Goward’s pale face hushed, and he turned angrily.
“I haven’t said anything of the sort,” he retorted. “Of all the unmanly, sneaking excuses that ever were offered for wrong-doing, that first of Adam’s has never been beaten.”
“You evidently don’t think that Adam was a gentleman,” I put in, with a feeling of relief at the boy’s attitude toward my suggestion.
“Not according to my standards,” he said, with warmth.
“Well,” I ventured, “he hadn’t had many opportunities, Adam hadn’t. His outlook was rather provincial, and his associations not broadening. You wouldn’t have been much better yourself brought up in a zoo. Nevertheless, I don’t think myself that he toed the mark as straight as he might have.”
“He was a coward,” said Goward, with a positiveness born of conviction. And with that remark Goward took his place in my affections. Whatever the degree of his seeming offence, he was at least a gentleman himself, and his unwillingness to place any part of the blame for his conduct upon Aunt Elizabeth showed me that he was not a cad, and I began to feel pretty confident that some reasonable way out of our troubles was looming into sight.
“How old are you, Goward?” I asked.
“Twenty-one,” he answered, “counting the years. If you count the last week by the awful hours it has contained I am older than Methuselah.”
At last I thought I had it, and a feeling of wrath against Aunt Elizabeth began to surge up within me. It was another case of that intolerable “only a boy” habit that so many women of uncertain age and character, married and single, seem nowadays to find so much pleasure in. We find it too often in our complex modern society, and I am not sure that it is not responsible for more deviations from the path of rectitude than even the offenders themselves imagine. Callow youth just from college is susceptible to many kinds of flattery, and at the age of adolescence the appeal which lovely woman makes to inexperience is irresistible.
I know whereof I speak, for I have been there myself. I always tell Maria everything that I conveniently can — it is not well for a man to have secrets from his wife — and when I occasionally refer to my past flames I find myself often growing more than pridefully loquacious over my early affairs of the heart, but when I thought of the serious study that I once made in my twentieth year of the dozen easiest, most painless methods of committing suicide because Miss Mehitabel Flanders, ætat thirty-eight, whom I had chosen for my life’s companion, had announced her intention of marrying old Colonel Barrington — one of the wisest matches ever as I see it now — I drew the line at letting Maria into that particular secret of my career. Miss Mehitabel was indeed a beautiful woman, and she took a very deep and possibly maternal interest in callow youth. She invited confidence and managed in many ways to make a strong appeal to youthful affections, but I don’t think she was always careful to draw the line nicely between maternal love and that other which is neither maternal, fraternal, paternal, nor even filial. To my eye she was no older than I, and to my way of thinking nothing could have been more eminently fitting than that we should walk the Primrose Way hand in hand forever.
While I will not say that the fair Mehitabel trifled with my young affections, I will say that she let me believe — nay, induced me to believe by her manner — that even as I regarded her she regarded me, and when at the end she disclaimed any intention to smash my heart into the myriad atoms into which it flew — which have since most happily reunited upon Maria — and asserted that she had let me play in the rose-garden of my exuberant fancy because I was “only a boy,” my bump upon the hard world of fact was an atrociously hard one. Some women pour passer le temps find pleasure in playing thus with young hopes and hearts as carelessly as though they were mere tennis-balls, to be whacked about and rallied, and volleyed hither and yon, without regard to their constituent ingredients, and then when trouble comes, and a catastrophe is imminent, the refuge of “only a boy” is sought as though it really afforded a sufficient protection against “responsibility.” The most of us would regard the hopeless infatuation of a young girl committed to our care, either as parents or as guardians, for a middle-aged man of the world with such horror that drastic steps would be taken to stop it, but we are not so careful of the love-affairs of our sons, and view with complaisance their devotion to some blessed damozel of uncertain age, comforting ourselves with the reflection that he is “only a boy” and will outgrow it all in good time. (There’s another mem. for my legislative career — a Bill for the Protection of Boys, and the Suppression of Old Maids Who Don’t Mean Anything By It.)
