Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “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 sa
id—” 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?”