Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Not bad news from home, Celia!”

  “No; a letter which she wishes to show you. It has just come. As I don’t wish to influence you, I would rather not be present.” Mrs. Elmore slipped out of the room, and Miss Mayhew glided gravely in, holding an open note in her hand, and looking into Elmore’s eyes with a certain unfathomable candor, of which she had the secret.

  “Here,” she said, “is a letter which I think you ought to see at once, Professor Elmore”; and she gave him the note with an air of unconcern, which he afterward recalled without being able to determine whether it was real indifference or only the calm resulting from the transfer of the whole responsibility to him. She stood looking at him while he read:

  Miss,

  In this evening I am just arrived from Venise, 4 hours afterwards I have had the fortune to see you and to speake with you — and to favorite me of your gentil acquaintanceship at rail-away. I never forgeet the moments I have seen you. Your pretty and nice figure had attached my heard so much, that I deserted in the hopiness to see you at Venise. And I was so lukely to speak with you cut too short, and in the possibility to understand all. I wished to go also in this Sonday to Venise, but I am sory that I cannot, beaucause I must feeled now the consequences of the desertation. Pray Miss to agree the assurance of my lov, and perhaps I will be so lukely to receive a notice from you Miss if I can hop a little (hapiness) sympathie. Très humble

  E. von Ehrhardt.

  Elmore was not destitute of the national sense of humor; but he read this letter not only without amusement in its English, but with intense bitterness and renewed alarm. It appeared to him that the willingness of the ladies to put the affair in his hands had not strongly manifested itself till it had quite passed their own control, and had become a most embarrassing difficulty, — when, in fact, it was no longer a merit in them to confide it to him. In the resentment of that moment, his suspicions even accused his wife of desiring, from idle curiosity and sentiment, the accidental meeting which had resulted in this fresh aggression.

  “Why did you show me this letter?” he asked harshly.

  “Mrs. Elmore told me to do so,” Lily answered.

  “Did you wish me to see it?”

  “I don’t suppose I wished you to see it: I thought you ought to see it.”

  Elmore felt himself relenting a little. “What do you want done about it?” he asked more gently.

  “That is what I wished you to tell me,” replied the girl.

  “I can’t tell you what you wish me to do, but I can tell you this, Miss Mayhew: this man’s behavior is totally irregular. He would not think of writing to an Italian or German girl in this way. If he desired to — to — pay attention to her, he would write to her father.”

  “Yes, that’s what Mrs. Elmore said. She said she supposed he must think it was the American way.”

  “Mrs. Elmore,” began her husband; but he arrested himself there, and said, “Very well. I want to know what I am to do. I want your full and explicit authority before I act. We will dismiss the fact of irregularity. We will suppose that it is fit and becoming for a gentleman who has twice met a young lady by accident — or once by accident, and once by his own insistence — to write to her. Do you wish to continue the correspondence?”

  “No.”

  Elmore looked into the eyes which dwelt full upon him, and, though they were clear as the windows of heaven, he hesitated. “I must do what you say, no matter what you mean, you know?”

  “I mean what I say.”

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, “you would prefer to return him this letter with a few lines on your card.”

  “No. I should like him to know that I have shown it to you. I should think it a liberty for an American to write to me in that way after such a short acquaintance, and I don’t see why I should tolerate it from a foreigner, though I suppose their customs are different.”

  “Then you wish me to write to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And make an end of the matter, once for all?”

  “Yes—”

  “Very well, then.” Elmore sat down at once, and wrote: —

  Sir, — Miss Mayhew has handed me your note of yesterday, and begs me to express her very great surprise that you should have ventured to address her. She desires me also to add that you will consider at an end whatever acquaintance you suppose yourself to have formed with her.

  Your obedient servant,

  Owen Elmore.

  He handed the note to Lily. “Yes, that will do,” she said, in a low, steady voice. She drew a deep breath, and, laying the letter softly down, went out of the room into Mrs. Elmore’s.

