“Which do you like better, Miss Brandon, boating in Newport or skating on Jamaica Pond?” asked Vancouver.
“This is better than the Music Hall, is it not?” remarked John to Miss Thorn.
“Oh, Jamaica Pond, by far,” Sybil answered, and her hold on Joe’s arm relaxed a very little.
“Oh no! I would a thousand times rather be in the Music Hall!” exclaimed Joe, and her hand slipped away from Sybil’s white fur. And so the four were separated into couples, and went their ways swiftly under the glorious moonlight. As they parted Sybil turned her head and looked after Joe, but Joe did not see her.
“I would rather be here,” said John quietly.
“Why?” asked Joe.
“There is enough fighting in life to make peace a very desirable thing sometimes,” John answered.
“A man cannot be always swinging his battle-axe.” There was a very slight shade of despondency in the tone of his voice. Joe noticed it at once.
Women do not all worship success, however much they may wish their champion to win when they are watching him fight. In the brilliant, unfailing, all-conquering man, the woman who loves him feels pride; if she be vain and ambitious, she feels wholly satisfied, for the time. But woman’s best part is her gentle sympathy, and where there is no room at all for that, there is very often little room for love. In the changing hopes and fears of uncertain struggles, a woman’s love well given and truly kept may turn the scale for a man, and it is at such times, perhaps, that her heart is given best, and most loyally held by him who has it.
“I wish I could do anything to help him to succeed,” thought Joe, in the innocent generosity of her half-conscious devotion.
“Has anything gone wrong?” she asked aloud.
Chapter VII.
“HAS ANYTHING GONE wrong?” There was so much of interest and sympathy in her tone, as Joe put the simple question, that John turned and looked into her face. The magic of moonlight softens the hardest features, makes interest look like friendship, and friendship like love; but it can harden too at times, and make a human face look like carved stone.
“No, there is nothing wrong,” John answered presently; “what made you think so?”
“You spoke a little regretfully,” answered Joe.
“Did I? I did not mean to. Perhaps one is less gay and less hopeful at some times than at others. It has nothing to do with success or failure.”
“I know,” answered Joe. “One can be dreadfully depressed when one is enjoying one’s self to any extent. But I should not have thought you were that sort of person. You seem always the same.”
“I try to be. That is the great difference between people who live to work and people who live to amuse and be amused.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean,” said John, “that people who work, especially people who have to do with large ideas and great movements, need to be more or less monotonous. The men who succeed are the men of one idea or at least they are the men who only have one idea at a time.”
“Whereas people who live to amuse and be amused must have as many ideas as possible.”
“Yes, to play with,” said John, completing the sentence. “Their life is play, their ideas are their playthings, and so soon as they have spoiled one toy they must have another. The people who supply ideas to an idle public are very valuable, and may have great power.”
“Novel-writers, and that sort of people,” suggested Joe.
“All producers of light literature and second-rate poetry, and a very great variety of other people besides. A man who amuses others may often be a worker himself. He raises a laugh or excites a momentary interest by getting rid of his superfluous ideas and imaginations, reserving to himself all the time the one idea in which he believes.”
“Not at all a bad theory,” said Joe.
“There are more men of that sort with you in Europe than with us. You need more amusement, and you will generally give more for it. You English, who are uncommonly fond of doing nothing, give yourselves vast trouble in the pursuit of pleasure. We Americans, who are ill when we are idle, are content to surround ourselves with the paraphernalia of pleasure when office hours are over; but we make very little use of our opportunities for amusement, being tired out at the end of the day with other things which we think more important. The result is that we have no such thing as what you denominate ‘Society,’ because we lack the prime element of aristocratic social intercourse, the ingrained determination to be idle.”
“You are very hard on us,” remarked Joe.
“Excuse me,” returned John, “you are compensated by having what we have not. Europeans are the most agreeable people in the world, wherever mutual and daily conversation and intercourse are to be considered. The majority of you, of polite European society, are not troubled with any very large ideas, but you have an immense number of very charming and attractive small ones. In America there are only two ideas that practically affect society, but they are very big ones indeed.”
“What?” asked Joe laconically, growing interested in John’s queer lecture.
“Money and political influence,” answered John Harrington. “They are the two great motors of our machine. All men who are respected among us are in pursuit of one or the other, or have attained to one or the other by their own efforts. The result is, that European society is amusing and agreeable; whereas Americans of the same class are more interesting, less polished, better acquainted with the general laws that govern the development of nations.” “Really, Mr. Harrington,” said Joe, “you are making us out to be very insignificant. And I think it would be very dull if we all had to understand ever so many general laws. Besides, I do not agree with you.”
“About what, Miss Thorn?”
“About Americans. They talk better than Englishmen, as a rule.”
“But I am comparing Americans with the whole mass of Europeans,” John objected. “The English are a rather silent race, I should say.”
