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A Fearful Responsibility, a fiction by William Dean Howells |
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Chapter 12 |
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_ CHAPTER XII Long after the ball Lily seemed to Elmore'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 gayety 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 company, 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 willing to rest for a while from further social endeavor. Life was falling into the dull routine 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 overseers 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 university 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 recognize this proud fact of its history as by hereafter making war one of the arts which it taught. The board explained that of course Mr. Elmore would not be expected to take charge of this branch of instruction at once. A competent military assistant would be provided, 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 labors 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 before, but this chance of returning makes it certain." "And you see nothing ridiculous in my taking the presidency of a military institute?" "They say expressly that they don't expect you to give instruction in that branch." "No, not immediately, it seems," he said, with his pensive irony. "And the history?" "Haven't you almost got notes enough?" Elmore laughed sadly. "I have been here two years. It would take me twenty years to write such 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 material, 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 I'm able to abandon it. The man who is born to write the history of Venice will have no volition in the matter: he cannot leave it, and he will not die till he has finished it." He feebly crushed a bit of bread in his fingers as he ended with this burst of feeling, 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 history 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 college 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's a great compliment. 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 drooping; 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 decision was a blow to Hoskins under which he visibly suffered; and they did not realize 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, "Well, I don't see but what I will have to go along." The last night but one Lily felt it her duty to talk to him very seriously about his future and what he owed to it. She told him that he must stay in Italy till he could bring home something that would honor 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, Hoskins'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 _facchino_ 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_!" 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:-- DEAR MISS LILY,--Your kind interest in me gives me courage to say something that will very likely make me hateful to you forevermore. But 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, wherever 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 happy. 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.
"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 he knows how much trouble I've----" Lily re-entered the room as precipitately as she had left it, and saved him from betraying himself as to the extent of his confidences to Hoskins. "Professor Elmore," she said, bending her reddened eyes upon him, "I want you to answer this letter for me; and I don't want you to write as you--I mean, don't make it so cutting--so--so--Why, I _like_ Mr. Hoskins! He's been so _kind_! And if you 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't_ 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 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 answer him." "I could never do it in the world!" "I own it's difficult," said Elmore coldly. "Oh, _I_ 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! What shall I say? What date is it?--the 25th? And it doesn't matter about the day of the week. 'Dear 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. Hoskins? Esquire seems so cold, anyway, and I _won't_ put it! 'Dear Mr. Hoskins'--Professor Elmore!" she implored reproachfully, "tell 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 _ask_ 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 legal,--and I'll copy it out in the first person." "Owen," said his wife, "you shall not refuse! It's inhuman, it's inhospitable, when Lily wants you to, so! Why, I never heard of such a thing!" Elmore desperately caught up the sheet of paper on which Lily had written "Dear Mr. Hoskins," and groaning out "Well, well!" he added,-- Your friend,
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 rueful cast. But he came pluckily to the mark. He marched straight up to the girl. "It's 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, "You 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 inability 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 towards 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 as they approached Peschiera his expectation became intense. There was no reason why it should exist; it would be by the thousandth 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 returned to their places in the train, to which he remounted after a last despairing glance around the platform in a passion of disappointment. 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. _ |
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