Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  He began to flatter himself that if he went back he could contrive that compromise with the court which his friends had failed to bring about; he persuaded himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evidence that would result in his acquittal. But if he must undergo some punishment for the offence of being caught in transactions which were all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt guilty of wrong.

  It could not be said that these moments of a consciousness of guilt were so frequent as ever to become confluent, and to form a mood. They came and went; perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. What seems certain is that in the end there began to mix with his longing for home a desire, feeble and formless enough, for expiation. There began to be suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, something like the thought that if he had really done wrong, there might be rest and help in accepting the legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it might be. He tried to make this notion appreciable to Pinney when they first met after he summoned Pinney to Quebec; he offered it as an explanation of his action.

  In making up his mind to return at all hazards and to take all the chances, he remembered what Pinney had said to him about his willingness to bear him company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that prompted him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacrificing desire to make Pinney’s fortune in his new quality of detective; he simply dreaded the long journey alone; he wanted the comfort of Pinney’s society. He liked Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. He felt that he could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself to face; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying sympathy of a soul that had so much affinity with his own. He telegraphed Pinney to come for him, and he was impatient till he came.

  Pinney started the instant he received Northwick’s telegram, and met him with an enthusiasm of congratulation. “Well, Mr. Northwick, this is a great thing. It’s the right thing, and it’s the wise thing. It’s going to have a tremendous effect. I suppose,” he added, a little tremulously, “that you’ve thought it all thoroughly over?”

  “Yes; I’m prepared for the worst,” said Northwick.

  “Oh, there won’t be any worst,” Pinney returned gayly. “There’ll be legal means of delaying the trial; your lawyer can manage that; or if he can’t, and you have to face the music at once, we can have you brought into court without the least publicity, and the judge will go through with the forms, and it’ll be all over before anybody knows anything about it. I’ll see that there’s no interviewing, and that there are no reporters present. There’ll probably be a brief announcement among the cases in court; but there won’t be anything painful. You needn’t be afraid. But what I’m anxious about now is, not to bring any influence to bear on you. I promised my wife I wouldn’t urge you, and I won’t; I know I’m a little optimistic, and if you don’t see this thing exactly couleur de rose, don’t you do it from anything I say.” Pinney apparently put great stress upon himself to get this out.

  “I’ve looked it in the face,” said Northwick.

  “And your friends know you’re coming back?”

  “They expect me at any time. You can notify them.”

  Pinney drew a long, anxious breath. “Well,” he said, with a sort of desperation, “then I don’t see why we don’t start at once.”

  “Have you got your papers all right?” Northwick asked.

  “Yes,” said Pinney, with a blush. “But you know,” he added, respectfully, “I can’t touch you till we get over the line, Mr. Northwick.”

  “I understand that. Let me see your warrant.”

  Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and Northwick read it carefully over. He folded it up with a deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope from his breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the warrant. “Here is the money I brought with me.”

  “Mr. Northwick! It isn’t necessary yet! Indeed it isn’t. I’ve every confidence in your honor as a gentleman.” Pinney’s eyes glowed with joy, and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. “But if you mean business—”

  “I mean business,” said Northwick. “Count it.”

  Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. “Forty-one thousand six hundred and forty.”

  “That is right,” said Northwick. “Now, another matter. Have you got handcuffs?”

  “Why, Mr. Northwick! What are you giving me?” demanded Pinney. “I’d as soon put them on my own father.”

  “I want you to put them on me,” said Northwick. “I intend to go back as your prisoner. If I have anything to expiate” — and he seemed to indulge a question of the fact for the last time— “I want the atonement to begin as soon as possible. If you haven’t brought those things with you, you’d better go out to the police station and get them, while I attend to the tickets.”

  “Oh, I needn’t go,” said Pinney, and his face burned.

  He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and throughout the journey he was anxious and perturbed, while on Northwick, after the first excitement, a deep quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed to have fallen.

  “By George!” said Pinney, when they started, “anybody to see us would think you were taking me back.” He was tenderly watchful of Northwick’s comfort; he left him free to come and go at the stations; from the restaurants he bought him things to tempt his appetite; but Northwick said he did not care to eat.

  They had a long night in a day-car, for they found there was no sleeper on their train. In the morning, when the day broke, Northwick asked Pinney what the next station was.

  Pinney said he did not know. He looked at Northwick as if the possession of him gave him very little pleasure, and asked him how he had slept.

  “I haven’t slept,” said Northwick. “I suppose I’m rather excited. My nerves seem disordered.”

  “Well, of course,” said Pinney, soothingly.

  They were silent a moment, and then Northwick asked, “What did you say the next station was?”

  “I’ll ask the brakeman.” They could see the brakeman on the platform. Pinney went out to him, and returned. “It’s Wellwater, he says. We get breakfast there.”

  “Then we’re over the line, now,” said Northwick.

  “Why, yes,” Pinney admitted, reluctantly. He added, in a livelier note, “You get a mighty good breakfast at Wellwater, and I’m ready to meet it half way.” He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. “If I should happen to get left there, what would you do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your mind still made up on that point? I ask, because all kinds of accidents happen, and—” Pinney stopped, and regarded his captive fixedly. “Or if you don’t feel quite able to travel—”

  “Let me see your warrant again,” said Northwick.

  Pinney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced the paper. Northwick read it all once more. “I’m your prisoner,” he said, returning the paper. “You can put the handcuffs on me now.”

  “No, no, Mr. Northwick!” Pinney pleaded. “I don’t want to do that. I’m not afraid of your trying to get away. I assure you it isn’t necessary between gentlemen.”

