Delphi complete works of.., p.89
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 89
“Our friend is violent,” observed Phillips, when the door had closed upon him. Ford made no reply, and Phillips continued: “I fancied his accident rather too opportune.”
“Very likely,” said Ford.
“And you won’t go with me to Mrs. Burton’s?”
“No.”
“I don’t wonder at your indifference to society, with such really dramatic excitements in your own life. The matinée has been extraordinarily brilliant — for a matinée. They ‘re apt to be tame.”
VI.
IN spite of the defiant temper in which Boynton had quitted Ford’s lodging, he reached his own in extreme dejection. He found Hatch with Egeria in the parlor.
“Well, my friend,” he said, wringing Hatch’s hand, as he passed him on his way from the door to the sofa, “I have met with a great disappointment.” Neither Hatch nor Egeria questioned him, but after an exchange of anxious glances waited silently. “It isn’t that I care for the frustration of my hopes; I do care for that; but that is a small matter compared with the loss of my faith in human nature, my reliance upon the willingness of man to make sacrifices tending to — to — solve, to unravel, our common riddle.” He let his head fall upon his breast.
“Oh, father,” pleaded Egeria tremulously, after the little dramatic pause which Boynton had let follow upon his period, “did you go to see him?”
“Yes,” said her father.
“And did he — is he going to do it?”
Boynton lifted his head. “No,” he said, solemnly; “he refuses.” Egeria drew a long breath, and turned very pale. She seemed about to fall from her chair, which she had drawn next the corner of the sofa on which he had thrown himself. Hatch made a movement toward her, but she recovered herself, and sat strongly upright.
“He refused?” she gasped.
“My dear friend,” said her father, looking toward Hatch, while he took her cold hand and gently smoothed it, “I must explain that I have had two interviews with this man, and what their nature has been. He came here this morning to boast that it was he who caught Egeria’s hand in the séance that day. I drove him from the house. Afterwards, upon conversing with Egeria, I learnt that the manifestations were really genuine, and that at the moment he caught her hand she had no agency whatever in their production.”
Hatch looked at Egeria. “I could have bet my soul on that!”
“On learning this,” pursued Boynton, “I at once determined to challenge him to a new test, in which he should pit his influence over Egeria against mine, and the public should decide upon the result. He has just refused the challenge, peremptorily and finally, and I have branded him as a coward in the presence of Mr. Phillips.”
Boynton flung his daughter’s hand away. Hatch and Egeria had the effect of refraining from looking at each other. At last the young fellow said, recovering something of his wonted cheery audacity, “Well, of course it’s a disappointment, doctor, but why not look at the bright side of it?”
“What bright side of it?” asked the doctor, tragically.
“Oh, it has its bright side,” said Hatch, undauntedly. “It saves Miss Egeria from a good deal, and I’m glad of that, for one.”
The doctor mistook the word. “Ordeal! There is no ordeal; there could have been no question about the result!”
“Not with you or me. But there’s no use trying to deny it, — the public is against you, and would be glad to have her fail.”
“Oh, yes, father: you know how it has always been,” cried Egeria.
“The circumstances had never been propitious before; but now they were all with us. We could not have failed!” replied her father.
“Well, you might,” said Hatch. “What do you think did produce the manifestations that day, doctor?”
“Do you ask that question?” demanded the doctor, in astonishment. “I answer, with an absolute certainty, such as I never reached before, the disembodied spirits of the dead!”
“I doubt it,” said Hatch, quietly.
“You doubt it?” shouted Boynton, in amaze.
“Dr. Boynton, you’ve told me twenty times that you wouldn’t give a straw for manifestations that took place in the presence of a dozen persons. Now, what makes you pin your faith to what happened the other day?” Boynton was silent; all his reasons, so prompt and facile, seemed to have forsaken him. “There were too many people on hand that day for me. You know I’m as much interested in these things, doctor, as anybody, and I should be the last to give aid and comfort to the enemy; but I couldn’t go those materializations, and the dark séance was rather too dark for me. I’ll tell you what, doctor, I wish you’d go back home, and start new.” Hatch planted himself directly in front of Boynton, who looked at him with astonishment and rising indignation.
