“And what is that, pray?”
“What’s that? Hear the fellow, now! How innocent we are! I suppose you think I haven’t heard of your campaign in New York — carrying off that princess of little flirts, Miss Gordon.”
Clayton responded to the charge only with a slight shrug and a smile, in which not only his lips but his eyes took part, while the color mounted to his forehead.
“Now, do you know, Clayton,” continued Russel, “I like that. Do you know, I always thought I should detest the woman that you should fall in love with? It seemed to me that such a portentous combination of all the virtues as you were planning for would be something like a comet —— an alarming spectacle. Do you remember (I should like to know if you do) just what that woman was to be? — was to have all the learning of a man, all the graces of a woman (I think I have it by heart); she was to be practical, poetical, pious, and everything else that begins with a p; she was to be elegant and earnest; take deep and extensive views of life; and there was to be a certain air about her, half Madonna, half Venus, made of every creature’s best. Ah, bless us! what poor creatures we are! Here comes along our little coquette, flirting, tossing her fan; picks you up like a great solid chip, as you are, and throws you into her chip-basket of beaux, and goes on dancing and flirting as before. Aren’t you ashamed of it, now?”
“No. I am really much like the minister in our town, where we fitted for college, who married a pretty Polly Peters in his sixtieth year, and, when the elders came to inquire if she had the requisite qualifications for a pastor’s lady, he told them that he didn’t think she had. ‘But the fact is, brethren,’ said he, ‘though I don’t pretend she is a saint, she is a very pretty little sinner, and I love her.’ That’s just my case.”
“Very sensibly said; and, do you know, as I told you before, I’m perfectly delighted with it, because it is acting like other folks. But then, my dear fellow, do you think you have come to anything really solid with this little Venus of the sea-foam? Isn’t it much the same as being engaged to a cloud, or a butterfly? One wants a little streak of reality about a person that one must take for better or for worse. You have a deep nature, Clayton. You really want a wife who will have some glimmering perception of the difference between you and the other things that walk and wear coats, and are called men.”
“Well, then, really,” said Clayton, rousing himself, and speaking with energy, “I’ll tell you just what it is: Nina Gordon is a flirt and a coquette — a spoiled child, if you will. She is not at all the person I ever expected would obtain any power over me. She has no culture, no reading, no habits of reflection; but she has, after all, a certain tone and quality to her, a certain timbre, as the French say of voices, which suits me. There is about her a mixture of energy, individuality, and shrewdness, which makes her, all uninformed as she is, more piquant and attractive than any woman I ever fell in with. She never reads; it is almost impossible to get her to read; but, if you can catch her ear for five minutes, her literary judgments have a peculiar freshness and truth. And so with her judgment on all other subjects, if you can stop her long enough to give you an opinion. As to heart, I think she has yet a wholly unawakened nature. She has lived only in the world of sensation, and that is so abundant and so buoyant in her that the deeper part still sleeps. It is only two or three times that I have seen a flash of this under nature look from her eyes, and color her voice and intonation. And I believe — I’m quite sure — that I am the only person in the world that ever touched it at all. I’m not at all sure that she loves me now; but I’m almost equally sure that she will.”
“They say,” said Russel carelessly, “that she is generally engaged to two or three at a time.”
“That may be also,” said Clayton indolently. “I rather suspect it to be the case now, but it gives me no concern. I’ve seen all the men by whom she is surrounded, and I know perfectly well there’s not one of them that she cares a rush for.”
“Well, but, my dear fellow, how can your extra fastidious moral notions stand the idea of her practicing this system of deception?”
“Why, of course, it isn’t a thing to my taste; but then, like the old parson, if I love the ‘little sinner,’ what am I to do? I suppose you think it a lover’s paradox; yet I assure you, though she deceives, she is not deceitful; though she acts selfishly, she is not selfish. The fact is, the child has grown up, motherless and an heiress, among servants. She has, I believe, a sort of an aunt, or some such relative, who nominally represents the head of the family to the eye of the world. But I fancy little madam has had full sway. Then she has been to a fashionable New York boarding-school, and that has developed the talent of shirking lessons, and evading rules, with a taste for sidewalk flirtation. These are all the attainments that I ever heard of being got at a fashionable boarding-school, unless it be a hatred of books, and a general dread of literary culture.”
