Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Bowen had listened with acquiescence and intelligence that might well have looked like sympathy, as she sat fingering the top of her hand-screen, with her eyelids fallen. She lifted them to say, “I have told you that I will not advise yon in any way. I cannot. I have no longer any wish in this matter. I must still remain in the place of Imogene’s mother; but I will do only what you wish. Please understand that, and don’t ask me for advice any more. It is painful.” She drew her lower lip in a little, and let the screen fall into her lap.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bowen, to do anything — say anything — that is painful to you,” Colville began. “You know that I would give the world to please you — —” The words escaped him and left him staring at her.

  “What are you saying to me, Theodore Colville?” she exclaimed, flashing a full-eyed glance upon him, and then breaking into a laugh, as unnatural for her. “Really, I don’t believe you know!”

  “Heaven knows I meant nothing but what I said,” he answered, struggling stupidly with a confusion of desires which every man but no woman will understand. After eighteen hundred years, the man is still imperfectly monogamous. “Is there anything wrong in it?”

  “Oh no! Not for you,” she said scornfully.

  “I am very much in earnest,” he went on hopelessly, “in asking your opinion, your help, in regard to how I shall treat this affair.”

  “And I am still more in earnest in telling you that I will give you no opinion, no help. I forbid you to recur to the subject.” He was silent, unable to drop his eyes from hers. “But for her,” continued Mrs. Bowen, “I will do anything in my power. If she asks my advice I will give it, and I will give her all the help I can.”

  “Thank you,” said Colville vaguely.

  “I will not have your thanks,” promptly retorted Mrs. Bowen, “for I mean you no kindness. I am trying to do my duty to Imogene, and when that is ended, all is ended. There is no way now for you to please me — as you call it — except to keep her from regretting what she has done.”

  “Do you think I shall fail in that?” he demanded indignantly.

  “I can offer you no opinion. I can’t tell what you will do.”

  “There are two ways of keeping her from regretting what she has done; and perhaps the simplest and best way would be to free her from the consequences, as far as they’re involved in me,” said Colville.

  Mrs. Bowen dropped herself back in her armchair. “If you choose to force these things upon me, I am a woman, and can’t help myself. Especially, I can’t help myself against a guest.”

  “Oh, I will relieve you of my presence,” said Colville. “I’ve no wish to force anything upon you — least of all myself.” He rose, and moved toward the door.

  She hastily intercepted him. “Do you think I will let you go without seeing Imogene? Do you understand me so little as that? It’s too late for you to go! You know what I think of all this, and I know, better than you, what you think. I shall play my part, and you shall play yours. I have refused to give you advice or help, and I never shall do it. But I know what my duty to her is, and I will fulfil it. No matter how distasteful it is to either of us, you must come here as before. The house is as free to you as ever — freer. And we are to be as good friends as ever — better. You can see Imogene alone or in my presence, and, as far as I am concerned, you shall consider yourself engaged or not, as you choose. Do you understand?”

  “Not in the least,” said Colville, in the ghost of his old bantering manner. “But don’t explain, or I shall make still less of it.”

  “I mean simply that I do it for Imogene and not for you.”

  “Oh, I understand that you don’t do it for me.”

  At this moment Imogene appeared between the folds of the portière, and her timid, embarrassed glance from Mrs. Bowen to Colville was the first gleam of consolation that had visited him since he parted with her the night before. A thrill of inexplicable pride and fondness passed through his heart, and even the compunction that followed could not spoil its sweetness. But if Mrs. Bowen discreetly turned her head aside that she need not witness a tender greeting between them, the precaution was unnecessary. He merely went forward and took the girl’s hand, with a sigh of relief. “Good morning, Imogene,” he said, with a kind of compassionate admiration.

  “Good morning,” she returned half-inquiringly.

  She did not take a seat near him, and turned, as if for instruction, to Mrs. Bowen. It was probably the force of habit. In any case, Mrs. Bowen’s eyes gave no response. She bowed slightly to Colville, and began, “I must leave Imogene to entertain you for the present, Mr.—”

  “No!” cried the girl impetuously; “don’t go.” Mrs. Bowen stopped. “I wish to speak with you — with you and Mr. Colville together. I wish to say — I don’t know how to say it exactly; but I wish to know — You asked him last night, Mrs. Bowen, whether he wished to consider it an engagement?”

  “I thought perhaps you would rather hear from your mother—”

  “Yes, I would be glad to know that my mother approved; but if she didn’t, I couldn’t help it. Mr. Colville said he was bound, but I was not. That can’t be. I wish to be bound, if he is.”

  “I don’t quite know what you expect me to say.”

  “Nothing,” said Imogene. “I merely wished you to know. And I don’t wish you to sacrifice anything to us. If you think best, Mr. Colville will not see me till I hear from home; though it won’t make any difference with me what I hear.”

  “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t meet,” said Mrs. Bowen absently.

  “If you wish it to have the same appearance as an Italian engagement — —”

  “No,” said Mrs. Bowen, putting her hand to her head with a gesture she had; “that would be quite unnecessary. It would be ridiculous under the circumstances. I have thought of it, and I have decided that the American way is the best.”

