IT was true enough what Harry had said. Philip Malbone’s was that
perilous Rousseau-like temperament, neither sincere enough for safety,
nor false enough to alarm; the winning tenderness that thrills and
softens at the mere neighborhood of a woman, and fascinates by its
reality those whom no hypocrisy can deceive. It was a nature half
amiable, half voluptuous, that disarmed others, seeming itself unarmed.
He was never wholly ennobled by passion, for it never touched him deeply
enough; and, on the other hand, he was not hardened by the habitual
attitude of passion, for he was never really insincere. Sometimes it
seemed as if nothing stood between him and utter profligacy but a little
indolence, a little kindness, and a good deal of caution.
“There seems no such thing as serious repentance in me,” he had once
said to Kate, two years before, when she had upbraided him with some
desperate flirtation which had looked as if he would carry it as far as
gentlemen did under King Charles II. “How does remorse begin?”
“Where you are beginning,” said Kate.
“I do not perceive that,” he answered. “My conscience seems, after all,
to be only a form of good-nature. I like to be stirred by emotion, I
suppose, and I like to study character. But I can always stop when it is
evident that I shall cause pain to somebody. Is there any other motive?”
“In other words,” said she, “you apply the match, and then turn your
back on the burning house.”
Philip colored. “How unjust you are! Of course, we all like to play with
fire, but I always put it out before it can spread. Do you think I have
no feeling?”
Kate stopped there, I suppose. Even she always stopped soon, if she
undertook to interfere with Malbone. This charming Alcibiades always
convinced them, after the wrestling was over, that he had not been
thrown.
The only exception to this was in the case of Aunt Jane. If she had
anything in common with Philip,--and there was a certain element of
ingenuous unconsciousness in which they were not so far unlike,--it only
placed them in the more complete antagonism. Perhaps if two beings were
in absolutely no respect alike, they never could meet even for purposes
of hostility; there must be some common ground from which the aversion
may proceed. Moreover, in this case Aunt Jane utterly disbelieved in
Malbone because she had reason to disbelieve in his father, and
the better she knew the son the more she disliked the father
retrospectively.
Philip was apt to be very heedless of such aversions,--indeed, he had
few to heed,--but it was apparent that Aunt Jane was the only person
with whom he was not quite at ease. Still, the solicitude did not
trouble him very much, for he instinctively knew that it was not his
particular actions which vexed her, so much as his very temperament and
atmosphere,--things not to be changed. So he usually went his way; and
if he sometimes felt one of her sharp retorts, could laugh it off that
day and sleep it off before the next morning.
For you may be sure that Philip was very little troubled by inconvenient
memories. He never had to affect forgetfulness of anything. The past
slid from him so easily, he forgot even to try to forget. He liked to
quote from Emerson, “What have I to do with repentance?” “What have my
yesterday’s errors,” he would say, “to do with the life of to-day?”
“Everything,” interrupted Aunt Jane, “for you will repeat them to-day,
if you can.”
“Not at all,” persisted he, accepting as conversation what she meant as
a stab. “I may, indeed, commit greater errors,”--here she grimly nodded,
as if she had no doubt of it,--“but never just the same. To-day must
take thought for itself.”
“I wish it would,” she said, gently, and then went on with her own
thoughts while he was silent. Presently she broke out again in her
impulsive way.
“Depend upon it,” she said, “there is very little direct retribution in
this world.”
Phil looked up, quite pleased at her indorsing one of his favorite
views. She looked, as she always did, indignant at having said anything
to please him.
“Yes,” said she, “it is the indirect retribution that crushes. I’ve seen
enough of that, God knows. Kate, give me my thimble.”
Malbone had that smooth elasticity of surface which made even Aunt
Jane’s strong fingers slip from him as they might from a fish, or from
the soft, gelatinous stem of the water-target. Even in this case he only
laughed good-naturedly, and went out, whistling like a mocking-bird, to
call the children round him.
Toward the more wayward and impulsive Emilia the good lady was far more
merciful. With all Aunt Jane’s formidable keenness, she was a little apt
to be disarmed by youth and beauty, and had no very stern retributions
except for those past middle age. Emilia especially charmed her while
she repelled. There was no getting beyond a certain point with this
strange girl, any more than with Philip; but her depths tantalized,
while his apparent shallows were only vexatious. Emilia was usually
sweet, winning, cordial, and seemed ready to glide into one’s heart as
softly as she glided into the room; she liked to please, and found it
very easy. Yet she left the impression that this smooth and delicate
loveliness went but an inch beyond the surface, like the soft, thin foam
that enamels yonder tract of ocean, belongs to it, is a part of it, yet
is, after all, but a bequest of tempests, and covers only a dark abyss
of crossing currents and desolate tangles of rootless kelp. Everybody
was drawn to her, yet not a soul took any comfort in her. Her very voice
had in it a despairing sweetness, that seemed far in advance of her
actual history; it was an anticipated miserere, a perpetual dirge, where
nothing had yet gone down. So Aunt Jane, who was wont to be perfectly
decisive in her treatment of every human being, was fluctuating and
inconsistent with Emilia. She could not help being fascinated by the
motherless child, and yet scorned herself for even the doubting love she
gave.
“Only think, auntie,” said Kate, “how you kissed Emilia, yesterday!”
“Of course I did,” she remorsefully owned. “I have kissed her a great
many times too often. I never will kiss her again. There is nothing but
sorrow to be found in loving her, and her heart is no larger than her
feet. Today she was not even pretty! If it were not for her voice, I
think I should never wish to see her again.”
But when that soft, pleading voice came once more, and Emilia asked
perhaps for luncheon, in tones fit for Ophelia, Aunt Jane instantly
yielded. One might as well have tried to enforce indignation against the
Babes in the Wood.
This perpetual mute appeal was further strengthened by a peculiar
physical habit in Emilia, which first alarmed the household, but soon
ceased to inspire terror. She fainted very easily, and had attacks at
long intervals akin to faintness, and lasting for several hours. The
physicians pronounced them cataleptic in their nature, saying that they
brought no danger, and that she would certainly outgrow them. They were
sometimes produced by fatigue, sometimes by excitement, but they brought
no agitation with them, nor any development of abnormal powers. They
simply wrapped her in a profound repose, from which no effort could
rouse her, till the trance passed by. Her eyes gradually closed,
her voice died away, and all movement ceased, save that her eyelids
sometimes trembled without opening, and sweet evanescent expressions
chased each other across her face,--the shadows of thoughts unseen.
For a time she seemed to distinguish the touch of different persons by
preference or pain; but soon even this sign of recognition vanished, and
the household could only wait and watch, while she sank into deeper and
yet deeper repose.
There was something inexpressibly sweet, appealing, and touching in this
impenetrable slumber, when it was at its deepest. She looked so young,
so delicate, so lovely; it was as if she had entered into a shrine, and
some sacred curtain had been dropped to shield her from all the cares
and perplexities of life. She lived, she breathed, and yet all the
storms of life could but beat against her powerless, as the waves beat
on the shore. Safe in this beautiful semblance of death,--her pulse a
little accelerated, her rich color only softened, her eyelids drooping,
her exquisite mouth curved into the sweetness it had lacked in
waking,--she lay unconscious and supreme, the temporary monarch of the
household, entranced upon her throne. A few hours having passed, she
suddenly waked, and was a self-willed, passionate girl once more. When
she spoke, it was with a voice wholly natural; she had no recollection
of what had happened, and no curiosity to learn.