A Counterfeit Presentment; and, The Parlour Car - William Howells 2 стр.

General Wyatt. "You infernal scoundrel! What are you doing here?" He raises his stick at Bartlett, who remains motionlessly frowning in wrathful bewilderment, his strong hand knotting itself into a fist where it hangs at his side, while Cummings starts toward them in dismay, with his hand raised to interpose. "Didn't I tell you if I ever set eyes on you again, you villain didn't I warn you that if you ever crossed my path, you" He stops with a violent self-arrest, and lets his stick drop as he throws up both his hands in amaze. "Good Heavens! It's a mistake! I beg your pardon, sir; I do, indeed." He lets fall his hands, and stands staring into Bartlett's face with his illusion apparently not fully dispelled. "A mistake, sir, a mistake. I was misled, sir, by the most prodigious resemblance" At the sound of voices in the corridor without, he turns from Bartlett, and starts back toward the door.

A Voice, very sweet and weak, without.  "I left them in here, I think."

Another Voice. "You must sit down, Constance, and let me look."

The First Voice. "Oh, they'll be here."

General Wyatt., in a loud and anxious tone.  "Margaret, Margaret! Don't bring Constance in here! Go away!" At the moment he reaches the door by which he came in, two ladies in black enter the parlour by the other door, the younger leaning weakly on the arm of the elder, and with a languidly drooping head letting her eyes rove listlessly about over the chairs and sofas. With an abrupt start at sight of Bartlett, who has mechanically turned toward them, the elder lady arrests their movement.

Mrs. Wyatt. "Oh, in mercy's name!" The young lady wearily lifts her eyes; they fall upon Bartlett's face, and a low cry parts her lips as she approaches a pace or two nearer, releasing her arm from her mother's.

Constance. "Ah!" She stops; her thin hands waver before her face, as if to clear or to obstruct her vision, and all at once she sinks forward into a little slender heap upon the floor, almost at Bartlett's feet. He instantly drops upon his knees beside her, and stoops over her to lift her up.

Mrs. Wyatt. "Don't touch her, you cruel wretch! Your touch is poison; the sight of you is murder!" Kneeling on the other side of her daughter, she sets both her hands against his breast and pushes him back.

General Wyatt. "Margaret, stop! Look! Look at him again! It isn't he!"

Mrs. Wyatt. "Not he? Don't tell me! What?" She clutches Bartlett's arm, and scans his face with dilating eyes. "Oh! it isn't, it isn't! But go away,  go away, all the same! You may be an innocent man, but she would perish in your presence. Keep your hands from her, sir! If your wicked heart is not yet satisfied with your wicked work Excuse me; I don't know what I'm saying! But if you have any pity in your faithless soul I oh, speak for me, James, and send him implore him to go away!" She bows her face over her daughter's pale visage, and sobs.

General Wyatt. "Sir, you must pardon us, and have the great goodness to be patient. You have a right to feel yourself aggrieved by what has happened, but no wrong is meant,  no offence. You must be so kind as to go away. I will make you all the needed apologies and explanations." He stoops over his daughter, as Bartlett, in a sort of daze, rises from his knees and retires a few steps. "I beg your pardon, sir," addressing himself to Cummings,  "will you help me a moment?" Cummings, with delicate sympathy and tenderness, lifts the arms of the insensible girl to her father's neck, and assists the General to rise with his burden. "Thanks! She's hardly heavier, poor child, than a ghost." The tears stand in his eyes, as he gathers her closer to him and kisses her wan cheek. "Sir," as he moves away he speaks to Bartlett,  "do me the favour to remain here till I can return to offer you reparation." He makes a stately effort to bow to Bartlett in leaving the room, while his wife, who follows with the young lady's hat and shawl, looks back at the painter with open abhorrence.

Bartlett, turning to his friend from the retreating group on which he has kept his eyes steadfastly fixed.  "Where are their keepers?" He is pale with suppressed rage.

Cummings. "Their keepers?"

Bartlett, savagely.  "Yes! Have they escaped from them, or is it one of the new ideas to let lunatics go about the country alone? If that old fool hadn't dropped his stick, I'd have knocked him over that table in another instant. And that other old maniac,  what did she mean by pushing me back in that way? How do you account for this thing, Cummings? What do you make of it?"

Cummings. "I don't know, upon my word. There seems to be some mystery,  some painful mystery. But the gentleman will be back directly, I suppose, and"

Bartlett, crushing his hat over his eyes.  "I'll leave you to receive him and his mystery. I've had enough of both." He moves toward the door.

