Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Cummings.— “Yes, — oh yes, certainly; certainly, very often, General Wyatt. But” — endeavouring to recover himself— “your name is known to us all, and honoured. I — I am glad to see you back; I — understood you were in Paris.”

  General Wyatt, with fierce defiance.— “I was in Paris three weeks ago.” Some moments of awkward silence ensue, during which General Wyatt does not relax his angry attitude.

  Cummings, finally.— “I am sorry my friend is not here to meet you. I ought to say, in justice to him, that his hasty temper does great wrong to his heart and judgment.”

  General Wyatt.— “Why, yes, sir; so does mine — so does mine.”

  Cummings, with a respectful smile lost upon the General.— “And I know that he will certainly be grieved in this instance to have yielded to it.”

  General Wyatt, with sudden meekness.— “I hope so, sir. But I am not altogether sorry that he has done it. I have not only an explanation but a request to make, — a very great and strange favour to ask, — and I am not sure that I should be able to treat him civilly enough throughout an entire interview to ask it properly.” Cummings listens with an air of attentive respect, but makes, to this strange statement, no response other than a look of question, while the General pokes about on the carpet at his feet with the point of his stick for a moment before he brings it resolutely down upon the floor with a thump, and resumes, fiercely again: “Sir, your friend is the victim of an extraordinary resemblance, which is so much more painful to us than we could have made it to him that I have to struggle with my reason to believe that the apology should not come from his side rather than mine. He may feel that we have outraged him, but every look of his, every movement, every tone of his voice, is a mortal wound, a deadly insult to us. He should not live, sir, in the same solar system!” The General deals the floor another stab with his cane, while his eyes burn vindictively upon the mild brown orbs of Cummings, wide open with astonishment. He falters, with returning consciousness of his attitude: “I — I beg your pardon, sir; I am ridiculous.” He closes his lips pathetically, and lets fall his head. When he lifts it again, it is to address Cummings with a singular gentleness: “I know that I speak to a gentleman.”

  Cummings.— “I try to be a good man.”

  General Wyatt.— “I had formed that idea of you, sir, in the pulpit. Will you do me the great kindness to answer a question, personal to myself, which I must ask?”

  Cummings.— “By all means.”

  General Wyatt.— “You spoke of supposing me still in Paris. Are you aware of any circumstances — painful circumstances — connected with my presence there? Pardon my asking; I wouldn’t press you if I could help.”

  Cummings, with reluctance.— “I had just heard something about — a letter from a friend” —

  General Wyatt, bitterly.— “The news has travelled fast. Well, sir, a curious chance — a pitiless caprice of destiny — connects your friend with that miserable story.” At Cummings’s look of amaze: “Through no fault of his, sir; through no fault of his. Sir, I shall not seem to obtrude my trouble unjustifiably upon you when I tell you how; you will see that it was necessary for me to speak. I am glad you already know something of the affair, and I am sure that you will regard what I have to say with the right feeling of a gentleman, — of, as you say, a good man.”

  Cummings.— “Whatever you think necessary to say to me shall be sacred. But I hope you won’t feel that it is necessary to say anything more. I am confident that when my friend has your assurance from me that what has happened is the result of a distressing association” —

  General Wyatt.— “I thank you, sir. But something more is due to him; how much more you shall judge. Something more is due to us: I wish to preserve the appearance of sanity, in his eyes and your own. Nevertheless” — the General’s tone and bearing perceptibly stiffen— “if you are reluctant” —

  Cummings, with reverent cordiality.— “General Wyatt, I shall feel deeply honoured by whatever confidence you repose in me. I need not say how dear your fame is to us all.” General Wyatt, visibly moved, bows to the young minister. “It was only on your account that I hesitated.”

