Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Of course, after you are dead—”

  “Nay, we think we are continuously alive to all eternity. In the Family the heavenly order is honored; in the world-outside, the earthly order. But we do not condemn the earthly order. When we see a married pair living peaceably and affectionately together we respect them.”

  “Then, why don’t more of them live that way together?” As if she felt the futility of her question the girl smiled forlornly.

  The old man smiled compassionately. “Nay, I cannot tell you that. Perhaps it is because they are too ignorant of life and expect too much of each other. They are mostly very young and inexperienced.”

  “I see,” the girl said; “you think they ought to wait.”

  “Nay, if they waited they might not wish to marry at all,” the Elder suggested.

  “That is true,” she sighed; “it seems a difficult problem. They certainly ought to know each other a long time.”

  She fell into a troubled muse, from which she was startled after what seemed to her a much greater interval than it really was by his saying, “My own partner and I had known each other from childhood.”

  “Why, Elder Nathaniel!” she cried. “Were you ever married?”

  “Oh, yee; we had a family of children when we were led to enter upon the angelic life here. It was quite a little trial for us to separate.”

  “You had a family?” She started forward in her chair. “Did you have any — girls?”

  “Yee; we had three daughters and two sons.”

  “And what became — did they — were they gathered in, too?”

  “They were children. The boys followed me into the Church Family and the girls went with their mother into the Family that lived here.” He looked up and around at the great old house before which they sat. “The Family was fairly large then.”

  “Elder Nathaniel!” the girl said. After a moment of amaze, she asked, “And are you all living in the Church Family now?”

  “Nay; my wife died before the Family left this house.”

  “Oh!” the girl said, tenderly.

  As if her compassion made it easier for him to go on, he continued: “My daughters got to feeling foolish about some of the young men in the Family and ran away to be married. One of my sons died, and the other left us for the world-outside. You have heard of Mabel Northland?”

  “I think I have seen the name,” Parthenope said, suddenly inattentive to the general inquiry. “Isn’t she some kind of actress?”

  “Yee; he is with her company.”

  “And — and does he play, too? Is he on the stage?”

  “Nay; he is her press agent, as they call it.”

  “Oh,” she said, and she sat staring at Elder Nathaniel, who softly passed his tongue over his lower lip as he drooped forward in his chair. “Elder Nathaniel,” she began again, “I am afraid I have pained you — made you pain yourself.”

  “Oh, nay; it is a long time ago. Now and then my son comes to see me. My daughters are settled in the West. They are well-to-do, and in the earthly order they are happy for what I know.”

  “Yes,” she vaguely assented. “Do you — do you like your son being connected with the theatre?”

  “I do not mind that. When Friend Mabel was in Boston last I went down to see her act; he wished it. I thought it was a foolish play; but the theatre is no worse than other things in the world-outside. I could see how it might do some good with the right kind of play.”

  “Did you?” she asked, with an unreasoned gratitude. “You mean with a piece that teaches a good lesson?”

  “Yee. Any piece that shows the life of the world outside as it really is would teach a good lesson. Friend Mabel’s piece was foolish because it did not do that. It pretended that when the young folks who had got foolish about each other were married they were going to be happy because they were married.”

  “I see,” Parthenope said. “I suppose that is the way people want plays to end,” she reflected. “Thank you very much, Elder Nathaniel.”

  She sat silent, and the Elder was silent too, but he did not offer to go at once. When at last he made a movement to go it seemed to her that she had been hinting him away.

  “Elder Nathaniel,” she asked, more abruptly than perhaps she would if she had not wished to disabuse him of any such suspicion, “if your daughters — or one of them — had wished to marry an actor, would you have felt worse than for her to marry a Shaker?”

  “When they married,” he answered, severely, “they ceased to be Shakers.”

  “Yes, I know; I don’t mean Shakers, exactly. I mean some other kind of profession.”

  “Nay, I cannot answer that. I have never thought of it.”

