A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

A Modern Instance

W >> William Dean Howells >> A Modern Instance




Mr. Atherton and Halleck moved about among the guests, and did their best
to second Clara's efforts for their encouragement; but it was useless. In
the desperation which owns defeat, she resolved to devote herself for the
rest of the evening to trying to make at least the Hubbards have a good
time; and then, upon the dangerous theory, of which young and pretty
hostesses cannot be too wary, that a wife is necessarily flattered by
attentions to her husband, she devoted herself exclusively to Bartley, to
whom she talked long and with a reckless liveliness of the events of his
former stay in Boston. Their laughter and scraps of their reminiscence
reached Marcia where she sat in a feint of listening to Ben Halleck's
perfunctory account of his college days with her husband, till she could
bear it no longer. She rose abruptly, and, going to him, she said that it
was time to say good-night. "Oh, so soon!" cried Clara, mystified and a
little scared at the look she saw on Marcia's face. "Good night," she added
coldly.

The assembly hailed this first token of its disintegration with relief; it
became a little livelier; there was a fleeting moment in which it seemed as
if it might yet enjoy itself; but its chance passed; it crumbled rapidly
away, and Clara was left looking humbly into Olive Halleck's pitiless eyes.
"Thank you for a _delightful_ evening, Miss Kingsbury! Congratulate you!"
she mocked, with an unsparing laugh. "Such a success! But why didn't you
give them something to eat, Clara? Those poor Hubbards have a one-o'clock
dinner, and I famished for them. I wasn't hungry myself,--_we_ have a
two-o'clock dinner!"




XXII.


Bartley came home elate from Miss Kingsbury's entertainment. It was
something like the social success which he used to picture to himself. He
had been flattered by the attention specially paid him, and he did not
detect the imposition. He was half starved, but he meant to have up some
cold meat and bottled beer, and talk it all over with Marcia.

She did not seem inclined to talk it over on their way home, and when they
entered their own door, she pushed in and ran up-stairs. "Why, where are
you going, Marcia?" he called after her.

"To bed!" she replied, closing the door after her with a crash of
unmistakable significance.

Bartley stood a moment in the fury that tempted him to pursue her with a
taunt, and then leave her to work herself out of the transport of senseless
jealousy she had wrought herself into. But he set his teeth, and, full of
inward cursing, he followed her up-stairs with a slow, dogged step. He took
her in his arms without a word, and held her fast, while his anger changed
to pity, and then to laughing. When it came to that, she put up her arms,
which she had kept rigidly at her side, and laid them round his neck, and
began softly to cry on his breast.

"Oh, I'm not myself at all, any more!" she moaned penitently.

"Then this is very improper--for me," said Bartley.

The helpless laughter broke through her lamentation, but she cried a little
more to keep herself in countenance.

"But I guess, from a previous acquaintance with the party's character,
that it's really all you, Marcia. I don't blame you. Miss Kingsbury's
hospitality has left me as hollow as if I'd had nothing to eat for a week;
and I know you're perishing from inanition. Hence these tears."

It delighted her to have him make fun of Miss Kingsbury's tea, and she
lifted her head to let him see that she was laughing for pleasure now,
before she turned away to dry her eyes.

"Oh, poor fellow!" she cried. "I did pity you so when I saw those mean
little slices of bread and butter coming round!"

"Yes," said Bartley, "I felt sorry myself. But don't speak of them any
more, dearest."

"And I suppose," pursued Marcia, "that all the time she was talking to you
there, you were simply ravening."

"I was casting lots in my own mind to see which of the company I should
devour first."

His drollery appeared to Marcia the finest that ever was; she laughed and
laughed again; when he made fun of the conjecturable toughness of the
elderly aristocrat, she implored him to stop if he did not want to kill
her. Marcia was not in the state in which woman best convinces her enemies
of her fitness for empire, though she was charming in her silly happiness,
and Bartley felt very glad that he had not yielded to his first impulse to
deal savagely with her. "Come," he said, "let us go out somewhere, and get
some oysters."

She began at once to take out her ear-rings and loosen her hair. "No,
I'll get something here in the house; I'm not very hungry. But _you_ go,
Bartley, and have a good supper, or you'll be sick to-morrow, and not fit
to work. Go," she added to his hesitating image in the glass, "I insist
upon it. I won't _have_ you stay." His reflected face approached from
behind; she turned hers a little, and their mirrored lips met over her
shoulder. "Oh, how _sweet_ you are, Bartley!" she murmured.

