The Athertons sat late over their breakfast in the luxurious dining-room
where the April sun came in at the windows overlooking the Back Bay, and
commanding at that stage of the tide a long stretch of shallow with a
flight of white gulls settled upon it.
They had let Clara's house on the hill, and she had bought another on the
new land; she insisted upon the change, not only because everybody was
leaving the hill, but also because, as she said, it would seem too much
like taking Mr. Atherton to board, if they went to housekeeping where she
had always lived; she wished to give him the effect before the world of
having brought her to a house of his own. She had even furnished it anew
for the most part, and had banished as far as possible the things that
reminded her of the time when she was not his wife. He humored her in this
fantastic self-indulgence, and philosophized her wish to give him the
appearance of having the money, as something orderly in its origin, and not
to be deprecated on other grounds, since probably it deceived nobody. They
lived a very tranquil life, and Clara had no grief of her own unless it was
that there seemed to be no great things she could do for him. One day when
she whimsically complained of this, he said: “I'm very glad of that. Let's
try to be equal to the little sacrifices we must make for each other;
they will be quite enough. Many a woman who would be ready to die for her
husband makes him wretched because she won't live for him. Don't despise
the day of small things.”
“Yes, but when every day seems the day of small things!” she pouted.
“Every day _is_ the day of small things,” said Atherton, “with people
who are happy. We're never so prosperous as when we can't remember what
happened last Monday.”
“Oh, but I can't bear to be always living in the present.”
“It's not so spacious, I know, as either the past or the future, but it's
all we have.”
“There!” cried Clara. “That's _fatalism_! It's _worse_ than fatalism!”
“And is fatalism so very bad?” asked her husband.
“It's Mahometanism!”
“Well, it isn't necessarily a plurality of wives,” returned Atherton, in
subtle anticipation of her next point. “And it's really only another name
for resignation, which is certainly a good thing.”
“Resignation? Oh, I don't know about that!”
Atherton laughed, and put his arm round her waist: an argument that no
woman can answer in a man she loves; it seems to deprive her of her
reasoning faculties. In the atmosphere of affection which she breathed, she
sometimes feared that her mental powers were really weakening. As a girl
she had lived a life full of purposes, which, if somewhat vague, were
unquestionably large. She had then had great interests,--art, music,
literature,--the symphony concerts, Mr. Hunt's classes, the novels of
George Eliot, and Mr Fiske's lectures on the cosmic philosophy; and she had
always felt that they expanded and elevated existence. In her moments of
question as to the shape which her life had taken since, she tried to think
whether the happiness which seemed so little dependent on these things was
not beneath the demands of a spirit which was probably immortal and was
certainly cultivated. They all continued to be part of her life, but only
a very small part; and she would have liked to ask her husband whether his
influence upon her had been wholly beneficial. She was not sure that
it had; but neither was she sure that it had not. She had never fully
consented to the distinctness with which he classified all her emotions and
ideas as those of a woman: in her heart she doubted whether a great many of
them might not be those of a man, though she had never found any of them
exactly like his. She could not complain that he did not treat her as an
equal; he deferred to her, and depended upon her good sense to an extent
that sometimes alarmed her, for she secretly knew that she had a very large
streak of silliness in her nature. He seemed to tell her everything, and to
be greatly ruled by her advice, especially in matters of business; but she
could not help observing that he often kept matters involving certain moral
questions from her till the moment for deciding them was past. When she
accused him of this, he confessed that it was so; but defended himself
by saying that he was afraid her conscience might sway him against his
judgment.
Clara now recurred to these words of his as she sat looking at him through
her tears across the breakfast table. “Was that the reason you never told
me about poor Ben before?”
“Yes, and I expect you to justify me. What good would it have done to tell
you?”
“I could have told you, at least, that, if Ben had any such feeling as
that, it wasn't _his_ fault altogether.”
“But you wouldn't have believed that, Clara,” said Atherton. “You know
that, whatever that poor creature's faults are, coquetry isn't one of
them.”
Clara only admitted the fact passively. “How did he excuse himself for
coming back?” she asked.
“He didn't excuse himself; he defied himself. We had a stormy talk, and he
ended by denying that he had any social duty in the matter.”
“And I think he was quite right!” Clara flashed out. “It was his own
affair.”
“He said he had a concrete purpose, and wouldn't listen to abstractions.
