In the Shadow/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
LEYDEN'S ANALYSIS
I NEVER thought," said Manning bitterly, "that I would have to take my sister from England to Carolina to avoid the familiarity of a nigger! But what is a man to do? Frenchmen are bad enough … niggers are worse; when you get the two combined in one big, hulking buck who ought to be building rice dikes, instead of sitting around in drawing-rooms, reeking with French perfumery … isn't that just about the limit of endurance, Dr. Leyden?"
Leyden laughed softly.
Manning resumed, his cold voice edged with anger. "Yet what else can I do? He's received over here, he's an Oxonian, he is rich and a friend and classmate of Giles, and he has saved his life and that of my sister; one can't snub him with decency." And Manning swore a fervid Carolinian oath. "To think that a sister of mine … a Moultrie, should find anything beyond a curious interest in a great big pampered lump of an African nigger … once worth a thousand dollars and to-day, thanks to the meddling Yankees, not worth a d!" Again Manning mounted heights of classic objurgatory.
Leyden had been an interested audience to this monologue. He liked Manning, or, more properly, he liked to be with Manning. Few people really liked Manning Moultrie, but fewer still disliked his company. It was the cold-bloodedness of Manning which most appealed to Leyden; there are few fascinations equal to that of attractive cold-bloodedness, and Manning was attractive mentally, physically, and immorally.
Virginia had culled all of the emotional ingredients of their heritage, barring perhaps anger. One could look at Virginia and see, young as she was, where passions suppressed had carved their initials upon the wall of their prison; in Manning they either beat their heads against the walls or were coldly set at liberty.
"Are you growling, Moultrie?" asked Leyden, with his quiet smile, "or asking advice?" The naturalist was chary of unsolicited personalities; bountiful at the request of his friends.
"Both," said Manning. "What do you think I should do? I've got to go back to Carolina, but I can't go back and leave this here brute messing about."
"Why not take Miss Moultrie with you?" asked Leyden.
"The place would bore her horribly; our plantation is on the Caw Caw Swamp; we have no near neighbors. Of course she might stay in Charleston, but that would be stupid for her; in any case she would have to remain in the North until autumn; the rice belt is rotten with fever. You see, Leyden, I have an idea that it will take a good deal of a man to hold my sister's affections; Giles is a fine chap, but he is young and not especially subtle. I am very anxious for this marriage to take place, for I am sure that once married they will be very happy, and I am afraid that if I take her so far away something may come up to interfere with the match."
"They are to be married in January, are they not? Then why not take Miss Moultrie away for a few months and persuade Giles to give up the hunting and join you there. It will not take much argument on your part, I fancy."
Manning's face brightened. "That is a good thought. Giles had agreed to go home with me when I first came over, and then backed out … I fancy he did not care for the separation. ..." His features clouded again. "Can you tell me why it is, Dr. Leyden, that a woman of my sister's position and engaged to be married to a fine fellow like Giles Maltby should be interested in a brute like this Dessalines? I am a good deal biased I'll admit, and you are thoroughly cosmopolitan. Do you think that this Haytian is so different from any other negro?"
"No," replied Leyden quietly. "I do not believe that this Haytian possesses the brain of a very ignorant white person, although he has no doubt developed such brain as he has almost to its physiological limits, which places him, of course, for all practical purposes, the mental superior of the ignorant white."
Manning looked annoyed. "I would much prefer to think that it was the oddity, the striking element of mentality in the man by which my sister was attracted. Why, confound it, doctor, it is evident enough that she is attracted, and if not by his mentality it must be … b-r-r-rgh!" Manning rose hastily and lit a cigar, then turned suddenly to Leyden, his fine aristocratic face white and fierce.
"My soul, doctor! if any man had ever hinted, implied by the shadow of insinuation, such a thing of my sister as I have just said, I would shoot him on sight. Just why I am telling it all to you I'm sure I don't know. There's no other man living to whom I would breathe such a thing; perhaps it's because you have told me things … it's because you know your world as no man living whom I ever met before, and I want your advice."
