Books: An Open Eyed Conspiracy An Idyl of Saratoga
W >>
William Dean Howells >> An Open Eyed Conspiracy An Idyl of Saratoga
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9
"Yes," said Kendricks ruefully.
"But his daughter," I continued, "is probably altogether different.
There is something fine about her--really fine. Our world wouldn't
shrivel in her eye; it would probably swell up and fill the
universe," I added by an impulse that came from nowhere irresistibly
upon me: "that is, if she could see YOU in it."
"What do you mean?" he asked with a start.
"Oh, now I must tell you what I mean," I said desperately. "It's
you that have complicated this case so dreadfully for us. Can't you
think why?"
"No, I can't," he said; but he had to say that.
His fine, sensitive face flamed at once so fire-red that it could
only turn pale for a change when I plunged on: "I'm afraid we've
trifled with her happiness"; and this formulation of the case
disgusted me so much that I laughed wildly, and added, "unless we've
trifled with yours, too."
"I don't know why you call it trifling with happiness," he returned
with dignity, but without offence. "If you will leave her out of
the question, I will say that you have given me the greatest
happiness of my life in introducing me to Miss Gage."
"Now," I demanded, "may I ask what YOU mean? You know I wouldn't if
I didn't feel bound for her sake, and if you hadn't said just what
you have said. You needn't answer me unless you like! It's
pleasant to know that you've not been bored, and Mrs. March and I
are infinitely obliged to you for helping us out."
Kendricks made as if he were going to say something, and then he did
not. He hung his head lower and lower in the silence which I had to
break for him--"I hope I haven't been intrusive, my dear fellow.
This is something I felt bound to speak of. You know we couldn't
let it go on. Mrs. March and I have blamed ourselves a good deal,
and we couldn't let it go on. But I'm afraid I haven't been as
delicate with you--"
"Oh! delicate!" He lifted his head and flashed a face of generous
self-reproach upon me. "It's _I_ that haven't been delicate with
YOU. I've been monstrously indelicate. But I never meant to be,
and--and--I was coming to see you just now when we met--to see you--
Miss Gage--and ask her--tell her that we--I--must tell you and Mrs.
March--Mr. March! At the hop last night I asked her to be my wife,
and as soon as she can hear from her father--But the first thing
when I woke this morning, I saw that I must tell Mrs. March and you.
And you--you must forgive us--or me, rather; for it was my fault--
for not telling you last night--at once--oh, thank you! thank you!"
I had seized his hand, and was wringing it vehemently in expression
of my pleasure in what he had told me. In that first moment I felt
nothing but pure joy and an immeasurable relief. I drew my breath,
a very deep and full one, in a sudden, absolute freedom from
anxieties which had been none the less real and constant because so
often burlesqued. Afterward considerations presented themselves to
alloy my rapture, but for that moment, as I say, it was nothing but
rapture. There was no question in it of the lovers' fitness for
each other, of their acceptability to their respective families, of
their general conduct, or of their especial behaviour toward us.
All that I could realise was that it was a great escape for both of
us, and a great triumph for me. I had been afraid that I should not
have the courage to speak to Kendricks of the matter at all, much
less ask him to go away; and here I had actually spoken to him, with
the splendid result that I need only congratulate him on his
engagement to the lady whose unrequited affections I had been
wishing him to spare. I don't remember just the terms I used in
doing this, but they seemed satisfactory to Kendricks; probably a
repetition of the letters of the alphabet would have been equally
acceptable. At last I said, "Well, now I must go and tell the great
news to Mrs. March," and I shook hands with him again; we had been
shaking hands at half-minutely intervals ever since the first time.
CHAPTER XVIII
I saw Mrs. March waiting for me on the hotel verandah. She wore her
bonnet, and she warned me not to approach, and then ran down to meet
me.
"Well, my dear," she said, as she pushed her hand through my arm and
began to propel me away from the sight and hearing of people on the
piazza, "I hope you didn't make a fool of yourself with Kendricks.
They're engaged!"
She apparently expected me to be prostrated by this stroke. "Yes,"
I said very coolly; "I was just coming to tell you."
"How did you know it? Who told you? Did Kendricks? I don't
believe it!" she cried in an excitement not unmixed with resentment.
"No one told me," I said. "I simply divined it."
