Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Bemis, coming forward, jovially: “Well, now, I gladly forgive you both — or whoever did rob me — if you’ll only give me back my watch.”

  Willis: “I haven’t got your watch.”

  Lawton: “Nor I.”

  Roberts, rather faintly, and coming reluctantly forward: “I — I have it, Mr. Bemis.” He produces it from one waistcoat-pocket and hands it to Bemis. Then, visiting the other: “And what’s worse, I have my own. I don’t know how I can ever explain it, or atone to you for my extraordinary behavior. Willis thought you might finally see it as a joke, and I’ve done my best to pass it off lightly—” —

  Willis: “And you succeeded. You had all the lightness of a sick hippopotamus.”

  Roberts: “I’m afraid so. I’ll have the chain mended, of course. But when I went out this evening I left my watch on my dressing-table, and when you struck against me in the Common I missed it, and supposed I had been robbed, and I ran after you and took yours—”

  Willis: “Being a man of the most violent temper and the most desperate courage—”

  Roberts: “But I hope, my dear sir, that I didn’t hurt you seriously?”

  Remis: “Not at all — not the least.” Shaking him cordially by both hands: “I’m all right. Mrs. Roberts has healed all my wounds with her skilful needle; I’ve got on one of your best neckties, and this lace handkerchief of your wife’s, which I’m going to keep for a souvenir of the most extraordinary adventure of my life—”

  Lawton: “Oh, it’s an old newspaper story, Bemis, I tell you.”

  Willis: “Well, Aunt Mary, I wish Agnes were here now to see Roberts in his character of moral hero. He ‘done’ it with his little hatchet, but he waited to make sure that Bushrod was all right before he owned up.”

  Mrs. Roberts, appearing: “Who, Willis?”

  Willis: “A very great and good man — George Washington.”

  Mrs. Roberts: “I thought you meant Edward.”

  Willis: “Well, I don’t suppose there is much difference.”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “The robber has been caught, Agnes.”

  Mrs. Roberts: “Caught? Nonsense! You don’t mean it! How can you trifle with such a subject? I know you are joking! Who is it?”

  Young Bemis: “You never could guess—”

  Mrs. Bemis: “Never in the world!”

  Mrs. Roberts: “I don’t wish to. But oh, Mr. Bemis, I’ve just come from my own children, and you must be merciful to his family!”

  Bemis: “For your sake, dear lady, I will.” Bella, between the portières: “Dinner is ready, Mrs. Roberts.”

  Mrs. Roberts, passing her hand through Mr. Bemis’s arm: “Oh, then you must go in with me, and tell me all about it.”

  FIVE O’CLOCK TEA

  “‘WILL YOU ANSWER MY QUESTION, AMY?’”

  I. MRS. SOMERS; MR. WILLIS CAMPBELL

  MRS. Amy Somers, in a lightly floating tea-gown of singularly becoming texture and color, employs the last moments of expectance before the arrival of her guests in marching up and down in front of the mirror which fills the space between the long windows of her drawing-room, looking over either shoulder for different effects of the drifting and eddying train, and advancing upon her image with certain little bobs and bows, and retreating from it with a variety of fan practice and elaborated courtesies, finally degenerating into burlesque, and a series of grimaces and “mouths” made at the responsive reflex. In the fascination of this amusement she is first ignorant, and then aware, of the presence of Mr. Willis Campbell, who on the landing space between the drawing-room and the library stands, hat in hand, in the pleased contemplation of Mrs. Somers’s manœuvres and contortions as the mirror reports them to him. Mrs. Somers does not permit herself the slightest start on seeing him in the glass, but turns deliberately away, having taken time to prepare the air of gratification and surprise with which she greets him at half the length of the drawing-room.

  Mrs. Somers, giving her hand: “Why, Mr. Campbell! How very nice of you! How long have you been prowling about there on the landing? So stupid of them not to have turned up the gas!”

  Campbell: “I wasn’t much incommoded. That sort of pitch-darkness is rather becoming to my style of beauty, I find. The only objection was that I couldn’t see you.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Do you often make those pretty speeches?”

  Campbell: “When I can found them on fact.”

  Mrs. Somers: “What can I say back? Oh! That I’m sorry I couldn’t have met you when you were looking your best.”

  Campbell: “Um! Do you think you could have borne it? We might go out there.”

