depends not on myself at all.”
He spoke not a word of love to her then, nor she to him, unless there
was love in such greeting as has been here repeated. Indeed, it was not
till after that first interview that he fully understood that she had
made her journey to Verona, solely in quest of him. The words between
them for the first day or two were very tame, as though neither had full
confidence in the other; and she had taken her place as nurse by his
side, as a sister might have done by a brother, and was established in
her work,--nay, had nearly completed her work, before there came to be
any full understanding between them. More than once she had told herself
that she would go back to Venice and let there be an end of it. “The
great work of the war,” she said to herself, “has so filled his mind,
that the idleness of his days in Venice and all that he did then, are
forgotten. If so, my presence here is surely a sore burden to him, and I
will go.” But she could not now leave him without a word of farewell.
“Hubert,” she said, for she had called him Hubert when she first came to
his bedside, as though she had been his sister, “I think I must return
now to Venice. My mother will be lonely without me.”
At that moment it appeared almost miraculous to her that she should be
sitting there by his bedside, that she should have loved him, that she
should have had the courage to leave her home and seek him after the
war, that she should have found him, and that she should now be about
to leave him, almost without a word between them.
“She must be very lonely,” said the wounded man.
“And you, I think, are stronger than you were?”
“For me, I am strong enough. I have lost my arm, and I shall carry this
gaping scar athwart my face to the grave, as my cross of honour won in
the Italian war; but otherwise I shall soon be well.”
“It is a fair cross of honour.”
“Yes; they cannot rob us of our wounds when our service is over. And so
you will go, Signorina?”
“Yes; I will go. Why should I remain here? I will go, and Carlo will
return, and I will tend upon him. Carlo also was wounded.”
“But you have told me that he is well again.”
“Nevertheless, he will value the comfort of a woman’s care after his
sufferings. May I say farewell to you now, my friend?” And she put her
hand down upon the bed so that he might reach it. She had been with him
for days, and there had been no word of love. It had seemed as though he
had understood nothing of what she had done in coming to him; that he
had failed altogether in feeling that she had come as a wife goes to a
husband. She had made a mistake in this journey, and must now rectify
her error with as much of dignity as might be left to her.
He took her hand in his, and held it for a moment before he answered
her. “Nina,” he said, “why did you come hither?”
“Why did I come?”
“Why are you here in Verona, while your mother is alone in Venice?”
“I had business here; a matter of some moment. It is finished now, and I
shall return.”
“Was it other business than to sit at my bedside?”
She paused a moment before she answered him.
“Yes,” she said; “it was other business than that.”
“And you have succeeded?”
“No; I have failed.”
He still held her hand; and she, though she was thus fencing with him,
answering him with equivoques, felt that at last there was coming from
him some word which would at least leave her no longer in doubt.
“And I too, have I failed?” he said. “When I left Venice I told myself
heartily that I had failed.”
“You told yourself, then,” said she, “that Venetia never would be ceded.
You know that I would not triumph over you, now that your cause has been
lost. We Italians have not much cause for triumphing.”
“You will admit always that the fortresses have not been taken from us,”
said the sore-hearted soldier.
“Certainly we shall admit that.”
“And my own fortress,--the stronghold that I thought I had made
altogether mine,--is that, too, lost for ever to the poor German?”
“You speak in riddles, Captain von Vincke,” she said.
She had now taken back her hand; but she was sitting quietly by his
bedside, and made no sign of leaving him.
“Nina,” he said, “Nina,--my own Nina. In losing a single share of
Venice,--one soldier’s share of the province,--shall I have gained all
the world for myself? Nina, tell me truly, what brought you to Verona?”
She knelt slowly down by his bedside, and again taking his one hand in
hers, pressed it first to her lips and then to her bosom. “It was an
unmaidenly purpose,” she said. “I came to find the man I loved.”
“But you said you had failed?”
“And I now say that I have succeeded. Do you not know that success in
great matters always trembles in the balance before it turns the beam,
thinking, fearing, all but knowing that failure has weighed down the
scale?”
“But now----?”
“Now I am sure that--Venice has been won.”
