William Dean Howells

“ Farrell. “I am rather tired, after all.”
“Will you take my arm?” asked Easton. “It isn’t of much use yet, I’m ashamed to think, but it will be. Did you despise me when I was lying there sick?”
“Despise you?”
“Why, I think a sick man is a contemptible kind of creature. You women seem to be able to make anything gracious and appropriate, even suffering; but a sick man can only be an odious burden. We ought to be allowed to crawl away like hurt animals into holes and clefts of rocks, and take the chances, unseen, of dying or living. Were you able to pity me very much?” ”

“ On Sunday the breeze that draws across Woodward farm almost all summer long, from over the shoulder of Scatticong, had fallen, and the leaves of the maples along the roadside and in the grove beyond the meadow hung still as in a picture; the old Lombardy poplars at the gate shook with a faint, nervous agitation. Up the valley came the vast bath of the heat, which inundated the continent and made that day memorable for suffering and sudden death. In the cities there were sunstrokes at ten o’clock in the morning; some who kept withindoors perished from exhaustion when the sun’s fury was spent. ”

“ Love baptizes us with a new youth whenever it comes; the talk of all lovers is like the babble of childhood, and a heavenly simpleness inspires it. This is so, whatever the number of the passion; it is true in even greater degree if first love comes when the lover is well toward his thirties. Easton was one of the most single-hearted of men, but pride had kept him one of the most reserved. ”

“ Gilbert, who had leaned forward with interest, in the course of Mrs. Gilbert’s tale, now fell back again in his chair, and said: “Oh, I see. You are prejudiced against Mrs. Belle Farrell. You have among you here a woman of extraordinary beauty, who strives in her own fashion after the ideal, who struggles to escape from the stupid round of your cares and duties and proprieties, and you want to hem her in with the same dread and misapprehension that imprison her life in your brutal Boston. She longs for a breath of free mountain air, and you stifle her with your dense social atmosphere. ”

“ Farrell, keeping her eyes on her work and knitting faster and faster, “if she has any heart at all, it must be half broken to think of what she’s done. The falsest coquette that ever was would feel like bowing down to true love in a man; and what is she to do if ever the worst comes to the worst and she finds she’s afraid she doesn’t love him? She must know that his good faith is ten million times stronger than her looks, and that it has a claim which she must try to answer somehow. Shall she marry him out of pity, and put him to the shame of finding it out some day? ”

“ I might set up a studio, and everybody would smile on my efforts, but if I set up a shop, nobody would associate with me. You wouldn’t, yourself! Don’t pretend to be so much better than other people,” cried Mrs. Farrell, with nothing of the convent left in her look.
“I don’t know about being better,” said Easton. “But I’ve lived too little in the world to be quite of it, I suppose. I’m afraid I am not shocked at the notion of anybody’s being a milliner that likes.”
“Oh yes, I know. Cheap ideas of equality. But you wouldn’t marry a milliner, if she was ever such a genius in her art.” ”

“ During the summer, the fair artist, having dismissed her little flock of pupils, consecrated the red schoolhouse at the corner of the road to the labors of her genius, devoting to them such moments as she could steal from household cares and the demands of her mother’s boarders, who little dreamt with what visions of beauty and fame she glorified the dim old farmhouse kitchen, albeit she was familiarly known among them as the Rosa Bonheur of West Pekin, and they duly reverenced her God-given talent. ”

“ They set out and toiled slowly up the long meadow slope, slanting their course in the direction of the orchard behind the house. Easton hung more heavily on his friend’s arm as they drew nearer. “Do you suppose we’ve been seen?” he panted, as they stepped through a gap in the orchard wall.
“No; there isn’t a woman on watch; not a solitary soul. They’re everyone asleep—confound ’em,” said Gilbert, in the fervent irrelevancy of his gratitude. ”

“ Everything else under the sun has its price; you slave for it, you risk your life for it, you buy it somehow. But the divinest thing in the world is given, it has no price, it’s invaluable; we can’t merit a woman’s love any more than we can merit God’s mercy. Come, take yourself from me again! I’ve never given you a fair chance to say me nay. You must acknowledge that you never had time to answer that question of mine. Before you could decide whether you could endure me or not you had to pity me so much that you were biased in my favor. ”

“ Think that she is pledged by everything that is good in her to your friend. If you believe she does not love him, let her break with him how and when she will. But don’t you be her wicked hope—wickeder a thousand times than she!—don’t be the temptation,{217} the refuge of her falseness. Leave her to herself! You could only add your treason to hers by staying!”
“Wicked hope, temptation, treason—this is all rather theatrical for you, Susan,” said Gilbert, with an attempt to smile. He frowned instead. “And what do I owe to Easton in the way of loyalty? ”

