Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Hewitt broke into a laugh. “Resigning! Bless you, you can’t resign. There’s no such thing.”

  “Gracious powers! Not resign an office for which I don’t feel myself competent—”

  “Oh, come, now! you know very well what it is. It’s them curtains,” said Mrs. Hewitt, pointing to the green-and-gold-trimmed shades.

  Mr. Evans rose and curiously examined the shades; his boy also slipped down out of his chair, and joined in the inspection.

  “Thomas, who gave you leave to quit the table? Come back!” cried Mrs. Evans.

  “My dear!” expostulated her husband, “the child very naturally wishes to see what sort of window-shade it is that thrusts an irresignable office of honour and profit upon his father. Look carefully, Tom. Regard the peculiarity of the texture; the uncommon tone of the colours.”

  “Oh, pshaw, Mr. Evans! You stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Hewitt. “When they sent in their bill, I told ’em ’twas too much, and I shouldn’t pay it I didn’t believe they’d really go so far as to trustee me.”

  “But what does it mean, Mrs. Hewitt?” asked Mrs. Evans. “I don’t believe Mr. Evans knows any more than the rest of us,”

  “Why, Mrs. Evans, it means just this: that your husband isn’t to pay me any board till this bill is settled, and if he does, he’s liable for it himself. I presume they’ll be trusteein’ all of you. I shall have to pay it now.”

  “Is that the law?” demanded Mrs. Evans. “It makes one long for a delinquent debtor of one’s own. So simple, yet so effective.”

  “Well, you have it to say,” said Mrs. Hewitt, surprisingly little ruffled by the incident, “that you never was trusteed in my Louse before.”

  “I certainly have that to say,” admitted Mr. Evans. “I’m sorry on your account that I can’t resign my trusteeship, and I’m sorry on my own that it’s such a very sordid affair. I never happened to be appointed to office before, and I was feeling rather proud of the confidence reposed in me.”

  They all rose from the table together, and Helen went up-stairs with the Evanses. She and Mrs. Evans exchanged a few words on the way, and stopped on the first landing to glance into the large parlour. Mr. Evans came after, bestriding his boy, who now had hold of both his forefingers — like a walking Colossus of Rhodes. He flung open the parlour door, which stood ajar, in Mrs. Hewitt’s manner. “Goes with the rooms on this floor; I always let ’em on suit; now, if you wanted anything on suit—” He looked Helen for sympathy, and she laughed. —

  “Yes”, I know,” she said.

  “Mrs. Hewitt won’t like your joking her so much,” said his wife.

  “She won’t know it, if I do it behind her back. And she seems to enjoy it to her face.”

  “Do you think she liked your coming out about that trusteeing?”

  “She didn’t mind it. But I have it on my conscience to tell Miss Harkness that Mrs. Hewitt is, for all I know, a very just person — and that I’m surprised she let those shade-people get the advantage of her. She has a passion, like all landladies, for single gentlemen. She idealises them, I am afraid. There haven’t been any single gentlemen in the house since we came here, two years ago. We sometimes fancy that her preference is founded upon her experience of Mr. Hewitt as a married gentleman, which was probably unpleasant.”

  “Is — is she a widow?” Helen ventured to Mrs. Evans.

  — “Why, not exactly,” said Mrs. Evans, “It’s a very neat way of putting it,” said Mr. Evans. “She’s a widow, Miss Harkness, of the herbaceous variety.”

  “My dear, she’ll hear you,” cried Mrs. Evans.

  “Very well, then, she won’t understand me. I’ll venture to say Miss Harkness doesn’t.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Helen, and looked at Mrs. Evans for light.

  “Her husband is living, I believe,” explained Mrs. Evans, “but — absent.”

  Mr. Evans laughed again. “Not lost, but gone before. Come, Tom! We must go to work!” He led the way up to the next floor, and at her door Mrs. Evans asked Helen if she would not come in.