“And her estates are” —
“Nothing very considerable. Managed nominally by an old uncle of hers; really by a very clever quadroon servant, who was left her by her father, and who has received an education, and has talents very superior to what are common to those in his class. He is, in fact, the overseer of her plantation, and I believe the most loyal, devoted creature breathing.”
“Clayton,” said his companion, “this affair might not be much to one who takes the world as I do, but for you it may be a little too serious. Don’t get in beyond your depth.”
“You are too late, Russel, for that — I am in.”
“Well, then, good luck to you, my dear fellow! And now, as we are about it, I may as well tell you that I’m in for it, too. I suppose you have heard of Miss Benoir, of Baltimore. Well, she is my fate.”
“And are you really engaged?”
“All signed and sealed, and to be delivered next Christmas.”
“Let’s hear about her.”
“Well, she is of a good height (I always said I shouldn’t marry a short woman), — not handsome, but reasonably well looking — very fine manners — knows the world — plays and sings handsomely — has a snug little fortune.
Now, you know I never held to marrying for money and nothing else; but then, as I’m situated, I could not have fallen in love without that requisite. Some people call this heartless. I don’t think it is. If I had met Mary Benoir, and had known that she hadn’t anything, why, I should have known that it wouldn’t do for me at all to cultivate any particular intimacy; but, knowing she had fortune, I looked a little further, and found she had other things too. Now, if that’s marrying for money, so be it. Yours, Clayton, is a genuine case of falling in love. But, as for me, I walked in with my eyes wide open.”
“And what are you going to do with yourself in the world, Russel?”
“I must get into practice, and get some foothold there, you know; and then, hey for Washington! — I’m to be President, like every other adventurer in these United States. Why not I as well as another man?”
“I don’t know, certainly,” said Clayton, “if you want it, and are willing to work hard enough and long enough, and pay all the price. I would as soon spend my life walking the drawn sword which they say is the bridge to Mahomet’s paradise.”
“Ah! ah! I fancy I see you doing it! What a figure you’d make, my dear fellow, balancing and posturing on the sword-blade, and making horrid wry faces! Yet I know you’d be as comfortable there as you would in political life. And yet, after all, you are greatly superior to me in every respect. It would be a thousand pities if such a man as you couldn’t have the management of things. But our national ship has to be navigated by second-rate fellows, Jerry-go-nimbles, like me, simply because we are good in dodging and turning. But that’s the way. Sharp’s the word, and the sharpest wins.”
“For my part,” said Clayton, “I shall never be what the world calls a successful man. There seems to be one inscription written over every passage of success in life, as far as I’ve seen,—’ What shall it profit a man if he gain
the whole world, and lose his own soul? ‘“
“I don’t understand you, Clayton.”
“Why, it seems to me just this. As matters are going on now in our country, I must either lower my standard of right and honor, and sear my soul in all its nobler sensibilities, or I must be what the world calls an unsuccessful man. There is no path in life, that I know of, where humbuggery and fraud and deceit are not essential to success, — none where a man can make the purity of his moral nature the first object. I see Satan standing in every avenue, saying, ‘All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’”
“Why don’t you take to the ministry, then, Clayton, at once, and put up a pulpit-cushion and big Bible between you and the fiery darts of the devil?”
“I’m afraid I should meet him there, too. I could not gain a right to speak in any pulpit without some profession or pledge to speak this or that, that would be a snare to my conscience by and by. At the door of every pulpit I must swear always to find truth in a certain formula; and living, prosperity, success, reputation, will all be pledged on my finding it there. I tell you I should, if I followed my own conscience, preach myself out of pulpits quicker than I should plead out at the bar.”
“Lord help you, Clayton! What will you do? Will you settle down on your plantation, and raise cotton and sell niggers? I’m expecting to hear, every minute, that you’ve subscribed for the ‘Liberator,’ and are going to turn Abolitionist.”
