Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “I want nothing to do with you, sir,” he said, less violently, but, as he felt, not more effectually. “You are in my house without my invitation, and against my wish!”

  “I didn’t expect to find you here. I came in because I saw the door open, and I thought I might see Dick or his wife and give them, this paper for you. But I’m glad I found you, and if you won’t give me any reason for not wanting me here, I can give it myself, and I think I can make out a very good case for you.” Kenton quivered in anticipation of some mention of Ellen, and Bittridge smiled as if he understood. But he went on to say: “I know that there were things happened after you first gave me the run of your house that might make you want to put up the bars again — if they were true. But they were not true. And I can prove that by the best of all possible witnesses — by Uphill himself. He stands shoulder to shoulder with me, to make it hot for any one who couples his wife’s name with mine.”

  “Humph!” Kenton could not help making this comment, and Bittridge, being what he was, could not help laughing.

  “What’s the use?” he asked, recovering himself. “I don’t pretend that I did right, but you know there wasn’t any harm in it. And if there had been I should have got the worst of it. Honestly, judge, I couldn’t tell you how much I prized being admitted to your house on the terms I was. Don’t you think I could appreciate the kindness you all showed me? Before you took me up, I was alone in Tuskingum, but you opened every door in the place for me. You made it home to me; and you won’t believe it, of course, because you’re prejudiced; but I felt like a son and brother to you all. I felt towards Mrs. Kenton just as I do towards my own mother. I lost the best friends I ever had when you turned against me. Don’t you suppose I’ve seen the difference here in Tuskingum? Of course, the men pass the time of day with me when we meet, but they don’t look me up, and there are more near-sighted girls in this town!” Kenton could not keep the remote dawn of a smile out of his eyes, and Bittridge caught the far-off gleam. “And everybody’s been away the whole winter. Not a soul at home, anywhere, and I had to take my chance of surprising Mrs. Dick Kenton when I saw your door open here.” He laughed forlornly, as the gleam faded out of Kenton’s eye again. “And the worst of it is that my own mother isn’t at home to me, figuratively speaking, when I go over to see her at Ballardsville. She got wind of my misfortune, somehow, and when I made a clean breast of it to her, she said she could never feel the same to me till I had made it all right with the Kentons. And when a man’s own mother is down on him, judge!”

  Bittridge left Kenton to imagine the desperate case, and in spite of his disbelief in the man and all he said, Kenton could not keep his hardness of heart towards him. “I don’t know what you’re after, young man,” he began. “But if you expect me to receive you under my roof again—”

  “Oh, I don’t, judge, I don’t!” Bittridge interposed. “All I want is to be able to tell my mother — I don’t care for anybody else — that I saw you, and you allowed me to say that I was truly sorry for the pain — if it was pain; or annoyance, anyway — that I had caused you, and to go back to her with the hope of atoning for it sometime or somehow. That’s all.”

  “Look here!” cried Renton. “What have you written to my daughter for?”

  “Wasn’t that natural? I prized her esteem more than I do yours even; but did I ask her anything more than I’ve asked you? I didn’t expect her to answer me; all I wanted was to have her believe that I wasn’t as black as I was painted — not inside, anyway. You know well enough — anybody knows — that I would rather have her think well of me than any one else in this world, except my mother. I haven’t got the gift of showing out what’s good in me, if there is any good, but I believe Miss Ellen would want to think well of me if I gave her a chance. If ever there was an angel on earth, she’s one. I don’t deny that I was hopeful of mercy from her, because she can’t think evil, but I can lay my hand on my heart and say that I wasn’t selfish in my hopes. It seemed to me that it was her due to understand that a man whom she had allowed to be her friend wasn’t altogether unworthy. That’s as near as I can come to putting into words the motive I had in writing to her. I can’t even begin to put into words the feeling I have towards her. It’s as if she was something sacred.”

  This was the feeling Renton himself had towards his daughter, and for the first time he found himself on common ground with the scapegrace who professed it, and whose light, mocking face so little enforced his profession. If Bittridge could have spoken in the dark, his words might have carried a conviction of his sincerity, but there, in plain day, confronting the father of Ellen, who had every wish to believe him true, the effect was different. Deep within his wish to think the man honest, Kenton recoiled from him. He vaguely perceived that it was because she could not think evil that this wretch had power upon her, and he was sensible, as he had not been before, that she had no safety from him except in absence. He did not know what to answer; he could not repel him in open terms, and still less could he meet him with any words that would allow him to resume his former relations with his family. He said, finally: “We will let matters stand. We are going to Europe in a week, and I shall not see you again. I will tell Mrs. Kenton what you say.”

  “Thank you, judge. And tell her that I appreciate your kindness more than I can say!” The judge rose from his chair and went towards the window, which he had thrown open. “Going to shut up? Let me help you with that window; it seems to stick. Everything fast up-stairs?”

  “I — I think so,” Kenton hesitated.

  “I’ll just run up and look,” said Bittridge, and he took the stairs two at a time, before Kenton could protest, when they came out into the hall together. “It’s all right,” he reported on his quick return. “I’ll just look round below here,” and he explored the ground-floor rooms in turn. “No, you hadn’t opened any other window,” he said, glancing finally into the library. “Shall I leave this paper on your table?”