She didn't mind that for a moment. "Well, I'm glad he had the grace
to do so, and I hope he did it before you asked him any leading
questions." Without waiting to hear whether this was so or not, she
went on, with an emphasis on the next word that almost blotted it
out of the language, "SHE came back to me almost the instant you
were gone, and told me everything. She said she wanted to tell me
last night, but she hadn't the courage, and this morning, when she
saw that I was beginning to hint up to Mr. Kendricks a little, she
hadn't the courage at all. I sent her straight off to telegraph for
her father. She is behaving splendidly. And now, what are we going
to do?"
"What the rest of the world is--nothing. It seems to me that we are
out of the story, my dear. At any rate, I shan't attempt to compete
with Miss Gage in splendid behaviour, and I hope you won't. It
would be so easy for us. I wonder what Papa Gage is going to be
like."
I felt my thrill of apprehension impart itself to her. "Yes!" she
gasped; "what if he shouldn't like it?"
"Well, then, that's his affair." But I did not feel so lightly
about it as I spoke, and from time to time during the day I was
overtaken with a cold dismay at the thought of the unknown quantity
in the problem.
When we returned to the hotel after a tour of the block, we saw
Kendricks in our corner of the verandah with Miss Gage. They were
both laughing convulsively, and they ran down to meet us in yet
wilder throes of merriment.
"We've just been comparing notes," he said, "and at the very moment
when I was telling you, Mr. March, Julia was telling Mrs. March."
"Wonderful case of telepathy," I mocked.
"Give it to the Psychical Research."
They both seemed a little daunted, and Miss Gage said, "I know Mr.
March doesn't like the way we've done."
"Like it!" cried Mrs. March, contriving to shake me a little with
the hand she still had in my arm. "Of course he likes it. He was
just saying you had behaved splendidly. He said HE wouldn't attempt
to compete with you. But you mustn't regard him in the least."
I admired the skill with which Isabel saved her conscience in this
statement too much to dispute it; and I suppose that whatever she
had said, Miss Gage would have been reassured. I cannot
particularly praise the wisdom of her behaviour during that day, or,
for the matter of that, the behaviour of Kendricks either. The
ideal thing would have been for him to keep away now till her father
came, but it seemed to me that he was about under our feet all the
while, and that she, so far from making him remain at his own hotel,
encouraged him to pass the time at ours. Without consulting me,
Mrs. March asked him to stay to dinner after he had stayed all the
forenoon, and he made this a pretext for spending the afternoon in
our corner of the verandah. She made me give it up to him and Miss
Gage, so that they could be alone together, though I must say they
did not seem to mind us a great deal when we were present; he was
always leaning on the back of her chair, or sitting next her with
his hand dangling over it in a manner that made me sick. I wondered
if I was ever such an ass as that, and I quite lost the respect for
Kendricks's good sense and good taste which had been the ground of
my liking for him.
I felt myself withdrawn from the affair farther and farther in
sympathy, since it had now passed beyond my control; and I resented
the strain of the responsibility which I had thrown off, I found,
only for a moment, and must continue to suffer until the girl's
father appeared and finally relieved me. The worst was that I had
to bear it alone. It was impossible to detach Mrs. March's interest
from Miss Gage, as a girl who had been made love to, long enough to
enable her to realise her as a daughter with filial ties and duties.
She did try in a perfunctory way to do it, but I could see that she
never gave her mind to it. I could not even make her share my sense
of my own culpability, a thing she was only too willing to do in
most matters. She admitted that it was absurd for me to have let my
fancy play about the girl when I first saw her until we felt that I
must do something for her; but I could not get her to own that we
had both acted preposterously in letting Mrs. Deering leave Miss
Gage in our charge. In the first place, she denied that she had
been left in our charge. She had simply been left in the hotel
where we were staying, and we should have been perfectly free to do
nothing for her. But when Kendricks turned up so unexpectedly, it
was quite natural we should ask him to be polite to her. Mrs. March
saw nothing strange in all that. What was I worrying about? What
she had been afraid of was that he had not been in love with the
girl when she was so clearly in love with him. But now!
"And suppose her father doesn't like it!"
"Not like Mr. Kendricks!" She stared at me, and I could see how
infatuated she was.
