RESULTS REPORTED.
I reached home in the early evening. The servant told me at the door that Mrs. T. was in attendance on Master Herbert, who had fallen over the banisters and injured his nasal organ. I rushed upstairs: Mabel met me with no demonstrations of grief or anxiety. "I see by your face that it is all right—as I always said it would be. Go to Clarice; she is in the library. O, Herbert? He fell on his nose, of course; he always does. It is not at all serious. The dear child has been feeling better since we heard from you, and taking more exercise. Clarice has the first right to your news."
I found her, and dropped on my knees. She looked at me, not so sweetly as of late. "Get up, Robert, I thought I had cured you of your bad habit of untimely jesting."
"You have. I realize the solemnity of the occasion, if you do not. My name is James—no, that's not it. I am a representative, an envoy. You see before you a banished man who has justly incurred his sovereign's displeasure, and has repented day and night. This posture, perhaps unseemly in the father of a family, expresses the other fellow's state of mind. He's afraid to come himself, and so he sent me."
She looked at me again, and saw that I was serious. You see, these delicate matters have to be managed delicately. I can't do the unmitigated tragedy business as well as Hartman might, and yet I had to meet the requirements of the situation, and the Princess' expectations, which are always high. People who have their own affairs of this kind to conduct might sometimes avoid painful failures by taking a leaf out of my book, and mixing the difficult passages with a little—a very little—chastened [179] and judicious humor; then they would avoid overdoing it, and sending the lady off disgusted.
"Does he take all the blame?"
"Absolutely: he did from the first moment. He can't come here to say so till he's allowed, and he can't get up till you give him a token of forgiveness."
She gave it: it was inexpensive to her, and soothing to the penitent—or would have been if he had been there to get it in person. I took it simply on his account.
"Keep still now, and let me think."
I kept still. The attitude of prayer, while well suited to the lighter forms of ladies, is inconvenient to a man of my size, and deeply distressing when I am obliged to maintain it for more than five minutes; for that reason I don't go to church as much as I might. But I had to keep quiet while she did her thinking. May it be recorded to my credit! I would bear a good deal for Clarice, and sometimes I have to.
At last she finished her cogitations. "O, get up, Robert; I forgot. What else have you to tell me? But don't you want some supper?"
I was as hungry as a bison, but that was a secondary consideration.
"The supper can wait while I have your work to do. I'll tell you anything you care to know: he wants to have no secrets from you. But it has all been graphically summed up already. A famous orator of old told a young fellow who went to him to learn how to speak a piece, 'Act it.' That's what I've been doing the last half hour: I didn't think it would take so long."
I rubbed my knees, which were still sore: the library carpet is reasonably thick, but it was not built for devotional uses, "I suppose Hartman would be glad to stay down there all night if he had the chance. But he'd be awkward about it—infernally awkward. You see, he has had no practice in this kind of thing; [180] he doesn't know your ways as I do. I wonder if you will ever get him into as good training as you have me."
I put in this light badinage to relieve any embarrassment she might feel—not that she could show any such if she tried, but for what you and I know even she might feel it—and to let her get used to the situation. But she did not seem to care for it. "That's enough for now, Robert. Go and get your supper." She said this in a weary tone. My heart sank.
"Princess dear, have I offended you? I meant it all right. Have I done anything wrong, and made a mess of this as usual?"
She gave me her hand. "O no, Bob. But go now. I'll talk more to you to-morrow."
Now I thought I had done this up in the most superior style, and that she would be pleased for once. But the ways of women are past man's understanding.
Jane awaited me in the dining-room with viands and an anxious brow, and would scarcely let me appease the cravings of exhausted nature. She sent the servant out, and ministered to my wants herself.
"Brother, you look downcast. Have you returned with empty hands?"
"I have brought some of the finest trout you ever saw—not in mere size perhaps, but in flavor, colors, and gaminess. You didn't expect me to carry 'em on a string over my shoulder, did you? And I would have brought some venison, but you don't care for it. You told me once that their eyes were so pretty and plaintive, it was a shame to kill them. I always try to please you, so I thought I would let them live.—Yes, thank you, I have brought back more health than I took away: I may be able now to stand the fatigues of business till Thanksgiving.—O, Hartman? I couldn't bring him along, you know: where is your sense of propriety? I advised him to stay up there where he is safe, and not tempt the shafts and arrows any more. [181] What, I 'haven't done anything then, after all?' O, haven't I! Jane, you are worse than a serpent's tooth: if Lear had been in my place, he would have talked about a thankless sister. It has been a weary, toilsome, painful task, and few men could have carried it through to so happy an end. And when I come back hungering for sympathy—I told you what my nature was—you meet me with cold words and suspicious looks. It is enough to make one weep, and long for the silent grave. If it were Hartman, you would do the weeping, no doubt. Yet that man, whom you thus unnaturally set above your brother—you have no idea of his harshness, his violence, his embittered prejudice and obstinacy; nor of the patience and gentleness and persuasive force with which I expelled the demons that possessed him, and brought him to his right mind. O, he has had an overhauling; he will take care how he does it again. But he is all right now."
