A WALTONVILLE DELILAH
Pacing his quiet study, sitting before his desk, eating his
absent-minded meals, lying sleepless in his bed, Dr. Scott waited
impatiently. In another month school would begin, but school work had
become routine which would take only his time and would not interrupt
his mental processes. He had read the last of Basil Everman's
compositions and had made complete and elaborate plans for their
presentation to the world, even though Dr. Lister had warned him that
Mrs. Lister's consent must first be gained. Dr. Scott did not believe
for an instant that she would refuse. She would rejoice as any sensible
person would in this late fame for her brother.
Already he saw before him "Miscellaneous Studies, Basil Everman," "The
Poems of Basil Everman," "Bitter Bread and other Stories, Basil
Everman," "Translations from the Greek, Basil Everman." The books would
need no wide advertising to float them; they would come gradually and
certainly into favor. They should be smoothly bound in dark blue,
excellently printed on thick, light, creamy paper in large type, and on
the title-page of each should stand "The Works of Basil Everman, vol.--,
Henry Harrington Scott, Editor." He gave a half-day to deciding whether
"Professor of English Literature in Walton College" should be added.
He saw before him his own sentences, few in number, rich in meaning. He
wrote them down, some on slips of paper which he carried with him on
long walks into the country or held in his hand in the twilight as he
sat in his study. "Everman's style," he wrote, "combines the freshness
and lightness of youth with the more solid qualities which belong to
maturity. He ornamented dexterously the subjects whose impressiveness
was enhanced by an embroidery of words and with equal taste pruned
rigorously those passages whose truth was best set forth undecked." Here
and there he underlined a word as an indication that it was to be
further considered and its suitability scrutinized.
He placed Basil in the Everman house, saw him walking the streets and
wrote a sentence which pleased him mightily. The sentence was to please
poor Mary Alcestis: "The history of Basil Everman offers a positive
answer to that problem about which there is and will always be frequent
contention--whether the human soul finds within itself the material for
such presentations." Basil Everman had found tragedy, gloom, passion in
his own heart and in the literature which he read and not in his own
experience.
He determined to quote passages which he had loved and
cherished--cherished, it might well seem for this end: Basil Everman
"sensed that old Greek question, yet unanswered. The unconquerable
specter still flitting among the forest trees at twilight; rising
ribbed out of the sea sand; white, a strange Aphrodite--out of the sea
foam; stretching its gray, cloven wings among the clouds; turning the
light of their sunsets into blood."
Another sentence he meant to use which was still new and whose
applicability he saw as yet vaguely:
"She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire she
has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has
been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and
trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was
the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and
all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives
only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments,
and tinged the eyelids and the hands."
He considered the sources for the brief biography. There was Mary
Alcestis, first and most important. There were, he hoped, letters. And
there was Thomasina.
His delight in his work set the machinery of his mind into swift
revolution. He recalled with satisfaction his short contributions to
contemporary literature and got down the scrapbooks in which he had
preserved them. Here was an admirable paragraph--there was one which
should be recast. He read again the carefully preserved letters which he
had received in agreement and commendation. When the works of Basil
Everman appeared, Vreeland and Lewis and Wilson would in all probability
write to him again. He was still not middle-aged; there might be before
him deeper literary satisfactions than the editing of another man's
work, extraordinary as that work was. He might see some happy day his
own productions beautifully printed, beautifully bound, his own name in
gold on dark-blue cloth--Henry Harrington Scott.
In the glow which pervaded his spirit, old feelings revived, feelings
which had no connection with literary matters. He began to remember once
more not only why he had married, but why he had married Mrs. Scott. He
saw her blue eyes, unsharpened and unfaded; he saw her eager face; he
heard--alas for him!--her siren tones of appreciation and admiration. He
had not, he knew, justified himself in her eyes, but that should all be
changed; he promised himself that she should think well of him, that he
would still achieve that success which every woman has a right to expect
in the man whom she marries. Even Walter--supercilious, prosperous
Walter, jingling coin in his pocket--should think well of him. To Cora's
opinion he attributed no value. But he anticipated more and more
pleasantly the moment when he should tell Mrs. Scott his happy secret.
That his condition might become apparent to the sharp eyes which daily
reviewed him, that it might require some cunning to conceal from his
wife the aura of renewed hopes in which he walked, did not occur to him.
