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) 



A FEAKFUL RESPONSIBILITY 

AND 

TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

Now ready, Copyright Edition, 

A MODERN INSTANCE, 

In two vols. Crown 8vo, Price 12s. 



Lately published, with the sanction of the Author, 
Pocket Editions, in One Shilling Volumes, 

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

A. CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

A COUNTERFEIT PRESENTMENT. 

THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. 

THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK, 2 vols. 

OUT OF THE QUESTION. 
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, 2 vols. 



Edinburgh : David Douglas. 
London : Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 



A FEARFUL 
RESPONSIBILITY 

AND 

TONELLI'S MARRIAGE 

WILLIAM D. HOWELLS 




EDINBURGH 
DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET 



24MAYf*3 
PXFOB^- 



Strinburgi) Sntfeersttg $ft*0 : 

T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY. 



CONTENTS. 



PAO« 
A FEARFUL BESPONSIB1LITY, . . 7 

TONELLl'S MARRIAGE 189 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 



A FEAKFUL EESPONSIBILITY. 



L 

EVERY loyal American who went abroad 
during the first years of our great war 
felt bound to make himself some excuse for 
turning his back on his country in the hour 
of her trouble. But when Owen Elmore 
sailed, no one else seemed to think that he 
needed excuse. All his friends said it was 
the best thing for him to do ; that he could 
have leisure and quiet over there, and would 
be able to go on with his work. 

At the risk of giving a farcical effect to 
my narrative, I am obliged to confess that 
the work of which Elmore's friends spoke 
was a projected history of Venice. So many 
literary Americans have projected such a 
work that it may now fairly be regarded as. 



10 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

a national enterprise. Elmore was too ob- 
scure to have been announced in the usual 
way by the newspapers as having this de- 
sign ; but it was well known in his town 
that he was collecting materials when his 
professorship in the small inland college 
with which he was connected lapsed through 
the enlistment of nearly all the students. 
The president became colonel of the college 
regiment ; and in parting with Elmore, 
while their boys waited on the campus with- 
out, he had said, " Now, Elmore, you must 
go on with your history of Venice. Go to 
Venice and collect your materials on the 
spot. We 're coming through this all right. 
Mr. Seward puts it at sixty days, but I '11 
give them six months to lay down their 
arms, and we shall want you back at the 
end of the year. Don't you have any com- 
punctions about going. I know how you 
feel ; but it is perfectly right for you to 
keep out of it. Good-bye." They wrung 
each other's hands for the last time, — the 
president fell at Fort Donelson ; but now 
Elmore followed him to the door, and when 
he appeared there one of the boyish cap- 
tains shouted, "Three cheers for Professor 
Elmore !" and the president called for the 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. II 

tiger, and led it, whirling his cap round his 
head. 

Elmore went back to his study, sick at 
heart. It grieved and vexed him that even 
these had not thought that he should go to 
the war, and that his inward struggle on 
that point had been idle so far as others 
were concerned. He had been quite earnest 
in the matter ; he had once almost volun- 
teered as a private soldier : he had consulted 
his doctor, who sternly discouraged him. 
He would have been truly glad of any 
accident that forced him into the ranks ; 
but, as he used afterward to say, it was not 
his idea of soldiership to enlist for the hos- 
pital. At the distance of five hundred miles 
from the scene of hostilities, it was absurd 
to enter the Home Guard ; and, after all, 
there were, even at first, some selfish people 
who went into the army, and some unselfish 
people who kept out of it. Elmore's bron- 
chitis was a disorder which active service 
would undoubtedly have aggravated ; as it 
was, he made a last effort to be of use to 
our Government as a bearer of despatches. 
Failing such an appointment, he submitted 
to expatriation as he best could ; and in 
Italy he fought for our cause against 



*"C 



12 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY 

English, whom he found everywhere all but 
in arms against us. 

He sailed, in fine, with a very fair con- 
science. "I should be perfectly at ease," 
he said to his wife, as the steamer dropped 
smoothly down to Sandy Hook, " if I were 
sure that I was not glad to be getting away. " 

" You are not glad," she answered. 

"I don't know, I don't know," he said, 
with the weak persistence of a man willing 
that his wife should persuade him against 
his convictions ; "I wish that I felt certain 
of it." 

"You are too sick to go to the war; 
nobody expected you to go." 

" I know that, and I can't say that I like 
it As for being too sick, perhaps it 's the 
part of a man to go if he dies on the way to 
the field. It would encourage the others," 
he added, smiling faintly. 

She ignored the tint from Voltaire in 
replying: "Nonsense! It would do no 
good at alL At any rate, it 's too late now. " 

"Yea, it's too late now." 

Tb* sea-sickness which shortly followed 

a diversion from his accusing 

Bach day of the voyage removed 

r, and with the preoccupations 




A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 13 

of his first days in Europe, his travel to 
Italy, and his preparations for a long so- 
journ in Venice, they had softened to a 
pensive sense of self-sacrifice, which took a 
warmer or a cooler tinge according as the 
news from home was good or bad. 



14 A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 



n. 



HE lost no time in going to work in the 
Marcian Library, and he early applied 
to the Austrian authorities for leave to have 
transcripts made in the archives. The per- 
mission was negotiated by the American 
consul (then a young painter of the name of 
Ferris), who reported a mechanical facility 
on the part of the authorities, — as if, he 
said, they were used to obliging American 
historians of Venice. The foreign tyranny 
which cast a pathetic glamour over the 
romantic city had certainly not appeared to 
grudge such publicity as Elmore wished to 
give her heroic memories, though it was 
then at its most repressive period, and 
formed a check upon the whole life of the 
place. The tears were hardly yet dry in 
the despairing eyes that had seen the French 
fleet sail away from the Lido, after Solf erino, 
without firing a shot in behalf of Venice; 
but Lombardy, the Duchies, the Sicilies, 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 15 

had all passed to Sardinia, and the Pope 
alone represented the old order of native 
despotism in Italy. At Venice the Germans 
seemed tranquilly awaiting the change which 
should destroy their system with the rest ; 
and in the meantime there had occurred one 
of those impressive pauses, as notable in the 
lives of nations as of men, when, after the 
occurrence of great events, the forces of 
action and endurance seem to be gathering 
themselves against the stress of the future. 
The quiet was almost consciously a truce 
and not a peace ; and this local calm had 
drawn into it certain elements that pictur- 
esquely and sentimentally heightened the 
charm of the place. It was a refuge for 
many exiled potentates and pretenders ; the 
gondolier pointed out on the Grand Canal 
the palaces of the Count of Chambord, the 
Duchess of Parma, and the Infante of Spain ; 
and one met these fallen princes in the 
squares and streets, bowing with distinct 
courtesy to any that chose to salute them. 
Every evening the Piazza San Marco was 
filled with the white coats of the A 
officers, promenading to the exquisite 
tary music which has ceased there for 
the patrol clanked through the fad 




16 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

all hours of the night, and the lagoon heard 
the cry of the sentinel from fort to fort, and 
from gunboat to gunboat. Through all this 
the demonstration of the patriots went on, 
silent, ceaseless, implacable, annulling every 
alien effort at gaiety, depopulating the thea- 
tres, and desolating the ancient holidays. 

There was something very fine in this, as 
a spectacle, Elmore said to his young wife, 
and he had to admire the austere self-denial 
of a people who would not suffer their tyrants 
to see them happy ; but they secretly owned 
to each other that it was fatiguing. Soon 
after coming to Venice they had made some 
acquaintance among the Italians through Mr. 
Ferris, and had early learned that the condi- 
tion of knowing Venetians was not to know 
Austrians. It was easy and natural for them 
to submit, theoretically. As Americans, they 
must respond to any impulse for freedom, and 
certainly they could have no sympathy with 
such a system as that of Austria. By what- 
ever was sacred in our own war upon slavery, 
they were bound to abhor oppression in every 
form. But it was hard to make the applica- 
tion of their hatred to the amiable-looking 
people whom they saw everywhere around 
them in the quality of tyrants, especially 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 17 

when their Venetian friends confessed that 
personally they liked the Anstrians. Be- 
sides, if the whole truth must be told, they 
found that their friendship with the Italians 
was not always of the most penetrating sort, 
though it had a superficial intensity that for 
a while gave the effect of lasting cordiality. 
The Elmores were not quite able to decide 
whether the pause of feeling at which they 
arrived was through their own defect or not. 
Much was to be laid to the difference of race, 
religion, and education ; but something, they 
feared, to the personal vapidity of acquaint- 
ances whose meridional liveliness made them 
yawn, and in whose society they did not 
always find compensation for the sacrifices 
they made for it. 

" But it is right," said Elmore. " It would 
be a sort of treason to associate with the 
Austrians. We owe it to the Venetians to 
let them see that our feelings are with them. 1 

" Yes," said his wife pensively. 

" And it is better for us, as Americans' 
abroad, during this war, to be retired. 1 

" Well, we are retired," said Mrs. 

" Yes, there is no doubt of 
turned. 

They laughed, and made what 

B 




18 A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

of chance American acquaintances at the 
caffte. Elmore had his history to occupy 
him, and doubtless he could not understand 
how heavy the time hung upon his wife's 
hands. They went often Jo the theatre, 
and every evening they wetot to the Piazza, 
and ate an ice at Florian's. This was cer- 
tainly amusement ; and routine was so plea- 
sant to his scholarly temperament that he 
enjoyed merely that. He made a point of 
admitting his wife as much as possible into 
his intellectual life ; he read her his notes as 
fast as he made them, and he consulted her 
upon the management of his theme, which, 
as his research extended, he found so vast 
that he was forced to decide upon a much 
lighter treatment than he had at first in- 
tended. He had resolved upon a history 
which should be presented in a series of bio- 
graphical studies, and he was so much in- 
terested in this conclusion, and so charmed 
with the advantages of the form as they de- 
veloped themselves, that he began to lose the 
sense of social dulness, and ceased to imagine 
it in his wife. 

A sort of indolence of the sensibilities, in 
fact, enabled him to endure ennui that made 
her frantic, and he was often deeply bored 




A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 19 

without knowing it at the time, or without 
a reasoned suffering. He suffered as a child 
suffers, simply, almost ignorantly : it was 
upon reflection that his nerves began to 
quiver with retroactive anguish. He was 
also able to idealise the situation when his 
wife no longer even wished to do so. His 
fancy cast a poetry about these Venetian 
friends, whose conversation displayed the 
occasional sparkle of Ollendorff- English on 
a dark ground of lagoon-Italian, and whose 
vivid smiling and gesticulation she wearied 
herself in hospitable efforts to outdo. To his 
eyes their historic past clothed them with 
its interest, and the long patience of their 
hope and hatred under foreign rule ennobled 
them, while to hers they were too often only 
tiresome visitors, whose powers of silence 
and of eloquence were alike to be dreaded. 
It did not console her as it did her husband 
to reflect that they probably bored the Ital- 
ians as much in their turn. When a young 
man, very sympathetic for literature and the 
Americans, spent an evening, as it seemed 
to her, in crying nothing but " Per Bacco ! " 
she owned that she liked better his oppres- 
sor, who once came by chance, in the figure 
of a young lieutenant, and who unbuckled his 



20 A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

wife, as he called his sword, and, putting 
her in a corner, sat up on a chair in the 
middle of the room and sang like a bird, and 
then told ghost stories. The songs were 
out of Heine, and they reminded her of her 
girlish enthusiasm for German. Elmore was 
troubled at the lieutenant's visit, and feared 
it would coat them all their Italian friends ; 
but she said boldly that she did not care ; 
and she never even tried to believe that the 
life they saw in Venice was comparable to 
that of their little college town at home, 
with its teas and picnics, and simple, easy 
social gaieties. There she had been a 
power in her way ; she had entertained, 
and had helped to make some matches : 
but the Venetians ate nothing, and as for 
young people, they never saw each other 
but by stealth, and their matches were 
made by their parents on a money-basis. 
She could not adapt herself to this foreign 
life ; it puzzled her, and her husband's con- 
formity seemed to estrange them, as far as 
it went. It took away her spirit, and she 
grew listless and dull Even the history 
began to lose its interest in her eyes ; she 
doubted if the annals of such a people as she 
saw about her could ever be popular. 



A FEABFC7L RESPONSIBILITY. 21 

There were other things to make them 
melancholy in their exile. The war at home 
was going badly, where it was going at all. 
The letters now never spoke of any term 
to it; they expressed rather the dogged 
patience of the time when it seemed as if 
there could be no end, and indicated that 
the country had settled into shape about it, 
and was pushing forward its other affairs as 
if the war did not exist. Mrs. Elmore felt 
that the America which she had left had 
ceased to be. The letters were almost less a 
pleasure than a pain, but she always tore 
them open, and read them with eager un- 
happiness. There were miserable intervals 
of days and even weeks when no letters came, 
and when the Reuter telegrams in the Gazette 
of Venice dribbled their vitriolic news of 
Northern disaster through a few words or 
lines, and Galignani's long columns were 
filled with the hostile exultation and pro- 
phecy of the London press. 



22 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 



ni. 

THEY had passed eighteen months of this 
sort of life in Venice when one day a 
letter dropped into it which sent a thousand 
ripples over its stagnant surface. Mrs. 
Elmore read it first to herself, with gasps 
and cries of pleasure and astonishment, 
which did not divert her husband from the 
perusal of some notes he had made the day 
before, and had brought to the breakfast- 
table with the intention of amusing her. 
When she flattened it out over his notes, 
and exacted his attention, he turned an un- 
willing and lack-lustre eye upon it ; then he 
looked up at her. 

"Did you expect she would come?" he 
asked, in ill-masked dismay. 

" I don't suppose they had any idea of it 
at first. When Sue wrote me that Lily had 
been studying too hard, and had to be taken 
out of school, I said that I wished she could 
come over and pay us a visit. But I don't 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 29 

believe they dreamed of letting her — Sue 
says so — till the Mortons' coming seemed too 
good a chance to be lost. I am so glad of it, 
Owen ! You know how much they have 
always done for me ; and here is a chance 
now to pay a little of it back." 

"What in the world shall we do with 
her?" he asked. 

" Do ? Everything ! Why, Owen," she 
urged, with pathetic recognition of his cold* 
ness, " she is Susy Stevens's own sister !" 

" Oh, yes — yes," he admitted. 

"And it was Susy who brought us to- 
gether!" 

"Why, of course." 

" And oughtn't you to be glad of the op- 
portunity ?" 

" I am glad — very glad." 

"It will be a relief to you instead of a 
care. She's such a bright, intelligent girl 
that we can both sympathise with your 
work, and you won't have to go round with 
me all the time, and I can matronise her 
myself. " 

"I see, I see," Elmore replied, with 
scarcely abated seriousness. " Perhaps, if 
she is coming here for her health, she won't 
need much matronising." 



r 



24 A FEABFITL RESPONSIBILITY. 

" Oh, pshaw ! She '11 be well enough for 
that 1 She 's overdone a little at school. I 
shall take good care of her, I can tell you ; 
and I shall make her have a real good time. 
It '8 quite flattering of Susy to trust her to 
us, so far away, and I shall write and tell 
her we both think so." 

"Yes," said Elmore, "it's a fearful re- 
sponsibility." 

There are instances of the persistence of 
husbands in certain moods or points of view 
on which even wheedling has no effect. The 
wise woman perceives that in these cases she 
must trust entirely to the softening influ- 
ences of time, and as much as possible she 
changes the subject ; or if this is impossible 
she may hope something from presenting a 
still worse aspect of the affair. Mrs. Elmore 
said, in lifting the letter from the table : 
"Ifshe sailed the 3d in the ' City of Tim- 
buctoo,' she will be at Queenstown on the 
12th or 13th, and we shall have a letter from 
her by Wednesday saying when she will be 
at Genoa. That 's as far as the Mortons can 
bring her, and there 's where we must meet 
her." 

' * Meet her in Genoa ! How ? " 

" By going there for her," replied Mrs. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 25 

Elmore, as if this were the simplest thing in 
the world. " I have never seen Genoa." 

Elmore now tacitly abandoned himself to 
his fate. His wife continued : " I needn't 
take anything. Merely run on, and right 
back." 

" When must we go ?" he asked. 

" I don't know yet ; but we shall have a 
letter to-morrow. Don't worry on my ac- 
count, Owen. Her coming won't be a bit of 
care to me. It will give me something to 
do and to think about, and it will be a plea- 
sure all the time to know that it 's for Susy 
Stevens. And I shall like the companion- 
ship." 

Elmore looked at his wife in surprise, for 
it had not occurred to him before that with 
his company she could desire any other com- 
panionship. He desired none but hers, and 
when he was about his work he often thought 
of her. He supposed that at these moments 
she thought of him, and found society, as he 
did, in such thoughts. But he was not a 
jealous or exacting man, and he said nothing. 
His treatment of the approaching visit from 
Susy Stevens's sister had not been enthusi- 
astic, but a spark had kindled his imagina- 
tion, and it burned warmer and brighter as 



i 



26 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

the days went by. He found a charm in the 
thought of having this fresh young life here 
in his charge, and of teaching the girl to live 
into the great and beautiful history of the 
city ; there was still much of the school- 
master in him, and he intended to make her 
sojourn an education to her ; and as a liter- 
ary man he hoped for novel effects from her 
mind upon material which he was above all 
trying to set in a new light before himself. 

When the time had arrived for them to go 
and meet Miss Mayhew at Genoa, he was 
more than reconciled to the necessity. But 
at the last moment, Mrs. Elmore had one of 
her old attacks. What these attacks were I 
find myself unable to specify, but as every 
lady has an old attack of some kind, I may 
safely leave their precise nature to conjec- 
ture. It is enough that they were of a 
nervous character, that they were accom- 
panied with headache, and that they pro- 
strated her for several days. During their 
continuance she required the active sym- 
pathy and constant presence of her husband, 
whose devotion was then exemplary, and 
brought up long arrears of indebtedness in 
that way. 

" Well, what shall we do ?" he asked, as 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 27 

he sank into a chair beside the lounge on 
which Mrs. Elmore lay, her eyes closed, and 
a slice of lemon placed on each of her throb- 
bing temples with the effect of a new sort of 
blinders. " Shall I go alone for her ?" 

She gave his hand the kind of convulsive 
clutch that signified, " Impossible for you to 
leave me." 

He reflected. " The Mortons will be push- 
ing on to Leghorn, and somebody must meet 
her. How would it do for Mr. Hoskins to 

go?" 

Mrs. Elmore responded with a clutch tan- 
tamount to " Horrors ! How could you 
think of such a thing ?" 

"Well, then," he said, "the only thing 
we can do is to send a valet de place for her. 
We can send old Cazzi. He 's the incarna- 
tion of respectability ; five francs a day and 
his expenses will buy all the virtues of him. 
She '11 come as safely with him as with me." 

Mrs. Elmore had applied a vividly thought- 
ful pressure to her husband's hand ; she now 
released it in token of assent, and he rose. 

" But don't be gone long," she whispered. 

On his way to the caffe which Cazzi fre- 
quented, Elmore fell in with the consul. 

By this time a change had taken place in 



i 



28 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

the consular office. Mr. Ferris, some months 
before, had suddenly thrown up his charge 
and gone home ; and after the customary 
interval of ship-chandler, the California 
sculptor, Hoskins, had arrived out, with his 
commission in his pocket, and had set up his 
allegorical figure of " The Pacific Slope" in 
the room where Ferris had painted his too 
metaphysical conception of "A Venetian 
Priest." Mrs. Elmore had never liked 
Ferris ; she thought him cynical and opin- 
ionated, and she believed that he had not 
behaved quite well towards a young Ameri- 
can lady, — a Miss Vervain, who had stayed 
a while in Venice with her mother. She 
was glad to have him go ; but she could 
not admire Mr. Hoskins, who, however good- 
hearted, was too hopelessly Western. He 
had had part of one foot shot away in the 
nine months' service, and walked with a 
limp that did him honour ; and he knew as 
much of a consul's business as any of the 
authors or artists with whom it is the tradi- 
tion to fill that office at Venice. Besides, he 
was at least a fellow- American, and Elmore 
could not forbear telling him the trouble he 
was in : a young girl coming from their town 
in America as far as Genoa with friends, and 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 29 

expecting to be met there by the Elmores, 
with whom she was to pass some months ; 
Mrs. Elmore utterly prostrated by one of 
her old attacks, and he unable to leave her, 
or to take her with him to Genoa ; the friends 
with whom Miss Mayhew travelled unable 
to bring her to Venice ; she, of course, un- 
able to come alone. The case deepened and 
darkened in Elmore's view as he unfolded it. 

" Why," cried the consul sympathetically, 
" if I could leave my post I 'd go ! " 

" Oh, thank you !" cried Elmore eagerly, 
remembering his wife. " I couldn't think 
of letting you." 

" Look here !" said the consul, taking an 
official letter, with the seal broken, from his 
pocket. "This is the first time I couldn't 
have left my post without distinct advantage 
to the public interests, since I 've been here. 
But with this letter from Turin, telling me 
to be on the look-out for the 'Alabama/ I 
couldn't go to Genoa even to meet a young 
lady. The Austrians have never recognised 
the rebels as belligerents : if she enters the 
port of Venice, all I 've got to do is to re- 
quire the deposit of her papers with me, and 
then I should like to see her get out again. 
I should like to capture her. Of course, I 



30 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

don't mean Miss May hew," said the consul, 
recognising the double sense in which his 
language could be taken. 

" It would be a great thing for yon," said 
Elmore, — " a great thing." 

" Yes, it would set me up in my own eyes, 
and stop that infernal clatter inside about 
going over and taking a hand again." 

" Yes," Elmore assented, with a twinge of 
the old shame. " I didn't know you had it 
too." 

" If I could capture the 'Alabama,' I 
could afford to let the other fellows fight it 
out." 

" I congratulate you with all my heart," 
said Elmore sadly, and he walked in silence 
beside the consul. 

"Well," said the latter, with a laugh at 
Elmore's pensive rapture. "I'm as much 
obliged to you as if I had captured her. I '11 
go up to the Piazza with you, and see Cazzi. " 

The affair was easily arranged ; Cazzi was 
made to feel by the consul's intervention 
that the shield of American sovereignty had 
been extended over the young girl whom he 
was to escort from Genoa, and two days 
later he arrived with her. Mrs. Elmore's 
attack now was passing off, and she was well 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 31 

enough to receive Miss Mayhew half -recum- 
bent on the sofa where she had been prone 
till her arrival. It was pretty to see her 
fond greeting of the girl, and her joy in her 
presence as they sat down for the first long 
talk; and Elmore realised, even in his 
dreamy withdrawal, how much the bright, 
active spirit of his wife had suffered merely 
in the restriction of her English. Now it 
was not only English they spoke, but that 
American variety of the language of which 
I hope we shall grow less and less ashamed ; 
and not only this, but their parlance was 
characterised by local turns and accents, 
which all came welcomely back to Mrs. 
Elmore, together with those still more 
intimate inflections which belonged to her 
own particular circle of friends in the little 
town of Patmos, N. Y. Lily Mayhew was 
of course not of her own set, being five or 
six years younger ; but women, more easily 
than men, ignore the disparities of age 
between themselves and their juniors ; and 
in Susy Stevens's absence it seemed a sort 
of tribute to her to establish her sister in the 
affection which Mrs. Elmore had so long 
cherished. Their friendship had been of 
such a thoroughly trusted sort on both sides 



32 A FEARFUL RESPOXSIBrLITT. 

that Mrs. Stevens (the memorably brilliant 
Sue Mayhew in her girlish days) had felt 
perfectly free to act upon Mrs. Elmore's 
invitation to let lily come out to her ; and 
here the child was, as much at home as if 
she had just walked into Mrs. Elmore's 
parlour out of her sister's house in Patmos. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 33 



IV. 



THEY briefly despatched the facts relating 
to Miss Mayhew's voyage, and her 
journey to Genoa, and came as quickly as 
they could to all those things which Mrs. 
Elmore was thirsting to learn about the town 
and its people. "Is it much changed ? I 
suppose it is," she sighed. "The war 
changes everything." 

"Oh, you don't notice the war much," 
said Miss Mayhew. "But Patmos is gay, — 
perfectly delightful. We 've got one of the 
camps there now ; and such times as the girls 
have with the officers ! We have lots of fun 
getting up things for the Sanitary. Hops on 
the parade-ground at the camp, and going 
out to see the prisoners, — you never saw 
such a place. " 

" The prisoners ?" murmured Mrs. Elmore. 

" Why, yea /" cried Lily, with a gay laugh. 
"Didn't you know that we had a prison - 
camp too? Some of the Southerners look 

o 



34 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

real nice. I pitied them," she added, with 
unabated gaiety. 

"Your sister wrote to me," said Mrs. 
Elmore ; " but I couldn't realise it, I sup- 
pose, and so I forgot it." 

"Yes," pursued lily, "and Frank Hal- 
sey 's in command. You would never know 
by the way he walks that he had a cork leg. 
Of course he can't dance, though, poor fellow. 
He's pale, and he's perfectly fascinating. 
So 's Dick Burton, with his empty sleeve ; 
he 's one of the recruiting officers, and there 's 
nobody so popular with the girls. You can't 
think how funny it is, Professor Elmore, to 
see the old college buildings used for barracks. 
Dick says it's much livelier than it was 
when he was a student there." 

" I suppose it must be," dreamily assented 
the professor. "Does he find plenty of 
volunteers ?" 

"Well, you know," the young girl ex- 
plained, " that the old style of volunteering 
is all over." 

"No, I didn't know it." 

"Yes. It's the bounties now that they 
rely upon, and they do say that it will come 
to the draft very soon, now. Some of the 
young men have gone to Canada. But 



A FEAKFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 35 

everybody despises them. Oh, Mrs. Elmore, 
I should think you 'd be so glad to have the 
professor off here, and honourably out of the 
way !" 

" I 'm dishonourably out of the way ; I can 
never forgive myself for not going to the 
war," said Elmore. 

"Why, how ridiculous!" cried Lily. 
" Nobody feels that way about it now I As 
Dick Burton says, we 've come down to busi- 
ness. I tell you, when you see arms and 
legs off in every direction, and women going 
about in black, you don't feel that it 's such 
a romantic thing any more. There are mighty 
few engagements now, Mrs. Elmore, when 
a regiment sets off; no presentation of re- 
volvers in the town hall ; and some of the 
widows have got married again ; and that I 
don't think is right. But what can they do, 
poor things ? You remember Tom Friar's 
widow, Mrs. Elmore ?" 

"Tom Friar's widow! Is Tom Friar 
dead?" 

"Why, of course ! One of the first. I 
think it was Ball's Bluff. Well, she '« mar- 
ried. But she married his cousin, and as 
Dick Burton says, that isn't so bad. Isn't it 
awful, Mrs. Clapp 's losing all her boys, 




86 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

five of them ? It does seem to bear too hard 
on some families. And then, when yon see 
every one of those six Armstrongs going 
through without a scratch !" 

" I suppose, 1 ' said Elmore, " that business 
is at a standstill. The streets must look 
rather dreary." 

"Business at a standstill!" exclaimed 
Lily. " What has Sue been writing you all 
this time ? Why, there never was such pros- 
perity in Patmos before ! Everybody is 
making money, and people that you wouldn't 
hardly speak to a year ago are giving parties 
and inviting the old college families. You 
ought to see the residences and business 
blocks going up all over the place. I don't 
suppose you would know Patmos now. You 
remember George Fenton, Mrs. Elmore ?" 

"Mr. Haskell's clerk ?" 

" Yes. Well, he 's made a fortune out of 
an army contract; and he 's going to marry — 
the engagement came out just before I left 
—Bella Stearns." 

At these words Mrs. Elmore sat upright, 
— the only posture in which the fact could 
be imagined. " Lily 1 " 

" Oh, I can tell you these are gay times in 
America," triumphed the young girl. She 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 37 

now put her hand to her mouth and hid a 
yawn. 

"You're sleepy," said Mrs. Elmore. 
"Well, you know the way to your room. 
You'll find everything ready there, and I 
shall let you go alone. You shall commence 
being at home at once." 

4 'Yes, lam sleepy," assented Lily; and 
she promptly said her good-nights and van- 
ished ; though a keener eye than Elmore's 
might have seen that her promptness had a 
colour — or say light — of hesitation in it. 

But he only walked up and down the 
room, after she was gone, in unheedful dis- 
tress. "Gay times in America 1 Good 
heavens 1 Is the child utterly heartless, 
Celia, or is she merely obtuse ?" 

