Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  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!”