Уилки Коллинз - Man and Wife

“You may see for yourself.”

Arnold pointed to the window. Sir Patrick was crossing the lawn, on his way to the library with a newspaper in his hand; and the guests at Windygates were accompanying him. Sir Patrick was smiling, and saying nothing. The guests were talking excitedly at the tops of their voices. There had apparently been a collision of some kind between the old school and the new. Arnold directed Geoffrey’s attention to the state of affairs on the lawn.

“How are you to consult Sir Patrick with all those people about him?”

“I’ll consult Sir Patrick, if I take him by the scruff of the neck and carry him into the next county!” He rose to his feet as he spoke those words, and emphasized them under his breath with an oath.

Sir Patrick entered the library, with the guests at his heels.

THE object of the invasion of the library by the party in the garden appeared to be twofold.

Sir Patrick had entered the room to restore the newspaper to the place from which he had taken it. The guests, to the number of five, had followed him, to appeal in a body to Geoffrey Delamayn. Between these two apparently dissimilar motives there was a connection, not visible on the surface, which was now to assert itself.

Of the five guests, two were middle-aged gentlemen belonging to that large, but indistinct, division of the human family whom the hand of Nature has painted in unobtrusive neutral tint. They had absorbed the ideas of their time with such receptive capacity as they possessed; and they occupied much the same place in society which the chorus in an opera occupies on the stage. They echoed the prevalent sentiment of the moment; and they gave the solo-talker time to fetch his breath.

The three remaining guests were on the right side of thirty. All profoundly versed in horse-racing, in athletic sports, in pipes, beer, billiards, and betting. All profoundly ignorant of every thing else under the sun. All gentlemen by birth, and all marked as such by the stamp of “a University education.” They may be personally described as faint reflections of Geoffrey; and they may be numerically distinguished (in the absence of all other distinction) as One, Two, and Three.

Sir Patrick laid the newspaper on the table and placed himself in one of the comfortable arm-chairs. He was instantly assailed, in his domestic capacity, by his irrepressible sister-in-law. Lady Lundie dispatched Blanche to him with the list of her guests at the dinner. “For your uncle’s approval, my dear, as head of the family.”

While Sir Patrick was looking over the list, and while Arnold was making his way to Blanche, at the back of her uncle’s chair, One, Two, and Three—with the Chorus in attendance on them—descended in a body on Geoffrey, at the other end of the room, and appealed in rapid succession to his superior authority, as follows:

“I say, Delamayn. We want You. Here is Sir Patrick running a regular Muck at us. Calls us aboriginal Britons. Tells us we ain’t educated. Doubts if we could read, write, and cipher, if he tried us. Swears he’s sick of fellows showing their arms and legs, and seeing which fellow’s hardest, and who’s got three belts of muscle across his wind, and who hasn’t, and the like of that. Says a most infernal thing of a chap. Says—because a chap likes a healthy out-of-door life, and trains for rowing and running, and the rest of it, and don’t see his way to stewing over his books— therefore he’s safe to commit all the crimes in the calendar, murder included. Saw your name down in the newspaper for the Foot-Race; and said, when we asked him if he’d taken the odds, he’d lay any odds we liked against you in the other Race at the University—meaning, old boy, your Degree. Nasty, that about the Degree—in the opinion of Number One. Bad taste in Sir Patrick to rake up what we never mention among ourselves—in the opinion of Number Two. Un-English to sneer at a man in that way behind his back—in the opinion of Number Three. Bring him to book, Delamayn. Your name’s in the papers; he can’t ride roughshod over You.”

The two choral gentlemen agreed (in the minor key) with the general opinion. “Sir Patrick’s views are certainly extreme, Smith?” “I think, Jones, it’s desirable to hear Mr. Delamayn on the other side.”

Geoffrey looked from one to the other of his admirers with an expression on his face which was quite new to them, and with something in his manner which puzzled them all.

“You can’t argue with Sir Patrick yourselves,” he said, “and you want me to do it?”

One, Two, Three, and the Chorus all answered, “Yes.”

“I won’t do it.”

One, Two, Three, and the Chorus all asked, “Why?”

“Because,” answered Geoffrey, “you’re all wrong. And Sir Patrick’s right.”

Not astonishment only, but downright stupefaction, struck the deputation from the garden speechless.

Without saying a word more to any of the persons standing near him, Geoffrey walked straight up to Sir Patrick’s arm-chair, and personally addressed him. The satellites followed, and listened (as well they might) in wonder.

“You will lay any odds, Sir,” said Geoffrey “against me taking my Degree? You’re quite right. I sha’n’t take my Degree. You doubt whether I, or any of those fellows behind me, could read, write, and cipher correctly if you tried us. You’re right again—we couldn’t. You say you don’t know why men like Me, and men like Them, may not begin with rowing and running and the like of that, and end in committing all the crimes in the calendar: murder included. Well! you may be right again there. Who’s to know what may happen to him? or what he may not end in doing before he dies? It may be Another, or it may be Me. How do I know? and how do you?” He suddenly turned on the deputation, standing thunder-struck behind him. “If you want to know what I think, there it is for you, in plain words.”

There was something, not only in the shamelessness of the declaration itself, but in the fierce pleasure that the speaker seemed to feel in making it, which struck the circle of listeners, Sir Patrick included, with a momentary chill.

In the midst of the silence a sixth guest appeared on the lawn, and stepped into the library—a silent, resolute, unassuming, elderly man who had arrived the day before on a visit to Windygates, and who was well known, in and out of London, as one of the first consulting surgeons of his time.

“A discussion going on?” he asked. “Am I in the way?”

“There’s no discussion—we are all agreed,” cried Geoffrey, answering boisterously for the rest. “The more the merrier, Sir!”

After a glance at Geoffrey, the surgeon suddenly checked himself on the point of advancing to the inner part of the room, and remained standing at the window.

“I beg your pardon,” said Sir Patrick, addressing himself to Geoffrey, with a grave dignity which was quite new in Arnold’s experience of him. “We are not all agreed. I decline, Mr. Delamayn, to allow you to connect me with such an expression of feeling on your part as we have just heard. The language you have used leaves me no alternative but to meet your statement of what you suppose me to have said by my statement of what I really did say. It is not my fault if the discussion in the garden is revived before another audience in this room—it is yours.”

He looked as he spoke to Arnold and Blanche, and from them to the surgeon standing at the window.

The surgeon had found an occupation for himself which completely isolated him among the rest of the guests. Keeping his own face in shadow, he was studying Geoffrey’s face, in the full flood of light that fell on it, with a steady attention which must have been generally remarked, if all eyes had not been turned toward Sir Patrick at the time.