It came into my head that this was not quite right, and that as an honest man I ought to try to stop it; but torpor overpowered my sense of justice, as it has a right to do, when the case is not our own. "I only want to know who that lady was," I mumbled.
"Zat gal was nothing of your concerns," Hopmann replied, as he sat down by the table, and began to rub some cake tobacco he had sliced; "little English Fräulein of the name of Pezzeril. Zat bad fe-loe you knock worse than they knock you bring her from England with a heap of lies, and make sham to marry her; then he throw her off, and drive long black stick through her brother, because he haf desire of too moosh money. Englishmans often make mishtakes zat way."
"But I want to know about some one else, somebody different altogether, somebody who never thinks of money——"
"Ach zen, what fool can it be? Sometimes leetle gal not think of money; but boys do, vimmen do, men obliged to follow zem."
"Nonsense, doctor! The men set the example. But you know well enough what I want to know. I want to know where I am, and all about it."
The German came over and looked at me, and turned up one of my eyelids, and then did the same to the other, while he blew his smoke over his shoulder; and then he said "No fear. Shorge, you are a brick, and your prain go the way to belong to him. One leetle drop I give you shoost to clear both ears, and zen I tell you everyzing."
O double-dyed villain! With my usual faith, I accepted and made the most of his kind offering; and when I awoke again where was he? Perhaps in a boat at the mouth of the Rion, listening for the mill-wheels of a paddle-steamer to grind the slow grit of distance. For a telegram had reached Karthlos that the vegetable Earl, the good Melladew, lay at the last twist of our mortal coil internal, through travail on a bicycle with a County Council lecturer who had taken crab-apples to be synonymous with crabs.
When this abandonment was first brought home to me, my behaviour was not what it should have been. We are all too apt to suppose ourselves neglected, and doubly so when the system has been lowered, and the action of the heart restricted. To my shame I confess that a miserable pessimism—such as manhood should scorn on its own behalf, even without higher thoughts to lead it—invaded and began to vanquish me.
"What is the good of anything? All nature is cruelty; all life a curse. Every one for himself, and for none of us a God. Bitterness, and contempt of mankind, and a reckless fight for one's own hand,—those are the only solid things black destiny has left us. There is no choice before us. As for sense of duty, or the stuff we call honour, or patriotism, or the absurdity called love——"
"My dear young friend, my directions are precise and I cannot depart from them. You may talk as much as you like about flowers, or food, or sport, or the hills and valleys, or anything in fact that you know anything about. And while you do that, you may refresh yourself and grow stronger and stronger with these good things here." Sûr Imar, who had risen from behind a curtain, pointed to a table which was laden with fine import of exceedingly attractive fragrance. "On the other hand, if you insist upon wandering into difficult and unpleasant subjects, which no man has ever yet made head or tail of, my orders are to anticipate the inevitable injury to the poor head and enfeebled system by prompt administration of these two doses." My host laid his hands upon a large flat bottle nearly full, but with room below the cork to shake up a profoundity of horrors at the bottom, and a box of pills as big as bullets. But before he could approach me, my heart and stomach, and every other organ that can influence opinion underwent a fundamental change.