Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  He had not found just the opportunity yet; but in the mean time he did not mind telling the real cause of their alienation to good fellows who could enjoy a joke. He had his following, though so many of his brother journalists had cooled toward him, and those of his following considered him as smart as chain-lightning and bound to rise. These young men and not very wise elders roared over Bartley’s frank declaration of the situation Between himself and Ricker, and they contended that, if Ricker had taken the article for the Chronicle-Abstract, he ought to take the consequences. Bartley told them that, of course, he should explain the facts to Kinney; but that he meant to let Ricker enjoy his virtuous indignation awhile. Once, after a confidence of this kind at the club, where Ricker had refused to speak to him, he came away with a curious sense of moral decay. It did not pain him a great deal, but it certainly surprised him that now, with all these prosperous conditions, so favorable for cleaning up, he had so little disposition to clean up. He found himself quite willing to let the affair with Ricker go, and he suspected that he had been needlessly virtuous in his intentions concerning church-going and beer. As to Marcia, it appeared to him that he could not treat a woman of her disposition otherwise than as he did. At any rate, if he had not done everything he could to make her happy, she seemed to be getting along well enough, and was probably quite as happy as she deserved to be. They were getting on very quietly now; there had been no violent outbreak between them since the trouble about Kinney, and then she had practically confessed herself in the wrong, as Bartley looked at it. She had appeared contented with his explanation; there was what might be called a perfect business amity between them. If her life with him was no longer an expression of that intense devotion which she used to show him, it was more like what married life generally comes to, and he accepted her tractability and what seemed her common-sense view of their relations as greatly preferable. With his growth in flesh, Bartley liked peace more and more.

  Marcia had consented to go down to Equity alone, that summer, for he had convinced her that during a heated political contest it would not do for him to be away from the paper. He promised to go down for her when she wished to come home; and it was easily arranged for her to travel as far as the Junction under Halleck’s escort, when he went to join his sisters in the White Mountains. Bartley missed her and the baby at first. But he soon began to adjust himself with resignation to his solitude. They had determined to keep their maid over this summer, for they had so much trouble in replacing her the last time after their return; and Bartley said he should live very economically. It was quiet, and the woman kept the house cool and clean; she was a good cook, and when Bartley brought a man home to dinner she took an interest in serving it well. Bartley let her order the things from the grocer and butcher, for she knew what they were used to getting, and he had heard so much talk from Marcia about bills since he bought that Events stock that he was sick of the prices of things. There was no extravagance, and vet he seemed to live very much better after Marcia went. There is no doubt but he lived very much more at his ease. One little restriction after another fell away from him; he went and came with absolute freedom, not only without having to account for his movements, but without having a pang for not doing so. He had the sensation of stretching himself after a cramping posture; and he wrote Marcia the cheerfulest letters, charging her not to cut short her visit from anxiety on his account. He said that he was working hard, but hard work evidently agreed with him, for he was never better in his life. In this high content he maintained a feeling of loyalty by going to the Hallecks, where Mrs. Halleck often had him to tea in pity of his loneliness. They were dull company, certainly; but Marcia liked them, and the cooking was always good. Other evenings he went to the theatres, where there were amusing variety bills; and sometimes he passed the night at Nantasket, or took a run for a day to Newport; he always reported these excursions to Marcia, with expressions of regret that Equity was too far away to run down to for a day.

  Marcia’s letters were longer and more regular than his; but he could have forgiven some want of constancy for the sake of a less searching anxiety on her part. She was anxious not only for his welfare, which was natural and proper, but she was anxious about the housekeeping and the expenses, things Bartley could not afford to let trouble him, though he did what he could in a general way to quiet her mind. She wrote fully of the visit which Olive Halleck had paid her, but said that they had not gone about much, for Ben Halleck had only been able to come for a day. She was very well, and so was Flavia.

  Bartley realized Flavia’s existence with an effort, and for the rest this letter bored him. What could he care about Olive Halleck’s coming, or Ben Halleck’s staying away? All that he asked of Ben Halleck was a little extension of time when his interest fell due. The whole thing was disagreeable; and he resented what he considered Marcia’s endeavor to clap the domestic harness on him again. His thoughts wandered to conditions, to contingencies, of which a man does not permit himself even to think without a degree of moral disintegration. In these ill-advised reveries he mused upon his life as it might have been if he had never met her, or if they had never met after her dismissal of him. As he recalled the facts, he was at that time in an angry and embittered mood, but he was in a mood of entire acquiescence; and the reconciliation had been of her own seeking. He could not blame her for it; she was very much in love with him, and he had been fond of her. In fact, he was still very fond of her; when he thought of little ways of hers, it filled him with tenderness. He did justice to her fine qualities, too: her generosity, her truthfulness, her entire loyalty to his best interests; he smiled to realize that he himself preferred his second-best interests, and in her absence he remembered that her virtues were tedious, and even painful at times. He had his doubts whether there was sufficient compensation in them. He sometimes questioned whether he had not made a great mistake to get married; he expected now to stick it through; but this doubt occurred to him. A moment came in which he asked himself, What if he had never come back to Marcia that night when she locked him out of her room? Might it not have been better for both of them? She would soon have reconciled herself to the irreparable; he even thought of her happy in a second marriage; and the thought did not enrage him; he generously wished Marcia well. He wished — he hardly knew what he wished. He wished nothing at all but to have his wife and child back again as soon as possible; and he put aside with a laugh the fancies which really found no such distinct formulation as I have given them; which were mere vague impulses, arrested mental tendencies, scraps of undirected revery. Their recurrence had nothing to do with what he felt to be his sane and waking state. But they recurred, and he even amused himself in turning them over.

