The Lady of the Aroostook by W. D. Howells

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"But don't you--don't you play something, anything?" persisted Dunham,
in desperate appeal to Hicks.

"Well, yes," the latter admitted, "I play the flute a little."

"Flutes on water!" said Staniford. Hicks looked at him in sulky
dislike, but as if resolved not to be put down by him.

"And have you got your flute with you?" demanded Dunham, joyously.

"Yes, I have," replied Hicks.

"Then we are all right. I think I can carry a part, and if you will
play to Miss Blood's singing--"

"Try it this evening, if you like," said the other.

"Well, ah--I don't know. Perhaps--we hadn't better begin this evening."

Staniford laughed at Dunham's embarrassment. "You might have a sacred
concert, and Mr. Hicks could represent the shawms and cymbals with
his flute."

Dunham looked sorry for Staniford's saying this. Captain Jenness
stared at him, as if his taking the names of these scriptural
instruments in vain were a kind of blasphemy, and Lydia seemed
puzzled and a little troubled.

"I didn't think of its being Sunday," said Hicks, with what Staniford
felt to be a cunning assumption of manly frankness, "or any more
Sunday than usual; seems as if we had had a month of Sundays already
since we sailed. I'm not much on religion myself, but I shouldn't like
to interfere with other people's principles."

Staniford was vexed with himself for his scornful pleasantry, and
vexed with the others for taking it so seriously and heavily, and
putting him so unnecessarily in the wrong. He was angry with Dunham,
and he said to Hicks, "Very just sentiments."

"I am glad you like them," replied Hicks, with sullen apprehension
of the offensive tone.

Staniford turned to Lydia. "I suppose that in South Bradfield your
Sabbath is over at sundown on Sunday evening."

"That used to be the custom," answered the girl. "I've heard my
grandfather tell of it."

"Oh, yes," interposed Captain Jenness. "They used to keep Saturday
night down our way, too. I can remember when I was a boy. It came
pretty hard to begin so soon, but it seemed to kind of break it,
after all, having a night in."

The captain did not know what Staniford began to laugh at. "Our
Puritan ancestors knew just how much human nature could stand, after
all. We did not have an uninterrupted Sabbath till the Sabbath had
become much milder. Is that it?"

The captain had probably no very clear notion of what this meant, but
simply felt it to be a critical edge of some sort. "I don't know as
you can have too much religion," he remarked. "I've seen some pretty
rough customers in the church, but I always thought, What would they
be out of it!"

"Very true!" said Staniford, smiling. He wanted to laugh again, but
he liked the captain too well to do that; and then he began to rage
in his heart at the general stupidity which had placed him in the
attitude of mocking at religion, a thing he would have loathed to do.
It seemed to him that Dunham was answerable for his false position.
"But we shall not see the right sort of Sabbath till Mr. Dunham gets
his Catholic church fully going," he added.

They all started, and looked at Dunham as good Protestants must when
some one whom they would never have suspected of Catholicism turns out
to be a Catholic. Dunham cast a reproachful glance at his friend, but
said simply, "I am a Catholic,--that is true; but I do not admit the
pretensions of the Bishop of Rome."

The rest of the company apparently could not follow him in making this
distinction; perhaps some of them did not quite know who the Bishop of
Rome was. Lydia continued to look at him in fascination; Hicks seemed
disposed to whistle, if such a thing were allowable; Mr. Watterson
devoutly waited for the captain. "Well," observed the captain at last,
with the air of giving the devil his due, "I've seen some very good
people among the Catholics."

"That's so, Captain Jenness," said the first officer.

"I don't see," said Lydia, without relaxing her gaze, "why, if you
are a Catholic, you read the service of a Protestant church."

"It is not a Protestant church," answered Dunham, gently, "as I have
tried to explain to you."

"The Episcopalian?" demanded Captain Jenness.

"The Episcopalian," sweetly reiterated Dunham.

"I should like to know what kind of a church it is, then," said
Captain Jenness, triumphantly.

"An Apostolic church."

Captain Jenness rubbed his nose, as if this were a new kind of church
to him.

"Founded by Saint Henry VIII. himself," interjected Staniford.

