“Can you blame them? They are the product of a corrupt society. No one can blame them, whatever they are or do. The dunghill cannot bring forth the rose. Your service has debased them. The fault of their debasement lies with you.”
“But Critchett cannot be debased. He must, living in so rarefied a moral atmosphere, be elevated above all mortal weaknesses.”
Bertram replies stiffly: “I can assure you I have much more respect for Critchett than for any member of a St. James’ Street club.”
“And yet you give him carrot fritters!” cried Lady Southwold.
Bertram replies with great irritation: “He eats whatever he pleases, turtle and turbot for aught I know. I should never presume to impose upon him either my menu or my tenets, my beliefs or my principles.”
“You do wisely if you wish to keep him!” says his aunt. “I hope you will keep him. He is your only link with civilised life.”
Bertram smiles. “My dear aunt, when I was in the South Pacific I landed at a small island where civilisation was considered to consist in a pierced nose and a swollen belly. I do not want to be offensive, but the estimate which my age takes of its own civilisation is not very much more sensible.”
“I think it would have been better, Wilfrid, to study psychology under these savages than to publish the Age to Come! You could not have injured them, but here——”
“How illiberal you are, dear Lady Southwold,” says Cicely Seymour. “You want a course of Montaigne.”
“What’s that, Miss Seymour?” asks Marlow. “A rival to Mariani wine?”