A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories Part 5

MISS,

In this evening I am just arrived from Venise, 4 hours afterwards I have had the fortune to see you and to speake with you--and to favorite me of your gentil acquaintances.h.i.+p at rail-away. I never forgeet the moments I have seen you. Your pretty and nice figure had attached my heard so much, that I deserted in the hopiness to see you at Venise. And I was so lukely to speak with you cut too short, and in the possibility to understand all. I wished to go also in this Sonday to Venise, but I am sory that I cannot, beaucause I must feeled now the consequences of the desertation.

Pray Miss to agree the a.s.surance of my lov, and perhaps I will be so lukely to receive a notice from you Miss if I can hop a little (hapiness) sympathie. Tres humble

E. VON EHRHARDT.

Elmore was not dest.i.tute of the national sense of humor; but he read this letter not only without amus.e.m.e.nt in its English, but with intense bitterness and renewed alarm. It appeared to him that the willingness of the ladies to put the affair in his hands had not strongly manifested itself till it had quite pa.s.sed their own control, and had become a most embarra.s.sing difficulty,--when, in fact, it was no longer a merit in them to confide it to him. In the resentment of that moment, his suspicions even accused his wife of desiring, from idle curiosity and sentiment, the accidental meeting which had resulted in this fresh aggression.

"Why did you show me this letter?" he asked harshly.

"Mrs. Elmore told me to do so," Lily answered.

"Did _you_ wish me to see it?"

"I don't suppose I _wished_ you to see it: I thought you ought to see it."

Elmore felt himself relenting a little. "What do you want done about it?" he asked more gently.

"That is what I wished you to tell me," replied the girl.

"I can't tell you what you wish me to do, but I can tell you this, Miss Mayhew: this man's behavior is totally irregular. He would not think of writing to an Italian or German girl in this way. If he desired to--to--pay attention to her, he would write to her father."

"Yes, that's what Mrs. Elmore said. She said she supposed he must think it was the American way."

"Mrs. Elmore," began her husband; but he arrested himself there, and said, "Very well. I want to know what I am to do. I want your full and explicit authority before I act. We will dismiss the fact of irregularity. We will suppose that it is fit and becoming for a gentleman who has twice met a young lady by accident--or once by accident, and once by his own insistence--to write to her. Do you wish to continue the correspondence?"

"No."

Elmore looked into the eyes which dwelt full upon him, and, though they were clear as the windows of heaven, he hesitated. "I must do what you _say_, no matter what you mean, you know?"

"I mean what I say."

"Perhaps," he suggested, "you would prefer to return him this letter with a few lines on your card."

"No. I should like him to know that I have shown it to you. I should think it a liberty for an American to write to me in that way after such a short acquaintance, and I don't see why I should tolerate it from a foreigner, though I suppose their customs _are_ different."

"Then you wish me to write to him?"

"Yes."

"And make an end of the matter, once for all?"

"Yes--"

"Very well, then." Elmore sat down at once, and wrote:--

SIR,--Miss Mayhew has handed me your note of yesterday, and begs me to express her very great surprise that you should have ventured to address her. She desires me also to add that you will consider at an end whatever acquaintance you suppose yourself to have formed with her.

Your obedient servant, OWEN ELMORE.

He handed the note to Lily. "Yes, that will do," she said, in a low, steady voice. She drew a deep breath, and, laying the letter softly down, went out of the room into Mrs. Elmore's.

Elmore had not had time to kindle his sealing-wax when his wife appeared swiftly upon the scene.

"I want to see what you have written, Owen," she said.

"Don't talk to me, Celia," he replied, thrusting the wax into the candle-light. "You have put this affair entirely in my hands, and Lily approves of what I have written. I am sick of the thing, and I don't want any more talk about it."

"I _must_ see it," said Mrs. Elmore, with finality, and possessed herself of the note. She ran it through, and then flung it on the table and dropped into a chair, while the tears started to her eyes. "What a cold, cutting, merciless letter!" she cried.

"I hope he will think so," said Elmore, gathering it up from the table, and sealing it securely in its envelope.

"You're not going to _send_ it!" exclaimed his wife.

"Yes, I am."

"I didn't suppose you could be so heartless."

