The Register
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William D. Howells >> The Register
This etext was produced from the 1911 Houghton Mifflin Company
edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE REGISTER
by William D. Howells
I.
SCENE: In an upper chamber of a boarding-house in Melanchthon Place,
Boston, a mature, plain young lady, with every appearance of
establishing herself in the room for the first time, moves about,
bestowing little touches of decoration here and there, and talking
with another young lady, whose voice comes through the open doorway
of an inner room.
MISS ETHEL REED, from within: "What in the world are you doing,
Nettie?"
MISS HENRIETTA SPAULDING: "Oh, sticking up a household god or two.
What are you doing?"
MISS REED: "Despairing."
MISS SPAULDING: "Still?"
MISS REED, tragically: "Still! How soon did you expect me to stop?
I am here on the sofa, where I flung myself two hours ago, and I
don't think I shall ever get up. There is no reason WHY I ever
should."
MISS SPAULDING, suggestively: "Dinner."
MISS REED: "Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken heart!"
MISS SPAULDING: "I don't believe your heart is broken."
MISS REED: "But I tell you it is! I ought to know when my own heart
is broken, I should hope. What makes you think it isn't?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, it's happened so often!"
MISS REED: "But this is a real case. You ought to feel my forehead.
It's as hot!"
MISS SPAULDING: "You ought to get up and help me put this room to
rights, and then you would feel better."
MISS REED: "No; I should feel worse. The idea of household gods
makes me sick. Sylvan deities are what I want; the great god Pan
among the cat-tails and arrow-heads in the 'ma'sh' at Ponkwasset; the
dryads of the birch woods--there are no oaks; the nymphs that haunt
the heights and hollows of the dear old mountain; the" -
MISS SPAULDING: "Wha-a-at? I can't hear a word you say."
MISS REED: "That's because you keep fussing about so. Why don't you
be quiet, if you want to hear?" She lifts her voice to its highest
pitch, with a pause for distinctness between the words: "I'm heart-
broken for--Ponkwasset. The dryads--of the--birch woods. The
nymphs--and the great--god--Pan--in the reeds--by the river. And
all--that--sort of--thing!"
MISS SPAULDING: "You know very well you're not."
MISS REED: "I'm not? What's the reason I'm not? Then, what am I
heart-broken for?"
MISS SPAULDING: "You're not heart-broken at all. You know very well
that he'll call before we've been here twenty-four hours."
MISS REED: "Who?"
MISS SPAULDING: "The great god Pan."
MISS REED: "Oh, how cruel you are, to mock me so! Come in here, and
sympathize a little! Do, Nettie."
MISS SPAULDING: "No; you come out here and utilize a little. I'm
acting for your best good, as they say at Ponkwasset."
MISS REED: "When they want to be disagreeable!"
MISS SPAULDING: "If this room isn't in order by the time he calls,
you'll be everlastingly disgraced."
MISS REED: "I'm that now. I can't be more so--there's that comfort.
What makes you think he'll call?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Because he's a gentleman, and will want to
apologize. He behaved very rudely to you."
MISS REED: "No, Nettie; _I_ behaved rudely to HIM. Yes! Besides,
if he behaved rudely, he was no gentleman. It's a contradiction in
terms, don't you see? But I'll tell you what I'm going to do if he
comes. I'm going to show a proper spirit for once in my life. I'm
going to refuse to see him. You've got to see him."
MISS SPAULDING: "Nonsense!"
MISS REED: "Why nonsense? Oh, why? Expound!"
MISS SPAULDING: "Because he wasn't rude to me, and he doesn't want
to see me. Because I'm plain, and you're pretty."
MISS REED: "I'm NOT! You know it perfectly well. I'm hideous."
MISS SPAULDING: "Because I'm poor, and you're a person of
independent property."
MISS REED: "DEPENDENT property, I should call it: just enough to be
useless on! But that's insulting to HIM. How can you say it's
because I have a little money?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Well, then, I won't. I take it back. I'll say
it's because you're young, and I'm old."
