III.
It will doubtless seem to the reader very singular that, in spite of
this reflection, which appeared to sum up her judgment of the matter,
Mrs. Portico should, in the course of a very few days, have consented to
everything that Georgina asked of her. I have thought it well to narrate
at length the first conversation that took place between them, but I
shall not trace further the details of the girl’s hard pleading, or
the steps by which--in the face of a hundred robust and salutary
convictions--the loud, kind, sharp, simple, sceptical, credulous woman
took under her protection a damsel whose obstinacy she could not speak
of without getting red with anger. It was the simple fact of Georgina’s
personal condition that moved her; this young lady’s greatest eloquence
was the seriousness of her predicament She might be bad, and she had a
splendid, careless, insolent, fair-faced way of admitting it, which at
moments, incoherently, inconsistently, and irresistibly, resolved the
harsh confession into tears of weakness; but Mrs. Portico had known her
from her rosiest years, and when Georgina declared that she could n’t go
home, that she wished to be with her and not with her mother, that she
could n’t expose herself,--how could she?--and that she must remain with
her and her only till the day they should sail, the poor lady was forced
to make that day a reality. She was overmastered, she was cajoled,
she was, to a certain extent, fascinated. She had to accept Georgina’s
rigidity (she had none of her own to oppose to it; she was only violent,
she was not continuous), and once she did this, it was plain, after all,
that to take her young friend to Europe was to help her, and to leave
her alone was not to help her. Georgina literally frightened Mrs.
Portico into compliance. She was evidently capable of strange things if
thrown upon her own devices.
So, from one day to another Mrs. Portico announced that she was really
at last about to sail for foreign lands (her doctor having told her that
if she did n’t look out she would get too old to enjoy them), and that
she had invited that robust Miss Gressie, who could stand so long on her
feet, to accompany her. There was joy in the house of Gressie at this
announcement, for though the danger was over, it was a great general
advantage to Georgina to go, and the Gressies were always elated at the
prospect of an advantage. There was a danger that she might meet Mr.
Benyon on the other side of the world; but it didn’t seem likely that
Mrs. Portico would lend herself to a plot of that kind. If she had taken
it into her head to favor their love affair, she would have done
it frankly, and Georgina would have been married by this time. Her
arrangements were made as quickly as her decision had been--or rather
had appeared--slow; for this concerned those agile young men down town.
Georgina was perpetually at her house; it was understood in Twelfth
Street that she was talking over her future travels with her kind
friend. Talk there was, of course to a considerable degree; but after it
was settled they should start nothing more was said about the motive
of the journey. Nothing was said, that is, till the night before they
sailed; then a few words passed between them. Georgina had already
taken leave of her relations in Twelfth Street, and was to sleep at
Mrs. Portico’s in order to go down to the ship at an early hour. The
two ladies were sitting together in the firelight, silent, with the
consciousness of corded luggage, when the elder one suddenly remarked to
her companion that she seemed to be taking a great deal upon herself in
assuming that Raymond Benyon wouldn’t force her hand. _He_ might
choose to acknowledge his child, if she didn’t; there were promises
and promises, and many people would consider they had been let off when
circumstances were so altered. She would have to reckon with Mr. Benyon
more than she thought.
“I know what I am about,” Georgina answered. “There is only one promise,
for him. I don’t know what you mean by circumstances being altered.”
“Everything seems to me to be changed,” poor Mrs. Portico murmured,
rather tragically.
“Well, he is n’t, and he never will! I am sure of him,--as sure as that
I sit here. Do you think I would have looked at him if I had n’t known
he was a man of his word?”
“You have chosen him well, my dear,” said Mrs. Portico, who by this time
was reduced to a kind of bewildered acquiescence.
“Of course I have chosen him well! In such a matter as this he will be
perfectly splendid.” Then suddenly, “Perfectly splendid,--that’s why I
cared for him!” she repeated, with a flash of incongruous passion.
