Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Kelwyn kept feeling like a guest during the drive over from the station, and she had an obscure resentment of the feeling as a foreshadowed effect from an attempt on Mrs. Kite’s part to play the hostess. She must be the mistress from the first, and, though Mrs. Kite was not to be quite her servant, she must be made to realize distinctly that the house was Mrs. Kelwyn’s, and that she was in it by Mrs. Kelwyn’s favor; this realization could not begin too soon.

  But it had apparently begun already, and when the caravan of the Kelwyns drew up under the elms at the gable of the old Shaker Family house, nothing could have been more to Mrs. Kelwyn’s mind than the whole keeping of the place, unless it was the behavior of Mrs. Kite. She did not come officiously forward in welcome, as Mrs. Kelwyn had feared she might; she stood waiting in the doorway for the Kelwyns to alight and introduce themselves; but Mrs. Kelwyn decided that this was from respect and not pride, for the woman seemed a humble creature enough when she spoke to her: not embarrassed, but not forth-putting.

  She had the effect of having on the best dress she had compatible with household duties, and she looked neat and agreeable in it. She was rather graceful, and she was of a sort of blameless middlingness in looks. A boy, somewhat younger than the elder Kelwyn boy, stood beside her and stared at the two young Kelwyns with strange eyes of impersonal guile.

  It was a relief for the moment, and then for another moment a surprise, not to see Kite himself about; but Mrs. Kelwyn had scarcely drawn an indignant breath when the man came hulking round the corner of the house, where he stopped to swear over his shoulder at the team he must have left somewhere, and then advanced to the wagon piled high with the Kelwyns’ trunks, and called out to them rather than to the Kelwyns, “Well, how are you!”

  The house was everything Kelwyn had painted it. Mrs. Kelwyn explored it with him to give him the pleasure of her approval before she settled down to the minute examination of their quarters; and together, with their children, they ranged up and down stairs and through the long passages, feeling like a bath the delight of its cool cleanliness. Mrs. Kite, who met them on their return from their wanderings, said the Shaker ladies had been up the day before, putting on the last touches before they should come. It was pleasant to know that they had been expected and prepared for, but Mrs. Kelwyn fancied that, though the housekeeping had been instituted by the Shaker ladies, it must have been the Shaker gentlemen who had looked after the house furnishing. She had expected that there might he a Shaker stiffness in the appointments, but that there would also be a Shaker quaintness; and she had imagined her rooms dressed in the Shaker gear, which the house must once have worn, and which would have been restored from the garrets and basements of the other community dwellings. But the Shakers had not imagined anything of that kind. Whichever of them it had been left to had laid one kind of ingrain carpet in all the rooms, and furnished the chambers in a uniformity of painted pine sets. There was a parlor set of black walnut, and there were painted shades at the windows. All was new, and smelled fresh and wholesome, but the things had no more character than they had in the furniture warerooms where they were bought. Apparently the greatest good-will had been used, and Mrs. Kelwyn could well believe that the Shakers supposed they had dealt much more acceptably by them than if they had given them the rag carpets and the hooked rugs, the high-post bedsteads and splint chairs which she would have so much rather had.

  The Kelwyns were a long time getting settled into temporary form; the robins were shouting their goodnights around them, and a thrush was shrilling from the woods that covered the hill slope behind the house, when the tinkle of a far-off bell called them to supper. Then they found themselves suddenly hungry, and they sat down in the old Shaker refectory with minds framed to eager appreciation of what good things might be set before them. Mrs. Kite gave a glance at the table before she left it to them; and said that she would be right there in the kitchen if they wanted anything. She really went down-stairs beyond the kitchen to the ground floor, where she had four or five rooms with her family.

  The Kelwyns had a four-o’clock dinner at home, and now it was a quarter past seven as they sat down with their orderly little boys at the supper which Mrs. Kite had imagined for them. There were two kinds of cake on the table: three slices of pound-cake, translucent but solid, at one end of the table, and thicker slices of marble-cake, with veins of verde antique varying its surface of Siena yellow, at the other. A dish of stewed fruit stood in the centre, which proved to be dried apples; at Mrs. Kelwyn’s right elbow was the teapot; on one hand of Kelwyn was a plate of butter, and on the other a plate of bread cut from a loaf of which the half remained beside the pieces. In the bewilderment of realizing the facts he lifted successively the butter and the bread to his nose, which involuntarily curled from them, in the silence broken by Mrs. Kelwyn’s lifting the teapot lid an instant, and then clapping it to with a quick “Ugh!”

