Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Powell laughed again, shaking his shoulders and nodding his head up and down as his fashion was, but Ann would not join him at once. “What did he mean by that?” she asked, conditionally.

  “Why, you know,” Powell explained, struggling with his delight, “ you know he had never felt just right about my pulling his boy out of the water. I could see that it was worrying him all along. He felt that he ought to say something civil about it, but he didn’t know how, and he didn’t want to, besides. It would have been like giving up his grudge against us.

  Well, as luck would have it, he thought he had saved my neck, and so we were quits. It’s deliciously like the fellow.”

  Powell laughed again, but his wife frowned before she smiled.

  “Why do you say he thought he saved you? He did save you.”

  “Oh, there wasn’t the least danger! I was intending to roll out at the first soft spot I came to.”

  “You were a long time coming to it, Owen.”

  “Yes; I hadn’t made up my mind about the softness even at the last.”

  He laughed now at his own humorous notion of himself; he found that as characteristic as the miller’s behavior; Ann made a despairing click of her tongue in her perplexity with the man who through their whole married life had puzzled her by the provisional levity tempering his final seriousness. At the moment, now, he turned serious, as much interested in another philosophy of the case which suggested itself as he had been in its grotesque phase.

  “I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it worked out favorably, on the whole. Whether there was any real danger or not, Overdale believes he’s done me a good turn, and he’s relieved of the gratitude toward me which has been embittering him. At the same time he has involved himself in the obligation which binds us in kindness toward those we have benefited. If he’s saved my neck, as you think, he can’t help feeling friendlier toward me from that fact alone.”

  “Well,” Ann said, “let us hope so. You’ll want your dinner now. But let me brush you. You’re all dust.”

  “And I think I had better wash up a little,” Powell said, going before her into the kitchen, where she followed him, plying the whisk-broom on his shoulders.

  XI

  AT their next meeting Overdale did not pass Powell in surly avoidance so promptly as he usually did. He looked at him with a sort of novel interest, as if he might have seen something in him which had not caught his eye before. He said nothing, and Powell thought it best not to renew the offer of his gratitude for the miller’s timely aid; that was what he now called it to himself. But he halted the man, who, after the first hesitation, would have slouched by him with the peck measure of corn under his arm on the way to feed his pigs. “Mr. Overdale,” he said, “I suppose you know we are going to put in the paper machinery as soon as we can make the necessary changes. No, wait a moment,” he hurried on at sight of the frown darkening the miller’s white face. “I want to say now what I have wanted to say from the outset, that in any change we make we hope to keep you here with us. I’m not sure that we can’t keep something of the flouring apparatus,” the notion flashed into Owen’s hopeful mind, “but, whether we can or not, we want you to stay on, somehow. This is my brother’s wish as well — as well as my—”

  “You tell your brother,” the miller blazed out, “to go to hell.”

  “Oh, come, come,” Powell reasoned. “Let us consider this matter in its true light. I’ve wanted to have an opportunity to talk it over with you ever since I came here, for I know—”

  “For half a cent,” the miller blazed out again, “I’d knock your head off.” But in spite of his furious words his tone was helplessly provisional.

  “After just saving my neck? You ought to ask more,” Powell said; and he smiled so kindly that Overdale, who glowered still, might well have been moved by the joke. But he shifted the peck measure to his left side and pressed close, pushing his floury visage almost against Powell’s face and lifting his fist. The man who had never been in any danger that he knew of did not believe that the miller was going to strike him. “I think,” he argued, placidly, “that we can come to an understanding that will be of mutual advantage if we once reach it. I am not aware of ever harboring ill feeling toward you, and if I had I couldn’t do so now. But apparently there is something on your mind against my brothers and me — me more especially, as I’m their representative here. Should you mind frankly saying what it is?”

  “You keep away from me!” Overdale shouted. “I’ll kill you some day.”

  “I don’t believe you will. Perhaps you really meant to kill me the first night I was here, but you didn’t; and after what happened yesterday I feel pretty safe with you; in fact, you’ve just thrown away a chance that would have relieved you of responsibility. When it came to the point, you wouldn’t even let the pony kill me.”

  “Do you suppose — curse you! — I done it for you?”

  “‘No, you did it for your little boy; I understood that perfectly, and I accepted it on those terms. But what I am trying to get at is the thing you have on your mind against us. If we could sit down somewhere—” Powell looked about him for the log or fence-rail which commonly offered itself for the convenience of talk at New Leaf Mills, but he found none near, and he was afraid Over dale would escape him if they moved from the spot where they were.

  “I don’t want to set down nowheres,” the miller said, but he did not go. It was as if the gentle philosopher held him by a mesmeric spell.

  “Oh, well, we can as easily talk standing,” Powell lightly put the point aside. “I’m not aware of having offered you any personal offense. Have I?”

  “Who said you had?”

  “Well, I’m glad you don’t think I have. Then the question is whether we’ve done you some sort of injury by buying the mills?”

  “No, you hain’t, unless the Larrabees told you I wanted ‘em.”

