Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “‘Old Dan Tucker, he got drunk;

  He jumped in the fire and he kicked up a chunk

  Of red-hot charcoal with his shoes.

  Lordy!how the ashes flew-hoo!’

  “Jane dropped the daguerreotype in time to take up the refrain:

  “‘Clear the road for old Dan Tucker!

  You’re too late to get your supper.

  Clear the road for old Dan—’

  ‘Aha! you know it!’ cried Mrs. Bates, gayly. ‘Of course,’ responded Jane. ‘My education may be modem, on the whole, but it hasn’t neglected the classics completely! Gentlemen forward!’ she said, with a sudden cry, which sent Mrs. Bates’s fingers back to the keyboard; “gentlemen forward to Mister Tucker!’ Mrs. Bates pounded loudly, and Jane pirouetted up to her from behind. ‘Ladies forward to Mister Tucker!’ cried Jane, and Mrs. Bates left the stool and began dancing towards her. Then she danced back and took her seat again; but with the first chord; ‘ALL forward to Miss Tucker!’ called Jane again; and they met face to face in the middle of the room and burst out laughing.... ‘Sit down; I’m going to play the “Java March” for you.’ She struck out several ponderous and vengeful chords. ‘Why,’ called Jane, ‘is that the “Java March”?’ She spread out her elbows and stalked up and down singing:

  “‘Oh, the Dutch compa-nee

  Is the best compa-nee!”

  ‘Right again!’ cried Mrs. Bates. ‘You are one of us — just as I said!’ ‘Well, if that’s the “Java March,’” said Jane, ‘it’s in an old book we used to have about the house years and years ago. Only, if you bring it up as an example of pa’s taste—’ ‘He liked it because I played it, perhaps,’ said Mrs. Bates quietly. ‘Besides, why should you put it to those shocking words? It is in that book,’ she continued, ‘and I’ve got one here just like it.’ ‘Is it the one with “ Roll on, Silver Moon,” and “Wild roved the Indian Maid, Bright What’s-her-name”?’ ‘Bright Alfarata. Same one, exactly. Bring up another chair, and we’ll go through a whole programme of classics — pruggrum, I mean.’ ‘Let’s see, though,’ said Jane, looking at her watch. ‘Mercy me! where has the morning gone? It’s after eleven o’clock.’... Mrs. Bates opened the front door herself. ‘You can take the choo-choo cars at Sixteenth, you know, and get off at Van Buren. Oh, dear; excuse my baby-talk; our little Reginald — two months old, you know.’... She accompanied Jane halfway down the steps, bareheaded as she was, and in her morning-gown. A society reporter who happened to be passing originated the rumor that she had gone insane.”

  If, after all, these passages are illustrative of Mrs. Bates rather than of Jane Marshall, it is perhaps because Jane Marshall is less susceptible of illustration by select passages. She is a singularly undramatic heroine, and lives in a sort of subjectivity more perceptible than demonstrable to the sympathetic reader’s knowledge of her faithful and lovable character. In fact, the scene given displays only that surface of her character which is the least significant of her quality. It is her hard fate, through her zeal for her father’s standing and her pride in him, to rend him and her mother from the ugly, old-fashioned keeping in which they were peacefully rusting out their lives, and get them into “the procession,” and when her father falls out of it dying, she feels as if she had killed him. But she really has not; she has been the truest and kindest of all his children to him; and she has her reward when the faithful Theodore Brower, long mute with love for her, takes heart at the funeral to say that he will go as one of the family, and in the same carriage as her, or not go at all. The grotesqueness is not blinked, but the pathos is delicately intimated in it; and, throughout the story, the blunt, angular, outright nature of the girl is studied with constant recognition of her sweetness and unselfish goodness, and her humorous self-depreciation. She is but one of many women in the story whose personalities are all rendered with an unerring touch.

