"To-day--I give battle!"
Aunt Clo's voice sounded as though the prospect filled her with mingled
elation and concern.
"Can you amuse yourself, my Lily, if I leave you for the day?
Books--piano--flowers--birds----" Aunt Clo enumerated the resources of
her establishment with large and expressive wavings of her well-shaped
hands over the breakfast-table.
"I can write some letters, and you have lent me so many books. I shall
have plenty to do."
"_Benissimo!_"
"Shall you be away all day?" said Lily tentatively. She had already
learnt that Miss Stellenthorpe rather welcomed enquiries on subjects of
which the importance apparently required an extreme reticence of reply.
A shade of gravity at once fell across her face. "Ah! who can tell?
If the mission is to be successful, a day is not too long ... but I
am very much afraid. Not fearful, you understand, _cara_, but--let me
say--aware of responsibility--immense responsibility."
Lily felt that she, too, must look serious, in sympathy, and
regretfully realized that Aunt Clo was about to rise abstractedly from
the table, although her niece greatly desired another breakfast roll.
Sometimes, interested in discussion, Aunt Clo would sit over a meal
interminably, her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her keen,
handsome face. At others, she would rise impatiently, flinging her
napkin to the ground, and appearing regardless of the incompleteness of
her niece's meal.
Lily had never yet found the necessary courage to remain in her place
and continue stolidly to eat. Aunt Clo had a curious faculty for
throwing into relief the grossness of material needs.
She now stood at the open window and addressed Lily slowly and sadly.
"Little one, do you know what it is to see a frail, foolish, lovely
butterfly dashing itself against a lighted globe? To seek desperately
to turn it elsewhere, to set it free into the cool, dark night
outside--and yet to see it return again and again in search of its own
destruction?"
Lily nodded. She always found it difficult to reply adequately in words
when Aunt Clo became, as she often did, metaphorical.
"I go," said Miss Stellenthorpe, her hands extended, palms uppermost,
"I go to try and deliver the butterfly from the lamp to-day. I can tell
you no more, my Lily."
She left the house with the same mixture of portentous foreboding and
exhilaration in her bearing, saying to Lily in farewell, as though her
new simile still pleased her:
"Who knows but that I myself may come back with singed wings! Not for
nothing has one the privilege of spending oneself upon others!"
"I hope it will be all right," said Lily--inadequately, she felt, as
usual.
Aunt Clo also appeared to be conscious of the inadequacy, for she
replied very gravely indeed:
"Ah! That is what it can never be. _Addio!_" She waved her hand
above her head and strode away, clad in the blue jersey and the
knickerbockers which she never discarded in the day-time, except when
proceeding on a sight-seeing expedition to Rome.
Lily turned back into the house, and felt rather guilty because she
was relieved by the prospect of spending a whole day in solitude, free
from the slight tension of spirit that always assailed her in the lofty
atmosphere wherein Aunt Clo seemed usually to exist. She felt still
more guilty a little later on, when she went in search of a book.
Aunt Clo had recommended several volumes to her niece from the many,
bearing the stamp of the London Library, that lay about the house.
"Pater," had said Aunt Clo. "Incredible that you have not yet made
acquaintance with the beloved Pater! Or Fénelon. Do you know Fénelon?
Then there is the little '_Cinque-cento_' series--light, of course,
but full of appeal. Or you may care for old friends, perhaps--I have
Froissard, Ruskin, d'Annunzio--but not in a translation, I fear. Take
your choice, _bambina mia_--I make you free of all my most precious
companions."
Lily tried hard not to remember Aunt Clo's generous suggestions as she
made her way to a small and remote bookcase that she had observed,
on the first evening of her arrival at Genazzano, in a corner of the
passage. The books were small and old-fashioned looking, and Lily had
had no difficulty in discovering that almost all were children's books,
that no doubt dated from Aunt Clo's incredible childhood. And Lily
liked children's books, just as she liked toys, and sweets, and other
babyish diversions, and she was just as profoundly ashamed of the one
predilection as of the other.
She had read the volumes pressed upon her by Aunt Clo, and had liked
one or two of them, whilst finding the majority strangely wearisome,
but all the time there had lurked at the back of her mind a longing
recollection of those children's books that were never taken from the
shelf.
She knew that she would really enjoy them much more than even the
novels conceded to her youthful tastes by Aunt Clo: "Jude the Obscure,"
"Daisy Miller," and "Sandra Belloni," none of which she had felt
herself able to appreciate, or even to understand.
It was all part of that old sense that she was not a real, live person
at all, but only a little girl pretending.
The relief of dropping the pretence was undeniable. Lily chose "The
Little Duke" because it had pictures, a book called "The Magic Beads"
because she liked the name, and a volume of fairy-tales because she
always loved fairy-tales. She took them out into the garden.
She was a little bit ashamed of herself, because she felt so happy,
knowing that it was childish pleasure in the story-books, and the
sunniness of the day and her own feeling of freedom, that made her
happy.
She had so often been told that happiness is the attribute of
youth that she believed it, although she herself was young and
not particularly happy. And as she had also heard youth spoken of
contemptuously, or else with amused patronage, Lily had retained an
impression that happiness was something slightly to be despised,
especially when springing from trivial causes.
