“I haven’t any opinion yet,” said the other man slowly; “and, somehow, I got to thinking—I say, John, after all, what do you make of West’s telling Miss Townsend that matter?”
“I think she didn’t know which side her bread was buttered,” John Paul said gruffly.
“Oh, that’s another question,” the lawyer said. “I think almost any woman is too good for almost any man. I wonder they don’t all think better of it at the last moment, and throw us over!”
“How long have you been married, Gifford?” the older man inquired cynically. “I’ll tell you what Kate says: Kate says if Amy could throw him over, she ought to have had the chance to. So she thinks West ought to have told her.”
“That’s like saying, if there is a chance of breaking your neck by taking some preposterous leap, take it,” the lawyer commented. “But as I look back at it now, and see how it has aged Billy, and—well, hardened him a little, I think—it seems such an unnecessary calamity; such a blunder! And yet”—
“Kate has views about heredity, and all that sort of thing,” Mr. Paul explained. “She says a woman has a right to say her children shan’t have a—shady character for a father. That was too much for me; I don’t generally contradict my Boss; it isn’t peaceful. But that was too much for me! Billy West shady! I gave my wife a piece of my mind. I tell you, Woodhouse, women are hard.”
“Well, but there’s something in that,” the lawyer protested. “A woman has not only a right, but a duty, to think of her children, and a possible moral taint”—
“Moral grandmother!” John Paul broke in; “West is one man in a hundred. I think he’s well rid of Amy: I told him so at the time. Why, look here; a man who has not repented of his sin has no inclination to confess it. And, having repented and made reparation, confession becomes a mere matter of expediency. Why, good heavens, Gifford! is there to be no escape from sin? What’s all this talk about forgiveness mean, if we’ve got to rake up the past and agonize over it as long as we live? Isn’t there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don’t believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues! And yet,” he ended, suddenly cooling, “I swear it is a difficult question, the telling or not telling the girl you are going to marry.”
“If you bring it down to expediency, it’s simple enough,” Gifford Woodhouse said; “it was obviously inexpedient. Even if she had married him, and simply remembered, would either of them have been any better off? Would any end have been subserved by putting such painful knowledge on her conscience as well as his own? It was not as though there was a lady ‘with nine small children and one at the breast’ somewhere round the corner in the Past, who might turn up some day. That sort of sin affects the relation of the man and woman, and it may be simple prudence to confess. Though I think there is a question, even there. But in this case expediency, you might even call it unselfishness, would make him hold his tongue. The only thing is, perhaps there is something higher than expediency?”