CHAPTER I_Adam Johnstone's Son

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The Complete Works of F. Marion Crawford

ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON

F. MARION CRAWFORD

With Frontispiece

[Illustration: "I SOMETIMES THINK THAT ONE'S PAST LIFE IS WRITTEN IN A

FOREIGN LANGUAGE," SAID MRS. BOWRING, SHUTTING THE BOOK SHE HELD.]

P. F. Collier & Son

New York

by F. Marion Crawford

ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON

CHAPTER I

"I sometimes think that one's past life is written in a foreign

language," said Mrs. Bowring, shutting the book she held, but keeping

the place with one smooth, thin forefinger, while her still, blue eyes

turned from her daughter's face towards the hazy hills that hemmed the

sea thirty miles to the southward. "When one wants to read it, one finds

ever so many words which one cannot understand, and one has to look them

out in a sort of unfamiliar dictionary, and try to make sense of the

sentences as best one can. Only the big things are clear."

Clare glanced at her mother, smiling innocently and half mechanically,

without much definite expression, and quite without curiosity. Youth can

be in sympathy with age, while not understanding it, while not

suspecting, perhaps, that there is anything to understand beyond the

streaked hair and the pale glance and the little torture-lines which

paint the portrait of fifty years for the eyes of twenty.

Every woman knows the calendar of her own face. The lines are years,

one for such and such a year, one for such and such another; the streaks

are months, perhaps, or weeks, or sometimes hours, where the tear-storms

have bleached the brown, the black, or the gold. "This little

wrinkle--it was so very little then!" she says. "It came when I doubted

for a day. There is a shadow there, just at each temple, where the cloud

passed, when my sun went out. The bright hair grew lower on my forehead.

It is worn away, as though by a crown, that was not of gold. There are

hollows there, near the ears, on each side, since that week when love

was done to death before my eyes and died--intestate--leaving his

substance to be divided amongst indifferent heirs. They wrangle for what

he has left, but he himself is gone, beyond hearing or caring, and,

thank God, beyond suffering. But the marks are left."

Youth looks on and sees alike the ill-healed wounds of the martyrdom and

the rough scars of sin's scourges, and does not understand. Clare

Bowring smiled, without definite expression, just because her mother had

spoken and seemed to ask for sympathy; and then she looked away for a

few moments. She had a bit of work in her hands, a little bag which she

was making out of a piece of old Italian damask, to hold a needle-case

and thread and scissors. She had stopped sewing, and instinctively

waited before beginning again, as though to acknowledge by a little

affectionate deference that her mother had said something serious and

had a right to expect attention. But she did not answer, for she could

not understand.

Her own young life was vividly clear to her; so very vividly clear, that

it sometimes made her think of a tiresome chromolithograph. All the

facts and thoughts of it were so near that she knew them by heart, as

people come to know the patterns of the wall-paper in the room they

inhabit. She had nothing to hide, nothing to regret, nothing which she

thought she should care very much to recall, though she remembered

everything. A girl is very young when she can recollect distinctly every

frock she has had, the first long one, and the second, and the third;

and the first ball gown, and the second, and no third, because that is

still in the future, and a particular pair of gloves which did not fit,

and a certain pair of shoes she wore so long because they were so

comfortable, and the precise origin of every one of the few trinkets and

bits of jewellery she possesses. That was Clare Bowring's case. She

could remember everything and everybody in her life. But her father was

not in her memories, and there was a little motionless grey cloud in

the place where he should have been. He had been a soldier, and had been

killed in an obscure skirmish with black men, in one of England's

obscure but expensive little wars. Death is always very much the same

thing, and it seems unfair that the guns of Balaclava should still roar

"glory" while the black man's quick spear-thrust only spells "dead,"