Cummings, detaining him.  "Bartlett, you're surely not going away?"

Bartlett. "Yes, I am!"

Cummings. "But he'll be here in a moment. He said he would come back and satisfy the claim which you certainly have to an explanation."

Bartlett, furiously.  "Claim? I've a perfect Alabama Claim to an explanation. He can't satisfy it; he shall not try. It's a little too much to expect me to be satisfied with anything he can say after what's passed. Get out of the way, Cummings, or I'll put you on top of the piano."

Cummings. "You may throw me out of the window, if you like, but not till I've done my best to keep you here. It's a shame, it's a crime to go away. You talk about lunatics: you're a raving madman, yourself. Have one glimmer of reason, do; and see what you're about. It's a mistake; it's a misunderstanding. It's his right, it's your duty, to have it cleared up. Come, you've a conscience, Bartlett, and a clean one. Don't give way to your abominable temper. What? You won't stay? Bartlett, I blush for you!"

Bartlett. "Blush unseen, then!" He thrusts Cummings aside and pushes furiously from the room. Cummings looks into the corridor after him, and then returns, panting, to the piano, and mechanically rearranges the things at his feet; he walks nervously away, and takes some turns up and down the room, looking utterly bewildered, and apparently uncertain whether to go or stay. But he has decided upon the only course really open to him by sinking down into one of the armchairs, when General Wyatt appears at the threshold of the door on the right of the piano. Cummings rises and comes forward in great embarrassment to meet him.

General Wyatt, with a look of surprise at not seeing Bartlett.  "The other gentleman"

Cummings. "My friend has gone out. I hope he will return soon. He has I hardly know what to say to you, sir. He has done himself great injustice; but it was natural that under the circumstances"

General Wyatt, with hurt pride.  "Perfectly. I should have lost my temper, too; but I think I should have waited at the request the prayer of an older man. I don't mind his temper; the other villain had no temper. Sir, am I right in addressing you as the Rev. Arthur Cummings?"

General Wyatt, with a look of surprise at not seeing Bartlett.  "The other gentleman"

Cummings. "My friend has gone out. I hope he will return soon. He has I hardly know what to say to you, sir. He has done himself great injustice; but it was natural that under the circumstances"

General Wyatt, with hurt pride.  "Perfectly. I should have lost my temper, too; but I think I should have waited at the request the prayer of an older man. I don't mind his temper; the other villain had no temper. Sir, am I right in addressing you as the Rev. Arthur Cummings?"

Cummings. "My name is Arthur Cummings. I am a minister."

General Wyatt. "I thought I was not mistaken this time. I heard you preach last Sunday in Boston; and I know your cousin, Major Cummings of the 34th Artillery. I am General Wyatt."

Cummings, with a start of painful surprise and sympathy.  "General Wyatt?"

General Wyatt, keenly.  "Your cousin has mentioned me to you?"

Cummings. "Yes,  oh yes, certainly; certainly, very often, General Wyatt. But" endeavouring to recover himself "your name is known to us all, and honoured. I I am glad to see you back; I understood you were in Paris."

General Wyatt, with fierce defiance.  "I was in Paris three weeks ago." Some moments of awkward silence ensue, during which General Wyatt does not relax his angry attitude.

Cummings, finally.  "I am sorry my friend is not here to meet you. I ought to say, in justice to him, that his hasty temper does great wrong to his heart and judgment."

General Wyatt. "Why, yes, sir; so does mine so does mine."

Cummings, with a respectful smile lost upon the General.  "And I know that he will certainly be grieved in this instance to have yielded to it."

General Wyatt, with sudden meekness.  "I hope so, sir. But I am not altogether sorry that he has done it. I have not only an explanation but a request to make,  a very great and strange favour to ask,  and I am not sure that I should be able to treat him civilly enough throughout an entire interview to ask it properly." Cummings listens with an air of attentive respect, but makes, to this strange statement, no response other than a look of question, while the General pokes about on the carpet at his feet with the point of his stick for a moment before he brings it resolutely down upon the floor with a thump, and resumes, fiercely again: "Sir, your friend is the victim of an extraordinary resemblance, which is so much more painful to us than we could have made it to him that I have to struggle with my reason to believe that the apology should not come from his side rather than mine. He may feel that we have outraged him, but every look of his, every movement, every tone of his voice, is a mortal wound, a deadly insult to us. He should not live, sir, in the same solar system!" The General deals the floor another stab with his cane, while his eyes burn vindictively upon the mild brown orbs of Cummings, wide open with astonishment. He falters, with returning consciousness of his attitude: "I I beg your pardon, sir; I am ridiculous." He closes his lips pathetically, and lets fall his head. When he lifts it again, it is to address Cummings with a singular gentleness: "I know that I speak to a gentleman."

