Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “To-morrow afternoon,” she stipulated. “You’re sure your cousin will be satisfied without seeing it herself?”

  “Oh, she will trust my report,” Parthenope answered, from the distance that persisted in putting itself between her and the actualities of life, where she was remotely dramatizing a scene of final character with Emerance, and defining her position in regard to his affairs with a distinctness which she felt had been wanting to it.

  In the midst of this she heard him suggesting an interest very alien to it. “There’s a question of transportation,” he said to the man, “that I was to consult you about. Do you know where Professor Kelwyn could get a two-horse team to move his things over? He doesn’t want to make more than one trip of it.”

  “I see,” the man said, intelligently, but without coming further to the rescue.

  His wife said, “I don’t believe but what Benson could move them.” She referred her belief to her husband, who agreed.

  “Guess you’re right — for once. Do you know Benson?” he queried of the pair before him.

  Parthenope left Emerance to say, “I’m afraid we don’t know where he lives, anyway.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” the owner of the cottage said. “You want to take the first turn to the left on the way to the Shakers, and, when you come to a barn with a wind-pump on it, that’s Benson’s. Guess you’ll find him there about now.”

  Emerance drove to the Benson place without attempting to return to the subject which their business had interrupted. In front of the barn, under the shade of an elm a little at one side, they saw a handsome two-horse wagon, with wheels picked out in black and yellow; looking closer, they saw a man lying on his back under the wagon-bed, whistling thoughtfully and bestowing some touches of restoration where the paint had been chipped off.

  At Emerance’s friendly hail he came out, and when he stood up he proved a tall, gaunt man, with a plastering of short, red beard on his face and a sort of lame wink.

  He listened to the errand which Emerance said had brought them, and then he asked, “You the folks been staying in the old Family house over to the Shakers?”

  “Partly,” Emerance admitted. “I’ve been a guest on sufferance, but Miss Brook is one of Professor Kelwyn’s family.”

  Mr. Benson took Parthenope’s name for an introduction and offered his hand, from which he first wiped a little paint on his overalls. “How d’ye do? They say them Shakers believe they’re livin’ the angelic life, as they call it, right here and now; and I guess they are pretty good sort of folks. And some of ’em look ready to go, if they ain’t there already. I tell my wife, when I see one them Shaker ladies, I seem to feel as if she was all laid out for buryin’. They’re all finished up so, you know, round the neck” — he put his hand to his own throat—” and they keep themselves so neat lookin’.” Having freed his mind of the observation, he took up the business in hand, languidly: “I guess I can move ye. When d’you want I should come?”

  “To-morrow afternoon,” Emerance said.

  Mr. Benson turned and ran a critical eye over his wagon. “I been paintin’ her up some. But I guess she’ll be dry by to-morrow afternoon. Yes, I’ll be round about three o’clock, if that’ll do ye.”

  “Terrible!” Parthenope said, as they drove away. “Yes,” Emerance admitted; “it was rather ghastly. But in town we forget what a large part death plays in the social interests in the country. A funeral is a prized event, and the particulars are talked over to the least detail for weeks, as often as friends of the family meet or go to the village for the exchange of gossip. We try to pass death over and hush it up with flowers, but they cherish its acquaintance, and value themselves on every step they see a neighbor taking toward it.”

  “It’s ghoulish.”

  “I don’t think it’s ghoulish. It’s a remnant of the strength of the old Puritan days when people faced not only death but damnation — when they were willing to be damned for the glory of God.”

  It had always surprised Parthenope a little when Emerance ventured to differ with her, yet he differed, she had to realize, rather often. In some things she could put him down, but on grounds like this she felt her inadequacy. She said, wilfully: “Then it’s about the only remnant of Puritanism left them in this neighborhood. I think they’re all abominable.”

