“I believe nothing can save him,” he said slowly. “But we will all do our best, you may be sure of that, Miss Moffat.”
“Thank you,” she answered. The words were nothing, but the tone in which she spoke them went straight to the surgeon’s heart.
“I wish that idiot Girvan had been dead and buried rather than he should have meddled in the case,” thought the surgeon. “And yet, perhaps, it is as well. A few years might have been added to this man’s life, but how could he have found enjoyment in them, with the dread of THIS dogging his path? Better as it is,” decided Mr. Hanlon philosophically. Like many other social reformers, his ideas about the value of life were extremely lax. The nation, the race, the world, posterity, these were the objects he desired to benefit.
What did a few or many lives matter, providing the grand result were obtained? What mattered it whether thousands died brokenhearted, if by the travail of their souls millions yet unborn tasted the delights of perfect equality of (this was a telling platform phrase, perhaps because there is no country—unless, indeed, it may be Scotland, where there is less uncovering, except amongst the beggars, than in Ireland)—“doffing their hats to no man.”
Mr. Hanlon said, and doubtless thought he spoke the truth, he would cheerfully lay down his life to emancipate Ireland.
There is a considerable difference, however, between abstract propositions and actual practice. When the time came that Mr. Hanlon’s chances of existence seemed jeopardized, he proved himself as solicitous to extend his days as the veriest aristocrat might have been.
Nevertheless his theories on the subject being that as a man had to die some time, it did not much matter when he died, he began after a time to consider that perhaps it was quite as well Mr. Moffat should not recover.
He had been a negative quantity ever since his arrival in Ireland. He had not done any harm, but he had not done any good. He occupied the place where a better man might stand, or which no man might advantageously fail to occupy.
A woman with money, a willing heart, an open hand, was of ten times more use in her generation than a man. Perhaps he had in his mind the old saying, “When women reign—men rule.”
At any rate, he thought he could find a use for much of Miss Moffat’s income, not a use so far as he personally was concerned; he was not mercenary; good things he desired, but those it was beyond the power of gold to purchase. No, he would relieve the poor, he would advance the cause, he would drive the wedge destined to split up “the dynasty of oppression,” and Grace’s money would help him to these ends.