This seemed to Mrs. Portico audacious to the point of being sublime; but
she had given up trying to understand anything that the girl might
say or do. She understood less and less, after they had disembarked in
England and begun to travel southward; and she understood least of all
when, in the middle of the winter, the event came off with which, in
imagination, she had tried to familiarize herself, but which, when it
occurred, seemed to her beyond measure strange and dreadful. It took
place at Genoa, for Georgina had made up her mind that there would be
more privacy in a big town than in a little; and she wrote to America
that both Mrs. Portico and she had fallen in love with the place and
would spend two or three months there. At that time people in the United
States knew much less than to-day about the comparative attractions
of foreign cities, and it was not thought surprising that absent
New Yorkers should wish to linger in a seaport where they might find
apartments, according to Georgina’s report, in a palace painted in
fresco by Vandyke and Titian. Georgina, in her letters, omitted, it will
be seen, no detail that could give color to Mrs. Portico’s long stay at
Genoa. In such a palace--where the travellers hired twenty gilded rooms
for the most insignificant sum--a remarkably fine boy came into the
world. Nothing could have been more successful and comfortable than
this transaction. Mrs. Portico was almost appalled at the facility and
felicity of it. She was by this time in a pretty bad way, and--what
had never happened to her before in her life--she suffered from chronic
depression of spirits. She hated to have to lie, and now she was lying
all the time. Everything she wrote home, everything that had been said
or done in connection with their stay in Genoa, was a lie. The way
they remained indoors to avoid meeting chance compatriots was a lie.
Compatriots, in Genoa, at that period, were very rare; but nothing could
exceed the businesslike completeness of Georgina’s precautions. Her
nerves, her self-possession, her apparent want of feeling, excited on
Mrs. Portico’s part a kind of gloomy suspense; a morbid anxiety to see
how far her companion would go took possession of the excellent woman,
who, a few months before, hated to fix her mind on disagreeable things.
Georgina went very far indeed; she did everything in her power to
dissimulate the origin of her child. The record of its birth was made
under a false name, and he was baptized at the nearest church by a
Catholic priest. A magnificent contadina was brought to light by
the doctor in a village in the hills, and this big, brown, barbarous
creature, who, to do her justice, was full of handsome, familiar smiles
and coarse tenderness, was constituted nurse to Raymond Benyon’s son.
She nursed him for a fortnight under the mother’s eye, and she was then
sent back to her village with the baby in her arms and sundry gold coin
knotted into a corner of her rude pocket-handkerchief. Mr. Gressie had
given his daughter a liberal letter of credit on a London banker, and
she was able, for the present, to make abundant provision for the little
one. She called Mrs. Portico’s attention to the fact that she spent none
of her money on futilities; she kept it all for her small pensioner
in the Genoese hills. Mrs. Portico beheld these strange doings with a
stupefaction that occasionally broke into passionate protest; then she
relapsed into a brooding sense of having now been an accomplice so far
that she must be an accomplice to the end. The two ladies went down to
Rome--Georgina was in wonderful trim--to finish the season, and
here Mrs. Portico became convinced that she intended to abandon her
offspring. She had not driven into the country to see the nursling
before leaving Genoa,--she had said that she could n’t bear to see it in
such a place and among such people. Mrs. Portico, it must be added,
had felt the force of this plea,--felt it as regards a plan of her own,
given up after being hotly entertained for a few hours, of devoting a
day, by herself, to a visit to the big contadina. It seemed to her that
if she should see the child in the sordid hands to which Georgina had
consigned it she would become still more of a participant than she was
already. This young woman’s blooming hardness, after they got to Borne,
acted upon her like a kind of Medusa-mask. She had seen a horrible
thing, she had been mixed up with it, and her motherly heart had
received a mortal chill. It became more clear to her every day that,
though Georgina would continue to send the infant money in considerable
quantities, she had dispossessed herself of it forever. Together with
this induction a fixed idea settled in her mind,--the project of taking
the baby herself, of making him her own, of arranging that matter with
the father. The countenance she had given Georgina up to this point was
an effective pledge that she would not expose her; but she could adopt
the child without exposing her; she could say that he was a lovely
baby--he was lovely, fortunately--whom she had picked up in a poor
village in Italy,--a village that had been devastated by brigands. She
would pretend--she could pretend; oh, yes, of course, she could pretend!
Everything was imposture now, and she could go on to lie as she had
begun. The falsity of the whole business sickened her; it made her so
yellow that she scarcely knew herself in her glass. None the less, to
rescue the child, even if she had to become falser still, would be in
some measure an atonement for the treachery to which she had already
lent herself. She began to hate Georgina, who had drawn her into such an
atrocious current, and if it had not been for two considerations she
would have insisted on their separating. One was the deference she owed
to Mr. and Mrs. Gressie, who had reposed such a trust in her; the other
was that she must keep hold of the mother till she had got possession of
the infant Meanwhile, in this forced communion, her aversion to her
companion increased; Georgina came to appear to her a creature of brass,
of iron; she was exceedingly afraid of her, and it seemed to her now a
wonder of wonders that she should ever have trusted her enough to come
so far. Georgina showed no consciousness of the change in Mrs. Portico,
though there was, indeed, at present, not even a pretence of confidence
between the two. Miss Gressie--that was another lie, to which Mrs.
