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A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT.
A COMEDY.
* * * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_And published with Mr. Howells's sanction._
A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.
A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE.
THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK. 2 VOLS.
OUT OF THE QUESTION and AT THE
SIGN OF THE SAVAGE.
THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY.
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 2 VOLS.
A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY and
TONELLI'S MARRIAGE.
EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS.
LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS AND CO.
* * * * * *
A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT AND THE PARLOUR CAR
by
WILLIAM D. HOWELLS
[Illustration]
Author's Edition
Edinburgh
David Douglas, Castle Street
1882
Edinburgh University Press
T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty.
[Illustration]
Frederic Ernest Allsopp.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. AN EXTRAORDINARY RESEMBLANCE, 7
II. DISTINCTIONS AND DIFFERENCES, 61
III. DISSOLVING VIEWS, 99
IV. NOT AT ALL LIKE, 141
* * * * *
THE PARLOUR CAR, A FARCE, 191
I.
AN EXTRAORDINARY RESEMBLANCE.
A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT.
(_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 table-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."
_Bartlett_, with unheeding petulance.--"The whole thing's too infernally
brown! I beg your pardon, Cummings: what were you saying? Go on! I like
your prattle about pictures; I do, indeed. I like to see how far you
art-cultured fellows can miss all that was in a poor devil's mind when
he was at work. But I'd rather you'd sentimentalise my pictures than
moralise them. If there's anything that makes me quite limp, it's to
have an allegory discovered in one of my poor stupid old landscapes. But
The First Grey Hair isn't bad, really. And a good, senseless, sloppy
name like that often sells a picture."
_Cummings._--"You're brutal, Bartlett. I don't believe your pictures
would own you, if they had their way about it."
_Bartlett._--"And I wouldn't own _them_ if I had _mine_. I've got about
forty that I wish somebody else owned--and I had the money for them; but
we seem inseparable. Glad you're going to-morrow? You _are_ a good
fellow, Cummings, and I _am_ a brute. Come, I'll make a great concession
to friendship: it struck me, too, while I was at work on that elm, that
it was something like--an old girl!" Bartlett laughs, and catching his
friend by either shoulder, twists him about in his strong clutch, while
he looks him merrily in the face. "I'm not a poet, old fellow; and
sometimes I think I ought to have been a painter and glazier instead of
a mere painter. I believe it would have paid better."
_Cummings._--"Bartlett, I hate to have you talk in that way."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, I know it's a stale kind."
_Cummings._--"It's worse than stale. It's destructive. A man can soon
talk himself out of heart with his better self. You can end by really
being as sordid-minded and hopeless and low-purposed as you pretend to
be. It's insanity."
_Bartlett._--"Good! I've had my little knock on the head, you know. I
don't deny being cracked. But I've a method in my madness."
_Cummings._--"They all have. But it's a very poor method; and I don't
believe you could say just what yours is. You think because a girl on
whom you set your fancy--it's nonsense to pretend it was your
heart--found out she didn't like you as well as she thought, and
honestly told you so in good time, that your wisest course is to take up
that rôle of misanthrope which begins with yourself and leaves people to
imagine how low an opinion you have of the rest of mankind."
_Bartlett._--"My dear fellow, you know I always speak well of that young
lady. I've invariably told you that she behaved in the handsomest
manner. She even expressed the wish--I distinctly remember being struck
by the novelty of the wish at the time--that we should remain friends.
You misconceive"--
_Cummings._--"How many poor girls have been jilted who don't go about
doing misanthropy, but mope at home and sorrow and sicken over their
wrong in secret,--a wrong that attacks not merely their pride, but their
life itself. Take the case I was telling you of: did you ever hear of
anything more atrocious? And do you compare this little sting to your
vanity with a death-blow like that?"
_Bartlett._--"It's quite impossible to compute the number of jilted
girls who take the line you describe. But if it were within the scope of
arithmetic, I don't know that a billion of jilted girls would comfort me
or reform me. I never could regard myself in that abstract way--a mere
unit on one side or other of the balance. My little personal snub goes
on rankling beyond the reach of statistical consolation. But even if
there were any edification in the case of the young lady in Paris, she's
too far off to be an example for me. Take some jilted girl nearer home,
Cummings, if you want me to go round sickening and sorrowing in secret.
I don't believe you can find any. Women are much tougher about the
pericardium than we give them credit for, my dear fellow,--much. I don't
see why it should hurt a woman more than a man to be jilted. We shall
never truly philosophise this important matter till we regard women with
something of the fine penetration and impartiality with which they
regard each other. Look at the stabs they give and take--they would kill
men! And the graceful ferocity with which they despatch any of their
number who happens to be down is quite unexampled in natural history.
How much do you suppose her lady friends have left of that poor girl
whose case wrings your foolish bosom all the way from Paris? I don't
believe so much as a boot-button. Why, even your correspondent--a very
lively woman, by the way--can't conceal under all her indignation her
little satisfaction that so _proud_ a girl as Miss What's-her-name
should have been jilted. Of course, she doesn't say it."