“Cold, you think?” suggested Joe.
“No, not cold. Perhaps less cold than we are; but less demonstrative.”
“I like that,” answered Joe. “I like people to feel more than they show.”
“Why?” asked John. “Why should not people be perfectly natural, and show when they feel anything, or be cold when they do not?” “I think when you know some one feels a great deal and hides it, that gives one the idea of reserved strength.”
They had reached a distant part of the ice, and were slowly skating round the limits of a little bay, where the slanting moonbeams fell through tall old trees upon the glinting black surface. They were quite alone, only in the distance they could hear the long-drawn clang and ring of the other skaters, echoing all along the lake with a tremulous musical sound in the still bright night. “You must be very cold yourself, Mr. Harrington,” Joe began again after a pause, stopping and looking at him.
John laughed a little.
“I?” he cried. “No, indeed, I am the most enthusiastic man alive.”
“You are when you are speaking in public,” said Joe. “But that may be all comedy, you know. Orators always study their speeches, with all the gestures and that, before a glass, don’t they?”
“I do not know,” said John. “Of course I know by heart what I am going to say, when I make a speech like that of the other evening, but I often insert a great deal on the spur of the moment. It is not comedy. I grow very much excited when I am speaking.”
“Never at any other time?” asked Joe.
“Seldom; why should I? I do not feel other things or situations so strongly.”
“In other words,” replied Joe, “it is just as I said; you are generally very cold.”
“I suppose so,” John acquiesced, “since you will not allow the occasions when I am not cold to be counted.”
Joe looked down as she stood, and moved her skates slowly on the ice; the shadows hid her face.
“Do you know,” she said presently, “
you lose a great deal; you must, you cannot help it. You only like people in a body, so as to see what you can do with them. You only care for things on a tremendously big scale, so that you may try to influence them. When you have not a crowd to talk to, or a huge scheme to argue about, you are bored to extinction.”
“No,” said John; “I am not bored at present, by any means.”
“Because you are talking about big things. Most men in your place would be talking about the moonlight, and quoting Shelley.”
“To oblige you, Miss Thorn, I could quote a little now and then,” said John, laughing. “Would it please you? I dare say you have seen elephants stand upon their hind legs and their heads alternately. I should feel very much like one; but I will do anything to oblige you.”
“That is frivolous,” said Joe, who did not smile.
“Of course it is. I am heavy by nature. You may teach me all sorts of tricks, but they will not be at all pretty.”
“No, you are very interesting as you are,” said Joe quietly. “But I do not think you will be happy.”
“It is not a question of happiness.”
“What is it then?”
“Usefulness,” said John.
“You do not care to be happy, you only care to be useful?” Joe asked.
“Yes. But my ideas of usefulness include many things. Some of the people who listen to me would be very much astonished if they knew what I dream.”
“Nothing would astonish me,” said Joe, thoughtfully. “Of course you must think of everything in a large way–it is your nature. You will be a great man.”
John looked at his companion. She had struck the main chord of his nature in her words, and he felt suddenly that thrill of pleasure which comes from the flattery of our pride and our hopes. John was not a vain man, but he was capable of being intoxicated by the grandeur of a scheme when the possibility of its realization was suddenly thrust before him. Like all men of exceptional gifts who are constantly before the public, he could estimate very justly the extent of the results he could produce on any given occasion, but his enthusiastic belief in his ideas could see no limit to the multiplication of those results. His strong will and natural modesty about himself constantly repressed any desire he might have to speak over-confidently of ultimate success, so that the prediction of ultimate success by some one else was doubly sweet to him. We Americans have said of ourselves that we are the only nation who accomplish what we have boasted of. Rash speech and rash action are our national characteristics, and lead us into all manner of trouble, but in so far as such qualifications or defects imply a positive conviction of success, they contribute largely to the realization of great schemes. No one can succeed who does not believe in himself, nor can any scheme be realized which has not gained the support of a sufficient number of men who believe in it and in themselves.
John was gratified by Miss Thorn’s speech, for he saw that it was spontaneous.
“I will try to be great,” he said, “for the sake of what I think is great.”
There was a short pause, and the pair by common consent skated slowly out of the shadow into the broad moonlight.
“Not that I believe you will be happy if you think of nothing else,” said Joe presently.
“In order to do anything well, one must think of nothing else,” answered John.
“Many great men find time to be great and to do many other things,” said Joe. “Look at Mr. Gladstone; he has an immense private correspondence about things that interest him, quite apart from the big things he is always doing.”
“When a man has reached that point he may find plenty of time to spare,” answered Harrington. “But until he has accomplished the main object of his life he must not let anything take him from his pursuit. He must form no ties, he must have no interests, that do not conduce to his success. I think a man who enters on a political career must devote himself to it as exclusively as a missionary Jesuit attacks the conversion of unbelievers, as wholly as a Buddhist ascetic gives himself to the work of uniting his individual intelligence with the immortal spirit that gives it life.”
