The sky over a funeral should be low and grey, with a soft, fine rain
falling, and no ray of sunshine to mock the mourners' gloom; but over
Giulia Provana's funeral train the sky was a vault of unclouded blue,
reflected on the blue of the tideless sea, and olive woods and lemon
groves were steeped in sunlight. It was one of those mornings such as
Giulia had enjoyed with her utmost power of enjoyment, the kind of
morning on which the pretty soprano voice had burst into song, from
irrepressible gladness--brief song that ended in breathlessness.
The cemetery of San Marco was a white-walled garden between the sea and
the hill-side, where the lemon trees and old, grey olives were broken
here and there by a cypress that rose, a tall shaft of darkness, out of
the silvery grey.
Never till to-day had those dark obelisks suggested anything to Vera
but the beauty of contrast--a note that gave dignity to monotonous
olive woods; but to-day the cypresses were symbols of parting and
death. Their shadow would fall across Giulia's grave in the sunlight
and in the moonlight. Vera would remember them, and visualise them
when she was far away from the place where she had known and loved
Signor Provana's daughter. She was thinking this, as she stood beside
Grannie's chair by the gate of the cemetery--watching the funeral
procession. There were no carriages. The priest and acolytes walked
in front of the bier. The white velvet pall was covered with white
flowers, and behind the coffin, with slow and steady step, followed
Provana, an imposing figure, tall and massive, with head erect; calm,
but deadly pale.
Miss Thompson, the two nurses, and Giulia's Italian maid followed,
carrying baskets of violets; and Lady Felicia, who had left her chair
as the priest and white-robed acolytes came in view, walked feebly
behind them, with Vera by her side. They, too, had brought their
tribute of flowers, roses white and red, roses which were now plentiful
at San Marco.
It had been a surprise to Vera that Lady Felicia should insist upon
getting up before nine o'clock to attend the funeral; she who had
contrived to absent herself from all such ceremonies, even when an old
friend was to be laid at rest, on the ground that her dear Jane, or her
dear Lucy, could sleep no better at Highgate or Kensal Green because
her friend risked rheumatism or bronchitis on her account.
"The poor dear herself would not have wished it," Lady Felicia always
remarked on such occasions, as she wrote her apology to the nearest
relation of the deceased. Yet for Signor Provana's daughter, almost a
stranger, Grannie had put herself, or at least Lidcott, to infinite
trouble in arranging a mourning toilette.
The Roman rites were simple and pathetic; and throughout the ceremony
Signor Provana bore himself with the same pale dignity. He stood at the
head of the open grave, and watched the rain of violets and roses, nor
did his hand tremble when he dropped one perfect white rose upon the
white coffin, the last of all the flowers, the symbol of the pure life
that was ended in that cruel grave.
It was only when the earth began to fall thud after thud upon the
flowers that his fortitude failed. He turned from the grave suddenly,
and walked towards the gate before the priest had finished his office,
and Vera did not see him again till she was walking beside Grannie's
chair, on their way back to the hotel, when he overtook them.
"I want to say good-bye to you and your granddaughter, Lady Felicia,"
he said in his grave, calm voice, the voice that was so much more
attractive than his person. "I shall leave San Marco by the afternoon
train, and I shall go straight through to London."
"So soon?" exclaimed Grannie, with a look of disappointment. "Would it
not be better to rest for a few days in this quiet place?"
"I could not rest at San Marco. It is the end of a journey that has
lasted three years. I shall never lie down to rest in San Marco till I
lie down yonder, beside my girl."
He looked towards the cemetery gate with a strange longing in his eyes,
as if his heart were yearning for that last sleep in the shadow of the
cypresses.
"Good-bye," he said, clasping Grannie's hand, and then Vena's. "I shall
never forget," he said, earnestly. "Never, never." He walked away
quickly towards the hotel, and Lidcott went on with her mistress's
chair.
"A queer kind of man," said Lady Felicia. "I don't understand him. He
ought to have shown a little more gratitude for your kindness to his
daughter."
"There is no reason for gratitude. I have never had such happy days
as those I spent with Giulia, while I could forget that she was to be
taken from me."
"Oh, indeed," said Lady Felicia in an aggrieved voice. "You are vastly
polite to me."
"Dear Grannie, of course I have been happy with you, and you have been
very kind to me."
Grannie kept her offended air till they were in their sitting-room,
when a sudden interest was awakened by the appearance of a sealed
packet on her table. At the first glance it looked like a jeweller's
parcel, but a nearer view showed that it was somewhat carelessly packed
in writing-paper, and that the large red seal bore the monogram "M. P."
Grannie's taper fingers--bent a little with the suppressed gout that
seems natural to the eighth decade--trembled with excitement, as she
tore off the thin paper and discovered a red morocco jewel-case,
heart-shaped.
While Lady Felicia was opening the case--a rather difficult matter, as
the metal spring was strong and her fingers were weak--Vera picked up
an open letter that had fallen out of the parcel.
"From Signor Provana," she said, and she read the brief note aloud,
without waiting for Grannie's permission.
"DEAR LADY FELICIA,--I hope you will let your granddaughter wear this
trinket in memory of my daughter. It was Giulia's own choice of a
souvenir for a friend she loved. A friendship of two months may seem
short to you and me; but it was long in that brief life.
