The years were passing and very little occurred to break the humdrum of
our life. We never were idle, for if not occupied in the duties that
succeeded each other, as the night the day, we were engaged in our
mutual studies. I had never told my wife of my father, or of Mr. Smith
being my half brother. Somehow, I never could muster up courage enough
to do this. Not only that, but I felt that if I should once begin, I
should have to go through the hateful story from a to izzard, and I
shrank from the task. The longer I delayed the less inclined I was to do
it. There was so much in it that was awful and disgusting, that I would
have given much to have blotted it from my own memory, and did not wish
to soil her pure mind with its recital. Somewhere, I have read of a
painter who said that he never looked upon a bad picture but he carried
away a dirty tint. My wife was to me as a priceless painting by the
greatest of masters, and I wished to preserve her in all her loveliness
and purity. I tried constantly to cultivate this feeling, and with this
thought uppermost, I very often restrained myself from saying or doing
what might soil her mind. I may be peculiar in this, as I am in so many
things, yet I am what I am, and what else should I be?
I am reminded of something Mr. Jasper told me in one of his interesting
conversations. It was about one of his visits in Paris. One evening,
looking at a shop window on one of the boulevards, he was approached by
a young man who presented his card and offered to be his guide. “What
have you to show me?” asked Mr. Jasper.
The proposed guide enumerated a list of the most disreputable sights and
places, and then Mr. Jasper interrupted him with “Who goes to see these
things?” And the reply was in a list of prominent men, distinguished
divines from London, a prominent minister from Brooklyn, some from New
York and Chicago, and other noted men. He had a long list of those he
had shown around to these stys of vice and pollution, and as Mr. Jasper
questioned him about the characteristics of the different men, they were
so correct it was evident that the guide had not made up his story.
Said Mr. Jasper to me while relating the story: “I wonder if these men
ever thought that their names would be quoted as recommendations to
future visitors. They probably thought, as they were away from home,
their salacious doings would never be known, but if so they were greatly
mistaken. The world now is very small, only a large neighborhood in this
age of fast travel, and there is no concealment of anything from your
fellow men, much less from yourself and the all-seeing eye of God, yet
people fool themselves that it is otherwise. When the guide had
completed his descriptions of the sight-seers, I asked: ‘For what
purpose did these men go with you?’ He was somewhat taken aback by the
question, and then with hesitation replied: ‘Some of them for scientific
purposes, but the most of them to see, and they seemed to enjoy the
sights.’ Then I said, ‘Young man, you see my clean clothes, should you
throw any filth on them I would knock you down, yet I could easily have
them washed, and it would be only an offense, but here you deliberately
propose to take me around and show me foul sights that would make filthy
stains upon my mind to remain for life and throughout eternity, that
neither I nor God himself could ever remove. You are an infamous dirty
dog, and the sooner you leave me the better, or I will give you
something to remember,’ and the guide shrank away like a dog that had
been kicked.”
I have often thought of this lesson taught me by my friend and further
added my own reflections. Suppose I had some valued painting by one of
the great masters that I was protecting with the greatest care and some
one should soil it, if only just for a joke, what would I think of him
or do to him? Yet I have heard of men, and I regret to say, some
Christian men and clergymen too, and of women in society, who take
special pleasure in gathering up all the obscene bawdy stories they can
find and pride themselves on being racy raconteurs of these unsavory
bits to their fellows. They are the devil’s best agents in corrupting
humanity, that is if they are not each a devil himself. What puzzles me
is that some people passing good at home, should take special pleasure
in hunting up the nasty things when they go abroad.
What affects me more than all, is what relates to myself, for it has
always been a habit of mine to bring everything to a personal test, to
weigh it upon my own scales. These questions I have often asked, “Why
was I created as I was, in a condition where I had to come in contact
with vice in my earliest years? Why was I thrown on to the dirt heap of
the world? If the all-wise, loving God, intended me to be pure in heart,
why did He not with His almighty power create me where I could have had
the best opportunities for a noble life?” My questions have never been
answered.
Another question might be asked that would be personal and from which I
do not shrink. Why do I tell the story of my life that has so much of
evil in it? If I told anything, what else could I tell but the truth? A
man can only paint what he himself has felt. I have not told it with
pride, but with the deepest humiliation. I have not rolled my story as a
sweet morsel over my tongue. I have had a motive of good in the telling,
to show up the wrongs I have suffered and to reveal the infamies of
others who have made me suffer, as a warning, or as the theologians say
when they excuse the scripture descriptions of the frailties and sins of
the Bible worthies, that these are given as warning lessons to mankind.
