"Not quite?" suggested Sybil.
"I think not quite; but I know he thinks it is quite quite, you know."
"Well, but perhaps he is not so certain, after all. Do you know, I do not think men really care so much; do you?"
"Oh, of course not," said Joe scornfully. "But it does not seem quite honest to let a man think you are going to marry him if you do not mean to."
"But you did mean to, dear, until you found out you did not care for him enough. And just think how dreadful it would be to be married if you did not care enough!"
"Yes, that is true," answered Joe. "It would be dreadful for him too."
"When is he coming?" asked Sybil.
"I think next week. He sailed the day before yesterday."
"Then there is plenty of time to settle on what you want to say," said Sybil. "If you make up your mind just how to put it, you know, it will be ever so much easier."
"Oh no!" cried Joe. "I will trust to luck. I always do; it is much easier."
"Excuse me, Miss Brandon," said the voice of Vancouver, who came up behind them at a great pace, and holding his feet together let himself slide rapidly along beside the two girls,--"excuse me, but do you not think you are very unsociable, going off in this way?"
"May I give you my arm, Miss Thorn?" asked Harrington, coming up on the other side.
Without leaving each other Joe and Sybil took the proffered arms of the two men, and the four skated smoothly out into the middle of the ice, that rang again in the frosty air under their joint weight. Mrs. Wyndham had insisted that Vancouver and Harrington should leave her and follow the young girls, and they had obeyed in mutual understanding.
"Which do you like better, Miss Brandon, boating in Newport or skating on Jamaica Pond?" asked Vancouver.
"This is better than the Music Hall, is it not?" remarked John to Miss Thorn.
"Oh, Jamaica Pond, by far," Sybil answered, and her hold on Joe"s arm relaxed a very little.
"Oh no! I would a thousand times rather be in the Music Hall!" exclaimed Joe, and her hand slipped away from Sybil"s white fur. And so the four were separated into couples, and went their ways swiftly under the glorious moonlight. As they parted Sybil turned her head and looked after Joe, but Joe did not see her.
"I would rather be here," said John quietly.
"Why?" asked Joe.
"There is enough fighting in life to make peace a very desirable thing sometimes," John answered.
"A man cannot be always swinging his battle-axe." There was a very slight shade of despondency in the tone of his voice. Joe noticed it at once.
Women do not all worship success, however much they may wish their champion to win when they are watching him fight. In the brilliant, unfailing, all-conquering man, the woman who loves him feels pride; if she be vain and ambitious, she feels wholly satisfied, for the time. But woman"s best part is her gentle sympathy, and where there is no room at all for that, there is very often little room for love. In the changing hopes and fears of uncertain struggles, a woman"s love well given and truly kept may turn the scale for a man, and it is at such times, perhaps, that her heart is given best, and most loyally held by him who has it.
"I wish I could do anything to help him to succeed," thought Joe, in the innocent generosity of her half-conscious devotion.
"Has anything gone wrong?" she asked aloud.
CHAPTER VII.
"Has anything gone wrong?" There was so much of interest and sympathy in her tone, as Joe put the simple question, that John turned and looked into her face. The magic of moonlight softens the hardest features, makes interest look like friendship, and friendship like love; but it can harden too at times, and make a human face look like carved stone.
"No, there is nothing wrong," John answered presently; "what made you think so?"
"You spoke a little regretfully," answered Joe.
"Did I? I did not mean to. Perhaps one is less gay and less hopeful at some times than at others. It has nothing to do with success or failure."
"I know," answered Joe. "One can be dreadfully depressed when one is enjoying one"s self to any extent. But I should not have thought you were that sort of person. You seem always the same."
"I try to be. That is the great difference between people who live to work and people who live to amuse and be amused."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean," said John, "that people who work, especially people who have to do with large ideas and great movements, need to be more or less monotonous. The men who succeed are the men of one idea or at least they are the men who only have one idea at a time."
"Whereas people who live to amuse and be amused must have as many ideas as possible."
"Yes, to play with," said John, completing the sentence. "Their life is play, their ideas are their playthings, and so soon as they have spoiled one toy they must have another. The people who supply ideas to an idle public are very valuable, and may have great power."
"Novel-writers, and that sort of people," suggested Joe.
"All producers of light literature and second-rate poetry, and a very great variety of other people besides. A man who amuses others may often be a worker himself. He raises a laugh or excites a momentary interest by getting rid of his superfluous ideas and imaginations, reserving to himself all the time the one idea in which he believes."
"Not at all a bad theory," said Joe.
"There are more men of that sort with you in Europe than with us. You need more amus.e.m.e.nt, and you will generally give more for it. You English, who are uncommonly fond of doing nothing, give yourselves vast trouble in the pursuit of pleasure. We Americans, who are ill when we are idle, are content to surround ourselves with the paraphernalia of pleasure when office hours are over; but we make very little use of our opportunities for amus.e.m.e.nt, being tired out at the end of the day with other things which we think more important. The result is that we have no such thing as what you denominate "Society," because we lack the prime element of aristocratic social intercourse, the ingrained determination to be idle."
"You are very hard on us," remarked Joe.
"Excuse me," returned John, "you are compensated by having what we have not. Europeans are the most agreeable people in the world, wherever mutual and daily conversation and intercourse are to be considered. The majority of you, of polite European society, are not troubled with any very large ideas, but you have an immense number of very charming and attractive small ones. In America there are only two ideas that practically affect society, but they are very big ones indeed."
"What?" asked Joe laconically, growing interested in John"s queer lecture.
"Money and political influence," answered John Harrington. "They are the two great motors of our machine. All men who are respected among us are in pursuit of one or the other, or have attained to one or the other by their own efforts. The result is, that European society is amusing and agreeable; whereas Americans of the same cla.s.s are more interesting, less polished, better acquainted with the general laws that govern the development of nations." "Really, Mr. Harrington," said Joe, "you are making us out to be very insignificant. And I think it would be very dull if we all had to understand ever so many general laws. Besides, I do not agree with you."
"About what, Miss Thorn?"
"About Americans. They talk better than Englishmen, as a rule."
"But I am comparing Americans with the whole ma.s.s of Europeans," John objected. "The English are a rather silent race, I should say."
"Cold, you think?" suggested Joe.