Portico had to lend herself--was bent on enjoying Europe, and was
especially delighted with Rome. She certainly had the courage of her
undertaking, and she confessed to Mrs. Portico that she had left Raymond
Benyon, and meant to continue to leave him, in ignorance of what had
taken place at Genoa. There was a certain confidence, it must be said,
in that. He was now in Chinese waters, and she probably should not see
him for years.
Mrs. Portico took counsel with herself, and the result of her cogitation
was, that she wrote to Mr. Benyon that a charming little boy had
been born to him, and that Georgina had put him to nurse with Italian
peasants, but that, if he would kindly consent to it, she, Mrs. Portico,
would bring him up much better than that. She knew not how to address
her letter, and Georgina, even if _she_ should know, which was doubtful,
would never tell her; so she sent the missive to the care of the
Secretary of the Navy, at Washington, with an earnest request that it
might immediately be forwarded. Such was Mrs. Portico’s last effort in
this strange business of Georgina’s. I relate rather a complicated
fact in a very few words when I say that the poor lady’s anxieties,
indignations, repentances, preyed upon her until they fairly broke her
down. Various persons whom she knew in Borne notified her that the air
of the Seven Hills was plainly unfavorable to her, and she had made
up her mind to return to her native land, when she found that, in her
depressed condition, malarial fever had laid its hand upon her. She was
unable to move, and the matter was settled for her in the course of an
illness which, happily, was not prolonged. I have said that she was not
obstinate, and the resistance that she made on the present occasion
was not worthy even of her spasmodic energy. Brain-fever made its
appearance, and she died at the end of three weeks, during which
Georgina’s attentions to her patient and protectress had been
unremitting. There were other Americans in Rome who, after this
sad event, extended to the bereaved young lady every comfort and
hospitality. She had no lack of opportunities for returning under a
proper escort to New York. She selected, you may be sure, the best, and
re-entered her father’s house, where she took to plain dressing; for she
sent all her pocket-money, with the utmost secrecy, to the little boy in
the Genoese hills.
IV.
“Why should he come if he doesn’t like you? He is under no obligation,
and he has his ship to look after. Why should he sit for an hour at a
time, and why should he be so pleasant?”
“Do you think he is very pleasant?” Kate Theory asked, turning away her
face from her sister. It was important that Mildred should not see how
little the expression of that charming countenance corresponded with the
inquiry.
This precaution was useless, however, for in a moment Mildred said, from
the delicately draped couch, where she lay at the open window, “Kate
Theory, don’t be affected!”
“Perhaps it’s for you he comes. I don’t see why he should n’t; you are
far more attractive than I, and you have a great deal more to say. How
can he help seeing that you are the cleverest of the clever? You can
talk to him of everything: of the dates of the different eruptions, of
the statues and bronzes in the Museum, which you have never seen, poor
darling! but which you know more about than he does, than any one does.
