An Oldport Romance

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"The most influential part of it," said Emilia.

"Are you sure, dear?" said her sister. "I do not think they
influence it half so much as a great many people who are too
busy to go to either place. I always remember those hundred
girls at the Normal School, and that they were not at all like
Mrs. Meredith, nor would they care to be like her, any more
than she would wish to be like them."

"They have not had the same advantages," said Emilia.

"Nor the same disadvantages," said Hope. "Some of them are not
so well bred, and none of them speak French so well, for she
speaks exquisitely. But in all that belongs to real training of
the mind, they seem to me superior, and that is why I think
they will have more influence."

"None of them are rich, though, I suppose," said Emilia, "nor
of very nice families, or they would not be teachers. So they
will not be so prominent in society."

"But they may yet become very prominent in society," said
Hope,--"they or their pupils or their children. At any rate, it
is as certain that the noblest lives will have most influence
in the end, as that two and two make four."

"Is that certain?" said Philip. "Perhaps there are worlds
where two and two do not make just that desirable amount."

"I trust there are," said Aunt Jane. "Perhaps I was intended
to be born in one of them, and that is why my housekeeping
accounts never add up."

Here hope was called away, and Emilia saucily murmured, "Sour
grapes!"

"Not a bit of it!" cried Kate, indignantly. "Hope might have
anything in society she wishes, if she would only give up some
of her own plans, and let me choose her dresses, and her rich
uncles pay for them. Count Posen told me, only yesterday, that
there was not a girl in Oldport with such an air as hers."

"Not Kate herself?" said Emilia, slyly.

"I?" said Kate. "What am I? A silly chit of a thing, with
about a dozen ideas in my head, nearly every one of which was
planted there by Hope. I like the nonsense of the world very
well as it is, and without her I should have cared for nothing
else. Count Posen asked me the other day, which country
produced on the whole the most womanly women, France or
America. He is one of the few foreigners who expect a rational
answer. So I told him that I knew very little of Frenchwomen
personally, but that I had read French novels ever since I was
born, and there was not a woman worthy to be compared with Hope
in any of them, except Consuelo, and even she told lies."

"Do not begin upon Hope," said Aunt Jane. "It is the only
subject on which Kate can be tedious. Tell me about the
dresses. Were people over-dressed or under-dressed?"

"Under-dressed," said Phil. "Miss Ingleside had a half-inch
strip of muslin over her shoulder."

Here Philip followed Hope out of the room, and Emilia presently
followed him.

"Tell on!" said Aunt Jane. "How did Philip enjoy himself?"

"He is easily amused, you know," said Kate. "He likes to
observe people, and to shoot folly as it flies."

"It does not fly," retorted the elder lady. "I wish it did.
You can shoot it sitting, at least where Philip is."

"Auntie," said Kate, "tell me truly your objection to Philip.
I think you did not like his parents. Had he not a good
mother?"

"She was good," said Aunt Jane, reluctantly, "but it was that
kind of goodness which is quite offensive."

"And did you know his father well?"

"Know him!" exclaimed Aunt Jane. "I should think I did. I have
sat up all night to hate him."

"That was very wrong," said Kate, decisively. "You do not mean
that. You only mean that you did not admire him very much."

"I never admired a dozen people in my life, Kate. I once made
a list of them. There were six women, three men, and a
Newfoundland dog."

"What happened?" said Kate. "The Is-raelites died after
Pharaoh, or somebody, numbered them. Did anything happen to
yours?"

"It was worse with mine," said Aunt Jane. "I grew tired of
some and others I forgot, till at last there was nobody left
but the dog, and he died."

"Was Philip's father one of them?"

"No."

"Tell me about him," said Kate, firmly.

"Ruth," said the elder lady, as her young handmaiden passed the
door with her wonted demureness, "come here; no, get me a glass
of water. Kate! I shall die of that girl. She does some
idiotic thing, and then she looks in here with that contented,
beaming look. There is an air of baseless happiness about her
that drives me nearly frantic."

"Never mind about that," persisted Kate. "Tell me about
Philip's father. What was the matter with him?"

"My dear," Aunt Jane at last answered,--with that fearful
moderation to which she usually resorted when even her stock of
superlatives was exhausted,--"he belonged to a family for whom
truth possessed even less than the usual attractions."

This neat epitaph implied the erection of a final tombstone
over the whole race, and Kate asked no more.

Meantime Malbone sat at the western door with Harry, and was
running on with one of his tirades, half jest, half earnest,
against American society.

