Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “It’s the best thing you could possibly do. But you’re not feeling very bobbish now.” A woman respects the word a man uses, not because she would have chosen it, but because she thinks that he has an exact intention in it, which could not be reconveyed in a more feminine phrase. In this way slang arises. “Is n’t it time for Mr. Maynard to be here?”

  “Yes,” he answered. Then, “How did you know I was thinking of that?”

  “I did n’t. I only happened to think it was time. What are you keeping back, Mr. Libby?” she pursued tremulously.

  “Nothing, upon my honor. I almost wish there were something to keep back. But there is n’t anything. There have n’t been any accidents reported. And I should n’t keep anything back from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you would be equal to it, whatever it was.”

  “I don’t see why you say that.” She weakly found comfort in the praise which she might once have resented as patronage.

  “I don’t see why I should n’t,” he retorted:

  “Because I am not fit to be trusted at all.”

  “Do you mean” —

  “Oh, I haven’t the strength, to mean anything,” she said. “But I thank you, thank you very much,” she added. She turned her head away.

  “Confound Maynard!” cried the young man. “I don’t see why he does n’t come. He must have started four days ago. He ought to have’ had sense enough to telegraph when he did start. I did n’t tell his partner to ask him. You can’t think of everything. I’ve been trying to find out something. I’m going over to Leyden, now, to try to wake up somebody in Cheyenne who knows Maynard.” He looked ruefully at Grace, who listened with anxious unintelligence. “You’re getting worn out, Miss Breen,” he said. “I wish I could ask you to go with me to Leyden. It would do you good. But my mare’s fallen lame; I’ve just been to see her. Is there anything I can do for you over there?”

  “Why, how are you going?” she asked.

  “In my boat,” he answered consciously.

  “The same boat?”

  “Yes. I’ve had her put to rights. She was n’t much damaged.”

  She was silent a moment, while he stood looking down at her in the chair into which she had sunk. “Does it take you long?”

  “Oh, no. It’s shorter than it is by land. I shall have the tide with me both ways. I can make the run there and back in a couple of hours.”

  “Two hours?”

  “Yes.”

  A sudden impulse, unreasoned and unreasonable, in which there seemed hope of some such atonement, or expiation, as the same ascetic nature would once have found in fasting or the scourge, prevailed with her. She rose. “Mr. Libby,” she panted, “if you will let me, I should like to go with you in your boat. Do you think it will be rough?”

  “No, it’s a light breeze; just right. You need n’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid. I should not care if it were rough! I should not care if it stormed! I hope it — I will ask mother to stay with Mrs. Maynard.”

  Mrs. Breen had not been pleased to have her daughter in charge of Mrs. Maynard’s case, but she had not liked her giving it up. She had said more than once that she had no faith in Dr. Mulbridge. She willingly consented to Grace’s prayer, and went down into Mrs. Maynard’s room, and insinuated misgivings in which the sick woman found so much reason that they began for the first time to recognize each other’s good qualities. They decided that the treatment was not sufficiently active, and that she should either have something that would be more loosening to the cough, or some application — like mustard plasters — to her feet, so as to take away that stuffed feeling about the head.

  At that hour of the afternoon, when most of the ladies were lying down in their rooms, Grace met no one on the beach but Miss Gleason and Mrs. Alger, who rose from their beds of sand under the cliff at her passage with Mr. Libby to his dory.

  “Don’t you want to go to Leyden?” he asked jocosely over his shoulder.

  “You don’t mean to say you’re going?” Miss Gleason demanded of Grace.

  “Yes, certainly. Why not?”

  “Well, you are brave!”

  She shut her novel upon her thumb, that she might have nothing to do but admire Grace’s courage, as the girl walked away.

  “It will do her good, poor thing,” said the elder woman. “She looks wretchedly.”

  “I can understand just why she does it,” murmured Miss Gleason in adoring rapture.

