|SOMEONE once suggested that Camilla was “a type,” and Miss Eunice found
comfort in the suggestion. To most of her friends she seemed nothing
else than Camilla, a term inclusive and select, meaning something
radiant and surprising, valuable for the zest that came with her and
lingered after her going. They said that, if she had been born to
masculine destinies, she would have been another Henry Champ-ney, a
Camillus with
“The fervent love Camillus bore
His native land.”
In that case she would not have been Camilla. Here speculation paused.
In general they agreed that she walked and talked harmoniously, and was
lovely and lovable, with grey eyes and lifted brows, stature tall and
shoulder carried martially, delicate and tender curves of mouth and
throat. Camilla was no accumulation of details either.
At any rate, the world is not so old but a sweet-faced maiden still
makes it lyrical. It is a fine question whether she is not more
exhilarating than ever.
Camilla seemed to herself identified with her ideas, her energetic
beliefs and sympathies. The terms in which she made an attempt to
interpret herself came forth partly from cloistral studies in that hive
of swarming energies, a girls' college in an old New England town, where
ran a swift river, much cleaner and swifter than the Muscadine. She
barely remembered when the family lived in the national capital, and
Henry Champney was a noted and quoted man. She had but a dim mental
picture of an invalid mother, fragile, be-laced, and be-ribboned. Her
memories ran about Port Argent and the Muscadine, the Eastern seminary,
the household rule of Miss Eunice. They included glimpses of her
father's friend, the elder Hennion, a broad-shouldered man, who always
had with him the slim youth, Dick; which slim youth was marvellously
condescending, and once reconstructed her doll with wires, so that when
you pulled a wire it would wave arms and legs in the manner in which
Miss Eunice said no well-bred little girl ever waved her arms and legs.
He seemed a beneficial person, this Dick. He taught her carpentry and
carving. Magical things he used to do with hammer and saw, mallet and
chisel, in that big unfurnished room over the mansards of the Champney
house, so high up that one saw the Muscadine through the tops of
the trees. The room was unchanged even now. It was still Camilla's
hermitage. The ranges of trunks were still there, the tool-chest with
Dick's old tools, old carvings, drawings, plans of bridges.
He was beneficial, but peculiar. He thought the Maple Street bridge
the finest of objects on the earth. He did not care for fairy stories,
because they were not true.
Henry Champney kept certain blocks of wood, whereon Camilla at the age
of twelve had cut the semblances of faces, semblances of the vaguest,
but all hinting at tragedy. Miss Eunice had disapproved of that pursuit.
On the morning after Aidee's visit Miss Eunice sat at the parlour window
knitting. Beyond the lawn ran Lower Bank Street; beyond the street and
underneath the bluff were the freight-yards, with piles of black coal
and brown iron dust, and a travelling crane rattling to and fro, from
ship to car. Beyond the yards were the river and the P. and N. railroad
bridge; beyond the river the dark chimneys of factories, with long
roofs, and black smoke streaming in the sky, and the brick and wood
tenements of East Argent. Beyond these, hidden but influential, because
one knew they were there, lay the rank, unsightly suburbs; beyond the
suburbs, a flat, prosperous country of fields and woods, farm buildings,
highways, and trestle pyramids of the oil wells.
Camilla was reading, with one hand plunged in her hair. The river
and factories had lain some hours under the shadow of Miss Eunice's
disapproval. She turned the shadow on Camilla, and remonstrated. Camilla
came out of her absorption slowly. The remonstrance roused her to
reminiscence.
“We used to keep our heads in wet towels at college,” she said.
Miss Eunice laid down her knitting. Camilla went on thoughtfully:
“Do you know, Aunty, a wet towel is a good thing?”
Miss Eunice sighed. Camilla lingered over her reminiscences. After a
time she picked up the books that lay about her, laid them on her lap,
and began running through the titlepages.
“They're Mr. Aidee's. Listen! 'The Problems of the Poor,' 'The Civic
Disease,' 'If Christ Came to Chicago.'”
“Mr. Aidee lent you such books!”