“By what right do you presume to advise me?” he asked, with stately emphasis.
“Well, by no right,” said Hatch easily; “or else the right that I have from the good you’ve always done me.” The doctor waived away the sense of this with a gesture which was still stately, but no longer severe. “I only speak from, my interest in you and Miss Egeria, here. I think it’s wearing on her, — wearing on you both.”
“Has my daughter complained to you?” demanded Boynton, with more than his former hauteur, looking round at her. She returned his look with a glance of tender reproach, and Hatch answered: —
“No more than you, doctor. I’m talking of what I see. And I think you’ve made a wrong start. I think you’ve made a mistake. You oughtn’t to have ever mixed yourself up with professional mediums. You were on the right tack at home. Now, I say, you just go back there, and you form a disinterested circle, — people that haven’t got money in it, — and you go on with your investigations there; and when you’ve got a sure thing of it, you come out with it. But don’t you do it till then! Heh?”
“There is reason in what you urge,” replied Boynton; “or rather there was reason. But I have advanced beyond the point you indicate. I have got a sure thing of it, as you say. I am as fully persuaded of the reality of those manifestations as I am of my own existence.”
“Which ones?” asked Hatch.
“Those in the dark séance, and” —
“I’m not!” returned Hatch; “but I don’t want you to take my opinion for proof against them. I’m going to headquarters for that, and all I ask is, Don’t you interfere with my little game.” He took the doctor by the shoulders in a friendly caress, as he spoke, and then he rang the bell. The servant-girl put in her unkempt head at the door, with a look of surprise, after first going to the outer door, to see if the ring had come from there; evidently, she was not used to being rung for in-doors. “Ah, Mary — Jenny — Bridget — Susy — Polly — whatever it is,” said Hatch; “you just ask Mrs. Le Roy to step here half a second, that’s a good girl, and I’ll dance at your wedding.” The girl vanished, grinning. As the big woman appeared at the door, “Walk right in, Mrs. Le Roy,” he called out, and she advanced questioningly, while he closed the door behind her. “Now it’s all among friends, you know, Mrs. Le Roy; we won’t keep you a minute. You know the doctor has some peculiar theories on this subject. We don’t care about the materializations, — they We all right; but you just tell us now how much you helped along in the dark séance, the other day.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Le Roy, with a sly look at each of her listeners, and a smile that ended in a small, thin chuckle, “give the spirits a chance, — that was the doctor’s idea, as I understood it.”
“Exactly,” said Hatch, “and you did give ’em a chance?”
“Now, Mr. Hatch,” said the huge sibyl, with a mixture of cunning and of that liking for Hatch which all women seemed to feel, “what are you up to?”
“I give you my word, Mrs. Le Roy, I’m up to nothing you’d object to. I just want to know how much of a chance you gave ‘em.”
Mrs. Le Roy hesitated a moment.
“Well, pretty much all they wanted, I guess,” she answered, at length.
“Do you mean,” said Boynton, “that you produced the phenomena in the dark séance?”
“Well, I did give the spirits a fair chance, as you may say,” admitted Mrs. Le Roy, with some awe and some apparent pity for Boynton.
He dropped his face in his hands, and bowed his head against the back of the sofa. “Oh, woman, woman!” he groaned.
“The witness can now retire,” said Hatch, and amid Mrs. Le Roy’s protestations of good intention and regret, and her mystification as to what it all meant, he took her by her vast shoulders and pushed her out of the door. “You’re all right, Mrs. Le Roy,” he explained. “See you again in half a second. Now, doctor,” he continued, turning to the desperate figure on the sofa, “you see how it is. It’s just as I said; you ‘re on the wrong tack. You can’t make any headway in connection with professional mediums. You can’t have your theories applied in the right spirit. What you want to do is to back out and start new.”
