Читать книгу Sackcloth into Silk - Warwick Deeping - Страница 23
CHAPTER VIII
ОглавлениеEmily was one of those who did not understand.
“Crikey! She must be balmy, letting her fatted calf go to be slaughtered.”
Rebecca’s eldest son was both surprised and shocked. Knowing his mother as he did, he would have expected her to fight this madness tooth and nail, and to throw herself between the butchers and their victim. Possibly, there was a self love in Augustus that felt itself affected by Karl’s conventionalism. His younger brother was challenging Gus’s courage and his ideals, and Augustus was approaching that unpleasant period when authority would drag him before the tribunal. He was not going to sacrifice to a bloody Cæsar.
Meanwhile, Emily sat picking at a piece of work with her fingers. Emily had a nose for the mean and the obscure. She found a sneer.
“The golden calf. That’s what it is. All she cares about is money. Selling fur coats to all the little amateur totties. Disgusting—I call it.”
For once, Augustus had the courage to call his wife to order.
“You mustn’t talk like that, Emily. My mother——”
“A precious lot she’s done for you, hasn’t she!”
Augustus did not wholly regret Karl’s insanity. However pure one’s philosophy may claim to be, it cannot wholly transcend life’s propensities and prejudices. Augustus was a very capable illusionist; he could harmonize his internal qualms. He went round to see his mother, but almost before he had broached the matter she effaced him.
“It’s just a question—of character, Gus.”
Augustus was piqued. Did the old woman suggest that by refraining he was less of a hero than a silly, emotional boy?—Good God, what fools women were! Always caught by a flash of the eyes or a gesture. He warned his mother that he felt it his duty to speak to Karl.
“You may,” said his mother, as though giving him leave to open a window.
Augustus did speak to Karl. He began almost as a father. He climbed to a high level. He was even a little emotional.
“I take this—personally,—Karl.—To me—it’s treachery to our ideals, to the love of man for man. It’s a surrender to crowd propaganda—a——”
Karl was in one of his silent moods.
“No use,—Gus.”
“Don’t you understand?—I love humanity.”
And suddenly Karl looked at him with a little merciless smile.
“Don’t talk that stuff to me, Gus.—You—love—humanity!—O, my God!”
His brother’s soapy face seemed to hang in the air like an inflated bladder.
“You don’t know what you are talking about, you young fool.”
Karl turned away.
“If you cared a damn,—you’d be out there in a stretcher-squad.”