The spectacle of a love affair in which the woman gives more of her heart
than the man gives of his is so pitiable that we are apt to attribute a
kind of merit to her, as if it were a voluntary self-sacrifice for her to
love more than her share. Not only other men, but other women, look on with
this canonizing compassion; for women have a lively power of imagining
themselves in the place of any sister who suffers in matters of sentiment,
and are eager to espouse the common cause in commiserating her. Each of
them pictures herself similarly wronged or slighted by the man she likes
best, and feels how cruel it would be if he were to care less for her than
she for him; and for the time being, in order to realize the situation, she
loads him with all the sins of omission proper to the culprit in the alien
case. But possibly there is a compensation in merely loving, even where the
love given is out of all proportion to the love received.
If Bartley Hubbard's sensations and impressions of the day had been at all
reasoned, that night as he lay thinking it over, he could unquestionably
have seen many advantages for Marcia in the affair,--perhaps more than for
himself. But to do him justice he did not formulate these now, or in any
wise explicitly recognize the favors he was bestowing. At twenty-six one
does not naturally compute them in musing upon the girl to whom one is just
betrothed; and Bartley's mind was a confusion of pleasure. He liked so well
to think how fond of him Marcia was, that it did not occur to him then to
question whether he were as fond of her. It is possible that as he drowsed,
at last, there floated airily through the consciousness which was melting
and dispersing itself before the approach of sleep, an intimation from
somewhere to some one that perhaps the affair need not be considered too
seriously. But in that mysterious limbo one cannot be sure of what is
thought and what is dreamed; and Bartley always acquitted himself, and
probably with justice, of any want of seriousness.
What he did make sure of when he woke was that he was still out of sorts,
and that he had again that dull headache; and his instant longing for
sympathy did more than anything else to convince him that he really loved
Marcia, and had never, in his obscurest or remotest feeling, swerved in
his fealty to her. In the atmosphere of her devotion yesterday, he had so
wholly forgotten his sufferings that he had imagined himself well; but now
he found that he was not well, and he began to believe that he was going to
have what the country people call a fit of sickness. He felt that he ought
to be taken care, of, that he was unfit to work; and in his vexation at
not being able to go to Marcia for comfort-it really amounted to nothing
less--he entered upon the day's affairs with fretful impatience.
The Free Press was published on Tuesdays, and Monday was always a busy time
of preparation. The hands were apt also to feel the demoralization that
follows a holiday, even when it has been a holy day. The girls who set the
type of the Free Press had by no means foregone the rights and privileges
of their sex in espousing their art, and they had their beaux on Sunday
night like other young ladies. It resulted that on Monday morning they were
nervous and impatient, alternating between fits of giggling delight in the
interchange of fond reminiscences, and the crossness which is pretty sure
to disfigure human behavior from want of sleep. But ordinarily Bartley got
on very well with them. In spite of the assumption of equality between all
classes in Equity, they stood in secret awe of his personal splendor, and
the tradition of his achievements at college and in the great world; and
a flattering joke or a sharp sarcasm from him went a great way with them.
Besides, he had an efficient lieutenant in Henry Bird, the young printer
who had picked up his trade in the office, and who acted as Bartley's
foreman, so far as the establishment had an organization. Bird had industry
and discipline which were contagious, and that love of his work which is
said to be growing rare among artisans in the modern subdivision of trades.
This boy--for he was only nineteen--worked at his craft early and late out
of pleasure in it. He seemed one of those simple, subordinate natures which
are happy in looking up to whatever assumes to be above them. He exulted to
serve in a world where most people prefer to be served, and it is uncertain
whether he liked his work better for its own sake, or Bartley's, for whom
he did it. He was slight and rather delicate in health, and it came natural
for Bartley to patronize him. He took him on the long walks of which he was
fond, and made him in some sort his humble confidant, talking to him of
himself and his plans with large and braggart vagueness. He depended upon
Bird in a great many things, and Bird never failed him; for he had a
basis of constancy that was immovable. “No,” said a philosopher from a
neighboring logging-camp, who used to hang about the printing-office a long
time after he had got his paper, “there aint a great deal of natural git up
and howl about Henry; but he stays put.” In the confidences which Bartley
used to make Bird, he promised that, when he left the newspaper for the
law, he would see that no one else succeeded him. The young fellow did not
need this promise to make him Bartley's fast friend, but it colored his
affection with ambitious enthusiasm; to edit and publish a newspaper,--his
dreams did not go beyond that: to devote it to Bartley's interest in the
political life on which Bartley often hinted he might enter,--that would be
the sweetest privilege of realized success. Bird already wrote paragraphs
for the Free Press, and Bartley let him make up a column of news from the
city exchanges, which was partly written and partly selected.
