“Say what?” asked Lemuel, not without some prescience.
“Well, you can forgive the brotherly frankness, if you don’t like it. I don’t think they’re quite up to you.”
Lemuel gave a sort of start, which Berry interpreted in his own way.
“Now, hold on! I know just how you feel. Been there myself. I have seen the time too when I thought any sort of girl was too good for Alonzo W., Jr. But I don’t now. I think A. W., Jr., is good enough for the best. I may be mistaken; I was the other time. But we all begin that way; and the great object is not to keep on that way. See? Now, I suppose you’re in love — puppy love — with that little thing. Probably the first girl you got acquainted with after you came to Boston, or may be a sweet survival of the Willoughby Pastures period. All right. Perfectly natural, in either case. But don’t you let it go any further, my dear boy; old man, don’t you let it go any further. Pause! Reflect! Consider! Love wisely, but not too well! Take the unsolicited advice of a sufferer.”
Pride, joy, shame, remorse, mixed in Lemuel’s heart, which eased itself in an involuntary laugh at Berry’s nonsense.
“Now, what I want you to do — dear boy, or old man, as the case may be — is to regard yourself in a new light. Regard yourself, for the sake of the experiment, as too good for any girl in Boston. No? Can’t fetch it? Try again!”
Lemuel could only laugh foolishly.
“Well, now, that’s singular,” pursued Berry. “I supposed you could have done it without the least trouble. Well, let’s try something a little less difficult. Look me in the eye, and regard yourself as too good, for example, for Miss Carver. Ha!”
An angry flush spread over Lemuel’s embarrassed face. “I wish you’d behave yourself,” he stammered.
“In any other cause I would,” said Berry solemnly. “But I must be cruel to be kind. Seriously, old man, if you can’t think yourself too good for Miss Carver, I wish you’d think yourself good enough. Now, I’m not saying anything against the Willoughby episode, mind. That has its place in the wise economy of nature, just like anything else. But there ain’t any outcome in it for you. You’ve got a future before you, Barker, and you don’t want to go and load up with a love affair that you’ll keep trying to unload as long as you live. No, sir! Look at me! I know I’m not an example in some things, but in this little business of correctly placed affections I could give points to Solomon. Why am I in love with M. Swan? Because I can’t help it for one thing, and because for another thing she can do more to develop the hidden worth and unsuspected powers of A. W., Jr., than any other woman in the world. She may never feel that it’s her mission, but she can’t shake my conviction that way; and I shall stay undeveloped to prove that I was right. Well, now, what you want, my friend, is development, and you can’t get it where you’ve been going. She hain’t got it on hand. And what you want to do is not to take something else in its place — tender heart, steadfast affections, loyalty; they’ve got ’em at every shop in town; they’re a drug in the market. You’ve got to say ‘No development, heigh? Well, I’ll just look round a while, and if I can’t find it at some of the other stores I’ll come back and take some of that steadfast affection. You say it won’t come off? Or run in washing?’ See?”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Lemuel, trying to summon an indignant feeling, and laughing with a strange pleasure at heart. “You’ve got no right to talk to me that way. I want you should leave me alone!”
“Well, since you’re so pressing, I will go,” said Berry easily. “But if I find you at our next interview sitting under the shade of the mustard-tree whose little seed I have just dropped, I shall feel that I have not laboured in vain. ‘She’s a darling, she’s a daisy, she’s a dumpling, she’s a lamb!’ I refer to Miss Swan, of course; but on other lips the terms are equally applicable to Miss Carver; and don’t you forget it!”
He swung out of the office with a mazurka step. His silk hat, gaily tilted on the side of his head, struck against the door-jamb, and fell rolling across the entry floor. Lemuel laughed wildly. At twenty these things are droll.
XXI.
A week passed, and Lemuel had not tried to see Statira again. He said to himself that even when he had tried to do what was right, and to show those young ladies how much he thought of her by bringing her to see their pictures, she had acted very ungratefully, and had as good as tried to quarrel with him. Then, when he went to see her before his visit home, she was out; she had never been out before when he called.
