CLAYTON.
The curtain rises on our next scene, and discovers a tranquil library,
illuminated by the slant rays of the afternoon's sun. On one side the
room opened by long glass windows on to a garden, from whence the air
came in perfumed with the breath of roses and honeysuckles. The floor
covered with white matting, the couches and sofas robed in smooth glazed
linen, gave an air of freshness and coolness to the apartment. The walls
were hung with prints of the great masterpieces of European art, while
bronzes and plaster-casts, distributed with taste and skill, gave
evidence of artistic culture in the general arrangement. Two young men
were sitting together near the opened window at a small table, which
displayed an antique coffee-set of silver, and a silver tray of ices and
fruits. One of these has already been introduced to the notice of our
readers, in the description of our heroine in the last chapter.
Edward Clayton, the only son of Judge Clayton, and representative of one
of the oldest and most distinguished families of North Carolina, was in
personal appearance much what our lively young friend had
sketched--tall, slender, with a sort of loose-jointedness and
carelessness of dress, which might have produced an impression of
clownishness, had it not been relieved by a refined and intellectual
expression on the head and face. The upper part of the face gave the
impression of thoughtfulness and strength, with a shadowing of
melancholy earnestness, and there was about the eye, in conversation,
that occasional gleam of troubled wildness which betrays the
hypochondriac temperament. The mouth was even feminine in the delicacy
and beauty of its lines, and the smile which sometimes played around it
had a peculiar fascination. It seemed to be a smile of but half the
man's nature; for it never rose as high as the eyes, or seemed to
disturb the dark stillness of their thoughtfulness.
The other speaker was in many respects a contrast; and we will
introduce him to our readers by the name of Frank Russel. Furthermore,
for their benefit, we will premise that he was the only son of a once
distinguished and wealthy, but now almost decayed, family of Virginia.
It is supposed by many that friendship is best founded upon similarity
of nature; but observation teaches that it is more common by a union of
opposites, in which each party is attracted by something wanting in
itself. In Clayton, the great preponderance of those faculties which
draw a man inward, and impair the efficiency of the outward life,
inclined him to overvalue the active and practical faculties, because he
saw them constantly attended with a kind of success which he fully
appreciated, but was unable to attain. Perfect ease of manner, ready
presence of mind under all social exigencies, adroitness in making the
most of passing occurrences, are qualities which are seldom the gift of
sensitive and deeply-thoughtful natures, and which for this very reason
they are often disposed to overvalue. Russel was one of those men who
have just enough of all the higher faculties to appreciate their
existence in others, and not enough of any one to disturb the perfect
availability of his own mind. Everything in his mental furnishing was
always completely under his own control, and on hand for use at a
moment's notice. From infancy he was noted for quick tact and ready
reply. At school he was the universal factotum, the "good fellow" of the
ring, heading all the mischief among the boys, and yet walking with
exemplary gravity on the blind side of the master. Many a scrape had he
rescued Clayton from, into which he had fallen from a more fastidious
moral sense, a more scrupulous honor, than is for worldly profit either
in the boy's or man's sphere; and Clayton, superior as he was, could not
help loving and depending on him.
The diviner part of man is often shamefaced and self-distrustful, ill at
home in this world, and standing in awe of nothing so much as what is
called common sense; and yet common sense very often, by its own
keenness, is able to see that these unavailable currencies of another's
mind are of more worth, if the world only knew it, than the ready coin
of its own; and so the practical and the ideal nature are drawn
together.
So Clayton and Russel had been friends from boyhood; had roomed
together their four years in college; and, though instruments of a
vastly different quality, had hitherto played the concerts of life with
scarce a discord.
In person, Russel was of about the medium size, with a well-knit,
elastic frame, all whose movements were characterized by sprightliness
and energy. He had a frank, open countenance, clear blue eyes, a high
forehead shaded by clusters of curling brown hair; his flexible lips
wore a good-natured yet half-sarcastic smile. His feelings, though not
inconveniently deep, were easily touched; he could be moved to tears or
to smiles, with the varying humor of a friend; but never so far as to
lose his equipoise--or, as he phrased it, forget what he was about.