Boynton controlled himself, and, turning about, looked up at Hatch with a candor that was full of immediate courage and enterprise. “My friend, you are right! I see my error, now; but experience alone could have shown it to me. I have attempted to work in the public way, when I should have strictly confined myself to the social way. I see that my success depends upon the application of my theories by followers purely disinterested. It may be that no progress can be otherwise achieved, in psychological science. The experiment must be absolutely free from mercenary alloy.”
“Yes,” said Hatch; “if you let them see that there is money in it, you can’t get an honest count. Human nature is too much for you.”
“The true method,” Boynton mused aloud, “would be first to form some sort of society, in which the material basis was secured, and in which there would thus be leisure and disposition for the higher research. There are elements, in our own neighborhood which could be as favorably operated with as — Yes, the result will be much slower than I thought; but in the end it will be sure, beyond all peradventure. Egeria!” he cried, starting up, “we will go home!”
“At once — now — to-day?” asked the girl, her pale cheeks flushing.
“This very hour. There is not a moment to be lost. Go and put our things together, child.” Egeria turned towards the door; then she came back towards Hatch. “We won’t say good-by now, Miss Egeria. I shall be at the depot to see you off.”
“Yes, don’t delay,” said her father, impatiently. “We will be off by the first train.” She went out, and he mechanically carried his hand to his pocket. “We can’t go!” he cried, as if a sudden pang had caught him. “I haven’t five dollars in the world; we are in arrears for board. You see, my dear friend, there is no hope.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” said Hatch, with the ease of a man who had suspected something of this kind. “This gives me a chance to pay you my old bill, doctor.”
“My dear sir, I hope you wouldn’t offer me an affront,” said Boynton, staying the hand with which Hatch was opening his porte-monnaie.
“That’s what I said to you when you wouldn’t let me settle with you for my sickness, — or words to that effect.”
“Mr. Hatch, you — move me!”
“How much do you owe Mrs. Le Roy?” asked Hatch.
“I haven’t the least idea,” replied Boynton. “It may be three weeks, — it may be two. How long have we been here?”
“We must ask Mrs. Le Roy that.” Hatch rang again, and this time Mrs. Le Roy herself answered the bell. “The doctor’s going away, Mrs. Le Roy, and he wants to pay up.”
“Well, I’m real sorry,” said the woman, who had her bonnet on, as if about to go out, “to have you go, Dr. Boynton, — you and Miss Egeria both. But I guess you better. I thought, may be, Mr. Hatch was up to something of that kind. I don’t think you ‘re just fit for the business. You put too much dependence on other folks, and you ‘re sure to get exposed in the end. I don’t suppose but what there’s as much truth in it as there is in anything,” she said, by way of reservation.
Boynton answered nothing, and at a look from Hatch Mrs. Le Roy added, “Well, it’s two weeks, —— thirty dollars in all.” She took the money from Hatch and put it in the pocket of her dress. “Well, I’m going out now, and I shall be gone till evening; so if I don’t see you again, I’ll say good-by at once, Dr. Boynton. Come and see me when you ‘re up to Boston.”
She held out her hand to Boynton, who refused it with a very short “No!” and a quick shake of the head. “You are a charlatan,” he added,— “an impostor.”
Mrs. Le Roy stared at him, until his meaning dawned upon her. Then it amused her through her whole huge person, which shook with her enjoyment. “Why, land alive, man I what are you?”
“Something quite beyond your comprehension,” replied Boynton, with overwhelming state.
“Well, well!” said Mrs. Le Roy, as she went contentedly out of the room, “you certainly are a new kind of fool.”