It was three months after this, and half of December had passed away,
and all Venetia had in truth been ceded, and Victor Emmanuel had made
his entry in to Venice and exit out of it, with as little of real
triumph as ever attended a king’s progress through a new province, and
the Austrian army had moved itself off very quietly, and the city had
become as thoroughly Italian as Florence itself, and was in a way to be
equally discontented, when a party of four, two ladies and two
gentlemen, sat down to breakfast in the Hôtel Bauer.
The ladies were the Signora Pepé and her daughter, and the men were
Carlo Pepé and his brother-in-law, Hubert von Vincke. It was but a poor
fête, this family breakfast at an obscure inn, but it was intended as a
gala feast to mark the last day of Nina’s Italian life.
To-morrow, very early in the morning, she was to leave Venice for
Trieste,--so early that it would be necessary that she should be on
board this very night.
“My child,” said the Signora, “do not say so; you will never cease to be
Italian. Surely, Hubert, she may still call herself Venetian?”
“Mother,” she said, “I love a losing cause. I will be Austrian now. I
told him that he could not have both. If he kept his Venice, he could
not have me; but as he has lost his province, he shall have his wife
entirely.”
“I told him that it was fated that he should lose Venetia,” said Carlo,
“but he would never believe me.”
“Because I knew how true were our soldiers,” said Hubert, “and could not
understand how false were our statesmen.”
“See how he regrets it,” said Nina; “what he has lost, and what he has
won, will, together, break his heart for him.”
“Nina,” he said, “I learned this morning in the city, that I shall be
the last Austrian soldier to leave Venice, and I hold that of all who
have entered it, and all who have left it, I am the most successful and
the most triumphant.”
[Illustration: text decoration]
MISS OPHELIA GLEDD.
[Illustration: text decoration]
MISS OPHELIA GLEDD.
Who can say what is a lady? My intelligent and well-bred reader of
either sex will at once declare that he and she knows very well who is a
lady. So, I hope, do I. But the present question goes further than that.
What is it, and whence does it come? Education does not give it, nor
intelligence, nor birth, not even the highest. The thing, which in its
presence or absence is so well known and understood, may be wanting to
the most polished manners, to the sweetest disposition, to the truest
heart. There are thousands among us who know it at a glance, and
recognise its presence from the sound of a dozen words, but there is not
one among us who can tell us what it is.
Miss Ophelia Gledd was a young lady of Boston, Massachusetts, and I
should be glad to know whether in the estimation of my countrymen and
countrywomen she is to be esteemed a lady.
An Englishman, even of the best class, is often at a loss to judge of
the “ladyship” of a foreigner, unless he has really lived in foreign
cities and foreign society; but I do not know that he is ever so much
puzzled in this matter by any nationality as he is by the American.
American women speak his own language, read his own literature, and in
many respects think his own thoughts; but there have crept into American
society so many little social ways at variance with our social ways,
there have been wasted thither so many social atoms which there fit into
their places, but which with us would clog the wheels, that the words,
and habits, and social carriage, of an American woman of the best class,
too often offend the taste of an Englishman; as do, quite as strongly,
those of the Englishwoman offend the American.
There are those who declare that there are no American ladies; but these
are people who would probably declare the same of the French and the
Italians, if the languages of France and Italy were as familiar to their
ears as is the language of the States. They mean that American women do
not grow up to be English ladies,--not bethinking themselves that such
a growth was hardly to be expected. Now I will tell my story, and ask my
readers to answer this question,--Was Miss Ophelia Gledd a lady?
When I knew her she was at any rate great in the society of Boston,
Massachusetts, in which city she had been as well known for the last
four or five years as the yellow dome of the State House. She was as
pure and perfect a specimen of a Yankee girl as ever it was my fortune
to know.
Standing about five feet eight, she seemed to be very tall, because she
always carried herself at her full height. She was thin too, and rather
narrower at the shoulders than the strictest rules of symmetry would
have made her. Her waist was very slight; so much so, that to the eye it
would seem that some unjust and injurious force had created its slender
compass; but I have fair ground for stating my belief that no such force
had been employed. But yet, though she was slight and thin, and even
narrow, there was a vivacity and quickness about all her movements, and
an easiness in her mode of moving which made it impossible to deny to
her the merit of a pleasing figure.