_Cummings_ hotly.--"_No_, she doesn't say it, and it's not to your
credit to imagine it."
_Bartlett_, with a laugh.--"Oh, I don't ask any praise for the
discovery. You deserve praise for not making it. It does honour to your
good heart. Well, don't be vexed, old fellow. And in trying to improve
me on this little point--a weak point, I'll allow, with me--do me the
justice to remember that I didn't flaunt my misanthropy, as you call it,
in your face; I didn't force my confidence upon you."
_Cummings_, with compunction.--"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,
Bartlett."
_Bartlett._--"Well, you haven't. It's all right."
_Cummings_, with anxious concern.--"I wish I could think so."
_Bartlett_, dryly.--"You have _my_ leave--my request, in fact." He
takes a turn about the room, thrusting his fingers through the hair on
his forehead, and letting it fall in a heavy tangle, and then pulling at
either side of his parted beard. In facing away from one of the sofas at
the end of the room, he looks back over his shoulder at it, falters,
wheels about, and picks up from it a lady's shawl and hat. "Hallo!" He
lets the shawl fall again into picturesque folds on the sofa. "This is
the spoil of no local beauty, Cummings. Look here; I don't understand
this. There has been an arrival."
_Cummings_, joining his friend in contemplation of the hat and shawl:
"Yes; it's an arrival beyond all question. Those are a _lady's_ things.
I should think that was a Paris hat." They remain looking at the things
some moments in silence.
_Bartlett._--"How should a Paris hat get here? I know the landlord
wasn't expecting it. But it can't be going to stay; it's here through
some caprice. It may be a transient of quality, but it's a transient. I
suppose we shall see the young woman belonging to it at dinner." He sets
the hat on his fist, and holds it at arm's length from him. "What a
curious thing it is about clothes"--
_Cummings._--"Don't, Bartlett, don't!"
_Bartlett._--"Why?"
_Cummings._--"I don't know. It makes me feel as if you were offering an
indignity to the young lady herself."
_Bartlett._--"You express my idea exactly. This frippery has not only
the girl's personality but her very spirit in it. This hat looks like
her; you can infer the whole woman from it, body and soul. It has a
conscious air, and so has the shawl, as if they had been eavesdropping
and had understood everything we were saying. They know all about my
heart-break, and so will she as soon as she puts them on; she will be
interested in me. The hat's in good taste, isn't it?"
_Cummings_, with sensitive reverence for the millinery which his friend
handles so daringly.-- "Exquisite it seems to me; but I don't know about
such things."
_Bartlett._--"Neither do I; but I feel about them. Besides, a painter
and glazier sees some things that are hidden from even a progressive
minister. Let us interpret the lovely being from her hat. This knot of
pale-blue flowers betrays her a blonde; this lace, this mass of silky,
fluffy, cob-webby what-do-you-call-it, and this delicate straw fabric
show that she is slight; a stout woman would kill it, or die in the
attempt. And I fancy--here pure inspiration comes to my aid--that she is
tallish. I'm afraid of her! No--wait! The shawl has something to say."
He takes it up and catches it across his arm, where he scans it
critically. "I don't know that I understand the shawl, exactly. It
proves her of a good height,--a short woman wouldn't, or had better not,
wear a shawl,--but this black colour: should you think it was mourning?
Have we a lovely young widow among us?"
_Cummings._--"I don't see how it could go with the hat, if it were."
_Bartlett._--"True; the hat is very pensive in tone, but it isn't
mourning. This shawl's very light, it's very warm; I construct from it a
pretty invalid." He lets the shawl slip down his arm to his hand, and
flings it back upon the sofa. "We return from the young lady's heart to
her brain--where she carries her sentiments. She has a nice taste in
perfumes, Cummings: faintest violet; that goes with the blue. Of what
religion is a young lady who uses violet, my reverend friend?"
_Cummings._--"Bartlett, you're outrageous. Put down that hat!"
_Bartlett._--"No, seriously. What is her little æsthetic specialty? Does
she sketch? Does she scribble? Tell me, thou wicked hat, does she flirt?
Come; out with the vows that you have heard poured into the shelly ear
under this knot of pale-blue flowers! Where be her gibes now, her
gambols, her flashes of merriment? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and
tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come;
make her laugh at that. Dost thou think, Horatio Cummings, Cleopatra
looked o' this fashion? And smelt so?"--he presses the knot of
artificial flowers to his moustache--"Pah!" He tosses the hat on the
sofa and walks away.
_Cummings._--"Bartlett, this is atrocious. I protest"--
_Bartlett._--"Well, give me up, I tell you." He returns, and takes his
friend by the shoulders, as before, and laughs. "I'm not worth your
refined pains. I might be good, at a pinch, but I never could be truly
lady-like."
_Cummings._--"You like to speak an infinite deal of nothing, don't
you?"
