Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “It was like you, my dear,” said Mrs. Butler. “You never believe that anything is wrong till you believe that everything is wrong.

  “Well, well — very likely,” returned the Captain. “I had what I thought very good reasons for my course. But afterwards I set a shrewd hand at work on the books, and we found out that things were very much better, as I told you at the time. When a man’s affairs are in such confusion as Joshua’s, the confusion is usually against him, but in this case it was mostly for him. There wasn’t a day after I reported the estate insolvent that the case didn’t brighten. If it had been any other case, I should have been mortified at the way things turned out. To be sure, I didn’t believe there’d be anything for Helen, but before the sale I saw that unless the property went for nothing the estate would pay all Joshua’s debts, dollar for dollar. This morning we called a meeting of the creditors. They had the notion they were going to lose, and they were prepared for that. When I told them how matters really stood they were tremendously taken aback. But they had behaved very handsomely all along, out of respect for Joshua’s memory, and they came out strong now about him, and said such things — well, I can’t tell you,” said the Captain. “But,” he added confusedly, “I wish Harkness could have been there!”

  “Perhaps he was,” said Mrs. Butler devoutly. “Eh?” cried the Captain sharply. “Ah! Yes! Well, perhaps. Old Rogers asked me to wait a minute, and they had a little confabulation among themselves, and then Rogers came forward and asked if there would be anything left for Helen. Then I told them the estate had yielded $5000 more than the indebtedness, so far as I knew of it; and we had congratulations all round, and if Joshua had been alive to resume, he might have started business again on a better basis than ever he had in his life. I wish — confound it! — I could be sure about those bids.”

  “Why, my dear!” cried his wife, “you talk as if some fraud had been really committed. Can’t you look at it as Mr. Hibbard does? Probably the man did hear the bids. He wouldn’t have dared to pretend that he heard them; it wouldn’t have been safe for him.”

  “No,” said the Captain thoughtfully. “Why, of course not,” he added briskly, after a moment. “Of course you’re right about it. He wouldn’t have dared. Where’s Helen?”

  He went down and found Helen on the rocks by the sea, where she often strayed apart from the others; they did not follow her, they respected her right to what solitude she would. Her sorrow was no longer a thing of tears and sobs; but it was no more comprehensible than at first; her bereavement still seemed the one great unreasoned fact of the universe. She turned the pathos of her bewildered smile upon the Captain, as she heard him climbing the rocks behind her, and rose to meet him.

  “No, sit down,” he said. “I want to have a little talk with you, Helen, as your man of business.”

  “You’re my man of business as — as — papa was,” said Helen, with a grateful look.

  “Thank you, my dear, for that,” answered the Captain. “I’ve only tried to do what he would have done for my girls. I don’t know, my dear, whether I had ever given you the idea that your father was in embarrassed circumstances?”

  “O yes; I knew that,” said Helen.

  “Well, we won’t enlarge upon the fact. It isn’t necessary. Would you like me to go into particulars about the settlement of the estate?”

  “No,” answered Helen, “that isn’t necessary either. I shouldn’t be any the wiser if you did. Tell me whatever you think I ought to know, Captain Butler.”

  “I was very much afraid, my dear,” said the Captain, “when I began to look into your father’s affairs that there would be nothing, or worse than nothing, left.” This did not seem to affect Helen as a matter of personal concern, and the Captain went on: “There was a time when I was afraid that the creditors would not get more than seventy-five per cent, of their money, and might be very glad to get that.” Helen looked round at the Captain with a quick glance, as if here were something that touched her. “But as I got along towards the bottom, things looked better, and I saw that unless the sale turned out very badly, we should save ourselves. The sale turned out far beyond my expectations. — Helen,” cried the Captain, “the prospect now is that I shall pay up every cent that your father owed in the world, and have some five thousand dollars left for you.”

  “Oh, Captain Butler!”

  “It isn’t a great sum—”

  “It’s more than I dared to dream of!”

  “But if it’s carefully handled, it can be made to go a great way.”

  “Oh, it’s ample, ample! But I don’t care for that. What I think of — and I feel like going down on my knees for it — is that no one lost anything by papa. He would rather have died than wronged any one, and that any one should have differed by him after he was helpless to repair the wrong, that would have been more than the bitterness of death to me. Oh, I’m so happy about this, Captain Butler; you can’t think how much more of a comfort it is than anything else could have been!”

  “You’re a good girl, Helen,” said the Captain, with a reverent fondness; “you “re your father’s girl, my dear. He would have died a rich man if he had not stood by people whom he knew to be in a bad way, because they had helped him long ago, when it was no risk for them to do so.”

  “He was right!” cried Helen. “He would not have been papa if he had done less.”

  “I should not have said he was right,” said Captain Butler, “if he had not believed that he had already put you beyond want. He had insured his life for twenty-five thousand dollars in the Metropolitan Reciprocal; but that went to pieces two years ago.’’

