Clare Bowring went to her room that night feeling as though she had been
at the theatre. She could not get rid of the impression made upon her by
the scene she had witnessed, and over and over again, as she lay awake,
with the moonbeams streaming into her room, she went over all she had
seen and heard on the platform. It had, at least, been very like the
theatre. The broad, flat stage, the somewhat conventionally picturesque
buildings, the strip of far-off sea, as flat as a band of paint, the
unnaturally bright moonlight, the two chief figures going through a love
quarrel in the foreground, and she herself calmly seated in the shadow,
as in the darkened amphitheatre, and looking on unseen and unnoticed.
But the two people had not talked at all as people talked on the stage
in any piece Clare had ever seen. What would have been the "points" in a
play had all been left out, and instead there had been abrupt pauses and
awkward silences, and then, at what should have been the supreme moment,
the lady in white had asked for a cigarette. And the two hasty little
kisses that had a sort of perfunctory air, and the queer, jerky
"good-byes," and the last stop near the door of the hotel--it all had an
air of being very badly done. It could not have been a success on the
stage, Clare thought.
And yet this was a bit of life, of the real, genuine life of two people
who had been in love, and perhaps were in love still, though they might
not know it. She had been present at what must, in her view, have been a
great crisis in two lives. Such things, she thought, could not happen
more than once in a lifetime--twice, perhaps. Her mother had been
married twice, so Clare admitted a second possibility. But not more than
that.
The situation, too, as she reviewed it, was nothing short of romantic.
Here was a young man who had evidently been making love to a married
woman, and who had made her believe that he loved her, and had made her
love him too. Clare remembered the desperate little sob, and the
handkerchief twice pressed to the pale lips. The woman was married, and
yet she actually loved the man enough to think of divorcing her husband
in order to marry him. Then, just when she was ready, he had turned and
told her in the most heartless way that it had been all play, and that
he would not marry her under any circumstances. It seemed monstrous to
the innocent girl that they should even have spoken of marriage, until
the divorce was accomplished. Then, of course, it would have been all
right. Clare had been brought up with modern ideas about divorce in
general, as being a fair and just thing in certain circumstances. She
had learned that it could not be right to let an innocent woman suffer
all her life because she had married a brute by mistake. Doubtless that
was Lady Fan's case. But she should have got her divorce first, and then
she might have talked of marriage afterwards. It was very wrong of her.
But Lady Fan's thoughtlessness--or wickedness, as Clare thought she
ought to call it--sank into insignificance before the cynical
heartlessness of the man. It was impossible ever to forget the cool way
in which he had said she ought not to take it so tragically, because it
was not worth it. Yet he had admitted that he had promised to marry her
if she got a divorce. He had made love to her, there on the Acropolis,
at sunset, as she had said. He even granted that he might have believed
himself in earnest for a few moments. And now he told her that he was
sorry, but that "it would not do." It had evidently been all his fault,
for he had found nothing with which to reproach her. If there had been
anything, Clare thought, he would have brought it up in self-defence.
She could not suspect that he would almost rather have married Lady Fan,
and ruined his life, than have done that. Innocence cannot even guess at
sin's code of honour--though sometimes it would be in evil case without
it. Brook had probably broken Lady Fan's heart that night, thought the
young girl, though Lady Fan had said with such a bitter, crying laugh
that they were not children and that their hearts could not break.
And it all seemed very unreal, as she looked back upon it. The situation
was certainly romantic, but the words had been poor beyond her
imagination, and the actors had halted in their parts, as at a first
rehearsal.
Then Clare reflected that of course neither of them had ever been in
such a situation before, and that, if they were not naturally eloquent,
it was not surprising that they should have expressed themselves in
short, jerky sentences. But that was only an excuse she made to herself
to account for the apparent unreality of it all. She turned her cheek to
a cool end of the pillow and tried to go to sleep.
She tried to bring back the white dreams she had dreamt when she had sat
alone in the shadow before the other two had come out to quarrel. She
did her best to bring back that vague, soft joy of yearning for
something beautiful and unknown. She tried to drop the silver veil of
fancy-threads woven by the May moon between her and the world. But it
would not come. Instead of it, she saw the flat platform, the man and
woman standing in the unnatural brightness, and the woman's desperate
little face when he had told her that she had never loved him. The dream
was not white any more.
So that was life. That was reality. That was the way men treated women.