  “They never did.”

  “If I had ’em by the scruff of the neck and could crack their heads together—”

  “Mind, I don’t say that we shouldn’t have bought them in any case.”

  “Then, what the hell—”

  “But we never meant to put you out of your place here. We have intended nothing but good by this whole neighborhood, and from the fact that we have gladly kept you on here—”

  Overdale snorted disdainfully. “You knowed dern well you couldn’t ‘a’ got along without me.”

  “Yes, we knew that. But now you see that when we could get on without you we still wish you to stay. We wish you to be one of us, to be in charge of the paper-mill, if possible, as you have been in charge of the grist-mill. Now, what is on your mind?”

  The shame for his secret could not show its red through the flour of the miller’s face; but he dropped his eyes, turning his head first this way and then that.

  Whatever longing was in his heart to free itself, he quelled it.

  “Mrs. Overdale,” Powell continued, “ asked my wife the other day what I had against you. If I can convince you that I have only the kindest feeling toward you—” —

  Overdale gave a formless bark. He showed his under teeth as a dog does; he squared his shoulders and pushed against Powell. “You git out o’ my road.”

  Powell stood aside. “Well, some other time when you’re more in the mood for it. I won’t press the matter now.”

  He praised himself for his forbearance when he reported the incident to his wife, who could only give a gasp of relief at the conclusion.

  “I watched you talking with him,” Ann said. She was seldom of a satiric mood with the man whose philosophic mind held her respect even when it passed her patience, but now she added, “Did he seem to like you better because he had saved your life?”

  “Oh, he didn’t save my life.” Powell was constant in his insistence on the point. “But apparently he doesn’t like me any better for his having stopped the pony. At one moment I certainly thought he was going to strike me.”

  �
�I thought so too,” Ann said. “My heart was in my mouth.”

  “There wasn’t the least danger, however, as it turned out.” Then Powell began to laugh in the way that tried her so.

  “What is it now?” she required of him.

  “Oh, I was thinking of the effect in myself of bearing with his violence. Whatever his feeling toward me was, I was aware of liking him better because I was still wishing to do him good in spite of himself. If he had really knocked me over” — Powell pursued his notion to its climax with joy in its absurdity—” I suppose I should have become his friend for life. There was no danger of his striking me,” he assured Ann again, “but now I shall have to fall back upon general principles. I shall have to love Overdale along with the rest of our neighbors; and certainly a more detestable crew never appealed to a man’s best feelings. I shall be glad when we get the paper machinery in and begin actively doing them good. If we don’t do it soon, I shall feel like packing up and leaving them to their evils.”

  “That is the way I have felt all along, Owen,” Ann said, grimly. “But we can’t think of that now. If Felix is coming here to live we must surely stay, no matter what happens. We must hurry everything forward and have the new house ready for him before the summer begins. Oh, when I think how the thing has lagged along, it seems as if I must put it up with my own hands!”

  “Well, I think the neighbors will help with the frame when they see you lifting those heavy sills, and Rosy and the children tugging the studs and scantling to you.” He mocked her, but he ended, as always, with the earnest cheer, which she ended by accepting with the trust which his hopefulness compelled. “Now that you’ve got Rosy you won’t even have to call on the neighbors’ wives to cook the dinner for the raising.”

  XII

  THE Powells had forecast the raising in every detail months before the day came, and after the masons had put in the foundation their fancy was busy completing the structure. It was the custom for the builders of a new house to ask the whole neighborhood to the raising. The invitation went out by word, direct or indirect, as convenience served. Those who were spoken to carried the message to those unspoken, and in response the farmers came to put the skeleton of the house together and leave it for the carpenters to line with sheathing and clothe on with clapboards and shingles; and the farmers’ wives came to help cook the feast which rewarded the labors of the day. Ann proudly felt herself equal to deal single-handed with the quality of the feast, but the quantity, she knew from the beginning, was beyond her, and there she was aware she must not fail, under pain of an indefinite increase of the unpopularity which she knew that she shared with Powell. With Rosy’s help no one could cook a better meal, but three times their joint efficiency would not suffice for the meal which must be cooked. She must rely upon the favor of her neighbors, but she could ask it by implication only in asking them to the raising.

  She and her husband agreed about this necessity, as they agreed about the necessity of asking the men.

  They got on confidently enough in the details till they came to a point where Powell sometimes seemed to waver and Ann always stood firm. The point was whether they should provide the whiskey, which was the free drink at raisings, or should offer unstinted coffee of a compensating strength, and of a brew which Ann was willing publicly to stake her housewifely reputation on.

  “You know, Ann, I have never been a teetotaler,” he teased.

  “When have you ever drunk anything?”

  “That is true; but I mean a teetotaler on principle.”

  “Well, you have never been an Abolitionist, but you have always been opposed to the extension of slavery, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see—”

  “Yes, Owen, you know you do. You want to restrict drunkenness, and though you may not be a teetotaler, you can’t do that unless you stop the drinking.”

