Delphi complete works of.., p.933
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 933
They each took more than one cup, in the difficulty of making the coffee and the Peake & Frean wafers, with which their hostess surprised them, come out evenly together; and they stayed nearly the whole afternoon talking. In the security of their distance from the ground-floor ell, where the Kites lived, they talked of the Kites, and so justly and kindly that Mrs. Kelwyn could join them in the justice if not the kindness.
Sister Saranna talked the most because the others deferred, and not because she wished. She owned that she had never wanted Brother Jasper to keep the Kites after he had tried in vain to make them prepare for their guests; but there did not seem to be any one else. “Jasper was two weeks trying to get him to put up shelves for you in the milk-room instead of the cellar, where the dust from the beams used to speckle the cream so.”
“Used!” Mrs. Kelwyn exclaimed. “Why, it does so yet!”
“I want to know!” Saranna lamented. “And the butter?”
“Worse than ever. The last churning she let stand three days without working it, and it was so rancid that we could not eat it and had to get some from the village.”
Saranna was dumb. “I’m ‘most afraid,” she murmured, at last, “to ask anything about the beds.”
“We have attended to those ourselves, Sister Saranna,” Mrs. Kelwyn returned, with patience that she felt the sister ought to feel was saintly. “I cannot understand these people; and I hardly dare have Mr. Kelwyn speak to the man any more, he swears so, and he thinks that every complaint we make is an imputation on his wife’s character. He considers her perfect, and she’s just as devoted to him. Of course I like that in them, but their standing by each other doesn’t help us at all; it makes the situation worse, if anything. Don’t they wish to please us?”
“Why, she was quite proud at the idea of having you come, and of getting the Family house to live in after you go in the fall. I can’t make it out any more than you. But sometimes I think we ain’t quite fair to expect all women to be good housekeepers. Some of them are born to it and some ain’t, any more than men to the same trade, and they can’t seem to learn because they don’t take any interest. Don’t you think she’s got pretty manners?”
“Beautiful!” Mrs. Kelwyn conceded, in some excess, secure of her other grounds against Mrs. Kite. “She has almost the manners of a lady; she has repose.”
“Too much,” one of the younger Sisters ventured, and the rest tittered helplessly.
“Well, we must see what can be done,” Saranna ended the matter, and this gave Mrs. Kelwyn the courage which the good-will of the Shakers always gave her. When the Sisters were gone she and Parthenope talked them over, and agreed that no behavior they had seen in the world outside was so charming as theirs.
Mrs. Kelwyn could not formulate their joint sense of it; but she accepted the notion of Parthenope, who asked: “Don’t you think it must be their sincerity? I kept noticing, all the time, how they could express every shade of politeness in the simplest way without any of our compliments, and how they could make Nay sound as sweet and kind as Yee, I suppose they mean Yea.”
“Yes; I noticed it, too,” Mrs. Kelwyn sighed, “and when I could forget the Kites I enjoyed it. How those wretched Kites spoil everything! They’re as much a blight on the society of the Shakers as they are on the weather or the scenery. I don’t suppose,” she lamented, “that people who enjoy nice natural things, as Mr. Kelwyn and I do, were ever so baffled. When I can get the Kites out of my mind I’m radiantly happy.”
She expressed the idea of her radiant happiness in a wail that made the girl turn away her face. It would Lave been cruel to laugh at Her cousin; and she felt the pity of her case the more when Mrs. Kelwyn owned: “The day I got your letter saying you were coming, I tried to make Mr. Kelwyn stop you; I was ashamed to have you find us in this squalor; but if you hadn’t come I don’t know what I should have done. You may be sure, Thennie, I appreciate your staying on.”
The example of the Shakers’ sincerity had so far wrought with the girl that she felt she must say, “Yes, but you know I oughtn’t to impose on your good nature.”
“Oh, impose!”
“I mean,” Parthenope added, more honestly, “Aunt Julia will be expecting me back any day, now. She’ll want to be getting off to Pigeon Cove, and she’ll need my help.”
“Oh, don’t go!” Mrs. Kelwyn entreated, with sudden tears. “I can’t let you — yet! I’ll write to Aunt Julia—”
“No! That wouldn’t do. But I will write, Cousin Carry; and she’ll let me stay, I know, till you’re more settled.” They kissed each other, and her burst of tears was such relief to Mrs. Kelwyn, and Mrs. Kite had so far mastered the art of toasting the baker’s bread without charring it, and had by such a happy chance brought hot water for steeping the tea on the table, that, with their chipped beef and their potted jam, the Kelwyn family were able to sup in self-respect verging on pride. Their mother put the boys to bed in a cheerfulness they could not share, and when they had said their prayers after her she left Parthenope to sit with them and keep the dark off till they fell asleep.
She was still more heartened before she slept by something Kelwyn had forgotten to tell her, though she was indignant with him for forgetting when he did tell her.
“I saw Brother Jasper to-day, and he’s found a family to put in the place of the Kites.”
“He has?” A note of joy came into Mrs. Kelwyn’s voice.
“Yes. The man has been in the Shakers’ employ and the woman is an excellent cook. Should you want to go away if they come?”
