The Complete Short Stories of W.D. Howells (Illustrated Edition). William Dean Howells
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state with Alford, it was a collapse. The man withered and dwindled away, till he felt that he must audibly rattle in his clothes as he walked by people. He did not walk much. Mostly he remained shrunken in the arm-chair where he used to sit beside Mrs. Yarrow’s rocker, and the ladies, the older and the older-fashioned, who were “sticking it out” at the hotel till it should close on the 15th of September, observed him, some compassionately, some censoriously, but all in the same conviction.
“It’s plain to be seen what ails Mr. Alford, now.”
“Well, I guess it is.”
“I guess so.”
“I guess it is.”
“Seems kind of heartless, her going and leaving him so.”
“Like a sick kitten!”
“Well, I should say as much.”
“Your eyes bother you, Mr. Alford?” one of them chanted, breaking from their discussion of him to appeal directly to him. He was rubbing his eyes, to relieve himself for the moment from the intolerable affliction of those swarming eidolons, which, whenever he thought of this thing or that, thickened about him. They now no longer displaced one another, but those which came first remained fadedly beside or behind the fresher appearances, like the earlier rainbow which loses depth and color when a later arch defines itself.
“Yes,” he said, glad of the subterfuge. “They annoy me a good deal of late.”
“You want to get fitted for a good pair of glasses. I kept letting it go, when I first began to get old-sighted.”
Another lady came to Alford’s rescue. “I guess Mr. Alford has no need to get fitted for old sight yet a while. You got little spidery things—specks and dots—in your eyes?”
“Yes—multitudes,” he said, hopelessly.
“Well, I’ll tell you what: you want to build up. That was the way with me, and the oculist said it was from getting all run down. I built up, and the first thing I knew my sight was as clear as a bell. You want to build up.”
“You want to go to the mountains,” a third interposed. “That’s where Mrs. Yarrow’s gone, and I guess it’ll do her more good than sticking it out here would ever have done.”
Alford would have been glad enough to go to the mountains, but with those illusions hovering closer and closer about him, he had no longer the courage, the strength. He had barely enough of either to get away to Boston. He found his doctor this time, after winning and losing the wager he made himself that he would not have returned to town yet, and the good-fortune was almost too much for his shaken nerves. The cordial of his friend’s greeting—they had been chums at Harvard—completed his overthrow. As he sank upon the professional sofa, where so many other cases had been diagnosticated, he broke into tears. “Hello, old fellow!” the doctor said, encouragingly, and more tenderly than he would have dealt with some women. “What’s up?”
“Jim,” Alford found voice to say, “I’m afraid I’m losing my mind.”
The doctor smiled provisionally. “Well, that’s one of the signs you’re not. Can you say how?”
“Oh yes. In a minute,” Alford sobbed, and when he had got the better of himself he told his friend the whole story. In the direct examination he suppressed Mrs. Yarrow’s part, but when the doctor, who had listened with smiling seriousness, began to cross-examine him with the question, “And you don’t remember that any outside influence affected the recurrence of the illusions, or did anything to prevent it?” Alford answered promptly: “Oh yes. There was a woman who did.”
“A woman? What sort of a woman?”
Alford told.
“That is very curious,” the doctor said. “I know a man who used to have a distressing dream. He broke it up by telling his wife about it every morning after he had dreamt it.”
“Unluckily, she isn’t my wife,” Alford said, gloomily.
“But when she was with you, you got rid of the illusions?”
“At first, I used to see hers; then I stopped seeing any.”
“Did you ever tell her of them?”
“No; I didn’t.”
“Never tell anybody?”
“No one but you.”
“And do you see them now?”
“No.”
“Do you think, because you’ve told me of them?”
“It seems so.”
The doctor was silent for a marked space. Then he asked, smiling: “Well, why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Tell your wife.”
“How, my wife?”
“By marriage.”
Alford looked dazed. “Do you mean Mrs. Yarrow?”
“If that’s her name, and she’s a widow.”
“And do you think it would be the fair thing for a man on the verge of insanity—a physical and mental wreck—to ask a woman to marry him?”
“In your case, yes. In the first place, you’re not so bad as all that. You need nothing but rest for your body and change for your mind. I believe you’ll get rid of your illusions as soon as you form the habit of speaking of them promptly when they begin to trouble you. You ought to speak of them to some one. You can’t always have me around, and Mrs. Yarrow would be the next best thing.”
“She’s rich, and you know what I am. I’ll have to borrow the money to rest on, I’m so poor.”
“Not if you marry it.”
Alford rose, somewhat more vigorously than he had sat down. But that day he did not go beyond ascertaining that Mrs. Yarrow was in town. He found out the fact from the maid at her door, who said that she was nearly always at home after dinner, and, without waiting for the evening of another day, Alford went to call upon her.
She said, coming down to him in a rather old-fashioned, impersonal drawing-room which looked distinctly as if it had been left to her: “I was so glad to get your card. When did you leave Woodbeach?”
“Mrs. Yarrow,” he returned, as if that were the answer, “I think I owe you an explanation.”
“Pay it!” she bantered, putting out her hand.
“I’m so poverty-stricken that I don’t know whether I can. Did you ever notice anything odd about me?”
His directness seemed to have a right to directness from her. “I noticed that you stared a good deal—or used to. But people do stare.”
“I stared because I saw things.”
“Saw things?”
“I saw whatever I thought of. Whatever came into my mind was externated in a vision.”
She smiled, he could not make out whether uneasily or not. “It sounds rather creepy, doesn’t it? But it’s very interesting.”
“That’s what the doctor said; I’ve been to see him this morning. May I tell you about my visions? They’re not so creepy as they sound, I believe, and I don’t think they’ll keep you awake.”
“Yes, do,” she said. “I should like of all things to hear about them. Perhaps I’ve been one of them.”
“You have.”
“Oh! Isn’t that rather personal?”
“I hope not offensively.”