Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  When I got back mamma and Grandma Evarts and Tom Price and Peggy and Aunt Elizabeth were in the parlor, looking more excited than ever, because Maria had been there telling the family about Lorraine. Then she had gone on to Lorraine’s and Tom had dropped in to call for her and was waiting to hear about the letter. They were all watching the door when I came in, and Peggy and Aunt Elizabeth started to get up, but sat down again. I stood there hesitating because, of course, I didn’t know who to give it to, and Grandma Evarts shot out, “Well, Alice! Well, Well!” as if she was blowing the words at me from a little peashooter. Then I began to explain about the address, but before I could say more than two or three words mamma motioned to me and I gave the letter to her.

  You could have heard an autumn leaf fall in that room. Mamma put on her glasses and puzzled over the smear on the envelope, and Peggy drew a long breath and jumped up and walked over to mamma and held out her hand. Mamma didn’t hesitate a minute. “Certainly it must be for you, my dear,” she said, and then she added, in a very cold, positive way, “For whom else could it possibly be intended?” No one spoke; but just as Peggy had put her finger under the flap to tear it open, Aunt Elizabeth got up and crossed the room to where mamma and Peggy stood. She spoke very softly and quietly, but she looked queer and excited.

  “Wait one moment, my dear,” she said to Peggy. “Very probably the letter IS for you, but it is just possible that it may be for some one else. Wouldn’t it be safer — wiser — for ME to open it?”

  Then Peggy cried out, “Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, how dreadful! How can you say such a thing!” Mother had hesitated an instant when Aunt Elizabeth spoke, but now she drew Peggy’s head down to her dear, comfy shoulder, and Peggy stayed right there and cried as hard as she could — with little gasps and moans as if she felt dreadfully nervous. Then, for once in my life, I saw my mother angry. She looked over Peggy’s head at Aunt Elizabeth, and her face was so dreadful it made me shiver.

  “Elizabeth,” she said, and she brought her teeth right down hard on the word, “this is the climax of your idiocy. Have you the audacity to claim here, before me, that this letter from my child’s affianced husband is addressed to you?”

  Aunt Elizabeth looked very pale now, but when she answered she spoke as quietly as before.

  “If it is, Ada,” she said, “it is against my wish and my command. But — it may be.” Then her voice changed as if she were really begging for something.

  “Let me open it,” she said. “If it is for Peggy I can tell by the first line or two, even if he does not use the name. Surely it will do no harm if I glance at it.”

  Mother looked even angrier than before.

  “Well,” she said, “it could do no harm, you think, if you read a letter intended for Peggy, but you don’t dare to risk letting Peggy read a letter addressed by Harry Goward to you. This is intolerable, Elizabeth Talbert. You have passed the limit of my endurance — and of my husband’s.”

  She brought out the last words very slowly, looking Aunt Elizabeth straight in the eyes, and Aunt Elizabeth looked back with her head very high. She has a lovely way of using such expressions as “For the rest” and “As to that,” and she did it now.

  “As to that,” she said, “my brother must speak for himself. No one regrets more bitterly than I do this whole most unpleasant affair. I can only say that with all my heart I am trying to straighten it out.”

  Grandma Evarts sniffed just then so loudly that we all looked at her, and then, of course, mamma suddenly remembered that I was still there, regarding the scene with wide, intelligent young eyes, and she nodded toward the door, meaning for me to go out. My, but I hated to! I picked up grandma’s ball of wool and drew the footstool close to her feet, and looked around to see if I couldn’t show her some other delicate girlish attention such as old ladies love, but there wasn’t anything, especially as grandma kept motioning for me to leave. So I walked toward the door very slowly, and before I got there I heard Tom Price say:

  “Oh, come now; we’re making a lot of fuss about nothing. There’s a very simple way out of all this. Alice says Goward’s still at the hotel. I’ll just run down there and explain, and ask him to whom that letter belongs.”