I don’t mean, in saying all this, to reflect in any way upon the many helpful friendships that exist between youngsters developing into manhood and their elders among women who are not related to them. There have been thousands of such friendships, no doubt, that have worked for the upbuilding of character; for the inspiring in the unfolding consciousness of what life means in the young boy’s being of a deeper, more lasting, respect for womanhood than would have been attained to under any other circumstances, but that has been the result only when the woman has taken care to maintain her own dignity always, and to regard her course as one wherein she has accepted a degree of responsibility second only to a mother’s, and not a by-path leading merely to pleasure and for the idling away of an unoccupied hour. Potential manhood is a difficult force to handle, and none should embark upon the parlous enterprise of arousing it without due regard for the consequences. We may not let loose a young lion from its leash, and, when dire consequences follow, excuse ourselves on the score that we thought the devastating feature was “only a cub.”
These things flashed across my mind as I sat in Goward’s room watching the poor youth in his nerve-distracting struggles, and, when I thought of the tangible evidence in hand against Aunt Elizabeth, I must confess if I had been juryman sitting in judgment of the case I should have convicted her of kidnapping without leaving the box. To begin with, there was the case of Ned Temple. I haven’t quite been able to get away from the notion that however short-sighted and gauche poor Mrs. Temple’s performance was in going over to the Talberts’ to make a scene because of Aunt Elizabeth’s attentions to Temple, she thought she was justified in doing so, and Elizabeth’s entire innocence in the premises, in view of her record as a man-snatcher, has not been proven to my satisfaction. Then there was that Lyman Wilde business, which I never understood and haven’t wanted to until they tried to mix poor Lorraine up in it. Certain it is that Elizabeth and Wilde were victims of an affair of the heart, but what Lorraine has had to do with it I don’t know, and I hope the whole matter will be dropped at least until we have settled poor Peggy’s affair. Then came Goward and this complication, and through it all Elizabeth has had a weather-eye open for Dr. Denbigh. A rather suggestive chain of evidence that, proving that Elizabeth seems to regard all men as her own individual property. As Mrs. Evarts says, she perks up even when Billie comes into the room — or Mr. Talbert, either; and as for me — well, in the strictest confidence, if Aunt Elizabeth hasn’t tried to flirt even with me, then I don’t know what flirtation is, and there was a time — long before I was married, of course — when I possessed certain well-developed gifts in that line. I know this, that when I was first paying my addresses to Maria, Aunt Elizabeth was staying at the Talberts’ as usual, and Maria and I had all we could do to get rid of her. She seemed to be possessed with the idea that I came there every night to see her, and not a hint in the whole category of polite intimations seemed capable of conveying any other idea to her mind, although she showed at times that even a chance remark fell upon heeding ears, for once when I observed that pink was my favorite color, she blossomed out in it the next day and met me looking like a peach-tree in full bloom, on Main Street as I walked from my office up home. And while we are discussing other people’s weaknesses I may as well confess my own, and say that I was so pleased at this unexpected revelation of interest in my tastes that when I called that evening I felt vaguely
disappointed to learn that Aunt Elizabeth was dining out — and I was twenty-seven at the time, too, and loved Maria into the bargain! And after the wedding, when we came to say good-bye, and I kissed Aunt Elizabeth — I kissed everybody that day in the hurry to get away, even the hired man at the door — and said, “Good-bye, Aunty,” she pouted and said she didn’t like the title “a little bit.”
Now, of course, I wouldn’t have anybody think that I think Aunt Elizabeth was ever in love with me, but I mention these things to show her general attitude toward members of the so-called stronger sex. The chances are that she does not realize what she is doing, and assumes this coy method with the whole masculine contingent as a matter of thoughtless habit. What she wants to be to man I couldn’t for the life of me even guess — mother, sister, daughter, or general manager. But that she does wish to grab every male being in sight, and attach them to her train, is pretty evident to me, and I have no doubt that this is what happened in poor Harry Goward’s case. She has a bright way of saying things, is unmistakably pretty, and has an unhappy knack of making herself appear ten or fifteen years younger than she is if she needs to. She is chameleonic as to age, and takes on always something of the years of the particular man she is talking to. I saw her talking to the dominie the other night, and a more spiritual-looking bit of demure middle-aged piety you never saw in a nunnery, and the very next day when she was conversing with young George Harris, a Freshman at Yale, at the Barbers’ reception, you’d have thought she was herself a Vassar undergraduate. So there you are. With Goward she had assumed that same youthful manner, and backed by all the power other thirty-seven years of experience he was mere putty in her hands, and she played with him and he lost, just as any other man, from St. Anthony down to the boniest ossified man of to-day would have lost, and it wasn’t until he saw Peggy again and realized the difference between the real thing and the spurious that he waked up.
