only want your sympathy."
"You have it, Clarice; you have it most fully. Come rest on this bosom,
my own stricken dear--"
"I don't want to rest on your bosom, Bob; your shoulder is big enough.
Have you got your best coat on?"
"Well, no; this is not the one I wore at dinner. But I will go to the
house and get my clawhammer if you wish."
"No, no. I only want to cry a little."
"You would be perfectly welcome to cry on my best coat every day of the
week, Princess, and I would get a new one as often as it might be
needed. I don't wish to make capital out of your grief, my dear; I would
rather never get a kind word from you than have you suffer. But often it
seems as if you didn't care for anybody, you are so high and mighty and
offish; and O doth not an hour like this make amends--"
"Drop that, Bob. Don't try to be sentimental: you always get the lines
wrong. I've not been here an hour. O, were you joking? You are no more
in the humor for jokes than I am, and you know it. Do keep quiet."
I did: I 'dropped it.' Clarice will use slang at times, it is one of
her few faults. Where she learns it, I cannot conceive. It is
unfeminine, and out of keeping with her whole character; in any one else
I should call it vulgar. But I saw she did not wish to be disturbed just
then, so I said no more. Instead, I thought of my guilty secret--her
secret. It weighs on me heavily; but I can't tell her what I saw and
heard. I don't know how she would take it; and I don't care to be
exploding any dynamite bombs about my own premises. The situation is bad
enough as it is; I'll not make it worse. Poor Clarice! poor Hartman! And
yet you can't meddle with such high-strung folks. By and by she spoke.
"Bob, do you know why I come to you, instead of to Jane or Mabel?"
I was on the point of quoting Jane's valuable idea about my being a man,
but refrained.
"I could not ask any woman for what you give me. And you are half a
woman, Bob; you are so patient and loyal. Nobody else would be that."
"But Mabel and Jane love you too, dear. They would do anything for you."
"Yes, but that is more on equal terms. I am so exacting; I want so much,
and give so little. I suppose I was born so; and you have spoiled
me--all of you. O, I know I have treated you badly, Robert, often;
generally, in fact. I am proud and hateful, and you never resent it.
Only a man can be like that--to a woman: and very few men would be so.
You are not like other men, Bob: there is nobody like you. You are such
a useful domestic animal."
Perhaps I was getting unduly exalted when she let me down thus. I wish
Clarice at least would be less mixed--more continuous and consistent, so
to speak--when she sets forth my virtues. But one must take the Princess
as he finds her, and be content with any crumbs of approval she may
drop. Sometimes I think I am a fool about her; but when she talks as
she does to-night, I know I am not. There may be more amiable women, and
plenty more even-tempered; but there is only one Clarice. I may have
made that remark before, but it will bear repeating. It is not of me she
is thinking all this time: how should it be? O Hartman, Hartman, if you
could know what I know, and see what is before you!
Presently she spoke again. "Robert, why don't you ask me what I have
done? I know you are dying of curiosity."
"I can restrain my curiosity, rather than pry into your affairs, dear.
When you see fit, you will tell me. But if you wish it, I will ask you."
"No, it would be of no use. I can't tell you now; perhaps never. Robert,
where did you learn to respect a woman so?"
"Jane says I will never learn it. But I do respect you, Princess."
"That must have been when you had vexed her with some of your blunders:
you do make blunders, you know? But, Bob, do you know why I love you?"
This moved me so that I had to put myself on guard. She never said so
much as that before: it is not her way to talk about feelings or profess
much affection for anybody.
"I suppose because we were brought up together, and you are used to me.
And, as you say, I am a useful domestic animal. If I can be useful to
you, I am proud and thankful. I think more of you than I could easily
say: it is very good of you to give me some small return."
"It is because you have a heart, Robert. They may say what they please
of your head, but you have a great big heart."
Now was ever the superior male intellect thus disparaged? She must have
got this notion from Jane; but I can't quarrel with her now.
"Men are great clumsy things, as you said, dear: we have not your tact,
nor your delicate roundabout methods. You are right, I do make blunders;
I feel my deficiencies when I am with you. But if my head, such as it
is, or my heart, or my hand, can ever serve you, they will be ready."