I was myself always charmed with the young fellow. He was not only
good and generous and handsome, and clever--I never thought him a
first-class talent--but he was beautifully well bred, and he was
very well born, as those things go with us. That is, he came of
people who had not done much of anything for a generation, and had
acquired merit with themselves for it. They were not very rich, but
they had a right to think that he might have done nothing, or done
something better than literature; and I wish I could set forth
exactly the terms, tacit and explicit, in which his mother and
sisters condoned his dereliction to me at a reception where he
presented me to them. In virtue of his wish to do something, he had
become a human being, and they could not quite follow him; but they
were very polite in tolerating me, and trying to make me feel that I
was not at all odd, though he was so queer in being proud of writing
for my paper, as they called it. He was so unlike them all that I
liked him more than ever after meeting them. Still, I could imagine
a fond father, as I imagined Miss Gage's father to be, objecting to
him, on some grounds at least, till he knew him, and Mrs. March
apparently could not imagine even this.
I do not know why I should have prefigured Miss Gage's father as
tall and lank. She was not herself so very tall, though she was
rather tall than short, and though she was rather of the Diana or
girlish type of goddess, she was by no means lank. Yet it was in
this shape that I had always thought of him, perhaps through an
obscure association with his fellow-villager, Deering. I had
fancied him saturnine of spirit, slovenly of dress, and lounging of
habit, upon no authority that I could allege, and I was wholly
unprepared for the neat, small figure of a man, very precise of
manner and scrupulous of aspect, who said, "How do you do, sir? I
hope I see you well, sir," when his daughter presented us to each
other, the morning after the eventful day described, and he shook my
hand with his very small, dry hand.
I could not make out from their manner with each other whether they
had been speaking of the great matter in hand or not. I am rather
at a loss about people of that Philistine make as to what their
procedure will be in circumstances where I know just what people of
my own sort of sophistication would do. These would come straight
at the trouble, but I fancy that with the other sort the convention
is a preliminary reserve. I found Mr. Gage disposed to prolong,
with me at least, a discussion of the weather, and the aspects of
Saratoga, the events of his journey from De Witt Point, and the
hardship of having to ride all the way to Mooer's Junction in a
stage-coach. I felt more and more, while we bandied these
futilities, as if Mr. Gage had an overdue note of mine, and was
waiting for me, since I could not pay it, to make some proposition
toward its renewal; and he did really tire me out at last, so that I
said, "Well, Mr. Gage, I suppose Miss Gage has told you something of
the tremendous situation that has developed itself here?"
I thought I had better give the affair such smiling character as a
jocose treatment might impart, and the dry little man twinkled up
responsively so far as manner was concerned. "Well, yes, yes.
There has been some talk of it between us," and again he left the
word to me.
"Mrs. March urged your daughter to send for you at once because that
was the right and fit thing to do, and because we felt that the
affair had now quite transcended our powers, such as they were, and
nobody could really cope with it but yourself. I hope you were not
unduly alarmed by the summons?"
"Not at all. She said in the despatch that she was not sick. I had
been anticipating a short visit to Saratoga for some days, and my
business was in a shape so that I could leave."
"Oh!" I said vaguely, "I am very glad. Mrs. March felt, as I did,
that circumstances had given us a certain obligation in regard to
Miss Gage, and we were anxious to discharge it faithfully and to the
utmost. We should have written to you, summoned you, before, if we
could have supposed--or been sure; but you know these things go on
so obscurely, and we acted at the very first possible moment. I
wish you to understand that. We talked it over a great deal, and I
hope you will believe that we studied throughout--that we were most
solicitous from beginning to end for Miss Gage's happiness, and that
if we could have foreseen or imagined--if we could have taken any
steps--I trust you will believe--" I was furious at myself for
being so confoundedly apologetic, for I was thinking all the time of
the bother and affliction we had had with the girl; and there sat
that little wooden image accepting my self-inculpations, and
apparently demanding more of me; but I could not help going on in
the same strain: "We felt especially bound in the matter, from the
fact that Mr. Kendricks was a personal friend of ours, whom we are
very fond of, and we both are very anxious that you should not
suppose that we promoted, or that we were not most vigilant--that we
were for a moment forgetful of your rights in such an affair--"
I stopped, and Mr. Gage passed his hand across his little meagre,
smiling mouth.
"Then he is not a connection of yours, Mr. March?"
