“On the contrary,” Rochester replied, smiling, “I am much too interested in your amiable conversation. You see,” he added, knocking the ashes from his pipe, and leaning carelessly back against the rock, “I live in a world, every member of which is more or less satisfied. I will be frank with you, and I will admit that I find satisfaction in either man or woman a most reprehensible state. I find a certain relief, therefore, in talking to a person who wants something he hasn’t got, or who wants to be something that he isn’t.”
“Then you can find all the satisfaction you want in talking to me,” the boy declared, gloomily. “I am at the opposite pole of life, you see, to those friends of yours. I want everything I haven’t got. I am content with nothing that I have.”
“For instance?” Rochester asked, suggestively.
“I want freedom from the life of a slave,” the boy said. “I want money, the money that gives power. I want the right to shape my own life in my own way, and to my own ends, instead of being forced to remain a miserable, ineffective part of a useless scheme of existence.”
“Your desires are perfectly reasonable,” Rochester remarked, calmly. “Imagine, if you please—you seem to have plenty of imaginative force—that I am a fairy godfather. I may not look the part, but at least I can live up to it. I will provide the key for your escape. I will set you down in the world you are thirsting to enter. You shall take your place with the others, and run your race.”
The boy suddenly abandoned his huddled-up position, and rose to his feet. Against the background of empty air, and in the gathering darkness, he seemed thinner than ever, and smaller.
“I am going,” he said shortly. “It may seem amusing to you to make fun of me. I will not stay——”
“Don’t be a fool!” Rochester interrupted. “Haven’t you heard that I am more than half a madman? I am going to justify my character for eccentricity. You see my house down there—Beauleys, they call it? At twelve o’clock to-morrow, if you come to me, I will give you a sum of money sufficient to keep you for several years. I do not specify the amount at this moment, I shall think it over before you come.”
The boy had no words. He simply stared at his chance companion in blank astonishment.
“My offer seems to surprise you,” Rochester remarked, pleasantly. “It need not. You can go and tell the whole world of it, if you like, although, as a reputation for sanity is quite a valuable asset, nowadays, I should suggest that you keep your mouth closed. Still, if you do speak of it, no one will be in the least surprised. My friends—I haven’t many—call me the most eccentric man in Christendom. My enemies wonder how it is that I keep out of the asylum. Personally, I consider myself a perfectly reasonable mortal. I have whims, and I am not afraid to indulge them. I give you this money on one—or perhaps we had better say two conditions. The first is that you make a bonâ fide use of it. When I say that, I mean that you leave immediately your present employment, whatever it may be, and go out into the world with the steadfast purpose of finding for yourself the things which you saw a few minutes ago down in the valley there. You may not find them, but still I pledge you to the search. The second condition is that some day or other you find your way back into this part of the country, and tell me how my experiment has fared.”