Elmore went out for a long walk, from which he returned disconsolate at
dinner. He was one of those people, common enough in our Puritan
civilization, who would rather forego any pleasure than incur the
reaction which must follow with all the keenness of remorse; and he
always mechanically pitied (for the operation was not a rational one)
such unhappy persons as he saw enjoying themselves. But he had not meant
to add bitterness to the anguish which Lily would necessarily feel in
retrospect of the night's gayety; he had not known that he was
recognizing, by those unsparing words of his, the nervous misgivings in
the girl's heart. He scarcely dared ask, as he sat down at table with
Mrs. Elmore alone, whether Lily were asleep.
"Asleep?" she echoed, in a low tone of mystery. "I hope so."
"Celia, Celia!" he cried in despair. "What shall I do? I feel terribly
at what I said to her."
"Sh! At what you said to her? Oh yes! Yes, that was cruel. But there is
so much else, poor child, that I had forgotten that."
He let his plate of soup stand untasted. "Why--why," he faltered,
"didn't she enjoy herself?" And a historian of Venice, whose mind should
have been wholly engaged in philosophizing the republic's difficult
past, hung abjectly upon the question whether a young girl had or had
not had a good time at a ball.
"Yes. Oh, yes! She _enjoyed_ herself--if that's all you require,"
replied his wife. "Of course she wouldn't have stayed so late if she
hadn't enjoyed herself."
"No," he said in a tone which he tried to make leading; but his wife
refused to be led by indirect methods. She ate her soup, but in a manner
to carry increasing bitterness to Elmore with every spoonful.
"Come, Celia!" he cried at last, "tell me what has happened. You know
how wretched this makes me. Tell me it, whatever it is. Of course, I
must know it in the end. Are there any new complications?"
"No _new_ complications," said his wife, as if resenting the word. "But
you make such a bugbear of the least little matter that there's no
encouragement to tell you anything."
"Excuse me," he retorted, "I haven't made a bugbear of this."
"You haven't had the opportunity." This was so grossly unjust that
Elmore merely shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. When it
finally appeared that he was not going to ask anything more, his wife
added: "If you could listen, like any one else, and not interrupt with
remarks that distort all one's ideas"--Then, as he persisted in his
silence, she relented still further. "Why, of course, as you say, you
will have to know it in the end. But I can tell you, to begin with,
Owen, that it's nothing you can do anything about, or take hold of in
any way. Whatever it is, it's done and over; so it needn't distress you
at all."
"Ah, I've known some things done and over that distressed me a great
deal," he suggested.
"The princess wasn't so very young, after all," said Mrs. Elmore, as if
this had been the point in dispute, "but very fat and jolly, and very
kind. She wasn't in costume; but there was a young countess with her,
helping receive, who appeared as Night,--black tulle, you know, with
silver stars. The princess seemed to take a great fancy to Lily,--the
Russians always _have_ sympathized with us in the war,--and all the time
she wasn't dancing, the princess kept her by her, holding her hand and
patting it. The officers--hundreds of them, in their white uniforms and
those magnificent hussar dresses--were very obsequious to the princess,
and Lily had only too many partners. She says you can't imagine how
splendid the scene was, with all those different costumes, and the rooms
a perfect blaze of waxlights; the windows were battened, so that you
couldn't tell when it came daylight, and she hadn't any idea how the
time was passing. They were not all in masks; and there didn't seem to
be any regular hour for unmasking. She can't tell just when the supper
was, but she thinks it must have been towards morning. She says Mr.
Hoskins got on capitally, and everybody seemed to like him, he was so
jolly and good-natured; and when they found out that he had been wounded
in the war, they made quite a belle of him, as he called it. The
princess made a point of introducing all the officers to Lily that came
up after they unmasked. They paid her the greatest attention, and you
can easily see that she was the prettiest girl there."
"I can believe that without seeing," said Elmore, with magnanimous pride
in the loveliness that had made him so much trouble. "Well?"
"Well, they couldn't any of them get the hang, as Mr. Hoskins said, of
the character she came in, for a good while; but when they did, they
thought it was the best idea there: and it was all _your_ idea, Owen,"
said Mrs. Elmore, in accents of such tender pride that he knew she must
now be approaching the difficult passage of her narration. "It was so
perfectly new and unconventional. She got on very well speaking Italian
with the officers, for she knew as much of it as they did."
Here Mrs. Elmore paused, and glanced hesitatingly at her husband. "They
only made one little mistake; but that was at the beginning, and they
soon got over it." Elmore suffered, but he did not ask what it was, and
his wife went on with smooth caution. "Lily thought it was just as it is
at home, and she mustn't dance with any one unless they had been
introduced. So after the first dance with the Spanish consul, as her
escort, a young officer came up and asked her; and she refused, for she
thought it was a great piece of presumption. Afterwards the princess
told her she could dance with any one, introduced or not, and so she
did; and pretty soon she saw this first officer looking at her very
angrily, and going about speaking to others and glancing toward her. She
felt badly about it, when she saw how it was; and she got Mr. Hoskins to
go and speak to him. Mr. Hoskins asked him if he spoke English, and the
officer said No; and it seems that he didn't know Italian either, and
Mr. Hoskins tried him in Spanish,--he picked up a little in New
Mexico,--but the officer didn't understand it; and all at once it
occurred to Mr. Hoskins to say, 'Parlez-vous Français?' and says the
officer instantly, 'Oui, monsieur.'"
