Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Won’t you let ME help you!” she asked, as another dish intervened at his right. “I hurt you.”

  Breckon laughed at her solemn face and voice. “If you’ll exonerate yourself first,” he answered: “I couldn’t touch a morsel that conveyed confession of the least culpability on your part. Do you consent? Otherwise, I pass this dish. And really I want some!”

  “Well,” she sadly consented, and he allowed her to serve his plate.

  “More yet, please,” he said. “A lot!”

  “Is that enough?”

  “Well, for the first helping. And don’t offer to cut it up for me! My proud spirit draws the line at cutting up. Besides, a fork will do the work with goulash.”

  “Is that what it is?” she asked, but not apparently because she cared to know.

  “Unless you prefer to naturalize it as stew. It seems to have come in with the Hungarian bands. I suppose you have them in—”

  “Tuskingum? No, it is too small. But I heard them at a restaurant in New York where my brother took us.”

  “In the spirit of scientific investigation? It’s strange how a common principle seems to pervade both the Hungarian music and cooking — the same wandering airs and flavors — wild, vague, lawless harmonies in both. Did you notice it?”

  Ellen shook her head. The look of gloom which seemed to Breckon habitual in it came back into her face, and he had a fantastic temptation to see how far he could go with her sad consciousness before she should be aware that he was experimenting upon it. He put this temptation from him, and was in the enjoyment of a comfortable self-righteousness when it returned in twofold power upon him with the coming of some cutlets which capriciously varied the repast.

  “Ah, now, Miss Kenton, if you were to take pity on my helplessness!”

  “Why, certainly!” She possessed herself of his plate, and began to cut up the meat for him. “Am I making the bites too small?” she asked, with an upward glance at him.

  “Well, I don’t know. Should you think so?” he returned, with a smile that out-measured the morsels on the plate before her.

  She met his laughing eyes with eyes that questioned his honesty, at first sadly, and then indignantly. She dropped the knife and fork upon the plate and rose.

  “Oh, Miss Kenton!” he penitently entreated.

  But she was down the slanting aisle and out of the reeling door before he could decide what to do.

  XI.

  It seemed to Breckon that he had passed through one of those accessions of temperament, one of those crises of natural man, to put it in the terms of an older theology than he professed, that might justify him in recurring to his original sense of his unfitness for his sacred calling, as he would hardly ham called it: He had allowed his levity to get the better of his sympathy, and his love of teasing to overpower that love of helping which seemed to him his chief right and reason for being a minister: To play a sort of poor practical joke upon that melancholy girl (who was also so attractive) was not merely unbecoming to him as a minister; it was cruel; it was vulgar; it was ungentlemanly. He could not say less than ungentlemanly, for that seemed to give him the only pang that did him any good. Her absolute sincerity had made her such an easy prey that he ought to have shrunk from the shabby temptation in abhorrence.

  It is the privilege of a woman, whether she wills it or not, to put a man who is in the wrong concerning her much further in the wrong than he could be from his offence. Breckon did not know whether he was suffering more or less because he was suffering quite hopelessly, but he was sure that he was suffering justly, and he was rather glad, if anything, that he must go on suffering. His first impulse had been to go at once to Judge Kenton and own his wrong, and take the consequences — in fact, invite them. But Breckon forbore for two reasons: one, that he had already appeared before the judge with the confession of having possibly made an unclerical joke to his younger daughter; the other, that the judge might not consider levity towards the elder so venial; and though Breckon wished to be both punished and pardoned, in the final analysis, perhaps, he most wished to be pardoned. Without pardon he could see no way to repair the wrong he had done. Perhaps he wished even to retrieve himself in the girl’s eyes, or wished for the chance of trying.

  Ellen went away to her state-room and sat down on the sofa opposite Lottie, and she lost herself in a muse in which she was found by the voice of the sufferer in the berth.

  “If you haven’t got anything better to do than come in here and stare at me, I wish you would go somewhere else and stare. I can tell you it isn’t any joke.”

