Malbone: An Oldport Romance

VII.

AN INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION.

AT the celebrated Oldport ball for the French officers, the merit of each maiden was estimated by the number of foreigners with whom she could talk at once, for there were more gentlemen than ladies, and not more than half the ladies spoke French. Here Emilia was in her glory; the ice being once broken, officers were to her but like so many school-girls, and she rattled away to the admiral and the fleet captain and two or three lieutenants at once, while others hovered behind the circle of her immediate adorers, to pick up the stray shafts of what passed for wit. Other girls again drove two-in-hand, at the most, in the way of conversation ; while those least gifted could only encounter one small Frenchman in some safe corner, and converse chiefly by smiles and signs.

On the whole, the evening opened gayly. Newly arrived Frenchmen are apt to be so unused to the familiar society of unmarried girls, that (the most innocent share in it has for them the zest of forbidden fruit, and the most blameless intercourse seems almost a bonne fortune. Most of these officers were from the lower ranks of French society, but they all had that good breeding which their race wears with such ease, and can unhappily put off with the same.

The admiral and the fleet captain were soon turned over to Hope, who spoke French as she did English, with quiet grace. She found them agreeable companions, while Emilia drifted among the elder midshipmen, who were dazzling in gold-lace, if not in intellect. Kate fell to the share of a vehement little surgeon, who danced her out of breath. Harry officiated as interpreter between the governor of the State and a lively young ensign, who yearned for the society of dignitaries. The governor was quite aware that he himself could not speak French ; the Frenchman was quite unaware that he himself could not speak English ; but with Harry’s aid they plunged boldly into conversation. Their talk happened to fall on steamengines, English, French, American; their comparative cost, comparative power, comparative cost per horse-power,— until Harry, who was not very strong upon the steam-engine in his own tongue, and was quite helpless on that point in any other, got a good deal astray among the numerals, and implanted some rather wild statistics in the mind of each. The young Frenchman was far more definite, when requested by the governor to state in English the precise number of men engaged on board the corvette. With the accuracy of his nation, he beamingly replied, “ Seeshundredtousand.”

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co., in the Clerk’s office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

As is apt to be the case in Oldport, other European nationalities beside the French were represented, though the most marked foreign accent was of course to be found among Americans just returned. There were European diplomatists who spoke English perfectly ; there were travellers who spoke no English at all ; and as usual each guest sought to practise himself in the tongue he knew least. There was the usual eagerness among the fashionable vulgar to make acquaintance with anything that combined broken English and a title; and two minutes after a Russian prince had seated himself comfortably on a sofa beside Kate, he was vehemently tapped on the shoulder by Mrs. Courtenay Brash with the endearing summons : “ Why ! Prince, I did n’t see as you was here. Do you set comfortable where you be ? Come over to this window and tell all you know ! ”

The prince might have felt that his summons was abrupt, but he knew not that it was ungrammatical, and so was led away in triumph. He had been but a month or two in this country, and so spoke our language no more correctly than Mrs. Brash, but only witli more grace. There was no great barm in Mrs. Brash; like most loquacious people, she was kind-hearted, with a tendency to corpulence and good works. She was also afflicted with a high color, and a chronic eruption of diamonds. Her husband had an eye for them, having begun life as a jeweller’s apprentice. and having developed sufficient sharpness of vision in other directions to become a millionnaire, and a Congressman, and to let his wife do as she pleased.

What goes forth from the lips may vary in dialect, but wine and oysters speak the universal language. The supper-table brought our party together, and they compared notes.

“ Parties are very confusing,” philosophized Hope, — “especially when waiters and partners dress so much alike. Just now I saw an ill-looking man elbowing his way up to Mrs. Meredith, and I thought he was bringing her something on a plate. Instead of that, it was his hand he field out, and she put hers into it ; and I was told that he was one of the leaders of society. There are very few gentlemen here whom I could surely tell from the waiters by their faces, and yet Harry says the fast set are not here.”

“Talk of the angels !” said Philip. “There come the Inglesides.”

