Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  I must say, mother, that when Miss Ralson got that off to me, I felt that Mr. Ardith deserved all my original disapprobation, but I could not say so to Miss Ralson. I was so indignant I could hardly speak, but if I could have spoken I had no business to tell her that I always believed he was a heartless little wretch, and now I believed he was a wicked traitor. I wanted to fly out and declare that such a simpleton as that poor girl even, could not be so self-deluded as to think he cared for her, if he had not looked it and acted it, and that his not saying it did not matter. But I held in, and Miss Ralson went on, and did not notice my coolness, except to say that I was not celebrating worth a cent, and to laugh at what she considered my reserved nature. The most that I could do was to intimate that she would want to tell her father and mother at once, and then she said, No, she and Mr. Ardith had agreed to let it go, a little while, and it was to be a dead secret between her and me. She said it would be all right with her father and mother, whenever she told them, for they were both as much in love with Mr. Ardith as she was; and I could not deny that. Mrs. Ralson has been quite frank about it from the beginning with me, and has always hoped that Make would take a fancy to him, and Mr. Ralson has done everything that an entire resignation of his paternal duties to Mr. Ardith could do to show him that there would be no trouble when he wanted to assume any filial duties. Ever since Mr. Ardith has been coming here there has been a sort of lull in Miss Ralson’s social campaign, and I think her father has felt it such a blessed respite that he has been willing to prolong it on any terms. He has not had to go with her to any of the functions where she used to drag him, and she has left off a great many of them herself.

  It was a week ago that she told me of her engagement, and he has been here a part of every day since, and I must say that he has seemed very much in love with her. They have kept up a pretty lively interchange of notes, and I have had to be consulted on many of the letters and answers; in fact I have had to help compose some of the answers, for Miss Ralson has held that she ought to make them the nicest kind, and as nearly up to his as possible. Sometimes I have wanted to resign and clear out altogether, for I could not approve of the affair as it stood, and I felt that if I was abetting it I was doing a thing that my conscience would give me gowdy for sooner or later. He has been staying on with the Baysleys, and has made an excuse of that girl’s having the grippe herself now for not leaving them. I don’t understand that he is actually helping nurse her, but the family have got to depending on him so that he cannot leave them. That is the prose of it, and what the poetry of it is that he makes up for Miss Ralson, I don’t know, of course; I have kept away from their poetry as much as I could; but any sort of doggerel would do for Miss Ralson in the state she is in. I don’t mean to say that he has been dishonest with her, about the Baysley girl, but if he had wanted to be, Miss Ralson has offered him every inducement by her blind faith in him. Any old thing that he chose to say would have gone with her. Her only trouble was that she couldn’t go and be with him, when he couldn’t come and be with her.

  I don’t know whether this is preparing you for what has just happened or not, or whether anything could prepare you; nothing could have prepared me, I know. Mr. Ardith has been here, and he has left me in a state of mind that is worse than no mind. He asked for me, but I should not have been allowed to see him more than a minute alone if Miss Ralson had been at home; she happened to be out, and so I had the strange visit quite to myself. For an accepted lover, he has looked more excited than happy during the whole time since she announced their engagement to me, but when he came in to-day, he looked ghastly. He hardly took time to say how do you do, before he began on the business that apparently filled him to the brim.

  He opened with the surprising remark, “I know you don’t like me, Miss Dennam.” I was not going to deny a thing of that kind, even if it were true, and so I smiled, and asked how he had happened to find out my secret; but he would not have any fooling. He said, “No matter; I know it, and I have come to you because I know it.” He stopped, and I just waited. “I have always felt that you were disposed to judge me severely, and now I want all the severity you can give my case. If I have been letting myself up too easily, I know you won’t abet me.” Of course, I suspected that this had something to do with his engagement to Miss Ralson, but still I did not say anything, and he went on again. “I saw what you thought that day at the Baysleys’, and now I have come to say that up to a certain point, you were right. I want to make a clean breast of it, if a breast like mine can be made clean, and to tell you that in a kind of way I did care for that poor girl.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Ardith,” I said, “I would rather you would not tell me this. I don’t want to know about your affairs.” But that was not the truth, and you know it, mother, and perhaps he saw it. At any rate he went on, just as if I had been dying, as I really was, to hear about his affairs.

