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A Modern Instance

W >> William Dean Howells >> A Modern Instance




A man is master in his own house generally through the exercise of a
certain degree of brutality, but Squire Gaylord maintained his predominance
by an enlightened absenteeism. No man living always at home was ever so
little under his own roof. While he was in more active business life, he
had kept an office in the heart of the village, where he spent all his
days, and a great part of every night; but after he had become rich enough
to risk whatever loss of business the change might involve, he bought this
large old square house on the border of the village, and thenceforth made
his home in the little detached office.

If Mrs. Gaylord had dimly imagined that she should see something more of
him, having him so near at hand, she really saw less: there was no weather,
by day or night, in which he could not go to his office, now. He went no
more than his wife into the village society; she might have been glad now
and then of a little glimpse of the world, but she never said so, and her
social life had ceased, like her religious life. Their house was richly
furnished according to the local taste of the time; the parlor had a
Brussels carpet, and heavy chairs of mahogany and hair-cloth; Marcia had a
piano there, and since she had come home from school they had made company,
as Mrs. Gaylord called it, two or three times for her; but they had held
aloof from the festivity, the Squire in his office, and Mrs. Gaylord in the
family room where they now sat in unwonted companionship.

"Well, Mr. Gaylord," said his wife, "I don't know as you can say but what
_Marcia_'s suited well enough."

This was the first allusion they had made to the subject, but she let it
take the argumentative form of her cogitations.

"M-yes," sighed the Squire, in long, nasal assent, "most too well, if
anything." He rasped first one unshaven cheek and then the other, with his
thin, quivering hand.

"He's smart enough," said Mrs. Gaylord, as before.

"M-yes, most too smart," replied her husband, a little more quickly than
before. "He's smart enough, even if she wasn't, to see from the start that
she was crazy to have him, and that isn't the best way to begin life for a
married couple, if I'm a judge."

"It would killed her if she hadn't got him. I could see 't was wearin' on
her every day, more and more. She used to fairly jump, every knock she'd
hear at the door; and I know sometimes, when she was afraid he wa' n't
coming, she used to go out, in hopes 't she sh'd meet him: I don't suppose
she allowed to herself that she did it for that--Marcia's proud."

"M-yes," said the Squire, "she's proud. And when a proud girl makes a fool
of herself about a fellow, it's a matter of life and death with her. She
can't help herself. She lets go everything."

"I declare," Mrs. Gaylord went on, "it worked me up considerable to have
her come in some those times, and see by her face 't she'd seen him with
some the other girls. She used to _look_ so! And then I'd hear her up in
her room, cryin' and cryin'. I shouldn't cared so much, if Marcia'd been
like any other girl, kind of flirty, like, about it. But she wa' n't. She
was just bowed down before her idol."

A final assent came from the Squire, as if wrung out of his heart, and he
rose from his chair, and then sat down again. Marcia was his child, and he
loved her with his whole soul. "M-well!" he deeply sighed, "all that part's
over, anyway," but he tingled in an anguish of sympathy with what she had
suffered. "You see, Miranda, how she looked at me when she first came in
with him,--so proud and independent, poor girl! and yet as if she was
afraid I _mightn't_ like it?"

"Yes, I see it."

He pulled his hat far down over his cavernous eyes, and worked his thin,
rusty old jaws.

"I hope 't she'll be able to school herself, so 's t' not show out her
feelings so much," said Mrs. Gaylord.

"I wish she could school herself so as to not have 'em so much; but I guess
she'll have 'em, and I guess she'll show 'em out." They were both silent;
after a while he added, throwing at the stove a minute fragment of the cane
he had pulled off the seat of his chair: "Miranda, I've expected something
of this sort a good while, and I've thought over what Bartley had better
do."

