A Woman's Reason. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ the world find itself old and haggard, and suffering once more ; but while it lasted, this respite was a rapture.

      Helen came down with something of it in her face, the natural unreasoned and unreasoning hopefulness of young nerves rejoicing in the weather's mood; but she began at breakfast by asking her father if he did not think it was rather crazy for her to be starting off for Beverley the very day after she had got home for good, and had just unpacked everything. She said she would go only on three conditions:—first, that he felt perfectly well; second, that he would be sure to come down on Saturday; and third, that he would be sure to bring her back with him on Monday.

      "I don't think I could stand Marian Butler in her present semi-fluid state more than three days; and I wouldn't consent to leave you, papa, except that while you're worrying over business, you'd really rather not have me about. Would you f"

      Her father said he always liked to have her about .

      "O yes; of course," said Helen. "But don't you see, I'm trying to make it a virtue to go, and I can't go unless I do?"

      He laughed with her at her hypocrisy. They agreed that this was Thursday the 15th, and that he should come down on Saturday the 17th, and that he would let nothing detain him, and that he would come in time for dinner, and not put it off, as he would be sure to do, till the last train. Helen gave him a number of charges as to his health, and his hours of work, and bade him, if he did not feel perfectly well, to telegraph her instantly. When he started downtown, she made him promise to drive home. After the door closed upon him, she wondered that she had ever allowed herself to think of leaving him, and indignantly dismissed the idea of going to Beverley; but she went on and packed her trunk so as to have it ready when the express-man came for it. She could easily send him away, and besides, if she did not go now, there was no hope of getting her father off for a holiday and a little change of scene. She quitted the house in time to catch the noon train, and rode drearily down to Beverley, but not without the comfort of feeling herself the victim of an inexorable destiny. All the way down she was in impulse rushing back to Boston, and astonishing Margaret by her return, and telling her father that she found she could not go, and being fondly laughed at by him. She was almost in tears when the brakeman shouted out the name of the station, and if Marian Butler had not been there with her phaeton, in obedience to the Captain's telegram announcing Helen's arrival, she would have hidden herself somewhere, and taken the next train back to town. As it was, she descended into the embrace of her friend, who was so glad to see her that she tried to drive through the train, just beginning to move off, on the track that crossed their road, and had to be stopped by the baggage-master, who held the pony's nose till the train was well on its way to Portland. At the door of the cottage, when the pony had drawn up the phaeton there, with a well-affected air of being driven up, Mrs. Butler met Helen with tender and approving welcome, and said that they could never have hoped to get her father to come unless she had come first. "This change in the weather will be everything for him, and you mustn't worry about him," she said, laying a soothing touch upon Helen's lingering anxieties. "If he has any business perplexities, you may be sure he'd rather have you out of the way. I have seen something of business perplexities in my time, my dear, and I know what they are. I shall telegraph to Mr. Butler to bring your father in the same train with him, and not give him any chance of slipping through his fingers."

      Mrs. Butler was one of those pale, slight ladies, not easily imaginable apart from the kind of soft breakfast shawl which she wore, and which harmonized with the invalid purple under her kind eyes, the homes of habitual headache; and the daughters of the marriage Captain Butler had made rather late in life with a woman fifteen years younger than himself, were as unlike their mother as their father was. These large, warm blondes invited all the coolness they could with their draperies, and stood grouped about her, so many statues of health and young good looks and perpetual good-nature, with bangs and frizzes over their white foreheads, and shadowing their floating, heavily-lashed blue eyes. When alone they often tended in behavior to an innocent rowdiness; they were so amiable, and so glad, and so strong, that they could not very well keep quiet, and when quiet, especially in their mother's presence, they had a knowingly quelled look: in their father's presence they were not expected nor liked to be quiet. They admired Helen almost as much as they admired their mother. She was older than any of them, except Marian, and was believed to be a pattern of style and wisdom, who had had lots of offers, and could marry anybody. While Helen and their mother talked together, they listened in silence, granting their superiority, with the eager humility of well-bred younger girlhood; and Marian went to see about lunch.

      Mr. Ray was coming to lunch, and Helen was to see him with Marian for the first time since their engagement. He was a man she had not known very well in Harvard, though he was of the class she had danced through with. He was rather quiet, and she had not formed a flattering opinion of him; some of the most brilliant fellows liked him, but she had chosen to think him dull. That was some years ago, and she had not often met him since; he had been away a great deal.

      His quiet seemed to have grown upon him, when he appeared, or it might have been the contrast of his composure with the tumult of the young girls that gave it such a positive effect. He seemed the best of friends with them all, but in his own way. He spoke little and he spoke low; and he could not be got to repeat what he said; he always said. something different the second time, and if he only looked as if he were going to speak, his prospective sisters-in-law fell helplessly silent. He was not quite so tall as Marian, and he was much slighter; she generously prided herself upon being unable to wear his gloves, which Jessie Butler could just get on. He was a very scrupulously perfect man as to his gloves, and every part of his dress, which the young ladies now criticized in detail, after he had paid his duty to Helen and their mother. They all used him with a freedom that amused Helen, and that was not much short of the frankness with which Marian came out and planted a large kiss upon his lips, and then, without speaking to him, turned to her mother with an air of housekeeperly pre-occupation to ask something about the lunch, and disappeared again.

      Mr. Ray took everything with grave composure, a little point of light in either of his brown eyes, and the slightest curve of the small brown moustache that curled tightly in over his upper lip, showing his sense from time to time of what he must have found droll if someone else had been in his place. He had an affectionate deference for Mrs. Butler that charmed Helen. He carved at lunch with a mastery of the difficult art, and he was quite at ease in his character of head of the family. It gave Helen a sort of shock to detect him in pressing Marian's hand under the table; but upon reflection, she was not sure that she disapproved of it.

      She perceived that she must revise her opinion of Mr. Ray. Without being witty, his talk was bright and to the last degree sensible, with an edge of satire for the young girls, to whom at the same time he was alertly attentive. Helen thought his manner exquisite, especially towards herself in her quality of Marian's old and valued friend; it was just what the manner of a man in his place should be. He talked a good deal to her, and told her he had spent most of the summer on the water, "Which accounts," she mused, "for his brown little hands, not much bigger than a Jap law-student's, and for that perfect mass of freckles." He said he was expecting his boat round from Manchester; and he hoped that she would come with the other young ladies and take a look at her after lunch. He said "boat" so low that Helen could just catch the word, and she smiled in consenting to go and look at it, for she imagined from his deprecatory tone that it was something like a dory which might have been bestowed upon Mr. Ray's humility by some kindly fisherman. Walking to the shore by Helen's side he said something further about running down to Mt. Dessert in his boat, and about one of his men knowing how to broil a mackerel pretty well, which puzzled her, and shook her in her error, just before they came upon a vision of snowy duck and paint, and shining brasses, straight and slim and exquisite as Helen herself in line, and light as a bird dipped for a moment upon the water. A small boat put out for them, and they were received on board the yacht with grave welcome by Mr. Ray, whose simple dress—so far hitherto from proclaiming itself nautical in cut or color—now appeared perfectly adapted to yachting. He did not seem to do the host here anymore than at Captain Butler's table, but he distinguished Helen as his СКАЧАТЬ