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




Bartley came to the office rather late on Monday morning, bringing with him
the papers from Saturday night's mail, which had lain unopened over
Sunday, and went directly into his own room, without looking into the
printing-office. He felt feverish and irritable, and he resolved to fill up
with selections and let his editorial paragraphing go, or get Bird to do
it. He was tired of the work, and sick of Equity; Marcia's face seemed to
look sadly in upon his angry discontent, and he no longer wished to go to
her for sympathy. His door opened, and, without glancing from the newspaper
which he held up before him, he asked, "What is it, Bird? Do you want
copy?"

"Well, no, Mr. Hubbard," answered Bird, "we have copy enough for the force
we've got this morning."

"Why, what's up?" demanded Bartley, dropping his paper.

"Lizzie Sawyer has sent word that she is sick, and we haven't heard or seen
anything of Hannah Morrison."

"Confound the girls!" said Bartley, "there's always something the matter
with them." He rubbed his hand over his forehead, as if to rub out the dull
pain there. "Well," he said, "I must go to work myself, then." He rose,
and took hold of the lapels of his coat, to pull it off; but something in
Bird's look arrested him. "What is it?" he asked.

"Old Morrison was here, just before you came in, and said he wanted to see
you. I think he was drunk," said Bird, anxiously. "He said he was coming
back again."

"All right; let him come," replied Bartley. "This is a free
country,--especially in Equity. I suppose he wants Hannah's wages raised,
as usual. How much are we behind on the paper, Henry?"

"We're not a great deal behind, Mr. Hubbard, if we were not so
weak-handed."

"Perhaps we can get Hannah back, during the forenoon. At any rate, we can
ask her honored parent when he comes."

Where Morrison got his liquor was a question that agitated Equity from time
to time, and baffled the officer of the law empowered to see that no strong
drink came into the town. Under conditions which made it impossible even in
the logging-camps, and rendered the sale of spirits too precarious for the
apothecary, who might be supposed to deal in them medicinally, Morrison
never failed of his spree when the mysterious mechanism of his appetite
enforced it. Probably it was some form of bedevilled cider that supplied
the material of his debauch; but even cider was not easily to be had.

Morrison's spree was a movable feast, and recurred at irregular intervals
of two, or three, or even six weeks; but it recurred often enough to keep
him poor, and his family in a social outlawry against which the kindly
instincts of their neighbors struggled in vain. Mrs. Morrison was that
pariah who, in a village like Equity, cuts herself off from hope by taking
in washing; and it was a decided rise in the world for Hannah, a wild girl
at school, to get a place in the printing-office. Her father had applied
for it humbly enough at the tremulous and penitent close of one of his long
sprees, and was grateful to Bartley for taking the special interest in her
which she reported at home.

But the independence of a drunken shoemaker is proverbial, and Morrison's
meek spirit soared into lordly arrogance with his earliest cups. The
first warning which the community had of his change of attitude was
the conspicuous and even defiant closure of his shop, and the scornful
rejection of custom, however urgent or necessitous. All Equity might go in
broken shoes, for any patching or half-soling the people got from him. He
went about collecting his small dues, and paying up his debts as long as
the money lasted, in token of his resolution not to take any favors from
any man thereafter. Then he retired to his house on one of the by streets,
and by degrees drank himself past active offence. It was of course in his
defiant humor that he came to visit Bartley, who had learned to expect
him whenever Hannah failed to appear promptly at her work. The affair was
always easily arranged. Bartley instantly assented, with whatever irony he
liked, to Morrison's demands; he refused with overwhelming politeness even
to permit him to give himself the trouble to support them by argument; he
complimented Hannah inordinately as one of the most gifted and accomplished
ladies of his acquaintance, and inquired affectionately after the health
of each member of the Morrison family. When Morrison rose to go he always
said, in shaking hands, "Well, sir, if there was more like you in Equity
a poor man could get along. You're a gentleman, sir." After getting some
paces away from the street door, he stumbled back up the stairs to repeat,
"You're a gentleman!" Hannah came during the day, and the wages remained
the same: neither of the contracting parties regarded the increase so
elaborately agreed upon, and Morrison, on becoming sober, gratefully
ignored the whole transaction, though, by a curious juggle of his brain, he
recurred to it in his next spree, and advanced in his new demand from the
last rise: his daughter was now nominally in receipt of an income of forty
dollars a week, but actually accepted four.