She thought she began to understand what faithlessness and
unfaithfulness meant. She had seen an unfaithful man, and had heard him
telling the woman he had made love him that he never could love her any
more. That was real life.
Clare's heart went out to the little lady in white. By this time she was
alone in her cabin, and her pillow was wet with tears. Brook doubtless
was calmly asleep, unless he were drinking or doing some of those
vaguely wicked things which, in the imagination of very simple young
girls, fill up the hours of fast men, and help sometimes to make those
very men "interesting." But after what she had seen Clare felt that
Brook could never interest her under imaginable circumstances. He was
simply a "brute," as the lady in white had told him, and Clare wished
that some woman could make him suffer for his sins and expiate the
misdeeds which had made that little face so desperate and that short
laugh so bitter.
She wished, though she hardly knew it, that she had done anything rather
than have sat there in the shadow, all through the scene. She had lost
something that night which it would be hard indeed to find again. There
was a big jagged rent in the drop-curtain of illusions before her
life-stage, and through it she saw things that troubled her and would
not be forgotten.
She had no memory of her own of which the vivid brightness or the
intimate sadness could diminish the force of this new impression.
Possibly, she was of the kind that do not easily fall in love, for she
had met during the past two years more than one man whom many a girl of
her age and bringing up might have fancied. Some of them might have
fallen in love with her, if she had allowed them, or if she had felt the
least spark of interest in them and had shown it. But she had not. Her
manner was cold and over-dignified for her years, and she had very
little vanity together with much pride--too much of the latter, perhaps,
to be ever what is called popular. For "popular" persons are generally
those who wish to be such; and pride and the love of popularity are at
opposite poles of the character-world. Proud characters set love high
and their own love higher, while a vain woman will risk her heart for a
compliment, and her reputation for the sake of having a lion in her
leash, if only for a day. Clare Bowring had not yet been near to loving,
and she had nothing of her own to contrast with this experience in which
she had been a mere spectator. It at once took the aspect of a
generality. This man and this woman were probably not unlike most men
and women, if the truth were known, she thought. And she had seen the
real truth, as few people could ever have seen it--the supreme crisis of
a love-affair going on before her very eyes, in her hearing, at her
feet, the actors having no suspicion of her presence. It was, perhaps,
the certainty that she could not misinterpret it all which most
disgusted her, and wounded something in her which she had never defined,
but which was really a sort of belief that love must always carry with
it something beautiful, whether joyous, or tender, or tragic. Of that,
there had been nothing in what she had seen. Only the woman's face came
back to her, and hurt her, and she felt her own heart go out to poor
Lady Fan, while it hardened against Brook with an exaggerated hatred, as
though he had insulted and injured all living women.
It was probable that she was to see this man during several days to
come. The idea struck her when she was almost asleep, and it waked her
again, with a start. It was quite certain that he had stayed behind,
when the others had gone down to the yacht, for she had heard the voices
calling out "Good-bye, Brook!" Besides he had said repeatedly to the
lady in white that he must stay. He was expecting his people. It was
quite certain that Clare must see him during the next day or two. It was
not impossible that he might try to make her mother's acquaintance and
her own. The idea was intensely disagreeable to her. In the first place,
she hated him beforehand for what he had done, and, secondly, she had
once heard his secret. It was one thing, so long as he was a total
stranger. It would be quite another, if she should come to know him. She
had a vague thought of pretending to be ill, and staying in her room as
long as he remained in the place. But in that case she should have to
explain matters to her mother. She should not like to do that. The
thought of the difficulty disturbed her a little while longer. Then, at
last, she fell asleep, tired with what she had felt, and seen, and
heard.
The yacht sailed before daybreak, and in the morning the little hotel
had returned to its normal state of peace. The early sun blazed upon the
white walls above, and upon the half-moon, beach below, and shot
straight into the recess in the rocks where Clare had sat by the old
black cross in the dark. The level beams ran through her room, too, for
it faced south-east, looking across the gulf; and when she went to the
window and stood in the sunshine, her flaxen hair looked almost white,
and the good southern warmth brought soft colour to the northern girl's
cheeks. She was like a thin, fair angel, standing there on the high
balcony, looking to seaward in the calm air. That, at least, was what a
fisherman from Praiano thought, as he turned his hawk-eyes upwards,
standing to his oars and paddling slowly along, top-heavy in his tiny
boat. But no native of Amalfi ever mistook a foreigner for an angel.
