Miss Bellard's Inspiration. William Dean Howells
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terrible disappointment of a broken-up summer! It's having the disturbance of it going on under our roof day after day, when I was looking forward to such a complete rest with you, dear! It's enough to make me wish we were back at The Surges. You had better sell this place at once."
"There'll be time enough to think about that and to change our minds twice or thrice. Mountain property hasn't the instant convertibility of shore property. I should find some difficulty in giving this place away if I was in a hurry to get rid of it. Fortunately I'm not. Did she tell you how they happened to meet?"
"Oh, romantically enough, I believe. After his last failure in ranching he was quite at leisure, and he came into town to pass the time at the hotel, and think. There he heard of Lillias's lectures, or talks, which were open to the public — really, I can't imagine it, but her lectures seem to be quite a fad, out there — and he went to one of them, and then he went to all that were left of them. At last he got himself introduced; though why he didn't at first she couldn't understand, unless it was his English shyness. After he did it seems to have been plain sailing, as far as they've gone."
"And how far have they gone?"
"Well, she doesn't seem to know, exactly. The case appears to be that she has some doubts of marriage itself."
"Oh, come, now! A pretty girl like that?"
" I don't see what her prettiness has to do with it. A great many girls are that way, now. They look at it very cool-headedly. They don't like to give up their liberty unless they're certain of their happiness, and they see, if they look round them at all, that there's a great deal of unhappiness in marriage."
"They could always get divorced."
"Yes, but they don't like that — nice girls don't. They'd rather not go in for it, to begin with. It seems that Lillias has a great idea of being honest with herself. Really, to hear her talk — I wish you could have been at the key-hole!"
" I wish I could — if I may be as honest as Lillias."
"It seems that it wasn't the hard work, or the beginning at the bottom, or the personal exhibition, as Mrs. Kemble calls it, which kept her from going on the stage. There was a manager quite ready to take her from the dramatic school and feature her, as she said, in a new play — "
"Don't go too far back!"
"I'm not, but you can't understand if I don't. — It was the perpetual pretense; what she felt was the essential and final falsity of a life that consisted in the representation of emotions that were not really felt. In short, the insincerity."
"Well?"
"Well— where was I? Oh yes! She felt that if she had no doubt about marrying Mr. Craybourne, she would have no misgivings about marriage; or if she had perfect faith in marriage, she could confidently trust herself in marrying him. But as she has neither, she can't."
Crombie rubbed his forehead, as if to clear away a cloud within. " I don't believe I've followed you," he said.
" Why, he's offered himself, but she hasn't thought it out yet."
"And she's got him here to help her think?"
"That is where the sinuosity comes in; that is where Lillias shows herself a true girl."
Crombie laughed. "And what does she expect us to do?"
" Do you know what she said to me? Not just in so many words, but that was the sum and substance of it. She made a long, sly preamble about having always thought us the happiest married couple she had ever seen, the most united and harmonious; and she wanted Mr. Craybourne to know us, too."
" As a sort of object-lesson? I'm not sure that I should like to be studied. It would make me conscious."
"Of course," Mrs. Crombie said, with a seriousness which amazed him, "it's very flattering."
" It's taffy of the most barefaced description. Now, my dear, you look out for that girl. Don't trust her beyond your sight. Does she expect us to take any active part in regard to this Englishman of hers?"
"Oh no. And I quite agree with you about her slyness. There can't be so much smoke without some fire, and I shall certainly watch her. She wants to commit us to some scheme in her mother's absence, and I am not going to be used. She will find that out."
The talk of the Crombies ended for the night in a very exhaustive analysis of the relations of Lillias to her more immediate family, then as remote in space as close in blood, and in a just recognition of how very little the girl, left to shift for herself, owed her mother in obedience or deference. Mrs. Crombie led the conclusion in censure of her sister, with those reserves in behalf of her peculiarities which a woman sometimes likes to make in judging her next of kin, as if their eccentricities somehow reflected picturesqueness if not praise upon herself. Lillias, she said, had come honestly by anything that was original in her; and she did not know but that if the girl was now hesitating in a way that was ridiculous about accepting Mr. Craybourne, she was certainly improving upon her mother, who used to be always hesitating about people after she had accepted them, and sometimes after she had married them. In the case of Lillias's father, she reminded Crombie, Aggie's misgiving had gone so far as to have the character of a provisional separation for a whole year before his death. She asked Crombie if he did not think that this showed a real honesty in the child; and he said that he did. By this time he was so sleepy that he would have said anything.
He was quite as compliant when he woke, but he found his wife of another mind, after a night passed beyond the influence of her niece. She came into his room before he was up, or fairly awake, fully dressed and with a defensive armor invisibly on, which she betrayed in saying, " Well, she is a case."
"Why, what has she been doing now?"
Crombie asked, instantly roused to consciousness.
" Oh, nothing. I have just been thinking her over, and I have gone back to my first impressions. I think what she has done is enough without anything more. The question is, what ought we to do? Shall we quietly ignore Mr. Craybourne until she chooses to make a move, or shall we ignore her, and you go over to the Saco Shore and call upon him, and take the bull by the horns? Do you know, my dear, I believe that's just what she wants you to do. How can we tell but it's a plot between them to force our hands? There's every probability, to my mind, that she planned for him to get here before her, so that he would come and be looked over before she arrived, and we be driven at the point of the bayonet to say what we think of him. I'll bet anything you dare that she was enraged beyond description when she found that she had missed fire, and that we hadn't seen him, after all!"
" I don't think it's fair," Crombie said, " to use such various and vigorous imagery with a man that's still on his back."
"Well, you must get up, then." She had been going about, pulling up window-shades and throwing open shutters, as she talked, and she now confronted him in the full light of day. "It's nearly breakfast-time, anyway; and I want to talk it thoroughly over with you after you're shaved."
" I shall be clearer, then; but I shall be a great deal hungrier, and I don't believe I can talk it over till I've had my coffee."
"You've got to," she said, going out of the room.
But before he had half-finished shaving, and while he was still grieving inwardly at having to help his wife make up her mind about her niece all over again, he heard her voice gayly lifted and the clash of enthusiastic kisses in a pause of the rustling skirts that he knew to be meeting in the upper hallway on which all the bedroom doors opened. He noticed that his wife's and her niece's voices were very much alike in the one asking, "Why, child, you poor thing, are you up already? Why didn't you let me send your breakfast to your room?" and the other answering, " Oh, I'm always up to breakfast, aunt, and I'm so be-you-tifull rested, I couldn't think of it."
" Well, then, come right down. It 'll be on the table instantly," he heard his wife continue. "Your uncle will come any old time, as he says, and we needn't wait for him."
"Well, I am rather nippish," he