Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “I can never be anything without you — never anything but a dreamer and experimenter, a mere empiricist.”

  Parthenope was not sure that she knew what this meant; the word was strange to her, but she understood a self-reproach from it which she must not suffer in him. “No,” she began.

  He would not heed her protest. “But you, you could make up for all my shortcomings. You could make a man of me — any sort of man you wanted.”

  “It’s very sweet of you to say that, and I ought to be proud. I ought to be grateful, and I am. But it all comes to nothing if I have not the feeling I ought to have.”

  “But perhaps you have, Parthenope. Can’t we reason it out together?”

  No; if I could reason about it I’m sure I shouldn’t have it.”

  “That seems very strange: that reason can have nothing to do with the highest and humanest thing in the world. If you could give yourself time to look into your feelings—”

  “No. If I cared for you I should know it without looking into my feelings, and it would be absurd to reason about it.”

  This silenced him. “Well,” he said, at last, “that ends it, I suppose. Get up,” he said to the old horse, which had come to a stand unbidden, with a yearning twist of his head toward the Office of the Shakers, before which they found themselves pausing. The windows were dark, but those of one of the houses on the other hand were bright, and as they started on a burst of singing in one of the weird, sad Shaker tunes followed them from it. He said, with a bitterness that went to her heart, “They’ve got rid of it all.”

  Parthenope suddenly realized it: the Shakers had got rid of love, and all that came of it. She had never meant to do that. She was rather vague about it, as cultivated girls often are; she had always expected to be married when she met her ideal; but there would be time enough. Now, however, it seemed to her that she had been very cruel, and her soul bowed in pity over the man who had offered her his love. She could not deny to herself that what had happened was something she ought to have expected; she knew very well that there had been moments when she had thought it would be best for it to come to this, if only it might well be over with. But it was not well over with as it ought logically to have been; it was very ill over with.

  She imagined his anguish from her own pain and with some sense of the mortification a man must experience, even in the best conditions, at a woman’s refusal. She had sometimes fancied that a refusal could be made with expressions that would render it almost flatteringly acceptable; but now she realized that it never could be so. It must always be disappointment and humiliation; and she had inflicted these upon a man whose goodness she owned as greater than that of any man she had yet known; a generous spirit, full of ambition and the power that the future would turn into success. His very consciousness of this must add to his shame. She wished he would say something; in the time before the word had come into use she suggested his saying something, but her hypnotic forces failed. The moment came when she could bear it no longer, and as they passed into the shadow of the woods that darkened on each side of the road before they reached home she put out her hand on his that lay listlessly holding the reins on his knee. She wished to be appealing and consoling, and she could only say, “I am sorry for it.”

  He answered in terms which she felt her atonement did not justify, but which she would not allow herself to resent, “Are you, dearest?” At the same time he put his right hand on hers and held it between his two.

  She did not try to take it away, and it trembled there as she tried to explain. “Don’t you see that if I — It would only be from pity, and—”

  “Pity would be good enough for me,” he answered, and his humility seemed the crowning effect of his magnanimity.

  “Oh, but it oughtn’t to be,” she instructed him. “It would make it such an unequal thing. You wanted me to reason about it, and now I will, for that is your due. Yes, I owe you that. I don’t want you to regret me; I would rather you would think I was weak than heartless. Don’t you believe I understand you?”

  She could not say, “How you feel,” but perhaps he knew what she meant.

  “Don’t you think every one ought to marry their ideal?”

  “You are my ideal,” he said, and he took the reins into his right hand that he might keep the better hold of hers in his left. It was absurd, and it was distracting; but, if she was to make atonement to him, it could not be helped, at once.

  “But that isn’t enough,” she said, and she pressed his hand for emphasis, “if you are not my ideal — There, I have hurt you!” she said, feeling him wince.

  “Nο. Will you tell me what your ideal is? I would try to realize it.”

