And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,
To live on still in love, and yet in vain,
To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face. E. B. Browning.
Much has been said and written about the monotony of unalloyed pleasure,
and the necessity of shadows and dark places in life as well as in
pictured landscape. And certainly there can be but few in this world of
stern realities who would dispute the fact that pleasure is doubled by
its contrast with preceding pain. Perhaps it was the vividness of this
contrast that made Raeburn and Erica enjoy, with a perfect rapture of
enjoyment, a beautiful view and a beautiful spring day in Italy. Behind
them lay a very sombre past; they had escaped for a brief moment from
the atmosphere of strife, from the world of controversy, from the
scorching breath of slander, from the baleful influences of persecution
and injustice. Before them lay the fairest of all the cities of Italy.
They were sitting in the Boboli gardens, and from wooded heights looked
down upon that loveliest of Italian valleys.
The silver Arno wound its way between the green encircling hills; then
between the old houses of Florence, its waters spanned now by a
light suspension bridge token of modern times now by old brown arches
strengthened and restored, now by the most venerable looking of all the
bridges, the Ponte Vecchio, with its double row of little shops. Into
the cloudless blue sky rose the pinnacles of Santa Croce, the domes of
San Spirito, of the Baptistery, of the Cathedral; sharply defined in
the clear atmosphere were the airy, light Campanile of Giotto, the more
slender brown tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the spire of Santa Maria
Novella. Northward beyond the city rose the heights of Fiesole, and to
the east the green hills dotted all over with white houses, swept away
into the unseen distance.
Raeburn had been selected as the English delegate to attend a certain
political gathering held that year at Florence. He had at first
hesitated to accept the post for his work at home had enormously
increased; but the long months of wearing anxiety had so told upon him
that his friends had at length persuaded him to go, fully aware that the
only chance of inducing him to take any rest was to get him out of the
region of work.
The “Miracles” trial was at length over, but Mr. Pogson had not obtained
the desire of his heart, namely, the imprisonment and fining of Luke
Raeburn. The only results of the trial were the extensive advertisement
of the pamphlet in question, a great increase of bitterness on each
side, and a great waste of money. Erica's sole consolation lay in the
fact that a few of the more liberal thinkers were beginning to see
the evil and to agitate for a repeal of the Blasphemy Laws. As for the
action for libel, there was no chance of its coming on before June, and
in the meantime Mr. Pogson's letter was obtaining a wider circulation,
and perhaps, on the whole, Luke Raeburn was just at that time the
best-abused man in all England.
There had been a long silence between the father and daughter who
understood each other far too well to need many words at such a time;
but at length a sudden ejaculation from Raeburn made Erica turn her eye
from Fiesole to the shady walk in the garden down which he was looking.
“Does any Italian walk at such a pace?” he exclaimed. “That must surely
be Brian Osmond or his double in the shape of an English tourist.”
“Oh, impossible!” said Erica, coloring a little and looking intently at
the pedestrian who was still at some little distance.
“But it is,” said Raeburn “height, way of walking, everything! My dear
Eric, don't tell me I can't recognize the man who saved my life. I
should know him a mile off!”
“What can have brought him here?” said Erica, a certain joyous tumult
in her heart checked by the dread of evil tidings a dread which was but
natural to one who had lived her life.
“Come and meet him,” said Raeburn. “Ha, Brian, I recognized you ever so
far off, and couldn't persuade this child of your identity.”
Brian, a little flushed with quick walking, looked into Erica's face
searchingly, and was satisfied with what he read there satisfied with
the soft glow of color that came to her cheeks, and with the bright look
of happiness that came into her eyes which, as a rule, were grave, and
when in repose even sad in expression.
“I owe this to a most considerate patient who thought fit to be taken
ill at Genoa and to telegraph for me,” he said in explanation; “and
being in Italy, I thought I might as well take my yearly outing now.”
“Capital idea!” said Raeburn. “You are the very man we wanted. What with
the meetings and interviews, I don't get much peace even here, and Erica
is much in need of an escort sometimes. How did you find us?”
“They told me at the hotel that I should probably find you here, though,
if I had known what a wilderness of a place it is I should have been
rather hopeless.”
Erica left most of the talking to her father; just then she felt no
wish to put a single thought into words. She wanted only to enjoy the
blissful dream-like happiness which was so new, and rare, and wonderful
that it brought with it the feeling that any very definite thought or
word must bring it to an end. Perfect harmony with your surroundings.