"Yes, you will always find me obedient when commanded to go out and repair
my wasted tissue."

"I don't mean _that_, dear," she said softly. "I mean--your not quarrelling
with me when I'm unreasonable. Why can't we always do so!"

"Well, you see," said Bartley, "it throws the whole burden on the fellow in
his senses. It doesn't require any great degree of self-sacrifice to fly
off at a tangent, but it's rather a maddening spectacle to the party that
holds on."

"Now I will show you," said Marcia, "that I can be reasonable too: I shall
let you go alone to make our party call on Miss Kingsbury." She looked at
him heroically.

"Marcia," said Bartley, "you're such a reasonable person when you're the
most unreasonable, that I wonder I _ever_ quarrel with you. I rather think
I'll let _you_ call on Miss Kingsbury alone. I shall suffer agonies of
suspicion, but it will prove that I have perfect confidence in you." He
threw her a kiss from the door, and ran down the stairs. When he returned,
an hour later, he found her waiting up for him. "Why, Marcia!" he
exclaimed.

"Oh! I just wanted to say that we will both go to call on her _very soon_.
If I sent you, she might think I was mad, and I won't give her that
satisfaction."

"Noble girl!" cried Bartley, with irony that pleased her better than
praise. Women like to be understood, even when they try not to be
understood.

When Marcia went with Bartley to call, Miss Kingsbury received her with
careful, perhaps anxious politeness, but made no further effort to take her
up. Some of the people whom Marcia met at Miss Kingsbury's called; and the
Witherbys came, father, mother, and daughter together; but between the
evident fact that the Hubbards were poor, and the other evident fact that
they moved in the best society, the Witherbys did not quite know what to do
about them. They asked them to dinner, and Bartley went alone; Marcia was
not well enough to go.

He was very kind and tractable, now, and went whenever she bade him go
without her, though tea at the Hallecks was getting to be an old story with
him, and it was generally tea at the Hallecks to which she sent him. The
Halleck ladies came faithfully to see her, and she got on very well with
the two older sisters, who gave her all the kindness they could spare from
their charities, and seemed pleased to have her so pretty and conjugal,
though these things were far from them. But she was afraid of Olive
at first, and disliked her as a friend of Miss Kingsbury. This rather
attracted the odd girl. What she called Marcia's snubs enabled her to
declare in her favor with a sense of disinterestedness, and to indulge her
repugnance for Bartley with a good heart. She resented his odious good
looks, and held it a shame that her mother should promote his visible
tendency to stoutness by giving him such nice things for tea.

"Now, I like Mr. Hubbard," said her mother placidly. "It's very kind of him
to come to such plain folks as we are, whenever we ask him; now that his
wife can't come, I know he does it because he likes us."

"Oh, he comes for the eating," said Olive, scornfully. Then another phase
of her mother's remark struck her: "Why, mother!" she cried, "I do believe
you think Bartley Hubbard's a distinguished man somehow!"

"Your father says it's very unusual for such a young man to be in a place
like his. Mr. Witherby really leaves everything to him, he says."

"Well, I think he'd better not, then! The Events has got to be perfectly
horrid, of late. It's full of murders and all uncleanness."

"That seems to be the way with the papers, nowadays. Your father hears that
the Events is making money."

"Why, mother! What a corrupt old thing you are! I believe you've been
bought up by that disgusting interview with father. Nestor of the Leather
Interest! Father ought to have turned him out of doors. Well, this family
is getting a little _too_ good, for me! And Ben's almost as bad as any of
you, of late,--I haven't a bit of influence with him any more. He seems
determined to be friendlier with that _person_ than ever; he's always
trying to do him good,--I can see it, and it makes me sick. One thing I
know: I'm going to stop Mr. Hubbard's calling me Olive. Impudent!"

Mrs. Halleck shifted her ground with the pretence which women use, even
amongst themselves, of having remained steadfast. "He is a very good
husband."

"Oh, because he likes to be!" retorted her daughter. "Nothing is easier
than to be a good husband."

"Ah, my dear," said Mrs. Halleck, "wait till you have tried."

This made Olive laugh; but she answered with an argument that always had
weight with her mother, "Ben doesn't think he's a good husband."

"What makes you think so, Olive?" asked her mother.

"I know he dislikes him intensely."

"Why, you just said yourself, dear, that he was friendlier with him than
ever."

"Oh, that's nothing. The more he disliked him the kinder he would be to
him."

"That's true," sighed her mother. "Did he ever say anything to you about
him?"

