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+Project Gutenberg's The Lady of the Aroostook, by William Dean Howells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Lady of the Aroostook
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+
+Release Date: March, 2005 [EBook #7797]
+This file was first posted on May 17, 2003
+Last Updated: February 25, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Earle Beach and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK
+
+By William Dean Howells
+
+
+
+THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+In the best room of a farm-house on the skirts of a village in the hills
+of Northern Massachusetts, there sat one morning in August three people
+who were not strangers to the house, but who had apparently assembled
+in the parlor as the place most in accord with an unaccustomed finery
+in their dress. One was an elderly woman with a plain, honest face, as
+kindly in expression as she could be perfectly sure she felt, and
+no more; she rocked herself softly in the haircloth arm-chair, and
+addressed as father the old man who sat at one end of the table between
+the windows, and drubbed noiselessly upon it with his stubbed fingers,
+while his lips, puckered to a whistle, emitted no sound. His face had
+that distinctly fresh-shaven effect which once a week is the advantage
+of shaving no oftener: here and there, in the deeper wrinkles, a frosty
+stubble had escaped the razor. He wore an old-fashioned, low black
+satin stock, over the top of which the linen of his unstarched collar
+contrived with difficulty to make itself seen; his high-crowned,
+lead-colored straw hat lay on the table before him. At the other end of
+the table sat a young girl, who leaned upon it with one arm, propping
+her averted face on her hand. The window was open beside her, and she
+was staring out upon the door-yard, where the hens were burrowing for
+coolness in the soft earth under the lilac bushes; from time to time she
+put her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+“I don't like this part of it, father,” said the elderly
+woman,--“Lyddy's seeming to feel about it the way she does right at the
+last moment, as you may say.” The old man made a noise in his throat
+as if he might speak; but he only unpuckered his mouth, and stayed his
+fingers, while the other continued: “I don't want her to go now, no more
+than ever I did. I ain't one to think that eatin' up everything on your
+plate keeps it from wastin', and I never was; and I say that even if you
+couldn't get the money back, it would cost no more to have her stay than
+to have her go.”
+
+“I don't suppose,” said the old man, in a high, husky treble, “but what
+I could get some of it back from the captain; may be all. He didn't seem
+any ways graspin'. I don't want Lyddy should feel, any more than you do,
+Maria, that we're glad to have her go. But what I look at is this:
+as long as she has this idea--Well, it's like this--I d'know as I can
+express it, either.” He relapsed into the comfort people find in giving
+up a difficult thing.
+
+“Oh, I know!” returned the woman. “I understand it's an opportunity; you
+might call it a leadin', almost, that it would be flyin' in the face
+of Providence to refuse. I presume her gifts were given her for
+improvement, and it would be the same as buryin' them in the ground for
+her to stay up here. But I do say that I want Lyddy should feel just
+_so_ about goin', or not go at all. It ain't like goin' among strangers,
+though, if it _is_ in a strange land. They're her father's own kin, and
+if they're any ways like him they're warm-_hearted_ enough, if that's
+all you want. I guess they'll do what's right by Lyddy when she gets
+there. And I try to look at it this way: that long before that maple by
+the gate is red she'll be with her father's own sister; and I for one
+don't mean to let it worry me.” She made search for her handkerchief,
+and wiped away the tears that fell down her cheeks.
+
+“Yes,” returned the old man; “and before the leaves are on the ground
+we shall more'n have got our first letter from her. I declare for't,”
+ he added, after a tremulous pause, “I was goin' to say how Lyddy would
+enjoy readin' it to us! I don't seem to get it rightly into my head that
+she's goin' away.”
+
+“It ain't as if Lyddy was leavin' any life behind her that's over and
+above pleasant,” resumed the woman. “She's a good girl, and I never want
+to see a more uncomplainin'; but I know it's duller and duller here all
+the while for her, with us two old folks, and no young company; and I
+d'know as it's been any better the two winters she's taught in the
+Mill Village. That's what reconciles me, on Lyddy's account, as much as
+anything. I ain't one to set much store on worldly ambition, and I never
+was; and I d'know as I care for Lyddy's advancement, as you may call it.
+I believe that as far forth as true happiness goes she'd be as well off
+here as there. But I don't say but what she would be more satisfied in
+the end, and as long as you can't have happiness, in this world, I say
+you'd better have satisfaction. Is that Josiah Whitman's hearse goin'
+past?” she asked, rising from her chair, and craning forward to bring
+her eyes on a level with the window, while she suspended the agitation
+of the palm-leaf fan which she had not ceased to ply during her talk;
+she remained a moment with the quiescent fan pressed against her bosom,
+and then she stepped out of the door, and down the walk to the gate.
+“Josiah!” she called, while the old man looked and listened at the
+window. “Who you be'n buryin'?”
+
+The man halted his hearse, and answered briefly, “Mirandy Holcomb.”
+
+“Why, I thought the funeral wa'n't to be till tomorrow! Well, I
+declare,” said the woman, as she reëntered the room and sat down again
+in her rocking-chair, “I didn't ask him whether it was Mr. Goodlow
+or Mr. Baldwin preached the sermon. I was so put out hearin' it was
+Mirandy, you might say I forgot to ask him anything. Mirandy was always
+a well woman till they moved down to the Mill Village and began takin'
+the hands to board,--so many of 'em. When I think of Lyddy's teachin'
+there another winter,--well, I could almost rejoice that she was goin'
+away. She ain't a mite too strong as it is.”
+
+Here the woman paused, and the old man struck in with his quaint treble
+while she fanned herself in silence: “I do suppose the voyage is goin'
+to be everything for her health. She'll be from a month to six weeks
+gettin' to Try-East, and that'll be a complete change of air, Mr.
+Goodlow says. And she won't have a care on her mind the whole way out.
+It'll be a season of rest and quiet. I did wish, just for the joke of
+the thing, as you may say, that the ship had be'n goin' straight to
+Venus, and Lyddy could 'a' walked right in on 'em at breakfast, some
+morning. I should liked it to be'n a surprise. But there wa'n't any ship
+at Boston loadin' for Venus, and they didn't much believe I'd find
+one at New York. So I just took up with the captain of the Aroostook's
+offer. He says she can telegraph to her folks at Venus as soon as she
+gets to Try-East, and she's welcome to stay on the ship till they come
+for her. I didn't think of their havin' our mod'n improvements out
+there; but he says they have telegraphs and railroads everywheres, the
+same as we do; and they're _real_ kind and polite when you get used to
+'em. The captain, he's as nice a man as I ever see. His wife's be'n two
+or three voyages with him in the Aroostook, and he'll know just how to
+have Lyddy's comfort looked after. He showed me the state-room she's
+goin' to have. Well, it ain't over and above large, but it's pretty as
+a pink: all clean white paint, with a solid mahogany edge to the berth,
+and a mahogany-framed lookin'-glass on one side, and little winders at
+the top, and white lace curtains to the bed. He says he had it fixed
+up for his wife, and he lets Lyddy have it all for her own. She can set
+there and do her mendin' when she don't feel like comin' into the cabin.
+The cabin--well, I wish you could see that cabin, Maria! The first mate
+is a fine-appearing man, too. Some of the sailors looked pretty rough;
+but I guess it was as much their clothes as anything; and I d'know as
+Lyddy'd _have_ a great deal to do with them, any way.” The old man's
+treble ceased, and at the same moment the shrilling of a locust in one
+of the door-yard maples died away; both voices, arid, nasal, and high,
+lapsed as one into a common silence.
+
+The woman stirred impatiently in her chair, as if both voices had been
+repeating something heard many times before. They seemed to renew her
+discontent. “Yes, I know; I know all that, father. But it ain't the
+mahogany I think of. It's the child's gettin' there safe and well.”
+
+“Well,” said the old man, “I asked the captain about the seasickness,
+and he says she ain't nigh so likely to be sick as she would on the
+steamer; the motion's more regular, and she won't have the smell of the
+machinery. That's what he said. And he said the seasickness would do her
+good, any way. I'm sure I don't want her to be sick any more than you
+do, Maria.” He added this like one who has been unjustly put upon his
+defense.
+
+They now both remained silent, the woman rocking herself and fanning,
+and the old man holding his fingers suspended from their drubbing upon
+the table, and looking miserably from the woman in the rocking-chair
+to the girl at the window, as if a strict inquiry into the present
+situation might convict him of it in spite of his innocence. The girl
+still sat with her face turned from them, and still from time to time
+she put her handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away the tears. The
+locust in the maple began again, and shrilled inexorably. Suddenly the
+girl leaped to her feet.
+
+“There's the stage!” she cried, with a tumult in her voice and manner,
+and a kind of choking sob. She showed, now that she stood upright, the
+slim and elegant shape which is the divine right of American girlhood,
+clothed with the stylishness that instinctive taste may evoke, even in a
+hill town, from study of paper patterns, Harper's Bazar, and the costume
+of summer boarders. Her dress was carried with spirit and effect.
+
+“Lydia Blood!” cried the other woman, springing responsively to her
+feet, also, and starting toward the girl, “don't you go a step without
+you feel just like it! Take off your things this minute and stay, if
+you wouldn't jus' as lives go. It's hard enough to _have_ you go, child,
+without seemin' to force you!”
+
+“Oh, aunt Maria,” answered the girl, piteously, “it almost kills me to
+go; but _I'm_ doing it, not you. I know how you'd like to have me stay.
+But don't say it again, or I couldn't bear up; and I'm going now, if I
+have to be carried.”
+
+The old man had risen with the others; he was shorter than either, and
+as he looked at them he seemed half awed, half bewildered, by so much
+drama. Yet it was comparatively very little. The girl did not offer to
+cast herself upon her aunt's neck, and her aunt did not offer her an
+embrace, it was only their hearts that clung together as they simply
+shook hands and kissed each other. Lydia whirled away for her last look
+at herself in the glass over the table, and her aunt tremulously began
+to put to rights some slight disorder in the girl's hat.
+
+“Father,” she said sharply, “are Lyddy's things all ready there by the
+door, so's not to keep Ezra Perkins waitin'? You know he always grumbles
+so. And then he _gets_ you to the cars so't you have to wait half an
+hour before they start.” She continued to pin and pull at details of
+Lydia's dress, to which she descended from her hat. “It sets real nice
+on you, Lyddy. I guess you'll think of the time we had gettin' it made
+up, when you wear it out there.” Miss Maria Latham laughed nervously.
+
+With a harsh banging and rattling, a yellow Concord coach drew up at the
+gate where Miss Maria had stopped the hearse. The driver got down, and
+without a word put Lydia's boxes and bags into the boot, and left two or
+three light parcels for her to take into the coach with her.
+
+Miss Maria went down to the gate with her father and niece. “Take the
+back seat, father!” she said, as the old man offered to take the middle
+place. “Let them that come later have what's left. You'll be home
+to-night, father; I'll set up for you. Good-by again, Lyddy.” She did
+not kiss the girl again, or touch her hand. Their decent and sparing
+adieux had been made in the house. As Miss Maria returned to the door,
+the hens, cowering conscience-stricken under the lilacs, sprang up
+at sight of her with a screech of guilty alarm, and flew out over the
+fence.
+
+“Well, I vow,” soliloquized Miss Maria, “from where she set Lyddy must
+have seen them pests under the lilacs the whole time, and never said
+a word.” She pushed the loosened soil into place with the side of her
+ample slipper, and then went into the house, where she kindled a fire in
+the kitchen stove, and made herself a cup of Japan tea: a variety of the
+herb which our country people prefer, apparently because it affords the
+same stimulus with none of the pleasure given by the Chinese leaf.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Lydia and her grandfather reached Boston at four o'clock, and the old
+man made a bargain, as he fancied, with an expressman to carry her
+baggage across the city to the wharf at which the Aroostook lay. The
+expressman civilly offered to take their small parcels without charge,
+and deliver them with the trunk and large bag; but as he could not check
+them all her grandfather judged it safest not to part with them, and he
+and Lydia crowded into the horse-car with their arms and hands full. The
+conductor obliged him to give up the largest of these burdens, and hung
+the old-fashioned oil-cloth sack on the handle of the brake behind,
+where Mr. Latham with keen anxiety, and Lydia with shame, watched it as
+it swayed back and forth with the motion of the car and threatened
+to break loose from its hand-straps and dash its bloated bulk to the
+ground. The old man called out to the conductor to be sure and stop in
+Scollay's Square, and the people, who had already stared uncomfortably
+at Lydia's bundles, all smiled. Her grandfather was going to repeat his
+direction as the conductor made no sign of having heard it, when his
+neighbor said kindly, “The car always stops in Scollay's Square.”
+
+“Then why couldn't he say so?” retorted the old man, in his high
+nasal key; and now the people laughed outright. He had the nervous
+restlessness of age when out of its wonted place: he could not remain
+quiet in the car, for counting and securing his parcels; when they
+reached Scollay's Square, and were to change cars, he ran to the
+car they were to take, though there was abundant time, and sat down
+breathless from his effort. He was eager then that they should not be
+carried too far, and was constantly turning to look out of the window to
+ascertain their whereabouts. His vigilance ended in their getting aboard
+the East Boston ferry-boat in the car, and hardly getting ashore before
+the boat started. They now gathered up their burdens once more, and
+walked toward the wharf they were seeking, past those squalid streets
+which open upon the docks. At the corners they entangled themselves in
+knots of truck-teams and hucksters' wagons and horse-cars; once
+they brought the traffic of the neighborhood to a stand-still by the
+thoroughness of their inability and confusion. They wandered down the
+wrong wharf amidst the slime cast up by the fishing craft moored in the
+dock below, and made their way over heaps of chains and cordage, and
+through the hand-carts pushed hither and thither with their loads of
+fish, and so struggled back to the avenue which ran along the top of
+all the wharves. The water of the docks was of a livid turbidity, which
+teemed with the gelatinous globes of the sun-fish; and people were
+rowing about there in pleasure-boats, and sailors on floats were
+painting the hulls of the black ships. The faces of the men they met
+were red and sunburned mostly,--not with the sunburn of the fields, but
+of the sea; these men lurched in their gait with an uncouth heaviness,
+yet gave them way kindly enough; but certain dull-eyed, frowzy-headed
+women seemed to push purposely against her grandfather, and one of them
+swore at Lydia for taking up all the sidewalk with her bundles. There
+were such dull eyes and slattern heads at the open windows of the shabby
+houses; and there were gaunt, bold-faced young girls who strolled up
+and down the pavements, bonnetless and hatless, and chatted into the
+windows, and joked with other such girls whom they met. Suddenly a
+wild outcry rose from the swarming children up one of the intersecting
+streets, where a woman was beating a small boy over the head with a
+heavy stick: the boy fell howling and writhing to the ground, and the
+cruel blows still rained upon him, till another woman darted from an
+open door and caught the child up with one hand, and with the other
+wrenched the stick away and flung it into the street. No words passed,
+and there was nothing to show whose child the victim was; the first
+woman walked off, and while the boy rubbed his head and arms, and
+screamed with the pain, the other children, whose sports had been
+scarcely interrupted, were shouting and laughing all about him again.
+
+“Grandfather,” said Lydia faintly, “let us go down here, and rest a
+moment in the shade. I'm almost worn out.” She pointed to the open and
+quiet space at the side of the lofty granite warehouse which they had
+reached.
+
+“Well, I guess I'll set down a minute, too,” said her grandfather.
+“Lyddy,” he added, as they released their aching arms from their bags
+and bundles, and sank upon the broad threshold of a door which seemed to
+have been shut ever since the decay of the India trade, “I don't believe
+but what it would have be'n about as cheap in the end to come down in a
+hack. But I acted for what I thought was the best. I supposed we'd be'n
+there before now, and the idea of givin' a dollar for ridin' about
+ten minutes did seem sinful. I ain't noways afraid the ship will sail
+without you. Don't you fret any. I don't seem to know rightly just where
+I am, but after we've rested a spell I'll leave you here, and inquire
+round. It's a real quiet place, and I guess your things will be safe.”
+
+He took off his straw hat and fanned his face with it, while Lydia
+leaned her head against the door frame and closed her eyes. Presently
+she heard the trampling of feet going by, but she did not open her
+eyes till the feet paused in a hesitating way, and a voice asked her
+grandfather, in the firm, neat tone which she had heard summer boarders
+from Boston use, “Is the young lady ill?” She now looked up, and
+blushed like fire to see two handsome young men regarding her with frank
+compassion.
+
+“No,” said her grandfather; “a little beat out, that's all. We've been
+trying to find Lucas Wharf, and we don't seem somehow just to hit on
+it.”
+
+“This is Lucas Wharf,” said the young man. He made an instinctive
+gesture of salutation toward his hat, with the hand in which he held a
+cigar; he put the cigar into his mouth as he turned from them, and
+the smoke drifted fragrantly back to Lydia as he tramped steadily and
+strongly on down the wharf, shoulder to shoulder with his companion.
+
+“Well, I declare for't, so it is,” said her grandfather, getting stiffly
+to his feet and retiring a few paces to gain a view of the building at
+the base of which they had been sitting. “Why, I might known it by this
+buildin'! But where's the Aroostook, if this is Lucas Wharf?” He looked
+wistfully in the direction the young men had taken, but they were
+already too far to call after.
+
+“Grandfather,” said the girl, “do I look pale?”
+
+“Well, you don't now,” answered the old man, simply. “You've got a good
+color now.”
+
+“What right had he,” she demanded, “to speak to you about me?”
+
+“I d'know but what you did look rather pale, as you set there with your
+head leaned back. I d'know as I noticed much.”
+
+“He took us for two beggars,--two tramps!” she exclaimed, “sitting here
+with our bundles scattered round us!”
+
+The old man did not respond to this conjecture; it probably involved
+matters beyond his emotional reach, though he might have understood
+them when he was younger. He stood a moment with his mouth puckered to
+a whistle, but made no sound, and retired a step or two farther from
+the building and looked up at it again. Then he went toward the dock and
+looked down into its turbid waters, and returned again with a face of
+hopeless perplexity. “This is Lucas Wharf, and no mistake,” he said. “I
+know the place first-rate, now. But what I can't make out is, What's got
+the Aroostook?”
+
+A man turned the corner of the warehouse from the street above, and came
+briskly down towards them, with his hat off, and rubbing his head and
+face with a circular application of a red silk handkerchief. He was
+dressed in a suit of blue flannel, very neat and shapely, and across
+his ample waistcoat stretched a gold watch chain; in his left hand he
+carried a white Panama hat. He was short and stout; his round florid
+face was full of a sort of prompt kindness; his small blue eyes twinkled
+under shaggy brows whose sandy color had not yet taken the grizzled tone
+of his close-clipped hair and beard. From his clean wristbands his hands
+came out, plump and large; stiff, wiry hairs stood up on their backs,
+and under these various designs in tattooing showed their purple.
+
+Lydia's grandfather stepped out to meet and halt this stranger, as he
+drew near, glancing quickly from the girl to the old man, and then at
+their bundles. “Can you tell me where a ship named the Aroostook
+is, that was layin' at this wharf--Lucas Wharf--a fortnight ago, and
+better?”
+
+“Well, I guess I can, Mr. Latham,” answered the stranger, with a
+quizzical smile, offering one of his stout hands to Lydia's grandfather.
+“You don't seem to remember your friends very well, do you?”
+
+The old man gave a kind of crow expressive of an otherwise unutterable
+relief and comfort. “Well, if it ain't Captain Jenness! I be'n so turned
+about, I declare for't, I don't believe I'd ever known you if you hadn't
+spoke up. Lyddy,” he cried with a child-like joy, “this is Captain
+Jenness!”
+
+Captain Jenness having put on his hat changed Mr. Latham's hand into his
+left, while he stretched his great right hand across it and took Lydia's
+long, slim fingers in its grasp, and looked keenly into her face. “Glad
+to see you, glad to see you, Miss Blood. (You see I've got your name
+down on my papers.) Hope you're well. Ever been a sea-voyage before?
+Little homesick, eh?” he asked, as she put her handkerchief to her eyes.
+He kept pressing Lydia's hand in the friendliest way. “Well, that's
+natural. And you're excited; that's natural, too. But we're not going to
+have any homesickness on the Aroostook, because we're going to make her
+home to you.” At this speech all the girl's gathering forlornness broke
+in a sob. “That's right!” said Captain Jenness. “Bless you, I've got a
+girl just about your age up at Deer Isle, myself!” He dropped her hand,
+and put his arm across her shoulders. “Good land, I know what girls are,
+I hope! These your things?” He caught up the greater part of them into
+his capacious hands, and started off down the wharf, talking back at
+Lydia and her grandfather, as they followed him with the light parcels
+he had left them. “I hauled away from the wharf as soon as I'd stowed my
+cargo, and I'm at anchor out there in the stream now, waiting till I
+can finish up a few matters of business with the agents and get my
+passengers on board. When you get used to the strangeness,” he said to
+Lydia, “you won't be a bit lonesome. Bless your heart! My wife's been
+with me many a voyage, and the last time I was out to Messina I had both
+my daughters.”
+
+At the end of the wharf, Captain Jenness stopped, and suddenly calling
+out, “Here!” began, as she thought, to hurl Lydia's things into the
+water. But when she reached the same point, she found they had all been
+caught, and deposited in a neat pile in a boat which lay below, where
+two sailors stood waiting the captain's further orders. He keenly
+measured the distance to the boat with his eye, and then he bade the men
+work round outside a schooner which lay near; and jumping on board this
+vessel, he helped Lydia and her grandfather down, and easily transferred
+them to the small boat. The men bent to their oars, and pulled swiftly
+out toward a ship that lay at anchor a little way off. A light breeze
+crept along the water, which was here blue and clear, and the grateful
+coolness and pleasant motion brought light into the girl's cheeks and
+eyes. Without knowing it she smiled. “That's right!” cried Captain
+Jenness, who had applauded her sob in the same terms. “_You'll_ like
+it, first-rate. Look at that ship! _That's_ the Aroostook. _Is_ she a
+beauty, or ain't she?”
+
+The stately vessel stood high from the water, for Captain Jenness's
+cargo was light, and he was going out chiefly for a return freight.
+Sharp jibs and staysails cut their white outlines keenly against the
+afternoon blue of the summer heaven; the topsails and courses dripped,
+half-furled, from the yards stretching across the yellow masts that
+sprang so far aloft; the hull glistened black with new paint. When Lydia
+mounted to the deck she found it as clean scrubbed as her aunt's kitchen
+floor. Her glance of admiration was not lost upon Captain Jenness. “Yes,
+Miss Blood,” said he, “one difference between an American ship and any
+other sort is dirt. I wish I could take you aboard an English vessel, so
+you could appreciate the Aroostook. But I guess you don't need it,” he
+added, with a proud satisfaction in his laugh. “The Aroostook ain't in
+order yet; wait till we've been a few days at sea.” The captain swept
+the deck with a loving eye. It was spacious and handsome, with a stretch
+of some forty or fifty feet between the house at the stern and the
+forecastle, which rose considerably higher; a low bulwark was surmounted
+by a heavy rail supported upon turned posts painted white. Everything,
+in spite of the captain's boastful detraction, was in perfect trim, at
+least to landfolk's eyes. “Now come into the cabin,” said the captain.
+He gave Lydia's traps, as he called them, in charge of a boy, while
+he led the way below, by a narrow stairway, warning Lydia and her
+grandfather to look out for their heads as they followed. “There!” he
+said, when they had safely arrived, inviting their inspection of the
+place with a general glance of his own.
+
+“What did I tell you, Lyddy?” asked her grandfather, with simple joy in
+the splendors about them. “Solid mahogany trimmin's everywhere.” There
+was also a great deal of milk-white paint, with some modest touches of
+gilding here and there. The cabin was pleasantly lit by the long low
+windows which its roof rose just high enough to lift above the deck, and
+the fresh air entered with the slanting sun. Made fast to the floor was
+a heavy table, over which hung from the ceiling a swinging shelf. Around
+the little saloon ran lockers cushioned with red plush. At either
+end were four or five narrow doors, which gave into as many tiny
+state-rooms. The boy came with Lydia's things, and set them inside one
+of these doors; and when he came out again the captain pushed it
+open, and called them in. “Here!” said he. “Here's where my girls made
+themselves at home the last voyage, and I expect you'll find it pretty
+comfortable. They say you don't feel the motion so much,--_I_ don't
+know anything about the motion,--and in smooth weather you can have that
+window open sometimes, and change the air. It's light and it's large.
+Well, I had it fitted up for my wife; but she's got kind of on now, you
+know, and she don't feel much like going any more; and so I always give
+it to my nicest passenger.” This was an unmistakable compliment,
+and Lydia blushed to the captain's entire content. “That's a rug she
+hooked,” he continued, touching with his toe the carpet, rich in its
+artless domestic dyes as some Persian fabric, that lay before the berth.
+“These gimcracks belong to my girls; they left 'em.” He pointed to
+various slight structures of card-board worked with crewel, which were
+tacked to the walls. “Pretty snug, eh?”
+
+“Yes,” said Lydia, “it's nicer than I thought it could be, even after
+what grandfather said.”
+
+“Well, that's right!” exclaimed the captain. “I like your way of
+speaking up. I wish you could know my girls. How old are you now?”
+
+“I'm nineteen,” said Lydia.
+
+“Why, you're just between my girls!” cried the captain. “Sally is
+twenty-one, and Persis is eighteen. Well, now, Miss Blood,” he said, as
+they returned to the cabin, “you can't begin to make yourself at home
+too soon for me. I used to sail to Cadiz and Malaga a good deal; and
+when I went to see any of them Spaniards he'd say, 'This house is
+yours.' Well, that's what I say: This ship is yours as long as you
+stay in her. And I _mean_ it, and that's more than _they_ did!” Captain
+Jenness laughed mightily, took some of Lydia's fingers in his left hand
+and squeezed them, and clapped her grandfather on the shoulder with
+his right. Then he slipped his hand down the old man's bony arm to the
+elbow, and held it, while he dropped his head towards Lydia, and said,
+“We shall be glad to have him stay to supper, and as much longer as he
+likes, heh?”
+
+“Oh, no!” said Lydia; “grandfather must go back on the six o'clock
+train. My aunt expects him.” Her voice fell, and her face suddenly
+clouded.
+
+“Good!” cried the captain. Then he pulled out his watch, and held it
+as far away as the chain would stretch, frowning at it with his head
+aslant. “Well!” he burst out. “He hasn't got any too much time on his
+hands.” The old man gave a nervous start, and the girl trembled. “Hold
+on! Yes; there's time. It's only fifteen minutes after five.”
+
+“Oh, but we were more than half an hour getting down here,” said Lydia,
+anxiously. “And grandfather doesn't know the way back. He'll be sure to
+get lost. I _wish_ we'd come in a carriage.”
+
+“Couldn't 'a' kept the carriage waitin' on expense, Lyddy,” retorted her
+grandfather, “But I tell you,” he added, with something like resolution,
+“if I could find a carriage anywheres near that wharf, I'd take it, just
+as _sure_! I wouldn't miss that train for more'n half a dollar. It would
+cost more than that at a hotel to-night, let alone how your aunt Maria'd
+feel.”
+
+“Why, look here!” said Captain Jenness, naturally appealing to the girl.
+“Let _me_ get your grandfather back. I've got to go up town again, any
+way, for some last things, with an express wagon, and we can ride right
+to the depot in that. Which depot is it?”
+
+“Fitchburg,” said the old man eagerly.
+
+“That's right!” commented the captain. “Get you there in plenty of time,
+if we don't lose any now. And I'll tell you what, my little girl,” he
+added, turning to Lydia: “if it'll be a comfort to you to ride up with
+us, and see your grandfather off, why come along! _My_ girls went with
+me the last time on an express wagon.”
+
+“No,” answered Lydia. “I want to. But it wouldn't be any comfort. I
+thought that out before I left home, and I'm going to say good-by to
+grandfather here.”
+
+“First-rate!” said Captain Jenness, bustling towards the gangway so as
+to leave them alone. A sharp cry from the old man arrested him.
+
+“Lyddy! Where's your trunks?”
+
+“Why!” said the girl, catching her breath in dismay, “where _can_ they
+be? I forgot all about them.”
+
+“I got the checks fast enough,” said the old man, “and I shan't give 'em
+up without I get the trunks. They'd ought to had 'em down here long
+ago; and now if I've got to pester round after 'em I'm sure to miss the
+train.”
+
+“What shall we do?” asked Lydia.
+
+“Let's see your checks,” said the captain, with an evident ease of
+mind that reassured her. When her grandfather had brought them with
+difficulty from the pocket visited last in the order of his search, and
+laid them in the captain's waiting palm, the latter endeavored to get
+them in focus. “What does it say on 'em?” he asked, handing them to
+Lydia. “My eyes never _did_ amount to anything on shore.” She read aloud
+the name of the express stamped on them. The captain gathered them back
+into his hand, and slipped them into his pocket, with a nod and wink
+full of comfort. “I'll see to it,” he said. “At any rate, this ship
+ain't a-going to sail without them, if she waits a week. Now, then, Mr.
+Latham!”
+
+The old man, who waited, when not directly addressed or concerned, in a
+sort of blank patience, suddenly started out of his daze, and following
+the captain too alertly up the gangway stairs drove his hat against the
+hatch--with a force that sent him back into Lydia's arms.
+
+“Oh, grandfather, are you hurt?” she piteously asked, trying to pull up
+the hat that was jammed down over his forehead.
+
+“Not a bit! But I guess my hat's about done for,--without I can get it
+pressed over; and I d'know as this kind of straw _doos_ press.”
+
+“First-rate!” called the captain from above. “Never mind the hat.”
+ But the girl continued fondly trying to reshape it, while the old man
+fidgeted anxiously, and protested that he would be sure to be left. It
+was like a half-shut accordion when she took it from his head; when she
+put it back it was like an accordion pulled out.
+
+“All ready!” shouted Captain Jenness from the gap in the bulwark, where
+he stood waiting to descend into the small boat. The old man ran towards
+him in his senile haste, and stooped to get over the side into the boat
+below.
+
+“Why, grandfather!” cried the girl in a breaking voice, full of keen,
+yet tender reproach.
+
+“I declare for't,” he said, scrambling back to the deck. “I 'most
+forgot. I be'n so put about.” He took Lydia's hand loosely into his own,
+and bent forward to kiss her. She threw her arms round him, and while he
+remained looking over her shoulder, with a face of grotesque perplexity,
+and saying, “Don't cry, Lyddy, don't cry!” she pressed her face tighter
+into his withered neck, and tried to muffle her homesick sobs. The
+sympathies as well as the sensibilities often seem dulled by age. They
+have both perhaps been wrought upon too much in the course of the years,
+and can no longer respond to the appeal or distress which they can only
+dimly realize; even the heart grows old. “Don't you, don't you, Lyddy!”
+ repeated the old man. “You mustn't. The captain's waitin'; and the
+cars--well, every minute I lose makes it riskier and riskier; and your
+aunt Maria, she's always so uneasy, you know!”
+
+The girl was not hurt by his anxiety about himself; she was more anxious
+about him than about anything else. She quickly lifted her head, and
+drying her eyes, kissed him, forcing her lips into the smile that is
+more heart-breaking to see than weeping. She looked over the side, as
+her grandfather was handed carefully down to a seat by the two
+sailors in the boat, and the captain noted her resolute counterfeit of
+cheerfulness. “That's right!” he shouted up to her. “Just like my girls
+when their mother left 'em. But bless you, they soon got over it, and
+so'll you. Give way, men,” he said, in a lower voice, and the boat
+shot from the ship's side toward the wharf. He turned and waved
+his handkerchief to Lydia, and, stimulated apparently by this, her
+grandfather felt in his pockets for his handkerchief; he ended after a
+vain search by taking off his hat and waving that.
+
+When he put it on again, it relapsed into that likeness of a half-shut
+accordion from which Lydia had rescued it; but she only saw the face
+under it.
+
+As the boat reached the wharf an express wagon drove down, and Lydia saw
+the sarcastic parley which she could not hear between the captain and
+the driver about the belated baggage which the latter put off. Then she
+saw the captain help her grandfather to the seat between himself and the
+driver, and the wagon rattled swiftly out of sight. One of the sailors
+lifted Lydia's baggage over the side of the wharf to the other in the
+boat, and they pulled off to the ship with it.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Lydia went back to the cabin, and presently the boy who had taken charge
+of her lighter luggage came dragging her trunk and bag down the gangway
+stairs. Neither was very large, and even a boy of fourteen who was small
+for his age might easily manage them.
+
+“You can stow away what's in 'em in the drawers,” said the boy. “I
+suppose you didn't notice the drawers,” he added, at her look of
+inquiry. He went into her room, and pushing aside the valance of
+the lower berth showed four deep drawers below the bed; the charming
+snugness of the arrangement brought a light of housewifely joy to the
+girl's face.
+
+“Why, it's as good as a bureau. They will hold everything.”
+
+“Yes,” exulted the boy; “they're for two persons' things. The captain's
+daughters, they both had this room. Pretty good sized too; a good deal
+the captain's build. You won't find a better stateroom than this on a
+steamer. I've been on 'em.” The boy climbed up on the edge of the upper
+drawer, and pulled open the window at the top of the wall. “Give you
+a little air, I guess. If you want I should, the captain said I was to
+bear a hand helping you to stow away what was in your trunks.”
+
+“No,” said Lydia, quickly. “I'd just as soon do it alone.”
+
+“All right,” said the boy. “If I was you, I'd do it now. I don't know
+just when the captain means to sail; but after we get outside, it might
+be rough, and it's better to have everything pretty snug by that time.
+I'll haul away the trunks when you've got 'em empty. If I shouldn't
+happen to be here, you can just call me at the top of the gangway, and
+I'll come. My name's Thomas,” he said. He regarded Lydia inquiringly a
+moment before he added: “If you'd just as lives, I rather you'd call
+me Thomas, and not _steward_. They said you'd call me steward,” he
+explained, in a blushing, deprecating confidence; “and as long as I've
+not got my growth, it kind of makes them laugh, you know,--especially
+the second officer.”
+
+“I will call you Thomas,” said Lydia.
+
+“Thank you.” The boy glanced up at the round clock screwed to the cabin
+wall. “I guess you won't have to call me anything unless you hurry. I
+shall be down here, laying the table for supper, before you're done. The
+captain said I was to lay it for you and him, and if he didn't get back
+in time you was to go to eating, any way. Guess you won't think Captain
+Jenness is going to starve anybody.”
+
+“Have you been many voyages with Captain Jenness before this?” asked
+Lydia, as she set open her trunk, and began to lay her dresses out on
+the locker. Homesickness, like all grief, attacks in paroxysms. One gust
+of passionate regret had swept over the girl; before another came, she
+could occupy herself almost cheerfully with the details of unpacking.
+
+“Only one before,” said the boy. “The last one, when his daughters went
+out. I guess it was their coaxing got mother to let me go. _My_ father
+was killed in the war.”
+
+“Was he?” asked Lydia, sympathetically.
+
+“Yes. I didn't know much about it at the time; so little. Both your
+parents living?”
+
+“No,” said Lydia. “They're both dead. They died a long while ago. I've
+always lived with my aunt and grandfather.”
+
+“I thought there must be something the matter,--your coming with your
+grandfather,” said the boy. “I don't see why you don't let me carry in
+some of those dresses for you. I'm used to helping about.”
+
+“Well, you may,” answered Lydia, “if you want.” A native tranquil
+kindness showed itself in her voice and manner, but something of the
+habitual authority of a school-mistress mingled with it. “You must be
+careful not to rumple them if I let you.”
+
+“I guess not. I've got older sisters at home. They hated to have me
+leave. But I looked at it this way: If I was ever going to sea--and I
+_was_--I couldn't get such another captain as Captain Jenness, nor such
+another crew; all the men from down our way; and I don't mind the second
+mate's jokes much. He doesn't mean anything by them; likes to plague,
+that's all. He's a first-rate sailor.”
+
+Lydia was kneeling before one of the trunks, and the boy was stooping
+over it, with a hand on either knee. She had drawn out her only black
+silk dress, and was finding it rather crumpled. “I shouldn't have
+thought it would have got so much jammed, coming fifty miles,” she
+soliloquized. “But they seemed to take a pleasure in seeing how much
+they could bang the trunks.” She rose to her feet and shook out the
+dress, and drew the skirt several times over her left arm.
+
+The boy's eyes glistened. “Goodness!” he said. “Just new, ain't it?
+Going to wear it any on board?”
+
+“Sundays, perhaps,” answered Lydia thoughtfully, still smoothing and
+shaping the dress, which she regarded at arm's-length, from time to
+time, with her head aslant.
+
+“I suppose it's the latest style?” pursued the boy.
+
+“Yes, it is,” said Lydia. “We sent to Boston for the pattern. I hate to
+pack it into one of those drawers,” she mused.
+
+“You needn't,” replied Thomas. “There's a whole row of hooks.”
+
+“I want to know!” cried Lydia. She followed Thomas into her state-room.
+“Well, well! They do seem to have thought of everything!”
+
+“I should say so,” exulted the boy. “Look here!” He showed her a little
+niche near the head of the berth strongly framed with glass, in which a
+lamp was made fast. “Light up, you know, when you want to read, or feel
+kind of lonesome.” Lydia clasped her hands in pleasure and amaze. “Oh,
+I tell you Captain Jenness meant to have things about right. The other
+state-rooms don't begin to come up to this.” He dashed out in his zeal,
+and opened their doors, that she might triumph in the superiority of her
+accommodations without delay. These rooms were cramped together on one
+side; Lydia's was in a comparatively ample corner by itself.
+
+She went on unpacking her trunk, and the boy again took his place near
+her, in the same attitude as before. “I tell you,” he said, “I shall
+like to see you with that silk on. Have you got any other nice ones?”
+
+“No; only this I'm wearing,” answered Lydia, half amused and half honest
+in her sympathy with his ardor about her finery. “They said not to bring
+many clothes; they would be cheaper over there.” She had now reached the
+bottom of her trunk. She knew by the clock that her grandfather could
+hardly have left the city on his journey home, but the interval of time
+since she had parted with him seemed vast. It was as if she had started
+to Boston in a former life; the history of the choosing and cutting and
+making of these clothes was like a dream of preëxistence. She had never
+had so many things new at once, and it had been a great outlay, but her
+aunt Maria had made the money go as far as possible, and had spent it
+with that native taste, that genius for dress, which sometimes strikes
+the summer boarder in the sempstresses of the New England hills. Miss
+Latham's gift was quaintly unrelated to herself. In dress, as in person
+and manner, she was uncompromisingly plain and stiff. All the more
+lavishly, therefore, had it been devoted to the grace and beauty of
+her sister's child, who, ever since she came to find a home in her
+grandfather's house, had been more stylishly dressed than any other girl
+in the village. The summer boarders, whom the keen eye of Miss Latham
+studied with unerring sense of the best new effects in costume, wondered
+at Lydia's elegance, as she sat beside her aunt in the family pew,
+a triumph of that grim artist's skill. Lydia knew that she was well
+dressed, but she knew that after all she was only the expression of her
+aunt's inspirations. Her own gift was of another sort. Her father was
+a music-teacher, whose failing health had obliged him to give up his
+profession, and who had taken the traveling agency of a parlor organ
+manufactory for the sake of the out-door life. His business had brought
+him to South Bradfield, where he sold an organ to Deacon Latham's
+church, and fell in love with his younger daughter. He died a few years
+after his marriage, of an ancestral consumption, his sole heritage from
+the good New England stock of which he came. His skill as a pianist,
+which was considerable, had not descended to his daughter, but her
+mother had bequeathed her a peculiarly rich and flexible voice, with a
+joy in singing which was as yet a passion little affected by culture. It
+was this voice which, when Lydia rose to join in the terrible hymning of
+the congregation at South Bradfield, took the thoughts of people off her
+style and beauty; and it was this which enchanted her father's sister
+when, the summer before the date of which we write, that lady had come
+to America on a brief visit, and heard Lydia sing at her parlor organ in
+the old homestead.
+
+Mrs. Erwin had lived many years abroad, chiefly in Italy, for the sake
+of the climate. She was of delicate health, and constantly threatened by
+the hereditary disease that had left her the last of her generation,
+and she had the fastidiousness of an invalid. She was full of generous
+impulses which she mistook for virtues; but the presence of some object
+at once charming and worthy was necessary to rouse these impulses. She
+had been prosperously married when very young, and as a pretty
+American widow she had wedded in second marriage at Naples one of those
+Englishmen who have money enough to live at ease in Latin countries; he
+was very fond of her, and petted her. Having no children she might
+long before have thought definitely of poor Henry's little girl, as she
+called Lydia, but she had lived very comfortably indefinite in regard to
+her ever since the father's death. Now and then she had sent the child a
+handsome present or a sum of money. She had it on her conscience not to
+let her be wholly a burden to her grandfather; but often her conscience
+drowsed. When she came to South Bradfield, she won the hearts of the
+simple family, which had been rather hardened against her, and she
+professed an enthusiasm for Lydia. She called her pretty names in
+Italian, which she did not pronounce well; she babbled a great deal
+about what ought to be done for her, and went away without doing
+anything; so that when a letter finally came, directing Lydia to be sent
+out to her in Venice, they were all surprised, in the disappointment to
+which they had resigned themselves.
+
+Mrs. Erwin wrote an epistolary style exasperatingly vacuous and diffuse,
+and, like many women of that sort, she used pencil instead of ink,
+always apologizing for it as due now to her weak eyes, and now to her
+weak wrist, and again to her not being able to find the ink. Her hand
+was full of foolish curves and dashes, and there were no spaces between
+the words at times. Under these conditions it was no light labor to get
+at her meaning; but the sum of her letter was that she wished Lydia to
+come out to her at once, and she suggested that, as they could have few
+opportunities or none to send her with people going to Europe, they had
+better let her come the whole way by sea. Mrs. Erwin remembered--in the
+space of a page and a half--that nothing had ever done _her_ so much
+good as a long sea voyage, and it would be excellent for Lydia, who,
+though she looked so strong, probably needed all the bracing up she
+could get. She had made inquiries,--or, what was the same thing, Mr.
+Erwin had, for her,--and she found that vessels from American ports
+seldom came to Venice; but they often came to Trieste, which was only a
+few hours away; and if Mr. Latham would get Lydia a ship for Trieste at
+Boston, she could come very safely and comfortably in a few weeks. She
+gave the name of a Boston house engaged in the Mediterranean trade to
+which Mr. Latham could apply for passage; if they were not sending any
+ship themselves, they could probably recommend one to him.
+
+This was what happened when Deacon Latham called at their office a
+few days after Mrs. Erwin's letter came. They directed him to the firm
+dispatching the Aroostook, and Captain Jenness was at their place when
+the deacon appeared there. The captain took cordial possession of the
+old man at once, and carried him down to the wharf to look at the ship
+and her accommodations. The matter was quickly settled between them.
+At that time Captain Jenness did not know but he might have other
+passengers out; at any rate he would look after the little girl (as
+Deacon Latham always said in speaking of Lydia) the same as if she were
+his own child.
+
+Lydia knelt before her trunk, thinking of the remote events, the extinct
+associations of a few minutes and hours and days ago; she held some
+cuffs and collars in her hand, and something that her aunt Maria had
+said recurred to her. She looked up into the intensely interested face
+of the boy, and then laughed, bowing her forehead on the back of the
+hand that held these bits of linen.
+
+The boy blushed. “What are you laughing at?” he asked, half piteously,
+half indignantly, like a boy used to being badgered.
+
+“Oh, nothing,” said Lydia. “My aunt told me if any of these things
+should happen to want doing up, I had better get the stewardess to help
+me.” She looked at the boy in a dreadfully teasing way, softly biting
+her lip.
+
+“Oh, if you're going to begin _that_ way!” he cried in affliction.
+
+“I'm not,” she answered, promptly. “I like boys. I've taught school two
+winters, and I like boys first-rate.”
+
+Thomas was impersonally interested again. “Time! _You_ taught school?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“You look pretty young for a school-teacher!”
+
+“Now you're making fun of me,” said Lydia, astutely.
+
+The boy thought he must have been, and was consoled. “Well, you began
+it,” he said.
+
+“I oughtn't to have done so,” she replied with humility; “and I won't
+any more. There!” she said, “I'm not going to open my bag now. You can
+take away the trunk when you want, Thomas.”
+
+“Yes, ma'am,” said the boy. The idea of a school-mistress was perhaps
+beginning to awe him a little. “Put your bag in your state-room first.”
+ He did this, and when he came back from carrying away her trunk he began
+to set the table. It was a pretty table, when set, and made the little
+cabin much cosier. When the boy brought the dishes from the cook's
+galley, it was a barbarously abundant table. There was cold boiled ham,
+ham and eggs, fried fish, baked potatoes, buttered toast, tea, cake,
+pickles, and watermelon; nothing was wanting. “I tell you,” said Thomas,
+noticing Lydia's admiration, “the captain lives well lay-days.”
+
+“Lay-days?” echoed Lydia.
+
+“The days we're in port,” the boy explained.
+
+“Well, I should think as much!” She ate with the hunger that
+tranquillity bestows upon youth after the swift succession of strange
+events, and the conflict of many emotions. The captain had not returned
+in time, and she ate alone.
+
+After a while she ventured to the top of the gangway stairs, and stood
+there, looking at the novel sights of the harbor, in the red sunset
+light, which rose slowly from the hulls and lower spars of the shipping,
+and kindled the tips of the high-shooting masts with a quickly fading
+splendor. A delicate flush responded in the east, and rose to meet
+the denser crimson of the west; a few clouds, incomparably light and
+diaphanous, bathed themselves in the glow. It was a summer sunset,
+portending for the land a morrow of great heat. But cool airs crept
+along the water, and the ferry-boats, thrust shuttlewise back and forth
+between either shore, made a refreshing sound as they crushed a broad
+course to foam with their paddles. People were pulling about in small
+boats; from some the gay cries and laughter of young girls struck
+sharply along the tide. The noise of the quiescent city came off in a
+sort of dull moan. The lamps began to twinkle in the windows and the
+streets on shore; the lanterns of the ships at anchor in the stream
+showed redder and redder as the twilight fell. The homesickness began to
+mount from Lydia's heart in a choking lump to her throat; for one must
+be very happy to endure the sights and sounds of the summer evening
+anywhere. She had to shield her eyes from the brilliancy of the kerosene
+when she went below into the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Lydia did not know when the captain came on board. Once, talking in the
+cabin made itself felt through her dreams, but the dense sleep of weary
+youth closed over her again, and she did not fairly wake till morning.
+Then she thought she heard the crowing of a cock and the cackle of hens,
+and fancied herself in her room at home; the illusion passed with
+a pang. The ship was moving, with a tug at her side, the violent
+respirations of which were mingled with the sound of the swift rush of
+the vessels through the water, the noise of feet on the deck, and of
+orders hoarsely shouted.
+
+The girl came out into the cabin, where Thomas was already busy with
+the breakfast table, and climbed to the deck. It was four o'clock of the
+summer's morning; the sun had not yet reddened the east, but the stars
+were extinct, or glimmered faint points immeasurably withdrawn in the
+vast gray of the sky. At that hour there is a hovering dimness over all,
+but the light on things near at hand is wonderfully keen and clear, and
+the air has an intense yet delicate freshness that seems to breathe from
+the remotest spaces of the universe,--a waft from distances beyond the
+sun. On the land the leaves and grass are soaked with dew; the densely
+interwoven songs of the birds are like a fabric that you might see and
+touch. But here, save for the immediate noises on the ship, which
+had already left her anchorage far behind, the shouting of the tug's
+escape-pipes, and the huge, swirling gushes from her powerful wheel, a
+sort of spectacular silence prevailed, and the sounds were like a part
+of this silence. Here and there a small fishing schooner came lagging
+slowly in, as if belated, with scarce wind enough to fill her sails; now
+and then they met a steamboat, towering white and high, a many-latticed
+bulk, with no one to be seen on board but the pilot at his wheel, and a
+few sleepy passengers on the forward promenade. The city, so beautiful
+and stately from the bay, was dropping, and sinking away behind. They
+passed green islands, some of which were fortified: the black guns
+looked out over the neatly shaven glacis; the sentinel paced the
+rampart.