Bartley came to the office rather late on Monday morning, bringing with him
the papers from Saturday night's mail, which had lain unopened over
Sunday, and went directly into his own room, without looking into the
printing-office. He felt feverish and irritable, and he resolved to fill up
with selections and let his editorial paragraphing go, or get Bird to do
it. He was tired of the work, and sick of Equity; Marcia's face seemed to
look sadly in upon his angry discontent, and he no longer wished to go to
her for sympathy. His door opened, and, without glancing from the newspaper
which he held up before him, he asked, “What is it, Bird? Do you want
copy?”
“Well, no, Mr. Hubbard,” answered Bird, “we have copy enough for the force
we've got this morning.”
“Why, what's up?” demanded Bartley, dropping his paper.
“Lizzie Sawyer has sent word that she is sick, and we haven't heard or seen
anything of Hannah Morrison.”
“Confound the girls!” said Bartley, “there's always something the matter
with them.” He rubbed his hand over his forehead, as if to rub out the dull
pain there. “Well,” he said, “I must go to work myself, then.” He rose,
and took hold of the lapels of his coat, to pull it off; but something in
Bird's look arrested him. “What is it?” he asked.
“Old Morrison was here, just before you came in, and said he wanted to see
you. I think he was drunk,” said Bird, anxiously. “He said he was coming
back again.”
“All right; let him come,” replied Bartley. “This is a free
country,--especially in Equity. I suppose he wants Hannah's wages raised,
as usual. How much are we behind on the paper, Henry?”
“We're not a great deal behind, Mr. Hubbard, if we were not so
weak-handed.”
“Perhaps we can get Hannah back, during the forenoon. At any rate, we can
ask her honored parent when he comes.”
Where Morrison got his liquor was a question that agitated Equity from time
to time, and baffled the officer of the law empowered to see that no strong
drink came into the town. Under conditions which made it impossible even in
the logging-camps, and rendered the sale of spirits too precarious for the
apothecary, who might be supposed to deal in them medicinally, Morrison
never failed of his spree when the mysterious mechanism of his appetite
enforced it. Probably it was some form of bedevilled cider that supplied
the material of his debauch; but even cider was not easily to be had.
Morrison's spree was a movable feast, and recurred at irregular intervals
of two, or three, or even six weeks; but it recurred often enough to keep
him poor, and his family in a social outlawry against which the kindly
instincts of their neighbors struggled in vain. Mrs. Morrison was that
pariah who, in a village like Equity, cuts herself off from hope by taking
in washing; and it was a decided rise in the world for Hannah, a wild girl
at school, to get a place in the printing-office. Her father had applied
for it humbly enough at the tremulous and penitent close of one of his long
sprees, and was grateful to Bartley for taking the special interest in her
which she reported at home.
But the independence of a drunken shoemaker is proverbial, and Morrison's
meek spirit soared into lordly arrogance with his earliest cups. The
first warning which the community had of his change of attitude was
the conspicuous and even defiant closure of his shop, and the scornful
rejection of custom, however urgent or necessitous. All Equity might go in
broken shoes, for any patching or half-soling the people got from him. He
went about collecting his small dues, and paying up his debts as long as
the money lasted, in token of his resolution not to take any favors from
any man thereafter. Then he retired to his house on one of the by streets,
and by degrees drank himself past active offence. It was of course in his
defiant humor that he came to visit Bartley, who had learned to expect
him whenever Hannah failed to appear promptly at her work. The affair was
always easily arranged. Bartley instantly assented, with whatever irony he
liked, to Morrison's demands; he refused with overwhelming politeness even
to permit him to give himself the trouble to support them by argument; he
complimented Hannah inordinately as one of the most gifted and accomplished
ladies of his acquaintance, and inquired affectionately after the health
of each member of the Morrison family. When Morrison rose to go he always
said, in shaking hands, “Well, sir, if there was more like you in Equity
a poor man could get along. You're a gentleman, sir.” After getting some
paces away from the street door, he stumbled back up the stairs to repeat,
“You're a gentleman!” Hannah came during the day, and the wages remained
the same: neither of the contracting parties regarded the increase so
elaborately agreed upon, and Morrison, on becoming sober, gratefully
ignored the whole transaction, though, by a curious juggle of his brain, he
recurred to it in his next spree, and advanced in his new demand from the
last rise: his daughter was now nominally in receipt of an income of forty
dollars a week, but actually accepted four.
