contain an element of truth. There is more in her than I have supposed;
and of course what she insists on is exactly what I have all along meant
to do. But it did not come in handy to say so at this point. "I'll think
it over. You two had better go to bed: I must go out and smoke."
"Robert," said Mabel, "don't go out to-night. You can smoke in the
dining-room."
"No; I'll not take a base advantage of your present amiable mood. But I
tell you what it is; if you want to get Hartman here in cold weather you
must let us have a snuggery. He can't do without his tobacco."
It was a fine night, and I wanted a walk as well as a smoke. I felt
gratified, for this thing had gone just as I desired. I am not quite so
impulsive as Jane, and I understand the difficulties as she does not;
but my plan has merely waited for events to give it definite shape and
make it feasible. Certainly I must see Hartman, and as he can't come
here, I must go there. But I wanted the women to suggest my going; that
divides the responsibility, and gives them a hand in the game. I would
have had to propose it myself within a week or so, if they had not
spoken. But the Princess knows what she is about, and what is fit and
proper. It may seem strange that she should speak to Mabel instead of to
me; but she will say what she has to say to me before I start. In fact,
I'll not start till she does--how could I? It is her business I am going
on, with just enough of my own to give it a color. I'll write to Jim at
once, to ask when he wants me: the mails are slow up there, and it may
be a week before his answer comes. That will give me time to get my
instructions, and not be in any unseemly haste to seek them either. So
far, so good; but there is more to be done, and delicate work too, such
as will bear no scamping. It is the biggest contract you ever undertook,
R. T., and you must make a neat job of it.
XX.
APOLOGY FOR LYING.
If you do not understand my waiting for Mabel and the girls to prompt
this move, and allowing them to urge it against my apparent reluctance,
I ascribe this failure on your part to lack of experience, rather than
to any deeper deficiency. Some men like to make a parade of
independence, and to do--or pretend to do--everything of themselves,
without consulting or considering their womankind. But such are not the
sort I choose my friends from; for I have been accustomed to regard both
brain and heart as desirable appurtenances to a man. There is little
Bruteling, at the club, who would like to be considered a man of the
world--but I can't waste space or time on him. And I have met family men
even--but I don't meet them more than once if I can help it--who regard
their wives and sisters as playthings, dolls, upper-class servants, not
to be trusted, taken into their confidence, or treated with any real
respect. Such heresies have no place under a Christian civilization,
which has exalted Woman to her true rank as the equal and helpmeet of
Man, the object of his tenderest affections and most loyal services. It
is in his domestic life that one's true character is shown; and Home is
not only the dearest place on earth to me and to every one whose head is
level, but the stage on which his talents and qualities are best brought
out.
You think that I don't practice what I preach; that I introduce within
those sacred precincts too much of play-acting and small diplomacy, as
Jane says; that even at this moment my thoughts and intentions in a
matter which concerns us all are imperfectly revealed to my nearest and
dearest? Ah, that is owing to the difference between the sexes, and to
the singular lines on which the Sex was constructed, mentally speaking.