  Mrs. Somers: “On second thoughts, no. I shall ring to have them turn up the gas.”

  Campbell: “No; let me.” He prevents her ringing, and going out into the space between the library and drawing-room, stands with his hand on the key of the gas-burner. “Now how do I look?”

  Mrs. Somers: “Beautiful.”

  Campbell, turning up the gas: “And now?”

  Mrs. Somers: “Not half so well. Decidedly pitch-darkness is becoming to you. Better turn it down again.”

  Campbell, rejoining her in the drawing-room: “No; it isn’t so becoming to you; and I’m not envious, whatever I am.”

  Mrs. Somers: “You are generosity itself.”

  Campbell: “If you come to phrases, I prefer magnanimity.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Well, say magnanimity. Won’t you sit down — while you have the opportunity?” She sinks upon the sofa, and indicates with her fan an easy-chair at one end of it.

  Campbell, dropping into it: “Are there going to be so many?”

  Mrs. Somers: “You never can tell about five o’clock tea. There mayn’t be more than half a dozen; there may be thirty or forty. But I wished to affect your imagination.”

  Campbell: “You had better have tried it in some other kind of weather. It’s snowing like—”

  Mrs. Somers, running to the window, and peeping out through the side of the curtain: “It is! like — cats and dogs!”

  Campbell: “Oh no! You can’t say that! It only rains that way. I was going to say it myself, but I stopped in time.”

  Mrs. Somers, standing before the window with clasped hands: “No matter! There will simply be nobody but bores. They come in any sort of weather.”

  Campbell: “Thank you, Mrs. Somers. I’m glad I ventured out.”

  Mrs. Somers, turning about: “What?” Then realizing the situation: “Oh, poor Mr. Campbell!”

  Campbell: “Oh, don’t mind me! I can stand it if you can. I belong to a sex, thank you, that doesn’t pretend to have any tact. I would just as soon tell a man he was a bore as not. But I thought it might worry a lady, perhaps.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Worry? I’m simply aghast at it. Did you ever hear of anything worse?”

  Campbell: “Well, not much worse.”

  Mrs. Somers: “What can I do to make you forget it?”

  Campbell: “I can’t think of anything. It seems to me that I shall always remember it as the most fortunate speech a lady ever made to me — and they have said some flattering things to me in my time.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Oh, don’t be entirely heartless. Wouldn’t a cup of tea blot it out? With a Peak & Frean?” She advances beseechingly upon him. “Come, I will give you a cup at once.”

  Campbell: “No, thank you; I would rather have it with the rest of the bores. They’ll be sure to come.”

  Mrs. Somers, resuming her seat on the sofa: “You are implacable. And I thought you said you were generous.”

  Campbell: “No; merely magnanimous. I can’t forget your cruel frankness; but I know you can, and I ask you to do it.” He throws himself back in his chair with a sigh. “And who knows? Perhaps you were right.”

  Mrs. Somers: “About what?”

  Campbell: “My being a bore.”

  Mrs. Somers: “I should think you would know.”

  Campbell: “No; that’s the difficulty. Nobody would be a bore if he knew it.”
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  Mrs. Somers: “Oh, some would, I think.”

  Campbell: “Do you mean me?”

  Mrs. Somers: “Well, no, then. I don’t believe you would be a bore, if you knew it. Is that enough? or do you expect me to say something more?”

  Campbell: “No, it’s quite enough, thank you.” He remains pensively silent.

  Mrs. Somers, after waiting for him to speak: “Bores for bores, don’t you hate the silent ones most?”

  Campbell, desperately rousing himself: “Mrs. Somers, if you only knew how disagreeable I was going to make myself just before I concluded to hold my tongue!”

  Mrs. Somers: “Really? What were you going to say?”

  Campbell: “Do you actually wish to know?”

  Mrs. Somers: “Oh no; I only thought you wished to tell.”

  Campbell: “Not at all. You complained of my being silent.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Did I? I was wrong. I will never do so again.” She laughs in her fan.

  Campbell: “And I complain of your delay. You can tell me now, just as well as two weeks hence, whether you love me enough to marry me or not.”

  Mrs. Somers: “You promised not to recur to that subject without some hint from me. You have broken your promise.”

  Campbell: “Well, you wouldn’t give me any hint.”