Bartley, on his part, enjoyed the business as an agreeable excitement and
a welcome relief from the monotony of his official life. He never hurried
Morrison's visits, but amused himself by treating him with the most
flattering distinction, and baffling his arrogance by immediate concession.
But this morning, when Morrison came back with a front of uncommon
fierceness, he merely looked up from his newspapers, to which he had
recurred, and said coolly. "Oh, Mr. Morrison! Good morning. I suppose it's
that little advance that you wish to see me about. Take a chair. What is
the increase you ask this time? Of course I agree to anything."

He leaned forward, pencil in hand, to make a note of the figure Morrison
should name, when the drunkard approached and struck the table in front of
him with his fist, and blazed upon Bartley's face, suddenly uplifted, with
his blue crazy eyes:

"No, sir! I won't take a seat, and I don't come on no such business! No,
sir!" He struck the table again, and the violence of his blow upset the
inkstand.

Bartley saved himself by suddenly springing away. "Hollo here!" he shouted.
"What do you mean by this infernal nonsense?"

"What do _you_ mean," retorted the drunkard, "by makin' up to my girl?"

"You're a fool," cried Bartley, "and drunk!"

"I'll show you whether I'm a fool, and I'll show you whether I'm drunk,"
said Morrison. He opened the door and beckoned to Bird, with an air of
mysterious authority. "Young man! Come here!"

Bird was used to the indulgence with which Bartley treated Morrison's tipsy
freaks, and supposed that he had been called by his consent to witness
another agreement to a rise in Hannah's wages. He came quickly, to help
get Morrison out of the way the sooner, and he was astonished to be met by
Bartley with "I don't want you, Bird."

"All right," answered the boy, and he turned to go out of the door.

But Morrison had planted himself against it, and waved Bird austerely
back. "_I_ want you," he said, with drunken impressiveness, "for a
witness--wick--witness--while I ask Mr. Hubbard what he means by--"

"Hold your tongue!" cried Bartley. "Get out of this!" He advanced a pace or
two toward Morrison who stood his ground without swerving.

"Now you--you keep quiet, Mr. Hubbard," said Morrison, with a swift drunken
change of mood, by which he passed from arrogant denunciation to a smooth,
patronizing mastery of the situation. "_I_ wish this thing all settled
amic--ic--amelcabilly."

Bartley broke into a helpless laugh at Morrison's final failure on a word
difficult to sober tongues, and the latter went on: "No 'casion for bad
feeling on either side. All I want know is what you mean."

"Well, go on!" cried Bartley, good-naturedly, and he sat down in his chair,
which he tilted back, and, clasping his hands behind his head, looked up
into Morrison's face. "What do I mean by what?"

Probably Morrison had not expected to be categorical, or to bring anything
like a bill of particulars against Bartley, and this demand gave him pause.
"What you mean," he said, at last, "by always praising her up so?"

"What I said. She's a very good girl, and a very bright one. You don't deny
that?"

"No--no matter what I deny. What--what you lend her all them books for?"

"To improve her mind. You don't object to that? I thought you once thanked
me for taking an interest in her."

"Don't you mind what I object to, and what I thank you for," said Morrison,
with dignity. "I know what I'm about."

"I begin to doubt. But get on. I'm in a great hurry this morning," said
Bartley.

Morrison seemed to be making a mental examination of his stock of charges,
while the strain of keeping his upright position began to tell upon him,
and he swayed to and fro against the door. "What's that word you sent her
by my boy, Sat'day night?"

"That she was a smart girl, and would be sure to get on if she was good--or
words to that effect. I trust there was no offence in that, Mr. Morrison?"

Morrison surrendered, himself to another season of cogitation, in which he
probably found his vagueness growing upon him. He ended by fumbling in all
his pockets, and bringing up from the last a crumpled scrap of paper. "What
you--what you say that?"

Bartley took the extended scrap with an easy air. "Miss Morrison's
handwriting, I think." He held it up before him and read aloud, "'I love my
love with an H because he is Handsome.' This appears to be a confidence of
Miss Morrison to her Muse. Whom do you think she refers to, Mr. Morrison?"

"What's--what's the first letter your name?" demanded Morrison, with an
effort to collect his dispersing severity.

"B," promptly replied Bartley. "Perhaps this concerns you, Henry. Your name
begins with an H." He passed the paper up over his head to Bird, who took
it silently. "You see," he continued, addressing Bird, but looking at
Morrison as he spoke, "Mr. Morrison wishes to convict me of an attempt upon
Miss Hannah's affections. Have you anything else to urge, Mr. Morrison?"

