"Do let me take him, Elizabeth; he will soon fall asleep again," said Lenox. He looked annoyed. "You are overtaxing your strength; I can see that you are tired out."
"It will not harm me; I know when I am really too tired," answered his wife. She gave him a little trusting smile as she spoke, and his frown passed off.
They were all together in one of the large gondolas; Blake noted this little side-scene.
That night Theocritus had a slight attack of fever. Mrs. Lenox said that it came from over-fatigue, and that he must not go on any of the longer expeditions. When they went to Murano, therefore, and down to Chioggia, she did not accompany them, but remained at home with her charge.
Mrs. Marcy was enjoying this last month in Venice greatly. "Naturally, it is much pleasanter when one has some one to attend to one, and one too who knows one's tastes and looks after one's little comforts," she remarked to her niece, with some intricacy of impersonal pronouns. The lily did not observe that the attentions she found so agreeable were being offered to her niece also by another impersonal pronoun. As shewould herself have said, "naturally," when they went here and there together, the two elders often sat down to rest awhile when Claudia and Lenox did not feel the need of it.
"Of course, with her beauty, her attractive qualities, and her fortune, Miss Marcy has had many suitors," said Blake to the aunt during one of these rests.
"Several," answered that lady, moderately. "But Claudia is not at all susceptible. Neither is she so—so generally attractive as you might suppose. She has too little thought for the opinions of others. She says, for instance, just what she thinks, and that, you know, is seldom agreeable."
"True; we much prefer that people should say what they don't. I have myself noticed some plainly evident faults in her: a most impolitic honesty; and, when stirred, an impulsiveness which is sure to be unremunerative in the long-run. I should say, too, that she had an empyrean sort of pride."
"Yes," replied the lily, not knowing what he meant, but concluding on the whole that he spoke in reprobation. "As I said before, she has notquiteenough of that true feminine softness one likes so much to see—I mean, of course, in a woman."
"Her pride will be her bane yet. It will make her blind to the most obvious pitfall. However, I'll back her courage against it when once she sees where she has dropped."
"What?" said the lily.
"She will in time learn from you; she could not follow a more lovely example," said Blake, coming back from his reflections.
Towards the last of June a long expedition wasplanned, an expedition into "Titian's country," which was to last three days. This little pilgrimage had been talked about for a long time, Mrs. Lenox being as much interested in it as the others. Whether she would have had the courage to take Theocritus, even in his best estate, is a question; but after the time was finally set and all the arrangements made, his worst asserted itself, and so markedly that it was plain to all that she could not go. Something was said about postponement, but it was equally plain that if they were to go at all they should go at once, as the weather was rapidly approaching a too great heat. Claudia wished particularly to take this little journey; she had set her heart upon seeing the Titians and reputed Titians said to be still left in that unvisited neighborhood. Blake asserted that she even expected to discover one. It was next proposed (although rather faintly) that Mr. Lenox should be excused from the pilgrimage. But it could not be denied that the little boy had been quite as ill (and irritable) several times before in Venice, and that he had always recovered in a day or two. Not that Mrs. Lenox denied it; on the contrary, she was the one to mention it. She urged her husband's going; it was the excursion of all others to please him the most. It ended in his consenting; it seemed, indeed, too much to give up for so slight a cause.
"She looks a little anxious," observed Blake, as they waited for him in the gondola which was to take them to the railway station. Lenox had said good-bye to her, and was now coming down the long stairway within, while she had stepped out on her balcony to see them start.
"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Marcy. "To me she always looks just the same, always so unmoved."
Lenox now came out, and the gondola started. Claudia looked back and waved her hand, Mrs. Lenox returning the salutation.
On the evening of the third day, at eleven o'clock, a gondola from the railway station stopped at the larger palace's lower door, and three persons ascended the dimly lighted stairs.
At the top Mrs. Lenox's servant was waiting for them. "Oh, where is signore? Is he not with you? He has not come? Oh, the poor signora—may the sweet Madonna help her now!" cried the girl, with tears in her sympathetic Italian eyes. "The poor little boy is dead."
They rushed up the higher stairway and across the hall bridge. But it was as the woman had said. There, on his little white bed, lay the child; he would be troublesome no more on this earth; he was quiet at last. Mrs. Lenox stood in the lighted doorway of her room as they came towards her. When she saw that her husband was not with them, when they began hurriedly to explain that he had not come, that he had stayed behind, that he had sent a note, she swayed over without a word and fainted away.
