Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “I have been hoping to see you,” she said. “I wanted to ask you about the

  Leightons. Did they really come?”

  “I believe so. They are in town — yes. I haven’t seen them.”

  “Then you don’t know how they’re getting on — that pretty creature, with her cleverness, and poor Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturing on a rash experiment. Do you know where they are?”

  “In West Eleventh Street somewhere. Miss Leighton is in Mr. Wetmore’s class.”

  “I must look them up. Do you know their number?”

  “Not at the moment. I can find out.”

  “Do,” said Mrs. Horn. “What courage they must have, to plunge into New York as they’ve done! I really didn’t think they would. I wonder if they’ve succeeded in getting anybody into their house yet?”

  “I don’t know,” said Beaton.

  “I discouraged their coming all I could,” she sighed, “and I suppose you did, too. But it’s quite useless trying to make people in a place like St. Barnaby understand how it is in town.”

  “Yes,” said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while inwardly he tried to believe that he had really discouraged the Leightons from coming to New York. Perhaps the vexation of his failure made him call Mrs. Horn in his heart a fraud.

  “Yes,” she went on, “it is very, very hard. And when they won’t understand, and rush on their doom, you feel that they are going to hold you respons—”

  Mrs. Horn’s eyes wandered from Beaton; her voice faltered in the faded interest of her remark, and then rose with renewed vigor in greeting a lady who came up and stretched her glove across the tea-cups.

  Beaton got himself away and out of the house with a much briefer adieu to the niece than he had meant to make. The patronizing compassion of Mrs. Horn for the Leightons filled him with indignation toward her, toward himself. There was no reason why he should not have ignored them as he had done; but there was a feeling. It was his nature to be careless, and he had been spoiled into recklessness; he neglected everybody, and only remembered them when it suited his whim or his convenience; but he fiercely resented the inattentions of others toward himself. He had no scruple about breaking an engagement or failing to keep an appointment; he made promises without thinking of their fulfilment, and not because he was a faithless person, but because he was imaginative, and expected at the time to do what he said, but was fickle, and so did not. As most of his shortcomings were of a society sort, no great harm was done to anybody else. He had contracted somewhat the circle of his acquaintance by what some people called his rudeness, but most people treated it as his oddity, and were patient with it. One lady said she valued his coming when he said he would come because it had the charm of the unexpected. “Only it shows that it isn’t always the unexpected that happens,” she explained.

  It did not occur to him that his behavior was immoral; he did not realize that it was creating a reputation if not a character for him. While we are still young we do not realize that our actions have this effect. It seems to us that people will judge us from what we think and feel. Later we find out that this is impossible; perhaps we find it out too late; some of us never find it out at all.

  In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Beaton had no present intention of looking them up or sending Mrs. Horn their address. As a matter of fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet Mr. Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where he dined, and he got it of the painter for himself. He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was getting on; but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on the futility of women generally going in for art. “Even when they have talent they’ve got too much against them. Where a girl doesn’t seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help.”

  His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do.

  “No, Dolly,” he persisted; “she’d better be home milking the cows and leading the horse to water.”

  “Do you think she’d better be up till two in the morning at balls and going all day to receptions and luncheons?”

  “Oh, guess it isn’t a question of that, even if she weren’t drawing. You knew them at home,” he said to Beaton.

  “Yes.”

  “I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has some notion of it; there’s no doubt about that. But — she’s a woman. The trouble with these talented girls is that they’re all woman. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we’ve got Providence on our own side from the start. I’m able to watch all their inspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it’s going to end in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and put them out of their misery.”

  “And what will you do with your students who are married already?” his wife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough.

  “Oh, they ought to get divorced.”

  “You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that’s what you think of them.”

  “My dear, I have a wife to support.”

  Beaton intervened with a question. “Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn’t standing it very well?”

  “How do I know? She isn’t the kind that bends; she’s the kind that breaks.”

  After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, “Won’t you come home with us,

  Mr. Beaton?”

