Campbell: “That’s something I can’t help. It’s no merit. Well, hand over the letter.”
Mrs. Campbell: “I should have thought you’d insist on my opening it, after that.”
Campbell: “Why?”
Mrs. Campbell: “To show your confidence.”
Campbell: “When I haven’t got any?”
Mrs. Campbell, tearing the note open: “Well, it’s no use trying any sentiment with you, or any generosity either. You’re always just the same; a teasing joke is your ideal. You can’t imagine a woman’s wanting to keep up a little romance all through; and a character like Mr. Welling’s, who’s all chivalry and delicacy and deference, is quite beyond you. That’s the reason you’re always sneering at him.”
Campbell: “I’m not sneering at him, my dear. I’m only afraid Miss Rice isn’t good enough for him.”
Mrs. Campbell, instantly placated: “Well, she’s the only girl who’s anywhere near it. I don’t say she’s faultless, but she has a great deal of character, and she’s very practical; just the counterpart of his dreaminess; and she is very, very good-looking, don’t you think?”
Campbell: “Her bang isn’t so nice as his.”
Mrs. Campbell: “No; and aren’t his eyes beautiful? And that high, serious look! And his nose and chin are perfectly divine. He looks like a young god!”
Campbell: “I dare say; though I never saw an old one. Well, is he coming? I’m not jealous, but I’m impatient. Read it out loud.”
Mrs. Campbell, sinking back in her chair for the more luxurious perusal of the note: “Indeed I shall not.” She opens it and runs it hastily through, with various little starts, stares, frowns, smiles of arrested development, laughs, and cries: “Why — why! What does it mean? Is he crazy? Why, there’s some mistake. No! It’s his hand — and here’s his name. I can’t make it out.” She reads it again and again. “Why, it’s perfectly bewildering! Why, there must be some mistake. He couldn’t have meant it. Could he have imagined? Could he have dared? There never has been the slightest thing that could be tortured into — But of course not. And Mr. Welling, of all men! Oh, I can’t understand it! Oh, Willis, Willis, Willis! What does it mean?” She flings the note wildly across the table, and catching her handkerchief to her face, falls back into her chair, tumultuously sobbing.
Campbell, with the calm of a man accustomed to emotional superabundance, lifting the note from the toast-rack before him: “Well, let’s see.” He reads aloud: “‘Oh, my darling! How can I live till I see you? I will be there long before the hour! To think of your asking me! You should have said, “I permit you to come,” and I would have flown from the ends of the earth. The presence of others will be nothing. It will be sweet to ignore them in my heart, and while I see you moving among them, and looking after their pleasure with that beautiful thoughtfulness of yours, to think, “She is mine, mine, mine!”
“Oh, young lord lover, what sighs are those For one that can never be thine?”
I thank you, and thank you a thousand times over, for this proof of your trust in me, and of your love — our love. You shall be the sole keeper of our secret — it is so sweet to think that no one even suspects it! — and it shall live with you, and if you will, it shall die with me. Forever yours, Arthur Welling.’” Campbell turns the note over, and picking up the envelope, examines the address. “Well, upon my word! It’s to you, Amy — on the outside, anyway. What do you suppose he means?”
Mrs. Campbell, in her handkerchief: “Oh, I don’t know; I don’t know why he should address such language to me!”
Campbell, recurring to the letter: “I never did. ‘Oh, my darling — live till I see you — ends of the earth — others will be nothing — beautiful thoughtfulness — mine, mine, mine — our love — sweet to think no one suspects it — forever yours.’ Amy, these are pretty strong expressions to use towards the wife of another, and she a married lady! I think I had better go and solve that little problem of how he can live till he sees you by relieving him of the necessity. It would be disagreeable to him, but perhaps there’s a social duty involved.”
Mrs. Campbell: “Oh, Willis, don’t torment me! What do you suppose it means? Is it some — mistake? It’s for somebody else!”
Campbell: “I don’t see why he should have addressed it to you, then.”
Mrs. Campbell: “But don’t you see? He’s been writing to some other person at the same time, and he’s got the answers mixed — put them in the wrong envelopes. Oh dear! I wonder who she is!”
Campbell, studying her with an air of affected abstraction: “Her curiosity gets the better of her anguish. Look here, Amy! I believe you’re afraid it’s to some one else.”