  “Yes, leave it there,” said Kenton, helplessly, and he let Bittridge close the front door after him, and lock it.

  “I hope Miss Lottie is well,” he suggested in handing the key to Kenton. “And Boyne” he added, with the cordiality of an old family friend. “I hope Boyne has got reconciled to New York a little. He was rather anxious about his pigeons when he left, I understand. But I guess Dick’s man has looked after them. I’d have offered to take charge of the cocoons myself if I’d had a chance.” He walked, gayly chatting, across the intervening lawn with Kenton to his son’s door, where at sight of him bra. Richard Kenton evanesced into the interior so obviously that Bittridge could not offer to come in. “Well, I shall see you all when you come back in the fall, judge, and I hope you’ll have a pleasant voyage and a good time in Europe.”

  “Thank you,” said Kenton, briefly.

  “Remember me to the ladies!” and Bittridge took off his hat with his left hand, while he offered the judge his right. “Well, good-bye!”

  Kenton made what response he could, and escaped in-doors, where his daughter-in-law appeared from the obscurity into which she had retired from Bittridge. “Well, that follow does beat all! How, in the world did he find you, father?”

  “He came into the house,” said the judge, much abashed at his failure to deal adequately with Bittridge. He felt it the more in the presence of his son’s wife. “I couldn’t, seem to get rid of him in any way short of kicking him out.”

  “No, there’s nothing equal to his impudence. I do believe he would have come in here, if he hadn’t seen me first. Did you tell him when you were going back, father? Because he’d be at the train to see you off, just as sure!”

  “No, I didn’t tell him,” said Kenton, feeling move shaken now from the interview with Bittridge than he had realized before. He was ashamed to let Mary know that he had listened to Bittridge’s justification, which he now perceived was none, and he would have liked to pretend that he had not silently condoned his offences, but Mary did not drive him to
these deceptions by any further allusions to Bittridge.

  “Well, now, you must go into the sitting-room and lie down on the lounge; I promised Dick to make you. Or would you rather go up-stairs to your room?”

  “I think I’ll go to my room,” said Kenton.

  He was asleep there on the bed when Richard came home to dinner and looked softly in. He decided not to wake him, and Mary said the sleep would do him more good than the dinner. At table they talked him over, and she told her husband what she knew of the morning’s adventure.

  “That was pretty tough for father,” said Richard. “I wouldn’t go into the house with him, because I knew he wanted to have it to himself; and then to think of that dirty hound skulking in! Well, perhaps it’s for the best. It will make it easier, for father to go and leave the place, and they’ve got to go. They’ve got to put the Atlantic Ocean between Ellen and that fellow.”

  “It does seem as if something might be done,” his wife rebelled.

  “They’ve done the best that could be done,” said Richard. “And if that skunk hasn’t got some sort of new hold upon father, I shall be satisfied. The worst of it is that it will be all over town in an hour that Bittridge has made up with us. I don’t blame father; he couldn’t help it; he never could be rude to anybody.”

  “I think I’ll try if I can’t be rude to Mr. Bittridge, if he ever undertakes to show in my pretence that he has made it up with us,” said Mary.

  Richard tenderly found out from his father’s shamefaced reluctance, later, that no great mischief had been done. But no precaution on his part availed to keep Bittridge from demonstrating the good feeling between himself and the Kentons when the judge started for New York the next afternoon. He was there waiting to see him off, and he all but took the adieus out of Richard’s hands. He got possession of the judge’s valise, and pressed past the porter into the sleeping-car with it, and remained lounging on the arm of the judge’s seat, making conversation with him and Richard till the train began to move. Then he ran outside, and waved his hand to the judge’s window in farewell, before all that leisure of Tuskingum which haunted the arrival and departure of the trains.

  Mary Kenton was furious when her husband came home and reported the fact to her.

  “How in the world did he find out when father was going?”

  “He must have come to all the through trains since he say him yesterday. But I think even you would have been suited, Mary, if you had seen his failure to walk off from the depot arm-in-arm with me:

  “I wouldn’t have been suited with anything short of your knocking, him down, Dick.”

  “Oh, that wouldn’t have done,” said Richard. After a while he added, patiently, “Ellen is making a good deal of trouble for us.”

  This was what Mary was thinking herself, and it was what she might have said, but since Dick had said it she was obliged to protest. “She isn’t to blame for it.”

  “Oh, I know she isn’t to blame.”

  V.

  The father of the unhappy girl was of the same mixed mind as he rode sleeplessly back to New York in his berth, and heard the noises of slumber all round him. From time to time he groaned softly, and turned from one cheek to the other. Every half-hour or so he let his window-curtain fly up, and lay watching the landscape fleeting past; and then he pulled the curtain down again and tried to sleep. After passing Albany he dozed, but at Poughkeepsie a zealous porter called him by mistake, and the rest of the way to New York he sat up in the smoking-room. It seemed a long while since he had drowsed; the thin nap had not rested him, and the old face that showed itself in the glass, with the frost of a two days’ beard on it, was dry-eyed and limply squared by the fall of the muscles at the corners of the chin.