  “Very well, then,” said Imogene, with the air of summing up; “then the only question is whether we shall make it known or not to other people.”

  This point seemed to give Mrs. Bowen greater pause than any. She was a long time silent, and Colville saw that Imogene was beginning to chafe at her indecision. Yet he did not see the moment to intervene in a debate in which he found himself somewhat ludicrously ignored, as if the affair were solely the concern of these two women, and none of his.

  “Of course, Mrs. Bowen,” said the girl haughtily, “if it will be disagreeable to you to have it known — —”

  Mrs. Bowen blushed delicately — a blush of protest and of generous surprise, or so it seemed to Colville. “I was not thinking of myself, Imogene. I only wish to consider you. And I was thinking whether, at this distance from home, you wouldn’t prefer to have your family’s approval before you made it known.”

  “I am sure of their approval. Father will do what mother says, and she has always said that she would never interfere with me in — in — such a thing.”

  “Perhaps you would like all the more, then, to show her the deference of waiting for her consent.”

  Imogene started as if stopped short in swift career; it was not hard for Colville to perceive that she saw for the first time the reverse side of a magnanimous impulse. She suddenly turned to him.

  “I think Mrs. Bowen is right,” he said gravely, in answer to the eyes of Imogene. He continued, with a flicker of his wonted mood: “You must consider me a little in the matter. I have some small shreds of self-respect about me somewhere, and I would rather not be put in the attitude of defying your family, or ignoring them.”

  “No,” said Imogene, in the same effect of arrest.

  “When it isn’t absolutely necessary,” continued Colville. “Especially as you say there will be no opposition.”

  “Of course,” Imogene assented; and in fact what he said was very just, and he knew it; but he could perceive that he had suffered loss with her. A furtive glance at Mrs. Bowen did not assure him that he had made a compensating gain in that
direction, where, indeed, he had no right to wish for any.

  “Well, then,” the girl went on, “it shall be so. We will wait. It will only be waiting. I ought to have thought of you before; I make a bad beginning,” she said tremulously. “I supposed I was thinking of you; but I see that I was only thinking of myself.” The tears stood in her eyes. Mrs. Bowen, quite overlooked in this apology, slipped from the room.

  “Imogene!” said Colville, coming toward her.

  She dropped herself upon his shoulder. “Oh, why, why, why am I so miserable?”

  “Miserable, Imogene!” he murmured, stroking her beautiful hair.

  “Yes, yes! Utterly miserable! It must be because I’m unworthy of you — unequal every way. If you think so, cast me off at once. Don’t be weakly merciful!”

  The words pierced his heart. “I would give the world to make you happy, my child!” he said, with perfidious truth, and a sigh that came from the bottom of his soul. “Sit down here by me,” he said, moving to the sofa; and with whatever obscure sense of duty to her innocent self-abandon, he made a space between them, and reduced her embrace to a clasp of the hand she left with him. “Now tell me,” he said, “what is it makes you unhappy?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she answered, drying her averted eyes. “I suppose I am overwrought from not sleeping, and from thinking how we should arrange it all.”

  “And now that it’s all arranged, can’t you be cheerful again?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re satisfied with the way we’ve arranged it? Because if—”

  “Oh, perfectly — perfectly!” She hastily interrupted. “I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Of course,” she added, “it wasn’t very pleasant having some one else suggest what I ought to have thought of myself, and seem more delicate about you than I was.”

  “Some one else?”

  “You know! Mrs. Bowen.”

  “Oh! But I couldn’t see that she was anxious to spare me. It occurred to me that she was concerned about your family.”

  “It led up to the other! it’s all the same thing.”

  “Well, even in that case, I don’t see why you should mind it. It was certainly very friendly of her, and I know that she has your interest at heart entirely.”

  “Yes; she knows how to make it seem so.”

  don’t understand this. Don’t you think Mrs. Bowen likes you?”

  “She detests me.”

  “Oh, no, no, no! That’s too cruel an error. You mustn’t think that. I can’t let you. It’s morbid. I’m sure that she’s devotedly kind and good to you.”

  “Being kind and good isn’t liking. I know what she thinks. But of course I can’t expect to convince you of it; no one else could see it.”

  “No!” said Colville, with generous fervour.

  “Because it doesn’t exist and you mustn’t imagine it. You are as sincerely and unselfishly regarded in this house as you could be in your own home. I’m sure of that. I know Mrs. Bowen. She has her little worldlinesses and unrealities of manner, but she is truth and loyalty itself. She would rather die than be false, or even unfair. I knew her long ago—”

  “Yes,” cried the girl, “long before you knew me!”

  “And I know her to be the soul of honour,” said Colville, ignoring the childish outburst. “Honour — like a man’s,” he added. “And, Imogene, I want you to promise me that you’ll not think of her any more in that way. I want you to think of her as faithful and loving to you, for she is so. Will you do it?”

  Imogene did not answer him at once. Then she turned upon him a face of radiant self-abnegation. “I will do anything you tell me. Only tell me things to do.”

