Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “No. Was that what you were talking about?”

  “We talked about something a great deal more interesting — the impression he got of me.”

  “Winter impression.”

  “Cold enough. He had come to the conclusion that I was very selfish and unworthy; that I used other people for my own advantage, or let them use themselves; that I was treacherous and vindictive, and if I didn’t betray a man I couldn’t be happy till I had beaten him. He said that if I ever behaved well, it came after I had been successful one way or the other.”

  “How perfectly fascinating!” Bessie rested her elbow on the corner of the table, and her chin in the palm of the hand whose thin fingers tapped her red lips; the light sleeve fell down and showed her pretty, lean little forearm. “Did it strike you as true, at all?”

  “I could see how it might strike him as true.”

  “Now you are candid. But go on! What did he expect you to do about it?”

  “Nothing. He said he didn’t suppose I could help it.”

  “This is immense,” said Bessie. “I hope I’m taking it all in. How came he to give you this flattering little impression? So hopeful, too! Or, perhaps your frankness doesn’t go any farther?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind saying. He seemed to think it was a sort of abstract duty he owed to my people.”

  “Your-folks?” asked Bessie.

  “Yes,” said Jeff, with a certain dryness. But as her face looked blankly innocent, he must have decided that she meant nothing offensive. He relaxed into a broad smile. “It’s a queer household up there, in the winter. I wonder what you would think of it.”

  “You might describe it to me, and perhaps we shall see.”

  “You couldn’t realize it,” said Jeff, with a finality that piqued her. He reached out for the bottle of apollinaris, with somehow the effect of being in another student’s room, and poured himself a glass. This would have amused her, nine times out of ten, but the tenth time had come when she chose to resent it.

  “I suppose,” she said, “you are all very much excited about Class Day at Cambridge.”

  “That sounds like a remark made to open the way to conversation.” Jeff went on to burlesque a reply in the same spirit. “Oh, very much so indeed, Miss Lynde! We are all looking forward to it so eagerly. Are you coming?”

  She rejected his lead with a slight sigh so skilfully drawn that it deceived him when she said, gravely:

  “I don’t know. It’s apt to be a very baffling time at the best. All the men that you like are taken up with their own people, and even the men that you don’t like overvalue themselves, and think they’re doing you a favor if they give you a turn at the Gym or bring you a plate of something.”

  “Well, they are, aren’t they?”

  “I suppose, yes, that’s what makes me hate it. One doesn’t like to have such men do one a favor. And then, Juniors get younger every year! Even a nice Junior is only a Junior,” she concluded, with a sad fall of her mocking voice.

  “I don’t believe there’s a Senior in Harvard that wouldn’t forsake his family and come to the rescue if your feelings could be known,” said Jeff. He lifted the bottle at his elbow and found it empty, and this seemed to remind him to rise.

  “Don’t make them known, please,” said Bessie. “I shouldn’t want an ovation.” She sat, after he had risen, as if she wished to detain him, but when he came up to take leave she had to put her hand in his. She looked at it there, and so did he; it seemed very little and slim, about one-third the size of his palm, and it seemed to go to nothing in his grasp. “I should think,” she added, “that the jays would have the best time on Class Day. I should like to dance at one of their spreads, and do everything they did. It would be twice the fun, and there would be some nature in it. I should like to see a jay Class Day.”

  “If you’ll come out, I’ll show you one,” said Jeff, without wincing.

  “Oh, will you?” she said, taking away her hand. “That would be delightful. But what would become of your folks?” She caught a corner of her mouth with her teeth, as if the word had slipped out.

  “Do you call them folks?” asked Jeff, quietly:

  “I — supposed — Don’t you?”

  “Not in Boston. I do at Lion’s Head.”

  “Oh! Well-people.”

  “I don’t know as they’re coming.”

  “How delightful! I don’t mean that; but if they’re not, and if you really knew some jays, and could get me a little glimpse of their Class Day—”

  “I think I could manage it for you.” He spoke as before, but he looked at her with a mockery in his lips and eyes as intelligent as her own, and the latent change in his mood gave her the sense of being in the presence of a vivid emotion. She rose in her excitement; she could see that he admired her, and was enjoying her insolence too, in a way, though in a way that she did not think she quite understood; and she had the wish to make him admire her a little more.

  She let a light of laughter come into her eyes, of harmless mischief played to an end. “I don’t deserve your kindness, and I won’t come. I’ve been very wicked, don’t you think?”

  “Not very — for you,” said Jeff.

  “Oh, how good!” she broke out. “But be frank now! I’ve offended you.”

  “How? I know I’m a jay, and in the country I’ve got folks.”

  “Ah, I see you’re hurt at my joking, and I’m awfully sorry. I wish there was some way of making you forgive me. But it couldn’t be that alone,” she went on rather aimlessly as to her words, trusting to his answer for some leading, and willing meanwhile to prolong the situation for the effect in her nerves. It had been a very dull and tedious day, and she was finding much more than she could have expected in the mingled fear and slight which he inspired her with in such singular measure. These feminine subtleties of motive are beyond any but the finest natures in the other sex, and perhaps all that Jeff perceived was the note of insincerity in her words.

