“Of course you couldn’t have anything to do with him if you don’t care for him,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar.
Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack for a few days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door with a bunch of white stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a sudden, odd smile when she opened the door—a broad, pale-gleaming, remarkable smile.
“Lottie wanted to know if you’d come to tea tomorrow,” he said straight out, looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that smiled palely right into her eyes, but did not see her at all. He was waiting on the doorstep to come in.
“Will you come in?” said Alvina. “Father is in.”
“Yes, I don’t mind,” he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still holding his bunch of white stocks.
James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his spectacles to see who was coming.
“Father,” said Alvina, “you know Mr. Witham, don’t you?”
James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the intruder.
“Well—I do by sight. How do you do?”
He held out his frail hand.
Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his broad, pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he said:
“What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?” He stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.
“Are they for me?” she said, with false brightness. “Thank you.”
James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly, at the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and sharp-toothed ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand which Albert at last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and said:
“Take a seat.”
“I’m afraid I’m disturbing you in your reading,” said Albert, still having the drawn, excited smile on his face.
“Well—” said James Houghton. “The light is fading.”
Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.
“Haven’t they a lovely scent?” she said.
“Do you think so?” he replied, again with the excited smile. There was a pause. Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:
“May I see what you’re reading!” And he turned over the book. “Tommy and Grizel! Oh yes! What do you think of it?”
“Well,” said James, “I am only in the beginning.”
“I think it’s interesting, myself,” said Albert, “as a study of a man who can’t get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like that. What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback.”
“Find what a drawback?” asked James.
“Not being able to get away from themselves. That self-consciousness. It hampers them, and interferes with their power of action. Now I wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man in his action? Why does it cause misgiving? I think I’m self-conscious, but I don’t think I have so many misgivings. I don’t see that they’re necessary.”
“Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he’s a despicable character,” said James.
“No, I don’t know so much about that,” said Albert. “I shouldn’t say weak, exactly. He’s only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there’s no need to feel guilty about it, is there?”
He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.
“I shouldn’t say so,” replied James. “But if a man never knows his own mind, he certainly can’t be much of a man.”
“I don’t see it,” replied Albert. “What’s the matter is that he feels guilty for not knowing his own mind. That’s the unnecessary part. The guilty feeling—”
Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular interest for James.
“Where we’ve got to make a change,” said Albert, “is in the feeling that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and do. Nobody knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his own special feelings, and his own right to them. That’s where it is with education. You ought not to want all your children to feel alike. Their natures are all different, and so they should all feel different, about practically everything.”
“There would be no end to the confusion,” said James.
“There needn’t be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number of rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in private you feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to feel something else.”
“I don’t know,” said James. “There are certain feelings common to humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth.”
“Would you call them feelings?” said Albert. “I should say what is common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you’ve put it into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea represents a different kind of feeling in every different individual. It seems to me that’s what we’ve got to recognize if we’re going to do anything with education. We don’t want to produce mass feelings. Don’t you agree?”
Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to agree.
“Shall we have a light, Alvina?” he said to his daughter.
Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly. It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all. He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said. Yet she believed he was clever.
It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way, sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and talking animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he talked in the direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak to him: merely said his words towards him. James, however, was such an airy feather himself he did
