woods, Bob, and came down here in good faith for a change of air,
prepared to learn anything you might have to teach me. If you've got any
more traps and masked batteries, let them loose on me; practice on me to
your heart's content. You've undertaken to convert me, and I'm here to
give you a chance: a fine old apostle you are. But I don't quite
understand Miss Elliston's position here, Bob."
"Her position here, or anywhere else, is that she does about as she
pleases, and makes everybody else do it too, as you will see before your
hair is gray, my learned friend. As I may have told you, we are her
nearest relatives: she is an orphan."
"Parents been dead long?"
"About seventeen years. What's that got to do with it?"
"O, not much; don't be so suspicious. Do you think I'm trying to play
some trick on you, after your model? How should I, a helpless stranger
in a strange land, betrayed by the friend in whom I trusted? I'm an
orphan myself too. So that Miss Elliston is in a measure dependent on
your kindness?"
"O, don't fancy that she's a poor relation, or anything of that sort.
She's got more cash than she wants, and loads of friends: had twenty
invitations for the summer. If you don't behave to suit her, she's
liable to go off any day to Bar Harbor, or Saratoga, or the Yosemite, or
Kamtchatka."
"Very good of her, to stay here with you, then."
"Well, Mabel is deeply attached to her; so is Jane, and the children of
course. Her parents and mine were close friends in the country--where I
came from, you know. She and I were brought up together; that is, she
was--I was mostly brought up before her appearance on this mundane
sphere. We used to play in the haymow, and fall from the apple trees
together, and all that. O, Clarice is quite a sister to me--a pretty
good sister too, all things considered."
"And you are quite a brother to her, as I see. Strange, that it never
occurred to mention her, when you were describing the various members of
your family. Does her mind match her personal attractions?"
"She's got as good a head as you have, old man, or any other male
specimen I've struck. I myself meet her on almost equal terms. O, hang
that; I don't either. This is no subject for profane jesting. Talk about
the inferiority of women! If the moralists and stump-speakers had one
like her at home, they'd change their tune. But there are no more like
her."
"You speak warmly, Bob. To Clarice every virtue under heaven. Beautiful,
brilliant, accomplished, amiable; you are a happy man to have such an
annex to your household--even if she wasn't worth naming at the start."
"Amiable--who said she was amiable? Leave that to commonplace women and
plain everyday fellows like me. You can't expect that of her sort, Jim.
She can be very nice when she pleases. I suppose she has a heart; it has
never waked up yet. When it does, it will be a big one. We don't expect
the plebeian virtues of her."
"She has a conscience, I hope? If not, it might be better to go away,
and stay away. You ought not to keep dangerous compounds about the
house, Bob."
"She won't explode--though others may. A conscience? I think so. She
couldn't do a mean thing. She keeps a promise: she has more sense of
justice than most women. But you can't apply ordinary rules to her. She
is of the blood royal: the Princess, we call her. Can't you see, Jim?
You are man enough to take her measure, so far as any one can."
"I see her outside; it is worth coming here to see, if I were an artist
or an aesthete. She has deigned to show me no more as yet."
"It is all of a piece: the rest matches that, as you will see in time.
There is but one Clarice."
"Bob, you are different from last night. I believe you are telling the
truth now."
"She sobers you. When you have been with her, when you think of her, it
is as if you were in church--only a good deal more so."
"Very convenient and edifying, to have such a private chapel in one's
house. Bob, in this mood I can trust you. Tell me one thing: why did you
never mention her to me?"
"She doesn't wish me to talk of her to strangers."
"And now the prohibition is removed?"
"You are not a stranger now. She knows you, and you have seen her."
"Well, you are loyal. Does she appreciate such fidelity?"
"We are very good friends. From childhood we have been more together
than most brothers and sisters. More or less, I have always been to her
as I am now. She is used to me. I do not ask too much of her. Don't
fancy that I am in her confidence, or any one: she has a royal reserve.
See here, Jim; I am making you one of the family."
"I understand. I must ask you one thing: why did you bring me here, to
expose me to all this?"
"You needed a change, Jim, as you half owned just now; almost any change
would be for the better. I wanted you to see the world again: there is
in it nothing fairer or richer than Clarice."