Mrs. Gaylord stooped forward and picked up the bit of wood which her
husband had thrown down; her vigilance was rewarded by finding a thread on
the oil-cloth near where it lay; she whipped this round her finger, and her
husband continued: "He'd better give up his paper and go into the law. He
's done well in the paper, and he's a smart writer; but editing a newspaper
aint any work for a _man_. It's all well enough as long as he's single,
but when he's got a wife to look after, he'd better get down to _work_. My
business is in just such a shape now that I could hand it over to him in a
lump; but come to wait a year or two longer, and this young man and that
one 'll eat into it, and it won't be the same thing at all. I shall want
Bartley to push right along, and get admitted at once. He can do it, fast
enough. He's bright enough," added the old man, with a certain grimness.
"M-well!" he broke out, with a quick sigh, after a moment of musing; "it
hasn't happened at any very bad time. I was just thinking, this morning,
that I should like to have my whole time, pretty soon, to look after my
property. I sha'n't want Bartley to do _that_ for me. I'll give him a good
start in money and in business; but I'll look after my property myself.
I'll speak to him, the first chance I get."

A light step sounded on the stairs, and Marcia burst into the room,
ready for her drive. "I wanted to get a good warm before I started," she
explained, stooping before the stove, and supporting herself with one hand
on her father's knee. There had been no formal congratulations upon her
engagement from either of her parents; but this was not requisite, and
would have been a little affected; they were perhaps now ashamed to mention
it outright before her alone. The Squire, however, went so far as to put
his hand over the hand she had laid upon his knee, and to smooth it twice
or thrice.

"You going to ride after that sorrel colt of Bartley's?" he asked.

"Of course!" she answered, with playful pertness. "I guess Bartley can
manage the sorrel colt! He's never had any trouble yet."

"He's always been able to give his whole mind to him before," said the
Squire. He gave Marcia's hand a significant squeeze, and let it go.

She would not confess her consciousness of his meaning at once. She looked
up at the clock, and then turned and pulled her father's watch out of his
waistcoat pocket, and compared the time. "Why, you're both fast!"

"Perhaps Bartley's slow," said the Squire; and having gone as far as he
intended in this direction, he permitted himself a low chuckle.

The sleigh-bells jingled without, and she sprang lightly to her feet. "I
guess you don't think Bartley's slow," she exclaimed, and hung over her
father long enough to rub her lips against his bristly cheek. "By, mother,"
she said, over her shoulder, and went out of the room. She let her muff
hang as far down in front of her as her arms would reach, in a stylish way,
and moved with a little rhythmical tilt, as if to some inner music. Even in
her furs she was elegantly slender in shape.

The old people remained silent and motionless till the clash of the bells
died away. Then the Squire rose, and went to the wood-shed beyond the
kitchen, whence he reappeared with an armful of wood. His wife started at
the sight. "Mr. Gaylord, what _be_ you doin'?"

"Oh, I'm going to make 'em up a little fire in the parlor stove. I guess
they won't want us round a great deal, when they come back."

Mrs. Gaylord said, "Well, I never did!" When her husband returned from the
parlor, she added, "I suppose some folks'd say it was rather of a strange
way of spendin' the Sabbath."

"It's a very good way of spending the Sabbath. You don't suppose that
any of the people in church are half as happy, do you? Why, old Jonathan
Edwards himself used to allow 'all proper opportunity' for the young
fellows that come to see his girls, 'and a room and fire, if needed.' His
'Life' says so."

"I guess he didn't allow it on the Sabbath," retorted Mrs. Gaylord.

"Well, the 'Life' don't say," chuckled the Squire. "Why, Miranda, I do it
for Marcia! There's never but one first day to an engagement. You know that
as well as I do." In saying this, Squire Gaylord gave way to his repressed
emotion in an extravagance. He suddenly stooped over and kissed his wife;
but he spared her confusion by going out to his office at once, where he
stayed the whole afternoon.