Morrison slid at last from his difficult position into a convenient chair,
and struggled to keep himself from doubling forward. "I want know what you
mean," he said, with dogged iteration.

"I'll show you what I mean," said Bartley with an ugly quiet, while his
mustache began to twitch. He sprang to his feet and seized Morrison by
the collar, pulling him up out of the chair till he held him clear of the
floor, and opened the door with his other hand. "Don't show your face here
again,--you or your girl either!" Still holding the man by the collar, he
pushed him before him through the office, and gave him a final thust out of
the outer door.

Bartley returned to his room in a white heat: "Miserable tipsy rascal!" he
panted; "I wonder who has set him on to this thing."

Bird stood pale and silent, still, nolding the crumpled scrap of paper in
his hand.

"I shouldn't be surprised if that impudent little witch herself had put him
up to it. She's capable of it," said Bartley, fumbling aimlessly about on
his table, in his wrath, without looking at Bird.

"It's a lie!" said Bird.

Bartley started as if the other had struck him, and as he glared at Bird
the anger went out of his face for pure amazement. "Are you out of your
mind, Henry?" he asked calmly. "Perhaps you're drunk too, this morning. The
Devil seems to have got into pretty much everybody."

"It's a lie!" repeated the boy, while the tears sprang to his eyes. "She's
as good a girl as Marcia Gaylord is, any day!"

"Better go away, Henry," said Bartley, with a deadly sort of gentleness.

"I'm going away," answered the boy, his face twisted with weeping. "I've
done my last day's work for _you_." He pulled down his shirt-sleeves,
and buttoned them at the wrists, while the tears ran out over his
face,--helpless tears, the sign of his womanish tenderness, his womanish
weakness.

Bartley continued to glare at him. "Why, I do believe you're in love with
her yourself, you little fool!"

"Oh, I've _been_ a fool!" cried Bird. "A fool to think as much of you as
I always have,--a fool to believe that you were a gentleman, and wouldn't
take a mean advantage. I was a fool to suppose you wanted to do her any
good, when you came praising and flattering her, and turning her head!"

"Well, then," said Bartley with harsh insolence, "don't be a fool any
longer. If you're in love with her, you haven't any quarrel with me, my
boy. She flies at higher game than humble newspaper editors. The head of
Willett's lumbering gang is your man; and so you may go and tell that old
sot, her father. Why, Henry! You don't mean to say you care anything for
that girl?"

"And do you mean to say you haven't done everything you could to turn her
head since she's been in this office? She used to like me well enough at
school." All men are blind and jealous children alike, when it comes to
question of a woman between them, and this poor boy's passion was turning
him into a tiger. "Don't come to _me_ with your lies, any more!" Here his
rage culminated, and with a blind cry of "Ay!" he struck the paper which he
had kept in his hand into Bartley's face.

The demons, whatever they were, of anger, remorse, pride, shame, were at
work in Bartley's heart too, and he returned the blow as instantly as if
Bird's touch had set the mechanism of his arm in motion. In contempt of
the other's weakness he struck with the flat of his hand; but the blow was
enough. Bird fell headlong, and the concussion of his head upon the floor
did the rest. He lay senseless.




VII.


Bartley hung over the boy with such a terror in his soul as he had never
had before. He believed that he had killed him, and in this conviction came
with the simultaneity of events in dreams the sense of all his blame, of
which the blow given for a blow seemed the least part. He was not so wrong
in that as he was wrong in what led to it. He did not abhor in himself so
much the wretch who had struck his brother down as the light and empty fool
who had trifled with that silly hoyden. The follies that seemed so amusing
and resultless in their time had ripened to this bitter effect, and he knew
that he, and not she, was mainly culpable. Her self-betrayal, however it
came about, was proof that they were more serious with her than with him,
and he could not plead to himself even the poor excuse that his fancy
had been caught. Amidst the anguish of his self-condemnation the need to
conceal what he had done occurred to him. He had been holding Bird's head
in his arms, and imploring him, "Henry! Henry! wake up!" in a low, husky
voice; but now he turned to the door and locked it, and the lie by which he
should escape sprang to his tongue. "He died in a fit." He almost believed
it as it murmured itself from his lips. There was no mark, no bruise,
nothing to show that he had touched the boy. Suddenly he felt the lie choke
him. He pulled down the window to let in the fresh air, and this pure
breath of heaven blew into his darkened spirit and lifted there a little
the vapors which were thickening in it. The horror of having to tell that
lie, even if he should escape by it, all his life long, till he was a gray
old man, and to keep the truth forever from his lips, presented itself to
him as intolerable slavery. "Oh, my God!" he spoke aloud, "how can I bear
that?" And it was in self-pity that he revolted from it. Few men love the
truth for its own sake, and Bartley was not one of these; but he practised
it because his experience had been that lies were difficult to manage, and
that they were a burden on the mind. He was not candid; he did not shun
concealments and evasions; but positive lies he had kept from, and now he
could not trust one to save his life. He unlocked the door and ran out to
find help; he must do that at last; he must do it at any risk; no matter
what he said afterward. When our deeds and motives come to be balanced at
the last day, let us hope that mercy, and not justice, may prevail.

