How shall I tell my friend that I am grateful? The very telling of it will make him feel guilty of a sort of treachery, which he did not design. So I must be silent for awhile; and, above all, resist the feeling, natural enough in the first humiliation, that one would like to send some fire-tailed fox into his standing-corn as well.
There is no impulse to be more carefully and jealously guarded than the impulse which tells us that we are bound to speak unpleasant truths to one's friends. It must be resisted until seventy times seven! It can only be yielded to if there is nothing but pure pain in the doing of it; if there is the least touch of satisfaction or zest about it, it may be safely put aside.
And so to-day I will stand for a little and watch the slow smoke drifting heavenwards from the dry weeds of my soul. It is not a sad experience, though the fingers of the fire are sharp! Rather as the rich smoke rolls into the air, and then winds and hangs in airy veils, there comes a sense of relief, of lightness, of burdens not stricken harshly off, but softly and cleanly purged away.
XXIV
One meets a great many people of various kinds, old and young, kind and severe, amiable and harsh, gentle and dry, rude and polite, tiresome and interesting. One meets men who are, one recognises, virtuous, honourable, conscientious, and able; one meets women of character, and ingenuousness, and charm, and beauty. But the thing that really interests me is to meet a person—and it is not a common experience—who has made something of himself or herself; who began with one set of qualities, and who has achieved another set of qualities, by desiring them and patiently practising them; who, one is sure, has a peculiar sympathy drawn from experience, and a wisdom matured by conflict and effort.
As a rule, one feels that people are very much the same as they began by being. They are awkward and have not learned to be easy; they are dull and have not learned to be interesting; or they are clever and have not learned to be sympathetic; or charming and have not learned to be loyal; who are satisfied, in fact, with being what they are. But what a delightful and reviving thing it is to meet one whose glance betrays a sort of tenderness, a gentleness, a desire to establish a relationship; who means to like one, if he can; whose face bears signs of the conflict of spirit, in which selfishness and complacency have been somehow eradicated; who understands one's clumsy hints and interprets one's unexpressed feelings; who goes about, one knows, looking out for beautiful qualities and for subtle relationships; who evokes the best of people, their confidence, their true and natural selves; who is not in the least concerned with making an impression or being thought wise or clever or brilliant, but who just hopes for companionship and equality of soul.
Sometimes, indeed, one does not discern this largeness and wisdom of spirit quite at first sight, though it is generally revealed by aspect even more than by words. Sometimes these brotherly and sisterly persons have a fence of shyness which cannot be instantly overleapt; but one generally can discern the beautiful creature waiting gently within. But as a rule these gracious people have nothing that is formidable or daunting about them; they are quiet and simple; and having no cards to play and no game to win, they are at leisure to make the best of other people.
I have met both men and women of this apostolic kind, and one feels that they understand; that in their tranquil maturity they can make allowances for crude immaturity; that they do not at once dismiss one as being foolishly young or tiresomely elderly: they have no subjects of their own which they are vexed at finding misunderstood or not comprehended. They do not think the worse of a person for having preferences or prejudices; though when one has uttered a raw preference or an unreasonable prejudice in their presence one is ashamed, as one is for hurling a stone into a sleeping pool. One comes away from them desiring to appreciate rather than to contemn, with horizons and vistas of true and beautiful things opening up on all sides, with a wish to know more and to understand more, and to believe more; with the sense of a desirable secret of which they have the possession.
One meets sometimes exactly the opposite of all this, a lively, brilliant, contemptuous specialist, who talks briskly and lucidly about his own subject, and makes one feel humble and clumsy and drowsy. One sees that he is pleased to talk, and when the ball rolls to one's feet, one makes a feeble effort to toss it back, whereupon he makes a fine stroke, with an ill-concealed contempt for a person who is so ill-informed. Perhaps it is good to be humiliated thus; but it is not pleasant, and the worst of it is that one confuses the subject with the personality behind it, and thinks that the subject is dreary when it is only the personality that is repellent.
Such a man is repellent, because he is self-absorbed, conceited, contemptuous. He has grown up inside a sort of walled fortress, and he thinks that everyone outside is a knave or a fool. He has not changed. It is this change, this progress of the soul that is adorable.