Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/283

269 AN ODD LIFE. 269

considerably in advance of your age. Did you assure your life?" I asked, with a sudden thought.

" I did ; but by an oversight I let the policy be invalidated by my imaginary expedition to the African deserts. Down- ton has, however, taken out a fresh policy for my new life."

" What a baffling complex of probabilities would be added to Life Assurances if your way of living were to become general ! " I observed. " Downton will probably more than recoup himself for his first loss. Have you always been a bachelor, by the way? " I asked.

"Yes," said the baby, with a sigh. " I missed marriage ; it probably fell in an even year."

" Poor child ! " I cried, my eyes growing humid again. To think, too, of that beautiful young girl, that fond wife, waiting for him who would never come ; that innocent maiden cheated of love and happiness because her appointed hus- band had not lived in the other alternate series of years, — to think of this tangled tragedy moved me to fresh tears, not a few of which were for the husband who never was.

" Nay, do not pity me," said the baby, and his tones were hushed and low, and in his heavenly blue eyes I seemed to read the high sorrowful wisdom of the ages ; " for, since I have lain here on this bed of sickness with no spectacular whirl to claim my thoughts, with four walls for my horizon, and the agony of death in my throat, the darker side of my dual existence has been borne in upon me. I see the shadow cast by the sunshine of my privilege of double birth ; I see the curse which is the obverse of the blessing my mother's prayers brought me ; I see myself dissipating a youth which I knew would recur, throwing away a manhood which I knew would come again, and sinking into a sensual senility which I knew would pass into an innocent infancy.