Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “And nothing could happen in three minutes,” said Ludlow. “That stands to reason.”

  “And my one luxury is going home alone,” said Charmian. “Mamma doesn’t allow it, except to and from the Synthesis. Then I’m an art student and perfectly safe. If I were a young lady my life wouldn’t be worth anything.”

  “Yes,” Ludlow assented, “the great thing is to have some sort of business to be where you are.”

  “I know a girl who’s in some of the charities, and she goes about at all hours of the night, and nobody speaks to her,” said Charmian.

  “Well, then,” said Ludlow, “I don’t see that there’s anything for me to do, unless we all go together with Mrs. Wesley to get her Broadway car, and then keep on to the Elevated with you, Miss Maybough. Miss Saunders may be frightened enough then to let me walk to her door with her. A man likes to be of some little use in the world.”

  They had some mild fun about the weakness of Cornelia in needing an escort. She found it best to own that she did not quite know her way home, and was afraid to ask if she got puzzled.

  Ludlow put out his spirit-lamp, which had been burning blue all the time, and embittering the tea in the kettle over it, and then they carried out their plan. Cornelia went before with Mrs. Westley, who asked her to come to her on her day, whenever she could leave her work for such a reckless dissipation. At the foot of the Elevated station stairs, where Charmian inflexibly required that they should part with her, in the interest of the personal liberty which she prized above personal safety, she embraced Cornelia formally, and then added an embrace of a more specific character, and whispered to her ear, “You’re glorious!” and fled up the station stairs.

  Cornelia understood that she was glorious because Mr. Ludlow was walking home with her, and that Charmian was giving the fact a significance out of all reason. They talked rather soberly, as two people do when a gayer third has left them, and they had little silences. They spoke of Charmian, and Cornelia praised her beauty and her heart, and said how everybody liked her at the Synthesis.

  “Do they laugh at her a little, too?” Ludlow asked.

  “Why?”

  “She’s rather romantic.”

  “Oh, I thought all girls were romantic.”

  “Yes? You’re not.”

  “What makes you think so?” asked the girl. “I’m a great deal more romantic than is good for me. Don’t you like romantic people? I do!”

  “I don’t believe I do,” said Ludlow. “They’re rather apt to make trouble. I don’t mean Miss Maybough. She’ll probably take it out in madly impossible art. Can she draw?”

  Cornelia did not like to say what she thought of Charmian’s drawing, exactly. She said, “Well, I don’t know.”

  Ludlow hastened to say, “I oughtn’t to have asked that about your friend.”

  “We’re both in the Preparatory, you know,” Cornelia explained. “I think Charmian has a great deal of imagination.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing, if it doesn’t go too far. Fortunately it can’t, in the Preparatory.”

  At her door Cornelia did not know whether to ask him in, as she would have done in Pymantoning; she ended by not even offering him her hand; but he took it all the same, as if he had expected her to offer it.

  XXII.

  Cornelia found herself in her room without knowing how she got there, or how long she had been there, when the man-voiced Irish girl came up and said something to her. She did not understand at first; then she made out that there was a gentleman asking for her in the parlor; and with a glance at her face in the glass, she ran down stairs. She knew it was Ludlow, and that he had thought of something he wanted to say, and had come back. It must be something very important; it might be an invitation to go with him somewhere; she wondered if they would have a chaperone.

  In the vague light of the long parlor, where a single burner was turned half up, because it was not yet dark outside, a figure rose from one of the sofas and came toward her with one hand extended in gay and even jocose greeting. It was the figure of a young man, with a high forehead, and with nothing to obstruct the view of the Shakespearian dome it mounted into, except a modest growth of hair above either ear. He was light upon his feet, and he advanced with a rhythmical step. Cornelia tried to make believe that she did not know who it was; she recoiled, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and she could not gainsay him when he demanded joyfully, “Why, Nie! Why, Nelie! Don’t you remember me? Dickerson, J. B., with Gates & Clarkson, art goods? Pymantoning? Days of yore, generally? Oh, pshaw, now!”

