Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  She would take a coupé by the hour, and perhaps get it cheaper, if she had it several hours; though when she went out for the carriage, she found the driver inflexible, and she had to take it at the usual rate. She bade him drive her to Mrs. Hewitt’s door, and she wanted him to go up with her and carry down her basket; but he, seeing her a single defenceless woman, boldly answered that he could not leave his horse; and Helen, indignant, and trembling for her secret, was forced to bring it down herself. Happily, Miss Root had gone out; the Evanses’ door was closed; and she encountered Mrs. Hewitt neither in going up nor in coming down. When she lifted the basket on the carriage seat she was out of breath, but exultant at her escape, and with unbroken courage she ordered the driver to go to the address given him. But it now occurred to her that she could not lug that great hamper across a crowded pavement into a shop-door, and she must sell her wares by sample. She employed the drive in taking out the best of the stork vases; one of the most characteristic Flaxmans; and the blackberry and bird-banded jar. She scarcely dared look at them now, but as she gathered them to her bosom with one hand, while she caught up her skirt with the other to alight from the coupé, it was with quite as much hope as fear that her heart palpitated against “those classic shapes. She pulled down her veil, however, for she knew that she was blushing violently and when she stepped upon the ground, she found herself giddy.

  The people were all busy when she entered the store, and the gentleman to whom she hoped to speak was occupied with a lady whom Helen knew: a lady who gave proof of having lived abroad by the loud and confident voice which she had succeeded in managing, not like an Englishwoman but like an Englishman. Helen shrank from her recognition, and lurked about, pretending to be interested in distant bric-a-brac, and growing momentarily more faint and tremulous, but when the lady went out and the gentleman turned from closing the door after her, Helen came quickly forward. She plucked up an excited gasp from somewhere, and waiving the respectful kindness with which he bent to listen, said, “I’ve something here I’d like to show you,” and she unfolded one of her vases, and as he took it up, with “Ah, yes! Something in keramics,” she unwrapped the others and set them on the shelf near which they stood. “Why, this is very nice, Miss Harkness,” said the dealer, “very nice indeed.” He carried all three of the vases to the light and returned with them, holding out the bird-banded jar.

  “I like this one best. You’ve managed these birds and this vine in quite the Japanese spirit: they ‘re v the only people who understand the use of unconventionalised forms. The way your blackberry climbs into the neck of your vase is thoroughly Japanese. These storks are good, too, very effectively handled. The classic subject — well, I don’t think that’s quite so successful, do you?”

  “No, I don’t know that it is,” said Helen, so grateful for his praise of the others that she would willingly have allowed this to be a disgraceful failure.

  “Have you ever done anything of this kind before?” asked the dealer.

  “No,” replied Helen.

  “Very remarkable,” said the dealer. He had set the vases back on the shelf again, and now gazed at them somewhat absently. “It shows what can be done with this sort of thing. See here!” he called to his partner, who was also disengaged. “Here’s something pretty, and rather new?”

  “Your work, Miss Harkness?” asked the other partner politely, coming up. He said much the same things that the first had said; he even stopped a young lady assistant who was passing, and made her admire the jars. Then he also fell into a musing silence, while Helen waited with a thickly beating heart for the rest of her reverie to come true, and stayed herself against a counter, till these amiable partners should formulate some offer for her wares. The young lady assistant ebbed noiselessly away, and went to writing at a high desk; the second partner shifted from his right foot to his left, turned his head abruptly, and feigned to be called suddenly by some duty in the direction to which he looked. His going roused the first partner. “Yes!” he said with a deep, nasal sigh, in coming to himself, and was sinking again into his abstraction, when he seemed to think of something. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, and went and looked into the show window, and then into a dark corner in the back part of the room. “I thought we had some of that Cambridge pottery,” he called out to his partner.

  “No,” said the other, remaining aloof, “we only had a few pieces.”

  “Well!” said the first, coming back to Helen.

  “I supposed we had some of it left. I was going to suggest, Miss Harkness, if you ‘re interested in this sort of thing, that you ought to see that North Cambridge ware. Have you ever seen it?”

  “No,” answered Helen faintly.

  “It isn’t so native quite in sentiment as this Beverley ware, but it’s much more refined in form.

  It’s beautifully finished. Really, I don’t see how it falls short of that Copenhagen pottery in finish. If you have plenty of time on your hands, you couldn’t do a better thing than go out to see them making it.

  I think it would interest you.”

  “Thank you,” said Helen; her head whirled, but she resolved to speak steadily if it killed her. “I shall certainly go. I’m glad you mentioned it. I never saw any of it.” She fumbled piteously at the papers which she had taken off her vases, and the dealer brought some softer stuff, and skilfully wrapped them up for her.

