Far from the Maddening Girls/Chapter 4
At the end of six months, life at “Sans Souci” had developed from a novelty into a habit. It was hard for me to appreciate that I had ever known any form of existence other than this, in which hour followed hour, and day succeeded day, with a kind of pleasurable monotony. The city might have been a thousand miles away instead of barely thirty. I can find no better way of describing the singular change which had come over my life than by recording the fact that my watch ran down at frequent intervals, and that, at intervals almost as frequent, I would forget to wind it up again. This, all said and done, would seem to be the essential difference between town and country life — I mean, the vast significance of time in relation to the one, as compared with its utter unimportance in connection with the other. It is a contrast in which town life comes out a shabby second-best. There we are no more than the slaves of a precedent which we carry in our waistcoat pockets and frequently consult with feverish anxiety. The hands of our watch are but two tyrants, who make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a mockery and a sham. We rise, not by any means because we are through with sleeping, but because the shorter of these tyrants points to VII; and retire, not because we have not been ready for bed three full hours before, but because precedent whispers that it is a childish thing to make the most sensible of all moves before eleven o’clock. We eat, not because we are hungry, but because it is half after seven or twelve or six. In short, there is not a metropolitan of us all, who, when he winds his watch at night, is not slavishly committing himself to a definite course of action for twenty-four hours to come.
At “Sans Souci,” on the contrary, I was not ashamed to be up with the first chirp of a robin, or to lie abed till ten: to make a hearty luncheon, or skip that interesting function altogether, as fancy prompted: to doze over a book till midnight, or to be hand and glove with Morpheus before the light was fairly out of the west. I knew what the weather was, but never the precise time of day. I felt that I was hungry, or not hungry, but never that I should not eat or should. I slept at noonday as shamelessly as at midnight. If there was any convention about my life at all, it was a convention to which there was only one delegate, and every motion I made was secure from opposition. In this enlightened republic there are eighty-five millions of inhabitants, and of these, perhaps eighty-five are absolutely free. I was a member of the glorious minority — and the most pathetic figure Miss Susie Berrith had ever seen! From the moment of its utterance, I have never been able to consider that remark with the faintest sensation of patience.
It is only fair to admit that it was Galvin who oiled the wheels which ran thus smoothly, though I was far from suspecting to what an extent my comfort was dependent upon her exertions until I was abruptly deprived of her services — fortunately, for a few hours only. The occasion was the marriage of a cousin of hers in town, and I readily granted the request for a brief leave of absence which she made with some show of hesitation.
“It’s only for the day,” she said, “but, then, there’s your luncheon, Mr. Sands.”
I remembered with a smile the meals I had prepared at the age of thirteen, in a cave of my own finding, over the rudest of fires, and with sticks and flat stones for my only utensils, instead of forks and pans. Never, I think, were catfish more palatably fried, never were sweet potatoes baked to such a turn. I reflected that it would be surprising indeed, if I could not contrive to equal, or even to excel, these early exploits, with all the culinary equipment of “Sans Souci” at my command.
“Leave that to me, Galvin,” said I. “I shall manage very well.”
Galvin only paused to post me upon the whereabouts of the tea, the milk, the eggs, the coal and the kindling-wood, and then departed. From a window I beheld her, hastening down the path, arrayed like a lily of the field (somewhat advanced in years) and, five minutes later, I was pottering about my kitchen like a kitten in a work-basket. From the child with the jam-pot to the usurper of a throne, I suppose there is no one of us who does not exult in the sensation of being temporary monarch of what he has only a questionable right to survey. I am confident to this instant that all would have been well with me and with my luncheon if Arbuthnot had not come down from town, and dropped in upon me, most inopportunely, just as I was about to begin operations. I explained the situation, with a word of decent apology.
“Hum,” said Arbuthnot. “If I had known that, I would have lunched in town.”
“You might go further and fare worse than here,” I retorted, a trifle tartly.