She had lunch by herself and kept "The Magic Beads" propped open on
the table in front of her, and ate several more of the enormous purple
figs than she would have eaten had Aunt Clo, with her superhuman
indifference to food, been sitting, very erect and animated, opposite
to her.
The afternoon was even lazier and more blissful than the morning had
been, the joy of it somehow enhanced as it became more liable to
interruption. But Miss Stellenthorpe had not returned by five o'clock.
Evidently the butterfly was showing determination, in its pursuit of
the flame.
It was nearly six o'clock when Lily heard sounds that caused her to
bestow the three small and shabby volumes into her work-bag, which she
had guiltily extracted from disuse from the bottom of her trunk for the
purpose, and hasten to the little iron gate in welcome.
Aunt Clotilde was not alone, and she looked, if possible, even more
exhilarated than she usually looked after some particularly strenuous
exertion.
"_Ecco!_ I return with a friend, my Lily!"
Was this the butterfly, or the lamp?
Lily at once rejected the former hypothesis, and felt doubtful even of
the latter, as she exchanged greetings with Aunt Clo's friend.
He was a very tall Englishman, in whose long face Lily discovered some
freakish resemblance to a good-looking camel, and he had small, tawny
eyes that twinkled, and very crisp curly hair, touched with iron-grey.
His shoulders were so broad and his carriage so erect that even Aunt
Clo seemed unimposing beside him.
Lily did not learn his name at once, since Miss Stellenthorpe had
merely waved their introduction with both hands, and since throughout
the evening she called the visitor either "Amico," "my very dear
Friend," or "Mon cher."
It appeared that Aunt Clo's very dear friend was serving on a Royal
Commission for the investigation of something unspecified, that
compelled him to sojourn in Rome, now a hot and arid desert.
"But della Torre, you know the young Marchese della Torre, of course?
Well, he is actually kind enough to stay on in a corner of the Palazzo
della Torre, and make me his guest. What a good fellow he is--I met him
once or twice in England, that's all--and now he turns up trumps like
this! Isn't he a brick?"
The hearty English colloquialisms positively rang through the little
room still vibrant with the cosmopolitan inversions and polished
elegancies of Aunt Clo's habitual speech. Aunt Clo, however, was more
animated than ever, and commented vivaciously several times upon the
good fortune that had brought about the encounter with her friend.
"Would that I could offer you the hospitality of _mon toit de
chaumière, amico_! But alas! even my grey hairs would not protect me
from the tongues of _ce bon Genazzano_. I dare not do it," cried Aunt
Clo in humorous despair. "But we meet again, is it not so?"
"I hope so! I should hope so indeed. Won't you and your niece come in
one morning, and let us do some sight-seeing together, and then perhaps
you will allow me to have the pleasure of giving you lunch at the Grand
Hotel?"
He addressed himself to Miss Stellenthorpe, but after her gracious
and sprightly acceptance of the invitation, the Englishman's kindly,
twinkling gaze turned triumphantly to Lily.
She smiled at him shyly and almost involuntarily, attracted by his
eagerness and simplicity, and perhaps by the manifest admiration in
his glance. "Why not to-morrow?" he cried. "Do come in to-morrow. What
could we go and look at to-morrow?"
"Why not San Pietro?" said Aunt Clo.
"As a matter of fact, I've been there already," said the guest with
great simplicity. "But by all means----"
"_Amico_," said Aunt Clo, with some severity in her voice, "you do not
see San Pietro in one visit--nor yet in two, nor perhaps two hundred.
_Je vous donne rendezvous_ at the Bronze Door at eleven to-morrow
morning. _Va bene?_"
Lily looked forward to the proposed excursion and hoped that the
Marchese would be as agreeable as was his friend.
She learnt from Aunt Clo that the name of the latter was Nicholas
Aubray, that she had met him first in Paris, several years ago, and had
then personally demonstrated to him the beauties of the Louvre.
"Not altogether a Philistine," said Aunt Clo thoughtfully. "There are
possibilities there, my Lily; undoubtedly, possibilities. _Ce bon
Nicholas!_ I wonder what he finds in common with Giulio della Torre!"
Lily wondered too, when she met the Marchese della Torre on the
following morning. He looked much younger than did Mr. Aubray, was
extremely good-looking in an elegant pink-and-bronze style, and was
meticulously clad in a beautifully-cut grey suit, with a soft shirt,
a pink tie, pink socks, and shining brown boots. Miss Stellenthorpe's
acquaintance with him was slight, she had told her niece, but she
addressed him as della Torre, in Continental fashion, and extended the
back of her hand for him to kiss. The Marchese also kissed Lily's
hand, and she fancied that she saw amusement lurking in Nicholas
Aubray's long, lean face.
She had expected that Aunt Clo, as usual, would live up to her
rôle of _connaisseuse_ in Beauty, and would deliver eloquent and
pungently-worded dissertations upon the more eclectic subjects for
admiration that surrounded them.