What was it you began on last time? Oh, yes, you poured forth floods
about Magna Græcia. And then--and then--” But with this Kate Theory
paused; she felt it would n’t do to speak the words that had risen to
her lips. That her sister was as beautiful as a saint, and as delicate
and refined as an angel,--she had been on the point of saying something
of that sort But Mildred’s beauty and delicacy were the fairness of
mortal disease, and to praise her for her refinement was simply to
intimate that she had the tenuity of a consumptive. So, after she had
checked herself, the younger girl--she was younger only by a year
or two--simply kissed her tenderly, and settled the knot of the lace
handkerchief that was tied over her head. Mildred knew what she had
been going to say,--knew why she had stopped. Mildred knew everything,
without ever leaving her room, or leaving, at least, that little salon
of their own, at the _pension_, which she had made so pretty by simply
lying there, at the window that had the view of the bay and of Vesuvius,
and telling Kate how to arrange and rearrange everything. Since it
began to be plain that Mildred must spend her small remnant of years
altogether in warm climates, the lot of the two sisters had been cast in
the ungarnished hostelries of southern Europe. Their little sitting-room
was sure to be very ugly, and Mildred was never happy till it was
rearranged. Her sister fell to work, as a matter of course, the first
day, and changed the place of all the tables, sofas, chairs, till every
combination had been tried, and the invalid thought at last that there
was a little effect Kate Theory had a taste of her own, and her ideas
were not always the same as her sister’s; but she did whatever Mildred
liked, and if the poor girl had told her to put the doormat on the
dining-table, or the clock under the sofa, she would have obeyed without
a murmur. Her own ideas, her personal tastes, had been folded up and put
away, like garments out of season, in drawers and trunks, with camphor
and lavender. They were not, as a general thing, for southern wear,
however indispensable to comfort in the climate of New England, where
poor Mildred had lost her health. Kate Theory, ever since this event,
had lived for her companion, and it was almost an inconvenience for her
to think that she was attractive to Captain Benyon. It was as if she
had shut up her house and was not in a position to entertain. So long as
Mildred should live, her own life was suspended; if there should be
any time afterwards, perhaps she would take it up again; but for the
present, in answer to any knock at her door, she could only call down
from one of her dusty windows that she was not at home. Was it really in
these terms she should have to dismiss Captain Benyon? If Mildred said
it was for her he came she must perhaps take upon herself such a duty;
for, as we have seen, Mildred knew everything, and she must therefore be
right She knew about the statues in the Museum, about the excavations at
Pompeii, about the antique splendor of Magna Græcia. She always had some
instructive volume on the table beside her sofa, and she had strength
enough to hold the book for half an hour at a time. That was about the
only strength she had now. The Neapolitan winters had been remarkably
soft, but after the first month or two she had been obliged to give up
her little walks in the garden. It lay beneath her window like a single
enormous bouquet; as early as May, that year, the flowers were so dense.
None of them, however, had a color so intense as the splendid blue of
the bay, which filled up all the rest of the view. It would have looked
painted, if you had not been able to see the little movement of the
waves. Mildred Theory watched them by the hour, and the breathing crest
of the volcano, on the other side of Naples, and the great sea-vision
of Capri, on the horizon, changing its tint while her eyes rested there,
and wondered what would become of her sister after she was gone. Now
that Percival was married,--he was their only brother, and from one day
to the other was to come down to Naples to show them his new wife, as
yet a complete stranger, or revealed only in the few letters she had
written them during her wedding tour,--now that Percival was to be quite
taken up, poor Kate’s situation would be much more grave. Mildred felt
that she should be able to judge better, after she should have seen her
sister-in-law, how much of a home Kate might expect to find with the
pair; but even if Agnes should prove--well, more satisfactory than her
letters, it was a wretched prospect for Kate,--this living as a mere
appendage to happier people. Maiden aunts were very well, but being a
maiden aunt was only a last resource, and Kate’s first resources had not
even been tried.
Meanwhile the latter young lady wondered as well,--wondered in what book
Mildred had read that Captain Benyon was in love with her. She admired
him, she thought, but he didn’t seem a man that would fall in love with
one like that She could see that he was on his guard; he would n’t throw
himself away. He thought too much of himself, or at any rate he took
too good care of himself,--in the manner of a man to whom something had
happened which had given him a lesson. Of course what had happened was
that his heart was buried somewhere,--in some woman’s grave; he had
loved some beautiful girl,--much more beautiful, Kate was sure, than
she, who thought herself small and dark,--and the maiden had died, and
his capacity to love had died with her. He loved her memory,--that was
the only thing he would care for now. He was quiet, gentle, clever,
