The market-place at Trieste lay in a blaze of colour under the June
sunlight. The scent of fruits and flowers was heavy on the air. A
faint-hearted breeze which scarcely dared to blow came up from the
harbour now and again, and made the heat just bearable. Mr. William
Holmes Barndale, of Barndale in the county of Surrey, and King’s Bench
Walk-, Temple, sat in shadow in front of a restaurant with his legs
comfortably thrust forth and his hat tilted over his eyes. He pulled his
tawny beard lazily with one hand, and with the other caressed a great
tumbler of iced beer. He was beautifully happy in his perfect idleness,
and a sense was upon him of the eternal fitness of things in general.
In the absolute serenity of his beatitude he fell asleep, with one hand
still lazily clutching his beard, and the other still lingering lovingly
near the great tumbler. This was surely not surprising, and on the
face of things it would not have seemed that there was any reason for
blushing at him. Yet a young lady, unmistakably English and undeniably
pretty, gave a great start, beholding him, and blushed celestial rosy
red. She was passing along the shady side of the square with papa and
mamma, and the start and the blush came in with some hurried commonplace
in answer to a commonplace. These things, papa and mamma noted
not--good, easy, rosy, wholesome people, who had no great trouble in
keeping their heads clear of fancies, and were chiefly engaged just then
with devices for keeping cool.
Two minutes later, or thereabouts, came that way a young gentleman of
whom the pretty young lady seemed a refined and feminine copy, save and
except that the young lady was dearly and daintily demure, whilst from
this youth impudence and mischief shone forth as light radiates from
a lantern. He, pausing before the sleeping Barndale, blushed not, but
poked him in the ribs with the end of his walking-stick, and regarded
him with an eye of waggish joy, as who should say that to poke a
sleeping man in the ribs was a stroke of comic genius whereof the world
had never beheld the like. He sat on his stick, cocked Mr. Barndale’s
hat on one side, and awaited that gentleman’s waking. Mr. Barndale,
languidly stretching himself, arose, adjusted his hat, took a great
drink of iced beer, and, being thereby in some degree primed for
conversation, spoke.
‘That you, Jimmy?’ said Mr. Barndale.
‘Billy, my boy?’ said the awakener, ‘how are you?’
‘Thought you were in Oude, or somewhere,’ said Mr. Barndale.
‘Been back six months,’ the other answered.
‘Anybody with you here?’
‘Yes,’ said the awakener, ‘the Mum, the Pater, and the Kid.’
Mr. Barndale did not look like the sort of man to be vastly shocked at
these terms of irreverence, yet it is a fact that his brown and bearded
cheeks flushed like any schoolgirl’s.
‘Stopping at the Hotel de la Ville,’ said the awakener, ‘and adoing of
the Grand Tower, my pippin. I’m playing cicerone. Come up and have a
smoke and a jaw.’
‘All right,’ said Mr. Barndale languidly. Nobody, to look at him now,
would have guessed how fast his heart beat, and how every nerve in his
body fluttered. ‘I’m at the same place. When did you come?’
‘Three hours ago. We’re going on to Constantinople. Boat starts at six.’
‘Ah!’ said Barndale placidly. ‘_I’m_ going on to Constantinople too.’
‘Now that’s what I call jolly,’ said the other. ‘You’re going to-night
of course?’
‘Of course. Nothing to stay here for.’
At the door of the hotel stood Barndale’s servant, a sober-looking
Scotchman dressed in dark tweed.
‘Come with me, Bob,’ said Barndale as he passed him. ‘See you in the
coffee-room in five minutes, Jimmy.’
In his own room Barndale sat down upon the bedside and addressed his
servant.
‘I have changed my mind about going home. Go to Lloyd’s office and take
places for this evening’s boat to Constantinople. Wait a bit. Let me see
what the fare is. There you are. Pack up and get everything down to the
boat and wait there until I come.’
The man disappeared, and Barndale joined his friend. He had scarce
seated himself when a feminine rustling was heard outside. The door
opened, a voice of singular sweetness cried, ‘Jimmy, dear!’ and a young
lady entered. It was the young lady who blushed and started when she saw
Barndale asleep in front of the restaurant. She blushed again, but held
her hand frankly out to him. He rose and took it with more tenderness
than he knew of. The eyes of the third person twinkled, and he winked at
his own reflection in a mirror.
‘This,’ Barndale said, ‘is not an expected pleasure, and is all
the greater on that account. By a curious coincidence I find we are
travelling together to Constantinople.’
Her hand still lingered in his whilst he said this, and as he ceased to
speak he gave it a little farewell pressure. Her sweet hazel eyes
quite beamed upon him, and she returned the pressure cordially. But she
answered only--
‘Papa will be very pleased,’
‘Isn’t it singular,’ said the guilty Barndale with an air of commonplace
upon him, ‘that we should all be making this journey together?’
‘Very singular indeed,’ said pretty Miss Le-land, with so bright a
sparkle of mirth in those demure hazel eyes that Barndale, without
knowing why, felt himself confounded.