"Suppose I were to leave you, and go out of your life?"
"You could not go out of my life, though you might go far away. I should
be sorry, but I have no right to hold you. But if you ever wanted me, I
should always be here."
"Suppose I did something wrong and foolish?"
"I don't want to suppose that, but if I must--it would not be for me to
judge you, as you told me once. You might do something that did not
accurately represent your mind and character: since I know them, the
action would be merely a mistake, a transient incongruity. I don't
change easily: I have known you from your cradle. And if it was ever
possible for me to fail you, it is not possible after to-night."
"You are very fond of Mr. Hartman, Robert. What if I quarreled with him?
Would you take my part against him?"
"I would take your part against the world, Clarice. But he is not of the
world. A sad and lonely man, burdened with an inverted conscience and
quixotic fancies that turn the waters into blood, who has come for once
out of his hermitage to catch a glimpse of the light that never was on
sea or land, and then to see it turn into darkness for him. I fear he is
sadder and lonelier now than when I brought him from the woods: but I
would stake my soul on his honor, as I would on yours. You cannot force
me into such a dilemma."
A heavenly glow was on her face now, as she looked long at the stars,
and then at me. "Why are you eloquent only when you speak of him,
brother?"
"You say I have a heart, Clarice: it is eloquent when I think of you.
Shall a stranger be more sacred to me than my sister?--and I don't mean
Jane. You would be sacred to a better man than I, dear, if he knew you
as I do: you may be so already, for what I can tell. He _could_ not mean
to sin against you, Princess. If he seemed to fail in respect, or
courtesy, or anything that was your due, forgive him, and don't banish
him forever. I trusted that you would have enlightened and converted and
consoled him: he is worth it."
I longed to say more, but this was as far as I dared go. She sighed.
"Perhaps I need to be converted and consoled myself. But that is
ungrateful; with such a comforter at hand I ought not to be miserable.
We never knew each other like this before, Robert. Why is it?"
"I don't know, Clarice--or rather I do, of course. It takes the moon,
and stars, and a common trouble, to bring people together, even when
they see each other every day; and then concurring moods must help. One
stands in awe of you, Princess; I always shall. You only tolerated me
when you were happy: I was rough, and careless, and stupid, and made bad
jokes in the wrong places. I will try to do better after this, so that
you need not be repelled when you want me. Hartman, now, is of finer
mould than I: if you would let him come back--"
"No more of that now, dear. Let us go in. The moon is going down: it is
getting cold and dark." So it was; and damp too--on my shoulder at
least. "I am glad you had your old coat on," she said.
Mabel was alone in the parlor. "Well," she began; then she saw our
faces, and modified her tone. "The moonlight was very fine, I suppose?"
"You know you never will go out in the evening," said Clarice. "It is
later than I thought. Don't scold Robert; he has been a dear good boy."
She kissed her, and went upstairs.
"Mabel," said I, "Clarice is in trouble." I had to say something, and
this was perfectly safe. You see, she had told me nothing, and so I
could say if asked. But I wasn't.
"I know that, of course, Robert: I have seen it all along. She is a dear
girl, for all her flightiness. She will say nothing to me. I hope it
will come right. If you can help or comfort her, I shall be glad." Then
she too went to bed.
It is unusual for Mabel to be surprised into such candor. I got a cigar,
and went out on the porch to meditate. Jane thought that Clarice would
tell me things. Yes, I have got a lot of information. Let me see, I am a
useful domestic animal, and I have a big heart: that's about the size of
it. At this rate, I can soon write a Cyclopaedia. Well, cold facts are
not all there is in life: there are some things the Cyclopaedias fail to
tell us about. I don't regard the last few hours as altogether wasted.
After this the Princess and I did not talk much: there seemed to be no
need of it. But she was a new and revised edition of the old Clarice,
wonderfully sweet, and gracious, and equable; and her look when we met
was like the benediction in answer to prayer, as Longfellow says. I went
about with a solemn feeling, as if I had just joined the Church. What
does a fellow want with slang, and pipes, and beer, and cheating other
fellows on the street, when he has such entertainments at home? And yet
it cuts me to the soul to look at her: I _must_ do something to bring
them together. Pretty soon we went back to New York.