+
+“Well, well!” shouted Captain Jenness, catching sight of Lydia where she
+lingered at the cabin door. “You are an early bird. Glad to see you up!
+Hope you rested well! Saw your grandfather off all right, and kept him
+from taking the wrong train with my own hand. He's terribly excitable.
+Well, I suppose I shall be just so, at his age. Here!” The captain
+caught up a stool and set it near the bulwark for her. “There! You make
+yourself comfortable wherever you like. You're at home, you know.” He
+was off again in a moment. Lydia cast her eye over at the tug. On the
+deck, near the pilot-house, stood the young man who had stopped the
+afternoon before, while she sat at the warehouse door, and asked her
+grandfather if she were not ill. At his feet was a substantial valise,
+and over his arm hung a shawl. He was smoking, and seated near him, on
+another valise, was his companion of the day before, also smoking. In
+the instant that Lydia caught sight of them, she perceived that they
+both recognized her and exchanged, as it were, a start of surprise. But
+they remained as before, except that he who was seated drew out a fresh
+cigarette, and without looking up reached to the other for a light. They
+were both men of good height, and they looked fresh and strong, with
+something very alert in their slight movements,--sudden turns of the
+head and brisk nods, which were not nervously quick. Lydia wondered at
+their presence there in an ignorance which could not even conjecture.
+She knew too little to know that they could not have any destination on
+the tug, and that they would not be making a pleasure-excursion at that
+hour in the morning. Their having their valises with them deepened the
+mystery, which was not solved till the tug's engines fell silent, and at
+an unnoticed order a space in the bulwark not far from Lydia was opened
+and steps were let down the side of the ship. Then the young men, who
+had remained, to all appearance, perfectly unconcerned, caught up their
+valises and climbed to the deck of the Aroostook. They did not give her
+more than a glance out of the corners of their eyes, but the surprise of
+their coming on board was so great a shock that she did not observe that
+the tug, casting loose from the ship, was describing a curt and foamy
+semicircle for her return to the city, and that the Aroostook, with a
+cloud of snowy canvas filling overhead, was moving over the level sea
+with the light ease of a bird that half swims, half flies, along
+the water. A sudden dismay, which was somehow not fear so much as an
+overpowering sense of isolation, fell upon the girl. She caught at
+Thomas, going forward with some dishes in his hand, with a pathetic
+appeal.
+
+“Where are you going, Thomas?”
+
+“I'm going to the cook's galley to help dish up the breakfast.”
+
+“What's the cook's galley?”
+
+“Don't you know? The kitchen.”
+
+“Let me go with you. I should like to see the kitchen.” She trembled
+with eagerness. Arrived at the door of the narrow passage that ran
+across the deck aft of the forecastle, she looked in and saw, amid
+a haze of frying and broiling, the short, stocky figure of a negro,
+bow-legged, and unnaturally erect from the waist up. At sight of Lydia,
+he made a respectful duck forward with his uncouth body. “Why, are you
+the cook?” she almost screamed in response to this obeisance.
+
+“Yes, miss,” said the man, humbly, with a turn of the pleading black
+eyes of the negro.
+
+Lydia grew more peremptory: “Why--why--I thought the cook was a woman!”
+
+“Very sorry, miss,” began the negro, with a deprecatory smile, in a
+slow, mild voice.
+
+Thomas burst into a boy's yelling laugh: “Well, if that ain't the best
+joke on Gabriel! He'll never hear the last of it when I tell it to the
+second officer!”
+
+“Thomas!” cried Lydia, terribly, “you shall _not_!” She stamped her
+foot. “Do you hear me?”
+
+The boy checked his laugh abruptly. “Yes, ma'am,” he said submissively.
+
+“Well, then!” returned Lydia. She stalked proudly back to the cabin
+gangway, and descending shut herself into her state-room.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+A few hours later Deacon Latham came into the house with a milk-pan full
+of pease. He set this down on one end of the kitchen table, with his
+straw hat beside it, and then took a chair at the other end and fell
+into the attitude of the day before, when he sat in the parlor with
+Lydia and Miss Maria waiting for the stage; his mouth was puckered to
+a whistle, and his fingers were held above the board in act to drub it.
+Miss Maria turned the pease out on the table, and took the pan into
+her lap. She shelled at the pease in silence, till the sound of their
+pelting, as they were dropped on the tin, was lost in their multitude;
+then she said, with a sharp, querulous, pathetic impatience, “Well,
+father, I suppose you're thinkin' about Lyddy.”
+
+“Yes, Maria, I be,” returned her father, with uncommon plumpness, as
+if here now were something he had made up his mind to stand to. “I been
+thinkin' that Lyddy's a woman grown, as you may say.”
+
+“Yes,” admitted Miss Maria, “she's a woman, as far forth as that goes.
+What put it into your head?”
+
+“Well, I d'know as I know. But it's just like this: I got to thinkin'
+whether she mightn't get to feelin' rather lonely on the voyage, without
+any other woman to talk to.”
+
+“I guess,” said Miss Maria, tranquilly, “she's goin' to feel lonely
+enough at times, any way, poor thing! But I told her if she wanted
+advice or help about anything just to go to the stewardess. That Mrs.
+Bland that spent the summer at the Parkers' last year was always tellin'
+how they went to the stewardess for most everything, and she give her
+five dollars in gold when they got into Boston. I shouldn't want
+Lyddy should give so much as that, but I should want she should give
+something, as long's it's the custom.”
+
+“They don't have 'em on sailin' vessels, Captain Jenness said; they only
+have 'em on steamers,” said Deacon Latham.
+
+“Have what?” asked Miss Maria, sharply.
+
+“Stewardesses. They've got a cabin-boy.”
+
+Miss Maria desisted a moment from her work; then she answered, with a
+gruff shortness peculiar to her, “Well, then, she can go to the cook, I
+suppose. It wouldn't matter which she went to, I presume.”
+
+Deacon Latham looked up with the air of confessing to sin before the
+whole congregation. “The cook's a man,--a black man,” he said.
+
+Miss Maria dropped a handful of pods into the pan, and sent a handful of
+peas rattling across the table on to the floor. “Well, who in Time”--the
+expression was strong, but she used it without hesitation, and was never
+known to repent it “_will_ she go to, then?”
+
+“I declare for't,” said her father, “I don't know. I d'know as I ever
+thought it out fairly before; but just now when I was pickin' the pease
+for you, my mind got to dwellin' on Lyddy, and then it come to me all
+at once: there she was, the only _one_ among a whole shipful, and I--I
+didn't know but what she might think it rather of a strange position for
+her.”
+
+“_Oh_!” exclaimed Miss Maria, petulantly. “I guess Lyddy'd know how to
+conduct herself wherever she was; she's a born lady, if ever there was
+one. But what I think is--” Miss Maria paused, and did not say what she
+thought; but it was evidently not the social aspect of the matter which
+was uppermost in her mind. In fact, she had never been at all afraid of
+men, whom she regarded as a more inefficient and feebler-minded kind of
+women.
+
+“The only thing't makes me feel easier is what the captain said about
+the young men,” said Deacon Latham.
+
+“What young men?” asked Miss Maria.
+
+“Why, I told you about 'em!” retorted the old man, with some
+exasperation.
+
+“You told me about two young men that stopped on the wharf and pitied
+Lyddy's worn-out looks.”
+
+“Didn't I tell you the rest? I declare for't, I don't believe I did; I
+be'n so put about. Well, as we was drivin' up to the depot, we met the
+same two young men, and the captain asked 'em, 'Are you goin' or not
+a-goin'?'--just that way; and they said, 'We're goin'.' And he said,
+'When you comin' aboard?' and he told 'em he was goin' to haul out this
+mornin' at three o'clock. And they asked what tug, and he told 'em, and
+they fixed it up between 'em all then that they was to come aboard from
+the tug, when she'd got the ship outside; and that's what I suppose they
+did. The captain he said to me he hadn't mentioned it before, because he
+wa'n't sure't they'd go till that minute. He give 'em a first-rate of a
+character.”
+
+Miss Maria said nothing for a long while. The subject seemed one with
+which she did not feel herself able to grapple. She looked all about
+the kitchen for inspiration, and even cast a searching glance into
+the wood-shed. Suddenly she jumped from her chair, and ran to the open
+window: “Mr. Goodlow! Mr. Goodlow! I wish you'd come in here a minute.”
+
+She hurried to meet the minister at the front door, her father lagging
+after her with the infantile walk of an old man.
+
+Mr. Goodlow took off his straw hat as he mounted the stone step to the
+threshold, and said good-morning; they did not shake hands. He wore a
+black alpaca coat, and waistcoat of farmer's satin; his hat was dark
+straw, like Deacon Latham's, but it was low-crowned, and a line of
+ornamental openwork ran round it near the top.
+
+“Come into the settin'-room,” said Miss Maria. “It's cooler, in there.”
+ She lost no time in laying the case before the minister. She ended by
+saying, “Father, he don't feel just right about it, and I d'know as I'm
+quite clear in my own mind.”
+
+The minister considered a while in silence before he said, “I think
+Lydia's influence upon those around her will be beneficial, whatever her
+situation in life may be.”
+
+“There, father!” cried Miss Maria, in reproachful relief.
+
+“You're right, Maria, you're right!” assented the old man, and they both
+waited for the minister to continue.
+
+“I rejoiced with you,” he said, “when this opportunity for Lydia's
+improvement offered, and I am not disposed to feel anxious as to the
+ways and means. Lydia is no fool. I have observed in her a dignity, a
+sort of authority, very remarkable in one of her years.”
+
+“I guess the boys at the school down to the Mill Village found out she
+had authority enough,” said Miss Maria, promptly materializing the idea.
+
+“Precisely,” said Mr. Goodlow.
+
+“That's what I told father, in the first place,” said Miss Maria. “I
+guess Lyddy'd know how to conduct herself wherever she was,--just the
+words I used.”
+
+“I don't deny it, Maria, I don't deny it,” shrilly piped the old man.
+“I ain't afraid of any harm comin' to Lyddy any more'n what you be. But
+what I said was, Wouldn't she feel kind of strange, sort of lost, as you
+may say, among so many, and she the only _one_?”
+
+“She will know how to adapt herself to circumstances,” said Mr. Goodlow.
+“I was conversing last summer with that Mrs. Bland who boarded at Mr.
+Parker's, and she told me that girls in Europe are brought up with no
+habits of self-reliance whatever, and that young ladies are never seen
+on the streets alone in France and Italy.”
+
+“Don't you think,” asked Miss Maria, hesitating to accept this
+ridiculous statement, “that Mrs. Bland exaggerated some?”
+
+“She _talked_ a great deal,” admitted Mr. Goodlow. “I should be sorry
+if Lydia ever lost anything of that native confidence of hers in her
+own judgment, and her ability to take care of herself under any
+circumstances, and I do not think she will. She never seemed conceited
+to me, but she _was_ the most self-reliant girl I ever saw.”
+
+“You've hit it there, Mr. Goodlow. Such a spirit as she always had!”
+ sighed Miss Maria. “It was just so from the first. It used to go to my
+heart to see that little thing lookin' after herself, every way, and not
+askin' anybody's help, but just as quiet and proud about it! She's her
+mother, all over. And yest'day, when she set here waitin' for the stage,
+and it did seem as if I should have to give up, hearin' her sob,
+sob, sob,--why, Mr. Goodlow, she hadn't any more idea of backin' out
+than--than--” Miss Maria relinquished the search for a comparison, and
+went into another room for a handkerchief. “I don't believe she cared
+over and above about goin', from the start,” said Miss Maria, returning,
+“but when once she'd made up her mind to it, there she was. I d'know
+as she _took_ much of a fancy to her aunt, but you couldn't told from
+anything that Lyddy said. Now, if I have anything on my mind, I have to
+blat it right out, as you may say; I can't seem to bear it a minute;
+but Lyddy's different. Well,” concluded Miss Maria, “I guess there ain't
+goin' to any harm come to her. But it did give me a kind of start, first
+off, when father up and got to feelin' sort of bad about it. I d'know
+as I should thought much about it, if he hadn't seemed to. I d'know as
+I should ever thought about anything except her not havin' any one to
+advise with about her clothes. It's the only thing she ain't handy with:
+she won't know what to wear. I'm afraid she'll spoil her silk. I d'know
+but what father's _been_ hasty in not lookin' into things carefuller
+first. He most always does repent afterwards.”
+
+“Couldn't repent beforehand!” retorted Deacon Latham. “And I tell
+you, Maria, I never saw a much finer man than Captain Jenness; and the
+cabin's everything I said it was, and more. Lyddy reg'larly went off
+over it; 'n' I guess, as Mr. Goodlow says, she'll influence 'em for
+good. Don't you fret about her clothes any. You fitted her out in
+apple-pie order, and she'll soon be there. 'T ain't but a little ways
+to Try-East, any way, to what it is some of them India voyages, Captain
+Jenness said. He had his own daughters out the last voyage; 'n' I guess
+he can tell Lyddy when it's weather to wear her silk. I d'know as I'd
+better said anything about what I was thinkin'. I don't want to be
+noways rash, and yet I thought I couldn't be too partic'lar.”
+
+For a silent moment Miss Maria looked sourly uncertain as to the
+usefulness of scruples that came so long after the fact. Then she said
+abruptly to Mr. Goodlow, “Was it you or Mr. Baldwin, preached Mirandy
+Holcomb's fune'l sermon?”
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+One of the advantages of the negative part assigned to women in life
+is that they are seldom forced to commit themselves. They can, if they
+choose, remain perfectly passive while a great many things take place in
+regard to them; they need not account for what they do not do. From time
+to time a man must show his hand, but save for one supreme exigency a
+woman need never show hers. She moves in mystery as long as she likes;
+and mere reticence in her, if she is young and fair, interprets itself
+as good sense and good taste.
+
+Lydia was, by convention as well as by instinct, mistress of the
+situation when she came out to breakfast, and confronted the young men
+again with collected nerves, and a reserve which was perhaps a little
+too proud. The captain was there to introduce them, and presented first
+Mr. Dunham, the gentleman who had spoken to her grandfather on the
+wharf, and then Mr. Staniford, his friend and senior by some four or
+five years. They were both of the fair New England complexion; but
+Dunham's eyes were blue, and Staniford's dark gray. Their mustaches were
+blonde, but Dunham's curled jauntily outward at the corners, and his
+light hair waved over either temple from the parting in the middle.
+Staniford's mustache was cut short; his hair was clipped tight to his
+shapely head, and not parted at all; he had a slightly aquiline nose,
+with sensitive nostrils, showing the cartilage; his face was darkly
+freckled. They were both handsome fellows, and fittingly dressed in
+rough blue, which they wore like men with the habit of good clothes;
+they made Lydia such bows as she had never seen before. Then the Captain
+introduced Mr. Watterson, the first officer, to all, and sat down,
+saying to Thomas, with a sort of guilty and embarrassed growl, “Ain't he
+out yet? Well, we won't wait,” and with but little change of tone asked
+a blessing; for Captain Jenness in his way was a religious man.
+
+There was a sixth plate laid, but the captain made no further mention of
+the person who was not out yet till shortly after the coffee was poured,
+when the absentee appeared, hastily closing his state-room door behind
+him, and then waiting on foot, with a half-impudent, half-intimidated
+air, while Captain Jenness, with a sort of elaborate repressiveness,
+presented him as Mr. Hicks. He was a short and slight young man, with
+a small sandy mustache curling tightly in over his lip, floating
+reddish-blue eyes, and a deep dimple in his weak, slightly retreating
+chin. He had an air at once amiable and baddish, with an
+expression, curiously blended, of monkey-like humor and spaniel-like
+apprehensiveness. He did not look well, and till he had swallowed two
+cups of coffee his hand shook. The captain watched him furtively from
+under his bushy eyebrows, and was evidently troubled and preoccupied,
+addressing a word now and then to Mr. Watterson, who, by virtue of what
+was apparently the ship's discipline, spoke only when he was spoken
+to, and then answered with prompt acquiescence. Dunham and Staniford
+exchanged not so much a glance as a consciousness in regard to him,
+which seemed to recognize and class him. They talked to each other,
+and sometimes to the captain. Once they spoke to Lydia. Mr. Dunham,
+for example, said, “Miss--ah--Blood, don't you think we are uncommonly
+fortunate in having such lovely weather for a start-off?”
+
+“I don't know,” said Lydia.
+
+Mr. Dunham arrested himself in the use of his fork. “I beg your pardon?”
+ he smiled.
+
+It seemed to be a question, and after a moment's doubt Lydia answered,
+“I didn't know it was strange to have fine weather at the start.”
+
+“Oh, but I can assure you it is,” said Dunham, with a certain lady-like
+sweetness of manner which he had. “According to precedent, we ought to
+be all deathly seasick.”
+
+“Not at _this_ time of year,” said Captain Jenness.
+
+“Not at this time of _year_,” repeated Mr. Watterson, as if the remark
+were an order to the crew.
+
+Dunham referred the matter with a look to his friend, who refused
+to take part in it, and then he let it drop. But presently Staniford
+himself attempted the civility of some conversation with Lydia. He asked
+her gravely, and somewhat severely, if she had suffered much from the
+heat of the day before.
+
+“Yes,” said Lydia, “it was very hot.”
+
+“I'm told it was the hottest day of the summer, so far,” continued
+Staniford, with the same severity.
+
+“I want to know!” cried Lydia.
+
+The young man did not say anything more.
+
+As Dunham lit his cigar at Staniford's on deck, the former said
+significantly, “What a very American thing!”
+
+“What a bore!” answered the other.
+
+Dunham had never been abroad, as one might imagine from his calling
+Lydia's presence a very American thing, but he had always consorted
+with people who had lived in Europe; he read the Revue des Deux Mondes
+habitually, and the London weekly newspapers, and this gave him the
+foreign stand-point from which he was fond of viewing his native world.
+“It's incredible,” he added. “Who in the world can she be?”
+
+“Oh, _I_ don't know,” returned Staniford, with a cold disgust. “I should
+object to the society of such a young person for a month or six weeks
+under the most favorable circumstances, and with frequent respites; but
+to be imprisoned on the same ship with her, and to have her on one's
+mind and in one's way the whole time, is more than I bargained for.
+Captain Jenness should have told us; though I suppose he thought that
+if _she_ could stand it, _we_ might. There's that point of view. But
+it takes all ease and comfort out of the prospect. Here comes that
+blackguard.” Staniford turned his back towards Mr. Hicks, who was
+approaching, but Dunham could not quite do this, though he waited for
+the other to speak first.
+
+“Will you--would you oblige me with a light?” Mr. Hicks asked, taking a
+cigar from his case.
+
+“Certainly,” said Dunham, with the comradery of the smoker.
+
+Mr. Hicks seemed to gather courage from his cigar. “You didn't expect to
+find a lady passenger on board, did you?” His poor disagreeable little
+face was lit up with unpleasant enjoyment of the anomaly. Dunham
+hesitated for an answer.
+
+“One never can know what one's fellow passengers are going to be,” said
+Staniford, turning about, and looking not at Mr. Hicks's face, but his
+feet, with an effect of being, upon the whole, disappointed not to find
+them cloven. He added, to put the man down rather than from an exact
+belief in his own suggestion, “She's probably some relation of the
+captain's.”
+
+“Why, that's the joke of it,” said Hicks, fluttered with his superior
+knowledge. “I've been pumping the cabin-boy, and he says the captain
+never saw her till yesterday. She's an up-country school-marm, and she
+came down here with her grandfather yesterday. She's going out to meet
+friends of hers in Venice.” The little man pulled at his cigar, and
+coughed and chuckled, and waited confidently for the impression.
+
+“Dunham,” said Staniford, “did I hand you that sketch-block of mine to
+put in your bag, when we were packing last night?”
+
+“Yes, I've got it.”
+
+“I'm glad of that. Did you see Murray yesterday?”
+
+“No; he was at Cambridge.”
+
+“I thought he was to have met you at Parker's.” The conversation no
+longer included Mr. Hicks or the subject he had introduced; after a
+moment's hesitation, he walked away to another part of the ship. As soon
+as he was beyond ear-shot, Staniford again spoke: “Dunham, this girl
+is plainly one of those cases of supernatural innocence, on the part of
+herself and her friends, which, as you suggested, wouldn't occur among
+any other people in the world but ours.”
+
+“You're a good fellow, Staniford!” cried Dunham.
+
+“Not at all. I call myself simply a human being, with the elemental
+instincts of a gentleman, as far as concerns this matter. The girl has
+been placed in a position which could be made very painful to her. It
+seems to me it's our part to prevent it from being so. I doubt if she
+finds it at all anomalous, and if we choose she need never do so till
+after we've parted with her. I fancy we can preserve her unconsciousness
+intact.”
+
+“Staniford, this is like you,” said his friend, with glistening eyes. “I
+had some wild notion of the kind myself, but I'm so glad you spoke of it
+first.”
+
+“Well, never mind,” responded Staniford. “We must make her feel that
+there is nothing irregular or uncommon in her being here as she is.
+I don't know how the matter's to be managed, exactly; it must be a
+negative benevolence for the most part; but it can be done. The first
+thing is to cow that nuisance yonder. Pumping the cabin-boy! The little
+sot! Look here, Dunham; it's such a satisfaction to me to think of
+putting that fellow under foot that I'll leave you all the credit of
+saving the young lady's feelings. I should like to begin stamping on him
+at once.”
+
+“I think you have made a beginning already. I confess I wish you hadn't
+such heavy nails in your boots!”
+
+“Oh, they'll do him good, confound him!” said Staniford.
+
+“I should have liked it better if her name hadn't been Blood,” remarked
+Dunham, presently.
+
+“It doesn't matter what a girl's surname is. Besides, Blood is very
+frequent in some parts of the State.”
+
+“She's very pretty, isn't she?” Dunham suggested.
+
+“Oh, pretty enough, yes,” replied Staniford. “Nothing is so common
+as the pretty girl of our nation. Her beauty is part of the general
+tiresomeness of the whole situation.”
+
+“Don't you think,” ventured his friend, further, “that she has rather a
+lady-like air?”
+
+“She wanted to know,” said Staniford, with a laugh.
+
+Dunham was silent a while before he asked, “What do you suppose her
+first name is?”
+
+“Jerusha, probably.”
+
+“Oh, impossible!”
+
+“Well, then,--Lurella. You have no idea of the grotesqueness of these
+people's minds. I used to see a great deal of their intimate life when
+I went on my tramps, and chanced it among them, for bed and board,
+wherever I happened to be. We cultivated Yankees and the raw material
+seem hardly of the same race. Where the Puritanism has gone out of
+the people in spots, there's the rankest growth of all sorts of crazy
+heresies, and the old scriptural nomenclature has given place to
+something compounded of the fancifulness of story-paper romance and the
+gibberish of spiritualism. They make up their names, sometimes, and call
+a child by what sounds pretty to them. I wonder how the captain picked
+up that scoundrel.”
+
+The turn of Staniford's thought to Hicks was suggested by the appearance
+of Captain Jenness, who now issued from the cabin gangway, and came
+toward them with the shadow of unwonted trouble in his face. The
+captain, too, was smoking.
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” he began, with the obvious indirectness of a man not
+used to diplomacy, “how do you like your accommodations?”
+
+Staniford silently acquiesced in Dunham's reply that they found them
+excellent. “But you don't mean to say,” Dunham added, “that you're going
+to give us beefsteak and all the vegetables of the season the whole way
+over?”
+
+“No,” said the captain; “we shall put you on sea-fare soon enough. But
+you'll like it. You don't want the same things at sea that you do on
+shore; your appetite chops round into a different quarter altogether,
+and you want salt beef; but you'll get it good. Your room's pretty
+snug,” he suggested.
+
+“Oh, it's big enough,” said Staniford, to whom he had turned as perhaps
+more in authority than Dunham. “While we're well we only sleep in it,
+and if we're seasick it doesn't matter where we are.”
+
+The captain knocked the ash from his cigar with the tip of his fat
+little finger, and looked down. “I was in hopes I could have let you
+had a room apiece, but I had another passenger jumped on me at the last
+minute. I suppose you see what's the matter with Mr. Hicks?” He looked
+up from one to another, and they replied with a glance of perfect
+intelligence. “I don't generally talk my passengers over with one
+another, but I thought I'd better speak to you about him. I found him
+yesterday evening at my agents', with his father. He's just been on a
+spree, a regular two weeks' tear, and the old gentleman didn't know what
+to do with him, on shore, any longer. He thought he'd send him to sea a
+voyage, and see what would come of it, and he plead hard with me to take
+him. I didn't want to take him, but he worked away at me till I couldn't
+say no. I argued in my own mind that he couldn't get anything to drink
+on my ship, and that he'd behave himself well enough as long as he was
+sober.” The captain added ruefully, “He looks worse this morning than
+he did last night. He looks bad. I told the old gentleman that if he got
+into any trouble at Try-East, or any of the ports where we touched,
+he shouldn't set foot on my ship again. But I guess he'll keep pretty
+straight. He hasn't got any money, for one thing.”
+
+Staniford laughed. “He stops drinking for obvious reasons, if for no
+others, like Artemus Ward's destitute inebriate. Did you think only of
+us in deciding whether you should take him?”
+
+The captain looked up quickly at the young men, as if touched in a sore
+place. “Well, there again I didn't seem to get my bearings just right.
+I suppose you mean the young lady?” Staniford motionlessly and silently
+assented. “Well, she's more of a young lady than I thought she was, when
+her grandfather first come down here and talked of sending her over with
+me. He was always speaking about his little girl, you know, and I got
+the idea that she was about thirteen, or eleven, may be. I thought the
+child might be some bother on the voyage, but thinks I, I'm used to
+children, and I guess I can manage. Bless your soul! when I first see
+her on the wharf yesterday, it most knocked me down! I never believed
+she was half so tall, nor half so good-looking.” Staniford smiled at
+this expression of the captain's despair, but the captain did not smile.
+“Why, she was as pretty as a bird. Well, there I was. It was no time
+then to back out. The old man wouldn't understood. Besides, there was
+the young lady herself, and she seemed so forlorn and helpless that I
+kind of pitied her. I thought, What if it was one of my own girls? And I
+made up my mind that she shouldn't know from anything I said or did that
+she wasn't just as much at home and just as much in place on my ship as
+she would be in my house. I suppose what made me feel easier about it,
+and took the queerness off some, was my having my own girls along last
+voyage. To be sure, it ain't quite the same thing,” said the captain,
+interrogatively.
+
+“Not quite,” assented Staniford.
+
+“If there was two of them,” said the captain, “I don't suppose I should
+feel so bad about it. But thinks I, A lady's a lady the world over,
+and a gentleman's a gentleman.” The captain looked significantly at
+the young men. “As for that other fellow,” added Captain Jenness, “if I
+can't take care of him, I think I'd better stop going to sea altogether,
+and go into the coasting trade.”
+
+He resumed his cigar with defiance, and was about turning away when
+Staniford spoke. “Captain Jenness, my friend and I had been talking this
+little matter over just before you came up. Will you let me say that I'm
+rather proud of having reasoned in much the same direction as yourself?”
+
+This was spoken with that air which gave Staniford a peculiar
+distinction, and made him the despair and adoration of his friend: it
+endowed the subject with seriousness, and conveyed a sentiment of grave
+and noble sincerity. The captain held out a hand to each of the young
+men, crossing his wrists in what seemed a favorite fashion with him.
+“Good!” he cried, heartily. “I _thought_ I knew you.”
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+Staniford and Dunham drew stools to the rail, and sat down with their
+cigars after the captain left them. The second mate passed by, and cast
+a friendly glance at them; he had whimsical brown eyes that twinkled
+under his cap-peak, while a lurking smile played under his heavy
+mustache; but he did not speak. Staniford said, there was a pleasant
+fellow, and he should like to sketch him. He was only an amateur artist,
+and he had been only an amateur in life otherwise, so far; but he did
+not pretend to have been anything else.
+
+“Then you're not sorry you came, Staniford?” asked Dunham, putting
+his hand on his friend's knee. “He characteristically assumed the
+responsibility, although the voyage by sailing-vessel rather than
+steamer was their common whim, and it had been Staniford's preference
+that decided them for Trieste rather than any nearer port.
+
+“No, I'm not sorry,--if you call it come, already. I think a bit of
+Europe will be a very good thing for the present, or as long as I'm
+in this irresolute mood. If I understand it, Europe is the place for
+American irresolution. When I've made up my mind, I'll come home
+again. I still think Colorado is the thing, though I haven't abandoned
+California altogether; it's a question of cattle-range and sheep-ranch.”
+
+“You'll decide against both,” said Dunham.
+
+“How would you like West Virginia? They cattle-range in West Virginia,
+too. They may sheep-ranch, too, for all I know,--no, that's in Old
+Virginia. The trouble is that the Virginias, otherwise irreproachable,
+are not paying fields for such enterprises. They say that one is a sure
+thing in California, and the other is a sure thing in Colorado. They
+give you the figures.” Staniford lit another cigar.
+
+“But why shouldn't you stay where you are, Staniford? You've money
+enough left, after all.”
+
+“Yes, money enough for one. But there's something ignoble in living on a
+small stated income, unless you have some object in view besides living,
+and I haven't, you know. It's a duty I owe to the general frame of
+things to make more money.”
+
+“If you turned your mind to any one thing, I'm sure you'd succeed where
+you are,” Dunham urged.
+
+“That's just the trouble,” retorted his friend. “I can't turn my mind to
+any one thing,--I'm too universally gifted. I paint a little, I model
+a little, I play a very little indeed; I can write a book notice. The
+ladies praise my art, and the editors keep my literature a long time
+before they print it. This doesn't seem the highest aim of being. I have
+the noble earth-hunger; I must get upon the land. That's why I've got
+upon the water.” Staniford laughed again, and pulled comfortably at
+his cigar. “Now, you,” he added, after a pause, in which Dunham did not
+reply, “you have not had losses; you still have everything comfortable
+about you. _Du hast Alles was Menschen begehr_, even to the _schönsten
+Augen_ of the divine Miss Hibbard.”
+
+“Yes, Staniford, that's it. I hate your going out there all alone. Now,
+if you were taking some nice girl with you!” Dunham said, with a lover's
+fond desire that his friend should be in love, too.
+
+“To those wilds? To a redwood shanty in California, or a turf hovel in
+Colorado? What nice girl would go? 'I will take some savage woman, she
+shall rear my dusky race.'”
+
+“I don't like to have you take any risks of degenerating,” began Dunham.
+
+“With what you know to be my natural tendencies? Your prophetic eye
+prefigures my pantaloons in the tops of my boots. Well, there is time
+yet to turn back from the brutality of a patriarchal life. You must
+allow that I've taken the longest way round in going West. In Italy
+there are many chances; and besides, you know, I like to talk.”
+
+It seemed to be an old subject between them, and they discussed it
+languidly, like some abstract topic rather than a reality.
+
+“If you only had some tie to bind you to the East, I should feel pretty
+safe about you,” said Dunham, presently.
+
+“I have you,” answered his friend, demurely.
+
+“Oh, I'm nothing,” said Dunham, with sincerity.
+
+“Well, I may form some tie in Italy. Art may fall in love with me,
+there. How would you like to have me settle in Florence, and set up
+a studio instead of a ranch,--choose between sculpture and painting,
+instead of cattle and sheep? After all, it does grind me to have lost
+that money! If I had only been swindled out of it, I shouldn't have
+cared; but when you go and make a bad thing of it yourself, with your
+eyes open, there's a reluctance to place the responsibility where it
+belongs that doesn't occur in the other case. Dunham, do you think it
+altogether ridiculous that I should feel there was something sacred in
+the money? When I remember how hard my poor old father worked to get it
+together, it seems wicked that I should have stupidly wasted it on the
+venture I did. I want to get it back; I want to make money. And so I'm
+going out to Italy with you, to waste more. I don't respect myself as I
+should if I were on a Pullman palace car, speeding westward. I'll own I
+like this better.”
+
+“Oh, it's all right, Staniford,” said his friend. “The voyage will
+do you good, and you'll have time to think everything over, and start
+fairer when you get back.”
+
+“That girl,” observed Staniford, with characteristic abruptness, “is
+a type that is commoner than we imagine in New England. We fair people
+fancy we are the only genuine Yankees. I guess that's a mistake. There
+must have been a good many dark Puritans. In fact, we always think of
+Puritans as dark, don't we?”
+
+“I believe we do,” assented Dunham. “Perhaps on account of their black
+clothes.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Staniford. “At any rate, I'm so tired of the blonde type
+in fiction that I rather like the other thing in life. Every novelist
+runs a blonde heroine; I wonder why. This girl has the clear Southern
+pallor; she's of the olive hue; and her eyes are black as sloes,--not
+that I know what sloes are. Did she remind you of anything in
+particular?”
+
+“Yes; a little of Faed's Evangeline, as she sat in the door-way of the
+warehouse yesterday.”
+
+“Exactly. I wish the picture were more of a picture; but I don't know
+that it matters. _She's_ more of a picture.”
+
+“'Pretty as a bird,' the captain said.”
+
+“Bird isn't bad. But the bird is in her manner. There's something
+tranquilly alert in her manner that's like a bird; like a bird that
+lingers on its perch, looking at you over its shoulder, if you come up
+behind. That trick of the heavily lifted, half lifted eyelids,--I wonder
+if it's a trick. The long lashes can't be; she can't make them curl up
+at the edges. Blood,--Lurella Blood. And she wants to know.” Staniford's
+voice fell thoughtful.
+
+“She's more slender than Faed's Evangeline. Faed painted rather too fat
+a sufferer on that tombstone. Lurella Blood has a very pretty figure.
+Lurella. Why Lurella?”
+
+“Oh, come, Staniford!” cried Dunham. “It isn't fair to call the girl by
+that jingle without some ground for it.”
+
+“I'm sure her name's Lurella, for she wanted to know. Besides, there's
+as much sense in it as there is in any name. It sounds very well.
+Lurella. It is mere prejudice that condemns the novel collocation of
+syllables.”
+
+“I wonder what she's thinking of now,--what's passing in her mind,”
+ mused Dunham aloud.
+
+“_You_ want to know, too, do you?” mocked his friend. “I'll tell you
+what: processions of young men so long that they are an hour getting by
+a given point. That's what's passing in every girl's mind--when
+she's thinking. It's perfectly right. Processsions of young girls are
+similarly passing in our stately and spacious intellects. It's the chief
+business of the youth of one sex to think of the youth of the other
+sex.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I know,” assented Dunham; “and I believe in it, too--”
+
+“Of course you do, you wicked wretch, you abandoned Lovelace, you
+bruiser of ladies' hearts! You hope the procession is composed entirely
+of yourself. What would the divine Hibbard say to your goings-on?”
+
+“Oh, don't, Staniford! It isn't fair,” pleaded Dunham, with the
+flattered laugh which the best of men give when falsely attainted
+of gallantry. “I was wondering whether she was feeling homesick, or
+strange, or--”
+
+“I will go below and ask her,” said Staniford. “I know she will tell
+me the exact truth. They always do. Or if you will take a guess of mine
+instead of her word for it, I will hazard the surmise that she is not at
+all homesick. What has a pretty young girl to regret in such a life as
+she has left? It's the most arid and joyless existence under the sun.
+She has never known anything like society. In the country with us, the
+social side must always have been somewhat paralyzed, but there are
+monumental evidences of pleasures in other days that are quite extinct
+now. You see big dusty ball-rooms in the old taverns: ball-rooms that
+have had no dancing in them for half a century, and where they give you
+a bed sometimes. There used to be academies, too, in the hill towns,
+where they furnished a rude but serviceable article of real learning,
+and where the local octogenarian remembers seeing something famous in
+the way of theatricals on examination-day; but neither his children nor
+his grandchildren have seen the like. There's a decay of the religious
+sentiment, and the church is no longer a social centre, with merry
+meetings among the tombstones between the morning and the afternoon
+service. Superficial humanitarianism of one kind or another has killed
+the good old orthodoxy, as the railroads have killed the turnpikes and
+the country taverns; and the common schools have killed the academies.
+Why, I don't suppose this girl ever saw anything livelier than a
+township cattle show, or a Sunday-school picnic, in her life. They don't
+pay visits in the country except at rare intervals, and their evening
+parties, when they have any, are something to strike you dead with pity.
+They used to clear away the corn-husks and pumpkins on the barn floor,
+and dance by the light of tin lanterns. At least, that's the traditional
+thing. The actual thing is sitting around four sides of the room,
+giggling, whispering, looking at photograph albums, and coaxing somebody
+to play on the piano. The banquet is passed in the form of apples and
+water. I have assisted at _some_ rural festivals where the apples were
+omitted. Upon the whole, I wonder our country people don't all go mad.
+They do go mad, a great many of them, and manage to get a little glimpse
+of society in the insane asylums.” Staniford ended his tirade with a
+laugh, in which he vented his humorous sense and his fundamental pity of
+the conditions he had caricatured.
+
+“But how,” demanded Dunham, breaking rebelliously from the silence in
+which he had listened, “do you account for her good manner?”
+
+“She probably was born with a genius for it. Some people are born with
+a genius for one thing, and some with a genius for another. I, for
+example, am an artistic genius, forced to be an amateur by the delusive
+possession of early wealth, and now burning with a creative instinct
+in the direction of the sheep or cattle business; you have the gift of
+universal optimism; Lurella Blood has the genius of good society. Give
+that girl a winter among nice people in Boston, and you would never know
+that she was not born on Beacon Hill.”
+
+“Oh, I doubt that,” said Dunham.
+
+“You doubt it? Pessimist!”
+
+“But you implied just now that she had no sensibility,” pursued Dunham.
+
+“So I did!” cried Staniford, cheerfully. “Social genius and sensibility
+are two very different things; the cynic might contend they were
+incompatible, but I won't insist so far. I dare say she may regret the
+natal spot; most of us have a dumb, brutish attachment to the _cari
+luoghi_; but if she knows anything, she hates its surroundings, and must
+be glad to get out into the world. I should like mightily to know how
+the world strikes her, as far as she's gone. But I doubt if she's one
+to betray her own counsel in any way. She looks deep, Lurella does.”
+ Staniford laughed again at the pain which his insistence upon the name
+brought into Dunham's face.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+After dinner, nature avenged herself in the young men for their vigils
+of the night before, when they had stayed up so late, parting with
+friends, that they had found themselves early risers without having been
+abed. They both slept so long that Dunham, leaving Staniford to a still
+unfinished nap, came on deck between five and six o'clock.
+
+Lydia was there, wrapped against the freshening breeze in a red knit
+shawl, and seated on a stool in the waist of the ship, in the Evangeline
+attitude, and with the wistful, Evangeline look in her face, as she
+gazed out over the far-weltering sea-line, from which all trace of the
+shore had vanished. She seemed to the young man very interesting, and he
+approached her with that kindness for all other women in his heart which
+the lover feels in absence from his beloved, and with a formless sense
+that some retribution was due her from him for the roughness with which
+Staniford had surmised her natural history. Women had always been dear
+and sacred to him; he liked, beyond most young men, to be with them; he
+was forever calling upon them, getting introduced to them, waiting upon
+them, inventing little services for them, corresponding with them, and
+wearing himself out in their interest. It is said that women do not
+value men of this sort so much as men of some other sorts. It was
+long, at any rate, before Dunham--whom people always called Charley
+Dunham--found the woman who thought him more lovely than every other
+woman pronounced him; and naturally Miss Hibbard was the most exacting
+of her sex. She required all those offices which Dunham delighted to
+render, and many besides: being an invalid, she needed devotion. She had
+refused Dunham before going out to Europe with her mother, and she had
+written to take him back after she got there. He was now on his way
+to join her in Dresden, where he hoped that he might marry her, and be
+perfectly sacrificed to her ailments. She only lacked poverty in order
+to be thoroughly displeasing to most men; but Dunham had no misgiving
+save in regard to her money; he wished she had no money.
+
+“A good deal more motion, isn't there?” he said to Lydia, smiling
+sunnily as he spoke, and holding his hat with one hand. “Do you find it
+unpleasant?”
+
+“No,” she answered, “not at all. I like it.”
+
+“Oh, there isn't enough swell to make it uncomfortable, yet,” asserted
+Dunham, looking about to see if there were not something he could do for
+her. “And you may turn out a good sailor. Were you ever at sea before?”
+
+“No; this is the first time I was ever on a ship.”
+
+“Is it possible!” cried Dunham; he was now fairly at sea for the first
+time himself, though by virtue of his European associations he seemed
+to have made many voyages. It appeared to him that if there was nothing
+else he could do for Lydia, it was his duty to talk to her. He found
+another stool, and drew it up within easier conversational distance.
+“Then you've never been out of sight of land before?”
+
+“No,” said Lydia.
+
+“That's very curious--I beg your pardon; I mean you must find it a great
+novelty.”
+
+“Yes, it's very strange,” said the girl, seriously. “It looks like the
+Flood. It seems as if all the rest of the world was drowned.”
+
+Dunham glanced round the vast horizon. “It _is_ like the Flood. And it
+has that quality, which I've often noticed in sublime things, of seeming
+to be for this occasion only.”
+
+“Yes?” said Lydia.
+
+“Why, don't you know? It seems as if it must be like a fine sunset,
+and would pass in a few minutes. Perhaps we feel that we can't endure
+sublimity long, and want it to pass.”
+
+“I could look at it forever,” replied Lydia.
+
+Dunham turned to see if this were young-ladyish rapture, but perceived
+that she was affecting nothing. He liked seriousness, for he was, with
+a great deal of affectation for social purposes, a very sincere person.
+His heart warmed more and more to the lonely girl; to be talking to her
+seemed, after all, to be doing very little for her, and he longed to be
+of service. “Have you explored our little wooden world, yet?” he asked,
+after a pause.
+
+Lydia paused too. “The ship?” she asked presently. “No; I've only been
+in the cabin, and here; and this morning,” she added, conscientiously,
+“Thomas showed me the cook's galley,--the kitchen.”
+
+“You've seen more than I have,” said Dunham. “Wouldn't you like to go
+forward, to the bow, and see how it looks there?”
+
+“Yes, thank you,” answered Lydia, “I would.”
+
+She tottered a little in gaining her feet, and the wind drifted her
+slightness a step or two aside. “Won't you take my arm, perhaps?”
+ suggested Dunham.
+
+“Thank you,” said Lydia, “I think I can get along.” But after a few
+paces, a lurch of the ship flung her against Dunham's side; he caught
+her hand, and passed it through his arm without protest from her.
+
+“Isn't it grand?” he asked triumphantly, as they stood at the prow, and
+rose and sank with the vessel's careering plunges. It was no gale, but
+only a fair wind; the water foamed along the ship's sides, and, as her
+bows descended, shot forward in hissing jets of spray; away on every
+hand flocked the white caps. “You had better keep my arm, here.” Lydia
+did so, resting her disengaged hand on the bulwarks, as she bent over a
+little on that side to watch the rush of the sea. “It really seems as if
+there were more of a view here.”
+
+“It does, somehow,” admitted Lydia.
+
+“Look back at the ship's sails,” said Dunham. The swell and press of the
+white canvas seemed like the clouds of heaven swooping down upon them
+from all the airy heights. The sweet wind beat in their faces, and they
+laughed in sympathy, as they fronted it. “Perhaps the motion is a little
+too strong for you here?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, not at all!” cried the girl.
+
+He had done something for her by bringing her here, and he hoped to do
+something more by taking her away. He was discomfited, for he was at
+a loss what other attention to offer. Just at that moment a sound made
+itself heard above the whistling of the cordage and the wash of the sea,
+which caused Lydia to start and look round.
+
+“Didn't you think,” she asked, “that you heard hens?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Dunham. “What could it have been? Let us investigate.”
+
+He led the way back past the forecastle and the cook's galley, and
+there, in dangerous proximity to the pots and frying pans, they found a
+coop with some dozen querulous and meditative fowl in it.
+
+“I heard them this morning,” said Lydia. “They seemed to wake me with
+their crowing, and I thought--I was at home!”
+
+“I'm very sorry,” said Dunham, sympathetically. He wished Staniford were
+there to take shame to himself for denying sensibility to this girl.
+
+The cook, smoking a pipe at the door of his galley, said, “Dey won't
+trouble you much, miss. Dey don't gen'ly last us long, and I'll kill de
+roosters first.”
+
+“Oh, come, now!” protested Dunham. “I wouldn't say that!” The cook and
+Lydia stared at him in equal surprise.
+
+“Well,” answered the cook, “I'll kill the hens first, den. It don't make
+any difference to me which I kill. I dunno but de hens is tenderer.” He
+smoked in a bland indifference.
+
+“Oh, hold on!” exclaimed Dunham, in repetition of his helpless protest.
+
+Lydia stooped down to make closer acquaintance with the devoted birds.
+They huddled themselves away from her in one corner of their prison, and
+talked together in low tones of grave mistrust. “Poor things!” she said.
+As a country girl, used to the practical ends of poultry, she knew as
+well as the cook that it was the fit and simple destiny of chickens to
+be eaten, sooner or later; and it must have been less in commiseration
+of their fate than in self-pity and regret for the scenes they recalled
+that she sighed. The hens that burrowed yesterday under the lilacs
+in the door-yard; the cock that her aunt so often drove, insulted and
+exclamatory, at the head of his harem, out of forbidden garden bounds;
+the social groups that scratched and descanted lazily about the wide,
+sunny barn doors; the anxious companies seeking their favorite perches,
+with alarming outcries, in the dusk of summer evenings; the sentinels
+answering each other from farm to farm before winter dawns, when all
+the hills were drowned in snow, were of kindred with these hapless
+prisoners.
+
+Dunham was touched at Lydia's compassion. “Would you like--would you
+like to feed them?” he asked by a happy inspiration. He turned to the
+cook, with his gentle politeness: “There's no objection to our feeding
+them, I suppose?”
+
+“Laws, no!” said the cook. “Fats 'em up.” He went inside, and reappeared
+with a pan full of scraps of meat and crusts of bread.
+
+“Oh, I say!” cried Dunham. “Haven't you got some grain, you know, of
+some sort; some seeds, don't you know?”
+
+“They will like this,” said Lydia, while the cook stared in perplexity.
+She took the pan, and opening the little door of the coop flung the
+provision inside. But the fowls were either too depressed in spirit to
+eat anything, or they were not hungry; they remained in their corner,
+and merely fell silent, as if a new suspicion had been roused in their
+unhappy breasts.
+
+“Dey'll come, to it,” observed the cook.
+
+Dunham felt far from content, and regarded the poultry with silent
+disappointment. “Are you fond of pets?” he asked, after a while.
+
+“Yes, I used to have pet chickens when I was a little thing.”
+
+“You ought to adopt one of these,” suggested Dunham. “That white one is
+a pretty creature.”
+
+“Yes,” said Lydia. “He looks as if he were Leghorn. Leghorn breed,” she
+added, in reply to Dunham's look of inquiry. “He's a beauty.”