"No, Staniford," said Dunham, with a soft repressiveness. And now
a threatening light of zeal began to burn in his kindly eyes. These
souls had plainly been given into his hands for ecclesiastical
enlightenment. "If our friends will allow me, I will explain--"

Staniford's shaft had recoiled upon his own head. "O Lord!" he cried,
getting up from the table, "I can't stand _that_!" The others
regarded him, as he felt, even to that weasel of a Hicks, as a sheep
of uncommon blackness. He went on deck, and smoked a cigar without
relief. He still heard the girl's voice in singing; and he still felt
in his nerves the quality of latent passion in it which had thrilled
him when she sang. His thought ran formlessly upon her future, and
upon what sort of being was already fated to waken her to those
possibilities of intense suffering and joy which he imagined in her.
A wound at his heart, received long before, hurt vaguely; and he
felt old.

XI.

No one said anything more of the musicales, and the afternoon and
evening wore away without general talk. Each seemed willing to keep
apart from the rest. Dunham suffered Lydia to come on deck alone
after tea, and Staniford found her there, in her usual place, when he
went up some time later. He approached her at once, and said, smiling
down into her face, to which the moonlight gave a pale mystery, "Miss
Blood, did you think I was very wicked to-day at dinner?"

Lydia looked away, and waited a moment before she spoke. "I don't
know," she said. Then, impulsively, "Did you?" she asked.

"No, honestly, I don't think I was," answered Staniford. "But I seemed
to leave that impression on the company. I felt a little nasty, that
was all; and I tried to hurt Mr. Dunham's feelings. But I shall make
it right with him before I sleep; he knows that. He's used to having
me repent at leisure. Do you ever walk Sunday night?"

"Yes, sometimes," said Lydia interrogatively.

"I'm glad of that. Then I shall not offend against your scruples if
I ask you to join me in a little ramble, and you will refuse from
purely personal considerations. Will you walk with me?"

"Yes." Lydia rose.

"And will you take my arm?" asked Staniford, a little surprised
at her readiness.

"Thank you."

She put her hand upon his arm, confidently enough, and they began
to walk up and down the stretch of open deck together.

"Well," said Staniford, "did Mr. Dunham convince you all?"

"I think he talks beautifully about it," replied Lydia, with quaint
stiffness.

"I am glad you see what a very good fellow he is. I have a real
affection for Dunham."

"Oh, yes, he's good. At first it surprised me. I mean--"

"No, no," Staniford quickly interrupted, "why did it surprise you
to find Dunham good?"

"I don't know. You don't expect a person to be serious who
is so--so--"

"Handsome?"

"No,--so--I don't know just how to say it: fashionable."

Staniford laughed. "Why, Miss Blood, you're fashionably dressed
yourself, not to go any farther, and you're serious."

"It's different with a man," the girl explained.

"Well, then, how about me?" asked Staniford. "Am I too well dressed
to be expected to be serious?"

"Mr. Dunham always seems in earnest," Lydia answered, evasively.

"And you think one can't be in earnest without being serious?" Lydia
suffered one of those silences to ensue in which Staniford had already
found himself helpless. He knew that he should be forced to break it:
and he said, with a little spiteful mocking, "I suppose the young men
of South Bradfield are both serious and earnest."

"How?" asked Lydia.

"The young men of South Bradfield."

"I told you that there were none. They all go away."

"Well, then, the young men of Springfield, of Keene, of Greenfield."

"I can't tell. I am not acquainted there."

Staniford had begun to have a disagreeable suspicion that her
ready consent to walk up and down with a young man in the moonlight
might have come from a habit of the kind. But it appeared that her
fearlessness was like that of wild birds in those desert islands where
man has never come. The discovery gave him pleasure out of proportion
to its importance, and he paced back and forth in a silence that no
longer chafed. Lydia walked very well, and kept his step with rhythmic
unison, as if they were walking to music together. "That's the time
in her pulses," he thought, and then he said, "Then you don't have a
great deal of social excitement, I suppose,--dancing, and that kind
of thing? Though perhaps you don't approve of dancing?"

"Oh, yes, I like it. Sometimes the summer boarders get up little
dances at the hotel."

"Oh, the summer boarders!" Staniford had overlooked them. "The young
men get them up, and invite the ladies?" he pursued.

"There are no young men, generally, among the summer boarders.
The ladies dance together. Most of the gentlemen are old, or else
invalids."

"Oh!" said Staniford.

"At the Mill Village, where I've taught two winters, they have dances
sometimes,--the mill hands do."

"And do you go?"

"No. They are nearly all French Canadians and Irish people."

"Then you like dancing because there are no gentlemen to dance with?"

"There are gentlemen at the picnics."

"The picnics?"

"The teachers' picnics. They have them every summer, in a grove
by the pond."

There was, then, a high-browed, dyspeptic high-school principal, and
the desert-island theory was probably all wrong. It vexed Staniford,
when he had so nearly got the compass of her social life, to find
this unexplored corner in it.

