"A little--a little more than a little, but not half so much as I deserved--not to the point of not being able to cut up my meat. Am I forgiven? I"ll promise to cut up all your meat for you at dinner! Ah, I"m making it worse!"
"Oh no. Please don"t speak of it"
"Could you forbid my thinking of it, too?" He did not wait for her to answer. "Then here goes! One, two, three, and the thought is banished forever. Now what shall we speak of, or think of? We finished up the weather pretty thoroughly this morning. And if you have not the weather and the ship"s run when you"re at sea, why, you are at sea. Don"t you think it would be a good plan, when they stick those little flags into the chart, to show how far we"ve come in the last twenty-four hours, if they"d supply a topic for the day? They might have topics inscribed on the flags-standard topics, that would serve for any voyage. We might leave port with History--say, personal history; that would pave the way to a general acquaintance among the pa.s.sengers. Then Geography, and if the world is really round, and what keeps the sea from spilling. Then Politics, and the comparative advantages of monarchical and republican governments, for international discussion. Then Pathology, and whether you"re usually sea-sick, and if there is any reliable remedy. Then--for those who are still up--Poetry and Fiction; whether women really like Kipling, and what kind of novels you prefer. There ought to be about ten topics. These boats are sometimes very slow. Can"t you suggest something, Miss Kenton? There is no hurry! We"ve got four to talk over, for we must bring up the arrears, you know. And now we"ll begin with personal history. Your sister doesn"t approve of me, does she?"
"My sister?" Ellen faltered, and, between the conscience to own the fact and the kindness to deny it, she stopped altogether.
"I needn"t have asked. She told me so herself, in almost as many words.
She said I was slippery, and as close as a trap. Miss Kenton! I have the greatest wish to know whether I affect you as both slippery and close!"
"I don"t always know what Lottie means."
"She means what she says; and I feel that I am under condemnation till I reform. I don"t know how to stop being slippery, but I"m determined to stop being close. Will you tell her that for me? Will you tell her that you never met an opener, franker person?--of course, except herself!--and that so far from being light I seemed to you particularly heavy? Say that I did nothing but talk about myself, and that when you wanted to talk about yourself you couldn"t get in a word edgewise. Do try, now, Miss Kenton, and see if you can! I don"t want you to invent a character for me, quite."
"Why, there"s nothing to say about me," she began in compliance with his gayety, and then she fell helpless from it.
"Well, then, about Tuskingum. I should like to hear about Tuskingum, so much!"
"I suppose we like it because we"ve always lived there. You haven"t been much in the West, have you?"
"Not as much as I hope to be." He had found that Western people were sometimes sensitive concerning their section and were prepared to resent complacent ignorance of it. "I"ve always thought it must be very interesting."
"It isn"t," said the girl. "At least, not like the East. I used to be provoked when the lecturers said anything like that; but when you"ve been to New York you see what they mean."
"The lecturers?" he queried.
"They always stayed at our house when they lectured in Tuskingum."
"Ah! Oh yes," said Breckon, grasping a situation of which he had heard something, chiefly satirical. "Of course. And is your father--is Judge Kenton literary? Excuse me!"
"Only in his history. He"s writing the history of his regiment; or he gets the soldiers to write down all they can remember of the war, and then he puts their stories together."
"How delightful!" said Breckon. "And I suppose it"s a great pleasure to him."
"I don"t believe it is," said Ellen. "Poppa doesn"t believe in war any more."
"Indeed!" said Breckon. "That is very interesting."
"Sometimes when I"m helping him with it--"
"Ah, I knew you must help him!"
"And he comes to a place where there has been a dreadful slaughter, it seems as if he felt worse about it than I did. He isn"t sure that it wasn"t all wrong. He thinks all war is wrong now."
"Is he--has he become a follower of Tolstoy?"
"He"s read him. He says he"s the only man that ever gave a true account of battles; but he had thought it all out for himself before he read Tolstoy about fighting. Do you think it is right to revenge an injury?"
"Why, surely not!" said Breckon, rather startled.
"That is what we say," the girl pursued. "But if some one had injured you--abused your confidence, and--insulted you, what would you do?"
"I"m not sure that I understand," Breckon began. The inquiry was superficially impersonal, but he reflected that women are never impersonal, or the sons of women, for that matter, and he suspected an intimate ground. His suspicions were confirmed when Miss Kenton said: "It seems easy enough to forgive anything that"s done to yourself; but if it"s done to some one else, too, have you the right--isn"t it wrong to let it go?"
"You think the question of justice might come in then? Perhaps it ought.
But what is justice? And where does your duty begin to be divided?" He saw her following him with alarming intensity, and he shrank from the responsibility before him. What application might not she make of his words in the case, whatever it was, which he chose not to imagine? "To tell you the truth, Miss Kenton, I"m not very clear on that point--I"m not sure that I"m disinterested."
"Disinterested?"
"Yes; you know that I abused your confidence at luncheon; and until I know whether the wrong involved any one else--" He looked at her with hovering laughter in his eyes which took wing at the reproach in hers.
"But if we are to be serious--"
"Oh no," she said, "it isn"t a serious matter." But in the helplessness of her sincerity she could not carry it off lightly, or hide from him that she was disappointed.
He tried to make talk about other things. She responded vaguely, and when she had given herself time she said she believed she would go to Lottie; she was quite sure she could get down the stairs alone. He pursued her anxiously, politely, and at the head of her corridor took leave of her with a distinct sense of having merited his dismissal.
"I see what you mean, Lottie," she said, "about Mr. Breckon."
Lottie did not turn her head on the pillow. "Has it taken you the whole day to find it out?"
XII.
The father and the mother had witnessed with tempered satisfaction the interest which seemed to be growing up between Ellen and the young minister. By this time they had learned not to expect too much of any turn she might take; she reverted to a mood as suddenly as she left it.
They could not quite make out Breckon himself; he was at least as great a puzzle to them as their own child was.
"It seems," said Mrs. Kenton, in their first review of the affair, after Boyne had done a brother"s duty in trying to bring Ellen under their mother"s censure, "that he was the gentleman who discussed the theatre with Boyne at the vaudeville last winter. Boyne just casually mentioned it. I was so provoked!"
"I don"t see what bearing the fact has," the judge remarked.
"Why, Boyne liked him very much that night, but now he seems to feel very much as Lottie does about him. He thinks he laughs too much."
"I don"t know that there"s much harm in that," said the judge. "And I shouldn"t value Boyne"s opinion of character very highly."
"I value any one"s intuitions--especially children"s."
"Boyne"s in that middle state where he isn"t quite a child. And so is Lottie, for that matter."
"That is true," their mother a.s.sented. "And we ought to be glad of anything that takes Ellen"s mind off herself. If I could only believe she was forgetting that wretch!"
"Does she ever speak of him?"
"She never hints of him, even. But her mind may be full of him all the time."
The judge laughed impatiently. "It strikes me that this young Mr.
Breckon hasn"t much advantage of Ellen in what Lottie calls closeness!"