Everything was quiet and peaceful again, and there seemed to be neither
trace nor memory of the preceding day's invasion. The English old maids
were early at their window, and saw with disappointment that the yacht
was gone. They were never to know whether the big man with the gold
cigarette case had been the Duke of Orkney or not. But order was
restored, and they got their tea and toast without difficulty. The
Russian invalid was slicing a lemon into his cup on the vine-sheltered
terrace, and the German family, having slept on the question of the Pope
and Bismarck, were ruddy with morning energy, and were making an early
start for a place in the hills where the Professor had heard that there
was an inscription of the ninth century.
The young girl stood still on her balcony, happily dazed for a few
moments by the strong sunshine and the clear air. It is probably the
sensation enjoyed for hours together by a dog basking in the sun, but
with most human beings it does not last long--the sun is soon too hot
for the head, or too bright for the eyes, or there is a draught, or the
flies disturb one. Man is not capable of as much physical enjoyment as
the other animals, though perhaps his enjoyment is keener during the
first moments. Then comes thought, restlessness, discontent, change,
effort, and progress, and the history of man's superiority is the
journal of his pain.
For a little while, Clare stood blinking in the sunshine, smitten into a
pleasant semi-consciousness by the strong nature around her. Then she
thought of Brook and the lady in white, and of all she had been a
witness of in the evening, and the colour of things changed a little,
and she turned away and went between the little white and red curtains
into her room again. Life was certainly not the same since she had heard
and seen what a man and a woman could say and be. There were certain new
impressions, where there had been no impression at all, but only a
maiden readiness to receive the beautiful. What had come was not
beautiful, by any means, and the thought of it darkened the air a
little, so that the day was not to be what it might have been. She
realised how she was affected, and grew impatient with herself. After
all, it would be the easiest thing in the world to avoid the man, even
if he stayed some time. Her mother was not much given to making
acquaintance with strangers.
And it would have been easy enough, if the man himself had taken the
same view. He, however, had watched the Bowrings on the preceding
evening, and had made up his mind that they were "human beings," as he
put it; that is to say, that they belonged to his own class, whereas
none of the people at the upper end of the table had any claim to be
counted with the social blessed. He was young, and though he knew how to
amuse himself alone, and had all manner of manly tastes and
inclinations, he preferred pleasant society to solitude, and his
experience told him that the society of the Bowrings would in all
probability be pleasant. He therefore determined that he would try to
know them at once, and the determination had already been formed in his
mind when he had run after Clare to give her the shawl she had dropped.
He got up rather late, and promptly marched out upon the terrace under
the vines, smoking a briar-root pipe with that solemn air whereby the
Englishman abroad proclaims to the world that he owns the scenery. There
is something almost phenomenal about an Englishman's solid
self-satisfaction when he is alone with his pipe. Every nation has its
own way of smoking. There is a hasty and vicious manner about the
Frenchman's little cigarette of pungent black tobacco; the Italian
dreams over his rat-tail cigar; the American either eats half of his
Havana while he smokes the other, or else he takes a frivolous delight
in smoking delicately and keeping the white ash whole to the end; the
German surrounds himself with a cloud, and, god-like, meditates within
it; there is a sacrificial air about the Asiatic's narghileh, as the
thin spire rises steadily and spreads above his head; but the
Englishman's short briar-root pipe has a powerful individuality of its
own. Its simplicity is Gothic, its solidity is of the Stone Age, he
smokes it in the face of the higher civilisation, and it is the badge of
the conqueror. A man who asserts that he has a right to smoke a pipe
anywhere, practically asserts that he has a right to everything. And it
will be admitted that Englishmen get a good deal.
Moreover, as soon as the Englishman has finished smoking he generally
goes and does something else. Brook knocked the ashes out of his pipe,
and immediately went in search of the head waiter, to whom he explained
with some difficulty that he wished to be placed next to the two ladies
who sat last on the side away from the staircase at the public table.
The waiter tried to explain that the two ladies, though they had been
some time in the hotel, insisted upon being always last on that side
because there was more air. But Brook was firm, and he strengthened his
argument with coin, and got what he wanted. He also made the waiter
point out to him the Bowrings' name on the board which held the names of
the guests. Then he asked the way to Ravello, turned up his trousers
round his ankles, and marched off at a swinging pace down the steep
descent towards the beach, which he had to cross before climbing the
hill to the old town. Nothing in his outward manner or appearance
betrayed that he had been through a rather serious crisis on the
preceding evening.
