Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Oh, if we only could!” cried the girl. “But it’s no use. I have been talking to him, and begging him to; but he’ll never go back in the world. He hates my grandfather.”

  “The old gentleman was rough on him; but you can’t much wonder at it. I’m not saying anything against the doctor, mind; I don’t go back on him; I don’t forget what he did for me. But we can talk about all that afterwards. What we’ve got to do now is to go and beg off from that fellow. Good-by, Miss Egeria; I mustn’t lose time.”

  She stopped him. “I can’t let you. It would be throwing blame on my father. I’d rather let him kill me.”

  “Oh, I’ll make it all right about the doctor,” said Hatch. “No one shall have a right to blame him for anything. Don’t you be troubled. I’ll fix it. Don’t worry!”

  Egeria faltered. “You’ll only lose your time. It won’t do any good.”

  “But you don’t tell me not to go?”

  “It won’t do any good,” she said.

  “Well,” said Hatch, “I’m going to see this man, and then I’m coming back to have a talk with the doctor. I want to go away to-morrow feeling first-rate, and I don’t believe I shall feel just right unless you take the Eastern road back to Maine about the time I take the Boston and Albany for Omaha.” Egeria followed him from the room, and responded with a hopeless look to the bright nod with which he turned to her at the outer door. As it closed, she stood a moment in the dim entry, and then crept languidly up the stairs to her own room; she cast herself upon the lounge again, with her face to the wall, and lay there in the apathy which is the refuge from overstress of feeling. The worst could not be worse than the worst; and whatever happened, it could but be another form, not another degree, of ill.

  Hatch hurried upon his errand, and climbed, heated and panting, to Ford’s room, and to a loud “Come in!” which followed his knock, he responded by entering and shutting the door behind him.

  Ford stood before the fireplace, striking against the brick a burning paper with which he had been lighting his pipe. In this act, he looked round at Hatch over his shoulder, at first vaguely, and then with recognition, but not certainly with welcome. “Oh!” he said.

  “Mr. Ford?” asked Hatch.

  “Yes.”

  “I met you at Mrs. Le Roy’s. I don’t know whether you remember me.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Ford. He drew two or three whiffs at his pipe. “Will you sit down? You know Mr. Phillips.” He indicated with a motion of his head a third person, whose face, black against the window, Hatch had not made out.

  At the mention of his name, Phillips came forward in his brisk way, and shook hands with Hatch. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Mr. Hatch hasn’t forgotten me. I feel myself memorable since that night. I was then an element of the supernatural. Have you seen our friends lately?”

  “Yes,” said Hatch. “I’ve just come from them.”

  “They ‘re well, I hope? Miss Boynton struck me as a most interesting person. Doesn’t her life of excitements wear upon her? Most young ladies find one world as much as they can stand; mingling in the society of two, as she does, must be rather fatiguing.”

  “Miss Boynton isn’t very well, or, rather, she hasn’t been.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Phillips. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “Well, no,” replied Hatch, uneasily. He turned to Ford, who from his superior stature had been smoking down upon Phillips and himself. “Mr. Ford,” he added, “I came here from Dr. Boynton’s to see you.”

  “Yes?” said Ford.

  Phillips made a polite movement in the direction of his hat. “I think I’ll be going, Ford,” he explained.

  “You can go,” returned Ford, taking his pipe from his mouth, “but it isn’t necessary. This gentleman can have nothing confidential to say to me. I’d rather you’d stay — for once.”

  “You’re so flattering,” said Phillips, “that I will stay, if Mr. Hatch doesn’t object. My engagement’s at one.”

  “Oh, not at all,” said Hatch, reluctantly. Ford had remained standing, with his back to the fireplace, and Hatch had not accepted his invitation, or his permission, to sit down. “As Mr. Phillips was at Mrs. Le Roy’s that night, he might as well hear what I have to say. Mr. Ford,” he added abruptly, “I want you to do me a great favor.”

  “Why should I do you a great favor, Mr. Hatch?” asked Ford, while he looked with halfclosed eyes at the ceiling, and blew a cloud of smoke above Hatch’s head.

