THE GRAVE ON THE HILL.
After that visit to the great white barrack on the road to St. André,
Mildred felt that her business at Nice was finished, there was nothing
more for her to learn. She knew all the sad story now—all, except
those lights and shadows of the picture which only the unhappy actor
in that domestic tragedy could have told her. The mystery of the past
had unfolded itself, stage by stage, from that Sunday afternoon when
César Castellani came to Enderby Manor, and out of trivial-seeming
talk launched a thunderbolt. The curtain was lifted. There was no more
to be done. And yet Mildred lingered at Nice, loving the place and
its environs a little for their own beauty, and feeling a strange and
sorrowful interest in the scene of her husband’s misfortunes.
There was another reason for remaining in the gay white city in the
fact that Lady Lochinvar had taken a fancy to Miss Ransome, and that
the young lady seemed to be achieving a remarkably rapid cure of her
infatuation for the Italian. It may have been because at the Palais
Montano she met a good many Italians, and that the charm of that
nationality became less potent with familiarity. There was music, too,
at the Palais, and to spare, according to Mr. Stuart, who was not an
enthusiast, and was wont to shirk his aunt’s musical reunions.
Mildred was delighted to see her husband’s niece entering society under
such agreeable auspices. She went out with her occasionally, just
enough to make people understand that she was not indifferent to her
niece’s happiness; and for the rest, Lady Lochinvar and Mrs. Murray
were always ready to chaperon the frank, bright girl, who was much
admired by the best people, and was never at a loss for partners at
dances, whoever else might play wallflower.
Mrs. Greswold invited Mr. and Mrs. Murray and Malcolm Stuart to a quiet
little dinner at the Westminster, and the impression the young man
made upon Mildred’s mind was altogether favourable. He was certainly
not handsome, but his plainness was of an honest Scottish type, and
his freckled complexion and blue eyes, sandy hair and moustache,
were altogether different from the traditionary Judas colouring of
Castellani’s auburn beard and hazel eyes. Truth and honesty beamed in
the Scotchman’s open countenance. He looked every inch a soldier and a
gentleman.
That he admired Pamela was obvious to the most unobservant eye; that
she affected to look down upon him was equally obvious; but it might
be that her good-humoured scorn of him was more pretence than reality.
She made light of him openly as one of that inferior race of men whose
minds never soar above the stable, the gunroom, or the home-farm, and
whose utmost intellectual ingenuity culminates in the invention of a
salmon-fly or the discovery of a new fertiliser for turnip-fields.
“You are just like my brother-in-law, Henry Mountford,” she told him.
“From the air with which you say that, I conclude Sir Henry Mountford
must be a very inferior person.”
“Not at all. He is the kind of man whom all other men seem to respect.
I believe he is one of the best shots in England. His bags are written
about in the newspapers; and I wonder there are any pigeons left in the
world, considering the way he has slaughtered them.”
“I saw him shoot at Monte Carlo the year before last.”
“Yes; he went there and back in a week on purpose to shoot. Imagine any
man coming to this divine Riviera, this land of lemon-groves and palms,
and roses and violets, just to slaughter pigeons!”
“He won the Grand Prix. It was a pretty big feather in his cap,” said
Mr. Stuart. “Am I to conclude that you dislike sporting men?”
“I prefer men who cultivate their minds.”
“Ah, but a man who shoots well and rides straight, and can play a
big salmon, and knows how to manage a farm, cannot be altogether an
imbecile. I never knew a really fine rider yet who was a fool. Good
horsemanship needs so many qualities that fools don’t possess; and to
be a crack shot, I assure you that a man must have some brains and a
good deal of perseverance; and perseverance is not a bad thing in its
way, Miss Ransome.”
He looked at her with a certain significance in his frank blue eyes,
looked at her resolutely, as some bold young Vandal or Visigoth might
have looked at a Roman maiden whom he meant to subjugate.
“I did not say that sportsmen were fools,” she answered sharply. “I
only say that the kind of man I respect is the man whose pleasures are
those of the intellect—who is in the front rank among the thinkers of
his age—who—”
“Reads Darwin and the German metaphysicians, I suppose. I tried Darwin
to see if he would help me in my farming, but I can’t say I got very
much out of him in that line. There’s more in old Virgil for an
agriculturist. I’m not a reading man, you see, Miss Ransome. I find by
the time I’ve read the daily papers my thirst for knowledge is pretty
well satisfied. There’s such a lot of information in the London papers,
and when you add the _Figaro_ and the _New York Herald_, there’s not
much left for a man to learn. I generally read the Quarterlies—as a
duty—to discover how many dull books have enriched the world during the
previous three months.”
“That’s a great deal more reading than my brother-in-law gets through.
He makes a great fuss about his _Times_ every morning; but I believe
he seldom goes beyond the births, marriages, and deaths, or a report
of a billiard match. He reads the _Field_, as a kind of religion, and
_Baily’s Magazine_; and I think that’s all.”
“Do you like men who write books, Miss Ransome, as well as men who read
them?”
Pamela crimsoned to the roots of her hair at this most innocent
question. Malcolm Stuart marked that blush with much perplexity.
“When one is interested in a book one likes to know the author,” she
replied, with cautious vagueness.
“Do you know many writers?”
“Not many—in fact, only one.”
“Who is he?”
“Mr. Castellani, the author of _Nepenthe_.”
“_Nepenthe?_—ah, that’s a novel people were talking about some time
ago. My aunt was full of it, because she fancied it embodied some of
her own ideas. She wanted me to read it. I tried a few chapters,” said
Malcolm, making a wry face. “Sickly stuff.”
