Grinnidge: “Well, if you wanted to make an ass of yourself, you did it pretty completely.”
Miss Reed, whispering: “How witty he is! Those men are always so humorous with each other.”
Ransom: “Yes; I didn’t do it by halves.”
Miss Reed, whispering: “Oh, that’s funny, too!”
Grinnidge: “It didn’t occur to you that she might feel bound to pay you for the first half-dozen, and was embarrassed how to offer to pay for them alone?”
Miss Reed: “How he does go to the heart of the matter!” She presses Miss Spaulding’s hand in an ecstasy of approval.
Ransom: “Yes, it did — afterward.”
Miss Reed, in a tender murmur: “Oh, poor Oliver!”
Ransom: “And it occurred to me that she was perfectly right in the whole affair.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, how generous! how noble!”
Ransom: “I had had a thousand opportunities, and I hadn’t been man enough to tell her that I was in love with her.”
Miss Reed: “How can he say it right out so bluntly? But if it’s true” —
Ransom: “I couldn’t speak. I was afraid of putting an end to the affair — of frightening her — disgusting her.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, how little they know us, Nettie!”
Ransom: “She seemed so much above me in every way — so sensitive, so refined, so gentle, so good, so angelic!”
Miss Reed: “There! Now do you call it eavesdropping? If listeners never hear any good of themselves, what do you say to that? It proves that I haven’t been listening.”
Miss Spaulding: “‘Sh! They’re saying something else.”
Ransom: “But all that’s neither here nor there. I can see now that under the circumstances she couldn’t as a lady have acted otherwise than she did. She was forced to treat our whole acquaintance as a business matter, and I had forced her to do it.”
Miss Reed: “You had, you poor thing!”
Grinnidge: “Well, what do you intend to do about it?”
Ransom: “Well” —
Miss Reed: “‘Sh!”
Miss Spaulding: “‘Sh!”
Ransom: “ — that’s what I want to submit to you, Grinnidge. I must see her.”
Grinnidge: “Yes. I’m glad I mustn’t.”
Miss Reed, stifling a laugh on Miss Spaulding’s shoulder: “They’re actually afraid of us, Nettie!”
Ransom: “See her, and go down in the dust.”
Miss Reed: “My very words!”
Ransom: “I have been trying to think what was the very humblest pie I could eat, by way of penance; and it appears to me that I had better begin by saying that I have come to ask her for the money I refused.”
Miss Reed, enraptured: “Oh! doesn’t it seem just like — like — inspiration, Nettie?”
Miss Spaulding: “‘Sh! Be quiet, do! You’ll frighten them away!”
Grinnidge: “And then what?”
Ransom: “What then? I don’t know what then. But it appears to me that, as a gentleman, I’ve got nothing to do with the result. All that I’ve got to do is to submit to my fate, whatever it is.”
Miss Reed, breathlessly: “What princely courage! What delicate magnanimity! Oh, he needn’t have the least fear! If I could only tell him that!”
Grinnidge, after an interval of meditative smoking: “Yes, I guess that’s the best thing you can do. It will strike her fancy, if she’s an imaginative girl, and she’ll think you a fine fellow.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, the horrid thing!”
Grinnidge: “If you humble yourself to a woman at all, do it thoroughly. If you go halfway down she’ll be tempted to push you the rest of the way. If you flatten out at her feet to begin with, ten to one but she will pick you up.”
Ransom: “Yes, that was my idea.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, was it, indeed! Well!”
Ransom: “But I’ve nothing to do with her picking me up or pushing me down. All that I’ve got to do is to go and surrender myself.”
Grinnidge: “Yes. Well; I guess you can’t go too soon. I like your company; but I advise you as a friend not to lose time. Where does she live?”
Ransom: “That’s the remarkable part of it: she lives in this house.”
Miss Reed and Miss Spaulding, in subdued chorus: “Oh!”
Grinnidge, taking his pipe out of his mouth in astonishment: “No!”
