Marlow paused with a whimsical look at me. The last few words he had
spoken with the cigar in his teeth. He took it out now by an ample
movement of his arm and blew a thin cloud.
"You smile? It would have been more kind to spare my blushes. But as a
matter of fact I need not blush. This is not vanity; it is analysis.
We'll let sagacity stand. But we must also note what sagacity in this
connection stands for. When you see this you shall see also that there
was nothing in it to alarm my modesty. I don't think Mrs. Fyne credited
me with the possession of wisdom tempered by common sense. And had I had
the wisdom of the Seven Sages of Antiquity, she would not have been moved
to confidence or admiration. The secret scorn of women for the capacity
to consider judiciously and to express profoundly a meditated conclusion
is unbounded. They have no use for these lofty exercises which they look
upon as a sort of purely masculine game--game meaning a respectable
occupation devised to kill time in this man-arranged life which must be
got through somehow. What women's acuteness really respects are the
inept "ideas" and the sheeplike impulses by which our actions and
opinions are determined in matters of real importance. For if women are
not rational they are indeed acute. Even Mrs. Fyne was acute. The good
woman was making up to her husband's chess-player simply because she had
scented in him that small portion of 'femininity,' that drop of superior
essence of which I am myself aware; which, I gratefully acknowledge, has
saved me from one or two misadventures in my life either ridiculous or
lamentable, I am not very certain which. It matters very little. Anyhow
misadventures. Observe that I say 'femininity,' a privilege--not
'feminism,' an attitude. I am not a feminist. It was Fyne who on
certain solemn grounds had adopted that mental attitude; but it was
enough to glance at him sitting on one side, to see that he was purely
masculine to his finger-tips, masculine solidly, densely,
amusingly,--hopelessly.
I did glance at him. You don't get your sagacity recognized by a man's
wife without feeling the propriety and even the need to glance at the man
now and again. So I glanced at him. Very masculine. So much so that
"hopelessly" was not the last word of it. He was helpless. He was bound
and delivered by it. And if by the obscure promptings of my composite
temperament I beheld him with malicious amusement, yet being in fact, by
definition and especially from profound conviction, a man, I could not
help sympathizing with him largely. Seeing him thus disarmed, so
completely captive by the very nature of things I was moved to speak to
him kindly.