April Hopes by William Dean Howells
XLVIII.
The relations between Dan and his father had always been kindly andtrustful; they now became, in a degree that touched and flattered theyoung fellow, confidential. With the rest of the family there soonceased to be any reference to his engagement; his sisters were glad,each in her way, to have him back again; and, whatever they may havesaid between themselves, they said nothing to him about Alice. Hismother appeared to have finished with the matter the first night; shehad her theory, and she did it justice; and when Mrs. Mavering had oncedone a thing justice, she did not bring it up again unless somebodydisputed it. But nobody had defended Mrs. Pasmer after Dan's feebleprotest in her behalf; Mrs. Mavering's theory was accepted withobedience if not conviction; the whole affair dropped, except betweenDan and his father.
Dan was certainly not so gay as he used to be; he was glad to find thathe was not so gay. There had been a sort of mercy in the suddenness ofthe shock; it benumbed him, and the real stress and pain came during thelong weeks that followed, when nothing occurred to vary the situationin any manner; he did not hear a word about Alice from Boston, nor anyrumour of her people.
At first he had intended to go back with Boardman and face it out; butthere seemed no use in this, and when it came to the point he found itimpossible. Boardman went back alone, and he put Dan's things togetherin his rooms at Boston and sent them to him, so that Dan remained athome.
He set about helping his father at the business with unaffecteddocility. He tried not to pose, and he did his best to bear his lossand humiliation with manly fortitude. But his whole life had not set sostrongly in one direction that it could be sharply turned aside now,and not in moments of forgetfulness press against the barriers almostto bursting. Now and then, when he came to himself from the wontedtendency, and remembered that Alice and he, who had been all in all toeach other, were now nothing, the pain was so sharp, so astonishing,that he could not keep down a groan, which he then tried to turn offwith a cough, or a snatch of song, or a whistle, looking wildly round tosee if any one had noticed.
Once this happened when his father and he were walking silently homefrom the works, and his father said, without touching him or showing hissympathy except in his tone of humorously frank recognition, "Does itstill hurt a little occasionally, Dan?"
"Yes, sir, it hurts," said the son; and he turned his face aside, andwhistled through his teeth.
"Well, it's a trial, I suppose," said his father, with his gentle, softhalf-lisp. "But there are greater trials."
"How, greater?" asked Dan, with sad incredulity. "I've lost all thatmade life worth living; and it's all my own fault, too."
"Yes," said his father; "I think she was a good girl."
"Good!" cried Dan; the word seemed to choke him.
"Still, I doubt if it's all your fault." Dan looked round at him. Headded, "And I think it's perhaps for the best as it is."
Dan halted, and then said, "Oh, I suppose so," with dreary resignation,as they walked on.
"Let us go round by the paddock," said his father, "and see if Pat'sput the horses up yet. You can hardly remember your mother, before shebecame an invalid, I suppose," he added, as Dan mechanically turnedaside with him from the path that led to the house into that leading tothe barn.
"No; I was such a little fellow," said Dan.
"Women give up a great deal when they marry," said the elder. "It's notstrange that they exaggerate the sacrifice, and expect more in returnthan it's in the nature of men to give them. I should have been sorry tohave you marry a woman of an exacting disposition."
"I'm afraid she was exacting," said Dan. "But she never asked more thanwas right."
"And it's difficult to do all that's right," suggested the elder.
"I'm sure you always have, father," said the son.
The father did not respond. "I wish you could remember your mother whenshe was well," he said. Presently he added, "I think it isn't best for awoman to be too much in love with her husband."
Dan took this to himself, and he laughed harshly. "She's been able todissemble her love at last."
His father went on, "Women keep the romantic feeling longer than men; itdies out of us very soon--perhaps too soon."
"You think I couldn't have come to time?" asked Dan. "Well, as it'sturned out, I won't have to."
"No man can be all a woman wishes him to be," said his father. "It'sbetter for the disappointment to come before it's too late."
"I was to blame," said Dan stoutly. "She was all right."
"You were to blame in the particular instance," his father answered."But in general the fault was in her--or her temperament. As long as theromance lasted she might have deluded herself, and believed you were allshe imagined you; but romance can't last, even with women. I don likeyour faults, and I don't want you to excuse them to yourself. I don'tlike your chancing things, and leaving them to come out all right ofthemselves; but I've always tried to make you children see all yourqualities in their true proportion and relation."
"Yes; I know that, sir," said Dan.