+
+“Let me get him out for you a moment!” cried the young man, in his
+amiable zeal. Before Lydia could protest, or the cook interfere, he
+had opened the coop-door and plunged his arm into the tumult which his
+manoeuvre created within. He secured the cockerel, and drawing it forth
+was about to offer it to Lydia, when in its struggles to escape it drove
+one of its spurs into his hand. Dunham suddenly released it; and then
+ensued a wild chase for its recapture, up and down the ship, in which it
+had every advantage of the young man. At last it sprang upon the rail;
+he put out his hand to seize it, when it rose with a desperate screech,
+and flew far out over the sea. They watched the suicide till it sank
+exhausted into a distant white-cap.
+
+“Dat's gone,” said the cook, philosophically. Dunham looked round. Half
+the ship's company, alarmed by his steeple-chase over the deck, were
+there, silently agrin.
+
+Lydia did not laugh. When he asked, still with his habitual sweetness,
+but entirely at random, “Shall we--ah--go below?” she did not answer
+definitely, and did not go. At the same time she ceased to be so timidly
+intangible and aloof in manner. She began to talk to Dunham, instead
+of letting him talk to her; she asked him questions, and listened with
+deference to what he said on such matters as the probable length of the
+voyage and the sort of weather they were likely to have. She did not
+take note of his keeping his handkerchief wound round his hand, nor of
+his attempts to recur to the subject of his mortifying adventure. When
+they were again quite alone, the cook's respect having been won back
+through his ethnic susceptibility to silver, she remembered that she
+must go to her room.
+
+“In other words,” said Staniford, after Dunham had reported the whole
+case to him, “she treated your hurt vanity as if you had been her pet
+schoolboy. She lured you away from yourself, and got you to talking and
+thinking of other things. Lurella is deep, I tell you. What consummate
+tacticians the least of women are! It's a pity that they have to work so
+often in such dull material as men; they ought always to have women to
+operate on. The youngest of them has more wisdom in human nature than
+the sages of our sex. I must say, Lurella is magnanimous, too. She might
+have taken her revenge on you for pitying her yesterday when she sat in
+that warehouse door on the wharf. It was rather fine in Lurella not to
+do it. What did she say, Dunham? What did she talk about? Did she want
+to know?”
+
+“No!” shouted Dunham. “She talked very well, like any young lady.”
+
+“Oh, all young ladies talk well, of course. But what did this one say?
+What did she do, except suffer a visible pang of homesickness at the
+sight of unattainable poultry? Come, you have represented the interview
+with Miss Blood as one of great brilliancy.”
+
+“I haven't,” said Dunham. “I have done nothing of the kind. Her talk was
+like any pleasant talk; it was refined and simple, and--unobtrusive.”
+
+“That is, it was in no way remarkable,” observed Staniford, with a
+laugh. “I expected something better of Lurella; I expected something
+salient. Well, never mind. She's behaved well by you, seeing what
+a goose you had made of yourself. She behaved like a lady, and I've
+noticed that she eats with her fork. It often happens in the country
+that you find the women practicing some of the arts of civilization,
+while their men folk are still sunk in barbaric uses. Lurella, I see, is
+a social creature; she was born for society, as you were, and I
+suppose you will be thrown a good deal together. We're all likely to be
+associated rather familiarly, under the circumstances. But I wish you
+would note down in your mind some points of her conversation. I'm really
+curious to know what a girl of her traditions thinks about the world
+when she first sees it. Her mind must be in most respects an unbroken
+wilderness. She's had schooling, of course, and she knows her grammar
+and algebra; but she can't have had any cultivation. If she were of an
+earlier generation, one would expect to find something biblical in
+her; but you can't count upon a Puritanic culture now among our country
+folks.”
+
+“If you are so curious,” said Dunham, “why don't you study her mind,
+yourself?”
+
+“No, no, that wouldn't do,” Staniford answered. “The light of your
+innocence upon hers is invaluable. I can understand her better through
+you. You must go on. I will undertake to make your peace with Miss
+Hibbard.”
+
+The young men talked as they walked the deck and smoked in the
+starlight. They were wakeful after their long nap in the afternoon,
+and they walked and talked late, with the silences that old friends
+can permit themselves. Staniford recurred to his loss of money and his
+Western projects, which took more definite form now that he had placed
+so much distance between himself and their fulfillment. With half a year
+in Italy before him, he decided upon a cattle-range in Colorado. Then,
+“I should like to know,” he said, after one of the pauses, “how two
+young men of our form strike that girl's fancy. I haven't any personal
+curiosity about her impressions, but I should like to know, as an
+observer of the human race. If my conjectures are right, she's never met
+people of our sort before.”
+
+“What sort of men has she been associated with?” asked Dunham.
+
+“Well, I'm not quite prepared to say. I take it that it isn't exactly
+the hobbledehoy sort. She has probably looked high,--as far up as
+the clerk in the store. He has taken her to drive in a buggy Saturday
+afternoons, when he put on his ready-made suit,--and looked very well
+in it, too; and they've been at picnics together. Or may be, as she's in
+the school-teaching line, she's taken some high-browed, hollow-cheeked
+high-school principal for her ideal. Or it is possible that she
+has never had attention from any one. That is apt to happen to
+self-respectful girls in rural communities, and their beauty doesn't
+save them. Fellows, as they call themselves, like girls that have what
+they call go, that make up to them. Lurella doesn't seem of that kind;
+and I should not be surprised if you were the first gentleman who
+had ever offered her his arm. I wonder what she thought of you. She's
+acquainted by sight with the ordinary summer boarder of North America;
+they penetrate everywhere, now; but I doubt if she's talked with them
+much, if at all. She must be ignorant of our world beyond anything we
+can imagine.”
+
+“But how do you account for her being so well dressed?”
+
+“Oh, that's instinct. You find it everywhere. In every little village
+there is some girl who knows how to out-preen all the others. I wonder,”
+ added Staniford, in a more deeply musing tone, “if she kept from
+laughing at you out of good feeling, or if she was merely overawed by
+your splendor.”
+
+“She didn't laugh,” Dunham answered, “because she saw that it would have
+added to my annoyance. My splendor had nothing to do with it.”
+
+“Oh, don't underrate your splendor, my dear fellow!” cried Staniford,
+with a caressing ridicule that he often used with Dunham. “Of course,
+_I_ know what a simple and humble fellow you are, but you've no idea how
+that exterior of yours might impose upon the agricultural imagination;
+it has its effect upon me, in my pastoral moods.” Dunham made a gesture
+of protest, and Staniford went on: “Country people have queer ideas
+of us, sometimes. Possibly Lurella was afraid of you. Think of that,
+Dunham,--having a woman afraid of you, for once in your life! Well,
+hurry up your acquaintance with her, Dunham, or I shall wear myself out
+in mere speculative analysis. I haven't the _aplomb_ for studying the
+sensibilities of a young lady, and catching chickens for her, so as to
+produce a novel play of emotions. I thought this voyage was going to
+be a season of mental quiet, but having a young lady on board seems to
+forbid that kind of repose. I shouldn't mind a half dozen, but _one_ is
+altogether too many. Poor little thing! I say, Dunham! There's something
+rather pretty about having her with us, after all, isn't there? It gives
+a certain distinction to our voyage. We shall not degenerate. We shall
+shave every day, wind and weather permitting, and wear our best things.”
+ They talked of other matters, and again Staniford recurred to Lydia: “If
+she has any regrets for her mountain home,--though I don't see why she
+should have,--I hope they haven't kept her awake. My far-away cot on the
+plains is not going to interfere with my slumbers.”
+
+Staniford stepped to the ship's side, and flung the end of his cigarette
+overboard; it struck, a red spark amidst the lurid phosphorescence of
+the bubbles that swept backward from the vessel's prow.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+The weather held fine. The sun shone, and the friendly winds blew out
+of a cloudless heaven; by night the moon ruled a firmament powdered with
+stars of multitudinous splendor. The conditions inspired Dunham with a
+restless fertility of invention in Lydia's behalf. He had heard of the
+game of shuffle-board, that blind and dumb croquet, with which the jaded
+passengers on the steamers appease their terrible leisure, and with the
+help of the ship's carpenter he organized this pastime, and played it
+with her hour after hour, while Staniford looked on and smoked in grave
+observance, and Hicks lurked at a distance, till Dunham felt it on
+his kind heart and tender conscience to invite him to a share in the
+diversion. As his nerves recovered their tone, Hicks showed himself a
+man of some qualities that Staniford would have liked in another man:
+he was amiable, and he was droll, though apt to turn sulky if Staniford
+addressed him, which did not often happen. He knew more than Dunham of
+shuffle-board, as well as of tossing rings of rope over a peg set up a
+certain space off in the deck,--a game which they eagerly took up in the
+afternoon, after pushing about the flat wooden disks all the morning.
+Most of the talk at the table was of the varying fortunes of the
+players; and the yarn of the story-teller in the forecastle remained
+half-spun, while the sailors off watch gathered to look on, and to bet
+upon Lydia's skill. It puzzled Staniford to make out whether she felt
+any strangeness in the situation, which she accepted with so much
+apparent serenity. Sometimes, in his frequently recurring talks with
+Dunham, he questioned whether their delicate precautions for saving her
+feelings were not perhaps thrown away upon a young person who played
+shuffle-board and ring-toss on the deck of the Aroostook with as much
+self-possession as she would have played croquet on her native turf at
+South Bradfield.
+
+“Their ideal of propriety up country is very different from ours,” he
+said, beginning one of his long comments. “I don't say that it concerns
+the conscience more than ours does; but they think evil of different
+things. We're getting Europeanized,--I don't mean you, Dunham; in spite
+of your endeavors you will always remain one of the most hopelessly
+American of our species,--and we have our little borrowed anxieties
+about the free association of young people. They have none whatever;
+though they are apt to look suspiciously upon married people's
+friendships with other people's wives and husbands. It's quite likely
+that Lurella, with the traditions of her queer world, has not
+imagined anything anomalous in her position. She may realize certain
+inconveniences. But she must see great advantages in it. Poor girl!
+How she must be rioting on the united devotion of cabin and forecastle,
+after the scanty gallantries of a hill town peopled by elderly unmarried
+women! I'm glad of it, for her sake. I wonder which she really prizes
+most: your ornate attentions, or the uncouth homage of those sailors,
+who are always running to fetch her rings and blocks when she makes
+a wild shot. I believe I don't care and shouldn't disapprove of her
+preference, whichever it was.” Staniford frowned before he added: “But
+I object to Hicks and his drolleries. It's impossible for that little
+wretch to think reverently of a young girl; it's shocking to see her
+treating him as if he were a gentleman.” Hicks's behavior really gave no
+grounds for reproach; and it was only his moral mechanism, as Staniford
+called the character he constructed for him, which he could blame;
+nevertheless, the thought of him gave an oblique cast to Staniford's
+reflections, which he cut short by saying, “This sort of worship is
+every woman's due in girlhood; but I suppose a fortnight of it will make
+her a pert and silly coquette. What does she say to your literature,
+Dunham?”
+
+Dunham had already begun to lend Lydia books,--his own and
+Staniford's,--in which he read aloud to her, and chose passages for her
+admiration; but he was obliged to report that she had rather a passive
+taste in literature. She seemed to like what he said was good, but not
+to like it very much, or to care greatly for reading; or else she had
+never had the habit of talking books. He suggested this to Staniford,
+who at once philosophized it.
+
+“Why, I rather like that, you know. We all read in such a literary way,
+now; we don't read simply for the joy or profit of it; we expect to talk
+about it, and say how it is this and that; and I've no doubt that we're
+sub-consciously harassed, all the time, with an automatic process of
+criticism. Now Lurella, I fancy, reads with the sense of the days when
+people read in private, and not in public, as we do. She believes that
+your serious books are all true; and she knows that my novels are all
+lies--that's what some excellent Christians would call the fiction even
+of George Eliot or of Hawthorne; she would be ashamed to discuss the
+lives and loves of heroes and heroines who never existed. I think that's
+first-rate. She must wonder at your distempered interest in them. If
+one could get at it, I suppose the fresh wholesomeness of Lurella's mind
+would be something delicious,--a quality like spring water.”
+
+He was one of those men who cannot rest in regard to people they meet
+till they have made some effort to formulate them. He liked to ticket
+them off; but when he could not classify them, he remained content with
+his mere study of them. His habit was one that does not promote sympathy
+with one's fellow creatures. He confessed even that it disposed him to
+wish for their less acquaintance when once he had got them generalized;
+they became then collected specimens. Yet, for the time being, his
+curiosity in them gave him a specious air of sociability. He lamented
+the insincerity which this involved, but he could not help it. The next
+novelty in character was as irresistible as the last; he sat down before
+it till it yielded its meaning, or suggested to him some analogy by
+which he could interpret it.
+
+With this passion for the arrangement and distribution of his neighbors,
+it was not long before he had placed most of the people on board in what
+he called the psychology of the ship. He did not care that they should
+fit exactly in their order. He rather preferred that they should have
+idiosyncrasies which differentiated them from their species, and he
+enjoyed Lydia's being a little indifferent about books for this and for
+other reasons. “If she were literary, she would be like those vulgar
+little persons of genius in the magazine stories. She would have read
+all sorts of impossible things up in her village. She would have
+been discovered by some aesthetic summer boarder, who had happened to
+identify her with the gifted Daisy Dawn, and she would be going out on
+the aesthetic's money for the further expansion of her spirit in Europe.
+Somebody would be obliged to fall in love with her, and she would
+sacrifice her career for a man who was her inferior, as we should be
+subtly given to understand at the close. I think it's going to be as
+distinguished by and by not to like books as it is not to write them.
+Lurella is a prophetic soul; and if there's anything comforting about
+her, it's her being so merely and stupidly pretty.”
+
+“She is not merely and stupidly pretty!” retorted Dunham. “She never
+does herself justice when you are by. She can talk very well, and on
+some subjects she thinks strongly.”
+
+“Oh, I'm sorry for that!” said Staniford. “But call me some time when
+she's doing herself justice.”
+
+“I don't mean that she's like the women we know. She doesn't say witty
+things, and she hasn't their responsive quickness; but her ideas are
+her own, no matter how old they are; and what she says she seems to
+be saying for the first time, and as if it had never been thought out
+before.”
+
+“That is what I have been contending for,” said Staniford; “that is what
+I meant by spring water. It is that thrilling freshness which charms
+me in Lurella.” He laughed. “Have you converted her to your spectacular
+faith, yet?” Dunham blushed. “You have tried,” continued Staniford.
+“Tell me about it!”
+
+“I will not talk with you on such matters,” said Dunham, “till you know
+how to treat serious things seriously.”
+
+“I shall know how when I realize that they are serious with you. Well, I
+don't object to a woman's thinking strongly on religious subjects: it's
+the only safe ground for her strong thinking, and even there she had
+better feel strongly. Did you succeed in convincing her that Archbishop
+Laud was a _saint incompris_, and the good King Charles a blessed
+martyr.”
+
+Dunham did not answer till he had choked down some natural resentment.
+He had, several years earlier, forsaken the pale Unitarian worship of
+his family, because, Staniford always said, he had such a feeling for
+color, and had adopted an extreme tint of ritualism. It was rumored at
+one time, before his engagement to Miss Hibbard, that he was going to
+unite with a celibate brotherhood; he went regularly into retreat at
+certain seasons, to the vast entertainment of his friend; and, within
+the bounds of good taste, he was a zealous propagandist of his faith,
+of which he had the practical virtues in high degree. “I hope,” he
+said presently, “that I know how to respect convictions, even of those
+adhering to the Church in Error.”
+
+Staniford laughed again. “I see you have not converted Lurella. Well,
+I like that in her, too. I wish I could have the arguments, _pro_ and
+_con_. It would have been amusing. I suppose,” he pondered aloud, “that
+she is a Calvinist of the deepest dye, and would regard me as a lost
+spirit for being outside of her church. She would look down upon me from
+one height, as I look down upon her from another. And really, as far as
+personal satisfaction in superiority goes, she might have the advantage
+of me. That's very curious, very interesting.”
+
+As the first week wore away, the wonted incidents of a sea voyage lent
+their variety to the life on board. One day the ship ran into a school
+of whales, which remained heavily thumping and lolling about in her
+course, and blowing jets of water into the air, like so many breaks in
+garden hose, Staniford suggested. At another time some flying-fish came
+on board. The sailors caught a dolphin, and they promised a shark, by
+and by. All these things were turned to account for the young girl's
+amusement, as if they had happened for her. The dolphin died that she
+might wonder and pity his beautiful death; the cook fried her some of
+the flying-fish; some one was on the lookout to detect even porpoises
+for her. A sail in the offing won the discoverer envy when he pointed
+it out to her; a steamer, celebrity. The captain ran a point out of
+his course to speak to a vessel, that she might be able to tell what
+speaking a ship at sea was like.
+
+At table the stores which the young men had laid in for private use
+became common luxuries, and she fared sumptuously every day upon
+dainties which she supposed were supplied by the ship,--delicate jellies
+and canned meats and syruped fruits; and, if she wondered at anything,
+she must have wondered at the scrupulous abstinence with which Captain
+Jenness, seconded by Mr. Watterson, refused the luxuries which his
+bounty provided them, and at the constancy with which Staniford declined
+some of these dishes, and Hicks declined others. Shortly after the
+latter began more distinctly to be tolerated, he appeared one day on
+deck with a steamer-chair in his hand, and offered it to Lydia's use,
+where she sat on a stool by the bulwark. After that, as she reclined in
+this chair, wrapped in her red shawl, and provided with a book or some
+sort of becoming handiwork, she was even more picturesquely than
+before the centre about which the ship's pride and chivalrous sentiment
+revolved. They were Americans, and they knew how to worship a woman.
+
+Staniford did not seek occasions to please and amuse her, as the others
+did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at table, he took
+his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her a perfunctory
+civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he interested himself
+in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike. “A woman,” he said,
+“must always dislike some one in company; it's usually another woman; as
+there's none on board, I accept her enmity with meekness.” Dunham wished
+to persuade him that he was mistaken. “Don't try to comfort me, Dunham,”
+ he replied. “I find a pleasure in being detested which is inconceivable
+to your amiable bosom.”
+
+Dunham turned to go below, from where they stood at the head of the
+cabin stairs. Staniford looked round, and saw Lydia, whom they had kept
+from coming up; she must have heard him. He took his cigar from his
+mouth, and caught up a stool, which he placed near the ship's side,
+where Lydia usually sat, and without waiting for her concurrence got a
+stool for himself, and sat down with her.
+
+“Well, Miss Blood,” he said, “it's Saturday afternoon at last, and we're
+at the end of our first week. Has it seemed very long to you?”
+
+Lydia's color was bright with consciousness, but the glance she gave
+Staniford showed him looking tranquilly and honestly at her. “Yes,” she
+said, “it _has_ seemed long.”
+
+“That's merely the strangeness of everything. There's nothing like local
+familiarity to make the time pass,--except monotony; and one gets both
+at sea. Next week will go faster than this, and we shall all be at
+Trieste before we know it. Of course we shall have a storm or two, and
+that will retard us in fact as well as fancy. But you wouldn't feel that
+you'd been at sea if you hadn't had a storm.”
+
+He knew that his tone was patronizing, but he had theorized the girl so
+much with a certain slight in his mind that he was not able at once
+to get the tone which he usually took towards women. This might not,
+indeed, have pleased some women any better than patronage: it mocked
+while it caressed all their little pretenses and artificialities; he
+addressed them as if they must be in the joke of themselves, and did not
+expect to be taken seriously. At the same time he liked them greatly,
+and would not on any account have had the silliest of them different
+from what she was. He did not seek them as Dunham did; their society was
+not a matter of life or death with him; but he had an elder-brotherly
+kindness for the whole sex.
+
+Lydia waited awhile for him to say something more, but he added nothing,
+and she observed, with a furtive look: “I presume you've seen some very
+severe storms at sea.”
+
+“No,” Staniford answered, “I haven't. I've been over several times,
+but I've never seen anything alarming. I've experienced the ordinary
+seasickening tempestuousness.”
+
+“Have you--have you ever been in Italy?” asked Lydia, after another
+pause.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “twice; I'm very fond of Italy.” He spoke of it in a
+familiar tone that might well have been discouraging to one of her total
+unacquaintance with it. Presently he added of his own motion, looking
+at her with his interest in her as a curious study, “You're going to
+Venice, I think Mr. Dunham told me.”
+
+“Yes,” said Lydia.
+
+“Well, I think it's rather a pity that you shouldn't arrive there
+directly, without the interposition of Trieste.” He scanned her yet more
+closely, but with a sort of absence in his look, as if he addressed some
+ideal of her.
+
+“Why?” asked Lydia, apparently pushed to some self-assertion by this way
+of being looked and talked at.
+
+“It's the strangest place in the world,” said Staniford; and then he
+mused again. “But I suppose--” He did not go on, and the word fell again
+to Lydia.
+
+“I'm going to visit my aunt, who is staying there. She was where I live,
+last summer, and she told us about it. But I couldn't seem to understand
+it.”
+
+“No one can understand it, without seeing it.”
+
+“I've read some descriptions of it,” Lydia ventured.
+
+“They're of no use,--the books.”
+
+“Is Trieste a strange place, too?”
+
+“It's strange, as a hundred other places are,--and it's picturesque; but
+there's only one Venice.”
+
+“I'm afraid sometimes,” she faltered, as if his manner in regard to this
+peculiar place had been hopelessly exclusive, “that it will be almost
+too strange.”
+
+“Oh, that's another matter,” said Staniford. “I confess I should be
+rather curious to know whether you liked Venice. I like it, but I can
+imagine myself sympathizing with people who detested it,--if they said
+so. Let me see what will give you some idea of it. Do you know Boston
+well?”
+
+“No; I've only been there twice,” Lydia acknowledged.
+
+“Then you've never seen the Back Bay by night, from the Long Bridge.
+Well, let me see--”
+
+“I'm afraid,” interposed Lydia, “that I've not been about enough for you
+to give me an idea from other places. We always go to Greenfield to do
+our trading; and I've been to Keene and Springfield a good many times.”
+
+“I'm sorry to say I haven't,” said Staniford. “But I'll tell you: Venice
+looks like an inundated town. If you could imagine those sunset clouds
+yonder turned marble, you would have Venice as she is at sunset. You
+must first think of the sea when you try to realize the place. If you
+don't find the sea too strange, you won't find Venice so.”
+
+“I wish it would ever seem half as home-like!” cried the girl.
+
+“Then you find the ship--I'm glad you find the ship--home-like,” said
+Staniford, tentatively.
+
+“Oh, yes; everything is so convenient and pleasant. It seems sometimes
+as if I had always lived here.”
+
+“Well, that's very nice,” assented Staniford, rather blankly. “Some
+people feel a little queer at sea--in the beginning. And you haven't--at
+all?” He could not help this leading question, yet he knew its meanness,
+and felt remorse for it.
+
+“Oh, _I_ did, at first,” responded the girl, but went no farther; and
+Staniford was glad of it. After all, why should he care to know what was
+in her mind?
+
+“Captain Jenness,” he merely said, “understands making people at home.”
+
+“Oh, yes, indeed,” assented Lydia. “And Mr. Watterson is very agreeable,
+and Mr. Mason. I didn't suppose sailors were so. What soft, mild voices
+they have!”
+
+“That's the speech of most of the Down East coast people.”
+
+“Is it? I like it better than our voices. Our voices are so sharp and
+high, at home.”
+
+“It's hard to believe that,” said Staniford, with a smile.
+
+Lydia looked at him. “Oh, I wasn't born in South Bradfield. I was ten
+years old when I went there to live.”
+
+“Where _were_ you born, Miss Blood?” he asked.
+
+“In California. My father had gone out for his health, but he died
+there.”
+
+“Oh!” said Staniford. He had a book in his hand, and he began to
+scribble a little sketch of Lydia's pose, on a fly-leaf. She looked
+round and saw it. “You've detected me,” he said; “I haven't any right to
+keep your likeness, now. I must make you a present of this work of art,
+Miss Blood.” He finished the sketch with some ironical flourishes, and
+made as if to tear out the leaf.
+
+“Oh!” cried Lydia, simply, “you will spoil the book!”
+
+“Then the book shall go with the picture, if you'll let it,” said
+Staniford.
+
+“Do you mean to give it to me?” she asked, with surprise.
+
+“That was my munificent intention. I want to write your name in it.
+What's the initial of your first name, Miss Blood?”
+
+“L, thank you,” said Lydia.
+
+Staniford gave a start. “No!” he exclaimed. It seemed a fatality.
+
+“My name is Lydia,” persisted the girl. “What letter should it begin
+with?”
+
+“Oh--oh, I knew Lydia began with an L,” stammered Staniford, “but
+I--I--I thought your first name was--”
+
+“What?” asked Lydia sharply.
+
+“I don't know. Lily,” he answered guiltily.
+
+“Lily _Blood_!” cried the girl. “Lydia is bad enough; but _Lily_ Blood!
+They couldn't have been such fools!”
+
+“I beg your pardon. Of course not. I don't know how I could have got the
+idea. It was one of those impressions--hallucinations--” Staniford found
+himself in an attitude of lying excuse towards the simple girl, over
+whom he had been lording it in satirical fancy ever since he had seen
+her, and meekly anxious that she should not be vexed with him. He began
+to laugh at his predicament, and she smiled at his mistake. “What is the
+date?” he asked.
+
+“The 15th,” she said; and he wrote under the sketch, _Lydia Blood. Ship
+Aroostook, August_ 15, 1874, and handed it to her, with a bow surcharged
+with gravity.
+
+She took it, and regarded the picture without comment.
+
+“Ah!” said Staniford, “I see that you know how bad my sketch is. You
+sketch.”
+
+“No, I don't know how to draw,” replied Lydia.
+
+“You criticise.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“So glad,” said Staniford. He began to like this. A young man must find
+pleasure in sitting alone near a pretty young girl, and talking with her
+about herself and himself, no matter how plain and dull her speech is;
+and Staniford, though he found Lydia as blankly unresponsive as might be
+to the flattering irony of his habit, amused himself in realizing that
+here suddenly he was almost upon the terms of window-seat flirtation
+with a girl whom lately he had treated with perfect indifference, and
+just now with fatherly patronage. The situation had something more even
+than the usual window-seat advantages; it had qualities as of a common
+shipwreck, of their being cast away on a desolate island together. He
+felt more than ever that he must protect this helpless loveliness, since
+it had begun to please his imagination. “You don't criticise,” he said.
+“Is that because you are so amiable? I'm sure you could, if you would.”
+
+“No,” returned Lydia; “I don't really know. But I've often wished I did
+know.”
+
+“Then you didn't teach drawing, in your school?”
+
+“How did you know I had a school?” asked Lydia quickly.
+
+He disliked to confess his authority, because he disliked the authority,
+but he said, “Mr. Hicks told us.”
+
+“Mr. Hicks!” Lydia gave a little frown as of instinctive displeasure,
+which gratified Staniford.
+
+“Yes; the cabin-boy told him. You see, we are dreadful gossips on the
+Aroostook,--though there are so few ladies--” It had slipped from him,
+but it seemed to have no personal slant for Lydia.
+
+“Oh, yes; I told Thomas,” she said. “No; it's only a country school.
+Once I thought I should go down to the State Normal School, and
+study drawing there; but I never did. Are you--are you a painter, Mr.
+Staniford?”
+
+He could not recollect that she had pronounced his name before; he
+thought it came very winningly from her lips. “No, I'm not a painter.
+I'm not anything.” He hesitated; then he added recklessly, “I'm a
+farmer.”
+
+“A farmer?” Lydia looked incredulous, but grave.
+
+“Yes; I'm a horny-handed son of the soil. I'm a cattle-farmer; I'm a
+sheep-farmer; I don't know which. One day I'm the one, and the next day
+I'm the other.” Lydia looked mystified, and Staniford continued: “I
+mean that I have no profession, and that sometimes I think of going into
+farming, out West.”
+
+“Yes?” said Lydia.
+
+“How should I like it? Give me an opinion, Miss Blood.”
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” answered the girl.
+
+“You would never have dreamt that I was a farmer, would you?”
+
+“No, I shouldn't,” said Lydia, honestly. “It's very hard work.”
+
+“And I don't look fond of hard work?”
+
+“I didn't say that.”
+
+“And I've no right to press you for your meaning.”
+
+“What I meant was--I mean--Perhaps if you had never tried it you didn't
+know what very hard work it was. Some of the summer boarders used to
+think our farmers had easy times.”
+
+“I never was a summer boarder of that description. I know that farming
+is hard work, and I'm going into it because I dislike it. What do you
+think of that as a form of self-sacrifice?”
+
+“I don't see why any one should sacrifice himself uselessly.”
+
+“You don't? You have very little conception of martyrdom. Do you like
+teaching school?”
+
+“No,” said Lydia promptly.
+
+“Why do you teach, then?” Staniford had blundered. He knew why she
+taught, and he felt instantly that he had hurt her pride, more sensitive
+than that of a more sophisticated person, who would have had no scruple
+in saying that she did it because she was poor. He tried to retrieve
+himself. “Of course, I understand that school-teaching is useful
+self-sacrifice.” He trembled lest she should invent some pretext for
+leaving him; he could not afford to be left at a disadvantage. “But do
+you know, I would no more have taken you for a teacher than you me for a
+farmer.”
+
+“Yes?” said Lydia.
+
+He could not tell whether she was appeased or not, and he rather feared
+not. “You don't ask why. And I asked you why at once.”
+
+Lydia laughed. “Well, why?”
+
+“Oh, that's a secret. I'll tell you one of these days.” He had really no
+reason; he said this to gain time. He was always honest in his talk with
+men, but not always with women.
+
+“I suppose I look very young,” said Lydia. “I used to be afraid of the
+big boys.”
+
+“If the boys were big enough,” interposed Staniford, “they must have
+been afraid of you.”
+
+Lydia said, as if she had not understood, “I had hard work to get my
+certificate. But I was older than I looked.”
+
+“That is much better,” remarked Staniford, “than being younger than
+you look. I am twenty-eight, and people take me for thirty-four. I'm
+a prematurely middle-aged man. I wish you would tell me, Miss Blood, a
+little about South Bradfield. I've been trying to make out whether I was
+ever there. I tramped nearly everywhere when I was a student. What sort
+of people are they there?”
+
+“Oh, they are very nice people,” said Lydia.
+
+“Do you like them?”
+
+“I never thought whether I did. They are nearly all old. Their children
+have gone away; they don't seem to live; they are just staying. When I
+first came there I was a little girl. One day I went into the grave-yard
+and counted the stones; there were three times as many as there were
+living persons in the village.”
+
+“I think I know the kind of place,” said Staniford. “I suppose you're
+not very homesick?”
+
+“Not for the place,” answered Lydia, evasively.
+
+“Of course,” Staniford hastened to add, “you miss your own family
+circle.” To this she made no reply. It is the habit of people bred like
+her to remain silent for want of some sort of formulated comment upon
+remarks to which they assent.
+
+Staniford fell into a musing mood, which was without visible
+embarrassment to the young girl, who must have been inured to much
+severer silences in the society of South Bradfield. He remained staring
+at her throughout his reverie, which in fact related to her. He was
+thinking what sort of an old maid she would have become if she had
+remained in that village. He fancied elements of hardness and sharpness
+in her which would have asserted themselves as the joyless years went
+on, like the bony structure of her face as the softness of youth left
+it. She was saved from that, whatever was to be her destiny in Italy.
+From South Bradfield to Venice,--what a prodigious transition! It seemed
+as if it must transfigure her. “Miss Blood,” he exclaimed, “I wish I
+could be with you when you first see Venice!”
+
+“Yes?” said Lydia.
+
+Even the interrogative comment, with the rising inflection, could not
+chill his enthusiasm. “It is really the greatest sight in the world.”
+
+Lydia had apparently no comment to make on this fact. She waited
+tranquilly a while before she said, “My father used to talk about
+Italy to me when I was little. He wanted to go. My mother said
+afterwards--after she had come home with me to South Bradfield--that
+she always believed he would have lived if he had gone there. He had
+consumption.”
+
+“Oh!” said Staniford softly. Then he added, with the tact of his sex,
+“Miss Blood, you mustn't take cold, sitting here with me. This wind is
+chilly. Shall I go below and get you some more wraps?”
+
+“No, thank you,” said Lydia; “I believe I will go down, now.”
+
+She went below to her room, and then came out into the cabin with
+some sewing at which she sat and stitched by the lamp. The captain
+was writing in his log-book; Dunham and Hicks were playing checkers
+together. Staniford, from a corner of a locker, looked musingly
+upon this curious family circle. It was not the first time that its
+occupations had struck him oddly. Sometimes when they were all there
+together, Dunham read aloud. Hicks knew tricks of legerdemain which he
+played cleverly. The captain told some very good stories, and led off
+in the laugh. Lydia always sewed and listened. She did not seem to find
+herself strangely placed, and her presence characterized all that was
+said and done with a charming innocence. As a bit of life, it was as
+pretty as it was quaint.
+
+“Really,” Staniford said to Dunham, as they turned in, that night, “she
+has domesticated us.”
+
+“Yes,” assented Dunham with enthusiasm; “isn't she a nice girl?”
+
+“She's intolerably passive. Or not passive, either. She says what she
+thinks, but she doesn't seem to have thought of many things. Did she
+ever tell you about her father?”
+
+“No,” said Dunham.
+
+“I mean about his dying of consumption?”
+
+“No, she never spoke of him to me. Was he--”
+
+“Um. It appears that we have been upon terms of confidence, then.”
+ Staniford paused, with one boot in his hand. “I should never have
+thought it.”
+
+“What was her father?” asked Dunham.
+
+“Upon my word, I don't know. I didn't seem to get beyond elemental
+statements of intimate fact with her. He died in California, where she
+was born; and he always had a longing to go to Italy. That was rather
+pretty.”
+
+“It's very touching, I think.”
+
+“Yes, of course. We might fancy this about Lurella: that she has a sort
+of piety in visiting the scenes that her father wished to visit, and
+that--Well, anything is predicable of a girl who says so little and
+looks so much. She's certainly very handsome; and I'm bound to say that
+her room could not have been better than her company, so far.”
+
+
+
+X.
+
+The dress that Lydia habitually wore was one which her aunt Maria
+studied from the costume of a summer boarder, who had spent a preceding
+summer at the sea-shore, and who found her yachting-dress perfectly
+adapted to tramping over the South Bradfield hills. Thus reverting to
+its original use on shipboard, the costume looked far prettier on Lydia
+than it had on the summer boarder from whose unconscious person it had
+been plagiarized. It was of the darkest blue flannel, and was fitly
+set off with those bright ribbons at the throat which women know how
+to dispose there according to their complexions. One day the bow was
+scarlet, and another crimson; Staniford did not know which was better,
+and disputed the point in vain with Dunham. They all grew to have a
+taste in such matters. Captain Jenness praised her dress outright,
+and said that he should tell his girls about it. Lydia, who had always
+supposed it was a walking costume, remained discreetly silent when the
+young men recognized its nautical character. She enjoyed its success;
+she made some little changes in the hat she wore with it, which met the
+approval of the cabin family; and she tranquilly kept her black silk in
+reserve for Sunday. She came out to breakfast in it, and it swept the
+narrow spaces, as she emerged from her state-room, with so rich and deep
+a murmur that every one looked up. She sustained their united glance
+with something tenderly deprecatory and appealingly conscious in her
+manner, much as a very sensitive girl in some new finery meets the eyes
+of her brothers when she does not know whether to cry or laugh at what
+they will say. Thomas almost dropped a plate. “Goodness!” he said,
+helplessly expressing the public sentiment in regard to a garment of
+which he alone had been in the secret. No doubt it passed his fondest
+dreams of its splendor; it fitted her as the sheath of the flower fits
+the flower.
+
+Captain Jenness looked hard at her, but waited a decent season after
+saying grace before offering his compliment, which he did in drawing the
+carving-knife slowly across the steel. “Well, Miss Blood, that's right!”
+ Lydia blushed richly, and the young men made their obeisances across the
+table.
+
+The flushes and pallors chased each other over her face, and the sight
+of her pleasure in being beautiful charmed Staniford. “If she were used
+to worship she would have taken our adoration more arrogantly,” he said
+to his friend when they went on deck after breakfast. “I can place her;
+but one's circumstance doesn't always account for one in America, and
+I can't make out yet whether she's ever been praised for being pretty.
+Some of our hill-country people would have felt like hushing up her
+beauty, as almost sinful, and some would have gone down before it like
+Greeks. I can't tell whether she knows it all or not; but if you suppose
+her unconscious till now, it's pathetic. And black silks must be
+too rare in her life not to be celebrated by a high tumult of inner
+satisfaction. I'm glad we bowed down to the new dress.”
+
+“Yes,” assented Dunham, with an uneasy absence; “but--Staniford, I
+should like to propose to Captain Jenness our having service this
+morning. It is the eleventh Sunday after--”
+
+“Ah, yes!” said Staniford. “It is Sunday, isn't it? I _thought_ we had
+breakfast rather later than usual. All over the Christian world, on land
+and sea, there is this abstruse relation between a late breakfast and
+religious observances.”
+
+Dunham looked troubled. “I wish you wouldn't talk that way, Staniford,
+and I hope you won't say anything--”
+
+“To interfere with your proposition? My dear fellow, I am at least a
+gentleman.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Dunham, gratefully.
+
+Staniford even went himself to the captain with Dunham's wish; it is
+true the latter assumed the more disagreeable part of proposing the
+matter to Hicks, who gave a humorous assent, as one might to a joke of
+doubtful feasibility.
+
+Dunham gratified both his love for social management and his zeal for
+his church in this organization of worship; and when all hands were
+called aft, and stood round in decorous silence, he read the lesson for
+the day, and conducted the service with a gravity astonishing to the
+sailors, who had taken him for a mere dandy. Staniford bore his part in
+the responses from the same prayer-book with Captain Jenness, who kept
+up a devout, inarticulate under-growl, and came out strong on particular
+words when he got his bearings through his spectacles. Hicks and the
+first officer silently shared another prayer-book, and Lydia offered
+half hers to Mr. Mason.
+
+When the hymn was given out, she waited while an experimental search
+for the tune took place among the rest. They were about to abandon the
+attempt, when she lifted her voice and began to sing. She sang as she
+did in the meeting-house at South Bradfield, and her voice seemed
+to fill all the hollow height and distance; it rang far off like a
+mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep
+appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up
+a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense
+of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter,
+hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the
+sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the girl's contralto
+thrilled through all.
+
+“Well, Miss Blood,” said the captain, when the service had ended in that
+subordination of the spiritual to the artistic interest which marks
+the process and the close of so much public worship in our day, “you've
+given us a surprise. I guess we shall keep you pretty busy with our
+calls for music, after this.”
+
+“She is a genius!” observed Staniford at his first opportunity with
+Dunham. “I knew there must be something the matter. Of course she's
+going out to school her voice; and she hasn't strained it in idle babble
+about her own affairs! I must say that Lu--Miss Blood's power of holding
+her tongue commands my homage. Was it her little _coup_ to wait till we
+got into that hopeless hobble before she struck in?”
+
+“Coup? For shame, Staniford! Coup at such a time!”
+
+“Well, well! I don't say so. But for the theatre one can't begin
+practicing these effects too soon. Really, that voice puts a new
+complexion on Miss Blood. I have a theory to reconstruct. I have been
+philosophizing her as a simple country girl. I must begin on an operatic
+novice. I liked the other better. It gave value to the black silk; as a
+singer she'll wear silk as habitually as a cocoon. She will have to
+take some stage name; translate Blood into Italian. We shall know her
+hereafter as La Sanguinelli; and when she comes to Boston we shall make
+our modest brags about going out to Europe with her. I don't know; I
+think I preferred the idyllic flavor I was beginning to find in the
+presence of the ordinary, futureless young girl, voyaging under the
+chaperonage of her own innocence,--the Little Sister of the Whole
+Ship. But this crepusculant prima donna--no, I don't like it. Though
+it explains some things. These splendid creatures are never sent half
+equipped into the world. I fancy that where there's an operatic voice,
+there's an operatic soul to go with it. Well, La Sanguinelli will wear
+me out, yet! Suggest some new topic, Dunham; talk of something else, for
+heaven's sake!”
+
+“Do you suppose,” asked Dunham, “that she would like to help get up some
+_musicales_, to pass away the time?”
+
+“Oh, do you call that talking of something else? What an insatiate
+organizer you are! You organize shuffleboard; you organize public
+worship; you want to organize musicales. She would have to do all your
+music for you.”
+
+“I think she would like to go in for it,” said Dunham. “It must be a
+pleasure to exercise such a gift as that, and now that it's come out in
+the way it has, it would be rather awkward for us not to recognize it.”
+
+Staniford refused point-blank to be a party to the new enterprise, and
+left Dunham to his own devices at dinner, where he proposed the matter.
+
+“If you had my Persis here, now,” observed Captain Jenness, “with her
+parlor organ, you could get along.”
+
+“I wish Miss Jenness was here,” said Dunham, politely. “But we must try
+to get on as it is. With Miss Blood's voice to start with, nothing ought
+to discourage us.” Dunham had a thin and gentle pipe of his own, and
+a fairish style in singing, but with his natural modesty he would not
+offer himself as a performer except in default of all others. “Don't you
+sing, Mr. Hicks?”
+
+“Anything to oblige a friend,” returned Hicks. “But I don't sing--before
+Miss Blood.”
+
+“Miss Blood,” said Staniford, listening in ironic safety, “you overawe
+us all. I never did sing, but I think I should want to make an effort if
+you were not by.”
+
+“But don't you--don't you play something, anything?” persisted Dunham,
+in desperate appeal to Hicks.
+
+“Well, yes,” the latter admitted, “I play the flute a little.”
+
+“Flutes on water!” said Staniford. Hicks looked at him in sulky dislike,
+but as if resolved not to be put down by him.
+
+“And have you got your flute with you?” demanded Dunham, joyously.
+
+“Yes, I have,” replied Hicks.
+
+“Then we are all right. I think I can carry a part, and if you will play
+to Miss Blood's singing--”
+
+“Try it this evening, if you like,” said the other.
+
+“Well, ah--I don't know. Perhaps--we hadn't better begin this evening.”
+
+Staniford laughed at Dunham's embarrassment. “You might have a sacred
+concert, and Mr. Hicks could represent the shawms and cymbals with his
+flute.”
+
+Dunham looked sorry for Staniford's saying this. Captain Jenness stared
+at him, as if his taking the names of these scriptural instruments in
+vain were a kind of blasphemy, and Lydia seemed puzzled and a little
+troubled.
+
+“I didn't think of its being Sunday,” said Hicks, with what Staniford
+felt to be a cunning assumption of manly frankness, “or any more Sunday
+than usual; seems as if we had had a month of Sundays already since
+we sailed. I'm not much on religion myself, but I shouldn't like to
+interfere with other people's principles.”
+
+Staniford was vexed with himself for his scornful pleasantry, and vexed
+with the others for taking it so seriously and heavily, and putting him
+so unnecessarily in the wrong. He was angry with Dunham, and he said to
+Hicks, “Very just sentiments.”
+
+“I am glad you like them,” replied Hicks, with sullen apprehension of
+the offensive tone.
+
+Staniford turned to Lydia. “I suppose that in South Bradfield your
+Sabbath is over at sundown on Sunday evening.”
+
+“That used to be the custom,” answered the girl. “I've heard my
+grandfather tell of it.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” interposed Captain Jenness. “They used to keep Saturday night
+down our way, too. I can remember when I was a boy. It came pretty hard
+to begin so soon, but it seemed to kind of break it, after all, having a
+night in.”
+
+The captain did not know what Staniford began to laugh at. “Our Puritan
+ancestors knew just how much human nature could stand, after all. We
+did not have an uninterrupted Sabbath till the Sabbath had become much
+milder. Is that it?”
+
+The captain had probably no very clear notion of what this meant, but
+simply felt it to be a critical edge of some sort. “I don't know as you
+can have too much religion,” he remarked. “I've seen some pretty rough
+customers in the church, but I always thought, What would they be out of
+it!”
+
+“Very true!” said Staniford, smiling. He wanted to laugh again, but he
+liked the captain too well to do that; and then he began to rage in his
+heart at the general stupidity which had placed him in the attitude of
+mocking at religion, a thing he would have loathed to do. It seemed to
+him that Dunham was answerable for his false position. “But we shall not
+see the right sort of Sabbath till Mr. Dunham gets his Catholic church
+fully going,” he added.
+
+They all started, and looked at Dunham as good Protestants must when
+some one whom they would never have suspected of Catholicism turns out
+to be a Catholic. Dunham cast a reproachful glance at his friend, but
+said simply, “I am a Catholic,--that is true; but I do not admit the
+pretensions of the Bishop of Rome.”
+
+The rest of the company apparently could not follow him in making this
+distinction; perhaps some of them did not quite know who the Bishop of
+Rome was. Lydia continued to look at him in fascination; Hicks seemed
+disposed to whistle, if such a thing were allowable; Mr. Watterson
+devoutly waited for the captain. “Well,” observed the captain at last,
+with the air of giving the devil his due, “I've seen some very good
+people among the Catholics.”
+
+“That's so, Captain Jenness,” said the first officer.
+
+“I don't see,” said Lydia, without relaxing her gaze, “why, if you are a
+Catholic, you read the service of a Protestant church.”
+
+“It is not a Protestant church,” answered Dunham, gently, “as I have
+tried to explain to you.”
+
+“The Episcopalian?” demanded Captain Jenness.
+
+“The Episcopalian,” sweetly reiterated Dunham.
+
+“I should like to know what kind of a church it is, then,” said Captain
+Jenness, triumphantly.
+
+“An Apostolic church.”
+
+Captain Jenness rubbed his nose, as if this were a new kind of church to
+him.
+
+“Founded by Saint Henry VIII. himself,” interjected Staniford.
+
+“No, Staniford,” said Dunham, with a soft repressiveness. And now a
+threatening light of zeal began to burn in his kindly eyes. These souls
+had plainly been given into his hands for ecclesiastical enlightenment.
+“If our friends will allow me, I will explain--”
+
+Staniford's shaft had recoiled upon his own head. “O Lord!” he cried,
+getting up from the table, “I can't stand _that_!” The others regarded
+him, as he felt, even to that weasel of a Hicks, as a sheep of uncommon
+blackness. He went on deck, and smoked a cigar without relief. He still
+heard the girl's voice in singing; and he still felt in his nerves the
+quality of latent passion in it which had thrilled him when she sang.
+His thought ran formlessly upon her future, and upon what sort of
+being was already fated to waken her to those possibilities of intense
+suffering and joy which he imagined in her. A wound at his heart,
+received long before, hurt vaguely; and he felt old.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+No one said anything more of the musicales, and the afternoon and
+evening wore away without general talk. Each seemed willing to keep
+apart from the rest. Dunham suffered Lydia to come on deck alone after
+tea, and Staniford found her there, in her usual place, when he went up
+some time later. He approached her at once, and said, smiling down into
+her face, to which the moonlight gave a pale mystery, “Miss Blood, did
+you think I was very wicked to-day at dinner?”
+
+Lydia looked away, and waited a moment before she spoke. “I don't know,”
+ she said. Then, impulsively, “Did you?” she asked.
+
+“No, honestly, I don't think I was,” answered Staniford. “But I seemed
+to leave that impression on the company. I felt a little nasty, that
+was all; and I tried to hurt Mr. Dunham's feelings. But I shall make
+it right with him before I sleep; he knows that. He's used to having me
+repent at leisure. Do you ever walk Sunday night?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes,” said Lydia interrogatively.
+
+“I'm glad of that. Then I shall not offend against your scruples if I
+ask you to join me in a little ramble, and you will refuse from purely
+personal considerations. Will you walk with me?”
+
+“Yes.” Lydia rose.