But it speedily became astoundingly evident that Aunt Clo's erudition
was out-matched. Lily and Mr. Aubray, obediently waiting to be told
what they might admire, found themselves overlooked in the clash of
conflicting authorities. The Marchese gracefully countered all Miss
Stellenthorpe's artistic and historical allusions with others even more
recondite, and appeared to have command of ejaculatory phrases in at
least six languages to her three.
"Michelangelo--_il maestro_!" said Aunt Clo reverently, gazing up at
the dome.
"You forget Bramante!" cried the Marchese in tones of courteous
anguish. "_Aïe!_ you forget Bramante!"
"Most certainly I do not forget Bramante," said Aunt Clo with dignified
annoyance. "But I put the Maestro first."
The Marchese bowed with a gesture that far outdid, in its appreciative
humility, the tone of Aunt Clo's tribute, through which an undeniable
asperity had pierced.
"_E le due San Gallo?_" murmured the Marchese.
"Penuzzi!" Aunt Clo retorted with flashing eyes.
"Rosellino," said the Marchese politely, but securing the last word,
since Miss Stellenthorpe had nothing ready with which to defeat the
recollection of Rosellino.
"Your aunt is a wonderful person," said Nicholas Aubray in lowered
tones to Lily. "She knows everything about Art, I suppose?"
"Yes, I suppose she does."
"She and della Torre must revel in one another's company. He's a most
artistic fellow, very well read and full of information. I knew they'd
have a lot in common."
At the triumph in his tone, Lily turned to look at him. He was
evidently not in the least ironical, but full of genuine pride and
satisfaction at an encounter which he obviously accepted entirely at
its face value.
Lily felt momentarily ashamed of her own secret inclination to detect a
concealed and embittered resentment at the other's pretensions on the
part of either of the two exponents of Art.
She was half puzzled and half attracted by that characteristic
simplicity of Nicholas Aubray's, that, to her more critical
perceptions, was later on to account for his curiously limited
capacity to judge correctly of his fellow-creatures, and that so oddly
counteracted his unmistakable shrewdness of mind.
She found in him a very sympathetic companion, as they wandered
together round the interior of the immense building, leaving behind
them fragmentary echoes of the sprightly Spanish proverbs with which
the Marchese appeared to be countering Aunt Clo's interpolated French
exclamations and Latin quotations.
There was a feeling of relaxation in freely pointing out certain
obvious glories and universally acknowledged masterpieces, such as
Aunt Clo regarded as only to be commented upon by the general public,
and Lily felt it to be even more of a relief when Mr. Aubray calmly
suggested, at the end of half an hour, that they should go outside and
wait for the others.
"You'll get tired, if you stand about for so long in the heat," he
observed matter-of-factly, and with a consideration to which she had,
at Genazzano, become unused.
They sat down outside in the shade, and instead of abstract and
impassioned discourse upon all that Beauty stood for, Lily found
herself embarked upon such trivial and comfortable personalities
as she could not help welcoming, after the long course of unbroken
conversational altitudes upon which her hostess habitually promenaded
her.
Nicholas Aubray actually seemed to think that anything about herself
was interesting!
She told him about her home and about Bridgecrap, and he laughed
whole-heartedly when she confessed that she was no good at games, and
seemed to think it of so little account that Lily was encouraged to
make a daring confession.
"Sometimes I read children's books--just because I enjoy them. It makes
me feel as though I was only pretending to be grown up, you know."
"Oh, you splendid person! I think that's simply ripping!"
"You don't think I ought to be ashamed of it?" cried Lily, delightedly
conscious that he did not.
"Good heavens, no! I think it's splendid. Why shouldn't you like
children's books? I read fairy-tales myself and enjoy them immensely."
"Do you really?" Lily was enchanted.
"Tell me some more about yourself," begged Nicholas Aubray warmly, and
Lily was young enough to respond candidly to the invitation.
"We must make some more of these expeditions," was the conclusion
reached by Mr. Aubray, when he and Lily had spent an hour in eager
conversation eminently satisfactory to them both.
"I was a good deal bored at having to stay on and on here, excellent
fellow though della Torre is, but this meeting with you and your aunt
has made all the difference in the world. You'll come with me again,
won't you?"
"Oh, I should love to!"
"Hurrah!" He looked quite boyishly delighted, and flung his hat into
the air and caught it again.
"Now what about lunch? Food--food! I'm starving!"
He reiterated the announcement with the same unabashed exuberance to
Aunt Clo herself, having returned into the Cathedral, to Lily's rather
awed astonishment, for the express purpose of summoning her away.
"Come along, come along. We want our meal!"
He was just as vehemently enthusiastic about their excellent and
prolonged luncheon at the Grand Hotel as he had been about St. Peter's
or in denunciation of Lily's deprecatory confessions of her athletic
short-comings.
Aunt Clo's own vitality, to the strength of which she often made
carelessly thankful allusion, was as nothing beside that of Nicholas
Aubray.
But to-day, Aunt Clo appeared to have fallen rather below her usual
standards of high-spirited graciousness and gallantry of intellect.
She even said "_Ay di me!_" in a rather wearied fashion as she sank
into a chair.
"I'm afraid you are quite tired out," solicitously said the Marchese,
in his fluent English idiom.
