In his excitement he jumped up, and walked up and down, blowing out the smoke furiously in white clouds. The old fable of the ant and the grasshopper came to Miss Ley’s mind, and she reflected that so at the approach of autumn might have reasoned the ant when she contemplated her store of food laboriously collected; perhaps she, bitterly envied the grasshopper who had spent the glorious days in idle singing, and in her heart, notwithstanding an empty larder and the cold winter to come, felt that the careless songster had made a better use than she of the summer-time.
“Do you think you’ll have the same ideas after a fortnight in the country has brought you back again your full health?” asked Miss Ley meditatively.
She was astonished at the effect of this question, for he turned on her with an anger which she had never seen in him before.
“D’you think I’m an absolute fool, Miss Ley?” he cried. “D’you think these are mere idle womanish fancies? I’ve been thinking of this for months, and my illness has left my brain clearer than ever it was. We’re all tied to the wheel, and when one of us tries to escape the rest do all they can by jibes and sneers to hold him back.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, my son,” smiled Miss Ley indulgently. “You know I have a certain discreet affection for you.”
“I beg your pardon; I didn’t mean to be so violent,” he answered, quickly penitent. “But I feel as though chains were eating into my flesh, and I want to get free.”
“I should have thought London offered a fairly spirited and various life.”
“London doesn’t offer life at all—it offers culture. Oh, they bore me to extinction, the people I go and see, all talking of the same things and so self-satisfied in their narrow outlook! Just think what culture is. It means that you go to first-nights at the theatre and to private views at the Academy; you rave over Eleonora Duse and read the Saturday Review; you make a point of wading through the latest novel talked of in Paris, discuss glibly the books that come out here, and occasionally meet at tea the people who write them. You travel along the beaten track in Italy and France, much despising the Cook’s Tourist, but really no better than a vulgar tripper yourself; you’re very fond of airing your bad French, and you have a smattering of worse Italian. Occasionally, to impress the vulgar, you consent to be bored to death by a symphony concert; you go into fashionable raptures over Wagner, collect paste buckles, and take in the Morning Post.”
“Spare me,” cried Miss Ley, throwing up her hands; “I recognise a particularly unflattering portrait of myself.”
Frank in his vehemence paid no attention to her remark.