"Bless me, no!" I said in great relief; "we are not so swell as
that." And I tried to give him some notion of Kendricks's local
quality, repeating a list of agglutinated New York surnames to which
his was more or less affiliated. They always amuse me, those names,
which more than any in the world give the notion of social
straining; but I doubt if they affected the imagination of Mr. Gage,
either in this way or in the way I meanly meant them to affect him.
"And what did you say his business was?" he asked, with that
implication of a previous statement on your part which some people
think it so clever to make when they question you.
I always hate it, and I avenged myself by answering simply, "Bless
my soul, he has no business!" and letting him take up the word now
or not, as he liked.
"Then he is a man of independent means?"
I could not resist answering, "Independent means? Kendricks has no
means whatever." But having dealt this blow, I could add, "I
believe his mother has some money. They are people who live
comfortably"
"Then he has no profession?" asked Mr. Gage, with a little more
stringency in his smile.
"I don't know whether you will call it a profession. He is a
writer."
"Ah!" Mr. Gage softly breathed. "Does he write for your--paper?"
I noted that as to the literary technicalities he seemed not to be
much more ignorant than Kendricks's own family, and I said,
tolerantly, "Yes; he writes for our magazine."
"Magazine--yes; I beg your pardon," he interrupted.
"And for any others where he can place his material."
This apparently did not convey any very luminous idea to Mr. Gage's
mind, and he asked after a moment, "What kind of things does he
write?"
"Oh, stories, sketches, poems, reviews, essays--almost anything, in
fact."
The light left his face, and I perceived that I had carried my
revenge too far, at least for Kendricks's advantage, and I
determined to take a new departure at the first chance. The chance
did not come immediately.
"And can a man support a wife by that kind of writing?" asked Mr.
Gage.
I laughed uneasily. "Some people do. It depends upon how much of
it he can sell. It depends upon how handsomely a wife wishes to be
supported. The result isn't usually beyond the dreams of avarice,"
I said, with a desperate levity.
"Excuse me," returned the little man. "Do you live in that way? By
your writings?"
"No," I said with some state, which I tried to subdue; "I am the
editor of Every Other Week, and part owner. Mr. Kendricks is merely
a contributor."
"Ah," he breathed again. "And if he were successful in selling his
writings, how much would he probably make in a year?"
"In a year?" I repeated, to gain time. "Mr. Kendricks is
comparatively a beginner. Say fifteen hundred--two thousand--
twenty-five hundred."
"And that would not go very far in New York."
"No; that would not go far in New York." I was beginning to find a
certain pleasure in dealing so frankly with this hard little man. I
liked to see him suffer, and I could see that he did suffer; he
suffered as a father must who learns that from a pecuniary point of
view his daughter is imprudently in love. Why should we always
regard such a sufferer as a comic figure? He is, if we think of it
rightly, a most serious, even tragical figure, and at all events a
most respectable figure. He loves her, and his heart is torn
between the wish to indulge her and the wish to do what will be
finally best for her. Why should our sympathies, in such a case, be
all for the foolish young lovers? They ought in great measure to be
for the father, too. Something like a sense of this smote me, and I
was ashamed in my pleasure.
"Then I should say, Mr. March, that this seems a most undesirable
engagement for my daughter. What should you say? I ask you to make
the case your own."
"Excuse me," I answered; "I would much rather not make the case my
own, Mr. Gage, and I must decline to have you consult me. I think
that in this matter I have done all that I was called upon to do. I
have told you what I know of Mr. Kendricks's circumstances and
connections. As to his character, I can truly say that he is one of
the best men I ever knew. I believe in his absolute purity of
heart, and he is the most unselfish, the most generous--"
Mr. Gage waved the facts aside with his hand. "I don't undervalue
those things. If I could be master, no one should have my girl
without them. But they do not constitute a livelihood. From what
you tell me of Mr. Kendricks's prospects, I am not prepared to say
that I think the outlook is brilliant. If he has counted upon my
supplying a deficiency--"
"Oh, excuse me, Mr. Gage! Your insinuation--"
"Excuse ME!" he retorted. "I am making no insinuation. I merely
wish to say that, while my means are such as to enable me to live in
comfort at De Witt Point, I am well aware that much more would be
needed in New York to enable my daughter to live in the same
comfort. I'm not willing she should live in less. I think it is my
duty to say that I am not at all a rich man, and if there has been
any supposition that I am so, it is a mistake that cannot be
corrected too soon."
