12 Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV (22 page)

    "Ha, a long sermon!" he exclaimed. "Come in."

    "I fear it was," said the Father, obeying the invitation. "I am that dangerous thing - an extempore preacher."

    "More attractive to speak without notes, if you can do it. Hang your hat and coat - oh, cloak - here. We'll have supper at once. This is the dining room."

    He opened a door on the right and they entered a long, narrow room, with a gold paper and a black ceiling, from which hung an electric lamp with a gold-coloured shade. In the room stood a small oval table with covers laid for two. The Professor rang the bell. Then he said:

    "People seem to talk better at an oval table than at a square one."

    "Really. Is that so?"

    "Well, I've had precisely the same party twice, once at a square table, once at an oval table. The first dinner was a dull failure, the second a brilliant success. Sit down, won't you?"

    "How d'you account for the difference?" said the Father, sitting down, and pulling the tail of his cassock well under him.

    "H'm. I know how you'd account for it."

    "Indeed. How then?"

    "At an oval table, since there are no corners, the chain of human sympathy - the electric current, is much more complete. Eh! Let me give you some soup."

    "Thank you."

    The Father took it, and, as he did so, turned his beaming blue eyes on his host. Then he smiled.

    "What!" he said, in his pleasant, light tenor voice. "You do go to church sometimes, then?"

    "To-night is the first time for ages. And, mind you, I was tremendously bored."

    The Father still smiled, and his blue eyes gently twinkled.

    "Dear, dear!" he said, "what a pity!"

    "But not by the sermon," Guildea added. "I don't pay a compliment. I state a fact. The sermon didn't bore me. If it had, I should have said so, or said nothing."

    "And which would you have done?"

    The Professor smiled almost genially.

    "Don't know," he said. "What wine d'you drink?"

    "None, thank you. I'm a teetotaller. In my profession and
milieu
it is necessary to be one. Yes, I will have some soda water. I think you would have done the first."

    "Very likely, and very wrongly. You wouldn't have minded much."

    "I don't think I should."

    They were intimate already. The Father felt most pleasantly at home under the black ceiling. He drank some soda water and seemed to enjoy it more than the Professor enjoyed his claret.

    "You smile at the theory of the chain of human sympathy, I see," said the Father. "Then what is your explanation of the failure of your square party with corners, the success of your oval party without them?"

    "Probably on the first occasion the wit of the assembly had a chill on his liver, while on the second he was in perfect health. Yet, you see, I stick to the oval table."

    "And that means -"

    "Very little. By the way, your omission of any allusion to the notorious part liver plays in love was a serious one to-night."

    "Your omission of any desire for close human sympathy in your life is a more serious one."

    "How can you be sure I have no such desire?"

    "I divine it. Your look, your manner, tell me it is so. You were disagreeing with my sermon all the time I was preaching. Weren't you?"

    "Part of the time."

    The servant changed the plates. He was a middle-aged, blond, thin man, with a stony white face, pale, prominent eyes, and an accomplished manner of service. When he had left the room the Professor continued.

    "Your remarks interested me, but I thought them exaggerated."

    "For instance?"

    "Let me play the egoist for a moment. I spend most of my time in hard work, very hard work. The results of this work, you will allow, benefit humanity."

    "Enormously," assented the Father, thinking of more than one of Guildea's discoveries.

    "And the benefit conferred by this work, undertaken merely for its own sake, is just as great as if it were undertaken because I loved my fellow man, and sentimentally desired to see him more comfortable than he is at present. I'm as useful precisely in my present condition of - in my present non-affectional condition - as I should be if I were as full of gush as the sentimentalists who want to get murderers out of prison, or to put a premium on tyranny - like Tolstoi - by preventing the punishment of tyrants."

    "One may do great harm with affection; great good without it. Yes, that is true. Even
le bon motif
is not everything, I know. Still I contend that, given your powers, you would be far more useful in the world with sympathy, affection for your kind, added to them than as you are. I believe even that you would do still more splendid work."

    The Professor poured himself another glass of claret.

    "You noticed my butler?" he said.

    "I did."

    "He's a perfect servant. He makes me perfectly comfortable. Yet he has no feeling of liking for me. I treat him civilly. I pay him well. But I never think about him, or concern myself with him as a human being. I know nothing of his character except what I read of it in his last master's letter. There are, you may say, no truly human relations between us. You would affirm that his work would be better done if I had made him personally like me as man - of any class - can like man - of any other class?"

    "I should, decidedly."

    "I contend that he couldn't do his work better than he does it at present."

    "But if any crisis occurred?"

    "What?"

    "Any crisis, change in your condition. If you needed his help, not only as a man and a butler, but as a man and a brother? He'd fail you then, probably. You would never get from your servant that finest service which can only be prompted by an honest affection."

    "You have finished?"

    "Quite."

    "Let us go upstairs then. Yes, those are good prints. I picked them up in Birmingham when I was living there. This is my workroom."

    They came to a double room lined entirely with books, and brilliantly, rather hardly, lit by electricity. The windows at one end looked on to the Park, at the other on to the garden of a neighbouring house. The door by which they entered was concealed from the inner and smaller room by the jutting wall of the outer room, in which stood a huge writing-table loaded with letters, pamphlets and manuscripts. Between the two windows of the inner room was a cage in which a large, grey parrot was clambering, using both beak and claws to assist him in his slow and meditative peregrinations.

    "You have a pet," said the Father, surprised.

    "I possess a parrot," the Professor answered drily, "I got him for a purpose when I was making a study of the imitative powers of birds, and I have never got rid of him. A cigar?"

    "Thank you."