It must have been mercy that sent the doctor at that moment to the
apothecary's, on the other side of the street, and enabled Bartley to get
him up into his office, without publicity or explanation other than that
Henry Bird seemed to be in a fit. The doctor lifted the boy's head, and
explored his bosom with his hand.

"Is he--is he dead?" gasped Bartley, and the words came so mechanically
from his tongue that he began to believe he had not spoken them, when the
doctor answered.

"No! How did this happen? Tell me exactly."

"We had a quarrel. He struck me. I knocked him down." Bartley delivered up
the truth, as a prisoner of war--or a captive brigand, perhaps--parts with
his weapons one by one.

"Very well," said the doctor. "Get some water."

Bartley poured some out of the pitcher on his table, and the doctor,
wetting his handkerchief, drew it again and again over Bird's forehead.

"I never meant to hurt him," said Bartley. "I didn't even intend to strike
him when he hit me."

"Intentions have very little to do with physical effects," replied the
doctor sharply. "Henry!"

The boy opened his eyes, and, muttering feebly, "My head!" closed them
again.

"There's a concussion here," said the doctor. "We had better get him home.
Drive my sleigh over, will you, from Smith's."

Bartley went out into the glare of the sun, which beat upon him like the
eye of the world. But the street was really empty, as it often was in the
middle of the forenoon at Equity. The apothecary, who saw him untying the
doctor's horse, came to his door, and said jocosely, "Hello, Doc! who's
sick?"

"I am," said Bartley, solemnly, and the apothecary laughed at his
readiness. Bartley drove round to the back of the printing-office, where
the farmers delivered his wood. "I thought we could get him out better
that way," he explained, and the doctor, who had to befriend a great many
concealments in his practice, silently spared Bartley's disingenuousness.

The rush of the cold air, as they drove rapidly down the street, with that
limp shape between them, revived the boy, and he opened his eyes, and made
an effort to hold himself erect, but he could not; and when they got him
into the warm room at home, he fainted again. His mother had met them at
the door of her poor little house, without any demonstration of grief or
terror; she was far too well acquainted in her widowhood--bereft of all her
children but this son--with sickness and death, to show even surprise, if
she felt it. When Bartley broke out into his lamentable confession, "Oh,
Mrs. Bird! this is _my_ work!" she only wrung her hands and answered,
"_Your_ work! Oh, Mr. Hubbard, he thought the world of _you_!" and did not
ask him how or why he had done it. After they had got Henry on the bed,
Bartley was no longer of use there; but they let him remain in the corner
into which he had shrunk, and from which he watched all that went on, with
a dry mouth and faltering breath. It began to appear to him that he was
very young to be involved in a misfortune like this; he did not understand
why it should have happened to him; but he promised himself that, if Henry
lived, he would try to be a better man in every way.

After he had lost all hope, the time seemed so long, the boy on the bed
opened his eyes once more, and looked round, while Bartley still sat with
his face in his hands. "Where--where is Mr. Hubbard?" he faintly asked,
with a bewildered look at his mother and the doctor.

Bartley heard the weak voice, and staggered forward, and fell on his
knees beside the bed. "Here, here! Here I am, Henry! Oh, Henry, I didn't
intend--" He stopped at the word, and hid his face in the coverlet.

The boy lay as if trying to make out what had happened, and the doctor told
him that he had fainted. After a time, he put out his hand and laid it on
Bartley's head. "Yes; but I don't understand what makes him cry."

They looked at Bartley, who had lifted his head, and he went over the whole
affair, except so far as it related to Hannah Morrison; he did not spare
himself; he had often found that strenuous self-condemnation moved others
to compassion; and besides, it was his nature to seek the relief of full
confession. But Henry heard him through with a blank countenance. "Don't
you remember?" Bartley implored at last.

