Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  The miller lifted himself on his elbow; then he dropped back with a curse of pain; he would not let it be a groan. “What do you mean by living out the year?”

  “Simply what I say. What could I mean?”

  The miller lay silent. Then he turned his bandaged head on the pillow and said, as if he had been tacitly working to that conclusion, “I’ll be derned if I’ll tell you.”

  Powell sat patiently confident of some other conclusion, and after a minute Overdale turned his face toward him again. “There’s always got to be two to a bargain. If it was a spell that you devils laid on me, to git me out of the way, you must ‘a’ knowed what it was before you agreed to pay the price, and all your pretendin’ to want me to stay couldn’t fool me. Your sayin’ that about a year’s time, just now, shows you always had it on your mind. But I’ll fool you yit. I’ll live the year out, in spite of you.”

  It seemed to Powell that another and clearer glimpse of the miller’s trouble was offering itself; he thought he could best promote the revelation by postponing it, and he rose to go, but more than half feigning to go. “Very well, Overdale, when you feel ready to tell me what you mean I’ll try to help you; but as it is you won’t let me. I must leave you now; this excitement is bad for you—”

  “No, you don’t! No, you don’t!” The miller shook his fist and tried to writhe up from his bed. “You know as well as I do that when you took the mills you’d fixed it so I wouldn’t live more’n a year after you bought ‘em.”

  Now it was all plain before Powell. He was in the presence of the anguish of a foreboding; he had once known the terror and the stress of it in his hypochondriacal youth; he had seen his own brother again and again in its shadow; and his heart was glad that he could lift the incubus from the wretched soul which he seemed to see writhing before him. But he must treat the pseudo-foreknowledge reverently, though he could have laughed it away.

  “Why, Overdale, you’ve lived the time out already. We bought the mills in August last year — two months before you knew about it.”

  “What!” the miller shouted. In spite of his bruises and bandages, he raised himself on his sound arm and stared at Powell, as if to take in with his eyes what his ears had known. Then he dropped back and lay still.

  XVII

  “I CERTAINLY thought he was dead,” Powell said, telling it all in detail to his wife when he came home and found her on the point of following him to the miller’s house. “It was not so long, though, before we brought him to. Or, rather, I did.” He corrected himself, not to refuse the credit justly his due. “The woman was not much help, though she knew that tea would have more effect with him than whiskey; be more of a contrast,” and Powell did not deny himself the comfort of a laugh. Then he mused the case in a silence which Ann interrupted.

  “And what did he say when he came to?”

  “Why, practically nothing. He wanted to get up and go over to the mill. The whole affair was as simple as having a tooth pulled. You nurse your terror of the pain to come in infinitely greater pain, and when the dentist jerks the tooth out and the whole thing is over you’re simply ashamed of yourself, and you don’t want to say anything about it. Not but what there are real presentiments; but for the most part they are lying intimations from the devils who delight in tormenting people in this world when they escape from the hells.” Ann was not satisfied with the Doctrinal philosophy of the case. She could not help thinking of the miller’s misery during the year past, but she put it out of her mind with a personal consideration. “Well, I hope he will behave himself now and treat you decently.”

  “I don’t count on it,” Powell said. “His behavior is from the character that he’s been building up all his life. To change now would be like saving his soul by a death-bed repentance. He will be more likely to show that he doesn’t owe me anything by behaving worse than ever.” The notion moved Powell to his usual laughter, but he checked himself at the continued gravity of his wife’s face. “Well, what is it now, Ann?”

  “Nothing. I thought if I once had Overdale off my mind I shouldn’t care for anything. But I do. There’s some trouble with Rosy. She’s been crying.”

  Powell was guiltily sensible of the brooch in his waistcoat pocket; the crazy question whether it could be that which was making Rosy cry went through him, and he thought his wife might be going to speak of it; but she said:

  “You noticed that fellow scarcely looked at her yesterday, and didn’t speak to her at all. He’s trying to break off.”

  “Well, isn’t that what you wanted him to do?”

  “Yes, but when it comes to it, and I see her taking on so! Oh, I wish the child had never set eyes on him! Of course he never did care for her, and now that he thinks he’s going to be elected he doesn’t want even to speak to her. And I know she’s got her heart set on him.”