_Bartlett._--"It's the only thing that makes conversation." As he
releases Cummings, and turns away from him, in the doorway he confronts
an elderly gentleman, whose white hair and white moustache give
distinction to his handsome florid face. There is something military in
his port, as he stands immoveably erect upon the threshold, his left
hand lodged in the breast of his frock-coat, and his head carried with
an officer-like air of command. His visage grows momently redder and
redder, and his blue eyes blaze upon Bartlett with a fascinated glare
that briefly preludes the burst of fury with which he advances toward
him.
II.
GENERAL WYATT, BARTLETT, _and_ CUMMINGS.
_General Wyatt._--"You infernal scoundrel! What are you doing here?" He
raises his stick at Bartlett, who remains motionlessly frowning in
wrathful bewilderment, his strong hand knotting itself into a fist where
it hangs at his side, while Cummings starts toward them in dismay, with
his hand raised to interpose. "Didn't I tell you if I ever set eyes on
you again, you villain--didn't I warn you that if you ever crossed my
path, you"-- He stops with a violent self-arrest, and lets his stick drop
as he throws up both his hands in amaze. "Good Heavens! It's a mistake!
I beg your pardon, sir; I do, indeed." He lets fall his hands, and
stands staring into Bartlett's face with his illusion apparently not
fully dispelled. "A mistake, sir, a mistake. I was misled, sir, by the
most prodigious resemblance"-- At the sound of voices in the corridor
without, he turns from Bartlett, and starts back toward the door.
_A Voice_, very sweet and weak, without.--"I left them in here, I
think."
_Another Voice._--"You must sit down, Constance, and let me look."
_The First Voice._--"Oh, they'll be here."
_General Wyatt_, in a loud and anxious tone.--"Margaret, Margaret!
Don't bring Constance in here! Go away!" At the moment he reaches the
door by which he came in, two ladies in black enter the parlour by the
other door, the younger leaning weakly on the arm of the elder, and with
a languidly drooping head letting her eyes rove listlessly about over
the chairs and sofas. With an abrupt start at sight of Bartlett, who has
mechanically turned toward them, the elder lady arrests their movement.
III.
MRS. WYATT, CONSTANCE, _and the others_.
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Oh, in mercy's name!" The young lady wearily lifts her
eyes; they fall upon Bartlett's face, and a low cry parts her lips as
she approaches a pace or two nearer, releasing her arm from her
mother's.
_Constance._--"Ah!" She stops; her thin hands waver before her face, as
if to clear or to obstruct her vision, and all at once she sinks forward
into a little slender heap upon the floor, almost at Bartlett's feet. He
instantly drops upon his knees beside her, and stoops over her to lift
her up.
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Don't touch her, you cruel wretch! Your touch is poison;
the sight of you is murder!" Kneeling on the other side of her daughter,
she sets both her hands against his breast and pushes him back.
_General Wyatt._--"Margaret, stop! Look! Look at him again! It isn't
_he_!"
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Not he? Don't tell me! What?" She clutches Bartlett's
arm, and scans his face with dilating eyes. "Oh! it isn't, it isn't! But
go away,--go away, all the same! You may be an innocent man, but she
would perish in your presence. Keep your hands from her, sir! If your
wicked heart is not yet satisfied with your wicked work--Excuse me; I
_don't_ know what I'm saying! But if you have any pity in your faithless
soul--I--oh, _speak_ for me, James, and send him--implore him to go
away!" She bows her face over her daughter's pale visage, and sobs.
_General Wyatt._--"Sir, you must pardon us, and have the great
goodness to be patient. You have a right to feel yourself aggrieved by
what has happened, but no wrong is meant,--no offence. You must be so
kind as to go away. I will make you all the needed apologies and
explanations." He stoops over his daughter, as Bartlett, in a sort of
daze, rises from his knees and retires a few steps. "I beg your pardon,
sir,"--addressing himself to Cummings,--"will you help me a moment?"
Cummings, with delicate sympathy and tenderness, lifts the arms of the
insensible girl to her father's neck, and assists the General to rise
with his burden. "Thanks! She's hardly heavier, poor child, than a
ghost." The tears stand in his eyes, as he gathers her closer to him and
kisses her wan cheek. "Sir,"--as he moves away he speaks to
Bartlett,--"do me the favour to remain here till I can return to offer
you reparation." He makes a stately effort to bow to Bartlett in leaving
the room, while his wife, who follows with the young lady's hat and
shawl, looks back at the painter with open abhorrence.
IV.
BARTLETT _and_ CUMMINGS.
_Bartlett_, turning to his friend from the retreating group on which he
has kept his eyes steadfastly fixed.--"Where are their keepers?" He is
pale with suppressed rage.
_Cummings._--"Their keepers?"
_Bartlett_, savagely.--"Yes! Have they escaped from them, or is it one
of the new ideas to let lunatics go about the country alone? If that old
fool hadn't dropped his stick, I'd have knocked him over that table in
another instant. And that other old maniac,--what did she mean by
pushing me back in that way? How do you account for this thing,
Cummings? What do you make of it?"
