Kitabı oku: «Paul Kelver», sayfa 6

“But they can pray, too,” I reminded him.

“If you all pray for it,” answered Dan, “then it will go, not to the fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that’s prayed the hardest. That isn’t old Florret’s idea, I’m sure.”

“But we are told to pray for things we want,” I insisted.

“Beastly mean way of getting ‘em,” retorted Dan. And no argument that came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right thinking on this point.

He would judge all matters for himself. In his opinion Achilles was a coward, not a hero.

“He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn’t hurt any part of him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that,” he argued; “King Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it wasn’t playing the game. There’s no pluck in fighting if you know you’re bound to win. Beastly cads, I call them all.”

I won no prize that year. Oddly enough, Dan did, for arithmetic; the only subject studied in the Lower Fourth that interested him. He liked to see things coming right, he explained.

My father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me himself.

“It’s very curious, Paul,” he said, “you seem to know a good deal.”

“They asked me all the things I didn’t know. They seemed to do it on purpose,” I blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm. My father crossed the room and sat down beside me.

“Spud!” he said – it was a long time since he had called me by that childish nickname – “perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the unlucky ones.”

“Are you unlucky?” I asked.

“Invariably,” answered my father, rumpling his hair. “I don’t know why. I try hard – I do the right thing, but it turns out wrong. It always does.”

“But I thought Mr. Hasluck was bringing us such good fortune,” I said, looking up in surprise. “We’re getting on, aren’t we?”

“I have thought so before, so often,” said my father, “and it has always ended in a – in a collapse.”

I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.

“You see, when I married your mother,” he went on, “I was a rich man. She had everything she wanted.”

“But you will get it all back,” I cried.

“I try to think so,” he answered. “I do think so – generally speaking. But there are times – you would not understand – they come to you.”

“But she is happy,” I persisted; “we are all happy.”

He shook his head.

“I watch her,” he said. “Women suffer more than we do. They live more in the present. I see my hopes, but she – she sees only me, and I have always been a failure. She has lost faith in me.”

I could say nothing. I understood but dimly.

“That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul,” he continued after a silence. “You can’t think what a help education is to a man. I don’t mean it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it rather hampers you. But it helps you to bear adversity. To a man with a well-stored mind, life is interesting on a piece of bread and a cup of tea. I know. If it were not for you and your mother I should not trouble.”

And yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as I remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh hope, planning, scheming, dreaming again. It was never acting. A worse actor never trod this stage on which we fret. His occasional attempts at a cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our all three crying in one another’s arms. No; it was only when things were going well that experience came to his injury. Child of misfortune, he ever rose, Antaeus-like, renewed in strength from contact with his mother.

Nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of prosperity, were oft recurring. Generally speaking, as he himself said, he was full of confidence. Already had he fixed upon our new house in Guilford Street, then still a good residential quarter; while at the same time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently central for office purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey’s Inn and Bedford Row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the Law’s sad courtiers.

“Poplar,” said my father, “has disappointed me. It seemed a good idea – a rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors. It ought to have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn’t.”

“There have been a few come,” my mother reminded him.

“Of a sort,” admitted my father; “a criminal lawyer might gather something of a practice here, I have no doubt. But for general work, of course, you must be in a central position. Now, in Guilford Street people will come to me.”

“It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in,” agreed my mother.

“Later on,” said my father, “in case I want the whole house for offices, we could live ourselves in Regent’s Park. It is quite near to the Park.”

“Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?” asked my mother, who of the two was by far the more practical.

“For Hasluck,” replied my father, “it will be much more convenient. He grumbles every time at the distance.”

“I have never been quite able to understand,” said my mother, “why Mr. Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be plenty of solicitors in the City.”

“He had heard of me,” explained my father. “A curious old fellow – likes his own way of doing things. It’s not everyone who would care for him as a client. But I seem able to manage him.”

Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It was a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered, with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the Foundling Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.

