Kitabı oku: «A Pessimist in Theory and Practice», sayfa 13

"Not just yet. You have opened my eyes as well as his, Bob; you've revealed so many masculine virtues that I must take them in by degrees. You've been keeping yourself in the background and putting him forward, as if I could be interested in one person only. Now let him wait a day or two, while I think about you."

There may have been more of these exchanges, which I do not care to repeat. What goes on in the domestic circle is essentially of a private nature, too intimate and sacred to be whispered into the general ear. There are persons who will violate these holy confidences, and tell you what he said and she said when the doors were shut. I am not like them. If I appear at times to break my own rule and treat you as a member of the household, it is merely for your improvement, that you may see (as I told Jim last summer) how things are arranged in a christian family: and especially that, when any trouble of this kind invades your own humble roof, you may know how to slay the lion and extract strength and sweetness from his carcass, as I have done. Should these pages instruct but a single brother, whether by nature or adoption, how to unwind his sister's tangled affairs and bring them to a prosperous conclusion, I shall not have penned them in vain.

XXXIII.
A FAMILY CONCLAVE

I had written to Hartman more than once since my return, telling him to keep up his spirits and bide his time. Before long came the permission to open a correspondence with a more important person than I. What he wrote I know not; he is probably able to do that well enough, whatever blunders he may commit when face to face. I have reason to believe his outpouring was answered, with excessive brevity but to the purpose, in the one word, 'Come.' In fact, the Princess declined (and very properly) to expend a postage-stamp on him, or to gratify him with an envelope of her own inditing, but told me to enclose this minute but inflammatory document in non-explosive wrappings of my own.

He was to arrive on a certain day in late November. The evening previous, as we were sitting together, Clarice – who generally prefers her own society, and I can't blame her – appeared, in our midst (if that expression is allowable), with an aspect of grim determination. I rose to give her a chair in the corner, but she sat down where she could see us and we could look at her. We did so, anxiously expectant, for this was a most unusual proceeding; and I inwardly resolved to make it easier for her than she meant to have it. She began with the air of an orator who reluctantly emerges from seclusion at his country's call, constrained to deliver matter of pith and moment.

"It is no news that you all have shown me kindness such as passes all acknowledgment – "

She was not allowed to proceed without hindrance. Jane put forth an interrupting hand, which the speaker seized and imprisoned in her own: not that Clarice's is bigger than Jane's, but it possesses some muscular force. Mabel opened her lips, and one of us – I will not say which – was obliged to remind her that Miss Elliston had the floor.

"It is not in me to be demonstrative, and I have seemed cold and thankless – "

"We knew you better than that, dear," came from both.

" – But I knew, I felt it all. Never did a girl without natural protectors – "

"But you can have a natural protector whenever you like," cried Mabel. "You might have had any number of them, for years past."

"Well, with or without, no girl ever had, or could have had, more faithful affection and delicate consideration shown her than I. I have given you a great deal of trouble, and you never complained. I have come between you and friends – "

"My dear," Mabel interposed again, "that is all right. Our friends will come back." And she nodded and looked like a female Solomon, while Jane whispered something and put her disengaged arm around the orator.

"Don't interrupt me any more, please. You know it is not easy for me to talk of these matters – "

"That is so," said I. "It is rarely we get a speech from Clarice on any subject. Do keep quiet, all of you, and let the poor girl go on."

"But now I must tell you something you have no idea of."

Here the female portion of the audience pricked up their ears, and I began to be nervous. "It is about Mr. Hartman's going away in August. That was all my fault."

"Don't you believe her," said I. "He says it was all his fault."

"Do be quiet, Robert. He is coming to-morrow, and justice must be done him. I treated him very badly, and – "

"She didn't," said I. "Clarice, we don't want to be dragged into all your private squabbles, but if you will tell this disreputable story you have got to tell it straight. Jim says you merely showed a proper spirit, and so you did."

"Why, what do you know about it, Robert?" cried Mabel and Jane together.

"He was there, hidden in the bushes, like a villain in a cloak and slouched hat."

Here came a chorus of exclamations and reproaches, till one of us had to say, "You may as well give it up, Clarice. These women will never let you go on; they don't know how to listen. If you were talking only to me, now – "

"Jane, you can never twit him again with not being able to keep a secret; he kept this one sacredly for three months."

"Of course he did," said Mabel: "I always knew it."

"Why, Robert, you told me – ," Clarice exclaimed, and "O no, you didn't, my dear," some one else put in, while Jane looked triumphant.

"No, I didn't know this secret, of course," Mabel admitted: "I only meant that I always knew Robert could keep a secret, if it were of very extraordinary importance, and if he were certain it would ruin everything to let it out. Poor Robert, what a hard time you have had!"

