Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “That’s ridiculous, Elizabeth,” he said— “ridiculous! If it’s a good thing for other girls to go to college, it’s been a good thing for her.”

  “Ah,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “but is it a good thing?”

  Then I knew they were talking about me, and I put my fingers in my ears and said the Latin prepositions. I have been talked about enough. They may talk, but I won’t hear. By-and-by I took my fingers out and listened. They had gone in, and everything was still. Then I began to think it over. Was it a bad thing for me to go to college? I’m different from what I was three years ago, but I should have been different if I’d stayed at home. For one thing, I’m not so shy. I remember the first day I came out of a class-room and Stillman Dane walked up to me and said; “So you’re Charlie Ned’s sister!” I couldn’t look at him. I stood staring down at my note-book, and now I should say, quite calmly: “Oh, you must be Mr. Dane? I believe you teach psychology.” But I stood and stared. I believe I looked at my hands for a while and wished I hadn’t got ink on my forefinger — and he had to say: “I’m the psychology man. Charlie Ned and I were college friends. He wrote me about you.” But though I didn’t look at him that first time, I thought he had the kindest voice that ever was — except mother’s — and perhaps that was why I selected psychology for my specialty. I was afraid I might be stupid, and I knew he was kind. And then came that happy time when I was getting acquainted with everybody, and Mr. Dane was always doing things for me. “I’m awfully fond of Charlie Ned, you know,” he told me. “You must let me take his place.” Then Mr. Goward told me all those things at the dance, how he had found life a bitter waste, how he had been betrayed over and over by the vain and worldly, and how his heart was dead and nobody could bring it to life but me. He said I was his fate and his guiding-star, and since love was a mutual flame that meant he was my fate, too. But it seemed as if that were the beginning of all my bad luck, for about that time Stillman Dane was different, and one day he stopped me in the yard when I was going to chapel.

  “Miss Peggy,” said he, “don’t let’s quarrel.”

  He held out his hand, and I gave him mine quickly.

  “No,” said I, “I’m not quarrelling.”

  “I want to ask you something,” said he. “You must answer, truly. If I have a friend and she’s doing something foolish, should I tell her? Should I write to her brother and tell him?”

  “Why,” said I, “do you mean me?” Then I understood. “You think I’m not doing very well in my psychology,” I said. “You think I’ve made a wrong choice.” I looked at him then. I never saw him look just so. He had my hand, and now I took it away. But he wouldn’t talk about the psychology.

  “Peggy,” said he, “do your people know Goward?”

  “They will in vacation,” I said. “He’s going home with me. We’re engaged, you know.”

  “Oh!” said he. “Oh! Then it is true. Let him meet Charles Edward at once, will you? Tell Charles Edward I particularly want him to know Goward.” His voice sounded sharp and quick, and he turned away and left me. But I didn’t give his message to Charles Edward, and somehow, I don’t know why, I didn’t talk about him after I came home. “Dane never wrote me whether he looked you up,” said Charles Edward one day. “Not very civil of him.” But even then I couldn’t tell him. Mr. Dane is one of the people I never can talk about as if they were like everybody else. Perhaps that is because he is so kind in a sort of intimate, beautiful way. And when I went back after vacation he had resigned, and they said he had inherited some money and gone away, and after he went I never understood the psychology at all. Mr. Goward used to laugh at me for taking it, only he said I could get honors in anything, my verbal memory is so good. But I told him, and it is true, that the last part of the book is very dull. While I was going over all this, still with that strange excited feeling of happiness, I heard Aunt Elizabeth’s voice from below. She was calling, softly: “Peggy! Peggy! Are you up there?”

  I got on my feet just as quietly as I could, and slipped through mother’s room and down the back stairs. Mother was in the vegetable garden watering the transplanted lettuce. I ran out to her. “Mother,” I said, “may I go over to Lorraine’s and spend the night?”

  “Yes, lamb,” said mother. That’s a good deal for mother to say.

  “I’ll run over now,” I told her. “I won’t stop to take anything. Lorraine will give me a nightie.”

