"Tous les hommes se haissent naturellement. Je mets en fait que
s'ils savaient exactement ce qu'ils disent, les uns des autres,
il n'y aurait pas quatre amis dans le monde."
Although Mrs. Byng always speaks of Miss Wilson as "Amelia," and is
acquainted with every detail of that young lady's uneventful
history--thanks to a long series of direct and interested questions,
addressed through a considerable number of years, to her friend Jim, as
to his betrothed--she has no personal acquaintance with the latter. She
is so determined, however, to repair this omission, now that so highly
favourable an opportunity is presented as their common stay in the same
small city, that Jim is powerless to hinder her from arranging a joint
expedition of the two parties--herself and her son on the one side, and
Jim with his future wife and sister-in-law on the other, to Careggi, on
the afternoon of the same day as he had witnessed her abortive attempt
to add Elizabeth Le Marchant and her mother to the list of her
acquaintances.
Amelia, is, for a wonder, free from home claims, Sybilla being more than
usually bright, a kind friend having lately provided her with a number
of the _Lancet_, containing a detailed account of an operation, which it
seems not over-sanguine to expect she may herself be able to undergo. We
all have our Blue Roses, and to "undergo operation," as she technically
phrases it, is Sybilla Wilson's Blue Rose. Cecilia is likewise
disengaged. The latter circumstance is matter for not unmixed rejoicing
to Jim, Cecilia's future connection with himself being too close for him
to relish the thought of her somewhat pronounced wooing of Byng being
exposed in all its _naivete_ to the clear if good-humoured eyes of
Byng's mother. But in this he wrongs Cecilia. The garden-party at the
villa on Bellosguardo had proved to her that the fruit is hung too high
for her fingers to reach, and that philosophy, which had enabled her
genuinely to relish the wedding-cake of the man who had jilted her, now
teaches her to lay to heart the sarcastic advice offered her by Jim, to
look at the young man as poor women look at diamonds. Beyond one or two
trifling gallantries, for which no one can judge her harshly, she leaves
him alone, even though out of good-nature, and from inveterate force of
habit, he gives her several openings to make love to him.
The day is one of even Italy's best, an air as soft as feathers, and
full of April odours--a bright gay sun. The vines are rushing into leaf;
they that ten days ago looked such hopeless sticks; little juicy leaves
uncurling and spreading on each, and the mulberry trees, round which
they twine, are rushing out too, at the triumphant call of the spring.
The party being of the unmanageable number five, has to be divided
between two fiacres, whereof Mrs. Byng, in pursuance of her
determination to know Amelia, insists upon occupying the first in
_tete-a-tete_ with Miss Wilson, while Cecilia and the two men fill the
other. The latter makes but a silent load. Byng is, for him, out of
spirits, and finding that Cecilia has virtually abandoned her suit, is
glad to lapse into his own reflections. His example is followed by Jim,
whose temper is ruffled by being again obliged to defer the quest he is
still feverishly anxious to pursue, despite the shock of the morning's
meeting at the Accademia.
They reach the villa, and leave their vehicles, glad to think that two
of the perennially tired Florentine cab-horses will have a pause of
rest, and, having shaken off a tiresome would-be _laquais de place_,
desirous to embitter for them the sweet day and place, they stray at
will through the garden among the clipped laurels, the cypresses, the
gorgeous red rhododendrons, while beds of mignonette send forth such a
steady wave of poignant sweetness as makes the sense ache with ecstasy
of pleasure; and over the conservatory hangs a wistaria so old, so
magnificent, with such a Niagara of giant flower bunches, as takes an
English breath away. They go over the villa itself, pass through the
room, and by the bed where Lorenzo, with the grotesque grim face,
Lorenzo the Magnificent, gave his last sigh. It would make Death even
more difficult to face than he is already, if one thought one should
have to meet him under such a catafalque.
As they issue out again from the house's shadow into the sun-drenched
garden, Mrs. Byng joins Burgoyne, who is walking a little apart.
"I like Amelia," she says confidentially, "such a nice _pillowy_ sort of
woman; not too clever, and oh, Jim, poor soul, how fond she is of you!"
It must always be pleasant to hear that the one absolutely good thing
which this life has to offer is lavishly heaped upon us by the person
with whom we are to pass that life; and perhaps pleasure is the emotion
evidenced by the silent writhe with which Jim receives this piece of
information.