Through the door of the supper-room they saw entering the drawing-room one of those pretty, fair-haired women who grow older up to twenty-five and then remain unchanged till sixty. She was dressed in the loveliest pale blue silk, very low in the neck, and she seemed to smile on all with her white teeth and her white shoulders. This was Mrs. Ingleside. With her came her daughter Blanche, a pretty blonde, whose bearing seemed at first as innocent and pastoral as her name. Her dress was of spotless white, what there was of it; and her skin was so snowy, you could hardly tell where the dress ended. Her complexion was exquisite, her eyes of the softest blue ; at twenty-three she did not look more than seventeen ; and yet there was such a contrast between these virginal traits and the worn, faithless, hopeless expression, that she looked, as Philip said, like a depraved lamb. Does it show the higher nature of woman, that, while “ fast young men ” are content to look like well-dressed stable-boys and billiard-markers, one may observe that girls of the corresponding type are apt to addict themselves to white and rosebuds, and pose themselves for falling angels ?

Mrs. Ingleside was a stray widow (from New Orleans via Paris), into whose antecedents it was best not to inquire too close. After many ups and downs, she was at present up. It was difficult to state with certainty what bad deed she had ever done, or what good deed. She simply lived by her wits, and by the want of that article in her male friends. Her house was a sort of gentlemanly club-house, where the presence of two women offered perhaps a shade less restraint than if there had been men alone. She was amiable and unscrupulous, went regularly to church, and needed only money to be the most respectable and fastidious of women. It was always rather a mystery who paid for her charming little dinners; indeed, several things in her demeanor were questionable, but as the questions were never answered, no harm was done, and everybody invited her because everybody else did. Had she committed some graceful forgery tomorrow, or some mild murder the next day, nobody would have been surprised, and all her intimate friends would have said it was what they had always expected.

Meantime the entertainment went on.

“ I shall not have scalloped oysters in heaven,” lamented Kate, as she finished with healthy appetite her first instalment.

“Are you sure you shall not ? ” said the sympathetic Hope, who would have eagerly followed Kate into Paradise with a supply of whatever she liked best.

“ I suppose you will, darling,” responded Kate, “but what will you care ? It seems hard that those who are bad enough to long for them should not be good enough to earn them.”

At this moment Blanche Ingleside and her train swept into the supperroom ; the girls cleared a passage, their attendant youths collected chairs. Blanche tilted hers slightly against a wall, professed utter exhaustion, and demanded a fresh bottle of champagne in a voice that showed no signs of weakness. Presently a sheepish youth drew near the noisy circle.

“ Here comes that Talbot van Alsted,” said Blanche, bursting at last into a loud whisper. “What a goose he is, to be sure ! Dear baby, it promised its mother it would n't drink wine for two months. Let’s all drink with him. Talbot, my boy, just in time ! Fill your glass. Stosst an ! ”

And Blanche and her attendant spirits in white muslin thronged around the weak boy, saw him charged with the three glasses that were all his head could stand, and sent him reeling home to his mother. Then they looked round for fresh worlds to conquer.

“There are the Maxwells !” said Miss Ingleside, without lowering her voice. “Who is that party in the highnecked dress ? Is she the schoolmistress ? Why do they have such people here ? Society is getting so common, there is no bearing it. That Frnily who is with her is too good for that slow set. She’s the school-girl we heard of at Nice, or somewhere ; she wanted to elope with somebody, and Phil Malbone stopped her, worse luck. She will be for eloping with us, before long.”

Emilia colored scarlet, and gave a furtive glance at Hope, half of shame, half of triumph. Hope looked at Blanche with surprise, made a movement forward, but was restrained by the crowd, while the noisy damsel broke out in a different direction.

“ How fiendishly hot it is here, though. Jones junior, put your elbow through that window ! This champagne is boiling. What a tiresome time we shall have to-morrow, when the Frenchmen arc gone. Ah, Count, there you are at last ! Ready for the German ? Come for me ? Just primed and up to anything, and so I tell you ! ”

But as Count Posen, kissing his hand to her, squeezed his way through the crowd with Hal, to be presented to Hope, there came over Blanche’s young face such a mingled look of hatred and weariness and chagrin, that even her unobserving friends saw it, and asked with tender commiseration what was up.

The dancing recommenced. There was the usual array of partners, distributed by mysterious discrepancies, like soldiers’ uniforms, so that all the tail drew short, and all the short had tall. There were the timid couples, who danced with trembling knees and eyes cast over their shoulders ; the feeble couples, who meandered aimlessly and got tangled in corners; the rash couples, who tore breathlessly through the rooms and brought up at last against the large white waistcoat of the violoncello. There was the professional lady-killer, too supreme and indolent to dance, but sitting amid an admiring bevy of fair women, where he reared his head of raven curls, and pulled ceaselessly his black mustache. And there were certain young girls who. having astonished the community for a month by the lowness of their dresses, now brought to bear their only remaining art, and struck everybody dumb by appearing clothed. All these came and went and came again and had their day or their night, and danced until the robust Hope went home exhausted and left her more fragile cousins to dance on till morning. Indeed, it was no easy thing for them to tear themselves away ; Kate was always in demand ; Philip knew everybody, and had that latest aroma of Paris which the soul of fashion covets ; Harry had the tried endurance which befits brothers and lovers at halls; while Emflia’s foreign court belli out till morning, and one handsome voting midshipman, in special, kept revolving back to her after each long Orbit of separation, like a goldlaced comet.