"You go on as if she were a saint; and yet you say she's not."
"You can answer that yourself, Jim. She's far from it: you and I are not
saint-worshippers. But she has it in her to be a saint, if her attention
and her latent force were turned that way. She can be anything, or do
anything. She hasn't found her life yet. She bides her time, and I wait
with her. Her wings will sprout some day. I like her well enough as she
is."
"Evidently. Do you know, old man, that you are talking very freely?"
"Am I the first? or do you suppose I would say all this to any chance
comer? You opened your soul to me in May, as far as you knew it: you are
welcome to see into mine now."
"There is a difference. I cared for nothing, and believed in nothing; so
my soul was worth little. Yours is that of a prosperous and happy man."
"Externals are not the measure of the soul, Jim, nor yet creeds. I know
a gentleman when I see him, and so do you. Your soul will get its food
yet, and assume its full stature; you've been trying to starve it
partly, that's all."
"Do you talk this way to your Princess, Bob?"
"No. She is younger than we: why should I bore her? You and I are on
equal terms: she and I are not."
"This humility is very chivalric, but I don't quite understand it in
you, Bob."
"You can't: you've been so long unused to women, and you never knew one
like her. If you had, it would have been too early; what does a boy of
twenty know of himself, or of the girls he thinks he is in love with, or
of the true relations that should exist between him and them? Call it
quixotic if you like; I don't mind. Any gentleman, that is, any
spiritual man, has it in him to be a Quixote. When you come to know
Clarice, you will understand."
"Do you call yourself and me spiritual men, Bob?"
"Yes; why not? Spirituality does not depend on the opinions one chances
to hold, but on the view he takes of his own part in Life, and on the
inherent nature of his soul. We are not worshippers of mammon, or
fashion, or any of the idols of the tribe. I live in the world, and you
out of it; but that makes little difference. You were in danger of
becoming a dogmatist, but you are too much of a man for that. We both
live to learn, and we can spend ourselves on an adequate object when we
find it."
"Bob, if you don't talk to her like this, she doesn't know you as I do."
"No human being knows another exactly as a third does. We strike fire at
different points--when we do at all, which is seldom--and show different
sides of ourselves to such few as can see at all. She does not care
especially for me: why should she? But she has great penetration--more
than you have, far more than I. She sees my follies and faults as you
don't; she is a sort of a confessor. At present she is a Sunday-school
teacher, and I am her class."
"What _do_ you talk of, all the time?"
"It's not all the time, by any means. That is as she pleases; just now
it may be a good deal. By and by it may be your turn: then you'll know
some things you don't now. There is nothing I say to her which the world
might not overhear, if the world could understand it; and nothing that I
can repeat. Jim, I am done: we are up very late."
"Two things I must say yet, or ask, old man. You would stand by this
girl against the world; and yet you have charged yourself with me. It
may be idle to formulate remote and improbable contingencies, but it is
in our line. Would you take her part against me, and be my enemy--you
who are my only friend?"
"I would stand by her against the world, assuredly. I would stand by you
against all the world but her, I think. You two might quarrel, but
neither of you would be wrong: I know you both, and you don't know each
other. So I take the risk; it is none. When that time comes, neither of
you will find me wanting."
"I believe it. The other thing is this--forgive me if I go too far. Do
you know what even intelligent and charitable people would say of all
this? That it was very queer, very mixed, very dubious."
"They are not our judges, nor we theirs. What would they say of your
theories, and your way of life? To be sure, these concern yourself
alone. So is this inwardly my affair; it binds, it holds no other. Must
a man live in the woods, to form his own ethical code? Here too one may
keep clean hands and a pure heart, and do his own thinking. Life is very
queer, very mixed, very dubious; I take it as it comes. O, I see truth
here and there in your notions of it, though it has done well by me. If
I find in it something unique and precious, shall I thrust that aside,
because the statutes have not provided for such a case? But one thing I
can reject, so that for me it is not: the baser element. Gross
selfishness and vulgar passions are no more in my scheme than in yours:
if their suggestions were to rise, it would be easy to disown them. The
human beasts who let their lower nature rule, the animals who care for
themselves and call it caring for another, are not of our society. O
yes, in common things one must get and keep his own--the body must have
its food; but one's private temple is kept for worship, and owns a
different law. It is not always, nor often, that one can build his
shrine on earth, and enter it every day: when a man has that exceptional
privilege, he must and may keep his standards high enough to fit. You
understand?"
