Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “That’s so, every time,” said Hatch.

  “I don’t care for my consistency in the thing; I’d rather do him justice. I’ve come to his own ground, and yours: I want to say that when I interfered with him there in Boston he had a noble motive, and I had an ignoble one.”

  “If you ‘re not firing over my head,” said Hatch, “and if I catch your meaning rightly, I’m bound to confess that the doctor had got mixed up with a pretty queer lot in the course of his researches. But he was all right himself. I pinned my faith to him, right along. But if you mean that you ‘re going in for anything like spiritualism, I advise you to hush it up among yourself. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve about come to that conclusion. And I think Miss Egeria’s had enough of it.”

  His mention of her name in this connection was at first puzzling, and at last so offensive to Ford that he found it harder than he had thought to say what he now said. After a dry assent to Hatch’s proposition, he added, “I dare say you ‘re right. Mr. Hatch, I treated you shabbily when we met last. I am sorry for that, and ashamed of it. I should have behaved better, if I had understood better”—” Oh, I knew how it was, myself,” Hatch interrupted. “Or I did when I came to think of it.” Ford looked at him as if he did not comprehend his drift; and Hatch continued, “It was pretty rough at the time, but I suppose I should have acted just so, in your place. Well, sir! I hope we part better friends, now,” he said, offering his hand. “I think that’s what the old doctor would have liked. Some of his ideas were most too large a fit for this world, but he was pretty practical about others.”

  Ford took the proffered hand, and followed Hatch to his door, wholly baffled and unsettled. He longed to have it all out with him, but this was not possible, and he submitted as he best could. He had thought himself right in resolving not to follow Egeria home, or vex her with his presence before she went; but he was not sure of’ this now; and he spent the time intervening before her departure in an anguish of indecision. But he let her go without seeing her, and in the afternoon he went away, too.

  XXVII.

  HE did not go back to his old lodging in Boston, but spent a day at a hotel till he could find other quarters. It was intolerable to think of meeting any one he knew, and he had such a horror of Mrs. Perham’s possible return that he asked at the door whether she had come back before he went in to make ready for removal.

  When the change was effected, all change seemed forever at an end. The days went by without event; he could not write, but he took up again his study with the practical chemist, and pushed on with that through an unstoried month which brought him through the bluster and chill of September to the mellow heart of October.

  A chasm divided him from all that he had been, and he tried to keep from thinking across it. But his mind was full of broken glimpses of the past; of doubts of what he had done; of vague wonder if he should ever hear from her again, and how; of crazy purposes, broken as fast as formed, of going where he might look on her, if it might be only that, and know that she was still in life. There were terrible moments in which his heart was wrung with the possibility that his conjecture had been all wrong, and that she might be lingering in cruel amaze that he had never made any sign to her, and puzzling over the problem which his refusal to see her, or to stand with her at her father’s grave, had left her.

  One evening when he came home, he found a flat, square package, which had arrived through the mail after going first to his old address. It was directed in an old-fashioned, round hand, and it yielded softly to the touch with which he fingered it before he tore it open. It proved to hold a handkerchief, which he recognized as his own, fragrantly washed and ironed; and he found a little note pinned to it, and signed F. Plumb, explaining that the handkerchief had been found in his room. While he stood scowling at it, and trying to make out who F. Plumb was, and where he had left the handkerchief, he turned the scrap of paper over, and saw written in pencil on the back, as if the writer had wished to whisper it there, “I do not know as you heard that Egeria is back with us. Frances.”

  Now he knew, now he understood. All the hopes that had seemed dead sprang to life again.

  He caught up a paper, and looked at the timetables. The last train passing Vardley would leave in fifteen minutes. He turned the key in his door, and two hours later he was rounding the dark point of the wooded hill that intervenes between the station and the Shaker village, where a light sparely twinkled in the window of Elihu’s shop. He had walked, as he supposed, but his pace was more like a run from the train; and his heart thundered in his ears as he sat and panted on Elihu’s door-step, trying to gather courage to go in. At last he went in without the courage.

  Elihu was amazed, certainly, but hardly disquieted. He shut upon his thumb the book that he was reading, and pushed his spectacles above his forehead. “Friend Ford!” he said.

