Anyone who had not been roughly seized by destiny and forced to fight desperately weaponless might have found it difficult to understand how this intelligent, high-spirited girl could be so reasonable--coarsely practical, many people would have said.Abrave soul--truly brave with the unconscious courage that lives heroically without any taint of heroics--such a soul learns to accept the facts of life, to make the best of things, to be grateful for whatever sunshine may be and not to shriek and gesticulate at storm.Suffering had given this sapling of a girl the strong fiber that enables a tree to push majestically up toward the open sky.Because she did not cry out was no sign that she was not hurt; and because she did not wither and die of her wounds was only proof of her strength of soul.The weak wail and the weak succumb; the strong persist--and a world of wailers and weaklings calls them hard, insensible, coarse.
Spenser was fond of exhibiting to his men friends--to some of them--this treasure to which he always returned the more enamoured for his vagary and its opportunity of comparison.
Women he would not permit.In general, he held that all women, the respectable no less than the other kind, put mischief in each other's heads and egged each other on to carry out the mischief already there in embryo.In particular, he would have felt that he was committing a gross breach of the proprieties, not to say the decencies, had he introduced a woman of Susan's origin, history and present status to the wives and sisters of his friends; and, for reasons which it was not necessary even to pretend to conceal from her, he forbade her having anything to do with the kinds of woman who would not have minded, had they known all about her.Thus, her only acquaintances, her only associates, were certain carefully selected men.He asked to dinner or to the theater or to supper at Jack's or Rector's only such men as he could trust.And trustworthy meant physically unattractive.Having small and dwindling belief in the mentality of women, and no belief whatever in mentality as a force in the relations of the sexes, he was satisfied to have about her any man, however clever, provided he was absolutely devoid of physical charm.
The friend who came oftenest was Drumley, an editorial writer who had been his chum at college and had got him the place on the _Herald_.Drumley he would have trusted alone with her on a desert island; for several reasons, all of his personal convenience, it pleased him that Susan liked Drumley and was glad of his company, no matter how often he came or how long he stayed.Drumley was an emaciated Kentucky giant with grotesquely sloping shoulders which not all the ingenious padding of his tailor could appreciably mitigate.His spare legs were bowed in the calves.His skin looked rough and tough, like sandpaper and emery board.The thought of touching his face gave one the same sensation as a too deeply cut nail.His neck was thin and long, and he wore a low collar--through that interesting passion of the vain for seeing a defect in themselves as a charm and calling attention to it.The lower part of his sallow face suggested weakness--the weakness so often seen in the faces of professional men, and explaining why they chose passive instead of active careers.His forehead was really fine, but the development of the rest of the cranium above the protuberant little ears was not altogether satisfying to a claim of mental powers.
Drumley was a good sort--not so much through positive virtue as through the timidity which too often accounts for goodness, that is, for the meek conformity which passes as goodness.He was an insatiable reader, had incredible stores of knowledge; and as he had a large vocabulary and a ready speech he could dole out of those reservoirs an agreeable treacle of commonplace philosophy or comment--thus he had an ideal equipment for editorial writing.He was absolutely without physical magnetism.The most he could ever expect from any woman was respect; and that woman would have had to be foolish enough not to realize that there is as abysmal a difference between knowledge and mentality as there is between reputation and character.Susan liked him because he knew so much.She had developed still further her innate passion for educating herself.She now wanted to know all about everything.He told her what to read, set her in the way to discovering and acquiring the art of reading--an art he was himself capable of acquiring only in its rudiments--an art the existence of which is entirely unsuspected by most persons who regard themselves and are regarded as readers.He knew the histories and biographies that are most amusing and least shallow and mendacious.He instructed her in the great playwrights and novelists and poets, and gave--as his own--the reasons for their greatness assigned by the world's foremost critical writers.He showed her what scientific books to read--those that do not bore and do not hide the simple fascinating facts about the universe under pretentious, college-professor phraseology.
He was a pedant, but his pedantry was disguised, therefore mitigated by his having associated with men of the world instead of with the pale and pompous capons of the student's closet.His favorite topic was beauty and ugliness--and his abhorrence for anyone who was not good to look at.As he talked this subject, his hearers were nervous and embarrassed.He was a drastic cure for physical vanity.If this man could so far deceive himself that he thought himself handsome, who in all the world could be sure he or she was not the victim of the same incredible delusion? It was this hallucination of physical beauty that caused Rod to regard him as the safest of the safe.For it made him pitiful and ridiculous.