  “But do you know that, Ann?”

  “What else would she be crying about?”

  “You might ask her. But seriously, I don’t think there’s the least danger of trouble for her.”

  “Oh, you never think there’s the least danger of anything, Owen!”

  “Well, but how often has she met him? It couldn’t go on without our knowing. He’s been all over the county drumming up delegates. I haven’t seen him here once in a week, and then he hasn’t been near us.”

  “No, not us; but Rosy has met him. I know she has. She goes out with the children, but they get separated, and she comes home alone. Not always, but often enough to make me anxious. Time and again I’ve been on the point of asking her, but I didn’t like to; Rosy is proud. She does her work, and she might say that was enough without answering questions. She’s queer; sometimes I think she’s sly.”

  “Oh no, Ann! She may be secret, but she isn’t sly.”

  “No, I mean secret; she’s keeping something to herself, and it troubles me. Well, I’m going to watch her. Here comes poor Bellam’s boy. He said he was going to Spring Grove, and I told him to ask if there were any letters for us.”

  A barefooted boy on a barebacked horse, the last left of Bellam’s children and possessions, rode up to the cabin door, where the Powells were talking. “Here’s y’ur letter fur yuh,” he said to Ann, taking it out of his open shirt-front and holding it toward her.

  “Oh, thank you, Jimmy. Wait and I’ll get you a slice of cake.” Jimmy waited; then he thumped his heels into the horse’s ribs, and rode away with his mouth instantly full. “It’s from Jessamy,” Ann said, opening her letter. “I expected she would write after not coming. I wish they could see how well the new house looks.” She delayed herself with a glance at the frame of her future home before she began to read. After the first look she said, “Why it’s dated from the City and—” She crushed the sheet together and gave it to Powell. “Felix has had another hemorrhage, and they’re on the way to New Orleans! You read it, dear!” she said, with the hem of her apron to her eyes.

  “Well, well,” Powell complied. “There’s nothing to be alarmed about. We’ll see what Jessamy says. If they’re going South it’s the best thing, and we’ll be all the better prepared for them in the spring.” Then he read on to himself, as people begin doing when they are asked to read for others.

  “Owen!” his wife sharply recalled him.

  “Oh! Oh yes! Why, she just says that he’s had a little attack, and they’re very properly going South for the winter; and — there isn’t the least danger—”

  “Read what she says out loud” Ann bade him, severely, and then he did so. But it came to no more in substance than the facts they both knew already. Jessamy sent her love and her husband’s to all. She said the doctor thought he ought to get away before the first chilly weather, and she was going to bring him back strong and well; and they were coming straight to the mills. If there was not room enough for them in the new house, Felix and she would live in the cabin till they could build for themselves; he was crazy for the place now, and Owen must hurry and get out the stuff. She wrote bravely, even
gaily, and “You see,” Powell ended for her, “there isn’t any cause for anxiety.” —

  Ann took the letter he held illustratively toward her, and, the sadder for his cheer, folded it carefully for another reading and went into the cabin.

  Rosy was coming in at the back door from the shed outside, panting as if she had been running, and Ann thought she looked pale. “Where have you been, Rosy? Where are the children?”

  “I do’ know where the children are,” the girl answered, sullenly. “I been up over the hill, if you want to know.”

  “You mustn’t be saucy, Rosy,” Ann said; and she added, as if it were the reason why, “We’ve had bad news about Mr. Powell’s brother.”

  Oh, have you, Mrs. Powell?” the girl broke in, with instant contrition. “I’d just lay down my life for him. Has he had another bleeding?”

  “Yes. And they’re on their way South for the winter.”

  Oh, Mrs. Powell! But that’ll do him good, won’t it?”

  “The doctor thinks so; I hope so. And, Rosy, child, I’m troubled for you, too. I’m sorry for you. I saw what happened yesterday, but you won’t believe I’m sorry for you when I say I was glad of it.”

  Yes, I will, Mrs. Powell! But I’m all right now, and you don’t need to worry a bit about me. I reckon he’s got as good as he give.”