without comment. But glory in death is even more a matter of luck than

fame in life. At all events, Captain Bowring, as brave a gentleman as

ever faced fire, had perished like so many other brave gentlemen of his

kind, in a quiet way, without any fuss, beyond killing half a dozen or

so of his assailants, and had left his widow the glory of receiving a

small pension in return for his blood, and that was all. Some day, when

the dead are reckoned, and the manner of their death noted, poor Bowring

may count for more than some of his friends who died at home from a

constitutional inability to enjoy all the good things fortune set before

them, complicated by a disposition incapable of being satisfied with

only a part of the feast. But at the time of this tale they counted for

more than he; for they had been constrained to leave behind them what

they could not consume, while he, poor man, had left very little besides

the aforesaid interest in the investment of his blood, in the form of a

pension to his widow, and the small grey cloud in the memory of his

girl-child, in the place where he should have been. For he had been

killed when she had been a baby.

The mother and daughter were lonely, if not alone in the world; for when

one has no money to speak of, and no relations at all, the world is a

lonely place, regarded from the ordinary point of view--which is, of

course, the true one. They had no home in England, and they generally

lived abroad, more or less, in one or another of the places of society's

departed spirits, such as Florence. They had not, however, entered into

Limbo without hope, since they were able to return to the social earth

when they pleased, and to be alive again, and the people they met abroad

sometimes asked them to stop with them at home, recognising the fact

that they were still socially living and casting shadows. They were sure

of half a hundred friendly faces in London and of half a dozen

hospitable houses in the country; and that is not little for people who

have nothing wherewith to buy smiles and pay for invitations. Clare had

more than once met women of her mother's age and older, who had looked

at her rather thoughtfully and longer than had seemed quite natural,

saying very quietly that her father had been "a great friend of theirs."

But those were not the women whom her mother liked best, and Clare

sometimes wondered whether the little grey cloud in her memory, which

represented her father, might not be there to hide away something more

human than an ideal. Her mother spoke of him, sometimes gravely,

sometimes with a far-away smile, but never tenderly. The smile did not

mean much, Clare thought. People often spoke of dead people with a sort

of faint look of uncertain beatitude--the same which many think

appropriate to the singing of hymns. The absence of anything like

tenderness meant more. The gravity was only natural and decent.

"Your father was a brave man," Mrs. Bowring sometimes said. "Your father

was very handsome," she would say. "He was very quick-tempered," she

perhaps added.

But that was all. Clare had a friend whose husband had died young and

suddenly, and her friend's heart was broken. She did not speak as Mrs.

Bowring did. When the latter said that her past life seemed to be

written in a foreign language, Clare did not understand, but she knew

that the something of which the translation was lost, as it were,

belonged to her father. She always felt an instinctive desire to defend

him, and to make her mother feel more sympathy for his memory. Yet, at

the same time, she loved her mother in such a way as made her feel that

if there had been any trouble, her father must have been in the wrong.

Then she was quite sure that she did not understand, and she held her

tongue, and smiled vaguely, and waited a moment before she went on with

her work.

Besides, she was not at all inclined to argue anything at present. She

had been ill, and her mother was worn out with taking care of her, and

they had come to Amalfi to get quite well and strong again in the air of

the southern spring. They had settled themselves for a couple of months

in the queer hotel, which was once a monastery, perched high up under

the still higher overhanging rocks, far above the beach and the busy

little town; and now, in the May afternoon, they sat side by side under

the trellis of vines on the terraced walk, their faces turned southward,

in the shade of the steep mountain behind them; the sea was blue at

their feet, and quite still, but farther out the westerly breeze that

swept past the Conca combed it to crisp roughness; then it was less blue

to southward, and gradually it grew less real, till it lost colour and

melted into a sky-haze that almost hid the southern mountains and the

lizard-like head of the far Licosa.

A bit of coarse faded carpet lay upon the ground under the two ladies'

feet, and the shady air had a soft green tinge in it from the young

vine-leaves overhead. At first sight one would have said that both were

delicate, if not ill. Both were fair, though in different degrees, and

both were pale and quiet, and looked a little weary.

