A Counterfeit Presentment; and, The Parlour Car. Howells William Dean

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      Cummings.– "Why, you know what we were talking of just before they came in: you know what I told you of that cruel business."

      Bartlett.– "Well?"

      Cummings.– "Well, this is the young lady" —

      Bartlett, dauntedly. – "Oh, come now! You don't expect me to believe that! It isn't a stage-play."

      Cummings.– "Indeed, indeed, I tell you the miserable truth."

      Bartlett.– "Do you mean to say that this is the young girl who was jilted in that way? Who – Do you mean – Do you intend to tell me – Do you suppose – Cummings" —

      Cummings.– "Yes, yes, yes!"

      Bartlett.– "Why, man, she's in Paris, according to your own showing!"

      Cummings.– "She was in Paris three weeks ago. They have just brought her home, to help her hide her suffering, as if it were her shame, from all who know it. They are in this house by chance, but they are here. I mean what I say. You must believe it, shocking and wild as it is."

      Bartlett, after a prolonged silence in which he seems trying to realise the fact. – "If you were a man capable of such a ghastly joke – but that's impossible." He is silent again, as before. "And I – What did you say about me? That I look like a man who" – He stops and stares into Cummings's face without speaking, as if he were trying to puzzle the mystery out; then, with fallen head, he muses in a voice of devout and reverent tenderness: "That – that – broken – lily! Oh!" With a sudden start he flings his burden upon the closed piano, whose hidden strings hum with the blow, and advances upon Cummings: "And you can tell it? Shame on you! It ought to be known to no one upon earth! And you – you show that gentle creature's death-wound to teach something like human reason to a surly dog like me? Oh, it's monstrous! I wasn't worth it. Better have let me go, where I would, how I would. What did it matter what I thought or said? And I – I look like that devil, do I? I have his voice, his face, his movement? Cummings, you've over-avenged yourself."

      Cummings.– "Don't take it that way, Bartlett. It is hideous. But I didn't make it so, nor you. It's a fatality, it's a hateful chance. But you see now, don't you, Bartlett, how the sight of you must affect them, and how anxious her father must be to avoid you? He most humbly asked your forgiveness, and he hardly knew how to ask that you would not let her see you again. But I told him there could be no question with you; that of course you would prevent it, and at once. I know it's a great sacrifice to expect you to go" —

      Bartlett.– "Go? What are you talking about?" He breaks again from the daze into which he had relapsed. "If there's a hole on the face of the earth where I can hide myself from them, I want to find it. What do you think I'm made of? Go? I ought to be shot away out of a mortar; I ought to be struck away by lightning! Oh, I can't excuse you, Cummings! The indelicacy, the brutality of telling me that! No, no, – I can't overlook it." He shakes his head and walks away from his friend; then he returns, and bends on him a look of curious inquiry. "Am I really such a ruffian" – he speaks very gently, almost meekly, now – "that you didn't believe anything short of that would bring me to my senses? Who told you this of her?"

      Cummings.– "Her father."

      Bartlett.– "Oh, that's too loathsome! Had the man no soul, no mercy? Did he think me such a consummate beast that nothing less would drive me away? Yes, he did! Yes, I made him think so! Oh!" He hangs his head and walks away with a shudder.

      Cummings.– "I don't know that he did you that injustice; but I'm afraid I did. I was at my wits' end."

      Bartlett, very humbly. – "Oh, I don't know that you were wrong."

      Cummings.– "I suppose that his anxiety for her life made it comparatively easy for him to speak of the hurt to her pride. She can't be long for this world."

      Bartlett.– "No, she had the dying look!" After a long pause, in which he has continued to wander aimlessly about the room: "Cummings, is it necessary that you should tell him you told me?"

      Cummings.– "You know I hate concealments of any kind, Bartlett."

      Bartlett.– "Oh, well; do it then!"

      Cummings.– "But I don't know that we shall see him again; and even if we do, I don't see how I can tell him unless he asks. It's rather painful."

      Bartlett.– "Well, take that little sin on your conscience if you can. It seems to me too ghastly that I should know what you've told me; it's indecent. Cummings," – after another pause, – "how does a man go about such a thing? How does he contrive to tell the woman whose heart he has won that he doesn't care for her, and break the faith that she would have staked her life on? Oh, I know, – women do such things, too; but it's different, by a whole world's difference. A man comes and a man goes, but a woman stays. The world is before him after that happens, and we don't think him much of a man if he can't get over it. But she, she has been sought out; she has been made to believe that her smile and her looks are heaven, poor, foolish, helpless idol! her fears have been laid, all her pretty maidenly traditions, her proud reserves overcome; she takes him into her inmost soul, – to find that his love is a lie, a lie! Imagine it! She can't do anything. She can't speak. She can't move as long as she lives. She must stay where she has been left, and look and act as if nothing had happened. Oh, good Heaven! And I, I look like a man who could do that!" After a silence: "I feel as if there were blood on me!" He goes to the piano, and gathering up his things turns about towards Cummings again: "Come, man; I'm going. It's sacrilege to stay an instant, – to exist."

      Cummings.– "Don't take it in that way, Bartlett. I blame myself very much for not having spared you in what I said. I wouldn't have told you of it, if I could have supposed that an accidental resemblance of the sort would distress you so."

      Bartlett, contritely. – "You had to tell me. I forced you to extreme measures. I'm quite worthy to look like him. Good Lord! I suppose I should be capable of his work." He moves towards the door with his burden, but before he reaches it General Wyatt, from the corridor, meets him with an air of confused agitation. Bartlett halts awkwardly, and some of the things slip from his hold to the floor.

      General Wyatt.– "Sir, I am glad to see you." He pronounces the civility with a manner evidently affected by the effort to reconcile Bartlett's offensive personal appearance with his own sense of duty. "I – I was sorry to miss you before; and now I wish – Your friend" – referring with an inquiring glance to Cummings – "has explained to you the cause of our very extraordinary behaviour, and I hope you" —

      Bartlett.– "Mr. Cummings has told me that I have the misfortune to resemble some one with whom you have painful associations. That is quite enough, and entirely justifies you. I am going at once, and I trust you will forgive my rudeness in absenting myself a moment ago. I have a bad temper; but I never could forgive myself if I had forced my friend" – he turns and glares warningly at Cummings, who makes a faint pantomime of conscientious protest as Bartlett proceeds – "to hear anything more than the mere fact from you. No, no," – as General Wyatt seems about to speak, – "it would be atrocious in me to seek to go behind it. I wish to know nothing more." Cummings gives signs of extreme unrest at being made a party to this tacit deception, and General Wyatt, striking his palms hopelessly together, walks to the other end of the room. Bartlett touches the fallen camp-stool with his foot. "Cummings, will you be kind enough to put that on top of this other rubbish?" СКАЧАТЬ