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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3403-0.txt b/3403-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..09bc8e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/3403-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1827 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Register, by William D. Howells + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Register + + +Author: William D. Howells + + + +Release Date: June 30, 2014 [eBook #3403] +[This file was first posted on March 4, 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REGISTER*** + + +Transcribed from “The Sleeping Car and Other Farces” 1911 Houghton +Mifflin Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + +THE REGISTER. +Farce. + + +I. + + +SCENE: In an upper chamber of a boarding-house in Melanchthon Place, +Boston, a mature, plain young lady, with every appearance of establishing +herself in the room for the first time, moves about, bestowing little +touches of decoration here and there, and talking with another young +lady, whose voice comes through the open doorway of an inner room. + + * * * * * + +_Miss Ethel Reed_, from within: “What in the world are you doing, +Nettie?” + +_Miss Henrietta Spaulding_: “Oh, sticking up a household god or two. +What are you doing?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Despairing.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Still?” + +_Miss Reed_, tragically: “Still! How soon did you expect me to stop? I +am here on the sofa, where I flung myself two hours ago, and I don’t +think I shall ever get up. There is no reason _why_ I ever should.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, suggestively: “Dinner.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken heart!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “I don’t believe your heart is broken.” + +_Miss Reed_: “But I tell you it is! I ought to know when my own heart is +broken, I should hope. What makes you think it isn’t?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, it’s happened so often!” + +_Miss Reed_: “But this is a real case. You ought to feel my forehead. +It’s as hot!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You ought to get up and help me put this room to +rights, and then you would feel better.” + +_Miss Reed_: “No; I should feel worse. The idea of household gods makes +me sick. Sylvan deities are what I want; the great god Pan among the +cat-tails and arrow-heads in the ‘ma’sh’ at Ponkwasset; the dryads of the +birch woods—there are no oaks; the nymphs that haunt the heights and +hollows of the dear old mountain; the”— + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Wha-a-at? I can’t hear a word you say.” + +_Miss Reed_: “That’s because you keep fussing about so. Why don’t you be +quiet, if you want to hear?” She lifts her voice to its highest pitch, +with a pause for distinctness between the words: “I’m heart-broken +for—Ponkwasset. The dryads—of the—birch woods. The nymphs—and the +great—god—Pan—in the reeds—by the river. And all—that—sort of—thing!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You know very well you’re not.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I’m not? What’s the reason I’m not? Then, what am I +heart-broken for?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You’re not heart-broken at all. You know very well +that he’ll call before we’ve been here twenty-four hours.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Who?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “The great god Pan.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, how cruel you are, to mock me so! Come in here, and +sympathize a little! Do, Nettie.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “No; you come out here and utilize a little. I’m +acting for your best good, as they say at Ponkwasset.” + +_Miss Reed_: “When they want to be disagreeable!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “If this room isn’t in order by the time he calls, +you’ll be everlastingly disgraced.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I’m that now. I can’t be more so—there’s that comfort. +What makes you think he’ll call?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Because he’s a gentleman, and will want to apologize. +He behaved very rudely to you.” + +_Miss Reed_: “No, Nettie; _I_ behaved rudely to _him_. Yes! Besides, if +he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It’s a contradiction in terms, +don’t you see? But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do if he comes. I’m +going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I’m going to refuse +to see him. You’ve got to see him.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Nonsense!” + +_Miss Reed_: “Why nonsense? Oh, why? Expound!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Because he wasn’t rude to me, and he doesn’t want to +see me. Because I’m plain, and you’re pretty.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I’m _not_! You know it perfectly well. I’m hideous.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Because I’m poor, and you’re a person of independent +property.” + +_Miss Reed_: “_Dependent_ property, I should call it: just enough to be +useless on! But that’s insulting to _him_. How can you say it’s because +I have a little money?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Well, then, I won’t. I take it back. I’ll say it’s +because you’re young, and I’m old.” + +_Miss Reed_: “You’re _not_ old. You’re as young as anybody, Nettie +Spaulding. And you know I’m not young; I’m twenty-seven, if I’m a day. +I’m just dropping into the grave. But I can’t argue with you, miles off +so, any longer.” _Miss Reed_ appears at the open door, dragging +languidly after her the shawl which she had evidently drawn round her on +the sofa; her fair hair is a little disordered, and she presses it into +shape with one hand as she comes forward; a lovely flush vies with a +heavenly pallor in her cheeks; she looks a little pensive in the arching +eyebrows, and a little humorous about the dimpled mouth. “Now I can +prove that you are entirely wrong. Where—were you?—This room is rather +an improvement over the one we had last winter. There is more of a +view”—she goes to the window—“of the houses across the Place; and I +always think the swell front gives a pretty shape to a room. I’m sorry +they’ve stopped building them. Your piano goes very nicely into that +little alcove. Yes, we’re quite palatial. And, on the whole, I’m glad +there’s no fireplace. It’s a pleasure at times; but for the most part +it’s a vanity and a vexation, getting dust and ashes over everything. +Yes; after all, give me the good old-fashioned, clean, convenient +register! Ugh! My feet are like ice.” She pulls an easy-chair up to +the register in the corner of the room, and pushes open its valves with +the toe of her slipper. As she settles herself luxuriously in the chair, +and poises her feet daintily over the register: “Ah, this is something +like! Henrietta Spaulding, ma’am! Did I ever tell you that you were the +best friend I have in the world?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, who continues her work of arranging the room: “Often.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Did you ever believe it?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Never.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Why?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, thoughtfully regarding a vase which she holds in her +hand, after several times shifting it from a bracket to the corner of her +piano and back: “I wish I could tell where you do look best!” + +_Miss Reed_, leaning forward wistfully, with her hands clasped and +resting on her knees: “I wish you would tell me _why_ you don’t believe +you’re the best friend I have in the world.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, finally placing the vase on the bracket: “Because +you’ve said so too often.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, that’s no reason! I can prove to you that you are. +Who else but you would have taken in a homeless and friendless creature +like me, and let her stay bothering round in demoralizing idleness, while +you were seriously teaching the young idea how to drub the piano?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Anybody who wanted a room-mate as much as I did, and +could have found one willing to pay more than her share of the lodging.” + +_Miss Reed_, thoughtfully: “Do you think so, Henrietta?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “I know so.” + +_Miss Reed_: “And you’re not afraid that you wrong yourself?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Not the least.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Well, be it so—as they say in novels. I will not +contradict you; I will not say you are my _best_ friend; I will merely +say that you are my _only_ friend. Come here, Henrietta. Draw up your +chair, and put your little hand in mine.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, with severe distrust: “What do you want, Ethel Reed?” + +_Miss Reed_: “I want—I want—to talk it over with you.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, recoiling: “I knew it! Well, now, we’ve talked it over +enough; we’ve talked it over till there’s nothing left of it.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, there’s everything left! It remains in all its +original enormity. Perhaps we shall get some new light upon it.” She +extends a pleading hand towards _Miss Spaulding_. “Come, Henrietta, my +only friend, shake!—as the ‘good Indians’ say. Let your Ethel pour her +hackneyed sorrows into your bosom. Such an uncomfortable image, it +always seems, doesn’t it, pouring sorrows into bosoms! Come!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, decidedly: “No, I won’t! And you needn’t try wheedling +any longer. I won’t sympathize with you on that basis at all.” + +_Miss Reed_: “What shall I try, then, if you won’t let me try wheedling?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, going to the piano and opening it: “Try courage; try +self-respect.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, dear! when I haven’t a morsel of either. Are you going +to practise, you cruel maid?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Of course I am. It’s half-past four, and if I don’t +do it now I sha’n’t be prepared to-morrow for Miss Robins: she takes this +piece.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Well, well, perhaps it’s all for the best. If music be the +food of—umph-ump!—you know what!—play on.” They both laugh, and _Miss +Spaulding_ pushes back a little from the piano, and wheels toward her +friend, letting one hand rest slightly on the keys. + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel Reed, you’re the most ridiculous girl in the +world.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Correct!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “And I don’t believe you ever were in love, or ever +will be.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Ah, there you wrong me, Henrietta! I have been, and I +shall be—lots of times.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Well, what do you want to say now? You must hurry, +for I can’t lose any more time.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I will free my mind with neatness and despatch. I simply +wish to go over the whole affair, from Alfred to Omaha; and you’ve got to +let me talk as much slang and nonsense as I want. And then I’ll skip all +the details I can. Will you?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, with impatient patience: “Oh, I suppose so!” + +_Miss Reed_: “That’s very sweet of you, though you don’t look it. Now, +where was I? Oh, yes, do you think it was forth-putting at all, to ask +him if he would give me the lessons?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “It depends upon why you asked him.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I asked him from—from—Let me see; I asked him +because—from—Yes, I say it boldly; I asked him from an enthusiasm for +art, and a sincere wish to learn the use of oil, as he called it. Yes!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Are you sure?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Sure? Well, we will say that I am, for the sake of +argument. And, having secured this basis, the question is whether I +wasn’t bound to offer him pay at the end, and whether he wasn’t wrong to +take my doing so in dudgeon.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Yes, I think he was wrong. And the terms of his +refusal were very ungentlemanly. He ought to apologize most amply and +humbly.” At a certain expression in _Miss Reed’s_ face, she adds, with +severity: “Unless you’re keeping back the main point. You usually do. +Are you?” + +_Miss Reed_: “No, no. I’ve told you everything—everything!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Then I say, as I said from the beginning, that he +behaved very badly. It was very awkward and very painful, but you’ve +really nothing to blame yourself for.” + +_Miss Reed_, ruefully: “No-o-o!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “What do you mean by that sort of ‘No’?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Nothing.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, sternly: “Yes, you do, Ethel.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I don’t, really. What makes you’ think I do?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “It sounded very dishonest.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Did it? I didn’t mean it to.” Her friend breaks down with +a laugh, while _Miss Reed_ preserves a demure countenance. + +_Miss Spaulding_: “What _are_ you keeping back?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Nothing at all—less than nothing! I never thought it was +worth mentioning.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Are you telling me the truth?” + +_Miss Reed_: “I’m telling you the truth and something more. You can’t +ask better than that, can you?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, turning to her music again: “Certainly not.” + +_Miss Reed_: in a pathetic wail: “O Henrietta! do you abandon me thus? +Well, I will tell you, heartless girl! I’ve only kept it back till now +because it was so extremely mortifying to my pride as an artist—as a +student of oil. Will you hear me?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, beginning to play: “No.” + +_Miss Reed_, with burlesque wildness: “You shall!” _Miss Spaulding_ +involuntarily desists. “There was a moment—a fatal moment—when he said +he thought he ought to tell me that if I found oil amusing I could go on; +but that he didn’t believe I should ever learn to use it, and he couldn’t +let me take lessons from him with the expectation that I should. There!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, with awful reproach: “And you call that less than +nothing? I’ve almost a mind never to speak to you again, Ethel. How +_could_ you deceive me so?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Was it really deceiving? _I_ shouldn’t call it so. And I +needed your sympathy so much, and I knew I shouldn’t get it unless you +thought I was altogether in the right.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You are altogether in the wrong! And it’s _you_ that +ought to apologize to _him_—on your bended knees. How _could_ you offer +him money after that? I wonder at you, Ethel!” + +_Miss Reed_: “Why—don’t you see, Nettie?—I did keep on taking the lessons +of him. I did find oil amusing—or the oilist—and I kept on. Of course I +had to, off there in a farmhouse full of lady boarders, and he the only +gentleman short of Crawford’s. Strike, but hear me, Henrietta Spaulding! +What was I to do about the half-dozen lessons I had taken before he told +me I should never learn to use oil? Was I to offer to pay him for these, +and not for the rest; or was I to treat the whole series as gratuitous? +I used to lie awake thinking about it. I’ve got little tact, but I +couldn’t find any way out of the trouble. It was a box—yes, a box of the +deepest dye! And the whole affair having got to be—something else, don’t +you know?—made it all the worse. And if he’d only—only—But he didn’t. +Not a syllable, not a breath! And there I was. I _had_ to offer him the +money. And it’s almost killed me—the way he took my offering it, and now +the way you take it! And it’s all of a piece.” _Miss Reed_ suddenly +snatches her handkerchief from her pocket, and buries her face in +it.—“Oh, dear—oh, dear! Oh!—hu, hu, hu!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, relenting: “It was awkward.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Awkward! You seem to think that because I carry things off +lightly I have no feeling.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You know I don’t think that, Ethel.” + +_Miss Reed_, pursuing her advantage: “I don’t know it from you, Nettie. +I’ve tried and _tried_ to pass it off as a joke, and to treat it as +something funny; but I can tell you it’s no joke at all.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, sympathetically: “I see, dear.” + +_Miss Reed_: “It’s not that I care for him”— + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Why, of course.” + +_Miss Reed_: “For I don’t in the least. He is horrid every way: blunt, +and rude, and horrid. I never cared for him. But I care for myself! He +has put me in the position of having done an unkind thing—an unladylike +thing—when I was only doing what I had to do. Why need he have taken it +the way he did? Why couldn’t he have said politely that he couldn’t +accept the money because he hadn’t earned it? Even _that_ would have +been mortifying enough. But he must go and be so violent, and rush off, +and—Oh, I never could have treated anybody so!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Not unless you were very fond of them.” + +_Miss Reed_: “What?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Not unless you were very fond of them.” + +_Miss Reed_, putting away her handkerchief: “Oh, nonsense, Nettie! He +never cared anything for me, or he couldn’t have acted so. But no matter +for that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got +straight—never in the world. It will just have to remain a hideous mass +of—of—_I_ don’t know what; and I have simply got to on withering with +despair at the point where I left off. But I don’t care! That’s one +comfort.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “I don’t believe he’ll let you wither long, Ethel.” + +_Miss Reed_: “He’s let me wither for twenty-four hours already! But it’s +nothing to me, now, how long he lets me wither. I’m perfectly satisfied +to have the affair remain as it is. I am in the right, and if he comes I +shall refuse to see him.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, no, you won’t, Ethel!” + +_Miss Reed_: “Yes, I shall. I shall receive him very coldly. I won’t +listen to any excuse from him.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, yes, you will, Ethel!” + +_Miss Reed_: “No, I shall not. If he wishes me to listen he must begin +by humbling himself in the dust—yes, the dust, Nettie! I won’t take +anything short of it. I insist that he shall realize that I have +suffered.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Perhaps he has suffered too!” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, _he_ suffered!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You know that he was perfectly devoted to you.” + +_Miss Reed_: “He never said so.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Perhaps he didn’t dare.” + +_Miss Reed_: “He dared to be very insolent to me.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “And you know you liked him very much.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I won’t let you say that, Nettie Spaulding. I _didn’t_ +like him. I respected and admired him; but I didn’t _like_ him. He will +come near me; but if he does he has to begin by—by—Let me see, what shall +I make him begin by doing?” She casts up her eyes for inspiration while +she leans forward over the register. “Yes, I will! He has got to begin +by taking that money!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel, you wouldn’t put that affront upon a sensitive +and high-spirited man!” + +_Miss Reed_: “Wouldn’t I? You wait and _see_, Miss Spaulding! He shall +take the money, and he shall sign a receipt for it. I’ll draw up the +receipt now, so as to have it ready, and I shall ask him to sign it the +very moment he enters this door—the very instant!” She takes a portfolio +from the table near her, without rising, and writes: “‘Received from Miss +Ethel Reed one hundred and twenty-five dollars, in full, for twenty-five +lessons in oil-painting.’ There—when Mr. Oliver Ransom has signed this +little document he may begin to talk; not before!” She leans back in her +chair with an air of pitiless determination. + +_Miss Spaulding_: “But, Ethel, you don’t mean to make him take money for +the lessons he gave you after he told you you couldn’t learn anything?” + +_Miss Reed_, after a moment’s pause: “Yes, I do. This is to punish him. +I don’t wish for justice now; I wish for vengeance! At first I would +have compromised on the six lessons, or on none at all, if he had behaved +nicely; but after what’s happened I shall insist upon paying him for +every lesson, so as to make him feel that the whole thing, from first to +last, was a purely business transaction on my part. Yes, a +_purely_—BUSINESS—TRANSACTION!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, turning to her music: “Then I’ve got nothing more to +say to you, Ethel Reed.” + +_Miss Reed_: “I don’t say but what, after he’s taken the money and signed +the receipt, I’ll listen to anything else he’s got to say, very +willingly.” _Miss Spaulding_ makes no answer, but begins to play with a +scientific absorption, feeling her way fitfully through the new piece, +while _Miss Reed_, seated by the register, trifles with the book she has +taken from the table. + + + +II. + + +THE interior of the room of _Miss Spaulding_ and _Miss Reed_ remains in +view, while the scene discloses, on the other side of the partition wall +in the same house, the bachelor apartment of _Mr. Samuel Grinnidge_. +_Mr. Grinnidge_ in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his pipe in his +mouth, has the effect of having just come in; his friend _Mr. Oliver +Ransom_ stands at the window, staring out into the November weather. + + * * * * * + +_Grinnidge_: “How long have you been waiting here?” + +_Ransom_: “Ten minutes—ten years. How should I know?” + +_Grinnidge_: “Well, I don’t know who else should. Get back to-day?” + +_Ransom_: “Last night.” + +_Grinnidge_: “Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register, and +warm your poor feet.” He puts his hand out over the register. “Confound +it! somebody’s got the register open in the next room! You see, one pipe +comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just under the floor, and +professes to heat both rooms. But it don’t. There was a fellow in there +last winter who used to get all my heat. Used to go out and leave his +register open, and I’d come in here just before dinner and find this +place as cold as a barn. We had a running fight of it all winter. The +man who got his register open first in the morning got all the heat for +the day, for it never turned the other way when it started in one +direction. Used to almost suffocate—warm, muggy days—maintaining my +rights. Some piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And +she hasn’t lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What +kept you so late in the country?” + +_Ransom_, after an absent-minded pause: “Grinnidge, I wish you would give +me some advice.” + +_Grinnidge_: “You can have all you want of it at the market price.” + +_Ransom_: “I don’t mean your legal advice.” + +_Grinnidge_: “I’m sorry. What have you been doing?” + +_Ransom_: “I’ve been making an ass of myself.” + +_Grinnidge_: “Wasn’t that rather superfluous?” + +_Ransom_: “If you please, yes. But now, it you’re capable of listening +to me without any further display of your cross-examination wit, I should +like to tell you how it happened.” + +_Grinnidge_: “I will do my best to veil my brilliancy. Go on.” + +_Ransom_: “I went up to Ponkwasset early in September for the foliage.” + +_Grinnidge_: “And staid till late in October. There must have been a +reason for that. What was her name? Foliage?” + +_Ransom_, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, near which his +friend sits, and talking to him directly over the register: “I think +you’ll have to get along without the name for the present. I’ll tell you +by and by.” As _Mr. Ransom_ pronounces these words, _Miss Reed_, on her +side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and, after a +moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. “But she was beautiful. +She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes—eyes, you know, that +could be funny or tender, just as she chose—the kind of eyes I always +liked.” _Miss Reed_ leads forward over the register. “She had one of +those faces that always leave you in doubt whether they’re laughing at +you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but you feel certain that +they’re _good_, and that if they did hurt you by laughing at you, they’d +look sorry for you afterward. When she walked you saw what an exquisite +creature she was. It always made me mad to think I couldn’t _paint_ her +walk.” + +_Grinnidge_: “I suppose you saw a good deal of her walk.” + +_Ransom_: “Yes; we were off in the woods and fields half the time +together.” He takes a turn towards the window. + +_Miss Reed_, suddenly shutting the register on her side: “Oh!