The young girl sat in the deep straw chair, hatless, with bare white

hands that held her work. Her thick flaxen hair, straightly parted and

smoothed away from its low growth on the forehead, half hid small fresh

ears, unpierced. Long lashes, too white for beauty, cast very faint

light shadows as she looked down; but when she raised the lids, the

dark-blue eyes were bright, with wide pupils and a straight look, quick

to fasten, slow to let go, never yet quite softened, and yet never

mannishly hard. But, in its own way, perhaps, there is no look so hard

as the look of maiden innocence can be. There can even be something

terrible in its unconscious stare. There is the spirit of God's own

fearful directness in it. Half quibbling with words perhaps, but surely

with half truth, one might say that youth "is," while all else "has

been"; and that youth alone possesses the present, too innocent to know

it all, yet too selfish even to doubt of what is its own--too sure of

itself to doubt anything, to fear anything, or even truly to pray for

anything. There is no equality and no community in virtue; it is only

original sin that makes us all equal and human. Old Lucifer, fallen,

crushed, and damned, knows the worth of forgiveness--not young Michael,

flintily hard and monumentally upright in his steel coat, a terror to

the devil himself. And youth can have something of that archangelic

rigidity. Youth is not yet quite human.

But there was much in Clare Bowring's face which told that she was to be

quite human some day. The lower features were not more than strong

enough--the curved lips would be fuller before long, the small nostrils,

the gentle chin, were a little sharper than was natural, now, from

illness, but round in outline and not over prominent; and the slender

throat was very delicate and feminine. Only in the dark-blue eyes there

was still that unabashed, quick glance and long-abiding straightness,

and innocent hardness, and the unconscious selfishness of the

uncontaminated.

Standing on her feet, she would have seemed rather tall than short,

though really but of average height. Seated, she looked tall, and her

glance was a little downward to most people's eyes. Just now she was too

thin, and seemed taller than she was. But the fresh light was already in

the young white skin, and there was a soft colour in the lobes of the

little ears, as the white leaves of daisies sometimes blush all round

their tips.

The nervous white hands held the little bag lightly, and twined it and

sewed it deftly, for Clare was clever with her fingers. Possibly they

looked even a little whiter than they were, by contrast with the dark

stuff of her dress, and illness had made them shrink at the lower part,

robbing them of their natural strength, though not of their grace. There

is a sort of refinement, not of taste, nor of talent, but of feeling and

thought, and it shows itself in the hands of those who have it, more

than in any feature of the face, in a sort of very true proportion

between the hand and its fingers, between each finger and its joints,

each joint and each nail; a something which says that such a hand could

not do anything ignoble, could not take meanly, nor strike cowardly, nor

press falsely; a quality of skin neither rough and coarse, nor over

smooth like satin, but cool and pleasant to the touch as fine silk that

is closely woven. The fingers of such hands are very straight and very

elastic, but not supple like young snakes, as some fingers are, and the

cushion of the hand is not over full nor heavy, nor yet shrunken and

undeveloped as in the wasted hands of old Asiatic races.

In outward appearance there was that sort of inherited likeness between

mother and daughter which is apt to strike strangers more than persons

of the same family. Mrs. Bowring had been beautiful in her youth--far

more beautiful than Clare--but her face had been weaker, in spite of the

regularity of the features and their faultless proportion. Life had given

them an acquired strength, but not of the lovely kind, and the complexion

was faded, and the hair had darkened, and the eyes had paled. Some faces

are beautified by suffering. Mrs. Bowring's face was not of that class.

It was as though a thin, hard mask had been formed and closely moulded

upon it, as the action of the sea overlays some sorts of soft rock with a

surface thin as paper but as hard as granite. In spite of the hardness,

the features were not really strong. There was refinement in them,

however, of the same kind which the daughter had, and as much, though

less pleasing. A fern--a spray of maiden's-hair--loses much of its beauty

but none of its refinement when petrified in limestone or made fossil in

coal.

