He was irritated to find that Mrs.
Moreen was right, that he couldn't at the pinch bear to leave the child.
This stood out clearer for the very reason that, the night of his
desperate appeal to his patrons, he had seen fully for the first time
where he was. Wasn't it another proof of the success with which those
patrons practised their arts that they had managed to avert for so long
the illuminating flash? It descended on our friend with a breadth of
effect which perhaps would have struck a spectator as comical, after he
had returned to his little servile room, which looked into a close court
where a bare dirty opposite wall took, with the sound of shrill clatter,
the reflexion of lighted back windows. He had simply given himself away
to a band of adventurers. The idea, the word itself, wore a romantic
horror for him--he had always lived on such safe lines. Later it assumed
a more interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a moral, and
Pemberton could enjoy a moral. The Moreens were adventurers not merely
because they didn't pay their debts, because they lived on society, but
because their whole view of life, dim and confused and instinctive, like
that of clever colour-blind animals, was speculative and rapacious and
mean.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43