Yes, he talked like a woman. But you know he wasn't right, Clara, though
_you_ talk like a woman, too. There are a great many things that are not
wrong except as they wrong others. I've no doubt that, as compared with the
highest love her husband ever felt for her, Ben's passion was as light to
darkness. But if he could only hope for its return through the perversion
of her soul,--through teaching her to think of escape from her marriage by
a divorce,--then it was a crime against her and against society.”
“Ben couldn't do such a thing!”
“No, he could only dream of doing it. When it came to the attempt,
everything that was good in him revolted against it and conspired to make
him help her in the efforts that would defeat his hopes if they succeeded.
It was a ghastly ordeal, but it was sublime; and when the climax
came,--that paper, which he had only to conceal for a few days or
weeks,--he was equal to the demand upon him. But suppose a man of his pure
training and traditions had yielded to temptation,--suppose he had so far
depraved himself that he could have set about persuading her that she owed
no allegiance to her husband, and might rightfully get a divorce and marry
him,--what a ruinous blow it would have been to all who knew of it! It
would have disheartened those who abhorred it, and encouraged those who
wanted to profit by such an example. It doesn't matter much, socially, what
undisciplined people like Bartley and Marcia Hubbard do; but if a man
like Ben Halleck goes astray, it's calamitous; it 'confounds the human
conscience,' as Victor Hugo says. All that careful nurture in the right
since he could speak, all that life-long decency of thought and act, that
noble ideal of unselfishness and responsibility to others, trampled under
foot and spit upon,--it's horrible!”
“Yes,” answered Clara, deeply moved, even as a woman may be in a pretty
breakfast-room, “and such a good soul as Ben always was naturally. Will you
have some more tea?”
“Yes, I will take another cup. But as for natural goodness--”
“Wait! I will ring for some hot water.”
When the maid had appeared, disappeared, reappeared, and finally vanished,
Atherton resumed. “The natural goodness doesn't count. The natural man is a
wild beast, and his natural goodness is the amiability of a beast basking
in the sun when his stomach is full. The Hubbards were full of natural
goodness, I dare say, when they didn't happen to cross each other's wishes.
No, it's the implanted goodness that saves,--the seed of righteousness
treasured from generation to generation, and carefully watched and tended
by disciplined fathers and mothers in the hearts where they have dropped
it. The flower of this implanted goodness is what we call civilization,
the condition of general uprightness that Halleck declared he owed no
allegiance to. But he was better than his word.”
Atherton lifted, with his slim, delicate hand, the cup of translucent
china, and drained off the fragrant Souchong, sweetened, and tempered with
Jersey cream to perfection. Something in the sight went like a pang to his
wife's heart. “Ah!” she said, “it is easy enough for us to condemn. _We_
have everything we want!”
“I don't forget that, Clara,” said Atherton, gravely. “Sometimes when
I think of it, I am ready to renounce all judgment of others. The
consciousness of our comfort, our luxury, almost paralyzes me at those
times, and I am ashamed and afraid even of our happiness.”
“Yes, what right,” pursued Clara, rebelliously, “have we to be happy and
united, and these wretched creatures so--”
“No right,--none in the world! But somehow the effects follow their causes.
In some sort they chose misery for themselves,--we make our own hell in
this life and the next,--or it was chosen for them by undisciplined wills
that they inherited. In the long run their fate must be a just one.”
“Ah, but I have to look at things in the _short_ run, and I can't see any
justice in Marcia's husband using her so!” cried Clara. “Why shouldn't
you use me badly? I don't believe that any woman ever meant better by her
husband than she did.”
“Oh, the meaning doesn't count! It's our deeds that judge us. He is a
thoroughly bad fellow, but you may be sure she has been to blame. Though I
don't blame the Hubbards, either of them, so much as I blame Halleck. He
not only had everything he wished, but the training to know what he ought
to wish.”
“I don't know about his having everything. I think Ben must have been
disappointed, some time,” said Clara, evasively.
“Oh, that's nothing,” replied Atherton, with the contented husband's
indifference to sentimental grievances.
Clara did not speak for some moments, and then she summed up a turmoil of
thoughts in a profound sigh. “Well, I don't like it! I thought it was bad
enough having a man, even on the outskirts of my acquaintance, abandon his
wife; but now Ben Halleck, who has been like a brother to me, to have him
mixed up in such an affair in the way he is, it's intolerable!”
“I agree with you,” said Atherton, playing with his spoon. “You know how I
hate anything that sins against order, and this whole thing is disorderly.