Yes, that was indeed a very true definition of happiness; and of late
the surroundings had been so grim and stormy. She seemed to tread upon
air as they roamed about the lovely walks. The long, green vistas were
to her a veritable paradise. Her father looked so happy, too, and had so
entirely shaken off his cares, and Brian, who was usually rather silent,
seemed today a perfect fountain of talk.
Since that December day in Westminster Hall a great change had come
over Erica. Not a soul besides Brian and herself knew anything about the
scene with Sir Algernon Wyte. Not a word had passed between them since
upon the subject; but perhaps because of the silence, that day was
all the more in the thoughts of each. The revelation of Brian's
love revealed also to Erica much in his character which had hitherto
perplexed her simply because she had not seen it in the true light.
There had always been about him a wistfulness bordering on sadness which
had sometimes almost angered her. For so little do even intimate
friends know each other, that lives, which seem all peaceful and full of
everything calculated to bring happiness, are often the ones which are
preyed upon by some grievous trouble or anxiety unknown to any outsider.
If he had indeed loved her all those seven years he must have suffered
fearfully. What the suffering had been Erica could, from her present
position, understand well enough. The thought of it touched her
inexpressibly, seemed to her, as indeed it was, the shadow of that
Divine Love which had loved her eternally had waited for her through
long years had served her and shielded her, though she never recognized
its existence till at length, in one flash of light, the revelation had
come to her, and she had learned the glory of Love, the murky gloom of
those past misunderstandings.
Those were wonderful days that they spent together at Florence, the sort
of days that come but once in a life time; for the joy of dawn is quite
distinct from the bright noon day or the calm evening, distinct, too,
from that second and grander dawn which awaits us in the Unseen when the
night of life is over. Together they wandered through the long corridors
of the Uffizzi; together they returned again and again to the Tribune,
or traversed that interminable passage across the river which leads to
the Pitti Gallery, or roamed about among the old squares and palaces
which are haunted by so many memories. And every day Brian meant to
speak, but could not because the peace, and restfulness, and glamour of
the present was so perfect, and perhaps because, unconsciously, he felt
that these were “halcyon days.”
On Sunday he made up his mind that he certainly would speak before the
day was over. He went with Erica to see the old monastery of San Marco
before morning service at the English church. But, though they were
alone together, he could not bring himself to speak there. They
wandered from cell to cell, looking at those wonderful frescoes of the
Crucifixion in each of which Fra Angelico seemed to gain some fresh
thought, some new view of his inexhaustible subject. And Brian, watching
Erica, thought how that old master would have delighted in the pure face
and perfect coloring, in the short auburn hair which was in itself a
halo, but could not somehow just then draw her thoughts away from the
frescoes. Together they stood in the little cells occupied once by
Savonarola; looked at the strange, stern face which Bastianini chiseled
so effectively; stood by the old wooden desk where Savonarola had
written and read, saying very little to one another, but each conscious
that the silence was one of perfect understanding and sympathy. Then
came the service in a hideous church, which yet seemed beautiful to
them, with indifferent singing, which was somehow sweeter to them than
the singing of a trained choir elsewhere.
But, on returning to the hotel, Brian found that his chances for that
day were over for all the afternoon Erica had to receive a constant
succession of visitors who, as she said, turned her father for the time
being into the “British lion.” In the evening, too, when they walked in
the Cascine, they were no longer alone. Raeburn went with then, and as
they paced along the broad avenue with the Arno gleaming through the
fresh green of the trees, talking of the discussions of the past week,
he inadvertently touched the note of pain in an otherwise cloudless day.
“The work is practically over now,” he said. “But I think I must take
a day or two to see a little of Florence. I must be at Salsburg to
meet Hasenbalg by Wednesday week. Can you be ready to leave here on
Wednesday, Eric?”
“Oh, yes, father,” she said without hesitation or comment but with
something in her voice which told Brian that she, too, felt a pang of
regret at the thought that their days in that city of golden dreams were
so soon to be ended.
The Monday morning, however, proved so perfect a day that it dispelled
the shadow that had fallen on them. Raeburn wished to go to Fiesole, and
early in the morning Brian, having secured a carriage and settled the
terms with the crafty-looking Italian driver, they set off together.
The sunny streets looked sunnier than ever; the Tornabuoni was as
usual lively and bustling; the flower market at the base of the Palazza
Strozzi was gay with pinks and carnations and early roses. They drove
out of the city, passed innumerable villas, out into the open country
where the only blot upon the fair landscape was a funeral train, the
coffin borne by those gruesome beings, the Brothers of the Misericordia,
with their black robes and black face cloths pierced only with holes for
the eyes.
