The younger stretched back lazily in an attitude of ease which spoke of the habit of travelling.Sometimes he smoked a pipe.Thrice he read over a letter.It was from his sister, and announced her arrival at the little rural village in which he had made arrangements for her to stay."It is interesting,--now," she wrote, "though the resources do not look as though they would wear well.I am learning under Mrs.Renwick to sweep and dust and bake and stew and do a multitude of other things which I always vaguely supposed came ready-made.I like it; but after I have learned it all, I do not believe the practise will appeal to me much.However, I can stand it well enough for a year or two or three, for I am young; and then you will have made your everlasting fortune, of course."Harry Thorpe experienced a glow of pride each time he read this part of the letter.He liked the frankness of the lack of pretence;he admired the penetration and self-analysis which had taught her the truth that, although learning a new thing is always interesting, the practising of an old one is monotonous.And her pluck appealed to him.It is not easy for a girl to step from the position of mistress of servants to that of helping about the housework of a small family in a small town for the sake of the home to be found in it.
"She's a trump!" said Thorpe to himself, "and she shall have her everlasting fortune, if there's such a thing in the country."He jingled the three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket, and smiled.That was the extent of his everlasting fortune at present.
The letter had been answered from Detroit.
"I am glad you are settled," he wrote."At least I know you have enough to eat and a roof over you.I hope sincerely that you will do your best to fit yourself to your new conditions.I know it is hard, but with my lack of experience and my ignorance as to where to take hold, it may be a good many years before we can do any better."When Helen Thorpe read this, she cried.Things had gone wrong that morning, and an encouraging word would have helped her.The somber tone of her brother's communication threw her into a fit of the blues from which, for the first time, she saw her surroundings in a depressing and distasteful light.And yet he had written as he did with the kindest possible motives.
Thorpe had the misfortune to be one of those individuals who, though careless of what people in general may think of them, are in a corresponding degree sensitive to the opinion of the few they love.This feeling was further exaggerated by a constitutional shrinking from any outward manifestation of the emotions.As a natural result, he was often thought indifferent or discouraging when in reality his natural affections were at their liveliest.Afailure to procure for a friend certain favors or pleasures dejected him, not only because of that friend's disappointment, but because, also, he imagined the failure earned him a certain blame.
Blame from his heart's intimates he shrank from.His life outside the inner circles of his affections was apt to be so militant and so divorced from considerations of amity, that as a matter of natural reaction he became inclined to exaggerate the importance of small objections, little reproaches, slight criticisms from his real friends.Such criticisms seemed to bring into a sphere he would have liked to keep solely for the mutual reliance of loving kindness, something of the hard utilitarianism of the world at large.In consequence he gradually came to choose the line of least resistance, to avoid instinctively even the slightly disagreeable.Perhaps for this reason he was never entirely sincere with those he loved.He showed enthusiasm over any plan suggested by them, for the reason that he never dared offer a merely problematical anticipation.
The affair had to be absolutely certain in his own mind before he ventured to admit anyone to the pleasure of looking forward to it,--and simply because he so feared the disappointment in case anything should go wrong.He did not realize that not only is the pleasure of anticipation often the best, but that even disappointment, provided it happen through excusable causes, strengthens the bonds of affection through sympathy.We do not want merely results from a friend--merely finished products.We like to be in at the making, even though the product spoil.
This unfortunate tendency, together with his reserve, lent him the false attitude of a rather cold, self-centered man, discouraging suggestions at first only to adopt them later in the most inexplicable fashion, and conferring favors in a ready-made impersonal manner which destroyed utterly their quality as favors.
In reality his heart hungered for the affection which this false attitude generally repelled.He threw the wet blanket of doubt over warm young enthusiasms because his mind worked with a certain deliberateness which did not at once permit him to see the practicability of the scheme.Later he would approve.But by that time, probably, the wet blanket had effectually extinguished the glow.You cannot always savor your pleasures cold.
So after the disgrace of his father, Harry Thorpe did a great deal of thinking and planning which he kept carefully to himself.He considered in turn the different occupations to which he could turn his hand, and negatived them one by one.Few business firms would care to employ the son of as shrewd an embezzler as Henry Thorpe.
