‘You put a premium on wrong-doing,’ said I, as I shook my head at his argument, smiling, however, at the impassioned face before me.
His high, narrow forehead with the ruffled upstanding hair betrayed the enthusiast; the broad, refined, and eager lips marked a perennial emotion within; his eyes, notwithstanding their wonderful clarity, had a far-away look in the depths of them; a spare form, thin wrists, and shrunken hands completed the presentation of the idealistic, mystical, Don Quixote type of human nature.
While I thus reflected, my friend continued to pour out fresh instances proving satisfactorily to any non-prejudiced mind the correctness of his theory.
‘But what are you going to do with him?’ I asked eventually, ‘for after all that is the important thing. I mean, his being here with you may be very nice for him, but it doesn’t teach him a trade, and you can’t afford to keep him, I know, for long.’
‘First of all,’ eagerly began my friend, ‘I propose to keep him long enough to re-instate him in his self-respect; secondly, to study his temperament and character thoroughly in order to discover what line of life he is best suited for, and then to get him some appropriate situation. That is the programme, and, I think, a quite practical and satisfactory one. There is no “pauperizing” here, you see; it is simply giving a man a fair chance. And now,’ he continued briskly, ‘come out and inspect the garden.’
The protégé, it appeared, had been making himself useful therein, which my friend thought was a highly encouraging sign, ‘for,’ said he, ‘no bad man ever cared for gardening.’
The next few days I spent contentedly in absolute idleness, now strolling up the waterside, now smoking and reading peacefully in the little arbour behind the herbaceous border. I had almost forgotten the existence of my bête-noir; he showed, indeed, a most commendable readiness to efface himself as much as possible from observation, and when I chanced to pass him he seemed rather to avoid me than to seek my company. ‘Good-morning,’ I would say, if I happened to come out of the house before breakfast for a stroll, and find him chopping firewood, ‘lovely weather, and looks like lasting, I think.’
‘Ay,’ he would usually reply, with a hurried touch to his cap, ‘it’s canny weather,’ then muttering something about being busy, would incontinently hurry into the house. I took this as a sign of grace, and was quite favourable to the mode of intercourse thus established. But my host, I could see, was pained at my apparent lack of interest in his protégé; so the next day, finding Blythe engaged in tying up the suckers of the honeysuckle to the trellis of the arbour, I went boldly up to him, determined to try and draw him out.
‘Well, and how do you like the country?’ I inquired. ‘A pleasant change after town life, eh?’
He gave me a quick, suspicious glance in return, then muttering, ‘Ay, dootless,’ again devoted himself to his occupation.