It was only over-fatigue, she explained later. The child had lain in her arms for thirty hours, most of the time in great pain, and she had suffered with him. She soon recovered consciousness and was quite calm—more calm than they had feared she would be. They were anxiously watchful; they tended her with the most devoted care. Blake did what he could, and then waited. After a while, when Mrs. Lenox had in a measure recovered, he softly beckoned Mrs. Marcy out.
"You must tell her that her husband will not beback in time for—that he will not be back for at least six days, and very likely longer. And as his route was quite uncertain, we cannot reach him; there is no telegraph, of course, and even if I were to go after him I could only follow his track from village to village, and probably come back to Venice behind him."
"How can I tell her!" said the tearful lady. "Perhaps Claudia—"
"No, on no account. You are the one, and you must do it," replied Blake, and with so much decision that she obeyed him. Thus the wife was told.
What Blake had said was true; it was hopeless to try to reach Lenox before the time when he would probably be back of his own accord. He had started on a hunt after some early drawings of Titian's, of which they had unearthed dim legends. One was said to be in an old monastery, among others of no importance; two more were vaguely reported as now here, now there. Lenox had not been certain of his own route, but expected to be guided from village to village according to indications. It was not even certain whether he would come back by Conegliano or strike the railway at another point. "It certainly is an inexorable fate!" exclaimed poor Mrs. Marcy, in the emergency driven to unusual expressions.
But when Stephen Lenox's wife understood the position in which she was placed, she at once decided upon all that was to be done, and gave her directions clearly and calmly—directions which Blake executed with an attention and thoughtful care as complete as any one could possibly have bestowed.
The little boy was to be buried at Venice, in thecemetery on the island opposite, early in the morning of the second day.
"She issosensible!" Mrs. Marcy commented, admiringly. "Of course, under all the circumstances, it is the thing to do. But so many women would have insisted upon—all sorts of plans; and it would have beensohard."
"I would willingly carry out anything she wished for, no matter how difficult," replied Blake. "I greatly respect and admire Mrs. Lenox. But, as you say, the perfect balance of her character, her clear judgment and beautiful goodness, have at once decided upon the best course." (The lily had not quite said this; but in her present state of distressed sympathy she accepted it.)
Claudia, meanwhile, remained through all very silent. She assisted, and ably, in everything that was done, but said almost nothing.
The evening before the funeral the two ladies went across to Mrs. Lenox's rooms; they had left her some hours before, as she had promised to lie down for a while, but they thought that she was now probably awake again. They found her sitting beside the little white-shrouded form.
"Now this is not wise, Elizabeth," began Mrs. Marcy, chidingly.
"I think it is; I like to look at him," replied the watcher. "See, the peaceful expression I have been hoping for has come; it is not often needed on the face of a child, but it was with my poor little boy. Look."
And, sure enough, there shone upon the small, still countenance a lovely sweetness which had never been there in life. The face did not even seem thin; itslines had all passed away; it looked very fair and young, and very peacefully at rest.
"His mother would know him now at once; he was a very pretty little fellow the last time she saw him, when he was about a year old," she went on. "I was very fond of his mother, and his father, as probably you know, was my only brother. Their child was very dear to me," she resumed, after a short silence, which the others did not break. "His constant suffering made him unlike stronger, happier children, and I think that was the very reason I loved him the more. I wanted to make it up to him. But I could not. I suppose he never knew what it was to be entirely without pain—the doctors have told me so. He did not know anything else, or any other way, but to suffer more or less, and to be tired all the time. And he was so used to it, poor little fellow, that I suppose he thought that every one suffered too—that that was life. He has found a better now." Leaning forward, she took the small hands in hers. "All my loving care, dear child, was not enough to keep you here," she said, smoothing them tenderly. "But you are with your mother now; that is far better."
The funeral took place early the next morning. Then Mrs. Lenox came back to her empty rooms, and entered them alone. She preferred it so.
After the first explanation, the only allusion she had made to her husband's absence was to Rodney Blake. That gentleman had not expressed the shadow of a disapprobation. He had not told her that he had objected to Lenox's lengthened absence, and had done what he could to prevent it; he had stopped Mrs. Marcy sharply when she spoke of telling.
