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MY name is Johnson, just plain John Johnson—nothing more
subtle
than that ; and my individuality is, as they say, "in a
concatenation
accordingly." In other words, the character of my
intellect is exactly
what you would expect in a man of my name.
This was well known to my old
friend, schoolmate, and fellow-
student at Oxford, the late Basil Fillimer
; a man of the very
subtlest mind that I should think has ever housed
itself in human
body since the brain of the last mediæval schoolman ceased
to
"distinguish." Yet Basil Fillimer must needs appoint me—
all men in the world—his literary
executor, and charge me with
the duty of making a selection from his
papers and preparing them
for publication. They include a series of "
Analytic Studies," a
diary extending over several years, and a
three-volume novel
turning on the question whether the hero before
marrying the
heroine was or was not bound to communicate to her the fact
that he had once unjustly suspected her mother of circulating
reports injurious to the reputation of his aunt.
Basil knew, I say—he must have known—that I was quite
unable
to follow him in these refined speculations. Hence I can
only suppose that
at the time when his will was drawn he had not
yet discovered my
psychological incompetence, and that after he
had made that discovery his somewhat sudden death prevented
him from
appointing some one of keener analytical acumen in my
place.
It would not be fair to the novel, in case it should ever be
published, to
give any specimens of it here ; it might discount the
reader's interest in
the development of the plot. But this is the
sort of thing the diary
consists of:
"
found her more troubled than ever about the foundations of
her
faith. It is a singular phenomenon this awakening of doubt in
an
elderly mind—this 'St. Martin's summer' of scepticism if I
may so
call it ; an intensely curious and at the same time a
painful study. For
me it has so potent a fascination, that I
never say or do anything, even
in what at the time seems to me
perfect good faith, to invite a
continuance of my aunt's con-
fidences, without afterwards suspecting my
own motives. My
first inclination was to divert her mind to other
subjects. Why,
I asked myself, should an old lady of seventy-two who has
all her
life accepted the conventional religion without question be
encouraged to what the French call
extremely late hour of the day ? Still you can't very well tell any
old lady, even though she is your aunt, that you think she is too
old to begin bothering herself with these high matters. You
have to put it
just the other way, and suggest that she has
probably many years of life
before her, and will have plenty of
time for such speculations later on.
But the first sentence I tried
to frame in this sense reminded me so
ludicrously of Mrs.
Quickly's consolations of the dying Falstaff, that I
had to stop
for fear of laughing, and allow her to go on. For reply I put
her
off at the time with commonplaces, but she has since renewed the
conversation so often that I feel I shall be obliged to disclose
some of my own opinions, which are of course of a much
more advanced
scepticism than hers. I have considered the
question of disguising or
qualifying them, and have come
without doubt—or I think without
much doubt—to the con-
clusion that I am not justified in doing so.
I have never believed
in the morality of—
"Besides, there is no interpretation clause at the end of
Memoriam
Moreover, I have every reason to suspect that my aunt Catherine
has ceased to pray, and I am sure her days are anything but
'melodious' just now, poor old soul. It is all very well to respect
other
people's religious illusions as long as they remain undisturbed
in the
minds of those who harbour them. So long the maxim
if the Divine Deceiver begins to lose his power of
deceiving ? Is
it the business of any of his creatures to come to his
assistance ?
"
my aunt, who almost immediately opened out on the question
of
her doubts. She spoke of them in tones of profound, indeed of
almost tragic agitation ; and I could not bring myself to say any-
thing
which would increase her mental anguish, as I thought might
happen if I
confessed to sharing them. I accordingly found
myself reverting after all
to the old commonplaces,—that 'these
things were mysteries' and so
forth (which of course is exactly the
trouble), and the rest of the
'vacant chaff well meant for grain.'
It had a soothing effect at the time,
and I returned home well
pleased with my own wise humanity, as I thought it. But now
that I look
back upon it and examine my mixed motives, I am
forced to admit that there
was more of cowardice than compassion
in the amalgam. I was not even quite
sincere, I now find, in
pleading to myself my aunt's distress of mind as
an excuse for the
concealment, or rather the misrepresentation, of my
opinions. I
knew at the time that she had had a bad night and that she is
suf-
fering severely just now from suppressed gout. In other words, I
was secretly conscious at the back of my mind that the abnormal
excess of her momentary sufferings was due to physical and not
mental
causes, and would yield readily enough to colchicum or
salicylic acid,
which no one has ever ranked among Christian
apologetics. Yet I persuaded
myself for the moment that it was
this quite exceptional and transitory
state of my aunt's feelings
which compelled me to keep silence.
"
I have not yet had time for a thorough
analysis—a clear indication
of my only rational and legitimate
course. My aunt Catherine said
plainly to me this afternoon that as she
had gathered from our
conversations that my views were strictly orthodox,
she would not
pain me in future by any further disclosures of her own
doubts.
