Vanbrugh was a father fighting for his child, a zealot fighting for his faith. But he was touched by this appeal.
“I have not said that. I have only told you that you ought not to become a father. It is not your fault if you have received an evil inheritance, but it will be your fault if you pass it on.”
Alistair hid his face in his hands for a time.
“Be honest with me, Sir Bernard,” he said presently, in a husky voice, without lifting his head. “You are the priest of science, and I am in the confessional. You think I ought to commit suicide?”
The scientist was profoundly moved. He held his breath for an instant, and his forehead grew damp. He found his resolution failing him.
“No,” he said, in faltering tones—“no, don’t think that. I have told you science is still groping her way. I believe it would be happier for some of the poor victims of heredity—the hopelessly insane, the deaf and dumb, and perhaps the criminal and paralytic—if a painless death were provided for them. But a man with your gifts should find something worth living for.”
Alistair looked at him earnestly.
“I want to live,” he said simply. “I don’t want to die. I can’t feel that I have any less right to live than you. Perhaps the criminals and paralytics can’t feel that either. I never feel unfit; I never knew that there was anything wrong about me till other people told me so. When I was a boy the world was a beautiful place to me; it would be so still if there were no good people in it. It is they who will not let me live. You are only saying to me in more honest language what they have been saying to me, what my own mother has been saying to me, ever since I can remember. I don’t know why I am condemned. Ever since I was a boy I have loved beautiful things as other men love gold; I have walked through life with my eyes fixed on the stars, and my feet tripped up by every ditch. My mother thinks that I am wicked, and you say that I am diseased. And to me—yes, to me—you all seem blind people burrowing in the earth and refusing to be happy.”
Vanbrugh shook his head.
“I am not responsible for what others have said to you. In my eyes you are simply a victim of heredity. I do not want my daughter’s children to be victims in their turn; that is all. If you love her——”