  He said, “I can’t help that: you have got to hear about them. The fact that you have always distrusted me has given me the right to make you hear, for you are the one person who can see these things in the true light, and do me justice.” He tried to keep quiet but he was trembling with excitement, and he looked fairly sick. “You know that whether I cared for her or not, she cared for me, and now you know that I have been telling America that I care for her. I do care for her — the whole world. She is the best and dearest thing in it to me; and yet I care for that other — too. I don’t defend myself, and if I try to explain myself it’s because — because I want to see if you can understand me. Sometimes it seems to me that I must be insane. My mind keeps working on that one point, and can’t leave it. I have thought that a word of blame, a verdict of guilty, would kill me. But now I believe that it is the only thing that can save me. And I’ve come to you for it; but I won’t let you think that I have meant any harm. I haven’t. I came to New York after a wretched business in Wottoma which I know you know about, and I have been in love with America ever since I saw her here, the first night, and I realized how good and beautiful she was: I had never known it before, but the time had come. Well, I got in with those people — the people I am living with — and I can say that I helped them in their helplessness. It was what anybody would have done under the same circumstances. They were from the town where I was born, and they were poor, and pretty soon they were sick, all but that girl. I don’t know whether she cared for me, at first, and it may have been my being friendly that made her. But I saw it coming, and I liked it — yes, I did! though I was in love with America then as much as I could be. I haven’t wronged the girl by one word of love-making, but I know she thinks I am in love with her. There you have the whole case — or not the whole, either. The others have had the grippe and got over it. Now she has it. At first I thought she was going to die, and — but she is getting better, though she is still very sick. The rest have taken care of her, of course, and my part has been what it is, yet, to keep up the ghastly fraud. But it isn’t altogether a fraud. I do like her — not as I like America, but as I can’t help liking any creature that likes me — that has trusted me. Oh! I know what my duty is! My duty is to tell her that I don’t care for her as she cares for me, to kill her with that, and then come and tell America that our engagement must be off because I have liked some one else while I was loving her. But I am not going to do either. I am going away.” He stopped, and while I still couldn’t make any reply, he went on: “When I began, I thought I wanted to know what you would say. But now I don’t. It wouldn’t matter what you said. It couldn’t make it any better if you justified me at every point, and it couldn’t make it worse if you condemned me.”

  He got up, and began gathering his overcoat into his arm, and letting it drop, and then taking it up again, and he did not seem to know what he was doing, but he went toward the door, while I tried to gasp out something. And do you know what it was I gasped out, when it came? It was this: that I was sorry for him, and that if I had never believed in him before I believed in him now; and I begge
d him to tell Miss Ralson what he had told me, or if he couldn’t, to let me tell her; for I knew that she would take it in the right way, she was so large-minded and so noble and good. I forgot how I had always accused him in my own mind of being a sneak, and then of being a traitor, and had suspected him of deserting that Baysley girl because she was poor, and of trying to get Miss Ralson because she was rich; and now, simply because he had confessed the worst things about himself that a man could, I was trying to comfort him, and encourage him, and make him think that it was not such a desperate case, after all. He listened to me, in a sort of daze, and then as if he had realized what I was saying he fairly laughed in my face, and ran out of the room.

  Now, what do you say, mother? Have I gone clear, stark, raving distracted, or is there something in what he said? I suppose that nobody but a man would know, and yet I don’t believe that any one but a woman could judge him fairly, and that is why my principles are out on the woodpile in the backyard. Don’t you see that if we let men go on at that rate, it would excuse every kind of wicked flirtation, and I don’t know but polygamy itself? I don’t know what the end of it will be or what anybody can do about it. I can’t tell whether I ought to let Miss Ralson know about it, or just leave it to fate, or nature, or Providence. It might be the best thing if he did go away, the best thing for her and for that wretched Baysley girl, not to mention your own bewildered daughter.

  FRANCES.

  XXXVI.

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

  NEW YORK, Feb.14, 1902.

  My dear Linc, I guess I am going in for it; no one ever knows how the grippe is going to end, but I could tell you how it begins. My head is like lead, but through this density, the queerest little antic deliriums go capering as nimbly as if it were the finest ether; if I could note them down, or remember them for future use, they would be the weirdest sort of material.

  I want to tell you something, but I do not know what it is long enough to get it out. It is something about that girl who secretaries and companions for the Raisons; I shall have it directly; never mind. That old Boston cock up in the Park, feeding the squirrels, where I first saw him, near the bust of Schiller, had something to do with it. America was not there —

  Lord, how it keeps escaping me! But I shall get it, and I shall keep on writing.

  I should like to make a fight of it, everyway, and see how long I could beat the thing off. I wonder if a man could give a thing of that sort the worst of it, if he held on to his courage. If my legs were good for it, I would go out, and walk it off. But my confounded legs won’t work. It is only the upper half of me that seems to have any sort of enterprise. I won’t go to bed; that is too base.

  Let me see if I can’t nail that idea. It was about getting an unfavorable opinion — no, not that, but about putting my case in the hands of a just enemy; I can’t think what my case was; and the enemy seemed to play me false — came round to my side. How curious! I can’t get any nearer it than that. I have the strangest indifference about it all, and perhaps that is why I can’t express it. One torment drives another out. I suppose hell is having no change of subject; the damnable iteration makes the hellishness. In the last week I have known what this infernal monotony was; but I can’t remember what it was about.

  I am going to keep writing away. If I pull through, I can make copy of it; if I don’t, you can.

  What a disgusting pose! But there is an awful reality in it, too. I am going to reach that before I quit, and then I shall stop, and carry this out and mail it. There is a postal box just round the corner; my legs ought to do that much for me. I must keep on foot till morning, and then get an ambulance and go to some hospital; I won’t be sick on their hands, here; that would be too —

  I should like to be at home, in Timber Creek. I used to hate it because it was like a prison, and I wanted to escape. Wottoma seemed a metropolis; but you must come to New York if you want to see what a metropolis is. I haven’t begun my epic yet. I haven’t written to my mother, for more than a week. I hate to write, for I don’t like her knowing that I have the grippe. I wish you — .

