“I'm afraid your little friend at the St. Albans isn't altogether happy
of late,” said Evans toward the end of what he called one of his powwows
with Sewell. Their talk had taken a vaster range than usual, and they
both felt the need, that people know in dealing with abstractions, of
finally getting the ground beneath their feet again.
“Ah?” asked Sewell, with a twinge that allayed his satisfaction in this.
“What's the matter with him?”
“Oh, the knowledge of good and evil, I suspect.”
“I hope there's nothing wrong,” said Sewell anxiously.
“Oh no. I used the phrase because it came easily. Just what I mean is
that I'm afraid his view of our social inequalities is widening and
deepening, and that he experiences the dissatisfaction of people who
don't command that prospect from the summit. I told you of his censure
of our aristocratic constitution?”
“Yes,” said Sewell, with a smile.
“Well, I'm afraid he feels it more and more. If I can judge from
the occasional distance and _hauteur_ with which he treats me, he is
humiliated by it. Nothing makes a man so proud as humiliation, you
know.”
“That's true!”
“There are a couple of pretty girls at the St. Albans, art-students,
who have been painting Barker. So I learn from a reformed cow-boy of
the plains who is with us as a law-student and is about with one of
the young ladies a good deal. They're rather nice girls; quite nice, in
fact; and there's no harm in the cow-boy, and a good deal of fun. But if
Barker had conceived of being painted as a social inferior, and had been
made to feel that he was merely a model; and if he had become at all
aware that one of the girls was rather pretty--they both are--”
“I see!”
“I don't say it's so. But he seems low-spirited. Why don't you come
round and cheer him up--get into his confidence--”
“Get into the centre of the earth!” cried Sewell. “I never saw such an
inapproachable creature!”
Evans laughed. “He _is_ rather remote. The genuine American youth is
apt to be so, especially if he thinks you mean him a kindness. But
there ought to be some way of convincing him that he need not feel any
ignominy in his employment. After so many centuries of Christianity and
generations of Democracy, it ought to be very simple to convince him
that there is nothing disgraceful in showing people to their places at
table.”
“It isn't,” said the minister soberly.
“No, it isn't,” said Evans. “I wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “why we
despise certain occupations? We don't despise a man who hammers stone
or saws boards; why should we despise a barber? Is the care of the
human head intrinsically less honourable than the shaping of such rude
material? Why do we still condemn the tailor who clothes us, and honour
the painter who portrays us in the same clothes? Why do we despise
waiters? I tried to make Barker believe that I respected all kinds of
honest work. But I lied; I despised him for having waited on table.
Why have all manner of domestics fallen under our scorn, and come to be
stigmatised in a lump as servants?”
“Ah, I don't know,” said the minister. “There _is_ something in personal
attendance upon us that dishonours; but the reasons of it are very
obscure; _I_ couldn't give them. Perhaps it's because it's work that in
a simpler state of things each of us would do for himself, and in this
state is too proud to do.”
“That doesn't cover the whole ground,” said Evans.
“And you think that poor boy is troubled--is really suffering from a
sense of inferiority to the other young people?”
“Oh, I don't say certainly. Perhaps not. But if he were, what should
you say was the best thing for him to do? Remain a servant; cast his
lot with these outcasts; or try to separate and distinguish himself from
them, as we all do? Come; we live in the world,--which isn't so bad,
though it's pretty stupid. He couldn't change it. Now, what ought he to
do?”
Sewell mused a while without answering anything. Then he said with a
smile, “It's very much simpler to fit people for the other world than
for this, don't you think?”
“Yes, it is. It was a cold day for the clergy when it was imagined that
they ought to do both.”
“Well,” said Sewell, rising to follow his friend to the door, “I will
come to see Barker, and try to talk with him. He's a very complicated
problem. I supposed that I had merely his material prosperity to provide
for, after getting him down here, but if I have to reconcile him to the
constitution of society!----”
“Yes,” said Evans. “I wish you'd let me know the result of your labours.
