The End of a Coil

At getting upon his feet and out into the air and gloom of the little street, Mr. Copley's head was very contused; or else he had taken more wine than his daughter guessed. He was not fit to guide himself, or to take care of her. As he seemed utterly at a standstill, Dolly naturally and unconsciously set her face to go the way she had come; for one or two turnings at least she was sure of it. Before those one or two turnings were made, however, she was shocked and scared to find that her father's walk was wavering; he swayed a little on his feet. The street was empty; and if it had not been, what help could Dolly ask for? A pang of great terror shot through her. She took her father's arm, to endeavour to hold him fast; a task rather too much for her little hands and slight frame; and feeling that in spite of her he still moved unsteadily, and that she was an insufficient help, Dolly's anguish broke forth in a cry; natural enough in its unreasoningness —

"O father, don't! – remember, I am all alone!"

How much was in the tone of those last words Dolly could not know; they hardly reached Mr. Copley's sense, though they went through and through another hearer. The next minute Rupert stood before the pair, and was offering his arm to Mr. Copley. Not trusting his patron, in the circumstances, to take care of his young mistress, Rupert had disobeyed her orders so far as to keep the two figures in sight; he had watched them from one turning to another, and had seen that his help was needed, even before he heard Dolly's cry. Then, with a spring, he was there. Mr. Copley leaned now upon his arm, and Dolly fell behind, thankful unspeakably for the relief. She knew by this time that she could never have found her way; and it was plain her father could not.

"Rupert," said Mr. Copley, half recognising the assistance afforded him, "you're a good fellow, and always in the way when you aren't wanted, by George!" But he leaned on his arm heavily.

Dolly followed close; she could not well keep beside them; and felt in that hour more thoroughly lonely perhaps than at any other of her life before or after. Rupert was a relief; and yet so the shame was increased. She stepped along through moonlight and shadow, feeling that light was gone out of her pathway of life for ever, as far as this world was concerned. What was left, when her father was lost to her? – her father! – and not by death; that would not have been to lose him utterly; but now his very identity was gone. Her father, whom all her life she had loved; manly, frank, able, active, taking the lead in every society where she had seen him, making other men do his bidding always, until the passion of gaining and the lust of drink got hold of him! Was it the same, that figure in front of her, leaning on somebody's arm and glad to lean, and going with lame, unsteady gait whither he was led, so like the way his mental course had been lately? Was that her father? The bitterness of Dolly's feeling it is impossible to put into words. Tears could bring no relief, and nature did not summon them to the impossible service. The fire at her heart would have burnt them up; for there was a strange passion of resistance and sense of wrong mixed with Dolly's bitter pain. The way was not short, and it seemed threefold the length it was; every step was so hard, and the crowd of thoughts was so disproportionately great.

They were rather ruminating thoughts of grief and pain, than considerative of what was to be done. For the first, the thing was to get Mr. Copley home. Dolly did not look beyond that. She was glad to find herself arrived at St. Mark's again; and presently they were all three in the gondola. Mr. Copley leaned in a corner, laid his head against a cushion, and slept, or seemed to sleep. The other two were as silent; but I think both felt at the moment as if they would never sleep again. Rupert's face was in shadow; he watched Dolly's face which was in light. She forgot it could be watched; her eyes stared into the moonshine, not seeing it, or looking through it; the sweet face was so very grave that the watcher felt his heart ache. Not the gentle gravity of young maidenhood, looking into the vague light; but the anxious, searching gaze of older life looking into the vague darkness. Rupert did not dare speak to her, though he longed. What would he not have given for the right and the power to comfort! But he knew he had neither. He had sense enough not to try.

It was customary for Mr. Copley, after he had been late out at night, to keep to his room until a late hour the next morning; so Dolly knew what she had to expect. It suited her very well this time, for she must think what she would say to her father when she next saw him. She took care that a cup of coffee such as he liked was sent him; and then, after her own slight breakfast, sat down to plan her movements. So Rupert found her, with her Bible in her lap, but not reading; sitting gazing out upon the bright waters of the lagoon. He came up to her, with a depth of understanding and sympathy in his plain features which greatly dignified them.

"Does that help?" said he, glancing at the book in Dolly's lap.

"This?" said Dolly. "What other help in the world is there?"

"Friends?" suggested Rupert.

"Yes, you were a great help last night," Dolly said slowly. "But there come times – and things – when friends cannot do anything."

"And then – what does the book do?"

"The book?" Dolly repeated again. "O Rupert! it tells of the Friend that can do everything!" Her eyes flushed with tears and she clasped her hands as she spoke.