XVIII.
AGAINST EARNESTNESS.
Jane, and even Mabel, have the idea that I am of light and shallow
nature; and sometimes I think they are right. It must be so; for your
profound and serious characters have a weakness for sorrow, and
luxuriate in woe--whereas I object to trouble of any kind, and cannot
get used to it. The house has been like a rural cemetery for near two
months, and it simply bores me. Hartman now prefers to dwell among the
tombs: he has lived these ten years in a graveyard, so to speak, under a
canopy of funereal gloom, and he thrives on it. He and Clarice are the
most superior persons I know; and they have gone and got themselves into
a peck, or rather several bushels, of trouble, about nothing at all.
They must like it, or why should they do it? I doubt if I can ever be
educated up to that point. I have the rude and simple tastes of a child:
sunshine seems to me better than shade (except during the heated term),
and pleasure more desirable than pain. I like to be comfortable myself,
and to have every one else so. Imagine Mabel getting miffed at me, or I
at her, over some little two-penny affair of unadvised expressions! She
often says unkind things to me: if I took an earnest view of life, and
were full of deep thought and fine feeling, probably I should have to
take her criticisms to heart, and go away in a hurry and never come
back. I sometimes make blunders worse than that one of Hartman's, and no
harm worth mentioning ever comes of them--though I do have to be careful
with the Princess. No doubt I am frivolous and superficial; but people
of my sort appear to get along more easily, and to make less trouble for
themselves and others, than those whose standards are so much higher.
If I had the managing of this business, I could set it right inside a
week--or in two days, if Jim were not so far away. It is merely to say
to him, "Your language was unparliamentary. It is not etiquette to
assume that a lady cares for you when you have not asked her to. You
have no right to resent her resenting such unconventional behavior. You
owe her an apology: go and make it like a man, and withdraw the
offensive epithet, term, phrase, clause, or sentence, which ever it
might be." Then I would say to her, "He meant no harm. How do you expect
a member from Wayback to be posted on all the usages of metropolitan
society? You ought not to have come down on him so hard. Let the man say
he is sorry, and forgive him. You were mainly to blame yourself; but
seeing it is you, we'll pass that." Then I would stand over them like
the heavy father in the plays, and say, "You love each other. Take her,
Jim: take him, Clarice. Bless you, my children." That is the way it
ought to be done, and that is the way I would fix it if it concerned
common every-day people like myself, with no pretence to qualities
higher than practicability and common sense--supposing such people could
have got into such a mess, which I own is improbable. A method that
would answer for them is not so easily applied to these superfine
specimens, who have taken such pains to build themselves a private
Purgatory, and keep it going on a limited supply of fuel. They might
resent intrusion on their agreeable demesne, and put up a board with 'No
Trespassing' on it; but then they ought to keep the place fenced in
better: as it is, the smoke and heat spread too much. They might say,
'If we enjoy our misery, what right have the rest of you to interfere?'
Yes, but what right have they to rope in the rest of us, who are not so
addicted to the luxury of grief, and make us miserable too? That's what
it comes to. 'Each man's life is all men's lesson,' and each woman's
too. Now if our high-toned friends had kept this particular part of
their lives in manuscript, and not supplied us with copies, but reserved
it for spelling out in secret at their own leisure, the case would be
different. As it stands, this embroglio is a lesson which I have got by
heart and am tired of: I would like to set it aside and turn to
something more cheerful. Moreover, as the head of a family I have duties
in the matter, for it affects us all. I don't mind so much about Jane:
she thinks this is a XX. romance, which the parties chiefly concerned
are conducting in the most approved manner; if she had one of her own, I
suppose this would be her style--her idea of how the thing should be
done.[1] It is not mine, however; far from it. Shall I sit passive, and
see the clouds of care growing heavier about the wife of my bosom, and
the furrows deepening in that once marble brow? She looks two years
older than she did two months ago, and she owns it. I have three lovely
children: how brief a space it is since they played in the abandonment
of infant glee! And now their young existence, too, is darkened. Herbert
no longer slides down the banisters, with his former recklessness, but
sits and looks wistfully at Cousin Clarice. The change involves a saving
in lint and arnica, but a loss of muscular development. You see, we are
all of the sympathetic--which is the expensive--temperament: we have not
sense enough to be content each with his or her own personal affairs,
and let the others arrange their private funerals at their own charge.