  “Isn’t it our tea?” he asked, quietly.

  “It’s all of it, I should think,” said his wife. “ She doesn’t know how to make English breakfast tea, evidently. She’s steeped it like green tea, and it’s as strong as lye. What’s the matter with the butter?”

  “I don’t know what to liken its strength to.”

  “And the bread?”

  “It seems like what they used to call salt - rising bread. I haven’t smelt any since I was a boy.”

  He stretched the plate toward her, and when she brought it within range of her nose she averted her face with a wild “Phew!” and an imploring cry of “Elmer!” while she made play with her hands as if fighting away mosquitoes.

  “I remember that when it was hot you could eat it if you hurried; but when it was cold!”

  He said no more, and his wife could not speak. The elder of the two well-behaved little boys made a preliminary noise in his throat, and then, not being quelled, ventured to ask, “Mamma, may I say something?”

  “What is it, dear?” his mother returned, tenderly, as from the sense of a common sorrow.

  “Oh, nothing,” the boy said, politely. “But is this all, or do they begin with the dessert in the country?” Kelwyn laughed harshly, and his wife looked at him with reproach. She had been about to bid the child eat what was set before him and not make remarks, but in despair of setting him the example she felt that she must forbear the precept. “I’m afraid it isn’t the dessert, dear,” she answered, gently. “I’m afraid it’s — all.”

  “All?” the boy echoed, in a husky tone, and at the melancholy sound his younger brother, who took his cue from him in everything, silently put up his lip.

  “Elmer!” their mother demanded. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to get something to eat.” Kelwyn pushed back his chair and launched himself forward as in act to start for the kitchen door.

  His wife intercepted him with the appeal: “No! Wait, Elmer! We must begin as we can carry out.” This saying has always an implication of reserved wisdom, and besides Kelwyn was willing to be intercepted; he sank back into his chair.

  “I must talk with her, and I must think what to say, what to do. We mustn’t be harsh, but we must be firm. I’m afraid she’s done her best on mistaken lines. She’s tried to realize our ideals, but if she had been left to her own it might have been different. We are bound to suppose so.”

  “And in the mean time we are starving,” Kelwyn argued.

  “I know all that, my dear,” his wife retorted. “But we must begin as we can carry out; and in the first place there must be no going to them: they must come to us. Will you bring the bell off the bureau in mamma’s room?” she bade the eldest boy, and the youngest ran with him; they returned in better spirits, and climbed back to their places in eager expectation.

  “May I ring it?” the eldest brother asked.

  “I want to ring it,” the youngest entreated.

  “No, darlings, mamma must ring,” said the mother, with a tenderness meant for them and a stateliness meant for Mrs. Kite. Sh
e rang almost majestically at first; then indignantly; then angrily.

  Mrs. Kite put her head in from the kitchen. “Oh! I thought I heard a bell ringin’ somewhere,” she concluded, in apology for her intrusion.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Kelwyn, with a sternness from which she gave herself time to relax before she added: “Could you give us some eggs, Mrs. Kite? Soft boiled?”

  “Oh, fried, mamma!” the eldest boy, who was Francis, entreated.

  “I want fried,” his younger brother whispered, with the lack of originality innate in younger brothers.

  “‘Sh!” said their mother. “Francy, I’m astonished. Carl! Won’t you come in, Mrs. Kite?”

  Mrs. Kite came in and sat down.

  “And could you,” Mrs. Kelwyn pursued, in the petition which she tried to keep from making itself a command, “give us some of your hot biscuit?”

  The children could not keep from noiselessly clapping their hands; arrested in the act by their mother’s frown, they held their hands joined and appeared to be saying a grace.

  “Why, yes,” Mrs. Kite assented. “But I guess they ain’t very hot any more. The fire’s gone down—”

  “I suppose you could make it up for the eggs,” Mrs. Kelwyn suggested.