“That remains to be seen,” he answered dryly. “Are there any sardines?”
“There are,” said I, “but I think you will not need them. I was just about to fry some eggs, and bake some potatoes.”
“By all means,” said Arbuthnot. “I will hold the sardines in reserve. The best laid eggs of hens and men gang aft a-gley.”
“That is a long way from Burns,” I remarked.
“Let us hope,” said he, “that we shall be able to say the same of the eggs.”
His implied distrust awakened in me a vexed ambition, and, hastily summoning all my knowledge of the subject, I resolved upon a little cake. Flour, two eggs, baking-powder, milk, vanilla extract — I had accomplished the thing a hundred times in my mother’s kitchen, as a boy, with the cook confining herself to looking on. This, with fried eggs, potatoes, tea, and, if Arbuthnot insisted, the sardines, would be ample, and forthwith I girded myself to the task. I observed with satisfaction that the confidence of my demeanour silenced Arbuthnot at once.
I suppose it was the baking-powder, although I managed to rescue all but a very little after I had upset it in the dough. Or else there wasn’t enough room in the oven for the confection to rise. Whatever the reason, the thing I made was a conspicuous failure as a cake, albeit it might have passed muster as a balloon. Arbuthnot merely snorted when I took it out, prying the crust off the roof of the oven with a carving-knife. It was quite black, and smelt abominably. It would never have done for me to leave it where it could have fallen under Galvin’s eyes, but I was obliged to keep it concealed under a pile of shirts in my clothes-press for a full week, before I was able to catch the ashman when she was not by.
The time absorbed in separating the cake from the oven was responsible for the fiasco of the eggs — that, and the fact that I forgot to put a lump of butter in the pan. They adhered, all six of them, to the latter, with the utmost promptitude, and a tenacity worthy of a like number of leeches or English bull-dogs, and by the time I had persuaded them to loosen their grip upon it, they were quite unfit for publication. I have never discovered what it was I did to hurt the feelings of the potatoes, but they sulked from the outset, and obstinately refused to be baked. The edible part of them, after a solid hour in the oven, was, like beauty, skin-deep and no more.
Arbuthnot made the tea. It was excellent, not at all because of any ability on his part, but because it is of all things the easiest to prepare. I will not consume space with a verbatim transcription of his comments upon the other dishes. They were nothing more than a collision between the multiplication table and the phrase “I told you so,” and wholly uncalled-for, in view of the fact that he had the sardines — which were all he asked for in the beginning.
That evening, much to my relief, Galvin came again into her own. I had no further craving for the kitchen. It is a bourne in which no caviler re-burns, and I felt that I could never forget those eggs. Newton deduced the force of gravitation from the fall of an apple, and James Watt the principles of steam locomotion from observation of a tea-kettle. In like manner, I am persuaded, did Master Peter Cooper evolve from an attempt to fry eggs without a lump of butter the possibilities of glue. Not the ultimate possibilities, however. That discovery is mine, and dates from the disastrous day in question.
For a time life resumed the even tenor of its way.
Withal — since candour is the keynote of these pages — there were times when I was lonely. One’s power of conversation is like a bottle of choice perfumery. The glass stopper of disuse has a distressful way of sticking, when left too long in place, and one must resort to sweet oil and glycerine and hot water to make the contents available again. Day after day of self-communion was having something of this effect on me. I was in need of a companion with whom to talk, and, for lack of a better, I turned to Darius Doane. Galvin was out of the question. Hers was the only case I have ever known in which it did not take two to make a conversation. On the rare occasions when she talked at all, it would have required two wedges and a sledge-hammer to force the briefest of replies in edge-wise. Moreover, the manner of her discourse was disjointed to the last degree. Sequence of thought with her went round and round like a squirrel in a wheel and with about as definite results. She started, she continued, but she never arrived.
