A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories | Page 5

had not occurred to him
before that with his company she could desire any other companionship.
He desired none but hers, and when he was about his work he often
thought of her. He supposed that at these moments she thought of him,
and found society, as he did, in such thoughts. But he was not a jealous
or exacting man, and he said nothing. His treatment of the approaching

visit from Susy Stevens's sister had not been enthusiastic, but a spark
had kindled his imagination, and it burned warmer and brighter as the
days went by. He found a charm in the thought of having this fresh
young life here in his charge, and of teaching the girl to live into the
great and beautiful history of the city: there was still much of the
school-master in him, and he intended to make her sojourn an
education to her; and as a literary man he hoped for novel effects from
her mind upon material which he was above all trying to set in a new
light before himself.
When the time had arrived for them to go and meet Miss Mayhew at
Genoa, he was more than reconciled to the necessity. But at the last
moment, Mrs. Elmore had one of her old attacks. What these attacks
were I find myself unable to specify, but as every lady has an old attack
of some kind, I may safely leave their precise nature to conjecture. It is
enough that they were of a nervous character, that they were
accompanied with headache, and that they prostrated her for several
days. During their continuance she required the active sympathy and
constant presence of her husband, whose devotion was then exemplary,
and brought up long arrears of indebtedness in that way.
"Well, what shall we do?" he asked, as he sank into a chair beside the
lounge on which Mrs. Elmore lay, her eyes closed, and a slice of lemon
placed on each of her throbbing temples with the effect of a new sort of
blinders. "Shall I go alone for her?"
She gave his hand the kind of convulsive clutch that signified,
"Impossible for you to leave me."
He reflected. "The Mortons will be pushing on to Leghorn, and
somebody must meet her. How would it do for Mr. Hoskins to go?"
Mrs. Elmore responded with a clutch tantamount to "Horrors! How
could you think of such a thing?"
"Well, then," he said, "the only thing we can do is to send a valet de
place for her. We can send old Cazzi. He's the incarnation of
respectability; five francs a day and his expenses will buy all the virtues

of him. She'll come as safely with him as with me."
Mrs. Elmore had applied a vividly thoughtful pressure to her husband's
hand; she now released it in token of assent, and he rose.
"But don't be gone long," she whispered.
On his way to the caffè which Cazzi frequented, Elmore fell in with the
consul.
By this time a change had taken place in the consular office. Mr. Ferris,
some months before, had suddenly thrown up his charge and gone
home; and after the customary interval of ship-chandler, the California
sculptor, Hoskins, had arrived out, with his commission in his pocket,
and had set up his allegorical figure of The Pacific Slope in the room
where Ferris had painted his too metaphysical conception of A
Venetian Priest. Mrs. Elmore had never liked Ferris; she thought him
cynical and opinionated, and she believed that he had not behaved quite
well towards a young American lady,--a Miss Vervain, who had stayed
awhile in Venice with her mother. She was glad to have him go; but
she could not admire Mr. Hoskins, who, however good-hearted, was
too hopelessly Western. He had had part of one foot shot away in the
nine months' service, and walked with a limp that did him honor; and
he knew as much of a consul's business as any of the authors or artists
with whom it is the tradition to fill that office at Venice. Besides he
was at least a fellow-American, and Elmore could not forbear telling
him the trouble he was in: a young girl coming from their town in
America as far as Genoa with friends, and expecting to be met there by
the Elmores, with whom she was to pass some months; Mrs. Elmore
utterly prostrated by one of her old attacks, and he unable to leave her,
or to take her with him to Genoa; the friends with whom Miss Mayhew
travelled unable to bring her to Venice; she, of course, unable to come
alone. The case deepened and darkened in Elmore's view as he
unfolded it.
"Why," cried the consul sympathetically, "if I could leave