treat the friends of your youth, when they entrust life and limb to your
hospitality?"
"I give 'em the best I've got: sorry if it doesn't suit. There's no
Delmonico's round the corner, here. What's the matter with you, old
man?"
"O, it's not your housekeeping: that's all right. But why did you lead
me such a dance, and get me lost in that unconscionable doghole of a
wilderness?"
"Did you ever take so many fish out of a brook in one day before? No, of
course you didn't. Well, that's why. I told you it would be a rough
expedition; but I thought you came here to rough it. You didn't expect
balls and a casino, did you? You were here last May."
"Last May I saw nothing as bad as this to-day. You haven't been playing
it on me, I hope? Jim, have you got any grudge against me?"
"What should I have? You're deucedly suspicious and sensitive--far more
so than I was with you. I believe I let you play on me to your heart's
content, and never complained--did I?"
"Jim, I don't like this. There's a change in you: Hodge said so, and I
didn't believe him. You're not the same man."
"O, we all change--from year to year, and from day to day. But I ought
never to have left these woods, Bob, and that's the truth. You should
have let me stay here as I was."
"I meant it in all kindness, for your good, Jim. Surely you'll do me the
justice to acknowledge that."
"No doubt. But your philanthropic experiments are apt to be damnably
expensive to the patient."
"You couldn't be much worse than you were, according to your own
account. Any change ought to have been for the better."
"That was your assumption. Do I strike you as being changed for the
better?"
"Well, no, you don't--not to put too fine a point upon it."
He certainly does not. His whole manner is altered. His former
gentleness has given way to rough harshness. You have seen how he treats
me. It may be his best, as he says; if so, his best is far from good.
His bitterness used to be, if I may say so, in the abstract, and leveled
against abstractions; now it seems to have a painfully concrete
character and aim. His estrangement from the scheme of things, or from
his kind at least, was purely intellectual, leaving his heart no more
affected than the heart usually is by brain-disorders; now it is moral.
He is like a man tormented by remorse, or regrets as savage. But I think
I know a cure for his complaint.
After a pause he said, "I don't want to blame you, Bob, and I don't
propose to whine. Nor was it any great matter what came to me, wherever
it might come from. I thought I was done with the world, and had nothing
to fear from it, except being bored and disgusted. There was only one
thing I cared about, and that I supposed I could keep. I was mistaken.
It was my little ewe lamb--all I had; and they took it from me."
"I thought your live stock was confined to dogs, and a cow, and the
tomcat--by the way, I don't see him any more. I didn't know you went
into sheep. Was Tommy the ewe-lamb, and did the dogs play Nathan and
David with him?"
This I said, thinking to cheer him up a bit; but he only scowled.
Really, I must remember Mabel's caution about telling the wrong stories
and laughing in the wrong places. "Well, Jim, what was 'it' that you
valued so, and who were 'they' who took it away?"
"The prince of the power of the air; the spirit that walks in darkness,
and rules in the children thereof. The beautiful order of things
generally, and their incurable depravity. All these are one, and the
name doesn't matter. If you urged me to it, I might say that you had
played a very passable David to my Uriah."
"Who--I? I'm not a sheep-stealer. What would I want to hurt you for?
Jim, you're joking, and it's a joke of doubtful taste."
"Do I look like it? _You_ might find a joke in this: you can find them
everywhere. I can't."
"As I told you, you take Life too seriously. If you will be more
specific, and tell me what you have lost, perhaps I can help you to find
it."
"Some losses are irrecoverable. You'd better let it alone, Bob; you'd
better have let me alone before, as I've said. You mean well enough; but
it's ill meddling with another man's life. You don't know what
responsibility you take, or what effect you may produce. I don't say
that it's the worst of all possible worlds, but it is such that each of
us had best go his own way, and keep clear of the others. When one
forgets that safe rule, and mixes with his kind, only harm seems to come
of it."
"If that is so, I might better have staid at home now. Methinks your
written hand is different from your spoken. I mean--"
"O yes, when I write I try to come out of myself and be decently civil;
and so I should to a chance visitor for five minutes, or an hour maybe.
