Blake: “If she sees any man she likes better than me, I won’t claim her. But I can’t judge her by a loyalty less than my own. She will never change.” Bellingham essays an answer, but after some preliminary ahs and urns, abruptly desists, and guards an evidently troubled silence, which Blake assails with jealous quickness: “What do you mean? Out with it, man!”
Bellingham: “Don’t take it in that way! My dear fellow” —
Blake: “If I’m her caprice and not her choice, I want to know it! I won’t be killed by inches. Speak I”
Bellingham: “Stop! — I owe you my life, but you mustn’t take that tone with me.”
Blake: “You owe me nothing, — nothing but an answer. If you mean there has been some one before me — She has told me that she never cared for any one but me; I believe her, but I want to know what you mean.”
Bellingham: “She’s my sister! What do you mean?”
IV. LESLIE, BLAKE, AND BELLINGHAM.
Leslie: “Oh, what does it mean?” She enters the room, as if she had been suddenly summoned by the sound of their angry voices from a guiltless ambush in the hall. At the sight of their flushed faces and defiant attitudes she flutters, electrically attracted, first toward one and then toward the other, but at last she instinctively takes shelter at Blake’s elbow: “Charles, what are you saying? What are you both so angry for? Oh, I hoped to find you such good friends, and here you are quarreling! Charles, what have you been doing? O Charles, I always thought you were so generous and magnanimous, and have you been joining that odious conspiracy against us? For shame! And what have you found to say, I should like to know? I should like to know what you’ve found to say — what a gentleman COULD say, under the circumstances!” She grows more vehement as their mutual embarrassment increases upon the men, and Bellingham fades into a blank dismay behind the glitter of his eyeglasses.
“Have you been saying something you ‘re ashamed of, Charles? You couldn’t say anything about him, and so you’ve been trying to set him against me. What have you said about your sister, Charles? — and always pretending to be so fond of me! Oh, oh, oh!” Miss Bellingham snatches her handkerchief from her pocket and hides her grief in it, while her brother remains in entire petrifaction at her prescience.
Bellingham, finally: “Why, Leslie — Deuce take it all, Blake, why don’t you say something?
I tell you, I haven’t said anything against you, Les. Blake will tell you himself that I was merely endeavoring to set the thing before him from different points of view. I wanted him to consider the shortness of your acquaintance” — Leslie, in her handkerchief: “It’s fully three weeks since we met, — you know it is.”
Bellingham: “And I wanted him to reflect upon how very different all your associations and — traditions — were” —
Leslie, still in her handkerchief: “Oh, that was delicate — very!”
Bellingham: “And to — ah — take into consideration the fact that returning to another — atmosphere — surroundings, you might — ah — change.”
Leslie, lifting her face: “You did! Charles, did I ever change?”
Bellingham: “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know whether you’d call it changing, exactly; but I certainly got the impression from aunt Kate that there was some hope on Dudley’s part last summer” ——
Leslie, quitting her refuge and advancing fiercely upon the dismayed but immovable Bellingham with her right hand thrust rigidly down at her side, and her left held behind her clutching her handkerchief: “Charles, have you dared to intimate that I ever cared the least thing about that — that — horrid — little — reptile? When you knew that my life was made perfectly ghastly by the way aunt Kate forced him on me, and it was as much as I could ever do to treat him decently! I never encouraged him for an instant, and you know it. Oh, Charley, Charley, how could you? It isn’t for myself I care; it’s for you, for you ‘re a gentleman, and you let yourself do that! How painfully strange that low, mean, shabby feeling must have been to you! I don’t wonder you couldn’t face me or speak to me. I don’t” —
Bellingham, desperately: “Here; hold on! Good Lord! I can’t stand this! Confound it, I’m not made of granite — or gutta-percha. I’ll allow it was sneaking, — Blake will tell you I looked it, — but it was a desperate case. It was a family job, and I had to do my best — or my worst — as the head of the family; and Blake wouldn’t hear reason, and” —
Leslie: “And so you thought you’d try fraud!” Bellingham: “Well, I shouldn’t use that word. But it’s the privilege of your sex to call a spade a pitchfork, if you don’t like the spade. I tell you I never professed to know anything personally about the Dudley business and I didn’t say anything about it; when Blake caught me up so, I was embarrassed to think how I might have mentioned it in — in the heat of argument. Come, Blake” — Leslie, turning and going devoutly up to Blake: “Yes, he will defend you. He must save your honor since he saved your life.”