_Cummings._--"I don't know, upon my word. There seems to be some
mystery,--some painful mystery. But the gentleman will be back directly,
I suppose, and"--
_Bartlett_, crushing his hat over his eyes.--"I'll leave you to receive
him and his mystery. I've had enough of both." He moves toward the door.
_Cummings_, detaining him.--"Bartlett, you're surely not going away?"
_Bartlett._--"Yes, I am!"
_Cummings._--"But he'll be here in a moment. He said he would come back
and satisfy the claim which you certainly have to an explanation."
_Bartlett_, furiously.--"Claim? I've a perfect Alabama Claim to an
explanation. He can't satisfy it; he shall not try. It's a little too
much to expect me to be satisfied with anything he can say after what's
passed. Get out of the way, Cummings, or I'll put you on top of the
piano."
_Cummings._--"You may throw me out of the window, if you like, but not
till I've done my best to keep you here. It's a shame, it's a crime to
go away. You talk about lunatics: you're a raving madman, yourself. Have
one glimmer of reason, do; and see what you're about. It's a mistake;
it's a misunderstanding. It's his right, it's your duty, to have it
cleared up. Come, you've a conscience, Bartlett, and a clean one. Don't
give way to your abominable temper. What? You won't stay? Bartlett, I
blush for you!"
_Bartlett._--"Blush unseen, then!" He thrusts Cummings aside and pushes
furiously from the room. Cummings looks into the corridor after him, and
then returns, panting, to the piano, and mechanically rearranges the
things at his feet; he walks nervously away, and takes some turns up and
down the room, looking utterly bewildered, and apparently uncertain
whether to go or stay. But he has decided upon the only course really
open to him by sinking down into one of the armchairs, when General
Wyatt appears at the threshold of the door on the right of the piano.
Cummings rises and comes forward in great embarrassment to meet him.
V.
CUMMINGS _and_ GENERAL WYATT.
_General Wyatt_, with a look of surprise at not seeing Bartlett.--"The
other gentleman"--
_Cummings._--"My friend has gone out. I hope he will return soon. He
has--I hardly know what to say to you, sir. He has done himself great
injustice; but it was natural that under the circumstances"--
_General Wyatt_, with hurt pride.--"Perfectly. I should have lost my
temper, too; but I think I should have waited at the request--the prayer
of an older man. I don't mind his temper; the other villain had _no_
temper. Sir, am I right in addressing you as the Rev. Arthur Cummings?"
_Cummings._--"My name is Arthur Cummings. I am a minister."
_General Wyatt._--"I thought I was not mistaken this time. I heard you
preach last Sunday in Boston; and I know your cousin, Major Cummings of
the 34th Artillery. I am General Wyatt."
_Cummings_, with a start of painful surprise and sympathy.--"General
Wyatt?"
_General Wyatt_, keenly.--"Your cousin has mentioned me to you?"
_Cummings._--"Yes,--oh yes, certainly; certainly, very often, General
Wyatt. But"--endeavouring to recover himself--"your name is known to us
all, and honoured. I--I am glad to see you back; I--understood you were
in Paris."
_General Wyatt_, with fierce defiance.--"I was in Paris three weeks
ago." Some moments of awkward silence ensue, during which General Wyatt
does not relax his angry attitude.
_Cummings_, finally.--"I am sorry my friend is not here to meet you. I
ought to say, in justice to him, that his hasty temper does great wrong
to his heart and judgment."
_General Wyatt._--"Why, yes, sir; so does mine--so does mine."
_Cummings_, with a respectful smile lost upon the General.--"And I know
that he will certainly be grieved in this instance to have yielded to
it."
_General Wyatt_, with sudden meekness.--"I hope so, sir. But I am not
altogether sorry that he has done it. I have not only an explanation but
a request to make,--a very great and strange favour to ask,--and I am
not sure that I should be able to treat him civilly enough throughout an
entire interview to ask it properly." Cummings listens with an air of
attentive respect, but makes, to this strange statement, no response
other than a look of question, while the General pokes about on the
carpet at his feet with the point of his stick for a moment before he
brings it resolutely down upon the floor with a thump, and resumes,
fiercely again: "Sir, your friend is the victim of an extraordinary
resemblance, which is so much more painful to us than we could have made
it to him that I have to struggle with my reason to believe that the
apology should not come from his side rather than mine. He may feel that
we have outraged him, but every look of his, every movement, every tone
of his voice, is a mortal wound, a deadly insult to us. He should not
live, sir, in the same solar system!" The General deals the floor
another stab with his cane, while his eyes burn vindictively upon the
mild brown orbs of Cummings, wide open with astonishment. He falters,
with returning consciousness of his attitude: "I--I beg your pardon,
sir; I am ridiculous." He closes his lips pathetically, and lets fall
his head. When he lifts it again, it is to address Cummings with a
singular gentleness: "I know that I speak to a gentleman."
_Cummings._--"I try to be a good man."
_General Wyatt._--"I had formed that idea of you, sir, in the pulpit.
