The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells

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"Yes," Staniford assented vaguely; "that's the great object."

After a while Dunham asked, "She's never said anything to you about
your rescuing Hicks?"

"Rescuing? What rescuing? They'd have had him out in another minute,
any way," said Staniford, fretfully. Then he brooded angrily upon the
subject: "But I can tell you what: considering all the circumstances,
she might very well have said something. It looks obtuse, or it looks
hard. She must have known that it all came about through my trying to
keep him away from her."

"Oh, yes; she knew that," said Dunham; "she spoke of it at the time.
But I thought--"

"Oh, she did! Then I think that it would be very little if she
recognized the mere fact that something had happened."

"Why, you said you hoped she wouldn't. You said it would be
embarrassing. You're hard to please, Staniford."

"I shouldn't choose to have her speak for _my_ pleasure,"
Staniford returned. "But it argues a dullness and coldness in her--"

"I don't believe she's dull; I don't believe she's cold," said
Dunham, warmly.

"What _do_ you believe she is?"

"Afraid."

"Pshaw!" said Staniford.

The eve of their arrival at Messina, he discharged one more duty
by telling Hicks that he had better come on to Trieste with them.
"Captain Jenness asked me to speak to you about it," he said. "He
feels a little awkward, and thought I could open the matter better."

"The captain's all right," answered Hicks, with unruffled humility,
"but I'd rather stop at Messina. I'm going to get home as soon as
I can,--strike a bee-line."

"Look here!" said Staniford, laying his hand on his shoulder. "How
are you going to manage for money?"

"Monte di Pietà," replied Hicks. "I've been there before. Used to
have most of my things in the care of the state when I was studying
medicine in Paris. I've got a lot of rings and trinkets that'll
carry me through, with what's left of my watch."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

"Because you can draw on me, if you're going to be short."

"Thanks," said Hicks. "There's something I should like to ask you,"
he added, after a moment. "I see as well as you do that Miss Blood
isn't the same as she was before. I want to know--I can't always be
sure afterwards--whether I did or said anything out of the way in
her presence."

"You were drunk," said Staniford, frankly, "but beyond that you were
irreproachable, as regarded Miss Blood. You were even exemplary."

"Yes, I know," said Hicks, with a joyless laugh. "Sometimes it takes
that turn. I don't think I could stand it if I had shown her any
disrespect. She's a lady,--a perfect lady; she's the best girl
I ever saw."

"Hicks," said Staniford, presently, "I haven't bored you in regard to
that little foible of yours. Aren't you going to try to do something
about it?"

"I'm going home to get them to shut me up somewhere," answered Hicks.
"But I doubt if anything can be done. I've studied the thing; I am
a doctor,--or I would be if I were not a drunkard,--and I've diagnosed
the case pretty thoroughly. For three months or four months, now, I
shall be all right. After that I shall go to the bad for a few weeks;
and I'll have to scramble back the best way I can. Nobody can help
me. That was the mistake this last time. I shouldn't have wanted
anything at Gibraltar if I could have had my spree out at Boston. But
I let them take me before it was over, and ship me off. I thought I'd
try it. Well, it was like a burning fire every minute, all the way.
I thought I should die. I tried to get something from the sailors;
I tried to steal Gabriel's cooking-wine. When I got that brandy
in Gibraltar I was wild. Talk about heroism! I tell you it was
superhuman, keeping that canteen corked till night! I was in hopes
I could get through it,--sleep it off,--and nobody be any the wiser.
But it wouldn't work. O Lord, Lord, Lord!"

Hicks was as common a soul as could well be. His conception of life
was vulgar, and his experience of it was probably vulgar. He had a
good mind enough, with abundance of that humorous brightness which
may hereafter be found the most national quality of the Americans; but
his ideals were pitiful, and the language of his heart was a drolling
slang. Yet his doom lifted him above his low conditions, and made him
tragic; his despair gave him the dignity of a mysterious expiation,
and set him apart with all those who suffer beyond human help. Without
deceiving himself as to the quality of the man, Staniford felt awed
by the darkness of his fate.