  “You’ve seen the worst among them, but I think you’ve seen some good things in the worst. They’re not up to the moral level of the Shakers, who have the immediate and instant help of one another in their goodness, but the average life here is good, and it’s not affected by the intimate knowledge of evil around it; the sort of knowledge people don’t have in towns, and which would be depraving here if it were not guarded by the principles inherited from the past. If Puritanism was false in doctrine, as we both think, it was true in life, and it’s as true now as ever.”

  When Emerance talked in this way his tone took on something magisterial, and Parthenope liked it, though it quelled her. Still, she would not yield to him till she had tried getting him on other ground by indirection, and now she said from her elevation, “I suppose your play is to celebrate country people, then.”

  “If you mean their real character, yes, it is; but I don’t flatter them.”

  “Oh, then you haven’t got a funeral in?”

  Emerance frowned at what he might very well have felt an impertinent and wanton thrust. Then his brow cleared and his whole face brightened as with a sudden inspiration. “That would be great! And it could be staged wonderfully—”

  She burst out upon him. “It would be sacrilegious.

  Really, I wonder at you, Mr. Emerance. To Have a funeral on the stage! It would be horrible!”

  “There’s one in Hamlet” he rejoined, steadily, and with a readiness that took her breath. “ But I wouldn’t have a graveyard scene, not the actual interment; just a country parlor, with the people seen, say, through an open door, sitting in rows and singing. Perhaps a girl at the melodeon. It could be made very effective.”

  “And you are really going to have it?”

  “No. Or not in this play. The scheme wouldn’t include it. But I shall certainly think the scene over for another play. I see a long series stretching out before me. Thank you for suggesting it.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest it, and your thanks don’t console me for having put such an idea into your head.” They both perceived at this point that the horse had come to a stop, and then they saw that from force of habit he had come to a stop in front of the Office at the Shakers.

  Sister Saranna showed herself at the door. “Won’t you come in?” she called to them where they sat dazed in their wagon. “Why, Friend Emerance, I thought you had gone to the Centennial!”

  He looked round at Parthenope for some motion on her part to alight; as she made none he briefly explained, without giving the nature of the business that had made him change his plans. But what he said seemed to suffice Sister Saranna. She smiled gently upon them both, and said she thought it was he when she saw them through the window; they appeared so natural, there, coming together.

  Parthenope, as if this natural appearance needed excuse, said that they had been to the stone cottage to engage it, and to engage a wagon to take their things, and they were all going to move on the morrow. But she ended with a sort of disdain for the elaboration of her excuse, which was lost upon the Shakeress. She, it seemed, had no thought but for the annoyance of the Kelwyns, which was now ending in their banishment, and for the grief of the Family at their going. “Oh, we sha’n’t be so far away, Sister Saranna,” the girl consoled her. “We will come every Sunday to meeting, and as often to see you as you’ll let us.”

  “But you won’t seem like part of the Family any more,” she lamented.

  “Well, it can’t be helped, for now we really are going. Good-bye! Say good-bye to all the Sisters!” Even at this hint Emerance did not start, and Parthenope had to say to him: “I think we had better go on, Mr. Emerance. I shall have t
o help my cousin get lunch, and there’s a great deal of packing to do yet.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said, chirruping to the horse. “I was just thinking,” and he called his farewell in turn to Sister Saranna.

  XXVII

  AFTER helping Parthenope help get luncheon, Emerance helped her help get supper, Mrs. Kite sitting by throughout with the effect of being helped. “Well, it seems like old times to have you two out here together workin’ away just the way you done first off.” After reflection, she added: “I don’t see why we couldn’t get along together, after all. But maybe it wouldn’t be for the best. Land knows, we shall miss you bad enough!”

  They let her begin inuring herself to the separation by washing the supper dishes alone. Emerance sat with Kelwyn talking under the elm-tree in the sweet, dry summer evening, while Parthenope bore her part in reconciling the boys first to their baths and then to their beds. She chased them in their nightgowns round the old Family meeting-room, and then left them to their dreams after tiding them over a gloomy moment of prayer.

