Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  But of course, that wouldn’t do. Thank goodness, Mr. Ralson is coming home to-night, and if there is the slightest opening, I think I can get in some good work with him. Anyway I have got my warpaint on, and I am not going to bury the hatchet in a hurry, I can tell you.

  Your affectionate daughter,

  BLOOD-IN-THE-EYES DENNAM.

  XLV.

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

  NEW YORK, March 1902.

  My dear Lincoln:

  I have been down, and nearly under, with the grippe, but am up at last, and it might have been better if I were not. Death would have been much simpler than life, for me.

  I hope you will not be hurt at my asking you to send me back my letters. I have had my parting with A. R., preparatory to my meeting with E. B., and it seems right that I should destroy all written records of the past that relate to A. R. I have come back to this hotel, and you can send them here. I could not stay any longer at the B.s’ under the circumstances, but I shall go round there to-night and try to do what is right.

  But what is right? Was breaking with A. R., right when I love her with my whole heart and soul, and is it right to make good to E. B. the things that she took for granted? Both of these alternatives are utterly false, and yet they seem my duty. Why? I know no other reason than because I wish to do neither, and that there is no other way to punish myself for what I have done. It is illogical and unreasonable, of course, but there seems nothing else.

  I have not the strength to write more, at present. You can know the situation from what I have told you before; but if not, I cannot help it. I will write again as soon as there is something more. Send this letter back with the others, and I will feel that the incident is closed.

  Yours faithfully,

  W. ARDITH.

  XLVI.

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

  NEW YORK, March 5, 1902.

  Dear Mother:

  Yesterday was certainly a day of the craziest events that ever happened, and what to-day will be, goodness only knows. It has not had time to get in its work, yet, for it is only six o’clock in the morning, and I am scribbling this with a pencil in bed, to pass away the time till I can get up with the hope of something to eat: I am furiously hungry, and I have got to thinking, so I can’t sleep any longer. The principals of the affair are slumbering peacefully, while I. an innocent second, have hardly had two consecutive winks the whole night.

  After I sent off my massive missive to you yesterday, I had to lunch with Miss Ralson, who had such an appetite as I have never seen outside of a house of mourning; the strongest emotions seem to leave one the hollowest. But I pitied her, and when she proposed going to a matinée, I perfectly understood her: she had got to kill time from this out, and she could not begin a moment too soon. And where do you think we decided to go? “Well, to a sort of burlesque place, where there are three broken-English-speaking Germans that get you into perfect gales. I do not know how we came to think of it, but we did, both together; and I suppose it was because we thought something like that would help her to take her mind off itself better than anything else. Well, it did, almost from the first moment of the sort of comic opera, with dancing in it, that I should blush to have you see me see. Then came a parody of a play that is running at another theatre, and that was just as killing, without being as scandalous as the opera; I suppose because several women’s part was taken by men: I don’t know why the men are always more decent on the stage than the women are, even when the men are acting women.

  It seemed to be an actressy sort of matinée; you could tell the strong professional faces, and the intense professional hats and gowns; and you could be perfectly safe that you would not see anybody you knew in the whole crowd. I do not believe America cared what sort of crowd it was; what she wanted to do was not to think; and as I only know about ten people in New York, I was not anxious. But whom do you think we saw coming out of the vestibule of the theatre, a little ahead of us? The psychological Mr. Binning! He had been there, too, and he was looking at the photographs of the actresses on the easels in the corrider, standing slanted over, with his cane under his arm, and his silk-hatted head bent to one side, critically. Fortunately, he had his back to us, and I clutched America by the arm, and dragged her out, and never let her stop till we had mixed ourselves up with the crowd coming out of one of the proper theatres. Then I slowed up and explained, and after awhile Mr. Binning overtook us, and lifted his hat and asked us if we were walking, and might he walk with us as far as our hotel.