  “I hope she does it for pleasure,” said Mrs. Alger.

  “It is n’t that,” returned Miss Gleason mysteriously.

  “At any rate, Mr. Libby seemed pleased.”

  “Oh, she would never marry HIM!” said Miss Gleason.

  The other laughed, and at that moment Grace also laughed. The strong current of her purpose, the sense of escape from the bitter servitude of the past week, and the wild hope of final expiation through the chances she was tempting gave her a buoyancy long unfelt. She laughed in gayety of heart as she helped the young man draw his dory down the sand, and then took her place at one end while he gave it the last push and then leaped in at the other. He pulled out to where the boat lay tilting at anchor, and held the dory alongside by the gunwale that she might step aboard. But after rising she faltered, looking intently at the boat as if she missed something there.

  “I thought you had a man to sail your boat”

  “I had. But I let him go last week. Perhaps I ought to have told you,” he said, looking up at her aslant. “Are you afraid to trust my seamanship? Adams was a mere form. He behaved like a fool that day.”

  “Oh, I’m not afraid,” said Grace. She stepped from the dory into the boat, and he flung out the dory’s anchor and followed. The sail went up with a pleasant clucking of the tackle, and the light wind filled it. Libby made the sheet fast, and, sitting down in the stern on the other side, took the tiller and headed the boat toward the town that shimmered in the distance. The water hissed at the bow, and seethed and sparkled from the stern; the land breeze that bent their sail blew cool upon her cheek and freshened it with a tinge of color.

  “This will do you good,” he said, looking into hers with his kind, gay eyes.

  The color in her cheeks deepened a little. “Oh, I am better than I look. I did n’t come for” —

  “For medicinal purposes. Well, I am glad of it. We’ve a good hour between us and news or no news from Maynard, and I should like to think we were out for pleasure. You don’t object?”

  “No. You can even smoke, if that will heighten the illusion.”

  “It will make it reality. But you don’t mean it?”

  “Yes; why not?”

  “I don’t know. But I could n’t have dreamt of smoking in your presence. And we take the liberty to dream very strange things.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s shocking what things we do dream of people. But am I so forbidding?” she asked, a little sadly.

  “Not now,” said Libby. He got out a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette papers, and putting the tiller under his arm, he made himself a cigarette.

  “You seem interested,” he said, as he lifted his eyes from his work, on which he found her intent, and struck his fusee.

  “I was admiring your skill,” she answered.

  “Do you think it was worth a voyage to South America?”

  “I shouldn’t have thought the voyage was necessary.”

  “Oh, perhaps you think you can do it,” he said, handing her the tobacco and papers. She took them and made a cigarette. “It took me a whole day to learn to make bad ones, and this, is beautiful. But I will never smoke it. I will keep this always.”

  “You had better smoke it, if you want more,” she said.

  “Will you make some more? I can’t smoke the first one!”

  “Then smoke the last,” she said, offering him the things back.

  “No, go on. I’ll smoke it.”

  She lent herself to the idle humor of the time
, and went on making cigarettes till there were no more papers. From time to time she looked up from this labor, and scanned the beautiful bay, which they had almost wholly to themselves. They passed a collier lagging in the deep channel, and signalling for a pilot to take her up to the town. A yacht, trim and swift, cut across their course; the ladies on board waved a salutation with their handkerchiefs, and Libby responded.

  “Do you know them?” asked Grace.

  “No!” he laughed. “But ladies like to take these liberties at a safe distance.”

  “Yes, that’s a specimen of woman’s daring,” she said, with a self-scornful curl of the lip, which presently softened into a wistful smile. “How lovely it all is!” she sighed.

  “Yes, there’s nothing better in all the world than a sail. It is all the world while it lasts. A boat’s like your own fireside for snugness.”

