Melville overcame an impulse to follow him.
"Confound the fellow!" said he.
And then as the whole outburst came into focus, he said with still more
emphasis, "Confound the fellow!"
He stood up and became aware that the member who had been asleep was now
regarding him with malevolent eyes. He perceived it was a hard and
invincible malevolence, and that no petty apologetics of demeanour could
avail against it. He turned about and went towards the door.
The interview had done my cousin good. His misery and distress had
lifted. He was presently bathed in a profound moral indignation, and
that is the very antithesis of doubt and unhappiness. The more he
thought it over, the more his indignation with Chatteris grew. That
sudden unreasonable outbreak altered all the perspectives of the case.
He wished very much that he could meet Chatteris again and discuss the
whole matter from a new footing.
"Think of it!" He thought so vividly and so verbally that he was nearly
talking to himself as he went along. It shaped itself into an outspoken
discourse in his mind.
"Was there ever a more ungracious, ungrateful, unreasonable creature
than this same Chatteris? He was the spoiled child of Fortune; things
came to him, things were given to him, his very blunders brought more
to him than other men's successes. Out of every thousand men, nine
hundred and ninety-nine might well find food for envy in this way luck
had served him. Many a one has toiled all his life and taken at last
gratefully the merest fraction of all that had thrust itself upon this
insatiable thankless young man. Even I," thought my cousin, "might envy
him--in several ways. And then, at the mere first onset of duty,
nay!--at the mere first whisper of restraint, this insubordination, this
protest and flight!
"Think!" urged my cousin, "of the common lot of men. Think of the many
who suffer from hunger----"
(It was a painful Socialistic sort of line to take, but in his mood of
moral indignation my cousin pursued it relentlessly.)
"Think of many who suffer from hunger, who lead lives of unremitting
toil, who go fearful, who go squalid, and withal strive, in a sort of
dumb, resolute way, their utmost to do their duty, or at any rate what
they think to be their duty. Think of the chaste poor women in the
world! Think again of the many honest souls who aspire to the service
of their kind, and are so hemmed about and preoccupied that they may
not give it! And then this pitiful creature comes, with his mental
gifts, his gifts of position and opportunity, the stimulus of great
ideas, and a _fiancee_, who is not only rich and beautiful--she _is_
beautiful!--but also the best of all possible helpers for him. And
he turns away. It isn't good enough. It takes no hold upon his
imagination, if you please. It isn't beautiful enough for him, and
that's the plain truth of the matter. What does the man _want_? What
does he expect?..."
My cousin's moral indignation took him the whole length of Piccadilly,
and along by Rotten Row, and along the flowery garden walks almost into
Kensington High Street, and so around by the Serpentine to his home, and
it gave him such an appetite for dinner as he had not had for many days.
Life was bright for him all that evening, and he sat down at last, at
two o'clock in the morning, before a needlessly lit, delightfully
fusillading fire in his flat to smoke one sound cigar before he went to
bed.
"No," he said suddenly, "I am not _mawbid_ either. I take the gifts the
gods will give me. I try to make myself happy, and a few other people
happy, too, to do a few little duties decently, and that is enough for
me. I don't look too deeply into things, and I don't look too widely
about things. A few old simple ideals----
"H'm.
"Chatteris is a dreamer, with an impossible, extravagant discontent.
What does he dream of?... Three parts he is a dreamer and the fourth
part--spoiled child."
"Dreamer...."
"Other dreams...."
"What other dreams could she mean?"
My cousin fell into profound musings. Then he started, looked about him,
saw the time by his Rathbone clock, got up suddenly and went to bed.