Perhaps the most singular quality of his nature is his heedlessness of individual opinion, and his dread of it in mass. He is so absolutely self-centred—every thought directed inward—that he never tries to make the individual like him, yet he craves intensely the world’s esteem. He longs for notoriety, and even stoops to an almost daily mention of himself in his paper, taking endless pains to get his name into other journals as well. Even his philanthropy, for which the world admires him, is used for this purpose. Ridiculous as it may seem, the most grating task I have to do is the writing of the fulsome press dispatches which he invariably sends out whenever he makes one of his gifts. He writes, too, to his fellow editors, asking them to comment on the largess; and since he makes it a point to cultivate the pleasantest relations with his confrères, they give him good measure, though with many a smile and wink among themselves when they get together. “Mr. White-Lie” is his sobriquet in the fraternity.
How curiously diverse the same man is to different people! To the world Mr. Whitely is a man of great business ability, of wide knowledge, of great benevolence, and of fine manners. I do not wonder, Maizie, that he imposes on you; for though you have discernment, yet you are not of a suspicious nature, and his acting is so wonderful and his manner so frank, through his own unconsciousness of his self-deceit, that not a dozen people dream the man is other than he seems. You might, perhaps, in spite of his taciturnity, have discovered his charlatan pretense of learning if you had been born inquisitive, but you take his writings for the measure of his intellect, and have no more reason to suspect that his skillful reservations are the refuge of a sciolist than that my silence covers such little erudition as I have.
Why I can do naught else but sit here and write of the past I do not understand. Until a month ago I was working every evening till far into the night, but now, try as I may, I can no longer force myself to my task. I should think it was physical exhaustion, were it not that I can chronicle this stale record of what I know so well. I suppose it is mental discouragement at my slight progress in reducing that crushing debt, and, even more, my sadness at the thought of you as his wife.
Good-night, my darling. May happiness be yours.
XIII
March 4. My impressions of that first winter in New York are curiously dim except for the extreme loneliness of my life, which, after the close companionship with my father for so many years, seemed at times almost unbearable. Indeed, I doubt if I could have borne the long hours of solitude and toil but for my occasional glimpses of you. I should think myself fatuous in claiming that you influence me physically,—that I am conscious of a material glow, ecstasy, thrill, call it what you please, when with you,—if I had not once heard Agnes declare that she always felt, when you were in the room, as if she had been drinking champagne; showing that I am not the only one you can thus affect.
My pleasantest recollection is of our long talk in my employer’s study; and strangely enough, it was my books which gained it for me. Mr. Whitely, when I first came into his service, had just endowed a free library in one of the Western cities where some of his oil interests centred, and I hinted to him the purchase of my books as a further gift to his hobby. The suggestion did not meet with his approval,—I fear because there was not the self-advertising in it that there is in a money gift,—but after a week he told me that he might buy the collection to furnish his editorial study. “I plan,” he said, “to make my office attractive, and then have informal literary receptions once a week. I shall therefore require some books, and as your library should be marked by breadth and depth of learning, I presume it will serve my purpose.”
“There are quite a number of Eastern manuscripts of value,” I told him, “and few of the books are in languages that can be read by the average New Yorker.”
“That gives the suggestion of scholarship which I wish,” he acknowledged.