I don't wish to criticize the Architect's plans, but it seems to me I
could suggest improvements which might have simplified relations, and
avoided much embarrassment. The difficulty is that women, as a rule, can
neither use nor appreciate Frankness. Just after I was married, I
thought it was only the fair thing to tell Mabel about several girls I
had been sweet on before I knew her. Would you believe it, she burst
into tears, and upbraided me with my brutality; and she brings up that
ill-advised disclosure against me to this day. I know several ladies who
will not lie, under ordinary circumstances--not for the mere pleasure of
it, at least; Clarice, for instance, and Jane, I believe; but not one
who will tell the whole truth, or forgive you for telling it. Well,
well, we have to take them as they are, and make the best of them: they
have other redeeming traits, as Jane says of me. In heaven these
inequalities will be done away, and one can afford to speak out--at
least I hope so. But meantime you can see how these feminine
peculiarities hamper a man, and check his natural candor, and impose on
him a wholly new, or at least a hugely modified, ethical code. If I were
to follow my original bent, which was uncommonly direct and guileless, I
should be in hot water all the time. It is this struggle between nature
and--well, I can hardly call it grace; let us say necessity, or
environment--which is making me bald, and fat, and aging me so fast. You
have seen, in the course of this narrative, what scrapes I have gotten
into by speaking before I stopped to think, and blurting out the simple
truth. I was once as honest as they are ever made--and for practical and
domestic uses nearly an idiot. I have been obliged, actually forced, to
deny myself the indulgence of a virtue, and diligently to cultivate the
opposite vice. The preachers don't know everything: I could give them
points. I don't say I have succeeded remarkably, and the exercise has
been deeply painful to me; but it was absolutely essential, if I was to
be fit for the family circle, and able to do or get any good in this
imperfect world. There is no escape, unless you live in a hermitage like
Hartman. You may have noticed that my loved ones sometimes appear to
treat me with less than absolute respect and confidence: it is the
result of this life-conflict, which has left me with a character mixed,
and in one respect wrecked. But they would think much worse of me than
they do if I told them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, on all occasions. Thus I might--and then again I might not--go to
our poor Princess, and say, "Clarice, Mabel and Jane think I ought to
see Hartman. I think so too, and they report you as concurring in the
verdict. This is delicately put under cover of my health and the fall
fishing; but we all know that you and Jim want looking after more than I
do, and that bigger game than trout is to be caught. Tell me what you
want me to say to him and do with him, and I will start at once." Some
women might stand that, possibly, but not the ones I am used to: such
would be eminently the way not to attain my benevolent end. No, no; you
can do nothing in such cases without finesse, as Jim calls it, and
strategy, and tact, and management; and if you have not these gifts by
nature, you must acquire them, whatever they may cost. I still hold to
my principles; but I don't propose to run them into the ground. In
morality, as elsewhere, a little too much is apt to be worse than much
too little; and theory and practice are very different things, not to be
rashly confounded. You want to hold the right theories, and then to live
as near them as depraved mundane conditions will allow. The manly
weapons of which Jane spoke so scornfully last night are the right
ones--when you can use them. In the case in hand, to tell all I know
would have been at any time, and would still be, impossible and ruinous.
Hartman is not so far out on some points: as he says, we did not arrange
the present scheme of things, and could not be proud of it if we had.
You may say, and I could not deny, that my diplomacy, such as it is, is
not always employed for the benefit of women only. Hartman is a luminous
and transparent soul--too much so for his own good: why did I practise
occasionally on him? I can explain that best on general principles.
In a world a majority of whose inhabitants are female, demoralization
has naturally extended far and wide, till strict veracity has become
unpractical. The first falsehood (after the serpent's) must have been
humiliating to him who uttered it, and a fatal example to those who
heard; but mankind soon grew used to the new fashion. I pass over the
rude barbarian ages, whose gross and inartistic lying offers no claim to
respectful and sympathetic interest, and no excuse but the lame one of
selfish depravity, common to the race. But with the inroads of
civilization Life became complex, and Truth was found too simple and
rigid to fit with all its varied intricacies. That is, when Truth _is_
simple. "Don't you think my baby beautiful?" demands a fond parent. "No,
I don't: far from it." That is the truth; but its naked and repulsive
brutality demands to be clothed with the garb of humane and graceful
fiction. "Prisoner at the bar, are you guilty or not guilty?" He is
guilty, of course; but if he says so, it is a dead give-away. In this
case indeed the interests of Truth are one with those of Society, though
not of the prisoner; but often it is different. The basis of ethics, our
moralists say, is as largely utilitarian as it is ideal. If so, is there
any special sacredness about cold facts, that they should get up on end
and demand to be published everywhere continually? Truth ought to be
modest, and not claim all the observances and honors, seeing there are
so many other deities whom we poor mortals are no less bound to worship.
When Grotius' wife lied to the policeman about her husband's
whereabouts, the lie was an act of piety, whereas truthtelling would
have been murderous infidelity. If the minions of the law were after me,
would I thank Mabel and Jane and Herbert for telling them which way I
had gone? There is no more aggravated nuisance than he who insists on
exposing all he knows at all times and places--as I used to do before I
learned these tricks. Look at poor Hartman, ejecting his honest
backwoods thought without asking whether it was a wise and decent
offering to his small but highly select audience; and see what trouble
he has brought on himself and all of us thereby.