The young people lingered extravagantly late at that ball, for the corvette was to sail next day, and the girls were willing to make the most of it. As they came to the outer door, the dawn was inexpressibly beautiful, — deep rose melting into saffron, beneath a tremulous morning star. With a sudden impulse, they agreed to walk home, the fresh air seemed so delicious. Philip and Emilia went first, outstripping the others.

Passing the Jewish cemetery, Kate and Harry paused a moment. The sky was almost cloudless, the air was full of a thousand scents and songs, the rose-tints in the sky were deepening, the star paling, while a few vague clouds went wandering upward, and dreamed themselves away.

“ There is a grave in that cemetery,” said Kate, gently, “where lovers should always be sitting. It lies behind that tall monument ; I cannot see it lor the blossoming boughs. There were two young cousins who loved each other from childhood, but were separated, because Jews do not allow such unions. Neither of them was ever married ; and they lived to be very old, the one in New Orleans, the other at the North. In their last illnesses each dreamed of walking in the fields with the other, as in their early days ; and the telegraphis despatches that told their deaths crossed each other on the way. That is His monument, and her grave was made behind it ; there was no room for a stone.”

Kate moved a step or two, that she might sec the graves. The branches opened clear. What living lovers had met there, at this strange hour, above the dust of lovers dead ? She saw with amazement, and walked on quickly that Harry might not also see.

It was Emilia who sat beside the grave, her dark hair drooping and dishevelled, her carnation cheeks still brilliant after the night’s excitement ; and lie who sat at her feet, grasping her hand in both of his, while his lips poured out passionate words to which she eagerly listened, was Philip Malbone.

Here, upon the soil of a new nation, lay a spot whose associations seemed already as old as time could make them, — the last footprint of a tribe now vanished from this island forever, — the resting-place of a race whose very funerals would soon be no more. Each April the robins built their nests around these crumbling stones, each May they reared their broods, each June the clover blossomed, each July the wild strawberries grew cool and red ; all around was youth and life and ecstasy, and yet the stones bore inscriptions in an unknown language, and the very graves seemed dead.

And lovelier than all the youth of Nature, little Emilia sat there in the early light, her girlish existence gliding into that drama of passion which is older than the buried nations, older than time, than death, than all things save life and God.

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 hut 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 wellfavored. 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 calisthenics 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 so 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 Censuelo, and even she told lies.”

“Do not begin upon Hope,” said Aunt Jane. “ It is the only subject on which Kate can be tedious. 'Fell me about the dresses. Were people overdressed 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 heryoung 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 ereetion 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-lreld.”

“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 lill 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 chinking. 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 book-keepers 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 loungingplace,” 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, 1 shared the deception, at least for a time ; and, as for sensuality, I had none in me.”

“ Did you have nothingworse ? 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, during which 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.

IX.

DANGEROUS WAYS.

It was true enough, what Harry had said. Philip Malbone’s was that perilous Rousseau-like temperament, neither sincere enough for safety, nor false enough to alarm ; the winning tenderness that thrills and softens at the mere neighborhood of a woman, and fascinates by its reality those whom no hypocrisy can deceive. It was a nature half amiable, half voluptuous, that disarmed others, seeming itself unarmed. He was never wholly ennobled by passion, for it never touched him deeply enough ; and, on the other hand, he was not hardened by the habitual attitude of passion, for he was never really insincere. Sometimes it seemed as if nothing stood between him and utter profligacy but a little indolence, a little kindness, and a good deal of caution.

“ There seems no such thing as serious repentance in me,” he had once said to Kate, two years before, when she had upbraided him with some desperate flirtation which had looked as it he would carry it as far as gentlemen did under King Charles II. “How does remorse begin ? ”

“Where you are beginning,” said Kate.

“ I do not perceive that,” he answered. “ My conscience seems, after all, to be only a form of good-nature. I like to be stirred by emotion, I suppose, and I like to study character. But I can always stop when it is evident that I shall cause pain to somebody. Is there any other motive?”

