He had learned a great deal; he couldn't say just what, but he had it there under his hat-band.He had done what he wanted;he had seen the great things, and he had given his mind a chance to "improve," if it would.He cheerfully believed that it had improved.Yes, this seeing of the world was very pleasant, and he would willingly do a little more of it.Thirty-six years old as he was, he had a handsome stretch of life before him yet, and he need not begin to count his weeks.Where should he take the world next? I have said he remembered the eyes of the lady whom he had found standing in Mrs.Tristram's drawing-room;four months had elapsed, and he had not forgotten them yet.
He had looked--he had made a point of looking--into a great many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones he thought of now were Madame de Cintre's.If he wanted to see more of the world, should he find it in Madame de Cintre's eyes?
He would certainly find something there, call it this world or the next.Throughout these rather formless meditations he sometimes thought of his past life and the long array of years (they had begun so early) during which he had had nothing in his head but "enterprise." They seemed far away now, for his present attitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture.
He had told Tristram that the pendulum was swinging back and it appeared that the backward swing had not yet ended.
Still "enterprise," which was over in the other quarter wore to his mind a different aspect at different hours.In its train a thousand forgotten episodes came trooping back into his memory.
Some of them he looked complacently enough in the face;from some he averted his head.They were old efforts, old exploits, antiquated examples of "smartness" and sharpness.
Some of them, as he looked at them, he felt decidedly proud of;he admired himself as if he had been looking at another man.
And, in fact, many of the qualities that make a great deed were there:
the decision, the resolution, the courage, the celerity, the clear eye, and the strong hand.Of certain other achievements it would be going too far to say that he was ashamed of them for Newman had never had a stomach for dirty work.
He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct, unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation.And certainly, in no man could a want of integrity have been less excusable.
Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, and the former had cost him, first and last, a great many moments of lively disgust.
But none the less some of his memories seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it struck him that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never, on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful.
He had spent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands, and, now that he stood well outside of it, the business of money-getting appeared tolerably dry and sterile.
It is very well to sneer at money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and Newman, it may be said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately.To this it may be answered that he might have made another fortune, if he chose;and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing.
It had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.