Chapter VIII: Introduction (4)

"O yes, tell her anything you like, and Mabel too. I have made you all such a poor return: any other woman in my place would have trusted you long ago, and been the better for it. But I am so strangely made, Robert: my lips are like a seal to my heart. Excuse me at dinner, won't you? And promise me one thing--that always, after this, you will come to me at once, without scruple, when you want me, on my account or on your own. As if I could be reluctant to talk with you! Tell me when you hear from him, and when you are going, and--anything else. You won't mind my silence, or wait for me to speak? And you must never be afraid of me again."

XXIII.

PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

The Princess was seen no more that night, and I got away till dinner time. Then I said that she was not coming down, and anxious looks were exchanged, and dark ones cast on me. In return I winked at Jane, and frowned severely on Herbert, who intercepted the signal and began to grin. Mabel, who had seen it too, reproved me for setting the boy a bad example; and thus a diversion was effected. While she was seeing after the children, my sister carried me off to the library: I made her kiss me before I would tell her anything.

"Jane, you may scold me as much as you like after this, and I will never say a cross word to you again. Hartman was right: he said you had more penetration than any of us, and all sorts of virtues. O, you needn't mind about blushing; we are alone. It's true, and I shall hold you in honor accordingly."

"Brother, I hope you have not spoiled your work with careless handling. I always distrust you when you begin your fine speeches."

"That was in the past, which we have put behind us: they come now from the abundance of the heart. We are one, you know, and I am to tell you everything. Jane, I've done exactly as you told me, and given you all credit. She knows it was your move; and it's all right."

"Then you found that your imagination had created, or greatly magnified, the difficulties, and that your fears were unnecessary?"

"Far from it. It was a terrible job for both of us: the mere recollection of it is harrowing. Clarice is laid up, and only my superior physical strength and fortitude, with an hour's recuperation, enabled me to face you all at table."

"Then you must have been rough with her. Brother, how could you?"

"What did I tell you? You drive me, with all your sharp-pointed feminine weapons, to a painful task, and then you blame me because you fancy I've not discharged it as neatly as the angel Gabriel might. She thinks I did, however. Was I rough with you last night? Is it my habit to go around trampling on the finer feelings of our nature? In the hour of woe, when your heartstrings are torn asunder, you will find me a first-class comforter. I thought you knew that already."

"I doubt if Clarice knows it, if you took this tone with her. Can you never be serious, Robert?"

"Good heavens, Jane, what would you have? Have I not been serious through two weary months, and eminently so all this afternoon? I had to be. Let the overstrung bow be relaxed a little now. You remember the Prime Minister, who after an exciting debate used to go home and play with his children?

"As exciting debates are usually conducted in the small hours, it was cruel to disturb their infant slumbers. If you want to do that here you will have to get Mabel's consent; it is out of my province. Best play with your children before they go to bed."

"Children of a larger growth will serve. Bear with me, sister. My faculties have been sorely tasked: I am spent and weary--"

"And you must have somebody to play with. Was that why you were so fond of Clarice, because she sometimes humored you? She could hardly serve your turn now: the poor child is in no jesting mood. Nor am I; nor ought you to be."

"Sister, you wrong me. It is my warmth of heart, my fraternal affection, which you have so oft-repulsed. Mine is a poet's nature. You stare, but it is so: it is only lately that I discovered the fact myself. Like the elder Bulwer, I pine for appreciation, for sympathy--"

"You will continue to pine if you go on like this. I never saw such a man for beating about the bush and talking nonsense. What have you accomplished?--I don't want to pry into her secrets, or ask her to share her confidences, but--"

"Now, Jane, if you have any heart left, I will bring the tear of contrition to your eye. I asked and obtained her permission to tell you all I know, and all we have just arranged."

"Don't be so long about it, then. What are the arrangements?"

So I imparted them with but little modification or reservation; and Mabel coming in presently, I went over the main outlines again. It is not every man who could thus communicate state secrets to his family; but mine never talk about home affairs to outsiders. One point is, they do not attend the Sewing Society: if they did, I should feel less safe. They approved in the main.

"It hardly seems fair to Mr. Hartman," said Jane; "but no doubt it's as much as you can expect from her."

"I should say it was: why, she is acting nobly. If it were any other man, he should, and would, have all the making up to do, instead of putting it on us. You see, you--that is, we--don't exactly know what the quarrel was. He must have been in the wrong, of course."

"O yes, because you are a man. Now suppose I, being a woman, say, 'She must have been in the wrong, of course.'"

"My dears," said Mabel, "let us compromise. They are both human beings; probably they were both in the wrong."

"Happy thought," said I. "We'll fix it that way: then they have only to kiss and be friends. But still, the man is generally expected to open the ball."

"That is," said Jane, "if all does not go smoothly from the start, which can hardly be expected, poor Mr. Hartman is to be sacrificed."

