The Kentons. William Dean Howells

It will make it easier, for father to go and leave the place, and they’ve got to go. They’ve got to put the Atlantic Ocean between Ellen and that fellow.”

      “It does seem as if something might be done,” his wife rebelled.

      “They’ve done the best that could be done,” said Richard. “And if that skunk hasn’t got some sort of new hold upon father, I shall be satisfied. The worst of it is that it will be all over town in an hour that Bittridge has made up with us. I don’t blame father; he couldn’t help it; he never could be rude to anybody.”

      “I think I’ll try if I can’t be rude to Mr. Bittridge, if he ever undertakes to show in my pretence that he has made it up with us,” said Mary.

      Richard tenderly found out from his father’s shamefaced reluctance, later, that no great mischief had been done. But no precaution on his part availed to keep Bittridge from demonstrating the good feeling between himself and the Kentons when the judge started for New York the next afternoon. He was there waiting to see him off, and he all but took the adieus out of Richard’s hands. He got possession of the judge’s valise, and pressed past the porter into the sleeping-car with it, and remained lounging on the arm of the judge’s seat, making conversation with him and Richard till the train began to move. Then he ran outside, and waved his hand to the judge’s window in farewell, before all that leisure of Tuskingum which haunted the arrival and departure of the trains.

      Mary Kenton was furious when her husband came home and reported the fact to her.

      “How in the world did he find out when father was going?”

      “He must have come to all the through trains since he say him yesterday. But I think even you would have been suited, Mary, if you had seen his failure to walk off from the depot arm-in-arm with me:

      “I wouldn’t have been suited with anything short of your knocking, him down, Dick.”

      “Oh, that wouldn’t have done,” said Richard. After a while he added, patiently, “Ellen is making a good deal of trouble for us.”

      This was what Mary was thinking herself, and it was what she might have said, but since Dick had said it she was obliged to protest. “She isn’t to blame for it.”

      “Oh, I know she isn’t to blame.”

      V.

      The father of the unhappy girl was of the same mixed mind as he rode sleeplessly back to New York in his berth, and heard the noises of slumber all round him. From time to time he groaned softly, and turned from one cheek to the other. Every half-hour or so he let his window-curtain fly up, and lay watching the landscape fleeting past; and then he pulled the curtain down again and tried to sleep. After passing Albany he dozed, but at Poughkeepsie a zealous porter called him by mistake, and the rest of the way to New York he sat up in the smoking-room. It seemed a long while since he had drowsed; the thin nap had not rested him, and the old face that showed itself in the glass, with the frost of a two days’ beard on it, was dry-eyed and limply squared by the fall of the muscles at the corners of the chin.

      He wondered how he should justify to his wife the thing which he felt as accountable for having happened to him as if he could have prevented it. It would not have happened, of course, if he had not gone to Tuskingum, and she could say that to him; now it seemed to him that his going, which had been so imperative before 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.”