"Not, of course, that she told me so in so many words," continues his
friend, perceiving that her speech is received in a silence that may
mean disapproval of any intrusion into the sanctuary of his affections;
"but one can see with half an eye: poor Amelia, she beamed all over when
I said one or two little civil things about you! She worships the very
ground you tread on!"
He writhes again. "I hope that that is one of your figures of speech,"
he answers constrainedly.
The not unnatural result of the tone in which he utters this sentence,
no less than the words themselves, is to quench the fire of Mrs. Byng's
benevolent eulogies; and, as she cannot at once hit upon another topic,
and is by no means sure that her countenance does not betray the rather
snubbed dismay produced by the reception of her amenities, she is not
sorry when Jim presently leaves her. Being, however, of a very sanguine
disposition, and seeing him a little later sitting peacefully on a
garden-seat beside his _fiancee_, she hopes that her words, though not
very handsomely received at the time, may bear fruit later for Amelia's
benefit. "And he always was very undemonstrative," she adds to herself
consolatorily. "Nobody would have guessed that he was delighted to see
me this morning; and yet, of course, he was."
The sun is growing visibly lower, and the Ave Maria comes ringing
solemnly from the city. The seat to which Jim has somewhat remorsefully
led his lady-love is a stone bench, shaded by a honeysuckle bower, close
to a fountain. The fountain is not playing now; but round about it first
a marten wheels, dipping in the water the end of her fleet wings; then a
little bat prematurely flits, for it is still broad daylight. Broad
indeed and bounteous is the daylight of Italy. Around them is the lush
unmown grass; full of homely field-flowers, buttercups, catch-flies,
daisies, ragged robins, while from some bush near by a nightingale is
pouring out all the infinite variety of her ravishing song. She says so
many different things that one never can feel sure that one has heard
all that she has to say. Jim leans back listening, with his hands behind
his head, steeped in a half-voluptuous sadness. He is oppressed by the
thought of Amelia's great love. Is the nightingale's splendid eloquence
really the voice of the poor dumb passion beside him, lent to Amelia to
plead her cause? The high-flown poetry of the idea fills his heart with
an imaginative yearning kindness towards her. He is in the act of
turning to face her, with a more lover-like speech on his lips than has
hovered there for years, when Amelia herself anticipates him.
"And to think that it is only April!" she says, with an air of prosaic
astonishment. "Last April we had four inches of snow on the front drive.
It was when Cecilia had the mumps."
"When Cecilia had the mumps?" repeats Burgoyne in a rather dazed voice.
"I did not know that Cecilia had ever had the mumps."
This is the form into which are frozen the love-words that the
nightingale and the perfume of the Tuscan flowers and the Ave Maria had
so nearly brought to his tongue. Had Amelia known what an unwonted burst
of tenderness her unlucky reminiscence had choked, she would have
regretted it probably with a good deal deeper bitterness than would many
a woman with a happier gift of utterance. But she is blessedly ignorant
of what Cecilia's mumps have robbed her, and presently again strikes
athwart the nightingale's song with the placid remark:
"I like your friend very much; I think that she is a very nice woman."
This time Burgoyne has no difficulty in responding immediately. Miss
Wilson's first speech had so effectually chased his dreams that he can
now reply with commonplace kindliness:
"She has just been button-holing me to make the same confidence about
you."
"And she is so fond of you," continues Amelia.
He laughs.
"She has just confided to me that so are you;" then, with a hurried
change of tone, in dread lest the last speech shall call out some
expression of the mute pent passion always lurking in her patient eyes,
he adds lightly, "I seem to be very generally beloved!"
What effect the flat fatuity, as it seems to Jim himself, of this last
observation has upon Amelia, does not appear, since she receives it in
silence; and again the Ave Maria and the bird divide between them the
province of sound.
As the great sun droops, the honeysuckle above their heads seems to give
out more generously its strong clean sweetness. The rest of the party
have drifted away out of sight and hearing; but by-and-by their voices
are again heard and their returning forms seen. As they draw near, it
appears that their original number of three has been augmented by the
addition of two men; and a still nearer approach reveals who the two men
are. Mrs. Byng leads the way, talking animatedly to Mr. Greenock, who is
evidently an old acquaintance. Byng trails after them by himself, and
the rear is brought up by Cecilia and a portly clerically-dressed
figure, whom Jim at once recognises as the Devonshire clergyman, his
failure in obtaining information about whom has embittered and fidgeted
his whole day. Here then is the opportunity he has sought brought to his
very hand. And yet his first feeling, as he sees the complacent priestly
face, and the deliberate black legs pacing beside Cecilia, is one of
dismay. There is nothing unlikely in the supposition that he may have
been presented to her at the garden-party at the Bellosguardo villa; and
yet he now realizes with a shock of surprise that they are acquainted,
and, if acquainted, then at liberty to converse upon whatever subject
may best recommend itself to them. He is absolutely powerless to put any
check upon their talk, and yet at this very moment he may be narrating
to her that story which his own loyalty had forbidden him to overhear.