  “Yes!” answered the young man, still striving for breath, as he pressed the Shaker’s hand. “I have come — I have come” —

  “Yee,” Elihu assented; “sit down. We did not expect you, but the family will be glad to see you. Have you kept your health?”

  “Is she well? Is she going to stay with you? When did she come back?” The questions thronged upon one another faster than he could utter them, and he stopped perforce again.

  “I suppose you mean Egeria. Yee, she is well. She came back last week. I — I — wrote to you from her place that she was coming back.” Elihu colored with a guilty conscience.

  “I never got your letter. I only heard two hours ago that she was with you.”

  “She only stayed to settle up things there. I don’t know as Humphrey ever told you that her grandfather left his property to her?”

  “I don’t know — Yes, yes, — he did.”

  “There weren’t any of her folks left there, and her father had brought her up in such a way, late years, that she was pretty much a stranger outside of her grandfather’s house. When she got back there, she found that it was more like home to her here than anywhere else. Friend Hatch stayed a spell, to help her settle up the property, and then he had to go West again. As soon as she could she came to us.”

  “Elihu,” said Ford, who had listened with but half a sense, “I have come here to speak to her. Shall I do it? I want you to advise me. I want you to tell me” —

  “Nay, I must not meddle or make in this business,” said the Shaker.

  “You did meddle and make in it once,” retorted Ford, unresentfully but inflexibly, “and I recognized your right to do so, from your point of view; I submitted to you. We can’t withdraw from each other’s confidence now. I have a claim upon your advice. Besides, in all worldly knowledge that comes through acquaintance with women, I am as much a Shaker as you are. I only know that I must speak with her. If she cares anything for me, as you said she did, I must speak. But when? Shall I go away again, and come back after a while? Since we last talked together have you learned anything that makes you think she would be willing to spend her life among you? If you have, I will leave her alone. She could be at peace here; and I, — I have only brought her trouble and sorrow so far. Even if she cared for me, I would leave her to you — No, I wouldn’t! I couldn’t do that I By all that a man can be to a woman, I oughtn’t to do it! But what do you say?”

  Elihu had tilted his chair upon its hind-legs, and he rocked back and forth without bringing its forelegs to the ground. “I haven’t seen anything in her that would make me think she would like to stay with us. And I have heard that she intends to leave us as soon as she can find something to do in the world outside. Frances wants she should go to friends of hers in Boston that would help her find something. They’ve been talking about it this afternoon, and Egeria’s mind seems quite made up about going.”

  “Well,” repeated Ford, “may I speak with her?” —

  “I can’t answer you. I felt it a cross laid upon me to interfere against your showing your feeling for her here; but to interfere in behalf of it is a cross wh
ich I don’t have any call to take up — twice.”

  “Can I stay here to-night?” asked Ford.

  “Yee. They can give you a room at the office.”

  “Do you suppose Mrs. Williams could put me up some sort of bed in my old place? I would rather sleep there.”

  “Oh, yee, I guess so. I will step down with you and see.”

  “No, I’ll go alone. If she can’t, I’ll come back to the office. Good-night.”

  “Good-night,” said Elihu, with his flicker of a smile.

  Ford’s bed had not been taken down, and while the farmer’s wife made it ready for him with fresh sheets, he kindled a roaring fire on his hearth. He sat a long time before it, turning over and over in his mind the same doubt which had tormented him when he last sat there. But he could not believe that Frances and Elihu would have let him come back if there had been any grounds for this fear. It had burnt in his heart to ask Elihu, and solve it; but that seemed a sort of cowardice, and he had withheld the question. He would not know the truth now till he had put his own fate to the test, and spoken in defiance of whatever the answer might be.

  The next morning he perceived an undercurrent of deeply subdued excitement in such of the family as he met at the office, and a sympathy which he afterwards remembered with compassion. The brothers and sisters all shook hands with him, and, refraining from recognition of the suddenness of his return, said they were glad to see him back. “And that’s more than we can say to some of the friends from the world outside!” exclaimed Diantha, when her turn came. Ford was touched by this friendliness; a man so little used to being liked might overvalue it; but he looked impatiently about for Frances, and the sisters knew how to interpret his glance.

