University of Virginia Library

5. V.
A MULTIVALVE HEART.

PHILIP MALBONE had that perfectly
sunny temperament which is peculiarly
captivating among Americans, because it is so
rare. He liked everybody and everybody
liked him; he had a thousand ways of affording
pleasure, and he received it in the giving.
He had a personal beauty, which, strange to
say, was recognized by both sexes, — for handsome
men must often consent to be mildly
hated by their own. He had travelled much,
and had mingled in very varied society; he
had a moderate fortune, no vices, no ambition,
and no capacity of ennui.

He was fastidious and over-critical, it might
be, in his theories, but in practice he was
easily suited and never vexed.

He liked travelling, and he liked staying at
home; he was so continually occupied as to
give an apparent activity to all his life, and yet
he was never too busy to be interrupted, especially
if the intruder were a woman or a

child. He liked to be with people of his own
age, whatever their condition; he also liked
old people because they were old, and children
because they were young. In travelling by
rail, he would woo crying babies out of their
mothers' arms, and still them; it was always
his back that Irishwomen thumped, to ask if
they must get out at the next station; and he
might be seen handing out decrepit paupers,
as if they were of royal blood and bore concealed
sceptres in their old umbrellas. Exquisitely
nice in his personal habits, he had
the practical democracy of a good-natured
young prince; he had never yet seen a human
being who awed him, nor one whom he had
the slightest wish to awe. His courtesy,
had, therefore, that comprehensiveness which
we call republican, though it was really the
least republican thing about him. All felt its
attraction; there was really no one who disliked
him, except Aunt Jane; and even she
admitted that he was the only person who
knew how to cut her lead-pencil.

That cheerful English premier who thought
that any man ought to find happiness enough
in walking London streets and looking at the
lobsters in the fish-markets, was not more easily

satisfied than Malbone. He liked to observe
the groups of boys fishing at the wharves,
or to hear the chat of their fathers about
coral-reefs and penguins' eggs; or to sketch
the fisher's little daughter awaiting her father
at night on some deserted and crumbling
wharf, his blue pea-jacket over her fair ringleted
head, and a great cat standing by with
tail uplifted, her sole protector. He liked the
luxurious indolence of yachting, and he liked
as well to float in his wherry among the fleet
of fishing schooners getting under way after
a three days' storm, each vessel slipping out
in turn from the closely packed crowd, and
spreading its white wings for flight. He liked
to watch the groups of negro boys and girls
strolling by the window at evening, and strumming
on the banjo, — the only vestige of tropical
life that haunts our busy Northern zone.
But he liked just as well to note the ways of
well-dressed girls and boys at croquet parties,
or to sit at the club window and hear the gossip.
He was a jewel of a listener, and was
not easily bored even when Philadelphians
talked about families, or New-Yorkers about
bargains, or Bostonians about books. A man
who has not one absorbing aim can get a great
many miscellaneous things into each twenty-four
hours; and there was not a day in which
Philip did not make himself agreeable and
useful to many people, receive many confidences,
and give much good-humored advice
about matters of which he knew nothing.
His friends' children ran after him in the
street, and he knew the pet theories and wines
of elderly gentlemen. He said that he won
their hearts by remembering every occurrence
in their lives except their birthdays.

It was, perhaps, no drawback on the popularity
of Philip Malbone that he had been for
some ten years reproached as a systematic flirt
by all women with whom he did not happen at
the moment to be flirting. The reproach was
unjust; he had never done anything systematically
in his life; it was his temperament that
flirted, not his will. He simply had that most
perilous of all seductive natures, in which the
seducer is himself seduced. With a personal
refinement that almost amounted to purity, he
was constantly drifting into loves more profoundly
perilous than if they had belonged to
a grosser man. Almost all women loved him,
because he loved almost all; he never had to
assume an ardor, for he always felt it. His

heart was multivalve; he could love a dozen at
once in various modes and gradations, press a
dozen hands in a day, gaze into a dozen pair
of eyes with unfeigned tenderness; while the
last pair wept for him, he was looking into the
next. In truth, he loved to explore those sweet
depths; humanity is the highest thing to investigate,
he said, and the proper study of mankind
is woman. Woman needs to be studied
while under the influence of emotion; let us
therefore have the emotions. This was the
reason he gave to himself; but this refined
Mormonism of the heart was not based on
reason, but on temperament and habit. In
such matters logic is only for the by-standers.

His very generosity harmed him, as all our
good qualities may harm us when linked with
bad ones; he had so many excuses for doing
kindnesses to his friends, it was hard to quarrel
with him if he did them too tenderly. He
was no more capable of unkindness than of
constancy; and so strongly did he fix the allegiance
of those who loved him, that the women
to whom he had caused most anguish would
still defend him when accused; would have
crossed the continent, if needed, to nurse him
in illness, and would have rained rivers of tears

on his grave. To do him justice, he would
have done almost as much for them, — for any
of them. He could torture a devoted heart,
but only through a sort of half-wilful unconsciousness;
he could not bear to see tears shed
in his presence, nor to let his imagination
dwell very much on those which flowed in his
absence. When he had once loved a woman,
or even fancied that he loved her, he built for
her a shrine that was never dismantled, and in
which a very little faint incense would sometimes
be found burning for years after; he
never quite ceased to feel a languid thrill at
the mention of her name; he would make even
for a past love the most generous sacrifices of
time, convenience, truth perhaps, — everything,
in short, but the present love. To those who
had given him all that an undivided heart can
give he would deny nothing but an undivided
heart in return. The misfortune was that this
was the only thing they cared to possess.