Manning's face was drawn and haggard; young as he was he did not open his soul without breaking certain seals and wrenching his whole fabric to its core. This stifling of his pride had in it something submissive; it was simply that he had fallen beneath the influence of the world wisdom of this man who wandered up and down, looking, seeing, observing, dispassionately analyzing, quietly placing startling truths upon their proper shelves, sticking labels on heart beats, compassionate, kind, with the large-heartedness of deep understanding and the stamp of an ineradicable pain which had purified his soul and set him apart from selfish interest with those affairs which he might be asked to arbitrate.
Leyden studied the fire, for there was a damp drizzle without and the hall was cold and draughty. He pushed a log with his toe, poked another into place, crouched on the hearth, resting on his heels—the aboriginal position acquired by one who lives much in the open; his fine face was rather more flushed than the backset of heat would warrant.
"Ach!" he said, "this Channel weather, with its cold and fog and rain!" He clapped his hands absently, waited, clapped again, glanced vexedly over his shoulder, then laughed. "Will you ring the bell, Moultrie? It is at your elbow. I forget that I am in the land of electricity. Ach, but these English servants are deliberate! Wiggin, have you any rum?"
Manning started, glanced over his shoulder. Keen as were his own senses he had failed to hear the approach of the felt-shod butler.
"There is some of the Santa Cruz which you sent from the West Injies last May, sir."
"Evidently it is not a popular beverage; so much the better. Bring me a gill, Wiggin; and Wiggin, will you be so good as to look on the dressing table in my room and bring me the green bottle which you will find there; also, some water and the half of a lemon. I beg your pardon, Moultrie; I am going to bore you directly, and before beginning I wish to fortify myself against a fight which is to occur in my blood vessels"—he glanced at the tall clock—"in precisely four hours and fifteen minutes."
"What do you mean?" asked Manning. "Are you ill?" He had at first been inclined to resent Leyden's neglect of his direct question; then he had been puzzled, and when one is puzzled one is apt to try to solve the query before indulging in other emotions.
"No," said Leyden lightly. "There is a chill due in four hours, and I think that with the aid of some very excellent rum which Sir Henry does not properly appreciate and a preparation of my own I may be able to abort it. It is this vile weather … but, so much for that!" He assembled the charred logs, blew upon an ember, kindled the whole into a blaze, raised himself, lightly as a cat, from his knee-strained position, and turned to Manning.
"You have asked my counsel, but before giving it I must explain certain things." His voice became rhythmic, the voice of a pedagogue, a professor. "You mention with horror the idea of this Haytian exercising any physical attraction for Miss Moultrie; you wish that it were mental, spiritual, psychical—a lovely word, by the way, and much in vogue with those wishing to describe what they cannot understand. My dear fellow, you should let well enough alone! If it were anything but the physical which attracted your sister it would be a matter for the deepest regret."
"I do not agree with you!" interrupted Manning sulkily.
"There is no especial reason why you should," pursued Leyden calmly. "All I ask is that you follow me. I say that this attraction is properly physical." He raised his hand warningly. "Man, I know what I am saying; have you never seen a woman stand fascinated in front of the cage of a tiger when the brute is exercising himself, going through his paces? This is a purely physical attraction; I fear from your words that your vocabulary is inaccurate. By physical attraction one does not necessarily imply a—now do not misunderstand me again—sexual. A physical attraction may be defined as the attraction of cell for cell, fiber for fiber, nerve for nerve; an attraction which may go no higher than the spinal cord, a reflex sympathy; or, when it does go higher, what then? It is the joy of one vigorous vitality in another.
"To make myself more plain, there are certain inherent qualities in certain entities which may call to like qualities in another, entirely ex-intellect. Every human being possesses certain impulses, spiritual and physical. To both of these there is a vague force, called, for lack of a better word 'magnetism,' which, unlike that peculiar to the poles of an electric magnet, serves not to neutralize, but tends rather to a diffusion which results in the establishing of an equilibrium. An individual possessing an excess of the spiritual calls loudly for the other complementary quality to bring its physical up to the level of its spiritual; calls unconsciously and aside from all reasoning; in other words, craves."
Leyden paused, placed the tips of his fingers together; the man had beautiful hands, the hands of a gentleman who uses them and his brain.
