The Lady of the Aroostook Part 32

"She was not along," said Lydia.

"Not along?" repeated Mrs. Erwin, feebly. "Who--who were the other pa.s.sengers?"

"There were three gentlemen," answered Lydia.

"Three gentlemen? Three men? Three--And you--and--" Mrs. Erwin fell back upon her pillow, and remained gazing at Lydia, with a sort of remote bewildered pity, as at perdition, not indeed beyond compa.s.sion, but far beyond help. Lydia's color had been coming and going, but now it settled to a clear white. Mrs. Erwin commanded herself sufficiently to resume: "And there were--there were--no other ladies?"

"No."

"And you were--"

"I was the only woman on board," replied Lydia. She rose abruptly, striking the edge of the table in her movement, and setting its china and silver jarring. "Oh, I know what you mean, aunt Josephine, but two days ago I couldn't have dreamt it! From the time the ship sailed till I reached this wicked place, there wasn't a word said nor a look looked to make me think I wasn't just as right and safe there as if I had been in my own room at home. They were never anything but kind and good to me.

They never let me think that they could be my enemies, or that I must suspect them and be on the watch against them. They were Americans!

I had to wait for one of your Europeans to teach me that,--for that officer who was here yesterday--"

"The cavaliere? Why, where--"

"He spoke to me in the cars, when Mr. Erwin was asleep! Had he any right to do so?"

"He would think he had, if he thought you were alone," said Mrs. Erwin, plaintively. "I don't see how we could resent it. It was simply a mistake on his part. And now you see, Lydia--"

"Oh, I see how my coming the way I have will seem to all these people!"

cried Lydia, with pa.s.sionate despair. "I know how it will seem to that married woman who lets a man be in love with her, and that old woman who can't live with her husband because he's too good and kind, and that girl who swears and doesn't know who her father is, and that impudent painter, and that officer who thinks he has the right to insult women if he finds them alone! I wonder the sea doesn't swallow up a place where even Americans go to the theatre on the Sabbath!"

"Lydia, Lydia! It isn't so bad as it seems to you," pleaded her aunt, thrown upon the defensive by the girl's outburst. "There are ever so many good and nice people in Venice, and I know them, too,--Italians as well as foreigners. And even amongst those you saw, Miss Landini is one of the kindest girls in the world, and she had just been to see her old teacher when we met her,--she half takes care of him; and Lady Fenleigh's a perfect mother to the poor; and I never was at the Countess Tatocka's except in the most distant way, at a ball where everybody went; and is it better to let your uncle go to the opera alone, or to go with him? You told me to go with him yourself; and they consider Sunday over, on the Continent, after morning service, any way!"

"Oh, it makes no difference!" retorted Lydia, wildly. "I am going away.

I am going home. I have money enough to get to Trieste, and the ship is there, and Captain Jenness will take me back with him. Oh!" she moaned.

"_He_ has been in Europe, too, and I suppose he's like the rest of you; and he thought because I was alone and helpless he had the right to--Oh, I see it, I see now that he never meant anything, and--Oh, oh, oh!" She fell on her knees beside the bed, as if crushed to them by the cruel doubt that suddenly overwhelmed her, and flung out her arms on Mrs.

Erwin's coverlet--it was of Venetian lace sewed upon silk, a choice bit from the palace of one of the ducal families--and buried her face in it.

Her aunt rose from her pillow, and looked in wonder and trouble at the beautiful fallen head, and the fair young figure shaken with sobs.

"He--who--what are you talking about, Lydia? Whom do you mean? Did Captain Jenness--"

"No, no!" wailed the girl, "the one that gave me the book."

"The one that gave you the book? The book you were looking at last night?"

"Yes," sobbed Lydia, with her voice m.u.f.fled in the coverlet.

