Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  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 like
ness, 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.