"And I suppose you are leaving very agreeable friends among
the teachers?"

"Some of them are pleasant. But I don't know them very well. I've
only been to one of the picnics."

Staniford drew a long, silent breath. After all, he knew everything.
He mechanically dropped a little the arm on which her hand rested,
that it might slip farther within. Her timid remoteness had its
charm, and he fell to thinking, with amusement, how she who was so
subordinate to him was, in the dimly known sphere in which he had been
groping to find her, probably a person of authority and consequence.
It satisfied a certain domineering quality in him to have reduced her
to this humble attitude, while it increased the protecting tenderness
he was beginning to have for her. His mind went off further upon this
matter of one's different attitudes toward different persons; he
thought of men, and women too, before whom he should instantly feel
like a boy, if he could be confronted with them, even in his present
lordliness of mood. In a fashion of his when he convicted himself
of anything, he laughed aloud. Lydia shrank a little from him, in
question. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I was laughing at something
I happened to think of. Do you ever find yourself struggling very
hard to be what you think people think you are?"

"Oh, yes," replied Lydia. "But I thought no one else did."

"Everybody does the thing that we think no one else does," said
Staniford, sententiously.

"I don't know whether I quite like it," said Lydia. "It seems like
hypocrisy. It used to worry me. Sometimes I wondered if I had any
real self. I seemed to be just what people made me, and a different
person to each."

"I'm glad to hear it, Miss Blood. We are companions in hypocrisy.
As we are such nonentities we shall not affect each other at all."
Lydia laughed. "Don't you think so? What are you laughing at? I told
you what I was laughing at!"

"But I didn't ask you."

"You wished to know."

"Yes, I did."

"Then you ought to tell me what I wish to know."

"It's nothing," said Lydia. "I thought you were mistaken in what
you said."

"Oh! Then you believe that there's enough of you to affect me?"

"No."

"The other way, then?"

She did not answer.

"I'm delighted!" exclaimed Staniford. "I hope I don't exert an
uncomfortable influence. I should be very unhappy to think so." Lydia
stooped side-wise, away from him, to get a fresh hold of her skirt,
which she was carrying in her right hand, and she hung a little more
heavily upon his arm. "I hope I make you think better of yourself,
--very self-satisfied, very conceited even."

"No," said Lydia.

"You pique my curiosity beyond endurance. Tell me how I make you
feel."

She looked quickly round at him, as if to see whether he was in
earnest. "Why, it's nothing," she said. "You made me feel as if
you were laughing at everybody."

It flatters a man to be accused of sarcasm by the other sex, and
Staniford was not superior to the soft pleasure of the reproach.
"Do you think I make other people feel so, too?"

"Mr. Dunham said--"

"Oh! Mr. Dunham has been talking me over with you, has he? What did
he tell you of me? There is nobody like a true friend for dealing
an underhand blow at one's reputation. Wait till you hear my account
of Dunham! What did he say?"

"He said that was only your way of laughing at yourself."

"The traitor! What did you say?"

"I don't know that I said anything."

"You were reserving your opinion for my own hearing?"

"No."

"Why don't you tell me what you thought? It might be of great use
to me. I'm in earnest, now; I'm serious. Will you tell me?"

"Yes, some time," said Lydia, who was both amused and mystified
at this persistence.

"When? To-morrow?"

"Oh, that's too soon. When I get to Venice!"

"Ah! That's a subterfuge. You know we shall part in Trieste."

"I thought," said Lydia, "you were coming to Venice, too."

"Oh, yes, but I shouldn't be able to see you there."

"Why not?"

"Why not? Why, because--" He was near telling the young girl who hung
upon his arm, and walked up and down with him in the moonlight, that
in the wicked Old World towards which they were sailing young people
could not meet save in the sight and hearing of their elders, and that
a confidential analysis of character would be impossible between them
there. The wonder of her being where she was, as she was, returned
upon him with a freshness that it had been losing in the custom of the
week past. "Because you will be so much taken up with your friends,"
he said, lamely. He added quickly, "There's one thing I should like to
know, Miss Blood: did you hear what Mr. Dunham and I were saying, last
night, when we stood in the gangway and kept you from coming up?"

Lydia waited a moment. Then she said, "Yes. I couldn't help
hearing it."

"That's all right. I don't care for your hearing what I said. But--
I hope it wasn't true?"

"I couldn't understand what you meant by it," she answered, evasively,
but rather faintly.

