Читать книгу William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated) - William Dean Howells - Страница 145

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"Now, how unhandsome life is!" I broke out, at one point on our way home, after we had turned the affair over in every light, and then dropped it, and then taken it up again. "It's so graceless, so tasteless! Why didn't Tedham die before the expiration of his term and solve all this knotty problem with dignity? Why should he have lived on in this shabby way and come out and wished to see his daughter? If there had been anything dramatic, anything artistic in the man's nature, he would have renounced the claim his mere paternity gives him on her love, and left word with me that he had gone away and would never be heard of any more. That was the least he could have done. If he had wanted to do the thing heroically—and I wouldn't have denied him that satisfaction—he would have walked into that pool in the old cockpit and lain down among the autumn leaves on its surface, and made an end of the whole trouble with his own burdensome and worthless existence. That would truly have put an end to the evil he began."

"I wouldn't be—impious, Basil," said my wife, with a moment's hesitation for the word. Then she sighed and added, "Yes, it seems as if that would be the only thing that could end it. There doesn't really seem to be any provision in life for ending such things. He will have to go on and make more and more trouble. Poor man! I feel almost as sorry for him as I do for her. I guess he hasn't expiated his sin yet, as fully as he thinks he has."

"And then," I went on, with a strange pleasure I always get out of the poignancy of a despair not my own, "suppose that this isn't all. Suppose that the girl has met some one who has become interested in her, and whom she will have to tell of this stain upon her name?"

"Basil!" cried my wife, "that is cruel of you! You knew I was keeping away from that point, and it seems as if you tried to make it as afflicting as you could—the whole affair."

"Well, I don't believe it's as bad as that. Probably she hasn't met any one in that way; at any rate, it's pure conjecture on my part, and my conjecture doesn't make it so."

"It doesn't unmake it, either, for you to say that now," my wife lamented.

"Well, well! Don't let's think about it, then. The case is bad enough as it stands, Heaven knows, and we've got to grapple with it as soon as we get home. We shall find Tedham waiting for us, I dare say, unless something has happened to him. I wonder if anything can have been good enough to happen to Tedham, overnight."

I got a little miserable fun out of this, but my wife would not laugh; she would not be placated in any way; she held me in a sort responsible for the dilemma I had conjectured, and inculpated me in some measure for that which had really presented itself.

When we reached home she went directly to her room and had a cup of tea sent to her there, and the children and I had rather a solemn time at the table together. A Sunday tea-table is solemn enough at the best, with its ghastly substitution of cold dishes or thin sliced things for the warm abundance of the week-day dinner; with the gloom of Mrs. March's absence added, this was a very funereal feast indeed.

We went on quite silently for a while, for the children saw I was preoccupied; but at last I asked, "Has anybody called this afternoon?"

"I don't know exactly whether it was a call or not," said my daughter, with a nice feeling for the social proprieties which would have amused me at another time. "But that strange person who was here last night, was here again."

"Oh!"

"He said he would come in the evening. I forgot to tell you. Papa, what kind of person is he?"

"I don't know. What makes you ask?"

"Why, we think he wasn't always a workingman. Tom says he looks as if he had been in some kind of business, and then failed."

"What makes you think that, Tom?" I asked the boy.

"Oh, I don't know. He speaks so well."

"He always spoke well, poor fellow," I said with a vague amusement. "And you're quite right, Tom. He was in business once and he failed—badly."

I went up to my wife's room and told her what the children had said of Tedham's call, and that he was coming back again.

"Well, then, I think I shall let you see him alone, Basil. I'm completely worn out, and besides there's no reason why I should see him. I hope you'll get through with him quickly. There isn't really anything for you to say, except that we have seen the Haskeths, and that if he is still bent upon it he can find his daughter there to-morrow evening. I want you to promise me that you will confine yourself to that, Basil, and not say a single word more. There is no sense in our involving ourselves in the affair. We have done all we could, and more than he had any right to ask of us, and now I am determined that he shall not get anything more out of you. Will you promise?"

"You may be sure, my dear, that I don't wish to get any more involved in this coil of sin and misery than you do," I began.

