Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  I do not know why I should have fancied, after I parted with my young Mr. Ardith the last time I saw him in the Park, that he might apply my counsel to an interview with Miss Dennam, on his way home to begin having the grippe. He has been having it ever since, in a form that at first alarmed his friends for him, though now he is out of danger. I understand, by no means so fully as I should like, that the glowing daughter of the Trust has seen that he wanted for nothing, in his sufferings, and I have found her away from home in both of the calls I have made at the Walhondia. Whether she was beside his couch or not, on these occasions, I cannot say, but for the sake of the old-fashioned fiction in which the heroines were always nursing their loves through critical sicknesses, let us hope so, Margaret. Her getting the grippe herself is something we would gladly have allowed in such a case.

  Her absence has left me the freer opportunity for the employment of any subtlety I may possess in the study of her lieutenant, in whom I have joyfully divined a belated and dislocated Puritan. It has been very interesting to find what we call the New England conscience coming from Western New York, but that anxious and righteous spirit is always in the world, and owns no time or clime exclusively. The sense of personal responsibility for evil in one’s self and in others is as rife in every religion — and irreligion for that matter — as it was in Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth century, and I will confess a malign pleasure which I have taken in teasing it in Miss Dennam. To indulge this, I have gone so far as to tell her of my last meeting with young Ardith, and of his strange problem, and I have admired the struggle in her transparent soul with the question whether it was quite truthful to forbear owning that she knew of it already. It was a spectacle the more interesting because of the humor which qualified her scruple, and enabled her to experience the ordeal objectively, as it were. This gave it the quaintness, which is perhaps the note of her whole personality, and which I despair of making you feel.

  Though she could not hide the fact, she did hide the correlated facts, and I can only surmise a tragedy lurking below her silence. I am afraid there is something worse than the grippe in Mr. Ardith’s case. Just for the dramatic interest, wouldn’t you like to imagine his playing some sort of double part, with that single selfishness which is the unique force of duplicity? I hinted at some such mystery, but it was not intimated to me in return that I was right. It was there that my hermit thrush became a sphinx, and refused to read the riddle she had not asked. That is the reason I cannot be more explicit with you at present, and must leave you at such a poignant moment of the story, which I hope is to be continued. If you suffer, remember that I suffer with you.

  Yours affectionately,

  OTIS.

  XLII.

  From ABNER J. BAYSLEY to REV. WILLIAM BAYSLEY

  Timber Creek. N. Y. Feb. 23, 1902.

  Dr Bro:

  Yrs of Friday to hand. Would say that young Ardith is out of danger. He ought to be, with the care he has had from all hands, including two doctors, man nurse and our whole family, up with him day and night most of the time. You can tell his mother not to worry; he is getting along first rate.

  I guess from this out we can do any worrying ourselves that there is any call for. There has been pretty curious goings on here since that he took to his bed, and unless I am a good deal mistaken somebody has got to pay for it. Looks now, when he was fooling with Essie, like he had somebody else on the hook at the same time. I don’t want to mention any names, yet, but you mustn’t be surprised if some things come out that wont show that fellow in the best of lights. I am not blaming anybody but him, and I hain’t blamed him to his face, for he ain’t strong enough to stand it. But if he thinks he can make a poor girl believe he’s engaged to her, and at the same time get engaged to a rich girl, he is mistaken. That is about the way the land lays, and it don’t seem to mother and I that it looks well for young A. I am not saying when we were all down with the grippe, here, but what he seemed to act the friend. He helped about the house like a good fellow, and when there was nobody around but Ess, he lent a hand at everything going. But the question is whether he done it for us, or done it for himself, or whether he was not just trying to have a good time as it went along.

  Old Ralson’s girl seems to think he belongs to her, somehow, and she has been here ordering round as if she owned things. Ess and her come into collision one night when they were both hanging round outside his door, and America Ralson said things to Ess that I wont let any one say to a daughter of mine, I don’t care who she is, or what her father is. He may own the Cheese and Churn Trust, but he don’t own me. We would not found out anything about it if mother had not heard Ess crying when she got back to her room, and went in and just made her say what the matter was. I tell you I feel pretty mad, and I am not going to let myself be imposed on if I am a Christian.

  So I think you can let up a little on the consolation with Mrs. Ardith till we see how this thing is going to come out. He has got to do the right thing by Essie, or I will know the reason why. No more at present, but I thought I would just give you a hint.

  Will write you again when I have had my talk with Ardith. With our united love to your family,

  Yr aff bro.

  ABNER.

  XLIII.

  From MRS. ABNER J. BAYSLEY, to MRS. WM. BAYSLEY, Timber Creek.

  NEW YORK, February 24, 1902.

