Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Sewell rose. “Well, I don’t see but what your supplement is a very demoralising element. I shall never dare to tell Mrs. Sewell what you’ve said.”

  “Oh, she knows it,” cried Miss Vane. “We’ve agreed that you will counteract any temptation that Lemuel may feel to abuse his advantages by the ferociously self-denying sermons you preach at him every Sunday.”

  “Do I preach at him? Do you notice it?” asked Sewell nervously.

  “Notice it?” laughed Miss Vane. “I should think your whole congregation would notice it. You seem to look at nobody else.”

  “I know it! Since he began to come, I can’t keep my eyes off him. I do deliver my sermons at him. I believe I write them at him! He has an eye of terrible and exacting truth. I feel myself on trial before him. He holds me up to a standard of sincerity that is killing me. Mrs. Sewell was bad enough; I was reasonably bad myself; but this! Couldn’t you keep him away? Do you think it’s exactly decorous to let your man-servant occupy a seat in your family pew? How do you suppose it looks to the Supreme Being?”

  Miss Vane was convulsed. “I had precisely those misgivings! But Lemuel hadn’t. He asked me what the number of our pew was, and I hadn’t the heart — or else I hadn’t the face — to tell him he mustn’t sit in it. How could I? Do you think it’s so very scandalous?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sewell. “It may lead to great abuses. If we tacitly confess ourselves equal in the sight of God, how much better are we than the Roman Catholics?”

  Miss Vane could not suffer these ironies to go on.

  “He approves of your preaching. He has talked your sermons over with me. You oughtn’t to complain.”

  “Oh, I don’t! Do you think he’s really softening a little toward me?”

  “Not personally, that I know,” said Miss Vane. “But he seems to regard you as a channel of the truth.”

  “I ought to be glad of so much,” said Sewell. “I confess that I hadn’t supposed he was at all of our way of thinking. They preached a very appreciable orthodoxy at Willoughby Pastures.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Miss Vane. “I only know that he approves your theology, or your ethics.”

  “Ethics, I hope. I’m sure they’re right.” After a thoughtful moment the minister asked, “Have you observed that they have softened him socially at all — broken up that terrible rigidity of attitude, that dismaying retentiveness of speech?”

  “I know what you mean!” cried Miss Vane delightedly. “I believe Lemuel is a little more supple, a little less like a granite boulder in one of his meadows. But I can’t say that he’s glib yet. He isn’t apparently going to say more than he thinks.”

  “I hope he thinks more than he says,” sighed the minister. “My interviews with Lemuel have left me not only exhausted but bruised, as if I had been hurling myself against a dead wall. Yes, I manage him better from the pulpit, and I certainly oughtn’t to complain. I don’t expect him to make any response, and I perceive that I am not quite so sore as after meeting him in private life.”

  That evening Lemuel was helping to throng the platform of an overcrowded horse-car. It was Saturday night, and he was going to the provision man up toward the South End, whom Miss Vane was dealing with for the time being, in an economical recoil from her expensive Back Bay provision man, to order a forgotten essential of the Sunday’s supplies. He had already been at the grocer’s, and was carrying home three or four packages to save the cart from going a third time that day to Bolingbroke Street, and he stepped down into the road when two girls came squeezing their way out of the car.

  “Well, I’m glad,” said one of them in a voice Lemuel knew at once, “‘t there’s one man’s got the politeness to make a little grain o’ room for you. Thank you, sir!” she added, with more scorn for the others than gratitude for Lemuel. “You’re a gentleman, anyway.”

  The hardened offenders on the platform laughed, but Lemuel said simply, “You’re quite welcome.”

  “Why, land’s sakes!” shouted the girl. “Well, if ‘tain’t you! S’tira!” she exclaimed to her companion in utter admiration. Then she added to Lemuel, “Why, I didn’t s’pose but what you’d a’ be’n back home long ago. Well, I am glad. Be’n in Boston ever since? Well, I want to know!”