As they sat there, side by side, mother and daughter, where they had sat

every day for a week or more, they had very little to say. They had

exhausted the recapitulation of Clare's illness, during the first days

of her convalescence. It was not the first time that they had been in

Amalfi, and they had enumerated its beauties to each other, and renewed

their acquaintance with it from a distance, looking down from the

terrace upon the low-lying town, and the beach and the painted boats,

and the little crowd that swarmed out now and then like ants, very busy

and very much in a hurry, running hither and thither, disappearing

presently as by magic, and leaving the shore to the sun and the sea. The

two had spoken of a little excursion to Ravello, and they meant to go

thither as soon as they should be strong enough; but that was not yet.

And meanwhile they lived through the quiet days, morning, meal times,

evening, bed time, and round again, through the little hotel's programme

of possibility; eating what was offered them, but feasting royally on

air and sunshine and spring sweetness; moistening their lips in strange

southern wines, but drinking deep draughts of the rich southern

air-life; watching the people of all sorts and of many conditions, who

came and stayed a day and went away again, but social only in each

other's lives, and even that by sympathy rather than in speech. A corner

of life's show was before them, and they kept their places on the

vine-sheltered terrace and looked on. But it seemed as though nothing

could ever possibly happen there to affect the direction of their own

quietly moving existence.

Seeing that her daughter did not say anything in answer to the remark

about the past being written in a foreign language, Mrs. Bowring looked

at the distant sky-haze thoughtfully for a few moments, then opened her

book again where her thin forefinger had kept the place, and began to

read. There was no disappointment in her face at not being understood,

for she had spoken almost to herself and had expected no reply. No

change of expression softened or accentuated the quiet hardness which

overspread her naturally gentle face. But the thought was evidently

still present in her mind, for her attention did not fix itself upon her

book, and presently she looked at her daughter, as the latter bent her

head over the little bag she was making.

The young girl felt her mother's eyes upon her, looked up herself, and

smiled faintly, almost mechanically, as before. It was a sort of habit

they both had--a way of acknowledging one another's presence in the

world. But this time it seemed to Clare that there was a question in the

look, and after she had smiled she spoke.

"No," she said, "I don't understand how anybody can forget the past. It

seems to me that I shall always remember why I did things, said things,

and thought things. I should, if I lived a hundred years, I'm quite

sure."

"Perhaps you have a better memory than I," answered Mrs. Bowring. "But

I don't think it is exactly a question of memory either. I can remember

what I said, and did, and thought, well--twenty years ago. But it seems

to me very strange that I should have thought, and spoken, and acted,

just as I did. After all isn't it natural? They tell us that our bodies

are quite changed in less time than that."

"Yes--but the soul does not change," said Clare with conviction.

"The soul--"

Mrs. Bowring repeated the word, but said nothing more, and her still,

blue eyes wandered from her daughter's face and again fixed themselves

on an imaginary point of the far southern distance.

"At least," said Clare, "I was always taught so."

She smiled again, rather coldly, as though admitting that such teaching

might not be infallible after all.

"It is best to believe it," said her mother quietly, but in a colourless

voice. "Besides," she added, with a change of tone, "I do believe it,

you know. One is always the same, in the main things. It is the point of

view that changes. The best picture in the world does not look the same

in every light, does it?"

"No, I suppose not. You may like it in one light and not in another,

and in one place and not in another."

"Or at one time of life, and not at another," added Mrs. Bowring,

thoughtfully.

"I can't imagine that." Clare paused a moment. "Of course you are

thinking of people," she continued presently, with a little more

animation. "One always means people, when one talks in that way. And

that is what I cannot quite understand. It seems to me that if I liked

people once I should always like them."

Her mother looked at her.

"Yes--perhaps you would," she said, and she relapsed into silence.

Clare's colour did not change. No particular person was in her thoughts,

and she had, as it were, given her own general and inexperienced opinion

of her own character, quite honestly and without affectation.

"I don't know which are the happier," said Mrs. Bowring at last, "the

people who change, or the people who can't."

"You mean faithful or unfaithful people, I suppose," observed the young

girl with grave innocence.