  Helen had a curiosity, which she thought harmless, to see their apartment, and she accepted the invitation in the drifting, indecisive manner which ladies have when they do not mean to commit themselves to the consequences of a self-indulgence. She did not feel quite sure of these people; she had a strong impression that she was their social superior, but thrown with them as she was, she had too much good sense to hold stiffly aloof from them. She sat down without, as it were, acknowledging that she sat down; and she followed Mrs. Evans about from room to room without seeming to do so, as well as she could manage that difficult effect. It was a very pretty little apartment of four tiny rooms, of which the last was Mr. Evans’s study: this was just large enough to admit his desk and chairs, and was packed with books on shelves to the ceiling, and Helen inferred that he was some sort of literary man. She would not sit down again, but paid a frosty little net-work of compliments to the souvenirs of travel that she saw upon the tables and walls; she praised the balcony on which one of the windows opened, and she smiled upon the flowers with which Mrs. Evans had filled it. In fine she guarded her distance with the skill that had kept the acquaintance at a standstill, and yet left it resumable on more cordial terms at will. One is of one’s world after all; and even in resigning her world, as she thought she had done, Helen had not yet made up her mind to be of a lower one.

  She had promised to go down to Beverley on the morrow, and tell her friends what she had done, as the condition of their letting her come up to Boston at all on that wild enterprise of hers; and though she would have been glad not to go, she kept her word. But it was really not so hard meeting them as she had feared. Mrs. Butler was forbearing, and Marian was preoccupied; the younger girls saw it somewhat as Helen did, and thought it an enviable adventure. She told them all that had happened in detail, and made them laugh. She partly dramatised her interview with the Miss Amys, and they said it was perfectly delightful to think of Helen being patronised by such people. They wanted to see Mrs. Hewitt, and the fellow-boarders; they wished that somebody would trustee their mother; they said that the life Helen was leading was fascinating.

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t find it so fascinating if you were obliged to lead it,” said Mrs. Butler.

  “Helen leads it, and she finds it fascinating.”

  “Helen leads it out of the hardness of her heart, because her friends don’t wish her to,” returned Mrs. Butler fondly.

  “Mrs. Butler! Remember your promise!” said Helen.

  “I hope you’ll remember yours, my dear, — to come back to us.”

  “Oh! And what are you going to do, Helen? What are you going to do for a living?” demanded Jessie Butler.

  “Jessie!” cried her mother. “Don’t be absurd! Do for a living!”

  “I hope you won’t think it absurd, Mrs. Butler,” said Helen, with serious dignity, “for I really want to do something for a living.”

  “Poor child!” said Mrs. Butler, getting Helen’s hand between hers, and tenderly smoothing it.

  “What could you do?”

  “I don’t know what yet. But I know I could do something.” She felt dispirited by Mrs. Butler’s; motherly kindness, and would have liked to take her hand away. This was what she had dreaded, this feeling on the part of such friends as the Butlers that anything useful and practical was impossible to her. For the moment this feeling seemed all that stood between her and a prosperous career of self-help; it unnerved her so terribly “Do tell us what you’ve been thinking of trying,” persisted Jessie. She was the youngest, and she ventured on almost as great freedoms with her mother and Helen as Marian herself did.

  “Oh, I thought over a great many things as I came down this morning,” answered Helen. “But I haven’t settled upon anything yet. Indeed, indeed, Mrs. Butler!” she exclaimed, “I’m very much in earnest about it, and don’t try to discourage me, please!”

  “I won’t, dear!” Mrs. Butler assented soothi
ngly, as if Helen were a sick child, and must be humoured in her little fancies.

  “How would plain sewing do?” suggested Jessie. “Or, Wanted by a young lady, to have the care of small children, where she would be received as one of the family; no objection to the country; wages not so much of an object as permanent home, address H. H., Transcript Office?”

  They laughed at this, Helen forlornly and helplessly with the rest. They could not realise her ambition, and they did not believe in her necessity: Mrs. Butler because she felt that all Helen need really do was to go to Europe with her, and return to marry Robert Fenton as soon as he could get leave to come home; the young girls because they had no experience of life, and could not imagine Helen’s case. They were merry about her projects all through lunch, and Helen herself felt that she was behaving very ridiculously in pretending to be anything but the well-taken-care-of young lady that she had always been. The world which she had touched yesterday became as unreal in its turn as it had made her old life seem.