"But how did he come to overhear your conversation?" said Jane. "What business had he there?"

"It was all through his pipe. Mabel, you must never object to his pipe again."

"There now, Mabel," remarked another of the company, "you wouldn't believe that the pipe was good for my health, and now you see it has preserved the whole family."

"I don't see that," said the troublesome Jane: "what was the use of your being there intermeddling?"

"Jane," said one severely, "if you will be still, you will probably learn. How can you expect to hear anything when you keep on interrupting Clarice like this?"

"I am coming to that now, Jane. What he thus saw and heard he most patiently, and heroically, and from the noblest motives – "

"Excuse me, ladies," said I. "My pipe is not handy, but I must go out and smoke a cigar. I want to see a man – "

"Let the man smoke the cigar, and that will provide for both of them. You will sit down, Robert, and hear me out; I am not to be overruled this time."

"It would give me the greatest pleasure to hear you out, my dear, but you know your health is delicate, and you are not accustomed to public speaking. This is the longest oration you ever made: Jane's constant interruptions are trying, and you must be fatigued. If I were you, I would rest now, and finish this up to-morrow."

"Now isn't that exactly like him?" cried the irrepressible Jane. "He is afraid of your exposures, as well he may be. Go on, Clarice, and tell us what other iniquities he has committed, besides deceiving Mabel and me about this, while he was questioning us all the time, and pretending to impart all he knew."

"He deceived me too. Yes, you may well stare; he kept this absolutely to himself, till he could use it for his own deep purposes; and" – she blushed a little – "that is why things are as they are."

I saw she wanted to be helped out, so I said.

"Yes, that is the cause of this thusness. You see, Mabel, what great results may spring from a little pipe. Jane, you will have to admit that I am the guardian angel and protecting genius of you all."

"Well, Clarice," said Jane, "I will own that my estimate of his talents has risen lately; but then my confidence in his moral character has fallen in the same degree. He does tell such dreadful falsehoods."

"It is not quite as if he told them for love of them, simply for the pleasure he takes in falsehood itself. You must allow for his motives."

"Yes," said Mabel, "his motives are always excellent, whatever his words and actions may be. You remember the man in the Bible, who was delivered to Satan for his soul's sake; and I have heard Robert himself say that in ascending a mountain you often have to go down hill."

"She means," I explained, "that on the rare occasions when I employ fiction, I do it purely in the interests of Truth. That goddess is imperfectly provided with garments – excuse me for stating so scandalous a fact, but it is so. Now this might have been well enough in Eden before the fall, but it will not do now; so we have to make the poor creature presentable, and pay her milliner's bills, which are often high. It would have been far more congenial to my candid nature to tell you all at once what I saw and heard that day in August; but such a course might have been attended with unpleasant consequences. If you will all forgive me, I will try not to do it again."

"I do not see my way to forgive you, brother," said Jane with a judicial air, "unless Clarice does; and that appears doubtful. I will be guided entirely by her."

"I have managed my own affairs so well without help, that you will naturally all wish to be guided by me. It is a good deal for me to do; but since Robert's misconduct has done no great harm, and rather than come between brother and sister, I will – yes, I will forgive him." She rose majestically, signed to me to do the same, and gave me both hands, with the air of a sovereign conferring knighthood; we made an impressive tableau. "And since you are all so quiet at last, I may finish my speech, and state the reason for this act of leniency. As Mr. Hartman's conversion is to be completed this time without fail, it is plainly necessary that he should find us a united family."

XXXIV.
TO PERSONS ABOUT TO MARRY

I would have liked to celebrate Jim's arrival by sundry pleasant and appropriate remarks; but impressive warnings and entreaties had reached me privately from three distinct quarters, urging me to efface myself on this occasion, and keep in the background. I complied with these suggestions, and there were no tumultuous rejoicings over the returning prodigal. Mabel and Jane greeted him with unobtrusive warmth: Clarice was rather stately and very calm; to look at her, you would have thought this was an ordinary call. When they talk about my duplicity, they mean that they want a monopoly of the article themselves. The visitor flushed and trembled like a boy, till I felt sorry for him, and would have offered him something to drink if they had given me a chance. Women are so queer about such matters: instead of letting the poor man go off with me, they pretended not to notice his confusion, and talked about the weather and mountains and trout, as if he wanted to discuss such frivolities. This soon got to be a bore, and I went to the new smoking-room, inviting him to follow when he needed rational conversation. He did not come at all, and I found afterwards that my wife and sister had gone away presently, and left him alone with Clarice – and they such sticklers for Propriety.