  XXXI.

  One morning in September, not long before Marcia returned, Bartley found Witherby at the office waiting for him. Witherby wore a pensive face, which had the effect of being studied. “Good morning, Mr. Hubbard,” he said, and when Bartley answered, “Good morning,” cheerfully ignoring his mood, he added, “What is this I hear, Mr. Hubbard, about a personal misunderstanding between you and Mr. Ricker?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Bartley; “but I suppose that if you have heard anything you know.”

  “I have heard,” proceeded Witherby, a little dashed by Bartley’s coolness, “that Mr. Ricker accuses you of having used material in that article you sold him which had been intrusted to you under the seal of confidence, and that you had left it to be inferred by the party concerned — that Mr. Ricker had written the article himself.”

  “All right,” said Bartley.

  “But, Mr. Hubbard,” said Witherby, struggling to rise into virtuous supremacy, “what am I to think of such a report?”

  “I can’t say; unless you should think that it wasn’t your affair. That would be the easiest thing.”

  “But I can’t think that, Mr. Hubbard! Such a report reflects through you upon the Events; it reflects upon me!” Bartley laughed. “I can’t approve
of such a thing. If you admit the report, it appears to me that you have — a — done a — a — wrong action, Mr. Hubbard.”

  Bartley turned upon him with a curious look; at the same time he felt a pang, and there was a touch of real anguish in the sarcasm of his demand, “Have I fallen so low as to be rebuked by you?”

  “I — I don’t know what you mean by such an expression as that, Mr. Hubbard,” said Witherby. “I don’t know what I’ve done to forfeit your esteem, — to justify you in using such language to me.”

  “I don’t suppose you really do,” said Bartley. “Go on.”

  “I have nothing more to say, Mr. Hubbard, except — except to add that this has given me a great blow, — a great blow. I had begun to have my doubts before as to whether we were quite adapted to each other, and this has — increased them. I pass no judgment upon what you have done, but I will say that it has made me anxious and — a — unrestful. It has made me ask myself whether upon the whole we should not be happier apart. I don’t say that we should; but I only feel that nine out of ten business men would consider you, in the position you occupy on the Events, — a — a — dangerous person.”

  Bartley got up from his desk, and walked toward Witherby, with his hands in his pockets; he halted a few paces from him, and looked down on him with a sinister smile. “I don’t think they’d consider you a dangerous person in any position.”

  “May be not, may be not,” said Witherby, striving to be easy and dignified. In the effort he took up an open paper from the desk before him, and, lifting it between Bartley and himself, feigned to be reading it.

  Bartley struck it out of his trembling hands. “You impudent old scoundrel! Do you pretend to be reading when I speak to you? For half a cent—”

  Witherby, slipping and sliding in his swivel chair, contrived to get to his feet “No violence, Mr. Hubbard, no violence here!”

  “Violence!” laughed Bartley. “I should have to touch you! Come! Don’t be afraid! But don’t you put on airs of any sort! I understand your game. You want, for some reason, to get rid of me, and you have seized the opportunity with a sharpness that does credit to your cunning. I don’t condescend to deny this report,” — speaking in this lofty strain, Bartley had a momentary sensation of its being a despicable slander,— “but I see that as far as you are concerned it answers all the purposes of truth. You think that with the chance of having this thing exploited against me I won’t expose your nefarious practices, and you can get rid of me more safely now than ever you could again. Well, you’re right. I dare say you heard of this report a good while ago, and you’ve waited till you could fill my place without inconvenience to yourself. So I can go at once. Draw your check for all you owe me, and pay me back the money I put into your stock, and I’ll clear out at once.” He went about putting together a few personal effects on his desk.

  “I must protest against any allusion to nefarious practices, Mr. Hubbard,” said Witherby, “and I wish you to understand that I part from you without the slightest ill-feeling. I shall always have a high regard for your ability, and — and — your social qualities.” While he made these expressions he hastened to write two checks.

