“Splendidly generous,” replied Malcolm; “—but—I so well remember when Mr Graham first made me see that the question of duty does not always lie between a good thing and a bad thing: there would be no room for casuistry then, he said. A man has very often to decide between one good thing and another. But indeed I can hardly tell without more time to think, whether that comes in here. If a man wants to be generous, it must at least be at his own expense.”
“But surely,” said Florimel, not in the least aware that she was changing sides, “a man ought to hold by the rights that birth and inheritance give him.”
“That is by no means so clear, my lady,” returned Malcolm, “as you seem to think. A man may be bound to hold by things that are his rights, but certainly not because they are rights. One of the grandest things in having rights is that, being your rights, you may give them up—except, of course, they involve duties with the performance of which the abnegation would interfere.”
“I have been trying to think,” said Lady Clementina, “what can be the two good things here to choose between.”
“That is the right question, and logically put, my lady,” rejoined Malcolm, who, from his early training, could not help sometimes putting on the schoolmaster. “The two good things are—let me see—yes—on the one hand the protection of the lady to whom he owed all possible devotion of man to woman, and on the other what he owed to his tenants, and perhaps to society in general—yes —as the owner of wealth and position. There is generosity on the one side and dry duty on the other.”
“But this was no case of mere love to the lady, I think,” said Clementina. “Did Mr Tyrrel not owe Miss Mowbray what reparation lay in his power? Was it not his tempting of her to a secret marriage, while yet she was nothing more than a girl, that brought the mischief upon her?”
“That is the point,” said Malcolm, “that makes the one difficulty. Still, I do not see how there can be much of a question. He could have no right to do fresh wrong for the mitigation of the consequences of preceding wrong—to sacrifice others to atone for injuries done by himself.”
“Where would be the wrong to others?” said Florimel, now back to her former position. “Why could it matter to tenants or society which of the brothers happened to be an earl?”
“Only this, that, in the one case, the landlord of his tenants, the earl in society, would be an honourable man, in the other, a villain—a difference which might have consequences.”
“But,” said Lady Clementina, “is not generosity something more than duty—something higher, something beyond it?”