"I am not easily wearied of body," returned Miss Stellenthorpe, smiling
sombrely.
"Food--that's what we all want!" Nicholas Aubray declared. "I may not
always be hungry, but thank God I'm greedy, as the man said in _Punch_."
He laughed heartily at the hackneyed jest, and Lily noted with a
slight feeling of disappointment that his laugh was perhaps the least
attractive thing about him. It came too frequently, although always
spontaneously, and was what the French call _saccadé_ in character.
Moreover, his laughter at his own indifferent humour, rooted more often
in light-heartedness than in wit, was over-prolonged.
An adjournment for rest at the Palazzo della Torre was politely
suggested by the Marchese, and Lily rather hoped that the invitation
might be accepted, but Miss Stellenthorpe again gravely repudiated any
suggestion of fatigue.
"But you make the siesta, surely?" cried the Marchese, astonished.
"Never," said Aunt Clo austerely.
The stately proclamation of her own immunity from the prevalent custom
of an afternoon sleep during the hot weather, appeared somehow to
restore to Aunt Clo her usual equanimity.
She bade an agreeable farewell to the two men, by whom an expedition to
Frascati was proposed for the following week.
"We'll make a picnic of it," cried Nicholas Aubray joyously. "Take
plenty of sandwiches and things, and eat them under the trees."
But even Nicholas Aubray's needless insistence upon the grosser aspects
of the day's requirements did not, as Lily half feared, cause Miss
Stellenthorpe to flinch.
"I'm glad," said she graciously that evening at Genazzano, "very glad
to do all in my power _pour égayer un peu les choses_ for Nicholas
Aubray. Tell me, my Lily, how did our friend strike you?"
"I liked him very much."
"Liked!" Aunt Clo shrugged away the conventional phrase in her most
characteristic fashion.
"How significant that contrast was, _n'est-ce pas_? The frankly
_bourgeois_ enthusiasm of our friend--his _naif_ admiration for the
obvious--and then that affectation of preciseness, that pedantic
effrontery of young della Torre! It amused me, Lily--it amused me
greatly."
Aunt Clo's mouth took on an embittered curve at the recollection.
"Let me recommend you to cultivate that young man rather more,
_bambina_, when next our quartette sallies forth in company. He repays
study, I assure you. Besides," added Aunt Clo with some acidity of
tone, "I will not conceal from you that a whole day spent in listening
to so much youthful arrogance would try my nerves considerably. He is
your contemporary, my Lily. I shall leave you to deal with him."
Lily felt vaguely sorry to hear it.
"He is much younger than Mr. Aubray, isn't he?" she asked.
"By at least ten years, I should imagine," said her aunt emphatically.
"Nicholas Aubray must be nearing forty. But the heart of a boy still.
_Ce cher Nicholas!_ He should have married, as I have often told him.
Now della Torre, who could well learn rather more of life in the wider,
bigger sense of the word, is actually in search of a wife, as I know.
But fools have ever rushed in----"
Aunt Clo ended with raised eyebrows and a sigh, leaving no doubt, in
Lily's mind, that her own destined rôle in the Frascati expedition was
that of recipient of the Marchese's polished conversation.
Perhaps her efforts were not sufficiently decided.
Perhaps Nicholas Aubray, with a certain joyful obtuseness that he was
disconcertingly apt to display when dealing with the human equation,
still triumphantly furthered the intercourse of the two fine spirits
between whom he had elected to find so rare an affinity. Perhaps, as
Lily herself suspected, the Marchese liked a youthful and ignorant
hearer less well than one with whom discussion was at least possible,
even if unprofitable. At all events, he explained Frascati to Miss
Stellenthorpe, and twice informed her that she had been misinformed
regarding the remote ancestry of the family of Aldobrandini, while Lily
and Nicholas Aubray loitered beneath the trees, and Nicholas told Lily
that he lived by himself in London and was often very lonely.
"But to you, I suppose, I seem almost old. Too old to want new
friends?" he asked her with a wistful air of desiring contradiction,
and at the same time throwing out his broad chest and straightening his
always straight shoulders with obviously unconscious vanity.
Lily remembered her father. He was over fifty, and she certainly did
not look upon him as being old, if only because she knew that he would
have regarded the application of such an adjective from a child to a
parent as being both disrespectful and disloyal.
Nicholas Aubray was at least twelve years younger than Philip
Stellenthorpe.
She reassured him whole-heartedly and was gratified at the satisfaction
in his face, which he displayed with the frankness of a child.
"I thought you and I would be pals, somehow, from the first moment we
met. Don't you think it's a great thing to have a pal?"
Lily felt herself to be unreasonable for intensely disliking the word
that he had selected.
"That's a word I like--_pal_!" said Nicholas Aubray, striking one hand
into the palm of the other. "Isn't it a splendid, hearty sort of word?
That's what I should really like _us_ to be--regular _pals_."
There was silence between them for the fraction of a moment, and then
he added wistfully: "You don't think it's cheek of me to suggest
it--you don't think it's absurd, at my age?"
On the instant, his odd, intermittent appeal made itself acutely felt
once more.
