



Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                                GOSLINGS

                                   By

                            J. D. BERESFORD

               Author of "The Hampdenshire Wonder," etc.


                                 London
                           William Heinemann
                                  1913








BOOK I

THE NEW PLAGUE


I--THE GOSLING FAMILY


1

"Where's the gels gone to?" asked Mr Gosling.

"Up the 'Igh Road to look at the shops. I'm expectin' 'em in every
minute."

"Ho!" said Gosling. He leaned against the dresser; the kitchen was
hot with steam, and he fumbled for a handkerchief in the pocket of
his black tail coat. He produced first a large red bandanna with which
he blew his nose vigorously. "Snuff 'andkerchief; brought it 'ome to
be washed," he remarked, and then brought out a white handkerchief
which he used to wipe his forehead.

"It's a dirty 'abit snuff-taking," commented Mrs Gosling.

"Well, you can't smoke in the orfice," replied Gosling.

"Must be doin' somethin', I suppose?" said his wife.

When the recital of this formula had been accomplished--it was hallowed
by a precise repetition every week, and had been established now for
a quarter of a century--Gosling returned to the subject in hand.

"They does a lot of lookin' at shops," he said, "and then nothin' 'll
satisfy 'em but buyin' somethin'. Why don't they keep away from 'em?"

"Oh, well; sales begin nex' week," replied Mrs Gosling. "An' that's a
thing we 'ave to consider in our circumstances." She left the vicinity
of the gas-stove, and bustled over to the dresser. "'Ere, get out of
my way, do," she went on, "an' go up and change your coat. Dinner'll
be ready in two ticks. I shan't wait for the gells if they ain't in."

"Them sales is a fraud," remarked Gosling, but he did not stop to
argue the point.

He went upstairs and changed his respectable "morning" coat for a
short alpaca jacket, slipped his cuffs over his hands, put one inside
the other and placed them in their customary position on the chest of
drawers, changed his boots for carpet slippers, wetted his hair brush
and carefully plastered down a long wisp of grey hair over the top
of his bald head, and then went into the bathroom to wash his hands.

There had been a time in George Gosling's history when he had not been
so regardful of the decencies of life. But he was a man of position
now, and his two daughters insisted on these ceremonial observances.

Gosling was one of the world's successes. He had started life as
a National School boy, and had worked his way up through all the
grades--messenger, office-boy, junior clerk, clerk, senior clerk,
head clerk, accountant--to his present responsible position as head of
the counting-house, with a salary of £26 a month. He rented a house
in Wisteria Grove, Brondesbury, at £45 a year; he was a sidesman
of the church of St John the Evangelist, Kilburn; a member of Local
Committees; and in moments of expansion he talked of seeking election
to the District Council. A solid, sober, thoroughly respectable man,
Gosling, about whom there had never been a hint of scandal; grown
stout now, and bald--save for a little hair over the ears, and that
one persistent grey tress which he used as a sort of insufficient
wrapping for his naked skull.

Such was the George Gosling seen by his wife, daughters, neighbours,
and heads of the firm of wholesale provision merchants for whom he had
worked for forty-one years in Barbican, E.C. Yet there was another man,
hardly realized by George Gosling himself, and apparently so little
representative that even his particular cronies in the office would
never have entered any description of him, if they had been obliged
to give a detailed account of their colleague's character.

Nevertheless, if you heard Gosling laughing uproariously at some story
produced by one of those cronies, you might be quite certain that it
was a story he would not repeat before his daughters, though he might
tell his wife--if it were not too broad. If you watched Gosling in the
street, you would see that he took a strange, unaccountable interest in
the feet and ankles of young women. And if many of Gosling's thoughts
and desires had been translated into action, the Vicar of St John the
Evangelist would have dismissed his sidesman with disgust, the Local
Committees would have had no more of him, and his wife and daughters
would have regarded him as the most depraved of criminals.

Fortunately, Gosling had never been tempted beyond the powers of
his resistance. At fifty-five, he may be regarded as safe from
temptation. He seldom put any restraint upon his thoughts, outside
business hours; but he had an ideal which ruled his life--the ideal
of respectability. George Gosling counted himself--and others counted
him also--as respectable a man as could be found in the Metropolitan
Police area. There were, perhaps, a quarter of a million other men
in the same area, equally respectable.




2

As he was drying his hands, Gosling heard the front door slam and
his daughters' voices in the passage below, followed by a shrill
exhortation from the kitchen: "Now, gels, 'urry up, dinner's all
ready and your father's waitin'!"

