PHILIP MALBONE had that perfectly sunny temperament which is peculiarly
captivating among Americans, because it is so rare. He liked everybody
and everybody liked him; he had a thousand ways of affording pleasure,
and he received it in the giving. He had a personal beauty, which,
strange to say, was recognized by both sexes,--for handsome men must
often consent to be mildly hated by their own. He had travelled much,
and had mingled in very varied society; he had a moderate fortune, no
vices, no ambition, and no capacity of ennui.
He was fastidious and over-critical, it might be, in his theories, but
in practice he was easily suited and never vexed.
He liked travelling, and he liked staying at home; he was so continually
occupied as to give an apparent activity to all his life, and yet he
was never too busy to be interrupted, especially if the intruder were
a woman or a child. He liked to be with people of his own age, whatever
their condition; he also liked old people because they were old, and
children because they were young. In travelling by rail, he would woo
crying babies out of their mothers’ arms, and still them; it was always
his back that Irishwomen thumped, to ask if they must get out at the
next station; and he might be seen handing out decrepit paupers, as
if they were of royal blood and bore concealed sceptres in their old
umbrellas. Exquisitely nice in his personal habits, he had the practical
democracy of a good-natured young prince; he had never yet seen a human
being who awed him, nor one whom he had the slightest wish to awe.
His courtesy, had, therefore, that comprehensiveness which we call
republican, though it was really the least republican thing about him.
All felt its attraction; there was really no one who disliked him,
except Aunt Jane; and even she admitted that he was the only person who
knew how to cut her lead-pencil.
That cheerful English premier who thought that any man ought to find
happiness enough in walking London streets and looking at the lobsters
in the fish-markets, was not more easily satisfied than Malbone. He
liked to observe the groups of boys fishing at the wharves, or to hear
the chat of their fathers about coral-reefs and penguins’ eggs; or to
sketch the fisher’s little daughter awaiting her father at night on
some deserted and crumbling wharf, his blue pea-jacket over her fair
ring-leted head, and a great cat standing by with tail uplifted, her
sole protector. He liked the luxurious indolence of yachting, and
he liked as well to float in his wherry among the fleet of fishing
schooners getting under way after a three days’ storm, each vessel
slipping out in turn from the closely packed crowd, and spreading its
white wings for flight. He liked to watch the groups of negro boys
and girls strolling by the window at evening, and strumming on the
banjo,--the only vestige of tropical life that haunts our busy Northern
zone. But he liked just as well to note the ways of well-dressed girls
and boys at croquet parties, or to sit at the club window and hear the
gossip. He was a jewel of a listener, and was not easily bored even when
Philadelphians talked about families, or New Yorkers about bargains, or
Bostonians about books. A man who has not one absorbing aim can get a
great many miscellaneous things into each twenty-four hours; and there
was not a day in which Philip did not make himself agreeable and useful
to many people, receive many confidences, and give much good-humored
advice about matters of which he knew nothing. His friends’ children
ran after him in the street, and he knew the pet theories and wines of
elderly gentlemen. He said that he won their hearts by remembering every
occurrence in their lives except their birthdays.
It was, perhaps, no drawback on the popularity of Philip Malbone that
he had been for some ten years reproached as a systematic flirt by all
women with whom he did not happen at the moment to be flirting. The
reproach was unjust; he had never done anything systematically in his
life; it was his temperament that flirted, not his will. He simply had
that most perilous of all seductive natures, in which the seducer is
himself seduced. With a personal refinement that almost amounted to
purity, he was constantly drifting into loves more profoundly perilous
than if they had belonged to a grosser man. Almost all women loved him,
because he loved almost all; he never had to assume an ardor, for he
always felt it. His heart was multivalve; he could love a dozen at once
in various modes and gradations, press a dozen hands in a day, gaze into
a dozen pair of eyes with unfeigned tenderness; while the last pair wept
for him, he was looking into the next. In truth, he loved to explore
those sweet depths; humanity is the highest thing to investigate,
he said, and the proper study of mankind is woman. Woman needs to be
studied while under the influence of emotion; let us therefore have
the emotions. This was the reason he gave to himself; but this refined
Mormonism of the heart was not based on reason, but on temperament and
habit. In such matters logic is only for the by-standers.
His very generosity harmed him, as all our good qualities may harm us
when linked with bad ones; he had so many excuses for doing kindnesses
to his friends, it was hard to quarrel with him if he did them too
tenderly. He was no more capable of unkindness than of constancy; and
so strongly did he fix the allegiance of those who loved him, that the
women to whom he had caused most anguish would still defend him when
accused; would have crossed the continent, if needed, to nurse him in
illness, and would have rained rivers of tears on his grave. To do him
justice, he would have done almost as much for them,--for any of them.
