Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Murray: “Oh! I had forgotten that we were detaining you!” Mrs. Murray is about to leave the room with the two young girls, when her eye falls upon Blake, who is still present, with his burden of hand-bags and shawls. “Leave the things on the table, please. We are obliged to you.” Mrs. Murray speaks with a certain finality of manner and tone which there is no mistaking; Blake stares at her a moment, and then, without replying, lays down the things and turns to quit the room; at the same instant Leslie rises with a grand air from her mother’s side, on the sofa, and sweeps towards him. —

  Leslie, very graciously: “Don’t let our private afflictions drive you from a public room, Mr.—” Blake: “Blake.”

  Leslie: “Mr. Blake. This is my mother, Mr. Blake, who wishes to thank you for all your kindness to us.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Yes, indeed, Mr. Blake, we are truly grateful to you.”

  Leslie, with increasing significance: “And my aunt, Mrs. Murray; and my friend, Miss Wallace; and Miss Roberts.” Blake bows to each of the ladies as they are named, but persists in his movement to quit the room; Leslie impressively offers him her hand. “Must you go? Thank you, ever, ever so much!” She follows him to the door in his withdrawal, and then turns and confronts her aunt with an embattled front of defiance.

  Maggie, with an effort breaking the embarrassing silence:— “Come, Lilly. Let us go and take a look at our resources. We’ll be back in a moment, Mrs. Bellingham.”

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

  Leslie, coming abruptly forward as her aunt goes out with the two young girls, and drooping meekly in front of her mother, who remains seated on the sofa: “Well, mamma!”

  Mrs. Bellingham, tranquilly contemplating her for a moment: “Well, Leslie!” She pauses, and again silently regards her daughter. “Perhaps you may be said to have overdone it.”

  Leslie, passionately: “I can’t help it, mother! I couldn’t see him sent away in that insolent manner, I don’t care who or what he is. Aunt Kate’s tone was outrageous, atrocious, hideous! And after accepting, yes, demanding every service he could possibly render, the whole afternoon! It made me blush for her, and I wasn’t going to stand it.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “If you mean by all that that your poor aunt is a very ungracious and exacting woman, I shall not dispute you. But she’s your father’s sister; and she’s very much older than you. You seem to have forgotten, too, that your mother was present to do any justice that was needed. It’s very unfortunate that he should have been able to do us so many favors, but that can’t be helped now. It’s one of the risks of coming to these out-of-the-way places, that you ‘re so apt to be thrown in with nondescript people that you don’t know how to get rid of afterwards. And now that he’s been so cordially introduced to us all! Well, I hope you won’t have to be crueller in the end, my dear, than your aunt meant to be in the beginning. So far, of course, he has behaved with perfect delicacy; but you must see yourself, Leslie, that even as a mere acquaintance he’s quite out of the question; that however kind and thoughtful he’s been, and no one could have been more so, he isn’t a gentleman.”

  Leslie, impatiently: “Well, then, mother, I am! And so are you. And I think we are bound to behave like gentlemen at any cost. I didn’t mean to ignore you. I didn’t consider. I acted as I thought Charley would have done.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Oh, my dear, my dear!

  Don’t you see there’s a very important difference? Your brother is a man, and he can act without reference to consequences. But you are a young lady, and you can’t be as gentlemanly as you like without being liable to misinterpretation. I shall expect you to behave very discreetly indeed from this time forth. We must consider now how our new friend can be kindly, yet firmly and promptly, dropped.”

  Leslie: “Oh, it’s another of those embarrassments that aunt Kate’s always getting me into! I was discreet about it till she acted so horridly. You can ask Maggie if I didn’t talk in the wisest way about it; like a perfect — owl. I saw it just as you do, mamma, and I was going to drop him, and so I will, yet; but I couldn’t see him so ungratefully trampled on. It’s all her doing! Who wanted to come here to this out-of-the-way place? Why, aunt Kate, — when I was eager to go to Conway! I declare it’s too bad!”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “That will do, Leslie.”

  Leslie: “And now she’s gone off with those poor girls to crowd them out of house and home, I suppose. It’s a shame! Why did you let her, mamma?”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “For the same reason that I let you talk on, my dear, when I’ve bidden you stop.”

  Leslie: “Oh, you dear, kind old mamma, you! You ‘re a gentleman, and you always were! I only wish I could be half like you!” She throws her arms round her mother’s neck and kisses her. “I know you ‘re right about this matter, but you mustn’t expect me to acknowledge that aunt Kate is. If you both said exactly the same thing, you would be right and she would be wrong, you’d say it so differently!”

  Mrs. Murray, who returns alone with signs of discontent and perplexity, and flings herself into a chair: “Their rooms are mere coops, and I don’t see how even two of us are to squeeze into one of them. It’s little better than impertinence to offer it to us. I’ve been down to see the landlord again, and you’ll be pleased to know, Marion, that the only vacant room in the house had been engaged by the person to whom we’ve all just had the honor of an introduction.” Leslie makes an impetuous movement, as if she were about to speak, but at a gesture from her mother she restrains herself, and Mrs. Murray continues: “Of course, if he had been a gentleman, in the lowest sense of the word, he would have offered his room to ladies who had none, at once. As long as he could make social capital out of his obtrusive services to us he was very profuse with them, but as soon as it came to a question of real self-sacrifice — to giving up his own ease and comfort for a single night” — A bell rings, and at the sound Mrs. Bellingham rises.

  Mrs. Bellingham: “I suppose that’s for supper. I think a cup of tea will put a cheerfuller face on our affairs. I don’t at all agree with you about Mr. Blake’s obligation to give up his room, nor about his services to us this afternoon; I’m sure common justice requires us to acknowledge that he was everything that was kind and thoughtful. Oh, you good child!” — as Miss Wallace appears at the door,—” have you come to show us the way to supper? Are you quite sure you’ve not gone without tea on our account as well as given up your room?” She puts her arm fondly round the young girl’s waist, and presses her cheek against her own breast.

  Maggie, with enthusiasm: Oh, Mrs. Bellingham, you know I wouldn’t ask anything better than to starve on your account. I wish I hadn’t been to tea! I’m afraid that you’ll think the room is a very slight offering when you come to see it — it is such a little room; why, when I took Mrs. Murray into it, it seemed all at once as if I saw it through the wrong end of an opera-glass — it did dwindle so!”

  Leslie: “Never mind, Maggie; you ‘re only too good, as it is. If your room was an inch bigger, we couldn’t bear it. I hope you may be without a roof over your head yourself, some day! Can I say anything handsomer than that? Don’t wait for me, mamma; I’ll find the dining-room myself. I’m rather too crumpled even for a houseless wanderer.” She opens her bag where it stands on the table. “I am going to make a flying toilet at one of these glasses. Do you think any one will come in, Maggie?”

  Maggie: “There isn’t the least danger. This is the parlor of the “transients,” as they call them, — the occasional guests, — and Lilly and I have it mostly to ourselves when there are no transients. The regular boarders stay in the lower parlor. Shan’t I help you, Leslie?”

  Leslie, rummaging through her bag: “No, indeed! It’s only a question of brush and hair-pins. Do go with mamma!” As Maggie obeys, Leslie finds her brush, and going to one of the mirrors touches the blonde masses of her hair, and then remains a moment, lightly turning her head from side to side to get the effect. S
he suddenly claps her hand to one ear. “Oh, horrors! That ear-drop’s gone again!” She runs to the table, reopens her bag, and searches it in every part, talking rapidly to herself. “Well, really, it seems as if sorrows would never end! To think of that working out a third time! To think of my coming away without getting the clasp fixed! And to think of my not leaving them in my trunk at the station! Oh dear me, I shall certainly go wild! What shall I do? It isn’t in the bag at all. It must be on the floor.” Keeping her hand in helpless incredulity upon the ear from which the jewel is missing, she scrutinizes the matting far and near, with a countenance of acute anguish. Footsteps are heard approaching the door, where they hesitatingly arrest themselves. “Have you come back for me? Oh, I’ve met with such a calamity! I’ve lost one of my ear-rings. I could cry. Do come and help me mouse for it.” There is no response to this invitation, and Leslie, lifting her eyes, in a little dismay confronts the silent intruder. “Mr. Blake!”

  V. LESLIE AND BLAKE.

  Blake: “Excuse me. I expected to find your mother here. I didn’t mean to disturb” —

  Leslie, haughtily: “There’s no disturbance. It’s a public room: I had forgotten that. Mamma has gone to tea. I thought it was my friend Miss Wallace. I” — With a flash of indignation: “When you knew it wasn’t, why did you let me speak to you in that way?”

