PARLOUR CAR***


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A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT.

A COMEDY.


      *      *      *      *      *      *

    BY THE SAME AUTHOR

    _And published with Mr. Howells's sanction._

    A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

    A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE.

    THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK. 2 VOLS.

    OUT OF THE QUESTION and AT THE
    SIGN OF THE SAVAGE.

    THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY.

    THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 2 VOLS.

    A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY and
    TONELLI'S MARRIAGE.

    EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS.

    LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS AND CO.

      *      *      *      *      *      *


A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT AND THE PARLOUR CAR

by

WILLIAM D. HOWELLS







[Illustration]

Author's Edition

Edinburgh
David Douglas, Castle Street
1882

Edinburgh University Press
T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty.

[Illustration]

Frederic Ernest Allsopp.




CONTENTS.


                                                   PAGE

    I. AN EXTRAORDINARY RESEMBLANCE,                  7

    II. DISTINCTIONS AND DIFFERENCES,                61

    III. DISSOLVING VIEWS,                           99

    IV. NOT AT ALL LIKE,                            141

           *       *       *       *       *

    THE PARLOUR CAR, A FARCE,                       191




I.

AN EXTRAORDINARY RESEMBLANCE.




A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT.

(_The Scene is always in the Parlour of the Ponkwasset Hotel._)




I.

BARTLETT _and_ CUMMINGS.


On a lovely day in September, at that season when the most sentimental
of the young maples have begun to redden along the hidden courses of the
meadow streams, and the elms, with a sudden impression of despair in
their languor, betray flecks of yellow on the green of their pendulous
boughs,--on such a day at noon, two young men enter the parlour of the
Ponkwasset Hotel, and deposit about the legs of the piano the burdens
they have been carrying: a camp-stool namely, a field-easel, a closed
box of colours, and a canvas to which, apparently, some portion of
reluctant nature has just been transferred. These properties belong to
one of the young men, whose general look and bearing readily identify
him as their owner: he has a quick, somewhat furtive eye, a full brown
beard, and hair that falls in a careless mass down his forehead, which,
as he dries it with his handkerchief, sweeping the hair aside, shows
broad and white; his figure is firm and square, without heaviness, and
in his movement as well as in his face there is something of
stubbornness, with a suggestion of arrogance. The other, who has
evidently borne his share of the common burdens from a sense of good
comradeship, has nothing of the painter in him, nor anything of this
painter's peculiar temperament: he has a very abstracted look and a
dark, dreaming eye: he is pale, and does not look strong. The painter
flings himself into a rocking chair and draws a long breath.

_Cummings_ (for that is the name of the slighter man, who remains
standing as he speaks).--"It's warm, isn't it?" His gentle face evinces
a curious and kindly interest in his friend's sturdy demonstrations of
fatigue.

_Bartlett._--"Yes, hot--confoundedly." He rubs his handkerchief
vigorously across his forehead, and then looks down at his dusty shoes,
with apparently no mind to molest them in their dustiness. "The idea of
people going back to town in this weather! However, I'm glad they're
such asses; it gives me free scope here. Every time I don't hear some
young woman banging on that piano, I fall into transports of joy."

_Cummings_, smiling.--"And after to-day you won't be bothered even with
me."

_Bartlett._--"Oh, I shall rather miss you, you know. I like somebody to
contradict."

_Cummings._--"You can contradict the ostler."

_Bartlett._--"No, I can't. They've sent him away; and I believe you're
going to carry off the last of the table-girls with you in the stage
to-morrow. The landlord and his wife are to run the concern themselves
the rest of the fall. Poor old fellow! The hard times have made lean
pickings for him this year. His house wasn't full in the height of the
season, and it's been pretty empty since."

_Cummings._--"I wonder he doesn't shut up altogether."