"I wonder at that, after his being in your hands for a week. Your tender mercies were cruel, I fear. What does Clarice say to this? Is she satisfied?"
"She ought to be, but she says nothing at all; couldn't take in the magnitude of my news at once, most likely. Yet I took pains to break it to her delicately, and with light touches of humor, to relieve any strain there might be."
"Yes, soothed her nerves as with a nutmeg-grater, no doubt. You will serenade her next with tin pans and fish-horns, and think that a delicate attention. Brother, Clarice does not share your peculiar view of humor, nor do I. Mabel tries to comprehend it and to catch your tone, as is her melancholy duty; but it is hard work for her. Well, what does Mr. Hartman say?—Don't tell me anything that is private, or belongs to Clarice alone."
"O, you may hear most of it. He says all sorts of things—anything you like. You see [182] he can't be trusted, or trust himself, any longer, so I have full power to represent him."
"That is definite, and convenient for you, whatever it may be to others. Of course a man will promise anything when he has an object to gain. I suppose you left him in the depths of despair and on a pinnacle of ecstasy at once."
"That is about it. Let us be thankful that you and I are well beyond these follies.—My dear, I wasn't alluding to your age; upon my honor I wasn't. I only meant that your elevation of mind and dignity of character lift you far above such idiotic transports, and give you a right to despise weak creatures like Jim, and in some degree even myself. No man is worthy of you, Jane: you know you never would look at any of them. What did I tell you about your looks? Except Clarice, and perhaps I ought to say Mabel, and a few on the cars, you are by far the handsomest woman I've seen since I left home."
"After your week among the belles of Wayback, that compliment seems strained. O, I see: Clarice was not in the right mood just now, and your tide of geniality rolled back upon itself, so that it has to break loose on some one else: or you are to see her again to-morrow, and must practice smooth things meantime to say then.—Ah, it is both, is it?"
"Sister, you are an external conscience—except that you won't approve when I have done the right thing, and done it well. You would be invaluable to Jim. I doubt whether he and Clarice will get on; and he thinks a heap of you. If he don't suit her on further inspection, or makes any more blunders, you might take him in hand and make a man of him."
"So as to keep him in reach as material for you? Robert, if you want me to comfort you when Clarice is gone, you will have to make your light humor much lighter yet, and let me select subjects for its exercise."
[183] "Now, now—do you think I would offer you secondhand goods? If I had known him then as I do to-day, I would have let her go off in June as she proposed, and fixed it the other way. It would have saved no end of bother."
"And deprived you of a source of huge amusement, and an unprecedented field for the display of your peculiar talents. Do you think men and women are mere puppets for you to play with? You would make but a poor tenth-rate Providence—though you may have succeeded in this case. Tell me how you did it."
"I showed him that he was all wrong. He knew that already, but thought she didn't care. I told him she did."
"Robert! You have not betrayed her? Is this your diplomacy?"
"Of course not: how you talk, Jane. I said her interest in him was philanthropic, and he had behaved with brutal ingratitude—like a charity patient in the hospital, or a bad boy at Sunday School; so he ought to yearn to come back—if she will kindly allow—and give her a chance to go on reforming him or not, just as she pleases. I admitted the purely speculative possibility that it might be otherwise—of a more personal and commonplace description—just to encourage him a little; but as he had said at the start that this chance was practically nonexistent, I let him think so and dwelt on the other view, which was new to him, and impressive. O, I preserved her dignity; that was the first necessity. If he is cherishing any hopes of the vulgar, everyday sort, he did not get them from me."
"And did he believe all that? If so, I must have been mistaken in the man."
"He had to believe it. It was the simple truth: I merely arranged the colors properly on his mental canvas. He thinks I am Solon and Rhadamanthus and Nehemiah in one. How would you have done it perhaps, when [184] you had to hook your fish without letting him get the bait—induce him to commit himself, and yet not commit her at all?"
"I don't know, brother. You could not have thrown her on his generosity, of course; she would have killed herself and him and all of us, rather than take happiness at such a price—and I can't blame her. Yet she despises a subterfuge. I would not tell her the details if I were you; she will not ask for them, nor want to hear them. It is a queer world: when such things have to be done—sacrificing your best friend to insure his welfare, deceiving him in the interest of one who abhors deception—your eccentricities may be of more use than I had hitherto supposed possible."
I pretended to be deeply pained at this; but in my heart I knew it was high praise, coming from Jane. She is not like Clarice; she asked all manner of questions, and kept me answering them three mortal hours. Fortunately Mabel has less curiosity, or I should not have got much sleep that night, after all my ill-appreciated labors. But I don't regret what I did for Hartman; he believes what you tell him.
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