The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells

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"Forgiven you?" she echoed.

"Yes," he said, "for letting that lady ask me to drive with her."

"I never said--" she began.

"Oh, no! But I knew it, all the same. It was not such a very wicked
thing, as those things go. But I liked your not liking it. Will you
let me say something to you?"

"Yes," she answered, rather breathlessly.

"You must think it's rather an odd thing to say, as I ask leave.
It is; and I hardly know how to say it. I want to tell you that I've
made bold to depend a great deal upon your good opinion for my peace
of mind, of late, and that I can't well do without it now."

She stole the quickest of her bird-like glances at him, but did
not speak; and though she seemed, to his anxious fancy, poising
for flight, she remained, and merely looked away, like the bird
that will not or cannot fly.

"You don't resent my making you my outer conscience, do you, and
my knowing that you're not quite pleased with me?"

She looked down and away with one of those turns of the head, so
precious when one who beholds them is young, and caught at the
fringe of her shawl. "I have no right," she began.

"Oh, I give you the right!" he cried, with passionate urgence. "You
have the right. Judge me!" She only looked more grave, and he hurried
on. "It was no great harm of her to ask me; that's common enough; but
it was harm of me to go if I didn't quite respect her,--if I thought
her silly, and was willing to be amused with her. One hasn't any
right to do that. I saw this when I saw you." She still hung her head,
and looked away. "I want you to tell me something," he pursued. "Do
you remember once--the second time we talked together--that you said
Dunham was in earnest, and you wouldn't answer when I asked you about
myself? Do you remember?"

"Yes," said the girl.

"I didn't care, then. I care very much now. You don't think me--you
think I can be in earnest when I will, don't you? And that I can
regret--that I really wish--" He took the hand that played with the
shawl-fringe, but she softly drew it away.

"Ah, I see!" he said. "You can't believe in me. You don't believe
that I can be a good man--like Dunham!"

She answered in the same breathless murmur, "I think you are good."
Her averted face drooped lower.

"I will tell you all about it, some day!" he cried, with joyful
vehemence. "Will you let me?"

"Yes," she answered, with the swift expulsion of breath that sometimes
comes with tears. She rose quickly and turned away. He did not try to
keep her from leaving him. His heart beat tumultuously; his brain
seemed in a whirl. It all meant nothing, or it meant everything.

"What is the matter with Miss Blood?" asked Dunham, who joined him at
this moment. "I just spoke to her at the foot of the gangway stairs,
and she wouldn't answer me."

"Oh, I don't know about Miss Blood--I don't know what's the matter,"
said Staniford. "Look here, Dunham; I want to talk with you--I want
to tell you something--I want you to advise me--I--There's only one
thing that can explain it, that can excuse it. There's only one thing
that can justify all that I've done and said, and that can not only
justify it, but can make it sacredly and eternally right,--right for
her and right for me. Yes, it's reason for all, and for a thousand
times more. It makes it fair for me to have let her see that I thought
her beautiful and charming, that I delighted to be with her, that
I--Dunham," cried Staniford, "I'm in love!"

Dunham started at the burst in which these ravings ended. "Staniford,"
he faltered, with grave regret, "I _hope_ not!"

"You hope not? You--you--What do you mean? How else can I free myself
from the self-reproach of having trifled with her, of--"

Dunham shook his head compassionately. "You can't do it that way.
Your only safety is to fight it to the death,--to run from it."

"But if I don't _choose_ to fight it?" shouted Staniford,--"if
I don't _choose_ to run from it? If I--"

"For Heaven's sake, hush! The whole ship will hear you, and you
oughtn't to breathe it in the desert. I saw how it was going! I
dreaded it; I knew it; and I longed to speak. I'm to blame for not
speaking!"

"I should like to know what would have authorized you to speak?"
demanded Staniford, haughtily.

"Only my regard for you; only what urges me to speak now! You
_must_ fight it, Staniford, whether you choose or not. Think of
yourself,--think of her! Think--you have always been my ideal of honor
and truth and loyalty--think of her husband--"

"Her husband!" gasped Staniford. "Whose husband? What the deuce--
_who_ the deuce--are you talking about, Dunham?"

"Mrs. Rivers."

"Mrs. Rivers? That flimsy, feather-headed, empty-hearted--eyes-maker!
That frivolous, ridiculous--Pah! And did you think that I was talking
of _her_? Did you think I was in love with _her_?"