“In other words,” said she, “you apply the match, and then turn your back on the burning house.”

Philip colored. “ How unjust you are ! Of course, we all like to play with fire, but I always put it out belore it can spread. Do you think I have no feeling ? ”

Kate stopped there, I suppose. Even she always stopped soon, if she undertook to interfere with Malbone. This charming Alcihiades always convinced them, alter the wrestling was over, that he had not been thrown.

The only exception to this-swas in the case of Aunt Jane. If she had anything in common with Philip,—-and there was a certain element of ingenuous unconsciousness in which they were not so far unlike, — it only placed them in the more complete antagonism. Perhaps if two beings were in absolutely no respect alike, they never could meet even for purposes of hostility ; there must be some common ground from which the aversion may proceed. Moreover, in this case Aunt Jane utterly disbelieved in Malbone because she had reason to disbelieve in his father, and the better she knew the son the more she disliked the father retrospectively.

Philip was apt to be very heedless of such aversions, — indeed, he had few to heed, — but it was apparent that Aunt Jane was the only person with whom he was not quite at ease. Still, the solicitude did not trouble him very much, for he instinctively knew that it was not his particular actions which vexed her, so much as his very temperament and atmosphere, — things not to be changed. So he usually went his way; and if he sometimes felt one of her sharp retorts, could laugh it off that day and sleep it off before the next morning.

For you may be sure that Philip was very little troubled by inconvenient memories. He never bad to affect forgetfulness of anything. The past slid from him so easily, he forgot even to try to forget, He liked to quote from Emerson, “ What have I to do with repentance ? ” “ What have my yesterday’s errors,” he would say, “ to do with the life of to-day ? ”

“ Everything,” interrupted Aunt Jane, “ for you will repeat them to-day, it you can.”

“ Not at all,” persisted he, accepting as conversation what she meant as a stab. “ I may, indeed, commit greater errors,”—here she grimly nodded, as if she had no doubt of it, — “ but never just the same. To-day must take thought for itself.”

“ I wish it would,” she said, gently, and then went on with her own thoughts while he was silent. Presently she broke out again in her impulsive way.

“ Depend upon it,” she said, “there is very little direct retribution in this world.”

Phil looked up, quite pleased at her indorsing one of his favorite views. She looked, as she always did, indignant at having said anything to please him,

“Yes,” said she, “it is the indirect retribution that crushes. I ’ve seen enough of that, God knows. Kate, give me my thimble.”

Malbone had that smooth elasticity of surface which made even Aunt Jane’s strong fingers slip from him as they might from a fish, or from the soft gelatinous stem of the water-target. Even in this case he only laughed good-naturedly, and went out, whistling like a mocking-bird, to call the children round him.

Toward the more wayward and impulsive Emilia the good lady was far more merciful. With all Aunt Jane’s formidable keenness, she was a little apt to be disarmed by youth and beauty, and had no very stern retributions except for those past middle age. Emilia especially charmed her while she repelled. There was no getting beyond a certain point with this strange girl, any more than with Philip; but her depths tantalized, while his apparent shallows were only vexatious. Emilia was usually sweet, winning, cordial, and seemed ready to glide into one’s heart as softly as she glided into the room ; she liked to please, and found it very easy. Yet she left the impression that this smooth and delicate loveliness went but an inch beyond the surface, like the soft thin foam that enamels yonder tract of ocean, belongs to it, is a part of it, yet is, after all, but a bequest of tempests, and covers only a dark abyss of crossing currents and desolate tangles of rootless kelp. Everybody was drawn to her, yet not a soul took any comfort in her. Her very voice had in it a despairing sweetness, that seemed far in advance of her actual history ; it was an anticipated Miserere, a perpetual dirge, where nothing had yet gone down. So Aunt Jane, who was wont to be perfectly decisive in her treatment of every human being, was fluctuating and inconsistent with Emilia. She could not help being fascinated by the motherless child, and yet scorned herself for even the doubting love she gave.

“ Only think, auntie,” said Kate, “how you kissed Emilia, yesterday!”

“Of course I did,” she remorsefully owned. “ I have kissed her a great many times too often. I never will kiss her again. There is nothing but sorrow to be found in loving her, and her heart is no larger than her feet. To-day she was not even pretty ! If is were not for her voice, I think I should never wish to see her again.”