Ransom: “I just came in here to give my good resolutions a rest while I was screwing my courage up to ask for her.”
Miss Reed: “Don’t you think he’s very humorous? Give his good resolutions a rest! That’s the way he always talks.”
Miss Spaulding: “‘Sh!”
Grinnidge: “You said you came for my advice.”
Ransom: “So I did. But I didn’t promise to act upon it. Well!” He goes toward the door.
Grinnidge, without troubling himself to rise: “Well, good luck to you!”
Miss Reed: “How droll they are with each other! Don’t you like to hear them talk? Oh, I could listen all day.”
Grinnidge, calling after Ransom: “You haven’t told me your duck’s name.”
Miss Reed: “Is that what they call us? Duck! Do you think it’s very respectful, Nettie? I don’t believe I like it. Or, yes, why not? It’s no harm — if I am his duck!”
Ransom, coming back: “Well, I don’t propose to go shouting it round. Her name is Miss Reed — Ethel Reed.”
Miss Reed: “How can he?”
Grinnidge: “Slender, willowy party, with a lot of blond hair that looks as if it might be indigenous? Rather pensive-looking?”
Miss Reed: “Indigenous! I should hope so!”
Ransom: “Yes. But she isn’t pensive. She’s awfully deep. It makes me shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of my courage in daring to be in love with her — a stupid, straightforward idiot like me — I begin to respect myself in spite of being such an ass. Well, I’m off. If I stay any longer I shall never go.” He closes the door after him, and Miss Reed instantly springs to her feet.
Miss Reed: “Now he’ll have to go down to the parlor and send up his name, and that just gives me time to do the necessary prinking. You stay here and receive him, Nettie.”
Miss Spaulding: “Never! After what’s happened I can never look him in the face again. Oh, how low, and mean, and guilty I feel!”
Miss Reed, with surprise: “Why, how droll! Now I don’t feel the least so.”
Miss Spaulding: “Oh, it’s very different with you. You’re in love with him.”
Miss Reed: “For shame, Nettie! I’m not in love with him.”
Miss Spaulding: “And you can explain and justify it. But I never can justify it to myself, much less to him. Let me go, Ethel! I shall tell Mrs. McKnight that we must change this room instantly. And just after I’d got it so nearly in order! Go down and receive him in the parlor, Ethel. I can’t see him.”
Miss Reed: “Receive him in the parlor! Why, Nettie, dear, you’re crazy! I’m going to accept him: and how can I accept him — with all the consequences — in a public parlor? No, indeed! If you won’t meet him here for a moment, just to oblige me, you can go into the other room. Or, no — you’d be listening to every word through the key-hole, you’re so demoralized!”
Miss Spaulding: “Yes, yes, I deserve your contempt, Ethel.”
Miss Reed, laughing: “You will have to go out for a walk, you poor thing; and I’m not going to have you coming back in five or ten minutes. You have got to stay out a good hour.”
Miss Spaulding, running to get her things from the next room: “Oh, I’ll stay out till midnight!”
Miss Reed, responding to a tap at the door: “Ye-e-s! Come in! — You’re caught, Nettie.”
A maid-servant, appearing with a card: “This gentleman is asking for you in the parlor, Miss Reed.”
Miss Reed: “Oh! Ask him to come up here, please. — Nettie! Nettie!” She calls to her friend in the next room. “He’s coming right up, an
d if you don’t run you’re trapped.”
Miss Spaulding, re-appearing, cloaked and bonneted: “I don’t blame you, Ethel, comparatively speaking. You can say that everything is fair in love. He will like it, and laugh at it in you, because he’ll like everything you’ve done. Besides, you’ve no principles, and I have.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, I’ve lots of principles, Nettie, but I’ve no practice!”
Miss Spaulding: “No matter. There’s no excuse for me. I listened simply because I was a woman, and couldn’t help it; and, oh, what will he think of me?”