"I would not put it just that way; though he, or any man, ought to be glad to be sacrificed for Clarice. She is naturally first with me, as I should suppose she would be with you--except that, as you pertinently observe, you also are a woman. But never fear, Jane; I'll attend to Hartman's case too. I hope to act as attorney for both plaintiff and defendant, and speedily to reconcile their conflicting interests. It is true I am on a prospecting tour: I have no retainer from him yet. But I shall soon pocket that, and master his side of the suit. O, I'll take him up tenderly, and handle with care."

"Of course you will, Robert," said Mabel. "If there is any quality for which you are distinguished, it is the even-tempered justice of your mind. You can argue on both sides of a case with equal fluency and force, and that quite independent of your personal predilections."

"Just so. But I fear Jane has not the same confidence in my fairness and ability with you, my dear. You will have to talk to her privately, and bring her to a proper frame of mind. She is my only and much loved sister, and I can't go till she has faith in me."

"It is you who are not in a proper frame of mind as to Mr. Hartman's side of this affair, brother. A man has no sympathy, no charity, for another man. You can be all tenderness, and consideration, and faith, and loyalty, to a woman--when she has Clarice's looks; but when it is only an old friend who trusts you, you will laugh, and sneer, and amuse yourself at his expense, and either delude him or hopelessly estrange him."

"Did you ever hear the like? Yesterday, and the day before, she insisted on my going; and now, when I am all on fire to go, she throws cold water on my zeal, and--"

Here my wife interrupted me. "Jane, it is you who show undue levity. You forget that Clarice is my cousin; that is why Robert is so fond of her, and espouses her cause so warmly. I think it is very good of him, and very generous."

"Now you have hit it: Jane, hide your diminished head. Mabel, if Hartman can prove affinity with you, I will take just as much pains for him as for Clarice. But, sister, you and I must be one. I tell you what I will do: I will stay at home all next Sunday, and let you preach to me: then, if you can't fill me to the nozzle with your views, whose fault will it be? Or you might go along, as you wanted to in May. Then you could personally superintend the campaign."

"My only hope is that you will sober down before you get there. In this mood you could do no good at all."

"That's where you are mistaken. Jim expects me to brighten him up: _he_ is not wholly without a sense of humor. But if you think I am going there for amusement, you are out again. I shall take Young's Night Thoughts, and Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, and a volume or two of sermons, to read on the way, and get my mind attuned to the atmosphere of the place. My jokes there will be solemn and elaborate offerings, prompted solely by a humane sense of necessity. But, Jane, you are in a minority of one. Clarice has confidence in me: you ask her. And so has Mabel: haven't you, my love?"

"Yes, certainly. Why, Jane, Robert is the only person who can possibly manage this affair, since you and I can't well go, and Clarice does not like to speak out herself. We could not commit it to a stranger, you know. Robert knew Mr. Hartman before any of us did; they were old friends at college. He is the natural link between them, you might say. If he will only remember not to laugh in the wrong places, as he did that time we took him to church, when the minister thumped his sermon off the pulpit, and not to tell the wrong stories, as he so often does at table, and not to yawn when Mr. Hartman explains how badly he has been feeling since he left us, he will do very well. You can't expect him to take the same interest in Mr. Hartman as in Clarice: would he care for us as he does, if we were men? Jane, he is pointed out by Providence as the means of reconciling them. You must see that he is to be trusted entirely. Under his supervision it will all come right: I said so from the beginning."

After this, there seemed no need of further remarks. Mabel withdrew early, and I went out to smoke. When I came back, I found Jane again in tears.

"Brother, tell me that you were only playing with me, and that you are really in earnest about this matter, and will do your best to set it straight."

"My dear sister, I will tell you anything you like, if you will only believe me; what is the use, if you won't? Do you suppose I care less for Clarice's happiness than you do--or for Jim's either? I wish you would talk to her, and let her clarify your ideas. Faith, as you may have heard in church, is a saving grace, and essential to peace of mind. Within a month or two you will see whether I fail my friends or not, and then perhaps you will learn to trust me. Jane, I believe in you now, even if you don't believe in me; I would do almost anything to please you. You want me to change my nature: I would do even that, but it is so expensive, and then the new one might not fit as well as what I have now. You are very exacting, but you can't quarrel with me, because I will be no party to such proceedings."

"Brother, it all rests with you. If you will bring them together, I will never doubt you again."

"No, my dear, I'll not hold you to that. You shall doubt me as often as you like; but I will keep my promises all the same."

You see, I am trying new tactics with Jane now. Magnanimity, patient forgiveness of injuries, disinterested and persistent affection, will in time soften the most obdurate. After Clarice goes off, there will be so few of us left that I can't afford to be on any but the best terms with such as remain. And then my sister, when she is willing to do herself--and me--justice, has some quite creditable traits.