Will you do me the great kindness to answer a question, personal to
myself, which I must ask?"
_Cummings._--"By all means."
_General Wyatt._--"You spoke of supposing me still in Paris. Are you
aware of any circumstances--painful circumstances--connected with my
presence there? Pardon my asking; I wouldn't press you if I could help."
_Cummings_, with reluctance.--"I had just heard something about--a
letter from a friend"--
_General Wyatt_, bitterly.--"The news has travelled fast. Well, sir, a
curious chance--a pitiless caprice of destiny--connects your friend with
that miserable story." At Cummings's look of amaze: "Through no fault of
his, sir; through no fault of his. Sir, I shall not seem to obtrude my
trouble unjustifiably upon you when I tell you how; you will see that it
was necessary for me to speak. I am glad you already know something of
the affair, and I am sure that you will regard what I have to say with
the right feeling of a gentleman,--of, as you say, a good man."
_Cummings._--"Whatever you think necessary to say to me shall be sacred.
But I hope you won't feel that it is necessary to say anything more. I
am confident that when my friend has your assurance from me that what
has happened is the result of a distressing association"--
_General Wyatt._--"I thank you, sir. But something more is due to him;
how much more you shall judge. Something more is due to us: I wish to
preserve the appearance of sanity, in his eyes and your own.
Nevertheless"--the General's tone and bearing perceptibly stiffen--"if
you are reluctant"--
_Cummings_, with reverent cordiality.--"General Wyatt, I shall feel
deeply honoured by whatever confidence you repose in me. I need not say
how dear your fame is to us all." General Wyatt, visibly moved, bows to
the young minister. "It was only on your account that I hesitated."
_General Wyatt._--"Thanks. I understand. I will be explicit, but I will
try to be brief. Your friend bears this striking, this painful
resemblance to the man who has brought this blight upon us all; yes,
sir,"--at Cummings's look of deprecation,--"to a scoundrel whom I hardly
know how to characterise aright--in the presence of a clergyman. Two
years ago--doubtless your correspondent has written--my wife and
daughter (they were then abroad without me) met him in Paris; and he won
the poor child's affection. My wife's judgment was also swayed in his
favour,--against her first impulse of distrust; but when I saw him, I
could not endure him. Yet I was helpless: my girl's happiness was bound
up in him; all that I could do was to insist upon delay. He was an
American, well related, unobjectionable by all the tests which society
can apply, and I might have had to wait long for the proofs that an
accident gave me against him. The man's whole soul was rotten; at the
time he had wound himself into my poor girl's innocent heart, a woman
was living who had the just and perhaps the legal claim of a wife upon
him; he was a felon besides,--a felon shielded through pity for his
friends by the man whose name he had forged; he was of course a liar and
a coward: I beat him with my stick, sir. Ah! I made him confess his
infamy under his own hand, and then"--the General advances defiantly
upon Cummings, who unconsciously retires a pace--"and then I compelled
him to break with my daughter. Do you think I did right?"
_Cummings._--"I don't exactly understand."
_General Wyatt._--"Why, sir, it happens often enough in this shabby
world that a man gains a poor girl's love, and then jilts her. I chose
what I thought the less terrible sorrow for my child. I could not tell
her how filthily unworthy he was without bringing to her pure heart a
sense of intolerable contamination; I could not endure to speak of it
even to my wife. It seemed better that they should both suffer such
wrong as a broken engagement might bring them than that they should know
what I knew. He was master of the part, and played it well; he showed
himself to them simply a heartless scoundrel, and he remains in my
power, an outcast now and a convict whenever I will. My story, as it
seems to be, is well known in Paris; but the worst is unknown. I choose
still that it shall be thought my girl was the victim of a dastardly
slight, and I bear with her and her mother the insolent pity with which
the world visits such sorrow." He pauses, and then brokenly resumes:
"The affair has not turned out as I hoped, in the little I could hope
from it. My trust that the blow, which must sink so deeply into her
heart, would touch her pride, and that this would help her to react
against it, was mistaken. In such things it appears a woman has no
pride; I did not know it; we men are different. The blow crushed her;
that was all. Sometimes I am afraid that I must yet try the effect of
the whole truth upon her; that I must try if the knowledge of all his
baseness cannot restore to her the self-respect which the wrong done
herself seems to have robbed her of. And yet I tremble lest the sense of
his fouler shame--I may be fatally temporising; but in her present
state, I dread any new shock for her; it may be death--I"-- He pauses
again, and sets his lips firmly; all at once he breaks into a sob. "I--I
beg your pardon, sir."
