A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories Part 10

I'll say that much."

"You've got to say more. You have got to say you approved of it; for you know you did."

"Oh--_approved_ of it? Yes!"

"That's all I want. Now I agree with you that if we pa.s.s this letter in silence, it will leave him with some hope. You agree with me that in a marriage between an American girl and an Austrian officer the chances would be ninety-nine to a hundred against her happiness at the best."

"There are a great many unhappy marriages at home," said Mrs. Elmore impartially.

"That isn't the point, Celia, and you know it. The point is whether you believe the chances are for or against her in such a marriage. Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Agree with me?"

"Yes; but I say they _might_ be _very_ happy. I shall always say that."

Elmore flung up his hands in despair. "Well, then, say what shall be done now."

This was perhaps just what Mrs. Elmore did not choose to say. She was silent a long time,--so long that Elmore said, "But there's really no haste about it," and took some notes of his history out of a drawer, and began to look them over, with his back turned to her.

"I never knew anything so heartless!" she cried. "Owen, this _must_ be attended to at once! I can't have it hanging over me any longer. It will make me sick."

He turned abruptly round, and, seating himself at the table, wrote a note, which he pushed across to her. It acknowledged the receipt of Captain von Ehrhardt's letter, and expressed Miss Mayhew's feeling that there was nothing in it to change her wish that the acquaintance should cease. In after years, the terms of this note did not always appear to Elmore wisely chosen or humanely considered; but he stood at bay, and he struck mercilessly. In spite of the explicit concurrence of both Miss Mayhew and his wife, he felt as if they were throwing wholly upon him a responsibility whose fearfulness he did not then realize. Even in his wife's "Send it!" he was aware of a subtile reservation on her part.

VIII.

Mrs. Elmore and Lily again rose buoyantly from the conclusive event, but he succ.u.mbed to it. For the delicate and fastidious invalid, keeping his health evenly from day to day upon the condition of a free and peaceful mind, the strain had been too much. He had a bad night, and the next day a gastric trouble declared itself which kept him in bed half the week, and left him very weak and tremulous. His friends did not forget him during this time. Hoskins came regularly to see him, and supplied his place at the table d'hote of the Danieli, going to and fro with the ladies, and efficiently protecting them from the depredations of the Austrian soldiery. From Mr. Rose-Black he could not protect them; and both the ladies amused Elmore with a dramatization of how the Englishman had boldly outwitted them, and trampled all their finessing under foot, by simply walking up to them in the reading-room, and saying, "This is Miss Mayhew, I suppose," and putting himself at once on the footing of an old family friend. They read to Elmore, and they put his papers in order, so that he did not know where to find anything when he got well; but they always came home from the hotel with some lively gossip, and this he liked. They professed to recognize an anxiety on the part of Mr.

Andersen's aunt that his mind should not be diverted from the civil service in India by thoughts of young American ladies; but she sent some delicacies to Elmore, and one day she even came to call with her nephew, in extreme reluctance and anxiety as they pretended to him.

The next afternoon the young man called alone, and Elmore, who was now on foot, received him in the parlor, before the ladies came in. Mr.

Andersen had a bunch of flowers in one hand, and a small wooden box containing a little turtle on a salad-leaf in the other; the poor animals are sold in the Piazza at Venice for souvenirs of the city, and people often carry them away. Elmore took the offerings simply, as he took everything in life, and interpreted them as an expression, however odd, of Mr. Andersen's sympathy with his recent sufferings, of which he gave him some account; but he practised a decent self-denial, here, and they were already talking of the weather when the ladies appeared. He hastened to exhibit the tokens of Mr. Andersen's kind remembrance, and was mystified by the young man's confusion, and the impatient, almost contemptuous, air with which his wife listened to him. Hoskins came in at that moment to ask about Elmore's health, and showed the hostile civility to Andersen which young men use toward each other in the presence of ladies; and then, seeing that the latter had secured the place at Miss Mayhew's side on the sofa, he limped to the easy chair near Mrs. Elmore, and fell into talk with her about Rose-Black's pictures, which he had just seen. They were based upon an endeavor to trace the moral principles believed by Mr. Ruskin to underlie Venetian art, and they were very queer, so Hoskins said; he roughly sketched an idea of some of them on a block he took from his pocket.

