This history will not concern itself to any extent with our friend's
career as a law clerk, though, as he promised himself, he took it
seriously and laboriously while it lasted, notwithstanding that after
two years of being his own master, and the rather desultory and
altogether congenial life he had led, he found it at first even more
irksome than he had fancied. The novice penetrates but slowly the
mysteries of the law, and, unless he be of unusual aptitude and
imagination, the interesting and remunerative part seems for a long time
very far off. But John stuck manfully to the reading, and was diligent
in all that was put upon him to do; and after a while the days spent in
the office and in the work appointed to him began to pass more quickly.
He restrained his impulse to call at Sixty-ninth Street until what
seemed to him a fitting interval had elapsed; one which was longer than
it would otherwise have been, from an instinct of shyness not habitual
to him, and a distrustful apprehension that perhaps his advent was not
of so much moment to the people there as to him. But their greeting was
so cordial on every hand that Mrs. Carling's remark that they had been
almost afraid he had forgotten them embarrassed while it pleased him,
and his explanations were somewhat lame. Miss Blake, as usual, came to
the rescue, though John's disconcert was not lessened by the suspicion
that she saw through his inventions. He had conceived a great opinion of
that young person's penetration.
His talk for a while was mostly with Mr. Carling, who was in a pleasant
mood, being, like most nervous people, at his best in the evening. Mary
made an occasional contributory remark, and Mrs. Carling, as was her
wont, was silent except when appealed to. Finally, Mr. Carling rose and,
putting out his hand, said: "I think I will excuse myself, if you will
permit me. I have had to be down town to-day, and am rather tired." Mrs.
Carling followed him, saying to John as she bade him good night: "Do
come, Mr. Lenox, whenever you feel like it. We are very quiet people,
and are almost always at home."
"Thank you, Mrs. Carling," responded John, with much sincerity. "I shall
be most glad to. I am so quiet myself as to be practically noiseless."
The hall of the Carlings' house was their favorite sitting place in the
evening. It ran nearly the whole depth of the house, and had a wide
fireplace at the end. The further right hand portion was recessed by the
stairway, which rose from about the middle of its length.
Miss Blake sat in a low chair, and John took its fellow at the other
angle of the fireplace, which contained the smoldering remnant of a wood
fire. She had a bit of embroidery stretched over a circular frame like a
drum-head. Needlework was not a passion with her, but it was understood
in the Carling household that in course of time a set of table doilies
of elaborate devices in colored silks would be forthcoming. It has been
deplored by some philosopher that custom does not sanction such little
occupations for masculine hands. It would be interesting to speculate
how many embarrassing or disastrous consequences might have been averted
if at a critical point in a negotiation or controversy a needle had had
to be threaded or a dropped stitch taken up before a reply was made, to
say nothing of an excuse for averting features at times without
confession of confusion.
The great and wise Charles Reade tells how his hero, who had an island,
a treasure ship, and a few other trifles of the sort to dispose of,
insisted upon Captain Fullalove's throwing away the stick he was
whittling, as giving the captain an unfair advantage. The value of the
embroidered doily as an article of table napery may be open to question,
but its value, in an unfinished state, as an adjunct to discreet
conversation, is beyond all dispute.
"Ought I to say good night?" asked John with a smile, as he seated
himself on the disappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Carling.
"I don't see any reason," she replied. "It isn't late. Julius is in one
of his periods of retiring early just now. By and by he will be sure to
take up the idea again that his best sleep is after midnight. At present
he is on the theory that it is before twelve o'clock."
"How has he been since your return?" John asked.
"Better in some ways, I think," she replied. "He seems to enjoy the home
life in contrast with the traveling about and living in hotels; and
then, in a moderate way, he is obliged to give some attention to
business matters, and to come in contact with men and affairs
generally."
"And you?" said John. "You find it pleasant to be back?"
"Yes," she said, "I do. As my sister said, we are quiet people. She goes
out so little that it is almost not at all, and when I go it has nearly
always to be with some one else. And then, you know that while Alice and
I are originally New Yorkers, we have only been back here for two or
three years. Most of the people, really, to whose houses we go are those
who knew my father. But," she added, "it is a comfort not to be carrying
about a traveling bag in one hand and a weight of responsibility in the
other."
"I should think," said John, laughing, "that your maid might have taken
the bag, even if she couldn't carry your responsibilities."
"No," she said, joining in his laugh, "that particular bag was too
precious, and Eliza was one of my most serious responsibilities. She had
to be looked after like the luggage, and I used to wish at times that
she could be labeled and go in the van. How has it been with you since
your return? and," as she separated a needleful of silk from what seemed
an inextricable tangle, "if I may ask, what have you been doing? I was
recalling," she added, putting the silk into the needle, "some things
you said to me on the Altruria. Do you remember?"
"Perfectly," said John. "I think I remember every word said on both
sides, and I have thought very often of some things you said to me. In
fact, they had more influence upon my mind than you imagined."
She turned her work so that the light would fall a little more directly
upon it.
"Really?" she asked. "In what way?"
"You put in a drop or two that crystallized the whole solution," he
answered. She looked up at him inquiringly.
"Yes," he said, "I always knew that I should have to stop drifting some
time, but there never seemed to be any particular time. Some things you
said to me set the time. I am under 'full steam a-head' at present.
Behold in me," he exclaimed, touching his breast, "the future chief of
the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom you shall say some time
in the next brief interval of forty years or so, 'I knew him as a young
man, and one for whom no one would have predicted such eminence!' and
perhaps you will add, 'It was largely owing to me.'"