  “She’s gone over to put the infirmary to rights a little,” Rebecca explained. She added casually, “Egery’s over there with her, I guess. She wanted to go.”

  The sisters decently turned from the door, but they stood a little way back from the window, and looked at him there as he crossed the street.

  The door of the little house stood open, and Ford saw Frances within, dusting where there was no dust, and vainly rubbing the neat chairs with a cloth. The bed where Boynton had lain was dismantled: it seemed as if he might have risen to have it made for him. Ford expected to hear his voice, and a lump hung in his throat. When his sad eyes met those of Frances, he saw that hers were red with weeping. She gave her hand and said, “Good-morning, Friend Edward. I’m real glad to see you back again. We’ve all missed you. I was just thinkin’ how you and Friend Boynton seemed to have been with us always. He went to a better place; but where did you go? Do you think the world outside is better? I wish you could feel to stay with us, Edward!”

  “It isn’t possible,” said Ford, smiling sadly. “The only point on which I should agree with you is that the world outside is not so good a place.”

  “Well, that’s a great deal.”

  “It isn’t enough.”

  “Really,” said Frances, “it’s discouragin’ to hear you and Egery go on. You say everything that’s good of the Shakers, but you won’t be gathered in.”

  “I think everything that’s good of you. I honor and reverence you; I do everything but envy you. It’s another world that calls me.”

  “Yee,” sighed the Shakeress, “that’s just the way with Egery. I suppose I have been here so long that I don’t see anything strange in Shakers. The other people are the ones that are strange to me. But I can see’t it’s different with Egery. She’s had so much queerness in her life already ‘t I guess she don’t want to have much more. Was you surprised to hear’t she’d got back?”

  “I was very glad; and I’m very grateful to you, Frances” —

  “I s’posed the handkerchief must be yours,” Frances interrupted, with artful evasion. She went on to give some particulars of Boynton’s funeral and of their sojourn in Egeria’s old home and of her affairs. “It was real kind and good of Friend Hatch to stay as long as he did, and help her, especially as they do say he’s engaged to be married out West, there.” Something like a luminous concussion seemed to take place in Ford’s brain. The burden suddenly thrown from his soul left him light and giddy, and he clung for support to the door-post, while Frances prattled on: “Well, Humphrey says he’s a master-hand for business, and he’s sure to get along. He’s been a good friend to Egery, all through, and her father before her. I guess if Friend Boynton had taken his advice, there wouldn’t been so much sufferin’ for her. Well, she’s back with us again. But it’s only till she can find something for herself in the world outside.

  I suppose it’s natural for her to want to be like folks. That’s the way I look at it.”

  Ford’s heart throbbed. “Do you think I’m like folks, Frances?”

  “Not much,” replied Frances.

  “Do you think I could be, — for her sake?”

  A flash of joy, succeeded by a red blush, went over the pale face of the Shakeress. “You’d oughtn’t to talk to me of such things, Edward. You know it ain’t right.”

  “I know — I know,” pleaded the young man. “I know it’s all wrong. But — but I knew you knew about it, and I thought — I thought” —

  “She’s up in the orchard, by her apple-tree!” cried Frances, with hysterical abruptness. “Don’t you say another word to me!” But after Ford left the room, she ran to the door, and watched him going up the orchard aisle.

  Egeria stood leaning against the tree, and looking another way, and she might well have been ignorant of his approach through the fallen grass, till she heard his husky voice: —

  “I — I have come back — I would have come before, but I didn’t know you were here” — He had some intention of excusing himself, because in his cogitations it had occurred to him that she must have wondered why he had not come. But she only turned on him that face of intense resistance, changing to question, and then to wild appeal. “For Heaven’s sake,” he exclaimed, “don’t look at me in that way! What is the matter?”

  “Oh, why did you come back?” she cried. “Why couldn’t you have stayed away, and left me in peace?”