“Is it necessary to make death so repulsive?” said Raeburn. “Our own
black hearses are bad enough, but upon my word, I should be sorry to be
carried to my grave by such grim beings!”
He took off his hat, however, as they passed, and that not merely out of
deference to the custom of the country but because of the deep reverence
with which he invariably regarded the dead a reverence which in his own
country was marked by the involuntary softening of his voice when he
alluded to the death of others, the token of a nature which, though
strangely twisted, was in truth deeply reverential.
Then began the long ascent, the road, as usual, being lined with beggars
who importunately followed the carriage; while, no sooner had they
reached the village itself than they were besieged by at least a dozen
women selling the straw baskets which are the specialty of Fiesole.
“Ecco, signor! Ecco signorina! Vary sheep! Vary sheep!” resounded on
all sides, each vendor thrusting her wares forward so that progress was
impossible.
“What a plague this is!” said Raeburn. “They'll never leave you in
peace, Erica; they are too well used to the soft hearted signorina
Inglese.”
“Well, then, I shall leave you to settle them,” said Erica, laughing,
“and see if I can't sketch a little in the amphitheatre. They can't
torment us there because there is an entrance fee.”
“All right, and I will try this bird's eye view of Florence,” said
Raeburn, establishing himself upon the seat which stands on the verge
of the hill looking southward. He was very fond of making pen-and-ink
sketches, and by his determined, though perfectly courteous manner, he
at last succeeded in dismissing the basket women.
Erica and Brian, in the meantime, walked down the steep little path
which leads back to the village, on their way encountering a second
procession of Brothers bearing a coffin. In a few minutes they had found
their way to a quiet garden at the remote end of which, far from the
houses of Fiesole and sheltered on all sides by the green Apennines, was
an old Roman amphitheatre. Grass and flowers had sprung up now on the
arena where in olden times had been fearful struggles between men and
beasts. Wild roses and honeysuckle drooped over the gray old building,
and in between the great blocks of stone which formed the tiers of seats
for the spectators sprung the yellow celandine and the white star of
Bethlehem.
Erica sat down upon one of the stony seats and began to sketch the
outline of the hills and roughly to draw in the foreground the further
side of the amphitheatre and broken column which lay in the middle.
“Would you mind fetching me some water?” she said to Brian.
There was a little trickling stream close by, half hidden by bramble
bushes. Brian filled her glass and watched her brush as she washed in
the sky.
“Is that too blue, do you think?” she asked, glancing up at him with one
of her bright looks.
“Nothing could be too deep for such a sky as this,” he replied, half
absently. Then, with a sudden change of tone, “Erica, do you remember
the first day you spoke to me?”
“Under murky London skies very unlike these,” she said, laughing a
little, but nervously. “You mean the day when our umbrellas collided!”
“You mustn't abuse the murky skies,” said Brian, smiling. “If the sun
had been shining, the collision would never have occurred. Oh, Erica!
What a life time it seems since that day in Gower Street! I little
thought then that I should have to wait more than seven years to
tell you of my love, or that at last I should tell you in a Roman
amphitheatre under these blue skies. Erica, I think you have known it of
late. Have you, my darling? Have you known how I loved you?”
“Yes,” she said, looking down at her sketch book with glowing cheeks.
“Oh! If you knew what a paradise of hope you opened to me that day last
December and how different life has been ever since! Those were gray
years, Erica, when I dared not even hope to gain your love. But lately,
darling, I have hoped. Was I wrong?”
“No,” she said with a little quiver in her voice.
“You will love me?”
She looked up at him for a moment in silence, a glorious light in her
eyes, her whole face radiant with joy.
“I do love you,” she said softly.
He drew nearer to her, held both her hands in his, waiting only for the
promise which would make her indeed his own.
“Will you be my wife, darling?”
But the words had scarcely passed his lips when a look of anguish swept
over Erica's face; she snatched away her hands.
“Oh! God help me!” she cried. “What have I done? I've been living in a
dream! It's impossible, Brian! Impossible!”
A gray look came over Brian's face.
“How impossible?” he asked in a choked voice.
“I can't leave home,” she said, clasping her hands tightly together. “I
never can leave my father.”
“I will wait,” said Brian, recovering his voice. “I will wait any time
for you only give me hope.”
“I can't,” she sobbed. “I daren't!”
“But you have given it me!” he exclaimed. “You have said you loved me!”
