Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  A few stragglers, looking as jaded as himself for the most part, lounged on the seats along the walks, or hung listless on the parapet of the bridge. The spiteful English sparrows scattered their sharp, irritating notes through the air, and quarreled about over the grass, or made love like the nagging lovers out of a lady’s novel.

  When Ford at last withdrew his absent eyes from the swans and looked up, he was aware of a large and flabby presence, which towered, in the sense that a lofty mold of jelly may be said to tower, on the path directly before him. In this he gradually recognized an acquaintance of the spiritual séance, and finally knew the mottled face of Mr. Eccles; the morning was unseasonably close and warm; his hat was off, and the breeze played with the hair that crept thinly over his crown; his shirt and collar were clean, but affected the spectator differently.

  “A-r-r-h — good-morning!” he said, with a slow, hard smoothness, staring intently at Ford, with a set smile and shut teeth.

  “How d’ ye do!” answered Ford, without interest.

  “Nice morning,” said Mr. Eccles, turning half about, and describing it with a wave of his limp-rimmed silk hat.

  “Very pleasant,” assented Ford, making no motion to rise, and neither inviting nor forbidding further conversation.

  “A habitual early riser?” suggested Mr. Eccles. “No, I merely happen to be up.”

  “I rise early myself,” said Mr. Eccles. “It is my digestion. I sleep badly.” He looked, as he spoke, like a man who had never slept well. “Your friend, I presume, is not troubled in his digestion?”

  “If you mean Mr. Phillips,” replied Ford, with a cold ray of amusement, “I believe not. He makes it a matter of conscience to digest well.”

  “It isn’t that, sir,” said Mr. Eccles. “I have experimented in the matter a great deal. I have tried to digest well on principle, but that does not reach the root of the trouble. It may be alleviated by the proper influences; but this sourness.”

  —— he struck his stomach softly—” seems to be the material response to some spiritual ferment which we are at present powerless to escape. I am satisfied that the large majority of our indigestion, sir, comes from the existing imperfections of mediumization.”

  “Some philosophers attribute it to pie,” said Ford, neutrally.

  “That is a very superficial way of looking at it,” returned Mr. Eccles. “If we could once establish the true relations with the other life, pie wouldn’t stand in our way.”

  “I’ve no doubt that those who establish their relations in the old-fashioned way, by dying, are not troubled by pie,” said Ford.

  “Oh, death is not necessary to a complete rapport,” returned Mr. Eccles, somewhat impatiently. “I have long been satisfied of that. It may even prove an obstacle. What we want is to place ourselves in connection with the regions of order and peace. Till we can do this, we must feel the effects of the acidity, as I may call it, which characterizes the crude and unsettled spiritual existence reached by our present system of mediumization. We had an illustration of that the other night, sir, in the vulgar violence of the manifestations. I was ashamed that any person of refinement should have been invited to witness such a — a saturnalia. I should have withdrawn from the circle myself, at once, as soon as I perceived what the character of the communications was likely to be, if it had not been for my regard for Dr. Boynton and his daughter. There is no doubt in my mind, sir, that if we had then been in communication with ladies and gentlemen of the other life, the circle could have been broken with impunity. As it was, you saw the brutality with which the violation of a single condition was resented by the savage crew we had suffered to be called about us. They dreaded to lose an opportunity for riot. The consequence was that Miss Boynton’s hand was caught and crushed till the setting of her ring cut to the bone; then she was flung to the ground. The only redeeming feature, the only hopeful aspect, of the affair was the apparition which terminated the disgraceful scene. Undoubtedly the hand which turned on the gas was a celestial agency of the highest and purest type.”

  Ford let his gaze, which had been dwelling upon Mr. Eccles’s face with cold scrutiny, drop to the ground. “I hope,” he said, “that Miss Boynton has quite recovered from her — accident.”

  “It was a shock,” returned Mr. Eccles, candidly, “and her physique is delicate. She is a mingling of the finest elements, but the proportions are so adjusted that the equilibrium is very easily disturbed. Her digestion, I should say, was normally very good. She is evidently in relation, for the most part, with settled and orderly essences.” He again set his teeth, and shone upon Ford with a wide, joyless smile. He waited for a moment, and Ford making no sign of interest, he said “Good-morning,” and towered tremulously away, carrying his hat in his hand, and letting his baldness take the breeze as he walked.

  When he was gone, Ford sat in a long reverie, from which he was roused by the clock of the Arlington Street church striking eight, which was his breakfast hour. He rose, and strolled down the path and across the street to his lodging, which he entered with his latch-key. The other boarders, with their morning freshness of toilet upon them, were lounging or tripping down-stairs to breakfast, and met him with various degrees of interest, umbrage, and indifference in their salutation as he went up. The men mostly growled at him, with settled dislike in their tones; some of the women beheld him with pique, others with kindly curiosity; one little lady, in a pretty morning-robe, warbled at him, as she swept her skirts aside to make room for him at the turn of the stairs, “Doing the early bird, Mr. Ford?”