The first couple has passed, so absorbed in eager question and answer
that they do not even see Burgoyne and his betrothed. Mrs. Byng left
London only three days ago, and Mr. Greenock might return thither at any
moment that he chooses; and yet they are talking of it with a wistful
fondness that might have beseemed Dante questioning some chance wayfarer
to Ravenna as to the prosperity of his Florence. The second pair's
voices are lower pitched, and their topics therefore less easy to
ascertain; yet by Cecilia's gratified and even hopeful air they are
evidently agreeable ones. But though agreeable, there is no evidence of
their being, by their riveting ear and eye, of the nature he dreads.
They also are so absorbed in each other as to have no attention to spare
for the quiet silent persons sitting on the stone bench.
Amelia looks after them with a benevolent smile. Her sense of humour is
neither keen nor quick, but there is a touch of very mild sarcasm in her
voice, as she says, watching her sister's retreating figure:
"Cecilia has found a new friend, a clergyman again; do you know what his
name is?"
"I believe it is Burton or Bruton, or something of the sort," replies
Jim reluctantly, feeling as if even in admitting knowledge of the
stranger's surname he were letting out a dangerous secret. "I should
have thought that she had had enough of the Church," he adds with a very
much more pronounced accent of satire than Miss Wilson's. "She has not
taken my advice of sticking to the laity. Shall we--shall we follow
them?"
This last suggestion is the result of a vague, uneasy feeling that, by
keeping within earshot, he may exercise some check upon their
conversation.
"Why should we?" replies Amelia, for once in her life running counter to
a proposition of her lover's, and turning her meek eyes affectionately
upon him; "we are so well here, are not we? and"--laughing--"we should
spoil sport."
As Jim can allege no adequate reason for pursuing Cecilia and her latest
spoil, he has unwillingly to acquiesce, and to content himself with
following them with his eyes, to gain what reassurance he can from the
expression of their backs. But the peaceful if melancholy restfulness
that had marked the first part of his abode on the stone seat is gone,
past recall. He moves his feet fidgetily on the gravel; he gets up, and
throws pebbles into the fountain; he snubs an officious little Italian
boy who brings Amelia a small handful of flowers plucked out of the
emerald grass.
Amelia does not share her lover's uneasiness, as indeed why should she?
She puts the expected tip into the young Tuscan's dirty brown hand, and
leans her head enjoyingly on the back of the stone seat.
"I think I like to come to these sort of places with you even better
than to picture-galleries," she says with an intonation of extreme
content.
"Do you, dear?" replies he absently, with his uneasy eyes still
searching the spot at which Cecilia and her escort had disappeared. "Of
course you are quite right: 'God made the country, and man made the----'
Ah!"
The substitution of this ejaculation for the noun which usually
concludes the proverb is due to the fact of the couple he is interested
in having come back into sight, retracing their steps, and again
approaching. It is clear as they come near that the desire to explore
the villa grounds has given way, in this case, to the absorption of
conversation. With a pang of dread, Jim's sharpened faculties realize,
before they are within earshot, that they have exchanged the light and
_banal_ civilities which had at first employed them for talk of a much
more intimate and interesting character. Cecilia is generally but an
indifferent listener, greatly preferring to take the lion's share in any
dialogue; but now she is all silent attention, only putting in, now and
again, a short eager question, while her companion is obviously
narrating--narrating gravely, and yet with a marked relish. Narrating
what? Jim tells himself angrily that there are more stories than one in
the world; that there is no reason why, because Cecilia's clerical
friend is relating to her something, it must necessarily be that
particular something which he dreads so inexpressibly; but he strains
his ears as they pass to catch a sentence which may relieve or confirm
his apprehensions. He has not to strain them long. It is Cecilia who is
speaking, and in her eagerness she has raised her voice.
