Mr. Kyrle allowed himself to be monopolized almost unresistingly
for several days. Not indeed as completely as at the Lido, but to
a degree sufficient to prevent any satisfactory intercourse with
Aimée. A sudden passion for excursions seemed to have seized the
Joscelyns, who had hitherto seen as little as possible of the
different places in which they had unwillingly sojourned, and
who had seemed quite insensible to any claims of art or history
upon their attention. Now, however, they discovered that the
neighborhood of Venice abounded in places of interest; and Lydia
arranged one excursion after another to the adjacent islands,
excursions which Kyrle was invited to join, and during which he was
carefully kept as much as possible apart from Aimée.
The tactics by which this was managed were beautifully simple.
He found himself sitting by Miss Joscelyn’s side in a gondola,
carrying her shawl, offering her his arm whenever the need for
an arm arose, without in the least understanding how it all came
about. But one of the lookers-on understood perfectly, and laughed
to herself with an amusement not untinctured by malice. “He
declined my aid,” Mrs. Meredith thought, “so I shall leave him to
Lydia’s mercy. A man, poor creature, is so helpless in such a case!”
This man was certainly very helpless. There was not in him any
of the tincture of brutality which exists in men who can release
themselves from such a position by the simplest and most direct
methods. He could not be deaf when a woman asked for assistance;
he could not refuse to hold a parasol over her when she requested
him to do so, nor leave her alone when, falling behind the others,
she pleaded fatigue and begged to “rest a little.” They were all
threadbare artifices, but still strong enough to hold one who
to the instincts of a gentleman in such matters added a certain
hopelessness with regard to his own affairs. For, after all, he
said to himself, he had made up his mind not to compromise Aimée by
attentions of a loverlike character, and it was well that Lydia
Joscelyn should help him to keep this somewhat difficult resolution.
But it was a resolution which every day became more difficult, as
every day the charm that breathed from her presence laid deeper
hold upon him. Despite the vigilance of the Joscelyns, they
had occasional opportunities for conversation, and every such
opportunity seemed to him to strengthen that impression of a rare
individuality which she had from their first acquaintance made upon
him. Now and then there were glimpses of thoughts and feelings that
lay usually hidden under the gentle composure with which she met
the world; and these glimpses, he had a fancy, were given only to
him. One of these rare occasions occurred on an excursion to one of
the islands, where they encountered another group of tourists, who,
proving to be acquaintances, distracted for a time the attention of
the rest of the party and so made it possible for him to find Aimée
alone. She was sitting, when he discovered her, under the shadow
of the cloisters belonging to the ancient and partially deserted
monastic building they were supposed to be examining, gazing
seaward; and as he approached unobserved, he was struck by the
wistful, almost sad expression of her face. The expression vanished
as she became conscious of his presence; only a slight shadow still
lingered in her eyes as she turned them on him. But she spoke, with
a smile:
“Does a scene like this,” she said, indicating the wide, beautiful
marine picture spread before them, “ever rouse in you the
expectation of seeing a sail rise up from ‘the underworld’ bringing
some wonderful good fortune to you? I am always expecting it. I
never look at an ocean horizon without saying to myself, ‘When will
my sail come?’”
“I thought,” he said, as he sat down beside her, “that your sail
had come, bearing what most people consider the best of good
fortune.”
“You mean money?” she asked. “Yes, that came to me, and I am not
so ungrateful as to underrate its value, though I can not say it
has done much for me; but I am not thinking of anything so prosaic,
in looking for my fairy sail. That will bring--ah, I know not
what, but something that will give a different meaning to life. All
things seem possible there”--she waved her hand toward the distant
meeting-place of sea and sky; “one feels as if everything for which
one longs might come out of that mysterious distance.”
“But if the magic fortune delays, why not go in search of it?”
Kyrle asked, smiling at the fancifulness of the talk. “Shall we
embark? Behind that dim line we may find all that we have lacked in
life awaiting us.”
She shook her head. “No,” she answered; “I have no heart to search
the unknown. I am one of those who can only sit on the shore and
wait the coming of the sail, however much it may delay.”
Something in her tone, an unconscious echo of the sadness still
lurking in her eyes, made Kyrle realize more fully than he had ever
done before that her life was certainly not happy. How, indeed,
could happiness in any positive degree exist in such an environment
as hers? Physical well-being, the comfort and luxury of wealth
were hers; but what besides, what love for the tender heart, what
sympathy for the aspiring mind? No wonder that the dark, wistful
eyes sought the horizon for the magic sail that should bring
some meaning into her colorless days. A rush of pity made speech
impossible to him for several minutes, and with pity came a longing
like a passion to seize and bear her away from the odious people
who surrounded and preyed upon her, into the sunshine of such a
full and generous existence as her nature craved. It was the force
of repression which he had to exert upon himself which made his
voice sound almost stern, as he said:
“The most of us can do little more than sit on the shore and wait
for sails that long delay in their coming. But I fear that what we
chiefly look for them to bring is that prosaic fortune which you
despise.”
