A Hazard of New Fortunes

by William Dean Howells

  “No, you don’t.”

  “That is, to consent to help us with your advice and criticism. That’s all I want. It won’t commit you to anything; and you can be as anonymous as anybody.” At the door Fulkerson added: “By the way, the new man—the fellow that’s taken my old syndicate business—will want you to keep on; but I guess he’s going to try to beat you down on the price of the letters. He’s going in for retrenchment. I brought along a check for this one; I’m to pay for that.” He offered Beaton an envelope.

  “I can’t take it, Fulkerson. The letter’s paid for already.” Fulkerson stepped forward and laid the envelope on the table among the tubes of paint.

  “It isn’t the letter merely. I thought you wouldn’t object to a little advance on your Every Other Week work till you kind of got started.”

  Beaton remained inflexible. “It can’t be done, Fulkerson. Don’t I tell you I can’t sell myself out to a thing I don’t believe in? Can’t you understand that?”

  “Oh yes, I can understand that first-rate. I don’t want to buy you; I want to borrow you. It’s all right. See? Come around when you can; I’d like to introduce you to old March. That’s going to be our address.” He put a card on the table beside the envelope, and Beaton allowed him to go without making him take the check back. He had remembered his father’s plea; that unnerved him, and he promised himself again to return his father’s poor little check, and to work on that picture and give it to Fulkerson for the check he had left and for his back debts. He resolved to go to work on the picture at once; he had set his palette for it; but first he looked at Fulkerson’s check. It was for only fifty dollars, and the canny Scotch blood in Beaton rebelled; he could not let this picture go for any such money; he felt a little like a man whose generosity has been trifled with. The conflict of emotions broke him up, and he could not work.

  IV

  THE DAY WASTED AWAY in Beaton’s hands; at half past four o’clock he went out to tea at the house of a lady who was “at home” that afternoon from four till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession of one of those other selves of which we each have several about us, and was again the laconic, staccato, rather worldlified young artist whose moments of a controlled utterance and a certain distinction of manner had commended him to Mrs. Horn’s fancy in the summer at St. Barnaby.

  Mrs. Horn’s rooms were large, and they never seemed very full, though this perhaps was because people were always so quiet. The ladies, who outnumbered the men ten to one, as they always do at a New York tea, were dressed in sympathy with the low tone everyone spoke in, and with the subdued light which gave a crepuscular uncertainty to the few objects, the dim pictures, the un-excited upholstery, of the rooms. One breathed free of bric-a-brac there, and the newcomer breathed softly as one does on going into church after service has begun. This might be a suggestion from the voiceless behavior of the manservant who let you in, but it was also because Mrs. Horn’s “at home” was a ceremony, a decorum, and not a festival. At far greater houses there was more gaiety, at richer houses there was more freedom; the suppression at Mrs. Horn’s was a personal, not a social, effect; it was an efflux of her character-intense, silentious, vague, but very correct.

  Beaton easily found his way to her around the grouped skirts and among the detached figures, and received a pressure of welcome from the hand which she momentarily relaxed from the teapot. She sat behind a table put crosswise of a remote corner and offered tea to people whom a niece of hers received provisionally or sped finally in the outer room. They did not usually take tea, and when they did they did not usually drink it; but Beaton was feverishly glad of his cup; he took rum and lemon in it and stood talking at Mrs. Horn’s side till the next arrival should displace him; he talked in his French manner.

  “I have been hoping to see you,” she said. “1 wanted to ask you about the Leightons. Did they really come?”

  “I believe so. They are in town—yes. I haven’t seen them.”

  “Then you don’t know how they’re getting on—that pretty creature, with her cleverness, and poor Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturing on a rash experiment. Do you know where they are?”

  “In West Eleventh Street somewhere. Miss Leighton is in Mr. Wetmore’s class.”

  “I must look them up. Do you know their number?”

  “Not at the moment. I can find out.”

  “Do,” said Mrs. Horn. “What courage they must have, to plunge into New York as they’ve done! I really didn’t think they would. I wonder if they’ve succeeded in getting anybody into their house yet?”

