Nobody Part 109

"I have no doubt they say it. And they mean it honestly."

"And it is not?"

"I find it quite too severe a tax on my powers of simulation and dissimulation. Those are powers you never call in play?" he added, with a most pleasant smile and glance at her.

"Simulation and dissimulation?" repeated Lois, who had by no means got her usual balance of mind or manner yet. "Are those powers which ought to be called into play?"

"What are you going to do?"

"When?"

"When, for instance, you are in the mood for a grand theme of Handel, and somebody gives you a sentimental bit of Rossini. Or when Mendelssohn is played as if 'songs without words' were songs without meaning. Or when a singer simply displays to you a VOICE, and leaves music out of the question altogether."

"That is hard!" said Lois.

"What is one to do then?"

"It is hard," Lois said again. "But I suppose one ought always to be true."

"If I am true, I must say what I think."

"Yes. If you speak at all."

"What will _they_ think then?"

"Yes," said Lois. "But, after all, that is not the first question."

"What is the first question?"

"I think--to do right."

"But what _is_ right? What will people think of me, if I tell them their playing is abominable?"

"You need not say it just with those words," said Lois. "And perhaps, if anybody told them the truth, they would do better. At any rate, what they think is not the question, Mr. Dillwyn."

"What is the question?" he asked, smiling.

"What the Lord will think."

"Miss Lois, do you never use dissimulation?"

Lois could not help colouring, a little distressed.

"I try not," she answered. "I dare say I do, sometimes. I dare not say I do not. It is very difficult for a woman to help it."

"More difficult for a woman than for a man?"

"I do not know. I suppose it is."

"Why should that be?"

"I do not know--unless because she is the weaker, and it may be part of the defensive armour of a weak animal."

Mr. Dillwyn laughed a little.

"But that is _dis_simulation," said Lois. "One is not bound always to say all one thinks; only never to say what one does not think."

"You would always give a true answer to a question?"

"I would try."

"I believe it. And now, Miss Lois, in that trust, I am going to ask you a question. Do you recollect a certain walk in the rain?"

"Certainly!" she said, looking at him with some anxiety.

"And the conversation we held under the umbrella, without simulation or dissimulation?"

"Yes."

"You tacitly--perhaps more than tacitly--blamed me for having spent so much of my life in idleness; that is uselessly, to all but myself."

"Did I?"

"You did. And I have thought about it since. And I quite agree with you that to be idle is to be neither wise nor dignified. But here rises a difficulty. I think I would like to be of some use in the world, if I could. But I do not know what to set about."

Lois waited, with silent attention.

"My question is this: How is a man to find his work in the world?"

Lois's eyes, which had been on his face, went away to the fire. His, which had been on the ground, rose to her face.

"I am in a fog," he said

"I believe every one has his work," Lois remarked.

"I think you said so."

"The Bible says so, at any rate."

"_Then_ how is a man to find his work?" Philip asked, half smiling; at the same time he drew up his chair a little nearer the fire, and began to put the same in order. Evidently he was not going away immediately, and had a mind to talk out the subject. But why with her? And was he not going to his sister's?--

"If each one has, not only his work but his peculiar work, it must be a very important matter to make sure he has found it. A wheel in a machine can do its own work, but it cannot take the part of another wheel. And your words suppose an exact adjustment of parts and powers."

"The Bible words," said Lois.

"Yes. Well, to my question. I do not know what I ought to do, Miss Lois. I do not see the work to my hand. How am I ever to be any wiser?"

"I am the last person you should ask. And besides,--I do not think anybody knows enough to set another his appointed task."