“Oh, no,” she answered, quickly, “I am not so foolish nor, as I
have said, so ungrateful as to despise wealth. But if I do not rate
its power as high as most people seem to do, that is natural. My
fortune has really brought me very little personal good. I have
often thought that I should have been happier without it. Yet that
seems ungrateful; and my family would think it sheer profanity,”
she added, with a smile.
“I wish,” said Kyrle, with an energy that was fairly startling,
“I wish to Heaven that I were a rich man! Shall I tell you what I
would do? It is understood that we are in fairyland, you know. I
would have a yacht--a very sea-gull for swiftness and beauty--at my
bidding, and I would take you--”
“Oh, here she is!” said a voice at a little distance--the far from
welcome voice of Percy Joscelyn. “Aimée, we are waiting for you.”
* * * * *
It chanced that Kyrle was thinking of this conversation and all
that it had suggested the next day as, having left the party in a
church engaged in inspecting, with blank amazement, some frescoes
of Carpaccio which Mr. Ruskin has held up to the admiration of
the world, he went out on the little piazza before the church and
sat down on the steps which led down to the canal, to wait for
them. As he sat there in the soft Venetian sunlight he was of two
moods--one to go quickly, at once, out of a temptation which had
become overmastering; the other, to cast all scruples to the winds,
and show these people--who fancied, forsooth, that their stratagems
and devices had any power to restrain him--how little such barriers
of straw would stand in his way did he once resolve to take that
way. Some one, who came quietly out of the church and sat down
beside him, thought that at this moment he looked more like the
old, masterful Lennox Kyrle than he had looked since she had seen
him under these new conditions.
“I wonder,” said Fanny Meredith, “if you are by this time aware
that you are a very foolish man?”
He turned and looked at her. “I have been aware of it for a long
time,” he answered, quietly.
“And is not the knowledge of folly the beginning of wisdom? Are you
not sorry now that you refused my good offices?”
“Did I refuse them? I am not sure of it. But, if so, the reason
holds good now as then, which made it impossible for me to accept
them. You urged me to come forward as a suitor to your cousin,
and I told you that I was too poor a man to think of doing so. My
position has not changed since then.”
“But if you don’t see the folly of _that_, you are not at the
beginning of wisdom,” said she, impatiently. “Why, according to
your fancy, only rich people should ever marry rich people; when,
on the contrary, it should really be the other way! The proper
equalizing of wealth demands that rich persons should marry poor
ones.”
He was not in a mirthful mood, but to refrain from laughing at
this was impossible. “It is a new thing for you to appear in the
character of a political economist,” he said. “Your theory is well
enough, and I find no fault with those who practice it. But I must
decline to be one of the poor persons who aid in the equalization
of wealth by such means.”
“Well, _I_ am one of them,” said Fanny, quite unabashed, turning
a diamond ring round on her finger so that its flashing splendor
lent emphasis to the assertion, “and I can assure you that it is
a very good means. Pride is the matter with you,” she went on,
remorselessly, “and I call it a very selfish thing--much worse
than the mercenary spirit, which I presume you feel very virtuous
in despising! You don’t deny that you are in love with Aimée; you
dare not say that she is not worth a thousand times more than her
fortune; and yet you are prepared to let _her_ go, for the sake
of the money you profess to hold in such scorn, and because the
Joscelyns might call you a fortune-hunter.”
This was certainly very plain speech, and contained a kernel of
truth which struck Kyrle sharply. “If I have held money in scorn,”
he said, “it has only been with regard to myself. I know well what
its value is in the eyes of others. And it is true that I think too
much of my own pride, perhaps; but this is a point on which I have
always been peculiarly sensitive--”
“As if I did not know that!” she interposed, with a note of that
curious old resentment against his culpable indifference to
mercenary considerations in her voice. “You were so afraid of
being suspected of paying court to your uncle, that you behaved
outrageously to him. Oh, it was a very fine thing to show your
spirit, your independence, your scorn of groveling souls that cared
for money! So you lost a fortune which a little compliance with an
old man’s whims would have secured to you; and now you are enjoying
the fine results thereof, and preparing to be guilty of the same
folly, only in an aggravated form, over again!”
Some people, leaning in the windows of one of the tall, old houses
across the canal, and watching the little scene curiously, remarked
among themselves that the pretty foreign lady seemed to be a
terrible scold, and that the poor man--her husband, probably--had
little to say under her rating. “He has deserved it, no doubt,”
remarked one woman, enlightened by her own experience. “It is a
case of jealousy, most likely.”
“What a vindictive creature you are!” Kyrle was meanwhile saying,
with a smile. “Why can not my old follies--for which, as you justly
observe, I am now suffering--be allowed to rest? I grant you that
I was foolish, impracticable, full of pride--”
“As you are yet,” she interpolated.
“Granted again. But a fortune-hunter--to be suspected of seeking a
woman for her wealth--that is something I should feel very deeply.
Yet Miss Vincent is indeed worth so much more than her fortune,
that to speak of it in connection with her seems an insult. If she
were only rid of it--”
“But she is not,” said practical Fanny; “and you can hardly expect
her to give it or throw it away in order to oblige you.”