  “Yes, I remember you,” said Cornelia, in a voice as cold as the finger-tips which she inwardly raged to think she gave him, but was helpless to refuse, simply because he was holding out his hand to her.

  “Well, it’s good for sore eyes to see you again,” said Mr. Dickerson, closing both of his hands on hers. “Let’s see; it’s four years ago! How the time flies! I declare, it don’t hardly seem a day. Mustn’t tell you how you’ve grown, I suppose? Well, we weren’t much more than children, then, anyhow. Set down! I’m at home here. Old stamping-ground of mine, when I’m in New York; our house has its headquarters in New York, now; everything’s got to come, sooner or later. Well, it’s a great place.”

  Cornelia obeyed him for the same reason that she gave him her hand, which was no reason. “I heard your voice there at the door, when you came in a little while ago, and I was just going to rush out and speak to you. I was sure it was you; but thinks I, ‘It can’t be; it’s too good to be true’; and I waited till I could see Mrs. Montgomery, and then I sent up for you. Didn’t send my name; thought I’d like to surprise you. Well, how’s the folks? Mother still doing business at the old stand? Living and well, I hope?”

  “My mother is well,” said Cornelia. She wondered how she should rid herself of this horrible little creature, who grew, as she looked at him in her fascination, more abominable to her every moment. She was without any definite purpose in asking, “How is Mrs. Dickerson?”

  The question appeared to give Mr. Dickerson great satisfaction; he laughed, throwing back his head: “Who, Tweet? Well, I thought you’d be after me there, about the first thing! I don’t blame you; don’t blame you a bit. Be just so myself, if I was in your place! Perfectly natural you should! Then you ain’t heard?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Cornelia, with mounting aversion. She edged away from him, for in the expression of his agreeable emotion he had pushed nearer to her on the sofa.

  “Why, Tweet is Mrs. Byers, now; court let her take back her maiden name. I didn’t oppose the divorce; nothing like peace in families, you know. Tweet was all right, and I hain’t got anything to say against her. She’s a good girl; but we couldn’t seem to hit it off, and we agreed to quit, after we’d tried it a couple of years or so, and I’ve been a free man ever since.”

  It could not be honestly said that Cornelia was profoundly revolted by the facts so lightly, almost gaily, presented. Her innocence of so much that they implied, and her familiarity with divorce as a common incident of life, alike protected her from the shock. But what really struck terror to her heart was something that she realized with the look that the hideous little man now bent upon her: the mutual understanding; the rights once relinquished which might now be urged again; the memory of things past, were all suggested in this look. She thought of Ludlow, with his lofty ideals and his great gifts, and then she looked at this little grinning, leering wretch, and remembered how he had once put his arm round her and kissed her. It seemed impossible — too cruel and unjust to be. She was scarcely more than a child, then, and that foolish affair had been more her mother’s folly than her own. It flashed upon her that unless she put away the shame of it, the shame would weaken her and master her. But how to assert herself she did not know till he gave her some pretext.

  “Well,” he sighed, rolling his head against the back of the sofa, and looking up at the chandelier, “sometimes a man has more freedom than
he’s got any use for. I don’t know as I want to be back under Tweet’s thumb, but I guess the Scripture was about right where it says it ain’t good for a man to be alone. When d’you leave Pymantoning, Nelie?”

  “It makes no difference when I left.” Cornelia got to her feet, trembling. “And I’ll thank you not to call me by my first name, Mr. Dickerson. I don’t know why you should do it, and I don’t like it.”

  “Oh, all right, all right,” said Mr. Dickerson. “I don’t blame you. I think you’re perfectly excusable to feel the way you do. But some time, when I get a chance, I should like to tell you about it, and put it to you in the right light — —”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” cried Cornelia fiercely. “And I won’t have you thinking that it’s because I ever did care for you. I didn’t. And I was only too glad when you got married. And I don’t hate you, for I despise you too much; and I always did. So!”

