"Oh, I know you"re not, dear," interrupted his mother, glad of another chance to abet him.
"I"m not strong enough to go on with the line of work I"ve marked out, and I feel that I"m throwing away the feeble powers I have."
His father answered with less surprise than Halleck had evidently expected, for he had thrown out his words with a sort of defiance; probably the old man had watched him closely enough to surmise that it might come to this with him at last. At any rate, he was able to say, without seeming to a.s.sent too readily, "Well, well, give up the law, then, and come back into leather, as you call it. Or take up something else. We don"t wish to make anything a burden to you; but take up some useful work at home. There are plenty of things to be done."
"Not for me," said Halleck, gloomily.
"Oh, yes, there are," said the old man.
"I see you are not willing to have me go," said Halleck, rising in uncontrollable irritation. "But I wish you wouldn"t all take this tone with me!"
"We haven"t taken any tone with you, Ben," said his mother, with pleading tenderness.
"I think Anna has decidedly taken a tone," said Olive.
Anna did not retort, but "What tone?" demanded Louisa, in her behalf.
"Hush, children," said their mother.
"Well, well," suggested his father to Ben. "Think it over, think it over.
There"s no hurry."
"I"ve thought it over; there _is_ hurry," retorted Halleck. "If I go, I must go at once."
His mother arrested her thread, half drawn through the seam, letting her hand drop, while she glanced at him.
"It isn"t so much a question of your giving up the law, Ben, as of your giving up your family and going so far away from us all," said his father.
"That"s what I shouldn"t like."
"I don"t like that, either. But I can"t help it." He added, "Of course, mother, I shall not go without your full and free consent. You and father must settle it between you." He fetched a quick, worried sigh as he put his hand on the door.
"Ben isn"t himself at all," said Mrs. Halleck, with tears in her eyes, after he had left the room.
"No," said her husband. "He"s restless. He"ll get over this idea in a few days." He urged this hope against his wife"s despair, and argued himself into low spirits.
"I don"t believe but what it _would_ be the best thing for his health, may be," said Mrs. Halleck, at the end.
"I"ve always had my doubts whether he would ever come to anything in the law," said the father.
The elder sisters discussed Halleck"s project apart between themselves, as their wont was with any family interest, and they bent over a map of South America, so as to hide what they were doing from their mother.
Olive had left the room by another door, and she intercepted Halleck before he reached his own.
"What is the matter, Ben?" she whispered.
"Nothing," he answered, coldly. But he added, "Come in, Olive."
She followed him, and hovered near after he turned up the gas.
"I can"t stand it here, I must go," he said, turning a dull, weary look upon her.
"Who was at the Elm House that you knew this last time?" she asked, quickly.
"Laura Dixmore isn"t driving me away, if you mean that," replied Halleck.
"I _couldn"t_ believe it was she! I should have despised you if it was. But I shall hate her, whoever it was."
Halleck sat down before his table, and his sister sank upon the corner of a chair near it, and looked wistfully at him. "I know there is some one!"
"If you think I"ve been fool enough to offer myself to any one, Olive, you"re very much mistaken."
"Oh, it needn"t have come to that," said Olive, with indignant pity.
"My life"s a failure here," cried Halleck, moving his head uneasily from side to side. "I feel somehow as if I could go out there and pick up the time I"ve lost. Great Heaven!" he cried, "if I were only running away from some innocent young girl"s rejection, what a happy man I should be!"
"It"s some horrid married thing, then, that"s been flirting with you!"
He gave a forlorn laugh. "I"d almost confess it to please you, Olive. But I"d prefer to get out of the matter without lying, if I could. Why need you suppose any reason but the sufficient one I"ve given?--Don"t afflict me!
don"t imagine things about me, don"t make a mystery of me! I"ve been blunt and awkward, and I"ve bungled the business with father and mother; but I want to get away because I"m a miserable fraud here, and I think I might rub on a good while there before I found myself out again."
"Ben," demanded Olive, regardless of his words, "what have you been doing?"
"The old story,--nothing."
"Is that true, Ben?"
"You used to be satisfied with asking once, Olive."
"You _haven"t_ been so wicked, so careless, as to get some poor creature in love with, you, and then want to run away from the misery you"ve made?"
"I suppose if I look it there"s no use denying it," said Halleck, letting his sad eyes meet hers, and smiling drearily. "You insist upon having a lady in the case?"
"Yes. But I see you won"t tell me anything; and I _won"t_ afflict you. Only I"m afraid it"s just some silly thing, that you"ve got to brooding over, and that you"ll let drive you away."
"Well, you have the comfort of reflecting that I can"t get away, whatever the pressure is."
"You know better than that, Ben; and so do I. You know that, if you haven"t got father and mother"s consent already, it"s only because you haven"t had the heart to ask for it. As far as that"s concerned, you"re gone already.
But I hope you won"t go without thinking it over, as father says,--and talking it over. I hate to have you seem unsteady and fickle-minded, when I know you"re not; and I"m going to set myself against this project till I know what"s driving you from us,--or till I"m sure that it"s something worth while. You needn"t expect that I shall help to make it easy for you; I shall help to make it hard."
Her loving looks belied her threats; if the others could not resist Ben when any sort of desire showed itself through his habitual listlessness, how could she, who understood him best and sympathized with him most?
"There was something I was going to talk to you about, to-night, if you hadn"t scared us all with this ridiculous scheme, and ask you whether you couldn"t do something." She seemed to suggest the change of interest with the hope of winning his thoughts away from the direction they had taken; but he listened apathetically, and left her to go further or not as she chose. "I think," she added abruptly, "that some trouble is hanging over those wretched Hubbards."
"Some new one?" asked Halleck, with sad sarcasm, turning his eyes towards her, as if with the resolution of facing her.
"You know he"s left his place on that newspaper."
"Yes, I heard that when I was at home before."