I called a day or two afterwards and found Mr Pontifex still at
Battersby, laid up with one of those attacks of liver and depression to
which he was becoming more and more subject. I stayed to luncheon. The
old gentleman was cross and very difficult; he could eat nothing--had no
appetite at all. Christina tried to coax him with a little bit of the
fleshy part of a mutton chop. "How in the name of reason can I be asked
to eat a mutton chop?" he exclaimed angrily; "you forget, my dear
Christina, that you have to deal with a stomach that is totally
disorganised," and he pushed the plate from him, pouting and frowning
like a naughty old child. Writing as I do by the light of a later
knowledge, I suppose I should have seen nothing in this but the world's
growing pains, the disturbance inseparable from transition in human
things. I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without
ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very
uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling--but surely nature might
find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give
her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all?
Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty
thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake
up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only
left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some
weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account?
About a year and a half afterwards the tables were turned on
Battersby--for Mrs John Pontifex was safely delivered of a boy.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146