The Lady of the Aroostook

W >> W. D. Howells >> The Lady of the Aroostook

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

"Interested in you?" interrupted Staniford rudely.

"Well--ah--well, that is--ah--well--yes!" cried Dunham, bracing
himself to sustain a shout of ridicule. But Staniford did not
laugh, and Dunham had courage to go on. "Of course, it sounds rather
conceited to say so, but the circumstances are so peculiar that I
think we ought to recognize even any possibilities of that sort."

"Oh, yes," said Staniford, gravely. "Most women, I believe, are
so innocent as to think a man in love when he behaves like a lover.
And this one," he added ruefully, "seems more than commonly ignorant
of our ways,--of our infernal shilly-shallying, purposeless
no-mindedness. She couldn't imagine a man--a gentleman--devoting
himself to her by the hour, and trying by every art to show his
interest and pleasure in her society, without imagining that he
wished her to like him,--love him; there's no half-way about it.
She couldn't suppose him the shallow, dawdling, soulless, senseless
ape he really was." Staniford was quite in a heat by this time, and
Dunham listened in open astonishment.

"You are hard upon me," he said. "Of course, I have been to blame;
I know that, I acknowledge it. But my motive, as you know well enough,
was never to amuse myself with her, but to contribute in any way I
could to her enjoyment and happiness. I--"

"_You_!" cried Staniford. "What are you talking about?"

"What are _you_ talking about?" demanded Dunham, in his turn.

Staniford recollected himself. "I was speaking of abstract flirtation.
I was firing into the air."

"In my case, I don't choose to call it flirtation," returned Dunham.
"My purpose, I am bound to say, was thoroughly unselfish and kindly."

"My dear fellow," said Staniford, with a bitter smile, "there can be
no unselfishness and no kindliness between us and young girls, unless
we mean business,--love-making. You may be sure that they feel it so,
if they don't understand it so."

"I don't agree with you. I don't believe it. My own experience is
that the sweetest and most generous friendships may exist between
us, without a thought of anything else. And as to making love, I must
beg you to remember that my love has been made once for all. I never
dreamt of showing Miss Blood anything but polite attention."

"Then what are you troubled about?"

"I am troubled--" Dunham stopped helplessly, and Staniford laughed in
a challenging, disagreeable way, so that the former perforce resumed:

"I'm troubled about--about her possible misinterpretation."

"Oh! Then in this case of sweet and generous friendship the party of
the second part may have construed the sentiment quite differently!
Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to take the contract
off your hands?"

"You put it grossly," said Dunham.

"And _you_ put it offensively!" cried the other. "My regard for
the young lady is as reverent as yours. You have no right to miscolor
my words."

"Staniford, you are too bad," said Dunham, hurt even more than
angered. "If I've come to you in the wrong moment--if you are vexed
at anything, I'll go away, and beg your pardon for boring you."

Staniford was touched; he looked cordially into his friend's face.
"I _was_ vexed at something, but you never can come to me at the
wrong moment, old fellow. I beg _your_ pardon. _I_ see your
difficulty plainly enough, and I think you're quite right in proposing
to hold up,--for that's what you mean, I take it?"

"Yes," said Dunham, "it is. And I don't know how she will like it. She
will be puzzled and grieved by it. I hadn't thought seriously about
the matter till this morning, when she didn't come to breakfast. You
know I've been in the habit of asking her to walk with me every night
after tea; but Saturday evening you were with her, and last night I
felt sore about the affairs of the day, and rather dull, and I didn't
ask her. I think she noticed it. I think she was hurt."

"You think so?" said Staniford, peculiarly.

"I might not have thought so," continued Dunham, "merely because she
did not come to breakfast; but her blushing when she looked across
at dinner really made me uneasy."

"Very possibly you're right." Staniford mused a while before he spoke
again. "Well, what do you wish me to do?"

"I must hold up, as you say, and of course she will feel the
difference. I wish--I wish at least you wouldn't avoid her, Staniford.
That's all. Any little attention from you--I know it bores you--would
not only break the loneliness, but it would explain that--that
my--attentions didn't--ah--hadn't meant anything."

"Oh!"

"Yes; that it's common to offer them. And she's a girl of so much
force of character that when she sees the affair in its true light--I
suppose I'm to blame! Yes, I ought to have told her at the beginning
that I was engaged. But you can't force a fact of that sort upon a new
acquaintance: it looks silly." Dunham hung his head in self-reproach.

