CHAPTER VII.
AN IMPOSSIBLE BARGAIN.
“I should eat humble-pie, George,” said Mr. Blodwell, tapping his eye-glasses against his front teeth. “She’s one too many for you.”
“Do you think I’m wrong?”
“On the whole, I incline to think you’re right. But I should eat humble-pie if I were you, all the same.”
The suggested diet is palatable to nobody, and the power of consuming it without contortion is rightly put high in the list of virtues, if virtue be proportionate to difficulty. To a man of George Neston’s temperament penance was hard, even when enforced by the consciousness of sin; to bend the knees in abasement, when the soul was erect in self-approval, came nigh impossibility.
Still it was unquestionably necessary that he should assume the sheet and candle, or put up with an alternative hardly, if at all, less unpleasant. The “Fourth Paragraph” had appeared. It was called a paragraph for the sake of uniformity, but it was in reality a narrative, stretching to a couple of columns, and giving a detailed account of the attempted identification. For once, George implicitly believed the editor’s statement that his information came to him on unimpeachable authority. The story was clearly not only inspired by, but actually written by the hand of Gerald himself, and it breathed a bitter hostility to himself that grieved George none the less because it was very natural. This hostility showed itself, here and there, in direct attack; more constantly in irony and ingenious ridicule. George’s look, manner, tones, and walk were all pressed into the service. In a word, the article certainly made him look an idiot; he rather thought it made him look a malignant idiot.
“What can you do?” demanded Mr. Blodwell again. “You can’t bring up any more people from Peckton. You chose your witnesses, and they let you in.”
George nodded.