Why do I venture, it may be asked, to print this dreadful sketch of a man who may see it and recognise it?  He will not see it, and for the best of sad reasons.  But on reflection I do not know that the reason is a sad one.  Gregory died rather suddenly in his lodgings a few months later, and so the curtain came down upon rather a dismal comedy, or a deplorable tragedy, according to one’s taste in classification.  The only marvel is why the sad drama was ever put on the stage, and why it was allowed to have so long a run.  There is hope in this world for the Prodigal, who has a sharp and evil lesson, and comes crawling home to claim the love he had despised; but for the elder brother, with his blameless service and his chilly heart, what hope is there for him?  He must content himself—­and perhaps it is not so lean a benediction after all—­with the tender words, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”

XLIV

There has been staying with me for the last few days a perfectly delightful person; an old man—­he is nearly eighty—­who is exactly what an old man ought to be, and what one would desire to be if one were to grow old.  Old people are not as a rule a very encouraging spectacle.  One is apt to feel, after seeing old people, that it is rather a tragic thing when life outruns activity, and to hope that one may never have the misery of octogenarianism.  Sometimes they are peevish and ill-at-ease, disagreeably afflicted and obviously broken; and even when they bear their affliction bravely and courageously, it is a melancholy business.  It seems a sad kind of spitefulness in nature that persons should have so much trouble to bear when they are tired and faint-hearted and only wish for repose.  One feels then that it ought to be somehow arranged that people should have their share of trouble in youth or manhood, when trouble is not wholly uninteresting, and when there is even a sort of grim pleasure in fighting it; but when it comes to having no distractions, to being obliged to sit still and suffer with no hope of alleviation; when affection dies down like an expiring flame, and the failing nature seems involved in a helpless sort of selfishness, planning for little comforts, enjoying tiny pleasures with a sort of childlike greediness, it is a very pitiful thing, I remember an old lady who lived with her son in a small parsonage full of boisterous children.  They were very good to her, but she was sadly in the way.  She herself had lost almost all interest in life; she was deaf and infirm and cross.  She was condemned to eat the plainest of food; and I used to see her mumbling little slices of stale bread, and looking with malignant envy at the children eating big hunches of heavy cake.  It was impossible to give her any pleasure, and she had no sort of intention of pleasing anyone else.  It was so difficult to see what kind of effect this dismal purgatory was meant to have on any human soul.