Long after the ball Lily seemed to Elmore's eye not to have recovered
her former tone. He thought she went about languidly, and that she was
fitful and dreamy, breaking from moods of unwonted abstraction in bursts
of gayety as unnatural. She did not talk much of the ball; he could not
be sure that she ever recurred to it of her own motion. Hoskins
continued to come a great deal to the house, and she often talked with
him for a whole evening; Elmore fancied she was very serious in these
talks.
He wondered if Lily avoided him, or whether this was only an illusion of
his; but in any case, he was glad that the girl seemed to find so much
comfort in Hoskins's company, and when it occurred to him he always said
something to encourage his visits. His wife was singularly quiescent at
this time, as if, having accomplished all she wished in Lily's presence
at the princess's ball, she was willing to rest for a while from further
social endeavor. Life was falling into the dull routine again, and
after the past shocks his nerves were gratefully clothing themselves in
the old habits of tranquillity once more, when one day a letter came
from the overseers of Patmos University, offering him the presidency of
that institution on condition of his early return. The board had in view
certain changes, intended to bring the university abreast with the
times, which they hoped would meet his approval.
Among these was a modification of the name, which was hereafter to be
Patmos University and Military Institute. The board not only believed
that popular feeling demanded the introduction of military drill into
the college, but they felt that a college which had been closed at the
beginning of the Rebellion, through the dedication of its president and
nearly all its students to the war, could in no way so gracefully
recognize this proud fact of its history as by hereafter making war one
of the arts which it taught. The board explained that of course Mr.
Elmore would not be expected to take charge of this branch of
instruction at once. A competent military assistant would be provided,
and continued under him as long as he should deem his services
essential. The letter closed with a cordial expression of the desire of
Elmore's old friends to have him once more in their midst, at the close
of labors which they were sure would do credit to the good old
university and to the whole city of Patmos.
Elmore read this letter at breakfast, and silently handed it to his
wife: they were alone, for Lily, as now often happened, had not yet
risen. "Well?" he said, when she had read it in her turn. She gave it
back to him with a look in her dimmed eyes which he could not mistake.
"I see there is no doubt of your feeling, Celia," he added.
"I don't wish to urge you," she replied, "but yes, I should like to go
back. Yes, I am homesick. I have been afraid of it before, but this
chance of returning makes it certain."
"And you see nothing ridiculous in my taking the presidency of a
military institute?"
"They say expressly that they don't expect you to give instruction in
that branch."
"No, not immediately, it seems," he said, with his pensive irony. "And
the history?"
"Haven't you almost got notes enough?"
Elmore laughed sadly. "I have been here two years. It would take me
twenty years to write such a history of Venice as I ought not to be
ashamed to write; it would take me five years to scamp it as I thought
of doing. Oh, I dare say I had better go back. I have neither the time
nor the money to give to a work I never was fit for,--of whose
magnitude even I was unable to conceive."
"Don't say that!" cried his wife, with the old sympathy. "You will write
it yet, I know you will. I would rather spend all my days in
this--watery mausoleum than have you talk so, Owen!"
"Thank you, my dear; but the work won't be lost even if I give it up at
this point. I can do something with my material, I suppose. And you know
that if I didn't _wish_ to give up my project I couldn't. It's a sign of
my unfitness for it that I'm able to abandon it. The man who is born to
write the history of Venice will have no volition in the matter: he
cannot leave it, and he will not die till he has finished it." He feebly
crushed a bit of bread in his fingers as he ended with this burst of
feeling, and he shook his head in sad negation to his wife's tender
protest,--"Oh, you will come back some day to finish it!"
"No one ever comes back to finish a history of Venice," he said.
"Oh, yes, you will," she returned. "But you need the rest from this kind
of work, now, just as you needed rest from your college work before. You
need a change of standpoint,--and the American standpoint will be the
very thing for you."
"Perhaps so, perhaps so," he admitted. "At any rate, this is a handsome
offer, and most kindly made, Celia. It's a great compliment. I didn't
suppose they valued me so much."
"Of course they valued you, and they will be very glad to get you. I
call it merely letting the historic material ripen in your mind, or else
I shouldn't let you accept. And I shall be glad to go home, Owen, on
Lily's account. The child is getting no good here: she's drooping."
"Drooping?"
"Yes. Don't you see how she mopes about?"
"I'm afraid--that--I have--noticed."
He was going to ask why she was drooping; but he could not. He said,
recurring to the letter of the overseers, "So Patmos is a city."
"Of course it is by this time," said his wife, "with all that
prosperity!"
Now that they were determined to go, their little preparations for
return were soon made; and a week after Elmore had written to accept the
offer of the overseers, they were ready to follow his letter home. Their
decision was a blow to Hoskins under which he visibly suffered; and they
did not realize till then in what fond and affectionate friendship he
held them. He now frankly spent his whole time with them; he
disconsolately helped them pack, and he did all that a consul can do to
secure free entry for some objects of Venice that they wished to get in
without payment of duties at New York.
He said a dozen times, "I don't know what I _will_ do when you're gone";
and toward the last he alarmed them for his own interests by beginning
to say, "Well, I don't see but what I will have to go along."
The last night but one Lily felt it her duty to talk to him very
seriously about his future and what he owed to it. She told him that he
must stay in Italy till he could bring home something that would honor
the great, precious, suffering country for which he had fought so nobly,
and which they all loved. She made the tears come into her eyes as she
spoke, and when she said that she should always be proud to be
associated with one of his works, Hoskins's voice was quite husky in
replying: "Is that the way you feel about it?" He went away promising to
remain at least till he finished his bas-relief of Westward, and his
figure of the Pacific Slope; and the next morning he sent around by a
_facchino_ a note to Lily.
She ran it through in the presence of the Elmores, before whom she
received it, and then, with a cry of "I think Mr. Hoskins is too _bad_!"
she threw it into Mrs. Elmore's lap, and, catching her handkerchief to
her eyes, she broke into tears and went out of the room. The note
read:--
DEAR MISS LILY,--Your kind interest in me gives me courage to say
something that will very likely make me hateful to you forevermore.
But I have got to say it, and you have got to know it; and it's all
the worse for me if you have never suspected it. I want to give my
whole life to you, wherever and however you will have it. With you
by my side, I feel as if I could really do something that you would
not be ashamed of in sculpture, and I believe that I could make you
happy. I suppose I believe this because I love you very dearly, and
I know the chances are that you will not think this is reason
enough. But I would take one chance in a million, and be only too
glad of it. I hope it will not worry you to read this: as I said
before, I had to tell you. Perhaps it won't be altogether a
surprise. I might go on, but I suppose that until I hear from you I
had better give you as little of my eloquence as possible.