Bartley and Marcia took the "Long Drive," as it was called, at Equity. The
road plunged into the darkly wooded gulch beyond the house, and then
struck away eastward, crossing loop after loop of the river on the covered
bridges, where the neighbors, who had broken it out with their ox-teams in
the open, had thickly bedded it in snow. In the valleys and sheltered spots
it remained free, and so wide that encountering teams could easily pass
each other; but where it climbed a hill, or crossed a treeless level, it
was narrowed to a single track, with turn-outs at established points, where
the drivers of the sleighs waited to be sure that the stretch beyond was
clear before going forward. In the country, the winter which held the
village in such close siege was an occupation under which Nature seemed
to cower helpless, and men made a desperate and ineffectual struggle. The
houses, banked up with snow almost to the sills of the windows that looked
out, blind with frost, upon the lifeless world, were dwarfed in the drifts,
and seemed to founder in a white sea blotched with strange bluish shadows
under the slanting sun. Where they fronted close upon the road, it was
evident that the fight with the snow was kept up unrelentingly; spaces were
shovelled out, and paths were kept open to the middle of the highway, and
to the barn; but where they were somewhat removed, there was no visible
trace of the conflict, and no sign of life except the faint, wreathed lines
of smoke wavering upward from the chimneys.

In the hollows through which the road passed, the lower boughs of the
pines and hemlocks were weighed down with the snow-fall till they lay half
submerged in the drifts; but wherever the wind could strike them, they
swung free of this load and met in low, flat arches above the track. The
river betrayed itself only when the swift current of a ripple broke through
the white surface in long, irregular, grayish blurs. It was all wild and
lonesome, but to the girl alone in it with her lover, the solitude was
sweet, and she did not wish to speak even to him. His hands were both busy
with the reins, but it was agreed between them that she might lock hers
through his arm. Cowering close to him under the robes, she laid her head
on his shoulder and looked out over the flying landscape in measureless
content, and smiled, with filling eyes, when he bent over, and warmed his
cold, red cheek on the top of her fur cap.

The moments of bliss that silence a woman rouse a man to make sure of his
rapture. "How do you like it, Marsh?" he asked, trying at one of these
times to peer round into her face. "Are you afraid?"

"No,--only of getting back too soon."

He made the shivering echoes answer with his delight in this, and chirruped
to the colt, who pushed forward at a wilder speed, flinging his hoofs out
before him with the straight thrust of the horn trotter, and seeming to
overtake them as they flew. "I should like this ride to last forever!"

"Forever!" she repeated. "That would do for a beginning."

"Marsh! What a girl you are! I never supposed you would be so free to let a
fellow know how much you cared for him."

"Neither did I," she answered dreamily. "But now--now the only trouble is
that I don't know _how_ to let him know." She gave his arm to which she
clung a little convulsive clutch, and pressed her head harder upon his
shoulder.

"Well, that's pretty much my complaint, too," said Bartley, "though I
couldn't have expressed it so well."

"Oh, _you_ express!" she murmured, with the pride in him which implied
that there were no thoughts worth expressing to which he could not give a
monumental utterance. Her adoration flattered his self-love to the same
passionate intensity, and to something like the generous complexion of her
worship.

"Marcia," he answered, "I am going to try to be all you expect of me. And I
hope I shall never do anything unworthy of your ideal."

She could only press his arm again in speechless joy, but she said to
herself that she should always remember these words.

The wind had been rising ever since they started but they had not noticed
it till now, when the woods began to thin away on either side, and he
stopped before striking out over one of the naked stretches of the
plain,--a white waste swept by the blasts that sucked down through a gorge
of the mountain, and flattened the snow-drifts as the tornado flattens the
waves. Across this expanse ran the road, its stiff lines obliterated here
and there, in the slight depressions, and showing dark along the rest of
the track.

It was a good half-mile to the next body of woods, and midway there was one
of those sidings where a sleigh approaching from the other quarter must
turn out and yield the right of way. Bartley stopped his colt, and scanned
the road.

"Anybody coming?" asked Marcia.

