Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  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 anywhere 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 — somet
hing 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.