Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  XXI.

  From Miss FRANCES DENNAM to MRS. DENNAM, Lake Ridge.

  NEW YORK, Jan’y 21, 1902.

  Dear Folks:

  I include Lizzie in the address because I know that she will enjoy this letter as much as you, mother, and because she ought to share fully in the guilt of it, if it is wrong to write it. I don’t know as it’s betraying a confidence, exactly, for there was nothing less confided, as I understand such things. But anyway, I am tempted beyond my strength, and here goes!

  Miss Ralson certainly is funnier than a goat. She had Mr. Ardith here to-day again lunching, as usual; she has got to telling him it is to meet me; and after it was over, and he was gone, she began on him, almost as soon as his back was turned. I must try to give you what she said in her own words, for they are half the fun. She said, “Now, Miss Dennam, I really did make this lunch to have Mr. Ardith meet you; for I wanted you to look him carefully over, and tell me just what you think of him. You needn’t ask why, but when you have given me your candid opinion, I will tell you why. I don’t promise to be ruled by your opinion, so you needn’t be afraid to speak up, for you wont be held responsible. Begin! Do you think he’s handsome?”

  Her way of talking helped me put my back up, and I answered as plumply as she asked, “He isn’t my style of beauty, but I do think he’s handsome. I like a larger man; and I’m so old-fashioned that I prefer a man with a beard, or a mustache, at least, instead of clean-shaved. I think your father must have been a very handsome man,” and I didn’t say this to flatter her, and she knew it. “Father was very well in his day, but the style is different, now, and Mr. Ardith is more in the style. Do you think he’s good?”

  “I don’t know what he’s done!”

  “Goodness is being as well as doing, and you needn’t try to slip out of it that way. Do you think he’s selfish?”

  “Yes, I do. I think all the men I’ve ever seen are selfish, except my father.”

  “Well, that’s so, and I don’t suppose some people would let me except my father, though I know he’s the best father in the world. Yes, I suppose Mr. Ardith may be called selfish.”

  She looked a little down, and I had to say, “I shouldn’t call him selfish so much as self-centered. He’s so wrapped up in what he’s doing, or going to do, that he can’t think of anybody else. He never does nice little polite, thoughtful things like Mr. Binning, for instance. The woman that married Mr. Ardith”—” It hasn’t come to that point in the conversation yet,” she broke in, and I had to laugh; she kept her face straight. “But I see what you mean. She would have to go way back and sit down when he wanted to work. Well, go on!” She put up her hands and clasped them behind her neck, the way her father does, and she slid down in her chair like him, and — if I must say it — stretched her legs out before her, as he does his, when he is feeling just right; and I suppose she will be his figure at his age. “Do you think he’s in love?”

  “No, I don’t. With Miss Deschenes, you mean?” She sat up. “With Miss Deschenes! He never was in love with that conceited, cold-hearted, lean, black little — Or, if he ever was, he’s good and over it long ago. I mean with me!”

  Well, mother — and Lizzie — that did rather take my breath, used as I am to her frankness; but I was not going to be scared into saying anything I did not think, and I said, “I think he’s in love with himself.” I decided that this was noncommittal enough, but it did not daunt Miss Ralson. She laughed and said, “Well, so am I, and I don’t wonder at him a bit. He’ll be in love with me fast enough, when I say the word; and I’ve only been waiting to be sure that I’m in love with him. And now I am sure. I wanted to hug him, he’s so dear, all through the opera last night, but I didn’t because I hated to scandalize him; and to-day when he went away it was all I could do to keep from saying, ‘Take me with you, precious, and don’t remember to bring me back!’ He’s good, if he is selfish; and he’s pure, and he’s got more sense, and more wit, and more soul, and more intellect! And if he wants to, he is going to be the greatest writer that ever lived; and he shall, too, for all me. I would rather slave for him, scrub, cook, take in washing, and do plain sewing, than be Queen of the Four Hundred. The Four Hundred! What do I care for the Four Hundred? That dream is past, thank goodness, and it was he that come to wake me from the worst nightmare I ever had. We can go abroad — I know father will let us — and you can stay with mother; or go back to Wottoma with her; and we can settle down in some quiet place, like Rome, or London — and he can write his head off. My, but it’ll be great!” She jumped up, and caught me round the neck, and kissed me; and I could hardly get away. “You think I ought to be ashamed, but I’m not. What is there to be ashamed of? I shouldn’t be ashamed, now, if he didn’t have me; but he will. And I’ll get Caroline Deschenes to come on, and when I’ve got her here I’ll spring it on her that she is to be one of the bridesmaids, and you’ve got to be the other. We’ll have the greatest time!”