They heard the stairs creak under her tread, as she went slowly and comfortably up; then they heard her voice, as she made her adieux to Egeria, who was probably too dimly informed as to her father’s point of honor to be able to take her stand upon it. “Poor child!” they heard Mrs. Le Roy’s voice saying, “I hope you’ll stay at home, and get well rested. You look half sick, now. Good-by. I wish I could stay and see you off. But I can’t. I’ve got a see-aunts with a patient of mine at her house, and I suppose I must go.” She added in a louder tone, for the listeners below, “Take care of that poor old father of yours, and don’t let him excite himself. I should be afraid he’d go out of his head, — if he was mine.”
Hatch looked at his watch. “You won’t be able to get the two o ‘clock train,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what,” he added: “you don’t want to stay here to-night, after what’s passed between you and Mrs. Le Roy, and you can take the five o’clock train on the Fitchburg road as far as Ayer Junction, and there you can connect with a train on the new road to Portland. You’ll have a little night travel.”
“Oh, that will make no difference,” said the doctor. “I would rather travel all night than stay here. I feel that if I’m to begin anew I can’t begin too soon. I shall be eternally grateful to you for your suggestion, my dear friend. I am sure now that it is in the right direction.”
“Good!” said Hatch. “I shall not leave till nine o’clock on the Albany road, and I shall have plenty of time to see you off. You’ll have to bank with me to the extent of tickets home, and I’ll have to come down any way and get them for you: I haven’t the money about me for them now.” Hatch seemed to think that the doctor might take offense at this, but he merely said, “Yes, yes; quite right,” and gave his hand dreamily, as the young man went out.
“Tell Miss Egeria I will meet you at the depot. Be there with you half an hour before the train starts.”
“Thanks,” said Boynton, and hardly waited for him to be gone before he lapsed into the easy corner of the sofa, apparently forgetful of all that had vexed him; his face was eager with the rush of his hopes and purposes, as he abandoned himself to a sort of intense reverie. At times he rose and walked the floor, but mostly he kept his place on the sofa. He took no counsel with Egeria, and he gave her no help in the work of packing, about which she went swiftly in the rooms overhead. It was not a great work, and it was finished before his reverie was ended. She looked in at the door when it was done, dressed for going out in a costume which was at once fantastic and shabby. In her village life it had once been her best dress, and it looked as if there had subsequently been some sketchy attempts to make it over into a street costume for city use; her bonnet was of a former season; her soiled gloves were frayed at more than one of the fingers. “I shall be back in a minute, father,” she said, buttoning one of the poor gloves. “I’m going out on an errand.” He looked at her, but did not seem to see her, and she passed on out.
At the next corner she stepped, after a hesitation at the door, into a little shop where they sold newspapers and stationery, and bought a few sheets of note-paper and envelopes, halting some time in her choice, and finally deciding on some paper of an outlandish color and envelopes of a rhomboid shape: they were not in good taste, but they were recommended to Egeria as a kind that the shopwoman “sold a great many of.” Returning to her own room she wrote a letter, which, when finished, she tore up, hiding the fragments in her pocket; she began a second, which she also destroyed; at last she took the pieces of the first, and carefully putting them together copied them slowly in the small, painful hand of one neither acquainted with the bold angularities of the fashionable female scrawl, nor accustomed to write any hand.
At the letter-box in front of the Fitchburg depot she faltered a moment; then, for her father was pushing on into the building, she caught her letter from her pocket, and posted it.
VII.
FORD received Egeria’s letter the next morning. He examined its outside, as people do that of letters coming to them in strange handwriting, and he bestowed a derisive curiosity upon the person who could choose that outlandish shape for a missive. A dashing hand might have authorized the form, but Egeria’s hand was timid and feeble, and only heightened its absurdity. She had not quite known how to address him; she had decided at last to begin without that formality.
“I do not know why you refused what my father asked you to do; but we were imposed upon as well as you. You had a right to suspect us; but we had nothing to do with those things. If you knew about us at home you would not regret that you had refused.
“I felt grateful to you; but perhaps it is wrong to write. If it is, I can only say that I meant it truly and rightly.
