Part 16 (1/2)

”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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 was.h.i.+ng 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.

”a.s.sume 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 a.s.s, but it showed him only the more an a.s.s. Here a.s.ses go about as a.s.ses, 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.”

”I prefer the dolls,” concluded Dr. Florret.

”I admit they are pretty,” answered Washburn.

”I remember,” said my father, ”the first masked ball I ever went to when I was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal; everybody was so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street and see faces.”

”But I thought they always unmasked at midnight,” said the second Mrs.

Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.

”I did not wait,” explained my father.

”That was a pity,” she replied. ”I should have been interested to see what they were like, underneath.”

”I might have been disappointed,” answered my father. ”I agree with Dr.

Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement.”

Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.

Always she was very kind to me. Moreover, since the disappearance of Cissy she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my small self. My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was the one thing needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take much pride in our solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to our desires: like the oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world than to ourselves. If others there were who admired me, very guardedly must they have kept the secret I would so gladly have shared with them. But this new friend of ours--or had I not better at once say enemy--made me feel when in her presence a person of importance. How it was accomplished I cannot explain. No word of flattery nor even of mere approval ever pa.s.sed her lips. Her charm to me was not that she admired me, but that she led me by some mysterious process to admire myself.

And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me, I never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the sudden raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.

She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting on her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his eyes were turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them back again. Once she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some light jest of his, and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick glance, saw that my mother's eyes were watching also.

I have spoken of my father only as he then appeared to me, a child--an older chum with many lines about his mobile mouth, the tumbled hair edged round with grey; but looking back with older eyes, I see him a slightly stooping, yet still tall and graceful man, with the face of a poet--the face I mean a poet ought to possess but rarely does, nature apparently abhorring the obvious--with the shy eyes of a boy, and a voice tender as a woman's. Never the dingiest little drab that entered the kitchen but adored him, speaking always of ”the master” in tones of fond proprietors.h.i.+p, for to the most slatternly his ”orders” had ever the air of requests for favours. Women, I so often read, can care for only masterful men. But may there not be variety in women as in other species? Or perhaps--if the suggestion be not over-daring--the many writers, deeming themselves authorities upon this subject of woman, may in this one particular have erred? I only know my father spoke to few women whose eyes did not brighten. Yet hardly should I call him a masterful man.

”I think it's all right,” whispered Hasluck to my father in the pa.s.sage--they were the last to go. ”What does she think of it, eh?”