James Harding Miller was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan of most
gentlemanly exterior. His grey face was deeply lined and bore that
curious washed-out look of a man who had lived many years in a hot
climate. After ten years or so the fiery Italian sun no longer tans the
face of the northerner, but on the contrary his hair goes prematurely
grey, and each year as the burning summer comes he is less able to
withstand the heat of the "lion" days. His leanness, his foreign-cut
clothes, and the slight gesticulation as he spoke all showed him to be a
man more at home in the bright Italian land of song and sunlight than
there, in an English village, the proprietor of that charming old home
of his honourable ancestors.
In reply to his question I was rather evasive, saying that I happened to
be in Swanage, and had driven out to pay a complimentary call upon his
sister. She was not to put herself out of the way in the least, I
urged. I should remain in Swanage for some days and hoped to have the
pleasure of calling again.
Then turning and glancing around, I exclaimed:--"What a delightful old
room! To me it is a real pleasure to enter a thoroughly English home,
as this is."
"Why?" he inquired, eyeing me with some surprise. "Because I live
almost always on the Continent, and after a time foreign life and
foreign ways jar upon the Englishman. At least I've found it so."
"Ah!" He sighed, rather heavily I thought. "And I, too, have found it
so. I quite agree with you. One may travel the world over, as I have
done these past twenty years, yet there's no place like our much-abused
old England, after all."
"Oh, then you've been a rolling stone, like myself," I remarked,
delighted at the success of my ruse.
"Yes. And I still am," was his answer, given rather sadly. "Ever since
my poor wife's death, now nearly twenty years ago, I've been a wanderer.
This place is mine, but I'm scarcely ever here. Why? I can't for the
life of me tell you. I've tried to settle down, but cannot. After a
week here in this quiet rural dulness, the old fever sets up in my
blood, a longing for action, a longing to go south to Italy--the country
which seems to hold me in a kind of magnetism which I have never been
able to resist."
"And I, too, love Italy," I said. "Is it not strange that most of us
who have lived any length of time in that country of blossoming
magnolias and gentle vines always desire to return to it. We may abuse
its defects, we may revile its people as dishonest idlers, we may
execrate its snail-like railways and run down its primitive hotels, yet
all the same we have a secret longing to return to that glowing land
where life is love, where art is in the very atmosphere, where the sun
brings gladness to the heaviest heart, and the night silence is broken
by love _stornelli_ and the mandoline."
"You are right," he said, gazing straight out of the old leaded window
and speaking almost as though to himself. "Byron found it so, Shelley,
Smollet, Trollope, the Brownings and hosts of others. They were
fascinated by the fatal beauty of Italy--just as a man is so often drawn
to his doom by the face of a beautiful woman. And after all we are but
straws on the winds of the hour."
Then, turning to a cabinet, I bent and admired a fine old Lowestoft
tea-set and a collection of old blue posset-pots, whereupon he said:--
"Ah! I see you are interested in antiques. Do you care for pictures?
I have one or two."
"I do. I should delight to see them," I answered with enthusiasm;
therefore he led me across the low old-fashioned hall with its great oak
beams and open fireplace into a long gallery where the floor was
polished, and along one side was hung a choice collection of masters of
the Bolognese, Tuscan and Venetian schools.
At a glance I saw that they were of considerable value, and as I walked
along slowly examining them I half feared lest I might come face to face
with the daughter of the house.
Mine was a bold adventure, and surely it was fortunate for me that old
Miss Catherine had a headache.
Through room after room he conducted me with all the pride of a
collector showing his treasures. Indeed, I was amazed to find such a
perfect museum of Italian art hidden away in that picturesque old Manor
House. "Yes," he said presently, as we entered the long old-fashioned
drawing-room upholstered in antique rose-pattern chintz, "I've collected
in Italy for a good many years. One can pick up bargains, even now, in
the less frequented towns, say Ravenna, Verona, Bologna or Rimini; while
in Leghorn there are still lots of genuine Sheraton and Chippendale
which was imported from England by the English merchants of that time.
I once made a splendid find of seventeenth-century English silver--two
porringers and some spoons--in the Ghetto in Leghorn."
I was at the moment looking at a circular Madonna on panel, evidently of
the Bolognese school of the cinquecento, hanging at the end of the long
pleasant old room when, in glancing round, my eye fell upon two small
tables where stood photographs in frames.
In an instant I bent over one and recognised it as that of the girl who
had come to me so mysteriously at Shepherd's Bush.
"That is my daughter," he remarked.
"Curious," I said, feigning to reflect. "I think I've met her somewhere
abroad. Perhaps it was in Italy. Could it have been in Leghorn?"
"You know Leghorn?"
"I've been there many times. I know the Camerons, the Davises, the
Matthews, and most of the English colony there."