  Elmore had not had time to kindle his sealing-wax when his wife appeared swiftly upon the scene.

  “I want to see what you have written, Owen,” she said.

  “Don’t talk to me, Celia,” he replied, thrusting the wax into the candle-light. “You have put this affair entirely in my hands, and Lily approves of what I have written. I am sick of the thing, and I don’t want any more talk about it.”

  “I must see it,” said Mrs. Elmore, with finality, and possessed herself of the note. She ran it through, and then flung it on the table and dropped into a chair, while the tears started to her eyes. “What a cold, cutting, merciless letter!” she cried.

  “I hope he will think so,” said Elmore, gathering it up from the table, and sealing it securely in its envelope.

  “You’re not going to send it!” exclaimed his wife.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I didn’t suppose you could be so heartless.”

  “Very well, then, I won’t send it,” said Elmore. “I put the affair in your hands. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nonsense!”

  “On the contrary, I’m perfectly serious. I don’t see why you shouldn’t manage the business. The gentleman is an acquaintance of yours. I don’t know him.” Elmore rose and put his hands in his pockets. “What do you intend to do? Do you like this clandestine sort of thing to go on? I dare say the fellow only wishes to amuse himself by a flirtation with a pretty American. But the question is whether you wish him to do so. I’m willing to lay his conduct to a misunderstanding of our customs, and to suppose that he thinks this is the way Americans do. I take the matter at its best: he speaks to Lily on the train without an introduction; he joins you in your walk without invitation; he writes to her without leave, and proposes to get up a correspondence. It is all perfectly right and proper, and will appear so to Lily’s friends when they hear of it. But I’m curious to know how you’re going to manage the sequel. Do you wish the affair to go on, and how long do you wish it to go on?”

  “You know very well that I don’t wish it to go on.”

  “Then you wish it broken off?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “How?”

  “I think there is such a thing as acting kindly and considerately. I don’t see anything in Captain Ehrhardt’s conduct that calls for savage treatment,” said Mrs. Elmore.

  “You would like to have him stopped, but stopped gradually. Well, I don’t wish to be savage, either, and I will act upon any suggestion of yours. I want Lily’s people to feel that we managed not only wisely but humanely in checking a man who was resolved to force his acquaintance upon her.”

  Mrs. Elmore thought a long while. Then she said: “Why, of course, Owen, you’re right about it. There is no other way. There couldn’t be any kindness in checking him gradually. But I wish,” she added sorrowfully, “that he had not been such a complete goose; and then we could have done something with him.”

  “I am obliged to him for the perfection which you regret, my dear. If he had been less complete, he would have been much harder to manage.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Elmore, rising, “I shall always say that he meant well. But send the letter.”

  Her husband did not wait for a second bidding. He carried it himself to the general post-office that there might be no mistake and
no delay about it; and a man who believed that he had a feeling and tender heart experienced a barbarous joy in the infliction of this pitiless snub. I do not say that it would not have been different if he had trusted at all in the sincerity of Captain Ehrhardt’s passion; but he was glad to discredit it. A misgiving to the other effect would have complicated the matter. But now he was perfectly free to disembarrass himself of a trouble which had so seriously threatened his peace. He was responsible to Miss Mayhew’s family, and Mrs. Elmore herself could not say, then or afterward, that there was any other way open to him. I will not contend that his motives were wholly unselfish. No doubt a sense of personal annoyance, of offended decorum, of wounded respectability, qualified the zeal for Miss Mayhew’s good which prompted him. He was still a young and inexperienced man, confronted with a strange perplexity: he did the best he could, and I suppose it was the best that could be done. At any rate, he had no regrets, and he went cheerfully about the work of interesting Miss Mayhew in the monuments and memories of the city.