  “Thank you; no. I have an engagement.”

  “I don’t see why that should prevent you,” said Wetmore. “But you always were a punctilious cuss. Well!”

  Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else whom he knew came in, and he yielded to the threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, of inclination, in going to call at the Leightons’. He asked for the ladies, and the maid showed him into the parlor, where he found Mrs. Leighton and Miss Woodburn.

  The widow met him with a welcome neatly marked by resentment; she meant him to feel that his not coming sooner had been noticed. Miss Woodburn bubbled and gurgled on, and did what she could to mitigate his punishment, but she did not feel authorized to stay it, till Mrs. Leighton, by studied avoidance of her daughter’s name, obliged Beaton to ask for her. Then Miss Woodburn caught up her work, and said, “Ah’ll go and tell her, Mrs. Leighton.” At the top of the stairs she found Alma, and Alma tried to make it seem as if she had not been standing there. “Mah goodness, chald! there’s the handsomest young man asking for you down there you evah saw. Alh told you’ mothah Ah would come up fo’ you.”

  “What — who is it?”

  “Don’t you know? But bo’ could you? He’s got the most beautiful eyes, and he wea’s his hai’ in a bang, and he talks English like it was something else, and his name’s Mr. Beaton.”

  “Did he — ask for me?” said Alma, with a dreamy tone. She put her hand on the stairs rail, and a little shiver ran over her.

  “Didn’t I tell you? Of coase he did! And you ought to go raght down if you want to save the poo’ fellah’s lahfe; you’ mothah’s just freezin’ him to death.”

  V.

  “She is?” cried Alma. “Tchk!” She flew downstairs, and flitted swiftly into the room, and fluttered up to Beaton, and gave him a crushing hand-shake.

  “How very kind of you to come and see us, Mr. Beaton! When did you come to New York? Don’t you find it warm here? We’ve only just lighted the furnace, but with this mild weather it seems too early. Mamma does keep it so hot!” She rushed about opening doors and shutting registers, and then came back and sat facing him from the sofa with a mask of radiant cordiality. “How have you been since we saw you?”

  “Very well,” said Beaton. “I hope you’re well, Miss Leighton?”

  “Oh, perfectly! I think New York agrees with us both wonderfully. I never knew such air. And to think of our not having snow yet! I should think everybody would want to come here! Why don’t you come, Mr. Beaton?”

  Beaton lifted his eyes and looked at her. “I — I live in New York,” he faltered.

&
nbsp; “In New York City!” she exclaimed.

  “Surely, Alma,” said her mother, “you remember Mr. Beaton’s telling us he lived in New York.”

  “But I thought you came from Rochester; or was it Syracuse? I always get those places mixed up.”

  “Probably I told you my father lived at Syracuse. I’ve been in New York ever since I came home from Paris,” said Beaton, with the confusion of a man who feels himself played upon by a woman.

  “From Paris!” Alma echoed, leaning forward, with her smiling mask tight on. “Wasn’t it Munich where you studied?”

  “I was at Munich, too. I met Wetmore there.”

  “Oh, do you know Mr. Wetmore?”

  “Why, Alma,” her mother interposed again, “it was Mr. Beaton who told you of Mr. Wetmore.”

  “Was it? Why, yes, to be sure. It was Mrs. Horn who suggested Mr. Ilcomb.

  I remember now. I can’t thank you enough for having sent me to Mr.

  Wetmore, Mr. Beaton. Isn’t he delightful? Oh yes, I’m a perfect

  Wetmorian, I can assure you. The whole class is the same way.”

  “I just met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner,” said Beaton, attempting the recovery of something that he had lost through the girl’s shining ease and steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth and hard, with a repellent elasticity from which he was flung off. “I hope you’re not working too hard, Miss Leighton?”

  “Oh no! I enjoy every minute of it, and grow stronger on it. Do I look very much wasted away?” She looked him full in the face, brilliantly smiling, and intentionally beautiful.

