Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Well, Leslie, I’m glad that you could agree upon so wise a course. This has all been a terribly perplexing and painful affair; and I have had my fears, my dear, that perhaps it had gone so far with you that” —

  Leslie, vehemently: “Why, so it had! I didn’t know I liked him so, but I do; and I give him up — I gave him up — because you all hate him, yes, all; and you shut your eyes, and won’t see how kind and brave and good he is; and I can’t hold out against you. Yes, he must go; but he takes my broken heart with him.”

  Mrs. Bellingham, sternly: “Leslie, this is absurd. You know yourself that he’s out of the question.”

  Leslie, flinging herself down and laying her head in her mother’s lap with a desolate cry: “O mamma, mamma, don’t speak so harshly to me, or I shall die. I know he’s out of the question; yes, yes, I do. But how? How, mamma? How is he out of the question? That’s what I can’t understand!” —

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Why, to begin with, we know nothing about him, Leslie.”

  Leslie, eagerly: “Oh yes, I do. He’s told me all about himself. He’s an inventor. He’s a genius. Yes, he knows everything, indeed he does; and in the war he was an engineer. If you could only hear him talk as I do” —

  Mrs. Bellingham: “I dare say. But even a civil engineer” —

  Leslie: “A civil engineer! I should hope not. I should be ashamed of a man who had been a civilian during the war. He always had this great taste for mechanics, and he studied the business of a machinist — I don’t know what it is, exactly; but he knows all about steam, and he can build a whole engine, himself; and he happened to be a private soldier going somewhere on a Mississippi gunboat when the engineer was killed, and he took charge of the engine at once, and was in the great battles with the boat afterwards. He’s a military engineer.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “He’s a steamboat engineer, Leslie.”

  Leslie: “He was an officer of the boat — an officer” ——

  Mrs. Bellingham, with a groan: “Oh, he wasn’t an officer of the sort you think; he had no military rank; he had the place of a clever artisan.” Leslie: “I don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “He looked after the machinery, and saw that the boiler didn’t burst, — I don’t know what. But you might as well marry a locomotive-driver, as far as profession goes.” Leslie, aghast: “Do you mean that when Mr. Blake was an engineer, he didn’t wear any coat, and had his sleeves rolled up, and went about with a stringy wad of oily cotton in his hand?”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Yes.”

  Leslie: “Oh!” She excludes the horrible vision by clasping both hands over her eyes.

  Mrs. Bellingham, very gravely: “Now listen to me, Leslie. You know that I am not like your aunt Kate, — that I never talk in that vulgar way about classes and stations, don’t you?”

  Leslie, still in a helpless daze: “Oh, yes, mamma. I’ve always been a great deal worse than you, myself.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: ““Well, my dear, then I hope that you will acquit me of anything low or snobbish in what I have to say. There is a fitness in all things, and I speak out of respect to that. It is simply impossible that a girl of your breeding and ideas and associations should marry a man of his. Recollect that no one belongs entirely to themselves. You are part of the circle in which you have always moved, and he is part of the circumstances of his life. Do you see?”

  Leslie: “Yes.” She lapses from a kneeling to a crouching posture, and resting one elbow on her mother’s knee poises her chin on her hand, and listens drearily.

  Mrs. Bellingham: “We may say that it is no matter what a man has been; that we are only concerned with what Mr. Blake is now. But the trouble is that every one of us is what they have been. If Mr. Blake’s early associations have been rude and his business coarse, you may be sure they have left their mark upon him, no matter how good he may be naturally. I think he is of a very high and sweet nature; he seems so” — Leslie: “Oh, he is, he is!”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “But he can’t outlive his own life. Isn’t that reasonable?”

