Dunham followed Staniford to their room, and helped him off with his wet clothes. He tried to say something ideally fit in recognition of his heroic act, and he articulated some bald commonplaces of praise, and shook Staniford's clammy hand. “Yes,” said the latter, submitting; “but the difficulty about a thing of this sort is that you don't know whether you haven't been an ass. It has been pawed over so much by the romancers that you don't feel like a hero in real life, but a hero of fiction. I've a notion that Hicks and I looked rather ridiculous going over the ship's side; I know we did, coming back. No man can reveal his greatness of soul in wet clothes. Did Miss Blood laugh?”
“Staniford!” said Dunham, in an accent of reproach. “You do her great injustice. She felt what you had done in the way you would wish,—if you cared.”
“What did she say?” asked Staniford, quickly.
“Nothing. But—”
“That's an easy way of expressing one's admiration of heroic behavior. I hope she'll stick to that line. I hope she won't feel it at all necessary to say anything in recognition of my prowess; it would be extremely embarrassing. I've got Hicks back again, but I couldn't stand any gratitude for it. Not that I'm ashamed of the performance. Perhaps if it had been anybody but Hicks, I should have waited for them to lower a boat. But Hicks had peculiar claims. You couldn't let a man you disliked so much welter round a great while. Where is the poor old fellow? Is he clothed and in his right mind again?”
“He seemed to be sober enough,” said Dunham, “when he came on board; but I don't think he's out yet.”
“We must let Thomas in to gather up this bathing-suit,” observed Staniford. “What a Newportish flavor it gives the place!” He was excited, and in great gayety of spirits.
He and Dunham went out into the cabin, where they found Captain Jenness pacing to and fro. “Well, sir,” he said, taking Staniford's hand, and crossing his right with his left, so as to include Dunham in his congratulations, “you ought to have been a sailor!” Then he added, as if the unqualified praise might seem fulsome, “But if you'd been a sailor, you wouldn't have tried a thing like that. You'd have had more sense. The chances were ten to one against you.”
Staniford laughed. “Was it so bad as that? I shall begin to respect myself.”
The captain did not answer, but his iron grip closed hard upon Staniford's hand, and he frowned in keen inspection of Hicks, who at that moment came out of his state-room, looking pale and quite sobered. Captain Jenness surveyed him from head to foot, and then from foot to head, and pausing at the level of his eyes he said, still holding Staniford by the hand: “The trouble with a man aboard ship is that he can't turn a blackguard out-of-doors just when he likes. The Aroostook puts in at Messina. You'll be treated well till we get there, and then if I find you on my vessel five minutes after she comes to anchor, I'll heave you overboard, and I'll take care that nobody jumps after you. Do you hear? And you won't find me doing any such fool kindness as I did when I took you on board, soon again.”
“Oh, I say, Captain Jenness,” began Staniford.
“He's all right,” interrupted Hicks. “I'm a blackguard; I know it; and I don't think I was worth fishing up. But you've done it, and I mustn't go back on you, I suppose.” He lifted his poor, weak, bad little face, and looked Staniford in the eyes with a pathos that belied the slang of his speech. The latter released his hand from Captain Jenness and gave it to Hicks, who wrung it, as he kept looking him in the eyes, while his lips twitched pitifully, like a child's. The captain gave a quick snort either of disgust or of sympathy, and turned abruptly about and bundled himself up out of the cabin.
“I say!” exclaimed Staniford, “a cup of coffee wouldn't be bad, would it? Let's have some coffee, Thomas, about as quick as the cook can make it,” he added, as the boy came out from his stateroom with a lump of wet clothes in his hands. “You wanted some coffee a little while ago,” he said to Hicks, who hung his head at the joke.
For the rest of the day Staniford was the hero of the ship. The men looked at him from a distance, and talked of him together. Mr. Watterson hung about whenever Captain Jenness drew near him, as if in the hope of overhearing some acceptable expression in which he could second his superior officer. Failing this, and being driven to despair, “Find the water pretty cold, sir?” he asked at last; and after that seemed to feel that he had discharged his duty as well as might be under the extraordinary circumstances.