I think I could make a very incisive article on the subject. The topic
is always an attractive one. There is nobody who doesn't feel that
somebody else is taking on airs with him, and ought to have his comb
cut. Or, if you should happen to prove to Barker that his ignominy is in
accordance with the Development Theory, and is a necessary Survival,
or something of that sort, don't you see what a card it would be for us
with the better classes?”
They went downstairs together, and at the street door Evans stopped
again. “Or, I'll tell you what. Make it a simple study of Barker's
mind--a sort of psychological interview, and then with what I've been
able to get from him we can present the impression that Boston makes
upon a young, fresh, shrewd mind. That would be something rather new,
wouldn't it? Come! the _Afternoon_ would make it worth your while. And
then you could work it into a sermon afterwards.”
“You shameless reprobate!” said Sewell, laying his hand affectionately
on his friend's arm.
There was nothing in Lemuel's case that seemed to him urgent, and he did
not go to see him at once. In the meantime, Fast Day came, and Lemuel
got away at last to pay his first visit home.
“Seems to me ye ain't lookin' over and above well, Lem,” was the first
thing his mother said to him, even before she noticed how well he was
dressed.
His new spring overcoat, another prize from the Misfit Parlours, and his
new pointed-toe shoes, and Derby hat, with the suit of clothes he had
kept so carefully all through the winter, were not the complete disguise
he had fancied they might be at Willoughby Pastures. The depot-master
had known him as soon as he got out of the cars, and ignored his
splendour in recognising him. He said, “Hello, Lem,” and had not time to
reconcile himself to the boy's changed appearance before Lemuel hurried
away with the bag he had bought so long before for the visit. He met
several people on his way home from the depot: two of them were women,
and one of these said she knew as soon as she looked at him who it was,
and the other said she should have known it was Lem Barker as far as she
could see him. She asked him if he was home for good now.
His mother pushed back his thick hair with her hard old hand as she
spoke to him, and then she pressed his head down upon her neck, which
was mostly collar-bone. But Lemuel could hear her heart beat, and the
tears came into his eyes.
“Oh, I'm all right, mother,” he said huskily, though he tried to say it
cheerfully. He let her hold his head there the longer because mixed with
his tenderness for her was a horror of her bloomers, which he was not at
once able to overcome. When he gained courage to look, he saw that she
had them on, but now he had the strength to bear it.
“Ye had any breakfast?” she asked, and when he said that he had got a
cup of coffee at Fitchburg, she said, well, she must get him something,
and she drew him a cup of Japan tea, and made him some milk toast and
picked-fish, talking all the time, and telling him how his sister and
her husband had gone to the village to have one of her teeth drawn. They
had got along through the winter pretty well; but she guessed that they
would have had more to complain of if it had not been for him. This was
her way of acknowledging the help Lemuel had given them every week,
and it was casually sandwiched between an account of an Indian Spirit
treatment which Reuben had tried for his rheumatism, and a question
whether Lemuel had seen anything of that Mind Cure down to Boston.
But when he looked about the room, and saw here and there the simple
comforts and necessaries which his money had bought the sick man and
the two helpless women, his heart swelled with joy and pride; and he
realised the pleasure we all feel in being a good genius. At times it
had come pretty hard to send the greater part of his week's wages home,
but now he was glad he had done it. The poor, coarse food which his
mother had served him as a treat; the low, cracked ceilings; the waving
floor, covered with rag carpet; the sagging doors, and the old-fashioned
trim of the small-paned windows, were all very different from the
luxurious abundance, the tesselated pavement, and the tapestry Brussels,
the lofty studding, and the black walnut mouldings of the St. Albans;
and Lemuel felt the difference with a curious mixture of pride and
remorse in his own escape from the meanness of his home. He felt the
self-reproach to which the man who rises without raising with him
all those dear to him is destined in some measure all his life. His
interests and associations are separated from theirs, but if he is not
an ignoble spirit, the ties of affection remain unweakened; he cares for
them with a kind of indignant tenderness, and calls himself to account
before them in the midst of pleasures which they cannot share, or even
imagine.
Lemuel's mother did not ask him much about his life in Boston; she had
not the materials for curiosity about it; but he told her everything
that he thought she could understand. She recurred to his hopes when he
left home and their disappointment in Sewell, and she asked if
Lemuel ever saw him nowadays. She could not reconcile herself to
his reconciliation with Sewell, whom she still held to have behaved
treacherously. Then she went back to Lemuel's looks, and asked him if
he kept pretty well; and when he answered that he did, she smoothed with
her hand the knot between her eyes, and did not question him further.
He had the whole forenoon with his mother, and he helped her to get the
dinner, as he used to do, pulling the stove-wood out of the snow-drift
that still embedded part of the wood-pile, though the snow was all gone
around Boston. It was thawing under the dull, soft April sky, and he saw
the first bluebird perched on the clothes-line when he went out for the
wood; his mother said there had been lots of them. He walked about the
place, and into the barn, taking in the forlornness and shabbiness; and
then he went up into the room over the shed, where he used to study and
write. His heart ached with self-pity.
He realised as he had not done at a distance how dependent this wretched
home was upon him; and after meaning the whole morning to tell his
mother about Statira, he decided that he was keeping it from her, not
merely because he was ashamed to tell her that he was engaged, but
because it seemed such a crazy thing, for a person in his circumstances,
if it was really an engagement. He had not seen Statira since that night
when he brought her to look at the pictures the art-students had made of
him. He felt that he had not parted with her kindly, and he went to see
her the night before he started home, though it was not Sunday, but he
had found her door locked, and this made him angry with her, he could
not have said just why. If he told his mother about Statira now, what
should he tell her? He compromised by telling her about the two girls
that had painted his likeness.
His mother seemed not to care a great deal about the pictures. She said,
“I don't want you should let any girl make a fool of you, Lem.”
“Oh no,” he answered, and went and looked out of the window.
“I don't say but what they're nice girls enough, but in your place you
no need to throw yourself away.”
Lemuel thought of the awe of Miss Carver in which he lived, and the
difference between them; and he could have laughed at his mother's
ignorant pride. What would she say if she knew that he was engaged to a
girl that worked in a box-factory? But probably she would not think that
studying art and teaching it was any better. She evidently believed that
his position in the St. Albans was superior to that of Miss Carver.
His sister and her husband came home before they had finished dinner.
His sister had her face all tied up to keep from taking cold after
having her tooth drawn, and Lemuel had to go out and help his rheumatic
brother-in-law put up the horse. When they came in, his brother-in-law
did not wash his hands before going to the table, and Lemuel could not
keep his eyes off his black and broken fingernails; his mother's and
sister's nails were black too. It must have been so when he lived at
home.
His sister could not eat; she took some tea, and went to bed. His
brother-in-law pulled off his boots after dinner, and put up his
stocking-feet on the stove-hearth to warm them.
There was no longer any chance to talk with his mother indoors, and he
asked her if she would not like to come out; it was very mild. She put
on her bonnet, and they strolled down the road. All the time Lemuel had
to keep from looking at her bloomers. When they met any one driving, he
had to keep himself from trying to look as if he were not with her, but
was just out walking alone.
The day wore heavily away. His brother-in-law's rheumatism came on
toward evening, and his sister's face had swollen, so that it would not
do for her to go out. Lemuel put on some old clothes he found in his
room, and milked the cows himself.
“Like old times, Lem,” said his mother, when he came in.
“Yes,” he assented quietly.
He and his mother had tea together, but pretty soon afterwards she
seemed to get sleepy; and Lemuel said he had been up early and he
guessed he would go to bed. His mother said she guessed she would go
too.
After he had blown out his light, she came in to see if he were
comfortable. “I presume it seems a pretty poor place to you, Lem,” she
said, holding her lamp up and looking round.