At the same time, she added, it was only right to tell me that my
pious advice had done her no good, but, on the contrary, harm, since
there was to her mind nothing so calculated to confirm scepticism
as the
sight of a man of good understanding thus firmly wedded
to certain
received opinions of which nevertheless he was unable to
offer any
reasonable defence or even intelligible explanation whatso-
ever. Upon
this hint I of course spoke. It was clear that if my
silence only
increased my aunt's trouble, and that if, further, it
threatened to
convict me unjustly of stupidity, I was clearly
entitled, as well on
altruistic as on self-regarding grounds, to reveal
my true opinions. In fact, I thought at the time that I had never
acted
under the influence of a motive so clearly visible along its
whole course
from Thought to Will, and so manifestly free from
any the smallest fibre
of impulse having its origin in the subliminal
consciousness. Yet now I am
beginning to doubt.
"
to vindicate my own intelligence and of a praiseworthy
anxiety not
to add to my aunt's spiritual perplexities, but that it was
subtly
tainted with an illegitimate longing to continue my study of her
curious case. Consequently, I cannot now assure myself that if I
had
not known that further concealment of my opinions would
arrest my aunt's
confidences and thus deprive me of a keen
psychological pleasure (which I
have no right to enjoy at her
expense) the legitimate inducements to
candour that were
presented to me would of themselves have prevailed."
There is much more of the same kind ; but I will cut it short
at this
point, not only to escape a headache, but to ask any
impartial reader into
whose hands this apology may fall, whether,
I—who as I said before
am not only John Johnson by name but
by nature—am a fit and proper
person to edit the posthumous
papers of Basil Fillimer.
I come now, however, to what I consider my strongest justifi-
cation for
declining this literary trust. Though I had, and
indeed still retain, the
highest admiration for Basil Fillimer's
intellectual subtlety, and though,
confessing myself absolutely
unable to follow him into his refinements of
analysis, I hazard
this opinion with diffidence, I do not think that,
except in their
curiosity as infinitely delicate and minute mental
processes, his
speculations are of any value to the world. I have formed
this
opinion in my rough-and-ready way from a variety of circum-
stances ; but in support of it I rely mainly upon an incident
which
occurred within a few months of my lamented friend's
death, and which
formed to the best of my knowledge the sole
passage of sentiment in his
intensely speculative career.
To say that he fell in love would be to employ a metaphor of
quite
inappropriate violence. He "shaded off" from a colourless
indifference to
a certain young woman of his acquaintance
through various neutral tints of
regard into a sort of pale sunset
glow of affection for her. Eleanor
Selden was a first cousin of
my own. We had seen much of each other from
childhood
upwards, and I knew—or thought I knew—her well.
She was a
lively, good-natured, commonplace girl, without a spark of
romance about her, and all a woman's eye to the main chance. I
don't mean
by this that she was more mercenary than most girls.
She merely took that
practical view of life and its material
requirements which has always
seemed to me (only I am not a
psychologist) to be so much more common
among young people
of what is supposed to be the sentimental sex, than of
the other.
I daresay she was not incapable of love—among
appropriate
surroundings. Unlike some women, she was not constitutionally
unfitted to appear with success in the matrimonial drama ; but
she
was particular about the
would not have suited her at all. She would have played the
wife's part with no spirit, I feel convinced. As to "Act V., A
Cottage," with an "interval of twenty years supposed to elapse"
between
that and the preceding act, I doubt whether she would
ever have reached it
at all.
I imparted these views of mine as delicately as I could to my
accomplished
friend, but they produced no impression on him.
He told me kindly but
firmly that I was altogether mistaken.
He had, he said, made a
particularly careful study of Eleanor's
character and had arrived at the confident conclusion that absolute
unselfishness formed its most distinctive feature. Nor was he at
all
shaken in this opinion by the fact that when a little later on
he informed
her of the nature of his sentiments towards her, he
found that she agreed
with him in thinking that his then income
was not enough to marry upon,
and that they had better wait
until the death of an uncle of his from whom
he had expectations.
I felt rather curious to know what passed at the
interview between
them, and questioned him on the subject.
"As to this objection on the ground of the insufficiency of
your income,
did it come from you," I asked, "or from her ?"
"What a question," said Basil, contemptuously. "From me
of course."
"But at once?"
"How do you mean, at once ?"
"Well, was there any interval between your telling her you
loved her and
your adding that you did not think you were well
enough off to marry just
at present ?"
" Any interval ? No, of course not. It would have been
obviously unfair and
ungenerous on my part to have made her a
declaration of love without at
the same time adding that I could
not ask her to share my present poverty
and—"
"Oh," I interrupted, "you said that at the same time, did you ?
