Bernard Capes

“ JOHN FIELDS RETURN JOHN FIELD'S father had been a man of considerable business acumen, a forceful, wide-grasping figure, one of the most noticeable of his time in Capel Court. It will be admitted, I suppose, that luck is a foremost factor in the success of a stockbroker; but why do some men habitually command it and others fail to? Putting aside the Buddhistic theory of pre-existence, with its demised rewards and atonements, it would seem as if luck were no other than the definite sum in certain human entities of a multitude of inherited qualities. ”

“ Those who are bred in the shadow of power assume, naturally, something of its hue. It was only when stripped of his borrowed covering that he realised his own anæmic nakedness. That he himself, and no other, was John Field and Son came upon him with something the shock of a sleep-walker's sudden awakening to a consciousness of his own lost isolation. ”

“ These temples of gastronomy, with others of their distinguished kind, had always been among John junior's most quietly favoured resorts during his rare trips abroad.
John Field had been well educated. Perhaps, after all, since some sort of mental employment is almost imposed upon one who has been, he simply developed, in cultivating the art of the palate, along his line of least resistance. Education makes us aspire, but it fails in teaching us to what. That, in order to the satisfaction of a vague intellectual hunger, we must find out for ourselves. ”

“ It takes more dressing to recruit a poor soil than a rich one. In any case, there is nothing more certain than that a glutton is not to be known by his waist.
Small side-whiskers, large blind-looking blue eyes, an habitual smile, more wistful in suggestion than humorous, a shrinking manner—such in John Field comprised the negative features of an uneventful personality. ”

“ Only it has come to pass—that is the astounding thing. These schemes"—he put a hand, fondly, tremulously, upon the papers—"there is wealth in every one of them—foresight, certain calculation, brilliancy. They restore the odour of the past; they are the John Field and Son of my first knowledge." ”

“ Some resolve the problem through the eyes, and collect pictures; some through the ears, and study Wagner; others through the nose, and grow carnations. There is food for taste in each of these, and surely there is also food for taste in a taste for food. Indeed, epicurism may be said to command all tastes, since a good dinner enhances the aesthetic values of all art, whether musical, spectacular, or literary. In the respect of his hobby, therefore, John Field might have claimed distinction as a virtuoso. ”

“ Field was a short meagre man, one of those starveling figures whose dimensions of capacity seem hopelessly inadequate to the strain put upon them, and who yet can absorb a Gargantuan repast without a sign, moral or physical, of inconvenience. ”

“ It seems an odd way; but every man knows his own resources best, I suppose."
It will be observed that, for all his retiring disposition, John Field had not succeeded in hiding his foible from the world. But Harding was really distressed and perplexed. He foresaw fresh disaster, without having a conception of any means possible to avert it; and he prayed only that his employer, did he decide to take his advice and a holiday, would read of his loss in the papers, and so spare him, Harding, the pain of having to announce it to him. ”

“ One is not lucky because one is virtuous, or has been virtuous in a former life, but because there happens to have come together in one a cluster of ancestral propensities, each congenial to each, and all together forming the character most apt to command luck. ”

“ It is not for me or for anyone to analyse these constituents; yet somehow, I think, we are instinctively conscious of the lucky man when we meet him. Maybe it is that same instinctive recognition which partly makes for the lucky man's luck, inasmuch as we are naturally inclined to invest our trust in such a child of Fortune ”

“ John Field, a well-known stockbroker in the City. Mr. Field had latterly been staying at the Clayton Arms in Stanbury, from which hostelry he disappeared, without giving notice, some eight or nine days ago. It is believed that financial difficulties were responsible for the unfortunate gentleman's rash act, to which he was driven on the receipt of newspaper information as to the failure of certain gigantic operations on the Stock Exchange. Mr. Field is supposed to have gone straight from the inn to the spot where the corpse was discovered, and there to have shot himself through the head. ”