  The conductor had halted his car for the girls to get off, but, as he remarked with a vicious jerk at his bell-strap, he could not keep his car standing there while a woman was asking about the folks, and the horses started up and left Lemuel behind. “Well, there!” said ‘Manda Grier. “‘F I hain’t made you lose your car! I never see folks like some them conductors.”

  “Oh, I guess I can walk the rest of the way,” said Lemuel, his face bright with a pleasure visible in the light of the lamp that brought out Statira Dudley’s smiles and the forward thrust of ‘Manda Grier’s whopper-jaw as they turned toward the pavement together.

  “Well, I guess ‘f I’ve spoke about you once, I have a hundred times, in the last six weeks. I always told S’tira you’d be’n sure to turn up b’fore this ‘f you’d be’n in Boston all the time; ‘n’ ‘t I guessed you’d got a disgust for the place, ‘n’ ‘t you wouldn’t want to see it again for one while.”

  Statira did not say anything. She walked on the other side of ‘Manda Grier, who thrust her in the side from time to time with a lift of her elbow, in demand of sympathy and corroboration; but though she only spoke to answer yes or no, Lemuel could see that she was always smiling or else biting her lip to keep herself from it. He thought she looked about as pretty as anybody could, and that she was again very fashionably dressed. She had on a short dolman, and a pretty hat that shaded her forehead but fitted close round, and she wore long gloves that came up on her sleeves. She had a book from the library; she walked with a little bridling movement that he found very ladylike. ‘Manda Grier tilted along between them, and her tongue ran and ran, so that Lemuel, when they came to Miss Vane’s provision man’s, could hardly get in a word to say that he guessed he must stop there.

  Statira drifted on a few paces, but ‘Manda Grier halted abruptly with him. “Well, ‘f you’re ever up our way we sh’d be much pleased to have you call, Mr. Barker,” she said formally.

  “I should be much pleased to do so,” said Lemuel with equal state.

  “‘Tain’t but just a little ways round here on the Avenue,” she added.

  Lemuel answered, “I guess I know where it is.” He did not mean it for anything of a joke, but both the girls laughed, and though she had been so silent before, Statira laughed the most.

  He could not help laughing either when ‘Manda Grier said, “I guess if you was likely to forget the number you could go round to the station and inquire. They got your address too.”

  “‘Manda Grier, you be still!” said Statira.

  “S’tira said that’s the way she knew you was from Willoughby Pastures. Her folks is from up that way, themselves. She says the minute she heard the name she knew it couldn’t ‘a’ be’n you, whoever it was done it.”

  “‘Manda Grier!” cried Statira again.

  “I tell her she don’t believe ‘t any harm can come out the town o’ Willoughby, anywheres.”

  “‘Manda!” cried Statira.

  Lemuel was pleased, but he could not say a word. He could not look at Statira.

  “Well, good evening,” said Amanda Grier.

  “Well, good evening,” said Lemuel.

  “Well, good evening,” said Statira.

  “Well, good evening,” said Lemuel again.

  The next moment they were gone round the corner, and he was left standing before the provision man’s, with his packages in his hand. It did not come to him till he had transacted his business within, and was on his way home, that he had been very impolite not to ask if he might not see them home. He did not know but he ought to go back and try to find them, and apologise for his rudeness, and yet he did not see how he could do that, either; he had no excuse for it; he was afraid it would seem queer, and
make them laugh. Besides, he had those things for Miss Vane, and the cook wanted some of them at once.

  He could hardly get to sleep that night for thinking of his blunder, and at times he cowered under the bedclothes for shame. He decided that the only way for him to do was to keep out of their way after this, and if he ever met them anywhere, to pretend not to see them.

  The next morning he went to hear Mr. Sewell preach, as usual, but he found himself wandering far from the sermon, and asking or answering this or that in a talk with those girls that kept going on in his mind. The minister himself seemed to wander, and at times, when Lemuel forced a return to him, he thought he was boggling strangely. For the first time Mr. Sewell’s sermon, in his opinion, did not come to much.

