The Lady of the Aroostook

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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?"

"No."

"And you were--"

"I was the only woman on board," replied Lydia. She rose abruptly,
striking the edge of the table in her movement, and setting its china
and silver jarring. "Oh, I know what you mean, aunt Josephine, but
two days ago I couldn't have dreamt it! From the time the ship sailed
till I reached this wicked place, there wasn't a word said nor a look
looked to make me think I wasn't just as right and safe there as if
I had been in my own room at home. They were never anything but kind
and good to me. They never let me think that they could be my enemies,
or that I must suspect them and be on the watch against them. They
were Americans! I had to wait for one of your Europeans to teach me
that,--for that officer who was here yesterday--"

"The cavaliere? Why, where--"

"He spoke to me in the cars, when Mr. Erwin was asleep! Had he any
right to do so?"

"He would think he had, if he thought you were alone," said Mrs.
Erwin, plaintively. "I don't see how we could resent it. It was
simply a mistake on his part. And now you see, Lydia--"

"Oh, I see how my coming the way I have will seem to all these
people!" cried Lydia, with passionate despair. "I know how it will
seem to that married woman who lets a man be in love with her, and
that old woman who can't live with her husband because he's too good
and kind, and that girl who swears and doesn't know who her father
is, and that impudent painter, and that officer who thinks he has
the right to insult women if he finds them alone! I wonder the sea
doesn't swallow up a place where even Americans go to the theatre
on the Sabbath!"

"Lydia, Lydia! It isn't so bad as it seems to you," pleaded her aunt,
thrown upon the defensive by the girl's outburst. "There are ever so
many good and nice people in Venice, and I know them, too,--Italians
as well as foreigners. And even amongst those you saw, Miss Landini
is one of the kindest girls in the world, and she had just been to
see her old teacher when we met her,--she half takes care of him; and
Lady Fenleigh's a perfect mother to the poor; and I never was at the
Countess Tatocka's except in the most distant way, at a ball where
everybody went; and is it better to let your uncle go to the opera
alone, or to go with him? You told me to go with him yourself; and
they consider Sunday over, on the Continent, after morning service,
any way!"

"Oh, it makes no difference!" retorted Lydia, wildly. "I am going
away. I am going home. I have money enough to get to Trieste, and the
ship is there, and Captain Jenness will take me back with him. Oh!"
she moaned. "_He_ has been in Europe, too, and I suppose he's
like the rest of you; and he thought because I was alone and helpless
he had the right to--Oh, I see it, I see now that he never meant
anything, and--Oh, oh, oh!" She fell on her knees beside the bed, as
if crushed to them by the cruel doubt that suddenly overwhelmed her,
and flung out her arms on Mrs. Erwin's coverlet--it was of Venetian
lace sewed upon silk, a choice bit from the palace of one of the
ducal families--and buried her face in it.

Her aunt rose from her pillow, and looked in wonder and trouble at
the beautiful fallen head, and the fair young figure shaken with sobs.
"He--who--what are you talking about, Lydia? Whom do you mean? Did
Captain Jenness--"

"No, no!" wailed the girl, "the one that gave me the book."

"The one that gave you the book? The book you were looking at last
night?"

"Yes," sobbed Lydia, with her voice muffled in the coverlet.

Mrs. Erwin lay down again with significant deliberation. Her face
was still full of trouble, but of bewilderment no longer. In moments
of great distress the female mind is apt to lay hold of some minor
anxiety for its distraction, and to find a certain relief in it.
"Lydia," said her aunt in a broken voice, "I wish you wouldn't cry
in the coverlet: it doesn't hurt the lace, but it stains the silk."
Lydia swept her handkerchief under her face but did not lift it. Her
aunt accepted the compromise. "How came he to give you the book?"

"Oh, I don't know. I can't tell. I thought it was because--because--
It was almost at the very beginning. And after that he walked up and
down with me every night, nearly; and he tried to be with me all he
could; and he was always saying things to make me think--Oh dear, oh
_dear_, oh dear! And he _tried_ to make me care for him!
Oh, it was cruel, cruel!"