  She smothered her face in my neck, and ran out of the room, and left me there not knowing what to think. I don’t know yet, and I wish you and Lizzie would take the job off my hands. I knew well enough what I ought to think; but when I remember how she has always been allowed to have and do all she pleased, and how, after all, she is so generous and big-hearted with everyone and not the least spoiled, I am not able to think what I ought. It isn’t exactly usual for a girl to talk out her feelings so; but if the feelings are right in themselves what harm is there in talking them out? That is what I ask myself, and then I say that if anyone is to blame it is I for telling you this, and you for letting me, and so we had better be pretty modest.

  Your affectionate daughter and sister,

  FRANCES.

  For pity’s sake don’t let Lizzie suppose I want her to take after Miss Ralson! She hasn’t got the money, for one thing.

  XXII.

  From WALLACE ARDITH to A. L. WIBBERT, Wattoma.

  NEW YORK, Jan. 23, 1902.

  My Dear Lincoln:

  I address you in this serious way not because I have got anything against you, but because I have got something against myself. I am to blame, for I put myself in the way of it when I might have seen it coming; but I can swear that I meant to do nothing to make it come. If I thought of it at all, I thought it would be a bore, but I never supposed it would be a tragedy. Of course, I was all kinds of an ass to come here, but I can bear myself witness that I did it from the kindest motive in the world, though it wasn’t any the less assinine on that account. I had a good deal better jumped at the poor old woman and swept her off the earth when she hinted at my coming.

  Well, the grippe has begun to let up on the old man, so as to get a new hold of the old woman and Jenny, and if it had chosen either little Essie or me, it would have been better for us; I could have advised it what to do, if it had consulted me, but it didn’t. I have not only been kindling fires, and helping Essie with the housework generally, between the times of scrapping with the Ralsons on the ragged edge of the Four Hundred, but I have been taking my turn nursing old Baysley. I don’t know what I shall do now, with Jenny and her mother sick, except cook all the meals and lend Essie a hand with the wash; she isn’t much of a cook, or laundress either. I suppose it reads comically, but it doesn’t live so, and if you will add the fact that I have had to intercede personally with Mr. Ralson for old Baysley, you will have the touch of pathos that is always supposed to give the humorous such fine relief.

  There has been pathos enough in it, ever since I knew that the old man here was in the employment of the Cheese and Churn Trust, and that he had found out I was a friend of the Ralsons, and believed that if I wanted to I could do something in the way of promotions and appropriations. I don’t say that I have seen this in either of the girls, or at least not in Essie, but I’ve divined it in the old people; they couldn’t have been more deferential if I had been Ralson in person. When Baysley began to get over the grippe so far as to be more anxious about living than dying, he couldn’t keep
himself from asking me to “use my influence.” Imagine what a dose that was!

  The Ralsons had brought me home here in their automobile several times, but I hadn’t found it essential to tell them who my landlord was, and now I would have to come out with it, when it would have the effect of something I had been hiding. Baysley was afraid of losing his job, and of course I couldn’t say no; I put the case to Mr. Ralson, last night, in the presence of America, and I had him whipped as badly as I was. We were at the play, and it was between the acts of Mrs. Pat Campbell’s “Second Mrs. Tanqueray,” when we were all rather broken up.

  The old gentleman had forgotten about Baysley, whom he had sent on here I guess because he was not much use anywhere else, and I don’t believe he would have hesitated even if he had been alone with me. But it was all I could do to keep America from leaving the play and driving right up here with a hamper full of Christmas goods, like the good angels in those old Dickens stories. She got the facts of the family sickness out of me in about a minute, and when she found that the girls were not pretty, to speak of, and the youngest was doing the work herself (I suppressed my share) she wanted to fill the flat with trained nurses and professed cooks. After the play was over, and they brought me here her father had to use force to keep her from coming up-stairs with me to see how they were getting along; and nothing would do but to let her come here this morning. I don’t know how early she will come, but perhaps Nature may assist Art, and she will oversleep herself, though I am taking no chances, and am writing this letter between kindling the fire in the kitchen and calling the miserable Essie to get breakfast.

