A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories | Page 4

badly, where it was going at all. The letters now
never spoke of any term to it; they expressed rather the dogged patience
of the time when it seemed as if there could be no end, and indicated
that the country had settled into shape about it, and was pushing
forward its other affairs as if the war did not exist. Mrs. Elmore felt that
the America which she had left had ceased to be. The letters were
almost less a pleasure than a pain, but she always tore them open, and
read them with eager unhappiness. There were miserable intervals of
days and even weeks when no letters came, and when the Reuter
telegrams in the Gazette of Venice dribbled their vitriolic news of
Northern disaster through a few words or lines, and Galignani's long
columns were filled with the hostile exultation and prophecy of the
London press.
III.
They had passed eighteen months of this sort of life in Venice when
one day a letter dropped into it which sent a thousand ripples over its
stagnant surface. Mrs. Elmore read it first to herself, with gasps and
cries of pleasure and astonishment, which did not divert her husband
from the perusal of some notes he had made the day before, and had
brought to the breakfast-table with the intention of amusing her. When
she flattened it out over his notes, and exacted his attention, he turned

an unwilling and lack-lustre eye upon it; then he looked up at her.
"Did you expect she would come?" he asked, in ill-masked dismay.
"I don't suppose they had any idea of it at first. When Sue wrote me
that Lily had been studying too hard, and had to be taken out of school,
I said that I wished she could come over and pay us a visit. But I don't
believe they dreamed of letting her--Sue says so--till the Mortons'
coming seemed too good a chance to be lost. I am so glad of it, Owen!
You know how much they have always done for me; and here is a
chance now to pay a little of it back."
"What in the world shall we do with her?" he asked.
"Do? Everything! Why, Owen," she urged, with pathetic recognition of
his coldness, "she is Susy Stevens's own sister!"
"Oh, yes--yes," he admitted.
"And it was Susy who brought us together!"
"Why, of course."
"And oughtn't you to be glad of the opportunity?"
"I am glad--very glad."
"It will be a relief to you instead of a care. She's such a bright,
intelligent girl that we can both sympathize with your work, and you
won't have to go round with me all the time, and I can matronize her
myself."
"I see, I see," Elmore replied, with scarcely abated seriousness.
"Perhaps, if she is coming here for her health, she won't need much
matronizing."
"Oh, pshaw! She'll be well enough for that! She's overdone a little at
school. I shall take good care of her, I can tell you; and I shall make her
have a real good time. It's quite flattering of Susy to trust her to us, so

far away, and I shall write and tell her we both think so."
"Yes," said Elmore, "it's a fearful responsibility."
There are instances of the persistence of husbands in certain moods or
points of view on which even wheedling has no effect. The wise
woman perceives that in these cases she must trust entirely to the
softening influences of time, and as much as possible she changes the
subject; or if this is impossible she may hope something from
presenting a still worse aspect of the affair. Mrs. Elmore said, in lifting
the letter from the table: "If she sailed the 3d in the City of Timbuctoo,
she will be at Queenstown on the 12th or 13th, and we shall have a
letter from her by Wednesday saying when she will be at Genoa. That's
as far as the Mortons can bring her, and there's where we must meet
her."
"Meet her in Genoa! How?"
"By going there for her," replied Mrs. Elmore, as if this were the
simplest thing in the world. "I have never seen Genoa."
Elmore now tacitly abandoned himself to his fate. His wife continued:
"I needn't take anything. Merely run on, and right back."
"When must we go?" he asked.
"I don't know yet; but we shall have a letter to-morrow. Don't worry on
my account, Owen. Her coming won't be a bit of care to me. It will give
me something to do and to think about, and it will be a pleasure all the
time to know that it's for Susy Stevens. And I shall like the
companionship."
Elmore looked at his wife in surprise, for it