With all these facts marshalled and flashing through my brain much more rapidly than I can tell them, like the quick succession of pictures in the cinematograph, I made up my mind to become Goward’s friend in so far as circumstances would permit. With Aunt Elizabeth out of the way it seemed to me that we would find all plain sailing again, but how to get rid other was the awful question. Poor Peggy could hardly be happy with such a Richmond in the field, and nothing short of Elizabeth’s engagement to some other man would help matters any. She had been too long unmarried, anyhow. Maiden aunthood is an unhappy estate, and grows worse with habit. If I could only find Lyman Wilde and bring him back to her, or, perhaps, Dr. Denbigh — that was the more immediate resource, and surely no sacrifice should be too great for a family physician to make for the welfare of his patients. Maria and I would invite Dr. Denbigh to dinner and have Aunt Elizabeth as the only other guest. We could leave them alone on some pretext or other after dinner, and leave the rest to fate — aided and abetted by Elizabeth herself.
Meanwhile there was Goward still on my hands.
“Well, my boy,” I said, patting him kindly on the shoulder, “I hardly know what to say to you about this thing. You’ve got yourself in the dickens of a box, but I don’t mind telling you I think your heart is in the right place, and, whatever has happened, I don’t believe you have intentionally done wrong. Maybe at your age you do not realize that it is not safe to be engaged to two people at the same time, especially when they belong to the same family. Scientific heart-breakers, as a rule, take care that their fiancees are not only not related, but live in different sections of the country, and as I have no liking for preaching I shall not dwell further upon the subject.”
“I think I realize my position keenly enough without putting you to the trouble,” said Goward, gazing gloomily out of the window.
“What I will say, however,” said I, “is that I’ll do all I can to help you out of your trouble. As one son-in-law to another, eh?”
“You are very kind,” said he, gripping me by the hand.
“I will go to Mrs. Talbert — she is the best one to talk to — first, and tell her just what you have told me, and it is just possible that she can explain it to Peggy,” I went on.
“I — I think I could do that myself if I only had the chance,” he said, ruefully.
“Well, then — I’ll try to make the chance. I won’t promise that I will make it, because I can’t answer for anybody but myself. Some day you will find out that women are peculiar. But what I can do I will,” said I. “And, furthermore, as the general attorney for the family I will cross-examine Aunt Elizabeth — put her through the third degree, as it were, and try to show her how foolish it is for her to make so serious a matter of a trifling flirtation.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Goward, with a frown. “She needn’t be involved in the affair any more than she already is. She is not in the least to blame.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “she may be able to help us to an easy way out—”
“She can’t,” said Goward, positively.
“Excuse me, Mr. Goward,” said I, chilling a trifle in my newly acquired friendliness, “but is there any real reason why I should not question Miss Talbert—”
“Oh no, none at all,” he hastened to reply. “Only I — I see no particular object in vexing her further in a matter that must have already annoyed her sufficiently. It is very good of you to take all this trouble on my account, and I don’t wish you to add further to your difficulties, either,” he added.
I appreciated his consideration, with certain reservations. However, the latter were not of such character as to make me doubt the advisability of standing his friend, and when we parted a few minutes later I left him with the intention of becoming his advocate with Peggy and her mother, and at the same time of having it out with Aunt Elizabeth.
I was detained at my office by other matters, which our family troubles had caused me to neglect, until supper-time, and then I returned to my own home, expecting to have a little chat over the affair with Maria before acquainting the rest of the family with my impressions of Goward and his responsibility for our woe. Maria is always so full of good ideas, but at half-past six she had not come in, and at six-forty-five she ‘phoned me that she was at her father’s and would I not better go there for tea. In the Talbert family a suggestion of that sort is the equivalent of a royal command in Great Britain, and I at once proceeded to accept it. As I was leaving the house, however, the thought flashed across my mind that in my sympathy for Harry Goward I had neglected to ask him the question I had sought him out to ask, “To whom was the letter addressed?” So I returned to the ‘phone, and ringing up the Eagle Hotel, inquired for Mr. Goward.
