Beatrice stopped short, her eyes opened wide. “Why,” exclaimed she, “I thought you disliked him!”
“Not at all—not at all,” replied her father. “He’s a disagreeable chap. But all men who amount to anything are. A man who’s thoroughly agreeable is invariably weak. An agreeable man’s rarely worth more then twelve or fifteen a week. What this world needs is more people like this friend of yours. I saw that he had built himself up solidly from the ground. I wish I had a son like that! Your brothers are pretty poor excuses, thanks to the vicious training your mother has given them. ‘Be a gentleman—and make everybody comfortable—don’t do anything to hurt anybody’s feelings or to make yourself conspicuous.’ That is, be a cipher.” Richmond snorted. “A gentleman is a cipher—and ciphers count for nothing unless they’re annexed after a figure that stands for something. But I suppose a successful man can’t expect to have strong sons. He has to be thankful if they’re not imbecile or dissipated.”
Beatrice had been caught up and whirled all in a twinkling from depth to height. The way down through the woods was rough and toilsome. She flitted along as if it were smooth as a French high-road. She beamed upon her father. “What a difference between the ordinary young man, the sort we meet—and a man like Roger Wade!” she cried.
“Those tailor’s dummies!” said Richmond contemptuously. “You can’t compare a man with them.”
He was on his favorite topic for private and public addresses—the topic that enabled him to express the views which had won for him the name of being the most democratic of the big financiers. Like all men of abounding mentality he was a huge talker; get him started and the only thing to do, whether one wished or no, was to listen. Usually, Beatrice, who was not fond of silence and soon reached the limit of her capacity for listening, would imperiously interrupt these monologues—and both would enjoy the tussle between their wills as each tried to compel the other to listen. But this discourse—composed though it was of commonplaces he had repeated and she had heard scores of times—she drank in as if it had been the brand-new thing her soul had long thirsted to hear. Like all fluent talkers Richmond often fell victim—in conversation, never in action—to the intoxication of bubbling ideas and phrases. Before they reached the place where they had left the T cart to await their return, Richmond had not merely committed himself finally and completely to the gospel of the aristocracy of achievement, he had hailed that aristocracy as the only one worthy of consideration, had ridiculed and denounced all others as utterly contemptible.
Beatrice took advantage of his pause for getting the horses under way. She gave his arm a loving squeeze. “I’m so proud of you!” she said tenderly, gazing at him with sparkling eyes and delicately flushed cheeks. “I knew you’d feel that way about him!”
“About whom?” said her father, whose flooding sermon had borne him swiftly far from view, or remembrance even, of the text whence it had sprung.
“About Chang.”
“Chang? What Chang? Who’s Chang?”
“Roger Wade.”