"You may depend upon me; I assure you I am as safe as a church; if I had
chosen I might have made a great deal of mischief in my day, but I never
did. I always said that she had a history. I do not pretend to be a
physiognomist, but I said so the first time I saw her. I knew that they
came from Devonshire. I assure you I am as safe as a church!"
It is clear that the clergyman's hesitation, already perhaps more coy
than real, is unable to withstand the earnestness of Cecilia's
asseverations of her own trustworthiness. He has already opened his
mouth to respond when an unexpected interruption arrests the stream of
his eloquence. Jim has sprung from his bench, and thrust himself
unceremoniously between the two interlocutors.
"Come and see the wistaria," he says, brusquely addressing the girl;
"you were not with us when we were looking at it, were you? You were
maintaining the other day that wistaria has no scent; come and smell
it!"
It is in vain that Cecilia protests that she has already seen quite as
much of the wistaria as she wishes; that she had never denied the
potency of its perfume; that her legs are giving way beneath her from
fatigue. Jim marches her relentlessly away, nor does he again quit her
side until he sees her safely seated in the fiacre which is to carry her
home. It is indeed his portion to have a _tete-a-tete_ drive back to
Florence with her, Byng having absently stepped into the vehicle which
bears the other ladies. He draws a long breath as they jog slowly away
from the villa, leaving the clergyman taking off his tall hat, with a
baffled and offended air of farewell. He is conscious that Cecilia is
swelling beside him with feelings no less wounded, even for some moments
before she speaks.
"You rather cut your own throat," she says, in an affronted voice, "when
you interrupted me and Mr. Burton so rudely; he was on the point of
telling me something very interesting about your dear friends the Le
Marchants; he knows all about them; he has known Elizabeth ever since
she was a child."
Even across Jim's alarm and anxiety there comes a flash of indignation
and distaste at the familiar employment of the name that even to himself
he only pronounces on his heart's knees.
"Who is Elizabeth? Do you mean Miss Le Marchant?"
"Mr. Burton talked of her as 'Elizabeth,'" replies Cecilia, with a still
more offended accent at the rebuke implied in his words; "one naturally
would of a person whom one had known in short frocks."
"And he--he told you something very interesting about her?"
"No, he did not," returns Cecilia snappishly, "he had not the chance; he
was just beginning when you rushed in like a bull in a china shop, and
now"--in a key of excessive vexation--"I shall probably never have
another chance of hearing, as he leaves Florence to-morrow."
Jim's heart gives a bound. "Leaves Florence to-morrow, does he?" he
repeats eagerly.
"I do not know why you should seem so delighted to hear it," rejoins
Cecilia, looking at him from under her smart hat with a mixture of
surprise and resentment. "I do not see anything particularly
exhilarating in losing an agreeable acquaintance almost as soon as one
has made it!"
"Perhaps--perhaps it was a false alarm," says Jim, set, to some extent,
on his guard by her evident astonishment at the keenness of his interest
in the subject; "perhaps"--beginning to laugh--"he only said it to
frighten you; why do you think that he is leaving Florence to-morrow?"
"Because he told me so," answers she impatiently; "he is at the Grande
Bretagne, and he was complaining of not being comfortable there, and I
was advising him to move to another hotel, and he said, 'Oh no, it was
not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.'"
Jim draws a long breath, and leans back in his corner of the fiacre. He
has gained the information he sought. It has come to his hand at the
very time he was chafing most at his inability to go in quest of it.
"So your interruption was the more provoking," continues Cecilia, her
indignation puffing out and ruffling its feathers at the recollection of
her wrongs, "as it was our last chance of meeting; however, you cut your
own throat, as he evidently knew something very interesting about your
dear friends; something which he does not generally tell people, and
which he would not have told me only that he saw at once I was no blab."
Jim shivers. He had only just been in time then--only just in time to
stop the mouth of this blatant backbiter in priest's raiment. His
companion looks at him curiously.
"Are you cold," she asks, "or did a goose walk over your grave? Why did
you shiver?"
He pulls himself together. "I was shivering," he says, compelling
himself to assume the rallying tone in which he is apt to address the
girl beside him, "at the thought of the peril I had saved you from. My
poor Cis, have not you and I suffered enough already at the hands of the
Church?"
She reddens. "Though I do not pretend to any great sensitiveness on the
subject, I think you have worn that old joke nearly off its legs."
But during the rest of the drive she utters no further lament over her
lost clergyman.