  “Couldn’t be what alone?” he asked.

  “What I’ve said,” she ventured, letting her eyes fall; but they were not eyes that fell effectively, and she instantly lifted them again to his.

  “You haven’t said anything, and if you’ve thought anything, what have I got to do with that? I think all sorts of things about people — or folks, as you call them—”

  “Oh, thank you! Now you are forgiving me!”

  “I think them about you!”

  “Oh, do sit down and tell me the kind of things you think about me!” Bessie implored, sinking back into her chair.

  “You mightn’t like them.”

  “But if they would do me good?”

  “What should I want to do you good for?”

  “That’s true,” sighed Bessie, thoughtfully.

  “People — folks—”

  “Thank you so much!”

  “Don’t try to do each other good, unless they’re cranks like Lancaster, or bores like Mrs. Bevidge—”

  “You belong to the analytical school of Seniors! Go on!”

  “That’s all,” said Jeff.

  “And you don’t think I’ve tried to do you good?”

  He laughed. Her comedy was delicious to him. He had never found, anybody so amusing; he almost respected her for it.

  “If that is your opinion of me, Mr. Durgin,” she said, very gravely, “I am sorry. May I remark that I don’t see why you come, then?”

  “I can tell you,” said Jeff, and he advanced upon her where she sat so abruptly that she started and shrank back in her chair. “I come because you’ve got brains, and you’re the only girl that has — here.” They were Alan’s words, almost his words, and for an instant she thought of her brother, end wondered what he would think of this jay’s praising her in his terms. “Because,” Jeff went on, “you’ve got more sense and nonsense — than all the women here put together. Because it’s better than a play to hear you talk — and act; and because you’re graceful — and fascinating, and ch
ic, and — Good-night, Miss Lynde.”

  He put out his hand, but she did not take it as she rose haughtily. “We’ve said good-night once. I prefer to say good-bye this time. I’m sure you will understand why after this I cannot see you again.” She seemed to examine him for the effect of these words upon him before she went on.

  “No, I don’t understand,” he answered, coolly; “but it isn’t necessary I should; and I’m quite willing to say good-bye, if you prefer. You haven’t been so frank with me as I have with you; but that doesn’t make any difference; perhaps you never meant to be, or couldn’t be, if you meant. Good-bye.” He bowed and turned toward the door.

  She fluttered between him and it. “I wish to know what you accuse me of!”

  “I? Nothing.”

  “You imply that I have been unjust toward you.”

  “Oh no!”

  “And I can’t let you go till you prove it.”

  “Prove to a woman that — Will you let me pass?”

  “No!” She spread her slender arms across the doorway.

  “Oh, very well!” Jeff took her hands and put them both in the hold of one of his large, strong bands. Then, with the contact, it came to him, from a varied experience of girls in his rustic past, that this young lady, who was nothing but a girl after all, was playing her comedy with a certain purpose, however little she might know it or own it. He put his other large, strong hand upon her waist, and pulled her to him and kissed her. Another sort of man, no matter what he had believed of her, would have felt his act a sacrilege then and there. Jeff only knew that she had not made the faintest straggle against him; she had even trembled toward him, and he brutally exulted in the belief that he had done what she wished, whether it was what she meant or not.

  She, for her part, realized that she had been kissed as once she had happened to see one of the maids kissed by the grocer’s boy at the basement door. In an instant this man had abolished all her defences of family, of society, of personality, and put himself on a level with her in the most sacred things of life. Her mind grasped the fact and she realized it intellectually, while as yet all her emotions seemed paralyzed. She did not know whether she resented it as an abominable outrage or not; whether she hated the man for it or not. But perhaps he was in love with her, and his love overpowered him; in that case she could forgive him, if she were in love with him. She asked herself whether she was, and whether she had betrayed herself to him so that he was somehow warranted in what he did. She wondered if another sort of man would have done it, a gentleman, who believed she was in love with him. She wondered if she were as much shocked as she was astonished. She knew that there was everything in the situation to make the fact shocking, but she got no distinct reply from her jarred consciousness.

  It ought to be known, and known at once; she ought to tell her brother, as soon as she saw him; she thought of telling her aunt, and she fancied having to shout the affair into her ear, and having to repeat, “He kissed me! Don’t you understand? Kissed me!” Then she reflected with a start that she could never tell any one, that in the midst of her world she was alone in relation to this; she was as helpless and friendless as the poorest and lowliest girl could be. She was more so, for if she were like the maid whom the grocer’s boy kissed she would be of an order of things in which she could advise with some one else who had been kissed; and she would know what to feel.

  She asked herself whether she was at all moved at heart; till now it seemed to her that it had not been different with her toward him from what it had been toward all the other men whose meaning she would have liked to find out. She had not in the least respected them, and she did not respect him; but if it happened because he was overcome by his love for her, and could not help it, then perhaps she must forgive him whether she cared for him or not.

  These ideas presented themselves with the simultaneity of things in a dream in that instant when she lingered helplessly in his hold, and she even wondered if by any chance Andrew had seen them; but she heard his step on the floor below; and at the same time it appeared to her that she must be in love with this man if she did not resent what he had done.