  “Well, you have said it. My ideal could never be realized by experimenting, and that is why I have always blamed you. Your aims have been too uncertain; you haven’t known your own mind.”

  “I’ve known it on one point ever since I saw you, Parthenope.”

  “You mustn’t be trivial. I thought you wanted me to reason with you.”

  “I do.”

  “Well” — she hesitated from a wandering thought— “then, a man,” she said, “ought to have one aim and pursue it unswervingly. It mustn’t be a selfish aim, and it must be a high one. He must want to be of use in the world, and yet he must have a love of the beautiful. He ought to be philanthropical, but not professionally philanthropical; that’s rather weakening. I should not care what his calling was, and I shouldn’t care what his looks were; he might be ugly and deformed and yet perfectly radiant. And — every woman likes to be thought worth an effort — he ought to have done something specially great, and for her. There! I know it sounds ridiculous, but you are too noble to laugh at it, and that has always been my ideal. Of course, I’m not worthy of it myself.” She did not take her hand away at this climax, though she made a slight effort to do so. “I could die for such an ideal, and, whatever you think, that is how I feel.”

  “Then I think,” he said, with a kind of indignation, “that you are far more than worthy. And may I do a little reasoning, too?”

  “Yes,” she said, with a slight push of her Hand in his, as if to fix her attention, “I expected you to.”

  “Well, I would rather be an ideal which you would be willing to live for. I should like to be some faltering, imperfect creature that you could strengthen and straighten into the sort of man you would like him to be. I believe you would be happier in that than in dying for somebody who didn’t need you. How could you be of use to a man who didn’t need you? No, you are full of help, and uselessness would be solitude and exile to you, dearest. But with a man whom you could advise and inspire when he was going wrong, who would value your criticism and appreciate your taste, and come to know your sweetness and your brightness, to live in the light of your mind — Well, I suppose it is no use talking,” he ended, and his hand relaxed from hers as if she might have it back now. But she would not have it back; she caught his faster, and she said:

  “And you would be willing to try—”

  “To experiment?”

  “Yes, experiment! And if I disappointed you — if I wasn’t at all what you expected—”

  “I supposed we were reasoning!”

  “And may I think — must I answer now — may I have time—”

  “All the time there is, dear.”

  “I’m not sure you ought to call me dear — yet.”

  “I won’t till you let me.”

  “I won’t make you wait. I should despise myself if I didn’t know now. And if you believe you’ll never be sorry—”

  “With all my soul!”

  “Then — then you may call me Parthenope.” She said, after a moment: “And I suppose I must call you Elihu. How came they to give you such a name?” She took refuge in the collateral question from the vital demands directly pressing upon her. “I’ve always wondered. Were they very Biblical?”

  “Not very. They called me after Elihu Burritt.”

  “Oh, t
hat’s where the ‘ B’ came from. And who was he?”

  “He was the learned blacksmith. He was a famous linguist, and my father admired him because he taught himself the languages.”

  “Tell me about your father and your mother.” She questioned him, and he answered at what length she would; they had long been dead; he had two brothers living; she thought she could manage with them; and he had no sisters. “And do you want me to call you Elyhu or Ellihu? Ellihu is wrong, isn’t it?”

  “Not if you call it so.”

  “I don’t believe I like pretty speeches very much. But I don’t object for the time being. Did they call you Ellihu? Because if they did, I shall. If this” — she pressed his hand for explanation—” is for eternity, it’s for all our past as well as all our future. Ellihu, Ellihu, Ellihu,” she murmured, thoughtfully. “It’s nicer than Elyhu; yes, it’s rather nice.” She said, rather more shyly than her wont was, “You don’t ask me how I came to know your first name.”

  “I hadn’t thought — I supposed you always knew it.”

  Isn’t that a little conceited? And you haven’t any curiosity now? You don’t deserve to know! I saw it in a book of yours. Do you call that prying? But I couldn’t imagine what the ‘B’ was for. How do you like my name?”

