Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  There is another thing I will mention while I think of it. Grandma Evarts is always talking about “rules of life,” but the only rule of life I’m perfectly sure I have is to always mention things when I think of them. Even that doesn’t please the family, though, because sometimes I mention things they thought I didn’t know, and then they are annoyed and cross instead of learning a lesson by it and realizing how silly it is to try to keep secrets from me. If they’d TELL me, and put me on my honor, I could keep their old secrets as well as anybody. I’ve kept Billy’s for years and years. But when they all stop talking the minute I come into a room, and when mamma and Peggy go around with red eyes and won’t say why, you’d better believe I don’t like it. It fills me with the “intelligent discontent” Tom is always talking about. Then I don’t rest until I know what there is to know, and usually when I get through I know more than anybody else does, because I’ve got all the different sides — Maria’s and Tom’s and Lorraine’s and Charles Edward’s and mamma’s and papa’s and grandma’s and Peggy’s and Aunt Elizabeth’s. It isn’t that they intend to tell me things, either; they all try not to. Every one of them keeps her own secrets beautifully, but she drops things about the others. Then all I have to do is to put them together like a patch-work quilt.

  You needn’t think it’s easy, though, for the very minute I get near any of the family they waste most of the time we’re together by trying to improve me. You see, they are all so dreadfully old that they have had time to find out their faults and youthful errors, and every single one of them thinks she sees ALL her faults in me, and that she must help me to conquer them ere it is too late. Aunt Elizabeth says they mean it kindly, and perhaps they do. But if you have ever had ten men and women trying to improve you, you will know what my life is. Tom Price, who married my sister Maria, told Dr. Denbigh once that “every time a Talbert is unoccupied he or she puts Alice or Billy, or both, on the family moulding-board and kneads awhile.” I heard him say it and it’s true. All I can say is that if they keep on kneading and moulding me much longer there won’t be anything left but a kind of a pulpy mass. I can see what they have done to Billy already; he’s getting pulpier every day, and I don’t believe his brain would ever work if I didn’t keep stirring it up.

  However, the thing I want to say while I think of it is this. It is a question, and I will ask it here because there is no use of asking it at home: Why is it that grown-up men and women never have anything really interesting to say to a girl fifteen years old? Then, if you can answer that, I wish you would answer another: Why don’t they ever listen or understand what a girl means when she talks to them? Billy and I have one rule now when we want to say something serious. We get right in front of them and fix them with a glittering eye, the way the Ancient Mariner did, you know, and speak as slowly as we can, in little bits of words, to show them it’s very important. Then, sometimes, they pay attention and answer us, but usually they act as if we were babies gurgling in cunning little cribs. And the rude way they interrupt us often and go on talking about their own affairs — well, I will not say more, for dear mamma has taught me not to criticise my elders, and I never do. But I watch them pretty closely, just the same, and when I see them doing something that is not right my brain works so hard it keeps me awake nights. If it’s anything very dreadful, like Peggy’s going and getting engaged, I point out the error, the way they’re always pointing errors out to me. Of course it doesn’t do any good, but that isn’t my fault. It’s because they haven’t got what my teacher calls “receptive minds.”

  I’m telling you all this before I tell you what has happened, so you will be sorry for Billy and me. If you are sorry already, as well indeed you may be, you will be a great deal more sorry before I get through. For if ever any two persons were “downtrodden and oppressed” and “struggling in darkness” and “feeling the chill waters of affliction,” it’s Billy and me to-night — all because we tried to help Peggy and Lorraine and Aunt Elizabeth after they had got everything mixed up! I told them I was just trying to help, and Tom Price said right off that there was only one thing for Billy and me to do in future whenever the “philanthropic spirit began to stir” in us, and that was to get on board the suburban trolley-car and go as far away from home as our nickels would take us, and not hurry back. So you see he is not a bit grateful for the interesting things I told Maria.