humorous, and very kind in his manner; but if any one save Mildred had
said to her that if he came three times a week to Posilippo, it was for
anything but to pass his time (he had told them he didn’t know another
soul in Naples), she would have felt that this was simply the kind of
thing--usually so idiotic--that people always thought it necessary to
say. It was very easy for him to come; he had the big ship’s boat, with
nothing else to do; and what could be more delightful than to be rowed
across the bay, under a bright awning, by four brown sailors with
“Louisiana” in blue letters on their immaculate white shirts, and in gilt
letters on their fluttering hat ribbons? The boat came to the steps of
the garden of the _pension_, where the orange-trees hung over and made
vague yellow balls shine back out of the water. Kate Theory knew all
about that, for Captain Benyon had persuaded her to take a turn in the
boat, and if they had only had another lady to go with them, he could
have conveyed her to the ship, and shown her all over it It looked
beautiful, just a little way off, with the American flag hanging loose
in the Italian air. They would have another lady when Agnes should
arrive; then Percival would remain with Mildred while they took this
excursion. Mildred had stayed alone the day she went in the boat;
she had insisted on it, and, of course it was really Mildred who had
persuaded her; though now that Kate came to think of it, Captain Benyon
had, in his quiet, waiting way--he turned out to be waiting long after
you thought he had let a thing pass--said a good deal about the pleasure
it would give him. Of course, everything would give pleasure to a man
who was so bored. He was keeping the “Louisiana” at Naples, week after
week, simply because these were the commodore’s orders. There was no
work to be done there, and his time was on his hands; but of course the
commodore, who had gone to Constantinople with the two other ships, had
to be obeyed to the letter, however mysterious his motives. It made no
difference that he was a fantastic, grumbling, arbitrary old commodore;
only a good while afterwards it occurred to Kate Theory that, for a
reserved, correct man, Captain Benyon had given her a considerable
proof of confidence, in speaking to her in these terms of his superior
officer. If he looked at all hot when he arrived at the _pension_,
she offered him a glass of cold “orangeade.” Mildred thought this an
unpleasant drink,--she called it messy; but Kate adored it, and Captain
Benyon always accepted it.
The day I speak of, to change the subject, she called her sister’s
attention to the extraordinary sharpness of a zigzagging cloud-shadow,
on the tinted slope of Vesuvius; but Mildred only remarked in answer
that she wished her sister would many the captain. It was in this
familiar way that constant meditation led Miss Theory to speak of him;
it shows how constantly she thought of him, for, in general, no one was
more ceremonious than she, and the failure of her health had not caused
her to relax any form that it was possible to keep up. There was a kind
of slim erectness, even in the way she lay on her sofa; and she always
received the doctor as if he were calling for the first time.
“I had better wait till he asks me,” Kate Theory said. “Dear Milly, if
I were to do some of the things you wish me to do, I should shock you
very much.”
“I wish he would marry you, then. You know there is very little time, if
I wish to see it.”
“You will never see it, Mildred. I don’t see why you should take so for
granted that I would accept him.”
“You will never meet a man who has so few disagreeable qualities. He is
probably not enormously rich. I don’t know what is the pay of a captain
in the navy--”
“It’s a relief to find there is something you don’t know,” Kate Theory
broke in.
“But when I am gone,” her sister went on calmly, “when I am gone there
will be plenty for both of you.”
The younger sister, at this, was silent for a moment; then she
exclaimed, “Mildred, you may be out of health, but I don’t see why you
should be dreadful!”
“You know that since we have been leading this life we have seen no
one we liked better,” said Milly. When she spoke of the life they were
leading--there was always a soft resignation of regret and contempt in
the allusion--she meant the southern winters, the foreign climates,
the vain experiments, the lonely waitings, the wasted hours, the
interminable rains, the bad food, the pottering, humbugging doctors,
the damp _pensions_, the chance encounters, the fitful apparitions, of
fellow-travellers.
“Why should n’t you speak for yourself alone? I am glad _you_ like him,
Mildred.”
“If you don’t like him, why do you give him orangeade?”
At this inquiry Kate began to laugh, and her sister continued,--
“Of course you are glad I like him, my dear. If I did n’t like him, and
you did, it would n’t be satisfactory at all. I can imagine nothing more
miserable; I should n’t die in any sort of comfort.”
Kate Theory usually checked this sort of allusion--she was always too
late--with a kiss; but on this occasion she added that it was a long
time since Mildred had tormented her so much as she had done to-day.
“You will make me hate him,” she added.
“Well, that proves you don’t already,” Milly rejoined; and it happened
that almost at this moment they saw, in the golden afternoon, Captain
Benyon’s boat approaching the steps at the end of the garden. He came
that day, and he came two days later, and he came yet once again after
an interval equally brief, before Percival Theory arrived, with Mrs.