But I can't keep it up all day--not to say for a week. You'll have to
see the facts, and bear with them. I don't want to be rough on you; but
I'm not myself--or not what I was before, or supposed myself to be. It's
all in the plan, no doubt; we are fulfilling the beneficent intentions
of Nature. Perhaps I'm breaking down, and the end is not so far off as
we thought. If so, so much the better: we'll escape that sad old age you
prophesied."
Now I am not lacking in humanity, but it does not afflict me as it did
six months ago to hear Jim go on in this way. I know what is the matter
with him now, and what he is driving at, though I must assume ignorance
for a while yet. The patient must tell his symptoms, and then the doctor
will give him the physic he needs, and proceed to make a new man of him.
That is what I am after now, and the good work must not be spoiled by
undue haste. So I put on a decorous air of sympathy, and said,
"That's all bosh, you know. If anything is the matter with you
physically, I ought to hear about it; but I don't believe there is. As
for the mind, we are all subject to gloomy moods and periods of
depression; but they pass, Jim--they pass. You believed in friendship
before; hadn't you better tell me what you think ails you?"
"I can't talk about it, except in this roundabout way: what's the use?
Best keep to broad principles: the particular case only illustrates the
general law. I knew it of old: what business had I to expose myself
again? What would you do with a child who will keep on playing about
moving cars, or mill machinery? Let him fall under the wheels, and rid
the earth of an idiot."
"O no: pull him out in time, and he'll learn better. Well, Jim, you
might at least tell me what hand I had in this catastrophe."
"O, none, none whatever: how should you? You never laid any plots for
me, and used me for your mirth. You never devised an elaborately
concealed ambush, and smoothed it over till I was in the snare. That
would be foreign to your open and candid nature. It is very good fun to
practice on unsuspecting innocence; but you are far above that."
"See here, Hartman: you talk as if my house were a den of iniquity. If
so, I was not aware of it till now. Your ill opinion has not thus far
been reciprocated. We entertain none but kind feelings toward you: we
all regretted your hasty departure. You were received as a friend, and
treated as such, I believe. My wife and sister often speak of you: you
could command their fullest sympathy in this, or any trouble, real or
imaginary."
"That I never doubted: I owe them nothing but pleasant memories, and
thankful good will.--You need not stare at me so: I make no charges, and
imply none.--Well, if you must have it, I can say that every member of
your family has my absolute respect,--down to the twins; do you
understand? If I have any grudge, it is toward you alone."
It was plain that he forced himself to say this--or some of it--as if it
were coming perilously near a name he could not utter. He is having his
bad time now, as I had mine last week. It is his own fault: he has no
need to be so censorious. He _had_ to say what he did, or there would be
trouble: some things a man cannot stand, and my best friend would be my
friend no longer, if he ventured to reflect upon the Princess.
"I'm glad to hear you say so: the difficulty is simple then, and easily
settled. You've got no pistols, of course, and I didn't bring mine. I'll
take your rifle, and you can borrow Hodge's old shotgun: if it bursts,
it won't be much loss--only you mustn't come too near me with it.
There's no danger of interference from the police up here, I judge? But
I say, what shall we do for a surgeon?"
"There you go again, turning everything into a jest. Can you never be
serious, man?"
"Try to say something original, James: that is stale. Jane asks me that
about six times a day, and Mabel frequently, and--and the others. I was
serious with you just now, or nearly: had I been entirely so, I might
have knocked the top of your head off, and then they would have blamed
me at home. You see, they think you are more of a man than you show
yourself. To be serious all the time is the most serious mistake one can
make in life; and I want no worse example than you. When I go back to
town I shall write the Decline and Fall of an Alleged Seeker after
Truth, who missed it by taking things too seriously. You are too stiff
and narrow and rigid and dogmatic: you take one point of view and stick
to it like grim death. You can't get at Truth in that way."
"I suppose you would stand on your head and look at it upside down, and
then turn a back somersault and view it from between your legs."