But when that soft, pleading voice came once more, and Emilia asked perhaps for luncheon, in tones fit for Ophelia, Aunt Jane instantly yielded. One might as well have tried to enforce indignation against the Babes in the Wood.

This perpetual mute appeal was further strengthened by a peculiar physical habit in Emilia, which first alarmed the household, but soon ceased to inspire terror. She fainted very easily, and had attacks at long intervals akin to faintness, and lasting for several hours. The physicians pronounced them cataleptic in their nature, saying that they brought no danger, and that she would certainly outgrow them. They were sometimes produced by fatigue, sometimes by excitement, but they brought no agitation with them, nor any development of abnormal powers. They simply wrapped her in a profound repose, from which no effort could rouse her, till the trance passed by. Her eyes gradually closed, her voice died away, and all movement ceased, save that her eyelids sometimes trembled without opening, and sweet evanescent expressions chased each other across her face, — the shadows of thoughts unseen. For a time site seemed to distinguish the touch of different persons by preference or pain ; but soon even this sign of recognition vanished, and the household could only wait and watch, while she sank into deeper and yet deeper repose.

There was something inexpressibly sweet, appealing, and touching in this impenetrable slumber, when it was at its deepest. She looked so young, so delicate, so lovely ; it was as if she had entered into a shrine, and some sacred curtain had been dropped, to shield her from all the cares and perplexities of life. She lived, she moved, she breathed, she spoke, and yet all the storms of life could but beat against her powerless, as the waves beat on the shore. Safe in this beautiful semblance of death,— her pulse a little accelerated, her rich color only softened, her eyelids drooping, her exquisite mouth curved into the sweetness it had lacked in waking, — she lay unconscious and supreme, the temporary monarch of the household, entranced upon her throne. A few hours having prassed, she suddenly waked, and was a self-willed, passionate girl once more. When she spoke, it was with a voice wholly natural ; she had no recollection of what had happened, and no curiosity to learn.

X.

REMONSTRANCES.

It had been a lovely summer day, with a tinge of autumnal coolness toward nightfall, ending in what Aunt Jane called a “quince-jelly sunset.” Kate and Emilia sat upon the Blue Rocks, earnestly talking.

“ Promise, Emilia ! ” said Kate.

Emilia said nothing.

“Remember,” continued Kate, “he is Hope’s betrothed. Promise, promise, promise ! ”

Emilia looked into Kate’s face and saw it flushed with a generous eagerness, that called forth an answering look in her. She tried to speak, and the words died into silence. There was a pause, while each watched the other.

When one soul is grappling with another for life, such silence may last an instant too long; and Kate soon felt her grasp slipping. Momentarily the spell relaxed. Other thoughts swelled up, and Emilia’s eyes began to wander ; delicious memories stole in, of walks through blossoming paths with Malbone, — of lingering steps, halfstifled words and sentences left unfinished ; —then, alas ! of passionate caresses,— other blossoming paths that only showed the way to sin, but had never quite led her there, she fancied. There was so much to tell, more than could ever be told to Kate, infinitely more than could ever be explained or justified. Moment by moment, farther and farther strayed the wandering thoughts, ancl when the poor child looked in Kate’s face again, the mist between them seemed to have grown wide and dense, as if neither eyes nor words nor hands could ever meet again. When she spoke it was to say something evasive and unimportant, and her voice was as one from the grave.

In truth, Philip had given Emilia his heart to play with at Neuchâtel, that he might beguile her from an attachment they all regretted. The device succeeded. The toy once in her hand, the passionate girl had kept it, had clung to him with all her might ; he could not shake her off. Nor was this the worst, for to his dismay he found himself responding to her love with a self-abandonment of ardor for which all former loves had been hut a cool preparation. Pie had not intended this ; it seemed hardly his fault : his intentions had been good, or at least not bad. This piquant and wonderful fruit of nature, this girlish soul, he had merely touched it and it was his. Its mere fragrance was intoxicating. Good God ! what should he do with it ?

No clear answer coming, he had drifted on with that terrible facility for which years of self-indulged emotion had prepared him. Each step, while it was intended to be the last, only made some other last step needful.

He had begun wrong, for he had concealed his engagement, fancyingthat he could secure a stronger influence over this young girl without the knowledge. He had come to her simply as a friend of her Transatlantic kindred ; and she, who was always rather indifferent to them, asked no questions, nor made the discovery till too late. Then, indeed, she had burst upon him with an impetuous despair that had alarmed him. He feared not that she would do herself any violence, for she had a childish dread of death, but that she would show some desperate animosity toward Hope, whenever they should meet. After a long struggle, he had touched, not her sense of justice, for she had none, but her love for him ; he had aroused her tenderness and her pride. Without his actual assurance, she yet believed that he would release himself in some way from his betrothal, and love only her.