“I do mean to settle down on my plantation, but not to raise cotton or negroes as a chief end of man. I do take the ‘ Liberator,’ because I’m a free man, and have a right to take what I have a mind to. I don’t agree with Garrison, because I think I know more about the matter, where I stand, than he does, or can, where he stands. But it’s his right, as an honest man, to say what he thinks; and I should use it in his place. If I saw things as he does, I should be an Abolitionist. But I don’t.”
“That’s a mercy, at least,” said Russel, “to a man with your taste for martyrdom. But what are you going to do?”
“What any Christian man should do who finds four hundred odd of his fellow men and women placed in a state of absolute dependence on him. I’m going to educate and fit them for freedom. There isn’t a sublimer power on earth than God has given to us, masters. The law gives us absolute and unlimited control. A plantation such as a plantation might be would be ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles.’ There is a wonderful and beautiful development locked up in this Ethiopian race, and it is worth being a life-object to unlock it. The raising of cotton is to be the least of the thing. I regard my plantation as a sphere for raising men and women, and demonstrating the capabilities of a race.”
“Selah!” said Russel.
Clayton looked angry.
“I beg your pardon, Clayton. This is all superb, sublime! There is just one objection to it — it is wholly impossible.”
“Every good and great thing has been called impossible before it is done.”
“Well, let me tell you, Clayton, just how it will be. You will be a mark for arrows, both sides. You will offend all your neighbors by doing better than they do. You will bring your negroes up to a point in which they will meet the current of the whole community against them, and meanwhile you will get no credit with the Abolitionists. They will call you a cut-throat, pirate, sheep-stealer, and all the rest of their elegant little list of embellishments, all the same. You’ll get a state of things that nobody can manage but yourself, and you by the hardest; and then you’ll die, and it’ll all run to the devil faster than you run it up. Now, if you would do the thing by halves, it wouldn’t be so bad; but I know you of old. You won’t be satisfied with teaching a catechism and a few hymns, parrot-wise, which I think is a respectable religious amusement for our women. You’ll teach ’em all to read and write and think and speak. I shouldn’t wonder to hear of an importation of black-boards and spelling-books. You’ll want a lyceum and debating society. Pray, what does sister Anne say to all this? Anne is a sensible girl now, but I’ll warrant you’ve got her to go in for it.”
“Anne is as much interested as I, but her practical tact is greater than mine, and she is of use in detecting difficulties that I do not see. I have an excellent man, who enters fully into my views, who takes charge of the business interests of the plantation, instead of one of these scoundrel overseers. There is to be a graduated system of work and wages introduced — a system that shall teach the nature and rights of property and train to habits of industry and frugality, by making every man’s acquirements equal to his industry and good conduct.”
“And what sort of a support do you expect to make out of all this? Are you going to live for them, or they for you?” —
“I shall set them the example of living for them, and trust to awaken the good that is in them, in return. The strong ought to live for the weak — the cultivated for the ignorant.”
“Well, Clayton, the Lord help you! I’m in earnest now — fact! Though I know you won’t do it, yet I wish you could. It’s a pity, Clayton, you were born in this world. It isn’t you, but our planet and planetary ways that are in fault. Your mind is a splendid storehouse — gold and gems of Ophir — but they are all up in the fifth story, and no staircase to get ’em down into common life. Now I’ve just enough appreciation of the sort of thing that’s in you, not to laugh at you. Nine out of ten would. To tell you the truth, if I were already set up in life, and had as definite a position as you have, — family, friends, influence, and means, — why, perhaps I might afford to cultivate this style of thing. But I tell you what it is, Clayton, such a conscience as yours is cursedly expensive to keep. It’s like a carriage — a fellow mustn’t set it up unless he can afford it. It’s one of the luxuries.”
“It’s a necessary of life with me,” said Clayton dryly.
“Well, that’s your nature. I can’t afford it. I’ve got my way to make. I must succeed, and with your ultra notions I couldn’t succeed. So there it is. After all, I can be as religious as dozens of your most respectable men, who have taken their seats in the night train for Paradise and keep the daylight for their own business.”