"You express it inelegantly, but you have caught the idea. Truth is not
a half pound package done up in brown paper and permanently deposited in
one corner of the pantry shelf; she is big and various and active. While
you have your head fixed in the iron grip and are staring at the sign
'Terms Cash,' she is off to the other side of the room--and you don't
make a good picture at all in that constrained attitude. Your mind has
got to be nimble and unbiassed if you want to overtake her, because she
is always changing: that is, she appears in new and--to you--unexpected
places. I gave you a hint of this in May, and another last summer, but
you seem to have forgotten it. O, I could sit here all night and
explain it to you, if you were in the right frame of mind."
"No doubt: happily I am not. What has this to do with your defence of
buffoonery, and apotheosis of clowns and pantomimes?"
"A pantomime is a very good thing in its way. But that is your
illustration; I would rather say opera bouffe, which is probably the
truest copy of Life--if we were limited to one kind. But we are not: I
tell you, we must have all sorts. There is tragedy in Life, and
comedy--that more especially; a little of the other goes a long way. But
they are always mixed--not kept apart, and one alone taken in large and
frequent doses, after your fashion. Shakespeare understood his business
pretty well; though, if I had been he, I would have put in more of those
light and graceful touches which hit us where we live, and make the
whole world kin."
"Like the Dromios, or the Carriers in Henry Fourth."
"Or the Gravediggers; they are more to your purpose. I want you to see
that Humor is the general solvent and reconciler, the key that opens
most locks: a feeling for it, well developed, would be money in your
pocket. Things don't go to suit you, and you think your powers of the
air are frowning, the universe a vault, and the canopy a funeral pall:
perhaps the powers are only laughing at you, and want you to smile with
them. If you could do that, it would let in light on your darkness. Any
situation, properly viewed, has its amusing elements: if you ignore
them, you fail to understand the whole. What did Heine say about his
irregular Latin nouns? That his knowledge of them, in many a gloomy
hour, supplied much inward consolation and delight. You ought to read
him more, Jim."
"And Josh Billings, and Bill Nye. Well, that's enough of your wisdom for
to-night. We must arrange for to-morrow. Are you up to another
scramble?"
"Not like to-day's. Let's take in some decent scenery along with the
trout."
"There is a wild gorge ten miles off, with a brook in it. We can take
Hodge's mare, put up at a house, and work down the ravine. It's not so
bad as the last place, nor so good for fish." I agreed, and we went to
bed.
You may think I am humoring Hartman too much, and letting him shirk the
subject. But I have a week--more if necessary--and I don't want to be
too hard on him. He'll thaw out by degrees: so long as he doesn't blame
Clarice, it is all right. He has got my idea about the way to discover
Truth now, and it will work in his brain, and soften him. I know Jim: he
never seems to take hold at first, but he comes round in time. You just
wait, and you will see whether I know what I am about.
XXVII.
SCENERY IMPROVED.
The next day we drove to a farmhouse which had annexed some rather
decent fields for that region. On one side was tolerably level ground,
on the other a cut between two savage mountains. Down this we made our
way, taking presently the bed of a small brook: woodroad or footpath
never can be there. For a while there was room to walk on dry land: soon
the cliffs closed in upon us, on the right rising sheer, on the left
sloping, but steeper than I would want to climb. At first the stream was
very shallow and narrow, and the fish small and scarce; but think of the
creatures that must come there to drink at night! It was the only
watercourse for miles, Jim said. He pointed out the tracks of a bear or
two, and he thought of a panther; but it is not here I should choose to
hunt--your game might have you at a disadvantage. He tried to make me
believe that even now some of these beasts might catch us; but that was
simply to discourage me from going after them, later on: Jim does not
like the chase. _My_ jokes are in better taste: as he is now, I believe
the bears could beat him in manners. Near noon we found a place to sit
down, where we could see a little of the crags, and proceeded to
assimilate our frugal lunch.
"Hartman," said I, "I should think you would want to live up to your
scenery, as the ladies do to their blue china. Look at this majestic
cliff, whose scarred and aged front, frowning upon these lonesome trout
since the creation, has never been profaned by mortal foot."
"Probably not. People very seldom come here, and when they do, they
wouldn't be fools enough to try to climb up. They couldn't do it, and it
wouldn't pay if they could."