Bartley, on his part, enjoyed the business as an agreeable excitement and
a welcome relief from the monotony of his official life. He never hurried
Morrison's visits, but amused himself by treating him with the most
flattering distinction, and baffling his arrogance by immediate concession.
But this morning, when Morrison came back with a front of uncommon
fierceness, he merely looked up from his newspapers, to which he had
recurred, and said coolly. “Oh, Mr. Morrison! Good morning. I suppose it's
that little advance that you wish to see me about. Take a chair. What is
the increase you ask this time? Of course I agree to anything.”
He leaned forward, pencil in hand, to make a note of the figure Morrison
should name, when the drunkard approached and struck the table in front of
him with his fist, and blazed upon Bartley's face, suddenly uplifted, with
his blue crazy eyes:
“No, sir! I won't take a seat, and I don't come on no such business! No,
sir!” He struck the table again, and the violence of his blow upset the
inkstand.
Bartley saved himself by suddenly springing away. “Hollo here!” he shouted.
“What do you mean by this infernal nonsense?”
“What do _you_ mean,” retorted the drunkard, “by makin' up to my girl?”
“You're a fool,” cried Bartley, “and drunk!”
“I'll show you whether I'm a fool, and I'll show you whether I'm drunk,”
said Morrison. He opened the door and beckoned to Bird, with an air of
mysterious authority. “Young man! Come here!”
Bird was used to the indulgence with which Bartley treated Morrison's tipsy
freaks, and supposed that he had been called by his consent to witness
another agreement to a rise in Hannah's wages. He came quickly, to help
get Morrison out of the way the sooner, and he was astonished to be met by
Bartley with “I don't want you, Bird.”
“All right,” answered the boy, and he turned to go out of the door.
But Morrison had planted himself against it, and waved Bird austerely
back. “_I_ want you,” he said, with drunken impressiveness, “for a
witness--wick--witness--while I ask Mr. Hubbard what he means by--”
“Hold your tongue!” cried Bartley. “Get out of this!” He advanced a pace or
two toward Morrison who stood his ground without swerving.
“Now you--you keep quiet, Mr. Hubbard,” said Morrison, with a swift drunken
change of mood, by which he passed from arrogant denunciation to a smooth,
patronizing mastery of the situation. “_I_ wish this thing all settled
amic--ic--amelcabilly.”
Bartley broke into a helpless laugh at Morrison's final failure on a word
difficult to sober tongues, and the latter went on: “No 'casion for bad
feeling on either side. All I want know is what you mean.”
“Well, go on!” cried Bartley, good-naturedly, and he sat down in his chair,
which he tilted back, and, clasping his hands behind his head, looked up
into Morrison's face. “What do I mean by what?”
Probably Morrison had not expected to be categorical, or to bring anything
like a bill of particulars against Bartley, and this demand gave him pause.
“What you mean,” he said, at last, “by always praising her up so?”
“What I said. She's a very good girl, and a very bright one. You don't deny
that?”
“No--no matter what I deny. What--what you lend her all them books for?”
“To improve her mind. You don't object to that? I thought you once thanked
me for taking an interest in her.”
“Don't you mind what I object to, and what I thank you for,” said Morrison,
with dignity. “I know what I'm about.”
“I begin to doubt. But get on. I'm in a great hurry this morning,” said
Bartley.
Morrison seemed to be making a mental examination of his stock of charges,
while the strain of keeping his upright position began to tell upon him,
and he swayed to and fro against the door. “What's that word you sent her
by my boy, Sat'day night?”
