HE
I am carried by the fascination of
a musical laugh. Apparently I am doomed to hear
it at my own expense. We are secure from nothing
in this life.
I have determined to stand for the
county. An unoccupied man is a prey to every
hook of folly. Be dilettante all your days, and
you might as fairly hope to reap a moral harvest as
if you had chased butterflies. The activities
created by a profession or determined pursuit are
necessary to the growth of the mind.
Heavens! I find myself writing
like an illegitimate son of La Rochefoucauld, or of
Vauvenargues. But, it is true that I am fifty
years old, and I am not mature. I am undeveloped
somewhere.
The question for me to consider is,
whether this development is to be accomplished by
my being guilty of an act of egregious folly.
Dans la cinquantaine!
The reflection should produce a gravity in men.
Such a number of years will not ring like bridal bells
in a man’s ears. I have my books about
me, my horses, my dogs, a contented household.
I move in the centre of a perfect machine, and I am
dissatisfied. I rise early. I do not digest
badly. What is wrong?
The calamity of my case is that I
am in danger of betraying what is wrong with me to
others, without knowing it myself. Some woman
will be suspecting and tattling, because she has nothing
else to do. Girls have wonderfully shrewd eyes
for a weakness in the sex which they are instructed
to look upon as superior. But I am on my guard.
The fact is manifest: I feel
I have been living more or less uselessly. It
is a fat time. There are a certain set of men
in every prosperous country who, having wherewithal,
and not being compelled to toil, become subjected
to the moral ideal. Most of them in the end sit
down with our sixth Henry or second Richard and philosophise
on shepherds. To be no better than a simple hind!
Am I better? Prime bacon and an occasional draft
of shrewd beer content him, and they do not me.
Yet I am sound, and can sit through the night and
be ready, and on the morrow I shall stand for the
county.
I made the announcement that I had
thoughts of entering Parliament, before I had half
formed the determination, at my sister’s lawn
party yesterday.
‘Gilbert!’ she cried,
and raised her hands. A woman is hurt if you do
not confide to her your plans as soon as you can conceive
them. She must be present to assist at the birth,
or your plans are unblessed plans.
I had been speaking aside in a casual
manner to my friend Amble, whose idea is that the
Church is not represented with sufficient strength
in the Commons, and who at once, as I perceived, grasped
the notion of getting me to promote sundry measures
connected with schools and clerical stipends, for
his eyes dilated; he said: ’Well, if you
do, I can put you up to several things,’ and
imparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mind,
he continued absently: ’Pollingray might
be made strong on church rates. There is much
to do. He has lived abroad and requires schooling
in these things. We want a man. Yes, yes,
yes. It’s a good idea; a notion.’
My sister, however, was of another
opinion. She did me the honour to take me aside.
‘Gilbert, were you serious just now?’
‘Quite serious. Is it not my characteristic?’
’Not on these occasions.
I saw the idea come suddenly upon you. You were
looking at Charles.’
‘Continue: and at what was he looking?’
‘He was looking at Alice Amble.’
‘And the young lady?’
‘She looked at you.’
I was here attacked by a singularly
pertinacious fly, and came out of the contest with
a laugh.
’Did she have that condescension
towards me? And from the glance, my resolution
to enter Parliament was born? It is the French
vaudevilliste’s doctrine of great events from
little causes. The slipper of a soubrette trips
the heart of a king and changes the destiny of a nation-the
history of mankind. It may be true. If I
were but shot into the House from a little girl’s
eye!’
With this I took her arm gaily, walked
with her, and had nearly overreached myself with excess
of cunning. I suppose we are reduced to see more
plainly that which we systematically endeavour to veil
from others. It is best to flutter a handkerchief,
instead of nailing up a curtain. The principal
advantage is that you may thereby go on deceiving
yourself, for this reason: few sentiments are
wholly matter of fact; but when they are half so,
you make them concrete by deliberately seeking either
to crush or conceal them, and you are doubly betrayed betrayed
to the besieging eye and to yourself. When a sentiment
has grown to be a passion (mercifully may I be spared!)
different tactics are required. By that time,
you will have already betrayed yourself too deeply
to dare to be flippant: the investigating eye
is aware that it has been purposely diverted:
knowing some things, it makes sure of the rest from
which you turn it away. If you want to hide a
very grave case, you must speak gravely about it. At
which season, be but sure of your voice, and simulate
a certain depth of sentimental philosophy, and you
may once more, and for a long period, bewilder the
investigator of the secrets of your bosom. To
sum up: in the preliminary stages of a weakness,
be careful that you do not show your own alarm, or
all will be suspected. Should the weakness turn
to fever, let a little of it be seen, like a careless
man, and nothing will really be thought.
