Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “I thought she was older,” I ventured to put in, remembering my impressions as to her age the last time I saw her with her father.

  “No,” said Mrs. Hasketh, “she always appeared rather old for her age, and that made me all the more anxious to know just how much of the trouble she had taken in. I suppose it was all a kind of awful mystery to her, as most of our trials are to children; but when her father was taken from her, she seemed to think it was something she mustn’t ask about; there are a good many things in the world that children feel that way about — how they come into it, for one thing, and how they go out of it; and by and by she didn’t speak of it. She had some of his lightness, and I presume that helped her through; I was afraid it did sometimes. Then, at other times, I thought she had got the notion he was in for life, and that was the reason she didn’t speak of him; she had given him up. Then I used to wonder whether it wasn’t my duty to take her to see him — where he was. But when I came to find out that you had to see them through the bars, and with the kind of clothes they wear, I felt that I might as well kill the child at once; it was for her sake I didn’t take her. You may be sure I wasn’t anxious for the responsibility of not doing it either, the way I knew I felt toward Mr. Tedham.”

  I did not like her protesting so much as this; but I saw that it was a condition of her being able to deal with herself in the matter, and I had no doubt she was telling the truth.

  “You never can know just how much of a thing children have taken in, or how much they have understood,” she continued, repeating herself, as she did throughout, “and I had to keep this in mind when I had my talks with Fay about her father. She wanted to write to him at first, and of course I let her—”

  My wife and I could not forbear exchanging a glance of intelligence, which Mrs. Hasketh intercepted.

  “I presume he told you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “he showed us the letter.”

  “Well, it was something that had to be done. As long as she questioned me about him, I put her off the best way I could, and after a while she seemed to give up questioning me of her own accord. Perhaps she really began to understand it, or some of the cruel little things she played with said something. I was always afraid of the other children throwing it up to her, and that was one reason we went away for three or four years and let our place here.”

  “I didn’t know you were gone,” I said toward Hasketh, who cleared his throat to explain:

  “I had some interests at that time in Canada. We were at Quebec.”

  “It shows what a rush our life is,” I philosophized, with the implication that Hasketh and I had been old friends, and I ought to have noticed that I had not met him during the time of his absence. The fact was we had never come so near intimacy as when we exchanged confidences concerning the severity of Tedham’s sentence in coming out of the court-room together.

  “I hadn’t any interest in Canada, except to get the child away,” said Mrs. Hasketh. “Sometimes it seemed strange we should be in Canada, and not Mr. Tedham! She got acquainted with some little girls who were going to a convent school there as externes — outside pupils, you know,” Mrs. Hasketh explained to my wife. “She got very fond of one of them — she is a child of very warm affections. I never denied that Mr. Tedham had warm affections — and when her little girl friend went into the convent to go on with her education there, Fay wanted to go too, and — we let her. That was when she was twelve, and Mr. Hasketh felt that he ought to come back and look after his business here; and we left her in the convent. Just as soon as she was out of the way, and out of the question, it seemed as if I got to feeling differently toward Mr. Tedham. I don’t mean to say I ever got to like him, or that I do to this day; but I saw that he had some rights, too, and for years and years I wanted to take the child and tell her when he was coming out. I used to ask myself what right I even had to keep the child from the suffering. The suffering was hers by rights, and she ought to go through it. I got almost crazy thinking it over. I got to thinking that her share of her father’s shame might be the very thing, of all things, that was to discipline her and make her a good and useful woman; and that’s much more than being a happy one, Mrs. March; we can’t any of us be truly happy, no matter what’s done for us. I tried to make believe that I was sparing her alone, but I knew I was sparing myself, too, and that made it harder to decide.” She suddenly addressed herself to us both: “What would you have done?”

  My wife and I looked at each other in a dismay in which a glance from old Hasketh assured us that we had his sympathy. It would have been far simpler if Mrs. Hasketh had been up and down with us as Tedham’s emissaries, and refused to tell us anything of his daughter, and left us to report to him that he must find her for himself if he found her at all. This was what we had both expected, and we had come prepared to take back that answer to Tedham, and discharge our whole duty towards him in its delivery. This change in the woman who had hated him so fiercely, but whose passion had worn itself down to the underlying conscience with the lapse of time, certainly complicated the case. I was silent; my wife said: “I don’t know what I should have done, Mrs. Hasketh;” and Mrs. Hasketh resumed:

  “If I did wrong in trying to separate her life from her father’s, I was punished for it, because when I wanted to undo my work, I didn’t know how to begin; I presume that’s the worst of a wrong thing. Well, I never did begin; but now I’ve got to. The time’s come, and I presume it’s as easy now as it ever could be; easier. He’s out and it’s over, as far as the law is concerned; and if she chooses she can see him. I’ll prepare her for it as well as I can, and he can come if she wishes it.”

  “Do you mean that he can see her here?” my wife asked.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Hasketh, with a sort of strong submission.