  “That’s nothing. I couldn’t have managed so much money,” promptly answered Helen. “The five thousand will be enough, and more than enough, for my utmost desires. I’m not extravagant. I can get on with very little, and this is wildly abundant.”

  The Captain, from rejoicing in her mood, suddenly looked aghast, as if a terrible idea had presented itself. “You understand, Helen,” he said, “that it will be some time yet — six months at least — before I can place the money due you at your disposal. It isn’t certainly due you till all the creditors have had full notice to present their claims, and these have been passed upon by the commissioners.’”

  “Oh, that makes no difference,” said Helen. “I’m in no haste for the money.”

  “And you understand,” pursued the Captain, as if this were really the point he wished to insist on, “that it is only five thousand?”

  “O yes, I understand perfectly,” quickly answered the girl, and then she stopped, and cast a keen glance at the Captain, without, however, seeming to perceive his chopfallen aspect: she was, perhaps, looking deeper.

  “You haven’t brought any more letters for me, I suppose?” she said.

  “No, I must have got everything the last time,” replied the Captain. “I went carefully through all the drawers again before the sale began.”

  “I shall ask you to take care of those law-papers for me, Captain Butler; I don’t know what to do with them. The letters were all recent ones. I thought there might have been some old ones. Not that I have missed any. But you did sometimes lose home letters when you were off on those long voyages of yours, didn’t you?”

  “No, very few,” the Captain responded. “We get them nearly all, sooner or later.”

  “But sometimes they had to wander about after you?”

  “Yes, sometimes. And sometimes they waited.”

  “It must have been terribly distressing,” said Helen, “to wait for them.”

  “Well,” returned the Captain, “that depended a good deal on whom the letter was from.” Helen flushed a little. “There were some letters that I shouldn’t have cared if I’d never got. But, generally speaking, the fellows in the navy had the advantage of us in the merchant service.”

  “I don’t see why,” said Helen.

  “Oh, their letters were addressed to them through the Navy Department, and of course
they came the straightest and safest way. I recollect once at Singapore,” and the Captain went on with much circumstance to give a case in point. Helen had furnished him a thread of associations which the Captain never willingly dropped. She listened at first with interest, then patience, then respect. At last she said it was getting a little chilly, and Captain Butler agreed that it was. They went back to the house together, and parted on the piazza, where Helen paused a moment to say: “I haven’t thanked you, Captain Butler, because it seemed no use to try. Where should I end?”

  “Don’t begin,” said the Captain, with the smile which he kept for Helen; she was as dear to him as his own daughters, and just strange enough to be a colour of romance in his thoughts. It always astonished him, and slightly abashed him that she should be a young lady; she had so long been a little girl.

  She looked fondly into his kind eyes. “It is too much — too much!” she cried, and slipped away with a fallen head.

  The words made the Captain think of the money again, and the smile went and the trouble came back to his face, as he walked away to find his wife.

  “Well?” said Mrs. Butler.

  “Catharine,” said the Captain, “I’m afraid she thinks it’s five thousand a year.”

  “O no, she doesn’t!” pleaded his wife.

  “Yes, she does, my dear. She spoke of it as an enormous sum, and I hadn’t the courage to make the thing clear. I began to, and then gave it up. I don’t see what’s to be done about it. I’m afraid it’s going to be a dreadful blow when she finds out what it really is.” Captain Butler looked ruefully at his wife.

  “I think you’re mistaken,” said Mrs. Butler. “It’s her ignorance of money that makes her think of five thousand, and not the income from it; but as you’ve raised the doubt she must be told that it is not five thousand a year, and she must be told just how much it is.” The Captain groaned. “But you needn’t tell her, John. You’ve gone through quite enough. I will tell her.”

  Captain Butler looked ashamed, but relieved. “Well, my dear, I must let you. It’s shirking, but I can’t help it. You can manage it better than I can. When I think of telling that poor child how very little better than a beggar she is, my tongue turns to a chip in my mouth.”

  “Yes, it’s hard. But suppose she’d had nothing?”

  “Then something better than this might have been done with the creditors. Some were old friends. But you can’t ask people to help a girl who has five thousand dollars. It sounds preposterous.”

  “I doubt whether Helen would have allowed herself to be helped in that way if she had known it, and how could it have been kept from her?” Mrs. Butler rose to go to another room.

  “Catharine,” asked the Captain, “was it at Singapore that I got that first letter of yours, after it had chased me round so long?”

  “No; it was at Cape Town,” said Mrs. Butler. “Why?”

  “I told Helen it was at Singapore.”

  “How in the world came you to be talking to Helen of our old love-letters, my dear?”

  “Oh, she was asking if letters to the East didn’t often get lost. I don’t know why she should have happened to ask. But she did.”