"Well, it is grand, anyway, and it ought to quicken your soul to grand
thoughts. In such a scene you ought to feel stirring within you noble
sympathies and resolves."
"I can't see much grandeur in human nature, Bob, nor any in myself. If
you had thought yourself a gentleman, and suddenly awaked to the fact
that you were a cad and a scoundrel, you would be apt to change your
tune, and drop the high notes."
Oho, I thought, he is coming to the point. While I was meditating how to
utilize this confidence, a small piece of rock fell from above upon the
edge of my toes: if it had been a large piece, and fallen on my head,
you would have missed this moral tale. When I had expressed my
sentiments, he said, "I can't insure you against accidents,--any more
than you did me. If I had brought you here in spring, you might growl.
The rocks are loose then, and it is dangerous. A man was killed once
just below here, and his body never found till the year after." This
trivial occurrence seemed to turn his thoughts away from the important
topic, and I could not get him back to it.
It was a warm day for the season: once in a while it will be hotter in
these sylvan solitudes than it is in New York. While we were in the
brook we did not mind that, for we could drop every five minutes and
drink. I suppose I consumed some nine gallons of _aqua pura_ during the
morning: you can do this with impunity, because there is no ice in it,
and the bacteria are of the most wholesome kind. But by and by we
finished with the gorge: then we had to go across a sort of common, up
hill. There was no water now, and it was hot. After more trees, and a
steeper ascent, Jim said, "You'll get a view now." We came out on an
open place, with steep rocks beneath. Before us lay a wilderness, with
clearings here and there, and a background of mountains. The forests
were in their early November bloom; the country looked one great flower.
In the Alps or the Rockies they can give this odds, and beat it easily,
but it was pretty well for eastern America--and an occasion to be
improved. "Jim, if the crags don't appeal to you, this might. If you
don't feel up to moral grandeur, why not go in for peace? Let your
perturbed spirit catch the note of harmony from this landscape, and
drink in purity from this air."
"That is all very fine, and you would make a pretty fair exhorter--with
practice. But natural theology is not in my line. These hills look
nicely now, but it will be different within a month. If I am to learn
peace from a fine day, what from a stormy one? Nature changes for the
worse like us, and with less shame: she has no regrets for the past, no
care to keep up appearances or make a show of consistency."
"I fear you have been learning of Nature on her wrong side then. Half
confidences are in bad taste, Jim. What is it you keep hinting at? It
ought to be murder, from the airs you put on about it."
"Leave that for to-night, when we have nothing better to attend to.
There is another brook here we ought to try."
XXVIII.
DIPLOMACY.
We got back reasonably early, much less tired than the day before. Now,
I thought, for some progress. "Well, Jim, you wanted to unfold your tale
to-night."
"That is, you wanted to ask me about it. You can't do any good, and I
don't find speech a safety-valve: but I suppose it is my duty to supply
you with amusement. So get on, and say what is on your mind."
He takes this tone to conceal his morbid yearning to ease his bosom of
its perilous stuff: I will have his coil unwound pretty soon. If I were
not here, he would probably be whispering her name under the solemn
stars, and shouting it in tragic tones on the lonely mountain-top;
sighing it under the waterfalls, and expecting the trout to echo it. He
talks about fishing the home brook the first rainy day, but he must have
scared all the fish away from there with his sentiment. I must remember
to notice whether 'C. E.' is carved about the forest. He will pretend to
hold back; but I will get it out of him.--I made this pause long enough
to let him prepare for the examination on which depends his admission
into the civil service, so to speak--he will have to be more civil and
serviceable than hitherto if he is to pass it, and follow me back to
town--and indeed his whole future.
"You say you have lost something valuable. All you had, you said it was;
but that is nonsense. You have health, and more money than you want, and
brains and education, of which you are making very poor use, and
friends, whom you are treating badly. I can't think what you have
lost--unless it was your heart, perhaps." This I brought in in the way
of afterthought, as if it had suddenly occurred to me. He started, but
assumed a tone of cynical indifference.
"My heart? Would I sit down and howl over that? What use have I for a
heart, any more than for a poodle? And if I had one, what does it matter
what may have become of it?"
