Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  There was some one waiting for him in his office, and he said, “Ah, Hawberk!” in greeting of the presence which he had inferred from the legs he had first seen, as they stretched across the perspective of the door-way.

  The man got to his feet with a certain alertness, which was more like a reminiscence of past activity than an actual fact, and offered the doctor a wasted hand. He looked shrunken within his clothes, and his greenish-brown complexion, blotched with patches of deeper brown, where the skin showed above the lustreless beard, was lighted with eyes which were still beautiful, though their black was dimmed by the suffering through which they had sunk into their cavernous sockets.

  “Good-morning, doctor,” Hawberk said, and he added, courteously, “I hope I see you well?”

  “I’m fairly well,” Anther said, facing round in his swivel-chair, which he had taken at once. “Sit down, won’t you? When did you get back?”

  “Oh, I’ve been back some time — about a fortnight, I should say. But I’ve been pretty busy with a little thing of mine that I’m working at, and I haven’t been about the town much.”

  “I hope my old friend Fredericks was able to do for you what you wanted?”

  “Oh yes, oh yes,” Hawberk answered, nervously, but with a vagueness that did not seem to belong with the quickness. “He set me up. I’m all right now.”

  “Gone back to it since your return?”

  “Well, no. I can’t say that exactly. Still I don’t think it’s well to make an entire break. I think the tonic effect is good, don’t you?”

  “Perhaps. If you don’t make it too tonic. How much have you got back to?”

  “Well, it ain’t worth mentioning. Two or three spoonfuls after meals, and as many more at night.”

  “Dreams all they ought to be?”

  “Oh yes, they’re all right, now. I’m out of that pit that used to give me so much trouble. I don’t have to keep digging at it the whole night now, as I used to before I went to the Retreat. Dr. Fredericks pulled me out of that fairly well. There is a small matter of old bones and a skull or two,” Hawberk added, with a jocosity that did not make Anther smile. “But the great thing is that I understand it’s a dream even while I’m dreaming it, and I guess I shall be able to break it up if I keep realizing it. And it doesn’t seem to last so long. I think that’s a decided gain, don’t you?”

  “It’s not a loss,” the doctor admitted.

  “It’s a fighting chance, and I’m taking all the fighting chances there are. I’ve fairly got the upperhand. If you were to tell me to leave the whole thing off, I could do it, and not turn a hair.”

  Anther made no answer, and Hawberk sank from his bragging note into a dull, confused tone, as he rubbed his hand over his forehead tremulously. “There was something I wanted to tell you about—”

  The doctor prompted him after a moment’s wait, “Anything about your condition?”

  “No, no.” As if he could not recall the thing he was groping for, Hawberk said, with a sort of provisionality, “I stopped in Boston on my way up yesterday, and saw that man who has my new patent in hand. He’s a great fellow, and he’s working it for all it’s worth. He’s sold territory over the whole country, and up into Canada. Why, doctor, he’s got twenty thousand dollars for the Canadian rights alone, up to date, and I come in for a clean half of the money! I’m going to build, this spring. I’ve as good as bought that hill back of my house — got an option on it — and I’m going to build up there and keep the old place where we are for a shop. Have a walk slanting down to it over the corner of the hill, but have the main entrance to the new place by a flight of stone steps from the street. Have the whole front of the hill terraced. I’ve got a landscape architect in Boston studying it out for me. I was telling Jim Langbrith about it last night. He brought Hope home from the party at his mother’s, and we got talking, and — Oh yes. Now I know what it is I wanted to speak with you about, doctor, It’s a very confidential matter, and I don’t know anybody that I’d like to trust with it except you. You at their house last night?”

  “Yes,” Anther owned.

  “Well, all right. I couldn’t go with Hope myself, for I had that man up from Boston that’s handling my new patent. Had to send Mrs. Langbrith an excuse by Hope. But you saw them together, didn’t you? And what did you think? Think there was anything serious? I mean in Hope. Because I know there is in him. He asked me last night if I had any objections to their getting married as soon as he is out of college. I haven’t talked with Hope, and I don’t know, except from him, how she feels.”

  Hawberk tried to fix Anther with the dull eyes that had once been brilliantly black and bold, but now seemed to slip in their glance, and he paused in the monologue which was film sleep-talking, a continuous babble, unbroken in its flow by the questions that interspersed it.

  The doctor rubbed his chin and stared back at him. “Are you sure of what you say, Hawberk?”

  “Sure!”

  “Because, you know, you sometimes can’t tell the facts from the dreams.”

