The Lady of the Aroostook Part 26

I suppose," he added, "that something more explicit has its charms; but a mutual understanding is very pleasant,--if it _is_ a mutual understanding." He looked inquiringly at Dunham.

"Why, as to that, of course I don't know. You ought to be the best judge of that. But I don't believe your impressions would deceive you."

"Yours did, once," suggested Staniford, in suspense.

"Yes; but I was not in love with her," explained Dunham.

"Of course," said Staniford, with a breath of relief. "And you think--Well, I must wait!" he concluded, grimly. "But don't--don't mention this matter, Dunham, unless I do. Don't keep an eye on me, old fellow. Or, yes, you must! You can't help it. I want to tell you, Dunham, what makes me think she may be a not wholly uninterested spectator of my--sentiments." He made full statement of words and looks and tones. Dunham listened with the patience which one lover has with another.

XX.

The few days that yet remained of their voyage were falling in the latter half of September, and Staniford tried to make the young girl see the surpa.s.sing loveliness of that season under Italian skies; the fierceness of the summer is then past, and at night, when chiefly they inspected the firmament, the heaven has begun to a.s.sume something of the intense blue it wears in winter. She said yes, it was very beautiful, but she could not see that the days were finer, or the skies bluer, than those of September at home; and he laughed at her loyalty to the American weather. "Don't _you_ think so, too?" she asked, as if it pained her that he should like Italian weather better.

"Oh, yes,--yes," he said. Then he turned the talk on her, as he did whenever he could. "I like your meteorological patriotism. If I were a woman, I should stand by America in everything."

"Don't you as a man?" she pursued, still anxiously.

"Oh, certainly," he answered. "But women owe our continent a double debt of fidelity. It's the Paradise of women, it's their Promised Land, where they've been led up out of the Egyptian bondage of Europe. It's the home of their freedom. It is recognized in America that women have consciences and souls."

Lydia looked very grave. "Is it--is it so different with women in Europe?" she faltered.

"Very," he replied, and glanced at her half-laughingly, half-tenderly.

After a while, "I wish you would tell me," she said, "just what you mean. I wish you would tell me what is the difference."

"Oh, it's a long story. I will tell you--when we get to Venice." The well-worn jest served its purpose again; she laughed, and he continued: "By the way, just when will that be? The captain says that if this wind holds we shall be in Trieste by Friday afternoon. I suppose your friends will meet you there on Sat.u.r.day, and that you'll go back with them to Venice at once."

"Yes," a.s.sented Lydia.

"Well, if I should come on Monday, would that be too soon?"

"Oh, no!" she answered. He wondered if she had been vaguely hoping that he might go directly on with her to Venice. They were together all day, now, and the long talks went on from early morning, when they met before breakfast on deck, until late at night, when they parted there, with blushed and laughed good-nights. Sometimes the trust she put upon his unspoken promises was terrible; it seemed to condemn his reticence as fantastic and hazardous. With her, at least, it was clear that this love was the first; her living and loving were one. He longed to testify the devotion which he felt, to leave it unmistakable and safe past accident; he thought of making his will, in which he should give her everything, and declare her supremely dear; he could only rid himself of this by drawing up the paper in writing, and then he easily tore it in pieces.

They drew nearer together, not only in their talk about each other, but in what they said of different people in their relation to themselves.

But Staniford's pleasure in the metaphysics of reciprocal appreciation, his wonder at the quickness with which she divined characters he painfully a.n.a.lyzed, was not greater than his joy in the pretty hitch of the shoulder with which she tucked her handkerchief into the back pocket of her sack, or the picturesqueness with, which she sat facing him, and leant upon the rail, with her elbow wrapped in her shawl, and the fringe gathered in the hand which propped her cheek. He scribbled his sketch-book full of her contours and poses, which sometimes he caught unawares, and which sometimes she sat for him to draw. One day, as they sat occupied in this, "I wonder," he said, "if you have anything of my feeling, nowadays. It seems to me as if the world had gone on a pleasure excursion, without taking me along, and I was enjoying myself very much at home."

"Why, yes," she said, joyously; "do you have that feeling, too?"

"I wonder what it is makes us feel so," he ventured.

"Perhaps," she returned, "the long voyage."

"I shall hate to have the world come back, I believe," he said, reverting to the original figure. "Shall you?"

"You know I don't know much about it," she answered, in lithe evasion, for which she more than atoned with a conscious look and one of her dark blushes. Yet he chose, with a curious cruelty, to try how far she was his.

