Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  II

  It may very justly be urged that this is not drama; and very often in the illustrative passages I have given in this series of studies I have felt that they did not represent the heroines in those lime-lighted moments in which a heroine is supposed most to live. One has to choose between such moments and some quieter episode in which character softly unfolds itself, and its fascination penetrates like a perfume to the reader’s sympathy while his more tumultuous sensations are left unstirred. Then, one has one’s conscience as to the quality of the whole work in which the character is rooted, and of which it is the consummate flower. One must somehow do justice to that; and in reading Mr. Cable’s novel one is afraid that nothing short of entreating the reader to go to it and do it justice himself will suffice. Not to make this beggarly default, however, one may remind him of the opalescent shimmer in which the story is wrapped, and from which keenly sparkle its facts and traits of comedy and tragedy. For a certain blend of romance and reality, which does no wrong to either component property, I do not know its like in American fiction, and I feel that this is saying far too little; I might say in all fiction, and not accuse myself of extravagance. Short of this I may safely declare it the author’s masterpiece, on which he has lavished his happiest if not his most conscious art; and Aurora Nancanou is its supreme grace. What she is otherwise will not be readily put into words, even her own words. She is always the wild, wilful heart of girlhood, which the experiences of wifehood, motherhood, and widowhood have left unchanged. She is a THE TWO HEROINES OF “THE GRANDISSIMES” woman with a grown-up daughter, but essentially she is her daughter’s junior, and, adorable as Clotilde is in her way, she pales and dulls into commonplace when Aurora is by.

  That last chapter, which is so apt to be an anti-climax in a novel, is so good in “ The Grandissimes,” and is so subtly interpretative of Aurora’s personality — the sort of personality which coquettes with itself to the very, end — that I should like to give it entire, though I know that I should have still a haunting fear that without everything that had gone before the portrait of this bewitching creature would want its full effect. Honoré Grandissime, who has loved her through all the involutions of her caprice, has offered himself and been refused, and a scene follows which, among love scenes, has to my knowledge scarcely been surpassed in its delicious naturalness.

  “If M. Grandissime had believed that he was prepared for the supreme bitterness of that moment, he had sadly erred. He could not speak. He extended his hand in a dumb farewell, when, all unsanctioned by his will, the voice of despair escaped him in a low groan.

  At the same moment, a tinkling sound drew near, and the room, which had grown dark with the fall of night, began to brighten with the softly widening light of an evening lamp, as a servant approached to place it in the front drawing-room. Aurora gave her hand and withdrew it In the act the two somewhat changed position, and the rays of the lamp, as the maid passed the door, falling upon Aurora’s face, betrayed the again upturned eyes. “Sieur Grandissime—’ They fell. The lover paused. ‘You thing I’m crool.’ She was the statue of meekness. ‘Hope has been cruel to me,’ replied M. Grandissime, ‘not you; that I cannot say. Adieu.’ He was turning. “Sieur Grandissime—’ She seemed to tremble. He stood still.

