William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
Читать онлайн книгу.
knowing your theory; but your practice is against me. You draw too many checks," said Atherton, laughing.
"Very well!" cried the lady, pulling down her veil. "Then I'm to have nothing?"
"You won't allow yourself to have anything," Atherton began. But she interrupted him haughtily.
"It is certainly very odd that my affairs should be in such a state that I can't have all the money of my own that I want, whenever I want it."
Atherton's thin face paled a little more than usual. "I shall be glad to resign the charge of your affair Miss Kingsbury."
"And I shall accept your resignation," cried Clara, magnificently, "whenever you offer it." She swept out of the office, and descended to her coupé like an incensed goddess. She drew the curtains and began to cry. At her door, she bade the servant deny her to everybody, and went to bed, where she was visited a little later by Olive Halleck, whom no ban excluded. Clara lavishly confessed her sin and sorrow. "Why, I went there, more than half, to sympathize with him about Ben; I don't need any money, just yet; and the first thing I knew, I was accusing him of neglecting my interests, and I don't know what all! Of course he had to say he wouldn't have anything more to do with them, and I should have despised him if he hadn't. And now I don't care what becomes of the property: it's never been anything but misery to me ever since I had it, and I always knew it would get me into trouble sooner or later." She whirled her face over into her pillow, and sobbed, "But I didn't suppose it would ever make me insult and outrage the best friend I ever had,—and the truest man,—and the noblest gentleman! Oh, what will he think of me?"
Olive remained sadly quiet, as if but superficially interested in these transports, and Clara lifted her face again to say in her handkerchief, "It's a shame, Olive, to burden you with all this at a time when you've care enough of your own."
"Oh, I'm rather glad of somebody else's care; it helps to take my mind off," said Olive.
"Then what would you do?" asked Clara, tempted by the apparent sympathy with her in the effect of her naughtiness.
"You might make a party for him, Clara," suggested Olive, with lack-lustre irony.
Clara gave way to a loud burst of grief. "Oh, Olive Halleck! I didn't suppose you could be so cruel!"
Olive rose impatiently. "Then write to him, or go to him and tell him that you're ashamed of yourself, and ask him to take your property back again."
"Never!" cried Clara, who had listened with fascination. "What would he think of me?"
"Why need you care? It's purely a matter of business!"
"Yes."
"And you needn't mind what he thinks."
"Of course," admitted Clara, thoughtfully.
"He will naturally despise you," added Olive, "but I suppose he does that, now."
Clara gave her friend as piercing a glance as her soft blue eyes could emit, and, detecting no sign of jesting in Olive's sober face, she answered haughtily, "I don't see what right Mr. Atherton has to despise me!"
"Oh, no! He must admire a girl who has behaved to him as you've done."
Clara's hauteur collapsed, and she began to truckle to Olive. "If he were merely a business man, I shouldn't mind it; but knowing him socially, as I do, and as a—friend, and—an acquaintance, that way, I don't see how I can do it."
"I wonder you didn't think of that before you accused him of fraud and peculation, and all those things."
"I didn't accuse him of fraud and peculation!" cried Clara, indignantly.
"You said you didn't know what all you'd called him," said Olive, with her hand on the door.
Clara followed her down stairs. "Well, I shall never do it in the world," she said, with reviving hope in her voice.
"Oh, I don't expect you to go to him this morning," said Olive dryly. "That would be a little too barefaced."
Her friend kissed, her. "Olive Halleck, you're the strangest girl that ever was. I do believe you'd joke at the point of death! But I'm so glad you have been perfectly frank with me, and of course it's worth worlds to know that you think I've behaved horridly, and ought to make some reparation."
"I'm glad you value my opinion, Clara. And if you come to me for frankness, you can always have all you want; it's a drug in the market with me." She meagrely returned Clara's embrace, and left her in a reverie of tactless scheming for the restoration of peace with Mr. Atherton.
Marcia came in upon the lawyer before he had thought, after parting with Miss Kingsbury, to tell the clerk in the outer office to deny him; but she was too full of her own trouble to see the reluctance which it tasked all his strength to quell, and she sank into the nearest chair unbidden. At sight of her, Atherton became the prey of one of those fantastic repulsions in which men visit upon women the blame of others' thoughts about them: he censured her for Halleck's wrong; but in another instant he recognized his cruelty, and atoned by relenting a little in his intolerance of her presence. She sat gazing at him with a face of blank misery, to which he could not refuse the charity of a prompting question: "Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. Hubbard?"
"Oh, I don't know,—I don't know!" She had a folded paper in her hands, which lay helpless in her lap. After a moment she resumed, in a hoarse, low voice: "They have all begun to come for their money, and this one—this one says he will have the law of me—I don't know what he means—if I don't pay him."
Marcia could not know how hard Atherton found it to govern the professional suspicion which sprung up at the question of money. But he overruled his suspicion by an effort that was another relief to the struggle in which he was wrenching his mind from Miss Kingsbury's outrageous behavior. "What have you got there?" he asked gravely, and not unkindly, and being used to prompt the reluctance of lady clients, he put out his hand for the paper she held. It was the bill of the threatening creditor, for indefinitely repeated dozens of tivoli beer.
"Why do they come to you with this?"
"Mr. Hubbard is away."
"Oh, yes. I heard. When do you expect him home?"
"I don't know."
"Where is he?"
She looked at him piteously without speaking.
Atherton stepped to his door, and gave the order forgotten before. Then he closed the door, and came back to Marcia. "Don't you know where your husband is, Mrs. Hubbard?"
"Oh, he will come back! He couldn't leave me! He's dead,—I know he's dead; but he will come back! He only went away for the night, and something must have happened to him."
The whole tragedy of her life for the past fortnight was expressed in these wild and inconsistent words; she had not been able to reason beyond the pathetic absurdities which they involved; they had the effect of assertions confirmed in the belief by incessant repetition, and doubtless she had said them to herself a thousand times. Atherton read in them, not only the confession of her despair, but a prayer for mercy, which it would have been inhuman to deny, and for the present he left her to such refuge from herself as she had found in them. He said, quietly, "You had better give me that paper, Mrs. Hubbard," and took the bill from her. "If the others come with their accounts again, you must send them to me. When did you say Mr. Hubbard left home?"
"The night after the election," said Marcia.
"And he didn't say how long he should be gone?" pursued the lawyer, in the feint that she had known he was going.
"No," she answered.
"He took some things with him?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps you could judge how long he meant to be absent from the preparation he made?"
"I've never looked to see. I couldn't!"
Atherton