"She certainly isn't at all like Sue," 
sighed Mrs. Elmore, who had not had time 
to formulate Lily's defence. "But she's 
excited now, and a little off her balance. 
She '11 be different to-morrow. Besides, all 
America seems changed, and the people 
with it. We shouldn't have noticed it if 
we had stayed there, but we feel it after 
this absence." 

" I never realised it before, as I did from 
her babble 1 The letters have told us the 



38 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

Bame thing, but they were like the histories 
of other times. Camps, prisoners, barracks, 
mutilation, widowhood, death, sudden gains, 
social upheavals, — it is the old, hideous 
story of war come true of our day and 
country. It 's terrible 1 " 

" She will miss the excitement," said Mrs. 
Elmore. "I don't know exactly what we 
shall do with her. Of course, she can't 
expect the attentions she 's been used to in 
Patmos, with those young men." 

Elmore stopped, and stared at his wife. 
" What do you mean, Celia ?" 

" We don't go into society at all, and she 
doesn't speak Italian. How shall we amuse 
her?" 

" Well, upon my word, I don't know that 
we 're obliged to provide her amusement ! 
Let her amuse herself. Let her take up 
some branch of study, or of — of — research, 
and get something besides 'fun' into her 
head, if possible." He spoke boldly, but 
his wife's question had unnerved him, for 
he had a soft heart, and liked people about 
him to be happy. " We can show her the 
objects of interest. And there are the 
theatres," he added. 

" Yes, that is true," said Mrs. Elmore. 



A FfiABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 39 

" We can both go about with her. I will 
just peep in at her now, and see if she has 
everything she wants." She rose from her 
sofa and went to Lily's room, whence she 
did not return for nearly three quarters of 
an hour. By this time Elmore had got out 
his notes, and, in their transcription and clas- 
sification, had fallen into forgetfulness of his 
troubles. His wife closed the door behind 
her, and said in a low voice, little above a 
whisper, as she sank very quietly into a 
chair, " Well, it has all come out, Owen." 

"What has all come out?" he asked, 
looking up stupidly. 

"I knew that she had something on her 
mind, by the way she acted. And you saw 
her give me that look as she went out ?" 

"No — no, I didn't What look was it? 
She looked sleepy." 

"She looked terribly, terribly excited, 
and as if she would like to say something to 
me. That was the reason I said I would 
let her go to her room alone." 

"Oh!" 

"Of course she would have felt awfully 
if I had gone straight off with her. So I 
waited. It may never come to anything in 
the world, and I don't suppose it will ; but 



40 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

it 's quite enough to account for everything 
you saw in her. " 

" I didn't see anything in her, — that was 
the difficulty. But what is it — what is it, 
Celia? You know how I hate these de- 
lays." 

" Why, I 'm not sure that I need tell you, 
Owen ; and yet I suppose I had better. It 
will be safer," said Mrs. Elmore, nursing 
her mystery to the last, enjoying it for its 
own sake, and dreading it for its effect upon 
her husband. "I suppose you will think 
your troubles are beginning pretty early," 
she suggested. 

"Is it a trouble?" 

"Well, I don't know that it is. If it 
comes to the very worst, I daresay that 
every one wouldn't call it a trouble. " 

Elmore threw himself back in his chair in 
an attitude of endurance. " What would 
the worst be?" 

" Why, it 's no use even to discuss that, 
for it 's perfectly absurd to suppose that it 
could ever come to that. But the case," 
added Mrs. Elmore, perceiving that further 
delay was only further suffering for her 
husband, and that any fact would now prob- 
ably fall far short of his apprehensions, " is 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 41 

simply this, and I don't know that it amounts 
to anything; but at Peschiera, just before 
the train started, she looked out of the 
window, and saw a splendid officer walking 
up and down and smoking ; and before she 
could draw back he must have seen her, for 
he threw away his cigar instantly, and got 
into the same compartment. He talked a 
while in German with an old gentleman 
who was there, and then he spoke in Italian 
with Cazzi ; and afterwards, when he heard 
her speaking English with Cazzi, he joined in. 
I don't know how he came to join in at first, 
and she doesn't, either ; but it seems that he 
knew some English, and he began speaking. 
He was very tall and handsome and distin- 
guished-looking, and a 'perfect gentleman in 
his manners ; and she says that she saw 
Cazzi looking rather queer, but he didn't say 
anything, and so she kept on talking. She 
told him at once that she was an Ameri- 
can, and that she was coming here to stay 
with friends ; and, as he was very curious 
about America, she told him all she could 
think of. It did her good to talk about 
home, for she had been feeling a little blue 
at being so far away from everybody. Now, 
/ don't see any harm in it ; do you, Owen V* 



42 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

" It isn't according to the custom here ; 
but we needn't care for that. Of course it 
was imprudent," 

"Of course," Mrs. Elmore admitted. "The 
officer was very polite ; and when he found 
that she was from America, it turned out 
that he was a great sympathiser with the 
North, and that he had a brother in our 
army. Don't you think that was nice ?" 

"Probably some mere soldier of fortune, 
with no heart in the cause," said Elmore. 

' * And very likely he has no brother there, 
as I told Lily. He told her he was coming 
to Padua ; but when they reached Padua, he 
came right on to Venice. That shows you 
couldn't place any dependence upon what he 
said. He said he expected to be put under 
arrest for it ; but he didn't care, — he was 
coming. Do you believe they'll put him 
under arrest?" 

"I don't know — I don't know," said 
Elmore, in a voice of grief and apprehension, 
which might well have seemed anxiety for 
the officer's liberty. 

" I told her it was one of his jokes. He 
was very funny, and kept her laughing the 
whole way, with his broken English and his 
witty little remarks. She says he's just 



> 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 43 

dying to go to America. Who do you sup- 
pose it can be, Owen ? " 

"How should I know? We've no ac- 
quaintance among the Austrian!," groaned 
Elmore. 

" That 's what I told Lily. She 's no idea 
of the state of things here, and she was quite 
horrified. But she says he was a perfect 
gentleman in everything. He belongs to the 
engineer corps, — that's one of the highest 
branches of the service, he told her,— and he 
gave her his card." 

" Gave her his card ! " 

Mrs. Elmore had it in the hand which she 
had been keeping in her pocket, and she now 
suddenly produced it ; and Elmore read the 
name and address of Ernst von Ehrhardt, 
Captain of the Royal-Imperial Engineers, 
Peschiera. " She says she knows he wanted 
hers, but she didn't offer to give it to him ; 
and he didn't ask her where she was going, 
or anything." 

" He knew that he could get her 
from Cazzi for ten soldi as soon as her' 
was turned," said Elmore cynically, 
then?" 

" Why, he said — and this is the onl; 
bold thing he did do — that he must 




44 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

again, and that he should stay over a day ^ 
Venice in hopes of meeting her at the theafc; 
or somewhere." 

" It 's a piece of high-handed impudence ! " 
cried Elmore. " Now, Celia, you see what 
these people are ! Do you wonder that the 
Italians hate them ?" 

" You Ve often said they only hate their 
system." 

" The Austrians are part of their system. 
He thinks he can take any liberty with us 
because he is an Austrian officer ! Lily 
must not stir out of the house to-morrow." 

" She will be too tired to do so," said Mrs. 
Elmore. 

"And if he molests us further, I will 
appeal to the consul." Elmore began to 
walk up and down the room again. 

" Well, I don't know whether you could 
call it molesting, exactly," suggested Mrs. 
Elmore. 

" What do you mean, Celia ? Do you 
suppose that she — she — encouraged this 
officer?" 

" Owen ! It was all in the simplicity and 
innocence of her heart ! 

" Well, then, that she wishes to see him 
again ? " 




A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 45 

" Certainly not ! But that 's no reason 
why we should be rude about it." 

"Rude about it? How? Is simply 
avoiding him rudeness? Is proposing to 
protect ourselves from his impertinence 
rudeness ?" 

" No. And if you can't see the matter for 
yourself, Owen, I don't know how any one ia 
to make you." 

"Why, Celia, one would think that you 
approved of this man's behaviour, — that you 
wished her to meet him again ! You under- 
stand what the consequences would be if we 
received this officer. You know how all the 
Venetians would drop us, and we should 
have no acquaintances here outside of the 
army." 

"Who has asked you to receive him, 
Owen ? And as for the Italians dropping us, 
that doesn't frighten me. But what could 
he do if he did meet her again ? She needn't 
look at him. She says he is very intelligent, 
and that he has read a great many English 
books, though he doesn't speak it very well, 
and that he knows more about the war than 
she does. But of course she won't go out to- 
morrow. All that I hate is that we should 
seem to be frightened into staying at home." 



46 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

* ( She needn't stay in on his account. You 
said she would be too tired to go out." 

"I see by the scattering way you talk, 
Owen, that your mind isn't on the subject, 
and that you 're anxious to get back to your 
work. I won't keep you." 

"Celia, Celia ! Be fair, now!" cried 
Elmore. " You know very well that I 'm 
only too deeply interested in this matter, 
and that I 'm not likely to get back to my 
work to-night, at least. What is it you 
wish me to do ? " 

Mrs. Elmore considered a while. " I don't 
wish you to do anything, " she returned, plac- 
ably. " Of course, you 're perfectly right in 
not choosing to let an acquaintance begun 
in that way go any further. We shouldn't 
at home, and we shan't here. But I don't 
wish you to think that Lily has been impru- 
dent, under the circumstances. She doesn't 
know that it was anything out of the way, 
but she happened to do the best that any 
one could. Of course, it was very exciting 
and very romantic ; girls like such things, 
and there 's no reason they shouldn't. We 
must manage," added Mrs. Elmore, " so that 
she shall see that we appreciate her conduct, 
and trust in her entirely. I wouldn't do 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 47 

anything to wound her pride or self-confi- 
dence. I would rather send her out alone 
to-morrow." 

" Of course," said Elmore. 

" And if I were with her when she met 
him, I believe I should leave it entirely to 
her how to behave." 

" Well," said Elmore, " you 're not likely 
to be put to the test. He'll hardly force 
his way into the house, and she isn't going 
out." 

"No," said Mrs. Elmore. She added, 
after a silence, ' ' I 'm trying to think whether 
I Ve ever seen him in Venice ; he 's here 
often. But there are so many tall officers 
with fair complexions and English beards. 
I should like to know how he looks ! She 
said he was very aristocratic-looking." 

"Yes, it's a fine type," said Elmore. 
" They 're all nobles, I believe." 

"But after all, they're no better-looking 
than our boys, who come up out of nothing." 

" Ours are Americans," said Elmore. 

"And they are the best husbands, as I 
told lily." 

Elmore looked at his wife, as she turned 
dreamily to leave the room ; but since the 
conversation had taken this impersonal turn 



48 A FSABFCTL RESPONSIBILITY. 

he would not say anything to change its 
complexion. A conjecture vaguely taking 
shape in his mind resolved itself to nothing 
again, and left him with only the ache of 
something unascertained. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 49 



V. 



IN the morning Lily came to breakfast as 
blooming as a rose. The sense of her. 
simple, fresh, wholesome loveliness might 
have pierced even the indifference of a man 
to whom there was but one pretty woman in 
the world, and who had lived since their 
marriage as if his wife had absorbed her 
whole sex into herself; this deep, uncon- 
scious constancy was a noble trait in him, 
but it is not so rare in men as women would 
have us believe. For Elmore, Miss Mayhew 
merely pervaded the place in her finer way, 
as the flowers on the table did, as the sweet 
butter, the new eggs, and the morning's 
French bread did ; he looked at her with a 
perfectly serene ignorance of her piquant 
face, her beautiful eyes and abundant hair, 
and her trim, straight figure. But his wife 
exulted in every particular of her charm, 
and was as generously glad of it as if it were 
her own ; as women are when they are sure 

D 



50 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

that the charm of others has no designs. 
The ladies twittered and laughed together, 
and as he was a man without small talk, he 
soon dropped out of the conversation into a 
reverie, from which he found himself pre- 
sently extracted by a question from his 
wife. 

' ' We had better go in a gondola, hadn't 
we, Owen ?" She seemed to be, as she put 
this, trying to look something into him. 
He, on his part, tried his best to make out 
her meaning, but failed. 

He simply asked, " Where ? Are you 
going out ?" 

" Yes. Lily has some shopping she must 
do. I think we can get it at Pazienti's in 
San Polo." 

Again she tried to pierce him with her 
meaning. It seemed to him a sudden ad- 
vance from the position she had taken the 
night before in regard to Miss Mayhew's not 
going out ; but he could not understand his 
wife's look, and he feared to misinterpret if 
he opposed her going. He decided that she 
wished him for some reason to oppose the 
gondola, so he said, '* I think you 'd better 
walk, if Lily isn't too tired." 

" Oh, Vm not tired at all !" she cried. 



A WAWOT, MSPONSlBILITlf. SI 

' ' I can go with you, In that direction, on 
my way to the library," he added. 

" Well, that will be very nice," said 
Mrs. Elmore, din continuing her look, and 
leaving her husband with an uneasy sense 
of wantonly assumed responsibility. 

" She can step into the Frari a moment, 
and see those tombs," he said. " I think it 
will amuse her." 

Lily broke into a laugh. "Is that the 
way you amuse y ourselves in Venice T " she 
asked ; and Mrs. Elmore hastened to reas- 

" That 's the way Mr. Elmore amuse* him- 
self. You know his history makes every bit 
of the past fascinating to him." 

"Oh, yes, that history! Everybody is 
looking out for that," said Lily. 

" la it possible," I 

of flattery lurked, I 




52 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

You must be getting pretty near the end of 
it, Professor Elmore." 

" I 'm getting pretty near the beginning," 
said Elmore sadly. 

"It must be hard writing histories; 
they 're so awfully hard to read," said Lily 
innocently. "Does it interest you?" she 
asked, with unaffected compassion. 

"Yes," he said, "far more than it will 
ever interest anybody else." 

"Oh, I don't believe that!" she cried 
sweetly, seizing the occasion to get in a little 
compliment. 

Mrs*. Elmore sat silent, while things were 
thus going against Miss Mayhew, and per- 
haps she was then meditating the stroke by 
which she restored the balance to her own 
favour as soon as she saw her husband alone 
after breakfast. "Well. Owen," she said, 
" you Ve done it now." 

" Done what ?" he demanded. 

" Oh, nothing, perhaps ! " she answered, 
while she got on her things for the walk 
with unusual gaiety ; and, with the con- 
sciousness of unknown guilt depressing him, 
he followed the ladies upon their errand, 
subdued, distraught, but gradually forget- 
ting his sin, as he forgot everything but his 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 53 

history. His wife hated to see him so miser- 
able, and whispered at the shop-door where 
they parted, "Don't be troubled, Owen ! I 
didn't mean anything. " 

"By what?" 

"Oh, if you've forgotten, never mind 1" 
she cried ; and she and Miss Mayhew disap- 
peared within. 

It was two hours later when he next saw 
them, after he had turned over the book he 
wished to see, and had found the passage 
which would enable him to go on with his 
work for the rest of the day at home. He 
was fitting his key into the house-door* when 
he happened to look up the little street to- 
ward the bridge that led into it, and there, 
defined against the sky on the level of the 
bridge, he saw Mrs. Elmore and Miss May- 
hew receiving the adieux of a distinguished- 
looking man in the Austrian uniform. The 
officer had brought his heels together in the 
conventional manner, and with his cap in his 
right hand, while his left rested on the hilt 
of his sword, and pressed it down, he was 
bowing from the hips. Once, ti 
was gone. 

The ladies came down the 
steps and flushed faces, and Eli 




64 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

in. His wife whispered as she brushed by 
his elbow, "I want to speak with you in- 
stantly, Owen. Well, now 1" she added, 
when they were alone in their own room and 
she had shut the door, " what do you say 
now?" 

"What do I say now, Celia?" retorted 
Elmore, with just indignation. " It seems 
to me that it is for you to say something— or 
nothing." 

" Why, you brought it on us." 

Elmore merely glanced at his wife, and 
did not speak, for this passed all force of 
language. 

"Didn't you see me looking at you when 
I spoke of going out in a gondola, at break- 
fast?" 

"Yes." 

" What did you suppose I meant ?" 

" I didn't know." 

" When I was trying to make you under- 
stand that if we took a gondola we could go 
and come without being seen ! Lily had to 
do her shopping. But if you chose to run 
off on some interpretation of your own, was 
/ to blame, I should like to know ? No, 
indeed ! You won't get me to admit it, 
Owen.' 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 55 

Elmore continued inarticulate, but he 
made a low, miserable sibillation between 
his set teeth. 

" Such presumption, such perfect audacity 
I never saw in my life ! " cried Mrs. Elmore, 
fleetly changing the subject in her own mind, 
and leaving her husband to follow her as he 
could. "It was outrageous 1" Her words 
were strong, but she did not really look 
affronted ; and it is hard to tell what sort of 
liberty it is that affronts a woman. It seems 
to depend a great deal upon the person who 
takes the liberty. 

"That was the man, I suppose," said 
Elmore quietly. 

" Yes, Owen," answered his wife, with 
beautiful candour, "it was." Seeing that 
he remained unaffected by her display of 
this virtue, she added, " Don't you think he 
was very handsome ?" 

" I couldn't judge, at such a distance." 

" Well, he is perfectly splendid. And I 
don't want you to think he was disrespectful 
at all. He wasn't. He was everything that 
was delicate and deferential." 

"Did you ask him to walk home 
you?" 

Mrs. Elmore remained speechless for 




56 A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

moments. Then she drew a long breath, and 
said firmly : "If you won't interrupt me 
with gratuitous insults, Owen, I will tell you 
all about it, and then perhaps you will be 
ready to do me justice. I ask nothing more." 
She waited for his contrition, but proceeded 
without it, in a somewhat meeker strain : 
" Lily couldn't get her things at Pazienti's, 
and we had to go to the Merceria for them. 
Then of course the nearest way home was 
through St. Mark's Square. I made Lily go 
on the Florian side, so as to avoid the officers 
who were sitting at the Quadri, and we had 
got through the square and past San Moise, 
as far as the Stadt Gratz. I had never 
thought of how the officers frequented the 
Stadt Gratz, but there we met a most mag- 
nificent creature, and I had just said, ' What 
a splendid officer ! ' when she gave a sort of 
stop and he gave a sort of stop, and bowed 
very low, and she whispered, 'It's my 
officer.' I didn't dream of his joining us, 
and I don't think he did, at first ; but 
after he took a second look at Lily, it 
really seemed as if he couldn't help it. He 
asked if he might join us, and I didn't say 
anything." 

" Didn't say anything !" 



A FKABFtTL RESPONSIBILITY. 57 

" No ! How could I refuse, in so many 
words ? And I was frightened and confused, 
any way. He asked if we were going to the 
music in the Giardini Pubblici ; and I said 
No, that Miss Mayhew was not going into 
society in Venice, but was merely here for 
her health. That 's all there is of it. Now 
do you blame me, Owen ?" 

"No." 

" Do you blame her ?" 

" No." 

''Well, I don't see how he was to blame." 

"The transaction was a little irregular, 
but it was highly creditable to all parties 
concerned." 

Mrs. Elmore grew still meeker under this 
irony. Indignation and censure she would 
have known how to meet ; but hi§ quiet per- 
plexed her ; she did not know what might 
not be coming. "Lily scarcely spoke to 
him," she pursued, " and I was very cold. 
I spoke to him in German. " 

"Is German a particularly repellent 
tongue?" 

"No. But I was determined he should 
get no hold upon us. He was very poll 
and very respectful, as I said, but I didn 1 
give him an atom of encouragement ; I w 




58 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

that he was dying to be asked to call, but I 
parted from him very stiffly. " 

" Is it possible ?" 

" Owen, what is there so wrong about it 
all ? He 's clearly fascinated with her ; and 
as the matter stood, he had no hope of see- 
ing her or speaking with her except on the 
street. Perhaps he didn't know it was 
wrong, — or didn't realise it." 

"I dare say." 

"What else could the poor fellow have 
done ? There he was ! He had stayed over 
a day, and laid himself open to arrest, on 
the bare chance — one in a hundred — of see- 
ing Lily ; and when he did see her, what 
was he to do?" 

"Obviously, to join her and walk home 
with her." 

" You are too bad, Owen ! Suppose it 
had been one of our own poor boys ? He 
looked like an American." 

" He didn't behave like one. One of ' our 
own poor boys,' as you call them, would 
have been as far as possible from thrusting 
himself upon you. He would have had 
too much reverence for you, too much self- 
respect, too much pride." 

" What has pride to do with such things, 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 59 

my dear ? I think he acted very naturally. 
He acted upon impulse. I'm sure you're 
always crying out against the restraints and 
conventionalities between young people, over 
here ; and now, when a European does do 
a simple, unaffected thing" — 

Elmore made a gesture of impatience. 
" This fellow has presumed upon your being 
Americans — on your ignorance of the customs 
here — to take a liberty that he would not 
have dreamed of taking with Italian or Ger- 
man ladies. He has shown himself no gen- 
tleman." 

" Now there you are very much mistaken, 
Owen. That's what I thought when Lily 
first told me about his speaking to her in 
the cars, and I was very much prejudiced 
against him ; but when I saw him to-day, I 
must say that I felt that I had been wrong. 
He is a gentleman ; but — he is desperate." 

"Oh, indeed!" 

"Yes," said Mrs. Elmore, shrinking a 
little under her husband's sarcastic tone. 
" Why, Owen," she pleaded, " can't you see 
anything romantic in it?" 

" I see nothing but a vulgar impertinence 
in it. I see it from his standpoint as an ad- 
venture to be bragged of and laughed over 



t 




GO A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

at the mess-table and the caffe. I 'm going 
to put a stop to it." 

Mrs. Elmore looked daunted and a little 
bewildered. "Well, Owen," she said, "I 
put the affair entirely in your hands." 

Elmore never could decide upon just what 
theory his wife had acted ; he had to rest 
upon the fact, already known to him, of her 
perfect truth and conscientiousness, and his 
perception that even in a good woman the 
passion for manoeuvring and intrigue may 
approach the point at which men commit 
forgery. He now saw her quelled and sub- 
missive ; but he was by no means sure that 
she looked at the affair as he did, or that she 
voluntarily acquiesced. 

41 All that I ask is that you won't do any- 
thing that you'll regret afterward. And 
as for putting a stop to it, I fancy it 's put 
a stop to already. He's going back to 
Pcschiora this afternoon, and that'll pro- 
bably be the last of him." 

" Very well," said Elmore, " if that is the 
last of him, I ask nothing better. I certainly 
have no wish to take any steps in the 
matter." 

But he wont out of the house very un- 
happy and greatly perplexed. He thought 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. Gl 

at first of going to the Stadt Gratz, where 
Captain Ehrhardt was probably staying for 
the tap of Vienna beer peculiar to that 
hostelry, and of inquiring him out, and re- 
questing him to discontinue his attentions ; 
but this course, upon reflection, was less 
high-handed than comported with his pre- 
sent mood, and he turned aside to seek 
advice of his consul. He found Mr. Hoskins 
in the best humour for backing his quarrel. 
He had just received a second despatch from 
Turin, stating that the rumour of the ap- 
proaching visit of the "Alabama" was un- 
founded ; and he was thus left with a force 
of unexpended belligerence on his hands 
which he was glad to contribute to the 
defence of Mr. Elmore's family from the 
pursuit of this Austrian officer. 

" This is a very simple affair, Mr. Elmore," 
— he usually said "Elmore," but in his 
haughty frame of mind, he naturally threw 
something more of state into their inter- 
course, — "a very simple affair, fortunately. 
All that I have to do is to call on the military 
governor, and state the facts of the case, and 
this fellow will get his orders quietly and 
definitively. This war has sapped our influ- 
ence in Europe, — there *s no doubt of it ; 



62 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

but I think it 's a pity if an American family 
living in this city can't be safe from moles- 
tation ; and if it can't I want to know the 
reason why." 

This language was very acceptable to 
Elmore, and he thanked the consul. At the 
same time he felt his own resentment mode- 
rated, and he said, "I'm willing to let the 
matter rest if he goes away this afternoon. " 

" Oh, of course," Hoskins assented, " if he 
clears out, that 's the end of it. 1 11 look in 
to-morrow, and see how you're getting 
along." 

"Don't — don't give them the impression 
that I've — profited by your kindness," sug- 
gested Elmore at parting. 

" You haven't yet. I only hope you may 
have the chance." 

" Thank you ; I don't think J do." 

Elmore took a long walk, and returned 
home tranquillised and clarified as to the 
situation. Since it could be terminated with- 
out difficulty and without scandal in the way 
Hoskins had explained, he was not unwilling 
to see a certain poetry in it. He could not 
repress a degree of sympathy with the 
bold young fellow who had overstepped the 
conventional proprieties in the ardour of a 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 63 

romantic impulse, and he could see how this 
very boldness, while it had a terror, would 
have a charm for a young girl. There was 
no necessity, except for the purpose of hold- 
ing Mrs. Elmore in check, to look at it in an 
ugly light. Perhaps the officer had inferred 
from Lily's innocent frankness of manner 
that this sort of approach was permissible 
with Americans, and was not amusing him- 
self with the adrenture, but was in love in 
earnest. Elmore could allow himself this 
view of a case which he had so completely in 
his own hands ; and he was sensible of a 
sort of pleasure in the novel responsibility 
thrown upon him. Few men at his age were 
called upon to stand in the place of a parent 
to a young girl, to intervene in her affairs, and 
to decide who was and who was not a proper 
person to pretend to her acquaintance. 

Feeling so secure in his right, he rebelled 
against the restraint he had proposed to him- 
self, and at dinner he invited the ladies to go 
to the opera with him. He chose to show 
himself in public with them, and to check 
any impression that they were without due 
protection. As usual, the pit was full of 
officers, and between the acts they all rose, 
as usual, and faced the boxes, whi 




66 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

sent. " Mrs. Elmore slipped out of the room, 
and Miss Mayhew glided gravely in, holding 
an open note in her hand, and looking into 
Elmore's eyes with a certain unfathomable 
candour, of which she had the secret. 

"Here," she said, "is a letter which I 
think you ought to see at once, Professor 
Elmore ; " and she gave him the note with 
an air of unconcern, which he afterward 
recalled without being able to determine 
whether it was real indifference or only the 
calm resulting from the transfer of the whole 
responsibility to him. She stood looking at 
him while he read : 

Miss, 

In this evening I am just arrived from 
Yenise, 4 hours afterwards I have had the 
fortune to see you and to speake with you — 
and to favorite me of your gentil acquaint- 
anceship at rail-away. I never forgeet the 
moments I have seen you. Your pretty and 
nice figure had attached my heard so much, 
that I deserted in the hopiness to see you at 
Venise. And I was so lukely to speak with 
you cut too short, and in the possibility to 
understand all. I wished to go also in this 
Sonday to Venise, but I am sory that I can- 
not, beaucause I must feeled now the conse- 
quences of the deesrtation. Pray Miss to 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 67 

agree the assurance of my lov, and perhaps 
I will be so lukely to receive a notice from 
you Miss if I can hop a little (hapiness) 
sympathie. Tres humble 

E. von Ehrhardt. 

Elmore was not destitute of the national 
sense of humour ; but he read this letter 
not only without amusement in its English, 
but with intense bitterness and renewed 
alarm. It appeared to him that the willing- 
ness of the ladies to put the affair in his 
hands had not strongly manifested itself till 
it had quite passed their own control, and 
had become a most embarrassing difficulty, 
— when, in fact, it was no longer a merit in 
them to confide it to him. In the resent- 
ment of that moment, his suspicions even 
accused his wife of desiring, from idle curi- 
osity and sentiment, the accidental meeting 
which had resulted in this fresh aggression. 

" Why did you show me this letter?" he 
asked harshly. 

"Mrs. Elmore told me to do so," Lily 
answered. 

" Did you wish me to see it ?" 

" I don't suppose I wished you to see 
I thought you ought to see it. " 

Elmore felt himself relenting a lit 




68 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

"What do you want done about it?" he 
asked more gently. 

" That is what I wished you to tell me," 
replied the girl. 

"I can't tell you what you wish me to 
do, but I can tell you this, Miss Mayhew : 
this man's behaviour is totally irregular. 
He would not think of writing to an Italian 
or German girl in this way. If he desired 
to — to — pay attention to her, he would 
write to her father." 