  He wondered how he should justify to his wife the thing which he felt as accountable for having happened to him as if he could have prevented it. It would not have happened, of course, if he had not gone to Tuskingum, and she could say that to him; now it seemed to him that his going, which had been so imperative before he went, was altogether needless. Nothing but harm had come of it, and it had been a selfish indulgence of a culpable weakness.

  It was a little better for Kenton when he found himself with his family, and they went down together to the breakfast which the mother had engaged the younger children to make as pleasant as they could for their father, and not worry him with talk about Tuskingum. They had, in fact, got over their first season of homesickness, and were postponing their longing for Tuskingum till their return from Europe, when they would all go straight out there. Kenton ran the gauntlet of welcome from the black elevator-boys and bell-boys and the head-waiter, who went before him to pull out the judge’s chair, with commanding frowns to his underlings to do the like for the rest of the family; and as his own clumsy Irish waiter stood behind his chair, breathing heavily upon the judge’s head, he gave his order for breakfast, with a curious sense of having got home again from some strange place. He satisfied Boyne that his pigeons and poultry had been well cared for through the winter, and he told Lottie that he had not met much of anybody except Dick’s family, before he recollected seeing half a dozen of her young men at differed times. She was not very exacting about them and her mind seemed set upon Europe, or at least she talked of nothing else. Ellen was quiet as she always was, but she smiled gently on her father, and Mrs. Kenton told him of the girl’s preparations for going, and congratulated herself on their wisdom in having postponed their sailing, in view of all they had to do; and she made Kenton feel that everything was in the best possible shape. As soon as she got him alone in their own room, she said, “Well, what is it, poppa?”

  Then he had to tell her, and she listened with ominous gravity. She did not say that now he could see how much better it would have been if he had not gone, but she made him say it for her; and she would not let him take comfort in the notion of keeping the fact of his interview with Bittridge from Ellen. “It would be worse than useless. He will write to her about it, and then she will know that we have been, concealing it.”

  Kenton was astonished at himself for not having thought of that. “And what are you going to do, Sarah?”

  “I am going to tell her,” said Mrs. Kenton.

  “Why didn’t poppa tell me before?” the girl perversely demanded, as soon as her another had done so.

  “Ellen, you are a naughty child! I have a great mind not to have a word more to say to you. Your father hasn’t been in the house an hour. Did you want him to speak before Lottie and Boyne!”

  “I don’t see why he didn’t tell me himself. I know there is something you are keeping back. I know there is some word—”

  “Oh, you poor girl!” said her mother, melting into pity against all sense of duty. “Have we ever tried to deceive you?”

  “No,” Ellen sobbed, with her face in her hands. “Now I will tell you every word that passed,” said Mrs. Kenton, and she told, as well as she could remember, all that the judge had repeated from Bittridge. “I don’t say he isn’t ashamed of himself,” she commented at the end. “He ought to be, and, of course, he would be glad to be in with us again when we go back; but that doesn’t alter his character, Ellen. Still, if you can’t see that yourself, I don’t want to make you, and if you would rather go home to Tuskingum, we will give up the trip to Europe.”

  “It’s too late to do that now,” said the girl, in cruel reproach.

  Her mother closed her lips resolutely till she could say, “Or you can write to him if you want to.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Ellen, and she dragged herself up out of her chair, and trailed slowly out of the room without looking at her mother.

  “Well?” the judge asked, impatiently, when he came in as soon after this as he decently could. They observed forms with regard to talking about Ellen which, after all, were rather for themselves than for her; Mrs. Kenton, at least, knew that the girl knew when they were talking about her.

  “She took it as well as I expected.”

>   “What is she going to do?”

  “She didn’t say. But I don’t believe she will do anything.”

  “I wish I had taken our tickets for next Saturday,” said Kenton.

  “Well, we must wait now,” said his wife. “If he doesn’t write to her, she won’t write to him.”

  “Has she ever answered that letter of his?”

  “No, and I don’t believe she will now.”

  That night Ellen came to her mother and said she need not be afraid of her writing to Bittridge. “He hasn’t changed, if he was wrong, by coming and saying those things to poppa, and nothing has changed.”

  “That is the way I hoped you would see it; Ellen.” Her mother looked wistfully at her, but the girl left her without letting her satisfy the longing in the mother’s heart to put her arms round her child, and pull her head down upon her breast for a cry.

  Kenton slept better that night than his wife, who was kept awake by a formless foreboding. For the week that followed she had the sense of literally pushing the hours away, so that at times she found herself breathless, as if from some heavy physical exertion. At such times she was frantic with the wish to have the days gone, and the day of their sailing come, but she kept her impatience from her husband and children, and especially from Ellen. The girl was passive enough; she was almost willing, and in the preparation for their voyage she did her share of the shopping, and discussed the difficult points of this business with her mother and sister as if she had really been thinking about it all. But her mother doubted if she had, and made more of Ellen’s sunken eyes and thin face than of her intelligent and attentive words. It was these that she reported to her husband, whom she kept from talking with Ellen, and otherwise quelled.