  General Wyatt.— “Thanks. I understand. I will be explicit, but I will try to be brief. Your friend bears this striking, this painful resemblance to the man who has brought this blight upon us all; yes, sir,” — at Cummings’s look of deprecation,— “to a scoundrel whom I hardly know how to characterise aright — in the presence of a clergyman. Two years ago — doubtless your correspondent has written — my wife and daughter (they were then abroad without me) met him in Paris; and he won the poor child’s affection. My wife’s judgment was also swayed in his favour, — against her first impulse of distrust; but when I saw him, I could not endure him. Yet I was helpless: my girl’s happiness was bound up in him; all that I could do was to insist upon delay. He was an American, well related, unobjectionable by all the tests which society can apply, and I might have had to wait long for the proofs that an accident gave me against him. The man’s whole soul was rotten; at the time he had wound himself into my poor girl’s innocent heart, a woman was living who had the just and perhaps the legal claim of a wife upon him; he was a felon besides, — a felon shielded through pity for his friends by the man whose name he had forged; he was of course a liar and a coward: I beat him with my stick, sir. Ah! I made him confess his infamy under his own hand, and then” — the General advances defiantly upon Cummings, who unconsciously retires a pace— “and then I compelled him to break with my daughter. Do you think I did right?”

  Cummings.— “I don’t exactly understand.”

  General Wyatt.— “Why, sir, it happens often enough in this shabby world that a man gains a poor girl’s love, and then jilts her. I chose what I thought the less terrible sorrow for my child. I could not tell her how filthily unworthy he was without bringing to her pure heart a sense of intolerable contamination; I could not endure to speak of it even to my wife. It seemed better that they should both suffer such wrong as a broken engagement might bring them than that they should know what I knew. He was master of the part, and played it well; he showed himself to them simply a heartless scoundrel, and he remains in my power, an outcast now and a convict whenever I will. My story, as it seems to be, is well known in Paris; but the worst is unknown. I choose still that it shall be thought my girl was the victim of a dastardly slight, and I bear with her and her mother the insolent pity with which the world visits such sorrow.” He pauses, and then brokenly resumes: “The affair has not turned out as I hoped, in the little I could hope from it. My trust that the blow, which must sink so deeply into her heart, would touch her pride, and that this would help her to react against it, was mistaken. In such things it appears a woman has no pride; I did not know it; we men are different. The blow crushed her; that was all. Sometimes I am afraid that I must yet try the effect of the whole truth upon her; that I must try if the knowledge of all his baseness cannot restore to her the self-respect which the wrong done herself seems to have robbed her of. And yet I tremble lest the sense of his fouler shame — I may be fatally temporising; but in her present state, I dread any new shock for her; it may be death — I” — He pauses again, and sets his lips firmly; all at once he breaks into a sob. “I — I beg your pardon, sir.”

  Cummings.— “Don’t! You wrong yourself and me. I have seen Miss Wyatt; but I hope” —

  General Wyatt.— “You have seen her ghost. You have not seen the radiant creature that was once alive. Well, sir; enough of this. There is little left to trouble you with. We landed eight days ago, and I have since been looking about for some place in which my daughter could hide herself; I can’t otherwise suggest her morbid sensitiveness, her terror of people. This region was highly commended to me for its healthfulness; but I have come upon this house by chance. I understood that it was empty, and I thought it more than probable that we might pass the autumn months here unmolested by the presence of any one belonging to ou
r world, if not in entire seclusion. At the best, my daughter would hardly have been able to endure another change at once; so far as anything could give her pleasure, the beauty and the wild quiet of the region had pleased her, but she is now quite prostrated, sir,” —

  Cummings, definitively.— “My friend will go away at once. There is nothing else for it.”

  General Wyatt.— “That is too much to ask.”

  Cummings.— “I won’t conceal my belief that he will think so. But there can be no question with him when” —

  General Wyatt.— “When you tell him our story?” After a moment: “Yes, he has a right to know it — as the rest of the world knows it. You must tell him, sir.”

  Cummings, gently.— “No, he need know nothing beyond the fact of this resemblance to some one painfully associated with your past lives. He is a man whose real tenderness of heart would revolt from knowledge that could inflict further sorrow upon you.”

  General Wyatt.— “Sir, will you convey to this friend of yours an old man’s very humble apology, and sincere prayer for his forgiveness?”

  Cummings.— “He will not exact anything of that sort. The evidence of misunderstanding will be clear to him at a word from me.”