  “I don’t know,” said Beaton.

  “I discouraged their coming all I could,” she sighed, “and 1 suppose you did too. But it’s quite useless trying to make people in a place like St. Barnaby understand how it is in town.”

  “Yes,” said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while inwardly he tried to believe that he had really discouraged the Leightons from coming to New York. Perhaps the vexation of his failure made him call Mrs. Horn in his heart a fraud.

  “Yes,” she went on. “It is very, very hard. And when they won’t understand and rush on their doom, you feel that they are going to hold you respons—”

  Mrs. Horn’s eyes wandered from Beaton; her voice faltered in the faded interest of her remark and then rose with renewed vigor in greeting a lady who came up and stretched her glove across the teacups.

  Beaton got himself away and out of the house with a much briefer adieu to the niece than he had meant to make. The patronizing compassion of Mrs. Horn for the Leightons filled him with indignation toward her, toward himself. There was no reason why he should not have ignored them as he had done; but there was a feeling. It was his nature to be careless, and he had been spoiled into recklessness; he neglected everybody, and only remembered them when it suited his whim or his convenience; but he fiercely resented the inattention of others toward himself. He had no scruple about breaking an engagement or failing to keep an appointment; he made promises without thinking of their fulfillment, and not because he was a faithless person, but because he was imaginative, and expected at the time to do what he said, but was fickle, and so did not. As most of his shortcomings were of a society sort, no great harm was done to anybody else. He had contracted somewhat the circle of his acquaintance by what some people called his rudeness, but most people treated it as his oddity, and were patient with it. One lady said she valued his coming when he said he would come because it had the charm of the unexpected. “Only it shows that it isn’t always the unexpected that happens,” she explained.

  It did not occur to him that his behavior was immoral; he did not realize that it was creating a reputation if not a character for him. While we are still young we do not realize that our actions have this effect. It seems to us that people will judge us from what we think and feel. Later we find out that this is impossible; perhaps we find it out too late; some of us never find it out at all.

  In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Beaton had no present intention of looking them up or sending Mrs. Horn their address. As a matter of fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet Mr. Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where he dined, and he got it of the painter for himself. He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was getting on; but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on the futility of women generally going in for art. “Even when they have talent they’ve got too much against them. Where a girl doesn’t seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help.”

  His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do.

  “No, Dolly,” he persisted; “she’d better be home milking the cows and leading the horse to water.”

  “Do you think she’d better be up till two in the morning at balls and going all day to receptions and luncheons?”

  “Oh, I guess it isn’t a question of that, even if she weren’t drawing. You knew them at home?” he said to Beaton.

  “Yes.”

 
“I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has some notion of it; there’s no doubt about that. But—she’s a woman. The trouble with all these talented girls is that they’re all woman. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we’ve got Providence on our own side from the start. I’m able to watch all their inspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it’s going to end in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and put them out of their misery.”

  “And what will you do with your students who are married already?” his wife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough.

  “Oh, they ought to get divorced.”

  “You ought to be ashamed to take their money, if that’s what you think of them.”

  “My dear, I have a wife to support.”

  Beaton intervened with a question. “Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn’t standing it very well?”

  “How do I know? She isn’t the kind that bends; she’s the kind that breaks.”

  After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, “Won’t you come home with us, Mr. Beaton?”

  “Thank you; no. I have an engagement.”

  “I don’t see why that should prevent you,” said Wetmore. “But you always were a punctilious cuss. Well!”

  Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else whom he knew came in, and he yielded to the threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, of inclination, in going to call at the Leightons’. He asked for the ladies, and the maid showed him into the parlor, where he found Mrs. Leighton and Miss Woodburn.

  The widow met him with a welcome neatly marked by resentment; she meant him to feel that his not coming sooner had been noticed. Miss Woodburn bubbled and gurgled on, and did what she could to mitigate his punishment, but she did not feel authorized to stay it, till Mrs. Leighton, by studied avoidance of her daughter’s name, obliged Beaton to ask for her. Then Miss Woodburn caught up her work and said, “Ah’ll go and tell her, Mrs. Leighton.” At the top of the stairs she found Alma, and Alma tried to make it seem as if she had not been standing there. “Mah goodness, chald! There’s the handsomest young man asking for you down there you evah saw. Ah told you’ mothah Ah would come up fo’ you.”

