Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  When she had finished Mrs. Sewell did not say anything. She merely looked at her husband, who looked really sick.

  At last he said, making an effort to rise from his chair, “I must go and see him, I suppose.”

  “Yes, if you can find him,” responded his wife, with a sigh.

  “Find him?” echoed Sewell.

  “Yes. Goodness knows what more trouble the wretched creature’s got into by this time. You saw that he was acquitted, didn’t you?” she demanded, in answer to her husband’s stare.

  “No, I didn’t. I supposed he was convicted, of course.”

  “Well, you see it isn’t so bad as it might be,” she said, using a pity which she did not perhaps altogether feel. “Eat your breakfast now, David, and then go and try to look him up.”

  “Oh, I don’t want any breakfast,” pleaded the minister.

  He offered to rise again, but she motioned him down in his chair. “David, you shall! I’m not going to have you going about all day with a headache. Eat! And then when you’ve finished your breakfast, go and find out which station that officer Baker belongs to, and he can tell you something about the boy, if any one can.”

  Sewell made what shift he could to grasp these practical ideas, and he obediently ate of whatever his wife bade him. She would not let him hurry his breakfast in the least, and when he had at last finished, she said, “Now you can go, David. And when you’ve found the boy, don’t you let him out of your sight again till you’ve put him aboard the train for Willoughby Pastures, and seen the train start out of the depot with him. Never mind your sermon. I will be setting down the heads of a sermon, while you’re gone, that will do you good, if you write it out, whether it helps any one else or not.”

  Sewell was not so sure of that. He had no doubt that his wife would set down the heads of a powerful sermon, but he questioned whether any discourse, however potent, would have force to benefit such an abandoned criminal as he felt himself, in walking down his brown-stone steps, and up the long brick sidewalk of Bolingbroke Street toward the Public Garden. The beds of geraniums and the clumps of scarlet-blossomed salvia in the little grass-plots before the houses, which commonly flattered his eye with their colour, had a suggestion of penal fires in them now, that needed no lingering superstition in his nerves to realise something very like perdition for his troubled soul. It was not wickedness he had been guilty of, but he had allowed a good man to be made the agency of suffering, and he was sorely to blame, for he had sinned against himself. This was what his conscience said, and though his reason protested against his state of mind as a phase of the religious insanity which we have all inherited in some measure from Puritan times, it could not help him. He went along involuntarily framing a vow that if Providence would mercifully permit him to repair the wrong he had done, he would not stop at any sacrifice to get that unhappy boy back to his home, but would gladly take any open shame or obloquy upon himself in order to accomplish this.

  He met a policeman on the bridge of the Public Garden, and made bold to ask him at once if he knew an officer named Baker, and which station he could be found at. The policeman was over-rich in the acquaintance of two officers of the name of Baker, and he put his hand on Sewell’s shoulder, in the paternal manner of policemen when they will be friendly, and advised him to go first to the Neponset Street station, to which one of these Bakers was attached, and inquire there first. “Anyway, that’s what I should do in your place.”

  Sewell was fulsomely grateful, as we all are in the like case, and at the station he used an urbanity with the captain which was perhaps not thrown away upon him, but which was certainly disproportioned to the trouble he was asking him to take in saying whether he knew where he could find officer Baker.

  “Yes, I do,” said the captain. “You can find him in bed, upstairs, but I’d rather you wouldn’t wake a man off duty, if you don’t have to, especially if you don’t know he’s the one. What’s wanted?”

  Sewell stopped to say that the captain was quite right, and then he explained why he wished to see officer Baker.

  The captain listened with nods of his head at the names and facts given. “Guess you won’t have to get Baker up for that. I can tell you what there is to tell. I don’t know where your young man is now, but I gave him an order for a bed at the Wayfarer’s Lodge last night, and I guess he slept there. You a friend of his?”

  “Yes,” said Sewell, much questioning inwardly whether he could be truly described as such. “I wish to befriend him,” he added savingly. “I knew him at home, and I am sure of his innocence.”

