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Bethink yourself. Bestir yourself. Man! Do something to show
us you are alive."
To such speeches Mr. Eames would listen with a smile of amused
indignation. He was incapable of living up to the ideals of a man like
Keith whose sympathy with every form of wrong-doing would have rendered
him positively unfit for decent society but for his flagrant good
nature and good luncheons. He suffered in silence.
He had good reason for suffering. That "little affair" of twelve years
ago was a ghost which refused to be laid. Every one on the island knew
the story; it was handed down from one batch of visitors to the next.
He knew that whenever his name was mentioned this unique indiscretion
of his, this toothsome morsel, would likewise be dished up. It would
never grow stale, though atoned for by twelve years of exemplary
conduct. He felt guilty. There was a skeleton in his cupboard. He
realized what people were saying.
"Know Eames? Oh, yes. That quiet man, who writes. One can't swallow
half those yarns about him; quite impossible to believe, of course.


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