This outspokenness is often mere self-indulgence. Take me, for instance:
to this day, in spite of all the lessons I have had, it is far easier
and pleasanter for me to tell the truth than not. People of this
temperament must learn to put a check on nature. Self-indulgence is
bad, all agree, and self-denial useful and necessary. This is the way
virtues clash and collide. I say, confound such a world. What is a plain
man to do in it? As the poet sings, the _Summum Bonum_ belongs in
heaven, and you can't expect to get at it here, but must simply do the
best you can, which is generally not very good. And then, as another
poet puts it, very likely nobody will appreciate your efforts, but you
will get cuffed for them: we are punished for our purest deeds, and so
forth.--But this is trenching on Hartman's province. It is well that I
should think all this out now: I can talk it over with him before we get
to business. He will want sympathy with his notions about the depravity
of things in general, and that will smooth the way, and make him willing
to open up on the specific woe that lies nearest.
To return to our muttons. The guilt of duplicity has lain heavy on my
conscience for two months, but how can I help it? I don't so much mind
keeping what I know from Mabel and Jane, for it is not their affair. But
it is Clarice's affair--most eminently so--and I had promised solemnly
to tell her at once when I knew or thought of anything that concerned
her. It was obviously impossible to keep my promise in this case--not on
my account, but on hers. It will not be easy to tell even Jim that I
overheard their last colloquy, and witnessed the tragical parting scene:
I'll have to watch my opportunities, and spring that on him just at the
right moment, when it will have the best effect. Now any one who knows
Clarice must see that to tell her this would be to take the most awful
risks, and probably to destroy all chance of reconciling them; that is
level to the meanest apprehension, I judge. No sir: it can't be done
till I have seen Jim, and got things in train. Properly handled, the
secret--that is, my possession of it, which is a second secret, almost
as weighty as the original one--may be a tool to manage both these
intractable subjects with, and bring them to terms: in a fool's hands,
and thrown about promiscuously, it would be an infernal machine to blow
us up. No: I'll take whatever guilt there is, rather than hurt Clarice
now and hereafter. Do you want to know my opinion of a man who is always
and only thinking about keeping his hands clean and his conscience at
peace, so that he can't do a little lying--or it might be other
sinning--on adequate occasion, to serve his friends or a good cause? I
think he is a cad, sir--a low-minded cad; and of such is not the kingdom
of heaven. It may not occur every day: it might not do to insert in the
text-books as a rule; but once in a while there may be better businesses
than saving one's soul and keeping one's conscience void of offense.[2]
I am arguing against my own nature in all this. In my heart I love Truth
above all things, and follow and serve her with a devotion that is
probably exaggerated. But I can't help seeing that there are two kinds
of her. When she is simple and obvious, she seems to reside in bare
facts, which we may easily respect too much, for what are they but
blackguard carnalities? Preraphaelitism in art, Realism in literature,
might be all very well if they would keep their place--which is in the
kitchen. Some may want pots and pans, and scullions, and pigs' feet, and
ribs of beef described. I don't myself; but it is a free country, and
vivid and accurate portraiture of these delicacies may constitute the
main charm of literature for some readers, possibly. But Realism wants
to take its pots and pans into the parlor: it always overdoes things. "A
daisy by the river's brim a yellow daisy was to him, and it was nothing
more." Well, what else should it be?--But perhaps I have not got that
right. Pass on to our next head.
Truth is not always simple--by no means always. Often she is highly
complex, and as much mixed as I was just now; and then you don't know
where she is, or what she is, and it gets to be all guesswork. One says,
Here, and another says, There: the philosophers upset each other's
schemes in turn, the theologians hurl reciprocal excommunications, the
scientists of to-day laugh at those of last year. If Pilate meant it
this way, we owe him some sympathy and respect. "Speak the truth and
shame the devil," they say. Bah! [I think this expletive ought to be
spelt _Baa_.] When you know what the truth is, you are more likely to
shame your friends, and become obnoxious and ridiculous. And in most
cases you don't know, and if you suppose you do, you are mistaken. I
have thought out a way of approximating Truth on a large scale, and more
nearly than most succeed in doing; but this is a big topic, and I had
better keep it to entertain Hartman with.