MISS REED: "You're NOT old. You're as young as anybody, Nettie
Spaulding. And you know I'm not young; I'm twenty-seven, if I'm a
day. I'm just dropping into the grave. But I can't argue with you,
miles off so, any longer." Miss Reed appears at the open door,
dragging languidly after her the shawl which she had evidently drawn
round her on the sofa; her fair hair is a little disordered, and she
presses it into shape with one hand as she comes forward; a lovely
flush vies with a heavenly pallor in her cheeks; she looks a little
pensive in the arching eyebrows, and a little humorous about the
dimpled mouth. "Now I can prove that you are entirely wrong. Where-
-were you?--This room is rather an improvement over the one we had
last winter. There is more of a view"--she goes to the window--"of
the houses across the Place; and I always think the swell front gives
a pretty shape to a room. I'm sorry they've stopped building them.
Your piano goes very nicely into that little alcove. Yes, we're
quite palatial. And, on the whole, I'm glad there's no fireplace.
It's a pleasure at times; but for the most part it's a vanity and a
vexation, getting dust and ashes over everything. Yes; after all,
give me the good old-fashioned, clean, convenient register! Ugh! My
feet are like ice." She pulls an easy-chair up to the register in
the corner of the room, and pushes open its valves with the toe of
her slipper. As she settles herself luxuriously in the chair, and
poises her feet daintily over the register: "Ah, this is something
like! Henrietta Spaulding, ma'am! Did I ever tell you that you were
the best friend I have in the world?"
MISS SPAULDING, who continues her work of arranging the room:
"Often."
MISS REED: "Did you ever believe it?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Never."
MISS REED: "Why?"
MISS SPAULDING, thoughtfully regarding a vase which she holds in her
hand, after several times shifting it from a bracket to the corner of
her piano and back: "I wish I could tell where you do look best!"
MISS REED, leaning forward wistfully, with her hands clasped and
resting on her knees: "I wish you would tell me WHY you don't
believe you're the best friend I have in the world."
MISS SPAULDING, finally placing the vase on the bracket: "Because
you've said so too often."
MISS REED: "Oh, that's no reason! I can prove to you that you are.
Who else but you would have taken in a homeless and friendless
creature like me, and let her stay bothering round in demoralizing
idleness, while you were seriously teaching the young idea how to
drub the piano?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Anybody who wanted a room-mate as much as I did,
and could have found one willing to pay more than her share of the
lodging."
MISS REED, thoughtfully: "Do you think so, Henrietta?"
MISS SPAULDING: "I know so."
MISS REED: "And you're not afraid that you wrong yourself?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Not the least."
MISS REED: "Well, be it so--as they say in novels. I will not
contradict you; I will not say you are my BEST friend; I will merely
say that you are my ONLY friend. Come here, Henrietta. Draw up your
chair, and put your little hand in mine."
MISS SPAULDING, with severe distrust: "What do you want, Ethel
Reed?"
MISS REED: "I want--I want--to talk it over with you."
MISS SPAULDING, recoiling: "I knew it! Well, now, we've talked it
over enough; we've talked it over till there's nothing left of it."
MISS REED: "Oh, there's everything left! It remains in all its
original enormity. Perhaps we shall get some new light upon it."
She extends a pleading hand towards Miss Spaulding. "Come,
Henrietta, my only friend, shake!--as the 'good Indians' say. Let
your Ethel pour her hackneyed sorrows into your bosom. Such an
uncomfortable image, it always seems, doesn't it, pouring sorrows
into bosoms! Come!"
MISS SPAULDING, decidedly: "No, I won't! And you needn't try
wheedling any longer. I won't sympathize with you on that basis at
all."
MISS REED: "What shall I try, then, if you won't let me try
wheedling?"
MISS SPAULDING, going to the piano and opening it: "Try courage; try
self-respect."
