Page:Arrow of Gold.djvu/222

 prostrate, handless, without its head, pathetic, like the mangled victim of a crime.

"John is fastidious, too," began Mrs. Blunt again. "Of course you wouldn't suppose anything vulgar in his resistances to a very real sentiment. One has got to understand his psychology.  He can't leave himself in peace.  He is exquisitely absurd."

I recognized the phrase. Mother and son talked of each other in identical terms. But perhaps "exquisitely absurd" was the Blunt family saying? There are such sayings in families and generally there is some truth in them. Perhaps this old woman was simply absurd. She continued:

"We had a most painful discussion all this morning. He is angry with me for suggesting the very thing his whole being desires.  I don't feel guilty.  It's he who is tormenting himself with his infinite scrupulosity."

"Ah," I said, looking at the mangled dummy like the model of some atrocious murder. "Ah, the fortune. But that can be left alone."

"What nonsense! How is it possible?  It isn't contained in a bag, you can't throw it into the sea.  And moreover, it isn't her fault. I am astonished that you should have thought of that vulgar hypocrisy.  No, it isn't her fortune that cheeks my son; it's something much more subtle.  Not so much her history as her position.  He is absurd.  It isn't what has happened in her life. It's her very freedom that makes him torment himself and her, too-- as far as I can understand."

I suppressed a groan and said to myself that I must really get away from there.

Mrs. Blunt was fairly launched now.