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, looking up from her music: “What is it, Ethel?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Nothing, nothing; I—I—thought it was getting too warm. Go +on, dear; don’t let me interrupt you.” After a moment of heroic +self-denial she softly presses the register open with her foot. + +_Ransom_, coming back to the register: “It all began in that way. I had +the good fortune one day to rescue her from a—cow.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, for shame!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, desisting from her piano: “What _is_ the matter?” + +_Miss Reed_, clapping the register to: “This ridiculous book! But +don’t—don’t mind me, Nettie.” Breathlessly: “Go—go—on!” _Miss +Spaulding_ resumes, and again _Miss Reed_ softly presses the register +open. + +_Ransom_, after a pause: “The cow was grazing, and had no more thought of +hooking Miss”— + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, I didn’t suppose he _would_!—Go on, Nettie, go on! The +hero—_such_ a goose!” + +_Ransom_: “I drove her away with my camp-stool, and Miss—the young +lady—was as grateful as if I had rescued her from a menagerie of wild +animals. I walked home with her to the farm house, and the trouble began +at once.” Pantomime of indignant protest and burlesque menace on the +part of _Miss Reed_. “There wasn’t another well woman in the house, +except her friend Miss Spaulding, who was rather old and rather plain.” +He takes another turn to the window. + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh!” She shuts the register, but instantly opens it again. +“Louder, Nettie.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, in astonishment: “What?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Did I speak? I didn’t know it. I”— + +_Miss Spaulding_, desisting from practice: “What is that strange, hollow, +rumbling, mumbling kind of noise?” + +_Miss Reed_, softly closing the register with her foot: “I don’t hear any +strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do you hear it +_now_?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “No. It was the Brighton whistle, probably.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, very likely.” As _Miss Spaulding_ turns again to her +practice _Miss Reed_ re-opens the register and listens again. A little +interval of silence ensues, while _Ransom_ lights a cigarette. + +_Grinnidge_: “So you sought opportunities of rescuing her from other +cows?” + +_Ransom_, returning: “That wasn’t necessary. The young lady was so +impressed by my behavior, that she asked if I would give her some lessons +in the use of oil.” + +_Grinnidge_: “She thought if she knew how to paint pictures like yours +she wouldn’t need any one to drive the cows away.” + +_Ransom_: “Don’t be farcical, Grinnidge. That sort of thing will do with +some victim on the witness-stand who can’t help himself. Of course I +said I would, and we were off half the time together, painting the +loveliest and loneliest bits around Ponkwasset. It all went on very +well, till one day I felt bound in conscience to tell her that I didn’t +think she would ever learn to paint, and that—if she was serious about it +she’d better drop it at once, for she was wasting her time.” + +_Grinnidge_, getting up to fill his pipe: “That was a pleasant thing to +do.” + +_Ransom_: “I told her that if it amused her, to keep on; I would be only +too glad to give her all—the hints I could, but that I oughtn’t to +encourage her. She seemed a good deal hurt. I fancied at the time that +she thought I was tired of having her with me so much.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, _did_ you, indeed!” To _Miss Spaulding_, who bends an +astonished glance upon her from the piano: “The man in this book is the +most _conceited_ creature, Nettie. Play chords—something very +subdued—ah!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “What are you talking about, Ethel?” + +_Ransom_: “That was at night; but the next day she came up smiling, and +said that if I didn’t mind she would keep on—for amusement; she wasn’t a +bit discouraged.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh!—Go on, Nettie; don’t let my outbursts interrupt you.” + +_Ransom_: “I used to fancy sometimes that she was a little sweet on me.” + +_Miss Reed_: “You wretch!—Oh, scales, Nettie! Play scales!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel Reed, are you crazy?” + +_Ransom_, after a thoughtful moment: “Well, so it went on for the next +seven or eight weeks. When we weren’t sketching in the meadows, or on +the mountain-side, or in the old punt on the pond, we were walking up and +down the farmhouse piazza together. She used to read to me when I was at +work. She had a heavenly voice, Grinnidge.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, you silly, silly thing!—Really this book makes me sick, +Nettie.” + +_Ransom_: “Well, the long and the short of it was, I was hit—_hard_, and +I lost all courage. You know how I am, Grinnidge.” + +_Miss Reed_, softly: “Oh, poor fellow!” + +_Ransom_: “So I let the time go by, and at the end I hadn’t said +anything.” + +_Miss Reed_: “No, sir! You _hadn’t_!” _Miss Spaulding_ gradually ceases +to play, and fixes her attention wholly upon _Miss Reed_, who bends +forward over the register with an intensely excited face. + +_Ransom_: “Then something happened that made me glad, for twenty-four +hours at least, that I hadn’t spoken. She sent me the money for +twenty-five lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I +suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and storing up her +resentment for my having told her she couldn’t learn to paint, till she +could pay me back with interest in one supreme insult?” + +_Miss Reed_, in a low voice: “Oh, how could you think such a cruel, +vulgar thing?” _Miss Spaulding_ leaves the piano, and softly approaches +her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register. + +_Ransom_: “It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing +herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole +association, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation of +teacher and pupil. It was a snub—a heartless, killing snub; and I +couldn’t see it in any other light.” _Ransom_ walks away to the window, +and looks out. + +_Miss Reed_, flinging herself backward from the register, and hiding her +face in her hands: “Oh, it wasn’t! it wasn’t! it wasn’t! How could you +think so?” + +_Miss Spaulding_, rushing forward, and catching her friend in her arms: +“What is the matter with you, Ethel Reed? What are you doing here, over +the register? Are you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you taken +leave of your senses?” + +_Grinnidge_: “Our fair friend on the other side of the wall seems to be +on the rampage.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, shutting the register with a violent clash: “Ugh! how +hot it is here!” + +_Grinnidge_: “Doesn’t like your conversation, apparently.” + +_Miss Reed_, frantically pressing forward to open the register: “Oh, +don’t shut it, Nettie, dear! If you do I shall die! Do-o-n’t shut the +register!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Don’t shut it? Why, we’ve got all the heat of the +furnace in the room now. Surely you don’t want any more?” + +_Miss Reed_: “No, no; not any more. But—but— Oh, dear! what shall I +do?” She still struggles in the embrace of her friend. + +_Grinnidge_, remaining quietly at the register, while _Ransom_ walks away +to the window: “Well, what did you do?” + +_Miss Reed_: “There, there! They’re commencing again! _Do_ open it, +Nettie. I _will_ have it open!” She wrenches herself free, and dashes +the register open. + +_Grinnidge_: “Ah, she’s opened it again.” + +_Miss Reed_, in a stage-whisper: “That’s the other one!” + +_Ransom_, from the window: “Do? I’ll tell you what I did.” + +_Miss Reed_: “That’s Ol—Mr. Ransom. And, oh, I can’t make out what he’s +saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the room—and it’s at +the most important point!” + +_Miss Spaulding_, in an awful undertone: “Was that the hollow rumbling I +heard? And have you been listening at the register to what they’ve been +saying? O _Ethel_!” + +_Miss Reed_: “I haven’t been listening, exactly.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “You have! You have been eavesdropping!” + +_Miss Reed_: “Eavesdropping is listening through a key-hole, or around a +corner. This is very different. Besides, it’s Oliver, and he’s been +talking about _me_. Hark!” She clutches her friend’s hand, where they +have crouched upon the floor together, and pulls her forward to the +register. “Oh, dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off the heat +down below.” + +_Grinnidge_, smoking peacefully through the silence which his friend has +absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: “Well, you seem disposed +to take your time about it.” + +_Ransom_: “About what? Oh, yes! Well”— + +_Miss Reed_: “’Sh! Listen.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “I won’t listen! It’s shameful: it’s wicked! I don’t +see how you can do it, Ethel!” She remains, however, kneeling near the +register, and she involuntarily inclines a little more toward it. + +_Ransom_: “—It isn’t a thing that I care to shout from the house-tops.” +He returns from the window to the chimney-piece. “I wrote the rudest +kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in it. She had said +that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with the summer, but that +we might sometimes meet in Boston; and I answered that our acquaintance +had ended already, and that I should be sorry to meet her anywhere +again.” + +_Grinnidge_: “Well, if you wanted to make an ass of yourself, you did it +pretty completely.” + +_Miss Reed_, whispering: “How witty he is! Those men are always so +humorous with each other.” + +_Ransom_: “Yes; I didn’t do it by halves.” + +_Miss Reed_, whispering: “Oh, _that’s_ funny, too!” + +_Grinnidge_: “It didn’t occur to you that she might feel bound to pay you +for the first half-dozen, and was embarrassed how to offer to pay for +them alone?” + +_Miss Reed_: “How he _does_ go to the heart of the matter!” She presses +_Miss Spaulding’s_ hand in an ecstasy of approval. + +_Ransom_: “Yes, it did—afterward.” + +_Miss Reed_, in a tender murmur: “Oh, _poor_ Oliver!” + +_Ransom_: “And it occurred to me that she was perfectly right in the +whole affair.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, how generous! how noble!” + +_Ransom_: “I had had a thousand opportunities, and I hadn’t been man +enough to tell her that I was in love with her.” + +_Miss Reed_: “How can he say it right out so bluntly? But if it’s true”— + +_Ransom_: “I _couldn’t_ speak. I was afraid of putting an end to the +affair—of frightening her—disgusting her.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, how little they know us, Nettie!” + +_Ransom_: “She seemed so much above me in every way—so sensitive, so +refined, so gentle, so good, so angelic!” + +_Miss Reed_: “There! _Now_ do you call it eavesdropping? If listeners +never hear any good of themselves, what do you say to that? It proves +that I haven’t been listening.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh! They’re saying something else.” + +_Ransom_: “But all that’s neither here nor there. I can see now that +under the circumstances she couldn’t as a lady have acted otherwise than +she did. She was forced to treat our whole acquaintance as a business +matter, and I had forced her to do it.” + +_Miss Reed_: “You _had_, you poor thing!” + +_Grinnidge_: “Well, what do you intend to do about it?” + +_Ransom_: “Well”— + +_Miss Reed_: “’Sh!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh!” + +_Ransom_: “—that’s what I want to submit to you, Grinnidge. I must see +her.” + +_Grinnidge_: “Yes. I’m glad _I_ mustn’t.” + +_Miss Reed_, stifling a laugh on _Miss Spaulding’s_ shoulder: “They’re +actually _afraid_ of us, Nettie!” + +_Ransom_: “See her, and go down in the dust.” + +_Miss Reed_: “My very words!” + +_Ransom_: “I have been trying to think what was the very humblest pie I +could eat, by way of penance; and it appears to me that I had better +begin by saying that I have come to ask her for the money I refused.” + +_Miss Reed_, enraptured: “Oh! doesn’t it seem just like—like—inspiration, +Nettie?” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh! Be quiet, do! You’ll frighten them away!” + +_Grinnidge_: “And then what?” + +_Ransom_: “What then? I don’t know what then. But it appears to me +that, as a gentleman, I’ve got nothing to do with the result. All that +I’ve got to do is to submit to my fate, whatever it is.” + +_Miss Reed_, breathlessly: “What princely courage! What delicate +magnanimity! Oh, he needn’t have the _least_ fear! If I could only tell +him that!” + +_Grinnidge_, after an interval of meditative smoking: “Yes, I guess +that’s the best thing you can do. It will strike her fancy, if she’s an +imaginative girl, and she’ll think you a fine fellow.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, the horrid thing!” + +_Grinnidge_: “If you humble yourself to a woman at all, do it thoroughly. +If you go halfway down she’ll be tempted to push you the rest of the way. +If you flatten out at her feet to begin with, ten to one but she will +pick you up.” + +_Ransom_: “Yes, that was my idea.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, was it, indeed! Well!” + +_Ransom_: “But I’ve nothing to do with her picking me up or pushing me +down. All that I’ve got to do is to go and surrender myself.” + +_Grinnidge_: “Yes. Well; I guess you can’t go too soon. I like your +company; but I advise you as a friend not to lose time. Where does she +live?” + +_Ransom_: “That’s the remarkable part of it: she lives in this house.” + +_Miss Reed_ and _Miss Spaulding_, in subdued chorus: “Oh!” + +_Grinnidge_, taking his pipe out of his mouth in astonishment: “No!” + +_Ransom_: “I just came in here to give my good resolutions a rest while I +was screwing my courage up to ask for her.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Don’t you think he’s _very_ humorous? Give his good +resolutions a rest! That’s the way he _always_ talks.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh!” + +_Grinnidge_: “You said you came for my advice.” + +_Ransom_: “So I did. But I didn’t promise to act upon it. Well!” He +goes toward the door. + +_Grinnidge_, without troubling himself to rise: “Well, good luck to you!” + +_Miss Reed_: “How droll they are with each other! Don’t you _like_ to +hear them talk? Oh, I could listen all day.” + +_Grinnidge_, calling after _Ransom_: “You haven’t told me your duck’s +name.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Is _that_ what they call us? Duck! Do you think it’s very +respectful, Nettie? I don’t believe I like it. Or, yes, why not? It’s +no harm—if I _am_ his duck!” + +_Ransom_, coming back: “Well, I don’t propose to go shouting it round. +Her name is Miss Reed—Ethel Reed.” + +_Miss Reed_: “How _can_ he?” + +_Grinnidge_: “Slender, willowy party, with a lot of blond hair that looks +as if it might be indigenous? Rather pensive-looking?” + +_Miss Reed_: “Indigenous! I should hope so!” + +_Ransom_: “Yes. But she isn’t pensive. She’s awfully deep. It makes me +shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of my courage +in daring to be in love with her—a stupid, straightforward idiot like +me—I begin to respect myself in spite of being such an ass. Well, I’m +off. If I stay any longer I shall never go.” He closes the door after +him, and _Miss Reed_ instantly springs to her feet. + +_Miss Reed_: “Now he’ll have to go down to the parlor and send up his +name, and that just gives me time to do the necessary prinking. You stay +here and receive him, Nettie.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Never! After what’s happened I can never look him in +the face again. Oh, how low, and mean, and guilty I feel!” + +_Miss Reed_, with surprise: “Why, how droll! Now _I_ don’t feel the +least so.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, it’s very different with _you_. _You’re_ in love +with him.” + +_Miss Reed_: “For shame, Nettie! I’m _not_ in love with him.” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “And you can explain and justify it. But I never can +justify it to myself, much less to him. Let me go, Ethel! I shall tell +Mrs. McKnight that we must change this room instantly. And just after +I’d got it so nearly in order! Go down and receive him in the parlor, +Ethel. I _can’t_ see him.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Receive him in the parlor! Why, Nettie, dear, you’re +crazy! I’m going to _accept_ him: and how can I accept him—with all the +consequences—in a public parlor? No, indeed! If you won’t meet him here +for a moment, just to oblige me, you can go into the other room. Or, +no—you’d be listening to every word through the key-hole, you’re so +demoralized!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Yes, yes, I deserve your contempt, Ethel.” + +_Miss Reed_, laughing: “You will have to go out for a walk, you poor +thing; and I’m not going to have you coming back in five or ten minutes. +You have got to stay out a good hour.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, running to get her things from the next room: “Oh, I’ll +stay out till midnight!” + +_Miss Reed_, responding to a tap at the door: “Ye-e-s! Come in!—You’re +caught, Nettie.” + +_A maid-servant_, appearing with a card: “This gentleman is asking for +you in the parlor, Miss Reed.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh! Ask him to come up here, please.—Nettie! Nettie!” +She calls to her friend in the next room. “He’s coming right up, and if +you don’t run you’re trapped.” + +_Miss Spaulding_, re-appearing, cloaked and bonneted: “I don’t blame +_you_, Ethel, comparatively speaking. You can say that everything is +fair in love. He will like it, and laugh at it in you, because he’ll +like everything you’ve done. Besides, you’ve no principles, and I +_have_.” + +_Miss Reed_: “Oh, I’ve lots of principles, Nettie, but I’ve no practice!” + +_Miss Spaulding_: “No matter. There’s no excuse for me. I listened +simply because I was a woman, and couldn’t help it; and, oh, what will he +think of me?” + +_Miss Reed_: “I won’t give you away; if you really feel so badly”— + +_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, _do_ you think you can keep from telling him, +Ethel dear? Try! And I will be your slave forever!” Steps are heard on +the stairs outside. “Oh, there he comes!” She dashes out of the door, +and closes it after her, a moment before the maid-servant, followed by +_Mr. Ransom_, taps at it. + + + +III. + + +SCENE: _Miss Reed_ opens the door, and receives _Mr. Ransom_ with +well-affected surprise and state, suffering him to stand awkwardly on the +threshold for a moment. + + * * * * * + +_She_, coldly: “Oh!—Mr. Ransom!” + +_He_, abruptly: “I’ve come”— + +_She_: “Won’t you come in?” + +_He_, advancing a few paces into the room: “I’ve come”— + +_She_, indicating a chair: “Will you sit down?” + +_He_: “I must stand for the present. I’ve come to ask you for that +money, Miss Reed, which I refused yesterday, in terms that I blush to +think of. I was altogether and wholly in the wrong, and I’m ready to +offer any imaginable apology or reparation. I’m ready to take the money +and to sign a receipt, and then to be dismissed with whatever ignominy +you please. I deserve anything—everything!” + +_She_: “The money? Excuse me; I don’t know—I’m afraid that I’m not +prepared to pay you the whole sum to-day.” + +_He_, hastily: “Oh, no matter! no matter! I don’t care for the money +now. I merely wish to—to assure you that I thought you were perfectly +right in offering it, and to—to”— + +_She_: “What?” + +_He_: “Nothing. That is—ah—ah”— + +_She_: “It’s extremely embarrassing to have people refuse their money +when it’s offered them, and then come the next day for it, when perhaps +it isn’t so convenient to pay it—_very_ embarrassing.” + +_He_, hotly: “But I tell you I don’t want the _money_! I never wanted +it, and wouldn’t take it on any account.” + +_She_: “Oh! I thought you said you came to get it?” + +_He_: “I said—I didn’t say—I meant—that is—ah—I”—He stops, open-mouthed. + +_She_, quietly: “I could give you part of the money now.” + +_He_: “Oh, whatever you like; it’s indifferent”— + +_She_: “Please sit down while I write a receipt.” She places herself +deliberately at the table, and opens her portfolio. “I will pay you now, +Mr. Ransom, for the first six lessons you gave me—the ones before you +told me that I could never learn to do anything.” + +_He_, sinking mechanically into the chair she indicates: “Oh, just as you +like!” He looks up at the ceiling in hopeless bewilderment, while she +writes. + +_She_, blotting the paper: “There! And now let me offer you a little +piece of advice, Mr. Ransom, which may be useful to you in taking pupils +hereafter.” + +_He_, bursting out: “I never take pupils!” + +_She_: “Never take pupils! I don’t understand. You took _me_.” + +_He_, confusedly: “I took you—yes. You seemed to wish—you seemed—the +case was peculiar—peculiar circumstances.” + +_She_, with severity: “May I ask _why_ the circumstances were peculiar? +I saw nothing peculiar about the circumstances. It seemed to me it was a +very simple matter. I told you that I had always had a great curiosity +to see whether I could use oil paints, and I asked you a very plain +question, whether you would let me study with you. Didn’t I?” + +_He_: “Yes.” + +_She_: “Was there anything wrong—anything queer about my asking you?” + +_He_: “No, no! Not at all—not in the least.” + +_She_: “Didn’t you wish me to take the lessons of you? If you didn’t, it +wasn’t kind of you to let me.” + +_He_: “Oh, I was perfectly willing—very glad indeed, very much +so—certainly!” + +_She_: “If it wasn’t your _custom_ to take pupils, you ought to have told +me, and I wouldn’t have forced myself upon you.” + +_He_, desperately: “It wasn’t forcing yourself upon me. The Lord knows +how humbly grateful I was. It was like a hope of heaven!” + +_She_: “Really, Mr. Ransom, this is very strange talk. What am I to +understand by it? Why should you be grateful to teach me? Why should +giving me lessons be like a hope of heaven?” + +_He_: “Oh, I will tell you!” + +_She_: “Well?” + +_He_, after a moment of agony: “Because to be with you”— + +_She_: “Yes?” + +_He_: “Because I wished to be with you. Because—those days in the woods, +when you read, and I”— + +_She_: “Painted on my pictures”— + +_He_: “Were the happiest of my life. Because—I loved you!” + +_She_: “Mr. Ransom!” + +_He_: “Yes, I must tell you so. I loved you; I love you still. I shall +always love you, no matter what”— + +_She_: “You forget yourself, Mr. Ransom. Has there been anything in my +manner—conduct—to justify you in using such language to me?” + +_He_: “No—no”— + +_She_: “Did you suppose that because I first took lessons of you +from—from—an enthusiasm for art, and then continued them +for—for—amusement, that