The Kentons. William Dean Howells
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Plumpton says he’s coming down to see us off,” said Lottie, smoothing her napkin in her lap. “Do you know the time of day when the boat sails, momma?”
“Yes,” her brother broke in, “and if I had been momma I’d have boxed your ears for the way you went on with him. You fairly teased him to come. The way Lottie goes on with men is a shame, momma.”
“What time does the boat sail, momma!” Lottie blandly persisted. “I promised to let Mr. Plumpton know.”
“Yes, so as to get a chance to write to him,” said Boyne. “I guess when he sees your spelling!”
“Momma! Do wake up! What time does our steamer sail?”
A light of consciousness came into Mrs. Renton’s eyes at last, and she sighed gently. “We’re not going, Lottie.”
“Not going! Why, but we’ve got the tickets, and I’ve told—”
“Your father has decided not to go, for the present. We may go later in the summer, or perhaps in the fall.”
Boyne looked at his father’s troubled face, and said nothing, but Lottie was not stayed from the expression of her feelings by any ill-timed consideration for what her father’s might be. “I just know,” she fired, “it’s something to do with that nasty Bittridge. He’s been a bitter dose to this family! As soon as I saw Ellen have a letter I was sure it was from him; and she ought to be ashamed. If I had played the simpleton with such a fellow I guess you wouldn’t have let me keep you from going to Europe very much. What is she going to do now? Marry him? Or doesn’t he want her to?”
“Lottie!” said her mother, and her father glanced up at her with a face that silenced her.
“When you’ve been half as good a girl as Ellen has been, in this whole matter,” he said, darkly, “it will be time for you to complain of the way you’ve been treated.”
“Oh yes, I know you like Ellen the best,” said the girl, defiantly.
“Don’t say such a thing, Lottie!” said her mother. “Your father loves all his children alike, and I won’t have you talking so to him. Ellen has had a great deal to bear, and she has behaved beautifully. If we are not going to Europe it is because we have decided that it is best not to go, and I wish to hear nothing more from you about it.”
“Oh yes! And a nice position it leaves me in, when I’ve been taking good-bye of everybody! Well, I hope to goodness you won’t say anything about it till the Plumptons get away. I couldn’t have the face to meet them if you did.”
“It won’t be necessary to say anything; or you can say that we’ve merely postponed our sailing. People are always doing that.”
“It’s not to be a postponement,” said Kenton, so sternly that no one ventured to dispute him, the children because they were afraid of him, and their mother because she was suffering for him.
At the steamship office, however, the authorities represented that it was now so near the date of his sailing that they could not allow him to relinquish his passages except at his own risk. They would try to sell his ticket for him, but they could not take it back, and they could not promise to sell it. There was reason in what they said, but if there had been none, they had the four hundred dollars which Kenton had paid for his five berths and they had at least the advantage of him in the argument by that means. He put the ticket back in his pocket-book without attempting to answer them, and deferred his decision till he could advise with his wife, who, after he left the breakfast-table upon his errand to the steamship office, had abandoned her children to their own devices, and gone to scold Ellen for not eating.
She had not the heart to scold her when she found the girl lying face downward in the pillow, with her thin arms thrown up through the coils and heaps of her loose-flung hair. She was so alight that her figure scarcely defined itself under the bedclothes; the dark hair, and the white, outstretched arms seemed all there was of her. She did not stir, but her mother knew she was not sleeping. “Ellen,” she said, gently, “you needn’t be troubled about our going to Europe. Your father has gone down to the steamship office to give back his ticket.”
The girl flashed her face round with nervous quickness. “Gone to give back his ticket!”
“Yes, we decided it last night. He’s never really wanted to go, and—”
“But I don’t wish poppa to give up his ticket!” said Ellen. “He must get it again. I shall die if I stay here, momma. We have got to go. Can’t you understand that?”
Mrs. Kenton did not know what to answer. She had a strong superficial desire to shake her daughter as a naughty child which has vexed its mother, but under this was a stir stronger pity for her as a woman, which easily, prevailed. “Why, but, Ellen dear! We thought from what you said last night—”
“But couldn’t you SEE,” the girl reproached her, and she began to cry, and turned her face into the pillow again and lay sobbing.
“Well,” said her mother, after she had given her a little time, “you needn’t be troubled. Your father can easily get the ticket again; he can telephone down for it. Nothing has been done yet. But didn’t you really want to stay, then?”
“It isn’t whether I want to stay or not,” Ellen spoke into her pillow. “You know that. You know that I have got to go. You know that if I saw him—Oh, why do you make me talk?”
“Yes, I understand, child.” Then, in the imperious necessity of blaming some one, Mrs. Kenton added: “You know how it is with your father. He is always so precipitate; and when he heard what you said, last night, it cut him to the heart. He felt as if he were dragging you away, and this morning he could hardly wait to get through his breakfast before he rushed down to the steamship office. But now it’s all right again, and if you want to go, we’ll go, and your father will only be too glad.”
“I don’t want father to go against his will. You said he never wanted to go to Europe.” The girl had turned her face upon her mother again; and fixed her with her tearful, accusing eyes.
“The doctors say he ought to go. He needs the change, and I think we should all be the better far getting away.”
“I shall not,” said Ellen. “But if I don’t—”
“Yes,” said her mother, soothingly.
“You know that nothing has changed. He hasn’t changed and I haven’t. If he was bad, he’s as bad as ever, and I’m just as silly. Oh, it’s like a drunkard! I suppose they know it’s killing them, but they can’t give it up! Don’t you think it’s very strange, momma? I don’t see why I should be so. It seems as if I had no character at all, and I despise myself so! Do you believe I shall ever get over it? Sometimes I think the best thing for me would be to go into an asylum.”
“Oh yes, dear; you’ll get over it, and forget it all. As soon as you see others—other scenes—and get interested—”
“And you don’t you don’t think I’d better let him come, and—”
“Ellen!”
Ellen began to sob again, and toss her head upon the pillow. “What shall I do? What shall I do?” she wailed. “He hasn’t ever done anything bad to me, and if I can overlook his—his flirting—with that horrid thing, I don’t know what the rest of you have got to say. And he says he can explain everything. Why shouldn’t I give him the chance, momma? I do think it is acting very cruel not to let him even say a word.”
“You can see him if you wish, Ellen,” said her mother, gravely. “Your father and I have always said that. And perhaps it would be the best thing, after all.”
“Oh, you say that because you think that if I did see him, I should be so disgusted with him that I’d never want to speak to him again. But what if I shouldn’t?”
“Then