_Cummings._--"Don't! You wrong yourself and me. I have seen Miss Wyatt;
but I hope"--
_General Wyatt._--"You have seen her ghost. You have not seen the
radiant creature that was once alive. Well, sir; enough of this. There
is little left to trouble you with. We landed eight days ago, and I have
since been looking about for some place in which my daughter could hide
herself; I can't otherwise suggest her morbid sensitiveness, her terror
of people. This region was highly commended to me for its healthfulness;
but I have come upon this house by chance. I understood that it was
empty, and I thought it more than probable that we might pass the autumn
months here unmolested by the presence of any one belonging to our
world, if not in entire seclusion. At the best, my daughter would hardly
have been able to endure another change at once; so far as anything
could give her pleasure, the beauty and the wild quiet of the region had
pleased her, but she is now quite prostrated, sir,"--
_Cummings_, definitively.--"My friend will go away at once. There is
nothing else for it."
_General Wyatt._--"That is too much to ask."
_Cummings._--"I won't conceal my belief that he will think so. But there
can be no question with him when"--
_General Wyatt._--"When you tell him our story?" After a moment: "Yes,
he has a right to know it--as the rest of the world knows it. You must
tell him, sir."
_Cummings_, gently.--"No, he need know nothing beyond the fact of this
resemblance to some one painfully associated with your past lives. He is
a man whose real tenderness of heart would revolt from knowledge that
could inflict further sorrow upon you."
_General Wyatt._--"Sir, will you convey to this friend of yours an old
man's very humble apology, and sincere prayer for his forgiveness?"
_Cummings._--"He will not exact anything of that sort. The evidence of
misunderstanding will be clear to him at a word from me."
_General Wyatt._--"But he has a right to this explanation from my own
lips, and-- Sir, I am culpably weak. But now that I have missed seeing
him here, I confess that I would willingly avoid meeting him. The mere
sound of his voice, as I heard it before I saw him, in first coming upon
you, was enough to madden me. Can you excuse my senseless dereliction to
him?"
_Cummings._--"I will answer for him."
_General Wyatt._--"Thanks. It seems monstrous that I should be asking
and accepting these great favours. But you are doing a deed of charity
to a helpless man utterly beggared in pride." He chokes with emotion,
and does not speak for a moment. "Your friend is also--he is not also--a
clergyman?"
_Cummings_, smiling.--"No. He is a painter."
_General Wyatt._--"Is he a man of note? Successful in his profession?"
_Cummings._--"Not yet. But that is certain to come."
_General Wyatt._--"He is poor?"
_Cummings._--"He is a young painter."
_General Wyatt._--"Sir, excuse me. Had he planned to remain here some
time yet?"
_Cummings_, reluctantly.--"He has been sketching here. He had expected
to stay through October."
_General Wyatt._--"You make the sacrifice hard to accept--I beg your
pardon! But I must accept it. I am bound hand and foot."
_Cummings._--"I am sorry to have been obliged to tell you this."
_General Wyatt._--"I obliged you, sir; I obliged you. Give me your
advice, sir; you know your friend. What shall I do? I am not rich. I
don't belong to a branch of the government service in which people
enrich themselves. But I have my pay; and if your friend could sell me
the pictures he's been painting here"--
_Cummings._--"That's quite impossible. There is no form in which I could
propose such a thing to a man of his generous pride."
_General Wyatt._--"Well, then, sir, I must satisfy myself as I can to
remain his debtor. Will you kindly undertake to tell him?"
_An Elderly Serving-Woman_, who appears timidly and anxiously at the
right-hand door.--"General Wyatt."
_General Wyatt_, with a start.--"Yes, Mary! Well?"
_Mary_, in vanishing.--"Mrs. Wyatt wishes to speak with you."
_General Wyatt_, going up to Cummings.-- "I must go, sir. I leave unsaid
what I cannot even try to say." He offers his hand.
_Cummings_, grasping the proffered hand.--"Everything is understood."
But as Mr. Cummings returns from following General Wyatt to the door,
his face does not confirm the entire security of his words. He looks
anxious and perturbed, and when he has taken up his hat and stick, he
stands pondering absent-mindedly. At last he puts on his hat and starts
briskly toward the door. Before he reaches it, he encounters Bartlett,
who advances abruptly into the room. "Oh! I was going to look for you."
VI.
CUMMINGS _and_ BARTLETT.
_Bartlett_, sulkily.--"Were you?" He walks, without looking at Cummings,
to where his painter's paraphernalia are lying, and begins to pick them
up.
_Cummings._--"Yes." In great embarrassment: "Bartlett, General Wyatt has
been here."
_Bartlett_, without looking round.--"Who is General Wyatt?"
_Cummings._--"I mean the gentleman who--whom you wouldn't wait to see."
_Bartlett._--"Um!" He has gathered the things into his arms, and is
about to leave the room.
_Cummings_, in great distress.--"Bartlett, Bartlett! Don't go! I
implore you, if you have any regard for me whatever, to hear what I have
to say. It's boyish, it's cruel, it's cowardly to behave as you're
doing!"
_Bartlett._--"Anything more, Mr. Cummings? I give you benefit of
clergy."
_Cummings._--"I take it--to denounce your proceeding as something that
you'll always be sorry for and ashamed of."
_Bartlett._--"Oh! Then, if you have quite freed your mind, I think I may
go."