+
+“And will you take my arm?” asked Staniford, a little surprised at her
+readiness.
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+She put her hand upon his arm, confidently enough, and they began to
+walk up and down the stretch of open deck together.
+
+“Well,” said Staniford, “did Mr. Dunham convince you all?”
+
+“I think he talks beautifully about it,” replied Lydia, with quaint
+stiffness.
+
+“I am glad you see what a very good fellow he is. I have a real
+affection for Dunham.”
+
+“Oh, yes, he's good. At first it surprised me. I mean--”
+
+“No, no,” Staniford quickly interrupted, “why did it surprise you to
+find Dunham good?”
+
+“I don't know. You don't expect a person to be serious who is so--so--”
+
+“Handsome?”
+
+“No,--so--I don't know just how to say it: fashionable.”
+
+Staniford laughed. “Why, Miss Blood, you're fashionably dressed
+yourself, not to go any farther, and you're serious.”
+
+“It's different with a man,” the girl explained.
+
+“Well, then, how about me?” asked Staniford. “Am I too well dressed to
+be expected to be serious?”
+
+“Mr. Dunham always seems in earnest,” Lydia answered, evasively.
+
+“And you think one can't be in earnest without being serious?” Lydia
+suffered one of those silences to ensue in which Staniford had already
+found himself helpless. He knew that he should be forced to break it:
+and he said, with a little spiteful mocking, “I suppose the young men of
+South Bradfield are both serious and earnest.”
+
+“How?” asked Lydia.
+
+“The young men of South Bradfield.”
+
+“I told you that there were none. They all go away.”
+
+“Well, then, the young men of Springfield, of Keene, of Greenfield.”
+
+“I can't tell. I am not acquainted there.”
+
+Staniford had begun to have a disagreeable suspicion that her ready
+consent to walk up and down with a young man in the moonlight might have
+come from a habit of the kind. But it appeared that her fearlessness
+was like that of wild birds in those desert islands where man has
+never come. The discovery gave him pleasure out of proportion to its
+importance, and he paced back and forth in a silence that no longer
+chafed. Lydia walked very well, and kept his step with rhythmic unison,
+as if they were walking to music together. “That's the time in her
+pulses,” he thought, and then he said, “Then you don't have a great
+deal of social excitement, I suppose,--dancing, and that kind of thing?
+Though perhaps you don't approve of dancing?”
+
+“Oh, yes, I like it. Sometimes the summer boarders get up little dances
+at the hotel.”
+
+“Oh, the summer boarders!” Staniford had overlooked them. “The young men
+get them up, and invite the ladies?” he pursued.
+
+“There are no young men, generally, among the summer boarders. The
+ladies dance together. Most of the gentlemen are old, or else invalids.”
+
+“Oh!” said Staniford.
+
+“At the Mill Village, where I've taught two winters, they have dances
+sometimes,--the mill hands do.”
+
+“And do you go?”
+
+“No. They are nearly all French Canadians and Irish people.”
+
+“Then you like dancing because there are no gentlemen to dance with?”
+
+“There are gentlemen at the picnics.”
+
+“The picnics?”
+
+“The teachers' picnics. They have them every summer, in a grove by the
+pond.”
+
+There was, then, a high-browed, dyspeptic high-school principal, and the
+desert-island theory was probably all wrong. It vexed Staniford, when
+he had so nearly got the compass of her social life, to find this
+unexplored corner in it.
+
+“And I suppose you are leaving very agreeable friends among the
+teachers?”
+
+“Some of them are pleasant. But I don't know them very well. I've only
+been to one of the picnics.”
+
+Staniford drew a long, silent breath. After all, he knew everything. He
+mechanically dropped a little the arm on which her hand rested, that it
+might slip farther within. Her timid remoteness had its charm, and he
+fell to thinking, with amusement, how she who was so subordinate to him
+was, in the dimly known sphere in which he had been groping to find her,
+probably a person of authority and consequence. It satisfied a certain
+domineering quality in him to have reduced her to this humble attitude,
+while it increased the protecting tenderness he was beginning to have
+for her. His mind went off further upon this matter of one's different
+attitudes toward different persons; he thought of men, and women
+too, before whom he should instantly feel like a boy, if he could be
+confronted with them, even in his present lordliness of mood. In a
+fashion of his when he convicted himself of anything, he laughed aloud.
+Lydia shrank a little from him, in question. “I beg your pardon,” he
+said. “I was laughing at something I happened to think of. Do you ever
+find yourself struggling very hard to be what you think people think you
+are?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” replied Lydia. “But I thought no one else did.”
+
+“Everybody does the thing that we think no one else does,” said
+Staniford, sententiously.
+
+“I don't know whether I quite like it,” said Lydia. “It seems like
+hypocrisy. It used to worry me. Sometimes I wondered if I had any real
+self. I seemed to be just what people made me, and a different person to
+each.”
+
+“I'm glad to hear it, Miss Blood. We are companions in hypocrisy. As
+we are such nonentities we shall not affect each other at all.” Lydia
+laughed. “Don't you think so? What are you laughing at? I told you what
+I was laughing at!”
+
+“But I didn't ask you.”
+
+“You wished to know.”
+
+“Yes, I did.”
+
+“Then you ought to tell me what I wish to know.”
+
+“It's nothing,” said Lydia. “I thought you were mistaken in what you
+said.”
+
+“Oh! Then you believe that there's enough of you to affect me?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“The other way, then?”
+
+She did not answer.
+
+“I'm delighted!” exclaimed Staniford. “I hope I don't exert an
+uncomfortable influence. I should be very unhappy to think so.” Lydia
+stooped side-wise, away from him, to get a fresh hold of her skirt,
+which she was carrying in her right hand, and she hung a little more
+heavily upon his arm. “I hope I make you think better of yourself,--very
+self-satisfied, very conceited even.”
+
+“No,” said Lydia.
+
+“You pique my curiosity beyond endurance. Tell me how I make you feel.”
+
+She looked quickly round at him, as if to see whether he was in earnest.
+“Why, it's nothing,” she said. “You made me feel as if you were laughing
+at everybody.”
+
+It flatters a man to be accused of sarcasm by the other sex, and
+Staniford was not superior to the soft pleasure of the reproach. “Do you
+think I make other people feel so, too?”
+
+“Mr. Dunham said--”
+
+“Oh! Mr. Dunham has been talking me over with you, has he? What did
+he tell you of me? There is nobody like a true friend for dealing an
+underhand blow at one's reputation. Wait till you hear my account of
+Dunham! What did he say?”
+
+“He said that was only your way of laughing at yourself.”
+
+“The traitor! What did you say?”
+
+“I don't know that I said anything.”
+
+“You were reserving your opinion for my own hearing?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why don't you tell me what you thought? It might be of great use to me.
+I'm in earnest, now; I'm serious. Will you tell me?”
+
+“Yes, some time,” said Lydia, who was both amused and mystified at this
+persistence.
+
+“When? To-morrow?”
+
+“Oh, that's too soon. When I get to Venice!”
+
+“Ah! That's a subterfuge. You know we shall part in Trieste.”
+
+“I thought,” said Lydia, “you were coming to Venice, too.”
+
+“Oh, yes, but I shouldn't be able to see you there.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Why not? Why, because--” He was near telling the young girl who hung
+upon his arm, and walked up and down with him in the moonlight, that in
+the wicked Old World towards which they were sailing young people could
+not meet save in the sight and hearing of their elders, and that a
+confidential analysis of character would be impossible between them
+there. The wonder of her being where she was, as she was, returned upon
+him with a freshness that it had been losing in the custom of the week
+past. “Because you will be so much taken up with your friends,” he said,
+lamely. He added quickly, “There's one thing I should like to know, Miss
+Blood: did you hear what Mr. Dunham and I were saying, last night, when
+we stood in the gangway and kept you from coming up?”
+
+Lydia waited a moment. Then she said, “Yes. I couldn't help hearing it.”
+
+“That's all right. I don't care for your hearing what I said. But--I
+hope it wasn't true?”
+
+“I couldn't understand what you meant by it,” she answered, evasively,
+but rather faintly.
+
+“Thanks,” said Staniford. “I didn't mean anything. It was merely the
+guilty consciousness of a generally disagreeable person.” They walked up
+and down many turns without saying anything. She could not have made
+any direct protest, and it pleased him that she could not frame any
+flourishing generalities. “Yes,” Staniford resumed, “I will try to see
+you as I pass through Venice. And I will come to hear you sing when you
+come out at Milan.”
+
+“Come out? At Milan?”
+
+“Why, yes! You are going to study at the conservatory in Milan?”
+
+“How did you know that?” demanded Lydia.
+
+“From hearing you to-day. May I tell you how much I liked your singing?”
+
+“My aunt thought I ought to cultivate my voice. But I would never go
+upon the stage. I would rather sing in a church. I should like that
+better than teaching.”
+
+“I think you're quite right,” said Staniford, gravely. “It's certainly
+much better to sing in a church than to sing in a theatre. Though I
+believe the theatre pays best.”
+
+“Oh, I don't care for that. All I should want would be to make a
+living.”
+
+The reference to her poverty touched him. It was a confidence, coming
+from one so reticent, that was of value. He waited a moment and said,
+“It's surprising how well we keep our footing here, isn't it? There's
+hardly any swell, but the ship pitches. I think we walk better together
+than alone.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Lydia, “I think we do.”
+
+“You mustn't let me tire you. I'm indefatigable.”
+
+“Oh, I'm not tired. I like it,--walking.”
+
+“Do you walk much at home?”
+
+“Not much. It's a pretty good walk to the school-house.”
+
+“Oh! Then you like walking at sea better than you do on shore?”
+
+“It isn't the custom, much. If there were any one else, I should have
+liked it there. But it's rather dull, going by yourself.”
+
+“Yes, I understand how that is,” said Staniford, dropping his teasing
+tone. “It's stupid. And I suppose it's pretty lonesome at South
+Bradfield every way.”
+
+“It is,--winters,” admitted Lydia. “In the summer you see people, at any
+rate, but in winter there are days and days when hardly any one passes.
+The snow is banked up everywhere.”
+
+He felt her give an involuntary shiver; and he began to talk to her
+about the climate to which she was going. It was all stranger to her
+than he could have realized, and less intelligible. She remembered
+California very dimly, and she had no experience by which she could
+compare and adjust his facts. He made her walk up and down more and more
+swiftly, as he lost himself in the comfort of his own talking and of her
+listening, and he failed to note the little falterings with which she
+expressed her weariness.
+
+All at once he halted, and said, “Why, you're out of breath! I beg your
+pardon. You should have stopped me. Let us sit down.” He wished to
+walk across the deck to where the seats were, but she just perceptibly
+withstood his motion, and he forbore.
+
+“I think I won't sit down,” she said. “I will go down-stairs.” She began
+withdrawing her hand from his arm. He put his right hand upon hers, and
+when it came out of his arm it remained in his hand.
+
+“I'm afraid you won't walk with me again,” said Staniford. “I've tired
+you shamefully.”
+
+“Oh, not at all!”
+
+“And you will?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Thanks. You're very amiable.” He still held her hand. He pressed it.
+The pressure was not returned, but her hand seemed to quiver and throb
+in his like a bird held there. For the time neither of them spoke, and
+it seemed a long time. Staniford found himself carrying her hand towards
+his lips; and she was helplessly, trustingly, letting him.
+
+He dropped her hand, and said, abruptly, “Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night,” she answered, and ceased from his side like a ghost.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+Staniford sat in the moonlight, and tried to think what the steps were
+that had brought him to this point; but there were no steps of which
+he was sensible. He remembered thinking the night before that the
+conditions were those of flirtation; to-night this had not occurred to
+him. The talk had been of the dullest commonplaces; yet he had pressed
+her hand and kept it in his, and had been about to kiss it. He bitterly
+considered the disparity between his present attitude and the stand he
+had taken when he declared to Dunham that it rested with them to guard
+her peculiar isolation from anything that she could remember with pain
+or humiliation when she grew wiser in the world. He recalled his rage
+with Hicks, and the insulting condemnation of his bearing towards him
+ever since; and could Hicks have done worse? He had done better: he had
+kept away from her; he had let her alone.
+
+That night Staniford slept badly, and woke with a restless longing to
+see the girl, and to read in her face whatever her thought of him had
+been. But Lydia did not come out to breakfast. Thomas reported that she
+had a headache, and that he had already carried her the tea and toast
+she wanted. “Well, it seems kind of lonesome without her,” said the
+captain. “It don't seem as if we could get along.”
+
+It seemed desolate to Staniford, who let the talk flag and fail round
+him without an effort to rescue it. All the morning he lurked about,
+keeping out of Dunham's way, and fighting hard through a dozen pages of
+a book, to which he struggled to nail his wandering mind. A headache was
+a little matter, but it might be even less than a headache. He belated
+himself purposely at dinner, and entered the cabin just as Lydia issued
+from her stateroom door.
+
+She was pale and looked heavy-eyed. As she lifted her glance to him,
+she blushed; and he felt the answering red stain his face. When she sat
+down, the captain patted her on the shoulder with his burly right hand,
+and said he could not navigate the ship if she got sick. He pressed her
+to eat of this and that; and when she would not, he said, well, there
+was no use trying to force an appetite, and that she would be better all
+the sooner for dieting. Hicks went to his state-room, and came out
+with a box of guava jelly, from his private stores, and won a triumph
+enviable in all eyes when Lydia consented to like it with the chicken.
+Dunham plundered his own and Staniford's common stock of dainties for
+her dessert; the first officer agreed and applauded right and left;
+Staniford alone sat taciturn and inoperative, watching her face
+furtively. Once her eyes wandered to the side of the table where he and
+Dunham sat; then she colored and dropped her glance.
+
+He took his book again after dinner, and with his finger between the
+leaves, at the last-read, unintelligible page, he went out to the bow,
+and crouched down there to renew the conflict of the morning. It was not
+long before Dunham followed. He stooped over to lay a hand on either of
+Staniford's shoulders.
+
+“What makes you avoid me, old man?” he demanded, looking into
+Staniford's face with his frank, kind eyes.
+
+“And I avoid you?” asked Staniford.
+
+“Yes; why?”
+
+“Because I feel rather shabby, I suppose. I knew I felt shabby, but I
+didn't know I was avoiding you.”
+
+“Well, no matter. If you feel shabby, it's all right; but I hate to have
+you feel shabby.” He got his left hand down into Staniford's right, and
+a tacit reconciliation was transacted between them. Dunham looked about
+for a seat, and found a stool, which he planted in front of Staniford.
+“Wasn't it pleasant to have our little lady back at table, again?”
+
+“Very,” said Staniford.
+
+“I couldn't help thinking how droll it was that a person whom we all
+considered a sort of incumbrance and superfluity at first should really
+turn out an object of prime importance to us all. Isn't it amusing?”
+
+“Very droll.”
+
+“Why, we were quite lost without her, at breakfast. I couldn't have
+imagined her taking such a hold upon us all, in so short a time. But
+she's a pretty creature, and as good as she's pretty.”
+
+“I remember agreeing with you on those points before.” Staniford feigned
+to suppress fatigue.
+
+Dunham observed him. “I know you don't take so much interest in her
+as--as the rest of us do, and I wish you did. You don't know what a
+lovely nature she is.”
+
+“No?”
+
+“No; and I'm sure you'd like her.”
+
+“Is it important that I should like her? Don't let your enthusiasm for
+the sex carry you beyond bounds, Dunham.”
+
+“No, no. Not important, but very pleasant. And I think acquaintance with
+such a girl would give you some new ideas of women.”
+
+“Oh, my old ones are good enough. Look here, Dunham,” said Staniford,
+sharply, “what are you after?”
+
+“What makes you think I'm after anything?”
+
+“Because you're not a humbug, and because I am. My depraved spirit
+instantly recognized the dawning duplicity of yours. But you'd better be
+honest. You can't make the other thing work. What do you want?”
+
+“I want your advice. I want your help, Staniford.”
+
+“I thought so! Coming and forgiving me in that--apostolic manner.”
+
+“Don't!”
+
+“Well. What do you want my help for? What have you been doing?”
+ Staniford paused, and suddenly added: “Have you been making love to
+Lurella?” He said this in his ironical manner, but his smile was rather
+ghastly.
+
+“For shame, Staniford!” cried Dunham. But he reddened violently.
+
+“Then it isn't with Miss Hibbard that you want my help. I'm glad of
+that. It would have been awkward. I'm a little afraid of Miss Hibbard.
+It isn't every one has your courage, my dear fellow.”
+
+“I haven't been making love to her,” said Dunham, “but--I--”
+
+“But you what?” demanded Staniford sharply again. There had been less
+tension of voice in his joking about Miss Hibbard.
+
+“Staniford,” said his friend, “I don't know whether you noticed her, at
+dinner, when she looked across to our own side?”
+
+“What did she do?”
+
+“Did you notice that she--well, that she blushed a little?”
+
+Staniford waited a while before he answered, after a gulp, “Yes, I
+noticed that.”
+
+“Well, I don't know how to put it exactly, but I'm afraid that I have
+unwittingly wronged this young girl.”
+
+“Wronged her? What the devil _do_ you mean, Dunham?” cried Staniford,
+with bitter impatience.
+
+“I'm afraid--I'm afraid--Why, it's simply this: that in trying to amuse
+her, and make the time pass agreeably, and relieve her mind, and
+all that, don't you know, I've given her the impression that
+I'm--well--interested in her, and that she may have allowed
+herself--insensibly, you know--to look upon me in that light, and that
+she may have begun to think--that she may have become--”
+
+“Interested in you?” interrupted Staniford rudely.
+
+“Well--ah--well, that is--ah--well--yes!” cried Dunham, bracing himself
+to sustain a shout of ridicule. But Staniford did not laugh, and Dunham
+had courage to go on. “Of course, it sounds rather conceited to say so,
+but the circumstances are so peculiar that I think we ought to recognize
+even any possibilities of that sort.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Staniford, gravely. “Most women, I believe, are so
+innocent as to think a man in love when he behaves like a lover. And
+this one,” he added ruefully, “seems more than commonly ignorant of our
+ways,--of our infernal shilly-shallying, purposeless no-mindedness.
+She couldn't imagine a man--a gentleman--devoting himself to her by the
+hour, and trying by every art to show his interest and pleasure in her
+society, without imagining that he wished her to like him,--love him;
+there's no half-way about it. She couldn't suppose him the shallow,
+dawdling, soulless, senseless ape he really was.” Staniford was quite in
+a heat by this time, and Dunham listened in open astonishment.
+
+“You are hard upon me,” he said. “Of course, I have been to blame; I
+know that, I acknowledge it. But my motive, as you know well enough, was
+never to amuse myself with her, but to contribute in any way I could to
+her enjoyment and happiness. I--”
+
+“_You_!” cried Staniford. “What are you talking about?”
+
+“What are _you_ talking about?” demanded Dunham, in his turn.
+
+Staniford recollected himself. “I was speaking of abstract flirtation. I
+was firing into the air.”
+
+“In my case, I don't choose to call it flirtation,” returned Dunham. “My
+purpose, I am bound to say, was thoroughly unselfish and kindly.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Staniford, with a bitter smile, “there can be no
+unselfishness and no kindliness between us and young girls, unless we
+mean business,--love-making. You may be sure that they feel it so, if
+they don't understand it so.”
+
+“I don't agree with you. I don't believe it. My own experience is that
+the sweetest and most generous friendships may exist between us, without
+a thought of anything else. And as to making love, I must beg you to
+remember that my love has been made once for all. I never dreamt of
+showing Miss Blood anything but polite attention.”
+
+“Then what are you troubled about?”
+
+“I am troubled--” Dunham stopped helplessly, and Staniford laughed in a
+challenging, disagreeable way, so that the former perforce resumed:
+
+“I'm troubled about--about her possible misinterpretation.”
+
+“Oh! Then in this case of sweet and generous friendship the party of the
+second part may have construed the sentiment quite differently! Well,
+what do you want me to do? Do you want me to take the contract off your
+hands?”
+
+“You put it grossly,” said Dunham.
+
+“And _you_ put it offensively!” cried the other. “My regard for the
+young lady is as reverent as yours. You have no right to miscolor my
+words.”
+
+“Staniford, you are too bad,” said Dunham, hurt even more than angered.
+“If I've come to you in the wrong moment--if you are vexed at anything,
+I'll go away, and beg your pardon for boring you.”
+
+Staniford was touched; he looked cordially into his friend's face. “I
+_was_ vexed at something, but you never can come to me at the wrong
+moment, old fellow. I beg _your_ pardon. _I_ see your difficulty plainly
+enough, and I think you're quite right in proposing to hold up,--for
+that's what you mean, I take it?”
+
+“Yes,” said Dunham, “it is. And I don't know how she will like it. She
+will be puzzled and grieved by it. I hadn't thought seriously about the
+matter till this morning, when she didn't come to breakfast. You know
+I've been in the habit of asking her to walk with me every night after
+tea; but Saturday evening you were with her, and last night I felt sore
+about the affairs of the day, and rather dull, and I didn't ask her. I
+think she noticed it. I think she was hurt.”
+
+“You think so?” said Staniford, peculiarly.
+
+“I might not have thought so,” continued Dunham, “merely because she did
+not come to breakfast; but her blushing when she looked across at dinner
+really made me uneasy.”
+
+“Very possibly you're right.” Staniford mused a while before he spoke
+again. “Well, what do you wish me to do?”
+
+“I must hold up, as you say, and of course she will feel the difference.
+I wish--I wish at least you wouldn't avoid her, Staniford. That's all.
+Any little attention from you--I know it bores you--would not only
+break the loneliness, but it would explain that--that my--attentions
+didn't--ah--hadn't meant anything.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Yes; that it's common to offer them. And she's a girl of so much force
+of character that when she sees the affair in its true light--I suppose
+I'm to blame! Yes, I ought to have told her at the beginning that I
+was engaged. But you can't force a fact of that sort upon a new
+acquaintance: it looks silly.” Dunham hung his head in self-reproach.
+
+“Well?” asked Staniford.
+
+“Well, that's all! No, it _isn't_ all, either. There's something else
+troubles me. Our poor little friend is a blackguard, I suppose?”
+
+“Hicks?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You have invited him to be the leader of your orchestra, haven't you?”
+
+“Oh, don't, Staniford!” cried Dunham in his helplessness. “I should hate
+to see her dependent in any degree upon that little cad for society.”
+ Cad was the last English word which Dunham had got himself used to.
+“That was why I hoped that you wouldn't altogether neglect her. She's
+here, and she's no choice but to remain. We can't leave her to herself
+without the danger of leaving her to Hicks. You see?”
+
+“Well,” said Staniford gloomily, “I'm not sure that you couldn't leave
+her to a worse cad than Hicks.” Dunham looked up in question. “To me,
+for example.”
+
+“Oh, hallo!” cried Dunham.
+
+“I don't see how I'm to be of any use,” continued the other. “I'm not a
+squire of dames; I should merely make a mess of it.”
+
+“You're mistaken, Staniford,--I'm sure you are,--in supposing that she
+dislikes you,” urged his friend.
+
+“Oh, very likely.”
+
+“I know that she's simply afraid of you.”
+
+“Don't flatter, Dunham. Why should I care whether she fears me or
+affects me? No, my dear fellow. This is irretrievably your own affair.
+I should be glad to help you out if I knew how. But I don't. In the mean
+time your duty is plain, whatever happens. You can't overdo the sweet
+and the generous in this wicked world without paying the penalty.”
+
+Staniford smiled at the distress in which Dunham went his way. He
+understood very well that it was not vanity, but the liveliness of a
+sensitive conscience, that had made Dunham search his conduct for the
+offense against the young girl's peace of heart which he believed he had
+committed, and it was the more amusing because he was so guiltless of
+harm. Staniford knew who was to blame for the headache and the blush. He
+knew that Dunham had never gone so far; that his chivalrous pleasure in
+her society might continue for years free from flirtation. But in
+spite of this conviction a little poignant doubt made itself felt, and
+suddenly became his whole consciousness. “Confound him!” he mused. “I
+wonder if she really could care anything for him!” He shut his book, and
+rose to his feet with such a burning in his heart that he could not have
+believed himself capable of the greater rage he felt at what he just
+then saw. It was Lydia and Hicks seated together in the place where he
+had sat with her. She leaned with one arm upon the rail, in an attitude
+that brought all her slim young grace into evidence. She seemed on
+very good terms with him, and he was talking and making her laugh as
+Staniford had never heard her laugh before--so freely, so heartily.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+The atoms that had been tending in Staniford's being toward a certain
+form suddenly arrested and shaped themselves anew at the vibration
+imparted by this laughter. He no longer felt himself Hicks's possible
+inferior, but vastly better in every way, and out of the turmoil of his
+feelings in regard to Lydia was evolved the distinct sense of having
+been trifled with. Somehow, an advantage had been taken of his
+sympathies and purposes, and his forbearance had been treated with
+contempt.
+
+The conviction was neither increased nor diminished by the events of
+the evening, when Lydia brought out some music from her state-room, and
+Hicks appeared, flute in hand, from his, and they began practicing one
+of the pieces together. It was a pretty enough sight. Hicks had
+been gradually growing a better-looking fellow; he had an undeniable
+picturesqueness, as he bowed his head over the music towards hers;
+and she, as she held the sheet with one hand for him to see, while she
+noiselessly accompanied herself on the table with the fingers of the
+other, and tentatively sang now this passage and now that, was divine.
+The picture seemed pleasing to neither Staniford nor Dunham; they went
+on deck together, and sat down to their cigarettes in their wonted
+place. They did not talk of Lydia, or of any of the things that had
+formed the basis of their conversation hitherto, but Staniford returned
+to his Colorado scheme, and explained at length the nature of his
+purposes and expectations. He had discussed these matters before, but he
+had never gone into them so fully, nor with such cheerful earnestness.
+He said he should never marry,--he had made up his mind to that; but
+he hoped to make money enough to take care of his sister's boy Jim
+handsomely, as the little chap had been named for him. He had been
+thinking the matter over, and he believed that he should get back by
+rail and steamer as soon as he could after they reached Trieste. He was
+not sorry he had come; but he could not afford to throw away too much
+time on Italy, just then.
+
+Dunham, on his part, talked a great deal of Miss Hibbard, and of
+some curious psychological characteristics of her dyspepsia. He asked
+Staniford whether he had ever shown him the photograph of Miss Hibbard
+taken by Sarony when she was on to New York the last time: it was a
+three-quarters view, and Dunham thought it the best she had had done. He
+spoke of her generous qualities, and of the interest she had always had
+in the Diet Kitchen, to which, as an invalid, her attention had been
+particularly directed: and he said that in her last letter she had
+mentioned a project for establishing diet kitchens in Europe, on the
+Boston plan. When their talk grew more impersonal and took a wider
+range, they gathered suggestion from the situation, and remarked upon
+the immense solitude of the sea. They agreed that there was something
+weird in the long continuance of fine weather, and that the moon had a
+strange look. They spoke of the uncertainty of life. Dunham regretted,
+as he had often regretted before, that his friend had no fixed religious
+belief; and Staniford gently accepted his solicitude, and said that he
+had at least a conviction if not a creed. He then begged Dunham's pardon
+in set terms for trying to wound his feelings the day before; and in the
+silent hand-clasp that followed they renewed all the cordiality of their
+friendship. From time to time, as they talked, the music from below came
+up fitfully, and once they had to pause as Lydia sang through the song
+that she and Hicks were practicing.
+
+As the days passed their common interest in the art brought Hicks
+and the young girl almost constantly together, and the sound of their
+concerting often filled the ship. The musicales, less formal than
+Dunham had intended, and perhaps for that reason a source of rapidly
+diminishing interest with him, superseded both ring-toss and
+shuffle-board, and seemed even more acceptable to the ship's company as an
+entertainment. One evening, when the performers had been giving a piece
+of rather more than usual excellence and difficulty, one of the sailors,
+deputed by his mates, came aft, with many clumsy shows of deference, and
+asked them to give Marching through Georgia. Hicks found this out of his
+repertory, but Lydia sang it. Then the group at the forecastle shouted
+with one voice for Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching, and so
+beguiled her through the whole list of war-songs. She ended with one
+unknown to her listeners, but better than all the rest in its pathetic
+words and music, and when she had sung The Flag's come back to
+Tennessee, the spokesman of the sailors came aft again, to thank her for
+his mates, and to say they would not spoil that last song by asking
+for anything else. It was a charming little triumph for her, as she sat
+surrounded by her usual court: the captain was there to countenance the
+freedom the sailors had taken, and Dunham and Staniford stood near, but
+Hicks, at her right hand, held the place of honor.
+
+The next night Staniford found her alone in the waist of the ship, and
+drew up a stool beside the rail where she sat.
+
+“We all enjoyed your singing so much, last night, Miss Blood. I think
+Mr. Hicks plays charmingly, but I believe I prefer to hear your voice
+alone.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Lydia, looking down, demurely.
+
+“It must be a great satisfaction to feel that you can give so much
+pleasure.”
+
+“I don't know,” she said, passing the palm of one hand over the back of
+the other.
+
+“When you are a _prima donna_ you mustn't forget your old friends of the
+Aroostook. We shall all take vast pride in you.”
+
+It was not a question, and Lydia answered nothing. Staniford, who had
+rather obliged himself to this advance, with some dim purpose of showing
+that nothing had occurred to alienate them since the evening, of their
+promenade, without having proved to himself that it was necessary to do
+this, felt that he was growing angry. It irritated him to have her sit
+as unmoved after his words as if he had not spoken.
+
+“Miss Blood,” he said, “I envy you your gift of snubbing people.”
+
+Lydia looked at him. “Snubbing people?” she echoed.
+
+“Yes; your power of remaining silent when you wish to put down some one
+who has been wittingly or unwittingly impertinent.”
+
+“I don't know what you mean,” she said, in a sort of breathless way.
+
+“And you didn't intend to mark your displeasure at my planning your
+future?”
+
+“No! We had talked of that. I--”
+
+“And you were not vexed with me for anything? I have been afraid that
+I--that you--” Staniford found that he was himself getting short of
+breath. He had begun with the intention of mystifying her, but matters
+had suddenly taken another course, and he was really anxious to know
+whether any disagreeable associations with that night lingered in her
+mind. With this longing came a natural inability to find the right word.
+“I was afraid--” he repeated, and then he stopped again. Clearly, he
+could not tell her that he was afraid he had gone too far; but this
+was what he meant. “You don't walk with me, any more, Miss Blood,” he
+concluded, with an air of burlesque reproach.
+
+“You haven't asked me--since,” she said.
+
+He felt a singular value and significance in this word, since. It showed
+that her thoughts had been running parallel with his own; it permitted,
+if it did not signify, that he should resume the mood of that time,
+where their parting had interrupted it. He enjoyed the fact to the
+utmost, but he was not sure that he wished to do what he was permitted.
+“Then I didn't tire you?” he merely asked. He was not sure, now he came
+to think of it, that he liked her willingness to recur to that time. He
+liked it, but not quite in the way he would have liked to like it.
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+“The fact is,” he went on aimlessly, “that I thought I had rather abused
+your kindness. Besides,” he added, veering off, “I was afraid I should
+be an interruption to the musical exercises.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Lydia. “Mr. Dunham hasn't arranged anything yet.”
+ Staniford thought this uncandid. It was fighting shy of Hicks, who was
+the person in his own mind; and it reawakened a suspicion which was
+lurking there. “Mr. Dunham seems to have lost his interest.”
+
+This struck Staniford as an expression of pique; it reawakened quite
+another suspicion. It was evident that she was hurt at the cessation
+of Dunham's attentions. He was greatly minded to say that Dunham was a
+fool, but he ended by saying, with sarcasm, “I suppose he saw that he
+was superseded.”
+
+“Mr. Hicks plays well,” said Lydia, judicially, “but he doesn't really
+know so much of music as Mr. Dunham.”
+
+“No?” responded Staniford, with irony. “I will tell Dunham. No doubt
+he's been suffering the pangs of professional jealousy. That must be the
+reason why he keeps away.”
+
+“Keeps away?” asked Lydia.
+
+“_Now_ I've made an ass of myself!” thought Staniford. “You said that he
+seemed to have lost his interest,” he answered her.
+
+“Oh! Yes!” assented Lydia. And then she remained rather distraught,
+pulling at the ruffling of her dress.
+
+“Dunham is a very accomplished man,” said Staniford, finding the usual
+satisfaction in pressing his breast against the thorn. “He's a great
+favorite in society. He's up to no end of things.” Staniford uttered
+these praises in a curiously bitter tone. “He's a capital talker. Don't
+you think he talks well?”
+
+“I don't know; I suppose I haven't seen enough people to be a good
+judge.”
+
+“Well, you've seen enough people to know that he's very good looking?”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“You don't mean to say you don't think him good looking?”
+
+“No,--oh, no, I mean--that is--I don't know anything about his looks.
+But he resembles a lady who used to come from Boston, summers. I thought
+he must be her brother.”
+
+“Oh, then you think he looks effeminate!” cried Staniford, with inner
+joy. “I assure you,” he added with solemnity, “Dunham is one of the
+manliest fellows in the world!”
+
+“Yes?” said Lydia.
+
+Staniford rose. He was smiling gayly as he looked over the broad stretch
+of empty deck, and down into Lydia's eyes. “Wouldn't you like to take a
+turn, now?”
+
+“Yes,” she said promptly, rising and arranging her wrap across her
+shoulders, so as to leave her hands free. She laid one hand in his arm
+and gathered her skirt with the other, and they swept round together for
+the start and confronted Hicks.
+
+“Oh!” cried Lydia, with what seemed dismay, “I promised Mr. Hicks to
+practice a song with him.” She did not try to release her hand from
+Staniford's arm, but was letting it linger there irresolutely.
+
+Staniford dropped his arm, and let her hand fall. He bowed with icy
+stiffness, and said, with a courtesy so fierce that Mr. Hicks, on
+whom he glared as he spoke, quailed before it, “I yield to your prior
+engagement.”
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+It was nothing to Staniford that she should have promised Hicks to
+practice a song with him, and no process of reasoning could have made
+it otherwise. The imaginary opponent with whom he scornfully argued the
+matter had not a word for himself. Neither could the young girl answer
+anything to the cutting speeches which he mentally made her as he
+sat alone chewing the end of his cigar; and he was not moved by the
+imploring looks which his fancy painted in her face, when he made
+believe that she had meekly returned to offer him some sort of
+reparation. Why should she excuse herself? he asked. It was he who ought
+to excuse himself for having been in the way. The dialogue went on at
+length, with every advantage to the inventor.
+
+He was finally aware of some one standing near and looking down at
+him. It was the second mate, who supported himself in a conversational
+posture by the hand which he stretched to the shrouds above their heads.
+“Are you a good sailor, Mr. Staniford?” he inquired. He and Staniford
+were friends in their way, and had talked together before this.
+
+“Do you mean seasickness? Why?” Staniford looked up at the mate's face.
+
+“Well, we're going to get it, I guess, before long. We shall soon be off
+the Spanish coast. We've had a great run so far.”
+
+“If it comes we must stand it. But I make it a rule never to be seasick
+beforehand.”
+
+“Well, I ain't one to borrow trouble, either. It don't run in the
+family. Most of us like to chance things, I chanced it for the whole
+war, and I come out all right. Sometimes it don't work so well.”
+
+“Ah?” said Staniford, who knew that this was a leading remark, but
+forbore, as he knew Mason wished, to follow it up directly.
+
+“One of us chanced it once too often, and of course it was a woman.”
+
+“The risk?”
+
+“Not the risk. My oldest sister tried tamin' a tiger. Ninety-nine times
+out of a hundred, a tiger won't tame worth a cent. But her pet was such
+a lamb most the while that she guessed she'd chance it. It didn't work.
+She's at home with mother now,--three children, of course,--and he's in
+hell, I s'pose. He was killed 'long-side o' me at Gettysburg. Ike was a
+good fellow when he was sober. But my souls, the life he led that poor
+girl! Yes, when a man's got that tiger in him, there ought to be some
+quiet little war round for puttin' him out of his misery.” Staniford
+listened silently, waiting for the mate to make the application of his
+grim allegory. “I s'pose I'm prejudiced; but I do _hate_ a drunkard; and
+when I see one of 'em makin' up to a girl, I want to go to her, and tell
+her she'd better take a real tiger out the show, at once.”
+
+The idea which these words suggested sent a thrill to Staniford's heart,
+but he continued silent, and the mate went on, with the queer smile,
+which could be inferred rather than seen, working under his mustache
+and the humorous twinkle of his eyes evanescently evident under his cap
+peak.
+
+“I don't go round criticisn' my superior officers, and _I_ don't say
+anything about the responsibility the old man took. The old man's all
+right, accordin' to his lights; he ain't had a tiger in the family. But
+if that chap was to fall overboard,--well, I don't know _how_ long it
+would take to lower a boat, if I was to listen to my _conscience_. There
+ain't really any help for him. He's begun too young ever to get over it.
+He won't be ashore at Try-East an hour before he's drunk. If our men had
+any spirits amongst 'em that could be begged, bought, or borrowed, he'd
+be drunk now, right along. Well, I'm off watch,” said the mate, at the
+tap of bells. “Guess we'll get our little gale pretty soon.”
+
+“Good-night,” said Staniford, who remained pondering. He presently rose,
+and walked up and down the deck. He could hear Lydia and Hicks trying
+that song: now the voice, and now the flute; then both together; and
+presently a burst of laughter. He began to be angry with her ignorance
+and inexperience. It became intolerable to him that a woman should
+be going about with no more knowledge of the world than a child,
+and entangling herself in relations with all sorts of people. It was
+shocking to think of that little sot, who had now made his infirmity
+known for all the ship's company, admitted to association with her which
+looked to common eyes like courtship. From the mate's insinuation that
+she ought to be warned, it was evident that they thought her
+interested in Hicks; and the mate had come, like Dunham, to leave the
+responsibility with Staniford. It only wanted now that Captain Jenness
+should appear with his appeal, direct or indirect.
+
+While Staniford walked up and down, and scorned and raged at the idea
+that he had anything to do with the matter, the singing and fluting came
+to a pause in the cabin; and at the end of the next tune, which brought
+him to the head of the gangway stairs, he met Lydia emerging. He stopped
+and spoke to her, having instantly resolved, at sight of her, not to do
+so.
+
+“Have you come up for breath, like a mermaid?” he asked. “Not that I'm
+sure mermaids do.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Lydia. “I think I dropped my handkerchief where we were
+sitting.”
+
+Staniford suspected, with a sudden return to a theory of her which he
+had already entertained, that she had not done so. But she went lightly
+by him, where he stood stolid, and picked it up; and now he suspected
+that she had dropped it there on purpose.
+
+“You have come back to walk with me?”
+
+“No!” said the girl indignantly. “I have not come back to walk with
+you!” She waited a moment; then she burst out with, “How dare you say
+such a thing to me? What right have you to speak to me so? What have I
+done to make you think that I would come back to--”
+
+The fierce vibration in her voice made him know that her eyes were
+burning upon him and her lips trembling. He shrank before her passion
+as a man must before the justly provoked wrath of a woman, or even of a
+small girl.
+
+“I stated a hope, not a fact,” he said in meek uncandor. “Don't you
+think you ought to have done so?”
+
+“I don't--I don't understand you,” panted Lydia, confusedly arresting
+her bolts in mid-course.
+
+Staniford pursued his guilty advantage; it was his only chance. “I gave
+way to Mr. Hicks when you had an engagement with me. I thought--you
+would come back to keep your engagement.” He was still very meek.
+
+“Excuse me,” she said with self-reproach that would have melted the
+heart of any one but a man who was in the wrong, and was trying to get
+out of it at all hazards. “I didn't know what you meant--I--”
+
+“If I had meant what you thought,” interrupted Staniford nobly, for he
+could now afford to be generous, “I should have deserved much more than
+you said. But I hope you won't punish my awkwardness by refusing to walk
+with me.”
+
+He knew that she regarded him earnestly before she said, “I must get my
+shawl and hat.”
+
+“Let me go!” he entreated.
+
+“You couldn't find them,” she answered, as she vanished past him. She
+returned, and promptly laid her hand in his proffered arm; it was as if
+she were eager to make him amends for her harshness.
+
+Staniford took her hand out, and held it while he bowed low toward her.
+“I declare myself satisfied.”
+
+“I don't understand,” said Lydia, in alarm and mortification.
+
+“When a subject has been personally aggrieved by his sovereign, his
+honor is restored if they merely cross swords.”
+
+The girl laughed her delight in the extravagance. She must have been
+more or less than woman not to have found his flattery delicious. “But
+we are republicans!” she said in evasion.
+
+“To be sure, we are republicans. Well, then, Miss Blood, answer your
+free and equal one thing: is it a case of conscience?”
+
+“How?” she asked, and Staniford did not recoil at the rusticity. This
+how for what, and the interrogative yes, still remained. Since their
+first walk, she had not wanted to know, in however great surprise she
+found herself.
+
+“Are you going to walk with me because you had promised?”
+
+“Why, of course,” faltered Lydia.
+
+“That isn't enough.”
+
+“Not enough?”
+
+“Not enough. You must walk with me because you like to do so.”
+
+Lydia was silent.
+
+“Do you like to do so?”
+
+“I can't answer you,” she said, releasing her hand from him.
+
+“It was not fair to ask you. What I wish to do is to restore the
+original status. You have kept your engagement to walk with me, and
+your conscience is clear. Now, Miss Blood, may I have your company for a
+little stroll over the deck of the Aroostook?” He made her another very
+low bow.
+
+“What must I say?” asked Lydia, joyously.
+
+“That depends upon whether you consent. If you consent, you must say, 'I
+shall be very glad.'”
+
+“And if I don't?”
+
+“Oh, I can't put any such decision into words.”
+
+Lydia mused a moment. “I shall be very glad,” she said, and put her hand
+again into the arm he offered.
+
+As happens after such a passage they were at first silent, while they
+walked up and down.
+
+“If this fine weather holds,” said Staniford, “and you continue as
+obliging as you are to-night, you can say, when people ask you how you
+went to Europe, that you walked the greater part of the way. Shall you
+continue so obliging? Will you walk with me every fine night?” pursued
+Staniford.
+
+“Do you think I'd better say so?” she asked, with the joy still in her
+voice.
+
+“Oh, I can't decide for you. I merely formulate your decisions after you
+reach them,--if they're favorable.”
+
+“Well, then, what is this one?”
+
+“Is it favorable?”
+
+“You said you would formulate it.” She laughed again, and Staniford
+started as one does when a nebulous association crystallizes into a
+distinctly remembered fact.
+
+“What a curious laugh you have!” he said. “It's like a nun's laugh. Once
+in France I lodged near the garden of a convent where the nuns kept a
+girls' school, and I used to hear them laugh. You never happened to be a
+nun, Miss Blood?”
+
+“No, indeed!” cried Lydia, as if scandalized.
+
+“Oh, I merely meant in some previous existence. Of course, I didn't
+suppose there was a convent in South Bradfield.” He felt that the
+girl did not quite like the little slight his irony cast upon South
+Bradfield, or rather upon her for never having been anywhere else. He
+hastened to say, “I'm sure that in the life before this you were of the
+South somewhere.”
+
+“Yes?” said Lydia, interested and pleased again as one must be in
+romantic talk about one's self. “Why do you think so?”
+
+He bent a little over toward her, so as to look into the face she
+instinctively averted, while she could not help glancing at him from the
+corner of her eye. “You have the color and the light of the South,”
+ he said. “When you get to Italy, you will live in a perpetual
+mystification. You will go about in a dream of some self of yours that
+was native there in other days. You will find yourself retrospectively
+related to the olive faces and the dark eyes you meet; you will
+recognize sisters and cousins in the patrician ladies when you see their
+portraits in the palaces where you used to live in such state.”
+
+Staniford spiced his flatteries with open burlesque; the girl entered
+into his fantastic humor. “But if I was a nun?” she asked, gayly.
+
+“Oh, I forgot. You were a nun. There was a nun in Venice once, about two
+hundred years ago, when you lived there, and a young English lord who
+was passing through the town was taken to the convent to hear her sing;
+for she was not only of 'an admirable beauty,' as he says, but sang
+'extremely well.' She sang to him through the grating of the convent,
+and when she stopped he said, 'Die whensoever you will, you need to
+change neither voice nor face to be an angel!' Do you think--do you
+dimly recollect anything that makes you think--it might--Consider
+carefully: the singing extremely well, and--” He leant over again, and
+looked up into her face, which again she could not wholly withdraw.
+
+“No, no!” she said, still in his mood.
+
+“Well, you must allow it was a pretty speech.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Lydia, with sudden gravity, in which there seemed to
+Staniford a tender insinuation of reproach, “he was laughing at her.”
+
+“If he was, he was properly punished. He went on to Rome, and when he
+came back to Venice the beautiful nun was dead. He thought that his
+words 'seemed fatal.' Do you suppose it would kill you _now_ to be
+jested with?”
+
+“I don't think people like it generally.”
+
+“Why, Miss Blood, you are intense!”
+
+“I don't know what you mean by that,” said Lydia.
+
+“You like to take things seriously. You can't bear to think that people
+are not the least in earnest, even when they least seem so.”
+
+“Yes,” said the girl, thoughtfully, “perhaps that's true. Should you
+like to be made fun of, yourself?”
+
+“I shouldn't mind it, I fancy, though it would depend a great deal upon
+who made fun of me. I suppose that women always laugh at men,--at their
+clumsiness, their want of tact, the fit of their clothes.”
+
+“I don't know. I should not do that with any one I--”
+
+“You liked? Oh, none of them do!” cried Staniford.
+
+“I was not going to say that,” faltered the girl.
+
+“What were you going to say?”
+
+She waited a moment. “Yes, I was going to say that,” she assented with
+a sigh of helpless veracity. “What makes you laugh?” she asked, in
+distress.
+
+“Something I like. I'm different from you: I laugh at what I like; I
+like your truthfulness,--it's charming.”
+
+“I didn't know that truth need be charming.”
+
+“It had better be, in women, if it's to keep even with the other thing.”
+ Lydia seemed shocked; she made a faint, involuntary motion to withdraw
+her hand, but he closed his arm upon it. “Don't condemn me for thinking
+that fibbing is charming. I shouldn't like it at all in you. Should you
+in me?”
+
+“I shouldn't in any one,” said Lydia.
+
+“Then what is it you dislike in me?” he suddenly demanded.
+
+“I didn't say that I disliked anything in you.”
+
+“But you have made fun of something in me?”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Then it wasn't the stirring of a guilty conscience when you asked me
+whether I should like to be made fun of? I took it for granted you'd
+been doing it.”
+
+“You are very suspicious.”
+
+“Yes; and what else?”
+
+“Oh, you like to know just what every one thinks and feels.”
+
+“Go on!” cried Staniford. “Analyze me, formulate me!”
+
+“That's all.”
+
+“All I come to?”
+
+“All I have to say.”
+
+“That's very little. Now, I'll begin on you. You don't care what people
+think or feel.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I do. I care too much.”
+
+“Do you care what I think?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then I think you're too unsuspicious.”
+
+“Ought I to suspect somebody?” she asked, lightly.
+
+“Oh, that's the way with all your sex. One asks you to be suspicious,
+and you ask whom you shall suspect. You can do nothing in the abstract.
+I should like to be suspicious for you. Will you let me?”
+
+“Oh, yes, if you like to be.”
+
+“Thanks. I shall be terribly vigilant,--a perfect dragon. And you really
+invest me with authority?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That's charming.” Staniford drew a long breath. After a space of
+musing, he said, “I thought I should be able to begin by attacking some
+one else, but I must commence at home, and denounce myself as quite
+unworthy of walking to and fro, and talking nonsense to you. You must
+beware of me, Miss Blood.”
