"Don't you get thinking that living in a city is a soft job, for it isn't. But I know what you mean. There's a kind of satisfaction in working out of doors with your hands; that's what you mean, isn't it? Well, I used to feel that way—once. I can mind how I used to whistle at my work, and had a jest for my mates, and got more real pleasure out of a pot of ale and a plate of bread-and-cheese than I've ever had since, in fine living.... I don't know but what that was the happiest time of my life, after all; though of course I didn't think so then. I can mind the little house I lived in, and the patch of garden. I'd be working in that garden by five o'clock on a summer morning, and again late at night, after work. Seems to me, as I look back, that in those days I hadn't got a real care. It's a queer thing to think about. Makes you feel as if life had fooled you after all. But I reckon that's about what life is for most of us—kind of game of blind hookey. Well, I've lost the game, that's evident; and it seems as if you'd won it."
It was a curious confession from such a man. Arthur recollected that Bundy had said much the same thing. He also had spoken of a little house with mignonette under the window, with its unforgetable memories of content and peace, and had summed up his life in one little bit of dearly bought wisdom—"We don't know what we want, and, with all our trying, get the wrong thing after all." Had his father also made that sad discovery, and made it too late?
All that evening Masterman was very quiet and subdued. He talked at intervals, and in snatches, of various things in his own past life, speaking of them with ironic sad composure, as of things which lay a long way off, in which he had ceased to be interested. And yet there appeared to be some method in this vague reminiscent talk, some point toward which his thoughts were working, something that he found it difficult to say.
At last he reached his point. "When you and me parted—" He stopped, as though swallowing something bitter, and began again. "When you went away, do you remember you said something to me? You said I was dishonest. You didn't ought to have said that."
"O father! don't speak of that!"
"I reckon it's got to be spoke of. I want to know what you think of me now."
"Father, you have no need to defend yourself to me."
"Haven't I? Well, I suppose that's kindly meant, and I ought to be grateful. Only I'm not; and I'll tell you why. Do you know why I'm sitting in this empty house, feeding on the pig's swill that old lady in the kitchen calls food? Perhaps you think I like it? Well, I don't. Do you know why there's no furniture in the rooms? Do you know why I'm a beggar? Do you know why the men I knew in the city turn their faces away when I pass, why the men I used to lunch with won't speak to me and are too busy to see me when I call? Well, I'll tell you. It's just because I've been too honest. I had no call to give my fortune to the creditors of the Amalgamated. They hadn't a pretence of right to it. It was mine, every penny of it. But I did it, just because I was honest, and proud of my honesty. There's not half a dozen men in the city would have done that. Those jeering scoundrels who pass me in the street as if I was dirt, and laugh and whisper to one another, 'That's poor old Masterman, poor old bankrupt Masterman; and lucky he ain't in gaol'—there's not one of them as would have done it. But bankrupt Masterman did it, and he knew he had no call to do it. He was too proud to let any man call him a thief. If he hadn't done it, he'd be riding in his carriage now, and folk would ha' said, 'Mighty smart man, that Masterman,' and they'd have thought the better of me. Well, that's what I want you to remember. No, I don't want you to answer me. I'm not concerned to know what you think about it. I know I'm down, but I've got my pride still, and I don't care what people think about me. I've been robbed of almost everything, and I needn't have been but for this—that I'm honest!"
He spoke with extraordinary heat, striding up and down the room, his face dark and harsh. He was again the Masterman of the old days, full of fierce passion, proud, strong, not to be contradicted. But amid all the harshness of that strong face there shone something new, something never seen there before, like light flashed fitfully through dark clouds—an element of dignity that was almost nobleness. Arthur gazed upon that spectacle in a sort of silent wonder. And once more the sense of elemental bigness in his father came to him with vivid force. Here was a nature that overtopped his own at all points. It was great even in its faultiness, and who could estimate its crude astounding virtues?
There was no return of this mood. The next day Masterman spent several hours out of doors, coming home late at night, weary and silent.