"You mean that he made love to you?" asked her aunt.

"Yes--no--I don't know. He tried to make me care for him, and to
make me think he cared for me."

"Did he say he cared for you? Did he--"

"No!"

Mrs. Erwin mused a while before she said, "Yes, it was cruel indeed,
poor child, and it was cowardly, too."

"Cowardly?" Lydia lifted her face, and flashed a glance of tearful
fire at her aunt. "He is the bravest man in the world! And the most
generous and high-minded! He jumped into the sea after that wicked Mr.
Hicks, and saved his life, when he disliked him worse than anything!"

"_Who_ was Mr. Hicks?"

"He was the one that stopped at Messina. He was the one that got some
brandy at Gibraltar, and behaved so dreadfully, and wanted to fight
him."

"Whom?"

"This one. The one who gave me the book. And don't you see that his
being so good makes it all the worse? Yes; and he pretended to be glad
when I told him I thought he was good,--he got me to say it!" She had
her face down again in her handkerchief. "And I suppose _you_
think it was horrible, too, for me to take his arm, and talk and walk
with him whenever he asked me!"

"No, not for you, Lydia," said her aunt, gently. "And don't you think
now," she asked after a pause, "that he cared for you?"

"Oh, I _did_ think so,--I _did_ believe it; but now,
_now_--"

"Now, what?"

"Now, I'm afraid that may be he was only playing with me, and putting
me off; and pretending that he had something to tell me when he got
to Venice, and he never meant anything by anything."

"Is he coming to--" her aunt began, but Lydia broke vehemently out
again.

"If he had cared for me, why couldn't he have told me so at once,
and not had me wait till he got to Venice? He _knew_ I--"

"There are two ways of explaining it," said Mrs. Erwin. "He _may_
have been in earnest, Lydia, and felt that he had no right to be more
explicit till you were in the care of your friends. That would be the
European way which you consider so bad," said Mrs. Erwin. "Under the
circumstances, it was impossible for him to keep any distance, and
all he could do was to postpone his declaration till there could be
something like good form about it. Yes, it might have been that." She
was silent, but the troubled look did not leave her face. "I am sorry
for you, Lydia," she resumed, "but I don't know that I wish he was
in earnest." Lydia looked up at her in dismay. "It might be far less
embarrassing the other way, however painful. He may not be at all a
suitable person." The tears stood in Lydia's eyes, and all her face
expressed a puzzled suspense. "Where was he from?" asked Mrs. Erwin,
finally; till then she had been more interested in the lover than
the man.

"Boston," mechanically answered Lydia.

"What was his name?"

"Mr. Staniford," owned Lydia, with a blush.

Her aunt seemed dispirited at the sound. "Yes, I know who they are,"
she sighed.

"And aren't they nice? Isn't he--suitable?" asked Lydia, tremulously.

"Oh, poor child! He's only _too_ suitable. I can't explain to
you, Lydia; but at home he wouldn't have looked at a girl like you.
What sort of looking person is he?"

"He's rather--red; and he has--light hair."

"It must be the family I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Erwin. She had
lived nearly twenty years in Europe, and had seldom revisited her
native city; but at the sound of a Boston name she was all Bostonian
again. She rapidly sketched the history of the family to which she
imagined Staniford to belong. "I remember his sister; I used to see
her at school. She must have been five or six years younger than I;
and this boy--"

"Why, he's twenty-eight years old!" interrupted Lydia.

"How came he to tell you?"

"I don't know. He said that he looked thirty-four."

"Yes; _she_ was always a forward thing too,--with her freckles,"
said Mrs. Erwin, musingly, as if lost in reminiscences, not wholly
pleasing, of Miss Staniford.

"_He_ has freckles," admitted Lydia.

"Yes, it's the one," said Mrs. Erwin. "He couldn't have known what
your family was from anything you said?"

"We never talked about our families."

"Oh, I dare say! You talked about yourselves?"