  XLIII

  Westover was sitting at an open window of his studio smoking out into the evening air, and looking down into the thinly foliaged tops of the public garden, where the electrics fainted and flushed and hissed. Cars trooped by in the troubled street, scraping the wires overhead that screamed as if with pain at the touch of their trolleys, and kindling now and again a soft planet, as the trolleys struck the batlike plates that connected the crossing lines. The painter was getting almost as much pleasure out of the planets as pain out of the screams, and he was in an after-dinner languor in which he was very reluctant to recognize a step, which he thought he knew, on his stairs and his stairs-landing. A knock at his door followed the sound of the approaching steps. He lifted himself, and called out, inhospitably, “Come in!” and, as he expected, Jeff Durgin came in. Westover’s meetings with him had been an increasing discomfort since his return from Lion’s Head. The uneasiness which he commonly felt at the first moment of encounter with him yielded less and less to the influence of Jeff’s cynical bonhomie, and it returned in force as soon as they parted.

  It was rather dim in the place, except for the light thrown up into it from the turmoil of lights outside, but he could see that there was nothing of the smiling mockery on Jeff’s face which habitually expressed his inner hardihood. It was a frowning mockery.

  “Hello!” said Westover.

  “Hello!” answered Jeff. “Any commands for Lion’s Head?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going up there to-morrow. I’ve got to see Cynthia, and tell her what I’ve been doing.”

  Westover waited a moment before he asked: “Do you want me to ask what you’ve been doing?”

  “I shouldn’t mind it.”

  The painter paused again. “I don’t know that I care to ask. Is it any good?”

  “No!” shouted Jeff. “It’s the worst thing yet, I guess you’ll think. I couldn’t have believed it myself, if I hadn’t been through it. I shouldn’t have supposed I was such a fool. I don’t care for the girl; I never did.”

  “Cynthia?”

  “Cynthia? No! Miss Lynde. Oh, try to take it in!” Jeff cried, with a laugh at the daze in Westover’s face. “You must have known about the flirtation; if you haven’t, you’re the only one.” His vanity in the fact betrayed itself in his voice. “It came to a crisis last week, and we tried to make each other believe that we were in earnest. But there won’t be any real love lost.”

  Westover did not speak. He could not make out whether he was surprised or whether he was shocked, and it seemed to him that he was neither surprised nor shocked. He wondered whether he had really expected something of the kind, sooner or later, or whether he was not always so apprehensive of some deviltry in Durgin that nothing he did could quite take him unawares. At last he said: “I suppose it’s true — even though you say it. It’s probably the only truth in you.”

  “That’s something like,” said Jeff, as if the contempt gave him a sort of pleasure; and his heavy face lighted up and then darkened again.

  “Well,” said Westover, “what are we going to do? You’ve come to tell me.”

  “I’m going to break with her. I don’t care for her — that!” He snapped his fingers. “I told her I cared because she provoked me to. It happened because she wanted it to and led up to it.”

  “Ah!” said Westover. “You put it on her!” But he waited for Durgin’s justification with a dread that he should find something in it.

  “Pshaw! What’s the use? It’s been a game from the beginning, and a question which should ruin. I won. She meant to throw me over, if the time came for her, but it came for me first, and it’s only a question now which shall break first; we’ve both been near it once or twice already. I don’t mean she shall get the start of me.”

  Westover had a glimpse of the innate e
nmity of the sexes in this game; of its presence in passion that was lived and of its prevalence in passion that was played. But the fate of neither gambler concerned him; he was impatient of his interest in what Jeff now went on to tell him, without scruple concerning her, or palliation of himself. He scarcely realized that he was listening, but afterward he remembered it all, with a little pity for Bessie and none for Jeff, but with more shame for her, too. Love seems more sacredly confided to women than to men; it is and must be a higher and finer as well as a holier thing with them; their blame for its betrayal must always be the heavier. He had sometimes suspected Bessie’s willingness to amuse herself with Jeff, as with any other man who would let her play with him; and he would not have relied upon anything in him to defeat her purpose, if it had been anything so serious as a purpose.

  At the end of Durgin’s story he merely asked: “And what are you going to do about Cynthia?”

  “I am going to tell her,” said Jeff. “That’s what I am going up there for.”

  Westover rose, but Jeff remained sitting where he had put himself astride of a chair, with his face over the back. The painter walked slowly up and down before him in the capricious play of the street light. He turned a little sick, and he stopped a moment at the window for a breath of air.

  “Well?” asked Jeff.

  “Oh! You want my advice?” Westover still felt physically incapable of the indignation which he strongly imagined. “I don’t know what to say to you, Durgin. You transcend my powers. Are you able to see this whole thing yourself?”

  “I guess so,” Jeff answered. “I don’t idealize it, though. I look at facts; they’re bad enough. You don’t suppose that Miss Lynde is going to break her heart over—”

  “I don’t believe I care for Miss Lynde any more than I care for you. But I believe I wish you were not going to break with her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you and she are fit for each other. If you want my advice, I advise you to be true to her — if you can.”

  “And Cynthia?”