Part 44 (1/2)

'I thought you might just as well have some more money,' he said, 'so I brought you some. I may want to sail any minute. I don't know. Yes, you'd better take it.'

Lady Maud had looked up quickly and had hesitated to receive the envelope, but when he finished speaking she took it quickly and slipped it into the opening of her long glove, pus.h.i.+ng it down till it lay in the palm of her hand. She fastened the b.u.t.tons before she spoke.

'How thoughtful you always are for me!'

She unconsciously used the very words with which she had thanked him in Hare Court the last time he had given her money. The tone told him how deeply grateful she was.

'Well,' he said in answer, 'as far as that goes, it's for you yourself, as much as if I didn't know where it went; and if I'm obliged to sail suddenly I don't want you to be out of your reckoning.'

'You're much too good, Rufus. Do you really mean that you may have to go back at once, to defend yourself?'

'No, not exactly that. But business is business, and somebody responsible has got to be there, since poor old Bamberger has gone crazy and come abroad to stay--apparently.'

'Crazy?'

'Well, he behaves like it, anyway. I'm beginning to be sorry for that man. I'm in earnest. You mayn't believe it, but I really am. Kind of unnatural, isn't it, for me to be sorry for people?'

He looked steadily at Lady Maud for a moment, then smiled faintly, looked away, and began to blow his little tune through his teeth again.

'You were sorry for little Ida,' suggested Lady Maud.

'That's different. I--I liked her mother a good deal, and when the child was turned adrift I sort of looked after her. Anybody'd do that, I expect.'

'And you're sorry for me, in a way,' said Lady Maud.

'You're different, too. You're my friend. I suppose you're about the only one I've got, too. We can't complain of being crowded out of doors by our friends, either of us, can we? Besides, I shouldn't put it in that way, or call it being sorry, exactly. It's another kind of feeling I have. I'd like to undo your life and make it over again for you, the right way, so that you'd be happy. I can do a great deal, but all the cursed nickel in the world won't bring back the--' he checked himself suddenly, shutting his hard lips with an audible clack, and looking down. 'I beg your pardon, my dear,' he said in a low voice, a moment later.

For he had been very near to speaking of the dead, and he felt instinctively that the rough speech, however kindly meant, would have pained her, and perhaps had already hurt her a little. But as she looked down, too, her hand gently touched the sleeve of his coat to tell him that there was nothing to forgive.

'He knows,' she said, more softly than sadly. 'Where he is, they know about us--when we try to do right.'

'And you haven't only tried,' Van Torp answered quietly, 'you've done it.'

'Have I?' It sounded as if she asked the question of herself, or of some one to whom she appealed in her heart. 'I often wonder,' she added thoughtfully.

'You needn't worry,' said her companion, more cheerily than he had yet spoken. 'Do you want to know why I think you needn't fuss about your conscience and your soul, and things?'

He smiled now, and so did she, but more at the words he used than at the question itself.

'Yes,' she said. 'I should like to know why.'

'It's a pretty good sign for a lady's soul when a lot of poor creatures bless her every minute of their lives for fis.h.i.+ng them out of the mud and landing them in a decent life. Come, isn't it now? You know it is. That's all. No further argument's necessary. The jury is satisfied and the verdict is that you needn't fuss. So that's that, and let's talk about something else.'

'I'm not so sure,' Lady Maud answered. 'Is it right to bribe people to do right? Sometimes it has seemed very like that!'

'I don't set up to be an expert in morality,' retorted Van Torp, 'but if money, properly used, can prevent murder, I guess that's better than letting the murder be committed. You must allow that. The same way with other crimes, isn't it? And so on, down to mere misdemeanours, till you come to ordinary morality. Now what have you got to say? If it isn't much better for the people themselves to lead decent lives just for money's sake, it's certainly much better for everybody else that they should. That appears to me to be unanswerable. You didn't start in with the idea of making those poor things just like you, I suppose. You can't train a cart-horse to win the Derby. Yet all their nonsense about equality rests on the theory that you can. You can't make a good judge out of a criminal, no matter how the criminal repents of his crimes. He's not been born the intellectual equal of the man who's born to judge him. His mind is bia.s.sed. Perhaps he's a degenerate--everything one isn't oneself is called degenerate nowadays. It helps things, I suppose. And you can't expect to collect a lot of poor wretches together and manufacture first-cla.s.s Magdalens out of ninety-nine per cent of them, because you're the one that needs no repentance, can you? I forget whether the Bible says it was ninety-nine who did or ninety-nine who didn't, but you'll understand my drift, I daresay. It's logic, if it isn't Scripture. All right. As long as you can stop the evil, without doing wrong yourself, you're bringing about a good result. So don't fuss.

See?'

'Yes, I see!' Lady Maud smiled. 'But it's your money that does it!'