“I see you think I’m a renegade. The way certain classes arrogate to themselves the title of the people has never pleased me. Why are some human beings the people, the people only, and others not? I’m of the people myself, I’ve worked all my days like a knife-grinder and I’ve really never changed.”
“You mustn’t let me make you angry,” she laughed as she sat down again. “I’m sometimes very provoking, but you must stop me off. You wouldn’t think it perhaps, but no one takes a snub better than I.”
Mr. Vetch dropped his eyes a minute; he appeared to wish to show that he regarded such a speech as that as one of this great, perverse lady’s characteristic humours and knew he should be wanting in respect to her if he took it seriously or made a personal application of it. “What I want is this,” he began after a moment: “that you’ll, that you’ll——” But he stopped before he had got further. She was watching him, listening to him; she waited while he paused. It was a long pause and she said nothing. “Princess,” the old man broke out at last, “I’d give my own life many times for that boy’s!”
“I always told him you must have been fond of him!” she cried with bright exultation.
“Fond of him? Pray who can doubt it? I made him, I invented him!”
“He knows it, moreover,” the Princess smiled. “It’s an exquisite organisation.” And as the old man gazed at her, not knowing apparently what to make of her tone, she kept it up: “It’s a very interesting opportunity for me to learn certain things. Speak to me of his early years. How was he as a child? When I like people I like them altogether and want to know everything about them.”
“I shouldn’t have supposed there was much left for you to learn about our young friend. You’ve taken possession of his life,” Mr. Vetch added gravely.
“Yes, but as I understand you, you don’t complain of it? Sometimes one does so much more than one has intended. One must use one’s influence for good,” she went on with the noble, gentle air of accessibility to reason that sometimes lighted up her face. And then irrelevantly: “I know the terrible story of his mother. He told it me himself when he was staying with me. In the course of my life I think I’ve never been more affected.”
“That was my fault—that he ever learnt it. I suppose he also told you that.”
“Yes, but I think he understood your idea. If you had the question to determine again would you judge differently?”