“Back to Willoughby Pastures?” asked Sewell, with not so much faith in that panacea for Lemuel’s troubles as he had once had.
“No, to some other town. Do you know of anything I could get to do in New York?”
“Oh, no, no!” said the minister. “You needn’t let this banish you. We must seek this young Mr.—”
“Berry.”
“ — Mr. Berry out, and explain the matter to him.”
“Then you’ll have to tell him all about me?”
“Yes. Why not?”
Lemuel was silent, and looked down.
“In the meantime,” pursued the minister, “I have a message for you from Miss Vane. She has heard, as we all have, of your behaviour during the fire—”
“It wasn’t anything,” Lemuel interrupted. “There wasn’t the least danger; and Mrs. Evans did it all herself, anyway. It made me sick to see how the papers had it. It’s a shame!”
Sewell smiled. “I’m afraid you couldn’t make Miss Vane think so; but I can understand what you mean. She has never felt quite easy about the way — the terms — on which she parted with you. She has spoken to me several times of it, and — ah — expressed her regret; and now, knowing that you have been — interrupted in your life, she is anxious to have you come to her—”
An angry flash lighted up Lemuel’s face.
“I couldn’t go back there! I wouldn’t do any such work again.”
“I don’t mean that,” Sewell hastened to say “Miss Vane wished me to ask you to come as her guest until you could find something — Miss Sibyl Vane has gone to New York—”
“I’m very much obliged to her,” said Lemuel, “but I shouldn’t want to give her so much trouble, or any one. I — I liked her very much, and I shouldn’t want she should think I didn’t appreciate her invitation.”
“I will tell her,” said the minister. “I had no great hope you would see your way to accepting it. But she will be glad to know that you received it.” He added, rather interrogatively than affirmatively, “In the right spirit.”
“Oh yes,” said Lemuel. “Please to tell her I did.”
“Thank you,” said Sewell, with bland vagueness. “I don’t know that I’ve asked yet where you are staying at present?”
“I’m at Mrs. Nash’s, 13 Canary Place. Mrs. Harmon went there first.”
“Oh! And are you looking forward to rejoining her in a new place?”
“I don’t know as I am. I don’t know as I should want to go into an hotel again.”
Sewell manifested a little embarrassment. “Well, you won’t forget your promise to let me be of use to you — pecuniarily, if you should be in need of a small advance at any time.”
“Oh no! But I’ve got enough money for a while yet — till I can get something to do.” He rose, and after a moment’s hesitation he said, “I don’t know as I want you should say anything to that fellow about me. To Mr. Berry, I mean.”
“Oh! certainly not,” said Sewell, “if you don’t wish it.”
Whatever it was in that reticent and elusive soul which prompted his request, the minister now felt that he could not know; but perhaps the pang that Lemuel inflicted on himself had as much transport as anguish in it. He believed that he had for ever cut himself off from the companionship that seemed highest and holiest on earth to him; he should never see that girl again; Berry must have told Miss Swan, and long before this Miss Carver had shuddered at the thought of him as the accomplice of a thief. But he proudly said to himself that he must let it all go; for if he had not been a thief, he had been a beggar and a menial, he had come out of a hovel at home, and his mother went about like a scarecrow, and it mattered little what kind of shame she remembered him in.
He thought of her perpetually now, and, in those dialogues which we hold in reverie with the people we think much about, he talked with her all day long. At first, when he began to do this, it seemed a wrong to Statira; but now, since the other was lost to him beyond other approach, he gave himself freely up to the mystical colloquies he held with her, as the devotee abandons himself to imagined converse with a saint. Besides, if he was in love with Statira, he was not in love with Jessie; that he had made clear to himself; for his feeling toward her was wholly different.
Most of the time, in these communings, he was with her in her own home, down at Corbitant, where he fancied she had gone, after the catastrophe at the St. Albans, and he sat there with her on a porch at the front door, which she had once described to him, and looked out under the silver poplars at the vessels in the bay. He formed himself some image of it all from pictures of the seaside which he had seen; and there were times when he tried to go back with her into the life she had led there as a child. Perhaps his ardent guesses at this were as near reality as anything that could be made to appear, for, after her mother and brothers and sisters had died out of the wide old house, her existence there was as lonely as if she had been a little ghost haunting it. She had inherited her mother’s temperament with her father’s constitution; she was the child born to his last long absence at sea and her mother’s last solitude at home. When he returned, he found his wife dead and his maiden sister caring for the child in the desolate house.
This sister of Captain Carver’s had been disappointed, as the phrase is, when a young girl; another girl had won her lover from her. Her disappointment had hardened her to the perception of the neighbours; and, by a strange perversion of the sympathies and faculties, she had turned from gossip and censure, from religion, and from all the sources of comfort that the bruised heart of Corbitant naturally turned to, and found such consolation as came to her in books, that is to say romances, and especially the romances that celebrated and deified such sorrow as her own. She had been a pretty little thing when young, and Jessie remembered her as pretty in her early old age. At heart she must still have been young when her hair was grey, for she made a friend and companion of the child, and they fed upon her romances together. When the aunt died, the child, who had known no mother but her, was stricken with a grief so deep and wild that at first her life and then her mind was feared for. To get her away from the associations and influences of the place, her father sent her to school in the western part of the State, where she met Madeline Swan, and formed one of those friendships which are like passions between young girls. During her long absence, her father married again; and she was called home to his deathbed. He was dead when she arrived; he had left a will that made her dependent on her stepmother. When Madeline Swan wrote to announce that she was coming to Boston to study art, Jessie Carver had no trouble in arranging with her stepmother, by the sacrifice of her final claim on her father’s estate, to join her friend there, with a little sum of money on which she was to live till she should begin to earn something.