I wished you to make love to me?” + +_He_: “No, I never supposed such a thing. I’m incapable of it. I +beseech you to believe that no one could have more respect—reverence”—He +twirls his hat between his hands, and casts an imploring glance at her. + +_She_: “Oh, respect—reverence! I know what they mean in the mouths of +men. If you respected, if you reverenced me, could you dare to tell me, +after my unguarded trust of you during the past months, that you had been +all the time secretly in love with me?” + +_He_, plucking up a little courage: “I don’t see that the three things +are incompatible.” + +_She_: “Oh, then you acknowledge that you did presume upon something you +thought you saw in me to tell me that you loved me, and that you were in +love with me all the time?” + +_He_, contritely: “I have no right to suppose that you encouraged me; and +yet—I can’t deny it now—I was in love with you all the time.” + +_She_: “And you never said a word to let me believe that you had any such +feeling toward me!” + +_He_: “I—I”— + +_She_: “You would have parted from me without a syllable to suggest +it—perhaps parted from me forever?” After a pause of silent humiliation +for him: “Do you call that brave or generous? Do you call it +manly—supposing, as you hoped, that _I_ had any such feeling?” + +_He_: “No; it was cowardly, it was mean, it was unmanly. I see it now, +but I will spend my life in repairing the wrong, if you will only let +me.” He impetuously advances some paces toward her, and then stops, +arrested by her irresponsive attitude. + +_She_, with a light sigh, and looking down at the paper, which she has +continued to hold between her hands: “There was a time—a moment—when I +might have answered as you wish.” + +_He_: “Oh! then there will be again. If you have changed once, you may +change once more. Let me hope that some time—any time, dearest”— + +_She_, quenching him with a look: “Mr. Ransom, I shall _never_ change +toward you! You confess that you had your opportunity, and that you +despised it.” + +_He_: “Oh! _not_ despised it!” + +_She_: “Neglected it.” + +_He_: “Not wilfully—no. I confess that I was stupidly, vilely, +pusillan—pusillan—illani”— + +_She_: “’Monsly”— + +_He_: “Thanks—’mously unworthy of it; but I didn’t despise it; I didn’t +neglect it; and if you will only let me show by a lifetime of devotion +how dearly and truly I have loved you from the first moment I drove that +cow away”— + +_She_: “Mr. Ransom, I have told you that I should never change toward +you. That cow was nothing when weighed in the balance against your being +willing to leave a poor girl, whom you supposed interested in you, and to +whom you had paid the most marked attention, without a word to show her +that you cared for her. What is a cow, or a whole herd of cows, as +compared with obliging a young lady to offer you money that you hadn’t +earned, and then savagely flinging it back in her face? A yoke of oxen +would be nothing—or a mad bull.” + +_He_: “Oh, I acknowledge it! I confess it.” + +_She_: “And you own that I am right in refusing to listen to you now?” + +_He_, desolately: “Yes, yes.” + +_She_: “It seems that you gave me lessons in order to be with me, and if +possible to interest me in you; and then you were going away without a +word.” + +_He_, with a groan: “It was only because I was afraid to speak.” + +_She_: “Oh, is _that_ any excuse?” + +_He_: “No; none.” + +_She_: “A man ought always to have courage.” After a pause, in which he +stands before her with bowed head: “Then there’s nothing for me but to +give you this money.” + +_He_, with sudden energy: “This is too much! I”— + +_She_, offering him the bank-notes: “No; it is the exact sum. I counted +it very carefully.” + +_He_: “I won’t take it; I can’t! I’ll never take it!” + +_She_, standing with the money in her outstretched hand: “I have your +word as a gentleman that you will take it.” + +_He_, gasping: “Oh, well—I will take it—I will”—He clutches the money, +and rushes toward the door. “Good-evening; ah—good-by”— + +_She_, calling after him: “The receipt, Mr. Ransom! Please sign this +receipt!” _She_ waves the paper in the air. + +_He_: “Oh, yes, certainly! Where is it—what—which”—_He_ rushes back to +her, and seizing the receipt, feels blindly about for the pen and ink. +“Where shall I sign?” + +_She_: “Read it first.” + +_He_: “Oh, it’s all—all right”— + +_She_: “I insist upon your reading it. It’s a business transaction. +Read it aloud.” + +_He_, desperately: “Well, well!” _He_ reads. “‘Received from Miss Ethel +Reed, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting, one hundred and +twenty-five dollars, and her hand, heart, and dearest love forever.’” +_He_ looks up at her. “Ethel!” + +_She_, smiling: “Sign it, sign it!” + +_He_, catching her in his arms and kissing her: “Oh, yes—_here_!” + +_She_, pulling a little away from him, and laughing: “Oh, oh! I only +wanted _one_ signature! Twenty autographs are too many, unless you’ll +let me trade them off, as the collectors do.” + +_He_: “No; keep them all! I couldn’t think of letting any one else have +them. One more!” + +_She_: “No; it’s quite enough!” + +_She_ frees herself, and retires beyond the table. “This unexpected +affection”— + +_He_: “_Is_ it unexpected—seriously?” + +_She_: “What do you mean?” + +_He_: “Oh, nothing!” + +_She_: “Yes, tell me!” + +_He_: “I hoped—I thought—perhaps—that you might have been prepared for +some such demonstration on my part.” + +_She_: “And why did you think—hope—perhaps—_that_, Mr. Ransom, may I +ask?” + +_He_: “If I hadn’t, how should I have dared to speak?” + +_She_: “Dared? You were obliged to speak! Well, since it’s all over, I +don’t mind saying that I _did_ have some slight apprehensions that +something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from you.” + +_He_: “Extorted? Oh!” He makes an impassioned rush toward her. + +_She_, keeping the table between them: “No, no.” + +_He_: “Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to make me suffer so, +after I had come to the point.” + +_She_: “Ask it across the table, then.” After a moment’s reflection, “I +made you suffer—I made you suffer—so that you might have a realizing +sense of what you had made _me_ suffer.” + +_He_, enraptured by this confession: “Oh, you angel!” + +_She_, with tender magnanimity: “No; only a woman—a poor, trusting, +foolish woman!” She permits him to surround the table, with imaginable +results. Then, with her head on his shoulder: “You’ll _never_ let me +regret it, will you, darling? You’ll never oblige me to punish you +again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt _me_ far worse to _see_ your pain +than it did you to—to—feel it!” On the other side of the partition, _Mr. +Grinnidge’s_ pipe falls from his lips, parted in slumber, and shivers to +atoms on the register. “Oh!” _She_ flies at the register with a shriek +of dismay, and is about to close it. “That wretch has been listening, +and has heard every word!” + +_He_, preventing her: “What wretch? Where?” + +_She_: “Don’t you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?” + +_Grinnidge_: “Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and +untold toil in coloring it!” + +_Ransom_, listening with an air of mystification: “Who’s that?” + +_She_: “Gummidge, Grimmidge—whatever you called him. Oh!” _She_ arrests +herself in consternation. “Now I _have_ done it!” + +_He_: “Done what?” + +_She_: “Oh—nothing!” + +_He_: “I don’t understand. Do you mean to say that my friend Grinnidge’s +room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can hear him talk +through the register?” _She_ preserves the silence of abject terror. He +stoops over the register, and calls down it. “Grinnidge! Hallo!” + +_Grinnidge_: “Hallo, yourself!” + +_Ransom_, to _Miss Reed_: “Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the +phonograph.” To _Grinnidge_: “What’s the trouble?” + +_Grinnidge_: “Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and let it drop on this +infernal register.” + +_Ransom_, turning from the register with impressive deliberation: “Miss +Reed, may I ask _how_ you came to know that his name was Gummidge, or +Grimmidge, or whatever I called him?” + +_She_: “Oh, dearest, I _can’t_ tell you! Or—yes, I had better.” +Impulsively: “I will judge you by myself. _I_ could forgive _you_ +anything!” + +_He_, doubtfully: “Oh, could you?” + +_She_: “Everything! I had—I had better make a clean breast of it. Yes, +I had. Though I don’t like to. I—I listened!” + +_He_: “Listened?” + +_She_: “Through the register to—to—what—you—were saying before you—came +in here.” Her head droops. + +_He_: “Then you heard everything?” + +_She_: “Kill me, but don’t look _so_ at me! It was accidental at +first—indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew +you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you +so dearly! You _will_ forgive me, darling? It wasn’t as if I were +listening with any bad motive.” + +_He_, taking her in his arms: “Forgive you? Of course I do. But you +must change this room at once, Ethel; you see you hear everything on the +other side, too.” + +_She_: “Oh, not if you whisper on this. You couldn’t hear _us_?” At a +dubious expression of his: “You _didn’t_ hear us? If you did, I can +never forgive you!” + +_He_: “It was accidental at first—indeed it was; and then I recognized +your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much +at stake; and I did love you so dearly!” + +_She_: “All that has nothing whatever to do with it. How much did you +hear?” + +_He_, with exemplary meekness: “Only what you were saying before +Grinnidge came in. You didn’t whisper then. I had to wait there for him +while”— + +_She_: “While you were giving your good resolutions a rest?” + +_He_: “While I was giving my good resolutions a rest.” + +_She_: “And that accounts for your determination to humble yourself so?” + +_He_: “It seemed perfectly providential that I should have known just +what conditions you were going to exact of me.” + +_She_: “Oh, don’t make light of it! I can tell you it’s a very serious +matter.” + +_He_: “It was very serious for me when you didn’t meet my self-abasement +as you had led me to expect you would.” + +_She_: “Don’t make fun! I’m trying to think whether I can forgive you.” + +_He_, with insinuation: “Don’t you believe you could think better if you +put your head on my shoulder?” + +_She_: “Nonsense! Then I should forgive you without thinking.” After a +season of reflection: “No, I _can’t_ forgive you. I never could forgive +eavesdropping. It’s _too_ low.” + +_He_, in astonishment: “Why, you did it yourself!” + +_She_: “But you began it. Besides, it’s very different for a man. Women +are weak, poor, helpless creatures. They have to use finesse. But a man +should be above it.” + +_He_: “You said you could forgive me anything.” + +_She_: “Ah, but I didn’t know what you’d been doing!” + +_He_, with pensive resignation, and a feint of going: “Then I suppose +it’s all over between us.” + +_She_, relenting: “If you could think of any reason _why_ I should +forgive you”— + +_He_: “I can’t.” + +_She_, after consideration: “Do you suppose Mr. Grumage, or Grimidge, +heard too?” + +_He_: “No; Grinnidge is a very high-principled fellow, and wouldn’t +listen; besides, he wasn’t there, you know.” + +_She_: “Well, then, I will forgive you on these grounds.” _He_ instantly +catches her to his heart. “But these alone, remember.” + +_He_, rapturously: “Oh, on any!” + +_She_, tenderly: “And you’ll always be devoted? And nice? And not try +to provoke me? Or neglect me? Or anything?” + +_He_: “Always! Never!” + +_She_: “Oh, you dear, sweet, simple old thing—how I _do_ love you!” + +_Grinnidge_, who has been listening attentively to every word at the +register at his side: “Ransom, if you don’t want me to go stark mad, +_shut the register_!” + +_Ransom_, about to comply: “Oh, poor old man! I forgot it was open!” + +_Miss Reed_, preventing him: “No! If he has been vile enough to listen +at a register, let him suffer. Come, sit down here, and I’ll tell you +just when I began to care for you. It was long before the cow. Do you +remember that first morning after you arrived”—_She_ drags him close to +the register, so that every word may tell upon the envious Grinnidge, on +whose manifestations of acute despair, a rapid curtain descends. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REGISTER*** + + +******* This file should be named 3403-0.txt or 3403-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/0/3403 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Howells</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Register, by William D. Howells + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Register + + +Author: William D. Howells + + + +Release Date: June 30, 2014 [eBook #3403] +[This file was first posted on March 4, 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REGISTER*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from “The Sleeping Car and Other +Farces” 1911 Houghton Mifflin Company edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h2><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>THE +REGISTER.<br /> +Farce.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p><span class="smcap">Scene</span>: In an upper chamber of a +boarding-house in Melanchthon Place, Boston, a mature, plain +young lady, with every appearance of establishing herself in the +room for the first time, moves about, bestowing little touches of +decoration here and there, and talking with another young lady, +whose voice comes through the open doorway of an inner room.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>Miss Ethel Reed</i>, from within: “What in the world +are you doing, Nettie?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Henrietta Spaulding</i>: “Oh, sticking up a +household god or two. What are you doing?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Despairing.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Still?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, tragically: “Still! How soon did +you expect me to stop? I am here on the sofa, where I flung +myself two hours ago, and I don’t <a +name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>think I +shall ever get up. There is no reason <i>why</i> I ever +should.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, suggestively: “Dinner.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken +heart!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “I don’t believe your heart +is broken.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “But I tell you it is! I ought +to know when my own heart is broken, I should hope. What +makes you think it isn’t?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Oh, it’s happened so +often!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “But this is a real case. You +ought to feel my forehead. It’s as hot!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You ought to get up and help me +put this room to rights, and then you would feel +better.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “No; I should feel worse. The +idea of household gods makes me sick. Sylvan deities are +what I want; the great god Pan among the cat-tails and +arrow-heads in the ‘ma’sh’ at Ponkwasset; the +dryads of the birch woods—there are no oaks; the nymphs +that haunt the heights and hollows of the dear old mountain; +the”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Wha-a-at? I can’t +hear a word you say.”</p> +<p><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “That’s because you keep +fussing about so. Why don’t you be quiet, if you want +to hear?” She lifts her voice to its highest pitch, +with a pause for distinctness between the words: “I’m +heart-broken for—Ponkwasset. The dryads—of +the—birch woods. The nymphs—and the +great—god—Pan—in the reeds—by the +river. And all—that—sort +of—thing!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You know very well you’re +not.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I’m not? What’s the +reason I’m not? Then, what am I heart-broken +for?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You’re not heart-broken at +all. You know very well that he’ll call before +we’ve been here twenty-four hours.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Who?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “The great god Pan.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, how cruel you are, to mock me +so! Come in here, and sympathize a little! Do, +Nettie.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “No; you come out here and +utilize a little. I’m acting for your best good, as +they say at Ponkwasset.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “When they want to be +disagreeable!”</p> +<p><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “If this room isn’t +in order by the time he calls, you’ll be everlastingly +disgraced.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I’m that now. I +can’t be more so—there’s that comfort. +What makes you think he’ll call?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Because he’s a gentleman, +and will want to apologize. He behaved very rudely to +you.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “No, Nettie; <i>I</i> behaved rudely +to <i>him</i>. Yes! Besides, if he behaved rudely, he +was no gentleman. It’s a contradiction in terms, +don’t you see? But I’ll tell you what I’m +going to do if he comes. I’m going to show a proper +spirit for once in my life. I’m going to refuse to +see him. You’ve got to see him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Nonsense!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Why nonsense? Oh, why? +Expound!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Because he wasn’t rude to +me, and he doesn’t want to see me. Because I’m +plain, and you’re pretty.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I’m <i>not</i>! You know +it perfectly well. I’m hideous.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Because I’m poor, and +you’re a person of independent property.”</p> +<p><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “<i>Dependent</i> property, I +should call it: just enough to be useless on! But +that’s insulting to <i>him</i>. How can you say +it’s because I have a little money?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Well, then, I won’t. +I take it back. I’ll say it’s because +you’re young, and I’m old.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “You’re <i>not</i> old. +You’re as young as anybody, Nettie Spaulding. And you +know I’m not young; I’m twenty-seven, if I’m a +day. I’m just dropping into the grave. But I +can’t argue with you, miles off so, any +longer.” <i>Miss Reed</i> appears at the open door, +dragging languidly after her the shawl which she had evidently +drawn round her on the sofa; her fair hair is a little +disordered, and she presses it into shape with one hand as she +comes forward; a lovely flush vies with a heavenly pallor in her +cheeks; she looks a little pensive in the arching eyebrows, and a +little humorous about the dimpled mouth. “Now I can +prove that you are entirely wrong. Where—were +you?—This room is rather an improvement over the one we had +last winter. There is more of a view”—she goes +to the window—“of the houses across the Place; and I +always think the <a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +106</span>swell front gives a pretty shape to a room. +I’m sorry they’ve stopped building them. Your +piano goes very nicely into that little alcove. Yes, +we’re quite palatial. And, on the whole, I’m +glad there’s no fireplace. It’s a pleasure at +times; but for the most part it’s a vanity and a vexation, +getting dust and ashes over everything. Yes; after all, +give me the good old-fashioned, clean, convenient register! +Ugh! My feet are like ice.” She pulls an +easy-chair up to the register in the corner of the room, and +pushes open its valves with the toe of her slipper. As she +settles herself luxuriously in the chair, and poises her feet +daintily over the register: “Ah, this is something +like! Henrietta Spaulding, ma’am! Did I ever +tell you that you were the best friend I have in the +world?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, who continues her work of arranging the +room: “Often.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Did you ever believe it?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Never.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Why?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, thoughtfully regarding a vase which she +holds in her hand, after several times shifting it from a bracket +to the corner of her <a name="page107"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 107</span>piano and back: “I wish I +could tell where you do look best!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, leaning forward wistfully, with her hands +clasped and resting on her knees: “I wish you would tell me +<i>why</i> you don’t believe you’re the best friend I +have in the world.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, finally placing the vase on the +bracket: “Because you’ve said so too +often.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, that’s no reason! I +can prove to you that you are. Who else but you would have +taken in a homeless and friendless creature like me, and let her +stay bothering round in demoralizing idleness, while you were +seriously teaching the young idea how to drub the +piano?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Anybody who wanted a room-mate +as much as I did, and could have found one willing to pay more +than her share of the lodging.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, thoughtfully: “Do you think so, +Henrietta?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “I know so.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “And you’re not afraid that you +wrong yourself?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Not the least.”</p> +<p><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Well, be it so—as they +say in novels. I will not contradict you; I will not say +you are my <i>best</i> friend; I will merely say that you are my +<i>only</i> friend. Come here, Henrietta. Draw up +your chair, and put your little hand in mine.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, with severe distrust: “What do +you want, Ethel Reed?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I want—I want—to talk it +over with you.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, recoiling: “I knew it! +Well, now, we’ve talked it over enough; we’ve talked +it over till there’s nothing left of it.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, there’s everything +left! It remains in all its original enormity. +Perhaps we shall get some new light upon it.” She +extends a pleading hand towards <i>Miss Spaulding</i>. +“Come, Henrietta, my only friend, shake!—as the +‘good Indians’ say. Let your Ethel pour her +hackneyed sorrows into your bosom. Such an uncomfortable +image, it always seems, doesn’t it, pouring sorrows into +bosoms! Come!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, decidedly: “No, I +won’t! And you needn’t try wheedling any +longer. I won’t sympathize with you on that basis at +all.”</p> +<p><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +109</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “What shall I try, then, if you +won’t let me try wheedling?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, going to the piano and opening it: +“Try courage; try self-respect.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, dear! when I haven’t a +morsel of either. Are you going to practise, you cruel +maid?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Of course I am. It’s +half-past four, and if I don’t do it now I +sha’n’t be prepared to-morrow for Miss Robins: she +takes this piece.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Well, well, perhaps it’s all +for the best. If music be the food +of—umph-ump!—you know what!—play +on.” They both laugh, and <i>Miss Spaulding</i> +pushes back a little from the piano, and wheels toward her +friend, letting one hand rest slightly on the keys.</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Ethel Reed, you’re the +most ridiculous girl in the world.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Correct!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “And I don’t believe you +ever were in love, or ever will be.