"No, I don't see any one. But if there's any one in the woods yonder,
they'd better wait till I get across. No horse in Equity can beat this colt
to the turn-out."

"Oh, well, look carefully, Bartley. If we met any one beyond the turn-out,
I don't know what I should do," pleaded the girl.

"I don't know what _they_ would do," said Bartley. "But it's their lookout
now, if they come. Wrap your face up well, or put your head under the robe.
I've got to hold my breath the next half-mile." He loosed the reins, and
sped the colt out of the shelter where he had halted. The wind struck them
like an edge of steel, and, catching the powdery snow that their horse's
hoofs beat up, sent it spinning and swirling far along the glistening
levels on their lee. They felt the thrill of the go as if they were in some
light boat leaping over a swift current. Marcia disdained to cover her
face, if he must confront the wind, but after a few gasps she was glad to
bend forward, and bury it in the long hair of the bearskin robe. When she
lifted it, they were already past the siding, and she saw a cutter dashing
toward them from the cover of the woods. "Bartley!" she screamed, "the
sleigh!"

"Yes," he shouted. "Some fool! There's going to be trouble here," he
added, checking his horse as he could. "They don't seem to know how to
manage--It's a couple of women! Hold on! hold on!" he called. "Don't try to
turn out! I'll turn out!"

The women pulled their horse's head this way and that, in apparent
confusion, and then began to turn out into the trackless snow at the
roadside, in spite of Bartley's frantic efforts to arrest them. They sank
deeper and deeper into the drift; their horse plunged and struggled, and
then their cutter went over, amidst their shrieks and cries for help.

Bartley drove up abreast of the wreck, and, saying, "Still, Jerry! Don't be
afraid, Marcia,"--he put the reins into her hands, and sprang out to the
rescue.

One of the women had been flung out free of the sleigh, and had already
gathered herself up, and stood crying and wringing her hands; "Oh, Mr.
Hubbard, Mr. Hubbard! Help Hannah! she's under there!"

"All right! Keep quiet, Mrs. Morrison! Take hold of your horse's head!"
Bartley had first of all seized him by the bit, and pulled him to his feet;
he was old and experienced in obedience, and he now stood waiting orders,
patiently enough. Bartley seized the cutter and by an effort of all his
strength righted it. The colt started and trembled, but Marcia called to
him in Bartley's tone, "Still, Jerry!" and he obeyed her.

The girl, who had been caught under the overturned cutter, escaped like
a wild thing out of a trap, when it was lifted, and, plunging some paces
away, faced round upon her rescuer with the hood pulled straight and set
comely to her face again, almost before he could ask, "Any bones broken,
Hannah?"

"_No_!" she shouted. "Mother! mother! stop crying! Don't you see I'm not
dead?" She leaped about, catching up this wrap and that, shaking the dry
snow out of them, and flinging them back into the cutter, while she laughed
in the wild tumult of her spirits. Bartley helped her pick up the fragments
of the wreck, and joined her in making fun of the adventure. The wind
hustled them, but they were warm in defiance of it with their jollity and
their bustle.

"Why didn't you let me turn out?" demanded Bartley, as he and the girl
stood on opposite sides of the cutter, rearranging the robes in it.

"Oh, I thought I could turn out well enough. You had a right to the road."

"Well, the next time you see any one past the turn-out, you better not
start from the woods."

"Why, there's no more room in the woods to get past than there is here,"
cried the girl.

"There's more shelter."

"Oh, I'm not cold!" She flashed a look at him from her brilliant face, warm
with all the glow of her young health, and laughed, and before she dropped
her eyes, she included Marcia in her glance. They had already looked at
each other without any sign of recognition. "Come, mother! All right, now!"

Her mother left the horse's head, and, heavily ploughing back to the
cutter, tumbled herself in. The girl, from her side, began to climb in, but
her weight made the sleigh careen, and she dropped down with a gay shriek.

Bartley came round and lifted her in; the girl called to her horse, and
drove up into the road and away.

