He stood up and became aware that the member who had been asleep was now
regarding him with malevolent eyes. He perceived it was a hard and
invincible malevolence, and that no petty apologetics of demeanour could
avail against it. He turned about and went towards the door.
The interview had done my cousin good. His misery and distress had
lifted. He was presently bathed in a profound moral indignation, and
that is the very antithesis of doubt and unhappiness. The more he
thought it over, the more his indignation with Chatteris grew. That
sudden unreasonable outbreak altered all the perspectives of the case.
He wished very much that he could meet Chatteris again and discuss the
whole matter from a new footing.
"Think of it!" He thought so vividly and so verbally that he was nearly
talking to himself as he went along. It shaped itself into an outspoken
discourse in his mind.
"Was there ever a more ungracious, ungrateful, unreasonable creature
than this same Chatteris? He was the spoiled child of Fortune; things
came to him, things were given to him, his very blunders brought more
to him than other men's successes. Out of every thousand men, nine
hundred and ninety-nine might well find food for envy in this way luck
had served him. Many a one has toiled all his life and taken at last
gratefully the merest fraction of all that had thrust itself upon this
insatiable thankless young man. Even I," thought my cousin, "might envy
him--in several ways. And then, at the mere first onset of duty,
nay!--at the mere first whisper of restraint, this insubordination, this
protest and flight!
"Think!" urged my cousin, "of the common lot of men. Think of the many
who suffer from hunger----"
(It was a painful Socialistic sort of line to take, but in his mood of
moral indignation my cousin pursued it relentlessly.)
"Think of many who suffer from hunger, who lead lives of unremitting
toil, who go fearful, who go squalid, and withal strive, in a sort of
dumb, resolute way, their utmost to do their duty, or at any rate what
they think to be their duty. Think of the chaste poor women in the
world! Think again of the many honest souls who aspire to the service
of their kind, and are so hemmed about and preoccupied that they may
not give it! And then this pitiful creature comes, with his mental
gifts, his gifts of position and opportunity, the stimulus of great
ideas, and a _fiancée_, who is not only rich and beautiful--she _is_
beautiful!--but also the best of all possible helpers for him. And
he turns away. It isn't good enough. It takes no hold upon his
imagination, if you please. It isn't beautiful enough for him, and
that's the plain truth of the matter. What does the man _want_? What
does he expect?..."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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