Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Your affectionate daughter,

  FRANCES.

  XXIX.

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

  NEW YORK, Jan’y 28, 1902.

  Dear Lincoln:

  Of course I appreciate your friendly advice. If I were as far off as Wottoma, I have no doubt it would be perfectly easy for me to act upon it, and I wish to heaven I were. I might treat with poor Essie through the long distance telephone, and tell her that I never really cared for her, and all would be well. But in this comparative proximity, it is difficult. She might not understand my motives in the whole transaction any better than I do. After Miss Ralson was gone yesterday, Essie kept away from me, and I made it easy for her by going down town and staying till the play was over. Then I crept in and began to write. I expected that she would break in upon me at first, but nothing worse happened than old Baysley’s visiting me to ask if I knew what ailed Ess, who had gone to bed crying. I promptly lied to the effect that I did not, and then he stayed to rub the family gratitude into me for what I had done for him with Mr. Ralson, and to say he hoped Ess was not going to be sick, or anything, for he did not know what we should all do. He sat awhile longer in his shirtsleeves with his stocking-feet against the cooling radiator, and then he left me alone.

  I suppose we are not responsible for our thoughts, are we? I should hate to answer for mine, and I don’t exactly know what I shall say at the day of judgment when I am asked, How about that little idea that Essie’s sickness might not be the worst thing for you? It was as bad as that, Linc, and before I went to bed, I got down on my knees, and prayed to be saved from a thought which, if it was not mine, must have been the devil’s own. You may imagine whether I slept very sweetly, but I did sleep, somehow, and I slept late, so late that I did not have the old gentleman’s company at breakfast. Essie heard me stirring, and when I came out, she was bringing my coffee and bacon, and her eyes were red and swollen. She put the things down, and then stood hesitating, and looking at me. She sobbed out some kind of pathetic apology to the effect that she didn’t mean to offend me, and hoped I was not mad at her: and she knew she was not educated up to me; and not fit for me, anyway, and she would rather die than keep me from being happy.

  Isn’t life sweet, Linc, and isn’t it simple? Perhaps you will say, off there at Wottoma where things are so easy, that I ought to have reminded her that I had never said, by word of mouth that I loved her, and that so far as I was concerned there was no engagement between us, and she could not make me unhappy, for she had no claim on me whatever. Is that what you would have done? Perhaps you would, as far off as Wottoma; but if you had done it here, you would not have been fit to associate even with a miscreant like me.

  No, Lincoln, I am in for it, and if the heavenly powers wont help me out, the infernal sha’n’t. I go round half-crazy. But if my mind is blurred I shall try to keep my soul clear. Don’t take anything amiss that I have said. I do value your interest, and I know your advice is good. The only thing the matter with it is that it is impossible.

  Yours ever,

  W. A.

  XXX.

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

  NEW YORK, February 5th, 1902.

  Dear Margaret:

  I am sorry to hear of your relapse, and I will gladly do what I can to comfort you with the woes of others, while you are renewing your care of yourself. I must say, however, that I cannot respect, — though I think I could account for it upon a principle which you would not allow, — your paramount interest in the affair of Miss Ralson and the pretty boy. It is very well for you to pretend that these two young persons are illustrations of New York conditions, but you must confess, before I go further, that they attract your fancy simply on the old human ground of their lovership, and that you prefer my writing about them because, after all, you like gossip better than anything else in the world. Having extorted this admission from you I do not mind saying that I have seen very little of them for the last ten days, and that this little has been very unsatisfactory. Your young man, in fact, I have not seen at all, and your young woman I have seen only in the most cursory manner. This has not been for want of trying. I have called several times at the Walhondia, but each time Miss Ralson has been out, or been out of repair; and when I have found her in, but ill, I have had to console myself as I could with her secretary, Miss Dennam. You will say that you care to hear nothing of Miss Dennam, and I can only say I am sorry you don’t, for I am sure if you could have seen the sort of conscientious tolerance of me, which marks the present extreme of her kindness, growing upon her, you would have been amused; and I think you would have admired the art with which I tried to convince her that I was not the heartless old worldling she had set me down for. I can feel that she has contested with herself every inch of the way to a better opinion of me. I believe she formerly regarded me as a sort of emissary from the mythical Four Hundred sent to beguile Miss Ralson, and bring her into its toils bereft of self-respect and the flower of her native ingenuousness. But now, if Miss Dennam still despises me, she also pities me; she has consented to talk with me, and has not altogether refused to satisfy a curiosity I betrayed concerning the civilization of Lake Ridge. She seems a survival of the old New England morality, and I was not surprised to find that she was of a New England stock, flourishing the more vigorously from its transplantation to western New York. Something ancestral in me sympathized with what I divined of her, while posterity as I represent it, kept itself with difficulty from smiling at her pathetic casuistries in the matters I made bold to touch on. I know you are impatient of this, Margaret, and yet I think you would have enjoyed the psychological spectacle, especially when I entered upon some question of Mr. Ardith, which I ventured to do, very, very discreetly after I found there was to be no question whatever of Miss Ralson. Her face involuntarily lighted up at my asking if she had seen him lately, and then darkened again as she answered, “Not for a week:” I could see her mentally making scrupulous count of the days, so as not sin against him by the smallest excess. I expressed the hope that he was well, and she answered that when they saw him he was well. Then I went so far as to say that he had a face which had interested me rather, from the first, as having a certain strength in spite of his apparent physical delicacy, which promised success for him; and she shot out, as if without intending it, that he seemed the kind of person who would probably get what he wanted in life.