But we linger too long in description. We had better let the reader hear
the _dramatis personæ_, and judge for himself.
"Well, now, Clayton," said Russel, as he leaned back in a stuffed
leather chair, with a cigar between his fingers, "how considerate of
them to go off on that marooning party, and leave us to ourselves, here!
I say, old boy, how goes the world now?--Reading law, hey?--booked to be
Judge Clayton the second! Now, my dear fellow, if _I_ had the
opportunities that you have--only to step into my father's shoes--I
should be a lucky fellow."
"Well, you are welcome to all my chances," said Clayton, throwing
himself on one of the lounges; "for I begin to see that I shall make
very little of them."
"Why, what's the matter?--Don't you like the study?"
"The study, perhaps, well enough--but not the practice. Reading the
theory is always magnificent and grand. 'Law hath her seat in the bosom
of God; her voice is the harmony of the world.' You remember we used to
declaim that. But, then, come to the practice of it, and what do you
find? Are legal examinations anything like searching after truth? Does
not an advocate commit himself to one-sided views of his subject, and
habitually ignore all the truth on the other side? Why, if I practised
law according to my conscience, I should be chased out of court in a
week."
"There you are, again, Clayton, with your everlasting conscience, which
has been my plague ever since you were a boy, and I have never been
able to convince you what a humbug it is! It's what I call a _crotchety_
conscience--always in the way of your doing anything like anybody else.
I suppose, then, of course, you won't go into political life.--Great
pity, too. You'd make a very imposing figure as senator. You have
exactly the cut for a conscript father--one of the old Viri Romæ."
"And what do you think the old Viri Romæ would do in Washington? What
sort of a figure do you think Regulus, or Quintus Curtius, or Mucius
Scævola, would make there?"
"Well, to be sure, the style of political action has altered somewhat
since those days. If political duties were what they were then,--if a
gulf would open in Washington, for example,--you would be the fellow to
plunge in, horse and all, for the good of the republic; or, if anything
was to be done by putting your right hand in the fire and burning it
off--or, if there were any Carthaginians who would cut off your eyelids,
or roll you down hill in a barrel of nails, for truth and your country's
sake,--you would be on hand for any such matter. That's the sort of
foreign embassy that you would be after. All these old-fashioned goings
on would suit you to a T; but as to figuring in purple and fine linen,
in Paris or London, as American minister, you would make a dismal
business of it. But still, I thought you might practise law in a
wholesome, sensible way,--take fees, make pleas with abundance of
classical allusions, show off your scholarship, marry a rich wife, and
make your children princes in the gates--all without treading on the
toes of your too sensitive moral what-d'-ye-call-ems. But you've done
one thing like other folks, at least, if all 's true that I've heard."
"And what is that, pray?"
"What's that? Hear the fellow, now! How innocent we are! I suppose you
think I haven't heard of your campaign in New York--carrying off that
princess of little flirts, Miss Gordon."
Clayton responded to the charge only with a slight shrug and a smile, in
which not only his lips but his eyes took part, while the color mounted
to his forehead.
"Now, do you know, Clayton," continued Russel, "I _like_ that. Do you
know I always thought I should detest the woman that you should fall in
love with? It seemed to me that such a portentous combination of all the
virtues as you were planning for would be something like a comet--an
alarming spectacle. Do you remember (I should like to know, if you do)
just what that woman was to be?--was to have all the learning of a man,
all the graces of a woman (I think I have it by heart); she was to be
practical, poetical, pious, and everything else that begins with a _p_;
she was to be elegant and earnest; take deep and extensive views of
life; and there was to be a certain air about her, half Madonna, half
Venus, made of every creature's best. Ah, bless us! what poor creatures
we are! Here comes along our little coquette, flirting, tossing her fan;
picks you up like a great solid chip, as you are, and throws you into
her chip-basket of beaux, and goes on dancing and flirting as before.
