His mother knew it too.
"I wish Eliot would marry," she said.
"Why?" said Anne.
"Because then he wouldn't be so keen on going off to look for germs in
disgusting climates."
Anne wondered whether Adeline knew Eliot. For Eliot talked to her about
his work as he walked with her at a fine swinging pace over the open
country, taking all his exercise now while he could get it. That was
another thing he liked about Anne Severn, her splendid physical fitness;
she could go stride for stride with him, and mile for mile, and never
tire. Her mind, too, was robust and active, and full of curiosity; it
listened by the hour and never tired. It could move, undismayed, among
horrors. She could see, as he saw, the "beauty" of the long trains of
research by which Sir Martin Crozier had tracked down the bacillus of
amoebic dysentery and established the difference between typhoid and
Malta fever.
Once started on his subject, the grave, sullen Eliot talked excitedly.
"You do see, Anne, how thrilling it is, don't you? For me there's
nothing but bacteriology. I always meant to go in for it, and Sir
Martin's magnificent. Absolutely top-hole. You see, all these disgusting
diseases can be prevented. It's inconceivable that they should be
tolerated in a civilized country. People can't care a rap or they
couldn't sleep in their beds. They ought to get up and make a public row
about it, to insist on compulsory inoculation for everybody whether they
like it or not. It really isn't enough to cure people of diseases when
they've got them. We ought to see that they never get them, that there
aren't any to get... What we don't know yet is the complete behaviour of
all these bacteria among themselves. A bad bacillus may be doing good
work by holding down a worse one. It's conceivable that if we succeeded
in exterminating all known diseases we might release an unknown one,
supremely horrible, that would exterminate the race."
"Oh Eliot, how awful. How can _you_ sleep in your bed?"
"You needn't worry. It's only a nightmare idea of mine."
And so on and so on, for he was still so young that he wanted Anne to be
excited by the things that excited him. And Anne told him all about her
Ilford farm and what she meant to do on it. Eliot didn't behave like
Aunt Adeline, he listened beautifully, like Uncle Robert and Jerrold, as
if it was really most important that you should have a farm and work on
it.
"What I want is to sell it and get one here. I don't want to be anywhere
else. I can't tell you how frightfully home-sick I am when I'm away. I
keep on seeing those gables with the little stone balls, and the
peacocks, and the fields down to the Manor Farm. And the hills, Eliot.
When I'm away I'm always dreaming that I'm trying to get back to them
and something stops me. Or I see them and they turn into something else.
I shan't be happy till I can come back for good."