"Why," stammered Dunham, "I supposed--I thought--At Messina, you
know--"

"Oh!" Staniford walked the deck's length away. "Well, Dunham," he
said, as he came back, "you've spoilt a pretty scene with your rot
about Mrs. Rivers. I was going to be romantic! But perhaps I'd better
say in ordinary newspaper English that I've just found out that I'm
in love with Miss Blood."

"With _her_!" cried Dunham, springing at his hand.

"Oh, come now! Don't _you_ be romantic, after knocking
_my_ chance."

"Why, but Staniford!" said Dunham, wringing his hand with a lover's
joy in another's love and his relief that it was not Mrs. Rivers.
"I never should have dreamt of such a thing!"

"Why?" asked Staniford, shortly.

"Oh, the way you talked at first, you know, and--"

"I suppose even people who get married have something to take back
about each other," said Staniford, rather sheepishly. "However,"
he added, with an impulse of frankness, "I don't know that I should
have dreamt of it myself, and I don't blame you. But it's a fact,
nevertheless."

"Why, of course. It's splendid! Certainly. It's magnificent!" There
was undoubtedly a qualification, a reservation, in Dunham's tone. He
might have thought it right to bring the inequalities of the affair
to Staniford's mind. With all his effusive kindliness of heart and
manner, he had a keen sense of social fitness, a nice feeling for
convention. But a man does not easily suggest to another that the
girl with whom he has just declared himself in love is his inferior.
What Dunham finally did say was: "It jumps with all your ideas--all
your old talk about not caring to marry a society girl--"

"Society might be very glad of such a girl!" said Staniford,
stiffly.

"Yes, yes, certainly; but I mean--"

"Oh, I know what you mean. It's all right," said Staniford. "But it
isn't a question of marrying yet. I can't be sure she understood me,
--I've been so long understanding myself. And yet, she must, she must!
She must believe it by this time, or else that I'm the most infamous
scoundrel alive. When I think how I have sought her out, and followed
her up, and asked her judgment, and hung upon her words, I feel that
I oughtn't to lose a moment in being explicit. I don't care for
myself; she can take me or leave me, as she likes; but if she doesn't
understand, she mustn't be left in suspense as to my meaning." He
seemed to be speaking to Dunham, but he was really thinking aloud,
and Dunham waited for some sort of question before he spoke. "But it's
a great satisfaction to have had it out with myself. I haven't got
to pretend any more that I hang about her, and look at her, and go
mooning round after her, for this no-reason and that; I've got the
best reason in the world for playing the fool,--I'm in love!" He drew
a long, deep breath. "It simplifies matters immensely to have reached
the point of acknowledging that. Why, Dunham, those four days at
Messina almost killed me! They settled it. When that woman was in
full fascination it made me gasp. I choked for a breath of fresh air;
for a taste of spring-water; for--Lurella!" It was a long time since
Staniford had used this name, and the sound of it made him laugh.
"It's droll--but I always think of her as Lurella; I wish it _was_
her name! Why, it was like heaven to see her face when I got back to
the ship. After we met her that day at Messina, Mrs. Rivers tried her
best to get out of me who it was, and where I met her. But I flatter
myself that I was equal to _that_ emergency."

Dunham said nothing, at once. Then, "Staniford," he faltered, "she
got it out of me."

"Did you tell her who Lu--who Miss Blood was?"

"Yes."

"And how I happened to be acquainted with her?"

"Yes."

"And that we were going on to Trieste with her?"

"She had it out of me before I knew," said Dunham. "I didn't realize
what she was after; and I didn't realize how peculiar the situation
might seem--"

"I see nothing peculiar in the situation," interrupted Staniford,
haughtily. Then he laughed consciously. "Or, yes, I do; of course I
do! You must know _her_ to appreciate it, though." He mused a
while before he added: "No wonder Mrs. Rivers was determined to come
aboard! I wish we had let her,--confound her! She'll think I was
ashamed of it. There's nothing to be ashamed of! By Heaven, I should
like to hear any one--" Staniford broke off, and laughed, and then bit
his lip, smiling. Suddenly he burst out again, frowning: "I won't view
it in that light. I refuse to consider it from that point of view. As
far as I'm concerned, it's as regular as anything else in life. It's
the same to me as if she were in her own house, and I had come there
to tell her that she has my future in her hand. She's such a lady by
instinct that she's made it all a triumph, and I thank God that I
haven't done or said anything to mar it. Even that beast of a Hicks
didn't; it's no merit. I've made love to her,--I own it; of course
I have, because I was in love with her; and my fault has been that I
haven't made love to her openly, but have gone on fancying that I was
studying her character, or some rubbish of that sort. But the fault
is easily repaired." He turned about, as if he were going to look for
Lydia at once, and ask her to be his wife. But he halted abruptly,
and sat down. "No; that won't do," he said. "That won't do at all."
He remained thinking, and Dunham, unwilling to interrupt his reverie,
moved a few paces off. "Dunham, don't go. I want your advice. Perhaps
I don't see it in the right light."

