Part 19 (1/2)
We parted on bad terms. I fully intended to write her a sweet letter to make her forgive me in spite of herself, but somehow the weeks have slipped away and I am still fully intending. She has never written, and I have never written. This is a pretty state of things, isn't it, Miss Wilson, after all her advantages under the influence of moral force and the movement for the higher education of women?”
”By your own admission, the fault seems to lie upon your moral training and not upon hers.”
”The fault was in the conditions of our a.s.sociation. Why they should have attracted me so strongly at first, and repelled me so horribly afterwards, is one of those devil's riddles which will not be answered until we shall have traced all the yet unsuspected reactions of our inveterate dishonesty. But I am wasting your time, I fear. You sent for Smilash, and I have responded by practically annihilating him. In public, however, you must still bear with his antics. One moment more.
I had forgotten to ask you whether you are interested in the shepherd whose wife you sheltered on the night of the storm?”
”He a.s.sured me, before he took his wife away, that he was comfortably settled in a lodging in Lyvern.”
”Yes. Very comfortably settled indeed. For half-a-crown a week he obtained permission to share a s.p.a.cious drawing-room with two other families in a ten-roomed house in not much better repair than his blown-down hovel. This house yields to its landlord over two hundred a year, or rather more than the rent of a commodious mansion in South Kensington. It is a troublesome rent to collect, but on the other hand there is no expenditure for repairs or sanitation, which are not considered necessary in tenement houses. Our friend has to walk three miles to his work and three miles back. Exercise is a capital thing for a student or a city clerk, but to a shepherd who has been in the fields all day, a long walk at the end of his work is somewhat too much of a good thing. He begged for an increase of wages to compensate him for the loss of the hut, but Sir John pointed out to him that if he was not satisfied his place could be easily filled by less exorbitant shepherds.
Sir John even condescended to explain that the laws of political economy bind employers to buy labor in the cheapest market, and our poor friend, just as ignorant of economics as Sir John, of course did not know that this was untrue. However, as labor is actually so purchased everywhere except in Downing Street and a few other privileged spots, I suggested that our friend should go to some place where his market price would be higher than in merry England. He was willing enough to do so, but unable from want of means. So I lent him a trifle, and now he is on his way to Australia. Workmen are the geese that lay the golden eggs, but they fly away sometimes. I hear a gong sounding, to remind me of the fight of time and the value of your share of it. Good-morning!”
Miss Wilson was suddenly moved not to let him go without an appeal to his better nature. ”Mr. Trefusis,” she said, ”excuse me, but are you not, in your generosity to others a little forgetful of your duty to yourself; and--”
”The first and hardest of all duties!” he exclaimed. ”I beg your pardon for interrupting you. It was only to plead guilty.”
”I cannot admit that it is the first of all duties, but it is sometimes perhaps the hardest, as you say. Still, you could surely do yourself more justice without any great effort. If you wish to live humbly, you can do so without pretending to be an uneducated man and without taking an irritating and absurd name. Why on earth do you call yourself Smilash?”
”I confess that the name has been a failure. I took great pains, in constructing it, to secure a pleasant impression. It is not a mere invention, but a compound of the words smile and eyelash. A smile suggests good humor; eyelashes soften the expression and are the only features that never blemish a face. Hence Smilash is a sound that should cheer and propitiate. Yet it exasperates. It is really very odd that it should have that effect, unless it is that it raises expectations which I am unable to satisfy.”
Miss Wilson looked at him doubtfully. He remained perfectly grave. There was a pause. Then, as if she had made up her mind to be offended, she said, ”Good-morning,” shortly.
”Good-morning, Miss Wilson. The son of a millionaire, like the son of a king, is seldom free from mental disease. I am just mad enough to be a mountebank. If I were a little madder, I should perhaps really believe myself Smilash instead of merely acting him. Whether you ask me to forget myself for a moment, or to remember myself for a moment, I reply that I am the son of my father, and cannot. With my egotism, my charlatanry, my tongue, and my habit of having my own way, I am fit for no calling but that of saviour of mankind--just of the sort they like.”
After an impressive pause he turned slowly and left the room.
”I wonder,” he said, as he crossed the landing, ”whether, by judiciously losing my way, I can catch a glimpse of that girl who is like a golden idol?”
Downstairs, on his way to the door, he saw Agatha coming towards him, occupied with a book which she was tossing up to the ceiling and catching. Her melancholy expression, habitual in her lonely moments, showed that she was not amusing herself, but giving vent to her restlessness. As her gaze travelled upward, following the flight of the volume, it was arrested by Smilash. The book fell to the floor. He picked it up and handed it to her, saying:
”And, in good time, here is the golden idol!”
”What?” said Agatha, confused.
”I call you the golden idol,” he said. ”When we are apart I always imagine your face as a face of gold, with eyes and teeth of bdellium, or chalcedony, or agate, or any wonderful unknown stones of appropriate colors.”
Agatha, witless and dumb, could only look down deprecatingly.
”You think you ought to be angry with me, and you do not know exactly how to make me feel that you are so. Is that it?”
”No. Quite the contrary. At least--I mean that you are wrong. I am the most commonplace person you can imagine--if you only knew. No matter what I may look, I mean.”
”How do you know that you are commonplace?”
”Of course I know,” said Agatha, her eyes wandering uneasily.
”Of course you do not know; you cannot see yourself as others see you.
For instance, you have never thought of yourself as a golden idol.”
”But that is absurd. You are quite mistaken about me.”