  She stamped her foot for a final emphasis, but she was aware of her words all having fallen effectless, like blows dealt some detestable thing in a dream.

  “Good! Just what I expected and deserved,” said Mr. Dickerson, with a magnanimity that was appalling. “I did behave like a perfect scallawag to you, Nie; but I was young then, and Tweet got round me before I knew. I can explain — —”

  “I don’t want you to explain! I won’t let you. You’re too disgusting for anything. Don’t I tell you I never cared for you?”

  “Why, of course,” said Mr. Dickerson tolerantly, “you say that now; and I don’t blame you. But I guess you did care, once, Nelie.”

  “Oh, my goodness, what shall I do?” She found herself appealing in some sort to the little wretch against himself.

  “Why, let’s see how you look; I hain’t had a fair peep at you, yet.” As if with the notion of affording a relief to the strain of the situation, he advanced, and lifted his hand toward the low-burning chandelier.

  “Stop!” cried Cornelia. “Are you staying here — in this house?”

  “Well, I inferred that I was, from a remark that I made.”

  “Then I’m going away instantly. I will tell Mrs. Montgomery, and I will go to-night.”

  “Why, Nie!”

  “Hush! Don’t you — don’t dare to speak to me! Oh, you — you — —” She could not find a word that would express all her loathing of him, and her scorn of herself in the past for having given him the hold upon her that nothing appeared to have loosed. She was putting on a bold front, and she meant to keep her word, but if she left that house, she did not know where, in the whole vast city, she should go. Of course she could go to Charmian Maybough; but besides bring afraid to venture out after dark, she knew she would have to tell Charmian all about it; or else make a mystery of it; there was nothing, probably, that Charmian would have liked better, but there was nothing that Cornelia would have liked less. She wanted to cry; it always seems hard and very unjust to us, in after life, when some error or folly of our youth rises up to perplex us; and Cornelia was all the more rebellious because the fault was not wholly hers, or not even largely, but mostly her dear, innocent, unwise mother’s.

  Mr. Dickerson dropped his hand without turning up the gas; perhaps he did not need a stronger light on Cornelia, after all. “Oh, well! I don’t want to drive you out of the house. I’ll go. I’ve got my grip out here in the hall. But see here! I told Mrs. Montgomery we hailed from the same place — children together, and I don’t know but what cousins — and how glad I was to find you here, and now if I leave —— Better let me stay here, over night, anyhow! I’m off on the road to-morrow, anyway. I won’t trouble you; I won’t, indeed. Now you can depend upon it. Word’s as good as my bond, if my bond ain’t worth a great deal. But, honor bright!”

  Cornelia’s heart, which stood still at the threat she made, began to pound in her breast. She panted so that she could hardly speak.

  “Will you call me by my first name?” she demanded.

  “No. You shall be Miss Saunders to me till you say when.”

  “And will you ever speak to me, or look at me, as if we were ever anything but the most perfect strangers?”

  “It’ll be a good deal of a discount from what I told Mrs. Montgomery, but I guess I shall have to promise.”

  “And you will go in the morning?”

  “Sure.”

  “How soon?”

  “Well, I don’t like a very early breakfast, but I guess I can get out of the house by about nine, or half-past eight, maybe.”

  “Then you may stay.” Cornelia turned and marched out of the parlor with a state that failed her more and more, the higher she mounted toward her room. If it had been a flight further she would have had to crawl on her hands and knees.

  At first she thought she would not go down to dinner, but after a while she found herself very hungry, and she decided she must go for appearance sake at any rate. At the bottom of her heart, too, she was curious to see whether that little wretch would keep his word.

  He was the life of the table. His jokes made everybody laugh; it could be seen that he was a prime favorite with the landlady. After the coffee came he played a great many tricks with knives and forks and spoons, and coins. He dressed one of his hands, all but two fingers, with a napkin which he made like the skirts of a ballet-dancer, and then made his fingers dance a hornpipe. He tried a skirt-dance with them later, but it was comparatively a failure, for want of practice, he said.