"Can't you see, Sophy, that that would be the worst of all for her?" he said; "to know that Lenox would go, in spite of my unconcealed opposition, just because Clau—just because he wanted those trivial drawings," he added, changing the termination of his sentence, but quite sure, meanwhile, that "Sophy" would never discover what he had begun to say.
Mrs. Lenox's remark was this. Blake had come in to speak to her about some necessary directions concerning the funeral, and when she had given them she said: "It will be a grief to Stephen when he comes back that he could not have seen the little boy, even if but for once more. And I hoped so that he would see him! I expected you back at eight—you know that was the first arrangement—and towards seven he seemed easier. Once he even smiled, and talked a little about that legend of St. Mark and St. Theodore, of which, you remember, he was so fond. Then it was half-past seven, and I still hoped. And then it grew towards eight, and he was in pain again. Still I kept listening for the sound of your gondola. But it did not come. And at half-past eight he died. But perhaps it was as well so," she continued, although her voice trembled a little. "Stephen would have felt his suffering so much. I was more used to it, you know, than he was."
"Yes," answered Blake.
But she seemed to know that he was not quite in accord with her. "Of course I feel it very deeply, Mr. Blake, on my own account, that my husband is not here; I depend upon him for everything, and feel utterly lonely without him. But his absence is one of those accidents which we must all encounter sometimes, and asto everything else—the outside help I needed—you have done all that even he could have done. You have been very good to me," and she held out her hand.
Blake took it, and thanked her. And in his words this time he put something that contented her. It was the sacrifice he made to his liking for Stephen Lenox's wife.
The evening after the funeral Mrs. Marcy, who had been made nervous and ill by all that had happened, went out at sunset for a change of air, and Blake accompanied her. Claudia preferred to stay at home. But five minutes after the departure of their gondola she went up the stairs and across the hall bridge that led to Mrs. Lenox's apartment. Mrs. Lenox was there, lying on the sofa. It was the first time since the return that the two had been alone together. She looked pale and ill, and there were dark shadows under her eyes; but she smiled and spoke in her usual voice, asking Claudia to sit beside her in an easy-chair that stood there. Claudia sat down, and they spoke on one or two unimportant subjects. But the girl soon paused in this.
"I have come to say," she began again, in a voice that showed the effort she made to keep it calm, "that I shall never forgive myself, Mrs. Lenox, for—for a great deal that I have thought about you, but especially for having had a part in the absence of your husband at such a time. If it had not been for me he would not have gone off on that foolish expedition. But I wanted those miserable drawings, or at least sketches of them, and so I kept talking about it. When I think of what you have had to go through,alone, in consequence of it, I am overwhelmed." Here her voice nearly broke down.
"You must not take it all upon yourself, Miss Marcy," answered the wife. "No doubt Stephen wanted to please you; no doubt he wanted to very much—to get you the drawings, if it was possible; of that I am quite sure."
But Claudia was not quieted. "If you knew how I have suffered—how I suffer now as I see you lying there so pale and ill"—here she stopped again. "I come to tell you how I feel your suffering, and I spend the time talking about my own," she added, abruptly. "I am a worthless creature!" And covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears.
Mrs. Lenox put out her hand and stroked the beautiful bowed head caressingly. "Do not feel so badly," she said. "You must not; it is not necessary."
"But it is—it is," said the girl, amid her tears. "If you knew—"
"I do know, Claudia. I knowyou."
"Oh, if you really do," said Claudia, lifting her head, her wet eyes turned eagerly upon the wife, "then it is better."
"It is better; it is well. My dear, I think I have understood you all along."
"But—I have not understood myself," replied Claudia. She had nerved herself to say it; but after it was spoken a deep blush rose slowly over her whole face until it was in a flame. Through all its heat, however, she kept her eyes bravely upon those of the wife.
"That I knew, too," rejoined Mrs. Lenox. "But I also knew that there was no danger," she added.
"There was not. It was unconscious. In any case,I should in time have recognized it. And destroyed it, as I do now." These short sentences were brought out, each with a fresh effort. "I do not speak of—of the other side," the girl went on, with abrupt, heavy awkwardness of phrase. "There never was any other side—it was all mine." And then came the flaming blush again.
"But you are very beautiful, Claudia?" said the other woman, not as if disturbed at all in her own quiet calm, but half tentatively.
