“Possibly. Who’d talk him back—to something like he used to be.”
“Yes. If such a man as Wilfred Devizes, for example, could talk to him——”
“I don’t know much about these people. I’ve read some Freud of course—and a little Jung.”
“I know Devizes slightly. We talked at lunch. And I liked his wife. And if perhaps you could get your father away into a country cottage. By the by—have you got any money?”
“He’s got the cheque-book, but he makes me an allowance. So far there’s been no money trouble. He signs his cheques all right.”
“But he may not presently.”
“Oh! Of course at any time he may begin putting a swastika or a royal cipher in the place of his signature, and then the fat would be in the fire. I shouldn’t know where to turn. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No,” said Lambone.
For some seconds—it seemed quite a long time to Christina Alberta—he said nothing more. He sat half leaning upon the arm of his chair and looked past her at the fire. She had said what she wanted to say, and now stood waiting for him to speak. His wisdom told him that things had to be done in this matter very soon; his temperament inclined him just to stay in that pleasant room and say things. Meanwhile she looked about the room and realized how comfortable a wise man could be. It was the best furnished room she had ever been in. The chairs were jolly; there were bound books in the bookcase, a delightful old Chinese horse on the top of it; all his tea-things were silver or fine china; there was a great writing-desk with silver candlesticks; the windows that gave on Half Moon Street were curtained with a rich, subtly folding material very pleasing to the eye. Her eyes came back to his big fat face and his peevish mouth and fine, meditative eyes.
“Something,” he said and sighed, “ought to be done at once. It isn’t a matter to leave about. He might commit some indiscretion. And get into trouble.”