A Counterfeit Presentment; and, The Parlour Car. Howells William Dean
– 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."
Cummings.– "Don't! You wrong yourself and me. I have seen Miss Wyatt; but I hope" —
General Wyatt.– "You have seen her ghost. You have not seen the radiant creature that was once alive. Well, sir; enough of this. There is little left to trouble you with. We landed eight days ago, and I have since been looking about for some place in which my daughter could hide herself; I can't otherwise suggest her morbid sensitiveness, her terror of people. This region was highly commended to me for its healthfulness; but I have come upon this house by chance. I understood that it was empty, and I thought it more than probable that we might pass the autumn months here unmolested by the presence of any one belonging to our world, if not in entire seclusion. At the best, my daughter would hardly have been able to endure another change at once; so far as anything could give her pleasure, the beauty and the wild quiet of the region had pleased her, but she is now quite prostrated, sir," —
Cummings, definitively. – "My friend will go away at once. There is nothing else for it."
General Wyatt.– "That is too much to ask."
Cummings.– "I won't conceal my belief that he will think so. But there can be no question with him when" —
General Wyatt.– "When you tell him our story?" After a moment: "Yes, he has a right to know it – as the rest of the world knows it. You must tell him, sir."
Cummings, gently. – "No, he need know nothing beyond the fact of this resemblance to some one painfully associated with your past lives. He is a man whose real tenderness of heart would revolt from knowledge that could inflict further sorrow upon you."
General Wyatt.– "Sir, will you convey to this friend of yours an old man's very humble apology, and sincere prayer for his forgiveness?"
Cummings.– "He will not exact anything of that sort. The evidence of misunderstanding will be clear to him at a word from me."
General Wyatt.– "But he has a right to this explanation from my own lips, and – Sir, I am culpably weak. But now that I have missed seeing him here, I confess that I would willingly avoid meeting him. The mere sound of his voice, as I heard it before I saw him, in first coming upon you, was enough to madden me. Can you excuse my senseless dereliction to him?"
Cummings.– "I will answer for him."
General Wyatt.– "Thanks. It seems monstrous that I should be asking and accepting these great favours. But you are doing a deed of charity to a helpless man utterly beggared in pride." He chokes with emotion, and does not speak for a moment. "Your friend is also – he is not also – a clergyman?"
Cummings, smiling. – "No. He is a painter."
General Wyatt.– "Is he a man of note? Successful in his profession?"
Cummings.– "Not yet. But that is certain to come."
General Wyatt.– "He is poor?"
Cummings.– "He is a young painter."
General Wyatt.– "Sir, excuse me. Had he planned to remain here some time yet?"
Cummings, reluctantly. – "He has been sketching here. He had expected to stay through October."
General Wyatt.– "You make the sacrifice hard to accept – I beg your pardon! But I must accept it. I am bound hand and foot."
Cummings.– "I am sorry to have been obliged to tell you this."
General