'Ha! good, so far. How do you account for it?' said Lady Charlotte.
'I read it in this way: that the world being such as it is at present, demanding and rewarding with honours and pay special services, the men called great, who have risen to distinction, are not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes. These men of aptitudes have a poor conception of the facts of life to meet the necessities of modern expansion. They are serviceable in departments. They go as they are driven, or they resist. In either case, they explain how it is that we have a world moving so sluggishly. They are not the men of brains, the men of insight and outlook. Often enough they are foes of the men of brains.'
'Aptitudes; yes, that flashes a light into me,' said Lady Charlotte. 'I see it better. It helps to some comprehension of their muddle. A man may be a first-rate soldier, doctor, banker--as we call the usurer now-a-days--or brewer, orator, anything that leads up to a figure-head, and prove a foolish fellow if you sound him. I 've thought something like it, but wanted the word. They say themselves, “Get to know, and you see with what little wisdom the world is governed!” You explain how it is. I shall carry “aptitudes” away.'
She looked straight at Weyburn. 'If I were a younger woman I could kiss you for it.'
'Remember, my lady, there's a good deal of the Reformer in that definition.'
'I stick to my class. But they shall hear a true word when there's one abroad, I can tell them. That reminds me--you ought to have asked; let me tell you I'm friendly with the Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey. We had a wrestle for half an hour, and I threw him and helped him up, and he apologized for tumbling, and I subscribed to one of his charities, and gave up about the pew, but had an excuse for not sitting under the sermon. A poor good creature. He 's got the aptitudes for his office. He won't do much to save his Church. I knew another who had his aptitude for the classics, and he has mounted. He was my tutor when I was a girl. He was fond of declaiming passages from Lucian and Longus and Ovid. One day he was at it with a piece out of Daphnis and Chloe, and I said, “Now translate.” He fetched a gurgle to say he couldn't, and I slapped his check. Will you believe it? the man was indignant. I told him, if he would like to know why I behaved in “that unmaidenly way,” he had better apply at home. I had no further intimations of his classical aptitudes; but he took me for a cleverer pupil than I was. I hadn't a notion of the stuff he recited. I read by his face. That was my aptitude--always has been. But think of the donkeys parents are when they let a man have a chance of pouring his barley-sugar and sulphur into the ears of a girl. Lots of girls have no latent heckles and prickles to match his villany.--There's my brother come back to breakfast from a round. You and I 'll have a drive before lunch, and a ride or a stroll in the afternoon. There's a lot to see. I mean you to get the whole place into your head. I 've ordered the phaeton, and you shall take the whip, with me beside you. That's how my husband and I spent three-quarters of our honeymoon.'