"What?" said Rupert; for her action was eloquent, and he was curious; and besides he liked to make her talk.

Dolly looked at him and saw that the question was serious. She opened her book.

"Listen. 'Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have; for He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.'"

"That makes pretty close work of it. Can you get hold of that rope? and how much strain will it bear?"

"I believe it will bear anything," said Dolly slowly and thoughtfully; "if one takes hold with both hands. I guess the trouble with me is, that I only take hold with one."

"What do you do with the other hand?"

"Stretch it out towards something else, I suppose. For, see here, Rupert; – 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee; because he trusteth in Thee.' – I am just ashamed of myself!" said Dolly, breaking down and bursting into tears.

"What for?" said Rupert.

"Because I do not trust so."

"I should think it would be very difficult."

"It ought not to be difficult to trust a friend whose truth you know. There! that has done me good," said the girl, sitting up and brushing away the tears. "Rupert, if there is anything you want to see or to do here in Venice, be about it; for I think we shall go off to Rome at once."

She told the same thing to St. Leger when he came in; and having got rid of both the young men set herself anew to consider how she should speak to her father. And consideration helped nothing; she could not tell; she had to leave it to the moment to decide.

It was late in the morning, later than the usual hour for the déjeuner à la fourchette, which Mr. Copley liked. He did not want anything to-day, his wife said; and she and Dolly and Rupert had finished their meal. Dolly contrived then that her mother should go out under Rupert's convoy, to visit the curiosity shop again, (nothing else would have tempted her), and to make one or two little purchases for which Dolly gave Rupert the means. When they were fairly off, she went to her father's room; he was up and dressed, she knew. She went with a very faint heart, not knowing in the least what she would do or say, but feeling that something must be said and done, both.

Mr. Copley was sitting listlessly in a chair by the window; miserable enough, Dolly could see by the gloomy blank of his face; looking out, and caring for nothing that he saw. His features showed traces of the evening before, in red eyes and pale cheeks; and yet worse, in the spiritless, abased expression, which was more than Dolly could bear. She had come in very quietly, but when she saw this she made one spring to his side and sank down on the floor before him, hiding her face on his knee. Mr. Copley's trembling hand presently lifted her up into his arms, and Dolly sat on his knee and buried her face in his breast. Neither of them was ready to speak; neither did speak for some time. It was Mr. Copley who began.

"Well, Dolly, – I suppose you will say to me that I have broken my word?"

"O father!" – it came in a sort of despair from Dolly's heart, – "what shall we do?"

Mr. Copley had certainly no answer ready to this question; and his next words were a departure.

"How came you to be at that place last night?"

"I was afraid you were there" —

"How did you dare come poking about through all those crooked ways, and at that time of night?"

"Father," Dolly said, without lifting her head, "that was nothing. I dared nothing, compared with what you dared!"

"I? You are mistaken, child. I did not run the slightest risk. In fact, I was only doing what everybody else does. You make much of nothing, in your inexperience."

"Father," said Dolly, with a great effort, "you promised me. And when a man cannot keep his promise" —

She had meant to be perfectly quiet; she had begun very calmly; but at that word, suddenly, her calmness failed her. It was too much; and with a sort of wailing cry, which in its forlornness reached and wrung even Mr. Copley's nerves, she broke into a terrible passion of weeping. Terrible! young hearts ought never to know such an agony; and never, never should such an agony be known for the shame or even the weakness of a father. The hand appointed to shield, the love which ought to shelter, – when the blow comes from that quarter, it finds the heart bare and defenceless indeed, and comes so much the harder in that it comes from so near. No other more distant can give such a stroke. And to the young heart, unaccustomed to sorrow, new to life, not knowing how many its burdens and how heavy; not knowing on the other hand the equalising, tempering effects of time; the first great pain comes crushing. The shoulders are not adjusted to the burden, and they feel as if they must break. Dolly's sobs were so convulsive and racking that her father was startled and shocked. What had he done? Alas, the man never knows what he has done; he cannot understand how women die, before their time, that death of the heart which is out of the range of masculine nature.

"Dolly! – Dolly!" Mr. Copley cried, "what is the matter? Don't, Dolly, if you love me. My child, what have I done? Don't you know everybody takes a little wine? Are you wiser than all the world?"

"You promised, father!" Dolly managed to say.

"Perhaps I promised too much. You see, Dolly, —don't cry so! – a man must do as the rest of the world do. It isn't possible to live a separate life, as you would have me. It would make me ridiculous. It would not do. There's no harm in a little wine, child."