+
+“Why?” asked the girl.
+
+“I am very narrow-minded and prejudiced, and I have violent antipathies.
+I shouldn't be able to do justice to any one I disliked.”
+
+“I think that's the trouble with all of us,” said Lydia.
+
+“Oh, but only in degree. I should not allow, if I could help it, a man
+whom I thought shabby, and coarse at heart, the privilege of speaking to
+any one I valued,--to my sister, for instance. It would shock me to find
+her have any taste in common with such a man, or amused by him. Don't
+you understand?”
+
+“Yes,” said Lydia. It seemed to him as if by some infinitely subtle and
+unconscious affinition she relaxed toward him as they walked. This was
+incomparably sweet and charming to Staniford,--too sweet as recognition
+of his protecting friendship to be questioned as anything else. He felt
+sure that she had taken his meaning, and he rested content from further
+trouble in regard to what it would have been impossible to express. Her
+tacit confidence touched a kindred spring in him, and he began to talk
+to her of himself: not of his character or opinions,--they had already
+gone over them,--but of his past life, and his future. Their strangeness
+to her gave certain well-worn topics novelty, and the familiar project
+of a pastoral career in the far West invested itself with a color of
+romance which it had not worn before. She tried to remember, at his
+urgence, something about her childhood in California; and she told him a
+great deal more about South Bradfield. She described its characters
+and customs, and, from no vantage-ground or stand-point but her native
+feeling of their oddity, and what seemed her sympathy with him, made him
+see them as one might whose life had not been passed among them. Then
+they began to compare their own traits, and amused themselves to find
+how many they had in common. Staniford related a singular experience of
+his on a former voyage to Europe, when he dreamed of a collision, and
+woke to hear a great trampling and uproar on deck, which afterwards
+turned out to have been caused by their bare escape from running into an
+iceberg. She said that she had had strange dreams, too, but mostly when
+she was a little girl; once she had had a presentiment that troubled
+her, but it did not come true. They both said they did not believe in
+such things, and agreed that it was only people's love of mystery that
+kept them noticed. He permitted himself to help her, with his disengaged
+hand, to draw her shawl closer about the shoulder that was away from
+him. He gave the action a philosophical and impersonal character by
+saying immediately afterwards: “The sea is really the only mystery
+left us, and that will never be explored. They circumnavigate the whole
+globe,--” here he put the gathered shawl into the fingers which
+she stretched through his arm to take it, and she said, “Oh, thank
+you!”--“but they don't describe the sea. War and plague and famine
+submit to the ameliorations of science,”--the closely drawn shawl
+pressed her against his shoulder; his mind wandered; he hardly knew what
+he was saying,--“but the one utterly inexorable calamity--the same now
+as when the first sail was spread--is a shipwreck.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, with a deep inspiration. And now they walked back and
+forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once
+Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously
+suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not
+thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed himself for not
+thinking. The fact justified itself, as if it had been the one perfectly
+right and wise thing in a world where all else might be questioned.
+
+“Isn't it pretty late?” she asked, at last.
+
+“If you're tired, we'll sit down,” he said.
+
+“What time is it?” she persisted.
+
+“Must I look?” he pleaded. They went to a lantern, and he took out his
+watch and sprang the case open. “Look!” he said. “I sacrifice myself on
+the altar of truth.” They bent their heads low together over the
+watch; it was not easy to make out the time. “It's nine o'clock,” said
+Staniford.
+
+“It can't be; it was half past when I came up,” answered Lydia.
+
+“One hand's at twelve and the other at nine,” he said, conclusively.
+
+“Oh, then it's a quarter to twelve.” She caught away her hand from his
+arm, and fled to the gangway. “I didn't dream it was so late.”
+
+The pleasure which her confession brought to his face faded at sight of
+Hicks, who was turning the last pages of a novel by the cabin lamp, as
+he followed Lydia in. It was the book that Staniford had given her.
+
+“Hullo!” said Hicks, with companionable ease, looking up at her. “Been
+having quite a tramp.”
+
+She did not seem troubled by the familiarity of an address that incensed
+Staniford almost to the point of taking Hicks from his seat, and tossing
+him to the other end of the cabin. “Oh, you've finished my book,” she
+said. “You must tell me how you like it, to-morrow.”
+
+“I doubt it,” said Hicks. “I'm going to be seasick to-morrow. The
+captain's been shaking his head over the barometer and powwowing with
+the first officer. Something's up, and I guess it's a gale. Good-by; I
+shan't see you again for a week or so.”
+
+He nodded jocosely to Lydia, and dropped his eyes again to his book,
+ignoring Staniford's presence. The latter stood a moment breathing
+quick; then he controlled himself and went into his room. His coming
+roused Dunham, who looked up from his pillow. “What time is it?” he
+asked, stupidly.
+
+“Twelve,” said Staniford.
+
+“Had a pleasant walk?”
+
+“If you still think,” said Staniford, savagely, “that she's painfully
+interested in you, you can make your mind easy. She doesn't care for
+either of us.”
+
+“_Either_ of us?” echoed Dunham. He roused himself.
+
+“Oh, go to sleep; _go_ to sleep!” cried Staniford.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+The foreboded storm did not come so soon as had been feared, but the
+beautiful weather which had lasted so long was lost in a thickened
+sky and a sullen sea. The weather had changed with Staniford, too. The
+morning after the events last celebrated, he did not respond to the
+glance which Lydia gave him when they met, and he hardened his heart to
+her surprise, and shunned being alone with her. He would not admit to
+himself any reason for his attitude, and he could not have explained
+to her the mystery that at first visibly grieved her, and then seemed
+merely to benumb her. But the moment came when he ceased to take a
+certain cruel pleasure in it, and he approached her one morning on deck,
+where she stood holding fast to the railing where she usually sat, and
+said, as if there had been no interval of estrangement between them, but
+still coldly, “We have had our last walk for the present, Miss Blood. I
+hope you will grieve a little for my loss.”
+
+She turned on him a look that cut him to the heart, with what he fancied
+its reproach and its wonder. She did not reply at once, and then she did
+not reply to his hinted question.
+
+“Mr. Staniford,” she began. It was the second time he had heard her
+pronounce his name; he distinctly remembered the first.
+
+“Well?” he said.
+
+“I want to speak to you about lending that book to Mr. Hicks. I ought to
+have asked you first.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Staniford. “It was yours.”
+
+“You gave it to me,” she returned.
+
+“Well, then, it was yours,--to keep, to lend, to throw away.”
+
+“And you didn't mind my lending it to him?” she pursued. “I--”
+
+She stopped, and Staniford hesitated, too. Then he said, “I didn't
+dislike your lending it; I disliked his having it. I will acknowledge
+that.”
+
+She looked up at him as if she were going to speak, but checked herself,
+and glanced away. The ship was plunging heavily, and the livid
+waves were racing before the wind. The horizon was lit with a yellow
+brightness in the quarter to which she turned, and a pallid gleam
+defined her profile. Captain Jenness was walking fretfully to and fro;
+he glanced now at the yellow glare, and now cast his eye aloft at the
+shortened sail. While Staniford stood questioning whether she meant to
+say anything more, or whether, having discharged her conscience of an
+imagined offense, she had now reached one of her final, precipitous
+silences, Captain Jenness suddenly approached them, and said to him, “I
+guess you'd better go below with Miss Blood.”
+
+The storm that followed had its hazards, but Staniford's consciousness
+was confined to its discomforts. The day came, and then the dark came,
+and both in due course went, and came again. Where he lay in his berth,
+and whirled and swung, and rose and sank, as lonely as a planetary
+fragment tossing in space, he heard the noises of the life without.
+Amidst the straining of the ship, which was like the sharp sweep of
+a thunder-shower on the deck overhead, there plunged at irregular
+intervals the wild trample of heavily-booted feet, and now and then the
+voices of the crew answering the shouted orders made themselves hollowly
+audible. In the cabin there was talking, and sometimes even laughing.
+Sometimes he heard the click of knives and forks, the sardonic rattle of
+crockery. After the first insane feeling that somehow he must get
+ashore and escape from his torment, he hardened himself to it through
+an immense contempt, equally insane, for the stupidity of the sea, its
+insensate uproar, its blind and ridiculous and cruel mischievousness.
+Except for this delirious scorn he was a surface of perfect passivity.
+
+Dunham, after a day of prostration, had risen, and had perhaps shortened
+his anguish by his resolution. He had since taken up his quarters on a
+locker in the cabin; he looked in now and then upon Staniford, with
+a cup of tea, or a suggestion of something light to eat; once he even
+dared to boast of the sublimity of the ocean. Staniford stared at him
+with eyes of lack-lustre indifference, and waited for him to be gone.
+But he lingered to say, “You would laugh to see what a sea-bird our lady
+is! She hasn't been sick a minute. And Hicks, you'll be glad to know, is
+behaving himself very well. Really, I don't think we've done the fellow
+justice. I think you've overshadowed him, and that he's needed your
+absence to show himself to advantage.”
+
+Staniford disdained any comment on this except a fierce “Humph!” and
+dismissed Dunham by turning his face to the wall. He refused to think of
+what he had said. He lay still and suffered indefinitely, and no longer
+waited for the end of the storm. There had been times when he thought
+with acquiescence of going to the bottom, as a probable conclusion; now
+he did not expect anything. At last, one night, he felt by inexpressibly
+minute degrees something that seemed surcease of his misery. It might
+have been the end of all things, for all he cared; but as the lull
+deepened, he slept without knowing what it was, and when he woke in the
+morning he found the Aroostook at anchor in smooth water.
+
+She was lying in the roads at Gibraltar, and before her towered the
+embattled rock. He crawled on deck after a while. The captain was going
+ashore, and had asked such of his passengers as liked, to go with him
+and see the place. When Staniford appeared, Dunham was loyally refusing
+to leave his friend till he was fairly on foot. At sight of him they
+suspended their question long enough to welcome him back to animation,
+with the patronage with which well people hail a convalescent. Lydia
+looked across the estrangement of the past days with a sort of inquiry,
+and Hicks chose to come forward and accept a cold touch of the hand from
+him. Staniford saw, with languid observance, that Lydia was very fresh
+and bright; she was already equipped for the expedition, and could never
+have had any doubt in her mind as to going. She had on a pretty walking
+dress which he had not seen before, and a hat with the rim struck
+sharply upward behind, and her masses of dense, dull black hair pulled
+up and fastened somewhere on the top of her head. Her eyes shyly
+sparkled under the abrupt descent of the hat-brim over her forehead.
+
+His contemptuous rejection of the character of invalid prevailed with
+Dunham; and Staniford walked to another part of the ship, to cut short
+the talk about himself, and saw them row away.
+
+“Well, you've had a pretty tough time, they say,” said the second mate,
+lounging near him. “I don't see any fun in seasickness _myself_.”
+
+“It's a ridiculous sort of misery,” said Staniford.
+
+“I hope we shan't have anything worse on board when that chap gets back.
+The old man thinks he can keep an eye on him.” The mate was looking
+after the boat.
+
+“The captain says he hasn't any money,” Staniford remarked carelessly.
+The mate went away without saying anything more, and Staniford returned
+to the cabin, where he beheld without abhorrence the preparations for
+his breakfast. But he had not a great appetite, in spite of his long
+fast. He found himself rather light-headed, and came on deck again after
+a while, and stretched himself in Hicks's steamer chair, where Lydia
+usually sat in it. He fell into a dull, despairing reverie, in which he
+blamed himself for not having been more explicit with her. He had merely
+expressed his dislike of Hicks; but expressed without reasons it was a
+groundless dislike, which she had evidently not understood, or had not
+cared to heed; and since that night, now so far away, when he had spoken
+to her, he had done everything he could to harden her against himself.
+He had treated her with a stupid cruelty, which a girl like her would
+resent to the last; he had forced her to take refuge in the politeness
+of a man from whom he was trying to keep her.
+
+His heart paused when he saw the boat returning in the afternoon without
+Hicks. The others reported that they had separated before dinner, and
+that they had not seen him since, though Captain Jenness had spent an
+hour trying to look him up before starting back to the ship. The captain
+wore a look of guilty responsibility, mingled with intense exasperation,
+the two combining in as much haggardness as his cheerful visage could
+express. “If he's here by six o'clock,” he said, grimly, “all well and
+good. If not, the Aroostook sails, any way.”
+
+Lydia crept timidly below. Staniford complexly raged to see that the
+anxiety about Hicks had blighted the joy of the day for her.
+
+“How the deuce could he get about without any money?” he demanded of
+Dunham, as soon as they were alone.
+
+Dunham vainly struggled to look him in the eye. “Staniford,” he
+faltered, with much more culpability than some criminals would confess a
+murder, “I lent him five dollars!”
+
+“You lent him five dollars!” gasped Staniford.
+
+“Yes,” replied Dunham, miserably; “he got me aside, and asked me for it.
+What could I do? What would you have done yourself?”
+
+Staniford made no answer. He walked some paces away, and then returned
+to where Dunham stood helpless. “He's lying about there dead-drunk,
+somewhere, I suppose. By Heaven, I could almost wish he was. He couldn't
+come back, then, at any rate.”
+
+The time lagged along toward the moment appointed by the captain, and
+the preparations for the ship's departure were well advanced, when
+a boat was seen putting out from shore with two rowers, and rapidly
+approaching the Aroostook. In the stern, as it drew nearer, the familiar
+figure of Hicks discovered itself in the act of waving a handkerchief He
+scrambled up the side of the ship in excellent spirits, and gave Dunham
+a detailed account of his adventures since they had parted. As always
+happens with such scapegraces, he seemed to have had a good time,
+however he had spoiled the pleasure of the others. At tea, when Lydia
+had gone away, he clapped down a sovereign near Dunham's plate.
+
+“Your five dollars,” he said.
+
+“Why, how--” Dunham began.
+
+“How did I get on without it? My dear boy, I sold my watch! A ship's
+time is worth no more than a setting hen's,--eh, captain?--and why take
+note of it? Besides, I always like to pay my debts promptly:
+there's nothing mean about me. I'm not going ashore again without my
+pocket-book, I can tell you.” He winked shamelessly at Captain Jenness.
+“If you hadn't been along, Dunham, I couldn't have made a raise, I
+suppose. _You_ wouldn't have lent me five dollars, Captain Jenness.”
+
+“No, I wouldn't,” said the captain, bluntly.
+
+“And I believe you'd have sailed without me, if I hadn't got back on
+time.”
+
+“I would,” said the captain, as before.
+
+Hicks threw back his head, and laughed. Probably no human being had
+ever before made so free with Captain Jenness at his own table; but the
+captain must have felt that this contumacy was part of the general
+risk which he had taken in taking Hicks, and he contented himself with
+maintaining a silence that would have appalled a less audacious spirit.
+Hicks's gayety, however, was not to be quelled in that way.
+
+“Gibraltar wouldn't be a bad place to put up at for a while,” he said.
+“Lots of good fellows among the officers, they say, and fun going all
+the while. First-class gunning in the Cork Woods at St. Roque. If
+it hadn't been for the _res angusta domi_,--you know what I mean,
+captain,--I should have let you get along with your old dug-out, as
+the gentleman in the water said to Noah.” His hilarity had something
+alarmingly knowing in it; there was a wildness in the pleasure with
+which he bearded the captain, like that of a man in his first cups; yet
+he had not been drinking. He played round the captain's knowledge of
+the sanative destitution in which he was making the voyage with mocking
+recurrence; but he took himself off to bed early, and the captain came
+through his trials with unimpaired temper. Dunham disappeared not long
+afterwards; and Staniford's vague hope that Lydia might be going on deck
+to watch the lights of the town die out behind the ship as they sailed
+away was disappointed. The second mate made a point of lounging near him
+where he sat alone in their wonted place.
+
+“Well,” he said, “he did come back sober.”
+
+“Yes,” said Staniford.
+
+“Next to not comin' back at all,” the mate continued, “I suppose it was
+the best thing he could do.” He lounged away. Neither his voice nor his
+manner had that quality of disappointment which characterizes those who
+have mistakenly prophesied evil. Staniford had a mind to call him back,
+and ask him what he meant; but he refrained, and he went to bed at last
+resolved to unburden himself of the whole Hicks business once for all.
+He felt that he had had quite enough of it, both in the abstract and in
+its relation to Lydia.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+Hicks did not join the others at breakfast. They talked of what Lydia
+had seen at Gibraltar, where Staniford had been on a former voyage.
+Dunham had made it a matter of conscience to know all about it
+beforehand from his guide-books, and had risen early that morning to
+correct his science by his experience in a long entry in the diary which
+he was keeping for Miss Hibbard. The captain had the true sea-farer's
+ignorance, and was amused at the things reported by his passengers of
+a place where he had been ashore so often; Hicks's absence doubtless
+relieved him, but he did not comment on the cabin-boy's announcement
+that he was still asleep, except to order him let alone.
+
+They were seated at their one o'clock dinner before the recluse made
+any sign. Then he gave note of his continued existence by bumping and
+thumping sounds within his state-room, as if some one were dressing
+there in a heavy sea.
+
+“Mr. Hicks seems to be taking his rough weather retrospectively,” said
+Staniford, with rather tremulous humor.
+
+The door was flung open, and Hicks reeled out, staying himself by the
+door-knob. Even before he appeared, a reek of strong waters had preceded
+him. He must have been drinking all night. His face was flushed, and
+his eyes were bloodshot. He had no collar on; but he wore a cravat and
+otherwise he was accurately and even fastidiously dressed. He balanced
+himself by the door-knob, and measured the distance he had to make
+before reaching his place at the table, smiling, and waving a delicate
+handkerchief, which he held in his hand: “Spilt c'logne, tryin' to
+scent my hic--handkerchief. Makes deuced bad smell--too much c'logne;
+smells--alcoholic. Thom's, bear a hand, 's good f'low. No? All right,
+go on with your waitin'. B-ic--business b'fore pleasure, 's feller says.
+Play it alone, I guess.”
+
+The boy had shrunk back in dismay, and Hicks contrived to reach his
+place by one of those precipitate dashes with which drunken men attain a
+point, when the luck is with them. He looked smilingly round the circle
+of faces. Staniford and the captain exchanged threatening looks of
+intelligence, while Mr. Watterson and Dunham subordinately waited their
+motion. But the advantage, as in such cases, was on the side of Hicks.
+He knew it, with a drunkard's subtlety, and was at his ease.
+
+“No app'tite, friends; but thought I'd come out, keep you from feeling
+lonesome.” He laughed and hiccuped, and smiled upon them all. “Well,
+cap'n,” he continued, “'covered from 'tigues day, sterday? You look
+blooming's usual. Thom's, pass the--pass the--victuals lively, my son,
+and fetch along coffee soon. Some the friends up late, and want their
+coffee. Nothing like coffee, carry off'fee's.” He winked to the men, all
+round; and then added, to Lydia: “Sorry see you in this state--I mean,
+sorry see me--Can't make it that way either; up stump on both routes.
+What I mean is, sorry hadn't coffee first. But _you're_ all right--all
+right! Like see anybody offer you disrespec', 'n I'm around. Tha's all.”
+
+Till he addressed her, Lydia had remained motionless, first with
+bewilderment, and then with open abhorrence. She could hardly have seen
+in South Bradfield a man who had been drinking. Even in haying, or other
+sharpest stress of farmwork, our farmer and his men stay themselves with
+nothing stronger than molasses-water, or, in extreme cases, cider with
+a little corn soaked in it; and the Mill Village, where she had taught
+school, was under the iron rule of a local vote for prohibition. She
+stared in stupefaction at Hicks's heated, foolish face; she started
+at his wild movements, and listened with dawning intelligence to his
+hiccup-broken speech, with its thickened sibilants and its wandering
+emphasis. When he turned to her, and accompanied his words with a
+reassuring gesture, she recoiled, and as if breaking an ugly fascination
+she gave a low, shuddering cry, and looked at Staniford.
+
+“Thomas,” he said, “Miss Blood was going to take her dessert on deck
+to-day. Dunham?”
+
+Dunham sprang to his feet, and led her out of the cabin.
+
+The movement met Hicks's approval. “Tha's right; 'sert on deck, 'joy
+landscape and pudding together,--Rhine steamer style. All right. Be
+up there m'self soon's I get my coffee.” He winked again with drunken
+sharpness. “I know wha's what. Be up there m'self, 'n a minute.”
+
+“If you offer to go up,” said Staniford, in a low voice, as soon as
+Lydia was out of the way, “I'll knock you down!”
+
+“Captain,” said Mr. Watterson, venturing, perhaps for the first time in
+his whole maritime history, upon a suggestion to his superior officer,
+“shall I clap him in irons?”
+
+“Clap him in irons!” roared Captain Jenness. “Clap him in bed! Look
+here, you!” He turned to Hicks, but the latter, who had been bristling
+at Staniford's threat, now relaxed in a crowing laugh:--
+
+“Tha's right, captain. Irons no go, 'cept in case mutiny; bed perfectly
+legal 't all times. Bed is good. But trouble is t' enforce it.”
+
+“Where's your bottle?” demanded the captain, rising from the seat in
+which a paralysis of fury had kept him hitherto. “I want your bottle.”
+
+“Oh, bottle's all right! Bottle's under pillow. Empty,--empty's Jonah's
+gourd; 'nother sea-faring party,--Jonah. S'cure the shadow ere the
+substance fade. Drunk all the brandy, old boy. Bottle's a canteen;
+'vantage of military port to houseless stranger. Brought the brandy
+on board under my coat; nobody noticed,--so glad get me back. Prodigal
+son's return,--fatted calf under his coat.”
+
+The reprobate ended his boastful confession with another burst of
+hiccuping, and Staniford helplessly laughed.
+
+“Do me proud,” said Hicks. “Proud, I 'sure you. Gentleman, every time,
+Stanny. Know good thing when you see it--hear it, I mean.”
+
+“Look here, Hicks,” said Staniford, choosing to make friends with the
+mammon of unrighteousness, if any good end might be gained by it. “You
+know you're drunk, and you're not fit to be about. Go back to bed,
+that's a good fellow; and come out again, when you're all right. You
+don't want to do anything you'll be sorry for.”
+
+“No, no! No, you don't, Stanny. Coffee'll make me all right. Coffee
+always does. Coffee--Heaven's lash besh gift to man. 'Scovered
+subse-subs'quently to grape. See? Comes after claret in course of
+nature. Captain doesn't understand the 'lusion. All right, captain.
+Little learning dangerous thing.” He turned sharply on Mr. Watterson,
+who had remained inertly in his place. “Put me in irons, heh! _You_ put
+me in irons, you old Triton. Put _me_ in irons, will you?” His
+amiable mood was passing; before one could say so, it was past. He was
+meditating means of active offense. He gathered up the carving-knife and
+fork, and held them close under Mr. Watterson's nose. “Smell that!” he
+said, and frowned as darkly as a man of so little eyebrow could.
+
+At this senseless defiance Staniford, in spite of himself, broke into
+another laugh, and even Captain Jenness grinned. Mr. Watterson sat with
+his head drawn as far back as possible, and with his nose wrinkled at
+the affront offered it. “Captain,” he screamed, appealing even in this
+extremity to his superior, “shall I fetch him _one?_”
+
+“No, no!” cried Staniford, springing from his chair; “don't hit him! He
+isn't responsible. Let's get him into his room.”
+
+“Fetch me _one_, heh?” said Hicks, rising, with dignity, and beginning
+to turn up his cuffs. “_One_! It'll take more than one, fetch _me_.
+Stan' up, 'f you're man enough.” He was squaring at Mr. Watterson,
+when he detected signs of strategic approach in Staniford and Captain
+Jenness. He gave a wild laugh, and shrank into a corner. “No! No, you
+don't, boys,” he said.
+
+They continued their advance, one on either side, and reinforced by Mr.
+Watterson hemmed him in. The drunken man has the advantage of his sober
+brother in never seeming to be on the alert. Hicks apparently entered
+into the humor of the affair. “Sur-hic-surrender!” he said, with a smile
+in his heavy eyes. He darted under the extended arms of Captain Jenness,
+who was leading the centre of the advance, and before either wing could
+touch him he was up the gangway and on the deck.
+
+Captain Jenness indulged one of those expressions, very rare with him,
+which are supposed to be forgiven to good men in moments of extreme
+perplexity, and Mr. Watterson profited by the precedent to unburden his
+heart in a paraphrase of the captain's language. Staniford's laugh had
+as much cursing in it as their profanity.
+
+He mechanically followed Hicks to the deck, prepared to renew the
+attempt for his capture there. But Hicks had not stopped near Dunham
+and Lydia. He had gone forward on the other side of the ship, and was
+leaning quietly on the rail, and looking into the sea. Staniford paused
+irresolute for a moment, and then sat down beside Lydia, and they
+all tried to feign that nothing unpleasant had happened, or was still
+impending. But their talk had the wandering inconclusiveness which was
+inevitable, and the eyes of each from time to time furtively turned
+toward Hicks.
+
+For half an hour he hardly changed his position. At the end of that
+time, they found him looking intently at them; and presently he began to
+work slowly back to the waist of the ship, but kept to his own side. He
+was met on the way by the second mate, when nearly opposite where they
+sat.
+
+“Ain't you pretty comfortable where you are?” they heard the mate
+asking. “Guess I wouldn't go aft any further just yet.”
+
+“_You're_ all right, Mason,” Hicks answered. “Going below--down cellar,
+'s feller says; go to bed.”
+
+“Well, that's a pious idea,” said the mate. “You couldn't do better than
+that. I'll lend you a hand.”
+
+“Don't care 'f I do,” responded Hicks, taking the mate's proffered arm.
+But he really seemed to need it very little; he walked perfectly well,
+and he did not look across at the others again.
+
+At the head of the gangway he encountered Captain Jenness and Mr.
+Watterson, who had completed the perquisition they had remained to make
+in his state-room. Mr. Watterson came up empty-handed; but the captain
+bore the canteen in which the common enemy had been so artfully conveyed
+on board. He walked, darkly scowling, to the rail, and flung the canteen
+into the sea. Hicks, who had saluted his appearance with a glare as
+savage as his own, yielded to his whimsical sense of the futility of
+this vengeance. He gave his fleeting, drunken laugh: “Good old boy,
+Captain Jenness. Means well--means well. But lacks--lacks--forecast.
+Pounds of cure, but no prevention. Not much on bite, but death on bark.
+Heh?” He waggled his hand offensively at the captain, and disappeared,
+loosely floundering down the cabin stairs, holding hard by the
+hand-rail, and fumbling round with his foot for the steps before he put
+it down.
+
+“As soon as he's in his room, Mr. Watterson, you lock him in.” The
+captain handed his officer a key, and walked away forward, with a
+hang-dog look on his kindly face, which he kept averted from his
+passengers.
+
+The sound of Hicks's descent had hardly ceased when clapping and
+knocking noises were heard again, and the face of the troublesome little
+wretch reappeared. He waved Mr. Watterson aside with his left hand, and
+in default of specific orders the latter allowed him to mount to
+the deck again. Hicks stayed himself a moment, and lurched to where
+Staniford and Dunham sat with Lydia.
+
+“What I wish say Miss Blood is,” he began,--“what I wish say is,
+peculiar circumstances make no difference with man if man's gentleman.
+What I say is, everybody 'spec's--What I say is, circumstances
+don't alter cases; lady's a lady--What I want do is beg you fellows'
+pardon--beg _her_ pardon--if anything I said that firs' morning--”
+
+“Go away!” cried Staniford, beginning to whiten round the nostrils.
+“Hold your tongue!”
+
+Hicks fell back a pace, and looked at him with the odd effect of now
+seeing him for the first time. “What _you_ want?” he asked. “What you
+mean? Slingin' criticism ever since you came on this ship! What you mean
+by it? Heh? What you mean?”
+
+Staniford rose, and Lydia gave a start. He cast an angry look at her.
+“Do you think I'd hurt him?” he demanded.
+
+Hicks went on: “Sorry, very sorry, 'larm a lady,--specially lady we all
+respec'. But this particular affair. Touch--touches my honor. You said,”
+ he continued, “'f I came on deck, you'd knock me down. Why don't you do
+it? Wha's the matter with you? Sling criticism ever since you been
+on ship, and 'fraid do it! 'Fraid, you hear? 'F-ic--'fraid, I
+say.” Staniford slowly walked away forward, and Hicks followed him,
+threatening him with word and gesture. Now and then Staniford thrust
+him aside, and addressed him some expostulation, and Hicks laughed and
+submitted. Then, after a silent excursion to the other side of the ship,
+he would return and renew his one-sided quarrel. Staniford seemed to
+forbid the interference of the crew, and alternately soothed and baffled
+his tedious adversary, who could still be heard accusing him of slinging
+criticism, and challenging him to combat. He leaned with his back to the
+rail, and now looked quietly into Hicks's crazy face, when the latter
+paused in front of him, and now looked down with a worried, wearied air.
+At last he crossed to the other side, and began to come aft again.
+
+“Mr. Dunham!” cried Lydia, starting up. “I know what Mr. Staniford wants
+to do. He wants to keep him away from me. Let me go down to the cabin. I
+can't walk; _please_ help me!” Her eyes were full of tears, and the hand
+trembled that she laid on Dunham's arm, but she controlled her voice.
+
+He softly repressed her, while he intently watched Staniford. “No, no!”
+
+“But he can't bear it much longer,” she pleaded. “And if he should--”
+
+“Staniford would never strike him,” said Dunham, calmly. “Don't be
+afraid. Look! He's coming back with him; he's trying to get him below;
+they'll shut him up there. That's the only chance. Sit down, please.”
+ She dropped into her seat, hid her eyes for an instant, and then fixed
+them again on the two young men.
+
+Hicks had got between Staniford and the rail. He seized him by the arm,
+and, pulling him round, suddenly struck at him. It was too much for his
+wavering balance: his feet shot from under him, and he went backwards in
+a crooked whirl and tumble, over the vessel's side.
+
+Staniford uttered a cry of disgust and rage. “Oh, you little brute!” he
+shouted, and with what seemed a single gesture he flung off his coat and
+the low shoes he wore, and leaped the railing after him.
+
+The cry of “Man overboard!” rang round the ship, and Captain Jenness's
+order, “Down with your helm! Lower a boat, Mr. Mason!” came, quick as it
+was, after the second mate had prepared to let go; and he and two of
+the men were in the boat, and she was sliding from her davits, while the
+Aroostook was coming up to the light wind and losing headway.
+
+When the boat touched the water, two heads had appeared above the
+surface terribly far away. “Hold on, for God's sake! We'll be there in a
+second.”
+
+“All right!” Staniford's voice called back. “Be quick.” The heads rose
+and sank with the undulation of the water. The swift boat appeared to
+crawl.
+
+By the time it reached the place where they had been seen, the heads
+disappeared, and the men in the boat seemed to be rowing blindly about.
+The mate stood upright. Suddenly he dropped and clutched at something
+over the boat's side. The people on the ship could see three hands on
+her gunwale; a figure was pulled up into the boat, and proved to be
+Hicks; then Staniford, seizing the gunwale with both hands, swung
+himself in.
+
+A shout went up from the ship, and Staniford waved his hand. Lydia
+waited where she hung upon the rail, clutching it hard with her hands,
+till the boat was along-side. Then from white she turned fire-red, and
+ran below and locked herself in her room.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+Dunham followed Staniford to their room, and helped him off with his
+wet clothes. He tried to say something ideally fit in recognition of
+his heroic act, and he articulated some bald commonplaces of praise, and
+shook Staniford's clammy hand. “Yes,” said the latter, submitting; “but
+the difficulty about a thing of this sort is that you don't know whether
+you haven't been an ass. It has been pawed over so much by the romancers
+that you don't feel like a hero in real life, but a hero of fiction.
+I've a notion that Hicks and I looked rather ridiculous going over the
+ship's side; I know we did, coming back. No man can reveal his greatness
+of soul in wet clothes. Did Miss Blood laugh?”
+
+“Staniford!” said Dunham, in an accent of reproach. “You do her great
+injustice. She felt what you had done in the way you would wish,--if you
+cared.”
+
+“What did she say?” asked Staniford, quickly.
+
+“Nothing. But--”
+
+“That's an easy way of expressing one's admiration of heroic behavior.
+I hope she'll stick to that line. I hope she won't feel it at all
+necessary to say anything in recognition of my prowess; it would be
+extremely embarrassing. I've got Hicks back again, but I couldn't stand
+any gratitude for it. Not that I'm ashamed of the performance. Perhaps
+if it had been anybody but Hicks, I should have waited for them to
+lower a boat. But Hicks had peculiar claims. You couldn't let a man
+you disliked so much welter round a great while. Where is the poor old
+fellow? Is he clothed and in his right mind again?”
+
+“He seemed to be sober enough,” said Dunham, “when he came on board; but
+I don't think he's out yet.”
+
+“We must let Thomas in to gather up this bathing-suit,” observed
+Staniford. “What a Newportish flavor it gives the place!” He was
+excited, and in great gayety of spirits.
+
+He and Dunham went out into the cabin, where they found Captain Jenness
+pacing to and fro. “Well, sir,” he said, taking Staniford's hand,
+and crossing his right with his left, so as to include Dunham in his
+congratulations, “you ought to have been a sailor!” Then he added, as if
+the unqualified praise might seem fulsome, “But if you'd been a sailor,
+you wouldn't have tried a thing like that. You'd have had more sense.
+The chances were ten to one against you.”
+
+Staniford laughed. “Was it so bad as that? I shall begin to respect
+myself.”
+
+The captain did not answer, but his iron grip closed hard upon
+Staniford's hand, and he frowned in keen inspection of Hicks, who at
+that moment came out of his state-room, looking pale and quite sobered.
+Captain Jenness surveyed him from head to foot, and then from foot
+to head, and pausing at the level of his eyes he said, still holding
+Staniford by the hand: “The trouble with a man aboard ship is that he
+can't turn a blackguard out-of-doors just when he likes. The Aroostook
+puts in at Messina. You'll be treated well till we get there, and then
+if I find you on my vessel five minutes after she comes to anchor, I'll
+heave you overboard, and I'll take care that nobody jumps after you. Do
+you hear? And you won't find me doing any such fool kindness as I did
+when I took you on board, soon again.”
+
+“Oh, I say, Captain Jenness,” began Staniford.
+
+“He's all right,” interrupted Hicks. “I'm a blackguard; I know it; and I
+don't think I was worth fishing up. But you've done it, and I mustn't go
+back on you, I suppose.” He lifted his poor, weak, bad little face, and
+looked Staniford in the eyes with a pathos that belied the slang of his
+speech. The latter released his hand from Captain Jenness and gave it to
+Hicks, who wrung it, as he kept looking him in the eyes, while his
+lips twitched pitifully, like a child's. The captain gave a quick snort
+either of disgust or of sympathy, and turned abruptly about and bundled
+himself up out of the cabin.
+
+“I say!” exclaimed Staniford, “a cup of coffee wouldn't be bad, would
+it? Let's have some coffee, Thomas, about as quick as the cook can make
+it,” he added, as the boy came out from his stateroom with a lump of wet
+clothes in his hands. “You wanted some coffee a little while ago,” he
+said to Hicks, who hung his head at the joke.
+
+For the rest of the day Staniford was the hero of the ship. The men
+looked at him from a distance, and talked of him together. Mr. Watterson
+hung about whenever Captain Jenness drew near him, as if in the hope
+of overhearing some acceptable expression in which he could second his
+superior officer. Failing this, and being driven to despair, “Find the
+water pretty cold, sir?” he asked at last; and after that seemed to
+feel that he had discharged his duty as well as might be under the
+extraordinary circumstances.
+
+The second mate, during the course of the afternoon, contrived to pass
+near Staniford. “Why, there wa'n't no _need_ of your doing it,” he said,
+in a bated tone. “I could ha' had him out with the boat, _soon enough_.”
+
+Staniford treasured up these meagre expressions of the general
+approbation, and would not have had them different. From this time,
+within the narrow bounds that brought them all necessarily together in
+some sort, Hicks abolished himself as nearly as possible. He chose often
+to join the second mate at meals, which Mr. Mason, in accordance with
+the discipline of the ship, took apart both from the crew and his
+superior officers. Mason treated the voluntary outcast with a sort of
+sarcastic compassion, as a man whose fallen state was not without its
+points as a joke to the indifferent observer, and yet might appeal to
+the pity of one who knew such cases through the misery they inflicted.
+Staniford heard him telling Hicks about his brother-in-law, and dwelling
+upon the peculiar relief which the appearance of his name in the
+mortality list gave all concerned in him. Hicks listened in apathetic
+patience and acquiescence; but Staniford thought that he enjoyed, as
+much as he could enjoy anything, the second officer's frankness. For his
+own part, he found that having made bold to keep this man in the world
+he had assumed a curious responsibility towards him. It became his
+business to show him that he was not shunned by his fellow-creatures,
+to hearten and cheer him up. It was heavy work. Hicks with his joke was
+sometimes odious company, but he was also sometimes amusing; without
+it, he was of a terribly dull conversation. He accepted Staniford's
+friendliness too meekly for good comradery; he let it add, apparently,
+to his burden of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with
+him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a
+point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to
+sink the lower. “Deuce take him!” mused his benefactor; “he's in love
+with her!” But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing
+that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never
+relented in her abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There
+seemed no scorn in her condemnation, but neither was there any mercy.
+In her simple life she had kept unsophisticated the severe morality of a
+child, and it was this that judged him, that found him unpardonable and
+outlawed him. He had never ventured to speak to her since that day, and
+Staniford never saw her look at him except when Hicks was not looking,
+and then with a repulsion which was very curious. Staniford could have
+pitied him, and might have interceded so far as to set him nearer right
+in her eyes; but he felt that she avoided him, too; there were no more
+walks on the deck, no more readings in the cabin; the checker-board,
+which professed to be the History of England, In 2 Vols., remained a
+closed book. The good companionship of a former time, in which they had
+so often seemed like brothers and sister, was gone. “Hicks has smashed
+our Happy Family,” Staniford said to Dunham, with little pleasure in his
+joke. “Upon my word, I think I had better have left him in the water.”
+ Lydia kept a great deal in her own room; sometimes when Staniford came
+down into the cabin he found her there, talking with Thomas of little
+things that amuse children; sometimes when he went on deck in the
+evening she would be there in her accustomed seat, and the second mate,
+with face and figure half averted, and staying himself by one hand on
+the shrouds, would be telling her something to which she listened with
+lifted chin and attentive eyes. The mate would go away when Staniford
+appeared, but that did not help matters, for then Lydia went too. At
+table she said very little; she had the effect of placing herself more
+and more under the protection of the captain. The golden age, when they
+had all laughed and jested so freely and fearlessly together, under her
+pretty sovereignty, was past, and they seemed far dispersed in a common
+exile. Staniford imagined she grew pale and thin; he asked Dunham if he
+did not see it, but Dunham had not observed. “I think matters have taken
+a very desirable shape, socially,” he said. “Miss Blood will reach her
+friends as fancy-free as she left home.”
+
+“Yes,” Staniford assented vaguely; “that's the great object.”
+
+After a while Dunham asked, “She's never said anything to you about your
+rescuing Hicks?”
+
+“Rescuing? What rescuing? They'd have had him out in another minute,
+any way,” said Staniford, fretfully. Then he brooded angrily upon the
+subject: “But I can tell you what: considering all the circumstances,
+she might very well have said something. It looks obtuse, or it looks
+hard. She must have known that it all came about through my trying to
+keep him away from her.”
+
+“Oh, yes; she knew that,” said Dunham; “she spoke of it at the time. But
+I thought--”
+
+“Oh, she did! Then I think that it would be very little if she
+recognized the mere fact that something had happened.”
+
+“Why, you said you hoped she wouldn't. You said it would be
+embarrassing. You're hard to please, Staniford.”
+
+“I shouldn't choose to have her speak for _my_ pleasure,” Staniford
+returned. “But it argues a dullness and coldness in her--”
+
+“I don't believe she's dull; I don't believe she's cold,” said Dunham,
+warmly.
+
+“What _do_ you believe she is?”
+
+“Afraid.”
+
+“Pshaw!” said Staniford.
+
+The eve of their arrival at Messina, he discharged one more duty by
+telling Hicks that he had better come on to Trieste with them. “Captain
+Jenness asked me to speak to you about it,” he said. “He feels a little
+awkward, and thought I could open the matter better.”
+
+“The captain's all right,” answered Hicks, with unruffled humility,
+“but I'd rather stop at Messina. I'm going to get home as soon as I
+can,--strike a bee-line.”
+
+“Look here!” said Staniford, laying his hand on his shoulder. “How are
+you going to manage for money?”
+
+“Monte di Pietà,” replied Hicks. “I've been there before. Used to have
+most of my things in the care of the state when I was studying medicine
+in Paris. I've got a lot of rings and trinkets that'll carry me through,
+with what's left of my watch.”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“Because you can draw on me, if you're going to be short.”
+
+“Thanks,” said Hicks. “There's something I should like to ask you,” he
+added, after a moment. “I see as well as you do that Miss Blood isn't
+the same as she was before. I want to know--I can't always be sure
+afterwards--whether I did or said anything out of the way in her
+presence.”
+
+“You were drunk,” said Staniford, frankly, “but beyond that you were
+irreproachable, as regarded Miss Blood. You were even exemplary.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Hicks, with a joyless laugh. “Sometimes it takes
+that turn. I don't think I could stand it if I had shown her any
+disrespect. She's a lady,--a perfect lady; she's the best girl I ever
+saw.”
+
+“Hicks,” said Staniford, presently, “I haven't bored you in regard to
+that little foible of yours. Aren't you going to try to do something
+about it?”
+
+“I'm going home to get them to shut me up somewhere,” answered Hicks.
+“But I doubt if anything can be done. I've studied the thing; I am a
+doctor,--or I would be if I were not a drunkard,--and I've diagnosed the
+case pretty thoroughly. For three months or four months, now, I shall
+be all right. After that I shall go to the bad for a few weeks; and I'll
+have to scramble back the best way I can. Nobody can help me. That
+was the mistake this last time. I shouldn't have wanted anything at
+Gibraltar if I could have had my spree out at Boston. But I let them
+take me before it was over, and ship me off. I thought I'd try it. Well,
+it was like a burning fire every minute, all the way. I thought I
+should die. I tried to get something from the sailors; I tried to steal
+Gabriel's cooking-wine. When I got that brandy in Gibraltar I was wild.
+Talk about heroism! I tell you it was superhuman, keeping that canteen
+corked till night! I was in hopes I could get through it,--sleep it
+off,--and nobody be any the wiser. But it wouldn't work. O Lord, Lord,
+Lord!”
+
+Hicks was as common a soul as could well be. His conception of life was
+vulgar, and his experience of it was probably vulgar. He had a good mind
+enough, with abundance of that humorous brightness which may hereafter
+be found the most national quality of the Americans; but his ideals were
+pitiful, and the language of his heart was a drolling slang. Yet his
+doom lifted him above his low conditions, and made him tragic; his
+despair gave him the dignity of a mysterious expiation, and set him
+apart with all those who suffer beyond human help. Without deceiving
+himself as to the quality of the man, Staniford felt awed by the
+darkness of his fate.
+
+“Can't you try somehow to stand up against it, and fight it off? You're
+so young yet, it can't--”
+
+The wretched creature burst into tears. “Oh, try,--try! You don't
+know what you're talking about. Don't you suppose I've had reasons for
+trying? If you could see how my mother looks when I come out of one of
+my drunks,--and my father, poor old man! It's no use; I tell you it's no
+use. I shall go just so long, and then I shall want it, and _will_ have
+it, unless they shut me up for life. My God, I wish I was dead! Well!”
+ He rose from the place where they had been sitting together, and held
+out his hand to Staniford. “I'm going to be off in the morning before
+you're out, and I'll say good-by now. I want you to keep this chair, and
+give it to Miss Blood, for me, when you get to Trieste.”
+
+“I will, Hicks,” said Staniford, gently.
+
+“I want her to know that I was ashamed of myself. I think she'll like to
+know it.”
+
+“I will say anything to her that you wish,” replied Staniford.
+
+“There's nothing else. If ever you see a man with my complaint fall
+overboard again, think twice before you jump after him.”
+
+He wrung Staniford's hand, and went below, leaving him with a dull
+remorse that he should ever have hated Hicks, and that he could not
+quite like him even now.
+
+But he did his duty by him to the last. He rose at dawn, and was on deck
+when Hicks went over the side into the boat which was to row him to the
+steamer for Naples, lying at anchor not far off. He presently returned,
+to Staniford's surprise, and scrambled up to the deck of the Aroostook.
+“The steamer sails to-night,” he said, “and perhaps I couldn't raise the
+money by that time. I wish you'd lend me ten napoleons. I'll send 'em to
+you from London. There's my father's address: I'm going to telegraph
+to him.” He handed Staniford a card, and the latter went below for the
+coins. “Thanks,” said Hicks, when he reappeared with them. “Send 'em to
+you where?”
+
+“Care Blumenthals', Venice. I'm going to be there some weeks.”
+
+In the gray morning light the lurid color of tragedy had faded out of
+Hicks. He was merely a baddish-looking young fellow whom Staniford had
+lent ten napoleons that he might not see again. Staniford watched the
+steamer uneasily, both from the Aroostook and from the shore, where he
+strolled languidly about with Dunham part of the day. When she sailed in
+the evening, he felt that Hicks's absence was worth twice the money.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+The young men did not come back to the ship at night, but went to a
+hotel, for the greater convenience of seeing the city. They had talked
+of offering to show Lydia about, but their talk had not ended in
+anything. Vexed with himself to be vexed at such a thing, Staniford at
+the bottom of his heart still had a soreness which the constant sight
+of her irritated. It was in vain that he said there was no occasion,
+perhaps no opportunity, for her to speak, yet he was hurt that she
+seemed to have seen nothing uncommon in his risking his own life for
+that of a man like Hicks. He had set the action low enough in his own
+speech; but he knew that it was not ignoble, and it puzzled him that it
+should be so passed over. She had not even said a word of congratulation
+upon his own escape. It might be that she did not know how, or did not
+think it was her place to speak. She was curiously estranged. He felt as
+if he had been away, and she had grown from a young girl into womanhood
+during his absence. This fantastic conceit was strongest when he met her
+with Captain Jenness one day. He had found friends at the hotel, as one
+always does in Italy, if one's world is at all wide,--some young ladies,
+and a lady, now married, with whom he had once violently flirted. She
+was willing that he should envy her husband; that amused him in his
+embittered mood; he let her drive him about; and they met Lydia and the
+captain, walking together. Staniford started up from his lounging ease,
+as if her limpid gaze had searched his conscience, and bowed with an air
+which did not escape his companion.
+
+“Ah! Who's that?” she asked, with the boldness which she made pass for
+eccentricity.
+
+“A lady of my acquaintance,” said Staniford, at his laziest again.
+
+“A lady?” said the other, with an inflection that she saw hurt. “Why
+the marine animal, then? She bowed very prettily; she blushed prettily,
+too.”
+
+“She's a very pretty girl,” replied Staniford.
+
+“Charming! But why blush?”
+
+“I've heard that there are ladies who blush for nothing.”
+
+“Is she Italian?”
+
+“Yes,--in voice.”
+
+“Oh, an American _prima donna_!” Staniford did not answer. “Who is she?
+Where is she from?”
+
+“South Bradfield, Mass.” Staniford's eyes twinkled at her pursuit,
+which he did not trouble himself to turn aside, but baffled by mere
+impenetrability.