XXIV.

TO WAYBACK AGAIN.

I pass succeeding interviews, of which there were several. Poor Clarice had little to say, but was quite willing to listen to any suggestions of mine. What Jane unkindly calls beating about the bush is necessary with a person of her sensitive organization. She seems to feel that she has fallen from her old estate, and is not yet established in a new one. I am satisfied that she never would have made those admissions, slight as they are, and allowed me to go on this secret embassy, if she had only herself to consider. For the first time duty to others has come into collision with her pride, and shaken the citadel of her reserve. Always hitherto she has had things and people come to her; the exercise has been in keeping them off. To want, to seek, to invite--to lift a finger, unless in the way of small and graceful social management--this is new to her, and she takes it hard. The thing I have to do beyond all others is to preserve her dignity: she knows I can be trusted for that, though Jane does not. I can't blame Jane: she has never seen me conduct an affair like this, nor has any one else, for the simple reason that I never had it to do till now. I am only her brother: she has had experience of all my failings, and is imperfectly acquainted with my resources. Mabel is more satisfactory. She has not figured as much as some others in this chronicle; connubial modesty prevents my making her prominent. But she too possesses some very good traits; especially she has a way of bringing forward and dwelling upon points which nobody else would think of mentioning. She used to scold me sometimes, but that was chiefly when she thought I was not treating Clarice well. She lays great stress on ties of blood, and considers herself natural guardian and defender to the Princess, whom she sometimes forgets that I knew for fifteen years before I ever met her. Clarice talks little with her, and no more with Jane: I really believe that her only confidences--which are not much, if measured by words--have been made to me. But they are very fond of each other all the same. I suppose you can understand that much affection can exist with little intimacy. The Princess was cast in her own peculiar mould: I don't want to see many more like her, for they would be poor imitations. None of us ever attempt to pry into her inner life--or to meddle with her outward life either; when she wants anything of any of us, we are ready, and there it ends. She knows we love her, and that is enough.

Hartman, now, is much less impenetrable; though I suppose he will shut himself up like an oyster over the dubious pearl of his precious secret, and give me no end of trouble to extract his contents. But I possess a knife which is able to open his shell. He has answered my letter promptly, and expects me presently. Does he think I am going up there merely to fish and hunt, and hear him talk a lot of rubbish about the Vanity of Life? Or does he scent my deeper motives--discern the Ethiopian within the encompassing pale, as they say in Boston? If so, he is apparently as willing to be operated on as he was before. At any rate he is a gentleman, and knows how to respect a woman--when he takes time to think about it. This is a delicate business for him as well as for the lady--and there is where the awkwardness comes in: from his point of view he can't speak out, any more than she. Well, I'll turn him inside out and manipulate him, if it takes the whole week. Happily I don't have to consider him as I did Clarice; as Jane intimates, a man can't expect to have his feelings spared in the process. What are a man's feelings anyway, compared with a woman's? And what rights has he as against hers? No: between man and man all that can be needed is plain speech and manly frankness--aided by a little diplomacy. I'll break you to pieces, James H., if you are fractious; and I've got the weapons to do it with. It is all for your good, and you'll bless me the rest of your life. One thing must be understood: I can't have you coming to my place and practising your wild backwoods manners on my family, and then sneaking off in the night and evading responsibility. The next time you come you will have to behave yourself, and to stay till Somebody has had enough of you.

Mabel thinks I ought to enliven the account of my trip with descriptions of scenery and the like. But a rock is a rock, and a field is a field, and who wants to know whether a tree is elm or maple? I am not a geological survey, and you can get mountains enough from Craddock. Not that I am insensible to the beauties of Nature--as I have proved before now. How often have I sat upon an eminence, and admiringly gazed at the departing luminary as he sank slowly to rest, flooding hill and valley with tints which a painter might strive in vain to reproduce! I would have to sit there some time to see it all, for I have noticed that with us the Sunset proper does not begin till after the Setting of the Sun is finished. And when the distant mountains assumed a robe of royal purple, and 'the death-smile of the dying day' lingered pathetically on the horizon, my thoughts would soar to the Celestial City, and long to rest themselves upon its pavement of liquid gold. I heard Dr. Chapin say these last words at the first lecture I ever attended, and it struck my infant intelligence that they ought to be preserved. And I too might be a poet if I lived in the country, in constant communion with Nature, abandoning my soul to her maternal caress. But alas, the stir, the scramble, the mad whirl of city life, the debasing contact with low material minds, the daily study of Prices Current, make even of me a muckworm. Still, I might work up a brook or two after I get to the woods, or expatiate on a seven-pound trout: my conscience forbids me to weigh them higher, for I never saw any above three. And yet some men will talk familiarly of ten-pounders!--Or I might analyze the mediaeval garments of Hodge and his old Poll. As for the Wayback houses, they are like any other habitations, only less of them, and few and far between: Jim's is the best, and it is nothing to brag of. You can see much better buildings any day on Broadway. The rural parts, as Lord Bacon observed, are but a den of savage men. It is to see one of these, and resume the interrupted process of civilizing him, that I am about starting on this philanthropic journey, leaving my happy home and the advantages of a metropolis. If the savage breast is open to ennobling influences, it shall be soothed and charmed by the music of my discourse. What loftier, more disinterested task than to reclaim the wanderer, and guide the penitent in the way wherein he should go? I began this soul-raising labor some time ago, but an unexpected hitch occurred in the proceeding: there must be no more such now.