  When she came out to the threshold she had two books in her hand. “These ought to go back to the Alisons,” she said. “I don’t know how we overlooked them in the packing.”

  “I’ll take them,” Emerance offered, getting to his feet from his place on the grass and coming for them. She did not give them up to him, or so quickly but he could say, “Why shouldn’t we both take them?”

  “Well,” she temporized, rather than consented.

  “We’re both very tired,” he suggested, “but we could drive, you know. The horse wouldn’t like anything better.”

  “He’s tired, too, I’m afraid.” She continued: “If it wouldn’t be much farther round by the village, we could get some things at the store that my cousin wants to begin housekeeping with in the stone cottage. She wants a yeast-cake.”

  She seemed to refer the point to Kelwyn, who said, gravely, “If it is a question of a yeast-cake, I don’t think it would be a great way round.”

  “Very well,” she said, but Emerance had not waited for her to say that.

  He returned with the carryall, while Mrs. Kelwyn, who had overheard part of the parley from the window overhead, called down some additional commissions.

  She did not need the things immediately, but if Parthenope was bent upon a drive with Emerance, which she did not approve of, she felt that a mere yeast-cake was too barefaced.

  They took the Alisons in on their way to the village, and found them, in the interval between two of the man’s sprees, the image of a happy family. He was smoking where he lay on the ground near the door, and Mrs. Alison was sitting on the threshold, with her children, corrected from their play by the approach of company, about her, and her baby in her lap asleep. She made the eldest girl take the books, and she said, “Well, I’m real sorry to have you go, and I guess the whole neighborhood’ll be.”

  “We’re not going far off,” Parthenope said. “ We shall be coming to borrow more books of you.”

  “So do. We shall be glad to have you. Want to take any now?”

  “Not now. There isn’t time. We’re going on to the village, and it’s getting late.”

  Parthenope shook Hands with the woman, and, after a hesitation, with her husband, who desisted from his talk with Emerance about crops. He had been giving it as his opinion that it would do more for the neighborhood if the Shakers raised something besides timber. So much woods kept a place back and made a hiding for tramps, besides looking so lonesome. “Well,” he said, hospitably, to Parthenope, “you must come over and see the woman.”

  “Yes, call again,” his wife joined with him, as Emerance helped the girl into the carryall.

  “We seem to be leaving friends everywhere,” Parthenope said, with a laugh. “We are universal favorites.”

  “Yes, you are apparently,” the young man answered, but in a way as if he had not liked her laughing.

  His tone provoked Her to say, “Perhaps I ought to be more respectful, if you are going to put the Alisons into a play.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that I am,” he said, and, though she was vexed with his sensitiveness, she addressed herself to soothing his peasant-pride, as she called it to herself. The wound, if there was any, had not gone deep, and he accepted the kindly things she found to say of the Alisons as sufficient atonement to himself. They had both forgotten them by the time her shopping was done, and she remounted with him in the carryall, ready for an amicable discussion as to which way they should keep on to the village, whether by the Shakers or by a longer way and pleasanter road which the moonlight seemed to justify them in taking. They had a polite difficulty as to which should yield, where neither really cared, and the horse settled the point for them by taking the shorter road by the Shakers. They compromised with him, if they had a preference, by letting him walk, and prolonging the drive in that way.

  Parthenope was the first to begin. “I don’t believe I have made you feel how glad I am that your play is going to have a chance. Now, you must tell me all about it, and just how much of a chance it has. Isn’t it very uncommon to have an actor willing to talk it over with you?”

  “It’s uncommon with me,” he said. “It’s more to me than I could make you understand. It has settled one point effectually. If there is any such hope as there seems for me as a dramatist, I should never think of being an actor.”

  “I’m awfully glad to hear you say that, Mr. Emerance. Of course, it’s your own affair, but none of us have liked the notion of the stage for you. Perhaps you think we had no business to talk you over.”

  ‘“I like your making it your business. But I’ve had my revenge, if I was wronged by your talking me over; I’ve been thinking you over.”