So I am on safe ground. But I have wandered again.
I think I was speaking of my wife as my choicest treasure, the priceless
painting of my life and home, which I wished to keep from every evil
touch or injurious thought. This is why I never told her of the worst,
the meanest parts of my life. With her I always followed the Hindu
proverb, “Tell your troubles to your own mind, tell your happiness to
the world.” An incident occurred to remind me again of the old subject.
I tried to forget it and to do this more effectually, became absorbed in
various things, yet doing our best we cannot always avoid the
disagreeable. Even the best of roads will have holes in them. There is
an irony in fate, something in our destiny that ever upsets our wisest
endeavors, plan them as we will. I have frequently noticed that when I
have congratulated myself on the smoothness of my life, the success of
my plans, something suddenly came to upset them all. “The best laid
plans of mice and men gang aft aglee.”
That sister of mine, no longer little, but the mother of several
bouncing boys had, with her husband, paid us several visits. They were
leading a busy, happy, prosperous life. She had been well educated, so
my wife found in her a genial companion, and their coming to us made a
kind of festival in our home. On one of these visits an uncle and aunt
of my wife’s had come to see us on their tour through India. Our
Collector and this gentleman were old acquaintances, so we were all
invited to a large dinner party at the Barra Sahib’s. On entering the
drawing room we found quite an assembly of the society people of the
station. As we went up to greet the hostess, to my consternation there
stood my venerable father and my distinguished half brother. They were
so placed that they could not escape if they had desired to, and we had
acquired such momentum that we could not retire. There was no
alternative but to face each other. My heart beat at a thumping pace,
and every one of the seven hundred thousand pores in my body became an
aqueduct, and in a moment I was in a glow of heat and perspiration. This
was not from fear, far from it. Had I not been dared by this parent of
mine, and had I not met him and thrown his insults back into his own
face? I had no fear of him whatever, nor did I fear that white-haired,
white-faced half brother of mine; he, too, had fallen before my well
barbed shafts. It was not of myself that I thought. Had I been alone I
would have risked my soul, but I would have given them each something to
keep as a memento of our meeting. I truly confess that I would have
hugely enjoyed this, let others say what they might about such a
feeling.
There was my wife. She knew nothing of my relation to this couple, nor
would I for the life of me have revealed a word and I knew she could
hold her own in any tilt with them, but my sister, the daughter of the
one, the half sister of the other, to meet her own father who had
betrayed and seduced her! Since that fearful time when I had rescued her
from his baneful power, we had never mentioned his name. We would have
erased and annihilated from our thoughts and lives every remembrance of
him if we could. I know this was my feeling and I am sure it was hers.
She was beautiful, as my little sister, as I think I have said before,
but now developed into a very handsome matron. As she had been educated
in the best schools in France and England and been polished by travel in
different countries, she could appear in any society with dignity and
grace.
But to my story. We were in a tight place, at least I was. I doubt if
ever I thought so quickly in my life as then. The thoughts came like
flashes. I had the most anxious solicitude to shield this beloved
sister. Our hostess received us most graciously, and then began to
introduce us. At first to those nearest her, who were Mr. Smith and his
son. I bowed. Then my wife acquitted herself nobly, as if the two, sire
and son, had been members of the royal family, and if this had been her
first meeting with Mr. Smith, Jr. I was proud of her, for she was a
queen to me, then as always. Then Mrs. Edwards, my sister, the daughter
to her father who had been mistress to him.
There was a scene. Not a word was said, only a bow, but I saw from the
flushes of paleness to red on the old man’s face that he was conscious
of all the past. He no doubt had his turn of nervous thinking as I had
mine. I certainly would have prevented this meeting had I had any
suspicion of it, but as it was I had—call it a wicked pleasure if you
will—a delight in thus facing my enemy and giving him something to
remind him of his sins. All this took place in a moment, for others
coming up, we passed on and into another room. Then I saw my sister
greatly agitated. She did not utter a word, as if she was conscious that
I understood as well as if she had told me all with her lips. I led her
to a seat, and my wife remarked about the crowd and the heat in the big
room. Such a relief to always have that to which we can attribute our
troubles as well as our sins. Every heart knows its own sorrows, and
what a blessing it is that every one else does not know them. So far so
good, but I still had my anxiety. I was fearful that our hostess in her
ignorance might arrange that another face to face encounter would take
place at the dinner table. I was in a quandary and probably in a greater
state of excitement than was Napoleon at Waterloo. Our hostess soon came
up, saying, “Mr. Japhet, you are to take Mrs. Shanks to dinner.” “And my
wife and sister?” said I, interrupting her. “O,” she replied, “Mr.