“I once had a niece, Mr. Sands,” she would say, for example, “that is, she wasn’t exactly my niece — or, yes, you might call her a niece, I suppose. She was my brother-in-law’s child by his first wife — a very intelligent girl, she was — that is, she was hardly a girl — she was twenty — well, you might say a girl — she wasn’t quite twenty — but she was a very intelligent girl — girl is hardly the word, because she seemed older — at all events, I always thought of her as my niece — in fact, she might just as well have been — though calling her my niece didn’t make her so — but if she had been I couldn’t have thought more of her — I had a niece who didn’t seem half so much so as she did — though she was very intelligent, too — but the one I’m speaking of — though she was really no relation at all — used to say herself that it seemed as if — which shows my feelings wasn’t unnatural — not that I mean to say but what — but then, she wasn’t, except by marriage, which can’t be called a relation —though I felt as if — and seeing that she was so intelligent — I couldn’t be blamed for feeling — not that I ever claimed — but if she had been my niece — “
As the butcher called regularly once in every twenty-four hours, it will readily be seen that Galvin was more than apt to be interrupted by his coming before she had made much progress along these lines. As for my part in the conversation, if I was to come in at all, it could only be after she had gone out. The sixth side of the Galvin octagon was anecdotical.
So I came to having a daily chat with Darius, and almost the first thing I discovered was that what the pole-star is to the mariner, or the semaphore to the locomotive engineer, Miss Susie Berrith was to my youthful retainer. He candidly stated that she had taught him all he knew, and, I suspected from the amount and diversity of his information, close to the measure of all she knew herself. She had referred to him as her Sunday-school scholar, but it seemed, what I had not known before, that he was her every-day pupil, as well. The nearest school-house was four miles distant —a bitter matter in snow-time — and so Darius and four of his similarly situated fellows went regularly to the Berrith residence for their schooling. I felt that it was very singular that Miss Berrith had never mentioned this to me. “Dere’s all kines er people,” said Darius Doane, “an’ den, der’s Miss Berrit’. She’d oughter git marrit.”
“In the name of mercy, why?” I demanded. The times were certainly piteously askew when babes of twelve thus took the marriage question on their tongues!
“She cud make some ’un more happier’n wot he is,” said Darius. “An’ you’d oughter git marrit, Mist’ San’s, ’cause some ’un cud make yer more happier’n wot y’are.”
I looked at him aghast, an axiom from my half-forgotten “Euclid’s Elements” buzzing in my brain: — “Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” Miss Berrith was equal to matrimony, I was equal to matrimony. Were Miss Berrith and I —
Good gracious! what an infant terrible he was, that boy, Darius Doane!
“Darius,” said I severely, “the path needs raking.”
“I’ll comb ut fer yer in er jiff. Mist’ San’s,” said he, and, five minutes later, through the window of my den, my ears were saluted by the commingled sounds of a rake on gravel and Darius on the mouth-organ. He was committing melodicide upon the undeservedly popular air of “A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night,” and as the mouth-organ wheezed into the measure of the chorus, new undreamt-of and torturing words seemed to sear themselves upon my mind: —
“She cud make — some’un — more happier’n wot he is!
“Some’un — cud make — yer more happier’n wot y’are!
“Dere’s all — kines er people — an’ den dere is Miss Berrit’!
“An’ you’d oughter — git marrit — Mist’ San’s!”
Was it any wonder that I felt that the moon of my intelligence was in its last quarter?
Presently, I had an opportunity of taxing Miss Berrith with what I felt to be her undue reticence. I had been thrashing through the woods for a half-hour with no particular aim but exercise in view, when I came abruptly into a little clearing, where the level pitched sharply down in a kind of rocky terrace, and, pausing, to take breath and survey the vista thus opened to me, I was suddenly aware of a familiar sound, which I was able to identify almost instantly as the voice of Darius Doane. But what were those singular sentiments to which, in that peaceful corner of woodland, it was giving utterance?
“An’ as ter ketch de gale
Roun’ weered de flappin’ sail,
‘Deat’!’ was de helmsman’s hail,
‘Deat’ widout kerworter!’