  I asked her if she would mind telling me just what she meant by that, and she said that she thought she had already expressed her meaning. Then I suggested, “You mean that he is selfish?” and I added that I had known some selfish people who had no more got what they wanted than some unselfish people. She protested that she did not mean to say Mr. Ardith was more selfish than others. He was very ambitious, and he was talented; and had I read any of his things? He was writing for the Signal now. She offered to get me a copy of the paper, if I liked; but I was afraid she wished to leave the subject, and I detained her with another question of psychological import. I began with the fact that from the first I had felt the attraction of something finally innocent in Mr. Ardith’s face, perhaps the air of one who could make sacrifices; and I proposed the inquiry whether we had always the grounds in ourselves for judging others. “Have I been judging him?” she wanted to know, and of course I answered, “Not in the least. I was thinking merely how outside of the current youth my age seemed to leave me,” and she made the instant reflection that a woman was always disabled from judging men, young or old, because she was a woman. I admitted that this was probably the case, and then I put before her a dissatisfaction I am beginning to experience with my judgments of New York, which I perceive more and more to be upon the Boston grounds, when they ought to be upon the New York grounds, if they are to have any value. That made her laugh, and she explained her laughing as from a sudden realization of the possibility that she had been judging New York on Lake Ridge grounds. She would not explain what these were, but p
romised sometime to do so if I would explain the Boston grounds. I offered to illustrate them by saying that in our Boston solar system the meteoric visitors that roam harmlessly through the spacious New York firmament would jar social planets of the first magnitude, and impart a thrill of anxious question to the whole social framework; but as if she felt a slant towards Miss Ralson in this, she refused to go farther, and although I believed that I had left her curious, I could be certain only that I had left her silent.

  I tried boldly, for your sake, to discuss Miss Ralson in plain terms, but Miss Dennam would have none of it. When I ventured some analytical appreciations of the Trust himself, she did not refuse to join me, though again at my conjectures as to whether his charming daughter was more like her mother than like the Trust, I was aware of being delicately but firmly withheld. It was as if Miss Dennam’s loyalty included reservations such as a person of more than Lake Ridge experiences might have had, and she was defending the Ralson family from herself as well as from me. Yet, in spite of her, and rather from her repression than from her expression, I fancied — always in your interest, Margaret! — that there was some sort of trouble in the Ralson household, and that this was mystically related to the retrorsive Mr. Ardith. I have imagined — still in your interest! — that the beautiful America — that is really her spacious name; in the West they seem to require names of continental implication — has felt the charm that I have found in Mr. Ardith, without perhaps being able to make him responsive to her feeling. It would be a novel and fascinating situation, would not it? To have a beautiful millionairess in love with a poor young journalist, and to have the poor young journalist hesitating, or possibly not hesitating, about denying himself the boon fortune: that would be something so original as almost to be aboriginal. But what I want you to own, Margaret, is that I could not have done more handsomely by the leisure into which you have relapsed, or supplied you with a richer feast of surmise.

  Your affectionate brother,

  OTIS.

  XXXI.

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

  NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 1902.

  My dear Lincoln: —

  I hesitate to tell you what has happened, but of course I am going to do it.

  As long as I could, I made an excuse to myself of the Baysleys’ sickness for not going to see the Raisons, or rather America; but to you I will lie as little about it as I can. When the other Baysleys had got well enough to do their own work, and Essie had not taken the grippe from the others, I had no excuse even with myself for staying away. You might say that common decency might still have been my excuse, but my experience is that common decency has nothing to do with affairs of the heart. Besides there was nothing explicit about the situation, and I had a feeling that it was rather loutish to let it make a break in the friendship between us; I mean between America and me. I was bound to ignore it, and ignore it actively as well as passively. So I went down to the Walhondia this afternoon, and sent up my name to the family; sometimes Mrs. Ralson likes to see me when America is out.