  Then I was at the door, and I HAD to open it and go out. The voices went on inside for a few minutes, but soon I saw Tom come out and I went to him and slipped my arm inside of his and walked with him across the lawn and out to the sidewalk. I don’t very often like the things Tom says, but I thought it was clever of him to think of going to ask Harry Goward about the letter, and I told him so to encourage him. He thanked me very politely, and then he stopped and braced his back against the lamp-post on the corner and “fixed me with a stern gaze,” as writers say.

  “Look here, Clarry,” he said (“Clarry” is short, he says, for Daily Bugle and Clarion Call, which is “too lengthy for frequent use”), “you’re doing a lot of mischief to-day with your rural delivery system for Goward and your news extras about Lorraine. What’s this cock-and-bull story you’ve got up about her, anyway?”

  I told him just what I had seen. When I got through he said there was “nothing in it.”

  “That bit about her head being among the toast and cake,” he went on, “would be convincing circumstantial evidence of a tragedy if it had been any other woman’s head, but it doesn’t count with Lorraine — I mean it doesn’t represent the complete abandonment to grief which would be implied if it happened in the case of any one else. You must remember that when Lorraine wants to have a comfortable cry she’s got to choose between putting her head in the jam on the sofa, or among the wet paint and brushes in the easy-chair, or among the crumbs on the tea-table. As for that photograph, it probably fell off the mantel-piece to the tea-table, instead of falling, as usual, into the coal-hod. To sum up, my dear Clarry, if you had remembered the extreme emotionalism of your sister Lorraine’s temperament and the — er — eccentricity of her housekeeping, you would not have permitted yourself to be so sadly misled. Not remembering it, you’ve done a lot of mischief. All these things being so, no one will believe them. And to-night, when you are safely tucked into your little bed, if you hear the tramping of many feet on the asphalt walks you may know what it will mean. It will mean that your mother and father, and Elizabeth, and Grandma Evarts and Maria and Peggy will be dropping in on Lorraine, each alone and quite casually, of course, to find out what there really is in this terrible rumor. And some of them will believe to their dying day that there was something in it.”

  Well, that made me feel very unhappy. For I could see that under Tom’s gay exterior and funny way of saying things he really meant every word. Of course I told him that I had wanted to help Lorraine and Peggy because they were so wretched, and he made me promise on the spot that if ever I wanted to help him I’d tell him about it first. Then he went off to the hotel looking more cheerful, and I was left alone with my sad thoughts.

  When I got into the house the first thing I saw was Billy sneaking out of the back door. I had meant to have a long and earnest talk with Billy the minute he got home, and point out some of his serious faults, but when I looked at him I saw that mamma or grandma had just done it. He looked red eyed and miserable, and the minute he saw me he began to whistle. Billy never whistles except just before or just after a whipping, so my heart sank, and I was dreadfully sorry for him. I started after him to tell him so, but he made a face at me and ran; and just then Aunt Elizabeth came along the hall and dragged me up to her room and began to ask me all over again about Mr. Goward and all that he said — whether I was perfectly SURE he didn’t mention any name. She looked worried and unhappy. Then she asked about Lorraine, but in an indifferent voice, as if she was really thinking about something else. I told her all I knew, but she didn’t say a word or pay much attention until I mentioned that the man in the photograph was Mr. Lyman Wilde. Then — well, I wish you had seen Aunt Elizabeth! She made me promise afterwards that I’d never tell a single soul what happened, and I won’t
. But I do wish sometimes that Billy and I lived on a desert island, where there wasn’t anybody else. I just can’t bear being home when everybody is so unhappy, and when not a single thing I do helps the least little bit!