“I do! I do!” she cried passionately. “But, oh, Brian! Have pity on me
don't make me say it again I must not think of it I can never be your
wife.”
Her words were broken with sobs which she could not restrain.
“My darling,” he said growing calm and strong again at the sight of her
agitation, and once more possessing himself of her hand, “you have had a
great many troubles lately, and I can quite understand that just now you
could not leave your father. But I will wait till less troubled times;
then surely you will come to me?”
“No,” she said quickly as if not daring to pause, “It will always be the
same; there never will be quiet times for us. I can't leave my father.
It isn't as if he had other children I am the only one, and must stay.”
“Is this then to be the end of it all?” cried Brian. “My darling, you
can not be so cruel to me. It can not be the end there is no end to love
and we know that we love each other. Erica, give me some future to look
to some hope.”
The terrible pain expressed in every line of his face wrung her heart.
“Oh, wait,” she exclaimed. “Give me one moment to think.”
She buried her face in her hands, shutting out the sunny Italian
landscape, the very beauty of which seemed to weaken her powers of
endurance. Truly she had been living lately in a golden dream, and the
waking was anguish. Oh, if she had but realized before the meaning of
it all, then she would have hidden her love so that he never would have
guessed it. She would have been to him the Erica of a year ago, just a
friend and nothing more. But now she must give him the worst of pain,
perhaps ruin his whole life. If she might but give him some promise.
What was the right? How were love and duty to be reconciled?
As she sat crouched up in her misery, fighting the hardest battle of her
life, the bell in the campanile of the village church began to ring.
It was twelve o'clock. All through the land, in remembrance of the hour
when the true meaning of love and sacrifice was revealed to the human
race, there swept now the music of church bells, bidding the people to
pause in their work and pray. Many a peasant raised his thoughts for a
moment from sordid cares or hard labor, and realized that there was an
unseen world. And here in the Roman amphitheatre, where a conflict more
painful than those physical conflicts of old time was going on, a soul
prayed in agony for the wisdom to see the right and the strength to do
it.
When at length Erica lifted her face she found that Brian was no longer
beside her, he was pacing to and fro in the arena; waiting had grown
unbearable to him. She went down to him, moving neither quickly nor
hurriedly, but at the steady “right onward” pace which suited her whole
aspect.
“Brian,” she said in a low voice, “do you remember telling me that day
that I must try to show them what the Father is? You must help me now,
not hinder. You will help me just because you do indeed love me?”
“You will give me no promise even for the most distant future?”
“I can't,” she replied, faltering a little as she saw him turn deadly
white. “If there were any engagement between us, I should have to tell
my father of it; and that would only make our trouble his and defeat my
whole object. Oh, Brian, forgive me, and just leave me. I can have given
you nothing but pain all these years. Don't let me spoil your whole
life!”
His face caught something of the noble purpose which made hers shine in
spite of the sadness.
“Darling,” he said quickly, “I can thank God for you though you are
never to be mine. God bless you, Erica.”
There was a moment's pause; he still kept her hands in his.
“Tell your father I've gone for a walk over to those hills that I shall
not be home till evening.” He felt her hands tremble, and knew that he
only tortured her by staying. “Will you kiss me once, Erica?” he said.
She lifted a pale steadfast face and quivering lips to his, and after
that one long embrace they parted. When he turned away Erica stood quite
still for a minute in the arena listening to his retreating footsteps.
Her heart, which had throbbed painfully, seemed now only to echo his
steps, to beat more faintly as they grew less audible. At last came
silence, and then she crept up to the place where she had left her
sketch book and paint box.
The whole world seemed sliding away aching desolation overwhelmed her.
Brian's face with its passion and pain rose before her dry, burning
eyes. Then darkness came, blotting out the sunshine; the little stream
trickling into its stony basin seemed to grow into a roaring cataract,
the waters to rush into her ears with a horrid gurgling; while the
stones of the amphitheatre seemed to change into blocks of ice and to
freeze her as she lay.
A few minutes later she gasped her way painfully back to life. All was
very peaceful now; the water fell with its soft tinkling sound, there
was a low hum of insects; beside her stony pillow grew some stars of
Bethlehem, and in between their delicate white and green she could see
the arena and the tiers of seats opposite, and out beyond the green
encircling hills. Golden sunshine lighted up the dark pines and
spirelike cypresses; in the distance there was an olive garden, its
soft, gray-green foliage touched into silvery brightness.
