Out Of The Question - William Dean Howells

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finishing her confidence: "Oh, we needn't make a mystery of such a little thing. We 're going to offer you one of our rooms."

      Mrs. Bellingham: "My dear, you are going to do nothing of the kind. We will never allow it."

      Maggie: "Now, Mrs. Bellingham, you break my heart! It's nothing, it's less than nothing. I believe we can make room for all three of you."

      Mrs. Murray, promptly: "Let me go with you, young ladies. I'm an old housekeeper, and I can help you plan."

      Maggie: "Oh do, Mrs. Murray. You can tell which room you'd better take, Lilly's or mine. Lilly's is" —

      Mrs. Murray: "Oh! I had forgotten that we were detaining you!" Mrs. Murray is about to leave the room with the two young girls, when her eye falls upon Blake, who is still present, with his burden of hand-bags and shawls. "Leave the things on the table, please. We are obliged to you." Mrs. Murray speaks with a certain finality of manner and tone which there is no mistaking; Blake stares at her a moment, and then, without replying, lays down the things and turns to quit the room; at the same instant Leslie rises with a grand air from her mother's side, on the sofa, and sweeps towards him.

      Leslie, very graciously: "Don't let our private afflictions drive you from a public room, Mr.—"

      Blake: "Blake."

      Leslie: "Mr. Blake. This is my mother, Mr. Blake, who wishes to thank you for all your kindness to us."

      Mrs. Bellingham: "Yes, indeed, Mr. Blake, we are truly grateful to you."

      Leslie, with increasing significance: "And my aunt, Mrs. Murray; and my friend, Miss Wallace and Miss Roberts." Blake bows to each of the ladies as they are named, but persists in his movement to quit the room; Leslie impressively offers him her hand. "Must you go? Thank you, ever, ever so much!" She follows him to the door in his withdrawal, and then turns and confronts her aunt with an embattled front of defiance.

      Maggie, with an effort breaking the embarrassing silence: "Come, Lilly. Let us go and take a look at our resources. We 'll be back in a moment Mrs. Bellingham."

      IV. Mrs. Bellingham and Leslie; afterwards Mrs, Murray and Maggie.

      Leslie, coming abruptly forward as her aunt goes out with the two young girls, and drooping meekly in front of her mother, who remains seated on the sofa: "Well, mamma!"

      Mrs. Bellingham, tranquilly contemplating her for a moment: "Well, Leslie!" She pauses, and again silently regards her daughter. "Perhaps you may be said to have overdone it."

      Leslie, passionately: "I can't help it. mother! I couldn't see him sent away in that insolent manner, I don't care who or what he is. Aunt Kate's tone was outrageous, atrocious, hideous! And after accepting, yes, demanding every service he could possibly render, the whole afternoon! It made me blush for her, and I wasn't going to stand it."

      Mrs. Bellingham: "If you mean by all that that your poor aunt is a very ungracious and exacting woman, I shall not dispute you. But she's your father's sister; and she's very much older than you. You seem to have forgotten, too, that your mother was present to do any justice that was needed. It 'a very unfortunate that he should have been able to do us so many favors, but that can't be helped now. It's one of the risks of coming to these out-of-the-way places, that you 're so apt to be thrown in with nondescript people that you don't know how to get rid of afterwards. And now that he's been so cordially introduced to us all! Well, I hope you won't have to be crueler in the end, my dear, than your aunt meant to be in the beginning. So far, of course, he has behaved with perfect delicacy; but you must see yourself, Leslie, that even as a mere acquaintance he's quite out of the question; that however kind and thoughtful he's been, and no one could have been more so, he isn't a gentleman."

      Leslie, impatiently: "Well, then, mother, I am! And so are you. And I think we are bound to behave like gentlemen at any cost. I didn't mean to ignore you. I didn't consider. I acted as I thought Charley would have done."

      Mrs. Bellingham: "Oh, my dear, my dear Don't you see there's a very important difference? Your brother is a man, and he can act without reference to consequences. But you are a young lady, and you can't be as gentlemanly as you like without being liable to misinterpretation. I shall expect you to behave very discreetly indeed from this time forth. We must consider now how our new friend can be kindly, yet firmly and promptly, dropped."

      Leslie: "Oh, it's another of those embarrassments that aunt Kate's always getting me into I I was discreet about it till she acted so horridly. You can ask Maggie if I didn't talk in the wisest way about it; like a perfect — owl. I saw it just as you do, mamma, and I was going to drop him, and so I will, yet; but I couldn't see him so ungratefully trampled on. It's all her doing! Who wanted to come here to this out-of-the-way place? Why, aunt Kate, — when I was eager to go to Conway! I declare it's too bad!"

      Mrs. Bellingham: "That will do, Leslie."

      Leslie: "And now she's gone off with those poor girls to crowd them out of house and home, I suppose. It's a shame! Why did you let her, mamma?"

      Mrs. Bellingham: "For the same reason that I let you talk on, my dear, when I've bidden you stop."

      Leslie: "Oh, you dear, kind old mamma, you! You 're a gentleman, and you always were! I only wish I could be half like you!" She throws her arms round her mother's neck and kisses her. "I know you 're right about this matter, but you mustn't expect me to acknowledge that aunt Kate is. If you both said exactly the same thing, you would be right and she would be wrong, you'd say it so differently!"

      Mrs. Murray, who returns alone with signs of discontent and perplexity, and flings herself into a chair: "Their rooms are mere coops, and I don't see how even two of us are to squeeze into one of them. It's little better than impertinence to offer it to us. I've been down to see the landlord again, and you'll be pleased to know, Marion, that the only vacant room in the house had been engaged by the person to whom we've all just had the honor of an introduction." Leslie makes an impetuous movement, as if she were about to speak, but at a gesture from her mother she restrains herself, and Mrs. Murray continues: "Of course, if he had been a gentleman, in the lowest sense of the word, he would have offered his room to ladies who had none, at once. As long as he could make social capital out of his obtrusive services to us he was very profuse with them, but as soon as it came to a question of real self-sacrifice—to giving up his own ease and comfort for a single night"— A bell rings, and at the sound Mrs. Bellingham rises.

      Mrs. Bellingham: "I suppose that's for supper. I think a cup of tea will put a cheerfuller face on our affairs. I don't at all agree with you about Mr. Blake's obligation to give up his room, nor about his services to us this afternoon; I'm sure common justice requires us to acknowledge that he was everything that was kind and thoughtful. Oh, you good child!" — as Miss Wallace appears at the door, — " have you come to show us the way to supper? Are you quite sure you've not gone without tea on our account as well as given up your room?" She puts her arm fondly round the young girl's waist, and presses her cheek against her own breast.

      Maggie, with enthusiasm: Oh, Mrs. Bellingham, you know I wouldn't ask anything better than to starve on your account. I wish I hadn't been to tea! I'm afraid that you'll think the room is a very slight offering when you come to see it — it is such a little room; why, when I took Mrs. Murray into it, it seemed all at once as if I saw it through the wrong end of an opera-glass — it did dwindle so!"

      Leslie: "Never mind, Maggie; you 're only too good, as it is. If your room was an inch bigger, we couldn't bear it. I hope you may be without a roof over your head yourself, some day! Can I say anything handsomer than that? Don't wait for me, mamma; I'll find the dining-room myself. I'm rather too crumpled even for a houseless wanderer."

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