  “Oh, I guess he’s innocent enough,” said the captain. “Well, now, I tell you what you do, if you want to befriend him; you get him home quick as you can.”

  “Yes,” said Sewell, helpless to resent the officer’s authoritative and patronising tone. “That’s what I wish to do. Do you suppose he’s at the Wayfarer’s Lodge now?” asked Sewell.

  “Can’t say,” said the captain, tilting himself back in his chair, and putting his quill toothpick between his lips like a cigarette. “The only way is to go and see.”

  “Thank you very much,” said the minister, accepting his dismissal meekly, as a man vowed to ignominy should, but feeling keenly that he was dismissed, and dismissed in disgrace.

  At the Lodge he was received less curtly. The manager was there with a long morning’s leisure before him, and disposed to friendliness that Sewell found absurdly soothing. He turned over the orders for beds delivered by the vagrants the night before, and “Yes,” he said, coming to Lemuel’s name, “he slept here; but nobody knows where he is by this time. Wait a bit, sir!” he added to Sewell’s fallen countenance. “There was one of the young fellows stayed to help us through with the dishes, this morning. I’ll have him up; or may be you’d like to go down and take a look at our kitchen? You’ll find him there if it’s the one. Here’s our card, We can supply you with all sorts of firewood at less cost than the dealers, and you’ll be helping the poor fellows to earn an honest bed and breakfast. This way, sir!”

  Sewell promised to buy his wood there, put the card respectfully into his pocket, and followed the manager downstairs, and through the basement to the kitchen. He arrived just as Lemuel was about to lift a trayful of clean soup-bowls, to carry it upstairs. After a glance at the minister, he stood still with dropped eyes.

  Sewell did not know in what form to greet the boy on whom he had unwillingly brought so much evil, and he found the greater difficulty in deciding as he saw Lemuel’s face hardening against him.

  “Barker!” he said at last. “I’m very glad to find you — I have been very anxious to find you.”

  Lemuel made no sign of sympathy, but stood still in his long check apron, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, and the minister was obliged to humble himself still further to this figure of lowly obstinacy.

  “I should like to speak with you. Can I speak with you a few moments?”

  The manager politely stepped into the storeroom, and affected to employ himself there, leaving Lemuel and the minister alone together.

  X.

  Sewell lost no time. “I want you to go home, Barker. I feel that I am wholly to blame, and greatly to blame, for your coming to Boston with the expectation that brought you; and that I am indirectly responsible for all the trouble that has befallen you since you came. I want to be the means of your getting home, in any way you can let me.”

  This was a very different way of talking from the smooth superiority of address which the minister had used with him the other day at his own house. Lemuel was not insensible to the atonement offered him, and it was not from sulky stubbornness that he continued silent, and left the minister to explore the causes of his reticence unaided.

  “I will go home with you, if you like,” pursued the minister, though his mind misgave him that this was an extreme which Mrs. Sewell would not have justified him in. “I will go with you, and explain all the circumstances to your friends, in case there should be
any misunderstanding — though in that event I should have to ask you to be my guest till Monday.” Here the unhappy man laid hold of the sheep, which could not bring him greater condemnation than the lamb.

  “I guess they won’t know anything about it,” said Lemuel, with whatever intention.

  It seemed hardened indifference to the minister, and he felt it his disagreeable duty to say, “I am afraid they will. I read of it in the newspaper this morning, and I’m afraid that an exaggerated report of your misfortunes will reach Willoughby Pastures, and alarm your family.”

  A faint pallor came over the boy’s face, and he stood again in his impenetrable, rustic silence. The voice that finally spoke from, it said, “I guess I don’t want to go home, then.”

  “You must go home!” said the minister, with more of imploring than imperiousness in his command. “What will they make of your prolonged absence?”

  “I sent a postal to mother this morning. They lent me one.”

