“How do, doctor!”
“How do, Dr. Anther!”
He looked up blankly, and presently realized that he saw Hope Hawberk, Jessamy Colebridge, and Susie Johns, walking, with arms more or less intertwined, along the pavement which he was closely skirting by the erratic preference of his horse. They smiled brightly upon his daze, and nodded gayly to him, hanging over one another and laughing at him over their shoulders when they got by. He gathered himself together to call back to them, “Oh, how do you do!” and the charm of their differing prettiness very sweetly possessed him. They were like his own children to him, in his long intimate acquaintance with their ailments as a physician, and with their accomplishments as chairman of the school board. Their young voices, and their arch, familiar, trustful tones made the blood play warmly about his heart, and he let his horse take him home to supper in a mood which he could not have imagined of himself when he parted such a little while ago from Judge Garley.
The girls walked on down the street towards the denser part of the town, chattering, singing snatches of song, humming and laughing, leaning over to mock one another, and then straining outward or forward in their fun. They sobered as they got more into the crowds thronging the sidewalks, till they distinguished themselves from the mill-girls by a demure state, which could not leave one in doubt of their quality as village girls who did not work in the mills. Mill-hands of both sexes were exuberantly filling the street, after their release from the week’s work, in a tumult of shopping, of carrying on, of courting, which would last far into the night. The young men stood at the corners or lounged along the curbstones, smoking, and challenging the girls to a stand which here and there stopped the way with giggling and slanging and tussling groups; the girls, when they did not stop, tossed chaff and sauce at the young men over their shoulders and tempted them to pursuit, as they passed chewing gum. But neither the young men nor the girls molested the three friends, who had now separated, and were pushing sinuously through the open spaces towards the post-office. The mill-hands knew who each of them was, and how they were nearly always together; some had been in school with them, or in Sunday-school, and these exchanged nods with them; others who were strangers to them looked inimically after them, as representatives of class.
The three were not equally friends, though they were all friends. Hope Hawberk was chief among them, and Susie Johns was next her in the understanding that Jessamy Colebridge was capable of being silly at moments when the others would rather have died. Without being untrue to her, they sometimes laughed a little at her; but that did not keep either of them from laughing a little with her at something queer in the other. Susie and Jessamy both knew about Hope’s father, but her grandmother was of a family which no one in Saxmills could look down on. Her grandfather had been Squire Southfield, once the chief lawyer of the place, and he had been in Congress; though that was a long time ago, and her mother had certainly married beneath her in taking Hope’s father. He was then a skilful young mechanic, but it quite passed the knowledge of Hope’s friends that he had been a very fascinating fellow, whom such a girl as Hope’s mother could not resist. Hope was like him in the dark coloring of her beauty, her dusky hair, and her black eyes; but there was a passionate irregularity of her mouth when she smiled which was the trace of her mother’s stormy temperament. She had really more of her father’s amiability, which, to the strict New England sense, erred almost to the guilt of easy-goingness! His dreams had not Begun with opium. There were psychologists among his critics who regarded the opium as the logical consequence of his dreams, and who, if they had been asked in time, could have prophesied from the first all that he had come to since.
Neither of the three girls expected a letter, but when it seemed that there really was a letter for Susie Johns, Jessamy confessed her own disappointment with a quick “Oh, dear!” in taking the letter from the girl clerk behind the boxes, who severely announced, “Ain’t nothing for you or Hope.” But Hope, if she had a disappointment, hid it under a laugh.
She caught the letter from Susie’s lax hand, and said, “Let me read it for you, Susie dear,” and Susie wrinkled her nose, and said, “Well, you may.” But Hope contented herself with looking at the post-mark.
Jessamy joined her in the inspection, and it was she who proclaimed their joint discovery. “It’s from Boston! Why, Susie Johns, who’s been writing to you from Boston? Oh, I’ll bet it’s Mr. Falk.”
