The Lady of the Aroostook Part 23

The party at the hotel suggested that the young men should leave their ship and go on with them to Naples; Dunham was tempted, for he could have reached Dresden sooner by land; but Staniford overruled him, and at the end of four days they went back to the Aroostook. They said it was like getting home, but in fact they felt the change from the airy heights and breadths of the hotel to the small cabin and the closets in which they slept; it was not so great alleviation as Captain Jenness seemed to think that one of them could now have Hicks's stateroom. But Dunham took everything sweetly, as his habit was; and, after all, they were meeting their hardships voluntarily. Some of the ladies came with them in the boat which rowed them to the Aroostook; the name made them laugh; that lady who wished Staniford to regret her waved him her hand kerchief as the boat rowed away again. She had with difficulty been kept from coming on board by the refusal of the others to come with her. She had contrived to a.s.sociate herself with him again in the minds of the others, and this, perhaps, was all that she desired. But the sense of her frivolity--her not so much vacant-mindedness as vacant-heartedness--was like a stain, and he painted in Lydia's face when they first met the reproach which was in his own breast.

Her greeting, however, was frank and cordial; it was a real welcome.

Staniford wondered if it were not more frank and cordial than he quite liked, and whether she was merely relieved by Hicks's absence, or had freed herself from that certain subjection in which she had hitherto been to himself.

Yet it was charming to see her again as she had been in the happiest moments of the past, and to feel that, Hicks being out of her world, her trust of everybody in it was perfect once more. She treated that interval of coldness and diffidence as all women know how to treat a thing which they wish not to have been; and Staniford, a man on whom no pleasing art of her s.e.x was ever lost, admired and gratefully accepted the effect of this. He fell luxuriously into the old habits again. They had still almost the time of a steamer's voyage to Europe before them; it was as if they were newly setting sail from America. The first night after they left Messina Staniford found her in her place in the waist of the ship, and sat down beside her there, and talked; the next night she did not come; the third she came, and he asked her to walk with him. The elastic touch of her hand on his arm, the rhythmic movement of her steps beside him, were things that seemed always to have been. She told him of what she had seen and done in Messina. This glimpse of Italy had vividly animated her; she had apparently found a world within herself as well as without.

With a suddenly depressing sense of loss, Staniford had a prevision of splendor in her, when she should have wholly blossomed out in that fervid air of art and beauty; he would fain have kept her still a wilding rosebud of the New England wayside. He hated the officers who should wonder at her when she first came into the Square of St. Mark with her aunt and uncle.

Her talk about Messina went on; he was thinking of her, and not of her talk; but he saw that she was not going to refer to their encounter.

"You make me jealous of the objects of interest in Messina," he said.

"You seem to remember seeing everything but me, there."

She stopped abruptly. "Yes," she said, after a deep breath, "I saw you there;" and she did not offer to go on again.

"Where were you going, that morning?"

"Oh, to the cathedral. Captain Jenness left me there, and I looked all through it till he came back from the consulate."

"Left you there alone!" cried Staniford.

"Yes; I told him I should not feel lonely, and I should not stir out of it till he came back. I took one of those little pine chairs and sat down, when I got tired, and looked at the people coming to worship, and the strangers with their guide-books."

"Did any of them look at you?"

"They stared a good deal. It seems to be the custom in Europe; but I told Captain Jenness I should probably have to go about by myself in Venice, as my aunt's an invalid, and I had better get used to it."

She paused, and seemed to be referring the point to Staniford.

"Yes,--oh, yes," he said.

"Captain Jenness said it was their way, over here," she resumed; "but he guessed I had as much right in a church as anybody."

"The captain's common sense is infallible," answered Staniford. He was ashamed to know that the beautiful young girl was as improperly alone in church as she would have been in a cafe, and he began to hate the European world for the fact. It seemed better to him that the Aroostook should put about and sail back to Boston with her, as she was,--better that she should be going to her aunt in South Bradfield than to her aunt in Venice. "We shall soon be at our journey's end, now," he said, after a while.

"Yes; the captain thinks in about eight days, if we have good weather."

"Shall you be sorry?"

"Oh, I like the sea very well."

"But the new life you are coming to,--doesn't that alarm you sometimes?"