Gosling trotted downstairs and received the usual salute from his two
girls. He noted that they were a shade more effusive than usual. "Want
more money for fal-lals," was his inward comment. They were always
wanting money for "fal-lals."

He adopted his usual line of defence through dinner and constantly
brought the subject of conversation back to the need for a reduction
of expenses. He did not see Blanche wink at Millie across the table,
during these strategic exercises; nor catch the glance of understanding
which passed between the girls and their mother. So, as his dinner
comforted and cheered him, Gosling began to relax into his usual
facetiousness; incredibly believing, despite the invariable precedents
of his family history, that his daughters had been convinced of the
hopelessness of approaching him for money that evening.

The credulous creature even allowed them to make their opening,
and then assisted them to a statement of their petition.

They were talking of a friend's engagement to be married, and Gosling
with an obtuseness he never displayed in business remarked, "Wish my
gels 'ud get married."

"Talking about us, father?" asked Blanche.

"Well, you're the only gels I've got--as I know of," said Gosling.

"Well, how can you expect us to get married when we haven't got a
decent thing to put on?" returned Blanche.

Gosling realized his danger too late. "Pooh! That don't make any
difference," he said hastily, adopting a thoroughly unsound line of
defence; "I never noticed what your mother was wearing when I courted
'er."

"Dessay you didn't," replied Millie, "I dessay most fellows couldn't
tell you what a girl was wearing, but it makes just all the difference
for all that."

"Of course it does," said Blanche. "A girl's got no chance these days
unless she can look smart. No fellow's going to marry a dowdy."

"It does make a big difference, there's no denyin'," put in Mrs
Gosling, as though she was being convinced against her will.

"And now the sales are just beginning----"

Poor Gosling knew the game was up. They had made no direct attack
upon his pocket, yet; but they would not relax their grip of this
fascinating subject till they had achieved their object. Blanche was
saying that she was ashamed to be seen anywhere; and procrastination
would be met at once by the argument--how well he knew it--based on
the premise that if you didn't buy at sale-time, you had to pay twice
as much later.

It was quite useless for Gosling to fidget, throw himself back in
his chair, frown, shake his head, and look horribly determined;
the course of progress was unalterable from the direct attack: "Do
you like to see us going about in rags, father?" through the stage
of "Well, well, 'ow much do you want? I simply can't afford----"
and the ensuing haggles down to the despairing sigh as the original
minimum demanded--in this case no less than five pounds--was forlornly
conceded, and clinched by Blanche's, "We must have it before the end
of the week, dad, the sales begin on Monday."

At the end of it all, he received what compensation they had to offer
him; hugs and kisses, offers to do all sorts of impossible things,
assistance in getting his armchair into precisely the right position,
and him into the chair, and the table cleared and the lamp in just
the right place for him to read his half-penny evening paper which
was fetched for him from the pocket of his overcoat. And, finally,
the crux of Gosling's whole position, a general air of complacency,
good-temper and comfort.

Gosling was an easy-going man, he hated rows.

"Mind you, you two," he remarked with a return to facetiousness as he
settled himself with his carpet slippers spread out to the fire--"mind
you, I look on this money as an investment. You two gels got to get
married; and quick or I shall be in the bankrup'cy Court. Don't you
forget as these 'fal-lals' is bought for a purpose."

"Oh, don't be so horrid, father," said Blanche, with a change of front;
"it sounds as if we were setting traps for men."

"Well, ain't you?" asked Gosling. "You said just now----"

"Not like that," interrupted Blanche. "It's very different just wanting
to look nice. Personally, I'm in no 'urry to get married, thank you."

"You wait till Mr Right comes along," put in Mrs Gosling, and then
turned the conversation by saying: "Well, father, what's the news
this evening?"

"Nothin' excitin'," replied Gosling. "Seems this new plague's spreadin'
in China."

"They're always inventin' new diseases, nowadays, or callin' old ones
by new names," said Mrs Gosling. The two girls were busy with a sheet
of note-paper and a stump of pencil that seemed to require frequent
lubrication; they were making calculations.

"This one's quite new, seemingly," returned Gosling. "It's only the
men as get it."

"No need for us to worry, then," put in Millie, more as a duty,
some slight return for benefits promised, than because she took any
interest in the subject. Blanche was absorbed; her unseeing gaze was
fixed on the mantelpiece and ever and again she removed the point of
the pencil from her mouth and wrote feverishly.