"Yes, that's what Mrs. Elmore said. 
She said she supposed he must think it was 
the American way." 

" Mrs. Elmore," began her husband ; but he 
arrested himself there, and said, " Very well. 
I want to know what I am to do. I want 
your full and explicit authority before I act. 
We will dismiss the fact of irregularity. 
We will suppose that it is fit and becoming 
for a gentleman who has twice met a young 
lady by accident, — or once by accident, and 
once by his own insistence — to write to her. 
Do you wish to continue the correspondence?" 

"No." 

Elmore looked into the eyes whicn dwelt 
full upon him, and, though they were clear 
as the windows of heaven, he hesitated. " I 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 69 

must do what you say y no matter what you 
mean, you know ?" 

" I mean what I say." 

" Perhaps," he suggested, " you would 
prefer to return him this letter with a few 
lines on your card." 

4 'No. I should like him to know that I 
have shown it to you. I should think it a 
liberty for an American to write to me in 
that way after such a short acquaintance, 
and I don't see why I should tolerate it 
from a foreigner, though I suppose their 
customs are different." 

" Then you wish me to write to him ?" 

"Yes." 

" And make an end of the matter once for 
all?" 

« Yes—" 

"Very well, then." Elmore sat down at 
once, and wrote : — 

Sir, — Miss Mayhew has handed me your 
note of yesterday, and begs me to express 
her very great surprise that you should have 
ventured to address her. She desires me also 
to add that you will consider at an end what- 
ever acquaintance you suppose yourself to 
have formed with her. 

Your obedient servant, 

Owen 




70 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

He handed the note to Lily. " Yes, that 
will do," she said, in a low, steady voice. 
She drew a deep breath, and, laying the 
letter softly down, went out of the room into 
Mrs. Elmore's. 

Elmore had not had time to kindle his 
sealing-wax when his wife appeared swiftly 
upon the scene. 

"I want to see what you have written, 
Owen," she said. 

"Don't talk to me, Celia," he replied, 
thrusting the wax into the candle-light. 
"You have put this affair entirely in my 
hands, and lily approves of what I have 
written. I am sick of the thing, and I don't 
want any more talk about it." 

" I must see it," said Mrs. Elmore, with 
finality, and possessed herself of the note. 
She ran it through, and then flung it on 
the table, and dropped into a chair, while 
the tears started to her eyes. "What 
a cold, cutting, merciless letter ! " she 
cried. 

" I hope he will think so," said Elmore, 
gathering it up from the table, and sealing it 
securely in its envelope. 

" You 're not going to send it !" exclaimed 
his wife. 



" Yes, I ato." 

" I didn't suppose yon could be ao heart- 

"Very well, then, I won't send it," said 
Elmore. "I put the affair in your hands. 
What are you going to do about it ! " 



" On the contrary, I 'm perfectly serious. I 
don't see why you shouldn't manage the busi- 
ness. The gentleman is an acquaintance of 
yours, /don't know him." Elmore rose and 
pnt his hands in his pockets. ' ' What do you 
intend to do T Do you like this clandestine 
sort of thing to go on T I dare say the fellow 
only wishes to amuse himself by a flirtation 
with a pretty American. But the question 
is whether you wish him to do bc 
ing to lay his 

of our customs, and to suppose that hi 
this ia the way Americans do, 
matter at its best : he speaks to 
trail: uSllii'jiit an inhoiluutioii ; I 

to her without U 
a corresponded 
and proper, ■ 
friends when t] 
Qua to know hi 




72 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

sequel. Do you wish the affair to go on, and 
how long do you wish it to go on ?" 

"You know very well that I don't wish it 
to go on." 

"Then you wish it broken off?" 

"Of course I do." 

"How?" 

" I think there is such a thing as acting 
kindly and considerately. I don't see any- 
thing in Captain Ehrhardt's conduct that 
calls for savage treatment," said Mrs. Elmore. 

"You would like to have him stopped, 
but stopped gradually. Well, I don't wish 
to be savage, either, and I will act upon any 
suggestion of yours. I want Lily's people to 
feel that we managed not only wisely but 
humanely in checking a man who was re- 
solved to force his acquaintance upon her. " 

Mrs. Elmore thought a long while. Then 
she said : " Why, of course, Owen, you 're 
right about it. There is no other way. 
There couldn't be any kindness in checking 
him gradually. But I wish," she added sor- 
rowfully, "that he had not been such a com- 
plete goose ; and then we could have done 
something with him." 

"I am obliged to him for the perfection 
which you regret, my dear. If he had been 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 73 

less complete, he would have been much 
harder to manage." 

"Well," said Mrs. Elmore, rising; "I 
shall always say that he meant well. But 
send the letter." 

Her husband did not wait for a second 
bidding. He carried it himself to the 
general post-ofjfice that there might be no 
mistake and no delay about it ; and a man 
who believed that he had a feeling and 
tender heart experienced a barbarous joy in 
the infliction of this pitiless snub. I do not 
say that it would not have been different if 
he had trusted at all in the sincerity of 
Captain Ehrhardt's passion ; but he was 
glad to discredit it. A misgiving to the 
other effect would have complicated the 
matter. But now he was perfectly free to 
disembarrass himself of a trouble which had 
so seriously threatened his peace. He was 
responsible to Miss Mayhew's family, and 
Mrs. Elmore herself could not say, then or 
afterward, that there was any other way 
open to him. I will not contend that his 
motives were wholly unselfish. No doubt 
a sense of personal annoyance, of oflf< 
decorum, of wounded respectability, 
fied the zeal for Miss Mayhew's good 




74 A VXABFUL BESPOXSIBILnT. 

prompted him. He was still a young and in- 
experienced man, confronted with a strange 
perplexity : he did the best he could, and I 
suppose it was the best that could be done. 
At any rate, he had no regrets, and he went 
cheerfully about the work of interesting Miss 
Mayhew in the monuments and memories of 
the city. 

Since the decisive blow had been struck, 
the ladies seemed to share his relief. The 
pursuit of Captain Ehrhardt, while it flat- 
tered, might well have alarmed, and the loss 
of a not unpleasant excitement was made 
good by a sense of perfect security. What- 
ever repining Miss Mayhew indulged was 
secret, or confided solely to Mrs. Elmore. 
To Elmore himself she appeared in better 
spirits than at first, or at least in a more 
equable frame of mind. To be sure, he did 
not notice very particularly. He took her 
to the places and told her the things that 
she ought to be interested in, and he con- 
ceived a better opinion of her mind from the 
quick intelligence with which she entered 
into his own feelings in regard to them, 
though he never could see any evidence of 
the over-study for which she had been 
taken from school. He made her, like 




A FEAKFTJL BESPONSEBILTTV. 75 

Mrs. Elmore, the partner of his historical 
researches ; he read his notes to both of 
them now ; and when his wife was pre- 
vented from accompanying him, he went 
with Lily alone to visit the scenes of such 
events as his researches concerned, and to 
fill his mind with the local colour which he 
believed would give life and character to his 
studies of the past. They also went often 
to the theatre ; and, though Lily could not 
understand the plays, she professed to be 
entertained, and she had a grateful appre- 
ciation of all his efforts in her behalf that 
amply repaid him. He grew fond of her 
society ; he took a childish pleasure in hav- 
ing people in the streets turn and glance 
at the handsome girl by his side, of whose 
beauty and stylishness he became aware 
through the admiration looked over the 
shoulders of the Austrians, and openly 
spoken by the Italian populace. It did 
not occur to him that she might not enjoy 
the growth of their acquaintance in equal 
degree, that she fatigued herself with the 
appreciation of the memorable and the 
beautiful, and that she found these long 
rambles rather dull. He was a man of 
little conversation ; and, unless Mrs. Elmore 



76 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

was of the company, Miss Mayhew pursued 
his pleasures for the most part in silence. 
One evening, at the end of the week, his 
wife asked, " Why do you always take lily 
through the Piazza on the side furthest from 
where the officers sit? Are you afraid of 
her meeting Captain Ehrhardt ?" 

" Oh, no ! I consider the Ehrhardt busi- 
ness settled. But you know the Italians 
never walk on the officers* side." 

" You are not an Italian. What do you 
gain by flattering them up ? I should think 
you might suppose a young girl had some 
curiosity." 

"I do; and I do everything I can to 
gratify her curiosity. I went to San Pietro 
di Castello to-day, to show her where the 
Brides of Venice were stolen." 

" The oldest and dirtiest part of the city ! 
What could the child care for the Brides of 
Venice ? Now be reasonable, Owen ! " 

"It's a romantic story. I thought girls 
liked such things,— about getting married." 

"And that's the reason you took her 
yesterday to show her the Bucentaur that 
the doges wedded the Adriatic in ! Well, 
what was your idea in going with her to the 
Cemetery of San Michele ?" 



«% 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 77 

"I thought she would be interested. I 
had never been there before myself, and I 
thought it would be a good opportunity to 
verify a passage I was at work on. We 
always show people the cemetery at home." 

4 * That was considerate. And why did 
you go to Oanarregio on Wednesday ?** 

"I wished her to see the statue of Sior 
Antonio Rioba ; you know it was the Vene- 
tian Pasquino in the Revolution of '48" — 

"Charming!" 

" And the Oampo di Giustizia, where the 
executions used to take place." 

"Delightful!" 

"And — and — the house of Tintoretto," 
faltered Elmore. 

"Delicious ! She cares so much for Tin- 
toretto ! And you Ve been with her to the 
Jewish burying-ground at the Lido, and the 
Spanish synagogue in the Ghetto, and the 
fish-market at the Rialto, and you Ve shown 
her the house of Othello and the house of 
Desdemona, and the prisons in the ducal 
palace ; and three nights you Ve taken us to 
the Piazza as soon as the Austrian band 
stopped playing, and all the interesting 
promenading was over, and those stuffy old 
Italians began to come to the caffes. Well, 



78 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

I can tell you that's no way to amuse a 
young girl. We must do something for her, 
or she will die. She has come here from a 
country where girls have always had the 
best time in the world, and where the times 
are livelier now than they ever were, with 
all this excitement of the war going on ; and 
here she is dropped down in the midst of 
this absolute deadness : no calls, no pic-nics, 
no parties, no dances — nothing ! We must 
do something for her." 

' ' Shall we give her a ball ? " asked Elmore, 
looking round the pretty little apartment. 

"There's nothing going on among the 
Italians. But you might get us invited to 
the German Casino. " 

"I dare say. But I will not do that." 

" Then we could go to the Luogotenenza, 
to the receptions. Mr. Hoskins could call 
with us, and they would send us cards." 

"That would make us simply odious to 
the Venetians, and our house would be 
thronged with officers. What I 've seen of 
them doesn't make me particularly anxious 
for the honour of their further acquaint- 
ance." 

" Well, I don't ask you to do any of these 
things," said Mrs. Elmore, who had, in 



"\ 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 79 

fact, mentioned them with the intention of 
insisting upon an abated claim. "But I 
think you might go and dine at one of the 
hotels — at the Danieli — instead of that 
Italian restaurant ; and then Lily could see 
somebody at the table-d'hdte, and not sim- 
ply perish of despair. " 

"I — I didn't suppose it was so bad as 
that," said Elmore. 

"Why, of course, she hasn't said any- 
thing, — she 's far too well-bred for that ; 
but I can tell from my own feelings how she 
must suffer. I have you, Owen," she said 
tenderly, "but Lily has nobody. She has 
gone through this Ehrhardt business so well 
that I think we ought to do all we can to 
divert her mind." 

" Well, now, Celia, you see the difficulty 
of our position, — the nature of the responsi- 
bility we have assumed. How are we pos- 
sibly, here in Venice, to divert the mind of 
a young lady fresh from the parties and pic- 
nics of Patmos ?" 

"We can go and dine at the Danieli," 
replied Mrs. Elmore. 

" Very well, let us go, then. But she 
will learn no Italian there. She will hear 
nothing but English from the travellers and 



80 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

bad French from the waiters ; while at our 
restaurant" — 

"Pshaw!" cried Mrs. Elmore, "what 
does Lily care for Italian? I'm sure / 
never want to hear another word of it." 

At this desperate admission, Elmore quite 
gave way ; he went to the Danieli the next 
morning, and arranged to begin dining there 
that day. There is no denying that Miss 
Mayhew showed an enthusiasm in prospect 
of the change that even the sight of the 
pillar to which Foscarini was hanged head 
downwards for treason to the Republic had 
not evoked. She made herself look very 
pretty, and she was visibly an impression at 
the table-d'hdte when she sat down there. 
Elmore had found places opposite an elderly 
lady and quite a young gentleman, of Eng- 
lish speech, but of not very English effect 
otherwise, who bowed to Lily in acknow- 
ledgment of some former meeting. The 
old lady said, " So you 've reached Venice 
at last ? I 'm very pleased, for your sake," 
as if at some point of the progress thither 
she had been privy to anxieties of Lily 
about arriving at her destination ; and, in 
fact, they had been in the same hotels at 
Marseilles and Genoa. The young gentle- 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 61 

man said nothing, but he looked at Lily 
throughout the dinner, and seemed to take 
his eyes from her only when she glanced at 
him ; then he dropped his gaze to hia 
neglected plate and blushed. When they 
left the table, he made haste to join the 
Elmores in the reading-room, where he con- 
trived, with creditable skill, to get Lily 
apart from them for the examination of an 
illustrated newspaper, at which neither of 
them looked ; they remained chatting and 
laughing over it in entire irrelevancy till 
the elderly lady rose and said, "Herbert, 
Herbert ! I am ready to go- now," upon 
which he did not seem at all so, but went 
submissively. 

"Who are those people, Lily?" asked 
Mrs. Elmore, as they walked towards Flo- 
rian's for their after-dinner coffee. The Aus- 
trian band was playing in the centre of the 
Piazza, and the tall, blonde German officers 
promenaded back and forth with dark Hun- 
garian women, who looked each like a prin- 
cess of her race. The lights glittered upon 
them, and on the brilliant groups spread 
fan-wise out into the Piazza before the 
caffes ; the scene seemed to shake and waver 
in the splendour, like something painted. 



62 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

"Oh, their name is Andersen, or some- 
thing like that ; and they 're from Helgo- 
land, or some such place. I saw them first 
in Paris, but we didn't speak till we got to 
Marseilles. That 's his aunt ; they 're Eng- 
lish subjects, someway; and he's got an 
appointment in the civil service — I think he 
called it — in India, and he doesn't want to 
go ; and I told him he ought to go to 
America. That's what I tell all these 
Europeans." 

"It's the best advice for them," said 
Mrs. Elmore. 

"They don't seem in any great haste to 
act upon it, " laughed Miss Mayhew. * ' Who 
was the red-faced young man that seemed 
to know you, and stared so ?" 

" That 's an English artist who is staying 
here. He has a curious name, — Rose-Black ; 
and he is the most impudent and pushing 
man in the world. I wouldn't introduce 
him, because I saw he was just dying for 
it." 

Miss Mayhew laughed, as she laughed at 
everything, not because she was amused, 
but because she was happy ; this child-like 
gaiety of heart was great part of her charm. 

Elmore had quieted his scruples as a good 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 



83 



Venetian by coming inside of the caffe while 
the band played, instead of sitting outside 
with the bad patriots ; but he put the ladies 
next the window, and so they were not alto- 
gether sacrificed to his sympathy with the 
dimostrazione. 




84 A FEARFJ7L RESPONSIBILITY. 



VII. 

THE next morning Elmore was called from 
his bed — at no very early hour, it must 
be owned, but at least before a nine o'clock 
breakfast — to see a gentleman who was wait- 
ing in the parlour. He dressed hurriedly, 
with a thousand exciting speculations in his 
mind, and found Mr. Rose-Black looking 
from the balcony window. "You have a 
pleasant position here," he said easily, as he 
turned about to meet Elmore's look of indig- 
nant demand. " I 've come to ask all about 
our friends the Andersens.'' 

" I don't know anything about them," an- 
swered Elmore. " I never saw them before. " 

"Abh!" said the painter. Elmore had 
not invited him to sit down, but now he 
dropped into a chair, with the air of asking 
Elmore to explain himself. "The young 
lady of your party seemed to know them. 
How uncommonly pretty all your American 
young girls are ! But I 'in told they fade 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 85 

very soon. I should like to make up a pic- 
nic party with you all for the Lido." 

"Thank you," replied Elmore stiffly. 
" Miss Mayhew has seen the Lido." 

' ' Aoh ! That 's her name. It 's a pretty 
name." He looked through the open door 
into the dining-room, where the table was 
set for breakfast, with the usual water- 
goblet at each plate. " I see you have beer 
for breakfast. There 's nothing so nice, you 
know. Would you — would you mind giv- 
ing me aglahs?" 

Through an undefined sense of the duties 
of hospitality, Elmore was surprised by this 
impudence into sending out to the next caffe 
for a pitcher of beer. Rose-Black poured 
himself out one glass and another till he 
had emptied the pitcher, conversing affably 
meanwhile with his silent host. 

" Why didn't you turn him out of doors?" 
demanded Mrs. Elmore, as soon as the 
painter's departure allowed her to slip from 
the closed door behind which she had been 
imprisoned in her room. 

" I did everything but that," replied her 
husband, whom this interview had saddened 
more than it had angered. 

" You sent out for beer for him ! " 



86 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

" I didn't know bnt it might make him 
sick. Really, the thing is incredible. I 
think the man is cracked." 

" He is an Englishman, and he thinks he 
can take any kind of liberty with us because 
we are Americans. " 

" That seems to be the prevalent impres- 
sion among all the European nationalities," 
said Elmore. " Let 's drop him for the 
present, and try to be more brutal in the 
future." 

Mrs. Elmore, so far from dropping him, 
turned to Lily, who entered at that moment, 
and recounted the extraordinary adventure 
of the morning, which scarcely needed the 
embellishment of her fancy ; it was not 
really a gallon of beer, but a quart, that 
Mr. Rose-Black had drunk. She enlarged 
upon previous aggressions of his, and said 
finally that they had to thank Mr. Ferris 
-for his acquaintance. 

"Ferris couldn't help himself," said 

" He apologised to me afterward. 

him into a corner. But he 

>ut him as soon as he could. 

would have made our 

any way, I believe he's 




A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 87 

" I don't see how that helps the matter." 

' * It helps to explain it, " concluded Elmore, 
with a sigh. " We can't refer everything to 
our being American lambs, and his being a 
ravening European wolf." 

"Of course he came round to find out 
about Lily," said Mrs. Elmore. "The 
Andersens were a mere blind. " 

" Oh, Mrs. Elmore !" cried Lily in depre- 
cation. 

The bell jangled. ' ' That is the postman, ' ' 
said Mrs. Elmore. 

There was a home-letter for Lily, and one 
from Lily's sister enclosed to Mrs. Elmore. 
The ladies rent them open, and lost them- 
selves in the cross-written pages ; and neither 
of them saw the dismay with which Elmore 
looked at the handwriting of the envelope 
addressed to him. His wife vaguely knew 
that he had a letter, and meant to ask him 
for it as soon as shs should have finished her 
own. When she glanced at him again, he 
was staring at the smiling face of Miss May- 
hew, as she read her letter, with the wild 
regard of one who sees another in mortal 
peril, and can do nothing to avert the coming 
doom, but must dumbly await the catas- 
trophe. 



S8 



nil'*?. m*» 8 

tioti° l *t&eve. S ?' genera » yv*S""i w 

..d-a*"* 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 89 

perhaps dreaded some triumphant outburst 
from her, he ought to have been content with 
the thoroughly daunted look which she lifted 
to his, and the silence in which she suffered 
him to do justice to the writer. 

" This is the letter of a gentleman, Celia," 
he said. 

" Yes," she responded faintly. 

" It puts another complexion on the affair 
entirely." 

' ' Yes. Why did he wait a whole week ? " 
she added. 

" It is a serious matter with him. He had 
a right to take time for thinking it over." 
Elmore looked at the date of the Peschiera 
postmark, and then at that of Venice on the 
back of the envelope. "No, he wrote at 
once. This has been kept in the Venetian 
office, and probably read there by the autho- 
rities." 

His wife did not heed the conjecture. 
" He began all wrong," she grieved. " Why 
couldn't he have behaved sensibly?" 

" We must look at it from another point 
of view now," replied Elmore. " He has 
repaired his error by this letter." 

" No, no ; he hasn't." 

" The question is now what to do about 



90 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

the changed situation. This is an offer of 
marriage. It comes in the proper way. It 's 
a very sincere and manly letter. The man 
has counted the whole cost : he 's ready to 
leave the army and go to America, if she 
says so. He 's in love. How can she refuse 
him?" 

" Perhaps she isn't in love with him,' 
said Mrs. Elmore. 

" Oh ! That 's true. I hadn't thought of 
that. Then it 's very simple." 

" But I don't know that she isn't," mur- 
mured Mrs. Elmore. 

"Well, ask her." 

"How could Retell?" 

"How could she tell?" 

" Yes. Do you suppose a child like that 
can know her own mind in an instant ?" 

" I should think she could." 

"Well, she couldn't. She liked the ex- 
citement, — the romanticality of it ; but she 
doesn't know any more than you or I whether 
she cares for him. I don't suppose marriage 
with anybody has ever seriously entered her 
head yet." 

" It will have to do so now," said Elmore 
firmly. ' * There 's no help for it." 

"I think the American plan is much 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 91 

better," pouted Mrs. Elmore. " It 's horrid 
to know that a man 's in love with you, and 
wants to marry you, from the very start. Of 
course it makes you hate him." 

" I dare say the American plan is better 
in this as in most other things. But we 
can't discuss abstractions, Celia. We must 
come down to business. What are we to do ? " 

"I don't know." 

" We must submit the question to her." 

" To that innocent, unsuspecting little 
thing ? Never ! " cried Mrs. Elmore. 

" Then we must decide it, as he seems to 
expect we may, without reference to her," 
said her husband. 

"No, that won't do. Let me think." 
Mrs. Elmore thought to so little purpose that 
she left the word to her husband again. 

" You see we must lay the matter before 
her." 

" Couldn't— couldn't we let him come to 
see us a while? Couldn't we explain our ways 
to him, and allow him to pay her attentions 
without letting her know about this letter ? " 

"I'm afraid he wouldn't understand, — 
that we couldn't make it clear to him," said 
Elmore. " If we invited him to the house he 
would consider it as an acceptance. He 



92 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

wants a categorical answer, and he has a 
right to it. It would be no kindness to a 
man with his ideas to take him on probation. 
He has behaved honourably, and we're 
bound to consider him." 

" Oh, I don't think he 's done anything so 
very great," said Mrs. Elmore, with that dis- 
position we all have to disparage those who 
put us in difficulties. 

" He 's done everything he could do," said 
Elmore. " Shall I speak to Miss Mayhew ?" 

" No, you had better let me," sighed his 
wife. "I suppose we must. But I think it 's 
horrid ! Everything could have gone on so 
nicely if he hadn't been so impatient from 
the beginning. Of course she won't have him 
now. She will be scared, and that will be 
the end of it." 

"I think you ought to be just to him, 
Celia. I can't help feeling for him. He has 
thrown himself upon our mercy, and he has 
a claim to right and thoughtful treatment." 

" She won't have anything to do with him. 
You '11 see." 

"I shall be very glad of that," Elmore 
began. 

14 Why should you be glad of it?" de- 
manded his wife. 



I 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 93 

He laughed. " I think I can safely leave 
his case in your hands. Don't go to the 
other extreme. If she married a German, 
he would let her black his boots, — like that 
general in Munich." 

"Who is talking of marriage?" retorted 
Mrs. Elmore. 

' ' Captain Ehrhardt and I. That 's what it 
comes to ; and it can't come to anything else. 
I like his courage in writing English, and 
it' s wonderful how he hammers his meaning 
into it. ' Lukely ' isn't bad, is it? And 'my 
position permitted me to take a woman ' — I 
suppose he means that he has money enough 
to marry on — is delicious. Upon my word, 
I have a good deal of sympathie for he !" 

" For shame, Owen ! It 's wicked to make 
fun of his English." 

" My dear, I respect him for writing in 
English. The whole letter is touchingly 
brave and fine. Confound him ! I wish I 
had never heard of him. What does lie come 
bothering across my path for ?" 

"Oh, don't feel that way about it, Owen ! " 
cried his wife. " It 's cruel. " 

" I don't. I wish to treat him in the most 
generous manner ; after all, it isn't his fault. 
But you must allow, Celia, that it's very 



94 A FEASJTOL RESPONSIBILITY. 

annoying and extremely perplexing. Wt 
can't make up Miss Mayhew's mind for her. 
Even if we found out that she liked him, it 
would be only the beginning of our troubles. 
We Ve no right to give her away in marriage, 
or let her involve her affections here. But be 
judicious, Celia." 

" It 's easy enough to say that ! " 

"I'll be back in an hour," said Elmore. 
" I 'm going to the square. We mustn't lose 
time." 

As he passed out through the breakfast- 
room, lily was sitting by the window with 
her letter in her lap, and a happy smile on 
her lips. When he came back she happened 
to be seated in the same place ; she still had 
a letter in her lap, but she was smiling no 
longer ; her face was turned from him as he 
entered, and he imagined a wistful droop in 
that corner of her mouth which showed on 
her profile. 

But she rose very promptly, and with a 
heightened colour said, "I 'm sorry to trouble 
you to answer another letter for me, Pro- 
fessor Elmore. I manage my correspondence 
at home myself, but here it seems to be dif- 
ferent." 

"It needn't be different here, Lily," said 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 95 

Elmore kindly. " You can answer all the 
letters you receive in just the way you like. 
We don't doubt your discretion in the least. 
We will abide by any decision of yours, on 
any point that concerns yourself." 

" Thank you, " replied the girl ; ' * but in this 
case I think you had better write. " She kept 
slipping Ehrhardt's letter up and down be- 
tween her thumb and finger against the palm 
of her left hand, and delayed giving it to him, 
as if she wished him to say something first. 

" I suppose you and Celia have talked the 
matter over?" 

"Yes." 

" And I hope you have determined upon 
the course you are going to take, quite un- 
influenced ?" 

"Oh, quite so." 

"I feel bound to tell you," said Elmore, 
" that this gentleman has now done every- 
thing that we could expect of him, and has 
fully atoned for any error he committed in 
making your acquaintance." 

"Yes, I understand that. Mrs. Elmore 
thought he might have written because he 
saw he had gone too far, and couldn't think 
of any other way out of it. " 

" That occurred to me, too, though I didn't 



96 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

mention it. But we're bound to take the 
letter on its face, and that 'a open and hon- 
ourable. Have you made up your mind ? " 

"Yes." 

" Do you wish for delay ? There is no 
reason for haste. " 

"There's no reason for delay, either," 
said the girl. Yet she did not give up the 
letter, or show any signs of intending to ter- 
minate the interview. " If I had had more 
experience, I should know how to act better; 
but I must do the best I can, without the 
experience. I think that even in a case like 
this we should try to do right, don't you ?" 

" Yes, above all other cases," said Elmore, 
with a laugh. 

She flushed in recognition of her absurdity. 
" I mean that we oughtn't to let our feelings 
carry us away. I saw so many girls carried 
away by their feelings, when the first regi- 
ments went off, that I got a horror of it. I 
think it 's wicked : it deceives both ; and 
then you don't know how to break the en- 
gagement afterward." 

" You 're quite right, Lily," said Elmore, 
with a rising respect for the girl. 

" Professor Elmore, can you believe that 
with all the attentions I 've had, I Ve never 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 97 

seriously thought of getting married as the 
end of it all ?" she asked, looking him freely 
in the eyes. 

"I can't understand it, — no man could, I 
suppose, — but I do believe it. Mrs. Elmore 
has often told me the same thing." 

"And this — letter — it — means marriage."' 

" That and nothing else. The man who 
wrote it would consider himself cruelly 
wronged if you accepted his attentions with- 
out the distinct purpose of marrying him." 

She drew a deep breath. "I shall have 
to ask you to write a refusal for me." But 
still she did not give him the letter. 

" Have you made up your mind to that ?" 

" I can't make up my mind to anything 
else." 