Bellingham, with a start: “Eh?”
Leslie: “Oh, I know about it! Mamma told me. She thinks just as I do, now, and she has been feeling dreadfully about this shabby work she’d set you at; but I comforted her. I told her you would never do it in the world; that you would just shuffle about in your way” — Bellingham: “Oh, thanks!”
Leslie: “But that you had too good a heart, too high a spirit, to breathe a syllable that would wound the pride of a brave and generous man to whom you owed life itself: that you would rather die than do it!” To Blake: “Oh, I’ve always been a romantic girl, — you won’t mind it in me, will you? — and I’ve had my foolish dreams a thousand times about the man who risked his life to save my brother’s; and I hoped and longed, that some day we should meet. I promised myself that I should know him, and I always thought how sweet and dear a privilege it would be to thank him. I want to thank you for his life as I used to dream of doing, but I cannot yet. I cannot till you tell me that he has not said one word unworthy of you, — unworthy of a gentleman!” Blake, smiling: “He’s all right!”
Leslie, impetuously clinging to him: “Oh, thanks, thanks, thanks!”
Bellingham, accurately focusing the pair with freshly adjusted glasses. “If you’ll both give me your blessing, now, I’ll go away, feeling perfectly rehabilitated, in the afternoon stage.”
V. MRS. BELLINGHAM, AND LESLIE, BLAKE, AND BELLINGHAM; AFTERWARDS MRS. MURRAY.
Mrs. Bellingham, entering the parlor door:
“Stage? Why, Mr. Blake isn’t going away!”
Bellingham: “Oh, no, Mr. Blake has kindly consented to remain. It was I who thought of going. I can’t bear to be idle!”
Mrs. Bellingham, apart from the others:
“Charles, dear, I’m sorry I asked you to undertake that disagreeable business, and I’d have come back at once with Leslie to relieve you, — to tell you that you needn’t speak after all, — but she felt sure that you wouldn’t, and she insisted upon leaving you together and then stealing back upon you and enjoying” —
Bellingham, solemnly: “You little knew me, mother. I have the making of an iron-hearted parent in me, and I was crushing all hope out of Blake when Leslie came in.”
Mrs. Bellingham: “Charles, you don’t mean that you said anything to wound the feelings of a man to whom you owed your life, — to whom we all owe so much?”
Bellingham: “I don’t know about his feelings. But I represented pretty distinctly to him the social incompatability.”
Mrs. Bellingham: “Charles, I wonder at you!” Bellingham: “Oh, yes! So do I. But if you’ll take the pains to recall the facts, that’s exactly what you left me to do. May I ask what has caused you to change your mind?”
Mrs. Bellingham, earnestly: “I found that Leslie’s happiness really depended upon it; and in fact, Charles, when I came to reflect, I found that I myself liked him.”
Bellingham: “The words have a familiar sound, — as if I had used them myself in a former existence.” Turning from his mother and looki
ng about: “I seem to miss a — a support — moral support — in those present. Where is aunt Kate?”
Mrs. Murray, appearing at the door: “Marion! Ma” — She hesitates at sight of the peaceful grouping.
Bellingham: “Ah, this is indeed opportune! Come in, aunt Kate, come in! This is a free fight, as they say in Mr. Blake’s section. Any one can join.” Mrs. Murray advances wonderingly into the room, and Bellingham turns to his sister, where she stands at Blake’s side: “Leslie, you think I’ve behaved very unhandsomely in this matter, don’t you?”
Leslie, plaintively: “Charley, you know I hate to blame you. But I never could have believed it if any one else had told me.”