A very slight flush rose in Mrs. Bowring's thin cheeks, and the quiet

eyes grew suddenly hard, but Clare was busy with her work again and did

not see.

"Those are big words," said the older woman in a low voice.

"Well--yes--of course!" answered Clare. "So they ought to be! It is

always the main question, isn't it? Whether you can trust a person or

not, I mean."

"That is one question. The other is, whether the person deserves to be

trusted."

"Oh--it's the same thing!"

"Not exactly."

"You know what I mean, mother. Besides, I don't believe that any one who

can't trust is really to be trusted. Do you?"

"My dear Clare!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring. "You can't put life into a

nutshell, like that!"

"No. I suppose not, though if a thing is true at all it must be always

true."

"Saving exceptions."

"Are there any exceptions to truth?" asked Clare incredulously. "Truth

isn't grammar--nor the British Constitution."

"No. But then, we don't know everything. What we call truth is what we

know. It is only what we know. All that we don't know, but which is, is

true, too--especially, all that we don't know about people with whom we

have to live."

"Oh--if people have secrets!" The young girl laughed idly. "But you and

I, for instance, mother--we have no secrets from each other, have we?

Well? Why should any two people who love each other have secrets? And if

they have none, why, then, they know all that there is to be known about

one another, and each trusts the other, and has a right to be trusted,

because everything is known--and everything is the whole truth. It seems

to me that is simple enough, isn't it?"

Mrs. Bowring laughed in her turn. It was rather a hard little laugh, but

Clare was used to the sound of it, and joined in it, feeling that she

had vanquished her mother in argument, and settled one of the most

important questions of life for ever.

"What a pretty steamer!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring suddenly.

"It's a yacht," said Clare after a moment. "The flag is English, too. I

can see it distinctly."

She laid down her work, and her mother closed her book upon her

forefinger again, and they watched the graceful white vessel as she

glided slowly in from the Conca, which she had rounded while they had

been talking.

"It's very big, for a yacht," observed Mrs. Bowring. "They are coming

here."

"They have probably come round from Naples to spend a day," said Clare.

"We are sure to have them up here. What a nuisance!"

"Yes. Everybody comes up here who comes to Amalfi at all. I hope they

won't stay long."

"There is no fear of that," answered Clare. "I heard those people saying

the other day that this is not a place where a vessel can lie any length

of time. You know how the sea sometimes breaks on the beach."

Mrs. Bowring and her daughter desired of all things to be quiet. The

visitors who came, stayed a few days at the hotel, and went away again,

were as a rule tourists or semi-invalids in search of a climate, and

anything but noisy. But people coming in a smart English yacht would

probably be society people, and as such Mrs. Bowring wished that they

would keep away. They would behave as though the place belonged to them,

so long as they remained; they would get all the attention of the

proprietor and of the servants for the time being; and they would make

everybody feel shabby and poor.

The Bowrings were poor, indeed, but they were not shabby. It was perhaps

because they were well aware that nobody could mistake them for average

tourists that they resented the coming of a party which belonged to what

is called society. Mrs. Bowring had a strong aversion to making new

acquaintances, and even disliked being thrown into the proximity of

people who might know friends of hers, who might have heard of her, and

who might talk about her and her daughter. Clare said that her mother's

shyness in this respect was almost morbid; but she had unconsciously

caught a little of it herself, and, like her mother, she was often quite

uselessly on her guard against strangers, of the kind whom she might

possibly be called upon to know, though she was perfectly affable and at

her ease with those whom she looked upon as undoubtedly her social

inferiors.

They were not mistaken in their prediction that the party from the yacht

would come up to the Cappuccini. Half an hour after the yacht had

dropped anchor the terrace was invaded. They came up in twos and threes,

nearly a dozen of them, men and women, smart-looking people with

healthy, sun-burnt faces, voices loud from the sea as voices become on a

long voyage--or else very low indeed. By contrast with the frequenters

of Amalfi they all seemed to wear overpoweringly good clothes and

perfectly new hats and caps, and their russet shoes were resplendent.