  “But what will you do here, without work and without means? I wish you to go home with me — I feel responsible for you — and remain with me till you can hear from your mother. I’m sorry you came to Boston — it’s no place for you, as you must know by this time, and I am sure your mother will agree with me in desiring your return.”

  “I guess I don’t want to go home,” said Lemuel.

  “Are you afraid that an uncharitable construction will be placed upon what has happened to you by your neighbours?” Lemuel did not answer. “I assure you that all that can be arranged. I will write to your pastor, and explain it fully. But in any event,” continued Sewell, “it is your duty to yourself and your friends to go home and live it down. It would be your duty to do so, even if you had been guilty of wrong, instead of the victim of misfortune.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lemuel, “as I want to go home and be the laughing-stock.”

  Against this point Sewell felt himself helpless. He could not pretend that the boy would not be ridiculous in the eyes of his friends, and all the more ridiculous because so wholly innocent. He could only say, “That is a thing you must bear,” and then it occurred to him to ask, “Do you feel that it is right to let your family meet the ridicule alone?”

  “I guess nobody will speak to mother about it, more than once,” said Lemuel, with a just pride in his mother’s powers of retort. A woman who, unaided and alone, had worn the Bloomer costume for twenty years in the heart of a commentative community like Willoughby Pastures, was not likely to be without a cutting tongue for her defence.

  “But your sister,” urged Sewell; “your brother-in-law,” he feebly added.

  “I guess they will have to stand it,” replied Lemuel.

  The minister heaved a sigh of hopeless perplexity. “What do you propose to do, then? You can’t remain here without means. Do you expect to sell your poetry?” he asked, goaded to the question by a conscience peculiarly sore on that point.

  It made Lemuel blush. “No, I don’t expect to sell it, now. They took it out of my pocket on the Common.”

  “I am glad of that,” said the minister as simply, “and I feel bound to warn you solemnly, that there is absolutely no hope for you in that direction.”

  Lemuel said nothing.

  The minister stood baffled again. After a bad moment he asked, “Have you anything particular in view?”

  “I don’t know as I have.”

  “How long can you remain here?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  Sewell turned and followed the manager into the refrigerator room, where he had remained patiently whistling throughout this interview.

  When he came back, Lemuel had carried one trayful of bowls upstairs, and returned for another load, which he was piling carefully up for safe transportation.

  “The manager tells me,” said Sewell, “that practically you can stay here as long as you like, if you work, but he doesn’t think it desirable you should remain, nor do I. But I wish to find you here again, when I come back. I have something in view for you.”

  This seemed to be a question, and Lemuel said, “All right,” and went on piling up his bowls. He added, “I shouldn’t want you to take a great deal of trouble.”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble,” groaned the minister. “Then I may depend upon seeing you here any time during the day?”

  “I don’t know as I’m going away,” Lemuel admitted.

  “Well, then, good-bye, for the present,” said Sewell, and after speaking again to the manager, and gratefully ordering some kindling which he did not presently need, he went out, and took his way homeward. But he stopped half a block short of his own door, and rang at Miss Vane’s. To his perturbed and eager spirit, it seemed nothing short of a divine mercy that she should be at home. If he had not been a man bent on repairing his wrong at any cost to others, he would hardly have taken the step he now contemplated without first advising with his wife, who, he felt sure, would have advised against it. His face did not brighten at all when Miss Vane came briskly in, with the “How d’ye do?” which he commonly found so cheering. She pulled up the blind and saw his knotted brow.

  “What is the matter? You look as if you had got Lemuel Barker back on your hands.”

  “I have,” said the minister briefly.

  Miss Vane gave a wild laugh of delight. “You don’t mean it!” she sputtered, sitting down before him, and peering into his face. “What do you mean?”

  Sewell was obliged to possess Miss Vane’s entire ignorance of all the facts in detail. From point to point he paused; he began really to be afraid she would do herself an injury with her laughing.

