Good Heavens! how can pigmy people, atoms in the vast eternity of time, thus narrow the great universe in which they are permitted to exist; dwarfing it down, to the limit of their jaundiced vision, by the application of their miserable measuring tape of “fashionable” feet and “class” inches! How can they abase grand humanity to the level of their social organon, affecting to control it with their arbitrary absolutisms, their mammon deification, their mimic infallibility! What creeping, crawling, wretched insects we all are, taken collectively; and, of all of us, the blindest, the most insignificant, and most grub-like, are, so-called men and women “of the world!”
Cold, heartless, in a general sense, and worldly as Mrs Clyde was, I could easily have excused it in her and tried to like her, for, was she not the mother of my darling, whom with all her faults she loved very dearly—her affection being judiciously tempered by those considerations paramount in the clique to which she belonged? But, Mrs Clyde did not like me. She spurned every effort I essayed to make her my friend.
I saw this the first evening I passed in her house; and the impression I then received never wore off.
Just as you can tell at sight whether certain persons attract or repel you, through some unknown, nameless influence that you are unable to fathom; so, in like degree, can you decide—that is, if you possess a naturally sensitive mind—whether they are drawn towards yourself or remain antipathetical. I know that I can tell without asking them, if people whom I see for the first time are likely to fancy me or not; and, at all events, I had some inward monition which warned me that Mrs Clyde, contrary to my earnest wish that she should regard me in a friendly light, was not one of those amiable beings who would “cotton to me,” as the inhabitants of New England express the sentiment in their pointed vernacular.
Perhaps you think me a very egotistical person, thus to dwell upon my own ideas and feelings?
You must recollect, however, that I’m telling you this story myself, a story in which I am both actively and intimately interested; and how, unless I speak of my own self, are you going to learn anything about me? I have nobody to describe me, so I must be what you call “egotistical.”
Yes, Mrs Clyde did not like me.
I do not mean to say, remember, that she was impolite, or grim, or wanting in courtesy.
The reverse was the case, as she was one of the smoothest, suavest persons you ever met.
But, there is an exquisitely refined way in which a woman of the world can make you understand that your presence is “de trop” and your society distasteful, without saying a single word that might be construed into an offence against good breeding.