Midships wid irn keel
Steruck we her ribs er steel;
Down her berlack huck did reel
T’rough de berlack worter!”
My experience of Darius had taught me to expect many things of him, but not this — not “The Skeleton in Armor,” declaimed, with something of rude eloquence, at high noon in the heart of the forest primeval! I stood as if chained to the spot, while the poem went on and on, until the concluding lines were reached:
“Dere f’om de flowin’ bowl
Deep derinks de worrior’s soul,
Skool—”
“No,” said another voice — Miss Berrith’s!
“Skull,” ventured Darius, after a pause.
“No,” said Miss Berrith again. “Say the whole line. What rhymes with ‘soul’?”
“Skoal!” exclaimed Darius triumphantly.
“Skoal to de Nort’lan’! Skoal!
Duss de tale entit.”
“I can’t never remember dat woid. Miss Berrit’.”
“You did very well,” said Miss Berrith’s voice, “but it is time you were off for dinner. Don’t be late for work this afternoon. Good-bye, Darius.”
“Gubbye, Miss Berrit’,” answered Darius, with very evident regret, and, shortly, there followed the crackle of trampled twigs, and then, from a greater distance the sound of “Marching Through Georgia,” egregiously distorted upon the mouth-organ. Peering down from my coign of vantage, I espied Miss Berrith seated upon a fallen tree, her fingers busy with some intricacy of fancy-work, and what I soon learned was a volume of Longfellow perched, tent-like, upon her knee.
“How do you do?” I called.
She looked about her, with a little start of surprise. “Is that you, Mr. Sands?” she answered. “Wherever are you?”
“Up here, behind the barberry-bush,” said I. “I’ve been leaves-dropping.” And I scrambled rapidly down, to find her blushing not unattractively.
I think that at this point it is appropriate to mention a certain alteration in Miss Berrith which I had begun to notice, and which, if I may be permitted the expression, friendlied my feeling for her to a very marked degree. It may have been due to a simple regard for comfort as the weather had grown warmer, or to a mere caprice, or, what is more likely than either, certain skillful hints which I had dropped from time to time: but she appeared no more in the distorted semblances of masculine attire which had impressed me so unfavourably in the first days of our acquaintance. Instead, she was now arrayed in the simple, white variety of material which some women use to clothe their daughters withal, and others for their spare-room curtains: or else it was a silk-shirt effect, and a trim, shortish walking-skirt. In either, she was far from plain, although at first I had thought her distinctly so. She had her share of freckles; but, with them, good eyes and teeth, and a kind of clear under-complexion which was very pleasing. I think, not only that I showed some appreciation of the change in her attire, but that my approbation gratified her. All women are on the outlook for that kind of thing, and, of course, the approval of a man of my own experience was flattering to a girl so young and so unfamiliar with life as she.
As I took my seat beside her, on the trunk of the fallen tree, she seemed to feel that an explanation was in order.
“Darius has a very pleasant knack of memorizing good poetry,” she began. “I wish you could have heard him reciting ‘You know, we French stormed Ratisbon,’ a moment ago. But perhaps you did?”
“No,” said I.
“It is rather nice, I think,” continued Miss Berrith, “that a boy in his position should be good at Browning.”
“It is rather lamentable,” I retorted, with a rueful glance at my rusty boots, “that he is not equally good at blacking.”
“He has a soul above blacking,” said Miss Berrith lightly.
“Whereas blacking above a sole,” said I, “would be very much more to the point. Seriously, Miss Berrith, I hope you are not spoiling Darius. He shouldn’t get a false idea of life, you know. There is not likely to be much poetry, either good or bad, in the existence which he is destined to lead.”
“The more reason for making hay while the sun shines,” said Miss Berrith — very illogically, as I thought.
“There are ways and ways of learning to make hay,” I objected.