MISS REED: "Oh, dear! when I haven't a morsel of either. Are you
going to practise, you cruel maid?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Of course I am. It's half-past four, and if I
don't do it now I sha'n't be prepared to-morrow for Miss Robins: she
takes this piece."
MISS REED: "Well, well, perhaps it's all for the best. If music be
the food of--umph-ump!--you know what!--play on." They both laugh,
and Miss Spaulding pushes back a little from the piano, and wheels
toward her friend, letting one hand rest slightly on the keys.
MISS SPAULDING: "Ethel Reed, you're the most ridiculous girl in the
world."
MISS REED: "Correct!"
MISS SPAULDING: "And I don't believe you ever were in love, or ever
will be."
MISS REED: "Ah, there you wrong me, Henrietta! I have been, and I
shall be--lots of times."
MISS SPAULDING: "Well, what do you want to say now? You must hurry,
for I can't lose any more time."
MISS REED: "I will free my mind with neatness and despatch. I
simply wish to go over the whole affair, from Alfred to Omaha; and
you've got to let me talk as much slang and nonsense as I want. And
then I'll skip all the details I can. Will you?"
MISS SPAULDING, with impatient patience: "Oh, I suppose so!"
MISS REED: "That's very sweet of you, though you don't look it.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes, do you think it was forth-putting at all,
to ask him if he would give me the lessons?"
MISS SPAULDING: "It depends upon why you asked him."
MISS REED: "I asked him from--from--Let me see; I asked him because-
-from--Yes, I say it boldly; I asked him from an enthusiasm for art,
and a sincere wish to learn the use of oil, as he called it. Yes!"
MISS SPAULDING: "Are you sure?"
MISS REED: "Sure? Well, we will say that I am, for the sake of
argument. And, having secured this basis, the question is whether I
wasn't bound to offer him pay at the end, and whether he wasn't wrong
to take my doing so in dudgeon."
MISS SPAULDING: "Yes, I think he was wrong. And the terms of his
refusal were very ungentlemanly. He ought to apologize most amply
and humbly." At a certain expression in Miss Reed's face, she adds,
with severity: "Unless you're keeping back the main point. You
usually do. Are you?"
MISS REED: "No, no. I've told you everything--everything!"
MISS SPAULDING: "Then I say, as I said from the beginning, that he
behaved very badly. It was very awkward and very painful, but you've
really nothing to blame yourself for."
MISS REED, ruefully: "No-o-o!"
MISS SPAULDING: "What do you mean by that sort of 'No'?"
MISS REED: "Nothing."
MISS SPAULDING, sternly: "Yes, you do, Ethel."
MISS REED: "I don't, really. What makes you' think I do?"
MISS SPAULDING: "It sounded very dishonest."
MISS REED: "Did it? I didn't mean it to." Her friend breaks down
with a laugh, while Miss Reed preserves a demure countenance.
MISS SPAULDING: "What ARE you keeping back?"
MISS REED: "Nothing at all--less than nothing! I never thought it
was worth mentioning."
MISS SPAULDING: "Are you telling me the truth?"
MISS REED: "I'm telling you the truth and something more. You can't
ask better than that, can you?"
MISS SPAULDING, turning to her music again: "Certainly not."
MISS REED: in a pathetic wail: "O Henrietta! do you abandon me
thus? Well, I will tell you, heartless girl! I've only kept it back
till now because it was so extremely mortifying to my pride as an
artist--as a student of oil. Will you hear me?"
MISS SPAULDING, beginning to play: "No."
MISS REED, with burlesque wildness: "You shall!" Miss Spaulding
involuntarily desists. "There was a moment--a fatal moment--when he
said he thought he ought to tell me that if I found oil amusing I
could go on; but that he didn't believe I should ever learn to use
it, and he couldn't let me take lessons from him with the expectation
that I should. There!"
