Concerning love—that mysterious passion which Plotinus so well describes as part god part devil—Doctor McKirdy was an absolute fatalist. He regarded the attraction of man to woman as inevitable in its manifestations as are any of the other maleficent forces of nature, and for this view—not to go further than his own case—he had good reason. Till he was nearly thirty, he had himself experienced, not only a distaste but a positive contempt for what those about him described as love.
However much the fact was disguised by soft phrases, he, the young Alexander McKirdy, knew full well that the passion was wholly base and devilish—playing sometimes impish, more often terrible, tricks on those it lured within its labyrinth; causing men to deviate almost unconsciously from the paths lying straight before them; generally injuring their careers, and invariably—and this, to such a nature as his own, seemed the most tragic thing of all—making, while the spell was upon the victims, utter fools of them. Above all had he condemned, with deepest scorn and intolerance—this, doubtless, owing in a measure to his early religious training—that man who allowed himself to feel the slightest attraction for a married woman; indeed, for such a one, he felt nothing but scathing contempt. The whole subject of man's relation to woman was one on which the doctor had been, even as a very raw and shy youth, always ready to hold forth, warning and admonishing those about him, especially his own sentimental countrymen cast up on the lonely and yet siren-haunted sea of London life.
Then, holding these views more than ever, though perhaps less eager to discuss them, a chance had brought him to Chancton, there to fall himself in the same snare which he believed in all good faith so easy to avoid. After one determined effort to shake himself free, he had bowed his neck to the yoke, gradually sacrificing all that he had once thought made life alone worth living to a feeling which he had known to be unrequited, and which for a time he had believed to be unsuspected by the object of it.
Who was he, Alexander McKirdy, so he asked himself during those days when he watched with very mingled feelings Berwick and Barbara—who was he to jeer, to find fault, even to feel surprised at what had now befallen James Berwick and Barbara Rebell? And yet, as was still apt to be his wont, the old Scotchman blamed the woman far more than the man—for even now, to his mind, man was the victim, woman the Circe leading him astray. This view angered the mistress of the Priory, but not even to please Madame Sampiero would the doctor pretend that he thought otherwise than he did.
"Is this, think you, the first time she soweth destruction?" he once asked rather sternly. "I tell ye, Madam, she cannot be so simple as ye take her to be! I grant her Jamie"—falling back in the eagerness of the discussion on what had been his name for Berwick as a child—"we all know he's a charmer! But how about that poor stiff loon, Oliver Boringdon? would you say that there she has not been to blame?"
But the answering murmur was very decided, "I am sure it is the first time she has sowed destruction, as you call it."
"Well then, she has been lacking the opportunities God gives most women! If she has not sowed, it has not been for lack of the seed: she has a very persuasive manner—very persuasive indeed! That first night before she stumbled into this house, I was only half minded that she should see you, and she just wheedled me into allowing her to do so—oh! in a very dignified way, that I will admit. Now as women sow so shall they reap."
"That," muttered Madame Sampiero, "is quite true;" and the doctor had pursued, rather ruthlessly, his advantage. "Can you tell me in all honesty," he asked, peering forward at her, meeting with softened gaze the wide open blue eyes, "if you yourself sowed destruction innocently-like, that is without knowing it? Was there ever a time when you were not aware of what you were doing?"
For a moment the paralysed woman had made no answer, and then her face quivered, and he knew that the sounds which issued from between her trembling lips signified, "Yes, McKirdy, I always did know it! But Barbara is a better woman than I ever was——"