The second mate, during the course of the afternoon, contrived to pass near Staniford. “Why, there wa'n't noneedof your doing it,” he said, in a bated tone. “I could ha' had him out with the boat,soon enough.”
Staniford treasured up these meagre expressions of the general approbation, and would not have had them different. From this time, within the narrow bounds that brought them all necessarily together in some sort, Hicks abolished himself as nearly as possible. He chose often to join the second mate at meals, which Mr. Mason, in accordance with the discipline of the ship, took apart both from the crew and his superior officers. Mason treated the voluntary outcast with a sort of sarcastic compassion, as a man whose fallen state was not without its points as a joke to the indifferent observer, and yet might appeal to the pity of one who knew such cases through the misery they inflicted. Staniford heard him telling Hicks about his brother-in-law, and dwelling upon the peculiar relief which the appearance of his name in the mortality list gave all concerned in him. Hicks listened in apathetic patience and acquiescence; but Staniford thought that he enjoyed, as much as he could enjoy anything, the second officer's frankness. For his own part, he found that having made bold to keep this man in the world he had assumed a curious responsibility towards him. It became his business to show him that he was not shunned by his fellow-creatures, to hearten and cheer him up. It was heavy work. Hicks with his joke was sometimes odious company, but he was also sometimes amusing; without it, he was of a terribly dull conversation. He accepted Staniford's friendliness too meekly for good comradery; he let it add, apparently, to his burden of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to sink the lower. “Deuce take him!” mused his benefactor; “he's in love with her!” But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never relented in her abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There seemed no scorn in her condemnation, but neither was there any mercy. In her simple life she had kept unsophisticated the severe morality of a child, and it was this that judged him, that found him unpardonable and outlawed him. He had never ventured to speak to her since that day, and Staniford never saw her look at him except when Hicks was not looking, and then with a repulsion which was very curious. Staniford could have pitied him, and might have interceded so far as to set him nearer right in her eyes; but he felt that she avoided him, too; there were no more walks on the deck, no more readings in the cabin; the checker-board, which professed to be the History of England, In 2 Vols., remained a closed book. The good companionship of a former time, in which they had so often seemed like brothers and sister, was gone. “Hicks has smashed our Happy Family,” Staniford said to Dunham, with little pleasure in his joke. “Upon my word, I think I had better have left him in the water.” Lydia kept a great deal in her own room; sometimes when Staniford came down into the cabin he found her there, talking with Thomas of little things that amuse children; sometimes when he went on deck in the evening she would be there in her accustomed seat, and the second mate, with face and figure half averted, and staying himself by one hand on the shrouds, would be telling her something to which she listened with lifted chin and attentive eyes. The mate would go away when Staniford appeared, but that did not help matters, for then Lydia went too. At table she said very little; she had the effect of placing herself more and more under the protection of the captain. The golden age, when they had all laughed and jested so freely and fearlessly together, under her pretty sovereignty, was past, and they seemed far dispersed in a common exile. Staniford imagined she grew pale and thin; he asked Dunham if he did not see it, but Dunham had not observed. “I think matters have taken a very desirable shape, socially,” he said. “Miss Blood will reach her friends as fancy-free as she left home.”
“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 formypleasure,” 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.
“Whatdoyou 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, andwillhave 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.
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 Americanprima 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'sthisworld! 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.”
“Askedyou!” 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.
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.
“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, “Ihopenot!”
“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'tchooseto fight it?” shouted Staniford,—“if I don'tchooseto 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! Youmustfight 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—whothe 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 ofher? Did you think I was in love withher?”
“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.”
“Withher!” cried Dunham, springing at his hand.
“Oh, come now! Don'tyoube romantic, after knockingmychance.”
“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 itwasher 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 tothatemergency.”
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 knowherto 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 itisa 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.