I found Hodge awaiting me at the station: he said that Hartman was arranging the tackle for to-morrow. The fact is, it is one of Jim's notions not to keep a horse, but to depend on Hodge for his communications with the outside world; and another never to see the railroad when he can help it.

"Well, old man," I said as the effete steed began laboriously to get in motion, "how is your valuable health?"

"Pooty tollable. How's them gells o' yourn as wanted to foller ye up here las' time?"

"The ladies are reasonably well, and will be flattered by your inquiries. How is Mr. Hartman?"

"Wall, Square, I ain't none too satyfied 'bout him. He don't say nothin to nobody, but he seems kinder low in his mind, like. Ever sence you played that durn trick on me and him, he's ben someways diffurnt. He--"

"Look here, my aged friend; why should you accuse me of playing durn tricks on people? To what circumstance do you allude?"

"I ain't alludin' to nothin; I says it out plain. If ye don't know, Id'no as I'm called to tell ye. Me an' Hartman was gittin on fust rate, till ye come and upsot us; we ain't used to bein upsot. So when our commydations wan't good enough for ye an' yer gells, ye went and got Hartman down thar in the city, or wharever 'twas. An' Id'no what ye done to him thar, an' I spose it's no good to ask a feller like ye; but he ain't ben the same man sence. That's how _he_ is. He uster be chipper, an' peart, an' clost frens with me; an' now he don't say nothin. Ye can see fur yerself pooty durn soon."

And the native bestowed on me a malign glance. I trotted him out and entertained myself with his paces (which were livelier than those of his nag) for the next three hours. Those who like nature unadorned can find it here. As a specimen of unbridled rancor Hodge deserves a prize. I believe I have got to the bottom of his luminous intellect--not that it was worth the labor, if one had anything else to do. Supposing himself Jim's most intimate friend, he is jealous of me as a rival in that capacity; and he has never forgiven the slight put on his establishment in connection with the girls' proposed visit. I partly appeased him by suggesting that he supply the shanty with a new signboard labeled 'Palace Hotel.' Fortunately I don't have to put up there this time.

Of course he told me a lot of lies. A casual eye could see no change in the recluse: his head does not hang down on his breast, his locks are not long and matted, his sighs do not resound through the primeval forest and scare away the panthers. When you look closely at him, or have been with him long enough, you can see that he is a little thinner, a little older, a little less inclined to chaff--as well he may be. Chaffing is a bad habit anyway, and was his worst fault when I was here before; so far, his woes have improved him. He met me cordially enough, but with no wild demonstration: he seems no nearer insanity than last May. He asked after Mabel, Jane, and the children, but not after Clarice; nor did I mention her, of course. It was not a very pleasant evening, for each of us was watching the other to see what he would say. He knows as well as I do that the enemy has troops in reserve: he is not so unsuspicious as he was. He did not ventilate his theories to any great extent, nor did I see my way to expound my great scheme for the Ascertainment of Truth: the ground ought to be in good condition before you drop seed of such value upon it.

If I thought things would go on like this, I should begin to grumble; but we shall probably get broken in to each other in a day or two, and then I can thaw him out. We talked glittering generalities for a while--the weather, and the war prospects abroad, and the chances of getting deer on the other side of a mountain not far away--like any commonplace boobies at a county fair. Then he proposed for next morning a stream I had not seen, some distance off, which would necessitate a start before daybreak: so I pretended to be tired from the journey, and we turned in early.

XXV.

A WILD BROOK.

