Governesses -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
"You've said a number. Which is the one?"
Anxiety not to seem either young or didactic or a prig made my tone
apologetic.
"There's such a thing as Right, written with a capital. If I persist in
doing Right--still with a capital--then nothing but right can come of
it."
"Oh, can't it!"
"I know it sounds like a platitude--"
"No, it doesn't," he interrupted, rudely, "because a platitude is
something obviously true; and this isn't."
I felt some relief.
"Oh, isn't it? Then I'm glad. I thought it must be."
"You won't go on thinking it. Suppose you do right and somebody else
does wrong?"
"Then I should be willing to back my way against his. Don't you see?
That's the point. That's the secret I'm telling you about. Right works;
wrong doesn't."
"That's all very fine--"
"It's all very fine because it's so. Right is--what's the word William
James put into the dictionary?"
He suggested pragmatism.
"That's it. Right is pragmatic, which I suppose is the same thing as
practical. Wrong must be impractical; it must be--"
"I shouldn't bank too confidently on that in dealing with the great J.
Howard."
"But I'm going to bank on it. It's where I'm to have him at a
disadvantage. If he does wrong while I do right, why, then I'll get him
on the hip."
"How do you know he's going to do wrong?"
"I don't. I merely surmise it. If he does right--"
"He'll get you on the hip."
"No, because there can't be a right for him which isn't a right for me.
There can't be two rights, each contrary to the other. That's not in
common sense. If he does right then I shall be safe--whichever way I
have to take it. Don't you see? That's where the success comes in as
well as the secret. It can't be any other way. Please don't think I'm
talking in what H. G. Wells calls the tin-pot style--but one must
express oneself somehow. I'm not afraid, because I feel as if I'd got
something that would hang about me like a magic cloak. Of course for
you--a man--a magic cloak may not be necessary; but I assure you that
for a girl like me, out in the world on her own--"
He, too, sobered down from his chaffing mood.
"But in this case what is going to be Right--written with a capital?"
I had just time to reply, "Oh, that I shall have to see!" when the
children and dogs came scampering up and our conversation was over.
On returning from my walk with Gladys I informed Mrs. Rossiter of the
order I had received. I could see her distressed look in the mirror
before which she sat doing something to her hair.
"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "it's just what I was afraid of. Now I suppose
he'll want you to leave."
"That is, he'll want you to send me away."
"It's the same thing," she said, fretfully, and sat with hands lying
idly in her lap.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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