Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Lily. “I don’t know anything about flirtations.”

  This seemed to amuse Rose-Black as an uncommonly fine piece of American humor, which was then just beginning to make its way with the English. “Oh, but come, now, you don’t expect me to believe that, you know. If you won’t tell me, suppose you show me what an American flirtation is like. Suppose we get up a flirtation. How should you begin?”

  The girl rose with a more imposing air than Elmore could have imagined of her stature; but almost any woman can be awful in emergencies. “I should begin by bidding you good-evening,” she answered, and swept out of the room.

  Elmore felt as if he had been left alone with a man mortally hurt in combat, and were likely to be arrested for the deed. He gazed with fascination upon Rose-Black, and wondered to see him stir, and at last rise, and with some incoherent words to them, get himself away. He dared not lift his gaze to the man’s eyes, lest he should see there some reflection of the pain that filled his own. He would have gone after him, and tried to say something in condolence, but he was quite helpless to move; and as he sat still, gazing at the door through which Rose-Black disappeared, Mrs. Elmore said quietly: —

  “Well, really, I think that ought to be the last of him. You see, she’s quite able to take care of herself when she knows her ground. You can’t say that she has thrown the brunt of this affair upon you, Owen.”

  “I am not so sure of that,” sighed Elmore. “I think I suffer less when I do it than when I see it. It’s horrible.”

  “He deserved it, every bit,” returned his wife.

  “Oh, I dare say,” Elmore granted. “But the sight even of justice isn’t pleasant, I find.”

  “I don’t understand you, Owen. How can you care so much for this impudent wretch’s little snub, and yet be so indifferent about refusing Captain Ehrhardt?”

  “I’m not indifferent about it, my dear. I know that I did right, but I don’t know that I could do right under the same circumstances again.”

  In fact there were times when Elmore found almost insupportable the absolute conclusion to which that business had come. It is hard to believe that anything has come to an end in this world. For a time, death itself leaves the ache of an unsatisfied expectation, as if somehow the interrupted life must go on, and there is no change we make or suffer which is not denied by the sensation of daily habit. If Ehrhardt had really come back from the vague limbo to which he had been so inexorably relegated, he might only have restored the original situation in all its discomfort and apprehension; yet maintaining, as he did, this perfect silence and absence, he established a hold upon Elmore’s imagination which deepened because he could not discuss the matter frankly with his wife. He weakly feared to let her know what was passing in his thoughts, lest some misconception of hers should turn them into self-accusal or urge him to some attempt at the reparation towards which he wavered. He really could have done nothing that would not have made the matter worse, and he confined himself to speculating upon the character and history of the man whom he knew only by the incoherent hearsay of two excited women, and by the brief record of hope and passion left in the notes which Lily treasured somewhere among the archives of a young girl’s triumphs. He had a morbid curiosity to see these letters again, but he dared not ask for them; and indeed it would have been an idle self-indulgence: he remembered them perfectly well. Seeing Lily so indifferent, it was characteristic of him, in that safety from consequences which he chiefly loved, that he should tacitly constitute himself, in some sort, the champion of her rejected suitor, whose pain he luxuriously fancied in all its different stages and degrees. His indolent pity even developed into a sort of self-righteous abhorrence of the girl’s hardness. But this was wholly within himself, and could work no sort of harm. If he never ventured to hint these feelings to his wife, he was still further from confessing them to Lily; but once he approached the subject with Hoskins in a well-guarded generality relating to the different kinds of sensibility developed by the European and American civilization. A recent suicide for love which excited all Venice at that time — an Austrian officer hopelessly attached to an Italian girl had shot himself — had suggested their talk, and given fresh poignancy to the misgivings in Elmore’s mind.

  “Well,” said Hoskins, “those Dutch are queer. They don’t look at women as respectfully as we do, and they mix up so much cabbage with their romance that you don’t know exactly how to take them; and yet here you find this fellow suffering just as much as a white man because the girl’s folks won’t let her have him. In fact, I don’t know but he suffered more than the average American citizen. I think we have a great deal more common sense in our love-affairs. We respect women more than any other people, and I think we show them more true politeness; we let ’em have their way more, and get their finger into the pie right along, and it’s right we should: but we don’t make fools of ourselves about them, as a general rule. We know they’re awfully nice, and they know we know it; and it’s a perfectly understood thing all round. We’ve been used to each other all our lives, and they’re just as sensible as we are. They like a fellow, when they do like him, about as well as any of ‘em; but they know he’s a man and a brother after all, and he’s got ever so much human nature in him. Well, now, I reckon one of these Dutch chaps, the first time he gets a chance to speak with a pretty girl, thinks he’s got hold of a goddess, and I suppose the girl feels just so about him. Why, it’s natural they should, — they’ve never had any chance to know any better, and your feelings are apt to get the upper hand of you, at such times, anyway. I don’t blame ‘em. One of ’em goes off and shoots himself, and the other one feels as if she was never going to get over it. Well, now, look at the way Miss Lily acted in that little business of hers: one of these girls over here would have had her head completely turned by that adventure; but when she couldn’t see her way exactly clear, she puts the case in your hands, and then stands by what you do, as calm as a clock.”

