I
deplored this prejudice at the time, and the deep injury of it was
now visible--first in the fact that it hadn't saved the poor boy,
who was clever, frail and foolish, from congestion of the lungs,
and second in the greater break with London to which the event
condemned me. I'm afraid that what was uppermost in my mind during
several anxious weeks was the sense that if we had only been in
Paris I might have run over to see Corvick. This was actually out
of the question from every point of view: my brother, whose
recovery gave us both plenty to do, was ill for three months,
during which I never left him and at the end of which we had to
face the absolute prohibition of a return to England. The
consideration of climate imposed itself, and he was in no state to
meet it alone. I took him to Meran and there spent the summer with
him, trying to show him by example how to get back to work and
nursing a rage of another sort that I tried NOT to show him.
The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena so
strangely interlaced that, taken together--which was how I had to
take them--they form as good an illustration as I can recall of the
manner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate sometimes
deals with a man's avidity. These incidents certainly had larger
bearings than the comparatively meagre consequence we are here
concerned with--though I feel that consequence also a thing to
speak of with some respect.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54