  “

  “Of course not. What you would wish them to do would be to think very seriously before they married at all.”

  “Nay, the thinking seriously might better the case, but it would not change its nature. I could have had no wish but that they should remain Shakers.”

  “Yes, I know. You must think I am very stupid.” He had risen, but he hesitated, as if he thought she was going to say more. Then he said: “I must be going, now. I bid you good-afternoon.”

  She watched him up the path that led toward the Church Family house through the woods. Then she went indoors to her cousin, whom she found still busy putting the contents of her work-basket in order.

  “Well,” Mrs. Kelwyn asked, without looking up, “what did Elder Nathaniel have to say?”

  “He wasn’t so outright as that Brother from Canbury; but I believe he feels just the same about it.”

  “Feels the same?” Now Mrs. Kelwyn looked up. “About what?”

  “About marriage,” Parthenope answered.

  Mrs. Kelwyn stared. “I thought you were talking about those people Jasper proposed putting in here?”

  “Oh, we were” the girl answered, all too compliantly. “That was what led up to it. From what he said I shouldn’t think it would be easy to find any nice married couple to keep house for you. His own daughters ran away with Shaker Brothers and got married, and his son is the press agent of that Mabel Northland the actress.”

  “Parthenope Brook, what are you talking about?”

  “I forgot. You didn’t know that Elder Nathaniel came here with a family of his own?”

  “No. But what in the world has that got to do with somebody in the place of the Kites?”

  Parthenope had to own that directly it Had nothing to do. She escaped from the question with which Mrs. Kelwyn must have visited her in a less distracted moment, on the plea that she would have to see what she could get for supper, if Mrs. Kite would let her get anything at all.

  The daze in which she Had returned from her drive with Emerance seemed to have been deepened by her efforts to escape from it. She had got no light upon herself either from Mrs. Kelwyn or Elder Nathaniel. Nevertheless, she was in a conditional clearness as to her part in the event which she forecast now this way and now that.

  XXIII

  MRS. KITE was less difficult than when she first returned from her visit to her friends. She had apparently relinquished the ideals they had inspired, or the prospect of change in her relations to the Kelwyns had softened her toward them. She now let Parthenope use her kitchen at will, and sat by, watching her and talking of what she and her family should do next, and how soon they would have to leave when the crops had been appraised and everything was settled.

  She had taken no steps toward removal, but the rumor of the Kites’ going had spread so widely that Kelwyn had received three offers from families who were willing to take their place. It was more and more clear that in the neighbors’ estimation the Kites had wasted an enviable opportunity. Upon the whole, the knowledge of this public opinion had comforted and strengthened Kelwyn, and on his return from Boston he professed an appetite for supper such as he had not shown for breakfast. He had driven from the station to the Church Family, and Emerance had come home with him, but he had gone to Mrs. Kite�
��s door. He seemed to be helping Parthenope with the supper, and Mrs. Kite joined them in bringing in the dishes from the kitchen. All was, in fact, so quite as it had been at its best a month before that Mrs. Kelwyn could not believe in the events which had threatened a different catastrophe. Kite returned from his fields with the big boy and Raney; and, after they had eaten their evening meal, they came out and lounged upon the grass before the kitchen door and talked and smoked. When Kite rose to go and give a last look at his horses for the night, he called over his shoulder to Kelwyn, where he sat with his family group, “Want I should have you’ yer team ready to go to the Shakers after breakfast?”

  “What does it mean, Elmer?” his wife entreated. “Surely they’re not expecting to stay, are they, after all that’s been done?”

  “It seems like a convulsive effort to be commonly decent,” he assented, in a puzzle with the fact.

  “Well, it’s sickening. She’s been hanging about, offering to do things, since you went this morning. Do you suppose they’ve just realized it?”

  “Perhaps they’ve heard of the general willingness to replace them, and have begun to think they are losing something worth having. I wish they’d thought so sooner,” Kelwyn sighed, with a look up at the great friendly house. “If they’d only been half possible!”