MISS SPAULDING, with awful reproach: "And you call that less than
nothing? I've almost a mind never to speak to you again, Ethel. How
COULD you deceive me so?"
MISS REED: "Was it really deceiving? _I_ shouldn't call it so. And
I needed your sympathy so much, and I knew I shouldn't get it unless
you thought I was altogether in the right."
MISS SPAULDING: "You are altogether in the wrong! And it's YOU that
ought to apologize to HIM--on your bended knees. How COULD you offer
him money after that? I wonder at you, Ethel!"
MISS REED: "Why--don't you see, Nettie?--I did keep on taking the
lessons of him. I did find oil amusing--or the oilist--and I kept
on. Of course I had to, off there in a farmhouse full of lady
boarders, and he the only gentleman short of Crawford's. Strike, but
hear me, Henrietta Spaulding! What was I to do about the half-dozen
lessons I had taken before he told me I should never learn to use
oil? Was I to offer to pay him for these, and not for the rest; or
was I to treat the whole series as gratuitous? I used to lie awake
thinking about it. I've got little tact, but I couldn't find any way
out of the trouble. It was a box--yes, a box of the deepest dye!
And the whole affair having got to be--something else, don't you
know?--made it all the worse. And if he'd only--only--But he didn't.
Not a syllable, not a breath! And there I was. I HAD to offer him
the money. And it's almost killed me--the way he took my offering
it, and now the way you take it! And it's all of a piece." Miss
Reed suddenly snatches her handkerchief from her pocket, and buries
her face in it.--"Oh, dear--oh, dear! Oh!--hu, hu, hu!"
MISS SPAULDING, relenting: "It was awkward."
MISS REED: "Awkward! You seem to think that because I carry things
off lightly I have no feeling."
MISS SPAULDING: "You know I don't think that, Ethel."
MISS REED, pursuing her advantage: "I don't know it from you,
Nettie. I've tried and TRIED to pass it off as a joke, and to treat
it as something funny; but I can tell you it's no joke at all."
MISS SPAULDING, sympathetically: "I see, dear."
MISS REED: "It's not that I care for him" -
MISS SPAULDING: "Why, of course."
MISS REED: "For I don't in the least. He is horrid every way:
blunt, and rude, and horrid. I never cared for him. But I care for
myself! He has put me in the position of having done an unkind
thing--an unladylike thing--when I was only doing what I had to do.
Why need he have taken it the way he did? Why couldn't he have said
politely that he couldn't accept the money because he hadn't earned
it? Even THAT would have been mortifying enough. But he must go and
be so violent, and rush off, and--Oh, I never could have treated
anybody so!"
MISS SPAULDING: "Not unless you were very fond of them."
MISS REED: "What?"
MISS SPAULDING: "Not unless you were very fond of them."
MISS REED, putting away her handkerchief: "Oh, nonsense, Nettie! He
never cared anything for me, or he couldn't have acted so. But no
matter for that. He has fixed everything so that it can never be got
straight--never in the world. It will just have to remain a hideous
mass of--of--_I_ don't know what; and I have simply got to on
withering with despair at the point where I left off. But I don't
care! That's one comfort."
MISS SPAULDING: "I don't believe he'll let you wither long, Ethel."
MISS REED: "He's let me wither for twenty-four hours already! But
it's nothing to me, now, how long he lets me wither. I'm perfectly
satisfied to have the affair remain as it is. I am in the right, and
if he comes I shall refuse to see him."
MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, no, you won't, Ethel!"
MISS REED: "Yes, I shall. I shall receive him very coldly. I won't
listen to any excuse from him."
MISS SPAULDING: "Oh, yes, you will, Ethel!"
MISS REED: "No, I shall not. If he wishes me to listen he must
begin by humbling himself in the dust--yes, the dust, Nettie! I
won't take anything short of it. I insist that he shall realize that
I have suffered."
MISS SPAULDING: "Perhaps he has suffered too!"
MISS REED: "Oh, HE suffered!"
