THE REALLY UGLY DUCKLING.
He turned, to the woman across the table: "All right; I will stay."
I am but telling the story of a man of whose life from this time for
two years I know but little. He was always reticent about these years,
yet always said he had no occasion to regret them. With the life's
outlines, though, with what it really was, aside from details, I
became, in a degree, familiar.
What does the average person in one class know of the life in another?
There are "classes," certainly, with great bars between them here,
though this is a republic, and all men and women are supposed to be
free and equal and alike in most things. There are lower and wider
grades of existence, such that the story of them may never be told save
in patch-work or by inference, yet which have as full a history, and
where there are loves and hates and hopes and despairs as deep as are
ever felt in the mass where the creed-teachers and Mrs. Grundy and the
legislatures are greater factors.
And of this more reckless, hopeless people Harlson learned much. With
them he was; of them he could never fully be. The extent to which a
man is permanently defiled by pitch-touching cannot, of course, be
known. It depends upon the pitch and upon the man. It was not a quiet
life the young man led! On the contrary, it was a very feverish one,
for he labored hard in the office by day--he never for an instant
abandoned his ambitions and his plans--and at night he drifted into the
land where were warmth and light and lawlessness. He had his duty
there, such as it might be, for he was both a gambler and a protector,
and, young as he was, callow as he was, within a year he had become one
in demand, no trifler at the table, and an object of rivalry among
those whose regard means fee of body and of soul. He, himself, at that
time, did not appreciate the remarkable nature of his changing. So
rapidly he aged in knowledge of all undercurrents that he passed into
full maturity without a comprehension of the change. It is said that
some Indians teach their children to swim, not by repeated gentle
lessons, but by throwing them into a deep stream recklessly, saving
them only at the last moment. So had some power hurled Grant Harlson
into the black waters, and he had not drowned, and had taken rank among
strong swimmers.
It is, as I have said, difficult to write intelligently of this portion
of this man's life. I want to do him justice, for I have always cared
for him; yet, from the conventional point of view, at least, nothing
can excuse his lapse at this one time. He should have continued
starving, I suppose, as have so many others, and have either died or
won, as they did, instead of tasting all that is denied, and gaining
much knowledge of the world, of much use in the future, all at the
expense, perhaps, of that purity attaching to certain ignorances, as
much in the man as the woman, since between the sexes all things are
relative.
There were enough odd things in this most odd career. There were
friendships and feuds with those who were of the lower multitude
morally, but who were politicians and had their followings. There were
romances of the order which makes the story of Dumas such a success
upon the stage, and risks and escapes enough to satisfy the hungriest
of romance-readers. It was all grotesque in its grim reality, and the
young man did not know it. He was an unconscious desperado, and the
odd thing about it all was the ease with which he led the double life.
In the morning, clear-headed and competent--for he did not drink at all
of liquors--he appeared and was resolute at his work. He was becoming
more and more considered. That he, somehow, knew the town so well, was
in his favor. More than one case of importance was decided in another
way from which it might have been, because of his knowledge of the
outcasts and their connections, and how they had been used or trifled
with on this occasion or on that one. He was zealous and studied
furiously, and in the mere letter of the law became most confident.
His examination was a trifling thing, and, once admitted to the bar, he
did not remit his efforts. He was valuable to the firm. He was their
watch-dog, and he suggested many things.
One day the senior partner called Harlson in, and a long conference was
held. The younger man was offered a partnership on condition that he
would make a specialty of certain branches of the firm's varied
practice; but the offer had its disadvantages. It was not in the line
political at all, but in one with vexatious business demands and
requisites; yet it was accepted in a moment. And within the next week
all the wicked, nervous night-life was abandoned, all the friendships
formed there put upon probation, all the soiled sentiment made a thing
to be ended surely and forgotten, if possible.