“ Farrell,” said Rachel, sternly, “you ought to be afraid to talk as you do.”
“Why, so I am, aunty—so I am,” retorted Mrs. Farrell, incorrigibly. “It sends the cold chills over me to talk as I do, but I can’t help it. Don’t you suppose I know how nice Mr. Easton is? I do. He is the very soul of truth and honor and all uprightness. He is the noblest and best man in the world. But what could I do with him, or he with me? No, ma’am, it isn’t such a simple affair as liking or not liking. This is a case of conscience, I’d have you to know, such as doesn’t often turn up in West Pekin.” ”

“ If I had a daughter whose love affair had been so romantic as yours, I believe I should tell her to make all the surer of her heart on account of the romance. I’m afraid that in matters of love, romance is a dangerous element. Love ought to be perfectly ordinary, regular, and every-day like.”
“Those are very heretical ideas!” said Mrs. Farrell, shaking her head.
“Yes, yes, I dare say,” answered Mrs. Gilbert; “but, as I said before, I hope for both your sakes that you and Mr. Easton will have a good stupid wooing—at least a year of it—when he gets well.” ”

“ Don’t you think,” she asked, dazzling him with the radiant, immortal youth of her glance and smile, “that the worst thing about growing older is that you have to be so careful about your miserable, perishable body? I hope I’ve not made you do anything against your principles, Mr. Easton, in getting you to go with me after brakes on Sunday? We don’t often do such things, ourselves.” ”

“ She is charming—yes, she charms me, too; and to a man she must make all other women seem so blank and poor and plain! But now you mustn’t love her: she cannot be yours without a wrong that when you’re away from her you must shudder at. And—and—you will go, won’t you, William?”
Gilbert’s arm dropped from the mantel where it lay, to his side. ”

“ Farrell, putting her hand down at her side and electrically touching that wrist of his next to her; “I thought somebody was coming. Yes, I know. Even if you tell me that you meant no harm—and I don’t believe you did—still, don’t you know— Oh!” she broke off, “why is it that there isn’t some common ground for men and women to meet on, and be helpful to each other? Must they always be either lovers or enemies? Yes, enemies; it’s really a state of almost warfare; there can’t be any kindness, any freedom, any sincerity. ”

“ Have I got the logical sequences all right, William? Yes? Well, I’m glad of that; not that I care the least for them, but I like to consult the weakness of a sex that can’t reason without them. As I was saying, she is young, beautiful, and attractive; the fact might not strike you at first, but she is. The only drawback is her extreme unconsciousness. But for all that, if I were a man, I should simply go raving distracted over Mrs. Belle Farrell.”
“I won’t speak for Easton,” said Gilbert, “but I think men generally prefer a spice of coquetry in the objects of their raving distraction. ”

“ Gilbert are of no epoch, but still endure in the New England character, unalterable as its native granite. Coming from southern Ohio, my father could, perhaps, see the New England people more clearly than if he had been one of them, and the Woodward family gives what he felt and valued in their stern uprightness and self-restraint.
The echoes of the Civil War, in the injustice of Easton’s advancement in military rank over the head of his friend, come strangely to us who have just lived through another terrible conflict which has left this world weary and discouraged. ”

“ It is certain that they are far readier than the men, more intelligent, gracious, and graceful, and with their able connivance the farmer stays the adversity creeping upon his class, if he does not retrieve its old prosperity. In the winter his daughters teach school, and in the summer they help their mother through her enterprise of taking boarders. The farm feeds them all, but from the women’s labor comes thrice the ready money that the land ever yields, and it is they who keep alive the sense of all higher and finer things, Heaven knows with what heroic patience and devoted endeavor. ”

“ Rachel had been struggling to release herself from a position so scandalous; but Mrs. Farrell, who had never risen from her knees, had securely hemmed her in. At the climax of the burlesque the girl flung herself back and gave way to a rush of sobs and tears. Mrs. Farrell attempted to throw her arms about her and console her, but Rachel shrank resolutely aside. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, when she could speak. “It’s horrible! You have no pity; you have no heart! You have no peace of yourself, and you are never at rest unless you are tormenting some one else. ”

