At the earliest opportunity Mr. Trimblerigg retired to consider them. It was evident that Davidina had penetrated another of his secrets; she had discovered that he thought himself good. Many years after, when asked by an American reporter what it felt like to be the greatest man in the world, he replied that it made him feel shy, and then was ready to bite his tongue out for having so aimed at modesty and missed. He saw twenty reporters writing down the words, ‘It makes me feel shy’; and within twelve hours it was all over the world—a mistake which he couldn’t explain away. That was to be one of the worst moments of his life; and this was another, that Davidina should have unearthed so hidden and central a truth. He was deeply annoyed, partly with her for having discovered it, much more with himself for having let it appear.
Yet his cogitations brought him in the end to a conclusion which had in it a measure of comfort. ‘After all,’ he said to himself, ‘I am good sometimes.’
It was that ‘sometimes,’ and the consciousness of it, that in the future was to work havoc with his soul. He did know desperately well that he was good sometimes; and the fervour of it used to spread so far beyond the appointed limit that he ceased to know where his goodness began, and where it left off. As from an oasis in the wilderness exhales fragrance from the blossom of the rose, regaling the dusty nostrils of sand-bound travellers, as into its airy horizon ascends mirage from waters, and palm-trees, and temples, that are real somewhere—but not in the place where they so phenomenally display themselves—so from parts of him excellent, into other parts less excellent, went the sense that he was ‘somehow good’; and he never perceived, in spite of the very genuine interest he took in himself that what made him more interesting than anyone else was the extraordinary division of his character into two parts, a good and a bad, so dexterously allied that they functioned together as one, endowing him with that curious gift of sincerity to each mood while it lasted, which kept him ever true to himself and the main chance, even as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope always shape to patterns, however varied, having the same fixed centre—a haphazard orderliness which no amount of shaking can destroy.
As has been hinted already, a time unavoidable for youth came in Mr. Trimblerigg’s life when kisses began to have an attraction for him: in his case it came rather early, and the attraction grew strong. But so also grew his fear of them—or perhaps it would be more true to say his fear lest Davidina should get wind of them. Davidina had an unlovable scorn for kisses, which she paraded to the world; she kissed nobody except her parents, and them only from a sense of duty, and became known, in a country-side where kisses were easily come by, as the girl from whom nobody could get a kiss.
Few tried; the first who did so had been made a warning for others.
It is likely enough—since moral emblems have their contrary effect—that the impregnable barrier set up by Davidina was responsible for the thing becoming so much a vogue in other quarters; and Lizzie Seebohm, the prettiest small wench of the village, in pure derision of Davidina’s aloofness, and under her very eyes, made open sale of her kisses at a price which, starting from chocolates, rose to a penny and thence to twopence.
For this amiable weakness she got from Davidina the nickname of ‘Tuppenny,’ and in view of the feud which thence arose, Mr. Trimblerigg was instinctively advised of danger to his peace of mind if he put himself on Tuppenny’s list. And so it came about that, whatever his natural inclinations in the matter, he saved his pocket-money and did not apply for her favours.
In this Lizzie Seebohm saw the influence of Davidina; for which reason and sheer spitefulness, Mr. Trimblerigg became her quarry.
So one day a communication reached him, artfully told by the small maiden commissioned thereto as a breach of confidence. She had heard Lizzie say that Jonathan might have a kiss of her not merely for nothing; she would give twopence to get it. A sense that he was really attractive made him fail to see deep enough, and when the offer rose to sixpence he succumbed.
Within an hour—Lizzie Seebohm had seen to it—Davidina got the news. Her wrath and sense of humiliation were deep; in the great battle of life which lay ahead for the possession of her brother’s soul, she had lost a point, and that to an opponent whom she regarded as insignificant. It was not a case for silence. Davidina descended upon him before the sixpence in his pocket had had time to get warm. ‘You’ve been kissing Tuppenny!’ she cried.