“That certainly puts a different face on the matter. But are you sure they will come?”
“The Shakers are to let me know to-morrow. Then they will arrange with the Kites.”
“I feel sorry for them,” Mrs. Kelwyn said, with dutiful compunction.
“Oh, so do I. But I feel sorry for myself and my family, too,” he said.
“It isn’t,” she reflected, “as if they had tried to do better, They really don’t seem to want to. And, as you say, we ought to consider ourselves.”
“Did I say that?”
“You the same as said it.”
Kelwyn hoped that somehow he had not, but he did not insist.
XVI
ONE afternoon, a few days later, Elder Nathaniel came with a bunch of sturdy flowers in his hand — coxcomb, and prince’s - feather, and balsam, and four-o’clock, and marigold. “For the young woman,” he said, gravely, when Kelwyn, whom he found lying on the grass under the elms, rose to greet him.
“For my cousin? She is out with the children somewhere.”
“Yee. You can give them to her later.”
“Well, then, take a stretch of turf,” Kelwyn said, and the two lay down together on the grass. It was becoming a habit of theirs when Elder Nathaniel called for a half-hour of the philosophic converse he loved. “The Sisters were much pleased with their visit.” He turned his delicate aquiline profile toward Kelwyn. “The coffee was pretty strong, I guess.”
“Miss Brook does make it rather strong. Were they excited?”
“They were still talking — a little. Friend Kelwyn, we are all much concerned that you are not more comfortable here. I did not think when I mentioned this house to you in the spring that it would be so bad.”
“Why, it might be worse,” Kelwyn said, by way of owning that it might be much better.
“We all tell Jasper that he did not use the best judgment in putting Friend Kite and his wife in to care for you, but he says he used the best judgment he had at the time. He is making careful inquiries about the people he has found to replace them, and as soon as he is satisfied we will make the change.”
Kelwyn waited a moment before he said: “I don’t feel quite easy about putting the Kites out. They are not fit to stay, of course, and there isn’t a day when they keep their agreement fully. They don’t know how; apparently they don’t want to. Sometimes we think they want to force us out.”
“Nay, we couldn’t allow that,” Elder Nathaniel protested.
“It all seemed very simple in prospect,” Kelwyn went on. “We had only to say, ‘You don’t do and you must go.’”
“Yee?” the Elder prompted.
“Of course we expected that it could be arranged so that they should lose nothing—”
“That could be arranged.”
“But that doesn’t seem so conclusive or inclusive as it did in prospect. There is something besides their interest to be considered. Their natural pride is to be considered, their unnatural self-respect — for they have no reason to respect themselves in their failure with us — and their real disgrace before the community if we should turn them out.”
“Yee,” Elder Nathaniel gently acquiesced. He added, sadly, “Life is not very logical, Friend Kelwyn.”
“No, or else its logic is in the consequences, not in the actions. Of course, consequences flow from causes, but the actions that relate the consequences to the causes often seem to be of a quality quite different from either.”
“Yee; but it is in them that our individual responsibility lies. We have nothing to do with causes or consequences. They seem to belong to God.”
Kelwyn smiled. “Well, that is why I feel slow to act, even in such a simple case as turning these miserable people out of a house where they have forfeited all right to remain. At any rate, I shall want to know fully about the couple that Brother Jasper proposes to put in their place.”
Elder Nathaniel forbore to recognize the inconsequence, if he saw it, which Kelwyn’s decision implied. He only said: “He is asking about them. We don’t want to make another mistake, either,” and then he said, with no apparent sense of relevance, “Friend Emerance has come back.”
“Emerance has come back!” Kelwyn echoed, with a joyousness which he could have proved no more logical than some other things in life. “When?”
“By the early train this morning. He walked up from the depot before breakfast.”
“Is he going to stay with you?”
“Nay; I don’t know that. There is nothing for him to do, and we have no room for permanent guests in the Office. And Friend Emerance does not give us the hope that he will ever be gathered in.”
“I shall be very glad to see him again,” Kelwyn said, ignoring the fact which Elder Nathaniel had owned with a sigh. He tried to continue the conversation on the impersonal, the psychological, the sociological terms, but it would not do. Probably Elder Nathaniel felt his inattention, of which Kelwyn himself was hardly aware, for presently he sat up on the grass, and presently he went away, as Kelwyn suspected, with an obscure pang, sooner than he had meant to go. He watched the Shaker’s quaint bowed figure down the road, and then he went in-doors to his wife, whose name he called before him, as if impatient to speak with her.
Parthenope, with the two boys, had wandered another way, and found herself going in the direction of a little roadside school-house which she had already noticed in her rambles. When they came up to it she saw some wagons and buggies hitched to the nearest trees and fence-posts, and she was sensible of some unwonted commotion in the simple place. As she hesitated before the door she heard voices unlike those of the routine recitations, and she saw the room fairly filled with people in hats and bonnets who were clearly visitors. A pretty girl of her own age, with locks matching the gold fillings in her teeth which chowed when she smiled sweetly upon Parthenope, came to the door.
“Won’t you come in?” she said. “We’re having our examinations for the end of the term, and the School Committee are conducting them just now. I’m the teacher. I should be much pleased to have you come in.”