Now, he had told Berry that they were not engaged. At first, this shocked him as if it were a lie. Then he said to himself that he had a right to make that answer because Berry had no right to ask the questions that led to it. Then he asked himself if he really were engaged to Statira. He had told her that he liked her better than any one else in the world, and she had said as much to him. But he pretended that he did not know whether it could be called an engagement.
There was no one who could solve the question for him, and it kept asking itself that whole week, and especially when he was with Miss Carver, as happened two or three times through Berry’s connivance. Once he had spent the greater part of an evening in the studio, where he talked nearly all the time with Miss Carver, and he found out that she was the daughter of an old ship’s captain at Corbitant; her mother was dead, and her aunt had kept house for her father. It was an old square house that her grandfather built, in the days when Corbitant had direct trade with France. She described it minutely, and told how a French gentleman had died there in exile at the time of the French revolution and who was said to haunt the house; but Miss Carver had never seen any ghosts in it. They all began to talk of ghosts and weird experiences; even Berry had had some strange things happen to him in the West. Then the talk broke in two again, and Lemuel sat apart with Miss Carver, who told at length the plot of a story she had been reading; it was a story called Romola; and she said she would lend it to Lemuel; she said she did not see how any one could bear to be the least selfish or untrue after reading it. That made Lemuel feel cold; but he could not break away from her charm. She sat where the shaded lamp threw its soft light on one side of her face; it looked almost like the face of a spirit, and her eyes were full of a heavenly gentleness.
Lemuel asked himself how he could ever have thought them proud eyes. He asked himself at the same time and perpetually, whether he was really engaged to Statira or not. He thought how different this evening was from those he spent with her. She could not talk about anything but him and her dress; and ‘Manda Grier could not do anything but say saucy things which she thought were smart. Miss Swan was really witty; it was as good as the theatre to hear her and Berry going on together. Berry was pretty bright; there was no denying it. He sang to his banjo that night; one of the songs was Spanish; he had learned it in New Mexico.
Lemuel began to understand better how such nice young ladies could go with Berry. At first, after Berry talked so to him that night in the office against Statira, he determined that he would keep away from him. But Berry was so sociable and good-natured that he could not. The first thing he knew, Lemuel was laughing at something Berry said, and then he could not help himself.
Berry was coming now, every chance he had, to talk about the art-students. He seemed to take it for granted that Lemuel was as much interested in Miss Carver as he was himself in Miss Swan; and Lemuel did begin to speak of her in a shy way. Berry asked him if he had noticed that she looked like that Spanish picture of the Virgin that Miss Swan had pinned up next to the door; and Lemuel admitted that there was some resemblance.
“Notice those eyes of hers, so deep, and sorry for everybody in general? If it was anybody in particular, that fellow would be in luck. Oh, she’s a dumpling, there’s no mistake about it! ‘Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered!’ That’s Miss Carver’s style. She looks as if she just wanted to forgive somebody something. I’m afraid you ain’t wicked enough, Barker. Look here! What’s the reason we can’t
make up a little party for the Easter service at the Catholic cathedral Sunday night? The girls would like to go, I know.”
“No, no, I can’t! I mustn’t!” said Lemuel, and he remained steadfast in his refusal. It would be the second Sunday night that he had not seen Statira, and he felt that he must not let it pass so. Berry went off to the cathedral with the art-students; and he kept out of the way till they were gone.
He said to himself that he would go a little later than usual to see Statira, to let her know that he was not so very anxious; but when he found her alone, and she cried on his neck, and owned that she had not behaved as she should that night when she went to see the pictures, and that she had been afraid he hated her, and was not coming any more, he had stayed away so long, his heart was melted, and he did everything to soothe and comfort her, and they were more loving together than they had been since the first time. ‘Manda Grier came in, and said through her nose, like an old country-woman, “‘The falling out of faithful friends, renewing is of love!’” and Statira exclaimed in the old way, “‘Manda!” that he had once thought so cunning, and rested there in his arms with her cheek tight pressed against his.