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Ah, there you wrong me, +Henrietta! I have been, and I shall be—lots of +times.”</p> +<p><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Well, what do you want to +say now? You must hurry, for I can’t lose any more +time.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I will free my mind with neatness and +despatch. I simply wish to go over the whole affair, from +Alfred to Omaha; and you’ve got to let me talk as much +slang and nonsense as I want. And then I’ll skip all +the details I can. Will you?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, with impatient patience: “Oh, I +suppose so!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “That’s very sweet of you, +though you don’t look it. Now, where was I? Oh, +yes, do you think it was forth-putting at all, to ask him if he +would give me the lessons?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “It depends upon why you asked +him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I asked him from—from—Let +me see; I asked him because—from—Yes, I say it +boldly; I asked him from an enthusiasm for art, and a sincere +wish to learn the use of oil, as he called it. +Yes!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Are you sure?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Sure? Well, we will say that I +am, for the sake of argument. And, having <a +name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>secured +this basis, the question is whether I wasn’t bound to offer +him pay at the end, and whether he wasn’t wrong to take my +doing so in dudgeon.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Yes, I think he was wrong. +And the terms of his refusal were very ungentlemanly. He +ought to apologize most amply and humbly.” At a +certain expression in <i>Miss Reed’s</i> face, she adds, +with severity: “Unless you’re keeping back the main +point. You usually do. Are you?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “No, no. I’ve told you +everything—everything!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Then I say, as I said from the +beginning, that he behaved very badly. It was very awkward +and very painful, but you’ve really nothing to blame +yourself for.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, ruefully: “No-o-o!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “What do you mean by that sort of +‘No’?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Nothing.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, sternly: “Yes, you do, +Ethel.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I don’t, really. What +makes you’ think I do?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “It sounded very +dishonest.”</p> +<p><a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +112</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Did it? I didn’t +mean it to.” Her friend breaks down with a laugh, +while <i>Miss Reed</i> preserves a demure countenance.</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “What <i>are</i> you keeping +back?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Nothing at all—less than +nothing! I never thought it was worth +mentioning.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Are you telling me the +truth?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I’m telling you the truth and +something more. You can’t ask better than that, can +you?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, turning to her music again: +“Certainly not.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: in a pathetic wail: “O Henrietta! do +you abandon me thus? Well, I will tell you, heartless +girl! I’ve only kept it back till now because it was +so extremely mortifying to my pride as an artist—as a +student of oil. Will you hear me?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, beginning to play: +“No.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, with burlesque wildness: “You +shall!” <i>Miss Spaulding</i> involuntarily +desists. “There was a moment—a fatal +moment—when he said he thought he ought to tell me that if +<a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>I found +oil amusing I could go on; but that he didn’t believe I +should ever learn to use it, and he couldn’t let me take +lessons from him with the expectation that I should. +There!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, with awful reproach: “And you +call that less than nothing? I’ve almost a mind never +to speak to you again, Ethel. How <i>could</i> you deceive +me so?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Was it really deceiving? +<i>I</i> shouldn’t call it so. And I needed your +sympathy so much, and I knew I shouldn’t get it unless you +thought I was altogether in the right.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You are altogether in the +wrong! And it’s <i>you</i> that ought to apologize to +<i>him</i>—on your bended knees. How <i>could</i> you +offer him money after that? I wonder at you, +Ethel!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Why—don’t you see, +Nettie?—I did keep on taking the lessons of him. I +did find oil amusing—or the oilist—and I kept +on. Of course I had to, off there in a farmhouse full of +lady boarders, and he the only gentleman short of +Crawford’s. Strike, but hear me, Henrietta +Spaulding! What was I to do about the half-dozen lessons I +had taken before he told me I <a name="page114"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 114</span>should never learn to use oil? +Was I to offer to pay him for these, and not for the rest; or was +I to treat the whole series as gratuitous? I used to lie +awake thinking about it. I’ve got little tact, but I +couldn’t find any way out of the trouble. It was a +box—yes, a box of the deepest dye! And the whole +affair having got to be—something else, don’t you +know?—made it all the worse. And if he’d +only—only—But he didn’t. Not a syllable, +not a breath! And there I was. I <i>had</i> to offer +him the money. And it’s almost killed me—the +way he took my offering it, and now the way you take it! +And it’s all of a piece.” <i>Miss Reed</i> +suddenly snatches her handkerchief from her pocket, and buries +her face in it.—“Oh, dear—oh, dear! +Oh!—hu, hu, hu!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, relenting: “It was +awkward.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Awkward! You seem to think that +because I carry things off lightly I have no feeling.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You know I don’t think +that, Ethel.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, pursuing her advantage: “I don’t +know it from you, Nettie. I’ve tried and <i>tried</i> +to <a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>pass +it off as a joke, and to treat it as something funny; but I can +tell you it’s no joke at all.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, sympathetically: “I see, +dear.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “It’s not that I care for +him”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Why, of course.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “For I don’t in the least. +He is horrid every way: blunt, and rude, and horrid. I +never cared for him. But I care for myself! He has +put me in the position of having done an unkind thing—an +unladylike thing—when I was only doing what I had to +do. Why need he have taken it the way he did? Why +couldn’t he have said politely that he couldn’t +accept the money because he hadn’t earned it? Even +<i>that</i> would have been mortifying enough. But he must +go and be so violent, and rush off, and—Oh, I never could +have treated anybody so!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Not unless you were very fond of +them.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “What?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Not unless you were very fond of +them.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, putting away her handkerchief: “Oh, +nonsense, Nettie! He never cared anything for me, or he +couldn’t have acted so. But no <a +name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>matter for +that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got +straight—never in the world. It will just have to +remain a hideous mass of—of—<i>I</i> don’t know +what; and I have simply got to on withering with despair at the +point where I left off. But I don’t care! +That’s one comfort.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “I don’t believe +he’ll let you wither long, Ethel.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “He’s let me wither for +twenty-four hours already! But it’s nothing to me, +now, how long he lets me wither. I’m perfectly +satisfied to have the affair remain as it is. I am in the +right, and if he comes I shall refuse to see him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Oh, no, you won’t, +Ethel!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Yes, I shall. I shall receive +him very coldly. I won’t listen to any excuse from +him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Oh, yes, you will, +Ethel!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “No, I shall not. If he wishes +me to listen he must begin by humbling himself in the +dust—yes, the dust, Nettie! I won’t take +anything short of it. I insist that he shall realize that I +have suffered.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Perhaps he has suffered +too!”</p> +<p><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +117</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, <i>he</i> +suffered!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You know that he was perfectly +devoted to you.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “He never said so.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Perhaps he didn’t +dare.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “He dared to be very insolent to +me.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “And you know you liked him very +much.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I won’t let you say that, +Nettie Spaulding. I <i>didn’t</i> like him. I +respected and admired him; but I didn’t <i>like</i> +him. He will come near me; but if he does he has to begin +by—by—Let me see, what shall I make him begin by +doing?” She casts up her eyes for inspiration while +she leans forward over the register. “Yes, I +will! He has got to begin by taking that money!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Ethel, you wouldn’t put +that affront upon a sensitive and high-spirited man!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Wouldn’t I? You wait and +<i>see</i>, Miss Spaulding! He shall take the money, and he +shall sign a receipt for it. I’ll draw up the receipt +now, so as to have it ready, and I shall ask him to sign it the +very moment he enters this <a name="page118"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 118</span>door—the very +instant!” She takes a portfolio from the table near +her, without rising, and writes: “‘Received from Miss +Ethel Reed one hundred and twenty-five dollars, in full, for +twenty-five lessons in oil-painting.’ +There—when Mr. Oliver Ransom has signed this little +document he may begin to talk; not before!” She leans +back in her chair with an air of pitiless determination.</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “But, Ethel, you don’t mean +to make him take money for the lessons he gave you after he told +you you couldn’t learn anything?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, after a moment’s pause: “Yes, I +do. This is to punish him. I don’t wish for +justice now; I wish for vengeance! At first I would have +compromised on the six lessons, or on none at all, if he had +behaved nicely; but after what’s happened I shall insist +upon paying him for every lesson, so as to make him feel that the +whole thing, from first to last, was a purely business +transaction on my part. Yes, a <i>purely</i>—<span +class="GutSmall">BUSINESS</span>—<span +class="GutSmall">TRANSACTION</span>!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, turning to her music: “Then +I’ve got nothing more to say to you, Ethel Reed.”</p> +<p><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I don’t say but what, +after he’s taken the money and signed the receipt, +I’ll listen to anything else he’s got to say, very +willingly.” <i>Miss Spaulding</i> makes no answer, +but begins to play with a scientific absorption, feeling her way +fitfully through the new piece, while <i>Miss Reed</i>, seated by +the register, trifles with the book she has taken from the +table.</p> +<h3><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +120</span>II.</h3> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> interior of the room of <i>Miss +Spaulding</i> and <i>Miss Reed</i> remains in view, while the +scene discloses, on the other side of the partition wall in the +same house, the bachelor apartment of <i>Mr. Samuel +Grinnidge</i>. <i>Mr. Grinnidge</i> in his dressing-gown +and slippers, with his pipe in his mouth, has the effect of +having just come in; his friend <i>Mr. Oliver Ransom</i> stands +at the window, staring out into the November weather.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “How long have you been waiting +here?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Ten minutes—ten years. How +should I know?”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Well, I don’t know who else +should. Get back to-day?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Last night.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Well, take off your coat, and pull up +to the register, and warm your poor feet.” He puts +his hand out over the register. “Confound <a +name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>it! +somebody’s got the register open in the next room! +You see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V +just under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But +it don’t. There was a fellow in there last winter who +used to get all my heat. Used to go out and leave his +register open, and I’d come in here just before dinner and +find this place as cold as a barn. We had a running fight +of it all winter. The man who got his register open first +in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never turned +the other way when it started in one direction. Used to +almost suffocate—warm, muggy days—maintaining my +rights. Some piano-pounder in there this winter, it +seems. Hear? And she hasn’t lost any time in +learning the trick of the register. What kept you so late +in the country?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, after an absent-minded pause: “Grinnidge, +I wish you would give me some advice.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “You can have all you want of it at +the market price.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I don’t mean your legal +advice.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “I’m sorry. What have you +been doing?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I’ve been making an ass of +myself.”</p> +<p><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Wasn’t that rather +superfluous?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “If you please, yes. But now, it +you’re capable of listening to me without any further +display of your cross-examination wit, I should like to tell you +how it happened.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “I will do my best to veil my +brilliancy. Go on.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I went up to Ponkwasset early in +September for the foliage.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “And staid till late in October. +There must have been a reason for that. What was her +name? Foliage?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, +near which his friend sits, and talking to him directly over the +register: “I think you’ll have to get along without +the name for the present. I’ll tell you by and +by.” As <i>Mr. Ransom</i> pronounces these words, +<i>Miss Reed</i>, on her side of the partition, lifts her head +with a startled air, and, after a moment of vague circumspection, +listens keenly. “But she was beautiful. She was +a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes—eyes, you know, +that could be funny or tender, just as she chose—the kind +of eyes I always liked.” <i>Miss Reed</i> leads +forward over the register. “She <a +name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>had one of +those faces that always leave you in doubt whether they’re +laughing at you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but you +feel certain that they’re <i>good</i>, and that if they did +hurt you by laughing at you, they’d look sorry for you +afterward. When she walked you saw what an exquisite +creature she was. It always made me mad to think I +couldn’t <i>paint</i> her walk.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “I suppose you saw a good deal of her +walk.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Yes; we were off in the woods and fields +half the time together.” He takes a turn towards the +window.</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, suddenly shutting the register on her side: +“Oh!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, looking up from her music: “What +is it, Ethel?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Nothing, nothing; +I—I—thought it was getting too warm. Go on, +dear; don’t let me interrupt you.” After a +moment of heroic self-denial she softly presses the register open +with her foot.</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, coming back to the register: “It all +began in that way. I had the good fortune one day to rescue +her from a—cow.”</p> +<p><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +124</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, for shame!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, desisting from her piano: “What +<i>is</i> the matter?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, clapping the register to: “This +ridiculous book! But don’t—don’t mind me, +Nettie.” Breathlessly: +“Go—go—on!” <i>Miss Spaulding</i> +resumes, and again <i>Miss Reed</i> softly presses the register +open.</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, after a pause: “The cow was grazing, and +had no more thought of hooking Miss”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, I didn’t suppose he +<i>would</i>!—Go on, Nettie, go on! The +hero—<i>such</i> a goose!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I drove her away with my camp-stool, and +Miss—the young lady—was as grateful as if I had +rescued her from a menagerie of wild animals. I walked home +with her to the farm house, and the trouble began at +once.” Pantomime of indignant protest and burlesque +menace on the part of <i>Miss Reed</i>. “There +wasn’t another well woman in the house, except her friend +Miss Spaulding, who was rather old and rather plain.” +He takes another turn to the window.</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh!” She shuts the +register, but instantly opens it again. “Louder, +Nettie.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, in astonishment: +“What?”</p> +<p><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +125</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Did I speak? I +didn’t know it. I”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, desisting from practice: “What is +that strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of +noise?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, softly closing the register with her foot: +“I don’t hear any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling +kind of noise. Do you hear it <i>now</i>?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “No. It was the Brighton +whistle, probably.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, very likely.” As +<i>Miss Spaulding</i> turns again to her practice <i>Miss +Reed</i> re-opens the register and listens again. A little +interval of silence ensues, while <i>Ransom</i> lights a +cigarette.</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “So you sought opportunities of +rescuing her from other cows?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, returning: “That wasn’t +necessary. The young lady was so impressed by my behavior, +that she asked if I would give her some lessons in the use of +oil.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “She thought if she knew how to paint +pictures like yours she wouldn’t need any one to drive the +cows away.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Don’t be farcical, +Grinnidge. That sort of thing will do with some victim on +the <a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +126</span>witness-stand who can’t help himself. Of +course I said I would, and we were off half the time together, +painting the loveliest and loneliest bits around +Ponkwasset. It all went on very well, till one day I felt +bound in conscience to tell her that I didn’t think she +would ever learn to paint, and that—if she was serious +about it she’d better drop it at once, for she was wasting +her time.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, getting up to fill his pipe: “That was +a pleasant thing to do.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I told her that if it amused her, to +keep on; I would be only too glad to give her all—the hints +I could, but that I oughtn’t to encourage her. She +seemed a good deal hurt. I fancied at the time that she +thought I was tired of having her with me so much.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, <i>did</i> you, +indeed!” To <i>Miss Spaulding</i>, who bends an +astonished glance upon her from the piano: “The man in this +book is the most <i>conceited</i> creature, Nettie. Play +chords—something very subdued—ah!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “What are you talking about, +Ethel?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “That was at night; but the next day she +came up smiling, and said that if I didn’t mind <a +name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>she would +keep on—for amusement; she wasn’t a bit +discouraged.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh!—Go on, Nettie; don’t +let my outbursts interrupt you.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I used to fancy sometimes that she was a +little sweet on me.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “You wretch!—Oh, scales, +Nettie! Play scales!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Ethel Reed, are you +crazy?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, after a thoughtful moment: “Well, so it +went on for the next seven or eight weeks. When we +weren’t sketching in the meadows, or on the mountain-side, +or in the old punt on the pond, we were walking up and down the +farmhouse piazza together. She used to read to me when I +was at work. She had a heavenly voice, +Grinnidge.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, you silly, silly +thing!—Really this book makes me sick, Nettie.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Well, the long and the short of it was, +I was hit—<i>hard</i>, and I lost all courage. You +know how I am, Grinnidge.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, softly: “Oh, poor fellow!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “So I let the time go by, and at the end +I hadn’t said anything.”</p> +<p><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +128</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “No, sir! You +<i>hadn’t</i>!” <i>Miss Spaulding</i> gradually +ceases to play, and fixes her attention wholly upon <i>Miss +Reed</i>, who bends forward over the register with an intensely +excited face.</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Then something happened that made me +glad, for twenty-four hours at least, that I hadn’t +spoken. She sent me the money for twenty-five +lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I +suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and +storing up her resentment for my having told her she +couldn’t learn to paint, till she could pay me back with +interest in one supreme insult?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, in a low voice: “Oh, how could you +think such a cruel, vulgar thing?” <i>Miss +Spaulding</i> leaves the piano, and softly approaches her, where +she has sunk on her knees beside the register.