“I expect nothing,” he answered impatiently. “And I do not
understand why you should talk as if I had only to put out my hand
and grasp a prize which I am sure would, under any circumstances,
be far beyond my reach.”
“Your humility does you credit,” she said. “But in my opinion
there is no reason why you should not grasp the prize if you would
only resolve to make the effort. It is not on your own account
that I urge you in this manner,” she added, quickly, “but because
I want to rescue Aimée. You do not understand, and _she_ hardly
understands, in what a bondage she is held. If those people can
prevent it, she will never marry anybody, unless it be Percy
Joscelyn. By every possible means they keep suitors away from her;
and if I had not been here, you would never have been allowed to
approach her near enough to bow to her. Through me you have a
chance that no other man has had before. But if you are so blind,
if you throw it away for a mere scruple, if you think more of your
own pride than of saving her--then you may go! I have nothing more
to say to you.”
She rose as she uttered the last words, and Kyrle, who had listened
to the latter part of her speech with amazement, could scarcely
believe that it was Fanny Meredith who was leaving him with such an
air of dignity. He rose too, and made a step after her. There was
a sensible quickening of interest among the heads at the windows
opposite, as the scene promised to become more dramatic. “It must
be a lover’s quarrel,” some one suggested. “If he were her husband
he would not follow her.”
“Stop a minute,” Kyrle said. “If you have nothing more to say to
me, at least let me say something to you. I have never looked at
the matter in exactly the light in which you have put it. But
if you will have patience, if you will give me a little time to
consider, I will tell you my final decision before to-day is ended.”
“In your place, I would tell mine in five minutes,” said Fanny,
scornfully.
“Very likely,” said he, humbly, “but you must make allowances for
the slowness of the masculine mind. Can I see you--will you be at
home this afternoon?”
“No,” she replied, after a moment’s consideration, “for Mr.
Meredith would likely be at home also, and we could not speak
freely. But you may meet me at the top of the Campanile about
sunset.”
She had hardly said this, and Kyrle had no more than time to
assent, when Miss Joscelyn emerged from the church and came toward
them with an air of surprise.
“I have been wondering what had become of Mr. Kyrle,” she said.
“You really should not have kept him from studying those
extraordinary frescoes of Carpaccio.”
“They are certainly extraordinary,” said Fanny, dryly, “but I have
not kept Mr. Kyrle from them. I found him here when I came out for
a little relief of sunshine. I hope that we are done with Carpaccio
now, and that we are going home. It is time for lunch, and I am
hungry.”
This seemed to be the general sentiment of the party, which, with a
somewhat stupefied appearance--as of having taken art in rather too
large a dose--now emerged from the church. The major was shaking
his head. “Mr. Ruskin is, no doubt, a fine judge of painting,” he
was saying, “but, really--ah--hum--to send one to see such pictures
as these!”
Aimée, who was walking behind with Percy, looked tired and pale,
and when Kyrle met her eyes he was about to step to her side, but a
hand was suddenly laid on his arm.
“Do be kind enough to raise this parasol for me,” said Miss
Joscelyn. “The sun is positively blinding.”
Kyrle raised the parasol, and, accepting his fate, assisted her
into the waiting gondola. But then, instead of following, he
stepped back, and, lifting his hat quietly, bade the party adieu
“until to-morrow.”
“You will not join us this afternoon?” inquired Lydia, with some
surprise and evident concern.
“I am sorry that I can not have that pleasure,” he answered. “I
have a budget of correspondence to read, and another budget to
dispatch.”
“Then we will defer the excursion to Murano till to-morrow,” said
she, positively.
Kyrle did not answer, but watched the gondola, as it moved away,
with a very grave face. The moment of temptation had come now in
earnest. Ought he to think of himself and his own pride, when it
was a question of rescuing the fair and gentle creature who had won
his heart from such a bondage as that which Fanny described? If it
were true that by a singular chance he had been enabled to approach
her more nearly than any other man had ever approached her, or was
likely in the future to do, did it not seem as if Fate pointed
him out as her rescuer? Yet, for him, by comparison a poor man, to
woo so rich a woman, to meet the insults of her friends, and bear
the brand of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the world--that was a
bitter necessity to face; and, revolving it in his mind, he went
slowly home.
He had been strictly within the limit of the truth when he told
Miss Joscelyn that he had a budget of correspondence to read,
for the accumulation of several weeks had reached him only that
morning, and he had not taken time to wade through it before going
out. After a light _déjeuner_, he set himself to the task, partly
because it was a necessity, and partly to distract his mind from
the question which he was constantly asking and altogether unable
to answer.
So, after going through several letters with a very distracted
attention, he took up and opened one which was addressed in a
strange handwriting and bore the stamp of a legal firm. “How can
I--I, who have nothing!” was the refrain echoing through his brain
as he broke the seal. But a minute later he uttered a great
exclamation, and sat staring incredulously at the paper before him.
Instead of having nothing, this letter informed him that he
possessed a fortune of not less than a million and a half dollars.