“You are disappointed and unhappy now,” said Joe, gently. “It is very natural indeed. Anybody would feel like that. But you must not believe in yourself any less than your friends believe in you.”
“I fancy my friends do not all think alike,” answered John. “But I am grateful to you for what you say.”
He was indeed grateful, and the soothing sound of her gentle voice was the best refreshment for his troubled spirit. He thought for a moment how brave a man could be with such a woman by his side; and the thought pleased him, the more because he knew that it could not be realized. They sat in silence for a while, contented to be together, and in sympathy. But before long the anxiety for the future and the sense of his peculiar position came over John again.
“Do you know,” he said, “there are times when I regret it all very much? I never told any one so before–perhaps I was never so sure of it as I have been since this affair.”
“What is it that you regret so much?” asked Joe, softly. “It is a noble life.”
“It is, indeed, if only a man knows how to live it,” answered John. “But sometimes I think I do not. You once said a very true thing to me about it all. Do you remember?”
“No; what was it?”
“You said I should not succeed because I am not enough of a partisan, and because every one is a partisan here.”
“Did I? Yes, I remember saying it,” answered Joe, secretly pleased that he should not have forgotten it. “I do not think it is so very true, after all. It is true to-day; but it is for men like you to set things right, to make partisanship a thing of the past. Men ought to make laws because they are just and necessary, not in order that they may profit by them at the expense of the rest of the world. And to have such good laws men ought to choose good men to represent them.”
“There is no denying the truth of that,” said John. “That is the way to construct the ideal republic. It would be the way to do a great many ideal things. You need only persuade humanity to do right, and humanity will do it. Verily, it is an easy task!” He laughed, a little bitterly.
“It is not like you to laugh in that way,” said Joe, gravely.
“No; to tell the truth, I am not overmuch inclined to laugh at anything to-day, excepting myself, and I dare say there are plenty of people who will do that for me without the asking. They will have no chance when I am gone.”
Joe started slightly.
“Gone?” she repeated. “Are you going away?”
“It is very likely,” said John. “A friend of mine has warned me to be ready to start at a moment’s notice on very important business.”
“But it is uncertain, then?” asked Joe, quickly. She had turned very white in an instant, and she looked straight across the little room and pulled nervously at her fan. She would not have dared to let her eyes meet John’s at that moment.
“Yes, rather uncertain,” answered John. “But he would not have sent me such a warning unless it were very likely that he would really want me.”
Joe was silent; she could not speak.
“So you see,” continued Harrington, “I may leave to-morrow, and I cannot tell when I may come back. That is the reason I was glad to find you here. I would have called to-day, if it had been possible, after I got the message.” He spoke calmly, not dreaming of the storm of fear and passion he was rousing in the heart of the fair girl beside him.
“Where–where are you going?” asked Joe in a low voice.
“Probably to England,” said John.
Before the words were out of his mouth he turned and looked at her, suddenly realizing the change in her tones. But she had turned away from him. He could see the quiver of her lips and the beating throb of her beautiful throat; and as he watched the outline of her cheek a tear stole slowly over the delicate skin, and trembled, and fell upon her white neck. But still she looked away.
Ah, John Harrington, what have you done? You have taken the most precious and pure thing in this world, the thing men as brave as you have given their heart’s best blood to win and have perished for failing, the thing which angels guard and Heaven has in its keeping–the love of a good and noble woman. It has come into your hands and you do not want it. You hardly know it is yours; and if you fully knew it you would not know what to do!
You are innocent, indeed; you have done nothing, spoken no word, given no look that, in your opinion, your cold indifferent opinion, could attract a woman’s love. But the harm is done, nevertheless, and a great harm too. When you are old and sensible you will look back to this day as one of sorrow and evil, and you will know then that all greatness and power and glory of realized ambition are nothing unless a man have a woman’s love. You will know that a man who cannot love is blind to half the world he seeks to conquer, and that a man who cannot love truly is no true man, for he who is not true to one cannot be true to many. That is the sum and reckoning of what love is worth.
But John knew of nothing beyond friendship, and he could not conceive how friendship could turn into anything else. When he saw the tear on Josephine Thorn’s cheek he was greatly disturbed, and vaguely wondered what in the world he should do. The idea that any woman could care enough for him to shed a tear when he left her had never crossed his mind; even now, with the actual fact before his eyes, he doubted whether it were possible. She was ill, perhaps, and suffering pain. Pshaw! it was absurd, it could not be that she cared so much for him.
Seeing she did not move, he sat quite still for a while. His usual tact had deserted him in the extremity of the situation. He revolved in his mind what was best to say. It was safest to suppose that Joe was ill, but he would say something indifferent, in order to see whether she recovered, before he suggested that he might be of assistance.
“It is cold here,” he remarked, trying to speak as naturally as possible. “Would you not like to take a turn, Miss Thorn?”
Joe moved a little. She was deadly pale, and in the effort she had made to control her feelings she was unconscious of the tears in her eyes.
“Oh no, thanks,” she faltered, “I will not dance just now.” She could not say more.
John made up his mind.
“You are ill, Miss Thorn,” he said anxiously. “I am sure you are very far from well. Let me get you something, or call your aunt. Shall I?”
“Oh no–don’t–that is–please, I think so. I will go home.”
John rose quickly, but before he reached the door she called him back.
“Mr. Harrington, it is nothing. Please sit down.”
John came back and did as he was bid, more and more surprised and confused.
“I was afraid it was something serious,” he said nervously, for he was greatly disturbed.
Joe laughed, a bitter, harsh little laugh, that was bad to hear. She was making a great effort, but she was strong, and bravely forced back her bursting tears.
“Oh no! I was only choking,” she said. “I often do. Go on, please, with what you were saying. Why are you going away so suddenly?”
“Indeed,” answered John, “I do not know what the business is. I am going if I am required, simply because my friend wants me.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Joe, speaking more calmly, “that you will pack up your belongings and go to the end of the world whenever a friend asks you to? It is most tremendously obliging, you know.”
“Not for any friend,” John replied. “But I would most certainly do it for this particular one.”
“You must be very fond of him to do that,” said Joe.
“I am under great obligations to him, too. He is certainly the most important man with whom I have any relations. We can trust each other-it would not do to endanger the certainty of good faith that exists between us.”
“He must be a very wonderful person,” said Joe, who had grown quite calm by this time. “I should like to know him.”
“Very possibly you may meet him, some day. He is a very wonderful person indeed, as you say. He has devoted fifty years
of his life and strength to the unremitting pursuit of the best aim that any man can set before him.”
“In other words,” said Joe, “he is your ideal. He is what you hope to be at his age. He must be very old.”
“Yes, he is old. As for his representing my ideal, I think he approaches more nearly to it than any man alive. But you would probably not like him.”
“Why?”
“He belongs to a class of men whom old-world people especially dislike,” answered John. “He does not believe in any monarchy, aristocracy, or distinction of birth. He looks upon titles as a decaying institution of barbarous ages, and he confidently asserts that in two or three generations the republic will be the only form of social contract known amongst the inhabitants of the civilized world.”
John was watching Joe while he spoke. He was merely talking because it seemed necessary, and he saw that in spite of her assumed calm she was still greatly agitated. She seemed anxious, however, to continue the conversation.
“It is absurd,” said she, “to say that all men are born equal.”
“Everything depends on what you mean by the word ‘equal.’ I mean by it that all men are born with an equal claim to a share in all the essential rights of free citizenship. When a man demands more than that, he is infringing on the rights of others; when he is content with less, he is allowing himself to be robbed.”
“But who is to decide just how much belongs to each man?” asked Joe, leaning back wearily against the cushions. She wished now that she had allowed him to call her aunt. It was a fearful strain on her faculties to continue talking upon general subjects and listening to John Harrington’s calm, almost indifferent tones.
“The majority decides that,” said John.
“But a majority has just decided that you are not to be senator,” said Joe. “According to you they were right, were they not?”
“It is necessary that the majority should be free,” said John, “and that they should judge of themselves, each man according to his honest belief. Majorities with us are very frequently produced by a handful of dishonest men, who can turn the scale on either side, to suit their private ends. It is the aim we set before us to protect the freedom of majorities. That is the true doctrine of a republic.”
“And for that aim,” said Joe, slowly, “you would sacrifice everything?”
“Yes, indeed we would,” said John, gravely. “For that end we will sacrifice all that we have to give–the care for personal satisfaction, the hope of personal distinction, the peace of a home and the love of a wife. We seek neither distinction nor satisfaction, and we renounce all ties that could hamper our strength or interfere with the persevering and undivided attention we try to give to our work.”
“That is a magnificent programme,” said Joe, somewhat incredulously. “Do you not think it is possible sometimes to aim too high? You say ‘we seek,’ ‘we try,’ as though there were several of you, or at least, some one besides yourself. Do you believe that such ideas as you tell me of are really and seriously held by any body of men?”
Nothing had seemed too high to Josephine an hour earlier, nothing too exalted, nothing so noble but that John Harrington might do it, then and there. But a sudden change had come over her, the deadly cold phase of half melancholy unbelief that often follows close upon an unexpected disappointment, so that she looked with distaste on anything that seemed so full of the enthusiasm she had lost. The tears that bad risen so passionately to her dimmed eyes were suddenly frozen, and seemed to flow back with chilling force to her heart. She coldly asked herself whether she were mad, that she could have suffered thus for such a man, even ever so briefly. He was a man, she said, who loved an unattainable, fanatic idea in the first place, and who dearly loved himself as well for his own fanaticism’s sake. He was a man in whom the heart was crushed, even annihilated, by his intellect, which he valued far too highly, and by his vanity, which he dignified into a philosophy of self-sacrifice. He was aiming at what no man can reach, and though he knew his object to be beyond human grasp, he desired all possible credit for having madly dreamed of anything so high. In the sudden revulsion of her strong passion, she almost hated him, she almost felt the power to refute his theories, to destroy his edifice of fantastic morality, and finally to show him that he was a fool among men, and doubly a fool, because he was not even happy in his own folly.