"Oh, ain't there?" replied Gosling. He turned his head in order to
argue from so strong a position. "And where'd you be, and all the
rest of the women, if you 'adn't got no men to look after you?"

"I expect we could get along pretty well, if we had to," said Millie.

Gosling winked at his wife, and indicated by an upward movement of
his chin that he was astounded at such innocence. "Who'd buy your
'fal-lals' for you, I should like to know?" he asked.

"We'd have to earn money for ourselves," said Millie.

"Ah! I'd like to see you or Blanche takin' over my job," replied her
father. "Why, I'll lay there's 'alf a dozen mistakes in the figurin'
she's doing at the present moment. Let me see!"

Blanche descended suddenly from visions of Paradise, and put her hand
over the sheet of note-paper. "You can't, father," she said.

Gosling looked sly. "Indeed?" he said, with simulated surprise. "And
why not? Ain't I to be allowed to judge of the nature of the investment
I'm goin' in for? I might give you an 'int or two from the gentleman's
point of view."

Blanche shook her head. "I haven't added it up yet," she said.

Gosling did not press the point; he returned to his original
position. "I dunno where you ladies 'ud be if you 'adn't no gentlemen
to look after you."

Mrs Gosling smirked. "We'll 'ope it won't come to that," she
said. "China's a long way off."

"Appears as there's been one case in Russia, though," remarked
Gosling. He saw that he had rather a good thing in this threat of male
extermination, a pleasant, harmless threat to hold over his feminine
dependents; a means to emphasize the facts of masculine superiority
and of the absolute necessity for masculine intelligence; facts that
were not sufficiently well realized in Wisteria Grove, at times.

Mrs Gosling yawned surreptitiously. She was doing her best to be
pleasant, but the subject bored her. She was a practical woman
who worked hard all day to keep her house clean, and received very
feeble assistance from the daughters for whom her one ambition was
an establishment conducted on lines precisely similar to her own.

Millie and Blanche had returned to their calculations and were
completely absorbed.

"In Russia? Just fancy," commented Mrs Gosling.

"In Moscow," said Gosling, studying his Evening News. "'E was an
official on the trans-Siberian Railway. 'As soon as the disease
was identified as a case of the new plague,'" read Gosling, "'the
patient was at once removed to the infectious hospital and strictly
isolated. He died within two hours of his admission. Stringent measures
are being taken to prevent the infection from spreading.'"

"Was 'e a married man?" asked Mrs Gosling.

"Doesn't say," replied her husband. "But the point is that if it once
gets to Europe, who knows where it'll stop?"

"They'll see to that, you may be sure," said Mrs Gosling, with a
beautiful faith in the scientific resources of civilization. "It said
somethin' about that in the bit you've just read."

Gosling was not to be done out of his argument. "Very like," he
said. "But now, just supposin' as this 'ere plague did spread to
London, and 'alf the men couldn't go to work; where d'you fancy
you'd be?"

Mrs Gosling was unable to grasp the intricacies of this
abstraction. "Well, of course, every one knows as we couldn't get on
without the men," she said.

"Ah! well there you are, got it in once," said Gosling. "And don't
you gels forget it," he added turning to his daughters.

Millie only giggled, but Blanche said, "All right, dad, we won't."

The girls returned to their calculations; they had arrived at the
stage of cutting out all those items which were not "absolutely
necessary." Five pounds had proved a miserably inadequate sum on paper.

Gosling returned to his Evening News, which presently slipped gently
from his hand to the floor. Mrs Gosling looked up from her sewing
and put a finger on her lips. The voices of Blanche and Millie were
subdued to sibilant whisperings.

Gosling had forgotten his economic problems, and his daring
abstractions concerning a world despoiled of male activity, especially
of that essential activity, as he figured it, the making of money--the
wage-earner was enjoying his after-dinner nap, hedged about, protected
and cared for by his womankind.

There may have been a quarter of a million wage-earners in Greater
London at that moment, who, however much they differed from Gosling
on such minor questions as Tariff Reform or the capabilities of the
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have agreed with him as a
matter of course, on the essentials he had discussed that evening.




3

At half-past nine the click of the letter-box, followed by a resounding
double-knock, announced the arrival of the last post. Millie jumped
up at once and went out eagerly.