  General Wyatt.— “But he has a right to this explanation from my own lips, and — Sir, I am culpably weak. But now that I have missed seeing him here, I confess that I would willingly avoid meeting him. The mere sound of his voice, as I heard it before I saw him, in first coming upon you, was enough to madden me. Can you excuse my senseless dereliction to him?”

  Cummings.— “I will answer for him.”

  General Wyatt.— “Thanks. It seems monstrous that I should be asking and accepting these great favours. But you are doing a deed of charity to a helpless man utterly beggared in pride.” He chokes with emotion, and does not speak for a moment. “Your friend is also — he is not also — a clergyman?”

  Cummings, smiling.— “No. He is a painter.”

  General Wyatt.— “Is he a man of note? Successful in his profession?”

  Cummings.— “Not yet. But that is certain to come.”

  General Wyatt.— “He is poor?”

  Cummings.— “He is a young painter.”

  General Wyatt.— “Sir, excuse me. Had he planned to remain here some time yet?”

  Cummings, reluctantly.— “He has been sketching here. He had expected to stay through October.”

  General Wyatt.— “You make the sacrifice hard to accept — I beg your pardon! But I must accept it. I am bound hand and foot.”

  Cummings.— “I am sorry to have been obliged to tell you this.”

  General Wyatt.— “I obliged you, sir; I obliged you. Give me your advice, sir; you know your friend. What shall I do? I am not rich. I don’t belong to a branch of the government service in which people enrich themselves. But I have my pay; and if your friend could sell me the pictures he’s been painting here” —

  Cummings.— “That’s quite impossible. There is no form in which I could propose such a thing to a man of his generous pride.”

  General Wyatt.— “Well, then, sir, I must satisfy myself as I can to remain his debtor. Will you kindly undertake to tell him?”

  An Elderly Serving-Woman, who appears timidly and anxiously at the right-hand door.— “General Wyatt.”

  General Wyatt, with a start.— “Yes, Mary! Well?”

  Mary, in vanishing.— “Mrs. Wyatt wishes to speak with you.”

  General Wyatt, going up to Cummings.— “I must go, sir. I leave unsaid what I cannot even try to say.” He offers his hand.

  Cummings, grasping the proffered hand.— “Everything is understood.” But as Mr. Cummings returns from following General Wyatt to the door, his face does not confirm the entire security of his words. He looks anxious and perturbed, and when he has taken up his hat and stick, he stands pondering absent-mindedly. At last he puts on his hat and starts briskly toward the door. Before he reaches it, he encounters Bartlett, who advances abruptly into the room. “Oh! I was going to look for you.”

  VI.

  Cummings and Bartlett.

  Bartlett, sulkily.— “Were you?” He walks, without looking at Cummings, to where his painter’s paraphernalia are lying, and begins to pick them up.

  Cummings.— “Yes.” In great embarrassment: “Bartlett, General Wyatt has been here.”

  Bartlett, without looking round.— “Who is General Wyatt?”

  Cummings.— “I mean the gentleman who — whom you wouldn’t wait to see.”

  Bartlett.— “Um!” He has gathered the things into his arms, and is about to leave the room.

  Cummings, in great distress.— “Bartlett, Bartlett! Don’t go! I implore you, if you have any regard for me whatever, to hear what I have to say. It’s boyish, it’s cruel, it’s cowardly to behave as you’re doing!”

  Bartlett.— “Anything more, Mr. Cummings? I give you benefit of clergy.”

  Cummings.— “I take it — to denounce your proceeding as something that you’ll always be sorry for and ashamed of.”

  Bartlett.— “Oh! Then, if you have quite freed your mind, I think I may go.”

  Cummings.— “No, no! You mustn’t go. Don’t go, my dear fellow. Forgive me! I know how insulted you feel, but upon my soul it’s all a mistake, — it is, indeed. General Wyatt” — Bartlett falters a moment and stands as if irresolute whether to stay and listen or push on out of the room— “the young lady — I don’t know how to begin!”

  Bartlett, relenting a little.— “Well? I’m sorry for you, Cummings. I left a very awkward business to you, and it wasn’t yours either. As for General Wyatt, as he chooses to call himself” —

  Cummings, in amaze.— “Call himself? It’s his name!”