  I will now tell what happened. It began the day Billy heard the station agent at Whitman read Aunt Elizabeth’s telegram to Harry Goward. The telegram had a lot of silly letters and words in it, so Billy didn’t know what it meant, and, of course, he didn’t care. The careless child would have forgotten all about it if I hadn’t happened to meet him at Lorraine’s after he got back from Whitman. He is always going to Lorraine’s for some of Sallie’s cookies — she makes perfectly delicious ones, round and fat and crumbly, with currants on the top. Billy had taken so many that his pockets bulged out on the sides, and his mouth was so full he only nodded when he saw me. So, of course, I stopped to tell him how vulgar that was, and piggish, and to see if he had left any for me, and he was so anxious to divert my mind that as soon as he could speak he began to talk about seeing Aunt Elizabeth over in Whitman. That interested me, so I got the whole thing out of him, and the very minute he had finished telling it I made him go straight and tell Peggy. I told him to do it delicately, and not yell it out. I thought it would cheer and comfort Peggy to know that some one was doing something, instead of standing around and looking solemn, but, alas! it did not, and Billy told me with his own lips that it was simply awful to see Peggy’s face. Even he noticed it, so it must have been pretty bad. He said her eyes got so big it made him think of the times she used to imitate the wolf in Red Riding-Hood and scare us ‘most to death when we were young.

  When Billy told me that, I saw that perhaps we shouldn’t have told Peggy, so the next day I went over to Lorraine’s again to ask her what she thought about it. I stopped at noon on my way home from school, and I didn’t ring the bell, because I never do. I walked right in as usual, falling over the books and teacups and magazines on the floor, and I found Lorraine sitting at the tea-table with her head down among the little cakes and bits of toast left over from the afternoon before. She didn’t look up, so I knew she hadn’t heard me, and I saw her shoulders shake, and then I knew that she was crying. I had never seen Lorraine cry before, and I felt dreadfully, but I didn’t know just what to do or what to say, and while I stood staring at her I noticed that there was a photograph on the table with a lot of faded flowers. The face of the photograph was up and I saw that it was a picture of Mr. Wilde — the one that usually stands on the mantel-piece. Lorraine is always talking about him, and she has told me ever and ever so much about how nice and kind he was to her when she was studying art in New York. But, of course, I didn’t know she cared enough for him to cry over his picture, and it gave me the queerest feelings to see her do it — kind of wabbly ones in my legs, and strange, sinking ones in my stomach. You see, I had just finished reading Lady Hermione’s Terrible Secret. A girl at school lent it to me. So when I saw Lorraine crying over a photograph and faded flowers I knew it must mean that she had learned to love Mr. Wilde with a love that was her doom, or would be if she didn’t hurry and get over it. Finally I crept out of the house without saying a word to her or letting her know I was there, and I leaned on the gate to think it over and try to imagine what a girl in a book would do. In Lady Hermione her sister discovered the truth and tried to save the rash woman from the sad consequences of her love, so I knew that was what I must do, but I didn’t know how to begin. While I was standing there with my brain going round like one of Billy’s paper pinwheels some one stopped in front of me and said, “Hello, Alice,” in a sick kind of a way, like a boy beginning to recite a piece at school. I looked up. It was Harry Goward!

  You’d better believe I was surprised, for, of course, when he went away nobody expected he would come back so soon; and after all the fuss and the red
eyes and the mystery I hoped he wouldn’t come back at all. But here he was in three days, so I said, very coldly, “How do you do, Mr. Goward,” and bowed in a distant way; and he took his hat off quickly and held it in his hand, and I waited for him to say something else. All he did for a minute was to look over my head. Then he said, in the same queer voice: “Is Mrs. Peter in? I wanted to have a little talk with her,” and he put his hand on the gate to open it. I suppose it was dreadfully rude, but I stayed just where I was and said, very slowly, in icy tones, that he must kindly excuse my sister-in-law, as I was sure she wouldn’t be able to receive him. Of course I knew she wouldn’t want him or any one else to come in and see her cry, and besides I never liked Harry Goward and I never expect to. He looked very much surprised at first, and then his face got as red as a baby’s does when there’s a pin in it somewhere, and he asked if she was ill. I said, “No, she is not ill,” and then I sighed and looked off down the street as if I would I were alone. He began to speak very quickly, but stopped and bit his lip. Then he turned away and hesitated, and finally he came back and took a thick letter from his pocket and held it out to me. He was smiling now, and for a minute he really looked nice and sweet and friendly.

