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A Fearful Responsibility, a fiction by William Dean Howells |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ CHAPTER XI Elmore went out for a long walk, from which he returned disconsolate at dinner. He was one of those people, common enough in our Puritan civilization, who would rather forego any pleasure than incur the reaction which must follow with all the keenness of remorse; and he always mechanically 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 retrospect of the night's gayety; he had not known that he was recognizing, by those unsparing words of his, the nervous misgivings 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. "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 engaged in philosophizing the republic's difficult 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 bitterness 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, whatever it is. Of course, I must know it in the end. Are there any new complications?" "No _new_ complications," said his wife, as if resenting the word. "But you make such a bugbear of the least little matter that there's no encouragement to tell you anything." "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 young, after all," said Mrs. Elmore, as if this had been the point in dispute, "but very fat and jolly, and very kind. She wasn't in costume; 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 Russians always _have_ sympathized 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 princess, 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 unmasking. She can't tell just when the supper 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 of him, as he called it. The princess made a point of 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 over it." Elmore suffered, but he did not ask what it was, and his wife went on with smooth caution. "Lily thought it was just as it is at 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 speaking 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 occurred 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." 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 humor. "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 husband. "Oh, _I_ 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, which began not long 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 demanded 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 disguised except by the little visor of black silk, coming down to the point of his nose; his blond whiskers escaped at either side, and his blond 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 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 certainly 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 recognize my salutation." "How do you know that?" demanded Lily. "I don't know what you mean." "Oh, it is understood yet already," answered the mask. "Your compatriot, with 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 indignantly. "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." "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 unmask." "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 recognize 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 slipping it 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 vanished in the crowd. "That little fellow is a rogue," said the 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 unmask. 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." "Can you speak German?" asked the mask in that tongue. "Yes, a little, but I do not choose to speak it. If you have anything to say to me you can say it in English." "I cannot understand English," replied the mask, still in German, and now Lily thought the voice seemed changed; but she clung to her belief that it was some hoax played at her expense, and she continued her efforts to make him answer her in English. The two turns round the room had stretched to half a dozen in this futile task, but she felt herself powerless to leave the mask, who for his part betrayed signs of embarrassment, as if he had undertaken a ruse of which he repented. A confused movement in the crowd and a sudden cessation of the music recalled her to herself, and she now took her partner's arm and hurried with him toward the place where she had left the princess. But the princess had already gone into the supper-room, and she had no other recourse than to follow with the stranger. As they entered the supper-room she removed her little visor, and she felt, rather than saw, the mask put up his hand and lift away his own: he turned his head, and looked down upon her with the face of a man she had never seen before. "Ah, you are there!" she heard the princess's voice calling to her from one of the tables. "How tired you look! Here--here! I will make you drink this glass of wine." The officer who brought her the wine gave her his arm and led her to the princess, and the late mask mixed with the two-score other tall blond officers. The night which stretched so far into the day ended at last, and she followed Hoskins down to their gondola. He entered the boat first, to give her his hand in stepping from the _riva_; at the same moment she involuntarily turned at the closing of the door behind her, and found at her side the tall blond mask, or one of the masks, if there were two who had danced with her. He caught her hand suddenly to his lips, and kissed it. "Adieu--forgive!" he murmured in English, and then vanished indoors again.
"I have no doubt as to who it was, Celia," replied Elmore, with a heat evidently quite 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 dismiss 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!" repeated her husband. "Yes." "And we are well rid of him. He has relieved _me_ by this last performance, immensely; 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 abeyance; she looked beaten and bewildered, while he vehemently uttered these words. She could not meet his eyes, with her consciousness 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. _ |
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