Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  He took his arm from my shoulders, and turned about without any ceremony of adieu, and walked away, head down, with shuffling, slippered feet.

  We met several times, very pleasantly, and with increased liking. Then he took offence, as capricious as his former fancy, at something I wrote, and sent me an angry note, which I answered in kind. Not long afterward I went abroad on a little money I had saved up, and when I came home, I married, and by an ironical chance, found myself; with my aesthetic tastes, my literary ambition, and my journalistic experience, settled in the insurance business at Boston. I did not revisit the West, but I learned by letters that our dear little city out there had become a formidable railroad centre; everybody had made or lost money, and Faulkner had become very rich through the real estate which had long kept him land-poor. One day I got a newspaper addressed in his handwriting, which brought me the news of his marriage. The name of the lady struck me as almost factitiously pretty, and I could well imagine Faulkner provisionally falling in love with her because she was called Hermia Winter. The half-column account of the wedding described the Rev. James Nevil as “officiating”; and something in the noisy and bragging tone of the reporter in dealing with this important society event disadvantaged the people concerned in my mind. I chose to regard it all as cruder and louder than anything I remembered of the place in old days; but my wife said that it was characteristically Western, and that probably it had always been like that out there; only I had not felt it while I was in it, though, as she said, I was not of it.

  She was a Bostonian herself; and it was useless to appeal to the society journalism of her own city in proof of the prevalence of that sort of vulgarity everywhere. She laughed at the name Hermia, and said it sounded made-up, and that she had no doubt the girl’s name was Hannah. I thought I had my revenge afterward when a friend wrote me about the marriage, which was a surprise to everybody; for it had always been supposed that Faulkner was going to marry the beautiful and brilliant Miss Ludlow, long, perhaps too long, the belle of the place. The lady whom he had chosen was the daughter of a New England family, who had lived just out of town in my time and had never been in society. She was a teacher in Bell’s Institute, and Faulkner met her there on one of his business visits as trustee. She was a very cultivated girl, though; and they were going abroad for their wedding-journey. My correspondent had a special message from Faulkner for me, delivered on his wedding night. He remembered me among the people he would have liked to have there; he was sorry for our little quarrel and was to blame for it; he was coming home by way of Boston, and was going to look me up.

  My wife said, Well, he seemed a nice fellow; but it only showed how any sort of New England girl could go out there and pick up the best. For the rest, she hoped they would not hurry home on my account; and if all my Western friends, with their free ideas of hospitality, were going to call on me, there would be no end to it. It was the jealousy of her husband’s past every good wife feels that spoke; but long before I met Faulkner again we had both forgotten all about him.

  II

  ONE DAY seven or eight years later, when I was coming up from Lynn, where we had board for a few weeks’ outing in August, I fell in with Dr. Wingate, the nervous specialist. We were members of the same dining club, and were supposed to meet every month; we really met once or twice during the winter, but then it was a great pleasure to me, and I tried always to get a place next him at table. I found in him, as I think one finds in most intelligent physicians, a sympathy for human suffering unclouded by sentiment, and a knowledge of human nature at once vast and accurate, which fascinated me far more than any forays of the imagination in that difficult region. Like physicians everywhere, he was less local in his feelings and interests than men of other professions; and I was able better to overcome with him that sense of being a foreigner, and in some sort on sufferance, which embarrassed me (quite needlessly, I dare say) with some of my commensals: lawyers, ministers, brokers, and politicians. I had a sort of affection for him; I never saw him, with the sunny, simple-hearted, boyish smile he had, without feeling glad; and it seemed to me that he liked me, too. His kindly presence must have gone a long way with his patients, whose fluttering sensibilities would hang upon his cheery strength as upon one of the main chances of life.

  We rather rushed together to shake hands, and each asked how the other happened to be there at that hour in the morning. I explained my presence, and he said, as if it were some sort of coincidence: “You don’t say so! Why, I’ve got a patient over at Swampscott, who says he knows you. A man named Faulkner.”

  I repeated, “Faulkner?” In the course of travel and business I had met so many people that I forgave myself for not distinguishing them very sharply by name, at once.

