Linked with their fellow heart and mind;
The gains of science, gifts of art;
The sense of oneness with our kind;
The thirst to know and understand—
A large and liberal discontent:
These are the goods in life’s rich hand,
The things that are more excellent.”
William Watson.
The moment the door had closed behind the boy Sir Matthew’s anger cooled. For the time it had been genuine, for quite unintentionally Ralph had used words which stung him as no others could have done. There were two things in the world that the company promoter sincerely cared about—successful speculation, and his reputation as a philanthropist. His adoption of Ralph had been almost entirely a speculation, one of the specious bits of kindness which he had intended to redound to his own honour and glory. Having once undertaken the lad’s education he could not for his own credit’s sake turn back, but from the very first he had shrewdly guessed that it would prove a bad investment, and Ralph had been a thorn in his side. To begin with, the boy was in face curiously like his father, and Sir Matthew had some lingering remains of affection for his old friend, even though in his heart he despised him for not being more of a man of the world. He had not lived the life of a company promoter without having grown perfectly callous to the sufferings of his victims, but yet the conscience that was not dead but dormant within him had been faintly stirred at Whinhaven when he realised that the Rector’s ruin had been his work. Partly to salve his conscience, but chiefly because the world would applaud the action, he had adopted Ralph. The boy, however, had not taken kindly to the part assigned him. He never showed off well before visitors, never learnt to pose as a grateful recipient of unmerited kindness. On the contrary, Sir Matthew always had an uncomfortable feeling that Ralph saw through him, and knew him to be a humbug. As a matter of fact, the taunting allusions he had just made to Mr. Denmead’s mistakes and errors of judgment had driven his hearer far from all recollection of Sir Matthew’s actions or character; Ralph had thought only of that inward picture stamped indelibly upon his brain of the high-minded and scrupulously honourable father, who somehow seemed to him more of a living reality as he spoke than the angry, self-important patron confronting him.
“He was at least an honest man!” The words had intended no reflection on Sir Matthew, but they had gone straight to the company promoter’s one vulnerable spot, and for the moment had sharply pained him. Incensed at the perception that this fellow might hurt his jealously guarded reputation,—that reputation for benevolence which was part of his stock-in-trade, he had burst forth into angry denunciation, and in one indignant sentence had severed all connection between them.