Her mind was little with her living daughter beside her; it was almost entirely with the dead man who, when they had both been young, had stepped out beside her through the green grass of Kilrathy to conquer the world—and had done it.
“He was a great man, was William,” she said as she closed her eyes. She looked at her worn fingers, on which the flesh hung in folds, and turned the plain brass wedding ring feebly round and round; the ring that was now covered by a diamond guard.
“’Twas a fine mornin’ as he put it there,” she murmured. “The sun was shinin’ and the dew sparklin’, and I mind me of a little tit as sat on a wild bit o’ sweetbriar against the church door. ’Tis a sweet feelin’, Kathleen, when ye gives yerself for a man for good. But ye don’t care about them feelin’s. You’re too high and too cold.”
“Oh, not cold! Oh, mother—no, not cold!”
“Well, you’re somethin’ as comes to the same thing,” said Margaret wearily, and lay still. The light of the intellect must always seem cold as Arctic light to those who only know the mellow warmth of the sunshine of the heart.
Her daughter remained leaning against the bed upon her knees. She felt as if so much atonement were due from her, and yet——? Perhaps she should have remembered more the excuse which lay in society for the faults of her father.
Society says to the successful man: “You have done well and wisely; you have thought of yourself alone from your cradle.” Society offers the premium of its flattery and its rewards to the man who succeeds, without regard to the means he has employed. Provided he avoids scandals which become public, there would be obvious impertinence in any investigation into his methods. Society is only occupied with the results. When he succeeds his qualities become virtues, as when a vine bears fruit the chemicals which it has absorbed during its culture become grapes. Public subscriptions will become accreditated to him as divine charities; if he write his name down for a large sum at a banquet at which a royal duke or a lord mayor presides, to enrich a hospital or endow an asylum, he need fear no demands as to how he has gained his vast capital. The man who succeeds knows that his sins will be ignored because he has acquired greatly, as hers were forgiven to Mary Magdalene because she had loved greatly. Can we blame a man because his morality is not higher than that of the world in general? “Get money, honestly if you can, but get money,” says society, and when he has got it, if it has been got in quantities sufficiently large, sovereigns and princes will visit him and require nothing more from him than the fact and proof of its possession. Her father had not created the worship of the golden calf; he had only availed himself of it; he had only set up the animal in his own kailyard and opened his gates.
Great qualities he had undoubtedly possessed; if they were not lovable or altruistic, or such as pleased the strict moralist or the poetic philanthropist, they were such as are alone appreciated in an age which would send the Nazarene to a treadmill and the Stagyrite to a maison centrale if they were living now.
Had she done wrong not to value them more? No; she could not think so.
“He was a great man, my dear, and he had a right to do as he liked with his own,” her mother murmured again, faithful to the last, like a dog, to the hand which, though it had struck her many a brutal blow, had been her master’s.