“Yes, but you need a wet towel with them. 'Socialism and Anarchy,'
'The Inner Republic.' Oh! Why! How fine!” She had slipped beyond the
titlepage of a fat grey volume. She was sunk fathoms deep, and soaked
in a new impression, nested and covered and lost to conversation. Miss
Eunice returned to her knitting, and spread gloom about her in a circle.
It is one of the penalties of stirring times that they open such gulfs
between the generations. If the elders have been unplastic, the young
have not taken it intimately to themselves that life was as keen to
their predecessors as it is to them, that the present is not all the
purport of the past. Our fathers did not live merely in order that we
might live, but were worth something to themselves. Miss Eunice had had
her heartbeats and flushed cheeks, no matter at this late day when or
how. No matter what her romance was. It was a story of few events or
peculiarities. She had grown somewhat over-rigid with time. That
her melancholy--if melancholy it should be called, a certain dry
severity--that it gave most people a slight impression of comedy,
was perhaps one of the tragic elements in it. As to that long-past
phenomenon of flushed cheeks, at least she could not remember ever
having allowed herself any such folly over books entitled “Socialism and
Anarchy,” or “The Civic Disease,” or “The Inner Republic.” She was glad
to believe that Camilla was “a type,” because it was easier to condemn
a type than to condemn Camilla, for having heartbeats and flushed cheeks
over matters so unsuitable.
In the times when carefully constructed curls tapped against Miss
Eunice's flushed cheeks, it has been supposed, there was more social
emphasis on sex. At least there was a difference. Miss Eunice felt the
difference, and looked across it in disapproval of Camilla's reading.
Camilla started, gathered the books in an armful, and flashed out of the
room, across the hall to her father's library. She settled in a chair
beside him.
“Now! What do you think?”
Several books fell on the floor. She spilled others in picking up the
first.
“I think your books will lose their backs,” Champney rumbled mildly.
The fire leaped and snapped in the fireplace, and the sunlight streamed
in at the tall side windows.
“Think of what, my dear?”
“Listen!”
Her father leaned his white-haired and heavy head on his hand, while she
read from the grey volume, as follows:
“'You have remarked too often “I am as good as you.” It is probable that
God only knows whether you are or not. You may be better. I think he
knows that you are always either better or worse. If you had remarked
“You are as good as I,” it would have represented a more genial frame
of mind. It would have rendered your superiority more probable, since
whichever remark you make gives, so far as it goes, its own evidence
that it is not true. But indeed it is probable that neither your life
nor your ideas are admirable, that your one hope of betterment is, not
to become convinced that no one is better than you, but to find someone
to whom you can honourably look up. I am asking you to look up, not
back, nor away among the long dead years for any cause or ideal. I am
asking you to search for your leader among your contemporaries, not
satisfied until you find him, not limited in your devotion when you have
found him, taking his cause to be yours. I am asking you to remember
that evil is not social, but human; that good is not social, but human.
You have heard that an honest man is the noblest work of God. You have
heard of no institution which merits that finality of praise. You have
heard that every institution is the lengthened shadow of a man. Is it
then in shadows or by shadows that we live?'”
Camilla paused.
“I think your author is in a measure a disciple of Carlyle,” said
Champney.
“Are you interested, daddy? See who wrote it!”
Champney took the volume, read, “Chapter Eighth. Whither My Master
Went,” and turned back to the title page. “H'm--'The Inner Republic, by
Alcott Aidee.' Another discovery, is it?” he asked. “We discover America
every other day, my dear! What an extraordinary generation we are!”
Camilla's discovery of her father had been a happy surprise. Happy
surprises are what maids in their Arcadian age are of all creatures
most capable of receiving. She called him her “graduate course,” and he
replied gallantly by calling her his “postponed education.” He had had
his happy surprise as well. It was an especial, an unexpected reward for
the efforts Champ-ney had made--not altogether painless--to realise
the lapse of old conditions, and to pick up threads of interest in the
new,--that his efforts had brought him to these relations with Camilla;
so that the two were able to sit together of a morning, and talk
friendly and long, without patronage or impatience.
To realise the lapse of old conditions, to realise that he was obsolete,
that his effective days were over! It was a hard matter. Hard, but an
old story now, this struggle to realise this change. The books on his
shelves had grown to seem passive and lifeless, since they no longer had
connection through himself with the stir of existence.