  While his place in Miss Vane’s household was indefinitely ascertained, he had the whole of Sunday, and he always wrote home in the afternoon, or brought up the arrears of the journal he had begun keeping; but the Sunday afternoon that followed, he was too excited to stay in and write. He thought he would go and take a walk, and get away from the things that pestered him. He did not watch where he was going, and after a while he turned a corner, and suddenly found himself in a long street, planted with shade-trees, and looking old-fashioned and fallen from a former dignity. He perceived that it could never have been fashionable, like Bolingbroke Street or Beacon; the houses were narrow, and their doors opened from little, cavernous arches let into the brick fronts, and they stood flush upon the pavement. The sidewalks were full of people, mostly girls walking up and down; at the corners young fellows lounged, and there were groups before the cigar stores and the fruit stalls, which were open. It was not very cold yet, and the children who swarmed upon the low door-steps were bareheaded and often summer-clad. The street was not nearly so well kept as the streets on the Back Bay that Lemuel was more used to, but he could see that it was not a rowdy street either. He looked up at a lamp on the first corner he came to, and read Pleasant Avenue on it; then he said that the witch was in it. He dramatised a scene of meeting those girls, and was very glib in it, and they were rather shy, and Miss Dudley kept behind Amanda Grier, who nudged her with her elbow when Lemuel said he had come round to see if anybody had robbed them of their books on the way home after he left them last night.

  But all the time, as he hurried along to the next corner, he looked fearfully to the right and left. Presently he began to steal guilty glances at the numbers of the houses. He said to himself that he would see what kind of a looking house they did live in, any way. It was only No. 900 odd when he began, and he could turn off if he wished long before he reached 1334. As he drew nearer he said he would just give a look at it, and then rush by. But 1334 was a house so much larger and nicer than he had expected that he stopped to collect his slow rustic thoughts, and decide whether she really lived there or whether she had just given that number for a blind. He did not know why he should think that, though; she was dressed well enough to come out of any house.

  While he lingered before the house an old man with a cane in his hand and his mouth hanging open stopped and peered through his spectacles, whose glare he fixed upon Lemuel, till he began to feel himself a suspicious character. The old man did not say anything, but stood faltering upon his stick and now and then gathering up his lower lip as if he were going to speak, but not speaking. Lemuel cleared his throat. “Hmmn! Is this a boarding-house?”

  “I don’t know,” crowed the old man, in a high senile note. “You want table board or rooms?”

  “I don’t want board at all,” began Lemuel again.

  “What?” crowed the old man; and he put up his hand to his ear.

  People were beginning to put their heads out of the neighbouring windows, and to walk slowly as they went by, so as to hear what he and the old man were saying. He could not run away now, and he went boldly up to the door of the large house and rang.

  A girl came, and he asked her, with a flushed face, if Miss Amanda Grier boarded there; somehow he could not bear to ask for Miss Dudley.

  “Well,” the girl said, “she rooms here,” as if that might be a different thing to Lemuel altogether.

  “Oh!” he said. “Is she in?”

  “Well, you can walk in,” said the girl, “and I’ll see.” She came back to ask, “Who shall I say called?”

  “Mr. Barker,” said Lemuel, and then glowed with shame because he had called himself Mister. The girl did not come back, but she hardly seemed gone before ‘Manda Grier came into the room. He did not know whether she would speak to him, but she was as pleasant as could be, and said he must come right up to her and S’tira’s room. It was pretty high up, but he did not notice the stairs, ‘Manda Grier kept talking so; and when he got to it, and ‘Manda Grier dashed the door open, and told him to walk right in, he would not have known but he was in somebody’s sitting-room. A curtained alcove hid the bed, and the room was heated by a cheerful little kerosene stove; there were bright folding carpet-chairs, and the lid of the washstand had a cloth on it that came down to the floor, and there were plants in the window. There was a mirror on the wall, framed in black walnut with gilt moulding inside, and a family-group photograph in the same kind of frame, and two chromes, and a clock on a bracket.

  Statira seemed surprised to see him; the room was pretty warm, and her face was flushed. He said it was quite mild out, and she said, “Was it?” Then she ran and flung up the window, and said, “Why, so it was,” and that she had been in the house all day, and had not noticed the weather.