“That she was a smart girl, and would be sure to get on if she was good--or
words to that effect. I trust there was no offence in that, Mr. Morrison?”
Morrison surrendered, himself to another season of cogitation, in which he
probably found his vagueness growing upon him. He ended by fumbling in all
his pockets, and bringing up from the last a crumpled scrap of paper. “What
you--what you say that?”
Bartley took the extended scrap with an easy air. “Miss Morrison's
handwriting, I think.” He held it up before him and read aloud, “'I love my
love with an H because he is Handsome.' This appears to be a confidence of
Miss Morrison to her Muse. Whom do you think she refers to, Mr. Morrison?”
“What's--what's the first letter your name?” demanded Morrison, with an
effort to collect his dispersing severity.
“B,” promptly replied Bartley. “Perhaps this concerns you, Henry. Your name
begins with an H.” He passed the paper up over his head to Bird, who took
it silently. “You see,” he continued, addressing Bird, but looking at
Morrison as he spoke, “Mr. Morrison wishes to convict me of an attempt upon
Miss Hannah's affections. Have you anything else to urge, Mr. Morrison?”
Morrison slid at last from his difficult position into a convenient chair,
and struggled to keep himself from doubling forward. “I want know what you
mean,” he said, with dogged iteration.
“I'll show you what I mean,” said Bartley with an ugly quiet, while his
mustache began to twitch. He sprang to his feet and seized Morrison by
the collar, pulling him up out of the chair till he held him clear of the
floor, and opened the door with his other hand. “Don't show your face here
again,--you or your girl either!” Still holding the man by the collar, he
pushed him before him through the office, and gave him a final thust out of
the outer door.
Bartley returned to his room in a white heat: “Miserable tipsy rascal!” he
panted; “I wonder who has set him on to this thing.”
Bird stood pale and silent, still, nolding the crumpled scrap of paper in
his hand.
“I shouldn't be surprised if that impudent little witch herself had put him
up to it. She's capable of it,” said Bartley, fumbling aimlessly about on
his table, in his wrath, without looking at Bird.
“It's a lie!” said Bird.
Bartley started as if the other had struck him, and as he glared at Bird
the anger went out of his face for pure amazement. “Are you out of your
mind, Henry?” he asked calmly. “Perhaps you're drunk too, this morning. The
Devil seems to have got into pretty much everybody.”
“It's a lie!” repeated the boy, while the tears sprang to his eyes. “She's
as good a girl as Marcia Gaylord is, any day!”
“Better go away, Henry,” said Bartley, with a deadly sort of gentleness.
“I'm going away,” answered the boy, his face twisted with weeping. “I've
done my last day's work for _you_.” He pulled down his shirt-sleeves,
and buttoned them at the wrists, while the tears ran out over his
face,--helpless tears, the sign of his womanish tenderness, his womanish
weakness.
Bartley continued to glare at him. “Why, I do believe you're in love with
her yourself, you little fool!”
“Oh, I've _been_ a fool!” cried Bird. “A fool to think as much of you as
I always have,--a fool to believe that you were a gentleman, and wouldn't
take a mean advantage. I was a fool to suppose you wanted to do her any
good, when you came praising and flattering her, and turning her head!”
“Well, then,” said Bartley with harsh insolence, “don't be a fool any
longer. If you're in love with her, you haven't any quarrel with me, my
boy. She flies at higher game than humble newspaper editors. The head of
Willett's lumbering gang is your man; and so you may go and tell that old
sot, her father. Why, Henry! You don't mean to say you care anything for
that girl?”
“And do you mean to say you haven't done everything you could to turn her
head since she's been in this office? She used to like me well enough at
school.” All men are blind and jealous children alike, when it comes to
question of a woman between them, and this poor boy's passion was turning
him into a tiger. “Don't come to _me_ with your lies, any more!” Here his
rage culminated, and with a blind cry of “Ay!” he struck the paper which he
had kept in his hand into Bartley's face.
The demons, whatever they were, of anger, remorse, pride, shame, were at
work in Bartley's heart too, and he returned the blow as instantly as if
Bird's touch had set the mechanism of his arm in motion. In contempt of
the other's weakness he struck with the flat of his hand; but the blow was
enough. Bird fell headlong, and the concussion of his head upon the floor
did the rest. He lay senseless.