“Mr. Goward!” came the answer.
“Yes,” said I. “Mr. Henry Goward.”
“Mr. Goward left for New York on the 5.40 train this afternoon,” was the reply.
The answer, so unexpected and unsettling to all my plans, stunned me first and then angered me.
“Bah!” I cried, impatiently. “The little fool! An attack of cold feet, I guess — he ought to spell his name with a C.”
I hung up the receiver with a cold chill, for frankly I hated to go to the Talberts’ with the news. Moreover, it would be a humiliating confession to make that I had forgotten to ask Goward about the letter, when everybody knew that that was what I had called upon him for, and when I thought of all the various expressions in the very expressive Talbert eyes that would fix themselves upon me as I mumbled out my confession, I would have given much to be well out of it. Nevertheless, since there was no avoiding the ordeal, I resolved to face the music, and five minutes later entered the dining-room at my father-in-law’s house with as stiff an upper lip as I could summon to my aid in the brief time at my disposal. They were all seated at the table already — supper is not a movable feast in that well-regulated establishment — save Aunt Elizabeth. Her place was vacant.
“Sorry to be late,” said I, after respectfully saluting my mother-in-law, “but I couldn’t help it.
Things turned up at the last minute and they had to be attended to. Where’s Aunt Elizabeth?”
“She went to New York,” said my mother-in-law, “on the 5.40 train.”
CHAPTER VII THE MARRIED SON by Henry James
It’s evidently a great thing in life to have got hold of a convenient expression, and a sign of our inordinate habit of living by words. I have sometimes flattered myself that I live less exclusively by them than the people about me; paying with them, paying with them only, as the phrase is (there I am at it, exactly, again!) rather less than my companions, who, with the exception, perhaps, a little — sometimes! — of poor Mother, succeed by their aid in keeping away from every truth, in ignoring every reality, as comfortably as possible. Poor Mother, who is worth all the rest of us put together, and is really worth two or three of poor Father, deadly decent as I admit poor Father mainly to be, sometimes meets me with a look, in some connection, suggesting that, deep within, she dimly understands, and would really understand a little better if she weren’t afraid to: for, like all of us, she lives surrounded by the black forest of the “facts of life” very much as the people in the heart of Africa live in their dense wilderness of nocturnal terrors, the mysteries and monstrosities that make them seal themselves up in the huts as soon as it gets dark. She, quite exquisite little Mother, would often understand, I believe, if she dared, if she knew how to dare; and the vague, dumb interchange then taking place between us, and from the silence of which we have never for an instant deviated, represents perhaps her wonder as to whether I mayn’t on some great occasion show her how.
The difficulty is that, alas, mere intelligent useless wretch as I am, I’ve never hitherto been sure of knowing how myself; for am I too not as steeped in fears as any of them? My fears, mostly, are different, and of different dangers — also I hate having them, whereas they love them and hug them to their hearts; but the fact remains that, save in this private precinct of my overflow, which contains, under a strong little brass lock, several bad words and many good resolutions, I have never either said or done a bold thing in my life. What I seem always to feel, doubtless cravenly enough, under her almost pathetic appeal, has been that it isn’t yet the occasion, the really good and right one, for breaking out; than which nothing could more resemble of course the inveterate argument of the helpless. ANY occasion is good enough for the helpful; since there’s never any that hasn’t weak sides for their own strength to make up. However, if there COULD be conceivably a good one, I’ll be hanged if I don’t seem to see it gather now, and if I sha’n’t write myself here “poor” Charles Edward in all truth by failing to take advantage of it, (They have in fact, I should note, one superiority of courage to my own: this habit of their so constantly casting up my poverty at me — poverty of character, of course I mean, for they don’t, to do them justice, taunt me with having “made” so little. They don’t, I admit, take their lives in their hands when they perform that act; the proposition itself being that I haven’t the spirit of a fished-out fly.)
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 872