Aren't you ashamed of it, now?"
"No. I am really much like the minister in our town, where we fitted for
college, who married a pretty Polly Peters in his sixtieth year, and,
when the elders came to inquire if she had the requisite qualifications
for a pastor's lady, he told them that he didn't think she had. 'But the
fact is, brethren,' said he, 'though I don't pretend she is a saint, she
is a very pretty little sinner, _and I love her_.' That's just my case."
"Very sensibly said; and, do you know, as I told you before, I'm
perfectly delighted with it, because it is acting like other folks. But
then, my dear fellow, do you think you have come to anything really
solid with this little Venus of the sea-foam? Isn't it much the same as
being engaged to a cloud, or a butterfly? One wants a little _streak_ of
reality about a person that one must take for better or for worse. You
have a deep nature, Clayton. You really want a wife who will have some
glimmering perception of the difference between you and the other things
that walk and wear coats, and are called men."
"Well, then, really," said Clayton, rousing himself, and speaking with
energy, "I'll tell you just what it is: Nina Gordon is a flirt and a
coquette--a spoiled child, if you will. She is not at all the person I
ever expected would obtain any power over me. She has no culture, no
reading, no habits of reflection; but she has, after all, a certain tone
and quality to her, a certain '_timbre_,' as the French say of voices,
which suits me. There is about her a mixture of energy, individuality,
and shrewdness, which makes her, all uninformed as she is, more piquant
and attractive than any woman I ever fell in with. She never reads; it
is almost impossible to get her to read; but, if you can catch her ear
for five minutes, her literary judgments have a peculiar freshness and
truth. And so with her judgment on all other subjects, if you can stop
her long enough to give you an opinion. As to heart, I think she has yet
a wholly unawakened nature. She has lived only in the world of
sensation, and that is so abundant and so buoyant in her that the deeper
part still sleeps. It is only two or three times that I have seen a
flash of this under nature look from her eyes, and color her voice and
intonation. And I believe--I'm quite sure--that I am the only person in
the world that ever touched it at all. I'm not at all sure that she
loves me _now_; but I'm almost equally sure that she will."
"They say," said Russel, carelessly, "that she is generally engaged to
two or three at a time."
"That may be also," said Clayton, indolently. "I rather suspect it to be
the case now, but it gives me no concern. I've seen all the men by whom
she is surrounded, and I know perfectly well there's not one of them
that she cares a rush for."
"Well, but, my dear fellow, how can your extra fastidious moral notions
stand the idea of her practising this system of deception?"
"Why, of course, it isn't a thing to my taste; but then, like the old
parson, if I love the 'little sinner,' what am I to do? I suppose you
think it a lover's paradox; yet I assure you, though she deceives, she
is not deceitful; though she acts selfishly, she is not selfish. The
fact is, the child has grown up, _motherless_ and an heiress, among
servants. She has, I believe, a sort of an aunt, or some such relative,
who nominally represents the head of the family to the eye of the world.
But I fancy little madam has had full sway. Then she has been to a
fashionable New York boarding-school, and that has developed the talent
of shirking lessons, and evading rules, with a taste for sidewalk
flirtation. These are all the attainments that I ever heard of being got
at a fashionable boarding-school, unless it be a hatred of books, and a
general dread of literary culture."
"And her estates are"--
"Nothing very considerable. Managed nominally by an old uncle of hers;
really by a very clever quadroon servant, who was left her by her
father, and who has received an education, and has talents very superior
to what are common to those in his class. He is, in fact, the overseer
of her plantation, and I believe the most loyal, devoted creature
breathing."
"Clayton," said his companion, "this affair might not be much to one who
takes the world as I do, but for you it may be a little too serious.
Don't get in beyond your depth."
"You are too late, Russel, for that--I _am_ in."