  Northwick held out his wrists. “Put them on, please.”

  “Oh, well, if I must!” protested Pinney. “But I swear I won’t lock ‘em.” He glanced round to find whether any of the other passengers were noticing. “You can slip ’em off whenever you get tired of ‘em.” He pushed Northwick’s sleeves down over them with shame-faced anxiety. “Don’t let people see the damned things, for God’s sake!’”

  “That’s good!” murmured Northwick, as if the feel of the iron pleased him.

  The incident turned Pinney rather sick. He went out on the platform of the car for a little breath of air, and some restorative conversation with the brakeman. When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he
left him. His head had fallen on his breast. “Poor old fellow, he’s asleep,” Pinney thought. He put his hand gently on Northwick’s shoulder. “I’ll have to wake you here,” he said. “We’ll be in, now, in a minute.”

  Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Pinney caught him round the neck, and lifted his face.

  “Oh, my God! He’s dead!”

  The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor.

  XI.

  After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro’ to the company her father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the sacrifice on Suzette’s part as long as her sister lived. But suffering from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather a joyful relief.

  Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left her incalculably rich.

  Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father’s estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick’s indebtedness to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them.

  The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment of property made them by Northwick’s daughter. As a corporate body they had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter’s action in surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the commonwealth.

  “They considered,” said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, “that their first duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their interests. Well,” he went on, breaking from this grievance, “there’s this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last that he intended to do; and, of course, the he in question is a she. ‘She that was’ Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole affair, that’s had her way. Everybody else’s way has come to nothing, beginning with my own. I can look back to the time when I meant to have the late J. Milton Northwick’s blood; I was lying low for years, waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter’s counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send him to State’s prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off on the plea of insanity. But I wasn’t allowed to have my way, even in a little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign from the Board, and pay the defaulter’s debts. Pinney, I understand, considers himself a ruined man; he’s left off detecting for a living, and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope of making Northwick’s old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the money he had stolen; and now that she’s dead it goes to his creditors. Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William B. Gerrish, — couldn’t have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick himself couldn’t! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to fortune again. He couldn’t budge of his own motion; and the only thing he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn’t let him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed her. Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn’t have her way with Northwick. But I’m not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There wasn’t the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don’t know that he’s much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of — incident; and a pretty common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances — like the rest of us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. Sometimes I think there was nothing to Northwick, except what happened to him. He’s a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where it’s going without the slightest reference to what we do or don’t do? I suppose it’s wicked to be a fatalist, but I’ll go a few æons of eternal punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it’s all Fate.”

  “Why not call it Law?” the doctor suggested.

  “Well, I don’t like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I’ll split the difference with you and call it Mercy.”

  AN IMPERATIVE DUTY

  This short realist novel was published in 1892. The novel explores the problematic idea of “passing” (i.e. as a white person) through the racially mixed character of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman whose aunt informs her that she is one-sixteenth African American. Howells himself actively lobbied for the abolition of slavery and racial equality — a commitment reflected in this novel.

  Title page of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  I

  OLNEY got back to Boston about the middle of July, and found himself in the social solitude which the summer makes more noticeable in that city than in any other. The business, the hard work of life, was going on, galloping on, as it always does in America, but the pleasure of lif
e, which he used to be part of as a younger man, was taking a rest, or if not a rest, then certainly an outing at the sea-shore. He met no one he knew, and he continued his foreign travels in his native place, after an absence so long that it made everything once so familiar bewilderingly strange.

  He had sailed ten days before from Liverpool, but he felt as if he had been voyaging in a vicious circle when he landed, and had arrived in Liverpool again. In several humiliating little ways, Boston recalled the most commonplace of English cities. It was not like Liverpool in a certain civic grandiosity, a sort of lion-and-unicorn spectacularity which he had observed there. The resemblance appeared to him in the meanness and dulness of many of the streets in the older part of the town where he was lodged, and in the littleness of the houses. Then there was a curious similarity in the figures and faces of the crowd. He had been struck by the almost American look of the poorer class in Liverpool, and in Boston he was struck by its English look. He could half account for this by the fact that the average face and figure one meets in Boston in midsummer, is hardly American; but the other half of the puzzle remained. He could only conjecture an approach from all directions to a common type among those who work with their hands for a living; what he had seen in Liverpool and now saw in Boston was not the English type or the American type, but the proletarian type. He noticed it especially in the women, and more especially in the young girls, as he met them in the street after their day’s work was done, and on the first Sunday afternoon following his arrival, as he saw them in the Common. By far the greater part of those listening to the brass band which was then beginning to vex the ghost of our poor old Puritan Sabbath there, were given away by their accent for those primary and secondary Irish who abound with us. The old women were strong, sturdy, old-world peasants, but the young girls were thin and crooked, with pale, pasty complexions, and an effect of physical delicacy from their hard work and hard conditions, which might later be physical refinement. They were conjecturably out of box factories and clothier’s shops; they went about in threes or fours, with their lank arms round one another’s waists, or lounged upon the dry grass; and they seemed fond of wearing red jerseys, which accented every fact of their anatomy. Looking at them scientifically, Olney thought that if they survived to be mothers they might give us, with better conditions, a race as hale and handsome as the elder American race; but the transition from the Old World to the New, as represented in them, was painful. Their voices were at once coarse and weak; their walk was uncertain, now awkward and now graceful, an undeveloped gait; he found their bearing apt to be aggressive, as if from a wish to ascertain the full limits of their social freedom, rather than from ill-nature, or that bad-heartedness which most rudeness comes from.