"Thanks," said Staniford. "I didn't mean anything. It was merely the
guilty consciousness of a generally disagreeable person." They walked
up and down many turns without saying anything. She could not have
made any direct protest, and it pleased him that she could not frame
any flourishing generalities. "Yes," Staniford resumed, "I will try
to see you as I pass through Venice. And I will come to hear you sing
when you come out at Milan."

"Come out? At Milan?"

"Why, yes! You are going to study at the conservatory in Milan?"

"How did you know that?" demanded Lydia.

"From hearing you to-day. May I tell you how much I liked your
singing?"

"My aunt thought I ought to cultivate my voice. But I would never go
upon the stage. I would rather sing in a church. I should like that
better than teaching."

"I think you're quite right," said Staniford, gravely. "It's certainly
much better to sing in a church than to sing in a theatre. Though I
believe the theatre pays best."

"Oh, I don't care for that. All I should want would be to make
a living."

The reference to her poverty touched him. It was a confidence, coming
from one so reticent, that was of value. He waited a moment and said,
"It's surprising how well we keep our footing here, isn't it? There's
hardly any swell, but the ship pitches. I think we walk better
together than alone."

"Yes," answered Lydia, "I think we do."

"You mustn't let me tire you. I'm indefatigable."

"Oh, I'm not tired. I like it,--walking."

"Do you walk much at home?"

"Not much. It's a pretty good walk to the school-house."

"Oh! Then you like walking at sea better than you do on shore?"

"It isn't the custom, much. If there were any one else, I should have
liked it there. But it's rather dull, going by yourself."

"Yes, I understand how that is," said Staniford, dropping his teasing
tone. "It's stupid. And I suppose it's pretty lonesome at South
Bradfield every way."

"It is,--winters," admitted Lydia. "In the summer you see people, at
any rate, but in winter there are days and days when hardly any one
passes. The snow is banked up everywhere."

He felt her give an involuntary shiver; and he began to talk to her
about the climate to which she was going. It was all stranger to her
than he could have realized, and less intelligible. She remembered
California very dimly, and she had no experience by which she could
compare and adjust his facts. He made her walk up and down more and
more swiftly, as he lost himself in the comfort of his own talking
and of her listening, and he failed to note the little falterings
with which she expressed her weariness.

All at once he halted, and said, "Why, you're out of breath! I beg
your pardon. You should have stopped me. Let us sit down." He wished
to walk across the deck to where the seats were, but she just
perceptibly withstood his motion, and he forbore.

"I think I won't sit down," she said. "I will go down-stairs." She
began withdrawing her hand from his arm. He put his right hand upon
hers, and when it came out of his arm it remained in his hand.

"I'm afraid you won't walk with me again," said Staniford. "I've
tired you shamefully."

"Oh, not at all!"

"And you will?"

"Yes."

"Thanks. You're very amiable." He still held her hand. He pressed it.
The pressure was not returned, but her hand seemed to quiver and throb
in his like a bird held there. For the time neither of them spoke,
and it seemed a long time. Staniford found himself carrying her hand
towards his lips; and she was helplessly, trustingly, letting him.

He dropped her hand, and said, abruptly, "Good-night."

"Good-night," she answered, and ceased from his side like a ghost.

XII.

Staniford sat in the moonlight, and tried to think what the steps were
that had brought him to this point; but there were no steps of which
he was sensible. He remembered thinking the night before that the
conditions were those of flirtation; to-night this had not occurred
to him. The talk had been of the dullest commonplaces; yet he had
pressed her hand and kept it in his, and had been about to kiss it. He
bitterly considered the disparity between his present attitude and the
stand he had taken when he declared to Dunham that it rested with them
to guard her peculiar isolation from anything that she could remember
with pain or humiliation when she grew wiser in the world. He recalled
his rage with Hicks, and the insulting condemnation of his bearing
towards him ever since; and could Hicks have done worse? He had done
better: he had kept away from her; he had let her alone.

That night Staniford slept badly, and woke with a restless longing to
see the girl, and to read in her face whatever her thought of him had
been. But Lydia did not come out to breakfast. Thomas reported that
she had a headache, and that he had already carried her the tea and
toast she wanted. "Well, it seems kind of lonesome without her," said
the captain. "It don't seem as if we could get along."

It seemed desolate to Staniford, who let the talk flag and fail
round him without an effort to rescue it. All the morning he lurked
about, keeping out of Dunham's way, and fighting hard through a dozen
pages of a book, to which he struggled to nail his wandering mind.
A headache was a little matter, but it might be even less than a
headache. He belated himself purposely at dinner, and entered the
cabin just as Lydia issued from her stateroom door.