  “At once? To-day?”

  “No,” Mrs. Hasketh faltered. “I didn’t want him to see her just the first day, or before I saw him; and I thought he might try to. She’s visiting at some friends in Providence; but she’ll be back to-morrow. He can come to-morrow night, if she says so. He can come and find out. But if he was anything of a man he wouldn’t want to.”

  “I’m afraid,” I ventured, “he isn’t anything of that kind of man.”

  VI.

  “Now, how unhandsome life is!” I broke out, at one point on our way home, after we had turned the affair over in every light, and then dropped it, and then taken it up again. “It’s so graceless, so tasteless! Why didn’t Tedham die before the expiration of his term and solve all this knotty problem with dignity? Why should he have lived on in this shabby way and come out and wished to see his daughter? If there had been anything dramatic, anything artistic in the man’s nature, he would have renounced the claim his mere paternity gives him on her love, and left word with me that he had gone away and would never be heard of any more. That was the least he could have done. If he had wanted to do the thing heroically — and I wouldn’t have denied him that satisfaction — he would have walked into that pool in the old cockpit and lain down among the autumn leaves on its surface, and made an end of the whole trouble with his own burdensome and worthless existence. That would truly have put an end to the evil he began.”

  “I wouldn’t be — impious, Basil,” said my wife, with a moment’s hesitation for the word. Then she sighed and added, “Yes, it seems as if that would be the only thing that could end it. There doesn’t really seem to be any provision in life for ending such things. He will have to go on and make more and more trouble. Poor man! I feel almost as sorry for him as I do for her. I guess he hasn’t expiated his sin yet, as fully as he thinks he has.”

  “And then,” I went on, with a strange pleasure I always get out of the poignancy of a despair not my own, “suppose that this isn’t all. Suppose that the girl has met some one who has become interested in her, and whom she will have to tell of this stain upon her name?”

  “Basil!” cried my wife, “that is cruel of you! You knew I was keepin
g away from that point, and it seems as if you tried to make it as afflicting as you could — the whole affair.”

  “Well, I don’t believe it’s as bad as that. Probably she hasn’t met any one in that way; at any rate, it’s pure conjecture on my part, and my conjecture doesn’t make it so.”

  “It doesn’t unmake it, either, for you to say that now,” my wife lamented.

  “Well, well! Don’t let’s think about it, then. The case is bad enough as it stands, Heaven knows, and we’ve got to grapple with it as soon as we get home. We shall find Tedham waiting for us, I dare say, unless something has happened to him. I wonder if anything can have been good enough to happen to Tedham, overnight.”

  I got a little miserable fun out of this, but my wife would not laugh; she would not be placated in any way; she held me in a sort responsible for the dilemma I had conjectured, and inculpated me in some measure for that which had really presented itself.

  When we reached home she went directly to her room and had a cup of tea sent to her there, and the children and I had rather a solemn time at the table together. A Sunday tea-table is solemn enough at the best, with its ghastly substitution of cold dishes or thin sliced things for the warm abundance of the week-day dinner; with the gloom of Mrs. March’s absence added, this was a very funereal feast indeed.

  We went on quite silently for a while, for the children saw I was preoccupied; but at last I asked, “Has anybody called this afternoon?”

  “I don’t know exactly whether it was a call or not,” said my daughter, with a nice feeling for the social proprieties which would have amused me at another time. “But that strange person who was here last night, was here again.”

  “Oh!”

  “He said he would come in the evening. I forgot to tell you. Papa, what kind of person is he?”

  “I don’t know. What makes you ask?”

  “Why, we think he wasn’t always a workingman. Tom says he looks as if he had been in some kind of business, and then failed.”

  “What makes you think that, Tom?” I asked the boy.

  “Oh, I don’t know. He speaks so well.”

  “He always spoke well, poor fellow,” I said with a vague amusement. “And you’re quite right, Tom. He was in business once and he failed — badly.”

  I went up to my wife’s room and told her what the children had said of Tedham’s call, and that he was coming back again.

  “Well, then, I think I shall let you see him alone, Basil. I’m completely worn out, and besides there’s no reason why I should see him. I hope you’ll get through with him quickly. There isn’t really anything for you to say, except that we have seen the Haskeths, and that if he is still bent upon it he can find his daughter there to-morrow evening. I want you to promise me that you will confine yourself to that, Basil, and not say a single word more. There is no sense in our involving ourselves in the affair. We have done all we could, and more than he had any right to ask of us, and now I am determined that he shall not get anything more out of you. Will you promise?”

  “You may be sure, my dear, that I don’t wish to get any more involved in this coil of sin and misery than you do,” I began.

  “That isn’t promising,” she interrupted. “I want you to promise you’ll say just that and no more.”

  “Oh, I’ll promise fast enough, if that’s all you want,” I said.

