University of Virginia Library

41. CHAPTER XLI.
ENDING WITH A RUPTURE OF THE HYPOTHESIS.

“With what heart,” cried Frank, still in character,
“have you told me this story? A story I can no way
approve; for its moral, if accepted, would drain me of
all reliance upon my last stay, and, therefore, of my last
courage in life. For, what was that bright view of
China Aster but a cheerful trust that, if he but kept up
a brave heart, worked hard, and ever hoped for the best,
all at last would go well? If your purpose, Charlie, in
telling me this story, was to pain me, and keenly, you
have succeeded; but, if it was to destroy my last confidence,
I praise God you have not.”

“Confidence?” cried Charlie, who, on his side,
seemed with his whole heart to enter into the spirit of
the thing, “what has confidence to do with the matter?
That moral of the story, which I am for commending to
you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping
a friend. For was not that loan of Orchis to China
Aster the first step towards their estrangement? And
did it not bring about what in effect was the enmity of
Orchis? I tell you, Frank, true friendship, like other
precious things, is not rashly to be meddled with. And

what more meddlesome between friends than a loan?
A regular marplot. For how can you help that the
helper must turn out a creditor? And creditor and
friend, can they ever be one? no, not in the most
lenient case; since, out of lenity to forego one's claim,
is less to be a friendly creditor than to cease to be a
creditor at all. But it will not do to rely upon this
lenity, no, not in the best man; for the best man, as the
worst, is subject to all mortal contingencies. He may
travel, he may marry, he may join the Come-Outers,
or some equally untoward school or sect, not to speak of
other things that more or less tend to new-cast the
character. And were there nothing else, who shall
answer for his digestion, upon which so much depends?”

“But Charlie, dear Charlie—”

“Nay, wait.—You have hearkened to my story in
vain, if you do not see that, however indulgent and
right-minded I may seem to you now, that is no
guarantee for the future. And into the power of
that uncertain personality which, through the mutability
of my humanity, I may hereafter become,
should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank,
from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in
your present need, be willing to accept a loan from a
friend, securing him by a mortgage on your homestead,
and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel satisfied
that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred
into the hands of a foe? Yet the difference
between this man and that man is not so great as the
difference between what the same man be to-day and

what he may be in days to come. For there is no bent
of heart or turn of thought which any man holds by
virtue of an unalterable nature or will. Even those
feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal
right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal
persuasions, they may in reality be but the result
of some chance tip of Fate's elbow in throwing her dice.
For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and passing
by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that
habit of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you
change this man's experiences or that man's books, will
wisdom go surety for his unchanged convictions? As
particular food begets particular dreams, so particular
experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I
will hear nothing of that fine babble about development
and its laws; there is no development in opinion and
feeling but the developments of time and tide. You
may deem all this talk idle, Frank; but conscience bids
me show you how fundamental the reasons for treating
you as I do.”

“But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are
these? I thought that man was no poor drifting weed
of the universe, as you phrased it; that, if so minded,
he could have a will, a way, a thought, and a heart of
his own? But now you have turned everything upside
down again, with an inconsistency that amazes and
shocks me.”

“Inconsistency? Bah!”

“There speaks the ventriloquist again,” sighed
Frank, in bitterness.

Illy pleased, it may be, by this repetition of an allusion
little flattering to his originality, however much so
to his docility, the disciple sought to carry it off by exclaiming:
“Yes, I turn over day and night, with
indefatigable pains, the sublime pages of my master,
and unfortunately for you, my dear friend, I find nothing
there that leads me to think otherwise than I do. But
enough: in this matter the experience of China Aster
teaches a moral more to the point than anything Mark
Winsome can offer, or I either.”

“I cannot think so, Charlie; for neither am I China
Aster, nor do I stand in his position. The loan to China
Aster was to extend his business with; the loan I seek
is to relieve my necessities.”

“Your dress, my dear Frank, is respectable; your
cheek is not gaunt. Why talk of necessities when
nakedness and starvation beget the only real necessities?”

“But I need relief, Charlie; and so sorely, that I now
conjure you to forget that I was ever your friend, while
I apply to you only as a fellow-being, whom, surely,
you will not turn away.”

“That I will not. Take off your hat, bow over to
the ground, and supplicate an alms of me in the way of
London streets, and you shall not be a sturdy beggar in
vain. But no man drops pennies into the hat of a
friend, let me tell you. If you turn beggar, then, for
the honor of noble friendship, I turn stranger.”

“Enough,” cried the other, rising, and with a toss of
his shoulders seeming disdainfully to throw off the character

he had assumed. “Enough. I have had my fill
of the philosophy of Mark Winsome as put into action.
And moonshiny as it in theory may be, yet a very practical
philosophy it turns out in effect, as he himself
engaged I should find. But, miserable for my race
should I be, if I thought he spoke truth when he
claimed, for proof of the soundness of his system, that
the study of it tended to much the same formation of
character with the experiences of the world.—Apt disciple!
Why wrinkle the brow, and waste the oil both
of life and the lamp, only to turn out a head kept cool
by the under ice of the heart? What your illustrious
magian has taught you, any poor, old, broken-down,
heart-shrunken dandy might have lisped. Pray, leave
me, and with you take the last dregs of your inhuman
philosophy. And here, take this shilling, and at the
first wood-landing buy yourself a few chips to warm the
frozen natures of you and your philosopher by.”

With these words and a grand scorn the cosmopolitan
turned on his heel, leaving his companion at a loss to
determine where exactly the fictitious character had
been dropped, and the real one, if any, resumed. If
any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to
him, as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar
lines: