“This is the library,” she repeated, “and this is Mr. Griggs,” she added, with a little laugh, as she discovered me in the deep easy-chair. “This is the celebrated Mr. Griggs. His name is Paul, like yours, but otherwise he is not in the least like you, I fancy. Everybody knows him, and he knows everybody.”
“We have met before,” said Patoff, “not only this morning, but in the East. Mr. Griggs certainly seemed to know everybody there, from the Shah to the Greek consul. What a splendid room! It must have taken you years of thought to construct such a literary retreat, uncle John,” he added, turning to the master of the house as he spoke.
Indeed, Paul Patoff appeared much struck with everything he saw at Carvel Place. I left my chair and joined the party, who wandered through the rooms and into the great conservatory, and finally gravitated to the drawing-room. Patoff examined everything with an air of extreme interest, and seemed to understand intuitively the tastes of each member of the household. He praised John’s pictures and Mrs. Carvel’s engravings; he admired Chrysophrasia’s stained-glass window, and her pots, and plates, and bits of drapery, he glanced reverently at Mrs. Carvel’s religious books, and stopped now and then to smell the flowers Hermione loved. He noted the view upon the park from the south windows, and thought the disposal of the shrubbery near the house was a masterpiece of landscape gardening. As he proceeded, surrounded by his relations, remarking upon everything he saw, and giving upon all things opinions which marvelously flattered the individual tastes of each one of the family, it became evident that he was making a very favorable impression upon them.
“It is delightful to show you things,” said Hermione. “You are so appreciative.”
“It needs little skill to appreciate, where everything is so beautiful,” he answered. “Indeed,” he continued, addressing himself to all present, “your home is the most charming I ever saw: I had no idea that the English understood luxury so well. You know that with us Continental people you have the reputation of being extravagant, even magnificent, in your ideas, but of being also ascetics in some measure, — loving to make yourselves strangely uncomfortable, fond of getting very hot, and of taking very cold baths, and of living on raw meat and cold potatoes and all manner of strange things. I do not see here any evidences of great asceticism.”
“How wonderfully he speaks English!” exclaimed Mrs. Carvel, aside, to her husband.
“I should say,” continued Paul, without noticing the flattering interruption, “that you are the most luxurious people in the world, that you have more taste than any people I have ever known, and that if I had had the least idea how charming my relations were, I should have come from our Russian wilds ten years ago to visit you and tell you how superior I think you are to ourselves.”
Paul laughed pleasantly as he made this speech, and there was a little murmur of applause.
“We were very different, ten years ago,” said John Carvel. “In the first place, there was no Hermione then, to do the honors and show you the sights. She was quite a little thing, ten years ago.”
“That would have made no difference in the place, though,” said Hermione, simply.
“On the contrary,” said Paul. “I am inclined to think, on reflection, that I would have postponed my visit, after all, for the sake of having my cousin for a guide.”
“Ah, how gracefully these wild northern men can turn a phrase!” whispered Chrysophrasia in my ear,— “so strong and yet so tender!” She could not take her eyes from her nephew, and he appeared to understand that he had already made a conquest of the æsthetic old maid, for he took her admiration for granted, and addressed himself to Mrs. Carvel; not losing sight of Chrysophrasia, however, but looking pleasantly at her as he talked, though his words were meant for her sister.
“It is the whole atmosphere of this life that is delightful, and every little thing seems so harmonious,” he said. “You have here the solidity of traditional English country life, combined with the comforts of the most advanced civilization; and, to make it all perfection, you have at every turn the lingering romance of the glorious mediæval life,” with a glance at Miss Dabstreak, “that middle age which in beauty was the prime of age, from which began and spread all your most glorious ideas, your government, your warfare, your science. Did you never have an alchemist in your family, Uncle John? Surely he found for you the golden secret, and it is his touch which has beautified these old walls!”
“I don’t know,” said John Carvel.
“Indeed there was!” cried Chrysophrasia, in delight. “I have found out all about him. He was not exactly an alchemist; he was an astrologer, and there are the ruins of his tower in the park. There are some old books up-stairs, upon the Black Art, with his name in them, Johannes Carvellius, written in the most enchanting angular handwriting.”
“I believe there was somebody of that name,” remarked John.
“They are full of delicious incantations for raising the devil, — such exquisite ceremonies, with all the dress described that you must wear, and the phases of the moon, and hazel wands cut at midnight. Imagine how delightful!”
“The tower in the park is a beautiful place,” said Hermione. “I have it all filled with flowers in summer, and the gardener’s boy once saw a ghost there on All Hallow E’en.”
“You must take me there,” said Paul, smiling good-humoredly at the reference to the alchemist. “I have a passion for ruins, and I had no idea that you had any; nothing seems ruined here, and yet everything appears old. What a delightful place!” Paul sat far back in his comfortable chair, and inserted a single eyeglass in the angle between his heavy brow and his aquiline nose; his bony fingers were spotless, long, and white, and as he sat there he had the appearance of a personage receiving the respectful homage of a body of devoted attendants, the indescribable air of easy superiority and condescending good-nature which a Roman patrician might have assumed when visiting the country villa of one of his clients. Everybody seemed delighted to be noticed by him and flattered by his words.
I am by nature cross-grained and crabbed, I presume. I admitted that Paul Patoff, though not graceful in his movements, was a fine-looking fellow, with an undeniable distinction of manner; he had a pleasant voice, an extraordinary command of English, though he was but half an Englishman, and a tact which he certainly owed to his foreign blood; he was irreproachable in appearance, in the simplicity of his dress, in the smoothness of his fair hair and well-trimmed mustache; he appeared thoroughly at home among his new-found relations, and anxious to please them all alike; he was modest and unassuming, for he did not speak of himself, and he gave no opinion saving such as should be pleasing to his audience. He had all this, and yet in the cold stare of his stony eyes, in the ungainly twist of his broad white hand, where the bones and sinews crossed and recrossed like a network of marble, in the decisive tone with which he uttered the most flattering remarks, there was something which betrayed a tyrannical and unyielding character, — something which struck me at first sight, and which suggested a nature by no means so gentle and amiable as he was willing it should appear.
Nevertheless, I was the only one to notice these signs, to judge by the enthusiasm which Patoff produced at Carvel Place in those first hours of his stay. It is true that the professor was not present, although he had left me on the pretense of going to see Paul, and Macaulay Carvel was resting from his journey in his own rooms, in a remote part of the house; but I judged that the latter had already fallen under the spell of Patoff’s manner, and that it would not be easy to find out what the man of science really thought about the Anglo-Russian. They probably knew each other of old, and whatever opinions they held of each other were fully formed.
Paul sat in his easy-chair in the midst of the family, and smiled and surveyed everything through his single eyeglass, and if anything did not please him he did not say so. John had something to do, and went away, then Mrs. Carvel wanted to see her son alone, and she left us too; so that Chrysophrasia and Hermione and I
remained to amuse Patoff. Hermione immediately began to do so after her own fashion. I think that of all of us she was the one least inclined to give him absolute supremacy at first, but he interested her, for she had seen little of the world, and nothing of such men as her cousin Paul, who was thirty years of age, and had been to most of the courts of the world in the course of twelve years in the diplomatic service. She was not inclined to admit that knowledge of the world was superiority of itself, nor that an easy manner and an irreproachable appearance constituted the ideal of a man; but she was barely twenty, and had seen little of those things. She recognized their importance, and desired to understand them; she felt that wonderful suspicion of possibilities which a young girl loves to dwell on in connection with every exceptional man she meets; she unconsciously said to herself that such a man as Patoff might possibly be her ideal, because there was nothing apparent to her at first sight which was in direct contradiction with the typical picture she had conceived of the typical man she hoped to meet.
Every young girl has an ideal, I presume. If it be possible to reason about so unreasonable a thing as love, I should say that love at first sight is probably due to the sudden supposed realization in every respect of an ideal long cherished and carefully developed in the imagination. But in most cases a young girl sees one man after another, hopes in each one to find those qualities which she has elected to admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery, laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences a new sensation, and becomes a very sick man indeed before he is out of sight of Dover cliffs.
But with Hermione there was certainly no realization of her ideal, but probably only the faint, unformulated hope that in her cousin Paul she might find some of those qualities which her own many-sided nature longed to find in man.
“You must tell us all about Russia, cousin Paul,” she said, when her father and mother were gone. “Aunt Chrysophrasia believes that you are the most extraordinary set of barbarians up there, and she adores barbarians, you know.”
“Of course we are rather barbarous.”
“Hermione! How can you say I ever said such a thing!” interposed Miss Dabstreak, with a deprecating glance at Paul. “I only said the Russians were such a young and manly race, so interesting, so unlike the inhabitants of this dreary den of printing-presses and steam-engines, so” ——
“Thanks, aunt Chrysophrasia,” said Paul, “for the delightful ideal you have formed of us. We are certainly less civilized than you, and perhaps, as you are so good as to believe, we are the more interesting. I suppose the unbroken colt of the desert is more interesting than an American trotting horse, but for downright practical use” ——
“There is such a tremendous talk of usefulness!” ejaculated Chrysophrasia, a faint, sad smile flickering over her sallow features.
“Usefulness is so remarkably useful,” I remarked.
“Oh, Mr. Griggs,” exclaimed Hermione, “what an immensely witty speech!”
“There is nothing so witty as truth, Miss Carvel, though you laugh at it,” I answered, “for where there is no truth, there is no wit. I maintain that usefulness is really useful. Miss Dabstreak, I believe, maintains the contrary.”
“Indeed, I care more for beauty than for usefulness,” replied the æsthetic lady, with a fine smile.
“Beauty is indeed truly useful,” said Paul, with a very faint imitation of Chrysophrasia’s accent, “and it should be sought in everything. But that need not prevent us from seeing true beauty in all that is truly useful.”
I had a faint suspicion that if Patoff had mimicked Miss Dabstreak in the first half of his speech, he had imitated me in the second portion of the sentiment. I do not like to be made game of, because I am aware that I am naturally pedantic. It is an old trick of the schools to rouse a pedant to desperate and distracted self-contradiction by quietly imitating everything he says.
“You are very clever at taking both sides of a question at once,” said Hermione, with a smile.
“Almost all questions have two sides,” answered Paul, “but very often both sides are true. A man may perfectly appreciate and approve of the opinions of two persons who take diametrically opposite views of the same point, provided there be no question of right and wrong involved.”
“Perhaps,” retorted Hermione; “but then the man who takes both sides has no opinion of his own. I do not like that.”
“In general, cousin Hermione,” said Paul, with a polite smile, “you may be sure that any man will make your opinion his. In this case, I submit that both beauty and usefulness are good, and that they need not at all interfere with each other. As for the compliment my aunt Chrysophrasia has paid to us Russians, I do not think we can be said to have gone very far in either direction as yet.” After which diplomatic speech Paul dropped his eyeglass, and looked pleasantly round upon all three of us, as much as to say that it was impossible to draw him into the position of disagreeing with any one present by any device whatsoever.
IX.
PROFESSOR CUTTER AND I walked to the village that afternoon. He is a great pedestrian, and is never satisfied unless he can walk four or five miles a day. His robust and somewhat heavy frame was planned rather for bodily labor than for the housing of so active a mind, and he often complains that the exercise of his body has robbed him of years of intellectual labor. He grumbles at the necessity of wasting time in that way, but he never omits his daily walk.
“I should like to possess your temperament, Mr. Griggs,” he remarked, as we walked briskly through the park. “You might renounce exercise and open air for the rest of your life, and never be the worse for it.”
“I hardly know,” I answered. “I have never tried any regular method of life, and I have never been ill. I do not believe in regular methods.”
“That is the ideal constitution. By the by, I had hoped to induce Patoff to come with us, but he said he would stay with the ladies.”
“You will never induce him to do anything he does not want to do,” I replied. “However, I dare say you know that as well as I do.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can see it, — it is plain enough. Carvel wanted him to go and shoot something after lunch, you wanted him to come for a walk, Macaulay wanted him to bury himself up-stairs and talk out the Egyptian question, I wanted to get him into the smoking-room to ask him questions about some friends of mine in the East, Miss Dabstreak had plans to waylay him with her pottery. Not a bit of it! He smiled at us all, and serenely sat by Mrs. Carvel, talking to her and Miss Hermione. He has a will of his own.”
“Indeed he has,” assented the professor. “He is a moderately clever fellow, with a smooth tongue and a despotic character, a much better combination than a weak will and the mind of a genius. You are right, he is not to be turned by trifles.”
“I see that he must be a good diplomatist in these days.”
“Diplomacy has got past the stage of being intellectual,” said the professor. “There was a time when a fine intellect was thought important in an ambassador; nowadays it is enough if his excellency can hold his tongue and show his teeth. The question is, whether the low estimate of intellect in our day is due to the exigency of modern affairs, or to the exiguity of modern intelligence.”
“Men are stronger in our time,” I answered, “and consequently have less need to be clever. The transition from the joint government of the world by a herd of wily foxes to the domination of the universe by the mammoth ox is marked by the increase of clumsy strength and the disappearance of graceful deception.”
“That is true; but the graceful deception continues to be the more interesting, if not the more agreeable. As for me, I would rather be gracefully d
eceived, as you call it, than pounded to jelly by the hoofs of the mammoth, — unless I could be the mammoth myself.”
“To return to Patoff,” said I, “what are they going to do with him?”
“The question is much more likely to be what he will do with them, I should say,” answered the scientist, looking straight before him, and increasing the speed of his walk. “I am not at all sure what he might do, if no one prevented him. He is capable of considerable originality if left to himself, and they follow him up there at the Place as the boys and girls followed the Pied Piper.”
“Is he at all like his mother?” I asked.
“In point of originality?” inquired the professor, with a curious smile. “She was certainly a most original woman. I hardly know whether he is like her. Boys are said to resemble their mother in appearance and their father in character. He is certainly not of the same type of constitution as his mother, he has not even the same shape of head, and I am glad of it. But his father was a Slav, and what is madness in an Englishwoman is sanity in a Russian. Her most extraordinary aberrations might not seem at all extraordinary when set off by the natural violence he inherits from his father.”
“That is a novel idea to me,” I remarked. “You mean that what is madness in one man is not necessarily insanity in another; besides, you refused to allow this morning that Madame Patoff was crazy.”
“I did not refuse to allow it; I only said I did not know it to be the case. But as for what I just said, take two types of mankind, a Chinese and an Englishman, for instance. If you met a fair-haired, blue-eyed, sanguine Englishman, whose head and features were shaped precisely like those of a Chinaman, you could predicate of him that he must be a very extraordinary creature, capable, perhaps, of becoming a driveling idiot. The same of a Chinese, if you met one with a brain shaped like that of an Englishman, and similar features, but with straight black hair, a yellow skin, and red eyes. He would have the brain of the Anglo-Saxon with the temperament of the Mongol, and would probably become a raving maniac. It is not the temperament only, nor the intellect only, which produces the idiot or the madman; it is the lack of balance between the two. Arrant cowards frequently have very warlike imaginations, and in their dreams conceive themselves doing extremely violent things. Suppose that with such an imagination you unite the temperament of an Arab fanatic, or the coarse, brutal courage of an English prize-fighter, you can put no bounds to the possible actions of the monster you create. The salvation of the human race lies in the fact that very strong and brave people commonly have a peaceable disposition, or else commit murder and get hanged for it. It is far better that they should be hanged, because nobody knows where violence ends and insanity begins, and it is just as well to be on the safe side. Whenever a given form of intellect happens to be joined to a totally inappropriate temperament, we say it is a case of idiocy or insanity. Of course there are many other cases which arise from the mind or the body being injured by extraneous causes; but they are not genuine cases of insanity, because the evil has not been transmitted from the parents, nor will it be to the children.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 267