  “No,” he said, with a slow sadness; “I never saw you looking better.”

  “Poor Mr. Beaton!” she said, in recognition of his doleful tune. “It seems to be quite a blow.”

  “Oh no—”

  “I remember all the good advice you used to give me about not working too hard, and probably it’s that that’s saved my life — that and the house-hunting. Has mamma told you of our adventures in getting settled?

  “Some time we must. It was such fun! And didn’t you think we were fortunate to get such a pretty house? You must see both our parlors.” She jumped up, and her mother followed her with a bewildered look as she ran into the back parlor and flashed up the gas.

  “Come in here, Mr. Beaton. I want to show you the great feature of the house.” She opened the low windows that gave upon a glazed veranda stretching across the end of the room. “Just think of this in New York! You can’t see it very well at night, but when the southern sun pours in here all the afternoon—”

  “Yes, I can imagine it,” he said. He glanced up at the bird-cage hanging from the roof. “I suppose Gypsy enjoys it.”

  “You remember Gypsy?” she said; and she made a cooing, kissing little noise up at the bird, who responded drowsily. “Poor old Gypsum! Well, he sha’n’t be disturbed. Yes, it’s Gyp’s delight, and Colonel Woodburn likes to write here in the morning. Think of us having a real live author in the house! And Miss Woodburn: I’m so glad you’ve seen her! They’re Southern people.”

  “Yes, that was obvious in her case.”

  “From her accent? Isn’t it fascinating? I didn’t believe I could ever endure Southerners, but we’re like one family with the Woodburns. I should think you’d want to paint Miss Woodburn. Don’t you think her coloring is delicious? And such a quaint kind of eighteenth-century type of beauty! But she’s perfectly lovely every way, and everything she says is so funny. The Southerners seem to be such great talkers; better than we are, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Beaton, in pensive discouragement. He was sensible of being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from the performer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glittered upon him to the last with a keen impenetrable candor, a child-like singleness of glance, covering unfathomable reserve.

  “Well, Alma,” said her mother, when the door had closed upon him.

  “Well, mother.” Then, after a moment, she said, with a rush: “Did you think I was going to let him suppose we were piqued at his not coming? Did you suppose I was going to let him patronize us, or think that we were in the least dependent on his favor or friendship?”

  Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She merely said, “I shouldn’t think he would come any more.”

  “Well, we have got on so far without him; perhaps we can live through the rest of the winter.”

  “I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was quite stupefied. I could see that he didn’t know what to make of you.”

  “He’s not required to make anything of me,” said Alma.

  “Do you think he really believed you had forgotten all those things?”

  “Impossible to say, mamma.”

  “Well, I don’t think it was quite right, Alma.”

  “I’ll leave him to you the next time. Miss Woodburn said you were freezing him to death when I came down.”

  “That was quite different. But, there won’t be any next time, I’m afraid,” sighed Mrs. Leighton.

  Beaton went home feeling sure there would not. He tried to read when he got to his room; but Alma’s looks, tones, gestures, whirred through and through the woof of the story like shuttles; he could not keep them out, and he fell asleep at last, not because he forgot them, but because he forgave them. He was able to say to himself that he had been justly cut off from kindness which he knew how to value in losing it. He did not expect ever to right himself in Alma’s esteem, but he hoped some day to let her know that he had understood. It seemed to him that it would be a good thing if she should find it out after his death. He imagined her being touched by it under those circumstances.

  VI.