"How odd it would be," he said, "if we never should have a chance to talk up this voyage of ours when it is over!"

She started, in a way that made his heart smite him. "Why, you said you--" And then she caught herself, and struggled pitifully for the self-possession she had lost. She turned her head away; his pulse bounded.

"Did you think I wouldn't? I am living for that." He took the hand that lay in her lap; she seemed to try to free it, but she had not the strength or will; she could only keep her face turned from him.

XXI.

They arrived Friday afternoon in Trieste, and Captain Jenness telegraphed his arrival to Lydia's uncle as he went up to the consulate with his s.h.i.+p's papers. The next morning the young men sent their baggage to a hotel, but they came back for a last dinner on the Aroostook. They all pretended to be very gay, but everybody was perturbed and distraught. Staniford and Dunham had paid their way handsomely with the sailors, and they had returned with remembrances in florid scarfs and jewelry for Thomas and the captain and the officers.

Dunham had thought they ought to get something to give Lydia as a souvenir of their voyage; it was part of his devotion to young ladies to offer them little presents; but Staniford overruled him, and said there should be nothing of the kind. They agreed to be out of the way when her uncle came, and they said good-by after dinner. She came on deck to watch them ash.o.r.e. Staniford would be the last to take leave. As he looked into her eyes, he saw brave trust of him, but he thought a sort of troubled wonder, too, as if she could not understand his reticence, and suffered from it. There was the same latent appeal and reproach in the pose in which she watched their boat row away. She stood with one hand resting on the rail, and her slim grace outlined against the sky.

He waved his hand; she answered with a little languid wave of hers; then she turned away. He felt as if he had forsaken her.

The afternoon was very long. Toward night-fall he eluded Dunham, and wandered back to the s.h.i.+p in the hope that she might still be there.

But she was gone. Already everything was changed. There was bustle and discomfort; it seemed years since he had been there. Captain Jenness was ash.o.r.e somewhere; it was the second mate who told Staniford of her uncle's coming.

"What sort of person was he?" he asked vaguely.

"Oh, well! _Dum_ an Englishman, any way," said Mason, in a tone of easy, sociable explanation.

The scruple to which Staniford had been holding himself for the past four or five days seemed the most incredible of follies,--the most fantastic, the most cruel. He hurried back to the hotel; when he found Dunham coming out from the _table d'hote_ he was wild.

"I have been the greatest fool in the world, Dunham," he said. "I have let a quixotic quibble keep me from speaking when I ought to have spoken."

Dunham looked at him in stupefaction. "Where have you been?" he inquired.

"Down to the s.h.i.+p. I was in hopes that she might be still there. But she's gone."

"The Aroostook _gone_?"

"Look here, Dunham," cried Staniford, angrily, "this is the second time you've done that! If you are merely thick-witted, much can be forgiven to your infirmity; but if you've a mind to joke, let me tell you you choose your time badly."

"I'm not joking. I don't know what you're talking about. I may be thick-witted, as you say; or you may be scatter-witted," said Dunham, indignantly. "What are you after, any way?"

"What was my reason for not being explicit with her; for going away from her without one honest, manly, downright word; for sneaking off without telling her that she was more than life to me, and that if she cared for me as I cared for her I would go on with her to Venice, and meet her people with her?"

"Why, I don't know," replied Dunham, vaguely. "We agreed that there would be a sort of--that she ought to be in their care before--"

"Then I can tell you," interrupted Staniford, "that we agreed upon the greatest piece of nonsense that ever was. A man can do no more than offer himself, and if he does less, after he's tried everything to show that he's in love with a woman, and to make her in love with him, he's a scamp to refrain from a bad motive, and an a.s.s to refrain from a good one. Why in the name of Heaven _shouldn't_ I have spoken, instead of leaving her to eat her heart out in wonder at my delay, and to doubt and suspect and dread--Oh!" he shouted, in supreme self-contempt.

Dunham had nothing to urge in reply. He had fallen in with what he thought Staniford's own mind in regard to the course he ought to take; since he had now changed his mind, there seemed never to have been any reason for that course.

"My dear fellow," he said, "it isn't too late yet to see her, I dare say. Let us go and find what time the trains leave for Venice."

"Do you suppose I can offer myself in the _salle d'attente_?" sneered Staniford. But he went with Dunham to the coffee-room, where they found the Osservatore Triestino and the time-table of the railroad. The last train left for Venice at ten, and it was now seven; the Austrian Lloyd steamer for Venice sailed at nine.