"No; nor even of his kind: that is another mistake. I have no pleasure in evil any more than in suffering, unless my object makes it necessary. I should like you to do well. It was I, was it not, that set before you the miserableness of the life you have been leading? which you had never faced before. Can you suppose that I should wish greatness to the race and misfortune to its individual members? Certainly not. I wish you to do well. You could have done so, and lived very creditably with the girl whom you have just left, whom you have driven into refusing you. Take my advice—return to her, and all will be well."
"You have a right to despise me," said Walter, quivering with passion and self-restraint. "I did take your advice, and outraged her and myself. But that is over, and I shall take your advice no more."
"You are a fool for your pains," he said. "Go back now and you will find her mind changed. She has thought it over. What! you will not? I said it in your interest, it was your best chance. You could have taken up that good life which I recommend to you with all the more success had there been a boundless purse to begin upon. Poor it is not so easy: but still you can try. Your predecessor was of that kind. There was nothing in him that was bad, poor fellow. He was an agglomeration of small virtues. Underwood was his one vice, a fellow who played cards with him and amused him. No one, you will find, has anything to say against him; he was thought weak, and so he was—against me. But that did not hinder him from being good."
"In the name of Heaven what do you call yourself, that can speak of good and evil as if they were red and blue!" the young man cried. Passion cannot keep always at a climax. Walter's mind ranged from high indignation, rage, dismay, to a wonder that was almost impersonal, which sometimes reached the intolerable point, and burst out into impatient words. It seemed impossible to endure the calm of him, the reason of him, as he walked along the hilly road like any other man.
"It is not amiss for a comparison," he answered with a smile. His composure was not to be disturbed. He made no further explanations. While he played upon the young man beside him as on an instrument, he himself remained absolutely calm. "But these are abstractions," he resumed, "very important to you in your individual life, not so important to me who have larger affairs in hand. There is something however which will have to be decided almost immediately about the island property. I told you that small business about the cotters in the glen was a bagatelle. On the whole, though I thought it folly at the time, your action in the matter was serviceable. A burst of generosity has a fine effect. It is an example of what I have been saying. It throws dust in the eyes of the world. Now we can proceed with vigour on a larger scale."
"If you mean to injure the poor tenants, never! and whatever you mean, no," cried Walter, "I will not obey you. Claim your rights, if you have any rights, publicly."
"I will not take that trouble. I will enforce them through my descendant."
"No! you can torture me, I am aware, but something I have learned since last year."
"You have learned," said his companion calmly, "that your theatrical benevolence was not an unmixed good, that your protégés whom you kept to that barren glen would have been better off had they been dislodged cruelly from their holes. The question in its larger forms is not to be settled from that primitive point of view. I allow," he said with a smile, "that on the whole that was well done. It leaves us much more free for operations now. It gives a good impression—a man who in spite of his kind heart feels compelled to carry out—"
"You are a demon," cried the young man, stung beyond endurance. "You make even justice a matter of calculation, even the natural horror of one's mind. A kind heart! is that like a spade, an instrument in your hands?"