"Of course the man knew French. He ought to have tried him with that in
the beginning. What did Hoskins say then?" asked Elmore impatiently.
"He didn't say anything: that was all the French he knew."
Elmore broke into a cry of laughter, and laughed on and on with the wild
excess of a sad man when once he unpacks his heart in that way. His wife
did not, perhaps, feel the absurdity as keenly as he, but she gladly
laughed with him, for it smoothed her way to have him in this humor.
"Mr. Hoskins just took him by the arm, and said, 'Here! you come along
with me,' and led him up to the princess, where Lily was sitting; and
when the princess had explained to him, Lily rose, and mustered up
enough French to say, 'Je vous prie, monsieur, de danser avec moi,' and
after that they were the greatest friends."
"That was very pretty in her; it was sovereignly gracious," said Elmore.
"Oh, if an American girl is left to manage for herself she can _always_
manage!" cried Mrs. Elmore.
"Well, and what else?" asked her husband.
"Oh, _I_ don't know that it amounts to anything," said Mrs. Elmore; but
she did not delay further.
It appeared from what she went on to say that in the German, which began
not long after midnight, there was a figure fancifully called the
symphony, in which musical toys were distributed among the dancers in
pairs; the possessor of a small pandean pipe, or tin horn, went about
sounding it, till he found some lady similarly equipped, when he
demanded her in the dance. In this way a tall mask, to whom a penny
trumpet had fallen, was stalking to and fro among the waltzers, blowing
the silly plaything with a disgusted air, when Lily, all unconscious of
him, where she sat with her hand in that of her faithful princess,
breathed a responsive note. The mask was instantly at her side, and she
was whirling away in the waltz. She tried to make him out, but she had
already danced with so many people that she was unable to decide whether
she had seen this mask before. He was not disguised except by the little
visor of black silk, coming down to the point of his nose; his blond
whiskers escaped at either side, and his blond moustache swept beneath,
like the whiskers and moustaches of fifty other officers present, and he
did not speak. This was a permissible caprice of his, but if she were
resolved to make him speak, this also was a permissible caprice. She
made a whole turn of the room in studying up the Italian sentence with
which she assailed him: "Perdoni, Maschera; ma cosa ha detto? Non ho ben
inteso."
"Speak English, Mask," came the reply. "I did not say anything." It came
certainly with a German accent, and with a foreigner's deliberation; but
it came at once, and clearly.
The English astonished her, and somehow it daunted her, for the mask
spoke very gravely; but she would not let him imagine that he had put
her down, and she rejoined laughingly, "Oh, I knew that you hadn't
spoken, but I thought I would make you."
"You think you can make one do what you will?" asked the mask.
"Oh, no. I don't think I could make you tell me who you are, though I
should like to make you."
"And why should you wish to know me? If you met me in Piazza, you would
not recognize my salutation."
"How do you know that?" demanded Lily. "I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, it is understood yet already," answered the mask. "Your compatriot,
with whom you live, wishes to be well seen by the Italians, and he would
not let you bow to an Austrian."
"That is not so," exclaimed Lily indignantly.
"Professor Elmore wouldn't be so mean; and if he would, _I_ shouldn't."
She was frightened, but she felt her spirit rising, too. "You seem to
know so well who I am: do you think it is fair for you to keep me in
ignorance?"
"I cannot remain masked without your leave. Shall I unmask? Do you
insist?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "You will have to unmask at supper, and then I
shall see you. I'm not impatient. I prefer to keep you for a mystery."
"You will be a mystery to me even when you unmask," replied the mask
gravely.
Lily was ill at ease, and she gave a little, unsuccessful laugh. "You
seem to take the mystery very coolly," she said in default of anything
else.
"I have studied the American manner," replied the mask. "In America they
take everything coolly: life and death, love and hate--all things."
"How do you know that? You have never been in America."
"That is not necessary, if the Americans come here to show us."
"They are not true Americans, if they show you that," cried the girl.
"No?"
"But I see that you are only amusing yourself."
"And have you never amused yourself with me?"
"How could I," she demanded, "if I never saw you before?"
"But are you sure of that?" She did not answer, for in this masquerade
banter she had somehow been growing unhappy. "Shall I prove to you that
you have seen me before? You dare not let me unmask."
"Oh, I can wait till supper. I shall know then that I have never seen
you before. I forbid you to unmask till supper! Will you obey?" she
cried anxiously.
"I have obeyed in harder things," replied the mask.
She refused to recognize anything but meaningless badinage in his words.
