第27章 ON BEING SHY(2)

True, immediately after doing so I left the room with what may possibly have appeared to be precipitation and without waiting for any refreshment.But that was because I had changed my mind, not because I was frightened, you understand.

One consolation that shy folk can take unto themselves is that shyness is certainly no sign of stupidity.It is easy enough for bull-headed clowns to sneer at nerves, but the highest natures are not necessarily those containing the greatest amount of moral brass.The horse is not an inferior animal to the cock-sparrow, nor the deer of the forest to the pig.Shyness simply means extreme sensibility, and has nothing whatever to do with self-consciousness or with conceit, though its relationship to both is continually insisted upon by the poll-parrot school of philosophy.

Conceit, indeed, is the quickest cure for it.When it once begins todawn upon you that you are a good deal cleverer than any one else in this world, bashfulness becomes shocked and leaves you.When you can look round a roomful of people and think that each one is a mere child in intellect compared with yourself you feel no more shy of them than you would of a select company of magpies or orang-outangs.Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear.Upon its smooth, impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance harmlessly aside.Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well as dealt.I do not, of course, speak of the conceit that displays itself in an elevated nose and a falsetto voice.That is not real conceit--that is only playing at being conceited; like children play at being kings and queens and go strutting about with feathers and long trains.Genuine conceit does not make a man objectionable.On the contrary, it tends to make him genial, kind-hearted, and simple.He has no need of affectation--he is far too well satisfied with his own character; and his pride is too deep-seated to appear at all on the outside.Careless alike of praise or blame, he can afford to be truthful.Too far, in fancy, above the rest of mankind to trouble about their petty distinctions, he is equally at home with duke or costermonger.And valuing no one's standard but his own, he is never tempted to practice that miserable pretense that less self-reliant people offer up as an hourly sacrifice to the god of their neighbor's opinion.

The shy man, on the other hand, is humble--modest of his own judgment and over-anxious concerning that of others.But this in the case of a young man is surely right enough.His character is unformed.It is slowly evolving itself out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief.Before the growing insight and experience the diffidence recedes.A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period.Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down.You scarcely ever meet a really shy man--except in novels or on the stage, where, by the bye, he is much admired, especially by the women.

There, in that supernatural land, he appears as a fair-haired and saintlike young man--fair hair and goodness always go together on thestage.No respectable audience would believe in one without the other.I knew an actor who mislaid his wig once and had to rush on to play the hero in his own hair, which was jet-black, and the gallery howled at all his noble sentiments under the impression that he was the villain.He--the shy young man--loves the heroine, oh so devotedly (but only in asides, for he dare not tell her of it), and he is so noble and unselfish, and speaks in such a low voice, and is so good to his mother; and the bad people in the play, they laugh at him and jeer at him, but he takes it all so gently, and in the end it transpires that he is such a clever man, though nobody knew it, and then the heroine tells him she loves him, and he is so surprised, and oh, so happy! and everybody loves him and asks him to forgive them, which he does in a few well-chosen and sarcastic words, and blesses them; and he seems to have generally such a good time of it that all the young fellows who are not shy long to be shy.But the really shy man knows better.He knows that it is not quite so pleasant in reality.He is not quite so interesting there as in the fiction.He is a little more clumsy and stupid and a little less devoted and gentle, and his hair is much darker, which, taken altogether, considerably alters the aspect of the case.

The point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness.I am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he is constant in his love.But the reason is not far to seek.The fact is it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face, and it would be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal with a second.He stands in far too much dread of the whole female sex to want to go gadding about with many of them.One is quite enough for him.