Delphi complete works of.., p.1141
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 1141
Miss Spaulding, relenting: “It was awkward.”
Miss Reed: “Awkward! You seem to think that because I carry things off lightly I have no feeling.”
Miss Spaulding: “You know I don’t think that, Ethel.”
Miss Reed, pursuing her advantage: “I don’t know it from you, Nettie. I’ve tried and tried to pass it off as a joke, and to treat it as something funny; but I can tell you it’s no joke at all.”
Miss Spaulding, sympathetically: “I see, dear.”
Miss Reed: “It’s not that I care for him” —
Miss Spaulding: “Why, of course.”
Miss Reed: “For I don’t in the least. He is horrid every way: blunt, and rude, and horrid. I never cared for him. But I care for myself! He has put me in the position of having done an unkind thing — an unladylike thing — when I was only doing what I had to do. Why need he have taken it the way he did? Why couldn’t he have said politely that he couldn’t accept the money because he hadn’t earned it? Even that would have been mortifying enough. But he must go and be so violent, and rush off, and — Oh, I never could have treated anybody so!”
Miss Spaulding: “Not unless you were very fond of them.”
Miss Reed: “What?”
Miss Spaulding: “Not unless you were very fond of them.”
Miss Reed, putting away her handkerchief: “Oh, nonsense, Nettie! He never cared anything for me, or he couldn’t have acted so. But no matter for that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got straight — never in the world. It will just have to remain a hideous mass of — of — I don’t know what; and I have simply got to on withering with despair at the point where I left off. But I don’t care! That’s one comfort.”
Miss Spaulding: “I don’t believe he’ll let you wither long, Ethel.”
Miss Reed: “He’s let me wither for twenty-four hours already! But it’s nothing to me, now, how long he lets me wither. I’m perfectly satisfied to have the affair remain as it is. I am in the right, and if he comes I shall refuse to see him.”
Miss Spaulding: “Oh, no, you won’t, Ethel!”
Miss Reed: “Yes, I shall. I shall receive him very coldly. I won’t listen to any excuse from him.”
Miss Spaulding: “Oh, yes, you will, Ethel!”
Miss Reed: “No, I shall not. If he wishes me to listen he must begin by humbling himself in the dust — yes, the dust, Nettie! I won’t take anything short of it. I insist that he shall realize that I have suffered.”
Miss Spaulding: “Perhaps he has suffered too!”
Miss Reed: “Oh, he suffered!”
Miss Spaulding: “You know that he was perfectly devoted to you.”
Miss Reed: “He never said so.”
Miss Spaulding: “Perhaps he didn’t dare.”
Miss Reed: “He dared to be very insolent to me.”
Miss Spaulding: “And you know you liked him very much.”
Miss Reed: “I won’t let you say that, Nettie Spaulding. I didn’t like him. I respected and admired him; but I didn’t like him. He will come near me; but if he does he has to begin by — by — Let me see, what shall I make him begin by doing?” She casts up her eyes for inspiration while she leans forward over the register. “Yes, I will! He has got to begin by taking that money!”
Miss Spaulding: “Ethel, you wouldn’t put that affront upon a sensitive and high-spirited man!”
Miss Reed: “Wouldn’t I? You wait and see, Miss Spaulding! He shall take the money, and he shall sign a receipt for it. I’ll draw up the receipt now, so as to have it ready, and I shall ask him to sign it the very moment he enters this door — the very instant!” She takes a portfolio from the table near her, without rising, and writes: “‘Received from Miss Ethel Reed one hundred and twenty-five dollars, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting.’ There — when Mr. Oliver Ransom has signed this little document he may begin to talk; not before!” She leans back in her chair with an air of pitiless determination.
Miss Spaulding: “But, Ethel, you don’t mean to make him take money for the lessons he gave you after he told you you couldn’t learn anything?”
Miss Reed, after a moment’s pause: “Yes, I do. This is to punish him. I don’t wish for justice now; I wish for vengeance! At first I would have compromised on the six lessons, or on none at all, if he had behaved nicely; but after what’s happened I shall insist upon paying him for every lesson, so as to make him feel that the whole thing, from first to last, was a purely business transaction on my part. Yes, a purely — BUSINESS — TRANSACTION!”
Miss Spaulding, turning to her music: “Then I’ve got nothing more to say to you, Ethel Reed.”
Miss Reed: “I don’t say but what, after he’s taken the money and signed the receipt, I’ll listen to anything else he’s got to say, very willingly.” Miss Spaulding makes no answer, but begins to play with a scientific absorption, feeling her way fitfully through the new piece, while Miss Reed, seated by the register, trifles with the book she has taken from the table.
II.
The interior of the room of Miss Spaulding and Miss Reed remains in view, while the scene discloses, on the other side of the partition wall in the same house, the bachelor apartment of Mr. Samuel Grinnidge. Mr. Grinnidge in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his pipe in his mouth, has the effect of having just come in; his friend Mr. Oliver Ransom stands at the window, staring out into the November weather.
Grinnidge: “How long have you been waiting here?”
Ransom: “Ten minutes — ten years. How should I know?”