“Only one, however,” said she, “of learning that the sun shines. The pity of it is that a boy should need to have such things pointed out to him; but, since he must, I am very glad that I am the one to do it.”
“Yes, I know the feeling,” I agreed, “but in a sense somewhat less sentimental. I, too, have been a factor in the education of Darius. Teaching him to polish shoes is, perhaps, not a great thing on the face of it, but remember that he has been learning to understand the pleasures of industry, from the moment when I first pointed out the brush.”
Miss Berrith put down her fancy-work with a little laugh.
“Each to his trade, Mr. Sands,” said she. “Remember that Darius has been learning to appreciate the honey of poetry, from the moment when I first pointed out the comb.”
“Oh, be reasonable!” I protested, smiling, nevertheless, at her sally. “It isn’t a question of sentiment, is all this, but of what is best for the boy. We have been talking of shoes and of poetry. Well, suppose that I were a cobbler, and you a poet, and both of us offering to teach Darius our trades. Which of us would common-sense suggest that he should stick to?”
“He would probably act the part of cobbler —” began Miss Berrith.
“Exactly!” I was interrupting her, triumphantly, when —
“By sticking to the last,” said she.
There is never much use in an endeavour to combat this kind of frivolity, and so I went upon another tack.
“Was it modesty,” I asked, “which has thus far deterred you from mentioning the identity of his teacher?”
“I could not suppose you would be interested,” said Miss Berrith.
“On the contrary,” I replied, “I have a very sincere admiration for those who are engaged in doing good, of one kind or another, and according to their lights. I am only afraid that you are too gentle with him.”
“Can one be too gentle?” she asked ingenuously.
“Oh, yes,” I assured her. “‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ you know. Darius has his part cut out for him, and the best one could do would be to teach him to play it properly. He should be taught, first of all, a due respect for his superiors: then, devotion to his work: and, finally, that those in a subordinate position should not expect too much in the way of luxury or liberty. One is never too young to learn such lessons.”
“It is a dull creed enough,” observed Miss Berrith.
“I might readily challenge you to find one more illumined by common-sense,” I replied, “but we have discussed that, and I suppose we must agree to disagree. What I wanted to say was that, when you refrained from telling me of the work you are doing for Darius and the others, you did me an injustice, and yourself a greater one. I will not deny that my opinion of you would have been very considerably modified by the knowledge that you were giving a portion of your time to the education of five boys. It is not surprising that we should differ in our views of what the nature of such an education should be, but I am sure that, while mine may be more practical, yours are productive of good.”
“In that case,” said Miss Berrith reflectively, “it is plain that I did do myself a great injustice, for I am aware that to have your good opinion is a very desirable thing. Indeed, the only person who, to my certain knowledge, possesses it is the most eminently satisfied individual I have ever seen.”
I thought of her father, and then of Arbuthnot, without seeming to find a clue, and I suppose I looked at her perplexedly, for suddenly she laughed outright.
“I think I am at a loss to know to whom you refer,” I remarked a trifle stiffly.
“If there are no mirrors in your bungalow,” said she, “I will give you one for Christmas, Mr. Sands.”
I was downright angry — so angry, indeed, that I felt that if I did not immediately take my leave of her, I should say something rude. I did so, therefore, with a self-restraint which did me credit, and a courtesy which was far from her deserts. I had been absolutely squandering my time. The advice which I had proffered in all kindliness had been practically flung back in my face, and, at the end, I had been made the victim of unjust and capricious ridicule. And here I may be permitted a digression, to the intent of setting forth the sum and substance of my reflections of the ensuing half-hour, during which I tramped the woods in vain endeavour to assuage my irritation.
As between men, the laws of honourable combat demand that when you have disarmed your adversary, you shall return him his rapier, with a smile, a bow, and a courteous word. Not so in a duel with a woman. It is the business of her tongue — that, which, of all weapons, slips most readily from its sheath —first to disarm you, and then thrust home. But this ignorance of, or indifference to, the whole duty of the generous antagonist is not the least of the perils which you brave. The feminine brain is a thing of such excessive eccentricity that, without resource to the hackneyed simile of the kaleidoscope, I find myself wholly destitute of an adequate comparison. To follow, even approximately, a woman’s train of thought would be possible only to a water-spider, which has a similar faculty for skidding at unheard-of angles. Where a man proceeds over the landscape of logic like a trained hound, scenting his way unerringly from a definite hypothesis to a definite conclusion, a woman’s argument reappears at intervals, like a porpoise, at points to which there has been no such thing as the possibility of tracing her progress. Her reason does not go from step to step, but falls down-stairs headlong, touching only the high places: and always, as I have had occasion to remark before, the validity of her deductions is materially impaired by the intrusion of the purely personal. You may say to a man, for example, that all men are liars, and it is probable that he will view you in the light of a philosopher: but venture to observe to one of the opposite sex that the name of frailty is woman, and the chances are in favour of her regarding you as a boor. A man, in short, has an eye for generalities; while a woman will pounce upon your most abstract remark, try it on before the nearest mirror, and, finding it unbecoming, will lay the blame on you!
I returned to “Sans Souci,” after the brief interview recorded above, more than ever out of humour with the unfair sex. I was excessively annoyed — ten per cent, by the recollection of Miss Berrith’s remarks, and ninety per cent, by the knowledge that it was in her power to annoy me. The persons with this power are the most dangerous enemies to one’s peace of mind. I can view with composure the existence of incendiaries, train-robbers and assassins: but I am unable to tolerate the thought of scandal-mongers, bores, and pert young women. You never find anyone with sufficient grounds of complaint against basilisks, werwolves, or the sea-serpent: but there is a deal of legitimate objection to the domesticated mosquito.
There was no getting around it. With the best will in the world to make allowance for the infirmities of her sex, I was painfully and resentfully aware that Miss Berrith was not merely a disturbing influence in my life, but the only disturbing influence: and not the least exasperating element of the situation lay in the fact that it was none of my making. If, knowing the feminine faculty for creating a disturbance — “le mal que pent faire une femme,” as De Musset deftly puts it — I had nevertheless seen fit to marry, it would have been a different thing. If you play with matches, and set yourself ablaze, you have no one but yourself to blame, and it is unreasonable and childish to squeal at Destiny: but if some one discharges Roman-candle balls in at your front windows, there is every warrant for your regarding it as a liberty and an imposition. I conceive that I had the best of reasons for considering my treatment at Miss Berrith’s hands as saliently unhandsome.
When the wave flings itself pettishly against the shore which opposes its views of progress, it does not reflect that thereby is created an undertow which will sweep from their comfortable resting-places any number of innocent little pebbles which had no share whatever in defeating its purpose — the which is a lack of forethought reasonable enough in a wave, but wholly unpardonable in a girl. It showed, as much as anything could, Miss Berrith’s utter want of consideration, that she ignored what I may call the reflex action of perversity. She had been thoughtlessly petulant with me, and it was wholly due to this that I, who am usually of the most equable and tolerant temper in the world, discharged Darius on the following day. It was unjust on my part; if you will; but she had moiled the spring of my customary serenity. I had exhausted my store of patience upon her former humours, and with this last strain upon its resources the reservoir went completely dry.
The rake was passive in the left hand of Darius, and the mouth-organ somewhat more than active in his right, while, by way of adding dissonance to discord, the air upon which he was engaged was Galvin’s adagio rendering of “Bonnie Dundee.” Thenceforward I numbered this among the most malignant of the contagious diseases.
“Darius,” said I.
The marshalled host of freckles made way obsequiously, and from their ranks emerged his familiar and disarming smile. But this time I was like adamant.
“Yessir?” he answered.
“You play a good deal upon the mouth-organ,” I observed.
“I’ll perlay more w’en I git de reel hang uvvit,” said Darius.