Mr. James Leland winked once more at his reflection in the mirror, and
was discovered in the act by Barndale, who became signally disconcerted
in manner.
Miss Leland relieved his embarrassment by taking away her brother for a
conference respecting the package of certain treasures purchased a day
or two before in Venice. The lone one smoked, and lounged, and waited.
He tried to read, and gave it up. He strayed down to the harbour, and,
finding his servant solemnly mounting guard over his luggage on board
the boat, he himself went aboard and in-spected his berth, and chatted
with the steward, in whom he discovered an old acquaintance.
But the time went drearily; and Barndale, who was naturally a man to be
happy under all sorts of circumstances, suffered all the restlessness,
chagrin, and envy with which love in certain of its stages has power to
disturb the spirit. He had made up a most heroic mind on this question
of Miss Leland some three months ago, and had quite decided that she
did not care for him. He wasn’t going to break his heart for a woman who
didn’t care for him. Not he.
If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be?
She had made fun of him in her own demure way. He ventured once on a
little touch of sentiment, which she never neglected to repeat, when
opportunity offered, in his presence. She repeated it with so serious an
air, so precisely as if it were an original notion which had just then
occurred to her, that Barndale winced under it every time she used it.
His mind was quite made up on this matter. He would go away and forget
her. He believed she liked him, in a friendly sisterly sort of way,
and that made him feel more hopeless. There were evidences enough to
convince you or me, had we been there to watch them, that this young
lady was caught in the toils of love quite as inextricably as this young
gentleman; but, with the pigheaded obstinacy and stupidity incident to
his condition, he declined to see it, and voluntarily betook himself to
misery, after the manner of young men in love from time immemorial. A
maiden who can be caught without chasing is pretty generally not
worth catching; and cynics have been known to say that the pleasure
of stalking your bride is perhaps the best part of matrimony. This our
young Barndale would not have believed. He believed, rather, that the
tender hopes and chilling fears of love were among the chief pains of
life, and would have laughed grimly if anyone had prophesied that he
would ever look back to them with longing regret. We, who are wiser,
will not commiserate but envy this young gentleman, remembering the
time when those tender hopes and chilling fears were ours--when we were
happier in our miseries than we have now the power to be in our joys.
The Lelands came at last, and Barndale had got the particular form of
love’s misery which he most coveted. The old gentleman was cordial, the
old lady was effusive, the awakener was what he had always been, and
Lilian was what she had always been to Barndale--a bewildering maddening
witchery, namely, which set him fairly beside himself. Let it not be
prejudicial to him in your judgment that you see him for the first time
under these foolish circumstances. Under other conditions you would
find much to admire in him. Even now, if you have any taste for
live statuary, you shall admire this upright six feet two inches of
finely-modelled bone and muscle. If manly good-nature can make a handsome
sun-browned face pleasant to you, then shall Barndale’s countenance find
favour in your eyes. Of his manly ways, his good and honest heart, this
story will tell you something, though perchance not much. If you do not
like Barndale before you part with him, believe me, it is my fault, who
tell his story clumsily, and not his. For the lady of his love there
might be more to say, if I were one of those clever people who read
women. As it is, you shall make your own reading of her, and shall
dislike her on your own personal responsibility, or love her for her
transparent merits, and for the sake of no stupid analysis of mine.
Do you know the Adriatic? It pleases me to begin a love story over its
translucent sapphire and under its heavenly skies. I shall rejoice again
in its splendours as I hover in fancy over these two impressionable
young hearts, to whom a new glamour lives upon its beauties.
Papa and Mamma Leland are placidly asleep on the saloon deck, beneath
the flapping awning. Leland Junior is carrying on a pronounced
flirtation with a little Greek girl, and Lilian and Barndale are each
enjoying their own charming spiritual discomforts. They say little,
but, like the famous parrot, they think the more. Concerning one thing,
however, Mr. Barndale thinks long and deeply, pulling his tawny beard
meanwhile. Lilian, gazing with placid-seeming spirit on the deep, is
apparently startled by the suddenness of his address.
‘Miss Leland!’
‘How you startled me!’ she answers, turning her hazel eyes upon him. She
has been waiting these last five minutes for him to speak, and knew that
he was about it. But take notice that these small deceits in the gentle
sex are natural, and by no means immoral.
‘I am disturbed in mind,’ says Barndale, blushing a httle behind his
bronze, ‘about an incident of yesterday.’
‘Conscience,’ says Lilian, calmly didactic, ‘will assert herself
occasionally.’
‘Conscience,’ says Barndale, blushing a httle more perceptibly, ‘has
httle to do with this disturbance. Why did you laugh when I said that it
was singular that we should be making this pleasant journey together?’
‘Did I laugh?’ she asked demurely. Then quite suddenly, and with an air
of denunciation.
‘Ask James.’
Barndale rises obediently.
‘No, no,’ says the lady. ‘Sit down, Mr. Barndale. I was only joking.
There was no reason.’ And now the young lady is blushing. ‘Did I really
laugh?’
‘You smiled,’ says the guilty Barndale. ‘At what?’ inquires she with
innocent inadvertency.