Her life had been a series of romantic episodes; Madeline said that if it could be written out it would be fascinating; but she went to work very practically, and worked hard. She had not much feeling for colour; but she drew better than her friend, and what she hoped to do was to learn to illustrate books.
One evening, after a day of bitter-sweet reveries of Jessie, Lemuel went to see Statira. She and ‘Manda Grier were both very gay, and made him very welcome. They had tea for him; Statira tried all her little arts, and ‘Manda Grier told some things that had happened in the box-factory. He could not help laughing at them; they were really very funny; but he felt somehow that it was all a preparation for something else. At last the two girls made a set at him, as ‘Manda Grier called it, and tried to talk him into their old scheme of going to wait on table at some of the country hotels, or the seaside. They urged that now, while he was out of a place, it was just the time to look up a chance.
He refused, at first kindly, and at last angrily; and he would have gone away in this mood if Statira had not said that she would never say another word to him about it, and hung upon his neck, while ‘Manda Grier looked on in sullen resentment. He came away sick and heavy at heart. He said to himsel
f that they would be willing to drag him into the mire; they had no pride; they had no sense; they did not know anything and they could not learn. He tried to get away from them to Miss Carver in his thoughts; but the place where he had left her was vacant, and he could not conjure her back. Out of the void, he was haunted by a look of grieving reproach and wonder from her eyes.
XXV.
That evening Sewell went to see an old parishioner of his who lived on the Hill, and who among his eccentricities had the habit of occupying his city house all summer long, while his family flitted with other people of fashion to the seashore. That year they talked of taking a cottage for the first time since they had sold their own cottage at Nahant, in a day of narrow things now past. The ladies urged that he ought to come with them, and not think of staying in Boston now that he had a trouble of the eyes which had befallen him, and Boston would be so dull if he could not get about freely and read as usual.
He answered that he would rather be blind in Boston than telescopic at Beverly, or any other summer resort; and that as for the want of proper care, which they urged, he did not think he should lack in his own house, if they left him where he could reach a bell. His youngest daughter, a lively little blonde, laughed with a cousin of his wife’s who was present, and his wife decorously despaired. The discussion of the topic was rather premature, for they were not thinking of going to Beverly before middle of May, if they took the cottage; but an accident had precipitated it, and they were having it out, as people do, each party in the hope that the other would yield if kept at long enough before the time of final decision came.
“Do you think,” said the husband and father, who looked a whimsical tyrant at the worst, but was probably no easier to manage for his whimsicality, “that I am going to fly in the face of prosperity, and begin to do as other people wish because I’m pecuniarily able to do as I please?”
The little blonde rose decisively from the low chair where she had been sitting. “If papa has begun to reason about it, we may as well yield the point for the present, mamma. Come, Lily! Let us leave him to Cousin Charles.”
“Oh, but I say!” cried Cousin Charles, “if I’m to stay and fight it out with him, I’ve got to know which side I’m on.”
“You’re on the right side,” said the young lady over her shoulder; “you always are, Cousin Charles.”
Cousin Charles, in the attempt to kiss his hand toward his flatterer, pulled his glasses off his nose by their cord. “Bromfield,” he said, “I don’t see but this commits me against you.” And then, the ladies having withdrawn, the two men put on that business air with which our sex tries to atone to itself for having unbent to the lighter minds of the other; heaven knows what women do when the men with whom they have been talking go away.
“If you should happen to stay in town,” continued the cousin treacherously, “I shall be very glad, for I don’t know but I shall be here the greater part of the summer myself.”
“I shall stay,” said the other, “but there won’t be anything casual about it.”
“What do you hear from Tom?” asked the cousin, feeling about on the mantel for a match. He was a full-bodied, handsome, amiable-looking old fellow, whose breath came in quick sighs with this light exertion. He had a blond complexion, and what was left of his hair, a sort of ethereal down on the top of his head, and some cherished fringes at the temples, was turning the yellowish grey that blond hair becomes.
The other gentleman, stretched at ease in a deep chair, with one leg propped on a cricket, had the distinction of long forms, which the years had left in their youthful gracility; his snow-white moustache had been allowed to droop over the handsome mouth, whose teeth were beginning to go. “They’re on the other side of the clock,” he said, referring to the matches. He added, with another glance at his relative, “Charles, you ought to bant. It’s beginning to affect your wind.”
“Beginning! Your memory’s going, Bromfield. But they say there’s a new system that allows you to eat everything. I’m waiting for that. In the meantime, I’ve gone back to my baccy.”