"In America," he said, "everything which does not tend to money
is thought to be wasted, as our Quaker neighbor thinks the
children's croquet-ground wasted, because it is not a potato
field."

"Not just!" cried Harry. "Nowhere is there more respect for
those who give their lives to intellectual pursuits."

"What are intellectual pursuits?" said Philip. "Editing daily
newspapers? Teaching arithmetic to children? I see no others
flourishing hereabouts."

"Science and literature," answered Harry.

"Who cares for literature in America," said Philip, "after a
man rises three inches above the newspaper level? Nobody reads
Thoreau; only an insignificant fraction read Emerson, or even
Hawthorne. The majority of people have hardly even heard their
names. What inducement has a writer? Nobody has any weight in
America who is not in Congress, and nobody gets into Congress
without the necessity of bribing or button-holing men whom he
despises."

"But you do not care for public life?" said Harry.

"No," said Malbone, "therefore this does not trouble me, but it
troubles you. I am content. My digestion is good. I can
always amuse myself. Why are you not satisfied?"

"Because you are not," said Harry. "You are dissatisfied with
men, and so you care chiefly to amuse yourself with women and
children."

"I dare say," said Malbone, carelessly. "They are usually less
ungraceful and talk better grammar."

"But American life does not mean grace nor grammar. We are all
living for the future. Rough work now, and the graces by and
by."

"That is what we Americans always say," retorted Philip.
"Everything is in the future. What guaranty have we for that
future? I see none. We make no progress towards the higher
arts, except in greater quantities of mediocrity. We sell
larger editions of poor books. Our artists fill larger frames
and travel farther for materials; but a ten-inch canvas would
tell all they have to say."

"The wrong point of view," said Hal. "If you begin with high
art, you begin at the wrong end. The first essential for any
nation is to put the mass of the people above the reach of
want. We are all usefully employed, if we contribute to that."

"So is the cook usefully employed while preparing dinner," said
Philip. "Nevertheless, I do not wish to live in the kitchen."

"Yet you always admire your own country," said Harry, "so long
as you are in Europe."

"No doubt," said Philip. "I do not object to the kitchen at
that distance. And to tell the truth, America looks well from
Europe. No culture, no art seems so noble as this far-off
spectacle of a self-governing people. The enthusiasm lasts till
one's return. Then there seems nothing here but to work hard
and keep out of mischief."

"That is something," said Harry.

"A good deal in America," said Phil. "We talk about the
immorality of older countries. Did you ever notice that no
class of men are so apt to take to drinking as highly
cultivated Americans? It is a very demoralizing position, when
one's tastes outgrow one's surroundings. Positively, I think a
man is more excusable for coveting his neighbor's wife in
America than in Europe, because there is so little else to
covet."

"Malbone!" said Hal, "what has got into you? Do you know what
things you are saying?"

"Perfectly," was the unconcerned reply. "I am not arguing; I
am only testifying. I know that in Paris, for instance, I
myself have no temptations. Art and history are so delightful,
I absolutely do not care for the society even of women; but
here, where there is nothing to do, one must have some
stimulus, and for me, who hate drinking, they are, at least, a
more refined excitement."

"More dangerous," said Hal. "Infinitely more dangerous, in the
morbid way in which you look at life. What have these sickly
fancies to do with the career that opens to every brave man in
a great nation?"

"They have everything to do with it, and there are many for
whom there is no career. As the nation develops, it must
produce men of high culture. Now there is no place for them
except as bookkeepers or pedagogues or newspaper reporters.
Meantime the incessant unintellectual activity is only a
sublime bore to those who stand aside."

"Then why stand aside?" persisted the downright Harry.

"I have no place in it but a lounging-place," said Malbone. "I
do not wish to chop blocks with a razor. I envy those men,
born mere Americans, with no ambition in life but to 'swing a
railroad' as they say at the West. Every morning I hope to
wake up like them in the fear of God and the love of money."

"You may as well stop," said Harry, coloring a little.
"Malbone, you used to be my ideal man in my boyhood, but"--

"I am glad we have got beyond that," interrupted the other,
cheerily, "I am only an idler in the land. Meanwhile, I have
my little interests,--read, write, sketch--"

"Flirt?" put in Hal, with growing displeasure.

"Not now," said Phil, patting his shoulder, with imperturbable
good-nature. "Our beloved has cured me of that. He who has won
the pearl dives no more."

