A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories Part 8

"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'll see."

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

"_Why_ should you be glad of it?" demanded his wife.

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 he 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 annoying and extremely perplexing. _We_ 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 pa.s.sed 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 color said, "I am sorry to trouble you to answer another letter for me, Professor Elmore.

I manage my correspondence at home myself, but here it seems to be different."

"It needn't be different here, Lily," said 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 between 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 uninfluenced?"

"Oh, quite so."

"I feel bound to tell you," said Elmore, "that this gentleman has now done everything 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 mention it. But we're bound to take the letter on its face, and that's open and honorable. 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 terminate 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 regiments 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 engagement 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 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 without 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 terrible 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."

"Yes; that's what Mrs. Elmore said."

"And suppose you were married to an Austrian officer stationed in Italy.

You would have _no_ society outside of the garrison. Every other human creature that looked at you would hate you. And if you were ordered to some of those half barbaric princ.i.p.alities,--Moldavia or Wallachia, or into Hungary or Bohemia,--everywhere your husband would be an instrument for the suppression of an alien or disaffected population. 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's not so easy now; or he might go to Patmos, and live upon your friends till he found something to do in civil life."

Lily began a laugh. "Why, Professor Elmore, _I_ 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--at all--ahem! excuse me!--attached to him. That, of course, outweighs everything else."

"But I'm _not_!" cried the girl "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 anything."