Presently they pass into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown
grass-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale
pink peonies are flushing, and round whose well the grave rosemary
bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace,
of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a _tete-a-tete_, as their
tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to
their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a
camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the
carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man
be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think
her as brittle as spun glass, to believe that any weight, however light,
will bruise her arm--any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He
has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused--playfully at
first--telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards,
when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle gratitude, saying that
it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon,
and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a
woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the
homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and
featously" from her lips.
They stay a long time in the sun-kissed garden, considering that there
is after all not very much to see there. But Elizabeth's light steps,
that to-day seem set to some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to leave
it; she must smell the great new peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly
perfumed; she must steal a sprig of rosemary "to put into her coffin
when she dies," at which he catches his breath, shuddering; she must
peep into the well. He insists on her holding his hand for safety as she
leans over to do so; her little fingers grip his tight as she cranes her
neck and bends her lissom body. But what a small handful they are,
compared to those other fingers--those kind, useful, but undoubtedly
solid fingers--which he has held perfunctorily through many a
matter-of-fact hour. By-and-by they stray away together out of the
bounteous air of the hilltop into a semi-underground church, to see the
fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments, which look as fresh as if
their marble had left its home in Carrara but yesterday. They stand
looking down at those three kin who lie side by side before the high
altar, each with head dropped a little sideways on the shoulder, as if
overcome by sudden sleep. They step on into the side chapel, where that
yet nobler mitred figure, fashioned by Donatello's hand, stretches his
prone length above his border of fruit and flowers, among which lies a
carved skull, through whose empty eye-holes--strange and grisly fancy
contrasting with so much beauty--a mocking ribbon runs. Elizabeth is
perfectly silent the whole time, but no flood of talk could make Jim
half so conscious of her presence, palpitating with sympathy and
feeling, could give half the confidence he enjoys that she will
introduce no allusion to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is but too
probable that the excellent companion of most of his Florentine rambles
would have done.
Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet at last she speaks. It is in
the Chapter House, where, as most of us have done, they have suddenly
come upon another tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on the
pavement before the altar, with no separating edge of marble or
wrought-iron railing to keep him from the foot of the passer-by. He lies
there, portrayed with such an extraordinary vividness of life about his
prostrate figure and his severe, powerful face, that one feels inclined
to speak low, lest he should lift his white lids and look rebuke at us.
In the lines about his mouth there is a hint of sardonic mirth. Is
he--hearing our foolish chatter--touched with a grave contemptuous
amusement at it? Or is he keeping in his sleep the memory of some four
hundred years old jest? Elizabeth has involuntarily crept close to
Burgoyne's side, with the gesture of a frightened child.
"Are you sure that he did not stir?" she asks tremulously under her
breath. Her next thought is that her mother must see him too, this
wonderful living dead man, and they presently set forth to return to the
garden to fetch her. But apparently she has grown tired of waiting for
them, for, as they enter the cloistered _enceinte_, they see her
advancing to meet them.
"I would not be left alone with him at night for the wealth of the
Indies," Elizabeth is saying, with a half-nervous laugh. "Oh, mammy, you
would never have forgiven me if I had let you go without seeing him!
Why, what is this?"--with a sudden change of key--"what has happened?"
For as they draw near to Mrs. Le Marchant they see that her walk is a
staggering one, and that the usually healthy, clear pallor of her face
is exchanged for a livid whiteness. "What is it, darling?" cries
Elizabeth in an accent of terror. "Oh, Jim, she is going to faint!" In
the agitation of the moment she has unconsciously returned to the
familiar address which she used always to employ towards him in their
boy-and-girl days. "Put your arm round her on that side, I can hold her
up on this. Let us get her back to the camp-stool."
A camp-stool is neither an easy nor a luxurious seat upon which to
deposit a half-swooning woman, but the joint exertions of her daughter
and of Burgoyne presently succeed in replacing her on her rickety
resting-place; their arms interlace each other behind her back, and
their anxious eyes look interrogation at one another above her head,
half dropped on Elizabeth's slight shoulder.
"Does she often faint? Is she apt to do it?" asks Jim, in a whisper.
"Never--never!" replies the girl in a heart-rent voice, raining kisses
on her mother's white face. "Oh, darling, darling, what has happened to
you?"
Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain of those warm kisses, but a
little colour is certainly beginning to steal back into the elder
woman's cheek, and she draws a long breath.
"Oh, if she could have a glass of water!" cries Elizabeth, greedily
verifying these slight signs of returning consciousness. "Get her a
glass of water! Oh, please get her a glass of water--quick! quick!"
Burgoyne complies, though it is not without reluctant misgivings that he
withdraws the efficacious support of his own solid arm, and leaves
Elizabeth's poor little limb to bear the whole weight of her mother's
inert body.
Their guide has, as before mentioned, disappeared; and Jim has not the
slightest idea in which direction to seek him. It is five good minutes
before he discovers him, standing near the door of the monastery, in
conversation with a visitor who is apparently just in the act of
departure. The stranger is in clerical dress; and, as he turns to nod
farewell to the monk, Jim recognises in his features those of the
Devonshire clergyman, whom he had last seen, and so unwillingly heard,
by the well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In a second a light has
flashed into his mind. Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that
stranger--has seen him for the first time for ten years, since it is
evident that the recognition of mother and daughter in the Via
Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late rector had referred, could not have
been reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having been brought suddenly
and unpreparedly face to face with that mysterious past, which seems to
be always blocking his own path to her friendship, that is to be
attributed the poor woman's collapse. A rush of puzzled compassion flows
over him as he realizes the fact, and his one impatient wish is to
return with all the speed he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to
reassure them as to the removal (even though it may only be a temporary
one) out of their path of the object of their unexplained terror. Will
the mother have imparted to her child the cause of her fainting, or will
she have tried to keep it from her?