  He stood motionless, while his hopes seemed to fall in a tangible ruin round him. He saw now how eagerly he had built them on the fears of those fantastic communists, and how fondly he had hidden from himself all the reasons against them. He could have laughed at the ghastly wreck, but that he was too sick at heart. He moved his feet heavily, as if the long grass were fetters about them, and he tried to go; but without some other word he could not. “Well,” he said, at last, “if you ask me, I can’t tell you. I can go away again, and not molest you any more. Only, before I go, tell me —— you’ve not told me yet — that you forgive me, Egeria.” Her whispered name had been so often on his lips that he now spoke it aloud for the first time without knowing it. “Since your father is gone, I must be more hateful to you than ever. But I am going out of your way now; try to forgive me and to tell me so! Let me have your pardon to take with me.” She broke into a low sound of weeping, while he waited for her response. “Well, I will go. It’s best for me to know finally that, although you have tolerated me here, at the bottom of your heart you have always abhorred me.”

  “No, no! I didn’t say that.” —

  “Not in words, — no.”

  “But if you made me say that I forgave you” —

  “Make you say it? Nothing under heaven could make you say it! What is it you mean?” She looked up, and ran her eye in piteous search over his face.

  “When you first came there, in Boston, and when you hurt me; when we went after the leaves, and I forgot him; when I talked with you in the garden, and blamed him; when I went with you into the woods, and neglected him, almost the last day he lived — Oh, even if I couldn’t, I ought to hate you! Did you expect — Yes, I will, — I will never let you go, now, till you tell me whether it was true. He is gone, and I have no one to help me. I shall have to do for myself; but whatever my life is to be, I am going to hav
e it my own; and it isn’t mine if that is true.” —

  “If that is true?” repeated Ford, in stupefaction. “If what is true?”

  But the impulse which had carried her to this point failed her, apparently, and left her terrified at her own daring. She cowered at the involuntary step he made toward her, as a bird stoops for flight. “If what is true?” he reiterated. “Tell me what you mean!”

  He wondered if perhaps some rumor of his talk with Elihu had come to her, and she had wished to punish his presumption in trusting the Shaker’s conjecture regarding her; if she were resolved to wreak upon him her maidenly indignation at the community’s meddling. It seemed out of keeping with her and all the circumstances; but he could think of nothing else, and he darkly approached it: “If you have heard anything here that makes you think that I have come to you in anything but the humblest, the most reverent, spirit, I beseech you not to believe it! Has Elihu — or Frances — Is it something they have said?” —

  “No,” she said, and still shrunk away, as if he might be able to force the truth from her.

  “Then, what is it? Surely you won’t leave me in this perplexity? If there is anything that I can do or undo” —

  “No! Oh, go, for pity’s sake!”

  “I can’t go now,” said the young man. “I won’t go till you have told me what you mean. You must tell me.”

  She cast a strange glance at him. “If you make me tell you, that would show that it was true; and he was right when he used to say — I don’t want to believe it! Go, and let me try to think that you came here by chance, and that you stayed for his sake. Indeed, indeed, I can get to thinking again that you never tried to influence me in that way!”

  “In what way?” he asked, but now a gleam of light, lurid enough, began to steal upon his confusion. Her alternate eagerness and reluctance to be with him; her broken questions, the gestures, the looks, the tones, that had crossed with mystery the happiness he had known with her in the last weeks before her father’s death, and made it at its sweetest fearful and insecure, recurred to him with new meaning, and a profound compassion qualified his despair, and made him gentle and patient. “Is it possible,” he asked, “that you mean that old delusion of your father’s about me? And could you believe that I would try to control you against your will — to use some unnatural power over you? Ah!” he cried, “I couldn’t take even your forgiveness, now; for you might think that I had extorted it!” He looked sadly at her, but she did not speak, and he had a struggle to keep his pity of her from turning to execration of the unhappy man whose error could thus rise from his grave to cloud her soul; but he ruled himself, — not without an ominous remembrance of his former attempts to separate her cause from her father’s, — and brokenly continued: “Well, I have deserved that, too. But I know that before he died your father came to a clearer mind about those things, and I believe that now, wherever he is, nothing could grieve him more than to know that he had left you in that hideous superstition.” He looked with grave tenderness at her hidden face. “How could you think” — and now his tone expressed his wounded self-respect as well as his sorrow for her—” that I could be so false to both of us?”