  Of course, I shall never know whether he had seen us coming out of that place, but he confessed that he had been there himself, and said he had been immensely amused; it was so amusing that it was a pity it was not more adapted to ladies, and we pretended that we had hardly ever heard of it, and made him explain a little, which he did very skillfully; and then we talked of the piece at the theatre we had seemed to come out of; we had fortunately seen it just before Mr. Ardith was taken sick. If this was a little wicked, and I do not say it was perfectly truthful, I excused myself, because I could see that it was helping tide America over. Mr. Binning had been so nice that we asked him to come in and have tea with us, and you would never have imagined that America had been through anything half as bad as a hard day with the dress-maker. But I should, and when I saw the exhaustion in her eyes, and heard it in her voice, I got her away for an imaginary engagement, and made Mr. Binning believe that I wanted him to stay on with me. He seemed very glad to stay on with any one, and took cup after cup of tea, enough to keep him awake the whole night. He is a very sly old tommy, and I think he smelt a mouse of some sort, for every now and then he would come back from some other subject, and artfully bring the talk round to Mr. Ardith. He pretended to be ever so much interested in him; he thinks, or says he thinks, he is very talented, and that his greatest danger is getting himself involved in some sort of love-affair, and spoiling his career with some sort of disadvantageous early marriage. He was really very subtle in the analysis he made of Mr.

  Ardith’s nature: he said he was the sort of person to increase the danger of any situation he found himself in by fancying things far beyond the reality; that he was capable of becoming anything he dreaded becoming; he had a supersensitive conscience, and would sacrifice himself or anybody else to its aberrations. I could hardly believe he was not onto the facts, especially when he asked where Mr. Ardith lived, and who had taken care of him in his grippe. When I told him, he asked if there were daughters, and I said there were two. He said, “Ah! “ as if that told the whole story, and then he said “Which?” so slyly that I wanted to get up and box his old ears. He asked all sorts of questions about the Baysleys, but I was a tabby, if he was a tommy, and he did not know anything I did not want him to. Suddenly he switched off to Miss Ralson, and asked if she were not very romantic. I asked him why he thought so, and he said, merely because she always seemed so matter-of-fact; he had noticed that practical people were always full of romantic potentialities. He began to talk about her beauty; and it seemed to him that she was built so generously, and he hoped that she would not throw herself away at the first opportunity; such a girl could make the right man supremely happy.

  He suddenly asked when we expected Mr. Ralson back; he hoped he was not anxious about the Trust on account of the bluff the government was making; it was nothing but a bluff. Then, before I knew it, he was talking about Mr. Ardith again, and saying it was delightful to see two men of such different types as he and Mr. Ralson liking each other. Mr. Ralson was charmingly fond of the young fellow.

  He had managed to make it so impersonal that I could not feel that it was impertinent. You might say it was patronizing, for he talked of the Ralsons and Mr. Ardith as if they were a different order of beings from himself. I was just getting ready to resent that when he asked Mr. Ardith’s address, and said he was going to venture to call upon him; then he rose, with the ease of a person who has been used to managing
such things all his life, and shook hands with me, and got himself away before I could say Jack Robinson.

  You will infer from my beginning to use ink here that I am out of bed. I have had my coffee, but the others have not breakfasted yet, and I have the time and have got the strength to go on with this yarn for a while longer.

  Mr. Ralson arrived from Washington on the 6.23, last night and it seemed to me that he was in the hotel almost before Mr. Binning was out of it, but there must have been an interval, for I was with Mrs. Ralson, comforting her against her fears of accidents to Mr. Ralson, and reassuring her about America and her headache, and proving to her that it was mathematically impossible for Mr. Ardith to have a relapse from having come out too soon, when Mr. Ralson arrived to relieve me. Then he and I had rather a difficult dinner together, for it is hard to eat in absolute silence even when you do not want to talk; but long before I was ready for the order, he had pushed back his plate (as I suppose he used to do when he ate his whole dinner off one plate,) and lit his cigar, with his chair tilted on its hind legs, and was saying “Now tell me about Make.”

  I do not believe I could ever have done it, if I had not been like the beaver that clomb the tree, and had to. But I did do it, with no more interruption from Mr. Ralson than an occasional snort, and “Humph!” and a question now and then to make me keep on. Things must have been going the way of the Trust at Washington, for he was in a very good humor, and when he began to speak, he took a very optimistic view of the matter. He just said, “I guess we can arrange that all right, if Ardith don’t insist on making a fool of himself. We’re a party in interest as much as the Baysleys, and I don’t propose to let them walk over us if they are dependent on me for their living.” That way of looking at the case seemed to amuse him, and he laughed. “Of course, I will do the fair thing by them,” he said.

