“You would tell me, in plain words, that I keep my craft for myself; my high principle for my friends.”
Glencore only smiled, but Upton continued,—
“So, then, I have guessed aright; and the very worst you can allege against this course is, that what I bestow is better than what I retain!”
“One of Solomon's proverbs may be better than a shilling; but which would a hungry man rather have? I want no word-fencing, Upton; still less do I seek what might sow distrust between us. This much, however, has life taught me: the great trials of this world are like its great maladies. Providence has meant them to be fatal. We call in the doctor in the one case, or the counsellor in the other, out of habit rather than out of hope. Our own consciousness has already whispered that nothing can be of use; but we like to do as our neighbors, and so we take remedies and follow injunctions to the last. The wise man quickly detects by the character of the means how emergent is the case believed to be, and rightly judges that recourse to violent measures implies the presence of great peril. If he be really wise, then he desists at once from what can only torture his few remaining hours. They can be given to better things than the agonies of such agency. To this exact point has my case come, and by the counsels you have given me do I read my danger! Your only remedy is as bad as the malady it is meant to cure! I cannot take it!”
“Accepting your own imagery, I would say,” said Upton, “that you are one who will not submit to an operation of some pain that he might be cured.”
Glencore sat moodily for some moments without speaking; at last he said,—
“I feel as though continual change of place and scene would be a relief to me. Let us rendezvous, therefore, somewhere for the autumn, and meanwhile I 'll wander about alone.”
“What direction do you purpose to take?”
“The Schwarzwald and the Hohlenthal, first. I want to revisit a place I knew in happier days. Memory must surely have something besides sorrows to render us. I owned a little cottage there once, near Steig. I fished and read Uhland for a summer long. I wonder if I could resume the same life. I knew the whole village,—the blacksmith, the schoolmaster, the Dorfrichter,—all of them. Good, kind souls they were: how they wept when we parted! Nothing consoled them but my having purchased the cottage, and promised to come back again!”
Upton was glad to accept even this much of interest in the events of life, and drew Glencore on to talk of the days he had passed in this solitary region.