Bellingham: “All right. Mother, I understand that you would have been similarly incredulous?” Mrs. Bellingham: “I know that you acted from good motive, Charles, but you certainly went to an extreme that I could never have expected.” Bellingham: “All right, again. Blake, if the persons and relations had all been changed, could you have said to me what I said to you?”
Blake: “That isn’t a fair question, Bellingham.”
Bellingham: “All right, as before. Now, aunt Kate, I appeal to you. You know all the circumstances in which I was left here with this man who saved my life, who rescued Leslie from those tramps, who has done you all a thousand kindnesses of various sorts and sizes, who has behaved with the utmost delicacy and discretion throughout, and is in himself a thoroughly splendid fellow. Do you think I did right or wrong to set plainly before him the social disadvantages to which his marrying Leslie would put us?”
Mrs. Murray, instantly and with great energy: “Charles, I say — and every person in society, except your mother and sister, would say — that you did exactly right!”
Bellingham: “That settles it. Blake, my dear old fellow, I beg your pardon with all my heart; and I ask you to forget, if you can, every word I said. Confound society!” He offers his hand to Blake, who seizes it and wrings it in his own.
Leslie, as she flings her arms round his neck, with a fluttering cry of joy: “Oh, Charley, Charley, I’ve got my ideal back again!”
Bellingham, disengaging her arms and putting her hand into Blake’s: “Both of them.” Turning to Mrs. Murray: “And now, aunt, I beg your pardon. What do you say?”
Mrs. Murray, frozenly: “Charles, you know my principles.”
Bellingham: “They ‘re identical on all points with my own. Well?”
Mrs. Murray, grimly: “Well, then, you know that I never would abandon my family, whatever happened!”
Bellingham: “By Jove, that isn’t so bad. We must be satisfied to take your forgiveness as we get it. Perhaps Leslie might object to the formulation of” ——
Leslie, super-joyously: “Oh, no! I object to nothing in the world, now, Charles. Aunt Kate is too good! I never should have thought of asking her to remain with us.”
Bellingham: That isn’t so bad, either! You are your aunt’s own niece. Come, Blake, we can’t let this go on. Say something to allay the ill feeling you’ve created in this family.”
Blake: “I think I’d better not try. But if you’ll give me time, I’ll do my best to live down the objections to me.” Bellingham: “Oh, you’ve done that. What we want now — as I understand aunt Kate — is that you should live down the objections to us.
One thing that puzzles me” — thoughtfully scratching the sparse parting of his hair—” is that our position is so very equivocal in regard to the real principle involved. It seems to me that we are begging the whole question, which is, if Blake” —
Leslie: “There, there! I knew he would!” Bellingham, severely: “Mother, you will allow that I have been left to take the brunt of this little affair in a — well, somewhat circuitous manner?”
Mrs. Bellingham: “Charles, I am very, very sorry” —
Bellingham: “And that I am entitled to some sort of reparation?”
Leslie: “Don’t allow that, mamma! I know he’s going to say something disagreeable. He looks just as he always does when he has one of his ideas.”
Bellingham: “Thanks, Miss Bellingham. I am going to have this particular satisfaction out of you. Then I will return to my habitual state of agreeable vacancy. Mother” —
Leslie: “Mamma, don’t answer him! It’s the only way.”
Bellingham: “It is not necessary that I should be answered. I only wish to have the floor. The question is, if Blake were merely a gentleman somewhat at odds with his history, associations, and occupation, and not also our benefactor and preserver in so many ways, — whether we should be so ready to — ah” —
Mrs. Bellingham: “Charles, dear, I think it is unnecessary to enter into these painful minutiae.” Mrs. Murray: “I feel bound to say that I know we should not.”
Bellingham: “This is the point which I wished to bring out. Blake, here is your opportunity: renounce us!”
Blake: “What do you say, Leslie?”
Leslie: “I say that I don’t believe it, and I know that I like you for yourself, — not for what you’ve done for us. I did from the first moment, before you spoke or saw me. But if you doubt me, or should ever doubt me” ——
Blake, taking in his left both the little hands that she has appealingly laid upon his arms: “That’s out of the question!”