</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “It was tantamount to telling me that she +had been amusing herself with me instead of my lessons. It +remanded our whole association, which I had got to thinking so +romantic, to the relation of teacher and pupil. It was a +snub—a heartless, killing snub; and I couldn’t see it +in any <a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>other light.” <i>Ransom</i> walks away to +the window, and looks out.</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, flinging herself backward from the register, +and hiding her face in her hands: “Oh, it wasn’t! it +wasn’t! it wasn’t! How could you think +so?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, rushing forward, and catching her +friend in her arms: “What is the matter with you, Ethel +Reed? What are you doing here, over the register? Are +you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you taken leave of +your senses?”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Our fair friend on the other side of +the wall seems to be on the rampage.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, shutting the register with a violent +clash: “Ugh! how hot it is here!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Doesn’t like your conversation, +apparently.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, frantically pressing forward to open the +register: “Oh, don’t shut it, Nettie, dear! If +you do I shall die! Do-o-n’t shut the +register!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Don’t shut it? Why, +we’ve got all the heat of the furnace in the room +now. Surely you don’t want any more?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “No, no; not any more. +But—<a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>but— Oh, dear! what shall I +do?” She still struggles in the embrace of her +friend.</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, remaining quietly at the register, while +<i>Ransom</i> walks away to the window: “Well, what did you +do?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “There, there! They’re +commencing again! <i>Do</i> open it, Nettie. I +<i>will</i> have it open!” She wrenches herself free, +and dashes the register open.</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Ah, she’s opened it +again.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, in a stage-whisper: “That’s the +other one!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, from the window: “Do? I’ll +tell you what I did.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “That’s Ol—Mr. +Ransom. And, oh, I can’t make out what he’s +saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the +room—and it’s at the most important point!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, in an awful undertone: “Was that +the hollow rumbling I heard? And have you been listening at +the register to what they’ve been saying? O +<i>Ethel</i>!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I haven’t been listening, +exactly.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “You have! You have been +eavesdropping!”</p> +<p><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +131</span><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Eavesdropping is listening +through a key-hole, or around a corner. This is very +different. Besides, it’s Oliver, and he’s been +talking about <i>me</i>. Hark!” She clutches +her friend’s hand, where they have crouched upon the floor +together, and pulls her forward to the register. “Oh, +dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off the heat +down below.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, smoking peacefully through the silence which +his friend has absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: +“Well, you seem disposed to take your time about +it.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “About what? Oh, yes! +Well”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “’Sh! Listen.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “I won’t listen! +It’s shameful: it’s wicked! I don’t see +how you can do it, Ethel!” She remains, however, +kneeling near the register, and she involuntarily inclines a +little more toward it.</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “—It isn’t a thing that I +care to shout from the house-tops.” He returns from +the window to the chimney-piece. “I wrote the rudest +kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in it. +She had said that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with +the summer, but that we might <a name="page132"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 132</span>sometimes meet in Boston; and I +answered that our acquaintance had ended already, and that I +should be sorry to meet her anywhere again.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Well, if you wanted to make an ass of +yourself, you did it pretty completely.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, whispering: “How witty he is! +Those men are always so humorous with each other.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Yes; I didn’t do it by +halves.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, whispering: “Oh, <i>that’s</i> +funny, too!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “It didn’t occur to you that she +might feel bound to pay you for the first half-dozen, and was +embarrassed how to offer to pay for them alone?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “How he <i>does</i> go to the heart of +the matter!” She presses <i>Miss +Spaulding’s</i> hand in an ecstasy of approval.</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Yes, it did—afterward.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, in a tender murmur: “Oh, <i>poor</i> +Oliver!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “And it occurred to me that she was +perfectly right in the whole affair.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, how generous! how +noble!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I had had a thousand opportunities, <a +name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>and I +hadn’t been man enough to tell her that I was in love with +her.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “How can he say it right out so +bluntly? But if it’s true”—</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I <i>couldn’t</i> speak. I +was afraid of putting an end to the affair—of frightening +her—disgusting her.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, how little they know us, +Nettie!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “She seemed so much above me in every +way—so sensitive, so refined, so gentle, so good, so +angelic!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “There! <i>Now</i> do you call +it eavesdropping? If listeners never hear any good of +themselves, what do you say to that? It proves that I +haven’t been listening.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “’Sh! They’re +saying something else.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “But all that’s neither here nor +there. I can see now that under the circumstances she +couldn’t as a lady have acted otherwise than she did. +She was forced to treat our whole acquaintance as a business +matter, and I had forced her to do it.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “You <i>had</i>, you poor +thing!”</p> +<p><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +134</span><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Well, what do you intend to do +about it?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Well”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “’Sh!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “’Sh!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “—that’s what I want to +submit to you, Grinnidge. I must see her.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Yes. I’m glad <i>I</i> +mustn’t.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, stifling a laugh on <i>Miss +Spaulding’s</i> shoulder: “They’re actually +<i>afraid</i> of us, Nettie!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “See her, and go down in the +dust.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “My very words!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I have been trying to think what was the +very humblest pie I could eat, by way of penance; and it appears +to me that I had better begin by saying that I have come to ask +her for the money I refused.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, enraptured: “Oh! doesn’t it seem +just like—like—inspiration, Nettie?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “’Sh! Be quiet, +do! You’ll frighten them away!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “And then what?”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “What then? I don’t know what +then. But it appears to me that, as a gentleman, <a +name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>I’ve +got nothing to do with the result. All that I’ve got +to do is to submit to my fate, whatever it is.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, breathlessly: “What princely +courage! What delicate magnanimity! Oh, he +needn’t have the <i>least</i> fear! If I could only +tell him that!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, after an interval of meditative smoking: +“Yes, I guess that’s the best thing you can do. +It will strike her fancy, if she’s an imaginative girl, and +she’ll think you a fine fellow.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, the horrid thing!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “If you humble yourself to a woman at +all, do it thoroughly. If you go halfway down she’ll +be tempted to push you the rest of the way. If you flatten +out at her feet to begin with, ten to one but she will pick you +up.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Yes, that was my idea.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, was it, indeed! +Well!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “But I’ve nothing to do with her +picking me up or pushing me down. All that I’ve got +to do is to go and surrender myself.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Yes. Well; I guess you +can’t go too soon. I like your company; but I advise +you as a friend not to lose time. Where does she +live?”</p> +<p><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +136</span><i>Ransom</i>: “That’s the remarkable part +of it: she lives in this house.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i> and <i>Miss Spaulding</i>, in subdued chorus: +“Oh!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, taking his pipe out of his mouth in +astonishment: “No!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “I just came in here to give my good +resolutions a rest while I was screwing my courage up to ask for +her.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Don’t you think he’s +<i>very</i> humorous? Give his good resolutions a +rest! That’s the way he <i>always</i> +talks.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “’Sh!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “You said you came for my +advice.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “So I did. But I didn’t +promise to act upon it. Well!” He goes toward +the door.</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, without troubling himself to rise: +“Well, good luck to you!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “How droll they are with each +other! Don’t you <i>like</i> to hear them talk? +Oh, I could listen all day.”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, calling after <i>Ransom</i>: “You +haven’t told me your duck’s name.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Is <i>that</i> what they call +us? Duck! <a name="page137"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 137</span>Do you think it’s very +respectful, Nettie? I don’t believe I like it. +Or, yes, why not? It’s no harm—if I <i>am</i> +his duck!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, coming back: “Well, I don’t propose +to go shouting it round. Her name is Miss Reed—Ethel +Reed.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “How <i>can</i> he?”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Slender, willowy party, with a lot of +blond hair that looks as if it might be indigenous? Rather +pensive-looking?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Indigenous! I should hope +so!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>: “Yes. But she isn’t +pensive. She’s awfully deep. It makes me +shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of +my courage in daring to be in love with her—a stupid, +straightforward idiot like me—I begin to respect myself in +spite of being such an ass. Well, I’m off. If I +stay any longer I shall never go.” He closes the door +after him, and <i>Miss Reed</i> instantly springs to her +feet.</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Now he’ll have to go down to +the parlor and send up his name, and that just gives me time to +do the necessary prinking. You stay here and receive him, +Nettie.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Never! After what’s +happened <a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>I can never look him in the face again. Oh, how +low, and mean, and guilty I feel!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, with surprise: “Why, how droll! +Now <i>I</i> don’t feel the least so.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Oh, it’s very different +with <i>you</i>. <i>You’re</i> in love with +him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “For shame, Nettie! I’m +<i>not</i> in love with him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “And you can explain and justify +it. But I never can justify it to myself, much less to +him. Let me go, Ethel! I shall tell Mrs. McKnight +that we must change this room instantly. And just after +I’d got it so nearly in order! Go down and receive +him in the parlor, Ethel. I <i>can’t</i> see +him.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Receive him in the parlor! Why, +Nettie, dear, you’re crazy! I’m going to +<i>accept</i> him: and how can I accept him—with all the +consequences—in a public parlor? No, indeed! If +you won’t meet him here for a moment, just to oblige me, +you can go into the other room. Or, no—you’d be +listening to every word through the key-hole, you’re so +demoralized!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Yes, yes, I deserve your +contempt, Ethel.”</p> +<p><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +139</span><i>Miss Reed</i>, laughing: “You will have to go +out for a walk, you poor thing; and I’m not going to have +you coming back in five or ten minutes. You have got to +stay out a good hour.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, running to get her things from the next +room: “Oh, I’ll stay out till midnight!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, responding to a tap at the door: +“Ye-e-s! Come in!—You’re caught, +Nettie.”</p> +<p><i>A maid-servant</i>, appearing with a card: “This +gentleman is asking for you in the parlor, Miss Reed.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh! Ask him to come up here, +please.—Nettie! Nettie!” She calls to her +friend in the next room. “He’s coming right up, +and if you don’t run you’re trapped.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>, re-appearing, cloaked and bonneted: +“I don’t blame <i>you</i>, Ethel, comparatively +speaking. You can say that everything is fair in +love. He will like it, and laugh at it in you, because +he’ll like everything you’ve done. Besides, +you’ve no principles, and I <i>have</i>.”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “Oh, I’ve lots of principles, +Nettie, but I’ve no practice!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “No matter. There’s +no excuse for me. I listened simply because I was a <a +name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>woman, and +couldn’t help it; and, oh, what will he think of +me?”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>: “I won’t give you away; if you +really feel so badly”—</p> +<p><i>Miss Spaulding</i>: “Oh, <i>do</i> you think you can +keep from telling him, Ethel dear? Try! And I will be +your slave forever!” Steps are heard on the stairs +outside. “Oh, there he comes!” She dashes +out of the door, and closes it after her, a moment before the +maid-servant, followed by <i>Mr. Ransom</i>, taps at it.</p> +<h3><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>III.</h3> +<p><span class="smcap">Scene</span>: <i>Miss Reed</i> opens the +door, and receives <i>Mr. Ransom</i> with well-affected surprise +and state, suffering him to stand awkwardly on the threshold for +a moment.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p><i>She</i>, coldly: “Oh!—Mr. Ransom!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, abruptly: “I’ve come”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Won’t you come in?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, advancing a few paces into the room: +“I’ve come”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>, indicating a chair: “Will you sit +down?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I must stand for the present. +I’ve come to ask you for that money, Miss Reed, which I +refused yesterday, in terms that I blush to think of. I was +altogether and wholly in the wrong, and I’m ready to offer +any imaginable apology or reparation. I’m ready to +take the money and to sign a receipt, and then to be dismissed +with whatever ignominy you please. I deserve +anything—everything!”</p> +<p><a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +142</span><i>She</i>: “The money? Excuse me; I +don’t know—I’m afraid that I’m not +prepared to pay you the whole sum to-day.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, hastily: “Oh, no matter! no matter! I +don’t care for the money now. I merely wish +to—to assure you that I thought you were perfectly right in +offering it, and to—to”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “What?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Nothing. That +is—ah—ah”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “It’s extremely embarrassing to have +people refuse their money when it’s offered them, and then +come the next day for it, when perhaps it isn’t so +convenient to pay it—<i>very</i> embarrassing.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, hotly: “But I tell you I don’t want the +<i>money</i>! I never wanted it, and wouldn’t take it +on any account.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh! I thought you said you came to +get it?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I said—I didn’t say—I +meant—that is—ah—I”—He stops, +open-mouthed.</p> +<p><i>She</i>, quietly: “I could give you part of the money +now.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, whatever you like; it’s +indifferent”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Please sit down while I write a +receipt.” She places herself deliberately at the +table, and <a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>opens her portfolio. “I will pay you now, +Mr. Ransom, for the first six lessons you gave me—the ones +before you told me that I could never learn to do +anything.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, sinking mechanically into the chair she indicates: +“Oh, just as you like!” He looks up at the +ceiling in hopeless bewilderment, while she writes.</p> +<p><i>She</i>, blotting the paper: “There! And now +let me offer you a little piece of advice, Mr. Ransom, which may +be useful to you in taking pupils hereafter.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, bursting out: “I never take +pupils!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Never take pupils! I don’t +understand. You took <i>me</i>.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, confusedly: “I took you—yes. You +seemed to wish—you seemed—the case was +peculiar—peculiar circumstances.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, with severity: “May I ask <i>why</i> the +circumstances were peculiar? I saw nothing peculiar about +the circumstances. It seemed to me it was a very simple +matter. I told you that I had always had a great curiosity +to see whether I could use oil paints, and I asked you a very +plain question, whether you would let me study with you. +Didn’t I?”</p> +<p><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span><i>He</i>: “Yes.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Was there anything wrong—anything +queer about my asking you?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No, no! Not at all—not in the +least.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Didn’t you wish me to take the +lessons of you? If you didn’t, it wasn’t kind +of you to let me.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, I was perfectly willing—very glad +indeed, very much so—certainly!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “If it wasn’t your <i>custom</i> to +take pupils, you ought to have told me, and I wouldn’t have +forced myself upon you.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, desperately: “It wasn’t forcing +yourself upon me. The Lord knows how humbly grateful I +was. It was like a hope of heaven!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Really, Mr. Ransom, this is very strange +talk. What am I to understand by it? Why should you +be grateful to teach me? Why should giving me lessons be +like a hope of heaven?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, I will tell you!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Well?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, after a moment of agony: “Because to be with +you”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Yes?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Because I wished to be with you. +Because—<a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +145</span>those days in the woods, when you read, and +I”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Painted on my pictures”—</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Were the happiest of my life. +Because—I loved you!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Mr. Ransom!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Yes, I must tell you so. I loved you; +I love you still. I shall always love you, no matter +what”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “You forget yourself, Mr. Ransom. Has +there been anything in my manner—conduct—to justify +you in using such language to me?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No—no”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Did you suppose that because I first took +lessons of you from—from—an enthusiasm for art, and +then continued them for—for—amusement, that I wished +you to make love to me?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No, I never supposed such a thing. +I’m incapable of it. I beseech you to believe that no +one could have more respect—reverence”—He +twirls his hat between his hands, and casts an imploring glance +at her.</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh, respect—reverence! I know +what they mean in the mouths of men. If you respected, if +you reverenced me, could you dare to <a name="page146"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 146</span>tell me, after my unguarded trust of +you during the past months, that you had been all the time +secretly in love with me?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, plucking up a little courage: “I don’t +see that the three things are incompatible.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh, then you acknowledge that you did +presume upon something you thought you saw in me to tell me that +you loved me, and that you were in love with me all the +time?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, contritely: “I have no right to suppose that +you encouraged me; and yet—I can’t deny it +now—I was in love with you all the time.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “And you never said a word to let me believe +that you had any such feeling toward me!