Travelling Sketches. Trollope Anthony
float through his brain which he believed to be philosophical, but which all tended to the no-good-in-anything school of thought. He had assumed a constrained look of contempt, and would hardly notice the waiter, as he declined one after another the dishes brought to him at dinner. In the evening he roamed about moodily in the twilight, asking himself psychological questions about suicide; not, indeed, intending to kill himself, but having a fancy for the subject as one of great interest. He thought that he might, perhaps, have killed himself had he not felt that his doing so would be deleterious to his sisters. As for Jones, or Smith, or Walker, in his present mood he would not have spoken to them. He was in love with solitude, and would have been severe to any Jones or any Walker who might have intruded upon him.
But on the next day he makes another effort, having encountered our friend Paterfamilias, with his wife and three daughters, upon a Rhine steamboat. Like a prudent young man in such circumstances, he first speaks a word to the father, and the father admits the word graciously. Fathers so situated are always oblivious of their daughters, and never remember that they, when young men, used to make similar attempts. But mothers never forget, and with accurate measures of mental yard and foot, take inventory of all comers, weighing every gesture, and knowing the value of every stitch in the man's garment, and of every tone in the man's voice. The stitches and tones belonging to Robinson were not much in his favour. When a man is at discount with himself he is usually below par with all the world beside. When in the course of a couple of hours Robinson had remarked to Sophie, – the youthful Sophie, – that the Rhine was the monarch of rivers, the mother speaks a cautious word to Carry, the eldest daughter, and just as misanthropy was giving place to a genial love for all his kind under a pleasant smile on Sophie's mouth, the whole family whisk themselves away, and our friend is again alone.
He has Childe Harold in his pocket, and the labour of learning a stanza or two by heart carries him on into Switzerland. In ascending the Rigi he again comes across Jones and Walker. Alas for human nature, he is only too happy to be recognized by those whom he had assured himself that he despised! A civil word half spoken by a panting voice, a nod of recognition which could hardly not have been given, draws him once more into their social circle, and he forgets the counter, and the doubtful hs, and the bearishness of the obdurate Smith. If they will only open their arms to him, and let him be one of them! A fear comes upon him that they may suspect him to be impecunious, and he adapts his conversation to the idea, striving to make it apparent, by words carefully turned for the purpose, that he is quite another sort of person than that. Walker sees the attempt, and measures the man accordingly, – but measures him wrongly. Poor Robinson has been mean, – is mean; he has sunk beneath the weight of his solitude to a lowness that is not natural to him; but he has not the meanness of which they suspect him. "If you let that man hang on to you any longer, he'll be borrowing money of you," says Smith. Jones remarks that it takes two men to play at that game; but on the following morning the three friends, having necessarily been domiciled with Robinson on the top of the mountain that night, are careful to descend without him, and the poor wretch knows that he has again been dropped. The trio, as they descend the hill, are very merry withal respecting the Robinson difficulty, indulging that joy of ascendancy which naturally belongs to us when we have discovered anyone low enough to require our assistance.
Along the lakes and over the mountains goes the wretched man, still in solitude. He tells himself in moments of sober earnest that he has made a mistake, and has subjected himself to great misery in attempting to obtain alone delights which by their very nature require companionship. Robinson is not a student. He cares nothing for minerals, and knows nothing of botany. Neither the social manners of the people among whom he is wandering, nor the formation of the earth's crust in those parts, are able to give him that excitement which he requires. The verdure of the Alps, the peaks of the mountains, the sun rising through the mists, would give him pleasure if he had with him another soul to whom he could exclaim in the loving intimacy of free intercourse, "By George, Tom, that is jolly! It's all very well talking of Cumberland, but one must come to Switzerland to see that." Every man cannot be a Childe Harold; and even to be a Childe Harold one must begin by a stout determination to be unhappy, and to put up with it. In his own lodgings in London Robinson has lived a good deal alone, and, though he has not liked it, he has put up with it. It has been the business of his life. But he has it not in him to travel alone and to enjoy it. If, indeed, the Foreign Office in Whitehall had entrusted him with a letter or even a teapot, to carry to the Foreign Office at Vienna, he would have executed his mission with manly fidelity, and would have suffered nothing on the journey. The fact that he had a teapot to convey would have been enough for his support. But then work is always so much easier than play.
But he goes on wearily, and still makes an effort or two. As he falls down into Italy, looking with listless, unseeing eyes at all the prettinesses of the Ticino, he comes upon another Robinson, and there is a chance for him. But he has unconsciously learned and despised his own littleness, and in that other lonely one he fears to find one as small, or it may be smaller than himself. He gathers his toga round him, in the shape of knapsack and walking-stick, with somewhat of dignity, and looks at his brother with suspicious eye. His brother makes some faint effort at fraternization, such as he had made before, and then Robinson, – our Robinson, – is off. He wants a companion sorely, but he does not want one who shall be so low in the world's reckoning as to want him. So he passes on, and having at last tramped out with weary feet his six weeks of wretched vacation, he returns home rejoicing to think that on the morrow he shall be back amidst the comforts of his desk and stool, and the society of his fellow-labourers.
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