"How is it you see it, my dear fellow?" asked Dunham.

"I don't know whether I've a right to be explicit with her, here. It
seems like taking an advantage. In a few days she will be with her
friends--"

"You must wait," said Dunham, decisively. "You can't speak to her
before she is in their care; it wouldn't be the thing. You're quite
right about that."

"No, it wouldn't be the thing," groaned Staniford. "But how is it all
to go on till then?" he demanded desperately.

"Why, just as it has before," answered Dunham, with easy confidence.

"But is that fair to her?"

"Why not? You mean to say to her at the right time all that a man can.
Till that time comes I haven't the least doubt she understands you."

"Do you think so?" asked Staniford, simply. He had suddenly grown very
subject and meek to Dunham.

"Yes," said the other, with the superiority of a betrothed lover;
"women are very quick about those things."

"I suppose you're right," sighed Staniford, with nothing of his wonted
arrogant pretension in regard to women's moods and minds, "I suppose
you're right. And you would go on just as before?"

"I would, indeed. How could you change without making her unhappy--if
she's interested in you?"

"That's true. I could imagine worse things than going on just as
before. I suppose," he added, "that something more explicit has its
charms; but a mutual understanding is very pleasant,--if it _is_
a mutual understanding." He looked inquiringly at Dunham.

"Why, as to that, of course I don't know. You ought to be the best
judge of that. But I don't believe your impressions would deceive
you."

"Yours did, once," suggested Staniford, in suspense.

"Yes; but I was not in love with her," explained Dunham.

"Of course," said Staniford, with a breath of relief. "And you think
--Well, I must wait!" he concluded, grimly. "But don't--don't mention
this matter, Dunham, unless I do. Don't keep an eye on me, old fellow.
Or, yes, you must! You can't help it. I want to tell you, Dunham, what
makes me think she may be a not wholly uninterested spectator of my
--sentiments." He made full statement of words and looks and tones.
Dunham listened with the patience which one lover has with another.

XX.

The few days that yet remained of their voyage were falling in the
latter half of September, and Staniford tried to make the young girl
see the surpassing loveliness of that season under Italian skies;
the fierceness of the summer is then past, and at night, when chiefly
they inspected the firmament, the heaven has begun to assume something
of the intense blue it wears in winter. She said yes, it was very
beautiful, but she could not see that the days were finer, or the
skies bluer, than those of September at home; and he laughed at her
loyalty to the American weather. "Don't _you_ think so, too?" she
asked, as if it pained her that he should like Italian weather better.

"Oh, yes,--yes," he said. Then he turned the talk on her, as he did
whenever he could. "I like your meteorological patriotism. If I were
a woman, I should stand by America in everything."

"Don't you as a man?" she pursued, still anxiously.

"Oh, certainly," he answered. "But women owe our continent a double
debt of fidelity. It's the Paradise of women, it's their Promised
Land, where they've been led up out of the Egyptian bondage of Europe.
It's the home of their freedom. It is recognized in America that women
have consciences and souls."

Lydia looked very grave. "Is it--is it so different with women in
Europe?" she faltered.

"Very," he replied, and glanced at her half-laughingly, half-tenderly.

After a while, "I wish you would tell me," she said, "just what you
mean. I wish you would tell me what is the difference."

"Oh, it's a long story. I will tell you--when we get to Venice."
The well-worn jest served its purpose again; she laughed, and he
continued: "By the way, just when will that be? The captain says
that if this wind holds we shall be in Trieste by Friday afternoon.
I suppose your friends will meet you there on Saturday, and that
you'll go back with them to Venice at once."

"Yes," assented Lydia.

"Well, if I should come on Monday, would that be too soon?"

"Oh, no!" she answered. He wondered if she had been vaguely hoping
that he might go directly on with her to Venice. They were together
all day, now, and the long talks went on from early morning, when they
met before breakfast on deck, until late at night, when they parted
there, with blushed and laughed good-nights. Sometimes the trust she
put upon his unspoken promises was terrible; it seemed to condemn
his reticence as fantastic and hazardous. With her, at least, it was
clear that this love was the first; her living and loving were one. He
longed to testify the devotion which he felt, to leave it unmistakable
and safe past accident; he thought of making his will, in which he
should give her everything, and declare her supremely dear; he could
only rid himself of this by drawing up the paper in writing, and then
he easily tore it in pieces.