“I guess if it's good enough for you it is for me,” he answered
evasively.
“No, it ain't,” she said. “I always b'en used to it, and I can see from
your talk that you've got used to something different already. Well,
it's right, Lem. You're a good boy, and I want you should get the good
of Boston, all you can. We don't any of us begrutch it to ye; and what
I came up to say now was, don't you scrimp yourself down there to send
home to us. We got a roof over our heads, and we can keep soul and body
together somehow; we always have, and we don't need a great deal. But I
want you should keep yourself nicely dressed down to Boston, so 't you
can go with the best; I don't want you should feel anyways meechin' on
account of your clothes. You got a good figure, Lem; you take after your
father. Sometimes I wish you was a little bigger; but _he_ wa'n't; and
he had a big spirit. He wa'n't afraid of anything; and they said if he'd
come out o' that battle where he was killed, he'd 'a' b'en a captain. He
was a good man.”
She had hardly ever spoken so much of his father before; he knew now
by the sound of her voice in the dim room that the tears must be in her
eyes; but she governed herself and went on.
“What I wanted to say was, don't you keep sendin' so much o' your money
home, child. It's yours, and I want you should have it; most of it goes
for patent medicines, anyway, when it gets here; we can't keep Reuben
from buying 'em, and he's always changin' doctors. And I want you should
hold yourself high, Lem. You're as good as anybody. And don't you go
with any girls, especially, that ain't of the best. You're gettin' to
that time o' life when you'll begin to think about 'em; but don't you go
and fall in love with the first little poppet you see, because she's got
pretty eyes and curly hair.”
It seemed to Lemuel as if she must know about Statira, but of course she
did not. He lay still, and she went on.
“Don't you go and get engaged, or any such foolishness in a hurry, Lem.
Them art-student girls you was tellin' about, I presume they're all
right enough; but you wait a while. Young men think it's a kind of
miracle if a girl likes 'em, and they're ready to go crazy over it; but
it's the most natural thing she can do. You just wait a while. When
you get along a little further, you can pick and choose for yourself. I
don't know as I should want you should marry for money; but don't you go
and take up with the first thing comes along, because you're afraid to
look higher. What's become o' that nasty thing that talked so to you at
that Miss Vane's?”
Lemuel said that he had never seen Sibyl or Miss Vane since; but he did
not make any direct response to the anxieties his mother had hinted
at. Her pride in him, so ignorant of all the reality of his life in
the city, crushed him more than the sight and renewed sense of the mean
conditions from which he had sprung. What if he should tell her that
Miss Carver, whom she did not want him to marry in a hurry, regarded him
as a servant, and treated him as she would treat a black man? What if
she knew that he was as good as engaged to marry a girl that could no
more meet Miss Carver on the same level than she could fly? He could
only tell his mother not to feel troubled about him; that he was not
going to get married in any great hurry; and pretend to be sleepy and
turn his head away.
She pulled the covering up round his neck and tucked it in with her
strong, rough old hand, whose very tenderness hurt.
He had expected to stay the greater part of the next day, but he took an
earlier train. His sister was still laid up; she thought she must have
taken cold in her jaw; her husband, rumpled, unshaven, with a shawl over
his shoulders, cowered about the cook-stove for the heat. He began to
hate this poverty and suffering, to long for escape from it to the life
which at that distance seemed so rich and easy and pleasant; he trembled
lest something might have happened in his absence to have thrown him out
of his place.
All the way to Boston he was under the misery of the home that he was
leaving; his mother's pride added to the burden of it. But when the
train drew in sight of the city, and he saw the steeples and chimneys,
and the thin masts of the ships printed together against the horizon,
his heart rose. He felt equal to it, to anything in it.
He arrived in the middle of the afternoon, and he saw no one at the
hotel except the Harmons till toward dinner-time. Then the ladies coming
in from shopping had a word of welcome for him; some of them stopped and
shook hands at the office, and when they began to come down to dinner
they spoke to him, and there again some of them offered their hands;
they said it seemed an age since he had gone.