"Yours faithfully,
"PROVANA."
The lid was open and the red light of diamonds flashed in the shaft of
sunshine from the narrow slit in the Venetian shutters.
"You are a lucky girl, Vera," said Grannie approvingly, as she turned
the heart-shaped locket about in the slanting sun-rays, unconsciously
producing Newton's prism. "I know something about diamonds. That centre
stone is splendid. Hunt and Roskell would not sell a diamond heart as
good as this under three hundred pounds."
Vera's only comment was to burst out crying.
"For a commercial magnate, Signor Provana is a superior person," said
Lady Felicia. "I hope we may see more of him. If he had given me time,
I should have asked him to call upon me in London."
"Oh, Grannie, you could not! It would have been dreadful to talk about
visiting to a man in such deep grief."
"I am not likely to do anything unseemly," Grannie replied with her
accustomed dignity. "I ought to have asked the man to call."
* * * * *
Everybody was leaving the South, and San Marco had the dejected air
that the loveliest place will assume when people are going away. For
Vera San Marco seemed dead after the death of her friend; and, while
she grieved incessantly for Giulia, she was surprised to find how
much she missed Giulia's father. It seemed to her that some powerful
sustaining presence had been taken out of her life. His strength had
made her feel strong. He had been with them always, in those long
Spring days that were warm and vivid as an English July. He had talked
very little; but he had been interested in his daughter's talk, and
even in Vera's. He had come to their assistance sometimes in their
discussions, with grave philosophy or hard facts. He seemed to possess
universal knowledge; but he was not romantic or poetical. He smiled at
Giulia's flights of fancy, those voyages in cloud-land that charmed
Vera. He was always interested, always sympathetic; and the grave,
beautiful voice and the calm, slow smile were not to be forgotten by
Vera, now that he had gone out of her life.
"It is all like a long dream, beautiful, but oh, so sad," Vera said to
Grannie, who was more sympathetic than usual upon this subject.
"It has been an interesting experience for you, which one could never
have hoped for in such an hotel as this," she said. "Dr. Wilmot tells
me that Signor Provana has a house in Portland Place--the largest in
the street, where he used to entertain the best people in his wife's
time. Her rank and beauty gave distinction to his money; so I can
believe Wilmot that he was by way of being a personage in London."
Lidcott was packing the trunks, and the Bath chair, while Grannie
talked. The luggage, except the trunk with Grannie's best velvet gown,
and a frock or two for Vera, and the absolute needs of daily life, was
to go by _Petite Vitesse_, which meant being so long without it, that
old familiar things would seem new and strange when the trunks came to
be unpacked.
The long journey was dull--Grannie and Lidcott having a curious
capacity for creating dullness. It was their atmosphere, and went
with them everywhere. The change from summer sunshine to the grey sky
and drizzling rain of an English April was a sad surprise; and the
lodging-house in the street off Portland Place seemed the abode of
gloom. It was the London season, and carriages and motor-cars were
rolling up and down the handsome street in which Signor Provana's house
had been described as the largest. Vera looked at all the houses as the
cab drove past them, trying to find the superlative in size; but there
was no time for counting windows or calculating space.
The lodging-house drawing-room, albeit better furnished than Canincio's
second-floor _salon_, looked unutterably dreary; for the miniatures
and books, and old china, that were wont to redeem the commonness of
things, were creeping along the shores of the Rhone or mewed up in an
obscure station, and though flowers were cheap in the street-sellers'
baskets, not a blossom brightened the dingy drawing-room.
"How odious this house looks," said Lady Felicia, while she scanned the
cards in a cheap china dish, and read the pencilled messages upon some
of them. "I see your Aunt Mildred and your Aunt Olivia have called,
surprised not to find us. But not a word from Lady Helstone, though I
know she is in town. She was always heartless and selfish--but as she
is the one I rely on for taking you about, we shall have to be civil to
her."
"Poor dear Grannie, I really don't want to be taken out. I don't care
a scrap about Society--and, above all, I don't want to cost you
money for clothes, and I couldn't go to parties without all sorts of
expensive things."
"Don't talk nonsense, Vera. I am used to scraping and pinching. It
will only mean pinching a little harder. But there's time enough to
settle all that before you are eighteen. Of course, you will have to be
launched, if you are ever to marry--unless you want to sneak off to a
registry office with the first scribbler you meet."
"Oh, Grannie," cried Vera, and walked out of the room in a sad silence,
which made Grannie rather sorry for herself--as a poor old woman who
was being trampled upon by everybody.
The long hot journey had tired her limbs and her nerves, and this damp,
grey London, this shabby lodging-house had been too irritating for
placid endurance. Somebody must suffer; and Lidcott, that sturdy child
of the West Riding, was apt to retaliate.
Vera was perfectly sincere in her indifference to that grand event
of "coming out," which had always been held before her by Grannie as
the crown of girlhood, the crisis upon which all a young person's
future depended, the opening of a gate into the paradise of youth,
the paradise of dances and dinners, treats of every kind, where
beauty was to be surrounded with a circle of admirers, among whom
there would be at least one--the eligible, the rich, the inexpressive
he--who could lift her at once to the _summum bonum_, whether in
Carlton House Terrace, or Park Lane, whether titled or untitled---but
rich--rich--_ricconaccio_.