The Websterian periods had taken on a ghostly echo, and the slow ebbing
of the war issues had left him with a sense of being stranded on dry
sands. There seemed to be a flatness everywhere,--a silence, except for
the noisy rattle of the street.
It is a pleasant saying, that “The evening of life comes bringing its
own lamp,” but it seemed to him it was a drearily false one. The great
men of a great time, he thought, were gone, or fast going. It was a
stagnation period in his life, pictured in his mind afterward as an
actual desert, dividing arable lands. Were the new men so small, so
unuplifted, or was it only his own mind grown dry and nerveless? He was
afraid it was the latter,--afraid life was dying away, or drying up in
his still comfortable body.
He would prove to himself that it was not.
This was the beginning of the effort he had made,--a defiant,
half-desperate rally. The struggle began at a definite date. One day
he put away his old books. He bought new ones, and new periodicals, and
determined to find the world still alive,--to find again that old sense
of the importance of things that were going on. It was an intimate fight
this time, unapplauded--against a shadow, a creeping numbness. He fought
on, and at length had almost begun to lose hope.
When Camilla came back from college and Eastern friends she dawned upon
him in a series of minute surprises. She brought him his victory, and
the lamp for his evening. So it came about. The struggle was over, and
the longed-for hope and cheer came back to him.
So it came that the relation between them was peculiar. New books had a
meaning when Camilla read them to him, as she read from Alcott Aidee's
book to-day, while the noise of the freight-yards, and the rattle of the
travelling crane unloading a docked ship, sounded dull and distant. The
sunlight came yellow and pleasant through tall windows, and the fire
snapped briskly, and Alcott Aidee spoke through the medium of Camilla
and the grey volume, making these singular remarks:
“Incarnation of divinity! Surely you have been unfortunate, if in
going to and fro in this world you have nowhere observed any measure of
divinity incarnated in a man, apparent in ordering or in obedience, in
leading or in following, speaking from lips which said, 'Follow me,' as
well as from those which said, 'Thy will, not mine be done,' speaking,
for aught I know, as largely in one way as the other. I am not measuring
divinity. I am showing you where to look for it. I am trying to persuade
you that it does not speak from lips which say 'I am as good as you.'”
New books, ran Champney's thoughts, new men, new times, new waves
foaming up the old slant shores. But only as they spoke with Camilla's
voice, did they seem to him now to make the numbed cords vibrate again,
or comfort his wintry age.
“Isn't it interesting, daddy? If you're going to be frivolous, I shan't
read.”
Champney was looking at the volume with a grim smile.
“I was thinking that to read only in the middle of the gentleman's
book was perhaps not doing him justice. It was perhaps why I did not
understand where he began, or where he was going. It seems to be neither
old democracy nor new socialism, but more like the divine rights of some
kind of aristocracy. Shall we not read the book through in order, my
dear? Having become convinced that Mr. Aidee himself contains a measure
of this divinity, and having taken him for our leader, shall we not then
induce our recalcitrant friend Dick to join us, and in that way induce
him to become a politician?”
This was the Champney manner in the stately vein of irony.
“Oh!” Camilla pushed her hand through her hair, a Champney gesture,
“Dick was horrid about that.”
“Recalcitrant, Hum! Horrid, horridus, bristling, Ha! Not inappropriate
to the attitude on that occasion of the said Dick. Not usual for him, I
should say. He is like his father, Camilla. A quiet man, but striking,
the latter. You don't remember him?”
“Oh, yes! But you see, Dick didn't like it, because Mr. Aidee asked me
to help him. But it isn't like him to be fussy. Anyway, I liked it,
but Dick didn't. So!” Camilla pushed back her hair, another Champney
gesture--the defiant one. “Now, what made him act like hornets?”
“I also took the liberty not to like it, Camilla,” with a rumble of
thorough bass.
Camilla glanced up, half startled, and put a small warm hand into
her father's hand, which was large, bony, and wrinkled. The two hands
clasped instinctively hard, as if for assurance that no breach should
come between them, no distance over which the old and the young hand
could not clasp.
