“And an instructive one too, I should say, Sir.”
“In one sense, yes; certainly instructive. You see, Mr. M’Kinlay, with respect to life, it is thus: Men in your profession become conversant with all the material embarrassments and difficulties of families; they know of that crushing bond, or that ruinous mortgage, of the secret loan at fifty per cent., or the drain of hush-money to stop a disclosure, just as the doctor knows of the threatened paralysis or the spreading aneurism; but we men of the world—men of the world par excellence—read humanity in its moral aspect; we study its conflicts, its trials, its weakness, and its fall—I say fall, because such is the one and inevitable end of every struggle.”
“This is a sad view, a very sad view,” said M’Kinlay, who, probably to fortify himself against the depression he felt, drank freely of a strong Burgundy.
“Not so in one respect. It makes us more tolerant, more charitable. There is nothing ascetic in our judgment of people—we deplore, but we forgive.”
“Fine, Sir, very fine—a noble sentiment!” said the lawyer, whose utterance was not by any means so accurate as it had been an hour before.
“Of that relentless persecution of women, for instance, such as you practise it here in England, the great world knows positively nothing. In your blind vindictiveness you think of nothing but penalties, and you seem to walk over the battle-field of life with no other object or care than to search for the wounded and hold them up to shame and torture. Is it not so?”
“I am sure you are right. We are all fal—fal—la—hie, not a doubt of it,” muttered M’Kinlay to himself.
“And remember,” continued Sir Within, “it is precisely the higher organisations, the more finely-attuned temperaments, that are most exposed, and which, from the very excellence of their nature, demand our deepest care and solicitude. With what pains, for instance, would you put together the smashed fragments of a bit of rare Sèvres, concealing the junctures and hiding the flaws, while you would not waste a moment on a piece of vulgar crockery.”
“Pitch it out o’ window at once!” said M’Kinlay, with an almost savage energy.
“So it is. It is with this precious material, finely formed, beautiful in shape, and exquisite in colour, the world has to deal; and how natural that it should treat it with every solicitude and every tenderness. But the analogy holds further. Every connoisseur will tell you that the cracked or fissured porcelain is scarcely diminished in value by its fracture; that when skilfully repaired it actually is almost, if not altogether, worth what it was before.”