Miss Reed: “I won’t give you away; if you really feel so badly” —
Miss Spaulding: “Oh, do you think you can keep from telling him, Ethel dear? Try! And I will be your slave forever!” Steps are heard on the stairs outside. “Oh, there he comes!” She dashes out of the door, and closes it after her, a moment before the maid-servant, followed by Mr. Ransom, taps at it.
III.
Scene: Miss Reed opens the door, and receives Mr. Ransom with well-affected surprise and state, suffering him to stand awkwardly on the threshold for a moment.
She, coldly: “Oh! — Mr. Ransom!”
He, abruptly: “I’ve come” —
She: “Won’t you come in?”
He, advancing a few paces into the room: “I’ve come” —
She, indicating a chair: “Will you sit down?”
He: “I must stand for the present. I’ve come to ask you for that money, Miss Reed, which I refused yesterday, in terms that I blush to think of. I was altogether and wholly in the wrong, and I’m ready to offer any imaginable apology or reparation. I’m ready to take the money and to sign a receipt, and then to be dismissed with whatever ignominy you please. I deserve anything — everything!”
She: “The money? Excuse me; I don’t know — I’m afraid that I’m not prepared to pay you the whole sum to-day.”
He, hastily: “Oh, no matter! no matter! I don’t care for the money now. I merely wish to — to assure you that I thought you were perfectly right in offering it, and to — to” —
She: “What?”
He: “Nothing. That is — ah — ah” —
She: “It’s extremely embarrassing to have people refuse their money when it’s offered them, and then come the next day for it, when perhaps it isn’t so convenient to pay it — very embarrassing.”
He, hotly: “But I tell you I don’t want the money! I never wanted it, and wouldn’t take it on any account.”
She: “Oh! I thought you said you came to get it?”
He: “I said — I didn’t say — I meant — that is — ah — I” — He stops, open-mouthed.
She, quietly: “I could give you part of the money now.”
He: “Oh, whatever you like; it’s indifferent” —
She: “Please sit down while I write a receipt.” She places herself deliberately at the table, and opens her portfolio. “I will pay you now, Mr. Ransom, for the first six lessons you gave me — the ones before you told me that I could never learn to do anything.”
He, sinking mechanically into the chair she indicates: “Oh, just as you like!” He looks up at the ceiling in hopeless bewilderment, while she writes.
She, blotting the paper: “There! And now let me offer you a little piece of advice, Mr. Ransom, which may be useful to you in taking pupils hereafter.”
He, bursting out: “I never take pupils!”
She: “Never take pupils! I don’t understand. You took me.”
He, confusedly: “I took you — yes. You seemed to wish — you seemed — the case was peculiar — peculiar circumstances.”
She, with severity: “May I ask why the circumstances were peculiar? I saw nothing peculiar about the circumstances. It seemed to me it was a very simple matter. I told you that I had always had a great curiosity to see whether I could use oil paints, and I asked you a very plain question, whether you would let me study with you. Didn’t I?”
He: “Yes.”
She: “Was there anything wrong — anything queer about my asking you?”
He: “No, no! Not at all — not in the least.”
She: “Didn’t you wish me to take the lessons of you? If you didn’t, it wasn’t kind of you to let me.”
He: “Oh, I was perfectly willing — very glad indeed, very much so — certainly!”
She: “If it wasn’t your custom to take pupils, you ought to have told me, and I wouldn’t have forced myself upon you.”
He, desperately: “It wasn’t forcing yourself upon me. The Lord knows how humbly grateful I was. It was like a hope of heaven!”
She: “Really, Mr. Ransom, this is very strange talk. What am I to understand by it? Why should you be grateful to teach me? Why should giving me lessons be like a hope of heaven?”
He: “Oh, I will tell you!”
She: “Well?”
He, after a moment of agony: “Because to be with you” —
She: “Yes?”
He: “Because I wished to be with you. Because — those days in the woods, when you read, and I” —
She: “Painted on my pictures” —
He: “Were the happiest of my life. Because — I loved you!”
She: “Mr. Ransom!”