"Well?" asked Staniford.

"Well, that's all! No, it _isn't_ all, either. There's something
else troubles me. Our poor little friend is a blackguard, I suppose?"

"Hicks?"

"Yes."

"You have invited him to be the leader of your orchestra, haven't
you?"

"Oh, don't, Staniford!" cried Dunham in his helplessness. "I should
hate to see her dependent in any degree upon that little cad for
society." Cad was the last English word which Dunham had got himself
used to. "That was why I hoped that you wouldn't altogether neglect
her. She's here, and she's no choice but to remain. We can't leave
her to herself without the danger of leaving her to Hicks. You see?"

"Well," said Staniford gloomily, "I'm not sure that you couldn't leave
her to a worse cad than Hicks." Dunham looked up in question. "To me,
for example."

"Oh, hallo!" cried Dunham.

"I don't see how I'm to be of any use," continued the other. "I'm not
a squire of dames; I should merely make a mess of it."

"You're mistaken, Staniford,--I'm sure you are,--in supposing that
she dislikes you," urged his friend.

"Oh, very likely."

"I know that she's simply afraid of you."

"Don't flatter, Dunham. Why should I care whether she fears me or
affects me? No, my dear fellow. This is irretrievably your own affair.
I should be glad to help you out if I knew how. But I don't. In the
mean time your duty is plain, whatever happens. You can't overdo the
sweet and the generous in this wicked world without paying the
penalty."

Staniford smiled at the distress in which Dunham went his way. He
understood very well that it was not vanity, but the liveliness of a
sensitive conscience, that had made Dunham search his conduct for the
offense against the young girl's peace of heart which he believed he
had committed, and it was the more amusing because he was so guiltless
of harm. Staniford knew who was to blame for the headache and the
blush. He knew that Dunham had never gone so far; that his chivalrous
pleasure in her society might continue for years free from flirtation.
But in spite of this conviction a little poignant doubt made itself
felt, and suddenly became his whole consciousness. "Confound him!" he
mused. "I wonder if she really could care anything for him!" He shut
his book, and rose to his feet with such a burning in his heart that
he could not have believed himself capable of the greater rage he felt
at what he just then saw. It was Lydia and Hicks seated together in
the place where he had sat with her. She leaned with one arm upon
the rail, in an attitude that brought all her slim young grace into
evidence. She seemed on very good terms with him, and he was talking
and making her laugh as Staniford had never heard her laugh before--so
freely, so heartily.

XIII.

The atoms that had been tending in Staniford's being toward a certain
form suddenly arrested and shaped themselves anew at the vibration
imparted by this laughter. He no longer felt himself Hicks's possible
inferior, but vastly better in every way, and out of the turmoil of
his feelings in regard to Lydia was evolved the distinct sense of
having been trifled with. Somehow, an advantage had been taken of his
sympathies and purposes, and his forbearance had been treated with
contempt.

The conviction was neither increased nor diminished by the events of
the evening, when Lydia brought out some music from her state-room,
and Hicks appeared, flute in hand, from his, and they began practicing
one of the pieces together. It was a pretty enough sight. Hicks had
been gradually growing a better-looking fellow; he had an undeniable
picturesqueness, as he bowed his head over the music towards hers;
and she, as she held the sheet with one hand for him to see, while she
noiselessly accompanied herself on the table with the fingers of the
other, and tentatively sang now this passage and now that, was divine.
The picture seemed pleasing to neither Staniford nor Dunham; they
went on deck together, and sat down to their cigarettes in their
wonted place. They did not talk of Lydia, or of any of the things that
had formed the basis of their conversation hitherto, but Staniford
returned to his Colorado scheme, and explained at length the nature of
his purposes and expectations. He had discussed these matters before,
but he had never gone into them so fully, nor with such cheerful
earnestness. He said he should never marry,--he had made up his
mind to that; but he hoped to make money enough to take care of his
sister's boy Jim handsomely, as the little chap had been named for
him. He had been thinking the matter over, and he believed that he
should get back by rail and steamer as soon as he could after they
reached Trieste. He was not sorry he had come; but he could not afford
to throw away too much time on Italy, just then.

