The next morning Veronica brought Lydia a little scrawl from her aunt,
bidding the girl come and breakfast with her in her room at nine.
“Well, my dear,” her aunt called to her from her pillow, when she
appeared, “you find me flat enough, this morning. If there was anything
wrong about going to the opera last night, I was properly punished
for it. Such wretched stuff as _I_ never heard! And instead of the new
ballet that they promised, they gave an old thing that I had seen till
I was sick of it. You didn't miss much, I can tell you. How fresh and
bright you _do_ look, Lydia!” she sighed. “Did you sleep well? Were you
lonesome while we were gone? Veronica says you were reading the whole
evening. Are you fond of reading?”
“I don't think I am, very,” said Lydia. “It was a book that I began on
the ship. It's a novel.” She hesitated. “I wasn't reading it; I was just
looking at it.”
“What a queer child you are! I suppose you were dying to read it, and
wouldn't because it was Sunday. Well!” Mrs. Erwin put her hand under
her pillow, and pulled out a gossamer handkerchief, with which she
delicately touched her complexion here and there, and repaired with an
instinctive rearrangement of powder the envious ravages of a slight rash
about her nose. “I respect your high principles beyond anything, Lydia,
and if they can only be turned in the right direction they will never be
any disadvantage to you.” Veronica came in with the breakfast on a tray,
and Mrs. Erwin added, “Now, pull up that little table, and bring your
chair, my dear, and let us take it easy. I like to talk while I'm
breakfasting. Will you pour out my chocolate? That's it, in the ugly
little pot with the wooden handle; the copper one's for you, with coffee
in it. I never could get that repose which seems to come perfectly
natural to you. I was always inclined to be a little rowdy, my dear, and
I've had to fight hard against it, without any help from _either_ of my
husbands; men like it; they think it's funny. When I was first married,
I was very young, and so was he; it was a real love match; and my
husband was very well off, and when I began to be delicate, nothing
would do but he must come to Europe with me. How little I ever expected
to outlive him!”
“You don't look very sick now,” began Lydia.
“Ill,” said her aunt. “You must say ill. Sick is an Americanism.”
“It's in the Bible,” said Lydia, gravely.
“Oh, there are a great many words in the _Bible_ you can't use,”
returned her aunt. “No, I don't look ill now, and I'm worlds better. But
I couldn't live a year in any other climate, I suppose. You seem to
take after your mother's side. Well, as I was saying, the European ways
didn't come natural to me, at all. I used to have a great deal of gayety
when I was a girl, and I liked beaux and attentions; and I had very free
ways. I couldn't get their stiffness here for years and years, and all
through my widowhood it was one wretched failure with me. Do what I
would, I was always violating the most essential rules, and the worst of
it was that it only seemed to make me the more popular. I do believe it
was nothing but my rowdiness that attracted Mr. Erwin; but I determined
when I had got an Englishman I would make one bold strike for the
proprieties, and have them, or die in the attempt. I determined that no
Englishwoman I ever saw should outdo me in strict conformity to all the
usages of European society. So I cut myself off from all the Americans,
and went with nobody but the English.”
“Do you like them better?” asked Lydia, with the blunt, child-like
directness that had already more than once startled her aunt.
“_Like_ them! I detest them! If Mr. Erwin were a real Englishman, I
think I should go crazy; but he's been so little in his own country--all
his life in India, nearly, and the rest on the Continent,--that
he's quite human; and no American husband was ever more patient and
indulgent; and _that_'s saying a good deal. He would be glad to have
nothing but Americans around; he has an enthusiasm for them,--or for
what he supposes they are. Like the English! You ought to have heard
them during our war; it would have made your blood boil! And then how
they came crawling round after it was all over, and trying to pet us up!
Ugh!”
“If you feel so about them,” said Lydia, as before, “why do you want to
go with them so much?”