  “I suppose,” said Mrs. Butler simply, “she is going to write to Robert Fenton.”

  A light dawned upon Captain Butler; he laughed in a shamefaced way, and then he frowned a little. “Why didn’t she ask me outright which was the best way to address him?”

  “How could she? She couldn’t have asked her own father. You wouldn’t have wished your own daughter to do it.”

  “Yes, I should,” defiantly answered the Captain.

  “Well, she wouldn’t,” replied Mrs. Butler. The Captain was silenced, but not satisfied. He suffered Mrs. Butler to go, but remained still with that duped smile, and did not half like it.

  That night Helen came rather late and tapped at Mrs. Butler’s door. “It’s I — Helen — Mrs. Butler. Can I speak with you?”

  “Yes,’ come in, Helen.”

  She pushed in impetuously. “I came to ask Captain Butler’s pardon for the mean little intriguing way I got out of him how to address a letter to Robert Fenton. He must have told you!”

  “He said you asked him if his letters from home weren’t lost sometimes,” said Mrs. Butler, with a little smile. “I understood, my dear,” she added, leaning forward to smooth Helen’s hair, where she had sunk on the cricket at her feet. “It was a perfectly natural thing.”

  “O yes, only too natural with me! But I hate and detest all that beating round the bush, in me, even when I’m doing it; and what I came for now, Mrs. Butler, is to ask you how I had better write to Robert. “ Neither found anything worthy of remark in this second avowal of purpose, which might be said in a manner to supersede the first “If it hadn’t been for my wretched shilly-shallying ways, I shouldn’t have to write to him at all. But now I must. There is something — something — that I must tell him for his own sake, and — for his peace of mind. For if a person hates any one, especially if it’s through a mistake, I don’t think we ought to let any foolish pride interfere; do you, Mrs. Butler?”

  “No, Helen,” said Mrs. Butler, with perfect intelligence.

  “That’s what I think too, and it would be perfectly easy — more than easy — to write and tell him that, and take the consequences, whatever they were. You see it is just this: we had a quarrel before he went away, — or not a quarrel, but a misunderstanding; that is, he misunderstood — and he was so vexed with me that he wouldn’t come to say good-bye. I don’t care for that. He did perfectly right. But what I can’t forgive is his not trying to see papa, and bid him good-bye. I can’t bear to have him think any longer that I was trifling with him, and yet I can’t write to him, when I think of the way he treated papa. It seems very bad-hearted in him. Of course, I didn’t see how he could have borne to see papa under the circumstances, and feeling the way he did towards me; and, of course, if papa had lived it would have been different, and if it hadn’t been for me, I know Robert wouldn’t have done it, for he’s one of the best and kindest—” Helen stopped, and Mrs. Butler waited a moment before she answered.

  “Did you ever think, Helen, that Robert loved your father like — not like you, not like a daughter — but like a son?”

  “Why, papa had always been a father to him!” cried Helen. “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “And were you never remiss with your father, because you trusted that somehow, sometime, the love you felt for him would more than make it up to him?”

  “OH, a thousand times!” cried Helen, bowing her head on Mrs. Butler’s knees.

  The pale hand continued to stroke her hair. “That’s a risk we all take with those we love. It’s an earnest of something hereafter, perhaps. But for this world it isn’t safe. Go, and write your letter, my dear, and give Robert all our love.”

  Mrs. Butler leaned forward, and kissed the beautiful head good-night, and Helen, after a silent embrace, went back to her room again. It was easy now to write the letter which she had found so hard before, and a deep peace was in her heart when she read it over, and found no shadow of resentment or unkindness in it. She was glad to have abased herself so utterly before him, to have put herself so completely in his power. Now he might do as he pleased, but he never could have it to say that he had misunderstood her, or that he had cause to think her proud or cruel.

  “Dear Robert,” the letter ran, “it is five weeks now since papa died. I wrote you a line to tell you the sad news as soon as I could bring myself to put it in words, and I suppose you will get that letter before this reaches you. But for fear that it may fail (I sent you a Newspaper with the account, too), I will tell you again, that it was very sudden, and while I was away here at Beverley, where he expected to join me in a day or two. It was at his office; Captain Butler was there with him. I thought I could tell you more about it; but I cannot. He died of a disease of the heart. I will send a cutting from another newspaper that will tell you more.

&nb
sp; “The day before papa died I told him everything about that last letter I wrote you, and he took your part. The last words he spoke of you were full of affection and sympathy. I thought you would like to know this. You were mistaken about that letter. Read it again, and see if it doesn’t mean something different. But I’m afraid you tore it up in your disgust with me. Well, then, I must tell you. I did love you all the time. There, — I don’t care what you think of me. You can’t think less of me than I do.

  “The house has been sold, and everything in it.

  Papa did not leave a will, but I know he would have liked you to have his watch, and I am keeping that for you.