  “And is that all?” I fancy you asking. I wish it were!

  When I came home last night, the old man was waiting up along with the little girl, and he was so anxious that even when I shouted at him, “It’s all right, Mr. Baysley,” he couldn’t take it in. Essie had to say it over to him, and then he flopped into a chair, and cried for relief, and she cried, too. He got himself together to thank me, before she helped him off to bed, and when she had told her mother and sister the good news, she came back to me, to ask if she could get me a cup of tea, or something. Her face was so twisted with crying that she could hardly get the words out, and her head went down, down, as if I were some sort of deity, too great and good to look at.

  What would you have done, Linc? I will tell you what I did, and if you will come on here and kick me, I will pay your fare both ways, including sleepers and diners. I took the little fool into my arms, and let her have her cry out on my shoulder, and I took my cry out on the top of her yellow head. We did not pass a word, but by and by she lifted up her face and looked into mine, as much as to say that we understood each other, and pulled herself up and kissed me, and then ran out of the room and left me to my thoughts, as they used to do in the novels.

  The thoughts have gone on ever since, without any dreams to interrupt. They are to the effect that I am the prize idiot of the universe, and that if I could be wiped out of existence the average of common-sense would be so incalculably increased that this world would be a realm of supernal wisdom. If I am an honest man, if I am any sort of half-way decent scoundrel, I am now bound to this girl, without being the least in love with her, and I have deceived her without meaning her anything but truth. I do like her, Linc; I respect her; I would rather kill myself than do her harm, and here I have done her the deadliest kind of harm. Unless all the signs fail, I have either spoiled her peace or mine, forever. Well, you know me well enough to know that it won’t be her peace that will suffer.

  Yours,

  W. A.

  XXIII.

  From WALLACE ARDITH to A. L. WIBBERT, Wottoma.

  NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 1902.

  My dear Lincoln:

  Your letter has crossed mine, or else you could understand how very little your news can concern me now. To tell you the truth, I had ceased to be interested in the heart affairs, or no-heart affairs, of a Certain Person some time ago, and now it matters no more to me that she is disengaged than that she was engaged. The only fact of that kind which makes any appeal to me is my own engagement, which there seems no doubt about, though it is still tacit. It is accepted by the whole Baysley family, of which I seem to be the idol. The old man is the only one well enough to show me an active adoration, but he is sufficient, and I am not praying for the rapid convalescence of Jenny and her mother. I suppose they will get well, and then there will have to be something explicit about Essie.

  Linc, I don’t know what to do. When that child comes up to me, and expects me to do the lover-like thing, I have to do it, because I can’t bear to disappoint her; but when she wants me to say the lover-like thing, oh then! It’s comparatively easy to lie with my lips, but when it comes to lying with my tongue, that is so far beyond the limit, that I don’t know where I am. Upon my word and honor — honor! — I don’t know what I’m saying.

  If you haven’t guessed anything yet, I will let you guess now how much I am comforted in getting a couple of notes a day from America, inquiring about the Baysleys, and pleading, threatening, to come up here and look after them herself, if I don’t come down and report. She writes me what you have written about a Certain Person, and says she is coming on to visit her in March. She adds to the gayety of nations, as far as I can share it, by joking me about her, and promising to do everything for me with her!

  Best revise that obituary of mine which you are keeping in the A box, and add that the subject of the notice was a youth of so much promise that he couldn’t have done half he said he would if he had lived to be ninety.

  Yours ever,

  W. A.

  You can imagine how nice all this is, coming on top of the chance that Casman has given me in The Signal. “Impressions of a Provincial”! If I could make them the Confessions, and make them honest, I should have fame and fortune in my hand, or infamy and misfortune, I don’t care which.

  XXIV.

  From MR. OTIS BINNING to MRS. WALTER BINNING, Boston.

