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By Root 5886 0

face, his very scalp were flushed and shining, and his pink silk pyjamas were like an intensified continuation of the same fever. The dictaphone stood on the table by his bed; Mr. Quarles was talking into the mouthpiece of its flexible speaking-tube. ‘True greatness,’ he was saying sonorously, ‘is inversely proportional to myahr immediate success. Ah, hyah you are! he cried, looking round as the door opened. He stopped the clockwork of the machine, hung up the speaking-tube and stretched out a welcoming hand. Simple gestures. But there was something, it seemed to Philip, extravagant about all his movements. It was as though he were on the stage. The eyes which he turned on Philip were unnaturally bright. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. So glad, dyah boy.’ He patted Philip’s hand; the loud voice suddenly trembled.

Unused to such demonstrations, Philip was embarrassed. ‘Well, how are you feeling?’ he asked with an assumption of cheeriness.

Mr. Quarles shook his head and pressed his son’s hand without speaking. Philip was more than ever embarrassed at seeing that the tears had come into his eyes. How could one go on hating and being angry?

‘But you’ll be all right,’ he said, trying to be reassuring. ‘It’s just a question of resting for a bit.’ Mr. Quarles tightened the clasp of his hand. ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he said. ‘But I feel that the end’s nyah.’

‘But that’s nonsense, father. You mustn’t talk like that.’

‘Nyah,’ Mr. Quarles repeated, obstinately nodding, ‘very nyah. That’s why I’m so glad you’re hyah. I should have been unhappah to die when you were at the other end of the wahld. But with you hyah, I feel I can go’—his voice trembled again—’quite contentedlah.’ Once more he squeezed Philip’s hand. He was convinced that he had always been a devoted father, living for nothing but his children. And so he had been, every now and then. ‘Yes, quite contentedlah.’ He pulled out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and while he was doing so surreptitiously wiped his eyes.

‘But you’re not going to die.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Mr. Quarles insisted. ‘I can feel it.’ He genuinely did feel it; he believed he was going to die, because there was at least a part of his mind that desired to die. These complications of the last weeks had been too much for him; and the future promised to be worse, if that were possible. To fade out, painlessly—that would be the best solution of all his problems. He wished, he believed; and, believing in his approaching death, he pitied himself as a victim and at the same time admired himself for the resigned nobility with which he supported his fate.

‘But you’re not going to die,’ Philip dully insisted, not knowing what consolation, beyond mere denial, to offer. He had no gift for dealing extempore with the emotional situations of practical life. ‘There’s nothing…’ He was going to say, ‘There’s nothing the matter with you’; but checked himself, reflecting, before it was too late, that his father might be offended.

‘Let’s say no more about it.’ Mr. Quarles spoke tartly; there was a look of annoyance in his eye. Philip remembered what his mother had said about humouring him. He kept silence. ‘One can’t quarrel with Destinah,’ Mr. Quarles went on in another tone. ‘Destinah,’ he repeated with a sigh. ‘You’ve been fortunate, dyah boy; you discovered your vocation from the farst. Fate has treated you well.’

Philip nodded. He had often thought so himself, with a certain apprehension even. He had an obscure belief in nemesis.

‘Whereas in my case…’ Mr. Quarles did not finish the sentence, but raised his hand and let it fall again, hopelessly, on to the coverlet. ‘I wasted yahs of my life on false scents. Yahs and yahs before I discovered my ryahl bent. A philosopher’s wasted on practical affairs. He’s even absard. Like what’s-his-name’s albatross. You know.’

Philip was puzzled. ‘Do you mean the one in The Ancient Mariner?’

‘No, no,’ said Mr. Quarles impatiently. ‘That Frenchman.’

‘Oh, of course.’ Philip had caught the reference. ‘Le Poete est semblable au prince des nuees. Baudelaire, you mean.’

‘Baudelaire, of course.