O yes; I was to explain why I sometimes use roundabout methods even with
him. If you tell all you know to everyone you meet, or disclose your
real character, it will generally be a waste of good material which
might better be economized. By the way, what _is_ my real character? How
should I know? One sees one side of it, another another. I see all that
have turned up yet, but there may be many more, thus far latent; and how
am I to harmonize them all, and take the average of a succession of
phenomena? I am complex, like Truth.
But I must not interrupt myself any more. Let us fall back on the
utilitarian basis of ethics. You see, if I had talked like this to Jim
when we met last May, he would have put himself on guard and begun to
study me, whereas I wanted to draw him out--as I did. I have no
objection to people studying me when I don't care to study them; but
when there is anything to be done for them you have got to understand
them first, and to this end it is best to appear simple and not distract
their minds from the contemplation and disclosure of their own
qualities: you can play on their vanity if your own does not stand in
the road. Hartman has a fine mind, but in his innocent rural way he took
for granted that I had stood still since we were together at college. So
I played to his lead, and pretended, for instance, to know nothing about
poetry; whereas, as you must have noticed, I am pretty well read, and my
memory is remarkably copious and accurate. (Clarice did indeed say that
I sometimes got the lines wrong; but what she meant was that the
passages I quoted in my well-meant efforts to console her were of too
gay a character for her melancholy mood.)
In this way I secured Jim's regard and confidence, which I am using for
his good: if I had put myself forward, and been anxious to impress him
with my importance, he might have looked on me with the cynical
indifference which is all the feeling he can afford to most people, and
I should never have got him out of the woods. So when I was taking him
to Newport, I said what it was desirable to say, and omitted what was
not: how else should a rational man talk? And that first night there, I
took the tone that he required, as a host is bound to do: sacred are the
duties of christian hospitality. Poor Jim is as good as a play; he takes
Life in such dead earnest, and expects his friends to be rampant
idealists too: so I mounted the high horse for once to gratify him. He
will never forget that, nor cease to respect me accordingly: he thinks I
was serious then, and joking at all other times. You and I of course
understand that Life is but a series of appearances; and if I seem to
contradict myself, to say one thing on one page and its opposite on the
next, I am only reporting the various phases assumed by facts without
and moods within. 'The shield is gold.' 'No, it is silver.' Well, shall
we fight about that? Probably it is both. A thing may be black in one
light, and white in another, for what I know. Of all fools the positive
philosophers seem to me the worst; and the most abject kind of conceit
is that of alleged consistency. Why will you insist on a definiteness
which has so little place in nature? The world is a chameleon, and you
and I are smaller copies of it.
I must try to explain all this to Hartman, and make him see that it is
time he took on another color. He has been down in the depths all this
while; now let him get up on the heights. But he would never do it of
himself, nor without the management of a more practical mind. If I took
things as he does, I should be tempted to say, "You monumental idiot, to
fling a rash word at a girl as proud as Lucifer, and then to take her
hasty repartee as a final verdict from doomsday book!" Happily there is
one person around with sense enough to see that both these moon-struck
babes are forgivable, and therefore capable of such bliss as may be
found in a world of which the best to be said is that we are in very
small measure responsible for it. They were both foolish, of course; but
what proportion does their joint offence bear to their punishment--and
ours? That is the Order of Things--this blessed and beautiful Kosmos.
[Footnote 2: The unwary reader may possibly need to be reminded that R.
T. is not to be taken too seriously, especially in this his Apology for
Lying.--_Pub._]
XXI.
JANE TO THE RESCUE.
It may seem unfeeling in me to indulge in dissertations like the above
at so critical a juncture: but they serve to fill the time while I am
waiting for marching orders. I have written to Jim, and that is all I
can do at present. Jane thinks differently: she ought to have been a
man, she is so fond of action. She got me in a corner to-day.
"Well, brother?"
"Well, Jane?"