  XVIII

  THAT morning, while the doctor was talking with the Powells at the cabin door about Overdale, Rosy had gone with the children to look the new house over and help rejoice at moving into it, which they thought could not be more than a week or two now. She left them there and kept on up over the hill. “I’ll be back directly,” she called down to them.

  At the bottom of the hill on the other side a horse was grazing among the pawpaw bushes, with his bridle-rein hanging loosely behind his ears and dropping round his mouth. She pretended not to see the horse, so that she need not turn back; but a fire of consciousness blazed over her face.

  Bickler spoke from the grass, where he was sitting near the horse’s head. “Hello, Rosy!”

  She did not answer.

  “You don’t seem to hear very well this morning, Rosy.”

  Now she answered, “You didn’t seem to see very well yesterday, Captain Bickler.”

  “Well, no, that’s a fact,” he said, easily. “That’s what I thought I’d explain if you happened to be coming over the hill this morning.”

  “I reckon I don’t want any explaining from’ you,” she returned. “I reckon a hired girl knows when she’s a hired girl. And if I’d knowed you was here I wouldn’t ‘a’ happened to be comin’ over the hill, as you say.”

  “Well, maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t.” He laughed teasingly up into her face. “But I’m glad you have come. I didn’t see any one that looked like a hired girl yesterday; I saw a lady helping Mrs. Powell that I thought was too far above me to speak to.”

  “Did you?” Rosy retorted, scornfully. “You spoke to her good and plenty all the same.”

  “Oh, you mean that pale, little washed-out snip of a child? I mean the lady with the yellow hair, and the big blue eyes, and the cheeks as red as the roses she’s named after. You ain’t mad, are you, Rosy?”

  “Yes, I am mad; and you mustn’t think you can come it over me any longer, Captain Bickler. I reckon I can see through you well enough.” Rosy ended ineffectually, and she knew it as well as the man, who laughed again.

  “I didn’t know you were going anywhere, Rosy. If I had a chin like that — I wish you could just see it from here!”

  “You quit your foolin’, Captain Bickler, and let me past or I’ll—”

  “I didn’t know you were going anywhere, Rosy. But don’t hurry. I want to argue it out with you. What did you want me to do yesterday? Get up before ’em all and say, ‘ Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to announce the engagement of Miss Rose Hefmyer and Captain Harrison Bickler’? The fellows wouldn’t have done another stroke of work on Mrs. Powell’s chicken pie, and old Overdale wouldn’t have had a chance to fall off the top of the new house. I met Doc Jenner, here, just now; he thinks Overdale didn’t fracture enough ribs to hurt. But what I mean to say is this, Rosy. It won’t do for me to be courting you till I’m in a position to marry you.”

  “Who as’t you to marry me?” she demanded, fiercely.

  “Well, not you. And I’m not going to let you. When it comes to marrying I want to do the asking myself. But now I’m all tied up with this electioneering. If it was known I was running after a girl when I ought to be running for an office I wouldn’t get the office, I’m afraid.”

  “You wouldn’t get the girl, neither, if I had any say!”

  “Well, all right, Rosy, all right. We’ll see about that afterwards. You mustn’t think I don’t care for you if I don’t show it everywhere. It’s the whole world to me to meet you this way, every once in a while, and have a little friendly chat. I’ll tell you what, Rosy. If I’m elected, and I don’t see but what I will be the way things are going now, I’ll want some old friend to call on evenings after the legislature adjourns. I’ll want somebody to take to the theater, and then go round and have an oyster stew.”

  Rosy stood looking at him where he sat with his face lifted toward her, but she said nothing, while he chewed on a blade of grass which he plucked up from between his feet.

  “I know a lady up there who wants a girl. You don’t lay out to pass the winter here in the new house,” and Bickler laughed at the phrase which had become mockingly current in the neighborhood from the Powells’ use of it. “You would suit my friend first rate; kind of a parlor girl, with nothing to do but dust and keep the place in order, and all her evenings out. I’ll write and tell her I’ve found just the girl for her—”

  “Mrs. Powell,” Rosy broke off at this point in telling Ann, “you’ll think I done a poorty awful thing.”

  “Why, what did you do, Rosy?” Ann asked, fearfully.

