But there
was something else, something worse than any of these things, that
made Fritzing mop his forehead with so extreme a desperation: Annalise
had demanded the money due to her, and Fritzing had no money.
I am afraid Fritzing was never meant for a conspirator. Nature never
meant him to be a plotter, an arranger of unpleasant surprises for
parents. She never meant him to run away. She meant him, probably,
to spend his days communing with the past in a lofty room with
distempered walls and busts round them. That he should be forced to
act, to decide, to be artful, to wrangle with maids, to make ends
meet, to squeeze his long frame and explosive disposition into a
Creeper Cottage where only an ill-fitting door separated him from the
noise and fumes of the kitchen, was surely a cruel trick of Fate, and
not less cruel because he had brought it on himself. That he should
have thought he could run away as well as any man is merely a proof of
his singleness of soul. A man who does that successfully is always,
among a great many other things, a man who takes plenty of money with
him and knows exactly where to put his hand on more when it is wanted.
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