‘Oh!’ cries the young fellow, laughing outright, ‘that is too bad. Why
_did_ you laugh when I said it was singular?’
‘I am not prepared,’ she answers, ‘to account for all my smiles of
yesterday.’
‘Then,’ says Barndale, ‘I’ll go and ask Jimmy.’
‘You will do nothing of the kind.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are too polite, Mr. Barndale, to pry into a lady’s
secrets.’
‘There is a secret here, then?’
‘No.’
‘You are contradictory, Miss Leland?’
‘You are obtuse, Mr. Barndale. If there be a secret it is as open
as----’
‘As what?’
‘As your door was yesterday when you spoke to your servant.’
‘Then you----?’
‘Yes,’ responds Miss Lilian, severely. I know you gentlemen. You were
going home until you met that idle and dissolute James, by accident.
Then you suddenly change your mind, and go out to Constantinople.’ There
for a moment she pauses and follows up her victory over the now crimson
Barndale with a terrible whisper. ‘_On the spree_! Oh, you need scarcely
look surprised. I have learned your vulgar terms from James.’
‘I hope I am not so criminal as you fancy,’ says Barndale, finding the
proof of his guilt fall less heavily than he had feared.
‘If you were thrice as criminal, this is not the tribunal,’ and she
waves her parasol round her feet, ‘at which the felon should be tried.’
‘But, Miss Leland, if it were not because I met your brother that--I
came out here! If there were another reason!’
‘If there were another reason I confess my smile out of time and
apologise for it.’ And therewith she shot him through and through with
another smile. It was fatal to both, for he in falling caught her with
him. These things have a habit of occurring all at once, and in anything
rather than the meditated fashion.
‘Lilian,’ said the young Barndale, inwardly delirious at his own daring
and the supernal beauty of her smile, but on the outside of him quite
calm and assured, and a trifle masterful, ‘I came because I learned that
you were com-ing. If you are displeased with me for that, I will land at
Corfu and go home. And bury my misery,’ he added in a tone so hollow and
sepulchral that you or I had laughed.
Miss Leland sat quite grave with downcast eyes.
‘Are you displeased?’
‘I have no right to be displeased,’ she murmured.
Of course you and I can see quite clearly that he might have kissed her
there and then, and settled the business, murmuring ‘Mine own!’ But he
was in love, which we are not, and chose to interpret that pretty murmur
wrongly. So there fell upon the pair an awkward silence. He was the
first to break it.
‘I will land at Corfu,’ he said, with intense penitence.
‘But not--not because of my displeasure,’ she answered; a little too
gaily for the gaiety to be quite real.
‘Ah, then!’ he said, catching at this ark of perfect safety, which
looked like a straw to his love-blinded eyes, ‘you are not displeased?’
‘No,’ she answered lightly, still playing with him, now she felt so
sure of him, and inwardly melting and yearning over him; ‘I am not
displeased.’
‘But are you pleased?’ said he, growing bolder.’ Are you pleased that I
came because you came--because I------?’
There he paused, and she took a demure look at him. He burst out all at
once in a whisper--
‘Because I love you?’
She did not answer him; but when next she looked at him he saw that the
tears had gathered thickly in her lovely eyes.
‘You are not pained at that,’ he said. ‘I have loved you ever since that
day you were at my place in Surrey, when you came down with Jimmy, and
my poor old dad was there.’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking up again, and smiling through the dimness of
her eyes, ‘I know.’
And so it came about that, when Leland Senior awoke, Barndale held a
conference with him, which terminated in a great shaking of hands. There
was another conference between Lilian and her mother, which ended, as it
began, in tears, and kisses, and smiles. Tears, and kisses, and smiles
made a running accompaniment to that second conference, and tender
embraces broke in upon it often. It was settled between them all--papa,
and mamma, and the lovers--that they should finish the journey together,
and that the marriage should be solemnised a year after their arrival
at home. It goes without saying that Barndale looked on this delay with
very little approval. But Leland Senior insisted on it stoutly, and
carried his point. And even in spite of this the young people were
tolerably happy. They were together a good deal, and, in the particular
stage at which they had arrived, the mere fact of being together is a
bliss and a wonder. Leigh Hunt--less read in these days than he deserves
to be--sings truly--
Heaven’s in any roof that covers On any one same night two lovers.
They went about in a state of Elysian beatitude, these young people.
Love worked strange metamorphoses, as he does always. They found new
joys in Tennyson, and rejoiced in the wonderful colours of the waves. I
am not laughing at them for these things. I first read Tennyson when I
was in love, and liked him, and understood him a great deal better than
I have been able to do since I came out of Love’s dear bondages. To be
in love is a delicious and an altogether admirable thing. I would be in
love again to-morrow if I could. You should be welcome to your foolish
laugh at my raptures. Ah me! I shall never know those raptures any more;
and the follies you will laugh at in me will be less noble, less tender,
less innocently beautiful than those of young love. But to them,
who were so sweet to each other, the moonlight was a revelation of
marvellous sanctity, and the sea was holy by reason of their passionate
hearts that hallowed it.