  Mrs. Somers: “How can I believe you care for me if you are false in this?”

  Campbell: “It seems to me that my falsehood is another proof of my affection.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Very well, then; you can wait till I know my mind.”

  Campbell: “I’d rather know your heart. But I’ll wait.” After a pause: “Why do you carry a fan on a day like this? I ask, to make general conversation.”

  Mrs. Somers, spreading the fan in her lap, and looking at it curiously: “I don’t know.” After a moment: “Oh yes; for the same reason that I shall have ice-cream after dinner to-day.”

  Campbell: “That’s no reason at all.” After a moment: “Are you going to have ice-cream to-day after dinner?”

  Mrs. Somers: “I might. If I had company.”

  Campbell: “Oh, I couldn’t stay after hinting. I’m too proud for that.” He pulls his chair nearer and joins her in examining the fan in her lap. “What is so very strange about your fan?”

  Mrs. Somers: “Nothing. I was just seeing how a fan looked that was the subject of gratuitous criticism.”

  Campbell: “I didn’t criticise the fan.” He regards it studiously.

  Mrs. Somers: “Oh! Not the fan?”

  Campbell: “No; I think it’s extremely pretty. I like big fans.”

  Mrs. Somers: “So good of you! It’s Spanish. That’s why it’s so large.”

  Campbell: “It’s hand-painted, too.”

  Mrs. Somers, leaning back, and leaving him to the inspection of the fan: “You’re a connoisseur, Mr. Campbell.”

  Campbell: “Oh, I can tell hand-painting from machine-painting when I see it. ’Tisn’t so good.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Thank you.”

  Campbell: “Not at all. Now, that fellow — cavalier, I suppose, in Spain — making love in that attitude, you can see at a glance that he’s hand-painted. No machine-painted cavalier would do it in that way. And look at the lady’s hand. Who ever saw a hand of that size before?”

  Mrs. Somers, unclasping the hands which she had folded at her waist, and putting one of them out to take up the fan: “You said you were not criticising the fan.”

  Campbell, quickly seizing the hand, with the fan in it: “Ah, I’m wrong! Here’s another one no bigger. Let me see which is the largest.”

  Mrs. Somers, struggling not very violently to free her hand: “Mr. Campbell!”

  Campbell: “Don’t take it away! You must listen to me now, Amy.”

  Mrs. Somers, rising abruptly, and dropping her fan as she comes forward to meet an elderly gentleman arriving from the landing: “Mr. Bemis! How very heroic of you to come such a day! Isn’t it too bad?”

  II. MR. BEMIS; MRS. SOMERS; MR. WILLIS CAMPBELL

  Bemis: “Not if it makes me specially welcome, Mrs. Somers.” Discovering Campbell: “Oh, Mr. Campbell!”

  Campbell, striving for his self-possession as they shake hands: “Yes, another hero, Mr. Bemis. Mrs. Somers is going to brevet everybody who comes to-day. She didn’t say heroes to me, but—”

  Mrs. Somers: “You shall have your tea at once, Mr. Bemis.” She rings. “I was making Mr. Campbell wait for his. You don’t order up the teapot for one hero.”

  Bemis: “Ha, ha, ha! No, indeed! But I’m very glad you do for two. The fact is” — rubbing his hands— “I’m half frozen.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Is it so very cold?” To Campbell, who presents her fan with a bow: “Oh, thank you.” To Mr. Bemis: “Mr. Campbell has just been objecting to my fan. He doesn’t like its being hand-painted, as he calls it.”

  Bemis: “That reminds me of a California gentleman whom I found looking at an Andrea del Sarto in the Pitti Palace at Florence one day — by-the-way, you’ve been a Californian too, Mr. Campbell; but you won’t mind. He seemed to be puzzled over it, and then he said to me — I was standing near him— ‘Hand-painted, I presume?’”

  Mrs. Somers: “Ah! ha, ha, ha! How very good!” To the maid, who appears: “The tea, Lizzie.”

  Campbell: “You don’t think he was joking?”

  Bemis, with misgiving: “Why, no, it never occurred to me that he was.”

  Campbell: “You can’t always tell when a Californian’s joking.”

  Mrs. Somers, with insinuation: “Can’t you? Not even adoptive ones?”