Dunham, on his part, talked a great deal of Miss Hibbard, and of
some curious psychological characteristics of her dyspepsia. He asked
Staniford whether he had ever shown him the photograph of Miss Hibbard
taken by Sarony when she was on to New York the last time: it was a
three-quarters view, and Dunham thought it the best she had had done.
He spoke of her generous qualities, and of the interest she had always
had in the Diet Kitchen, to which, as an invalid, her attention had
been particularly directed: and he said that in her last letter she
had mentioned a project for establishing diet kitchens in Europe, on
the Boston plan. When their talk grew more impersonal and took a wider
range, they gathered suggestion from the situation, and remarked upon
the immense solitude of the sea. They agreed that there was something
weird in the long continuance of fine weather, and that the moon had a
strange look. They spoke of the uncertainty of life. Dunham regretted,
as he had often regretted before, that his friend had no fixed
religious belief; and Staniford gently accepted his solicitude, and
said that he had at least a conviction if not a creed. He then begged
Dunham's pardon in set terms for trying to wound his feelings the day
before; and in the silent hand-clasp that followed they renewed all
the cordiality of their friendship. From time to time, as they talked,
the music from below came up fitfully, and once they had to pause as
Lydia sang through the song that she and Hicks were practicing.

As the days passed their common interest in the art brought Hicks and
the young girl almost constantly together, and the sound of their
concerting often filled the ship. The musicales, less formal than
Dunham had intended, and perhaps for that reason a source of rapidly
diminishing interest with him, superseded both ring-toss and shuffle-
board, and seemed even more acceptable to the ship's company as an
entertainment. One evening, when the performers had been giving a
piece of rather more than usual excellence and difficulty, one of the
sailors, deputed by his mates, came aft, with many clumsy shows of
deference, and asked them to give Marching through Georgia. Hicks
found this out of his repertory, but Lydia sang it. Then the group
at the forecastle shouted with one voice for Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,
the Boys are Marching, and so beguiled her through the whole list
of war-songs. She ended with one unknown to her listeners, but better
than all the rest in its pathetic words and music, and when she had
sung The Flag's come back to Tennessee, the spokesman of the sailors
came aft again, to thank her for his mates, and to say they would not
spoil that last song by asking for anything else. It was a charming
little triumph for her, as she sat surrounded by her usual court: the
captain was there to countenance the freedom the sailors had taken,
and Dunham and Staniford stood near, but Hicks, at her right hand,
held the place of honor.

The next night Staniford found her alone in the waist of the ship,
and drew up a stool beside the rail where she sat.

"We all enjoyed your singing so much, last night, Miss Blood. I think
Mr. Hicks plays charmingly, but I believe I prefer to hear your voice
alone."

"Thank you," said Lydia, looking down, demurely.

"It must be a great satisfaction to feel that you can give so much
pleasure."

"I don't know," she said, passing the palm of one hand over the back
of the other.

"When you are a _prima donna_ you mustn't forget your old friends
of the Aroostook. We shall all take vast pride in you."

It was not a question, and Lydia answered nothing. Staniford, who
had rather obliged himself to this advance, with some dim purpose of
showing that nothing had occurred to alienate them since the evening,
of their promenade, without having proved to himself that it was
necessary to do this, felt that he was growing angry. It irritated him
to have her sit as unmoved after his words as if he had not spoken.

"Miss Blood," he said, "I envy you your gift of snubbing people."

Lydia looked at him. "Snubbing people?" she echoed.

"Yes; your power of remaining silent when you wish to put down some
one who has been wittingly or unwittingly impertinent."

"I don't know what you mean," she said, in a sort of breathless way.

"And you didn't intend to mark your displeasure at my planning your
future?"

"No! We had talked of that. I--"

"And you were not vexed with me for anything? I have been afraid that
I--that you--" Staniford found that he was himself getting short of
breath. He had begun with the intention of mystifying her, but matters
had suddenly taken another course, and he was really anxious to know
whether any disagreeable associations with that night lingered in
her mind. With this longing came a natural inability to find the
right word. "I was afraid--" he repeated, and then he stopped again.
Clearly, he could not tell her that he was afraid he had gone too far;
but this was what he meant. "You don't walk with me, any more, Miss
Blood," he concluded, with an air of burlesque reproach.

"You haven't asked me--since," she said.

He felt a singular value and significance in this word, since. It
showed that her thoughts had been running parallel with his own; it
permitted, if it did not signify, that he should resume the mood of
that time, where their parting had interrupted it. He enjoyed the fact
to the utmost, but he was not sure that he wished to do what he was
permitted. "Then I didn't tire you?" he merely asked. He was not sure,
now he came to think of it, that he liked her willingness to recur to
that time. He liked it, but not quite in the way he would have liked
to like it.