  CHAPTER VI THE SON-IN-LAW by John Kendrick Bangs

  On the whole I am glad our family is no larger than it is. It is a very excellent family as families go, but the infinite capacity of each individual in it for making trouble, and adding to complications already sufficiently complex, surpasses anything that has ever before come into my personal or professional experience. If I handle my end of this miserable affair without making a break of some kind or other, I shall apply to the Secretary of State for a high place in the diplomatic service, for mere international complications are child’s-play compared to this embroglio in which Goward and Aunt Elizabeth have landed us all. I think I shall take up politics and try to get myself elected to the legislature, anyhow, and see if I can’t get a bill through providing that when a man marries it is distinctly understood that he marries his wife and not the whole of his wife’s family, from her grandmother down through her maiden aunts, sisters, cousins, little brothers, et al., including the latest arrivals in kittens. In my judgment it ought to be made a penal offence for any member of a man’s wife’s family to live on the same continent with him, and if I had to get married all over again to Maria — and I’d do it with as much delighted happiness as ever — I should insist upon the interpolation of a line in the marriage ceremony, “Do you promise to love, honor, and obey your wife’s relatives,” and when I came to it I’d turn and face the congregation and answer “No,” through a megaphone, so loud that there could be no possibility of a misunderstanding as to precisely where I stood.

  If anybody thinks I speak with an unusual degree of feeling, I beg to inform him or her, as the case may be, that in the matter of wife’s relations I have an unusually full set, and, as my small brother-in-law says when he orates about his postage-stamp collection, they’re all uncancelled. Into all lives a certain amount of mother-in-law must fall, but I not only have that, but a grandmother-in-law as well, and maiden-aunt-in-law, and the Lord knows what else-in-law besides. I must say that as far as my mother-in-law is concerned I’ve had more luck than most men, because Mrs. Talbert comes pretty close to the ideal in mother-in-legal matters. She is gentle and unoffending. She prefers minding her own business to assuming a trust control of other people’s affairs, but HER mother — well, I don’t wish any ill to Mrs. Evarts, but if anybody is ambitious to adopt an orphan lady, with advice on tap at all hours in all matters from winter flannels to the conversion of the Hottentots, I will cheerfully lead him to the goal of his desires, and with alacrity surrender to him all my right, title, and interest in her. At the same time I will give him a quit-claim deed to my maiden-aunt-in-law — not that Aunt Elizabeth isn’t good fun, for she is, and I enjoy talking to her, and wondering what she will do next fills my days with a living interest, but I’d like her better if she belonged in some other fellow’s family.

  I don’t suppose I can blame Maria under all the circumstances for standing up for the various members of her family when they are attacked, which she does with much vigorous and at times aggressive loyalty. We cannot always help ourselves in the matter of our relations. Some are born relatives, some achieve relatives, and others have relatives thrust upon them. Maria was born to hers, and according to all the rules of the game she’s got to like them, nay, even cherish and protect them against the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. But, on the other hand, I think she ought to remember that while I achieved some of them with my eyes open, the rest were thrust upon me when I was defenceless, and when I find some difficulty in adapting myself to circumstances, as is frequently the case, she should be more lenient to my incapacity. The fact that I am a lawyer makes it necessary for me to toe the mark of respect for the authority of the courts all day, whether I am filled with contempt for the court or not, and it is pretty hard to find, when I return home at night, that another set of the judiciary in the form of Maria’s family, a sort of domestic supreme court, controls all my private life, so that except when I am rambling through the fields alone, or am taking my bath in the morning, I cannot give my feelings full and free expression without disturbing the family entente; and there isn’t much satisfaction in skinning people to a lonesome cow, or whispering your indignant sentiments into the ear of a sponge already soaked to the full with cold water. I have tried all my married life to agree with every member of the family in everything he, she, or it has said, but, now that this Goward business has come up, I can’t do that, because every time anybody says “Booh” to anybody else in the family circle, regarding this duplex love-affair, a family council is immediately called and “Booh” is discussed, not only from every possible stand-point, but from several impossible ones as well.

  When that letter of Goward’s was rescued from the chewing-gum contingent, with its address left behind upon the pulpy surface of Sidney Tracy’s daily portion of peptonized-paste, it was thought best that I should call upon the writer at his hotel and find out to whom the letter was really written.