  Leslie, hopelessly: “Yes, it seems so.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “You can’t safely marry any man whose history you despise. Marriage is a terrible thing, my dear; young girls can never understand how it searches out the heart and tries and tests in every way. You mustn’t have a husband whom you can imagine with a wad of greasy cotton in his hand. There will be wicked moments in which you will taunt and torment each other.” Leslie: “O mamma, mamma!”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Yes, it is so! The truest love can come to that. And in those moments it is better that all your past and present should be of the same level as his; for you wouldn’t hesitate to throw any scorn in his teeth; you would be mad, and you must not have deadly weapons within reach. I speak very plainly.”

  Leslie: “Terribly!”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “But that is the worst. There are a thousand lighter trials, which you must meet. Where would you live, if you married him? You have a fortune, and you might go to Europe” — Leslie: “I never would sneak away to Europe with him!”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “I should hope not. But if you remained at home, how would you introduce him to your friends? Invention isn’t a profession; would you tell them that he was a machinist or a steamboat engineer by trade? And if they found it out without your telling?”

  Leslie, evasively: “There are plenty of girls who marry men of genius, and it doesn’t matter what the men have done, — how humble they have been. If they ‘re geniuses” —

  Mrs. Bellingham: “O Leslie, such men have won all the honors and distinctions before they marry. Girls like you, my dear, don’t marry geniuses in their poverty and obscurity. Those men spend years and years of toil and study, and struggle through a thousand difficulties and privations, and set the world talking about them, before they can even be asked to meet the ordinary people of our set in society. “Wait till Mr. Blake has shown” —

  Leslie: “But he’d be an old man by that time, and then I shouldn’t want him. If I know now that he’s going to be great” —

  Mrs. Bellingham: “My dear, you know nothing whatever about him, except that his past life has been shabby and common.”

  Leslie, with sudden spirit: “Well, then, mamma, at least I don’t know anything horrid of him, as some girls must know of the young men they marry, — and the old men, too. Just think of Violet Emmons’s match with that count, there in Paris! And Aggy Lawson’s, with that dreadful old Mr.’ Lancaster, that everybody says has been so wicked! I’d rather marry Mr. Blake, a thousand times, if he had been a — I don’t know what!” —

  Mrs. Bellingham: “You have no right to take things at their worst, Leslie. Remember all the girls you know, and the accomplished men they have married in their own set; men who are quite their equals in goodness as well as station and wealth and breeding. That’s what I want you to do.” —

  Leslie: “Do you wish me to marry somebody I don’t like?”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Be fair, Leslie. I merely wish you to like somebody you ought to marry, — when the proper time comes. How do you know that Mr. Blake isn’t quite as bad as the count or Mr. Lancaster?”

  Leslie, with a burst of tears: “Oh, mamma, you just now said yourself that you believed he was good and sweet, and you have seen the beautiful delicacy he behaves towards women with. Well, well,” — she rises, and catches in her hand a long coil of her hair which has come loose from the mass, and stands holding it while she turns tragically toward her mother,—” let it all go. I will never marry at all, and then at least I can’t displease you. I give him up, and I hope it will make you happy, mamma.”

  Mrs. Bellingham, rising: “Leslie, is this the way you reward my anxiety and patience? I have reasoned with you as a woman of sense, and the return you make is to behave as a petulant child. I will never try to control you in such a matter as this, hut you know now what I think, and you can have your own way if you like it better or believe
it is wiser than mine. Oh, my poor child!” — clasping Leslie’s head between her hands and tenderly kissing the girl’s hair,— “don’t you suppose your mother’s heart aches for you? Marry him if you will, Leslie, and I shall always love you. I hope I may never have to pity you more than I do now. All that I ask of you, after all, is to make sure of yourself.”

  Leslie: “I will, mamma, I will. He must go; oh, yes, he must go! I see that it wouldn’t do. It would be too unequal, — I’m so far beneath him in everything but the things I ought to despise. No, I’m not his equal, and I never can he, and so I must not think of him any more. If he were rich, and had been brought up like me, and I were some poor girl with nothing but her love for him, he would never let the world outweigh her love, as I do his. Don’t praise me, mother; don’t thank me. It isn’t for you I do it; it isn’t for anything worthy, or true, or good; it’s because I’m a coward, and afraid of the opinions of people I despise. You’ve shown me what I am. I thought I was brave and strong; but I am weak and timid, and I shall never respect myself any more. Send him away; tell him what an abject creature I am! It will kill me to have him think meanly of me, but oh, it will be a thousand times better that he should have a right to scorn me now, than that I should ever come to despise myself for having been ashamed of him, when — when — That I couldn’t bear!” She drops into a chair near the table and lets fall her face into her hands upon it, sobbing.

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Leslie, Leslie! Be yourself! How strangely you act!”

  Leslie, lifting her face, to let it gleam a moment upon her mother before she drops it: “Oh, yes, I feel very strangely. But now I won’t distress you any more, mother,” lifting her face again and impetuously drying her eyes with her handkerchief; “I will be firm, now, and no one shall ever hear a murmur from me, — not a murmur. I think that’s due to you, mamma; you have been so patient with me. I’ve no right to grieve you by going on in this silly way, and I won’t. I will be firm, firm, firm!” She casts herself into her mother’s arms, and as she hangs upon her neck in a passion of grief, Mrs. Murray appears in the door-way, and in spite of Mrs. Bellingham’s gesticulated entreaties to retire, advances into the room.

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

  Mrs. Murray: “Why, what in the world does all this mean?”

  Leslie, raising her head and turning fiercely upon her: “It means that I’m now all you wish me to be, — quite your own ideal of ingratitude and selfishness, and I wish you joy of your success!” She vanishes stormily from the room and leaves Mrs. Murray planted.

  Mrs. Murray: “Has she dismissed him? Has she broken with him?”

  Mrs. Bellingham, coldly: “I think she meant you to understand that.”

  Mrs. Murray: “Very well, then, Charles can’t come a moment too soon. If things are at this pass, and Leslie’s in this mood, it’s the most dangerous moment of the whole affair. If she should meet him now, everything would be lost.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Don’t be troubled. She won’t meet him; he’s gone.”

  Mrs. Murray: “I shall believe that when I see him going. A man like that would never leave her, in the world, because she bade him, — and I should think, him a great fool if he did.”

  V. BLAKE’S SAVING DOUBT.

  I. LESLIE AND MAGGIE.

  Leslie: “But it’s all over, — it’s all over. I shall live it down; but it will make another girl of me, Maggie.” Along the road that winds near the nook where the encounter with the tramps took place, Leslie comes languidly pacing with her friend Maggie “Wallace, who listens, as they walk, with downcast eyes and an air of reverent devotion, to Leslie’s talk. Her voice trembles a little, and as they pause a moment Maggie draws Leslie’s head down upon her neck, from which the latter presently lifts it fiercely. “I don’t wish you to pity me, Maggie, for I don’t deserve any pity. I’m not suffering an atom more than I ought. It’s all my own fault. Mamma really left me quite free, and if I cared more for what people would say and think and look than I did for him, I’m rightfully punished, and I’m not going to whimper about it. I’ve thought it all out.”

  Maggie: “O Leslie, you always did think things out so clearly!”

  Leslie: “And I hope that I shall get my reward, and be an example. I hope I shall never marry at all, or else some horrid old thing I detest; it would serve me right and I should be glad of it!” Maggie: “Oh no, no! Don’t talk in that way, Leslie. Do come back with me to the house and lie down, or I’m sure you’ll be ill. You look perfectly worn out.”

  Leslie, drooping upon the fallen log where she had sat to sketch the birch forest: “Yes, I’m tired. I think I shall never be rested again. It’s the same place,” — looking wistfully round,—” and yet how strange it seems. You know we used to come here, and sit on this log and talk. What long, long talks! Oh me, it will never be again! How weird those birches look! Like ghosts. I wish I was one of them. Well, well! It’s all over. Don’t wait here, Maggie, dear. Go back to the house; I will come soon; you mustn’t let me keep you from Miss Roberts. Excuse me to her, and tell her I’ll go some other time. I can’t, now. Go, Maggie!”