“I dare say you can.”
“Yes, and I shall get all I aim at; and you, Clayton, will be always an unhappy, dissatisfied aspirant after something too high for mortality. There’s just the difference between us.”
The conversation was here interrupted by the return of the family party.
CHAPTER III
THE CLAYTON FAMILY AND SISTER ANNE
THE family party, which was now ushered in, consisted of Clayton’s father, mother, and sister. Judge Clayton was a tall, dignified, elderly personage, in whom one recognized, at a glance, the gentleman of the old school. His hair, snowy white, formed a singular contrast with the brightness of his blue eyes, whose peculiar acuteness of glance might remind one of a falcon. There was something stately in the position of the head and the carriage of the figure, and a punctilious exactness in the whole air and manner, that gave one a slight impression of sternness. The clear, sharp blue of his eye seemed to be that of a calm and decided intellect, of a logical severity of thought; and contrasted with the silvery hair with that same expression of cold beauty that is given by the contrast of snow mountains cutting into the keen, metallic blue of an Alpine sky. One should apprehend much to fear from such a man’s reason — little to hope from any outburst of his emotional nature. Yet, as a man, perhaps injustice was done to Judge Clayton by this first impression; for there was, deep beneath this external coldness, a severely repressed nature, of the most fiery and passionate vehemence. His family affections were strong and tender, seldom manifested in words, but always by the most exact appreciation and consideration for all who came within his sphere. He was strictly and impartially just in all the little minutiæ of social and domestic life, never hesitating to speak a truth or acknowledge an error.
Mrs. Clayton was a high-bred, elderly lady, whose well-preserved delicacy of compl
exion, brilliant dark eyes, and fine figure spoke of a youth of beauty. Of a nature imaginative, impulsive, and ardent, inclining constantly to generous extremes, she had thrown herself with passionate devotion round her clear-judging husband, as the Alpine rose girdles with beauty the breast of the bright, pure glacier.
Between Clayton and his father there existed an affection deep and entire; yet as the son developed to manhood, it became increasingly evident that they could never move harmoniously in the same practical orbit. The nature of the son was so veined and crossed with that of the mother, that the father, in attempting the age-long and often-tried experiment of making his child an exact copy of himself, found himself extremely puzzled and confused in the operation. Clayton was ideal to an excess; ideality colored every faculty of his mind, and swayed all his reasonings, as an unseen magnet will swerve the needle. Ideality pervaded his conscientiousness, urging him always to rise above the commonly received and so-called practical in morals. Hence, while he worshiped the theory of law, the practice filled him with disgust; and his father was obliged constantly to point out deficiencies in reasonings, founded more on a keen appreciation of what things ought to be, than on a practical regard to what they are. Nevertheless, Clayton partook enough of his father’s strong and steady nature to be his mother’s idol, who, perhaps, loved this second rendering of the parental nature with even more doting tenderness than the first.
Anne Clayton was the eldest of three sisters, and the special companion and confidante of the brother; and as she stands there untying her bonnet-strings, we must also present her to the reader. She is a little above the medium height, with that breadth and full development of chest which one admires in English women. She carries her well-formed head on her graceful shoulders with a positive, decided air, only a little on this side of haughtiness. Her clear brown complexion reddens into a fine glow in the cheek, giving one the impression of sound, perfect health. The positive outline of the small aquiline nose; the large, frank, well-formed mouth, with its clear rows of shining teeth; the brown eyes, which have caught something of the falcon keenness of the father, are points in the picture by no means to be overlooked. Taking her air altogether, there was an honest frankness about her which encouraged conversation, and put one instantly at ease. Yet no man in his senses could ever venture to take the slightest liberty with Anne Clayton. With all her frankness, there was ever in her manner a perfectly defined “thus far shalt thou come, and no further.” Beaux, suitors, lovers in abundance, had stood, knelt, and sighed protesting, at her shrine. Yet Anne Clayton was twenty-seven, and unmarried. Everybody wondered why; and as to that, we can only wonder with the rest. Her own account of the matter was simple and positive. She did not wish to marry — was happy enough without.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 64