"Yes, I am beautiful," replied Claudia, with a sort of scorn. "But he is not that kind of man," she added, a quick, involuntary pride coming into her eyes. Then she turned her head away, shading her face with her hand. She said no more; it seemed as if she had stopped herself shortly there.
After a moment or two Mrs. Lenox began to speak. "All this life, here in Venice, has been so much to Stephen," she said, in her sweet, quiet voice. "You know he has worked very hard—he was obliged to; just so many hours of each long day, for long, hard years. He never had any rest; and the work was always distasteful to him, too. It was a slavery. And it was beginning to tell upon him; he could not have kept it up without being worn out both in body and mind. Judge, then, how glad I am that he has had all this change and pleasure—he needed it so! There is that side to his nature—a love of the beautiful, and a strong one. This has been always repressed and bound down; it is natural that it should break forth here. I have not the feeling myself—at least, not like his; but I understand it in him, and sympathize with it fully." She paused. Claudia did not speak.
"You have not been a wife, Claudia, and therefore there are some things you do not know," pursued the voice. "A wife becomes in time to her husband such a part of himself (that is, if he loves her) that she isn't a separate person to him any more, and he hardly thinks of her as one; she is himself. Many things become a matter of course to him—are taken for granted—on this very account. It does not occur to him that she may feel differently. He supposes that they feel alike. Often they do. Still, a woman's thoughts do not always run in the same channel as those of a man; we are more timid, more limited, more—afraid of things, you know; but the husband does not always remember that. But there are some things in which a husband and wife do feel alike, always and forever; there are ties which are eternal. And my own life holds them—ties and memories so precious that I can hardly explain them to you; memories of those early years of ours when we were so alone and poor, but so dear to each other that we did not mind it. We love each other just the same; but then we had nothing but our love—and it was enough. The coming, the short stay with us, and the fading away of our two little children, Claudia—these are ties deep down in our hearts which nothing can ever sunder. Stephen will go back to all that old grief of his when he comes home to find the little boy gone. For the greatest sorrow of his life, one he has never at heart overcome, was that he felt when we lost our own little boy. Stephen had loved the child passionately, and would not believe that he must go; and when he did he bowed his head in a silence so long that I was frightened. I had never seen him give up before. But even that is a dear tiebetween us, for then he had only me. Those early years of ours, with their joys and sorrows—I often think of them. A man does not dwell upon such memories, one by one, as a woman does. But they are none the less there, a part of his life and of him." She stopped. "Do not mind," she added, in a changed voice. "I am only—a little tired, I think."
Claudia, who had not moved, turned quickly. Mrs. Lenox's eyes were closed; she was very pale. But she did not faint; owing to Claudia's quick, efficient help, she was soon herself again. "You know what to do, don't you?" she said, smiling, when the faint feeling had passed.
"It is not that I know, so much as that I long to help you," answered Claudia. "I wish you would let me unbraid your hair, and make you ready for bed; you look so tired, and perhaps I could do it with a lighter touch than Bianca," she added, humbly.
"Very well," said the other, assentingly.
And with much care and skill the girl performed her task. "I will even put out the light," she said. "I will tell Bianca that you have gone to bed, and are not to be disturbed." When all was done and the light out, she paused for a moment by the bedside. "I am not going to talk any more," she said, "but I will just say this: aunt and I are going away. To-morrow, probably, or the day after. You will not be left alone, for Mr. Blake will stay."
There was a silence. Then Mrs. Lenox's voice said: "That is a mistake. It would be better to stay."
"I do not see it in that way," answered the girl. Then, "You must not ask too much," she added, in a lower voice.
Mrs. Lenox took her hands, which were hanging before her, tightly clasped. The touch shook Claudia; she sank down beside the bed and hid her face.
"Stay; it is far better," whispered the wife. "Then it will be over. By going away you will only think about it the more."
"Yes, I know. But—"
"I will answer for all. I know you better than—you know yourself. When you see us together, it will be different to you. Stay, to please me."
"Very well," murmured the girl.
They kissed each other, and she rose. When she had reached the door Mrs. Lenox spoke again. "Of course, you know that I quite understand that it is only a girl's fancy," she said, with a tender lightness. This was her offering to Claudia.
