He looked delighted; so perhaps he had not forgiven the Vannecks for laughing.
BOOK III
BASIL'S PLOT AND "MRS. BAL"
I
Will the time come, I wonder, when I can calmly "work up" these things into a plot? If so, I foresee that I shall have to toss a coin to decide on the casting of my own part in the story. Heads, I am hero; tails, I am villain. But it has always been a theory of mine that ninety-nine out of a hundred novels are unjust toward some of their principal characters. Each (alleged) villain ought to have his motives and actions explained from his own point of view, not according to that of the (also alleged) hero and heroine whom he possibly tries (with success or failure) to separate. If this were done in books, villains qua villains would practically cease to exist; for it seems to me, in my experience of life as a man and a writer, that no normal, healthy villain is a villain in his own eyes. To understand all is to pardon all; and in analyzing his motives in order to justify himself to himself, he sees from every point of vantage, he knows how necessary certain actions are which appear evil to the limited view of the hero and heroine. They see him always obliquely, in profile; therefore they are prejudiced. And what is doubly unfair to the poor villain, the author of the book sympathizes with the others from first to last; whereas, if the villain were allowed to explain himself in his own way, not the author's, he would stand in the centre of the picture. Not being prejudiced against himself, he would have a chance of appealing to the readers' sense of justice.
Unfortunately for me, I have a way of seeing two sides of a question at once, even when my own interests and those of another are violently opposed. This is a kind of moral colour-blindness; for to be colour-blind means merely that your eyes give you an impression of red and green at the same tune, so that you can with difficulty tell which is which. Both kinds of colour-blindness, moral and physical, handicap you for success in life. On the whole, I think the moral sort is the more inconvenient of the two. If you saw nobody's motives but your own, you would be able honestly to detest your enemy and work against him. You would then be happy and successful, because of your complete self-confidence. It is seeing the enemy's point of view, and sympathizing in spite of yourself with him, which upsets you.
That has been my state of mind ever since I was a small and over-sensitive kid who wouldn't watch a terrier worry a rat because something made me put myself at once in the rat's place. Wiser boys called me a milksop and various other names, which I furiously resented yet inwardly recognized as just. Also they kicked me at times, and bashed me on the nose. I did my best in wild tempests of rage to kick and bash them in return, and now and then I gave them back as good or better than I had from them. But if I saw their blood flow, that same ridiculous Something which went out to the rat sickened within me, and was sorry.
I understand myself rather well, when I'm not in the grip of emotion; but at present my eyes are blinded. I feel so intensely for myself and for my sister that I'm not sure whether I act as I do more for her sake or my own. Probably, however, it is for my own. And, curiously enough, I dimly see past this brain-storm and heart-storm to some day of calmer weather when it may still be possible to make use of myself and her, and—the others, as "material." I don't know if I shall do this, yet it may happen; and sometimes, even now, these disturbing incidents take form in my mind as scenes for a future book. I suppose this shows that the writer in me stands in front of the man. Some day I shall see myself clearly again one way or the other.