A Man and a Woman Part 9

What does the average person in one cla.s.s know of the life in another?

There are "cla.s.ses," certainly, with great bars between them here, though this is a republic, and all men and women are supposed to be free and equal and alike in most things. There are lower and wider grades of existence, such that the story of them may never be told save in patch-work or by inference, yet which have as full a history, and where there are loves and hates and hopes and despairs as deep as are ever felt in the ma.s.s where the creed-teachers and Mrs. Grundy and the legislatures are greater factors.

And of this more reckless, hopeless people Harlson learned much. With them he was; of them he could never fully be. The extent to which a man is permanently defiled by pitch-touching cannot, of course, be known. It depends upon the pitch and upon the man. It was not a quiet life the young man led! On the contrary, it was a very feverish one, for he labored hard in the office by day--he never for an instant abandoned his ambitions and his plans--and at night he drifted into the land where were warmth and light and lawlessness. He had his duty there, such as it might be, for he was both a gambler and a protector, and, young as he was, callow as he was, within a year he had become one in demand, no trifler at the table, and an object of rivalry among those whose regard means fee of body and of soul. He, himself, at that time, did not appreciate the remarkable nature of his changing. So rapidly he aged in knowledge of all undercurrents that he pa.s.sed into full maturity without a comprehension of the change. It is said that some Indians teach their children to swim, not by repeated gentle lessons, but by throwing them into a deep stream recklessly, saving them only at the last moment. So had some power hurled Grant Harlson into the black waters, and he had not drowned, and had taken rank among strong swimmers.

It is, as I have said, difficult to write intelligently of this portion of this man's life. I want to do him justice, for I have always cared for him; yet, from the conventional point of view, at least, nothing can excuse his lapse at this one time. He should have continued starving, I suppose, as have so many others, and have either died or won, as they did, instead of tasting all that is denied, and gaining much knowledge of the world, of much use in the future, all at the expense, perhaps, of that purity attaching to certain ignorances, as much in the man as the woman, since between the s.e.xes all things are relative.

There were enough odd things in this most odd career. There were friends.h.i.+ps and feuds with those who were of the lower mult.i.tude morally, but who were politicians and had their followings. There were romances of the order which makes the story of Dumas such a success upon the stage, and risks and escapes enough to satisfy the hungriest of romance-readers. It was all grotesque in its grim reality, and the young man did not know it. He was an unconscious desperado, and the odd thing about it all was the ease with which he led the double life.

In the morning, clear-headed and competent--for he did not drink at all of liquors--he appeared and was resolute at his work. He was becoming more and more considered. That he, somehow, knew the town so well, was in his favor. More than one case of importance was decided in another way from which it might have been, because of his knowledge of the outcasts and their connections, and how they had been used or trifled with on this occasion or on that one. He was zealous and studied furiously, and in the mere letter of the law became most confident.

His examination was a trifling thing, and, once admitted to the bar, he did not remit his efforts. He was valuable to the firm. He was their watch-dog, and he suggested many things.

One day the senior partner called Harlson in, and a long conference was held. The younger man was offered a partners.h.i.+p on condition that he would make a specialty of certain branches of the firm's varied practice; but the offer had its disadvantages. It was not in the line political at all, but in one with vexatious business demands and requisites; yet it was accepted in a moment. And within the next week all the wicked, nervous night-life was abandoned, all the friends.h.i.+ps formed there put upon probation, all the soiled sentiment made a thing to be ended surely and forgotten, if possible.

There were some wrenches to it all. Camille learns to love sometimes, and Oakhurst, the gambler, does not want to part with one who has stood a friend in an emergency. But Camille knows that, for her, few flowers are even annual, and Oakhurst is practical and a fatalist.

From that day, all his life, Grant Harlson kept away from close touch with this ever-existing group who live from day to day because they have been branded and do not care. Good friends he ever had among them, but they never claimed him, though, on many occasions, the men served him. They recognized the fact that he had never been more than an adopted wanderer among them, and rather prided themselves upon him.

In later times he would occasionally exchange a word or two on that old life with some one who had grown outwardly respectable, with some one-time thug, later saloon-keeper and alderman and what may follow, and would be reminded of what happened on the night when the mirrors were all broken, and the Was.h.i.+ngton woman shot the man she was seeking, or when "we did the Coulson gang;" but it had long grown to seem unreal and dreamlike. He grew away from the memory, and there was no glamour to him in what might attract some other men to evil-doing, because to him there could be no novelty. He was a past-master in the ceremonials of fallen, reckless human nature, and the ritual bored him. He deserved no credit further than that. True, he was but young when he learned the rites, but that he was not still a member of the order was only because his ambition was dominant and his tastes had changed.

That his will was strong, that he had tastes to develop, was because of the blood which filled his veins, and of nothing else. He had gone with a current absolutely, though swimming and always keeping his head above water until he swam ash.o.r.e. Yet, as told in the beginning of this chapter, he always said to me that he did not regret this experience of abandonment. And he became a man seeking place and money.

He liked to visit his old home, and was faithful to his old crony, his aging mother, still; and, for a time, after any of these sojourns among the birds and squirrels and in the forest, he would be distrait and preoccupied with something; but all this would wear off, and then would come the press for place and pelf again. He was not entirely unsuccessful, and finally he married, as a prospering young man should--married a woman with money and presence for a hostess, and with traits to make her potent. He lived with her for a season, and found another, without his dreams and sympathies and understandings, but with a will and a way.