She did not talk; except when she was greatly excited about something, she rarely had anything to say. She had certain little tricks, poutings, bridlings, starts, outcries, which had seemed the most bewitching things in the world to Lemuel. She tried all these now, unaffectedly enough, in listening to his account of his visit home, and so far as she could she vividly sympathised with him.
He came away heavy and unhappy. Somehow, these things no longer sufficed for him. He compared this evening with the last he had spent with the art-students, which had left his brain in a glow, and kept him awake for hours with luminous thoughts. But he had got over that unkindness to Statira, and he was glad of that. He pitied her now, and he said to himself that if he could get her away from ‘Manda Grier, and under the influence of such girls as Miss Swan and Miss Carver, it would be much better for her. He did not relent toward ‘Manda Grier; he disliked her more than ever, and in the friendship which he dramatised between Statira and Miss Carver, he saw her cast adrift without remorse.
Sewell had told him that he was always at leisure Monday night, and the next evening Lemuel went to pay his first visit to the minister since his first day in Boston. It was early, and Evans, who usually came that evening, had not arrived yet, but Sewell had him in his thought when he hurried forward to meet his visitor.
“Oh, is it you, Mr. Barker?” he asked in a note of surprise. “I am glad to see you. I had been intending to come and look you up again. Will you sit down? Mr. Evans was here the other night, and we were talking of you. I hope you are all well?”
“Very well, thank you,” said Lemuel, taking the hand the minister offered, and then taking the chair he indicated. Sewell did not know exactly whether to like the greater ease which Lemuel showed in his presence; but there was nothing presumptuous in it, and he could not help seeing the increased refinement of the young man’s beauty. The knot between his eyes gave him interest, while it inflicted a vague pang upon the minister. “I have been at home since I saw you.” Lemuel looked down at his neat shoes to see if they were in fit state for the minister’s study-carpet, and Sewell’s eye sympathetically following, wandered to the various details of Lemuel’s simple and becoming dress, — the light spring suit which he had indulged himself in at the Misfit Parlours since his mother had bidden him keep his money for himself and not send so much of it home.
“Ah, have you?” cried the minister. “I hope you found your people all well? How is the place looking? I suppose the season isn’t quite so advanced as it is with us.”
“There’s some snow in the woods yet,” said Lemuel, laying the stick he carried across the hat-brim on his knees. “Mother was well; but my sister and her husband have had a good deal of sickness.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for that,” said Sewell, with the general sympathy which Evans accused him of keeping on tap professionally. “Well, how did you like the looks of Willoughby Pastures compared with Boston? Rather quieter, I suppose.”
“Yes, it was quieter,” answered Lemuel.
“But the first touch of spring must be very lovely there! I find myself very impatient with these sweet, early days in town. I envy you your escape to such a place.”
Lemuel opposed a cold silence to the lurking didacticism of these sentences, and Sewell hastened to add, “And I wish I could have had your experience in contrasting the country and the town, after your long sojourn here, on your first return home. Such a chance can come but once in a lifetime, and to very few.”
“There are some pleasant things about the country,” Lemuel began.
“Oh, I am sure of it!” cried Sewell, with cheerful aimlessness.
“The stillness was a kind of rest, after the noise here; I think any one might be glad to get back to such a place — —”
“I was sure you would,” interrupted Sewell.
“If he was discouraged or broken down any way,” Lemuel calmly added.
“Oh!” said Sewell. “You mean that you found more sympathy among your old friends and neighbours than you do here?”