Next day we went some miles along a lonely road, and then through the fields of an abandoned farm. I don't wonder they abandoned it; I am only sorry for the poor wretch who once cherished the delusive dream of scratching a living there; when he died or went back to Canada, he couldn't well be worse off. Nature had but partially reclaimed the land, and we tramped through weeds and grass up to our middle; one might as well be wading a fair-sized river. You have no idea of the dew up here till you have tried it. After a while we struck into the woods, and such woods you never saw--at least I hope so for your sake. Rocks, big and little, generally of the most unchristian shapes--not picturesque, but sprawling; underbrush wherever it had a chance to grow: you could scarcely find a foot of smooth ground. The worst of it was the way the trees lay around loose. The region had not been burned over, at least not for many years; but it did seem to have been cursed, as if Adam's fall had been enacted there. The monarchs of the forest, for countless generations, had indulged a depraved propensity to fall also, and across each other in all possible directions. It was such an abattis as I trust our men, in the war, never had to fight their way through: here it was bad enough without anybody to shoot at you. I would go rods out of my way to get around a great bowlder, and come upon a conglomeration of big trees which had tumbled about till they made a Virginia fence fifteen feet high. Climbing is all very well in its way, but I don't like this kind. The queer thing was that they had not the sense to decay and crumble; the wood was mostly sound enough to be standing yet. I asked Hartman why they did not haul off all this timber, and he said there was no place to haul it to, nor any way to haul it, nor anybody to do the hauling; that fuel was cheap, and the few inhabitants had plenty nearer home; and besides, that it was most ornamental and useful where it was--it afforded exercise to the bodily and spiritual muscles of any anglers from the city who might come that way like me. "You forget the characteristics of this region, which are its advantages in my view. You can get turnpike roads, and teams, and sawmills, nearer home. You come up here to be away from the busy haunts, you know, and to see Nature in her native purity. This stream that I am taking you to is very seldom visited."

"I should think it would be, if this is the way to get to it," I said, as I fell over a root and barked my nose and knees. "What the deuce did we come to such a blanked place for?"

"For trout: you said they were what you wanted. The less fishermen, the more fish. This is the best brook in the county, because it is the least accessible. I rarely come here myself: I've been saving it up this year for you."

We went on, our progress marked by frequent delays and accidents; that it was marked by no profanity was due merely to Jim's reticence and to my exceptional manners and principles. After what seemed to me about twenty miles--though he said it was only one and a half--of this singularly forsaken country, he cried, "Look out now, or you'll fall in. Here is the brook."

It made noise enough to be heard a long way off, but I thought that was something else--some kobolds or other abnormal beings, probably, working at their forges underground. The brook itself was well enough, but it did not seem to belong there; you could not see it till you were on the edge of it. I have fished a good many streams, and tramped through all sorts of woods, but I never saw such a place as that before, and I never want to again. We had left our rods at home; high-toned anglers who carry fancy tackle through such regions leave it along the painful way in small pieces. So we carried merely our baskets--which were encumbrance enough--and what we had in our pockets. You can cut a pole anywhere, and it does not want to be a long one either: take your fly-book if you like, but worms are as good or better. There was no use of wading: you would be more likely to scare the fish so than by staying on the bank, where they could never see you; the difficulty was to see far enough to throw in five feet of line. It was a superior brook--all but the getting to it, and, as I afterwards found, away from it. If it could be removed from its loathsome surroundings and put down in a decent country, I would go there every year. I was going to say that some of the cascades were forty feet high, till I remembered that trout cannot climb as far as that.

"Don't lose your balance," said Jim; "these fish are fierce." They were, in the wilder parts. They would bite like mad, and then wriggle and wrench themselves off the hook before you could get them up the bank. I never saw or heard of such ferocity, except in the celebrated scaly warrior which chased an equally famous fisherman all over an Adirondack lake, jumped across his boat several times, and, if I remember rightly, bit him on the nose. No such adventure fell to my lot on this occasion, though I thought that some of them, when sufficiently near my face, grinned at me as they parted company. Yet none of them were over half a pound, and most of them much less. You can see that this healthful pastime does not produce its usual demoralizing effect on me. When we reached a flat piece of ground, the water would become quiet and the manners of the fish more humane, so that they would come out like chubs. I stood in one spot under a tree, and took twenty-nine in succession. My sister, looking over these memoirs, suggests that they probably _were_ chubs; but Hartman, who was behind me then, came up and saw them, so I have his evidence. He said it was a spawning bed, and I ought to put the twenty-nine back. Who would have thought him capable of such mean jealousy? But he cannot play his tricks on me.

About two P.M. he said we had better start.

"Why, we don't want to reach home much before dark," said I.

"No danger of it. It's much worse getting out of this than getting in. You saw how much path there is: we can't go straight, and it's all chance where we strike the fields. You'd better eat what you've got, and drink all you can: there's no water between this and the road."

"Didn't you take landmarks? Look at the mountains all round."

"They are like the mountains about the Dark Tower Childe Roland came to. I've been here twice before, and missed the way back both times. Nobody ever got out of here without going a circuit to the right, and taking his chances. The natives are afraid to come here: they say there are ghosts--the ghosts of those who got lost of old, and were eaten by bears. That's how we took so many trout. Look to your belt now, and the straps of your basket. The last time I was here, the other fellow lost his fish in the woods, and I made him go back and hunt them up: it was near night before he found them, and his basket was not much heavier than yours is now. If we should have to camp out, we can build a fire, cook some of the fish, and probably avoid freezing: but we'd better try to get out."

