IV

THAT, as you know, took place a dozen years ago and more, when I was
thirty-two, and time, in the interval, has wrought unexpected ends
out of the material of my life. My trade as a soldier has led me to
an administrative post in a distant land where, apparently, I have
deserved well of my King and Country, as they say in the obituaries.
At any rate, the cryptic letters following my name, bear witness to
some kind of notoriety attained.

You were the first to welcome my success, and your congratulations
were the first I looked for, as surely as they were more satisfying
than those our mother sent. You knew me better, it seems, than she
did. For you expressed the surprise that I, too, felt, whereas mother
assured me she had "always known you would do well, my boy, and you
have only got your deserts in this tardy recognition." To her, of
course, even at forty-five, I was still her "little boy." You,
however, guessed shrewdly that Luck had played strong cards in
bringing me this distinction, and I will admit at once that it was,
indeed, due to little born in me, but, rather, to some adventitious
aid that, curiously, seemed never lacking at the opportune moment.
And this adventitious aid was new.

This is the unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards for
me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing
in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear
opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have
disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though