The beauty of the scene, which in her struggle had seemed to weaken and
unnerve her, stole now into her heart and comforted her; and all the
time there rang in her ears the message that the bells had brought her
“Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross.”
“Taking a siesta?” said a voice above her. She looked up and saw her
father.
“I've rather a headache,” she replied.
“Enough to give you one, my child, to lie there in the sun without
an umbrella,” he said, putting up his own to shelter her. “Such a
May noonday in Italy might give you a sunstroke. What was your doctor
thinking of to allow it?”
“Brian? Oh, he has gone over to those hills; we are not to wait for him,
he wanted a walk.”
“Quite right,” said Raeburn. “I don't think he ought to waste his
holiday in Italian cities, he wants fresh air and exercise after his
London life. Where's your handkerchief?”
He took it to the little stream, put aside the overhanging bushes,
dipped it in the water, and bringing it back laid it on her burning
forehead.
“How you spoil me, PADRE MIO,” she said with a little laugh that was
sadder than tears; and as she spoke she slipped down to a lower step
and rested her head on his knee, drawing down one of his strong hands to
shade her eyes. He talked of his sketch, of his word-skirmish with the
basket women, of the view from the amphitheatre; but she did not much
hear what he said, she was looking at the hand that shaded her eyes.
That strong hand which had toiled for her when she was a helpless baby,
the hand to which she had clung when every out her support had been
wrenched away by death, the hand which she had held in hers when she
thought he was dying, and the children had sung of “Life's long day and
death's dark night.”
All at once she drew it down and pressed it to her lips with a child's
loving reverence. Then she sat up with a sudden return of energy.
“There, now, let us go home,” she exclaimed. “My head aches a little
still, but we won't let it spoil our last day but one in Florence.
Didn't we talk of San Miniato for this afternoon?”
It was something of a relief to find, on returning, an invitation to
dinner for that evening which Raeburn could not well refuse. Erica kept
up bravely through the afternoon, but when she was once more alone her
physical powers gave way. She was lying on her bed sick and faint and
weary, and with the peculiarly desolate feeling which comes to most
people when they are ill in a hotel with all the unheeding bustle going
on around them. Then came a knock at her door.
“Entrate,” she said quickly, welcoming any fresh voice which would
divert her mind from the weary longing for her mother. A sort of wild
hope sprung up within her that some woman friend would be sent to her,
that Gladys Farrant, or old Mrs. Osmond, or her secularist friend Mrs.
MacNaughton, whom she loved best of all, would suddenly find themselves
in Florence and come to her in her need.
There entered a tall, overworked waiter. He looked first at her, then at
the note in his hand, spelling out the direction with a puzzled face.
“Mess Rabi Rabi Rabi Rabi an?” he asked hesitatingly.
“Grazie,” she replied, almost snatching it from him. The color rushed
to her cheeks as she saw the writing was Brian's, and the instant the
waiter had closed the door she tore open the envelope with trembling
hands.
It was a last appeal, written after he had returned from wandering among
the Apennines, worn out in body and shaken from the noble fortitude of
the morning. The strong passionate words woke an answering thrill in
Erica's heart. He asked her to think it all over once more, he had gone
away too hastily. If she could change her mind, could see any possible
hope for the future, would she write to him? If he heard nothing from
her, he would understand what the silence meant. This was in brief the
substance of the letter, but the words had a passionate, unrestrained
intensity which showed they had been written by a man of strong nature
overwrought by suffering and excitement.
He was here, in the very hotel. Might she not write to him? Might she
not send him some sort of message write just a word of indefinite hope
which would comfort and relieve herself as well as him? “If I do not
hear from you, I shall understand what your silence means.” Ah! But
would he understand? What had she said this morning to him? Scarcely
anything the merest broken bits of sentences, the poorest, coldest
confession of love.
Her writing case lay open on the table beside the bed with an unfinished
letter to Aunt Jean, begun before they had started for Fiesole. She
snatched up paper and pen, and trembling so much that she could scarcely
support herself she wrote two brief lines.
“Darling, I love you, and always must love you, first and best.”
Then she lay back again exhausted, looking at the poor little weak words
which would not contain a thousandth part of the love in heart. Yet,
though the words were true, would they perhaps convey a wrong meaning
to him? Ought she to send them? On the other hand would he indeed
understand the silence the silence which seemed now intolerable to her?