  I went through the vegetable garden to the back gate and out into the street. There I drew a long breath. I don’t know what I thought Aunt Elizabeth could do to me, but I felt safe. Then — I could laugh at it all, because it seems as if I must have been sort of crazy that night — I began to run as if I couldn’t get there fast enough. But when I got to the steps I heard Lorraine laughing, and I stopped to listen to see whether any one was there.

  “I tell Peter,” said she, “that it’s his opportunity. Don’t you remember the Great Magician’s story of the man who was always afraid he should miss his opportunity? And the opportunity came, and, sure enough, the man didn’t know it, and it slipped by. Well, that mustn’t be Peter.”

  “It musn’t be any of us,” said a voice. “Things are mighty critical, though. It’s as if everybody, the world and the flesh and the Whole Family, had been blundering round and setting their feet down as near as they could to a flower. But the flower isn’t trampled yet. We’ll build a fence round it.” My heart beat so fast that I had to put my hand over it. I wondered if I were going to have heart-failure, and I knew grandmother would say, “Digitalis!” When I thought of that I laughed, and Lorraine called out, “Who’s there?” She came to the long window. “Why, Peggy, child,” said she, “come in.” She had me by the hand and led me forward. They got up as I stepped in, Charles Edward and Stillman Dane. Then I knew why I was glad. If Stillman Dane had been here all these dreadful things would not have happened, because he is a psychologist, and he would have understood everybody at once and influenced them before they had time to do wrong.

  “Jove!” said Charles Edward. “Don’t you look handsome, Peg!”

  “Goose!” said Lorraine, as if she wanted him to be still. “A good neat girl is always handsome. There’s an epigram for you. And Peggy’s hair is loose in three places. Let me fix it for you, child.”

  So we all laughed, and Lorraine pinned me up in a queer, tender way, as if she were mother dress-me for something important, and we sat down, and began to talk about college. I am afraid Stillman Dane and I did most of the talking, for Lorraine and Charles Edward looked at each other and smiled a little, in a fashion they have, as if they understood each other, and Lorraine got up to show him the bag she had bought that day for the steamer; and while she was holding it out to him and asking him if it cost too much, she stopped short and called out, sharply, “Who’s there?” I laughed. “Lorraine has the sharpest ears,” I said. “Ears!” said Lorraine. “It isn’t ears. I smell orris. She’s coming. Mr. Dane, will you take Peggy out of that window into the garden? Don’t yip, either of you, while you’re within gunshot, and don’t appear till I tell you.”

  “Lorraine!” came a voice, softly, from the front walk. It was Aunt Elizabeth. She has a way of calling to announce herself in a sweet, cooing tone. I said to Charles Edward once it was like a dove, and he said: “No, my child, not doves, but woodcock.” Alice giggled and called out, quite loudly, ‘“Springes to catch woodcock!’” And he shook his head at her and said, “You all-knowing imp! isn’t even Shakespeare hidden from you?” But now the voice didn’t sound sweet to me at all, because I wanted to get away. We rose at the same minute, Mr. Dane and I, and Lorraine seemed to waft us from the house on a kind little wind. At the foot of the steps we stopped for fear the gravel should crunch, and while we waited for Aunt Elizabeth to go in the other way I looked at Mr. Dane to see if he wanted to laugh as much as I. He did. His eyes were full of fun and pleasure, and he gave me a little nod, as if we were two children going to play a game we knew all about. The
n I heard Aunt Elizabeth’s voice inside. It was low and broken — what Charles Edward called once her “come-and-comfort-me” voice.

  “Dears,” said she, “you are going abroad?”

  “Yes,” Charles Edward answered. “Yes, it looks that way now.”

  “Yes,” said Lorraine, rather sharply, I thought, as if she meant to show him he ought to be more decisive, “we are.”

  “Dears,” Aunt Elizabeth went on, “will you take me with you?”

  Mr. Dane started as if he meant to go back into the house. I must have started, too, and my heart beat hard. There was a silence of a minute, two minutes, three perhaps. Then I heard Charles Edward speak, in a voice I didn’t know he had.

  “No, Aunt Elizabeth, no. Not so you’d notice it.”

