第23章 (第3/3页)
Marta, as to Sergeant Williams, faces were a professional matter. The slant of an eyebrow, the set of a mouth, was just as much an evidence of character to Marta as to Williams. Indeed she actually made herself faces to match the characters she played.
'Nurse Ingham thinks he's a dreary. Nurse Darroll thinks he's a horror. My surgeon thinks he's a polio victim. Sergeant Williams thinks he's a born judge. Matron thinks he's a soul in torment.'
Marta said nothing for a little. Then she said: 'It's odd, you know. When you first look at it you think it a mean, suspicious face. Even cantankerous. But when you look at a little longer you find that it isn't like that at all. It is quite calm. It is really quite a gentle face. Perhaps that is what James meant by being saint-like.'
'No. No, I don't think so. What he meant was the - subservience to conscience.'
'Whatever it is, it is a face, isn't it! Not just a collection of organs for seeing, breathing, and eating with. A wonderful face. With very little alteration, you know, it might be a portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent.'
'You don't suppose that it is Lorenzo and that we're considering the wrong man altogether?