_Bartlett._--"Well, there are a good many transients, as they call them,
at this time of year,--fellows who drive over from the little hill-towns
with their girls in buggies, and take dinner and supper; then there are
picnics from the larger places, ten and twelve miles off, that come to
the grounds on the pond, and he always gets something out of them. And
as long as he can hope for anything else, my eight dollars a week are
worth hanging on to. Yes, I think I shall stay here all through October.
I've got no orders, and it's cheap. Besides, I've managed to get on
confidential terms with the local scenery; I thought we should like each
other last summer, and I feel now that we're ready to swear eternal
friendship. I shall do some fairish work here, yet. Phew!" He mops his
forehead again, and springing out of his chair he goes up to the canvas,
which he has faced to the wall, and turning it about retires some paces,
and with a swift, worried glance at the windows falls to considering it
critically.

_Cummings._--"You've done some fairish work already, if I'm any judge."
He comes to his friend's side, as if to get his effect of the picture.
"I don't believe the spirit of a graceful elm that just begins to feel
the approach of autumn was ever better interpreted. There is something
tremendously tragical to me in the thing. It makes me think of some
lovely and charming girl, all grace and tenderness, who finds the first
grey hair in her head. I should call that picture The First Grey Hair."

_Bartlett_, with unheeding petulance.--"The whole thing's too infernally
brown! I beg your pardon, Cummings: what were you saying? Go on! I like
your prattle about pictures; I do, indeed. I like to see how far you
art-cultured fellows can miss all that was in a poor devil's mind when
he was at work. But I'd rather you'd sentimentalise my pictures than
moralise them. If there's anything that makes me quite limp, it's to
have an allegory discovered in one of my poor stupid old landscapes. But
The First Grey Hair isn't bad, really. And a good, senseless, sloppy
name like that often sells a picture."

_Cummings._--"You're brutal, Bartlett. I don't believe your pictures
would own you, if they had their way about it."

_Bartlett._--"And I wouldn't own _them_ if I had _mine_. I've got about
forty that I wish somebody else owned--and I had the money for them; but
we seem inseparable. Glad you're going to-morrow? You _are_ a good
fellow, Cummings, and I _am_ a brute. Come, I'll make a great concession
to friendship: it struck me, too, while I was at work on that elm, that
it was something like--an old girl!" Bartlett laughs, and catching his
friend by either shoulder, twists him about in his strong clutch, while
he looks him merrily in the face. "I'm not a poet, old fellow; and
sometimes I think I ought to have been a painter and glazier instead of
a mere painter. I believe it would have paid better."

_Cummings._--"Bartlett, I hate to have you talk in that way."

_Bartlett._--"Oh, I know it's a stale kind."

_Cummings._--"It's worse than stale. It's destructive. A man can soon
talk himself out of heart with his better self. You can end by really
being as sordid-minded and hopeless and low-purposed as you pretend to
be. It's insanity."

_Bartlett._--"Good! I've had my little knock on the head, you know. I
don't deny being cracked. But I've a method in my madness."

_Cummings._--"They all have. But it's a very poor method; and I don't
believe you could say just what yours is. You think because a girl on
whom you set your fancy--it's nonsense to pretend it was your
heart--found out she didn't like you as well as she thought, and
honestly told you so in good time, that your wisest course is to take up
that role of misanthrope which begins with yourself and leaves people to
imagine how low an opinion you have of the rest of mankind."

_Bartlett._--"My dear fellow, you know I always speak well of that young
lady. I've invariably told you that she behaved in the handsomest
manner. She even expressed the wish--I distinctly remember being struck
by the novelty of the wish at the time--that we should remain friends.
You misconceive"--

_Cummings._--"How many poor girls have been jilted who don't go about
doing misanthropy, but mope at home and sorrow and sicken over their
wrong in secret,--a wrong that attacks not merely their pride, but their
life itself. Take the case I was telling you of: did you ever hear of
anything more atrocious? And do you compare this little sting to your
vanity with a death-blow like that?"

_Bartlett._--"It's quite impossible to compute the number of jilted
girls who take the line you describe. But if it were within the scope of
arithmetic, I don't know that a billion of