Malbone Part 4

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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion; 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 pa.s.s 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 s.e.x, 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 b.u.t.terfly, 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 pa.s.s to something else.

I almost blush to admit that Aunt Jane--of whom it could by no means be a.s.serted 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."

VI. "SOME LOVER'S CLEAR DAY."

"HOPE!" said Philip Malbone, as they sailed together in a little boat the next morning, "I have come back to you from months of bewildered dreaming. I have been wandering,--no matter where. I need you. You cannot tell how much I need you."

"I can estimate it," she answered, gently, "by my need of you."

"Not at all," said Philip, gazing in her trustful face. "Any one whom you loved would adore you, could he be by your side. You need nothing.

It is I who need you."

"Why?" she asked, simply.

"Because," he said, "I am capable of behaving very much like a fool.

Hope, I am not worthy of you; why do you love me? why do you trust me?"

"I do not know how I learned to love you," said Hope. "It is a blessing that was given to me. But I learned to trust you in your mother's sick-room."

"Ay," said Philip, sadly, "there, at least, I did my full duty."

"As few would have done it," said Hope, firmly,--"very few. Such prolonged self-sacrifice must strengthen a man for life."

"Not always," said Philip, uneasily. "Too much of that sort of thing may hurt one, I fancy, as well as too little. He may come to imagine that the balance of virtue is in his favor, and that he may grant himself a little indulgence to make up for lost time. That sort of recoil is a little dangerous, as I sometimes feel, do you know?"

"And you show it," said Hope, ardently, "by fresh sacrifices! How much trouble you have taken about Emilia! Some time, when you are willing, you shall tell me all about it. You always seemed to me a magician, but I did not think that even you could restore her to sense and wisdom so soon."

Malbone was just then very busy putting the boat about; but when he had it on the other tack, he said, "How do you like her?"

"Philip," said Hope, her eyes filling with tears, "I wonder if you have the slightest conception how my heart is fixed on that child. She has always been a sort of dream to me, and the difficulty of getting any letters from her has only added to the excitement. Now that she is here, my whole heart yearns toward her. Yet, when I look into her eyes, a sort of blank hopelessness comes over me. They seem like the eyes of some untamable creature whose language I shall never learn. Philip, you are older and wiser than I, and have shown already that you understand her.

Tell me what I can do to make her love me?"

"Tell me how any one could help it?" said Malbone, looking fondly on the sweet, pleading face before him.

"I am beginning to fear that it can be helped," she said. Her thoughts were still with Emilia.

"Perhaps it can," said Phil, "if you sit so far away from people. Here we are alone on the bay. Come and sit by me, Hope."

She had been sitting amidships, but she came aft at once, and nestled by him as he sat holding the tiller. She put her face against his knee, like a tired child, and shut her eyes; her hair was lifted by the summer breeze; a scent of roses came from her; the mere contact of anything so fresh and pure was a delight. He put his arm around her, and all the first ardor of pa.s.sion came back to him again; he remembered how he had longed to win this Diana, and how thoroughly she was won.

"It is you who do me good," said she. "O Philip, sail as slowly as you can." But he only sailed farther, instead of more slowly, gliding in and out among the rocky islands in the light north wind, which, for a wonder, lasted all that day,--dappling the bare hills of the Isle of Shadows with a shifting beauty. The tide was in and br.i.m.m.i.n.g, the fishing-boats were busy, white gulls soared and clattered round them, and heavy cormorants flapped away as they neared the rocks. Beneath the boat the soft mult.i.tudinous jellyfishes waved their fringed pendants, or glittered with tremulous gold along their pink, translucent sides.

Long lines and streaks of paler blue lay smoothly along the enamelled surface, the low, amethystine hills lay couched beyond them, and little clouds stretched themselves in lazy length above the beautiful expanse.

They reached the ruined fort at last, and Philip, surrendering Hope to others, was himself besieged by a joyous group.

As you stand upon the crumbling parapet of old Fort Louis, you feel yourself poised in middle air; the sea-birds soar and swoop around you, the white surf lashes the rocks far below, the white vessels come and go, the water is around you on all sides but one, and spreads its pale blue beauty up the lovely bay, or, in deeper tints, southward towards the horizon line. I know of no ruin in America which nature has so resumed; it seems a part of the living rock; you cannot imagine it away.

It is a single round, low tower, shaped like the tomb of Cacilia Metella. But its stately position makes it rank with the vast sisterhood of wave-washed strongholds; it might be King Arthur's Cornish Tyntagel; it might be "the teocallis tower" of Tuloom. As you gaze down from its height, all things that float upon the ocean seem equalized. Look at the crowded life on yonder frigate, coming in full-sailed before the steady sea-breeze. To furl that heavy canvas, a hundred men cl.u.s.ter like bees upon the yards, yet to us upon this height it is all but a plaything for the eyes, and we turn with equal interest from that thronged floating citadel to some lonely boy in his skiff.

Yonder there sail to the ocean, beating wearily to windward, a few slow vessels. Inward come jubilant white schooners, wing-and-wing. There are fishing-smacks towing their boats behind them like a family of children; and there are slender yachts that bear only their own light burden. Once from this height I saw the whole yacht squadron round Point Judith, and glide in like a flock of land-bound sea-birds; and above them, yet more snowy and with softer curves, pressed onward the white squadrons of the sky.

Within, the tower is full of debris, now disintegrated into one solid ma.s.s, and covered with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming clover, where the bees hum and the crickets chirp around you, and can look through the arch which frames its own fair picture. In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown with bayberry and gay with thistle blooms; then the little winding cove with its bordering cliffs; and the rough pastures with their grazing sheep beyond. Or, ascending the parapet, you can look across the bay to the men making hay picturesquely on far-off lawns, or to the cannon on the outer works of Fort Adams, looking like vast black insects that have crawled forth to die.

Here our young people spent the day; some sketched, some played croquet, some bathed in rocky inlets where the kingfisher screamed above them, some rowed to little craggy isles for wild roses, some fished, and then were taught by the boatmen to cook their fish in novel island ways. The morning grew more and more cloudless, and then in the afternoon a fog came and went again, marching by with its white armies, soon met and annihilated by a rainbow.

The conversation that day was very gay and incoherent,--little fragments of all manner of things; science, sentiment, everything: "Like a distracted dictionary," Kate said. At last this lively maiden got Philip away from the rest, and began to cross-question him.

"Tell me," she said, "about Emilia's Swiss lover. She shuddered when she spoke of him. Was he so very bad?"

"Not at all," was the answer. "You had false impressions of him. He was a handsome, manly fellow, a little over-sentimental. He had travelled, and had been a merchant's clerk in Paris and London. Then he came back, and became a boatman on the lake, some said, for love of her."

"Did she love him?"

"Pa.s.sionately, as she thought."

"Did he love her much?"

"I suppose so."

"Then why did she stop loving him?"

"She does not hate him?"

"No," said Kate, "that is what surprises me. Lovers hate, or those who have been lovers. She is only indifferent. Philip, she had wound silk upon a torn piece of his carte-de-visite, and did not know it till I showed it to her. Even then she did not care."

"Such is woman!" said Philip.