"Conrad, Joseph - The End Of The Tether" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

was sixty-five years old.


II


His age sat lightly enough on him; and of his ruin
he was not ashamed. He had not been alone to believe
in the stability of the Banking Corporation. Men whose
judgment in matters of finance was as expert as his sea-
manship had commended the prudence of his invest-
ments, and had themselves lost much money in the great
failure. The only difference between him and them was
that he had lost his all. And yet not his all. There
had remained to him from his lost fortune a very pretty
little bark, Fair Maid, which he had bought to occupy
his leisure of a retired sailor--"to play with," as he ex-
pressed it himself.

He had formally declared himself tired of the sea the
year preceding his daughter's marriage. But after the
young couple had gone to settle in Melbourne he found
out that he could not make himself happy on shore. He
was too much of a merchant sea-captain for mere yacht-
ing to satisfy him. He wanted the illusion of affairs;
and his acquisition of the Fair Maid preserved the con-
tinuity of his life. He introduced her to his acquaint-
ances in various ports as "my last command." When
he grew too old to be trusted with a ship, he would
lay her up and go ashore to be buried, leaving directions
in his will to have the bark towed out and scuttled
decently in deep water on the day of the funeral. His
daughter would not grudge him the satisfaction of
knowing that no stranger would handle his last command
after him. With the fortune he was able to leave her,
the value of a 500-ton bark was neither here nor there.
All this would be said with a jocular twinkle in his eye:
the vigorous old man had too much vitality for the sen-
timentalism of regret; and a little wistfully withal, be-
cause he was at home in life, taking a genuine pleasure
in its feelings and its possessions; in the dignity of his
reputation and his wealth, in his love for his daughter,
and in his satisfaction with the ship--the plaything of
his lonely leisure.

He had the cabin arranged in accordance with his
simple ideal of comfort at sea. A big bookcase (he was
a great reader) occupied one side of his stateroom; the
portrait of his late wife, a flat bituminous oil-painting
representing the profile and one long black ringlet of