That was what struck Clare Bowring when, to her dismay, he sat down
beside her at the midday meal. She could not help glancing at him as he
took his seat. His eyes were bright, his face, browned by the sun, was
fresh and rested. There was not a line of care or thought on his
forehead. The young girl felt that she was flushing with anger. He saw
her colour, and took it for a sign of shyness. He made a sort of
apologetic movement of the head and shoulders towards her which was not
exactly a bow--for to an Englishman's mind a bow is almost a
familiarity--but which expressed a kind of vague desire not to cause any
inconvenience.
The colour deepened a little in Clare's face, and then disappeared. She
found something to say to her mother, on her other side, which it would
hardly have been worth while to say at all under ordinary circumstances.
Mrs. Bowring had glanced at the man while he was taking his seat, and
her eyebrows had contracted a little. Later she looked furtively past
her daughter at his profile, and then stared a long time at her plate.
As for him, he began to eat with conscious strength, as healthy young
men do, but he watched his opportunity for doing or saying anything
which might lead to a first acquaintance.
To tell the truth, however, he was in no hurry. He knew how to make
himself comfortable, and it was an important element in his comfort to
be seated next to the only persons in the place with whom he should care
to associate. That point being gained, he was willing to wait for
whatever was to come afterwards. He did not expect in any case to gain
more than the chance of a little pleasant conversation, and he was not
troubled by any youthful desire to shine in the eyes of the fair girl
beside whom he found himself, beyond the natural wish to appear well
before women in general, which modifies the conduct of all natural and
manly young men when women are present at all.
As the meal proceeded, however, he was surprised to find that no
opportunity presented itself for exchanging a word with his neighbour.
He had so often found it impossible to avoid speaking with strangers at
a public table that he had taken the probability of some little incident
for granted, and caught himself glancing surreptitiously at Clare's
plate to see whether there were nothing wanting which he might offer
her. But he could not think of anything. The fried sardines were
succeeded by the regulation braised beef with the gluey brown sauce
which grows in most foreign hotels. That, in its turn, was followed by
some curiously dry slices of spongecake, each bearing a bit of pink and
white sugar frosting, and accompanied by fresh orange marmalade, which
Brook thought very good, but which Clare refused. And then there was
fruit--beautiful oranges, uncanny apples, and walnuts--and the young man
foresaw the near end of the meal, and wished that something would
happen. But still nothing happened at all.
He watched Clare's hands as she prepared an orange in the Italian
fashion, taking off the peel at one end, then passing the knife twice
completely round at right angles, and finally stripping the peel away in
four neat pieces. The hands were beautiful in their way, too thin,
perhaps, and almost too white from recent illness, but straight and
elastic, with little blue veins at the sides of the finger-joints and
exquisite nails that were naturally polished. The girl was clever with
her fingers, she could not help seeing that her neighbour was watching
her, and she peeled the orange with unusual skill and care. It was a
good one, too, and the peel separated easily from the deep yellow fruit.
"How awfully jolly!" exclaimed the young man, unconsciously, in genuine
admiration.
He was startled by the sound of his own voice, for he had not meant to
speak, and the blood rushed to his sunburnt face. Clare's eyes flashed
upon him in a glance of surprise, and the colour rose in her cheeks
also. She was evidently not pleased, and he felt that he had been guilty
of a breach of English propriety. When an Englishman does a tactless
thing he generally hastens to make it worse, becomes suddenly shy, and
flounders.
"I--I beg your pardon," stammered Brook. "I really didn't mean to
speak--that is--you did it so awfully well, you know!"
"It's the Italian way," Clare answered, beginning to quarter the orange.
She felt that she could not exactly be silent after he had apologised
for admiring her skill. But she remembered that she had felt some vanity
in what she had been doing, and had done it with some unnecessary
ostentation. She hoped that he would not say anything more, for the
sound of his voice reminded her of what she had heard him say to the
lady in white, and she hated him with all her heart.
But the young man was encouraged by her sufficiently gracious answer,
and was already glad of what he had done.
"Do all Italians do it that way?" he asked boldly.
"Generally," answered the young girl, and she began to eat the orange.
Brook took another from the dish before him.
"Let me see," he said, turning it round and round. "You cut a slice off
one end." He began to cut the peel.
"Not too deep," said Clare, "or you will cut into the fruit."
"Oh--thanks, awfully. Yes, I see. This way?"