  Mr. Dane gave a nod as if he were relieved, and we both began tiptoeing down the path in the dark. But it wasn’t dark any more. The moon was coming through the locust-trees, and I smelled the lindens by the wall. “Oh,” I said, “it’s summer, isn’t it? I don’t believe I’ve thought of summer once this year.”

  “Yes,” said he, “and there never was a summer such as this is going to be.”

  I knew he was very athletic, but I don’t believe I’d thought how much he cared for out-of-doors. “Come down here,” I said. “This is Lorraine’s jungle. There’s a seat in it, and we can smell the ferns.”

  Charles Edward had been watering the garden, and everything was sweet. Thousands of odors came out such as I never smelled before. And all the time the moon was rising. After we had sat there awhile, talking a little about college, about my trip abroad, I suddenly found I could not go on. There were tears in my eyes. I felt as if so good a friend ought to know how I had behaved — for I must have been very weak and silly to make such a mistake. He ought to hear the worst about me. “Oh,” I said, “do you know what happened to me?”

  He made a little movement toward me with both hands. Then he took them back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice: “I know you are going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you played with when you were a child.” But I cried, softly, though, because it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry, sorry for myself — and ashamed. Until now I’d never known how ashamed I was. “Don’t cry, child,” he was saying. “For God’s sake, don’t cry!” I think it came over me then, as it hadn’t before, that all that part of my life was spoiled. I’d been engaged and thought I liked somebody, and now it was all over and done. “I don’t know what I’m crying for,” I said, at last, when I could stop. “I suppose it’s because I’m different now, different from the other girls, different from myself. I can’t ever be happy any more.”

  He spoke, very quickly. “Is it because you liked Goward so much?”

  “Like him!” I said. “Like Harry Goward? Why, I—” There I stopped, because I couldn’t think of any word small enough, and I think he understood, for he laughed out quickly.

  “Now,” said he, “I’m a psychologist. You remember that, don’t you? It used to impress you a good deal.”

  “Oh,” said I, “it does impress me. Nobody has ever seemed so wise as you. Nobody!”

  “Then it’s understood that I’m a sage from the Orient. I know the workings of the human mind. And I tell you a profound truth: that the only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it. Now, you’re not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again. Not a minute. Not an instant. Do you hear?” He sounded quite stern, and I answered as if I had been in class.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are to think of Italy, and how blue the sea is — and Germany, and how good the beer is — and Charlie Ned and Lorraine, and what trumps they are. Do you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said I, and because I knew we were going to part and there would be nobody else to advise me in the same way, I went on in a great hurry for fear there should not be time. “I can’t live at home even after we come back. I could never be pointed at, like Aunt Elizabeth, and have people whisper and say I’ve had a disappointment. I must make my own life. I must have a profession. Do you think I could teach? Do you think I could learn to teach — psychology?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time, and I didn’t dare look at him, though the moon was so bright now that I could see how white his hand was, lying on his knee, and the chasing of the ring on his little finger. It had been his mother’s engagement ring, he told me once. But he spoke, and very gently and seriously. “I am sure you could teach some things. Whether psychology — but we can talk of that later. There’ll be lots of time. It proves I am going over on the same steamer with Charlie Ned and Lorraine and you.”

  “You are!” I cried. “Why, I never heard of anything so—” I couldn’t find the word for it, but everything stopped being puzzling and unhappy and looked clear and plain.

  “Yes,” said he. “It’s very convenient, isn’t it? We can talk over your future, and you could even take a lesson or two in psychology. But I fancy we shall have a good deal to do looking for porpoises and asking what the run is. People are terribly busy at sea.”

  Then it occurred to me that he had never been here before, and why was he here now? “How did you happen to come?” I asked. I suppose I really felt as if God sent him.

  “Why,” said he, “why—” Then he laughed. “Well,” said he, “to tell the truth, I was going abroad if — if certain things happened, and I needed to make sure. I didn’t want to write, so I ran down to see Charlie Ned.”

  “But could he tell you?” said I. “And had they happened?”

  He laughed, as if at something I needn’t share. “No,” he said, “the things weren’t going to happen. But I decided to go abroad.”