Mr Gosling opened his eyes and stared with drunken fixity at the
mantelpiece; then, without moving the rest of his body, he began to
grope automatically with his left hand for the fallen newspaper. He
found it at last, picked it up and pretended to read with sleep-sodden
eyes.

"It's the post, dear," remarked Mrs Gosling.

Gosling yawned enormously. "Who's it for?" he asked.

"Millie! Millie!" called Mrs Gosling. "Why don't you bring the
letters in?"

Millie did not reply, but she came slowly into the room, in her hands
a letter which she was examining minutely.

"Who's it for, Mill?" asked Blanche, impatiently.

"Father," replied Millie, still intent on her study. "It's a foreign
letter. I seem to remember the writing, too, only I can't fix it
exactly."

"'Ere, 'and it over, my gel," said Gosling, and Millie reluctantly
parted with her fascinating enigma.

"I know that 'and, too," remarked Gosling, and he, also, would have
spent some time in the attempt to guess the puzzle without looking
up the answer within the envelope, but the three spectators, who were
not sharing his interest, manifested impatience.

"Well, ain't you going to open it, father?" asked Millie, and Mrs
Gosling looked at her husband over her spectacles and remarked,
"It must be a business letter, if it comes from foreign parts."

"Don't get business letters to this address," returned the head
of the house, "besides which it's from Warsaw; we don't do nothin'
with Warsaw."

At last he opened the letter.

The three women fixed their gaze on Gosling's face.

"Well?" ejaculated Millie, after a silence of several seconds. "Aren't
you going to tell us?"

"You'd never guess," said Gosling triumphantly.

"Anyone we know?" asked Blanche.

"Yes, a gentleman."

"Oh! tell us, father," urged the impatient Millie.

"It's from the Mr Thrale, as lodged with us once," announced Gosling.

"Oh! dear, our Mr Fastidious," commented Blanche, "I thought he was
dead long ago."

"It must be over four years since 'e left," put in Mrs Gosling.

"Getting on for five," corrected Blanche. "I remember I put my hair
up while he was here."

"What's he say?" asked Millie.

"'E says, 'Dear Mr Gosling, I expect you will be surprised to 'ear
from me after my five years' silence----'"

"I said it was five years," put in Blanche. "Go on, dad!"

Dad resumed "... 'but I 'ave been in various parts of the world and it
'as been quite impossible to keep up a correspondence. I am writing
now to tell you that I shall be back in London in a few days, and to
ask you whether you can find a room for me in Wisteria Grove?'"

"Well! I should 'ave thought he'd 'ave written to me to ask that!" said
Mrs Gosling.

"So 'e should 'ave, by rights," agreed Gosling. "But 'e's a queer
card is Mr Thrale."

"Bit dotty, if you ask me," said Blanche.

"'S that all?" asked Mrs Gosling.

"No, 'e says: 'I can't give you an address as I go on to Berlin
immediately, but I will look you up the evening after I arrive. Eastern
Europe is not safe at the present time. There 'ave been several
cases of the new plague in Moscow, but the authorities are doing
everything they can--which is much in Russia--to keep the news out
of the press, yours sincerely, Jasper Thrale,' and that's the lot,"
concluded Gosling.

"I do think he's a cool hand," commented Blanche. "Of course you
won't have him as a paying guest now?"

Gosling and his wife looked at each other, thoughtfully.

"Well----" hesitated Gosling.

"'E might bring the infection," suggested Mrs Gosling.

"Oh! no fear of that," returned her husband, "but I dunno as we want
a boarder now. Five years ago I 'adn't got my big rise----"

"Oh, no, father; what would the neighbours think of us if we started
to take boarders again?" protested Blanche.

"It wouldn't look well," agreed Mrs Gosling.

"Jus' what I was thinking," said the head of the house. "'Owever,
there's no 'arm in payin' us a friendly visit."

"O' course not," said Mrs Gosling, "though I do think it odd 'e
shouldn't 'ave written to me in the first place.

"He's dotty!" said Blanche.

Gosling shook his head. "Not by a very long chalk 'e ain't," was his
firm pronouncement....

"Well, girls, what about bed?" asked Mrs Gosling, putting away the
"bit of mending" she had been engaged upon.

Gosling yawned again, stretched himself, and rose grunting to his
feet. "I'm about ready for my bed," he remarked, and after another
yawn he started his nightly round of inspection.