  “Oh, but I can this time. I couldn’t be mistaken about a thing like that. What do you advise me to do? I’ve got plenty of means to meet the Langbrith s half-way on any money proposition. As things are going with me now, I could give Hope a hundred thousand dollars the day she was married. And Jim Langbrith comes of good old stock. I consider his mother the finest lady I ever met, and he’s his mother all over again — looks like her, talks like her, walks like her. I haven’t forgot how she used to come up and nurse my poor wife, and it would be kind of appropriate having the two families brought together again, the same as Langbrith and I used to be in business. Well, now I’d like to get your opinion, doctor. I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law yet, because if the thing doesn’t strike you favorably I don’t want it to go any further. I want to stop it right here.” He lowered his voice from the high note to which it had been climbing back, and looked round him furtively. “You don’t think there’s any likelihood of that little green fellow coming back? I can get along now with the bones and the skulls, but that dwarf—”

  “Have you seen him again?” Anther asked, soberly.

  “No, not what you may call seen. But I feel as if I might, any minute.”

  “Well, you know there’s no more reality in him than there is in those other things.”

  “Yes, I understand that.”

  “But you will see him, if you get to letting yourself go.”

  “Yes,” Hawberk assented, with a long breath. “If he wasn’t green — kind of mouldy—” He stared, and after a moment he said, “What I want is something that will take me out of myself, good and strong.”

  Anther was apparently not heeding. He said sharply, “Hawberk! Can you carry your mind back to that old difficulty between you and James’s father?”

  Hawberk glanced at the doctor, slyly. “What old difficulty?”

  “You must know. When you first began to lose sleep, and took up this habit.”

  The slyness passed into vagueness, then the vagueness gathered itself into a look of fury, which lost itself with the words in which it exploded: “Damn him!”

  “Yes. Just what was it?” Anther pursued.

  The vagueness came back, and then the slyness. “Why, there wa’n’t anything that you may call a difficulty, doctor. All that’s past and gone. We both agreed not to say anything more about it. He never did, and I haven’t. Ever strike you that that skull of mine — that one I’ve had so much trouble with — looked like — Well, I’ve been thinking, since I saw Jim, last night—”

  Anther shook his head, kindly. “That’s your fancy, Hawberk. But you did feel injured, badly used, at the time, didn’t you? Try to think. You know you used to tell me things very different from those you have got to saying since, and I have a reason for wishing to find out the original facts, just now. They may have a bearing on an important matter — important to us both. You put in your invention, didn’t you, and then he forced you out?” Ha
wberk looked down and passed his hand over his forehead. “There was something like that. But he paid me a good round sum for the invention, and a big bonus for going out, didn’t he?”

  “You ought to know. Was that really the case, or is it what you’ve imagined since?”

  “Why, I should say it was the case.” A fear, the look of a man at some time deeply intimidated, supplanted the slyness in Hawberk’s blotched-brown visage. “It’s a thing I’ve agreed not to talk about. He lets me alone because I don’t. He’s got my promise, and I’ve got his. If I didn’t keep my word, he would be over the wall the first time I fell asleep. You don’t catch me.”

  “Come! come!” Anther said, severely. “You mustn’t talk that kind of nonsense to me. I tell you, I am quite in earnest, and I would like to know the bottom facts. You needn’t be afraid of trusting me with them. You know, as well as I do, the unreality of those troubles of yours. They come from opium, and from nothing else. Now, was there any hold that Langbrith had on you, enabling him to force your consent to going out of business and giving him the entire usufruct of your invention? I want you to answer that fairly and squarely. Was there, or wasn’t there?” — I Hawberk passed his hand over his tormented brow again. “There was something, doctor. It’s strange. It seems as if there was a hold I had on him. But it must have been a hold he had on me. I can’t straighten that out. That appears to be the trouble with me. I don’t see why I didn’t use the hold if I was the one that had it, unless — unless it was something about Mrs. Langbrith. Do you suppose it was? She had been good to my wife; she took care of her in those last days — Oh, my God, how they come back! Doctor, do you wonder I took to it? To get a little sleep! Once I went a fortnight without knowing I had any, if I had any. It was hell. Nothing since from the opium — Ah, I can’t think it out!”

  “Try,” Anther insisted. “It is very essential.” He rose from his chair, and began to walk restively up and down the room, while Hawberk lay dreamily staring at the windows, which Anther’s person showed itself against, now one and now the other, as he paced to and fro. “I — I don’t know but I’m getting it,” he began. The doctor’s foot struck a plank that gave under it, and the door of the long case fell softly open. Hawberk scrambled to his feet with a shuddering cry, “Oh, for God’s sake, what’s that?”

  “You know — you know well enough!” Anther shouted. “Don’t be a fool! It’s that old skeleton that you’ve seen a hundred times. I’ve had it ever since I’ve been here, and Hillward before me. Now, do have a little sense. It’s a real one, and it can’t bother you like those fancy ones of yours.”

  He went up to Hawberk, and put his hands on him to stay his trembling. “What — what does a man want to keep a thing like that around for?” Hawberk faltered out, helpless to take his eyes from the quivering thing that slightly turned as it dangled. “Shut it up!”

  Anther obeyed, and Hawberk dropped nervelessly into his chair. “Lord, I don’t see how I’m to get home.”

