The Kentons. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ he went, was altogether needless. Nothing but harm had come of it, and it had been a selfish indulgence of a culpable weakness.

      It was a little better for Kenton when he found himself with his family, and they went down together to the breakfast which the mother had engaged the younger children to make as pleasant as they could for their father, and not worry him with talk about Tuskingum. They had, in fact, got over their first season of homesickness, and were postponing their longing for Tuskingum till their return from Europe, when they would all go straight out there. Kenton ran the gauntlet of welcome from the black elevator-boys and bell-boys and the head-waiter, who went before him to pull out the judge’s chair, with commanding frowns to his underlings to do the like for the rest of the family; and as his own clumsy Irish waiter stood behind his chair, breathing heavily upon the judge’s head, he gave his order for breakfast, with a curious sense of having got home again from some strange place. He satisfied Boyne that his pigeons and poultry had been well cared for through the winter, and he told Lottie that he had not met much of anybody except Dick’s family, before he recollected seeing half a dozen of her young men at differed times. She was not very exacting about them and her mind seemed set upon Europe, or at least she talked of nothing else. Ellen was quiet as she always was, but she smiled gently on her father, and Mrs. Kenton told him of the girl’s preparations for going, and congratulated herself on their wisdom in having postponed their sailing, in view of all they had to do; and she made Kenton feel that everything was in the best possible shape. As soon as she got him alone in their own room, she said, “Well, what is it, poppa?”

      Then he had to tell her, and she listened with ominous gravity. She did not say that now he could see how much better it would have been if he had not gone, but she made him say it for her; and she would not let him take comfort in the notion of keeping the fact of his interview with Bittridge from Ellen. “It would be worse than useless. He will write to her about it, and then she will know that we have been, concealing it.”

      Kenton was astonished at himself for not having thought of that. “And what are you going to do, Sarah?”

      “I am going to tell her,” said Mrs. Kenton.

      “Why didn’t poppa tell me before?” the girl perversely demanded, as soon as her another had done so.

      “Ellen, you are a naughty child! I have a great mind not to have a word more to say to you. Your father hasn’t been in the house an hour. Did you want him to speak before Lottie and Boyne!”

      “I don’t see why he didn’t tell me himself. I know there is something you are keeping back. I know there is some word—”

      “Oh, you poor girl!” said her mother, melting into pity against all sense of duty. “Have we ever tried to deceive you?”

      “No,” Ellen sobbed, with her face in her hands. “Now I will tell you every word that passed,” said Mrs. Kenton, and she told, as well as she could remember, all that the judge had repeated from Bittridge. “I don’t say he isn’t ashamed of himself,” she commented at the end. “He ought to be, and, of course, he would be glad to be in with us again when we go back; but that doesn’t alter his character, Ellen. Still, if you can’t see that yourself, I don’t want to make you, and if you would rather go home to Tuskingum, we will give up the trip to Europe.”

      “It’s too late to do that now,” said the girl, in cruel reproach.

      Her mother closed her lips resolutely till she could say, “Or you can write to him if you want to.”

      “I don’t want to,” said Ellen, and she dragged herself up out of her chair, and trailed slowly out of the room without looking at her mother.

      “Well?” the judge asked, impatiently, when he came in as soon after this as he decently could. They observed forms with regard to talking about Ellen which, after all, were rather for themselves than for her; Mrs. Kenton, at least, knew that the girl knew when they were talking about her.

      “She took it as well as I expected.”

      “What is she going to do?”

      “She didn’t say. But I don’t believe she will do anything.”

      “I wish I had taken our tickets for next Saturday,” said Kenton.

      “Well, we must wait now,” said his wife. “If he doesn’t write to her, she won’t write to him.”

      “Has she ever answered that letter of his?”

      “No, and I don’t believe she will now.”

      That night Ellen came to her mother and said she need not be afraid of her writing to Bittridge. “He hasn’t changed, if he was wrong, by coming and saying those things to poppa, and nothing has changed.”

      “That is the way I hoped you would see it; Ellen.” Her mother looked wistfully at her, but the girl left her without letting her satisfy the longing in the mother’s heart to put her arms round her child, and pull her head down upon her breast for a cry.

      Kenton slept better that night than his wife, who was kept awake by a formless foreboding. For the week that followed she had the sense of literally pushing the hours away, so that at times she found herself breathless, as if from some heavy physical exertion. At such times she was frantic with the wish to have the days gone, and the day of their sailing come, but she kept her impatience from her husband and children, and especially from Ellen. The girl was passive enough; she was almost willing, and in the preparation for their voyage she did her share of the shopping, and discussed the difficult points of this business with her mother and sister as if she had really been thinking about it all. But her mother doubted if she had, and made more of Ellen’s sunken eyes and thin face than of her intelligent and attentive words. It was these that she reported to her husband, whom she kept from talking with Ellen, and otherwise quelled.

      “Let her alone,” she insisted, one morning of the last week. “What can you do by speaking to her about it? Don’t you see that she is making the best fight she can? You will weaken her if you interfere. It’s less than a week now, and if you can only hold out, I know she can.”

      Kenton groaned. “Well, I suppose you’re right, Sarah. But I don’t like the idea of forcing her to go, unless—”

      “Then you had better write to that fellow, and ask him to come and get her.”

      This shut Kenton’s mouth, and he kept on with his shaving. When he had finished he felt fresher, if not stronger, and he went down to breakfast, which he had alone, not only with reference to his own family, but all the other guests of the hotel. He was always so early that sometimes the dining-room was not open; when this happened, he used to go and buy a newspaper at the clerk’s desk, for it was too early then for the news-stand to be open. It happened so that morning, and he got his paper without noticing the young man who was writing his name in the hotel register, but who looked briskly up when the clerk bade Kenton good-morning by name.

      “Why, judge!” he said, and he put out a hand which Kenton took with trembling reluctance and a dazed stare. “I thought you sailed last Saturday!”

      “We sail next Saturday,” said Kenton.

      “Well, well! Then I misunderstood,” said Bittridge, and he added: “Why, this is money found in the road! How are all the family? I’ve got my mother here with me; brought her on for a kind of a little outing. She’ll be the most surprised woman in New York when I tell her you’re СКАЧАТЬ