"I do: I am learning. I knew all this in theory, but supposed it ended
there. And your Princess, you think is of our society?"
"No root of nobleness is lacking in her; when the season comes, the
plants will spring and the garden bloom. But we cannot expect to
understand her fully; she is of finer clay than we."
"One thing more, and then I will let you go. There is more of you than I
thought, my boy. In May I knew you had a heart; but one who heard you in
the woods would have set you down just for a kindly, practical man of
the world. Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the
trifler, the incorrigible jester. Why do you belie yourself so and hide
your inmost self from all but me?"
"Because I've got to convert you, old man. It is a poor instrument that
has but a single string; and David's harp of solemn sound would bore me
as much as it would other folks, if I tried to play on it all the time.
How many people would sit out this talk of ours, or read it if we put it
in print? Taken all in all, the light fantastic measure suits me much
better. To see all sides, we must take all tones. The varying moods
within fit the varying facts without; to get at truth we must give each
its turn. But in the main it is best to take Life lightly. Your error
was that you were too serious about it: it's not worth that. Most things
are chiefly fit to laugh at. The highgrand style will do once in a way:
we've worked it too hard now. Let's come down to earth. I wanted to show
you that I could do the legitimate drama as well as you, and yet wear a
tall hat and dress for dinner. See?"
"That's all very well, Bob, but I can discriminate between your
seriousness and your farce. Perhaps it is well to mix them, or to take
them as they are mixed for us. You may be right in that; I'll think it
over. Yes, I can see now that Heraclitus overdoes it, and that I used
to. Well, my lad, you are a queer professor of ethics; but I'm not sure
you've brought me to the wrong school."
XII.
AWAKENING.
The next day Clarice took me off as usual. "Well, have you made any more
blunders?"
"Not one. You have nothing to reproach me with this time, Czarina."
"You kept Mr. Hartman up dreadfully late. What were you talking about so
long?"
"O, he is prepared to find you wonderful, and to come to time whenever
you want him. I told him your wings weren't grown yet: you were the
Sleeping Beauty in the Enchanted Palace; the hour and the man hadn't
arrived. You dwelt in maiden meditation, and the rest of it."
"You did not cheapen me, surely, Robert?"
"God forbid: do I hold you cheap, that I should rate you so to others?
He may tell you every word I said, when you begin to turn him inside
out; there was none of it that you or I need be ashamed of. He knows,
both by his own observation and from my clear and impressive narrative,
that you are remote and inaccessible--the edelweiss growing high up in
its solitude, where only the daring and the elect can find its haunt."
"That is very neat. Did it take you three hours to tell him that? I
heard you come in as it struck two."
"Too bad to disturb your slumbers, Princess: we will take our boots off
outside, next time. Naturally you were the most important topic we could
discuss; but I also explained his advantages in being thrown so much
into my own society. O, he is getting on. He said--"
"I don't want to know what he said. The man is here, and I can see--and
hear, when I choose--for myself. Do you think I would tempt you to
violate what might be a confidence, Robert?"
"But if I repeat to you what I said, why not what he said?--except that
his observations would not be so powerful and suggestive as mine, of
course. Otherwise I don't see the difference."
"Now that is stupid, Bob. The difference is that you belong to me, and
he doesn't--as yet."
I can't tell you how she says these things. If I could put on paper the
tone, the toss of that lovely head, the smile, the sparkle of eyes and
lips, that go with what you might call these little audacities, then you
would know how they not only accent and punctuate the text, but supply
whole commentaries on it. If you get a notion that the Princess is
capable of boldness, or vulgar coquetry, or any of the faults of her sex
or of ours, you are away off the track, and my engineering must have
gone wrong. But I must stop this and get back to my report.
"One thing I must repeat, Princess. I got off a lot of wisdom for Jim's
benefit. You wouldn't think how wise it was; deep principles of human
nature, and rules for the conduct of life, and such. It did him no end
of good: and then he said that if I didn't talk to you that way, you
couldn't know me as well as he does."
