I think if some people only knew the bitter pangs that social culprits afterwards experience within themselves for their slips and slidings by the way, they would be less harsh in their judgments and unsparing in their condemnation than they usually are. Sending him to Coventry is a poor punishment in comparison with the offender’s own remorse. He finds the “labor et opus redintegrare gradum” hard enough, without that Rhadamanthus, “society,” making the ascent slippery for him!
As I recalled the incidents of the evening, I could not help allowing to my conscience that Mr Mawley the curate, whom I disliked, had shown himself a gentleman, where I had only acted like a snob; while Horner, a man whom I, in my conceit, had looked down upon and affected to despise as an empty-headed fop and nonentity, was a prince beside me!
They had but played their respective social parts, and accepted the gifts that the gods provided; while I—dunder-headed dolt that I was—had conducted myself worse than a budding school-boy who had but just donned swallow-tails, and made his first entry into society!
Jealousy had been the cause of it all, of course; but, although I have always held, and will continue to believe, that the presence of that “green-eyed monster,” as the passion is euphuistically termed, is inseparable from all cases of real, thorough, heart-felt, engrossing love—still, jealousy is no excuse for ill-manners. “Noblesse oblige” always. There is no half-way medium; no middle course to take.
Then, fancy my being such a brute as to quarrel with Min, merely because she could not avoid being courteous to her guests! The fact of their being personally obnoxious to me, did not affect the scale one way or the other; she could not help that. I doubt whether she even knew it.
I was unable to forgive myself, and wondered if she would excuse my conduct, and speak to me again; although, I really deserved social extinction.
But, I surely could not belie her angel nature, I thought? When she came to know all I had suffered that evening, and the miserable self-upbraidings I had since endured, she would pity me, and forgive me, forgetting all that had occurred “as a dream when one awaketh?” I was sure she would; and I gained renewed courage from the impression.
I now bethought me how I should next present myself before her. In accordance with the usages of conventionality, it would be right for me to make an early call at Mrs Clyde’s, in recognition of her late assembly; and, unless I should chance to meet Min out alone, I would have no chance of making my apology before then, while, even on that occasion, the presence of her mother might prevent my speaking to her as openly as I wished. What should I do?
I determined, under the circumstances, and from the fact of our being such old friends—she had said so herself, had she not?—that I would make her a little peace-offering, in the shape of a present of some sort or other.
This did not occur to me with the idea of propitiating her as an offended goddess, sacrifices being out of date in the existing era—except those to Moloch! No, such a thought never occurred to me for a moment.