“My dear,” cried her aunt, “_to beat them with their own weapons on
their own ground_,--to show them that an American can be more European
than any of them, if she chooses! And now you've come here with looks
and temperament and everything just to my hand. You're more
beautiful than any English girl ever dreamt of being; you're very
distinguished-looking; your voice is perfectly divine; and you're colder
than an iceberg. _Oh_, if I only had one winter with you in Rome,
I think I should die in peace!” Mrs. Erwin paused, and drank her
chocolate, which she had been letting cool in the eagerness of her
discourse. “But, never mind,” she continued, “we will do the best we can
here. I've seen English girls going out two or three together, without
protection, in Rome and Florence; but I mean that you shall be quite
Italian in that respect. The Italians never go out without a chaperone
of some sort, and you must never be seen without me, or your uncle, or
Veronica. Now I'll tell you how you must do at parties, and so on. You
must be very retiring; you're that, any way; but you must always keep
close to me. It doesn't do for young people to talk much together in
society; it makes scandal about a girl. If you dance, you must always
hurry back to me. Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Erwin, “I remember how, when
I was a girl, I used to hang on to the young men's arms, and promenade
with them after a dance, and go out to supper with them, and flirt on
the stairs,--_such_ times! But that wouldn't do here, Lydia. It would
ruin a girl's reputation; she could hardly walk arm in arm with a young
man if she was engaged to him.” Lydia blushed darkly red, and then
turned paler than usual, while her aunt went on. “You might do
it, perhaps, and have it set down to American eccentricity or
under-breeding, but I'm not going to have that. I intend you to be just
as dull and diffident in society as if you were an Italian, and _more_
than if you were English. Your voice, of course, is a difficulty. If
you sing, that will make you conspicuous, in spite of everything. But I
don't see why that can't be turned to advantage; it's no worse than your
beauty. Yes, if you're so splendid-looking and so gifted, and at the
same time as stupid as the rest, it's so much clear gain. It will come
easy for you to be shy with men, for I suppose you've hardly ever talked
with any, living up there in that out-of-the-way village; and your
manner is very good. It's reserved, and yet it isn't green. The way,”
continued Mrs. Erwin, “to treat men in Europe is to behave as if they
were guilty till they prove themselves innocent. All you have to do is
to reverse all your American ideas. But here I am, lecturing you as if
you had been just such a girl as I was, with half a dozen love affairs
on her hands at once, and no end of gentlemen friends. Europe won't
be hard for you, my dear, for you haven't got anything to unlearn. But
_some_ girls that come over!--it's perfectly ridiculous, the trouble
they get into, and the time they have getting things straight. They take
it for granted that men in good society are gentlemen,--what we mean by
gentlemen.”
Lydia had been letting her coffee stand, and had scarcely tasted the
delicious French bread and the sweet Lombard butter of which her aunt
ate so heartily. “Why, child,” said Mrs. Erwin, at last, “where is your
appetite? One would think you were the elderly invalid who had been up
late. Did you find it too exciting to sit at home _looking_ at a novel?
What was it? If it's a new story I should like to see it. But you didn't
bring a novel from South Bradfield with you?”
“No,” said Lydia, with a husky reluctance. “One of the--passengers gave
it to me.”
“Had you many passengers? But of course not. That was what made it so
delightful when I came over that way. I was newly married then, and with
spirits--oh dear me!--for anything. It was one adventure, the whole way;
and we got so well acquainted, it was like one family. I suppose your
grandfather put you in charge of some family. I know artists sometimes
come out that way, and people for their health.”
“There was no family on our ship,” said Lydia. “My state-room had been
fixed up for the captain's wife--”
“Our captain's wife was along, too,” interposed Mrs. Erwin. “She was
such a joke with us. She had been out to Venice on a voyage before, and
used to be always talking about the Du-_cal_ Palace. And did they really
turn out of their state-room for you?”
“She was not along,” said Lydia.
“Not along?” repeated Mrs. Erwin, feebly. “Who--who were the other
passengers?”
“There were three gentlemen,” answered Lydia.
“Three gentlemen? Three men? Three--And you--and--” Mrs. Erwin fell back
upon her pillow, and remained gazing at Lydia, with a sort of remote
bewildered pity, as at perdition, not indeed beyond compassion, but far
beyond help. Lydia's color had been coming and going, but now it settled
to a clear white. Mrs. Erwin commanded herself sufficiently to resume:
“And there were--there were--no other ladies?”
“No.”
“And you were--”
“I was the only woman on board,” replied Lydia. She rose abruptly,
striking the edge of the table in her movement, and setting its china
and silver jarring. “Oh, I know what you mean, aunt Josephine, but two
days ago I couldn't have dreamt it! From the time the ship sailed till I
reached this wicked place, there wasn't a word said nor a look looked to
make me think I wasn't just as right and safe there as if I had been in
my own room at home. They were never anything but kind and good to me.
They never let me think that they could be my enemies, or that I must
suspect them and be on the watch against them. They were Americans!
