Staniford

“ Dunham looked sorry for Staniford's saying this. Captain Jenness stared at him, as if his taking the names of these scriptural instruments in vain were a kind of blasphemy, and Lydia seemed puzzled and a little troubled.
“I didn't think of its being Sunday,” said Hicks, with what Staniford felt to be a cunning assumption of manly frankness, “or any more Sunday than usual; seems as if we had had a month of Sundays already since we sailed. I'm not much on religion myself, but I shouldn't like to interfere with other people's principles.” ”

“ Staniford recollected himself. “I was speaking of abstract flirtation. I was firing into the air.”
“In my case, I don't choose to call it flirtation,” returned Dunham. “My purpose, I am bound to say, was thoroughly unselfish and kindly.”
“My dear fellow,” said Staniford, with a bitter smile, “there can be no unselfishness and no kindliness between us and young girls, unless we mean business,—love-making. You may be sure that they feel it so, if they don't understand it so.” ”

“ This fantastic conceit was strongest when he met her with Captain Jenness one day. He had found friends at the hotel, as one always does in Italy, if one's world is at all wide,—some young ladies, and a lady, now married, with whom he had once violently flirted. She was willing that he should envy her husband; that amused him in his embittered mood; he let her drive him about; and they met Lydia and the captain, walking together. Staniford started up from his lounging ease, as if her limpid gaze had searched his conscience, and bowed with an air which did not escape his companion. ”

“ Staniford laughed. “Why, Miss Blood, you're fashionably dressed yourself, not to go any farther, and you're serious.”
“It's different with a man,” the girl explained.
“Well, then, how about me?” asked Staniford. “Am I too well dressed to be expected to be serious?”
“Mr. Dunham always seems in earnest,” Lydia answered, evasively.
“And you think one can't be in earnest without being serious?” Lydia suffered one of those silences to ensue in which Staniford had already found himself helpless. ”

“ But Staniford did not laugh, and Dunham had courage to go on. “Of course, it sounds rather conceited to say so, but the circumstances are so peculiar that I think we ought to recognize even any possibilities of that sort.”
“Oh, yes,” said Staniford, gravely. “Most women, I believe, are so innocent as to think a man in love when he behaves like a lover. And this one,” he added ruefully, “seems more than commonly ignorant of our ways,—of our infernal shilly-shallying, purposeless no-mindedness. ”

“ She seemed to the young man very interesting, and he approached her with that kindness for all other women in his heart which the lover feels in absence from his beloved, and with a formless sense that some retribution was due her from him for the roughness with which Staniford had surmised her natural history. Women had always been dear and sacred to him ”

“ She sang as she did in the meeting-house at South Bradfield, and her voice seemed to fill all the hollow height and distance; it rang far off like a mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the girl's contralto thrilled through all. ”

“ Staniford drew a long breath. After a space of musing, he said, “I thought I should be able to begin by attacking some one else, but I must commence at home, and denounce myself as quite unworthy of walking to and fro, and talking nonsense to you. You must beware of me, Miss Blood.”
“Why?” asked the girl.
“I am very narrow-minded and prejudiced, and I have violent antipathies. I shouldn't be able to do justice to any one I disliked.”
“I think that's the trouble with all of us,” said Lydia. ”

“ Staniford flushed angrily. But you cannot quarrel with a man lying helpless on his back; besides, what Dunham said was true.
The arrangements for Staniford's journey were quickly made,—so quickly that when he had seen the doctor, and had been down to the Aroostook and engaged Captain Jenness to come and take his place with Dunham for the next two nights, he had twelve hours on his hands before the train for Venice would leave, and he started at last with but one clear perception,—that at the soonest it must be twelve hours more before he could see her. ”

“ Staniford laughed, as he had laughed at everything on the way from the station, and had probably thus wounded Ezra Perkins's susceptibilities. The village houses, separated so widely by the one long street, each with its path neatly tunneled from the roadway to the gate; the meeting-house, so much vaster than the present needs of worship, and looking blue-cold with its never-renewed single coat of white paint ”

“ My splendor had nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, don't underrate your splendor, my dear fellow!” cried Staniford, with a caressing ridicule that he often used with Dunham. “Of course, I know what a simple and humble fellow you are, but you've no idea how that exterior of yours might impose upon the agricultural imagination; it has its effect upon me, in my pastoral moods.” Dunham made a gesture of protest, and Staniford went on: “Country people have queer ideas of us, sometimes. Possibly Lurella was afraid of you. Think of that, Dunham,—having a woman afraid of you, for once in your life! ”

“ The young men talked as they walked the deck and smoked in the starlight. They were wakeful after their long nap in the afternoon, and they walked and talked late, with the silences that old friends can permit themselves. Staniford recurred to his loss of money and his Western projects, which took more definite form now that he had placed so much distance between himself and their fulfillment. With half a year in Italy before him, he decided upon a cattle-range in Colorado. Then, “I should like to know,” he said, after one of the pauses, “how two young men of our form strike that girl's fancy. ”

“ I confess I wish you hadn't such heavy nails in your boots!”
“Oh, they'll do him good, confound him!” said Staniford.
“I should have liked it better if her name hadn't been Blood,” remarked Dunham, presently.
“It doesn't matter what a girl's surname is. Besides, Blood is very frequent in some parts of the State.”
“She's very pretty, isn't she?” Dunham suggested.
“Oh, pretty enough, yes,” replied Staniford. “Nothing is so common as the pretty girl of our nation. Her beauty is part of the general tiresomeness of the whole situation.” ”