"He must know you remarkably well then. Just like a man's conceit. Poor
Bob, who should know you through and through if I don't?--Why don't you
talk to me that way then, and improve me too?"
"As the Scotchwoman said when they asked her if she understood the
sermon, Wad I hae the presumption? When you catch me taking on airs and
trying to improve you, make a note of it. No, no, Princess dear; the
lecturing and improving between us had better remain where they are."
"But, Robert, perhaps I would like to have you vary this continual
incense-burning with snatches of something else."
"I dare say. Do you know, Clarice, sometimes I think I am an awful fool
about you."
"That is what the doctors call a congenital infirmity, my dear. No use
lamenting over what you can't help. Worship me as much as you like; it
keeps you out of mischief. But you might change the tune now and then,
and give me some of your alleged wisdom."
"Shall I becloud that pure and youthful brow with metaphysic fumes?
Should I soil your dainty muslins with the antique dust of folios, and
oil from the midnight lamp? You wait till you take up Hartman; perhaps
you can stand it from him. But if I were to hold forth to you in the
style he prefers, you would get sick of me in twenty minutes. Let it
suffice that my lonely vigils are spent in severe studies and profound
meditations, the fruit whereof, in a somewhat indirect and roundabout
way, may make smooth and safe the path that is traversed by your fairy
feet. In the expressive language of the poet, Be happy; tend thy
flowers; be tended by my blessing."
"I know about your lonely vigils, Bob; they are spent on cigars, and
making up jokes to use next morning. But you are not as bad as usual
to-day. Do you know, I like you better when you are comparatively
serious."
"Then let me be ever thus, my Queen! It is the solemnizing influence of
being so much with you. If you keep it up for another week, you'll have
to send me off to New York to get secularized. I say, Clarice, how long
do you mean to go on in this way? It's all very nice for me, but how
about Hartman? _He's_ not frivolous; he takes Life in awful earnest.
What do you propose to do with him after you've got him--I should say,
after the fatal dart has transfixed his manly form, and he falls pierced
and bleeding at your feet?"
"My dear child, let me tell you a pretty little tale. Once upon a time
there was a friend of mine, who thought a good deal of me, and of whom I
thought more than he knew, poor man--enough to make you jealous,
Bob."--Now who the devil was that, confound him? I never heard of him
before. It must have been that winter she spent in Boston, just after
she came out. That's over five years ago; he's probably dead or married
before this. Well, get on with your pretty little tale: not that I see
much prettiness about it.--"And when I would tease him to tell me some
secret, he would answer, in his own well-chosen language. Some day you
will know: you wait and see. By-by, baby!"--and away she dashed.
My tongue went too fast last night. Her heart _is_ waking; her wings are
sprouting. She must be getting interested in Jim. The hour is at hand,
and the man: the horn at the castle-gate will soon be sounded, and
presto! the transformation scene. That will be a spectacle for gods and
men, now; but no tickets will be sold at the doors--admittance only by
private card, and that to a very select few. I don't want any change in
you, Princess; but I suppose the angels would like to see the depths in
you that you haven't sounded, the fairer and wider chambers of your soul
opened to the light. God grant that light may need no darkness to come
before it, no storm-tossed, doubtful daybreak. If the change is for
your happiness, no matter about us. You are moving toward a land where I
cannot follow you; a land of mystery and wonder and awakening, of new
beauties and glories and perils, and possibilities unknown and
infinite--a journey wherein you can have no guide but your own pure
instincts, no adviser but your own untried heart. God be with you, for
Jane and Mabel can do no more than I. We shall hear no word from you
till all be over, and then the Clarice of old will return to us no more.
Transfigured she may be and beatified, but not the one we knew and loved
so long. Little sister, all these years I have been at your side or
ready at your call, and now you will not call and I cannot come to help
you; for in these matters the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a
stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy. May it be joy and not the
other! God be with them both, for it is a dangerous country where they
are going; a region of mists and pitfalls and morasses, where closest
friends may be rudely severed, and those whom Heaven hath joined be put
asunder by their own most innocent errors--and the finest spirits run
the heaviest risk. Ah well, if I were the Grand Duke of Gerolstein,
maybe things would be better managed in my dominions.