  “Say, Alice,” he said, in the most coaxing way, “don’t YOU get down on me, too. Do me a good turn — that’s a dear. Take this letter home and deliver it. Will you? And say I’m at the hotel waiting for an answer.”

  Now, you can see yourself that this was thrilling. The whole family was watching every mail for a letter from Harry Goward and here he was offering me one! I didn’t show how excited I was; I just took the letter and turned it over so I couldn’t see the address and slipped it into my pocket, and said, coldly, that I would deliver it with pleasure. Harry Goward was looking quite cheerful again, but he said, in a worried tone, that he hoped I wouldn’t forget, because it was very, very important. Then I dismissed him with a haughty bow, the way they do on the stage, and this time he put his hat on and really went.

  Of course after that I wanted to go straight home with the letter, but I knew it wouldn’t do to leave Lorraine bearing her terrible burden without some one to comfort her. While I was trying to decide what to do I saw Billy a block away with Sidney Tracy, and I whistled to him to come, and beckoned with both hands at the same time to show it was important. I had a beautiful idea. In that very instant I “planned my course of action,” as they say in books. I made up my mind that I would send the letter home by Billy, and that would give me time to run over to Maria’s and get something to eat and ask Maria to go and comfort Lorraine. Maria and Lorraine don’t like each other very much, but I knew trouble might bring them closer, for Grandma Evarts says it always does. Besides, Maria is dreadfully old and knows everything and is the one the family always sends for when things happen. If they don’t send she comes anyhow and tells everybody what to do. So I pinned the letter in Billy’s pocket, so he couldn’t lose it, and I ordered him to go straight home with it. He said he would. He looked queer and I thought I saw him drop something near a fence before he came to me, but I was so excited I didn’t pay close attention. As soon as Billy started off I went to Maria’s.

  She was all alone, for Tom was lunching with some one at the hotel. When we were at the table I told her about Lorraine, and if ever any one was excited and really listened this time it was sister Maria. She pushed back her chair, and spoke right out before she thought, I guess. “Charles Edward’s wife crying over another man’s picture!” she said. “Well, I like that! But I’m not surprised. I always said no good would come of THAT match!”

  Then she stopped and made herself quiet down, but I could see how hard it was, and she added: “So THAT was the matter with Charles Edward when I met him this morning rushing along the street like a cyclone.”

  I got dreadfully worried then and begged her to go to Lorraine at once, for I saw things were even more terrible than I had thought. But Maria said: “Certainly not! I must consult with father and mother first. This is something that affects us all. After I have seen them I will go to Lorraine’s.” Then she told me not to worry about it, and not to speak of it to any one else. I didn’t, either, except to Billy and Aunt Elizabeth; and when I told Aunt Elizabeth the man’s name I thought she would go up into the air like one of Billy’s skyrockets. But that part does not belong here, and I’m afraid if I stop to talk about it I’ll forget about Billy and the letter.

  After luncheon Maria put her hat on and went straight to our house to see mother, and I went back to school. When I got home I asked, the first thing, if Billy had delivered the letter from Harry Goward, and for the next fifteen minutes you would have thought every one in our house had gone crazy. That wretched boy had not delivered it at all! They had not even seen him, and they didn’t know anything about the letter. After they had let me get enough breath to tell just how I had met Harry and exactly what he had said and done, mother rushed off to telephone to father, and Aunt Elizabeth came down-stairs with a wild, eager face, and Grandma Evarts actually shook me when she found I didn’t even know whom the letter was for. I hadn’t looked, because I had been so excited. Finally, after everybody had talked at once for a while. Grandma Evarts told me mamma had said Billy could go fishing that afternoon, because the weather was so hot and she thought he looked pale and overworked. The idea of Billy Talbert being overworked! I could have told mamma something about THAT.