  Campbell: “Adoptive ones never joke.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Not even about hand-painted fans? What an interesting fact!” She sits down on the sofa behind the little table on which the maid arranges the tea, and pours out a cup. Then, with her eyes on Mr. Bemis: “Cream and sugar both? Yes?” Holding a cube of sugar in the tongs: “How many?”

  Bemis: “One, please.”

  Mrs. Somers, handing it to him: “I’m so glad you take your tea au naturel, as I call it.”

  Campbell: “What do you call it when they don’t take it with cream and sugar?”

  Mrs. Somers: “Au unnaturel. There’s only one thing worse: taking it with a slice of lemon in it. You might as well draw it from a bothersome samovar at once, and be done with it.”

  Campbell: “The samovar is picturesque.”

  Mrs. Somers: “It is insincere. Like Californians. Natives.”

  Campbell: “Well, I can think of something much worse than tea with lemon in it.”

  Mrs. Somers: “What?”

  Campbell: “No tea at all.”

  Mrs. Somers, recollecting herself: “Oh, poor Mr. Campbell! Two lumps?”

  Campbell: “One, thank you. Your pity is so sweet!”

  Mrs. Somers: “You ought to have thought of the milk of human kindness, and spared my cream-jug too.”

  Campbell: “You didn’t pour out your compassion soon enough.”

  Bemis, who has been sipping his tea in silent admiration: “Are you often able to keep it up in that way? I was fancying myself at the theatre.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Oh, don’t encore us! Mr. Campbell would keep saying his things over indefinitely.”

  Campbell, presenting his cup: “Another lump. It’s turned bitter. Two!”

  Bemis: “Ha, ha, ha! Very good — very good indeed!”

  Campbell: “Thank you kindly, Mr. Bemis.”

  Mrs. Somers, greeting the new arrivals, and leaning forward to shake hands with them as they come up, without rising: “Mrs. Roberts! How very good of you! And Mr. Roberts!”

  III. MR. and MRS. ROBERTS and the OTHERS

  Roberts: “Not at all.”

  Mrs. Roberts: “Of course we were coming.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Will you have some tea? You see I’m installed already. Mr. Campbell was so greedy he wouldn’t wait.”

  Campbell: “Mr. Bemis and I are here in the character of heroes, an
d we had to have our tea at once. You’re a hero too, Roberts, though you don’t look it. Any one who comes to tea in such weather is a hero, or a—”

  Mrs. Somers, interrupting him with a little shriek: “Ugh! How hot that handle’s getting!”

  Campbell: “Ah, I dare say. Let me turn out my sister’s cup.” Pouring out the tea and handing it to Mrs. Roberts. “I don’t see how you could reconcile it to your No. Eleven conscience to leave your children in such a snow-storm as this, Agnes.”

  Mrs. Roberts, in vague alarm: “Why, what in the world could happen to them, Willis?”

  Campbell: “Oh, nothing to them. But suppose Roberts got snowed under. Have some tea, Roberts?” He offers to pour out a cup.

  Mrs. Somers, dispossessing him of the teapot with dignity: “Thank you, Mr. Campbell; I will pour out the tea.”

  Campbell: “Oh, very well. I thought the handle was hot.”

  Mrs. Somers: “It’s cooler now.”

  Campbell: “And you won’t let me help you?”

  Mrs. Somers: “When there are more people you may hand the tea.”

  Campbell: “I wish I knew just how much that meant.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Very little. As little as an adoptive Californian in his most earnest mood.” While they talk — Campbell bending over the teapot, on which Mrs. Somers keeps her hand — the others form a little group apart.

  Bemis, to Mrs. Roberts: “I hope Mr. Roberts’s distinguished friend won’t give us the slip on account of the storm.”

  Roberts: “Oh no; he’ll be sure to come. He may be late. But he’s the most amiable of Englishmen, and I know he won’t disappoint Mrs. Somers.”

  Bemis: “The most unamiable of Englishmen couldn’t do that.”

  Roberts: “Ah, I don’t know. Did you meet Mr. Pogis?”

  Bemis: “No; what did he do?”

  Roberts: “Why, he came — to the Hibbens’s dinner — in a sack coat.”

  Mrs. Roberts: “I thought it was a Cardigan jacket.”

  Bemis: “I heard a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers.”

  Mrs. Somers: “Ah, there is Mrs. Curwen!” To Campbell, aside: “And without her husband!”