  Don’t exploit me in the Day till I want the facts to come out. Perhaps — I shall have to stop, my head hurts so —

  XXXVII.

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

  NEW YORK, February 15, 1902.

  Dear Mother:

  Last night, I told you that I had pulled up my principles by the roots, and thrown them out on the woodpile in the backyard, and to-night I have to inform you that Miss Ralson has cast her proprieties to the four winds, and we are both luxuriating in a freedom from moral restraint which I don’t see any end to.

  She came in a few minutes after Mr. Ardith left, yesterday, and when I told her that he had been there she was so angry with me for not keeping him that I did not know but she was going to hit me. She did manage to control herself long enough to let me explain that he had come to see me and not her, but not much longer. I had to tell her what he had said, and then I never saw such a passion as she flew out in. She wanted to know why Mr. Ardith should make a confidant of me, and appeal to me for my opinion in a matter that did not concern me; and when I made her realize that I had not asked for his confidence, and I had not given him any opinion, she was more furious than ever, and accused me of unjustly blaming him. She said she supposed I sided with those miserable Baysleys, because they were poor, and that she always knew I hated her. But she did not care, and if the whole Baysley family was at the point of death, it would not make the least difference to her. She said that she had seen from the first that I disliked Mr. Ardith as much as I did her, and that I had jumped at the chance to make him believe he had been doing wrong.

  I can stand a good deal, and I had excused her unreasonableness to her unhappiness, but when it came to that, I flew out, too. Or rather, I flew in, for you know that when I am mad I do not say much about it. I suppose I got a little white, (whity-brown would suit my complexion better) for she looked scared; and when I went for my jacket and hat and started toward the door, without saying a single word, she began trying to make some sort of apology. She was so incoherent, that if I had not been mad through and through I should have wanted to laugh, and I did pity her enough to cry. She followed me into the vestibule, and asked me what I was doing, and where I was going; and when I would not answer, she called after me, “Go, then!” and burst out sobbing.

  But I shut myself out, and I did not have a very good night. The fact is, I do love that family, if they are rich; and my heart ached for the poor soul, though she had said such insulting things that I could Dot bear it. Still, I knew I ought to have considered that as she could not hurt Mr. Ardith for the mischief he had made, she had to hurt me. I took it out of him for the mischief he had made in some one-sided dialogues of the sort we hold with people we are excited about, and they have not a word to say for themselves, and I made up for my mealy-mouthedness with him in the afternoon. I spoke daggers, I can tell you, but I retracted every single dagger when Miss Ralson came up in her automobile this morning to get me to go over to the Baysleys’ with her. Old Mr. Baysley had just been at the Walhondia to say that Mr. Ardith was down with the grippe, the worst way, and that he was out of his head, and they did not know what to do. He seemed to have been up all night, when Mr. Baysley found him in his room at breakfast time, and he had a letter before him on the table, and was trying to write. They got a doctor who found Mr. Ardith in a high fever, and got him to bed somehow; and Mr. Baysley seemed to have left pretty much the whole family watching with him, while he came to tell the Ralsons. Mr. Ralson is away at Washington, but America saw Mr. Baysley, and she telephoned their own doctor to send a trained nurse to the Baysleys’ instantly, and we found the nurse there taking possession when we arrived.

  America wanted to go right in to see Mr. Ardith, but the nurse said she had better not, and we had to stay in the parlor at the other end of the flat, and hear his crazy talk coming through the co
rrider. The nurse would not say whether he was very bad or not, she said the case was one of the sudden kind, when the patients are delirious, and that she would rather we would talk with the doctor about it. She was so non-committal that it seemed to me as if I had never held my tongue in my life, and she scared us a great deal worse than if she had told us he was dying.

  You remember how it was at Lake Ridge, when everybody had the grippe; some of them tried to kill themselves, and I guess Mr. Ardith is almost like that. The nurse would not stay with us a moment, hardly, but went right back to him, and shut his room door; she seemed to think he ought to have two nurses; but what they would do in that little bit of a flat I don’t see.

  While we sat there waiting for the Ralsons’ doctor to come, ( America had asked him to, when she telephoned for the nurse,) the youngest Baysley girl came in with the unfinished letter that they had found Mr. Ardith writing at in the morning, and gave it to Miss Ralson. She looked awfully pale, and so weak she could hardly put one foot before the other, and I fairly hated America Ralson. But I know there was no sense in that, for if he did not care for the girl — Oh, I have got so mixed up, I don’t know what to think, and sometimes I feel as if there was no way to settle it but for Mr. Ardith — But that wouldn’t settle the eternal right and wrong of it, either. The wretched child coughed so when she tried to speak to America, that she could not really say anything coherent, and she handed America the letter without explaining, and went out of the room without hardly looking at us; but I knew what was in her heart.