The girl wrinkled her pretty forehead “Well, father,” she answered, a little dubiously, “for one thing, I don’t know that I think it’s quite true. I always thought Sir Charles was a terrible prig; horribly self-satisfied and altogether too much taken up with marveling at his own virtues. I don’t believe, you know, that a man like Sir Charles ever could assume for any one ‘the seeming reality of flesh and blood.’ ‘The seeming reality of a lay figure,’ I think, would be about the nearest phrase one could properly use.”
Henry Carleton hastened to dissent. “No, no, my dear,” he returned, “you’re quite wrong. Sir Charles wasn’t perfect. Richardson was far too clever to fall into that error. Sir Charles had his faults, and the author in his concluding note takes special pains to draw attention to them. He had his faults, but then his virtues so far outweighed them that they sank into insignificance. Then there was Lovelace, whose faults were so pronounced, and who had such a lack of any redeeming virtues, that he is at once to be condemned as a character thoroughly immoral, serviceable ethically only to point the awful example of talents misspent and energies abused. And midway between the two is Mr. B., who also had his failings, but who finally atoned for them by his condescension in marrying Pamela. The trio, I think, point the way to the author’s whole philosophy of life. We have our faults, even the best of us. We can’t help them. But on the other hand, by constant endeavor, we can do so much good that in the end we counterbalance the evil we do, and so to speak obliterate it altogether. Very good, I think, and very sound. An interesting title for a little essay, The Balance, don’t you think so, Rose?”
The girl looked doubtful. “Why, no,” she answered, “to tell the truth, I don’t. I should think that was a pretty dangerous doctrine. Good and evil—debit and credit. I should think it was a very grave question whether any amount of good could ever really balance one conscious evil act. Take Mr. B., whom you’ve just quoted, for example. I could never, in reading that book, think of him as anything but a great, hulking, overbearing, arrogant animal, and the shameful way in which he treated poor Sally Goodwin is a case right in point—that was something no man could ever atone for, even by a series of the finest deeds in the world. No, father, I think, if I were you, I shouldn’t try to justify a theory like that. I’m afraid it isn’t sound.”
Henry Carleton frowned. “Nonsense,” he cried, for him a little irritably, “it’s perfectly sound. I could give you a hundred examples. ‘Take him for all in all,’ as Shakespeare phrases it; that’s what I mean. Some evil has to be done with the good, unless we’re going back to pillories and hermitages, to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. And in these days common sense forbids that. Your view is entirely unreasonable, Rose.”
The girl seemed somewhat surprised at his unusual heat. With a little laugh she rolled up her embroidery, quitted the easy chair, and coming over to him, kissed him obediently on the cheek. “Well, don’t mind me, father,” she said affectionately, “if you don’t want my foolish ideas, you shouldn’t ask for them. One thing’s sure; if your theory is right, you can do about anything you want to now. Rob a bank—or commit any dreadful crime you choose. Your balance must be so large you couldn’t overdraw it if you tried.”
Carleton laughed. “Well, perhaps that is rather a reductio ad absurdum,” he answered. “In any event, I don’t think I’ll experiment in the way you mention. You’re not going up-stairs already, are you, Rose?”
She nodded. “Yes, if you don’t mind,” she replied, “I’m a little tired this evening. Good night. Don’t work too hard over your writing now. You never rest. I never saw such a man.”
Left alone, Carleton returned to his essay, but not with the concentration he had before displayed. A sudden restlessness seemed to have come over him. Once or twice he ceased his work to consult his watch, and finally stopped, rose hastily, and walked over to the window, where he stood gazing aimlessly put into the night; then, with a sigh, turned slowly, almost, one would have said, reluctantly, again to his task.
For perhaps five minutes he kept manfully at work. Then once again his attention seemed to wander; slowly and still more slowly moved the unwilling pen, and finally, with a sudden impatient gesture, he laid it down, flung himself back in his chair, and sat there motionless, yet not with the air of one who has comfortably finished the task he has in hand, but rather as if debating within himself, between two possible courses of action, which one at last to choose.
If such, indeed, was the case, the decision was not to lie with him. There came a knock at the door. “Come in,” he said quickly, and the butler, Helmar’s friend of old, a little thinner, a little grayer, a little more imperturbable than ever, entered softly, approaching close to his master’s elbow before he delivered himself of his message. “Mr. Vaughan, sir,” he announced with slow deliberation, “in the reception-room. He wishes to know, sir, if without inconvenience to yourself you could give him a few moments.”