  She put her hand on his arm and bowed her head forward, with her face buried in her handkerchief. “What — what — do you suppose-pose — they did with the po-po-poem they stole from him?”

  “Well, one thing I’m sure they didn’t do,” said Sewell bitterly. “They didn’t read it.”

  Miss Vane hid her face in her handkerchief, and then plucked it away, and shrieked again. She stopped, with the sudden calm that succeeds such a paroxysm, and, “Does Mrs. Sewell know all about this?” she panted.

  “She knows everything, except my finding him in the dish-washing department of the Wayfarer’s Lodge,” said Sewell gloomily, “and my coming to you.”

  “Why do you come to me?” asked Miss Vane, her face twitching and her eyes brimming.

  “Because,” answered Sewell, “I’d rather not go to her till I have done something.”

  Miss Vane gave way again, and Sewell sat regarding her ruefully.

  “What do you expect me to do?” She looked at him over her handkerchief, which she kept pressed against her mouth.

  “I haven’t the least idea what I expected you to do. I expected you to tell me. You have an inventive mind.”

  Miss Vane shook her head. Her eyes grew serious, and after a moment she said, “I’m afraid I’m not equal to Lemuel Barker. Besides,” she added, with a tinge of trouble, “I have my problem, already.”

  “Yes,” said the minister sympathetically. “How has the flower charity turned out?”

  “She went yesterday with one of the ladies, and carried flowers to the city hospital. But she wasn’t at all satisfied with the result. She said the patients were mostly disgusting old men that hadn’t been shaved. I think that now she wants to try her flowers on criminals. She says she wishes to visit the prisons.”

  Sewell brightened forlornly. “Why not let her reform Barker?”

  This sent Miss Vane off again. “Poor boy!” she sighed, when she had come to herself. “No, there’s nothing that I can do for him, except to order some firewood from his benefactors.”

  “I did that,” said Sewell. “But I don’t see how it’s to help Barker exactly.”

  “I would gladly join in a public subscription to send him home. But you say he won’t go home?”

  “He won’t go home,” sighed the minister. “He’s determined to stay. I suspect he would accept employment, if it
were offered him in the right spirit.”

  Miss Vane shook her head. “There’s nothing I can think of except shovelling snow. And as yet it’s rather warm October weather.”

  “There’s certainly no snow to shovel,” admitted Sewell. He rose disconsolately. “Well, there’s nothing for it, I suppose, but to put him down at the Christian Union, and explain his checkered career to everybody who proposes to employ him.”

  Miss Vane could not keep the laughter out of her eyes; she nervously tapped her lips with her handkerchief, to keep it from them. Suddenly she halted Sewell, in his dejected progress toward the door. “I might give him my furnace?”

  “Furnace?” echoed Sewell.

  “Yes. Jackson has ‘struck’ for twelve dollars a month, and at present there is a ‘lock-out,’ — I believe that’s what it’s called. And I had determined not to yield as long as the fine weather lasted. I knew I should give in at the first frost. I will take Barker now, if you think he can manage the furnace.”

  “I’ve no doubt he can. Has Jackson really struck?” Miss Vane nodded. “He hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

  “He probably intends to make special terms to the clergy. But he told me he was putting up the rates on all his ‘famblies’ this winter.”

  “If he puts them up on me, I will take Barker too,” said the minister boldly. “If he will come,” he added, with less courage. “Well, I will go round to the Lodge, and see what he thinks of it. Of course, he can’t live upon ten dollars a month, and I must look him up something besides.”

  “That’s the only thing I can think of at present,” said Miss Vane.

  “Oh, you’re indefinitely good to think of so much,” said Sewell. “You must excuse me if my reception of your kindness has been qualified by the reticence with which Barker received mine, this morning.”

  “Oh, do tell me about it!” cried Miss Vane.

  “Sometime I will. But I can assure you it was such as to make me shrink from another interview. I don’t know but Barker may fling your proffered furnace in my teeth. But I’m sure we both mean well. And I thank you, all the same. Good-bye.”