“It went down very well,” he protested.
“Oh, yes! And no doubt you looked very nice. The decent women would always fall in love with you because you look delicate and interesting; and the fools because they think you’re spiritual. And I’ve no doubt your button-hole and gestures and lumps in the throat were perfect; you’re an old stage hand. I couldn’t see any of that, but I could hear. You must be careful, old man, before you try to put it over people who can’t see; we hear the very devil of a lot... And you must admit it was a rotten speech for you to make. Perhaps I know as much as most people about your private affairs; it was the yelp of a whipped cur.”
“But—I don’t know what you’re driving at! They gave me a marvellous reception, and I—I let myself go. I told ’em what it meant to me, the years of agony and bloody sweat... God! I laid myself bare and talked about art like a Chelsea poet. It had taken me half my life to get there... And you say it was insincere!”
“As you’d stripped so far, you might have talked about the future a bit,” suggested O’Rane. “It was that silence I heard most distinctly... What are you going to do when you get to England?”
“Get out again as soon as possible.”
“Dear man, you can’t get away from yourself any more than a kitten can catch its own tail. It’s time you pulled yourself together.”
Eric stifled a sigh before it could reach his companion’s too acute hearing.
“I’m a bit tired... As you know so much, you may as well know that, after that dinner, I knelt staring out into the night, thinking it all over; and at the end I had to admit I was beaten,” he added quickly.
“That was what I rudely described as the “whipped cur” note in your speech,” laughed O’Rane. “On my soul and honour, I should think a bit better of you if you’d quietly cut your throat. As you haven’t... Look here, Eric, I’ve had one or two facers in my time; and I think, when the smash has come, the only thing to do is to count the arms and legs that are left and see what show you can make with them. (When I was blinded, I did wander out in the approved “Light That Failed” spirit and try to take a bullet through the brain; but to a certain extent one had lost one’s head, and I’ve never dared tell a soul but George Oakleigh...) It’s no good, I’m sure, preserving an amputated limb in spirits of wine. You forget you’ve lost a hand when you forget you’ve ever had it to lose. Think of yourself as born one-handed; in other words, think of yourself as a new personality; in other words, don’t think of yourself at all. Can you do that?”
“I suppose it can be done if one makes a big enough effort.”