Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Ben will go home with you,” said Olive, soothingly. “Is it raining?” she asked, looking at her brother’s coat. “I will get my water-proof.”

  She left them a moment. “I have been — been walking — walking about,” Marcia panted. “It has got so dark — I’m — afraid to go home. I hate to — take you from them — the last — night.”

  Halleck answered nothing; he sat staring at her till Olive came back with the water-proof and an umbrella. Then, while his sister was putting the waterproof over Marcia’s shoulders, he said, “Let me take the little one,” and gathered it, with or without her consent, from her arms into his. The baby was sleeping; it nestled warmly against him with a luxurious quiver under the shawl that Olive threw round it. “You can carry the umbrella,” he said to Marcia.

  They walked fast, when they got out into the rainy dark, and it was hard to shelter Halleck as he limped rapidly on. Marcia ran forward once, to see if her baby were safely kept from the wet, and found that Halleck had its little face pressed close between his neck and cheek. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m looking out for it.”

  His voice sounded broken and strange, and neither of them spoke again till they came in sight of Marcia’s door. Then she tried to stop him. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Oh, I’m afraid — afraid to go in,” she pleaded.

  He halted, and they stood confronted in the light of a street lamp; her face was twisted with weeping. “Why are you afraid?” he demanded, harshly.

  “We had a quarrel, and I — I ran away — I said that I would never come back. I left him—”

  “You must go back to him,” said Halleck. “He’s your husband!” He pushed on again, saying over and over, as if the words were some spell in which he found safety, “You must go back, you must go back, you must go back!”

  He dragged her with him now, for she hung helpless on his arm, which she had seized, and moaned to herself. At the threshold, “I can’t go in!” she broke out. “I’m afraid to go in! What will he say? What will he do? Oh, come in with me! You are good, — and then I shall not be afraid!”

  “You must go in alone! No man can be your refuge from your husband! Here!” He released himself, and, kissing the warm little face of the sleeping child, he pressed it into her arms. His fingers touched hers under the shawl; he tore his hand away with a shiver.

  She stood a moment looking at the closed door; then she flung it open, and, pausing as if to gather her strength, vanished into the brightness within.

  He turned, and ran crookedly down the street, wavering from side to side in his lameness, and flinging up his arms to save himself from falling as he ran, with a gesture that was like a wild and hopeless appeal.

  XXXIV.

  Marcia pushed into the room where she had left Bartley. She had no escape from her fate; she must meet it, whatever it was. The room was empty, and she began doggedly to search the house for him, up stairs and down, carrying the child with her. She would not have been afraid now to call him; but she had no voice, and she could not ask the servant anything when she looked into the kitchen. She saw the traces of the meal he had made in the dining-room, and when she went a second time to their chamber to lay the little girl down in her crib, she saw the drawers pulled open, and the things as he had tossed them about in packing his bag. She looked at the clock on the mantel — an extravagance of Bartley’s, for which she had scolded him — and it was only half past eight; she had thought it must be midnight.

  She sat all night in a chair beside the bed; in the morning she drowsed and dreamed that she was weeping on Bartley’s shoulder, and he was joking her and trying to comfort her, as he used to do when they were first married; but it was the little girl, sitting up in her crib, and crying loudly for her breakfast. She put on the child a pretty frock that Bartley liked, and when she had dressed her own tumbled hair she went down stairs, feigning to herself that they should find him in the parlor. The servant was setting the table for breakfast, and the little one ran forward: “Baby’s chair; mamma’s chair; papa’s chair!”

  “Yes,” answered Marcia, so that the servant might hear too. “Papa will soon be home.”

  She persuaded herself that he had gone as before for the night, and in this pretence she talked with the child at the table, and she put aside some of the breakfast to be kept warm for Bartley. “I don’t know just when he may be in,” she explained to the girl. The utterance of her pretence that she expected him encouraged her, and she went about her work almost cheerfully.

  At dinner she said, “Mr. Hubbard must have been called away, somewhere. We must get his dinner for him when he comes: the things dry up so in the oven.”

  She put Flavia to bed early, and then trimmed the fire, and made the parlor cosey against Bartley’s coming. She did not blame him for staying away the night before; it was a just punishment for her wickedness, and she should tell him so, and tell him that she knew he never was to blame for anything about Hannah Morrison. She enacted over and over in her mind the scene of their reconciliation. In every step on the pavement he approached the door; at last all the steps died away, and the second night passed.

  Her head was light, and her brain confused with loss of sleep. When the child called her from above, and woke her out of her morning drowse, she went to the kitchen and begged the servant to give the little one its breakfast, saying that she was sick and wanted nothing herself. She did not say anything about Bartley’s breakfast, and she would not think anything; the girl took the child into the kitchen with her, and kept it there all day.

  Olive Halleck came during the forenoon, and Marcia told her that Bartley had been unexpectedly called away. “To New York,” she added, without knowing why.

  “Ben sailed from there to-day,” said Olive sadly.

  “Yes,” assented Marcia.

  “We want you to come and take tea with us this evening,” Olive began.