If the evidences of excitement had been hers, if she had shown signs of
interest in affairs unknown to him, he would have let her proceed,
unquestioned and unmolested, glad in his secret soul that he did not
have to know. But Mrs. Scott's position was different. She planned a
gayer August than ever before, and such an expression of countenance as
that brought by Dr. Scott to breakfast could have been inspired only by
some small literary success.
Had the work which he had done been paid for? Mrs. Scott had long since
lost interest in successes which were not accompanied by money, and
since she had heard from Mr. Utterly of the prices paid for promising
stories, she had despised in secret her husband's receipts. It seemed to
her that now he must have achieved something worth while.
In his absence on one of his long walks, she visited his study and
turned over his papers. But he had left accessible no written word of
his own, and Basil Everman's manuscript lay safely in Dr. Lister's desk
drawer, awaiting Mrs. Lister's decision. She slipped out of their
envelopes several letters, but found only a few small bills for books.
Neither an invitation to write an article in exchange for a hundred
dollars nor an actual check for ten dollars appeared. She frowned and
for several days said less than usual. Then, Dr. Scott's preoccupation
increasing, she pleaded general weariness and a severe headache and
stayed in bed.
In the evening Dr. Scott went to sit for an hour in her room. She lay
high on her pillows with a flutter of lace and ribbons about her, and he
sat by the window, a pleasant breeze fanning him, a young moon smiling
at him over the shoulder of the Lister house. The Lister house was dark
and somber in the deep shadow and its almost sinister appearance might
have warned him to keep its secrets. But he was not warned.
Mrs. Scott talked about his work, about the drudgery of the classroom,
about the dull boys and girls upon whom he wasted so many weary hours,
about the pittance he received. She wished for him leisure, larger pay,
opportunities such as he deserved.
"It is all you need to bring you out. I get angry at the conditions
under which you slave in this dull town when you might take a high place
elsewhere and become famous."
"You rate me highly, my dear," said Dr. Scott. Nevertheless he smiled.
"No, I don't," contradicted Mrs. Scott. "Here is Mrs. Lister's brother
writing a few things and dull things at that, and having his name
heralded through the whole world; and here is Eleanor Bent, a nobody,
with her name in every one's mouth."
Dr. Scott looked out of the window. He had suffered--and blushed with
shame for it--acute envy of Eleanor and her youth.
"You could do so much better! You are older and more learned and you
have had more experience and more outlook on the world."
Dr. Scott glanced back into the room. His eyes settled themselves on the
figure on the bed. If he could have seen Mrs. Scott clearly, he would
have recalled the disillusioning years between his wedding day and this
moment. But he saw in the dusk only the motion of a hand which seemed to
brush away a tear. This was the wife of his bosom, a part of himself!
"I am to have an enviable opportunity," said he slowly. "The Listers
have asked me--that is, Dr. Lister has asked me--to edit and prepare for
publication the works of Mrs. Lister's brother, Basil Everman."
"You mean that story and those other things!" Mrs. Scott's voice was
flat, disappointed, angry.
"Those and many equally valuable compositions which have accidentally
come to light after many years."
"'Accidentally come to light'!" repeated Mrs. Scott, with fine scorn.
"Didn't I tell you they would ransack every chest in the attic after
what Utterly said? Are they really worth anything?"
"They are magnificent," said Dr. Scott, trying to keep his voice steady.
"They will form a notable addition to the literature of America, to the
literature indeed of the world."
"Of all things!" With a vigor which escaped the notice of her husband
Mrs. Scott sat suddenly upright. "Won't this town be surprised!"
"Oh, my dear!" protested Dr. Scott. "Nothing is to be said, nothing! It
is all in the air as yet. Nothing is decided definitely. Oh, my dear,
not a word to any one!"
"I am glad to hear that nothing has been decided definitely," said Mrs.
Scott. "Glad, indeed! What have they offered you to do this work,
Henry?"
Dr. Scott's whole body quivered.
"Offered me?"
"Yes; what have they offered to pay you?"
"We haven't said anything about pay."
"Were you going to do it for nothing?" Mrs. Scott's tone implied that
exactly this particular lunacy was to have been expected.
"It is a very great honor to be asked," answered Dr. Scott nervously.
"It will, I am convinced, be an opportunity, leading probably to other
things."
"To other things!" repeated Mrs. Scott. "I want something more
substantial than opportunities leading to other things. I am sick of
honors without pay. Why, Utterly said he would give a thousand dollars
for another story! A thousand dollars is almost as much as you earn in
an entire year. They'll make a fortune, and they are well off already! I
shouldn't be surprised if they could live without Dr. Lister's salary.