"Father, you promised!" Dolly repeated, clinging to him. She was not shrinking away; her arms of love were wrapped round his neck as tenderly as even in old childish days; they had power over Mr. Copley, power which he could not quite resist nor break away from. He returned their pressure, he even kissed her, feeling, I am happy to say, a little ashamed of himself.

"You don't want me to be ridiculous, Dolly?" he repeated, not knowing what to say.

What should she answer to that? No, she did not want him to be ridiculous; and as he spoke she recalled the staggering, impotent figure of last night, in its unmanly feebleness and senseless idiocy. A sense of the difficulty of her task and the vanity of her representations came over Dolly; it gave her new food for tears, but the present effect was to make her stop them. I suppose despair does not weep. Dolly was not despairing, either.

"What shall we do, father?" she asked, ignoring all his remarks and suggestions.

"Do, Dolly? About what?"

"Don't you think we will not stay any longer in Venice?"

"For all I care! Where, then?"

"To Rome, father?"

"I thought you were to be in Rome at Christmas?"

"It is not so very long till Christmas."

"Is your mother agreed?"

"She will be, if you say so."

"If it pleases you, Dolly – I don't care."

"And, father, dear father! won't you keep your promise to me? What is to become of us, father?"

Some bitter tears flowed again as she said this quietly; but Mr. Copley knew they were flowing, and he had an intuitive sense that they were bitter. They embarrassed him.

"I'll make a bargain, Dolly," he said after a pause. "I'll do what you want of me – anything you want – if you'll marry St. Leger."

"But, father, I have not made up my mind to like him enough for that."

"You will like him well enough. If you were to marry him you would be devoted to him. I know you."

"I think the devotion ought to come first."

"Nonsense. That is romantic folly. Novels are one thing, and real life is another."

"I daresay; but do you object to people's being a little romantic?"

"When it interferes with their bread and butter, I do."

"Father, if you would drink no wine, we could all of us have as much bread and butter as we choose."

"You are always harping on that!" said Mr. Copley, frowning.

"Because, our whole life depends on it, father. You cannot bear wine as some people can, I suppose; the habit is growing on you; mother and I are losing you, we do not even have but half a sight of you; and – father – we are wanting necessaries. But I do not think of that," Dolly went on eagerly; "I do not care; I am willing to live on dry bread, and work for the means to get it; but I cannot bear to lose you, father! I cannot bear it! – and it will kill mother. She does not know; I have kept her from knowing; she knows nothing about what happened last night. O father, do not let her know! Would anything pay you for breaking her heart and mine? Is wine more to you than we are? O father, father! let us go home to America, and quit all these people and associations that make it so hard for you to be yourself. I want you to be your dear old self, father! Your dear self, that I love" —

Dolly's voice was choked, and she sobbed. Mr. Copley was not quite insensible. He was silent a good while, hearing her sobs, and then he groaned; a groan partly of real feeling, partly, I am afraid, of desire to have the scene ended; the embarrassment and the difficulty disposed of and behind him. But he thought it had been an expression of deeper feeling solely.

"I'll do anything you like, my dear child," he said. "Only stop crying. You break my heart."

"Father, will you really do something if I ask you?"

"Anything! Only stop crying so."

"Then, father, write and sign it, that you will not ever touch wine. Rupert and I have taken such a pledge already."

"What is the use of writing and signing? I don't see. A man can let it alone without that."

"He can, if he wants to let it alone; but if he is very much tempted, then the pledge is a help."

"What did you and Rupert do such a thing as that for?"

"I wanted to save him."

"Make him take the pledge, then. Why you?"

"How could I ask him to do what I would not do myself? But I've done it, father; now will you join us?"

"Pshaw!" said Mr. Copley, displeased. "Now you have incapacitated yourself from appearing as others do in society. How would you refuse, if you were asked to drink wine with somebody at a dinner-table?"

"Very easily. I should think all women would refuse," said Dolly. "Father, will you join us, and let us all be unfashionable and happy together?"

"Did St. Leger pledge himself?"

"I have not asked him."

"Well, I will if he will."

"For him, father, and not for me?" said Dolly.

"Ask him," said Mr. Copley. "I'll do as he does."

"Father, you might set an example to him."

"I'll let him set the example for me," said Mr. Copley rising. And Dolly could get no further.

But it was settled that they were to leave Venice. What was to be gained by this step Dolly did not quite know; yet it was a step, that was something. It was something, too, to get out of the neighbourhood of that wine-shop, of which Dolly thought with horror. What might await them in Rome she did not know; at least the bonds of habit in connection with a particular locality would be broken. And Venice was grown odious to her.