"Do not let us speak of Hope," said Harry. "Everything that
you have been asserting Hope's daily life disproves."

"That may be," answered Malbone, heartily. "But, Hal, I never
flirted; I always despised it. It was always a grande passion
with me, or what I took for such. I loved to be loved, I
suppose; and there was always something new and fascinating to
be explored in a human heart, that is, a woman's."

"Some new temple to profane?" asked Hal severely.

"Never!" said Philip. "I never profaned it. If I deceived, I
shared the deception, at least for a time; and, as for
sensuality, I had none in me."

"Did you have nothing worse? Rousseau ends where Tom Jones
begins."

"My temperament saved me," said Philip. "A woman is not a
woman to me, without personal refinement."

"Just what Rousseau said," replied Harry.

"I acted upon it," answered Malbone. "No one dislikes Blanche
Ingleside and her demi monde more than I."

"You ought not," was the retort. "You help to bring other
girls to her level."

"Whom?" said Malbone, startled.

"Emilia."

"Emilia?" repeated the other, coloring crimson. "I, who have
warned her against Blanche's society."

"And have left her no other resource," said Harry, coloring
still more. "Malbone, you have gained (unconsciously of course)
too much power over that girl, and the only effect of it is, to
keep her in perpetual excitement. So she seeks Blanche, as she
would any other strong stimulant. Hope does not seem to have
discovered this, but Kate has, and I have."

Hope came in, and Harry went out. The next day he came to
Philip and apologized most warmly for his unjust and
inconsiderate words. Malbone, always generous, bade him think
no more about it, and Harry for that day reverted strongly to
his first faith. "So noble, so high-toned," he said to Kate.
Indeed, a man never appears more magnanimous than in forgiving
a friend who has told him the truth.

IX.

DANGEROUS WAYS.

IT was true enough what Harry had said. Philip Malbone's was
that perilous Rousseau-like temperament, neither sincere enough
for safety, nor false enough to alarm; the winning tenderness
that thrills and softens at the mere neighborhood of a woman,
and fascinates by its reality those whom no hypocrisy can
deceive. It was a nature half amiable, half voluptuous, that
disarmed others, seeming itself unarmed. He was never wholly
ennobled by passion, for it never touched him deeply enough;
and, on the other hand, he was not hardened by the habitual
attitude of passion, for he was never really insincere.
Sometimes it seemed as if nothing stood between him and utter
profligacy but a little indolence, a little kindness, and a
good deal of caution.

"There seems no such thing as serious repentance in me," he had
once said to Kate, two years before, when she had upbraided him
with some desperate flirtation which had looked as if he would
carry it as far as gentlemen did under King Charles II. "How
does remorse begin?"

"Where you are beginning," said Kate.

"I do not perceive that," he answered. "My conscience seems,
after all, to be only a form of good-nature. I like to be
stirred by emotion, I suppose, and I like to study character.
But I can always stop when it is evident that I shall cause
pain to somebody. Is there any other motive?"

"In other words," said she, "you apply the match, and then turn
your back on the burning house."

Philip colored. "How unjust you are! Of course, we all like
to play with fire, but I always put it out before it can
spread. Do you think I have no feeling?"

Kate stopped there, I suppose. Even she always stopped soon,
if she undertook to interfere with Malbone. This charming
Alcibiades always convinced them, after the wrestling was over,
that he had not been thrown.

The only exception to this was in the case of Aunt Jane. If
she had anything in common with Philip,--and there was a
certain element of ingenuous unconsciousness in which they were
not so far unlike,--it only placed them in the more complete
antagonism. Perhaps if two beings were in absolutely no respect
alike, they never could meet even for purposes of hostility;
there must be some common ground from which the aversion may
proceed. Moreover, in this case Aunt Jane utterly disbelieved
in Malbone because she had reason to disbelieve in his father,
and the better she knew the son the more she disliked the
father retrospectively.

Philip was apt to be very heedless of such aversions,--indeed,
he had few to heed,--but it was apparent that Aunt Jane was the
only person with whom he was not quite at ease. Still, the
solicitude did not trouble him very much, for he instinctively
knew that it was not his particular actions which vexed her, so
much as his very temperament and atmosphere,--things not to be
changed. So he usually went his way; and if he sometimes felt
one of her sharp retorts, could laugh it off that day and sleep
it off before the next morning.