I had to wait for one of your Europeans to teach me that,--for that
officer who was here yesterday--”
“The cavaliere? Why, where--”
“He spoke to me in the cars, when Mr. Erwin was asleep! Had he any right
to do so?”
“He would think he had, if he thought you were alone,” said Mrs. Erwin,
plaintively. “I don't see how we could resent it. It was simply a
mistake on his part. And now you see, Lydia--”
“Oh, I see how my coming the way I have will seem to all these people!”
cried Lydia, with passionate despair. “I know how it will seem to that
married woman who lets a man be in love with her, and that old woman
who can't live with her husband because he's too good and kind, and that
girl who swears and doesn't know who her father is, and that impudent
painter, and that officer who thinks he has the right to insult women if
he finds them alone! I wonder the sea doesn't swallow up a place where
even Americans go to the theatre on the Sabbath!”
“Lydia, Lydia! It isn't so bad as it seems to you,” pleaded her aunt,
thrown upon the defensive by the girl's outburst. “There are ever so
many good and nice people in Venice, and I know them, too,--Italians as
well as foreigners. And even amongst those you saw, Miss Landini is one
of the kindest girls in the world, and she had just been to see her
old teacher when we met her,--she half takes care of him; and Lady
Fenleigh's a perfect mother to the poor; and I never was at the Countess
Tatocka's except in the most distant way, at a ball where everybody
went; and is it better to let your uncle go to the opera alone, or to go
with him? You told me to go with him yourself; and they consider Sunday
over, on the Continent, after morning service, any way!”
“Oh, it makes no difference!” retorted Lydia, wildly. “I am going away.
I am going home. I have money enough to get to Trieste, and the ship is
there, and Captain Jenness will take me back with him. Oh!” she moaned.
“_He_ has been in Europe, too, and I suppose he's like the rest of you;
and he thought because I was alone and helpless he had the right to--Oh,
I see it, I see now that he never meant anything, and--Oh, oh, oh!” She
fell on her knees beside the bed, as if crushed to them by the cruel
doubt that suddenly overwhelmed her, and flung out her arms on Mrs.
Erwin's coverlet--it was of Venetian lace sewed upon silk, a choice bit
from the palace of one of the ducal families--and buried her face in it.
Her aunt rose from her pillow, and looked in wonder and trouble at
the beautiful fallen head, and the fair young figure shaken with sobs.
“He--who--what are you talking about, Lydia? Whom do you mean? Did
Captain Jenness--”
“No, no!” wailed the girl, “the one that gave me the book.”
“The one that gave you the book? The book you were looking at last
night?”
“Yes,” sobbed Lydia, with her voice muffled in the coverlet.
Mrs. Erwin lay down again with significant deliberation. Her face was
still full of trouble, but of bewilderment no longer. In moments of
great distress the female mind is apt to lay hold of some minor anxiety
for its distraction, and to find a certain relief in it. “Lydia,” said
her aunt in a broken voice, “I wish you wouldn't cry in the coverlet:
it doesn't hurt the lace, but it stains the silk.” Lydia swept her
handkerchief under her face but did not lift it. Her aunt accepted the
compromise. “How came he to give you the book?”
“Oh, I don't know. I can't tell. I thought it was because--because--It
was almost at the very beginning. And after that he walked up and down
with me every night, nearly; and he tried to be with me all he could;
and he was always saying things to make me think--Oh dear, oh _dear_, oh
dear! And he _tried_ to make me care for him! Oh, it was cruel, cruel!”
“You mean that he made love to you?” asked her aunt.
“Yes--no--I don't know. He tried to make me care for him, and to make me
think he cared for me.”
“Did he say he cared for you? Did he--”
“No!”
Mrs. Erwin mused a while before she said, “Yes, it was cruel indeed,
poor child, and it was cowardly, too.”
“Cowardly?” Lydia lifted her face, and flashed a glance of tearful fire
at her aunt. “He is the bravest man in the world! And the most generous
and high-minded! He jumped into the sea after that wicked Mr. Hicks, and
saved his life, when he disliked him worse than anything!”
“_Who_ was Mr. Hicks?”
“He was the one that stopped at Messina. He was the one that got some
brandy at Gibraltar, and behaved so dreadfully, and wanted to fight
him.”
“Whom?”
“This one. The one who gave me the book. And don't you see that his
being so good makes it all the worse? Yes; and he pretended to be glad
when I told him I thought he was good,--he got me to say it!” She had
her face down again in her handkerchief. “And I suppose _you_ think it
was horrible, too, for me to take his arm, and talk and walk with him
whenever he asked me!”