  “I didn’t know I was staring at you,” said Ellen, humbly.

  “It would be enough to have you rising and sinking there, without your staring at all: If you’re going to stay, I wish you’d lie down. I don’t see why you’re so well, anyway, after getting us all to come on this wild-goose chase.”

  “I know, I know,” Ellen strickenly deprecated. “But I’m not going to stay. I jest came for my things.”

  “Is that giggling simpleton sick? I hope he is!”

  “Mr. Breckon?” Ellen asked, though she knew whom Lottie meant. “No, he isn’t sick. He was at lunch.”

  “Was poppa?”

  “He was at breakfast.”

  “And momma?”

  “She and Boyne are both in bed. I don’t know whether they’re very sick.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just tell you what, Ellen Kenton!” Lottie sat up in accusal. “You were staring at something he said; and the first thing we all know it will be another case of Bittridge!” Ellen winced, but Lottie had no pity. “You don’t know it, because you don’t know anything, and I’m not blaming you; but if you let that simpleton — I don’t care if he is a minister! — go ‘round with you when your family are all sick abed, you’ll be having the whole ship to look after you.”

  “Be still, Lottie!” cried Ellen. “You are awful,” and, with a flaming face, she escaped from the state-room.

  She did not know where else to go, and she beat along the sides of the corridor as far as the dining-saloon. She had a dim notion of trying to go up into the music-room above, but a glance at the reeling steep of the stairs forbade. With her wraps on her arm and her sea-cap in her hand, she stood clinging to the rail-post.

  Breckon came out of the saloon. “Oh, Miss Kenton,” he humbly entreated, “don’t try to go on deck! It’s rougher than ever.”

  “I was going to the music-room,” she faltered.

  “Let me help you, then,” he said again. They mounted the gangway-steps, but this time with his hand under her elbow, and his arm alert as before in a suspended embrace against her falling.

  She had lost the initiative of her earlier adventure; she could only submit herself to his guidance. But he almost outdid her in meekness, when he got her safely placed in a corner whence she could not be easily flung upon the floor. “You must have found it very stuffy below; but, indeed, you’d better not try going out.”

  “Do you think it isn’t safe here?” she asked.

  “Oh yes. As long as you keep quiet. May I get you something to read? They seem to have a pretty good little library.”

  They both glanced at the case of books; from which the steward-librarian was setting them the example of reading a volume.

  “No, I don’t want to read. You musn’t let me keep you from it.”

  “Well, one can read any time. But one hasn’t always the chance to say that one is ashamed. Don’t pretend you don’t understand, Miss Kenton! I didn’t really mean anything. The temptation to let you exaggerate my disability was too much for me. Say that you despise me! It would be such a comfort.”

  “Weren’t you hurt?”

  “A little — a little more than a little, but not half so much as I deserved — not to the point of not being able to cut up my meat. Am I forgiven? I’ll promise to cut up all your meat for you at dinner! Ah, I’m making it worse!”

  “Oh no. Please don’t speak of it”

  �
�Could you forbid my thinking of it, too?” He did not wait for her to answer. “Then here goes! One, two, three, and the thought is banished forever. Now what shall we speak of, or think of? We finished up the weather pretty thoroughly this morning. And if you have not the weather and the ship’s run when you’re at sea, why, you are at sea. Don’t you think it would be a good plan, when they stick those little flags into the chart, to show how far we’ve come in the last twenty-four hours, if they’d supply a topic for the day? They might have topics inscribed on the flags-standard topics, that would serve for any voyage. We might leave port with History — say, personal history; that would pave the way to a general acquaintance among the passengers. Then Geography, and if the world is really round, and what keeps the sea from spilling. Then Politics, and the comparative advantages of monarchical and republican governments, for international discussion. Then Pathology, and whether you’re usually sea-sick, and if there is any reliable remedy. Then — for those who are still up — Poetry and Fiction; whether women really like Kipling, and what kind of novels you prefer. There ought to be about ten topics. These boats are sometimes very slow. Can’t you suggest something, Miss Kenton? There is no hurry! We’ve got four to talk over, for we must bring up the arrears, you know. And now we’ll begin with personal history. Your sister doesn’t approve of me, does she?”