I do not care to tell the story of it,--indeed, I do not know it,--but the man learned the old-fas.h.i.+oned lesson, which seems to hold good still, that for a really comfortable wedded life a little love, as a preliminary, is a good thing always--usually a requisite. The woman lacked neither perception nor good sense. It was she who proposed, since they were ill-mated, they should live apart, and he consented, with only such show of courtesy as might conceal his height of gladness. There were money features to the arrangement made, and it was all dignified and thoughtful. The world knew nothing of the agreement, though that generation of vipers, the relations of Mrs.

Grundy, wondered why Mr. Harlson's wife and he so lived apart, and if either of them were opium-eaters, or dangerous in insane moods. The relations of Mrs. Grundy have the reputation of the universe on their hands, and, the task being one so great, they must be pardoned if they err occasionally.

From the day he was alone, Grant Harlson appeared himself again, and I speak knowingly, for I was with him then. His old self seemed then restored. The buoyancy of boyhood was his as it had never been to me since we were young together. It matters not what a chance,--this is a land where all men drift about,--but I was in the city near him now, and the old relations.h.i.+p was resumed. We rioted in the past of the country, and we visited it together. As time went on, Harlson seemed to forget that he was, or ever had been, a married man, and eventually the woman found other things in life than awaiting old age without social potency, and suggested, from a distance, that the separation be completed. Perhaps there was another man. I know that Harlson did not hesitate. He responded carelessly, and then reverted to things practical.

The reflection came that the mismated in this present age must ordinarily bear the burden to the end. Collusion, which in such case is but a term for a mutual business agreement, is not allowable. The social problem is a puzzle the solution of which is left to those whose ideas were given to them stereotyped. The separation was delayed, but was, vaguely, a thing possible. And Harlson laughed and threw out his arms, and made friends of many women.

They were the variety of his life, which else was a hard-working one.

He was not a saint nor a deliberate sinner. He but drifted again.

CHAPTER XVII.

"EH, BUT SHE'S WINSOME."

"Eh, but she's winsome!"

Grant Harlson entered my room one evening with this irrelevant exclamation.

I have remained unmarried, and have learned how to live, as a man may, after a fas.h.i.+on, who has no aid from that s.e.x which alone knows how to make a home.

Harlson, at this time, had apartments very near me, and we invaded each other's rooms at will, and were a mutual comfort to each other, and a help--at least I know that he was all this to me. I have never yet seen a man so strong and self-reliant or secretive--save some few who were misers or recluses, and not of the real world--who, if there were no woman for him, would not tell things to some one man. We two knew each other, and counted on each other, and while I could not do as much for him as he for me, I could try as hard. He knew that.

"Eh, but she's winsome!"

He went to the mantel, took a cigar, and lit it, and turned to me indignantly:

"You smoke-producing dolt, why are you silent? Didn't you hear my earnest comment? Where is the trace of good behavior you once owned?"

"Who's winsome?"

"She, I tell you! She--the girl I met to-night. And you sit there and inhale the fumes of a weed, and are no more stirred by my announcement than the belching chimney of an exposition by the fair display around it!"

"You big, driveling idiot, how can I know what you are talking about?

You come in with an obscure outburst of enthusiasm over something,--a woman, I infer,--and because the particular tone, and direction, and mood of your insanity is not recognized within a moment, you descend to personalities. If your distemper has left you reason enough for the comprehension of words, sit down and tell me about it. Who's winsome?

What's winsome? And have you been to a banquet?"

"There is a degree of reason in what you say--that is, from the point of a clod. I'll tell you. I've met a woman."

"I dare say. There are a number in town, I understand."

"Spoken in the vein of your dullness. A person not sodden with nicotine and dreams would have recognized the fact that I had met a Woman, one deserving a large W whenever her name is spelled, a woman of the sort to make one think that all poems are not trickery, and all romances not romance."

"What's her name?"

"Do you suppose I'll tell you, you scheming wife-hunter! If I do, you'll get an introduction somehow, and then you'll win her, for I'm afraid she has good sense."

And Harlson laughed and looked down in the brotherly way he had.

"But this is nonsense. Why don't you tell me something about her? Is she fat and fifty and rich, or bread-and-b.u.t.tery and white-skinned and promising, or twenty and just generally fair to look upon, or twenty-five and piquant and knowing, or some big, red-haired lioness, or some yellow-haired, blue-eyed innocent, with good digestion and premature maternal ways, or----"

"Rot! She's a woman, I tell you!"

"All right. Answer questions now categorically."

"Go ahead."

"How old is she?"

"Twenty-seven or eight."

"Married?"

"No."

"Ever been married?"

"Certainly not."

"How do you know?"

Harlson looked surprised, and then he became indignant again.

"Alf," said he, "you have good traits, but you have paralysis of a certain section of your brain. You don't remember things. Don't you think I could tell whether or not a woman were married?"

I did not answer him off-hand. I could not very well. He knew that his reply had set me thinking of many a curious test and many a curious experience. Harlson had an odd fad over which we had many a debate.