"Can't you try somehow to stand up against it, and fight it off?
You're so young yet, it can't--"

The wretched creature burst into tears. "Oh, try,--try! You don't know
what you're talking about. Don't you suppose I've had reasons for
trying? If you could see how my mother looks when I come out of one
of my drunks,--and my father, poor old man! It's no use; I tell you
it's no use. I shall go just so long, and then I shall want it, and
_will_ have it, unless they shut me up for life. My God, I wish
I was dead! Well!" He rose from the place where they had been sitting
together, and held out his hand to Staniford. "I'm going to be off in
the morning before you're out, and I'll say good-by now. I want you
to keep this chair, and give it to Miss Blood, for me, when you get
to Trieste."

"I will, Hicks," said Staniford, gently.

"I want her to know that I was ashamed of myself. I think she'll
like to know it."

"I will say anything to her that you wish," replied Staniford.

"There's nothing else. If ever you see a man with my complaint fall
overboard again, think twice before you jump after him."

He wrung Staniford's hand, and went below, leaving him with a dull
remorse that he should ever have hated Hicks, and that he could not
quite like him even now.

But he did his duty by him to the last. He rose at dawn, and was on
deck when Hicks went over the side into the boat which was to row him
to the steamer for Naples, lying at anchor not far off. He presently
returned, to Staniford's surprise, and scrambled up to the deck of
the Aroostook. "The steamer sails to-night," he said, "and perhaps
I couldn't raise the money by that time. I wish you'd lend me ten
napoleons. I'll send 'em to you from London. There's my father's
address: I'm going to telegraph to him." He handed Staniford a card,
and the latter went below for the coins. "Thanks," said Hicks, when
he reappeared with them. "Send 'em to you where?"

"Care Blumenthals', Venice. I'm going to be there some weeks."

In the gray morning light the lurid color of tragedy had faded out of
Hicks. He was merely a baddish-looking young fellow whom Staniford had
lent ten napoleons that he might not see again. Staniford watched the
steamer uneasily, both from the Aroostook and from the shore, where he
strolled languidly about with Dunham part of the day. When she sailed
in the evening, he felt that Hicks's absence was worth twice the
money.

XVIII.

The young men did not come back to the ship at night, but went to a
hotel, for the greater convenience of seeing the city. They had talked
of offering to show Lydia about, but their talk had not ended in
anything. Vexed with himself to be vexed at such a thing, Staniford at
the bottom of his heart still had a soreness which the constant sight
of her irritated. It was in vain that he said there was no occasion,
perhaps no opportunity, for her to speak, yet he was hurt that she
seemed to have seen nothing uncommon in his risking his own life for
that of a man like Hicks. He had set the action low enough in his
own speech; but he knew that it was not ignoble, and it puzzled him
that it should be so passed over. She had not even said a word of
congratulation upon his own escape. It might be that she did not know
how, or did not think it was her place to speak. She was curiously
estranged. He felt as if he had been away, and she had grown from a
young girl into womanhood during his absence. This fantastic conceit
was strongest when he met her with Captain Jenness one day. He had
found friends at the hotel, as one always does in Italy, if one's
world is at all wide,--some young ladies, and a lady, now married,
with whom he had once violently flirted. She was willing that he
should envy her husband; that amused him in his embittered mood; he
let her drive him about; and they met Lydia and the captain, walking
together. Staniford started up from his lounging ease, as if her
limpid gaze had searched his conscience, and bowed with an air
which did not escape his companion.

"Ah! Who's that?" she asked, with the boldness which she made pass
for eccentricity.

"A lady of my acquaintance," said Staniford, at his laziest again.

"A lady?" said the other, with an inflection that she saw hurt.
"Why the marine animal, then? She bowed very prettily; she blushed
prettily, too."

"She's a very pretty girl," replied Staniford.

"Charming! But why blush?"

"I've heard that there are ladies who blush for nothing."

"Is she Italian?"

"Yes,--in voice."

"Oh, an American _prima donna_!" Staniford did not answer.
"Who is she? Where is she from?"

"South Bradfield, Mass." Staniford's eyes twinkled at her pursuit,
which he did not trouble himself to turn aside, but baffled by mere
impenetrability.

