When he heard that it was generally reported that Aaron gave away in secret much more than he gave away in public his comment was, "What is easier than to set such a rumor afloat? Any rich man can do it by an expenditure of ten pounds a year. If money is bestowed in secret who is to know of it but the donor? If it becomes public who could have spoken of it first but the donor? No one but a fool would be gulled by so transparent a trick."
These detractions were generally uttered to men who sympathized with the speaker, and they were not without effect. By which it will be seen that Aaron had enemies, as all men have.
Mr. Poynter posed as a moral man, and it is the very essence of these usurpers of morality that they must stand alone, and that upon their pedestal there shall be no room for any other braggart. He was a married man with sons and daughters and a wife, who all looked upon the husband and father as a pattern.
Whether his children followed the pattern or not does not concern this history, which has to do with the head of the family alone. Whatever a man may be in the prime of life the earlier Adam, if it differ from the later, will very likely assert itself in the blood of his descendants, and this may have been the case with Mr. Poynter's children, despite the respect in which they held him.
You come into contact with a sober-faced man, whose distinguishing mark is one of intense respectability; you see him at home in the bosom of his family, whom he entertains with severely respectable platitudes; you hear his opinions on matters of current interest, a trial, a scandal in high life, tittle-tattle of the stage, the court, the Church, and society in general.
What an intensely respectable gentleman, what severely respectable views, what strict morality, what an estimable father of a family!
Ah, but draw the curtain of years aside, and we behold another
man--another man, yet still the same: a man about town, philandering, deceiving, lying, and playing the base part to serve his selfish pleasures. Where is the morality, where the respectability now?--and which of the two is the true man?
Was this the case with Mr. Poynter? The course of events may possibly supply the answer to this question presently. Meanwhile nothing is more certain to-day than that he is accepted as he presents himself. But if in the past life of such a man as Aaron Cohen may be found an episode of his own creating upon which he looks with dismay, why might it not be so with such a man as Mr. Poynter?
Aaron Cohen and he had been acquainted for many years, and at Aaron's hands Mr. Poynter had received mortifications again and again. In a country like England, where operations of magnitude are being continually undertaken, there is room for all who occupy the higher rungs of the ladder; it is only the lower rungs which are overcrowded, and which need clearing by means of emigration to lands where there is room for the toiling, suffering millions. But Mr. Poynter chose to believe that there was not room for Aaron and himself, and he had nursed and fostered an ardent wish to drag Aaron down.
Perhaps it was the knowledge of his own early life that made him think, "If I could find something in his past that would bring shame upon him--if I could only rake up something that would show him in his true light! It would be the commercial and social ruin of him. He would never be able to hold up his head again."
He would gladly have paid for some such discovery.