He: “Yes, I must tell you so. I loved you; I love you still. I shall always love you, no matter what” —
She: “You forget yourself, Mr. Ransom. Has there been anything in my manner — conduct — to justify you in using such language to me?”
He: “No — no” —
She: “Did you suppose that because I first took lessons of you from — from — an enthusiasm for art, and then continued them for — for — amusement, that I wished you to make love to me?”
He: “No, I never supposed such a thing. I’m incapable of it. I beseech you to believe that no one could have more respect — reverence” — He twirls his hat between his hands, and casts an imploring glance at her.
She: “Oh, respect — reverence! I know what they mean in the mouths of men. If you respected, if you reverenced me, could you dare to tell me, after my unguarded trust of you during the past months, that you had been all the time secretly in love with me?”
He, plucking up a little courage: “I don’t see that the three things are incompatible.”
She: “Oh, then you acknowledge that you did presume upon something you thought you saw in me to tell me that you loved me, and that you were in love with me all the time?”
He, contritely: “I have no right to suppose that you encouraged me; and yet — I can’t deny it now — I was in love with you all the time.”
She: “And you never said a word to let me believe that you had any such feeling toward me!”
He: “I — I” —
She: “You would have parted from me without a syllable to suggest it — perhaps parted from me forever?” After a pause of silent humiliation for him: “Do you call that brave or generous? Do you call it manly — supposing, as you hoped, that I had any such feeling?”
He: “No; it was cowardly, it was mean, it was unmanly. I see it now, but I will spend my life in repairing the wrong, if you will only let me.” He impetuously advances some paces toward her, and then stops, arrested by her irresponsive attitude.
She, with a light sigh, and looking down at the paper, which she has continued to hold between her hands: “There was a time — a moment — when I might have answered as you wish.”
He: “Oh! then there will be again. If you have changed once, you may change once more. Let me hope that some time — any time, dearest” —
She, quenching him with a look: “Mr. Ransom, I shall never change toward you! You confess that you had your opportunity, and that you despised it.”
He: “Oh! not despised it!”
She: “Neglected it.”
He: “Not wilfully — no. I confess that I was stupidly, vilely, pusillan — pusillan — illani” —
She: “‘Monsly” —
He: “Thanks
— ‘mously unworthy of it; but I didn’t despise it; I didn’t neglect it; and if you will only let me show by a lifetime of devotion how dearly and truly I have loved you from the first moment I drove that cow away” —
She: “Mr. Ransom, I have told you that I should never change toward you. That cow was nothing when weighed in the balance against your being willing to leave a poor girl, whom you supposed interested in you, and to whom you had paid the most marked attention, without a word to show her that you cared for her. What is a cow, or a whole herd of cows, as compared with obliging a young lady to offer you money that you hadn’t earned, and then savagely flinging it back in her face? A yoke of oxen would be nothing — or a mad bull.”
He: “Oh, I acknowledge it! I confess it.”
She: “And you own that I am right in refusing to listen to you now?”
He, desolately: “Yes, yes.”
She: “It seems that you gave me lessons in order to be with me, and if possible to interest me in you; and then you were going away without a word.”
He, with a groan: “It was only because I was afraid to speak.”
She: “Oh, is that any excuse?”
He: “No; none.”
She: “A man ought always to have courage.” After a pause, in which he stands before her with bowed head: “Then there’s nothing for me but to give you this money.”
He, with sudden energy: “This is too much! I” —
She, offering him the bank-notes: “No; it is the exact sum. I counted it very carefully.”
He: “I won’t take it; I can’t! I’ll never take it!”
She, standing with the money in her outstretched hand: “I have your word as a gentleman that you will take it.”
He, gasping: “Oh, well — I will take it — I will” — He clutches the money, and rushes toward the door. “Good-evening; ah — good-by” —
She, calling after him: “The receipt, Mr. Ransom! Please sign this receipt!” She waves the paper in the air.
He: “Oh, yes, certainly! Where is it — what — which” — He rushes back to her, and seizing the receipt, feels blindly about for the pen and ink. “Where shall I sign?”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1142