The party at the hotel suggested that the young men should leave their
ship and go on with them to Naples; Dunham was tempted, for he could
have reached Dresden sooner by land; but Staniford overruled him, and
at the end of four days they went back to the Aroostook. They said it
was like getting home, but in fact they felt the change from the airy
heights and breadths of the hotel to the small cabin and the closets
in which they slept; it was not so great alleviation as Captain
Jenness seemed to think that one of them could now have Hicks's
stateroom. But Dunham took everything sweetly, as his habit was; and,
after all, they were meeting their hardships voluntarily. Some of the
ladies came with them in the boat which rowed them to the Aroostook;
the name made them laugh; that lady who wished Staniford to regret
her waved him her hand kerchief as the boat rowed away again. She had
with difficulty been kept from coming on board by the refusal of the
others to come with her. She had contrived to associate herself with
him again in the minds of the others, and this, perhaps, was all that
she desired. But the sense of her frivolity--her not so much vacant-
mindedness as vacant-heartedness--was like a stain, and he painted
in Lydia's face when they first met the reproach which was in his
own breast.

Her greeting, however, was frank and cordial; it was a real welcome.
Staniford wondered if it were not more frank and cordial than he quite
liked, and whether she was merely relieved by Hicks's absence, or had
freed herself from that certain subjection in which she had hitherto
been to himself.

Yet it was charming to see her again as she had been in the happiest
moments of the past, and to feel that, Hicks being out of her world,
her trust of everybody in it was perfect once more. She treated that
interval of coldness and diffidence as all women know how to treat a
thing which they wish not to have been; and Staniford, a man on whom
no pleasing art of her sex was ever lost, admired and gratefully
accepted the effect of this. He fell luxuriously into the old habits
again. They had still almost the time of a steamer's voyage to Europe
before them; it was as if they were newly setting sail from America.
The first night after they left Messina Staniford found her in her
place in the waist of the ship, and sat down beside her there, and
talked; the next night she did not come; the third she came, and he
asked her to walk with him. The elastic touch of her hand on his arm,
the rhythmic movement of her steps beside him, were things that seemed
always to have been. She told him of what she had seen and done in
Messina. This glimpse of Italy had vividly animated her; she had
apparently found a world within herself as well as without.

With a suddenly depressing sense of loss, Staniford had a prevision
of splendor in her, when she should have wholly blossomed out in that
fervid air of art and beauty; he would fain have kept her still a
wilding rosebud of the New England wayside. He hated the officers who
should wonder at her when she first came into the Square of St. Mark
with her aunt and uncle.

Her talk about Messina went on; he was thinking of her, and not of her
talk; but he saw that she was not going to refer to their encounter.
"You make me jealous of the objects of interest in Messina," he said.
"You seem to remember seeing everything but me, there."

She stopped abruptly. "Yes," she said, after a deep breath, "I saw you
there;" and she did not offer to go on again.

"Where were you going, that morning?"

"Oh, to the cathedral. Captain Jenness left me there, and I looked
all through it till he came back from the consulate."

"Left you there alone!" cried Staniford.

"Yes; I told him I should not feel lonely, and I should not stir
out of it till he came back. I took one of those little pine chairs
and sat down, when I got tired, and looked at the people coming to
worship, and the strangers with their guide-books."

"Did any of them look at you?"

"They stared a good deal. It seems to be the custom in Europe; but
I told Captain Jenness I should probably have to go about by myself
in Venice, as my aunt's an invalid, and I had better get used to it."

She paused, and seemed to be referring the point to Staniford.

"Yes,--oh, yes," he said.

"Captain Jenness said it was their way, over here," she resumed;
"but he guessed I had as much right in a church as anybody."

"The captain's common sense is infallible," answered Staniford. He
was ashamed to know that the beautiful young girl was as improperly
alone in church as she would have been in a café, and he began to
hate the European world for the fact. It seemed better to him that the
Aroostook should put about and sail back to Boston with her, as she
was,--better that she should be going to her aunt in South Bradfield
than to her aunt in Venice. "We shall soon be at our journey's end,
now," he said, after a while.

"Yes; the captain thinks in about eight days, if we have good
weather."

"Shall you be sorry?"

"Oh, I like the sea very well."

"But the new life you are coming to,--doesn't that alarm you
sometimes?"

"Yes, it does," she admitted, with a kind of reluctance.

"So much that you would like to turn back from it?"

"Oh, no!" she answered quickly. Of course not, Staniford thought;
nothing could be worse than going back to South Bradfield. "I keep
thinking about it," she added. "You say Venice is such a very strange
place. Is it any use my having seen Messina?"

"Oh, all Italian cities have something in common."