No man would, I think, at first sight, declare her to be pretty, and
certainly no woman would do so; and yet I have seldom known a face in
the close presence of which it was more gratifying to sit, and talk, and
listen. Her brown hair was always brushed close off from her forehead.
Her brow was high, and her face narrow and thin; but that face was ever
bright with motion, and her clear, deep, gray eyes, full of life and
light, were always ready for some combat or some enterprise. Her nose
and mouth were the best features in her face, and her teeth were
perfect,--miracles of perfection; but her lips were too thin for
feminine beauty; and indeed such personal charms as she had were not the
charms which men love most,--sweet changing colour, soft full flowing
lines of grace, and womanly gentleness in every movement. Ophelia Gledd
had none of these. She was hard and sharp in shape, of a good brown
steady colour, hard and sharp also in her gait; with no full flowing
lines, with no softness; but she was bright as burnished steel.
And yet she was the belle of Boston. I do not know that any man of
Boston,--or any stranger knowing Boston, would have ever declared that
she was the prettiest girl in the city; but this was certain almost to
all,--that she received more of that admiration which is generally given
to beauty than did any other lady there; and that the upper social world
of Boston had become so used to her appearance, such as it was, that no
one ever seemed to question the fact of her being a beauty. She had
been passed as a beauty by examiners whose certificate in that matter
was held to be good, and had received high rank as a beauty in the
drawing-rooms at Boston.
The fact was never questioned now, unless by some passing stranger who
would be told in flat terms that he was wrong.
“Yes, Sir; you’ll find you’re wrong; you’ll find you aire, if you’ll
bide here awhile.”
I did bide there awhile, and did find that I was wrong. Before I left I
was prepared to allow that Miss Ophelia Gledd was a beauty. And
moreover, which was more singular, all the women allowed it.
Ophelia Gledd, though the belle of Boston, was not hated by the other
belles. The female feeling with regard to her was, I think, this, that
the time had arrived in which she should choose her husband and settle
down, so as to leave room for others less attractive than herself.
When I knew her she was very fond of men’s society; but I doubt if
anyone could fairly say that Miss Gledd ever flirted. In the proper
sense of the word she certainly never flirted. Interesting conversations
with interesting young men at which none but themselves were present she
had by the dozen. It was as common for her to walk up and down Beacon
Street,--the parade of Boston,--with young Jones, or Smith, or more
probably with young Mr. Optimus M. Opie, or young Mr. Hannibal H.
Hoskins, as it is for our young Joneses, and young Smiths, and young
Hoskinses, to saunter out together.
That is the way of the country, and no one took wider advantage of the
ways of her own country than did Miss Ophelia Gledd. She told young men
also when to call upon her, if she liked them; and in seeking or in
avoiding their society, did very much as she pleased.
But these practices are right or wrong, not in accordance with a fixed
rule of morality prevailing over all the earth,--such a rule, for
instance, as that which orders men not to steal; but they are right or
wrong according to the usages of the country in which they are
practised.
In Boston it is right that Miss Ophelia Gledd should walk up Beacon
Street with Hannibal Hoskins the morning after she has met him at a
ball, and that she should invite him to call upon her at twelve o’clock
on the following day.
She had certainly a nasal twang in speaking. Before my intercourse with
her was over, her voice had become pleasant in my ears, and it may be
that that nasal twang which had at first been so detestable to me, had
recommended itself to my sense of hearing. At different periods of my
life I have learned to love an Irish brogue and a northern burr.
Be that as it may, I must acknowledge that Miss Ophelia Gledd spoke with
a certain nasal twang. But then such is the manner of speech at Boston;
and she only did that which the Joneses and Smiths, the Opies and
Hoskinses, were doing around her.
Ophelia Gledd’s mother was, for a living being, the nearest thing to a
nonentity that I ever met. Whether within her own house in Chesnut
Street she exerted herself in her domestic duties and held authority
over her maidens I cannot say, but neither in her dining parlour nor in
her drawing-room did she hold any authority. Indeed, throughout the
house, Ophelia was paramount, and it seemed as though her mother could
not venture on a hint in opposition to her daughter’s behests.