“This,” said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom into the smaller room adjoining, “I shall make your mother’s boudoir. We will have the walls in lavender and maple green – she is fond of soft tones – and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will put her writing-table.”

My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.

“You will be quiet here,” said my father, “and we can shut out the bed and the washstand with a screen.”

Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent – eight and sixpence a week, including attendance – was somewhat more than at the time I ought to have afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my stout landlady, in later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass plate with my father’s name upon the door. “Luke Kelver, Solicitor. Office hours, 10 till 4.” A medical student thought he occupied my mother’s boudoir. He was a dull dog, full of tiresome talk. But I made acquaintanceship with him; and often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag.

The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her soft curls curtaining her quiet face.

CHAPTER VI.
OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE LOVE-LIT EYES

“There’s nothing missing,” said my mother, “so far as I can find out. Depend upon it, that’s the explanation: she has got frightened and has run away.

“But what was there to frighten her?” said my father, pausing with a decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.

“It was the idea of the thing,” replied my mother. “She has never been used to waiting at table. She was actually crying about it only last night.”

“But what’s to be done?” said my father. “They will be here in less than an hour.”

“There will be no dinner for them,” said my mother, “unless I put on an apron and bring it up myself.”

“Where does she live?” asked my father.

“At Ilford,” answered my mother.

“We must make a joke of it,” said my father.

My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for my mother. A party to dinner – to a real dinner, beginning with anchovies and ending with ices from the confectioner’s; if only they would remain ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences, present themselves as cold custard – was an extraordinary departure from the even tenor of our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect none previous. First there had been the house to clean and rearrange almost from top to bottom; endless small purchases to be made of articles that Need never misses, but which Ostentation, if ever you let her sneering nose inside the door, at once demands. Then the kitchen range – it goes without saying: one might imagine them all members of a stove union, controlled by some agitating old boiler out of work – had taken the opportunity to strike, refusing to bake another dish except under permanently improved conditions, necessitating weary days with plumbers. Fat cookery books, long neglected on their shelf, had been consulted, argued with and abused; experiments made, failures sighed over, successes noted; cost calculated anxiously; means and ways adjusted, hope finally achieved, shadowed by fear.

And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed from her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering table would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But between the two yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word of warning, had bolted – was probably by this time well on its way to Ilford. There was excuse for my mother’s tears.

“Isn’t it possible to get somebody else?” asked my father.

“Impossible, in the time,” said my mother. “I had been training her for the whole week. We had rehearsed it perfectly.”

“Have it in the kitchen,” suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins to look like ships, which they didn’t in the least, “and call it a picnic.” Really it seemed the only practical solution.

There came a light knock at the front door.

“It can’t be anybody yet, surely,” exclaimed my father in alarm, making for his coat.

“It’s Barbara, I expect,” explained my mother. “She promised to come round and help me dress. But now, of course, I shan’t want her.” My mother’s nature was pessimistic.

But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the window when Barbara came in at the door – in those days, I mean.

She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was so quick. And at once they saw the humour of the thing.

“There’s going to be no dinner,” laughed my father. “We are going to look surprised and pretend that it was yesterday. It will be fun to see their faces.”

“There will be a very nice dinner,” smiled my mother, “but it will be in the kitchen, and there’s no way of getting it upstairs.” And they explained to her the situation.

She stood for an instant, her sweet face the gravest in the group. Then a light broke upon it.

“I’ll get you someone,” she said.

“My dear, you don’t even know the neighbourhood,” began my mother. But Barbara had snatched the latchkey from its nail and was gone.

With her disappearance, shadow fell again upon us. “If there were only an hotel in this beastly neighbourhood,” said my father.

“You must entertain them by yourself, Luke,” said my mother; “and I must wait – that’s all.”

“Don’t be absurd, Maggie,” cried my father, getting angry. “Can’t cook bring it in?”