No, Vera had no eager desire for crowds of well-dressed people--for
music and lights and dancing, and those things that she had heard
the young cousins, still in the school-room, talk about with rapture
and longing. The joys she longed for, while the slow spring and the
fierce hot summer went by in the dull side street and the lodging-house
drawing-room, were woods and streams, and rural joys of all kinds,
such as she had known in that one happy summer of her childhood, for
slow rides in leafy glades, in and out of sunshine and shadow, for
the sound of a waterfall on moonlit nights, for young companions like
the cousin who was once so kind--for many more books, and spacious
rooms, and portraits of historic people--beautiful women--valiant
soldiers--looking at her from a panelled wall. These were the things
she wanted, and the want of which made life dreary.
In that long summer and autumn she often thought of the girl who was
lying between the olive woods and the tideless sea; and, meditating on
that short life, she could but compare it with her own, and wonder at
the difference.
Is was not the difference that wealth made--but the difference that
love made, that filled her with wonder as she recalled all that Giulia
had told her of her childhood and girlhood.
She looked back at her own fatherless years--remembering but as a dream
the father whom she had last seen on her birthday, when she was three
years old--and when a woman in whose rustic cottage she had been living
for what seemed a long time, took her to the nursing home where the
fading poet was lying on a sofa in a garden. It was to be her birthday
treat to visit "poor Papa, who would be sure to have something pretty
for her." But the poet had no birthday gift for his only child. He had
been too ill to think much about anything but his own weakness and
pain. He had not remembered his little girl's third anniversary. He
could only give her kisses, and sighs and tears; and she clung to him
fondly, and said again and again: "Poor Papa, poor Papa!"
Kind Mrs. Humphries, of the pretty rose-covered cottage, had told her
that Papa was ill, and had taught her to pray for him.
"Please God, bless poor Papa, and make him well again."
The prayer was not answered, and that spectral face, beautiful even on
the brink of the grave, was all she could remember of a father.
And then had come the long, slow years with Grannie, who had been
kind after her lights, but who required the subjugation of almost all
childish impulses and inclinations. Long years in which Vera had to
amuse herself in silence, and play no games that involved running about
a room, or disturbing things. She had been surrounded by things that
she must not touch; and her rare toys, the occasional gifts of aunts
and cousins, were objects of reprobation if they were ever left on a
chair or a table where they could offend Grannie's eye. The winter
season, when there was only one habitable room, was terrible; for then
Grannie was always there, and to play was impossible. She could only
sit on a hassock in her favourite corner and look at old story books,
too painfully familiar; and if she began to sing or to talk to herself,
there came a reproachful murmur from Grannie's sofa: "My dear child, do
you think I have no nerves?"
The summer was better, for she could play in the second-floor bedroom,
which she shared with Lidcott, a room with three windows upon which
the sun beat fiercely, but where she could talk to her dolls, and sing
them to sleep, and do anything except run about, as she had always to
remember that every step would beat like a hammer upon poor Grannie's
head.
And in these years Giulia, who was within a few months of her own
age, was being indulged with everything that could make the bliss of
childhood, in the loveliest country in the world, and then, as she grew
into a thinking, reasonable being, she had been her father's dearest
companion, his distraction after the dull round of business, his
choicest recreation, his unfailing delight. It was worth while to die
young after such a childhood, Vera thought.
Grannie's winter in Italy had been a success, and she had a summer
unspoiled by bronchial trouble. She wore her velvet gowns and her
diamond earrings very often, and had her hair dressed in the latest
fashion, with diamond combs gleaming amidst the silvery white, and was
quite a splendid Lady Felicia at the friendly dinners and small and
early parties to which she accepted invitations from her nieces and
very old friends. She had been reproached with burying herself alive,
but this year her health was better, and she was going out a little
more; chiefly on Vera's account, who was now seventeen, and must really
make her début next season. Her nieces told her that Vera was pretty
enough to make a sensation, or at any rate to have offers.
"If she does, I suppose she will refuse the best of them, as her mother
did," Lady Felicia said bitterly; "but whatever happens I shall not
interfere. If she chooses to fall in love with the first detrimental
who proposes to her, I won't forbid the banns."
Perhaps there was more of the serpent than the dove in this protest
from Lady Felicia. In long hours of brooding over an irrevocable past
it may have been borne in upon her that if she had not harped so much,
and so severely, upon the necessity of marrying for money, her daughter
might not have been so determined to marry for love.
The aunts who praised Vera did not forget to add that she would never
be as handsome as her mother.
"She may 'furnish,' as the grooms call it," said Lady Helstone, who
rode to hounds and bred her hunters; "but she will never be a striking
beauty. She won't take away the men's breath when she comes into
a ballroom. I'm afraid it may be the detrimentals, the poets, and
æsthetes, and impressionist painters, who will rave about her. She is
ethereal--she is poetical--and in spite of the man Davis she looks
thoroughbred to the points of her shoes. After all, she may make a
really good match, and make things much more comfortable for you by and
by, poor dear Auntie."