“No, not for you, Lydia,” said her aunt, gently. “And don't you think
now,” she asked after a pause, “that he cared for you?”
“Oh, I _did_ think so,--I _did_ believe it; but now, _now_--”
“Now, what?”
“Now, I'm afraid that may be he was only playing with me, and putting
me off; and pretending that he had something to tell me when he got to
Venice, and he never meant anything by anything.”
“Is he coming to--” her aunt began, but Lydia broke vehemently out
again.
“If he had cared for me, why couldn't he have told me so at once, and
not had me wait till he got to Venice? He _knew_ I--”
“There are two ways of explaining it,” said Mrs. Erwin. “He _may_
have been in earnest, Lydia, and felt that he had no right to be more
explicit till you were in the care of your friends. That would be the
European way which you consider so bad,” said Mrs. Erwin. “Under the
circumstances, it was impossible for him to keep any distance, and
all he could do was to postpone his declaration till there could be
something like good form about it. Yes, it might have been that.” She
was silent, but the troubled look did not leave her face. “I am sorry
for you, Lydia,” she resumed, “but I don't know that I wish he was
in earnest.” Lydia looked up at her in dismay. “It might be far less
embarrassing the other way, however painful. He may not be at all a
suitable person.” The tears stood in Lydia's eyes, and all her face
expressed a puzzled suspense. “Where was he from?” asked Mrs. Erwin,
finally; till then she had been more interested in the lover than the
man.
“Boston,” mechanically answered Lydia.
“What was his name?”
“Mr. Staniford,” owned Lydia, with a blush.
Her aunt seemed dispirited at the sound. “Yes, I know who they are,” she
sighed.
“And aren't they nice? Isn't he--suitable?” asked Lydia, tremulously.
“Oh, poor child! He's only _too_ suitable. I can't explain to you,
Lydia; but at home he wouldn't have looked at a girl like you. What sort
of looking person is he?”
“He's rather--red; and he has--light hair.”
“It must be the family I'm thinking of,” said Mrs. Erwin. She had lived
nearly twenty years in Europe, and had seldom revisited her native
city; but at the sound of a Boston name she was all Bostonian again.
She rapidly sketched the history of the family to which she imagined
Staniford to belong. “I remember his sister; I used to see her at
school. She must have been five or six years younger than I; and this
boy--”
“Why, he's twenty-eight years old!” interrupted Lydia.
“How came he to tell you?”
“I don't know. He said that he looked thirty-four.”
“Yes; _she_ was always a forward thing too,--with her freckles,” said
Mrs. Erwin, musingly, as if lost in reminiscences, not wholly pleasing,
of Miss Staniford.
“_He_ has freckles,” admitted Lydia.
“Yes, it's the one,” said Mrs. Erwin. “He couldn't have known what your
family was from anything you said?”
“We never talked about our families.”
“Oh, I dare say! You talked about yourselves?”
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
“Pretty nearly.”
“And he didn't try to find out who or what you were?”
“He asked a great deal about South Bradfield.”
“Of course, that was where he thought you had always belonged.” Mrs.
Erwin lay quiescent for a while, in apparent uncertainty as to how she
should next attack the subject. “How did you first meet?”
Lydia began with the scene on Lucas Wharf, and little by little told
the whole story up to the moment of their parting at Trieste. There were
lapses and pauses in the story, which her aunt was never at a loss to
fill aright. At the end she said, “If it were not for his promising to
come here and see you, I should say Mr. Staniford had been flirting,
and as it is he may not regard it as anything more than flirtation. Of
course, there was his being jealous of Mr. Dunham and Mr. Hicks, as
he certainly was; and his wanting to explain about that lady at
Messina--yes, that looked peculiar; but he may not have meant anything
by it. His parting so at Trieste with you, that might be either because
he was embarrassed at its having got to be such a serious thing, or
because he really felt badly. Lydia,” she asked at last, “what made
_you_ think he cared for you?”
“I don't know,” said the girl; her voice had sunk to a husky whisper. “I
didn't believe it till he said he wanted me to be his--conscience, and
tried to make me say he was good, and--”
“That's a certain kind of man's way of flirting. It may mean nothing at
all. I could tell in an instant, if I saw him.”
“He said he would be here this afternoon,” murmured Lydia, tremulously.
“This afternoon!” cried Mrs. Erwin. “I must get up!”
At her toilette she had the exaltation and fury of a champion arming for
battle.