"Very well, then, I _won't_ send it," said Elmore. "I put the affair in _your_ hands. What are you going to do about it?"

"Nonsense!"

"On the contrary, I'm perfectly serious. I don't see why you shouldn't manage the business. The gentleman is an acquaintance of yours. _I_ don't know him." Elmore rose and put his hands in his pockets. "What do you intend to do? Do you like this clandestine sort of thing to go on? I dare say the fellow only wishes to amuse himself by a flirtation with a pretty American. But the question is whether you wish him to do so. I'm willing to lay his conduct to a misunderstanding of our customs, and to suppose that he thinks this is the way Americans do. I take the matter at its best: he speaks to Lily on the train without an introduction; he joins you in your walk without invitation; he writes to her without leave, and proposes to get up a correspondence. It is all perfectly right and proper, and will appear so to Lily's friends when they hear of it. But I'm curious to know how you're going to manage the sequel. Do you wish the affair to go on, and how long do you wish it to go on?"

"You know very well that I don't wish it to go on."

"Then you wish it broken off?"

"Of course I do."

"How?"

"I think there is such a thing as acting kindly and considerately. I don't see anything in Captain Ehrhardt's conduct that calls for _savage_ treatment," said Mrs. Elmore.

"You would like to have him stopped, but stopped gradually. Well, I don't wish to be savage, either, and I will act upon any suggestion of yours. I want Lily's people to feel that we managed not only wisely but humanely in checking a man who was resolved to force his acquaintance upon her."

Mrs. Elmore thought a long while. Then she said: "Why, of course, Owen, you're right about it. There _is_ no other way. There couldn't be any kindness in checking him gradually. But I wish," she added sorrowfully, "that he had not been such a _complete_ goose; and then we could have done something with him."

"I am obliged to him for the perfection which you regret, my dear. If he had been less complete, he would have been much harder to manage."

"Well," said Mrs. Elmore, rising, "I shall always say that he meant well. But send the letter."

Her husband did not wait for a second bidding. He carried it himself to the general post-office that there might be no mistake and no delay about it; and a man who believed that he had a feeling and tender heart experienced a barbarous joy in the infliction of this pitiless snub. I do not say that it would not have been different if he had trusted at all in the sincerity of Captain Ehrhardt's pa.s.sion; but he was glad to discredit it. A misgiving to the other effect would have complicated the matter. But now he was perfectly free to disembarra.s.s himself of a trouble which had so seriously threatened his peace. He was responsible to Miss Mayhew's family, and Mrs. Elmore herself could not say, then or afterward, that there was any other way open to him. I will not contend that his motives were wholly unselfish. No doubt a sense of personal annoyance, of offended decorum, of wounded respectability, qualified the zeal for Miss Mayhew's good which prompted him. He was still a young and inexperienced man, confronted with a strange perplexity: he did the best he could, and I suppose it was the best that could be done. At any rate, he had no regrets, and he went cheerfully about the work of interesting Miss Mayhew in the monuments and memories of the city.

Since the decisive blow had been struck, the ladies seemed to share his relief. The pursuit of Captain Ehrhardt, while it flattered, might well have alarmed, and the loss of a not unpleasant excitement was made good by a sense of perfect security. Whatever repining Miss Mayhew indulged was secret, or confided solely to Mrs. Elmore. To Elmore himself she appeared in better spirits than at first, or at least in a more equable frame of mind. To be sure, he did not notice very particularly. He took her to the places and told her the things that she ought to be interested in, and he conceived a better opinion of her mind from the quick intelligence with which she entered into his own feelings in regard to them, though he never could see any evidence of the over-study for which she had been taken from school. He made her, like Mrs. Elmore, the partner of his historical researches; he read his notes to both of them now; and when his wife was prevented from accompanying him, he went with Lily alone to visit the scenes of such events as his researches concerned, and to fill his mind with the local color which he believed would give life and character to his studies of the past. They also went often to the theatre; and, though Lily could not understand the plays, she professed to be entertained, and she had a grateful appreciation of all his efforts in her behalf that amply repaid him. He grew fond of her society; he took a childish pleasure in having people in the streets turn and glance at the handsome girl by his side, of whose beauty and stylishness he became aware through the admiration looked over the shoulders of the Austrians, and openly spoken by the Italian populace.