"I cannot remember very clearly," said Ronnie. "I am not a member of the Board. But I do recall very clearly Steppe showing a draft and not only showing it, but reading it."
"Do you remember whether in that draft he referred to the Woodside Repairing Sheds; and if he did, whether he spoke of those as being the absolute property or leased property of the company?"
"The absolute property," said Ronnie. "I remember distinctly because the Woodside Repairing Shops are on the edge of a little estate which my father left me—you remember, John? And naturally I was interested."
Merville was dumbfounded. Never in his most sanguine moments did he suppose that Ronnie would assist him in this respect. Ronnie, who shivered at a word from Steppe, whose sycophantic servant he had been!
"This may come to a fight," said Sir John, "and that would mean putting you in the box to testify against Steppe. Have you quarrelled with him?"
"Good gracious, no!" said Ronnie in surprise. "Why should I quarrel with him? He doesn't worry me. In a way he is amusing, in another way pathetic. I feel sometimes sorry for him. A man with such attainments, such powers and yet so paltry! I often wonder why he prefers the mean way to the big way. He uses his power outrageously, his strength brutally. Perhaps he didn't start right—got all his proportions wrong. I was working it out last night—the beginnings of Steppe—and concluded that he must have had an unhappy childhood. If a child is treated meanly, and is the victim of mean tyrannies, he grows up to regard the triumph of meanness as the supreme end in life. His whole outlook is colored that way, and methods which we normal people look upon as despicable are perfectly legitimate in his eyes."
"Good God!" said Sir John aghast. It was the man, not the arguments which startled him.
"Children ought not to be left to the chance training which their parents give them," Ronnie went on, full of his subject, "but here, I admit, I am postulating a condition of society which will never be realized. Some day I will start my Mother College. It is a queer sounding title," he said apologetically, "but you will understand I want a great institution where we can take the illegitimate children of the country, the unwanted children. They go to baby farmers and beasts of that kind now. I want a college of babies where we will teach them and train them from their babyhood up to think and feel goodly, not piously. That doesn't matter. But bigly and generously. To have high ideals and broad visions; to—"
He stopped and blushed, conscious of their interest and stupefaction; squirmed unhappily in his chair, and rubbed his chin nervously with the knuckles of his hand.
Sir John Maxton leaned back in his chair, his face twitching.