“But if Mrs Waynflete knew that it was a matter of health—You must really let your friends know that you have to be careful.”
It was a new idea to Guy that the effects of his attacks were of importance in themselves, and naturally an unwelcome one. He looked rather obstinate, and went on eating his salad. After a minute or two, he said—
“I will do what I come to think is right. No one else can quite know.”
“No; but don’t you see, my dear boy, that whatever strengthens your constitution altogether will help you to—to—contend with your trouble—and make it less likely to attack you?”
“Yes,” said Guy, slowly. “What other people say does help one to think.”
“Well, there’s no hurry to decide,” said Cuthbert. “You still think you would like to go down to-night? Certainly, there isn’t much on at present here. What shall we do this afternoon?”
A friend of Staunton’s here turned up and pressed on their acceptance some tickets for a morning performance of Hamlet, in which he was interested.
“Should you like to go, Guy?” said Cuthbert; “there would be plenty of time to dine afterwards, and get our train.”
Guy thought that he would like it, and it was not till they were sitting in the stalls that it struck his friend that Hamlet was not calculated to divert his mind from the subject that engrossed it. Still, it must be familiar to him.
But Cuthbert failed to realise that, though Guy believed himself to have “read Shakespeare,” it is possible for a country-bred youth, brought up in an unliterary and non-play-going family, to bring an extremely fresh interest to bear on our great dramatist, and though Guy was not quite in the condition of the lady who, in the middle of the murder scene in Macbeth, observed tearfully to her friend, “Oh dear, I am afraid this cannot end well!” he was but dimly prepared for what he was going to see. He gave an odd little laugh as the ghost crossed the stage, but watched intently and quietly.