The first glimpse he gets when, having at length procured the desired
glass of water, he comes into sight of them, answers the question for
him. Mrs. Le Marchant is evidently partially recovered. She is sitting
up, no longer supported by her daughter's arm, and that daughter is
lying on her knees, with her head buried in her mother's lap. As he
nears them, he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing her daughter's
arm to warn her of his approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts her
face. But such a face! He can scarcely believe it is the same that laid
itself--hardly less bloomily fair than they--against the faint peony
buds half an hour ago; a face out of which the innocent glad shining has
been blown by some gust of brutal wind--scared, blanched, miserable.
"Oh, yes, I am better, much better--quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le
Marchant, pushing away the offered glass, and speaking with a ghastly
shadow of her former even cheerfulness. "Give it to Elizabeth, she needs
it more than I do! You see, I gave her a terrible fright!"
He silently holds out the water to Elizabeth, and she, without
attempting to take the tumbler into her own trembling hand, drinks. He
looks with impotent pity from the bent blonde head to the prematurely
snow-white one. How can he word his reassurance to them without
appearing to thrust himself with officious insolence into their
confidence? It seems to himself that he solves the problem very
clumsily.
"I am afraid you must have thought me but slow," he says, feeling that
he is dragging in the piece of information he is anxious to give them
with an awkward head-and-shoulder-ness: "but at first I couldn't find
our monk, and when I did, he was engaged--he was talking to a visitor--a
clergyman."
He pauses, conscious that at the last word a tremulous shiver has passed
over the kneeling figure.
"Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with nervous haste, hurrying to put them
out of their pain; "an elderly, gray-haired, English clergyman, who was
just in the act of going away; indeed, before I left, he had gone. I saw
him drive off!"
Ere he has finished his sentence, he is seized by the apprehension that
there must appear to his listeners something suspicious in the laboured
details into which he is entering; presupposing, as they do, that he is
aware of there being for them an interest attaching to the fact of the
stranger's departure. And indeed, as he speaks, he is conscious that
Mrs. Le Marchant's frightened eyes, which have been taking surreptitious
trips round the peaceful garden, now come home with a no less alarmed
look to his face.
"Was he--was he--an acquaintance of yours?" she asks, with an attempt at
a laugh--"this clergyman, I think you said he was--that you noticed him
so particularly?"
"An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubtfully; "what is an acquaintance? a
man whom one knew very little, and disliked a good deal, ten years ago;
and who passes one by without a gleam of recognition now--is that an
acquaintance?"
Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, and hitherto she has seemed
unconscious of the evening sunbeams smiting her uncovered head; now she
stoops and picks it up.
"And you did not make yourself known to him then?" continues Mrs. Le
Marchant, still with that painful effort at lightness of tone. "You let
him drive off without telling him who you were? or asking him where he
was staying? or how long his visit to Florence is to last? or--or
anything?"
Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she speaks with a compassionate
steadiness, under which hers quail waveringly. Is it possible that she
can imagine that she is deceiving him by this miserable pretence of
indifference?
"I have no doubt that I shall be able to find out if you wish to know,"
he answers gravely; "for I think he must be as much an acquaintance of
yours as of mine, since it was only at the Moat that I ever met him."
He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant was already as colourless as a
woman could be; but as he speaks, he sees her face take on a new degree
of pallor. She struggles unsteadily to her feet.
"It is--it is getting late!" she says indistinctly; "we--ought--to
be--going home!"
Even as she speaks she makes an uncertain step forward, but it is so
uncertain that he catches her by the arm.
"You are not fit to move yet," he says with kind imperativeness; "rest
five minutes longer; it is not late, really--the sun is quite high
still."
Convinced, either by the young man's eloquence, or, as is more likely,
by the shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le Marchant sits down again.
Elizabeth has risen to her feet, and now stands beside her mother. She
has said nothing, but he can see her trembling from head to heel. He
hears her voice now addressing him, but in so subdued a key that her
words are almost lost in the low blowing of the faint south wind that is
fondling the blades of the unshorn grass.
"Did you say that he was gone? Are you sure of it?"
"Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him go."
"Did you--did you happen to hear where he was staying?"
"No, but"--with the greatest eagerness--"I can easily find out; nothing
can be simpler."
Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, so close that he can see her
poor little heart leaping under the thin white gown, whose simple finery
had piqued him earlier in the day. She has apparently, in her new
terror, forgotten that there is any cause for concealing from him the
occasion of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a hurt child to the
nearest bystander. It seems to him the most natural thing in the world
that she should. They are both recalled to themselves by her mother's
voice.
"You must think that we have lost our wits," she says with a sickly
smile; "but even if we have, I do not know what right we have to impose
upon a--a comparative stranger like you, the task of helping us to
gratify our--our idle curiosity."
"But I am not a comparative stranger!" cries Jim vehemently; by this
time--he does not know how--he is holding a hand of each of the
trembling women in his. "I am not a stranger at all! I am a friend! Why
will not you treat me as one? Why will not you let me help you?"
He glances with pitying, affectionate eagerness from one to other of the
woebegone faces on either side of him. The tears have come in sudden
flood to the elder woman, and are pouring over her white cheeks,
stopping the passage of her voice; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are
drearily dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless from her.
"You are very good to us!" she says, giving the hand that holds hers a
little pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it is grateful; "at
least, I see that you want to be very good to us if we would let you;
but as to helping us"--with a slight despairing shrug--"no one can do
that; no one but God, and sometimes"--drawing a long, half-sobbing
breath--"I think that it would pass even His power."