And he gets five hundred dollars more a year than you do. If you charge
them well, they'll think better of you. I'll warrant they're trying to
get it done here because they think you'll do it for nothing and for no
other reason whatever. I am pretty sick of the Listers anyhow. Here is
poor Cora in love with Richard and encouraged by all of them since she
was a baby and he running round now with that miserable Bent girl. I
would make them pay well for every hour I spent on their work! They will
make enough out of it, I'll warrant! Why, it is like finding money for
them! I--"
Dr. Scott lifted his hand with an uncertain motion to his head. Thus
might Samson have felt of his shorn pate when he lifted it from the lap
of Delilah.
"Oh, my dear!" said he. "Oh, my dear!"
"I mean it all," insisted Mrs. Scott. "Every last word."
Then, to his unspeakable discomfort, she stepped from bed and came
across the room and kissed him.
"I'd charge either by the hour for my work, or else I'd ask a high
percentage on the sale of the books and have an iron-bound agreement to
see the publisher's accounts. You cannot be too careful. This is the
time for you to take council with Walter, papa. You have no idea how
keen he is; you have never had patience with him or done him justice. I
think you should send word to him to come here. He would be glad to make
the trip for such a reason. You could go to see him, but if he came here
he could talk to the Listers himself. He is certainly the one to make
the contract. I do not see why you should trouble yourself with the
matter at all."
Mrs. Scott took silence for consent, or at least for respectful
consideration of her suggestions.
"You think it over," said she, as she returned to bed. "You will see
that I am right."
Dr. Scott slept uneasily. He dreamed of impending avalanches and of
being compelled to enter, not entirely clothed, into the presence of
some august tribunal.
When he woke early on a cloudy morning, he lay for a while very still
with his eyes turned away from the sleeping figure at his side. After a
long time he rose quickly and, taking his clothing, stole into the spare
room to dress. Something had happened to him overnight. A situation long
suspended had crystallized, long dully seen, had become plain. Betrayed
and cajoled, he had revealed a secret entrusted to him. He laid no blame
upon his wife. He said, without bitterness, that he should have known,
did know Mrs. Scott. It seemed to him--and herein lay the source of his
misery--that his own moral fiber must have been gradually weakening or
he could not have so failed himself.
When he heard Mrs. Scott stirring, he came into the room.
"I hope you feel quite well."
"Oh, yes!" She did not regret yesterday's strategy, but she was thinking
that now yesterday's tasks were still to be done. "I think you ought to
write to Walter right after breakfast, Henry."
Dr. Scott straightened his tall figure. His declaration of independence
had been formulated.
"It is none of Walter's business. He is perfectly incapable of managing
this affair. His instincts are those of the counting-house. He is to
know nothing about it. If you speak of it to any one, I shall give the
whole thing up, both the work and the money--if there is any money
involved. My sense of honor will not allow me to proceed with it for a
day."
Brush in hand, Mrs. Scott looked at him with amazement. Unfortunately
she had never been spoken to in this fashion in all her married life.
"Do you think you've succeeded so well, Henry, that you can't take any
advice?"
"I know better than you do whether I've succeeded or failed. I'm
speaking of this particular instance, and what I say is this, if you
breathe a word of what I have told you to Walter, or to any one, I give
the whole thing up! Work like this is generally paid for, but I do not
care whether it is paid or not. I should be glad to do it for nothing.
Since you do care for money, you had better see that you don't lose
whatever there is in it by talking about it."
He went downstairs, his knees shaking under him, but a heavenly sense of
freedom in his heart. In the dining-room he found Cora standing by the
window waiting for the advent of her elders. He had meant to talk to
her, but this was not the time. He felt a sudden, keen pity for her
white face and her drooping shoulders. She was so steady, so occupied
with her own small concerns, so--if the truth must be told--dull; he did
not think her capable of any grand passion or deep sorrow. It was not
easy, he was certain, for her to bear her trouble under her mother's
eye. But she would get over it, she was young. It might make it harder
for her if he talked to her about it.
All day he hung about the house. Mrs. Scott was packing her trunks, but
he was afraid that some one might come in. He was not yet quite as free
as he thought. To-morrow she would be gone and he could breathe for a
little while in peace. Then his sensitive soul reproached him. When at
dark, Dr. Lister came to tell him that Mrs. Lister had consented to the
publication of Basil's work, and he went to tell Mrs. Scott, she smiled
from one corner of her mouth.
"Did you suppose she wouldn't consent?" said she.