“I once saw a painter who had no arms,” said the old gentleman. “It was in Paris, and he held the brushes with his toes. There is an idiot in the asylum now, who likes nothing better than to pull his shoes off and tie knots in a rope with his feet all day long.”
“He is probably one of us,” suggested Crowdie. “We artists are all half-witted. Give him a brush and see whether he has any talent for painting with his toes.”
“That’s an idea,” answered the philanthropist, thoughtfully. “Transference of manual skill from hands to feet,” he continued in a low, dreamy voice, thinking aloud. “Abnormal connections of nerves with next adjoining brain centres—yes—there might be something in it—yes—yes—”
The old gentleman had theories of his own about nerves and brain centres. He had never even studied anatomy, but he speculated in the wildest manner upon the probability of impossible cases of nerve derangement and imperfect development, and had long believed himself an authority on the subject.
The dinner was quite as short as most modern meals. Old Mr. Lauderdale and Crowdie smoked, and Alexander Junior, who despised such weaknesses, stayed in the dining-room with them. Neither Mrs. Lauderdale nor Katharine would have objected to smoking in the library, but Alexander’s inflexible conservatism abhorred such a practice.
“I can’t tell why it is,” said Katharine, when she was alone with her mother, “but that man is positively repulsive to me. It must be something besides his ugliness, and even that ought to be redeemed by his eyes and that beautiful voice of his. But it’s not. There’s something about him—” She stopped, in the sheer impossibility of expressing her meaning.
Her mother said nothing in answer, but looked at her with calm and quiet eyes, rather thoughtfully.
“Is it very foolish of me, mother? Don’t you notice something, too, when he’s near you?”
“Yes. He’s like a poisonous flower.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to say. That and—the title of Tennyson’s poem, what is it? Oh—‘A Vision of Sin’—don’t you know?”