  A dreamier light came into her eye, which wandered, with a turn of the head giving him the tender curve of her cheek, over the levels of the bay, roughened everywhere by the breeze, but yellowish green in the channels and dark with the thick growth of eel-grass in the shallows; then she lifted her face to the pale blue heavens in an effort that slanted towards him the soft round of her chin, and showed her full throat.

  “This is the kind of afternoon,” she said, still looking at the sky, “that you think will never end.”

  “I wish it would n’t,” he answered.

  She lowered her eyes to his, and asked: “Do you have times when you are sorry that you ever tried to do anything — when it seems foolish to have tried?”

  “I have the other kind of times, — when I wish that I had tried to do something.”

  “Oh yes, I have those, too. It’s wholesome to be ashamed of not having tried to do anything; but to be ashamed of having tried — it’s like death. There seems no recovery from that.”

  He did not take advantage of her confession, or try to tempt her to further confidence; and women like men who have this wisdom, or this instinctive generosity, and trust them further.

  “And the worst of it is that you can’t go back and be like those that have never tried at all. If you could, that would be some consolation for having failed. There is nothing left of you but your mistake.”

  “Well,” he said, “some people are not even mistakes. I suppose that almost any sort of success looks a good deal like failure from the inside. It must be a poor creature that comes up to his own mark. The best way is not to have any mark, and then you’re in no danger of not coming up to it.” He laughed, but she smiled sadly.

  “You don’t believe in thinking about yourself,” she said.

  “Oh, I try a little introspection, now and then. But I soon get through: there isn’t much of me to think about.”

  “No, don’t talk in that way,” she pleaded, and she was very charming in her earnestness: it was there that her charm lay. “I want you to be serious with me, and tell me — tell me how men feel when.” —

  A sudden splashing startled her, and looking round she saw a multitude of curious, great-eyed, black heads, something like the heads of boys, and something like the heads of dogs, thrusting from the water, and flashing under it again at sight of them with a swish that sent the spray into the air. She sprang to her feet. “Oh, look at those things! Look at them! Look at them!” She laid vehement hands upon the young man, and pushed him in the direction in which she wished him to look, at some risk of pushing him overboard, while he laughed at her ecstasy.

  “They’re seals. The bay’s full of them. Did you never see them on the reef at Jocelyn’s?”

  “I never saw them before!” she cried. “How wonderful they are! Oh!” she shouted; as one of them glanced sadly at her over its shoulder, and then vanished with a whirl of the head. “The Beatrice Cenci attitude!”

  “They ‘re always trying that,” said Libby. “Look yonder.” He pointed to a bank of mud which the tide had not yet covered, and where a herd of seals lay basking in the sun. They started at his voice, and wriggling and twisting and bumping themselves over the earth to the water’s edge, they plunged in. “Their walk isn’t so graceful as their swim. Would you like one for a pet, Miss Breen? That’s all they ‘re good for since kerosene came in. They can’t compete with that, and they’re not the kind that wear the cloaks.”

  She was standing with her hand pressed hard upon his shoulder.

  “Did they ever kill them?”

  “They used to take that precaution.”

  “With those eyes? It was murder!” She withdrew her hand and sat down.

  “Well, they only catch them, now. I tried it myself once. I set out at low tide, about ten o’clock, one night, and got between the water and the biggest seal on the bank. We fought it out on that line till daylight.”

  “And did you get it?” she demanded, absurdly interested.

  “No, it got me. The tide came in, and the seal beat.”

  “I am glad of that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What did you want with it?”

  “I don’t think I wanted it at all. At any rate, that’s what I always said. I shall have to ask you to sit on this side,” he added, loosening the sheet and preparing to shift the sail. “The wind has backed round a little more to the south, and it’s getting lighter.”

  “If it’s going down we shall be late,” she said, with an intimation of apprehension.

  “We shall be at Leyden on time. If the wind falls then, I can get a horse at the stable and have you driven back.”

  “Well.”

  He kept scanning the sky. Then, “Did you ever hear them whistle for a wind?” he asked.

  “No. What is it like?”