Mr. Andersen and Lily went out upon one of the high-railed balconies that overhung the ca.n.a.l, and stood there, with their backs to the others. She seemed to be listening, with averted face, while he, with his cheek leaning upon one hand and his elbow resting on the balcony rail, kept a pensive att.i.tude after they had apparently ceased to speak.

Something in their pose struck the sculptor's fancy, and he made a hasty sketch of them, and was showing it to the Elmores when Lily suddenly descended into the room again, and, saying something about its being quite dark, went out, and left Mr. Andersen to make his adieux to the others. He startled them by saying that he was to set off for India in the morning, and he went away very melancholy.

"Well, I don't know," said Hoskins, thoughtfully retouching his sketch, "that I should feel very lively about going out to India myself."

"He seems to be a very affectionate young fellow," observed Elmore, "and I've no doubt he will feel the separation from his friends. But I really don't know why he should have brought me a bouquet, and a small turtle in a box, on the eve of his departure."

"What?" cried Hoskins, with a rude guffaw; and when Elmore had showed his gifts, Hoskins threw back his head and laughed indecently. His behavior nettled Elmore, and it sent Mrs. Elmore prematurely out of the room; for, not content with his explosions of laughter, he continued for some time to amuse himself by touching up with the point of his pencil the tail of the turtle which he had turned out of its box upon the table. At Mrs. Elmore's withdrawal he stopped, and presently said good-night rather soberly.

Then she returned. "Owen," she asked sadly, "did you really think these flowers and that turtle were for you?"

"Why, yes," he answered.

"Well, I don't know whether I wouldn't almost rather it had been a joke.

I believe that I would rather despise your heart than your head. Why should Mr. Andersen bring _you_ flowers and a turtle?"

"Upon my word, I don't know."

"They were for Lily! And your mistake has added another pang to the poor young fellow's suffering. She has just refused him," she said; and as Elmore continued to glare blankly at her, she added: "She was refusing him there on the balcony while that disgusting Mr. Hoskins was sketching them; and he had his hand up, that way, because he was crying."

"This is horrible, Celia!" cried Elmore. The scent of the flowers lying on the table seemed to choke him; the turtle clawing about on the smooth surface looked demoniacal. "Why----"

"Now, don't ask me why she refused him, Owen. Of course she couldn't care for a boy like that. But he can't realize it, and it's just as miserable for him as if he were a thousand years old."

Elmore hung his head. "It was all a mistake. But how should I know any better? I am a straightforward man, Celia; and I am unfit for the care that has been thrown upon me. It's more than I can bear. No, I'm _not_ fit for it!" he cried at last; and his wife, seeing him so crushed, now said something to console him.

"I know you're not. I see it more and more. But I know that you will do the best you can, and that you will always act from a good motive. Only _do_ try to be more on your guard."

"I will--I will," he answered humbly.

He had a temptation, the next time he visited Hoskins, to tell him the awful secret, and to see how the situation of that night, with this lurid light upon it, affected him: it could do poor Andersen, now on his way to India, no harm. He yielded to his temptation, at the same time that he confessed his own blunder about the flowers.

Hoskins whistled. "I tell you what," he said, after a long pause, "there are some things in history that I never could realize,--like Mary, Queen of Scots, for instance, putting on her best things, and stepping down into the front parlor of that castle to have her head off. But a thing like this, happening on your own balcony, _helps_ you to realize it."

"It helps you to realize it," a.s.sented Elmore, deeply oppressed by the tragic parallel.

"He's just beginning to feel it about now," said Hoskins, with strange _sang froid_. "I reckon it's a good deal like being shot. I didn't fully appreciate my little hit under a couple of days. Then I began to find out that something had happened. Look here," he added, "I want to show you something;" and he pulled the wet cloth off a breadth of clay which he had set up on a board stayed against the wall. It was a bas-relief representing a female figure advancing from the left corner over a stretch of prairie towards a bulk of forest on the right; bison, bear, and antelope fled before her; a lifted hand s.h.i.+elded her eyes; a star lit the fillet that bound her hair.