MISS SPAULDING: "You know that he was perfectly devoted to you."
MISS REED: "He never said so."
MISS SPAULDING: "Perhaps he didn't dare."
MISS REED: "He dared to be very insolent to me."
MISS SPAULDING: "And you know you liked him very much."
MISS REED: "I won't let you say that, Nettie Spaulding. I DIDN'T
like him. I respected and admired him; but I didn't LIKE him. He
will come near me; but if he does he has to begin by--by--Let me see,
what shall I make him begin by doing?" She casts up her eyes for
inspiration while she leans forward over the register. "Yes, I will!
He has got to begin by taking that money!"
MISS SPAULDING: "Ethel, you wouldn't put that affront upon a
sensitive and high-spirited man!"
MISS REED: "Wouldn't I? You wait and SEE, Miss Spaulding! He shall
take the money, and he shall sign a receipt for it. I'll draw up the
receipt now, so as to have it ready, and I shall ask him to sign it
the very moment he enters this door--the very instant!" She takes a
portfolio from the table near her, without rising, and writes:
"'Received from Miss Ethel Reed one hundred and twenty-five dollars,
in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting.' There--when Mr.
Oliver Ransom has signed this little document he may begin to talk;
not before!" She leans back in her chair with an air of pitiless
determination.
MISS SPAULDING: "But, Ethel, you don't mean to make him take money
for the lessons he gave you after he told you you couldn't learn
anything?"
MISS REED, after a moment's pause: "Yes, I do. This is to punish
him. I don't wish for justice now; I wish for vengeance! At first I
would have compromised on the six lessons, or on none at all, if he
had behaved nicely; but after what's happened I shall insist upon
paying him for every lesson, so as to make him feel that the whole
thing, from first to last, was a purely business transaction on my
part. Yes, a PURELY--BUSINESS--TRANSACTION!"
MISS SPAULDING, turning to her music: "Then I've got nothing more to
say to you, Ethel Reed."
MISS REED: "I don't say but what, after he's taken the money and
signed the receipt, I'll listen to anything else he's got to say,
very willingly." Miss Spaulding makes no answer, but begins to play
with a scientific absorption, feeling her way fitfully through the
new piece, while Miss Reed, seated by the register, trifles with the
book she has taken from the table.
II.
The interior of the room of Miss Spaulding and Miss Reed remains in
view, while the scene discloses, on the other side of the partition
wall in the same house, the bachelor apartment of Mr. Samuel
Grinnidge. Mr. Grinnidge in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his
pipe in his mouth, has the effect of having just come in; his friend
Mr. Oliver Ransom stands at the window, staring out into the November
weather.
GRINNIDGE: "How long have you been waiting here?"
RANSOM: "Ten minutes--ten years. How should I know?"
GRINNIDGE: "Well, I don't know who else should. Get back to-day?"
RANSOM: "Last night."
GRINNIDGE: "Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register,
and warm your poor feet." He puts his hand out over the register.
"Confound it! somebody's got the register open in the next room! You
see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just
under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But it don't.
There was a fellow in there last winter who used to get all my heat.
Used to go out and leave his register open, and I'd come in here just
before dinner and find this place as cold as a barn. We had a
running fight of it all winter. The man who got his register open
first in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never
turned the other way when it started in one direction. Used to
almost suffocate--warm, muggy days--maintaining my rights. Some
piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And she hasn't
lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What kept you
so late in the country?"
RANSOM, after an absent-minded pause: "Grinnidge, I wish you would
give me some advice."
GRINNIDGE: "You can have all you want of it at the market price."
RANSOM: "I don't mean your legal advice."
GRINNIDGE: "I'm sorry. What have you been doing?"
RANSOM: "I've been making an ass of myself."
GRINNIDGE: "Wasn't that rather superfluous?"
RANSOM: "If you please, yes. But now, it you're capable of
listening to me without any further display of your cross-examination
wit, I should like to tell you how it happened."