  “I will tell you,” said Marian, who had given the subject less attention than the rest, and had laughed at Helen with half her mind all the while on her approaching marriage; “I will tell you. In these days Helen must take to some form of keramics. I wonder that we didn’t think of it before. How could we discuss this subject in Beverley, of all places and not think of pottery? Helen must decorate pottery for a living.”

  “O yes! and she can drive over to the pottery this afternoon with us, and select the shapes!” clamoured the younger sisters.

  Their noise submerged Mrs. Butler’s rebukes; there was open rebellion to her voice.

  “Mamma!” cried Jessie, “you needn’t try to put us down about this. It’s an extraordinary case! We’ve never had the opportunity before, to decide the vocation of a young lady who wants a lucrative employment. Do say you’ll decorate pottery for a living, Helen!”

  “Do! do!” pleaded all the rest. They had left their places and gathered round her in postures of supplication.

  Helen was swept along in the tide. “I don’t know anything about keramics,” she laughed, turning upon the group. —

  “That’s the beauty of the profession,” they shouted in reply. “You don’t need to know anything about it.”

  “I can’t draw!”

  “Drawing’s the very last thing that’s wanted for art-pottery. Say that you’ll drive-over with us and select the shapes!”

  “You must first begin with a bean-pot, like that pretty little Mrs. Gay,” said Jessie Butler. “You ought to have heard her talk about it: so colonial, so in character with Beverley!” The young girl gave the tone and the languish. “She decorated it with a flowering bean; they say she thought that was the kind they baked. Perhaps you’ll find that they’ve begun to give bean-pots an æsthetic shape. Miss Harkness’s bean-pots will become the fashion. We shall have a course of beans in their native earthenware, at dinners, and when the pot comes in, everybody will put on their pince-nez, and crane over, and ask, ‘Is that a Harkness, Mrs. Jones?”

  “No, no! I can’t go with you!” cried Helen; “I’m going back to Boston this afternoon.”

  They all protested, but Helen stood firm, feeling that it was her one chance for life, or for making a living. If she was ever to put in force her resolutions to be something and to do something, she could not get away too soon from an atmosphere in which no one,” not even herself, could regard them seriously. It was a trying ordeal, this pity of Mrs. Butler’s, and this jocose incredulity of the young girls; yet as Helen rode back to town, she was more and more satisfied that there was something possible and practical in Marian’s suggestion. She recalled some pretty shapes of pottery which she had seen in a shop-window, and which seemed to her more stupidly decorated than anything she could do if she did her worst. They were there on sale, and somebody had been paid for doing them, or expected to be paid for it. The conclusion from the premises was irresistible, and Helen found herself impatient to arrive and begin work. She could really draw very prettily, though she had denied her gift; she was even a clever copyist; but she knew that she lacked the imaginative impulse, and she had not cared for what she could do, because so many others could do it as well.

  As soon as she left the train she hastened to this shop, where, besides the decorated pots and vases, she had seen a good many uncontaminated examples of the Beverley ware. She was vexed to find the place already closed, and she could hardly wait for the morning.

  She hurried from her breakfast to the shop in the morning; when her purchase came home, and she unpacked it on her bed (the largest and safest surface in her room), she cowered a little to see it so great in quantity. She blushed to find herself making such an ambitious beginning, and though five dollars had seemed a great deal to spend, she wished for the moment that it had not bought quite so much. But this was foolish; of course she must spoil some of the designs, and since she was going to try a variety of decorations, she should want a variety of jars. She set them all on the shelf of her closet, which she locked; she folded up the wrapping-paper and tacked it away; she even concealed the string; and after putting on her hat and veil for the street, she had to sit down and have a paroxysm of guilty consciousness before she could summon courage to go out on her next errand.