  “What—who is it?”

  “Don’t you know? But ho’ could you? He’s got the most beautiful eyes, and he wea’s his hai’ in a bang, and he talks English like it was something else, and his name’s Mr. Beaton.”

  “Did he—ask for me?” said Alma, with a dreamy tone. She put her hand on the stairs rail, and a little shiver ran over her.

  “Didn’t Ah tell you? Of co’se he did! And you ought to go raght down if you want to save the poo’ fellah’s lahfe; you’ mothah’s jost freezin’ him to death.”

  V

  “SHE IS?” cried Alma. “Tchk!” She flew downstairs, and flitted swiftly into the room, and fluttered up to Beaton, and gave him a crushing handshake.

  “How very kind of you to come and see us, Mr. Beaton! When did you come to New York? Don’t you find it warm here? We’ve only just lighted the furnace, but with this mild weather it seems too early. Mamma does keep it so hot!” She rushed about opening doors and shutting registers, and then came back and sat facing him from the sofa with a mask of radiant cordiality. “How have you been since we saw you?”

  “Very well,” said Beaton. “I hope you’re well, Miss Leighton?”

  “Oh, perfectly! I think New York agrees with us both wonderfully. I never knew such air. And to think of our not having snow yet! I should think everybody would want to come here! Why don’t you come, Mr. Beaton?”

  Beaton lifted his eyes and looked at her. “I—I live in New York,” he faltered.

  “In New York City!” she exclaimed.

  “Surely, Alma,” said her mother, “you remember Mr. Beaton’s telling us he lived in New York.”

  “But I thought you came from Rochester; or was it Syracuse? I always get those places mixed up.”

  “Probably I told you my father lived at Syracuse. I’ve been in New York ever since I came home from Paris,” said Beaton, with the confusion of a man who feels himself played upon by a woman.

  “From Paris!” Alma echoed, leaning forward, with her smiling mask tight on. “Wasn’t it Munich, where you studied?”

  “I was at Munich too. I met Wetmore there.”

  “Oh, do you know Mr. Wetmore?”

  “Why, Alma,” her mother interposed again, “it was Mr. Beaton who told you of Mr. Wetmore.”

  “Was it? Why, yes, to be sure. It was Mrs. Horn suggested Mr. Ilcomb. I remember now. I can’t thank you enough for having sent me to Mr. Wetmore, Mr. Beaton. Isn’t he delightful? Oh yes, I’m a perfect Wetmorian, I can assure you. The whole class is the same way.”

  “I just met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner,” said Beaton, attempting the recovery of something that he had lost through the girl’s shining ease and steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth and hard, with a repellent elasticity from which he was flung off. “I hope you’re not working too hard, Miss Leighton?”

  “Oh no! I enjoy every minute of it and grow stronger on it. Do I look very much wasted away?” She looked him full in the face, brilliantly smiling and intentionally beautiful.

  “No,” he said, with a slow sadness; “I never saw you looking better.”

  “Poor Mr. Beaton!” she said, in recognition of his doleful tone. “It seems to be quite a blow.”

  “Oh no—”

  “I remember all the good advice you used to give me about not working too hard, and probably it’s that that’s saved my life—that and the house-hunting. Has Mamma told you of our adventures in getting settled? Sometime we must. It was such fun! And don’t you think we were fortunate to get such a pretty house? You must see both our parlors.”

  She jumped up, and her mother followed her with a bewildered look as she ran into the back parlor and flashed up the gas.

  “Come in here, Mr. Beaton. I want to show you the great feature of the house.” She opened the low windows that gave upon a glazed veranda stretching across the end of the room. “Just think of this in New York! You can’t see it very well at night, but when the southern sun pours in here all afternoon—”

  “Yes, I can imagine it,” he said. He glanced up at the birdcage hanging from the roof. “I suppose Gypsy enjoys it.”