"No," she said.

"The fact is," he went on aimlessly, "that I thought I had rather
abused your kindness. Besides," he added, veering off, "I was afraid
I should be an interruption to the musical exercises."

"Oh, no," said Lydia. "Mr. Dunham hasn't arranged anything yet."
Staniford thought this uncandid. It was fighting shy of Hicks, who
was the person in his own mind; and it reawakened a suspicion which
was lurking there. "Mr. Dunham seems to have lost his interest."

This struck Staniford as an expression of pique; it reawakened quite
another suspicion. It was evident that she was hurt at the cessation
of Dunham's attentions. He was greatly minded to say that Dunham was
a fool, but he ended by saying, with sarcasm, "I suppose he saw that
he was superseded."

"Mr. Hicks plays well," said Lydia, judicially, "but he doesn't really
know so much of music as Mr. Dunham."

"No?" responded Staniford, with irony. "I will tell Dunham. No doubt
he's been suffering the pangs of professional jealousy. That must be
the reason why he keeps away."

"Keeps away?" asked Lydia.

"_Now_ I've made an ass of myself!" thought Staniford. "You said
that he seemed to have lost his interest," he answered her.

"Oh! Yes!" assented Lydia. And then she remained rather distraught,
pulling at the ruffling of her dress.

"Dunham is a very accomplished man," said Staniford, finding the usual
satisfaction in pressing his breast against the thorn. "He's a great
favorite in society. He's up to no end of things." Staniford uttered
these praises in a curiously bitter tone. "He's a capital talker.
Don't you think he talks well?"

"I don't know; I suppose I haven't seen enough people to be a good
judge."

"Well, you've seen enough people to know that he's very good
looking?"

"Yes?"

"You don't mean to say you don't think him good looking?"

"No,--oh, no, I mean--that is--I don't know anything about his looks.
But he resembles a lady who used to come from Boston, summers. I
thought he must be her brother."

"Oh, then you think he looks effeminate!" cried Staniford, with inner
joy. "I assure you," he added with solemnity, "Dunham is one of the
manliest fellows in the world!"

"Yes?" said Lydia.

Staniford rose. He was smiling gayly as he looked over the broad
stretch of empty deck, and down into Lydia's eyes. "Wouldn't you like
to take a turn, now?"

"Yes," she said promptly, rising and arranging her wrap across her
shoulders, so as to leave her hands free. She laid one hand in his arm
and gathered her skirt with the other, and they swept round together
for the start and confronted Hicks.

"Oh!" cried Lydia, with what seemed dismay, "I promised Mr. Hicks to
practice a song with him." She did not try to release her hand from
Staniford's arm, but was letting it linger there irresolutely.

Staniford dropped his arm, and let her hand fall. He bowed with icy
stiffness, and said, with a courtesy so fierce that Mr. Hicks, on whom
he glared as he spoke, quailed before it, "I yield to your prior
engagement."

XIV.

It was nothing to Staniford that she should have promised Hicks to
practice a song with him, and no process of reasoning could have made
it otherwise. The imaginary opponent with whom he scornfully argued
the matter had not a word for himself. Neither could the young girl
answer anything to the cutting speeches which he mentally made her
as he sat alone chewing the end of his cigar; and he was not moved
by the imploring looks which his fancy painted in her face, when he
made believe that she had meekly returned to offer him some sort of
reparation. Why should she excuse herself? he asked. It was he who
ought to excuse himself for having been in the way. The dialogue went
on at length, with every advantage to the inventor.

He was finally aware of some one standing near and looking down at
him. It was the second mate, who supported himself in a conversational
posture by the hand which he stretched to the shrouds above their
heads. "Are you a good sailor, Mr. Staniford?" he inquired. He and
Staniford were friends in their way, and had talked together before
this.

"Do you mean seasickness? Why?" Staniford looked up at the
mate's face.

"Well, we're going to get it, I guess, before long. We shall soon
be off the Spanish coast. We've had a great run so far."

"If it comes we must stand it. But I make it a rule never to be
seasick beforehand."

"Well, I ain't one to borrow trouble, either. It don't run in the
family. Most of us like to chance things, I chanced it for the whole
war, and I come out all right. Sometimes it don't work so well."

"Ah?" said Staniford, who knew that this was a leading remark, but
forbore, as he knew Mason wished, to follow it up directly.