I expected to have some fun watching this tender pair; but I was disappointed. There never is anything sensational to see when the Princess is in action: she carries an atmosphere of quietness about with her, and imposes it on those who come within her circle. Hartman broke rules and bounds once last summer, but he seems unlikely to do it again. The rest of us kept out of the way as much we could, and gave them scope. I said to Jane that we ought to get up a torchlight procession, or a big dinner, or something, in Jim's honor, but she scornfully told me to wait at least till the engagement was announced. When he was with me – which was little, for his time seemed to be much occupied, and his weakness for tobacco nearly cured – he once or twice attempted some drivel about disinterested friendship and undying gratitude; but I stopped that. If there be one thing for which I profess no sympathy, it is puling sentiment. He apparently did not care to discuss the progress of his affair, which was a relief; it is a dreadful nuisance to have to listen to lovers' talk, and I had enough of that at Wayback, when I could not help myself. At our time of life a man ought to be occupied with serious pursuits. But Jim is as if he had been asleep in a cave for ten years, and waked up with his beard well grown and a large stock of emotional aptitudes abnormally developed. I suppose Clarice likes this kind of thing, but I wonder at her taste.

They had been at it a week or so when I stumbled upon them unawares one day in the library. I tried to retreat, but they both called to me to stop.

"Robert," said she, "we have quarrelled again. That is, he has."

"Yes, Bob," said Jim, "and you'll have to straighten it out for us as you did before."

"This is too much," said I. "You had better take the next train for home, and by next May my health will need another change and I'll come up and attend to your case."

"This needs to be settled right away. Clarice wants to go to the woods and live there the year round, and I can't permit such a sacrifice."

"Robert, he wants to live in the world like other people, just for my sake, and I can't permit such a sacrifice either."

"You must both prepare to be sacrificed, my lambs. Each of you will have to bear and forbear, and get used to the other's repulsive selfishness and hidebound eccentricities, to forego the sweet privacy and freedom of self-indulgence which have marked your innocent lives hitherto. When the glamour of young romance has faded, when the bloom is rubbed off the peach and the juice is crushed out of the strawberry, there will remain only the hard reality of daily duty, which is continual self-immolation. You are wise to commence practising this virtue at once."

"You must instruct us how to do it, Bob. It would be as you say, no doubt – with her – if she had to live at Wayback as she proposes. You have been there enough to know that it is no place for her; tell her so. She has confidence in you, and she won't believe me."

"It would be as you say, Robert – with him – if he had to live among the constraints and shams which his soul abhors. You know it, and you have great influence over him. Tell him so."

"You are both right, and it is clear there is no place where you can live – together. James, she is a fragile flower; transplanted to your sterile soil, she would soon wither and drop from the stalk. Clarice, he is fastidious, critical, and intense; made a part of the things he despises, the torturing contact with pomps and vanities would soon strike his knell. My little dears, your paths were never meant to unite, and the best thing you can do is to part in peace. James, this is all imagination, and you know it; a milliner's lay-figure, or that rural nymph at Wayback, would do just as well, and be much less exacting and expensive. Clarice, you are pushing philanthropy too far: the picturesqueness of this hermit, and his alleged romantic woes, have misled you as to the nature of your interest in him. I don't think matrimony would suit you at all: you had much better stay with us, whom you can leave whenever you please. You could not do that so easily with a husband, and you don't like divorce. My children, pause: you will soon have had enough of each other, and then you can go your several ways in peace."

"See here, old man; it is too late for this kind of wisdom, after all the pains you have taken to bring us together when we were parted indeed. You ought to be proud of your work, and ready to give us your blessing."

"Don't mind Robert, James. You must take him as you find him, and it encourages him to go on if you seem to pay attention. All you need is to give him time – generally a great deal of it, to be sure. When you have known him twenty years or so as I have, you will understand that he usually has some tolerably good sense at the bottom of his mind, underneath a mountain of foolishness; he would say it is like the beer after he has blown the froth off. – Get to the sense as soon as you can, dear, for we can't well wait more than a month or two for it: we have to make our plans."

"I was going to say that you had better leave the engagement unlimited as to time and say nothing about it, for then you can get tired of one another at leisure, and part without embarrassment. But if you are in such indecent haste, and seriously bent on ruin, I will assist you over the precipice as gently as may be. You will have to compromise, and humor each other a little. Go abroad for awhile, or to Florida or the Pacific, till you feel less exclusive; then come back to us. The house is big enough, and you can make your winter home here: we can't let you have her on any other terms, Jim. You can enlarge your place when the weather opens, and put in the spring and fall there: some of us will come up, or I will anyway, after trout. Perhaps I'll bring Jane: she wanted to catch some. It would not be safe for Herbert; he is too fond of bears. If you find the whole summer there too much bliss, as you will, you can divide with us at Newport. That is fair to all parties, isn't it?"