“People who are not in the habit of reading the literature of
imagination can hardly understand such a book as _Nepenthe_,” replied
Pamela severely. “They are out of touch with the spirit and the
atmosphere of the book.”
“One has to be trained up to that kind of thing, I suppose. One must
forget that two and two make four, in order to get into the proper
frame of mind, eh? Is the author of _Nepenthe_ an interesting man?”
He was shrewd enough to interpret the blush aright. The author of
_Nepenthe_ was a person to be dreaded by any aspirant to Miss Ransome’s
favour.
“He is like his book,” answered Pamela briefly.
“Is he a young man?”
“I don’t know your idea of youth. He is older than my aunt—about
five-and-thirty.”
Stuart was just thirty. One point in his favour, anyhow, he told
himself, not knowing that to a romantic girl years may be interesting.
“Handsome?”
“_That_ is always a matter of opinion. He is just the kind of man who
ought to have written _Nepenthe_. That is really all I can tell you,”
said Pamela, with some irritation. “I believe Lady Lochinvar knew Mr.
Castellani when he was a very young man. She can satisfy your curiosity
about him.”
“I am not curious. Castellani? An Italian, I suppose, one of my aunt’s
innumerable geniuses. She has a genius for discovering geniuses. When I
see her with a new one, I am always reminded of a child with a little
coloured balloon. So pretty—till it bursts!”
Pamela turned her back upon him in a rage, and went over to the
piano to talk to Mrs. Murray, who was preparing to sing one of her
_répertoire_ of five Scotch ballads.
“Shall it be ‘Gin a body’ or ‘Huntingtower’?” she asked meekly; and
nobody volunteering a decisive opinion, she chirruped the former
coquettish little ballad, and put a stop to social intercourse for
exactly four minutes and a half.
After that evening Mr. Stuart knew who his rival was, and with what
kind of influence he had to contend. An author, a musical man, a
genius! Well, he had very few weapons with which to fight such an
antagonist, he who was neither musical, nor literary, nor gifted with
any of the graces which recommend a lover to a sentimental girl.
But he was a man, and he meant to win her. He admired her for her
frank young prettiness, so unsophisticated and girlish, and for that
perfect freshness and truthfulness of mind which made all her thoughts
transparent. He was too much a man of the world to ignore the fact
that Miss Ransome of Mapledown would be a very good match for him,
or that such a marriage would strengthen his position in his aunt’s
esteem. Women bow down to success. Encouraged by these considerations,
Mr. Stuart pursued the even tenor of his way, and was not disheartened
by the idea of the author of _Nepenthe_, more especially as that
attractive personage was not on the ground. He had one accomplishment
over and above the usual outdoor exercises of a country gentleman. He
could dance, and he was Pamela’s favourite partner wherever she went.
No one else waltzed as well. Not even the most gifted of her German
acquaintance; not even the noble Spaniards who were presented to her.
He had another and still greater advantage in the fact that he was
often in the young lady’s society. She was fond of Lady Lochinvar, and
spent a good deal of her life at the Palais Montano, where, with Mrs.
Murray’s indefatigable assistance, there were tennis-parties twice a
week. That charming garden, with its numerous summer-houses, made a
kind of club for the privileged few who were permitted _les petites
entrées_.
While Pamela was enjoying the lovely springtide amongst people whose
only thought was of making the best of life, and getting the maximum
of sunshine, Mildred Greswold spent her days in sad musings upon an
irrevocable past. It was her melancholy pleasure to revisit again and
again the place in which her husband had lived, the picturesque little
village under the shadow of the tall cliff, every pathway which he must
have trodden, every point from which he must have gazed across the bay,
seaward or landward in his troubled reveries.
She dwelt with morbid persistence on the thought of those two lives,
both dear to her, yet in their union how terrible a curse! She
revisited the villa until the old caretaker grew to look upon her as a
heaven-sent benefactress, and until the village children christened her
the English Madonna, that pensive look recalling the face of the statue
in the church yonder, so mildly sad, a look of ineffable sweetness
tinged with pain. She sat for hours at a stretch in the sunlit garden,
amongst such flowers as must have been blooming there in those closing
hours of Fay’s wedded life, when the shadow of her cruel fate was
darkening round her, though she knew it not. She talked to people
who had known the English lady. Alas! they were all dubious in their
opinions. None would answer boldly for the husband’s innocence. They
shrugged their shoulders—they shook their heads. Who could say? Only
the good God would ever know the truth about that story.
The place to which she went oftenest in those balmy afternoons was the
burial-ground on the hill, where Fay’s grave, with its white marble
cross, occupied one of the highest points in the enclosure, and stood
out sharp and clear against the cloudless sapphire.
The inscription on that marble was of the briefest:
“VIVIEN RANSOME.
Died April 24th, 1868.
Eternally lamented.”
Below the cross stretched the grass mound, without shrub or flower.
It was Mildred’s task to beautify this neglected grave. She brought a
florist from the neighbourhood to carry out her own idea, and on her
instruction he removed the long, rank grass from the mound, and planted
a cross of roses, eight feet long, dwarf bush-roses closely planted,
Gloire de Dijon and Maréchal Niel.
She remembered how Fay had revelled in the rose-garden at The Hook,
where midsummer was a kind of carnival of roses. Here the roses would
bloom all the year round, and there would be perpetual perfume and
blossom and colour above poor Fay’s cold dust.