The Lady of the Aroostook Part 29

"Oh, well, you can't tell till you've unpacked; and we're not responsible for what people happen to think, you know. Wait!" her aunt suddenly cried. She pulled open a drawer, and s.n.a.t.c.hed two ribbons from it, which she pinned to the sides of Lydia's hat, and tied in a bow under her chin; she caught out a lace veil, and drew that over the front of the hat, and let it hang in a loose knot behind. "Now," she said, pushing her up to a mirror, that she might see, "it's a bonnet; and I needn't say _any_thing!"

They went in Mrs. Erwin's gondola to the palace in which the English service was held, and Lydia was silent, as she looked shyly, almost fearfully, round on the visionary splendors of Venice.

Mrs. Erwin did not like to be still. "What are you thinking of, Lydia?"

she asked.

"Oh! I suppose I was thinking that the leaves were beginning to turn in the sugar orchard," answered Lydia faithfully. "I was thinking how still the sun would be in the pastures, there, this morning. I suppose the stillness here put me in mind of it. One of these bells has the same tone as our bell at home."

"Yes," said Mrs. Erwin. "Everybody finds a familiar bell in Venice.

There are enough of them, goodness knows. I don't see why you call it still, with all this clashing and banging. I suppose this seems very odd to you, Lydia," she continued, indicating the general Venetian effect.

"It's an old story to me, though. The great beauty of Venice is that you get more for your money here than you can anywhere else in the world.

There isn't much society, however, and you mustn't expect to be very gay."

"I have never been gay," said Lydia.

"Well, that's no reason you shouldn't be," returned her aunt. "If you were in Florence, or Rome, or even Naples, you could have a good time.

There! I'm glad your uncle didn't hear me say that!"

"What?" asked Lydia.

"Good time; that's an Americanism."

"Is it?"

"Yes. He's perfectly delighted when he catches me in one. I try to break myself of them, but I don't always know them myself. Sometimes I feel almost like never talking at all. But you can't do that, you know."

"No," a.s.sented Lydia.

"And you have to talk Americanisms if you're an American. You mustn't think your uncle isn't obliging, Lydia. He is. I oughtn't to have asked him to go to church,--it bores him so much. I used to feel terribly about it once, when we were first married. But things have changed very much of late years, especially with all this scientific talk. In England it's quite different from what it used to be. Some of the best people in society are skeptics now, and that makes it quite another thing." Lydia looked grave, but she said nothing, and her aunt added, "I wouldn't have asked him, but I had a little headache, myself."

"Aunt Josephine," said Lydia, "I'm afraid you're doing too much for me.

Why didn't you let me come alone?"

"Come alone? To church!" Mrs. Erwin addressed her in a sort of whispered shriek. "It would have been perfectly scandalous."

"To go to church alone?" demanded Lydia, astounded.

"Yes. A young girl mustn't go _any_where alone."

"Why?"

"I'll explain to you, sometime, Lydia; or rather, you'll learn for yourself. In Italy it's very different from what it is in America."

Mrs. Erwin suddenly started up and bowed with great impressiveness, as a gondola swept towards them. The gondoliers wore shirts of blue silk, and long crimson sashes. On the cushions of the boat, beside a hideous little man who was sucking the top of an ivory-handled stick, reclined a beautiful woman, pale, with purplish rings round the large black eyes with which, faintly smiling, she acknowledged Mrs. Erwin's salutation, and then stared at Lydia.

"Oh, you may look, and you may look, and you may look!" cried Mrs.

Erwin, under her breath. "You've met more than your match at last!

The Countess Tatocka," she explained to Lydia. "That was her palace we pa.s.sed just now,--the one with the iron balconies. Did you notice the gentleman with her? She always takes to those monsters. He's a Neapolitan painter, and ever so talented,--clever, that is. He's dead in love with her, they say."

"Are they engaged?" asked Lydia.

"Engaged!" exclaimed Mrs. Erwin, with her shriek in dumb show. "Why, child, she's married!"

"To _him_?" demanded the girl, with a recoil.

"No! To her husband."

"To her husband?" gasped Lydia. "And she--"

"Why, she isn't quite well seen, even in Venice," Mrs. Erwin explained.

"But she's rich, and her _conversazioni_ are perfectly brilliant. She's very artistic, and she writes poetry,--Polish poetry. I _wish_ she could hear you sing, Lydia! I know she'll be frantic to see you again. But I don't see how it's to be managed; her house isn't one you can take a young girl to. And _I_ can't ask her: your uncle detests her."

