Late into the night, facing the window, and the broad starlit sky
stretching over the plain, Teresa sat with Sylvia's hands in hers,
listening. She said little, she was trying to gather what were the
girl's sensations--whether, as she unconsciously expected, things were
awakening under this new touch. What perhaps surprised her most, though
nothing would have induced her to own it, was Sylvia's own want of
surprise. She, who was generally so timid, so scrupulous, seemed to
take all as a matter of course. Teresa reflected that Wilbraham's
wooing must have been amazingly effective, for Sylvia no longer seemed
to have a doubt about anything. She talked of "we," she alluded to
plans with innocent egoism, she repeated some of the pretty things he
had said. Once she jumped up and ran to the funny little looking-glass
stuck against the wall, and came back smiling.
"He thinks my eyes charming," she said frankly. "You never said much
about them?"
"One waits for lovers to do that," laughed Teresa.
"I don't see why. Did the marchese admire yours?"
"How could he!" Teresa spoke with sharp pain, the pain of remembrance.
"I was never pretty, like you, child."
"No," said Sylvia, looking at her with her head on one side, "I suppose
not. Walter said you were not."
"Oh, Walter. That's his name, is it?"
Teresa hated herself for speaking with a certain asperity. It is so
much easier to disparage one's self than to bear with others doing it.
But Sylvia was at last genuinely amazed.
"Do you mean that all this time you never knew _that_? Why, I have
always known it. Teresa, how very funny! You have never thought about
him as Mr Walter Wilbraham? It is such a beautiful name! But that you
should not--Teresa, you _are_ funny!"
"I shall know now."
"Of course you will." The girl gazed at her almost with compassion, as
at one whom Wilbraham had called absent-minded. "It will be my name,
you know. At least, I think so, as there is his mother. Perhaps," she
added pityingly, "perhaps you have forgotten that there is a mother?"
Teresa turned and kissed her impulsively.
"A mother--yes, what does it matter, what does anything matter? Only be
happy, be happy, dear!"
"I am very happy," said Sylvia simply. "And I like so much talking to
you about it."
"Always talk to me--not to any one else."
"Not to granny?"
"No, not to granny--not even to granny. I'm your sister, I can
understand," cried Teresa, with a protective yearning in her heart, a
defiant uprising against Mrs Brodrick's prognostications.
"But I shall talk to Walter first," said Sylvia; "of course, I shall
tell him everything."
"Of course," returned her sister. Yet her heart sank, and long after
Sylvia was sleeping peacefully in her little bed, Teresa sat at the
window, her hands clasping one knee, while she looked out at the
wonderful night, and wondered how soon Wilbraham, who was not a fool,
would find out that he had indeed reached the bottom of everything.
But by the morning her fears had left her. By the morning she was her
energetic, suggestive self, with an added touch of cordiality in her
manner towards Wilbraham. She owned, as they sat at breakfast in the
uninviting feeding-room of the Subisio, that he was a striking-looking
man, taller than most, and broadly made. There was a greater suggestion
of strength about him than she had yet realised, and, like other women,
Teresa liked strength. Generally she felt an inclination to contradict
him, but this morning she adopted all his suggestions readily--so
readily, that once Mrs Maxwell, who had not yet been enlightened, and
was unused to seeing Teresa so meek, put down her cup and stared at her.
Teresa laughed a little, and went on being pleasant.
"You'll see how good I am going to be," she said triumphantly to Mary
Maxwell, when she had told her.
"Well, don't turn the man's head," replied her friend.
"My dear, the only thing that can turn a man's head is a pretty face."
"I'm not so sure."
"That's because you've one of your own."
"Oh!" cried Mrs Maxwell delightedly, "you're charming! I had almost
forgotten what a compliment was like. If Jim had the sense to throw me
a few, I should be ready to swear all his discoveries were genuine.
Why, why are husbands so foolish?"
Later, when they were clambering again up the stony streets, she caught
Mrs Brodrick alone.
"Let us forget all about Saint Francis for a few minutes and talk about
Saint Sylvia," she said; "she is our heroine to-day, and the best of
creatures, isn't she?"
"As good as gold," assented Mrs Brodrick hastily.
"But the best of creatures may be the least little bit in the world--
tiresome? Oh, don't let us be quite good ourselves, let us say what is
on the tip of our tongues. How can any one look at Sylvia when Teresa
is by?"