Elmore walked unhappily back and forth 
across the room. "I have seen something 
of international marriages since I've been 
in Europe," he said. "Sometimes they 
succeed ; but generally they 're wretched 
failures. The barriers of different race, 
language, education, religion,— they 're ter- 
rible barriers. It's very hard for a man 
and woman to understand each other at 
the best ; with these differences added, it 's 
almost a hopeless case." 

o 



•« 




00 A TXARFtt* BXSF05SIBIIJXT. 

"Yea ; that's what Mrs. Elmore said." 
And suppose you were married to an 
officer stationed in Italy. Too 
would have no society outside of the garrison. 
Every other human creature that looked at 
yon would hate you. And if yon were 
ordered to some of those half barbaric prin- 
cipalities, — MoldaTia or Wallachia, or into 
Hungary or Bohemia, — everywhere your 
husband would be an instrument for the 
suppression of an alien or disaffected popu- 
lation. What a fate for an American girl ! " 

" If he were good," said the girl, replying 
in the abstract, " she needn't care." 

" If he were good, you needn't care. No. 
And he might leave the Austrian service, 
and go with you to America, as he hints. 
What could he do there ? He might get an 
appointment in our army, though that 'b not 
so easy now ; or he might go to Patmos, and 
live upon your friends till he found some- 
thing to do in civil life." 

Lily began a laugh. "Why, Professor 
Elmore, / don't want to marry him ! What 
in the world are you arguing with me for ?" 

" Perhaps to convince myself. I feel that 
I oughtn't to let these considerations weigh 
as a feather in the balance if you are at all — 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 99 

at all— ahem ! excuse me ! — attached to him. 
That, of course, outweighs everything else." 

" But I 'm not /" cried the glrL " How 
could I be ? I Ve only met him twice. It 
would be perfectly ridiculous. I know I 'm 
not. I ought to know that if I know any- 
thing." 

Years afterward it occurred to Elmore, 
when he awoke one night, and his mind 
without any reason flew back to this period 
in Venice, that she might have been referring 
the point to him for decision. But now it 
only seemed to him that she was adding 
force to her denial ; and he observed nothing 
hysterical in the little laugh she gave. 

"Well, then, we can't have it over too 
soon. I'll write now, if you will give me 
his letter." 

She put it behind her. "Professor 
Elmore," she said, " I am not going to have 
you think that he ever behaved in the least 
presumingly. And whatever you think of 
me, I must tell you that I suppose I talked 
very freely with him, — just as freely, as I 
should with an American. I didn't know 
any better. He was very interesting, and I 
was home-sick, and so glad to see any one 
who could speak English. I suppose I was 



100 A FEAEFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

a goose ; but I felt very far away from all 
my friends, and I was grateful for his kind- 
ness. Even if he had never written this 
last letter, I should always have said that 
he was a time gentleman." 

"Well?" 

"That is all. I can't have him treated 
as if he were an adventurer." 

" You want him dismissed ?" 

" Yes." 

" A man can't distinguish as to the terms 
of a dismissal. They 're always insolent, — 
more insolent than ever if you try to make 
them kindly. I should merely make this as 
short and sharp as possible." 

"Yes," she said breathlessly, as if the 
idea affected her respiration. 

" But I will show it to you, and I won't 
send it without your approval." 

"Thank you. But I shall not want to 
see it. I 'd rather not." She was going out 
of the room. . 

"Will you leave me this letter? You 
can have it again." 

She turned red in giving it him. " I 
forgot. Why, it 's written to you, anyway ! " 
she cried, with a laugh, and put the letter 
on the table. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 101 

The two doors opened and closed : one 
excluded Lily, and the other admitted Mrs. 
Elmore. 

" Owen, I approve of all you said, except 
that about the form of the refusal. / will 
read what you say* I intend that it shall 
be made kindly." 

* ' Very well. I '11 copy a letter of yours, 
or write from your dictation." 

" No ; you write it, and I '11 criticise it." 

" Oh, you talk as if I were eager to write 
the letter ! Can't you imagine it 's being a 
very painful thing tome?" he demanded. 

" It didn't seem to be so before." 

" Why, the situation wasn't the same 
before he wrote this letter ! " 

" I don't see how. He was as much in 
earnest then as he is now, and you had no 
pity for him." 

"Oh, my goodness !" cried Elmore de- 
sperately. "Don't you see the difference? 
He hadn't given any proof before " — 

" Oh, proof, proof ! You men are always 
wanting proof ! What better proof could 
he have given than the way he followed her 
about ? Proof, indeed ! I suppose you 'd 
like to have Lily prove that she doesn't care 
for him ! " 



102 A rEABFTL MPgQ>3HBMLITl« 



tt 



Ye*," mud Elmore sadly, " I should like 
Tery uracil to have her prove ii." 

"Well, you won't get her to. What 
makes yon think she does?" 

"Idou't. Doyou?" 

" N-o," answered Mrs. Elmore reluctantly. 

"Cells, Celia, yon will drive me mad if 
you go on in this way ! The girl has told 
me, over and over, that she wishes him dis- 
missed* Why do yon think she doesn't ?" 

" I don't* Who hinted such a thing ? But 
I don't want yon to enjoy doing it." 

" Enjoy it ? So yon think I enjoy it ! 
What do yon suppose I 'm made of ? Per- 
haps yon think I enjoyed catechising the 
child about her feelings toward him ? Per- 
haps you think I enjoy the whole confounded 
affair? Well, I give it up. I will let it 
go. If I can't have your full and hearty 
support, I'll let it go. I'll do nothing 
about it." 

He threw Ehrhardt's letter on the table, 
and went and sat down by the window. His 
wife took the letter up and read it over. 
1 ' Why, you see he asks you to pass it over 
in silenoe if you don't consent." 

H Does he?" asked Elmore. "I hadn't 
noticed that." 




A FEARFUL BSSPONSIBILITY. 103 

"Perhaps you 'd better read some of your 
letters, Owen, before you answer them !" 

" Really, I had forgotten. I had forgotten 
that the letter was written to me at all. I 
thought it was to Lily, and she had got to 
thinking so too. Well, then, I won't do any- 
thing about it." He drew a breath of relief. 

" Perhaps," suggested his wife, " he asked 
that so as to leave himself some hope if he 
should happen to meet her again. " 

4 'And we don't wish him to have any 
hope." 

Mrs. Elmore was silent. 

"Celia," cried her husband indignantly, 
"I can't have you playing fast and loose 
with me in this matter ! " 

" I suppose I may have time to think ?" 
she retorted. 

"Yes, if you will tell me what you do 
think ; but that I must know. It 's a thing 
too vital in its consequences for me to act 
without your full concurrence. I won't take 
another step in it till I know just how far 
you have gone with me. If I may judge of 
what this man's influence upon Lily would 
be by the fact that he has brought us to the 
verge of the only real quarrel we Ve ever 
had"— 



104 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

" Who 'o quarrelling, Owen ?" asked Mrs. 
Elmore meekly. ' ' I 'm not. " 

" Well, well ! we won't dispute about that. 
I want to know whether yon thought with 
me that it was improper for him to address 
her in the car?" 

"Yes." 

•• And still more improper for him to join 
you in the street ?" 

"Yes. But he was very gentlemanly." 

" No matter about that. You were just 
as much annoyed as I was by his letter to 
her?" 

" I don't know about annoyed. It scared 
me. 

"Very well. And you approved of my 
answering it as I did ?" 

" I had nothing to do with it. I thought 
you were acting conscientiously. I'll Bay 
that much." 

" You 've got to say more. You have got 
to say you approved of it ; for you know 
you did." 

" Oh — approved of it ? Yes ! " 

"That's all I want. Now I agree with 
you that if we pass this letter in silence, it 
will leave him with some hope. You agree 
with me that in a marriage between an 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 105 

American girl and an Austrian officer the 
chances would be ninety-nine to a hundred 
against her happiness at the best.' 1 

" There are a great many unhappy mar- 
riages at home," said Mrs. Elmore impar- 
tially. 

" That isn't the point, Celia, and you know 
it. The point is whether you believe the 
chances are for or against her in such a mar- 
riage. Do you?" 

" Do I what?" 

"Agree with me?" 

• ' Yes ; but I say they might be very happy. 
I shall always say that." 

Elmore flung up his hands in despair. 
" Well, then, say what shall be done now." 

This was perhaps just what Mrs. Elmore 
did not choose to say. She was silent a 
long time, — so long that Elmore said, "But 
there 's really no haste about it," and took 
some notes of his history out of a drawer, 
and began to look them over, with his back 
turned to her. 

"I never knew anything so heartless!" 
she cried. "Owen, this must be attended 
to at once ! I can't have it hanging over 
me any longer. It will make me sick." 

He turned abruptly round, and, seating 



i 



106 A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

himself at the table, wrote a note, which he 
pushed across to her. It acknowledged the 
receipt of Captain von Ehrhardt's letter, and 
expressed Miss Mayhew's feeling that there 
was nothing in it to change her wish that the 
acquaintance should cease. In after years, 
the terms of this note did not always appear 
to Elmore wisely chosen or humanely con- 
sidered ; but he stood at bay, and he struck 
mercilessly. In spite of the explicit concur- 
rence of both Miss Mayhew and his wife, he 
felt as if they were throwing wholly upon 
him a responsibility whose f earf ulness he did 
not then realise. Even in his wife's " Send 
it ! " he was aware of a subtle reservation on 
her part. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 107 



VILL 

MRS. ELMORE and Lily again rose buoy- 
antly from the conclusive event, but 
he succumbed to it. For the delicate and 
fastidious invalid, keeping his health evenly 
from day to day upon the condition of a free 
and peaceful mind, the strain had been too 
much. He had a bad night, and the next 
day a gastric trouble declared itself which 
kept him in bed half the week, and left him 
very weak and tremulous. His friends did 
not forget him during this time. Hoskins 
came regularly to see him, and supplied his 
place at the table-d'h6te of the Danieli, going 
to and fro with the ladies, and efficiently 
protecting them from the depredations of 
the Austrian soldiery. From Mr. Rose-Black 
he could not protect them ; and both the 
ladies amused Elmore with a dramatisation 
of how the Englishman had boldly outwitted 
them, and trampled all their finessing under 
foot, by simply walking up to them in the 






108 A FEABTUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

reading-room, and saying, "This is Miss 
Mayhew, I suppose," and patting himself at 
once on the footing of an old family friend. 
They read to Elmore, and they put his 
papers in crier, so that he did not know 
where to find anything when he got well ; 
hut they always came home from the hotel 
with some lively gossip, and this he liked. 
They professed to recognise an anxiety on 
the part of Mr. Andersen's aunt that his 
mind should not be diverted from the civil 
service in India by thoughts of young Ameri- 
can ladies ; but she sent some delicacies to 
Elmore, and one day she even came to call 
with her nephew, in extreme reluctance and 
anxiety as they pretended to him. 

The next afternoon the young man called 
alone, and Elmore, who was now on foot, 
received him in the parlour, before the ladies 
came in. Mr. Andersen had a bunch of 
flowers in one hand, and a small wooden box 
containing a little turtle on a salad-leaf in 
the other ; the poor animals are sold in the 
Piazza at Venice for souvenirs of the city, 
and people often carry them away. Elmore 
took the offerings simply, as he took every- 
thing in life, and interpreted them as an 
expression, however odd, of Mr. Andersen's 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 109 

sympathy with his recent sufferings, of which 
he gave him some account ; but he practised 
a decent self-denial here, and they were 
already talking of the weather when the 
ladies appeared. He hastened to exhibit 
the tokens of Mr. Andersen's kind remem- 
brance, and was mystified by the young 
man's confusion, and the impatient, almost 
contemptuous, air with which his wife lis- 
tened to him. Hoskins came in at that 
moment to ask about Elmore 's health, and 
showed the hostile civility to Andersen 
which young men use toward each other 
in the presence of ladies ; and then,, seeing 
that the latter had secured the place at Miss- 
Mayhew's side on the sofa, he limped to the 
easy chair near Mrs. Elmore, and fell into* 
talk with her about Rose-Black's pictures, 
which he had just seen. They were based 
upon an endeavour to trace the moral prin- 
ciples believed by Mr. Buskin to underlie 
Venetian art, and they were very queer, so 
Hoskins said ; he roughly sketched an idea 
of some of them on a block he took from his 
pocket. 

Mr. Andersen and Lily went out upon one 
of the high-railed balconies that overhung 
the canal, and stood there, with their backs 



112 A FKABF0L JUSPOXMBILmr. 

and he had his hand up, that way, because 
he was crying." 

" This is horrible, Celia !" cried Elmore. 
The scent of the flowers lying on the table 
seemed to choke him; the turtle clawing 
about on the smooth surface looked demoni- 
acal. "Why" 

"Now, don't ask me why she refused 
him, Owen. Of course she couldn't care for 
a boy like that. But he can't realise it, and 
it 's just as miserable for him as if he were a> 
thousand years old." 

Elmore hung his head. "It was all a> 
mistake. But how should I know any 
better? I am a straightforward man, 
Celia ; and I am unfit for the care that has 
been thrown upon me. It's more than I 
can bear. No, I 'm not fit for it ! " he cried 
at last ; and his wife, seeing him so crushed, 
now said something to console him. 

" I know you 're not. I see it more and 
more. But I know that you will do the 
best you can, and that you will always act 
from a good motive. Only do try to be 
more on your guard." 

" I will — I will," he answered humbly. 

He hod a temptation, the next time he 
visited Hoskins, to tell him the awful secret, 



I 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 113 

and to see how the situation of that night, 
with this lurid light upon it, affected him : 
it could do poor Andersen, now on his way 
to India, no harm. He yielded to his temp- 
tation, at the same time that he confessed 
his own blunder about the flowers. 

Hoskins whistled. "I tell you what," 
he said, after a long pause, " there are some 
things in history that I never could realise, 
— like Mary, Queen of Scots, for instance, 
putting on her best things, and stepping 
down into the front parlour of that castle to 
have her head off. But a thing like this, 
happening on your own balcony, helps you 
to realise it. " 

"It helps you to realise it," assented 
Elmore, deeply oppressed by the tragic 
parallel. 

" He 's just beginning to feel it about 
now," said Hoskins, with strange sangfroid, 
" I reckon it 's a good deal like being shot. 
I didn't fully appreciate my little hit under 
a couple of days. Then I began to find out 
that something had happened. Look here," 
he added, " I want to show you something ; " 
and he pulled the wet cloth off a breadth of 
clay which he had set up on a board stayed 
against the wall. It was a bas-relief repre- 

H 



114 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

senting a female figure advancing from the 
left corner over a stretch of prairie towards a 
bulk of forest on the right ; bison, bear, and 
antelope fled before her ; a lifted hand 
shielded her eyes ; a star lit the fillet that 
bound her hair. 

"That's the best thing you've done, 
Hoskins," said Elmore. " What do you call 
it?" 

"Well, I haven't settled yet. I have 
thought of ' Westward the Star of Empire,' 
but that 's rather long ; and I Ve thought of 
* American Enterprise. ' I ain't in any hurry 
to name it. You like it, do you ?" 

"I like it immensely!" cried Elmore. 
" You must let me bring the ladies to see 
it." 

" Well, not just yet," said the sculptor, in 
some confusion. " I want to get it a little 
further along first." 

They stood looking together at the figure ; 
and when Elmore went away he puzzled 
himself about something in it, — he could not 
tell exactly what. He thought he had seen 
that face and figure before, but this is what 
often occurs to the connoisseur of modern 
sculpture. His mind heavily reverted to 
Lily and her suitors. Take her in one way, 



fc 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 115 

especially in her subordination to himself, 
the girl was as simply a child as any in the 
world, — good-hearted, tender, and sweet, 
and, as he could see, without tendency to 
flirtation. Take her in another way, con- 
front her with a young and marriageable 
man, and Elmore greatly feared that she 
unconsciously set all her beauty and grace at 
work to charm him ; another life seemed to 
inform her, and irradiate from her, apart 
from which she existed simple and childlike 
still. In the security of his own deposited 
affections, it appeared to him cruelly absurd 
that a passion which any other pretty girl 
might, and some other pretty girl in time 
must, have kindled, should cling, when once 
awakened, so inalienably to the pretty girl 
who had, in a million chances, chanced to 
awaken it. He wondered how much of this 
constancy was natural, and how much merely 
attributive and traditional, and whether hu- 
man happiness or misery were increased by 
it on the whole. 



116 a njkmrvh bssfovsibility. 



i 



IX. 



IK the respite which followed the dismissal 
of Andersen, the English painter Rose- 
Black visited the Elmores as often as the 
servant, who had orders in his case to say 
that they were impediti, failed of her duty. 
They could not always escape him at the 
caffe, and they would have left off dining at 
the hotel but for the shame of feeling that he 
had driven them away. If he had been an 
Englishman repelling their advances, instead 
of an Englishman pursuing them, he could 
not have been more offensive. He affronted 
their national as well as personal self-esteem ; 
he early declared himself a sympathiser with 
the Southrons (as the London press then 
callod them), and he expressed the current 
belief of his compatriots, that we were going 
to the dogs. 

"What do you really make of him, Owen?" 
nuked Mrs. Elmore, after an evening that, in 
its improbable discomfort, had passed quite 
like a nightmare. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 117 

"Well, I've been thinking a good deal 
about him. I have been wondering if, in his 
phenomenal way, he is not a final expression 
of the national genius, — the stupid contempt 
for the rights of others ; the tacit denial of 
the rights of any people who are ac English 
mercy ; the assumption that the courtesies 
and decencies of life are for use exclusively 
towards Englishmen. " 

This was in that embittered old war-time : 
we have since learned how forbearing and 
generous and amiable Englishmen are ; how 
they never take advantage of any one they 
believe stronger than themselves, or fail in 
consideration for those they imagine their 
superiors ; how you have but to show your- 
self successful in order to win their respect, 
and even affection. 

But for the present Mrs. Elmore replied to 
her husband's perverted ideas, " Yes, it must 
be so," and she supported him in the ineffec- 
tual experiment of deferential politeness, 
Christian charity, broad humanity, and sav- 
age rudeness upon Rose-Black. It was all 
one to Rose-Black. 

He took an air of serious protection to- 
wards Mrs. Elmore, and often gave her ad- 
vice, while he practised an easy gallantry 




US A FEABFCL RESPONSIBILITY. 

with Lily, and ignored Elmore altogether. 
His intimacy was superior to the accidents 
of their moods, and their slights and snubs 
were accepted apparently as interesting ex- 
pressions of a civilisation about which he 
was insatiably curious, especially as re- 
garded the relations of young people. There 
was no mistaking the fact that Rose-Black 
in his way had fallen under the spell which 
Elmore had learned to dread ; but there 
was nothing to be done, and he helplessly 
waited. He saw what must come ; and one 
evening it came, when Rose-Black, in more 
than usually offensive patronage, lolled back 
upon the sofa at Miss Mayhew's side, and 
said, " About flirtations, now, in America, — 
tell me something about flirtations. We Ve 
heard so much about your American flirta- 
tions. We only have them with married 
ladies, on the Continent, and I don't suppose 
Mrs. Elmore would think of one." 

41 I don't know what you mean," said 
Lily. " I don't know anything about flirta- 
tions. " 

This seemed to amuse Rose-Black as an 
uncommonly fine piece of American humour, 
which was then just beginning to make its 
way with the English. "Oh, but come, 



▲ FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 119 

now, you don't expect me to believe that, 
you know. If you won't tell me, suppose 
you show me what an American flirtation is 
like. Suppose we get up a flirtation. How 
should you begin ?" 

The girl rose with a more imposing air 
than Elmore could have imagined of her 
stature ; but almost any woman can be 
awful in emergencies. " I should begin by 
bidding you good-evening," she answered, 
and swept out of the room. 

Elmore felt as if he had been left alone 
with a man mortally hurt in combat, and 
were likely to be arrested for the deed. He 
gazed with fascination upon Rose-Black, 
and wondered to see him stir, and at last 
rise, and with some incoherent words to 
them, get himself away. He dared not lift 
his gaze to the man's eyes, lest he should 
see there some reflection of the pain that 
filled his own. He would have gone after 
him, and tried to say something in con- 
dolence, but he was quite helpless to move ; 
and as he sat still, gazing at the door through 
which Rose-Black disappeared, Mrs. Elmore 
said quietly : — 

" Well, really, I think that ought to be 
the last of him. You see, she 's quite able 



120 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

to take care of herself when she knows her 
ground. You can't say that she has thrown 
the brunt of this affair upon you, Owen." 

" I am not so sure of that," sighed Elmore, 
"I think I suffer less when I do it than 
when I see it. It 's horrible." 

" He deserved it, every bit," returned his 
wife. 

" Oh, I dare say," Elmore granted. " But 
the sight even of justice isn't pleasant, I 
find." 

"I don't understand you, Owen. How 
can you care so much for this impudent 
wretch's little snub, and yet be so indifferent 
about refusing Captain Ehrhardt ?" 

"I'm not indifferent about it, my dear. 
I know that I did right, but I don't know 
that I could do right under the same circum- 
stances again." 

In fact there were times when Elmore 
found almost insupportable the absolute 
conclusion to which that business had come. 
It is hard to believe that anything has come 
to an end in this world. For a time, death 
itself leaves the ache of an unsatisfied ex- 
pectation, as if somehow the interrupted life 
must go on, and there is no change we make 
or suffer which is not denied by the sensa- 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 121 

tion of daily habit. If Ehrhardt had really 
come back from the vague limbo to which 
he had been so inexorably relegated, he 
might only have restored the original situa- 
tion in all its discomfort and apprehension ; 
yet maintaining, as he did, this perfect 
silence and absence, he established a hold 
upon Elmore's imagination which deepened 
because he could not discuss the matter 
frankly with his wife. He weakly feared 
to let her know what was passing in his 
thoughts, lest some misconception of hers 
should turn them into self-accusal or urge 
him to some attempt at the reparation to- 
wards which he wavered. He really could 
have done nothing that would not have 
made the matter worse, and he confined 
himself to speculating upon the character 
and history of the man whom he knew only 
by the incoherent hearsay of two excited 
women, and by the brief record of hope and 
passion left in the notes which Lily treasured 
somewhere among the archives of a young 
girl's triumphs. He had a morbid curiosity 
to see these letters again, but he dared not 
ask for them ; and indeed it would have 
been an idle self-indulgence : he remembered 
them perfectly well. Seeing Lily so in- 



122 A FEA&FUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

different, it was characteristic of him, in 
that safety from consequences which he 
chiefly loved, that he should tacitly consti- 
tute himself, in some sort, the champion of 
her rejected suitor, whose pain he luxuri- 
ously fancied in all its different stages and 
degrees. His indolent pity even developed 
into a sort of self-righteous abhorrence of 
the girl's hardness. But this was wholly 
within himself, and could work no sort of 
harm. If he never ventured to hint these 
feelings to his wife, he was still further 
from confessing them to Lily ; but once he 
approached the subject with Hoskins in 
a well-guarded generality relating to the 
different kinds of sensibility developed by 
the European and American civilisation. A 
recent suicide for love which excited all 
Venice at that time — an Austrian officer 
hopelessly attached to an Italian girl had 
shot himself — had suggested their talk, and 
given fresh poignancy to the misgivings in 
Elmore's mind. 

11 Well," said Hoskins, " those Dutch are 
queer. They don't look at women as respect- 
fully as we do, and they mix up so much cab- 
bage with their romance that you don't know 
exactly how to take them ; and yet here you 



"* 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 123 

find thia fellow suffering just as much a* a 
white man because the girl's folks won't let 
her have him. In fact, I don't know but he 
suffered more than the average American 
citizen. I think we have a great deal more 
common sense in our love-affairs. We respect 
women more than any other people, and I 
think we show them more true politeness ; 
we let 'em have their way more, and get 
their finger into the pie right along, and it V 
right we should : but we don't make fools of 
ourselves about them, as a general rule. 
We know they're awfully nice, and they 
know we know it ; and it 's a perfectly under- 
stood thing all round. We 've been used to 
each other all our lives, and they Ve just as 
sensible as we are. They like a fellow, when 
they do like him, about as well as any of 'em, 
but they know he 's a man and a brother after 
all, and he 's got ever so much human nature, 
in him. Well, now, I reckon one of these 
Dutch chaps, the first time he gets a chance 
to speak with a pretty girl, thinks he 's got 
hold of a goddess, and I suppose the girl feels 
just so about him. Why, it 's natural they 
should — they've never had any chance to 
know any better, and you 're feelings are apt 
to get the upper hand of you, at such times, 



^^«re 



124 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

any way. I don't blame 'em. One of 'em 
goes off and shoots himself, and the other one 
feels as if she was never going to get over it. 
Well, now, look at the way Miss Lily acted 
in that little business of hers : one of these 
girls over here would have had her head 
completely turned by that adventure ; but 
when she couldn't see her way exactly clear, 
she puts the case in your hands, and then 
stands by what you do, as calm as a clock." 

"It was a very perplexing thing. I did 
the best I knew," said Elmore. 

" Why, of course you did," cried Hoskins, 
" and she sees that as well as you or I do, 
and she stands by you accordingly. I tell 
you, that girl 's got a cool head." 

In his soul Elmore ungratefully and incon- 
sistently wished that her heart were not 
equally cool ; but he only said, " Yes, she is 
a good and sensible girl. I hope the — the — 
other one is equally resigned. " 

." Oh, he '11 get along," answered Hoskins, 
with the indifference of one man for the 
sufferings of another in such matters. We 
are able to offer a brother very little comfort 
and scarcely any sympathy in those unhappy 
affairs of the heart which move women to a 
tty compassion for a disappointed sister. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 125 

A man in love is in no wise interesting to us 
for that reason ; and if he is unfortunate, we 
hope at the furthest that he will have better 
luck next time. It is only here and there 
that a sentimentalist like Elmore stops to 
pity him ; and it is not certain that even 
he would have sighed over Captain Ehrhardt 
if he had not been the means of his disap- 
pointment. As it was, he came away, feeling 
that doubtless Ehrhardt had "got along," 
and resolved at least to spend no more un- 
availing regrets upon him. 

The time passed very quietly now, and if 
it had not been for Hoskins, the ladies must 
have found it dull. He had nothing to do, 
except as he made himself occupation with 
his art, and he willingly bestowed on them 
the leisure which Elmore could not find. 
They went everywhere with him, and saw 
the city to advantage through his efforts. 
Doors, closed to ordinary curiosity, opened 
to the magic of his card, and he showed a 
pleasure in using such little privileges as his 
position gave him, for their amusement. He 
went upon errands for them ; he was like a 
brother, with something more than a brother's 
pliability ; he came half the time to breakfast 
with them, and was always welcome to all. 




126 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

He had the gift of extracting comfort from 
the darkest news about the war ; he was a 
prophet of unfailing good to the Union cause, 
and in many hours of despondency they 
willingly submitted to the authority of his 
greater experience, and took heart again. 

"I like your indomitable hopefulness, 
Hoskins," said Elmore, on one of those 
occasions when the consul was turning defeat 
into victory. "There's a streak of uncon- 
scious poetry in it, just as there is in your 
taking up the subjects you do. I imagine 
that, so far as the judgment of the world 
goes, our fortunes are at the lowest ebb just 
now" — 

" Oh, the world is wrong ! " interrupted 
the consul. "Those London papers are all 
in the pay of the rebels." 

"I mean that we have no sort of sym- 
pathy in Europe ; and yet here you are, em- 
bodying in your conception of * Westward * 
the arrogant faith of the days when our 
destiny seemed universal union and univer- 
sal dominion. There is something sublime 
to me in your treatment of such a work at 
such a time. I think an Italian, for instance, 
if his country were involved in a life and 
death struggle like this of ours, would have 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 127 

expressed something of the anxiety and ap- 
prehension of the time in it ; but this con- 
ception of yours is as serenely undisturbed 
by the facts of the war as if secession had 
taken place in another planet. There is 
something Greek in that repose of feeling, 
triumphant over circumstance. It is like 
the calm beauty which makes you forget 
the anguish of the Laocoon." 

"Is that so, Professor?" said Hoskins, 
blushing modestly, as an artist often must 
in these days of creative criticism. He 
seemed to reflect a while before he added, 
' ' Well, I reckon you 're partly right. If we 
ever did go to smash, it would take us a 
whole generation to find it out. We have 
all been raised to put so much dependence 
on Uncle Sam, that if the old gentleman 
really did pass in his checks we should only 
think he was lying low for a new deal, 
never happened to think it out before, but 
I 'm pretty sure it 's so." 

"Your work wouldn't be worth half so 
much to me if you had 'thought it out,'" 
said Elmore. "It's the unconsciousness of 
the faith that makes its chief value, as I said 
before ; and there is another thing about it 
that interests and pleases me still more." 