It's intolerable, as you say. But we must bear our share of it. We're all
bound together. No one sins or suffers to himself in a civilized state,--or
religious state; it's the same thing. Every link in the chain feels the
effect of the violence, more or less intimately. We rise or fall together
in Christian society. It's strange that it should be so hard to realize
a thing that every experience of life teaches. We keep on thinking of
offences against the common good as if they were abstractions!”
“Well, _one_ thing,” said Clara, “I shall always think unnecessarily
shocking and disgraceful about it. And that is Ben's going out with her on
this journey. I don't see how you could allow that, Eustace.”
“Yes,” said Atherton, after a thoughtful silence, “it _is_ shocking. The
only consolation is that it is _not_ unnecessarily shocking. I'm afraid
that it's necessarily so. When any disease of soul or body has gone
far enough, it makes its own conditions, and other things must adjust
themselves to it. Besides, no one knows the ugliness of the situation but
Halleck himself. I don't see how I could have interfered; and upon the
whole I don't know that I ought to have interfered, if I could. She would
be helpless without him; and he can get no harm from it. In fact, it's part
of his expiation, which must have begun as soon as he met her again after
he came home.”
Clara was convinced, but not reconciled. She only said, “I don't like it.”
Her husband did not reply; he continued musingly: “When the old man
made that final appeal to her jealousy,--all that there is really left,
probably, of her love for her husband,--and she responded with a face as
wicked as his, I couldn't help looking at Halleck--”
“Oh, poor Ben! _How_ did he take it? It must have scared, it must have
disgusted him!”
“That's what I had expected. But there was nothing in his face but pity. He
understood, and he pitied her. That was all.”
Clara rose, and turned to the window, where she remained looking through
her tears at the gulls on the shallow. It seemed much more than twenty-four
hours since she had taken leave of Marcia and the rest at the station, and
saw them set out on their long journey with its uncertain and unimaginable
end. She had deeply sympathized with them all, but at the same time she
had felt very keenly the potential scandalousness of the situation; she
shuddered inwardly when she thought what if people knew; she had always
revolted from contact with such social facts as their errand involved. She
got Olive aside for a moment, and asked her, “Don't you _hate_ it, Olive?
Did you ever dream of being mixed up in such a thing? I should die,--simply
_die_!”
“I shall not think of dying, unless we fail,” answered Olive. “And, as for
hating it, I haven't consulted my feelings a great deal; but I rather think
I like it.”
“Like going out to be a witness in an Indiana divorce case!”
“I don't look at it in that way, Clara. It's a crusade to me; it's a holy
war; it's the cause of an innocent woman against a wicked oppression. I
know how _you_ would feel about it, Clara; but I never _was_ as respectable
as you are, and I'm quite satisfied to do what Ben, and father, and Mr.
Atherton approve. They think it's my duty, and I am glad to go, and to be
of all the use I can. But you shall have my heartfelt sympathy through all,
Clara, for your involuntary acquaintance with our proceedings.”
“Olive! You _know_ that I'm proud of your courage and Ben's goodness, and
that I fully appreciate the sacrifice you're making. And I'm not ashamed
of your business: I think it's grand and sublime, and I would just as soon
scream it out at the top of my voice, right here in the Albany depot.”
“Don't,” said Olive. “It would frighten the child.” She had Flavia by
the hand, and she made the little girl her special charge throughout the
journey. The old Squire seemed anxious to be alone, and he restlessly
escaped from Marcia's care. He sat all the first day apart, chewing upon
some fragment of wood that he had picked up, and now and then putting up
a lank hand to rasp his bristling jaw; glancing furtively at people who
passed him, and lapsing into his ruminant abstraction. He had been vexed
that they did not start the night before; and every halt the train made
visibly afflicted him. He would not leave his place to get anything to eat
when they stopped for refreshment, though he hungrily devoured the lunch
that Marcia brought into the car for him. At New York he was in a tumult of
fear lest they should lose the connecting train on the Pennsylvania Road;
and the sigh of relief with which he sank into his seat in the sleeping-car
expressed the suffering he had undergone. He said he was not tired, but he
went to bed early, as if to sleep away as much of the time as he could.
When Halleck came into their car, the next morning, he found Marcia and her
father sitting together, and looking out of the window at the wooded slopes
of the Alleghanies through which the train was running. The old man's
impatience had relaxed; he let Marcia lay her hand on his, and he answered
her with quiet submission, when she spoke now and then of the difference
between these valleys, where the wild rhododendrons were growing, and the
frozen hollows of the hills at home, which must be still choked with snow.
