“We had better go home now,” he said.
“No, no, that would convince Mother that something dreadful had happened. Anyhow it will take me some time to get her to her room if she has one of her weak spells. Stay here and keep quiet till I come back.” Solly hurried down the stairs on tiptoe.
Roger had risen from the floor and was sitting with his tongue held between two cubes of ice, like the meat in a sandwich. Humphrey made as though to prepare him another drink, but Roger shook his head; a man who has bitten his tongue shrewdly feels a sickness all through his body which demands rest and quietness, not drinks. So Humphrey made a drink for himself and one for Hector, and sat down. Although they could not see it, all three were oppressively conscious of the pill-taking, the laboured breathing, the mute reproach, and the mordant old comedy of mother-and-son which was being played out at the foot of the stairs.
For some time nobody spoke. After perhaps five minutes Roger rose and went into Solly’s bedroom, which was behind the room in which they were, and finding a washbasin there he set to work to relieve his swollen tongue by holding it under the cold tap.
Hector and Humphrey looked at each other.
“I don’t like this,” said Hector.
“No. Bad business,” said Humphrey. “But probably we’ll be able to talk some sense into them when they come back.” He had had the fun of provoking a quarrel; he now looked forward with appetite to the fun of patching it up.
“I don’t mean these two fellows,” said Hector; “I mean that I don’t like Miss Webster to be mixed up in a thing like this—rough talk and fighting.”
“Oh, heavens, don’t worry about that. She’ll probably never hear of it. Not that she would mind, I suppose; girls rather like to be fought over. Not that this was a fight a girl could take much pride in. But don’t worry. Nothing will come of it.”
“How do you know that something has not come of it already?”
“Meaning—?”
“They talked—they talked quite cold-bloodedly of—well, of intimacy with her.”
“Oh well, that’s just talk, you know. You know how lads are.”
“Yes, I think I do. But that sort of talk disgusts me, and makes me angry, too. I wanted to knock their heads together.”
“I don’t know that I’d try that, if I were you.”
“But we are older than they are. Surely one of us should take a stand?”
“What about? I don’t see what you are getting at.”
“Well,” said Hector patiently, as though explaining the binomial theorem to a pupil, “they shouldn’t talk that way about a girl’s honour. A girl’s honour is like a man’s reputation for honesty—probably more easily destroyed. It is sacred. Men should treat it with reverence.”
“Aha, so that’s your notion, is it? Well, if I recall correctly, I was the first one to suggest that Griselda’s honour might have been a little blown upon. Now, in point of fact, I don’t believe that. But I wanted to find out what Tasset was up to, and I thought maybe I could goad him into an admission or a display of some kind. And I did.”
“Well, then I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I’m not, though. You’re not what could be called an original moralist, are you?”
“I know the difference between right and wrong, I hope.”
“How nice for you. I don’t.”
“I suppose it is nothing to you that a beautiful and innocent young girl might lose her honour?”
“Listen, Mackilwraith; do me a favour, will you; stop calling it her honour. You give me the creeps. Tasset has rather a reputation; I just wanted to find out what he was up to, if I could.”
“He leads an immoral life, does he?”
“By your standards, I suppose he does.”
“Are there any other standards for decent people?”
“That depends on the part of the world the decent people find themselves in, and the education they have had, and the place in society they occupy. Does Tasset strike you as an immoral fellow?”
“If he is loose with women I don’t see that there can be any argument about it.”
“Strictly between ourselves, I don’t like him either. Still, if it’s his nature to chase women, should we judge him?”
“There is such a thing as self-control.”
“You certainly ought to know. You look as though you had controlled yourself, I must say.”
“Certainly. In my profession anything else would be unthinkable.”
“The unthinkable has always been rather in my line. You don’t appear to have controlled yourself at the table, by the way. Quite a lad with the knife and fork, aren’t you?”
“That is different. It harms nobody.”
“I see. You don’t think this control business can be overdone, do you?”
“How could it be?”
“Well, you know what Galen says: If natural seed be overlong kept, it turns to poison.”
“Who was Galen?”
“Never heard of Galen? Claudius Galen? The father of medical practice?”
“Is he dead?”
“A small matter of seventeen hundred years.”
“Ah. Well I dare say his opinion has been contradicted since then. Medical opinion is always changing. Do you see The Reader’s Digest?”
“Galen wasn’t just a pill-roller. He was a first-rate psychologist. The remark I have quoted to you is really a philosophical opinion phrased as a medical maxim.”
“But it is out-dated.”
“Damn it, wisdom is never out-dated.”
“But how can the opinions of a doctor who died so long ago be any good today? In religion, of course, age is a good thing. But not in medicine.”
“All right, Mackilwraith, you win. I feel myself to be an angel, beating my ineffectual wings in vain against the granite fortress of your obtuse self-righteousness.”
“You’re not an angel. I think you’re rather silly. Why do you clutter your mind with what a dead doctor said?”
“Galen isn’t just a dead doctor, man; he was a great spirit. Probably a lot of his ideas are fantastic now. But he had flashes of insight which we can’t discount. That’s what makes a man great; his flashes of insight, when he pierces through the nonsense of his time, and gets at something that really matters.”
“You are a lucky man to have room to spare in your head for truck of that sort.”
“Truck?”
“Most of us find it hard enough to keep track of the things that we really need to know.”
“Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.”
“Certainly.”
“You say that a man’s first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?”
“Of course.”
“Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.”
“As a mathematician I can hardly agree with you that disorder is preferable to order.”
“Mathematician my foot! Do you know anything about linear algebra? How are you on diophantine equations? Could you tell me, in a few words, what Bertrand Russell has added to modern mathematical concepts? You are a mathematician in the way that a teacher of beginners on the piano is a musician!”
“I know what I know,” said Hector, “and it is sufficient for my needs.”
“But you don’t begin to realize how much you don’t know,” said Humphrey, “and I shrewdly suspect that that is the source of your remarkable strength of character. For you are strong, you know; you talk like a fool, but you have amazing personal impact.”
It was at this moment that Roger returned, and sat heavily down in his chair.
“How’s the tongue?” asked Humphrey.
“Thwobs,” said Roger.
“Aha. Swollen too, eh?”