CONFESSION.
Clarice was not at breakfast next day; but as I was going out, she met me in the hall. "Robert, can you come back at four?"
"At any hour you wish, Princess; or I will stay now."
"No, that will be early enough. I will be in the library."
Now that is Clarice all over: she is herself again. No eagerness, no petty curiosity, but a grand indifference, a statuesque calm, a goddess-like withdrawal from the affairs and atmosphere of common mortals. Indeed it is not she who will ask for details that any other woman would burn to know: a single question as to the vital point, and then "what else have you to tell me?" The rest might keep a day, a week, a month. Her taste was always for large outlines, her mind has breadth and grasp and comprehension; when she seemed to care for little things, she was at play. In a matter like this, her secret thoughts are the main element; what others may think or say or do need be noticed only as contributing material for them to work with. What has vexed her all this time has been that the sacrilege of events had put one factor in the problem out of reach, beyond her control: she has been used to having all she wanted of the earth, and deigning to want but little of it and to value that little but lightly. Now that she cares for something at last, and it is at her call again, she will weigh and measure the situation, and all its aspects and possibilities, in the silent council chamber of her soul, and the decision will go forth before any one ventures to ask what it may be. Stay in your cave, hermit of Wayback, and say your Ave Clarissa as patiently as you can: when the [186] edict calls you to court, your part will be cast for you, and you will have nothing to do but say the lines. If you break bounds again and stray from your proper posture before the throne, or put in any more of your irreverent gags, I am done with you.
I have wrought your will, my Princess, and brought back your pretty toy, for you to mend or break: you hardly mean to break it. Yet it is a pity to see you descend to common uses, to ordering a house and taking care of poor old Jim; you were born to shine apart in solitary state, and have men gaze at you wistfully from far below. No man can rate more highly than I the domestic relations, affections, virtues; but I don't like to see you put yourself in the category of mere human beings, as if marriage and a man were good enough for you. You will have your way, now as always, and use me at your will: it is you who have the ordering of this funeral, not I.
As she did not seem to like my style last night, I had better be sober and plain this afternoon; sort of Quaker thee and thou, without artistic embellishments. Yes, by Jove, I'll have to be, for there's the guilty secret to be unloaded. There is no excuse for keeping it to myself any longer, now Jim has it; sooner or later she must know that I've known all along what was not meant for me, and it may as well be done now, whatever the result. It will not please her, but I can't help that. I will not break my word and keep a thing from her, except as there is reason; to tell it can do no great harm now, unless to me—and that is a minor matter.
At the hour appointed I was on deck: no one ever interrupts the Princess, and we were undisturbed. "Robert, I had better hear your report. Cut it short, please; give me a condensed outline merely."
What did I tell you? This was said with an air as if she were discharging an unwelcome [187] duty, so that I might not feel neglected. She evidently resents the impertinence of circumstances in forcing her to allow me to have a hand in her private matters: it will be as much as I can expect if she forgives me for meddling. Obeying orders, I endeavored to be brief and business-like.
"He has had a bad time of it, Clarice. He was a changed man when I got there—rough and morose and unmanageable; kept hinting at some mysterious crime he had committed. It was a day or two before I could bring him to book, by methods on which I need not dwell. Detective work is not a nice business; the means has to take its justification from the end. He made his confession as if it were another's; said how superior you were, and how basely he had repaid your condescension. He thought that ended the affair, except for his lifelong remorse; hoped he might die soon; impossible to be forgiven, or regarded by you in any light but that of a loathsome object—regular stage part, you know, but perfectly sincere: if you like innocence, he can supply a first-class article. I put a head on him by saying his behavior had been much more flagrant than he realized, and the worst part of it was interfering with your plans and going off in such a hurry; that ladies like to be consulted in such cases, and sometimes to administer divine forgiveness, or at least punish the transgressor in their own way, and not leave it all to him.—You need not look at me like that, Princess. I know nothing of your feelings, and told him so. Of course I maintained your dignity: what else was I there for? And so, to do him justice, did he, as far as he knows how. He is just where you like to have them—or would if you cared enough about them. After I had enlightened him as to his duty, it was all simple. I gave him just sufficient hope—of pardon, I mean—to keep him alive, and turn his despair to active penitence. The game is [188] entirely in your hands now. He was on fire to come back with me, or to write at once. I said he must take no more liberties, but wait for permission. If I may venture a suggestion, you might let me tell him to write you; then you can graciously allow him to come when you are ready for him."
That I may call a succinct and lucid narrative. She listened to it with clear eyes like Portia, as if she were a judge and had to hear such cases every day. Now for questions: I bet odds there will not be more than three, and those straight to the heart of my discourse—nothing irrelevant, or secondary, or sentimental.
"Did he say what had been his offence?"
"Presumption. He insulted you—though of course he didn't mean to—and you very properly resented it and withered him with contempt. He never understood, till I made him see it, that what he did next was worse than this, as emphasizing the wrong and making it—for a while—irrevocable."
