CHAPTER IV
WILD HORSES AND CHAMPAGNE
James Wimbourne always had the reputation of being an exceptionally strong-willed person. None of his friends would have been in the least surprised to see him come so triumphantly through the first real test that life offered him, if they had known anything about it. Not one of them did know anything about it; no human being ever vaguely surmised that he renounced—the word is a big one but the act was worthy of it—Beatrice in favor of his brother. Beatrice may have suspected it at first, but her suspicion, if it existed at all, died an easy and natural death. Harry suspected it least of all, which was just what James wanted. The one reason why the renunciation did not turn out entirely as James intended was one over which he had no control, namely, the simple fact that Harry was never in love with Beatrice.
But as a matter of fact one must look deeper into James' character to discover how it was that, long before the completion of the four years that the story has recently skipped, James was able to think of Beatrice without even a flutter of the heart. Deeply imbedded in his nature there lay a motive force to which his will power, as other people knew it, was merely the servant. This may perhaps be most safely described as James' attitude toward Harry. It is not easy to describe it. It does not do to lay stress upon the elements of brotherly affection, desire to protect, unselfishness and so forth, which made it up; those things all appear to smack of priggishness and cant and are at variance with the spontaneity of the thing we are talking about. One might perhaps refer to it as an ineradicable conviction in the soul of James that Harry was always to be thought of first.
Very few people are capable of entertaining such a feeling. Very few are worthy of it. James had just the sort of nature in which it is most likely to occur. The Germans have an apt phrase for this type of nature—schöne Seele. James had a schöne Seele. He had his tastes and feelings, of course, like any one else, but the good always came naturally to him; the bad was abnormal. And this was why he found it possible and even—after a certain time—easy to erase from his brain the image of Beatrice, and set up in its place a vision of Harry and Beatrice coming into a mutual realization of each other.
Well, it couldn't have been much of a love in the first place if it wasn't stronger than brotherly affection, does some one suggest? some one, we fancy, who is thoroughly familiar with the poems of the late Robert Browning and entertains a penchant for the Paolo and Francesca brand of love. Well, possibly. We confess to our own moments of Paolomania; every healthy person has them. But we would call the attention of the aforesaid some one to the stern fact that love in the United States of America in the twentieth century is of necessity a different thing from love in—Rimini, we were going to say, but Rimini is a real place, with a railroad station and hotel omnibusses, so let us change it to Paolo-and-Francescadom. Also that he may have fostered his cult of Paoloism rather at the expense of his study of the schöne Seele. And we would also suggest, meeting him on his own ground, that there is no evidence of Paolo ever having got along very well with Giovanni. For if he had, of course, that whole beautiful story might have been spoilt.
Then, of course, James' remoteness from Beatrice made it easier for him. Love is primarily a matter of geography, anyway. With the result that finally, when the month of June arrived and with it the offer of the New York position, the danger implied in New York's proximity to New Haven and Beatrice was not enough to deter James from closing with it. He accepted the offer, as we know, and took up his duties in New York in September.
He took Stodger McClintock with him. Stodger by this time simply belonged to James, as far as the Emancipation Proclamation and other legal technicalities permit of one person belonging to another. He had already obtained for him a job as office boy in McClellan's and now proposed to take him east and educate him, with the eventual idea of turning him into a chauffeur. Stodger seemed delighted with the prospect.
"Only," he objected, "please, I'll have to ask me grand-mudder!"