University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.
TALKING IT OVER.

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 calisthenies
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 Israelites
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 act 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.