This abundant and spontaneous feeling gave
him an air of earnestness, without which he
could not have charmed any woman, and, least
of all, one like Hope. No woman really loves
a trifler; she must at least convince herself
that he who trifles with others is serious with

her. Philip was never quite serious and never
quite otherwise; he never deliberately got up
a passion, for it was never needful; he simply
found an object for his emotions, opened their
valves, and then watched their flow. To love
a charming woman in her presence is no test
of genuine passion; let us know how much
you long for her in absence. This longing
had never yet seriously troubled Malbone,
provided there was another charming person
within an easy walk.

If it was sometimes forced upon him that all
this ended in anguish to some of these various
charmers, first or last, then there was always
in reserve the pleasure of repentance. He
was very winning and generous in his repentances,
and he enjoyed them so much they were
often repeated. He did not pass for a weak
person, and he was not exactly weak; but he
spent his life in putting away temptations with
one hand and pulling them back with the
other. There was for him something piquant
in being thus neither innocent nor guilty, but
always on some delicious middle ground. He
loved dearly to skate on thin ice, — that was
the trouble, — especially where he fancied the
water to be just within his depth. Unluckily
the sea of life deepens rather fast.

Malbone had known Hope from her childhood,
as he had known her cousins, but their
love dated from their meetings beside the sickbed
of his mother, over whom he had watched
with unstinted devotion for weary months.
She had been very fond of the young girl, and
her last earthly act was to place Hope's hand
in Philip's. Long before this final consecration,
Hope had won his heart more thoroughly,
he fancied, than any woman he had ever
seen. The secret of this crowning charm was,
perhaps, that she was a new sensation. He
had prided himself on his knowledge of her
sex, and yet here was a wholly new species.
He was acquainted with the women of society,
and with the women who only wished to be in
society. But here was one who was in the
chrysalis, and had never been a grub, and had
no wish to be a butterfly, and what should he
make of her? He was like a student of insects
who had never seen a bee. Never had
he known a young girl who cared for the things
which this maiden sought, or who was not dazzled
by things to which Hope seemed perfectly
indifferent. She was not a devotee, she was
not a prude; people seemed to amuse and interest
her; she liked them, she declared, as

much as she liked books. But this very way
of putting the thing seemed like inverting the
accustomed order of affairs in the polite world,
and was of itself a novelty.

Of course he had previously taken his turn
for a while among Kate's admirers; but it was
when she was very young, and, moreover, it
was hard to get up anything like a tender and
confidential relation with that frank maiden;
she never would have accepted Philip Malbone
for herself, and she was by no means satisfied
with his betrothal to her best beloved. But
that Hope loved him ardently there was no
doubt, however it might be explained. Perhaps
it was some law of opposites, and she
needed some one of lighter nature than her
own. As her resolute purpose charmed him,
so she may have found a certain fascination in
the airy way in which he took hold on life; he
was so full of thought and intelligence; possessing
infinite leisure, and yet incapable of
ennui; ready to oblige every one, and doing so
many kind acts at so little personal sacrifice;
always easy, graceful, lovable, and kind. In
her just indignation at those who called him
heartless, she forgot to notice that his heart
was not deep. He was interested in all her

pursuits, could aid her in all her studies, suggest
schemes for her benevolent desires, and
could then make others work for her, and even
work himself. People usually loved Philip,
even while they criticised him; but Hope
loved him first, and then could not criticise him
at all.

Nature seems always planning to equalize
characters, and to protect our friends from
growing too perfect for our deserts. Love, for
instance, is apt to strengthen the weak, and yet
sometimes weakens the strong. Under its influence
Hope sometimes appeared at disadvantage.
Had the object of her love been indifferent,
the result might have been otherwise,
but her ample nature apparently needed to
contract itself a little, to find room within
Philip's heart. Not that in his presence she
became vain or petty or jealous; that would
have been impossible. She only grew credulous
and absorbed and blind. A kind of
gentle obstinacy, too, developed itself in her
nature, and all suggestion of defects in him
fell off from her as from a marble image of
Faith. If he said or did anything, there was
no appeal; that was settled, let us pass to
something else.

I almost blush to admit that Aunt Jane —
of whom it could by no means be asserted
that she was a saintly lady, but only a very
charming one — rather rejoiced in this transformation.

“I like it better, my dear,” she said, with
her usual frankness, to Kate. “Hope was altogether
too heavenly for my style. When
she first came here, I secretly thought I never
should care anything about her. She seemed
nothing but a little moral tale. I thought she
would not last me five minutes. But now she
is growing quite human and ridiculous about
that Philip, and I think I may find her very
attractive indeed.”