"Well, then, good luck to you, my dear fellow! And now, as we are about
it, I may as well tell you that I'm _in_ for it, too. I suppose you have
heard of Miss Benoir, of Baltimore. Well, she is my fate."
"And are you really engaged?"
"All signed and sealed, and to be delivered next Christmas."
"Let's hear about her."
"Well, she is of a good height (I always said I shouldn't marry a short
woman),--not handsome, but reasonably well-looking--very fine
manners--knows the world--plays and sings handsomely--has a snug little
fortune. Now, you know I never held to marrying for money and nothing
else; but then, as I'm situated, I could not have fallen in love without
that requisite. Some people call this heartless. I don't think it is. If
I had met Mary Benoir, and had known that she hadn't anything, why, I
should have known that it wouldn't do for me at all to cultivate any
particular intimacy; but, knowing she had fortune, I looked a little
further, and found she had other things too. Now, if that's marrying for
money, so be it. Yours, Clayton, is a genuine case of falling in love.
But, as for me, I walked in with my eyes wide open."
"And what are _you_ going to do with yourself in the world, Russel?"
"I must get into practice, and get some foothold there, you know; and
then, hey for Washington!--I'm to be president, like every other
adventurer in these United States. Why not I, as well as another man?"
"I don't know, certainly," said Clayton, "if you want it, and are
willing to work hard enough and long enough, and pay all the price. I
would as soon spend my life walking the drawn sword which they say is
the bridge to Mahomet's paradise."
"Ah! ah! I fancy I see you doing it! What a figure you'd make, my dear
fellow, balancing and posturing on the sword-blade, and making horrid
wry faces! Yet I know you'd be as comfortable there as you would in
political life. And yet, after all, you are greatly superior to me in
every respect. It would be a thousand pities if such a man as you
couldn't have the management of things. But our national ship has to be
navigated by second-rate fellows, Jerry-go-nimbles, like me, simply
because we are good in dodging and turning. But that's the way. Sharp's
the word, and the sharpest wins."
"For my part," said Clayton, "I shall never be what the _world_ calls a
_successful_ man. There seems to be one inscription written over every
passage of success in life, as far as I've seen,--'What shall it profit
a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"
"I don't understand you, Clayton."
"Why, it seems to me just this. As matters are going on now in our
country, I must either lower my standard of right and honor, and sear my
soul in all its nobler sensibilities, or I must be what the world calls
an unsuccessful man. There is no path in life, that I know of, where
humbuggery and fraud and deceit are not essential to success,--none
where a man can make the purity of his moral nature the first object. I
see Satan standing in every avenue, saying, 'All these things will I
give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.'"
"Why don't you take to the ministry, then, Clayton, at once, and put up
a pulpit-cushion and big Bible between you and the fiery darts of the
devil?"
"I'm afraid I should meet him there, too. I could not gain a right to
speak in any pulpit without some profession or pledge to speak this or
that, that would be a snare to my conscience by and by. At the door of
every pulpit I must swear always to find truth in a certain formula; and
living, prosperity, success, reputation, will all be pledged on my
finding it there. I tell you I should, if I followed my own conscience,
preach myself out of pulpits quicker than I should plead out at the
bar."
"Lord help you, Clayton! What _will_ you do? Will you settle down on
your plantation, and raise cotton and sell niggers? I'm expecting to
hear, every minute, that you've subscribed for the 'Liberator,' and are
going to turn Abolitionist."
"I do mean to settle down on my plantation, but not to _raise_ cotton or
negroes as a chief end of man. I do take the 'Liberator,' because I'm a
free man, and have a right to take what I have a mind to. I don't agree
with Garrison, because I think I know more about the matter, where I
stand, than he does, or can, where he stands. But it's his _right_, as
an honest man, to say what he thinks; and I should use it in his place.
If I saw things as he does, I _should_ be an Abolitionist. But I don't."
"That's a mercy, at least," said Russel, "to a man with your taste for
martyrdom. But what are you going to do?"