  II

  To pass from the atmosphere of Mr. Fuller’s “With the Procession” to Miss Mary E. Wilkins’s “Jane Field “ is to make proof at once of the variety and the solidarity of American life. Nothing as to conditions could be farther apart than Chicago and Green River; and yet the vast, loud, lavish metropolis of the West, and the prim, meagre, niggard New England village are animated by the same ideal of conduct, the same Puritanized conscience, the same desire of justice and righteousness. The Chicago family in dealing with the problem of the iniquitous son and brother whose sin has followed him home from Europe is of as simple and direct an impulse as Jane Field in her self-denunciation to those she has deceived in her too ingenious endeavor for justice; and when it appears that money will serve quite as well as marriage, or better, they feel a noble shame in compounding the wrong of a like quality with Lois Field’s sense of dishonor in silently witnessing her mother’s trespass. It is in the Europeanized and modernized black sheep of the Chicago fold that the differentiation of ideal takes place; but his aberration from the home standard is as wide in his Chicago domestic circle as it would be in Green River.

  The delight of the higher probability must remain with the Western novelist, who is realistic through and through, whereas the New England novelist is at heart romantic, and realistic mainly in expression. She narrowly escapes the impossible in her plot, and saves herself from point to point in the story by clever devices and agile turns which tax the credulity of the reader rather than raise his admiration. They ask him to grant premises; but the true plot, the situation that reproduces life, compels him to grant them. Nevertheless, it is fairly possible, or if not that, it is unfairly possible, that Jane Field, seeing her frail young daughter dying before her eyes in a pitiless decline, as she believes, for want of rest from work and change of air, should bethink herself of the inheritance left her dead sister, and, cloudily keeping in mind her extraordinary resemblance to her sister, should suffer herself to be mistaken for her, and should try to enter into the enjoyment of her own rights through her sister’s property. The reader of the story, so powerful in spite of its inherent weaknesses, will remember that her sister’s husband has lost all her own little fortune in speculation, and that Jane Field has no purpose but to recover the value of her fifteen hundred dollars. It is with this purpose that she goes to Elliott, a hundred miles away from Green River, to seek her just dues from the estate which must, upon her sister’s death being known, revert to the family of her sister’s husband. The lawyer who has the property in charge greets Mrs. Field as Mrs. Maxwell, and in the sudden, crazy hope of turning his error to her account, without infringing the just rights of the loyal heirs, she does not correct him. It is her dim, unformulated notion that she may collect her dues, to the amount of the fifteen hundred dollars lost, from the income of the property, and then relinquish possession; but when her daughter follows her to Elliott and sets her pitiless young conscience in condemnation over the mother who has taken this desperate chance for her sake, Jane Field finds it impossible to touch a cent of her dues. They put everything by for the legal owners, and cower in the old Maxwell house, keeping themselves from starvation by the little that Lois can earn in sewing, till a visit from some old Green River neighbors deepens the stress of her sin upon Jane Field, and drives her to anticipate detection by denouncing herself to the whole village of Elliott. You can drive a coach through several places in this loose structure, but if you have no wish for such an excursion, you can enjoy the psychology of the tremendous situation, as it is worked out in the characters of the mother and daughter.