  Hatch glanced sharply at him, to see whether he spoke in gratuitous insolence or ill-timed jest. He decided for the latter, apparently, for he returned jocosely, “Well, do yourself a great favor, then.”

  “I don’t feel the need of ‘that,” said Ford. “What is it?”

  “Has Dr. Boynton been here this morning?” asked Hatch, with the anxiety he could not hide.

  “No,” said Ford, taking out his pipe, and looking at him.

  “Then that makes it a great deal easier. I want to ask you, when he comes, — I know he is coming, —— to refuse the proposition he will make you.”

  “What proposition is Dr. Boynton coming to make me?” demanded Ford, with his pipe between his fingers.

  Hatch faltered, and scanned Ford’s unyielding face. “I shall have to tell you, of course. He is coming to propose a public test séance with you, in which Miss Boynton’s powers shall be put to proof. I ask you to refuse it.”

  Ford did not change countenance, but Phillips, from the easy-chair into which he had cast himself, smiled, and studied now his friend’s sad, cold visage, and now the eager, anxious face of Hatch.

  “In whose behalf do you ask this?” Ford inquired, beginning to smoke again. “By what right do you ask it?”

  “Miss Boynton has been sick, and is still very much unstrung. It would be a kindness, a mercy, to her, if you would refuse.”

  “How do you know? Do you ask it from her?” Hatch hesitated in an interval of silence that prolonged itself painfully.

  “I don’t come at her request,” he said, at last. Ford made no comment, but continued to smoke. His pipe died out; he struck a match and kindled it again; and then smoked as before. “Mr. Hatch,” he asked finally, “are you a spiritualist?”

  “I am a spiritualist, but I am not a fool,” replied Hatch.

  “Then you don’t care for the effect of this séance on the fortunes of your creed?”

  “No, I don’t. I care for the effect of it on a young lady who dreads it, and who — and on a man that I owe a good deal to. Look here, Mr. Ford; I don’t decide on these things. I suppose spiritualism is a matter of faith, like other religions. These people are in earnest about it; that is, Dr. Boynton is, and his daughter thinks and does whatever he tells her to. I’m sorry they ‘re in the business, and I wish they were out of it. They ‘re good people, and as innocent as babies, both of ‘em. I don’t like the way you take with me, but you can walk over me as much as you like, if only you’ll grant this favor. I’m in hopes to get them back to where they belong. I used to live in their town, and I know all about them. He’s a visionary, but he’s a good man, and their people are first-rate people. I would do anything I could for him. He’s got a heart as tender as a child.”

  “Very likely,” said Ford, with irony. “But I fail to see why I should let this child-like philanthropist go about preying upon the public. I may have my own opinion of his innocence. What if I told you I had detected them in a trick the other night?”

  “I shouldn’t believe you,” answered Hatch, promptly.

  Phillips half started out of his chair, but Ford smoked on unperturbed, and asked, as if the question were a pure abstraction, “Why?”

  “Because I know that they couldn’t cheat.”

  “But if I told you they did, should you consider them innocent?”

  “I shouldn’t doubt them in the least. And let me tell you” —

  Ford turned his back upon Hatch, and knocked the ashes of his pipe out a
gainst the corner of the chimney-piece. “Mr. Hatch, you said, a moment ago, that you were a spiritualist, but not a fool. I shall not say whether I will or will not refuse Dr. Boynton’s proposition.”

  Ford began to fill his pipe again, and paid not enough regard to Hatch’s presence to seem to wish him away; it was quite as if he were not there, so far as Ford was concerned.

  “Look here,” Hatch began, “I am sorry that I offended you. I’m anxious to get you to say that you won’t accept Dr. Boynton’s challenge.”

  “I perceive that you are anxious,” assented Ford. “Oh, if I only — It’s a very serious matter, — it is indeed! I would do anything to get you to say that. Come, now! The young lady is in delicate health; she will do whatever her father tells her, and if she does this I believe it will kill her.” Ford made no reply.

  “I can see the thing from your point of view. I suppose you feel that you have a public duty to perform, and all that sort of thing. Well, now, I’m going to make a strong move to get Dr. Boynton out of this business, any way; and I ask you just to hold on till I have a chance to try. Can’t you tell him that you’ll think it over? Can’t you go so far as to put him off a day, or half a day?” Ford took a book, and going to a chair at the window began to look into it.