"No," cried Olive, shortly; "he never speaks of people he doesn't like."

The mother returned, with logical severity, "All that doesn't prove that
Ben thinks he isn't a good husband."

"He dislikes him. Do you believe a bad man can be a good husband, then?"

"No," Mrs. Halleck admitted, as if confronted with indisputable proof of
Bartley's wickedness.

In the mean time the peace between Bartley and Marcia continued unbroken,
and these days of waiting, of suffering, of hoping and dreading, were the
happiest of their lives. He did his best to be patient with her caprices
and fretfulness, and he was at least manfully comforting and helpful, and
instant in atonement for every failure. She said a thousand times that she
should die without him; and when her time came, he thought that she was
going to die before he could tell her of his sorrow for all that he had
ever done to grieve her. He did not tell her, though she lived to give him
the chance; but he took her and her baby both into his arms, with tears of
as much fondness as ever a man shed. He even began his confession; but she
said, "Hush! you never did a wrong thing yet that I didn't drive you to."
Pale and faint, she smiled joyfully upon him, and put her hand on his head
when he hid his face against hers on the pillow, and put her lips against
his cheek. His heart was full; he was grateful for the mercy that had
spared him; he was so strong in his silent repentance that he felt like a
good man.

"Bartley," she said, "I'm going to ask a great favor of you."

"There's nothing that I can do that _I_ shall think a favor, darling!" he
cried, lifting his face to look into hers.

"Write for mother to come. I want her!"

"Why, of course." Marcia continued to look at him, and kept the quivering
hold she had laid of his hand when he raised his head. "Was that all?"

She was silent, and he added, "I will ask your father to come with her."

She hid her face for the space of one sob. "I wanted you to offer."

"Why, of course! of course!" he replied.

She did not acknowledge his magnanimity directly, but she lifted the
coverlet and showed him the little head on her arm, and the little creased
and crumpled face.

"Pretty?" she asked. "Bring me the letter before you send it.--Yes, that is
just right,--perfect!" she sighed, when he came back and read the letter to
her; and she fell away to happy sleep.

Her father answered that he would come with her mother as soon as he got
the better of a cold he had taken. It was now well into the winter, and
the journey must have seemed more formidable in Equity than in Boston. But
Bartley was not impatient of his father-in-law's delay, and he set himself
cheerfully about consoling Marcia for it. She stole her white, thin hand
into his, and now and then gave it a little pressure to accent the points
she made in talking.

"Father was the first one I thought of--after you, Bartley. It seems to me
as if baby came half to show me how unfeeling I had been to him. Of course,
I'm not sorry I ran away and asked you to take me back, for I couldn't have
had you if I hadn't done it; but I never realized before how cruel it was
to father. He always made such a pet of me; and I know that he thought he
was acting for the best."

"I knew that _you_ were," said Bartley, fervently.

"What sweet things you always say to me!" she murmured. "But don't you see,
Bartley, that I didn't think enough of him? That's what baby seems to have
come to teach me." She pulled a little away on the pillow, so as to fix him
more earnestly with her eyes. "If baby should behave so to _you_ when she
grew up, I should hate her!"

He laughed, and said, "Well, perhaps your mother hates you."

"No, they don't--either of them," answered Marcia, with a sigh. "And I
behaved very stiffly and coldly with him when he came up to see me,--more
than I had any need to. I did it for your sake; but he didn't mean any harm
to you, he just wanted to make sure that I was safe and well."

"Oh, that's all right, Marsh."

"Yes, I know. But what if he had died!"

"Well, he didn't die," said Bartley, with a smile. "And you've corresponded
with them regularly, ever since, and you know they've been getting along
all right. And it's going to be altogether different from this out," he
added, leaning back a little weary with a matter in which he could not be
expected to take a very cordial interest.

"Truly?" she asked, with one of the eagerest of those hand-pressures.

"It won't be my fault if it isn't," he replied, with a yawn.

"How good you are, Bartley!" she said, with an admiring look, as if it were
the goodness of God she was praising.

Bartley released himself, and went to the new crib, in which the baby lay,
and with his hands in his pockets stood looking down at it with a curious
smile.

"Is it pretty?" she asked, envious of his bird's-eye view of the baby.

"Not definitively so," he answered. "I dare say she will smooth out in
time; but she seems to be considerably puckered yet."

"Well," returned Marcia, with forced resignation, "I shouldn't let any one
else say so."

Her husband set up a soft, low, thoughtful whistle. "I'll tell you what,
Marcia," he said presently. "Suppose we name this baby after your father?"