Camilla turned back to Alcott Aidee's book, and read on. Champney found
himself now listening in a personal, or what he might have described
as a feminine, way; he found himself asking, not what meaning or truth
there was in this writer, but asking what meaning it might have toward
Camilla, at the Arcadian age when maids are fain of surprises. He
thought of Dick Hennion, of the Hennions, father and son. One always
wondered at them, their cross-lot logic, their brevities, their instinct
as to where the fulcrum of a thing rested. One believed in them without
asking reasons--character was a mysterious thing--a certain fibre or
quality. Ah! Rick Hennion was dead now, and Henry Champney's fighting
days were over. It was good to live, but a weariness to be too old. He
thought of Alcott Aidee, of his gifts and temperament, his theory of
devotion and divinity--an erratic star, a comet of a man, who had a
great church--by the way, it was not a church--a building at least, with
a tower full of clamouring bells, and a swarming congregation. It was
called “The Seton Avenue Assembly.” So Aidee had written this solid
volume on--something or other. One could see he was in earnest, but
that Camilla should be over-earnest in the wake of his argument seemed
a strong objection to the argument. A new man, an able writer--all very
interesting--but---- In fact, he might prove resident divinities, or
prove perpetual incarnations of the devil, if he chose, but what did
the fellow mean by asking Camilla to---- In fact, it was an unwarranted
liberty. Champney felt suddenly indignant. Camilla read on, and Champney
disliked the doctrine, whatever it was, in a manner defined even by
himself as “feminine.”
“'Not in vain,' she read, 'have men sought in nature the assurance
of its large currents, of its calm and self-control, the knitting up
of “the ravelled sleave of care,” “the breathing balm of mute insensate
things,” “the sleep that is among the lonely hills.” It has been
written,
“Into the woods my Master went
Clean foresprent,
and that “the little grey leaves were kind to him.” All these things
have I found, and known them. Was it there my Master went? I found the
balm, the slumber, and the peace. But I found no inspiration. This,
wherever I found it, always spoke with human lips, always looked out
of human eyes. The calm of nature is as the calm of the past. Green
battlefields lie brooding, because the issue is over; deep woods and
secluded valleys, because the issue is elsewhere. The apostle who met a
vision of his Master on the Appian Way, and asked, “Whither goest thou?”
was answered, “Into the city.” Do you ask again, whither he went? I
answer that he went on with the vanguard of the fight; which vanguard is
on the front wave and surf of these times; which front wave and surf
is in the minds and moods of persons; not in creeds, customs, formulas,
churches, governments, or anywhere else at all; for the key to all
cramped and rusted locks lies in humanity, not in nature; in cities, not
in solitudes; in sympathy, not in science; in men, not in institutions;
not in laws, but in persons.'
“Aren't you interested, daddy?”
“Yes, my dear. Why do you ask?”
“You look so absent-minded. But it's a new chapter now, and it's called
'Constitutions.'” Camilla laughed triumphantly.
“Constitutions! Then the gentleman will be political. Go on.”
“'Chapter ninth,'” she read. “'Constitutions.'
“'Most men govern themselves as monarchies; some as despotisms that
topple to anarchies, some as nearly absolute monarchies; but mainly,
and on the whole, they govern themselves as partially restricted or
constitutional monarchies; which constitutions are made up of customs,
precedents, and compromises, British Constitutions of opportunism and
common law. Indeed, they claim that the inner life _must_ be a monarchy
by its nature, and every man's soul his castle. They are wrong. It must
be a republic, and every man's soul an open house.
“'Now, it is nowhere stated in any Declaration or Constitution put forth
of this Inner Republic that “all men are by nature free and equal.” If
such a declaration occurred to the framers of this Constitution, they
would seem to have thought it difficult to reconcile with observation,
and not very pertinent either. As a special qualification for
citizenship, it appears to be written there that a man must love his
neighbour as himself--meaning as nearly as he can, his citizenship
graded to his success; and as a general maxim of common law, it is
written that he shall treat other men as he would like them to treat
him, or words to that effect. However, although to apply and interpret
this Constitution there are courts enough, and bewildering litigation,
and counsel eager with their expert advice, yet the Supreme Court holds
in every man's heart its separate session.”
To all of which Champney's thoughts made one singular comment.
“Camilla,” they insisted, “Camilla.”