  She was going to a shop where they sold artists’ materials, to get her colours, and to pick up any hints they could give her there about her work. They were not personally very well informed, but they sold her several little books which had keramic designs in them, and which would tell her all she wished to know. After she had bought them, she thought them rather poverty-stricken in their patterns, and as she passed a print-shop window she saw that pretty series of engravings, illustrative of the old fable of the storks and the babies; and the keramic fitness of storks at once struck her. The prints were rather expensive, and Helen thought that she could not get on without the whole set. Then, as the matter developed in her mind, a great idea occurred to her: Flaxman’s illustrations of Homer. They were of course the only things to copy in the classic shapes. The book cost more than she supposed it would, but as she meant to stop with that, she believed she might afford it, and at any rate she bought it. She was afraid to look the whole sum in the face at first, but her hopes rose with her rapid walk homeward, and she finally confronted the fifteen dollars with serene courage.

  The next three weeks were given to very ardent if not very diligent labour. Helen had an insuperable shyness about her enterprise; she managed so that she might put everything out of sight at a moment’s warning, if any one came to her room.

  Before actually beginning upon the vases, Helen schooled herself in reproducing on paper the designs she meant to use, and this took time. She was also interrupted by excursions to Beverley; but she did not count this as loss altogether, for she was able to, make several studies in colour of the low blackberry vine, now in its richest autumnal bronze, and of certain sea-weeds, with which she meant to decorate several pieces. She did three with storks, and had a fourth half-done when she let it fall. She wrapped the fragments in paper, and took them out at twilight, and dropped them in the street some distance away, that the pieces might not be traced to her, and so proceeded to the Flaxmans. She chose three subjects among these: The old nurse Euryclea recognising Ulysses as she bathes his feet; Penelope carrying the bow of Ulysses to the Suitors; and the meeting of Ulysses and Penelope. These all related to the return of the wanderer, and they went very prettily round the vases. Ulysses following the homeward car of Nausicaa from the coast on which she found him shipwrecked, was a subject which Helen instinctively rejected, though the lines were lovely, and she felt that she could do it easily. The jar which she decorated with the seaweed had a band of shells round the middle; a slanting flight of birds encircled the vases, over which she taught the blackberry vine to wanton.

  She had many alternating moods of exaltation and despair while upon this work, but when it was all done, and the pots set out in a fair row on her wind
ow-shelf, and she retired a pace or two with her pencil at her lip to get their entire effect, she could not but own that they seemed very successful. At that distance certain defects of drawing — such as that which gave Penelope bearing the bow rather a pert and mincing look — and other blemishes were subdued, but even when taken up severally and scrutinised merely at arm’s length, the vases bore the ordeal of critical inspection very well. “And no one,” thought Helen, “will ever look at them more severely than I have.”

  She sank into her chair, which she drew up in front of her work, and indulged a long reverie. In this she dramatised her appearance at one of those charming shops where they deal in such things; she set little scenes in which the proprietors called one another up to look at her vases; and she dialogued their compliments and her own evasive acceptance of them. They ended by asking very respectfully if she could not be persuaded to employ a part of her leisure in doing something of the kind for them; and on her replying that these were for sale, they had instantly offered her a price for them that passed her wildest hopes; that seemed so much too much, indeed, that she insisted upon abating something from it. Struck by this nobleness in her, they had conversed in low tones together; and then the senior member of the firm had confessed that they had some hesitation in asking her to design certain friezes which they were to do for a cottage at Newport, and their admiration for her work must be their excuse if they were proposing something quite out of the way; but they begged her to remember that two ladies in London had taken up decorative architecture as a profession, and they trusted they were not wrong. Then Helen had replied, O no, indeed! She was only too much flattered by their confidence in her, and she would be very glad to think it over; all that she feared was that she would not be able to meet their expectation; at which they had laughed, and said they had no such fear, and had drawn her a check for her vases, and had added a few hundreds as a sort of retainer in the matter of the friezes. At this point Helen broke from her reveries with “What silly, silly nonsense! What a simpleton I am!” While she was in good humour with them, she resolved to pack her vases in the basket that she had got for that purpose, and when each was carefully wrapped, and put in, she laughed to find the basket looking like that of an old Jew who used to come to the kitchen door to sell Bohemian glass, when she was a child. The matter of transportation was one that she did not consider till the next morning, when it flashed upon her that she could not go carrying that basket about. She must drive, and though this did not accord with her severe ideas of economy, she had to own that she had been rather lavish in her preparations for work, and that it would be foolish to try now to scrimp at an impossible point.