  “It was a very perplexing thing. I did the best I knew,” said Elmore.

  “Why, of course you did,” cried Hoskins, “and she sees that as well as you or I do, and she stands by you accordingly. I tell you, that girl’s got a cool head.”

  In his soul Elmore ungratefully and inconsistently wished that her heart were not equally cool; but he only said, “Yes, she is a good and sensible girl. I hope the — the — other one is equally resigned.”

  “Oh, he’ll get along,” answered Hoskins, with the indifference of one man for the sufferings of another in such matters. We are able to offer a brother very little comfort and scarcely any sympathy in those unhappy affairs of the heart which move women to a pretty compassion for a disappointed sister. A man in love is in no wise interesting to us for that reason; and if he is unfortunate, we hope at the farthest that he will have better luck next time. It is only here and there that a sentimentalist like Elmore stops to pity him; and it is not certain that even he would have sighed over Captain Ehrhardt if he had not been the means of his disappointment. As it was, he came away, feeling that doubtless Ehrhardt had “got along,” and resolved at least to spend no more unavailing regrets upon him.

  The time passed very quietly now, and if it had not been for Hoskins, the ladies must have found it dull. He had nothing to do, except as he made himself occupation with his art, and he willingly bestowed on them the leisure which Elmore could not find. They went everywhere with him, and saw the city to advantage through his efforts. Doors, closed to ordinary curiosity, opened to the magic of his card, and he showed a pleasure in using such little privileges as his position gave him for their amusement. He went upon errands for them; he was like a brother, with something more than a brother’s pliability; he came half the time to breakfast with them, and was always welcome to all. He had the gift of extracting comfort from the darkest news about the war; he was a prophet of unfailing good to the Union cause, and in many hours of despondency they willingly submitted to the aut
hority of his greater experience, and took heart again.

  “I like your indomitable hopefulness, Hoskins,” said Elmore, on one of those occasions when the consul was turning defeat into victory. “There’s a streak of unconscious poetry in it, just as there is in your taking up the subjects you do. I imagine that, so far as the judgment of the world goes, our fortunes are at the lowest ebb just now—”

  “Oh, the world is wrong!” interrupted the consul. “Those London papers are all in the pay of the rebels.”

  “I mean that we have no sort of sympathy in Europe; and yet here you are, embodying in your conception of ‘Westward’ the arrogant faith of the days when our destiny seemed universal union and universal dominion. There is something sublime to me in your treatment of such a work at such a time. I think an Italian, for instance, if his country were involved in a life and death struggle like this of ours, would have expressed something of the anxiety and apprehension of the time in it; but this conception of yours is as serenely undisturbed by the facts of the war as if secession had taken place in another planet. There is something Greek in that repose of feeling, triumphant over circumstance. It is like the calm beauty which makes you forget the anguish of the Laocoön.”

  “Is that so, Professor?” said Hoskins, blushing modestly, as an artist often must in these days of creative criticism. He seemed to reflect awhile before he added, “Well, I reckon you’re partly right. If we ever did go to smash, it would take us a whole generation to find it out. We have all been raised to put so much dependence on Uncle Sam, that if the old gentleman really did pass in his checks we should only think he was lying low for a new deal. I never happened to think it out before, but I’m pretty sure it’s so.”

  “Your work wouldn’t be worth half so much to me if you had ‘thought it out,’” said Elmore. “It’s the unconsciousness of the faith that makes its chief value, as I said before; and there is another thing about it that interests and pleases me still more.”

  “What’s that?” asked the sculptor.

  “The instinctive way in which you have given the figure an entirely American quality. There was something very familiar to me in it, the first time you showed it, but I’ve only just been able to formulate my impression: I see now that while the spirit of your conception is Greek, you have given it, as you ought, the purest American expression. Your ‘Westward’ is no Hellenic goddess: she is a vivid and self-reliant American girl.”

  At these words, Hoskins reddened deeply, and seemed not to know where to look. Mrs. Elmore had the effect of escaping through the door into her own room, and Miss Mayhew ran out upon the balcony. Hoskins followed each in turn with a queer glance, and sat a moment in silence. Then he said, “Well, I reckon I must be going,” and went rather abruptly, without offering to take leave of the ladies.

  As soon as he was gone, Lily came in from the balcony, and whipped into Mrs. Elmore’s room, from which she flashed again in swift retreat to her own, and was seen no more; and then Mrs. Elmore came back, with a flushed face, to where her husband sat mystified.

  “My dear,” he said gravely, “I’m afraid you’ve hurt Mr. Hoskins’s feelings.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked; and then she burst into a wild cry of laughter. “O, Owen, Owen! you will kill me yet!”

  “Really,” he replied with dignity, “I don’t see any occasion in what I said for this extraordinary behavior.”

  “Of course you don’t, and that’s just what makes the fun of it. So you found something familiar in Mr. Hoskins’s statue from the first, did you?” she asked. “And you didn’t notice anything particular in it?”

