“You thought he was going to kill himself?”
“No, I didn’t think anything so definite as that, but I had an intuition to ask him to come away with me, and I was afraid he’d think it rather cheek and, oh, Mrs. Ross, what on earth good am I? I believe I’ve got the gift of understanding people, and yet I’m afraid to use it. Shall I ever learn?”
Michael looked at Mrs. Ross in despair. He was exasperated by his own futility. He went on to rail at himself.
“The only gift I have got! And then my detestable self-consciousness wrecks the first decent chance I’ve had to turn it to account.”
They talked for some time. At first Mrs. Ross consoled him, insisting that imagination affected by what had happened later was playing him false. Then she seemed to be trying to state an opinion which she found it difficult to state. She spoke to Michael of qualities which in the future with one quality added would show his way in the world clear and straight before him. He was puzzled to guess at what career she was hinting.
“My dear Michael, I would not tell you for anything,” she affirmed.
“Why not?”
“Why not? Why, because with all the ingenuous proclamations of your willingness to do anything that you’re positive you can do better than anything else, I’m quite, quite sure you’re still the rather perverse Michael of old, and as I sit here talking to you I remember the time when I told you as a little boy that you would have been a Roundhead in the time of the Great Rebellion. How angry you were with me! So what I think you’re going to do—I almost said when you’re grown up—but I mean when you leave Oxford, I shall have to tell you after you have made up your own mind. I shall have to give myself merely the pleasure of saying, ‘I knew it.’”
“I suppose really I know what you think I shall do,” said Michael slowly. “But you’re wrong—at least, I think you’re wrong. I lack the mainspring of the parson’s life. Talk to me about Kenneth instead of myself. How’s he getting on?”
“Oh, he’s splendid at five years old, but I want to give him something more than I ever managed to give you.”