"That's the best thing you've done, Hoskins," said Elmore. "What do you call it?"

"Well, I haven't settled yet. I _have_ thought of 'Westward the Star of Empire,' but that's rather long; and I've thought of 'American Enterprise.' I ain't in any hurry to name it. You like it, do you?"

"I like it immensely!" cried Elmore. "You must let me bring the ladies to see it."

"Well, not just yet," said the sculptor, in some confusion. "I want to get it a little further along first."

They stood looking together at the figure; and when Elmore went away he puzzled himself about something in it,--he could not tell exactly what.

He thought he had seen that face and figure before, but this is what often occurs to the connoisseur of modern sculpture. His mind heavily reverted to Lily and her suitors. Take her in one way, especially in her subordination to himself, the girl was as simply a child as any in the world,--good-hearted, tender, and sweet, and, as he could see, without tendency to flirtation. Take her in another way, confront her with a young and marriageable man, and Elmore greatly feared that she unconsciously set all her beauty and grace at work to charm him; another life seemed to inform her, and irradiate from her, apart from which she existed simple and childlike still. In the security of his own deposited affections, it appeared to him cruelly absurd that a pa.s.sion which any other pretty girl might, and some other pretty girl in time must, have kindled, should cling, when once awakened, so inalienably to the pretty girl who had, in a million chances, chanced to awaken it. He wondered how much of this constancy was natural, and how much merely attributive and traditional, and whether human happiness or misery were increased by it on the whole.

IX.

In the respite which followed the dismissal of Andersen, the English painter, Rose-Black, visited the Elmores as often as the servant, who had orders in his case to say that they were _impediti_, failed of her duty. They could not always escape him at the caffe, and they would have left off dining at the hotel but for the shame of feeling that he had driven them away. If he had been an Englishman repelling their advances, instead of an Englishman pursuing them, he could not have been more offensive. He affronted their national as well as personal self-esteem; he early declared himself a sympathizer with the Southrons (as the London press then called them), and he expressed the current belief of his compatriots, that we were going to the dogs.

"What do you really make of him, Owen?" asked Mrs. Elmore, after an evening that, in its improbable discomfort, had pa.s.sed quite like a nightmare.

"Well, I've been thinking a good deal about him. I have been wondering if, in his phenomenal way, he is not a final expression of the national genius,--the stupid contempt for the rights of others; the tacit denial of the rights of any people who are at English mercy; the a.s.sumption that the courtesies and decencies of life are for use exclusively towards Englishmen."

This was in that embittered old war-time: we have since learned how forbearing and generous and amiable Englishmen are; how they never take advantage of any one they believe stronger than themselves, or fail in consideration for those they imagine their superiors; how you have but to show yourself successful in order to win their respect, and even affection.

But for the present Mrs. Elmore replied to her husband's perverted ideas, "Yes, it must be so," and she supported him in the ineffectual experiment of deferential politeness, Christian charity, broad humanity, and savage rudeness upon Rose-Black. It was all one to Rose-Black.

He took an air of serious protection towards Mrs. Elmore, and often gave her advice, while he practised an easy gallantry with Lily, and ignored Elmore altogether. His intimacy was superior to the accidents of their moods, and their slights and snubs were accepted apparently as interesting expressions of a civilization about which he was insatiably curious, especially as regarded the relations of young people. There was no mistaking the fact that Rose-Black in his way had fallen under the spell which Elmore had learned to dread; but there was nothing to be done, and he helplessly waited. He saw what must come; and one evening it came, when Rose-Black, in more than usually offensive patronage, lolled back upon the sofa at Miss Mayhew's side, and said, "About flirtations, now, in America,--tell me something about flirtations.

We've heard so much about your American flirtations. We only have them with married ladies, on the continent, and I don't suppose Mrs. Elmore would think of one."