Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Miss Galbraith, starting away again, and looking about the car: “Allen, I have an idea! Do you suppose Mr. Pullman could be induced to sell this car?”

  Mr. Richards: “Why?”

  Miss Galbraith: “Why, because I think it’s perfectly lovely, and I should like to live in it always. It could be fitted up for a sort of summer-house, don’t you know, and we could have it in the garden, and you could smoke in it.”

  Mr. Richards: “Admirable! It would look just like a travelling photographic saloon. No, Lucy, we won’t buy it; we will simply keep it as a precious souvenir, a sacred memory, a beautiful dream, — and let it go on fulfilling its destiny all the same.”

  Porter, entering, and gathering up Miss Galbraith’s things: “Be at Schenectady in half a minute, miss. Won’t have much time.”

  Miss Galbraith, rising, and adjusting her dress, and then looking about the car, while she passes her hand through her lover’s arm: “Oh, I do hate to leave it. Farewell, you dear, kind, good, lovely car! May you never have another accident!” She kisses her hand to the car, upon which they both look back as they slowly leave it.

  Mr. Richards, kissing his hand in the like manner: “Good-by, sweet chariot! May you never carry any but bridal couples!”

  Miss Galbraith: “Or engaged ones!”

  Mr. Richards: “Or husbands going home to their wives!”

  Miss Galbraith: “Or wives hastening to their husbands.”

  Mr. Richards: “Or young ladies who have waited one train over, so as to be with the young men they hate.”

  Miss Galbraith: “Or young men who are so indifferent that they pretend to be asleep when the young ladies come in!” They pause at the door and look back again. “‘And must I leave thee, Paradise?’” They both kiss their hands to the car again, and, their faces being very close together, they impulsively kiss each other. Then Miss Galbraith throws back her head, and solemnly confronts him. “Only think, Allen! If this car hadn’t broken its engagement, we might never have mended ours.”

  OUT OF THE QUESTION

  CONTENTS

  I. IN THE PARLOR OF THE PONKWASSET HOTEL.

  I. MISS MAGGIE WALLACE AND MISS LILLY ROBERTS.

  II. MISS LESLIE BELLINGHAM, MAGGIE, AND LILLY.

  III. MRS. BELLINGHAM, MRS. MURRAY, AND THE YOUNG GIRLS.

  IV. MRS. BELLINGHAM AND LESLIE; AFTERWARDS MRS. MURRAY AND MAGGIE.

  V. LESLIE AND BLAKE.

  VI. MRS. BELLINGHAM AND LESLIE; THEN MRS. MURRAY.

  II. “IN FAYRE FOREST.”

  I. TWO TRAMPS.

  II. BLAKE AND THE TRAMPS.

  III. LESLIE, MAGGIE, AND LILLY; THEN LESLIE ALONE.

  IV. THE YOUNG GIRLS AND THE TRAMPS.

  V. BLAKE AND THE YOUNG GIRLS.

  III. A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING.

  I. MRS. MURRAY AND MRS. BELLINGHAM.

  II. LESLIE AND BLAKE; MRS. MURRAY AND MRS. BELLINGHAM APART.

  III. LESLIE AND BLAKE; FINALLY, MRS. BELLINGHAM.

  IV. MRS. MURRAY’S TRIUMPH.

  I. MRS. BELLINGHAM AND LESLIE.

  II. MRS. MURRAY, MRS. BELLINGHAM, AND LESLIE.

  V. BLAKE’S SAVING DOUBT.

  I. LESLIE AND MAGGIE.

  II. LESLIE And BLAKE.

  VI. MR. CHARLES BELLINGHAM’S DIPLOMACY.

  I. MRS. BELLINGHAM, MRS. MURRAY, AND MR. CHARLES BELLINGHAM.

  II. BELLINGHAM AND MRS. BELLINGHAM; LESLIE AND BLAKE, WITHOUT.

  III. BLAKE AND BELLINGHAM.

  IV. LESLIE, BLAKE, AND BELLINGHAM.

  V. MRS. BELLINGHAM, AND LESLIE, BLAKE, AND BELLINGHAM; AFTERWARDS MRS. MURRAY.

  I. IN THE PARLOR OF THE PONKWASSET HOTEL.

  I. MISS MAGGIE WALLACE AND MISS LILLY ROBERTS.

  THE Ponkwasset Hotel stands on the slope of a hill and fronts the irregular mass of Ponkwasset Mountain, on which the galleries and northern windows of the parlor look out. The parlor is furnished with two hair-cloth sofas, two hair-cloth easy-chairs, and cane-seated chairs of divers patterns; against one side of the room stands a piano, near either end of which a door opens into the corridor; in the center of the parlor a marble-topped table supports a state-lamp of kerosene, — a perfume by day, a flame by night, — and near this table sit two young ladies with what they call work in their hands and laps.