  “Oh, I guess Alvin can make it up again,” Mrs. Kite assented.

  Kelwyn was taking involuntary notes of her, and he could not have said whether she was assenting willingly or unwillingly. She might have been meek or she might have been sly; she could have been pretty or plain, as you thought; her pale sandy hair might have been golden; her gray eyes blue. A neutrality which seemed the potentiality of better or worse things pervaded her.

  “Well, we should like some soft - boiled eggs — or fried,” Mrs. Kelwyn said, in concession to her children, “if it’s just as easy. We have a late dinner at home, and we’re rather hungry.”

  “Why,” said Mrs. Kite, “if you’d ‘a’ sent word I’d ‘a’ had a warm supper for you — milk toast and some kind of meat.”

  “Oh, this is very nice,” said Mrs. Kelwyn, absently, from her apparent absorption with the milk which she was inspecting in its pitcher. “There seems to be something in the milk—”

  “Is that so?” Mrs. Kite inquired, interestedly. “It does look kind of speckled.” She examined it, and then sat down again with the jug in her lap. “Must ‘a’ got in from the rafters in the cellar. But I can get you some warm from the cow as soon as Alvin comes in from milkin’. I guess that will be clean enough.”

  “And could you get us a little fresher butter?” Mrs. Kelwyn pursued, passing the plate to Mrs. Kite, who took it passively.

  “Why, ain’t the butter all right?” she asked.

  “It’s rather strong,” Mrs. Kelwyn admitted.

  “Well, I guess I can fix that.” Mrs. Kite put it in her lap with the milk-pitcher, and sat contentedly expectant.

  “And I am afraid that the tea has stood rather long,” Mrs. Kelwyn said. “You know that with this kind, you merely pour on the hot water and bring it to the table.”

  “My! We keep ours on the stove all day! I guess Alvin wouldn’t think he was drinking tea unless he could taste the bitter. Well,” Mrs. Kite rose in saying, “I’ll get you the things as soon as I can, but, as I said, the fire’s out, and—”

  She left the rest to their imagination as she let herself into the kitchen, with the milk-pitcher in one hand, the teapot in the other, and the butter-plate in the hollow of her arm.

  Kelwyn rose and put the bread beyond smelling-distance on the side-table.

  “Now, don’t you say one word, please,” said his wife, “till we see what she can do.”

  “Oh, I’m not disposed to be critical. I’m rather sorry for her, though she didn’t seem put to shame, much. I suppose I ought to have opened the door for her.”

  “She managed,” said Mrs. Kelwyn, coldly.

  In the kitchen presently they heard heavy clumping steps as of a man coming in, and after a moment what seemed a kind of hushed swearing. But a rattling of the stove-lids presently followed, and then the pungent odor of wood smoke stole encouragingly through the kitchen door. There was now and then the sound of steps, but there were spaces of silence in which the Kelwyn family drowsed in their chairs.

  The door flew open at last, and Mrs. Kite came in with a pitcher. “Thought I’d bring in some milk for the little boys while it was warm. The things will be ready right away now.” She went out, cutting short with the shutting door the steady hiss of frying.

  Mrs. Kelwyn put the pitcher to her face mechanically, and then set it down at arm’s-length. Her husband silently looked question, and she audibly explained, “Cowy.” They were helpless against a lack of neatness which gave the odor of the cow’s udder to the milk, and Kelwyn thought how promptly they had once dismissed their milkman at home for cowy milk. The children were eagerly intent on the frying eggs, which then ceased to fry, leaving a long silence to ensue, till Mrs. Kite pushed open the door with one of her elbows and one of her feet, and reappeared with the fried eggs on a platter, and the teapot; Kite hulked in after her with a plate of biscuit and butter, and set them down with a glower at his guests and hulked out.

  “I don’t believe but what you’ll find everything all right now,” she said, “though I presume I did let the tea stand a little mite long, to your taste.”

  Mrs. Kelwyn said, “Oh, I dare say it will be nice,” and Mrs. Kite, after a look at the table, flapped out, not cheerfully, but self - contentedly, on her heel-less shoes. Then the Kelwyns examined the food put before them.

