“Yes, Tom,” she said, “it is the realest thing in the world.”
Unluckily, at that moment Tom’s candle fell out of the candle-stick he was carrying, spattering his trousers with wax, and making it absolutely imperative to speak of the annoying ways of wax candles, and the possible opportunity passed, and it became harder to take advantage of the next.
Old Mr. Carlingford was not very well. He was suffering from a slight attack of gout, and the man who behaves cheerfully and equably under such an infliction has yet to be found. Consequently at dinner he spent his irritation by being less amiably cynical than usual, and he discussed questions of ethics in a somewhat unpleasant manner.
“Good and bad is a very poor division to make of the human race,” he said. “How is one to know in ninety cases out of a hundred if a man is good or not? He doesn’t wear a certificate round his neck. You might as well divide the race, for any practical purpose, into those who have got strawberry marks on their left arm and those who have not. Fools and wise is the only proper classification.”
“But they don’t wear certificates round their necks,” said Tom.
“No, Tom, and people don’t wear certificates round their necks to say whether they’ve got noses or not. The fact is so patent.”
“Only to the wise,” said Tom.
“Exactly so, and the fools don’t matter. Whereas about good and bad, the better a man is the more easily is he deceived, because it is impossible to know much of this wicked world and remain good. ‘Keep yourself unspotted from the world!’ Yes, you can do that if you seal yourself hermetically up in a convent or monastery, in which case it is hard to see why you have been born at all. To live like that casts a stigma on the intelligence of the Creator.”
Tom unthinkingly laughed, for the conviction which his father threw into this last remark amused him, but looking up he saw May flush deeply and bend her eyes over her plate. Dessert was on the table, and she ate her orange quickly, and rose to leave.
Tom saw the trouble in her face, but did not see how to remedy it. He and his father drew their chairs up to the fire, and the latter, abstaining for hygienic reasons from port, “took it out” in cynicism.