  “I always thought it was like you. How came they to call you so?”

  Parthenope told gladly but quickly, so as not to delay another branch of the inquiry. “It’s rather formidable. But I shall never do anything in art; my mother didn’t at the last. I want to be completely subordinate to you in everything. I shall have no ambition except for you. I suppose some people would say that naturally I was rather topping in my general character. But with you I don’t care to be so because you’ve seen me humiliated so often. I sha’n’t mind you laughing, now and then, at me.”

  “Oh!” he protested.

  “Yes,” she persisted. “With the bear and the gypsies; you know I’ve been ridiculous. Now I shall have no pride except in you.”

  “Do you want to spoil me at once?” he joked.

  “It would be no use trying. You are too truly modest, too sweet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m not sweet, generally speaking. You’ll find that out, too. But I shall be ashamed not to be, when I have you to rebuke me by your example. And from this time forth sweetness shall be one of my ideals. Oh yes, Aunt Julia will like you.” She put stress on the name, as if there were some other aunt who might be doubtful.

  Parthenope came in to where Mrs. Kelwyn was putting some of the last touches to her packing, with her eyes blinking in the lamplight, but her face glowing with the impulse which had carried her to her decision and was still moving her to immediate action.

  “Cousin Carry,” she said, abruptly, “I shall only stay with you to get you settled in the stone cottage. I must see my aunt Julia at once.”

  “Why, Parthenope Brook!” Mrs. Kelwyn exclaimed, and in her exclamation she expressed, with a woman’s subtilized and compacted challenge, everything that she did not demand.

  “Yes, I have” Parthenope responded to her implied question. “And he is going to Boston with me, for I want Aunt Julia to have the evidence of her senses when I tell her what a wild thing I have done.” She went out, and then she came back to add: “I know that you and Cousin Elmer won’t approve of it, and so I have not consulted you. It isn’t because I have such great faith in my own judgment; it’s because I trust his judgment. If he thinks it is right and wise! Don’t you see?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Kelwyn assented. But she qualified, “I see what your point of view is.”

  They had to pretend they would go no further now than the general recognition of the great fact. Then they talked it out to the least historical and actual detail.

  XXVIII

  THE trials of the Kelwyns had become noted in the country round, and they both woke with the same vague dread in their mind, which resolved itself into the apprehension that the neighbors might come to see them off in a show of public sympathy. But on reflection this fear yielded to the fact that it was not yet known much beyond the Shakers that they were going; it was commonly supposed that the Kites were going, and no time was fixed yet for that.

  In the forenoon Elder Nathaniel came with a final bunch of flowers for Parthenope, and with affectionate messages from the Sisters to Mrs. Kelwyn. He said that Brother Jasper had gone to Boston, and he added, indirectly, that perhaps it was just as well. The Family, he said, hoped that the Kelwyns and all their folks would come the same as ever; they would not be a great way off.

  Mrs. Ager came from over the way, and in making her first and last call she did not spare the cause of their exile. She said that they ought to have turned the Kites out, and, in view of the good offices which they must often have rendered her in her loneliness, she was, Kelwyn thought, perhaps too impartially severe, but he attributed her censorious frame of mind rather to her years than to a temperamental harshness. What touched them all more than Mrs. Ager’s rigid virtue was the offering with which Mrs. Alison appeared, just before they sat down to luncheon, which they had early. She led the youngest of her children that could walk, in a gingham slip typically washed and ironed, with a remoter following of her uncombed and barefooted brood. She carried her baby in her arms, and made shift to hold in a hand tight pressed against its back a book which she presented to Parthenope. “It’s one,” she explained, with a country confidence in her pronouns, “that his uncle give him, and he wants you should have it,” and she held out a worn volume of Cooper, which Parthenope took, when she had made sure it was not merely a loan, with a gratitude which seemed to please, though it did not change the unsmiling face of the giver. “He ain’t ever read it, and he’d just as lieves you’d have it as not,” she said, in conclusion, leaving the remark to find its own place in the order of their conversation. “I told him about you makin’ me come in that night.”