  “He says he used to know you in your demi-semi-literary days, and he rather seemed to think you must be concealing a reputation for a poet, when I told him you were in the insurance business, and I only knew of your literary tastes. He’s a Western man, and he met you out there.”

  “Oh!” said I. “Douglas Faulkner!” And now it was my turn to say, “You don’t say so! Why of course! Is it possible!” and I lost myself in a cloud of silent reminiscences and associations, to come out presently with the question, “What in the world is he doing at Swampscott?”

  The doctor looked serious; and then he looked keenly at me. “Were you and he great friends?”

  “Well, we were not sworn brothers exactly. We were writers on rival newspapers; but I rather liked him. Yes, there was something charming to me about him; something good and sweet. I haven’t met him, though, for ten years.”

  “He seemed to be rather fond of you. He said he wished I would tell you to come and see him, the next time I met you. Odd you should turn up there in the station!” By this time we were in the train, on our way to Boston.

  “I will,” I said, and I hesitated to add, “I hope there’s nothing serious the matter?”

  The doctor hesitated too. “Well, he’s a pretty sick man. There’s no reason I shouldn’t tell you. He’s badly run down; and — I don’t like the way his heart behaves.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—”

  “He had just got home from Europe, and was on his way to the mountains when he came to see me in Boston, and I sent him to the sea-side. I came down last night — it’s the beginning of my vacation — to see him, and spent the night there. He’s got the Mallows place — nice old place. Do you know his wife?”

  “No; he married after I came East. What sort of person is she?” I asked.

  I remembered my talk with my wife about her and her name, and I felt that it was really a triumph for me when the doctor said: “Well, she’s an exquisite creature. One of the most beautiful women I ever saw, and one of the most interesting. Of course, there’s where the ache comes in. In a case like that, it isn’t so much that one dies as that the other lives. It’s none of my business; but she seemed rather lonely. They have no acquaintance among the other cottagers, and — did you think of taking your wife over? Excuse me!”

  “Why of course! I’m so glad you suggested it. Mrs. March will be most happy to go with me.”

  III

  MRS. MARCH dissembled her joy at the prospect when I opened it to her. She said she did not see how she entered into the affair. Faulkner was an old friend of mine; but she had nothing to do with him, and certainly nothing to do with his wife. They would not like each other; it would look patronizing; it would complicate matters; she did not see what good it would do for her to go. I constantly fell back upon the doctor’s suggestion. In the end, she went. She professed to be governed entirely by Dr. Wingate’s opinion of our duty in the case; I acknowledged a good deal of curiosity as well as some humanity, and I boldly proposed to gratify both. But in fact I felt rather ashamed of my motives when I met Faulkner, and I righted myself in my own regard by instantly shifting my visit to the ground of friendly civility. He seemed surprised and touched to see me, and he welcomed my wife with that rather decorati
ve politeness which men of Southern extraction use toward women. He was not going to have any of my compassion as an invalid, that was clear; and he put himself on a level with me in the matter of health at once. He said it was very good of Dr. Wingate to send me so soon, and I was very good to come; he was rather expecting the doctor himself in the afternoon; he had been out of kilter for two or three years; but he was getting all right now. I knew he did not believe this, but I made believe not to know it, and I even said, when he asked me how I was, that I was so-so; and I left him to infer that everybody was out of kilter, and perhaps just in his own way.

  “Well, let us go up to the house,” he said, as if this gave him a pleasure, “and find Mrs. Faulkner. You never met my wife, March? Her people used to live just outside the city line, on Pawpaw Creek. They were of New England origin,” he added to my wife; “but I don’t know whether you’ll find her very much of a Yankee. She has passed most of her life in the West. She will be very glad to see you; we have no acquaintances about here. Your Eastern people don’t catch on to the homeless stranger quite so quickly as we do in the West. I dare say they don’t let go so easily, either.”