  Bartlett.— “Oh, very likely! So is King David his name, when he happens to be in a Scriptural craze. What explanation have you been commissioned to make me? What apology?”

  Cummings.— “The most definite, the most satisfactory. You resemble in a most extraordinary manner a man who has inflicted an abominable wrong upon these people, a treacherous and cowardly villain” —

  Bartlett, in a burst of fury.— “Stop! Is that your idea of an apology, an explanation? Isn’t it enough that I should be threatened, and vilified, and have people fainting at the sight of me, but I must be told by way of reparation that it all happens because I look like a rascal?”

  Cummings.— “My dear friend! Do listen to me!”

  Bartlett.— “No, sir, I won’t listen to you! I’ve listened too much! What right, I should like to know, have they to find this resemblance in me? And do they suppose that I’m going to be placated by being told that they treat me like a rogue because I look like one? It is a little too much. A man calls ‘Stop thief’ after me and expects me to be delighted when he tells me I look like a thief! The reparation is an additional insult. I don’t choose to know that they fancy this infamous resemblance in me. Their pretending it is an outrage; and your reporting it to me is an offence. Will you tell them what I say? Will you tell this General Wyatt and the rest of his Bedlam-broke-loose, that they may all go to the” —

  Cummings.— “For shame, for shame! You outrage a terrible sorrow! You insult a trouble sore to death! You trample upon, an anguish that should be sacred to your tears!”

  Bartlett, resting his elbow on the corner of the piano.— “What — what do you mean, Cummings?”

  Cummings.— “What do I mean? What you are not worthy to know! I mean that these people, against whom you vent your stupid rage, are worthy of angelic pity. I mean that by some disastrous mischance you resemble to the life, in tone, manner, and feature, the wretch who won that poor girl’s heart, and then crushed it; who — Bartlett, look here! These are the people — this is the young lady — of whom my friend wrote me from Paris: do you understand?”

  Bartlett, in a dull bewilderment.— “No, I don’t understand.”

  Cummings.— “Why, you know what we were talking of
just before they came in: you know what I told you of that cruel business.”

  Bartlett.— “Well?”

  Cummings.— “Well, this is the young lady” —

  Bartlett, dauntedly.— “Oh, come now! You don’t expect me to believe that! It isn’t a stage-play.”

  Cummings.— “Indeed, indeed, I tell you the miserable truth.”

  Bartlett.— “Do you mean to say that this is the young girl who was jilted in that way? Who — Do you mean — Do you intend to tell me — Do you suppose — Cummings” —

  Cummings.— “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Bartlett.— “Why, man, she’s in Paris, according to your own showing!”

  Cummings.— “She was in Paris three weeks ago. They have just brought her home, to help her hide her suffering, as if it were her shame, from all who know it. They are in this house by chance, but they are here. I mean what I say. You must believe it, shocking and wild as it is.”

  Bartlett, after a prolonged silence in which he seems trying to realise the fact.— “If you were a man capable of such a ghastly joke — but that’s impossible.” He is silent again, as before. “And I — What did you say about me? That I look like a man who” — He stops and stares into Cummings’s face without speaking, as if he were trying to puzzle the mystery out; then, with fallen head, he muses in a voice of devout and reverent tenderness: “That — that — broken — lily! Oh!” With a sudden start he flings his burden upon the closed piano, whose hidden strings hum with the blow, and advances upon Cummings: “And you can tell it? Shame on you! It ought to be known to no one upon earth! And you — you show that gentle creature’s death-wound to teach something like human reason to a surly dog like me? Oh, it’s monstrous! I wasn’t worth it. Better have let me go, where I would, how I would. What did it matter what I thought or said? And I — I look like that devil, do I? I have his voice, his face, his movement? Cummings, you’ve over-avenged yourself.”

  Cummings.— “Don’t take it that way, Bartlett. It is hideous. But I didn’t make it so, nor you. It’s a fatality, it’s a hateful chance. But you see now, don’t you, Bartlett, how the sight of you must affect them, and how anxious her father must be to avoid you? He most humbly asked your forgiveness, and he hardly knew how to ask that you would not let her see you again. But I told him there could be no question with you; that of course you would prevent it, and at once. I know it’s a great sacrifice to expect you to go” —