This time I could not resent his insinuation, for since he had begun
to speak I had become guiltily aware of having felt a sort of ease
in regard to Kendricks's modesty of competence from a belief, given
me, I suspect, by the talk of Deering, that Mr. Gage had plenty of
money, and could come to the rescue in any amount needed. I could
only say, "Mr. Gage, all this is so far beyond my control that I
ought not to allow you to say it to me. It is something that you
must say to Mr. Kendricks."
As I spoke I saw the young fellow come round the corner of the
street, and mount the hotel steps. He did not see me, for he did
not look toward the little corner of lawn where Mr. Gage and I had
put our chairs for the sake of the morning shade, and for the
seclusion that the spot afforded us. It was at the angle of the
house farthest from our peculiar corner of the piazza, whither I had
the belief that the girl had withdrawn when she left me to her
father. I was sure that Kendricks would seek her there, far enough
beyond eyeshot or earshot of us, and I had no doubt that she was
expecting him.
"You are Mr. Kendricks's friend--"
"I have tried much more to be Miss Gage's friend; and Mrs. March--"
It came into my mind that she was most selfishly and shamelessly
keeping out of the way, and I could not go on and celebrate her
magnanimous impartiality, her eager and sleepless vigilance.
"I have no doubt of that," said the little man, "and I am very much
obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken on my daughter's
account. But you are his friend, and I can speak to you much more
fully and frankly than I could to him."
I did not know just what to say to this, and he went on: "In point
of fact, I don't think that I shall speak to him at all."
"That is quite your affair, my dear sir," I said dryly. "It isn't
to be supposed that you would seek an interview with him."
"And if he seeks an interview with me, I shall decline it." He
looked at me defiantly and yet interrogatively. I could see that he
was very angry, and yet uncertain.
"I must say, then, Mr. Gage, that I don't think you would be right."
"How, not right?"
"I should say that in equity he had a full and perfect right to meet
you, and to talk this matter over with you. He has done you no
wrong whatever in admiring your daughter, and wishing to marry her.
It's for you and her to decide whether you will let him. But as far
as his wish goes, and his expression of it to her, he is quite
within his rights. You must see that yourself."
"I consider," he answered, "that he has done me a wrong in that very
thing. A man without means, or any stated occupation, he had no
business to speak to my daughter without speaking to me. He took
advantage of the circumstances. What does he think? Does he
suppose I am MADE of money? Does he suppose I want to support a
son-in-law? I can tell you that if I were possessed of unlimited
means, I should not do it." I began to suspect that Deering was
nearer right, after all, in his representations of the man's
financial ability; I fancied something of the anxiety, the tremor of
avarice, in his resentment of poor Kendricks's possible, or rather
impossible, designs upon his pocket. "If he had any profession, or
any kind of business, I should feel differently, and I should be
willing to assist him to a reasonable degree; or if he had a
business training, I might take him in with me; but as it is, I
should have a helpless burden on my hands, and I can tell you I am
not going in for that sort of thing. I shall make short work of it.
I shall decline to meet Mr. Hendricks, or Kendricks, and I shall ask
you to say as much to him from me."
"And I shall decline to be the bearer of any such message from you,
Mr. Gage," I answered, and I saw, not without pleasure, the
bewilderment that began to mix with his arrogance.
"Very well, then, sir," he answered, after a moment; "I shall simply
take my daughter away with me, and that will end it."
The prim little, grim little man looked at me with his hard eyes,
and set his lips so close that the beard on the lower one stuck out
at me with a sort of additional menace I felt that he was too
capable of doing what he said, and I lost myself in a sense of his
sordidness, a sense which was almost without a trace of compassion.
It seemed as if I were a long time under the spell of this, and the
sight of his repugnant face; but it could really have been merely a
moment, when I heard a stir of drapery on the grass near us, and the
soft, rich voice of Miss Gage saying, "Papa!"
We both started to our feet. I do not know whether she had heard
what he said or not. We had spoken low, and in the utmost vehemence
of his speech he did not lift his voice. In any case, she did not
heed what he said.
"Papa," she repeated, "I want you to come up and see Mrs. March on
the piazza. And--Mr. Kendricks is there."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9