  We had found Faulkner at the gate of his avenue, and we began to walk with him at once toward his cottage, under the arches of the sea-beaten, somewhat wizened elms, which all slanted landward, with a writhing fling of their gray and yellow lichened boughs. It was a delicious morning, and the cool sunshine dripped in through the thin leaves, here and there blighted at the edge and faded, and seemed to lie in pools in the road. The fine air was fresh, and brought from a distance apparently greater than it really came the plunge of the surf against the rocks, and the crash of the rollers along the beach. The ground fell away in a wide stretch of neglected lawn toward the water; and the autumnal dandelions lifted their stars on their tall slender stems from the long grass, which was full of late summer glint and sheen, and blowing with a delicate sway and tilt of its blades in the breeze that tossed the elms.

  “What a lovely place!” sighed my wife.

  “You haven’t begun to see it,” said Faulkner. “We’ve got twenty acres of land here, and all the sea and sky there are. Mrs. Faulkner will want to show you the whole affair. Did you walk up from the station? I’ll send for your baggage from the house.”

  “That won’t be necessary; I have it on my arm,” said my wife, and she put her little shopping bag in evidence with a gay twirl.

  “Why, but you’re going to stay all night?”

  “Oh, no, indeed! What would become of our children?”

  “We’ll send to Lynn for them.”

  “Thank you; it couldn’t be managed. I won’t try to convince you, Mr. Faulkner, but I’m sure your wife will be reasonable,” she said, to forestall the protests which she saw hovering in his eyes.

  I noticed that his eyes, once so beautiful, had a dull and suffering look, and the smokiness of his complexion had a kind of livid stain in it. His hair straggled from under his soft felt hat with the unkempt effect I remembered, and his dress had a sort of characteristic slovenliness. He carried a stick, and his expressive hands seemed longer and languider, as if relaxed from a nervous tension borne beyond the strength.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” said Faulkner. “But you’re booked for the day, anyway.”

  My wife apparently did not think it worth while to dispute this; or perhaps she was waiting to have it out with Mrs. Faulkner. He put up his arm across my shoulders, and gave me a little pull toward him. “It’s mighty pleasant to see you again, old fellow! I can’t tell you how pleasant.”

  I was not to be outdone in civilities, and my cordiality in reply retrospectively established our former acquaintance on a ground of intimacy which it had never really occupied. My wife knew this and gave me a look of surprise, which I could see hardening into the resolution not to betray herself at least into insincerities.

  “You’ll find another old acquaintance of yours here,” Faulkner went on. “You remember Nevil?”

  “Your clerical friend? Yes, indeed! Is he here?” I put as much factitious rapture into my tone as it would hold.

  “Yes; we were in Europe together, and he’s spending a month with us here.” Faulkner spoke gloomily, almost sullenly; he added, brightly, “You know I can’t get along without Jim. He was in Europe with us, too, a good deal of the time. Yes, we’ve always been great friends.”

  “You remember I told you about Mr. Nevil, my dear,” I explained to my wife.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, non-committally.

  Faulkner slipped his hand from my shoulder into my arm, and gently stayed my pace a little. I perceived that he was leaning on me; but I made a feint of our being merely affectionate, and slowed my step as unconsciously as I could. He looked up under the downward slanted brim of his hat. “I expected them before this. Nevil went up to the house for my wife, and then we were going down on the rocks.”

  He stopped short, and rested heavily against me. I glanced round at his face: it was a lurid red, and, as it were, suffused with pain; his eyes seemed to stand full of tears; his lips were purple, and they quivered.

  It was an odious moment: we could not speak or stir; we suffered too, and were cruelly embarrassed, for we felt that we must not explicitly recognize his seizure. In front of us I saw a gentleman and lady who seemed to be under something of our constraint. They were coming as swiftly as possible, without seeming to hurry, and they must have understood the situation, though they could not see his features. Before they reached us, Faulkner’s face relaxed, and began to recover its natural color. He stirred, and I felt him urging me softly forward. By the time we encountered the others, he was able to say, in very much his usual tone, “My dear, this is Mrs. March, and my old friend March, that I’ve told you about. Nevil, you remember March? Let me present you to Mrs. March.”

