William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
Читать онлайн книгу.
The club isn't what it used to be," said Bartley, confidentially.
"Why, of course! It isn't just the thing for a gentleman moving in the select circles of Clover Street, as you do; but why not come, sometimes, in the character of distinguished guest, and encourage your humble friends? I was talking with a lot of the fellows about you the other night."
"Were they abusing me?"
"They were speaking the truth about you, and I stopped them. I told them that sort of thing wouldn't do. Why, you're getting fat!"
"You're behind the times, Kicker," said Bartley. "I began to get fat six months ago. I don't wonder the Chronicle Abstract is running down on your hands. Come round and try my tivoli on Sunday. That's what gives a man girth, my boy." He tapped Ricker lightly on his hollow waistcoat, and left him with a wave of his hand.
Ricker leaned out of the doorway and followed him down the street with a troubled eye. He had taken stock in Bartley, as the saying is, and his heart misgave him that he should lose on the investment; he could not have sold out to any of their friends for twenty cents on the dollar. Nothing that any one could lay his finger on had happened, and yet there had been a general loss of confidence in that particular stock. Ricker himself had lost confidence in it, and when he lightly mentioned that talk at the club, with a lot of the fellows, he had a serious wish to get at Bartley some time, and see what it was that was beginning to make people mistrust him. The fellows who liked him at first and wished him well, and believed in his talent, had mostly dropped him. Bartley's associates were now the most raffish set on the press, or the green hands; and something had brought this to pass in less than two years. Ricker had believed that it was Witherby; at the club he had contended that it was Bartley's association with Witherby that made people doubtful of him. As for those ideas that Bartley had advanced in their discussion of journalism, he had considered it all mere young man's nonsense that Bartley would outgrow. But now, as he looked at Bartley's back, he had his misgivings; it struck him as the back of a degenerate man, and that increasing bulk seemed not to represent an increase of wholesome substance, but a corky, buoyant tissue, materially responsive to some sort of moral dry-rot.
Bartley pushed on to the Events office in a blithe humor. Witherby had recently advanced his salary; he was giving him fifty dollars a week now; and Bartley had made himself necessary in more ways than one. He was not only readily serviceable, but since he had volunteered to write those advertising articles for an advance of pay, he was in possession of business facts that could be made very uncomfortable to Witherby in the event of a disagreement. Witherby not only paid him well, but treated him well; he even suffered Bartley to bully him a little, and let him foresee the day when he must be recognized as the real editor of the Events.
At home everything went on smoothly. The baby was well and growing fast; she was beginning to explode airy bubbles on her pretty lips that a fond superstition might interpret as papa and mamma. She had passed that stage in which a man regards his child with despair; she had passed out of slippery and evasive doughiness into a firm tangibility that made it some pleasure to hold her.
Bartley liked to take her on his lap, to feel the spring of her little legs, as she tried to rise on her feet; he liked to have her stretch out her arms to him from her mother's embrace. The innocent tenderness which he experienced at these moments was satisfactory proof to him that he was a very good fellow, if not a good man. When he spent an evening at home, with Flavia in his lap for half an hour after dinner, he felt so domestic that he seemed to himself to be spending all his evenings at home now. Once or twice it had happened, when the housemaid was out, that he went to the door with the baby on his arm, and answered the ring of Olive and Ben Halleck, or of Olive and one or both of the intermediary sisters.
The Hallecks were the only people at all apt to call in the evening, and Bartley ran so little chance of meeting any one else, when he opened the door with Flavia on his arm, that probably he would not have thought it worth while to put her down, even if he had not rather enjoyed meeting them in that domestic phase. He had not only long felt how intensely Olive disliked him, but he had observed that somehow it embarrassed Ben Halleck to see him in his character of devoted young father. At those times he used to rally his old friend upon getting married, and laughed at the confusion to which the joke put him. He said more than once afterwards, that he did not see what fun Ben Halleck got out of coming there; it must bore even such a dull fellow as he was to sit a whole evening like that and not say twenty words. "Perhaps he's livelier when I'm not here, though," he suggested. "I always did seem to throw a wet blanket on Ben Halleck." He did not at all begrudge Halleck's having a better time in his absence if he could.
One night when the bell rung Bartley rose, and saying, "I wonder which of the tribe it is this time," went to the door. But when he opened it, instead of hearing the well-known voices, Marcia listened through a hesitating silence, which ended in a loud laugh from without, and a cry from her husband of "Well, I swear! Why, you infamous old scoundrel, come in out of the wet!" There ensued, amidst Bartley's voluble greetings, a noise of shy shuffling about in the hall, as of a man not perfectly master of his footing under social pressure, a sound of husky, embarrassed whispering, a dispute about doffing an overcoat, and question as to the disposition of a hat, and then Bartley reappeared, driving before him the lank, long figure of a man who blinked in the flash of gaslight, as Bartley turned it all up in the chandelier overhead, and rubbed his immense hands in cruel embarrassment at the beauty of Marcia, set like a jewel in the pretty comfort of the little parlor.
"Mr. Kinney, Mrs. Hubbard," said Bartley; and having accomplished the introduction, he hit Kinney a thwack between the shoulders with the flat of his hand that drove him stumbling across Marcia's footstool into the seat on the sofa to which she had pointed him. "You old fool, where did you come from?"
The refined warmth of Bartley's welcome seemed to make Kinney feel at home, in spite of his trepidations at Marcia's presence. He bobbed his head forward, and stretched his mouth wide, in one of his vast, silent laughs. "Better ask where I'm goin' to."
"Well, I'll ask that, if it'll be any accommodation. Where you going?"
"Illinois."
"For a divorce?"
"Try again."
"To get married?"
"Maybe, after I've made my pile." Kinney's eyes wandered about the room, and took in its evidences of prosperity, with simple, unenvious admiration; he ended with a furtive glimpse of Marcia, who seemed to be a climax of good luck, too dazzling for contemplation; he withdrew his glance from her as if hurt by her splendor, and became serious.
"Well, you're the last man I ever expected to see again," said Bartley, sitting down with the baby in his lap, and contemplating Kinney with deliberation. Kinney was dressed in a long frock-coat of cheap diagonals, black cassimere pantaloons, a blue necktie, and a celluloid collar. He had evidently had one of his encounters with a cheap clothier, in which the Jew had triumphed; but he had not yet visited a barber, and his hair and beard were as shaggy as they were in the logging-camp; his hands and face were as brown as leather. "But I'm as glad," Bartley added, "as if you had telegraphed you were coming. Of course, you're going to put up with us." He had observed Kinney's awe of Marcia, and he added this touch to let Kinney see that he was master in his house, and lord even of that radiant presence.
Kinney started in real distress. "Oh, no! I couldn't do it! I've got all my things round at the Quincy House."
"Trunk or bag?" asked Bartley.
"Well, it's a bag; but—"
"All right. We'll step round and get it together. I generally take a little stroll out, after dinner," said Bartley, tranquilly.
Kinney was beginning again, when Marcia, who had been stealing some covert looks at him under her eye lashes, while she put together the sewing she was at work on, preparatory to going upstairs with the baby, joined Bartley in his invitation.
"You wont make us the least trouble, Mr. Kinney," she said. "The guest-chamber is all ready, and we shall be glad to have you stay."
Kinney must have felt the note of sincerity in her words. He hesitated, and