Joe vaguely felt all this, and with it she felt a sense of shame at having so nearly broken down at the news that he was going away. He had thought she was ill; most assuredly he could not have guessed the cause of what he had seen; but nevertheless she had suffered a keen pain, and the tears had come to her eyes. She did not understand it. He might leave her now, if he pleased, and she would not care; indeed, it would be rather a relief if he would go. She no longer asked what she was to him, she simply reflected that, after all was said, he was nothing to her. She felt a quick antagonism to his ideas, to his words, and to himself, and she was willing to show it. She asked him incredulously whether his ideas were really held by others.
“It makes little difference,” answered John, “whether they are many or few who think as I do, and I cannot tell how many there may be. The truth is not made truth because many people believe it. The world went round, as Galileo knew, although he alone stood up and said it in the face of mankind, who scoffed at him for his pains.”
“In other words, you occupy the position of Galileo,” suggested Joe, calmly.
“Not I,” said John; “but there are men, and there have been men, in our country who know truths as great as any he discovered, and who have spent their lives in proclaiming them. I know that they are right, and that I am right, and that, however we may fail, others will succeed at last. I know that, come what may, honor and truth and justice will win the day in the end!” His gray eyes glittered as he spoke, and his broad white hands clasped nervously together in his enthusiasm. He was depressed and heartsick at his failure, but it needed only one word of opposition to rouse the strong main thought of his life into the most active expression. But Joe sat coldly by, her whole nature seemingly changed in the few minutes that had passed.
“And all this will be brought about by the measures you advocated the other day,” said she with a little laugh. “A civil service, a little tariff reform–that is enough to inaugurate the reign of honor, truth, and justice?”
John turned his keen eyes upon hers. He had begun talking because she had required it of him, and he had been roused by the subject. He remembered the sympathy she had given him, and he was annoyed at her caprice.
“Such things are the mere passing needs of a time,” he said. “The truth, justice, and honor, at which you are pleased to be amused, would insure the execution at all times of what is right and needful. Without a foundation composed of the said truth, justice, and honor, to get what is right and needful is often a matter so stupendous that the half of a nation’s blood is drained in accomplishing the task, if even it is accomplished after all. I see nothing to laugh at.”
Indeed, Joe was only smiling faintly, but John was so deeply impressed and penetrated by the absolute truth of what he was saying, that he had altogether ceased to make any allowances for Joe’s caprice of mood or for the disturbance in her manner that he had so lately witnessed. He was beginning to be angry, and she had never seen him in such a mood.
“The world would be a very nice tiresome place to live in,” she said, “if every one always did exactly what is absolutely right. I should not like to live among people who would be always so entirely padded and lined with goodness as they must be in your ideal republic.”
“It is a favorite and characteristic notion of modern society to associate goodness with dullness, and consequently, I suppose, to connect badness with all that is gay, interesting, and diverting. There is nothing more perverted, absurd, and contemptible than that notion in the whole history of the world.”
John was not gentle with an idea when he despised it, and the adjectives fell
in his clear utterance like the blows of a sledge-hammer. But as the idea he was abusing had been suggested by Joe, she resented the strong language.
“I am flattered that you should call anything I say by such bad names,” she said. “I am not good at arguing and that sort of thing. If I were I think I could answer you very easily. Will you please take me back to my aunt?” She rose in a somewhat stately fashion.
John was suddenly aware that he had talked too much and too strongly, and he was very sorry to have displeased her. She had always let him talk as he pleased, especially of late, and she had almost invariably agreed with him in everything he said, so that he had acquired too much confidence. At all events, that was the way he explained to himself the present difficulty.
“Please forgive me, Miss Thorn,” he said humbly, as he gave her his arm to leave the room. “I am a very sanguine person, and I often talk great nonsense. Please do not be angry.” Joe paused just as they reached the door.
“Angry? I am not angry,” she said with sudden gentleness. “Besides, you know, this is–you are really going away?”
“I think so,” said John.
“Then, if you do,” she said with some hesitation–”if you do, this is good-by, is it not?”
“Yes, I am afraid it is,” said John; “but not for long.”
“Not for long, perhaps,” she answered; “but I would not like you to think I was angry the very last time I saw you.”
“No, indeed. I should be very sorry if you were. But you are not?”
“No. Well then”–she held out her hand–”Good-by, then.” She had almost hated him a few minutes ago. Half an hour earlier she had loved him. Now her voice faltered a little, but her face was calm.
John took the proffered hand and grasped it warmly. With all her caprice, and despite the strange changes of her manner toward him, she had been a good friend in a bad time during the last days, and he was more sorry to leave her than he would himself have believed.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 130