"Yes."

"All the time?"

"Pretty nearly."

"And he didn't try to find out who or what you were?"

"He asked a great deal about South Bradfield."

"Of course, that was where he thought you had always belonged." Mrs.
Erwin lay quiescent for a while, in apparent uncertainty as to how
she should next attack the subject. "How did you first meet?"

Lydia began with the scene on Lucas Wharf, and little by little told
the whole story up to the moment of their parting at Trieste. There
were lapses and pauses in the story, which her aunt was never at
a loss to fill aright. At the end she said, "If it were not for his
promising to come here and see you, I should say Mr. Staniford had
been flirting, and as it is he may not regard it as anything more
than flirtation. Of course, there was his being jealous of Mr. Dunham
and Mr. Hicks, as he certainly was; and his wanting to explain about
that lady at Messina--yes, that looked peculiar; but he may not have
meant anything by it. His parting so at Trieste with you, that might
be either because he was embarrassed at its having got to be such
a serious thing, or because he really felt badly. Lydia," she asked
at last, "what made _you_ think he cared for you?"

"I don't know," said the girl; her voice had sunk to a husky whisper.
"I didn't believe it till he said he wanted me to be his--conscience,
and tried to make me say he was good, and--"

"That's a certain kind of man's way of flirting. It may mean nothing
at all. I could tell in an instant, if I saw him."

"He said he would be here this afternoon," murmured Lydia,
tremulously.

"This afternoon!" cried Mrs. Erwin. "I must get up!"

At her toilette she had the exaltation and fury of a champion arming
for battle.

XXV.

Mr. Erwin entered about the completion of her preparations, and
without turning round from her glass she said, "I want you to think
of the worst thing you can, Henshaw. I don't see how I'm ever to lift
up my head again." As if this word had reminded her of her head, she
turned it from side to side, and got the effect in the glass, first of
one ear-ring, and then of the other. Her husband patiently waited, and
she now confronted him. "You may as well know first as last, Henshaw,
and I want you to prepare yourself for it. Nothing can be done, and
you will just have to live through it. Lydia--has come over--on that
ship--alone,--with three young men,--and not the shadow--not the
ghost--of another woman--on board!" Mrs. Erwin gesticulated with her
hand-glass in delivering the words, in a manner at once intensely
vivid and intensely solemn, yet somehow falling short of the due
tragic effect. Her husband stood pulling his mustache straight down,
while his wife turned again to the mirror, and put the final touches
to her personal appearance with hands which she had the effect of
having desperately washed of all responsibility. He stood so long
in this meditative mood that she was obliged to be peremptory with
his image in the glass. "Well?" she cried.

"Why, my dear," said Mr. Erwin, at last, "they were all Americans
together, you know."

"And what difference does that make?" demanded Mrs. Erwin, whirling
from his image to the man again.

"Why, of course, you know, it isn't as if they were--English." Mrs.
Erwin flung down three hair-pins upon her dressing-case, and visibly
despaired. "Of course you don't expect your countrymen--" His wife's
appearance was here so terrible that he desisted, and resumed by
saying, "Don't be vexed, my dear. I--I rather like it, you know.
It strikes me as a genuine bit of American civilization."

"American civilization! Oh, Henshaw!" wailed Mrs. Erwin, "is it
possible that after all I've said, and done, and lived, you still
think that any one but a girl from the greenest little country place
could do such a thing as that? Well, it is no use trying to enlighten
English people. You like it, do you? Well, I'm not sure that the
Englishman who misunderstands American things and likes them isn't
a little worse than the Englishman who misunderstands them and
dislikes them. You _all_ misunderstand them. And would you
like it, if one of the young men had been making love to Lydia?"

The amateur of our civilization hesitated and was serious, but he
said at last, "Why, you know, I'm not surprised. She's so uncommonly
pretty. I--I suppose they're engaged?" he suggested.

His wife held her peace for scorn. Then she said, "The gentleman is
of a very good Boston family, and would no more think of engaging
himself to a young girl without the knowledge of her friends than
you would. Besides, he's been in Europe a great deal."