  “You remember Gypsy?” she said; and she made a cooing, kissing little noise up at the bird, who responded drowsily. “Poor old Gypsum! Well, he shan’t be disturbed. Yes, it’s Gyp’s delight; and Colonel Woodburn likes to write here in the morning. Think of us having a real live author in the house! And Miss Woodburn; I’m so glad you’ve seen her! They’re Southern people.”

  “Yes, that was obvious in her case.”

  “From her accent? Isn’t it fascinating? I didn’t believe I could ever endure Southerners, but we’re like one family with the Woodburns. I should think you’d want to paint Miss Woodburn. Don’t you think her coloring is delicious? And such a quaint kind of eighteenth-century type of beauty! But she’s perfectly lovely every way, and everything she says is so funny. The Southerners seem to be such great talkers; better than we are, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Beaton in pensive discouragement. He was sensible of being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from the performer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glittered upon him to the last with a keen impenetrable candor, a childlike singleness of glance, covering unfathomable reserve.

  “Well, Alma!” said her mother, when the door had closed upon him.

  “Well, Mother!” Then, after a moment, she said, with a rush: “Did you think I was going to let him suppose we were piqued at his not coming? Did you suppose I was going to let him patroni
ze us, or think that we were in the least dependent on his favor or friendship?”

  Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She merely said, “I shouldn’t think he would come anymore.”

  “Well, we have got on so far without him; perhaps we can live through the rest of the winter.”

  “I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was quite stupefied. I could see that he didn’t know what to make of you.”

  “He’s not required to make anything of me,” said Alma.

  “Do you think he really believed you had forgotten all those things?”

  “Impossible to say, ma’am.”

  “Well, I don’t think it was quite right, Alma.”

  “I’ll leave him to you the next time. Miss Woodburn said you were freezing him to death when I came down.”

  “That was quite different. But there won’t be any next time, I’m afraid,” sighed Mrs. Leighton.

  Beaton went home feeling sure there would not. He tried to read when he got to his room; but Alma’s looks, tones, gestures, whirred through and through the woof of the story like shuttles; he could not keep them out, and he fell asleep at last, not because he forgot them, but because he forgave them. He was able to say to himself that he had been justly cut off from kindness which he knew how to value in losing it. He did not expect ever to right himself in Alma’s esteem; but he hoped someday to let her know that he had understood. It seemed to him that it would be a good thing if she should find it out after his death. He imagined her being touched by it under those circumstances.

  VI

  IN THE MORNING it seemed to Beaton that he had done himself injustice. When he uncovered his Judas and looked at it, he could not believe that the man who was capable of such work deserved the punishment Miss Leighton had inflicted upon him. He still forgave her, but in the presence of a thing like that he could not help respecting himself; he believed that if she could see it she would be sorry that she had cut herself off from his acquaintance. He carried this strain of conviction all through his syndicate letter, which he now took out of his desk and finished, with an increasing security of his opinions and a mounting severity in his judgments. He retaliated upon the general condition of art among us the pangs of wounded vanity which Alma had made him feel, and he folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket, almost healed of his humiliation. He had been able to escape from its sting so entirely while he was writing that the notion of making his life more and more literary commended itself to him. As it was now evident that the future was to be one of renunciation, of self-forgetting, an oblivion tinged with bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of reconsidering his resolution against Fulkerson’s offer. One must call it reasoning, but it was rather that swift internal dramatization which constantly goes on in persons of excitable sensibilities, and which now seemed to sweep Beaton physically along toward the Every Other Week office and carried his mind with lightning celerity on to a time when he should have given that journal such quality and authority in matters of art as had never been enjoyed by any in America before. With the prosperity which he made attend his work he changed the character of the enterprise, and with Fulkerson’s enthusiastic support he gave the public an art journal of as high grade as Les Lettres et les Arts, and very much that sort of thing. All this involved now the unavailing regret of Alma Leighton, and now his reconciliation with her; they were married in Grace Church, because Beaton had once seen a marriage there and had intended to paint a picture of it sometime.