  My own first thought was to seek out Sidney Tracy and see if the superscription still remained on the chewing-gum, and I had the good-fortune to meet the boy on my way to the hotel, but on questioning him I learned that in the excitement of catching a catfish, shortly after Alice had left the lads, Sidney had incontinently swallowed the rubber-like substance, and nothing short of an operation for appendicitis was likely to put me in possession of the missing exhibit. So I went on to the hotel, and ten minutes later found myself in the presence of an interesting case of nervous prostration. Poor Goward! When I observed the wrought-up condition of his nerves, I was immediately so filled with pity for him that if it hadn’t been for Maria I think I should at once have assumed charge of his case, and, as his personal counsel, sued the family for damages on his behalf. He did not strike me as being either old enough, or sufficiently gifted in the arts of philandery, to be taken seriously as a professional heart-breaker, and to tell the truth I had to restrain myself several times from telling him that I thought the whole affair a tempest in a teapot, because, in wanting consciously to marry two members of the family, he had only attempted to do what I had done unconsciously when I and the whole tribe of Talberts, remotely and immediately connected, became one. Nevertheless, I addressed him coldly.

  “Mr. Goward,” I said, when the first greetings were over, “this is a most unfortunate affair.”

  “It is terrible,” he groaned, pacing the thin-carpeted floor like a poor caged beast in the narrow confines of the Zoo. “You don’t need to tell me how unfortunate it all is.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I went on, “I don’t exactly recall a similar case in my experience. You will doubtless admit yourself that it is a bit unusual for a man even of your age to flirt with the maiden aunt of his fiancee, and possibly you realize that we would all be very much relieved if you could give us some reasonable explanation of your conduct.”

  “I’ll be only too glad to explain,” said Goward, “if you will only listen.”

  “In my own judgment the best solution of the tangle would be for you to elope with a third party at your earliest convenience,” I continued, “but inasmuch as you have come here it is evident that you mean to pursue some course of action in respect to one of the two ladies — my sister or my aunt. Now what IS that course? and which of the two ladies may we regard as the real object of your vagrom affections? I tell you frankly, before you begin, that I shall permit no trifling with Peggy. As to Aunt Elizabeth, she is quite able to take care of herself.”

  “It’s — it’s Peggy, of course,” said Goward. “I admire Miss Elizabeth Talbert very much indeed, but I never really thought of — being seriously engaged to her.”

  “Ah!” said I, icily. “And did you think of being frivolously engaged to her?”

  “I not only thought of it,” said Goward, “but I wa
s. It was at the Abercrombies’, Mr. Price. Lily — that is to say, Aunt Elizabeth—”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Goward,” I interrupted. “As yet the lady is not your Aunt Elizabeth, and the way things look now I have my doubts if she ever is your Aunt Elizabeth.”

  “Miss Talbert, then,” said Goward, with a heart-rending sigh. “Miss Talbert and I were guests at the Abercrombies’ last October — maybe she’s told you — and on Hallowe’en we had a party — apple-bobbing and the mirror trick and all that, and somehow or other Miss Talbert and I were thrown together a great deal, and before I really knew how, or why, we — well, we became engaged for — for the week, anyhow.”

  “I see,” said I, dryly. “You played the farce for a limited engagement.”

  “We joked about it a great deal, and I — well, I got into the spirit of it — one must at house-parties, you know,” said Goward, deprecatingly.

  “I suppose so,” said I.

  “I got into the spirit of it, and Miss Talbert christened me Young Lochinvar, Junior,” Goward went on, “and I did my best to live up to the title. Then at the end of the week I was suddenly called home, and I didn’t have any chance to see Miss Talbert alone before leaving, and — well, the engagement wasn’t broken off. That’s all. I never saw her again until I came here to meet the family. I didn’t know she was Peggy’s aunt.”

  “So that in reality you WERE engaged to both Peggy and Miss Talbert at the same time,” I suggested. “That much seems to be admitted.”

  “I suppose so,” groaned Goward. “But not seriously engaged, Mr. Price. I didn’t suppose she would think it was serious — just a lark — but when she appeared that night and fixed me with her eye I suddenly realized what had happened.”

  “It was another case of ‘the woman tempted me and I did eat,’ was it, Goward?” I asked.