23. CHAPTER XXIII.
L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine,
Tiennent comme un forçat son esprit à la chaîne.
— Boileau.
Nobody knew Vinal but Vinal himself. Know thyself was
his favorite maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered
himself, with a rigorous and unsparing logic, applying the
dissecting knife and microscope to the secrets of his mind,
probing, testing, studying, pitilessly ripping up all that would
fain hide itself. The aim of all this scrutiny was, thoroughly
to comprehend the machine, in order to direct and perfect it
to its highest efficiency.
Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there
were points of his character which escaped him, or which,
rather, he misnamed. He knew perfectly that he was ambitious,
selfish, unscrupulous: this he confessed in his own ear,
pluming himself much on his philosophic candor. But he
never would see that he was envious. In his mental map of
himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The
wrestlings of human nature are not all of the sort figured in
the Pilgrim's Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal
had an ideal; he had cherished it from boyhood, and battled
ever since to realize it. He would fain make himself the finished
man of the world, the unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential
man of affairs, like a blade of steel, smooth and
polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This was his aim;
but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a
constitutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had
been known to swoon outright, on being run away with in a
chaise, and he never could muster nerve enough to fire a gun.
Against this defect his pride rose in revolt. It thwarted him
at every turn, and conflicted with all his aspirations. In
short, he could not endure its presence, and fought against it
with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a secret,
unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale,
nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no
good. This painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and
concentration of character, and would have led to still better
issues, had the assailing force been marshalled under a better
banner. A lofty purpose may turn timidity to heroism; but
a purpose like Vinal's is by no means so efficacious, and the
man remains, if not quite a coward, yet something very
like one.
It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had
been born to a fortune. In that case — for he had no aptitude
for pleasure hunting — his restless energies would
probably have spurred him into some creditable field of effort,
natural science, mathematics, or philology, to all of which he
inclined. But Fate had not been so propitious; and to
achieve the task which she had forgotten was the zenith of
his aspirations.
There was one person who had always been an eyesore to
him, and a stumbling block in his way. This was Vassall
Morton. Morton, at twenty-three, was, in feeling, still a
boy; Vinal, at twenty-three, was a well-ripened man. But
the man hated the boy; and the boy retorted with a dislike
which was largely dashed with scorn. Vinal felt the scorn,
and it cut him to the quick, the more so, that he could not
hide from himself that he stood in awe of Morton. He
hated him, too, because he had that which he, Vinal, lacked —
fortune, good health, steady nerve. He hated him, because
he thought that Morton understood him; because the frankness
of the latter's nature rebuked the secrecy of his own;
and, above all, because he saw in him his most formidable
rival in the affections of Edith Leslie.
Vinal's nature, self-drilled as it was, could not be called a
cold one. It had in it spots and veins of sensitiveness.
When a child, this sensitiveness had often been morbidly
awake, and had caused him much suffering; but as he grew
towards manhood, it had been overlaid and hidden by very
different qualities, not often found in connection with it. Of
late, however, he had been in love, — with Edith Leslie, as
well as with her money, — and the dormant susceptibilities
of his childhood had been in some sort reawakened.
His mind, inharmonious and unhappy as nature and himself
had jointly made it, had never yet felt a pang so sharp
as when, arriving at Matherton, he learned privately from
Colonel Leslie the engagement which had passed between
Morton and his daughter. Miss Leslie's twice rejected
suitor compressed his thin lips in silence; it was his usual
sign of strong emotion. Leslie pressed his favorite's hand,
— he would fain have called him son-in-law, — and, turning
away abruptly, Vinal left the house.
The man whom he envied and hated had triumphed;
robbed him of fortune, and robbed him of happiness; happiness
of which Morton had had already his full share, and a
fortune which would but swell the ample bulk of his possessions.
Vinal was frenzied with grief, rage, and jealousy.
