“Why, I suppose it amounts to this, that you can do almost anything once you get into the way of it. Why, I don’t know; I suppose it’s the natural constitution of the mind.”
“The ‘natural constitution of the mind’ is a conversational counter with whose value I am not acquainted. That you can get into the way of doing almost anything, is simple fact; but you must add, of thinking anything, of feeling anything, before you begin to limit the force of habit.”
“I think I begin to see what you mean. We, my child and I, are not so much to blame now for our sullen and resentful feelings, because we have got the habit of them. But surely habits may be cured?”
“Ah, once we begin to see that, we are to blame for them. We must ask, How are we to set about the cure? What’s to be done? What hopeless idiots we are, the best of us, not to see that the very existence of an evil is a demand for its cure, and that, in the moral world, there’s a dock for every nettle!”
“And then, surely, the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, is a bitter law. How could Dorothy help what she inherited?”
“Dorothy could not help it, but you could; and what have you two excellent parents been about to defer until the child is budding into womanhood this cure which should have been achieved in her infancy? Surely, seventeen years ago at least, you must have seen indications of the failing which must needs be shown up now, to the poor girl’s discredit.”
I grew hot all over under this home thrust, while George looked half dubious, half repentant, not being quite sure where his offence lay.
“It is doubly my fault, doctor, I see it all now. When Dorothy was a child I would not face the fact. It was too awful to think my child would be as I still was. So we had many little fictions that both nurse and mother saw through: the child was poorly, was teething still, was overdone. The same thing, only more so, went on during her schoolroom life. Dorothy was delicate, wanted stamina, must have a tonic. And this, though we had a governess who tried to convince me that it was temper and not delicacy that ailed my little girl. The worst of deceiving yourself is that you get to believe the lie. I saw much less of the schoolroom than of the nursery party, and firmly believed in Dorothy’s frequent attacks of indisposition.”
“But, supposing you had faced the truth, what would you have done?”
“There is my excuse; I had no idea that anything could be done.”