  Blake, with a smile: “I couldn’t know whom you took me for, and I hadn’t time to prevent your speaking.”

  Leslie: “You remained.”

  Blake, with a touch of resentment tempering his amusement: “I couldn’t go away after I had come without speaking to you. It was Mrs. Bellingham I was looking for. I’m sorry not to find her, and I’ll go, now.”

  Leslie, hastily: “Oh no! I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean” —

  Blake, advancing toward her, and stooping to pick up something from the floor, near the table: “Is this what you lost? — if I’ve a right to know that you lost anything.”

  Leslie: “Oh, my ear-ring! Oh, thanks! How did you see it? I thought I had looked and felt everywhere.” A quick color flies over her face as she takes the jewel from the palm of his hand. She turns to the mirror, and, seizing the tip of her delicate ear between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, hooks the pendant into place with the other, and then gives her head a little shake; the young man lightly sighs. She turns toward him, with the warmth still lingering in her cheeks. “I’m ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Blake. I wish I had your gift of doing all sorts of services — favors — to people. I wish I could find something for you.”

  Blake: “I wish you could — if it were the key to my room, which I came back in hopes of finding. I’ve mislaid it somewhere, and I thought I might have put it down with your shawls here on the table.” Leslie promptly lifts one of the shawls, and the key drops from it. “That’s it. Miss Bellingham, I have a favor to ask: will you give this key to your mother?”

  Leslie: “This key?”

  Blake: “I have found a place to sleep at a farm-house just down the road, and I want your mother to take my room; I haven’t looked into it yet, and I don’t know that it’s worth taking. But I suppose it’s better than no room at all; and I know you have none.”

  Leslie, with cold hauteur, after looking absently at him for a moment: “Thanks. It’s quite impossible. My mother would never consent.”

  Blake: “The room will stand empty, then. I meant to give it up from the first, — as soon as I found that you were not provided for, — but I hated to make a display of it before all the people down there in the office. I’ll go now and leave the key with the landlord, as I ought to have done, without troubling you. But — I had hardly the chance of doing so after we came here.”

  Leslie, with enthusiasm: “Oh, Mr. Blake, do you really mean to give us your room after you’ve been so odiously — Oh, it’s too bad; it’s too bad! You mustn’t; no, you shall not.”

  Blake: “I will leave the key on the table here Good night. Or — I shall not see you in the morning: perhaps I had better say good-by.”

  Leslie: “Good-by? In the morning?”

  Blake: “I’ve changed my plans, and I’m going away to-morrow. Good-by.”

  Leslie: “Going — Mamma will be very sorry to — Oh, Mr. Blake, I hope you are not going because — But indeed — I want you to believe” —

  Blake, devoutly: “I believe it. Good-by!” He turns away to go, and Leslie, standing bewildered and irresolute, lets him leave the room; then she hastens to the door after him, and encounters her mother.

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

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Well, Leslie. Are you quite ready? We went to look at Maggie’s room before going down to tea. It’s small, but we shall manage somehow. Come, dear. She’s waiting for us at the head of the stairs. Why, Leslie!”

  Leslie, touching her handkerchief to her eyes: “I was a little overwrought, mamma. I’m tired.” After a moment: “Mamma, Mr. Blake” —

  Mrs. Bellingham, with a look at her daughter: “I met him in the hall.”

  Leslie: “Yes, he has been here; and I thought I had lost one of my ear-rings; and of course he found it on the floor the instant he came in; and” ——

  Mrs. Murray, surging into the room, and going up to the table: “Well, Marion, the tea — What key is this? What in the world is Leslie crying about?”

  Leslie, with supreme disregard of her aunt, and adamantine self-control: “Mr. Blake had come” — she hands the key to Mrs. Bellingham—” to offer you the key of his room. He asked me to give it.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “The key of his room?” Leslie: “He offers you his room; he had always meant to offer it.”

  Mrs. Bellingham, gravely: “Mr. Blake had no right to know that we had no room. It is too great a kindness. We can’t accept it, Leslie. I hope you told him so, my dear.”