The art-students came down with Berry, who shook hands so cordially with
him that perhaps they could not help it. Miss Carver seemed to hesitate,
but she gave him her hand too, and she asked, as the others had done,
whether he had found his family well.
He did not know what to think. Sometimes he felt as if people were
trying to make a fool of him almost. He remained blushing and smiling
to himself after the last of them had gone in to dinner. He did not
know what Miss Carver meant, but her eyes seemed to have lost that cold
distance, and to have come nearer to him.
Late at night Berry came to him where he sat at his desk. “Well, Barker,
I'm glad you're back again, old man. Feels as if you'd been gone a month
of Sundays. Didn't know whether we should have you with us this _first_
evening.”
Lemuel grew hot with consciousness, and did not make it better for
himself by saying, “I don't know what you mean.”
“Well, I don't suppose I should in your _place_,” returned Berry. “It's
human nature. It's all right. What did the ladies think of the 'Roman
Youth' the other night? The distinguished artists weren't sure exactly,
and I thought I could make capital with one of 'em if I could find
out. Yes, that's my little game, Barker; that's what I dropped in for;
Bismarck style of diplomacy. I'll tell you why they want to know, if you
won't give me away: Miss Swan wanted to give her 'bit of colour'--that's
what she calls it--to one of the young ladies; but she's afraid she
didn't like it.”
“I guess they liked it well enough,” said Lemuel, thinking with shame
that Statira had not had the grace to say a word of either of the
pictures; he attributed this to 'Manda Grier's influence.
“Well that's good, so far as it goes,” said Berry. “But now, to come
down to particulars, what did they _say_? That's what Miss Swan will ask
_me_.”
“I don't remember just what they said,” faltered Lemuel.
“Well, they must have said something,” insisted Berry jocosely. “Give
a fellow some little clue, and I can piece it out for myself. What did
_she_ say? I don't ask which she _was_? but I have my suspicions. All
I want to know is what she _said_. Anything like beautiful middle
distance, or splendid chiaroscuro, or fine perspective, or exquisite
modelling? Come now! Try to think, Barker.” He gave Lemuel time, but to
no purpose. “Well,” he resumed, with affected dejection, “I'll have to
try to imagine it; I guess I can; I haven't worked my imagination much
since I took up the law. But look here, Barker,” he continued more
briskly, “now you open up a little. Here I've been giving you my
confidence ever since I saw you--forcing it on you; and you know just
how far I'm gone on Miss Swan, to a hundredth part of an inch; but I
don't know enough of your affections to swear that you've got any. Now,
which one is it? Don't be mean about it. I won't give you away. Honest
Injun!”
Lemuel was goaded to desperation. His face burned, and the perspiration
began to break out on his forehead. He did not know how to escape from
this pursuit.
“Which is it, Barker?” repeated his tormentor. “I know it's human nature
to deny it; though I never could understand why; if I was engaged, the
Sunday papers should have it about as quick!”
“I'm _not_ engaged!” cried Lemuel.
“You ain't?” yelled Berry.
“No!”
“Give me your hand! Neither am I!”
He shook Lemuel's helpless hand with mock heroic fervour. “We are
brothers from this time forth, Barker! You can't imagine how closely
this tie binds you to me, Barker. Barker, we are one; with no particular
prospect, as far as I am concerned, of ever being more.”
He offered to dramatise a burst of tears on Lemuel's shoulder; but
Lemuel escaped from him.
“Stop! Quit your fooling! What if somebody should come in?”
“They won't,” said Berry, desisting, and stretching himself at ease
in the only chair besides Lemuel's with which the office was equipped.
“It's too late for 'em. Now o'er the one-half world nature seems
dead-ah, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep-ah. We are safe
here from all intrusion, and I can lay bare my inmost thoughts to you,
Barker, if I happen to have any. Barker, I'm awfully glad you're not
engaged to either of those girls,--or both. And it's not altogether
because I enjoy the boon companionship of another unengaged man, but
it's partly because I don't think--shall I say it?”
