It's dedicated to me--flat out--and you even crossed out the dedication and tidied me out of the introduction. Listen to me, Pembroke. You've done people all your life--I think without knowing it, but that won't comfort us. A wretched devil at your school once wrote to me, and he'd been done. Sham food, sham religion, sham straight talks--and when he broke down, you said it was the world in miniature." He snatched at him roughly. "But I'll show you the world." He twisted him round like a baby, and through the open door they saw only the quiet valley, but in it a rivulet that would in time bring its waters to the sea. "Look even at that--and up behind where the Plain begins and you get on the solid chalk--think of us riding some night when you're ordering your hot bottle--that's the world, and there's no miniature world. There's one world, Pembroke, and you can't tidy men out of it. They answer you back do you hear?--they answer back if you do them. If you tell a man this way that four sheep equal ten, he answers back you're a liar."Mr. Pembroke was speechless, and--such is human nature--he chiefly resented the allusion to the hot bottle; an unmanly luxury in which he never indulged; contenting himself with nightsocks. "Enough--there is no witness present--as you have doubtless observed." But there was. For a little voice cried, "Oh, mummy, they're fighting--such fun--" and feet went pattering up the stairs. "Enough. You talk of 'doing,' but what about the money out of which you 'did' my sister? What about this picture"--he pointed to a faded photograph of Stockholm--"which you caused to be filched from the walls of my house? What about--enough! Let us conclude this disheartening scene. You object to my terms. Name yours. I shall accept them.
It is futile to reason with one who is the worse for drink."Stephen was quiet at once. "Steady on!" he said gently. "Steady on in that direction. Take one-third for your four stories and the introduction, and I will keep two-thirds for myself." Then he went to harness the horse, while Mr. Pembroke, watching his broad back, desired to bury a knife in it. The desire passed, partly because it was unclerical, partly because he had no knife, and partly because he soon blurred over what had happened. To him all criticism was "rudeness": he never heeded it, for he never needed it: he was never wrong. All his life he had ordered little human beings about, and now he was equally magisterial to big ones: Stephen was a fifth-form lout whom, owing to some flaw in the regulations, he could not send up to the headmaster to be caned.
This attitude makes for tranquillity. Before long he felt merely an injured martyr. His brain cleared. He stood deep in thought before the only other picture that the bare room boasted--the Demeter of Cnidus. Outside the sun was sinking, and its last rays fell upon the immortal features and the shattered knees. Sweet-peas offered their fragrance, and with it there entered those more mysterious scents that come from no one flower or clod of earth, but from the whole bosom of evening.
He tried not to be cynical. But in his heart he could not regret that tragedy, already half-forgotten, conventionalized, indistinct. Of course death is a terrible thing. Yet death is merciful when it weeds out a failure. If we look deep enough, it is all for the best. He stared at the picture and nodded.