  Lois first unexpectedly appears at Elliott the morning after her mother’s arrival. They meet at the lawyer’s office, where Jane Field is talking of the property with him, and she is obliged to introduce Lois as her niece, or rather to let the lawyer deceive himself as to their relation; she keeps as far as she can from positive deception; and then the mother and daughter go home to the Maxwell house together.... “Mrs. Field stalked ahead with her resolute stiffness; Lois followed after her, keeping always several paces behind. No matter how often Mrs. Field,
sternly conscious of it, slackened her own pace, Lois never gained upon her. When they reached the gate at the entrance of the Maxwell grounds, and Mrs. Field stopped, Lois spoke up. ‘What place is this?’ said she, in a defiantly timorous voice. ‘The Maxwell house,’ replied her mother, shortly, turning up the walk. ‘Are you going in here?’ ‘Of course I am.’ ‘Well, I ain’t going in one step.’ Mrs. Field turned and faced her. ‘Lois,’ said she, ‘if you want to go away and desert the mother that’s showin’ herself willin’ to die for you, you can.’ Lois said not another word. She turned in at the gate, with her eyes fixed upon her mother’s face. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get up to the house,’ said her mother, with appealing conciliation. Lois slunk mutely behind her again. Her eyes were full of the impulse of flight when she watched her mother unlock the house door, but she followed her in.... ‘Now, Lois,’ said Mrs. Field, ‘I’m goin’ to tell you about this.... You know, I s’pose, that Mr.Tuxbury took me for your aunt Esther. ‘Lois nodded; her dilated eyes never wavered from her mother’s face. ‘I s’pose you heard what he was sayin’ to me when you come in. Lois, I didn’t tell him I was your aunt Esther. The minute I come in, he took me for her, an’ Mis’ Henry Maxwell come into his office, an’ she did, an’ so did Mr. Tuxbury’s sister. I wa’n’t goin’ to tell them I wa’n’t her.... An’ I’ll tell you why. I’m goin’ to have that fifteen hundred dollars of your poor father’s earnin’s that I lent your uncle out of this property, an’ this is all the way to do it, an’ I’m goin’ to do it.’... ‘Couldn’t you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred dollars? Wouldn’t he have given you some? O mother!’ ‘I was goin’ to if he hadn’t took me for her, but it wouldn’t have done any good. They wouldn’t have been obliged to pay it, an’ folks ain’t fond of payin’ over money when they ain’t obliged to. I’d been a fool to have asked him after he took me for her.’ ‘Then — you’d got this — all planned?’ Her mother took her up sharply. ‘No, I hadn’t got it all planned,’ said she. ‘I don’t deny it come into my head. I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I didn’t go so far as to plan it; there needn’t anybody say I did.’ ‘You ain’t going to take the money?’ ‘I’m goin’ to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it.’ ‘Mother, you ain’t going to stay here, and make folks think you’re Aunt Esther?’ ‘Yes, I am.’ Then all Lois’s horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry— ‘O mother!’”

  When the fierce sense of wrong subsides, and the iron purpose of righting herself breaks in Jane Field, her relentless will asserts itself again in the impulse to punish herself for the deceit she has practised, and to take the consequences of her transgression before all the world; and she begins with the three old Green River neighbors who are visiting her.