"Perhaps," continued his father, as they swung easily along, shoulderto shoulder, "I may have gone too far in that direction because I wasafraid that you might take your mother too seriously in the other--thatyou might not understand that she judged you from her nerves and nother convictions. It's part of her malady, of her suffering, that herinherited Puritanism clouds her judgment, and makes her see all faultsas of one size and equally damning. I wish you to know that she was notalways so, but was once able to distinguish differences in error, and torealise that evil is of ill-will."
"Yes; I know that," said Dan. "She is now--when she feels well."
"Harm comes from many things, but evil is of the heart. I wouldn'thave you condemn yourself too severely for harm that you didn'tintend--that's remorse--that's insanity; and I wouldn't have you fallunder the condemnation of another's invalid judgment."
"Thank you, father," said Dan.
They had come up to the paddock behind the barn, and they laid theirarms on the fence while they looked over at the horses, which werestill there. The beasts, in their rough winter coats, some bedaubed withfrozen clots of the mud in which they had been rolling earlier in theafternoon, stood motionless in the thin, keen breeze that crept overthe hillside from the March sunset, and blew their manes and tails outtoward Dan and his father. Dan's pony sent him a gleam of recognitionfrom under his frowsy bangs, but did not stir.
"Bunch looks like a caterpillar," he said, recalling the time when hisfather had given him the pony; he was a boy then, and the pony was asmuch to him, it went through his mind, as Alice had ever been. Was itall a jest, an irony? he asked himself.
"He's getting pretty old," said his father. "Let's see: you were onlytwelve."
"Ten," said Dan. "We've had him thirteen years."
Some of the horses pricked up their ears at the sound of their voices.One of them bit another's neck; the victim threw up his heels andsquealed.
Pat called from the stable, "Heigh, you divils!"
"I think he'd better take them in," said Dan's father; and he continued,as if it were all the same subject, "I hope you'll have seen somethingmore of the world before you fall in love the next time."
"Thank you; there won't be any next time. But do you consider the worldsuch a school of morals; then? I supposed it was a very bad place."
"We seem to have been all born into it," said the father. He lifted hisarms from the fence, and Dan mechanically followed him into the stable.A warm, homely smell of hay and of horses filled the place; a lanternglimmered, a faint blot, in the loft where Pat was pitching some hayforward to the edge of the boards; the naphtha gas weakly flared fromthe jets beside the harness-room, whence a smell of leather issued andmingled with the other smell. The simple, earthy wholesomeness of theplace appealed to Dan and comforted him. The hay began to tumble fromthe loft with a pleasant rustling sound.
His father called up to Pat, "I think you'd better take the horses innow."
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Dan remembered how he and Eunice used to get into the box-stall withhis pony, and play at circus with it; he stood up on the pony, andhis sister was the ring-master. The picture of his careless childhoodreflected a deeper pathos upon his troubled present, and he sighedagain.
His father said, as they moved on through the barn: "Some of the bestpeople I've ever known were what were called worldly people. Theyare apt to be sincere, and they have none of the spiritual pride, theconceit of self-righteousness, which often comes to people who are shutup by conscience or circumstance to the study of their own motives andactions."
"I don't think she was one of that kind," said Dan.
"Oh, I don't know that she was. But the chances of happiness, ofgoodness, would be greater with a less self-centred person--for you."
"Ah, Yes! For me!" said Dan bitterly. "Because I hadn't it in me tobe frank with her. With a man like me, a woman had better be a littlescampish, too! Father, I could get over the loss; she might have died,and I could have got over that; but I can't get over being to blame."
"I don't think I'd indulge in any remorse," said his father. "There'snothing so useless, so depraving, as that. If you see you're wrong, it'sfor your warning, not for your destruction."
Dan was not really feeling very remorseful; he had never felt that hewas much to blame; but he had an intellectual perception of the case,and he thought that he ought to feel remorseful; it was this persuasionthat he took for an emotion. He continued to look very disconsolate.
"Come," said his father, touching his arm, "I don't want you to broodupon these things. It can do no manner of good. I want you to go toNew York next week and look after that Lafflin process. If it's what hethinks--if he can really cast his brass patterns without air-holes--itwill revolutionise our business. I want to get hold of him."
The Portuguese cook was standing in the basement door which they passedat the back of the house. He saluted father and son with a glitteringsmile.
"Hello, Joe!" said Dan.
"Ah, Joe!" said his father; he touched his hat to the cook, who snatchedhis cap off.
"What a brick you are, father!" thought Dan. His heart leaped at thenotion of getting away from Ponkwasset; he perceived how it had beenirking him to stay. "If you think I could manage it with Lafflin--"
"Oh, I think you could. He's another slippery chap."
Dan laughed for pleasure and pain at his father's joke.