A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories Part 7

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 Elmore. "He apologized to me afterward. The man got him into a corner. But he warned us about him as soon he could. And Rose-Black would have made our acquaintance, any way.

I believe he's crazy."

"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 deprecation.

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 themselves 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 she should have finished her own. When she glanced at him again, he was staring at the smiling face of Miss Mayhew, 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 catastrophe.

"What is it, Owen?" asked his wife in a low voice.

He started from his trance, and struggled to answer quietly. "I've a letter here which I suppose I'd better show to you first."

They rose and went into the next room, Miss Mayhew following them with a bright, absent look, and then dropping her eyes again to her letter.

Elmore put the note he had received into his wife's hands without a word.

SIR,--My position permitted me to take a woman. I am a soldier, but I am an engineer--operateous, and I can exercise wherever my profession in the civil life. I have seen Miss Mayhew, and I have great sympathie for she. I think I will be lukely with her, if Miss Mayhew would be of the same intention of me.

If you believe, Sir, that my open and realy proposition will not offendere Miss Mayhew, pray to handed to her this note. Pray sir to excuse me the liberty to fatigue you, and to go over with silence if you would be of another intention.

Your obedient servant, E. VON EHRHARDT.

Mrs. Elmore folded the letter carefully up and returned it to her husband. If he had 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 authorities."

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 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," murmured Mrs. Elmore.

"Well, ask her."

"How could _she_ tell?"

"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 excitement,--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 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 awhile? 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 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 honorably, and we're bound to consider him."

"Oh, I don't think he's done anything so very great," said Mrs. Elmore, with that disposition 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?"