"I presume," she went on, "that after I get there everything will
become natural. But I don't like to look forward. It--scares me.
I can't form any idea of it."

"You needn't be afraid," said Staniford. "It's only more beautiful
than anything you can imagine."

"Yes--yes; I know," Lydia answered.

"And do you really dread getting there?"

"Yes, I dread it," she said.

"Why," returned Staniford lightly, "so do I; but it's for a different
reason, I'm afraid. I should like such a voyage as this to go on
forever. Now and then I think it will; it seems always to have gone
on. Can you remember when it began?"

"A great while ago," she answered, humoring his fantasy, "but I can
remember." She paused a long while. "I don't know," she said at last,
"whether I can make you understand just how I feel. But it seems to me
as if I had died, and this long voyage was a kind of dream that I was
going to wake up from in another world. I often used to think, when
I was a little girl, that when I got to heaven it would be lonesome--I
don't know whether I can express it. You say that Italy--that Venice
--is so beautiful; but if I don't know any one there--" She stopped,
as if she had gone too far.

"But you do know somebody there," said Staniford. "Your aunt--"

"Yes," said the girl, and looked away.

"But the people in this long dream,--you're going to let some of them
appear to you there," he suggested.

"Oh, yes," she said, reflecting his lighter humor, "I shall want to
see them, or I shall not know I am the same person, and I must be sure
of myself, at least."

"And you wouldn't like to go back to earth--to South Bradfield
again?" he asked presently.

"No," she answered. "All that seems over forever. I couldn't go back
there and be what I was. I could have stayed there, but I couldn't
go back."

Staniford laughed. "I see that it isn't the other world that's got
hold of you! It's _this_ world! I don't believe you'll be unhappy
in Italy. But it's pleasant to think you've been so contented on the
Aroostook that you hate to leave it. I don't believe there's a man
on the ship that wouldn't feel personally flattered to know that you
liked being here. Even that poor fellow who parted from us at Messina
was anxious that you should think as kindly of him as you could. He
knew that he had behaved in a way to shock you, and he was very sorry.
He left a message with me for you. He thought you would like to know
that he was ashamed of himself."

"I pitied him," said Lydia succinctly. It was the first time that she
had referred to Hicks, and Staniford found it in character for her
to limit herself to this sparse comment. Evidently, her compassion
was a religious duty. Staniford's generosity came easy to him.

"I feel bound to say that Hicks was not a bad fellow. I disliked him
immensely, and I ought to do him justice, now he's gone. He deserved
all your pity. He's a doomed man; his vice is irreparable; he can't
resist it." Lydia did not say anything: women do not generalize in
these matters; perhaps they cannot pity the faults of those they do
not love. Staniford only forgave Hicks the more. "I can't say that up
to the last moment I thought him anything but a poor, common little
creature; and yet I certainly did feel a greater kindness for him
after--what I--after what had happened. He left something more than
a message for you, Miss Blood; he left his steamer chair yonder,
for you."

"For me?" demanded Lydia. Staniford felt her thrill and grow rigid
upon his arm, with refusal. "I will not have it. He had no right
to do so. He--he--was dreadful! I will give it to you!" she said,
suddenly. "He ought to have given it to you. You did everything
for him; you saved his life."

It was clear that she did not sentimentalize Hicks's case; and
Staniford had some doubt as to the value she set upon what he had
done, even now she had recognized it.

He said, "I think you overestimate my service to him, possibly.
I dare say the boat could have picked him up in good time."

"Yes, that's what the captain and Mr. Watterson and Mr. Mason all
said," assented Lydia.

Staniford was nettled. He would have preferred a devoted belief that
but for him Hicks must have perished. Besides, what she said still
gave no clew to her feeling in regard to himself. He was obliged to
go on, but he went on as indifferently as he could. "However, it was
hardly a question for me at the time whether he could have been got
out without my help. If I had thought about it at all--which I
didn't--I suppose I should have thought that it wouldn't do to
take any chances."

"Oh, no," said Lydia, simply, "you couldn't have done anything less
than you did."