  “Oh, I can’t,” Marcia broke in. “I mustn’t be away when Bartley gets back.” The thought was something definite in the sea of uncertainty on which she was cast away; she never afterwards lost her hold of it; she confirmed herself in it by other inventions; she pretended that he had told her where he was going, and then that he had written to her. She almost believed these childish fictions as she uttered them. At the same time, in all her longing for his return, she had a sickening fear that when he came back he would keep his parting threat and drive her away: she did not know how he could do it, but this was what she feared.

  She seldom left the house, which at first she kept neat and pretty, and then let fall into slatternly neglect. She ceased to care for her dress or the child’s; the time came when it seemed as if she could scarcely move in the mystery that beset her life, and she yielded to a deadly lethargy which paralyzed all her faculties but the instinct of concealment.

  She repelled the kindly approaches of the Hallecks, sometimes sending word to the door when they came, that she was sick and could not see them; or when she saw any of them, repeating those hopeless lies concerning Bartley’s whereabouts, and her expectations of his return.

  For the time she was safe against all kindly misgivings; but there were some of Bartley’s creditors who grew impatient of his long absence, and refused to be satisfied with her fables. She had a few dollars left from some money that her father had given her at home, and she paid these all out upon the demand of the first-comer. Afterwards, as other bills were pressed, she could only answer with incoherent promises and evasions that scarcely served for the moment. The pursuit of these people dismayed her. It was nothing that certain of them refused further credit; she would have known, both for herself and her child, how to go hungry and cold; but there was one of them who threatened her with the law if she did not pay. She did not know what he could do; she had read somewhere that people who did not pay their debts were imprisoned, and if that disgrace were all she would not care. But if the law were enforced against her, the truth would come out; she would be put to shame before
the world as a deserted wife; and this when Bartley had not deserted her. The pride that had bidden her heart break in secret rather than suffer this shame even before itself, was baffled: her one blind device had been concealment, and this poor refuge was possible no longer. If all were not to know, some one must know.

  The law with which she had been threatened might be instant in its operation; she could not tell. Her mind wavered from fear to fear. Even while the man stood before her, she perceived the necessity that was upon her, and when he left her she would not allow herself a moment’s delay.

  She reached the Events building, in which Mr. Atherton had his office, just as a lady drove away in her coup�. It was Miss Kingsbury, who made a point of transacting all business matters with her lawyer at his office, and of keeping her social relations with him entirely distinct, as she fancied, by this means. She was only partially successful, but at least she never talked business with him at her house, and doubtless she would not have talked anything else with him at his office, but for that increasing dependence upon him in everything which she certainly would not have permitted herself if she had realized it. As it was, she had now come to him in a state of nervous exaltation, which was not business-like. She had been greatly shocked by Ben Halleck’s sudden freak; she had sympathized with his family till she herself felt the need of some sort of condolence, and she had promised herself this consolation from Atherton’s habitual serenity. She did not know what to do when he received her with what she considered an impatient manner, and did not seem at all glad to see her. There was no reason why he should be glad to see a lady calling on business, and no doubt he often found her troublesome, but he had never shown it before. She felt like crying at first; then she passed through an epoch of resentment, and then through a period of compassion for him. She ended by telling him with dignified severity that she wanted some money: they usually made some jokes about her destitution when she came upon that errand. He looked surprised and vexed, and “I have spent what you gave me last month,” she explained.

  “Then you wish to anticipate the interest on your bonds?”

  “Certainly not,” said Clara, rather sharply. “I wish to have the interest up to the present time.”

  “But I told you,” said Atherton, and he could not, in spite of himself, help treating her somewhat as a child, “I told you then that I was paying you the interest up to the first of November. There is none due now. Didn’t you understand that?”

  “No, I didn’t understand,” answered Clara. She allowed herself to add, “It is very strange!” Atherton struggled with his irritation, and made no reply. “I can’t be left without money,” she continued. “What am I to do without it?” she demanded with an air of unanswerable argument. “Why, I must have it!”

  “I felt that I ought to understand you fully,” said Atherton, with cold politeness. “It’s only necessary to know what sum you require.”

  Clara flung up her veil and confronted him with an excited face. “Mr. Atherton, I don’t wish a loan; I can’t permit it; and you know that my principles are entirely against anticipating interest.”

  Atherton, from stooping over his table, pencil in hand, leaned back in his chair, and looked at her with a smile that provoked her: “Then may I ask what you wish me to do?”

  “No! I can’t instruct you. My affairs are in your hands. But I must say—” She bit her lip, however, and did not say it. On the contrary she asked, rather feebly, “Is there nothing due on anything?”

  “I went over it with you, last month,” said Atherton patiently, “and explained all the investments. I could sell some stocks, but this election trouble has disordered everything, and I should have to sell at a heavy loss. There are your mortgages, and there are your bonds. You can have any amount of money you want, but you will have to borrow it.”

  “And that you know I won’t do. There should always be a sum of money in the bank,” said Clara decidedly.

  “I do my very best to keep a sum there, knowing your theory; but your practice is against me. You draw too many checks,” said Atherton, laughing.

  “Very well!” cried the lady, pulling down her veil. “Then I’m to have nothing?”

  “You won’t allow yourself to have anything,” Atherton began. But she interrupted him haughtily.