+
+The party at the hotel suggested that the young men should leave their
+ship and go on with them to Naples; Dunham was tempted, for he could
+have reached Dresden sooner by land; but Staniford overruled him, and at
+the end of four days they went back to the Aroostook. They said it
+was like getting home, but in fact they felt the change from the airy
+heights and breadths of the hotel to the small cabin and the closets
+in which they slept; it was not so great alleviation as Captain Jenness
+seemed to think that one of them could now have Hicks's stateroom. But
+Dunham took everything sweetly, as his habit was; and, after all, they
+were meeting their hardships voluntarily. Some of the ladies came with
+them in the boat which rowed them to the Aroostook; the name made them
+laugh; that lady who wished Staniford to regret her waved him her hand
+kerchief as the boat rowed away again. She had with difficulty been kept
+from coming on board by the refusal of the others to come with her. She
+had contrived to associate herself with him again in the minds of the
+others, and this, perhaps, was all that she desired. But the
+sense of her frivolity--her not so much vacant-mindedness as
+vacant-heartedness--was like a stain, and he painted in Lydia's face
+when they first met the reproach which was in his own breast.
+
+Her greeting, however, was frank and cordial; it was a real welcome.
+Staniford wondered if it were not more frank and cordial than he quite
+liked, and whether she was merely relieved by Hicks's absence, or had
+freed herself from that certain subjection in which she had hitherto
+been to himself.
+
+Yet it was charming to see her again as she had been in the happiest
+moments of the past, and to feel that, Hicks being out of her world,
+her trust of everybody in it was perfect once more. She treated that
+interval of coldness and diffidence as all women know how to treat a
+thing which they wish not to have been; and Staniford, a man on whom no
+pleasing art of her sex was ever lost, admired and gratefully accepted
+the effect of this. He fell luxuriously into the old habits again. They
+had still almost the time of a steamer's voyage to Europe before them;
+it was as if they were newly setting sail from America. The first night
+after they left Messina Staniford found her in her place in the waist of
+the ship, and sat down beside her there, and talked; the next night she
+did not come; the third she came, and he asked her to walk with him. The
+elastic touch of her hand on his arm, the rhythmic movement of her steps
+beside him, were things that seemed always to have been. She told him of
+what she had seen and done in Messina. This glimpse of Italy had vividly
+animated her; she had apparently found a world within herself as well as
+without.
+
+With a suddenly depressing sense of loss, Staniford had a prevision
+of splendor in her, when she should have wholly blossomed out in that
+fervid air of art and beauty; he would fain have kept her still a
+wilding rosebud of the New England wayside. He hated the officers who
+should wonder at her when she first came into the Square of St. Mark
+with her aunt and uncle.
+
+Her talk about Messina went on; he was thinking of her, and not of her
+talk; but he saw that she was not going to refer to their encounter.
+“You make me jealous of the objects of interest in Messina,” he said.
+“You seem to remember seeing everything but me, there.”
+
+She stopped abruptly. “Yes,” she said, after a deep breath, “I saw you
+there;” and she did not offer to go on again.
+
+“Where were you going, that morning?”
+
+“Oh, to the cathedral. Captain Jenness left me there, and I looked all
+through it till he came back from the consulate.”
+
+“Left you there alone!” cried Staniford.
+
+“Yes; I told him I should not feel lonely, and I should not stir out
+of it till he came back. I took one of those little pine chairs and sat
+down, when I got tired, and looked at the people coming to worship, and
+the strangers with their guide-books.”
+
+“Did any of them look at you?”
+
+“They stared a good deal. It seems to be the custom in Europe; but I
+told Captain Jenness I should probably have to go about by myself in
+Venice, as my aunt's an invalid, and I had better get used to it.”
+
+She paused, and seemed to be referring the point to Staniford.
+
+“Yes,--oh, yes,” he said.
+
+“Captain Jenness said it was their way, over here,” she resumed; “but he
+guessed I had as much right in a church as anybody.”
+
+“The captain's common sense is infallible,” answered Staniford. He was
+ashamed to know that the beautiful young girl was as improperly alone
+in church as she would have been in a café, and he began to hate the
+European world for the fact. It seemed better to him that the Aroostook
+should put about and sail back to Boston with her, as she was,--better
+that she should be going to her aunt in South Bradfield than to her aunt
+in Venice. “We shall soon be at our journey's end, now,” he said, after
+a while.
+
+“Yes; the captain thinks in about eight days, if we have good weather.”
+
+“Shall you be sorry?”
+
+“Oh, I like the sea very well.”
+
+“But the new life you are coming to,--doesn't that alarm you sometimes?”
+
+“Yes, it does,” she admitted, with a kind of reluctance.
+
+“So much that you would like to turn back from it?”
+
+“Oh, no!” she answered quickly. Of course not, Staniford thought;
+nothing could be worse than going back to South Bradfield. “I keep
+thinking about it,” she added. “You say Venice is such a very strange
+place. Is it any use my having seen Messina?”
+
+“Oh, all Italian cities have something in common.”
+
+“I presume,” she went on, “that after I get there everything will become
+natural. But I don't like to look forward. It--scares me. I can't form
+any idea of it.”
+
+“You needn't be afraid,” said Staniford. “It's only more beautiful than
+anything you can imagine.”
+
+“Yes--yes; I know,” Lydia answered.
+
+“And do you really dread getting there?”
+
+“Yes, I dread it,” she said.
+
+“Why,” returned Staniford lightly, “so do I; but it's for a different
+reason, I'm afraid. I should like such a voyage as this to go on
+forever. Now and then I think it will; it seems always to have gone on.
+Can you remember when it began?”
+
+“A great while ago,” she answered, humoring his fantasy, “but I can
+remember.” She paused a long while. “I don't know,” she said at last,
+“whether I can make you understand just how I feel. But it seems to me
+as if I had died, and this long voyage was a kind of dream that I was
+going to wake up from in another world. I often used to think, when I
+was a little girl, that when I got to heaven it would be lonesome--I
+don't know whether I can express it. You say that Italy--that Venice--is
+so beautiful; but if I don't know any one there--” She stopped, as if
+she had gone too far.
+
+“But you do know somebody there,” said Staniford. “Your aunt--”
+
+“Yes,” said the girl, and looked away.
+
+“But the people in this long dream,--you're going to let some of them
+appear to you there,” he suggested.
+
+“Oh, yes,” she said, reflecting his lighter humor, “I shall want to see
+them, or I shall not know I am the same person, and I must be sure of
+myself, at least.”
+
+“And you wouldn't like to go back to earth--to South Bradfield again?”
+ he asked presently.
+
+“No,” she answered. “All that seems over forever. I couldn't go back
+there and be what I was. I could have stayed there, but I couldn't go
+back.”
+
+Staniford laughed. “I see that it isn't the other world that's got hold
+of you! It's _this_ world! I don't believe you'll be unhappy in Italy.
+But it's pleasant to think you've been so contented on the Aroostook
+that you hate to leave it. I don't believe there's a man on the ship
+that wouldn't feel personally flattered to know that you liked being
+here. Even that poor fellow who parted from us at Messina was anxious
+that you should think as kindly of him as you could. He knew that he had
+behaved in a way to shock you, and he was very sorry. He left a message
+with me for you. He thought you would like to know that he was ashamed
+of himself.”
+
+“I pitied him,” said Lydia succinctly. It was the first time that she
+had referred to Hicks, and Staniford found it in character for her to
+limit herself to this sparse comment. Evidently, her compassion was a
+religious duty. Staniford's generosity came easy to him.
+
+“I feel bound to say that Hicks was not a bad fellow. I disliked him
+immensely, and I ought to do him justice, now he's gone. He deserved all
+your pity. He's a doomed man; his vice is irreparable; he can't resist
+it.” Lydia did not say anything: women do not generalize in these
+matters; perhaps they cannot pity the faults of those they do not love.
+Staniford only forgave Hicks the more. “I can't say that up to the last
+moment I thought him anything but a poor, common little creature; and
+yet I certainly did feel a greater kindness for him after--what I--after
+what had happened. He left something more than a message for you, Miss
+Blood; he left his steamer chair yonder, for you.”
+
+“For me?” demanded Lydia. Staniford felt her thrill and grow rigid upon
+his arm, with refusal. “I will not have it. He had no right to do so.
+He--he--was dreadful! I will give it to you!” she said, suddenly. “He
+ought to have given it to you. You did everything for him; you saved his
+life.”
+
+It was clear that she did not sentimentalize Hicks's case; and Staniford
+had some doubt as to the value she set upon what he had done, even now
+she had recognized it.
+
+He said, “I think you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare
+say the boat could have picked him up in good time.”
+
+“Yes, that's what the captain and Mr. Watterson and Mr. Mason all said,”
+ assented Lydia.
+
+Staniford was nettled. He would have preferred a devoted belief that but
+for him Hicks must have perished. Besides, what she said still gave no
+clew to her feeling in regard to himself. He was obliged to go on,
+but he went on as indifferently as he could. “However, it was hardly a
+question for me at the time whether he could have been got out without
+my help. If I had thought about it at all--which I didn't--I suppose I
+should have thought that it wouldn't do to take any chances.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Lydia, simply, “you couldn't have done anything less than
+you did.”
+
+In his heart Staniford had often thought that he could have done very
+much less than jump overboard after Hicks, and could very properly have
+left him to the ordinary life-saving apparatus of the ship. But if he
+had been putting the matter to some lady in society who was aggressively
+praising him for his action, he would have said just what Lydia had said
+for him,--that he could not have done anything less. He might have said
+it, however, in such a way that the lady would have pursued his retreat
+from her praises with still fonder applause; whereas this girl seemed to
+think there was nothing else to be said. He began to stand in awe of her
+heroic simplicity. If she drew every-day breath in that lofty air, what
+could she really think of him, who preferred on principle the atmosphere
+of the valley? “Do you know, Miss Blood,” he said gravely, “that you pay
+me a very high compliment?”
+
+“How?” she asked.
+
+“You rate my maximum as my mean temperature.” He felt that she listened
+inquiringly. “I don't think I'm habitually up to a thing of that kind,”
+ he explained.
+
+“Oh, no,” she assented, quietly; “but when he struck at you so, you had
+to do everything.”
+
+“Ah, you have the pitiless Puritan conscience that takes the life out of
+us all!” cried Staniford, with sudden bitterness. Lydia seemed startled,
+shocked, and her hand trembled on his arm, as if she had a mind to take
+it away. “I was a long time laboring up to that point. I suppose you are
+always there!”
+
+“I don't understand,” she said, turning her head round with the slow
+motion of her beauty, and looking him full in the face.
+
+“I can't explain now. I will, by and by,--when we get to Venice,” he
+added, with quick lightness.
+
+“You put off everything till we get to Venice,” she said, doubtfully.
+
+“I beg your pardon. It was you who did it the last time.”
+
+“Was it?” She laughed. “So it was! I was thinking it was you.”
+
+It consoled him a little that she should have confused them in her
+thought, in this way. “What was it you were to tell me in Venice?” he
+asked.
+
+“I can't think, now.”
+
+“Very likely something of yourself--or myself. A third person might say
+our conversational range was limited.”
+
+“Do you think it is very egotistical?” she asked, in the gay tone which
+gave him relief from the sense of oppressive elevation of mind in her.
+
+“It is in me,--not in you.”
+
+“But I don't see the difference.”
+
+“I will explain sometime.”
+
+“When we get to Venice?”
+
+They both laughed. It was very nonsensical; but nonsense is sometimes
+enough.
+
+When they were serious again, “Tell me,” he said, “what you thought of
+that lady in Messina, the other day.”
+
+She did not affect not to know whom he meant. She merely said, “I only
+saw her a moment.”
+
+“But you thought something. If we only see people a second we form some
+opinion of them.”
+
+“She is very fine-appearing,” said Lydia.
+
+Staniford smiled at the countrified phrase; he had observed that when
+she spoke her mind she used an instinctive good language; when she would
+not speak it, she fell into the phraseology of the people with whom
+she had lived. “I see you don't wish to say, because you think she is
+a friend of mine. But you can speak out freely. We were not friends; we
+were enemies, if anything.”
+
+Staniford's meaning was clear enough to himself; but Lydia paused, as if
+in doubt whether he was jesting or not, before she asked, “Why were you
+riding with her then?”
+
+“I was driving with her,” he replied, “I suppose, because she asked me.”
+
+“_Asked_ you!” cried the girl; and he perceived her moral recoil both
+from himself and from a woman who could be so unseemly. That lady would
+have found it delicious if she could have known that a girl placed like
+Lydia was shocked at her behavior. But he was not amused. He was touched
+by the simple self-respect that would not let her suffer from what was
+not wrong in itself, but that made her shrink from a voluntary semblance
+of unwomanliness. It endeared her not only to his pity, but to that
+sense which in every man consecrates womanhood, and waits for some woman
+to be better than all her sex. Again he felt the pang he had remotely
+known before. What would she do with these ideals of hers in that
+depraved Old World,--so long past trouble for its sins as to have got
+a sort of sweetness and innocence in them,--where her facts would be
+utterly irreconcilable with her ideals, and equally incomprehensible?
+
+They walked up and down a few turns without speaking again of that lady.
+He knew that she grew momently more constrained toward him; that the
+pleasure of the time was spoiled for her; that she had lost her trust in
+him, and this half amused, half afflicted him. It did not surprise him
+when, at their third approach to the cabin gangway, she withdrew her
+hand from his arm and said, stiffly, “I think I will go down.” But she
+did not go at once. She lingered, and after a certain hesitation she
+said, without looking at him, “I didn't express what I wanted to, about
+Mr. Hicks, and--what you did. It is what I thought you would do.”
+
+“Thanks,” said Staniford, with sincere humility. He understood how she
+had had this in her mind, and how she would not withhold justice from
+him because he had fallen in her esteem; how rather she would be the
+more resolute to do him justice for that reason.
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+He could see that she avoided being alone with him the next day, but he
+took it for a sign of relenting, perhaps helpless relenting, that she
+was in her usual place on deck in the evening. He went to her, and, “I
+see that you haven't forgiven me,” he said.
+
+“Forgiven you?” she echoed.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “for letting that lady ask me to drive with her.”
+
+“I never said--” she began.
+
+“Oh, no! But I knew it, all the same. It was not such a very wicked
+thing, as those things go. But I liked your not liking it. Will you let
+me say something to you?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, rather breathlessly.
+
+“You must think it's rather an odd thing to say, as I ask leave. It is;
+and I hardly know how to say it. I want to tell you that I've made bold
+to depend a great deal upon your good opinion for my peace of mind, of
+late, and that I can't well do without it now.”
+
+She stole the quickest of her bird-like glances at him, but did not
+speak; and though she seemed, to his anxious fancy, poising for flight,
+she remained, and merely looked away, like the bird that will not or
+cannot fly.
+
+“You don't resent my making you my outer conscience, do you, and my
+knowing that you're not quite pleased with me?”
+
+She looked down and away with one of those turns of the head, so
+precious when one who beholds them is young, and caught at the fringe of
+her shawl. “I have no right,” she began.
+
+“Oh, I give you the right!” he cried, with passionate urgence. “You have
+the right. Judge me!” She only looked more grave, and he hurried on.
+“It was no great harm of her to ask me; that's common enough; but it was
+harm of me to go if I didn't quite respect her,--if I thought her silly,
+and was willing to be amused with her. One hasn't any right to do that.
+I saw this when I saw you.” She still hung her head, and looked away. “I
+want you to tell me something,” he pursued. “Do you remember once--the
+second time we talked together--that you said Dunham was in earnest, and
+you wouldn't answer when I asked you about myself? Do you remember?”
+
+“Yes,” said the girl.
+
+“I didn't care, then. I care very much now. You don't think me--you
+think I can be in earnest when I will, don't you? And that I can
+regret--that I really wish--” He took the hand that played with the
+shawl-fringe, but she softly drew it away.
+
+“Ah, I see!” he said. “You can't believe in me. You don't believe that I
+can be a good man--like Dunham!”
+
+She answered in the same breathless murmur, “I think you are good.” Her
+averted face drooped lower.
+
+“I will tell you all about it, some day!” he cried, with joyful
+vehemence. “Will you let me?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, with the swift expulsion of breath that sometimes
+comes with tears. She rose quickly and turned away. He did not try to
+keep her from leaving him. His heart beat tumultuously; his brain seemed
+in a whirl. It all meant nothing, or it meant everything.
+
+“What is the matter with Miss Blood?” asked Dunham, who joined him at
+this moment. “I just spoke to her at the foot of the gangway stairs, and
+she wouldn't answer me.”
+
+“Oh, I don't know about Miss Blood--I don't know what's the matter,”
+ said Staniford. “Look here, Dunham; I want to talk with you--I want to
+tell you something--I want you to advise me--I--There's only one thing
+that can explain it, that can excuse it. There's only one thing that can
+justify all that I've done and said, and that can not only justify it,
+but can make it sacredly and eternally right,--right for her and right
+for me. Yes, it's reason for all, and for a thousand times more. It
+makes it fair for me to have let her see that I thought her beautiful
+and charming, that I delighted to be with her, that I--Dunham,” cried
+Staniford, “I'm in love!”
+
+Dunham started at the burst in which these ravings ended. “Staniford,”
+ he faltered, with grave regret, “I _hope_ not!”
+
+“You hope not? You--you--What do you mean? How else can I free myself
+from the self-reproach of having trifled with her, of--”
+
+Dunham shook his head compassionately. “You can't do it that way. Your
+only safety is to fight it to the death,--to run from it.”
+
+“But if I don't _choose_ to fight it?” shouted Staniford,--“if I don't
+_choose_ to run from it? If I--”
+
+“For Heaven's sake, hush! The whole ship will hear you, and you oughtn't
+to breathe it in the desert. I saw how it was going! I dreaded it; I
+knew it; and I longed to speak. I'm to blame for not speaking!”
+
+“I should like to know what would have authorized you to speak?”
+ demanded Staniford, haughtily.
+
+“Only my regard for you; only what urges me to speak now! You
+_must_ fight it, Staniford, whether you choose or not. Think of
+yourself,--think of her! Think--you have always been my ideal of honor
+and truth and loyalty--think of her husband--”
+
+“Her husband!” gasped Staniford. “Whose husband? What the deuce--_who_
+the deuce--are you talking about, Dunham?”
+
+“Mrs. Rivers.”
+
+“Mrs. Rivers? That flimsy, feather-headed, empty-hearted--eyes-maker!
+That frivolous, ridiculous--Pah! And did you think that I was talking of
+_her_? Did you think I was in love with _her_?”
+
+“Why,” stammered Dunham, “I supposed--I thought--At Messina, you know--”
+
+“Oh!” Staniford walked the deck's length away. “Well, Dunham,” he said,
+as he came back, “you've spoilt a pretty scene with your rot about
+Mrs. Rivers. I was going to be romantic! But perhaps I'd better say in
+ordinary newspaper English that I've just found out that I'm in love
+with Miss Blood.”
+
+“With _her_!” cried Dunham, springing at his hand.
+
+“Oh, come now! Don't _you_ be romantic, after knocking _my_ chance.”
+
+“Why, but Staniford!” said Dunham, wringing his hand with a lover's joy
+in another's love and his relief that it was not Mrs. Rivers. “I never
+should have dreamt of such a thing!”
+
+“Why?” asked Staniford, shortly.
+
+“Oh, the way you talked at first, you know, and--”
+
+“I suppose even people who get married have something to take back about
+each other,” said Staniford, rather sheepishly. “However,” he added,
+with an impulse of frankness, “I don't know that I should have dreamt of
+it myself, and I don't blame you. But it's a fact, nevertheless.”
+
+“Why, of course. It's splendid! Certainly. It's magnificent!” There was
+undoubtedly a qualification, a reservation, in Dunham's tone. He
+might have thought it right to bring the inequalities of the affair to
+Staniford's mind. With all his effusive kindliness of heart and manner,
+he had a keen sense of social fitness, a nice feeling for convention.
+But a man does not easily suggest to another that the girl with whom he
+has just declared himself in love is his inferior. What Dunham finally
+did say was: “It jumps with all your ideas--all your old talk about not
+caring to marry a society girl--”
+
+“Society might be very glad of such a girl!” said Staniford, stiffly.
+
+“Yes, yes, certainly; but I mean--”
+
+“Oh, I know what you mean. It's all right,” said Staniford. “But
+it isn't a question of marrying yet. I can't be sure she understood
+me,--I've been so long understanding myself. And yet, she must, she
+must! She must believe it by this time, or else that I'm the most
+infamous scoundrel alive. When I think how I have sought her out, and
+followed her up, and asked her judgment, and hung upon her words, I feel
+that I oughtn't to lose a moment in being explicit. I don't care for
+myself; she can take me or leave me, as she likes; but if she doesn't
+understand, she mustn't be left in suspense as to my meaning.” He seemed
+to be speaking to Dunham, but he was really thinking aloud, and Dunham
+waited for some sort of question before he spoke. “But it's a great
+satisfaction to have had it out with myself. I haven't got to pretend
+any more that I hang about her, and look at her, and go mooning round
+after her, for this no-reason and that; I've got the best reason in the
+world for playing the fool,--I'm in love!” He drew a long, deep
+breath. “It simplifies matters immensely to have reached the point
+of acknowledging that. Why, Dunham, those four days at Messina almost
+killed me! They settled it. When that woman was in full fascination
+it made me gasp. I choked for a breath of fresh air; for a taste of
+spring-water; for--Lurella!” It was a long time since Staniford had used
+this name, and the sound of it made him laugh. “It's droll--but I always
+think of her as Lurella; I wish it _was_ her name! Why, it was like
+heaven to see her face when I got back to the ship. After we met her
+that day at Messina, Mrs. Rivers tried her best to get out of me who
+it was, and where I met her. But I flatter myself that I was equal to
+_that_ emergency.”
+
+Dunham said nothing, at once. Then, “Staniford,” he faltered, “she got
+it out of me.”
+
+“Did you tell her who Lu--who Miss Blood was?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And how I happened to be acquainted with her?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And that we were going on to Trieste with her?”
+
+“She had it out of me before I knew,” said Dunham. “I didn't realize
+what she was after; and I didn't realize how peculiar the situation
+might seem--”
+
+“I see nothing peculiar in the situation,” interrupted Staniford,
+haughtily. Then he laughed consciously. “Or, yes, I do; of course I do!
+You must know _her_ to appreciate it, though.” He mused a while before
+he added: “No wonder Mrs. Rivers was determined to come aboard! I wish
+we had let her,--confound her! She'll think I was ashamed of it. There's
+nothing to be ashamed of! By Heaven, I should like to hear any one--”
+ Staniford broke off, and laughed, and then bit his lip, smiling.
+Suddenly he burst out again, frowning: “I won't view it in that light. I
+refuse to consider it from that point of view. As far as I'm concerned,
+it's as regular as anything else in life. It's the same to me as if she
+were in her own house, and I had come there to tell her that she has my
+future in her hand. She's such a lady by instinct that she's made it all
+a triumph, and I thank God that I haven't done or said anything to mar
+it. Even that beast of a Hicks didn't; it's no merit. I've made love to
+her,--I own it; of course I have, because I was in love with her; and my
+fault has been that I haven't made love to her openly, but have gone
+on fancying that I was studying her character, or some rubbish of that
+sort. But the fault is easily repaired.” He turned about, as if he were
+going to look for Lydia at once, and ask her to be his wife. But he
+halted abruptly, and sat down. “No; that won't do,” he said. “That won't
+do at all.” He remained thinking, and Dunham, unwilling to interrupt his
+reverie, moved a few paces off. “Dunham, don't go. I want your advice.
+Perhaps I don't see it in the right light.”
+
+“How is it you see it, my dear fellow?” asked Dunham.
+
+“I don't know whether I've a right to be explicit with her, here. It
+seems like taking an advantage. In a few days she will be with her
+friends--”
+
+“You must wait,” said Dunham, decisively. “You can't speak to her before
+she is in their care; it wouldn't be the thing. You're quite right about
+that.”
+
+“No, it wouldn't be the thing,” groaned Staniford. “But how is it all to
+go on till then?” he demanded desperately.
+
+“Why, just as it has before,” answered Dunham, with easy confidence.
+
+“But is that fair to her?”
+
+“Why not? You mean to say to her at the right time all that a man can.
+Till that time comes I haven't the least doubt she understands you.”
+
+“Do you think so?” asked Staniford, simply. He had suddenly grown very
+subject and meek to Dunham.
+
+“Yes,” said the other, with the superiority of a betrothed lover; “women
+are very quick about those things.”
+
+“I suppose you're right,” sighed Staniford, with nothing of his wonted
+arrogant pretension in regard to women's moods and minds, “I suppose
+you're right. And you would go on just as before?”
+
+“I would, indeed. How could you change without making her unhappy--if
+she's interested in you?”
+
+“That's true. I could imagine worse things than going on just as before.
+I suppose,” he added, “that something more explicit has its charms;
+but a mutual understanding is very pleasant,--if it _is_ a mutual
+understanding.” He looked inquiringly at Dunham.
+
+“Why, as to that, of course I don't know. You ought to be the best judge
+of that. But I don't believe your impressions would deceive you.”
+
+“Yours did, once,” suggested Staniford, in suspense.
+
+“Yes; but I was not in love with her,” explained Dunham.
+
+“Of course,” said Staniford, with a breath of relief. “And you
+think--Well, I must wait!” he concluded, grimly. “But don't--don't
+mention this matter, Dunham, unless I do. Don't keep an eye on me,
+old fellow. Or, yes, you must! You can't help it. I want to tell
+you, Dunham, what makes me think she may be a not wholly uninterested
+spectator of my--sentiments.” He made full statement of words and looks
+and tones. Dunham listened with the patience which one lover has with
+another.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+The few days that yet remained of their voyage were falling in the
+latter half of September, and Staniford tried to make the young girl
+see the surpassing loveliness of that season under Italian skies; the
+fierceness of the summer is then past, and at night, when chiefly they
+inspected the firmament, the heaven has begun to assume something of the
+intense blue it wears in winter. She said yes, it was very beautiful,
+but she could not see that the days were finer, or the skies bluer,
+than those of September at home; and he laughed at her loyalty to the
+American weather. “Don't _you_ think so, too?” she asked, as if it
+pained her that he should like Italian weather better.
+
+“Oh, yes,--yes,” he said. Then he turned the talk on her, as he did
+whenever he could. “I like your meteorological patriotism. If I were a
+woman, I should stand by America in everything.”
+
+“Don't you as a man?” she pursued, still anxiously.
+
+“Oh, certainly,” he answered. “But women owe our continent a double debt
+of fidelity. It's the Paradise of women, it's their Promised Land, where
+they've been led up out of the Egyptian bondage of Europe. It's the
+home of their freedom. It is recognized in America that women have
+consciences and souls.”
+
+Lydia looked very grave. “Is it--is it so different with women in
+Europe?” she faltered.
+
+“Very,” he replied, and glanced at her half-laughingly, half-tenderly.
+
+After a while, “I wish you would tell me,” she said, “just what you
+mean. I wish you would tell me what is the difference.”
+
+“Oh, it's a long story. I will tell you--when we get to Venice.” The
+well-worn jest served its purpose again; she laughed, and he continued:
+“By the way, just when will that be? The captain says that if this wind
+holds we shall be in Trieste by Friday afternoon. I suppose your friends
+will meet you there on Saturday, and that you'll go back with them to
+Venice at once.”
+
+“Yes,” assented Lydia.
+
+“Well, if I should come on Monday, would that be too soon?”
+
+“Oh, no!” she answered. He wondered if she had been vaguely hoping that
+he might go directly on with her to Venice. They were together all day,
+now, and the long talks went on from early morning, when they met before
+breakfast on deck, until late at night, when they parted there, with
+blushed and laughed good-nights. Sometimes the trust she put upon his
+unspoken promises was terrible; it seemed to condemn his reticence as
+fantastic and hazardous. With her, at least, it was clear that this love
+was the first; her living and loving were one. He longed to testify the
+devotion which he felt, to leave it unmistakable and safe past accident;
+he thought of making his will, in which he should give her everything,
+and declare her supremely dear; he could only rid himself of this by
+drawing up the paper in writing, and then he easily tore it in pieces.
+
+They drew nearer together, not only in their talk about each other, but
+in what they said of different people in their relation to themselves.
+But Staniford's pleasure in the metaphysics of reciprocal appreciation,
+his wonder at the quickness with which she divined characters he
+painfully analyzed, was not greater than his joy in the pretty hitch of
+the shoulder with which she tucked her handkerchief into the back pocket
+of her sack, or the picturesqueness with, which she sat facing him, and
+leant upon the rail, with her elbow wrapped in her shawl, and the
+fringe gathered in the hand which propped her cheek. He scribbled his
+sketch-book full of her contours and poses, which sometimes he caught
+unawares, and which sometimes she sat for him to draw. One day, as they
+sat occupied in this, “I wonder,” he said, “if you have anything of my
+feeling, nowadays. It seems to me as if the world had gone on a pleasure
+excursion, without taking me along, and I was enjoying myself very much
+at home.”
+
+“Why, yes,” she said, joyously; “do you have that feeling, too?”
+
+“I wonder what it is makes us feel so,” he ventured.
+
+“Perhaps,” she returned, “the long voyage.”
+
+“I shall hate to have the world come back, I believe,” he said,
+reverting to the original figure. “Shall you?”
+
+“You know I don't know much about it,” she answered, in lithe evasion,
+for which she more than atoned with a conscious look and one of her dark
+blushes. Yet he chose, with a curious cruelty, to try how far she was
+his.
+
+“How odd it would be,” he said, “if we never should have a chance to
+talk up this voyage of ours when it is over!”
+
+She started, in a way that made his heart smite him. “Why, you said
+you--” And then she caught herself, and struggled pitifully for the
+self-possession she had lost. She turned her head away; his pulse
+bounded.
+
+“Did you think I wouldn't? I am living for that.” He took the hand
+that lay in her lap; she seemed to try to free it, but she had not the
+strength or will; she could only keep her face turned from him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+They arrived Friday afternoon in Trieste, and Captain Jenness
+telegraphed his arrival to Lydia's uncle as he went up to the consulate
+with his ship's papers. The next morning the young men sent their
+baggage to a hotel, but they came back for a last dinner on the
+Aroostook. They all pretended to be very gay, but everybody was
+perturbed and distraught. Staniford and Dunham had paid their way
+handsomely with the sailors, and they had returned with remembrances in
+florid scarfs and jewelry for Thomas and the captain and the officers.
+Dunham had thought they ought to get something to give Lydia as a
+souvenir of their voyage; it was part of his devotion to young ladies to
+offer them little presents; but Staniford overruled him, and said there
+should be nothing of the kind. They agreed to be out of the way when
+her uncle came, and they said good-by after dinner. She came on deck
+to watch them ashore. Staniford would be the last to take leave. As he
+looked into her eyes, he saw brave trust of him, but he thought a sort
+of troubled wonder, too, as if she could not understand his reticence,
+and suffered from it. There was the same latent appeal and reproach in
+the pose in which she watched their boat row away. She stood with one
+hand resting on the rail, and her slim grace outlined against the sky.
+He waved his hand; she answered with a little languid wave of hers; then
+she turned away. He felt as if he had forsaken her.
+
+The afternoon was very long. Toward night-fall he eluded Dunham, and
+wandered back to the ship in the hope that she might still be there.
+But she was gone. Already everything was changed. There was bustle and
+discomfort; it seemed years since he had been there. Captain Jenness
+was ashore somewhere; it was the second mate who told Staniford of her
+uncle's coming.
+
+“What sort of person was he?” he asked vaguely.
+
+“Oh, well! _Dum_ an Englishman, any way,” said Mason, in a tone of easy,
+sociable explanation.
+
+The scruple to which Staniford had been holding himself for the past
+four or five days seemed the most incredible of follies,--the most
+fantastic, the most cruel. He hurried back to the hotel; when he found
+Dunham coming out from the _table d'hôte_ he was wild.
+
+“I have been the greatest fool in the world, Dunham,” he said. “I
+have let a quixotic quibble keep me from speaking when I ought to have
+spoken.”
+
+Dunham looked at him in stupefaction. “Where have you been?” he
+inquired.
+
+“Down to the ship. I was in hopes that she might be still there. But
+she's gone.”
+
+“The Aroostook _gone_?”
+
+“Look here, Dunham,” cried Staniford, angrily, “this is the second time
+you've done that! If you are merely thick-witted, much can be forgiven
+to your infirmity; but if you've a mind to joke, let me tell you you
+choose your time badly.”
+
+“I'm not joking. I don't know what you're talking about. I may be
+thick-witted, as you say; or you may be scatter-witted,” said Dunham,
+indignantly. “What are you after, any way?”
+
+“What was my reason for not being explicit with her; for going away from
+her without one honest, manly, downright word; for sneaking off without
+telling her that she was more than life to me, and that if she cared
+for me as I cared for her I would go on with her to Venice, and meet her
+people with her?”
+
+“Why, I don't know,” replied Dunham, vaguely. “We agreed that there
+would be a sort of--that she ought to be in their care before--”
+
+“Then I can tell you,” interrupted Staniford, “that we agreed upon the
+greatest piece of nonsense that ever was. A man can do no more than
+offer himself, and if he does less, after he's tried everything to show
+that he's in love with a woman, and to make her in love with him, he's
+a scamp to refrain from a bad motive, and an ass to refrain from a good
+one. Why in the name of Heaven _shouldn't_ I have spoken, instead of
+leaving her to eat her heart out in wonder at my delay, and to doubt and
+suspect and dread--Oh!” he shouted, in supreme self-contempt.
+
+Dunham had nothing to urge in reply. He had fallen in with what he
+thought Staniford's own mind in regard to the course he ought to take;
+since he had now changed his mind, there seemed never to have been any
+reason for that course.
+
+“My dear fellow,” he said, “it isn't too late yet to see her, I dare
+say. Let us go and find what time the trains leave for Venice.”
+
+“Do you suppose I can offer myself in the _salle d'attente_?” sneered
+Staniford. But he went with Dunham to the coffee-room, where they found
+the Osservatore Triestino and the time-table of the railroad. The last
+train left for Venice at ten, and it was now seven; the Austrian Lloyd
+steamer for Venice sailed at nine.
+
+“Pshaw!” said Staniford, and pushed the paper away. He sat brooding over
+the matter before the table on which the journals were scattered, while
+Dunham waited for him to speak. At last he said, “I can't stand it; I
+must see her. I don't know whether I told her I should come on to-morrow
+night or not. If she should be expecting me on Monday morning, and I
+should be delayed--Dunham, will you drive round with me to the Austrian
+Lloyd's wharf? They may be going by the boat, and if they are they'll
+have left their hotel. We'll try the train later. I should like to find
+out if they are on board. I don't know that I'll try to speak with them;
+very likely not.”
+
+“I'll go, certainly,” answered Dunham, cordially.
+
+“I'll have some dinner first,” said Staniford. “I'm hungry.”
+
+It was quite dark when they drove on to the wharf at which the boat for
+Venice lay. When they arrived, a plan had occurred to Staniford,
+through the timidity which had already succeeded the boldness of his
+desperation. “Dunham,” he said, “I want you to go on board, and see if
+she's there. I don't think I could stand not finding her. Besides, if
+she's cheerful and happy, perhaps I'd better not see her. You can come
+back and report. Confound it, you know, I should be so conscious before
+that infernal uncle of hers. You understand!”
+
+“Yes, yes,” returned Dunham, eager to serve Staniford in a case like
+this. “I'll manage it.”
+
+“Well,” said Staniford, beginning to doubt the wisdom of either going
+aboard, “do it if you think best. I don't know--”
+
+“Don't know what?” asked Dunham, pausing in the door of the _fiacre_.
+
+“Oh, nothing, nothing! I hope we're not making fools of ourselves.”
+
+“You're morbid, old fellow!” said Dunham, gayly. He disappeared in the
+darkness, and Staniford waited, with set teeth, till he came back. He
+seemed a long time gone. When he returned, he stood holding fast to the
+open fiacre-door, without speaking.
+
+“Well!” cried Staniford, with bitter impatience.
+
+“Well what?” Dunham asked, in a stupid voice.
+
+“Were they there?”
+
+“I don't know. I can't tell.”
+
+“Can't tell, man? Did you go to see?”
+
+“I think so. I'm not sure.”
+
+A heavy sense of calamity descended upon Staniford's heart, but patience
+came with it. “What's the matter, Dunham?” he asked, getting out
+tremulously.
+
+“I don't know. I think I've had a fall, somewhere. Help me in.”
+
+Staniford got out and helped him gently to the seat, and then mounted
+beside him, giving the order for their return. “Where is your hat?” he
+asked, finding that Dunham was bareheaded.
+
+“I don't know. It doesn't matter. Am I bleeding?”
+
+“It's so dark, I can't see.”
+
+“Put your hand here.” He carried Staniford's hand to the back of his
+head.
+
+“There's no blood; but you've had an ugly knock there.”
+
+“Yes, that's it,” said Dunham. “I remember now; I slipped and struck my
+head.” He lapsed away in a torpor; Staniford could learn nothing more
+from him.
+
+The hurt was not what Staniford in his first anxiety had feared, but
+the doctor whom they called at the hotel was vague and guarded as to
+everything but the time and care which must be given in any event.
+Staniford despaired; but there was only one thing to do. He sat down
+beside his friend to take care of him.
+
+His mind was a turmoil of regrets, of anxieties, of apprehensions; but
+he had a superficial calmness that enabled him to meet the emergencies
+of the case. He wrote a letter to Lydia which he somehow knew to be
+rightly worded, telling her of the accident. In terms which conveyed to
+her all that he felt, he said that he should not see her at the time he
+had hoped, but promised to come to Venice as soon as he could quit his
+friend. Then, with a deep breath, he put that affair away for the time,
+and seemed to turn a key upon it.
+
+He called a waiter, and charged him to have his letter posted at once.
+The man said he would give it to the _portier_, who was sending out some
+other letters. He returned, ten minutes later, with a number of
+letters which he said the portier had found for him at the post-office.
+Staniford glanced at them. It was no time to read them then, and he put
+them into the breast pocket of his coat.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+At the hotel in Trieste, to which Lydia went with her uncle before
+taking the train for Venice, she found an elderly woman, who made her a
+courtesy, and, saying something in Italian, startled her by kissing her
+hand.
+
+“It's our Veronica,” her uncle explained; “she wants to know how she can
+serve you.” He gave Veronica the wraps and parcels he had been carrying.
+“Your aunt thought you might need a maid.”
+
+“Oh, no!” said Lydia. “I always help myself.”
+
+“Ah, I dare say,” returned her uncle. “You American ladies are so--up to
+snuff, as you say. But your aunt thought we'd better have her with us,
+in any case.”
+
+“And she sent her all the way from Venice?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, I never did!” said Lydia, not lightly, but with something of
+contemptuous severity.
+
+Her uncle smiled, as if she had said something peculiarly acceptable
+to him, and asked, hesitatingly, “When you say you never did, you know,
+what is the full phrase?”
+
+Lydia looked at him. “Oh! I suppose I meant I never heard of such a
+thing.”
+
+“Ah, thanks, thanks!” said her uncle. He was a tall, slender man of
+fifty-five or sixty, with a straight gray mustache, and not at all the
+typical Englishman, but much more English-looking than if he had been.
+His bearing toward Lydia blended a fatherly kindness and a colonial
+British gallantry, such as one sees in elderly Canadian gentlemen
+attentive to quite young Canadian ladies at the provincial
+watering-places. He had an air of adventure, and of uncommon pleasure
+and no small astonishment in Lydia's beauty. They were already good
+friends; she was at her ease with him; she treated him as if he were an
+old gentleman. At the station, where Veronica got into the same carriage
+with them, Lydia found the whole train very queer-looking, and he
+made her describe its difference from an American train. He said, “Oh,
+yes--yes, engine,” when she mentioned the locomotive, and he apparently
+prized beyond its worth the word cow-catcher, a fixture which Lydia
+said was wanting to the European locomotive, and left it very stubby. He
+asked her if she would allow him to set it down; and he entered the word
+in his note-book, with several other idioms she had used. He said that
+he amused himself in picking up these things from his American friends.
+He wished to know what she called this and that and the other thing, and
+was equally pleased whether her nomenclature agreed or disagreed with
+his own. Where it differed, he recorded the fact, with her leave, in
+his book. He plied her with a thousand questions about America, with all
+parts of which he seemed to think her familiar; and she explained with
+difficulty how very little of it she had seen. He begged her not to let
+him bore her, and to excuse the curiosity of a Britisher, “As I suppose
+you'd call me,” he added.
+
+Lydia lifted her long-lashed lids half-way, and answered, “No, I
+shouldn't call you so.”
+
+“Ah, yes,” he returned, “the Americans always disown it. But I don't
+mind it at all, you know. I like those native expressions.” Where they
+stopped for refreshments he observed that one of the dishes, which was
+flavored to the national taste, had a pretty tall smell, and seemed
+disappointed by Lydia's unresponsive blankness at a word which a
+countryman of hers--from Kentucky--had applied to the odor of the
+Venetian canals. He suffered in like measure from a like effect in her
+when he lamented the complications that had kept him the year before
+from going to America with Mrs. Erwin, when she revisited her old
+stomping-ground.
+
+As they rolled along, the warm night which had fallen after the
+beautiful day breathed through the half-dropped window in a rich, soft
+air, as strange almost as the flying landscape itself. Mr. Erwin began
+to drowse, and at last he fell asleep; but Veronica kept her eyes
+vigilantly fixed upon Lydia, always smiling when she caught her glance,
+and offering service. At the stations, so orderly and yet so noisy,
+where the passengers were held in the same meek subjection as at
+Trieste, people got in and out of the carriage; and there were officers,
+at first in white coats, and after they passed the Italian frontier in
+blue, who stared at Lydia. One of the Italians, a handsome young hussar,
+spoke to her. She could not know what he said; but when he crossed
+over to her side of the carriage, she rose and took her place beside
+Veronica, where she remained even after he left the carriage. She was
+sensible of growing drowsy. Then she was aware of nothing till she woke
+up with her head on Veronica's shoulder, against which she had fallen,
+and on which she had been patiently supported for hours. “Ecco Venezia!”
+ cried the old woman, pointing to a swarm of lights that seemed to float
+upon an expanse of sea. Lydia did not understand; she thought she was
+again on board the Aroostook, and that the lights she saw were the
+lights of the shipping in Boston harbor. The illusion passed, and left
+her heart sore. She issued from the glare of the station upon the quay
+before it, bewildered by the ghostly beauty of the scene, but shivering
+in the chill of the dawn, and stunned by the clamor of the gondoliers. A
+tortuous course in the shadow of lofty walls, more deeply darkened from
+time to time by the arch of a bridge, and again suddenly pierced by the
+brilliance of a lamp that shot its red across the gloom, or plunged
+it into the black water, brought them to a palace gate at which they
+stopped, and where, after a dramatic ceremony of sliding bolts and the
+reluctant yielding of broad doors on a level with the water, she passed
+through a marble-paved court and up a stately marble staircase to her
+uncle's apartment. “You're at home, now, you know,” he said, in a kindly
+way, and took her hand, very cold and lax, in his for welcome. She could
+not answer, but made haste to follow Veronica to her room, whither the
+old woman led the way with a candle. It was a gloomily spacious chamber,
+with sombre walls and a lofty ceiling with a faded splendor of gilded
+paneling. Some tall, old-fashioned mirrors and bureaus stood about, with
+rugs before them on the stone floor; in the middle of the room was a
+bed curtained with mosquito-netting. Carved chairs were pushed here and
+there against the wall. Lydia dropped into one of these, too strange and
+heavy-hearted to go to bed in that vastness and darkness, in which her
+candle seemed only to burn a small round hole. She longed forlornly
+to be back again in her pretty state-room on the Aroostook; vanishing
+glimpses and echoes of the faces and voices grown so familiar in the
+past weeks haunted her; the helpless tears ran down her cheeks.
+
+There came a tap at her door, and her aunt's voice called, “Shall I
+come in?” and before she could faintly consent, her aunt pushed in,
+and caught her in her arms, and kissed her, and broke into a twitter of
+welcome and compassion. “You poor child! Did you think I was going to
+let you go to sleep without seeing you, after you'd come half round the
+world to see me?” Her aunt was dark and slight like Lydia, but not so
+tall; she was still a very pretty woman, and she was a very effective
+presence now in the long white morning-gown of camel's hair, somewhat
+fantastically embroidered in crimson silk, in which she drifted about
+before Lydia's bewildered eyes. “Let me see how you look! Are you as
+handsome as ever?” She held the candle she carried so as to throw its
+light full upon Lydia's face. “Yes!” she sighed. “How pretty you are!
+And at your age you'll look even better by daylight! I had begun to
+despair of you; I thought you couldn't be all I remembered; but you
+are,--you're more! I wish I had you in Rome, instead of Venice;
+there would be some use in it. There's a great deal of society
+there,--_English_ society; but never mind: I'm going to take you to
+church with me to-morrow,--the English service; there are lots of
+English in Venice now, on their way south for the winter. I'm crazy to
+see what dresses you've brought; your aunt Maria has told me how she
+fitted you out. I've got two letters from her since you started, and
+they're all perfectly well, dear. Your black silk will do nicely,
+with bright ribbons, especially; I hope you haven't got it spotted or
+anything on the way over.” She did not allow Lydia to answer, nor seem
+to expect it. “You've got your mother's eyes, Lydia, but your father had
+those straight eyebrows: you're very much like him. Poor Henry! And now
+I'm having you get something to eat. I'm not going to risk coffee on
+you, for fear it will keep you awake; though you can drink it in this
+climate with _comparative_ impunity. Veronica is warming you a bowl of
+_bouillon_, and that's all you're to have till breakfast!”
+
+“Why, aunt Josephine,” said the girl, not knowing what bouillon was, and
+abashed by the sound of it, “I'm not the least hungry. You oughtn't to
+take the trouble--”
+
+“You'll be hungry when you begin to eat. I'm so impatient to hear about
+your voyage! I am going to introduce you to some very nice people,
+here,--English people. There are no Americans living in Venice; and the
+Americans in Europe are so queer! You've no idea how droll our customs
+seem here; and I much prefer the English. Your poor uncle can never get
+me to ask Americans. I tell him I'm American enough, and he'll have to
+get on without others. Of course, he's perfectly delighted to get at
+you. You've quite taken him by storm, Lydia; he's in raptures about your
+looks. It's what I told him before you came; but I couldn't believe it
+till I took a look at you. I couldn't have gone to sleep without it. Did
+Mr. Erwin talk much with you?”
+
+“He was very pleasant. He talked--as long as he was awake,” said Lydia.
+
+“I suppose he was trying to pick up Americanisms from you; he's always
+doing it. I keep him away from Americans as much as I can: but he will
+get at them on the cars and at the hotels. He's always asking them such
+ridiculous questions, and I know some of them just talk nonsense to
+him.”
+
+Veronica came in with a tray, and a bowl of bouillon on it; and Mrs.
+Erwin pulled up a light table, and slid about, serving her, in
+her cabalistic dress, like an Oriental sorceress performing her
+incantations. She volubly watched Lydia while she ate her supper, and at
+the end she kissed her again. “Now you feel better,” she said. “I knew
+it would cheer you up more than any one thing. There's nothing like
+something to eat when you're homesick. I found that out when I was off
+at school.”
+
+Lydia was hardly kissed so much at home during a year as she had been
+since meeting Mrs. Erwin. Her aunt Maria sparely embraced her when she
+went and came each week from the Mill Village; anything more than this
+would have come of insincerity between them; but it had been agreed that
+Mrs. Erwin's demonstrations of affection, of which she had been lavish
+during her visit to South Bradfield, might not be so false. Lydia
+accepted them submissively, and she said, when Veronica returned for the
+tray, “I hate to give you so much trouble. And sending her all the way
+to Trieste on my account,--I felt ashamed. There wasn' a thing for her
+to do.”