"I should like it," said Lily, flushing. "I--I think it's an honour for
me."
"No, no--it's all the other way round. What a splendid thing life is!
Don't you think it's splendid, on a day like this, when one's just
struck a bargain like ours? Real pals--that's what you and I are going
to be. I can't tell you how much it's going to mean to me. Of course,
you've got heaps of friends of your own age already I suppose. Perhaps
there's even----"
He paused.
"I haven't any business to ask, I suppose. But since we're to be pals,
you won't mind. You know I'm not asking from impertinent curiosity, but
from very keen interest in anything that belongs to you." His voice had
become very serious.
"Tell me whether there's anybody very special, that you take a--a great
interest in, won't you?"
"No, there isn't," said Lily in a low voice. She did not feel
humiliated by the unromantic admission, because she was acutely aware
that it would somehow intensely gratify her listener.
She heard him exhale a long breath.
"Do you know that's a relief to me! I was somehow certain you were
going to say that there was some young spark--and somehow I didn't want
there to be."
He burst out laughing.
"There's no fool like an old fool, is there? I want my new-found little
pal to myself, you know. I don't want to share her thoughts with some
young blood at Oxford or God knows where----"
He went on laughing, in catches, long after Lily felt that her own
faint smile had died upon her lips.
X
Lily thought a good deal about her friendship with Nicholas Aubray.
Sometimes she rejoiced almost incredulously in his flashes of
sympathetic understanding, and in the frank enjoyment of child-like
things that he, unlike her, never thought it necessary to conceal.
Sometimes she applied to herself the old term of "disloyal," because an
involuntary criticism of his simple vanity, or of his curiously unequal
powers of judgment, occasionally flashed across her.
She was flattered and touched by his enthusiastic liking for herself,
and presently she began to wonder, rather awestruck, whether he could
have fallen in love with her.
When she suddenly found him looking at her in silence with eager,
pleading eyes, or when he said: "We'll let the others go on a bit,
let's walk slowly," she was reminded of the boy Colin Eastwood, and
she then thought that perhaps Nicholas Aubray loved her. When Aunt
Clo said, in her thoughtful, appraising way: "My very good friend,
Nicholas, is accounted an able man in his own line. He has made a
success of his career--oh, undoubtedly!" then Lily felt that only an
incredible presumption could ever have led her to imagine that so
clever a man and one so much her senior, could ever have thought of her
save with the most passing, friendly interest.
His susceptibility to beauty was very evident, and he made it clear
that he admired Lily's.
That, of course, was not at all the same thing as falling in love, Lily
told herself.
She speculated a great deal more upon the state of Nicholas Aubray's
feelings, than upon her own. One of the more solemn counsels which Lily
had received from Miss Melody upon leaving Bridgecrap, had concerned
the question of falling in love.
"Not too many romantic fancies in that little head, childie," had
been Miss Melody's warning. "Remember that you've no mother to
guide you, poor child, and keep a watch upon yourself. Not too much
novel-reading--aha, Lily, isn't that a weakness?--and no day-dreaming,
mind."
Lily had been quite as much annoyed at hearing herself called romantic
as the romantic usually are.
"If love should come--as I hope it will, in due course--let it all come
quite naturally. Don't think about it beforehand; don't indulge in
fancies. Beware of that romantic imagination," Miss Melody had repeated
with great significance.
Lily had listened very dutifully, but if she had ever analyzed this
submissive spirit, she might have discovered that it was founded upon a
curious, calm certainty that Miss Melody knew nothing whatever of what
she talked about.
Not that the daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, well versed
in distrusting and suppressing her own instincts, would have made
such an admission to herself. She was undeveloped, and had never been
allowed the luxury of intellectual honesty.
She had, as yet, arrived at no conscious weighing of her own
capacities. Her nearest approach to it took the form of an inward and
rather derisive wonder that Miss Melody, who so advocated forethought
and preparation in respect of examinations, choice of a career, and the
like, should appear to suppose that something which Lily classified
to herself as "the most important thing in the world" could be best
approached after a course of completely ignoring its existence and
tacitly denying its potency.
In defiance of Miss Melody, Lily allowed herself to wonder whether
Nicholas meant to ask her to marry him. Her upbringing and her
inexperience alike admitted of no other development of affairs than
a proposal of marriage, to result in either a refusal and eternal
separation, or an acceptance and subsequent wedding.
She saw Nicholas Aubray almost daily.
Lily felt flattered and excited, but her now ingrained incapacity
for facing an issue definitely, allowed her to keep entirely upon
the surface of even her own thoughts, and when she was seized by a
misgiving that she felt no slightest real wish ever to marry Nicholas
Aubray, she hastily rebuked herself for the vanity of supposing that
he had any intention of asking her to do so, thus suppressing her
consciousness of the problem in relative values that confronted her.
It was that policy of suppression upon which her whole education had
been based.
Presently Lily became aware that Miss Stellenthorpe was turning a
thoughtful and critical eye upon the situation.
Her manner to her niece acquired both a more weighty tenderness, and a
slightly humorous air of appraisement.