Mrs. Erwin lay down again with significant deliberation. Her face was still full of trouble, but of bewilderment no longer. In moments of great distress the female mind is apt to lay hold of some minor anxiety for its distraction, and to find a certain relief in it. "Lydia," said her aunt in a broken voice, "I wish you wouldn't cry in the coverlet: it doesn't hurt the lace, but it stains the silk." Lydia swept her handkerchief under her face but did not lift it. Her aunt accepted the compromise. "How came he to give you the book?"

"Oh, I don't know. I can't tell. I thought it was because--because--It was almost at the very beginning. And after that he walked up and down with me every night, nearly; and he tried to be with me all he could; and he was always saying things to make me think--Oh dear, oh _dear_, oh dear! And he _tried_ to make me care for him! Oh, it was cruel, cruel!"

"You mean that he made love to you?" asked her aunt.

"Yes--no--I don't know. He tried to make me care for him, and to make me think he cared for me."

"Did he say he cared for you? Did he--"

"No!"

Mrs. Erwin mused a while before she said, "Yes, it was cruel indeed, poor child, and it was cowardly, too."

"Cowardly?" Lydia lifted her face, and flashed a glance of tearful fire at her aunt. "He is the bravest man in the world! And the most generous and high-minded! He jumped into the sea after that wicked Mr. Hicks, and saved his life, when he disliked him worse than anything!"

"_Who_ was Mr. Hicks?"

"He was the one that stopped at Messina. He was the one that got some brandy at Gibraltar, and behaved so dreadfully, and wanted to fight him."

"Whom?"

"This one. The one who gave me the book. And don't you see that his being so good makes it all the worse? Yes; and he pretended to be glad when I told him I thought he was good,--he got me to say it!" She had her face down again in her handkerchief. "And I suppose _you_ think it was horrible, too, for me to take his arm, and talk and walk with him whenever he asked me!"

"No, not for you, Lydia," said her aunt, gently. "And don't you think now," she asked after a pause, "that he cared for you?"

"Oh, I _did_ think so,--I _did_ believe it; but now, _now_--"

"Now, what?"

"Now, I'm afraid that may be he was only playing with me, and putting me off; and pretending that he had something to tell me when he got to Venice, and he never meant anything by anything."

"Is he coming to--" her aunt began, but Lydia broke vehemently out again.

"If he had cared for me, why couldn't he have told me so at once, and not had me wait till he got to Venice? He _knew_ I--"

"There are two ways of explaining it," said Mrs. Erwin. "He _may_ have been in earnest, Lydia, and felt that he had no right to be more explicit till you were in the care of your friends. That would be the European way which you consider so bad," said Mrs. Erwin. "Under the circ.u.mstances, it was impossible for him to keep any distance, and all he could do was to postpone his declaration till there could be something like good form about it. Yes, it might have been that." She was silent, but the troubled look did not leave her face. "I am sorry for you, Lydia," she resumed, "but I don't know that I wish he was in earnest." Lydia looked up at her in dismay. "It might be far less embarra.s.sing the other way, however painful. He may not be at all a suitable person." The tears stood in Lydia's eyes, and all her face expressed a puzzled suspense. "Where was he from?" asked Mrs. Erwin, finally; till then she had been more interested in the lover than the man.

"Boston," mechanically answered Lydia.

"What was his name?"

"Mr. Staniford," owned Lydia, with a blush.

Her aunt seemed dispirited at the sound. "Yes, I know who they are," she sighed.

"And aren't they nice? Isn't he--suitable?" asked Lydia, tremulously.

"Oh, poor child! He's only _too_ suitable. I can't explain to you, Lydia; but at home he wouldn't have looked at a girl like you. What sort of looking person is he?"

"He's rather--red; and he has--light hair."

"It must be the family I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Erwin. She had lived nearly twenty years in Europe, and had seldom revisited her native city; but at the sound of a Boston name she was all Bostonian again.

She rapidly sketched the history of the family to which she imagined Staniford to belong. "I remember his sister; I used to see her at school. She must have been five or six years younger than I; and this boy--"

"Why, he's twenty-eight years old!" interrupted Lydia.

"How came he to tell you?"