  My astonishment that he could accomplish these introductions was lost in the interest that Mrs. Faulkner at once inspired in my wife, as I could see, equally with myself. She must then have been about thirty, and she had lost her girlish slenderness without having lost her girlish grace. Her figure, tall much above the wont of women, had a mature stateliness, while fitful gleams of her first youth brightened her face, her voice, her manner. There could be no doubt about her refinement, and none about her beauty; the one was as evident as the other. The beauty was of a usual American type; the refinement was from her eyes, which were angelic; deep and faithful and touching. I am sure this was the first impression of my wife as well as myself.

  I shook hands with Nevil, whom I found looking not so much older as the past ten years should have made him. His dark golden hair had retreated a little on his forehead, and there were some faint, faint lines down his cheeks and his shaven lips. I saw the look of anxiety he cast furtively at Faulkner; but for that he seemed as young and high-hearted as when we first met. I searched his eyes for the clear goodness which once dwelt in them, and found it, a little saddened, a little sobered, a little more saintly, but all there, still. I cannot tell how my heart went out to him with a tenderness which nothing in his behavior toward me had ever invited. On the few occasions when we met, he had always loyally left me to Faulkner, who made all the advances and offered all the caresses, without winning any such return of affection from me as I now involuntarily felt for Nevil. Of course I looked at my wife to see what she thought of him. I saw that something in her being a woman, which drew her to Mrs. Faulkner, left her indifferent to Nevil.

  IV

  “HERMIA,” said Faulkner, sounding the canine letter in her name with a Western strength that was full of the charm of old associations for me, “these people have got some children at Lynn, and they can’t stay here overnight because they didn’t bring them. I’m going to send over for them.”

  “Oh, I should like to see your children,” she answered to my wife, cordially, yet submissively, as the way of one wise woman is with another concerning her children.

  Mrs. March explained how it was in no wise poss
ible to have the children sent for; and how we had only come for a short call. I perceived that all Mrs. Faulkner’s politeness could not keep her mind on what my wife was saying: that she was scanning her husband’s face with devoted intensity. The same absence showed itself in Nevil’s manner. Of course they were both terribly anxious; I could understand that from what I had already seen of Faulkner’s case; and in his interest they were both trying to hide their anxiety. Of course, too, he knew it on his part, and he tried to ignore their efforts at concealment. We were all playing at the futile and heart-breaking comedy which humanity obliges us to keep up with a dying man, and in which he must bear his part with the rest. We began to be even gay. Faulkner insisted again that we were good for the whole day; his wife joined him; he appealed to Nevil to put it to Mrs. March as a duty (that would fetch any New England woman, he said), and we consented to stay over lunch, in a burlesque of being kept prisoners. While this went on, I could not help noticing the quality of the look which Faulkner turned upon his wife and Nevil when he spoke to either: a sort of deadliness passing into a piteous appeal. It was very curious.

  He asked if we should go down on the rocks, or up to the house, and we decided that we had better go to the house, and do the rocks after lunch: the tide was coming in, and the surf would be better and better.

  “All right,” he said, and we let Mr. Nevil lead the way with the ladies, while we came at a little distance behind. Faulkner began at once to praise Nevil, for his goodness in staying on with him so long after he had given up to him the whole past year in Europe. I said the proper things in appreciation, and Faulkner went on to say that Nevil had the richest and the poorest parish in our old home now, the most millionaires and the most paupers; and he had made St. Luke’s a refuge and a sanctuary for them all. He said he did not suppose a man had ever been so fortunate as he was in his friendship with Nevil. At first his wife had been jealous of it, but now she had got used to it; and though he did not suppose she would ever quite forgive Nevil for having been his friend before her time, she tolerated him. I said I understood how that sort of thing was; and he added that there was also the religious difference: Mrs. Faulkner’s people were Unitarians, and she was strenuous in their faith, where he never allowed her to be molested. We got to talking about the old times in the West, and the people whom we had known in common, and how the city had grown, and how I would hardly know where I was if I were dropped down in it. But he kept returning to Nevil and to his wife, and I became rather tired of them.