  Dear Sister:

  Father has sent off a letter to William that I do not know as I feel exactly right about. You know how all up or all down he is, and he never sees anything but what is either black as night or bright as the noonday. I have talked with Essie more than he has, and I know the rights of the case a good deal better. I put the blame, what there is, on Mr. Ardith; and yet I do not know as he meant any harm. It was wrong for him to fool with Essie, if he was honestly in love with some one else, but then I cannot say that it was anything more than fooling on his part. I suppose it is what goes on with young people most of the while, and though I never liked it, and do not approve of such things, I am not going to pretend that it was not the same with me in my young days, or you either. The children are as good girls as ever stepped, and just as particular; but I am not going to say they have never let fellows kiss them without meaning anything by it. I hear it is not so much the custom in the city, any more; but you and I both know that it is different in the country. Besides Essie was only sixteen last November, and he might have looked upon her as a child; he is ten years older. When the rest of us were sick, and he was helping her about the work that there was nobody but her to do, and he saw her so anxious and distracted, it was natural for him to try to comfort her; and you know how our feelings are mixed up at that age, so that we can hardly tell one from the other. One thing is certain: he never asked her to be engaged to him, and I am not going to have him treated as if he had broken a promise to her, in getting engaged to anybody else. It is very hard for her, and she feels it; but if we go back to bygones, it was our fault ever having him come here. Before father got his increase of salary, (and it was Mr. Ardith that got it for him,) we were so hard put to it to make both ends meet here, where everything is so high, that we fairly made a set at him to take our spare room. I am ashamed to think of it now, and so I tell father when he wants to bring him to book, as he calls it. I just know that he took the room out of the kindness of his heart, and he has been like a son and a brother to the whole family ever since. Any girl might be glad to get him, but I would not have a girl of mine try to get him, for the world, unless he wanted her. That is the way I feel about it; and Emmeline, I am not going to let my judgment be clouded. He is a good young man, I don’t care what they say, and all during his delirium he kept raving and explaining, first to one and then to another, that he was not engaged to Essie, and never had been, but he did like her, though not in that way exactly; or so much. I believe he has tried to be honest, and that he has suffered more than any one else, from letting his foolishness overcome him. Essie has got to stand it. She was not to b
lame, for she did not know that she was getting so attached to him; but I guess she is not so attached but what she can get over it.

  You may think this is rather of an unnatural way for a mother to talk, but the way I look at it is that a mother can love her children all she need to, and still not be a fool about them, and I believe that is the way William will look at it too.

  With love,

  JANE BAYSLEY.

  XLIV.

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

  NEW YORK, March 1902.

  Dear Mother:

  I must say you do not seem very grateful for the letters that I have written to keep you and Lizzie along, you romantic things, while there has been nothing decisive happening here. You talk as if I had not told you anything worth knowing since my voluminous effort of February 20th. What did you expect, I wonder? Did you suppose I was writing a story, and could make up a chapter whenever I chose? Well, I almost wish I had done it, and stuffed you full of fibs. It would have been pleasanter than giving you the cold facts, now that something has happened, at last.

  Mr. Ardith has just been here looking so sick, so sick, and coughing to break anybody’s heart. It is the first time he has been out since he was taken down three weeks ago, and I don’t believe the doctor knew he was coming now. I have been spending the nights at home, lately, and I could hardly recognize his voice, when I heard him talking, after the maid let me in, from where I stopped in the vestibule. He spoke so weakly and huskily, and every now and then he broke down coughing, and now and then laughing so sadly it made my flesh creep. The parlor of the apartment is between the vestibule and the little room that belongs to me, when I am here, and where I always write Miss Ralson’s letters; but a door opens from the vestibule into Mrs. Ralson’s room, and I decided to go there, when America seemed to hear me, and called out, “Come in here, Miss Dennam! Mr. Ardith is here. Come and hear what he is saying!”

  Her voice sounded quite wild, and I hesitated, but before I could escape into her mother’s room she came running out, and pulled me in, like a crazy thing. Her face was drenched with crying, and there stood Mr. Ardith holding himself up by the table, and pale as death, trying to smile, when he put out his hand to me. She did not notice his gesture, but pushed me into a chair on the other side of the room and said, “Sit down, sit down, Mr. Ardith, and let Miss Dennam hear what you have been saying. I want her to be judge between us.”

  She took a big chair herself, and leaned forward with her elbow on one of the arms, and her chin in her hand, with a mocking expression of attention. He sank into the chair behind him, not as if he wished to, but as if he were not able to keep on foot any longer, and she went on: “Come, begin! I have forgotten a good deal of what you said, and it will all be fresh to Miss Dennam.” I began, “Miss Ralson, I am going to your mother,” and I got up, but she ran and pushed me down again, and then took the same attitude as before in her own chair, and waited for him to speak. He only hung his head, with a pitiful, sidelong glance at me. “What! you are not going on?” she said. “Well, then, I will tell Miss Dennam, myself. Part of it is rather ancient history, but she wont mind hearing it once more.” Then she turned to me, “Mr. Ardith has just driven down to the Walhondia from his apartments on the West Side to announce the end of our engagement.”

