A FAMILY CONCLAVE.
I had written to Hartman more than once since my return, telling him to keep up his spirits and bide his time. Before long came the permission to open a correspondence with a more important person than I. What he wrote I know not; he is probably able to do that well enough, whatever blunders he may commit when face to face. I have reason to believe his outpouring was answered, with excessive brevity but to the purpose, in the one word, 'Come.' In fact, the Princess declined (and very properly) to expend a postage-stamp on him, or to gratify him with an envelope of her own inditing, but told me to enclose this minute but inflammatory document in non-explosive wrappings of my own.
He was to arrive on a certain day in late November. The evening previous, as we were sitting together, Clarice—who generally prefers her own society, and I can't blame her—appeared, in our midst (if that expression is allowable), with an aspect of grim determination. I rose to give her a chair in the corner, but she sat down where she could see us and we could look at her. We did so, anxiously expectant, for this was a most unusual proceeding; and I inwardly resolved to make it easier for her than she meant to have it. She began with the air of an orator who reluctantly emerges from seclusion [193] at his country's call, constrained to deliver matter of pith and moment.
"It is no news that you all have shown me kindness such as passes all acknowledgment—"
She was not allowed to proceed without hindrance. Jane put forth an interrupting hand, which the speaker seized and imprisoned in her own: not that Clarice's is bigger than Jane's, but it possesses some muscular force. Mabel opened her lips, and one of us—I will not say which—was obliged to remind her that Miss Elliston had the floor.
"It is not in me to be demonstrative, and I have seemed cold and thankless—"
"We knew you better than that, dear," came from both.
"—But I knew, I felt it all. Never did a girl without natural protectors—"
"But you can have a natural protector whenever you like," cried Mabel. "You might have had any number of them, for years past."
"Well, with or without, no girl ever had, or could have had, more faithful affection and delicate consideration shown her than I. I have given you a great deal of trouble, and you never complained. I have come between you and friends—"
"My dear," Mabel interposed again, "that is all right. Our friends will come back." And she nodded and looked like a female Solomon, while Jane whispered something and put her disengaged arm around the orator.
"Don't interrupt me any more, please. You know it is not easy for me to talk of these matters—"
"That is so," said I. "It is rarely we get a speech from Clarice on any subject. Do keep quiet, all of you, and let the poor girl go on."
"But now I must tell you something you have no idea of."
Here the female portion of the audience pricked up their ears, and I began to be nervous. [194] "It is about Mr. Hartman's going away in August. That was all my fault."
"Don't you believe her," said I. "He says it was all his fault."
"Do be quiet, Robert. He is coming to-morrow, and justice must be done him. I treated him very badly, and—"
"She didn't," said I. "Clarice, we don't want to be dragged into all your private squabbles, but if you will tell this disreputable story you have got to tell it straight. Jim says you merely showed a proper spirit, and so you did."
"Why, what do you know about it, Robert?" cried Mabel and Jane together.
"He was there, hidden in the bushes, like a villain in a cloak and slouched hat."
Here came a chorus of exclamations and reproaches, till one of us had to say, "You may as well give it up, Clarice. These women will never let you go on; they don't know how to listen. If you were talking only to me, now—"
"Jane, you can never twit him again with not being able to keep a secret; he kept this one sacredly for three months."
"Of course he did," said Mabel: "I always knew it."
"Why, Robert, you told me—," Clarice exclaimed, and "O no, you didn't, my dear," some one else put in, while Jane looked triumphant.
"No, I didn't know this secret, of course," Mabel admitted: "I only meant that I always knew Robert could keep a secret, if it were of very extraordinary importance, and if he were certain it would ruin everything to let it out. Poor Robert, what a hard time you have had!"
"But how did he come to overhear your conversation?" said Jane. "What business had he there?"
"It was all through his pipe. Mabel, you must never object to his pipe again."
"There now, Mabel," remarked another of the company, "you wouldn't believe that the [195] pipe was good for my health, and now you see it has preserved the whole family."
"I don't see that," said the troublesome Jane: "what was the use of your being there intermeddling?"
"Jane," said one severely, "if you will be still, you will probably learn. How can you expect to hear anything when you keep on interrupting Clarice like this?"
"I am coming to that now, Jane. What he thus saw and heard he most patiently, and heroically, and from the noblest motives—"
"Excuse me, ladies," said I. "My pipe is not handy, but I must go out and smoke a cigar. I want to see a man—"
"Let the man smoke the cigar, and that will provide for both of them. You will sit down, Robert, and hear me out; I am not to be overruled this time."
"It would give me the greatest pleasure to hear you out, my dear, but you know your health is delicate, and you are not accustomed to public speaking. This is the longest oration you ever made: Jane's constant interruptions are trying, and you must be fatigued. If I were you, I would rest now, and finish this up to-morrow."
"Now isn't that exactly like him?" cried the irrepressible Jane. "He is afraid of your exposures, as well he may be. Go on, Clarice, and tell us what other iniquities he has committed, besides deceiving Mabel and me about this, while he was questioning us all the time, and pretending to impart all he knew."
"He deceived me too. Yes, you may well stare; he kept this absolutely to himself, till he could use it for his own deep purposes; and"—she blushed a little—"that is why things are as they are."
I saw she wanted to be helped out, so I said.
"Yes, that is the cause of this thusness. You see, Mabel, what great results may spring from a little pipe. Jane, you will have to [196] admit that I am the guardian angel and protecting genius of you all."
"Well, Clarice," said Jane, "I will own that my estimate of his talents has risen lately; but then my confidence in his moral character has fallen in the same degree. He does tell such dreadful falsehoods."
"It is not quite as if he told them for love of them, simply for the pleasure he takes in falsehood itself. You must allow for his motives."
"Yes," said Mabel, "his motives are always excellent, whatever his words and actions may be. You remember the man in the Bible, who was delivered to Satan for his soul's sake; and I have heard Robert himself say that in ascending a mountain you often have to go down hill."
"She means," I explained, "that on the rare occasions when I employ fiction, I do it purely in the interests of Truth. That goddess is imperfectly provided with garments—excuse me for stating so scandalous a fact, but it is so. Now this might have been well enough in Eden before the fall, but it will not do now; so we have to make the poor creature presentable, and pay her milliner's bills, which are often high. It would have been far more congenial to my candid nature to tell you all at once what I saw and heard that day in August; but such a course might have been attended with unpleasant consequences. If you will all forgive me, I will try not to do it again."
"I do not see my way to forgive you, brother," said Jane with a judicial air, "unless Clarice does; and that appears doubtful. I will be guided entirely by her."
"I have managed my own affairs so well without help, that you will naturally all wish to be guided by me. It is a good deal for me to do; but since Robert's misconduct has done no great harm, and rather than come between brother and sister, I will—yes, I will forgive him." She rose majestically, signed to me to [197] do the same, and gave me both hands, with the air of a sovereign conferring knighthood; we made an impressive tableau. "And since you are all so quiet at last, I may finish my speech, and state the reason for this act of leniency. As Mr. Hartman's conversion is to be completed this time without fail, it is plainly necessary that he should find us a united family."