Vandover and the Brute. Frank Norris
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preserved pears, Miss Ravis? Yes, miss, she'd get them right away; they were just over here on the sideboard. Yes, here they were. No more? Now she'd go and put them back. And at last when she had set the nerves of all of them in a jangle, was dismissed to the kitchen and retired with a gasp of unspeakable relief.
Somewhat later in the evening young Haight was alone with Turner, and their conversation had taken a very unusual and personal turn. All at once Turner exclaimed:
"I often wonder what good I am in the world to anybody. I don't know a thing, I can't do a thing. I couldn't cook the plainest kind of a meal to save me, and it took me all of two hours yesterday to do just a little buttonhole stitching. I'm not good for anything. I'm not a help to anybody."
Young Haight looked into the blue flame of the gas-log, almost the only modern innovation throughout the entire house, and was silent for a moment; then he leaned his elbows on his knees and, still looking at the flame, replied:
"I don't know about that. You have been a considerable help to me."
"To you!" exclaimed Turner, surprised. "A help to you? Why, how do you mean?"
"Well," he answered, still without looking at her, "one always has one's influence, you know."
"Ah, lots of influence I have over anybody," retorted Turner, incredulously.
"Yes, you have," he insisted. "You have plenty of influence over the people that care for you. You have plenty of influence over me."
Turner, very much embarrassed, and not knowing how to answer, bent down to the side of the mantelpiece and turned up the flame of the gas-log a little. Young Haight continued, almost as embarrassed as she:
"I suppose I'm a bad lot, perhaps a little worse than most others, but I think—I hope—there's some good in me. I know all this sounds absurd and affected, but really I'm not posing; you won't mind if I speak just as I think, for this once. I promise," he went on with a half smile, "not to do it again. You know my mother died when I was little and I have lived mostly with men. You have been to me what the society of women has been to other fellows. You see, you are the only girl I ever knew very well—the only one I ever wanted to know. I have cared for you the way other men have cared for the different women that come into their lives; as they have cared for their mothers, their sisters—and their wives. You have already influenced me as a mother or sister should have done; what if I should ever ask you to be—to be the other to me, the one that's best of all?"
Young Haight turned toward her as he finished and looked at her for the first time. Turner was still very much embarrassed.
"Oh, I'm very glad if I've been a help to—to anybody—to you," she said, confusedly. "But I never knew that you cared—that you thought about me—in that way. But you mustn't, you know, you mustn't care for me in that way. I ought to tell you right away that I never could care for you more than—I always have done; I mean care for you only as a very, very good friend. You don't know, Dolly," she went on eagerly, "how it hurts me to tell you so, because I care so much for you in every other way that I wouldn't hurt your feelings for anything; but then you know at the same time it would hurt you a great deal more if I shouldn't tell you, but encourage you, and let you go on thinking that perhaps I liked you more than any one else, when I didn't. Now wouldn't that be wrong? You don't know how glad it makes me feel that I have been of some good to you, and that is just why I want to be sincere now and not make you think any less of me—think any worse of me."
"Oh, I know," answered young Haight. "I know I shouldn't have said anything about it. I knew beforehand, or thought I knew, that you didn't care in that way."
"Maybe I have been wrong," she replied, "in not seeing that you cared so much, and have given you a wrong impression. I thought you knew how it was all the time."
"Knew how what was?" he asked, looking up.
"Why," she said, "knew how Van and I were."
"I knew that Van cared for you a great deal."
"Yes, but you know," she went on, hesitating and confused, "you know we are engaged. We have been engaged for nearly two years."
"But he don't consider himself as engaged!" The words were almost out of Haight's mouth, but he shut his teeth against them and kept silence—he hardly knew why.
"Suppose Vandover were out of the question," he said, getting up and smiling in order not to seem as serious as he really was.
"Ah," she said, smiling back at him. "I don't know; that's a hard question to answer. I've never asked myself that question."
"Well, I'm saving you the trouble, you see," he answered, still smiling. "I am asking it for you."
"But I don't want to answer such a question off-hand like that; how can I tell? It would only be perhaps, just now."
Young Haight answered quickly that "just now" he would be contented with that "perhaps"; but Turner did not hear this. She had spoken at the same time as he, exclaiming, "But what is the good of talking of that? Because no matter what happened I feel as though I could not break my promise to Van, even if I should want to. Because I have talked like this, Dolly," she went on more seriously, "you must not be deceived or get a wrong impression. You understand how things are, don't you?"
"Oh, yes," he answered, still trying to carry it off with a laugh. "I know, I know. But now I hope you won't let anything I have said bother you, and that things will go on just as if I hadn't spoken, just as if nothing had happened."
"Why, of course," she said, laughing with him again. "Of course, why shouldn't they?"
They were both at their ease again by the time young Haight stood at the door with his hat in his hand ready to go.
He raised his free hand over her head, and said, with burlesque, dramatic effect, trying to keep down a smile:
"Bless you both; go, go marry Vandover and be happy; I forgive you."
"Ah—don't be so utterly absurd," she cried, beginning to laugh.
Chapter Seven
On a certain evening about four months later Ellis and Vandover had a "date" with Ida Wade and Bessie Laguna at the Mechanics' Fair. Ellis, Bessie, and Ida were to meet Vandover there in the Art Gallery, as he had to make a call with his father, and could not get there until half-past nine. They were all to walk about the Fair until ten, after which the two men proposed to take the girls out to the Cliff House in separate coupés. The whole thing had been arranged by Ellis and Bessie, and Vandover was irritated. Ellis ought to have had more sense; rushing the girls was all very well, but everybody went to the Mechanics' Fair, and he didn't like to have nice girls like Turner or Henrietta Vance see him with chippies like that. It was all very well for Ellis, who had no social position, but for him, Vandover, it would look too confounded queer. Of course he was in for it now, and would have to face the music. You can't tell a girl like that that you're ashamed to be seen with her, but very likely he would get himself into a regular box with it all.
When he arrived at the Mechanics' Pavilion, it was about twenty minutes of ten, and as he pushed through the wicket he let himself into a huge amphitheatre full of colour and movement.
There was a vast shuffling of thousands of feet and a subdued roar of conversation like the noise of a great mill; mingled with these were the purring of distant machinery, the splashing of a temporary fountain and the rhythmic clamour of a brass band, while in the piano exhibit the hired performer was playing a concert-grand with a great flourish. Nearer at hand one could catch ends of conversation and notes of laughter, the creaking of boots, and the rustle of moving dresses and stiff skirts. Here and there groups of school children elbowed their way through the crowd, crying shrilly, their hands full of advertisement pamphlets, fans, picture cards, and toy whips with pewter whistles on the butts, while the air itself was full of the smell of fresh popcorn.
Ellis and Bessie were in the Art Gallery upstairs. Mrs. Wade, Ida's mother, who gave lessons in hand painting, had an exhibit there which they were interested to find; a bunch of yellow poppies painted on velvet and framed in gilt. They stood