  “I just run right up to him and slapped him in the face good and hard so’t he most keeled over, and then I run home as fast as I could foot it.” Ann did not ask why she had done this; she did not need Rosy’s explanation: “A poor girl finds out a good many things, especially if she’s got worse than no mother; she ain’t like a girl that’s been raised in a decent family; and when she ain’t much more than a child she understands — understands — what the oldest woman in the world ortn’t to—”

  Rosy’s hardness had given way now, and she was fetching her breath in dry sobs.

  “Oh, poor thing!” Ann tried to comfort her, but she would not hear further.

  “I wouldn’t ‘a’ minded his not noticin’ me yesterday; and I wouldn’t ‘a’ cared for his not likin’ me the way he’d like some one that wasn’t a hired girl; but for him to sejjest or even to hint — Oh, do you think I done right, Mrs. Powell?”

  “‘Deed and ‘deed I think you did just exactly right, Rosy,” Ann could not help saying, though she felt that she ought to add: “I suppose Mr. Powell would say that you ought to bear anything rather than give a blow. But a good smack in the face is the only way with such a man if he meant what you think he did—”

  “Oh, do you reckon he couldn’t ‘a’ meant it, Mrs. Powell? Say it if you do! I’d give the world to believe he didn’t! I’d just lay down and let him walk over me. I can’t help it, Mrs. Powell — I think he’s splendid and the handsomest and smartest man in the world, and I’d give my life if he didn’t mean it.”

  She was crying her heart out in tears now, and Ann was puzzled between her pity for the girl and her hope that she had not been mistaken. That would be the quickest and easiest way out. “I will speak to Mr. Powell and—”

  “If you do I’ll kill myself!” Rosy jumped up from where she sat bowed over, with her apron at her eyes.

  Ann took her in her arms. “Well, well, I won’t, then. But now you go up to your bed and lie down awhile. I’ll get the dinner; and don’t you come till I call you. I want to think about it.”

  When th
e dinner was out of the way Ann followed her husband over to the new house, where he stopped to speak with the carpenters, and they climbed part way up the hill to see how the frame looked from there. Then she told him what Rosy had told her; she knew that Rosy would expect her to break her promise.

  Instead of blaming Rosy for her violence Powell said, “He ought to be cowhided!” and instantly Ann, terror-stricken to silence, saw him cowhiding Bickler. But after the silence Powell began to retreat from his impetuous outburst. “Of course, he could say he didn’t mean anything of the kind.”

  “I was almost wishing he did mean it. It would put an end to the thing with Rosy. It’s the plague of my life.”

  “Well, well,” Powell resumed. “We mustn’t misjudge him.” With that brooch in his pocket, which he had never yet found the chance of making Bickler take back, he was aware of wishing to give him more than the benefit of the doubt. “Very likely he does know a woman there who wants a girl; it may be nothing more than that, and I see no reason why he shouldn’t wish to marry Rosy.”

  “Yes, you do, my dear,” Ann said. “She’s more than his equal in character and heart and good sense, but she hasn’t any education, and she never could get any; she doesn’t see the use of it. She’s a wild thing in all that, and she always will be. He’ll want somebody that will do him credit with her manners if he gets on; and he will get on; he’s the kind; and poor Rosy has no more manners than I don’t know what.”

  “Very well. Then I must keep an eye on him. I’m glad it’s come to this. Perhaps he’ll be so angry that he won’t come near her again.”

  “Trust him for that! And I’m afraid Rosy knew that when she struck him that way she lost the battle.”

  “Do you think so, Ann? Now I see it in quite another light. I believe she’s finished with him, and he understands it. You must keep her up to that idea, Ann; and I will keep a sharp lookout for him.” This was the translation of Powell’s purpose to take the first opportunity for returning the brooch, and for speaking his mind freely to Bickler and appealing to his better nature. He did not see why he should not deal frankly with the fellow, and pending the cowhiding which Bickler possibly deserved put the case before him and shame him into letting the child alone or into marrying her. Upon reflection he did not see why marrying her should not be the more probable outcome. “As for his ultimately giving any trouble,” he said aloud, “I don’t believe there’s any danger of it.”