Percival, from Borne. He seemed anxious to crowd into these few days, as
he would have said, a good deal of intercourse with the two remarkably
nice girls--or nice women, he hardly knew which to call them--whom in
the course of a long, idle, rather tedious detention at Naples, he had
discovered in the lovely suburb of Posilippo. It was the American consul
who had put him into relation with them; the sisters had had to sign, in
the consul’s presence, some law-papers, transmitted to them by the man
of business who looked after their little property in America, and the
kindly functionary, taking advantage of the pretext (Captain Benyon
happened to come into the consulate as he was starting, indulgently, to
wait upon the ladies) to bring together “two parties” who, as he said,
ought to appreciate each other, proposed to his fellow-officer in the
service of the United States that he should go with him as witness
of the little ceremony. He might, of course, take his clerk, but the
captain would do much better; and he represented to Benyon that the Miss
Theorys (singular name, wa’ n’t it?) suffered--he was sure--from a lack
of society; also that one of them was very sick, that they were
real pleasant and extraordinarily refined, and that the sight of a
compatriot, literally draped, as it were, in the national banner,
would cheer them up more than most anything, and give them a sense of
protection. They had talked to the consul about Benyon’s ship, which
they could see from their windows, in the distance, at its anchorage.
They were the only American ladies then at Naples,--the only residents,
at least,--and the captain would n’t be doing the polite thing unless he
went to pay them his respects. Benyon felt afresh how little it was in
his line to call upon strange women; he was not in the habit of hunting
up female acquaintance, or of looking out for the soft emotions which
the sex only can inspire. He had his reasons for this abstention, and
he seldom relaxed it; but the consul appealed to him on rather strong
grounds; and he suffered himself to be persuaded. He was far from
regretting, during the first weeks at least, an act which was distinctly
inconsistent with his great rule,--that of never exposing himself to the
chance of seriously caring for an unmarried woman. He had been obliged
to make this rule, and had adhered to it with some success. He was
fond of women, but he was forced to restrict himself to superficial
sentiments. There was no use tumbling into situations from which the
only possible issue was a retreat The step he had taken with regard to
poor Miss Theory and her delightful little sister was an exception on
which at first he could only congratulate himself. That had been a happy
idea of the ruminating old consul; it made Captain Benyon forgive
him his hat, his boots, his shirtfront,--a costume which might be
considered representative, and the effect of which was to make the
observer turn with rapture to a half-naked lazzarone. On either side the
acquaintance had helped the time to pass, and the hours he spent at
the little _pension_ at Posilippo left a sweet--and by no means
innutritive--taste behind.
As the weeks went by his exception had grown to look a good deal like
a rule; but he was able to remind himself that the path of retreat was
always open to him. Moreover, if he should fall in love with the younger
girl there would be no great harm, for Kate Theory was in love only with
her sister, and it would matter very little to her whether he advanced
or retreated. She was very attractive, or rather very attracting.
Small, pale, attentive without rigidity, full of pretty curves and quick
movements, she looked as if the habit of watching and serving had
taken complete possession of her, and was literally a little sister of
charity. Her thick black hair was pushed behind her ears, as if to help
her to listen, and her clear brown eyes had the smile of a person
too full of tact to cany a dull face to a sickbed. She spoke in an
encouraging voice, and had soothing and unselfish habits. She was very
pretty,--producing a cheerful effect of contrasted black and white, and
dressed herself daintily, so that Mildred might have something agreeable
to look at Benyon very soon perceived that there was a fund of good
service in her. Her sister had it all now; but poor Miss Theory was
fading fast, and then what would become of this precious little force?
The answer to such a question that seemed most to the point was
that it was none of his business. He was not sick,--at least not
physically,--and he was not looking out for a nurse. Such a companion
might be a luxury, but was not, as yet, a necessity: The welcome of the
two ladies, at first, had been simple, and he scarcely knew what to call
it but sweet; a bright, gentle friendliness remained the tone of their
greeting. They evidently liked him to come,--they liked to see his big
transatlantic ship hover about those gleaming coasts of exile. The fact
of Miss Mildred being always stretched on her couch--in his successive
visits to foreign waters Benyon had not unlearned (as why should he?)
the pleasant American habit of using the lady’s personal name--made
their intimacy seem greater, their differences less; it was as if his
hostesses had taken him into their confidence and he had been--as the
consul would have said--of the same party. Knocking about the salt parts
of the globe, with a few feet square on a rolling frigate for his only
home, the pretty, flower-decked sitting-room of the quiet American
sisters became, more than anything he had hitherto known, his interior.
