Grant said quietly:
"But before--before you came to hate him, what did you really think
of him?"
"I am in a terrible difficulty," said the young man, and his voice
told us, like a clear bell, that he was an honest man. "If I spoke
about him as I feel about him now, I could not trust myself. And I
should like to be able to say that when I first saw him I thought
he was charming. But again, the fact is I didn't. I hate him, that
is my private affair. But I also disapprove of him--really I do
believe I disapprove of him quite apart from my private feelings.
When first he came, I admit he was much quieter, but I did not
like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. Then that jolly old Sir
Walter Cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this fellow, with
his cheap-jack wit, began to score off the old man in the way he
does now. Then I felt that he must be a bad lot; it must be bad to
fight the old and the kindly. And he fights the poor old chap
savagely, unceasingly, as if he hated old age and kindliness. Take,
if you want it, the evidence of a prejudiced witness. I admit that
I hate the man because a certain person admires him. But I believe
that apart from that I should hate the man because old Sir Walter
hates him."
This speech affected me with a genuine sense of esteem and pity for
the young man; that is, of pity for him because of his obviously
hopeless worship of Miss Beaumont, and of esteem for him because of
the direct realistic account of the history of Wimpole which he had
given.
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