“I waited nearly three years, learning all I could about business and about the East, its trade and its resources, and waiting all the time for my opportunity which I knew would come, and which came. It came to me through Longhurst; but I must go back a little. I have said that Peters was my only equal in our society there. Now let me say, once for all, that in nothing that I am going to tell you do I wish to blame Peters more than I blame myself; but from the first we did not hit it off. Peters, as I have said, took on himself the part of my protector and adviser a little too obviously; he had not quite tact enough to do it well, and I was foolish enough in those days to resent what I thought his patronage. At first there was no harm done; Peters thought I should be the better if I entered more into such sport as there was in the place, for which I had very little taste, and he tried to make me do so by chaffing me about being a duffer, in his blunt way, which I thought rude, and that before other people. You would hardly imagine that I was ever shy, but I was; and, absurd as it seems, this added a good deal to my unhappiness in my new surroundings. I should very soon have got over that, for I soon found my way about the place, and my shyness quickly wore off; but worse than that followed. I was fond of arguing, and used to discuss all things in heaven and earth with Peters. You can easily suppose that his views and mine did not agree, and I daresay now that I pained him a good deal. I did not mean to do that, but I did mean to shock him sometimes, and so I often took a cynical line, by which I meant nothing at all, telling him the sharp things that I should do if I got the chance; and once or twice I was fool enough to pretend that all sorts of things of which Peters would not approve went on in our business. To my amazement I discovered after a time that Peters took all this nonsense seriously. I would have given anything to efface the impression that I had made, for though there are few men that I ever respected, Peters was one of them. But Peters became reserved towards me and impossible to get at. Then gossip came in between us. There is sometimes very spiteful gossip in a little European settlement in the East; and I am certain, though I cannot prove it, that a man there, with whom I had constant business, told Peters a story about a shady transaction which he said I was in. The transaction was real enough, but neither I nor my firm had any more to do with it than you. I know that this man told it to other people, for I have heard so from them, and I do not doubt that that was what finally turned Peters against me. I tried to tax Peters with having picked up this story, but he said something which sounded like disbelieving me, and I lost my temper and broke off; and from that day till we met again at Long Wilton we never exchanged any more words together, though we crossed one another’s path as you shall hear.
“Mind, again, I am not saying it was his fault; but it is in itself doing a young man a very ill turn to show him that you think him dishonest when as yet he is not, and it did me harm. Upon my soul, I was honest then; in fact, in that regard, most of my dealings throughout life would stand a pretty close scrutiny. But I have often thought that I might have become a much better man if Peters would have been my friend instead of suspecting me unjustly; and I confess that it rankles to this day, and all the more because I always respected Peters. After that, however, he did me some practical ill turns, disastrously ill turns; rightly enough, if he thought as he did. I must tell you that our separation came a very little while before Longhurst came to the place. Just afterwards I had an opening, a splendid opening; it would not have made me the rich man that I am, but it would have given me a good position right away, and what it would have saved me you shall judge. A very eminent person came to Saigon; he knew something of Peters and a little of me. He saw a great deal of Peters at Saigon, and he pressed him to accept a post that was in his gift in the Chinese Customs service. Peters refused. I suppose he was at that time thinking of coming home. The great man then spoke to me about it, and had all but offered it to me. How I should have jumped at it! But suddenly it all went off and he said no more to me. I believed that Peters warned him against me; possibly, being sore against Peters, I was mistaken; but at any rate that was what I ever afterwards believed. It was partly in desperate annoyance about