  “These things are quite worthy of Japanese paper,” he said, indicating the silky texture of the fabric he had used. “I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you for letting us see your work, Miss Harkness. It’s charming. I hope you’ll keep on at it. I’m interested business-wise, you know,” he added, “in having you ladies take up these graceful arts. And be sure and go to see that Cambridge ware. We can get some of it for you, if you wish.” He had followed her to the door, and now opened it for her, with a bow.

  “Thanks,” said Helen. “I won’t forget. Good-morning.”

  “Good-morning.”

  She got into the coupé, and put her vases carefully back in the basket, and sat down on the seat beside it. She quivered with the intense and bitter disappointment, and she burnt with shame, as every particular of her interview blazoned itself upon her consciousness, and she realised that she had no one but herself to blame for the precise result. The people had been thoroughly kind and sympathetic; they had praised her work, and had been far more interested in it than she had any right to expect; but their taking her on her old social plane had made it impossible for her to meet them on any other. Apparently, they had never once imagined that she wished to sell these things, and she had not known how to approach the fact. They had thought she wished merely to show them as matters of aesthetic interest, but if they had not supposed she came for advice, what could they think of her conceit in making such a display, and of staying and staying till she had all but to be turned out of doors! All that about the Cambridge ware must have been a polite ruse to get rid of her, — to spare her feelings while they relieved their own. What had kept her from telling them honestly and bravely what she had come for? Did she really expect them to ask her if her work was for sale, as in her reverie; and then offer her that frieze to do in Newport? It was intolerable! She literally bowed herself down in self-contempt, while her heart ached with the sickening defeat of her hopes.

  “Where to?” asked a gruff voice.

  She had been sitting still in her coupé, and this was the voice of the driver, as he leaned over from his seat, and projected the demand in at the window.

  “Oh!” cried Helen. Then she hesitated in a flutter. She had never thought where she should go next; she had not taken any next place into account. “Oh! Drive — drive—” She hesitated again, and then she gave the address of the street where she had bought her pottery. She remembered the decorated pieces there; and they might like hers. At any rate the people did not know her, and she should have the courage to offer them her work.

  She began somewhat as at the other place: “I t
hought you might like to see — ,” and then corrected herself, and said, “I wished, to show you my decoration of some of the Beverley ware I got here the other day.”

  “O yes,” said the shopman, — warily, Helen thought. But she undid her vases, and saw him smile in approval. “They’ve come out very well,” he added, as if they had been subjected to a process.

  “Here are some new shapes, which we’ve just got in to-day.”

  Helen only glanced at the vases he indicated. “I see you have some decorated pieces here,” she said hastily. “Would you like to buy these?”

  The man’s smile gave place to a look of something like anguish. He took off his hat, and scratched his head. “Well — well — not this morning, I think. The fact is, it’s a new thing, you know; and these decorated pieces are principally to show what may be done with the ware. We do sell them, but we don’t — we don’t buy. By and by, I hope we shall be able to do so, but as yet we only expect to supply the plain ware to ladies who wish to paint it. There are places where—” He looked still more distressed, and stopped.

  Helen hastily wrapped her jars up again, and turned to go. The man followed her a few paces.

  “Your own work?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Helen shortly, without looking round. “Drive slowly along Washington Street,” she ordered, and as the coupé started she blamed herself for not re-opening the parley at the man’s last question, and trying to learn of him something about those other places he had begun to mention. She was too much bewildered to do that, but it must have looked like pride. Helen resolved now that she would be not only bold but meek.

  She had a plan of stopping at various little shops, in whose windows she remembered seeing artistic caprices, like pictures in birch-bark, and comic designs jig-sawed out of white-wood. They might somewhere take a fancy to her vases. She stopped accordingly wherever bric-a-brac showed itself in any sort. The street was full of people, that is to say of women, thronging in and out of the shop-doors, and intent upon spending the money of their natural protectors. It is always a wonderful spectacle, and in the circuit of a quarter of a mile, about the confluence of Washington and Winter Streets, it enforces itself with incomparable vividness.

  There is doubtless more shopping in New York or London, or Paris, but in those cities it is dispersed over a larger area, and nowhere in the world perhaps has shopping such an intensity of physiognomy as in Boston. It is unsparingly sincere in its expression. It means business, and the sole business of the city seems to be shopping. The lovely faces of the swarming crowd were almost fierce in their preoccupation, as they pressed into the shop-doors; as they issued from them, and each lady stooped and caught the loop of her train in one hand, while she clasped half-a-dozen paper parcels to her heart with the other, those faces exhibited no relaxation of their eager purpose. Where do they all come from, and where does the money all come from? It is a fearful problem, and the imagination must shrink from following these multitudinous shoppers to their homes, in city and suburb, when they arrive frayed and limp and sore, with overspent allowances, and the hard task before them of making the worse appear the better reason.