+
+“Why, of course not!” exclaimed her aunt. “But what did you think I was
+made of? Did you suppose I was going to have you come on a night-journey
+alone with your uncle? It would have been all over Venice; it would have
+been ridiculous. I sent Veronica along for a dragon.”
+
+“A dragon? I don't understand,” faltered Lydia.
+
+“Well, you will,” said her aunt, putting the palms of her hands against
+Lydia's, and so pressing forward to kiss her. “We shall have breakfast
+at ten. Go to bed!”
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+When Lydia came to breakfast she found her uncle alone in the room,
+reading Galignani's Messenger. He put down his paper, and came forward
+to take her hand. “You are all right this morning, I see, Miss Lydia,”
+ he said. “You were quite up a stump, last night, as your countrymen
+say.”
+
+At the same time hands were laid upon her shoulders from behind, and she
+was pulled half round, and pushed back, and held at arm's-length. It was
+Mrs. Erwin, who, entering after her, first scanned her face, and then,
+with one devouring glance, seized every detail of her dress--the black
+silk which had already made its effect--before she kissed her. “You
+_are_ lovely, my dear! I shall spoil you, I know; but you're worth it!
+What lashes you have, child! And your aunt Maria made and fitted that
+dress? She's a genius!”
+
+“Miss Lydia,” said Mr. Erwin, as they sat down, “is of the fortunate age
+when one rises young every morning.” He looked very fresh himself in
+his clean-shaven chin, and his striking evidence of snowy wristbands and
+shirt-bosom. “Later in life, you can't do that. She looks as blooming,”
+ he added, gallantly, “as a basket of chips,--as you say in America.”
+
+“Smiling,” said Lydia, mechanically correcting him.
+
+“Ah! It is? Smiling,--yes; thanks. It's very good either way; very
+characteristic. It would be curious to know the origin of a saying
+like that. I imagine it goes back to the days of the first settlers.
+It suggests a wood-chopping period. Is it--ah--in general use?” he
+inquired.
+
+“Of course it isn't, Henshaw!” said his wife.
+
+“You've been a great while out of the country, my dear,” suggested Mr.
+Erwin.
+
+“Not so long as not to know that your Americanisms are enough to make
+one wish we had held our tongues ever since we were discovered, or had
+never been discovered at all. I want to ask Lydia about her voyage. I
+haven't heard a word yet. Did your aunt Maria come down to Boston with
+you?”
+
+“No, grandfather brought me.”
+
+“And you had good weather coming over? Mr. Erwin told me you were not
+seasick.”
+
+“We had one bad storm, before we reached Gibraltar; but I wasn't
+seasick.”
+
+“Were the other passengers?”
+
+“One was.” Lydia reddened a little, and then turned somewhat paler than
+at first.
+
+“What is it, Lydia?” her aunt subtly demanded. “Who was the one that was
+sick?”
+
+“Oh, a gentleman,” answered Lydia.
+
+Her aunt looked at her keenly, and for whatever reason abruptly left the
+subject. “Your silk,” she said, “will do very well for church, Lydia.”
+
+“Oh, I say, now!” cried her husband, “you're not going to make her go to
+church to-day!”
+
+“Yes, I am! There will be more people there to-day than any other time
+this fall. She must go.”
+
+“But she's tired to death,--quite tuckered, you know.”
+
+“Oh, I'm rested, now,” said Lydia. “I shouldn't like to miss going to
+church.”
+
+“Your silk,” continued her aunt, “will be quite the thing for church.”
+ She looked hard at the dress, as if it were not quite the thing for
+breakfast. Mrs. Erwin herself wore a morning-dress of becoming delicacy,
+and an airy French cap; she had a light fall of powder on her face.
+“What kind of overthing have you got?” she asked.
+
+“There's a sack goes with this,” said the girl, suggestively.
+
+“That's nice! What is your bonnet?”
+
+“I haven't any bonnet. But my best hat is nice. I could--”
+
+“_No_ one goes to church in a hat! You can't do it. It's simply
+impossible.”
+
+“Why, my dear,” said her husband, “I saw some very pretty American girls
+in hats at church, last Sunday.”
+
+“Yes, and everybody _knew_ they were Americans by their hats!” retorted
+Mrs. Erwin.
+
+“_I_ knew they were Americans by their good looks,” said Mr. Erwin, “and
+what you call their stylishness.”
+
+“Oh, it's all well enough for you to talk. _You're_ an Englishman, and
+you could wear a hat, if you liked. It would be set down to character.
+But in an American it would be set down to greenness. If you were an
+American, you would have to wear a bonnet.”
+
+“I'm glad, then, I'm not an American,” said her husband; “I don't think
+I should look well in a bonnet.”
+
+“Oh, stuff, Henshaw! You know what I mean. And I'm not going to have
+English people thinking we're ignorant of the common decencies of life.
+Lydia shall not go to church in a hat; she had better _never_ go. I will
+lend her one of my bonnets. Let me see, _which_ one.” She gazed at Lydia
+in critical abstraction. “I wear rather young bonnets,” she mused aloud,
+“and we're both rather dark. The only difficulty is I'm so much more
+delicate--” She brooded upon the question in a silence, from which she
+burst exulting. “The very thing! I can fuss it up in no time. It won't
+take two minutes to get it ready. And you'll look just killing in it.”
+ She turned grave again. “Henshaw,” she said, “I _wish_ you would go to
+church this morning!”
+
+“I would do almost anything for you, Josephine; but really, you know,
+you oughtn't to ask that. I was there last Sunday; I can't go every
+Sunday. It's bad enough in England; a man ought to have some relief on
+the Continent.”
+
+“Well, well. I suppose I oughtn't to ask you,” sighed his wife,
+“especially as you're going with us to-night.”
+
+“I'll go to-night, with pleasure,” said Mr. Erwin. He rose when his wife
+and Lydia left the table, and opened the door for them with a certain
+courtesy he had; it struck even Lydia's uneducated sense as something
+peculiarly sweet and fine, and it did not overawe her own simplicity,
+but seemed of kind with it.
+
+The bonnet, when put to proof, did not turn out to be all that it was
+vaunted. It looked a little odd, from the first; and Mrs. Erwin, when
+she was herself dressed, ended by taking it off, and putting on Lydia
+the hat previously condemned. “You're divine in that,” she said. “And
+after all, you are a traveler, and I can say that some of your things
+were spoiled coming over,--people always get things ruined in a sea
+voyage,--and they'll think it was your bonnet.”
+
+“I kept my things very nicely, aunt Josephine,” said Lydia
+conscientiously. “I don't believe anything was hurt.”
+
+“Oh, well, you can't tell till you've unpacked; and we're not
+responsible for what people happen to think, you know. Wait!” her aunt
+suddenly cried. She pulled open a drawer, and snatched two ribbons from
+it, which she pinned to the sides of Lydia's hat, and tied in a bow
+under her chin; she caught out a lace veil, and drew that over the front
+of the hat, and let it hang in a loose knot behind. “Now,” she said,
+pushing her up to a mirror, that she might see, “it's a bonnet; and I
+needn't say _any_thing!”
+
+They went in Mrs. Erwin's gondola to the palace in which the English
+service was held, and Lydia was silent, as she looked shyly, almost
+fearfully, round on the visionary splendors of Venice.
+
+Mrs. Erwin did not like to be still. “What are you thinking of, Lydia?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Oh! I suppose I was thinking that the leaves were beginning to turn in
+the sugar orchard,” answered Lydia faithfully. “I was thinking how still
+the sun would be in the pastures, there, this morning. I suppose the
+stillness here put me in mind of it. One of these bells has the same
+tone as our bell at home.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Erwin. “Everybody finds a familiar bell in Venice.
+There are enough of them, goodness knows. I don't see why you call it
+still, with all this clashing and banging. I suppose this seems very odd
+to you, Lydia,” she continued, indicating the general Venetian effect.
+“It's an old story to me, though. The great beauty of Venice is that you
+get more for your money here than you can anywhere else in the world.
+There isn't much society, however, and you mustn't expect to be very
+gay.”
+
+“I have never been gay,” said Lydia.
+
+“Well, that's no reason you shouldn't be,” returned her aunt. “If you
+were in Florence, or Rome, or even Naples, you could have a good time.
+There! I'm glad your uncle didn't hear me say that!”
+
+“What?” asked Lydia.
+
+“Good time; that's an Americanism.”
+
+“Is it?”
+
+“Yes. He's perfectly delighted when he catches me in one. I try to break
+myself of them, but I don't always know them myself. Sometimes I feel
+almost like never talking at all. But you can't do that, you know.”
+
+“No,” assented Lydia.
+
+“And you have to talk Americanisms if you're an American. You mustn't
+think your uncle isn't obliging, Lydia. He is. I oughtn't to have asked
+him to go to church,--it bores him so much. I used to feel terribly
+about it once, when we were first married. But things have changed very
+much of late years, especially with all this scientific talk. In England
+it's quite different from what it used to be. Some of the best people in
+society are skeptics now, and that makes it quite another thing.” Lydia
+looked grave, but she said nothing, and her aunt added, “I wouldn't have
+asked him, but I had a little headache, myself.”
+
+“Aunt Josephine,” said Lydia, “I'm afraid you're doing too much for me.
+Why didn't you let me come alone?”
+
+“Come alone? To church!” Mrs. Erwin addressed her in a sort of whispered
+shriek. “It would have been perfectly scandalous.”
+
+“To go to church alone?” demanded Lydia, astounded.
+
+“Yes. A young girl mustn't go _any_where alone.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I'll explain to you, sometime, Lydia; or rather, you'll learn for
+yourself. In Italy it's very different from what it is in America.”
+ Mrs. Erwin suddenly started up and bowed with great impressiveness, as a
+gondola swept towards them. The gondoliers wore shirts of blue silk,
+and long crimson sashes. On the cushions of the boat, beside a hideous
+little man who was sucking the top of an ivory-handled stick, reclined
+a beautiful woman, pale, with purplish rings round the large black eyes
+with which, faintly smiling, she acknowledged Mrs. Erwin's salutation,
+and then stared at Lydia.
+
+“Oh, you may look, and you may look, and you may look!” cried Mrs.
+Erwin, under her breath. “You've met more than your match at last!
+The Countess Tatocka,” she explained to Lydia. “That was her palace we
+passed just now,--the one with the iron balconies. Did you notice
+the gentleman with her? She always takes to those monsters. He's a
+Neapolitan painter, and ever so talented,--clever, that is. He's dead in
+love with her, they say.”
+
+“Are they engaged?” asked Lydia.
+
+“Engaged!” exclaimed Mrs. Erwin, with her shriek in dumb show. “Why,
+child, she's married!”
+
+“To _him_?” demanded the girl, with a recoil.
+
+“No! To her husband.”
+
+“To her husband?” gasped Lydia. “And she--”
+
+“Why, she isn't quite well seen, even in Venice,” Mrs. Erwin explained.
+“But she's rich, and her _conversazioni_ are perfectly brilliant. She's
+very artistic, and she writes poetry,--Polish poetry. I _wish_ she could
+hear you sing, Lydia! I know she'll be frantic to see you again. But
+I don't see how it's to be managed; her house isn't one you can take a
+young girl to. And _I_ can't ask her: your uncle detests her.”
+
+“Do you go to her house?” Lydia inquired stiffly.
+
+“Why, as a foreigner, _I_ can go. Of course, Lydia, you can't be as
+particular about everything on the Continent as you are at home.”
+
+The former oratory of the Palazzo Grinzelli, which served as the
+English chapel, was filled with travelers of both the English-speaking
+nationalities, as distinguishable by their dress as by their faces.
+Lydia's aunt affected the English style, but some instinctive elegance
+betrayed her, and every Englishwoman there knew and hated her for an
+American, though she was a precisian in her liturgy, instant in all the
+responses and genuflexions. She found opportunity in the course of
+the lesson to make Lydia notice every one, and she gave a telegrammic
+biography of each person she knew, with a criticism of the costume of
+all the strangers, managing so skillfully that by the time the sermon
+began she was able to yield the text a statuesquely close attention, and
+might have been carved in marble where she sat as a realistic conception
+of Worship.
+
+The sermon came to an end; the ritual proceeded; the hymn, with the
+hemming and hawing of respectable inability, began, and Lydia lifted her
+voice with the rest. Few of the people were in their own church; some
+turned and stared at her; the bonnets and the back hair of those who
+did not look were intent upon her; the long red neck of one elderly
+Englishman, restrained by decorum from turning his head toward her,
+perspired with curiosity. Mrs. Erwin fidgeted, and dropped her eyes from
+the glances which fell to her for explanation of Lydia, and hurried away
+with her as soon as the services ended. In the hall on the water-floor
+of the palace, where they were kept waiting for their gondola a while,
+she seemed to shrink even from the small, surly greetings with which
+people whose thoughts are on higher things permit themselves to
+recognize fellow-beings of their acquaintance in coming out of church.
+But an old lady, who supported herself with a cane, pushed through the
+crowd to where they stood aloof, and, without speaking to Mrs. Erwin,
+put out her hand to Lydia; she had a strong, undaunted, plain face, in
+which was expressed the habit of doing what she liked. “My dear,” she
+said, “how wonderfully you sing! Where did you get that heavenly voice?
+You are an American; I see that by your beauty. You are Mrs. Erwin's
+niece, I suppose, whom she expected. Will you come and sing to me? You
+must bring her, Mrs. Erwin.”
+
+She hobbled away without waiting for an answer, and Lydia and her aunt
+got into their gondola. “_Oh_! How glad I am!” cried Mrs. Erwin, in a
+joyful flutter. “She's the very tip-top of the English here; she has
+a whole palace, and you meet the very best people at her house. I was
+afraid when you were singing, Lydia, that they would think your voice
+was too good to be good form,--that's an expression you must get; it
+means everything,--it sounded almost professional. I wanted to nudge
+you to sing a little lower, or different, or something; but I couldn't,
+everybody was looking so. No matter. It's all right now. If _she_ liked
+it, nobody else will dare to breathe. You can see that she has taken a
+fancy to you; she'll make a great pet of you.”
+
+“Who is she?” asked Lydia, bluntly.
+
+“Lady Fenleigh. Such a character,--so eccentric! But really, I suppose,
+very hard to live with. It must have been quite a release for poor Sir
+Fenleigh.”
+
+“She didn't seem in mourning,” said Lydia. “Has he been dead long?”
+
+“Why, he isn't dead at all! He is what you call a grass-widower. The
+best soul in the world, everybody says, and very, very fond of her; but
+she couldn't stand it; he was _too_ good, don't you understand? They've
+lived apart a great many years. She's lived a great deal in Asia
+Minor,--somewhere. She likes Venice; but of course there's no telling
+how long she may stay. She has another house in Florence, all ready to
+go and be lived in at a day's notice. I wish I had presented you! It
+did go through my head; but it didn't seem as if I _could_ get the Blood
+out. It _is_ a fearful name, Lydia; I always felt it so when I was a
+girl, and I was _so_ glad to marry out of it; and it sounds so terribly
+American. I think you must take your mother's name, my dear. Latham is
+rather flattish, but it's worlds better than Blood.”
+
+“I am not ashamed of my father's name,” said Lydia.
+
+“But you'll have to change it some day, at any rate,--when you get
+married.”
+
+Lydia turned away. “I will be called Blood till then. If Lady
+Fenleigh--”
+
+“Yes, my dear,” promptly interrupted her aunt, “I know that sort of
+independence. I used to have whole Declarations of it. But you'll get
+over that, in Europe. There was a time--just after the war--when the
+English quite liked our sticking up for ourselves; but that's past now.
+They like us to be outlandish, but they don't like us to be independent.
+How did you like the sermon? Didn't you think we had a nicely-dressed
+congregation?”
+
+“I thought the sermon was very short,” answered Lydia.
+
+“Well, that's the English way, and I like it. If you get in all the
+service, you _must_ make the sermon short.”
+
+Lydia did not say anything for a little while. Then she asked, “Is the
+service the same at the evening meeting?”
+
+“Evening meeting?” repeated Mrs. Erwin.
+
+“Yes,--the church to-night.”
+
+“Why, child, there isn't any church to-night! What _are_ you talking
+about?”
+
+“Didn't uncle--didn't Mr. Erwin say he would go with us to-night?”
+
+Mrs. Erwin seemed about to laugh, and then she looked embarrassed. “Why,
+Lydia,” she cried at last, “he didn't mean church; he meant--opera!”
+
+“Opera! Sunday night! Aunt Josephine, do you go to the theatre on
+Sabbath evening?”
+
+There was something appalling in the girl's stern voice. Mrs. Erwin
+gathered herself tremulously together for defense. “Why, of course,
+Lydia, I don't approve of it, though I never _was_ Orthodox. Your uncle
+likes to go; and if everybody's there that you want to see, and they
+will give the best operas Sunday night, what are you to do?”
+
+Lydia said nothing, but a hard look came into her face, and she shut her
+lips tight.
+
+“Now you see, Lydia,” resumed her aunt, with an air of deductive
+reasoning from the premises, “the advantage of having a bonnet on, even
+if it's only a make-believe. I don't believe a soul knew it. All those
+Americans had hats. You were the only American girl there with a bonnet.
+I'm sure that it had more than half to do with Lady Fenleigh's speaking
+to you. It showed that you had been well brought up.”
+
+“But I never wore a bonnet to church at home,” said Lydia.
+
+“That has nothing to do with it, if they thought you did. And Lydia,”
+ she continued, “I was thinking while you were singing there that I
+wouldn't say anything at once about your coming over to cultivate your
+voice. That's got to be such an American thing, now. I'll let it out
+little by little,--and after Lady Fenleigh's quite taken you under her
+wing. Perhaps we may go to Milan with you, or to Naples,--there's a
+conservatory there, too; and we can pull up stakes as easily as not.
+Well!” said Mrs. Erwin, interrupting herself, “I'm glad Henshaw wasn't
+by to hear _that_ speech. He'd have had it down among his Americanisms
+instantly. I don't know whether it _is_ an Americanism; but he puts down
+all the outlandish sayings he gets hold of to Americans; he has no
+end of English slang in his book. Everything has opened _beautifully_,
+Lydia, and I intend you shall have the _best_ time!” She looked fondly
+at her brother's child. “You've no idea how much you remind me of your
+poor father. You have his looks exactly. I always thought he would come
+out to Europe before he died. We used to be so proud of his looks at
+home! I can remember that, though I was the youngest, and he was ten
+years older than I. But I always did worship beauty. A perfect Greek,
+Mr. Rose-Black calls me: you'll see him; he's an English painter staying
+here; he comes a _great_ deal.”
+
+“Mrs. Erwin, Mrs. Erwin!” called a lady's voice from a gondola behind
+them. The accent was perfectly English, but the voice entirely Italian.
+“Where are you running to?”
+
+“Why, Miss Landini!” retorted Mrs. Erwin, looking back over her
+shoulder. “Is that you? Where in the world are _you_ going?”
+
+“Oh, I've been to pay a visit to my old English teacher. He's awfully
+ill with rheumatism; but awfully! He can't turn in bed.”
+
+“Why, poor man! This is my niece whom I told you I was expecting!
+Arrived last night! We've been to church!” Mrs. Erwin exclaimed each of
+the facts.
+
+The Italian girl stretched her hand across the gunwales of the boats,
+which their respective gondoliers had brought skillfully side by side,
+and took Lydia's hand. “I'm glad to see you, my dear. But my God, how
+beautiful you Americans are! But you don't look American, you know;
+you look Spanish! I shall come a great deal to see you, and practice my
+English.”
+
+“Come home with, us now, Miss Landini, and have lunch,” said Mrs. Erwin.
+
+“No, my dear, I can't. My aunt will be raising the devil if I'm not
+there to drink coffee with her; and I've been a great while away now.
+Till tomorrow!” Miss Landini's gondolier pushed his boat away, and rowed
+it up a narrow canal on the right.
+
+“I suppose,” Mrs. Erwin explained, “that she's really her
+mother,--everybody says so; but she always calls her aunt. Dear knows
+who her father was. But she's a very bright girl, Lydia, and you'll like
+her. Don't you think she speaks English wonderfully for a person who's
+never been out of Venice?”
+
+“Why does she swear?” asked Lydia, stonily.
+
+“_Swear_? Oh, I know what you mean. That's the funniest thing about Miss
+Landini. Your uncle says it's a shame to correct her; but I do, whenever
+I think of it. Why, you know, such words as God and devil don't sound
+at all wicked in Italian, and ladies use them quite commonly. She
+understands that it isn't good form to do so in English, but when
+she gets excited she forgets. Well, you can't say but what _she_ was
+impressed, Lydia!”
+
+After lunch, various people came to call upon Mrs. Erwin. Several of
+them were Italians who were learning English, and they seemed to think
+it inoffensive to say that they were glad of the opportunity to practice
+the language with Lydia. They talked local gossip with her aunt, and
+they spoke of an approaching visit to Venice from the king; it seemed to
+Lydia that the king's character was not good.
+
+Mr. Rose-Black, the English artist, came. He gave himself the effect of
+being in Mrs. Erwin's confidence, apparently without her authority, and
+he bestowed a share of this intimacy upon Lydia. He had the manner of
+a man who had been taken up by people above him, and the impudence of a
+talent which had not justified the expectations formed of it. He softly
+reproached Mrs. Erwin for running away after service before he could
+speak to her, and told her how much everybody had been enchanted by her
+niece's singing. “At least, they said it was your niece.”
+
+“Oh, yes, Mr. Rose-Black, let me introduce you to Miss--” Lydia looked
+hard, even to threatening, at her aunt, and Mrs. Erwin added, “Blood.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Rose-Black, with his picked-up politeness,
+“I didn't get the name.”
+
+“Blood,” said Mrs. Erwin, more distinctly.
+
+“Aöh!” said Mr. Rose-Black, in a cast-off accent of jaded
+indifferentism, just touched with displeasure. “Yes,” he added,
+dreamily, to Lydia, “it was divine, you know. You might say it needed
+training; but it had the _naïve_ sweetness we associate with your
+countrywomen. They're greatly admired in England now, you know, for
+their beauty. Oh, I assure you, it's quite the thing to admire American
+ladies. I want to arrange a little lunch at my studio for Mrs. Erwin and
+yourself; and I want you to abet me in it, Miss Blood.” Lydia stared at
+him, but he was not troubled. “I'm going to ask to sketch you. Really,
+you know, there's a poise--something bird-like--a sort of repose in
+movement--” He sat in a corner of the sofa, with his head fallen back,
+and abandoned to an absent enjoyment of Lydia's pictorial capabilities.
+He was very red; his full beard, which started as straw color, changed
+to red when it got a little way from his face. He wore a suit of rough
+blue, the coat buttoned tightly about him, and he pulled a glove through
+his hand as he talked. He was scarcely roused from his reverie by the
+entrance of an Italian officer, with his hussar jacket hanging upon one
+shoulder, and his sword caught up in his left hand. He ran swiftly to
+Mrs. Erwin, and took her hand.
+
+“Ah, my compliments! I come practice my English with you a little. Is it
+well said, a little, or do you say a small?”
+
+“A little, cavaliere,” answered Mrs. Erwin, amiably. “But you must say a
+good deal, in this case.”
+
+“Yes, yes,--good deal. For what?”
+
+“Let me introduce you to my niece. Colonel Pazzelli,” said Mrs. Erwin.
+
+“Ah! Too much honor, too much honor!” murmured the cavaliere. He brought
+his heels together with a click, and drooped towards Lydia till his
+head was on a level with his hips. Recovering himself, he caught up his
+eye-glasses, and bent them on Lydia. “Very please, very honored, much--”
+ He stopped, and looked confused, and Lydia turned pale and red.
+
+“Now, won't you play that pretty _barcarole_ you played the other night
+at Lady Fenleigh's?” entreated Mrs. Erwin.
+
+Colonel Pazzelli wrenched himself from the fascination of Lydia's
+presence, and lavished upon Mrs. Erwin the hoarded English of a week.
+“Yes, yes; very nice, very good. With much pleasure. I thank you. Yes,
+I play.” He was one of those natives who in all the great Italian
+cities haunt English-speaking societies; they try to drink tea without
+grimacing, and sing for the ladies of our race, who innocently pet them,
+finding them so very like other women in their lady-like sweetness and
+softness; it is said they boast among their own countrymen of their
+triumphs. The cavaliere unbuckled his sword, and laying it across a
+chair sat down at the piano. He played not one but many barcaroles, and
+seemed loath to leave the instrument.
+
+“Now, Lydia,” said Mrs. Erwin, fondly, “won't you sing us something?”
+
+“Do!” called Mr. Rose-Black from the sofa, with the intonation of a
+spoiled first-cousin, or half-brother.
+
+“I don't feel like singing to-day,” answered Lydia, immovably. Mrs.
+Erwin was about to urge her further, but other people came in,--some
+Jewish ladies, and then a Russian, whom Lydia took at first for an
+American. They all came and went, but Mr. Rose-Black remained in his
+corner of the sofa, and never took his eyes from Lydia's face. At last
+he went, and then Mr. Erwin looked in.
+
+“Is that beast gone?” he asked. “I shall be obliged to show him the
+door, yet, Josephine. You ought to snub him. He's worse than his
+pictures. Well, you've had a whole raft of folks today,--as your
+countrymen say.”
+
+“Yes, thank Heaven,” cried Mrs. Erwin, “and they're all gone. I don't
+want Lydia to think that I let everybody come to see me on Sunday.
+Thursday is my day, Lydia, but a few privileged friends understand that
+they can drop in Sunday afternoon.” She gave Lydia a sketch of the life
+and character of each of these friends. “And now I must tell you that
+your manner is very good, Lydia. That reserved way of yours is quite the
+thing for a young girl in Europe: I suppose it's a gift; I never could
+get it, even when I _was_ a girl. But you mustn't show any _hauteur_,
+even when you dislike people, and you refused to sing with _rather_
+too much _aplomb_. I don't suppose it was noticed though,--those ladies
+coming in at the same time. Really, I thought Mr. Rose-Black and Colonel
+Pazzelli were trying to outstare each other! It was certainly amusing.
+I never saw such an evident case, Lydia! The poor cavaliere looked as if
+he had seen you somewhere before in a dream, and was struggling to make
+it all out.”
+
+Lydia remained impassive. Presently she said she would go to her room,
+and write home before dinner. When she went out Mrs. Erwin fetched a
+deep sigh, and threw herself upon her husband's sympathy.
+
+“She's terribly unresponsive,” she began. “I supposed she'd be in
+raptures with the place, at least, but you wouldn't know there was
+anything at all remarkable in Venice from anything she's said. We have
+met ever so many interesting people to-day,--the Countess Tatocka, and
+Lady Fenleigh, and Miss Landini, and everybody, but I don't really think
+she's said a word about a soul. She's too queer for anything.”
+
+“I dare say she hasn't the experience to be astonished from,” suggested
+Mr. Erwin easily. “She's here as if she'd been dropped down from her
+village.”
+
+“Yes, that's true,” considered his wife. “But it's hard, with Lydia's
+air and style and self-possession, to realize that she _is_ merely a
+village girl.”
+
+“She may be much more impressed than she chooses to show,” Mr. Erwin
+continued. “I remember a very curious essay by a French writer about
+your countrymen: he contended that they were characterized by a savage
+stoicism through their contact with the Indians.”
+
+“Nonsense, Henshaw! There hasn't been an Indian _near_ South Bradfield
+for two hundred years. And besides that, am _I_ stoical?”
+
+“I'm bound to say,” replied her husband, “that so far as you go, you're
+a complete refutation of the theory.”
+
+“I hate to see a young girl so close,” fretted Mrs. Erwin. “But
+perhaps,” she added, more cheerfully, “she'll be the easier managed,
+being so passive. She doesn't seem at all willful,--that's one comfort.”
+
+She went to Lydia's room just before dinner, and found the girl with her
+head fallen on her arms upon the table, where she had been writing. She
+looked up, and faced her aunt with swollen eyes.
+
+“Why, poor thing!” cried Mrs. Erwin. “What is it, dear? What is it,
+Lydia?” she asked, tenderly, and she pulled Lydia's face down upon her
+neck.
+
+“Oh, nothing,” said Lydia. “I suppose I was a little homesick; writing
+home made me.”
+
+She somewhat coldly suffered Mrs. Erwin to kiss her and smooth her hair,
+while she began to talk with her of her grandfather and her aunt at
+home. “But this is going to be home to you now,” said Mrs. Erwin, “and
+I'm not going to let you be sick for any other. I want you to treat me
+just like a mother, or an older sister. Perhaps I shan't be the wisest
+mother to you in the world, but I mean to be one of the best. Come, now,
+bathe your eyes, my dear, and let's go to dinner. I don't like to
+keep your uncle waiting.” She did not go at once, but showed Lydia the
+appointments of the room, and lightly indicated what she had caused to
+be done, and what she had done with her own hands, to make the place
+pretty for her. “And now shall I take your letter, and have your uncle
+post it this evening?” She picked up the letter from the table. “Hadn't
+you any wax to seal it? You know they don't generally mucilage their
+envelopes in Europe.”
+
+Lydia blushed. “I left it open for you to read. I thought you ought to
+know what I wrote.”
+
+Mrs. Erwin dropped her hands in front of her, with the open letter
+stretched between them, and looked at her niece in rapture. “Lydia,” she
+cried, “one would suppose you had lived all your days in Europe! Showing
+me your letter, this way,--why, it's quite like a Continental girl.”
+
+“I thought it was no more than right you should see what I was writing
+home,” said Lydia, unresponsively.
+
+“Well, no matter, even if it _was_ right,” replied Mrs. Erwin. “It comes
+to the same thing. And now, as you've been quite a European daughter,
+I'm going to be a real American mother.” She took up the wax, and sealed
+Lydia's letter without looking into it. “There!” she said, triumphantly.
+
+She was very good to Lydia all through dinner, and made her talk of the
+simple life at home, and the village characters whom she remembered from
+her last summer's visit. That amused Mr. Erwin, who several times, when,
+his wife was turning the talk upon Lydia's voyage over, intervened with
+some new question about the life of the queer little Yankee hill-town.
+He said she must tell Lady Fenleigh about it,--she was fond of picking
+up those curios; it would make any one's social fortune who could
+explain such a place intelligibly in London; when they got to having
+typical villages of the different civilizations at the international
+expositions,--as no doubt they would,--somebody must really send South
+Bradfield over. He pleased himself vastly with this fancy, till Mrs.
+Erwin, who had been eying Lydia critically from time to time, as if
+making note of her features and complexion, said she had a white cloak,
+and that in Venice, where one need not dress a great deal for the opera,
+Lydia could wear it that night.
+
+Lydia looked up in astonishment, but she sat passive during her aunt's
+discussion of her plans. When they rose from table, she said, at her
+stiffest and coldest, “Aunt Josephine, I want you to excuse me from
+going with you to-night. I don't feel like going.”
+
+“Not feel like going!” exclaimed her aunt in dismay. “Why, your uncle
+has taken a box!”
+
+Lydia opposed nothing to this argument. She only said, “I would rather
+not go.”
+
+“Oh, but you _will_, dear,” coaxed her aunt. “You would enjoy it so
+much.”
+
+“I thought you understood from what I said to-day,” replied Lydia, “that
+I could not go.”
+
+“Why, no, I didn't! I knew you objected; but if I thought it was proper
+for you to go--”
+
+“I should not go at home,” said Lydia, in the same immovable fashion.
+
+“Of course not. Every place has its customs, and in Venice it has
+_always_ been the custom to go to the opera on Sunday night.” This fact
+had no visible weight with Lydia, and after a pause her aunt added,
+“Didn't Paul himself say to do in Rome as the Romans do?”
+
+“No, aunt Josephine,” cried Lydia, indignantly, “he did _not_!”
+
+Mrs. Erwin turned to her husband with a face of appeal, and he answered,
+“Really, my dear, I think you're mistaken. I always had the impression
+that the saying was--an Americanism of some sort.”
+
+“But it doesn't matter,” interposed Lydia decisively. “I couldn't go, if
+I didn't think it was right, whoever said it.”
+
+“Oh, well,” began Mrs. Erwin, “if you wouldn't mind what _Paul_ said--”
+ She suddenly checked herself, and after a little silence she resumed,
+kindly, “I won't try to force you, Lydia. I didn't realize what a very
+short time it is since you left home, and how you still have all those
+ideas. I wouldn't distress you about them for the world, my dear. I want
+you to feel at home with me, and I'll make it as like home for you as I
+can in everything. Henshaw, I think you must go alone, this evening. I
+will stay with Lydia.”
+
+“Oh, no, no! I couldn't let you; I can't let you! I shall not know what
+to do if I keep you at home. Oh, don't leave it that way, please! I
+shall feel so badly about it--”
+
+“Why, we can both stay,” suggested Mr. Erwin, kindly.
+
+Lydia's lips trembled and her eyes glistened, and Mrs. Erwin said,
+“I'll go with you, Henshaw. I'll be ready in half an hour. I won't dress
+_much_.” She added this as if not to dress a great deal at the opera
+Sunday night might somehow be accepted as an observance of the Sabbath.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+The next morning Veronica brought Lydia a little scrawl from her aunt,
+bidding the girl come and breakfast with her in her room at nine.
+
+“Well, my dear,” her aunt called to her from her pillow, when she
+appeared, “you find me flat enough, this morning. If there was anything
+wrong about going to the opera last night, I was properly punished
+for it. Such wretched stuff as _I_ never heard! And instead of the new
+ballet that they promised, they gave an old thing that I had seen till
+I was sick of it. You didn't miss much, I can tell you. How fresh and
+bright you _do_ look, Lydia!” she sighed. “Did you sleep well? Were you
+lonesome while we were gone? Veronica says you were reading the whole
+evening. Are you fond of reading?”
+
+“I don't think I am, very,” said Lydia. “It was a book that I began on
+the ship. It's a novel.” She hesitated. “I wasn't reading it; I was just
+looking at it.”
+
+“What a queer child you are! I suppose you were dying to read it, and
+wouldn't because it was Sunday. Well!” Mrs. Erwin put her hand under
+her pillow, and pulled out a gossamer handkerchief, with which she
+delicately touched her complexion here and there, and repaired with an
+instinctive rearrangement of powder the envious ravages of a slight rash
+about her nose. “I respect your high principles beyond anything, Lydia,
+and if they can only be turned in the right direction they will never be
+any disadvantage to you.” Veronica came in with the breakfast on a tray,
+and Mrs. Erwin added, “Now, pull up that little table, and bring your
+chair, my dear, and let us take it easy. I like to talk while I'm
+breakfasting. Will you pour out my chocolate? That's it, in the ugly
+little pot with the wooden handle; the copper one's for you, with coffee
+in it. I never could get that repose which seems to come perfectly
+natural to you. I was always inclined to be a little rowdy, my dear, and
+I've had to fight hard against it, without any help from _either_ of my
+husbands; men like it; they think it's funny. When I was first married,
+I was very young, and so was he; it was a real love match; and my
+husband was very well off, and when I began to be delicate, nothing
+would do but he must come to Europe with me. How little I ever expected
+to outlive him!”
+
+“You don't look very sick now,” began Lydia.
+
+“Ill,” said her aunt. “You must say ill. Sick is an Americanism.”
+
+“It's in the Bible,” said Lydia, gravely.
+
+“Oh, there are a great many words in the _Bible_ you can't use,”
+ returned her aunt. “No, I don't look ill now, and I'm worlds better. But
+I couldn't live a year in any other climate, I suppose. You seem to
+take after your mother's side. Well, as I was saying, the European ways
+didn't come natural to me, at all. I used to have a great deal of gayety
+when I was a girl, and I liked beaux and attentions; and I had very free
+ways. I couldn't get their stiffness here for years and years, and all
+through my widowhood it was one wretched failure with me. Do what I
+would, I was always violating the most essential rules, and the worst of
+it was that it only seemed to make me the more popular. I do believe it
+was nothing but my rowdiness that attracted Mr. Erwin; but I determined
+when I had got an Englishman I would make one bold strike for the
+proprieties, and have them, or die in the attempt. I determined that no
+Englishwoman I ever saw should outdo me in strict conformity to all the
+usages of European society. So I cut myself off from all the Americans,
+and went with nobody but the English.”
+
+“Do you like them better?” asked Lydia, with the blunt, child-like
+directness that had already more than once startled her aunt.
+
+“_Like_ them! I detest them! If Mr. Erwin were a real Englishman, I
+think I should go crazy; but he's been so little in his own country--all
+his life in India, nearly, and the rest on the Continent,--that
+he's quite human; and no American husband was ever more patient and
+indulgent; and _that_'s saying a good deal. He would be glad to have
+nothing but Americans around; he has an enthusiasm for them,--or for
+what he supposes they are. Like the English! You ought to have heard
+them during our war; it would have made your blood boil! And then how
+they came crawling round after it was all over, and trying to pet us up!
+Ugh!”
+
+“If you feel so about them,” said Lydia, as before, “why do you want to
+go with them so much?”
+
+“My dear,” cried her aunt, “_to beat them with their own weapons on
+their own ground_,--to show them that an American can be more European
+than any of them, if she chooses! And now you've come here with looks
+and temperament and everything just to my hand. You're more
+beautiful than any English girl ever dreamt of being; you're very
+distinguished-looking; your voice is perfectly divine; and you're colder
+than an iceberg. _Oh_, if I only had one winter with you in Rome,
+I think I should die in peace!” Mrs. Erwin paused, and drank her
+chocolate, which she had been letting cool in the eagerness of her
+discourse. “But, never mind,” she continued, “we will do the best we can
+here. I've seen English girls going out two or three together, without
+protection, in Rome and Florence; but I mean that you shall be quite
+Italian in that respect. The Italians never go out without a chaperone
+of some sort, and you must never be seen without me, or your uncle, or
+Veronica. Now I'll tell you how you must do at parties, and so on. You
+must be very retiring; you're that, any way; but you must always keep
+close to me. It doesn't do for young people to talk much together in
+society; it makes scandal about a girl. If you dance, you must always
+hurry back to me. Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Erwin, “I remember how, when
+I was a girl, I used to hang on to the young men's arms, and promenade
+with them after a dance, and go out to supper with them, and flirt on
+the stairs,--_such_ times! But that wouldn't do here, Lydia. It would
+ruin a girl's reputation; she could hardly walk arm in arm with a young
+man if she was engaged to him.” Lydia blushed darkly red, and then
+turned paler than usual, while her aunt went on. “You might do
+it, perhaps, and have it set down to American eccentricity or
+under-breeding, but I'm not going to have that. I intend you to be just
+as dull and diffident in society as if you were an Italian, and _more_
+than if you were English. Your voice, of course, is a difficulty. If
+you sing, that will make you conspicuous, in spite of everything. But I
+don't see why that can't be turned to advantage; it's no worse than your
+beauty. Yes, if you're so splendid-looking and so gifted, and at the
+same time as stupid as the rest, it's so much clear gain. It will come
+easy for you to be shy with men, for I suppose you've hardly ever talked
+with any, living up there in that out-of-the-way village; and your
+manner is very good. It's reserved, and yet it isn't green. The way,”
+ continued Mrs. Erwin, “to treat men in Europe is to behave as if they
+were guilty till they prove themselves innocent. All you have to do is
+to reverse all your American ideas. But here I am, lecturing you as if
+you had been just such a girl as I was, with half a dozen love affairs
+on her hands at once, and no end of gentlemen friends. Europe won't
+be hard for you, my dear, for you haven't got anything to unlearn. But
+_some_ girls that come over!--it's perfectly ridiculous, the trouble
+they get into, and the time they have getting things straight. They take
+it for granted that men in good society are gentlemen,--what we mean by
+gentlemen.”
+
+Lydia had been letting her coffee stand, and had scarcely tasted the
+delicious French bread and the sweet Lombard butter of which her aunt
+ate so heartily. “Why, child,” said Mrs. Erwin, at last, “where is your
+appetite? One would think you were the elderly invalid who had been up
+late. Did you find it too exciting to sit at home _looking_ at a novel?
+What was it? If it's a new story I should like to see it. But you didn't
+bring a novel from South Bradfield with you?”
+
+“No,” said Lydia, with a husky reluctance. “One of the--passengers gave
+it to me.”
+
+“Had you many passengers? But of course not. That was what made it so
+delightful when I came over that way. I was newly married then, and with
+spirits--oh dear me!--for anything. It was one adventure, the whole way;
+and we got so well acquainted, it was like one family. I suppose your
+grandfather put you in charge of some family. I know artists sometimes
+come out that way, and people for their health.”
+
+“There was no family on our ship,” said Lydia. “My state-room had been
+fixed up for the captain's wife--”
+
+“Our captain's wife was along, too,” interposed Mrs. Erwin. “She was
+such a joke with us. She had been out to Venice on a voyage before, and
+used to be always talking about the Du-_cal_ Palace. And did they really
+turn out of their state-room for you?”
+
+“She was not along,” said Lydia.
+
+“Not along?” repeated Mrs. Erwin, feebly. “Who--who were the other
+passengers?”
+
+“There were three gentlemen,” answered Lydia.
+
+“Three gentlemen? Three men? Three--And you--and--” Mrs. Erwin fell back
+upon her pillow, and remained gazing at Lydia, with a sort of remote
+bewildered pity, as at perdition, not indeed beyond compassion, but far
+beyond help. Lydia's color had been coming and going, but now it settled
+to a clear white. Mrs. Erwin commanded herself sufficiently to resume:
+“And there were--there were--no other ladies?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And you were--”
+
+“I was the only woman on board,” replied Lydia. She rose abruptly,
+striking the edge of the table in her movement, and setting its china
+and silver jarring. “Oh, I know what you mean, aunt Josephine, but two
+days ago I couldn't have dreamt it! From the time the ship sailed till I
+reached this wicked place, there wasn't a word said nor a look looked to
+make me think I wasn't just as right and safe there as if I had been in
+my own room at home. They were never anything but kind and good to me.
+They never let me think that they could be my enemies, or that I must
+suspect them and be on the watch against them. They were Americans!
+I had to wait for one of your Europeans to teach me that,--for that
+officer who was here yesterday--”
+
+“The cavaliere? Why, where--”
+
+“He spoke to me in the cars, when Mr. Erwin was asleep! Had he any right
+to do so?”
+
+“He would think he had, if he thought you were alone,” said Mrs. Erwin,
+plaintively. “I don't see how we could resent it. It was simply a
+mistake on his part. And now you see, Lydia--”
+
+“Oh, I see how my coming the way I have will seem to all these people!”
+ cried Lydia, with passionate despair. “I know how it will seem to that
+married woman who lets a man be in love with her, and that old woman
+who can't live with her husband because he's too good and kind, and that
+girl who swears and doesn't know who her father is, and that impudent
+painter, and that officer who thinks he has the right to insult women if
+he finds them alone! I wonder the sea doesn't swallow up a place where
+even Americans go to the theatre on the Sabbath!”
+
+“Lydia, Lydia! It isn't so bad as it seems to you,” pleaded her aunt,
+thrown upon the defensive by the girl's outburst. “There are ever so
+many good and nice people in Venice, and I know them, too,--Italians as
+well as foreigners. And even amongst those you saw, Miss Landini is one
+of the kindest girls in the world, and she had just been to see her
+old teacher when we met her,--she half takes care of him; and Lady
+Fenleigh's a perfect mother to the poor; and I never was at the Countess
+Tatocka's except in the most distant way, at a ball where everybody
+went; and is it better to let your uncle go to the opera alone, or to go
+with him? You told me to go with him yourself; and they consider Sunday
+over, on the Continent, after morning service, any way!”
+
+“Oh, it makes no difference!” retorted Lydia, wildly. “I am going away.
+I am going home. I have money enough to get to Trieste, and the ship is
+there, and Captain Jenness will take me back with him. Oh!” she moaned.
+“_He_ has been in Europe, too, and I suppose he's like the rest of you;
+and he thought because I was alone and helpless he had the right to--Oh,
+I see it, I see now that he never meant anything, and--Oh, oh, oh!” She
+fell on her knees beside the bed, as if crushed to them by the cruel
+doubt that suddenly overwhelmed her, and flung out her arms on Mrs.
+Erwin's coverlet--it was of Venetian lace sewed upon silk, a choice bit
+from the palace of one of the ducal families--and buried her face in it.
+
+Her aunt rose from her pillow, and looked in wonder and trouble at
+the beautiful fallen head, and the fair young figure shaken with sobs.
+“He--who--what are you talking about, Lydia? Whom do you mean? Did
+Captain Jenness--”
+
+“No, no!” wailed the girl, “the one that gave me the book.”
+
+“The one that gave you the book? The book you were looking at last
+night?”
+
+“Yes,” sobbed Lydia, with her voice muffled in the coverlet.
+
+Mrs. Erwin lay down again with significant deliberation. Her face was
+still full of trouble, but of bewilderment no longer. In moments of
+great distress the female mind is apt to lay hold of some minor anxiety
+for its distraction, and to find a certain relief in it. “Lydia,” said
+her aunt in a broken voice, “I wish you wouldn't cry in the coverlet:
+it doesn't hurt the lace, but it stains the silk.” Lydia swept her
+handkerchief under her face but did not lift it. Her aunt accepted the
+compromise. “How came he to give you the book?”
+
+“Oh, I don't know. I can't tell. I thought it was because--because--It
+was almost at the very beginning. And after that he walked up and down
+with me every night, nearly; and he tried to be with me all he could;
+and he was always saying things to make me think--Oh dear, oh _dear_, oh
+dear! And he _tried_ to make me care for him! Oh, it was cruel, cruel!”
+
+“You mean that he made love to you?” asked her aunt.
+
+“Yes--no--I don't know. He tried to make me care for him, and to make me
+think he cared for me.”
+
+“Did he say he cared for you? Did he--”
+
+“No!”
+
+Mrs. Erwin mused a while before she said, “Yes, it was cruel indeed,
+poor child, and it was cowardly, too.”
+
+“Cowardly?” Lydia lifted her face, and flashed a glance of tearful fire
+at her aunt. “He is the bravest man in the world! And the most generous
+and high-minded! He jumped into the sea after that wicked Mr. Hicks, and
+saved his life, when he disliked him worse than anything!”
+
+“_Who_ was Mr. Hicks?”
+
+“He was the one that stopped at Messina. He was the one that got some
+brandy at Gibraltar, and behaved so dreadfully, and wanted to fight
+him.”
+
+“Whom?”
+
+“This one. The one who gave me the book. And don't you see that his
+being so good makes it all the worse? Yes; and he pretended to be glad
+when I told him I thought he was good,--he got me to say it!” She had
+her face down again in her handkerchief. “And I suppose _you_ think it
+was horrible, too, for me to take his arm, and talk and walk with him
+whenever he asked me!”
+
+“No, not for you, Lydia,” said her aunt, gently. “And don't you think
+now,” she asked after a pause, “that he cared for you?”
+
+“Oh, I _did_ think so,--I _did_ believe it; but now, _now_--”
+
+“Now, what?”
+
+“Now, I'm afraid that may be he was only playing with me, and putting
+me off; and pretending that he had something to tell me when he got to
+Venice, and he never meant anything by anything.”
+
+“Is he coming to--” her aunt began, but Lydia broke vehemently out
+again.
