Part 52 (2/2)
Our own private opinion is that any one who closely observes human communion will see that two-thirds of it runs on lines like the foregoing. Very rarely indeed does a human creature say what it means.
Exhaustive definition, lucid statements, concise terminology--even plain English--are foreign to its nature. The congenial soil in which the fruit of Intelligence ripens is Suggestion, and the wireless telegraphs of the mind are the means by which it rejoices to communicate. Don't try to say what you mean--because _you_ can't. You are not clever enough. Try to mean what you want to say, and leave the dictionary to take care of itself.
This little bit of philosophizing of ours has just given Sally time, pondering gravely with the eyebrows all at rest and lips at ease, to deal with the developed position created by the mere subst.i.tution of a name for a nickname.
”Ought there to be ... anything to think about?” Thus Sally; and her mother sees, or thinks she sees, a little new colour in the girl's cheeks. Or is it only the sunset? Then Rosalind says to herself that perhaps she has made a mistake, had better have left it alone.
Perhaps. But it's done now. She is not one that goes back on her resolutions. It is best not to be too tugging and solemn over it. She speaks with a laugh.
”It's not my little daughter I'm afraid of, Sallykin. She's got the key of the position. It's that dear good boy.”
”He's not a boy. He's thirty-one next February. Only he's not got a birthday, because it's not leap-year. Going by birthdays he's not quite half-past seven.”
”Then it won't do to go by birthdays. Even at thirty-one, though, some boys are not old enough to know better. He's very inexperienced in some things.”
”A babe unborn--only he can write prescriptions. Only they don't do you any good. (”Ungrateful child!”... ”Well, they _don't_.”) You see, he hasn't any one to go to to ask about things except me. Of course _I_ can tell him, if you come to that!”
”There's his mother.”
”His mother! That old dianthus! Oh, mammy darling, what different sorts of mothers do crop up when you think of it!” And Sally is so moved by this scientific marvel that she suddenly kisses her mother, there out on the public parade with a gentleman in check trousers and an eye-gla.s.s coming along!
”Why do you call the old lady a dianthus, chick? Really, the way you treat that poor old body!...”
”Not when Prosy's there. I know my place.... We-ell, you know what a dianthus's figure is like? When the tentacles are in, I mean.”
But Rosalind tacitly condemns the a.n.a.logy. Is she not herself a mother, and bound to take part with her kind, however obese? ”What were you and the doctor talking about in the boat all that long time yesterday?” she asks, skipping an interval which might easily have contained a review of Mrs. Vereker inside-out like a sea-anemone.
Sally is quite equal to it.
”Resuscitation after drowning. Prosy says death is really due to carbonic acid poisoning. Anybody would think it was choking, but it's nothing of the sort. The arterial blood is insufficiently fed with oxygen, and death ensues.”
”How long did you talk about that?”
”Ever so long. Till I asked him what he should do if a visitor were drowned and couldn't be brought to. Not at the hotel; down here. Me, for instance.”
”What did he say?”
”He was jolly solemn over it, Prosy was. Said he should try his best, and as soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his own existence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't do it. He said, oh yes, he could--he could inject air into a vein, and lots of things. He went on a physiological tack, so I quoted Hamlet.”
”What did he make of Hamlet?”
”Said the researches of modern science all tended to prove that extinction awaited us at death, and he would take his chance. He was quite serious over it.”
”And then you said?...”
”I said, suppose it turned out that modern science was tommy-rot, wouldn't he feel like a fool when all was said and done? He admitted that he might, in that case. But he would take his chance, he said.
And then we had a long argument, Prosy and I.”
”Has he ever resuscitated a drowned person?”
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