"What have you done?"
"Done? what should I do?"
"Use a man's tools, that you are so fond of; plain speech, if no more.
Have you spoken to Clarice yet?"
"No: why should I speak to her? She spoke to Mabel, not to me."
"Robert, are you ever sincere in anything? When _I_ profess affection
for people, I am ready to serve them at their need."
"So am I, and Clarice knows it. She is perfectly aware that I am ready
to do this thing, or any other thing within my power, for her at any
time. It is easy for her to say what she wants."
"Brother, you are _so_ stupid! Don't you know that it is excessively
difficult for her to allude, however remotely, to a matter like this?
Say what she wants, she would die first. Do you desire to wait for that?
She is not like the rest of us; and a woman is not like a man. _You_
could talk for a week, and turn your whole mind inside out, with no
fatigue--except to your audience; but the faintest reference to what I
need not name would cost her a painful effort. I told you it was a great
thing for her to say what she did to Mabel. That ought to have been
enough for you."
"How could it be enough? Do try to talk sense now, Jane. How can I go
off blindly on a fool's errand--in her interest, but without commission
or instructions?"
"Ask her for them, then. It is ungenerous to put on her the burden of
opening the subject. She is doubtless waiting for you to speak, and
wondering at your slackness."
"Hanged if I can understand that. How many times have you lectured me
about showing her proper respect, and restraining my native coarseness,
and what not; and now you want me to go to her like a trooper or a grand
inquisitor, and ask about the state of her feelings toward Hartman. I
can't do it, Jane. When you get into such a scrape, I might try it, if
you insisted--though it would go against me, as Sir Lancelot said: then
you could see how you liked it. Clarice wouldn't like it at all; and she
has deserved better things of me than that."
"She _has_ deserved better things of you than she is getting. I thought
you loved her as I do. So that was only one of your pretences?"
"I love her too well to harass her; to intrude upon her solitude when
she does not want me; to pry into her affairs without her consent, and
destroy what chance there is that she may call me when she is ready."
"She will never be ready, unless we, that are her first friends, come to
her aid against her own pride and shyness. You think me intrusive--a
meddlesome old maid, prying into what does not concern me: but, brother,
she and Mr. Hartman were made for one another. They were deeply
interested, both of them--I could see it plainly: it would have been
settled in a few days more, if that wretched misunderstanding had not
occurred. _He_ may get over it; he is a man, though he did not seem to
be that kind. But she--she is of the deep, and silent, and constant
type: she will nurse this hurt till it kills her. I love her, Robert;
she has nobody but us. She never knew a thing like this before; it is
her first experience. Other men to her were playthings, or bores; she
had no friend among them but you. You cannot fancy how hard it is for
her; harder far than for a younger girl. She is so helpless, for all her
pride--her pride makes her more helpless to speak or act. If I could
only help her, now--"
And here, to my amazement, my stately sister broke down in a passion of
tears and sobs: I never knew her do such a thing before. I patted, and
petted, and soothed her, and did all that a man of humanity and
experience does in such cases. I shall apply for the title, Consoler of
Feminine Woes, since the business of the office comes to me. It will be
Mabel next, I suppose, and then this thing must stop, unless we begin
the round afresh. Clarice may naturally want to be comforted once or
twice more; but I hope soon to remove all further occasion for that.
Jane and I have not been like this since we were children.
"There, there. Sister dear, I would knock any man down, and insult any
woman, who said of you what you just said of yourself. You are not an
old maid, and you might be a society leader if you cared for it: plenty
of women are who have more years and less looks and manners and brains
than you. You are as far as possible from a meddler: your fault is that
you keep too much to yourself. I am sure Clarice would be touched and
flattered by your interest in her: I should, if you took a quarter as
much in me. Do you know, I never saw you look so well, or do yourself
such credit--till now--as night before last. My heart said amen to every
word you uttered, even when you were girding at me; for you thought I
deserved it, and in part I did. I will have no more secrets from
you--except such as I have no right to impart. If you will, we shall be
friends now, and work together in this thing. You always seemed to
despise me, Jane; and it is tedious when the affection is all on one
side."