Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 | Page 9

He
prides himself on his good manners, his urbanity, his knowing a rule of
conduct for every occasion in life. My private impression is that his
skinny old bosom contains unsuspected treasures of impertinence. He
takes his stand on his speculative audacity--his direct, undaunted gaze
at the universe; in truth, his mind is haunted by a hundred dingy
old-world spectres and theological phantasms. He imagines himself one
of the most solid of men; he is essentially one of the hollowest. He
thinks himself ardent, impulsive, passionate, magnanimous--capable of
boundless enthusiasm for an idea or a sentiment. It is clear to me that
on no occasion of disinterested action can he ever have done anything
in time. He believes, finally, that he has drained the cup of life to the
dregs; that he has known, in its bitterest intensity, every emotion of
which the human spirit is capable; that he has loved, struggled, suffered.
Mere vanity, all of it. He has never loved any one but himself; he has
never suffered from anything but an undigested supper or an exploded
pretension; he has never touched with the end of his lips the vulgar
bowl from which the mass of mankind quaffs its floods of joy and
sorrow. Well, the long and short of it all is, that I honestly pity him. He
may have given sly knocks in his life, but he can't hurt any one now. I
pity his ignorance, his weakness, his pusillanimity. He has tasted the
real sweetness of life no more than its bitterness; he has never dreamed,
nor experimented, nor dared; he has never known any but mercenary
affection; neither men nor women have risked aught for _him_--for his
good spirits, his good looks, his empty pockets. How I should like to
give him, for once, a real sensation!
26th.--I took a row this morning with Theodore a couple of miles along
the lake, to a point where we went ashore and lounged away an hour in
the sunshine, which is still very comfortable. Poor Theodore seems
troubled about many things. For one, he is troubled about me: he is
actually more anxious about my future than I myself; he thinks better of
me than I do of myself; he is so deucedly conscientious, so scrupulous,
so averse to giving offence or to brusquer any situation before it has
played itself out, that he shrinks from betraying his apprehensions or
asking direct questions. But I know that he would like very much to
extract from me some intimation that there is something under the sun I
should like to do. I catch myself in the act of taking--heaven forgive

me!--a half-malignant joy in confounding his expectations--leading his
generous sympathies off the scent by giving him momentary glimpses
of my latent wickedness. But in Theodore I have so firm a friend that I
shall have a considerable job if I ever find it needful to make him
change his mind about me. He admires me--that's absolute; he takes my
low moral tone for an eccentricity of genius, and it only imparts an
extra flavor--a _haut goût_--to the charm of my intercourse.
Nevertheless, I can see that he is disappointed. I have even less to show,
after all these years, than he had hoped. Heaven help us! little enough it
must strike him as being. What a contradiction there is in our being
friends at all! I believe we shall end with hating each other. It's all very
well now--our agreeing to differ, for we haven't opposed interests. But
if we should really clash, the situation would be warm! I wonder, as it
is, that Theodore keeps his patience with me. His education since we
parted should tend logically to make him despise me. He has studied,
thought, suffered, loved--loved those very plain sisters and nieces. Poor
me! how should I be virtuous? I have no sisters, plain or
pretty!--nothing to love, work for, live for. My dear Theodore, if you
are going one of these days to despise me and drop me--in the name of
comfort, come to the point at once, and make an end of our state of
tension.
He is troubled, too, about Mr. Sloane. His attitude toward the
bonhomme quite passes my comprehension. It's the queerest jumble of
contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him--yet respects and
admires him. It all comes of the poor boy's shrinking New England
conscience. He's afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest,
forsooth, they should look over his neighbor's wall. He'll not
understand that he may as well sacrifice the old reprobate for a lamb as
for a sheep. His view of the gentleman, therefore, is a perfect tissue of
cobwebs--a jumble of half-way sorrows, and wire-drawn charities, and
hair-breadth 'scapes from utter damnation, and sudden