"One of us chanced it once too often, and of course it was a woman."

"The risk?"

"Not the risk. My oldest sister tried tamin' a tiger. Ninety-nine
times out of a hundred, a tiger won't tame worth a cent. But her pet
was such a lamb most the while that she guessed she'd chance it.
It didn't work. She's at home with mother now,--three children, of
course,--and he's in hell, I s'pose. He was killed 'long-side o' me
at Gettysburg. Ike was a good fellow when he was sober. But my souls,
the life he led that poor girl! Yes, when a man's got that tiger in
him, there ought to be some quiet little war round for puttin' him out
of his misery." Staniford listened silently, waiting for the mate to
make the application of his grim allegory. "I s'pose I'm prejudiced;
but I do _hate_ a drunkard; and when I see one of 'em makin' up
to a girl, I want to go to her, and tell her she'd better take a real
tiger out the show, at once."

The idea which these words suggested sent a thrill to Staniford's
heart, but he continued silent, and the mate went on, with the queer
smile, which could be inferred rather than seen, working under his
mustache and the humorous twinkle of his eyes evanescently evident
under his cap peak.

"I don't go round criticisn' my superior officers, and _I_ don't
say anything about the responsibility the old man took. The old man's
all right, accordin' to his lights; he ain't had a tiger in the
family. But if that chap was to fall overboard,--well, I don't know
_how_ long it would take to lower a boat, if I was to listen to
my _conscience_. There ain't really any help for him. He's begun
too young ever to get over it. He won't be ashore at Try-East an hour
before he's drunk. If our men had any spirits amongst 'em that could
be begged, bought, or borrowed, he'd be drunk now, right along. Well,
I'm off watch," said the mate, at the tap of bells. "Guess we'll get
our little gale pretty soon."

"Good-night," said Staniford, who remained pondering. He presently
rose, and walked up and down the deck. He could hear Lydia and Hicks
trying that song: now the voice, and now the flute; then both
together; and presently a burst of laughter. He began to be angry with
her ignorance and inexperience. It became intolerable to him that a
woman should be going about with no more knowledge of the world than
a child, and entangling herself in relations with all sorts of people.
It was shocking to think of that little sot, who had now made his
infirmity known for all the ship's company, admitted to association
with her which looked to common eyes like courtship. From the mate's
insinuation that she ought to be warned, it was evident that they
thought her interested in Hicks; and the mate had come, like Dunham,
to leave the responsibility with Staniford. It only wanted now that
Captain Jenness should appear with his appeal, direct or indirect.

While Staniford walked up and down, and scorned and raged at the idea
that he had anything to do with the matter, the singing and fluting
came to a pause in the cabin; and at the end of the next tune, which
brought him to the head of the gangway stairs, he met Lydia emerging.
He stopped and spoke to her, having instantly resolved, at sight of
her, not to do so.

"Have you come up for breath, like a mermaid?" he asked. "Not that
I'm sure mermaids do."

"Oh, no," said Lydia. "I think I dropped my handkerchief where we
were sitting."

Staniford suspected, with a sudden return to a theory of her which
he had already entertained, that she had not done so. But she went
lightly by him, where he stood stolid, and picked it up; and now he
suspected that she had dropped it there on purpose.

"You have come back to walk with me?"

"No!" said the girl indignantly. "I have not come back to walk with
you!" She waited a moment; then she burst out with, "How dare you say
such a thing to me? What right have you to speak to me so? What have
I done to make you think that I would come back to--"

The fierce vibration in her voice made him know that her eyes were
burning upon him and her lips trembling. He shrank before her passion
as a man must before the justly provoked wrath of a woman, or even of
a small girl.

"I stated a hope, not a fact," he said in meek uncandor. "Don't you
think you ought to have done so?"

"I don't--I don't understand you," panted Lydia, confusedly arresting
her bolts in mid-course.

Staniford pursued his guilty advantage; it was his only chance. "I
gave way to Mr. Hicks when you had an engagement with me. I thought--
you would come back to keep your engagement." He was still very meek.

"Excuse me," she said with self-reproach that would have melted the
heart of any one but a man who was in the wrong, and was trying to
get out of it at all hazards. "I didn't know what you meant--I--"

"If I had meant what you thought," interrupted Staniford nobly, for
he could now afford to be generous, "I should have deserved much more
than you said. But I hope you won't punish my awkwardness by refusing
to walk with me."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17