  You will say that I ought to have boxed her ears, and I felt like it; but I have not lived with her two months without understanding that a brutal speech like that was only the expression of suffering that could not relieve itself any other way. I hated her for it, but I pitied her too. Besides, it was not my business to box her ears, and the most I could do was to make another start for the door. This time it was Mr. Ardith who stopped me. “Don’t go,” he said hoarsely. “Let America tell you.”

  “Yes, let me give you his reasons; he has reasons!” she broke in, but without noticing her, he went on, to me: “I came to you once before for your judgment.”

  She did not seem to take that in, or else she was too preoccupied with what was in her mind. “Yes, indeed, he has reasons, and you will be surprised how good they are. He has found out — with the help of the Baysley family, of course — that he has been making love to that girl, up there, without realizing it, and that he has got her so much in love with him that it will kill her if he breaks with her. He says that he does not really care for her, and that he does not expect to be happy with her. His idea is that I have everything in the world to make me happy, and that I will not mind giving up a mere trifle like him to a poor girl who wants him so much worse.” That was frightfully vulgar, mother; but I am beginning to find out that real feeling is always vulgar; and I knew that if a girl like America Ralson would let herself say such things it must be because her soul was almost torn with red-hot pincers. She whirled her face round from me to him: “Is that it? Have I understated it, or overstated it?”

  “No,” he said, “you have stated it,” and she turned back to me again, “Well, and what do you think of it?”

  Then I broke out. “I don’t think anything about it, and I wont. You had no right to make me come in here. If you didn’t care for me, you ought to care for him.”

  “I intend to care for myself,” she said. “He has been telling me that he cares the whole world for me, and no matter how much I care for him I must give him up to somebody he doesn’t care for at all. He can’t say why it would be better for me to suffer than for her. He has given me his word, and he hasn’t given her his word; perhaps that’s why he can take it back from me, and can’t from her.” I knew she was just saying that to hurt him, and she wished to hurt him because she worshipped him; but it seemed to me that she was talking sense, too, though I don’t believe she knew it. He must have felt something like that too, for he got up and steadied himself on his feet without the help of the table, and said, “I don’t take it back, and I wont. My love is yours, and my life.” It sounds rather silly, when you write such speeches, back and forth, but the poor things were in dead earnest, when they made them, and so was I when I heard them. I looked at America, for what she would do next, and I was ready to fly out of the room at short notice.

  She had got up, too, and she said scornfully, “Oh, you’ve convinced me! I don’t want your love now, or your life.” He looked at her like death. “You mustn’t let me keep you, Mr. Ardith, from — your friends. Good-bye.” She held out her hand to him, but he did not offer to take it. He just kept looking at her, and then he turned away to the door. But she wailed after him in the greatest astonishment, “Why, are you going?” and he turned, and she held her arms toward him. I knew that this was the time for me to fly out of the room and I flew. With the door between them and me, I tried to collect my thoughts, as people used to do in the novels, but the most that I could scrape together was that they were acting sensibly, at last, if they were acting selfishly, and their love was keeping them from behaving falsely, no matter how cruelly he would have to behave to that other girl. Mother, I never had such hard work in the world to keep from listening at a keyhole as I did then, and I hope some day I shall be rewarded. You may be surprised, but I was so honorable that I went and raised the window, at the risk of taking my death of cold, and let the roar of the Avenue come in so that I could not hear anything through the door. I was determined to freeze rather than eavesdrop, and I had left my wraps in the vestibule. I could not get to Mrs. Ralson’s room without going back through the parlor, and I was in for it as long as they chose to keep me there. From the indications, I expected that they might keep me the whole forenoon, and I was composing a few last dying messages to you and Lizzie, when the door opened, and Miss Ralson came in.

  “Well,” she said, calmly, “it’s over.”

  “Over?” I gasped back at her. “You don’t mean that”—” We’ve given each other up! That’s what we’ve done. He’s gone back to her.” Before I could stop myself I had said, “What fools!” and she did not give me time to take it back. “Oh, fools, yes! What else did you expect?�
� and I came back with as much of an answer as she would let me: “I thought you were making up, and—”

  “Did you suppose I could let him go against his conscience?” She sank down in an armchair, looking somehow shrunken and little, like the same person wrung out, if you can understand, and the sight of her, and the knowledge of what she must have been through, for a girl like her to come to that, made me furious.

  “Why shouldn’t he have you on his conscience as well as her?” I said, but she only shook her head, and sort of sighed. “That is different. He was right. But if he was wrong, I had to give him up, just the same.”

  Do you think she had, mother? And what does Lizzie think?

  I can’t stand it anyhow; I know it can’t be right. That child has just set her heart on him because he has been good to her, and she would be over it in a few months; but America is a woman; she is twenty-five years old; as old as he is, nearly; and it is a serious thing with her; it is a matter of life and death.

  It is none of my business, but I cannot let it go so. I feel like going up there to the Baysleys’ and having it out with them myself, and telling them what a pack of simpletons they are, and how they are just making misery for themselves, as well as everybody else.