“ Farrell has been babbling to you about the admiration your picture excited. She’s a foolish woman. It was admired, and I think you might be a painter. But, oh, dear me! why should anyone encourage you on that account? Talent is a trouble and a vexation even to men, who are strong enough to fight against it; but for women it’s nothing but misery. The only hope for you that I can see is that you’ve got something of a man’s honesty and modesty to help you through. Draw up your chair and sit down by me, Rachel. ”

“ Farrell began to shell the peas with an air of tragical endurance. “Take any length of time you wish. But in the meanwhile, can’t you state the Eastonian principle more fully?”
“Only by saying that it’s the opposite of the system you admire and covet. Easton isn’t a man to formulate his ideas very freely. You’re astounded every now and then by some extraordinary piece of apparently quite uncalled-for uprightness, and then you find that he had long contemplated some such exigency, and had his conscience in perfect training.” ”

“ Your men are not so good as your cows and women, Rachel. Mr. Easton isn’t such a stick as that; you know he isn’t. Oh, Rachel,” said Mrs. Farrell, sinking upon a seat behind a school desk and leaning her elbow on it, chin in hand, while she brooded on the last sketch with effective eyes, “how awfully embarrassing men are! Here is Mr. Easton, for example, who has known me a week—a week but barely two—and guess what he’s been saying to me this afternoon!” She changed her posture and sat with her hands in her lap, regarding Rachel as one does the person whom one has posed with a conundrum. ”

“ I should be the better for being your daughter, Mrs. Gilbert.”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t like to promise you that. But sometimes I think I could have been a good mother, or at least that children would have made a good mother of me, for I believe that half the goodness that women get credit for is forced upon them by those little helpless troubles. Men could be just as good if they had the care and burden of children—men are so very near being very good as it is.”
“I know it,” sighed Mrs. Farrell. “I never knew my own mother,” she added; “if I had, I might have been a better woman. ”

“ And then, it’s New York.”
“Yes, New York is well dressed,” sighed Mrs. Farrell. “Oh dear me! The style of some New York girls that I’ve seen! I suppose men can’t feel it as we do.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. We can’t give any but the elementary names of things that a woman has on, but I don’t believe the subtlest effect of a dress is ever lost upon men; and I believe the soul of any man of imagination is as much taken with style in dressing as with beauty. Americans all adore it—perhaps because it’s so characteristic of American women that they seem almost to have invented it. ”

“ Chapter XV IN an orchestra chair at the theater sat a stout, good-natured-looking gentleman, iron gray where he was not bald, with a double chin smooth-shaven between iron-gray whiskers, and beside him sat a lady somewhat his junior in appearance, pale and invalid-like, to whom the strong contrast of her silvery hair and her thick, dark eyebrows gave a singular distinction; from some little attentions and neglects it could be seen that they were husband and wife. ”

“ Gilbert owned, “It does render one forgetful and liable to accidents, but it isn’t the worst fault. You gentlemen are very exacting; I see that you’re bent upon decrying every one of our ladies, whatever I say of them, and I believe I shall leave you to form your own perverse opinions. Yes, I’ve changed my mind, Mr. Easton, and instead of lecturing you on them beforehand, I shall confine myself to satisfying any curiosity you may happen to feel about them when you’ve seen them. Isn’t that the way a man would do?” ”

“ A man can’t always be marrying and supporting a wife. And as for countenancing Easton, if he thought a thing was right, it’s very little of my cheek he would want to uphold him.”
“Oh, I dare say. That’s his insufferable conceit; conscientious people are always so conceited! They’re always so sure that they know just what is right and wrong. Ugh! I can’t endure ’em.”
“I don’t think Easton’s conscientiousness is of that aggravating type, exactly,” said Gilbert, with a lazy laugh. ”

“ Farrell is in her way. She’s one of the most beautiful women I ever saw; one of the brightest, the most amiable. But I should be sorry to marry her; I shouldn’t want my wife so amiable—to everybody. She isn’t meant for the domesticities. There’s no harm in her; she simply wants excitement, luxury, applause, all in one, all the time. ”

“ Gilbert covered it with a quizzical smile. “Oh!” she continued, plainly enjoying her own discomfiture, “when will men learn that the boomerang is the natural weapon of woman? We’re all cross-eyed when it comes to love-glances; you can’t tell where we’re looking. You think she’s aiming at Easton! Poor fellow!”
“If I stay here talking,” said Gilbert, rising, “I shall bring on your headache again. Good night.”
“Oh, William,” Mrs. Gilbert appealed, “something sad has happened between you and Easton; and I’m very, very sorry. I liked him, too; and I’m grieved to have your old friendship touched. ”