  There was a longer hesitation in the bell-boy than usual, and I was beginning to be afraid he had got lost when he came back and said the ladies wished me to come up. I don’t believe the elevator ever took up a heavier load, but it got me to their floor without breaking down, and the maid let me in, as usual. While I waited, I perused the roofs of the city, and found a curious interest in impaling myself on a church steeple about fifty feet below the Ralsons’ windows. Then I heard a sort of shy stir behind me, and I knew that it was my enemy, the secretary, who had come into the drawing-room. I don’t know why that girl should hate me unless it is because she divines me, and I don’t know why I should hate her, for I entirely agree with her in her objections to me. But she was civil enough, and asked me to sit down, as if nothing had happened, since I was there the last time, to prevent it. She said Miss Ralson was not very well and was sorry she should not be able to see me, but that Mrs. Ralson had heard I was below and had wished me to come up. I said that was very kind of Mrs. Ralson, and I should like to see her and I hoped there was nothing serious the matter with Miss Ralson; of course I knew there was not, and Miss Dennam made my assurance doubly sure. After a little more skirmishing she got up, and said she would go and see if Mrs. Ralson were ready, for she would like me to come into her room, if I would not mind.

  She went out, and I went back and re-impaled myself on the steeple, and this time when the door opened from the inner room, I knew it was not Miss Dennam who was returning. I knew that it was America who was sweeping toward me, and I felt the sort of authority that suppressed indignation lends a girl’s movement, in her swift progress towards my back. I faced about promptly, and put on as good a front as I could, though my heart was in my boots; but I left her the initiative. She was equal to it, and towered down upon me with an out-stretched hand. She said, “How do you do?” with all her robust presence, and there was not a moment’s fooling with the question of her not being well. I never saw her look better, and she was the more splendid for being mad through and through with me. (I speak with the light that subsequent events threw back upon the fact.) She said it was very kind of me to come when I must be so anxious about my friends; but perhaps there was no reason to be anxious about them any longer? She hoped they were better, and that that poor little thing had not worked herself to death taking care of the others: such a frail-looking little thing! I knew that she meant Essie, and I said that the whole Baysley family were convalescent, and the poor little thing was none the worse for her care of them. She did not appear to have noticed anything that did not refer to Essie, but to that she said, “Of course, you would see that she didn’t overdo. She told me how you had helped her.”

  I had nothing in particular to answer, except to disown having done anything, and we talked a lot of inanities, and then I got up to go; I had quite forgotten her mother. She seemed to have forgotten her too, for she merely said, Oh, must I go so soon? and followed me to the door, where she put out her hand again, and suggested, “I don’t know whether you will allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Ardith?” I knew very well what she meant, but I got back with the established formula that we use when we know perfectly well what people mean: “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I beg your pardon for being indiscreet,” she said, and then I said, “I don’t know what you mean,” again. “I am quite willing to be congratulated upon anything there is cause for.”

  “On your engagement to Miss Baysley, for instance?” she suggested. She tried to be arch, about it, but she smiled with her lips, not with her eyes, and I saw her chin tremble. I got the words up from somewhere inside of me, “I am not engaged to Miss Baysley,” and I waited for the next thing with a perfect quiet. One is quiet when one is dead, and I was dead at that moment.

  She took a good long look at me, and we seemed tranced together in an endless moment. She gasped, “Not — engaged!”

  “Certainly not to Miss Baysley,” I answered; but I did not add that, if I was not, I was a scoundrel. When you begin a bluff of that kind you have to go on, and I went on, “I am in love with some one else,” and again we held each other with a look. “Oh! Did you know she was coming here, — Miss Deschenes?” We had never mentioned her since that first night we were at the theatre together, and there must have been a great stress on her to make her do it now. I said, “No, I didn’t know. But I didn’t mean Miss Deschenes. I meant you.”

  It was as if I had dealt her some kind of blinding stroke. She drooped forward with her left hand to her eyes, while she put out the other to me, as if to keep herself from reeling. She said, “Come!” and pulled me back into the room. “Now tell me what you mean!”

  There would be a white line here if it were fiction, but it is fact, and I must ask you to imagine the rest without giving you a white line to do it in. I stayed down there the whole afternoon, then to dinner and then far into the evening. Now I am here, facing another order of realities, or rather fight
ing away from facing them. Every moment I expect Essie to come in for an explanation of my long absence, and consolation. She will come in, and hang upon me; and shall I deal as frankly with her as I dealt with America? Can a man be frank with two women at a time? I could make America understand how, without a promise from me, without one word of love-making, this poor girl should have come to look upon me as belonging to her, and should trust in me as wholly as if I had asked her in absolute terms to be my wife. And I do respect her, Linc; I do like her. She is an ignorant little thing, but she is true, and she is not vulgar, — not like me, who feel myself false to the finger tips, and vulgar to the bottom of my mean soul. While I was with America, I was safe. I accounted for myself, I justified myself, or else I let her do it for me, on condition that I would tell Essie everything at once. But now that I am away from her, I am afraid, and all my fine, bold pretences and purposes have tumbled into chaos. Not yours, for you won’t own me after this, but the devil’s own

  W. A.

  P. S. Jennie Baysley has just been in to tell me that Essie is down with the grippe, and they are afraid she is very bad. They want me to go for the doctor.

  XXXII.

  From Miss AMERICA RALSON to Miss CAROLINE DESCHENES, Wottoma.

  NEW YORK, February the sixth, One thousand nine hundred and two.