How relieved I felt when the fellow closed the door after him and left me to “blow off the steam” of my indignation all alone! And was I not indignant? Only to fancy this insolent old woman giving her orders without so much as condescending to communicate with me! I am left to learn her whim by a mere accident, or not learn it at all, and exhibit myself ready to depart at the inn door, and then hear, for the first time, that I may unpack again.
This was unquestionably a studied rudeness, and demanded an equally studied reprisal. She means to discredit my station, and disparage my influence; how shall I reply to her? A vast variety of expedients offered themselves to my mind: I could go off, leaving a fearful letter behind me,—a document that would cut her to the very soul with the sarcastic bitterness of its tone; but could I leave without a reconciliation with Miss Herbert,—without the fond hope of our meeting as friends. I meant a great deal more, though I would n't trust myself to say so. Besides, were I to go away, there were financial considerations to be entertained. I could not, of course, carry off that crimson bag with its gold and silver contents, and yet it was very hard to tear myself from such a treasure.
I say it under correction, for I have never been rich, and, consequently, never in the position to assert it positively; but I declare my firm conviction to be that no man has ever tasted the unbounded pleasures of a careless liberality on a Journey, who has not travelled at some other person's expense. Be as wealthy as you like, let your portmanteau be stuffed full of circular notes, and there will be present at moments of payment the thought, “If I do not allow myself to be cheated here, I shall have all the more to squander there.” But, drawing from the bag of another, no such mean reflection obtrudes. You might as well defraud your lungs of a long inspiration out of the fear of taking more than your share of the atmosphere. There is enough, and will be enough there when you are dust and ashes.
In fact, if I had on one side the “three courses” of the great statesman, I had on the other full thirty reasons against each, and, therefore, I resolved to suspend action and do nothing. And let me here passingly remark that, much as we hear every day about the merits of promptitude and quick-wittedness, in nine cases out of ten in life, I 'd rather “give the move than take it.” The waiting policy is a rare one; it is the secret of success in love, and of victory in an equity court And so I determined I 'd wait and see what should come of it. I appealed to myself thus: “Potts, you are eminently a man of the world, one who accepts life as it is, with all its crosses and untoward incidents; who knows well that he must play bad cards even oftener than good ones. No impatience, therefore, no rashness; give at least twenty-four hours' thought to any important decision, and let a night's sleep intervene between your first conception of a plan and its adoption.” Oh, if the people who are fretting themselves about what is to happen this day ten years, would only remember what a long time it is,—that is, counting by the number of events that will occur between this and to-morrow,—not to say what incidents are happening at the antipodes that will yet bring joy or sorrow to their hearts,—they would keep more of their sympathies for present use, and perhaps be the happier for doing so.
CHAPTER XVIII. AN IMPATIENT SUMMONS.
I am about to make a very original observation. I hope its truth may equal its originality. It is, that the man who has never had a sister is, at his first entrance into life, far more the slave of feminine captivations than he who has been brought up in a “house full of girls.” “Oh, for shame, Mr. Potts! Is this the gallantry we have heard so much of? Is this the spirit of that chivalrous devotion you have been incessantly impressing upon us?” Wait a moment, fair creature; give me one half-minute for an explanation. He who has not had sisters has had no experiences of the behind-scene life of the female world; he has never heard one syllable about the plans and schemes and devices by which hearts are snared. He fancies Mary stuck that moss-rose in her hair in a moment of childish caprice; that Kate ran after her little sister and showed the prettiest of ankles in doing it, out of the irrepressible gayety of her buoyant spirits. In a word, he is one who only sees the play when the house is fully lighted, and all the actors in their grand costume; he has never witnessed a rehearsal, and has not the very vaguest suspicion of a prompter.
To him, therefore, who has only experienced the rough companionship of brothers—or worse still, has lived entirely alone—the first acquaintanceship with the young-lady world is such a fascination as no words can describe. The gentle look, the graceful gestures, the silvery voices, all the play and action of natures so infinitely more refined than any he has ever witnessed, are inexpressibly captivating. It is not alone the occupations of their hours, light, graceful, and picturesque as they are, but all their topics, their thoughts, seem to soar out of the commonplace world he has lived in, and rise to ideal realms of poetry and beauty. I say it advisedly: I do not know of anything so truly Elysian in life as our first—our very first—experiences of this kind.
Werther's passion for Charlotte received a powerful impulse from watching her as she cut bread-and-butter for the children. There are vulgar natures who will smile at this; who cannot enter into the intense far-sightedness of that poetic conception; that could in one trait of simplicity embody a whole lifetime with its ennobling duties, its cheerful sacrifices, its gracefully borne cares. Let him, therefore, who could sneer at Werther, scoff at Potts, as he owns that he never felt his heart so powerfully drawn to Kate Herbert as when he watched her making tea for breakfast. Dressed in a muslin that represented mourning, her rich hair plainly enclosed in a net, with a noiseless motion, she glided about, an ideal of gentle sadness, more fascinating than I can tell. If she bore any unpleasant memory of our little difference, she did not show it; her manner was calm and even kind. She felt, perhaps, that some compensation was due to me for the rudeness of that old woman, and was not unwilling to make it.
“You know we are to rest here to-day?” said she, as she busied herself at the table.