Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells
Page 1143
She: “Read it first.”
He: “Oh, it’s all — all right” —
She: “I insist upon your reading it. It’s a business transaction. Read it aloud.”
He, desperately: “Well, well!” He reads. “‘Received from Miss Ethel Reed, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and her hand, heart, and dearest love forever.’” He looks up at her. “Ethel!”
She, smiling: “Sign it, sign it!”
He, catching her in his arms and kissing her: “Oh, yes — here!”
She, pulling a little away from him, and laughing: “Oh, oh! I only wanted one signature! Twenty autographs are too many, unless you’ll let me trade them off, as the collectors do.”
He: “No; keep them all! I couldn’t think of letting any one else have them. One more!”
She: “No; it’s quite enough!”
She frees herself, and retires beyond the table. “This unexpected affection” —
He: “Is it unexpected — seriously?”
She: “What do you mean?”
He: “Oh, nothing!”
She: “Yes, tell me!”
He: “I hoped — I thought — perhaps — that you might have been prepared for some such demonstration on my part.”
She: “And why did you think — hope — perhaps — that, Mr. Ransom, may I ask?”
He: “If I hadn’t, how should I have dared to speak?”
She: “Dared? You were obliged to speak! Well, since it’s all over, I don’t mind saying that I did have some slight apprehensions that something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from you.”
He: “Extorted? Oh!” He makes an impassioned rush toward her.
She, keeping the table between them: “No, no.”
He: “Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to make me suffer so, after I had come to the point.”
She: “Ask it across the table, then.” After a moment’s reflection, “I made you suffer — I made you suffer — so that you might have a realizing sense of what you had made me suffer.”
He, enraptured by this confession: “Oh, you angel!”
She, with tender magnanimity: “No; only a woman — a poor, trusting, foolish woman!” She permits him to surround the table, with imaginable results. Then, with her head on his shoulder: “You’ll never let me regret it, will you, darling? You’ll never oblige me to punish you again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt me far worse to see your pain than it did you to — to — feel it!” On the other side of the partition, Mr. Grinnidge’s pipe falls from his lips, parted in slumber, and shivers to atoms on the register. “Oh!” She flies at the register with a shriek of dismay, and is about to close it. “That wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!”
He, preventing her: “What wretch? Where?”
She: “Don’t you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?”
Grinnidge: “Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and untold toil in coloring it!”
Ransom, listening with an air of mystification: “Who’s that?”
She: “Gummidge, Grimmidge — whatever you called him. Oh!” She arrests herself in consternation. “Now I have done it!”
He: “Done what?”
She: “Oh — nothing!”
He: “I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that my friend Grinnidge’s room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can hear him talk through the register?” She preserves the silence of abject terror. He stoops over the register, and calls down it. “Grinnidge! Hallo!”
Grinnidge: “Hallo, yourself!”
Ransom, to Miss Reed: “Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the phonograph.” To Grinnidge: “What’s the trouble?”
Grinnidge: “Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and let it drop on this infernal register.”
Ransom, turning from the register with impressive deliberation: “Miss Reed, may I ask how you came to know that his name was Gummidge, or Grimmidge, or whatever I called him?”
She: “Oh, dearest, I can’t tell you! Or — yes, I had better.” Impulsively: “I will judge you by myself. I could forgive you anything!”
He, doubtfully: “Oh, could you?”
She: “Everything! I had — I had better make a clean breast of it. Yes, I had. Though I don’t like to. I — I listened!”
He: “Listened?”
She: “Through the register to — to — what — you — were saying before you — came in here.” Her head droops.
He: “Then you heard everything?”
She: “Kill me, but don’t look so at me! It was accidental at first — indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly! You will forgive me, darling? It wasn’t as if I were listening with any bad motive.”
He, taking her in his arms: “Forgive you? Of course I do. But you must change this room at once, Ethel; you see you hear everything on the other side, too.”
She: “Oh, not if you whisper on this. You couldn’t hear us?” At a dubious expression of his: “You didn’t hear us? If you did, I can never forgive you!”
He: “It was accidental at first — indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly!”
She: “All that has nothing whatever to do with it. How much did you hear?”
He, with exemplary meekness: “Only what you were saying before Grinnidge came in. You didn’t whisper then. I had to wait there for him while” —
She: “While you were giving your good resolutions a rest?”
He: “While I was giving my good resolutions a rest.”
She: “And that accounts for your determination to humble yourself so?”
He: “It seemed perfectly providential that I should have known just what conditions you were going to exact of me.”
She: “Oh, don’t make light of it! I can tell you it’s a very serious matter.”
He: “It was very serious for me when you didn’t meet my self-abasement as you had led me to expect you would.”
She: “Don’t make fun! I’m trying to think whether I can forgive you.”
He, with insinuation: “Don’t you believe you could think better if you put your head on my shoulder?”