She tolerated the Marchese della Torre with renewed geniality, and
only upon one occasion relegated him to a lengthy _tête-à-tête_ walk
with Lily whilst she herself strode far ahead, apparently absorbed in
earnest conversation with Nicholas Aubray.
It was on that evening that Aunt Clo, for the first time, spoke with
great frankness and intimacy of herself and her own past to Lily.
"You have wondered, little one, why I have never chosen to marry, have
you not?" she abruptly demanded, gazing shrewdly at her niece.
Fortunately, Lily felt, the shrewdness was not sufficient to penetrate
her own embarrassment and pierce to the true answer of that portentous
question.
Lily had always supposed, on the rare occasions when she had given the
matter a thought, that Aunt Clo must have remained unmarried because
nobody had ever wanted to marry her.
It now became almost overwhelmingly evident that such had not been the
case.
"Why should I not say it? I have been greatly desired, and by many.
Perhaps, _bambina_, it may help you, if I let you in where so few
have ever yet penetrated--into the story of my heart. As a girl I
was, perhaps, not beautiful," Miss Stellenthorpe musingly observed
without, however, any great conviction in her tone. "Certainly I had
not the exquisite daintiness, the porcelain prettiness, that I see
in you, my Lily. But I was a strong, vital, passionate creature, and
intensely magnetic--that, above all. Had I a daughter possessed of that
magnetism, she should be guarded--most carefully guarded. The gift is
not one to be played with. I suppose I was reckless. _Chi lo sa?_ Ah
well, the years have brought their own chastening, maybe. Oh, not in
my proud, solitary virginity--_that_ has been my own choice."
Aunt Clo upreared her head in a sudden, high-souled gesture.
"No. But--_ay di me!_ How I have been loved! And I--I, in my turn have
loved, _carina_. Once--and once only. I cannot tell you the whole
story, little one. Some day, perhaps, when you, too, have lived and
loved--though may you never touch the depths that _I_ have plumbed!
I had rejected many loves--lesser loves, as they seemed to me. Then
came one--there is only _one_, in a woman's life. Our souls rushed
together--_une veritable fusion d'âmes_. There was one summer----"
Aunt Clo became lost in retrospect, her fine eyes fixed upon some point
of the horizon far above Lily's head.
When she spoke again, her voice had flattened dramatically.
"Autumn succeeds to summer, _carina_, and the deep-hearted, passionate
red roses drop their petals one by one.... A cataclysm swept across
my life. There was storm--separation, interference from others. I was
doubly betrayed. There was a woman who had been my dear, dear friend,
in whom I had trusted much. And she failed me, Lily. When the crisis
came, she was incapable of meeting the demands that the privilege of
friendship must always make, sooner or later. Ah yes--she failed me
indeed!"
"Was she--one of the people who interfered?" Lily half fearfully
enquired, as Miss Stellenthorpe paused as though for enquiry.
"Indeed, yes! She was ruthless--ruthless to me, and to that other...."
"But did he--how could he let her...?" stammered Lily.
"Ah how! But--," said Miss Stellenthorpe sombrely, "she was his wife."
No revelation could have come with greater unexpectedness upon her
breathless listener.
"Oh! Was he _married_, Aunt Clo?"
Aunt Clo bent a terrible brow upon Lily at the naïve colloquialism of
the exclamation.
"Bound by our hideous English laws, he was," she said slowly. "But
there are other, higher standards. He and I knew it--we had scaled the
mountain-heights--but the little, feeble soul that had called herself
my friend remained below, weakly wailing. The little soul that had only
strength to hold on, like some small, sharp-toothed rodent! It held
on--grasping the shadow between its tiny, poisoned fangs, when it could
no longer hold the substance."
Aunt Clo passed a hand slowly across her eyes, as though to banish the
vision of so perverted a tenacity.
Then she turned upon Lily a smile of rare, considered sweetness,
blended with great sadness. "I have forgiven--long, long ago. One
can outlive such bitterness, my Lily, and come out from the vortex
stronger, and bigger and braver."
Lily felt a mad desire to enquire whether the unfortunate rodent of
Aunt Clo's history had also emerged from it similarly uplifted.
"There was a time," said Aunt Clo, "when I asked myself
despairingly--'_Does the road wind up-hill all the way?_' You know the
answer, child. '_Yes--to the very end._' I have accepted that answer
now. Acceptance has long ago become part of myself. Not the pallid,
passive acceptance of submission, you understand, but some bright,
strong, vital thing that soars upwards like a flame----"
Aunt Clo paused again, and her niece kept silence.
"You mustn't call me brave, little one," Miss Stellenthorpe suddenly
protested, when both had remained speechless for some while.
Lily showed no sign of defying the prohibition. Her aunt stood up.
"I will leave you. It grows late, and this has cost me something.
But don't reproach yourself, _bambina_--if I can help you but a very
little, be sure that I shall never count the cost."
Aunt Clo crossed the room slowly, with an unwonted gesture of
supporting herself, as she reached a low table near the door and leant
her hand upon it heavily.
She glanced back at Lily, and there was again a slight suggestion of
baffled expectancy on her face.
"_Buona notte_, my child."