  She excused herself and the room for being in such a state; she said she was ashamed to be caught in such a looking dress, but they were not expecting company, and she did suppose ‘Manda Grier would have given her time to put the room to rights a little. He could not understand why she said all this, for the whole room was clean, and Statira herself was beautifully dressed in the same dress that she had worn the night before, or one just like it; and after she had put up the window, ‘Manda Grier said, “S’tira Dudley, do you want to kill yourself?” and ran and pulled aside the curtain in the corner, and took down the dolman from among other clothes that hung there, and threw it on Statira’s shoulders, who looked as pretty as a pink in it. But she pretended to be too hot, and wanted to shrug it off, and ‘Manda Grier called out, “Mr. Barker! will you make her keep it on?” and Lemuel sat dumb and motionless, but filled through with a sweet pleasure.

  He tried several times to ask them if they had been robbed on the way home last night, as he had done in the scene he had dramatised; but he could not get out a word except that it had been pretty warm all day.

  Statira said, “I think it’s been a very warm fall,” and ‘Manda Grier said, “I think the summer’s goin’ to spend the winter with us,” and they all three laughed.

  “What speeches you do make, ‘Manda Grier,” said Statira.

  “Well, anything better than Quaker meetin’, I say,” retorted ‘Manda Grier; and then they were all three silent, and Lemuel thought of his clothes, and how fashionably both of the girls were dressed.

  “I guess,” said Statira, “it’ll be a pretty sickly winter, if it keeps along this way. They say a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard.”

  “I guess you’ll see the snow fly long before Christmas,” said ‘Manda Grier, “or Thanksgiving either.”

  “I guess so too,” said Lemuel, though he did not like to seem to take sides against Statira.

  She laughed as if it were a good joke, and said, “‘Tain’t but about a fortnight now till Thanksgiving anyway.”

  “If it comes a good fall of snow before Thanksgivin’, won’t you come round and give us a sleigh-ride, Mr. Barker?” asked ‘Manda Grier.

  They all laughed at her audacity, and Lemuel said, Yes, he would; and she said, “We’ll give you a piece of real Willoughby Centre Mince-pie, if you will.”

  They all laughed again.

  “‘Manda Grier!” said Statira, in protest.

  “Her folks sent her half a dozen last Thanks
givin’,” persisted ‘Manda Grier.

  “‘Manda!” pleaded Statira.

  ‘Manda Grier sprang up and got Lemuel a folding-chair. “You ain’t a bit comfortable in that stiff old thing, Mr. Barker.”

  Lemuel declared that he was perfectly comfortable, but she would not be contented till he had changed, and then she said, “Why don’t you look after your company, S’tira Dudley? I should think you’d be ashamed.”

  Lemuel’s face burned with happy shame, and Statira, who was as red as he was, stole a look at him, that seemed to say that there was no use trying to stop ‘Manda Grier. But when she went on, “I don’t know but it’s the fashion to Willoughby Centre,” they both gave way again, and laughed more than ever, and Statira said, “Well, ‘Manda Grier, what do you s’pose Mr. Barker ‘ll think?”

  She tried to be sober, but the wild girl set her and Lemuel off laughing when she retorted, “Guess he’ll think what he did when he was brought up in court for highway robbery.”

  ‘Manda Grier sat upright in her chair, and acted as if she had merely spoken about the weather. He knew that she was talking that way just to break the ice, and though he would have given anything to be able to second her, he could not.

  “How you do carry on, ‘Manda Grier,” said Statira, as helpless as he was.

  “Guess I got a pretty good load to carry!” said ‘Manda Grier.

  They all now began to find their tongues a little, and Statira told how one season when her mother took boarders she had gone over to the Pastures with a party of summer-folks on a straw-ride and picked blueberries. She said she never saw the berries as thick as they were there.

  Lemuel said he guessed he knew where the place was; but the fire had got into it last year, and there had not been a berry there this summer.

  Statira said, “What a shame!” She said there were some Barkers over East Willoughby way; and she confessed that when he said his name was Barker, and he was from Willoughby Pastures, that night in the station, she thought she should have gone through the floor.