128 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBIUTY. 

" What 's that ?" asked the sculptor. 

*'The instinctive way in which you have 
given the figure an entirely American quality. 
There was something very familiar to me in 
it, the first time you showed it, but I 've 
only just been able to formulate my impres- 
sion : I see now that while the spirit of your 
conception is Greek, you have given it, as 
you ought, the purest American expression. 
Your 'Westward* is no Hellenic goddess: 
she is a vivid and self-reliant American girl." 

At these words, Hoskins reddened deeply, 
and seemed not to know where to look. 
Mrs. Elmore had the effect of escaping 
through the door into her own room, and 
Miss Mayhew ran out upon the balcony. 
Hoskins followed each in turn with a queer 
glance, and sat a moment in silence. Then 
he said, " Well, I reckon I must be going," 
and went rather abruptly, without offering 
to take leave of the ladies. 

As soon as he was gone, Lily came m from 
the balcony, and whipped into Mrs. Elmore's 
room, from which she flashed again in swift 
retreat to her own, and was seen no more ; 
and then Mrs. Elmore came back, with a 
flushed face, to where her husband sat mys- 
tified. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 129 

" My dear," he said gravely, " I 'm afraid 
you 've hurt Mr. Hoskins's feelings." 

" Do you think so ?" she asked ; and then 
she burst into a wild cry of laughter. * ' Oh, 
Owen, Owen ! you will kill me yet !" 

"Really," he replied with dignity, "I 
don't see any occasion in what I said for this 
extraordinary behaviour." 

"Of course you don't, and that's just 
what makes the fun of it. So you found 
something familiar in Mr. Hoskins's statue 
from the first, did you ?" she asked. " And 
you didn't notice anything particular in it?" 

"Particular, particular?" he demanded, 
beginning to lose his patience at this. 

" Oh," she exclaimed, "couldn't you see 
that it was Lily, all over again ?" 

Elmore laughed in turn. " Why, so it is ; 
so it is ! That accounts for everything that 
puzzled me. I don't wonder my maunder- 
ings amused you. It was ridiculous, to be 
sure ! When in the world did she give him 
the sittings, and how did you manage to 
keep it from me so well ?" 

"Owen ! " cried his wife, with terrible seve- 
rity. " You don't think that Lily would let 
him put her into it ?" 

"Why, I supposed — I didn't know — I 



130 A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

don't see how he could have done it un- 
less"— 

" He did it without leave or licence," said 
Mrs. Elmore. " We saw it all along, but he 
never ' let on/ as he would say, about it, and 
we never meant to say anything, of course." 

"Then," replied Elmore, delighted with 
the fact, " it has been a purely unconscious 
piece of cerebration." 

' Cerebration ! " exclaimed Mrs. Elmore, 
with more scorn than she knew how to ex- 
press. " I should think as much ! ' 

" Well, I don't know," said Elmore, with 
the pique of a man who does not care to be 
quite trampled under foot. " I don't see 
that the theory is so very unphilosophical." 

"Oh, not at all !" mocked his wife. "It 's 
philosophical to the last degree. Be as philo- 
sophical as you please, Owen ; I shall love 
you still the same." She came up to him 
where he sat, and twisting her arm round 
his face, patronisingly kissed him on top of 
the head. Then she released him, and left 
him with another burst of derision. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 131 



X. 



AFTER this Elmore had such an uncom- 
fortable feeling that he hated to see 
Hoskins again, and he was relieved when the 
sculptor failed to make his usual call, the 
next evening. He had not been at dinner 
either, and he did not reappear for several 
days. Then he merely said that he had been 
spending-the time at Chioggia, with a French 
painter who was making some studies down 
there, and they all took up the old routine 
of their friendly life without embarrassment. 
At first it seemed to Elmore that Lily was 
a little shy of Hoskins, and he thought that 
she resented his using her charm in his art ; 
but before the evening wore away, he lost 
this impression. They all got into a long talk 
about home, and she took her place at the 
piano and played some of the war-songs that 
had begun to supersede the old negro melo- 
dies. Then she wandered back to them, 
with fingers that idly drifted over the keys, 
and ended with "Stop dat knockin','' in 



132 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

which Hoskins joined with his powerful bass 
in the recitative " Let me in," and Elmore 
himself had half a mind to attempt a part. 
The sculptor rose as she struck the keys 
with a final crash, but lingered, as his fashion 
was when he had something to propose : if 
he felt pretty sore that the thing would be 
liked, he brought it in as if he had only hap- 
pened to remember it. He now drew out a 
large, square, ceremonious-looking envelope, 
at which he glanced as if, after all, he was 
rather surprised to see it, and said, "Oh, by- 
the-by, Mrs. Elmore, I wish you 'd tell me 
what to do about this thing. Here 's some- 
thing that 's come to me in my official capa- 
city, but it isn't exactly consular business, — 
if it was, I don't believe I should ask any 
lady for instructions, — and I don't know ex- 
actly what to do. It 's so long since I cor- 
responded with a princess that I don't even 
know how to answer her letter." 

The ladies perhaps feared a hoax of some 
sort, and would not ask to see the letter ; 
and then Hoskins recognised his failure to 
play upon their curiosity with a laugh, and 
gave the letter to Mrs. Elmore. It was an 
invitation to a mask ball, of which all Venice 
had begun to speak. A great Russian lady, 



A FEABFUL BKSPONSIBILITY. 133 

who had come to spend the winter in the 
Lagoons, and had taken a whole floor at one 
of the hotels, had sent out her cards, appa- 
rently to all the available people in the city, 
for the event which was to take place a fort- 
night later. In the meantime, a thrill of pre- 
paration was felt in various quarters, and the 
ordinary course of life was interrupted in a 
way that gave some idea of the old times, 
when Venice was the capital of pleasure, and 
everything yielded there to the great busi- 
ness of amusement. Mrs. Elmore had found 
it impossible to get a pair of fine shoes 
finished until after the ball ; a dress which 
Lily had ordered could not be made ; their 
laundress had given notice that for the pre- 
sent all fluting and quilling was out of the 
question; one already heard that the chief 
Venetian perruquier and his assistants were 
engaged for every moment of the forty-eight 
hours before the ball, and that whoever had 
him now must sit up with her hair dressed 
for two nights at least. Mrs. Elmore had a 
fanatical faith in these stories ; and while 
agreeing with her husband, as a matter of 
principle, that mask balls were wrong, and 
that it was in bad taste for a foreigner to 
insult the sorrow of Venice by a festivity 




134 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

the sort at such a time, she had secretly in- 
dulged longings which the sight of Hoakins's 
invitation rendered almost insupportable. 
Her longings were not for herself, but for 
Lily : if she could provide Lily with the 
experience of a masquerade in Venice, she 
could overpay all the kindnesses that the 
Mayhews had ever done her. It was an 
ambition neither ignoble nor ungenerous, 
and it was with a really heroic effort that 
she silenced it in passing the invitation to 
her husband, and simply saying to Hoskins, 
" Of course you will go." 

" I don't know about that," he answered. 
" That 's the point I want some advice on. 
You see this document calls for a lady to fill 
out the bill." 

" Oh," returned Mrs. Elmore, "you will 
find some Americans at the hotels. You can 
take them." 

"Well, now, I was thinking, Mrs. Elmore, 
that I should like to take you." 

"Take me!" she echoed tremulously. 
" What an idea ! I 'm too old to go to mask 
balls." 

" You don't look it," suggested Hoskins. 

"Oh, I couldn't go," she sighed. "But 
it's very, very kind." 



■i 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 135 

Hoskins dropped his head, and gave the 
low chuckle with which he confessed any 
little bit of humbug. " Well, you or Miss 
Lily." 

Lily had retired to the other side of the 
room as soon as the parley about the invi- 
tation began. Without asking or seeing, 
she knew what was in the note, and now she 
felt it right to make a feint of not knowing 
what Mrs. Elmore meant when she asked, 
" What do you say, Lily ?" 

When the question was duly explained to 
her, she answered languidly, "I don't know. 
Do you think I 'd better ?" 

" I might as well make a clean breast of 
it, first as last," said Hoskins. " I thought 
perhaps Mrs. Elmore might refuse, she 's so 
stiff about some things," — here he gave that 
chuckle of his, — "and so I came prepared 
for contingencies. It occurred to me that 
it mightn't be quite the thing, and so I went 
round to the Spanish consul and asked him 
how he thought it would do for me to 
matronise a young lady if I could get one, 
and he said he didn't think it would do at 
all." Hoskins let this adverse decision sink 
into the breasts of his listeners before he 
added : " But he said that he was g< 




136 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

with his wife, and that if we would come 
along she could matronise us both. I don't 
know how it would work," he concluded im- 
partially. 

They all looked at Elmore, who stood 
holding the princess's missive in his hand, 
and darkly forecasting the chances of con- 
sent and denial. At the first suggestion of 
the matter, a reckless hope that this ball 
might bring Ehrhardt above their horizon 
again sprang up in his heart, and became a 
desperate fear when the whole responsibility 
of action was, as usual, left with him. He 
stood, feeling that Hoskins had used him 
very ill. 

"I suppose," began Mrs. Elmore very 
thoughtfully, " that this will be something 
quite in the style of the old masquerades 
under the Republic. " 

" Regular Ridotto business, the Spanish 
consul says," answered Hoskins. 

" It might be very useful to you, Owen," 
she resumed, " in an historical way, if Lily 
were to go and take notes of everything ; so 
that when you came to that period you could 
describe its corruptions intelligently." 

Elmore laughed. "I never thought of 
that, my dear," he said, returning the in- 



1 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 137 

vitation to Hoskins. " Your historical sense 
has been awakened late, but it promises to 
be very active. Lily had better go, by all 
means, and I shall depend upon her coming 
home with very full notes upon her dance- 
list." 

They laughed at the professor's sarcasm, 
and Hoskins, having undertaken to see that 
the last claims of etiquette were satisfied by 
getting an invitation sent to Miss Mayhew 
through the Spanish consul, went off, and left 
the ladies to the discussion of ways and means. 
Mrs. Elmore said that of course it was now too 
late to hope to get anything done, and then 
set herself to devise the character that Lily 
would have appeared in if there had been 
time to get her ready, or if all the work- 
people had not been so busy that it was 
merely frantic to think of anything. She 
first patriotically considered her as Columbia, 
with the customary drapery of stars and 
stripes and the cap of liberty. But while 
holding that she would have looked very 
pretty in the dress, Mrs. Elmore decided 
that it would have been too hackneyed ; and 
besides, everybody would have known in- 
stantly who it was. 

" Why not have had her go in the 




138 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

acter of Mr. Hoskins's * Westward'?" sug- 
gested Elmore, with lazy irony. 

' ' The very thing ! " cried his wife. ' ' Owen, 
yon deserve great credit for thinking of that ; 
no one else would have done it ! No one 
will dream what it means, and it will be 
great fun, letting them make it out. We 
must keep it a dead secret from Mr. Hoskins, 
and let her surprise him with it when he 
comes for her that evening. It will be a 
very pretty way of returning his compliment, 
and it will be a sort of delicate acknowledg- 
ment of his kindness in asking her, and in 
so many other ways. Yes, you've hit it 
exactly, Owen ; she shall go as * Westward.' " 

" Go ?" echoed Elmore, who had with dif- 
ficulty realised the rapid change of tense. 
"I thought you said you couldn't get her 
ready." 

"We must manage somehow," replied 
Mrs. Elmore. And somehow a shoemaker 
for the sandals, a seamstress for the delicate 
flowing draperies, a hair-dresser for the ad- 
justment of the young girl's rebellious abun- 
dance of hair beneath the star-lit fillet, were 
actually found, — with the help of Hoskins, 
as usual, though he was not suffered to know 
anything of the character to whose make-up 



"I 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 139 

he contributed. The perruquier, a personage 
of lordly address naturally, and of a dignity 
heightened by the demand in which he found 
himself, came early in the morning, and was 
received by Elmore with a self-possession 
that ill-comported with the solemnity of the 
occasion. " Sit down/ 1 said Elmore easily, 
pushing him a chair. " The ladies will be 
here presently. " 

" But I have no time to sit down, signore ! " 
replied the artist, with an imperious bow, 
" and the ladies must be here instantly." 

Mrs. Elmore always said that if she had 
not heard this conversation, and hurried in 
at once, the perruquier would have left them 
at that point. But she contrived to appease 
him by the manifestation of an intelligent 
sympathy ; she made Lily leave her break- 
fast untasted, and submit her beautiful head 
to the touch of this man, with whom it was 
but a head of hair and nothing more ; and 
in an hour the work was done. The artist 
whisked away the cloth which covered her 
shoulders, and crying, "Behold!" bowed 
splendidly to the spectators, and without 
waiting for criticism or suggestion, took his 
napoleon and went his way. All that day 
the work of his 'skill was sacredly guarded, 



i 



140 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

and the custodian of the treasure went about 
with her head on her shoulders, as if it had 
been temporarily placed in her keeping, and 
were something she was not at all used to 
taking care of. More than once Mrs. Elmore 
had to warn her against sinister accidents. 
"Remember, Lily," she said, " that if any- 
thing did happen, nothing could be done to 
save you ! " In spite of himself Elmore shared 
these anxieties, and in the depths of his 
wonted studies he found himself pursued and 
harassed by vague apprehensions, which upon 
analysis proved to be fears for Miss Lily's 
hair. It was a great moment when the robe 
came home— rather late — from the dress- 
maker's, and was put on over Lily's head ; but 
from this thrilling rite Elmore was of course 
excluded, and only knew of it afterwards by 
hearsay. He did not see her till she came 
out just before Hoskins arrived to fetch her 
away, when she appeared radiantly perfect 
in her dress, and in the air with which she 
meant to carry it off. At Mrs. Elmore's direc- 
tion she paraded dazzlingly up and down the 
room a number of times, bending over to see 
how her dress hung, as she walked. Mrs. 
Elmore, with her head on one side, scruti- 
nised her in every detail, and Elmore regarded 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 141 

her young beauty and delight with a pride 
as innocent as her own. A dim regret, evap- 
orating in a long sigh, which made the others 
laugh, recalled him to himself, as the bell rang 
and Hoskins appeared. He was received in a 
preconcerted silence, and he looked from one 
to the other with his queer, knowing smile, 
and took in the whole affair without a word. 

" Isn't it a pretty idea? " said Mrs. Elmore. 
" Studied from an antique bas-relief, or just 
the same as an antique, — full of the anguish 
and the repose of the Laocoon." 

"Mrs. Elmore, " said the sculptor, "you 're 
too many for me. I reckon the procession had 
better start before I make a fool of myself. 
Well ! " This was all Hoskins could say ; 
but it sufficed. The ladies declared after- 
wards that if he had added a word more, it 
would have spoiled it. They had expected 
him to go to the ball in the character of a 
miner perhaps, or in that of a trapper of the 
great plains ; but he had chosen to appear 
more naturally as a courtier of the time of 
Louis xrv. "When you go in for a dis- 
guise," he explained, " you can't make it too 
complete ; and I consider that this limp of 
(mine adds the last touch." 

"It's no use to sit up for them," Mrs. 



y 



142 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

Elmore said, when she and her husband had 
come in from calling good wishes and last 
instructions after them from the balcony, as 
their gondola pushed away. "We shan't 
see anything more of them till morning. Now 
this," she added, " is something like the 
gaiety that people at home are always fancy- 
ing in Europe. Why, I can remember when 
I used to imagine that American tourists 
figured brilliantly in salons and conversa- 
zioni, and spent their time in masking and 
throwing confetti in carnival, and going to 
balls and opera. I didn't know what Ameri- 
can tourists were, then, and how dismally 
they moped about in hotels and galleries and 
churches. And I didn't know how stupid 
Europe was socially, — how perfectly dead 
and buried it was, especially for young 
people. It would be fun if things happened 
so that Lily never found it out ! I don't 
think two offers already, — or three, if you 
count Rose-Black, — are very bad for any 
girl ; and now this ball, coming right on 
top of it, where she will see hundreds of 
handsome officers ! Well, she 11 never miss 
Patmos, at this rate, will she ?" 

" Perhaps she had better never have left 
Patmos," suggested Elmore gravely. 



A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 143 

" I don't know what you mean, Owen," 
said his wife, as if hurt. 

" I mean that it 's a great pity she should 
give herself up to the same frivolous amuse- 
ments here that she had there. The only 
good that Europe can do American girls 
who travel here is to keep them in total 
exile from what they call a good time, — 
from parties and attentions and flirtations ; 
to force them, through the hard discipline 
of social deprivation, to take some interest 
in the things that make for civilisation, — in 
history, in art, in humanity." 

" Now, there I differ with you, Owen. I 
think American girls are the nicest girls in 
the world, just as they are. And I don't 
see any harm in the things you think are so 
awful. You've lived so long here among 
your manuscripts that you Ve forgotten there 
is any such time as the present. If you are 
getting so Europeanised, I think the sooner 
we go home the better." 

" / getting Europeanised ! " began Elmore 
indignantly. 

" Yes, Europeanised ! And I don't want 
►you to be so severe with Lily, Owen. The 
child stands in terror of you now ; and if 




144 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

you keep on in this way, she can't draw a 
natural breath in the house." 

There is always something flattering, at 
first, to a gentle and peaceable man in the 
notion of being terrible to any one ; Elmore 
melted at these words, and at the fear that 
he might have been, in some way that he 
could not think of, really harsh. 

" I should be very sorry to distress her," 
he began. 

"Well, you haven't distressed her yet,"" 
his wife relented. " Only you must be care- 
ful not to. She was going to be very cir- 
cumspect, Owen, on your account, for she 
really appreciates the interest you take in 
her, and I think she sees that it won't do- 
to be at all free with strangers over here. 
This ball will be a great education for Lily, 
— a great education. I 'm going to commence 
a letter to Sue about her costume, and all 
that, and leave it open to finish up when 
Lily gets home." 

When she went to bed, she did not sleep- 
till after the time when the girl ought to 
have come ; and when she awoke to a late 
breakfast, Lily had still not returned. By 
eleven o'clock she and Elmore had passed 
the stage of accusing themselves, and then 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 145 

of accusing each other, for allowing Lily to 
go in the way they had ; and had come to 
the question of what they had better do, 
and whether it was practicable to send to 
the Spanish consulate and ask what had 
become of her. They had resigned them- 
selves to waiting for one half-hour longer, 
when they heard her voice at the water- 
gate, gaily forbidding Hoskins to come up ; 
and running out upon the balcony, Mrs. 
Elmore had a glimpse of the courtier, very 
tawdry by daylight, re-entering his gondola, 
and had only time to turn about when Lily 
burst laughing into the room. 

"Oh, don't look at me, Professor Elmore ! " 
she cried. " I *m literally danced to rags ! n 

Her dress and hair were splashed with 
drippings from the wax candles ; she was 
wildly decorated with favours from the 
German, and one of these had been used 
to pin up a rent which the spur of a hussar 
had made in her robe ; her hair had escaped 
from its fastenings during the night, and in 
putting it back she had broken the star in 
her fillet ; it was now kept in place by a bit 
of black-and-yellow cord which an officer 
had lent her. " He said he should claim it 
of me the first time we met," she exclaimed 

K 



146 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

excitedly. " Why, Professor Elmore," she 
implored with a laugh, " don't look at me 

Grief and indignation were in his heart. 
"You look like the spectre of last night," 
he said with dreamy severity, and as if he 
saw her merely as a vision. 

" Why, that *s the way I fed /" she an- 
swered ; and with a reproachful " Owen ! " 
his wife followed her flight to her room. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 147 



XI. 



ELMORE went out for a long walk, from 
which he returned disconsolate at din- 
ner. He was one of those people, common 
enough in our Puritan civilisation, who 
would rather forego any pleasure than incur 
the reaction which must follow with all the 
keenness of remorse; and he always me- 
chanically pitied (for the operation was not 
a rational one) such unhappy persons as 
he saw enjoying themselves. But he had 
not meant to add bitterness to the anguish 
which Lily would necessarily feel in retro- 
spect of the night's gaiety; he had not 
known that he was recognising, by those 
unsparing words of his, the nervous mis- 
givings in the girl's heart. He scarcely 
dared ask, as he sat down at table with 
Mrs. Elmore alone, whether Lily were 
asleep. 

"Asleep?" she echoed, in a low tone of 
mystery. " I hope so." 

"Celia, Celia!" he cried in despair. 



148 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

" What shall I do ? I feel terribly at what 
I said to her." 

"Sh ! At what you said to her? Oh 
yes ! Yes, that was cruel But there is so 
much else, poor child, that I had forgotten 
that." 

He let his plate of soup stand untasted. 
"Why— why," he faltered, "didn't she 
enjoy herself ?" And a historian of Venice, 
whose mind should have been wholly en- 
gaged in philosophising the republic's diffi- 
cult past, hung abjectly upon the question 
whether a young girl had or had not had a 
good time at a ball. 

"Yes. Oh, yes! She enjoyed herself — 
if that's all you require," replied his wife. 
" Of course she wouldn't have stayed so 
late if she hadn't enjoyed herself." 

" No," he said in a tone which he tried 
to make leading ; but his wife refused to be 
led by indirect methods. She ate her soup, 
but in a manner to carry increasing bitter- 
ness to Elmore with every spoonful 

"Come, Celia!" he cried at last, "tell 
me what has happened. You know how 
wretched this makes me. Tell me it, what- 
ever it is. Of course, I must know it in the 
end. Are there any new complications ?" 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 149 

" No new complications/' said his wife, as 
if resenting the word. " But you make such 
a bugbear of the least little matter that 
there '8 no encouragement to tell you any- 
thing." 

"Excuse me," he retorted, "I haven't 
made a bugbear of this." 

' * You haven't had the opportunity. " This 
was so grossly unjust that Elmore merely 
shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. 
When it finally appeared that he was not 
going to ask anything more, his wife added : 
" If you could listen, like any one else, and 
not interrupt with remarks that distort all 
one's ideas" — Then, as he persisted in his 
silence, she relented still further. " Why, 
of course, as you say, you will have to know 
it in the end. But I can tell you, to begin 
with, Owen, that it's nothing you can do 
anything about, or take hold of in any way. 
Whatever it is, it 's done and over ; so it 
needn't distress you at all." 

"Ah, I've known some things done and 
over that distressed me a great deal," he 
suggested. 

" The princess wasn't so very y< 
all," said Mrs. Elmore, as if 
the point in dispute, "but 




150 A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

jolly, and very kind. She wasn't in cos- 
tume ; but there was a young countess with 
her, helping receive, who appeared as Night, 
— black tulle, you know, with silver stars. 
The princess seemed to take a great fancy 
to Lily, — the Kussians always have sym- 
pathised with us in the war, —and all the 
time she wasn't dancing, the princess kept 
her by her, holding her hand and patting 
it. The officers — hundreds of them, in their 
white uniforms and those magnificent hussar 
dresses — were very obsequious to the prin- 
cess, and Lily had only too many partners. 
She says you can't imagine how splendid the 
scene was, with all those different costumes, 
and the rooms a perfect blaze of waxlights ; 
the windows were battened, so that you 
couldn't tell when it came daylight, and she 
hadn't any idea how the time was passing. 
They were not all in masks ; and there 
didn't seem to be any regular hour for un- 
masking. She can't tell just when the sup- 
per was, but she thinks it must have been 
towards morning. She says Mr. Hoskins 
got on capitally, and everybody seemed to 
like him, he was so jolly and good-natured ; 
and when they found out that he had been 
wounded in the war, they made quite a belle 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 151 

of him as he called it. The princess made a 
pointof introducing all the officers to lily that 
came up after they unmasked. They paid 
her the greatest attention, and you can easily 
see that she was the prettiest girl there." 

" I can believe that without seeing," said 
Elmore, with magnanimous pride in the 
loveliness that had made him so much 
trouble. "Well?" 

" Well, they couldn't any of them get the 
hang, as Mr. Hoskins said, of the character 
she came in, for a good while ; but when 
they did, they thought it was the best idea 
there : and it was all your idea, Owen," said 
Mrs. Elmore, in accents of such tender pride 
that he knew she must now be approaching 
the difficult passage of her narration. "It 
was so perfectly new and unconventional. 
She got on very well speaking Italian with 
the officers, for she knew as much of it as 
they did." 

Here Mrs. Elmore paused, and glanced 
hesitatingly at her husband. "They only 
made one little mistake ; but that was at the 
beginning, and they soon got 
Elmore suffered, but he did not 
was, and his wife went on with 
tion. "Lily thought it was just 



it was at the 
t overJ^L 



152 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

home, and she mustn't dance with any one 
unless they had been introduced. So after 
the first dance with the Spanish consul, as 
her escort, a young officer came up and asked 
her; and she refused, for she thought it was a 
great piece of presumption. Afterwards the 
princess told her she could dance with any 
one, introduced or not, and so she did ; and 
pretty soon she saw this first officer looking 
at her very angrily, and going about speak- 
ing to others and glancing toward her. She 
felt badly about it, when she saw how it was ; 
and she got Mr. Hoskins to go and speak to 
him. Mr. Hoskins asked him if he spoke 
English, and the officer said No ; and it seems 
that he didn't know Italian either, and Mr. 
Hoskins tried him in Spanish, — he picked 
up a little in New Mexico, — but the officer 
didn't understand it ; and all at once it oc- 
curred to Mr. Hoskins to say, 'Parlez-vous 
Francais?' and says the officer instantly, 
'Oui, monsieur.'" 

"Of course the man knew French. He 
ought to have tried him with that in the 
beginning. What did Hoskins say then?" 
asked Elmore impatiently. 

"He didn't say anything : that was all 
the French he knew. " 



A FKARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 153 

Elmore broke into a cry of laughter, and 
laughed on and on with the wild excess of 
a sad man when once he unpacks his heart 
in that way. His wife did not, perhaps, feel 
the absurdity as keenly as he, but she gladly 
laughed with him, for it smoothed her way 
to have him in this humour. " Mr. Hoskins 
just took him by the arm, and said, ' Here ! 
you come along with me,' and led him up to 
the princess, where Lily was sitting ; and 
when the princess had explained to him, lily 
rose, and mustered up enough French to say, 
'Je vous prie, monsieur, de danser avec 
moi,' and after that they were the greatest 
friends." 

" That was very pretty in her ; it was 
sovereignly gracious," said Elmore. 

" Oh, if an American girl is left to manage 
for herself she can always manage ! " cried 
Mrs. Elmore. 

"Well, and what else?" asked her hus- 
band. 

"Oh, / don't know that it amounts to 
anything," said Mrs. Elmore ; but she did 
not delay further. 

It appeared from what she went on to say 
that in the German, 1 which began not long 
l Anglice Cotillion. 



154 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

after midnight, there was a figure fancifully 
called the symphony, in which musical toys 
were distributed among the dancers in pairs ; 
the possessor of a small pandean pipe, or tin 
horn, went about sounding it, till he found 
some lady similarly equipped, when he de- 
manded her in the dance. In this way a 
tall mask, to whom a penny trumpet had 
fallen, was stalking to and fro among the 
waltzers, blowing the silly plaything with a 
disgusted air, when Lily, all unconscious of 
him, where she sat with her hand in that of 
her faithful princess, breathed a responsive 
note. The mask was instantly at her side, 
and she was whirling away in the waltz. 
She tried to make him out, but she had 
already danced with so many people that 
she was unable to decide whether she had 
seen this mask before. He was not dis- 
guised except by the little visor of black 
silk, coming down to the point of his nose ; 
his blonde whiskers escaped at either side, 
and his blonde moustache swept beneath, 
like the whiskers and moustaches of fifty 
other officers present, and he did not speak. 
This was a permissible caprice of his, but if 
she were resolved to make him speak, this 
also was a permissible caprice. She made a 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 155 

whole turn of the room in studying up the 
Italian sentence with which she assailed 
him: "Perdoni, Maschera; ma cosa ha 
detto ? Non ho ben inteso." 

<( Speak English, Mask/' came the reply. 
"I did not say anything. " It came cer- 
tainly with a German accent, and with a 
foreigner's deliberation ; but it came at once, 
and clearly. 

The English astonished her, and somehow 
it daunted her, for the mask spoke very 
gravely ; but she would not let him imagine 
that he had put her down, and she rejoined 
laughingly, " Oh, I knew that you hadn't 
spoken, but I thought I would make 
you." 