  Helen was dismayed to realise herself the only one of all her sex who wished to sell, and not to buy, and at the shops which she entered they were puzzled to conceive of her in that unique character. They were busy with the buyers, and when she had waited about patiently, and had at last found a moment to show her work, they only considered it in various patterns of indifference and refusal. For the most part they scarcely looked at it, and Helen found her scantest toleration at those places where she was obliged to deal with women. Commonly they could not put her errand and her coupé intelligibly together; the conjunction seemed to raise suspicion. In one shop it raised laughter, which followed her from the young lady behind the counter, who said quite audibly to the young lady at the desk: “Actually in a coupé! Think I should walk, myself!” Helen, who had now hardened her sensibilities to everything, took the hint, and let the carriage come after her from shop to shop. But that served no purpose except perhaps to excite the fears of the driver lest she should try to escape from him. When every place had been tried, she still had her vases on her arm, which, when she got them back into the basket, she perceived was sore with carrying them.

  “Home,” she said to the driver, and leaned back against the cushions, and closed her hot dry eyes. She was so benumbed by what she had undergone, that she did not feel very keenly, and her physical fatigue helped off the mental pain. Presently the carriage stopped, and she saw that they were in a jam of vehicles in front of a large jewelry store. There had been something the matter with her watch, and now she thought she would have it looked at; and she dismounted and went in. She gave her watch to a man behind one of the counters, and while he screwed a glass into his eye, and began to peer and blow into the works, Helen cast a listless look into a window where there were some jars of limoges and plates of modern majolica. A gentleman, who did not look quite like a clerk, came forward. Helen carelessly asked him the price of some of the faience. It seemed very little, and he explained that it was merely earthenware painted in imitation of the faience, and began to praise it, and to tell who did it. Helen did not listen very attentively; she was thinking of her own work, and wondering if she should have courage to ask him to look at it, and how, if she should, she could get it from the coupé without awkwardness, when he said, “I see you have something there in the way of our business.” Then she saw that she had mechanically gathered up her three vases and brought them in with her on her arm; she had long ceased to wrap and unwrap them. She looked at them stupidly, but said, “Yes, this is something I’ve been doing;” and the gentleman politely took them, and admired them with a civility that was so cordial to her after the ordeal she had passed through that the tears came behind her veil.

  “Do you think,” she asked very timidly, “you would like to buy something of the kind?”

  “M — in — no,” said the gentleman musingly, as he turned one of the vases over in his hand.

  Helen’s breath came again, and she turned to get her watch, which the workman said was ready; one of the wheels had caught, merely; and there was no charge. She took back her vase, and nodded to the gentleman. He did not bow very definitively in return, but followed her to the door.

  “The fact is,” he said, “there’s very little sale for these things now. The whole decoration business has been overdone. However,” he added, after a pause in which he seemed to take in the fact of Helen’s black, “we might chance to dispose of them for you. If you like, you can leave them here on sale.” Helen promptly handed him the vases.

  “You mustn’t form any expectations,” he cautioned. “It will be a chance. What shall I ask for them?”

  “Oh, anything — anything you can get,” cried Helen desperately. “Nobody wants them.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” said the other, and he now set the vases in the window between the jars of imitation faïence.

  Helen timidly offered him her card, and she stole a glance at the vases from the outside, and thought they looked very common, and dreadfully personal. Their being there gave her neither hope nor pleasure.

  The door of the coupé stuck fast, and while she stood tugging at it, a policeman stepped up and opened it for her. “See here, my man,” he said to the driver, “you’d better get down and wait on your passengers decently, or give up the business. What’s your number?” and, while the man mumbled something in explanation and excuse, Helen looked up into the face of her champion. She failed at first to recognise the civil fellow who had come home with her father the day of his seizure, and whom she had met on the steps; but the officer knew her, and touched his hat.

  Then she remembered him. “Oh, is it you?” she cried, as if it were some old friend.

  “Yes,” said the officer, very much pleased.

  “I’ve always wanted to see you again and thank you,” began Helen.

  “Oh, that�
��s all right,” answered the officer. “Your father was a man, I can tell you. I — I — I was awfully sorry for you, Miss Harkness.” He spoke with such simple and honest cordiality that Helen felt it nothing odd to be shaking hands with a policeman at high noon in Washington Street.

  “Thank you, you are very kind. Good-bye. I shall never forget your goodness to him that day.”

  “Oh, don’t mention it,” said the policeman. He touched his hat again, and vanished in the crowd; and she reflected that she had not asked his name. As she looked in the direction he had gone, she saw not him but herself. She saw herself standing on the threshold of her old, lost home, and turning to look after this man with the stare of amused, haughty wonder, that., a girl bred in ease and fashion, and fondly shielded from all that was rude or was abrupt in life, might fitly bend upon such a curious” piece” of the social mechanism, unexpectedly and inconceivably related to herself. Her attitude implied secure possession in perpetuity of whatever was gracefully supreme in the world, of whatever was prosperously fastidious, and aloof. It was enough to remember this attitude now.

  The coupé stopped at Mrs. Hewitt’s narrow door, and the man got down and helped her out. “I guess the horse is tired enough to stand while I carry this basket up for you,” he said.