"Do you go to her house?" Lydia inquired stiffly.

"Why, as a foreigner, _I_ can go. Of course, Lydia, you can't be as particular about everything on the Continent as you are at home."

The former oratory of the Palazzo Grinzelli, which served as the English chapel, was filled with travelers of both the English-speaking nationalities, as distinguishable by their dress as by their faces.

Lydia's aunt affected the English style, but some instinctive elegance betrayed her, and every Englishwoman there knew and hated her for an American, though she was a precisian in her liturgy, instant in all the responses and genuflexions. She found opportunity in the course of the lesson to make Lydia notice every one, and she gave a telegrammic biography of each person she knew, with a criticism of the costume of all the strangers, managing so skillfully that by the time the sermon began she was able to yield the text a statuesquely close attention, and might have been carved in marble where she sat as a realistic conception of Worship.

The sermon came to an end; the ritual proceeded; the hymn, with the hemming and hawing of respectable inability, began, and Lydia lifted her voice with the rest. Few of the people were in their own church; some turned and stared at her; the bonnets and the back hair of those who did not look were intent upon her; the long red neck of one elderly Englishman, restrained by decorum from turning his head toward her, perspired with curiosity. Mrs. Erwin fidgeted, and dropped her eyes from the glances which fell to her for explanation of Lydia, and hurried away with her as soon as the services ended. In the hall on the water-floor of the palace, where they were kept waiting for their gondola a while, she seemed to shrink even from the small, surly greetings with which people whose thoughts are on higher things permit themselves to recognize fellow-beings of their acquaintance in coming out of church.

But an old lady, who supported herself with a cane, pushed through the crowd to where they stood aloof, and, without speaking to Mrs. Erwin, put out her hand to Lydia; she had a strong, undaunted, plain face, in which was expressed the habit of doing what she liked. "My dear," she said, "how wonderfully you sing! Where did you get that heavenly voice?

You are an American; I see that by your beauty. You are Mrs. Erwin's niece, I suppose, whom she expected. Will you come and sing to me? You must bring her, Mrs. Erwin."

She hobbled away without waiting for an answer, and Lydia and her aunt got into their gondola. "_Oh_! How glad I am!" cried Mrs. Erwin, in a joyful flutter. "She's the very tip-top of the English here; she has a whole palace, and you meet the very best people at her house. I was afraid when you were singing, Lydia, that they would think your voice was too good to be good form,--that's an expression you must get; it means everything,--it sounded almost professional. I wanted to nudge you to sing a little lower, or different, or something; but I couldn't, everybody was looking so. No matter. It's all right now. If _she_ liked it, n.o.body else will dare to breathe. You can see that she has taken a fancy to you; she'll make a great pet of you."

"Who is she?" asked Lydia, bluntly.

"Lady Fenleigh. Such a character,--so eccentric! But really, I suppose, very hard to live with. It must have been quite a release for poor Sir Fenleigh."

"She didn't seem in mourning," said Lydia. "Has he been dead long?"

"Why, he isn't dead at all! He is what you call a gra.s.s-widower. The best soul in the world, everybody says, and very, very fond of her; but she couldn't stand it; he was _too_ good, don't you understand? They've lived apart a great many years. She's lived a great deal in Asia Minor,--somewhere. She likes Venice; but of course there's no telling how long she may stay. She has another house in Florence, all ready to go and be lived in at a day's notice. I wish I had presented you! It did go through my head; but it didn't seem as if I _could_ get the Blood out. It _is_ a fearful name, Lydia; I always felt it so when I was a girl, and I was _so_ glad to marry out of it; and it sounds so terribly American. I think you must take your mother's name, my dear. Latham is rather flattish, but it's worlds better than Blood."

"I am not ashamed of my father's name," said Lydia.

"But you'll have to change it some day, at any rate,--when you get married."

Lydia turned away. "I will be called Blood till then. If Lady Fenleigh--"

"Yes, my dear," promptly interrupted her aunt, "I know that sort of independence. I used to have whole Declarations of it. But you'll get over that, in Europe. There was a time--just after the war--when the English quite liked our sticking up for ourselves; but that's past now.

They like us to be outlandish, but they don't like us to be independent.

How did you like the sermon? Didn't you think we had a nicely-dressed congregation?"

"I thought the sermon was very short," answered Lydia.

"Well, that's the English way, and I like it. If you get in all the service, you _must_ make the sermon short."

Lydia did not say anything for a little while. Then she asked, "Is the service the same at the evening meeting?"