"Strayed or stolen, probably. Such things have happened, especially when
persons of the opposite sex are about. They are apt to attach themselves
to poodles, and vice versa. But if you give me your honor that a loss of
heart is not the cause of these lamentations--"
"Why will you press that point, Bob? What is done can't be undone, and
what is broken can't be mended."
"And what is crooked can't be made straight, and what is wanting can't
be supplied; though these things are done every day and every hour. Why
any able-bodied lady of my acquaintance, even those at my own house,
limited as is their experience of the world's devious ways--Jane, I
mean, or Mabel--could tell you how."
"Robert, I am too old for these follies."
"James, you are the youngest man I ever knew. Any boy of eighteen would
be apt to know better how to manage such matters, and--if you will
pardon the frankness you employ yourself--to exhibit more sense."
He stared a little, and I gave him time to recover. Then he took up his
parable, defensively falling back on the abstract, after his manner.
"Of course I have thought of these things, Bob, and the philosophy of
them, if they can be said to have any. They seem much like everything
else. Taking Life in its unfinancial aspects, men do things, not because
the particular things are worth doing, but as an apology for the
unwarranted liberty they take in being alive. 'I am: why am I?' said the
youth at prayer-meeting, and everybody gave it up. As an effort toward
answering his own conundrum, he entered the ministry. Being alive, we
have to make a pretense of doing something, which else might better
remain undone. That is why books are written, and controversies waged;
it explains most of our intellectual and moral activities. So with
society: time must be killed, and we go out for an evening, though we
are dreadfully bored and gain nothing at all. So, I suppose, with what
is called love. The emotional part of our nature, which is the absurdest
part of all, finds or fancies itself unemployed: a void craves and aches
in the breast, and the man, as an old farmer once expressed it, is
'kinder lovesick for suthin he ain't got and dunno what.' Almost any
material of the other sex, if you allow a little for taste and
temperament, will fill the void--in a way, and for a time at least.
Darby marries Joan and is content, though any other woman would have
served his turn as well. With us of the finer feelings and higher
standards, the only difference is that we rant more and sophisticate
more, as belongs to our wider range. No one ever felt thus
before--because the feeling is new to us, and newer each time it comes:
so Festus protests to each successive mistress, perjuring himself in all
sincerity. Nor was any mistress ever so beautiful and divine as this
one, appointed to possess and be adored by us. All that is purely a
mental exercise: carry the illusion a little farther, and it might be
practised as well on a milliner's lay-figure. 'He that loves a coral
cheek or a ruby lip admires' is simply a red hot donkey, Bob. Nature
provides the imbecile desire, Propinquity furnishes an object at random.
Imagination does all the rest."
"Just so, Jim. I am glad to find you again capable of such lucid and
exhaustive analysis. But how about what is called _falling_ in love,
when the wild ass has not been craving to have his void filled up at
all, but is suddenly brought down unawares by an Amazonian arrow?"
"He was no less a donkey that he didn't know it, and it only comes
harder for him. The fool ought to have been better acquainted with his
own interior condition; then he might have eased his descent to his
royal thistle, secured his repast or gone without it, and got back to
his stable with a whole skin. Otherwise it is just the same. The heart
is an idiot baby, Robert: it feeds on pap and thinks it is guzzling
nectar on Olympus."
"Exactly, James; exactly. As you say, it is our fertile fancy that does
it all. You and I can conjure up women far more charming than we ever
met on brick or carpet. If we only had the raw material and knew how to
work it up, we could beat these flesh and blood girls off the field
before breakfast. Their merits and attractions are mainly such as we
generously invest them with; and often they take a mean advantage of our
kindness."
I glanced at him sideways, and he flushed and winced. "I would not
derogate from women, nor rate myself so high. I meant only that we
imagine--well, monstrous heaps of nonsense. For instance, we often fancy
that they care for us when they don't--and whose fault is that but ours?
There's a deal of rot talked about lords of creation--when a man isn't
able to be lord of himself. O, women are very well in their way: I've
nothing against them. They are just as good as we--better, very likely;
and wiser, for they don't idealize us as we do them."