“No,” said Lemuel bluntly. “That’s what city people think. But it’s all a mistake. There isn’t half the sympathy in the country that there is in the city. Folks pry into each other’s business more, but they don’t really care so much. What I mean is that you could live cheaper, and the fight isn’t so hard. You might have to use your hands more, but you wouldn’t have to use your head hardly at all. There isn’t so much opposition — competition.”
“Oh,” said Sewell a second time. “But this competition — this struggle — in which one or the other must go to the wall, isn’t that painful?”
“I don’t know as it is,” answered Lemuel, “as long as you’re young and strong. And it don’t always follow that one must go to the wall. I’ve seen some things where both got on better.”
Sewell succumbed to this worldly wisdom. He was frequently at the disadvantage men of cloistered lives must be, in having his theories in advance of his facts. He now left this point, and covertly touched another that had come up in his last talk with Evans about Barker. “But you find in the country, don’t you, a greater equality of social condition? People are more on a level, and have fewer artificial distinctions.”
“Yes, there’s that,” admitted Lemuel. “I’ve worried a good deal about that, for I’ve had to take a servant’s place in a good many things, and I’ve thought folks looked down on me for it, even when they didn’t seem to intend to do it. But I guess it isn’t so bad as I thought when I first began to notice it. Do you suppose it is?” His voice was suddenly tense with personal interest in the question which had ceased to be abstract.
“Oh, certainly not,” said the minister, with an ease which he did not feel.
“I presume I had what you may call a servant’s place at Miss Vane’s,” pursued Lemuel unflinchingly, “and I’ve been what you may call head waiter at the St. Albans, since I’ve been there. If a person heard afterwards, when I had made out something, if I ever did, that I had been a servant, would they — they — despise me for it?”
“Not unless they were very silly people,” said Sewell cordially, “I can assure you.”
“But if they had ever seen me doing a servant’s work, wouldn’t they always remember it, no matter what I was afterwards?” Sewell hesitated, and Lemuel hurried to add, “I ask because I’ve made up my mind not to be anything but clerk after this.”
Sewell pitied the simple shame, the simple pride. “That isn’t the question for you to ask, my dear boy,” he answered gently, and with an affection which he had never felt for his charge before. “There’s another question, more important, and one which you must ask yourself: ‘Should I care if they did?’ After all, the matter’s in your own hands. Your soul’s always your own till you do something wrong.”
“Yes, I understand that.” Lemue
l sat silently thoughtful, fingering his hat-band. It seemed to Sewell that he wished to ask something else, and was mustering his courage; but if this was so, it exhaled in a sigh, and he remained silent.
“I should be sorry,” pursued the minister, “to have you dwell upon such things. There are certain ignoble facts in life which we can best combat by ignoring them. A slight of almost any sort ceases to be when you cease to consider it.” This did not strike Sewell as wholly true when he had said it, and he was formulating some modification of it in his mind, when Lemuel said —
“I presume a person can help himself some by being ashamed of caring for such things, and that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant — —”
“I guess I’ve exaggerated the whole thing some. But if a thing is so, thinking it ain’t won’t unmake it.”
“No,” admitted Sewell reluctantly. “But I should be sorry, all the same, if you let it annoy — grieve you. What has pleased me in what I’ve been able to observe in you, has been your willingness to take hold of any kind of honest work. I liked finding you with your coat off washing dishes, that morning, at the Wayfarer’s Lodge, and I liked your going at once to Miss Vane’s in a — as you did — —”
“Of course,” Lemuel interrupted, “I could do it before I knew how it was looked at here.”
“And couldn’t you do it now?”
“Not if there was anything else.”
“Ah, that’s the great curse of it; that’s what I deplore,” Sewell broke out, “in our young people coming from the country to the city. They must all have some genteel occupation! I don’t blame them; but I would gladly have saved you this experience — this knowledge — if I could. I felt that I had done you a kind of wrong in being the means, however indirectly and innocently, of your coming to Boston, and I would willingly have done anything to have you go back to the country. But you seemed to distrust me — to find something hostile in me — and I did not know how to influence you.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 311