They drew nearer together, not only in their talk about each other,
but in what they said of different people in their relation to
themselves. But Staniford's pleasure in the metaphysics of reciprocal
appreciation, his wonder at the quickness with which she divined
characters he painfully analyzed, was not greater than his joy in the
pretty hitch of the shoulder with which she tucked her handkerchief
into the back pocket of her sack, or the picturesqueness with, which
she sat facing him, and leant upon the rail, with her elbow wrapped
in her shawl, and the fringe gathered in the hand which propped her
cheek. He scribbled his sketch-book full of her contours and poses,
which sometimes he caught unawares, and which sometimes she sat for
him to draw. One day, as they sat occupied in this, "I wonder," he
said, "if you have anything of my feeling, nowadays. It seems to me
as if the world had gone on a pleasure excursion, without taking me
along, and I was enjoying myself very much at home."

"Why, yes," she said, joyously; "do you have that feeling, too?"

"I wonder what it is makes us feel so," he ventured.

"Perhaps," she returned, "the long voyage."

"I shall hate to have the world come back, I believe," he said,
reverting to the original figure. "Shall you?"

"You know I don't know much about it," she answered, in lithe evasion,
for which she more than atoned with a conscious look and one of her
dark blushes. Yet he chose, with a curious cruelty, to try how far
she was his.

"How odd it would be," he said, "if we never should have a chance
to talk up this voyage of ours when it is over!"

She started, in a way that made his heart smite him. "Why, you said
you--" And then she caught herself, and struggled pitifully for the
self-possession she had lost. She turned her head away; his pulse
bounded.

"Did you think I wouldn't? I am living for that." He took the hand
that lay in her lap; she seemed to try to free it, but she had not
the strength or will; she could only keep her face turned from him.

XXI.

They arrived Friday afternoon in Trieste, and Captain Jenness
telegraphed his arrival to Lydia's uncle as he went up to the
consulate with his ship's papers. The next morning the young men
sent their baggage to a hotel, but they came back for a last dinner
on the Aroostook. They all pretended to be very gay, but everybody
was perturbed and distraught. Staniford and Dunham had paid their way
handsomely with the sailors, and they had returned with remembrances
in florid scarfs and jewelry for Thomas and the captain and the
officers. Dunham had thought they ought to get something to give Lydia
as a souvenir of their voyage; it was part of his devotion to young
ladies to offer them little presents; but Staniford overruled him,
and said there should be nothing of the kind. They agreed to be out of
the way when her uncle came, and they said good-by after dinner. She
came on deck to watch them ashore. Staniford would be the last to take
leave. As he looked into her eyes, he saw brave trust of him, but he
thought a sort of troubled wonder, too, as if she could not understand
his reticence, and suffered from it. There was the same latent appeal
and reproach in the pose in which she watched their boat row away. She
stood with one hand resting on the rail, and her slim grace outlined
against the sky. He waved his hand; she answered with a little languid
wave of hers; then she turned away. He felt as if he had forsaken her.

The afternoon was very long. Toward night-fall he eluded Dunham, and
wandered back to the ship in the hope that she might still be there.
But she was gone. Already everything was changed. There was bustle and
discomfort; it seemed years since he had been there. Captain Jenness
was ashore somewhere; it was the second mate who told Staniford of
her uncle's coming.

"What sort of person was he?" he asked vaguely.

"Oh, well! _Dum_ an Englishman, any way," said Mason, in a tone
of easy, sociable explanation.

The scruple to which Staniford had been holding himself for the past
four or five days seemed the most incredible of follies,--the most
fantastic, the most cruel. He hurried back to the hotel; when he
found Dunham coming out from the _table d'hôte_ he was wild.

"I have been the greatest fool in the world, Dunham," he said.
"I have let a quixotic quibble keep me from speaking when I ought
to have spoken."

Dunham looked at him in stupefaction. "Where have you been?" he
inquired.

"Down to the ship. I was in hopes that she might be still there.
But she's gone."

"The Aroostook _gone_?"

"Look here, Dunham," cried Staniford, angrily, "this is the second
time you've done that! If you are merely thick-witted, much can be
forgiven to your infirmity; but if you've a mind to joke, let me tell
you you choose your time badly."