There is more truth than I thought in part of what I told Hartman, that
night on the boat.
This thing must stop. I will have to ask the Princess if she wants our
humble abode to be a house of mourning much longer. We might accommodate
her in that respect for another month or two, but not permanently.
Lovers are so selfish: they don't care if they upset all your domestic
arrangements, and spoil your harmonies with the discord of their sweet
bells jangled. It ought not to be encouraged, nor yet allowed.
[Footnote 1: I was wholly mistaken in this, as will appear by the next
chapter. _R. T._]
XIX.
CONSPIRACY.
The summer has not done for any of us what it ought; quite the reverse.
Even I am not in my usual form, if Mabel and Jane are right. They had
let me alone for some time: last night they attacked me together--a
preconcerted movement, obviously.
"Robert, you are pale, almost haggard. You need a change."
"Why," said I, "I've just had a change--or rather several of them. We've
been back only three weeks."
"You need mountain air: the sea does not agree with you. And Newport is
not what it used to be."
"It's a good deal more so, if you mean that; but I don't know that its
increased muchness has damaged my health to any great extent."
"You prefer small, remote places, and their way of life; you know you
do. They are more of a change from town. You bought the house at Newport
for our sakes. I have often feared you were sacrificing yourself to
us--with your usual disinterestedness, dear."
"Well, my usual disinterestedness is ready to be worked again, to any
reasonable extent, if you will say what you're after. But how can I
leave the business now?"
"O, the business!" (It was Jane this time.) "That is all very fine, when
you don't want to leave town. But I notice that the business never
interferes with any of your junketings. What are your clerks paid for?
Can't they attend to the business?"
"A fine idea you women have of business, and a fine success you'd make
of it. Jane, suppose you take charge in Water Street while I am away."
"I don't doubt I could do it quite as well as you, after a little
practice. Why, brother, Mr. Pipeline understands it a great deal better
than you do. Our father, in his later years, trusted him entirely."
"Yes, Robert," said Mabel, "and how often you have assured me that Mr.
Pipeline was absolutely competent and reliable. When we were married,
and a hundred times since, you explained your carelessness and
indifference about the business by saying that all was right while old
Mr. Pipeline was there: he knew everything, and kept the whole force to
their work. It was that, you said, which enabled you to be so much more
about the house than most men could be, and so attentive and
satisfactory as a husband and father."
She had me there: who would expect a woman to remember things and bring
them up in this way, so long after? So I tried to turn it off.
"O, well, he hasn't gone to Canada yet: the books seem straight, and the
returns are pretty fair. But it is well for the head of the firm to look
in occasionally, all the same."
"You do look in occasionally, Robert: no one can accuse you of
neglecting that duty. Would I have married a man who neglected duty, and
allowed his business to go to ruin, and his family to come to want? Your
conscience may rest perfectly easy on that score, dear."
"O, thank you: it does. I've not often allowed the state of the oil
market to interfere with sleep or appetite, or with my appreciation of
you and the children. Family duties first, my dear; what so sacred, so
primary, as the ties of Home? But such virtue is not always duly prized
there. I'm glad you do me justice."
"I always have, Robert; always. Whatever Jane and others might say about
your levity and your untimely jests and so forth, I have steadily
maintained that you had a good heart."
"There, Jane, do you hear that? Mabel knows, for she is in a position to
know."
"Of course, brother, we are all aware of that. If you had not that one
redeeming trait, I should have left you long ago, even if I had had to
get married. You admire Artemus Ward: he had a giant mind, you
recollect, but not always about him. So with your good heart at times.
But we are wandering from the point. Mabel, you were showing him how he
could go away for a week or two without neglecting his important duties
down town."
"Why yes, Robert. You have been here three weeks now, and I am sure you
have been at the store nearly every day. Indeed, when you were not at
home, or at the club, or somewhere about town, I doubt not you might be
found in Water Street a good part of the time."
"Yes," I said with an air of virtuous complacency, "I believe you are
right. I can't deny it, though it may help your side of the argument."