GRINNIDGE: "I will do my best to veil my brilliancy. Go on."
RANSOM: "I went up to Ponkwasset early in September for the
foliage."
GRINNIDGE: "And staid till late in October. There must have been a
reason for that. What was her name? Foliage?"
RANSOM, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, near which his
friend sits, and talking to him directly over the register: "I think
you'll have to get along without the name for the present. I'll tell
you by and by." As Mr. Ransom pronounces these words, Miss Reed, on
her side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and,
after a moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. "But she was
beautiful. She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes--eyes,
you know, that could be funny or tender, just as she chose--the kind
of eyes I always liked." Miss Reed leads forward over the register.
"She had one of those faces that always leave you in doubt whether
they're laughing at you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but
you feel certain that they're GOOD, and that if they did hurt you by
laughing at you, they'd look sorry for you afterward. When she
walked you saw what an exquisite creature she was. It always made me
mad to think I couldn't PAINT her walk."
GRINNIDGE: "I suppose you saw a good deal of her walk."
RANSOM: "Yes; we were off in the woods and fields half the time
together." He takes a turn towards the window.
MISS REED, suddenly shutting the register on her side: "Oh!"
MISS SPAULDING, looking up from her music: "What is it, Ethel?"
MISS REED: "Nothing, nothing; I--I--thought it was getting too warm.
Go on, dear; don't let me interrupt you." After a moment of heroic
self-denial she softly presses the register open with her foot.
RANSOM, coming back to the register: "It all began in that way. I
had the good fortune one day to rescue her from a--cow."
MISS REED: "Oh, for shame!"
MISS SPAULDING, desisting from her piano: "What IS the matter?"
MISS REED, clapping the register to: "This ridiculous book! But
don't--don't mind me, Nettie." Breathlessly: "Go--go--on!" Miss
Spaulding resumes, and again Miss Reed softly presses the register
open.
RANSOM, after a pause: "The cow was grazing, and had no more thought
of hooking Miss--"
MISS REED: "Oh, I didn't suppose he WOULD!--Go on, Nettie, go on!
The hero--SUCH a goose!"
RANSOM: "I drove her away with my camp-stool, and Miss--the young
lady--was as grateful as if I had rescued her from a menagerie of
wild animals. I walked home with her to the farm house, and the
trouble began at once." Pantomime of indignant protest and burlesque
menace on the part of Miss Reed. "There wasn't another well woman in
the house, except her friend Miss Spaulding, who was rather old and
rather plain." He takes another turn to the window.
MISS REED: "Oh!" She shuts the register, but instantly opens it
again. "Louder, Nettie."
MISS SPAULDING, in astonishment: "What?"
MISS REED: "Did I speak? I didn't know it. I" -
MISS SPAULDING, desisting from practice: "What is that strange,
hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise?"
MISS REED, softly closing the register with her foot: "I don't hear
any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do you hear
it NOW?"
MISS SPAULDING: "No. It was the Brighton whistle, probably."
MISS REED: "Oh, very likely." As Miss Spaulding turns again to her
practice Miss Reed re-opens the register and listens again. A little
interval of silence ensues, while Ransom lights a cigarette.
GRINNIDGE: "So you sought opportunities of rescuing her from other
cows?"
RANSOM, returning: "That wasn't necessary. The young lady was so
impressed by my behavior, that she asked if I would give her some
lessons in the use of oil."
GRINNIDGE: "She thought if she knew how to paint pictures like yours
she wouldn't need any one to drive the cows away."
RANSOM: "Don't be farcical, Grinnidge. That sort of thing will do
with some victim on the witness-stand who can't help himself. Of
course I said I would, and we were off half the time together,
painting the loveliest and loneliest bits around Ponkwasset. It all
went on very well, till one day I felt bound in conscience to tell
her that I didn't think she would ever learn to paint, and that--if
she was serious about it she'd better drop it at once, for she was
wasting her time."