“You did not know,” Geraldine excused him.
“Responsible none the less,” Richard insisted quietly. “You surely don’t believe that the events of this world depend on whether folks know or are sorry or even wish otherwise? I gave that boy the money that sent him back to the devil. Knowing or not knowing has nothing to do with the fact. I feel responsible and I’ll make what amends I can.”
“You can do nothing with Walter. Everybody has given him up. And it is such a pity. He’s really a nice gentle boy who has been poisoned, that’s all.... But he is frightful when the devil gets working in him. Mother isn’t afraid of him, but I am. You can do nothing; nobody can.”
“We’ll see,” said Richard. “I am terrifically strong. I can lift and pull and knock things about in a quite extraordinary manner. That gives me confidence. This drink business is largely mental. I’ve done a little mental-suggesting, out of curiosity merely. Let me have a try at the boy.”
“If you talk that way,” she laughed as she left him to take her turn below, “you and mother will get along famously, and she’ll believe anything you tell her. Mental is mother’s favourite word. With mother everything is mental.”
“Everything is,” he assured her solemnly. “Even you, now, charming as you are, even you are only a figment of my brain, a well-ordered complication of my optic nerve. See! I can close my eyes so—and poof! you vanish. To me you are a very pleasant dream.”
“Thank you.”
“And for me you would not exist at all,” he went on, “if I ceased to hear you, see you, touch you, taste you and—I haven’t tasted you yet, but I would know your scent in the dark.”
“How dreadful!”
“Oh, no! No; no!” he sniffed the air delicately. “It is a faint orris and carbolic acid. Very pleasant, really; and perfectly antiseptic. You probably use an orris perfume. I don’t know what the carbolic is. All existence is sensation and I am an epicure on the cultivation of the senses. I am right about the scents, am I not?”