She looked at him with an expression in which amusement and curiosity
were blended.
"I congratulate you," she said, laughing, "upon the career in which it
appears I had the honor to start you. Am I being told that you have
taken up the law?"
"Not quite the whole of it as yet," he said; "but when I am not doing
errands for the office I am to some extent taken up with it," and then
he told her of his talk with his father and what had followed. She
overcame a refractory kink in her silk before speaking.
"It takes a long time, doesn't it, and do you like it?" she asked.
"Well," said John, laughing a little, "a weaker word than 'fascinating'
would describe the pursuit, but I hope with diligence to reach some of
the interesting features in the course of ten or twelve years."
"It is delightful," she remarked, scrutinizing the pattern of her work,
"to encounter such enthusiasm."
"Isn't it?" said John, not in the least wounded by her sarcasm.
"Very much so," she replied, "but I have always understood that it is a
mistake to be too sanguine."
"Perhaps I'd better make it fifteen years, then," he said, laughing. "I
should have a choice of professions by that time at any rate. You know
the proverb that 'At forty every man is either a fool or a physician.'"
She looked at him with a smile. "Yes," he said, "I realize the
alternative." She laughed a little, but did not reply.
"Seriously," he continued, "I know that in everything worth
accomplishing there is a lot of drudgery to be gone through with at the
first, and perhaps it seems the more irksome to me because I have been
so long idly my own master. However," he added, "I shall get down to it,
or up to it, after a while, I dare say. That is my intention, at any
rate."
"I don't think I have ever wished that I were a man," she said after a
moment, "but I often find myself envying a man's opportunities."
"Do not women have opportunities, too?" he said. "Certainly they have
greatly to do with the determination of affairs."
"Oh, yes," she replied, "it is the usual answer that woman's part is to
influence somebody. As for her own life, it is largely made for her.
She has, for the most part, to take what comes to her by the will of
others."
"And yet," said John, "I fancy that there has seldom been a great career
in which some woman's help or influence was not a factor."
"Even granting that," she replied, "the career was the man's, after all,
and the fame and visible reward. A man will sometimes say, 'I owe all my
success to my wife, or my mother, or sister,' but he never really
believes it, nor, in fact, does any one else. It is _his_ success, after
all, and the influence of the woman is but a circumstance, real and
powerful though it may be. I am not sure," she added, "that woman's
influence, so called, isn't rather an overrated thing. Women like to
feel that they have it, and men, in matters which they hold lightly,
flatter them by yielding, but I am doubtful if a man ever arrives at or
abandons a settled course or conviction through the influence of a
woman, however exerted."
"I think you are wrong," said John, "and I feel sure of so much as this:
that a man might often be or do for a woman's sake that which he would
not for its sake or his own."
"That is quite another thing," she said. "There is in it no question of
influence; it is one of impulse and motive."
"I have told you to-night," said John, "that what you said to me had
influenced me greatly."
"Pardon me," she replied, "you employed a figure which exactly defined
your condition. You said I supplied the drop which caused the solution
to crystallize--that is, to elaborate your illustration, that it was
already at the point of saturation with your own convictions and
intentions."
"I said also," he urged, "that you had set the time for me. Is the idea
unpleasant to you?" he asked after a moment, while he watched her face.
She did not at once reply, but presently she turned to him with slightly
heightened color and said, ignoring his question:
"Would you rather think that you had done what you thought right because
you so thought, or because some one else wished to have you? Or, I
should say, would you rather think that the right suggestion was
another's than your own?"
He laughed a little, and said evasively: "You ought to be a lawyer, Miss
Blake. I should hate to have you cross-examine me unless I were very
sure of my evidence."
She gave a little shrug of her shoulders in reply as she turned and
resumed her embroidery. They talked for a while longer, but of other
things, the discussion of woman's influence having been dropped by
mutual consent.
After John's departure she suspended operations on the doily, and sat
for a while gazing reflectively into the fire. She was a person as frank
with herself as with others, and with as little vanity as was compatible
with being human, which is to say that, though she was not without it,
it was of the sort which could be gratified but not flattered--in fact,
the sort which flattery wounds rather than pleases. But despite her
apparent skepticism she had not been displeased by John's assertion that
she had influenced him in his course. She had expressed herself truly,
believing that he would have done as he had without her intervention;
but she thought that he was sincere, and it was pleasant to her to have
him think as he did.
Considering the surroundings and conditions under which she had lived,
she had had her share of the acquaintance and attentions of agreeable
men, but none of them had ever got with her beyond the stage of mere
friendliness. There had never been one whose coming she had particularly
looked forward to, or whose going she had deplored. She had thought of
marriage as something she might come to, but she had promised herself
that it should be on such conditions as were, she was aware, quite
improbable of ever being fulfilled. She would not care for a man because
he was clever and distinguished, but she felt that he must be those
things, and to have, besides, those qualities of character and person
which should attract her. She had known a good many men who were clever
and to some extent distinguished, but none who had attracted her
personally. John Lenox did not strike her as being particularly clever,
and he certainly was not distinguished, nor, she thought, ever very
likely to be; but she had had a pleasure in being with him which she had
never experienced in the society of any other man, and underneath some
boyish ways she divined a strength and steadfastness which could be
relied upon at need. And she admitted to herself that during the ten
days since her return, though she had unsparingly snubbed her sister's
wonderings why he did not call, she had speculated a good deal upon the
subject herself, with a sort of resentful feeling against both herself
and him that she should care--
Her face flushed as she recalled the momentary pressure of his hand upon
hers on that last night on deck. She rang for the servant, and went up
to her room.