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I—I”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “You would have parted from me without a +syllable to suggest it—perhaps parted from me +forever?” After a pause of silent humiliation for +him: “Do you call that brave or generous? Do you call +it manly—supposing, as you hoped, that <i>I</i> had any +such feeling?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No; it was cowardly, it was mean, it was +unmanly. I see it now, but I will spend my life in +repairing the wrong, if you will only let me.” <a +name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>He +impetuously advances some paces toward her, and then stops, +arrested by her irresponsive attitude.</p> +<p><i>She</i>, with a light sigh, and looking down at the paper, +which she has continued to hold between her hands: “There +was a time—a moment—when I might have answered as you +wish.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh! then there will be again. If you +have changed once, you may change once more. Let me hope +that some time—any time, dearest”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>, quenching him with a look: “Mr. Ransom, I +shall <i>never</i> change toward you! You confess that you +had your opportunity, and that you despised it.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh! <i>not</i> despised it!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Neglected it.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Not wilfully—no. I confess that +I was stupidly, vilely, +pusillan—pusillan—illani”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “’Monsly”—</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Thanks—’mously unworthy of it; +but I didn’t despise it; I didn’t neglect it; and if +you will only let me show by a lifetime of devotion how dearly +and truly I have loved you from the first moment I drove that cow +away”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Mr. Ransom, I have told you that I <a +name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>should +never change toward you. That cow was nothing when weighed +in the balance against your being willing to leave a poor girl, +whom you supposed interested in you, and to whom you had paid the +most marked attention, without a word to show her that you cared +for her. What is a cow, or a whole herd of cows, as +compared with obliging a young lady to offer you money that you +hadn’t earned, and then savagely flinging it back in her +face? A yoke of oxen would be nothing—or a mad +bull.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, I acknowledge it! I confess +it.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “And you own that I am right in refusing to +listen to you now?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, desolately: “Yes, yes.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “It seems that you gave me lessons in order +to be with me, and if possible to interest me in you; and then +you were going away without a word.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, with a groan: “It was only because I was +afraid to speak.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh, is <i>that</i> any excuse?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No; none.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “A man ought always to have +courage.” After a pause, in which he stands before +her with <a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>bowed head: “Then there’s nothing for me +but to give you this money.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, with sudden energy: “This is too much! +I”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>, offering him the bank-notes: “No; it is the +exact sum. I counted it very carefully.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I won’t take it; I can’t! +I’ll never take it!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, standing with the money in her outstretched hand: +“I have your word as a gentleman that you will take +it.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, gasping: “Oh, well—I will take +it—I will”—He clutches the money, and rushes +toward the door. “Good-evening; +ah—good-by”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>, calling after him: “The receipt, Mr. +Ransom! Please sign this receipt!” <i>She</i> +waves the paper in the air.</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, yes, certainly! Where is +it—what—which”—<i>He</i> rushes back to +her, and seizing the receipt, feels blindly about for the pen and +ink. “Where shall I sign?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Read it first.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, it’s all—all +right”—</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “I insist upon your reading it. +It’s a business transaction. Read it +aloud.”</p> +<p><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +150</span><i>He</i>, desperately: “Well, well!” +<i>He</i> reads. “‘Received from Miss Ethel +Reed, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting, one +hundred and twenty-five dollars, and her hand, heart, and dearest +love forever.’” <i>He</i> looks up at +her. “Ethel!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, smiling: “Sign it, sign it!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, catching her in his arms and kissing her: +“Oh, yes—<i>here</i>!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, pulling a little away from him, and laughing: +“Oh, oh! I only wanted <i>one</i> signature! +Twenty autographs are too many, unless you’ll let me trade +them off, as the collectors do.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No; keep them all! I couldn’t +think of letting any one else have them. One +more!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “No; it’s quite enough!”</p> +<p><i>She</i> frees herself, and retires beyond the table. +“This unexpected affection”—</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “<i>Is</i> it +unexpected—seriously?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “What do you mean?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, nothing!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Yes, tell me!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I hoped—I +thought—perhaps—that you might have been prepared for +some such demonstration on my part.”</p> +<p><a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span><i>She</i>: “And why did you +think—hope—perhaps—<i>that</i>, Mr. Ransom, may +I ask?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “If I hadn’t, how should I have dared +to speak?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Dared? You were obliged to +speak! Well, since it’s all over, I don’t mind +saying that I <i>did</i> have some slight apprehensions that +something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from +you.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Extorted? Oh!” He makes an +impassioned rush toward her.</p> +<p><i>She</i>, keeping the table between them: “No, +no.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to +make me suffer so, after I had come to the point.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Ask it across the table, then.” +After a moment’s reflection, “I made you +suffer—I made you suffer—so that you might have a +realizing sense of what you had made <i>me</i> suffer.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, enraptured by this confession: “Oh, you +angel!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, with tender magnanimity: “No; only a +woman—a poor, trusting, foolish woman!” She +permits him to surround the table, with imaginable results. +Then, with her head on his shoulder: <a name="page152"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 152</span>“You’ll <i>never</i> let +me regret it, will you, darling? You’ll never oblige +me to punish you again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt +<i>me</i> far worse to <i>see</i> your pain than it did you +to—to—feel it!” On the other side of the +partition, <i>Mr. Grinnidge’s</i> pipe falls from his lips, +parted in slumber, and shivers to atoms on the register. +“Oh!” <i>She</i> flies at the register with a +shriek of dismay, and is about to close it. “That +wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, preventing her: “What wretch? +Where?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Don’t you hear him, mumbling and +grumbling there?”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Well, I swear! Cash value of +twenty-five dollars, and untold toil in coloring it!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, listening with an air of mystification: +“Who’s that?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Gummidge, Grimmidge—whatever you +called him. Oh!” <i>She</i> arrests herself in +consternation. “Now I <i>have</i> done it!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Done what?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh—nothing!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I don’t understand. Do you mean +to say that my friend Grinnidge’s room is on the other aide +of the wall, and that you can hear him talk <a +name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>through the +register?” <i>She</i> preserves the silence of abject +terror. He stoops over the register, and calls down +it. “Grinnidge! Hallo!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Hallo, yourself!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, to <i>Miss Reed</i>: “Sounds like the +ghostly squeak of the phonograph.” To +<i>Grinnidge</i>: “What’s the trouble?”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>: “Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and +let it drop on this infernal register.”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, turning from the register with impressive +deliberation: “Miss Reed, may I ask <i>how</i> you came to +know that his name was Gummidge, or Grimmidge, or whatever I +called him?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh, dearest, I <i>can’t</i> tell +you! Or—yes, I had better.” Impulsively: +“I will judge you by myself. <i>I</i> could forgive +<i>you</i> anything!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, doubtfully: “Oh, could you?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Everything! I had—I had better +make a clean breast of it. Yes, I had. Though I +don’t like to. I—I listened!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Listened?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Through the register +to—to—what—you—were saying before +you—came in here.” Her head droops.</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Then you heard everything?”</p> +<p><a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +154</span><i>She</i>: “Kill me, but don’t look +<i>so</i> at me! It was accidental at first—indeed it +was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were +talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you +so dearly! You <i>will</i> forgive me, darling? It +wasn’t as if I were listening with any bad +motive.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, taking her in his arms: “Forgive you? +Of course I do. But you must change this room at once, +Ethel; you see you hear everything on the other side, +too.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh, not if you whisper on this. You +couldn’t hear <i>us</i>?” At a dubious +expression of his: “You <i>didn’t</i> hear us? +If you did, I can never forgive you!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “It was accidental at first—indeed it +was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were +talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you +so dearly!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “All that has nothing whatever to do with +it. How much did you hear?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, with exemplary meekness: “Only what you were +saying before Grinnidge came in. You didn’t whisper +then. I had to wait there for him while”—</p> +<p><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +155</span><i>She</i>: “While you were giving your good +resolutions a rest?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “While I was giving my good resolutions a +rest.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “And that accounts for your determination to +humble yourself so?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “It seemed perfectly providential that I +should have known just what conditions you were going to exact of +me.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Oh, don’t make light of it! I +can tell you it’s a very serious matter.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “It was very serious for me when you +didn’t meet my self-abasement as you had led me to expect +you would.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Don’t make fun! I’m +trying to think whether I can forgive you.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, with insinuation: “Don’t you believe +you could think better if you put your head on my +shoulder?”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Nonsense! Then I should forgive you +without thinking.” After a season of reflection: +“No, I <i>can’t</i> forgive you. I never could +forgive eavesdropping. It’s <i>too</i> +low.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, in astonishment: “Why, you did it +yourself!”</p> +<p><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span><i>She</i>: “But you began it. Besides, +it’s very different for a man. Women are weak, poor, +helpless creatures. They have to use finesse. But a +man should be above it.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “You said you could forgive me +anything.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Ah, but I didn’t know what +you’d been doing!”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, with pensive resignation, and a feint of going: +“Then I suppose it’s all over between us.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, relenting: “If you could think of any reason +<i>why</i> I should forgive you”—</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “I can’t.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, after consideration: “Do you suppose Mr. +Grumage, or Grimidge, heard too?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “No; Grinnidge is a very high-principled +fellow, and wouldn’t listen; besides, he wasn’t +there, you know.”</p> +<p><i>She</i>: “Well, then, I will forgive you on these +grounds.” <i>He</i> instantly catches her to his +heart. “But these alone, remember.”</p> +<p><i>He</i>, rapturously: “Oh, on any!”</p> +<p><i>She</i>, tenderly: “And you’ll always be +devoted? And nice? And not try to provoke me? +Or neglect me? Or anything?”</p> +<p><i>He</i>: “Always! Never!”</p> +<p><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span><i>She</i>: “Oh, you dear, sweet, simple old +thing—how I <i>do</i> love you!”</p> +<p><i>Grinnidge</i>, who has been listening attentively to every +word at the register at his side: “Ransom, if you +don’t want me to go stark mad, <i>shut the +register</i>!”</p> +<p><i>Ransom</i>, about to comply: “Oh, poor old man! +I forgot it was open!”</p> +<p><i>Miss Reed</i>, preventing him: “No! If he has +been vile enough to listen at a register, let him suffer. +Come, sit down here, and I’ll tell you just when I began to +care for you. It was long before the cow. Do you +remember that first morning after you +arrived”—<i>She</i> drags him close to the register, +so that every word may tell upon the envious Grinnidge, on whose +manifestations of acute despair, a rapid curtain descends.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REGISTER***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 3403-h.htm or 3403-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/0/3403 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced from the 1911 Houghton Mifflin Company +edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE REGISTER + +by William D. Howells + + + + +I. + + + +SCENE: In an upper chamber of a boarding-house in Melanchthon Place, +Boston, a mature, plain young lady, with every appearance of +establishing herself in the room for the first time, moves about, +bestowing little touches of decoration here and there, and talking +with another young lady, whose voice comes through the open doorway +of an inner room. + + +MISS ETHEL REED, from within: "What in the world are you doing, +Nettie?" + +MISS HENRIETTA SPAULDING: "Oh, sticking up a household god or two. +What are you doing?" + +MISS REED: "Despairing." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Still?" + +MISS REED, tragically: "Still! How soon did you expect me to stop? +I am here on the sofa, where I flung myself two hours ago, and I +don't think I shall ever get up. There is no reason WHY I ever +should." + +MISS SPAULDING, suggestively: "Dinner." + +MISS REED: "Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken heart!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "I don't believe your heart is broken." + +MISS REED: "But I tell you it is! I ought to know when my own heart +is broken, I should hope. What makes you think it isn't?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, it's happened so often!" + +MISS REED: "But this is a real case. You ought to feel my forehead. +It's as hot!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "You ought to get up and help me put this room to +rights, and then you would feel better." + +MISS REED: "No; I should feel worse. The idea of household gods +makes me sick. Sylvan deities are what I want; the great god Pan +among the cat-tails and arrow-heads in the 'ma'sh' at Ponkwasset; the +dryads of the birch woods--there are no oaks; the nymphs that haunt +the heights and hollows of the dear old mountain; the" - + +MISS SPAULDING: "Wha-a-at? I can't hear a word you say." + +MISS REED: "That's because you keep fussing about so. Why don't you +be quiet, if you want to hear?" She lifts her voice to its highest +pitch, with a pause for distinctness between the words: "I'm heart- +broken for--Ponkwasset. The dryads--of the--birch woods. The +nymphs--and the great--god--Pan--in the reeds--by the river. And +all--that--sort of--thing!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "You know very well you're not." + +MISS REED: "I'm not? What's the reason I'm not? Then, what am I +heart-broken for?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "You're not heart-broken at all. You know very well +that he'll call before we've been here twenty-four hours." + +MISS REED: "Who?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "The great god Pan." + +MISS REED: "Oh, how cruel you are, to mock me so! Come in here, and +sympathize a little! Do, Nettie." + +MISS SPAULDING: "No; you come out here and utilize a little. I'm +acting for your best good, as they say at Ponkwasset." + +MISS REED: "When they want to be disagreeable!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "If this room isn't in order by the time he calls, +you'll be everlastingly disgraced." + +MISS REED: "I'm that now. I can't be more so--there's that comfort. +What makes you think he'll call?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Because he's a gentleman, and will want to +apologize. He behaved very rudely to you." + +MISS REED: "No, Nettie; _I_ behaved rudely to HIM. Yes! Besides, +if he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It's a contradiction in +terms, don't you see? But I'll tell you what I'm going to do if he +comes. I'm going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I'm +going to refuse to see him. You've got to see him." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Nonsense!" + +MISS REED: "Why nonsense? Oh, why? Expound!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Because he wasn't rude to me, and he doesn't want +to see me. Because I'm plain, and you're pretty." + +MISS REED: "I'm NOT! You know it perfectly well. I'm hideous." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Because I'm poor, and you're a person of +independent property." + +MISS REED: "DEPENDENT property, I should call it: just enough to be +useless on! But that's insulting to HIM. How can you say it's +because I have a little money?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Well, then, I won't. I take it back. I'll say +it's because you're young, and I'm old." + +MISS REED: "You're NOT old. You're as young as anybody, Nettie +Spaulding. And you know I'm not young; I'm twenty-seven, if I'm a +day. I'm just dropping into the grave. But I can't argue with you, +miles off so, any longer." Miss Reed appears at the open door, +dragging languidly after her the shawl which she had evidently drawn +round her on the sofa; her fair hair is a little disordered, and she +presses it into shape with one hand as she comes forward; a lovely +flush vies with a heavenly pallor in her cheeks; she looks a little +pensive in the arching eyebrows, and a little humorous about the +dimpled mouth. "Now I can prove that you are entirely wrong. Where- +-were you?--This room is rather an improvement over the one we had +last winter. There is more of a view"--she goes to the window--"of +the houses across the Place; and I always think the swell front gives +a pretty shape to a room. I'm sorry they've stopped building them. +Your piano goes very nicely into that little alcove. Yes, we're +quite palatial. And, on the whole, I'm glad there's no fireplace. +It's a pleasure at times; but for the most part it's a vanity and a +vexation, getting dust and ashes over everything. Yes; after all, +give me the good old-fashioned, clean, convenient register! Ugh! My +feet are like ice." She pulls an easy-chair up to the register in +the corner of the room, and pushes open its valves with the toe of +her slipper. As she settles herself luxuriously in the chair, and +poises her feet daintily over the register: "Ah, this is something +like! Henrietta Spaulding, ma'am! Did I ever tell you that you were +the best friend I have in the world?" + +MISS SPAULDING, who continues her work of arranging the room: +"Often." + +MISS REED: "Did you ever believe it?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Never." + +MISS REED: "Why?" + +MISS SPAULDING, thoughtfully regarding a vase which she holds in her +hand, after several times shifting it from a bracket to the corner of +her piano and back: "I wish I could tell where you do look best!" + +MISS REED, leaning forward wistfully, with her hands clasped and +resting on her knees: "I wish you would tell me WHY you don't +believe you're the best friend I have in the world." + +MISS SPAULDING, finally placing the vase on the bracket: "Because +you've said so too often." + +MISS REED: "Oh, that's no reason! I can prove to you that you are. +Who else but you would have taken in a homeless and friendless +creature like me, and let her stay bothering round in demoralizing +idleness, while you were seriously teaching the young idea how to +drub the piano?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Anybody who wanted a room-mate as much as I did, +and could have found one willing to pay more than her share of the +lodging." + +MISS REED, thoughtfully: "Do you think so, Henrietta?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "I know so." + +MISS REED: "And you're not afraid that you wrong yourself?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Not the least." + +MISS REED: "Well, be it so--as they say in novels. I will not +contradict you; I will not say you are my BEST friend; I will merely +say that you are my ONLY friend. Come here, Henrietta. Draw up your +chair, and put your little hand in mine." + +MISS SPAULDING, with severe distrust: "What do you want, Ethel +Reed?" + +MISS REED: "I want--I want--to talk it over with you." + +MISS SPAULDING, recoiling: "I knew it! Well, now, we've talked it +over enough; we've talked it over till there's nothing left of it." + +MISS REED: "Oh, there's everything left! It remains in all its +original enormity. Perhaps we shall get some new light upon it." +She extends a pleading hand towards Miss Spaulding. "Come, +Henrietta, my only friend, shake!--as the 'good Indians' say. Let +your Ethel pour her hackneyed sorrows into your bosom. Such an +uncomfortable image, it always seems, doesn't it, pouring sorrows +into bosoms! Come!" + +MISS SPAULDING, decidedly: "No, I won't! And you needn't try +wheedling any longer. I won't sympathize with you on that basis at +all." + +MISS REED: "What shall I try, then, if you won't let me try +wheedling?" + +MISS SPAULDING, going to the piano and opening it: "Try courage; try +self-respect." + +MISS REED: "Oh, dear! when I haven't a morsel of either. Are you +going to practise, you cruel maid?