  The eggs, with their discolored edges limp from standing in the pork fat, stared up dimly, sadly; the biscuits, when broken open, emitted an alkaline steam from their greenish - yellow crumb; the tea was black again. Kelwyn remained scrutinizing the butter.

  “What is it?” his wife asked.

  “It looks like — sugar.”

  “What?”

  He pushed it to her, and she scrutinized it in her turn. “It is — it actually is! She’s tried to sweeten it by working sugar into it!” She fell back into her chair, and tears came into her eyes. “What are we going to do, Elmer?”

  “Here, Carl,” said his father, recklessly, “have an egg. Have an egg, Francy.”

  “And a biscuit, papa?” Francy asked; and Carl parroted after him, “And a biscuit, papa?”

  “Yes, all you can eat.”

  “Do you want to kill them, Elmer?” their mother palpitated.

  “It’s filth, but it isn’t poison,” said Kelwyn, and he spread each of the boys a biscuit with the sugared butter, and set them the example of eating the things put before them. “Give me some of that bitter black tea, Carry, with plenty of cowy milk in it.”

  “I want some cowy milk, papa,” Francy whispered; and Carl whispered, too, “I want some cowy milk, papa.”

  “You shall have all the cowy milk you can drink,” said their father, and he commanded their mother, who was keeping one hand on the teapot and the other on the milk - pitcher: “Pass me the cowy milk, Carry; give me some bitter black tea. Eat your blear-eyed eggs, boys, and have some more. Take another bilious biscuit, with plenty of sugar-butter on it. My dear, you’re not eating anything!”

  “Are you crazy, Elmer?” his wife demanded. “You won’t sleep a wink. You’ll be dead before morning.”

  “I shall not be dead unless that brute murders me in my bed, and if I don’t sleep a wink I shall be awake to prevent him,” Kelwyn said, not fearlessly, but recklessly.

  The boys, rapt in their supper, did not Hear him. His wife shuddered out: “What in the world shall we do?”

  VI

  THERE was that summer a great alarm of tramps. The times were had, as they must he every now and then, in an economy as little regulated as the weather, and men without work were prowling the country everywhere. They were mostly long past the hope of work, or the wish for it, but they still wanted to eat. They found shelter for themselves in barns and hay-stacks, and any rags
sufficed in summer; but a handout was good for only a few hours at a time, and the newspapers teemed with stories of the insolence and even violence which repaid the charity done the vagabonds.

  After Kelwyn’s visit to the place they had taken for the summer, it seemed more and more that it was a lonely place, and that he ought to have some means of defending himself and his family from tramps. While the farmer was about they need not fear, but he must often be away cutting the wood which was the Shaker Family’s chief crop, and then the Kelwyns would be left unprotected. The truculent giant laughed when the notion was suggested to him; but he loosely agreed never to be out of call when Kelwyn was absent.

  For safety when he was not absent, Kelwyn bought himself a pistol. His sense of the sacredness of property rights was strong, as it should be in a lecturer on Historical Sociology, and the pistol was as much to save their belongings as their lives from the tramps. As regarded his own property, Kelwyn had ideas of peculiar force, which he made apply as well to the small estate brought him by his wife as to the little sum which he had put by from taking a pupil now and then; from his salary he could not put by anything. He held that if he caught a thief by night stealing his watch, for instance, or the silver which he had bought with his hard-earned savings, he would have a right to kill him. He often said this, and he believed that he should not have the least regret for such a deed.

  When he went to buy his revolver he told the dealer that he would like something that was good for tramps, and the man offered him for ten dollars a pretty nickel-plated toy which he said was just the thing for tramps; Kelwyn rejected it in favor of a plain steel burnished affair at six dollars. He and the dealer had reciprocally admired each other’s nonchalance in the transaction, but on the way home Kelwyn lost something of his selfsatisfaction. There was a moment when, as the horse-car of those days tinkled toward his university suburb, with nothing to suggest a break in his monotonous revery, he suddenly realized with a neuralgic poignancy that his revolver was meant to kill a man, and that with it in his pocket he was a potential homicide.