Bartley looked after her a moment, and continued to glance in that
direction when he stood stamping the snow off his feet, and brushing it
from his legs and arms, before he remounted to Marcia's side. He was
excited, and talked rapidly and loudly, as he took the reins from Marcia's
passive hold, and let the colt out. "That girl is the pluckiest fool, yet!
Wouldn't let me turn out because I had the right of way! And she wasn't
going to let anybody else have a hand in getting that old ark of theirs
afloat again. Good their horse wasn't anything like Jerry! How well Jerry
behaved! Were you frightened, Marsh?" He bent over to see her face, but she
had not her head on his shoulder, and she did not sit close to him, now.
"Did you freeze?"

"Oh, no! I got along very well," she answered, dryly, and edged away as far
as the width of the seat would permit. "It would have been better for
you to lead their horse up into the road, and then she could have got in
without your help. Her mother got in alone."

He took the reins into his left hand, and, passing his strong right around
her, pulled her up to his side. She resisted, with diminishing force; at
last she ceased to resist, and her head fell passively to its former place
on his shoulder. He did not try to speak any word of comfort; he only held
her close to him; when she looked up, as they entered the village, she
confronted him with a brilliant smile that ignored her tears.

But that night, when she followed him to the door, she looked him
searchingly in the eyes. "I wonder if you really do despise me, Bartley?"
she asked.

"Certainly," he answered, with a jesting smile. "What for?"

"For showing out my feelings so. For not even trying to pretend not to care
everything for you."

"It wouldn't be any use your trying: I should know that you did, anyway."

"Oh, don't laugh, Bartley, don't laugh! I don't believe that I ought to.
I've heard that it makes people sick of you. But I can't help it,--I can't
help it! And if--if you think I'm always going to be so,--and that I'm
going to keep on getting worse and worse, and making you so unhappy, why,
you'd better break your engagement now--while you have a chance."

"What have you been making me unhappy about, I should like to know? I
thought I'd been having a very good time."

She hid her face against his breast. "It almost _killed_ me to see you
there with her. I was so cold,--my hands were half frozen, holding the
reins,--and I was so afraid of the colt I didn't know what to do; and I had
been keeping up my courage on your account; and you seemed so long about
it all; and she could have got in perfectly well--as well as her mother
did--without your help--" Her voice broke in a miserable sob, and she
clutched herself tighter to him.

He smoothed down her hair with his hand. "Why, Marsh! Did you think that
made me unhappy? _I_ didn't mind it a bit. I knew what the trouble was, at
the time; but I wasn't going to say anything. I knew you would be all right
as soon as you could think it over. You don't suppose I care anything for
that girl?"

"No," answered a rueful sob. "But I _wish_ you didn't have anything to do
with her. I know she'll make trouble for you, somehow."

"Well," said Bartley, "I can't very well turn her off as long as she does
her work. But you needn't be worried about making me unhappy. If anything,
I rather liked it. It showed how much you _did_ care for me." He bent
toward her, with a look of bright raillery, for the parting kiss. "Now
then: once, twice, three times,--and good night it is!"




VI.


The spectacle of a love affair in which the woman gives more of her heart
than the man gives of his is so pitiable that we are apt to attribute a
kind of merit to her, as if it were a voluntary self-sacrifice for her to
love more than her share. Not only other men, but other women, look on with
this canonizing compassion; for women have a lively power of imagining
themselves in the place of any sister who suffers in matters of sentiment,
and are eager to espouse the common cause in commiserating her. Each of
them pictures herself similarly wronged or slighted by the man she likes
best, and feels how cruel it would be if he were to care less for her than
she for him; and for the time being, in order to realize the situation, she
loads him with all the sins of omission proper to the culprit in the alien
case. But possibly there is a compensation in merely loving, even where the
love given is out of all proportion to the love received.

