"Too bad!" I exclaimed. But as Sir S. was not far off I called to him, "Don't you think we may come back here again after dinner?"
"Certainly, if you like," he answered. "Although the moon will have gone."
"That doesn't matter," said I; "there will be stars. Mr. Douglas has a _new_ story of the Douglas Heart to tell me, which he thinks is even more interesting than the old, and it ought to be told in the Abbey."
When I explained this, Donald Douglas turned bright scarlet, and all three of the Vannecks burst out laughing, which I thought extremely rude and uncalled for. But Sir S. looked as solemn as a judge.
"No doubt he's right about it's being more interesting, and quite as credible," said he.
I don't know whether Mr. Douglas would have asked Mrs. James and me to walk over to the Abbey with him after dinner or not, if the weather had kept fine, but a thunder shower came up and it poured. So, although I teased him again to tell me the new story, when everybody but Mrs. James and he and I were playing bridge in our private sitting-room, he refused. "I'll wait till Edinburgh," he said, "if you'll let me see you there."
I had to explain that I didn't know where I should stay in Edinburgh, as that would depend upon my mother, to whom Mr. Somerled MacDonald was taking me.
"And Somerled himself, and the others?" he asked.
"Oh, they're going on," said I, "leaving me behind."
He looked delighted; so perhaps he had not forgiven the Vannecks for laughing.
Will the time come, I wonder, when I can calmly "work up" these things into a plot? If so, I foresee that I shall have to toss a coin to decide on the casting of my own part in the story. Heads, I am hero; tails, I am villain. But it has always been a theory of mine that ninety-nine out of a hundred novels are unjust toward some of their principal characters. Each (alleged) villain ought to have his motives and actions explained from his own point of view, not according to that of the (also alleged) hero and heroine whom he possibly tries (with success or failure) to separate. If this were done in books, villains _qua_ villains would practically cease to exist; for it seems to me, in my experience of life as a man and a writer, that no normal, healthy villain is a villain in his own eyes. To understand all is to pardon all; and in analyzing his motives in order to justify himself to himself, he sees from every point of vantage, he knows how necessary certain actions are which appear evil to the limited view of the hero and heroine. They see him always obliquely, in profile; therefore they are prejudiced. And what is doubly unfair to the poor villain, the author of the book sympathizes with the others from first to last; whereas, if the villain were allowed to explain himself in his own way, not the author's, he would stand in the centre of the picture. Not being prejudiced against himself, he would have a chance of appealing to the readers' sense of justice.