They moved as though everything belonged to them, from the wild crests

of the hills above to the calm blue water below, and the hotel servants

did their best to foster the agreeable illusion. They all wanted chairs,

and tables, and things to drink, and fruit. One very fair little lady

with hard, restless eyes, and clad in white serge, insisted upon having

grapes, and no one could convince her that grapes were not ripe in May.

"It's quite absurd!" she objected. "Of course they're ripe! We had the

most beautiful grapes at breakfast at Leo Cairngorm's the other day, so

of course they must have them here. Brook! Do tell the man not to be

absurd!"

"Man!" said the member of the party she had last addressed. "Do not be

absurd!"

"Si, Signore," replied the black-whiskered Amalfitan servant with

alacrity.

"You see!" cried the little lady triumphantly. "I told you so! You must

insist with these people. You can always get what you want. Brook,

where's my fan?"

She settled upon a straw chair--like a white butterfly. The others

walked on towards the end of the terrace, but the young man whom she

called Brook stood beside her, slowly lighting a cigarette, not five

paces from Mrs. Bowring and Clare.

"I'm sure I don't know where your fan is," he said, with a short laugh,

as he threw the end of the match over the wall.

"Well then, look for it!" she answered, rather sharply. "I'm awfully

hot, and I want it."

He glanced at her before he spoke again.

"I don't know where it is," he said quietly, but there was a shade of

annoyance in his face.

"I gave it to you just as we were getting into the boat," answered the

lady in white. "Do you mean to say that you left it on board?"

"I think you must be mistaken," said the young man. "You must have given

it to somebody else."

"It isn't likely that I should mistake you for any one else--especially

to-day."

"Well--I haven't got it. I'll get you one in the hotel, if you'll have

patience for a moment."

He turned and strode along the terrace towards the house. Clare Bowring

had been watching the two, and she looked after the man as he moved

rapidly away. He walked well, for he was a singularly well-made young

fellow, who looked as though he were master of every inch of himself.

She had liked his brown face and bright blue eyes, too, and somehow she

resented the way in which the little lady ordered him about. She looked

round and saw that her mother was watching him too. Then, as he

disappeared, they both looked at the lady. She too had followed him with

her eyes, and as she turned her face sideways to the Bowrings Clare

thought that she was biting her lip, as though something annoyed her or

hurt her. She kept her eyes on the door. Presently the young man

reappeared, bearing a palm-leaf fan in his hand and blowing a cloud of

cigarette smoke into the air. Instantly the lady smiled, and the smile

brightened as he came near.

"Thank you--dear," she said as he gave her the fan.

The last word was spoken in a lower tone, and could certainly not have

been heard by the other members of the party, but it reached Clare's

ears, where she sat.

"Not at all," answered the young man quietly.

But as he spoke he glanced quickly about him, and his eyes met Clare's.

She fancied that she saw a look of startled annoyance in them, and he

coloured a little under his tan. He had a very manly face, square and

strong. He bent down a little and said something in a low voice. The

lady in white half turned her head, impatiently, but did not look quite

round. Clare saw, however, that her expression had changed again, and

that the smile was gone.

"If I don't care, why should you?" were the next words Clare heard,

spoken impatiently and petulantly.

The man who answered to the name of Brook said nothing, but sat down on

the parapet of the terrace, looking out over his shoulder to seaward. A

few seconds later he threw away his half-smoked cigarette.

"I like this place," said the lady in white, quite audibly. "I think I

shall send on board for my things and stay here."

The young man started as though he had been struck, and faced her in

silence. He could not help seeing Clare Bowring beyond her.

"I'm going indoors, mother," said the young girl, rising rather

abruptly. "I'm sure it must be time for tea. Won't you come too?"

The young man did not answer his companion's remark, but turned his face

away again and looked seaward, listening to the retreating footsteps of

the two ladies.

On the threshold of the hotel Clare felt a strong desire to look back

again and see whether he had moved, but she was ashamed of it and went

in, holding her head high and looking straight before her.