It appeared that the letter was really from Mr. Falk, but not till the girls had left the anteroom of the post-office and made their way back homeward on the up-hill street leading out of the business thoroughfare. Then, when they could have the whole sidewalk to themselves again, each of the others passed a hand through Susie’s arms and prepared herself to help her make out any hard words, leaning forward in readiness. Jessamy kept babbling as Susie read her letter silently through, and by the time she reached the end Jessamy was offering the twentieth variant of her wonder: “What in the world is he writing to you about?”
“Oh, it’s just manners,” Susie responded serenely. “I suppose he thought he ought to write and say something pleasant about his visit here.”
“Is that all?” Jessamy innocently protested, and this made Hope laugh.
“What else did you expect there would be?” Susie folded the letter up and put it back in the envelope.
“Well, I don’t know. He might have sent some message!”
“He did. He said ‘give his regards to all inquiring friends.’”
“Oh, that sounds nice. It’s just what we say — village people. But I believe Mr. Falk isn’t from a very large town. Only you always think students must be like city folks. Dear, I wish I had a letter.”
“Well,” Hope said, “I’ll ask Harry Matthewson to write you one.”
“No, you mustn’t, Hope. Will you, really?”
Susie squealed, “Jessamy Colebridge, you certainly are almost a goose”; and Hope said, “Well, I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
They had come to Jessamy’s gate, and Hope pushed her arm through Susie’s and ran her on, while Jessamy stood looking in rueful puzzle after them.
“Jessamy is such a simpleton. I should think she was a child of ten yet.” Hope put her face down on Susie’s shoulder and laughed, and when she lifted it Susie put her face down on Hope’s shoulder and laughed. Then Susie offered to let Hope read Falk’s letter; but Hope had never shown her the letter which she had got from Langbrith the Monday before.
XVI
BEYOND the village, the little lake from which the mills drew their power had been clear of ice for weeks, but its waters had kept the look of winter. The logs weltering at the gates where the current which was to grind them into pulp left the lake, dipped and lifted with a cold, wet gleam as they pushed at the pales on the pull of the stream. A day came when the whole aspect of the landscape changed. No leaf had started, and scarcely a bud had swelled on the water-elms that showed their black trunks and boughs amid the green gloom of the pines and spruces overhanging the shores, and the white nakedness of the birches had not yet clothed itself, except for a thin veil of catkins. But the water had taken a warmth of tone from the sky, which was of a deep blue, heaped with milky clouds roughed to a superficial dusk by the southern wind. Bluebirds rose and sank with the rhythm of their querulous notes in their short flights about the farmsteads and village houses. The robins in the chilly mornings and evenings shouted from the door-yard trees. Ragged lines of blackbirds drifted with a glassy clatter over the woods and rested in their tops, or slanted towards the water, where they showed their iridescent splendors, as they strutted up and down on the logs and parleyed harshly together.
Hawberk sat tilted in his chair against the southern house-wall where the sun struck into the garden, and listened with a dim smile to their clatter, coming over to him through a cleft of the land that let the lake shine through below the hill. He had begun the joyful day with half a gill of laudanum, and he was feeling the primary ef
fect of the drug in the delicious lassitude he won from it at continually increasing cost. He was smiling, not only at the noise of the blackbirds, but at the comfort of the cat, which had found the stone warm at the base of the sundial in the walk of the little garden, and lay coiled there. He liked the look of the dishevelled beds, where the dry litter of the last summer’s stalks and stems was mixed with the tawny blades of the grassy borders, and he liked the softly waving plumes of the pines which beckoned to him from the brow of the hill behind the little dwelling. He heard, with the same sensuous pleasure, the jar of the mills below the street on which the house fronted, and he vaguely recalled the relation his life once had to that busy sound, now no more to him than the idle sound of the wind in the pine tops with which it was effectively one. Exquisite thrills passed through his relaxing nerves, and the twitching of his muscles was divinely voluptuous. Then, suddenly, he was in that pit again, out of which he had slowly fought his way at the Retreat, but which he knew he must now sink back into day by day. The green dwarf was there as he had not been for a long time, and was at his work of slowly filling in the sides of the pit, making it smaller and smaller, and arabesquing its surfaces with patterns of men’s bones. He choked in the thickening air and dug his way upward with his hands, toiling for months, for years, for ages; but the pit was always filled in again, and its roof and sides faced with those hideous arabesques. After centuries, he saw the light break through from above; then the dwarf came slowly overhead, and covered him in again and shut out the light. The groans of his torment ascended continually; when the dwarf extinguished the last gleam, the horror was such that it burst into a scream of despair — a cry of agony so sharp that it cut his dream asunder, and he woke with cold sweat, and saw the cat dozing at the base of the dial.
