L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine,
Tiennent comme un forcat son esprit a la chaine.--_Boileau_.
Nobody knew Vinal but Vinal himself. _Know thyself_ was his favorite
maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered himself, with a rigorous
and unsparing logic, applying the dissecting knife and microscope to
the secrets of his mind, probing, testing, studying, pitilessly
ripping up all that would fain hide itself. The aim of all this
scrutiny was, thoroughly to comprehend the machine, in order to direct
and perfect it to its highest efficiency.
Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there were points of
his character which escaped him, or which, rather, he misnamed. He
knew perfectly that he was ambitious, selfish, unscrupulous: this he
confessed in his own ear, pluming himself much on his philosophic
candor. But he never would see that he was envious. In his mental map
of himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The wrestlings
of human nature are not all of the sort figured in the Pilgrim's
Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal had an ideal; he had
cherished it from boyhood, and battled ever since to realize it. He
would fain make himself the finished man of the world, the
unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential man of affairs, like a blade
of steel, smooth and polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This
was his aim; but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a
constitutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had been known
to swoon outright, on being run away with in a chaise, and he never
could muster nerve enough to fire a gun. Against this defect his pride
rose in revolt. It thwarted him at every turn, and conflicted with all
his aspirations. In short, he could not endure its presence, and
fought against it with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a
secret, unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale,
nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no good. This
painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and concentration of
character, and would have led to still better issues, had the
assailing force been marshalled under a better banner. A lofty purpose
may turn timidity to heroism; but a purpose like Vinal's is by no
means so efficacious, and the man remains, if not quite a coward, yet
something very like one.
It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had been born to
a fortune. In that case--for he had no aptitude for pleasure
hunting--his restless energies would probably have spurred him into
some creditable field of effort, natural science, mathematics, or
philology, to all of which he inclined. But Fate had not been so
propitious; and to achieve the task which she had forgotten was the
zenith of his aspirations.
There was one person who had always been an eyesore to him, and a
stumbling block in his way. This was Vassall Morton. Morton, at
twenty-three, was, in feeling, still a boy; Vinal, at twenty-three,
was a well-ripened man. But the man hated the boy; and the boy
retorted with a dislike which was largely dashed with scorn. Vinal
felt the scorn, and it cut him to the quick, the more so, that he
could not hide from himself that he stood in awe of Morton. He hated
him, too, because he had that which he, Vinal, lacked--fortune, good
health, steady nerve. He hated him, because he thought that Morton
understood him; because the frankness of the latter's nature rebuked
the secrecy of his own; and, above all, because he saw in him his most
formidable rival in the affections of Edith Leslie.
Vinal's nature, self-drilled as it was, could not be called a cold
one. It had in it spots and veins of sensitiveness. When a child, this
sensitiveness had often been morbidly awake, and had caused him much
suffering; but as he grew towards manhood, it had been overlaid and
hidden by very different qualities, not often found in connection with
it. Of late, however, he had been in love,--with Edith Leslie, as well
as with her money,--and the dormant susceptibilities of his childhood
had been in some sort reawakened.
His mind, inharmonious and unhappy as nature and himself had jointly
made it, had never yet felt a pang so sharp as when, arriving at
Matherton, he learned privately from Colonel Leslie the engagement
which had passed between Morton and his daughter. Miss Leslie's twice
rejected suitor compressed his thin lips in silence; it was his usual
sign of strong emotion. Leslie pressed his favorite's hand,--he would
fain have called him son-in-law,--and, turning away abruptly, Vinal
left the house.
The man whom he envied and hated had triumphed; robbed him of fortune,
and robbed him of happiness; happiness of which Morton had had already
his full share, and a fortune which would but swell the ample bulk of
his possessions. Vinal was frenzied with grief, rage, and jealousy.