Mr. Bang knew of a rink we could go to. No, it was not the hockey rink, nor the Skating Club rink, but another. I wonder why Mr. Bang is so attentive to Me. I surely am not overly polite to him. Why is he so patient—so unnaturally so, it almost seems? I wonder if he will marry. Our personalities—his and mine—are far from being parallel, so that I am safe. What keeps him east? He says business, and, indeed, he leaves for Toronto on New Year’s Eve. If he wants a wife, I should suggest his addressing his attention to Ethel Bassett. She is the type of womanhood of which he approves. I cannot admire dowdiness myself.
Again, Mr. Bang’s bitterness puzzles me. Fancy anyone disliking a sister enough to speak of her as he spoke. I determined upon asking him why it should be so, and as we walked to the rink I did so.
“Do I?” he cried. “I’m sorry if I appear bitter, bitter is an ugly word but no doubt I have earned it, if you, who are my friend, find bitterness in my words. Sister Mary is a type—one of those scheming women, scheming in harmless little ways, who fancies herself clever, when she is really most transparent. I think you may accept it as an axiom, that the average of us are more adept at seeing through the schemes of others than covering up one’s own designs. Sister Mary had a great deal to do with bringing me up; perhaps my bitterness arises from her having made so complete a failure of the job.”
“Are you a failure?” I asked with genuine surprise. A man who can give away furs!
But my interruption did not alter the trend of his ideas.
“I fancy though, I may justly charge her with the hatred I have for the respectable. The inherent pugnacity of the human animal made me irresponsible early in life, partly as an affectation, but later from habit and inclination.
“How strange!” I exclaimed.
“Not strange, but a frequent circumstance: the parson’s son is proverbially a madcap.”
We skated about, hand in hand: my thoughts dwelling upon the strange being who was my companion. My mental attitude towards him had undergone a change. My interest, my sympathy were aroused. He was in the full glow of manhood, full of ambition, fighting his way in the world; and evidently doing so successfully. His abilities were constructive; his past had been hard. The story he told at the Christmas dinner while showing what he had seen and experienced also showed much of himself. Yet he could be egotistical. He is one of those who can talk of themselves without paining or boring the hearer; after all, a rare and delightful accomplishment. But his peculiar animosity to his sister I could not understand. I prompted him.
“I often think,” he said, his voice soft, his speech slow and thoughtful, his utterance suggesting his desire to speak true, “that I perhaps wrong my sister; that the lack of balance, which I had so much trouble in combating in my earlier youth was due really to heredity. I believe that many of the tendencies which experience has told me are to my hurt were as strongly developed in and as detrimental to my grandfather. It is wrong, I believe, to look upon a child’s character as something which may be moulded as a piece of clay. One might as well try and mould his features.”