“Father, father!” the voice of Hope called, while she caught his reeking hand in hers.
He tilted forward out of his chair, trembled to his feet, and stared around, gasping.
“Oh, Hope, child, don’t let me sleep, don’t ever let me sleep again. How long have I been here?”
“Only while I could go in and get my hat and a book to read to you. Grandma wanted me a minute.”
“It seemed eternity. Don’t let me sleep again. I’m all right if I don’t sleep. Promise me that.”
“Well, I won’t, father. But come now — or aren’t you able to go up the hill with me?” He had sunk back into his chair, and she kissed his forehead, blotched from the opium, with its sunken eyes beneath it, and the red scars seaming his cheeks, from which a sickening odor came. “But must you? — must you?”
“Yes, yes, I must. Don’t talk to me that way. I must, I tell you. If I had a little, now! Where is it?”
“In your room. I’ll get it, if you say so—”
“Well, get it then, quick, quick! I don’t want to sleep again.”
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll be back in a second.”
She vanished, and reappeared with a bottle in her hand which she put into his shaking hold.
He pushed it to his lips without looking at it. When he had drained it he glanced at the empty bottle. “Was that all?”
“Yes, every bit. But I can get some more this afternoon if you want it.”
“Of course I want it; it puts life into me. Ah!” He drew a long breath and stretched himself. “That’s something like. Now come on.” He laid his shaking hand on her arm, and they began to climb the hill together on the path that found its way upward by little juts of the ledge, and little turns round them, and over the rough surfaces where the thin soil left the rock bare. “It’s astonishing what it does for a man. It’s all that keeps me up, in these enterprises. But don’t you ever touch it, Hope. It’s the best of servants, but the worst of masters. If I didn’t know how to control it so well, it would play the mischief with me.” Hope said, with the lightness which all the horror of the situation could not sadden in her, “And even you don’t seem to have the upperhand always, father.”
Hawberk laughed in sympathy with her lightness. “That’s a fact, Hope. But it’s very seldom. The great thing is to know when to pull up. I’m all right as long as I’m awake, and there’s nothing like it to keep you awake. You’ve got to use it regularly if you want to get the good of it.”
“Well, you’ve wanted to get the good of it about two hours too soon to-day, father,” she said, with caressing mockery.
“Why, what time is it?”
“About eleven.”
“Lord, I thought it was after dinner, and I’d gone by my time. You oughtn’t to have given it all to me, Hope. I don’t know what I shall do now till night.”
“I’ll get some more for you from Dr. Anther. He wanted you to have it.”
“I don’t know about that. I believe he wants to keep it away from me, though he knows it’s the only thing that will carry me through this pinch of work. I want you to go right after dinner for it — before he starts on his visits.”
“I will, I will, father.”
“It’s the only thing that will keep me awake, and as long as I don’t sleep I’m all right.”
“Well, I should think you would find it pretty hard to manage without any sleep at all,” Hope said, always in the same drolling fashion. “Why don’t you try to stop it altogether?”
