Free The Whale by Mark Beauregard

children ran upstairs together, and Sophia paused a moment before following them up, to point out the package of books and to remind her husband that they owed Herman a dollar and a half.
    â€œLet’s see if Duyckinck found all the books I wanted,” Hawthorne said with an easy smile.
    Herman saw, in the older man’s angelic face and blithe manner, a battlefield where anguish had once contended with beauty and—neither proving victorious—each had lain down its arms and declared peace together. He felt Hawthorne’s hard-won serenity spreading into his own soul, and his abiding social discomfort evaporated like fog in the morning sun. For the first time in his life he felt perfectly at ease just standing and doing nothing; and he thought he could stay that way forever, as long as Hawthorne continued to smile at him.
    Hawthorne took out a pocketknife. “Are the knots a joke on you or by you?”
    â€œDuyckinck is the jester, in this case.”
    He cut a perfectly constructed butterfly knot away from the rest of the twine and placed it behind his ear for a garland; then he ripped away a section of the wrapping paper and began withdrawing volumes from the packet one by one, handing them to Herman as he read the titles aloud. “
Mardi
, excellent.
Typee
.
Redburn
, yes.
Omoo
.
White-Jacket
, tremendous.” Herman found himself standing in the middle of Hawthorne’s parlor holding a copy of every book he had ever written. “And finally a copy of
Pendennis
. I hope you don’t mind being lumped together with Thackeray.”
    â€œYou ordered every one of my books!”
    Hawthorne looked commandingly at him. “I had to know what it was all about,” he said.
    â€œWhat
what
was all about?”
    â€œThe picnic. What kind of person had such insight about me that he could make me feel known just by talking to me!”
    â€œBut these books,” Herman said, despairing. “Please do not judge me by them. They are not me. They were the best I could do at the time.”
    â€œI have read
Typee
already, of course,” Hawthorne said, unconcerned. “I wrote a review of it, for the Salem
Advertiser
, when it first came out.” He put his hand on Herman’s shoulder. “No one knows the relative value of one’s own previous work better than I do. I have not asked for these books in order to judge you by them, but in order to learn about you.”
    Herman’s mouth had gone completely dry. He tried to formulate a thought suitable to be spoken, but even had one occurred to him, he doubted whether his brain still had any control over his tongue. Una’s and Julian’s light footsteps rat-a-tatted overhead, and Herman looked around, alarmed that Sophia might see them inclined toward one another so intimately.
    â€œYou know, Herman, I’m not convinced of this blackness ten times black that you see in me, that you talked about in your review. That’s how you put it, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes,” he said, feeling foolish now for every word he had written in
Literary World
—for every word he had ever written. The easy philosophical banter that they had shared when they’d first met seemed a childish memory; Hawthorne had reduced him to mere reverence. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps I should have said that, in your stories, blackness competes with blackness, which would have been a better way to put it.” He swallowed hard and willed his composure to come back. “Because, in your stories, you seem to understand that true dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong but when he must choose between two wrongs.”
    Hawthorne looked quizzically at his younger companion and said, almost to himself, “Two wrongs. Indeed.” He finally took his hand from Herman’s shoulder as Sophia’s footsteps pounded down the stairs. As she entered, Hawthorne asked, “What was