Mrs. Campbell: “Willis!”
Campbell: “Yes. And before we proceed any further I must know just what you wrote to this — this Mr. Welling of yours. Did you put on R.S.V.P.?”
Mrs. Campbell: “Yes; and just a printed card like all the rest. I did want to write him a note in the first person, and urge him to come, because I expected Miss Rice and Miss Greenway to help me receive; but when I found Margaret had promised Mrs. Curwen for the next day, I knew she wouldn’t like to take the bloom off that by helping me first; so I didn’t.”
Campbell: “Didn’t what?”
Mrs. Campbell: “Write to him. I just sent a card.”
Campbell: “Then these passionate expressions are unprovoked, and my duty is clear. I must lose no time in destroying Mr. Welling. Do you happen to know where I laid my revolver?”
Mrs. Campbell: “Oh, Willis, what are you going to do? You see it’s a mistake.”
Campbell: “Mr. Welling has got to prove that. I’m not going to have young men addressing my wife as Oh their darling, without knowing the reason why. It’s a liberty.”
Mrs. Campbell, inclined to laugh: “Ah, Willis, how funny you are!”
Campbell: “Funny? I’m furious.”
Mrs. Campbell: “You know you’re not. Give me the letter, dearest. I know it’s for Margaret Rice, and I shall see her, and just feel round and find out if it isn’t so, and—”
Campbell: “What an idea! You haven’t the slightest evidence that it’s for Miss Rice, or that it isn’t intended for you, and it’s my duty to find out. And nobody is authority but Mr. Welling. And I’m going to him with the corpus delicti.”
Mrs. Campbell: “But how can you? Remember how sensitive, how shrinking he is. Don’t, Willis; you mustn’t. It will kill him!”
Campbell: “Well, that may save me considerable bother. If he will simply die of himself, I can’t ask anything better.” He goes on eating his breakfast.
Mrs. Campbell, admiring him across the table: “Oh, Willis, how perfectly delightful you are!”
Campbell: “I know; but why?”
Mrs. Campbell: “Why, taking it in the nice, sensible way you do. Now, some husbands would be so stupid! Of course you couldn’t think — you couldn’t dream — that the letter was really for me; and yet you might behave very disagreeably, and make me very unhappy, if you were not just the lovely, kind-hearted, magnanimous—”
Campbell, looking up from his coffee: “Oh, hello!”
Mrs. Campbell: “Yes; that is what took my fancy in you, Willis: that generosity, that real gentleness, in spite of the brusque way you have. Refinement of the heart, I call it.”
Campbell: “Amy, what are you after?”
Mrs. Campbell: “We’ve been married a whole year now—”
Campbell: “Longer, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Campbell: “ — And I haven’t known you do an unkind thing, a brutal thing.”
Campbell: “Well, I understand the banging around hardly ever begins much under two years.”
Mrs. Campbell: “How sweet you are! And you’re so funny always!”
Campbell: “Come, come, Amy; get down to business. What is it you do want?”
Mrs. Campbell: “You won’t go and tease that poor boy about his letter, will you? Just hand it to him, and say you suppose h
ere is something that has come into your possession by mistake, and that you wish to restore it to him, and then — just run off.”
Campbell: “With my parasol in one hand, and my skirts caught up in the other?”
Mrs. Campbell: “Oh, how good! Of course I was imagining how I should do it.”
Campbell: “Well, a man can’t do it that way. He would look silly.” He rises from the table, and comes and puts his arm round her shoulders. “But you needn’t be afraid of my being rough with him. Of course it’s a mistake; but he’s a fellow who will enter into the joke too; he’ll enjoy it; he’ll—” He merges his sentence in a kiss on her upturned lips, and she clings to his hand with her right, pressing it fondly to her cheek. “I shall do it in a man’s way; but I guess you’ll approve of it quite as much.”
Mrs. Campbell: “I know I shall. That’s what I like about you, Willis: your being so helplessly a man always.”
Campbell: “Well, that’s what attracted me to you, Amy; your manliness.”
Mrs. Campbell: “And I liked your finesse. You are awfully inventive, Willis. Why, Willis, I’ve just thought of something. Oh, it would be so good if you only would!”