    They sat down. Father Murchison glanced at the parrot. It had paused in its journey, and, clinging to the bars of its cage, was regarding them with attentive round eyes that looked deliberately intelligent, but by no means sympathetic. He looked away from it to Guildea, who was smoking, with his head thrown back, his sharp, pointed chin, on which the small black beard bristled, upturned. He was moving his under lip up and down rapidly. This action caused the beard to stir and look peculiarly aggressive. The Father suddenly chuckled softly.

    "Why's that?" cried Guildea, letting his chin drop down on his breast and looking at his guest sharply.

    "I was thinking it would have to be a crisis indeed that could make you cling to your butler's affection for assistance."

    Guildea smiled too.

    "You're right. It would. Here he comes."

    The man entered with coffee. He offered it gently, and retired like a shadow retreating on a wall.

    "Splendid, inhuman fellow," remarked Guildea.

    "I prefer the East End lad who does my errands in Bird Street," said the Father. "I know all his worries. He knows some of mine. We are friends. He's more noisy than your man. He even breathes hard when he is especially solicitous, but he would do more for me than put the coals on my fire, or black my square-toed boots."

    "Men are differently made. To me the watchful eye of affection would be abominable."

    "What about that bird?"

    The Father pointed to the parrot. It had got up on its perch and, with one foot uplifted in an impressive, almost benedictory, manner, was gazing steadily at the Professor.

    "That's the watchful eye of imitation, with a mind at the back of it, desirous of reproducing the peculiarities of others. No, I thought your sermon to-night very fresh, very clever. But I have no wish for affection. Reasonable liking, of course, one desires" - he tugged sharply at his beard, as if to warn himself against sentimentality - "but anything more would be most irksome, and would push me, I feel sure, towards cruelty. It would also hamper one's work."

    "I don't think so."

    "The sort of work I do. I shall continue to benefit the world without loving, and it will continue to accept the benefits without loving me. That's all as it should be."

    He drank his coffee. Then he added rather aggressively:

    "I have neither time nor inclination for sentimentality."

    When Guildea let Father Murchison out, he followed the Father on to the doorstep and stood there for a moment. The Father glanced across the damp road into the Park.

    "I see you've got a gate just opposite you," he said idly.

    "Yes. I often slip across for a stroll to clear my brain. Good-night to you. Come again some day."

    "With pleasure. Good-night."

    The Priest strode away, leaving Guildea standing on the step.

    Father Murchison came many times again to number 100, Hyde Park Place. He had a feeling of liking for most men and women whom he knew, and of tenderness for all, whether he knew them or not, but he grew to have a special sentiment towards Guildea. Strangely enough, it was a sentiment of pity. He pitied this hard-working, eminently successful man of big brain and bold heart, who never seemed depressed, who never wanted assistance, who never complained of the twisted skein of life or faltered in his progress along the way. The Father pitied Guildea, in fact, because Guildea wanted so little. He had told them so, for the intercourse of the two men, from the beginning, had been singularly frank.

    One evening, when they were talking together, the Father happened to speak of one of the oddities of life, the fact that those who do not want things often get them, while those who seek them vehemently are disappointed in their search.

    "Then I ought to have affection poured upon me," said Guildea smiling rather grimly. "For I hate it."

    "Perhaps some day you will."

    "I hope not, most sincerely."

    Father Murchison said nothing for a moment. He was drawing together the ends of the broad band round his cassock. When he spoke he seemed to be answering someone.

    "Yes," he said slowly, "yes, that
is
my feeling - pity."

    "For whom?" said the Professor.

    Then, suddenly, he understood. He did not say that he understood, but Father Murchison felt, and saw, that it was quite unnecessary to answer his friend's question. So Guildea, strangely enough, found himself closely acquainted with a man - his opposite in all ways - who pitied him.

    The fact that he did not mind this, and scarcely ever thought about it, shows perhaps as clearly as anything could, the peculiar indifference of his nature.

    

    

    One Autumn evening, a year and a half after Father Murchison and the Professor had first met, the Father called in Hyde Park Place and enquired of the blond and stony butler - his name was Pitting - whether his master was at home.

    "Yes, sir," replied Pitting. "Will you please come this way?"

    He moved noiselessly up the rather narrow stairs, followed by the Father, tenderly opened the library door, and in his soft, cold voice, announced:

    "Father Murchison."

    Guildea was sitting in an armchair, before a small fire. His thin, long-fingered hands lay outstretched upon his knees, his head was sunk down on his chest. He appeared to be pondering deeply. Pitting very slightly raised his voice.

    "Father Murchison to see you, sir," he repeated.

    The Professor jumped up rather suddenly and turned sharply round as the Father came in.

    "Oh," he said. "It's you, is it? Glad to see you. Come to the fire."

    The Father glanced at him and thought him looking unusually fatigued.

    "You don't look well to-night," the Father said.

    "No?"

    "You must be working too hard. That lecture you are going to give in Paris is bothering you?"

    "Not a bit. It's all arranged. I could deliver it to you at this moment verbatim. Well, sit down."

    The Father did so, and Guildea sank once more into his chair and stared hard into the fire without another word. He seemed to be thinking profoundly. His friend did not interrupt him, but quietly lit a pipe and began to smoke reflectively. The eyes of Guildea were fixed upon the fire. The Father glanced about the room, at the walls of soberly bound books, at the crowded writing-table, at the windows, before which hung heavy, dark-blue curtains of old brocade, at the cage, which stood between them. A green baize covering was thrown over it. The Father wondered why. He had never seen Napoleon - so the parrot was named - covered up at night before. While he was looking at the baize Guildea suddenly jerked up his head, and, taking his hands from his knees and clasping them, said abruptly: