It was the middle of February, and all the little gardens that lay like
a fringe along the edge of the olive woods had become one vivid pink
with peach blossoms, while the dull grey earth under the peach trees
was spread with the purple and red of anemones. San Marco was looking
its loveliest, blue sea and blue sky, cypresses rising up, like dark
green obelisks, among the grey olives, and even the hotel garden was
made beautiful by roses that hung in garlands from tree to tree, and
daffodils that made a golden belt round the dusty grass.
Vera went to the dining-room alone at the luncheon hour on this
heavenly morning, a loneliness to which she was now accustomed, as
Grannie's delicate and scanty meal was now served to her habitually
in her _salon_. Fortified by Dr. Wilmot, who was an authority at the
"Anglais," Lady Felicia had interviewed the landlord, and had insisted
upon this amenity without extra charge.
The hotel seemed in a strange commotion as Vera went downstairs.
Chambermaids with brooms and dusters were running up and down the
corridor on the first floor. Doors that were usually shut were all
wide open to the soft spring breezes. Furniture was being carried from
one room to another, and other furniture, that looked new, was being
brought upstairs from the hall. Carpets and curtains were being shaken
in the garden at the back of the hotel, and dust was being blown in
through the open window on the landing.
Vera wondered, but had not to wonder long; for at the luncheon table
everybody was talking about the upheaval, and its cause, and a torrent
of rambling chatter, in which widows and spinsters were almost shrill
with excitement, gradually resolved itself into these plain facts.
An Italian financier, Signor Mario Provana, the richest man in Rome,
and one of the richest men in London, which, of course, meant a great
deal more, was bringing his daughter to the hotel, a daughter in
delicate health, sent by her doctors to the most eligible spot along
the Western Ligura.
The poor dear girl was in a very bad way, the old ladies told each
other, threatened with consumption. She had two nurses besides her
governess and maid, and the whole of the first floor had been taken by
Signor Provana, to the annoyance of Lady Sutherland Jones, quite the
most important inmate of the hotel, who had been made to exchange her
first-floor bedroom for an apartment on the second floor, which Signor
Canincio, the landlord, declared to be superior in every particular, as
well as one lire less _per diem_.
"I should have thought your husband would have hesitated before putting
one of his best customers to inconvenience for a party who drops from
the skies, and may never come here again," Lady Jones complained to the
landlord's English wife, who was, if anything, more plausible than her
Italian husband.
The Holloway builder's widow was uncertain in her aspirates, more
especially when discomposed by a sense of injury.
Madame Canincio pleaded that they could not afford to turn away good
fortune in the person of a Roman millionaire, who took a whole floor,
and would have all his meals served in his private _salle à manger_,
the extra charge for which indulgence would come to almost as much
as her ladyship's "_arrangement_"; for Lady Sutherland Jones, albeit
supposed to be wealthy, was not liberal. Her late husband had been
knighted, after the opening by a Royal Princess of a vast pile of
workmen's dwellings, paid for by an American philanthropist, and
neither husband nor wife had achieved that shibboleth of gentility, the
letter "h."
Vera heard all about Signor Provana, and his daughter, next morning
from Dr. Wilmot, who was more elated at the letting of the first floor
to that great man than she had ever seen him by any other circumstance
in the quiet life of San Marco.
"I consider the place made from this hour," said the doctor, rubbing
his well-shaped white hands in a prophetic rapture. "There will be
paragraphs in all the Roman papers, and it will be my business to see
that they get into the _New York Herald_. We must boom our pretty
little San Marco, my dear Lady Felicia. Your coming here was good luck,
for we want our English aristocracy to take us up--but all over the
world Mario Provana's is a name to conjure with; and if his daughter
can recover her health here, we shall make San Marco as big as San Remo
before we are many years older. It was my wife's delicate chest that
brought me here, and I have been rewarded by the beauty of the place
and, I think I may venture to say, the influential position that I have
obtained here."
He might have added that his villa and garden cost him about half the
rent he would have had to pay in San Remo or Mentone, while a clever
manager like Mrs. Wilmot could make a superior figure in San Marco on
economical terms.
"How old is the girl?" Lady Felicia asked languidly.
"Between fifteen and sixteen, I believe. She will be a nice companion
for Miss Davis."
"I do so hope we may be friends," Vera said eagerly. In a hotel where
almost everybody was elderly, the idea of a girl friend was delightful.
Lady Felicia, who had been very severe in her warnings against
hotel-acquaintance, answered blandly, though with a touch of
condescension.
"If the girl is really nice, and has been well brought up, I should see
no objections to Vera's knowing her."
"Thank you, Grannie," cried Vera. "She is sure to be nice!"
"Signor Provana's daughter cannot fail to be nice," protested the
doctor.
Lady Felicia was dubious.
"An Italian!" she said. "She may be precocious--artful--of doubtful
morality."
"Signor Provana's daughter! Impossible!"
Nothing happened to stir the stagnant pool of life at San Marco during
the next day and the day after that. Vera asked Madame Canincio when
Signor Provana and his daughter were expected, but could obtain no
precise information. The rooms were ready. Madame Canincio showed
Vera the _salon_, which she had seen in its spacious emptiness, with
the shabby hotel furniture, but to which Signor Provana's additions
had given an air of splendour. Sofas and easy chairs had been sent
from Genoa, velvet curtains and _portières_, bronze lamps, and silver
candlesticks, Persian carpets, everything that makes for comfort and
luxury; and the bedroom for the young lady had been even more carefully
prepared; but, beside her own graceful pillared bedstead, with its lace
mosquito curtains, was the narrow bed for the night-nurse, which gave
its sad indication of illness.
The flowers were ready in the vases, filling the _salon_ with perfume.
"I believe they will be here before sunset," Madame Canincio told Vera.
"We are waiting for a telegram to order dinner. The _chef_ is in an
agony of anxiety. First impressions go for so much, and no doubt Signor
Provana is a _gourmet_."
Vera heard no more that day, but the maid who brought the early
breakfast told her that the great man and his daughter had arrived
at five o'clock on the previous afternoon. Vera went to the flower
market in a fever of expectation, bought her cheap supply of red and
purple anemones, her poor little bunch of Parma violets and branches
of mimosa, thinking of the luxury of tuberoses and camellias in the
Provana _salon_, but she thought much more of the sick girl, and the
father's love, exemplified in all that forethought and preparation. For
youth in vigorous health there is always a melancholy interest in youth
that is doomed to die, and Vera's heart ached with sympathy for the
consumptive girl, for whom a father's wealth might do everything except
spin out the weak thread of life.
She heard voices in the hotel garden, as she went up the sloping
carriage drive, with her flower basket on her arm; and at a bend in the
avenue of pepper trees and palms she stopped with a start, surprised at
the gaiety of the scene, which made the shabby hotel garden seem a new
place.
The dusty expanse of scanty grass which passed for a lawn, where
nothing gayer than aloes and orange trees had flourished, was now alive
with colour. A girl in a smart white cloth frock and a large white hat
was sitting in a blue and gold wicker chair, a girl all brightness and
vitality, as it seemed to Vera; where she had expected to see a languid
invalid reclining among a heap of pillows, a wasted hand drooping
inertly, too feeble to hold a book.
This girl's aspect was of life, not of sickness and coming death.
Her eyes were darkest brown, large and brilliant, with long black
lashes that intensified their darkness, intensified also by the marked
contrast of hair that was almost flaxen, parted on her forehead,
and hanging in a single thick plait that fell below her waist, and
was tied with a blue ribbon. Three spaniels, one King Charles, and
two Blenheims, jumped and barked about her chair, and increased the
colour and gaiety of her surroundings by their frivolous decorations
of silver bells and blue ribbons; and, as if this were not enough of
colour, gaudy draperies of Italian printed cotton were flung upon the
unoccupied chairs, and covered a wicker table, while, as the highest
note in this scale of colour, a superb crimson and green cockatoo,
with a tail of majestic length, screamed and fluttered on his perch,
and responded not too amiably to the attentions of Dr. Wilmot, who was
trying to scratch himself into the bird's favour.
The doctor desisted from his "Pretty Pollyings" on perceiving Vera.
"Ah, Miss Davis, that's lucky. Do stop a minute with Grannie's flowers.
I want to introduce you to Mademoiselle di Provana."
The "di" was the embellishment of Dr. Wilmot, who could not imagine
wealth and importance without nobility, but the financier called
himself Provana _tout court_.
Vera murmured something about being "charmed," put down her basket
on the nearest chair, and went eagerly towards the fair girl with
the dark, lustrous eyes, who held out a dazzling white hand, smiling
delightedly.
"I am so glad to find you here. Dr. Veelmot"--she stumbled a little
over the name, otherwise her English was almost perfect; "Dr. Vilmot
told me you were English, and about my own age, and that we ought to be
good friends. I am so glad you are English. I have talked much English
with my governess, but I want a companion of my own age. I have had no
girl friend since I left the Convent three year ago. Dr Vilmot tell me
your father was a poet. That is lovely, lovely. My father is a great
man, but he is not a poet, though he loves Dante."
"My little girl is an enthusiast, and something of a dreamer," said a
deep, grave voice, and a large, tall figure came into view suddenly
from behind a four-leaved Japanese screen that had been placed at the
back of the invalid's chair, to guard her from an occasional breath of
cold wind that testified to the fact that, although all things had the
glory of June, the month was February.
Vera was startled by a voice which seemed different from any other
voice she had ever heard--so grave, so deep, with such a tone of solemn
music; and yet voice and enunciation were quite natural; there was
nothing to suggest pose or affectation.
The speaker stood by his daughter's chair, an almost alarming figure
in that garden of ragged pepper trees, shabby palms, and sunshine--the
sun dominating the picture. He was considerably over six feet, with
broad shoulders, long arms, and large hands, very plainly clothed in
his iron-grey tweed suit, which almost matched his iron-grey hair. He
was not handsome, though he had a commanding brow and his head was
splendidly poised on those splendid shoulders. Vera told herself that
he was not aristocratic--indeed, she feared that there was something
almost plebeian in his appearance that might offend Grannie, who,
having had to do without money, was a fierce stickler for race.
While Vera was thinking about him, Signor Provana was talking to his
daughter, and the voice that had so impressed her at the first hearing,
became infinitely beautiful as it softened with infinite love.
What must it be to a girl to be loved so fondly by that great strong
man? Vera had known no such love since her poet father's death.
She took up her basket of flowers, and then lingered shyly, not knowing
whether she ought to go at once, or stay and make conversation; but
Giulia settled the question.
"Oh, please don't run away," she said. "Don't go without making
friends with my family. Let me introduce Miss Thompson," indicating
a comfortable, light-haired person sitting near her, absorbed in
Sudermann's last novel, "and look at my three spaniels, Jane Seymour,
Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Parr. I called them after your wicked King
Henry's wives. I hope you revel in history. It is my favourite study."
She stooped to pat the spaniels, who all wanted to clamber on her
knees at once. Even under the full cloth skirt and silk petticoat Vera
could not help seeing that the knees were sharp and bony. By this time
she had discovered the too slender form under the pretty white frock,
and the hectic bloom on the oval cheek. She knew the meaning of that
settled melancholy in Signor Provana's dark grey eyes--eyes that seemed
made rather for command than for softness.
She caressed the sparkling black-and-tan Anne Boleyn, and stroked the
long silken ears of the Blenheims, Jane and Catherine, and allowed
them to jump on her lap and explore her face with their affectionate
tongues. Jane Seymour was the favourite, Giulia told her, the dearest
dear, a most sensible person, and sensitive to a fault. Vera admired
the cockatoo, and answered all Giulia's questions about San Marco, and
the drives to old mountain towns and villages, old watch-towers and old
churches--drives which Vera knew only from the talk of the widows and
spinsters who had urged her to persuade Grannie to hire a carriage and
take her to see all the interesting things to be seen in an afternoon's
drive.
"Grannie is not strong enough for long drives," Vera had told them.
They smiled significantly at each other when she had gone.
"Poor child! I'm afraid it's Grannie's purse that isn't strong enough,"
said the leading light in the little community.
"I believe they're reg'lar church mice for poverty, in spite of the
airs my lady gives herself," said Lady Jones. "If it was me, and money
was an objick, I wouldn't pretend to be exclusive, and waste ten lire
a day on a _salon_. I don't mind poverty, and I don't mind pride--but
pride and poverty together is more than I can stand."
The other ladies agreed. Pride was a vice that could only be allowed
where there was wealth to sustain it. Only one timid spinster objected.
"Lady Felicia was a Disbrowe," she said meekly, "and the Disbrowes are
one of the oldest families in England."
* * * * *
Vera had to promise to take tea with the Signorina at five o'clock that
afternoon before Giulia would let her go.
"I am not allowed to put my nose out of doors after tea," Giulia said,
not in a complaining tone, but with light laughter. "People are so
absurd about me, especially this person," putting her hand in her
father's and smiling up at him, "just because of my winter cough--as if
almost everybody has not a winter cough. Promise! _A riverderci, cara_
Signorina."
Vera promised, and this time she was allowed to go.
Mario Provana went with her, and carried her basket.
He did not say a word till they had passed beyond the belt of pepper
trees that screened the lawn, and then he began to walk very slowly,
and looked earnestly at Vera.
"I know you are going to be kind to my girl," he said, and his low,
grave voice sounded mournful as a funeral bell. "Dr. Wilmot has told me
of your devotion to your grandmother and how sweet and sympathetic you
are. You can see how the case stands. You can see by how frail a thread
I hold the creature who is dearer to me than all this world besides."
"Oh, but I hope the Signorina will gain health and strength at San
Marco," Vera answered earnestly. "She does not look like an invalid!
And she is so bright and gay."
"She has never known sorrow. She is never to know sorrow. She is to
be happy till her last breath. That is my business in life. Sorrow
is never to touch her. But I do not deceive myself. I have never
cheated myself with a moment of hope since I saw Death's seal upon
her forehead. In my dreams sometimes I have seen her saved; but in
my waking hours, never. As I have watched her passing stage by stage
through the phases of a mortal illness, I watched her mother ten years
ago through the same stages of the same disease. Doctors said: Take her
to this place or to that--to Sicily, to the Tyrol, to the Engadine,
to India--to the Transvaal. For four years I was a wanderer upon this
earth, a wanderer without hope then, as I am a wanderer without hope
now. I have business interests that I dare not utterly neglect, because
they involve the fortunes of other people. I brought my daughter here,
because I am within easy reach of Rome. I ought to be in London."
He had walked with Vera beyond the door of the hotel. He stopped
suddenly, and apologised.
"I would not have saddened you by talking of my grief, if I did not
know that you are full of sympathy for my sweet girl. I want you
to understand her, and to be kind to her, and above all to give no
indication of fear or regret. You expected to find a self-conscious
invalid, hopeless and helpless, with the shadow of death brooding
over her--and you find a light-hearted girl, able to enjoy all that
is lovely in a world where she looks forward to a long and happy
life. That gaiety of heart, that high courage and unshaken hope, are
symptomatic of the fatal malady which killed my wife, and which is
killing her daughter."
"But is there really, really no hope of saving her?" cried Vera, with
her eyes full of tears.
"There is none. All that science can do, all that the beauty of the
world can do, has been done. I can do nothing but love her, and keep
her happy. Help me to do that, Miss Davis, and you will have the
heartfelt gratitude of a man to whom Fate has been cruel."
"My heart went out to your daughter the moment I saw her," Vera said,
with a sob. "I was interested in her beforehand, from what Dr. Wilmot
told us--but she is so amiable, so beautiful. One look made me love
her. I will do all I can--all--all--but it is so little!"
"No, it is a great deal. Your youth, your sweetness, make you the
companion she longs for. She has friends of her own age in Rome,
but they are girls just entering Society, self-absorbed, frivolous,
caring for nothing but gaiety. I doubt if they have ever added to
her happiness. She wanted an English friend; and if you will be that
friend, she will give you love for love. Forgive me for detaining you
so long. I will call upon Lady Felicia this afternoon, if she will
allow me--or perhaps I had better wait until she has been so good as to
call upon my daughter. I know that English ladies are particular about
details!"
Vera dared not say that Grannie was not particular, since she had heard
her discuss some trivial lapse of etiquette, involving depreciation of
her own dignity, for the space of an afternoon. Clever girls who live
with grandmothers have to bear these things.
Signor Provana carried her basket upstairs for her, and only left her
on the second-floor landing, with a thoroughly British shake-hands. He
was the most English foreigner Vera had ever met.
She had to give Grannie a minute account of all that had happened,
and Grannie was particularly amiable, and warmly interested in
Miss Provana's charm, and Mr. Provana's pathetic affection for his
consumptive daughter.
"They are evidently nobodies, from a social point of view," Lady
Felicia remarked, with the pride of a long line of Disbrowes in the
turn of her head towards the open window, as if dismissing a subject
too unimportant for her consideration; "but I dare say the man's wealth
gives him a kind of position in Rome, and even in London."
Vera told her that Signor Provana wished to call upon her, but would
not venture to do so till she had been so kind as to call upon his
daughter. This was soothing.
"I see he has not lived in London for nothing!" she said. "I will call
on Miss Provana this afternoon. You must help to dress me. Lidcott has
no taste."
On this Vera was bold enough to say she had accepted an invitation to
take tea with the invalid, without waiting to consult Grannie.
"You did quite right. Great indulgence must be given to a sick child.
In that case I will defer my visit till tea-time, and we will go
together. I want to be friendly, rather than ceremonious."
Vera was delighted to find Grannie unusually accommodating, and that
none of those unreasonable objections and unforeseen scruples to which
Grannie was subject were to interfere with her pleasure in Giulia's
society.
Pleasure? Must it not be pleasure too closely allied with pain, now
that she knew the girl she was so ready to love had the fatal sign
of early death upon her beauty? But at Vera's age it is natural to
hope--even in the face of doom.
"She may improve in this place. Her health may take a sudden turn for
the better. God may spare her, after all, for the poor father's sake.
At least I know what I have to do--to try with all my might to make her
happy."
* * * * *
A footman in a sober but handsome livery was hovering in the corridor
when lady Felicia arrived, supported by Vera's arm, and by a cane with
a long tortoiseshell crook like the Baroness Bernstein's, an amount of
support which was rather a matter of state than of necessity.
Lady Felicia had put on her favourite velvet gown and point-lace
collar for the occasion. She had always two or three velvet gowns in
her wardrobe, and declared that Genoa velvet was the only wear for
high-bred poverty--as it looked expensive and never wore out.
The footman flung open the tall door of Signor Canincio's best _salon_,
and announced the ladies.
The Provana _salon_ was startling in its afternoon glory. The three
long windows were open to the sunshine, which in most people's rooms
would have been excluded at this hour. The balcony was full of choice
flowers in turquoise and celadon vases from Vallauris. The luxury of
satin pillows overflowing sofas and arm-chairs, the Dresden cups and
saucers, and silver urn and tea-tray, the three dogs running about with
their ribbons and bells, the gaudy cockatoo screaming on his perch,
Giulia's blue silk tea-gown, and Miss Thompson's mauve cashmere, all
lighted to splendour by the glory of the western sky, made a confusion
of colour that almost blinded Lady Felicia.
Provana received her with grave courtesy, and led her to his daughter's
sofa. She bent over Giulia with an affectionate greeting, and then,
sinking into the arm-chair to which Provana led her, begged somewhat
piteously that the sunshine might be moderated a little, a request that
Provana hastened to obey, closing the heavy Venetian shutters with his
own hands.
"Giulia and I are too fond of our sun-bath," he said, "and we are apt
to forget that everybody does not like being dazzled."
"I came to San Marco for the sun, and it is seldom that I get enough;
but your _salon_ is just a little dazzling." "And your dogs are more
than a little intrusive," Lady Felicia would have liked to add, the
spaniels having taken a fancy to her tortoiseshell cane and velvet
skirt. One had jumped upon her lap, and the other two were disputing
possession of her cane. Serviceable Miss Thompson was quick to the
rescue, carried off the dogs, and restored the cane to its place by
the visitor's chair, while Provana brought an olive-wood table to Lady
Felicia's elbow, and stood ready to bring her tea-cup.
"I hope you are pleased with San Marco," said Grannie, not soaring
above the normal conversation in the hotel.
"We think it quite delightful so far," Provana replied, and Vera
noticed that he never expressed an opinion without including his
daughter. It was always "We," or "Giulia and I," and there was
generally a glance in Giulia's direction which emphasised the reference
to her.
"I love--love--love the place already," cried Giulia, who had beckoned
Vera to her sofa, and was holding her hand. "Most of all because I have
found this sweet friend here. You will let us be friends, won't you,
_cara_ Grannie?"
"_Carissima mia!_" murmured her father reprovingly.
"Please don't let us be ceremonious in this desert island of a place,"
said Lady Felicia, with a graciousness that was new to Vera. "I like
to be called Grannie, and I can be Grannie to the Signorina as well as
to this girl of my own flesh and blood. You can hardly doubt, Signor
Provana, that it is pleasant for me to find that my poor Vera has now a
sweet girl friend in this hotel, where we have lived three months and
hardly made an acquaintance, much less a friend."
"But it has been your own fault, Grannie!" interposed Vera, who was
essentially truthful. "People really tried to be kind to us when we
were strangers."
"If you mean that some of the people were odiously pushing and
officious, I cannot contradict you!" replied the descendant of the
Disbrowes, with ineffable scorn.
But Grannie was not scornful in her demeanour towards the Roman
financier. To him, and to Giulia, she was Grannie in her most urbane
and sympathetic mood. She was charmed to find him so much of an
Englishman.
"My mother was English to the core of her heart. She was the daughter
of a colonial merchant, whose offices were in Mincing Lane, and his
home in Lavender Sweep. I am told there is no such thing as Lavender
Sweep now," Provana went on regretfully, "but when I was a boy, my
grandfather's garden was in the country, and there were gardens all
about it."
"And fields of lavender," said Giulia. "Oh, do say that there were
fields of lavender!"
"No, the lavender fields had gone far away into Kent. Only the name was
left; and now there are streets of shabby houses, and shops, and not a
vestige of garden."
Encouraged by Lady Felicia's urbanity, Signor Provana went on to tell
her that he was plebeian on both sides, and that all there was of
nobility about him belonged to Giulia.
"My wife came of one of the noblest families in Italy," he said, "and
when we want to tease Giulia, we call her Contessina, a title to which
she has a right, but which always makes her angry."
"I don't want to be better than my father!" Giulia cried eagerly.
"If he is not a noble, he comes of a line of good and gifted men. My
grandfather's name is revered in Rome, and his charitable works remain
behind him, to show that if he was one of the cleverest Roman citizens,
he had a heart as fine as his brain. _That_ is the noblest kind of
nobility--_non è vero_, Grannie?"
Grannie smiled assent, and entertained a poor opinion of Giulia's
intellect. A shallow creature, spoilt by overmuch indulgence, and
inclined to presume. The two girls were sitting in the sun by an open
window, a long way off. They had their own table, and Miss Thompson
waited upon them with assiduity. Grannie had been warned that there was
to be no doleful talk, no thinly-disguised pity for the consumptive
girl. All was to be as bright as the room full of flowers and the
untempered sunshine.
Provana told Lady Felicia that he had ordered a landau from Genoa,
which had arrived that afternoon.
"The horses are strong, and used to hill work, and there is an
extra pair for difficult roads," he said. "Giulia and I mean to see
everything interesting that can be seen between breakfast and sundown.
Of course we must be indoors before sunset. Everybody must in this
treacherous climate. I hope Miss Davis may be allowed to go with us
sometimes, indeed often!"
"Always, _Padre mio_, always!" cried Giulia from her distant sofa. She
had begun to listen when her father talked of the carriage. "Vera is to
come with us always. You will let her come, won't you, _cara_ Grannie?"
"Please don't ask her," Vera said dutifully. "That would be deserting
Grannie. She likes me to read to her in the afternoon."
"She shall enjoy your hospitality now and then, Signorina, and I will
do without my afternoon novel. But you would soon tire of her if she
were with you often."
"Tire of her! Impossible! Why, I don't even tire of Miss Thompson!"
Giulia said naïvely.
"Please let Miss Davis come with us whenever you can spare her,"
Provana said, when he took leave of Lady Felicia at the foot of the
stairs leading to her upper floor. "You see how charmed my daughter is
at having found an English friend; and I think you must understand how
anxious I am to make her happy."
Lady Felicia was all sympathy, and placed her granddaughter at the
Signorina's disposal. If this man was of plebeian origin, he had a
certain personal dignity that impressed her; nor was she unaffected by
his importance in that mysterious world of which she knew so little,
the world of boundless wealth.
When she arrived, somewhat breathless, in the shabby second-floor
_salon_, she sank into her chair with an impatient movement, and
breathed a fretful sigh.
"Think of this great coarse man, with his balcony of flowers, and four
horses to his landau," she exclaimed disdainfully. "These Provanas
absolutely exude gold!"
"Oh, Grannie, he is not the least bit purse-proud or vulgar," Vera
protested. "You must see that he has only one desire in life, to make
his daughter happy, and to prolong her life. I hope God will be good to
that poor father, and spare that sweet girl."
"The girl is nice enough, and they will make this place pleasant for
you. Extra horses for the hills! And I have not been able to afford a
one-horse fly!"
"It is hard for you, Grannie dear; but we have been quite comfortable,
and you have been better than you were at Brighton last year."
"Yes, I have been better, but it is the same story everywhere--the
same pinching and watching lest the end of the quarter should find me
penniless."
Lady Felicia resented narrow means, as a personal affront from
Providence.
Signor Provana lost no time in returning Grannie's visit. He appeared
at three o'clock on the following day, bringing his daughter, and
a basket of flowers that had arrived that morning from Genoa, the
resources of San Marco not going beyond carnations, roses and anemones.
"I fear you must have found the stairs rather tiring," Lady Felicia
said, when she had welcomed Giulia.
"Not a bit. I rather like stairs. You see I came in my carriage," and
it was explained that Giulia had an invalid chair on which her father
and the footman carried her up and down stairs.
"Of course I could walk up and down just like other people," Giulia
said lightly; "but this foolish father of mine won't let me. I feel
as if I were the Princess Badroulbadore, coming from the bath in her
palanquin; only there is no Aladdin to fall in love with me."
"Aladdin will come in good time," said Lady Felicia.
"I don't want him. I want no one but Papa. When I was three years old I
used to think I should marry Papa as soon as I grew up; and now I know
I can't, it makes no difference--I don't want anybody else."
An engagement was made for the next day. They were to start at eleven
o'clock for the Roman Amphitheatre near Ventimiglia, looking at the old
churches and palm groves of Bordighera on their way. It would be a long
drive, but there were no alarming hills. Lady Felicia was invited, but
was far too much an invalid to accept. There was no making a secret
of Grannie's bad health. Her bronchial trouble was the staple of her
conversation.
And now a new life began for Vera, a life that would have been all joy
but for the shadow that went with them everywhere, like a cloud that
follows the traveller through a smiling sky--that shadow of doom which
the victim saw not, but which those who loved her could not forget.
The shadow made a bond of sympathy between Mario Provana and Vera. The
consciousness of that sad secret never left them, and many confidential
words and looks drew them closer together in the course of those long
days in lovely places--where Giulia was always the gayest of the little
party, and eager in her enjoyment of everything that was beautiful or
interesting, from a group of peasant children with whom she stopped to
talk, to the remains of a Roman citadel that took her fancy back to the
Cæsars. The chief care of father, governess, and friend, was to prevent
her doing too much. Nothing in her own consciousness warned her how
soon languor and fatigue followed on exertion and excitement.
Miss Thompson was always ready with a supporting arm, always tactful
in cutting short any little bit of exploration that might tire her
charge. She was one of those admirable women who seem born to teach and
cherish fragile girlhood. People almost thought she must have been born
middle-aged. It was unthinkable that she herself had been young, and
had required to be taught and cared for. She was highly accomplished,
and the things she knew were known so thoroughly, that one might
suppose all those dates and dry historical details had been born with
her, ready pigeon-holed in her brain.
Signor Provana treated her with unvarying respect, and always referred
any doubtful question in history or science to Miss Thompson.
But her most valuable gift was a disposition of unvarying placidity.
Nobody had ever seen Lucy Thompson out of temper. The most irritating
of pupils had never been able to put her in a passion. She stood on one
side, as it were, while a minx misbehaved herself. Her aloofness was
her only reproof, and one that was almost always efficacious.
With Giulia Provana that placid temper had never been put to the proof.
Giulia had a sweet nature, was quick to learn, and had a yearning for
knowledge that was pathetic when one thought how brief must be her use
for earthly wisdom; and, what was better, she loved her governess.
Miss Thompson had a pleasant time in Signor Provana's household; moving
from one lovely scene to another, or in Rome sharing all the pleasures
that the most enchanting of cities could afford. Plays, operas,
concerts, races, afternoon parties in noble houses.
From the day his daughter's health began to fail, and the appearance
of lung trouble made the future full of fear, Signor Provana made up
his mind that her life should never be the common lot of invalids.
However few the years she had to live, however inevitable that she was
to die in early youth--the years that were hers should not be treated
as a long illness. The horrible monotony of sick rooms should never be
hers. It should be the business of everybody about her to keep the dark
secret of decay. Her trained nurses were not to be called nurses, but
maids, and were to wear no hospital uniform. Everything about her was
to be gay and fair to look upon--a luxury of colour and light. And she
was to enjoy every amusement that was possible for her without actual
risk. Into that brief life all the best things that earth can give were
to be crowded. She was to know the cleverest and most agreeable people.
She was to read the best books, to hear the most exquisite music, to
see the finest pictures, the most gifted actors. Nothing famous or
beautiful was to be kept from her. From the first note of warning
this had been Giulia's education; and Miss Thompson's chief duty had
been to read the best books of the best writers to an intelligent and
sympathetic pupil. There had been no dull lessons, no long exercises in
the grammar of various tongues--Giulia's education after her fifteenth
birthday had been literature, in the best sense of that sometimes
ill-used word. Signor Provana's system had been so far successful that
his daughter had lived much longer than the specialists had expected,
and her girlhood had been utterly happy. But the shadow was always in
the background of their lives, and wherever he went with his idolised
child there was always the fear that he might leave her among the
flowers and the palm groves that filled her with joyous surprise on
their arrival, and go back to his workaday life lonely and desolate.
Vera was astonished at the things Giulia knew, and was sorely ashamed
of her own ignorance. For the first time in her life she had come
into close association with cultivated minds--with people whose
conversation, though without pedantry, was full of allusions to books
that she had never read, and knowledge that she had never heard of. To
know Giulia and her governess was a liberal education; and Vera showed
a quickness in absorbing knowledge that interested her new friends, and
made them eager to help her.
The world of poetry lay open and untrodden before this daughter of a
poet.
The idea of her friend's parentage fascinated Giulia.
"Does she not look like a poet's daughter?" she asked her father, and
Provana assented with smiling interest.
"All Giulia's geese are swans," he said; "but I believe she has found a
real swan this time."
Vera's shyness wore off after two or three excursions in that ideal
spring-time. The weather had been exceptionally mild this season, and
there had been no unkind skies or cruel mistral to gainsay Dr. Wilmot's
praise of San Marco. It might almost seem as if Provana had been able
to buy sunshine as well as other luxuries. Day after day the friendly
little company of four set out upon some new excursion, to spots whose
very name seemed a poem. To Santa Croce, to Dolce Aqua, to Finalmarina,
to Colla, the little white town among the mountains, where there were
a church and a picture gallery, or by the Roman Road to the Tower of
Mostaccini, on a high plateau crowned with fir trees, with its view
over sea and shore, valley and wood, and far-off horizon; a place for a
picnic luncheon, and an afternoon of delicious idleness. To Vera such
days were unspeakably sweet. Could it be strange that she loved the
girl who had begun by loving her, and who was her first girl friend?
If she was not so impulsive as Giulia, she was as sensitive and as
sympathetic, and Giulia's sad history had interested her before they
met.
As friendship ripened in the familiarity of daily companionship, her
interest in Giulia's father grew stronger day by day. His devotion
to his daughter was the most beautiful thing she had ever known. He
was the first man with whom she had ever lived in easy intimacy--for
the uncles by blood or by marriage in whose houses she had been a
visitor had always held her at arm's length, and her shyness had been
increased by their coldness. The only creature of that superior sex
with whom she had ever been at her ease was her young cousin, Claude
Rutherford. He had been kind to her, and with him she had been happy;
but that friendship was of a long time ago--ages and ages, it seemed
to her, when she conjured up a vision of delicious days in the Park,
hairbreadth escapes in Claude's dinghy, and thrilling rides on his
Arabian pony.
Vera noticed that Signor Provana did not often join in the animated
conversation which Giulia and her governess kept up untiringly during
their morning drives. He was silent for the most part, and always
meditative. His dark grey eyes seemed to be seeing things that were far
away.
"You see Papa sitting opposite us, _cara_," said Giulia; "but you
must not think he is really with us. He is in London, or in Paris,
negotiating a loan that may mean war. He has to provide the sinews of
war sometimes; and I tell him he is responsible for the lives of men.
His thoughts are a thousand miles away, and he doesn't hear a word of
our foolish talk. _Non è vero, Padre?_"
He looked at her with his fond parental smile. "I hear something like
the songs of birds," he said; "and it helps me to think. Go on talking,
_anima mia_. I like the sound, if I miss the sense."
"I have been telling Vera about Browning. She knows nothing of
Browning, though she is a poet's daughter. Is not that dreadful?"
"I have had only Grannie's books, and she does not think there has been
an English poet since Byron. We are birds of passage, and Grannie has
only her poor little travelling library--but it has always seemed to
me that Byron and my father were enough. I have never wearied of their
poetry."
"Oh, but we shall widen your horizon," said Giulia; "You shall read all
my books, and you must lend me your father's poems."
"I shall be very glad if you will read some of my favourites."
"All, all! When I admire I am insatiable."
Giulia was generally silent on their homeward journeys, wearied by the
day's pleasure, in spite of the watchful care that had spared her every
exertion. When the carriage had to stop at the foot of some grassy
hill, at the top of which they were to take their picnic luncheon, or
from which some vaunted view was to be seen, Provana would take his
daughter in his arms and carry her up the slope--and once when Vera
watched him coming slowly down such a hill with the tender form held
by one strong arm, and the fair head nestling on his shoulder, she was
reminded of that Divine Figure of the Shepherd carrying a lamb, the
pathetic symbol of superhuman love. Her eyes filled with tears as she
looked at him, holding the frail girl with such tender solicitude,
walking with such care; and in the homeward drive, when Giulia was
reclining among her pillows with closed eyes, Vera saw the profound
melancholy in the father's face, and realised the effort and agony of
every day in which he had to maintain an appearance of cheerfulness.
These pilgrimages to exquisite scenes, under a smiling sky, were to
him a kind of martyrdom, knowing all that lay before him, counting the
hours that remained before the inevitable parting.
Vera knew what was coming. Dr. Wilmot had told her that the end could
not be far off. The most famous physician in Rome had come to San Marco
one afternoon. Passing through on his way to a patient at Nice, Provana
had told his daughter, and coming casually to take his luncheon at the
hotel--and the great man had confirmed Wilmot's worst augury. The end
was near.
But even after this Giulia rallied, and the picnics in romantic places
were gayer than ever, though Dr. Wilmot went with them, armed with
restoratives for his patient, and pretending to be frivolous.
It was on the morning after a jaunt that had seamed especially
delightful to Giulia that Lidcott came into Vera's room, with a dismal
countenance, yet a sort of lugubrious satisfaction in being the first
to impart melancholy news.
"I'm afraid it's all over with your poor young friend, Miss. She was
taken suddenly bad at ten o'clock last night--with an hæmorrhage.
Dr. Wilmot was here all night. I saw the day-nurse for a minute just
now, as she was taking up her own breakfast tray--they're always
short-handed in this house, Signor Canincio being that mean--and the
nurse says her young lady's a little better this morning--but she'll
never leave her bed again. She's quite sensible, and she doesn't think
she's dangerously ill, even now, and all her thought is to prevent
her father worrying about her. Worrying! Nurse says he sits near her
bedroom door, with his face hidden in his hands, listening and waiting,
as still as if he were made of stone."
"Would they let me see her?" Vera asked.
"I think not, Miss. She's to be kept very quiet, and not to be allowed
to speak."
Vera went down to the corridor, directly she was dressed, and sat
there, near the _salon_ doors, waiting patiently, on the chance of
seeing one of the nurses, or Miss Thompson. She would not thrust
herself upon Signor Provana's sorrow even by so much as an inquiry or a
message; but she liked to wait at his door--to be near if Giulia wanted
her. They had been like sisters, in these few weeks that seemed so long
a space in her life; and she felt as if she were losing a sister.
She had been sitting there nearly an hour when Signor Provana came out
with a packet of letters for the post. He had been obliged to answer
the business letters of the morning. The machinery of his life could
not be stopped for an hour, for any reason, not even if his only child
were dying. There was a look in his face that froze Vera's heart. What
the nurse had said of him was true. He was like a man turned to stone.
He took no notice of Vera. He did not see her, though he passed close
to her, as he went downstairs to post his letters--a matter too
important to be trusted to a servant.
Vera was standing at the end of the corridor when he came back, and
this time he saw her, and stopped to speak. "Ah, Miss Davis, the hour I
have foreseen for a long time has come. I have thought of it every day
of my life, and I have dreamt of it a hundred times; but the reality is
worse than my worst dream."
He was passing her, and turned back.
"We dare not let her speak--every breath is precious. To-day she must
see no one but her nurse--not even me; but if she should be a shade
better to-morrow, will you come to her? I know she will want to see
you."
"I will come at any hour, night or day. I hope you know how dearly I
love her," Vera answered, and then broke down completely and sobbed
aloud.