  “My sister?” Ellen faltered, and, between the conscience to own the fact and the kindness to deny it, she stopped altogether.

  “I needn’t have asked. She told me so herself, in almost as many words. She said I was slippery, and as close as a trap. Miss Kenton! I have the greatest wish to know whether I affect you as both slippery and close!”

  “I don’t always know what Lottie means.”

  “She means what she says; and I feel that I am under condemnation till I reform. I don’t know how to stop being slippery, but I’m determined to stop being close. Will you tell her that for me? Will you tell her that you never met an opener, franker person? — of course, except herself! — and that so far from being light I seemed to you particularly heavy? Say that I did nothing but talk about myself, and that when you wanted to talk about yourself you couldn’t get in a word edgewise. Do try, now, Miss Kenton, and see if you can! I don’t want you to invent a character for me, quite.”

  “Why, there’s nothing to say about me,” she began in compliance with his gayety, and then she fell helpless from it.

  “Well, then, about Tuskingum. I should like to hear about Tuskingum, so much!”

  “I suppose we like it because we’ve always lived there. You haven’t been much in the West, have you?”

  “Not as much as I hope to be.” He had found that Western people were sometimes sensitive concerning their section and were prepared to resent complacent ignorance of it. “I’ve always thought it must be very interesting.”

  “It isn’t,” said the girl. “At least, not like the East. I used to be provoked when the lecturers said anything like that; but when you’ve been to New York you see what they mean.”

  “The lecturers?” he queried.

  “They always stayed at our house when they lectured in Tuskingum.”

  “Ah! Oh yes,” said Breckon, grasping a situation of which he had heard something, chiefly satirical. “Of course. And is your father — is Judge Kenton literary? Excuse me!”

  “Only in his history. He’s writing the history of his regiment; or he gets the soldiers to write down all they can remember of the war, and then he puts their stories together.”

  “How delightful!” said Breckon. “And I suppose it’s a great pleasure to him.”

  “I don’t believe it is,” said Ellen. “Poppa doesn’t believe in war any more.”

  “Indeed!” said Breckon. “That is very interesting.”

  “Sometimes when I’m helping him with it—”

  “Ah, I knew you must help him!”

  “And he comes to a place where there has been a dreadful slaughter, it seems as if he felt worse about it than I did. He isn’t sure that it wasn’t all wrong. He thinks all war is wrong now.”

  “Is he — has he become a follower of Tolstoy?”

  “He’s read him. He says he’s the only man that ever gave a true account of battles; but he had thought it all out for himself before he read Tolstoy about fighting. Do you think it is right to revenge an injury?”

  “Why, surely not!” said Breckon, rather startled.

  “That is what we say,” the girl pursued. “But if some one had injured you — abused your confidence, and — insulted you, what would you do?”

  “I’m not sure that I understand,” Breckon began. The inquiry was superficially impersonal, but he reflected that women are never impersonal, or the sons of women, for that matter, and he suspected an intimate ground. His suspicions were confirmed when Miss Kenton said: “It seems easy enough to forgive anything that’s done to yourself; but if it’s done to some one else, too, have you the right — isn’t it wrong to let it go?”

  “You think the question of justice might come in then? Perhaps it ought. But what is justice? And where does your duty begin to be divided?” He saw her following him with alarming intensity, and he shrank from the responsibility before him. What application might not she make of his words in the case, whatever it was, which he chose not to imagine? “To tell you the truth, Miss Kenton, I’m not very clear on that point — I’m not sure that I’m disinterested.”

  “Disinterested?”