She was pale and looked heavy-eyed. As she lifted her glance to him,
she blushed; and he felt the answering red stain his face. When
she sat down, the captain patted her on the shoulder with his burly
right hand, and said he could not navigate the ship if she got sick.
He pressed her to eat of this and that; and when she would not, he
said, well, there was no use trying to force an appetite, and that
she would be better all the sooner for dieting. Hicks went to his
state-room, and came out with a box of guava jelly, from his private
stores, and won a triumph enviable in all eyes when Lydia consented
to like it with the chicken. Dunham plundered his own and Staniford's
common stock of dainties for her dessert; the first officer agreed
and applauded right and left; Staniford alone sat taciturn and
inoperative, watching her face furtively. Once her eyes wandered
to the side of the table where he and Dunham sat; then she colored
and dropped her glance.

He took his book again after dinner, and with his finger between the
leaves, at the last-read, unintelligible page, he went out to the bow,
and crouched down there to renew the conflict of the morning. It was
not long before Dunham followed. He stooped over to lay a hand on
either of Staniford's shoulders.

"What makes you avoid me, old man?" he demanded, looking into
Staniford's face with his frank, kind eyes.

"And I avoid you?" asked Staniford.

"Yes; why?"

"Because I feel rather shabby, I suppose. I knew I felt shabby, but
I didn't know I was avoiding you."

"Well, no matter. If you feel shabby, it's all right; but I hate to
have you feel shabby." He got his left hand down into Staniford's
right, and a tacit reconciliation was transacted between them. Dunham
looked about for a seat, and found a stool, which he planted in front
of Staniford. "Wasn't it pleasant to have our little lady back at
table, again?"

"Very," said Staniford.

"I couldn't help thinking how droll it was that a person whom we
all considered a sort of incumbrance and superfluity at first should
really turn out an object of prime importance to us all. Isn't
it amusing?"

"Very droll."

"Why, we were quite lost without her, at breakfast. I couldn't have
imagined her taking such a hold upon us all, in so short a time. But
she's a pretty creature, and as good as she's pretty."

"I remember agreeing with you on those points before." Staniford
feigned to suppress fatigue.

Dunham observed him. "I know you don't take so much interest in her
as--as the rest of us do, and I wish you did. You don't know what
a lovely nature she is."

"No?"

"No; and I'm sure you'd like her."

"Is it important that I should like her? Don't let your enthusiasm
for the sex carry you beyond bounds, Dunham."

"No, no. Not important, but very pleasant. And I think acquaintance
with such a girl would give you some new ideas of women."

"Oh, my old ones are good enough. Look here, Dunham," said Staniford,
sharply, "what are you after?"

"What makes you think I'm after anything?"

"Because you're not a humbug, and because I am. My depraved spirit
instantly recognized the dawning duplicity of yours. But you'd better
be honest. You can't make the other thing work. What do you want?"

"I want your advice. I want your help, Staniford."

"I thought so! Coming and forgiving me in that--apostolic manner."

"Don't!"

"Well. What do you want my help for? What have you been doing?"
Staniford paused, and suddenly added: "Have you been making love
to Lurella?" He said this in his ironical manner, but his smile
was rather ghastly.

"For shame, Staniford!" cried Dunham. But he reddened violently.

"Then it isn't with Miss Hibbard that you want my help. I'm glad of
that. It would have been awkward. I'm a little afraid of Miss Hibbard.
It isn't every one has your courage, my dear fellow."

"I haven't been making love to her," said Dunham, "but--I--"

"But you what?" demanded Staniford sharply again. There had been less
tension of voice in his joking about Miss Hibbard.

"Staniford," said his friend, "I don't know whether you noticed her,
at dinner, when she looked across to our own side?"

"What did she do?"

"Did you notice that she--well, that she blushed a little?"

Staniford waited a while before he answered, after a gulp, "Yes,
I noticed that."

"Well, I don't know how to put it exactly, but I'm afraid that I
have unwittingly wronged this young girl."

"Wronged her? What the devil _do_ you mean, Dunham?" cried
Staniford, with bitter impatience.

"I'm afraid--I'm afraid--Why, it's simply this: that in trying to
amuse her, and make the time pass agreeably, and relieve her mind,
and all that, don't you know, I've given her the impression that I'm
--well--interested in her, and that she may have allowed herself--
insensibly, you know--to look upon me in that light, and that she may
have begun to think--that she may have become--"

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