“Now, Heaven forfend!” I ejaculated inwardly; adding, aloud:
“And Miss Berrith tells me you learn considerable poetry by heart.”
“I’m er-goin’ t’ give more ’n’ more time t’ pomes f’m now on,” was his reply. “I bin er-doin’ pieces outer Longfeller ’n’ Berownin’, but nex’ week Miss Berrit’ is er-goin’ t’ learn me Shakesper.”
“Then, Darius,” said I, “I clearly perceive that these increasing demands upon your time make it inadvisable for you to remain longer in my employ. After to-day I shall have no further need of your services.”
“D’yer mean I’m fy-ud?” asked Darius.
“That,” I answered, “is the substance of my meaning. Here are your wages for the coming week. You need not come here any more.”
And I wheeled, and walked into the house.
I am perplexed to account for the singular circumstance that there are days when everything, from the attempt to part your hair in the morning to the position of your pet pillow at night, is an unequivocal failure. The day in question was such a one. The luncheon which Galvin elected to serve me was not fit for a fretful child, and I could not eat it. When I set myself to write, my pencil points made more breaks than the Messrs. Westinghouse. A collar which had never irked me might as well have been a circular saw, for all the comfort I derived from its contact with my neck. It was a general half-holiday for the horse-hairs which formed the stuffing of my chair cushions. Where it was their custom to attend strictly to business, now they all had their heads out of the windows of their dwellings, taking the air. The house was full of flies. A dog, with whom I was not even on speaking terms, went round and round the bungalow, yapping for a wager. Dolorously-warbled reminiscences of a supposititious life in marble halls, in the company of vassals and serfs, came to my ears from Galvin at the wash-tub. At length, in a pure white passion, I strode off through the woods, turned my ankle, was caught in a drenching thunder-shower, and said two or seven things which have no place in these innocent pages. It was a day which caused me to look upon time as a soporific snail, a day to be remembered with awe and loathing, a day at which to hurl a black, black stone, with careful aim. Above all, it was a day to prove how much a man may suffer through no fault of his own.
On the morning following, however, Darius reappeared, the bearer of a note from Miss Berrith. This curiosity of literature ran after this manner:
“My Dear Mr. Sands:
“You will have had a night to think over your action of yesterday, whereof Darius has given me an account, and to remember several things: first, that you were once a boy yourself, and that at twelve you did not possess all the sobriety which is yours at thirty; then, that you have vented your irritation against one person upon the entirely guiltless shoulders of another; and, finally, that your action passes over his head and does grievous harm to his mother and the invalid he was aiding her to support. Of course you are in a position to do as you please, and I in that of a meddler in venturing to interfere: but not only is it merely a kind of weakness to exercise one’s strength upon an inferior, it is the noblest kind of strength to own up to that weakness and repair the evil before it is too late. I am giving you that chance, for Darius will wait for an answer.
- “Susie Berrith.”
Galvin had brought in the note, and now stood waiting with folded hands.
“Did Darius bring this? “ I asked.
I was not so much disconcerted by the words of Galvin’s reply, as by the manner in which she kept her upper lip perfectly rigid, for all the world as if it had been starched and ironed. The Sunday-school superintendent of my early childhood had a similar trick of intimating disapproval, and as I looked away from Galvin and down at the note again, it was with a curious and most uncomfortable sense of having forgotten to learn the collect for the day.
“He did,” Galvin was saying, “and if I do make the remark — and of course I know I have no right — but I cannot, I cannot see injustice done — the way you have treated him is a crying shame — we all have our faults —but he was working for his bread and butter — indeed, it is few enough of us ever sees the butter — but that’s always the way — the rich against the poor — and if I do say it — ”
“No, don’t say it, Galvin,” I interrupted. “I have no doubt but what you are quite right. You needn’t wait. I will give Darius the answer myself.”
Galvin had showed her seventh side. It was the chivalric, with a touch of the socialistic.