  Miss Maggie Wallace, with her left wrist curved in the act of rolling up a part of her work, at which she looks down with a very thoughtful air and a careworn little sigh: “I don’t think I shall cut it bias, after all, Lilly.”

  Miss Lilly Roberts, letting her work fall into her lap, in amazement: “Why, Maggie!”

  Maggie: “No. Or at least I shan’t decide to do so till I’ve had Leslie’s opinion on it. She has perfect taste, and she could tell at a glance whether it would do.”

  Lilly: “I wonder she isn’t here, now. The stage must be very late.”

  Maggie: “I suppose the postmaster at South Herodias waited to finish his supper before he ‘changed the mail,’ as they call it. I was so in hopes she would come while they were at tea! It will so disgust her to see them all strung along the piazza and staring their eyes out at the arrivals, when the stage drives up,” — a horrible picture which Miss Wallace dreamily contemplates for a moment in mental vision.

  Lilly: “Why don’t you go down, too, Maggie? Perhaps she’d find a familiar face a relief.”

  Maggie, recalled to herself by the wild suggestion: “Thank you, Lilly. I’d rather not be thought so vulgar as that, by Leslie Bellingham, if it’s quite the same to other friends. Imagine her catching sight of me in that crowd! I should simply wither away.”

  Lilly, rebelliously: “Well, I don’t see why she should feel authorized to overawe people in that manner. What does she do to show her immense superiority?”

  Maggie: “Everything! In the first place she’s so refined and cultivated, you can’t live; and then she takes your breath away, she’s so perfectly lovely; and then she kills you dead with her style, and all that. She isn’t the least stiff. She’s the kindest to other people you ever saw, and the carefullest of their feelings; and she has the grandest principles, and she’s divinely impulsive! But somehow you feel that if you do anything that’s a little vulgar in her presence, you’d better die at once. It was always so at school, and it always will be. Why you would no more dare to do or say anything just a little common, don’t you know, with Leslie Bellingham” — A young lady, tall, slender, and with an air of delicate distinction, has appeared at the door of the parlor. She is of that type of beauty which approaches the English, without losing the American fineness and grace; she is fair, and her eyes are rather gray than blue; her nose is slightly aquiline; her expression is serious, but becomes amused as she listens to Miss Wallace. She wears one of those blonde traveling-costumes, whose general fashionableness she somehow subdues into character with herself; over her arm she carries a shawl. She drifts lightly into the room. At the rustling of her dress Miss Wallace looks up, and with a cry of surprise and ecstasy springs from her chair, scattering the contents of her work-box in every direction over the floor, and flings herself into Miss Leslie Bellingham’s embrace. Then she starts away from her and gazes rapturously into her face, while they prettily clasp hands and hold each other at arm’s length: “Leslie! You heard every word!”

  II. MISS LESLIE BELLINGHAM, MAGGIE, AND LILLY.

  Leslie: “Every syllable, my child. And when you came to my grand principles, I simply said to myself, ‘Then listening at keyholes is heroic,’ and kept on eavesdropping without a murmur. Had you quite finished?”

  Maggie: “O Leslie! You know I never can finish when I get on that subject! It inspires me to greater and greater flights every minute. Where is your mother? Where is Mrs. Murray? Where is the stage? Why, excuse me! This is Miss Roberts. Lilly, it’s Leslie Bellingham! Oh, how glad I am to see you together at last! Didn’t the stage” —

  Leslie, having graciously bowed to Miss Roberts: “No, Maggie. The stage didn’t bring me here. I wa
lked.”

  Maggie: “Why, Leslie! How perfectly ghastly!”

  Leslie: “The stage has done nothing but disgrace itself ever since we left the station. In the first place it pretended to carry ten or twelve people and their baggage, with two horses. Four horses oughtn’t to drag such a load up these precipices; and wherever the driver would stop for me, I insisted upon getting out to walk.”

  Maggie: “How like you, Leslie!”