A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT
CONTENTS
I. AN EXTRAORDINARY RESEMBLANCE.
II. DISTINCTIONS AND DIFFERENCES.
III. DISSOLVING VIEWS.
IV. NOT AT ALL LIKE.
I. AN EXTRAORDINARY RESEMBLANCE.
(The Scene is always in the Parlour of the Ponkwasset Hotel.)
I.
Bartlett and Cummings.
ON a lovely day in September, at that season when the most sentimental of the young maples have begun to redden along the hidden courses of the meadow streams, and the elms, with a sudden impression of despair in their languor, betray flecks of yellow on the green of their pendulous boughs, — on such a day at noon, two young men enter the parlour of the Ponkwasset Hotel, and deposit about the legs of the piano the burdens they have been carrying: a camp-stool namely, a field-easel, a closed box of colours, and a canvas to which, apparently, some portion of reluctant nature has just been transferred. These properties belong to one of the young men, whose general look and bearing readily identify him as their owner: he has a quick, somewhat furtive eye, a full brown beard, and hair that falls in a careless mass down his forehead, which, as he dries it with his handkerchief, sweeping the hair aside, shows broad and white; his figure is firm and square, without heaviness, and in his movement as well as in his face there is something of stubbornness, with a suggestion of arrogance. The other, who has evidently borne his share of the common burdens from a sense of good comradeship, has nothing of the painter in him, nor anything of this painter’s peculiar temperament: he has a very abstracted look and a dark, dreaming eye: he is pale, and does not look strong. The painter flings himself into a rocking chair and draws a long breath.
Cummings (for that is the name of the slighter man, who remains standing as he speaks).— “It’s warm, isn’t it?” His gentle face evinces a curious and kindly interest in his friend’s sturdy demonstrations of fatigue.
Bartlett.— “Yes, hot — confoundedly.” He rubs his handkerchief vigorously across his forehead, and then looks down at his dusty shoes, with apparently no mind to molest them in their dustiness. “The idea of people going back to town in this weather! However, I’m glad they’re such asses; it gives me free scope here. Every time I don’t hear some young woman banging on that piano, I fall into transports of joy.”
Cummings, smiling.— “And after to-day you won’t be bothered even with me.”
Bartlett.— “Oh, I shall rather miss you, you know. I like somebody to contradict.”
Cummings.— “You can contradict the ostler.”
Bartlett.— “No, I can’t. They’ve sent him away; and I believe you’re going to carry off the last of the tabl
e-girls with you in the stage to-morrow. The landlord and his wife are to run the concern themselves the rest of the fall. Poor old fellow! The hard times have made lean pickings for him this year. His house wasn’t full in the height of the season, and it’s been pretty empty since.”
Cummings.— “I wonder he doesn’t shut up altogether.”
Bartlett.— “Well, there are a good many transients, as they call them, at this time of year, — fellows who drive over from the little hill-towns with their girls in buggies, and take dinner and supper; then there are picnics from the larger places, ten and twelve miles off, that come to the grounds on the pond, and he always gets something out of them. And as long as he can hope for anything else, my eight dollars a week are worth hanging on to. Yes, I think I shall stay here all through October. I’ve got no orders, and it’s cheap. Besides, I’ve managed to get on confidential terms with the local scenery; I thought we should like each other last summer, and I feel now that we’re ready to swear eternal friendship. I shall do some fairish work here, yet. Phew!” He mops his forehead again, and springing out of his chair he goes up to the canvas, which he has faced to the wall, and turning it about retires some paces, and with a swift, worried glance at the windows falls to considering it critically.
Cummings.— “You’ve done some fairish work already, if I’m any judge.” He comes to his friend’s side, as if to get his effect of the picture. “I don’t believe the spirit of a graceful elm that just begins to feel the approach of autumn was ever better interpreted. There is something tremendously tragical to me in the thing. It makes me think of some lovely and charming girl, all grace and tenderness, who finds the first grey hair in her head. I should call that picture The First Grey Hair.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1108