"Yes, it does," she admitted, with a kind of reluctance.

"So much that you would like to turn back from it?"

"Oh, no!" she answered quickly. Of course not, Staniford thought; nothing could be worse than going back to South Bradfield. "I keep thinking about it," she added. "You say Venice is such a very strange place. Is it any use my having seen Messina?"

"Oh, all Italian cities have something in common."

"I presume," she went on, "that after I get there everything will become natural. But I don't like to look forward. It--scares me. I can't form any idea of it."

"You needn't be afraid," said Staniford. "It's only more beautiful than anything you can imagine."

"Yes--yes; I know," Lydia answered.

"And do you really dread getting there?"

"Yes, I dread it," she said.

"Why," returned Staniford lightly, "so do I; but it's for a different reason, I'm afraid. I should like such a voyage as this to go on forever. Now and then I think it will; it seems always to have gone on.

Can you remember when it began?"

"A great while ago," she answered, humoring his fantasy, "but I can remember." She paused a long while. "I don't know," she said at last, "whether I can make you understand just how I feel. But it seems to me as if I had died, and this long voyage was a kind of dream that I was going to wake up from in another world. I often used to think, when I was a little girl, that when I got to heaven it would be lonesome--I don't know whether I can express it. You say that Italy--that Venice--is so beautiful; but if I don't know any one there--" She stopped, as if she had gone too far.

"But you do know somebody there," said Staniford. "Your aunt--"

"Yes," said the girl, and looked away.

"But the people in this long dream,--you're going to let some of them appear to you there," he suggested.

"Oh, yes," she said, reflecting his lighter humor, "I shall want to see them, or I shall not know I am the same person, and I must be sure of myself, at least."

"And you wouldn't like to go back to earth--to South Bradfield again?"

he asked presently.

"No," she answered. "All that seems over forever. I couldn't go back there and be what I was. I could have stayed there, but I couldn't go back."

Staniford laughed. "I see that it isn't the other world that's got hold of you! It's _this_ world! I don't believe you'll be unhappy in Italy.

But it's pleasant to think you've been so contented on the Aroostook that you hate to leave it. I don't believe there's a man on the ship that wouldn't feel personally flattered to know that you liked being here. Even that poor fellow who parted from us at Messina was anxious that you should think as kindly of him as you could. He knew that he had behaved in a way to shock you, and he was very sorry. He left a message with me for you. He thought you would like to know that he was ashamed of himself."

"I pitied him," said Lydia succinctly. It was the first time that she had referred to Hicks, and Staniford found it in character for her to limit herself to this spa.r.s.e comment. Evidently, her compa.s.sion was a religious duty. Staniford's generosity came easy to him.

"I feel bound to say that Hicks was not a bad fellow. I disliked him immensely, and I ought to do him justice, now he's gone. He deserved all your pity. He's a doomed man; his vice is irreparable; he can't resist it." Lydia did not say anything: women do not generalize in these matters; perhaps they cannot pity the faults of those they do not love.

Staniford only forgave Hicks the more. "I can't say that up to the last moment I thought him anything but a poor, common little creature; and yet I certainly did feel a greater kindness for him after--what I--after what had happened. He left something more than a message for you, Miss Blood; he left his steamer chair yonder, for you."

"For me?" demanded Lydia. Staniford felt her thrill and grow rigid upon his arm, with refusal. "I will not have it. He had no right to do so.

He--he--was dreadful! I will give it to you!" she said, suddenly. "He ought to have given it to you. You did everything for him; you saved his life."

It was clear that she did not sentimentalize Hicks's case; and Staniford had some doubt as to the value she set upon what he had done, even now she had recognized it.

He said, "I think you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare say the boat could have picked him up in good time."

"Yes, that's what the captain and Mr. Watterson and Mr. Mason all said,"

a.s.sented Lydia.

Staniford was nettled. He would have preferred a devoted belief that but for him Hicks must have perished. Besides, what she said still gave no clew to her feeling in regard to himself. He was obliged to go on, but he went on as indifferently as he could. "However, it was hardly a question for me at the time whether he could have been got out without my help. If I had thought about it at all--which I didn't--I suppose I should have thought that it wouldn't do to take any chances."

"Oh, no," said Lydia, simply, "you couldn't have done anything less than you did."