"It will do nicely, for a rough sketch at least, and give us time to think. But there is a more serious difficulty, as you will see. Robert, he wants to give up his well-considered principles of so many years, and just for me – however he may deny it. Now I say he was mainly right. Take Life in the large view, and it is not a grand or beautiful thing. Have we any right to overlook the misery of millions, because a few of us like each other and are outwardly comfortable? I will not have him do so weak a thing as change his standards from no better reason than – well, that you went up to him for the fall fishing."

"My dear Clarice, if you set up as a Pessimist apostle, you will convert all the town, and that will never do. – You hear her, Jim? A wise man sometimes has to take his sentiments from a wiser woman. But seriously, I am ashamed of you. Having used your eyes and brains long ago and received a true impression, what right have you to cast it away, and be misled by a narrow prejudice in behalf of Life – or of some particular section of it? If he that loves a coral cheek and a ruby lip is but a redhot donkey, what shall we say of him who makes these his weathergauge to test the universe by?"

"Well, Bob, perhaps I have received a new impression, which is truer than the other – and deeper. As you told me last summer, a world with Clarice in it is quite different from a world without her. Princess – if I may use his term – Bob thinks a good deal of you too; at least he used to. You entered into his scheme of things as well as mine. Such is his duplicity, perhaps you never suspected the fact."

"That is strange, when he has taken such pains to get me off his hands. I could hardly believe it of you, Robert, on any less authority; it was an unworthy weakness, in such a philosopher. But really now, are you going to uphold him in this – against me?"

"Far from it: you will make him think what you please – only your own opinion on this point, though so strongly held and stated, is somewhat recent. Let us have a middle ground to start from, on which all parties can meet, as in the other case. When things go to suit us, let us call it a good world: when they don't, of course it is a bad one. O, we can consider the suffering millions too; but then we ourselves are somebody, and have our own point of view. So when you two look at each other, and contemplate your own bliss, you will be optimists; and when you read the suicides in the papers, and think of the Siberian exiles and my labors in Water Street, it will be the other way. Why, I am often a pessimist in the morning, and the reverse at night. It depends on the impression you receive, as Jim says; and there are a good many impressions, and not all alike. Often you can be betwixt and between. Let us fix it that way: I am sure that ought to suit anybody."

Jim agreed that it would do very well, but Clarice seemed undecided. "It seems so frivolous to look at Life in this easy way, just because we – well, are not unhappy, and not without friends. You never do yourself justice, Robert – or very rarely. If we have been favored beyond others, we ought to be earnest and serious."

"My dear, Time will check your frivolity, and mitigate the morbid bitterness of Jim's gloomy contempt of life – or vice versa. If I have got you mixed up, I beg pardon: you have changed positions so, it confuses me. But as we are to be earnest and serious, we should seek to communicate our happiness to others. Hadn't I better call them in?"

The lovers consented, and I called. Mabel and Jane came with eager smiles and effusive congratulations. It is curious, the stress which the feminine intellect lays on a mere point of time, or external event, like the celebration of a union between two young people, or the first statement that such a union is to be formed; whereas we all know that the real event is mental, or at most resides in the clash and concurrence of two minds, assisted by the bodies they inhabit. Our friends had probably come to a sufficient understanding the night of Jim's arrival, a week ago: in fact the thing was practically settled when I brought back his submission, and even he must have had sense enough to know it was when she wrote him that one word, 'Come.' So what on earth is the use of making a fuss about it now? But I will not press this view, which may be too rarefied and lofty for the vulgar mind.

There were kisses, and laughter, and tears I believe – but not of the Princess' shedding – just as if something had really happened. I was sorry for Jim, he looked so sheepish. Then he, or Clarice, or both of them, to cover the awkwardness of the moment, began to extol my virtues and services – in which there was no sense at all; for suppose you have done a good thing, you don't want to be everlastingly cackling about it: the thing is done, let it stand on its own merits or demerits. To stop this, I proposed a division of the honors. "There is Herbert, who is unhappily in bed now: he set the ball rolling. He was the only one of us all who dared ask Clarice what she had done to you, Jim. And here is Clarice herself, who discovered that my health was failing and needed the air that blows over troutbrooks; give her a benefit. And here is Jane, who urged me on – drove me, I may say. But for her, I might never have had courage to beard you two dreadful people, and ask you what you meant by such conduct."

Jane was receiving due attention, when Mabel spoke. "You must not overlook me, as if I had had no hand in it. I approved and encouraged it from the start: you know I did. And when you went away, Mr. Hartman, and they all felt so badly and thought you would never come back, I always said it would be right – always."

THE END