" You think you can make one do what 
you will ?" asked the mask. 

" Oh, no. I don't think I could make you 
tell me who you are, though I should like to 
make you." 

" And why should you wish to know me ? 
If you met me in Piazza, you would not 
recognise my salutation." 

"How do you know that?" demanded 
Lily. " I don't know what you mean." 

" Oh, it is understood yet already," an- 
swered the mask. " Your compatriot, with 



156 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

whom you live, wishes to be well seen by 
the Italians, and he would not let you bow 
to an Austrian. " 

"That is not so," exclaimed Lily indig- 
nantly. " Professor Elmore wouldn't be so 
mean ; and if he would, I shouldn't." She 
was frightened, but she felt her spirit rising, 
too. " You seem to know so well who I am: 
do you think it is fair for you to keep me in 
ignorance ? " 

"I cannot remain masked without your 
leave. Shall I unmask ? Do you insist ?" 

"Oh, no," she replied. "You will have 
to unmask at supper, and then I shall see 
you. I 'm not impatient. I prefer to keep 
you for a mystery." 

" You will be a mystery to me even when 
you unmask," replied the mask gravely. 

Lily was ill at ease, and she gave a little, 
unsuccessful laugh. ' ' You seem to take the 
mystery very coolly," she said in default of 
anything else. 

" I have studied the American manner," 
replied the mask. "In America they take 
everything coolly : life and death, love and 
hate — all things." 

"How do you know that? You have 
never been in America." 



\ 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 157 

" That is not necessary, if the Americans 
come here to show us." 

"They are not true Americans, if they 
show you that," cried the girl. 

"No?" 

"But I see that you are only amusing 
yourself." 

"And have you never amused yourself 
with me?" 

"How could I," she demanded, "if I 
never saw you before ?" 

"But are you sure of that?" She did 
not answer, for in this masquerade banter 
she had somehow been growing unhappy. 
"Shall I prove to you that you have seen 
me before? You dare not let me un- 
mask." 

" Oh, I can wait till supper. I shall know 
then that I have never seen you before. I 
forbid you to unmask till supper ! Will you 
obey ?" she cried anxiously. 

" I have obeyed in harder things," replied 
the mask. 

She refused to recognise anything but 
meaningless badinage in his words. "Oh, 
as a soldier, yes ! — you must be used to 
obeying orders." He did not reply, and she 
added, releasing her hand and sir 




158 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

into his arm, "I am tired now ; will you 
take me back to the princess ?" 

He led her silently to her place, and left 
her with a profound bow. 

"Now," said the princess, "they shall 
give you a little time to breathe. I will not 
let them make you dance every minute. 
They are indiscreet. You shall not take any 
of their musical instruments, and so you can 
fairly escape till supper. " 

" Thank you," said Lily absently, " that 
will be the best way ;" and she sat languidly 
watching the dancers. A young naval officer 
who spoke English ran across the floor to her. 

" Come," he cried, " I shall have twenty 
duels on my hands if I let you rest here, 
when there are so many who wish to dance 
with you. " He threw a pipe into her lap, and 
at the same moment a pipe sounded from the 
other side of the room. 

"This is a conspiracy!" exclaimed the 
girl. " I will not have it ! I am not going to 
dance any more." She put the pipe back into 
his hands ; he placed it to his lips, and 
sounded it several times, and then dropped 
it into her lap again with a laugh, and van- 
ished in the crowd. 

"That little fellow is a rogue," said the 



A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 159 

princess. " But he is not so bad as some of 
them. Monsieur," she cried in French to 
the fair-whiskered, tall mask who had already 
presented himself before Lily, "I will not 
permit it, if it is for a trick. You must un- 
mask. I will dispense mademoiselle from 
dancing with you." 

The mask did not reply, but turned his 
eyes upon Lily with an appeal which the 
holes of the visor seemed to intensify. " It 
is a promise," she said to the princess, rising 
in a sort of fascination. " I have forbidden 
him to unmask before supper." 

"Oh, very well," answered the princess, 
" if that is the case. But make him bring 
you back soon : it is almost time." 

" Did you hear, Mask?" asked the girl, as 
they waltzed away. ' ' I will only make two 
turns of the room with you." 

"Perdoni?" 

"This is too bad!" she exclaimed. "I 
will not be trifled with in this way. Either 
speak English, or unmask at once." 

The mask again answered in Italian, with 
a repeated apology for not understanding. 
"You understand very well," retorted Lily, 
now really indignant, " and you know that 
this passes a jest. " 



i 



162 A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

unexpected to his wife, " and if Lily has not 
been seriously annoyed by the matter, I am 
glad that it has happened. I have had my 
regrets — my doubts — whether I did not dis- 
miss that man's pretensions too curtly, too 
unkindly. But I am convinced now that we 
did exactly right, and that she was wise never 
to bestow another thought upon him. A man 
capable of contriving a petty persecution of 
this sort — of pursuing a young girl who had 
rejected him in this shameless fashion, — is 
no gentleman. " 

" It was a persecution," said Mrs. Elmore 
with a dazed air, as if this view of the case 
had not occurred to her. 

" A miserable, unworthy persecution !" re- 
peated her husband. 

"Yes." 

"And we are well rid of him. He has 
relieved me by this last performance, im- 
mensely ; and I trust that if Lily had any 
secret lingering regrets, he has given her a 
final lesson. Though I must say, in justice 
to her, poor girl, she didn't seem to need it. " 

Mrs. Elmore listened with a strange abey- 
ance ; she looked beaten and bewildered, 
while he vehemently uttered these words. 
She could not meet his eyes, with her con- 



A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 163 

8ciousne88 of having her intended romance 
thrown back upon her hands ; and he seemed 
in nowise eager to meet hers, for whatever 
consciousness of his own. "Well, it isn't 
certain that he was the one, after all," she 
said. 



164 A TEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 



1 



xn. 

LONG after the ball Lily seemed to El- 
more's eye not to have recovered her 
former tone. He thought she went about 
languidly, and that she was fitful and dreamy, 
breaking from moods of unwonted abstraction 
in bursts of gaiety as unnatural. She did 
not talk much of the ball ; he could not be 
sure that she ever recurred to it of her own 
motion. Hoskins continued to come a great 
deal to the house, and she often talked with 
him for a whole evening ; Elmore fancied 
she was very serious in these talks. 

He wondered if Lily avoided him, or 
whether this was only an illusion of his ; but 
in any case, he was glad that the girl seemed 
to find so much comfort in Hoskins's com- 
pany, and when it occurred to him he always 
said something to encourage his visits. His 
wife was singularly quiescent at this time, as 
if, having accomplished all she wished in 
Lily's presence at the princess's ball, she was 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 165 

willing to rest for a while from further social 
endeavour. Life was falling into the dull rou- 
tine again, and after the past shocks his 
nerves were gratefully clothing themselves 
in the old habits of tranquillity once more, 
when one day a letter came from the over- 
seers of Patmos University, offering him the 
presidency of that institution on condition 
of his early return. The board had in view 
certain changes, intended to bring the uni- 
versity abreast with the times, which they 
hoped would meet his approval. 

Among these was a modification of the 
name, which was hereafter to be Patmos 
University and Military Institute. The 
board not only believed that popular feeling 
demanded the introduction of military drill 
into the college, but they felt that a college 
which had been closed at the . beginning of 
the Rebellion, through the dedication of its 
president and nearly all its students to the 
war, could in no way so gracefully recognise 
this proud fact of its history as by hereafter 
making war one of the arts whi( 
The board explained that 
more would not be ex] 
of this branch of instnu 
competent military 




166 A FKABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

vided, and continued under him as long as 
he should deem his services essential. The 
letter closed with a cordial expression of the 
desire of Elmore's old friends to have him 
once more in their midst, at the close of 
labours which they were sure would do 
credit to the good old university and to the 
whole city of Patmos. 

Elmore read this letter at breakfast, and 
silently handed it to his wife : they were 
alone, for Lily, as now often happened, had 
not yet risen. "Well?" he said, when she 
had read it in her turn. She gave it back 
to him with a look in her dimmed eyes 
which he could not mistake. " I see there 
is no doubt of your feeling, Celia," he added. 

" I don't wish to urge you," she replied, 
" but yes, I should like to go back. Yes, I 
am homesick. I have been afraid of it be- 
fore, but this chance of returning makes it 
certain. " 

"And you see nothing ridiculous in my 
taking the presidency of a military insti- 
tute?" 

" They say expressly that they don't ex- 
pect you to give instruction in that branch." 

"No, not immediately, it seems," he said, 
with his pensive irony. " And the history? " 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 167 

*' Haven't you almost got notes enough ?" 

Elmore laughed sadly. " I have been 
here two years. It would take me twenty 
years to write sueh a history of Venice as I 
ought not to be ashamed to write ; it would 
take me five years to scamp it as I thought 
of doing. Oh, I dare say I had better go 
back. I have neither the time nor the 
money to give to a work I never was fit for, 
— of whose magnitude even I was unable to 
conceive." 

" Don't say that ! " cried his wife, with 
the old sympathy. " You will write it yet, 
I know you will. I would rather spend all 
my days in this — watery mausoleum than 
have you talk so, Owen ! " 

" Thank you, my dear ; but the work 
won't be lost even if I give it up at this 
point. I can do something with my mate- 
rial, I suppose. And you know that if I 
didn't wish to give up my project I couldn't 
It 's a sign of my unfitness for it that 
able to abandon it. The man who is 
to write the history of Venice will have 
volition in the matter ; he cannot leav< 
and he will not die till he has finished 
He feebly crushed a bit of bread in 
fingers as he ended with this burst of 




168 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

ing, and he shook his head in sad negation 
to his wife's tender protest, — " Oh, you will 
come back some day to finish it ! " 

" No one ever comes back to finish a his- 
tory of Venice," he said. 

" Oh, yes, you will," she returned. "But 
you need the rest from this kind of work, 
now, just as you needed rest from your col- 
lege work before. You need a change of 
standpoint, — and the American standpoint 
will be the very thing for you." 

" Perhaps so, perhaps so," he admitted. 
" At any rate, this is a handsome offer, and 
most kindly made, Celia. It '3 a great com- 
pliment. I didn't suppose they valued me 
so much. " 

" Of course they valued you, and they will 
be very glad to get you. I call it merely 
letting the historic material ripen in your 
mind, or else I shouldn't let you accept. 
And I shall be glad to go home, Owen, on 
Lily's account. The child is getting no 
good here : she's drooping." 

"Drooping?" 

"Yes. Don't you see how she mopes 
about?" 

" I 'm afraid — that — I have — noticed." 

He was going to ask why she was droop- 




A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 169 



\ 



ing ; but he could not. He said, recurring 
to the letter of the overseers, " So Patmos 
is a city." 

" Of course it is by this time," said his 
wife, " with all that prosperity !" 

Now that they were determined to go, 
their little preparations for return were soon 
made ; and a week after Elmore had written 
to accept the offer of the overseers, they were 
ready to follow his letter home. Their deci- 
sion was a blow to Hoskins under which he 
visibly suffered ; and they did not realise till 
then in what fond and affectionate friendship 
he held them. He now frankly spent his 
whole time with them ; he disconsolately 
helped them pack, and he did all that a 
consul can do to secure free entry for some 
objects of Venice that they wished to get in 
without payment of duties at New York. 

He said a dozen times, "I don't know 
what I will do when you're gone;" and 
toward the last he alarmed them for his own 
interests by ^beginning to say, 
don't see but what I will have 

The last night but one 
duty to talk to him very sei 
future and what he owed to; 
him that he must stay in It 




170 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 



a 



bring home something that would honour 
the great, precious, suffering country for 
which he had fought so nobly, and which 
they all loved. She made the tears come 
into her eyes as she spoke, and when she 
said that she should always be proud to be 
associated with one of his works, Hoakins's 
voice was quite husky in replying : "Is 
that the way you feel about it ?" He went 
away promising to remain at least till he 
finished his bas-relief of Westward, and his 
figure of the Pacific Slope ; and the next 
morning he sent around by a/acchino a note 
to Lily. 

She ran it through in the presence of the 
Elmores, before whom she received it, and 
then, with a cry of "I think Mr. Hoskins 
is too bad I" she threw it into Mrs. Elmore's 
lap, and, catching her handkerchief to her 
eyes, she broke into tears and went out of 
the room. The note read : — 

Bear Miss Lily, — Your kind interest in 
me gives me courage to say something that 
will very likely make me hateful to you 
for evermore, feut I have got to say it, and 
you have got to know it ; and it 's all the 
worse for me if you have never suspected it. 
I want to give my whole life to you, where- 




A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 171 

ever and however you will have it. With 
you by my side, I feel as if I could really 
do something that you would not be ashamed 
of in sculpture, and I believe that I could 
make you nappy. I suppose I believe this 
because I love you very dearly, and I know 
the chances are that you will not think this 
is reason enough. But I would take one 
chance in a million, and be only too glad of 
it. I hope it will not worry you to read 
this : as I said before, I had to tell you. 
Perhaps it won't be altogether a surprise. 
I might go on, but I suppose that until I 
hear from you I had better give you as little 
of my eloquence as possible. 

Clay Hoskins. 

" Well, upon my word," said Elmore, to 
whom his wife had transferred the letter, 
" this is very indelicate of Hoskins ! I must 
say, I expected something better of him." 
He looked at the note with a face of disgust. 

"I don't know why you had a right to 
expect anything better of him, as you call 
it," retorted his wife. "It's perfectly 
natural." 

" Natural ! " cried Elmore. " To put this 
upon us at the last moment, when 
how much trouble I Ve" 

Lily re-entered the room as pi 
as she had left it, and saved him ^V V 




^ 



172 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

traying himself as to the extent of his con* 
fidences to Hoskins. " Professor Elmore," 
she said, bending her reddened eyes upon 
him, " I want yon to answer this letter for 
me ; and I don't want yon to write as yon — 
I mean, don't make it so cutting— so-so- 
Why, I like Mr. Hoskins ! He 's been so 
bind ! And if yon said anything to wound 
his feelings" — 

" I shall not do that, you may be sure ; 
because, for one reason, I shall say nothing 
at all to him," replied Elmore. 

" You won't write to him ?" she gasped. 

"No." 

" Why, what shall I do-o-o-o ?" demanded 
Lily, prolonging the syllable in a burst of 
grief and astonishment. 

" I don't know," answered Elmore. 

"Owen," cried his wife, interfering for 
the first time, in response to the look of 
appeal that Lily turned upon her, "you 
must write ! 

"Celia," he retorted boldly, "I won* 
write. I have a genuine regard for Hoskins ; 
I respect him, and I am very grateful to him 
for all his kindness to you. He has been 
like a brother to you both." 

"Why, of course," interrupted Lily, "I 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 173 

never thought of him as anything but a 
brother. " 

" And though I must say I think it would 
have been more thoughtful and — and — more 
considerate in him not to do this" — 

" We did everything we could to fight 
him off from it," interrupted Mrs. Elmore, 
" both of us. We saw that it was coming, 
and we tried to stop it. But nothing would 
help. Perhaps, as he says, he did have to 
do it" 

" I didn't dream of his — having any such 
—idea," said Elmore. " I felt so perfectly 
safe in his coming ; I trusted everything to 
him." 

"I suppose you thought his wanting to 
come was all unconscious cerebration," said 
his wife disdainfully. " Well, now you see 
it wasn't." 

" Yes ; but it 's too late now to help it ; 
and though I think he ought to have spared 
us this, if he thought there was no hope for 
him, still I can't bring myself to inflict pain 
upon him, and the long and the short of it 
is, I won't." 

" But how is he to be answered 

" I don't know. You can 

" I could never do it in the 




174 A nCARTUL RESPONSIBILITY* 

11 1 own it 's difficult," said Elmore coldly. 

11 Oh, / will answer him — I will answer 
him, " cried Lily, " rather than have any 
trouble about it. Here, — here," she said, 
reaching blindly for pen and paper, as she 
seated herself at Elmore's desk, "give me 
the ink, quick. Oh, dear 1 What shall I 
say ? What date is it ?— the 25th ? And it 
doesn't matter about the day of the week. 
4 Pear Mr. Hoskins — Dear Mr. Hoskins — 
Dear Mr. Hosk ' — Ought you to put Clay 
Hoskins, Esq., at the top or the bottom— or 
not at all, when you 've said Dear Mr. Hos- 
kins ? Esquire seems so cold, anyway, and 
I won't put it! 'Dear Mr. Hoskins' — 
Professor Elmore ! " she implored reproach- 
fully, " toll me what to say !" 

" That would be equivalent to writing the 
letter," he began. 

" Well, write it, then," she said, throwing 
down the pen. " I don't ash you to dictate 
it. Write it, — write anything, — just in 
pencil, you know ; that won't commit you to 
anything; they say a thing in pencil isn't 
^^Mk legal, — and I '11 copy it out in the first per- 

m "Owen," said his wife, "you shall not 

kfuf 






se ! It 's inhuman, it 's inhospitable, 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 175 

when Lily wants you to, so ! Why, I never 
heard of such a thing 1 " 

Elmore desperately caught up the sheet of 
paper on which Lily had written " Dear Mr. 
Hoskins," and groaning out " Well, well 1" 
he added, — 

/ have your letter, Conie to the station to- 
morrow and say good-bye to her whom you will 
yet live to thank for remaining only 

Your friend^ 

Elizabeth Ma rnsw. 

" There ! there, that will do beautifully — 
beautifully ! Oh, thank you, Professor El- 
more, ever and ever so much ! That will 
save his feelings, and do everything," said 
Lily, sitting down again to copy it ; while 
Mrs. Elmore, looking over her shoulder, 
mingled her hysterical excitement with the 
girl's, and helped her out by sealing the note 
when it was finished and directed. 

It accomplished at least one purpose 
intended. It kept Hoskins away till the 
final moment, and it brought him to the 
station for their adieux just before their train 
started. A consciousness of the absurdity 
of his part gave his face a humorously rue- 
ful cast. But he came pluckily to the mark. 
He marched straight up to the girl. " It 's 




176 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

all right, Miss Lily," he said, and offered her 
his hand, which she had a strong impulse to 
cry over. Then he turned to Mrs. Elmore, 
and while he held her hand in his right, he 
placed his left affectionately on Elmore's 
shoulder, and, looking at Lily, he said, " Yon 
ought to get Miss Lily to help you out with 
your history, Professor ; she has a very good 
style, — quite a literary style, I should have 
said, if I hadn't known it was hers. I don't 
like her subjects, though. " They broke into 
a forlorn laugh together; he wrung their 
hands once more, without a word, and, 
without looking back, limped out of the 
waiting-room and out of their lives. 

They did not know that this was really 
the last of Hoskins, — one never knows that 
any parting is the last, — and in their in- 
ability to conceive of a serious passion in 
him, they quickly consoled themselves for 
what he might suffer. They knew how 
kindly, how tenderly even, they felt to- 
wards him, and by that juggle with the 
emotions which we all practise at times, 
they found comfort for him in the fact. 
Another interest, another figure, began to 
occupy the morbid fancy of Elmore, and aa 
they approached Peschiera his expectation 



% 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 177 

became intense. There was no reason why 
it should exist ; it would be by the thou- 
sandth chance, even if Ehrhardt were still 
there, that they should meet him at the 
railroad station, and there were a thousand 
chances that he was no longer in Peschiera. 
He could see that his wife and Lily were 
restive too ; as the train drew into the 
station they nodded to each other, and 
pointed out of the window, as if to identify 
the spot where Lily had first noticed him ; 
they laughed nervously, and it seemed to 
Elmore that he could not endure their 
laughter. 

During that long wait which the train 
used to make in the old Austrian times at 
Peschiera, while the police authorities vised 
the passports of those about to cross the 
frontier, Elmore continued perpetually alert. 
He was aware that he should not know 
Ehrhardt if he met him ; but he should 
know that he was present from the looks of 
Lily and Mrs. Elmore, and he watched 
them. They dined well in waiting, while 
he impatiently trifled with the food, and ate 
next to nothing ; and they calmly 
to their places in the train, to 
remounted after a last desi 

M 




1 



178 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

around the platform in a passion of dis- 
appointment. The old longing not to be 
left so wholly to the effect of what he had 
done possessed him to the exclusion of all 
other sensations, and as the train moved 
away from the station he fell back against 
the cushions of the carriage, sick that he 
should never even have looked on the face 
of the man in whose destiny he had played 
so fatal a part. 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 179 



XIII. 

IN America, life soon settled into form 
about the daily duties of Elmore's place, 
and the daily pleasures and cares which his 
wife assumed as a leader in Patmos society. 
Their sojourn abroad conferred its distinc- 
tion ; the day came when they regarded it 
as a brilliant episode, and it was only by fit- 
ful glimpses that they recognised its essen- 
tial dulness. After they had been home a 
year or two, Elmore published his Story of 
Venice in the Lives of her Heroes, which 
fell into a ready oblivion ; he paid all the 
expenses of the book, and was puzzled that, 
in spite of this, the final settlement should 
still bring him in debt to his publishers. 
He did not understand, but he submitted ; 
and he accepted the failure of 
meekly. If he could have chosen, 
have preferred that the Satui 
which alone noticed it in London 
lines of exquisite slight, should 





180 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

it in silence. But after all, he felt that the 
book deserved no better fate. He always 
spoke of it as nnphilosophised and incom- 
plete, without any just claim to being. 

Lily had returned to her sister's house- 
hold, but though she came home in the hey- 
day of her young beauty, she failed somehow 
to take up the story of her life just where 
she had left it in Patmos. On the way 
home she had refused an offer in London, 
and shortly after her arrival in America she 
received a letter from a young gentleman 
whom she had casually seen in Geneva, and 
who had found exile insupportable since 
parting with her, and was ready to return 
to his native land at her bidding ; but she 
said nothing of these proposals till long after- 
wards to Professor Elmore, who, she said, 
had suffered enough from her offers. She 
went to all the parties and pic-nics, and had 
abundant opportunities of flirtation and mar- 
riage ; but she neither flirted nor married. 
She seemed to have greatly sobered ; and the 
sound sense which she had always shown be- 
came more and more qualified with a thought- 
ful sweetness. At first, the relation between 
her and the Elmores lost something of its in- 
timacy ; but when, after several years, her 



1S1 

health gave way, a familiarity, even kinder 
than before, grew up. She used to like to 
come to them, and talk and langh fondly 
over their old Venetian days. But often 
she eat pensive and absent, in the midst of 
these memories, and looked at Elmore with a 
regard which he found hard to bear ; a gentle 
unconscious wonder it seemed, in which he 
imagined a shade of tender reproach. 

When she recovered her health, after a jour, 
ney to the West one winter, they saw that, by 
some subtle and indefinable difference, she 
was no longer a young girl. Perhaps it was 
because they had not met her for half a year. 
But perhaps it was age, — she was now thirty. 
However it was, Elmore recognised with a 
pang that the first youth at least had gone 
out of her voice and eyes. She only re 
to arrange for a long sojourn in the Wei 
She liked the climate and the people, si 
said j and she seemed well and happy. 
had planned starting a Kindorga 
in Omaha with another young li " 
that she wanted something to I 
end by marrying one 
widowers," said Mrs. Elmore. 1 

" I wonder ehe didn't 1 
Hoskins," mused Elmore aloucW 




\ 



' 



r 




" Xo, jam don't, dear," wood hzs wife, wh 
bad sot grown less direct in dralrng witi 
him. " Ton know it would hare bee* ridi 
euloits; besides, the merer cared aajlkimj 
lor him, — she couldn't. Ton might as wd 
wonder why she didn't take Captain Ehrhard 
after yon dismissed him." 

" I dismissed him ?" 

' ' Yon wrote to him, didn't you ? " 

"Cetia," cried Elmore, "this I omm 
bear. Did I take a single step in tha 
business without her request and your fu] 
approval? Didn't yon both ask me t 
write?" 

"Yes, I suppose we did." 

"Suppose?" 

" Well, we ditl, — if you want me to sa; 
it. And I 'm not accusing you of anything 
I know you acted for the best But you cai 
see yourself, can't you, that it was rathe 
sudden to have it end so quickly " — 

She did not finish her sentence, or he di 
not hear the close in the miserable absenc 
into which he lapsed. " Celia," he asked a 
last, " do you think she — she had any feelin 
about him ?" 

"Oh," cried his wife restively, "hoi 
should /know?" 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 183 

" I didn't suppose you knew" he pleaded. 
" I asked if you thought so." 

" What would be the use of thinking any- 
thing about it ? The matter can't be helped 
now. If you inferred from any thing she said 
to you" — 

"She told me repeatedly, in answer to 
questions as explicit as I could make them, 
that she wished him dismissed." 

" Well, then, very likely she did." 

" Very likely, Celia?" 

" Yes. At any rate, it 's too late now." 

" Yes, it *s too late now." He was silent 
again, and he began to walk the floor, after 
his old habit, without speaking. He was 
always mute when he was in pain, and he 
startled her with the anguish in which he 
now broke forth. " I give it up ! I give it 
up ! Celia, Celia, I 'm afraid I did wrong ! 
Yes, I 'm afraid that I spoiled two lives. I 
ventured to lay my sacrilegious hands upon 
two hearts that a divine force was 
together, and put them asunder, 
lamentable blunder, — it was a 

"Why, Owen, how strangely 
How could you have done any 
under the circumstances ?" 

" Oh, I could have done very 




f 



184 A FEABFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

I might have seen him, and talked with him 
brotherly, face to face. He was a fearless 
and generous soul ! And I was meanly 
scared for my wretched little decorums, for 
my responsibility to her friends, and I gave 
him no chance." 

"We wouldn't let you give him any," 
interrupted his wife. 

" Don't try to deceive yourself, don't try 
to deceive me, Celia ! I know well enough 
that you would have been glad to have me 
show mercy 5 and I would not even show 
him the poor grace of passing his offer in 
silence, if I must refuse it. I couldn't spare 
him even so much as that ! " 

" We decided — we both decided — that it 
would be better to cut off all hope at once," 
urged his wife. 

" Ah, it was I who decided that — decided 
everything. Leave me to deal honestly with 
myself at last, Celia ! I have tried long 
enough to believe that it was not I who did 
it ! " The pent-up doubt of years, the long- 
silenced self-accusal, burst forth in his words. 
" Oh, I have suffered for it ! I thought he 
must come back, somehow, as long as we 
stayed in Venice. When we left Peschiera 
without a glimpse of him — I wonder I out- 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 185 

lived it. But even if I had seen him there, 
what use would it have been? Would I 
have tried to repair the wrong done ? What 
did I do but impute unmanly and impudent 
motives to him when he seized his chance to 
see her once more at that masquerade " — 

"No, no, Owen ! He was not the one. 
Lily was satisfied of that long ago. It was 
nothing but a chance, a coincidence. Per- 
haps it was some one he had told about the 
affair"— 

" No matter ! no matter ! If I thought it 
was he, my blame is the same. And she, 
poor girl, — in my lying compassion for him, 
I used to accuse her of cold-heartedness, of 
indifference ! I wonder she did not abhor 
the sight of me. How has she ever tolerated 
the presence, the friendship, of a man who 
did her this irreparable wrong ? Yes, it has 
spoiled her life, and it was my work. N< 
no, Celia ! you and she had nothing to 
with it, except as I forced your consent 
was my work ; and, however I have 
openly and secretly to shirk it, I must 
this fearful responsibility. " 

He dropped into a chair^ 
in his hands, while his 
with loving excuses for 




^ 



186 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

with tender protests against the exaggera- 
tions of his remorse. She said that he had 
done the only thing he could do ; that lily 
wished it, and that she never had blamed 
him. " Why, I don't believe she would 
ever have married Captain Ehrhardt, any- 
how. She was full of that silly fancy of 
hers about Dick Burton, all the time, — you 
know how she used always to be talking 
about him ; and when she came home and 
found she had outgrown him, she had to 
refuse him, and I suppose it's that that's 
made her rather melancholy. " She explained 
that Major Burton had become extremely 
fat, that his moustache was too big and 
black, and his laugh too loud ; there was 
nothing left of him, in fact, but his empsy 
sleeve, and Lily was too conscientious to 
marry him merely for that. 

