William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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his hand, without rising, and Halleck forced himself to touch it. "I appreciate your delicacy in not telling my wife. Of course you couldn't tell," he said, with depraved enjoyment of what he conceived of Halleck's embarrassment. "But I guess she must have smelt a rat. As the fellow says," he added, seeing the disgust that Halleck could not keep out of his face, "I shall make a clean breast of it, as soon as she can bear it. She's pretty high-strung. Lying down, now," he explained. "You see, I went out to get something to make me sleep, and the first thing I knew I had got too much. Good thing I turned up on your doorstep; might have been waltzing into the police court about now. How did you happen to hear me?"
Halleck briefly explained, with an air of abhorrence for the facts.
"Yes, I remember most of it," said Bartley. "Well, I want to thank you, Halleck. You've saved me from disgrace,—from ruin, for all I know. Whew! how my head aches!" he said, making an appeal to Halleck's pity, with closed eyes. "Halleck," he murmured, feebly, "I wish you would do me a favor."
"Yes? What is it?" asked Halleck, dryly.
"Go round to the Events office and tell old Witherby that I sha'n't be able to put in an appearance to-day. I'm not up to writing a note, even; and he'd feel flattered at your coming personally. It would make it all right for me."
"Of course I will go," said Halleck.
"Thanks," returned Bartley, plaintively, with his eyes closed.
XXVI
Bartley would willingly have passed this affair over with Marcia, like some of their quarrels, and allowed a reconciliation to effect itself through mere lapse of time and daily custom. But there were difficulties in the way to such an end; his shameful escapade had given the quarrel a character of its own, which could not be ignored. He must keep his word about making a clean breast of it to Marcia, whether he liked or not; but she facilitated his confession by the meek and dependent fashion in which she hovered about, anxious to do something or anything for him. If, as he suggested to Halleck, she had divined the truth, she evidently did not hold him wholly to blame for what had happened, and he was not without a self-righteous sense of having given her a useful and necessary lesson. He was inclined to a severity to which his rasped and shaken nerves contributed, when he spoke to her that night, as they sat together after tea; she had some sewing in her lap, little mysteries of soft muslin for the baby, which she was edging with lace, and her head drooped over her work, as if she could not confront him with her swollen eyes.
"Look here, Marcia," he said, "do you know what was the matter with me this morning?"
She did not answer in words; her hands quivered a moment; then she caught up the things out of her lap, and sobbed into them. The sight unmanned Bartley; he hated to see any one cry,—even his wife, to whose tears he was accustomed. He dropped down beside her on the sofa, and pulled her head over on his shoulder.
"It was my fault! it was my fault, Bartley!" she sobbed. "Oh, how can I ever get over it?"
"Well, don't cry, don't cry! It wasn't altogether your fault," returned Bartley. "We were both to blame."
"No! I began it. If I hadn't broken my promise about speaking of Hannah Morrison, it never would have happened." This was so true that Bartley could not gainsay it. "But I couldn't seem to help it; and you were—you were—so quick with me; you didn't give me time to think; you—But I was the one to blame, I was to blame!"
"Oh, well, never mind about it; don't take on so," coaxed Bartley. "It's all over now, and it can't be helped. And I can promise you," he added, "that it shall never happen again, no matter what you do," and in making this promise he felt the glow of virtuous performance. "I think we've both had a lesson. I suppose," he continued sadly, as one might from impersonal reflection upon the temptations and depravity of large cities, "that it's common enough. I dare say it isn't the first time Ben Halleck has taken a fellow home in a hack." Bartley got so much comfort from the conjecture he had thrown out for Marcia's advantage, that he felt a sort of self-approval in the fact with which he followed it up. "And there's this consolation about it, if there isn't any other: that it wouldn't have happened now, if it had ever happened before."
Marcia lifted her head and looked into his face: "What—what do you mean, Bartley?"
"I mean that I never was overcome before in my life by—wine." He delicately avoided saying whiskey.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Why, don't you see? If I'd had the habit of drinking, I shouldn't have been affected by it."
"I don't understand," she said, anxiously.
"Why, I knew I shouldn't be able to sleep, I was so mad at you—"
"Oh!"
"And I dropped into the hotel bar-room for a nightcap,—for something to make me sleep."
"Yes, yes!" she urged eagerly.
"I took what wouldn't have touched a man that was in the habit of it."
"Poor Bartley!"
"And the first thing I knew I had got too much. I was drunk,—wild drunk," he said with magnanimous frankness.
She had been listening intensely, exculpating him at every point, and now his innocence all flashed upon her. "I see! I see!" she cried. "And it was because you had never tasted it before—"
"Well, I had tasted it once or twice," interrupted Bartley, with heroic veracity.
"No matter! It was because you had never more than hardly tasted it that a very little overcame you in an instant. I see!" she repeated, contemplating him in her ecstasy, as the one habitually sober man in a Boston full of inebriates. "And now I shall never regret it; I shall never care for it; I never shall think about it again! Or, yes! I shall always remember it, because it shows—because it proves that you are always strictly temperance. It was worth happening for that. I am glad it happened!"
She rose from his side, and took her sewing nearer the lamp, and resumed her work upon it with shining eyes.
Bartley remained in his place on the sofa, feeling, and perhaps looking, rather sheepish. He had made a clean breast of it, and the confession had redounded only too much to his credit. To do him justice, he had not intended to bring the affair to quite such a triumphant conclusion; and perhaps something better than his sense of humor was also touched when he found himself not only exonerated, but transformed into an exemplar of abstinence.
"Well," he said, "it isn't exactly a thing to be glad of, but it certainly isn't a thing to worry yourself about. You know the worst of it, and you know the best of it. It never happened before, and it never shall happen again; that's all. Don't lament over it, don't accuse yourself; just let it go, and we'll both see what we can do after this in the way of behaving better."
He rose from the sofa, and began to walk about the room.
"Does your head still ache?" she asked, fondly. "I wish I could do something for it!"
"Oh, I shall sleep it off," returned Bartley.
She followed him with her eyes. "Bartley!"
"Well?"
"Do you suppose—do you believe—that Mr. Halleck—that he was ever—"
"No, Marcia, I don't," said Bartley, stopping. "I know he never was. Ben Halleck is slow; but he's good. I couldn't imagine his being drunk any more than I could imagine your being so. I'd willingly sacrifice his reputation to console you," added Bartley, with a comical sense of his own regret that Halleck was not, for the occasion, an habitual drunkard, "but I cannot tell a lie." He looked at her with a smile, and broke into a sudden laugh. "No, my dear, the only person I think of just now as having suffered similarly with myself is the great and good Andrew Johnson. Did you ever hear of him?"
"Was