  He had made me tell all I knew, and now he began to cross-question me; and I suppose I looked worried, for he apologized, “I have to make sure of my ground, you know,” and then he went into a long revery, and smoked and smoked. Every now and then he seemed as if he were going to say something, but he only made a noise in his throat, and kept on smoking. I had not heard any ring, when the maid came in with the sort of card they give people to send up their names on from the office, and he said, “Heigh! What’s this?” and looked at it, at arm’s length, to make out the name, and then said, “Yes, certainly, have him up,” and kept smoking, and frowning through his smoke, while I was on pins and needles, till I heard some one being let into the vestibule, and hesitating there, and Mr. Ralson roared out, “Come in here!”

  I had never seen Mr. Baysley before, but somehow I knew who it was the moment I set eyes on him; and mother, I am sorry to say I did not like his looks. My sympathies were naturally with him and against Mr. Ralson, for we belong to the poor side and not the rich, and I do think the Baysleys have had a good deal to bear. But it is no use to pretend that hard luck does not take the manhood out of a man; when he has an inferior part in life to play, he begins to look the part, and he looks the superior part when he has that to play. Mr. Ralson, with his cloud of white hair, and his red face crossed by his big white moustache, and his large stomach swelling out through his unbuttoned coat, was “all there” as he came forward with his napkin in his hand; and poor Mr. Baysley, in his shabby overcoat, with his silly Fedora hat in his hand, and his frightened eyes running from Mr. Ralson to me and back, seemed to have left the best of himself somewhere else. Mr. Ralson gave a roaring laugh and held out the hand that hadn’t the napkin in it. “Well, old Battery A!” he shouted out, and a pitiful kind of smile came into Mr. Baysley’s face, as if he did not dare quite believe in the appearance of friendliness. “What can I do for you? Have some coffee? Sit down — pull up!” and Mr. Ralson dragged him by the hand toward the table, and said to me, “Miss Dennam, will you make that girl fetch Mr. Baysley a cup? Do’ know whether you know Miss Dennam, Mr. Baysley. Take off your overcoat. Have a cigar? And tell her to put down the Scotch, too. I’m just off the train, and Miss Dennam and I have been having a bite here. Sorry my wife and daughter are not very well. How are your family?”

  “Well sir, we have had a good deal of sickness this winter.”

  “That so? Well, I’ve been away — but come to think, I had heard something about it. Grippe?”

  “Yes, sir. We have all been down with it, and Mr. Ardith has had it too.”

  “Oh, yes! Yes, yes!”

  “He’s been out for the first time, to-day, and — he hasn’t got in yet, or hadn’t when I left home, and moth — Mrs. Baysley was feeling a little anxious. And I thought I would run down, and inquire if you had happened to see anything of him here.”

  Mr. Baysley seemed to have hard work to get that out, and did not seem much relieved afterwards, but Mr. Ralson broke the ash of his cigar off into his saucer, and answered cosily, “Why, yes, Miss Dennam tells me he was here this afternoon — or morning, was it? — but I haven’t seen him myself. He’s probably met some friends — Sugar?” By this time Mr. Baysley had his coffee, and Mr. Ralson pushed the sugarbowl towards him; and offered him a lighted match for his cigar. “I like my tobacco along with my coffee.” Mr. Baysley submissively lighted his cigar, and with that and the coffee, he began to look a little less daunted in Mr. Ralson’s presence. “It seems like old times to be drinking coffee again with you, Baysley; we used to take it out of a tin cup, and we didn’t exactly have loaf sugar in it; we had to get our tobacco across the lines, when there was a Johnny handy that wanted coffee.” That made Mr. Baysley laugh, and show most of his upper teeth gone, and cough out through the smoke, “Gay times!” and wag his head with more courage. I could make out that they had been soldiers together, in the Civil War; and they went on talking, and getting friendlier. But that did not make me any happier, for I saw just as well that Mr. Ralson was working Mr. Baysley, and that the poor, weak old creature was flattered, and was like putty in his hands. I knew he had come to talk with Mr. Ralson about Mr. Ardith, and probably he had told his wife that he was not going to let the Ralsons walk over them; for if Mr. Ardith had not come back to them, yet, they might very well have supposed that he was not coming back at all, and the Ralsons knew it. That was what his first remark indicated, but Mr. Ralson had got him far beyond that. If he had met Mr. Baysley roughly, perhaps Mr. Baysley would have held his ground, but as it was he was not left a leg to stand on, whatever he thought his rights were. It made me fairly sick, and when Mr. Ralson said, “Why don’t that girl bring the Scotch?” I could not stand it any longer. I got up and said I would send her with it, and I went in to Mrs. Ralson, and let her talk her nerves down, after I had made excuses for Miss Ralson’s headache, and Mr. Ralson’s business caller. She did not ask who it was with him; and after awhile she said she believed she would go to bed, and I came to my own room, and have been writing to you ever since.

