William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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I have liked to tell her," she said, as if thinking aloud, "how we were really going to meet her father, and that you were coming with me to be my witness against him in a court,—to put him down and disgrace him,—to fight him, as father says?"
"You mustn't think of it in that way," said Halleck, gently, but, as he felt, feebly and inadequately.
"Oh, I shall not think of it in that way long," she answered. "My head is in a whirl, and I can't hold what we're doing before my mind in any one shape for a minute at a time. I don't know what will become of me,—I don't know what will become of me!"
But in another breath she rose from this desolation, and was talking with impersonal cheerfulness of the sights that the car-window showed. As long as the light held, they passed through the same opulent and monotonous landscape; through little towns full of signs of material prosperity, and then farms, and farms again; the brick houses set in the midst of evergreens, and compassed by vast acreages of corn land, where herds of black pigs wandered, and the farmers were riding their ploughs, or heaping into vast windrows for burning the winter-worn stalks of the last year's crop. Where they came to a stream the landscape was roughened into low hills, from which it sank again luxuriously to a plain. If there was any difference between Ohio and Indiana, it was that in Indiana the spring night, whose breath softly buffeted their cheeks through the open window, had gathered over those eternal cornfields, where the long crooked windrows, burning on either hand, seemed a trail of fiery serpents writhing away from the train as it roared and clamored over the track.
They were to leave their car at Indianapolis, and take another road which would bring them to Tecumseh by daylight the next morning. Olive went away with the little girl, and put her to bed on the sofa in their state-room, and Marcia suffered them to go alone; it was only by fits that she had cared for the child, or even noticed it. "Now tell me again," she said to Halleck, "why we are going."
"Surely you know."
"Yes, yes, I know; but I can't think,—I don't seem to remember. Didn't I give it up once? Didn't I say that I would rather go home, and let Bartley get the divorce, if he wanted?"
"Yes, you said that, Marcia."
"I used to make him very unhappy; I was very strict with him, when I knew he couldn't bear any kind of strictness. And he was always so patient with me; though he never really cared for me. Oh, yes, I knew that from the first! He used to try; but he must have been glad to get away. Poor Bartley! It was cruel, cruel, to put that in about my abandoning him when he knew I would come back; but perhaps the lawyers told him he must; he had to put in something! Why shouldn't I let him go? Father said he only wanted to get rid of me, so that he could marry some one else—Yes, yes; it was that that made me start! Father knew it would! Oh," she grieved, with a wild self-pity that tore Halleck's heart, "he knew it would!" She fell wearily back against the seat, and did not speak for some minutes. Then she said, in a slow, broken utterance: "But now I don't seem to mind even that, any more. Why shouldn't he marry some one else that he really likes, if he doesn't care for me?"
Halleck laughed in bitterness of soul as his thought recurred to Atherton's reasons. "Because," he said, "you have a public duty in the matter. You must keep him bound to you, for fear some other woman, whose husband doesn't care for her, should let him go, too, and society be broken up, and civilization destroyed. In a matter like this, which seems to concern yourself alone, you are only to regard others."
His reckless irony did not reach her through her manifold sorrow. "Well," she said, simply, "it must be that. But, oh! how can I bear it! how can I bear it!"
The time passed; Olive did not return for an hour; then she merely said that the little girl had just fallen asleep, and that she should go back and lie down with her; that she was sleepy too.
Marcia did not answer, but Halleck said he would call her in good time before they reached Indianapolis.
The porter made up the berths of such as were going through to St. Louis, and Marcia was left sitting alone with Halleck. "I will go and get your father to come here," he said.
"I don't want him to come! I want to talk to you—to say something—What was it? I can't think!" She stopped, like one trying to recover a faded thought; he waited, but she did not speak again. She had laid a nervous clutch upon his arm, to detain him from going for her father, and she kept her hand there mechanically; but after a while he felt it relax; she drooped against him, and fell away into a sleep in which she started now and then like a frightened child. He could not release himself without waking her; but it did not matter; her sorrow had unsexed her; only the tenderness of his love for this hapless soul remained in his heart, which ached and evermore heavily sank within him.
He woke her at last when he must go to tell Olive that they were running into Indianapolis. Marcia struggled to her feet: "Oh, oh! Are we there? Are we there?"
"We are at Indianapolis," said Halleck.
"I thought it was Tecumseh!" She shuddered. "We can go back; oh, yes, we can still go back!"
They alighted from the train in the chilly midnight air, and found their way through the crowd to the eating-room of the station. The little girl cried with broken sleep and the strangeness, and Olive tried to quiet her. Marcia clung to Halleck's arm, and shivered convulsively. Squire Gaylord stalked beside them with a demoniac vigor. "A few more hours, a few more hours, sir!" he said. He made a hearty supper, while the rest scalded their mouths with hot tea, which they forced with loathing to their lips.
Some women who were washing the floor of the ladies' waiting-room told them they must go into the men's room, and wait there for their train, which was due at one o'clock. They obeyed, and found the room full of emigrants, and the air thick with their tobacco smoke. There was no choice; Olive went in first and took the child on her lap, where it straightway fell asleep; the Squire found a seat beside them, and sat erect, looking round on the emigrants with the air of being amused at their outlandish speech, into which they burst clamorously from their silence at intervals. Marcia stopped Halleck at the threshold. "Stay out here with me," she whispered. "I want to tell you something," she added, as he turned mechanically and walked away with her up the vast lamp-shot darkness of the depot. "I am not going on! I am going back. We will take the train that goes to the East; father will never know till it is too late. We needn't speak to him about it—"
Halleck set himself against this delirious folly: he consented to her return; she could do what she would; but he would not consent to cheat her father. "We must go and tell him," he said, for all answer to all her entreaties. He dragged her back to the waiting-room; but at the door she started at the figure of a man who was bending over a group of emigrant children asleep in the nearest corner,—poor, uncouth, stubbed little creatures, in old-mannish clothes, looking like children roughly blocked out of wood, and stiffly stretched on the floor, or resting woodenly against their mother.
"There!" said the man, pressing a mug of coffee on the woman. "You drink that! It'll do you good,—every drop of it! I've seen the time," he said, turning round with the mug, when she had drained it, in his hand, and addressing Marcia and Halleck as the most accessible portion of the English-speaking public, "when I used to be down on coffee; I thought it was bad for the nerves; but I tell you, when you're travelling it's a brain-food, if ever there was a brain—" He dropped the mug, and stumbled back into the heap of sleeping children, fixing a ghastly stare on Marcia.
She ran toward him. "Mr. Kinney!"
"No, you don't!—no, you don't!"
"Why, don't you know me? Mrs. Hubbard?"
"He—he—told me you—was dead!" roared Kinney.
"He told you I was dead?"
"More'n a year ago! The last time I seen him! Before I went out to Leadville!"
"He told you I was dead," repeated Marcia huskily. "He must have wished it!" she whispered. "Oh, mercy, mercy, mercy!" She stopped, and then she broke into a wild laugh: "Well, you see he was wrong. I'm on my way to him now to show him that I'm alive!"
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