Mrs. Gledd never went out, but her daughter frequented all balls,
dinners, and assemblies, which she chose to honour. To all these she
went alone, and had done since she was eighteen years of age. She went
also to lectures, to meetings of wise men, for which the Western Athens
is much noted, to political debates, and wherever her enterprising heart
and enquiring head chose to carry her. But her mother never went
anywhere; and it always seemed to me that Mrs. Gledd’s intercourse with
her domestics must have been nearer, closer, and almost dearer to her,
than any that she could have with her daughter.
Mr. Gledd had been a merchant all his life. When Ophelia Gledd first
came before the Boston world he had been a rich merchant; and as she was
an only child she had opened her campaign with all the advantages which
attach to an heiress. But now, in these days, Mr. Gledd was known to be
a merchant without riches. He still kept the same house, and lived
apparently as he had always lived; but the world knew that he had been a
broken merchant and was now again struggling. That Miss Gledd felt the
disadvantage of this no one can, I suppose, doubt. But she never showed
that she felt it. She spoke openly of her father’s poverty as of a thing
that was known, and of her own. Where she had been exigeant before, she
was exigeant now. Those she disliked when rich she disliked now that she
was poor. Where she had been patronising before, she patronised now.
Where she had loved, she still loved. In former days she had a carriage,
and now she had none. Where she had worn silk, she now wore cotton. In
her gloves, her laces, her little belongings, there was all the
difference which money makes or the want of money; but in her manner
there was none.
Nor was there any difference in the manner of others to her. The loss of
wealth seemed to entail on Miss Gledd no other discomfort than the
actual want of those things which hard money buys. To go in a coach
might have been a luxury to her, and that she had lost; but she had lost
none of her ascendency, none of her position, none of her sovereignty.
I remember well where, when, and how, I first met Miss Gledd. At that
time her father’s fortune was probably already gone, but if so, she did
not then know that it was gone.
It was in winter,--towards the end of winter,--when the passion for
sleighing became ecstatic. I expect all my readers to know that
sleighing is the grand winter amusement of Boston. And indeed it is not
bad fun. There is the fashionable course for sleighing,--the Brighton
Road,--and along that you drive, seated among furs, with a young lady
beside you if you can get one to trust you; your horse or horses carry
little bells, which add to the charms; the motion is rapid and pleasant,
and, which is the great thing, you see and are seen by everybody. Of
course it is expedient that the frost should be sound and perfect, so
that the sleigh should run over a dry, smooth surface. But as the season
draws to an end, and when sleighing intimacies have become close and
warm, the horses are made to travel through slush and wet, and the scene
becomes one of peril and discomfort, though one also of excitement, and
not unfrequently of love.
Sleighing was fairly over at the time of which I now speak, so that the
Brighton Road was deserted in its slush and sloppiness. Nevertheless,
there was a possibility of sleighing; and as I was a stranger newly
arrived, a young friend of mine took me, or rather allowed me to take
him out, so that the glory of the charioteer might be mine.
“I guess we’re not alone,” said he, after we had passed the bridge out
of the town. “There’s young Hoskins with Pheely Gledd just ahead of us.”
That was the first I had ever heard of Ophelia, and then as I pushed
along after her, instigated by a foolish Briton’s ambition to pass the
Yankee whip, I did hear a good deal about her; and in addition to what
has already been told, I then heard that this Mr. Hannibal Hoskins, to
pass whom on the road was now my only earthly desire, was Miss Gledd’s
professed admirer; in point of fact, that it was known to all Boston
that he had offered his hand to her more than once already.
“She has accepted him now, at any rate,” said I, looking at their close
contiguity on the sleigh before me. But my friend explained to me that
such was by no means probable; that Miss Gledd had twenty hangers-on of
the same description, with any one of whom she might be seen sleighing,
walking, or dancing; but that no argument as to any further purpose on
her part was to be deduced from any such practice. “Our girls,” said my
friend, “don’t go about tied to their mothers’ aprons, as girls do in
the old country. Our free institutions,” &c., &c. I confessed my
blunder, and acknowledged that a wide and perhaps salutary latitude was
allowed to the feminine creation on his side of the Atlantic. But, do
what I would, I couldn’t pass Hannibal Hoskins. Whether he guessed that
I was an ambitious Englishman, or whether he had a general dislike to be
passed on the road, I don’t know; but he raised his whip to his horses
and went away from us suddenly and very quickly through the slush. The
snow was half gone, and hard ridges of it remained across the road, so
that his sleigh was bumped about most uncomfortably. I soon saw that his
horses were running away, and that Hannibal Hoskins was in a fix. He was
standing up, pulling at them with all his strength and weight, and the
carriage was yawing about and across the road in a manner that made us
fear it would go to pieces. Miss Ophelia Gledd, however, kept her seat,
and there was no shrieking. In about five minutes they were well
planted into a ditch, and we were alongside of them.