“But, oh! how much I would rather see them!” she said at last with a
homesick throb.
“Well,” he assented, “we can go right back--afterwards.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Well, sir, good morning,” said the old man to Halleck, “we are getting
along, sir. At this rate, unless our calculations were mistaken, we shall
be there by midnight. We are on time, the porter tells me.”
“Yes, we shall soon be at Pittsburg,” said Halleck, and he looked at
Marcia, who turned away her face. She had not spoken of the object of the
journey to him since they had left Boston, and it had not been so nearly
touched by either of them before.
He could see that she recoiled from it, but the old man, once having
approached it, could not leave it. “If everything goes well, we shall have
our grip on that fellow's throat in less than forty-eight hours.” He looked
down mechanically at his withered hands, lean and yellow like the talons of
a bird, and lifted his accipitral profile with a predatory alertness. “I
didn't sleep very well the last part of the night, but I thought it all
out. I sha'n't care whether I get there before or after judgment is
rendered; all I want is to get there before he has a chance to clear out.
I think I shall be able to convince Bartley Hubbard that there is a God
in Israel yet! Don't you be anxious, Marcia; I've got this thing at my
fingers' ends, as clear as a bell. I intend to give Bartley a little
surprise!”
Marcia kept her face averted, and Halleck relinquished his purpose of
sitting down with them, and went forward to the state-room that Marcia and
Olive had occupied with the little girl. He tapped on the door, and found
his sister dressed, but the child still asleep.
“What is the matter, Ben?” she asked. “You don't look well. You oughtn't to
have undertaken this journey.”
“Oh, I'm all right. But I've been up a good while, with nothing to eat.
That old man is terrible. Olive!”
“Her father? Yes, he's a terrible old man!”
“It sickened me to hear him talk, just now,--throwing out his threats of
vengeance against Hubbard. It made me feel a sort of sympathy for that poor
dog. Do you suppose she has the same motive? I couldn't forgive her!” he
said, with a kind of passionate weakness. “I couldn't forgive myself!”
“We've got nothing to do with their motive, Ben. We are to be her witnesses
for justice against a wicked wrong. I don't believe in special providences,
of course; but it does seem as if we had been called to this work, as
mother would say. Your happening to go home with her, that night, and then
that paper happening to come to you,--doesn't it look like it?”
“It looks like it, yes.”
“We couldn't have refused to come. That's what consoles me for being here
this minute. I put on a bold face with Clara Atherton, yesterday morning at
the depot; but I was in a cold chill, all the time. Our coming off, in this
way, on such an errand, is something so different from the rest of our
whole life! And I _do_ like quiet, and orderly ways, and all that we call
respectability! I've been thinking that the trial will be reported by some
such interviewing wretch as Bartley himself, and that we shall figure in
the newspapers. But I've concluded that we mustn't care. It's right, and we
must do it. I don't shut my eyes to the kind of people we're mixed up with.
I pity Marcia, and I love her--poor, helpless, unguided thing!--but that
old man _is_ terrible! He's as cruel as the grave where he thinks he's been
wronged, and crueller where he thinks _she's_ been wronged. You've forgiven
so much, Ben, that you can't understand a man who forgives nothing; but
_I_ can, for I'm a pretty good hater, myself. And Marcia's just like her
father, at times. I've seen her look at Clara Atherton as if she could kill
her!”
The little girl stirred in her berth, and then lifted herself on her hands,
and stared round at them through her tangled golden hair. “Is it morning,
yet?” she asked sleepily. “Is it to-morrow?”
“Yes; it's to-morrow, Flavia,” said Olive. “Do you want to get up?”
“And is next day the day after to-morrow?”
“Yes.”
“Then it's only one day till I shall see papa. That's what mamma said.
Where is mamma?” asked the child, rising to her knees, and sweeping back
her hair from her face with either hand.
“I will go and send her to you,” said Halleck.
At Pittsburg the Squire was eager for his breakfast, and made amends for
his fast of the day before. He ate grossly of the heterogeneous abundance
of the railroad restaurant, and drank two cups of coffee that in his thin,
native air would have disordered his pulse for a week. But he resumed his
journey with a tranquil strength that seemed the physical expression of a
mind clear and content. He was willing and even anxious to tell Halleck
what his theories and plans were; but the young man shrank from knowing
them. He wished only to know whether Marcia were privy to them, and this,
too, he shrank from knowing.