XIX Conspiracy
The summer has not done for any of us what it ought; quite the reverse. Even I am not in my usual form, if Mabel and Jane are right. They had let me alone for some time: last night they attacked me together—a preconcerted movement, obviously.
“Robert, you are pale, almost haggard. You need a change.”
“Why,” said I, “I’ve just had a change—or rather several of them. We’ve been back only three weeks.”
“You need mountain air: the sea does not agree with you. And Newport is not what it used to be.”
“It’s a good deal more so, if you mean that; but I don’t know that its increased muchness has damaged my health to any great extent.”
“You prefer small, remote places, and their way of life; you know you do. They are more of a change from town. You bought the house at Newport for our sakes. I have often feared you were sacrificing yourself to us—with your usual disinterestedness, dear.”
“Well, my usual disinterestedness is ready to be worked again, to any reasonable extent, if you will say what you’re after. But how can I leave the business now?”
“O, the business!” (It was Jane this time.) “That is all very fine, when you don’t want to leave town. But I notice that the business never interferes with any of your junketings. What are your clerks paid for? Can’t they attend to the business?”
“A fine idea you women have of business, and a fine success you’d make of it. Jane, suppose you take charge in Water Street while I am away.”
“I don’t doubt I could do it quite as well as you, after a little practice. Why, brother, Mr. Pipeline understands it a great deal better than you do. Our father, in his later years, trusted him entirely.”
“Yes, Robert,” said Mabel, “and how often you have assured me that Mr. Pipeline was absolutely competent and reliable. When we were married, and a hundred times since, you explained your carelessness and indifference about the business by saying that all was right while old Mr. Pipeline was there: he knew everything, and kept the whole force to their work. It was that, you said, which enabled you to be so much more about the house than most men could be, and so attentive and satisfactory as a husband and father.”
She had me there: who would expect a woman to remember things and bring them up in this way, so long after? So I tried to turn it off.
“O, well, he hasn’t gone to Canada yet: the books seem straight, and the returns are pretty fair. But it is well for the head of the firm to look in occasionally, all the same.”
“You do look in occasionally, Robert: no one can accuse you of neglecting that duty. Would I have married a man who neglected duty, and allowed his business to go to ruin, and his family to come to want? Your conscience may rest perfectly easy on that score, dear.”
“O, thank you: it does. I’ve not often allowed the state of the oil market to interfere with sleep or appetite, or with my appreciation of you and the children. Family duties first, my dear; what so sacred, so primary, as the ties of Home? But such virtue is not always duly prized there. I’m glad you do me justice.”
“I always have, Robert; always. Whatever Jane and others might say about your levity and your untimely jests and so forth, I have steadily maintained that you had a good heart.”
“There, Jane, do you hear that? Mabel knows, for she is in a position to know.”
“Of course, brother, we are all aware of that. If you had not that one redeeming trait, I should have left you long ago, even if I had had to get married. You admire Artemus Ward: he had a giant mind, you recollect, but not always about him. So with your good heart at times. But we are wandering from the point. Mabel, you were showing him how he could go away for a week or two without neglecting his important duties down town.”
“Why yes, Robert. You have been here three weeks now, and I am sure you have been at the store nearly every day. Indeed, when you were not at home, or at the club, or somewhere about town, I doubt not you might be found in Water Street a good part of the time.”
“Yes,” I said with an air of virtuous complacency, “I believe you are right. I can’t deny it, though it may help your side of the argument.”
“Well then, you can surely be spared during a brief absence. And when you return, you can continue to look in occasionally, as you say.”
“Perhaps I could, though it is not well to be too positive. Where do you think I ought to go?”
“Well, you are fond of fishing and hunting. You might go up and spend a week with Mr. Hartman. You found good sport there, you said.”
“O yes, there are trout enough, and deer not far off, he told me. But I was there in May. And it is not very comfortable at Hodge’s, if you remember.”
“But of course this time you would stay with Mr. Hartman. You refused his invitation before, and it was hardly civil to such an old friend.”
“He has a mere bachelor box, my dear, and I hardly like to thrust myself on him.”
“Why, Robert, I am surprised at you. After Mr. Hartman spent a fortnight with us at Newport—and when he has written you twice, urging you to come. Can’t you see that the poor man is lonely, and really wants you?”