  Leslie: “Yes; I wish the resemblance were not so striking. I’m here in character, Maggie, if you like, but almost nothing else. I’ve nothing but a hand-bag to bless me with for the next twenty-four hours. Shall you be very much ashamed of me?” Maggie: “Why, you don’t mean to say you’ve lost your trunks? Horrors!”

  Leslie: “No. I mean that I wasn’t going to let the driver add them to the cruel load he had already, and I made him leave them at the station till to-morrow night.”

  Maggie, embracing her: “Oh, you dear, good, grand, generous Leslie! How — Why, but Leslie! He’ll have just as many people to-morrow night, and your trunks besides theirs!”

  Leslie, with decision: “Very well! Then I shall not be there to see the outrage. I will not have suffering or injustice of any kind inflicted in my presence, if I can help it. That is all.” Nevertheless, Miss Bellingham sinks into one of the armchairs with an air of some dismay, and vainly taps the toe of her boot with the point of her umbrella in a difficult interval of silence.

  Maggie, finally: “But where is your hand-bag?” Leslie, with mystery, “Oh, he’s bringing it.” Maggie: “He?”

  Leslie, with reviving spirits: “A young man, the good genius of the drive. He’s bringing it from the foot of the hill; the stage had its final disaster there; and I left him in charge of mamma and aunt Kate, and came on to explore and surprise, and he made me leave the bag with him, too. But that isn’t the worst. I shall know what to do with the hand-bag when it gets here, but I shan’t know what to do with the young man.” Maggie: “With the young man? Why, Leslie, a young man is worth a thousand hand-bags in a place like this! You don’t know what you ‘re talking about; Leslie. A young man” —

  Leslie, rising and going toward the window: “My dear, he’s out of the question. You may as well make up your mind to that, for you’ll see at once that he’ll never do. He’s going to stop here, and as he’s been very kind to us it makes his never doing all the harder to manage. He’s a hero, if you like, but if you can imagine it he isn’t quite — well, what you’ve been used to. Don’t you see how a person could be everything that was unselfish and obliging, and yet not — not” —

  Maggie, eagerly: “Oh yes!”

  Leslie: “Well, he’s that. It seems to me that he’s been doing something for mamma, or aunt Kate, or me, ever since we left the station. To begin with, he gave up his place inside to one of us, and when he went to get on top, he found all the places taken there; and so he had to sit on the trunks behind — whenever he rode; for he walked most of the way, and helped me over the bad places in the road when I insisted on getting out.

  You know how aunt Kate is, Maggie, and how many wants she has. Well, there wasn’t one of them that this young man didn’t gratify: he handed her bag up to the driver on top because it crowded her, and handed it down because she couldn’t do without it; he got her out and put her back so that she could face the front, and then restored her to her place because an old gentleman who had been traveling a long way kept falling asleep on her shoulder; he buttoned her curtain down because she was sure it was going to rain, and rolled it up because it made the air too close; he fetched water for her; he looked every now and then to see if her trunks were all right, and made her more and more ungrateful every minute. Whenever the stage broke down — as it did twice before the present smash-up — he befriended everybody, encouraged old ladies, quieted children, and shamed the other men into trying to be of some use; and if it hadn’t been for him, I don’t see how the stage would ever have got out of its troubles; he always knew just what was the matter, and just how to mend it Is that the window that commands a magnificent prospect of Ponkwasset Mountain — in the advertisement?”

  Maggie: “The very window!”

  Leslie: “Does it condescend to overlook so common a thing as the road up to the house?” Maggie: “Of coarse; but why?”

  Leslie, going to the open window, and stepping through it upon the gallery, whither the other young ladies follow her, and where her voice is heard: “Yes, there they come! But I can’t see my young man. Is it possible that he’s riding? No, there he is! He was on the other side of the stage. Don’t you see him? Why he needn’t carry my hand-bag! He certainly might have let that ride. I do wonder what he means by it! Or is it only absent-mindedness? Don’t let him see us looking! It would be altogether too silly. Do let’s go in!”

  Maggie, on their return to the parlor: “What a great pity it is that he won’t do! Is he handsome, Leslie? Why won’t he do?”

  Leslie: “You can tell in a moment, when you’ve seen him, Maggie. He’s perfectly respectful and nice, of course, but he’s no more social perspective than — the man in the moon. He’s never obtrusive, but he’s as free and equal as the Declaration of Independence; and when you did get up some little perspective with him, and tried to let him know, don’t you know, that there was such a thing as a vanishing point somewhere, he was sure to do or say something so unconscious that away went your perspective — one simple crush.”