  “Yes. And now it’s too late. They must go. You see, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, I see.”

  Parthenope and Emerance had been strolling down the dimming road, and now they came back and stood expectant.

  “It’s the usual topic,” Mrs. Kelwyn explained. “We are wishing that the Kites wouldn’t try to do, since they can’t do, and they’re plainly trying to do. We hate to turn them out of the best home they’ve ever had.”

  “Especially,” Kelwyn added, “as we. don’t know whom to put in their place.”

  “No, Elmer, I won’t let you attribute a selfish motive to yourself.”

  “Then, say a scientific motive. We are simply conforming to the course of civilization, Mr. Emerance. We are the stronger race pushing the weaker to the wall.”

  Emerance consented, with a dreamy air, “That does seem the order of history.”

  “I don’t see why you say that, Mr. Emerance,” Mrs. Kelwyn returned, in a note of indignation. “I should think any dispassionate person would say we had been pushed to the wall, even if we are the stronger race.”

  “Oh,” the young man apologized, “ I meant that some such event is always inevitable. People seem to talk up, or they talk down, to one another, and not face to face on the same level. So there is never a perfect understanding between them.”

  “Very well, then, Mr. Emerance, we will make you our ambassador to the Kites. I thought we had explained ourselves fully from the very beginning. There has been talking enough, but perhaps we don’t speak the same language. If you know theirs—”

  “I can’t be sure,” Emerance returned, “and as your ambassador I might make bad worse. It might be better not to interrupt the order of history.”

  Parthenope took no part in the discussion, which ended here with Mrs. Kelwyn’s saying, from the asperity of spent nerves, “Well, I must go in and put the boys to bed.”

  “I’ll go and help you,” Parthenope volunteered. “Good-night.” She did not specialize Emerance, but he answered, “ Good-night,” as if she had. When she was alone with Mrs. Kelwyn she said, “I don’t believe he meant anything more than to agree to what Cousin Elmer said.”

  “Oh, I knew that.”

  “Then I don’t understand why you were so severe.”

  In the ensuing days, which now prolonged themselves into a fortnight, Kelwyn hesitated over his duty to himself and family, which he felt to be more and more obvious. It was even a duty to the Kites, especially when they did worse than usual, if there could be any exception that was worse than the ordinary course of their inefficiency and inadequacy. But a thing that clarified itself more satisfactorily to Kelwyn than his obvious duty was the wrong he was suffering at the hands of the Shakers, or, rather, the hands of Brother Jasper. In the slow and painful evolution of his thoughts he realized that Brother Jasper was standing from under and letting him take the whole responsibility of dispossessing the Kites. He was letting them believe, and logically letting them say, that they could have got on with other people, and if they could not get on with the Kelwyns, then they were being turned out of house and home because the Kelwyns were unreasonable and unjust.

  The time came when Kelwyn resolved he would endure the state of things no longer, and declared that Brother Jasper should take his full share in ending it.

  “Don’t do anything rash, Elmler,” his wife cautioned him, from admiration of the inflexible decision she saw in his face.

  “Rash doesn’t seem just the word for a delay of six or seven weeks. But rash or not, I am going to see Jasper at once and have it over.”

  “Well, I hope you will act prudently,” she cautioned further, from that vague necessity wives feel of holding their husbands back from a step they have reached in common.

  Kelwyn did not answer, but he got his hat and stick.

  “You are going to walk?” she temporized.

  “That is what the horse would do if I could get him, but I believe Kite has taken him for his work,” Kelwyn answered, and without more words he set off through the woods to the Church Family.

  At the Office the Sisters told him that Jasper was at the bam hitching up, and Kelwyn found him there buckling the holdbacks of the harness round the shafts.

  “Brother Jasper,” he said, without waiting for any form of greeting, “I want you to go with me to Kite where he is working and hear what I have to say to him.”

  “I was just tackling up to go and see some folks we were going to put in for you,” Brother Jasper said, looking at him over the horse’s back.

