“For you?”
“Yes, for me. And every one. About Life and the Mysteries. I had grown a sort of feeling there would be something there. Now—I don’t know where to turn.”
“But what sort of thing, what significance did you expect?”
“Isn’t Life a Riddle, Christina Alberta? Haven’t you noticed that? Do you think it is just nothing but studios and dances and excursions and char-à-bancs and meal-times and harvest?” he said. “Obviously there is something more in it than that. Obviously. All that is just a Veil. Outward Showing. H’rrmp. And I don’t know what is behind it, and I am just a plain boarder—in a boarding house—and my life is passing away. Very difficult. H’rrmp. Almost impossible. It worries me exceedingly. Somewhere there must be a clue.”
“But that’s how we all feel, Daddy,” cried Christina Alberta.
“Things can’t be what they seem,” said Mr. Preemby, waving his hand with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal towards Rusthall Village, public house, lamp-posts, a policeman, a dog, a grocer’s delivery van and three passing automobiles. “That at any rate is obvious. It would be too absurd. Infinite space; stars and so forth. Just for running about in—between meals....”
Now who would have thought, Christina Alberta reflected, that this sort of thing was going on in his head? Who would have thought it?
“Either I am a Reincarnation,” said Mr. Preemby, “or I am not. And if I am not, then I want to know what all this business of the world is about. Symbolical it must be, Christina Alberta. But of what?
“All those years at the Laundry I knew that that life wasn’t real. A period of rest and preparation. Your dear mother thought differently—we never discussed it, h’rrmp, but it was so.”
Christina Alberta could find no adequate comment and they went on in silence for some time. When they spoke again it was to discuss how they could get round to the High Rocks Hotel for tea.