Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “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 sch
ool. 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—”