+
+“If he had cared for me, why couldn't he have told me so at once, and
+not had me wait till he got to Venice? He _knew_ I--”
+
+“There are two ways of explaining it,” said Mrs. Erwin. “He _may_
+have been in earnest, Lydia, and felt that he had no right to be more
+explicit till you were in the care of your friends. That would be the
+European way which you consider so bad,” said Mrs. Erwin. “Under the
+circumstances, it was impossible for him to keep any distance, and
+all he could do was to postpone his declaration till there could be
+something like good form about it. Yes, it might have been that.” She
+was silent, but the troubled look did not leave her face. “I am sorry
+for you, Lydia,” she resumed, “but I don't know that I wish he was
+in earnest.” Lydia looked up at her in dismay. “It might be far less
+embarrassing the other way, however painful. He may not be at all a
+suitable person.” The tears stood in Lydia's eyes, and all her face
+expressed a puzzled suspense. “Where was he from?” asked Mrs. Erwin,
+finally; till then she had been more interested in the lover than the
+man.
+
+“Boston,” mechanically answered Lydia.
+
+“What was his name?”
+
+“Mr. Staniford,” owned Lydia, with a blush.
+
+Her aunt seemed dispirited at the sound. “Yes, I know who they are,” she
+sighed.
+
+“And aren't they nice? Isn't he--suitable?” asked Lydia, tremulously.
+
+“Oh, poor child! He's only _too_ suitable. I can't explain to you,
+Lydia; but at home he wouldn't have looked at a girl like you. What sort
+of looking person is he?”
+
+“He's rather--red; and he has--light hair.”
+
+“It must be the family I'm thinking of,” said Mrs. Erwin. She had lived
+nearly twenty years in Europe, and had seldom revisited her native
+city; but at the sound of a Boston name she was all Bostonian again.
+She rapidly sketched the history of the family to which she imagined
+Staniford to belong. “I remember his sister; I used to see her at
+school. She must have been five or six years younger than I; and this
+boy--”
+
+“Why, he's twenty-eight years old!” interrupted Lydia.
+
+“How came he to tell you?”
+
+“I don't know. He said that he looked thirty-four.”
+
+“Yes; _she_ was always a forward thing too,--with her freckles,” said
+Mrs. Erwin, musingly, as if lost in reminiscences, not wholly pleasing,
+of Miss Staniford.
+
+“_He_ has freckles,” admitted Lydia.
+
+“Yes, it's the one,” said Mrs. Erwin. “He couldn't have known what your
+family was from anything you said?”
+
+“We never talked about our families.”
+
+“Oh, I dare say! You talked about yourselves?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“All the time?”
+
+“Pretty nearly.”
+
+“And he didn't try to find out who or what you were?”
+
+“He asked a great deal about South Bradfield.”
+
+“Of course, that was where he thought you had always belonged.” Mrs.
+Erwin lay quiescent for a while, in apparent uncertainty as to how she
+should next attack the subject. “How did you first meet?”
+
+Lydia began with the scene on Lucas Wharf, and little by little told
+the whole story up to the moment of their parting at Trieste. There were
+lapses and pauses in the story, which her aunt was never at a loss to
+fill aright. At the end she said, “If it were not for his promising to
+come here and see you, I should say Mr. Staniford had been flirting,
+and as it is he may not regard it as anything more than flirtation. Of
+course, there was his being jealous of Mr. Dunham and Mr. Hicks, as
+he certainly was; and his wanting to explain about that lady at
+Messina--yes, that looked peculiar; but he may not have meant anything
+by it. His parting so at Trieste with you, that might be either because
+he was embarrassed at its having got to be such a serious thing, or
+because he really felt badly. Lydia,” she asked at last, “what made
+_you_ think he cared for you?”
+
+“I don't know,” said the girl; her voice had sunk to a husky whisper. “I
+didn't believe it till he said he wanted me to be his--conscience, and
+tried to make me say he was good, and--”
+
+“That's a certain kind of man's way of flirting. It may mean nothing at
+all. I could tell in an instant, if I saw him.”
+
+“He said he would be here this afternoon,” murmured Lydia, tremulously.
+
+“This afternoon!” cried Mrs. Erwin. “I must get up!”
+
+At her toilette she had the exaltation and fury of a champion arming for
+battle.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+
+Mr. Erwin entered about the completion of her preparations, and without
+turning round from her glass she said, “I want you to think of the worst
+thing you can, Henshaw. I don't see how I'm ever to lift up my head
+again.” As if this word had reminded her of her head, she turned it from
+side to side, and got the effect in the glass, first of one ear-ring,
+and then of the other. Her husband patiently waited, and she now
+confronted him. “You may as well know first as last, Henshaw, and I want
+you to prepare yourself for it. Nothing can be done, and you will
+just have to live through it. Lydia--has come over--on that
+ship--alone,--with three young men,--and not the shadow--not the
+ghost--of another woman--on board!” Mrs. Erwin gesticulated with her
+hand-glass in delivering the words, in a manner at once intensely
+vivid and intensely solemn, yet somehow falling short of the due tragic
+effect. Her husband stood pulling his mustache straight down, while
+his wife turned again to the mirror, and put the final touches to
+her personal appearance with hands which she had the effect of having
+desperately washed of all responsibility. He stood so long in this
+meditative mood that she was obliged to be peremptory with his image in
+the glass. “Well?” she cried.
+
+“Why, my dear,” said Mr. Erwin, at last, “they were all Americans
+together, you know.”
+
+“And what difference does that make?” demanded Mrs. Erwin, whirling from
+his image to the man again.
+
+“Why, of course, you know, it isn't as if they were--English.” Mrs.
+Erwin flung down three hair-pins upon her dressing-case, and visibly
+despaired. “Of course you don't expect your countrymen--” His wife's
+appearance was here so terrible that he desisted, and resumed by saying,
+“Don't be vexed, my dear. I--I rather like it, you know. It strikes me
+as a genuine bit of American civilization.”
+
+“American civilization! Oh, Henshaw!” wailed Mrs. Erwin, “is it possible
+that after all I've said, and done, and lived, you still think that any
+one but a girl from the greenest little country place could do such a
+thing as that? Well, it is no use trying to enlighten English people.
+You like it, do you? Well, I'm not sure that the Englishman who
+misunderstands American things and likes them isn't a little worse than
+the Englishman who misunderstands them and dislikes them. You _all_
+misunderstand them. And would you like it, if one of the young men had
+been making love to Lydia?”
+
+The amateur of our civilization hesitated and was serious, but he said
+at last, “Why, you know, I'm not surprised. She's so uncommonly pretty.
+I--I suppose they're engaged?” he suggested.
+
+His wife held her peace for scorn. Then she said, “The gentleman is of a
+very good Boston family, and would no more think of engaging himself
+to a young girl without the knowledge of her friends than you would.
+Besides, he's been in Europe a great deal.”
+
+“I wish I could meet some Americans who hadn't been in Europe,” said Mr.
+Erwin. “I should like to see what you call the simon-pure American. As
+for the young man's not engaging himself, it seems to me that he didn't
+avail himself of his national privileges. I should certainly have done
+it in his place, if I'd been an American.”
+
+“Well, if you'd been an American, you wouldn't,” answered his wife.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because an American would have had too much delicacy.”
+
+“I don't understand that.”
+
+“I know you don't, Henshaw. And there's where you show yourself an
+Englishman.”
+
+“Really,” said her husband, “you're beginning to crow, my dear. Come,
+I like that a great deal better than your cringing to the effete
+despotisms of the Old World, as your Fourth of July orators have it.
+It's almost impossible to get a bit of good honest bounce out of an
+American, nowadays,--to get him to spread himself, as you say.”
+
+“All that is neither here nor there, Henshaw,” said his wife. “The
+question is how to receive Mr. Staniford--that's his name--when he
+comes. How are we to regard him? He's coming here to see Lydia, and she
+thinks he's coming to propose.”
+
+“Excuse me, but how does she regard him?”
+
+“Oh, there's no question about that, poor child. She's _dead_ in love
+with him, and can't understand why he didn't propose on shipboard.”
+
+“And she isn't an Englishman, either!” exulted Mr. Erwin. “It appears
+that there are Americans and Americans, and that the men of your nation
+have more delicacy than the women like.”
+
+“Don't be silly,” said his wife. “Of course, women always think what
+they would do in such cases, if they were men; but if men did what women
+think they would do if they were men, the women would be disgusted.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“Yes. Her feeling in the matter is no guide.”
+
+“Do you know his family?” asked Mr. Erwin.
+
+“I think I do. Yes, I'm sure I do.”
+
+“Are they nice people?”
+
+“Haven't I told you they were a good Boston family?”
+
+“Then upon my word, I don't see that we've to take any attitude at all.
+I don't see that we've to regard him in one way or the other. It quite
+remains for him to make the first move.”
+
+As if they had been talking of nothing but dress before, Mrs. Erwin
+asked: “Do you think I look better in this black mexicaine, or would you
+wear your écru?”
+
+“I think you look very well in this. But why--He isn't going to propose
+to you, I hope?”
+
+“I must have on something decent to receive him in. What time does the
+train from Trieste get in?”
+
+“At three o'clock.”
+
+“It's one, now. There's plenty of time, but there isn't any too much.
+I'll go and get Lydia ready. Or perhaps you'll tap on her door, Henshaw,
+and send her here. Of course, this is the end of her voice,--if it is
+the end.”
+
+“It's the end of having an extraordinarily pretty girl in the house.
+I don't at all like it, you know,--having her whisked away in this
+manner.”
+
+Mrs. Erwin refused to let her mind wander from the main point. “He'll be
+round as soon as he can, after he arrives. I shall expect him by four,
+at the latest.”
+
+“I fancy he'll stop for his dinner before he comes,” said Mr. Erwin.
+
+“Not at all,” retorted his wife, haughtily. And with his going out of
+the room, she set her face in a resolute cheerfulness, for the task of
+heartening Lydia when she should appear; but it only expressed misgiving
+when the girl came in with her yachting-dress on. “Why, Lydia, shall you
+wear that?”
+
+Lydia swept her dress with a downward glance.
+
+“I thought I would wear it. I thought he--I should seem--more natural
+in it. I wore it all the time on the ship, except Sundays. He said--he
+liked it the best.”
+
+Mrs. Erwin shook her head. “It wouldn't do. Everything must be on a new
+basis now. He might like it; but it would be too romantic, wouldn't it,
+don't you think?” She shook her head still, but less decisively. “Better
+wear your silk. Don't you think you'd better wear your silk? This is
+very pretty, and the dark blue does become you, awfully. Still, I don't
+know--_I_ don't know, either! A great many English wear those careless
+things in the house. Well, _wear_ it, Lydia! You _do_ look perfectly
+killing in it. I'll tell you: your uncle was going to ask you to go
+out in his boat; he's got one he rows himself, and this is a boating
+costume; and you know you could time yourselves so as to get back just
+right, and you could come in with this on--”
+
+Lydia turned pale. “Oughtn't I--oughtn't I--to be here?” she faltered.
+
+Her aunt laughed gayly. “Why, he'll ask for _me_, Lydia.”
+
+“For you?” asked Lydia, doubtfully.
+
+“Yes. And I can easily keep him till you get back. If you're here by
+four--”
+
+“The train,” said Lydia, “arrives at three.”
+
+“How did you know?” asked her aunt, keenly.
+
+Lydia's eyelids fell even lower than their wont.
+
+“I looked it out in that railroad guide in the parlor.”
+
+Her aunt kissed her. “And you've thought the whole thing out, dear,
+haven't you? I'm glad to see you so happy about it.”
+
+“Yes,” said the girl, with a fluttering breath, “I have thought it out,
+and _I believe him_. I--” She tried to say something more, but could
+not.
+
+Mrs. Erwin rang the bell, and sent for her husband. “He knows about it,
+Lydia,” she said.
+
+“He's just as much interested as we are, dear, but you needn't be
+worried. He's a perfect post for not showing a thing if you don't want
+him to. He's really quite superhuman, in that,--equal to a woman. You
+can talk Americanisms with him. If we sat here staring at each other
+till four o'clock,--he _must_ go to his hotel before he comes here; and
+I say four at the earliest; and it's much more likely to be five or six,
+or perhaps evening,--I should die!”
+
+Mr. Erwin's rowing was the wonder of all Venice. There was every reason
+why he should fall overboard at each stroke, as he stood to propel the
+boat in the gondolier fashion, except that he never yet had done so. It
+was sometimes his fortune to be caught on the shallows by the falling
+tide; but on that day he safely explored the lagoons, and returned
+promptly at four o'clock to the palace.
+
+His wife was standing on the balcony, looking out for them, and she
+smiled radiantly down into Lydia's anxiously lifted face. But when
+she met the girl at the head of the staircase in the great hall, she
+embraced her, and said, with the same gay smile, “He hasn't come yet,
+dear, and of course he won't come till after dinner. If I hadn't been as
+silly as you are, Lydia, I never should have let you expect him sooner.
+He'll want to go to his hotel: and no matter how impatient he is, he'll
+want to dress, and be a little ceremonious about his call. You know
+we're strangers to him, whatever _you_ are.”
+
+“Yes,” said Lydia, mechanically. She was going to sit down, as she was;
+of her own motion she would not have stirred from the place till he
+came, or it was certain he would not come; but her aunt would not permit
+the despair into which she saw her sinking.
+
+She laughed resolutely, and said, “I think we must give up the little
+sentimentality of meeting him in that dress, now. Go and change it,
+Lydia. Put on your silk,--or wait: let me go with you. I want to try
+some little effects with your complexion. We've experimented with the
+simple and familiar, and now we'll see what can be done in the way of
+the magnificent and unexpected. I'm going to astonish the young man with
+a Venetian beauty; you know you look Italian, Lydia.”
+
+“Yes, he said so,” answered Lydia.
+
+“Did he? That shows he has an eye, and he'll appreciate what we are
+going to do.”
+
+She took Lydia to her own room, for the greater convenience of her
+experiments, and from that moment she did not allow her to be alone; she
+scarcely allowed her to be silent; she made her talk, she kept her in
+movement. At dinner she permitted no lapse. “Henshaw,” she said, “Lydia
+has been telling me about a storm they had just before they reached
+Gibraltar. I wish you would tell her of the typhoon you were in when you
+first went out to India.” Her husband obeyed; and then recurring to the
+days of his civil employment in India, he told stories of tiger-hunts,
+and of the Sepoy mutiny. Mrs. Erwin would not let them sit very long
+at table. After dinner she asked Lydia to sing, and she suffered her to
+sing all the American songs her uncle asked for. At eight o'clock she
+said with a knowing little look at Lydia, which included a sub-wink
+for her husband, “You may go to your café alone, this evening, Henshaw.
+Lydia and I are going to stay at home and talk South Bradfield gossip.
+I've hardly had a moment with her yet.” But when he was gone, she took
+Lydia to her own room again, and showed her all her jewelry, and passed
+the time in making changes in the girl's toilette.
+
+It was like the heroic endeavor of the arctic voyager who feels the
+deadly chill in his own veins, and keeps himself alive by rousing his
+comrade from the torpor stealing over him. They saw in each other's eyes
+that if they yielded a moment to the doubt in their hearts they were
+lost.
+
+At ten o'clock Mrs. Erwin said abruptly, “Go to bed, Lydia!” Then the
+girl broke down, and abandoned herself in a storm of tears. “Don't cry,
+dear, don't cry,” pleaded her aunt. “He will be here in the morning, I
+know he will. He has been delayed.”
+
+“No, he's not coming,” said Lydia, through her sobs.
+
+“Something has happened,” urged Mrs. Erwin.
+
+“No,” said Lydia, as before. Her tears ceased as suddenly as they had
+come. She lifted her head, and drying her eyes looked into her aunt's
+face. “Are you ashamed of me?” she asked hoarsely.
+
+“Ashamed of you? Oh, poor child--”
+
+“I can't pretend anything. If I had never told you about it at all, I
+could have kept it back till I died. But now--But you will never hear
+me speak of it again. It's over.” She took up her candle, and stiffly
+suffering the compassionate embrace with which her aunt clung to her,
+she walked across the great hall in the vain splendor in which she had
+been adorned, and shut the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+Dunham lay in a stupor for twenty-four hours, and after that he was
+delirious, with dim intervals of reason in which they kept him from
+talking, till one morning he woke and looked up at Staniford with a
+perfectly clear eye, and said, as if resuming the conservation, “I
+struck my head on a pile of chains.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Staniford, with a wan smile, “and you've been out of it
+pretty near ever since. You mustn't talk.”
+
+“Oh, I'm all right,” said Dunham. “I know about my being hurt. I shall
+be cautious. Have you written to Miss Hibbard? I hope you haven't!”
+
+“Yes, I have,” replied Staniford. “But I haven't sent the letter,” he
+added, in answer to Dunham's look of distress. “I thought you were going
+to pull through, in spite of the doctor,--he's wanted to bleed you, and
+I could hardly keep his lancet out of you,--and so I wrote, mentioning
+the accident and announcing your complete restoration. The letter merely
+needs dating and sealing. I'll look it up and have it posted.” He began
+a search in the pockets of his coat, and then went to his portfolio.
+
+“What day is this?” asked Dunham.
+
+“Friday,” said Staniford, rummaging his portfolio.
+
+“Have you been in Venice?”
+
+“Look here, Dunham! If you begin in that way, I can't talk to you.
+It shows that you're still out of your head. How could I have been in
+Venice?”
+
+“But Miss Blood; the Aroostook--”
+
+“Miss Blood went to Venice with her uncle last Saturday. The Aroostook
+is here in Trieste. The captain has just gone away. He's stood watch and
+watch with me, while you were off on business.”
+
+“But didn't you go to Venice on Monday?”
+
+“Well, hardly,” answered Staniford.
+
+“No, you stayed with me,--I see,” said Dunham.
+
+“Of course, I wrote to her at once,” said Staniford, huskily, “and
+explained the matter as well as I could without making an ado about it.
+But now you stop, Dunham. If you excite yourself, there'll be the deuce
+to pay again.”
+
+“I'm not excited,” said Dunham, “but I can't help thinking how
+disappointed--But of course you've heard from her?”
+
+“Well, there's hardly time, yet,” said Staniford, evasively.
+
+“Why, yes, there is. Perhaps your letter miscarried.”
+
+“Don't!” cried Staniford, in a hollow under-voice, which he broke
+through to add, “Go to sleep, now, Dunham, or keep quiet, somehow.”
+
+Dunham was silent for a while, and Staniford continued his search, which
+he ended by taking the portfolio by one corner, and shaking its contents
+out on the table. “I don't seem to find it; but I've put it away
+somewhere. I'll get it.” He went to another coat, that hung on the back
+of a chair, and fumbled in its pockets. “Hello! Here are those letters
+they brought me from the post-office Saturday night,--Murray's, and
+Stanton's, and that bore Farrington's. I forgot all about them.” He ran
+the unopened letters over in his hand. “Ah, here's my familiar scrawl--”
+ He stopped suddenly, and walked away to the window, where he stood with
+his back to Dunham.
+
+“Staniford! What is it?”
+
+“It's--it's my letter to _her_” said Staniford, without looking round.
+
+“Your letter to Miss Blood--not gone?” Staniford, with his face still
+from him, silently nodded. “Oh!” moaned Dunham, in self-forgetful
+compassion. “How could it have happened?”
+
+“I see perfectly well,” said the other, quietly, but he looked round at
+Dunham with a face that was haggard. “I sent it out to be posted by the
+_portier_, and he got it mixed up with these letters for me, and brought
+it back.”
+
+The young men were both silent, but the tears stood in Dunham's eyes.
+“If it hadn't been for me, it wouldn't have happened,” he said.
+
+“No,” gently retorted Staniford, “if it hadn't been for _me_, it
+wouldn't have happened. I made you come from Messina with me, when you
+wanted to go on to Naples with those people; if I'd had any sense, I
+should have spoken fully to her before we parted; and it was I who sent
+you to see if she were on the steamer, when you fell and hurt yourself.
+I know who's to blame, Dunham. What day did I tell you this was?”
+
+“Friday.”
+
+“A week! And I told her to expect me Monday afternoon. A week without
+a word or a sign of any kind! Well, I might as well take passage in the
+Aroostook, and go back to Boston again.”
+
+“Why, no!” cried Dunham, “you must take the first train to Venice. Don't
+lose an instant. You can explain everything as soon as you see her.”
+
+Staniford shook his head. “If all her life had been different, if she
+were a woman of the world, it would be different; she would know how to
+account for some little misgivings on my part; but as it is she wouldn't
+know how to account for even the appearance of them. What she must have
+suffered all this week--I can't think of it!” He sat down and turned his
+face away. Presently he sprang up again. “But I'm going, Dunham. I guess
+you won't die now; but you may die if you like. I would go over your
+dead body!”
+
+“Now you are talking sense,” said Dunham.
+
+Staniford did not listen; he had got out his railroad guide and was
+studying it. “No; there are only those two trains a day. The seven
+o'clock has gone; and the next starts at ten to-night. Great heavens!
+I could walk it sooner! Dunham,” he asked, “do you think I'd better
+telegraph?”
+
+“What would you say?”
+
+“Say that there's been a mistake; that a letter miscarried; that I'll be
+there in the morning; that--”
+
+“Wouldn't that be taking her anxiety a little too much for granted?”
+
+“Yes, that's true. Well, you've got your wits about you now, Dunham,”
+ cried Staniford, with illogical bitterness. “Very probably,” he added,
+gloomily, “she doesn't care anything for me, after all.”
+
+“That's a good frame of mind to go in,” said Dunham.
+
+“Why is it?” demanded Staniford. “Did I ever presume upon any supposed
+interest in her?”
+
+“You did at first,” replied Dunham.
+
+Staniford flushed angrily. But you cannot quarrel with a man lying
+helpless on his back; besides, what Dunham said was true.
+
+The arrangements for Staniford's journey were quickly made,--so quickly
+that when he had seen the doctor, and had been down to the Aroostook and
+engaged Captain Jenness to come and take his place with Dunham for the
+next two nights, he had twelve hours on his hands before the train
+for Venice would leave, and he started at last with but one clear
+perception,--that at the soonest it must be twelve hours more before he
+could see her.
+
+He had seemed intolerably slow in arriving on the train, but once
+arrived in Venice he wished that he had come by the steamboat, which
+would not be in for three hours yet. In despair he went to bed,
+considering that after he had tossed there till he could endure it no
+longer, he would still have the resource of getting up, which he would
+not have unless he went to bed. When he lay down, he found himself
+drowsy; and while he wondered at this, he fell asleep, and dreamed a
+strange dream, so terrible that he woke himself by groaning in spirit,
+a thing which, as he reflected, he had never done before. The sun was
+piercing the crevice between his shutters, and a glance at his watch
+showed him that it was eleven o'clock.
+
+The shadow of his dream projected itself into his waking mood, and
+steeped it in a gloom which he could not escape. He rose and dressed,
+and meagrely breakfasted. Without knowing how he came there, he stood
+announced in Mrs. Erwin's parlor, and waited for her to receive him.
+
+His card was brought in to her where she lay in bed. After supporting
+Lydia through the first sharp shock of disappointment, she had yielded
+to the prolonged strain, and the girl was now taking care of her.
+She gave a hysterical laugh as she read the name on the card Veronica
+brought, and crushing it in her hand, “He's come!” she cried.
+
+“I will not see him!” said Lydia instantly.
+
+“No,” assented her aunt. “It wouldn't be at all the thing. Besides,
+he's asked for me. Your uncle might see him, but he's out of the way;
+of course he _would_ be out of the way. Now, let me see!” The excitement
+inspired her; she rose in bed, and called for the pretty sack in which
+she ordinarily breakfasted, and took a look at herself in a hand-glass
+that lay on the bed. Lydia did not move; she scarcely seemed to breathe;
+but a swift pulse in her neck beat visibly. “If it would be decent to
+keep him waiting so long, I could dress, and see him myself. I'm _well_
+enough.” Mrs. Erwin again reflected. “Well,” she said at last, “you must
+see him, Lydia.”
+
+“I--” began the girl.
+
+“Yes, you. Some one must. It will be all right. On second thought, I
+believe I should send you, even if I were quite ready to go myself. This
+affair has been carried on so far on the American plan, and I think I
+shall let you finish it without my interference. Yes, as your uncle
+said when I told him, you're all Americans together; and you _are_. Mr.
+Staniford has come to see you, though he asks for me. That's perfectly
+proper; but I can't see him, and I want you to excuse me to him.”
+
+“What would you--what must I--” Lydia began again.
+
+“No, Lydia,” interrupted her aunt. “I won't tell you a thing. I might
+have advised you when you first came; but now, I--Well, I think I've
+lived too long in Europe to be of use in such a case, and I won't have
+anything to do with it. I won't tell you how to meet him, or what to
+say; but oh, child,”--here the woman's love of loving triumphed in her
+breast,--“I wish I was in your place! Go!”
+
+Lydia slowly rose, breathless.
+
+“Lydia!” cried her aunt. “Look at me!” Lydia turned her head. “Are you
+going to be hard with him?”
+
+“I don't know what he's coming for,” said Lydia dishonestly.
+
+“But if he's coming for what you hope?”
+
+“I don't hope for anything.”
+
+“But you did. Don't be severe. You're terrible when you're severe.”
+
+“I will be just.”
+
+“Oh, no, you mustn't, my dear. It won't do at all to be _just_ with men,
+poor fellows. Kiss me, Lydia!” She pulled her down, and kissed her. When
+the girl had got as far as the door, “Lydia, Lydia!” she called after
+her. Lydia turned. “Do you realize what dress you've got on?” Lydia
+looked down at her robe; it was the blue flannel yachting-suit of the
+Aroostook, which she had put on for convenience in taking care of
+her aunt. “Isn't it too ridiculous?” Mrs. Erwin meant to praise the
+coincidence, not to blame the dress. Lydia smiled faintly for answer,
+and the next moment she stood at the parlor door.
+
+Staniford, at her entrance, turned from looking out of the window and
+saw her as in his dream, with her hand behind her, pushing the door to;
+but the face with which she looked at him was not like the dead, sad
+face of his dream. It was thrillingly alive, and all passions were blent
+in it,--love, doubt, reproach, indignation; the tears stood in her eyes,
+but a fire burnt through the tears. With his first headlong impulse
+to console, explain, deplore, came a thought that struck him silent at
+sight of her. He remembered, as he had not till then remembered, in
+all his wild longing and fearing, that there had not yet been anything
+explicit between them; that there was no engagement; and that he had
+upon the face of things, at least, no right to offer her more than some
+formal expression of regret for not having been able to keep his promise
+to come sooner. While this stupefying thought gradually filled his whole
+sense to the exclusion of all else, he stood looking at her with a dumb
+and helpless appeal, utterly stunned and wretched. He felt the life die
+out of his face and leave it blank, and when at last she spoke, he
+knew that it was in pity of him, or contempt of him. “Mrs. Erwin is not
+well,” she said, “and she wished me--”
+
+But he broke in upon her: “Oh, don't talk to me of Mrs. Erwin! It was
+you I wanted to see. Are _you_ well? Are you alive? Do you--” He stopped
+as precipitately as he began; and after another hopeless pause, he went
+on piteously: “I don't know where to begin. I ought to have been here
+five days ago. I don't know what you think of me, or whether you have
+thought of me at all; and before I can ask I must tell you why I wanted
+to come then, and why I come now, and why I think I must have come back
+from the dead to see you. You are all the world to me, and have been
+ever since I saw you. It seems a ridiculously unnecessary thing to say,
+I have been looking and acting and living it so long; but I say it,
+because I choose to have you know it, whether you ever cared for me or
+not. I thought I was coming here to explain why I had not come sooner,
+but I needn't do that unless--unless--” He looked at her where she still
+stood aloof, and he added: “Oh, answer me something, for pity's sake!
+Don't send me away without a word. There have been times when you
+wouldn't have done that!”
+
+“Oh, I _did_ care for you!” she broke out. “You know I did--”
+
+He was instantly across the room, beside her. “Yes, yes, I know it!” But
+she shrank away.
+
+“You tried to make me believe you cared for me, by everything you could
+do. And I did believe you then; and yes, I believed you afterwards, when
+I didn't know what to believe. You were the one true thing in the world
+to me. But it seems that you didn't believe it yourself.”
+
+“That I didn't believe it myself? That I--I don't know what you mean.”
+
+“You took a week to think it over! I have had a week, too, and I have
+thought it over, too. You have come too late.”
+
+“Too late? You don't, you can't, mean--Listen to me, Lydia; I want to
+tell you--”
+
+“No, there is nothing you can tell me that would change me. I know it, I
+understand it all.”
+
+“But you don't understand what kept me.”
+
+“I don't wish to know what made you break your word. I don't care to
+know. I couldn't go back and feel as I did to you. Oh, that's gone! It
+isn't that you did not come--that you made me wait and suffer; but you
+knew how it would be with me after I got here, and all the things I
+should find out, and how I should feel! And you stayed away! I don't
+know whether I can forgive you, even; oh, I'm afraid I don't; but I can
+never care for you again. Nothing but a case of life and death--”
+
+“It was a case of life and death!”
+
+Lydia stopped in her reproaches, and looked at him with wistful doubt,
+changing to a tender fear.
+
+“Oh, have you been hurt? Have you been sick?” she pleaded, in a breaking
+voice, and made some unconscious movement toward him. He put out his
+hand, and would have caught one of hers, but she clasped them in each
+other.
+
+“No, not I,--Dunham--”
+
+“Oh!” said Lydia, as if this were not at all enough.
+
+“He fell and struck his head, the night you left. I thought he would
+die.” Staniford reported his own diagnosis, not the doctor's; but he was
+perhaps in the right to do this. “I had made him go down to the wharf
+with me; I wanted to see you again, before you started, and I thought we
+might find you on the boat.” He could see her face relenting; her hands
+released each other. “He was delirious till yesterday. I couldn't leave
+him.”
+
+“Oh, why didn't you write to me?” She ignored Dunham as completely as
+if he had never lived. “You knew that I--” Her voice died away, and her
+breast rose.
+
+“I did write--”
+
+“But how,--I never got it.”
+
+“No,--it was not posted, through a cruel blunder. And then I thought--I
+got to thinking that you didn't care--”
+
+“Oh,” said the girl. “Could you doubt me?”
+
+“You doubted me,” said Staniford, seizing his advantage. “I brought the
+letter with me to prove _my_ truth.” She did not look at him, but she
+took the letter, and ran it greedily into her pocket. “It's well I did
+so, since you don't believe my word.”
+
+“Oh, yes,--yes, I know it,” she said; “I never doubted it!” Staniford
+stood bemazed, though he knew enough to take the hands she yielded
+him; but she suddenly caught them away again, and set them against his
+breast. “I was very wrong to suspect you ever; I'm sorry I did; but
+there's something else. I don't know how to say what I want to say. But
+it must be said.”
+
+“Is it something disagreeable?” asked Staniford, lightly.
+
+“It's right,” answered Lydia, unsmilingly.
+
+“Oh, well, don't say it!” he pleaded; “or don't say it now,--not till
+you've forgiven me for the anxiety I've caused you; not till you've
+praised me for trying to do what I thought the right thing. You can't
+imagine how hard it was for one who hasn't the habit!”
+
+“I do praise you for it. There's nothing to forgive _you_; but I can't
+let you care for me unless I know--unless”--She stopped, and then, “Mr.
+Staniford,” she began firmly, “since I came here, I've been learning
+things that I didn't know before. They have changed the whole world to
+me, and it can never be the same again.”
+
+“I'm sorry for that; but if they haven't changed you, the world may go.”
+
+“No, not if we're to live in it,” answered the girl, with the soberer
+wisdom women keep at such times. “It will have to be known how we met.
+What will people say? They will laugh.”
+
+“I don't think they will in my presence,” said Staniford, with swelling
+nostrils. “They may use their pleasure elsewhere.”
+
+“And I shouldn't care for their laughing, either,” said Lydia. “But oh,
+why did you come?”
+
+“Why did I come?”
+
+“Was it because you felt bound by anything that's happened, and you
+wouldn't let me bear the laugh alone? I'm not afraid for myself. I shall
+never blame you. You can go perfectly free.”
+
+“But I don't want to go free!”
+
+Lydia looked at him with piercing earnestness. “Do you think I'm proud?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Yes, I think you are,” said Staniford, vaguely.
+
+“It isn't for myself that I should be proud with other people. But I
+would rather die than bring ridicule upon one I--upon you.”
+
+“I can believe that,” said Staniford, devoutly, and patiently
+reverencing the delay of her scruples.
+
+“And if--and--” Her lips trembled, but she steadied her trembling voice.
+“If they laughed at you, and thought of me in a slighting way because--”
+ Staniford gave a sort of roar of grief and pain to know how her heart
+must have been wrung before she could come to this. “You were all so
+good that you didn't let me think there was anything strange about it--”
+
+“Oh, good heavens! We only did what it was our precious and sacred
+privilege to do! We were all of one mind about it from the first.
+But don't torture yourself about it, my darling. It's over now; it's
+past--no, it's present, and it will always be, forever, the dearest and
+best thing in life Lydia, do you believe that I love you?”
+
+“Oh, I must!”
+
+“And don't you believe that I'm telling you the truth when I say that
+I wouldn't, for all the world can give or take, change anything that's
+been?”
+
+“Yes, I do believe you. Oh, I haven't said at all what I wanted to say!
+There was a great deal that I ought to say. I can't seem to recollect
+it.”
+
+He smiled to see her grieving at this recreance of her memory to her
+conscience. “Well, you shall have a whole lifetime to recall it in.”
+
+“No, I must try to speak now. And you must tell me the truth now,--no
+matter what it costs either of us.” She laid her hands upon his extended
+arms, and grasped them intensely. “There's something else. I want to ask
+you what _you_ thought when you found me alone on that ship with all
+of you.” If she had stopped at this point, Staniford's cause might
+have been lost, but she went on: “I want to know whether you were ever
+ashamed of me, or despised me for it; whether you ever felt that because
+I was helpless and friendless there, you had the right to think less of
+me than if you had first met me here in this house.”
+
+It was still a terrible question, but it offered a loop-hole of escape,
+which Staniford was swift to seize. Let those who will justify the
+answer with which he smiled into her solemn eyes: “I will leave you to
+say.” A generous uncandor like this goes as far with a magnanimous and
+serious-hearted woman as perhaps anything else.
+
+“Oh, I knew it, I knew it!” cried Lydia. And then, as he caught her to
+him at last, “Oh--oh--are you _sure_ it's right?”
+
+“I have no doubt of it,” answered Staniford. Nor had he any question of
+the strategy through which he had triumphed in this crucial test. He
+may have thought that there were always explanations that had to be made
+afterwards, or he may have believed that he had expiated in what he had
+done and suffered for her any slight which he had felt; possibly, he
+considered that she had asked more than she had a right to do. It is
+certain that he said with every appearance of sincerity, “It began the
+moment I saw you on the wharf, there, and when I came to know my mind
+I kept it from you only till I could tell you here. But now I wish I
+hadn't! Life is too short for such a week as this.”
+
+“No,” said Lydia, “you acted for the best, and you are--good.”
+
+“I'll keep that praise till I've earned it,” answered Staniford.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+In the Campo Santi Apostoli at Venice there stands, a little apart from
+the church of that name, a chapel which has been for many years the
+place of worship for the Lutheran congregation. It was in this church
+that Staniford and Lydia were married six weeks later, before the altar
+under Titian's beautiful picture of Christ breaking bread.
+
+The wedding was private, but it was not quite a family affair. Miss
+Hibbard had come down with her mother from Dresden, to complete Dunham's
+cure, and she was there with him perfectly recovered; he was not quite
+content, of course, that the marriage should not take place in the
+English chapel, but he was largely consoled by the candles burning on
+the altar. The Aroostook had been delayed by repairs which were found
+necessary at Trieste, and Captain Jenness was able to come over and
+represent the ship at the wedding ceremony, and at the lunch which
+followed. He reserved till the moment of parting a supreme expression of
+good-will. When he had got a hand of Lydia's and one of Staniford's in
+each of his, with his wrists crossed, he said, “Now, I ain't one to tack
+round, and stand off and on a great deal, but what I want to say is just
+this: the Aroostook sails next week, and if you two are a mind to go
+back in her, the ship's yours, as I said to Miss Blood, here,--I mean
+Mis' Staniford; well, I _hain't_ had much time to get used to it!--when
+she first come aboard there at Boston. I don't mean any pay; I want you
+to go back as my guests. You can use the cabin for your parlor; and I
+promise you I won't take any other passengers _this_ time. I declare,”
+ said Captain Jenness, lowering his voice, and now referring to Hicks for
+the first time since the day of his escapade, “I did feel dreadful about
+that fellow!”
+
+“Oh, never mind,” replied Staniford. “If it hadn't been for Hicks
+perhaps I mightn't have been here.” He exchanged glances with his wife,
+that showed they had talked all that matter over.
+
+The captain grew confidential. “Mr. Mason told me he saw you lending
+that chap money. I hope he didn't give you the slip?”
+
+“No; it came to me here at Blumenthals' the other day.”
+
+“Well, that's right! It all worked together for good, as you say. Now
+you come!”
+
+“What do you say, my dear?” asked Staniford, on whom the poetic fitness
+of the captain's proposal had wrought.
+
+Women are never blinded by romance, however much they like it in the
+abstract. “It's coming winter. Do you think you wouldn't be seasick?”
+ returned the bride of an hour, with the practical wisdom of a matron.
+
+Staniford laughed. “She's right, captain. I'm no sailor. I'll get home
+by the all-rail route as far as I can.”
+
+Captain Jenness threw back his head, and laughed too. “Good! That's
+about it.” And he released their hands, so as to place one hairy paw on
+a shoulder of each. “You'll get along together, I guess.”
+
+“But we're just as much obliged to you as if we went, Captain Jenness.
+And tell all the crew that I'm homesick for the Aroostook, and thank
+all for being so kind to me; and I thank _you_, Captain Jenness!” Lydia
+looked at her husband, and then startled the captain with a kiss.
+
+He blushed all over, but carried it off as boldly as he could. “Well,
+well,” he said, “that's right! If you change your minds before the
+Aroostook sails, you let me know.”
+
+This affair made a great deal of talk in Venice, where the common stock
+of leisure is so great that each person may without self-reproach
+devote a much larger share of attention to the interests of the others
+than could be given elsewhere. The decorous fictions in which Mrs. Erwin
+draped the singular facts of the acquaintance and courtship of Lydia
+and Staniford were what unfailingly astonished and amused him, and he
+abetted them without scruple. He found her worldliness as innocent as
+the unworldliness of Lydia, and he gave Mrs. Erwin his hearty sympathy
+when she ingenuously owned that the effort to throw dust in the eyes
+of her European acquaintance was simply killing her. He found endless
+refreshment in the contemplation of her attitude towards her burdensome
+little world, and in her reasons for enslaving herself to it. He was
+very good friends with both of the Erwins. When he could spare the time
+from Lydia, he went about with her uncle in his boat, and respected his
+skill in rowing it without falling overboard. He could not see why any
+one should be so much interested in the American character and dialect
+as Mr. Erwin was; but he did not object, and he reflected that after all
+they were not what their admirer supposed them.
+
+The Erwins came with the Stanifords as far as Paris on their way home,
+and afterwards joined them in California, where Staniford bought a
+ranch, and found occupation if not profit in its management. Once cut
+loose from her European ties, Mrs. Erwin experienced an incomparable
+repose and comfort in the life of San Francisco; it was, she declared,
+the life for which she had really been adapted, after all; and in the
+climate of Santa Barbara she found all that she had left in Italy. In
+that land of strange and surprising forms of every sort, her husband
+has been very happy in the realization of an America surpassing even his
+wildest dreams, and he has richly stored his note-book with philological
+curiosities. He hears around him the vigorous and imaginative locutions
+of the Pike language, in which, like the late Canon Kingsley, he finds
+a Scandinavian hugeness; and pending the publication of his Hand-Book
+of Americanisms, he is in confident search of the miner who uses his
+pronouns cockney-wise. Like other English observers, friendly and
+unfriendly, he does not permit the facts to interfere with his
+preconceptions.
+
+Staniford's choice long remained a mystery to his acquaintances, and
+was but partially explained by Mrs. Dunham, when she came home. “Why, I
+suppose he fell in love with her,” she said. “Of course, thrown together
+that way, as they were, for six weeks, it might have happened to
+anybody; but James Staniford was always the most consummate flirt that
+breathed; and he never could see a woman, without coming up, in that
+metaphysical way of his, and trying to interest her in him. He was
+always laughing at women, but there never was a man who cared more for
+them. From all that I could learn from Charles, he began by making fun
+of her, and all at once he became perfectly infatuated with her. I don't
+see why. I never could get Charles to tell me anything remarkable that
+she said or did. She was simply a country girl, with country ideas, and
+no sort of cultivation. Why, there was _nothing_ to her. He's done the
+wisest thing he could by taking her out to California. She never would
+have gone down, here. I suppose James Staniford knew that as well as any
+of us; and if he finds it worth while to bury himself with her there,
+we've no reason to complain. She did _sing_, wonderfully; that is, her
+voice was perfectly divine. But of course that's all over, now. She
+didn't seem to care much for it; and she really knew so little of life
+that I don't believe she could form the idea of an artistic career, or
+feel that it was any sacrifice to give it up. James Staniford was not
+worth any such sacrifice; but she couldn't know that either. She was
+good, I suppose. She was very stiff, and she hadn't a word to say for
+herself. I think she was cold. To be sure, she was a beauty; I really
+never saw anything like it,--that pale complexion some brunettes have,
+with her hair growing low, and such eyes and lashes!”
+
+“Perhaps the beauty had something to do with his falling in love with
+her,” suggested a listener. The ladies present tried to look as if this
+ought not to be sufficient.
+
+“Oh, very likely,” said Mrs. Dunham. She added, with an air of being
+the wreck of her former self, “But we all know what becomes of _beauty_
+after marriage.”
+
+The mind of Lydia's friends had been expressed in regard to her
+marriage, when the Stanifords, upon their arrival home from Europe, paid
+a visit to South Bradfield. It was in the depths of the winter following
+their union, and the hill country, stern and wild even in midsummer,
+wore an aspect of savage desolation. It was sheeted in heavy snow,
+through which here and there in the pastures, a craggy bowlder lifted
+its face and frowned, and along the woods the stunted pines and hemlocks
+blackened against a background of leafless oaks and birches. A northwest
+wind cut shrill across the white wastes, and from the crests of the
+billowed drifts drove a scud of stinging particles in their faces, while
+the sun, as high as that of Italy, coldly blazed from a cloudless blue
+sky. Ezra Perkins, perched on the seat before them, stiff and silent
+as if he were frozen there, drove them from Bradfield Junction to
+South Bradfield in the long wagon-body set on bob-sleds, with which he
+replaced his Concord coach in winter. At the station he had sparingly
+greeted Lydia, as if she were just back from Greenfield, and in the
+interest of personal independence had ignored a faint motion of hers
+to shake hands; at her grandfather's gate, he set his passengers down
+without a word, and drove away, leaving Staniford to get in his trunk as
+he might.
+
+“Well, I declare,” said Miss Maria, who had taken one end of the trunk
+in spite of him, and was leading the way up through the path cleanly
+blocked out of the snow, “that Ezra Perkins is enough to make you wish
+he'd _stayed_ in Dakoty!”
+
+Staniford laughed, as he had laughed at everything on the way from the
+station, and had probably thus wounded Ezra Perkins's susceptibilities.
+The village houses, separated so widely by the one long street,
+each with its path neatly tunneled from the roadway to the gate; the
+meeting-house, so much vaster than the present needs of worship, and
+looking blue-cold with its never-renewed single coat of white paint;
+the graveyard set in the midst of the village, and showing, after Ezra
+Perkins's disappearance, as many signs of life as any other locality,
+realized in the most satisfactory degree his theories of what winter
+must be in such a place as South Bradfield. The burning smell of the
+sheet-iron stove in the parlor, with its battlemented top of filigree
+iron work; the grimness of the horsehair-covered best furniture; the
+care with which the old-fashioned fire-places had been walled up, and
+all accessible character of the period to which the house belonged had
+been effaced, gave him an equal pleasure. He went about with his arm
+round Lydia's waist, examining these things, and yielding to the joy
+they caused him, when they were alone. “Oh, my darling,” he said, in one
+of these accesses of delight, “when I think that it's my privilege to
+take you away from all this, I begin to feel not so very unworthy, after
+all.”
+
+But he was very polite, as Miss Maria owned, when Mr. and Mrs. Goodlow
+came in during the evening, with two or three unmarried ladies of the
+village, and he kept them from falling into the frozen silence which
+habitually expresses social enjoyment in South Bradfield when strangers
+are present. He talked about the prospects of Italian advancement to an
+equal state of intellectual and moral perfection with rural New England,
+while Mr. Goodlow listened, rocking himself back and forth in the
+hair-cloth arm-chair. Deacon Latham, passing his hand continually
+along the stove battlements, now and then let his fingers rest on the
+sheet-iron till he burnt them, and then jerked them suddenly away, to
+put them, back the next moment, in his absorbing interest. Miss Maria,
+amidst a murmur of admiration from the ladies, passed sponge-cake and
+coffee: she confessed afterwards that the evening had been so brilliant
+to her as to seem almost wicked; and the other ladies, who owned to
+having lain awake all night on her coffee, said that if they _had_
+enjoyed themselves they were properly punished for it.
+
+When they were gone, and Lydia and Staniford had said good-night, and
+Miss Maria, coming in from the kitchen with a hand-lamp for her father,
+approached the marble-topped centre-table to blow out the large lamp of
+pea-green glass with red woollen wick, which had shed the full
+radiance of a sun-burner upon the festival, she faltered at a manifest
+unreadiness in the old man to go to bed, though the fire was low, and
+they had both resumed the drooping carriage of people in going about
+cold houses. He looked excited, and, so far as his unpracticed visage
+could intimate the emotion, joyous.
+
+“Well, there, Maria!” he said. “You can't say but what he's a
+master-hand to converse, any way. I'd know as I ever see Mr. Goodlow more
+struck up with any one. He looked as if every word done him good; I
+presume it put him in mind of meetin's with brother ministers: I don't
+suppose but what he misses it some, here. You can't say but what he's a
+fine appearin' young man. I d'know as I see anything wrong in his kind
+of dressin' up to the nines, as you may say. As long's he's got the
+money, I don't see what harm it is. It's all worked for good, Lyddy's
+going out that way; though it did seem a mysterious providence at the
+time.”
+
+“Well!” began Miss Maria. She paused, as if she had been hurried too
+far by her feelings, and ought to give them a check before proceeding.
+“Well, I don't presume you'd notice it, but she's got a spot on her
+silk, so't a whole breadth's got to come out, and be let in again bottom
+side up. I guess there's a pair of 'em, for carelessness.” She waited a
+moment before continuing: “I d'know as I like to see a husband puttin'
+his arm round his wife, even when he don't suppose any one's lookin';
+but I d'know but what it's natural, too. But it's one comfort to see't
+she ain't the least mite silly about _him_. He's dreadful freckled.”
+ Miss Maria again paused thoughtfully, while her father burnt his fingers
+on the stove for the last time, and took them definitively away. “I
+don't say but what he talked well enough, as far forth as talkin'
+_goes_; Mr. Goodlow said at the door't he didn't know's he ever passed
+_many_ such evenin's since he'd been in South Bradfield, and I d'know as
+_I_ have. I presume he has his faults; we ain't any of us perfect; but
+he _does_ seem terribly wrapped up in Lyddy. I don't say but what he'll
+make her a good husband, if she must _have_ one. I don't suppose but
+what people might think, as you may say, 't she'd made out pretty well;
+and if Lyddy's suited, I d'know as anybody else has got any call to be
+over particular.”
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Lady of the Aroostook, by William Dean Howells
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