"Then you may possibly have met her there," he said. "We have a small
flat on the sea-front, and my daughter often plays tennis."
"Of course!" I exclaimed, as though the mention of tennis brought back
to me full recollection of the incident. "It was at tennis that I saw
her--last season when I was at the Palace Hotel. I remember now, quite
well. Our Mediterranean fleet were lying there at the time, and there
were lots of festivities, as there are every summer. Is your daughter
now in England?"
"Oh, yes. She's up in London, but returns to-morrow."
"And are you going back to Italy soon?" I inquired.
"I hardly know. My movements are never very certain. I'm quite a
creature of circumstances, and nowadays drift about with the wind of
chance," he laughed.
"But this is a lovely old place," I remarked. "If I had it I should
certainly not prefer a flat in a sun-baked Italian town, like Leghorn."
"Circumstances," he remarked simply, with a mysterious smile upon his
grey face.
What, I wondered, was his meaning?
Did he really intend to convey that the circumstances of his
dishonourable profession compelled him to hide himself in a small flat
in that somewhat obscure town--obscure as far as English life went?
When he learnt that I knew some of his friends in Leghorn he became
enthusiastic, and began to discuss the town and its notabilities. What
did I think of the English parson? And whether I did not think that
seeing the small English congregation the church ought not to be removed
to some town with a larger English colony. It was absurd to keep a
parson there for half a dozen people.
And while my sharp eyes were busy examining the photographs set among
vases of fresh-cut flowers, I made replies and sometimes laughed at his
witty criticisms of persons known to both of us in "the Brighton of
Italy."
"What a contrast is the quiet rural life here, with all its old-world
English tranquillity, to that of the gay, garish, sun-blanched
_passeggiata_ of Leghorn, with its bright-eyed women, its oleanders, its
noise, movement, the glare and strident music of the _cafe-chantants_,
and the brightness of the newly discovered spa," I said.
He sighed, pursing his lips.
"Yes, Mr Leaf, you are quite right," he answered. "I love Italy, but I
confess I very often long to be back here at Studland, in my own quiet
old home. Lucie is always begging me to forsake the Continent and
return. But it is impossible--utterly impossible."
"Why impossible?" I asked, looking into his deeply furrowed face.
"Well--there is a reason," was his response. "A strong reason, one of
health, which induces--nay, compels me to live abroad. And I greatly
prefer Italy to any other country."
Little did he dream that I had that secret document of the Italian
Detective Department in my possession, or that I had learnt the truth
from my friend Sampson, the friend of the young Chilian Carrera.
We were chatting on, having halted at the open window which looked
across the old-fashioned garden with its rose arbours, moss-grown
terrace and grey weather-beaten sundial, away to the park beyond, when I
suddenly crossed to another table, whereon were other photographs.
One of them I thought I recognised even in the distance.
Yes! I was not mistaken! I took it in my trembling hand with a word of
apology, and looked into the picture intently. Sight of it staggered
me.
"Who is this?" I asked hoarsely, and my host must, I think, have
noticed the great change in my countenance.
"A friend of my daughter's, I think. Do you know her?"
"I knew her," I replied in a hard, low tone, for sight of that smiling
face brought back to me all the bitter remembrance of a part that I
would have fain forgotten. "It is Ella Murray!"
"Ah!--yes, that's her name. I recollect now," he said; and I saw by his
face that he was interested. "I think they were at school together."
Again I looked upon the portrait of my dear dead love, my eyes
fascinated, for I beheld there, at her throat, the small brooch I had
given her on her birthday, a green enamelled heart with two hearts in
diamonds entwined upon it.
Those sweet, wide-open eyes, clear blue and wondering like a child's,
gazed out upon me; her well-formed lips were slightly parted, as though
she were speaking again, uttering those soft words that had so charmed
me when she was mine, and mine only. I recollected the dress, too, one
she had worn one night at dinner at the big country-house where we had
been fellow-guests. Every feature of that lovely face was indelibly
photographed upon my memory. Through those dark years, after that
paroxysm of grief that had overtaken me when I discovered her false, I
had, sleeping and waking, seen that smiling countenance as before my
vision. Even in death Ella was still mine.
That smile! Ah! did it not mock me? Had not Avarice and Death cheated
me out of Happiness? A great darkness was over my mind, like the plague
of an unending night.
I set my teeth, swallowed the lump that arose in my throat, and with a
sigh replaced the photograph upon the table.
"A pretty face," remarked the man whose police record was in my
possession.
"Yes, very," I remarked casually.
Ah! what a storm of bitter recollections surged through my burning
brain.
Had she but lived and loved how different would my own wasted, aimless
life have been!
Yes. She was, after all, my dear dead love--my Ella!