptive with half an eye. See here”–he appealed to us–“this is just what we suffer from. You fellows with lung trouble flock to a tepid hole like Madeira, while the Cape would cure you in half the time: why, the voyage itself only begins to be decent after you get south! But you won’t see it; and the people who do see it are just the sort who don’t pay us when they come, and damage us when they go back,–hard cases, sent out to pick up a living as well as their health, who get stranded and hurry home half-cured.”

A young Briton in the deck-chair next to mine rose and walked off abruptly, while I fumbled for a coin, ashamed to meet the collector’s eye.

“Hullo!” Mr. Olstein grinned at me. “Our friend’s in a hurry to dodge the subscription list.”

But the young Briton turned and intercepted the collector as he moved towards the next group.

“It’s your sovereign,” said I, “that seems to be overlooked.”

Mr. Olstein saw it at his elbow and re-pocketed it. “Well, if he hasn’t the sense to pick it up, I’ve some more than to whistle him back. But that’ll show you the sort of fool we send out to compete with Germans and suchlike. It’s enough to make a man ashamed of his country.”

This happened on a Saturday morning, and in the afternoon we attended the sports–a depressing ceremony. The performers went through their contests, so to speak, with bated breath and a self-consciousness which, try as we might, poisoned our applause and made it insufferably patronising. Their backers would pluck up heart and encourage them loudly with Whitechapel catch-words, and anon would hush their voices in uneasy shame. Our collector, brave by fits in his dignity as steward, would catch the eye of a saloon-deck passenger and shrink behind the enormous rosette which some wag had pinned upon him.

Next day I made an opportunity to speak with him, after service. It needed no pressing to extract his story, and he told it with entire simplicity. He was a Cockney, and by trade had been a baker in Bermondsey. “A wearing trade,” he said. “The most of us die before forty. You’d be surprised.” But he had started with a sound constitution, and somehow persuaded himself, in spite of warnings, that he was immune. At thirty-two he had married. “A deal later than most,” he explained–and had scarcely been married three months before lung trouble declared itself. “I had a few pounds put by, having married so late; and it seemed a duty to Emily to give myself every chance: so we packed up almost at once and started for South Africa. It was a wrench to her, but the voyage out did us both all the good in the world, she being in a delicate state of health, and the room in Bermondsey not fit for a woman in that condition.” The baby was born in Cape Town, five months after their landing. “But they’ve no employment for bakers out there,” he assured me. “We found trade very low altogether, and what I picked up wasn’t any healthier than in London. Emily disliked the place, too; though she’d have stayed gladly if it had been doing me any good. And so back we’re going. There’s one thing: I’m safe of work. My old employer in Bermondsey has promised that all right. And the child, you see, sir, won’t suffer. There’s no consumption, that I know of, in either of our families; and Emily, you may be sure, will see he’s not brought up to be a baker.”

He announced it in the most matter-of-fact way. He was going back to England to die–to die speedily–and he knew it. “I should like you to see our baby, sir,” he added. “He weighs extraordinary, for his age. My wife comes from the North of England–a very big-boned family; and he’s British, every ounce of him, though he was born in South Africa.”