Grinnidge: “Well, I don’t know who else should. Get back to-day?”
Ransom: “Last night.”
Grinnidge: “Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register, and warm your poor feet.” He puts his hand out over the register. “Confound it! somebody’s got the register open in the next room! You see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But it don’t. There was a fellow in there last winter who used to get all my heat. Used to go out and leave his register open, and I’d come in here just before dinner and find this place as cold as a barn. We had a running fight of it all winter. The man who got his register open first in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never turned the other way when it started in one direction. Used to almost suffocate — warm, muggy days — maintaining my rights. Some piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And she hasn’t lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What kept you so late in the country?”
Ransom, after an absent-minded pause: “Grinnidge, I wish you would give me some advice.”
Grinnidge: “You can have all you want of it at the market price.”
Ransom: “I don’t mean your legal advice.”
Grinnidge: “I’m sorry. What have you been doing?”
Ransom: “I’ve been making an ass of myself.”
Grinnidge: “Wasn’t that rather superfluous?”
Ransom: “If you please, yes. But now, it you’re capable of listening to me without any further display of your cross-examination wit, I should like to tell you how it happened.”
Grinnidge: “I will do my best to veil my brilliancy. Go on.”
Ransom: “I went up to Ponkwasset early in September for the foliage.”
Grinnidge: “And staid till late in October. There must have been a reason for that. What was her name? Foliage?”
Ransom, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, near which his friend sits, and talking to him directly over the register: “I think you’ll have to get along without the name for the present. I’ll tell you by and by.” As Mr. Ransom pronounces these words, Miss Reed, on her side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and, after a moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. “But she was beautiful. She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes — eyes, you know, that could be funny or tender, just as she chose — the kind of eyes I always liked.” Miss Reed leads forward over the register. “She had one of those faces that always leave you in doubt whether they’re laughing at you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but you feel certain that they’re good, and that if they did hurt you by laughing at you, they’d look sorry for you afterward. When she walked you saw what an exquisite creature she was. It always made me mad to think I couldn’t paint her walk.”
Grinnidge: “I suppose you saw a good deal of her walk.”
Ransom: “Yes; we were off in the woods and fields half the time together.” He takes a turn towards the window.
Miss Reed, suddenly shutting the register on her side: “Oh!”
Miss Spaulding, looking up from her music: “What is it, Ethel?”
Miss Reed: “Nothing, nothing; I — I — thought it was getting too warm. Go on, dear; don’t let me interrupt you.” After a moment of heroic self-denial she softly presses the register open with her foot.
Ransom, coming back to the register: “It all began in that way. I had the good fortune one day to rescue her from a — cow.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, for shame!”
Miss Spaulding, desisting from her piano: “What is the matter?”
Miss Reed, clapping the register to: “This ridiculous book! But don’t — don’t mind me, Nettie.” Breathlessly: “Go — go — on!” Miss Spaulding resumes, and again Miss Reed softly presses the register open.
Ransom, after a pause: “The cow was grazing, and had no more thought of hooking Miss” —
Miss Reed: “Oh, I didn’t suppose he would! — Go on, Nettie, go on! The hero — such a goose!”
Ransom: “I drove her away with my camp-stool, and Miss — the young lady — was as grateful as if I had rescued her from a menagerie of wild animals. I walked home with her to the farm house, and the trouble began at once.” Pantomime of indignant protest and burlesque menace on the part of Miss Reed. “There wasn’t another well woman in the house, except her friend Miss Spaulding, who was rather old and rather plain.” He takes another turn to the window.
Miss Reed: “Oh!” She shuts the register, but instantly opens it again. “Louder, Nettie.”
Miss Spaulding, in astonishment: “What?”
Miss Reed: “Did I speak? I didn’t know it. I” —
Miss Spaulding, desisting from practice: “What is that strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise?”
Miss Reed, softly closing the register with her foot: “I don’t hear any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do you hear it now?”
Miss Spaulding: “No. It was the Brighton whistle, probably.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, very likely.” As Miss Spaulding turns again to her practice Miss Reed re-opens the register and listens again. A little interval of silence ensues, while Ransom lights a cigarette.
Grinnidge: “So you sought opportunities of rescuing her from other cows?”
Ransom, returning: “That wasn’t necessary. The young lady was so impressed by my behavior, that she asked if I would give her some lessons in the use of oil.”
Grinnidge: “She thought if she knew how to paint pictures like yours she wouldn’t need any one to drive the cows away.”
Ransom: “Don’t be farcical, Grinnidge. That sort of thing will do with some victim on the witness-stand who can’t help himself. Of course I said I would, and we were off half the time together, painting the loveliest and loneliest bits around Ponkwasset. It all went on very well, till one day I felt bound in conscience to tell her that I didn’t think she would ever learn to paint, and that — if she was serious about it she’d better drop it at once, for she was wasting her time.”
Grinnidge, getting up to fill his pipe: “That was a pleasant thing to do.”