I can say this, I can do this; and
is it still possible that a pin’s point has
got through the joints of the armour of a man like
me?
Elizabeth quitted my side with the
conviction that I am as considerate an uncle as I
am an affectionate brother.
I said to her, apropos, ’I have
been observing those two. It seems to me they
are deciding things for themselves.’
‘I have been going to speak
to you about them Gilbert,’ said she.
And I: ’The girl must be
studied. The family is good. While Charles
is in Wales, you must have her at Dayton. She
laughs rather vacantly, don’t you think? but
the sound of it has the proper wholesome ring.
I will give her what attention I can while she is
here, but in the meantime I must have a bride of my
own and commence courting.’
‘Parliament, you mean,’
said Elizabeth with a frank and tender smile.
The hostess was summoned to welcome a new guest, and
she left me, pleased with her successful effort to
reach my meaning, and absorbed by it.
I would not have challenged Machiavelli;
but I should not have encountered the Florentine ruefully.
I feel the same keen delight in intellectual dexterity.
On some points my sister is not a bad match for me.
She can beat me seven games out of twelve at chess;
but the five I win sequently, for then I am awake.
There is natural art and artificial art, and the last
beats the first. Fortunately for us, women are
strangers to the last. They have had to throw
off a mask before they have, got the schooling; so,
when they are thus armed we know what we meet, and
what are the weapons to be used.
Alice, if she is a fine fencer at
all, will expect to meet the ordinary English squire
in me. I have seen her at the baptismal font!
It is inconceivable. She will fancy that at least
she is ten times more subtle than I. When I get the
mastery it is unlikely to make me the master.
What may happen is, that the nature of the girl will
declare itself, under the hard light of intimacy,
vulgar. Charles I cause to be absent for six
weeks; so there will be time enough for the probation.
I do not see him till he returns. If by chance
I had come earlier to see him and he to allude to
her, he would have had my conscience on his side, and
that is what a scrupulous man takes care to prevent.
I wonder whether my friends imagine
me to be the same man whom they knew as Gilbert Pollingray
a month back? I see the change, I feel the change;
but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking
forward, no feeling: none for others, very little,
for myself. I am told that I am losing fluency
as a dinner-table talker. There is now more savour
to me in a silvery laugh than in a spiced wit.
And this is the man who knows women, and is far too
modest to give a decided opinion upon any of their
merits. Search myself through as I may, I cannot
tell when the change began, or what the change consists
of, or what is the matter with me, or what charm there
is in the person who does the mischief. She is
the counterpart of dozens of girls; lively, brown-eyed,
brown-haired, underbred it is not too harsh
to say so underbred slightly; half-educated,
whether quickwitted I dare not opine. She is undoubtedly
the last whom I or another person would have fixed
upon as one to work me this unmitigated evil.
I do not know her, and I believe I do not care to
know her, and I am thirsting for the hour to come when
I shall study her. Is not this to have the poison
of a bite in one’s blood? The wrath of
Venus is not a fable. I was a hard reader and
I despised the sex in my youth, before the family
estates fell to me; since when I have playfully admired
the sex; I have dallied with a passion, and not read
at all, save for diversion: her anger is not a
fable. You may interpret many a mythic tale by
the facts which lie in your own blood. My emotions
have lain altogether dormant in sentimental attachment.
I have, I suppose, boasted of, Python slain, and Cupid
has touched me up with an arrow. I trust to my
own skill rather than to his mercy for avoiding a
second from his quiver. I will understand this
girl if I have to submit to a close intimacy with
her for six months. There is no doubt of the
elegance of her movements. Charles might as well
take his tour, and let us see him again next year.
Yes, her movements are (or will be) gracious.
In a year’s time she will have acquired the fuller
tones and poetry of womanliness. Perhaps then,
too, her smile will linger instead of flashing.
I have known infinitely lovelier women than she.
One I have known! but let her be. Louise and
I have long since said adieu.