  “And what did you think of us — from your point of view? Be candid! I should really like to know.”

  “Collectively or individually?” he met her playfulness.

  “Now you’re trying to shirk, or at least to temporize. Treat us any way you like.”

  “Well, individually, then. And I’ll begin with you.” —

  “No, not with me, decidedly!”

  “But I’ve begun already.”

  “Well, then, my faults first, if you have the courage.”

  “Oh, I have the courage. That actor’s letter has given me courage for anything to-day. I shouldn’t be afraid to tell you of your faults, if you had any.”

  “Now, that is a shirk.”

  “He’s given me hope that I couldn’t have imagined having,” he waived her point. “He’s provided such a magnificent future for me that all my groping past and hesitating present have been redeemed by him.”

  “Aren’t you rather figurative, Mr. Emerance, for a dramatist?”

  “I wish I could believe you wanted me to be less so! Parthenope,” he said, and at this first sound of her name from his lips she felt a wild, glad thrilling, which she had to summon all her moral, social, and psychological forces to quell, “don’t you know what I mean? Don’t you know that this new hope of mine would be nothing if it were not the hope of you?” She was dumb past all her expectation and resolution, and he rushed on: “You must know that I care for you, and that the dearest wish of my life — You have been so good to me, so trustful of me, and hopeful for me that I’ve come to think — to think that you cared for me, too. Tell me I’m not wrong!”

  He had possessed himself of her hands, which he had dropped the reins to seize, with a faith in the horse’s resources of self - guidance which it justified in continuing on at the same pace as when driven, and swerving neither to the right nor the left in the white moonlight.

  Parthenope let him keep Her hands; it was somehow so sweet, for the appreciable instant before she began, as if struggling from some far trance: “Mr. Emerance, I’m sorry you’ve said this; very, very sorry,” and then she was strangely at the end of her words, and he had to prompt her.

  “But surely you must have thought I cared for you?”

  “If I
did I was very wrong to let you. I blame myself, oh, very much. I’ve let my selfish pleasure in your society — it has been pleasant — blind me to what I ought to have seen — if you say I ought.”

  “Ah, I don’t say it!” he said.

  “No, no! You are too generous. But you think it; yes you have a right to think it. I can see that now, when it’s too late. But, indeed, it can never be.” Whether there was or not something indefinite, or only something withheld in her tone, he asked, “If there is some one else—”

  “Oh, no! Never! You mustn’t think it’s that. But I can live my life more usefully by myself.”

  “Do you say that,” he persisted, “to save me from thinking myself unworthy—”

  “Don’t!” she entreated, “or I can’t forgive myself,” and now he was silent, and she could go on in such haphazard phrases as offered themselves. “We are too unlike — unlike in our ideals. I don’t mean yours are not better, higher than mine. But we’ve been brought up in such different worlds we never should understand each other. I should always be unjust to you.”

  “Do you mean my experimenting, as you call it? That’s over, now.”

  “No, no. It isn’t that.”

  “I know,” he said, “that my world hasn’t been like yours. Our traditions are different, but I hope not our principles. I’ve tried to make the most of myself, and not selfishly, always—”

  “Oh, Mr. Emerance!”

  “Ever since I first saw you, Parthenope — But I mustn’t call you so!”

  “Oh yes. What does it matter now?” she consented, desolately.

  “You have been my ideal. It isn’t your beauty alone, but I love your beauty. I liked your selfreliance, even when I thought you were wrong. It charmed me. And I liked your absolute truth. That was charming, too. But what is the use, now?”

  “I ought to hear anything you wish to say. You have the right to say anything to me.”

  “That’s your justice. Your justice was what took me most of all.”

  There was something intoxicating in his praises, but if she refused him she must refuse them. “You don’t know me. I’m not what you think. But you, you are a poet; you have imagination; you live in the ideal. Yes, I saw that from the first. You will succeed; you will be great, and you will be glad that you were not clogged with me.”