A Gamble with Life. Hocking Silas Kitto

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СКАЧАТЬ is he going on all right, doctor?" She turned her eyes suddenly upon him, and waited with parted lips for his answer.

      "Well, about as well as can be expected," he answered, slowly, "taking all the circumstances into account."

      "And is he suffering much pain?"

      "A good deal I should say. In fact, that is inevitable."

      "He must wish me far enough."

      "It depends how far that is, I should say," and the old doctor chuckled.

      "You've not heard him heaping maledictions on my defenceless head?"

      "No, I have not," he answered, with a satirical smile; "but then you see he's not given to expressing his thoughts in public."

      "Exactly. I guess his thoughts about me would not bear repeating in any polite society."

      "That is possible," the old doctor said, pursing his lips, and looking thoughtful.

      "I suppose no one sees him yet?"

      "Well, Chester or I myself see him every day – sometimes twice."

      "I intend seeing him myself soon."

      "You do?"

      "Yes I do. There's nothing wrong in it, is there?"

      "Why do you ask that question?"

      "Because you've got such stupid notions about propriety in this country. In fact, few things seem to be regarded as proper except what is highly improper. I'm constantly stubbing my toes against the notice tablets, 'keep off the grass,' the dangerous places are left without warning."

      The doctor laughed.

      "Isn't it true what I'm saying?" she went on. "Half the people seem to be straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Directly you propose to do some perfectly innocent thing, if it should happen to be unconventional, you are met with shocked looks and outstretched hands and cries of protest. I'm getting rather tired of that word 'proper.'"

      "But Society must have some code to regulate itself by," he said, with an air of pretended seriousness.

      "Aren't the Ten Commandments good enough?" she questioned.

      "Well, hardly," he said, in a tone of banter. "You see they are a bit antiquated and out of date. Society, as at present constituted, must have everything of the most modern type. And modernity is not able to tolerate such an antiquated code as the Decalogue."

      "What do you mean by Society?" she questioned.

      "Ah! now you have cornered me," he said, with a laugh. "But just at the moment I was thinking of the idle rich. Men and women who have more money than they know how to spend, and more time than they know how to kill. The people who have never a thought beyond themselves, who live to eat and dress, and pander to the lowest passions of their nature. Who will spend thousands on a dinner fit only for gourmands, while the people around them are dying of hunger. Who waste in folly and luxury and vice what ought to go for the uplifting of the downtrodden and neglected. It is a big class in England, and a growing class, recruited in many instances from across the water – "

      "You mean from my country?" she questioned.

      "Yes, from your country," he said, with a touch of indignation in his voice, "they come bringing their bad manners and their diamonds, and they hang round the fringe of what is called the 'Smart Set,' and they bribe impecunious dowagers and such like to give them introductions, and they worm their way into the big houses, and God alone knows what becomes of them afterwards. I have a brother who has a big practice in the West-end. You should hear him talk – "

      "If people are rich," Madeline retorted warmly, "they have surely the right to enjoy themselves in their own way so long as they do no wrong."

      "Enjoy themselves," he snorted. "Is enjoyment the end of life? – and such enjoyment! Has duty no place in the scheme of existence? Because people have grown rich through somebody else's toil – "

      "Or through their own toil," she interrupted.

      "Or through their own toil – if any man ever did it – are they justified in wasting their life in idle gluttony, and in wasteful and wanton extravagance?"

      "Extravagance is surely a question of degree," she replied. "A hundred dollars to one man may be more than ten thousand to another."

      "I admit it. But your idle profligate, whether man or woman, is an offence."

      "What do you mean by profligate?"

      "I mean the creature who lives to eat and drink and dress. Who shirks every duty and responsibility, who panders to every gluttonous and selfish desire. Who hears the cry of suffering and never helps, who wastes his or her substance in finding fresh sources of so-called enjoyment, or discovering new thrills of sensation."

      "But we surely have a right to enjoy ourselves?"

      "Of course we have. But not after the fashion of swine. We are not animals. We are men and women with intellectual vision and moral responsibility. The true life lies along the road of duty and help and goodwill."

      "Yes, I agree with you in that. But I do not like to hear anyone speak slightingly of my country people."

      "For your country and your people as a whole, I have the greatest respect. But every country has its snobs and its parasites; and it is humbling that our own great army of idle profligates should receive recruits from the great Republic of the West."

      When Dr. Pendarvis had gone Madeline sat for a long time staring out of the window, but seeing nothing of the fair landscape on which her eyes rested. She tried to recall what it was that led their conversation into such a serious channel. To say the least of it, it was not a little strange that he should have taken the hazy and nebulous efforts of her own brain, and shaped them into clear and definite speech. The life of ease and pleasure and self-indulgence to which she had looked forward with so much interest and with such childish delight, he had denounced with a vigour she had half resented, and which all the while she felt answered to the deepest emotions of her nature.

      She took the Captain's letter from the envelope and read it again. It was a most proper letter in every respect. There was not a word or syllable that anyone could take the slightest exception to. The love-making was intense and yet restrained, the pleading eloquent and even tender, the prospect pictured such as any ordinary individual would hail with delight. What was it that it lacked?

      It seemed less satisfying since her talk with the doctor than before.

      The Captain pleaded for an answer by return of post. He wanted to have the assurance before he left India for home. He was tired of roughing it and wanted to look forward to long years of domestic peace. If the engagement were settled now they would be able to set up a house of their own soon after his return.

      She put away the letter after reading it through twice, and heaved a long sigh.

      "If it had come a week ago," she said to herself, "I should have answered 'Yes' without any misgiving. But now, everything seems changed. Perhaps I shall feel differently when I get out of doors again."

      On the following day she took a ramble in the rose garden, and sat for an hour on the lawn in the sunshine. On the second day she strayed into the plantation beyond the park, and on the third day she ventured СКАЧАТЬ