X.

After this Elmore had such an uncomfortable feeling that he hated to see

Hoskins again, and he was relieved when the sculptor failed to make his

usual call, the next evening. He had not been at dinner either, and he

did not reappear for several days. Then he merely said that he had been

spending the time at Chioggia, with a French painter who was making some

studies down there, and they all took up the old routine of their

friendly life without embarrassment.

At first it seemed to Elmore that Lily was a little shy of Hoskins, and

he thought that she resented his using her charm in his art; but before

the evening wore away, he lost this impression. They all got into a long

talk about home, and she took her place at the piano and played some of

the war-songs that had begun to supersede the old negro melodies. Then

she wandered back to them, with fingers that idly drifted over the keys,

and ended with "Stop dat knockin'," in which Hoskins joined with his

powerful bass in the recitative "Let me in," and Elmore himself had half

a mind to attempt a part. The sculptor rose as she struck the keys with

a final crash, but lingered, as his fashion was when he had something to

propose: if he felt pretty sure that the thing would be liked, he

brought it in as if he had only happened to remember it. He now drew out

a large, square, ceremonious-looking envelope, at which he glanced as

if, after all, he was rather surprised to see it, and said, "Oh, by the

by, Mrs. Elmore, I wish you'd tell me what to do about this thing.

Here's something that's come to me in my official capacity, but it isn't

exactly consular business,--if it was I don't believe I should ask _any_

lady for instructions,--and I don't know exactly what to do. It's so

long since I corresponded with a princess that I don't even know how to

answer her letter."

The ladies perhaps feared a hoax of some sort, and would not ask to see

the letter; and then Hoskins recognized his failure to play upon their

curiosity with a laugh, and gave the letter to Mrs. Elmore. It was an

invitation to a mask ball, of which all Venice had begun to speak. A

great Russian lady, who had come to spend the winter in the Lagoons, and

had taken a whole floor at one of the hotels, had sent out her cards,

apparently to all the available people in the city, for the event which

was to take place a fortnight later. In the mean time, a thrill of

preparation was felt in various quarters, and the ordinary course of

life was interrupted in a way that gave some idea of the old times, when

Venice was the capital of pleasure, and everything yielded there to the

great business of amusement. Mrs. Elmore had found it impossible to get

a pair of fine shoes finished until after the ball; a dress which Lily

had ordered could not be made; their laundress had given notice that for

the present all fluting and quilling was out of the question; one

already heard that the chief Venetian perruquier and his assistants were

engaged for every moment of the forty-eight hours before the ball, and

that whoever had him now must sit up with her hair dressed for two

nights at least. Mrs. Elmore had a fanatical faith in these stories; and

while agreeing with her husband, as a matter of principle, that mask

balls were wrong, and that it was in bad taste for a foreigner to insult

the sorrow of Venice by a festivity of the sort at such a time, she had

secretly indulged longings which the sight of Hoskins's invitation

rendered almost insupportable. Her longings were not for herself, but

for Lily: if she could provide Lily with the experience of a masquerade

in Venice, she could overpay all the kindnesses that the Mayhews had

ever done her. It was an ambition neither ignoble nor ungenerous, and it

was with a really heroic effort that she silenced it in passing the

invitation to her husband, and simply saying to Hoskins, "Of course you

will go."

"I don't know about that," he answered. "That's the point I want some

advice on. You see this document calls for a lady to fill out the bill."

"Oh," returned Mrs. Elmore, "you will find some Americans at the hotels.

You can take them."

"Well, now, I was thinking, Mrs. Elmore, that I should like to take

you."

"Take me!" she echoed tremulously. "What an idea! I'm too old to go to

mask balls."

"You don't look it," suggested Hoskins.

"Oh, I couldn't go," she sighed. "But it's very, very kind."

Hoskins dropped his head, and gave the low chuckle with which he

confessed any little bit of humbug. "Well, you _or_ Miss Lily."

Lily had retired to the other side of the room as soon as the parley

about the invitation began. Without asking or seeing, she knew what was

in the note, and now she felt it right to make a feint of not knowing

what Mrs. Elmore meant when she asked, "What do _you_ say, Lily?"

When the question was duly explained to her, she answered languidly, "I

don't know. Do you think I'd better?"

"I might as well make a clean breast of it, first as last," said

Hoskins. "I thought perhaps Mrs. Elmore might refuse, she's so stiff

about some things,"--here he gave that chuckle of his,--"and so I came

prepared for contingencies. It occurred to me that it mightn't be quite

the thing, and so I went round to the Spanish consul and asked him how

he thought it would do for me to matronize a young lady if I could get

one, and he said he didn't think it would do at all." Hoskins let this

adverse decision sink into the breasts of his listeners before he added:

"But he said that he was going with his wife, and that if we would come

along she could matronize us both. I don't know how it would work," he

concluded impartially.