“That’s just what I’m going to do when I get through this pinch. I’ve talked it all over with Dr. Anther. We’ve got the whole thing mapped out, down to the last dot.”
They had reached the top of the hill in their talk, which had had as much silence as parlance in it.
Hawberk let go the arm to which he had been clinging less and less dependency, and straightened his bent, wasted frame.
“Fine! fine!” he said, looking dimly out of the caverns under his brows at the prospect. “I think I shall put the house right here. You know I’ve bought this hill, Hope?”
“No, I didn’t, father. But I’m not the least surprised to hear it. You keep buying all sorts of things.” She had settled herself on the warm, brown needles under the pine where he stood; and, as she spoke, she pulled her skirt closely about her knees and folded it under them. He looked down into her face, and they both laughed.
“But this is a fact, Hope. That last little thing of mine is doing so well in the hands of those people at Boston that I’ve decided to build here. We haven’t passed the papers yet, but I’ve got old Arlingham’s agreement to sell. Drew it up yesterday before Judge Garley, and left it with him. I’m going to have an architect make the plans. It’s to be for you, Hope.”
“Me? Oh my! I like the little old place at the foot of the hill well enough.”
“It’s well enough for your grandmother and me, but I want you to have a decent place when—”
“Well, well! That’s all right, father; and I’m ever so much obliged. But you better sit down and have a rest before you begin building.” She kept the same joking tone, but there was a sort of nervousness in the haste with which she cut him off from the topic, and hastened to say, “I’ll read to you now.”
Hawberk obeyed, and leaned his bared head against the trunk of the pine at whose foot he sank; his eyes closed, and he instantly started forward, with a shudder and a cry of “Ugh!”
She closed on her thumb the book which she had just opened, and asked, gravely, “Was it the green one?”
“It’s always the green one, now,” he lamented.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what, father: you’re getting pretty bad again.”
“No, no! I’m all right — or I shall be, if I can keep awake. I guess you better talk to me, Hope. Better not read. Seems to set me off at once. You’d just as lief talk, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh yes. It doesn’t matter to me. You’ll do the talking, anyway.”
Hawberk laughed. “I guess that’s about so, Hope. The reason I want you to have this place here is because Langbrith and I used to talk about building here together. We used to be great cronies, Royal Langbrith and I did, and it seems quite appro
priate—”
“Now, look here, father,” the girl broke in, “you’re getting on to forbidden ground. You may choose any other subject to talk about, and I’m with you, but I can’t follow you there.”
“Oh, all right, I wasn’t going to. But now let me tell you the kind of a house I’ve got in my head for this place. Of course, some of these pines will have to come down.” He got up, and began to walk about and take in the shape of the ground, and pace off certain measurements, and look up at the different trees. “But I shall leave a row of them in front, and a lot off to the side, here.” He gestured towards the right, as he came back, and sat down again. “But all back of here the trees have got to go. I want to have you a good big garden behind the house.”
“Well, I’m almost sorry for that,” Hope humored his fancy. “I believe I’d rather have the pines than the garden. They do smell so nice, with this sun on them.”
“That’s a fact,” her father assented, sniffing the balsamic odors that the heat drew from the boughs softly stirring themselves in the wind. “Well, I’ll leave as many as I can, Hope.” He broke off with, “What sort of young fellow is that one who was up here at Easter, with James?”
“He’s pretty nice, I believe. What makes you ask?” Her own question had something of the anxiety in it which marked her escape from his approaches to the forbidden topic of Langbrith.
“Oh, nothing. They tell me he’s something of a draughtsman — kind of artist.”
“Yes, I told you that. What of it?”
“Nothing. But I’ve thought some of employing him to illustrate the advertisements of that last little thing of mine. Those people down at Boston are going to have it written up in great shape for the back part of the magazines, and I want to have pictures. Suppose he could do them?”
“Yes, I should think so. But now, look here, father: you mustn’t go talking this around.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 800