If Bartley Hubbard's sensations and impressions of the day had been at all
reasoned, that night as he lay thinking it over, he could unquestionably
have seen many advantages for Marcia in the affair,--perhaps more than for
himself. But to do him justice he did not formulate these now, or in any
wise explicitly recognize the favors he was bestowing. At twenty-six one
does not naturally compute them in musing upon the girl to whom one is just
betrothed; and Bartley's mind was a confusion of pleasure. He liked so well
to think how fond of him Marcia was, that it did not occur to him then to
question whether he were as fond of her. It is possible that as he drowsed,
at last, there floated airily through the consciousness which was melting
and dispersing itself before the approach of sleep, an intimation from
somewhere to some one that perhaps the affair need not be considered too
seriously. But in that mysterious limbo one cannot be sure of what is
thought and what is dreamed; and Bartley always acquitted himself, and
probably with justice, of any want of seriousness.

What he did make sure of when he woke was that he was still out of sorts,
and that he had again that dull headache; and his instant longing for
sympathy did more than anything else to convince him that he really loved
Marcia, and had never, in his obscurest or remotest feeling, swerved in
his fealty to her. In the atmosphere of her devotion yesterday, he had so
wholly forgotten his sufferings that he had imagined himself well; but now
he found that he was not well, and he began to believe that he was going to
have what the country people call a fit of sickness. He felt that he ought
to be taken care, of, that he was unfit to work; and in his vexation at
not being able to go to Marcia for comfort-it really amounted to nothing
less--he entered upon the day's affairs with fretful impatience.

The Free Press was published on Tuesdays, and Monday was always a busy time
of preparation. The hands were apt also to feel the demoralization that
follows a holiday, even when it has been a holy day. The girls who set the
type of the Free Press had by no means foregone the rights and privileges
of their sex in espousing their art, and they had their beaux on Sunday
night like other young ladies. It resulted that on Monday morning they were
nervous and impatient, alternating between fits of giggling delight in the
interchange of fond reminiscences, and the crossness which is pretty sure
to disfigure human behavior from want of sleep. But ordinarily Bartley got
on very well with them. In spite of the assumption of equality between all
classes in Equity, they stood in secret awe of his personal splendor, and
the tradition of his achievements at college and in the great world; and
a flattering joke or a sharp sarcasm from him went a great way with them.
Besides, he had an efficient lieutenant in Henry Bird, the young printer
who had picked up his trade in the office, and who acted as Bartley's
foreman, so far as the establishment had an organization. Bird had industry
and discipline which were contagious, and that love of his work which is
said to be growing rare among artisans in the modern subdivision of trades.
This boy--for he was only nineteen--worked at his craft early and late out
of pleasure in it. He seemed one of those simple, subordinate natures which
are happy in looking up to whatever assumes to be above them. He exulted to
serve in a world where most people prefer to be served, and it is uncertain
whether he liked his work better for its own sake, or Bartley's, for whom
he did it. He was slight and rather delicate in health, and it came natural
for Bartley to patronize him. He took him on the long walks of which he was
fond, and made him in some sort his humble confidant, talking to him of
himself and his plans with large and braggart vagueness. He depended upon
Bird in a great many things, and Bird never failed him; for he had a
basis of constancy that was immovable. "No," said a philosopher from a
neighboring logging-camp, who used to hang about the printing-office a long
time after he had got his paper, "there aint a great deal of natural git up
and howl about Henry; but he stays put." In the confidences which Bartley
used to make Bird, he promised that, when he left the newspaper for the
law, he would see that no one else succeeded him. The young fellow did not
need this promise to make him Bartley's fast friend, but it colored his
affection with ambitious enthusiasm; to edit and publish a newspaper,--his
dreams did not go beyond that: to devote it to Bartley's interest in the
political life on which Bartley often hinted he might enter,--that would be
the sweetest privilege of realized success. Bird already wrote paragraphs
for the Free Press, and Bartley let him make up a column of news from the
city exchanges, which was partly written and partly selected.

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