We are walking along a street, arm
in arm, talking as rationally and even as virtuously as need be,
when all at once I find that B. has become silent and abstracted.
I know what it is; he has caught sight of a church. I pretend not
to notice any change in him, and endeavour to hurry him on. He lags
more and more behind, however, and at last stops altogether.
"Come, come," I say to him, encouragingly, "pull yourself together,
and be a man. Don't think about it. Put it behind you, and
determine that you WON'T be conquered. Come, we shall be round the
corner in another minute, where you won't be able to see it. Take
my hand, and let's run!"
He makes a few feeble steps forward with me, and then stops again.
"It's no good, old man," he says, with a sickly smile, so full of
pathos that it is impossible to find it in one's heart to feel
anything but pity for him. "I can't help it. I have given way to
this sort of thing too long. It is too late to reform now. You go
on and get a drink somewhere; I'll join you again in a few minutes.
Don't worry about me; it's no good."
And back he goes with tottering steps, while I sadly pass on into
the nearest cafe, and, over a glass of absinthe or cognac, thank
Providence that I learnt to control my craving for churches in early
youth, and so am not now like this poor B.
In a little while he comes in, and sits down beside me. There is a
wild, unhealthy excitement in his eye, and, under a defiant air of
unnatural gaiety, he attempts to hide his consciousness of guilt.
"It was a lovely altar-cloth," he whispers to me, with an enthusiasm
that only makes one sorrow for him the more, so utterly impossible
does it cause all hope of cure to seem. "And they've got a coffin
in the north crypt that is simply a poem. I never enjoyed a
sarcophagus more in all my life."
I do not say much at the time; it would be useless. But after the
day is done, and we are standing beside our little beds, and all
around is as silent as one can expect it to be in an hotel where
people seem to be arriving all night long with heavy luggage, and to
be all, more or less, in trouble, I argue with him, and gently
reprove him. To avoid the appearance of sermonising as much as
possible, I put it on mere grounds of expediency.
"How are we to find time," I say, "to go to all the places that we
really ought to go to - to all the cafes and theatres and music-halls
and beer-gardens and dancing-saloons that we want to visit - if you
waste half the precious day loafing about churches and cathedrals?"
He is deeply moved, and promises to swear off.