“No one can cook a dinner and serve it, too,” answered my mother, impatiently. “Besides, she’s not presentable.”

“What about Fan?” whispered my father.

My mother merely looked. It was sufficient.

“Paul?” suggested my father.

“Thank you,” retorted my mother. “I don’t choose to have my son turned into a footman, if you do.”

“Well, hadn’t you better go and dress?” was my father’s next remark.

“It won’t take me long to put on an apron,” was my mother’s reply.

“I was looking forward to seeing you in that new frock,” said my father. In the case of another, one might have attributed such a speech to tact; in the case of my father, one felt it was a happy accident.

My mother confessed – speaking with a certain indulgence, as one does of one’s own follies when past – that she herself also had looked forward to seeing herself therein. Threatening discord melted into mutual sympathy.

“I so wanted everything to be all right, for your sake, Luke,” said my mother; “I know you were hoping it would help on the business.”

“I was only thinking of you, Maggie, dear,” answered my father. “You are my business.”

“I know, dear,” said my mother. “It is hard.”

The key turned in the lock, and we all stood quiet to listen.

“She’s come back alone,” said my mother. “I knew it was hopeless.”

The door opened.

“Please, ma’am,” said the new parlour-maid, “will I do?”

She stood there, framed by the lintel, in the daintiest of aprons, the daintiest of caps upon her golden hair; and every objection she swept aside with the wind of her merry wilfulness. No one ever had their way with her, nor wanted it.

“You shall be footman,” she ordered, turning to me – but this time my mother only laughed. “Wait here till I come down again.” Then to my mother: “Now, ma’am, are you ready?”

It was the first time I had seen my mother, or, indeed, any other flesh and blood woman, in evening dress, and to tell the truth I was a little shocked. Nay, more than a little, and showed it, I suppose; for my mother flushed and drew her shawl over the gleaming whiteness of her shoulders, pleading coldness. But Barbara cried out against this, saying it was a sin such beauty should be hid; and my father, filching a shawl with a quick hand, so dextrously indeed as to suggest some previous practice in the feat, dropped on one knee – as though the world were some sweet picture book – and raised my mother’s hand with grave reverence to his lips; and Barbara, standing behind my mother’s chair, insisted on my following suit, saying the Queen was receiving. So I knelt also, glancing up shyly as towards the gracious face of some fair lady hitherto unknown, thus Catching my first glimpse of the philosophy of clothes.

My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed days that swiftly followed, when my mother’s eyes would flash towards my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour forth a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards, sitting alone in the dark, with bowed head between his hands.

Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.

In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung closer to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have understood if they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms clasping me tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I hated my father, who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet when my father drew me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind eyes so full of pain, then I felt angry with my mother, remembering her bitter tongue.

It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into each other’s loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow. The idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline in the air, feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently through the pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face before them. Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and the next moment, stealing across to my father, answer for him with his voice, but strangely different. I used to think I could hear it laughing to itself as it stepped back into enfolding space.

To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps man and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face between them. So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I see its mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent laugh. So that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the twilight, but I see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them, creeping after them with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me in quiet ways.

Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark valley of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love’s ordeal? testing the feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet again, the darkness passed?

Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann – or Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which – a snuffy, mumbling old frump, with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long blank walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother’s right hand; and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish seeming, how she could be so interested in him, shouting much and often to him; for added to his other disattractions he was very deaf, which necessitated his putting his hand up to his ear at every other observation made to him, crying querulously: “Eh, what? What are you talking about? Say it again,” – smiling upon him and paying close attention to his every want. Even old Hasluck, opposite to him, and who, though pleasant enough in his careless way, was far from being a slave to politeness, roared himself purple, praising some new disinfectant of which this same Teidelmann appeared to be the proprietor.

“My wife swears by it,” bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.

“Our drains!” chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; “well, you’d hardly know there was any in the house since I’ve took to using it.”