"I'm not joking. I don't know what you're talking about. I may be
thick-witted, as you say; or you may be scatter-witted," said Dunham,
indignantly. "What are you after, any way?"

"What was my reason for not being explicit with her; for going away
from her without one honest, manly, downright word; for sneaking off
without telling her that she was more than life to me, and that if
she cared for me as I cared for her I would go on with her to Venice,
and meet her people with her?"

"Why, I don't know," replied Dunham, vaguely. "We agreed that there
would be a sort of--that she ought to be in their care before--"

"Then I can tell you," interrupted Staniford, "that we agreed upon the
greatest piece of nonsense that ever was. A man can do no more than
offer himself, and if he does less, after he's tried everything to
show that he's in love with a woman, and to make her in love with him,
he's a scamp to refrain from a bad motive, and an ass to refrain from
a good one. Why in the name of Heaven _shouldn't_ I have spoken,
instead of leaving her to eat her heart out in wonder at my delay,
and to doubt and suspect and dread--Oh!" he shouted, in supreme
self-contempt.

Dunham had nothing to urge in reply. He had fallen in with what he
thought Staniford's own mind in regard to the course he ought to take;
since he had now changed his mind, there seemed never to have been
any reason for that course.

"My dear fellow," he said, "it isn't too late yet to see her, I dare
say. Let us go and find what time the trains leave for Venice."

"Do you suppose I can offer myself in the _salle d'attente_?"
sneered Staniford. But he went with Dunham to the coffee-room,
where they found the Osservatore Triestino and the time-table of
the railroad. The last train left for Venice at ten, and it was now
seven; the Austrian Lloyd steamer for Venice sailed at nine.

"Pshaw!" said Staniford, and pushed the paper away. He sat brooding
over the matter before the table on which the journals were scattered,
while Dunham waited for him to speak. At last he said, "I can't stand
it; I must see her. I don't know whether I told her I should come
on to-morrow night or not. If she should be expecting me on Monday
morning, and I should be delayed--Dunham, will you drive round with
me to the Austrian Lloyd's wharf? They may be going by the boat, and
if they are they'll have left their hotel. We'll try the train later.
I should like to find out if they are on board. I don't know that
I'll try to speak with them; very likely not."

"I'll go, certainly," answered Dunham, cordially.

"I'll have some dinner first," said Staniford. "I'm hungry."

It was quite dark when they drove on to the wharf at which the boat
for Venice lay. When they arrived, a plan had occurred to Staniford,
through the timidity which had already succeeded the boldness of his
desperation. "Dunham," he said, "I want you to go on board, and see
if she's there. I don't think I could stand not finding her. Besides,
if she's cheerful and happy, perhaps I'd better not see her. You can
come back and report. Confound it, you know, I should be so conscious
before that infernal uncle of hers. You understand!"

"Yes, yes," returned Dunham, eager to serve Staniford in a case like
this. "I'll manage it."

"Well," said Staniford, beginning to doubt the wisdom of either going
aboard, "do it if you think best. I don't know--"

"Don't know what?" asked Dunham, pausing in the door of
the _fiacre_.

"Oh, nothing, nothing! I hope we're not making fools of ourselves."

"You're morbid, old fellow!" said Dunham, gayly. He disappeared in
the darkness, and Staniford waited, with set teeth, till he came back.
He seemed a long time gone. When he returned, he stood holding fast
to the open fiacre-door, without speaking.

"Well!" cried Staniford, with bitter impatience.

"Well what?" Dunham asked, in a stupid voice.

"Were they there?"

"I don't know. I can't tell."

"Can't tell, man? Did you go to see?"

"I think so. I'm not sure."

A heavy sense of calamity descended upon Staniford's heart, but
patience came with it. "What's the matter, Dunham?" he asked, getting
out tremulously.

"I don't know. I think I've had a fall, somewhere. Help me in."

Staniford got out and helped him gently to the seat, and then mounted
beside him, giving the order for their return. "Where is your hat?"
he asked, finding that Dunham was bareheaded.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Am I bleeding?"

"It's so dark, I can't see."

"Put your hand here." He carried Staniford's hand to the back of
his head.

"There's no blood; but you've had an ugly knock there."

"Yes, that's it," said Dunham. "I remember now; I slipped and struck
my head." He lapsed away in a torpor; Staniford could learn nothing
more from him.

The hurt was not what Staniford in his first anxiety had feared, but
the doctor whom they called at the hotel was vague and guarded as to
everything but the time and care which must be given in any event.
Staniford despaired; but there was only one thing to do. He sat down
beside his friend to take care of him.

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