“ Farrell most disappointed those who most feared her picturesque inadequacy. She threw herself into her part with inspiration; rising far above the merely capable woman, she made her care of Easton a work of genius, and not only divined his wants and ministered to his comfort with a success that surprised all experience, but dealt so cunningly with his moods that he was at last flattered into submission if not resignation. In the beginning he was indeed a most refractory object of devotion ”

“ She sprang lightly from the wall and swept through the bowing brakes and down the slope of the hollow to a spot where clustering maples, flinging their shadows one upon another, made a cool gloom beneath their boughs, and the delicate maidenhair balanced its crest upon its slender purple stems and trembled in the silent air. “Here, here!” called Mrs. Farrell. “Did you ever see anything lovelier? But doesn’t it seem a pity to pull it? Well, it must die for women, as humming-birds and pheasants do; we can’t look pretty without them, poor things! ”

“ Easton turned about and looked after the others, whose voices, in talk and laughter, came over the bracken with a light, hollow sound that voices have in the woods.
“Oh, don’t snub me!” implored Mrs. Farrell; “I didn’t mean to ask anything wrong. You soldiers are always so queer about the war; one would think you were ashamed of it.”
“It was full of unjust chances,” answered Easton, almost fiercely. “All that I did Gilbert would have done better, and if he had done it he would have got the promotion that I got. I ought to have refused it; it’s my lasting shame and sorrow that I didn’t.” ”

“ Only in these days they’ll say it isn’t in the least like America. No matter: it’s like what she has been and hasn’t forgotten how to be again.{110}”
“Yes,” said Rachel, simply, “we all tell mother there’s not many like her nowadays, and folks won’t understand her way with them, and will lay it to pride.”
“Oh, let them lay it to what they like!” cried Mrs. Gilbert, with enthusiasm. “If she can keep the black burden of gratitude off your souls, it’s no matter. It hardens the heart worse than prosperity.” ”

“ There is always something vastly pitiable in the first attempts of a woman to please the public from the stage; this is especially the case if she is not to the theater born, and confronts in her audience the faces she has known in the world; and her audience may have felt a peculiar forlornness in Mrs. Farrell’s position: at any rate it showed itself the kindest of houses, and seized with eager applause every good point of her performance. Her beauty in itself was almost sufficient to achieve success for her. ”

“ Farrell seated at the foot of a rock and turning an anxious face to confront Blossom’s visage thrust through the birch-trees, with a mildly humorous gleam in her great calm eyes, as if she relished the notion of having been mistaken for a man. The next represented Blossom driven from her shelter, and at a few paces distant indignantly regarding Gilbert and Easton, who had just appeared, while Mrs. Farrell and Rachel were shown sailing down the meadow with extravagant swiftness. ”

“ Farrell doesn’t like women very much, and she does like men very much; and she couldn’t bear to be grotesque in men’s eyes. Not that she would respect men much, or more than she does women. She’s very queer. I suppose she has streaks of genius; just enough to spoil her for human nature’s daily food.{37}”
“We do find genius indigestible—in women,” allowed Gilbert, thoughtfully. “But isn’t life a little less responsive to her vivid intentions at Woodward farm than it would be anywhere else? ”

“ Women often marry for money, for ambition, for mere board and lodging; you know they do; and why shouldn’t I marry him because I can’t bear to tell him I’m afraid I don’t love him?”
“That’s a question that nobody can answer for you,” said Mrs. Gilbert. “But all those marriages are abominable; and even to marry from respect seems wrong—hideous.”
“Yes, oh yes, it is hideous; it would be making this wearisome deceit a lifelong burden. I know what it would be better than anyone could tell me. I feel the horror of it every minute, and it isn’t for myself that I care now; it’s the shame to him ”

“ During the first two acts, it seemed to prosper from moment to moment, under all those admiring eyes, like the immediate gift of Heaven, as if she were inspired to be more and more beautiful by her consciousness of her beauty’s power; and whether she walked or sat, or only stirred in some chosen posture amid the volume of her robes, she expressed a grace that divinely fascinated. Her girlish presence enabled her to realize that Juliet to many whose sensitive ideal refused the robust pretensions of more mature actresses ”

“ You’d have known that blue wouldn’t do for a brunette, if you’d seen it on her?”
“I’m not so sure,” said Gilbert.
“Why, look!” cried Mrs. Farrell, taking up a delicate shade of blue and holding it against one cheek, while she fixed her eyes upon his with businesslike preoccupation. “There! don’t you see how we take the life out of each other? Don’t you see that it perfectly kills me?” ”