  “When Lois left home that afternoon her mother had been in her bedroom changing her dress. When she came out she had on her best black dress, her black shawl and gloves, and her best bonnet. The three women stared at her. She stood before them a second without speaking. The strange look, for which Lois had watched her face, had appeared. ‘Why, what is the matter, Mis’ Field?’ cried Mrs. Babcock. ‘Where be you goin’?’ ‘I’m goin’ out a little ways,’ replied Mrs. Field. Then she raised her voice suddenly. ‘I’ve got something to say to all of you before I go,’ said she. ‘I’ve been deceivin’ you, and everybody here in Elliott. When I came down here, they all took me for my sister, Esther Maxwell, and I let them think so. They’ve all called me Esther Maxwell here. That’s how I got the money. Old Mr. Maxwell left it to Flora Maxwell if my sister didn’t outlive him. I shouldn’t have had a cent. I stole it I thought my daughter would die if she didn’t have it an’ get away from Green River; but that wa’n’t any excuse. Edward Maxwell had that fifteen hundred dollars of my husband’s, an’ I never had a cent of it; but that wa’n’t any excuse. I thought I’d jest stay here an’ carry it out till I got the money back; but that wa’n’t any excuse. I ain’t spent a cent of the money; it’s all put away just as it was paid in, in a sugar-bowl in the china closet; but that ain’t any excuse. I took it on myself to do justice instead of the Lord, an’ that ain’t for any human bein’ to do. I ain’t Esther Maxwell. I’m brought up short. I ain’t Esther Maxwell!’ Her voice rose to a stem shriek. The three women stared at her, then at each other. Their faces were white. Amanda was catching her breath in faint gasps. Jane Field rushed out of the room. The door closed heavily after her. Three wild, pale faces huddled together in a window watched her out of the yard. Mrs. Babcock called weakly after her to come back, but she kept on. She went out of the yard and down the street At the first house she stopped, went up to the door and rang the bell. When a woman answered her ring, she looked at her and said, ‘I ain’t Esther Maxwell!’ Then she turned and went down the walk between the rows of marigolds and asters, and the woman stood staring after her for a minute, then ran in, and the windows filled with wondering faces. Jane Field stopped at the next house with the same message. After she left a woman pelted across the yard in a panic to compare notes with her neighbors. She kept on down the street, and she stopped at every door and said, ‘I ain’t Esther Maxwell.’ Now and then somebody tried to delay her to question her and obtain an explanation, but she broke away. There was about her a terrible mental impetus which intimidated. People stood instinctively out of her way, as before some rushing force which might overwhelm them.... She went on and on, all the summer afternoon, and canvassed the little village with her remorse and confession of crime. Finally the four words which she said at the doors seemed almost involuntary. They became her one natural note, the expression of her whole life. It was as if she had never said any others.... When she went up the path to the Maxwell house, she said them where the shadow of a pine-tree fell darkly in front of her like the shadow of a man. She said them when she stood before the door of the house whose hospitality she had usurped. There was a little crowd at her heels, but she did not notice them until she was entering the door, Then she said the words over to them: ‘I ain’t Esther Maxwell,’ She entered the sitting-room, the people following. There were her three old friends and neighbors, the minister and his wife, Daniel Tuxbury, his sister and her daughter, Mrs. Jane Maxwell and her daughter, and her own Lois. She faced them all and said it again: ‘I ain’t Esther Maxwell.’... Lois pressed forward and clung to her. ‘Mother!’ she moaned, ‘mother,’ Then for once her mother varied her set speech. ‘Lois wa’n’t to blame,’ she said; ‘I want you to know it, all of you. Lois wa’n’t to blame. She didn’t know until after I’d done it She wanted to tell, but I told her they’d put me in prison. Lois wa’n’t to blame. I ain’t Esther Maxwell.’ ‘O mother, don’t! don’t!’ Lois sobbed. She hung about her mother’s neck, and pressed her lips to that pale, wrinkled face, whose wrinkles seemed now to be laid in stone. Not a muscle of Jane Field’s face changed. She kept repeating at intervals, in precisely the same tone, her terrible under-chord to all the excitement about her: ‘I ain’t Esther Maxwell. ‘“

  MRS. HUMPHRY WARD’S HEROINES

  IN reading Mrs. Humphry Ward’s last story, “Eleanor,” I felt again, as I had felt before in her work, its general difference from the best American fiction in a particular which may perhaps have caught the notice of others. If it has not, I may be mistaken in my feeling, and shall be unable to persuade others to make it their conviction. But the point is interesting, and if I can make it evident something will have been done toward explaining American novelists to themselves, and reconciling them to their performances as the necessary outcome of their conditions. Possibly, something more will have been done, and they will be satisfied in recognizing that English breadth must always be denied them, and to make the most of the depth which seems to be their characteristic when they are at their best.

  I

  The deceitfulness of appearances is notorious, and even when they are the effect of reality they are seldom of such a unanimity that the inference from them cannot reasonably be questioned. You have first to ge
t your appearances, and this alone is a thing of no small difficulty. Many appearances are so purely subjective that, when you come to draw the attention of others to them, they turn out to be disappearances; and, in the case in hand, there will probably be some people to deny that English fiction is noticeably broad, or American fiction noticeably deep. They will say that Thomas Hardy and George Eliot have both written things that suggest depth as well as breadth, and that Mrs. Ward, who is alone among English writers worthy to be mentioned with these novelists, is so much of the American spirit in her art that, if her work is broad, it is a proof that breadth is as characteristic of American fiction as depth.