“You are right. It can do no good—now. But we can’t talk as man to man until we’ve had it out. So now you know how I feel. As for the rest—I’ve done a lot of things, been a bigger fool than you’ve ever been, so, your adjective doesn’t apply.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“You’ve changed; changed a lot! You talk like a two-fisted man. How long have you been away from that precious family of ours?”
“About five years.” I drew a letter from my pocket. “It was through Molly I heard of you.”
His face softened. “The one human being in the family.”
“And Rossie, Alan.”
“Yes, yes,—Rossie,” he said hastily. “Had he lived—but he didn’t. Great God! What a family! As much human affection as you can squeeze out of the hind foot of a horsefly! You—you were one of them, but I—God knows why—I was different. I was stifling in that atmosphere of smug egotism.” His voice rose as his face set in anger. The girl looked up from her knitting and then at me, anxiously, but I knew that it was better for him to give play to the pent-up grievances of years. “I was stifling. I tell you—starved! A home? A mockery! A gallery of granite statues. I can’t remember one single time having known what it was to have a father or mother. I never knew a word of sympathy, a look of love. You made me believe I was a lost soul—a gallows bird—you made me believe it myself! Why? Because I had warm blood in my veins, because I was human, had imagination, ambition, wild animal force. I, who was worth the whole lot of you, you crushed out with your cold, damned superiority, your conventionality and your pride in yourselves. And now, you come here and acknowledge you were wrong! Sublime!”
“We were wrong.”
“Wrong? Can you give me back these ten years? Can you make me what I should have been? Great heavens, this decent little devil here has got more of a woman’s heart to her when she brings me my medicine than the whole blooming lot of you ever dreamed of!”
Toinon, who only half understood, looked up.