With a grave and graceful movement she kissed the tip of her slim, fine
fingers and waved them in the direction of her niece.
Then she appeared to detect suddenly the presence of her other hand,
still grasping the little table, and drew it away with an air of
surprised melancholy.
"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, half playfully, half sadly. "That is the first
time, is it not, that you have seen me in need of extraneous support?
That is not like me."
She slowly nodded, two or three times, as though considering so new an
aspect of herself, and then drew herself up to her full, stately height
as she left the room. Lily felt that she herself had been somehow found
remiss.
Comment, at least, had been expected of her, and she had been utterly
unable to offer any.
She wondered uneasily if it were the measure of her own childishness,
that Aunt Clo's story should merely have left her feeling uncomfortably
bewildered, and anxiously conscious that her father would have been
sincerely shocked by it.
Lily speculated as to what she should do if Nicholas Aubray were
suddenly to discover himself as a married man. She indulged in an
agreeable vision of his impassionate declaration, her own heart-broken
renunciation of him, and their eternal farewell. After a long, long
illness she would face life once more--her hair would be prematurely
whitened. She, too, would tell some young, untried soul the story of
her own experience....
Lily had formulated one or two very beautiful sentences when she
became aware that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. The discovery
scandalized her sincerely.
These things were serious--they constituted reality, and here she was
playing a kind of game with them!
Lily felt profoundly dissatisfied with herself and her own inability
to regard as sacred the many things that her upbringing had taught
her should be classified under that traditional heading of Philip's.
It bewildered her to find that Nicholas himself, although his ardour
touched and pleased her in a strange, exciting way, did not awaken in
her any of the emotions that she had always associated with the dawn of
love.
There was not even the vague, elusive sense of remote and delicate
romance that Colin Eastwood had inspired.
But Philip had implied that episode to have been an undignified and
childish cheapening of herself--something that, in the belittling
phrase of omniscient parenthood, "could not lead to anything," and
Lily herself, translating into the cruder and more direct terms of
youth, had known that, between her and Colin, there could be nothing so
matured and definite as a spoken engagement with definite prospects of
marriage.
Consequently, her relations with Colin must have been unreal--those
with Nicholas must be real. Thus Lily, faithfully endeavouring to
follow the careful rule of thumb laid down for her, and unutterably
perplexed at finding it so much at variance with that inner vision to
which she believed herself to have no right.
Daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, and product of their
teaching, she found the way of least resistance in allowing herself to
shelve the whole question, telling herself that it would certainly be
mere folly and vanity to envisage prematurely the possibilities latent
in a decision which she might never be called upon to make.
The issues at stake were consequently left to obscure themselves still
further while Lily strove to persuade herself of their non-existence,
and while the necessity for that decision which she was strenuously
unfitting herself to make coherently came nearer to her every day.
The weather had grown crisp and cool long before Nicholas Aubray's
affairs in Rome were concluded, and he came out to the villa at
Genazzano to announce his approaching return to England.
"I shall be very, very sorry to go," he said emotionally. "If anyone
had told me, when I first grumbled at coming to Italy, that six weeks
later I should actually want to stay on--I shouldn't have believed it."
He looked at Lily as he spoke.
"Aha!" quoth Aunt Clo. "Italy claims us all. I--but I was long ago
enslaved, as you perceive. You will return, my friend."
"I hope so. But good-byes are always sad things, I think. One is
always sorry, I mean, to say good-bye to a place in which one has been
happy." He was again addressing himself to Lily, surprising her, as he
occasionally did, by the earnest warmth with which he could deliver
himself of a platitude. She hoped that he did not see Aunt Clo wince as
she rose from her place.
"_Mes très chers, je vous quitte._ One little half-hour. There is
an unhappy child whose supreme moment is drawing very near. I have
told you of my Carla? They are trying to persuade her that she has
sinned--ah, the horrible folly and cruelty of it all!"
Miss Stellenthorpe hastened away, and Nicholas Aubray, after a moment,
exclaimed, as he not infrequently did:
"What a splendid person your aunt is! I can't tell you how much I
admire her."
"She is very kind," said Lily, trying to atone by the fervour of her
voice for a certain blankness that invaded her at this fresh example of
Nicholas Aubray's enthusiasm.
"Isn't she--isn't she? She's been a godsend to the peasantry here, I
feel sure. She has," said Nicholas significantly, "been very kind to
_me_."
"I know she likes you very much."
Lily spoke hurriedly and almost at random, overwhelmed by sudden
nervous shyness.
"She's--she's enjoyed your being here, and all our excursions."
"Did she tell you that we had a long talk the other day?"
"She didn't tell me so specially," said Lily, and added hastily:
"You've known her a long time, haven't you?"
"I have never seen as much of her as I should have liked, but I've
always thought of her as a most splendid person, whom I should like to
know much better. But it's never too late to mend, eh?"
He laughed, in jerks.
Lily seldom felt at ease with Nicholas Aubray when he was amused,
although she forced her own smiles, in sympathy with the child-like
appeal of the gaze that he was fixing directly upon her.
He grew grave again suddenly, after his wont.
"What about you? Am I to say good-bye to my little pal without anything
to look forward to?"