  “It is certainly very odd that my affairs should be in such a state that I can’t have all the money of my own that I want, whenever I want it.”

  Atherton’s thin face paled a little more than usual. “I shall be glad to resign the charge of your affair Miss Kingsbury.”

  “And I shall accept your resignation,” cried Clara, magnificently, “whenever you offer it.” She swept out of the office, and descended to her coup� like an incensed goddess. She drew the curtains and began to cry. At her door, she bade the servant deny her to everybody, and went to bed, where she was visited a little later by Olive Halleck, whom no ban excluded. Clara lavishly confessed her sin and sorrow. “Why, I went there, more than half, to sympathize with him about Ben; I don’t need any money, just yet; and the first thing I knew, I was accusing him of neglecting my interests, and I don’t know what all! Of course he had to say he wouldn’t have anything more to do with them, and I should have despised him if he hadn’t. And now I don’t care what becomes of the property: it’s never been anything but misery to me ever since I had it, and I always knew it would get me into trouble sooner or later.” She whirled her face over into her pillow, and sobbed, “But I didn’t suppose it would ever make me insult and outrage the best friend I ever had, — and the truest man, — and the noblest gentleman! Oh, what will he think of me?”

  Olive remained sadly quiet, as if but superficially interested in these transports, and Clara lifted her face again to say in her handkerchief, “It’s a shame, Olive, to burden you with all this at a time when you’ve care enough of your own.”

  “Oh, I’m rather glad of somebody else’s care; it helps to take my mind off,” said Olive.

  “Then what would you do?” asked Clara, tempted by the apparent sympathy with her in the effect of her naughtiness.

  “You might make a party for him, Clara,” suggested Olive, with lack-lustre irony.

  Clara gave way to a loud burst of grief. “Oh, Olive Halleck! I didn’t suppose you could be so cruel!”

  Olive rose impatiently. “Then write to him, or go to him and tell him that you’re ashamed of yourself, and ask him to take your property back again.”

  “Never!” cried Clara, who had listened with fascination. “What would he think of me?”

  “Why need you care? It’s purely a matter of business!”

  “Yes.”

  “And you needn’t mind what he thinks.”

  “Of course,” admitted Clara, thoughtfully.

  “He will naturally despise you,” added Olive, “but I suppose he does that, now.”

  Clara gave her friend as piercing a glance as her soft blue eyes could emit, and, detecting no sign of jesting in Olive’s sober face, she answered haughtily, “I don’t see what right Mr. Atherton has to despise me!”

  “Oh, no! He must admire a girl who has behaved to him as you’ve done.”

  Clara’s hauteur collapsed, and she began to truckle to Olive. “If he were merely a business man, I shouldn’t mind it; but knowing him socially, as I do, and as a — friend, and — an acquaintance, that way, I don’t see how I can do it.”

  “I wonder you didn’t think of that before you accused him of fraud and peculation, and all those things.”

  “I didn’t accuse him of fraud and peculation!” cried Clara, indignantly.

  “You said you didn’t know what all you’d called him,” said Olive, with her hand on the door.

  Clara followed her down stairs. “Well, I shall never do it in the world,” she said, with reviving hope in her voice.

  “Oh, I don’t expect you to go to him this morning,” said Olive dryly. “That would be a little too barefaced.”

  Her frien
d kissed, her. “Olive Halleck, you’re the strangest girl that ever was. I do believe you’d joke at the point of death! But I’m so glad you have been perfectly frank with me, and of course it’s worth worlds to know that you think I’ve behaved horridly, and ought to make some reparation.”

  “I’m glad you value my opinion, Clara. And if you come to me for frankness, you can always have all you want; it’s a drug in the market with me.” She meagrely returned Clara’s embrace, and left her in a reverie of tactless scheming for the restoration of peace with Mr. Atherton.

  Marcia came in upon the lawyer before he had thought, after parting with Miss Kingsbury, to tell the clerk in the outer office to deny him; but she was too full of her own trouble to see the reluctance which it tasked all his strength to quell, and she sank into the nearest chair unbidden. At sight of her, Atherton became the prey of one of those fantastic repulsions in which men visit upon women the blame of others’ thoughts about them: he censured her for Halleck’s wrong; but in another instant he recognized his cruelty, and atoned by relenting a little in his intolerance of her presence. She sat gazing at him with a face of blank misery, to which he could not refuse the charity of a prompting question: “Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. Hubbard?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, — I don’t know!” She had a folded paper in her hands, which lay helpless in her lap. After a moment she resumed, in a hoarse, low voice: “They have all begun to come for their money, and this one — this one says he will have the law of me — I don’t know what he means — if I don’t pay him.”

  Marcia could not know how hard Atherton found it to govern the professional suspicion which sprung up at the question of money. But he overruled his suspicion by an effort that was another relief to the struggle in which he was wrenching his mind from Miss Kingsbury’s outrageous behavior. “What have you got there?” he asked gravely, and not unkindly, and being used to prompt the reluctance of lady clients, he put out his hand for the paper she held. It was the bill of the threatening creditor, for indefinitely repeated dozens of tivoli beer.