incompatibles, ha, ha, ha! – taste and a hereditary income.’
‘Is not taste a cultivated luxury?’ said Steerpike.
‘But yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘But yes. One has the potentialities for taste; on finding this out about oneself, ha, ha! – after a little self-probing, it is a cultivated thing, as you remark.’
‘Which needs assiduous concentration and diligence, no doubt,’ said the youth.
‘But yes; but yes,’ answered the Doctor smiling, with a note in his voice that suggested it was only common politeness in him to keep amused.
‘Surely such diligence is the same thing as ambitiousness. Ambitiousness to perfect your taste. That is what I mean by “ambition”, Doctor, I believe you have it. I do not mean ambition for success, for “success” is a meaningless word – the successful, so I hear, being very often, to themselves, failures of the first water.’
‘You interest me,’ said Prunesquallor. ‘I would like to speak to Lady Fuchsia alone. We haven’t been paying very much attention to her, I am afraid. We have deserted her. She is alone in a desert of her own. Only watch her.’
Fuchsia’s eyes were shut as she leaned back in the chair, her knees curled up under her.
‘While I speak with her you will be so very, very good as to leave the room. There’s a chair in the hall, Master Steerpike. Thank you, dear youth. It would be a handsome gesture.’
Steerpike disappeared at once, taking his brandy with him.
Prunesquallor looked at the old woman and the girl. Mrs Slagg, with her little mouth wide open, was fast asleep. Fuchsia had opened her eyes at the sound of the door shutting behind Steerpike.
The Doctor immediately beckoned her to approach. She came to him at once, her eyes wide.
‘I’ve waited so long, Dr Prune,’ she said. ‘Can I have my stone now?’
‘This very moment,’ said the Doctor. ‘This very second. You will not know very much about the nature of this stone, but you will treasure it more than anyone I could possibly think of. Fuchsia dear, you were so distraught as you ran like a wild pony away from your father and me; so distraught with your black mane and your big hungry eyes – that I said to myself: “It’s for Fuchsia”, although ponies don’t usually care much about such things, ha, ha, ha! But you will, won’t you?’
The Doctor took from his pocket a small pouch of softest leather.
‘Take it out yourself,’ he said. ‘Draw it out with this slender chain.’
Fuchsia took the pouch from the Doctor’s hand and from it drew forth into the lamplight a ruby like a lump of anger.
It burned in her palm.
She did not know what to do. She did not wonder what she ought to say. There was nothing at all to say. Dr Prunesquallor knew something of what she felt. At last, clutching the solid fire between her fingers, she shook Nannie Slagg, who screamed a little as she awoke. Fuchsia got to her feet and dragged her to the door. A moment before the Doctor opened it for them, Fuchsia turned her face up to his and parted her lips in a smile of such dark, sweet loveliness, so subtly blended with her brooding strangeness, that the Doctor’s hand clenched the handle of the door. He had never seen her look like this before. He had always thought of her as an ugly girl of whom he was strangely fond. But now, what was it he had seen? She was no longer a small girl for all her slowness of speech and almost irritating simplicity.
In the hall they passed the figure of Steerpike sitting comfortably on the floor beneath a large carved clock. They did not speak, and when they parted with the Doctor Nannie said: ‘Thank you’ in a sleepy voice and bowed slightly, one of her hands in Fuchsia’s. Fuchsia’s fingers clenched the blood-red stone and the Doctor only said: ‘Good-bye, and take care, my dears, take care. Happy dreams. Happy dreams,’ before he closed the door.
A GIFT OF THE GAB
As he returned through the hall his mind was so engrossed with his new vision of Fuchsia that he had forgotten Steerpike and was startled at the sound of steps behind him. A moment or two earlier Steerpike had himself been startled by footsteps descending the staircase immediately above where he had been sitting in the shadowy, tiger stripes of the banisters.
He moved swiftly up to the Doctor. ‘I am afraid I am still here,’ he said, and then glanced over his shoulder following the Doctor’s eyes. Steerpike turned and saw, descending the last three steps of the staircase, a lady whose similarity to Dr Prunesquallor was unmistakable, but whose whole deportment was more rigid. She, also, suffered from faulty eyesight, but in her case the glasses were darkly tinted so that it was impossible to tell at whom she was looking save by the general direction of the head, which was no sure indication.
The lady approached them. ‘Who is this?’ she said directing her face at Steerpike.
‘This,’ said her brother, ‘is none other than Master Steerpike, who was brought to see me on account of his talents. He is anxious for me to make use of his brain, ha, ha! – not, as you might suppose, as a floating specimen in one of my jam jars, ha, ha, ha! but in its functional capacity as a vortex of dazzling thought.’
‘Did he go upstairs just now?’ said Miss Irma Prunesquallor. ‘I said did he go upstairs just now?’
The tall lady had the habit of speaking at great speed and of repeating her questions irritably before there had been a moment’s pause in which they might be answered. Prunesquallor had in moments of whimsy often amused himself by trying to wedge an answer to her less complex queries between the initial question and its sharp echo.
‘Upstairs, my dear?’ repeated her brother.
‘I said “upstairs”, I think,’ said Irma Prunesquallor sharply. ‘I think I said “upstairs”. Have you, or he, or anyone been upstairs a quarter of an hour ago? Have you? Have you?’
‘Surely not! surely not!’ said the Doctor. ‘We have all been downstairs, I think. Don’t you?’ he said, turning to Steerpike.
‘I do,’ said Steerpike. The Doctor began to like the way the youth answered quietly and neatly.
Irma Prunesquallor drew herself together. Her long tightly fitting black dress gave peculiar emphasis to such major bone formations as the iliac crest, and indeed the entire pelvis; the shoulder blades, and in certain angles, as
