The Lady of the Aroostook

by William Dean Howells

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; we expect to talk about it, and say how it is this and that; and I've no doubt that we're sub-consciously harassed, all the time, with an automatic process of criticism. Now Lurella, I fancy, reads with the sense of the days when people read in private, and not in public, as we do. She believes that your serious books are all true; and she knows that my novels are all lies—that's what some excellent Christians would call the fiction even of George Eliot or of Hawthorne; she would be ashamed to discuss the lives and loves of heroes and heroines who never existed. I think that's first-rate. She must wonder at your distempered interest in them. If one could get at it, I suppose the fresh wholesomeness of Lurella's mind would be something delicious,—a quality like spring water.”

He was one of those men who cannot rest in regard to people they meet till they have made some effort to formulate them. He liked to ticket them off; but when he could not classify them, he remained content with his mere study of them. His habit was one that does not promote sympathy with one's fellow creatures. He confessed even that it disposed him to wish for their less acquaintance when once he had got them generalized; they became then collected specimens. Yet, for the time being, his curiosity in them gave him a specious air of sociability. He lamented the insincerity which this involved, but he could not help it. The next novelty in character was as irresistible as the last; he sat down before it till it yielded its meaning, or suggested to him some analogy by which he could interpret it.

With this passion for the arrangement and distribution of his neighbors, it was not long before he had placed most of the people on board in what he called the psychology of the ship. He did not care that they should fit exactly in their order. He rather preferred that they should have idiosyncrasies which differentiated them from their species, and he enjoyed Lydia's being a little indifferent about books for this and for other reasons. “If she were literary, she would be like those vulgar little persons of genius in the magazine stories. She would have read all sorts of impossible things up in her village. She would have been discovered by some aesthetic summer boarder, who had happened to identify her with the gifted Daisy Dawn, and she would be going out on the aesthetic's money for the further expansion of her spirit in Europe. Somebody would be obliged to fall in love with her, and she would sacrifice her career for a man who was her inferior, as we should be subtly given to understand at the close. I think it's going to be as distinguished by and by not to like books as it is not to write them. Lurella is a prophetic soul; and if there's anything comforting about her, it's her being so merely and stupidly pretty.”

“She is not merely and stupidly pretty!” retorted Dunham. “She never does herself justice when you are by. She can talk very well, and on some subjects she thinks strongly.”

“Oh, I'm sorry for that!” said Staniford. “But call me some time when she's doing herself justice.”

“I don't mean that she's like the women we know. She doesn't say witty things, and she hasn't their responsive quickness; but her ideas are her own, no matter how old they are; and what she says she seems to be saying for the first time, and as if it had never been thought out before.”

“That is what I have been contending for,” said Staniford; “that is what I meant by spring water. It is that thrilling freshness which charms me in Lurella.” He laughed. “Have you converted her to your spectacular faith, yet?” Dunham blushed. “You have tried,” continued Staniford. “Tell me about it!”

“I will not talk with you on such matters,” said Dunham, “till you know how to treat serious things seriously.”

“I shall know how when I realize that they are serious with you. Well, I don't object to a woman's thinking strongly on religious subjects: it's the only safe ground for her strong thinking, and even there she had better feel strongly. Did you succeed in convincing her that Archbishop Laud was a saint incompris, and the good King Charles a blessed martyr.”