“Yes,” I said, “I can understand your being interested in that. It is a survival of a certain antiquarian value. It is the quaintest standard of conduct imaginable, totally unreasonable and inconsistent. But it exists. There are some things which a gentleman of that class will not do.”
“Exactly. These men—may I say you, for it is you I am thinking of. You have your sense of honour.”
I never was more surprised in my life than I was when Ascher said that to me. Nothing that I have ever said or done in his company could possibly have led him to suppose that I am a victim of that outworn superstition known as the honour of a gentleman.
“You have an instinct,” said Ascher, “inherited through many generations, a highly specialised sense, now nearly infallible, for knowing what is honourable and what is base. I do not know that any of my countrymen have that sense. I am sure that the class to which I belong has not. We look at things in a different way.”
“A much better way,” I said, “more practical.”
“Yes, more practical. Better perhaps in the sense of being wiser. But I have a wish, an odd fancy if you like, to see things your way, to guide my conduct according to your standard of honour.”
As well as I could make out Ascher was asking me to decide for him on which horn of his infernal dilemma he was to impale himself, and to base my decision on a perfectly absurd and arbitrary set of rules for conduct, none of which could by any possibility be made to apply to a situation like his.
“My dear Ascher,” I said, “I can’t possibly judge for you.”
“You could judge if it were your own case,” he said. “You could certainly judge then. Have you ever in your life been in the smallest doubt, even for a moment, about the way of honour, which it is?”
“That is all very well,” I said; “I quite admit I do know that. I generally do the other thing, but I know what I ought to do according to the ridiculous standard of my class. But I don’t know what you ought to do. That’s a different thing altogether.”