For you may be sure that Philip was very little troubled by
inconvenient memories. He never had to affect forgetfulness of
anything. The past slid from him so easily, he forgot even to
try to forget. He liked to quote from Emerson, "What have I to
do with repentance?" "What have my yesterday's errors," he
would say, "to do with the life of to-day?"

"Everything," interrupted Aunt Jane, "for you will repeat them
to-day, if you can."

"Not at all," persisted he, accepting as conversation what she
meant as a stab. "I may, indeed, commit greater errors,"--here
she grimly nodded, as if she had no doubt of it,--"but never
just the same. To-day must take thought for itself."

"I wish it would," she said, gently, and then went on with her
own thoughts while he was silent. Presently she broke out
again in her impulsive way.

"Depend upon it," she said, "there is very little direct
retribution in this world."

Phil looked up, quite pleased at her indorsing one of his
favorite views. She looked, as she always did, indignant at
having said anything to please him.

"Yes," said she, "it is the indirect retribution that crushes.
I've seen enough of that, God knows. Kate, give me my
thimble."

Malbone had that smooth elasticity of surface which made even
Aunt Jane's strong fingers slip from him as they might from a
fish, or from the soft, gelatinous stem of the water-target.
Even in this case he only laughed good-naturedly, and went out,
whistling like a mocking-bird, to call the children round him.

Toward the more wayward and impulsive Emilia the good lady was
far more merciful. With all Aunt Jane's formidable keenness,
she was a little apt to be disarmed by youth and beauty, and
had no very stern retributions except for those past middle
age. Emilia especially charmed her while she repelled. There
was no getting beyond a certain point with this strange girl,
any more than with Philip; but her depths tantalized, while his
apparent shallows were only vexatious. Emilia was usually
sweet, winning, cordial, and seemed ready to glide into one's
heart as softly as she glided into the room; she liked to
please, and found it very easy. Yet she left the impression
that this smooth and delicate loveliness went but an inch
beyond the surface, like the soft, thin foam that enamels
yonder tract of ocean, belongs to it, is a part of it, yet is,
after all, but a bequest of tempests, and covers only a dark
abyss of crossing currents and desolate tangles of rootless
kelp. Everybody was drawn to her, yet not a soul took any
comfort in her. Her very voice had in it a despairing
sweetness, that seemed far in advance of her actual history; it
was an anticipated miserere, a perpetual dirge, where nothing
had yet gone down. So Aunt Jane, who was wont to be perfectly
decisive in her treatment of every human being, was fluctuating
and inconsistent with Emilia. She could not help being
fascinated by the motherless child, and yet scorned herself for
even the doubting love she gave.

"Only think, auntie," said Kate, "how you kissed Emilia,
yesterday!"

"Of course I did," she remorsefully owned. "I have kissed her
a great many times too often. I never will kiss her again.
There is nothing but sorrow to be found in loving her, and her
heart is no larger than her feet. Today she was not even
pretty! If it were not for her voice, I think I should never
wish to see her again."

But when that soft, pleading voice came once more, and Emilia
asked perhaps for luncheon, in tones fit for Ophelia, Aunt Jane
instantly yielded. One might as well have tried to enforce
indignation against the Babes in the Wood.

This perpetual mute appeal was further strengthened by a
peculiar physical habit in Emilia, which first alarmed the
household, but soon ceased to inspire terror. She fainted very
easily, and had attacks at long intervals akin to faintness,
and lasting for several hours. The physicians pronounced them
cataleptic in their nature, saying that they brought no danger,
and that she would certainly outgrow them. They were sometimes
produced by fatigue, sometimes by excitement, but they brought
no agitation with them, nor any development of abnormal powers.
They simply wrapped her in a profound repose, from which no
effort could rouse her, till the trance passed by. Her eyes
gradually closed, her voice died away, and all movement ceased,
save that her eyelids sometimes trembled without opening, and
sweet evanescent expressions chased each other across her
face,--the shadows of thoughts unseen. For a time she seemed to
distinguish the touch of different persons by preference or
pain; but soon even this sign of recognition vanished, and the
household could only wait and watch, while she sank into deeper
and yet deeper repose.

There was something inexpressibly sweet, appealing, and
touching in this impenetrable slumber, when it was at its
deepest. She looked so young, so delicate, so lovely; it was as
if she had entered into a shrine, and some sacred curtain had
been dropped to shield her from all the cares and perplexities
of life. She lived, she breathed, and yet all the storms of
life could but beat against her powerless, as the waves beat on
the shore. Safe in this beautiful semblance of death,--her
pulse a little accelerated, her rich color only softened, her
eyelids drooping, her exquisite mouth curved into the sweetness
it had lacked in waking,--she lay unconscious and supreme, the
temporary monarch of the household, entranced upon her throne.
A few hours having passed, she suddenly waked, and was a
self-willed, passionate girl once more. When she spoke, it was
with a voice wholly natural; she had no recollection of what
had happened, and no curiosity to learn.