  “I don’t trust you a bit, Basil,” she lamented. “Now, I will explain to you all about it. I’ve thought the whole thing over.”

  She did explain, at much greater length than she needed, and she was still giving me some very solemn charges when the bell rang, and I knew that Tedham had come. “Now, remember what I’ve told you,” she called after me, as I went to the door, “and be sure to tell me, when you come back, just how he takes it and every word he says. Oh, dear, I know you’ll make the most dreadful mess of it!”

  By this time I expected to do no less, but I was so curious to see Tedham again that I should have been willing to do much worse, rather than forego my meeting with him. I hope that there was some better feeling than curiosity in my heart, but I will, for the present, call it curiosity.

  I met him in the hall at the foot of the stairs, and put a witless cheeriness into the voice I bade him good-evening with, while I gave him my hand and led the way into the parlor.

  The twenty-four hours that had elapsed since I saw him there before had estranged him in a way that I find it rather hard to describe. He had shrunk from the approach to equality in which we had parted, and there was a sort of consciousness of disgrace in his look, such as might have shown itself if he had passed the time in a low debauch. But undoubtedly he had done nothing of the kind, and this effect in him was from a purely moral cause. He sat down on the edge of a chair, instead of leaning back, as he had done the night before.

  “Well, Tedham,” I began, “we have seen your sister-in-law, and I may as well tell you at once that, so far as she is concerned, there will be nothing in the way of your meeting your daughter. The Haskeths are living at their old place in Somerville, and your daughter will be with them there to-morrow night — just at this moment she is away — and you can find her there, then, if you wish.”

  Tedham kept those deep eye-hollows of his bent upon me, and listened with a passivity which did not end when I ceased to speak. I had said all that my wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham’s not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, “Of course, it’s for you to decide whether you will or not.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Tedham, feebly, but as if he were physically laying hold of me for help.

  “Why, I mean — I mean — my dear fellow, you know what I mean! Whether you had better do it.” This was the very thing I had not intended to do, for I saw how wise my wife’s plan was, and how we really had nothing more to do with the matter, after having satisfied the utmost demands of humanity.

  “You think I had better not,” said Tedham.

  “No,” I said, but I felt that I was saying it too late, “I don’t think anything about it.”

  “I have been thinking about it, too,” said Tedham, as if I had confessed and not denied having an opinion in the matter. “I have been thinking about it ever since I saw you last night, and I don’t believe I have slept, for thinking of it. I know how you and Mrs. March feel about it, and I have tried to see it from your point of view, and now I believe I do. I am not going to see my daughter; I am going away.”

  He stood up, in token of his purpose, and at the same moment my wife entered the room. She must have been hurrying to do so from the moment I left her, for she had on a fresh dress, and her hair had the effect of being suddenly, if very effectively, massed for the interview from the dispersion in which I had lately seen it. She swept me with a glance of reproach, as she went up to Tedham, in the pretence that he had risen to meet her, and gave him her hand. I knew that she divined all that had passed between us, but she said:

  “Mr. March has told you that we have seen Mrs. Hasketh, and that you can find your daughter at her house to-morrow evening?”

  “Yes, and I have just been telling him that I am not going to see her.”

  “That is very foolish — very wrong!” my wife began.

  “I know you must say so,” Tedham replied, with more dignity and force than I could have expected, “and I know how kind you and Mr. March have been. But you must see that I am right — that she is the only one to be considered at all.”

  “Right! How are you right? Have you been suggesting that, my dear?” demanded my wife, with a gentle despair of me in her voice.

  It almost seemed to me that I had, but Tedham came to my rescue most unexpectedly.

  “No, Mrs. March, he hasn’t said anything of the kind to me; or, if he has, I haven’t heard it. But you intimated, yoursel
f, last night, that she might be so situated—”

  “I was a wicked simpleton,” cried my wife, and I forebore to triumph, even by a glance at her; “to put my doubts between you and your daughter in any way. It was romantic, and — and — disgusting. It’s not only your right to see her, it’s your duty. At least it’s your duty to let her decide whether she will let you see her. What nonsense! Of course she will! She must bear her part in it. She ought not to escape it, even if she could. Now you must just drop all idea of going away, and you must stay, and you must go to see your daughter. There is no other way to do.”

  Tedham shook his head stubbornly. “She has borne her share, already, and I won’t inflict my penalty on her innocence—”

  “Innocence? It’s because she is innocent that it must be inflicted upon her! That is what innocence is in the world for!”

  Tedham looked back at her in a dull bewilderment. “I can’t get back to that. It seemed so once; but now it looks selfish, and I’m afraid of it. I am not the one to take that ground. It might do for you—”

  “Well, then, let it do for me!” I confess that I was astonished at this turn, or should have been, if I could be astonished at any turn a woman takes. “I will see her for you, if you wish, and I will tell her just how it is with you, and then she can decide for herself. You have certainly no right to decide for her, whether she will see you or not, have you?”