"I feel rather sorry," said Master John, "for the folk who come down to it from the heights."
"Even in those cases," said his mother, "they have only themselves to blame. Generally, it's drink."
"Sometimes sheer misfortune," he remarked.
"Rather than lead that sort of existence," said Miss Muriel, dramatically, "I would take a revolver and shoot myself." I frowned at her, and she said, "Don't make faces, Weston. It doesn't improve your appearance in the least." Her father glanced at me.
Master John had a theory, and proceeded to give it across the table. Many of the districts he had been referring to were, he pointed out, near the river. You would assume that nothing was easier for these people, when goaded by worry, and depressed by anxiety, than to stroll down to the edge of the water, and put an end to their existence. But, said Master John, this was exactly the course they did not adopt. It was not in their class you found men and women taking upon themselves a duty that belonged to a greater power, and deciding when life was to be terminated. These cases existed in other stages of society, where the crumpled rose-leaf, and nothing but a crumpled rose-leaf, was sometimes held to justify the act.
"An unpleasant subject to be discussing," said Mrs. Hillier. "Let's talk about the war for a change. What do you think Germany means to do, John?"
I have often, in recent days, wished I had written down all the views, and all the prophecies heard from different sources at that period. Likely enough, Chislehurst was not more fruitful in this than was other places, but we were just far enough from town to enable folk to go around, distributing new ideas between the arrival of editions of the London newspapers. Master John altogether refused to make any predictions. "Ask me again in a week's time," he said. He took his father along to the billiard room, and there kept his opponent concentrated on the game, and declined to talk of any other matters than that of how to deal with the red. Mr. Hillier made a break of twelve, and felt tremendously pleased about it. "Really believe, do you know, Weston," he said, cheerfully, "that if I had more practise, I'd be able to give people quite a decent game."
Master John astonished us by going to church on Sunday morning; he announced at the mid-day meal that prayers had been offered for the maintenance of peace. He ran up to town in the afternoon, and on his return, described an anti-war meeting held in Trafalgar Square, and a patriotic meeting held close by at the Admiralty Arch. An enormous crowd, he said, marched along The Mall to the Palace where folk sang the National Anthem, and the Marseillaise, and the King and Queen bowed acknowledgments of the cheering.
"Like looking on at history," he remarked.
"A good deal of preposterous fuss," commented Miss Muriel, in her superior way, "concerning absolutely nothing at all!"