"Well then, you can surely be spared during a brief absence. And when
you return, you can continue to look in occasionally, as you say."
"Perhaps I could, though it is not well to be too positive. Where do you
think I ought to go?"
"Well, you are fond of fishing and hunting. You might go up and spend a
week with Mr. Hartman. You found good sport there, you said."
"O yes, there are trout enough, and deer not far off, he told me. But I
was there in May. And it is not very comfortable at Hodge's, if you
remember."
"But of course this time you would stay with Mr. Hartman. You refused
his invitation before, and it was hardly civil to such an old friend."
"He has a mere bachelor box, my dear, and I hardly like to thrust myself
on him."
"Why, Robert, I am surprised at you. After Mr. Hartman spent a fortnight
with us at Newport--and when he has written you twice, urging you to
come. Can't you see that the poor man is lonely, and really wants you?"
"Mabel, it would be all very well if it were like last May--only he and
I to be considered. But here is that blessed entanglement of his with
Clarice--quarrel, or love-making nipped in the bud, or whatever it
was--that complicates matters. After all the lectures I've had from you
two, I don't want to complicate them any more, nor to meddle in her
affairs, nor appear to. Suppose I go up there, and he wants news of her,
and anything goes wrong, or it simply doesn't come right as you expect;
I'd have your reproaches to bear ever after, and perhaps those of my own
conscience. You're not sending me off simply for my health, or for a
little fishing. If I go to Hartman, the sport will not be the main item
on the programme; and that every one of us knows perfectly well. So I
don't move till I see my way straight."
Finding me thus unexpectedly firm, Jane looked at Mabel, and Mabel
looked at Jane, and there was a pause. You see, in this last deliverance
I had uttered my real mind--or part of it--and it naturally impressed
them.
My sister's share in the discussion had thus far been confined to the
few efforts at sarcasm duly credited to her above--let no one say that I
am unjust to Jane. She had been watching me pretty closely, but I hardly
think she saw anything she was not meant to see. Now she came to the
front, looking very serious--as we all did, in fact.
"Well, brother, some things are better understood than spoken--from our
point of view. But if you insist on having all in plain words, and
playing, as you call it, with cards on the table--"
"Just so," said I. "You use your feminine tools: I use mine, which are a
man's. If I have to do this piece of work, it must be on my own
conditions and after my own fashion, with the least risk of
misunderstanding."
"Robert, if this is affectation, you are a better actor than I thought.
But if you really know no more than we do--"
This was too much for Mabel. "Now, Jane, you go too far. Robert likes
his little joke, but he knows when to be serious. Why do you suspect him
so?"
Jane went on. "Of course it is possible he may be no deeper in Clarice's
confidence than we: she is very reticent. You mean, brother, that you
will do nothing till she authorizes you?"
"Well, as I said, this is her affair. For you, or me, or anybody else,
to meddle in it without her direction, or permission--unless in case of
obvious extremity--would seem, by all rules alike ethical and
prudential, a delicate and doubtful proceeding, to say the least."
"I suppose you are right there. Mabel, you may as well tell him. Robert,
don't think, from all this preamble, that it is of more importance than
it would otherwise seem. Perhaps we might as well have told you at once;
but we are only women, you know. Now at last we are using your
tools--the tools you always use with such manly consistency--candor and
open speech. Tell him, Mabel."
"Robert dear, Clarice told me to-day that you were looking badly; she
thought you needed a change. 'Is he not going off for his fall fishing?'
she said."
"Is that all?"
"It is a good deal for her," said Jane. "If you want more, ask her. Are
you less concerned for her happiness than we are? Must we arrange all
the preliminaries? Brother, if _I_ could do anything, no fear of
consequences or reproaches should tie my hands: I would do what is
right, and take the chances. If I stood where you do, I would have this
matter settled, or know why it could not be. I would never sit idle, and
see two such lives spoiled--and all our hearts broken. O, I know you
love them both. But you are so cautious--unnecessarily and absurdly so
at times, and wedded to useless diplomacy, when only the plain speech
you talk about is needed. You stand in awe of Clarice too much: you may
wait too long. Forgive me, Robert; but whatever she may say, you _must_
see Mr. Hartman before winter."