When she uncovered her face Provana was gone, and she went slowly
back to the upper floor, where Grannie was waiting for her to
sympathise with her indignation at certain offensive--or supposed to be
offensive--remarks in the letters of a sister-in-law, a niece, and a
dear friend.
"But indeed, dear Grannie, _that_ could not be meant unkindly," urged
Vera; for this offender was her favourite aunt, Lady Okehampton, who
had been kind to her.
"Not meant? What could it mean but a sneer at my poverty?"
"I know Aunt Mildred wouldn't knowingly wound you."
"Don't contradict, Vera. I know my nephew's wife--a snob to the tip of
her nails. She feels sure San Marco must be just the place for us--'so
pretty and so quiet, and so inexpensive.' She _dared_ not say cheap.
And she does not wonder that I have stayed longer than I talked about
staying when I left London."
Lady Felicia had remained in the dull Hôtel des Anglais six weeks
beyond her original idea--six weeks longer than the London doctor had
insisted upon; she had stayed into the celestial light of an Italian
April, to the delight of Vera, who had thus enjoyed a new life with
her new friend. She was not frivolous in her attachments, or ready
to fall in love with new faces; but, in sober truth, she had never
before had the chance of such a friendship--a girl of her own age,
highly cultivated, attractive, and sympathetically eager to give her
the affection of a sister. It would have been too cruel if Grannie's
predetermination to leave Italy in the first week of March had cut
short that lovely friendship.
Happily Grannie had found out that March in London might be more
perilous for her bronchial tubes than December; and had made a good
bargain with the rapacious Canincio, since several of his spinsters and
widows were leaving him.
It was the third day after Giulia's fatal attack that Miss Thompson
came to the upper floor to summon Vera to the sick room.
"The dear child has been pining to see you ever since yesterday
morning, when she rallied a little. She has written your name on her
slate again and again, but the doctor was afraid she would excite
herself, and perhaps try to talk. She has promised to be quite calm,
and not to speak--and you must be very, very quiet, dear, and make no
fuss. You can just sit by her bedside for a little while and hold her
hand; but above all you must not cry--any agitation might be fatal."
"Is there no hope--no hope?" Vera asked piteously.
"No, my dear. It is a question of hours."
Giulia's room was so full of flowers that it looked already like a
_chapelle ardente_. Sinking slowly, surely, down into the darkness of
the grave, she was still surrounded with brightness and beauty. Windows
and shutters were open to the sky and the sun, and the blue plane of
the sea showed far away melting into the purple horizon. Her three
dogs were on the bed, Jane Seymour nestling against her arm, the other
two lying at her feet. They were transformed creatures. No impetuous
barking or restless jumping about. The wistful eyes gazed at the face
they loved, the silken ears drooped over the silken coverlet, the
fringed paws lay still. The dogs knew.
Giulia gazed at her friend with those too-brilliant eyes, and touched
her lips with a pale and wasted hand, as a sign that she must not
speak, and then she wrote on her slate eagerly:
"I have wanted to see you so long, so long, and now this may be the
last time. I did not know I was so ill, but I know now. Oh, who will
care take of my father when he is old; who will love him as I have
done? I thought I should always be there, always his dearest friend.
You must be his friend, Vera. He will be fond of you for my sake. You
will find my place by and by."
"Never, darling. No one can fill your place," Vera said, in a quiet
voice, full of calm tenderness.
A strange, suppressed sound, half sigh, half sob, startled her, and
looking at the window she saw Signor Provana sitting on the balcony,
motionless and watchful.
Again Giulia's tremulous hand wrote:
"Don't go till they send you away. Sit by me, and let me look at you.
Oh, what happy days we have had--among the lovely hills. You will think
of me in years to come, when you are in Italy."
"Always, always, I shall think of you and remember you, wherever I am.
And now I won't talk any more, but I will stay till Miss Thompson takes
me away."
Miss Thompson came very soon, and Vera bent over the dying girl and
kissed the cold brow.
"_A riverderci, Carissima_; I shall come again when Miss Thompson
fetches me."
She left the bedside with that word of hope, the luminous eyes
following her to the door. The dogs did not stir, nor the figure in
the balcony. Miss Thompson and the nurse sat silent and motionless. A
stillness so intense seemed strange in a sunlit room, gay with flowers.
It was late next morning when Vera fell into a troubled sleep, filled
with cruel dreams--dreams that mocked her with visions of Giulia well
and joyous--in one of those romantic scenes where they had been happy
together, in hours that were so bright that Vera had forgotten the
shadow that followed them.
Lidcott came with the morning tea, and there was a letter on the tray.
"From the foreign gentleman," said Lidcott, who had never attempted
Signor Provana's name.
Vera tore open the envelope, and looked wonderingly at the page, where
nothing in the strong, stern penmanship indicated sorrow and agitation.
"My girl is at rest," he wrote. "She knew very little acute suffering,
only three days and nights of weariness. She gave me her good-bye kiss
after three o'clock this morning, and the light faded out of the eyes
that have been my guiding stars. To make her happy is what I have lived
for, since I knew that I was to lose her on this side of my grave. If
prayer could reverse the Omnipotent's decree, mine would have been the
mortal disease, and I should have gone down to death leaving her in
this beautiful world, lovely and full of life.
"You have been very kind, and have helped me to make these last weeks
happy for her. I shall never forget you, and never cease to feel
grateful for your sweetness and sympathy. When she knew that she was
dying she begged me to lay her at rest in this place where she had been
so happy. Those were the words she wrote upon her slate when she was
dying, her last words, the last effort of her ebbing life, and I shall
obey her. You will go with us to the cemetery to-morrow morning, I
hope, though you are not of our Church."