“Sleep well?” his cousin inquired, when he appeared very late next day for déjeuner. “Think you’ll be able to work in that room all right?”
“I slept, yes, thanks,” said Jones. “No doubt I shall work there right enough—when I’m rested. By the bye,” he asked presently, “what has the attic been used for lately? What’s been in it, I mean?”
“Books, only books,” was the reply. “I’ve stored my ‘library’ there for months, without a chance of using it. I move about so much, you see. Five hundred books were taken out just before you came. I often think,” he added lightly, “that when books are unopened like that for long, the minds that wrote them must get restless and——”
“What sort of books were they?” Jones interrupted.
“Fiction, poetry, philosophy, history, religion, music. I’ve got two hundred books on music alone.”
XXI
VIOLENCE
“But what seems so odd to me, so horribly pathetic, is that such people don’t resist,” said Leidall, suddenly entering the conversation. The intensity of his tone startled everybody; it was so passionate, yet with a beseeching touch that made the women feel uncomfortable a little. “As a rule, I’m told, they submit willingly, almost as though——”
He hesitated, grew confused, and dropped his glance to the floor; and a smartly dressed woman eager to be heard, seized the opening. “Oh, come now,” she laughed; “one always hears of a man being put into a strait waistcoat. I’m sure he doesn’t slip it on as if he were going to a dance!” And she looked flippantly at Leidall, whose casual manners she resented. “People are put under restraint. It’s not in human nature to accept it—healthy human nature, that is?” But for some reason no one took her question up. “That is so, I believe, yes,” a polite voice murmured, while the group at tea in the Dover Street Club turned with one accord to Leidall as to one whose interesting sentence still remained unfinished. He had hardly spoken before, and a silent man is ever credited with wisdom.
“As though—you were just saying, Mr. Leidall?” a quiet little man in a dark corner helped him.
“As though, I meant, a man in that condition of mind is not insane—all through,” Leidall continued stammeringly; “but that some wise portion of him watches the proceeding with gratitude, and welcomes the protection against himself. It seems awfully pathetic. Still,” again hesitating and fumbling in his speech—“er—it seems queer to me that he should yield quietly to enforced restraint—the waistcoat, handcuffs, and the rest.” He looked round hurriedly, half suspiciously, at the faces in the circle, then dropped his eyes again to the floor. He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I cannot understand it,” he added, as no one spoke, but in a very low voice, and almost to himself. “One would expect them to struggle furiously.”