XIV Over two Cigars
When we got out under the pure breezes of heaven, Hartman turned to me and said, “So you call this reconciling me to domestic life, do you?”
“Well, I want you to see things as they are. They are not as bad as your fancy used to paint them, or as a duller man might suppose from recent appearances. Women haven’t our sense of humor, Jim: their humble efforts at jocosity are apt to be exaggerated, or flat—generally both; but they mean no harm.”
“Well, Bob, your preparations to instruct my ignorance are highly successful. All this is as good as a play. You see you are found out, old humbug; everybody sees through you. You can’t delude any of us any more.”
“I don’t quite see what you’re driving at, my christian friend; but I’m glad you like us, and I hope you’ll like us better before you are done with us.” When he talks like this, I am content to see the hand of Fate snatch at his scalp, as it will before long. Gibe on, ungrateful mocker: retribution will soon overtake you in your mad career. Where then will be your gibes, your quips, your quiddities? You’ll want my sympathy by and by, and I’ll see about giving it.
“You needn’t be so much cast down, Bob. Perhaps you are building me up better than you know. Your struggles with your womankind give a flavor to what I used to suppose must be insipid. You are pretty well satisfied with each other, or you wouldn’t pretend to quarrel so. What I saw of you before did something toward reconciling me to human nature at large, and your quaint efforts at shrewdness and finesse set off your real character. You might take in outsiders, but not me.”
“This is too much, my friend—a blanked sight too much. Crushed to earth by such unmerited compliments, I can only repeat my gratification that we meet with your approval. You settle down, and you’ll see how insipid it is: then you’ll be making some quaint efforts at shrewdness and finesse yourself. Invite me then, and I’ll get even with you, old man. But I say, what did you mean about my being a cub at college?”
“Well, you were, you know. Barmaids and ballet-dancers, and that sort of thing.”
“Confound you, Hartman, what do you go bringing them up for? There was only one of each, or thereabouts, and they were generally old enough to be my mothers. I was but a child, Jim—a guileless, merry, high-hearted boy, and innocent as the lamb unshorn.”
“You were that, and the shearing did you a lot of good. O, you can be easy; I’ll not bring up the sins of your youth.”
“They were no sins, only follies. I had my early Pendennis stage, of course, and invested every woman I met with the hues of imagination. But Mabel and the girls might not understand that.”
“I don’t think they would. Happily, it is not necessary they should try to, since you have returned to the path of rectitude. Do you think you belonged to Our Society in those days, Bob?”
“Yes, sir: I did, in embryo. I had it in me to develop into the ornament of our species you behold at present. That’s all a boy is good for, anyway. He thinks he’s somebody, but he isn’t. He doesn’t amount to anything, except in the fond hopes of his anxious parents. He knows nothing, and he can do nothing, except learn by his blunders; and some of ’em can’t do that. But if he has any stuff in him, he grows and ripens with time, as you and I did. What bosh, to put the prime of life at twenty-five. They ought to move it on a bit; about our age, now, a man ought to be at his best.”
“I don’t know, Bob. I was an egregious ass at twenty-five, and I’m not sure I’m any better now.”
“Then there’s hope of you, my boy. But one must go on getting experience. You shut the door too soon and too tight, Jim.”
“When I had it open, such an infernal stench and dust came in, that it seemed best to close it. But it’s open again now, partly, and this seems a healthier and cleaner atmosphere.”
“You’ll come out all right, Jim; and when you do, you won’t seem to have been altogether wrong all these years. You’ve kept yourself unspotted from the world, more than most of us; and when you come to know a girl like Clarice, you’ll want the most and best of you, to be fit for her society. If only one could get the general ripening without some of the dashed details of the process! She makes you wish you could have been brought up in a bandbox, if only you could have come out of it a man and not a mollycoddle.”
“Only ‘men-maidens in their purity’ are worthy to approach her, no doubt. Apparently I am not. I’ll have to be content with your account of Miss Elliston’s perfections, Robert. She seems to have no more use for me than the Texans for the Sheriff. But I am doing very nicely, thanks to your sister. I doubt if you appreciate Miss Jane, Bob. She sees further into things than you do. She impresses me as a sound-hearted woman, wise, kind, and gracious.”
“Yes, and so sisterly and appreciative. O yes, such a superior person as she is! But see here, Jim; that’s not what you’re here for. Jane is all very well in her way, but——”
He turned on me suddenly. “What the deuce do you mean now?”
By Jove, now I’ve done it: he’s got me in a corner.—You just wait and see me get out of it. “O well, Jim, I speak only by general analogy, of course. I am not in the Princess’s confidence, as I told you. I might be if any one were, but nobody can see into her mind further than she chooses to let them, and that is but a very little way. It would be a fine sight, no doubt; but she has the reticence of a—well, of an angel probably; exceptionally delicate and sensitive nature, and all that, you know. It’s not her way to let a good thing go by unnoticed, and she is quite able to appreciate you. Your time is not up yet: you’re likely to see more of her before you go—at least, I should suppose so.”
“Well, I am here to see things, as you say, and I may as well see whatever is to be shown me. I am in your hands, old man; make as good a job of it as you can before you send me back to the woods.”
It is all very well for him to talk lightly on solemn subjects; he’ll change his tone by and by. I have prepared his mind now, as I prepared the others before he came. Perhaps I ought to have done it sooner; perhaps the Princess has been waiting for that. She’ll know, without my telling her; she’ll see it in his eye.—Nonsense, Robert T.; your zeal outruns your discretion. What does she want of your help in a thing like this? Anyway, he’s ready to be operated on, and it seems about time she began to put in her work.