The Lady of the Aroostook Part 8

"I will not talk with you on such matters," said Dunham, "till you know how to treat serious things seriously."

"I shall know how when I realize that they are serious with you. Well, I don't object to a woman's thinking strongly on religious subjects: it's the only safe ground for her strong thinking, and even there she had better feel strongly. Did you succeed in convincing her that Archbishop Laud was a _saint incompris_, and the good King Charles a blessed martyr."

Dunham did not answer till he had choked down some natural resentment.

He had, several years earlier, forsaken the pale Unitarian worship of his family, because, Staniford always said, he had such a feeling for color, and had adopted an extreme tint of ritualism. It was rumored at one time, before his engagement to Miss Hibbard, that he was going to unite with a celibate brotherhood; he went regularly into retreat at certain seasons, to the vast entertainment of his friend; and, within the bounds of good taste, he was a zealous propagandist of his faith, of which he had the practical virtues in high degree. "I hope," he said presently, "that I know how to respect convictions, even of those adhering to the Church in Error."

Staniford laughed again. "I see you have not converted Lurella. Well, I like that in her, too. I wish I could have the arguments, _pro_ and _con_. It would have been amusing. I suppose," he pondered aloud, "that she is a Calvinist of the deepest dye, and would regard me as a lost spirit for being outside of her church. She would look down upon me from one height, as I look down upon her from another. And really, as far as personal satisfaction in superiority goes, she might have the advantage of me. That's very curious, very interesting."

As the first week wore away, the wonted incidents of a sea voyage lent their variety to the life on board. One day the ship ran into a school of whales, which remained heavily thumping and lolling about in her course, and blowing jets of water into the air, like so many breaks in garden hose, Staniford suggested. At another time some flying-fish came on board. The sailors caught a dolphin, and they promised a shark, by and by. All these things were turned to account for the young girl's amus.e.m.e.nt, as if they had happened for her. The dolphin died that she might wonder and pity his beautiful death; the cook fried her some of the flying-fish; some one was on the lookout to detect even porpoises for her. A sail in the offing won the discoverer envy when he pointed it out to her; a steamer, celebrity. The captain ran a point out of his course to speak to a vessel, that she might be able to tell what speaking a ship at sea was like.

At table the stores which the young men had laid in for private use became common luxuries, and she fared sumptuously every day upon dainties which she supposed were supplied by the ship,--delicate jellies and canned meats and syruped fruits; and, if she wondered at anything, she must have wondered at the scrupulous abstinence with which Captain Jenness, seconded by Mr. Watterson, refused the luxuries which his bounty provided them, and at the constancy with which Staniford declined some of these dishes, and Hicks declined others. Shortly after the latter began more distinctly to be tolerated, he appeared one day on deck with a steamer-chair in his hand, and offered it to Lydia's use, where she sat on a stool by the bulwark. After that, as she reclined in this chair, wrapped in her red shawl, and provided with a book or some sort of becoming handiwork, she was even more picturesquely than before the centre about which the ship's pride and chivalrous sentiment revolved. They were Americans, and they knew how to worship a woman.

Staniford did not seek occasions to please and amuse her, as the others did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at table, he took his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her a perfunctory civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he interested himself in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike. "A woman," he said, "must always dislike some one in company; it's usually another woman; as there's none on board, I accept her enmity with meekness." Dunham wished to persuade him that he was mistaken. "Don't try to comfort me, Dunham,"

he replied. "I find a pleasure in being detested which is inconceivable to your amiable bosom."

Dunham turned to go below, from where they stood at the head of the cabin stairs. Staniford looked round, and saw Lydia, whom they had kept from coming up; she must have heard him. He took his cigar from his mouth, and caught up a stool, which he placed near the ship's side, where Lydia usually sat, and without waiting for her concurrence got a stool for himself, and sat down with her.

"Well, Miss Blood," he said, "it's Sat.u.r.day afternoon at last, and we're at the end of our first week. Has it seemed very long to you?"

Lydia's color was bright with consciousness, but the glance she gave Staniford showed him looking tranquilly and honestly at her. "Yes," she said, "it _has_ seemed long."

"That's merely the strangeness of everything. There's nothing like local familiarity to make the time pa.s.s,--except monotony; and one gets both at sea. Next week will go faster than this, and we shall all be at Trieste before we know it. Of course we shall have a storm or two, and that will r.e.t.a.r.d us in fact as well as fancy. But you wouldn't feel that you'd been at sea if you hadn't had a storm."