On the evening of the seventh day after the funeral Stephen Lenox came back; he had sent a despatch to his wife from Conegliano, and Blake was therefore able to meet him at Mestre, and tell him what had happened. He went directly home, and the others did not see him until the next evening. Then he came across to the larger palace. Blake was there; he kept himself rather constantly with Mrs. Marcy now, perhaps to direct that lady's somewhat wandering inspirations. For this occasion he had warned her that she must not be too sympathetic, that she must be on her guard. So Mrs. Marcy was "on her guard;" she only took out her handkerchief four times; she even talked of the weather. Claudia scarcely spoke. Blake himself conducted the conversation, and filled all the gaps. They could naturally say a good deal about the health of Mrs. Lenox, as that lady had been obliged to keep herroom for the three preceding days. Lenox did not stay long; he said he must go back to his wife. As he rose he gave the small portfolio he had brought with him to Claudia. "I don't think they were Titians," he said. "But I sketched them for you as well as I could."
Mrs. Marcy thought this an opportunity; she took the portfolio, and exclaimed over each picture. Blake, too, put up his eye-glass to look at them. Lenox said a word or two about them and waited a moment longer; then he went away. Claudia had not glanced at them.
He never knew of her visit to his wife; those are the secrets women keep for each other, unto and beyond the grave.
What passed when he came home was simple enough. His wife cried when she saw him; she had not cried before. She told him the history of the little boy's last hours, and of all he had said, and of the funeral. Then they had talked a while of her health, and then of future plans.
"I ought to have remembered that you were anxious about him even before I went away," said Lenox, going back abruptly to the first subject. He was standing by the window, looking out; this was an hour after his return.
"But he had been ill so many times. No, it was something we could not foresee, and as such we must accept it. I wanted you to go—don't you remember? I urged your going. You must not blame yourself about it."
"But I do," answered her husband.
"I cannot allow you to; I shall never allow it. Tome, Stephen, all you do is right; I wish to hear nothing that could even seem otherwise. I trust you entirely, and always shall."
He turned. She was lying back in an easy-chair, supported by pillows. He came across and sat down beside her, his head bent forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands. He did not speak.
"Because I know that I can," added the wife.
That was all.
They stayed on together in Venice through another two weeks. Mrs. Lenox improved daily, and was soon able to go about with them. She seemed, indeed, to bloom into a new youth. "It is the reaction after the long, wearing care of that child," explained Mrs. Marcy. "And isn't it beautiful to see how devoted he is to her, and how careful of her in every way? But I have always noticed what a devoted husband he was, haven't you?"
These two ladies and Mr. Blake were going to Baden-Baden. But the others were going back to America. "We may return some time," said Lenox; "but at present I think we want a home."
"I wish we could have stayed on together always, just as we are now," sighed the sentimental lily, smoothing the embroidered edge of her handkerchief. "Sucha pleasant party, and of just the right size; these last two weeks have been so perfect!"
The time for parting came. The three who were going to Baden-Baden were to leave at dawn, and they had come across to Mrs. Lenox's parlor to spend a last hour. Claudia talked more than usual, and talked well; she looked brilliant.
At the end of the second hour the good-byes beganin earnest. Everything that was appropriate was said, Blake, in particular, delivering himself unblushingly of one long fluent commonplace after another. They were to meet again—oh, very soon; they were to visit each other; they were to write frequently—one would have supposed, indeed, that Blake intended to send a daily telegraphic despatch. At last the lily, having kept them all standing for twenty minutes, bestowed upon Mrs. Lenox a final kiss, and really did start, the two gentlemen and Claudia accompanying her down the long hall. But the hall was dark, and Claudia was behind; without the knowledge of the others she slipped back.
Mrs. Lenox was standing where they had left her. When she saw the girl returning, pale, repressed, all the sparkle gone, she went to her, and put her arms round her; Claudia laid her head down upon the other's shoulder. Thus they stood for several moments in silence. Then, still without speaking, Claudia went away.
When Mrs. Marcy reached the stairway which led down to her own apartment, on the other side of the hall bridge, "Why, where is Claudia?" she said.
"Here I am," said her niece, appearing from the darkness.
"You will come down with us for a moment, won't you, Mr. Lenox?" suggested the lily. "Just for onelastlook?"
"Do not ask him," said Claudia, smiling; "he is worn out! We have already extended that look over two long hours. Good-bye, Mr. Lenox; and this time, I think, is really the last."
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