“I thought they had better hear it from you, Mr. Ray,” he said, and for the third time Ray detailed the tragical incidents. He felt as if he had been inculpating himself.
Then Mrs. Chapley said: “It is what we might have expected from the beginning. But if it will be a warning to Mr. Chapley”—
Mrs. Brandreth turned upon her mother with a tone that startled Mr. Chapley from the attitude of gentle sufferance in which he sat resting his chin upon his hand. “I don’t see what warning there can be for papa in such a dreadful thing. Do you think he’s likely to take prussic acid?”
“I don’t say that, you know well enough, child. But I shall be quite satisfied if it is the last of Tolstoïsm in this family.”
“It has nothing to do with Tolstoï,” Mrs. Brandreth returned, with surprising energy. “If we’d all been living simply in the country, that wretched creature’s mind wouldn’t have been preyed upon by the misery of the city.”
“There’s more insanity in proportion to the population in the country than there is in the city,” Mrs. Chapley began.
Mrs. Brandreth ignored her statistical contribution. “There’s no more danger of father’s going out to live on a farm, or in a community, than there is of his taking poison; and at any rate he hasn’t got anything to do with what’s happened. He’s just been faithful to his old friend, and he’s given his daughter work. I don’t care how much the newspapers bring that in. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
Mr. Brandreth looked at his wife in evident surprise; her mother said, “Well, my dear!”
Her father gently urged: “I don’t think you’ve quite understood your mother. She doesn’t look at life from my point of view.”
“No, Henry, I’m thankful to say I don’t,” Mrs. Chapley broke in; “and I don’t know anybody who does. If I had followed you and your prophet, we shouldn’t have had a roof over our heads.”