He could torture a devoted heart, but only through a sort of half-wilful
unconsciousness; he could not bear to see tears shed in his presence,
nor to let his imagination dwell very much on those which flowed in his
absence. When he had once loved a woman, or even fancied that he loved
her, he built for her a shrine that was never dismantled, and in which
a very little faint incense would sometimes be found burning for years
after; he never quite ceased to feel a languid thrill at the mention
of her name; he would make even for a past love the most generous
sacrifices of time, convenience, truth perhaps,--everything, in short,
but the present love. To those who had given him all that an undivided
heart can give he would deny nothing but an undivided heart in return.
The misfortune was that this was the only thing they cared to possess.
This abundant and spontaneous feeling gave him an air of earnestness,
without which he could not have charmed any woman, and, least of all,
one like Hope. No woman really loves a trifler; she must at least
convince herself that he who trifles with others is serious with her.
Philip was never quite serious and never quite otherwise; he never
deliberately got up a passion, for it was never needful; he simply found
an object for his emotions, opened their valves, and then watched their
flow. To love a charming woman in her presence is no test of genuine
passion; let us know how much you long for her in absence. This longing
had never yet seriously troubled Malbone, provided there was another
charming person within an easy walk.
If it was sometimes forced upon him that all this ended in anguish to
some of these various charmers, first or last, then there was always in
reserve the pleasure of repentance. He was very winning and generous in
his repentances, and he enjoyed them so much they were often repeated.
He did not pass for a weak person, and he was not exactly weak; but he
spent his life in putting away temptations with one hand and pulling
them back with the other. There was for him something piquant in being
thus neither innocent nor guilty, but always on some delicious
middle ground. He loved dearly to skate on thin ice,--that was the
trouble,--especially where he fancied the water to be just within his
depth. Unluckily the sea of life deepens rather fast.
Malbone had known Hope from her childhood, as he had known her cousins,
but their love dated from their meetings beside the sickbed of his
mother, over whom he had watched with unstinted devotion for weary
months. She had been very fond of the young girl, and her last earthly
act was to place Hope’s hand in Philip’s. Long before this final
consecration, Hope had won his heart more thoroughly, he fancied, than
any woman he had ever seen. The secret of this crowning charm was,
perhaps, that she was a new sensation. He had prided himself on his
knowledge of her sex, and yet here was a wholly new species. He was
acquainted with the women of society, and with the women who only wished
to be in society. But here was one who was in the chrysalis, and had
never been a grub, and had no wish to be a butterfly, and what should he
make of her? He was like a student of insects who had never seen a bee.
Never had he known a young girl who cared for the things which this
maiden sought, or who was not dazzled by things to which Hope seemed
perfectly indifferent. She was not a devotee, she was not a prude;
people seemed to amuse and interest her; she liked them, she declared,
as much as she liked books. But this very way of putting the thing
seemed like inverting the accustomed order of affairs in the polite
world, and was of itself a novelty.
Of course he had previously taken his turn for a while among Kate’s
admirers; but it was when she was very young, and, moreover, it was hard
to get up anything like a tender and confidential relation with that
frank maiden; she never would have accepted Philip Malbone for herself,
and she was by no means satisfied with his betrothal to her best
beloved. But that Hope loved him ardently there was no doubt, however it
might be explained. Perhaps it was some law of opposites, and she needed
some one of lighter nature than her own. As her resolute purpose charmed
him, so she may have found a certain fascination in the airy way in
which he took hold on life; he was so full of thought and intelligence;
possessing infinite leisure, and yet incapable of ennui; ready to oblige
every one, and doing so many kind acts at so little personal sacrifice;
always easy, graceful, lovable, and kind. In her just indignation at
those who called him heartless, she forgot to notice that his heart was
not deep. He was interested in all her pursuits, could aid her in all
her studies, suggest schemes for her benevolent desires, and could then
make others work for her, and even work himself. People usually loved
Philip, even while they criticised him; but Hope loved him first, and
then could not criticise him at all.
Nature seems always planning to equalize characters, and to protect our
friends from growing too perfect for our deserts. Love, for instance, is
apt to strengthen the weak, and yet sometimes weakens the strong. Under
its influence Hope sometimes appeared at disadvantage. Had the object of
her love been indifferent, the result might have been otherwise, but her
ample nature apparently needed to contract itself a little, to find room
within Philip’s heart. Not that in his presence she became vain or petty
or jealous; that would have been impossible. She only grew credulous and
absorbed and blind. A kind of gentle obstinacy, too, developed itself
in her nature, and all suggestion of defects in him fell off from her as
from a marble image of Faith. If he said or did anything, there was no
appeal; that was settled, let us pass to something else.
I almost blush to admit that Aunt Jane--of whom it could by no means
be asserted that she was a saintly lady, but only a very charming
one--rather rejoiced in this transformation.
“I like it better, my dear,” she said, with her usual frankness, to
Kate. “Hope was altogether too heavenly for my style. When she first
came here, I secretly thought I never should care anything about her.
She seemed nothing but a little moral tale. I thought she would not last
me five minutes. But now she is growing quite human and ridiculous about
that Philip, and I think I may find her very attractive indeed.”