Ransom: “I told her that if it amused her, to keep on; I would be only too glad to give her all — the hints I could, but that I oughtn’t to encourage her. She seemed a good deal hurt. I fancied at the time that she thought I was tired of having her with me so much.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, did you, indeed!” To Miss Spaulding, who bends an astonished glance upon her from the piano: “The man in this book is the most conceited creature, Nettie. Play chords — something very subdued — ah!”
Miss Spaulding: “What are you talking about, Ethel?”
Ransom: “That was at night; but the next day she came up smiling, and said that if I didn’t mind she would keep on — for amusement; she wasn’t a bit discouraged.”
Miss Reed: “Oh! — Go on, Nettie; don’t let my outbursts interrupt you.”
Ransom: “I used to fancy sometimes that she was a little sweet on me.”
Miss Reed: “You wretch! — Oh, scales, Nettie! Play scales!”
Miss Spaulding: “Ethel Reed, are you crazy?”
Ransom, after a thoughtful moment: “Well, so it went on for the next seven or eight weeks. When we weren’t sketching in the meadows, or on the mountain-side, or in the old punt on the pond, we were walking up and down the farmhouse piazza together. She used to read to me when I was at work. She had a heavenly voice, Grinnidge.”
Miss Reed: “Oh, you silly, silly thing! — Really this book makes me sick, Nettie.”
Ransom: “Well, the long and the short of it was, I was hit — hard, and I lost all courage. You know how I am, Grinnidge.”
Miss Reed, softly: “Oh, poor fellow!”
Ransom: “So I let the time go by, and at the end I hadn’t said anything.”
Miss Reed: “No, sir! You hadn’t!” Miss Spaulding gradually ceases to play, and fixes her attention wholly upon Miss Reed, who bends forward over the register with an intensely excited face.
Ransom: “Then something happened that made me glad, for twenty-four hours at least, that I hadn’t spoken. She sent me the money for twenty-five lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and storing up her resentment for my having told her she couldn’t learn to paint, till she could pay me back with interest in one supreme insult?”
Miss Reed, in a low voice: “Oh, how could you think such a cruel, vulgar thing?” Miss Spaulding leaves the piano, and softly approaches her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register.
Ransom: “It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole association, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation of teacher and pupil. It was a snub — a heartless, killing snub; and I couldn’t see it in any other light.” Ransom walks away to the window, and looks out.
Miss Reed, flinging herself backward from the register, and hiding her face in her hands: “Oh, it wasn’t! it wasn’t! it wasn’t! How could you think so?”
Miss Spaulding, rushing forward, and catching her friend in her arms: “What is the matter with you, Ethel Reed? What are you doing here, over the register? Are you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you taken leave of your senses?”
Grinnidge: “Our fair friend on the other side of the wall seems to be on the rampage.”
Miss Spaulding, shutting the register with a violent clash: “Ugh! how hot it is here!”
Grinnidge: “Doesn’t like your conversation, apparently.”
Miss Reed, frantically pressing forward to open the register: “Oh, don’t shut it, Nettie, dear! If you do I shall die! Do-o-n’t shut the register!”
Miss Spaulding: “Don’t shut it? Why, we’ve got all the heat of the furnace in the room now. Surely you don’t want any more?”
Miss Reed: “No, no; not any more. But — but — Oh, dear! what shall I do?” She still struggles in the embrace of her friend.
Grinnidge, remaining quietly at the register, while Ransom walks away to the window: “Well, what did you do?”
Miss Reed: “There, there! They’re commencing again! Do open it, Nettie. I will have it open!” She wrenches herself free, and dashes the register open.
Grinnidge: “Ah, she’s opened it again.”
Miss Reed, in a stage-whisper: “That’s the other one!”
Ransom, from the window: “Do? I’ll tell you what I did.”
Miss Reed: “That’s Ol — Mr. Ransom. And, oh, I can’t make out what he’s saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the room — and it’s at the most important point!”
Miss Spaulding, in an awful undertone: “Was that the hollow rumbling I heard? And have you been listening at the register to what they’ve been saying? O Ethel!”
Miss Reed: “I haven’t been listening, exactly.”
Miss Spaulding: “You have! You have been eavesdropping!”
Miss Reed: “Eavesdropping is listening through a key-hole, or around a corner. This is very different. Besides, it’s Oliver, and he’s been talking about me. Hark!” She clutches her friend’s hand, where they have crouched upon the floor together, and pulls her forward to the register. “Oh, dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off the heat down below.”
Grinnidge, smoking peacefully through the silence which his friend has absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: “Well, you seem disposed to take your time about it.”
Ransom: “About what? Oh, yes! Well” —
Miss Reed: “‘Sh! Listen.”
Miss Spaulding: “I won’t listen! It’s shameful: it’s wicked! I don’t see how you can do it, Ethel!” She remains, however, kneeling near the register, and she involuntarily inclines a little more toward it.
Ransom: “ — It isn’t a thing that I care to shout from the house-tops.” He returns from the window to the chimney-piece. “I wrote the rudest kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in it. She had said that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with the summer, but that we might sometimes meet in Boston; and I answered that our acquaintance had ended already, and that I should be sorry to meet her anywhere again.”