She: “Nonsense! Then I should forgive you without thinking.” After a season of reflection: “No, I can’t forgive you. I never could forgive eavesdropping. It’s too low.”
He, in astonishment: “Why, you did it yourself!”
She: “But you began it. Besides, it’s very different for a man. Women are weak, poor, helpless creatures. They have to use finesse. But a man should be above it.”
He: “You said you could forgive me anything.”
She: “Ah, but I didn’t know what you’d been doing!”
He, with pensive resignation, and a feint of going: “Then I suppose it’s all over between us.”
She, relenting: “If you could think of any reason why I should forgive you” —
He: “I can’t.”
She, after consideration: “Do you suppose Mr. Grumage, or Grimidge, heard too?”
He: “No; Grinnidge is a very high-principled fellow, and wouldn’t listen; besides, he wasn’t there, you know.”
She: “Well, then, I will forgive you on these grounds.” He instantly catches her to his heart. “But these alone, remember.”
He, rapturously: “Oh, on any!”
She, tenderly: “And you’ll always be devoted? And nice? And not try to provoke me? Or neglect me? Or anything?”
He: “Always! Never!”
She: “Oh, you dear, sweet, simple old thing — how I do love you!”
Grinnidge, who has been listening attentively to every word at the register at his side: “Ransom, if you don’t want me to go stark mad, shut the register!”
Ransom, about to comply: “Oh, poor old man! I forgot it
was open!”
Miss Reed, preventing him: “No! If he has been vile enough to listen at a register, let him suffer. Come, sit down here, and I’ll tell you just when I began to care for you. It was long before the cow. Do you remember that first morning after you arrived” — She drags him close to the register, so that every word may tell upon the envious Grinnidge, on whose manifestations of acute despair, a rapid curtain descends.
The Poetry Collections
Howells’ home in Kittery Point, Maine, where he spent several summers between 1902 and 1908.
POEMS
CONTENTS
THE PILOT’S STORY.
FORLORN.
PLEASURE-PAIN.
IN AUGUST.
THE EMPTY HOUSE.
BUBBLES.
LOST BELIEFS.
LOUIS LEBEAU’S CONVERSION.
CAPRICE.
SWEET CLOVER.
THE ROYAL PORTRAITS.
THE FAITHFUL OF THE GONZAGA.
THE FIRST CRICKET.
THE MULBERRIES.
BEFORE THE GATE.
CLEMENT.
BY THE SEA.
SAINT CHRISTOPHER.
ELEGY ON JOHN BUTLER HOWELLS,
THANKSGIVING.
A SPRINGTIME.
IN EARLIEST SPRING.
THE BOBOLINKS ARE SINGING.
PRELUDE.
THE MOVERS.
THROUGH THE MEADOW.
GONE.
THE SARCASTIC FAIR.
RAPTURE.
DEAD.
THE DOUBT.
THE THORN.
THE MYSTERIES.
THE BATTLE IN THE CLOUDS.
FOR ONE OF THE KILLED.
THE TWO WIVES.
BEREAVED.
THE SNOW-BIRDS.
VAGARY.
FEUERBILDER.
AVERY.
BOPEEP: A PASTORAL.
WHILE SHE SANG.
A POET.
CONVENTION.
THE POET’S FRIENDS.
NO LOVE LOST.
PHILIP — To Bertha.
FANNY — To Clara.
POSTSCRIPT.
THE SONG THE ORIOLE SINGS.
PORDENONE.
THE LONG DAYS.
THE PILOT’S STORY.
I.
It was a story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers, —
Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff,
Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current,
Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood,
Widely shunning the snags that made us sardonic obeisance.
II.
All the soft, damp air was full of delicate perfume
From the young willows in bloom on either bank of the river, —
Faint, delicious fragrance, trancing the indolent senses
In a luxurious dream of the river and land of the lotus.
Not yet out of the west the roses of sunset were withered;
In the deep blue above light clouds of gold and of crimson
Floated in slumber serene; and the restless river beneath them
Rushed away to the sea with a vision of rest in its bosom;
Far on the eastern shore lay dimly the swamps of the cypress;
Dimly before us the islands grew from the river’s expanses, —
Beautiful, wood-grown isles, with the gleam of the swart inundation
Seen through the swaying boughs and slender trunks of their willows;
And on the shore beside us the cotton-trees rose in the evening,
Phantom-like, yearningly, wearily, with the inscrutable sadness
Of the mute races of trees. While hoarsely the steam from her ‘scape-pipes
Shouted, then whispered a moment, then shouted again to the silence,
Trembling through all her frame with the mighty pulse of her engines,
Slowly the boat ascended the swollen and broad Mississippi,
Bank-full, sweeping on, with tangled masses of drift-wood,
Daintily breathed about with whiffs of silvery vapor,
Where in his arrowy flight the twittering swallow alighted,
And the belated blackbird paused on the way to its nestlings.