  It is ten o’clock, and I have just heard Mr. Ralson and Mr. Baysley coming out into the vestibule together, shouting and laughing. Mr. Baysley’s voice was the same, but it was in quite another key, so I should have hardly known it, when I heard him saying, “Well, sir, you done the handsome thing, and I’ll see that there’s no trouble.”

  “If it isn’t right,” I heard Mr. Ralson answer, “I’ll make it right.”

  “Oh, it’s all right. It’ll fix the old place up in good shape; and if you make the salary the same in Timber Creek as what it is here”— “Sure!”

  “Then we don’t need to say anything more about it. Well, sir, goodnight — Jim.”

  “Good night, Ab.”

  “He, he!”

  “Haw, haw!”

  I feel as if I had overheard something awful, and the cold chills are running down my back; but I do not know any more than you do what those two miserable men meant, and I leave you to find out for yourselves. I am going to bed.

  I seem to be keeping a diary instead of writing a letter. I began this quite gaily on the 5th, expecting to mail it t
hat day, and here I am dragging on through the 7th, and not seeing the end yet. Well, one thing: I will never keep another diary.

  To my great surprise I did get to sleep towards morning, but a little after eight I was roused from my wicked dreams by the maid, who came to tell me that there was a lady in the vestibule wanting to see Mr. Ralson, and that she was afraid to call him, and what should she do? Of course I asked, “What kind of lady?” and what her name was, but the maid did not know, and my mind worked round from female anarchists to destitute females, and then I decided to get up and go see for myself, and get rid of the lady, who was unseasonable, whatever she was.

  I was rewarded by finding Mrs. Baysley, who accounted for her getting into the apartment at that hour by saying that she had come directly up in the elevator to the number that her husband had given her. She was only anxious apparently to make sure that Mr. Ralson had not gone out, and said she was not in a hurry, but could wait till he had his breakfast, if he could not see her before. I made her come into the parlor, and asked her to share my coffee, but she said she had been to breakfast, and did not want anything more at present. I tried to talk with her, but her mind seemed so centered on something, that I could not get more than a word at a time out of her, and she would not give me any clew to what she wanted. She just sat there drooping in her chair, and holding something in her folded hands that was like a scrap of paper; and I decided that if Mr. Ralson kept her waiting a great while, I would go and knock on his door myself, and take the consequences, when America came into the room.

  I did not know she was up, and it startled me, but I could not help noticing how fresh and strong and beautiful she looked. If she had shared my vigils, she did not show it, and Mrs., Baysley seemed to wither before her, as Mr. Baysley had withered before her father. She swept by her without seeing her, and said to me, “I wish you would give me some of your coffee, Miss Dennam; I’m half-starved,” and I had to say, “Mrs. Baysley is here,” before she noticed her. She gave a start, at the name, and as she whirled round, and looked at her, I could See the disgust come into her face. Mrs. Baysley stood up in front of her chair without offering to come forward, and for a dreadful moment America did not move, either. Then she went to her, and put out her hand. “Wont you have some breakfast, Mrs. Baysley!” she said, and Mrs. Baysley repeated her refusal, sinking down again into her chair without taking America’s hand. “I wanted to see your father,” she said, and I was afraid Miss Ralson would resent her bluntness, but she only answered, still more gently, “Father isn’t up yet, and he doesn’t like to have us call him. Wont I do?”