  “Particular, particular?” he demanded, beginning to lose his patience at this.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, “couldn’t you see that it was Lily, all over again?”

  Elmore laughed in turn. “Why, so it is; so it is! That accounts for everything that puzzled me. I don’t wonder my maunderings amused you. It was ridiculous, to be sure! When in the world did she give him the sittings, and how did you manage to keep it from me so well?”

  “Owen!” cried his wife, with terrible severity. “You don’t think that Lily would let him put her into it?”

  “Why, I supposed — I didn’t know — I don’t see how he could have done it unless—”

  “He did it without leave or license,” said Mrs. Elmore. “We saw it all along, but he never ‘let on,’ as he would say, about it, and we never meant to say anything, of course.”

  “Then,” replied Elmore, delighted with the fact, “it has been a purely unconscious piece of cerebration.”

  “Cerebration!” exclaimed Mrs. Elmore, with more scorn than she knew how to express. “I should think as much!”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Elmore, with the pique of a man who does not care to be quite trampled under foot. “I don’t see that the theory is so very unphilosophical.”

  “Oh, not at all!” mocked his wife. “It’s philosophical to the last degree. Be as philosophical as you please, Owen; I shall love you still the same.” She came up to him where he sat, and twisting her arm round his face, patronizingly kissed him on top of the head. Then she released him, and left him with another burst of derision.

  X.

  After this Elmore had such an uncomfortable feeling that he hated to see Hoskins again, and he was relieved when the sculptor failed to make his usual call, the next evening. He had not been at dinner either, and he did not reappear for several days. Then he merely said that he had been spending the time at Chioggia, with a French painter who was making some studies down there, and they all took up the old routine of their friendly life without embarrassment.

  At first it seemed to Elmore that Lily was a little shy of Hoskins, and he thought that she resented his using her charm in his art; but before the evening wore away, he lost this impression. They all got into a long talk about home, and she took her place at the piano and played some of the war-songs that had begun to supersede the old negro melodies. Then she wandered back to them, with fingers that idly drifted over the keys, and ended with “Stop dat knockin’,” in which Hoskins joined with his powerful bass in the recitative “Let me in,” and Elmore himself had half a mind to attempt a part. The sculptor rose as she struck the keys with a final crash, but lingered, as his fashion was when he had something to propose: if he felt pretty sure that the thing would be liked, he brought it in as if he had only happened to remember it. He now drew out a large, square, ceremonious-looking envelope, at which he glanced as if, after all, he was rather surprised to see it, and said, “Oh, by the by, Mrs. Elmore, I wish you’d tell me what to do about this thing. Here’s something that’s come to me in my official capacity, but it isn’t exactly consular business, — if it was I don’t believe I should ask any lady for instructions, — and I don’t know exactly what to do. It’s so long since I corresponded with a princess that I don’t even know how to answer her letter.”

  The ladies perhaps feared a hoax of some sort, and would not ask to see the letter; and then Hoskins recognized his failure to play upon their curiosity with a laugh, and gave the letter to Mrs. Elmore. It was an invitation to a mask ball, of which all Venice had begun to speak. A great Russian lady, who had come to spend the winter in the Lagoons, and had taken a whole floor at one of the hotels, had sent out her cards, apparently to all the available people in the city, for the event which was to take place a fortnight later. In the mean time, a thrill of preparation was felt in various quarters, and the ordinary course of life was interrupted in a way that gave some idea of the old times, when Venice was the capital of pleasure, and everything yielded there to the great business of amusement. Mrs. Elmore had found it impossible to get a pair of fine shoes finished until after the ball; a dress which Lily had ordered could not be made; their laundress had given notice that for the present all fluting and quilling was out of the question; one already heard that the chief Venetian perruquier and his assistants were engaged for every moment of the forty-eight hou
rs before the ball, and that whoever had him now must sit up with her hair dressed for two nights at least. Mrs. Elmore had a fanatical faith in these stories; and while agreeing with her husband, as a matter of principle, that mask balls were wrong, and that it was in bad taste for a foreigner to insult the sorrow of Venice by a festivity of the sort at such a time, she had secretly indulged longings which the sight of Hoskins’s invitation rendered almost insupportable. Her longings were not for herself, but for Lily: if she could provide Lily with the experience of a masquerade in Venice, she could overpay all the kindnesses that the Mayhews had ever done her. It was an ambition neither ignoble nor ungenerous, and it was with a really heroic effort that she silenced it in passing the invitation to her husband, and simply saying to Hoskins, “Of course you will go.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he answered. “That’s the point I want some advice on. You see this document calls for a lady to fill out the bill.”

  “Oh,” returned Mrs. Elmore, “you will find some Americans at the hotels. You can take them.”

  “Well, now, I was thinking, Mrs. Elmore, that I should like to take you.”

  “Take me!” she echoed tremulously. “What an idea! I’m too old to go to mask balls.”

  “You don’t look it,” suggested Hoskins.

  “Oh, I couldn’t go,” she sighed. “But it’s very, very kind.”

  Hoskins dropped his head, and gave the low chuckle with which he confessed any little bit of humbug. “Well, you or Miss Lily.”