"I shall never be a dependent upon my granddaughter's husband," Grannie
retorted, with an offended blush. "The pittance which has sufficed for
me since my own husband's death, and which has enabled me to keep out
of debt, will last me to the end. I require nobody's assistance--and as
I have never found blood-relations eager to help me, I should certainly
expect nothing from a grandson-in-law; if there is such a thing."
* * * * *
Vera felt a sudden thrill when Lady Felicia told her that they were to
winter at San Marco. She hardly knew whether the thrill was of pleasure
or of pain. The place would be full of melancholy thoughts. Giulia's
grave would be the one significant point in the landscape; but the
long parade, with its shabby date palms and ragged pepper trees, could
never again be as dull and grey and heartbreakingly monotonous as it
had been a year ago; for now San Marco was peopled with the shadows of
things that had once been lovely and dear. Now all that beauty which
had once been far away and unknown had been made familiar in the long
drives in the big, luxurious carriage drawn by gay and eager horses,
whose work seemed joy--and the al fresco luncheons on the summit of
romantic hills, with all the glory of the Western Ligura laid out below
them like an enchanter's carpet, and the semi-Moorish cities, and Roman
ruins of circus and citadel, the white cathedrals--remote among the
mountains, yet alive with priests and nuns and picturesque villagers,
and the sound of bells and swinging of censers--San Marco no longer
meant only that level walk above the sluggish sea. It meant historical
Italy. Her feelings about the place had altered utterly after the
coming of the Provanas, and her mind was full of her lost friend
when she alighted at the door of the Hôtel des Anglais, where Madame
Canincio was waiting to receive honoured guests.
Inmates who stopped till the very end of the season, and who came again
next year, were worthy of highest honour (albeit they paid the minimum
second-floor _pension_; and though Canincio had audaciously declared
that he lost money by the _arrangement_). Lady Felicia was a distinct
asset, were it only for keeping the Cit's wife, Lady Jones, in her
place.
Vera looked sadly along the spacious corridor, that had been so bright
with flowers during the Provana occupation.
"Have you nice people on your first floor, Madame Canincio?" she asked.
"Alas, no, Mademoiselle. Our noble floor is empty. If we had six third
floors and ten fourth floors, we could let every room--but for the
first floor there is no one. Rich people do not come to San Marco. They
want gambling-tables and pigeon-shooting, or the vulgarity of Nice."
"I suppose you have heard nothing of Signor Provana since he left?"
"Nothing, Mademoiselle, except that he is in Rome, and one of the
greatest men there. And he was so simple and plain in his ways, and
always so kind and courteous. He wanted so little for himself, and
never once found fault with our chef, who, good as he is, must have
been inferior to his own."
"I hope your chef did not give him risotto or chopped-up liver, or
macaroni three times a week for luncheon," Lady Felicia said, sourly.
It was not till Grannie had been read to sleep that Vera was free to go
where she liked. She had done her morning's work in the flower market,
and at the so-called circulating library, where the Tauchnitz novels of
the year before last were to be found by the explorer, stagnating on
dusty shelves. This morning duty had to be done hurriedly, as Grannie
liked to see the flower-vases filled, and a novel on her sofa-table
when she emerged from her bedroom, ready to begin her monotonous day.
Vera was secretary as well as reader, and had to write long letters to
her aunts, at Grannie's dictation; letters which were not pleasant to
her to write on account of the sense of injury and general discontent
which was the _Leit-Motiv_ running through them. In the beginning of
her secretaryship she had sometimes ventured a mild remonstrance, such
as, "Oh, Grannie, I don't think you ought to say that. I know Aunt
Olivia is very fond of you," or "Aunt Mildred is very affectionate,
and would be the last to neglect you." Whereupon Lady Felicia had told
her that if she presumed to express an opinion, the letters should be
written by Lidcott.
"Her spelling is as eccentric as the Paston letters; but I would rather
put up with that than with your impertinence."
It was rather late in the afternoon before the drowsy Tauchnitz novel
produced its soporific effect upon Grannie, though Vera had been
reading in a semi-slumber; but at last the withered eyelids fell, and
the grey head lay back upon the down pillow, and Vera might beckon
to Lidcott, who crept in from the bedroom, with her work-basket, and
seated herself by the open window most remote from Grannie, leaving
Vera free to go out for her afternoon walk; only till five o'clock,
when she must be at home to pour out Grannie's tea.
A church clock struck as she left the hotel garden, the garden where
she had often sat with Giulia, who used to breakfast on the lawn, and
only leave the garden to go to the carriage--spending as much of her
life as possible under the blue sky.
All show of brightness had vanished from the stretch of thin grass and
the ragged pepper trees--no pretty chairs or bright Italian draperies,
no gaudy-plumaged cockatoo, or be-ribboned Blenheims. All was desolate,
and tears clouded Vera's eyes, as she paused to look at the place where
she had been happy.
"How could I ever forget that she was going to die?" she wondered.
"It was she herself who made me forget. She was so full of joy--so
much alive--that I never really believed she was dying. I could not
believe; I never did believe, till she was lying speechless, with death
in her face."
She was going to the cemetery, to her friend's grave. It was almost as
if she were going to Giulia. She could not believe the bright spirit
was quenched, although the lovely form had passed into everlasting
darkness. Somewhere between earth and heaven that happy soul was
conscious of the beauty of the world she had loved, and of the love
that had been given to her--somewhere, not utterly beyond the reach
of those who loved her, that sweet spirit was floating--not dead, but
emancipated.
Miss Thompson had told her of the heroic fortitude behind that
light-hearted gaiety which had been Giulia's special charm. Although
she was sustained by the unconsciousness of her doom, which goes so
often with pulmonary disease, she had not been exempt from suffering.
The sleepless night, the wearying cough, breathlessness, pain,
exhaustion, fever, had all been borne with a sublime patience; and her
only thought when the tardy morning stole at last upon the seeming
endless night--had been of her father. He was never to be told she had
slept badly--or had not slept at all--and it was her own cheerful voice
that answered his inquiry as he stood at the half-open door: "Pretty
well, _Padre mio, si, si_; not a bad night--a pretty good night--very
good, upon the whole." No hint of the weariness, the suffering, of
those long hours--and the nurse, though unwilling, had to indulge
her, and allow the anxious father to be deceived. After all, as Miss
Thompson said, a detail like that could not matter. He knew.
Remembering this, it seemed to Vera that Giulia's death meant
emancipation--a blessed escape from the mortal frame that was fraught
with suffering, to the freedom of the immortal spirit, winged for its
flight to higher horizons, a being with new capacities, new joys--yet
not unremembering those beloved on earth, nay, with a higher power to
love the clay-bound creatures it had loved when it was clay.
In Vera's reverence for her father's genius, there had been much of the
child's unquestioning faith in something it has been told to admire,
for a considerable part of Lancelet Davis's poetry, and that which
his review book showed to have been most appreciated by his critics,
soared far beyond the limits of Vera's understanding. There were
verses which she recited to herself again and again, with a delight
in their music--verses where the words followed each other with an
entrancing melodiousness--but for whose meaning she sought in vain.
A Runic rhyme would have been as clear. She had repeated them dumbly
in the dead hours of the night. Mellifluous lines that had a soothing
charm. Lines that rose and fell like the waves of the sea; and lines
drawn out in a slow monotony like the long, level stretch of wind-swept
marshes--visions of white temples and strange goddesses; but they were
shapeless as dreams to Vera--a confusion of lovely images without one
distinct idea.
There were others of his poems that she understood and loved; the
poems that the critics had mourned over as a disappointment, a falling
away from the promise of a splendid career. There was his story of
his courtship and wedded life, which Vera thought better than "Maud,"
written during his three happy years; and there was a poem called
"Afterwards," written after her mother's death, which she thought
better than "In Memoriam," a poem in which, after descending to the
darkness of the grave, the poet soared to the gate of heaven, and told
how where there is great love there is no such thing as death. The
bond of love is also the bond of the dead and the living. Those who
love with intensity cannot be parted. The spirit returns from behind
the veil, and soul meets soul. Not in the crowded city--not within
the sound of foolish voices, not amidst people or things that are of
the earth earthy--but in the quiet graveyard, in the shadowy gloom of
the forest, in lonely places by the starlit sea, or in the silence of
sleepless nights, that other half of the soul is near, and, though
there is neither voice nor touch, the beloved presence is felt, and the
message of consolation is heard.
It was with her father's poem in her hand that Vera went to the
white-walled enclosure under the hill, where the silver-grey of the
olive woods shivered in the faint wind that could not stir a fibre of
the cypress.
She had no trouble in finding Giulia's resting-place, for the picture
of the spring morning when she had stood beside the open grave was in
her mind, as if the funeral had been yesterday. It was at the farther
end of the cemetery, in a little solitude guarded by a triangle of
cypresses that marked the end of the enclosure, a spot where the ground
rose considerably above the level of the larger space. Upon this higher
level the massive marble tomb--so severely simple, so dazzling in its
whiteness--dominated the lower plane, where memorial devices of every
shape and form, Gothic cross, and broken column, winged angel, inverted
torch, and Grecian urn, seemed poor and trivial by comparison.
It was a massive, oblong tomb without device or symbol, and only an
artist would have been conscious of the delicate workmanship with which
every member of the unobtrusive mouldings had been executed. There was
no elaborate ornament, only a Doric simplicity, and the perfection of
finely finished work.
The same simplicity marked the brief inscription on the level slab.
"Giulia, the only child of Mario Provana." This--with the date of birth
and death---was all. No record of parental love, nothing for the world
to know, except that a father's one ewe lamb had lived and died.
A yew hedge, breast high, made a quadrangular enclosure which isolated
Giulia's resting-place--a cemetery within a cemetery--and, at the end
facing Genoa and the morning sun, there was a broad marble bench, and
here Vera sat for nearly an hour, reading her father's poem, the work
of his last year, written after the hand of death had touched him.
It was an hour of pensive thought, and as she pondered over pages where
every line was familiar, it seemed to her that Giulia's spirit could
not be remote from the friend whose sudden tears fell on the page,
where some deeper melancholy in the verse brought last year's sorrow
back with the force of a new grief.
The sun was low when she left the cemetery, and the shiver that comes
with sundown chilled her as she hurried back to the hotel, more than
five minutes late for Grannie's tea. But the following afternoon, and
the day after that, she went back to the Roman bench, and sat there
till sunset, with the green cloth volume that had grown shabby with
much use, and her memory of Giulia, for her only companions. After
this she went there every afternoon, sometimes with "Afterwards,"
sometimes with a volume of Byron or Shelley. The sense of dullness
and monotony that had depressed her in her walk up and down the parade
under the palm trees seldom came upon her in this silent enclosure,
where the yew hedge--that only wealth could have attained in so brief
a time--screened her from observation. She sometimes heard the voices
of tourists admiring the monuments, or reading the epitaphs, in the
cemetery; but it was rarely that anyone looked in at the opening in the
green quadrangle where she sat.
It was more than a fortnight after her first visit to this mournful
solitude when for the first time Vera was startled by the sound of
approaching footsteps, and looking up she saw the tall form of Mario
Provana, standing in the golden sunset. She rose as he came towards
her, and gave him her hand, a hand so slender that it seemed to
disappear in the broad palm and strong fingers that clasped it.
"I was told that you were in San Marco," he said; "but I never thought
I should find you here. Then you have not forgotten?"
"I shall never forget. I come here every afternoon with my father's
book--the poem he wrote when he knew that he was dying."
"May I sit by your side for a few minutes? I should like to see your
father's book. I have not forgotten that he was a poet. Since you told
me that, it has seemed as if I ought to have known beforehand. You look
like a poet's child. I suppose everybody who saw Miranda for the first
time, without having seen Prospero, ought to have known that her father
was a magician."
His tone was grave and thoughtful, and his speech hardly sounded like a
compliment. There was no air of gallantry to alarm her.
He took the shabby little volume from her hand, and turned the pages
slowly, pausing to read a few lines, here and there.
"'Part the first, Thanatos, Part the second, Eros.' From darkness
to light," he said, in the deep, grave voice which was her most
distinctive impression of Mario Provana. "He believed in the victory
of spirit over flesh. He was a poet; and faith is easy where the
imagination is strong. Tennyson knew that all religion, all peace of
mind, hung upon that one vital question--the Afterwards--the other
world that is to give us back lost love, lost youth, lost genius, lost
joy. I am not a religious man, Vera; indeed, to the Church of Rome I
count as an infidel, because I cannot subject my mind to the outward
forms and conventions which seem to me no more than the dry husks of
spiritual things. But I am more of a Pantheist than an infidel--my
gospel is the gospel of Christ--my faith is the faith of Spinoza."
And then, after a silence, he said:
"I called you Vera just now. Do you mind? My daughter loved you as if
you had been her sister. May I call you by your pretty Christian name?"
"Pray do. I'm sure Grannie won't mind," Vera answered naïvely.
"We will ask Grannie's permission," he said, with a grave smile. "If
you will allow me to walk back to the 'Anglais' with you, I will call
on Lady Felicia this afternoon, and we can get that small matter
settled."
He talked to her as if she had been a child; and the difference between
his forty years and her seventeen made the fatherly tone seem natural.
He walked slowly round the tomb, lingering beside it now and then,
and leaning his hand on the marble slab while he stood with bent head
looking at the inscription, in a pause that seemed long; and then he
rejoined Vera, and they left the cemetery together.
"You are not out yet, I think," he said, when they had walked a little
way. "I read a paragraph in a London paper to the effect that Lady
Felicia Cunningham's granddaughter, Miss Veronica Davis, the daughter
of the poet whose early death had been a loss to literature, was to be
presented next season."
"It is so foolish of them to write like that, as if I were a person of
importance; when Grannie is so poor that it will be cruel to let her
spend a quarter's income upon a Court dress and party frocks--and I
don't care a scrap about parties or the Court."
"What a singular young lady you must be. I doubt if I could find your
parallel in London or Rome. If you don't care for society, what are the
things that make your idea of happiness?"
"Beautiful places, and the sea, books and music, and Shakespeare's
plays," she answered quite simply. "I saw Henry Irving in 'Hamlet,'
when I was twelve years old. It was my birthday, and my kindest aunt
took me to her box at the Lyceum. I have never forgotten that night."
"You admired the actor?"
"I admired Hamlet. I never remembered that he was an actor," she
answered, while her eyes brightened, and her cheek flushed with
enthusiasm. "But when someone told me suddenly that Sir Henry Irving
was dead, I felt as if one great joy had gone out of the world. I saw
Browning once--at an afternoon party at my aunt's; and she took me to
him as he stood among a group of young people, talking and laughing,
and told him who my father was; and he was too kind for words, and
patted my head, and stooped and asked me to kiss him. I knew nothing
about poetry then, not even about my father's, but now when I read
Browning, I always recall the noble face and the silvery hair, and I am
heart-broken when I think that he is dead, and that I shall never see
him again."
She stopped, blushing at her own audacity, and surprised at finding
herself talking as she had never talked to Grannie, but as she had
often talked to Provana's daughter.
Lady Felicia received the unexpected visitor with exceeding
graciousness, and showed a friendly interest in Signor Provana's
doings. She hoped he was going to spend some time at San Marco.
"I have a selfish interest in the question," she said, with her urbane
smile, "for at present Dr. Wilmot is the only person in the place who
has intelligence enough to make conversation possible. This poor child
and I come back to the 'Anglais' to find the same obese widow, the same
pinched spinsters with wisps of faded hair scraped over their poor
heads, too conscientious to put their trust in Lichtenstein. There is
one poor creature who would be almost pretty if she knew how to put on
her clothes and would treat herself to a wig."