“What are they talking about?” asked Teidelmann, appealing to my mother. “What’s he say his wife does?”

“Your disinfectant,” explained my mother; “Mrs. Hasluck swears by it.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Hasluck.”

“Does she? Delighted to hear it,” grunted the old gentleman, evidently bored.

“Nothing like it for a sick-room,” persisted Hasluck; “might almost call it a scent.”

“Makes one quite anxious to be ill,” remarked my aunt, addressing no one in particular.

“Reminds me of cocoanuts,” continued Hasluck.

Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his flattery should not be lost.

“I say it reminds me of cocoanuts.” He screamed it this time.

“Oh, does it?” was the reply.

“Doesn’t it you?”

“Can’t say it does,” answered Teidelmann. “As a matter of fact, don’t know much about it myself. Never use it.”

Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of the subject.

“Take my advice,” he shouted, “and buy a bottle.”

“Buy a what?”

“A bottle,” roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his strength.

“What’s he say? What’s he talking about now?” asked Teidelmann, again appealing to my mother.

“He says you ought to buy a bottle,” again explained my mother.

“What of?”

“Of your own disinfectant.”

“Silly fool!”

Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic (which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely misjudged the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say. I only know that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly, and therefore assume they reached round the table also.

A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned, and the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.

“He’s quite right,” was Hasluck’s comment; “that’s what I am undoubtedly. Because I can’t talk about anything but shop myself, I think everybody else is the same sort of fool.”

But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time Teidelmann was evidently interested.

“Well, if you could spare the time, I’d be more obliged than I can tell you,” Hasluck was saying. “I know absolutely nothing about pictures myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in Europe.”

“He ought to know,” chuckled old Teidelmann. “He’s tried often enough to palm off rubbish onto me.”

“That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young – ” Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; “been the making of him, I should say.”

“I gave him two thousand for the six,” replied Teidelmann, “and they’ll sell for twenty thousand.”

“But you’ll never sell them?” exclaimed my father.

“No,” grunted old Teidelmann, “but my widow will.” There came a soft, low laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.

“It’s Anderson’s great disappointment,” followed a languid, caressing voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), “that he has never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art. He’ll pay thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed Madonna. Such a waste of money, it appears to me.”

“But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,” argued my father’s voice.

“It would enhance the beauty of my neck,” replied the musical voice.

“An even more absolute waste of money,” was my father’s answer, spoken low. And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.

“Who is she?” I asked Barbara.

“The second Mrs. Teidelmann,” whispered Barbara. “She is quite a swell. Married him for his money – I don’t like her myself, but she’s very beautiful.”

“As beautiful as you?” I asked incredulously. We were sitting on the stairs, sharing a jelly.

“Oh, me!” answered Barbara. “I’m only a child. Nobody takes any notice of me – except other kids, like you.” For some reason she appeared out of conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of mind.

“But everybody thinks you beautiful,” I maintained.

“Who?” she asked quickly.

“Dr. Hal,” I answered.

We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.

“What did he say?” she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in it.

I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I was positive.

“Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,” Barbara instructed me, “and don’t forget what he says this time. I’m curious.” And though it seemed to me a foolish command – for what could he say of her more than I myself could tell her – I never questioned Barbara’s wishes.

Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may have clouded for a moment Barbara’s sunny nature, surely there was no reason for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention throughout the dinner than the parlour-maid.

“Where ever did you get her from?” asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having just descended the kitchen stairs.

“A neat-handed Phillis,” commented Dr. Florret with approval.

“I’ll take good care she never waits at my table,” laughed the wife of our minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman, mother of eleven, eight of them boys.

“To tell the truth,” said my mother, “she’s only here temporarily.”

“As a matter of fact,” said my father, “we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck for her.”

“Don’t leave me out of it,” laughed Hasluck; “can’t let the old girl take all the credit.”

Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as “My dear,” at which Mrs. Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that incident could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was looking, pinched her elbow, which would not have mattered had not the unexpectedness of it drawn from her an involuntary “augh,” upon which, for the reputation of the house, and the dinner being then towards its end; my mother deemed it better to take the whole company into her confidence. Naturally the story gained for Barbara still greater admiration, so that when with the dessert, discarding the apron but still wearing the dainty cap, which showed wisdom, she and the footman took their places among the guests, she was even more than before the centre of attention and remark.

“It was very nice of you,” said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the circle of compliments, “and, as I always tell my girls, that is better than being beautiful.”

“Kind hearts,” added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, “are more than coronets.” Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell upon the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like the Amen in church.

Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.

“When I was a girl,” said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing silence, “I used to look into the glass and say to myself: ‘Fanny, you’ve got to be amiable,’ and I was amiable,” added my aunt, challenging contradiction with a look; “nobody can say that I wasn’t, for years.”

“It didn’t pay?” suggested Hasluck.

“It attracted,” replied my aunt, “no attention whatever.”

Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi’s Aida (I am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the details of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion, so I have been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise of the moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa scheme becoming converted to Quakerism.

But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn and Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence in the East End.

As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr. Florret’s presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song once looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the cold stare of his disapproving eye. But Dr. “Fighting Hal” was no gentle warbler of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his partisans with him further than they meant to go, and quite unable to turn back; leaving his opponents clinging desperately – upside down, anyhow – to their perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.

“Life!” flung out Washburn – Dr. Florret had just laid down unimpeachable rules for the conduct of all mankind on all occasions – “what do you respectable folk know of life? You are not men and women, you are marionettes. You don’t move to your natural emotions implanted by God; you dance according to the latest book of etiquette. You live and love, laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only one moment do you come face to face with life; that is in the moment when you die, leaving the other puppets to be dressed in black and make believe to cry.”

It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality of us all.

“Little doll,” he had once called me, and I had resented the term.

“That’s all you are, little Paul,” he had persisted, “a good little hard-working doll, that does what it’s made to do, and thinks what it’s made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a gallant-hearted, soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and primmest of dolls. And I’m a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to be a man, but hasn’t the pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul.”

“He’s a trifle – a trifle whimsical on some subjects,” explained my father, on my repeating this conversation.

“There are a certain class of men,” explained my mother – “you will meet with them more as you grow up – who talk for talking’s sake. They don’t know what they mean. And nobody else does either.”

“But what would you have?” argued Dr. Florret, “that every man should do that which is right in his own eyes?”

“Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what every other fool thinks right,” retorted Washburn. “The other day I called to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His wife was washing clothes in the front room. ‘How’s your husband?’ I asked. ‘I think he’s dead,’ replied the woman. Then, without leaving off her work, ‘Jim,’ she shouted, ‘are you there?’ No answer came from the inner room. ‘He’s a goner,’ she said, wringing out a stocking.”

“But surely,” said Dr. Florret, “you don’t admire a woman for being indifferent to the death of her husband?”

“I don’t admire her for that,” replied Washburn, “and I don’t blame her. I didn’t make the world and I’m not responsible for it. What I do admire her for is not pretending a grief she didn’t feel. In Berkeley Square she’d have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief to her eyes.

“Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” murmured Dr. Florret.

“Go on,” said Washburn. “How does it run? ‘That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, of devil’s habit, is angel yet in this, that to the use of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put on.’ So was the lion’s skin by the ass, but it showed him only the more an ass. Here asses go about as asses, but there are lions also. I had a woman under my hands only a little while ago. I could have cured her easily. Why she got worse every day instead of better I could not understand. Then by accident learned the truth: instead of helping me she was doing all she could to kill herself. ‘I must, Doctor,’ she cried. ‘I must. I have promised. If I get well he will only leave me, and if I die now he has sworn to be good to the children.’ Here, I tell you, they live – think their thoughts, work their will, kill those they hate, die for those they love; savages if you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless dolls.”