“ What would the divine Hibbard say to your goings-on?”
“Oh, don't, Staniford! It isn't fair,” pleaded Dunham, with the flattered laugh which the best of men give when falsely attainted of gallantry. “I was wondering whether she was feeling homesick, or strange, or—”
“I will go below and ask her,” said Staniford. “I know she will tell me the exact truth. They always do. Or if you will take a guess of mine instead of her word for it, I will hazard the surmise that she is not at all homesick. What has a pretty young girl to regret in such a life as she has left? ”

“ Staniford turned to Lydia. “I suppose that in South Bradfield your Sabbath is over at sundown on Sunday evening.”
“That used to be the custom,” answered the girl. “I've heard my grandfather tell of it.”
“Oh, yes,” interposed Captain Jenness. “They used to keep Saturday night down our way, too. I can remember when I was a boy. It came pretty hard to begin so soon, but it seemed to kind of break it, after all, having a night in.”
The captain did not know what Staniford began to laugh at. “Our Puritan ancestors knew just how much human nature could stand, after all. ”

“ She told him of what she had seen and done in Messina. This glimpse of Italy had vividly animated her; she had apparently found a world within herself as well as without.
With a suddenly depressing sense of loss, Staniford had a prevision of splendor in her, when she should have wholly blossomed out in that fervid air of art and beauty; he would fain have kept her still a wilding rosebud of the New England wayside. He hated the officers who should wonder at her when she first came into the Square of St. Mark with her aunt and uncle. ”

“ Hicks or the subject he had introduced; after a moment's hesitation, he walked away to another part of the ship. As soon as he was beyond ear-shot, Staniford again spoke: “Dunham, this girl is plainly one of those cases of supernatural innocence, on the part of herself and her friends, which, as you suggested, wouldn't occur among any other people in the world but ours.”
“You're a good fellow, Staniford!” cried Dunham.
“Not at all. I call myself simply a human being, with the elemental instincts of a gentleman, as far as concerns this matter. ”

“ A young man must find pleasure in sitting alone near a pretty young girl, and talking with her about herself and himself, no matter how plain and dull her speech is; and Staniford, though he found Lydia as blankly unresponsive as might be to the flattering irony of his habit, amused himself in realizing that here suddenly he was almost upon the terms of window-seat flirtation with a girl whom lately he had treated with perfect indifference, and just now with fatherly patronage. ”

“ The captain did not answer, but his iron grip closed hard upon Staniford's hand, and he frowned in keen inspection of Hicks, who at that moment came out of his state-room, looking pale and quite sobered. Captain Jenness surveyed him from head to foot, and then from foot to head, and pausing at the level of his eyes he said, still holding Staniford by the hand: “The trouble with a man aboard ship is that he can't turn a blackguard out-of-doors just when he likes. The Aroostook puts in at Messina. ”

“ She couldn't imagine a man—a gentleman—devoting himself to her by the hour, and trying by every art to show his interest and pleasure in her society, without imagining that he wished her to like him,—love him; there's no half-way about it. She couldn't suppose him the shallow, dawdling, soulless, senseless ape he really was.” Staniford was quite in a heat by this time, and Dunham listened in open astonishment. ”

“ Staniford did not seek occasions to please and amuse her, as the others did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at table, he took his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her a perfunctory civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he interested himself in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike. “A woman,” he said, “must always dislike some one in company; it's usually another woman; as there's none on board, I accept her enmity with meekness.” Dunham wished to persuade him that he was mistaken. “Don't try to comfort me, Dunham,” he replied. ”

“ You find it everywhere. In every little village there is some girl who knows how to out-preen all the others. I wonder,” added Staniford, in a more deeply musing tone, “if she kept from laughing at you out of good feeling, or if she was merely overawed by your splendor.”
“She didn't laugh,” Dunham answered, “because she saw that it would have added to my annoyance. ”

“ Dunham had already begun to lend Lydia books,—his own and Staniford's,—in which he read aloud to her, and chose passages for her admiration; but he was obliged to report that she had rather a passive taste in literature. She seemed to like what he said was good, but not to like it very much, or to care greatly for reading; or else she had never had the habit of talking books. He suggested this to Staniford, who at once philosophized it.
“Why, I rather like that, you know. We all read in such a literary way, now; we don't read simply for the joy or profit of it ”

“ It's impossible for that little wretch to think reverently of a young girl; it's shocking to see her treating him as if he were a gentleman.” Hicks's behavior really gave no grounds for reproach; and it was only his moral mechanism, as Staniford called the character he constructed for him, which he could blame; nevertheless, the thought of him gave an oblique cast to Staniford's reflections, which he cut short by saying, “This sort of worship is every woman's due in girlhood; but I suppose a fortnight of it will make her a pert and silly coquette. What does she say to your literature, Dunham?” ”

“ The old man thinks he can keep an eye on him.” The mate was looking after the boat.
“The captain says he hasn't any money,” Staniford remarked carelessly. The mate went away without saying anything more, and Staniford returned to the cabin, where he beheld without abhorrence the preparations for his breakfast. But he had not a great appetite, in spite of his long fast. He found himself rather light-headed, and came on deck again after a while, and stretched himself in Hicks's steamer chair, where Lydia usually sat in it. ”

“ Yes!” assented Lydia. And then she remained rather distraught, pulling at the ruffling of her dress.
“Dunham is a very accomplished man,” said Staniford, finding the usual satisfaction in pressing his breast against the thorn. “He's a great favorite in society. He's up to no end of things.” Staniford uttered these praises in a curiously bitter tone. “He's a capital talker. ”