  “Come,” pleaded the other, “give me some sort of answer.”

  Ford seemed not to have heard him.

  “Well, sir,” said Hatch, “I’ve done with you:!” He stared at Ford in even more amaze than anger, and after waiting a moment, as if searching his mind for some fitting reproach, he turned and went out of the room.

  Phillips rose from his chair with a shrug. “My dear fellow,” he said, “I hope you’ll let me know when this ordeal takes place.”

  “What ordeal?” asked Ford, without looking up from his book.

  “Surely I needn’t specify your public test séance with the Pythoness and her papa.”

  “I am not going to meet Dr. Boynton in the way you mean,” returned Ford, quietly.

  “No? Why, this is magnanimity!”

  “I’ve no doubt it’s inconceivable to you.”

  “Not at all! I know you better; you could be magnanimous to carry a point. But it must be inconceivable to our friend who has just left us. I fancied he was something in leather. Should you say shoes, or leather generally?”

  Ford scorned to notice the conjecture as to Hatch’s business. “Are you fool enough to suppose that Dr. Boynton ever intended to come to me on such an errand?”

  “Why, I fancied so.”

  “You had better bridle your fancy, then. He has too much method in his madness for that. What he wanted was my refusal, beforehand, for professional use. He didn’t get it. This fellow is part of the game. But I don’t wonder you sympathize with him. He is a brother dilettante, it seems. He dabbles in ghosts as you dabble in bric-a-brac. He believes as much in ghosts as you believe in your Bonifazios. They may be genuine; in the mean time, you like to talk as if they were. Upon the whole, I believe I prefer blind superstition.”

  “Why, so do I,” said Phillips. “The trouble is to get your blind superstition. I confess that when I was at Mrs. Le Roy’s, — what an uncommonly good factitious name for the profession! — and saw the performances of the phantom-like Egeria, — that’s a good name, too! — I experienced a very agreeable sensation of fear. It was really something to be proud of. But it wouldn’t last. It haunted me for a night or two; but I’m no more afraid in the dark now than I was before. And the worst of it is that my interest in the affair is gone with my terrors. Apparitions have palled upon me. It is quite as the good doctor said: people bore themselves with séances very soon. The question at present is, Will you go with me to Mrs. Burton’s to lunch?”

  “No,” said Ford.

  “You ‘re in the wrong, Ford,” argued Phillips. “You would please Mrs. Burton by coming; but it won’t matter to her if you don’t. That’s the attitude of society towards the individual, and upon the whole one can’t complain of it. You had better come.. Mrs. Burton is really making a very pretty fist at a salon. In the first place, she keeps Burton out of the way: it’s essential to a salon not to have the husband in it. You will meet the passing Englishman there, whoever he is; you stand a chance of seeing the starring actor or actress, — operatic or dramatic; authors we have always with us, and painters, of course. Mrs. Burton is so far from pretty herself that she is not afraid to ask charming women who are also beautiful; you’ve no idea what decorative qualities beautiful women have. And then she introduces the purely American element, the visiting young lady. Really, she has an uncommon feeling for pretty girls; I never knew her to have an inharmonious young person staying with her yet; with her sense of values, the composition of her salon is delightful. Will you come? She told me to bring you; what excuse shall I make?”

  “Tell her that I’m not the sort of person to be brought.”

  “Oh, there you do yourself wrong. I shall be more just to her ideal of you. Good-by.”

  A knock was heard at the door, and Ford, without rising, growled, “Come in.”

  The door flew open, and Boynton burst into the room in the face of Phillips, who was just going out. He caught him by the hand.

  “Why, Mr. Phillips, is it possible! This is doubly fortunate. Finding you and Mr. Ford together, — it’s more than I could have hoped! I consider it a privilege — a privilege, in the old religious sense — to be allowed to say in your presence what I wish to say to our good friend here. Mr. Ford, I wish Mr. Phillips to hear me ask your pardon — humbly ask your pardon — for the violent language I used towards you at my lodging an hour ago.” Phillips grinned his triumph at Ford, but softened the derision to a smile, as he turned again to Boynton.