  “No; the early worm,” he returned with as little effusion as he had lavished upon Mr. Eccles.

  The lady gave him the slant of a laughing face, turned up at him, as she tripped down the stairs. “Don’t disagree with the bird!” she said saucily. She had achieved celebrity among the other ladies by not being afraid of him.

  He seemed not to think any answer necessary, and passed up two more flights to his room, which was small and in the rear of the house. It was cheerlessly furnished with a tumbled bed and two or three chairs and a large table, on which many papers and books, arranged in scrupulously neat order, left a small vacant space at one corner for writing, where some sheets of fresh manuscript lay. On the window seat were some chemical materials and apparatus; on the chimney shelf some faded photographs; a tobacco pouch and pipes. Ford’s business was with the manuscript leaves, which he took up and tore carefully into small pieces. He flung these into the grate, and then, with a conscious air, lifted one of the pipes, and fingered it a moment before he turned to leave the room. It was as if he had not liked the witness of his wonted environment of this act of his. He went on, down to breakfast, and took his place at a table as yet but sparsely tenanted. The lively lady of the stairs-landing was there; she sat long at meat, morning, noon, and night, not for the material, but for the mental refreshment; for she found that more people could be made to give some account of themselves there than anywhere else. She was sipping her coffee out of her spoon, and looking about her between sips, with a disengaged air, when Ford came in, and she fastened upon him over a good stretch of table, at once.

  “Perhaps you went out so early in order to see a ghost, Mr. Ford?”

  “Very likely,” answered Ford, making a listless decision between the steak and the bacon.

  “And did you?”

  “What?”

  “See one.”

  “They always charge people not to say.”

  “Ah, not nowadays! They want you to go and tell all about it. That’s what I understand from Mr. Phillips.” She sank back a little into herself, with her eyes resting quietly upon Ford’s inattentive face, and her elbow brought gracefully to her side, and softly stirred her coffee. She was not of the society in which Mr. Phillips ordinarily moved, but was one of the interesting people on its borders whom his leisure allowed him to cultivate. She thus became in some sort of his world, — enough at least to know what was going on in it, and to be referred
to there as Mr. Phillips’s bright little friend, by ladies who did not like her. She waited for Ford to speak in response to her last remark; but he was not one of those men who rush like air into any empty place; he had the gift of reticence, and the lady who had planned the vacuum beheld his self-control with admiration. It piqued her to fresh effort; she believed that his speaking was only a question of time. “Mr. Phillips,” she went on, beginning to sip her coffee again, “gave me quite a glowing description of the Pythoness, as he called her; quite a Medea-like beauty, I should judge, — if it was her own hair.”

  “Mr. Phillips has a very catholic taste in female loveliness,” said Ford.

  “But really, now, Mr. Ford,” said the lady, in a tone of alluring candor, “weren’t you very much frightened?”

  “I am constitutionally timid.”

  The lady laughed. “Then you were! What did you make of it all, Mr. Ford? What do you suppose made the cut in her hand? Don’t you think she made it herself? You know Mr. Phillips likes mystery, and he wouldn’t offer the least suggestion.”

  “Then I don’t think it would be wise in me to hazard a guess. I don’t see Mr. Perham, this morning,” said Ford, lifting his eyes for the first time, and lazily looking at the vacant places about the lady.

  She visibly honored him for this demonstration upon her weak point. She was a good-natured creature, and she liked skillful maneuvering, especially in men, where it had the piquancy of a surprise. “Oh, no!” she smiled. “Poor Mr. Perham is not equal to these early breakfasts. If you were often down yourself, Mr. Ford, you would have noticed his absence before this. He lets me come down on condition that I bring him his modest chop with my own hand, when I come up. You have no idea what a truly amiable invalid is till you know Mr. Perham well.”

  Ford expressed no concern for the intimate character of Mr. Perham, and after some further toying with her spoon Mrs. Perham slipped back to her point of attack: “I don’t know but I ought to make my excuses for trying to provoke you to talk of the matter.”

  “I don’t mind your trying. But I should have been vexed if you had succeeded.”

  “Yes, that would have been a dead loss of material. I suppose you intend to write about it.”

  A flush passed over Ford’s face, which Mrs. Perham gleefully noted. He replied, a little off his balance, that he had no intention of writing of it.

  “Oh, then, you have written!” joyed Mrs. Perham.

  Ford did not answer, but put his napkin into his ring, and rose from his chair, quitting the room with a faintly visible inclination toward the end of the table at which Mrs. Perham sat.