I thought so too, and supposed he was trying to scare me; but the sun was nearly down when we saw the fields. We went four times too far, through that beastly region of rocks and dead trees: I think our course was mainly northwest by south-southeast. At last we got back to the house, tired and hungry; but Jim's old housekeeper is a pretty good cook for a native, and there is no better supper than trout that were in the water the same day.

XXVI.

AN INTRACTABLE PATIENT.

When we were settled down to our pipes, I said, "Is this the way you treat the friends of your youth, when they entrust life and limb to your hospitality?"

"I give 'em the best I've got: sorry if it doesn't suit. There's no Delmonico's round the corner, here. What's the matter with you, old man?"

"O, it's not your housekeeping: that's all right. But why did you lead me such a dance, and get me lost in that unconscionable doghole of a wilderness?"

"Did you ever take so many fish out of a brook in one day before? No, of course you didn't. Well, that's why. I told you it would be a rough expedition; but I thought you came here to rough it. You didn't expect balls and a casino, did you? You were here last May."

"Last May I saw nothing as bad as this to-day. You haven't been playing it on me, I hope? Jim, have you got any grudge against me?"

"What should I have? You're deucedly suspicious and sensitive--far more so than I was with you. I believe I let you play on me to your heart's content, and never complained--did I?"

"Jim, I don't like this. There's a change in you: Hodge said so, and I didn't believe him. You're not the same man."

"O, we all change--from year to year, and from day to day. But I ought never to have left these woods, Bob, and that's the truth. You should have let me stay here as I was."

"I meant it in all kindness, for your good, Jim. Surely you'll do me the justice to acknowledge that."

"No doubt. But your philanthropic experiments are apt to be damnably expensive to the patient."

"You couldn't be much worse than you were, according to your own account. Any change ought to have been for the better."

"That was your assumption. Do I strike you as being changed for the better?"

"Well, no, you don't--not to put too fine a point upon it."

He certainly does not. His whole manner is altered. His former gentleness has given way to rough harshness. You have seen how he treats me. It may be his best, as he says; if so, his best is far from good. His bitterness used to be, if I may say so, in the abstract, and leveled against abstractions; now it seems to have a painfully concrete character and aim. His estrangement from the scheme of things, or from his kind at least, was purely intellectual, leaving his heart no more affected than the heart usually is by brain-disorders; now it is moral. He is like a man tormented by remorse, or regrets as savage. But I think I know a cure for his complaint.

After a pause he said, "I don't want to blame you, Bob, and I don't propose to whine. Nor was it any great matter what came to me, wherever it might come from. I thought I was done with the world, and had nothing to fear from it, except being bored and disgusted. There was only one thing I cared about, and that I supposed I could keep. I was mistaken. It was my little ewe lamb--all I had; and they took it from me."

"I thought your live stock was confined to dogs, and a cow, and the tomcat--by the way, I don't see him any more. I didn't know you went into sheep. Was Tommy the ewe-lamb, and did the dogs play Nathan and David with him?"

This I said, thinking to cheer him up a bit; but he only scowled. Really, I must remember Mabel's caution about telling the wrong stories and laughing in the wrong places. "Well, Jim, what was 'it' that you valued so, and who were 'they' who took it away?"

"The prince of the power of the air; the spirit that walks in darkness, and rules in the children thereof. The beautiful order of things generally, and their incurable depravity. All these are one, and the name doesn't matter. If you urged me to it, I might say that you had played a very passable David to my Uriah."

"Who--I? I'm not a sheep-stealer. What would I want to hurt you for? Jim, you're joking, and it's a joke of doubtful taste."

"Do I look like it? _You_ might find a joke in this: you can find them everywhere. I can't."

"As I told you, you take Life too seriously. If you will be more specific, and tell me what you have lost, perhaps I can help you to find it."

"Some losses are irrecoverable. You'd better let it alone, Bob; you'd better have let me alone before, as I've said. You mean well enough; but it's ill meddling with another man's life. You don't know what responsibility you take, or what effect you may produce. I don't say that it's the worst of all possible worlds, but it is such that each of us had best go his own way, and keep clear of the others. When one forgets that safe rule, and mixes with his kind, only harm seems to come of it."

"If that is so, I might better have staid at home now. Methinks your written hand is different from your spoken. I mean--"

"O yes, when I write I try to come out of myself and be decently civil; and so I should to a chance visitor for five minutes, or an hour maybe. But I can't keep it up all day--not to say for a week. You'll have to see the facts, and bear with them. I don't want to be rough on you; but I'm not myself--or not what I was before, or supposed myself to be. It's all in the plan, no doubt; we are fulfilling the beneficent intentions of Nature. Perhaps I'm breaking down, and the end is not so far off as we thought. If so, so much the better: we'll escape that sad old age you prophesied."

