Part 55 (2/2)
The faintest flicker of a smile crosses her lips. She lays her knitting on her knee for an instant, that she may the more readily let her tapered fingers droop until they touch the pale brow of the child at her feet; then she resumes it again, with a face calm and emotionless as usual.
”Old Browne's girl can't owe her father much,” Desmond is saying _apropos_ of something both lost and gone before, so far as Kelly and Mrs. Herrick are concerned.
”About a hundred thousand pounds,” says Ronayne. ”She is quite a catch, you know. No end of money. The old fellow died a year ago.”
”No, he didn't; he demised,” says Kelly, emerging from obscurity into the light of conversation once more. ”At least, so the papers said.
There is a tremendous difference, you know. A poor man dies, a rich man demises. One should always bear in mind that important social distinction.”
”And the good man! What of him?” says Desmond, looking at his friend.
”What does Montgomery say?”
”Yes, that is very mysterious,” says Kelly, with bated breath.
”According to Montgomery, 'the good man _never_ dies.' Think of that!
_Never_ dies. He walks the earth forever, like a superannuated ghost, only awfuller.”
”Have you ever seen one?” asks Olga, leaning forward.
”What? a man that never died? Yes, lots of 'em. Here's one,” laying his hand upon his breast.
”No. A man that never will die?”
”How can I answer such a question as that? Perhaps Ronayne, there, may be such a one.”
”How stupid you are! I mean, did you ever meet a man who _couldn't_ die?”
”Never,--if he went the right way about it.”
”Then, according to your showing, you have never seen a good man.” She leans back again in her chair, fatigued but satisfied.
”I'm afraid they are few and far between,” says Hermia.
”Now and again they _have_ appeared,” says Mr. Kelly, with a modest glance. ”Perhaps I shall never die.”
”Don't make us more unhappy than we need be,” says Mrs. Herrick, plaintively.
”How sad that good men should be so scarce!” says Miss Fitzgerald, with a glance she means to be funny, but which is only dull.
”Don't make trite remarks, Bella,” says Mrs. Bohun, languidly. ”You know if you did meet one he would bore you to death. The orthodox good man, the oppressive being we read about, but never see, is unknown to me or you, for which I, at least, am devoutly grateful.”
”To return to old Browne,” says Ulic: ”he wasn't good, if you like. He was a horrid ill-tempered, common old fellow, thoroughly without education of any kind.”
”He went through college, however, as he was fond of boasting whenever he got the chance.”
”And when he didn't get it he made it.”
”In at one door and out at the other, that's how he went through Trinity,” says Mr. Kelly. ”Oh, how I hated that dear old man, and _how_ he hated me!”
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