"That isn't promising," she interrupted. "I want you to promise you'll say just that and no more."

"Oh, I'll promise fast enough, if that's all you want," I said.

"I don't trust you a bit, Basil," she lamented. "Now, I will explain to you all about it. I've thought the whole thing over."

She did explain, at much greater length than she needed, and she was still giving me some very solemn charges when the bell rang, and I knew that Tedham had come. "Now, remember what I've told you," she called after me, as I went to the door, "and be sure to tell me, when you come back, just how he takes it and every word he says. Oh, dear, I know you'll make the most dreadful mess of it!"

By this time I expected to do no less, but I was so curious to see Tedham again that I should have been willing to do much worse, rather than forego my meeting with him. I hope that there was some better feeling than curiosity in my heart, but I will, for the present, call it curiosity.

I met him in the hall at the foot of the stairs, and put a witless cheeriness into the voice I bade him good-evening with, while I gave him my hand and led the way into the parlor.

The twenty-four hours that had elapsed since I saw him there before had estranged him in a way that I find it rather hard to describe. He had shrunk from the approach to equality in which we had parted, and there was a sort of consciousness of disgrace in his look, such as might have shown itself if he had passed the time in a low debauch. But undoubtedly he had done nothing of the kind, and this effect in him was from a purely moral cause. He sat down on the edge of a chair, instead of leaning back, as he had done the night before.

"Well, Tedham," I began, "we have seen your sister-in-law, and I may as well tell you at once that, so far as she is concerned, there will be nothing in the way of your meeting your daughter. The Haskeths are living at their old place in Somerville, and your daughter will be with them there to-morrow night—just at this moment she is away—and you can find her there, then, if you wish."

Tedham kept those deep eye-hollows of his bent upon me, and listened with a passivity which did not end when I ceased to speak. I had said all that my wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, and the incident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. But Tedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matter end so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl at the bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether you will or not."

"What do you mean?" asked Tedham, feebly, but as if he were physically laying hold of me for help.

"Why, I mean—I mean—my dear fellow, you know what I mean! Whether you had better do it." This was the very thing I had not intended to do, for I saw how wise my wife's plan was, and how we really had nothing more to do with the matter, after having satisfied the utmost demands of humanity.

"You think I had better not," said Tedham.

"No," I said, but I felt that I was saying it too late, "I don't think anything about it."

"I have been thinking about it, too," said Tedham, as if I had confessed and not denied having an opinion in the matter. "I have been thinking about it ever since I saw you last night, and I don't believe I have slept, for thinking of it. I know how you and Mrs. March feel about it, and I have tried to see it from your point of view, and now I believe I do. I am not going to see my daughter; I am going away."

He stood up, in token of his purpose, and at the same moment my wife entered the room. She must have been hurrying to do so from the moment I left her, for she had on a fresh dress, and her hair had the effect of being suddenly, if very effectively, massed for the interview from the dispersion in which I had lately seen it. She swept me with a glance of reproach, as she went up to Tedham, in the pretence that he had risen to meet her, and gave him her hand. I knew that she divined all that had passed between us, but she said:

"Mr. March has told you that we have seen Mrs. Hasketh, and that you can find your daughter at her house to-morrow evening?"

"Yes, and I have just been telling him that I am not going to see her."

"That is very foolish—very wrong!" my wife began.

"I know you must say so," Tedham replied, with more dignity and force than I could have expected, "and I know how kind you and Mr. March have been. But you must see that I am right—that she is the only one to be considered at all."

"Right! How are you right? Have you been suggesting that, my dear?" demanded my wife, with a gentle despair of me in her voice.

It almost seemed to me that I had, but Tedham came to my rescue most unexpectedly.

"No, Mrs. March, he hasn't said anything of the kind to me; or, if he has, I haven't heard it. But you intimated, yourself, last night, that she might be so situated—"

"I was a wicked simpleton," cried my wife, and I forebore to triumph, even by a glance at her; "to put my doubts between you and your daughter in any way. It was romantic, and—and—disgusting. It's not only your right to see her, it's your duty. At least it's your duty to let her decide whether she will let you see her. What nonsense! Of course she will! She must bear her part in it. She ought not to escape it, even if she could. Now you must just drop all idea of going away, and you must stay, and you must go to see your daughter. There is no other way to do."

