DOI article:
Crackanthorpe, Hubert: The Haseltons
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21806#0140
The Haseltons
136
because her personality possessed no obvious glamour. Perhaps,
now and then, his attentions to her in public seemed a little
ostentatious ; but then, in these modern uncourtly days, that in
itself was distinctive. In private too, especially at the moments
when he found life stimulating, he was still tactful and expansive
with sympathetic impulse ; from habit ; from pride in his com-
prehension of women ; from dislike to cheap hypocrisy. How
could he have divined that bitter suppressed seriousness, with
which she had taken her disillusionment ; when not once in three
months did he consider her apart from the play of his own person-
ality ; otherwise than in the light of her initial attitude towards
him ?
And her disillusionment, how had it come ? Certainly not
with a rush of sudden overwhelming revelation 3 certainly it was
in no wise inspired by the tragedy of Nora Helmer. It had been
a gradual growth, to whose obscure and trivial beginnings she had
not had the learning to ascribe their true significance. To sound
the current of life was not her way. She was naive by nature 5
and the ignorance of her girlhood had been due rather to a
natural inobservance than to carefully managed surroundings.
And yet, she had come to disbelieve in Hillier 3 to discredit his
clever attractiveness : she -had become acutely sensitive to his
instability, and, with a secret, instinctive obstinacy, to mistrust
the world’s praise of his work. Perhaps, had he made less effort
in the beginning to achieve a brilliancy of attitude in her eyes,
had he schooled her to expect from him a lesser loftiness of aspira-
tion, things might have been very different 3 or," at least, there
might have resulted from the process of her disillusionment a
lesser bitterness of conviction. But she had taken her marriage
with so keen an earnestness of ideal, had noted every turn in his
personality with so intense an expectation. Perhaps, too, had he
detected
136
because her personality possessed no obvious glamour. Perhaps,
now and then, his attentions to her in public seemed a little
ostentatious ; but then, in these modern uncourtly days, that in
itself was distinctive. In private too, especially at the moments
when he found life stimulating, he was still tactful and expansive
with sympathetic impulse ; from habit ; from pride in his com-
prehension of women ; from dislike to cheap hypocrisy. How
could he have divined that bitter suppressed seriousness, with
which she had taken her disillusionment ; when not once in three
months did he consider her apart from the play of his own person-
ality ; otherwise than in the light of her initial attitude towards
him ?
And her disillusionment, how had it come ? Certainly not
with a rush of sudden overwhelming revelation 3 certainly it was
in no wise inspired by the tragedy of Nora Helmer. It had been
a gradual growth, to whose obscure and trivial beginnings she had
not had the learning to ascribe their true significance. To sound
the current of life was not her way. She was naive by nature 5
and the ignorance of her girlhood had been due rather to a
natural inobservance than to carefully managed surroundings.
And yet, she had come to disbelieve in Hillier 3 to discredit his
clever attractiveness : she -had become acutely sensitive to his
instability, and, with a secret, instinctive obstinacy, to mistrust
the world’s praise of his work. Perhaps, had he made less effort
in the beginning to achieve a brilliancy of attitude in her eyes,
had he schooled her to expect from him a lesser loftiness of aspira-
tion, things might have been very different 3 or," at least, there
might have resulted from the process of her disillusionment a
lesser bitterness of conviction. But she had taken her marriage
with so keen an earnestness of ideal, had noted every turn in his
personality with so intense an expectation. Perhaps, too, had he
detected