  Since the decisive blow had been struck, the ladies seemed to share his relief. The pursuit of Captain Ehrhardt, while it flattered, might well have alarmed, and the loss of a not unpleasant excitement was made good by a sense of perfect security. Whatever repining Miss Mayhew indulged was secret, or confided solely to Mrs. Elmore. To Elmore himself she appeared in better spirits than at first, or at least in a more equable frame of mind. To be sure, he did not notice very particularly. He took her to the places and told her the things that she ought to be interested in, and he conceived a better opinion of her mind from the quick intelligence with which she entered into his own feelings in regard to them, though he never could see any evidence of the over-study for which she had been taken from school. He made her, like Mrs. Elmore, the partner of his historical researches; he read his notes to both of them now; and when his wife was prevented from accompanying him, he went with Lily alone to visit the scenes of such events as his researches concerned, and to fill his mind with the local color which he believed would give life and character to his studies of the past. They also went often to the theatre; and, though Lily could not understand the plays, she professed to be entertained, and she had a grateful appreciation of all his efforts in her behalf that amply repaid him. He grew fond of her society; he took a childish pleasure in having people in the streets turn and glance at the handsome girl by his side, of whose beauty and stylishness he became aware through the admiration looked over the shoulders of the Austrians, and openly spoken by the Italian populace. It did not occur to him that she might not enjoy the growth of their acquaintance in equal degree, that she fatigued herself with the appreciation of the memorable and the beautiful, and that she found these long rambles rather dull. He was a man of little conversation; and, unless Mrs. Elmore was of the company, Miss Mayhew pursued his pleasures for the most part in silence. One evening, at the end of the week, his wife asked, “Why do you always take Lily through the Piazza on the side farthest from where the officers sit? Are you afraid of her meeting Captain Ehrhardt?”

  “Oh, no! I consider the Ehrhardt business settled. But you know the Italians never walk on the officers’ side.”

  “You are not an Italian. What do you gain by flattering them up? I should think you might suppose a young girl had some curiosity.”

  “I do; and I do everything I can to gratify her curiosity. I went to San Pietro di Castello to-day, to show her where the Brides of Venice were stolen.”

  “The oldest and dirtiest part of the city! What could the child care for the Brides of Venice? Now be reasonable, Owen!”

  “It’s a romantic story. I thought girls liked such things, — about getting married.”

  “And that’s the reason you took her yesterday to show her the Bucentaur that the doges wedded the Adriatic in! Well, what was your idea in going with her to the Cemetery of San Michele?”

  “I thought she would be interested. I had never been there before myself, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to verify a passage I was at work on. We always show people the cemetery at home.”

  “That was considerate. And why did you go to Canarregio on Wednesday?”

  “I wished her to see the statue of Sior Antonio Rioba; you know it was the Venetian Pasquino in the Revolution of ‘48—”

  “Charming!”

  “And the Campo di Giustizia, where the executions used to take place.”

  “Delightful!”

  “And — and — the house of Tintoretto,” faltered Elmore.

  “Delicious! She cares so much for Tintoretto! And you’ve been with her to the Jewish burying-ground at the Lido, and the Spanish synagogue in the Ghetto, and the fish-market at the Rialto, and you’ve shown her the house of Othello and the house of Desdemona, and the prisons in the ducal palace; and three nights you’ve taken us to the Piazza as soon as the Austrian band stopped playing, and all the interesting promenading was over, and those stuffy old Italians began to come to the caffès. Well, I can tell you that’s no way to amuse a young girl. We must do something for her, or she will die. She has come here from a country where girls have always had the best time in the world, and where the times are livelier now than they ever were, with all this excitement of the war going on; and here she is dropped down in the midst of this absolute deadness: no calls, no picnics, no parties, no dances — nothing! We must do something for her.”

  “Shall we give her a ball?” asked Elmore, looking round the pretty little apartment.

  “There’s nothing going on among the Italians. But you might get us invited to the German Casino.”

  “I dare say. But I will not do that.”

  “Then we could go to the Luogotenenza, to the receptions. Mr. Hoskins could call with us, and they would send us cards.”