Then she
had nothing to do but to agree ?"
"Well, no, of course not," said Basil. "But, my dear fellow,"
he continued,
with his usual half-pitying smile, "you don't see the
point. The point is,
that she agreed reluctantly—indeed with quite
obvious reluctance."
" Did she press you to reconsider your decision ? '
" Well, no, she could hardly do that, you know. It would not
be quite
consistent with maidenly reserve and so forth. But
she again and again declared her perfect readiness to share my
present
fortunes."
" Ah ! she did that, did she ? "
" Yes, and even after she must have seen that my decision was
inflexible."
" Oh !
understand."
And I thought I did, as also did Basil. But I fancy our read-
ing of the
incident was not the same.
A closer intimacy now followed between the two. They were
not engaged ;
Basil had been beforehand in insisting that her future
freedom of choice
should not be fettered, and she again " reluctantly,
—indeed with
quite obvious reluctance," had agreed. They were
much in each other's
company, and Basil, who used to read her
some of the most intricate
psychological chapters in his novel, in
which she showed the greatest
interest, conceived a very high idea
of her intellectual gifts. "She has,"
he said, "by far the subtlest
mind for a woman that I ever came in contact
with."
" Do you ever talk to her about your uncle ? " I asked him one day.
" Oh yes, sometimes," he replied. " And, by the way," he
added, suddenly, "
that reminds me. To show you how unjust is
the view you take of your
cousin's motives, as no doubt you do of
human nature generally like most
superficial students of it (excuse
an old friend's frankness), I may tell
you that although there have
been many occasions when she might have put
the question with
perfect naturalness and propriety, she has never once
inquired the
amount of my uncle's means."
" It is very much to her credit," said I.
" It is true," he added, after a moment's reflection and with a
half-laugh, " I could not have told her if she had. His money is
all in
personalty, and he is a close old chap."
" Oh," I said, " have you ever by chance mentioned that to
her?"
" Eh ? What ? " answered Basil, absently, for, as his manner
was, he was
drifting away on some underground stream of his own
thoughts. " Mentioned
it ? I don't recollect. I daresay I have.
Probably I must have done. Why
do you ask ? "
"Well," said I, " because if she knew you could not answer the
question
that might account for her not asking it."
But he was already lost in reverie, and I did not feel justified in
rousing
him from it for no worthier purpose than that of hinting
suspicion of the
disinterestedness of a blood relation.
In due time—or at least in what the survivors considered due
time,
though I don't suppose the poor old gentleman so regarded
it—Basil's uncle died, and the nephew found himself the heir to a
snug little fortune of about £,900 a year. As soon as he was in
possession
of it he wrote to Eleanor, acquainting her with the
change in his
circumstances, and renewing his declaration of love,
accompanied this time
with a proposal of immediate marriage. I
happened to look in upon him at
his chambers on the evening of
the day on which the letter had been
despatched, and he told me
what he had done.
" Ah ! " said I, " now, then, we shall see which of us is right.
But no," I
added, on a moment's reflection, "after all, it won't
prove anything ; for
I suppose we both agree that she is likely to
accept you now, and I can't
deny that she can do so with perfect
propriety."
Basil looked at me as from a great height, a Gulliver conversing
with a
Lilliputian.
" Dear old Jack," he said, after a few moments of obviously
amused
silence, " you are really most interesting. What makes
you think she will
say Yes ? "
" What ! " I exclaimed in astonishment. " Don't you think
so yourself ? "
" On the contrary," replied Basil, with that sad patient smile of
his, " I
am perfectly convinced that she will say No."
I did not pursue the conversation, for my surprise at his opinion
had by
this time disappeared. It occurred to me that after all it
was not
unnatural in a man who had conceived so exalted an
estimate of Eleanor's
character. No doubt he thought her too
proud to incur the suspicion which
might attach to her motives in
accepting him after this accession to his
fortunes. I felt sure,
however, that he was mistaken, and it was therefore
with
renewed and much increased surprise that I read the letter which
he placed in my hand with quiet triumph a few days after-
wards.
It was a refusal. Eleanor thanked him for his renewal of his
proposal, said
she should always feel proud of having won the
affection of so
accomplished a man, but that having carefully
examined her own heart, she
felt that she did not love him enough
to marry him.
Basil, I feel sure, was as fond of my cousin as it was in his
nature to be
of anybody ; but he was evidently much less dis-
appointed by her
rejection than pleased with the verification of his
forecast. I confess I
was puzzled at its success.
" How did you know she would refuse you ? " I asked. " I
must say that
to accept you."
Basil gently shook his head.
"But I suppose
of being considered mercenary."
Basil still continued to shake his head, but now with a pro-
vokingly
enigmatic smile.
