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I was startled out of my reflection by Bill shouting for something with which to wipe himself.
"Wipe on your shirt-tail, you dirty pig," said McQuilly. "It'd be like you."
The room stank, and we left at once. Bill Unsworth last, looking smaller, meaner, and depleted, but certainly not repentant.
We went back to the car in extremely bad temper. Nobody spoke on the way to the Unsworths' place, and the next day Wood, McQuilly, and I took the only train home to Toronto. We did not speak of what we had done, and have never done so since.
On the long journey from Muskoka back to Toronto I had plenty of time to think, and I made my resolve then to be a lawyer. I was against people like Bill Unsworth, or who were possessed as he was. I was against whatever it was that possessed him, and I thought the law was the best way of making my opposition effective.
8
It was a surprise that brought no pleasure when I discovered that I was in love with Dr. von Haller.
For many weeks I had been seeing her on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and was always aware of changes in my attitude toward her. In the begi
In time, however, quite a big dossier of dreams accumulated, which the doctor filed, and of which I kept copies. I had taken rooms in Zurich; a small service flat, looking out on a courtyard, did me very well; meals with wine could be taken at the table d'hote, and I found after a time that the wine was enough, with a nightcap of whisky, just so that I should not forget what it tasted like. I was fully occupied, for the doctor gave me plenty of homework. Making up my notes for my next appointment took far more time than I had expected – quite as much as preparing a case for court – because my problem was to get the tone right; with Joha
To what extent should I surrender myself, I asked, and as I asked I was aware that the time for turning back had passed and I no longer had any choice in the matter. I even lost my embarrassment about dreams, and would take a good dream to my appointment as happily as a boy who has prepared a good lesson.
(The dream dossier I kept in another notebook, and only a few references to its contents appear here. This is not wilful concealment. The dreams of someone undergoing such treatment their say in series, and only rarely is a single dream revelatory. Reading such a record of dreams is comparable to reading the whole of a business correspondance when preparing for a case – dull pa
Indifference gave way to distaste. The doctor seemed to me to be a commonplace person, not as careful about her appearance as I had at first thought, and sometimes I suspected her of a covert antipathy toward me. She said things that seemed mild enough until they were pondered, and then a barb would appear. I began to wonder if she were not like so many people I have met who can never forgive me for being a rich and privileged person. Envy of the rich is understandable enough in people whose lives are lived under a sky always darkened by changing clouds of financial worry and need. They see people like me as free from the one great circumstance that conditions their lives, their loves and the fate of their families – want of cash. They say, glibly enough, that they do not envy the rich, who must certainly have many cares; the reality is something very different. How can they escape envy? They must be especially envious when they see the rich making fools of themselves, squandering big sums on trivialities. What that fellow has spent on his yacht, they think, would set me up for life. What they do not understand is that folly is to a great extent a question of opportunity, and that fools, rich or poor, are always as foolish as they can manage. But does money change the essential man? I have been much envied, and I know that many people who envy me my money are, if they only knew it, envying me my brains, my character, my appetite for work, and a quality of toughness that the wealth of an emperor ca
Did Dr. von Haller, sitting all day in her study listening to other people's troubles, envy me? And perhaps dislike me? I felt that it was not impossible.
Our relationship improved after some time. It seemed to me that the doctor was friendlier, less apt to say things that needed careful inspection for hidden criticism. I have always liked women, in spite of my somewhat unusual history with them; I have women friends, and have had a substantial number of women clients whose point of view I pride myself on understanding and setting forward successfully in court.
In this new atmosphere of friendship, I opened up as I had not done before. I lost much of my caution. I felt that I could tell her things that showed me in a poor light without dreading any reprisal. For the first time in my life since I lost Knopwood, I felt the urge to confide. I know what a heavy burden everybody carries of the unconfessed, which sometimes appears to be the unspeakable. Very often such stuff is not disgraceful or criminal; it is merely a sense of not having behaved well or having done something one knew to be contrary to someone else's good; of having snatched when one should have waited decently; of having turned a sharp corner when someone else was thereby left in a difficult situation; of having talked of the first-rate when one was pla