to do anything," said Horne Fisher. "I don't mean especially about
Ireland. I mean about England. I mean about the whole way we are
governed, and perhaps the only way we can be governed. You asked me
just now what became of the survivors of that tragedy. Well, Wilson
recovered and we managed to persuade him to retire. But we had to
pension that damnable murderer more magnificently than any hero who
ever fought for England. I managed to save Michael from the worst,
but we had to send that perfectly innocent man to penal servitude
for a crime we know he never committed, and it was only afterward
that we could connive in a sneakish way at his escape. And Sir
Walter Carey is Prime Minister of this country, which he would
probably never have been if the truth had been told of such a
horrible scandal in his department. It might have done for us
altogether in Ireland; it would certainly have done for him. And he
is my father's old friend, and has always smothered me with
kindness. I am too tangled up with the whole thing, you see, and I
was certainly never born to set it right. You look distressed, not
to say shocked, and I'm not at all offended at it. Let us change the
subject by all means, if you like. What do you think of this
Burgundy? It's rather a discovery of mine, like the restaurant
itself."

And he proceeded to talk learnedly and luxuriantly on all the wines
of the world; on which subject, also, some moralists would consider
that he knew too much.



III. THE SOUL OF THE SCHOOLBOY