“But,” urged old Ceely, without letting go his hold, “Joan has axed Miss Arminell for a scullery-maid’s place for me. Now I’d rather have to do wi’ the dogs, or I could keep the guns beautifully clean, or even the stables.”
“I really cannot attend to this!” said Jingles, impatiently. “I have other matters of more importance now on my mind; besides, my influence is not what—” he spoke bitterly—“what it should be in the great house.”
“You might do me a good turn, and speak a word for me.”
“The probability of my speaking a good word for you, or any one to Lord Lamerton, or of doing any one a good turn in Orleigh Park, is gone from me for ever,” said Giles. “You must detain me no longer—it is useless. Let me go.”
He shook himself free from the clutch of the old man, and walked along the road.
After he had gone several paces, perhaps a hundred yards, he turned—moved by what impulse was unknown to him—and looked back. In the road, lit by the moon, stood the cripple, stretching forth his maimed hand after him, with the claw-like fingers.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HOW ARMINELL TOOK IT.
Giles Inglett Saltren walked on fast, he was disturbed in the stream of his thoughts by the interruption of the tiresome old cripple. He had more important matters to occupy his mind than the requirements of Samuel Ceely. His heart beat, his hands became moist. What a marvellous disclosure had been made to him—and he wondered at himself for not having divined it before. He argued much as did his mother. Why had Lord Lamerton done such great things for him, why had he sent him abroad, found him money, given him education, lifted him far above the sphere in which his parents moved, unless he felt called to do so by a sense of responsibility, such as belongs to a father?
To a whole class of minds disinterested conduct is inconceivable. All such conduct as is oblique is to them intelligible, and allowance is made by them for stupidity, and stupidity with them is the same thing as unselfishness. But such unselfishness is permissible only by fits as lapses from the course which all men naturally take. But that men should act consistently on disinterested motives is an idea too preposterous for them to allow of its existence.
This class of minds does not belong specially to any particular stratum of society, though it is found to be most prevalent where the struggle for existence is most keen, and where there is least culture.