_Cummings._--"No, no! You mustn't go. Don't go, my dear fellow. Forgive
me! I know how insulted you feel, but upon my soul it's all a
mistake,--it is, indeed. General Wyatt"--Bartlett falters a moment and
stands as if irresolute whether to stay and listen or push on out of the
room--"the young lady--I don't know how to begin!"
_Bartlett_, relenting a little.--"Well? I'm sorry for _you_, Cummings. I
left a very awkward business to you, and it wasn't yours either. As for
General Wyatt, as he chooses to call himself"--
_Cummings_, in amaze.--"_Call_ himself? It's his _name_!"
_Bartlett._--"Oh, very likely! So is King David his name, when he
happens to be in a Scriptural craze. What explanation have you been
commissioned to make me? What apology?"
_Cummings._--"The most definite, the most satisfactory. You resemble in
a most extraordinary manner a man who has inflicted an abominable wrong
upon these people, a treacherous and cowardly villain"--
_Bartlett_, in a burst of fury.--"Stop! Is that your idea of an apology,
an explanation? Isn't it enough that I should be threatened, and
vilified, and have people fainting at the sight of me, but I must be
told by way of reparation that it all happens because I look like a
rascal?"
_Cummings._--"My dear friend! Do listen to me!"
_Bartlett._--"No, sir, I won't listen to you! I've listened too much!
What right, I should like to know, have they to find this resemblance in
me? And do they suppose that I'm going to be placated by being told that
they treat me like a rogue because I look like one? It is a little too
much. A man calls 'Stop thief' after me and expects me to be delighted
when he tells me I look like a thief! The reparation is an additional
insult. I don't choose to know that they fancy this infamous resemblance
in me. Their pretending it is an outrage; and your reporting it to me is
an offence. Will you tell them what I say? Will you tell this General
Wyatt and the rest of his Bedlam-broke-loose, that they may all go to
the"--
_Cummings._--"For shame, for shame! You outrage a terrible sorrow! You
insult a trouble sore to death! You trample upon, an anguish that should
be sacred to your tears!"
_Bartlett_, resting his elbow on the corner of the piano.--"What--what
do you mean, Cummings?"
_Cummings._--"What do I mean? What you are not worthy to know! I mean
that these people, against whom you vent your stupid rage, are worthy of
angelic pity. I mean that by some disastrous mischance you resemble to
the life, in tone, manner, and feature, the wretch who won that poor
girl's heart, and then crushed it; who--Bartlett, look here! These are
the people--this is the young lady--of whom my friend wrote me from
Paris: do you understand?"
_Bartlett_, in a dull bewilderment.--"No, I don't understand."
_Cummings._--"Why, you know what we were talking of just before they
came in: you know what I told you of that cruel business."
_Bartlett._--"Well?"
_Cummings._--"Well, this is the young lady"--
_Bartlett_, dauntedly.--"Oh, come now! You don't expect me to believe
that! It isn't a stage-play."
_Cummings._--"Indeed, indeed, I tell you the miserable truth."
_Bartlett._--"Do you mean to say that _this_ is the young girl who was
jilted in that way? Who--Do you mean-- Do you intend to tell me-- Do you
suppose--Cummings"--
_Cummings._--"Yes, yes, yes!"
_Bartlett._--"Why, man, she's in Paris, according to your own showing!"
_Cummings._--"She was in Paris three weeks ago. They have just brought
her home, to help her hide her suffering, as if it were her shame, from
all who know it. They are in this house by chance, but they are here. I
mean what I say. You _must_ believe it, shocking and wild as it is."
_Bartlett_, after a prolonged silence in which he seems trying to
realise the fact.--"If you were a man capable of such a ghastly
joke--but that's impossible." He is silent again, as before. "And
I-- What did you say about me? That I look like a man who"-- He stops and
stares into Cummings's face without speaking, as if he were trying to
puzzle the mystery out; then, with fallen head, he muses in a voice of
devout and reverent tenderness: "That--that--broken--lily! Oh!" With a
sudden start he flings his burden upon the closed piano, whose hidden
strings hum with the blow, and advances upon Cummings: "And you can
_tell_ it? Shame on _you_! It ought to be known to no one upon earth!
And you--you show that gentle creature's death-wound to teach something
like human reason to a surly dog like me? Oh, it's monstrous! I _wasn't_
worth it. Better have let me go, where I would, how I would. What did it
matter what I thought or said? And I--I look like that devil, do I? I
have his voice, his face, his movement? Cummings, you've over-avenged
yourself."