"I wish I could meet some Americans who hadn't been in Europe,"
said Mr. Erwin. "I should like to see what you call the simon-pure
American. As for the young man's not engaging himself, it seems to
me that he didn't avail himself of his national privileges. I should
certainly have done it in his place, if I'd been an American."

"Well, if you'd been an American, you wouldn't," answered his wife.

"Why?"

"Because an American would have had too much delicacy."

"I don't understand that."

"I know you don't, Henshaw. And there's where you show yourself
an Englishman."

"Really," said her husband, "you're beginning to crow, my dear. Come,
I like that a great deal better than your cringing to the effete
despotisms of the Old World, as your Fourth of July orators have it.
It's almost impossible to get a bit of good honest bounce out of an
American, nowadays,--to get him to spread himself, as you say."

"All that is neither here nor there, Henshaw," said his wife. "The
question is how to receive Mr. Staniford--that's his name--when he
comes. How are we to regard him? He's coming here to see Lydia, and
she thinks he's coming to propose."

"Excuse me, but how does she regard him?"

"Oh, there's no question about that, poor child. She's _dead_
in love with him, and can't understand why he didn't propose on
shipboard."

"And she isn't an Englishman, either!" exulted Mr. Erwin. "It appears
that there are Americans and Americans, and that the men of your
nation have more delicacy than the women like."

"Don't be silly," said his wife. "Of course, women always think what
they would do in such cases, if they were men; but if men did what
women think they would do if they were men, the women would be
disgusted."

"Oh!"

"Yes. Her feeling in the matter is no guide."

"Do you know his family?" asked Mr. Erwin.

"I think I do. Yes, I'm sure I do."

"Are they nice people?"

"Haven't I told you they were a good Boston family?"

"Then upon my word, I don't see that we've to take any attitude at
all. I don't see that we've to regard him in one way or the other.
It quite remains for him to make the first move."

As if they had been talking of nothing but dress before, Mrs. Erwin
asked: "Do you think I look better in this black mexicaine, or would
you wear your ecru?"

"I think you look very well in this. But why--He isn't going to
propose to you, I hope?"

"I must have on something decent to receive him in. What time does
the train from Trieste get in?"

"At three o'clock."

"It's one, now. There's plenty of time, but there isn't any too
much. I'll go and get Lydia ready. Or perhaps you'll tap on her
door, Henshaw, and send her here. Of course, this is the end of
her voice,--if it is the end."

"It's the end of having an extraordinarily pretty girl in the house.
I don't at all like it, you know,--having her whisked away in this
manner."

Mrs. Erwin refused to let her mind wander from the main point. "He'll
be round as soon as he can, after he arrives. I shall expect him by
four, at the latest."

"I fancy he'll stop for his dinner before he comes," said Mr. Erwin.

"Not at all," retorted his wife, haughtily. And with his going out of
the room, she set her face in a resolute cheerfulness, for the task
of heartening Lydia when she should appear; but it only expressed
misgiving when the girl came in with her yachting-dress on. "Why,
Lydia, shall you wear that?"

Lydia swept her dress with a downward glance.

"I thought I would wear it. I thought he--I should seem--more natural
in it. I wore it all the time on the ship, except Sundays. He said--
he liked it the best."

Mrs. Erwin shook her head. "It wouldn't do. Everything must be on
a new basis now. He might like it; but it would be too romantic,
wouldn't it, don't you think?" She shook her head still, but less
decisively. "Better wear your silk. Don't you think you'd better wear
your silk? This is very pretty, and the dark blue does become you,
awfully. Still, I don't know--_I_ don't know, either! A great
many English wear those careless things in the house. Well,
_wear_ it, Lydia! You _do_ look perfectly killing in it.
I'll tell you: your uncle was going to ask you to go out in his boat;
he's got one he rows himself, and this is a boating costume; and you
know you could time yourselves so as to get back just right, and you
could come in with this on--"

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 cafe
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."

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