He had dreamed once of having an interior, but the dream had vanished in
lurid smoke, and no such vision had come to him again. He had a feeling
that the end of this was drawing nigh; he was sure that the advent of
the strange brother, whose wife was certain to be disagreeable, would
make a difference. That is why, as I have said, he came as often as
possible the last week, after he had learned the day on which Percival
Theory would arrive. The limits of the exception had been reached.
He had been new to the young ladies at Posilippo, and there was no
reason why they should say to each other that he was a very different
man from the ingenuous youth who, ten years before, used to wander
with Georgina Gressie down vistas of plank fences brushed over with the
advertisements of quack medicines. It was natural he should be, and we,
who know him, would have found that he had traversed the whole scale of
alteration. There was nothing ingenuous in him now; he had the look of
experience, of having been seasoned and hardened by the years.
His face, his complexion, were the same; still smooth-shaven and slim,
he always passed, at first, for a man scarcely out of his twenties. But
his expression was old, and his talk was older still,--the talk of one
who had seen much of the world (as indeed he had, to-day), and judged
most things for himself, with a humorous scepticism which, whatever
concessions it might make, superficially, for the sake of not offending
(for instance) two remarkably nice American women, of the kind that had
kept most of their illusions, left you with the conviction that the
next minute it would go quickly back to its own standpoint There was a
curious contradiction in him; he struck you as serious, and yet he could
not be said to take things seriously. This was what made Kate Theory
feel so sure that he had lost the object of his affections; and she
said to herself that it must have been under circumstances of peculiar
sadness, for that was, after all, a frequent accident, and was not
usually thought, in itself, a sufficient stroke to make a man a cynic.
This reflection, it may be added, was, on the young lady’s part, just
the least bit acrimonious. Captain Benyon was not a cynic in any sense
in which he might have shocked an innocent mind; he kept his cynicism
to himself, and was a very clever, courteous, attentive gentleman. If he
was melancholy, you knew it chiefly by his jokes, for they were usually
at his own expense; and if he was indifferent, it was all the more
to his credit that he should have exerted himself to entertain his
countrywomen.
The last time he called before the arrival of the expected brother, he
found Miss Theory alone, and sitting up, for a wonder, at her window.
Kate had driven into Naples to give orders at the hotel for the
reception of the travellers, who required accommodation more spacious
than the villa at Posilippo (where the two sisters had the best rooms)
could offer them; and the sick girl had taken advantage of her absence
and of the pretext afforded by a day of delicious warmth, to transfer
herself, for the first time in six months, to an arm-chair. She was
practising, as she said, for the long carriage-journey to the north,
where, in a quiet corner they knew of, on the Lago Maggiore, her summer
was to be spent. Eaymond Benyon remarked to her that she had evidently
turned the corner and was going to get well, and this gave her a chance
to say various things that were on her mind. She had many things on her
mind, poor Mildred Theory, so caged and restless, and yet so resigned
and patient as she was; with a clear, quick spirit, in the most perfect
health, ever reaching forward, to the end of its tense little chain,
from her wasted and suffering body; and, in the course of the perfect
summer afternoon, as she sat there, exhilarated by the success of her
effort to get up, and by her comfortable opportunity, she took her
friendly visitor into the confidence of most of her anxieties. She told
him, very promptly and positively, that she was not going to get well
at all, that she had probably not more than ten months yet to live, and
that he would oblige her very much by not forcing her to waste any more
breath in contradicting him on that point. Of course she could n’t talk
much; therefore, she wished to say to him only things that he would
not hear from any one else. Such, for instance, was her present
secret--Katie’s and hers--the secret of their fearing so much that they
should n’t like Percival’s wife, who was not from Boston, but from New
York. Naturally, that by itself would be nothing, but from what they
had heard of her set--this subject had been explored by their
correspondents--they were rather nervous, nervous to the point of not
being in the least reassured by the fact that the young lady would bring
Percival a fortune. The fortune was a matter of course, for that was
just what they had heard about Agnes’s circle--that the stamp of money
was on all their thoughts and doings. They were very rich and very new
and very splashing, and evidently had very little in common with the two
Miss Theorys, who, moreover, if the truth must be told (and this was a
great secret), did not care much for the letters their sister-in-law had
hitherto addressed them. She had been at a French boarding-school in
New York, and yet (and this was the greatest secret of all) she wrote
to them that she had performed a part of the journey through France in