  NEW YORK, January 21, 1902.

  My dear Margaret;

  I am glad to hear you are so much better, but having formed the habit of writing to you, I do not know that I can quite give it up, now, even in the presence of your convalescence. All that I can consent to do is to make my letters shorter, and confine them more to personal interests, leaving out those studies of New York with which I used to pad them. My opportunities, civic and social, continue much the same, though I have indulged rather more than usual in the theatre, that refuge of the society outcast in New York, and I am able to advise you to have yourself carried to see Mrs. Pat Campbell in “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,” when she brings the play to Boston.

  I went to see the piece alone, having declined a seat in the box of my Cheese and Churn Trust magnate; for knowing the play as I did I hardly saw how I could talk it over between the acts with his blooming daughter. Women talk almost anything with men nowadays, but I do not think a man of my epoch ought to talk some things over with a girl of Miss Ralson’s. Heaven knows how she and her young man from Iowa managed the topics suggested by the play, but perhaps they talked only of themselves — innocent topics enough. I saw her in one of the chief seats at the spectacle: a box, where she showed her fine lengths sidewise to the house, and talked up into the young man’s face, with a picturesque slant of her hat. Her father occupied another chief seat, and the young man stood behind her, and beside him darkled the quaint girl I have described to you as her secretary and her mother’s companion: I should like to hear her shrewd comments, but they are the last thing one is likely to hear, about Mrs. Tanqueray.

  It was a most amusingly New Yorkish crowd that filled the theatre, dressing pretty much the same for the boxes and the orchestra places and balconies, and putting on all possible correctness in the men, and all fetching hattiness and cloakiness in the women.

  I recognized some personalities of social validity, but the rest I took for hotel sojourners, or flat-dwellers of the better sort, or peop
le in successful business, whose supreme society life the theatre party constitutes, shading into presences of harmless Bohemianism — artistic looking art-student girls, in large enough companies to dispense with chaperonage. I wondered how deep some of the awful implications of the play went with those children; but apparently the theatre is only for the surfaces of souls. I fancy most of these amusing New Yorkers were there for Mrs. Pat’s acting, and not for the play at all, except as it gave scope to her art and her beauty, and that it was she they talked about between the acts. Not all, however. A German American lady behind me talked incessantly neighborhood gossip of the feeblest and flattest description, passing insensibly from German into English, and from English into German again, without passing the shores of her small beer.

  I occupied myself a good deal with the effect of the play in my neighbors, without definite conclusions. I was especially interested in a tall, gaunt figure of a man two vacant seats away, who had Down East written all over his fisherman’s face and his clothing-store best; and I decided that he had got there by mistake. This proved really to be the case, for when I made bold to speak to him, as I followed him oat at the end, and to ask him how he liked Mrs. Pat, he said that he liked her well enough, but had thought it was going to be some sort of burlesque show, with dancing. Then I asked him what he thought of the play; and he confessed that he did not know whether he had rightly taken it in. He could not understand what it was that made people shy of that Paula, or what there was in her old acquaintance with her stepdaughter’s fellow to make her husband break off the match, and Paula go and kill herself; but he presumed it was all right.

  I have not seen my pretty boy from Iowa since that night, though I have been rather diligent in calling on the daughter of the Cheese and Churn Trust. He has not been at the Walhondia for several days, as I was given to understand, rather airily, there, yesterday, with an effect of dismissal for the subject as of great indifference. I hope no trouble is brewing, and yet, just for the peculiar interest of the fact, I should rather like to think he was triffling with fortune. He has an enemy, I fancy in the secretary-companion of Miss Ralson. Not from anything she said, but from the nothing she looked, when I mentioned him. She is my enemy, too, I believe, and I am rather sorry for that, for in her queer, angular way, she is charming, with a whimsical tremor round her prim mouth, and in her shy eyes. But I am proud to say that the daughter of the Trust seems to like me, and to be willing to make what she can of me in the absence of the pretty boy. Shall I confess that I amuse myself more in her gorgeous hotel parlor, where no one ever comes that any one knows, than in the hospitalities of the Van der Doeses and their friends? I am afraid I had always a vulgar streak. But do not disown