Part 41 (1/2)
He laid his hands in hers, smiling a little at his own earnestness.
”Alarmist? No! The younger set are better than those who bred them; and if, in time, they, too, fall short, they will not fall as far as their parents. And, in their turn, when they look around them at the younger set whom they have taught in the light and wisdom of their own shortcomings, they will see fresher, sweeter, lovelier young people than we see now. And it will continue so, dear, through the jolly generations. Life is all right, only, like art, it is very, very long sometimes.”
”Good out of evil, Phil?” asked his sister, smiling; ”innocence from the hotbeds of profligacy? purity out of vulgarity? sanity from hideous ostentation? Is that what you come preaching?”
”Yes; and isn't it curious! Look at that old harridan, Mrs. Sanxon Orchil! There are no more innocent and charming girls in Manhattan than her daughters. She _knew_ enough to make them different; so does the majority of that sort. Look at the Cardwell girl and the Innis girl and the Craig girl! Look at Mrs. Delmour-Carnes's children! And, Nina--even Molly Hatpin's wastrel waif shall never learn what her mother knows if Destiny will help Madame Molly ever so little. And I think that Destiny is often very kind--even to the Hatpin offspring.”
Nina sat silent on the padded arm of her chair, looking up at her brother.
”Mad preacher! Mad Mullah!--dear, dear fellow!” she said tenderly; ”all ills of the world canst thou discount, but not thine own.”
”Those, too,” he insisted, laughing; ”I had a talk with Boots--but, anyway, I'd already arrived at my own conclusion that--that--I'm rather overdoing this blighted business--”
”Phil!”--in quick delight.
”Yes,” he said, reddening nicely; ”between you and Boots and myself I've decided that I'm going in for--for whatever any man is going in for--life! Ninette, life to the full and up to the hilt for mine!--not side-stepping anything... . Because I--because, Nina, it's shameful for a man to admit to himself that he cannot make good, no matter how thoroughly he's been hammered to the ropes. And so I'm starting out again--not hunting trouble like him of La Mancha--but, like him in this, that I shall not avoid it... . Is _that_ plain to you, little sister?”
”Yes, oh, yes, it is!” she murmured; ”I am so happy, so proud--but I knew it was in your blood, Phil; I knew that you were merely hurt and stunned--badly hurt, but not fatally!--you could not be; no weaklings come from our race.”
”But still our race has always been law-abiding--observant of civil and religious law. If I make myself free again, I take some laws into my own hands.”.
”How do you mean?” she asked.
”Well,” he said grimly, ”for example, I am forbidden, in some States, to marry again--”
”But you _know_ there was no reason for _that_!”
”Yes, I do happen to know; but still I am taking the liberty of disregarding the law if I do. Then, what clergyman, of our faith, would marry me to anybody?”
”That, too, you know is not just, Phil. You were innocent of wrong-doing; you were chivalrous enough to make no defence--”
”Wrong-doing? Nina, I was such a fool that I was innocent of sense enough to do either good or evil. Yet I did do harm; there never was such a thing as a harmless fool. But all I can do is to go and sin no more; yet there is little merit in good conduct if one hides in a hole too small to admit temptation. No; there are laws civil and laws ecclesiastical; and sometimes I think a man is justified in repealing the form and retaining the substance of them, and remoulding it for purposes of self-government; as I do, now... . Once, oppressed by form and theory, I told you that to remarry after divorce was a slap at civilisation... . Which is true sometimes and sometimes not. Common sense, not laws, must govern a man in that matter. But if any motive except desire to be a decent citizen sways a self-punished man toward self-leniency, then is he unpardonable if he breaks those laws which truly were fas.h.i.+oned for such as he!”
”Saint Simon! Saint Simon! Will you please arise, stretch your limbs, and descend from your pillar?” said Nina; ”because I am going to say something that is very, very serious; and very near my heart.”
”I remember,” he said; ”it's about Eileen, isn't it?”
”Yes, it is about Eileen.”
He waited; and again his sister's eyes began restlessly searching his for something that she seemed unable to find.
”You make it a little difficult, Phil; I don't believe I had better speak of it.”
”Why not?”
”Why, just because you ask me 'why not?' for example.”
”Is it anything that worries you about Eileen?”
”N-no; not exactly. It is--it may be a phase; and yet I know that if it is anything at all it is not a pa.s.sing phase. She is different from the majority, you see--very intelligent, very direct. She never forgets--for example. Her loyalty is quite remarkable, Phil. She is very intense in her--her beliefs--the more so because she is unusually free from impulse--even quite ignorant of the deeper emotions; or so I believed until--until--”