And yet something held
him there--something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman's
satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and
mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this
fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed
fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save
the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever
known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept
his injury and walk away without looking behind him was a stretch of
good-nature of which he found himself incapable. He looked behind him
intently and continually, and what he saw there did not assuage his
resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy,
pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty. To have
eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized and satirized and
have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain--to
have done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to
protest. And to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As if
he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial since his connection with
the Bellegardes began--as if he had made the least circumstance of the
commercial--as if he would not have consented to confound the commercial
fifty times a day, if it might have increased by a hair's breadth the
chance of the Bellegardes' not playing him a trick! Granted that being
commercial was fair ground for having a trick played upon one, how
little they knew about the class so designed and its enterprising way
of not standing upon trifles! It was in the light of his injury that the
weight of Newman's past endurance seemed so heavy; his actual irritation
had not been so great, merged as it was in his vision of the cloudless
blue that overarched his immediate wooing.
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