  “When Adams does it, it’s like this.” He put on a furtive look, and glanced once or twice at her askance. “Well!” he said with the reproduction of a strong nasal, “of course I don’t believe there’s anything in it. Of course it’s all foolishness. Now you must urge me a little,” he added, in his own manner.

  “Oh, by all means go on, Mr. Adams,” she cried, with a laugh.

  He rolled his head again to one side sheepishly.

  “Well, I don’t presume it DOES have anything to do with the wind — well, I don’t PRESUME it does.” He was silent long enough to whet an imagined expectation; then he set his face towards the sky, and began a soft, low, coaxing sibilation between his teeth. “S-s-s-s; s-s-s-s-s-s! Well, it don’t stand to reason it can bring the wind — S-s-s-s-s-s-s; s-s-s-s. Why, of course it ‘s all foolishness. S-s-s-s.” He continued to emit these sibilants, interspersing them with Adams’s protests. Suddenly the sail pulled the loose sheet taut and the boat leaped forward over the water.

  “Wonderful!” cried the girl.

  “That’s what I said to Adams, or words to that effect. But I thought we should get it from the look of the sky before I proposed to whistle for it. Now, then,” he continued, “I will be serious, if you like.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you ask me to be serious just before those seals interrupted you?”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, coloring a little. “I don’t think we can go back to that, now.” He did not insist, and she said presently, “I thought the sailors had a superstition about ships that are lucky and unlucky. But you’ve kept your boat.”

  “I kept her for luck: the lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And I never saw a boat that behaved so well.”

  “Do you call it behaving well to tip over?”

  “She behaved well before that. She didn’t tip over outside the reef”

  “It certainly goes very smoothly,” said the girl. She had in vain recurred to the tragic motive of her coming; she could not revive it; there had been nothing like expiation in this eventless voyage; it had been a pleasure and no penance. She abandoned herself with a weak luxury to the respite from suffering and anxiety; she made herself the good comrade of the young man whom perhaps she even tempted to flatter her farther and farther out of the dre
ariness in which she had dwelt; and if any woful current of feeling swept beneath, she would not fathom it, but resolutely floated, as one may at such times, on the surface. They laughed together and jested; they talked in the gay idleness of such rare moods.

  They passed a yacht at anchor, and a young fellow in a white duck cap, leaning over the rail, saluted Libby with the significant gravity which one young man uses towards another whom he sees in a sail-boat with a pretty girl.

  She laughed at this. “Do you know your friend?” she asked.

  “Yes. This time I do?”

  “He fancies you are taking some young lady a sail. What would he say if you were to stop and introduce me to him as Dr. Breen?”

  “Oh, he knows who you are. It’s Johnson.”

  “The one whose clothes you came over in, that morning?”

  “Yes. I suppose you laughed at me.”

  “I liked your having the courage to do it. But how does he know me?”

  “I — I described you. He’s rather an old friend.” This also amused her. “I should like to hear how you described me.”

  “I will tell you sometime. It was an elaborate description. I could n’t get through with it now before we landed.”

  The old town had come out of the haze of the distance, — a straggling village of weather-beaten wood and weather-beaten white paint, picturesque, but no longer a vision of gray stone and pale marble. A coal-yard, and a brick locomotive house, and rambling railroad sheds stretched along the water-front. They found their way easily enough through the sparse shipping to the steps at the end of the wooden pier, where Libby dropped the sail and made his boat fast.

  A little pleasant giddiness, as if the lightness of her heart had mounted to her head, made her glad of his arm up these steps and up the wharf; and she kept it as they climbed the sloping elm-shaded village street to the main thoroughfare, with its brick sidewalks, its shops and awnings, and its cheerful stir and traffic.

  The telegraph office fronted the head of the street which they had ascended. “You can sit here in the apothecary’s till I come down,” he said.

  “Do you think that will be professionally appropriate? I am only a nurse now.”