III.
It was the pilot’s story:— “They both came aboard there, at Cairo,
From a New Orleans boat, and took passage with us for Saint Louis.
She was a beautiful woman, with just enough blood from her mother
Darkening her eyes and her hair to make her race known to a trader:
You would have thought she was white. The man that was with her, — you see such, —
Weakly good-natured and kind, and weakly good-natured and vicious,
Slender of body and soul, fit neither for loving nor hating.
I was a youngster then, and only learning the river, —
Not over-fond of the wheel. I used to watch them at monte,
Down in the cabin at night, and learned to know all of the gamblers.
So when I saw this weak one staking his money against them,
Betting upon the turn of the cards, I knew what was coming:
They never left their pigeons a single feather to fly with.
Next day I saw them together, — the stranger and one of the gamblers:
Picturesque rascal he was, with long black hair and moustaches,
Black slouch hat drawn down to his eyes from his villanous forehead.
On together they moved, still earnestly talking in whispers,
On toward the forecastle, where sat the woman alone by the gangway.
Roused by the fall of feet, she turned, and, beholding her master,
Greeted him with a smile that was more like a wife’s than another’s,
Rose to meet him fondly, and then, with the dread apprehension
Always haunting the slave, fell her eye on the face of the gambler, —
Dark and lustful and fierce and full of merciless cunning.
Something was spoken so low that I could not hear what the words were;
Only the woman started, and looked from one to the other,
With imploring eyes, bewildered hands, and a tremor
All through her frame: I saw her from where I was standing, she shook so.
‘Say! is it so?’ she cried. On the weak, white lips of her master
Died a sickly smile, and he said, ‘Louise, I have sold you.’
God is my judge! May I never see such a look of despairing,
Desolate anguish, as that which the woman cast on her master,
Griping her breast with her little hands, as if he had stabbed her,
Standing in silence a space, as fixed as the Indian woman
Carved out of wood, on the pilot-house of the old Pocahontas!
Then, with a gurgling moan, like the sound in the throat of the dying,
Came back her voice, that, rising, fluttered, through wild incoherence,
Into a terrible shriek that stopped my heart while she answered: —
‘Sold me? sold me? sold — And you promised to give me my freedom! —
Promised me, for the sake of our little boy in Saint Louis!
What will you say to our boy, when he cries for me there in Saint Louis?
What will you say to our God? — Ah, you have been joking! I see it! —
No? God! God! He shall hear it, — and all of the angels in heaven, —
Even the devils in hell! — and none will believe when they hear it!
Sold me!’ — Her voice died away with a wail, and in silence
Down she sank on the deck, and covered her face with her fingers.”
IV.
In his story a moment the pilot paused, while we listened
To the salute of a boat, that, rounding the point of an island,
Flamed toward us with fires that seemed to burn from the waters, —
Stately and vast and swift, and bo
rne on the heart of the current.
Then, with the mighty voice of a giant challenged to battle,
Rose the responsive whistle, and all the echoes of island,
Swamp-land, glade, and brake replied with a myriad clamor,
Like wild birds that are suddenly startled from slumber at midnight,
Then were at peace once more; and we heard the harsh cries of the peacocks
Perched on a tree by a cabin-door, where the white-headed settler’s
White-headed children stood to look at the boat as it passed them,
Passed them so near that we heard their happy talk and their laughter.
Softly the sunset had faded, and now on the eastern horizon
Hung, like a tear in the sky, the beautiful star of the evening.
V.
Still with his back to us standing, the pilot went on with his story: —
“All of us flocked round the woman. The children cried, and their mothers
Hugged them tight to their breasts; but the gambler said to the captain, —
‘Put me off there at the town that lies round the bend of the river.
Here, you! rise at once, and be ready now to go with me.’
Roughly he seized the woman’s arm and strove to uplift her.
She — she seemed not to heed him, but rose like one that is dreaming,
Slid from his grasp, and fleetly mounted the steps of the gangway,
Up to the hurricane-deck, in silence, without lamentation.
Straight to the stern of the boat, where the wheel was, she ran, and the people
Followed her fast till she turned and stood at bay for a moment,
Looking them in the face, and in the face of the gambler.
Not one to save her, — not one of all the compassionate people!
Not one to save her, of all the pitying angels in heaven!
Not one bolt of God to strike him dead there before her!
Wildly she waved him back, we waiting in silence and horror.
Over the swarthy face of the gambler a pallor of passion
Passed, like a gleam of lightning over the west in the night-time.
White, she stood, and mute, till he put forth his hand to secure her;
Then she turned and leaped, — in mid-air fluttered a moment, —
Down then, whirling, fell, like a broken-winged bird from a tree-top,
Down on the cruel wheel, that caught her, and hurled her, and crushed her,