DOI article:
Harland, Henry: A responsibility
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0114
I IO
A Responsibility
was reciprocal ; he would have liked a dialogue; he would have
welcomed a chance to commence one ; and I couldat any instant
have given him such a chance. I talked at him, it is true ; but I
talked with Flaherty or Miss Hicks, or to the Company at large.
Of his separate identity he had no reason to believe me conscious.
From a mixture of motives, in which I'm not sure that a certain
heathenish enjoyment of his embarrassment didn't count for some-
thing, I was determined that if he wanted to know me he must
come the whole distance ; I wouldn't meet him half-way. Ot
course I had no idea that it could be a matter of the faintest real
importance to the man. I judged his feelings by my own ; and
though I was interested in him, I shall have conveyed an altogether
exaggerated notion of my interest if you fancy it kept me awake
at night. How was I to guess that his case was more serious—
that he was not simply desirous of a little amusing talk, but
Starving, starving for a little human sympathy, a little brotherly
love and comradeship ?—that he was in an abnormally sensitive
condition of mind, where mere negative unresponsiveness could
hurt him like a slight or a rebuff?
In the course of the week I ran over to Pau, to pass a day with
the Winchfields, who had a villa there. When I came back I
brought with me all that they (who knew everybody) could teil
about Sir Richard Maistre. He was intelligent and amiable, but
the shyest of shy men. He avoided general society, frightened
away perhaps by the British Mamma, and spent a good part of
each year abroad, wandering- rather listlessly from town to town.
Though young and rieh, he was neither fast nor ambitious : the
Members' entrance to the House of Commons, the stage-doors of
the music halls, were equally without glamour for him ; and if he
was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he had become
so through the tacit Operation of his stake in the country. He
had
A Responsibility
was reciprocal ; he would have liked a dialogue; he would have
welcomed a chance to commence one ; and I couldat any instant
have given him such a chance. I talked at him, it is true ; but I
talked with Flaherty or Miss Hicks, or to the Company at large.
Of his separate identity he had no reason to believe me conscious.
From a mixture of motives, in which I'm not sure that a certain
heathenish enjoyment of his embarrassment didn't count for some-
thing, I was determined that if he wanted to know me he must
come the whole distance ; I wouldn't meet him half-way. Ot
course I had no idea that it could be a matter of the faintest real
importance to the man. I judged his feelings by my own ; and
though I was interested in him, I shall have conveyed an altogether
exaggerated notion of my interest if you fancy it kept me awake
at night. How was I to guess that his case was more serious—
that he was not simply desirous of a little amusing talk, but
Starving, starving for a little human sympathy, a little brotherly
love and comradeship ?—that he was in an abnormally sensitive
condition of mind, where mere negative unresponsiveness could
hurt him like a slight or a rebuff?
In the course of the week I ran over to Pau, to pass a day with
the Winchfields, who had a villa there. When I came back I
brought with me all that they (who knew everybody) could teil
about Sir Richard Maistre. He was intelligent and amiable, but
the shyest of shy men. He avoided general society, frightened
away perhaps by the British Mamma, and spent a good part of
each year abroad, wandering- rather listlessly from town to town.
Though young and rieh, he was neither fast nor ambitious : the
Members' entrance to the House of Commons, the stage-doors of
the music halls, were equally without glamour for him ; and if he
was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he had become
so through the tacit Operation of his stake in the country. He
had