"Burgess is a curious man," he resumed dispassionately. "I don't think he ever had any children of his own, but he's got—well, an extraordinarily human imagination. He began talking about this poor kiddie—who isn't born yet—and pointing the contrast between his life and the life of any other boy, who'd have a father and a mother fussing round him, whenever he had a bit of wind in his poor little tummy, and playing with him and watching him, as he began to crawl and talk, and trying to make him understand that it wasn't the end of the world when he was miserable trying to cut teeth.... The old man didn't spare me," said O'Rane with a quivering laugh. "I had about twenty years of the boy's life compressed into twenty minutes; the way he'd go to school, frightfully shy and with no one to see him through, no one to give him half a sovereign at mid-term; and the way he'd get a remove or find himself in the eleven—with nobody to brag about it to; and the way he'd go on to a public school and work his way through the green-sickness period of dirty stories and foul language—without anyone to tell him that he was becoming rather a pitiable little object.... And the portentous age, when he'd be head of his house, and the days when he'd want to ask his father what Oxford used to be like in the prehistoric days.... After twenty minutes or so I told Burgess that I didn't see it was my look-out."
"Well?" I said, as O'Rane hesitated.
"I think it was damned unfair," he burst out, but the resentment in his tone was unconvincing. "Burgess was a friend of my father, he knows all about me, I've told him every last thing about myself.... I don't suppose even George knows, but the old man used to invite me to help tidy up his library, if I wasn't taking Leave-Out, and of course I was as happy as a clam; and we used to talk, and I told him things that kept me awake half the night,—but he always seemed to have forgotten them next day. Well, I suppose after my father died I did have rather a—crowded youth; and Burgess asked me if I wanted to send my son through the same mill.
"He's not my son," I said.
"Thy wife's son, laddie," he answered.
O'Rane turned wearily from the fire and began to pace up and down the room.
"I told him!" he exclaimed. "I said that, if it hadn't been for that, Sonia and I could have forgotten everything and come together again. You remember? I was ready—ah, dear God in Heaven! I was ready! And then I heard that this had come between us, that there was going to be a permanent reminder, a permanent barrier, a permanent alien something in our lives. That was the first time I saw you were right, the first time I appreciated we could never forget and go on as if nothing had happened. My love for Sonia hasn't changed. If—if anything happened to the child.... But as long as it's there! I told Burgess that, though I agreed with him in principle, I was very sorry, but I couldn't help it. It was Grayle's business. He asked me if I thought Grayle was likely to accept his responsibilities; I told him I saw no indication of it. He said nothing to that, and I made another bolt for the door. He called me back and asked what I proposed to do. I said I'd told him already.
"He didn't stop me, and I got back to my rooms in the Cloisters. I began to pack a few things, but the whole time I was feeling that I hadn't explained properly and that Burgess rather despised me. I got extraordinarily excited and angry over it, until at last I left the packing alone and went back to his house to justify myself. The man shewed me at once into the library, and it was only when I got inside that I realised that all this time Burgess ought to have been taking the Sixth for Tacitus. Instead he was still in his chair, still sucking at his pipe. I fired away, full of indignation, and went through the whole weary business from the beginning, just as I'd done before. He never interrupted me, never said a word till I'd finished. Then he told me pretty bluntly that he was only indirectly interested in me and that what he wanted to find out was why the child should be penalised, why I, who knew something of what it would have to go through, persisted in making it face the music for no fault of its own. I was pretty well worked up, but I tried to be reasonable and asked him what he suggested I should do. He never hesitated a moment this time! He told me it was my duty to treat the child as if he were my own son, never to let him or anyone else know what had happened before he was born, but to devote myself to him as if he were—well, not my own son, not someone for whom I was naturally responsible, but someone who'd been entrusted to my care. He said, if I didn't—with the experience I'd got to back me.... Somehow, the way he put it, Stornaway...."
He brought his walk to a conclusion as abruptly as the sentence and dropped heavily on to a sofa, as though glad that a necessary task was finished, yet awaiting criticism from me and obviously prepared to argue as vehemently against me on one side as he had argued against Burgess on the other.
"In practice, what do you propose to do?" I asked.