At the usual tea-time I sent Columb, to see if anybody had come upstairs. He brought me word the eating-parlour was empty. I determined to go thither at once, with my work, that there might be no pretence to fetch me when the party assembled; but upon opening the door I saw Mr. Turbulent there, and alone!
I entered with readiness into discourse with him, and showed a disposition to placid good-will, for with so irritable a spirit resentment has much less chance to do good than an appearance of not supposing it deserved. Our conversation was in the utmost gravity. He told me he was not happy, though owned he had everything to make him so; but he was firmly persuaded that happiness in this world was a real stranger. I combated this misanthropy in general terms; but he assured me that such was his unconquerable opinion of human life.
How differently did I feel when I heard an almost similar sentiment from Mr. Fairly! In him I imputed it to unhappiness of circumstances, and was filled with compassion for his fate: in this person I impute it to something blameable within, and I tried by all the arguments I could devise to give him better notions. For him, however, I soon felt pity, though not of the same composition: for he frankly said he was good enough to be happy-that he thought human frailty incompatible with happiness, and happiness with human frailty, and that he had no wish so strong as to turn monk!
I asked him if he thought a life of uselessness and of goodness the same thing?
“I need not be useless,” he said; “I might assist by my counsels. I might be good in a monastery—in the world I cannot! I am not master of my feelings: I am run away by passions too potent for control!”
This was a most unwelcome species of confidence, but I affected to treat it as mere talk, and answered it only slightly, telling him he spoke from the gloom of the moment.
“No,” he answered, “I have tried in vain to conquer them. I have made vows—resolutions—all in vain! I cannot keep them!”
“Is not weakness,” cried I, “sometimes fancied, merely to save the pain and trouble of exerting fortitude.”
“No, it is with me inevitable. I am not formed for success in self-conquest. I resolve—I repent—but I fall! I blame— reproach—I even hate myself—I do everything, in short, yet cannot save myself! Yet do not,” he continued, seeing me shrink, “think worse of me than I deserve: nothing of injustice, of ill-nature, of malignancy—I have nothing of these to reproach myself with.”
“I believe you,” I cried, “and surely, therefore, a general circumspection, an immediate watchfulness—-”