In his heart Staniford had often thought that he could have done very
much less than jump overboard after Hicks, and could very properly
have left him to the ordinary life-saving apparatus of the ship. But
if he had been putting the matter to some lady in society who was
aggressively praising him for his action, he would have said just what
Lydia had said for him,--that he could not have done anything less.
He might have said it, however, in such a way that the lady would
have pursued his retreat from her praises with still fonder applause;
whereas this girl seemed to think there was nothing else to be said.
He began to stand in awe of her heroic simplicity. If she drew
every-day breath in that lofty air, what could she really think of
him, who preferred on principle the atmosphere of the valley? "Do
you know, Miss Blood," he said gravely, "that you pay me a very high
compliment?"

"How?" she asked.

"You rate my maximum as my mean temperature." He felt that she
listened inquiringly. "I don't think I'm habitually up to a thing
of that kind," he explained.

"Oh, no," she assented, quietly; "but when he struck at you so,
you had to do everything."

"Ah, you have the pitiless Puritan conscience that takes the life
out of us all!" cried Staniford, with sudden bitterness. Lydia seemed
startled, shocked, and her hand trembled on his arm, as if she had a
mind to take it away. "I was a long time laboring up to that point.
I suppose you are always there!"

"I don't understand," she said, turning her head round with the slow
motion of her beauty, and looking him full in the face.

"I can't explain now. I will, by and by,--when we get to Venice,"
he added, with quick lightness.

"You put off everything till we get to Venice," she said,
doubtfully.

"I beg your pardon. It was you who did it the last time."

"Was it?" She laughed. "So it was! I was thinking it was you."

It consoled him a little that she should have confused them in her
thought, in this way. "What was it you were to tell me in Venice?"
he asked.

"I can't think, now."

"Very likely something of yourself--or myself. A third person might
say our conversational range was limited."

"Do you think it is very egotistical?" she asked, in the gay tone
which gave him relief from the sense of oppressive elevation of mind
in her.

"It is in me,--not in you."

"But I don't see the difference."

"I will explain sometime,"

"When we get to Venice?"

They both laughed. It was very nonsensical; but nonsense is sometimes
enough.

When they were serious again, "Tell me," he said, "what you thought
of that lady in Messina, the other day."

She did not affect not to know whom he meant. She merely said,
"I only saw her a moment."

"But you thought something. If we only see people a second we form
some opinion of them."

"She is very fine-appearing," said Lydia.

Staniford smiled at the countrified phrase; he had observed that when
she spoke her mind she used an instinctive good language; when she
would not speak it, she fell into the phraseology of the people with
whom she had lived. "I see you don't wish to say, because you think
she is a friend of mine. But you can speak out freely. We were not
friends; we were enemies, if anything."

Staniford's meaning was clear enough to himself; but Lydia paused,
as if in doubt whether he was jesting or not, before she asked,
"Why were you riding with her then?"

"I was driving with her," he replied, "I suppose, because she
asked me."

"_Asked_ you!" cried the girl; and he perceived her moral recoil
both from himself and from a woman who could be so unseemly. That
lady would have found it delicious if she could have known that a girl
placed like Lydia was shocked at her behavior. But he was not amused.
He was touched by the simple self-respect that would not let her
suffer from what was not wrong in itself, but that made her shrink
from a voluntary semblance of unwomanliness. It endeared her not
only to his pity, but to that sense which in every man consecrates
womanhood, and waits for some woman to be better than all her sex.
Again he felt the pang he had remotely known before. What would she
do with these ideals of hers in that depraved Old World,--so long past
trouble for its sins as to have got a sort of sweetness and innocence
in them,--where her facts would be utterly irreconcilable with her
ideals, and equally incomprehensible?

They walked up and down a few turns without speaking again of that
lady. He knew that she grew momently more constrained toward him; that
the pleasure of the time was spoiled for her; that she had lost her
trust in him, and this half amused, half afflicted him. It did not
surprise him when, at their third approach to the cabin gangway, she
withdrew her hand from his arm and said, stiffly, "I think I will go
down." But she did not go at once. She lingered, and after a certain
hesitation she said, without looking at him, "I didn't express what
I wanted to, about Mr. Hicks, and--what you did. It is what I thought
you would do."

"Thanks," said Staniford, with sincere humility. He understood how
she had had this in her mind, and how she would not withhold justice
from him because he had fallen in her esteem; how rather she would
be the more resolute to do him justice for that reason.

XIX.

He could see that she avoided being alone with him the next day, but
he took it for a sign of relenting, perhaps helpless relenting, that
she was in her usual place on deck in the evening. He went to her,
and, "I see that you haven't forgiven me," he said.

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