  Leslie: “Yes, mamma. But he said he was going to lodge at one of the farm-houses in the neighborhood, and the room would be vacant if you didn’t take it. I couldn’t prevent his leaving the key.” Mrs. Bellingham: “That is all very well. But it doesn’t alter the case, as far as we are concerned. It is very good of Mr. Blake, but after what has occurred, it’s simply impossible. We can’t take it.” Mrs. Murray: “Occurred? Not take it? Of course we will take it, Marion! I certainly am astonished. The man will get a much better bed at the farmer’s than he’s accustomed to. You talk as if it were some act of self-sacrifice. I’ve no doubt he’s made the most of it. I’ve no doubt he’s given it an effect of heroism — or tried to. But that you should fall in with his vulgar conception of the affair, Marion, and Leslie should be affected to tears by his magnanimity, is a little too comical. One would think, really, that he had imperiled life and limb on our account. All this sentiment about a room on the third floor! Give the key to me, Marion.” She possesses herself of it from Mrs. Bellingham’s passive hand. “Leslie will wish to stay with you, so as to be near her young friends. I will occupy this vacant room.”

  II. “IN FAYRE FOREST.”

  I. TWO TRAMPS.

  UNDER the shelter of some pines near a lonely by-road, in the neighborhood of the Ponkwasset Hotel, lie two tramps asleep. One of them, having made his bed of the pine-boughs, has pillowed his head upon the bundle he carries by day; the other is stretched, face downward, on the thick brown carpet of pine-needles. The sun, which strikes through the thin screen of the trees upon the bodies of the two men, is high in the heavens. The rattle of wheels is heard from time to time on the remoter highway; the harsh clatter of a kingfisher, poising over the water, comes from the direction of the river near at hand. A squirrel descends the trunk of an oak near the pines under which the men lie, and at sight of them stops, barks harshly, and then, as one of them stirs in his sleep, whisks back into the top of the oak. It is the luxurious tramp on the pine-boughs who stirs, and who alertly opens his eyes and sits up in his bed, as if the noisy rush of the squirrel had startled him from his sleep.

  First Tramp, castin
g a malign glance at the top of the oak: “If I had a fair shot at you with this dub, my fine fellow, I’d break you of that trick of waking people before the bell rings in the morning, and I’d give ’em broiled squirrel for breakfast when they did get up.” He takes his bundle into his lap, and, tremulously untying it, reveals a motley heap of tatters; from these he searches out a flask, which he holds against the light, shakes at his ear, and inverts upon his lips. “Not a drop; not a square smell, even! I dreamt it” He lies down with a groan, and remains with his head pillowed in his hands. Presently he reaches for his stick, and again rising to a sitting posture strikes his sleeping comrade across the shoulders. “Get up!”

  Second Tramp, who speaks with a slight brogue, briskly springing to his feet, and rubbing his shoulders: “And what for, my strange bedfellow?”

  First Tramp: “For breakfast. What do people generally get up for in the morning?”

  Second Tramp: “Upon my soul, I’d as soon have had mine in bed; I’ve a day of leisure before me. And let me say a word to you, my friend: the next time you see a gentleman dreaming of one of the most elegant repasts in the world, and just waiting for his stew to cool, don’t you intrude upon him with that little stick of yours. I don’t care for a stroke or two in sport, but when I think of the meal I’ve lost, I could find it in my heart to break your head for you, you ugly brute. Have you got anything to eat there in your wardrobe?”

  First Tramp: “Not a crumb.”

  Second Tramp: “Or to drink?”

  First Tramp: “Not a drop.”

  Second Tramp: “Or to smoke?”

  First Tramp: “No.”

  Second Tramp: “Faith, you ‘re nearer a broken head than ever, me friend. Wake a man out of a dream of that sort!”

  First Tramp: “I’ve had enough of this. What do you intend to do?”

  Second Tramp: “I’m going to assume the character of an impostor, and pretend at the next farm-house that I haven’t had any breakfast, and haven’t any money to buy one. It’s a bare-faced deceit, I know, but” — looking down at his broken shoes and tattered clothes— “I flatter myself that I dress the part pretty well. To be sure, the women are not as ready to listen as they were once. The tramping-trade is overdone; there’s too many in it; the ladies can’t believe we ‘re all destitute; it don’t stand to reason.”