  “Sieur Grandissime,’ — her voice was very tender,—’ wad you’ horry?’ There was a great silence. ‘ ‘Sieur Grandissime, you know — teg a chair.’ He hesitated a moment and then both sat down. The servant repassed the door; yet when Aurora broke the silence, she spoke in English — having such hazardous things to say. It would conceal possible stammerings. “Sieur Grandissime — you know dad riz’n I—’ She slightly opened her fan, looking down upon it, and was still. ‘I have no right to ask the reason,’ said M. Grandissime. ‘It is yours — not mine.’ Her head went lower. ‘Well, you know,’ — she drooped it meditatively to one side, with her eyes on the floor,—’ ’tis bickause— ’tis bick-ause I thing in a few days I’m goin’ to die.’ M. Grandissime said never a word. He was not alarmed. She looked up suddenly and took a quick breath, as if to resume, but her eyes fell before his, and she said, in a tone of half-soliloquy: ‘I ‘ave so mudge troub’ wit dad hawt.’ She lifted one little hand feebly to the cardiac region, and sighed softly, with a dying languor. M. Grandissime gave no response. A vehicle rumbled by in the street below, and passed away. At the bottom of the room, where a gilded Mars was driving into battle, a soft note told the half-hour. The lady spoke again. ‘Id mague ‘ — she sighed once more—’ so strange, — sometime’ I thing I’m git’n’ crezzy.’ Still he to whom these fearful disclosures were being made remained as silent and motionless as an Indian captive, and, after another pause, with its painful accompaniment of small sounds, the fair speaker resumed with more energy, as befitting the approach to an incredible climax: ‘Some day, ‘Sieur Grandissime, — id mague me fo’gid my hage! I thing I’m young!’ She lifted her eyes with the evident determination to meet his own squarely, but it was too much; they fell as before; yet she went on speaking: ‘An’ w’en someboddie git’n’ ti’ed livin’ wid ‘imsev an’ big’n’ to fill ole, an’ wan’ someboddie to teg de care of ‘im an’ wan’ me to gid marri’d wid ‘im — I thing ‘e’s in love to me.’ Her fingers kept up a little shuffling with the fan. ‘I thing I’m crezzy. I thing I muz be go’n’ to die torecklie.’ She looked up to the ceiling with large eyes, and then again at the fan in her lap, which continued its spreading and shutting. ‘An’ daz de riz’n, ‘Sieur Grandissime.’ She waited until it was certain he was about to answer, and then interrupted him nervously: ‘You know, ‘Sieur Grandissime, id woon be righd! Id woon be de juztiz to you! An’ you de bez man I ewa know in my life, ‘Sieur Grandissime!’ Her hands shook. ‘A man w’at nevva wan’ to gid marri’d wid noboddie in ‘is life, and now trine to gid marri’d juz only to ripose de soul of ‘is oncl’—’ M. Grandissime uttered an exclamation of protest, and she ceased. ‘I asked you,’ continued he, with low-toned emphasis, ‘for the single and only reason that I want you for my wife.’ ‘Yez,’ she quickly replied; ‘daz all. Daz wad I thing. An’ I thing daz de rad weh to say, ‘Sieur Grandissime. Bick-ause, you know, you an’ me is too hole to talg aboud dad lovin’, you know. An’ you godd dad grade rizpeg fo’ me, an’ me I godd dad ‘ighez rispeg fo’ you; bud—’ she clutched the fan and her face sank lower still—’ bud—’ she swallowed — shook her head—’ bud—’ She bit her lip; she could not go on. ‘Aurora,’ said her lover, bending forward and taking one of her hands. ‘I do love you with all my soul.’ She made a poor attempt to withdraw her hand, abandoned the effort, and looked up savagely through a pair of overflowing eyes, demanding: ‘Mais, fo’ w’y you di’n’ wan’ to sesso?’ M. Grandissime smiled argumentatively. ‘I have said so a hundred times, in every way but in words.’ She lifted her head proudly, and bowed like a queen. ‘Mais, you see, ‘Sieur Grandissime, you bin meg one mizteg.’ ‘But ’tis corrected in time,’ exclaimed he, with suppressed but eager joyousness. “Sieur Grandissime,’ she said with a tremendous solemnity, ‘I’m verrie sawrie, —— you spogue too lade,’ ‘No, no!’ he cried, ‘the correction comes in time. Say that, lady; say that,’ His ardent gaze beat hers once more down; but she shook her head. He ignored the motion. ‘And you will correct your answer; ah! say that, too!’ he insisted, covering the captive hand with both his own, and leaning forward from his seat. ‘Mais, ‘Sieur Grandissime, you know, dad is so verrie unegspeg’.’ ‘Oh! unexpected!’ ‘Mais, I was thing all dad time id was Clotilde wad you—’ She turned her face away and buried her mouth in her handkerchief. ‘Ah!’ he cried, ‘mock me no more, Aurore Nancanou!’ He rose erect and held the hand firmly which she strove to draw away: ‘Say the word, sweet lady; say the word!’ She turned upon him suddenly, rose to her feet, was speechless an instant while her eyes flashed into his, and crying out: ‘No!’ burst into tears, laughed through them, and let him clasp her to his bosom.”