  The doctor looked at him grimly, then pityingly, then despairingly, as to any hope of further light from him then on the point he wished to clear.

  “I’m driving up your way. I’ll take you. There’s my buggy at the door.”

  “Oh, thank you, doctor,” Hawberk said, and he found strength to follow him out into the hall where his hat and coat hung, and got out of the house first.

  XIV

  LATE in the afternoon of the following Saturday, Anther stopped his horse in front of the business block, as it called itself, where Judge Garley had his office over the National Bank. It was the only brick building in Saxmills, and the office of the judge was itself approached by an outer stairway of the prevalent wooden construction. The doctor met him on the landing at the moment when he turned from turning the key in his door.

  “Going for the day?” he asked, with a disappointment which he could not keep out of either his face or his voice.

  “Not if you’re coming for it,” the judge placidly replied. He turned the key in his door again, and hospitably threw it open. “Walk in.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the doctor apologized, but the judge took no heed of his apology, except to push him in.

  “Sit down,” he said, and he reached a book from the top of his roll-top desk. “There’s something I think you might find interesting. It’s more in your line than mine, and I’ve found it interesting. Well, it’s important as a matter of medical jurisprudence, too.”

  “What is it?” the doctor asked, listlessly turning the book over in his lap and fluttering the leaves absently.

  “Why, it’s a study of the criminal settlement on that island off the northeast coast of Japan where the Russians colonize their murderers. As they have no capital punishment, except for political offences, they have to do something with their homicides, and they collect them on that island and keep them there for life. It’s very curious, especially in its reversion to some old-fashioned theories — the book, I mean. When I was on the bench — and it has been my experience as a criminal lawyer, too — it seemed to me that very few criminals suffered what we called remorse. They wished to disown their crimes, to keep from realizing that they had committed them, and they wished to get off from the penalty; but I could not make out that they were consumingly sorry for them. This man seems to think differently, and he says some things to make you think he is right. We generally kill off our murderers before they have time to show remorse, but the Russians keep them, in a kind of cold storage, up there in the latitude of Siberia, and they have opportunities of studying effects that we precipitately deny ourselves the knowledge of. The remorse is long in getting to the surface, but, if this man is right, it is always there, and he has heard it comes out about three o’clock in the morning, in the murderers’ dormitories, when they wake rested from the fatigue of their hard day’s labor, and begin to think. An interesting phase of their remorse is the pity they feel for their victims.” Anther sat with the book fallen shut in his lap, and he did not seem to have been attentive to all that the judge was saying. When Garley stopped, the doctor asked, “What do you think of a man who takes the life of another’s soul — destroys his soul? It was a woman’s expression.”

  The judge smiled intelligently. “I should imagine. But I should doubt whether it could be done. Do you want to engage me for the defence?”

  “No,” said Anther, falling in with his humor, “he’s out of danger from the law — unless — unless some law follows up such fellows where they go.”

  “The old theory was that some law did,” the judge suggested.

  “Yes, and we can’t tell how much truth there was in it. The base of doubt in me is the immunity which wrong-doing seems to have here. But perhaps it’s only an appearance.”

  The judge laughed now. “It serves the purpose of a reality in a great many cases. What scrape do you want me to get you out of?”

  The doctor got no further than smiling, though he fell in with the judge’s mood, which is the prevailing American mood in the face of any mystery. “Nothing worse than allowing opium to a man who would take it anyway.”

  “Well, I see that you’ve decided on your line of defence.”

  It was a little time before Anther suggested, at an apparent remoteness from the point, “You were never here in Royal Langbrith’s day?”

  “No, I came here first after my last term in the Assembly, when he had been dead some time. I believe you and I came here about the same time, didn’t we?”

  “No, I preceded you several years. And I had known him before I came here. We were in college together?”

  “Am I to infer something against him on that account?” the judge inquired, with the jocosity which the doctor had ceased to share, even by so much as a smile.

  “He was the devil,” Anther said, with a brevity which was of almost a dispassionate effect.

  The judge was amused by the succinctness so far as to observe, “In the case of a living person, that is a sort of language which we shou
ld consider actionable, I’m afraid.”

  “The things I know of that man—”

  Anther stopped, and sat staring at the judge’s law-books where they stood ranged on the shelves before him, showing their red labels on their sheepskin backs with a uniformity in height and shape, broken here and there by cases of pamphlets and documents, and stray pieces of fiction the judge was fond of reading.

  “Would fill volumes,” the lawyer interpreted, with pleasant interest.

  Anther came back to himself with a sharp “Yes!” and Judge Garley went on:

  “Well, now, do you know, I’m not surprised, somehow. I’ve come upon one or two things lately, in a professional way, connected with the deceased, that did not smell as sweet as the conventional memory which seems to have blossomed in the dust all over the place. It is very curious! I have sensed for a good while, by that sixth sense which we haven’t got a name for yet, that there was something hushed up in regard to that man.”