“Say what?” asked Lemuel, not without some prescience.
“Well, you can forgive the brotherly frankness, if you don't like it. I
don't think they're quite up to you.”
Lemuel gave a sort of start, which Berry interpreted in his own way.
“Now, hold on! I know just how you feel. Been there myself. I have seen
the time too when I thought any sort of girl was too good for Alonzo W.,
Jr. But I don't now. I think A. W., Jr., is good enough for the best.
I may be mistaken; I was the other time. But we all begin that way; and
the great object is not to keep on that way. See? Now, I suppose you're
in love--puppy love--with that little thing. Probably the first girl you
got acquainted with after you came to Boston, or may be a sweet survival
of the Willoughby Pastures period. All right. Perfectly natural, in
either case. But don't you let it go any further, my dear boy; old man,
don't you let it go any further. Pause! Reflect! Consider! Love wisely,
but not too well! Take the unsolicited advice of a sufferer.”
Pride, joy, shame, remorse, mixed in Lemuel's heart, which eased itself
in an involuntary laugh at Berry's nonsense.
“Now, what I want you to do--dear boy, or old man, as the case may
be--is to regard yourself in a new light. Regard yourself, for the sake
of the experiment, as too good for any girl in Boston. No? Can't fetch
it? Try again!”
Lemuel could only laugh foolishly.
“Well, now, that's singular,” pursued Berry. “I supposed you could have
done it without the least trouble. Well, let's try something a little
less difficult. Look me in the eye, and regard yourself as too good, for
example, for Miss Carver. Ha!”
An angry flush spread over Lemuel's embarrassed face. “I wish you'd
behave yourself,” he stammered.
“In any other cause I would,” said Berry solemnly. “But I must be cruel
to be kind. Seriously, old man, if you can't think yourself too good
for Miss Carver, I wish you'd think yourself good enough. Now, I'm not
saying anything against the Willoughby episode, mind. That has its place
in the wise economy of nature, just like anything else. But there ain't
any outcome in it for you. You've got a future before you, Barker, and
you don't want to go and load up with a love affair that you'll keep
trying to unload as long as you live. No, sir! Look at me! I know I'm
not an example in some things, but in this little business of correctly
placed affections I could give points to Solomon. Why am I in love with
M. Swan? Because I can't help it for one thing, and because for another
thing she can do more to develop the hidden worth and unsuspected powers
of A. W., Jr., than any other woman in the world. She may never feel
that it's her mission, but she can't shake my conviction that way; and
I shall stay undeveloped to prove that I was right. Well, now, what you
want, my friend, is development, and you can't get it where you've been
going. She hain't got it on hand. And what you want to do is not to
take something else in its place--tender heart, steadfast affections,
loyalty; they've got 'em at every shop in town; they're a drug in the
market. You've got to say 'No development, heigh? Well, I'll just look
round a while, and if I can't find it at some of the other stores I'll
come back and take some of that steadfast affection. You say it won't
come off? Or run in washing?' See?”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Lemuel, trying to summon
an indignant feeling, and laughing with a strange pleasure at heart.
“You've got no right to talk to me that way. I want you should leave me
alone!”
“Well, since you're so pressing, I will go,” said Berry easily. “But
if I find you at our next interview sitting under the shade of the
mustard-tree whose little seed I have just dropped, I shall feel that
I have not laboured in vain. 'She's a darling, she's a daisy, she's a
dumpling, she's a lamb!' I refer to Miss Swan, of course; but on other
lips the terms are equally applicable to Miss Carver; and don't you
forget it!”
He swung out of the office with a mazurka step. His silk hat, gaily
tilted on the side of his head, struck against the door-jamb, and fell
rolling across the entry floor. Lemuel laughed wildly. At twenty these
things are droll.