They had all forgotten him, and Sewell felt as if he had neglected this helpless guest. "Why, no, you mustn"t go! I was in hopes we might do something to make the day pleasant to you. I intended proposing--"
"Yes," his wife interrupted, believing that he meant to give up one of his precious afternoons to Barker, and hastening to prevent the sacrifice, "my son will show you the Public Garden and the Common, and go about the town with you." She rose too, and young Sewell, accustomed to suffer, silently acquiesced. "If your train isn"t to start very soon--"
"I guess I better be going," said Barker, and Mrs. Sewell now gave her husband a look conveying her belief that Barker would be happier if they let him go. At the same time she frowned upon the monstrous thought of asking him to stay the night with them, which she detected in Sewell"s face.
She allowed him to say nothing but, "I"m sorry; but if you really must--"
"I guess I better," persisted Barker. He got himself somehow to the door, where he paused a moment, and contrived to pant, "Well, good day,"
and without effort at more cordial leave-taking, pa.s.sed out.
Sewell followed him, and helped him find his hat, and made him shake hands. He went with him to the door, and, beginning to suffer afresh at the wrong he had done Barker, he detained him at the threshold. "If you still wish to see a publisher, Mr. Barker, I will gladly go with you."
"Oh, not at all, not at all. I guess I don"t want to see any publisher this afternoon. Well, good afternoon!" He turned away from Sewell"s remorseful pursuit, and clumsily hurrying down the steps, he walked up the street and round the next corner. Sewell stood watching him in rueful perplexity, shading his eyes from the mild October sun with his hand; and some moments after Barker had disappeared, he remained looking after him.
When he rejoined the ladies in the dining-room they fell into a conscious silence.
"Have you been telling, Lucy?" he asked.
"Yes, I"ve been telling, David. It was the only way. Did you offer to go with him to a publisher again?"
"Yes, I did. It was the only way," said Sewell.
Miss Vane and his wife both broke into a cry of laughter. The former got her breath first. "So _that_ was the origin of the famous sermon that turned all our heads grey with good resolutions." Sewell a.s.sented with a sickly grin. "What in the world _made_ you encourage him?"
"My goodness of heart, which I didn"t take the precaution of mixing with goodness of head before I used it."
Everything was food for Miss Vane"s laugh, even this confession. "But what is the natural history of the boy? How came he to write poetry?
What do you suppose he means by it?"
"That isn"t so easy to say. As to his natural history, he lives with his mother in a tumbledown, unpainted wooden house in the deepest fastness of Willoughby Pastures. Lucy and I used to drive by it and wonder what kind of people inhabited that solitude. There were milk-cans scattered round the door-yard, and the Monday we were there a poverty-stricken wash flapped across it. The thought of the place preyed upon me till one day I asked about it at the post-office, and the postmistress told me that the boy was quite a literary character, and read everything he could lay his hands on, and "sat up nights" writing poetry. It seemed to me a very clear case of genius, and the postmistress"s facts rankled in my mind till I couldn"t stand it any longer. Then I went to see him. I suppose Lucy has told you the rest?"
"Yes, Mrs. Sewell has told me the rest. But still I don"t see how he came to write poetry. I believe it doesn"t pay, even in extreme cases of genius."
"Ah, but that"s just what this poor fellow didn"t know. He must have read somewhere, in some deleterious newspaper, about the sale of some large edition of a poem, and have had his own wild hopes about it. I don"t say his work didn"t show sense; it even showed some rude strength, of a didactic, satirical sort, but it certainly didn"t show poetry. He might have taken up painting by a little different chance. And when it was once known about the neighbourhood that he wrote poetry, his vanity was flattered--"
"Yes, I see. But wasn"t there any kind soul to tell him that he was throwing his time away?"
"It appears not."
"And even the kind soul from Boston, who visited him," suggested Mrs.
Sewell. "Go on, David."
"Visited him in spite of his wife"s omniscience,--even the kind soul from Boston paltered with this plain duty. Even he, to spare himself the pain of hurting the boy"s feelings, tried to find some of the lines better than others, and left him with the impression that he had praised them."
"Well, that was pretty bad," said Miss Vane. "You had to tell him to-day, I suppose, that there was no hope for him?"
"Yes, I had to tell him at last, after letting him waste his time and money in writing more stuff and coming to Boston with it. I"ve put him to needless shame, and I"ve inflicted suffering upon him that I can"t lighten in the least by sharing."
"No, that"s the most discouraging thing about pitying people. It does them no manner of good," said Miss Vane, "and just hurts you. Don"t you think that in an advanced civilisation we shall cease to feel compa.s.sion? Why don"t you preach against common pity, as you did against common politeness?"
"Well, it isn"t quite such a crying sin yet. But really, really,"
exclaimed Sewell, "the world seems so put together that I believe we ought to think twice before doing a good action."
"David!" said his wife warningly.
"Oh, let him go on!" cried Miss Vane, with a laugh. "I"m proof against his monstrous doctrines. Go on, Mr. Sewell."
"What I mean is this." Sewell pushed himself back in his chair, and then stopped.
"Is what?" prompted both the ladies.
"Why, suppose the boy really had some literary faculty, should I have had any right to encourage it? He was very well where he was. He fed the cows and milked them, and carried the milk to the crossroads, where the dealer collected it and took it to the train. That was his life, with the incidental facts of cutting the hay and fodder, and bedding the cattle; and his experience never went beyond it. I doubt if his fancy ever did, except in some wild, mistaken excursion. Why shouldn"t he have been left to this condition? He ate, he slept, he fulfilled his use.
Which of us does more?"
"How would you like to have been in his place?" asked his wife.
"I couldn"t _put_ myself in his place; and therefore I oughtn"t to have done anything to take him out of it," answered Sewell.
"It seems to me that"s very un-American," said Miss Vane. "I thought we had prospered up to the present point by taking people out of their places."
"Yes, we have," replied the minister, "and sometimes, it seems to me, the result is hideous. I don"t mind people taking themselves out of their places; but if the particles of this mighty cosmos have been adjusted by the divine wisdom, what are we to say of the temerity that disturbs the least of them?"
"I"m sure I don"t know," said Miss Vane, rising. "I"m almost afraid to stir, in view of the possible consequences. But I can"t sit here all day, and if Mrs. Sewell will excuse me, I"ll go at once. Yes, "I guess I better be going," as your particle Barker says. Let us hope he"ll get safely back to his infinitesimal little crevice in the cosmos. He"s a very pretty particle, don"t you think? That thick, coa.r.s.e, wavy black hair growing in a natural bang over his forehead would make his fortune if he were a certain kind of young lady."
They followed her to the door, chatting, and Sewell looked quickly out when he opened it for her.
As she shook his hand she broke into another laugh. "Really, you looked as if you were afraid of finding him on the steps!"
"If I could only have got near the poor boy," said Sewell to his wife, as they returned withindoors. "If I could only have reached him where he lives, as our slang says! But do what I would, I couldn"t find any common ground where we could stand together. We were as unlike as if we were of two different species. I saw that everything I said bewildered him more and more; he couldn"t understand me! Our education is unchristian, our civilisation is pagan. They both ought to bring us in closer relations with our fellow-creatures, and they both only put us more widely apart! Every one of us dwells in an impenetrable solitude!
We understand each other a little if our circ.u.mstances are similar, but if they are different all our words leave us dumb and unintelligible."
IV.
Barker walked away from the minister"s door without knowing where he was going, and with a heart full of hot pain. He burned with a confused sense of shame and disappointment and anger. It had turned out just as his mother had said: Mr. Sewell would be mighty different in Boston from what he was that day at Willoughby Pastures. There he made Barker think everything of his poetry, and now he pretended to tell him that it was not worth anything; and he kept hinting round that Barker had better go back home and stay there. Did he think he would have left home if there had been anything for him to do there? Had not he as much as told him that he was obliged to find something to make a living by, and help the rest? What was he afraid of? Was he afraid that Barker wanted to come and live off _him_? He could show him that there was no great danger. If he had known how, he would have refused even to stay to dinner.
What made him keep the pictures of these people who had got along, if he thought no one else ought to try? Barker guessed to himself that if that Mr. Aga.s.siz had had to get a living off the farm at Willoughby Pastures, he would have _found_ time to make money. What did Mr. Sewell mean by speaking of that Nilsson lady by her surname, without any Miss or Mrs.?
Was that the way people talked in Boston?
Mr. Sewell had talked to him as if he were a baby, and did not know anything; and Barker was mad at himself for having stayed half a minute after the minister had owned up that he had got the letter he wrote him. He wished he had said, "Well, that"s all I want of _you_, sir," and walked right out; but he had not known how to do it. Did they think it was very polite to go on talking with that woman who laughed so much, and forget all about him? Pretty poor sort of manners to eat with her bonnet on, and tell them she hated their victuals.
Barker tried to rage against them in these thoughts, but at the bottom of all was a simple grief that he should have lost the friend whom he thought he had in the minister; the friend he had talked of and dreamed of ever since he had seen and heard him speak those cordial words; the friend he had trusted through all, and had come down to Boston counting upon so much. The tears came into his eyes as he stumbled and scuffled along the brick pavements with his uncouth country walk.
He was walking up a straight, long street, with houses just alike on both sides and bits of gra.s.s before them, that sometimes were gay with late autumn flowers. A horse-car track ran up the middle, and the cars seemed to be tinkling by all the time, and people getting on and off.
They were mostly ladies and children, and they were very well dressed.
Sometimes they stared at Barker, as they crossed his way in entering or issuing from the houses, but generally no one appeared to notice him.