Now there happened to be in the room at that moment an Angel. He had
come to Paulings express to counteract the Devil who had been putting in
such strong work on the Professor, and the Angel saved the quill driver,
whom, for his poverty, he loved. For that innocent, finding something
that felt like his slab of chocolate in among his tobacco, and knowing
himself to be well capable of having put it there, was just about to
pull it out, and was already speculating on what sort of flavour
chocolate gave to Bondman--or Bondman to chocolate--when the Angel
seized his wrist and pinned it. He did not know the Angel was doing
this--we never know our luck--he could not have told you what happened,
except that he hesitated, and being of the opposite sex, was not lost.
But for the Angel, he would have pulled out the thing before them all,
and said, "Hallo, what's this?" and there would have been an end of
McTaggart. Instead of which the Angel, with angelic swiftness, put a
thought into his head.
"Don't pull out that lump of chocolate! It will make you look a fool.
The great don't eat chocolate, except out of large expensive wooden
boxes with Japanese pictures outside; elaborate boxes. The rich do not
carry half-broken slabs of chocolate in their pockets--still less in
their tobacco pouches!"
Therefore was it that McTaggart did not take out the lump, whatever it
was; he grasped a fingerful of tobacco and peered down with one eye into
the recesses of the pouch. When he saw what was there, his heart stopped
beating! For a moment he felt faint and giddy.... But the angel firmly
put the pouch back again, leaving the tobacco in his fingers, and with
shaking hand he filled his pipe, and with shaking hand he lit it!
What the devil?
How on earth ...?
The unfortunate boy actually examined his own mind to see whether he
could possibly have done such a thing, and then forgotten it--have done
it inadvertently. Then he thought it had fallen into his coat when
Marjorie had let it drop. Then he remembered that he had not been
wearing that coat, that he had been in evening dress. Then he thought
that the universe was made in some way that he did not understand. He
looked at his coat, and fingered it. It was all right. His mind would
not work properly again until he had satisfied himself beyond a doubt
not once, but many times. He allowed--through terror--too long a time to
pass lest he should seem in haste; strolled, looking as careless as he
could, towards the library, looked round to make sure that no one had
noticed him, leaped upstairs to his room, locked the door, took out his
pouch and that which was within. He gazed at it for something like half
a minute, putting it down on his dressing-table in the strong light to
make sure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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