Smith, Sr., will take your sister, and Smith, Jr., your wife.”
This gave me a shock as from a battery, and I broke in, “Why not let my
wife go with Mr. Smith, Sr. She would like to meet him.” This was a lie,
unintentioned, as I was at my wit’s end, and on the impulse of a moment
did what most, even the best of people might do in such a case, told the
smallest, whitest lie I could. “It is well,” she said; “I will arrange
it at once.” And she did. So my father took out his daughter-in-law, my
wife; and my half brother his half sister. The two couples were seated
some distance apart, so I was somewhat at ease. Nothing further occurred
to disturb me, and I made some excuse to take away my company soon after
dinner. I never wanted such another encounter. Life is too short to have
many such excitements that set the heart going like a runaway engine
under an extra pressure of steam.
On our return home my wife and sister seemed to have enjoyed their
company. The one certainly never suspected that her consort was my
father, her father-in-law. Though now aged, he was an accomplished man
of society. I say it, though he was my villain of a father, he could
pose anywhere with the outward grace of a gentleman. Outwardly in
“society” he observed the decencies of life, but his hypocrisy was a
sufficient cloak to conceal his immoralities. The other did not realize
that her escort was her half brother and mine as well. Why tell them?
This question often came to me during years afterward. Why did I allow
them to go out with these men? I cannot tell. We are not always able to
give a reason why we do thus and so. Another question. What would these
ladies have said and done had they known who their gentlemen were? I can
surmise about my wife. Had she learned at table who he was, my venerable
parent would have thought himself in a hurricane storm off the Irish
coast, as she would have given him such cutting strokes of her native
wit that he would have preferred a dish of bitter herbs to the elaborate
spread before him, so her ignorance was bliss to him.
It appeared that my sister in her agitation at seeing Smith Sr. did not
catch the name of the other man when she was introduced, so after our
return home she asked his name. I quickly replied Smythe, Smithers, or
some other name commencing with S. She asked no further and I was
content. Now comes a question in morals, whether it is ever right to
deceive. One of the maxims of the Roman church is that “it is an act of
virtue to deceive and lie when the church might be promoted.” If the
church can do this by a pious fraud, why not an individual mislead
another for his good? But I will not discuss the subject. Had she
suddenly become aware that she was seated by her half brother, the son
of her father, she would have fainted or rushed away in fright and
disgust.
It is well we do not know everything about others, nor in fact all about
ourselves. Any one will loathe his own skin when seen through a
microscope. A traveler once dined well and heartily, praising the roast,
but on being informed that it was monkey, was suddenly afflicted with a
mal de mer, and was ill for a week afterward. To make him turn pale it
was only to say “monkey.”
But how did the gentlemen feel? I don’t know. The one I think was so
blasé in sin that he would have bluffed either an angel of light or the
devil himself, and without a blush. I have often imagined a little
scene, a catastrophe that I might have made by some introductions, as
“Mr. Smith, my father, your daughter-in-law, my wife,” or “Mr. Smith,
your daughter, my sister,” or “Mr. Smith, my brother, this is your
sister.” I am glad now that I was not fool or rogue enough to have done
it. Yet there would have been lots of fun to me in the doing of it, and
lots of misery to two of them at least. We get pain and trouble enough
without trying to make it.
I ought to state that the Smiths were unexpected visitors in the
station. It seems that the senior, then an old man, had retired from the
service and was living in a hill station and had gone on a holiday visit
to his son. The latter concluded to take a run up to our station, and
brought my father with him. The old man had probably a desire to look
over his old stamping ground, but did not expect to run against his son,
that is me, or to see his daughter, the once governess whom he had met
years ago on the parade ground, and whom he had betrayed under promise
of marriage. I might have invited him to visit Lucknow with me, to go
out through that old gully to the little court where my mother, his
wife, had lived, but why surmise any further?
The above was my last meeting with those two relatives of mine. I never
cared to know where they were or to trace them, and would most willingly
have ascribed to their memory the Romish letters R. I. P.