aunt jane was eager to hear about the ball, and called everybody into her breakfast-parlor the next morning. she was still hesitating about her bill of fare.
“i wish somebody would invent a new animal,” she burst forth. “how those sheep bleated last night! i know it was an expression of shame for providing such tiresome food.”
“you must not be so carnally minded, dear,” said kate. “you must be very good and grateful, and not care for your breakfast. somebody says that mutton chops with wit are a great deal better than turtle without.”
“a very foolish somebody,” pronounced aunt jane. “i have had a great deal of wit in my life, and very little turtle. dear child, do not excite me with impossible suggestions. there are dropped eggs, i might have those. they look so beautifully, if it only were not necessary to eat them. yes, i will certainly have dropped eggs. i think ruth could drop them; she drops everything else.”
“poor little ruth!” said kate. “not yet grown up!”
“she will never grow up,” said aunt jane, “but she thinks she is a woman; she even thinks she has a lover. o that in early life i had provided myself with a pair of twins from some asylum; then i should have had some one to wait on me.”
“perhaps they would have been married too,” said kate.
“they should never have been married,” retorted aunt jane. “they should have signed a paper at five years old to do no such thing. yesterday i told a lady that i was enraged that a servant should presume to have a heart, and the woman took it seriously and began to argue with me. to think of living in a town where one person could be so idiotic! such a town ought to be extinguished from the universe.”
“auntie!” said kate, sternly, “you must grow more charitable.”
“must i?” said aunt jane; “it will not be at all becoming. i have thought about it; often have i weighed it in my mind whether to be monotonously lovely; but i have always thrust it away. it must make life so tedious. it is too late for me to change,—at least, anything about me but my countenance, and that changes the wrong way. yet i feel so young and fresh; i look in my glass every morning to see if i have not a new face, but it never comes. i am not what is called well-favored. in fact, i am not favored at all. tell me about the party.”
“what shall i tell?” said kate.
“tell me what people were there,” said aunt jane, “and how they were dressed; who were the happiest and who the most miserable. i think i would rather hear about the most miserable,—at least, till i have my breakfast.”
“the most miserable person i saw,” said kate, “was mrs. meredith. it was very amusing to hear her and hope talk at cross-purposes. you know her daughter helen is in paris, and the mother seemed very sad about her. a lady was asking if something or other were true; ‘too true,’ said mrs. meredith; ‘with every opportunity she has had no real success. it was not the poor child’s fault. she was properly presented; but as yet she has had no success at all.’
“hope looked up, full of sympathy. she thought helen must be some disappointed school-teacher, and felt an interest in her immediately. ‘will there not be another examination?’ she asked. ‘what an odd phrase,’ said mrs. meredith, looking rather disdainfully at hope. ‘no, i suppose we must give it up, if that is what you mean. the only remaining chance is in the skating. i had particular attention paid to helen’s skating on that very account. how happy shall i be, if my foresight is rewarded!’
“hope thought this meant physical education, to be sure, and fancied that handsome helen meredith opening a school for calisthenics in paris! luckily she did not say anything. then the other lady said, solemnly, ‘my dear mrs. meredith, it is too true. no one can tell how things will turn out in society. how often do we see girls who were not looked at in america, and yet have a great success in paris; then other girls go out who were here very much admired, and they have no success at all.’
“hope understood it all then, but she took it very calmly. i was so indignant, i could hardly help speaking. i wanted to say that it was outrageous. the idea of american mothers training their children for exhibition before what everybody calls the most corrupt court in europe! then if they can catch the eye of the emperor or the empress by their faces or their paces, that is called success!”
“good americans when they die go to paris,” said philip, “so says the oracle. naughty americans try it prematurely, and go while they are alive. then paris casts them out, and when they come back, their french disrepute is their stock in trade.”
“i think,” said the cheerful hope, “that it is not quite so bad.” hope always thought things not so bad. she went on. “i was very dull not to know what mrs. meredith was talking about. helen meredith is a warm-hearted, generous girl, and will not go far wrong, though her mother is not as wise as she is well-bred. but kate forgets that the few hundred people one sees here or at paris do not represent the nation, after all.”
“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.