Darius was at the door. When he saw me his inevitable smile broke forth. I think he had more freckles than on the preceding day.
“There is no answer to Miss Berrith’s note,” I said as formally as I could, “but I have changed my mind about discharging you, Darius. You may come to-morrow, as usual.”
Then I shut the door abruptly upon him and his smile. If he had thanked me! …
Into such a coil of discomfort was I come by reason of my ill-advised condescension to an immature girl. I am broad-minded enough to admit that the fault was not wholly hers. Had I been true to my avowed principles from the very first, “Sans Souci” had never been invaded by those petty annoyances against which it was expressly designed to secure me. The whole difficulty lay in the fact that a man is never entirely selfish, however he may strive to steel himself against generous impulses. I had gone back upon my tenets because I could not help perceiving that Miss Berrith would derive satisfaction from my company, and because I could not find it in my heart to treat one so inexperienced with indifference or contempt. Well, fortunately it was not too late to repair my fault, and I determined that, when an opportunity should offer, I would politely but firmly put out of the question her further interference in my affairs. Thenceforward all between us should be of the most strictly formal nature. It might make a great difference to her, but after all, she had brought the rebuke upon herself. The result of my noticing her had been exactly what I might have foreseen. She had been carried away by it, and now — well, she was flinging herself at my head. In the privacy of these memoirs I can make this admission, which otherwise, while undeniably true, would not be kind or manly.
The privacy of these memoirs. The phrase reminds me that there are a few words of explanation which should have been written some distance back.
When you desire to see yourself as others see you, you rush off to the photographer’s; and, similarly, there is no better method of ascertaining the exact quality of your intellectual appearance in the eyes of the world than to set down your opinions in black and white. When Miss Berrith made the remark that I was the most pathetic figure she had ever seen, and supplemented it later with the observation that I was the most self-satisfied, I perceived that there was something radically wrong with either one or the other of us, and determined to find out what and which it was. Due reflection presently satisfied me that the remarks in question must have been based upon an imperfect conception of my ideas of life in general and matrimony in particular. A glance in my mirror was all that was necessary to convince me that my personal appearance had nothing whatever to do with it. Perhaps I am not striking, but still less am I pathetic. Nor was there a better reason for suspecting a reference to my pecuniary circumstances. Decidedly there can be nothing pathetic about a house of one’s own and five thousand a year. No, positively it must be my opinions; not only because it is in these alone that I differ from the general run of men, but by reason of my having, at one time or another, expounded them to Miss Berrith with a considerable degree of candour. Clearly, it was my duty to analyze them carefully; and, quite as clearly, there could be no more effective means of so doing than to write out in order the details of life at “Sans Souci.” Forthwith, I set to work upon these notes.
I think that I have been eminently frank, unprejudiced, and accurate, but I am not content with that. It is not enough to put down existing facts fully and fairly: what is necessary is the attainment of a proper perspective. One must put the narrative aside, and then re-read it, after a year or two, in the light of subsequent experience. That is precisely what I propose to do with this simple story, so soon as I shall have brought it to the point, now near at hand, when Miss Berrith disappears out of my life as surely as she entered it. That point attained, I shall have done all that the most broad-minded of criticized men could do in the line of endeavouring to ascertain the cause of complaint; and I can lay my manuscript aside with the serene conviction that, in common with a vast majority of the remarks made by her sex, those of Miss Berrith on the subject of my pathos and self-esteem had no absolute meaning at all.
Before resuming the main thread of my chronicle, I have only to add that although, from time to time, I have directly addressed the gentle reader of these pages, the apostrophe has been the merest matter of form, and any gentle reader, apart from the present gentle writer, a person purely supposititious. The artifice is designed simply to lend an air of disinterestedness and impersonality to this record, when I shall come to read it over. It is certain that I have not the most remote intention of allowing reflections so intimate (and very particularly in respect to what is now to follow) to come under any eye but mine.