They all looked at Elmore, who stood holding the princess's missive in

his hand, and darkly forecasting the chances of consent and denial. At

the first suggestion of the matter, a reckless hope that this ball might

bring Ehrhardt above their horizon again sprang up in his heart, and

became a desperate fear when the whole responsibility of action was, as

usual, left with him. He stood, feeling that Hoskins had used him very

ill.

"I suppose," began Mrs. Elmore very thoughtfully, "that this will be

something quite in the style of the old masquerades under the Republic."

"Regular Ridotto business, the Spanish consul says," answered Hoskins.

"It might be very useful to you, Owen," she resumed, "in an historical

way, if Lily were to go and take notes of everything; so that when you

came to that period you could describe its corruptions intelligently."

Elmore laughed. "I never thought of that, my dear," he said, returning

the invitation to Hoskins. "Your historical sense has been awakened

late, but it promises to be very active. Lily had better go, by all

means, and I shall depend upon her coming home with very full notes upon

her dance-list."

They laughed at the professor's sarcasm, and Hoskins, having undertaken

to see that the last claims of etiquette were satisfied by getting an

invitation sent to Miss Mayhew through the Spanish consul, went off, and

left the ladies to the discussion of ways and means. Mrs. Elmore said

that of course it was now too late to hope to get anything done, and

then set herself to devise the character that Lily would have appeared

in if there had been time to get her ready, or if all the work-people

had not been so busy that it was merely frantic to think of anything.

She first patriotically considered her as Columbia, with the customary

drapery of stars and stripes and the cap of liberty. But while holding

that she would have looked very pretty in the dress, Mrs. Elmore decided

that it would have been too hackneyed; and besides, everybody would have

known instantly who it was.

"Why not have had her go in the character of Mr. Hoskins's 'Westward'?"

suggested Elmore, with lazy irony.

"The very thing!" cried his wife. "Owen, you deserve great credit for

thinking of that; no one else would have done it! No one will dream what

it means, and it will be great fun, letting them make it out. We must

keep it a dead secret from Mr. Hoskins, and let her surprise him with it

when he comes for her that evening. It will be a very pretty way of

returning his compliment, and it will be a sort of delicate

acknowledgement of his kindness in asking her, and in so many other

ways. Yes, you've hit it exactly, Owen; she shall go as 'Westward.'"

"Go?" echoed Elmore, who had with difficulty realized the rapid change

of tense. "I thought you said you couldn't get her ready."

"We must manage somehow," replied Mrs. Elmore. And somehow a shoemaker

for the sandals, a seamstress for the delicate flowing draperies, a

hair-dresser for the adjustment of the young girl's rebellious abundance

of hair beneath the star-lit fillet, were actually found,--with the help

of Hoskins, as usual, though he was not suffered to know anything of the

character to whose make-up he contributed. The perruquier, a personage

of lordly address naturally, and of a dignity heightened by the demand

in which he found himself came early in the morning, and was received by

Elmore with a self-possession that ill-comported with the solemnity of

the occasion. "Sit down," said Elmore easily, pushing him a chair. "The

ladies will be here presently."

"But I have no time to sit down, signore!" replied the artist, with an

imperious bow, "and the ladies must be here instantly."

Mrs. Elmore always said that if she had not heard this conversation, and

hurried in at once, the perruquier would have left them at that point.

But she contrived to appease him by the manifestation of an intelligent

sympathy; she made Lily leave her breakfast untasted, and submit her

beautiful head to the touch of this man, with whom it was but a head of

hair and nothing more; and in an hour the work was done. The artist

whisked away the cloth which covered her shoulders, and crying,

"Behold!" bowed splendidly to the spectators, and without waiting for

criticism or suggestion, took his napoleon and went his way. All that

day the work of his skill was sacredly guarded, and the custodian of the

treasure went about with her head on her shoulders, as if it had been

temporarily placed in her keeping, and were something she was not at all

used to taking care of. More than once Mrs. Elmore had to warn her

against sinister accidents. "Remember, Lily," she said, "that if

anything _did_ happen, NOTHING could be done to save you!" In spite of

himself Elmore shared these anxieties, and in the depths of his wonted

studies he found himself pursued and harassed by vague apprehensions,

which upon analysis proved to be fears for Miss Lily's hair. It was a

great moment when the robe came home--rather late--from the

dressmaker's, and was put on over Lily's head; but from this thrilling

rite Elmore was of course excluded, and only knew of it afterwards by

hearsay. He did not see her till she came out just before Hoskins

arrived to fetch her away, when she appeared radiantly perfect in her

dress, and in the air with which she meant to carry it off. At Mrs.

Elmore's direction she paraded dazzlingly up and down the room a number

of times, bending over to see how her dress hung, as she walked. Mrs.

Elmore, with her head on one side, scrutinized her in every detail, and

Elmore regarded her young beauty and delight with a pride as innocent as

her own. A dim regret, evaporating in a long sigh, which made the others

laugh, recalled him to himself, as the bell rang and Hoskins appeared.