  “Mrs. Perham, I don’t see how you can bear to speak to that man,” said one of the ladies.

  “His manners are odious!” cried another.

  “Oh, he has manners then — of some sort?” inquired a third. “I hadn’t observed.”

  “My dears,” said Mrs. Perham, “he’s charming! He is as natural as the noble savage, and twice as handsome. I like those men who show their contempt of you. At least, they ‘re not hypocrites. And Mr. Ford’s insolence has a sort of cold thrill about it that’s delicious. Few men can retreat with dignity. He was routed, just now, but he went off like see the conquering hero.”

  “He skulked off,” said one of the unpersuaded. “Skulked? Did he really skulk?” demanded Mrs. Perham. “I wish I could believe I had made him skulk. Mary, have you Mr. Perham’s chop ready? I’ll take it up, — I said I took it.”

  Mrs. Perham laughed, and disappeared with her little tray, like a conjugal Chocolatière, and the ladies continued for a decent space to talk about Ford. Then they began to talk about her.

  III.

  Ford went back to his room, and turned over some new books which he had on his table for review. He could not make his choice among these volumes, or else he found them all unworthy; for after an absent glance at the deep chair in which he usually sat to read, he looked up his hat and went out, taking his way toward the shabbily adventurous street where the Boyntons had their lodgings.

  Dr. Boynton met him at the door of his apartment with a smile of cheerful cordiality; but when Ford mentioned his encounter with Mr. Eccles, and expressed his hope that Miss Boynton was better, “Well, no,” answered the doctor, “I cannot say that she is. She has had a shock, — a shock from which she may be days and even weeks in recovering.” He rubbed his small, soft hands together, and beamed upon Ford’s cold front almost rapturously.

  “I am very sorry to hear it,” said the latter, with a glance of misgiving.

  “Yes, yes,” admitted the other. “In some respects it is regrettable. But there are in this case, as in all others, countervailing advantages.” He settled himself comfortably in the corner of the sofa as he proceeded. “Yes. The whole episode, on its scientific side, has been eminently satisfactory. The character of the manifestations at the séance, the violence with which neglect of the conditions was resented, the subsequent effects, primary and secondary, on the nervous organism of the medium, and indeed of almost all persons present, have been singularly impressive, and indicative of novel and momentous developments. I don’t know, Mr. Ford, whether you have had an opportunity of conversing with any of our friends, since the evening in question, but I have seen many of them, and they have all testified to an experience which, however difficult of formulation, was most distinct. It appears to have been something analogous to the electrization of persons in the vicinity of a point struck by lightning. In the case of Mrs. Le Roy there has scarcely been a cessation of the effects. The raps in her room have been almost continuous, and the furniture of the whole house has been affected. Miss Boynton has suffered the greatest distress from the continuance of the manifestations, and her mind is oppressed by influences which she is apparently powerless to throw off. In a word, everything has worked most harmoniously to the best advantage, and the progress made has been all that we could wish. Mr. Eccles perhaps told you of a marked increase of the discomfort he habitually suffers from indigestion?”

  Ford hardly knew whether to laugh or rage at all this, but he merely said that Mr. Eccles had mentioned his dyspepsia, and remained in a bitter indecision, while Dr. Boynton went on. “Ah, yes I yes, yes! I think we may safely refer the aggravation of his complaint to the influences, still active, of our memorable séance. But I am not sure that Mr. Eccles’s peculiar theory is the correct one. I distrust his speculations in some degree. A ferment of the kind he speaks of in the world of spirits would be more apt to ultimate itself here in the mind than in the stomach.”

  “Do you generally distrust speculations in regard to these matters?” asked Ford.

  “I distrust all special speculation,” said the doctor. “We physicians know what specialism leads to in medicine. I prefer to base my convictions solely upon facts.”

  “Are you able to satisfy yourself as to the facts of the séance here, the other night?”

  “Not absolutely, — no. Not entirely. As yet we are only able to approximate facts.”

  “Then as yet you have only approximated convictions?” asked Ford.

  “As yet I am only inquiring,” said the doctor, with sweet acquiescence. “Startling and significant as those manifestations were, I feel that I am still only an inquirer. But I feel also that I have gained certain points which will almost infallibly lead me to a final conclusion in the matter.”

  “Then you mean to say,” pursued Ford, “that as a man of science you rose from Mrs. Le Roy’s experiments in sleight of hand, the other night, with a degree of satisfaction. Have you the slightest confidence in her powers?”

  “Why, there,” replied Boynton, “you touch upon a strange problem. I am always aware, in these matters, of an obscurity of motive and of opinion which will not allow me to make any explicit answer to such a question as yours.”