"No, I don't remember. I only remember that there seemed to be something
the matter with my head this morning."

"That was the trouble with me, too," said Bartley. "I must have been
crazy--I must have been insane--when I struck you. I can't account for it."

"I don't remember it," answered the boy.

"That's all right," said the doctor. "Don't try. I guess you better let him
alone, now," he added to Bartley, with such a significant look that the
young man retired from the bedside, and stood awkwardly apart. "He'll get
along. You needn't be anxious about leaving him. He'll be better alone."

There was no mistaking this hint. "Well, well!" said Bartley, humbly, "I'll
go. But I'd rather stay and watch with him,--I sha'n't eat or sleep till
he's on foot again. And I can't leave till you tell me that you forgive me,
Mrs. Bird. I never dreamed--I didn't intend--" He could not go on.

"I don't suppose you meant to hurt Henry," said the mother. "You always
pretended to be so fond of him, and he thought the world of you. But I
don't see how you could do it. I presume it was all right."

"No, it was all wrong,--or so nearly all wrong that I must ask your
forgiveness on that ground. I loved him,--I thought the world of him, too.
I'd ten thousand times rather have hurt myself," pleaded Bartley. "Don't
let me go till you say that you forgive me."

"I'll see how Henry gets along," said Mrs. Bird. "I don't know as I
could rightly say I forgive you just yet." Doubtless she was dealing
conscientiously with herself and with him. "I like to be sure of a thing
when I say it," she added.

The doctor followed him into the hall, and Bartley could not help turning
to him for consolation. "I think Mrs. Bird is very unjust, Doctor. I've
done everything I could, and said everything to explain the matter; and
I've blamed myself where I can't feel that I was to blame; and yet you see
how she holds out against me."

"I dare say," answered the doctor dryly, "she'll feel differently, as she
says, if the boy gets along."

Bartley dropped his hat to the floor. "Get along! Why--why you think he'll
get well _now_, don't you, Doctor?"

"Oh, yes; I was merely using her words. He'll get well."

"And--and it wont affect his mind, will it? I thought it was very strange,
his not remembering anything about it--"

"That's a very common phenomenon," said the doctor. "The patient usually
forgets everything that occurred for some little time before the accident,
in cases of concussion of the brain." Bartley shuddered at the phrase, but
he could not ask anything further. "What I wanted to say to you," continued
the doctor, "was that this may be a long thing, and there may have to be
an inquiry into it. You're lawyer enough to understand what that means. I
should have to testify to what I know, and I only know what you told me."

"Why, you don't doubt--"

"No, sir; I've no reason to suppose you haven't told me the truth, as far
as it goes. If you have thought it advisable to keep anything back from me,
you may wish to tell the whole story to an attorney."

"I haven't kept anything back, Doctor Wills," said Bartley. "I've told
you everything--everything that concerned the quarrel. That drunken old
scoundrel of a Morrison got us into it. He accused me of making love to his
daughter; and Henry was jealous--I never knew he cared anything for her. I
hated to tell you this before his mother. But this is the whole truth, so
help me God."

"I supposed it was something of the kind," replied the doctor. "I'm sorry
for you. You can't keep it from having an ugly look if it gets out; and it
may have to be made public. I advise you to go and see Squire Gaylord; he's
always stood your friend."

"I--I was just going there," said Bartley; and this was true.

Through all, he had felt the need of some sort of retrieval,--of
re-establishing himself in his own esteem by some signal stroke; and he
could think of but one thing. It was not his fault if he believed that
this must combine self-sacrifice with safety, and the greatest degree of
humiliation with the largest sum of consolation. He was none the less
resolved not to spare himself at all in offering to release Marcia from her
engagement. The fact that he must now also see her father upon the legal
aspect of his case certainly complicated the affair, and detracted from
its heroic quality. He could not tell which to see first, for he naturally
wished his action to look as well as possible; and if he went first to
Marcia, and she condemned him, he did not know in what figure he should
approach her father. If, on the other hand, he went first to Squire
Gaylord, the old lawyer might insist that the engagement was already at an
end by Bartley's violent act, and might well refuse to let a man in his
position even see his daughter. He lagged heavy-heartedly up the middle of
the street, and left the question to solve itself at the last moment. But
when he reached Squire Gaylord's gate, it seemed to him that it would be
easier to face the father first; and this would be the right way too.

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