Her eyes were like judgment lightnings now, that might burn through the darkness and bring out all hidden things. Luckily I had nothing to hide; or rather I was about to make a clean breast of it.
"How were you able to speak so positively?"
"That is what he asked me, and therein lay such power as I had to master him; at least it was the chief weapon in my arsenal. I answer you as I answered him: By knowing more about the matter than he did. Princess, I have deceived you all along, and broken my promise to tell you everything. I saw and overheard the quarrel." And then I told her all about it.
She looked at me silently, with an expression I never saw before. I turned away, as one turns from the sun in his strength. I was sitting on a stool beside her, and I suppose my head went down. Suddenly a hand was on my [189] forehead, pushing it back. "Robert, look at me. What was your motive in keeping this from me?"
"O, the motives were mixed; they always are. There was my dread of offending you; that was selfish. And more than that, I did not want to hurt you, if it could be avoided. And most, I was not willing to complicate the trouble, and all but certainly make it worse. It seemed to me that you would be shocked, and disgusted, and enraged to know that a third person had intruded on so private a scene, and surprised a secret that belonged to you. Don't fancy that I was blaming you; that was my rough guess at how any woman would feel, most of all you: perhaps I was wrong. I thought that for you to know might widen the breach, and destroy all chance of reconciliation. I had to think of him, as well as of you. Not as well, no; not as much—you know that; but of him too. I could not tell you till I had told him, and made the matter right—if you will have it so. You will not let it turn you against him now—this fact that I was there? It was not his fault: it was an accident, and I am the only one to blame. I did the best I could, after such lights as I had."
Still the great eyes kept burning into mine; but they did not hurt so much as I had expected. "Did you tell Mabel and Jane of this?"
"How could I? It was your secret. What do you take me for, Clarice? I never breathed a word of it, of course, until I had it out with Jim a week ago, and brought him to his senses: after that I thought you ought to know. Mabel and Jane never dreamed that I knew anything beyond what little you might have told me, or let me see."
Her arms were round my neck now. There was a minute or two of silence: I really did not know what to say next. Then she looked up, [190] tears in her eyes, a tone I never could describe in her voice.
"And you have done all this for me, Robert!"
I made a feeble attempt to unloose her hands and draw myself up. "Don't talk that way, Clarice; it hurts me. You make too much of this; it was a matter of course, and there is nothing new in it. I thought you knew I was always ready to do anything I could for you: that is an old story, as you used to say."
The effort at dignity was not successful, for her head drooped again. Soon she raised it, a smile chasing the tears away.
"You can triumph over Jane now. She used to say you never could keep a secret. Did you enjoy keeping this one, Bob?"
"Not exactly. I will keep some more if you insist on it, but it would be more enjoyable if they were of another sort. No more like this, if it is the same to you."
"You said you used this as a weapon to master him with. Why didn't you use it on me? It might have been good for me to be mastered and overruled."
I had to laugh now. "Jim can try that by and by—if he dares. Other men may overrule other women, perhaps; I know my place too well. Clarice, it is not like you to talk nonsense. If I could have consulted you about this—how to keep the secret, and what to do with it—it would have made things easier for me, but unhappily that was not feasible. You don't mean it would have done good instead of harm if I had told you earlier?"
"I doubt it. No, you were right. Brother, there is so much more of you than any of us thought!"
"So Hartman has found. But I don't want to be unduly exalted. Love is better than pride, and this trouble of yours has brought us all closer together, I believe. There is only one thing to be done yet."
"No; two at least. Robert, you deserve to [191] know everything. I will tell you what we were talking about that wretched day, so that you may see what excuse there was for him, and how wrong I was. And then you can tell Jane and Mabel."
"I don't want to know, my dear, nor is there any need to tell them anything. None of us desire to pry into your affairs, but only to see them set right. It was plain that something led up to poor Jim's blunder, and that is enough. You can tell Mabel and Jane what you like before he comes back,—though they won't ask it.—I will overrule you for once, as you insist. You want to put a force upon yourself for my sake, and I will not have it; not another word of that. But—and in this case I am not overruling, but only suggesting—Jim is waiting all this time. May I tell him that he can write to you?"
"Not just yet. You have opened my eyes as well as his, Bob; you've revealed so many masculine virtues that I must take them in by degrees. You've been keeping yourself in the background and putting him forward, as if I could be interested in one person only. Now let him wait a day or two, while I think about you."
There may have been more of these exchanges, which I do not care to repeat. What goes on in the domestic circle is essentially of a private nature, too intimate and sacred to be whispered into the general ear. There are persons who will violate these holy confidences, and tell you what he said and she said when the doors were shut. I am not like them. If I appear at times to break my own rule and treat you as a member of the household, it is merely for your improvement, that you may see (as I told Jim last summer) how things are arranged in a christian family: and especially that, when any trouble of this kind invades your own humble roof, you may know how to slay the lion and extract strength and sweetness [192] from his carcass, as I have done. Should these pages instruct but a single brother, whether by nature or adoption, how to unwind his sister's tangled affairs and bring them to a prosperous conclusion, I shall not have penned them in vain.