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Updated: May 15, 2025
Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he had not seen him for a week, and so, when Clutton left him, he wandered along to the cafe in which he was certain to find the writer. During the first few months of his stay in Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said, but Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories which resulted in no action.
He remembered how passionately he had prayed for the miracle which his uncle had assured him was possible to omnipotence. He smiled ruefully. "I was rather a simple soul in those days," he thought. Towards the end of February it was clear that Cronshaw was growing much worse. He was no longer able to get up.
There were gashes in the table-cloth and in the curtains and in the two arm-chairs. They were quite ruined. On one wall over the table which Philip used as his desk was the little bit of Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. Mildred had always hated it. "If it's a rug it ought to go on the floor," she said, "and it's a dirty stinking bit of stuff, that's all it is."
Gladstone, John Bright, and Cobden; there was a moment's discussion about George Meredith, but Matthew Arnold and Emerson were given up cheerfully. At last came Walter Pater. "Not Walter Pater," murmured Philip. Lawson stared at him for a moment with his green eyes and then nodded. "You're quite right, Walter Pater is the only justification for Mona Lisa. D'you know Cronshaw?
Cronshaw chuckled. "You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness.
"Art," he continued, with a wave of the hand, "is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life." Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully.
Cronshaw was often so ill-humoured that Philip could only keep his temper by remembering all the time that this irritability was a symptom of the disease. Upjohn came sometimes before Philip was in, and then Cronshaw would complain of him bitterly. Upjohn listened with complacency. "The fact is that Carey has no sense of beauty," he smiled. "He has a middle-class mind."
He had not been so happy for months. "Oh, life," he cried in his heart, "Oh life, where is thy sting?" For the same uprush of fancy which had shown him with all the force of mathematical demonstration that life had no meaning, brought with it another idea; and that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the Persian rug.
They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices. "Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good," they said. "He's quite hopeless."
He was very sarcastic to Philip, and Philip exercised a good deal of self-control in his dealings with him. But one evening he could not contain himself. He had had a hard day at the hospital and was tired out. Leonard Upjohn came to him, while he was making himself a cup of tea in the kitchen, and said that Cronshaw was complaining of Philip's insistence that he should have a doctor.
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