“I made no such statement. But this I say—that any man who contemplates self-destruction has, for the time being, lost his sense of humour.”
“I am in no hurry. Why?”
“Because he is taking himself with that exaggerated seriousness which is the trade-mark of the bore.”
“Is a suicide a bore?”
“Certainly. He is a man with a grievance, who, professing to accept life as a game of chances, cries out if the cards are against him. His tone may be clamorous or subdued; but it always carries the same refrain. At a certain point he would almost resent good fortune, for he hath persuaded himself that he is born the butt of Providence; and his vanity is such that he would not have even a diseased judgment of his refuted. Vanity, vanity—he is the very maggot of it.”
“Continue, continue, my friend. This is not Coke or Lyttleton.”
“Sir, I will continue. You decry my profession; but what doth it teach a man, if not to look below the surface? The suicide is he who will not take his own destinies in hand; for at heart he is a sensuous fellow, who hath subordinated his instinct for combativeness to a poor sentiment of fatality. In a world of noble struggle he would lie down and ignobly sleep. Thus, like a distempered cur, he turns and gnaws his own flesh; or, weakly despairing, stings himself to death like the fire-ringed scorpion.”
The baronet sat amazed.
“This is no lawyer,” he cried; “but a Wesley come to judgment!”
The dried-stick of a man in the bows drew in his breath, and leaned forward, with moist eyes, the lids whereof were like dead sea-weed.