Lady Felicia prattled gaily, not considering it her duty to put on a
mournful air and remind Provana of his bereavement. It was half a year
ago--and it was better taste to ignore the melancholy past. Vera busied
herself at the tea-table, providing for all Grannie's wants before she
gave the guest his tea. He looked colossal as he stood beside the small
wicker tea-table, and the fragile figure of the girl sitting there, in
her dark blue serge frock, a frock two years old, from a cheap tailor.
Lady Felicia had a convenient theory, that the intrinsic value
of clothes hardly mattered. It was the putting on that was the
consequence; and this philosophy, severely instilled into Vera's
growing mind, had certainly resulted in an exquisite neatness that went
some way to prove the truth of the theory.
In answer to friendly inquiries, Signor Provana told Lady Felicia that
he was staying at the "Metropole," and might possibly take another week
of quiet rest before he went back to Rome, where he was to spend the
winter.
"Rome and London are my two counting-houses," he said; "and I have to
divide my life between the two cities, with an occasional fortnight in
New York, where I have offices, and an American partner."
"How you must hate London after Rome," said Vera.
"You know Rome?"
"Only in books--Byron--and Corinne."
"Corinne sounds very old-fashioned," Grannie apologised, "but Vera has
been brought up by an old woman, and has had to put up with an old
woman's books. Vera and I can just afford to live, but we can't afford
to buy things we don't want."
Vera blushed hotly at this remark. She thought Grannie talked too much
about her poverty. It seemed quite as bad form as if Signor Provana had
expatiated upon his wealth.
Nothing could exceed Grannie's graciousness. Yes, of course, Provana
was to call the child Vera. "Miss Davis" would be absurdly formal.
"Even if Davis were not such a horribly commonplace name," added
Grannie, at which Vera protested that she had never been ashamed of her
father's name.
"An utterly ridiculous name for a poet!" And then Grannie went on to
lament that Signor Provana should think of going back to Rome in a
week. "But in that case I hope you will be charitable, and take tea
with me every afternoon."
She said "with me," not "with us"--ignoring the child.
Her hours were so long and so dull, she complained, and she loved
conversation; to hear about, and talk about, everything that was going
on in the world; the political and the social, the scientific and the
literary world. Art, letters, everything interested her; and she had
only such driblets of news as Dr. Wilmot could bring her.
"The man is fairly intelligent, but oh, so narrow," she complained.
"It will be an act of real benevolence if you will drop in at
tea-time," urged Grannie, when Provana was taking leave.
He promised to be benevolent, to take tea with Grannie every afternoon,
if so dull a person's company could give her any pleasure. He knew no
one at San Marco, wanted to know no one. He had come there only to be
near his daughter for a little while, just a short spell of thought and
rest.
"If I had been a good Catholic, I should have gone into retreat at the
nearest monastery," he said; "but my religion is too vague and shadowy
for such discipline; so I just wander about among the woods and hills,
and think, and remember."
The profound melancholy with which those words were spoken convinced
Grannie that, although his sorrow was half a year old, it was still an
absorbing grief, and that she must be prepared to take him seriously.
Vera felt a certain shyness about going to the spot where so many of
her afternoons had been spent. Signor Provana might be there before
her, and she would seem to intrude upon his sorrow. He had told them
why he had come to San Marco. He must want to be alone with sad
thoughts and cherished memories.
She took last year's dull walk on the parade, and met several of her
hotel acquaintances, one of whom, no less a personage than Lady Jones,
stopped to talk.
"I hear you had a visitor yesterday afternoon," she said; "the Italian
millionaire. Miss Mason saw him leave the hotel after dark. He must
have stopped with her ladyship quite a long time."
Lady Jones always talked of Grannie as her ladyship.
"I hope he has got over the loss of his daughter."
"In six months!" cried Vera. "How could you suppose such a thing!"
"Men's grief never lasts very long, not even a widower's," said Lady
Jones; "and I've always noticed that the more a widower wants to throw
himself into his wife's grave at the funeral, the sooner he begins to
think about marrying again. And from the fuss Signor Provana made over
his daughter, I should have expected six months would have been long
enough to make him forget her."
"I don't think he is that kind of man," Vera said gravely, trying to
move away; but Lady Jones detained her.
"What's your hurry?" she asked. "You must find it awfully dull walking
alone every afternoon."
"I rather like being alone--if I can have a book," Vera answered,
glancing at the little volume under her arm, and thinking how far the
charm of solitude surpassed Lady Jones's conversation.
"Well, I'll walk a little way with you," said that lady, with
exasperating patronage. "I don't like to see a young girl leading such
a dull life. Why don't you never come down to the drawing-room of an
evening?"
"I don't want to leave Grannie."
"You'd find us quite gay after your solitary salong. Two bridge tables,
and besique, and sometimes even games, How, when, and where, and
Consequences."
"I hate cards, and I like books better than society," Vera answered
frankly.
"Well, you are an oddity. But you seem to have a high opinion of this
Italian gentleman."