When he returned to the sitting-room the others were all ready to
retire. Gosling kissed his daughters, and the two girls and their
mother went upstairs. Gosling carefully took off the larger pieces
of coal from the fire and put them under the grate, rolled up the
hearthrug, saw that the window was securely fastened, extinguished
the lamp and followed his "womenfolk."

As he was undressing his thoughts turned once more to the threat of
the new disease which was devastating China.

"Rum thing about that new plague," he remarked to his wife. "Seems
as it's only men as get it."

"They'd never let it spread to England," replied Mrs Gosling.

"Oh! there's no fear of that, none whatever," said Gosling, "but it's
rum that about women never catching it."

The attitude of the Goslings faithfully reflected that of the immense
majority of English people. The faith in the hygienic and scientific
resources which were at the disposal of the authorities, and the
implicit trust in the vigilance and energy of those authorities, were
sufficient to allay any fears that were not too imminent. It was some
one's duty to look after these things, and if they were not looked
after there would be letters in the papers about it. At last, without
question, the authorities would be roused to a sense of duty and the
trouble, whatever it was, would be stopped. Precisely what authority
managed these affairs none of the huge Gosling family knew. Vaguely
they pictured Medical Boards, or Health Committees; dimly they
connected these things with local government; at the top, doubtless,
was some managing authority--in Whitehall probably--something to
do with the supreme head of affairs, the much abused but eminently
paternal Government.







II--THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE


1

"Lord, how I do envy you," said Morgan Gurney.

Jasper Thrale sat forward in his chair. "There's no reason why you
shouldn't do what I've done--and more," he said.

"Theoretically, I suppose not," replied Gurney. "It's just making
the big effort to start with. You see I've got a very decent berth
and good prospects, and it's comfortable and all that. Only when
some fellow like you comes along and tells one yarns of the world
outside, I get sort of hankerings after the sea and adventure, and
seeing the big things. It's only now and then--ordinary times I'm
contented enough." He stuck his pipe in the corner of his mouth and
stared into the fire.

"The only things that really count are feeling clean and strong and
able," said Thrale. "You never really have that feeling if you live
in the big cities."

"I've felt like that sometimes after a long bicycle ride," interpolated
Gurney.

"But then the feeling is wasted, you see," said Thrale. "When you
feel like that and there is something tremendous to spend it upon,
you get the great emotion as well."

"Like the glimmer of St Agnes' light, after you'd been eight weeks
out of sight of land?" reflected Gurney, going back to one of Thrale's
reminiscences.

"To feel that you are a part of life, not this dead, stale life of
the city, but the life of the whole universe," said Thrale.

"I know," replied Gurney. "To-night I've half a mind to chuck my job
and go out looking for mystery."

"But you won't do it," said Thrale.

Gurney sighed and began to analyse the instinct within himself,
to find precisely why he wanted to do it.

"Well, I must go," said Thrale, getting to his feet, "I've got to
find some sort of lodging."

"I thought you were going to stay with those Gosling people of yours,"
said Gurney.

"No! That's off. I went to see them last night and they won't have
me. The old man's making his £300 a year now, and the family's too
respectable to take boarders." Thrale picked up his hat and held out
his hand.

"But, look here, old chap, why the devil can't you stay here?" asked
Gurney.

"I didn't know that you'd anywhere to put me," said Thrale.

"Oh, yes. There's always a room to be had downstairs," said Gurney.

After a brief discussion the arrangement was made.

"It's understood I'm to pay my whack," said Thrale.

"Of course, if you insist----"

When Thrale had gone to fetch his luggage from the hotel, Gurney
sat pondering over the fire. He was debating whether he had been
altogether wise in pressing his invitation. He was wondering whether
the curiously rousing personality of Thrale, and the stories of those
still existent corners of the world outside the rules of civilization
were good for a civil servant with an income of £600 a year. Gurney,
faced with the plain alternatives, could only decide that he would be a
fool to throw up a congenial and lucrative occupation such as his own,
in order to face present physical discomfort and future penury. He
knew that the discomforts would be very real to him at first. His
friends would think him mad. And all for the sake of experiencing
some high emotion now and again, in order to feel clean and fresh
and be able to discover something of the unknown mystery of life.

"I suppose there is something of the poet in me," reflected
Gurney. "And I expect I should hate the discomforts. One's imagination
gets led away...."




2

During the next few evenings the conversations between these two
friends were many and protracted.