She folded the note and directed it, the tumult in her heart growing
wilder as she did so. Once more there raged the battle which she had
fought in the amphitheatre that morning, and she was not so strong now;
she was weakened by physical pain, and to endure was far harder. It
seemed to her that her whole life would be unbearable if she did not
send him that message. And to send it was so fatally easy; she had
merely to ring, and then in a few minutes the note would be in his
hands.
It was a little narrow slip of a room; all her life long she could
vividly recall it. The single bed pushed close to the wall, the writing
table with its gay-patterned cloth, the hanging wardrobe with glass
doors, the walls trellised with roses, and on the ceiling a painting of
some white swans eternally swimming in an ultra-marine lake. The window,
unshuttered, but veiled by muslin curtains, looked out upon the Arno;
from her bed she could see the lights on the further bank. On the wall
close beside her was a little round wooden projection. If it had been a
rattlesnake she could not have gazed at it more fixedly. Then she looked
at the printed card above, and the words written in French and English,
German, and Italian, seemed to fall mechanically on her brain, though
burning thoughts seethed there, too.
“Ring once for hot water, twice for the chamber maid, three times for
the waiter.”
Merely to touch that ivory knob, and then by the lightest pressure of
the finger tips a whole world of love and happiness and rest might open
for her, and life would be changed forever.
Again and again she was on the point of yielding, but each time she
resisted, and each resistance made her stronger. At length, with a
fearful effort, she turned her face away and buried it in the pillow,
clinging with all her might to the ironwork of the bed.
For at least an hour the most frightful hour of her life she did not
dare to stir. At last when her hands were stiff and sore with that rigid
grasping, when it seemed as if her heart had been wrenched out of
her and had left nothing but an aching void, she sat up and tore both
Brian's note and her reply into a thousand pieces; then, in a weary,
lifeless way, made her preparations for the night.
But sleep was impossible. The struggle was over forever, but the pain
was but just begun, and she was still a young girl with the best part of
her life stretching out before her. She did not toss about restlessly,
but lay very still, just enduring her misery, while all the every-day
sounds came to her from without laughter in the next room from two
talkative American girls, doors opening and shutting, boots thrown down,
electric bells rung, presently her father's step and voice.
“Has Miss Raeburn been up long?”
“Sairtenlee, sair, yes,” replied the English-speaking waiter. “The
signorina sleeps, doubtless.”
Then came a pause, and in another minute her father's door was closed
and locked.
Noisy parties of men shouting out some chorus sung at one of the
theatres passed along the Lung' Arno, and twanging mandolins wandered up
and down in the moonlight. The sound of that harshest and most jarring
of all musical instruments was every after hateful to her. She could not
hear one played without a shudder.
Slowly and wearily the night wore on. Sometimes she stole to the window,
and looked out on the sleeping city, on the peaceful Arno which was
bathed in silvery moonlight, and on the old, irregular houses, thinking
what struggles and agonies this place had witnessed in past times, and
realizing what an infinitesimal bit of the world's sufferings she was
called to bear. Sometimes she lighted a candle and read, sometimes
prayed, but for the most part just lay still, silently enduring,
learning, though she did not think it, the true meaning of pain.
Somewhat later than usual she joined her father the next morning in the
coffee room.
“Brian tells me he is off today,” was Raeburn's greeting. “It seems that
he must see that patient at Genoa again, and he wants to get a clear
fortnight in Switzerland.”
“Is it nor rather early for Switzerland?”
“I should have thought so, but he knows more about it than I do. He has
written to try to persuade your friend, Mr. Farrant, to join him in the
Whitsuntide recess.”
“Oh, I am glad of that,” said Erica, greatly relieved.
Directly after breakfast she went out with her father, going first of
all to French's bank, where Raeburn had to change a circular note.
“It is upstairs,” he said as they reached the house. “Don't you trouble
to come up; you'll have stairs enough presently at the Uffizzi.”
“Very well,” she replied, “I will wait for you here.”
She stood in the doorway looking out thoughtfully at the busy Tornabuoni
and its gay shops; but in a minute a step she knew sounded on the
staircase, and the color rushed to her cheeks.
“I have just said goodbye to your father,” said Brian. “I am leaving
Florence this morning. You must forgive me for having written last
night. I ought not to have done it, and I understood your silence.”
He spoke calmly, in the repressed voice of a man who holds “passion in
a leash.” Erica was thankful to have the last sight of him thus calm and
strong and self-restrained. It was a nobler side of love than that which
had inspired his letter nobler because freer from thought of self.
“I am so glad you will have Donovan,” she said. “Goodbye.”
He took her hand in his, pressed it, and turned away without a word.