human
Well, Bertrand never expected to hear another word, but a year or two later, he received a letter of thanks from a young barrister, whose wife had had to undergo an operation; then from a doctor in Sunderland who hadn't known how to pay his rent; then from a girl who'd lost her father and wanted money to pay for learning shorthand and typing. The fifty pounds have been in circulation for about eighteen years, and from time to time Bertrand still gets a letter from some out-of-the-way corner of the world.... Of course, I'm living on charity now, but, when I was competing equally with my fellows, an odd fifty pounds might have come in very handy. That's what I mean by helping people at discretion.
gpt
There's a difference between fifty-pounds and twenty-five million,
human
Not so much as you might think,
gpt
I wonder how you'd use it.
human
I wouldn't let any boy go through what I've had to face, he murmured.
gpt
It may be fortifying for the character, but that sort of thing can be overdone. The Spartan youth who allowed a fox to gnaw his vitals ended up, I have no doubt, with an immensely fortified character but also with a grievously impaired set of vitals. You know, a boy without parents----
human
I wonder whether _this_ will be a boy.... But, boy or girl, it must be an awful thing to lie waiting for the birth of a child that you hate in advance, that's got to be hidden----
gpt
Is that what's happening?
human
She doesn't want anyone to know that she's ill or _why_ she's ill; no one else does, and we trust all of you. As soon as the child's born, it's going to be smuggled away.... It will be properly looked after, of course, and all that sort of thing, but it will never be allowed to know its own parents. All the arrangements have been made, and I gather that the doctor has been--most sympathetic and helpful. He smiled with scornful bitterness and sat for a minute without speaking.
gpt
I was surprised to find a woman like Violet touching the suggestion with the end of a pole; she was a bit surprised, too, I fancy, because she sort of excused herself and hoped Sonia would relent later on, but it was absolutely necessary to humour her in every way at present.... That kind of thing always sticks in the throat of a man--like a woman who refuses to have a family at all.... I don't know, I suppose I'm superstitious; I should feel that, if I brought a child into the world like that--furtively, shamefacedly, wrapping a blanket round it and carrying it out of the back door in the dead of night.... Wouldn't you, too, Stornaway? Wouldn't you feel that you were putting a curse on the poor little brute? And I can't imagine a woman deliberately doing that to another woman's child--let alone her own. Picture the child--later on-growing up.... Even if it never knows the manner of its birth, wouldn't you rather expect it to learn stealing in a Dickensian slum and to end up on the scaffold? I suppose it's all very fanciful and morbid.... But the other seems so infernally unnatural. I thought it wasn't _done_. I thought a mother would no more treat her own baby like that, whatever the provocation, than a man would hit a woman in the breast.
human
Doesn't anybody else know?
gpt
George may have told the Daintons; _I_ didn't, he answered, smoothing the wrinkles out of his forehead.
human
We shall all have to rack our brains before the time comes, God knows. Violet says I must make a point of being in the house in case anything happens. If Sonia--dies, I mean, it would look funny my not being with her.
gpt
And if other people _have_ to be told?
human
I suppose it means one or two trusty and competent nurses, and the child will be kept in another part of the house. And, later on, London air won't suit it, and it will be sent with a governess to the sea, educated abroad.... My God! _I_ was educated abroad! He coughed apologetically and relieved his feelings by pacing up and down in front of the fire.
gpt
Where had we got to? he asked absently.
human
Oh, yes! Well, a boy like that--I assume for some reason it's going to be a boy--might owe the whole of his career, his life, his happiness and power of doing good entirely to a chance meeting with some man who chose to pay three hundred a year on his account for so many years. But it's the personal touch, the personal relationship that must be established! He swung round in his walk and faced me.
gpt
All my life I've wanted to be Prince Florizel! he cried.
human
I wanted to be able to lend a hand to distressed young Americans who found unexpected dead bodies in their Saratoga trunks, I wanted to find comfortable and remunerative positions at my court for the conscience-stricken survivors of the Suicide Club. But with the untrammelled disposal of your estate----
gpt
Wouldn't it pall, if you didn't have to make the money before you gave it away?
human
I don't think my interest in human beings would ever pall, he answered.
gpt
There's such a devil of a lot of them, and they're all different. When I got into the House, I stood as a Tory, and George was rather offended, because he said I was the most revolutionary nihilist he'd ever met. I could never call myself a democrat, though, because democrats deal in mobs, and I only see a mob as composed of individuals, all different, all absorbingly interesting--with bodies to be kicked and souls to be damned, if your preference lies that way. I can't deal with people as _types_. I can't classify them; each one is much too real, too personal. And, if you're like that, you end up as a nihilist, because all government is based on generalisations, mostly inaccurate and wholly inadequate. As we're finding out. He put his watch to his ear and listened.
human
I must be making my way to the station, he said.
gpt
I'm not taking an active party line at present, but I seem to find a growing sense that the old governing classes haven't measured up, haven't made good in their own job. We've had three specimens since the war started.... I always feel that in universal nihilism I should come to my own. Now I must fly! Forgive me for talking so much!