Campbell: “Would what?”
Mrs. Campbell: “Invent something now to get us out of the scrape.”
Campbell: “What a brilliant idea! I’m not in any scrape. And as for Mr. Welling, I don’t see how you could help him out unless you sent this letter to Miss Rice, and asked her to send yours back—”
Mrs. Campbell, springing to her feet: “Willis, you are inspired! Oh, how perfectly delightful! And it’s so delicate of you to think of that! I will just enclose his note — give it here, Willis — and he need never know that it ever went to the wrong address. Oh, I always felt that you were truly refined, anyway.” He passively yields the letter, and she whirls away to a writing-desk in the corner of the room. “Now, I’ll just keep a copy of the letter — for a joke; I think I’ve a perfect right to” — scribbling furiously away— “and then I’ll match the paper with an envelope — I can do that perfectly — and then I’ll just imitate his hand — such fun! — and send it flying over to Margaret Rice. Oh, how good! Touch the bell, Willis;” and then — as the serving-maid appears— “Yes, Jane! Run right across the lawn to Mrs. Rice’s, and give this letter for Miss Margaret, and say it was left here by mistake. Well, it was, Willis. Fly, Jane! Oh, Willis, love! Isn’t it perfect! Of course she’ll have got his formal reply to my invitation, and be all mixed up by it, and now when this note comes, she’ll see through it all in an instant, and it will be such a relief to her; and oh, she’ll think that he’s directed both the letters to her because he couldn’t think of any one else! Isn’t it lovely? Just like anything that’s nice, it’s ten times as nice as you expected it to be; and—”
Campbell: “But hold on, Amy!” He lifts a note from the desk. “You’ve sent your copy. Here’s the original now. She’ll think you’ve been playing some joke on her.”
Mrs. Campbell, clutching the letter from him, and scanning it in a daze: “What! Oh, my goodness! It is! I have! Oh, I shall die! Run! Call her back! Shriek, Willis!” They rush to the window together. “No, no! It’s too late! She’s given it to their man, and now nothing can save me! Oh, Willis! Willis! Willis! This is all your fault, with that fatal suggestion of yours. Oh, if you had only left it to me I never should have got into such a scrape! She will think now that I’ve been trying to hoax her, and she’s perfectly implacable at the least hint of a liberty, and she’ll be ready to kill me. I don’t know what she won’t do. Oh, Willis, how could you get me into this!”
Campbell, irately: “Get you into this! Now, Amy, this is a little too much. You got yourself into it. You urged me to think of something—”
Mrs. Campbell: “Well, do, Willis, do think of something, or I shall go mad! Help me, Willis! Don’t be so heartless — so unfeeling.”
Campbell: “There’s only one thing now, and that is to make a clean breast of it to Welling, and get him to help us out. A word from him can make everything right, and we can’t take a step without him; we can’t move!”
Mrs. Campbell: “I can’t let you. Oh, isn’t it horrible!”
Campbell: “Yes; a nice thing is always ten times nicer than you expected it to be!”
Mrs. Campbell: “Oh, how can you stand there mocking me? Why don’t you go to him at once, and tell him the whole thing, and beg him, implore him, to help us?”
Campbell: “Why, you just told me I mustn’t!”
Mrs. Campbell: “You didn’t expect me to say you might, did you? Oh, how cruel!” She whirls out of the room, and Campbell stands in a daze, in which he is finally aware of Mr. Arthur Welling, seen through the open window, on the veranda without. Mr. Welling, with a terrified and furtive air, seems to be fixed to the spot where he stands.
II. MR. WELLING; MR. CAMPBELL
Campbell: “Why, Welling, what the devil are you doing there?”
Welling: “Trying to get away.”
Campbell: “To get away? But you sha’n’t, man! I won’t let you. I was just going to see you. How long have you been there?”
Welling: “I’ve just come.”
Campbell: “What have you heard?”
Welling: “Nothing — nothing. I was knocking on the window-casing to make you hear, but you seemed preoccupied.”
Campbell: “Preoccupied! convulsed! cataclysmed! Look here: we’re in a box, Welling. And you’ve got us into it.” He pulls Welling’s note out of his pocket, where he has been keeping his hand on it, and pokes it at him. “Is that yours?”
