You have the kind of organization in which, within a second, without any warning or reason, a passing whim may have worked itself up into an imperative law--something you must obey."The man smiled and nodded approvingly: "You've got me down fine," he said.
"I talk with a good deal of confidence," she went on, with a cheerless, ruminative little laugh, "because it is my own organization that I am describing, too.
The difference is that I was allowed to exploit my capacity for mischief very early. I had my own way in my teens--my own money, my own power--of course only of a certain sort, and in a very small place.
But I know what I did with that power. I spread trouble and misery about me--always of course on a small scale.
Then a group of things happened in a kind of climax--a very painful climax--and it shook the nonsense out of me.
My brother and my father died--some other sobering things happened...and luckily I was still young enough to stop short, and take stock of myself, and say that there were certain paths I would never set foot on again--and stick to it.
But with you--do you see?--power only comes to you when you are a mature man. Experiences, no matter how unpleasant they are, will not change you now. You will not be moved by this occurrence or that to distrust yourself, or reconsider your methods, or form new resolutions.
Oh no! Power will be terrible in your hands, if people whom you can injure provoke you to cruel courses----""Oh, dear--dear!" broke in Lady Cressage. "What a distressing Mrs. Gummidge-Cassandra you are, Celia! Pray stop it!""No--she's right enough," said Thorpe, gravely.
"That's the kind of man I am."
He seemed so profoundly interested in the contemplation of this portrait which had been drawn of him, that the others respected his reflective silence. He sat for some moments, idly fingering a fork on the table, and staring at a blotch of vivid red projected through a decanter upon the cloth.
"It seems to me that's the only kind of man it's worth while to be," he added at last, still speaking with thoughtful deliberation. "There's nothing else in the world so big as power--strength. If you have that, you can get everything else. But if you have it, and don't use it, then it rusts and decays on your hands.
It's like a thoroughbred horse. You can't keep it idle in the stable. If you don't exercise it, you lose it."He appeared to be commenting upon some illustration which had occurred to his own mind, but was not visible to his auditors. While they regarded him, he was prompted to admit them to his confidence.
"There was a case of it today," he said, and then paused.
"Precisely," put in Miss Madden. "The fact that some Frenchwoman, of whom you had never heard before, was going to lose her marriage portion caught your attention, and on the instant you presented her with $10,000, an exercise of power which happens to be on the generous side--but still entirely unreasoning, and not deserving of any intellectual respect. And here's the point: if it had happened that somebody else chanced to produce an opposite impression upon you, you would have been capable of taking $50,000 away from him with just as light a heart."Thorpe's face beamed with repressed amusement. "As a matter of fact it was that kind of case I was going to mention.
I wasn't referring to the girl and her marriage portion.
A young man came to me today--came into my room all cock-a-whoop, smiling to himself with the notion that he had only to name what he wanted, and I would give it to him--and----"He stopped abruptly, with a confused little laugh.
He had been upon the brink of telling about Lord Plowden's discomfiture, and even now the story itched upon his tongue. It cost him an effort to put the narrative aside, the while he pondered the arguments which had suddenly reared themselves against publicity.
When at last he spoke, it was with a glance of conscious magnanimity toward the lady who had consented to be his wife.
"Never mind," he said, lightly. "There wasn't much to it.
The man annoyed me, somehow--and he didn't get what he came for--that's all.""But he was entitled to get it?" asked Celia Madden.