  Powell enjoyed her logic, but he could not forbear making her observe a break in it. “I am in favor of confining slavery to the present slave States, or against carrying it into Territories now free. On the same principle I ought to let the old topers get as drunk as they like, while I deny whiskey to those who have never been drunk. Suppose we let it be known that there is a jug for those who have the habit of it, and coffee for those who haven’t.”

  “Now, Owen!” Ann cried, charmed with his joking, but vexed with him for it.

  “Well, let us compromise, then; no whiskey for anybody; hard cider for everybody.”

  “Have you ever been in favor of compromising with slavery? They can get drunk on hard cider as well as on whiskey; you know they can.”

  “Well, not so fighting drunk. Unless we let some of them get peaceable drunk, we won’t have a friend in the neighborhood when the day’s over.”

  “Nonsense! Elder Griswell never lets them have anything but molasses water in the harvest field.”

  “And is the neighborhood full of his friends?” Powell saw that he had carried victory beyond its limits. “Oh, well,” he gave way, “have your old coffee then. But I shall reserve the privilege of getting drunk in private before I begin the day. What else are you going to have for the feast?”

  “Never you mind; I’ll see to that. Just keep your jug to yourself; that’s all I ask.”

  “I may offer Overdale a swig?”

  “Overdale has a jug of his own.”

  “I’ve sometimes suspected as much,” Powell said; and he went away lifting his shoulders and shaking with the fun.

  He came back to say, seriously: “I think we had better make a special point of asking Bladen. He is the decentest man in the neighborhood, and his coming would give the occasion dignity in the eyes of the world here that nothing else would.”

  “I didn’t know that you cared for the world anywhere, Owen.”

  “No, I don’t. But this is a matter in which we ought to put our best foot forward, and he seems our best foot.”

  “Well, make your special point, then.”

  They had other hopeful talks of it before the day of the raising, and their children shared the talks with them. Rosy was like one of the children; she made no claim, as the others did, for special recognition in the arrangement of the rooms, but she freely gave her opinion. She was for conformity to the house-kite house, as she called the gambrel-roof pattern which had been the shape of the house where she first lived out and which all the best kites were modeled upon. While the father and mother sat with the plan of the house on the table before them in the lamplight, and the children hung upon the backs of their chairs looking over at it, Rosy went and came in and out of the shed kitchen humming to herself as she carried her dishes to the cupboard and stopping to glance down at the map. She interrupted the humming when she spoke, and began humming again when she had spoken. She gave the effect of perfect freedom while preserving an attitude of non-intervention, of being a friend of the family, but not a member of it.

  Powell noticed how, with her shortness and straightness, she had yet a sort of stiff grace which expressed an inner rhythm and timed itself to the staccato tune she was humming. One night as he was winding his watch he said to his wife, “Rosy seems very happy.”

  “Yes,” Ann consented, “she seems happy,” and she sighed.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “She is very headstrong. She’s not a little girl any more. She has her own ideas; it’s hard to move her; I have to manage very carefully with her.”

  “About her work?”

  “About herself. There was never one like her to work; we are both agreed about the work; she knows my way, and all she wants is to do it.”

  “Well, then?”

  “She’s flattered.”

  “Well, she ought to be, with the way you pet her.”

  “Owen, have you seen that man lately to talk to? That Captain Bickler?”

  “Why, no. Not since he came with the brooch he thought Rosy had lost in the buggy.”

  “He never thought she lost it there.”

/>   “Then why—”

  “That’s what I don’t like. If he wanted to see the child, why didn’t he come and ask without making up that excuse and bringing her a present?”

  “Well, I suppose he’s shamefaced if he fancies her. Do you think he does?” There was no reason in Powell’s scheme of life why Captain Bickler should not fancy a girl like Rosy and be shamefaced about it; that was right and in the nature of things; but now with his wife’s vision he pierced below the surface.

  “I’ve got the brooch now.”

  “But you told me she gave it back to him.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then he’s been seeing her.”

  “Yes, more than I supposed. He’s been coming by here in his electioneering, and he’s talked with Rosy when she was out with the children on the other side of the hill. He stops to talk with her, and the children get tired and go off playing. She told me about it, and gave me the brooch. He made her take it the other evening when he was passing by and we were out with the children in the flatboat; we ought to have taken Rosy. I had to speak very plainly to her, and I’ll give him his brooch the first time I see him.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t know,” Owen demurred.

  “Why don’t you know? Haven’t you always mistrusted him?”

  “Yes, but I’ve had no real grounds.”

  “Has he got round you by pretending to think as you do about the State platform? I heard him flattering you up that day while his eyes followed Rosy whenever she came into the room. And his pretending to be interested in the Doctrines!”

  “We have no right to treat him as if he were guilty till he has done something wrong.”

  “Well, now he has done something wrong. He has made Rosy take that brooch in spite of us, Owen. Any man in the world but you would see that he was coming here just to amuse himself with Rosy, and to get you to use your political influence to send delegates to the county convention that will vote for him.”