Malbone had fortunately great control over Emilia when near her, and could thus keep the sight of this stormy passion from the pure and unconscious Hope. But a new distress opened before him, from the time when he again touched Hope’s hand. The dose intercourse of the voyage had given him for the time almost a surfeit of the hot-house atmosphere of Emilia’s love. The first contact of Hope’s cool, smooth fingers, the soft light of her clear eyes, the breezy grace of her motions, the rose-odors tliatclungaround her, brought back ail his early passion. Apart from this voluptuousness of the heart into which he had fallen, Malbone’s was a simple and unspoiled nature ; he had no vices, and had always won popularity too easily to be obliged to stoop for it; so all that was noblest in him paid allegiance to Hope. From the moment they again met, his wayward heart reverted to her. He had been in a dream, lie said to himself; he would conquer it and be only hers ; lie would go away with her into the forests and green fields she loved, or he would share in the life of usefulness for which she yearned. But then, what was he to do with this little waif from the heart’s tropics,— once tampered with, in an hour of mad dalliance, and now adhering inseparably to his life? Supposing him ready to separate from her, could she be detached from him ?

Kate’s anxieties, when she at last hinted them to Malb one, only sent him further into revery. " How is it,” he asked himself, " that when I only sought to love and be loved, I have thus entangled myself in the fate of others ? How is one’s heart to be governed ? Is there any sucli governing ? Mlle. Clairon complained that, so soon as she became seriously attached to any one, she was sure to meet somebody else whom she liked better. Have human hearts,” he said, “or, at least, has my heart, no more stability than this ? ”

It did not help the matter when Emilia went to stay awhile with Mrs. Meredith. The event came about in this way. Hope and Kate had been to a dinner-party, and were as usual reciting their experiences to Aunt Jane.

“Was it pleasant?” said that sympathetic lady.

“ It was one of those dreadfully dark dining-rooms,” said Hope, seating herself at the open window.

“Why do they make them look so like tombs ?” said Kate.

“Because,” said her aunt, “most Americans pass from them to the tomb, after eating such indigestible things. There is a wish for a gentle transition.”

“ Aunt Jane,” said Hope, “ Mrs. Meredith asks to have a little visit from Emilia. Do you think she had better go?”

“ Mrs. Meredith ?” asked Aunt Jane. “ Is that woman alive yet ? ”

‘Why, auntie!” said Kate. “We were talking about her only a week ago.”

“ Perhaps so,” conceded Aunt Jane, reluctantly. “But it seems to me she has great length of days ! ”

“ How very improperly you are talking, dear!” said Kate. “She is not more than forty, and you are—”

“Fifty-four,” interrupted the other.

“Then she has not seen nearly so many days as you.”

“ But they are such long days ! That is what I must have meant. One of her days is as long as three of mine. She is so tiresome ! ”

“ She does not tire you very often,” said Kate.

“She comes once a year,” said Aunt Jane. “And then it is not to see me. She comes out of respect to the memory of my great-aunt, with whom Talleyrand fell in love, when he was in America, before Mrs. Meredith was born. Yes, Emilia may as well go.”

So Emilia went. To provide her with companionship, Mrs. Meredith kindly had Blanche Ingleside to stay there also. Blanche stayed at different houses a good deal. To do her justice, she was very good company, when put upon her best behavior, and beyond the reach of her demure mamma. She was always in spirits, often good-natured, and kept everything in lively motion, you may he sure. She found it not unpleasant, in rich houses, to escape some of those little domestic parsimonies which the world saw not in her own ; and to secure this felicity she could sometimes lay great restraints upon herself, for as much as twenty-four hours. She seemed a little out of place, certainly, amid the precise proprieties of Mrs. Meredith’s establishment. But Blanche and her mother still held their place in society, and it was nothing to Mrs. Meredith who came to her doors, but only from what other doors they came.

She would have liked to see all “the best houses ” connected by secret gaileries Or underground passages, of which she and a few others should hold the keys. A guest properly presented could then go the rounds of all unerringly, leaving his card at each, while improper acquaintances in vain howled for admission at the outer wall. For the rest, her ideal of social happiness was a series ot perfectly ordered entertainments, at each of which there should be precisely the same guests, the same topics, the same supper, and the same ennui.