  “That would make us simply odious to the Venetians, and our house would be thronged with officers. What I’ve seen of them doesn’t make me particularly anxious for the honor of their further acquaintance.”

  “Well, I don’t ask you to do any of these things,” said Mrs. Elmore, who had, in fact, mentioned them with the intention of insisting upon an abated claim. “But I think you might go and dine at one of the hotels — at the Danieli — instead of that Italian restaurant; and then Lily could see somebody at the table d’hôte, and not simply perish of despair.”

  “I — I didn’t suppose it was so bad as that,” said Elmore.

  “Why, of course, she hasn’t said anything, — she’s far too well-bred for that; but I can tell from my own feelings how she must suffer. I have you, Owen,” she said tenderly, “but Lily has nobody. She has gone through this Ehrhardt business so well that I think we ought to do all we can to divert her mind.”

  “Well, now, Celia, you see the difficulty of our position, — the nature of the responsibility we have assumed. How are we possibly, here in Venice, to divert the mind of a young lady fresh from the parties and picnics of Patmos?”

  “We can go and dine at the Danieli,” replied Mrs. Elmore.

  “Very well, let us go, then. But she will learn no Italian there. She will hear nothing but English from the travellers and bad French from the waiters; while at our restaurant—”

  “Pshaw!” cried Mrs. Elmore, “what does Lily care for Italian? I’m sure I never want to hear another word of it.”

  At this desperate admission, Elmore quite gave way; he went to the Danieli the next morning, and arranged to begin dining there that day. There is no denying that Miss Mayhew showed an enthusiasm in prospect of the change that even the sight of the pillar to which Foscarini was hanged head downwards for treason to the Republic had not evoked. She made herself look very pretty, and she was visibly an impression at the table d’hôte when she sat down there. Elmore had found places opposite an elderly lady and quite a young gentleman, of English speech, but of not very English effect otherwise, who bowed to Lily in acknowledgment of some former meeting. The old lady said, “So you’ve reached Venice at last? I’m very pleased,
for your sake,” as if at some point of the progress thither she had been privy to anxieties of Lily about arriving at her destination; and, in fact, they had been in the same hotels at Marseilles and Genoa. The young gentleman said nothing, but he looked at Lily throughout the dinner, and seemed to take his eyes from her only when she glanced at him; then he dropped his gaze to his neglected plate and blushed. When they left the table, he made haste to join the Elmores in the reading-room, where he contrived, with creditable skill, to get Lily apart from them for the examination of an illustrated newspaper, at which neither of them looked; they remained chatting and laughing over it in entire irrelevancy till the elderly lady rose and said, “Herbert, Herbert! I am ready to go now,” upon which he did not seem at all so, but went submissively.

  “Who are those people, Lily?” asked Mrs. Elmore, as they walked towards Florian’s for their after-dinner coffee. The Austrian band was playing in the centre of the Piazza, and the tall, blond German officers promenaded back and forth with dark Hungarian women, who looked each like a princess of her race. The lights glittered upon them, and on the brilliant groups spread fan-wise out into the Piazza before the caffès; the scene seemed to shake and waver in the splendor, like something painted.

  “Oh, their name is Andersen, or something like that; and they’re from Helgoland, or some such place. I saw them first in Paris, but we didn’t speak till we got to Marseilles. That’s his aunt; they’re English subjects, someway; and he’s got an appointment in the civil service — I think he called it — in India, and he doesn’t want to go; and I told him he ought to go to America. That’s what I tell all these Europeans.”

  “It’s the best advice for them,” said Mrs. Elmore.

  “They don’t seem in any great haste to act upon it,” laughed Miss Mayhew. “Who was the red-faced young man that seemed to know you, and stared so?”

  “That’s an English artist who is staying here. He has a curious name, — Rose-Black; and he is the most impudent and pushing man in the world. I wouldn’t introduce him, because I saw he was just dying for it.”