"When you're my age," said the older woman, "you will have given up
asking questions."
"When I'm your age I shall try to answer other people's," said Mary,
with a laugh. "Do you believe for a moment that it can go on?--
particularly when Teresa withdraws, as she must, into the background,
and leaves Sylvia to stand alone?"
Our own thoughts are apt to look the uglier, held up by another person,
and Mrs Brodrick would have chosen silence. As it was she said
quietly:
"Mr Wilbraham is not the man to make mistakes."
Mary Maxwell laughed shrewdly.
"You mean he's not the man to acknowledge them. There you're right. I
daresay he will stick to Sylvia rather than own himself in the wrong.
Well, perhaps obstinacy has its uses. I wonder what they are talking
about now?" she added, wickedly.
At the moment when she asked the question, the two concerned were also
climbing steep streets--since at Assisi you must go up or down--stopping
every now and then to look through narrow vistas of grey stone houses,
towards the fair blue distances which lay beyond. Wilbraham was not so
much in love that he had not some uncertainty as to how much he ought to
say about it; sometimes, indeed, he felt that he had said but little.
Sylvia, however, was quite satisfied. She was not exacting, and she had
been brought up in an atmosphere which had given her trustfulness. When
Wilbraham had once said he loved her, it would not have occurred to her
to doubt the fact.
So, as they went, she babbled cheerfully and disconnectedly, turning to
him from time to time the face which invariably gave him a renewed
feeling of satisfaction. Had he pulled his own feelings to pieces, he
would have realised that his love was not a sweeping force, but, rather,
intermittent, moving in jerks, or brightening up now and then like a
flame stirred by a sudden current. As it was, he felt quite
sufficiently sure of himself to be content.
"What charming children!" cried Sylvia, stopping to smile at a group.
"Aren't they sweet? I always think the Italian children have such
beautiful eyes. Have you ever noticed it?"
He assured her that he had.
"I like them so much when they don't come _quite_ close, because, do you
know, they are not very clean. Poor little souls, I daresay they can't
help it, though. Oh, please, please send them away!"
"Be off!" cried Wilbraham, coming to the rescue.
Sylvia hurried on till she was breathless.
"I can't think why they beg so!" she said piteously. "They really
frighten one!"
The sweet helpless eyes turned towards him stirred the flame again. He
took her hand in his.
"My darling," he said tenderly, "you mustn't be frightened when I am by,
and they were very little children."
"They were dreadfully dirty--all rags," she said.
"When we're married, Sylvia--"
"Yes?"
She lifted her face, and he kissed it, forgetting what he was going to
say.
"I suppose there are plenty of schools and things at Blackmere?" she
asked reflectively.
"Oh, I suppose so."
"I hope I shan't have to teach the multiplication tables?"
"Why should you?" he said briefly. The flame had again died down.
"I fancied people did. Do you know, I was thinking about it in the
night."
"The multiplication table?"
"I never could learn beyond six times. Until one came to ten, of
course," she added triumphantly. "And granny says Teresa could say it
backwards--when she liked."
"I wouldn't trouble my head about it."
"No, I won't," said the girl obediently.
Wandering about a tangle of narrow streets, rugged, uneven, unchanged to
all appearance from those Middle Ages when men's lives and men's
thoughts were both simpler and more frankly expressed than in our
subtler days, they found themselves in the central piazza, where
Minerva's columns have faced the sun of centuries. Wilbraham had made
his way there the evening before, and had been so much impressed by
their grandeur that he had looked forward to bringing Sylvia. This
morning he said to himself that they were not what he had imagined them,
and Sylvia hardly glanced in their direction, until he pointed them out.
"I see. They are very pretty," she commented. "What did you call
them?"
"They belonged to a temple of Minerva."
Sylvia reflected.
"Then--" she hesitated--"they must be old, I suppose?"
"Very," he said, smiling.
"Ah, I thought so. I know one used to learn something about Minerva in
one's lesson books."
Wilbraham almost started. He had accepted the fact that Sylvia was
rather unusually ignorant, but somehow or other until now Teresa had
been there, to toss aside any wonder with a jest. It had never come
before him in so staringly obtrusive a light. And Sylvia, anxious to
prove her interest, went on gravely--
"Hadn't she something to do with an owl?"
But, as she said it, kind fate made her turn her face again up towards
his. He looked, and laughed.
"You've remembered one thing, haven't you, darling? We'll read up about
Minerva some day. People do forget their classics."