  MR. H. B. FULLER’S JANE M
ARSHALL AND MISS M. E. WILKINS’S JANE FIELD

  IN the fiction of that group of Western novelists whom I think the most representative, I feel the heroines generally so much less important than the heroes that I find myself in a difficulty which I will confess to the reader strictly upon the condition that it shall go no farther. I do this not only because I ought, but also because I must, for if I did not the reader would himself perceive that either I have been wrong in claiming the supremacy of the heroine in a novel as proof of the author’s mastery, or else that these Western novelists whom I like are really not masterly. What is certain is that their heroines are subordinate figures; and there is no way out for me but possibly through the fact that the feminization of our American life, so apparent in and out of literature in the East, has not yet reached the new centres of population between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, and that the Western subordination of the heroine is the instinctive response of fiction to the quantitative if not the qualitative fact. To the casual glance the West would seem, even more than the East, given up socially and intellectually to women; but so far women do not hold the first place in Western fiction. The type of Western womanhood studied in Selma, the heroine of Mr. Robert Grant’s “Unleavened Bread,” is the creation or invention of a Boston novelist, who in obedience to the Eastern tradition gives her supremacy in his story. To be sure Mr. Robert Herrick, in “ The Gospel of Freedom,” made a Western woman the foremost figure in his story; but Mr. Herrick is of Bostonian birth like Mr. Grant, and though recently of Chicagoan adoption, is still imaginably of the earlier allegiance in his deference to the nearly and ever womanly Eastern fiction. In the work of a native Westerner like Mr. Will Paine, the womanly, though so truly portrayed in such a story as “ The Money Captain,” is subordinated in interest to the manly; and Mr. George Ade, whose brilliant divinations of feminine foible form the delightfulness of his “Stories and Fables,” gives his highest energies or inspirations to the study of persons of his own sex, and Doc Horne and Artie and Pink Marsh are his masterpieces in characterization.

  Mr. Hamlin Garland also is more memorable for his men than his women, and the critical Trailer (I am writing with the phraseology of his latest story insistently in mind) will find the Float of masculine character more abundant in his gold-bearing mountains than the surface indications of heroinism. In his earlier and shorter stories, and still in his shorter and later stories, you are aware of the manly sympathy which divines this precious metal; and the Rose who is the “ Rose of Dutcher’s Cooley “ is a genuine piece of womanhood, with both the material and the spiritual auras which form its allure. She is imagined with a courage uncommon in our fiction, and portrayed with a conscience unable to spare the suggestions of undraped nature which our tradition blinks. It is no longer, as it is not yet, the time for such courage and conscience; and we still await a due heroine from a novelist whose work otherwise avouches his power in dealing with character.

  I

  Among Western novelists we must go to the page of Mr. Henry B. Fuller, apparently more sensitive to Eastern influences, or the Western advance of feminization, for a heroine of the fit proportions; and I think we find her in one of the chief figures of the story which is upon the whole the most representative of his native city. “With the Procession” has not the epical motive of “The Cliff-Dwellers”; but the epical motive always incurs the danger of turning mechanical, and “With the Procession” escapes this, while it studies, delicately but penetratingly, the evolution of Chicago from a large town to a great city, in the inner and outer life of a typical family which voluntarily and involuntarily prospers with it The daughter of this family, who determines to make it share her own social consciousness, is a heroine of rare and even new kind. She begins properly to win the heart of the reader from the moment when in view of her evident want of beauty and style she humorously decides to be “quaint” and to work life upon the lines of that decision. Her “quaintness” is not an affectation, but is the frank recognition of her material limitations, and she is powerfully abetted in her resolution by another person of the drama who was a belle of an earlier period, but has become quaint inwardly, while appearing outwardly a figure of great social power and splendor. The management of these two delightful women is of the artistic sort which puts you in full possession of their quality without much advertising you of the process. This makes it difficult to give distinctive passages concerning them; but not impossible, and it is not without the hope of making my reader wish to know them better that I introduce them in the scene where they become fast friends.

  Jane Marshall, the younger of the friends, has gone from her father’s old-fashioned house to the new-fashioned palace of Mrs. Granger Bates to ask the social leader for a subscription in behalf of the working-girls’ club she is fostering; and after being snubbed and put down on general principles by the great lady, suddenly finds herself caught to her heart, when Mrs. Bates learns that she is the daughter of David Marshall; for David Marshall, far back in the fifties, was a favorite “beau” of Mrs. Bates’s, and she still has an honest tenderness for him. She takes the odd girl to her heart in every way, and, leading her through the “marble halls” where she receives the world, she welcomes her to the little room where she lives.