"Oh, as a soldier, yes!--you must be used to obeying orders." He did not
reply, and she added, releasing her hand and slipping it into his arm,
"I am tired now; will you take me back to the princess?"
He led her silently to her place, and left her with a profound bow.
"Now," said the princess, "they shall give you a little time to breathe.
I will not let them make you dance every minute. They are indiscreet.
You shall not take any of their musical instruments, and so you can
fairly escape till supper."
"Thank you," said Lily absently, "that will be the best way"; and she
sat languidly watching the dancers. A young naval officer who spoke
English ran across the floor to her.
"Come," he cried, "I shall have twenty duels on my hands if I let you
rest here, when there are so many who wish to dance with you." He threw
a pipe into her lap, and at the same moment a pipe sounded from the
other side of the room.
"This is a conspiracy!" exclaimed the girl. "I will not have it! I am
not going to dance any more." She put the pipe back into his hands; he
placed it to his lips, and sounded it several times, and then dropped it
into her lap again with a laugh, and vanished in the crowd.
"That little fellow is a rogue," said the princess. "But he is not so
bad as some of them. Monsieur," she cried in French to the
fair-whiskered, tall mask who had already presented himself before Lily,
"I will not permit it, if it is for a trick. You must unmask. I will
dispense mademoiselle from dancing with you."
The mask did not reply, but turned his eyes upon Lily with an appeal
which the holes of the visor seemed to intensify. "It is a promise," she
said to the princess, rising in a sort of fascination. "I have forbidden
him to unmask before supper."
"Oh, very well," answered the princess, "if that is the case. But make
him bring you back soon: it is almost time."
"Did you hear, Mask?" asked the girl, as they waltzed away. "I will only
make two turns of the room with you."
"Perdoni?"
"This is too bad!" she exclaimed. "I will not be trifled with in this
way. Either speak English, or unmask at once."
The mask again answered in Italian, with a repeated apology for not
understanding. "You understand very well," retorted Lily, now really
indignant, "and you know that this passes a jest."
"Can you speak German?" asked the mask in that tongue.
"Yes, a little, but I do not choose to speak it. If you have anything to
say to me you can say it in English."
"I cannot understand English," replied the mask, still in German, and
now Lily thought the voice seemed changed; but she clung to her belief
that it was some hoax played at her expense, and she continued her
efforts to make him answer her in English. The two turns round the room
had stretched to half a dozen in this futile task, but she felt herself
powerless to leave the mask, who for his part betrayed signs of
embarrassment, as if he had undertaken a ruse of which he repented. A
confused movement in the crowd and a sudden cessation of the music
recalled her to herself, and she now took her partner's arm and hurried
with him toward the place where she had left the princess. But the
princess had already gone into the supper-room, and she had no other
recourse than to follow with the stranger.
As they entered the supper-room she removed her little visor, and she
felt, rather than saw, the mask put up his hand and lift away his own:
he turned his head, and looked down upon her with the face of a man she
had never seen before.
"Ah, you are there!" she heard the princess's voice calling to her from
one of the tables. "How tired you look! Here--here! I will make you
drink this glass of wine."
The officer who brought her the wine gave her his arm and led her to the
princess, and the late mask mixed with the two-score other tall blond
officers.
The night which stretched so far into the day ended at last, and she
followed Hoskins down to their gondola. He entered the boat first, to
give her his hand in stepping from the _riva_; at the same moment she
involuntarily turned at the closing of the door behind her, and found
at her side the tall blond mask, or one of the masks, if there were two
who had danced with her. He caught her hand suddenly to his lips, and
kissed it.
"Adieu--forgive!" he murmured in English, and then vanished indoors
again.
"Owen," said Mrs. Elmore dramatically at the end of her narration, "who
do you think it could have been?"
"I have no doubt as to who it was, Celia," replied Elmore, with a heat
evidently quite unexpected to his wife, "and if Lily has not been
seriously annoyed by the matter, I am glad that it has happened. I have
had my regrets--my doubts--whether I did not dismiss that man's
pretensions too curtly, too unkindly. But I am convinced now that we did
exactly right, and that she was wise never to bestow another thought
upon him. A man capable of contriving a petty persecution of this
sort--of pursuing a young girl who had rejected him in this shameless
fashion,--is no gentleman."
"It _was_ a persecution," said Mrs. Elmore, with a dazed air, as if this
view of the case had not occurred to her.
"A miserable, unworthy persecution!" repeated her husband.
"Yes."
"And we are well rid of him. He has relieved _me_ by this last
performance, immensely; and I trust that if Lily had any secret
lingering regrets, he has given her a final lesson. Though I must say,
in justice to her, poor girl, she didn't seem to need it."
Mrs. Elmore listened with a strange abeyance; she looked beaten and
bewildered, while he vehemently uttered these words. She could not meet
his eyes, with her consciousness of having her intended romance thrown
back upon her hands; and he seemed in nowise eager to meet hers, for
whatever consciousness of his own. "Well, it isn't certain that he was
the one, after all," she said.