In fact, Elmore's regret did reflect a mon- 
strous and distorted image of his conduct. 
He had really acted the part of a prudent 
and conscientious man ; he was perfectly 
justifiable at every step ; but in the retro- 
spect those steps which we can perfectly 
justify sometimes seem to have cost so ter- 
ribly that we look back even upon our sin- 
ful stumblings with better heart. Heaven 



A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 187 

knows how such things will be at the last 
day ; but at that moment there was no 
wrong, no folly of his youth, of which El- 
more did not think with more comfort than 
of this passage in which he had been so wise 
and right. 

Of course the time came when he saw it 
all differently again; when his wife per- 
suaded him that he had done the best that 
any one could do with the responsibilities 
that ought never to have been laid on a 
man of his temperament and habits ; when 
he even came to see that Lily's feeling was 
a matter of pure conjecture with him, and 
that so far as he knew she had never cared 
anything for Ehrhardt. Yet he was glad to 
have her away ; he did not like to talk of 
her with his wife ; he did not think of her 
if he could help it. 

They heard from time to time through her 
sister that her little enterprise in Omaha 
was prospering, and that she was very con- 
tented out West ; at last they heard directly 
from her that she was going to be 
Till then, Elmore had been dumbly 
in his sombre moods with the 
problem at which his imaginal 
toiled, — the problem of how 




^ 



188 A FEARFUL RESPONSIBILITY. 

and Ehrhardt should meet again and retrieve 
the error of the past for him. He contrived 
this encounter in a thousand different ways 
by a thousand different chances ; what he 
so passionately and sorrowfully longed for 
accomplished itself continually in his dreams, 
but only in his dreams. 

In due course Lily married, and from all 
they could understand, very happily. Her 
husband was a clergyman, and she took par- 
ticular interest in his parochial work, which 
her good heart and clear head especially 
qualified her to share with him. To connect 
her fate any longer with that of Ehrhardt 
was now not only absurd, it was improper ; 
yet Elmore sometimes found his fancy for- 
getfully at work as before. He could not at 
once realise that the tragedy of this romance, 
such as it was, remained to him alone, ex- 
cept perhaps as Ehrhardt shared it. With 
him, indeed, Elmore still sought to fret his 
remorse and keep it poignant, and his final 
failure to do so made him ashamed. But 
what lasting sorrow can one have from the 
disappointment of a man whom one has 
never seen? If Lily could console herself, 
it seemed probable that Ehrhardt too had 
"got along." 



TONELLrS MAEEIAGE. 




o 



TONELLPS MARRIAGE. 



THERE was do richer man in Venice than 
Tommaso Tonclli, who hud enough on 
his florin a day ; and none younger than he, 
who owned himself forty-seven years old. 
He led the cheerfullest life in the world, and 
was quite a monster of content ; but when 
I come to sum up hia pleasure!?, I fear that 
I shall appear to my readers to be celebrating 
a very insipid and monotonous existence. I 
doubt if even a summary of his duties could 
be made attractive to the conscientious Ima- 
gination of hard-working people ; for Ton- 
elli'a labours were not killing, nor, for that 
matter, were those of any Venetian that I 
ever knew. He had ft stated employ™™ 
in the office of the notary Canmrotti ; and h 
passed there so much of every working dj 
as lies between nine and five o'clock, writing 
upon deeds and conveyances sml rutitirmi 



^i 



192 TONELLl'S MAB&IAGE. 

and other legal instruments for the notary, 
who sat in an adjoining room, secluded from 
nearly everything in this world but snuff! 
He called Tonelli by the sound of a little 
bell ; and, when he turned to take a paper 
from his safe, he seemed to be abstracting 
some secret from long-lapsed centuries, which 
he restored again, and locked back among 
the dead ages when his clerk replaced the 
document in his hands. These hands were 
very soft and pale, and their owner was a 
colourless old man, whose silvery hair fell 
down a face nearly as white ; but, as he has 
almost nothing to do with the present affair, 
I shall merely say that, having been com- 
promised in the last revolution, he had been 
obliged to live ever since in perfect retire- 
ment, and that he seemed to have been 
blanched in this social darkness as a plant 
is blanched by growth in a cellar. His 
enemies said that he was naturally a timid 
man, but they could not deny that he had 
seen things to make the brave afraid, or that 
he had now every reason from the police to 
be secret and cautious in his life. He could 
hardly be called company for Tonelli, who 
must have found the day intolerably long 
but for the visit which the notary's pretty 



lRkiage. 103 

grand (laughter contrived to pay every morn- 
ing ip the cheerless mead. She commonly 
appeared on eome errand from her mother, 
but her chief business seemed to be to share 
with Tonelli the modest feast of rumour and 
hearsay which he loved to famish forth for 
her, and from which doubtless she carried 
back some fragments of gossip to the family 
apartments. Tonelli called her, with that 
ndngled archness and tenderness of the 
Venetians, his Paronsina ; and, as he had 
seen her grow up from the smallest possible 
of Little Mistresses, there was no shyness 
between them, and they were fully privi- 
leged to each other's society by her mother. 
When she flitted away again, Tonelli was 
left to a stillness broken only by the soft 
breathing of the old n 
and by the shrill discourse of his own loqua 
cioua pen, so that he was commonly glad 
enough when it came five o'clock. At tt" 
hour he put on his block coat, t 
with constant use, and his fi 
worn down to the pasteboard w 
brushing, and canght npiti 
in his hand. Then, saluting t! 
took his way to the little n 
it was his custom to dine, i 




194 toneim's iuxbuok. 

soup Hid bit risotto, or dish of fried Uvi 
the austere silence imposed by the pre 
of a few poor Austrian captains and lie 
ants. It was not that the Italians fear 
be overheard by these enemies ; but il 
good dimostrasione to be silent befon 
oppressor, and not let him know that 
even enjoyed their dinners well em 
under his government, to chat sociably 
them. To tell the truth, this duty w, 
irksome one to Tonelli, who liked far fa 
to dine, as he sometimes did, at a cook-i 
where he met the folk of the people ( 
dd popolo), as be called them ; and w 
though himself a person of civil condi 
he discoursed freely with the other gi 
and ate of their bumble but relishing 
He was known among them as Sior ' 
maao ; and they paid him a homage, V 
they enjoyed equally with htm, as a p 
not only learned in the law, but a po 
gift enough to write wedding and fu 
verses, and a veteran who had fougb 
the dead Republic of Forty-eight. ' 
honoured him as a most travelled gc 
man, who had been in the Tyrol, and 
could have spoken German, if he hat 
despised that tongae as the language o 



TONELLrt MABKIAGK. 195 

ugly Croats, like one born to it. Who, for 
example, spoke Venetian more elegantly 
than Sior Tommaso? or Tuscan, when he 
chose ? and yet he was poor, — a man of that 
genius ! Patience ! When Garibaldi came, 
we should see ! The facchini and gondoliers, 
who had been wagging their tongues all day 
at the church corners and ferries, were never 
tired of talking of this gifted friend of theirs, 
when having ended some impressive dis- 
course or some dramatic story, he left them 
with a sudden adieu, and walked quickly 
away toward the Biva degli Schiavoni. 

Here, whether he had dined at the cook- 
shop, or at his more genteel and gloomy 
restaurant of the Bronze Horses, it was his 
custom to lounge an hour or two over a cup 
of coffee and a Virginia cigar at one of the 
many caffes, and to watch all the world as 
it passed to and fro on the quay. Tonelli 
was grey, he did not disown it; but he 
always maintained that his heart was still 
young, and that there was, moreover, a 
great difference in persons as to age, which 
told in his favour. So he loved to sit there, 
and look at the ladies ; and he amused him- 
self by inventing a pet name for every face 
he saw, which ha used to teach to certain 



196 TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 

friends of his, when they joined him over 
his coffee. These friends were all young 
enough to be his sons, and wise enough to 
be his fathers; but they were always glad 
to be with him, for he had so cheery a wit 
and so good a heart that neither his years 
nor his follies could make any one sad. His 
kind face beamed with smiles, when Pen- 
nellini, chief among the youngsters in his 
affections, appeared on the top of the nearest 
bridge, and thence descended directly to- 
wards his little table. Then it was that he 
drew out the straw which ran through the 
centre of his long Virginia, and lighted the 
pleasant weed, and gave himself up to the 
delight of making aloud those comments on 
the ladies which he had hitherto stifled in 
his breast. Sometimes he would feign him- 
self too deeply taken with a passing beauty 
to remain quiet, and would make his friend 
follow with him in chase of her to the Public 
Gardens. But he was a fickle lover, and 
wanted presently to get back to his caffe, 
where, at decent intervals of days or weeks, he 
would indulge himself in discovering a spy 
in some harmless stranger, who, in going out, 
looked curiously at the scar Tonelli's cheek had 
brought from the battle of Vicenza in 1848. 



TONELLl'S MABRIAGK. 197 

"Something of a spy, no?" he asked at 
these times of the waiter, who, flattered by 
the penetration of a frequenter of his caffe, 
and the implication that it was thought sedi- 
tious enough to be watched by the police, as- 
sumed a pensive importance, and answered, 
" Something of a spy, certainly." 

Upon this Tonelli was commonly encour- 
aged to proceed : " Did I ever tell you how 
I once sent one of those ugly muzzles out of 
a caffe ? I knew him as soon as I saw him, 
— I am never mistaken in a spy, — and I went 
with my newspaper, and sat down close at 
his side. Then I whispered to him across 
the sheet, * We are two. ' • Eh ? ' says he. 
• It is a very small caffe, and there is no 
need of more than one,* and then I stared 
at him and frowned. He looks at me fix- 
edly a moment, then gathers up his hat and 
gloves, and takes his pestilency off." 

The waiter, who had heard this story, man 
and boy, a hundred times, made a quite suc- 
cessful show of enjoying it, as he walked 
away with Tonelli's fee of half a cent in his 
pocket. Tonelli then had left from his day's 
salary enough to pay for the ice which he ate 
at ten o'clock, but which he would sometimes 
forego, in order to give the money in chari 




198 TONELLl'S MABRIAGE. 

though more commonly he indulged himself, 
and put off the beggar with, "Another time, 
my dear. I have no leisure now to discuss 
those matters with thee." 

On holidays this routine of Tonelli's life 
was varied. In the forenoon he went to 
mass at St. Mark's, to see the beauty and 
fashion of the city ; and then he took a walk 
with his four or five young friends, or went 
with them to play at bowls, or even made 
an excursion to the main-land where they 
hired a carriage, and all those Venetians got 
into it, like so many seamen, and drove the 
horse with as little mercy as if he had been 
a sail-boat. At seven o'clock Tonelli dined 
with the notary, next whom he sat at table, 
and for whom his quaint pleasantries had 
a zest that inspired the Paronsina and her 
mother to shout them into his dull ears, that 
he might lose none of them. He laughed a 
kind of faded laugh at them, and, rubbing 
his pale hands together, showed by his act 
that he did not think his best wine too good 
for his kindly guest. The signora feigned 
to take the same delight shown by her father 
and daughter in Tonelli's drolleries ; but I 
doubt if she had a great sense of his humour, 
or, indeed, cared anything for it save as she 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 199 

perceived that it gave pleasure to those she 
loved. Otherwise, however, she had a sin- 
cere regard for him, for he was most useful 
and devoted to her in her quality of widowed 
mother ; and if she could not feel wit, she 
could feel gratitude, which is perhaps the 
rarer gift, if not the more respectable. 

The Little Mistress was dependent upon 
him for nearly all the pleasures and for the 
only excitements of her life. As a young 
girl she was at best a sort of caged bird, 
who had to be guarded against the youth 
of the other sex as if they, on their part, 
were so many marauding and ravening cats. 
During most days of the year the Paron- 
sina's parrot had almost as much freedom as 
she. He could leave his gilded prison when 
he chose, and promenade the notary's house 
as far down as the marble well in the sun- 
less court, and the Paronsina could do little 
more. The signora would as soon have 
thought of letting the parrot walk across 
their campo alone as her daughter, though 
the local dangers, either to bird or beauty, 
could not have been very great. The green- 
grocer of that sequestered campo was an old 
woman, the apothecary was grey, and his 
shop was haunted by none but superannuated 



i 




200 TOXELLl'S MARRIAGE. 

physicians ; the baker, the batcher, the 
waiters at the caffe were all professionally, 
and, as purveyors to her family, oat of the 
question ; the sacristan, who sometimes ap- 
peared at the perraqoier's to get a coal from 
Tinder the curling-tongs to kindle his censer, 
had but one eye, which he kept single to the 
service of the Church, and his perquisite of 
candle-drippings ; and I hazard little in say- 
ing that the Paronsina might have danced a 
polka around Campo San Giuseppe without 
jeopardy so far as concerned the handsome 
wood-carver, for his wife always sat in the 
shop beside him. Nevertheless a custom is 
not idly handed down by mother to daughter 
from the dawn of Christianity to the middle 
of the nineteenth century ; and I cannot deny 
that the local perruquier, though stricken in 
years, was still so far kept fresh by- the im- 
mortal youth of the wax heads in his window 
as to have something beau-ish about him ; 
or that, just at the moment the Paronsina 
chanced to go into the campo alone, a leone 
from Florian's might not have been passing 
through it, when he would eertainly have 
looked boldly at her, perhaps spoken to her, 
and possibly pounced at once upon her flut- 
tering heart. So by day the Paronsina rarely 



TONELLl'fl MARRIAGE. 201 

went out, and she never emerged unattended 
from the silence and shadow of her grand- 
father's house. 

If I were here telling a story of the Paron- 
sina, or indeed any story at all, I might suffer 
myself to enlarge somewhat upon the daily 
order of her secluded life, and show how the 
seclusion of other Venetian girls was the 
widest liberty as compared with hers ; but 
I have no right to play with the reader's 
patience in a performance that can promise 
no excitement of incident, no charm of inven- 
tion. Let him figure to himself, if he will, the 
ancient and half -ruined palace in which the 
notary dwelt, with a gallery running along 
one side of its inner court, the slender pillars 
supporting upon the corroded sculpture of 
their capitals a clinging vine, that dappled 
the floor with palpitant light and shadow in 
the afternoon sun. The gate, whose exquisite 
Saracenic arch grew into a carven flame, was 
surmounted by the armorial bearings of a 
family that died of its sins against the 
Serenest Republic long ago ; the marble cis- 
tern which stood in the middle of the court 
had still a ducal rose upon either of its four 
sides ; and little lions of stone perched upon 
the posts at the head of the marble stairway 



202 T0XELLT3 MABBIAGS. 

climbing to the gallery, their fines 
worn smooth and amiable by the contact of 
hands that for many agea had mouldered in 
tombs. Toward the canal the palace win- 
dows had been immemorially bricked up fbr 
some reason or caprice, and no morning son* 
light, save such as shone from the bright 
eyes of the Paroiisina, ever looked into the 
dim halls. It was a fit abode for such a man 
as the notary, exiled in the heart of hii 
native city, and it was not unfriendly in its 
influences to a quiet vegetation like the 
signora's ; but to the Paronsma it was sad 
as Venice itself, where, in some moods, I 
have wondered that any sort of youth could 
have the courage to exist. Nevertheless, 
the Paronsina had contrived to grow up 
here a child of the gayest and archest spirit, 
and to lead a life of due content, till after 
her return home from the comparative free- 
dom and society of Madame Prateux's school, 
where she spent three years in learning all 
Oftjttt accomplishments, and whence she 
M^Bk with brilliant hopes and romances 
^■piagined, for any possible exigency 
Suture, She adored all the modern 
^poets, and read their verse with that 
ad rhythmical fulness of voice which 



TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 203 

often made it sublime and always pleasing. 
She was a relentless patriot, an Italianissima 
of the vividest green, white, and red ; and 
she could interpret the historical novels of 
her countrymen in their subtlest application 
to the modern enemies of Italy. But all the 
Paronsina's gifts and accomplishments were 
to poor purpose, if they brought no young 
men a- wooing under her balcony ; and it 
was to no effect that her fervid fancy peopled 
the palace's empty halls with stately and 
gallant company out of Marco Visconti, 
Nicold de* Lapi, Margherita Pusterla, and 
the other romances, since she could not hope 
to receive any practicable offer of marriage 
from the heroes thus assembled. Her grand- 
father invited no guests of more substantial 
presence to his house. In fact, the police 
watched him too narrowly to permit him to 
receive society, even had he been so minded, 
and for kindred reasons his family paid few 
visits in the city. To leave Venice, except 
for the autumnal vitteggiatura was almost 
out of the question ; repeated applications 
at the Luogotenenza won the two ladies but 
a tardy and scanty grace ; and the use of 
the passport allowing them to spend a few 
weeks in Florence was attended with so 



204 TONELLrS MARRIAGE. 

much vexation, in coming and going upon 
the imperial confines, and when they re- 
turned home they were subject to so great 
fear of perquisition from the police, that it 
was after all rather a mortification than a 
pleasure that the government had given 
them. The signora received her few ac- 
quaintances once a week ; but the Paronsina 
found the old ladies tedious over their cups 
of coffee or tumblers of lemonade, and de- 
clared that her mamma's reception days 
were a martyrdom, — actually a martyrdom, 
to her. She was full of life and the beauti- 
ful and tender longing of youth ; she had 
a warm heart and a sprightly wit ; but 
she led an existence scarce livelier than a 
ghost's, and she was so poor in friends and 
resources that she shuddered to think what 
must become of her if Tonelli should die. 
It was not possible, thanks to God ! that he 
should marry. 

The signora herself seldom cared to go 
out, for the reason that it was too cold in 
winter and too hot in summer. In the one 
season she clung all day to her wadded arm- 
chair, with her scaldino in her lap ; and in 
the other season she found it a sufficient 
diversion to sit in the great hall of the 



TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 205 

palace, and be fanned by the salt breeze 
that came from the Adriatic through the 
vine-garlanded gallery. But besides this 
habitual inclemency of the weather, which 
forbade out-door exercise nearly the whole 
year, it was a displeasure to walk in Venice 
on account of the stairways of the bridges ; 
and the signora much preferred to wait till 
they went to the country in the autumn, 
when she always rode to take the air. The 
exceptions to her custom were formed by 
those after-dinner promenades which she 
sometimes made on holidays, in summer. 
Then she put on her richest black, and the 
Paronsina dressed herself in her best, and 
they both went to walk on the Molo, before 
the pillars of the lion and the saint, under 
the escort of Tonelli. 

It often happened that, at the hour of 
their arrival on the Molo, the moon was 
coming up over the low bank of the Lido in 
the east, and all that prospect of ship- 
bordered quay, island, and lagoon, which, 
at its worst, is everything that heart can 
wish, was then at its best, and far beyond 
words to paint. On the right stretched the 
long Giudecca, with the domes and towers 
of its Palladian church, and the swelling 



3M msaxcrs 

tbiiain? <jf ira jarrimm, sod ini fine of 
houses — n>niT?i*ii pink, as if sibl 
graceful a *je TaifflmBwi amid such, kroaiy 
seenes, had soctoi tt> adorn hauuI L Ia\ 
franc lay San. Giorgio, piitiu canoe wish, its 
ff h u rah a"«^ Tf»*4n»g jfr» w irii ifcs political 
aooa ; and, farther away to the 
the gloomy man of the madlw— at Sab 
Servolo, and then the slender campanili of 
the Armenian convent roae over the gleam- 
ing and tremulous water. Toned took nm 
the beauty of the scene with no more con- 
sciousness than, a, bird ; bat the Paronsina 
had learnt from her romantic poets and 
novelists to be complimentary to prospects, 
and her heart gurgled oat in rapturous praises 
of this. The unwonted freedom exhilarated 
her ; there was intoxication in the encounter 
of faces on the promenade, in the dazzle and 
glimmer of the lights, and even in the musio 
of the Austrian band playing in the Piazza, 
as it came purified to her patriotic ear by the 
distance. There were none but Italians upon 
the Molo, and one might walk there without 
^^^iMUKioh as touching an officer with the hem 
(r^fcp'i garment ; and, a little later, when 
f ^ftfid ceased playing, she should go with 

-flfcher Italians and possess the Piazza for 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 207 

one blessed hour. In the meantime the 
Paronsina had a sharp little tongue ; and, 
after she had flattered the landscape, and 
had, from her true heart, once for all, saluted 
the promenaders as brothers and sisters in 
Italy, she did not mind making fun of their 
peculiarities of dress and person. She was 
signally sarcastic upon such ladies as Tonelli 
chanced to admire, and often so stung him 
with her jests that he was glad when Pen- 
nellini appeared, as he always did exactly at 
nine o'clock, and joined the ladies in their 
promenade, asking and answering all those 
questions of ceremony which form Venetian 
greeting. He was a youth of the most 
methodical exactness in his whole life, and 
could no more have arrived on the Molo a 
moment before or after nine than the bronze 
giants on the clock -tower could have hastened 
or lingered in striking the hour. Nature, 
which had made him thus punctual and pre- 
cise, gave him also good looks, and a most 
amiable kindness of heart. The Paronsina 
cared nothing at all for him in his quality of 
handsome young fellow ; but she prized him 
as an acquaintance whom she might salute, 
and be saluted by, in a city where her grand- 
father's isolation kept her strange to nearly 



t 



208 TONELLl'S MAREIAGK. 

all the faces she saw. Sometimes her even- 
ings on the Molo wasted away without the 
exchange of a word save with Tonelli, for her 
mother seldom talked ; and then it was quite 
possible her teasing was greater than his 
patience, and that he grew taciturn under 
her tongue. At such times she hailed Pen- 
nellini's appearance with a double delight ; 
for, if he never joined in her attacks upon 
Tonelli's favourites, he always enjoyed them, 
and politely applauded them. If his friend 
reproached him for this treason, he made him 
every amend in answering, " She is jealous, 
Tonelli," — a wily compliment, which had the 
most intense effect in coming from lips ordi- 
narily so sincere as his. 

The signora was weary of the promenade 
long before the Austrian music ceased in the 
Piazza, and was very glad when it came time 
for them to leave the Molo, and go and sit 
down to an ice at the Gaffe Florian. This 
was the supreme hour to the Paronsina, the 
one heavenly excess of her restrained and 
eventless life. All about her were scattered 
tranquil Italian idlers, listening to the music 
of the strolling minstrels who had succeeded 
the military band ; on either hand sat her 
Mends, and she had thus the image of that 



TONILU'8 MARRIAGE. 209 

tender devotion without which a young girl 
is said not to be perfectly happy ; while the 
very heart of adventure seemed to bound in 
her exchange of glances with a handsome 
foreigner at a neighbouring table. On the 
other side of the Piazza a few officers still 
lingered at the Oaffe Quadri ; and at the 
Speochi sundry groups of citizens in their 
dark dress contrasted well with these white 
uniforms ; but, for the most part, the moon 
and gas-jets shone upon the broad, empty 
space of the Piazza, whose loneliness the 
presence of a few belated promenaders only 
served to render conspicuous. As the giants 
hammered eleven upon the great bell, the 
Austrian sentinel, under the Ducal Palace, 
uttered a long, reverberating cry ; and soon 
after a patrol of soldiers clanked across 
the Piazza, and passed with echoing feet 
through the arcade into the narrow and 
devious streets beyond. The young girl 
found it hard to rend herself from the 
dreamy pleasure of the scene, or even to 
turn from the fine impersonal pain which 
the presence of the Austrians in the spec- 
tacle inflicted. All gave an impression 
something like that of the theatre, with 
the advantage that here one's self was part 

O 



210 TONBLLl'S MARRIAGE. 

of the pantomime ; and in those days, when 
nearly everything but the puppet-shows was 
forbidden to patriots, it was altogether the 
greatest enjoyment possible to the Paron- 
sina. The pensive charm of the place im- 
bued all the little company so deeply that 
they scarcely broke it, as they loitered slowly 
homeward through the deserted Merceria. 
When they reached theCampo San Salvatore, 
on many a lovely summer's midnight, their 
footsteps seemed to waken a nightingale 
whose cage hung from a lofty balcony there ; 
for suddenly, at their coming, the bird broke 
into a wild and thrilling song, that touched 
them all, and suffused the tender heart of 
the Paronsina with an inexpressible pathos. 
Alas ! she had so often returned thus from 
the Piazza, and no stealthy footstep had fol- 
lowed hers homeward with love's persistence 
and diffidence ! She was young, she knew, 
and she thought not quite dull or hideous ; 
but her spirit was as sole in that melancholy 
city as if there were no youth but hers in 
the world. And a little later than this, 
when she had her first affair, it did not origi- 
nate in the Piazza, nor at all respond to her 
expectations in a love-affair. In fact, it was 
altogether a business affair, and was managed 



TONELLI'S MABRIAGK. 211 

chiefly by Tonelli, who having met a young 
doctor, laurelled the year before at Padua, 
had heard him express so pungent a curiosity 
to know what the Paronsina would have to 
her dower, that he perceived he must be 
madly in love with her. So with the con- 
sent of the signora he had arranged a cor- 
respondence between the young people ; and 
all went on well at first, — the letters from 
both passing through his hands. But his 
office was anything but a sinecure, for while 
the doctor was on his part of a cold temper- 
ament, and disposed to regard the affair 
merely as a proper way of providing for 
the natural affections, the Paronsina cared 
nothing for him personally, and only viewed 
him favourably as abstract matrimony, — as 
the means of escaping from the bondage 
of her girlhood and the sad seclusion of her 
life into the world outside her grandfather's 
house. So presently the correspondence fell 
almost wholly upon Tonelli, who worked up 
to the point of betrothal with an expense of 
finesse and sentiment that would have made 
his fortune in diplomacy or poetry. What 
should he say now ? that stupid young 
would ciy in a desperation, when 
delicately reminded him that it was 




212 TONELU'S MARRIAGE. 

answer the Paronsina's last note. Say this, 
that, and the other, Tonelli would answer, 
giving him the heads of a proper letter, 
which the Doctor took down on square bits 
of paper, neatly fashioned for writing pre- 
scriptions. " And for God's sake, caro dot- 
tore, put a little warmth into it ! " The poor 
Doctor would try, but it must always end in 
Tonelli's suggesting and almost dictating 
every sentence ; and then the letter, being 
carried to the Paronsina, made her laugh : 
"This is very pretty, my poor Tonelli, but 
it was never my onoratissimo dottore who 
thought of these tender compliments. Ah ! 
that allusion to my mouth and eyes could 
only have come from the heart of a great 
poet. It is yours, Tonelli, don't deny it." 
And Tonelli, taken in his weak point of 
literature, could make but a feeble pretence 
of disclaiming the child of his fancy, while 
the Paronsina, being in this reckless humour, 
more than once responded to the Doctor in 
such fashion that in the end the inspiration 
of her altered and amended letter was Ton- 
elli's. Even after the betrothal, the love- 
making languished, and the Doctor was in- 
decently patient of the late day fixed for the 
marriage by the notary. In fact, the Doctor 



TONKLLl'S MARRIAGE. 213 

was very busy ; and, as his practice grew, 
the dower of the Paronsina dwindled in his 
fancy, till one day he treated the whole 
question of their marriage with such coldness 
and uncertainty in his talk with Tonelli, 
that the latter saw whither his thoughts 
were drifting, and went home with an indig- 
nant heart to the Paronsina, who joyfully 
sat down and wrote her first sincere letter 
to the Doctor, dismissing him. 

