On the morrow Wilfrid was gone. No one had seen him go. Emilia, while
she touched the keys of a muted piano softly in the morning quiet of the
house, had heard the front-door close. At that hour one attributes every
noise to the servants. She played on and waited patiently, till the
housemaid expelled her into the dewy air.
The report from his bedchamber, telling the ladies of his absence, added
that he had taken linen for a lengthened journey.
This curious retreat of my hero belongs to the order of things that are
done 'None know why;' a curtain which drops conveniently upon either the
bewilderment of the showman or the infirmities of the puppet.
I must own (though I need not be told what odium frowns on such a
pretension to excess of cleverness) that I do know why. I know why, and,
unfortunately for me, I have to tell what I know. If I do not tell, this
narrative is so constituted that there will be no moral to it.
One who studies man in puppets (in which purpose lies the chief value of
this amusing species), must think that we are degenerating rapidly. The
puppet hero, for instance, is a changed being. We know what he was;
but now he takes shelter in his wits. His organs affect his destiny.
Careless of the fact that the hero's achievement is to conquer nature,
he seems rather to boast of his subservience to her.
Still, up to this day, the fixture of a nose upon the puppet-hero's
frontispiece has not been attempted. Some one does it at last. When the
alternative came: “No nose to the hero, no moral to the tale;” could
there be hesitation?
And I would warn our sentimentalists to admit the nose among the
features proper to heroes, otherwise the race will become extinct.
There is already an amount of dropping of the curtain that is positively
wearisome, even to extremely refined persons, in order to save him from
apparent misconduct. He will have to go altogether, unless we boldly
figure him as other men. Manifestly the moment his career as a fairy
prince was at end, he was on the high road to a nose. The beneficent
Power that discriminated for him having vanished utterly, he was, like
a bankrupt gentleman, obliged to do all the work for himself. This is
nothing more than the tendency of the generations downward from the
ideal.
The springs that moved Wilfrid upon the present occasion were simple.
We will strip him of his heroic trappings for one fleeting instant, and
show them.
Jumping briskly from a restless bed, his first act was to address his
features to the looking-glass: and he saw surely the most glorious sight
for a hero of the knightly age that could possibly have been offered.
The battle of the previous night was written there in one eloquent big
lump, which would have passed him current as hero from end to end of
the land in the great days of old. These are the tea-table days. His
preference was for the visage of Wilfrid Pole, which he saw not. At the
aspect of the fearful mask, this young man stared, and then cursed; and
then, by an odd transition, he was reminded, as by the force of a sudden
gust, that Emilia's hair was redolent of pipe-smoke.
His remark was, “I can't be seen in this state.” His thought (a dim
reminiscence of poetical readings): “Ambrosial locks indeed!” A sad
irony, which told that much gold-leaf had peeled away from her image in
his heart.
Wilfrid was a gallant fellow, with good stuff in him. But, he was young.
Ponder on that pregnant word, for you are about to see him grow. He was
less a coxcomb than shamefaced and sentimental; and one may have these
qualities, and be a coxcomb to boot, and yet be a gallant fellow. One
may also be a gallant fellow, and harsh, exacting, double-dealing, and
I know not what besides, in youth. The question asked by nature is,
“Has he the heart to take and keep an impression?” For, if he has,
circumstances will force him on and carve the figure of a brave man out
of that mass of contradictions. In return for such benefits, he pays
forfeit commonly of the dearest of the things prized by him in this
terrestrial life. Whereat, albeit created man by her, he reproaches
nature, and the sculptor, circumstance; forgetting that to make him man
is their sole duty, and that what betrayed him was the difficulty thrown
in their way by his quondam self--the pleasant boonfellow!
He forgets, in fact, that he was formerly led by his nose, and
sacrificed his deeper feeling to a low disgust.
When the youth is called upon to look up, he can adore devoutly and
ardently; but when it is his chance to look down on a fair head, he is,
if not worse, a sentimental despot.
Wilfrid was young, and under the dominion of his senses; which can be,
if the sentimentalists will believe me, as tyrannous and misleading
when super-refined as when ultra-bestial. He made a good stout effort
to resist the pipe-smoke. Emilia's voice, her growing beauty, her
simplicity, her peculiar charms of feature, were all conjured up to
combat the dismal images suggested by that fatal, dragging-down smell.
It was vain. Horrible pipe-smoke pervaded the memory of her. It seemed
to his offended dainty fancy that he could never dissociate her from
smoking-booths and abominably bad tobacco; and, let us add (for this
was part of the secret), that it never could dwell on her without
the companionship of a hideous disfigured countenance, claiming to be
Wilfrid Pole. He shuddered to think that he had virtually almost
engaged himself to this girl. Or, had he? Was his honour bound? Distance
appeared to answer the question favourably. There was safety in being
distant from her. She possessed an incomprehensible attractiveness. She
was at once powerful and pitiable: so that while he feared her, and was
running from her spell, he said, from time to time, “Poor little thing!”
and deeply hoped she would not be unhappy.
A showman once (a novice in his art, or ambitious beyond the mark),
after a successful exhibition of his dolls, handed them to the company,
with the observation, “satisfy yourselves, ladies and gentlemen.” The
latter, having satisfied themselves that the capacity of the lower limbs
was extraordinary, returned them, disenchanted. That showman did ill.
But I am not imitating him. I do not wait till after the performance,
when it is too late to revive illusion. To avoid having to drop the
curtain, I choose to explain an act on which the story hinges, while it
is advancing: which is, in truth, an impulse of character. Instead
of his being more of a puppet, this hero is less wooden than he was.
Certainly I am much more in awe of him.