"I know those gods and goddesses always seemed very silly," she
returned, encouraged. "They never lived, and the things couldn't have
happened, so why should we think about them?"
Why indeed? And, with the thought, visions of beautiful myths floated
up before his eyes, and he wondered whether the time would come when he
could as easily dismiss them. He did not as yet understand that they
had never yet touched her at all, so that it was no question of
dismissal. And she had her eyes still turned to his.
"You like real history better? Well, let's go back to Saint Francis;
he's real enough. Or--" and his voice changed, for love, even a little
love, will show people truths, if only they will let it; and for the
first, the very first time in his life, Wilbraham wondered whether he
were indeed a prig--"or never mind any of them, dear, we'll only think
about to-day."
"Yes," she said happily, drawing a little closer to him as his hand
sought hers, "yes, that is nicer."
And as they strolled round the piazza, and looked--with his eyes--at the
pictures which lived all round them, at shadowy eaves, flowers in dark
windows, bits of carving, children in bright rags, women carrying
pitchers; mules, vegetables, big umbrellas, gourds, maize, tomatoes,
shade, sun, he said again and again to himself, how sweet she was, and
how content a man should be with such a wife.
They were standing at last by an open washing place at the side of the
street, where a group of women thumped and wrung, much to Sylvia's
distress--for it seemed to her a destructive way of washing clothes--
when Teresa and Miss Sandiland came round a corner.
"Oh!" murmured Miss Sandiland, catching sight of them, and slackening
her steps significantly.
But the young marchesa marched on. When she had not Sylvia before her,
unacknowledged uneasiness fretted her; she was sure that by a look she
could judge how the two were getting on, and whether Sylvia had, as Mrs
Maxwell would have said, yet put her foot in it.
"Well," she called out, "you two got the start of us. I expect you have
seen everything."
"Yes, everything," said the girl confidently. "There isn't much, is
there? It's not like Rome, of course."
"And you've a kinder taskmaster. Poor Sylvia," she went on to
Wilbraham; "you know the sort of muddle one gets into with too much
sightseeing? That's where I've landed her. I worked her too hard, and
I'm not up in things myself, and--I think she's a good deal mixed by
this time," she ended with a laugh.
"Oh, I don't think I am," remonstrated Sylvia, nodding her head; "you
know I can find my way about Rome as well as you."
"So that you won't be like the lady who asked her husband if she'd seen
the Coliseum," put in Wilbraham, smiling at her.
"No-o-o," she said, more doubtfully.
"Did she really? I wonder she didn't remember that, because it's so
big."
"We're going on to the piazza," said Teresa hastily. "Please put us in
the way. Oh, look!"
For across the street beyond them swept, with long strides, the figure
of Colonel Maxwell. Something--they could not see what--he was clasping
in his arms; and at his heels--laden, one with a piece of stone, another
with a panel of carving; some (and these were naturally the most
clamorous) with only disappointed hopes--ran half-a-dozen or more
children. Behind the last, at breathless distance, followed his wife.
She waved a despairing greeting to the group, and vanished.
"Actaeon and Diana," said Miss Sandiland, as soon as she could speak.
"Or," suggested Wilbraham, "the Pied Piper."
"Who was he?" Sylvia asked.
"Oh, he's Browning," Teresa answered promptly, "and Browning's beyond
me." She observed, with added uneasiness, that Sylvia's changed
circumstances encouraged her to talk and ask more questions than usual.
Curiosity and laughter made them hasten up the hill, and turn into the
street which had engulfed their friends. Nothing could be seen of the
Maxwells, but two or three of the less lucky of the children were coming
back slowly. Strangely for Assisi, where the past reigns, and its
stones have set themselves down greyly and determinedly as the earth
itself, a piece of wall had yielded so far to time that it was evidently
held dangerous, and had been propped by one or two not very strong
supports. The English people passed by it, Wilbraham last. He glanced
up, and saw a quiver, an ominous bulge. The wall was falling, and
underneath was a little creature of four or five years old, staring at
him with large unheeding eyes! There was no time to snatch her away.
Wilbraham was a very strong man, and he shouted, flung his weight
against the falling stones, and for a moment held them back. Teresa
turned, saw, rushed, caught at the child, dashed her into safety, would
have run back once more, but it was too late; the whole mass was sliding
and crumbling into a heap in the road, and Wilbraham, borne down with
it, lay motionless.