She lifted herself on her elbow, and stared at him as if he must be making
fun of her. "Why, how could we?" she demanded. Squire Gaylord's parents
had called his name Flavius Josephus, in a superstition once cherished
by old-fashioned people, that the Jewish historian was somehow a sacred
writer.

"We can't name her Josephus, but we can call her Flavia," said Bartley.
"And if she makes up her mind to turn out a blonde, the name will just fit.
Flavia,--it's a very pretty name." He looked at his wife, who suddenly
turned her face down on the pillow.

"Bartley Hubbard," she cried, "you're the best man in the world!"

"Oh, no! Only the second-best," suggested Bartley.

In these days they took their fill of the delight of young fatherhood and
motherhood. After its morning bath Bartley was called in, and allowed to
revere the baby's mottled and dimpled back as it lay face downward on
the nurse's lap, feebly wiggling its arms and legs, and responding with
ineffectual little sighs and gurgles to her acceptable rubbings with warm
flannel. When it was fully dressed, and its long clothes pulled snugly
down, and its limp person stiffened into something tenable, he was suffered
to take it into his arms, and to walk the room with it. After all, there
is not much that a man can actually do with a small baby, either for its
pleasure or his own, and Barkley's usefulness had its strict limitations.
He was perhaps most beneficial when he put the child in its mother's arms,
and sat down beside the bed, and quietly talked, while Marcia occasionally
put up a slender hand, and smoothed its golden brown hair, bending her neck
over to look at it where it lay, with the action of a mother bird. They
examined with minute interest the details of the curious little creature:
its tiny finger-nails, fine and sharp, and its small queer fist doubled so
tight, and closing on one's finger like a canary's claw on a perch; the
absurdity of its foot, the absurdity of its toes, the ridiculous inadequacy
of its legs and arms to the work ordinarily expected of legs and arms, made
them laugh. They could not tell yet whether its eyes would be black like
Marcia's, or blue like Bartley's; those long lashes had the sweep of hers,
but its mop of hair, which made it look so odd and old, was more like his
in color.

"She will be a dark-eyed blonde," Bartley decided.

"Is that nice?" asked Marcia.

"With the telescope sight, they're warranted to kill at five hundred
yards."

"Oh, for shame, Bartley! To talk of baby's ever killing!"

"Why, that's what they all come to. It's what you came to yourself."

"Yes, I know. But it's quite another thing with baby." She began to mumble
it with her lips, and to talk baby-talk to it. In their common interest in
this puppet they already called each other papa and mamma.

Squire Gaylord came alone, and when Marcia greeted him with "Why, father!
Where's mother?" he asked, "Did you expect her? Well, I guess your mother's
feeling rather too old for such long winter journeys. You know she don't
go out a great deal _I_ guess she expects your family down there in the
summer."

The old man was considerably abashed by the baby when it was put into his
arms, and being required to guess its name he naturally failed.

"Flavia!" cried Marcia, joyfully. "Bartley named it after you."

This embarrassed the Squire still more. "Is that so?" he asked, rather
sheepishly. "Well, it's quite a compliment."

Marcia repeated this to her husband as evidence that her father was all
right now. Bartley and the Squire were in fact very civil to each other;
and Bartley paid the old man many marked attentions. He took him to the
top of the State House, and walked him all about the city, to show him its
points of interest, and introduced him to such of his friends as they met,
though the Squire's dresscoat, whether fully revealed by the removal of his
surtout, or betraying itself below the skirt of the latter, was a trial
to a fellow of Bartley's style. He went with his father-in-law to see Mr.
Warren in Jefferson Scattering Batkins, and the Squire grimly appreciated
the burlesque of the member from Cranberry Centre; but he was otherwise
not a very amusable person, and off his own ground he was not conversable,
while he refused to betray his impressions of many things that Bartley
expected to astonish him. The Events editorial rooms had no apparent
effect upon him, though they were as different from most editorial dens as
tapestry carpets, black-walnut desks, and swivel chairs could make them.
Mr. Witherby covered him with urbanities and praises of Bartley that ought
to have delighted him as a father-in-law; but apparently the great man of
the Events was but a strange variety of the type with which he was familiar
in the despised country editors. He got on better with Mr. Atherton,
who was of a man's profession. The Squire wore his hat throughout their
interview, and everywhere except at table and in bed; and as soon as he
rose front either, he put it on.