There were some wrenches to it all. Camille learns to love sometimes,
and Oakhurst, the gambler, does not want to part with one who has stood
a friend in an emergency. But Camille knows that, for her, few flowers
are even annual, and Oakhurst is practical and a fatalist.
From that day, all his life, Grant Harlson kept away from close touch
with this ever-existing group who live from day to day because they
have been branded and do not care. Good friends he ever had among
them, but they never claimed him, though, on many occasions, the men
served him. They recognized the fact that he had never been more than
an adopted wanderer among them, and rather prided themselves upon him.
In later times he would occasionally exchange a word or two on that old
life with some one who had grown outwardly respectable, with some
one-time thug, later saloon-keeper and alderman and what may follow,
and would be reminded of what happened on the night when the mirrors
were all broken, and the Washington woman shot the man she was seeking,
or when "we did the Coulson gang;" but it had long grown to seem unreal
and dreamlike. He grew away from the memory, and there was no glamour
to him in what might attract some other men to evil-doing, because to
him there could be no novelty. He was a past-master in the ceremonials
of fallen, reckless human nature, and the ritual bored him. He
deserved no credit further than that. True, he was but young when he
learned the rites, but that he was not still a member of the order was
only because his ambition was dominant and his tastes had changed.
That his will was strong, that he had tastes to develop, was because of
the blood which filled his veins, and of nothing else. He had gone
with a current absolutely, though swimming and always keeping his head
above water until he swam ashore. Yet, as told in the beginning of
this chapter, he always said to me that he did not regret this
experience of abandonment. And he became a man seeking place and money.
He liked to visit his old home, and was faithful to his old crony, his
aging mother, still; and, for a time, after any of these sojourns among
the birds and squirrels and in the forest, he would be distrait and
preoccupied with something; but all this would wear off, and then would
come the press for place and pelf again. He was not entirely
unsuccessful, and finally he married, as a prospering young man
should--married a woman with money and presence for a hostess, and with
traits to make her potent. He lived with her for a season, and found
another, without his dreams and sympathies and understandings, but with
a will and a way.
I do not care to tell the story of it,--indeed, I do not know it,--but
the man learned the old-fashioned lesson, which seems to hold good
still, that for a really comfortable wedded life a little love, as a
preliminary, is a good thing always--usually a requisite. The woman
lacked neither perception nor good sense. It was she who proposed,
since they were ill-mated, they should live apart, and he consented,
with only such show of courtesy as might conceal his height of
gladness. There were money features to the arrangement made, and it
was all dignified and thoughtful. The world knew nothing of the
agreement, though that generation of vipers, the relations of Mrs.
Grundy, wondered why Mr. Harlson's wife and he so lived apart, and if
either of them were opium-eaters, or dangerous in insane moods. The
relations of Mrs. Grundy have the reputation of the universe on their
hands, and, the task being one so great, they must be pardoned if they
err occasionally.
From the day he was alone, Grant Harlson appeared himself again, and I
speak knowingly, for I was with him then. His old self seemed then
restored. The buoyancy of boyhood was his as it had never been to me
since we were young together. It matters not what a chance,--this is a
land where all men drift about,--but I was in the city near him now,
and the old relationship was resumed. We rioted in the past of the
country, and we visited it together. As time went on, Harlson seemed
to forget that he was, or ever had been, a married man, and eventually
the woman found other things in life than awaiting old age without
social potency, and suggested, from a distance, that the separation be
completed. Perhaps there was another man. I know that Harlson did not
hesitate. He responded carelessly, and then reverted to things
practical.
The reflection came that the mismated in this present age must
ordinarily bear the burden to the end. Collusion, which in such case
is but a term for a mutual business agreement, is not allowable. The
social problem is a puzzle the solution of which is left to those whose
ideas were given to them stereotyped. The separation was delayed, but
was, vaguely, a thing possible. And Harlson laughed and threw out his
arms, and made friends of many women.
They were the variety of his life, which else was a hard-working one.
He was not a saint nor a deliberate sinner. He but drifted again.