A Pessimist in Theory and Practice

"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 Cyclopædia. Well, cold facts are not all there is in life: there are some things the Cyclopædias 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.

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."

I could have embraced Jane, besides forgiving her slurs on me, which may 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.