4 'It is finished," she said, "and I am 
glad. After all, perhaps, I don't want to 
be any freer than I am ; and while I have 
you, Tonelli, I don't want a younger lover. 
Younger ? Diana ! You are in the flower of 
youth, and I believe you will never wither. 
Did that rogue of a Doctor, then, really give 
you the elixir of youth for writing him those 
letters ? Tell me, Tonelli, as a true friend, 
how long have you been forty-seven ? Ever 
since your fiftieth birthday ? Listen ! I 
have been more afraid of losing you than 
my sweetest Doctor. I thought you would 
be so much in love with love-making that 
you would go break-neck and court some 
one in earnest on your own account ! " 

Thus the Paronsina made a jest of the loss 
she had sustained ; but it was not pleasant 



214 TOXELLl'S MARRIAGE. 

to her, except as it dissolved a tie which 
love had done nothing to form. Her life 
seemed colder and vaguer after it, and the 
hour very far away when the handsome offi- 
cers of her king (all good Venetians in those 
days called Victor Emanuel "our king") 
should come to drive out the Austrians and 
marry theu victims. She scarcely enjoyed 
the prodigious privilege, offered her at this 
time in consideration of her bereavement, of 
going to the comedy, under Tonelli's protec- 
tion and along with Pennellini and his sister, 
while the poor signora afterwards had real 
qualms of patriotism concerning the breach 
of public duty involved in this distraction of 
her daughter. She hoped that no » one had 
recognised her at the theatre, otherwise they 
might have a warning from the Venetian 
Committee. " Thou knowest," she said to 
the Paronsina, " that they have even ad- 
monished the old Conte Tradonico, who loves 
the comedy better than his soul, and who 
used to go every evening. Thy aunt told 
me, and that the old rogue, when people ask 
him why he doesn't go to the play, answers, 
* My mistress won't let me. ' But fie ! I am 
Baying what young girls ought not to hear. " 
After the affair with the Doctor, I say, 



TONELLl'S MABRIAGE. 215 

life refused to return exactly to its old ex- 
pression, and I suppose that, if what pre- 
sently happened was ever to happen, it could 
not have occurred at a more appropriate 
time for a disaster, or at a time when its 
victims were less able to bear it. I do not 
know whether I have yet sufficiently indi- 
cated the fact, but the truth is, both the 
Paronsina and her mother had from long use 
come to regard Tonelli as a kind of property 
of theirs, which had no right in any way to 
alienate itself. They would have felt an 
attempt of this sort to be not only very 
absurd, but very wicked, in view of their 
affection for him and dependence upon him; 
and while the Paronsina thanked God that 
he would never marry, she had a deep con- 
viction that he ought not to marry, even if 
he desired. It was at the same time per- 
fectly natural, nay, filial, that she should 
herself be ready to desert this old friend, 
whom she felt so strictly bound to be faith- 
ful to her loneliness. As matters fell out, 
she had herself primarily to blame for Ton- 
elli's loss ; for, in that interval of disgust 
and ennui following the Doctor's dismissal, 
she had suffered him to seek his own plea- 
sure on holiday evenings ; and he had thus 



216 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 

wandered alone to the Piazza, and bo, one 
night, had seen a lady eating an ice there, 
and fallen in love without more ado than 
another man should drink a lemonade. 

This facility came of habit, for Tonelli 
had now been falling in love every other 
day for some forty years ; and in that time 
had broken the hearts of innumerable women 
of all nations and classes. The prettiest 
water-carriers in his neighbourhood were in 
love with him, as their mothers had been 
before them, and ladies of noble condition 
were believed to cherish passions for him. 
Especially, gay and beautiful foreigners, as 
they sat at Florian's, were taken with hope- 
less love of him ; and he could tell stories 
of very romantic adventure in which he 
figured as hero, though nearly always with 
moral effect. For example, there was the 
countess from the mainland, — she merited 
the sad distinction of being chief among 
those who had vainly loved him, if you 
could believe the poet who both inspired 
and sang her passion. When she took a 
palace in Venice, he had been summoned 
to her on the pretended business of a secre- 
tary ; but when she presented herself with 
those idle accounts of her factor and tenants 



TONELLl'S MABRIAGE. 217 

on the mainland, her household expenses 
and her correspondence with her advocate, 
Tonelli perceived at once that it was upon 
a wholly different affair that she had desired 
to see him. She was a rich widow of forty, 
of a beauty supernaturally preserved and 
very great. "This is no place for thee, 
Tonelli mine," the secretary had said to 
himself, after a week had passed, and he 
had understood all the waywardness of that 
unhappy lady's intentions. " Thou art not 
too old, but thou art too wise, for these fol- 
lies, though no saint ;" and so had gathered 
up his personal effects, and secretly quitted 
the palace. But such was the countess's 
fury at his escape that she never paid him 
his week's salary ; nor did she manifest the 
least gratitude that Tonelli, out of regard 
for her son, a very honest young man, re- 
fused in any way to identify her, but, to all 
except his closest friends, pretended that he 
had passed those terrible eight days on a 
visit to the country village where he was 
born. It showed Pennellini's ignorance of 
life that he should laugh at this history ; 
and I prefer to treat it seriously, and to use 
it in explaining the precipitation with which 
Tonelli's latest inamorata returned his love. 



218 TCttZLLl'8 MARRIAGE. 

Though, indeed, why should a lady of 
thirty, and from an obscure country town, 
hesitate to be enamoured of any eligible 
suitor who presented himself in Venice ? It 
is not my duty to enter upon a detail or 
summary of Carlotta's character or condi- 
tion, or to do more than indicate that, while 
she did not greatly excel in youth, good 
looks, or worldly gear, she had yet a little 
property, and was of that soft prettiness 
which is often more effective than down- 
right beauty. There was, indeed, some- 
thing very charming about her ; and, if she 
was a blonde, I have no reason to think she 
was as fickle as the Venetian proverb paints 
that complexion of woman ; or that she had 
not every quality which would have excused 
any one but Tonelli for thinking of marry- 
ing her. 

After their first mute interview in the 
Piazza, the two lost no time in making each 
other's acquaintance ; but though the affair 
was vigorously conducted, no one could say 
that it was not perfectly in order. Tonelli 
on the following day, which chanced to 
be Sunday, repaired to St. Mark's at the 
hour of the fashionable mass, where he 
gazed steadfastly at the lady during her 



* 



TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 219 

orisons, and whence, at a discreet distance, 
he followed her home to the house of the 
friends whom she was visiting. Somewhat 
to his discomfiture at first, these proved to 
be old acquaintances of his ; and when he 
came at night to walk up and down under 
their balconies, as bound in true love to do, 
they made nothing of asking him in-doors, 
and presenting him to his lady. But the 
pair were not to be entirely balked of their 
romance, and they still arranged stolen in- 
terviews at church, where one furtively 
whispered word had the value of whole 
hours of unrestricted converse under the 
roof of their friends. They quite refused to 
take advantage of their anomalously easy 
relations, beyond inquiry on his part as to 
the amount of the lady's dower, and on hers 
as to the permanence of Tonelli's employ- 
ment. He in due form had Pennellini to 
his confidant, and Carlotta unbosomed her- 
self to her hostess ; and the affair was thus 
conducted with such secrecy that not more 
than two-thirds of Tonelli's acquaintance 
knew anything about it when their engage- 
ment was announced. 

There were now no circumstances to pre- 
vent their early union, yet the happy con- 



220 TONELLl'S MARKIAGE. 

elusion was one to which Tonelli urged 
himself after many secret and bitter displea- 
sures of spirit. I am persuaded that Ms 
love for Carlotta must have been most ardent 
and sincere, for there was everything in his 
history and reason against marriage. He 
could not disown that he had hitherto led a 
joyous and careless life, or that he was ex- 
actly fitted for the modest delights, the dis- 
creet variety, of his present state, — for his 
daily routine at the notary's, his dinner at 
the Bronze Horses or the cook-shop, his hour 
at the caffe, his walks and excursions, for 
his holiday banquet with the Cenarotti, and 
his formal promenade with the ladies of that 
family upon the Molo. He had a good em- 
ployment, with a salary that held him above 
want, and afforded him the small luxuries 
already named ; and he had fixed habits of 
work and of relaxation, which made both a 
blessing. He had his chosen circle of inti- 
mate equals, who regarded him for his good- 
heartedness and wit and foibles ; and his 
little following of humble admirers, who 
lookod upon him as a gifted man in disgrace 
with fortune. His friendships were as old 
ns thoy were secure and cordial; he was 
established in the kindliness of all who knew 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 221 

him ; and he was flattered by the depen- 
dence of the Paronsina and her mother, 
even when it was troublesome to him. He 
had his past of sentiment and war, his pre- 
sent of story-telling and romance. He was 
quite independent ; his sins, if he had any, 
began and ended in himself, for none was 
united to him so closely as to be hurt by 
them ; and he was far too imprudent a man 
to be taken for an example by any one. He 
came and went as he listed, he did this or 
that without question. With no heart chosen 
yet from the world of woman's love, he was 
still a young man, with hopes and affections 
as pliable as a boy's. He had, in a word, 
that reputation of good-fellow which in 
Venice gives a man the title of buon diavolo, 
but on which he does not anywhere turn his 
back with impunity, either from his own 
consciousness or from public opinion. There 
never was such a thing in the world as both 
good devil and good husband ; and even 
with his betrothal Tonelli felt that his old, 
careless, merry life of the hour ended, and 
that he had tacitly recognised a future while 
he was yet unable to cut the past. If one 
has for twenty years made a jest of women, 
however amiably and insincerely, one does 



222 toselu'b makriagb. 

not propose to marry a woman without 
making a jest of one's self. The avenging 
remembrance of elderly people whose late 
matrimony had furnished food for Tonellf s 
wit now rose up to torment him, and in his 
morbid fancy the merriment he had caused 
was echoed back in his own derision. 

It shocked him to find how quickly his 
secret took wing, and it annoyed him that 
all his acquaintances were so prompt to feli- 
citate him. He imagined a latent mockery 
in their speeches, and he took them with an 
argumentative solemnity. He reasoned sepa- 
rately with his friends ; to all who spoke to 
him of his marriage he presented elaborate 
proofs that it was the wisest thing he could 
possibly do, and tried to give the affair a cold 
air of prudence. "You see, I am getting 
old ; that is to say, I am tired of this bachelor 
life in which I have no one to take care of 
me, if I fall Bick, and to watch that the 
doctors do not put me to death. My pay is 
very little, but, with Carlotta's dower well 
Invosted, we shall both together live better 
than either of us lives alone. She is a care- 
ful woman, and will keep me neat and com- 
fortable. She ib not so young as some women 
I had thought to marry, — no, but so much 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 223 

the better ; nobody will think her half so 
charming as I do, and at my time of life 
that is a great point gained. She is good, 
and has an admirable disposition. She is 
not spoiled by Venice, but as innocent as a 
dove. 0, 1 shall find myself very well with 
her!" 

This was the speech which with slight 
modification Tonelli made over and over again 
to all his friends but Pennellini. To him 
he unmasked, and said boldly that at last 
he was really in love ; and being gently 
discouraged in what seemed his folly, and 
incredulously laughed at, he grew angry, and 
gave such proofs of his sincerity that Pen- 
nellini was convinced, and owned to himself, 
4 'This madman is actually enamoured, — 
enamoured like a cat ! Patience ! What *tU1 
ever those Cenarotti say ?" 

In a little while poor Tonelli lost the 
philosophic mind with which he had at first 
received the congratulations of his friends, 
and, from reasoning with them, fell to re- 
senting their good wishes. Very little things 
irritated him, and pleasantries which he had 
taken in excellent part, time out of mind, 
now raised his anger. His barber had for 
many years been in the habit of saying, as he 



applied the it^ «hT ff 1'ifcnrK to 
mimtarhey aad^e cfca Jaunty spwani carl, 
"3*w ire wiE bestow tin* hfefe daak of 
jontftfrcfTir» ;"" and it both.! 
ban. to bore TomrfTf rffipnil with 



its antiquity to the times of 
than, oar own. period, and so go oat of tie 
shop witbovt that "Adien, old feflow," 
winch he bad never failed to give in twenty 




"Capperi!" . -, 

be emerged from a profound reverie into 
which this outbreak bad plunged him, and 
in which he had remained holding the nose 
of his next customer, and tweaking it to and 
fro in the -violence of his emotions, regardless 
of those mumbled maledictions which the 
lather would not permit the victim to articu- 
late, "If Tonelli is so savage in his be- 
trothal, we must wait for his marriage to 
tame him. I am sorry. He was always 
such a good deviL" 

But if many things annoyed Tonelli, 
there were some that deeply wounded him, 
and chiefly the fact that his betrothal seemed 
have fixed an impassable gulf of years 
ween him and all those young men whose 
pany ho loved so well. He had really a 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 225 

boy's heart, and he had consorted with them 
because he felt himself nearer their age than 
his own. Hitherto they had in no wise 
found his presence a restraint They had 
always laughed, and told their loves, and 
spoken their young men's thoughts, and 
made their young men's jokes, without fear 
or shame, before the merry-hearted sage, 
who never offered good advice, if indeed he 
ever dreamed that there was a wiser philo- 
sophy than theirs. It had been as if he were 
the youngest among them ; but now, in spite 
of all that he or they could do, he seemed 
suddenly and irretrievably aged. They 
looked at him strangely, as if for the first 
time they saw that his moustache was grey, 
and his brow was not smooth like theirs, 
that there were crow's-feet at the corners of 
his kindly eyes. They could not phrase the 
vague feeling that haunted their hearts, or 
they would have said that Tonelli, in offering 
to marry, had voluntarily turned his back 
upon his youth ; that love, which would 
only have brought a richer bloom to their 
age, had breathed away for ever the autum- 
nal blossom of his. 

Something of this made itself felt in Ton- 
elli's own consciousness, whenever he met 

p 




226 TOXELLl'S MARRIAGE. 

them, and he soon grew to avoid these com- 
rades of his youth. It was therefore after a 
purely accidental encounter with one of them, 
and as he was passing into the Campo Sant' 
Angelo, head down, and supporting himself 
with an inexplicable sense of infirmity upon 
the cane he was wont so jauntily to flourish, 
that he heard himself addressed with, "I 
say, master !" He looked up, and beheld 
the fat madman who patrols that campo, and 
who has the licence of his affliction to utter 
insolences to whomsoever he will, leaning 
against the door of a tobacconist's shop, with 
his arms folded, and a lazy, mischievous smile 
loitering down on his greasy face. As he 
caught Tonelli's eye he nodded, " Eh ! I have 
heard, master ;" while the idlers of that 
neighbourhood, who relished and repeated 
his incoherent pleasantries like the mots of 
some great diner-out, gathered near with 
expectant grins. Had Tonelli been alto- 
gether himself, as in other days, he would 
have been far too wise to answer, " What 
host thou heard, poor animal ? " 

" That you are going to take a mate when 
most birds think of flying away," said the 
madman. " Because it has been summer a 
long time with you, master, you think it 



TOXKLLI'S MARRIAGE. 227 

will never be winter. Look out : the wolf 
doesn't eat the season. " 

The poor fool in these words seemed to 
utter a public voice of disapprobation and 
derision ; and as the pitiless bystanders, 
who had many a time laughed with Tonelli, 
now laughed at him, joining in the applause 
which the madman himself led off, the 
miserable good devil walked away with a 
shiver, as if the weather had actually turned 
cold. It was not till he found himself in 
Carlotta's presence that the long summer 
appeared to return to him. Indeed, in her 
tenderness and his real love for her he won 
back all his youth again ; and he found it 
of a truer and sweeter quality than he had 
known even when his years were few, while 
the gay old-bachelor life he had long led 
seemed to him a period of miserable loneli- 
ness and decrepitude. Mirrored in her fond 
eyes, he saw himself alert and handsome ; 
and, since for the time being they were to 
each other all the world, we may be sure 
there was nothing in the world then to vex 
or shame Tonelli. The promises of the 
future, too, seemed not improbable of fulfil- 
ment, for they were not extravagant pro- 
mises. These people's castle in the air was 



TCOfMLUB XABS2AGZ. 

a bouse furnished from Cariotta's modest 
portion, and situated in a quarter of the city 
not too far from the Piazza, and convenient 
to a decent caffe, from which they could 
order a lemonade or a cap of coffee for 
visitors. Tonelli's stipend was to pay the 
housekeeping, as well as the minute wage 
of a servant-girl from the country ; and it 
was believed that they could save enough 
from that, and a little of Carlotta's money 
at interest, to go sometimes to the Malibran 
theatre or the Marionette, or even make an 
excursion to the mainland upon a holiday ; 
but if they could not, it was certainly better 
Italianism to stay at home; and at least 
they could always walk to the Public Gar- 
dens. At one time, religious differences 
threatened to cloud this blissful vision of 
the future ; but it was finally agreed that 
Carlotta should go to mass and confession 
as often as she liked, and should not tease 
Tonelli about his soul ; while he, on his 
part, was not to speak ill of the pope except 
as a temporal prince, or of any of the priest- 
hood except of the Jesuits when in company, 
in ordor to show that marriage had not made 
him a codino. For the like reason, no change 
was to be made in his custom of praising 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 229 

Garibaldi and reviling the accursed Germans 
upon all safe occasions. 

As Tonelli had nothing in the world but 
his salary and his slender wardrobe, Carlotta 
eagerly accepted the idea of a loss of family 
property during the Revolution. Of Tonelli's 
scar she was as proud as Tonelli himself. 

When she came to speak of the acquaintance 
of all those young men, it seemed again like 
a breath from the north to her betrothed ; 
and he answered with a sigh, that this was an 
affair that had already finished itself. "I 
have long thought them too boyish for me," 
he said, " and I shall keep none of them but 
Pennellini, who is even older than I, — who, 
I believe, was never born, but created middle- 
aged out of the dust of the earth, like Adam. 
He is not a good devil, but he has every good 
quality." 

While he thus praised his friend, Tonelli 
was meditating a service, which, when he 
asked it of Pennellini, had almost the effect 
to destroy their ancient amity. This was no 
less than the composition of those wedding- 
verses, without which, printed and exposed 
to view in all the shop- windows, no one in 
Venice feels himself adequately and truly 
married. Pennellini had never willingly 



230 TOXELLl'S MARRIAGE. 

made a verse in his life ; and it was long be- 
fore he understood Tonelli, when he urged 
the delicate request. Then in vain he pro- 
tested, recalcitrated. It was all an offence 
to Tonelli's morbid soul, already irritated by 
his friend's obtuseness, and eager to turn even 
the reluctance of nature into insult. He took 
his refusal for a sign that he, too, deserted 
him ; and must be called back, after bidding 
Pennellini adieu, to hear the only condition 
on which the accursed sonnet would be fur- 
nished, namely, that it should not be signed 
Pennellini, but an Affectionate Friend. 
Never was sonnet cost poet so great anguish 
as this : Pennellini went at it conscientiously 
as if it were a problem in mathematics ; he 
refreshed his prosody, he turned over Carrer, 
he toiled a whole night, and in due time ap- 
peared as Tonelli's affectionate friend in all 
the butchers' and bakers' windows. But it 
had been too much to ask of him, and for a 
while he felt the shock of Tonelli's unreason 
and excess so much that there was a decided 
coolness between them. 

This important particular arranged, little 
remained for Tonelli to do but to come to that 
open understanding with the Paronsina and 
her mother which he had long dreaded and 



TONELLl'S MAKRIAGE. 231 

avoided. He could not conceal from himself 
that his marriage was a kind of desertion of 
the two dear friends so dependent upon his 
singleness, and he considered the case of the 
Paronsina with a real remorse. If his medi- 
tated act sometimes appeared to him a gross 
inconsistency and a satire upon all his former 
life, he had still consoled himself with the 
truth of his passion, and had found love its 
own apology and comfort ; but in its relation 
to these lonely women, his love itself had no 
fairer aspect than that of treason, and he 
shrank from owning it before them with a 
sense of guilt. Some wild dreams of recon- 
ciling his future with his past occasionally 
haunted him ; but in his saner moments, he 
perceived their folly. Carlotta, he knew, 
was good and patient, but she was neverthe- 
less a woman, and she would never consent 
that he should be to the Cenarotti all that 
he had been ; these ladies also were very 
kind and reasonable, but they too were 
women, and incapable of accepting a less 
perfect devotion. Indeed, was not his pro- 
posed marriage too much like taking her 
only son from the signora and giving the 
Paronsina a stepmother ? It was worse, and 
so the ladies of the notary's family viewed 



232 tojceuli's mwrrxML 



1 



it, 

Tonettf s delay to deal frankly with them ; 

while Carlotta, on her part, vai wounded 
that these old friends should ignore his fu- 
ture wife so utterly. On both sides evil was 
stored op. 

When Tonelli would still make a show of 
fidelity to the Paronsina and her mother, 
they accepted his awkward advances, the 
Utter with a cold visage, the former with a 
sarcastic face and tongue. He had managed 
particularly ill with the Paronsina, who, hav- 
ing no romance of her own, would possibly 
have come to enjoy the autumnal poetry of 
his love if he had permitted. But when she 
first approached him on the subject of those 
rumours she had heard, and treated them 
with a natural derision, as involving the 
most absurd and preposterous ideas, he, in- 
stead of suffering her jests, and then turning 
her interest to his favour, resented them, and 
closed his heart and its secret against her. 
What could she do, thereafter, but feign 
to avoid the subject, and adroitly touch it 
with constant, invisible stings ? Alas ! it 
did not need that she should ever speak to 
Tonelli with the wicked intent she did ; at 
thU time he would have taken ill whatever 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 233 

most innocent thing she said. When friends 
are to be estranged, they do not require a 
cause. They have but to doubt one another, 
and no forced forbearance or kindness be- 
tween them can do aught but confirm their 
alienation. This is on the whole fortunate, 
for in this manner neither feels to blame for 
the broken friendship, and each can declare 
with perfect truth that he did all he could 
to maintain it. Tonelli said to himself, " If 
the Paronsina had treated the affair properly 
at first !" and the Paronsina thought, "If 
he had told me frankly about it to begin 
with ! " Both had a latent heartache over 
their trouble, and both a sense of loss the 
more bitter because it was of loss still unac- 
knowledged. 

As the day fixed for Tonelli's wedding 
drew near, the rumour of it came to the 
Cenarotti from all their acquaintance. But 
when people spoke to them of it, as of some- 
thing they must be fully and particularly in- 
formed of, the signora answered coldly, " It 
seems that we have not merited Tonelli's 
confidence ;" and the Paronsina received the 
gossip with an air of clearly affected sur- 
prise, and a " Dawero /" that at least dis- 
comfited the tale-bearers. 



234 TONELLl'S MARBIAGE. 

The consciousness of the unworthy part 
he was acting toward these ladies had come 
at last to poison the pleasure of Tonelli's 
wooing, even in Carlotta's presence ; yet I 
suppose he would still have let his wedding- 
day come and go, and been married beyond 
hope of atonement, so loath was he to in- 
flict upon himself and them the pain of an 
explanation, if one day, within a week of 
that time, the notary had not bade his clerk 
dine with him on the morrow. It was a holi- 
day, and as Carlotta was at home, making 
ready for the marriage, Tonelli consented to 
take his place at the table from which he 
had been a long time absent. But it turned 
out such a frigid and melancholy banquet as 
never was known before. The old. notary, 
to whom all things came dimly, finally missed 
the accustomed warmth of Tonelli's fun, and 
said, with a little shiver, "Why, what ails 
you, Tonelli ? You are as moody as a man 
in love." 

The notary had been told several times of 
Tonelli's affair, but it was his characteristic 
not to remember any gossip later than that 
of 'Forty-eight. 

The Paronsina burst into a laugh full of 
the cruelty and insult of a woman's long- 



TONELLI'S MABBIAGE. 235 

smothered sense of injury. " Caro nonno," 
she screamed into her grandfather's dull ear, 
" he is really in despair how to support his 
happiness. He is shy, even of his old friends, 
— he has had so little experience. It is the 
first love of a young man. Bisogna com- 
patire la gioventu, caro nonno." And her 
tongue being finally loosed, the Paronsina 
broke into incoherent mockeries, that hurt 
more from their purpose than their point, 
and gave no one greater pain than herself. 

Tonelli sat sad and perfectly mute under 
the infliction, but he said in his heart, "I 
have merited worse. " 

At first the signora remained quite aghast ; 
but when she collected herself, she called out 
peremptorily, " Madamigella, you push the 
affair a little beyond. Cease ! " 

The Paronsina having said all she desired, 
ceased, panting. 

The old notary, for whose slow sense all 
but her first words had been too quick, though 
all had been spoken at him, said drily, turn- 
ing to Tonelli, " I imagine that my deafness 
is not always a misfortune." 

It was by an inexplicable, but hardly less 
inevitable, violence to the inclinations of 
each that, after this miserable dinner, the 



236 TONKLLl'S MARRIAGE. 

signora, the Paronsina, and Tonelli should 
go forth together for their wonted promenade 
on the Molo. Use, which is the second, is 
also very often the stronger nature, and so 
these parted friends made a last show of 
union and harmony. In nothing had their 
amity been more fatally broken than in this 
careful homage to its forms; and now, as 
they walked up and down in the moonlight, 
they were of the saddest kind of appari- 
tions, — not mere disembodied spirits, which, 
however, are bad enough, but disanimated 
bodies, which are far worse, and of which 
people are not more afraid only because they 
go about in society so commonly. As on 
many and many another night of summers 
past, the moon came up and stood over the 
Lido, striking far across the glittering lagoon, 
and everywhere winning the flattered eye to 
the dark masses of shadow upon the water ; 
to the trees of the Gardens, to the trees and 
towers and domes of the cloistered and tem- 
pled isles. Scene of pensive and incomparable 
loveliness ! giving even to the stranger, in 
some faint and most unequal fashion, a sense 
of the awful meaning of exile to the Vene- 
tian, who in all other lands in the world is 
doubly an alien, from their unutterable 



TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 237 

unlikeness to his sole and beautiful city. 
The prospect had that pathetic unreality 
to the friends which natural things always 
assume to people playing a part, and I 
imagine that they saw it not more substan- 
tial than it appears to the exile in his dreams. 
In their promenade they met again and again 
the unknown wonted faces ; they even en- 
countered some acquaintances, whom they 
greeted, and with whom they chatted for a 
while ; and when at nine the bronze giants 
beat the hour upon their bell, — with as re- 
mote effect as if they were giants of the 
times before the flood, — they were aware 
of Pennellini, promptly appearing like an 
exact and methodical spectre. 

But to-night the Paronsina, wno had made 
the scene no compliments, did not insist as 
usual upon the ice at Florian's; and Pen- 
nellini took his formal leave of the friends 
under the arch of the Clock Tower, and they 
walked silently homeward through the echo- 
ing Merceria. 

At the notary's gate Tonelli would have 
said good-night, but the signora made him 
enter with them, and then abruptly left him 
standing with the Paronsina in the gallery, 
while she was heard hurrying away to her 



t 



238 



TONELLI S MARRIAGE. 



own apartment. She reappeared, exrendin 
toward Tonelli both hands, upon whic 
glittered and glittered manifold skeins < 
the delicate chain of Venice. 

She had a very stately and impressh 
bearing, as she stood there in the moonligh 
and addressed him with a collected voici 
"Tonelli," she said, "I think you ha\ 
treated your oldest and best friends ver 
cruelly. Was it not enough that you shoul 
take yourself from us, but you must ah 
forbid our hearts to follow you even i 
sympathy and good wishes ? I had almof 
thought to say adieu for ever to-night ; but, 
she continued, with a breaking utterance 
and passing tenderly to the familiar form < 
address, " I cannot part so with thee. Tho 
hast been too like a son to me, too like 
brother to my poor Clarice. Maybe tho 
no longer lovest us, yet I think thou wi 
not disdain this gift for thy wife. Take i 
Tonelli, if not for our sake, perhaps then fc 
the sake of sorrows that in times pat 
we have shared together in this unhapp 
Venice." 

Here the signora ended perforce th 
speech, which had been long for her, an 
the Paronsina burst into a passion of wee} 



TONELLI'S MARRIAGE. 239 

ing, — not more at her mamma's words 
than out of self-pity and from the national 
sensibility. 

Tonelli took the chain, and reverently 
kissed it and the hands that gave it. He 
had a helpless sense of the injustice the 
signora's words and the Paronsina's tears 
did him ; he knew that they put him with 
feminine excess further in the wrong than 
even his own weakness had ; but he tried 
to express nothing of this, — it was but part 
of the miserable maze in which his life was 
involved. With what courage he might he 
owned his error, but protested his faithful 
friendship, and poured out all his troubles, 
— his love for Oarlotta, his regret for them, 
his shame and remorse for himself. They 
forgave him, and there was everything in 
their words and will to restore their old 
friendship, and keep it ; and when the gate 
with a loud clang closed upon Tonelli, going 
from them, they all felt that it had irrevo- 
cably perished. 

I do not say that there was not always a 
decent and affectionate bearing on the part 
of the Paronsina and her mother towards 
Tonelli and his wife ; I acknowledge that it 
was but too careful and faultless a tender- 



240 TONELLl'S MARRIAGE. 

ness, ever conscious of its own fragility. 
Far more natural was the satisfaction they 
took in the delayed fruitfulness of Tonelli's 
marriage, and then in the fact that his 
child was a girl, and not a boy. It was but 
human that they should doubt his happiness, 
and that the signora should always say, when 
hard pressed with questions upon the matter : 
" Yes, Tonelli is married ; but if it were to 
do again, I think he would do it to-morrow 
rather than to-day." 



THE END. 



(fftttntrarcf) Stafbctgitg $reg0: 

T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.