He knew that his tone was patronizing, but he had theorized the girl so much with a certain slight in his mind that he was not able at once to get the tone which he usually took towards women. This might not, indeed, have pleased some women any better than patronage: it mocked while it caressed all their little pretenses and artificialities; he addressed them as if they must be in the joke of themselves, and did not expect to be taken seriously. At the same time he liked them greatly, and would not on any account have had the silliest of them different from what she was. He did not seek them as Dunham did; their society was not a matter of life or death with him; but he had an elder-brotherly kindness for the whole s.e.x.

Lydia waited awhile for him to say something more, but he added nothing, and she observed, with a furtive look: "I presume you've seen some very severe storms at sea."

"No," Staniford answered, "I haven't. I've been over several times, but I've never seen anything alarming. I've experienced the ordinary seasickening tempestuousness."

"Have you--have you ever been in Italy?" asked Lydia, after another pause.

"Yes," he said, "twice; I'm very fond of Italy." He spoke of it in a familiar tone that might well have been discouraging to one of her total unacquaintance with it. Presently he added of his own motion, looking at her with his interest in her as a curious study, "You're going to Venice, I think Mr. Dunham told me."

"Yes," said Lydia.

"Well, I think it's rather a pity that you shouldn't arrive there directly, without the interposition of Trieste." He scanned her yet more closely, but with a sort of absence in his look, as if he addressed some ideal of her.

"Why?" asked Lydia, apparently pushed to some self-a.s.sertion by this way of being looked and talked at.

"It's the strangest place in the world," said Staniford; and then he mused again. "But I suppose--" He did not go on, and the word fell again to Lydia.

"I'm going to visit my aunt, who is staying there. She was where I live, last summer, and she told us about it. But I couldn't seem to understand it."

"No one can understand it, without seeing it."

"I've read some descriptions of it," Lydia ventured.

"They're of no use,--the books."

"Is Trieste a strange place, too?"

"It's strange, as a hundred other places are,--and it's picturesque; but there's only one Venice."

"I'm afraid sometimes," she faltered, as if his manner in regard to this peculiar place had been hopelessly exclusive, "that it will be almost too strange."

"Oh, that's another matter," said Staniford. "I confess I should be rather curious to know whether you liked Venice. I like it, but I can imagine myself sympathizing with people who detested it,--if they said so. Let me see what will give you some idea of it. Do you know Boston well?"

"No; I've only been there twice," Lydia acknowledged.

"Then you've never seen the Back Bay by night, from the Long Bridge.

Well, let me see--"

"I'm afraid," interposed Lydia, "that I've not been about enough for you to give me an idea from other places. We always go to Greenfield to do our trading; and I've been to Keene and Springfield a good many times."

"I'm sorry to say I haven't," said Staniford. "But I'll tell you: Venice looks like an inundated town. If you could imagine those sunset clouds yonder turned marble, you would have Venice as she is at sunset. You must first think of the sea when you try to realize the place. If you don't find the sea too strange, you won't find Venice so."

"I wish it would ever seem half as home-like!" cried the girl.

"Then you find the ship--I'm glad you find the ship--home-like," said Staniford, tentatively.

"Oh, yes; everything is so convenient and pleasant. It seems sometimes as if I had always lived here."

"Well, that's very nice," a.s.sented Staniford, rather blankly. "Some people feel a little queer at sea--in the beginning. And you haven't--at all?" He could not help this leading question, yet he knew its meanness, and felt remorse for it.

"Oh, _I_ did, at first," responded the girl, but went no farther; and Staniford was glad of it. After all, why should he care to know what was in her mind?

"Captain Jenness," he merely said, "understands making people at home."

"Oh, yes, indeed," a.s.sented Lydia. "And Mr. Watterson is very agreeable, and Mr. Mason. I didn't suppose sailors were so. What soft, mild voices they have!"

"That's the speech of most of the Down East coast people."

"Is it? I like it better than our voices. Our voices are so sharp and high, at home."

"It's hard to believe that," said Staniford, with a smile.

Lydia looked at him. "Oh, I wasn't born in South Bradfield. I was ten years old when I went there to live."

"Where _were_ you born, Miss Blood?" he asked.

"In California. My father had gone out for his health, but he died there."

"Oh!" said Staniford. He had a book in his hand, and he began to scribble a little sketch of Lydia's pose, on a fly-leaf. She looked round and saw it. "You've detected me," he said; "I haven't any right to keep your likeness, now. I must make you a present of this work of art, Miss Blood." He finished the sketch with some ironical flourishes, and made as if to tear out the leaf.

"Oh!" cried Lydia, simply, "you will spoil the book!"

"Then the book shall go with the picture, if you'll let it," said Staniford.

"Do you mean to give it to me?" she asked, with surprise.