Part 70 (2/2)

'I can't tell till I have heard from my brother.'

'But, Leonard, promise me now--you'll not go out and make a Yankee of yourself.'

'I can't tell; I shall do what he wishes.'

Aubrey presently found that Leonard seemed to have no capacity to think or speak of the future or the past. He set Aubrey off on his own concerns, and listened with interest, asking questions that showed him perfectly alive to what regarded his friend, but the pa.s.sive inaction of will and spirits still continued, and made him almost a disappointment.

On Monday morning there was a squabble between the young engineer and the Daisy, who was a profound believer in the scientific object of Tom's journey, and greatly resented the far too obvious construction thereof.

'You must read lots of bad novels at Chatham, Aubrey; it is like the f.a.g end of the most trumpery of them all!'

'You haven't gone far enough in your mathematics, you see, Daisy. You think one and one--'

'Make two. So I say.'

'I've gone into the higher branches.'

'I didn't think you were so simple and commonplace. It would be so stupid to think he must--just because he could not help making this discovery.'

'All for want of the higher branches of mathematics! One plus one--equals one.'

'One minus common sense, plus folly, plus romance, minus anything to do. Your equation is worthy of Mrs. Harvey Anderson. I gave her a good dose of the 'Diseases of Climate!''

Aubrey was looking at Ethel all the time Gertrude was triumphing; and finally he said, 'I've no absolute faith in disinterested philanthropy to a younger brother--whatever I had before I went to the Tyrol.'

'What has that to do with it?' asked Gertrude. 'Everybody was cut up, and wanted a change--and you more than all. I do believe the possibility of a love affair absolutely drives people mad: and now they must needs saddle it upon poor Tom--just the one of the family who is not so stupid, but has plenty of other things to think about.'

'So you think it a stupid pastime?'

'Of course it is. Why, just look. Hasn't everybody in the family turned stupid, and of no use, as soon at they went and fell in love!

Only good old Ethel here has too much sense, and that's what makes her such a dear old gurgoyle. And Harry--he is twice the fun after he comes home, before he gets his fit of love. And all the story books that begin pleasantly, the instant that love gets in, they are just alike--so stupid! And now, if you haven't done it yourself, you want to lug poor innocent Tom in for it.'

'When your time comes, may I be there to see!'

He retreated from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she turned round to Ethel with, 'Now, isn't it stupid, Ethel!'

'Very stupid to think all the zest of life resides in one particular feeling,' said Ethel; 'but more stupid to talk of what you know nothing about.'

Aubrey put in his head for a hurried farewell, and, 'Telegraph to me when Mrs. Thomas May comes home.'

'If Mrs. Thomas May comes home, I'll--'

'Give her that chair cover,' said Ethel; and her idle needlewoman, having been eight months working one corner of it, went off into fits of laughter, regarding its completion as an equally monstrous feat with an act of cannibalism on the impossible Mrs. Thomas May.

How different were these young things, with their rhodomontade and exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and aspiration of life seemed extinguished!

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