"Thank you, Wiggin," he remarked without looking around. "You may place them on the table." Leyden stared into the fire … seemed to be following the flow of his thought as the eager draught sucked it into the flames. "I am a poor talker," he observed; "possibly you do not follow me!"
Manning writhed uneasily, reached down, shoved his chair back with a gasp of pain. He had not realized that his knees were scorching; there was an odor of burnt wool. He swore a soft, warm oath; oaths and tobacco were Manning's most affected vices.
"Not entirely," he said, "your distinctions are too fine, too subtle, for a practical person like myself." "Practical" is the term by which people lacking in imagination define their lack of this quality. "If a powerful physical attraction is neither love nor lust then it is something which I do not understand."
"That also is possible," said Leyden sharply. The assumption of this young man to a right to knowledge which can only come of years and men annoyed him. "It is just that quality, that something which you do not understand, that I am attempting to define for you. Let us go back to the woman watching the caged tiger, or, for that matter, a feeble-chested man exulting in a prize fight will do; both attractions are purely physical. It is the fascination of dynamic force, and the finer the mastery of this force the greater the fascination. A strong man is more imposing than a falling tree. Have you never been fascinated by watching a great mechanism—a locomotive, a steel hammer, the engines of a liner when the ship is racing, and one feeble man with his hand on the throttle controls the rotation of tons and tons of steel? You are a horseman; have you never been thrilled at the beat and throb of your hunter's great shoulder muscles as they swelled and contracted between your knees?"
Manning's hard, patrician face suddenly lighted, and Leyden, watching narrowly, saw that he had struck the responsive note. He walked to the table, poured a bit of the solution from the green bottle into a glass, added rum, a dash of water, squeezed in a few drops of the lemon, stirred the whole with a pocket thermometer, drank it, and glanced at his watch. He returned to the fire and stood, his strong shoulders against the stone carving of the chimney, facing Manning.
"Do you understand? do you see what I mean? how it would be an injustice to Miss Moultrie to suppose this attraction anything but physical. If you do I shall go deeper, just for this once. It is a subject which is better discussed but once—disposed of at one sitting. Such things, like your color question in the United States, grow and flourish with the reek and the stink of a carnivorous plant in an atmosphere of argument."
"Please go on," said Manning. There was a new note of respect in his voice.
"We must go a step farther, to be honest analysts. While this attraction is, as I have said, in its origin a matter of the spinal cord as distinct from the brain, the latter is bound in time to become conscious of its presence; just as the master of a house will discover, in time, that he is entertaining an unasked guest who may be harbored by other members of his household. The brain then says, 'who have we here?' and subjects this tenant to scrutiny, and it is here that the danger lies, for one of two things will happen: the brain, never infallible, and to my mind rather a feeble substitute for unerring instincts, either ejects this inmate as undesirable or else raises him to the position of honored guest. A primitive emotion will not, as a rule, put muscles in motion until passed upon and approved by a bombastic brain, which is the snobbish element of one's cosmos." He glanced at Manning.
"In other words," said Manning, "you mean that an attraction of this sort is harmless and natural until the person begins to analyze, and tries to adjust the emotions?"
"Precisely. Take the present instance for example. Miss Moultrie is physically attracted by this Haytian; there is no harm in that, but soon she will say: 'Why does this man attract me? He is black, he is brutal, he is grotesque, yet he does attract me. Why? It must be that beneath all of this there is a subtle quality which I can feel but not see; that there is intellectual force, spirituality, a soul!'—and from this she will build up and endow this creature with qualities which he does not possess, because, having the usual ideas on such subjects, she is unwilling to admit that a mere physical attraction could so powerfully control her. And now, my dear fellow, that is all for to-day, and you may think about it, and if you agree with me, you will persuade Miss Moultrie to return with you next week to Charleston, for you may rest assured that this Dessalines will follow her all over Europe, now that he thinks that he has awakened her interest."
Leyden walked to the oriel window, drummed on the leaded pane, whistled a snatch of doggerel, then glanced over his shoulder to where Manning sat deep in his reflections.
"As far as Count Dessalines is concerned," said he, "you will have to draw your own conclusions; this should not be difficult."
A fortnight later Virginia sailed with Manning on the Eutopia.