“Have you lost interest in the world to that extent?”
“In my present environment.”
“Oh, you can easily change that. Get into livelier surroundings.”
Davenport shook his head. “My immediate environment would still be the same; my memories, my body; 'this machine,' as Hamlet says; my old, tiresome, unsuccessful self.”
“But if you got about more among mankind,—not that I know what your habits are at present, but I should imagine—” Larcher hesitated.
“You perceive I have the musty look of a solitary,” said Davenport. “That's true, of late. But as to getting about, 'man delights not me'—to fall back on Hamlet again—at least not from my present point of view.”
“'Nor woman neither'?” quoted Larcher, interrogatively.
“'No, nor woman neither,'” said Davenport slowly, a coldness coming upon his face. “I don't know what your experience may have been. We have only our own lights to go by; and mine have taught me to expect nothing from women. Fair-weather friends; creatures that must be amused, and are unscrupulous at whose cost or how great. One of their amusements is to be worshipped by a man; and to bring that about they will pretend love, with a pretence that would deceive the devil himself. The moment they are bored with the pastime, they will drop the pretence, and feel injured if the man complains. We take the beauty of their faces, the softness of their eyes, for the outward signs of tenderness and fidelity; and for those supposed qualities, and others which their looks seem to express, we love them. But they have not those qualities; they don't even know what it is that we love them for; they think it is for the outward beauty, and that that is enough. They don't even know what it is that we, misled by that outward softness, imagine is beyond; and when we are disappointed to find it isn't there, they wonder at us and blame us for inconstancy. The beautiful woman who could be what she looks—who could really contain what her beauty seems the token of—whose soul, in short, could come up to the promise of her face,—there would be a creature! You'll think I've had bad luck in love, too, Mr. Larcher.”
Larcher was thinking, for the instant, about Edna Hill, and wondering
how near she might come to justifying Davenport's opinion of women. For
himself, though he found her bewitching, her prettiness had never seemed
the outward sign of excessive tenderness. He answered conventionally:
“Well, one would suppose so from your remarks. Of course, women like
to be amused, I know. Perhaps we expect too much from them.
'Oh, woman in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made.'
I've sometimes had reason to recall those lines.” Mr. Larcher sighed at
certain memories of Miss Hill's variableness. “But then, you know,—
'When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel them.'”