She spoke with a little stiffness in her dignity which Parthenope found charming, and, after looking round at the eager faces of the boys, she said, “Oh, thank you,” and went in toward the seats against the wall to which the teacher led her.
“We are pretty nearly through with the examinations,” the teacher whispered, “and we are going to have a little scene — I don’t know what to call it exactly — something that the boys are going to represent. The young lady who is examining the children now is the first lady we have ever had elected on the School Committee here, and we think she’s splendid.”
The teacher nodded sweetly to Parthenope, and went forward to the platform where the school committee-girl sat with two committee-men, and took her place beside her. Parthenope thought them interesting contrasts — the pretty teacher, slender and erect and smiling on all with birdlike turns of her little head, and the committee-girl, to whom she seemed willingly subordinated, with close-cropped hair and a large-buttoned, loose jacket, wanting only the bifurcation of her plain skirt to seem a square - shouldered, short young man. She had a quick, useful, businesslike face, and she put with such force and distinctness the questions she had to ask in geography and arithmetic as to bring out what was best in the twenty-five or thirty children, mostly boys, answering from their regulation public-school desks, or working out the sums set them on the breadth of black-painted wall at the end of the room.
The place was garlanded with ground-pine caught up with knots and branches of the pink and white laurel still billowing the woods with their bloom. In the brief intermission which now followed the visitors talked together in low tones, and admired the decorations till the teacher rapped authoritatively upon her desk and said, “The scene we are going to have is out of the tragedy of Rollo. I don’t know as you’ve ever read it,” the teacher added, in a low murmur, to Parthenope, to whom she seemed to attach herself in a special hospitality, perhaps because they were both girls, and both young. “Well, I don’t know as I’ve read it all myself,” she hurried on, cutting herself short as two of the larger boys came out on the platform from some room behind it, and in their imagined costumes of ancient Peruvian and mediaeval Castilian began their dialogue.
“Inform, me, friend, is Alonso, the Peruvian, confined in this dungeon?”
“He is.”
“What is his fate?”
“He dies at sunrise.”
They went on with the passages which school-boys for a hundred years have recited upon like occasions, and then, with awkward bows to their audience, bumped one another out of the door by which they had entered.
The teacher rose and said, “If any of the friends would like to offer remarks, we should be pleased to have them.”
For a while no one stirred in response. Then, with a slight, nervous clearing of the throat, Emerance got to his feet in the place where Parthenope had all the time been subliminally aware he was sitting. She thought his thin, conscientious face, narrowing from the cheek-bones to the chin, which he fingered with the gesture somehow very familiar to her, was beautiful, and his figure, supported by one hand on the top of the chair before him, had grace in spite of its lean angularity.
“I should like,” he said, abruptly, “to have those boys come back a moment.”
“Why, certainly,” the teacher answered, in a tone not so acquiescent as her words. She looked at the committee-girl as if referring the matter to her, and at a nod from her she went to the door and returned with the Peruvian and the Castilian, hurriedly rehabilitated as to their costume and clearly much mystified.
“Now, boys,” Emerance briskly accosted them, “you aid that scene very well, in the way it has always been done. You had your parts perfectly, and you conveyed the sense. But now I want you to think how you would have spoken and acted if you had really been the friend of a man who was going to be put to death to-morrow morning, and the guard of his prison, who respected and pitied him. Then I want you to do it just as you feel it. Do you think you can?”
“I don’t believe we can,” the friend of Alonso confessed.
“Nobody could do it that way,” the Spanish sentinel was sure.
“Well, let’s try,” Emerance persisted. “Just do it as you think two boys would do it.”
“Boys wouldn’t talk that way,” one of them said. “If a fellow was to say, c Inform me, friend,’ the rest would say he was a fool.”
The other boy explained, “It’s poetry; or, anyway, elocution.”
“Oh, it’s elocution, I know. I’m not sure it’s poetry,” Emerance said. “But try it in the prose that boys talk.”
The boys grinned and looked at the teacher, who referred their glance to the committee-girl. She said: “I should like to have you try, boys. You’re not obliged to if you don’t wish.”
The Castilian answered for himself and the other: “We couldn’t do it, Miss Grove. Somebody would have to put it in common talk for us, and then maybe we could get it by heart and say it. But we couldn’t turn it into that kind of talk ourselves, right here before you. It would be ridic’lous.”
The committee - girl in her turn passed the matter with a glance to Emerance, who said: “You’re quite right, my boy. The fault is in the man who wrote the piece. He had a bit of nature to express, but he couldn’t do it naturally. It isn’t reasonable to expect you to improve on him offhand.”
He sat down, and the teacher murmured to Parthenope, “How very strange!” After a blank hesitation throughout the room, she rose and said: “If no one else has any remarks to offer, the exercises are concluded. Children, you must all be here in your places September 15th, at nine o’clock. Now you are dismissed.”
The little assembly dispersed with difficulty. Among the visitors every one was talking about the recent occurrence, with looks at Emerance, whom they left apart. The boys and girls made their way out, and their mocking shouts and laughter were heard from the road as they ran away in their different directions.