  In the morning it seemed to Beaton that he had done himself injustice. When he uncovered his Judas and looked at it, he could not believe that the man who was capable of such work deserved the punishment Miss Leighton had inflicted upon him. He still forgave her, but in the presence of a thing like that he could not help respecting himself; he believed that if she could see it she would be sorry that she had cut herself off from his acquaintance. He carried this strain of conviction all through his syndicate letter, which he now took out of his desk and finished, with an increasing security of his opinions and a mounting severity in his judgments. He retaliated upon the general condition of art among us the pangs of wounded vanity, which Alma had made him feel, and he folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket, almost healed of his humiliation. He had been able to escape from its sting so entirely while he was writing that the notion of making his life more and more literary commended itself to him. As it was now evident that the future was to be one of renunciation, of self-forgetting, an oblivion tinged with bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of reconsidering his resolution against Fulkerson’s offer. One must call it reasoning, but it was rather that swift internal dramatization which constantly goes on in persons of excitable sensibilities, and which now seemed to sweep Beaton physically along toward the ‘Every Other Week’ office, and carried his mind with lightning celerity on to a time when he should have given that journal such quality and authority in matters of art as had never been enjoyed by any in America before. With the prosperity which he made attend his work he changed the character of the enterprise, and with Fulkerson’s enthusiastic support he gave the public an art journal of as high grade as ‘Les Lettres et les Arts’, and very much that sort of thing. All this involved now the unavailing regret of Alma Leighton, and now his reconciliation with her: they were married in Grace Church, because Beaton had once seen a marriage there, and had intended to paint a picture of it some time.

  Nothing in these fervid fantasies prevented his responding with due dryness to Fulkerson’s cheery “Hello, old man!” when he found himself in
the building fitted up for the ‘Every Other Week’ office. Fulkerson’s room was back of the smaller one occupied by the bookkeeper; they had been respectively the reception-room and dining-room of the little place in its dwelling-house days, and they had been simply and tastefully treated in their transformation into business purposes. The narrow old trim of the doors and windows had been kept, and the quaintly ugly marble mantels. The architect had said, Better let them stay they expressed epoch, if not character.

  “Well, have you come round to go to work? Just hang up your coat on the floor anywhere,” Fulkerson went on.

  “I’ve come to bring you that letter,” said Beaton, all the more haughtily because he found that Fulkerson was not alone when he welcomed him in these free and easy terms. There was a quiet-looking man, rather stout, and a little above the middle height, with a full, close-cropped iron-gray beard, seated beyond the table where Fulkerson tilted himself back, with his knees set against it; and leaning against the mantel there was a young man with a singularly gentle face, in which the look of goodness qualified and transfigured a certain simplicity. His large blue eyes were somewhat prominent; and his rather narrow face was drawn forward in a nose a little too long perhaps, if it had not been for the full chin deeply cut below the lip, and jutting firmly forward.

  “Introduce you to Mr. March, our editor, Mr. Beaton,” Fulkerson said, rolling his head in the direction of the elder man; and then nodding it toward the younger, he said, “Mr. Dryfoos, Mr. Beaton.” Beaton shook hands with March, and then with Mr. Dryfoos, and Fulkerson went on, gayly: “We were just talking of you, Beaton — well, you know the old saying. Mr. March, as I told you, is our editor, and Mr. Dryfoos has charge of the publishing department — he’s the counting-room incarnate, the source of power, the fountain of corruption, the element that prevents journalism being the high and holy thing that it would be if there were no money in it.” Mr. Dryfoos turned his large, mild eyes upon Beaton, and laughed with the uneasy concession which people make to a character when they do not quite approve of the character’s language. “What Mr. March and I are trying to do is to carry on this thing so that there won’t be any money in it — or very little; and we’re planning to give the public a better article for the price than it’s ever had before. Now here’s a dummy we’ve had made up for ‘Every Other Week’, and as we’ve decided to adopt it, we would naturally like your opinion of it, so’s to know what opinion to have of you.” He reached forward and pushed toward Beaton a volume a little above the size of the ordinary duodecimo book; its ivory-white pebbled paper cover was prettily illustrated with a water-colored design irregularly washed over the greater part of its surface: quite across the page at top, and narrowing from right to left as it descended. In the triangular space left blank the title of the periodical and the publisher’s imprint were tastefully lettered so as to be partly covered by the background of color.