“You fixed that pretty straight, Hoskins,” said my friend.
“Darn them for horses,” said Hoskins, as he wiped the perspiration from
his brow and looked down upon the fiercest of the quadrupeds, sprawling
up to his withers in the snow. Then he turned to Miss Gledd, who was
endeavouring to unroll herself from her furs.
“Oh, Miss Gledd, I am so sorry. What am I to say?”
“You’d better say that the horses ran away, I think,” said Miss Gledd.
Then she stepped carefully out, on to a buffalo-robe, and moved across
from that, quite dry-footed, on to our sleigh. As my friend and Hoskins
were very intimate, and could, as I thought, get on very well by
themselves with the débris in the ditch, I offered to drive Miss Gledd
back to town. She looked at me with eyes which gave me, as I thought, no
peculiar thanks, and then remarked that she had come out with Mr.
Hoskins, and that she would go back with him.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Hoskins, who was at that time up to his middle
in snow.
“Ah, but I do mind you,” said Ophelia. “Don’t you think we could go back
and send some people to help these gentlemen?”
It was the coolest proposition that I had ever heard, but in two minutes
Miss Gledd was putting it into execution. Hannibal Hoskins was driving
her back in the sleigh which I had hired, and I was left with my friend
to extricate those other two brutes from the ditch.
“That’s so like Pheely Gledd,” said my friend. “She always has her own
way.”
Then it was that I questioned Miss Gledd’s beauty, and was told that
before long I should find myself to be wrong. I had almost acknowledged
myself to be wrong before that night was over.
I was at a tea-party that same evening at which Miss Gledd was
present;--it was called a tea-party, though I saw no tea. I did,
however, see a large hot supper, and a very large assortment of
long-necked bottles. I was standing rather listlessly near the door,
being short of acquaintance, when a young Yankee dandy, with a very
stiff neck, informed me that Miss Gledd wanted to speak to me. Having
given me this intimation he took himself off, with an air of disgust,
among the long-necked bottles.
“Mr. Green,” she said,--I had just been introduced to her as she was
being whisked away by Hoskins in my sleigh--“Mr. Green, I believe I owe
you an apology. When I took your sleigh from you I didn’t know you were
a Britisher,--I didn’t, indeed.”
I was a little nettled, and endeavoured to explain to her that an
Englishman would be just as ready to give up his carriage to a lady as
any American.
“Oh, dear, yes; of course,” she said. “I didn’t mean that; and now I’ve
put my foot into it worse than ever; I thought you were at home here,
and knew our ways, and if so you wouldn’t mind being left with a broken
sleigh.”
I told her that I didn’t mind it. That what I had minded was the being
robbed of the privilege of driving her home, which I had thought to be
justly mine.
“Yes,” said she, “and I was to leave my friend in the ditch! That’s what
I never do. You didn’t suffer any disgrace by remaining there till the
men came.”
“I didn’t remain there till any men came. I got it out and drove it
home.”
“What a wonderful man! But then you’re English. However, you can
understand that if I had left my driver he would have been disgraced. If
ever I go out anywhere with you, Mr. Green, I’ll come home with you. At
any rate it sha’n’t be my fault if I don’t.” After that I couldn’t be
angry with her, and so we became great friends.
Shortly afterwards the crash came; but Miss Gledd seemed to disregard
the crash altogether, and held her own in Boston. As far as I could see
there were just as many men desirous of marrying her as ever, and among
the number Hannibal H. Hoskins was certainly no defaulter.
My acquaintance with Boston had become intimate; but, after awhile, I
went away for twelve months, and when I returned, Miss Gledd was still
Miss Gledd. “And what of Hoskins?” I said to my friend,--the same friend
who had been with me in the sleighing expedition.