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Of course I am. It's half-past four, and if I +don't do it now I sha'n't be prepared to-morrow for Miss Robins: she +takes this piece." + +MISS REED: "Well, well, perhaps it's all for the best. If music be +the food of--umph-ump!--you know what!--play on." They both laugh, +and Miss Spaulding pushes back a little from the piano, and wheels +toward her friend, letting one hand rest slightly on the keys. + +MISS SPAULDING: "Ethel Reed, you're the most ridiculous girl in the +world." + +MISS REED: "Correct!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "And I don't believe you ever were in love, or ever +will be." + +MISS REED: "Ah, there you wrong me, Henrietta! I have been, and I +shall be--lots of times." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Well, what do you want to say now? You must hurry, +for I can't lose any more time." + +MISS REED: "I will free my mind with neatness and despatch. I +simply wish to go over the whole affair, from Alfred to Omaha; and +you've got to let me talk as much slang and nonsense as I want. And +then I'll skip all the details I can. Will you?" + +MISS SPAULDING, with impatient patience: "Oh, I suppose so!" + +MISS REED: "That's very sweet of you, though you don't look it. +Now, where was I? Oh, yes, do you think it was forth-putting at all, +to ask him if he would give me the lessons?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "It depends upon why you asked him." + +MISS REED: "I asked him from--from--Let me see; I asked him because- +-from--Yes, I say it boldly; I asked him from an enthusiasm for art, +and a sincere wish to learn the use of oil, as he called it. Yes!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Are you sure?" + +MISS REED: "Sure? Well, we will say that I am, for the sake of +argument. And, having secured this basis, the question is whether I +wasn't bound to offer him pay at the end, and whether he wasn't wrong +to take my doing so in dudgeon." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Yes, I think he was wrong. And the terms of his +refusal were very ungentlemanly. He ought to apologize most amply +and humbly." At a certain expression in Miss Reed's face, she adds, +with severity: "Unless you're keeping back the main point. You +usually do. Are you?" + +MISS REED: "No, no. I've told you everything--everything!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Then I say, as I said from the beginning, that he +behaved very badly. It was very awkward and very painful, but you've +really nothing to blame yourself for." + +MISS REED, ruefully: "No-o-o!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "What do you mean by that sort of 'No'?" + +MISS REED: "Nothing." + +MISS SPAULDING, sternly: "Yes, you do, Ethel." + +MISS REED: "I don't, really. What makes you' think I do?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "It sounded very dishonest." + +MISS REED: "Did it? I didn't mean it to." Her friend breaks down +with a laugh, while Miss Reed preserves a demure countenance. + +MISS SPAULDING: "What ARE you keeping back?" + +MISS REED: "Nothing at all--less than nothing! I never thought it +was worth mentioning." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Are you telling me the truth?" + +MISS REED: "I'm telling you the truth and something more. You can't +ask better than that, can you?" + +MISS SPAULDING, turning to her music again: "Certainly not." + +MISS REED: in a pathetic wail: "O Henrietta! do you abandon me +thus? Well, I will tell you, heartless girl! I've only kept it back +till now because it was so extremely mortifying to my pride as an +artist--as a student of oil. Will you hear me?" + +MISS SPAULDING, beginning to play: "No." + +MISS REED, with burlesque wildness: "You shall!" Miss Spaulding +involuntarily desists. "There was a moment--a fatal moment--when he +said he thought he ought to tell me that if I found oil amusing I +could go on; but that he didn't believe I should ever learn to use +it, and he couldn't let me take lessons from him with the expectation +that I should. There!" + +MISS SPAULDING, with awful reproach: "And you call that less than +nothing? I've almost a mind never to speak to you again, Ethel. How +COULD you deceive me so?" + +MISS REED: "Was it really deceiving? _I_ shouldn't call it so. And +I needed your sympathy so much, and I knew I shouldn't get it unless +you thought I was altogether in the right." + +MISS SPAULDING: "You are altogether in the wrong! And it's YOU that +ought to apologize to HIM--on your bended knees. How COULD you offer +him money after that? I wonder at you, Ethel!" + +MISS REED: "Why--don't you see, Nettie?--I did keep on taking the +lessons of him. I did find oil amusing--or the oilist--and I kept +on. Of course I had to, off there in a farmhouse full of lady +boarders, and he the only gentleman short of Crawford's. Strike, but +hear me, Henrietta Spaulding! What was I to do about the half-dozen +lessons I had taken before he told me I should never learn to use +oil? Was I to offer to pay him for these, and not for the rest; or +was I to treat the whole series as gratuitous? I used to lie awake +thinking about it. I've got little tact, but I couldn't find any way +out of the trouble. It was a box--yes, a box of the deepest dye! +And the whole affair having got to be--something else, don't you +know?--made it all the worse. And if he'd only--only--But he didn't. +Not a syllable, not a breath! And there I was. I HAD to offer him +the money. And it's almost killed me--the way he took my offering +it, and now the way you take it! And it's all of a piece." Miss +Reed suddenly snatches her handkerchief from her pocket, and buries +her face in it.--"Oh, dear--oh, dear! Oh!--hu, hu, hu!" + +MISS SPAULDING, relenting: "It was awkward." + +MISS REED: "Awkward! You seem to think that because I carry things +off lightly I have no feeling." + +MISS SPAULDING: "You know I don't think that, Ethel." + +MISS REED, pursuing her advantage: "I don't know it from you, +Nettie. I've tried and TRIED to pass it off as a joke, and to treat +it as something funny; but I can tell you it's no joke at all." + +MISS SPAULDING, sympathetically: "I see, dear." + +MISS REED: "It's not that I care for him" - + +MISS SPAULDING: "Why, of course." + +MISS REED: "For I don't in the least. He is horrid every way: +blunt, and rude, and horrid. I never cared for him. But I care for +myself! He has put me in the position of having done an unkind +thing--an unladylike thing--when I was only doing what I had to do. +Why need he have taken it the way he did? Why couldn't he have said +politely that he couldn't accept the money because he hadn't earned +it? Even THAT would have been mortifying enough. But he must go and +be so violent, and rush off, and--Oh, I never could have treated +anybody so!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Not unless you were very fond of them." + +MISS REED: "What?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Not unless you were very fond of them." + +MISS REED, putting away her handkerchief: "Oh, nonsense, Nettie! He +never cared anything for me, or he couldn't have acted so. But no +matter for that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got +straight--never in the world. It will just have to remain a hideous +mass of--of--_I_ don't know what; and I have simply got to on +withering with despair at the point where I left off. But I don't +care! That's one comfort." + +MISS SPAULDING: "I don't believe he'll let you wither long, Ethel." + +MISS REED: "He's let me wither for twenty-four hours already! But +it's nothing to me, now, how long he lets me wither. I'm perfectly +satisfied to have the affair remain as it is. I am in the right, and +if he comes I shall refuse to see him." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, no, you won't, Ethel!" + +MISS REED: "Yes, I shall. I shall receive him very coldly. I won't +listen to any excuse from him." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, yes, you will, Ethel!" + +MISS REED: "No, I shall not. If he wishes me to listen he must +begin by humbling himself in the dust--yes, the dust, Nettie! I +won't take anything short of it. I insist that he shall realize that +I have suffered." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Perhaps he has suffered too!" + +MISS REED: "Oh, HE suffered!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "You know that he was perfectly devoted to you." + +MISS REED: "He never said so." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Perhaps he didn't dare." + +MISS REED: "He dared to be very insolent to me." + +MISS SPAULDING: "And you know you liked him very much." + +MISS REED: "I won't let you say that, Nettie Spaulding. I DIDN'T +like him. I respected and admired him; but I didn't LIKE him. He +will come near me; but if he does he has to begin by--by--Let me see, +what shall I make him begin by doing?" She casts up her eyes for +inspiration while she leans forward over the register. "Yes, I will! +He has got to begin by taking that money!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Ethel, you wouldn't put that affront upon a +sensitive and high-spirited man!" + +MISS REED: "Wouldn't I? You wait and SEE, Miss Spaulding! He shall +take the money, and he shall sign a receipt for it. I'll draw up the +receipt now, so as to have it ready, and I shall ask him to sign it +the very moment he enters this door--the very instant!" She takes a +portfolio from the table near her, without rising, and writes: +"'Received from Miss Ethel Reed one hundred and twenty-five dollars, +in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting.' There--when Mr. +Oliver Ransom has signed this little document he may begin to talk; +not before!" She leans back in her chair with an air of pitiless +determination. + +MISS SPAULDING: "But, Ethel, you don't mean to make him take money +for the lessons he gave you after he told you you couldn't learn +anything?" + +MISS REED, after a moment's pause: "Yes, I do. This is to punish +him. I don't wish for justice now; I wish for vengeance! At first I +would have compromised on the six lessons, or on none at all, if he +had behaved nicely; but after what's happened I shall insist upon +paying him for every lesson, so as to make him feel that the whole +thing, from first to last, was a purely business transaction on my +part. Yes, a PURELY--BUSINESS--TRANSACTION!" + +MISS SPAULDING, turning to her music: "Then I've got nothing more to +say to you, Ethel Reed." + +MISS REED: "I don't say but what, after he's taken the money and +signed the receipt, I'll listen to anything else he's got to say, +very willingly." Miss Spaulding makes no answer, but begins to play +with a scientific absorption, feeling her way fitfully through the +new piece, while Miss Reed, seated by the register, trifles with the +book she has taken from the table. + + + +II. + + + +The interior of the room of Miss Spaulding and Miss Reed remains in +view, while the scene discloses, on the other side of the partition +wall in the same house, the bachelor apartment of Mr. Samuel +Grinnidge. Mr. Grinnidge in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his +pipe in his mouth, has the effect of having just come in; his friend +Mr. Oliver Ransom stands at the window, staring out into the November +weather. + + +GRINNIDGE: "How long have you been waiting here?" + +RANSOM: "Ten minutes--ten years. How should I know?" + +GRINNIDGE: "Well, I don't know who else should. Get back to-day?" + +RANSOM: "Last night." + +GRINNIDGE: "Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register, +and warm your poor feet." He puts his hand out over the register. +"Confound it! somebody's got the register open in the next room! You +see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just +under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But it don't. +There was a fellow in there last winter who used to get all my heat. +Used to go out and leave his register open, and I'd come in here just +before dinner and find this place as cold as a barn. We had a +running fight of it all winter. The man who got his register open +first in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never +turned the other way when it started in one direction. Used to +almost suffocate--warm, muggy days--maintaining my rights. Some +piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And she hasn't +lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What kept you +so late in the country?" + +RANSOM, after an absent-minded pause: "Grinnidge, I wish you would +give me some advice." + +GRINNIDGE: "You can have all you want of it at the market price." + +RANSOM: "I don't mean your legal advice." + +GRINNIDGE: "I'm sorry. What have you been doing?" + +RANSOM: "I've been making an ass of myself." + +GRINNIDGE: "Wasn't that rather superfluous?" + +RANSOM: "If you please, yes. But now, it you're capable of +listening to me without any further display of your cross-examination +wit, I should like to tell you how it happened." + +GRINNIDGE: "I will do my best to veil my brilliancy. Go on." + +RANSOM: "I went up to Ponkwasset early in September for the +foliage." + +GRINNIDGE: "And staid till late in October. There must have been a +reason for that. What was her name? Foliage?" + +RANSOM, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, near which his +friend sits, and talking to him directly over the register: "I think +you'll have to get along without the name for the present. I'll tell +you by and by." As Mr. Ransom pronounces these words, Miss Reed, on +her side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and, +after a moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. "But she was +beautiful. She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes--eyes, +you know, that could be funny or tender, just as she chose--the kind +of eyes I always liked." Miss Reed leads forward over the register. +"She had one of those faces that always leave you in doubt whether +they're laughing at you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but +you feel certain that they're GOOD, and that if they did hurt you by +laughing at you, they'd look sorry for you afterward. When she +walked you saw what an exquisite creature she was. It always made me +mad to think I couldn't PAINT her walk." + +GRINNIDGE: "I suppose you saw a good deal of her walk." + +RANSOM: "Yes; we were off in the woods and fields half the time +together." He takes a turn towards the window. + +MISS REED, suddenly shutting the register on her side: "Oh!" + +MISS SPAULDING, looking up from her music: "What is it, Ethel?" + +MISS REED: "Nothing, nothing; I--I--thought it was getting too warm. +Go on, dear; don't let me interrupt you." After a moment of heroic +self-denial she softly presses the register open with her foot. + +RANSOM, coming back to the register: "It all began in that way. I +had the good fortune one day to rescue her from a--cow." + +MISS REED: "Oh, for shame!" + +MISS SPAULDING, desisting from her piano: "What IS the matter?" + +MISS REED, clapping the register to: "This ridiculous book! But +don't--don't mind me, Nettie." Breathlessly: "Go--go--on!" Miss +Spaulding resumes, and again Miss Reed softly presses the register +open. + +RANSOM, after a pause: "The cow was grazing, and had no more thought +of hooking Miss--" + +MISS REED: "Oh, I didn't suppose he WOULD!--Go on, Nettie, go on! +The hero--SUCH a goose!" + +RANSOM: "I drove her away with my camp-stool, and Miss--the young +lady--was as grateful as if I had rescued her from a menagerie of +wild animals. I walked home with her to the farm house, and the +trouble began at once." Pantomime of indignant protest and burlesque +menace on the part of Miss Reed. "There wasn't another well woman in +the house, except her friend Miss Spaulding, who was rather old and +rather plain." He takes another turn to the window. + +MISS REED: "Oh!" She shuts the register, but instantly opens it +again. "Louder, Nettie." + +MISS SPAULDING, in astonishment: "What?" + +MISS REED: "Did I speak? I didn't know it. I" - + +MISS SPAULDING, desisting from practice: "What is that strange, +hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise?" + +MISS REED, softly closing the register with her foot: "I don't hear +any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do you hear +it NOW?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "No. It was the Brighton whistle, probably." + +MISS REED: "Oh, very likely." As Miss Spaulding turns again to her +practice Miss Reed re-opens the register and listens again. A little +interval of silence ensues, while Ransom lights a cigarette. + +GRINNIDGE: "So you sought opportunities of rescuing her from other +cows?" + +RANSOM, returning: "That wasn't necessary. The young lady was so +impressed by my behavior, that she asked if I would give her some +lessons in the use of oil." + +GRINNIDGE: "She thought if she knew how to paint pictures like yours +she wouldn't need any one to drive the cows away." + +RANSOM: "Don't be farcical, Grinnidge. That sort of thing will do +with some victim on the witness-stand who can't help himself. Of +course I said I would, and we were off half the time together, +painting the loveliest and loneliest bits around Ponkwasset. It all +went on very well, till one day I felt bound in conscience to tell +her that I didn't think she would ever learn to paint, and that--if +she was serious about it she'd better drop it at once, for she was +wasting her time." + +GRINNIDGE, getting up to fill his pipe: "That was a pleasant thing +to do." + +RANSOM: "I told her that if it amused her, to keep on; I would be +only too glad to give her all--the hints I could, but that I oughtn't +to encourage her. She seemed a good deal hurt. I fancied at the +time that she thought I was tired of having her with me so much." + +MISS REED: "Oh, DID you, indeed!" To Miss Spaulding, who bends an +astonished glance upon her from the piano: "The man in this book is +the most CONCEITED creature, Nettie. Play chords--something very +subdued--ah!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "What are you talking about, Ethel?" + +RANSOM: "That was at night; but the next day she came up smiling, +and said that if I didn't mind she would keep on--for amusement; she +wasn't a bit discouraged." + +MISS REED: "Oh!--Go on, Nettie; don't let my outbursts interrupt +you." + +RANSOM: "I used to fancy sometimes that she was a little sweet on +me." + +MISS REED: "You wretch!--Oh, scales, Nettie! Play scales!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Ethel Reed, are you crazy?" + +Ransom, after a thoughtful moment: "Well, so it went on for the next +seven or eight weeks. When we weren't sketching in the meadows, or +on the mountain-side, or in the old punt on the pond, we were walking +up and down the farmhouse piazza together. She used to read to me +when I was at work. She had a heavenly voice, Grinnidge." + +MISS REED: "Oh, you silly, silly thing!--Really this book makes me +sick, Nettie." + +RANSOM: "Well, the long and the short of it was, I was hit--HARD, +and I lost all courage. You know how I am, Grinnidge." + +MISS REED, softly: "Oh, poor fellow!" + +RANSOM: "So I let the time go by, and at the end I hadn't said +anything." + +MISS REED: "No, sir! You HADN'T!" + +MISS SPAULDING gradually ceases to play, and fixes her attention +wholly upon Miss Reed, who bends forward over the register with an +intensely excited face. + +RANSOM: "Then something happened that made me glad, for twenty-four +hours at least, that I hadn't spoken. She sent me the money for +twenty-five lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I +suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and storing up +her resentment for my having told her she couldn't learn to paint, +till she could pay me back with interest in one supreme insult?" + +MISS REED, in a low voice: "Oh, how could you think such a cruel, +vulgar thing?" Miss Spaulding leaves the piano, and softly +approaches her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register. + +RANSOM: "It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing +herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole +association, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation +of teacher and pupil. It was a snub--a heartless, killing snub; and +I couldn't see it in any other light." Ransom walks away to the +window, and looks out. + +MISS REED, flinging herself backward from the register, and hiding +her face in her hands: "Oh, it wasn't! it wasn't! it wasn't! How +could you think so?" + +MISS SPAULDING, rushing forward, and catching her friend in her arms: +"What is the matter with you, Ethel Reed? What are you doing here, +over the register? Are you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you +taken leave of your senses?" + +GRINNIDGE: "Our fair friend on the other side of the wall seems to +be on the rampage." + +MISS SPAULDING, shutting the register with a violent clash: "Ugh! +how hot it is here!" + +GRINNIDGE: "Doesn't like your conversation, apparently." + +MISS REED, frantically pressing forward to open the register: "Oh, +don't shut it, Nettie, dear! If you do I shall die! Do-o-n't shut +the register!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Don't shut it? Why, we've got all the heat of the +furnace in the room now. Surely you don't want any more?" + +MISS REED: "No, no; not any more. But--but--Oh, dear! what shall I +do?" She still struggles in the embrace of her friend. + +GRINNIDGE, remaining quietly at the register, while Ransom walks away +to the window: "Well, what did you do?" + +MISS REED: "There, there! They're commencing again! DO open it, +Nettie. I WILL have it open!" She wrenches herself free, and dashes +the register open. + +GRINNIDGE: "Ah, she's opened it again." + +Miss Reed, in a stage-whisper: "That's the other one!" + +RANSOM, from the window: "Do? I'll tell you what I did." + +MISS REED: "That's Ol--Mr. Ransom. And, oh, I can't make out what +he's saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the room-- +and it's at the most important point!" + +MISS SPAULDING, in an awful undertone: "Was that the hollow rumbling +I heard? And have you been listening at the register to what they've +been saying? O ETHEL!" + +MISS REED: "I haven't been listening, exactly." + +MISS SPAULDING: "You have! You have been eavesdropping!" + +MISS REED: "Eavesdropping is listening through a key-hole, or around +a corner. This is very different. Besides, it's Oliver, and he's +been talking about ME. Hark!" She clutches her friend's hand, where +they have crouched upon the floor together, and pulls her forward to +the register. "Oh, dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off +the heat down below." + +GRINNIDGE, smoking peacefully through the silence which his friend +has absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: "Well, you seem +disposed to take your time about it." + +RANSOM: "About what? Oh, yes! Well" - + +MISS REED: "'Sh! Listen." + +MISS SPAULDING: "I won't listen! It's shameful: it's wicked! I +don't see how you can do it, Ethel!" She remains, however, kneeling +near the register, and she involuntarily inclines a little more +toward it. + +RANSOM: "--It isn't a thing that I care to shout from the house- +tops." He returns from the window to the chimney-piece. "I wrote +the rudest kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in +it. She had said that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with +the summer, but that we might sometimes meet in Boston; and I +answered that our acquaintance had ended already, and that I should +be sorry to meet her anywhere again." + +GRINNIDGE: "Well, if you wanted to make an ass of yourself, you did +it pretty completely." + +MISS REED, whispering: "How witty he is! Those men are always so +humorous with each other." + +RANSOM: "Yes; I didn't do it by halves." + +MISS REED, whispering: "Oh, THAT'S funny, too!" + +GRINNIDGE: "It didn't occur to you that she might feel bound to pay +you for the first half-dozen, and was embarrassed how to offer to pay +for them alone?" + +MISS REED: "How he DOES go to the heart of the matter!" She presses +Miss Spaulding's hand in an ecstasy of approval. + +RANSOM: "Yes, it did--afterward." + +MISS REED, in a tender murmur: "Oh, POOR Oliver!" + +RANSOM: "And it occurred to me that she was perfectly right in the +whole affair." + +MISS REED: "Oh, how generous! how noble!" + +RANSOM: "I had had a thousand opportunities, and I hadn't been man +enough to tell her that I was in love with her." + +MISS REED: "How can he say it right out so bluntly? But if it's +true" - + +RANSOM: "I COULDN'T speak. I was afraid of putting an end to the +affair--of frightening her--disgusting her." + +MISS REED: "Oh, how little they know us, Nettie!" + +RANSOM: "She seemed so much above me in every way--so sensitive, so +refined, so gentle, so good, so angelic!" + +MISS REED: "There! NOW do you call it eavesdropping? If listeners +never hear any good of themselves, what do you say to that? It +proves that I haven't been listening." + +MISS SPAULDING: "'Sh! They're saying something else." + +RANSOM: "But all that's neither here nor there. I can see now that +under the circumstances she couldn't as a lady have acted otherwise +than she did. She was forced to treat our whole acquaintance as a +business matter, and I had forced her to do it." + +MISS REED: "You HAD, you poor thing!" + +GRINNIDGE: "Well, what do you intend to do about it?" + +RANSOM: "Well" - + +MISS REED: "'Sh!