  “Oh, thank you, and thank Mr. Alison for me. I shall always keep the book to remember you by, both of you. I don’t suppose I can come to see you soon again; I’m going back to Boston in a few days.” Mrs. Alison had nothing to say in opposition to this, and she said nothing. “And I sha’n’t forget what you said that night, Mrs. Alison; it was beautiful. Might I kiss the baby?” Parthenope asked, impulsively, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she took the mother in her arms, too, and kissed her on either gaunt cheek. It was not quite in character with Parthenope, but it was not out of keeping with the mood toward all the world in which she found herself.

  Mrs. Alison caught herself away, with a shrill screech to her children. “Come here this minute! You all want to get killed?”

  Parthenope looked round and saw what Mrs. Alison had already seen over her shoulder: the bear-leader and the bear advancing doubtfully toward them, with a choral attendance of the two Kelwyn boys and the Kite boy leaping into the air with cries of joy.

  “Oh, papa! Oh, mamma!” Francy shouted to the upper windows. “It’s the bear! It’s the same bear! Mayn’t he let him dance?”

  Mrs. Kelwyn scolded them to silence from her window and bade them come in, but their father came down to the door, and then they stayed. Emerance appeared with Raney from the barn, where they had been mending the curtains of the carryall.

  He was frowning as if in criticism of some suggestion that had tacitly offered itself, and he smiled rather absently when Kelwyn said: “This is getting to be something like the Vicar of Wakefield. But we need your gypsy van to complete the round-up of characters. Parthenope, where are your gypsies?”

  For the first time the girl looked to a man for guidance in her reply. She looked to Emerance, who said: “I wish they were here. But I doubt whether their assortment of draft and led horses could stand the bear.”

  He still wore his critical frown, and Parthenope interpreted while she submitted: “Are you going to have the bear in?”

  Emerance laughed, shamefacedly, “It would make an effective episode!” />
  “I knew it,” she rejoiced, in a passage which left them in a secret together; but now she felt the necessity of using her novel powers of rule, which a girl who is engaged begins instinctively to use. “I wish you would go up into the dancing-room and get my sketching-block. I’ll scratch them down if Raney will ask them to pose.” Emerance obeyed in a lover’s glad servility, and she sat down on the threshold-stone to get her picture, after Raney had made the bear-leader comprehend that he and his bear were wanted to stand for their portraits instead of performing their drama.

  Mrs. Kite had left something to burn in her oven, while she looked over the artist’s shoulder. “Well, the land!” she cried out, in wonder. A tell-tale odor stole from the kitchen, and she called, with a cheerful laugh, to Mrs. Kelwyn, “Well, I guess your cake will be done enough this time,” which was her way of letting Mrs. Kelwyn know that she had meant to make her an offering for the refreshment of the Kelwyn family on the way to their new place.

  Parthenope felt Emerance’s eyes upon her. He thought they were on her work, but they were really on her; on her cinnamon hair; on the tilt of Her head this way and that, up and down, as the practice of her art required; on the nape of her neck and her close-set little ears; on the droop of her shoulders, and on the play of her long, capable fingers. She felt the warmth of his gaze in all these places as he stood behind her, and she felt a bliss in it such as she had never imagined before. It was not at all the exaltation she had expected in her love for the hero of her dreams, and, in fact, Emerance was not that hero, though she found that she liked him better than if he had been. In derivation and education he was entirely middle-class, as far removed from what was plebeian as what was patrician. He had not come out of the new earth, which would have been heroic; he had sprung from soil wrought for generations, on the common level, which was average. He had been public - schooled for a public-school teacher, and, if he had something like an impulse of genius, it had been toward a calling which at the bottom of her heart she did not respect.