“Mabel, it would be all very well if it were like last May—only he and I to be considered. But here is that blessed entanglement of his with Clarice—quarrel, or love-making nipped in the bud, or whatever it was—that complicates matters. After all the lectures I’ve had from you two, I don’t want to complicate them any more, nor to meddle in her affairs, nor appear to. Suppose I go up there, and he wants news of her, and anything goes wrong, or it simply doesn’t come right as you expect; I’d have your reproaches to bear ever after, and perhaps those of my own conscience. You’re not sending me off simply for my health, or for a little fishing. If I go to Hartman, the sport will not be the main item on the programme; and that every one of us knows perfectly well. So I don’t move till I see my way straight.”
Finding me thus unexpectedly firm, Jane looked at Mabel, and Mabel looked at Jane, and there was a pause. You see, in this last deliverance I had uttered my real mind—or part of it—and it naturally impressed them.
My sister’s share in the discussion had thus far been confined to the few efforts at sarcasm duly credited to her above—let no one say that I am unjust to Jane. She had been watching me pretty closely, but I hardly think she saw anything she was not meant to see. Now she came to the front, looking very serious—as we all did, in fact.
“Well, brother, some things are better understood than spoken—from our point of view. But if you insist on having all in plain words, and playing, as you call it, with cards on the table—”
“Just so,” said I. “You use your feminine tools: I use mine, which are a man’s. If I have to do this piece of work, it must be on my own conditions and after my own fashion, with the least risk of misunderstanding.”
“Robert, if this is affectation, you are a better actor than I thought. But if you really know no more than we do—”
This was too much for Mabel. “Now, Jane, you go too far. Robert likes his little joke, but he knows when to be serious. Why do you suspect him so?”
Jane went on. “Of course it is possible he may be no deeper in Clarice’s confidence than we: she is very reticent. You mean, brother, that you will do nothing till she authorizes you?”
“Well, as I said, this is her affair. For you, or me, or anybody else, to meddle in it without her direction, or permission—unless in case of obvious extremity—would seem, by all rules alike ethical and prudential, a delicate and doubtful proceeding, to say the least.”
“I suppose you are right there. Mabel, you may as well tell him. Robert, don’t think, from all this preamble, that it is of more importance than it would otherwise seem. Perhaps we might as well have told you at once; but we are only women, you know. Now at last we are using your tools—the tools you always use with such manly consistency—candor and open speech. Tell him, Mabel.”
“Robert dear, Clarice told me to-day that you were looking badly; she thought you needed a change. ‘Is he not going off for his fall fishing?’ she said.”
“Is that all?”
“It is a good deal for her,” said Jane. “If you want more, ask her. Are you less concerned for her happiness than we are? Must we arrange all the preliminaries? Brother, if I could do anything, no fear of consequences or reproaches should tie my hands: I would do what is right, and take the chances. If I stood where you do, I would have this matter settled, or know why it could not be. I would never sit idle, and see two such lives spoiled—and all our hearts broken. O, I know you love them both. But you are so cautious—unnecessarily and absurdly so at times, and wedded to useless diplomacy, when only the plain speech you talk about is needed. You stand in awe of Clarice too much: you may wait too long. Forgive me, Robert; but whatever she may say, you must see Mr. Hartman before winter.”
I could have embraced Jane, besides forgiving her slurs on me, which may contain an element of truth. There is more in her than I have supposed; and of course what she insists on is exactly what I have all along meant to do. But it did not come in handy to say so at this point. “I’ll think it over. You two had better go to bed: I must go out and smoke.”
“Robert,” said Mabel, “don’t go out to-night. You can smoke in the dining-room.”
“No; I’ll not take a base advantage of your present amiable mood. But I tell you what it is; if you want to get Hartman here in cold weather you must let us have a snuggery. He can’t do without his tobacco.”
It was a fine night, and I wanted a walk as well as a smoke. I felt gratified, for this thing had gone just as I desired. I am not quite so impulsive as Jane, and I understand the difficulties as she does not; but my plan has merely waited for events to give it definite shape and make it feasible. Certainly I must see Hartman, and as he can’t come here, I must go there. But I wanted the women to suggest my going; that divides the responsibility, and gives them a hand in the game. I would have had to propose it myself within a week or so, if they had not spoken. But the Princess knows what she is about, and what is fit and proper. It may seem strange that she should speak to Mabel instead of to me; but she will say what she has to say to me before I start. In fact, I’ll not start till she does—how could I? It is her business I am going on, with just enough of my own to give it a color. I’ll write to Jim at once, to ask when he wants me: the mails are slow up there, and it may be a week before his answer comes. That will give me time to get my instructions, and not be in any unseemly haste to seek them either. So far, so good; but there is more to be done, and delicate work too, such as will bear no scamping. It is the biggest contract you ever undertook, R. T., and you must make a neat job of it.