Searching with his body for the most comfortable deeps of the
easy-chair, he set himself to savour "Harper's." This monthly
reassurance that nearly all was well with the world, and that what was
wrong was not seriously wrong, waited on his knees to be accepted and to
do its office. Unlike the magazines of his youth, its aim was to soothe
and flatter, not to disconcert and impeach. He looked at the refined
illustrations of South American capitals and of picturesque corners in
Provence, and at the smooth or the rugged portraits of great statesmen
and great bridges; all just as true to reality as the brilliant
letterpress; and he tried to slip into the rectified and softened world
offered by the magazine. He did not criticise the presentment. He did
nothing so subtle as to ask himself whether if he encountered the
reality he would recognise it from the presentment. He wanted the
illusions of "Harper's." He desired the comfort, the distraction, and
the pleasant ideal longings which they aroused. But they were a
medicine which he discovered he was not in a condition to absorb, a
medicine therefore useless. There was no effective medicine for his
trouble.
His trouble was that he objected to being disturbed. At first he had
been pleasantly excited, but now he shrank away at the call to freedom,
to action, to responsibility. All the slave in him protested against
the knocking off of irons, and the imperative kick into the open air.
He saw suddenly that in the calm of regular habit and of subjection, he
had arrived at something that closely resembled happiness. He wished
not to lose it, knowing that it was already gone. Actually, for his own
sake, and quite apart from his father, he would have been ready, were it
possible, to cancel the previous twenty-four hours. Everything was
ominous, and he wandering about, lost, amid menaces... Why, even his
cherished programmes of reading were smashed... Hallam! ... True,
to-night was not a night appointed for reading, but to-morrow night was.
And would he be able to read to-morrow night? No, a hundred new
complications would have arisen to harass him and to dispossess him of
his tranquillity!
Destiny was demanding from him a huge effort, unexpected and formidable,
and the whole of his being weakly complained, asking to be exempted, but
asking without any hope of success; for all his faculties and his
desires knew that his conscience was ultimately their master.
Talk to his father about making a will, eh! Besides being disgusting,
it was laughable. Those people did not know his father as he did. He
foresaw that, even in conducting the routine of business, he would have
difficulties with his father over the simplest details. In particular
there was one indispensable preliminary to the old man's complete
repose, and his first duty on the morrow would be to endeavour to
arrange this preliminary with his father; but he scarcely hoped to
succeed.
On the portion of the mantelpiece reserved for books in actual use lay
the "Tale of a Tub," last night so enchanting. And now he had
positively forgotten it. He yawned, and prepared for bed. If he could
not read "Harper's," perhaps he could read Swift.
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