“They’ve cut mine off,” sighed the other. “Doesn’t it affect your heart?”
“Not a bit. But what do you do, now you can’t smoke and your eyes have given out?”
“I bore myself. I had a letter from Tom yesterday,” said the sufferer, returning to the question that his cousin’s obesity had diverted him from. “He’s coming on in the summer.”
“Tom’s a lucky fellow,” said the cousin. “I wish you had insisted on my taking some of that stock of his when you bought in.”
“Yes, you made a great mistake,” said the other, with whimsical superiority. “You should have taken my advice. You would now be rolling in riches, as I am, with a much better figure for it.”
The cousin smoked a while. “Do you know, I think Tom’s about the best fellow I ever knew.”
“He’s a good boy,” said the other, with the accent of a father’s pride and tenderness.
“Going to bring his pretty chickens and their dam?” asked the cousin, parting his coat-skirts to the genial influence of the fire.
“No; it’s a short visit. They’re going into the Virginia mountains for the summer.” A manservant came in and said something in a low voice. “Heigh? What? Why, of course! Certainly! By all means! Show him in! Come in, parson; come in!” called the host to his yet unseen visitor, and he held out his hand for Sewell to take when he appeared at the door. “Glad to see you! I can’t get up, — a little gouty to-day, — but Bellingham’s on foot. His difficulty is sitting down.”
Bellingham gave the minister a near-sighted man’s glare through his glasses, and then came eagerly forward and shook hands. “Oh, Mr. Sewell! I hope you’ve come to put up some job on Corey. Don’t spare him! With Kanawha Paint Co. at the present figures he merits any demand that Christian charity can make upon him. The man’s prosperity is disgraceful.”
“I’m glad to find you here, Mr. Bellingham,” said Sewell, sitting down.
“Oh, is it double-barrelled?” pleaded Bellingham.
“I don’t know that it’s a deadly weapon of any kind,” returned the minister. “But if one of you can’t help me, perhaps the other can.”
“Well, let us know what the job is,” said Corey. “We refuse to commit ourselves beforehand.”
“I shall have to begin at the beginning,” said Sewell warningly, “and the beginning is a long way off.”
“No matter,” said Bellingham adventurously. “The further off, the better. I’ve been dining with Corey — he gives you a very good dinner now, Corey does — and I’m just in the mood for a deserving case.”
“The trouble with Sewell is,” said Corey, “that he doesn’t always take the trouble to have them deserving. I hope this is interesting, at least.”
“I suspect you’ll find it more interesting than I shall,” said the minister, inwardly preparing himself for the amusement which Lemuel’s history always created in his hearers. It seemed to him, as he began, that he was always telling this story, and that his part in the affair was always becoming less and less respectable. No point was lost upon his hearers; they laughed till the ladies in the drawing-room above wondered what the joke could be.
“At any rate,” said Bellingham, “the fellow behaved magnificently at the fire. I read the accounts of it.”
“I think his exploits owe something to the imagination of the reporters,” said Sewell. “He tells a different story himself.”
“Oh, of course!” said Bellingham.
“Well; and what else?” asked Corey.
“There isn’t any more. Simply he’s out of work, and wants something to do — anything to do — anything that isn’t menial.”
“Ah, that’s a queer start of his,” said Bellingham thoughtfully. “I don’t know but I like that.”
“And do you come to such effete posterity as we are for help in a case like that?” demanded Corey. “Why, the boy’s an Ancestor!”
“So he is! Why, so he is — so he is!” said Bellingham, with delight in the discovery. “Of course he is!”
“All you have to do,” pursued Corey, “is to give him time, and he’ll found a fortune and a family, and his children’s children will be cutting ours in society. Half of our great people have come up in that way. Look at the Blue-book, where our nobility is enrolled; it’s the apotheosis of farm-boys, mechanics, insidemen, and I don’t know what!”
“But in the meantime this ancestor is now so remote that he has nothing to do,” suggested Sewell. “If you give him time you kill him.”
“Well, what do you want me to do? Mrs. Corey is thinking of setting up a Buttons. But you say this boy has a soul above buttons. And besides, he’s too old.”
“Yes.”
“Look here, Bromfield,” said Bellingham, “why don’t you get him to read to you?”
Corey glanced from his cousin to the minister, whose face betrayed that this was precisely what he had had in his own mind.
“Is that the job?” asked Corey.
Sewell nodded boldly.
“He would read through his nose, wouldn’t he? I couldn’t stand that. I’ve stopped talking through mine, you know.”
“Why, look here, Bromfield!” said Bellingham for the second time. “Why don’t you let me manage this affair for you? I’m not of much use in the world, but from time to time I like to do my poor best; and this is just one of the kind of things I think I’m fitted for. I should like to see this young man. When I read in the newspapers of some fellow who has done a fine thing, I always want to see what manner of man he is; and I’m glad of any chance that throws him in my way.”
“Your foible’s notorious, Charles. But I don’t see why you keep my cigars all to yourself,” said Corey.
“My dear fellow,” said Bellingham, making a hospitable offer of the cigar-box from the mantel, “you said they’d cut you off.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 316