Thrale was the teacher, and Gurney was content to sit at his feet
and learn. He had a receptive mind, he was interested in all life,
but Uppingham, Trinity Hall, and the Home Civil had constricted his
mental processes. At twenty-nine he was losing flexibility. Thrale
gave him back his power to think, set him outside the formulas of
his school, taught him that however sound his deductions, there was
not one of his premises which could not be disputed.

Thrale was Gurney's senior by three years, and when Thrale left
Uppingham at eighteen, he had gone out into the world. He had a
patrimony of some £200 a year; but he had taken only a lump sum of
£100 and had started out to appease his furious curiosity concerning
life. He had laboured as a miner in the Klondike; had sailed, working
his passage as an ordinary seaman, from San Francisco to Southampton;
he had been a stockman in Australia, assistant to a planter in Ceylon,
a furnace minder in Kimberley and a tally clerk in Hong Kong. For
nearly nine years, indeed, he had earned a living in every country
of the world except Europe, and then he had come back to London and
invested the accumulation of income that his trustee had amassed for
him. The mere spending of money had no fascination for him. During
the six months he had remained in London he had lived very simply,
lodging with the Goslings in Kilburn, and, because he could not live
idly, exploring every corner of the great city and writing articles
for the journals. He might have earned a large income by this latter
means, for he had an originality of outlook and a freshness of style
that made his contributions eagerly sought after once he had obtained
a hearing--no difficult matter in London for anyone who has something
new to say. But experience, not income, was his desire, and at the
end of six months he had accepted an offer from the Daily Post as a
European correspondent--on space. He was offered £600 a year, but
he preferred to be free, and he had no wish to be confined to one
capital or country.

In those five years he had traversed Europe, sending in his articles
irregularly, as he required money. And during that time his chief
trustee--a lawyer of the soundest reputation--had absconded, and
Thrale found his private income reduced to about £40 a year, the
interest on one of the investments he had made, in his own name only,
with his former accumulation--two other investments made at the same
time had proved unsound.

This loss had not troubled him in any way. When he had read in a
London journal of his trustee's abscondence--he was later sentenced
to fourteen years' penal servitude--Thrale had smiled and dismissed
the matter from his mind. He could always earn all the money he
required, and had never, not even subconsciously, relied upon his
private fortune.

He had now come back to London with a definite purpose, he had come
to warn England of a great danger....

One other distinguishing mark of Jasper Thrale's life must be
understood, a mark which differentiated him from the overwhelming
majority of his fellow men--women had no fascination for him. Once in
his life, and once only, had he approached and tasted experience--with
a pretty little Melbourne cocotte. That experience he had undertaken
deliberately, because he felt that until it had been undergone one
great factor of life would be unknown to him. He had come away from
it filled with a disgust of himself that had endured for months....




3

Fragments of the long conversations between Thrale and Gurney,
the exchange of a few germane ideas among the irrelevant mass,
had a bearing upon their immediate future. There was, for instance,
a criticism of the Goslings, introduced on one occasion, which had
a certain significance in relation to subsequent developments.

Some question of Gurney's prompted Thrale to the opinion that the
Goslings were in the main precisely like half a million other families
of the same class.

"But that's just what makes them so interesting," said Gurney,
not because he believed it, but because at the moment he wanted to
lead the conversation into safe ground, away from the too appealing
attractions of the big world outside the little village of London.

Thrale laughed. "That's truer than you guess," he said. "Every
large generalization, however trite, is a valuable contribution to
knowledge--if it's more or less accurate."

"Generalize, then, mon vieux," suggested Gurney, "from the characters
and doings of your little geese."

"I've seen glimmerings of the immortal god in the old man," said
Thrale, "like the hint of sunlight seen through a filthy pane
of obscured glass. He's a prurient-minded old beast leading what's
called a respectable life, but if he could indulge his ruling desire
with absolute secrecy, no woman would be safe with him. In his world
he can't do that, or thinks he can't, which comes to precisely the
same thing. He is too much afraid of being caught, he sees danger
where none exists, he looks to all sorts of possibilities, and won't
take a million-to-one chance because he is risking his all--which is
included in the one word, respectability."

"Jolly good thing. What?" remarked Gurney.

"Good for society as a whole, apparently," replied Thrale, "but surely
not good for the man. I've told you that I have seen glimmerings of
the god in him, but outside the routine of his work the man's mind
is clogged. He's not much over fifty, and he has no outlet, now,
for his desires. He's like a man with choked pores, and his body is
po