  “Yes; you know that I abused your confidence at luncheon; and until I know whether the wrong involved any one else—” He looked at her with hovering laughter in his eyes which took wing at the reproach in hers. “But if we are to be serious—”

  “Oh no,” she said, “it isn’t a serious matter.” But in the helplessness of her sincerity she could not carry it off lightly, or hide from him that she was disappointed.

  He tried to make talk about other things. She responded vaguely, and when she had given herself time she said she believed she would go to Lottie; she was quite sure she could get down the stairs alone. He pursued her anxiously, politely, and at the head of her corridor took leave of her with a distinct sense of having merited his dismissal.

  “I see what you mean, Lottie,” she said, “about Mr. Breckon.”

  Lottie did not turn her head on the pillow. “Has it taken you the whole day to find it out?”

  XII.

  The father and the mother had witnessed with tempered satisfaction the interest which seemed to be growing up between Ellen and the young minister. By this time they had learned not to expect too much of any turn she might take; she reverted to a mood as suddenly as she left it. They could not quite make out Breckon himself; he was at least as great a puzzle to them as their own child was.

  “It seems,” said Mrs. Kenton, in their first review of the affair, after Boyne had done a brother’s duty in trying to bring Ellen under their mother’s censure, “that he was the gentleman who discussed the theatre with Boyne at the vaudeville last winter. Boyne just casually mentioned it. I was so provoked!”

  “I don’t see what bearing the fact has,” the judge remarked.

  “Why, Boyne liked him very much that night, but now he seems to feel very much as Lottie does about him. He thinks he laughs too much.”

  “I don’t know that there’s much harm in that,” said the judge. “And I shouldn’t value Boyne’s opinion of character very highly.”

  “I value any one’s intuitions — especially children’s.”

  “Boyne’s in that middle state where he isn’t quite a child. And so is Lottie, for that matter.”

  “That is true,” their mother assented. “And we ought to be glad of anything that takes Ellen’s mind off herself. If I could only believe she was forgetting that wretch!”

  “Does she ever speak of him?”

  “She never hints of him, even. But her mind may be full of him all the time.”

  The judge laughed impatiently. “
It strikes me that this young Mr. Breckon hasn’t much advantage of Ellen in what Lottie calls closeness!”

  “Ellen has always been very reserved. It would have been better for her if she hadn’t. Oh, I scarcely dare to hope anything! Rufus, I feel that in everything of this kind we are very ignorant and inexperienced.”

  “Inexperienced!” Renton retorted. “I don’t want any more experience of the kind Ellen has given us.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean — this Mr. Breckon. I can’t tell what attracts him in the child. She must appear very crude and uncultivated to him. You needn’t resent it so! I know she’s read a great deal, and you’ve made her think herself intellectual — but the very simple-heartedness of the way she would show out her reading would make such a young man see that she wasn’t like the girls he was used to. They would hide their intellectuality, if they had any. It’s no use your trying to fight it Mr. Kenton. We are country people, and he knows it.”

  “Tuskingum isn’t country!” the judge declared.

  “It isn’t city. And we don’t know anything about the world, any of us. Oh, I suppose we can read and write! But we don’t know the a, b, c of the things he, knows. He, belongs to a kind of society — of people — in New York that I had glimpses of in the winter, but that I never imagined before. They made me feel very belated and benighted — as if I hadn’t, read or thought anything. They didn’t mean to; but I couldn’t help it, and they couldn’t.”

  “You — you’ve been frightened out of your propriety by what you’ve seen in New York,” said her husband.

  “I’ve been frightened, certainly. And I wish you had been, too. I wish you wouldn’t be so conceited about Ellen. It scares me to see you so. Poor, sick thing, her looks are all gone! You must see that. And she doesn’t dress like the girls he’s used to. I know we’ve got her things in New York; but she doesn’t wear them like a New-Yorker. I hope she isn’t going in for MORE unhappiness!”

  At the thought of this the judge’s crest fell. “Do you believe she’s getting interested in him?” he asked, humbly.