  Toward Cornelia he behaved with the most scrupulous deference, even with delicacy, as if they had indeed met in former days, but as if she were a person of such dignity and consequence that their acquaintance could only have been of the most formal character. He did it so well, and seemed to take such a pleasure in doing it that she blushed for him. Some of the things he said to the others were so droll that she had to laugh at them. But he did not presume upon her tolerance.

  XXIII.

  The false courage that supported her in Dickerson’s presence left Cornelia when she went back to her room, and she did not sleep that night, or she thought she did not. She came down early for a cup of coffee, and the landlady told her that Mr. Dickerson had just gone; he wished Mrs. Montgomery to give Cornelia his respects, and apologize for his going away without waiting to see her again. He had really expected to stay over till Monday, but he found he could save several days by taking the Chicago Limited that morning. Mrs. Montgomery praised his energy; she did not believe he would be on the road a great while longer; he would be in the firm in less than another year. She hinted at his past unhappiness in the married state, and she said she did hope that he would get somebody who would appreciate him, next time. There did not seem to be any doubt in her mind that there would be a next time with him.

  Cornelia wanted to ask whether she expected him back soon; she could not; but she resolved that whenever he came he should not find her in that house. She thought where she should go, and what excuse she should make for going, what she should tell Charmian, or Mr. Ludlow, if she ever saw him again. It seemed to her that she had better go home, but Cornelia hated to give up; she could not bear to be driven away. She went to church, to escape herself, and a turmoil of things alien to the place and the hour whirled through her mind during the service; she came out spent with a thousand-fold dramatization of her relations to Mr. Dickerson and to Mr. Ludlow. She sat down on a bench in the little park before the church, and tried to think what she ought to do, while the children ran up and down the walks, and the people from the neighboring East Side avenues, in their poor Sunday best, swarmed in the square for the mild sun and air of the late October. The street cars dinned ceaselessly up and down, and back and forth; the trains of the Elevated hurtled by on the west and on the east; the troubled city roared all round with the anguish of the perpetual coming and going; but it was as much Sunday there as it would have been on the back street in Pymantoning where her mother’s little house stood. The leaves that dripped down at her feet in the light warm breaths of wind passing over the sq
uare might have fallen from the maple before the gate at home. The awful unity of life for the first time appeared to her. Was it true that you could not get away from what you had been? Was that the meaning of that little wretch’s coming back to claim her after he had forfeited every shadow of right to her that even her mother’s ignorance and folly had given him? Then it meant that he would come back again and again, and never stop coming. She made believe that if she looked up, she should now see him actually coming down the path toward her; she held her eyes fixed upon the ground at her feet, and then it seemed to her every moment that he was just going to take the seat next her. The seat was already taken; a heavy German woman filled it so solidly that no phantasm could have squeezed in beside her. But the presence of Dickerson became so veritable that Cornelia started up breathless, and hurried home, sick with the fear that she should find him waiting for her there.

  She was afraid to go out the next morning, lest she should meet him on the street, though she knew that by this time he was a thousand miles away.

  At the Synthesis she was ashamed to let Charmian think that her absent and tremulous mood had something to do with Ludlow; but she was so much more ashamed of the shabby truth that she would have been willing to accept the romance herself. This was very dishonest; it was very wicked and foolish; Cornelia saw herself becoming a guilty accomplice in an innocent illusion. She found strength to silence Charmian’s surmise, if not to undeceive her; she did her best; and as the days began to remove her farther and farther from the moment of her actual encounter with Dickerson, her reason came more and more into control of her conscience. She tried not to be the fool of a useless remorse for something she was at least not mainly to blame for. She had to make the struggle alone; there was no one she could advise with; her heart shut when she thought of telling any one her trouble; but in her perpetual reveries she argued the case before Ludlow.