  I was “curiouser and curiouser,” as Lorraine says.

  “But,” I insisted, “what had Charles Edward to do with it?”

  There were a great many pauses that night as if, I think, he didn’t know what was wise to say. I should imagine it would always be so with psychologists. They understand so well what effect every word will have.

  “Well, to tell the truth,” he answered, at last, in a kind, darling way, “I wanted to make sure all was well with my favorite pupil before I left the country. I couldn’t quite go without it.”

  “Mr. Dane,” I said, “you don’t mean me?”

  “Yes,” he answered, “I mean you.”

  I could have danced and sung with happiness. “Oh,” said I, “then I must have been a better scholar than I thought. I feel as if I could teach psychology — this minute.”

  “You could,” said he, “this minute.” And we both laughed and didn’t know, after all, what we were laughing at — at least I didn’t. But suddenly I was cold with fear.

  “Why,” I said, “if you’ve only really decided to go to-night, how do you know you can get a passage on our ship?”

  “Because, sweet Lady Reason,” said he, “I used Charlie Ned’s telephone and found out.” (That was a pretty name — sweet Lady Reason.)

  We didn’t talk any more then for a long time, because suddenly the moon seemed so bright and the garden so sweet. But all at once I heard a step on the gravel walk, and I knew who it was. “That’s Charles Edward,” I said. “He’s been home with Aunt Elizabeth. We must go in.”

  “No!” said he. “No, Peggy. There won’t be such another night.” Then he laughed quickly and got up. “Yes,” he said, “there will be such nights — over and over again. Come, Peggy, little psychologist, we’ll go in.”

  We found Lorraine and Charles Edward standing in the middle of the room, holding hands and looking at each other. “You’re a hero,” Lorraine was saying, “and a gentleman and a scholar and my own particular Peter.”

  “Don’t admire me,” said Charles Edward, “or you’ll get me so bellicose I shall have to challenge Lyman Wilde. Poor old chap! I believe to my soul he’s had the spirit to make off.”

  “Speak gently of Lyman Wilde,” said Lorraine. “I never for
get what we owe him. Sometimes I burn a candle to his photograph. I’ve even dropped a tear before it. Well, children?” She turned her bright eyes on us as if she liked us very much, and we two stood facing them two, and it all seemed quite solemn. Suddenly Charles Edward put out his hand and shook Mr. Dane’s, and they both looked very much moved, as grandmother would say. I hadn’t known they liked each other so well.

  “Do you know what time it is?” said Lorraine. “Half-past eleven by Shrewsbury clock. I’ll bake the cakes and draw the ale.”

  “Gee whiz!” said Mr. Dane. I’d never heard things like that. It sounded like Billy, and I liked it. “I’ve got to catch that midnight train.”

  For a minute it seemed as if we all stood shouting at one another, Lorraine asking him to stay all night, Charles Edward giving him a cigar to smoke on the way, I explaining to Lorraine that I’d sleep on the parlor sofa and leave the guest-room free, and Mr. Dane declaring he’d got a million things to do before sailing. Then he and Charles Edward dashed out into the night, as Alice would say, and I should have thought it was a dream that he’d been there at all except that I felt his touch on my hand. And Lorraine put her arms round me and kissed me and said, “Now, you sweet child, run up-stairs and look at the moonlight and dream — and dream — and dream.”

  I don’t know whether I slept that night; but, if I did, I did not dream.

  The next forenoon I waited until eleven o’clock before I went home. I wanted to be sure Aunt Elizabeth was safely away at Whitman. Yet, after all, I did not dread her now. I had been told what to do. Some one was telling me of a song the other day, “Command me, dear.” I had been commanded to stop thinking of all those things I hated. I had done it. Mother met me at the steps. She seemed a little anxious, but when she had put her hand on my shoulder and really looked at me she smiled the way I love to see her smile. “That’s a good girl!” said she. Then she added, quickly, as if she thought I might not like it and ought to know at once, “Aunt Elizabeth saw Dr. Denbigh going by to Whitman, and she asked him to take her over.”