Cummings. "I try to be a good man."

General Wyatt. "I had formed that idea of you, sir, in the pulpit. Will you do me the great kindness to answer a question, personal to myself, which I must ask?"

Cummings. "By all means."

General Wyatt. "You spoke of supposing me still in Paris. Are you aware of any circumstances painful circumstances connected with my presence there? Pardon my asking; I wouldn't press you if I could help."

Cummings, with reluctance.  "I had just heard something about a letter from a friend"

General Wyatt, bitterly.  "The news has travelled fast. Well, sir, a curious chance a pitiless caprice of destiny connects your friend with that miserable story." At Cummings's look of amaze: "Through no fault of his, sir; through no fault of his. Sir, I shall not seem to obtrude my trouble unjustifiably upon you when I tell you how; you will see that it was necessary for me to speak. I am glad you already know something of the affair, and I am sure that you will regard what I have to say with the right feeling of a gentleman,  of, as you say, a good man."

Cummings. "Whatever you think necessary to say to me shall be sacred. But I hope you won't feel that it is necessary to say anything more. I am confident that when my friend has your assurance from me that what has happened is the result of a distressing association"

General Wyatt. "I thank you, sir. But something more is due to him; how much more you shall judge. Something more is due to us: I wish to preserve the appearance of sanity, in his eyes and your own. Nevertheless" the General's tone and bearing perceptibly stiffen "if you are reluctant"

Cummings, with reverent cordiality.  "General Wyatt, I shall feel deeply honoured by whatever confidence you repose in me. I need not say how dear your fame is to us all." General Wyatt, visibly moved, bows to the young minister. "It was only on your account that I hesitated."

General Wyatt. "Thanks. I understand. I will be explicit, but I will try to be brief. Your friend bears this striking, this painful resemblance to the man who has brought this blight upon us all; yes, sir," at Cummings's look of deprecation,  "to a scoundrel whom I hardly know how to characterise aright in the presence of a clergyman. Two years ago doubtless your correspondent has written my wife and daughter (they were then abroad without me) met him in Paris; and he won the poor child's affection. My wife's judgment was also swayed in his favour,  against her first impulse of distrust; but when I saw him, I could not endure him. Yet I was helpless: my girl's happiness was bound up in him; all that I could do was to insist upon delay. He was an American, well related, unobjectionable by all the tests which society can apply, and I might have had to wait long for the proofs that an accident gave me against him. The man's whole soul was rotten; at the time he had wound himself into my poor girl's innocent heart, a woman was living who had the just and perhaps the legal claim of a wife upon him; he was a felon besides,  a felon shielded through pity for his friends by the man whose name he had forged; he was of course a liar and a coward: I beat him with my stick, sir. Ah! I made him confess his infamy under his own hand, and then" the General advances defiantly upon Cummings, who unconsciously retires a pace "and then I compelled him to break with my daughter. Do you think I did right?"

Cummings. "I don't exactly understand."

General Wyatt. "Why, sir, it happens often enough in this shabby world that a man gains a poor girl's love, and then jilts her. I chose what I thought the less terrible sorrow for my child. I could not tell her how filthily unworthy he was without bringing to her pure heart a sense of intolerable contamination; I could not endure to speak of it even to my wife. It seemed better that they should both suffer such wrong as a broken engagement might bring them than that they should know what I knew. He was master of the part, and played it well; he showed himself to them simply a heartless scoundrel, and he remains in my power, an outcast now and a convict whenever I will. My story, as it seems to be, is well known in Paris; but the worst is unknown. I choose still that it shall be thought my girl was the victim of a dastardly slight, and I bear with her and her mother the insolent pity with which the world visits such sorrow." He pauses, and then brokenly resumes: "The affair has not turned out as I hoped, in the little I could hope from it. My trust that the blow, which must sink so deeply into her heart, would touch her pride, and that this would help her to react against it, was mistaken. In such things it appears a woman has no pride; I did not know it; we men are different. The blow crushed her; that was all. Sometimes I am afraid that I must yet try the effect of the whole truth upon her; that I must try if the knowledge of all his baseness cannot restore to her the self-respect which the wrong done herself seems to have robbed her of. And yet I tremble lest the sense of his fouler shame I may be fatally temporising; but in her present state, I dread any new shock for her; it may be death I" He pauses again, and sets his lips firmly; all at once he breaks into a sob. "I I beg your pardon, sir."