What was there to deplore? His triumph had been so patent as to win the applause of the world. For the first time in his life money was in his pocket. That woman of courage who had striven so heroically for his welfare would meet with her reward. She would be enabled to end her days at ease. In those somewhat unilluminated eyes Money had always seemed to divide the place of honor with Duty. She would go to her grave, this upright and courageous one, with a p an upon her lips, because her son, her one talent, had in her old age been increased to her tenfold. Those worn hands would need to toil no more.
After all, this success, which to an honest nature was so embittering, had a curious virtue of its own if it could fulfil such an office. And it was hardly for the like of himself to be troubled with these intimations. Morality, like other privileges, was for those who could afford to enjoy it; it was for those who had a snug little annuity in the funds. Those who had shivered in penury, who had known the look of want, had purchased their right to walk unfearingly by the light of their necessity. And he had only parted with his dreams after all; he had only transmuted airy nothings into explicit gold of the state. Let the visionary who nourished his heart upon the unattainable despise Crœsus as before, but let the well-fed and valiant materialist render due homage to that lusty and pagan old fellow. You could not keep your cake and eat it; you could not resign your ideals and yet hope to inhabit your castle in Spain.
It always came back to the question of the Choice. Was it not a sign-post that headed every path; did it not denote the convergence and the parting of every road? It was his own will which had selected the broad and muddy highway of the many, instead of the narrow and precipitous mountain ascent which was only for the feet of the few. In a choice of this kind there might be an affront to his nature, but once having embraced it, it was weakness to repine. He must shed this ferocious arrogance of his. He was now of the common herd, no longer of the sacred few.
The strangeness of his position held his thoughts all day. That which he had purchased had been obtained at a cost beyond rubies; it was not worth one-half he had paid for it, but as he could never recover his outlay he was bound to go on. It remained for him now to play the part of the cynic and philosopher. It was not the highest style of the hypersensitive man on the defensive, but the patchwork target would have to serve until he found the cunning to provide himself with a more efficient cover for his wounds. Yet when all was said the shaft had sunk to a cruel depth in that quivering nature. Heart and mind were lacerated.
At the table at the aerated breadshop at which he took his lunch, two middle-aged clerks from a city counting-house, musty, cowed, and solemn men, were discussing the trial wherein the morning journals with their unerring instinct had discovered the element of sensation.
“——so she got off?”
“Yes, they brought in a verdict of not guilty. My father-in-law was on the jury. He says it was her lawyer’s speech that saved her. He says there wasn’t a dry eye in the court, and the poor old judge cried just like a child.”
“No!”
“Yes! He says he never heard a speech like that before in his life, and he says if he lives to be a hundred years old he will never forget it.”
“Who was her lawyer? Sir Somebody, K. C., M. P.?”