  “Will you sit down?” said Ford, with grave kindness, and without any token of surprise.

  “Thanks, thanks! But not till I have taken you by the hand.” Boynton stretched forth his small hand, and took the mechanically granted hand of Ford. “I wish to say that I have unexpectedly been enabled to see the subject matter of our difference from your point of view, and that I now recognize not only the justice, but the necessity — the necessity by operation of an inflexible law — of your attitude. In all these things,” continued Boynton, placing himself luxuriously in Ford’s deep chair, and didactically pressing the tips of his fingers together, “there is a law which I had quite lost sight of, — the law of progression through the antagonism of opposites.”

  Phillips made an ironical murmur of assent and admiration; Ford remained silent.

  “We are both, outside of our mere individual consciousness, blind forces. I affirm, you deny. We grind upon each other in the encounter of life, and a spark of light is evoked by the attrition. It was just so this morning: light was evoked by which I shall always see the correctness of your position and the error of mine. Understand me: I do not at all agree with you in your opinion of the phenomena; and I have come, so far as that is concerned, to cement our enmity, if I may so speak.” He smiled upon Ford with caressing suavity. “But what I have come for first is to withdraw all offensive expressions, and to say that I approve, even in its extreme, of your action on the afternoon of the séance.” He beamed upon Ford, and then turned his triumphantly amiable face upon Phillips.

  “Ford,” said the latter, “this is very handsome!”

  “Not at all, not at all!” cried Boynton; “simple duty, — self-interest, even. For I have a request to make of Mr. Ford, — a favor to ask. I wish Mr. Ford not only to continue steadfast in his opposition to my theories, but to assist me in a public exhibition, by antagonizing to the utmost of his power their application. I have learned from my daughter that she had no agency in the phenomena which we witnessed the other night, and of whose verity I am now perfectly convinced; and I wish Mr. Ford to join me in testing her supernatural gifts, either before a popular audience, or such persons, in considerable number, as we may select in common.”

  “I must refuse, Dr. Boynton,�
� said Ford, gently.

  Boynton’s face fell. “I hope,” he said, “you do not refuse because I have been remiss in not coming to you sooner.”

  “No,” began Ford; but Boynton interrupted him.

  “I started almost immediately upon your departure from my lodgings, to follow you up and make this application. But I was delayed by an accident: a child was run over in the street almost before my eyes, and was carried into the next apothecary’s. The force of habit is strong; I remembered that I was a physician, and forgot the larger in the lesser duty, till other attendance could be procured.”

  Ford frowned. “It has nothing to do with your delay. What you propose is quite out of my way. I could not consent to it on any conditions. I went to your séance the other day out of an idle whim. I don’t care anything about the matter. I don’t care whether there is any truth in your opinions, or any error in mine. I refuse because I am thoroughly indifferent to the whole thing.”

  Boynton rose, and buttoned his threadbare coat across his plump chest. “And you consider, sir,” he said, “that you have incurred no responsibility towards me, towards humanity, by going as far as you have, and then refusing to proceed?”

  “That is my feeling,” said Ford, respectfully. Boynton stood as if stupefied. “And — and — Excuse me, sir,” he said, coming to himself, “if I remark upon the suddenness of your indifference. One hour ago, you threatened that if I pursued my inquiries in this city you would expose me, as I understood, in the public prints. You left me with that threat upon your lips.”

  Phillips looked inquiringly at Ford, who said, “I left you in a passion that I’m ashamed of. I have no idea of carrying out that threat.”

  “Poh, sir!” cried Boynton, with mounting scorn. “You refuse, not from indifference, but from the sense of your inability to cope with me in this test.”

  “I am willing you should think that,” assented Ford.

  “I call this gentleman to witness,” said Boynton, “that you have slunk out of a contest which you have provoked, and that you are afraid to meet me upon terms even of your own choosing. An hour ago I parted with you in hate; I now leave you in contempt. Good morning, Mr. Phillips.” Boynton had already turned his back upon Ford; he now strutted from the room without looking at him again.