He was received in a preconcerted silence, and he looked from one to the

other with his queer, knowing smile, and took in the whole affair

without a word.

"Isn't it a pretty idea?" said Mrs. Elmore. "Studied from an antique

bas-relief, or just the same as an antique,--full of the anguish and the

repose of the Laocoön."

"Mrs. Elmore," said the sculptor, "you're too many for me. I reckon the

procession had better start before I make a fool of myself. Well!" This

was all Hoskins could say; but it sufficed. The ladies declared

afterwards that if he had added a word more, it would have spoiled it.

They had expected him to go to the ball in the character of a miner

perhaps, or in that of a trapper of the great plains; but he had chosen

to appear more naturally as a courtier of the time of Louis XIV. "When

you go in for a disguise," he explained, "you can't make it too

complete; and I consider that this limp of mine adds the last touch."

"It's no use to sit up for them," Mrs. Elmore said, when she and her

husband had come in from calling good wishes and last instructions after

them from the balcony, as their gondola pushed away. "We sha'n't see

anything more of _them_ till morning. Now this," she added, "is

something like the gayety that people at home are always fancying in

Europe. Why, I can remember when I used to imagine that American

tourists figured brilliantly in _salons_ and _conversazioni_, and spent

their time in masking and throwing _confetti_ in carnival, and going to

balls and opera. I didn't know what American tourists were, then, and

how dismally they moped about in hotels and galleries and churches. And

I didn't know how stupid Europe was socially,--how perfectly dead and

buried it was, especially for young people. It would be fun if things

happened so that Lily never found it out! I don't think two offers

already,--or three, if you count Rose-Black,--are very bad for _any_

girl; and now this ball, coming right on top of it, where she will see

hundreds of handsome officers! Well, she'll never miss Patmos, at this

rate, will she?"

"Perhaps she had better never have left Patmos," suggested Elmore

gravely.

"I don't know what you mean, Owen," said his wife, as if hurt.

"I mean that it's a great pity she should give herself up to the same

frivolous amusements here that she had there. The only good that Europe

can do American girls who travel here is to keep them in total exile

from what they call a good time,--from parties and attentions and

flirtations; to force them, through the hard discipline of social

deprivation, to take some interest in the things that make for

civilization,--in history, in art, in humanity."

"Now, there I differ with you, Owen. I think American girls are the

nicest girls in the world, just as they are. And I don't see any harm in

the things you think are so awful. You've lived so long here among your

manuscripts that you've forgotten there is any such time as the present.

If you are getting so Europeanized, I think the sooner we go home the

better."

"_I_ getting Europeanized!" began Elmore indignantly.

"Yes, Europeanized! And I don't want you to be so severe with Lily,

Owen. The child stands in terror of you now; and if you keep on in this

way, she can't draw a natural breath in the house."

There is always something flattering, at first, to a gentle and

peaceable man in the notion of being terrible to any one; Elmore melted

at these words, and at the fear that he might have been, in some way

that he could not think of, really harsh.

"I should be very sorry to distress her," he began.

"Well, you haven't distressed her yet," his wife relented. "Only you

must be careful not to. She was going to be very circumspect, Owen, on

your account, for she really appreciates the interest you take in her,

and I think she sees that it won't do to be at all free with strangers

over here. This ball will be a great education for Lily,--a _great_

education. I'm going to commence a letter to Sue about her costume, and

all that, and leave it open to finish up when Lily gets home."

When she went to bed, she did not sleep till after the time when the

girl ought to have come; and when she awoke to a late breakfast, Lily

had still not returned. By eleven o'clock she and Elmore had passed the

stage of accusing themselves, and then of accusing each other, for

allowing Lily to go in the way they had; and had come to the question of

what they had better do, and whether it was practicable to send to the

Spanish consulate and ask what had become of her. They had resigned

themselves to waiting for one half-hour longer, when they heard her

voice at the water-gate, gayly forbidding Hoskins to come up; and

running out upon the balcony, Mrs. Elmore had a glimpse of the

courtier, very tawdry by daylight, re-entering his gondola, and had only

time to turn about when Lily burst laughing into the room.

"Oh, don't look at me, Professor Elmore!" she cried. "I'm literally

danced to rags!"

Her dress and hair were splashed with drippings from the wax candles;

she was wildly decorated with favors from the German, and one of these

had been used to pin up a rent which the spur of a hussar had made in

her robe; her hair had escaped from its fastenings during the night, and

in putting it back she had broken the star in her fillet; it was now

kept in place by a bit of black-and-yellow cord which an officer had

lent her. "He said he should claim it of me the first time we met," she

exclaimed excitedly. "Why, Professor Elmore," she implored with a laugh,

"don't look at me _so_!"

Grief and indignation were in his heart. "You look like the spectre of

last night," he said with dreamy severity, and as if he saw her merely

as a vision.

"Why, that's the way I _feel_!" she answered; and with a reproachful

"Owen!" his wife followed her flight to her room.