His essay on Woman was only a self-satisfied description of his marriage. Out of the writing of it came no profit except to his vanity. Preoccupied with questions of style, he pruned and pared it down, refashioned and remodeled it until at last he could not read it himself. Having no convenient sands in which to bury it, he gave it to Panoukian to read.
Panoukian was in that stage of development (which has nothing to do with age) when a man needs to find his fellows worshipful and looks for wonders from them. He was very young, and kindness from a man older than himself could bowl him over completely, set his affections frothing and babbling over his judgment, so that he became enslaved and sycophantish, and prepared, mentally if not physically, to stand on his head if it so happened that the object of his admiration could be served by it. He was in a nervous state of flux, possessing small mastery over his faculties, many of which were only in bud; his life was so little his own, was so shapeless and unformed that there could be no moderation in him; his admirations were excessive, had more than once landed him in the mire, so that he was a little afraid of them, and to guard against these dangers sought refuge in intolerance. To prevent himself seeing beauty and nobility and being intoxicated by them, he created bugbears for himself and hated them, and was forever tracking them down and finding their marks in the moot innocent persons and places. He was very young, mightily in love with love, so that he was forever guarding himself from coming to it too early and being fobbed off with love cheapened or soiled. His passion was for “reality,” of which he had only the most shapeless and uncommunicable conception, but he was always talking about it with fierce denunciations of all the people who seemed to him to be deliberately, with criminal folly, burking it. For this reality his instinct was to preserve himself, and he lived in terror of his loneliness driving him to headlong falls from which he might never be able to recover. He was a full-blooded, healthy young man and must have been wretchedly unhappy had it not been that people, in their indolent, careless way, were often enough kind to him to draw off some of his accumulated enthusiasm in an explosive admiration and effusive, though tactfully manipulated, affection. Old Mole was kinder to him than anyone had ever been except his father, but then his father had had no other methods than those of common sense, while in Old Mole there was a subtlety always surprising and refreshing. Also Old Mole was prepared almost indefinitely, as it seemed, to listen to Panoukian’s views and opinions and rough winnowing of the wheat from the chaff of life, so far as he had experienced it.
Panoukian therefore read Old Mole’s manuscript with the fervor of a disciple, and found in it the heat and vigor which he himself always brought to their discussions. The essay, indeed, was like the master’s talk, cool and deliberate, broken in its monotony by comical little stabs of malice. The writing was fastidious and competent. Panoukian thought the essay a masterpiece, and there crept a sort of reverence into his attitude toward its author. This was an easy transition, for he had never quite shaken off the rather frightened respect of the pupil for the schoolmaster. Then, to complete his infatuation, he contrasted Old Mole with his employer, Harbottle.
And Old Mole was fond of Panoukian. At first it was the sort of amused tenderness which it is impossible not to feel on the sight of a leggy colt in a field or a woolly kitten staggering after a ball. Then, by association and familiarity, it was enriched and became a thing as near friendship as there can be between men of widely different ages, between immaturity and ripeness. It saved the situation for both of them, the young man from his wildness, the older from the violent distortion of values which had become necessary if he were to move easily and comfortably in the swim. Above all, for Old Mole, it was amusing. For Panoukian nothing was amusing. In his intense longing for the “reality” of his dreams he hated amusement; he detested the vast expenditure of energy in the modern world on making existence charming and pleasant and comfortable, the elaborate ingenuity with which the facts of life were hidden and glossed over; he despised companionable books, and fantastical pictures and plays, luxurious entertainments, magazines filled with advertisements and imbecile love-stories, kinematographs, spectacular football, could not understand how any man could devote his energies to the creation of them and retain his sincerity and honesty. He adored what he called the English genius, and was disappointed and hurt because the whole of English life was not a spontaneous expression of it, and he found one of his stock examples in architecture. He would storm and inveigh against the country because the English architectural tradition had been allowed to lapse away back in the dark ages of the nineteenth century. He had many other instances of the obscuring or sudden obliteration of the fairest tendencies of the English genius, and to their mutual satisfaction, Old Mole would put it all down to his theory of the eruption of gold.
Nearly all Panoukian’s leisure was spent at Gray’s Inn or out with Old Mole and Matilda, or with them on their visits to those of their friends to whom they had introduced him. He was good-looking, well built, easily adept at ball-games—for he possessed a quick, sure eye—and his shy frankness made him likeable. The charm of English country life would soften his violence and soothe his prejudices, but only the more, when he returned to London, would he chafe against the incessant pursuit of material advantages, the mania of unselective acquisition, the spinning and droning of the many-colored humming-top.
From the first moment he had been Matilda’s slave, and no trouble was too great, no time too long, no task too tedious, if only he could yield her some small service. He would praise her to Old Mole:
“She is so real. Compare her with other women. She does all the things they do, and does them better. She takes them in her stride. She can laugh with you, talk with you, understand what you mean better than you do yourself, give you just the little encouragement you need, and you can talk to her and forget that she is a woman. . . . You don’t know, sir, what an extraordinary difference it has made in my life since I have known you two.”
That would embarrass Old Mole, and he found it impossible to say anything without jarring Panoukian’s feelings. Therefore he would say nothing, and later he would look at Matilda, watch her, wait for her smile, and wonder. Her smile was the most surprising, the most intimate gift he ever had from her. Often for days together they would hardly see each other and, when they met, would have little to say, but he would watch until he could meet her gaze, win a smile from her, and feel her friendliness, her interest, and know that they still had much to share and were still profoundly aware of each other. He would say to her sometimes:
“I don’t see much of you nowadays.”
She would answer: