Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Murray: “How will you introduce him, and what will you say to people about his family and his station and business? Or do you mean to banish yourself and give up the world which you find so comfortable for the boon of a brother-in-law whom you don’t really know from Adam?” Bellingham: “Well, I must allow the force of your argument. “Yes,” — after a gloomy little reverie,—” you ‘re right. It won’t do. It is out of the question. I’ll put an end to it, — if it doesn’t put an end to me. That ‘weird seizure’ as of misappropriated mutton oppresses me again. Mother, I think you’d better go away, — you and aunt Kate, — and let me meet him and Leslie here alone, when they come in. Or, I say: if you could detach Les, and let him come in here by himself, somehow? I don’t suppose it can be done. Nothing seems disposed to let itself be done.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Charles,’ I’m sorry this disagreeable business should fall to you.”

  Bellingham:— “Oh, don’t mind it, mother.

  What’s a brother for, if he can’t be called upon to break off his sister’s love affairs? But I don’t deny it’s a nasty business.”

  Mrs. Murray, in retiring: “I sincerely hope he’ll make it so for you, and cure you of your absurdities.” —

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

  Bellingham: “O Parthian shaft! Wish me well out of it, mother!”

  Mrs. Bellingham, sighing: “I do, Charles; I do with all my heart. You have the most difficult duty that a gentleman ever had to perform. I don’t see how you ‘re to take hold of it; I don’t, indeed.”

  Bellingham: “Well, it is embarrassing. But it’s a noble cause, and I suppose Heaven will befriend me. The trouble is, don’t you know, I haven’t got any — any point of view, any tenable point of view. It won’t do to act simply in our own interest; we can’t do that, mother; we ‘re not the sort. I must try to do it in Blake’s behalf, and that’s what I don’t see my way to, exactly. What I wish to do is to make my interference a magnanimous benefaction to Blake, — something that he’ll recognize in after years with gratitude as a — a mysterious Providence. If I’ve got to be a snob, mother, I wish to he a snob on the highest possible grounds.”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Don’t use that word, Charles. It’s shocking.”

  Bellingham: “Well, I won’t, mother. I say: can’t you think of some disqualifications in Leslie, that I could make a point d’appui in a conscientious effort to serve Blake?”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “Charles!”

  Bellingham: “I mean, isn’t she rather a worldly, frivolous, fashionable spirit, devoted to pleasure, and incapable of sympathizing with — with his higher moods, don’t you know? Something like that?” Bellingham puts his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and inclines towards his mother with a hopeful smile.

  Mrs. Bellingham: “No, Charles; you know she is nothing of the kind. She’s a girl and she likes amusement, but I should like to see the man whose moods were too lofty for Leslie. She is everything that’s generous and true and high-minded.”

  Bellingham, scratching his head: “That’s bad! Then she isn’t — ah — she hasn’t any habits of extravagance that would unfit her to be the wife of a poor man who — ah — had his way to make in the world?”

  Mrs. Bellingham: “She never spends half her allowance on herself; and besides, Charles, (how ridiculously you talk!) she has all that money your uncle left her, and if she marries him, he won’t be poor any longer.”

  Bellingham, eagerly: “And that would ruin his career! Still” — after a moment’s thought— “I don’t see how I’m to use that idea, exactly. No, I shall have to fall back on the good old ground that it’s simply — out of the question. I think that’s good; it has a thorough, logical, and final sound. I shall stick to that. Well, leave me to my fate! — Hollo! That’s Blake’s voice, now. I don’t wonder it takes Leslie. It’s the most sympathetic voice in the world. They ‘re coming up here, aren’t they? You’d better go, mother. I wish you could have got Leslie away” —

  Leslie, without: “Wait for me, there. I must go to mamma’s room at once, and tell her everything.”

  Blake, without: “Of course. And say that I wish to see her.”

  Leslie: “Good-by.”

  Blake: “Good-by.”

  Leslie: “We won’t keep you long. Good-by.” Blake: “Good-by.” As he enters one of the parlor doors, flushed and radiant, Mrs. Bellingham retreats through the other.

  III. BLAKE AND BELLINGHAM.

  Bellingham, coming promptly forward to greet Blake, with both hands extended: “Blake!”

  Blake, after a moment of stupefaction: “Bellingham!”

  Bellingham: “My dear old fellow!” He wrings Blake fervently by the left hand. “This is the most astonishing thing in the world! To find you here — in New England — with my people; it’s the most wonderful thing that ever was! They’ve been — ah — been telling me all about you, my mother has; and I want to thank you — you look uncommonly well, Blake, and not a day older! Do you mean to go through life with that figure? — thank you for all you’ve done for them; and — I don’t know: what does a man say to a fellow who has behaved as you did in that business with the tramps?” — wringing Blake’s left hand again and gently touching his right arm in its sling. “By Jove, old fellow! I don’t know what to say, to you; I — Do you think it was quite the thing, though, not to intimate that you’d known me? Come, now; that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t frank. It wasn’t like you, Blake. Hey?” He affectionately presses Blake’s hand at every emphatic word.

  Blake, releasing himself: “I didn’t like it: but I couldn’t help it. It would have seemed to claim something, and I should have had to allow — they would have found out” —

  Bellingham: “That you happened to save my life, once. Well, upon my word, I don’t think it was a thing to be ashamed of; at least, at that time; I was in the army, then. At present — I don’t know that I should blame you for hushing the matter up.”

  Blake, who has turned uneasily away, and has apparently not been paying the closest attention to Bellingham’s reproaches, but now confronts him: “I suppose you’re a gentleman, Bellingham.”

  Bellingham, taking the abruptness of Blake’s question with amiable irony: “There have been moments in which I have flattered myself to that degree; even existence itself is problematical, to my mind, at other times: but — well, yes, I suppose I am a gentleman. The term’s conventional. And then?”

  Blake: “I mean that you ‘re a fair-minded, honest man, and that I can talk to you without the risk of being misunderstood or having any sort of meanness attributed to me?”

  Bellingham: “I should have to be a much shabbier fellow than I am, for anything of that sort, Blake.”

  Blake: “I didn’t expect to find you here; I was expecting to speak with your mother. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t say to you what I have to say. In fact, I think I can say it better to you.”

  Bellingham: “Thanks, Blake; you’ll always find me your — That is — well, go ahead!”

  Blake: “You don’t think I’m a man to do anything sneaking, do you?”

  Bellingham: “Again? My dear fellow, that goes without saying. It’s out of the question.”

  Blake, walking up and down, and stopping from time to time while he speaks in a tone of passionate self-restraint: “Well, I’m glad to hear that, because I know that to some the thing might have a different look.” After a pause, in which Blake takes another turn round the room and arrives in front of Bellingham again: “If your people have been telling you about me, I suppose they’ve hinted — but I don’t care to know it — that they think I’m in love with Miss Bellingham, your sister. I am!” He looks at Bellingham, who remains impassive behind the glitter of his eye-glasses: “Do you see any reason why I shouldn’t be?”

  Bellingham, reluctantly: “N-no.”

  Blake: “I believe — no, I can’t believe it! — but I know that Miss Bellingham permits it; that she — I c
an’t say it! Is there any — any reason why I shouldn’t ask her mother’s leave to ask her to be my wife? Why, of course, there is! — a thousand, million reasons in my unworthiness; I know that. But is there” —

  Bellingham, abruptly: “Blake, my dear fellow — my dear, good old boy — it won’t do; it’s out of the question! It is, it is indeed! It won’t do at all. Confound it, man! You know I like you, that I’ve always wanted to be a great deal more your friend than you would ever let me. Don’t ask me why, but take my word for it when I tell you it’s out of the question. There are a thousand reasons, as you say, though there isn’t one of them in any fault of yours, old fellow. But I can’t give them. It won’t do!” Bellingham in his turn begins to walk up and down the room with a face of acute misery and hopelessness, and at the last word he stops and stares helplessly into Blake’s eyes, who has remained in his place.

  Blake, with suppressed feeling: “Do you expect me to be satisfied with that answer?”