  “The door closed with a light click, and Jane looked about her with a great and sudden surprise. Poor, stupid, stumbling child! — she understood at last in what spirit she had been received and on what footing she had been placed. She found herself in a small, cramped, low-ceiled room which was filled with worn and antiquated furniture. There was a ponderous old mahogany bureau, with the veneering cracked and peeled, and a bed to correspond. There was a shabby little writing-desk, whose let-down lid was lined with faded and blotted, green baize. On the floor there was an old Brussels carpet, antique as to pattern and wholly threadbare as to surface. The walls were covered with an old-time paper whose plaintive primitiveness ran in slender pink stripes alternating with narrow green vines. In one corner stood a small upright piano whose top was littered with loose sheets of old music, and on one wall hung a set of thin black-walnut shelves strung together with cords and loaded with a variety of well-worn volumes. In the grate was a coal fire. Mrs. Bates sat down on the foot of the bed and motioned Jane to a small rocker that had been re-seated with a bit of old rugging.... Mrs. Bates had stepped to her single little window. ‘Isn’t it a gem?’ she asked. ‘I had it made to order; one of the old-fashioned sort, you see — two sash, with six little panes in each. No weights and cords, but simply catches at the side. It opens to just two widths; if I want anything different, I have to contrive it for myself. Sometimes I use a hair-brush and sometimes a paper-cutter.’... ‘Do you like my posies?’ She nodded towards the window, where, thanks to the hair-brush, a row of flowers in a long, narrow box blew about in the draught. ‘Asters?’ ‘No, no, no! But I hoped you’d guess asters. They’re chrysanthemums — you see, fashion will penetrate even here. But they’re the smallest and simplest I could find. What do I care for orchids and American beauties, and all those other expensive things under glass? How much does it please me to have two great big formal beds of gladiolus and foliage plants in the front yard, one on each side of the steps? Still, with our position, I suppose it can’t be helped. No; what I want is a bed of portulaca, and some cypress vines running up strings to the top of a pole. As soon as I get poor enough to afford it I’m going to have a lot of phlox and London pride and bachelor’s buttons out there in the back-yard, and the girls can run their clothes lines somewhere else.’ ‘It’s hard to keep flowers in a city,’ said Jane. ‘I know it is. At our old house we had such a nice little rose-bush in the front-yard. I hated so to leave it behind — one of those little yellow brier-roses. No, it wasn’t yellow; it was just— “yaller.” And it always scratched my nose when I tried to smell it. But oh, child ‘ — wistfully—’ if I could only smell it now!’ ‘Couldn’t you have transplanted it?’ asked Jane, sympathetically. ‘I went back the very next
day after we moved out, with a peach-basket and a fire-shovel. But my poor bush was buried under seven feet of yellow sand. To-day there’s seven stories of brick and mortar. So all I’ve got from the old place is just this furniture of ma’s and the wall-paper.’ ‘The wall-paper?’ ‘Not the identical same, of course. It’s like what I had in my bedroom when I was a girl. I remembered the pattern, and tried everywhere to match it.... And finally— “Well, what — finally?’ ‘Finally, I sent down East and had eight or ten rolls made to order. I chased harder than anybody ever chased for a Raphael, and I spent more than if I had hung the room with Gobelins; but—’ She stroked the narrow strips of pink and green with a fond hand, and cast on Jane a look which pleaded indulgence. ‘Isn’t it just too quaintly ugly for anything?’ ‘It isn’t any such thing,’ cried Jane. ‘It’s just as sweet as it can be! I only wish mine was like it.’... Mrs. Bates began to rummage among the drawers of her old desk. ‘There!’ she said, presently, ‘I knew I could put my hands on it.’ She set a daguerreotype before Jane. Its oval was bordered with a narrow line of gilded metal and its small square back was covered with embossed brown leather. ‘There, now! Do you know who that is?’ Jane looked back and forth doubtfully between the picture and its owner. ‘Is it — is it — pa?’ Mrs. Bates nodded. Jane regarded the daguerreotype with a puzzled fascination. ‘Did my father ever wear his hair all wavy across his forehead that way, and have such a thing tied around his throat, and wear a vest all covered with those little gold sprigs?’ ‘Precisely. That’s just the way he looked the last time we danced together. And what do you suppose the dance was? Guess and guess and guess again! It was this.’ Mrs. Bates whisked herself on to the piano-stool and began to play and to sing. Her touch was heavy and spirited, but her voice was easily audible above the instrument.