X.

REMONSTRANCES.

IT had been a lovely summer day, with a tinge of autumnal
coolness toward nightfall, ending in what Aunt Jane called a
"quince-jelly sunset." Kate and Emilia sat upon the Blue Rocks,
earnestly talking.

"Promise, Emilia!" said Kate.

Emilia said nothing.

"Remember," continued Kate, "he is Hope's betrothed. Promise,
promise, promise!"

Emilia looked into Kate's face and saw it flushed with a
generous eagerness, that called forth an answering look in her.
She tried to speak, and the words died into silence. There was
a pause, while each watched the other.

When one soul is grappling with another for life, such silence
may last an instant too long; and Kate soon felt her grasp
slipping. Momentarily the spell relaxed. Other thoughts
swelled up, and Emilia's eyes began to wander; delicious
memories stole in, of walks through blossoming paths with
Malbone,--of lingering steps, half-stifled words and sentences
left unfinished;--then, alas! of passionate caresses,--other
blossoming paths that only showed the way to sin, but had never
quite led her there, she fancied. There was so much to tell,
more than could ever be explained or justified. Moment by
moment, farther and farther strayed the wandering thoughts, and
when the poor child looked in Kate's face again, the mist
between them seemed to have grown wide and dense, as if neither
eyes nor words nor hands could ever meet again. When she spoke
it was to say something evasive and unimportant, and her voice
was as one from the grave.

In truth, Philip had given Emilia his heart to play with at
Neuchatel, that he might beguile her from an attachment they
had all regretted. The device succeeded. The toy once in her
hand, the passionate girl had kept it, had clung to him with
all her might; he could not shake her off. Nor was this the
worst, for to his dismay he found himself responding to her
love with a self-abandonment of ardor for which all former
loves had been but a cool preparation. He had not intended
this; it seemed hardly his fault: his intentions had been
good, or at least not bad. This piquant and wonderful fruit of
nature, this girlish soul, he had merely touched it and it was
his. Its mere fragrance was intoxicating. Good God! what
should he do with it?

No clear answer coming, he had drifted on with that terrible
facility for which years of self-indulged emotion had prepared
him. Each step, while it was intended to be the last, only made
some other last step needful.

He had begun wrong, for he had concealed his engagement,
fancying that he could secure a stronger influence over this
young girl without the knowledge. He had come to her simply as
a friend of her Transatlantic kindred; and she, who was always
rather indifferent to them, asked no questions, nor made the
discovery till too late. Then, indeed, she had burst upon him
with an impetuous despair that had alarmed him. He feared, not
that she would do herself any violence, for she had a childish
dread of death, but that she would show some desperate
animosity toward Hope, whenever they should meet. After a long
struggle, he had touched, not her sense of justice, for she had
none, but her love for him; he had aroused her tenderness and
her pride.

Without his actual assurance, she yet believed that he would
release himself in some way from his betrothal, and love only
her.

Malbone had fortunately great control over Emilia when near
her, and could thus keep the sight of this stormy passion from
the pure and unconscious Hope. But a new distress opened
before him, from the time when he again touched Hope's hand.
The close intercourse of the voyage had given him for the time
almost a surfeit of the hot-house atmosphere of Emilia's love.
The first contact of Hope's cool, smooth fingers, the soft
light of her clear eyes, the breezy grace of her motions, the
rose-odors that clung around her, brought back all his early
passion. Apart from this voluptuousness of the heart into which
he had fallen, Malbone's was a simple and unspoiled nature; he
had no vices, and had always won popularity too easily to be
obliged to stoop for it; so all that was noblest in him paid
allegiance to Hope. From the moment they again met, his
wayward heart reverted to her. He had been in a dream, he said
to himself; he would conquer it and be only hers; he would go
away with her into the forests and green fields she loved, or
he would share in the life of usefulness for which she yearned.
But then, what was he to do with this little waif from the
heart's tropics,--once tampered with, in an hour of mad
dalliance, and now adhering in-separably to his life?
Supposing him ready to separate from her, could she be detached
from him?

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