He took the end off, and looked at her for approval. She nodded
gravely, and then turned away her eyes. He made the two cuts round the
peel, crosswise, and looked to her again, but she affected not to see
him.
"Oh--might I ask you--" he began. She looked at his orange again,
without a smile. "Please don't think me too dreadfully rude," he said.
"But it was so pretty, and I'm tremendously anxious to learn. Was it
this way?"
His fingers teased the peel, and it began to come off. He raised his
eyes with another look of inquiry.
"Yes. That's all right," said Clare calmly.
She was going to look away again, when she reflected that since he was
so pertinacious it would be better to see the operation finished once
for all. Then she and her mother would get up and go away, as they had
finished. But he wished to push his advantage.
"And now what does one do?" he asked, for the sake of saying something.
"One eats it," answered Clare, half impatiently.
He stared at her a moment and then broke into a laugh, and Clare, very
much to her own surprise and annoyance, laughed too, in spite of
herself. That broke the ice. When two people have laughed together over
something one of them has said, there is no denying the acquaintance.
"It was really awfully kind of you!" he exclaimed, his eyes still
laughing. "It was horridly rude of me to say anything at all, but I
really couldn't help it. If I could get anybody to introduce me, so that
I could apologise properly, I would, you know, but in this place--"
He looked towards the German family and the English old maids, in a
helpless sort of way, and then laughed again.
"I don't think it's necessary," said Clare rather coldly.
"No--I suppose not," he answered, growing graver at once. "And I think
it is allowed--isn't it?--to speak to one's neighbour at a table d'hote,
you know. Not but what it was awfully rude of me, all the same," he
added hastily.
"Oh no. Not at all."
Clare stared at the wall opposite and leaned back in her chair.
"Oh! thanks awfully! I was afraid you might think so, you know."
Mrs. Bowring leaned forward as her daughter leaned back. Seeing that the
latter had fallen into conversation with the stranger, she was too much
a woman of the world not to speak to him at once in order to avoid any
awkwardness when they next met, for he could not possibly have spoken
first to her across the young girl.
"Is it your first visit to Amalfi?" she inquired, with as much
originality as is common in such cases.
Brook leaned forward too, and looked over at the elder woman.
"Yes," he answered, "I was with a party, and they dropped me here last
night. I was to meet my people here, but they haven't turned up yet, so
I'm seeing the sights. I went up to Ravello this morning--you know, that
place on the hill. There's an awfully good view from there, isn't
there?"
Clare thought his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her
mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she
looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He
was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured expression.
He was not in the least a "beauty" man--she thought he might be a
soldier or a sailor, and a very good specimen of either. Furthermore, he
was undoubtedly a gentleman, so far as a man is to be judged by his
outward manner and appearance. In her heart she had already set him down
as little short of a villain. The discrepancy between his looks and what
she thought of him disturbed her. It was unpleasant to feel that a man
who had acted as he had acted last night could look as fresh, and
innocent, and unconcerned as he looked to-day. It was disagreeable to
have him at her elbow. Either he had never cared a straw for poor Lady
Fan, and in that case he had almost broken her heart out of sheer
mischief and love of selfish amusement, or else, if he had cared for her
at all, he was a pitiably fickle and faithless creature--something much
more despicable in the eyes of most women than the most heartless cynic.
One or the other he must be, thought Clare. In either case he was bad,
because Lady Fan was married, and it was wicked to make love to married
women. There was a directness about Clare's view which would either have
made the man laugh or would have hurt him rather badly. She wondered
what sort of expression would come over his handsome face if she were
suddenly to tell him what she knew. The idea took her by surprise, and
she smiled to herself as she thought of it.
Yet she could not help glancing at him again and again, as he talked
across her with her mother, making very commonplace remarks about the
beauty of the place. Very much in spite of herself, she wished to know
him better, though she already hated him. His face attracted her
strangely, and his voice was pleasant, close to her ear. He had not in
the least the look of the traditional lady-killer, of whom the tradition
seems to survive as a moral scarecrow for the education of the young,
though the creature is extinct among Anglo-Saxons. He was, on the
contrary, a manly man, who looked as though he would prefer tennis to
tea and polo to poetry--and men to women for company, as a rule. She
felt that if she had not heard him talking with the lady in white she
should have liked him very much. As it was, she said to herself that she
wished she might never see him again--and all the time her eyes returned
again and again to his sunburnt face and profile, till in a few minutes
she knew his features by heart.