“My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap!” Reggie murmured. “Experiment made to observe reactions. Where have you put Minnie?”
“She’s up in her room, poor woman. That Miss Pearse is with her. When we had the big upset. Miss Pearse came in, hearing the row, and took her in hand. I was glad of it, I own. Minnie was pretty well throwing fits.”
“Poor soul. Yes,” Reggie sighed. “Go and ask Miss Pearse to come and see me a minute, will you?”
Miss Pearse came. She was tightly neat still, and still her little meek face had the assurance of power over everything.
“You’re very kind,” said Reggie.
“Minnie is helpless,” said Miss Pearse.
“It’s all over. Does she know that?”
“I have told her the doctor says her mother won’t recover. What do you want her to be told?”
“That there’s no blame on her. For her mother. For anything.”
Miss Pearse gave him a cold smile. “You have made sure of that? I congratulate you.”
“Oh, no. No. Your work. You gave me the key, Miss Pearse. When you made it so clear Mrs. Colson was a devoted mother. Confirmed by broken toad.”
“You are very acute, sir,” said Miss Pearse primly.
“Thanks very much. I value that.” Reggie bowed.
“Mrs. Colson committed suicide, of course?”
“Yes. Last act. Yes.”
“I have told Minnie that she did. Can you imagine what Minnie said?”
“I think so. Yes,” Reggie sighed. “Probably said it ought to have been her.”
“You are quite right. She said, ‘Why wasn’t it me; oh, it should have been me?’ These self - sacrificing people! I have no patience with them.”
“No. Nuisance.” Reggie smiled. “You’ll look after her won’t you?”
“Of course I shall,” said Miss Pearse.
SECOND OBJECTION:
THE ANGEL’S EYE
WHETHER the will of man is free is a question which Mr. Fortune has been heard to answer both ways.
One of his favourite pieces of evidence for the opinion that we have no choice in what we do or endure is the fact that he was introduced to the case of the angel’s eye through being in a country house in January. From this he also infers an irrational element in the ruling forces of the universe.
That he should go by his own free will to any country house but his own in winter is clearly beyond belief. The outdoor diversions of the season do not please him. For killing creatures, except in the way of his profession, he has no aptitude. By the social pleasures of the country - house evening he is made melancholy. What took him to stay with Mrs. Mead at her house in Midshire was the gentle sovereignty of his wife.
He will point out that in the particular example of despotism there was no reason, only the illogical emotion that when you are asked often you must go sometimes. Moreover, it was futile. For, though he was thereby introduced to the case before it began, this did no good to anybody. The result of his efforts, which were in his best style, cannot, he laments, be reconciled with faith that the world has any meaning.
Midshire is a various county, with some wooded river valleys of renowned charm, chalk downs good in the second class of their kind, and stretches of rolling sand which produce by nature heath and by plantation miles of solemn conifers.
None of the scenery, as Mr. Fortune pointed out bitterly to his wife, is adapted to the weather of a dank English January. The vapours pervasively wept their burden to the ground, and he spent his days curled up by the fire like a cat.
Mrs. Mead’s house is at one end of the county, on a knoll above the most picturesque reach of the biggest river. The family of Mrs. Mead has been in Midshire since it began to be civilised - a process, in Mr. Fortune’s judgment, still far from completion.
She is alone in the world, except for a son building up the Empire on the other side of it. Her loneliness and her universal charity drew Mrs. Fortune to her, and Mr. Fortune has admitted that she is the only good woman he ever knew content to let people be what they are. This he considers proof of brain - power in Mrs. Mead not otherwise apparent. Her accepted importance in Midshire is wholly ancestral.