  Maggie: “How ridiculous!”

  Leslie: “Yes. It was funny. But not just in that way. He isn’t in the least common or uncouth. Nobody could say that. But he’s going to be here two or three weeks, and it’s impossible not to be civil; and it’s very embarrassing, don’t you see?”

  Lilly: “Let me comfort you, Miss Bellingham. It will be the simplest thing in the world. We ‘re all on the same level in the Ponkwasset Hotel. The landlord will bring him up during the evening and introduce him. Our table girls teach school in the winter and are as good as anybody. Mine calls me ‘Lilly,’ and I’m so small I can’t help it.

  They dress up in the afternoon, and play the piano. The cook’s as affable, when you meet her in society, as can be.”

  Maggie: “Lilly!”

  Leslie, listening to Miss Roberts with whimsical trepidation: “Well, this certainly complicates matters. But I think we shall be able to manage.” At a sound of voices in the hall without, Miss Bellingham starts from her chair and runs to the corridor, where she is heard: “Thanks ever so much. So very good of you to take all this trouble. Come into the parlor, mamma — there’s nobody there but Maggie Wallace and Miss Roberts — and we’ll leave our things there till after tea.” She reenters the parlor with her mother and her aunt Kate, Mrs. Murray; after whom comes Stephen Blake with Leslie’s bag in his hand, and the wraps of the other ladies over his arm. His dress, which is evidently a prosperous fortuity of the clothing-store, takes character from his tall, sinewy frame; a smile of somewhat humorous patience lights his black eyes and shapes his handsome moustache, as he waits in quiet self-possession the pleasure of the ladies.

  III. MRS. BELLINGHAM, MRS. MURRAY, AND THE YOUNG GIRLS.

  Mrs. Bellingham, a matronly, middle-aged lady of comfortable, not cumbrous bulk, taking Miss Wallace by the hand and kissing her: “My dear child, how pleasant it is to see you so strong again! You ‘re a living testimony to the excellence of the air! How well you look!”

  Leslie: “Mamma, — Miss Roberts.” Mrs. Bellingham murmurously shakes hands with Miss Roberts, and after some kindly nods and smiles, and other shows of friendliness, provisionally and expectantly quiesces into a corner of the sofa, while her sister-in-law comes aggressively forward to assume the burden of conversation.

  Mrs. Murray: “Well, a more fatiguing drive I certainly never knew! How do you do, Maggie?” She kisses Miss Wallace in a casual, uninterested way, and takes Lilly’s hand. “Isn’t this Miss Roberts? I am Mrs. Murray. I used to know your family — your uncle Georg
e, before that dreadful business of his. I believe it all came out right; he wasn’t to blame; but it was a shocking experience.” Mrs. Murray turns from Lilly, and refers herself to the company in general: “It seems as if I should expire on the spot. I feel as if I had been packed away in my own hat-box for a week, and here, just as we arrive, the landlord informs us that he didn’t expect us till tomorrow night, and he hasn’t an empty room in the house!”

  Maggie: “No room! To-morrow night! What nonsense! Why it’s perfectly frantic! How could he have misunderstood? Why, it seems to me that I’ve done nothing for a week past but tell him you were coming to-night!” —

  Mrs. Murray, sharply: “I have no doubt of it. But it doesn’t alter the state of the case. You may tell us to leave our things till after tea, Leslie. If they can’t make up beds on the sofas and the piano, I don’t know where we ‘re going to pass the night.” In the moment of distressful sensation which follows Miss Wallace whispers something eagerly to her friend, Miss Roberts.

  Maggie, with a laughing glance at Leslie and her mother, and then going on with her whispering: “Excuse the little confidence!”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Conspiracy, I’m afraid. What are you plotting, Maggie?”

  Maggie, finishing her confidence: “Oh, we needn’t make a mystery of such a little thing. We ‘re going to offer you one of our rooms.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “My dear, you are going to do nothing of the kind. We will never allow it.” Maggie: “Now, Mrs. Bellingham, you break my heart! It’s nothing, it’s less than nothing. I believe we can make room for all three of you.” Mrs. Murray, promptly: “Let me go with you, young ladies. I’m an old housekeeper, and I can help you plan.”

  Maggie: “Oh do, Mrs. Murray. You can tell which room you’d better take, Lilly’s or mine. Lilly’s is” —