Welling, examining it with bewilderment mounting into anger: “It’s mine; yes. May I ask, Mr. Campbell, how you came to have this letter?”
Campbell: “May I ask, Mr. Welling, how you came to write such a letter to my wife?”
Welling: “To your wife? To Mrs. Campbell? I never wrote any such letter to her.”
Campbell: “Then you addressed it to her.”
Welling: “Impossible!”
Campbell: “Impossible? I think I can convince you, much as I regret to do so.” He makes search about Mrs. Campbell’s letters on the table first, and then on the writing-desk. “We have the envelope. It came amongst a lot of letters, and there’s no mistake about it.” He continues to toss the letters about, and then desists. “But no matter; I can’t find it; Amy’s probably carried it off with her. There’s no mistake about it. I was going to have some fun with you about it, but now you can have some fun with me. Whom did you send Mrs. Campbell’s letter to?”
Welling: “Mrs. Campbell’s letter?”
Campbell: “Oh, pshaw! your acceptance or refusal, or whatever it was, of her garden fandango. You got an invitation?”
Welling: “Of course.”
Campbell: “And you wrote to accept it or decline it at the same time that you wrote this letter here to some one else. And you addressed two envelopes before you put the notes in either. And then you put them into the wrong envelopes. And you sent this note to my wife, and the other note to the other person—”
Welling: “No, I didn’t do anything of the kind!” He regards Campbell with amazement, and some apparent doubt of his sanity.
Campbell: “Well, then, Mr. Welling, will you allow me to ask what the deuce you did do?”
Welling: “I never wrote to Mrs. Campbell at all. I thought I would just drop in and tell her why I couldn’t come. It seemed so formal to write.”
Campbell: “Then will you be kind enough to tell me whom you did write to?”
Welling: “No, Mr. Campbell, I can’t do that.”
Campbell: “You write such a letter as that to my wife, and then won’t tell me whom it’s to?”
Welling: “No! And you’ve no right to ask me.”
Campbell: “I’ve no right to ask you?”
Welling: “No. When I tell you that the note wasn’t meant for Mrs. Campbell, that’s enough.”
Campbell: “I’ll be judge of that, Mr. Wel
ling. You say that you were not writing two notes at the time, and that you didn’t get the envelopes mixed. Then, if the note wasn’t meant for my wife, why did you address it to her?”
Welling: “That’s what I can’t tell; that’s what I don’t know. It’s as great a mystery to me as it is to you. I can only conjecture that when I was writing that address I was thinking of coming to explain to Mrs. Campbell that I was going away to-day, and shouldn’t be back till after her party. It was too complicated to put in a note without seeming to give my regrets too much importance. And I suppose that when I was addressing the note that I did write I put Mrs. Campbell’s name on because I had her so much in mind.”
Campbell, with irony: “Oh!”
III. MRS. CAMPBELL; MR. WELLING; MR. CAMPBELL
Mrs. Campbell, appearing through the porti�re that separates the breakfast-room from the parlor beyond: “Yes!” She goes up and gives her hand to Mr. Welling with friendly frankness. “And it was very nice of you to think of me at such a time, when you ought to have been thinking of some one else.”
Welling, with great relief and effusion: “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Campbell! I was sure you would understand. You couldn’t have imagined me capable of addressing such language to you; of presuming — of—”
Mrs. Campbell: “Of course not! And Willis has quite lost his head. I saw in an instant just how it was. I’m so sorry you can’t come to my party—”
Campbell: “Amy, have you been eavesdropping?”
Mrs. Campbell: “There was no need of eavesdropping. I could have heard you out at Loon Rock Light, you shouted so. But as soon as I recognized Mr. Welling’s voice I came to the top of the stairs and listened. I was sure you would do something foolish. But now I think we had better make a clean breast of it, and tell Mr. Welling just what we’ve done. We knew, of course, the letter wasn’t for me, and we thought we wouldn’t vex you about it, but just send it to the one it was meant for. We’ve surprised your secret, Mr. Welling, though we didn’t intend to; but if you’ll accept our congratulations — under the rose, of course — we won’t let it go any further. It does seem so perfectly ideal, and I feel like saying, Bless you, my children! You’ve been in and out here so much this summer, and I feel just like an elder sister to Margaret.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1129