“I do not agree with you,” said Joe decisively, and in her womanly intelligence of life she understood the mistake John made. “I cannot agree with you. You are mixing up political activity, which deals with the government of men, with spiritual ideas and immortality, and that sort of thing.”
“How so?” asked John, in some surprise.
“I am quite sure,” said Joe, “that to govern man a man must be human, and the imaginary politician you tell me of is not human at all.”
“And yet I aspire to be that imaginary politician,” said John.
“Do not think me too dreadfully conceited,” Joe answered, “in talking about such things. Of course I do not pretend to understand them, but I am quite sure people must be like other people–I mean in good ways–or other people will not believe in them, you know. You are not vexed, are you?” She looked up into John’s face with a little timid smile that might have done wonders to persuade a less prejudiced person than Harrington.
“No indeed! why should I be vexed? But perhaps some day you will believe that I am right.”
“Oh no, never!” exclaimed Joe, in a tone of profound conviction. “You will never persuade me that people are meant to shut themselves from their fellow-creatures, and not be human, and that.”
“And yet you were so good as to say that you thought I might attain greatness,” said John, smiling.
“Yes, I think you will. But you will change your mind about a great many things before you do.”
John’s strong face grew thoughtful, and the white moonlight made his features seem harder and sterner than ever. Slowly the pair glided over the polished black ice, now marked here and there with clean white curves from the skates, and in a few minutes they were once more within hail of the remainder of their party.
Chapter VIII.
EIGHT DAYS AFTER the skating party, Ronald Surbiton telegraphed from New York that he would reach Boston the next morning, and Josephine Thorn knew that the hour had come. She was not afraid of the scene that must take place, but she wished with all her heart that it were over.
As Sybil Brandon had told her, there had been time to think of what she should say, and although she had answered recklessly that she would “trust to luck,” she knew when the day was come that she had in reality thought intensely of the very words which must be spoken. To Miss Schenectady she had said nothing, but on the other hand she had become very intimate with Sybil, and to tell the truth, she hoped inwardly for the support and sympathy of her beautiful friend.
Meanwhile, since her long evening with John Harrington on the ice, she had made every effort to avoid his society. Like many very young women with a vivid love of enjoyment and a fairly wide experience, she was something of a fatalist. That is to say, she believed that her evil destiny might spring upon her unawares at any moment, and she felt something when she was with Harrington that warned her. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to have moods of melancholy; she caught herself asking what was really the end and object of her gay life, whether it amounted to anything worthy in comparison with the trouble one had to take to amuse one’s self, whether it would not be far better in the end to live like Miss Schenectady, reading and studying and caring nothing for the world.
Not that Josephine admired Miss Schenectady, or thought that she herself could ever be like her. The old lady was a type of her class; intelligent and well versed in many subjects–even learned she might have been called by some. But to Joe’s view, essentially European by nature and education, it seemed as though her aunt, like many Bostonians, judged everything–literature, music, art of all kinds, history and the doings of great men– by one invariable standard. Her comments on what she heard and read were uniformly delivered from the same point of view, in the same tone of practical judgment, and with the same assumption of original superiority. It was the everlasting “Carthago delenda” of
the Roman orator. Whatever the world wrote, sang, painted, thought, or did, the conviction remained unshaken in Miss Schenectady’s mind that Beacon Street was better than those things, and that of all speeches and languages known and spoken in the world’s history, the familiar dialect of Boston was the one best calculated by Providence and nature to express and formulate all manner of wisdom.
It is a strange thing that where criticism is on the whole so fair, and cultivation of the best faculties so general, the manner of expressing a judgment and of exhibiting acquired knowledge should be such as to jar unpleasantly on the sensibilities of Europeans. Where is the real difference? It probably lies in some subtle point of proportion in the psychic chemistry of the Boston mind, but the analyst who shall express the formula is not yet born; though there be those who can cast the spectrum of Boston existence and thought upon their printed screens with matchless accuracy.
Joe judged but did not analyze. She said Miss Schenectady was always right, but that the way she was right was “horrid.” Consequently she did not look to her aunt for sympathy or assistance, and though they had more than once talked of Ronald Surbiton since receiving his cable from England, Joe had not said anything of her intentions regarding him. When the second telegram arrived from New York, saying that he would be in Boston on the following morning, Joe begged that Miss Schenectady would be at home to receive him when he came.
“Well, if you insist upon it, I expect I shall have to,” said Miss Schenectady. She did not see why her niece should require her presence at the interview; young men may call on young ladies in Boston without encountering the inevitable chaperon, or being obliged to do their talking in the hearing of a police of papas, mammas, and aunts. But as Joe “insisted upon it,” as the old lady said, she “expected there were no two ways about it.” Her expectations were correct, for Joe would have refused absolutely to receive Ronald alone.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 118