  “Well, never mind that now. We will cross that river when we come to it. Now you have got to face Kite with me and confirm what I say; you have got to take your share in turning him out. You put him in.”

  Brother Jasper made no answer, but he scolded the horse with unshakerly violence in terms which, if they had been translated into the parlance of the world-outside, would have been of the effect of swearing, while he went on buckling the shaft-strap under the horse, running the reins through the rings on the hames to the bridle, and then giving a final pull at the whole harness to make sure that everything was secure. “If you’ll get in, now,” he said at last, and he mounted beside Kelwyn and drove off to the meadow where Kite was at work, and called him away from the other mowers.

  Kite came up and sat down under the tree where Kelwyn was waiting for him, and took out his knife and began whittling a stick. He was pale, and to Kelwyn’s eyes hideous with hate, so that Kelwyn was glad that he sat aloof in the buggy, and sorry that he had thrown his revolver into the well; it would at least have been a show of weapon against weapon. But as it was, he would not fear.

  “Mr. Kite,” he began, “I hear that you are holding me responsible for your going away, and I have brought Brother Jasper with me to tell you that it is he who is putting you out of the house,” and at this unsparing statement Jasper winced, and his face twisted itself in an expression of his helpless inner protest.

  Kite whittled furiously at his stick, cutting large slices from it, while Kelwyn followed his blade in fearful fascination. “I’d like to know what’s gone wrong with you now? Was it that steak I got ye for your dinner yesterday? It was the best piece of steak in the meat-store, and you can ask Billings himself.”

  “We won’t go into particulars,” Kelwyn said. “All there is of it is you won’t do, and you don’t seem to want to do.”

  “No, I guess you don’t want to go into particulars,” Kite retorted. “There ain’t a single damn thing ye got against us. You’re mighty hard folks to suit; no boarder of mine ever complained before. You may bet your sweet life I wouldn’t take ye another year for all the money you got, even if you got
enough to pay a decent price for your board.”

  Kelwyn ignored the insinuation of his poverty, so far as open recognition went, but in the sting of the insult he forgot the stately position he had taken. He now went into the particulars of the wrongs he had suffered, and he enumerated them with a volubility worthy of a woman. He was not stayed by Kite’s denial of every instance, and, as happens with people who try to free their minds in anger, he found more and more rancor in his. At last they both stopped, breathless, and wiped the drops of fury from their faces.

  It was very squalid, and Kelwyn felt the shame of the squabble the more because he suspected that at the bottom of his heart Brother Jasper thought he had been too exacting. When he got breath for a renewal of the dispute, he said, some octaves lower than before:

  “It isn’t a question of another year; it’s a question of this year; and Brother Jasper will tell you that you are going, not because you can’t suit us, but because you are not fit to take boarders at all.”

  Brother Jasper did not speak, and Kelwyn had to ask him, “Is that so, Brother Jasper?”

  Then from Brother Jasper’s writhing features a kind of small scream emitted itself in a sharp “Yee” that was like the cry of a sufferer in having a tooth drawn.

  “All right, Jasper,” Kite said, rising to his feet, with the open knife in his hand, to which Kelwyn’s eyes still clung. He snapped it to and slipped it into his pocket. “I know where you stand.” Then he added, with a glare at Kelwyn, “We’ll see what the law o’ this is,” and hulked away to join the mowers, who had been listening their best from the other side of the meadow.

  Jasper remounted to the seat beside Kelwyn, but at a remove which symbolized the moral gulf between them.

  “Want I should drive ye home?” he asked, but the brief transit was rather lengthened than shortened by the “Yees” and “Nays” with which he responded to the points of justification which Kelwyn turned toward him. —

  In fact, he left Kelwyn to feel that he had played a cruel part, not only toward him, but toward Kite, from whom he had torn every tatter of self-respect in his effort to share the responsibility with Brother Jasper. It needed all the resentment he could heat up in his heart to support him in the retrospect of an action which had seemed to him so clear and right before he took it.