Tedham shook his head stubbornly. "She has borne her share, already, and I won't inflict my penalty on her innocence—"

"Innocence? It's because she is innocent that it must be inflicted upon her! That is what innocence is in the world for!"

Tedham looked back at her in a dull bewilderment. "I can't get back to that. It seemed so once; but now it looks selfish, and I'm afraid of it. I am not the one to take that ground. It might do for you—"

"Well, then, let it do for me!" I confess that I was astonished at this turn, or should have been, if I could be astonished at any turn a woman takes. "I will see her for you, if you wish, and I will tell her just how it is with you, and then she can decide for herself. You have certainly no right to decide for her, whether she will see you or not, have you?"

"No," Tedham admitted.

"Well, then, sit down and listen."

He sat down, and my wife reasoned it all out with him. She convinced me, perfectly, so that what Tedham proposed to do seemed not only sentimental and foolish, but unnatural and impious. I confess that I admired her casuistry, and gave it my full support. She was a woman who, in the small affairs of the tastes and the nerves and the prejudices could be as illogical as the best of her sex, but with a question large enough to engage the hereditary powers of her New England nature she showed herself a dialectician worthy of her Puritan ancestry.

Tedham rose when she had made an end; and when we both expected him to agree with her and obey her, he said, "Very likely you are right. I once saw it all that way myself, but I don't see it so now, and I can't do it. Perhaps we shouldn't care for each other; at any rate, it's too much to risk, and I can't do it. Good-by." He began sidling toward the door.

I would have detained him, but my wife made me a sign not to interfere. "But surely, Mr. Tedham," she pleaded, "you are going to leave some word for her—or for Mrs. Hasketh to give her?"

"No," he answered, "I don't think I will. If I don't appear, then she won't see me, and that will be all there is of it."

"Yes, but Mrs. Hasketh will probably tell her that you have asked about her, and will prepare her for your coming, and then if you don't come—"

"What time is it, March?" Tedham asked.

I took out my watch. "It's nine o'clock." I was surprised to find it no later.

"I can get over to Somerville before ten, can't I? I'll go and tell Mrs. Hasketh I am not coming."

We could not prevent his getting away, by force, and we had used all the arguments we could have hoped to detain him with. As he opened the door to go out into the night, "But, Tedham!" I called to him, "if anything happens, where are we to find you, hear of you?"

He hesitated. "I will let you know. Well, good-night."

"I suppose this isn't the end, Isabel," I said, after we had turned from looking blankly at the closed door, and listening to Tedham's steps, fainter and fainter on the board-walk to the gate.

"There never is an end to a thing like this!" she returned, with a passionate sigh of pity. "Oh, what a terrible thing an evil deed is! It can't end. It has to go on and on forever. Poor wretch! He thought he had got to the end of his misdeed, when he had suffered the punishment for it, but it was only just beginning then! Now, you see, it has a perfectly new lease of life. It's as if it had just happened, as far as the worst consequences are concerned."

"Yes," I assented. "By the way, that was a great idea of yours about the office of innocence in the world, Isabel!"

"Why, Basil!" she cried, "you don't suppose I believed in such a monstrous thing as that, do you?"

"You made me believe in it."

"Well, then, I can tell you that I merely said it so as to convince him that he ought to let his daughter decide whether she would see him or not, and it had nothing whatever to do with the matter. Do you think you could find me anything to eat, dear? I'm perfectly famishing, and it doesn't seem as if I could stir a step till I've had a bite of something."

She sank down on the sofa in the hall in proof of her statement, and I went out into the culinary regions (deserted of their dwellers after our early tea) and made her up a sandwich along with the one I had the Sunday-night habit of myself. I found some half-bottles of ale on the ice, and I brought one of them, too. Before we had emptied it we resigned ourselves to what we could not help in Tedham's case; perhaps we even saw it in a more hopeful light.