_diligance!_
Of course, they would see the next day; Miss Mildred was sure she should
know in a moment whether Agnes would like them. She could never have
told him all this if her sister had been there, and Captain Benyon must
promise never to reveal to Kate how she had chattered. Kate thought
always that they must hide everything, and that even if Agnes should be
a dreadful disappointment they must never let any one guess it And yet
Kate was just the one who would suffer, in the coming years, after she
herself had gone. Their brother had been everything to them, but now
it would all be different Of course it was not to be expected that he
should have remained a bachelor for their sake; she only wished he had
waited till she was dead and Kate was married One of these events,
it was true, was much less sure than the other; Kate might never
marry,--much as she wished she would! She was quite morbidly unselfish,
and did n’t think she had a right to have anything of her own--not even
a husband. Miss Mildred talked a good while about Kate, and it never
occurred to her that she might bore Captain Benyon. She did n’t, in
point of fact; he had none of the trouble of wondering why this poor,
sick, worried lady was trying to push her sister down his throat Their
peculiar situation made everything natural, and the tone she took with
him now seemed only what their pleasant relation for the last three
months led up to. Moreover, he had an excellent reason for not being
bored: the fact, namely, that after all, with regard to her sister,
Miss Mildred appeared to him to keep back more than she uttered. She
didn’t tell him the great thing,--she had nothing to say as to what that
charming girl thought of Eaymond Benyon. The effect of their interview,
indeed, was to make him shrink from knowing, and he felt that the right
thing for him would be to get back into his boat, which was waiting at
the garden steps, before Kate Theory should return from Naples. It came
over him, as he sat there, that he was far too interested in knowing
what this young lady thought of him. She might think what she pleased;
it could make no difference to him. The best opinion in the world--if it
looked out at him from her tender eyes--would not make him a whit more
free or more happy. Women of that sort were not for him, women whom one
could not see familiarly without falling in love with them, and whom it
was no use to fall in love with unless one was ready to marry them. The
light of the summer afternoon, and of Miss Mildred’s pure spirit, seemed
suddenly to flood the whole subject. He saw that he was in danger, and
he had long since made up his mind that from this particular peril
it was not only necessary but honorable to flee. He took leave of his
hostess before her sister reappeared, and had the courage even to say to
her that he would not come back often after that; they would be so much
occupied by their brother and his wife! As he moved across the glassy
bay, to the rhythm of the oars, he wished either that the sisters would
leave Naples or that his confounded commodore would send for him.
When Kate returned from her errand, ten minutes later, Milly told her
of the captain’s visit, and added that she had never seen anything so
sudden as the way he left her. “He would n’t wait for you, my dear,
and he said he thought it more than likely that he should never see us
again. It is as if he thought you were going to die too!”
“Is his ship called away?” Kate Theory asked.
“He did n’t tell me so; he said we should be so busy with Percival and
Agnes.”
“He has got tired of us,--that’s all. There’s nothing wonderful in that;
I knew he would.”
Mildred said nothing for a moment; she was watching her sister, who was
very attentively arranging some flowers. “Yes, of course, we are very
dull, and he is like everybody else.”
“I thought you thought he was so wonderful,” said Kate, “and so fond of
us.”
“So he is; I am surer of that than ever. That’s why he went away so
abruptly.”
Kate looked at her sister now. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, darling. But you will, one of these days.”
“How if he never comes back?”
“Oh, he will--after a while--when I am gone. Then he will explain; that,
at least, is clear to me.”
“My poor precious, as if I cared!” Kate Theory exclaimed, smiling as she
distributed her flowers. She carried them to the window, to place them
near her sister, and here she paused a moment, her eye caught by an
object, far out in the bay, with which she was not unfamiliar. Mildred
noticed its momentary look, and followed its direction.
“It’s the captain’s gig going back to the ship,” Milly said. “It’s so
still one can almost hear the oars.”
Kate Theory turned away, with a sudden, strange violence, a movement and
exclamation which, the very next minute, as she became conscious of what
she had said,--and, still more, of what she felt--smote her own
heart (as it flushed her face) with surprise, and with the force of a
revelation: “I wish it would sink him to the bottom of the sea!”
Her sister stared, then caught her by the dress, as she passed from her,
drawing her back with a weak hand. “Oh, my dearest, my poorest!” And she
pulled Kate down and down toward her, so that the girl had nothing for
it but to sink on her knees and bury her face in Mildred’s lap. If that
ingenious invalid did not know everything now, she knew a great deal.