Now I am not lacking in humanity, but it does not afflict me as it did six months ago to hear Jim go on in this way. I know what is the matter with him now, and what he is driving at, though I must assume ignorance for a while yet. The patient must tell his symptoms, and then the doctor will give him the physic he needs, and proceed to make a new man of him. That is what I am after now, and the good work must not be spoiled by undue haste. So I put on a decorous air of sympathy, and said,

"That's all bosh, you know. If anything is the matter with you physically, I ought to hear about it; but I don't believe there is. As for the mind, we are all subject to gloomy moods and periods of depression; but they pass, Jim--they pass. You believed in friendship before; hadn't you better tell me what you think ails you?"

"I can't talk about it, except in this roundabout way: what's the use? Best keep to broad principles: the particular case only illustrates the general law. I knew it of old: what business had I to expose myself again? What would you do with a child who will keep on playing about moving cars, or mill machinery? Let him fall under the wheels, and rid the earth of an idiot."

"O no: pull him out in time, and he'll learn better. Well, Jim, you might at least tell me what hand I had in this catastrophe."

"O, none, none whatever: how should you? You never laid any plots for me, and used me for your mirth. You never devised an elaborately concealed ambush, and smoothed it over till I was in the snare. That would be foreign to your open and candid nature. It is very good fun to practice on unsuspecting innocence; but you are far above that."

"See here, Hartman: you talk as if my house were a den of iniquity. If so, I was not aware of it till now. Your ill opinion has not thus far been reciprocated. We entertain none but kind feelings toward you: we all regretted your hasty departure. You were received as a friend, and treated as such, I believe. My wife and sister often speak of you: you could command their fullest sympathy in this, or any trouble, real or imaginary."

"That I never doubted: I owe them nothing but pleasant memories, and thankful good will.--You need not stare at me so: I make no charges, and imply none.--Well, if you must have it, I can say that every member of your family has my absolute respect,--down to the twins; do you understand? If I have any grudge, it is toward you alone."

It was plain that he forced himself to say this--or some of it--as if it were coming perilously near a name he could not utter. He is having his bad time now, as I had mine last week. It is his own fault: he has no need to be so censorious. He _had_ to say what he did, or there would be trouble: some things a man cannot stand, and my best friend would be my friend no longer, if he ventured to reflect upon the Princess.

"I'm glad to hear you say so: the difficulty is simple then, and easily settled. You've got no pistols, of course, and I didn't bring mine. I'll take your rifle, and you can borrow Hodge's old shotgun: if it bursts, it won't be much loss--only you mustn't come too near me with it. There's no danger of interference from the police up here, I judge? But I say, what shall we do for a surgeon?"

"There you go again, turning everything into a jest. Can you never be serious, man?"

"Try to say something original, James: that is stale. Jane asks me that about six times a day, and Mabel frequently, and--and the others. I was serious with you just now, or nearly: had I been entirely so, I might have knocked the top of your head off, and then they would have blamed me at home. You see, they think you are more of a man than you show yourself. To be serious all the time is the most serious mistake one can make in life; and I want no worse example than you. When I go back to town I shall write the Decline and Fall of an Alleged Seeker after Truth, who missed it by taking things too seriously. You are too stiff and narrow and rigid and dogmatic: you take one point of view and stick to it like grim death. You can't get at Truth in that way."

"I suppose you would stand on your head and look at it upside down, and then turn a back somersault and view it from between your legs."

"You express it inelegantly, but you have caught the idea. Truth is not a half pound package done up in brown paper and permanently deposited in one corner of the pantry shelf; she is big and various and active. While you have your head fixed in the iron grip and are staring at the sign 'Terms Cash,' she is off to the other side of the room--and you don't make a good picture at all in that constrained attitude. Your mind has got to be nimble and unbiassed if you want to overtake her, because she is always changing: that is, she appears in new and--to you--unexpected places. I gave you a hint of this in May, and another last summer, but you seem to have forgotten it. O, I could sit here all night and explain it to you, if you were in the right frame of mind."

"No doubt: happily I am not. What has this to do with your defence of buffoonery, and apotheosis of clowns and pantomimes?"

"A pantomime is a very good thing in its way. But that is your illustration; I would rather say opera bouffe, which is probably the truest copy of Life--if we were limited to one kind. But we are not: I tell you, we must have all sorts. There is tragedy in Life, and comedy--that more especially; a little of the other goes a long way. But they are always mixed--not kept apart, and one alone taken in large and frequent doses, after your fashion. Shakespeare understood his business pretty well; though, if I had been he, I would have put in more of those light and graceful touches which hit us where we live, and make the whole world kin."