  Bellingham, at first confused and then with a burst of candor: “No; I wouldn’t, myself.” His head falls, and a groan breaks from his lips: “This is the roughest thing I ever knew of. Hang it, Blake, don’t you see what a — a — box I’m in? People pulling and hauling at me, and hammering away on all sides, till I don’t know which end I’m standing on! You wouldn’t like it yourself. Why do you ask? Why must you be — ah — satisfied? Come! Why don’t you let it all — go?”

  Blake: “Upon my word, Bellingham, you talk” —

  Bellingham: “Like a fool! I know it. And it’s strictly in character. At the present moment I feel like a fool. I am a fool! By Jove, if I ever supposed I should get into such a tight place as this! Why, don’t you see, Blake, what an extremely unfair advantage you have of me? Deuce take it, man, I have some rights in the matter, too, I fancy!”

  Blake, bewildered: “Bights? Advantage? I don’t understand all this.”

  Bellingham: “How not understand?”

  Blake, gazing in mystified silence at Bellingham for a brief space, and then resuming more steadily: “There’s some objection to me, that’s clear enough. I don’t make any claim, but you would think I ought to know what the matter is, wouldn’t you?”

  Bellingham: “Y-yes, Blake.”

  Blake: “I know that I’m ten years older than Miss Bellingham, and that it might look as if” — Bellingham, hastily: “Oh, not in the least — not in the least!”

  Blake: “Our acquaintance wasn’t regularly made, I believe. But you don’t suppose that I urged it, or that it would have been kept up if it hadn’t been for their kindness and for chances that nobody foresaw?”

  Bellingham: “There isn’t a circumstance of the whole affair that isn’t perfectly honorable to you, Blake; that isn’t like you. Confound it” —

  Blake: “I won’t ask you whether you think I thought of her being rich?”

  Bellingham: “No, sir! That would be offensive.”

  Blake: “Then what is it? Is there some personal objection to me with your family?”

  Bellingham: “There isn’t at all, Blake, I assure you.”

  Blake: “Then I don’t understand, and” — with rising spirit— “I want to say once for all that I 11 think your leaving me to ask these things and put myself on the defensive in this way, begging you for this reason and for that, isn’t what I’m used to. But I’m like a man on trial for his life, and I stand it. Now, go on and say what there is to say. Don’t spare my feelings, man! I have no pride where she is concerned. What do you know against me that makes it impossible?”

  Bellingham: “O Lord! It isn’t against you. It’s nothing personal; personally we’ve all reason to respect and honor you; you’ve done us nothing but good in the handsomest way. ‘ But it won’t do for all that. There’s an incompatibility — a — a — I don’t know what to call it! Confound it, Blake! You know very well that there’s none of that cursed nonsense about me. I don’t care what a man is in life; I only ask what he is in himself. I accept the American plan in good faith. I know all sorts of fellows; devilish good fellows some of them are, too! Why, I had that Mitchell, who behaved so well at the Squattick Mills disaster, to dine with me; went down and looked him up, and had him to dine with me.

  Some of the men didn’t think it was the thing; but I can assure you that he talked magnificently about the affair. I drew him out, and before we were done we had the whole room about us. I wouldn’t have missed it on any account. That’s my way.”

  Blake, dryly: “It’s a very magnanimous way. The man must have felt honored.”

  Bellingham: “What? — Oh, dence take it! I don’t mean any of that patronizing rot, you know I don’t. You know I think such a man as that ten times as good as myself. What I mean is that it’s different with women. They haven’t got the same — what shall I say? — horizons, social horizons, don’t you know. They can’t accept a man for what he is in himself. They have to take him for what he isn’t in himself. They have to have their world carried on upon the European plan, in short. I don’t know whether I make myself understood” —

  Blake, with hardness: “Yes, you do. The objection is to my having been” —

  Bellingham, hastily interposing: “Well — ah — no! I can’t admit that. It isn’t the occupation. We’ve all been occupied more or less remotely in — in some sort of thing; a man’s a fool who tries to blink that. But I don’t know that I can make it clear how our belonging, now, to a different order of things makes our women distrustful — I won’t say skeptical, but anxious — as to the influence of — ah — other social circumstances. They ‘re mere creatures of tradition, women are, and where you or I, Blake,” — with caressing good comradeship and the assumption of an impartial high-mindedness,—” wouldn’t care a straw for a man’s trade or profession, they are more disposed to — ah — particularize, and — don’t you know — distinguish!”

  Blake, gravely: “I tried to make Miss Bellingham understand from the first just what I was and had been. I certainly never concealed anything. Do you think she would care for what disturbs the other ladies of your family?”

  Bellingham: “Leslie? Well, she’s still a very young girl, and she has streaks of originality that rather disqualify her for appreciating — ah —

  She’s romantic! I’m sure I’m greatly obliged to you, Blake, for taking the thing in this reasonable way. You know how to sympathize with one’s extreme reluctance — and — ah — embarrassment in putting a case of the kind.”

  Blake, with a sad, musing tone: “Yes, God knows I’m sorry for you. I don’t suppose you like to do it.”

  Bellingham: “Thanks, thanks, Blake. It was quite as much on your own account that I spoke. They would make it deucedly uncomfortable for you in the family, — there’s no end to the aunts and grandmothers, and things, and you’d make them uncomfortable too, with your — history.” Mopping his forehead with his handkerchief: “You have it infernally hot, up here, don’t you?”

  Blake, still musingly: “Then you think that Miss Bellingham herself wouldn’t be seriously distressed?”

  Bellingham: “Leslie’s a girl that will go through anything she’s made up her mind to. And if she likes you well enough to marry you” —

  Blake: “She says so.”

  Bellingham: “Then burning plowshares wouldn’t have the smallest effect upon her. But” —

  Blake, quietly: “Then I won’t give her up.” Bellingham: “Eh?”

  Blake: “I won’t give her up. It’s bad enough as it is, but if I were such a sneak as to leave the woman who loved me because my marrying her would be awkward for her friends, I should be ten thousand times unworthier than I am. I am going to hold to my one chance of showing myself worthy to win her, and if she will have me I will have her, though it smashes the whole social structure. Bellingham, you ‘re mistaken about this thing her happiness won’t depend upon the success of the aunts and cousins in accounting for me to the world; it’ll depend upon whether I’m man enough to be all the wo
rld to her. If she thinks I am, I will be!”

  Bellingham: “Oh, don’t talk in that illogical way, Blake. Confound it! I know; I can account for your state of feeling, and all that; but I do assure you it’s mistaken. Let me put it to you. You don’t see this matter as I do; you can’t The best part of a woman’s life is social” —

  Blake: “I don’t believe that.”

  Bellingham: “Well, no matter: it’s so; and whether you came into Leslie’s world or took her out of it, you’d make no end of — of — row. She’d suffer in a thousand ways.”

  Blake: “Not if she loved me, and was the kind of girl I take her to be.”

  Bellingham: “Oh, yes, she would, my dear fellow; Leslie’s a devilish proud girl; she’d suffer in secret, but it would try her pride in ways you don’t know of. Why, only consider: she’s taken by surprise in this affair; she’s had no time to think” —

  Blake: “She shall have my whole lifetime to make up her mind in; she shall test me in every way she will, and she may fling me away at any moment she will, and I will be her slave forever. She may give me up, but I will not give her up.” Bellingham: “Well, well! We won’t dispute about terms, but I’ll put it to you, yourself, Blake, — yourself. I want you to see that I’m acting for your good; that I’m your friend.”

  Blake: “You ‘re her brother, and you ‘re my friend, whatever you say. I’ve borne to have you insinuate -that I’m your inferior. Go on!” Blake’s voice trembles.

  Bellingham: “Oh, now! Don’t take that tone! It isn’t fair. It makes me feel like — like the very devil. It does, indeed. I don’t mean anything of the kind. I mean ‘simply that — that — ah — remote circumstances over which you had — ah — no control have placed you at a disadvantage, — social disadvantage. That’s all. It isn’t a question of inferiority or superiority. And I merely put it to you — as a friend, mind — whether the happiness of — ah — all concerned couldn’t be more promptly — ah — secured by your refusing to submit to tests that might — Come now my dear fellow! She’s flattered — any woman might be — by your liking her; but when she went back to her own associations” —