XIII.
DOMESTIC CRITICISMS.
Hartman has made a first-rate impression here. It would please you to
see this stern ascetic, this despiser of Life and Humanity, with two
toddlers on his lap, and Herbert at his knee, all listening open-mouthed
to tales of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The boy thinks that one
who lives in the woods must be a great hunter, and clamors for bears and
wildcats: Jane, in her usual unfeeling way, insists that I put him up to
this. But though I am a family man--and you could not easily find one
more exemplary--I do not propose to drag the nursery into the cold glare
of public comment, or favor you with a chapter on the Management of
Children.
I would like to know why it is that women are so ready to take up with
any chance stranger who comes along, when they cannot see the true
greatness of their own nearest and dearest. Mabel pronounces Hartman a
perfect gentleman and a safe companion for me; as if it were I, not he,
that needed looking after. Jane seems to regard him as the rock which
withstands the tempest, the oak round which the vine may safely cling,
and that sort of thing. He is a good-looking fellow yet, and he has a
stalwart kind of bearing, adapted to deceive persons who do not know him
as well as I do. They would almost side with him against Clarice--but
not quite: in their hearts, they think her perfect.
One evening we were all together in the parlor. The Princess had gone
somewhere with one of her numerous adorers, whom she had failed to bluff
off as she generally does: the young man was going to cast himself into
the sea, I believe, and I told her she had better let him and be done
with it, but she said he had a widowed mother and several sisters, and
ought to live long enough to leave them comfortably provided for; so I
let her go. I was trying to direct the conversation into improving
channels, but the frivolous female mind is too much for me.
"Mr. Hartman," Jane began, "we rely on you to exercise a good influence
upon Robert. He is so light-minded, and so deceitful."
"Yes," Mabel added; "no one can restrain him but Clarice, and she
cannot spend her whole time upon him, she has so much else to do."
"See here," said I; "this is a put-up job: I will have you all indicted
for conspiracy. Have you no proper respect for the head of the house?"
"We would like to," my spouse replied: "we make every effort: but it is
so difficult! Mr. Hartman, he wants to manage every little matter,
particularly those which pertain exclusively to women, and which he
cannot understand at all."
"Yes," said Jane; "would you believe it, Mr. Hartman, he attempted to
instruct us as to the proper manner of receiving you! But that is not
the worst of it. He is utterly unable to keep a secret--not that any one
would entrust him with secrets of the least importance, of course. And
when he thinks he knows something that we do not know, he goes about
looking so solemn that even Herbert can detect him at once. And in such
cases he actually comes to us, and questions us about the matter, with a
view to throwing us off the scent, and keeping dark, as he calls it. Did
you ever hear of such absurdity?"
"Ladies and gentleman," I said with dignity, "would you mind excusing me
for a few moments? I would like to retire to the rocks outside, and
swear a bit."
"Robert!" my wife cried, "I am ashamed of you. What will Mr. Hartman
think of your morals?" You see, they think Jim is a very correct young
man.
"O, I know him of old," he said. "Never mind, Bob, I will stand by you.
Really, you are a little hard on him. He has improved; I assure you he
has. Why, he was quite a cub at college. Your softening influences have
done a great deal for him; everything, in fact."
"It is very nice in you to say so, Mr. Hartman, and very polite, and
very loyal; but I know Robert. Clarice does him a little good: she would
do very much more, if he were not so stiff-necked. He thinks he is a
man, and we are only women."
"Well," I asked, "are you going to dispute that proposition? If so, I
will leave Hartman to argue it out with you."
"Mr. Hartman," said Jane, "he thinks he knows everything, and women are
inferior creatures. O, such a superior being as he is!"
"This is getting monotonous," I remarked. "Suppose, for a change, we
abuse Clarice, as she is not here; that will be pleasanter all round,
and less unconventional. Now that girl does a great deal of harm,
turning the heads of so many foolish young men. She spends more on her
dress than you and I do together, Hartman. What an aim in life for a
rational being! Simply to look pretty, and produce an occasional piece
of perfectly idle and useless embroidery: tidies even, now and
then--just think of it! Of all the--"
My wife stopped me here, and I was glad of it, for I really did not know
what to say next.