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "'Sh!" + +RANSOM: "--that's what I want to submit to you, Grinnidge. I must +see her." + +GRINNIDGE: "Yes. I'm glad _I_ mustn't." + +MISS REED, stifling a laugh on Miss Spaulding's shoulder: "They're +actually AFRAID of us, Nettie!" + +RANSOM: "See her, and go down in the dust." + +MISS REED: "My very words!" + +RANSOM: "I have been trying to think what was the very humblest pie +I could eat, by way of penance; and it appears to me that I had +better begin by saying that I have come to ask her for the money I +refused." + +MISS REED, enraptured: "Oh! doesn't it seem just like--like-- +inspiration, Nettie?" + +MISS SPAULDING: "'Sh! Be quiet, do! You'll frighten them away!" + +GRINNIDGE: "And then what?" + +RANSOM: "What then? I don't know what then. But it appears to me +that, as a gentleman, I've got nothing to do with the result. All +that I've got to do is to submit to my fate, whatever it is." + +MISS REED, breathlessly: "What princely courage! What delicate +magnanimity! Oh, he needn't have the LEAST fear! If I could only +tell him that!" + +GRINNIDGE, after an interval of meditative smoking: "Yes, I guess +that's the best thing you can do. It will strike her fancy, if she's +an imaginative girl, and she'll think you a fine fellow." + +MISS REED: "Oh, the horrid thing!" + +GRINNIDGE: "If you humble yourself to a woman at all, do it +thoroughly. If you go halfway down she'll be tempted to push you the +rest of the way. If you flatten out at her feet to begin with, ten +to one but she will pick you up." + +RANSOM: "Yes, that was my idea." + +MISS REED: "Oh, was it, indeed! Well!" + +RANSOM: "But I've nothing to do with her picking me up or pushing me +down. All that I've got to do is to go and surrender myself." + +GRINNIDGE: "Yes. Well; I guess you can't go too soon. I like your +company; but I advise you as a friend not to lose time. Where does +she live?" + +RANSOM: "That's the remarkable part of it: she lives in this +house." + +MISS REED and Miss Spaulding, in subdued chorus: "Oh!" + +GRINNIDGE, taking his pipe out of his mouth in astonishment: "No!" + +RANSOM: "I just came in here to give my good resolutions a rest +while I was screwing my courage up to ask for her." + +MISS REED: "Don't you think he's VERY humorous? Give his good +resolutions a rest! That's the way he ALWAYS talks." + +MISS SPAULDING: "'Sh!" + +GRINNIDGE: "You said you came for my advice." + +RANSOM: "So I did. But I didn't promise to act upon it. Well!" He +goes toward the door. + +GRINNIDGE, without troubling himself to rise: "Well, good luck to +you!" + +MISS REED: "How droll they are with each other! Don't you LIKE to +hear them talk? Oh, I could listen all day." + +GRINNIDGE, calling after Ransom: "You haven't told me your duck's +name." + +MISS REED: "Is THAT what they call us? Duck! Do you think it's +very respectful, Nettie? I don't believe I like it. Or, yes, why +not? It's no harm--if I AM his duck!" + +RANSOM, coming back: "Well, I don't propose to go shouting it round. +Her name is Miss Reed--Ethel Reed." + +MISS REED: "How CAN he?" + +GRINNIDGE: "Slender, willowy party, with a lot of blond hair that +looks as if it might be indigenous? Rather pensive-looking?" + +MISS REED: "Indigenous! I should hope so!" + +RANSOM: "Yes. But she isn't pensive. She's awfully deep. It makes +me shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of my +courage in daring to be in love with her--a stupid, straightforward +idiot like me--I begin to respect myself in spite of being such an +ass. Well, I'm off. If I stay any longer I shall never go." He +closes the door after him, and Miss Reed instantly springs to her +feet. + +MISS REED: "Now he'll have to go down to the parlor and send up his +name, and that just gives me time to do the necessary prinking. You +stay here and receive him, Nettie." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Never! After what's happened I can never look him +in the face again. Oh, how low, and mean, and guilty I feel!" + +MISS REED, with surprise: "Why, how droll! Now _I_ don't feel the +least so." + +MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, it's very different with YOU. YOU'RE in love +with him." + +MISS REED: "For shame, Nettie! I'm NOT in love with him." + +MISS SPAULDING: "And you can explain and justify it. But I never +can justify it to myself, much less to him. Let me go, Ethel! I +shall tell Mrs. McKnight that we must change this room instantly. +And just after I'd got it so nearly in order! Go down and receive +him in the parlor, Ethel. I CAN'T see him." + +MISS REED: "Receive him in the parlor! Why, Nettie, dear, you're +crazy! I'm going to ACCEPT him: and how can I accept him--with all +the consequences--in a public parlor? No, indeed! If you won't meet +him here for a moment, just to oblige me, you can go into the other +room. Or, no--you'd be listening to every word through the key-hole, +you're so demoralized!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "Yes, yes, I deserve your contempt, Ethel." + +MISS REED, laughing: "You will have to go out for a walk, you poor +thing; and I'm not going to have you coming back in five or ten +minutes. You have got to stay out a good hour." + +MISS SPAULDING, running to get her things from the next room: "Oh, +I'll stay out till midnight!" + +MISS REED, responding to a tap at the door: "Ye-e-s! Come in!-- +You're caught, Nettie." + +A MAID-SERVANT, appearing with a card: "This gentleman is asking for +you in the parlor, Miss Reed." + +MISS REED: "Oh! Ask him to come up here, please.--Nettie! Nettie!" +She calls to her friend in the next room. "He's coming right up, and +if you don't run you're trapped." + +MISS SPAULDING, re-appearing, cloaked and bonneted: "I don't blame +YOU, Ethel, comparatively speaking. You can say that everything is +fair in love. He will like it, and laugh at it in you, because he'll +like everything you've done. Besides, you've no principles, and I +HAVE." + +MISS REED: "Oh, I've lots of principles, Nettie, but I've no +practice!" + +MISS SPAULDING: "No matter. There's no excuse for me. I listened +simply because I was a woman, and couldn't help it; and, oh, what +will he think of me?" + +MISS REED: "I won't give you away; if you really feel so badly" - + +MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, DO you think you can keep from telling him, +Ethel dear? Try! And I will be your slave forever!" Steps are +heard on the stairs outside. "Oh, there he comes!" She dashes out +of the door, and closes it after her, a moment before the maid- +servant, followed by Mr. Ransom, taps at it. + + + +III. + + + +SCENE: Miss Reed opens the door, and receives Mr. Ransom with well- +affected surprise and state, suffering him to stand awkwardly on the +threshold for a moment. + + +SHE, coldly: "Oh!--Mr. Ransom!" + +HE, abruptly: "I've come" - + +SHE: "Won't you come in?" + +HE, advancing a few paces into the room: "I've come" - + +SHE, indicating a chair: "Will you sit down?" + +HE: "I must stand for the present. I've come to ask you for that +money, Miss Reed, which I refused yesterday, in terms that I blush to +think of. I was altogether and wholly in the wrong, and I'm ready to +offer any imaginable apology or reparation. I'm ready to take the +money and to sign a receipt, and then to be dismissed with whatever +ignominy you please. I deserve anything--everything!" + +SHE: "The money? Excuse me; I don't know--I'm afraid that I'm not +prepared to pay you the whole sum to-day." + +HE, hastily: "Oh, no matter! no matter! I don't care for the money +now. I merely wish to--to assure you that I thought you were +perfectly right in offering it, and to--to" - + +SHE: "What?" + +HE: "Nothing. That is--ah--ah" - + +SHE: "It's extremely embarrassing to have people refuse their money +when it's offered them, and then come the next day for it, when +perhaps it isn't so convenient to pay it--VERY embarrassing." + +HE, hotly: "But I tell you I don't want the MONEY! I never wanted +it, and wouldn't take it on any account." + +SHE: "Oh! I thought you said you came to get it?" + +HE: "I said--I didn't say--I meant--that is--ah--I"--He stops, open- +mouthed. + +SHE, quietly: "I could give you part of the money now." + +HE: "Oh, whatever you like; it's indifferent" - + +SHE: "Please sit down while I write a receipt." She places herself +deliberately at the table, and opens her portfolio. "I will pay you +now, Mr. Ransom, for the first six lessons you gave me--the ones +before you told me that I could never learn to do anything." + +HE, sinking mechanically into the chair she indicates: "Oh, just as +you like!" He looks up at the ceiling in hopeless bewilderment, +while she writes. + +SHE, blotting the paper: "There! And now let me offer you a little +piece of advice, Mr. Ransom, which may be useful to you in taking +pupils hereafter." + +HE, bursting out: "I never take pupils!" + +SHE: "Never take pupils! I don't understand. You took ME." + +HE, confusedly: "I took you--yes. You seemed to wish--you seemed-- +the case was peculiar--peculiar circumstances." + +SHE, with severity: "May I ask WHY the circumstances were peculiar? +I saw nothing peculiar about the circumstances. It seemed to me it +was a very simple matter. I told you that I had always had a great +curiosity to see whether I could use oil paints, and I asked you a +very plain question, whether you would let me study with you. Didn't +I?" + +HE: "Yes." + +SHE: "Was there anything wrong--anything queer about my asking you?" + +HE: "No, no! Not at all--not in the least." + +SHE: "Didn't you wish me to take the lessons of you? If you didn't, +it wasn't kind of you to let me." + +HE: "Oh, I was perfectly willing--very glad indeed, very much so-- +certainly!" + +SHE: "If it wasn't your CUSTOM to take pupils, you ought to have +told me, and I wouldn't have forced myself upon you." + +HE, desperately: "It wasn't forcing yourself upon me. The Lord +knows how humbly grateful I was. It was like a hope of heaven!" + +SHE: "Really, Mr. Ransom, this is very strange talk. What am I to +understand by it? Why should you be grateful to teach me? Why +should giving me lessons be like a hope of heaven?" + +HE: "Oh, I will tell you!" + +SHE: "Well?" + +HE, after a moment of agony: "Because to be with you" - + +SHE: "Yes?" + +HE: "Because I wished to be with you. Because--those days in the +woods, when you read, and I" - + +SHE: "Painted on my pictures" - + +HE: "Were the happiest of my life. Because--I loved you!" + +SHE: "Mr. Ransom!" + +HE: "Yes, I must tell you so. I loved you; I love you still. I +shall always love you, no matter what" - + +SHE: "You forget yourself, Mr. Ransom. Has there been anything in +my manner--conduct--to justify you in using such language to me?" + +HE: "No--no" - + +SHE: "Did you suppose that because I first took lessons of you from- +-from--an enthusiasm for art, and then continued them for--for-- +amusement, that I wished you to make love to me?" + +HE: "No, I never supposed such a thing. I'm incapable of it. I +beseech you to believe that no one could have more respect-- +reverence"--He twirls his hat between his hands, and casts an +imploring glance at her. + +SHE: "Oh, respect--reverence! I know what they mean in the mouths +of men. If you respected, if you reverenced me, could you dare to +tell me, after my unguarded trust of you during the past months, that +you had been all the time secretly in love with me?" + +HE, plucking up a little courage: "I don't see that the three things +are incompatible." + +SHE: "Oh, then you acknowledge that you did presume upon something +you thought you saw in me to tell me that you loved me, and that you +were in love with me all the time?" + +HE, contritely: "I have no right to suppose that you encouraged me; +and yet--I can't deny it now--I was in love with you all the time." + +SHE: "And you never said a word to let me believe that you had any +such feeling toward me!" + +HE: "I--I" - + +SHE: "You would have parted from me without a syllable to suggest +it--perhaps parted from me forever?" After a pause of silent +humiliation for him: "Do you call that brave or generous? Do you +call it manly--supposing, as you hoped, that _I_ had any such +feeling?" + +HE: "No; it was cowardly, it was mean, it was unmanly. I see it +now, but I will spend my life in repairing the wrong, if you will +only let me." He impetuously advances some paces toward her, and +then stops, arrested by her irresponsive attitude. + +SHE, with a light sigh, and looking down at the paper, which she has +continued to hold between her hands: "There was a time--a moment-- +when I might have answered as you wish." + +HE: "Oh! then there will be again. If you have changed once, you +may change once more. Let me hope that some time--any time, dearest" +- + +SHE, quenching him with a look: "Mr. Ransom, I shall NEVER change +toward you! You confess that you had your opportunity, and that you +despised it." + +HE: "Oh! NOT despised it!" + +SHE: "Neglected it." + +HE: "Not wilfully--no. I confess that I was stupidly, vilely, +pusillan--pusillan--illani" - + +SHE: "'Monsly" - + +HE: "Thanks--'mously unworthy of it; but I didn't despise it; I +didn't neglect it; and if you will only let me show by a lifetime of +devotion how dearly and truly I have loved you from the first moment +I drove that cow away" - + +SHE: "Mr. Ransom, I have told you that I should never change toward +you. That cow was nothing when weighed in the balance against your +being willing to leave a poor girl, whom you supposed interested in +you, and to whom you had paid the most marked attention, without a +word to show her that you cared for her. What is a cow, or a whole +herd of cows, as compared with obliging a young lady to offer you +money that you hadn't earned, and then savagely flinging it back in +her face? A yoke of oxen would be nothing--or a mad bull." + +HE: "Oh, I acknowledge it! I confess it." + +SHE: "And you own that I am right in refusing to listen to you now?" + +HE, desolately: "Yes, yes." + +SHE: "It seems that you gave me lessons in order to be with me, and +if possible to interest me in you; and then you were going away +without a word." + +HE, with a groan: "It was only because I was afraid to speak." + +SHE: "Oh, is THAT any excuse?" + +HE: "No; none." + +SHE: "A man ought always to have courage." After a pause, in which +he stands before her with bowed head: "Then there's nothing for me +but to give you this money." + +HE, with sudden energy: "This is too much! I" - + +SHE, offering him the bank-notes: "No; it is the exact sum. I +counted it very carefully." + +HE: "I won't take it; I can't! I'll never take it!" + +SHE, standing with the money in her outstretched hand: "I have your +word as a gentleman that you will take it." + +HE, gasping: "Oh, well--I will take it--I will"--He clutches the +money, and rushes toward the door. "Good-evening; ah--good-by" - + +SHE, calling after him: "The receipt, Mr. Ransom! Please sign this +receipt!" She waves the paper in the air. + +HE: "Oh, yes, certainly! Where is it--what--which"--He rushes back +to her, and seizing the receipt, feels blindly about for the pen and +ink. "Where shall I sign?" + +SHE: "Read it first." + +HE: "Oh, it's all--all right" - + +SHE: "I insist upon your reading it. It's a business transaction. +Read it aloud." + +HE, desperately: "Well, well!" He reads. "'Received from Miss +Ethel Reed, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting, one +hundred and twenty-five dollars, and her hand, heart, and dearest +love forever.'" He looks up at her. "Ethel!" + +SHE, smiling: "Sign it, sign it!" + +HE, catching her in his arms and kissing her: "Oh, yes--HERE!" + +SHE, pulling a little away from him, and laughing: "Oh, oh! I only +wanted ONE signature! Twenty autographs are too many, unless you'll +let me trade them off, as the collectors do." + +HE: "No; keep them all! I couldn't think of letting any one else +have them. One more!" + +SHE: "No; it's quite enough!" + +SHE frees herself, and retires beyond the table. "This unexpected +affection" - + +HE: "IS it unexpected--seriously?" + +SHE: "What do you mean?" + +HE: "Oh, nothing!" + +SHE: "Yes, tell me!" + +HE: "I hoped--I thought--perhaps--that you might have been prepared +for some such demonstration on my part." + +SHE: "And why did you think--hope--perhaps--THAT, Mr. Ransom, may I +ask?" + +HE: "If I hadn't, how should I have dared to speak?" + +SHE: "Dared? You were obliged to speak! Well, since it's all over, +I don't mind saying that I DID have some slight apprehensions that +something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from you." + +HE: "Extorted? Oh!" He makes an impassioned rush toward her. + +SHE, keeping the table between them: "No, no." + +HE: "Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to make me suffer so, +after I had come to the point." + +SHE: "Ask it across the table, then." After a moment's reflection, +"I made you suffer--I made you suffer--so that you might have a +realizing sense of what you had made ME suffer." + +HE, enraptured by this confession: "Oh, you angel!" + +SHE, with tender magnanimity: "No; only a woman--a poor, trusting, +foolish woman!" She permits him to surround the table, with +imaginable results. Then, with her head on his shoulder: "You'll +NEVER let me regret it, will you, darling? You'll never oblige me to +punish you again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt ME far worse to SEE +your pain than it did you to--to--feel it!" On the other side of the +partition, Mr. Grinnidge's pipe falls from his lips, parted in +slumber, and shivers to atoms on the register. "Oh!" She flies at +the register with a shriek of dismay, and is about to close it. +"That wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!" + +HE, preventing her: "What wretch? Where?" + +SHE: "Don't you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?" + +GRINNIDGE: "Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and +untold toil in coloring it!" + +RANSOM, listening with an air of mystification: "Who's that?" + +SHE: "Gummidge, Grimmidge--whatever you called him. Oh!" She +arrests herself in consternation. "Now I HAVE done it!" + +HE: "Done what?" + +SHE: "Oh--nothing!" + +HE: "I don't understand. Do you mean to say that my friend +Grinnidge's room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can +hear him talk through the register?" + +SHE preserves the silence of abject terror. He stoops over the +register, and calls down it. "Grinnidge! Hallo!" + +GRINNIDGE: "Hallo, yourself!" + +RANSOM, to Miss Reed: "Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the +phonograph." To Grinnidge: "What's the trouble?" + +GRINNIDGE: "Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and let it drop on this +infernal register." + +RANSOM, turning from the register with impressive deliberation: +"Miss Reed, may I ask HOW you came to know that his name was +Gummidge, or Grimmidge, or whatever I called him?" + +SHE: Oh, dearest, I CAN'T tell you! Or--yes, I had better." +Impulsively: "I will judge you by myself. _I_ could forgive YOU +anything!" + +HE, doubtfully: "Oh, could you?" + +SHE: "Everything! I had--I had better make a clean breast of it. +Yes, I had. Though I don't like to. I--I listened!" + +HE: "Listened?" + +SHE: "Through the register to--to--what--you--were saying before +you--came in here." Her head droops. + +HE: "Then you heard everything?" + +SHE: "Kill me, but don't look SO at me! It was accidental at first- +-indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you +were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you +so dearly! You WILL forgive me, darling? It wasn't as if I were +listening with any bad motive." + +HE, taking her in his arms: "Forgive you? Of course I do. But you +must change this room at once, Ethel; you see you hear everything on +the other side, too." + +SHE: "Oh, not if you whisper on this. You couldn't hear US?" At a +dubious expression of his: "You DIDN'T hear us? If you did, I can +never forgive you!" + +HE: "It was accidental at first--indeed it was; and then I +recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and +I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly!" + +SHE: "All that has nothing whatever to do with it. How much did you +hear?" + +HE, with exemplary meekness: "Only what you were saying before +Grinnidge came in. You didn't whisper then. I had to wait there for +him while" - + +SHE: "While you were giving your good resolutions a rest?" + +HE: "While I was giving my good resolutions a rest." + +SHE: "And that accounts for your determination to humble yourself +so?" + +HE: "It seemed perfectly providential that I should have known just +what conditions you were going to exact of me." + +SHE: "Oh, don't make light of it! I can tell you it's a very +serious matter." + +HE: "It was very serious for me when you didn't meet my self- +abasement as you had led me to expect you would." + +SHE: "Don't make fun! I'm trying to think whether I can forgive +you." + +HE, with insinuation: "Don't you believe you could think better if +you put your head on my shoulder?" + +SHE: "Nonsense! Then I should forgive you without thinking." After +a season of reflection: "No, I CAN'T forgive you. I never could +forgive eavesdropping. It's TOO low." + +HE, in astonishment: "Why, you did it yourself!" + +SHE: "But you began it. Besides, it's very different for a man. +Women are weak, poor, helpless creatures. They have to use finesse. +But a man should be above it." + +HE: "You said you could forgive me anything." + +SHE: "Ah, but I didn't know what you'd been doing!" + +HE, with pensive resignation, and a feint of going: "Then I suppose +it's all over between us." + +SHE, relenting: "If you could think of any reason WHY I should +forgive you" - + +HE: "I can't." + +SHE, after consideration: "Do you suppose Mr. Grumage, or Grimidge, +heard too?" + +HE: "No; Grinnidge is a very high-principled fellow, and wouldn't +listen; besides, he wasn't there, you know." + +SHE: "Well, then, I will forgive you on these grounds." He +instantly catches her to his heart. "But these alone, remember." + +HE, rapturously: "Oh, on any!" + +SHE, tenderly: "And you'll always be devoted? And nice? And not +try to provoke me? Or neglect me? Or anything?" + +HE: "Always! Never!" + +SHE: "Oh, you dear, sweet, simple old thing--how I DO love you!" + +GRINNIDGE, who has been listening attentively to every word at the +register at his side: "Ransom, if you don't want me to go stark mad, +SHUT THE REGISTER!" + +RANSOM, about to comply: "Oh, poor old man! I forgot it was open!" + +MISS REED, preventing him: "No! If he has been vile enough to +listen at a register, let him suffer. Come, sit down here, and I'll +tell you just when I began to care for you. It was long before the +cow. Do you remember that first morning after you arrived"--She +drags him close to the register, so that every word may tell upon the +envious Grinnidge, on whose manifestations of acute despair, a rapid +curtain descends. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Register, by William D. Howells + diff --git a/old/whreg10.zip b/old/whreg10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..41215fa --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whreg10.zip |