‘Long views?’ said Paul, staring at him.
‘Long views,’ Ralston repeated steadily. ‘I know what I’m talking about We are learners, and learners in the lowest class. That’s nonsense,’ he corrected himself, ‘and I hate exaggeration, though I am guilty of it a hundred times a day. But we are learners, and, whether our class is high or low makes little difference to the fact that there is much to learn. The man who is the stronger and the better for his trouble is the scholar who goes to the top of the class. Look ahead, man, and ask whether Paul Armstrong is to be a firmer or a flabbier small element in God’s great universe for what is now befalling him. Your own action has chosen you to be a sort of martyr in a big cause. We are on the fringe of the sex-fight, so far; but before our children are grown men and women, the battle will be in full swing. We have got to settle this question of the sanctity of marriage. What a certain kind of animal calls “free love” is of the beast and bestial; but a reasoned and loyal love between man and woman is a beautiful and noble thing, and it is not the less beautiful and noble because it has not been sanctified by the payment of seven-and-sixpence to the Inland Revenue. You have a principle to fight for, and you have Madge to fight for. By the God I worship,’ he cried, in sudden wrath, ‘I would fight for the principle against death itself, and for a woman like Madge I would die at a slow fire.’
‘But, Ralston,’ Paul besought him—‘Ralston, you don’t understand. You find animation there; but it is there my weakness lies. Do you think I care for myself?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Ralston. ‘If you hadn’t cared for yourself you would never have brought a child like Madge into such an evil as this.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Paul; ‘that’s truth itself.’
He laid his elbows on the table, and leaned his head disconsolately upon his hands. His companion shook him by the shoulder in the rough amity which men use with one another.
‘Look here, Armstrong: willy-nilly, you’re the champion of a great cause, and you have the sweetest woman in the world to fight for. Don’t flaunt the flag insolently—in the present temper of the public that will never do—but stand by it all the same. So far as you’re concerned, Armstrong, it’s a selfish accident that turns you Squire of Dames; but you’re in the tourney now, and you’ve got to behave respectably.’
‘If you mean by behaving respectably that I’ve got to hold by Madge, and live all this down if I can, and do my best to flutter through life on a broken wing, I am with you.’
‘I mean that, and more than that,’ said Ralston. ‘Turn your next play on this theme; turn your next book on it. Never mind the odium of seeming to fight a selfish battle; you’re past that now. Your story is that the man mires his feet in the ordinary manner, that he makes a fool of himself in the usual fashion; that the saving woman comes to him pure and clean, and does her healthful, beautiful work for him at such a cost as you know of. Whether her life is tragedy modified or tragedy unalloyed rests with the story-teller; but you’re there to champion that innocence.’
‘You recoiled from a little tube of manuscript once,’ said Paul, ‘as if it had held a poisonous explosive. Do you remember? Ralston laughed and nodded. ‘If you’re bolder now, I’ll show you something.’