Bartley tried to impress him with such novel traits of cosmopolitan life as
a _table d'hôte_ dinner at a French restaurant; but the Squire sat through
the courses, as if his barbarous old appetite had satisfied itself in
that manner all his life. After that, Bartley practically gave him up; he
pleaded his newspaper work, and left the Squire to pass the time as he
could in the little house on Clover Street, where he sat half a day at a
stretch in the parlor, with his hat on, reading the newspapers, his legs
sprawled out towards the grate. In this way he probably reconstructed for
himself some image of his wonted life in his office at home, and was for
the time at peace; but otherwise he was very restless, except when he was
with Marcia. He was as fond of her in his way as he had ever been, and
though he apparently cared nothing for the baby, he enjoyed Marcia's pride
in it; and he bore to have it thrust upon him with the surly mildness of an
old dog receiving children's caresses. He listened with the same patience
to all her celebrations of Bartley, which were often tedious enough, for
she bragged of him constantly, of his smartness and goodness, and of the
great success that had crowned the merit of both in him.

Mr. Halleck had called upon the Squire the morning after his arrival, and
brought Marcia a note from his wife, offering to have her father stay with
them if she found herself too much crowded at this eventful time. "There!
That is just the sort of people the Hallecks are!" she cried, showing the
letter to her father. "And to think of our not going near them for months
and mouths after we came to Boston, for fear they were stuck up! But
Bartley is always just so proud. Now you must go right in, father, and not
keep Mr. Halleck waiting. Give me your hat, or you'll be sure to wear it
in the parlor." She made him stoop down to let her brush his coat-collar a
little. "There! Now you look something like."

Squire Gaylord had never received a visit except on business in his life,
and such a thing as one man calling socially upon another, as women did,
was unknown to the civilization of Equity. But, as he reported to Marcia,
he got along with Mr. Halleck; and he got along with the whole family when
he went with Bartley to tea, upon the invitation Mr. Halleck made him that
morning. Probably it appeared to him an objectless hospitality; but he
spent as pleasant an evening as he could hope to spend with his hat off
and in a frock-coat, which he wore as a more ceremonious garment than the
dress-coat of his every-day life. He seemed to take a special liking to
Olive Halleck, whose habit of speaking her mind with vigor and directness
struck him as commendable. It was Olive who made the time pass for him;
and as the occasion was not one for personal sarcasm or question of the
Christian religion, her task in keeping the old pagan out of rather abysmal
silences must have had its difficulties.

"What did you talk about?" asked Marcia, requiring an account of his
enjoyment from him the next morning, after Bartley had gone down to his
work.

"Mostly about you, I guess," said the Squire, with a laugh. "There was a
large sandy-haired young woman there--"

"Miss Kingsbury," said Marcia, with vindictive promptness. Her eyes
kindled, and she began to grow rigid under the coverlet. "Whom did _she_
talk with?"

"Well, she talked a little with me; but she talked most of the time to the
young man. She engaged to him?"

"No," said Marcia, relaxing. "She's a great friend of the whole family. I
don't know what they meant by telling you it was to be just a family party,
when they were going to have strangers in," she pouted.

"Perhaps they didn't count her."

"No." But Marcia's pleasure in the affair was tainted, and she began to
talk of other things.

Her father stayed nearly a week, and they all found it rather a long week.
After showing him her baby, and satisfying herself that he and Bartley were
on good terms again, there was not much left for Marcia. Bartley had been
banished to the spare room by the presence of the nurse; and he gave up his
bed there to the Squire, and slept on a cot in the unfurnished attic room;
the cook and a small girl got in to help, had the other. The house that had
once seemed so vast was full to bursting.

"I never knew how little it was till I saw your father coming down stairs,"
said Bartley. "He's too tall for it. When he sits on the sofa, and
stretches out his legs, his boots touch the mop-board on the other side of
the room. Fact!"

"He won't stay over Sunday," began Marcia, with a rueful smile.

"Why, Marcia, you don't think I want him to go!"

"No, you're as good as can be about it. But I hope he won't stay over
Sunday."

"Haven't you enjoyed his visit?" asked Bartley.

"Oh, yes, I've enjoyed it." The tears came into her eyes. "I've made it all
up with father; and he doesn't feel hard to me. But, Bartley--Sit down,
dear, here on the bed!" She took his hand and gently pulled him down. "I
see more and more that father and mother can never be what they used to be
to me,--that you're all the world to me. Yes, my life is broken off from
theirs forever. Could anything break it off from yours? You'll always be
patient with me, won't you? and remember that I'd always rather be good
when I'm behaving the worst?"

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.