_Cummings._--"Don't take it that way, Bartlett. It _is_ hideous. But I
didn't make it so, nor you. It's a fatality, it's a hateful chance. But
you see now, don't you, Bartlett, how the sight of you must affect them,
and how anxious her father must be to avoid you? He most humbly asked
your forgiveness, and he hardly knew how to ask that you would not let
her see you again. But I told him there could be no question with you;
that of course you would prevent it, and at once. I know it's a great
sacrifice to expect you to go"--
_Bartlett._--"Go? What are you talking about?" He breaks again from the
daze into which he had relapsed. "If there's a hole on the face of the
earth where I can hide myself from them, I want to find it. What do you
think I'm made of? Go? I ought to be shot away out of a mortar; I ought
to be struck away by lightning! Oh, I can't excuse you, Cummings! The
indelicacy, the brutality of telling me that! No, no,--I can't overlook
it." He shakes his head and walks away from his friend; then he returns,
and bends on him a look of curious inquiry. "Am I really such a
ruffian"--he speaks very gently, almost meekly, now--"that you didn't
believe anything short of that would bring me to my senses? Who told you
this of her?"
_Cummings._--"Her father."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, that's too loathsome! Had the man no soul, no mercy?
Did he think me such a consummate beast that nothing less would drive me
away? Yes, he did! Yes, I made him think so! Oh!" He hangs his head and
walks away with a shudder.
_Cummings._--"I don't know that he did you that injustice; but I'm
afraid _I_ did. I was at my wits' end."
_Bartlett_, very humbly.--"Oh, I don't know that you were wrong."
_Cummings._--"I suppose that his anxiety for her life made it
comparatively easy for him to speak of the hurt to her pride. She can't
be long for this world."
_Bartlett._--"No, she had the dying look!" After a long pause, in which
he has continued to wander aimlessly about the room: "Cummings, is it
necessary that you should tell him you told me?"
_Cummings._--"You know I hate concealments of any kind, Bartlett."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, well; do it then!"
_Cummings._--"But I don't know that we shall see him again; and even if
we do, I don't see how I can tell him unless he asks. It's rather
painful."
_Bartlett._--"Well, take that little sin on your conscience if you can.
It seems to me too ghastly that I should know what you've told me; it's
indecent. Cummings,"--after another pause,--"how does a man go about
such a thing? How does he contrive to tell the woman whose heart he has
won that he doesn't care for her, and break the faith that she would
have staked her life on? Oh, I know,--women do such things, too; but
it's different, by a whole world's difference. A man comes and a man
goes, but a woman _stays_. The world is before him after that happens,
and we don't think him much of a man if he can't get over it. But she,
she has been sought out; she has been made to believe that her smile and
her looks are heaven, poor, foolish, helpless idol! her fears have been
laid, all her pretty maidenly traditions, her proud reserves overcome;
she takes him into her inmost soul,--to find that his love is a lie, a
lie! Imagine it! She can't do anything. She can't speak. She can't move
as long as she lives. She must stay where she has been left, and look
and act as if nothing had happened. Oh, good Heaven! And I, _I_ look
like a man who could do that!" After a silence: "I feel as if there were
blood on me!" He goes to the piano, and gathering up his things turns
about towards Cummings again: "Come, man; I'm going. It's sacrilege to
stay an instant,--to exist."
_Cummings._--"Don't take it in that way, Bartlett. I blame myself very
much for not having spared you in what I said. I wouldn't have told you
of it, if I could have supposed that an accidental resemblance of the
sort would distress you so."
_Bartlett_, contritely.--"You had to tell me. I forced you to extreme
measures. I'm quite worthy to look like him. Good Lord! I suppose I
should be capable of his work." He moves towards the door with his
burden, but before he reaches it General Wyatt, from the corridor, meets
him with an air of confused agitation. Bartlett halts awkwardly, and
some of the things slip from his hold to the floor.
VII.
GENERAL WYATT, CUMMINGS, _and_ BARTLETT.
_General Wyatt._--"Sir, I am glad to see you." He pronounces the
civility with a manner evidently affected by the effort to reconcile
Bartlett's offensive personal appearance with his own sense of
duty. "I--I was sorry to miss you before; and now I wish-- Your
friend"--referring with an inquiring glance to Cummings--"has explained
to you the cause of our very extraordinary behaviour, and I hope you"--
_Bartlett._--"Mr. Cummings has told me that I have the misfortune to
resemble some one with whom you have painful associations. That is quite
enough, and entirely justifies you. I am going at once, and I trust you
will forgive my rudeness in absenting myself a moment ago. I have a bad
temper; but I never could forgive myself if I had forced my friend"--he
turns and glares warningly at Cummings, who makes a faint pantomime of
conscientious protest as Bartlett proceeds--"to hear anything more than
the mere fact from you. No, no,"--as General Wyatt seems about to
speak,--"it would be atrocious in me to seek to go behind it. I wish to
know nothing more." Cummings gives signs of extreme unrest at being made
a party to this tacit deception, and General Wyatt, striking his palms
hopelessly together, walks to the other end of the room. Bartlett
touches the fallen camp-stool with his foot. "Cummings, will you be kind
enough to put that on top of this other rubbish?" He indicates his
armful, and as Cummings complies, he says in a swift fierce whisper:
"Her secret is mine. If you dare to hint that you've told it to me,
I'll--I'll assault you in your own pulpit." Then to General Wyatt, who
is returning toward him: "Good-morning, sir."