  The next time he came he again saw Mrs. Bowen alone before Imogene appeared. The conversation was confined to two sentences.

  “Mr. Colville,” she said, with perfectly tranquil point, while she tilted a shut book to and fro on her knee, “I will thank you not to defend me.”

  Had she overheard? Had Imogene told her? He answered, in a fury of resentment for her ingratitude that stupefied him. “I will never speak of you again.”

  Now they were enemies; he did not know how or why, but he said to himself, in the bitterness of his heart, that it was better so; and when Imogene appeared, and Mrs. Bowen vanished, as she did without another word to him, he folded the girl in a vindictive embrace.

  “What is the matter?” she asked, pushing away from him.

  “With me?”

  “Yes; you seem so excited.”

  “Oh, nothing,” he said, shrinking from the sharpness of that scrutiny in a woman’s eyes, which, when it begins the perusal of a man’s soul, astonishes and intimidates him; he never perhaps becomes able to endure it with perfect self-control. “I suppose a slight degree of excitement in meeting you may be forgiven me.” He smiled under the unrelaxed severity of her gaze.

  “Was Mrs. Bowen saying anything about me?”

  “Not a word,” said Colville, glad of getting back to the firm truth again, even if it were mere literality.

  “We have made it up,” she said, her scrutiny changing to a lovely appeal for his approval. “What there was to make up.”

  “Yes?”

  “I told her what you had said. And now it’s all right between us, and you mustn’t be troubled at that any more. I did it to please you.”

  She seemed to ask him with the last words whether she really had pleased him, as if something in his aspect suggested a doubt; and he hastened to reassure her. “That was very good of you. I appreciate it highly. It’s extremely gratifying.”

  She broke into a laugh of fond derision. “I don’t believe you really cared about it, or else you’re not thinking about it now. Sit down here; I want to tell you of something I’ve thought out.” She pulled him to the sofa, and put his arm about her waist, with a simple fearlessness and matter-of-course promptness that made him shudder. He felt that he ought to tell her not to do it, but he did not quite know how without wounding her. She took hold of his hand and drew his lax arm taut. Then she looked up into his eyes, as if some sense of his misgiving had conveyed itself to her, but she did not release her hold of his hand.

  “Perhaps we oughtn’t, if we’re not engaged?” she suggested, with such utter trust in him as made his heart quake.

  “Oh,” he sighed, from a complexity of feeling that no explanation could wholly declare, “we’re engaged enough for that, I suppose.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” she answered innocently. “I knew you wouldn’t let me if it were not right.” Having settled the question, “Of course,” she continued, “we shall all do our best to keep our secret; but in spite of everything it may get out. Do you see?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, of course it will make a great deal of remark.”

  “Oh yes; you must be prepared for that, Imogene,” said Colville, with as much gravity as he could make comport with his actual position.

  “I am prepared for it, and prepared to despise it,” answered the girl. “I shall have no trouble except the fear that you will mind it.” She pressed his hand as if she expected him to say something to this.

  “I shall never care for it,” he said, and this was true enough. “My only care will be to keep you from regretting. I have tried from the first to make you see that I was very much older than you. It would be miserable enough if you came to see it too late.”

  “I have never seen it, and I never shall see it, because there’s no such difference between us. It isn’t the years that make us young or old — who is it says that? No matter, it’s true. And I want you to believe it. I want you to feel that I am your youth — the youth you were robbed of — given back to you. Will you do it? Oh, if you could, I should be the happiest girl in the world.” Tears of fervour dimmed the beautiful eyes which looked into his. “Don’t speak!” she hurried on. “I won’t let you till I have said it all. It’s been this idea, this hope, with me always — ever since I knew what happened to you here long ago
— that you might go back in my life and take up yours where it was broken off; that I might make your life what it would have been — complete your destiny—”

  Colville wrenched himself loose from the hold that had been growing more tenderly close and clinging. “And do you think I could be such a vampire as to let you? Yes, yes; I have had my dreams of such a thing; but I see now how hideous they were. You shall make no such sacrifice to me. You must put away the fancies that could never be fulfilled, or if by some infernal magic they could, would only bring sorrow to you and shame to me. God forbid! And God forgive me, if I have done or said anything to put this in your head! And thank God it isn’t too late yet for you to take yourself back.”

  “Oh,” she murmured. “Do you think it is self-sacrifice for me to give myself to you? It’s self-glorification! You don’t understand — I haven’t told you what I mean, or else I’ve told it in such a way that I’ve made it hateful to you. Do you think I don’t care for you except to be something to you? I’m not so generous as that. You are all the world to me. If I take myself back from you, as you say, what shall I do with myself?”

  “Has it come to that?” asked Colville. He sat down again with her, and this time he put his arm around her and drew her to him, but it seemed to him he did it as if she were his child. “I was going to tell you just now that each of us lived to himself in this world, and that no one could hope to enter into the life of another and complete it. But now I see that I was partly wrong. We two are bound together, Imogene, and whether we become all in all or nothing to each other, we can have no separate fate.”