Concluding Read Online Free PDF Page B

here; and wouldn't it rather weaken his resolve if he knew which way the election went? After all, his attitude was sound. More than that, it was straightforward, which could not be said of the cruel posturing taken up by those two Babylonian harlots, Baker and Edge up there, who schemed day and night, never actually to come out in the open because they knew very well they would never venture, but who, with a tireless industry, neglected their trivial duties to machinate against him, to play with his girl's reason even, and who fell so low as to work on her sentiments with truly Byzantine malice by the use of a tutor they had no wish to retain, or other pretext to expel, the lout.
    No, it would be folly on his part to break the rule of years, to open his correspondence just to satisfy a moment's panic. What he had done for the country was his monument, no-one could steal that, even if they voted him tomorrow into the hunt kennels for broken down scientists. Because he wasn't going on a chain. Because he'd take the money instead, or refuse it. Besides he injured no-one in the blameless life he led here. And an individual still had some rights under the State. And if he opened this letter now, learned whether or no he had been elected, he could tell the turn their conversation would take when he met Miss Edge at the dance tonight. By the way, was he going?
    Well, Mr Rock, she'd say, and am I to congratulate you, or some such phrase, the smarming harpy, after which, if he knew he had been elected, he would have to smirk thank you, yes, they've put me in, I'm delivered over to their charity now all right. Or, on the other hand, if they had not elected him, was he to eat humble pie, tell her that young men whose work he despised had not thought him worth the candle, after all he'd done. Never, he told himself, never, he'd take the money, and then found he was actually opening the letter he had assumed to be from young Hargreaves, and which wasn't from the man after all.
    "Dear Sir," it read.
    "Although I have not the honour of your acquaintance, yet due to the pride of place which science occupies in the State, thereby she can work for the good of all, I write to enquire . . ." and the old man, who was breathing easier for his rest, thrust the thing back into its envelope, got off the trunk, opened this, and put the day's post onto a mass of other unopened letters. Muttering, he stumped off to his outhouse to boil the swill. He found he had no paper with which to light a fire, came back, raised the lid, took a fistful of letters at random, and used these. He employed the daily newspaper, which he never read, only in the outside lavatory.
    The fire was lit when he half heard a remark behind. He turned round, saw his granddaughter, Liz. She was a distracted looking woman and wore his winter overcoat over red cotton pyjamas, with rubber boots.
    "Morning Gapa," she said, as always to him, in an exaggeratedly loud voice, "I think, you know, it's going to be a lovely day."
    "There you are, dear," he replied, and his sour old face cracked into a grave smile. "Did you sleep all right?"
    "Took me rather a long time to sink off and then it was so tiresome, you know how things are, I awoke, I don't know what time it was, oh about four in the morning, and couldn't drop off again."
    "Hadn't you better go back to bed then, dear," he said. "I would if I were you. And I'll bring you up a bite, directly I've done Daisy's swill."
    "Oh but I had to come down at once, soon as ever I heard the postman, I mean I'm so excited for you, Gapa dear, today of all days this must mean such a great deal . . ." and, as so often, her mind fell away in a wail while she looked at him out of big empty eyes.
    "Now what are you getting at?" he enquired, like she were a child. His tone was good-humoured, although he knew very well what she had tried to express.
    "Well, it's the dawn of the day after, isn't it?" she said. "When they had their meeting? I thought, that's