  Well, I saw through the whole thing then. Billy hadn’t told me, for fear I would want to go along; so he had sneaked off with Sidney Tracy, and if he hadn’t forgotten all about the letter he had made up his mind it would do as well to deliver it when he came home. That’s the way Billy’s mind works — like Tom Price’s stop-watch. It goes up to a certain instant and then it stops short. You’d better believe I was angry. And it didn’t make it any easier for me to remember that while I was having this dreadful time at home, and being reproached by everybody. Billy and Sidney Tracy were sitting comfortably under the willows on the edge of the river pulling little minnows out of the water. I knew exactly where they would be — I’d been there with Billy often enough. Just as I thought of that I looked at poor Peggy, sitting in her wrapper in papa’s big easy-chair, leaning against a pillow Grandma Evarts had put behind her back, and trying to be calm. She looked so pale and worn and worried and sick that I made up my mind I’d follow those boys to the river and get that letter and bring it home to Peggy — for, of course, I was sure it was for her. I wish you could have seen her face when I said I’d do it, and the way she jumped up from the chair and then blushed and sank back and tried to look as if it didn’t matter — with her eyes shining all the time with excitement and hope.

  I got on my bicycle and rode off, and I made good time until I crossed the bridge. Then I had to walk along the river, pushing the bicycle, and I came to those two boys so quietly that they never saw me until I was right behind them. They were fishing still, but they had both been swimming — I could tell that by their wet hair and by the damp, mussy look of their clothes. When Billy saw me he turned red and began to make a great fuss over his line. He didn’t say a word; he never does when he’s surprised or ashamed, so he doesn’t speak very often, anyhow; but I broke the painful silence by saying a few words myself. I told Billy how dreadful he had made everybody feel and how they were all blaming me, and I said I’d thank him for that letter to take home to his poor suffering sister. Billy put down his rod, and all the time I talked he was going through his pockets one after the other and getting redder and redder. I was so busy talking that I didn’t understand at first just what this meant, but when I stopped and held out my hand and looked at him hard I saw in his guilty face the terrible, terrible fear that he had lost that letter; and I was so frightened that my legs gave way under me, and I sat down on the grass in my fresh blue linen dress, just where they had dripped and made it wet.

  All this time Sidney Tracy was going through HIS pockets, too, and just as I was getting up again in a hurry he took of
f his cap and emptied his pockets into it. I wish you could have seen what that cap held then — worms, and sticky chewing-gum, and tops, and strings, and hooks, and marbles, and two pieces of molasses candy all soft and messy, and a little bit of a turtle, and a green toad, and a slice of bread-and-butter, and a dirty, soaking, handkerchief that he and Billy had used for a towel. There was something else there, too — a dark, wet, pulpy, soggy-looking thing with pieces of gum and molasses candy and other things sticking to it. Sidney took it out and held it toward me in a proud, light-hearted way:

  “There’s your letter, all right,” he said, and Billy gave a whoop of joy and called out, “Good-bye, Alice,” as a hint for me to hurry home. I was so anxious to get the letter that I almost took it, but I stopped in time. I hadn’t any gloves on, and it was just too dreadful. If you could have seen it you would never have touched it in the world. I got near enough to look at it, though, and then I saw that the address was so dirty and so covered with gum and bait and candy that all I could read was a capital “M” and a small “s” at the beginning and an “ert” at the end; the name between was hidden. I covered my eyes with my hand and gasped out to the boys that I wanted the things taken off it that didn’t belong there, and when I looked again Sidney had scraped off the worst of it and was scrubbing the envelope with his wet handkerchief to make it look cleaner. After that you couldn’t tell what ANY letter was, so I just groaned and snatched it from his hands and left those two boys in their disgusting dirt and degradation and went home.