" No ? But confound it," I cried, out of patience, " there are
only these
two alternatives in every case of this kind."
" My dear Jack," said Basil, after a few moments' contemplation
of me, "
you have confounded it yourself. You are confusing act
with motive. It is
true there are only two possible replies to the
question I asked Miss
Selden ; but the series af alternating motives
for either answer is
infinite."
" Infinite ? " echoed I, aghast.
"Yes," said Basil, dreamily. " It is obviously infinite, though
the human
faculties in their present stage of development can only
follow a few
steps of it. Would you really care to know," he con-
tinued kindly, after
a pause, " the way in which I arrived at my
conclusion ? "
" I should like it of all things," I said.
" Then you had better just take a pencil and a sheet of paper,"
said Basil.
"You will excuse the suggestion, but to any one un-
familiar with these
trains of thought some aid of the kind is posi-
tively necessary. Now,
then, let us begin with the simplest case,
that of a girl of selfish
instincts and blunt sensibilities, who
looks out for as good a match, from
the pecuniary point of view,
as she can make, and doesn't very much care
to conceal the
fact."
(" Eleanor down to the ground," I thought to myself.)
" She would have said Yes to my question, wouldn't she ? "
" No doubt."
" Very well, then, kindly mark that
I did so.
" Next, we come to a girl of a somewhat higher type, not per-
haps
indifferent to pecuniary considerations, but still too proud to
endure the
suspicion of having acted upon them in the matter of
marriage. She would
answer No, wouldn't she ? "
" Yes," said I, eagerly. " And surely that is the way in which
"Pardon me," said Basil, raising a deprecating hand, "it is not
quite so
simple as that. But have you got that down? If so,
please mark it
nature who would have too much faith in her lover s generosity to
believe
him capable of suspecting her motives, and who would wel-
come the
opportunity of showing that faith. Have you got that
down ? "
"Yes, every word," said I. "But, my dear fellow, that is a
woman whose
answer would be Yes."
"Exactly," replied Basil, imperturbably. "Mark it
And now," he continued, lighting a cigarette, " have the
goodness
to favour me with your particular attention to this. There is a
woman of moral sensibilities yet more refined who would fear lest
her lover should suspect her of being actuated by motives
mercenary, but veiled under the
her reliance on his faith in her disinterestedness,
and who would
consequently answer No. Do you follow that ? "
" No, I'll be damned if I do ! " I cried, throwing down the
pencil.
" Ah," said Basil, sadly, " I was afraid so. Nevertheless, for
convenience
of reference, mark it
numberless others ; the series, as I have said, is infinite. There
is Case E, that of the woman who rises superior to this last-men-
tioned
fear, and says Yes ; and there is Case F, that of the
woman who fears to
be suspected of only feigning such superiority,
and says No. But it is
probably unnecessary to carry the analysis
further. You believe that Miss
Selden's refusal of me comes under
Case B ; I, on the other hand, from my
experience of the singular
subtlety and delicacy of her intellectual
operations, am persuaded
that it belongs to the D category. Her alleged excuse is, of course,
purely
conventional. Her plea that she is unable to love me," he
added with an
indescribable smile, " is, for instance, absurd. I will
let a couple of
months or so elapse, and shall then take steps to
ascertain from her
whether it was the motive of Case B or that of
Case D by which she has
been really actuated."
The couple of months, alas ! were not destined to go by in
Basil's
lifetime. Three weeks later my poor friend was carried off
by an attack of
pneumonia, and I was left with this unsolved pro-
blem of conduct on my
mind.
I was, however, determined to seek the solution of it, and the
first time I
met Eleanor I referred it to herself. I had taken the
precaution to bring
my written notes with me so as to be sure
that the question was correctly
stated.
" Nelly," said I, for, as I have already said, we were not only
cousins,
but had been brought up together from childhood, " I
want you to tell me,
your oldest chum,
Fillimer. Was it because you were too proud to endure the
suspicion of
having married for money, or was it—now for
goodness' sake don't
interrupt me just here," for I saw Nelly's
smiling lips opening to speak ;
"or was it," I continued, carefully
reading from my paper, " because you
feared lest he should suspect
you of being actuated by motives
under the
faith in your disinterestedness ? "
The smile broke into a ringing laugh.
"Why, you stupid Jack," cried Eleanor, "what nonsense of
poor dear old
Basil's have you got into your head ? Why did I
refuse him ? You who have
known me all my life to ask such a
question ! Now did you—
marry a
man with only nine hundred a year ? "
Candidly, I did not. But poor Basil did. And that, as I said
before, is one
and perhaps the strongest among many reasons why
I think that his studies
of human character and analyses of human
motive, though intellectually
interesting, would not be likely to
prove of much practical value to the
world.