"What any Christian man should do who finds four hundred odd of his
fellow men and women placed in a state of absolute dependence on him.
I'm going to educate and fit them for freedom. There isn't a sublimer
power on earth than God has given to us, masters. The law gives us
absolute and unlimited control. A plantation such as a plantation might
be would be 'a light to lighten the Gentiles.' There is a wonderful and
beautiful development locked up in this Ethiopian race, and it is worth
being a life-object to unlock it. The raising of cotton is to be the
least of the thing. I regard my plantation as a sphere for raising _men
and women_, and demonstrating the capabilities of a race."
"Selah!" said Russel.
Clayton looked angry.
"I beg your pardon, Clayton. This is all superb, sublime! There is just
one objection to it--it is wholly impossible."
"Every good and great thing has been called impossible before it is
done."
"Well, let me tell you, Clayton, just how it will be. You will be a mark
for arrows, both sides. You will offend all your neighbors by doing
better than they do. You will bring your negroes up to a point in which
they will meet the current of the whole community against them, and
meanwhile you will get no credit with the Abolitionists. They will call
you a cutthroat, pirate, sheep-stealer, and all the rest of their
elegant little list of embellishments, all the same. You'll get a state
of things that nobody can manage but yourself, and you by the hardest;
and then you'll die, and it'll all run to the devil faster than you run
it up. Now, if you would do the thing by halves, it wouldn't be so bad;
but I know you of old. You won't be satisfied with teaching a catechism
and a few hymns, parrot-wise, which I think is a respectable religious
amusement for our women. You'll teach 'em all to read, and write, and
think, and speak. I shouldn't wonder to hear of an importation of
black-boards and spelling-books. You'll want a lyceum and debating
society. Pray, what does sister Anne say to all this? Anne is a sensible
girl now, but I'll warrant you've got her to go in for it."
"Anne is as much interested as I, but her practical tact is greater than
mine, and she is of use in detecting difficulties that I do not see. I
have an excellent man, who enters fully into my views, who takes charge
of the business interests of the plantation, instead of one of these
scoundrel overseers. There is to be a graduated system of work and wages
introduced--a system that shall teach the nature and rights of property
and train to habits of industry and frugality, by making every man's
acquirements equal to his industry and good conduct."
"And what sort of a support do _you_ expect to make out of all this? Are
you going to live for them, or they for you?"
"I shall set them the example of living for _them_, and trust to awaken
the good that is in them, in return. The strong ought to live for the
weak--the cultivated for the ignorant."
"Well, Clayton, the Lord help you! I'm in earnest now--fact! Though I
know you won't do it, yet I wish you could. It's a pity, Clayton, you
were born in this world. It isn't you, but our planet and planetary
ways, that are in fault. Your mind is a splendid storehouse--gold and
gems of Ophir--but they are all up in the fifth story, and no staircase
to get 'em down into common life. Now I've just enough appreciation of
the sort of thing that 's in you, not to laugh at you. Nine out of ten
would. To tell you the truth, if I were already set up in life, and had
as definite a position as you have,--family, friends, influence, and
means,--why, perhaps I might afford to cultivate this style of thing.
But I tell you what it is, Clayton, such a conscience as yours is
cursedly expensive to keep. It's like a carriage--a fellow mustn't set
it up unless he can afford it. It's one of the luxuries."
"It's a _necessary_ of life, with me," said Clayton, dryly.
"Well, that's your nature. I can't afford it. I've got my way to make.
_I must succeed_, and with your ultra notions I couldn't succeed. So
there it is. After all, I can be as religious as dozens of your most
respectable men, who have taken their seats in the night-train for
Paradise, and keep the daylight for their own business."
"I dare say you can."
"Yes, and I shall get all I aim at; and you, Clayton, will be always an
unhappy, dissatisfied aspirant after something too high for mortality.
There's just the difference between us."
The conversation was here interrupted by the return of the family party.