—Six —

Cornelius and Vavasor

If you had chanced to meet Cornelius in any other company than that of his own family, on all of whom he looked down upon with contempt, you would probably have taken him for an agreeable young man. The slouch and hands-in-pocket mood—those signals that self was at home to nobody but himself—vanished whenever he left his family. By going to the same tailor as Vavasor, he always managed to be well dressed in the latest European fashion—paying twice as much as his father for his irreproachable coats and linen shirts. His shirt-studs were simplicity itself—single pearls—and he was very particular about both the quantity and the quality of the linen showing beyond his coat-cuffs. Altogether he was nicely got up and pleasant to look upon. Stupid as the conventional European dress is, its trimness and clear contrast of white and black tends to level up all to the appearance of gentlemen, and I suspect this may be the real cause of its popularity.

Of course there are the manners suitable to strangers and those suitable to intimates, but politeness is the one essential of both. Watch a child and when he begins to grow rough you will see an evil spirit looking out of his eyes. It is a mean and bad thing to be ungentle with our own. Politeness is either a true face or a mask. If worn at one place and not at another, which of them is it? Neither is politeness inconsistent with thorough familiarity. I will go farther and say, that no true, or certainly no profound familiarity is attainable without it. The soul will not come forth to be roughly used. And where truth reigns familiarity only makes the manners strike deeper root in the being, and take a larger share in its regeneration.

But the pubicly agreeable side of his existence Cornelius kept hidden from his family. He never spoke to them about anything he did away from home. And he gloried in the thought that he did this or that of which neither the governor, the mother, nor Hester knew anything. He felt large and powerful and wise, and if he was only the more of a fool, what did it matter so long as he did not know it?

From Cornelius’s first day at the bank, Mr. Vavasor, himself not the profoundest of men, had been taken with the youth’s easy manners and his obvious worship of himself. Therefore he had allowed the one who aspired to his favour to enter by degrees into his charmed circle. He began to make Cornelius an occasional companion for the evening, and would sometimes take him home with him. There Cornelius at once laid himself out to please Miss Vavasor. Flattery went a long way with her, because she had grown to suspect herself no longer young or beautiful. Cornelius soon learned what he must admire and what he must look down on if he would be in Miss Vavasor’s favour. As much energy as he expended on ingratiating himself to the man and his aunt, none of his own family had even heard of Mr. Vavasor before the encounter at the aquarium.