  Bartley, who had paid no attention to what Witherby was saying, came up and took the checks. “This is all right,” he said of one. But looking at the other, he added, “Fifteen hundred dollars? Where is the dividend?”

  “That is not due till the end of the month,” said Witherby. “If you withdraw your money now, you lose it.”

  Bartley looked at the face to which Witherby did his best to give a high judicial expression. “You old thief!” he said good-humoredly, almost affectionately. “I have a mind to tweak your nose!” But he went out of the room without saying or doing anything more. He wondered a little at his own amiability; but with the decay of whatever was right-principled in him, he was aware of growing more and more incapable of indignation. Now, his flash of rage over, he was not at all discontented. With these checks in his pocket, with his youth, his health, and his practised hand, he could have faced the world, with a light heart, if he had not also had to face his wife. But when he thought of the inconvenience of explaining to her, of pacifying her anxiety, of clearing up her doubts on a thousand points, and of getting her simply to eat or sleep till he found something else to do, it dismayed him. “Good Lord!” he said to himself, “I wish I was dead — or some one.” That conclusion made him smile again.

  He decided not to write to Marcia of the change in his affairs, but to take the chance of finding something better before she returned. There was very little time for him to turn round, and he was still without a place or any prospect when she came home. It had sufficed with his acquaintance when he said that he had left the Events because he could not get on with Witherby; but he was very much astonished when it seemed to suffice with her.

  “Oh, well,” she said, “I am glad of it. You will do better by yourself; and I know you can earn just as much by writing on the different papers.”

  Bartley knew better than this, but he said, “Yes, I shall not be in a hurry to take another engagement just yet. But, Marsh,” he added, “I was afraid you would blame me, — think I had been reckless, or at fault—”

  “No,” she answered after a little pause, “I shall not do that any more. I have been thinking all these things over, while I was away from you, and I’m going to do differently, after this. I shall believe that you’ve acted for the best, — that you’ve not meant to do wrong in anything, — and I shall never question you or doubt you any more.”

  “Isn’t that giving me rather too much rope?” asked Bartley, with lightness that masked a vague alarm lest the old times of exaction should be coming back with the old times of devotion.

  “No; I see where my mistake has always been. I’ve always asked too much, and expected too much, even when I didn’t ask it. Now, I shall be satisfied with what you don’t do, as well as what you do.”

  “I shall try to live up to my privileges,” said Bartley, with a sigh of relief. He gave her a kiss, and then he unclasped Kinney’s nugget from his watch-chain, and fastened it on the baby’s necklace, which lay in a box Marcia had just taken from her trunk. She did not speak; but Bartley felt better to have the thing off him; Marcia’s gentleness, the tinge of sadness in her tone, made him long to confess himself wrong in the whole matter, and justly punished by Ricker’s contempt and Witherby’s dismissal. But he did not believe that he could trust her to forgive him, and he felt himself unable to go through all that without the certainty of her forgiveness.

  As she took the things out of her trunk, and laid them away in this drawer and that, she spoke of events in the village, and told who was dead, who was married, and who had gone away. “I stayed longer than I expected, a little, because father seemed to want me to. I don’t think mother’s so well as she used to be, I — I’m afraid she seems to be failing, somehow.”

  Her voice dropped to a lower key, and Bartley said, “I’m sorry to hear that. I guess she isn’t failing. But of course she’s getting on, and every year makes a difference.”

  “Yes, that must be it,” she answered, looking at a bundle of collars she had in her hand, as if absorbed in the question as to where she should put them.

  Before they slept that night she asked, “Bartley, did you hear about Hannah Morrison?”

  “No. What about her?”

  “She’s gone — gone away. The last time she was seen was in Portland. They don’t know what’s become of her. They say that Henry Bird is about heart-broken; but everybody knows she never cared for him. I hated to write to you about it.”

  Bartley experienced so disagreeable a sensation that he was silent for a time. Then he gave a short, bitter laugh. “Well, that’s what it was bound to come to, sooner or later, I suppose. It’s a piece of good luck for Bird.”

  Bartley went about picking up work from one paper and another, but not securing a basis on any. In that curious and unwholesome leniency which corrupt n
atures manifest, he and Witherby met at their next encounter on quite amicable terms. Bartley reported some meetings for the Events, and experienced no resentment when Witherby at the office introduced him to the gentleman with whom he had replaced him. Of course Bartley expected that Witherby would insinuate things to his disadvantage, but he did not mind that. He heard of something of the sort being done in Ricker’s presence, and of Ricker’s saying that in any question of honor and veracity between Witherby and Hubbard he should decide for Hubbard. Bartley was not very grateful for this generous defence; he thought that if Ricker had not been such an ass in the first place there would have been no trouble between them, and Witherby would not have had that handle against him.