Lily's heart beat with excitement and a sense of flattery, but she also
felt overwhelmingly embarrassed, and quite unable to summon up the warm
reply with which she would have liked to please him.
"I wonder whether you ever write letters?" said Nicholas, when he had
waited in silence for some time.
"I haven't got many people to write to."
"You've got your pal--your old, ancient pal, who perhaps seems to you
almost in his dotage----"
He broke off anxiously, and this time Lily's quick perception of his
unspoken need of reassurance came to her help.
"I think of you as being of my own age," she exclaimed quickly, "or
else just a little bit older, so as to be able to help me about things,
and--and advise me sometimes."
"That's very sweet and dear of you to say that. I can't tell you how
much I appreciate it----" said Nicholas, with the abrupt huskiness of
tone of a man easily moved to emotion.
Suddenly he laid one of his hands very gently over Lily's, with a
tentative, almost timid, gesture.
She knew that his sensitiveness would be instantly hurt by the least
gesture of withdrawal, even though he was giving her the opportunity of
making one.
Tenderness for his feelings, a half-frightened desire to see what would
follow, and a certain exultant vanity, kept her motionless.
Subconsciously, there passed through her a regret, of which she
failed to catch the significance, that it had always been physically
distasteful to her to be touched. She accepted the dislike as being
part of an inevitable state of affairs not susceptible to alteration.
"You didn't mind my doing that, did you?" said Nicholas nervously.
He had taken his hand away, after a prolonged, gentle pressure upon
hers.
Lily shook her head.
She could not have given with truth either a negative or an affirmative
answer, nevertheless she was relieved at Nicholas Aubray's exclamation:
"I'm glad of that! I wouldn't vex you for the whole world, you know. If
ever I do anything that you don't like, you must tell me. Sometimes I
think I'm too clumsy--and rough and--and elderly, to hope to keep your
friendship. And it would make me very sad, if I lost it now."
"No, no--you couldn't!" Lily murmured.
"Well, will you let me hear from you--often--and see you when you're in
England again?"
"I hardly ever go to London, though, I'm afraid," said Lily naïvely.
"Perhaps I might be allowed to come to your part of the world, though.
I want to get to know your father, and--and everyone and everything
that belongs to you. I wonder if you realize that, little pal?"
Lily said: "I think I do," because she felt that that was what he
wanted her to say, and then was terrified at the thought of what his
rejoinder might be.
"Thank God for that!" cried Nicholas, with a sort of boyish, laughing
heartiness.
She was half relieved and half disappointed.
"That's a bargain, then. We'll write to one another."
"Ought I to?" Lily faltered, with a sudden recollection of the
obnoxious phrases as to hole-and-corner correspondence, once employed
by her father. The remembrance caused her to crimson, and Nicholas
Aubray looked at her very kindly.
"I told your aunt, when we had our talk together the other day, how
very much I should like to be allowed to hear from you," he said
quietly, "and she was good enough to suggest that I might propose it to
you. So it only depends upon you, now."
Something chivalrous in the words and manner alike sent a rush of
affection and gratitude through Lily's being.
At such moments she felt that nothing was wanting in her liking for
Nicholas Aubray.
"I'm so glad you did that," she said impulsively.
"You don't think I could ever take advantage of your youth and kindness
to ask you to do anything that you might for an instant regret later
on!" he exclaimed. "I'm not such a skunk as that! No. Thank God, you
never would do anything of the kind that some of these modern girls
seem to go in for.... That was just one of the things that attracted me
to you so awfully--if I may say so."
"You don't think I'm old-fashioned and priggish? I often think I'm not
like most other girls--I think I was brought up differently."
"All the better!" cried Nicholas vigorously.
"I'm glad you think it's all the better," said Lily. "Sometimes I--I've
felt that I hated being unlike other people."
She glanced at him wistfully, half wondering if he would reassure her,
if she confessed to that old, hidden feeling of not being a Real Live
Person, but only a pretender.
"I only wish there were more people like you," said Nicholas Aubray.
"Some day you must tell me all about your bringing-up, and why you
think it's made you different. Will you?"
"It's quite dull, I'm afraid. Only about how I was at home, and then at
a convent for a very little while and afterwards at school."
"I'm sure I shouldn't find it dull," said Nicholas Aubray, "I should
never find anything dull that was about yourself. I want to hear
everything."
His look, straight into her eyes, emphasized his words.
"I should like to feel that you were able to make a real safety-valve
of me--tell me anything and everything, quite freely."
Lily's liking for him just then was so strong that the required
assurance came in a rush of sincerity.
"I don't think I should mind telling you anything, and I've always
wanted a friend. So few people seem to understand----"
A certain recollection, awakened by the words, made her pause.
"Of course there are a few things," she said shyly and wistfully, "that
I suppose no one ever puts into words, exactly. Things one knows about
oneself, that--that nobody else in the world could be expected to
understand----"
"I won't ask for those," gently said Nicholas, smiling at her, rather
puzzled.
He was naturally unaware that Lily was thinking just then of a battered
wax baby-doll lying at the very back of the wardrobe in her bedroom.