"Like the Dromios, or the Carriers in Henry Fourth."

"Or the Gravediggers; they are more to your purpose. I want you to see that Humor is the general solvent and reconciler, the key that opens most locks: a feeling for it, well developed, would be money in your pocket. Things don't go to suit you, and you think your powers of the air are frowning, the universe a vault, and the canopy a funeral pall: perhaps the powers are only laughing at you, and want you to smile with them. If you could do that, it would let in light on your darkness. Any situation, properly viewed, has its amusing elements: if you ignore them, you fail to understand the whole. What did Heine say about his irregular Latin nouns? That his knowledge of them, in many a gloomy hour, supplied much inward consolation and delight. You ought to read him more, Jim."

"And Josh Billings, and Bill Nye. Well, that's enough of your wisdom for to-night. We must arrange for to-morrow. Are you up to another scramble?"

"Not like to-day's. Let's take in some decent scenery along with the trout."

"There is a wild gorge ten miles off, with a brook in it. We can take Hodge's mare, put up at a house, and work down the ravine. It's not so bad as the last place, nor so good for fish." I agreed, and we went to bed.

You may think I am humoring Hartman too much, and letting him shirk the subject. But I have a week--more if necessary--and I don't want to be too hard on him. He'll thaw out by degrees: so long as he doesn't blame Clarice, it is all right. He has got my idea about the way to discover Truth now, and it will work in his brain, and soften him. I know Jim: he never seems to take hold at first, but he comes round in time. You just wait, and you will see whether I know what I am about.

XXVII.

SCENERY IMPROVED.

The next day we drove to a farmhouse which had annexed some rather decent fields for that region. On one side was tolerably level ground, on the other a cut between two savage mountains. Down this we made our way, taking presently the bed of a small brook: woodroad or footpath never can be there. For a while there was room to walk on dry land: soon the cliffs closed in upon us, on the right rising sheer, on the left sloping, but steeper than I would want to climb. At first the stream was very shallow and narrow, and the fish small and scarce; but think of the creatures that must come there to drink at night! It was the only watercourse for miles, Jim said. He pointed out the tracks of a bear or two, and he thought of a panther; but it is not here I should choose to hunt--your game might have you at a disadvantage. He tried to make me believe that even now some of these beasts might catch us; but that was simply to discourage me from going after them, later on: Jim does not like the chase. _My_ jokes are in better taste: as he is now, I believe the bears could beat him in manners. Near noon we found a place to sit down, where we could see a little of the crags, and proceeded to assimilate our frugal lunch.

"Hartman," said I, "I should think you would want to live up to your scenery, as the ladies do to their blue china. Look at this majestic cliff, whose scarred and aged front, frowning upon these lonesome trout since the creation, has never been profaned by mortal foot."

"Probably not. People very seldom come here, and when they do, they wouldn't be fools enough to try to climb up. They couldn't do it, and it wouldn't pay if they could."

"Well, it is grand, anyway, and it ought to quicken your soul to grand thoughts. In such a scene you ought to feel stirring within you noble sympathies and resolves."

"I can't see much grandeur in human nature, Bob, nor any in myself. If you had thought yourself a gentleman, and suddenly awaked to the fact that you were a cad and a scoundrel, you would be apt to change your tune, and drop the high notes."

Oho, I thought, he is coming to the point. While I was meditating how to utilize this confidence, a small piece of rock fell from above upon the edge of my toes: if it had been a large piece, and fallen on my head, you would have missed this moral tale. When I had expressed my sentiments, he said, "I can't insure you against accidents,--any more than you did me. If I had brought you here in spring, you might growl. The rocks are loose then, and it is dangerous. A man was killed once just below here, and his body never found till the year after." This trivial occurrence seemed to turn his thoughts away from the important topic, and I could not get him back to it.

It was a warm day for the season: once in a while it will be hotter in these sylvan solitudes than it is in New York. While we were in the brook we did not mind that, for we could drop every five minutes and drink. I suppose I consumed some nine gallons of _aqua pura_ during the morning: you can do this with impunity, because there is no ice in it, and the bacteria are of the most wholesome kind. But by and by we finished with the gorge: then we had to go across a sort of common, up hill. There was no water now, and it was hot. After more trees, and a steeper ascent, Jim said, "You'll get a view now." We came out on an open place, with steep rocks beneath. Before us lay a wilderness, with clearings here and there, and a background of mountains. The forests were in their early November bloom; the country looked one great flower. In the Alps or the Rockies they can give this odds, and beat it easily, but it was pretty well for eastern America--and an occasion to be improved. "Jim, if the crags don't appeal to you, this might. If you don't feel up to moral grandeur, why not go in for peace? Let your perturbed spirit catch the note of harmony from this landscape, and drink in purity from this air."