  Maggie: “O Leslie; I hate to leave you here! After what’s happened, it seems such a dreadful place.”

  Leslie: “After what’s happened, it’s a sacred place, — the dearest place in the world to me. Come, Maggie, you mustn’t break your appointment. It was very good of you to come with me at all, and now you must go. Say that you left me behind a little way; that I’ll be there directly.”

  Maggie: “Leslie!”

  Leslie: “Maggie!” They embrace tenderly, and Maggie, looking back more than once, goes on her way, while Leslie sits staring absently at the birches. She remains in this dreary reverie till she is startled by a footfall in the road, when she rises in a sudden panic. Blake listlessly advances toward her; at the sight of her he halts, and they both stand silently regarding each other.

  II. LESLIE And BLAKE.

  Leslie: “Oh! You said you were going away.” Blake: “Are you in such haste to have me gone? I had to wait for the afternoon stage; I couldn’t walk. I thought I might keep faith with you by staying away from the house till it was time to start.” —

  Leslie, precipitately: “Do you call that keeping faith with me? Is leaving me all alone keeping — Oh, yes, yes, it is! You have done right. It’s I who can’t keep faith with myself. “Why did you come here? You knew I would be here! I didn’t think you could be guilty of such duplicity.” Blake: “I had no idea of finding you here, but if I had known you were here perhaps I couldn’t have kept away. The future doesn’t look very bright to me, Miss Bellingham. I had a crazy notion that perhaps I might somehow find something of the past here that I could make my own. I wanted to come and stand here, and think once more that it all really happened — that here I saw the pity in your face that made me so glad of my hurt.”

  Leslie: “No; stop! It wasn’t pity! It was nothing good or generous. It was mean regret that I should be under such an obligation to you; it was a selfish and despicable fear that you would have a claim upon my acquaintance which I must recognize.” Blake makes a gesture of protest and disbelief, and seems about to speak, but she hurries on: “You mustn’t go away with one good thought of me. Since we parted, three hours ago, I have learned to know myself as I never did before, and now I see what a contemptible thing I am. I flattered myself that I had begged you to go away because I didn’t like to cross the wishes of my family, but it wasn’t that. It was — oh, listen! and try if you can imagine such vileness: I’m so much afraid of the world I’ve always lived in, that no matter how good and brave and wise and noble you were, still if any one should laugh or sneer at you because you had been — what you have been — I should be ashamed of you. There! I’m so low and feeble a creature as that; and that’s the real reason why you must go and forget me; and I must not think and you must not think it’s from any good motive I send you away.”

  Blake: “I don’t believe
it!”

  Leslie: “What!”

  Blake: “I don’t believe what you say. Nothing shall rob me of my faith in you. Do you think that I’m not man enough to give up what I’ve no right to because it’s the treasure of the world? Do you think I can’t go till you make me believe that what I’d have sold my life for isn’t worth a straw? No! I’ll give up my hope, I’ll give up my love, — poor fool I was to let it live an instant! — but my faith in you is something dearer yet, and I’ll keep that till I die. Say what you will, you are still first among women to me: the most beautiful, the noblest, the best!”

  Leslie, gasping, and arresting him in a movement to turn away: “Wait, wait; don’t go! Speak; say it again! Say that you don’t believe it; that it isn’t true!”

  Blake: “No, I don’t believe it. No, it isn’t true. It’s abominably false!”

  Leslie, bursting into tears: “Oh yes, it is. It’s abominable, and it’s false. Yes, I will believe in myself again. I know that if I had cared for — any one, as — as you cared, as you said you cared for me, I could be as true to them as you would be through any fate. Oh, thank you, thank you!” At the tearful joy of the look she turns on him he starts toward her. “ Oh!” — she shrinks away—” you mustn’t think that I” —

  Blake: “I don’t think anything that doesn’t worship you!”

  Leslie: “Yes, but what I said sounds just like the other, when you misunderstood me so heartlessly.”