"No one could help liking Signor Provana after seeing him with his
daughter--and I was a good deal with them."
"Yes, driving out with them on all the most expensive excursions. They
quite took you up, didn't they? And it must have been very nice for you
to go about in such a luxurious way after being cooped up with Gran'ma."
"They were very kind."
"He's a fine-looking man," said Lady Jones thoughtfully. "Not what
anyone could call handsome; but a fine figure, and carries himself
well. I suppose he has been in the Army. Most of these foreigners have
to do a bit of soldiering in their young days."
They were at the end of the parade, and Vera stopped, and held out her
hand to her insistent companion.
"Aren't you coming back?" asked Lady Jones.
"Not yet. I shall sit here and read for a little while."
"Don't you go and get a chill and make her ladyship angry with you.
She won't like Dr. Wilmot's coming every day, or twice a day if he can
find an excuse for it--as he did when I had my influenzer. But, of
course, he knew I could afford to pay him. Well, O revore, dear," and
the portly form that had been blocking out the western glow over the
promontory of Bordighera slowly removed itself.
Vera was not destined to be alone that afternoon. She had not read
three pages when a tall figure came between her and the light, and she
rose hastily to acknowledge Signor Provana's greeting.
"It is too near sunset for you to be sitting there," he said. "Will you
walk a little way with me--until five o'clock?"
Vera shut her book, and they walked on slowly and in silence to the
gate of the cemetery, and still in silence till they stood by the white
tomb.
There were flowers lying upon the slab, choice flowers, in their first
freshness; and Vera thought that Provana had laid them there that
afternoon.
They stood beside the tomb for some minutes, till the chapel clock
struck the quarter before five, and no word was spoken till they were
going back to the gate. Then Provana began to talk of his daughter,
opening his heart to the girl she had loved.
He talked of her childhood, of her education, the bright, eager mind
that made learning a delight, the keen interest in all that was most
worthy to be admired, the innate appreciation of all that was best in
literature and art, her love of music, and of the beautiful in all
things. He was sure of Vera's sympathy, and that certainty made it easy
to talk of his girl, whose name had rarely passed his lips in the long
half-year of mourning.
"I have never talked of her since Miss Thompson left me," he said;
"there was no one who would understand or care. There were friends who
were kind and would have pitied me; but I could not endure their pity.
It was easier to stand alone, and keep an iron wall between my heart
and the world. But you were her companion in those last weeks; you are
of her own age; you seem a part of herself, as if you were really her
sister, left behind to mourn her, almost as I do."
After this confidence he made no more apologies for the sad note in
all his conversation, as he and Vera loitered in the place of graves,
or walked in the lemon orchards and olive woods on the hill-side above
the cemetery. It became a settled thing for them to walk together every
afternoon in the half-hour before Lady Felicia's tea-time; and as the
week that Provana had talked of drew near its close, their rambles
took a wider range, always with Grannie's approval, and they visited
the white towns on the hills where they had been with Giulia and her
governess in the golden spring-time. It was rapture to Vera to tread
the narrow mule-paths, winding through wood and orchard, to walk with
light, quick feet through scenes where everything was beautiful and
romantic; to visit wayside shrines, and humble chapels hidden in the
silver grey of the century-old trees, or to talk to the country women
tramping homeward, carrying their baskets of the ripe black fruit.
Provana helped her in her talk with the women, and contrived that
they should understand her shy little discourse, the broken words and
stumbling sentences.
Lady Felicia, usually so severe a stickler for etiquette, was curiously
lax at San Marco, and could see nothing strange or unseemly in these
unchaperoned rambles with the Roman financier, who, as she observed to
Dr. Wilmot, was so obviously correct in all his ideas, to say nothing
of his being almost old enough to be Vera's grandfather.
"Say father," said the doctor, smiling. "But you are perfectly right in
your appreciation of Provana. He is a man of the highest character, and
you may very well waive all conventionality where he is concerned."
Signor Provana did not leave San Marco at the end of the week. He
stayed from day to day; but he was always going to-morrow.
As time went by he and Vera found a world of ideas and experiences to
talk about. In the confidence that grew with every hill-side ramble,
with every half-hour spent among ruined convents or Roman remains,
they became licensed egotists, and talked of themselves and their own
feelings with unconscious self-absorption.
Led on from trifles to speak of vital things, Provana told Vera the
story of his unloved youth, motherless before his sixth birthday, and
soon under the subjection of a stepmother who disliked him.
"I was an ugly boy," he said, "and her only child was as beautiful as
the Belvedere Apollo, a creature to be worshipped, and I was made to
feel the contrast. I had inherited my English mother's plain features
and plain ways. I had none of the graces that make children adorable.
My father was not unkind, but he was indifferent, and left me to
servants, or later to my tutor, a German, middle-aged, learned, and
severely practical, a man to whom affection and emotion were unknown
quantities. It was always kept before me that I was to succeed to a
great business, to the certainty of wealth, and the paramount purpose
of my education was to make me a money-spinning machine.
"My brother's death in the flower of boyhood hardened my father's
heart against me; and the indifference to which I had resigned myself
became undisguised dislike. I lived in a frozen atmosphere; and of
sheer necessity had to devote all my energies to the barren ambition of
the man whose task in life is to sustain and augment the fortune that
others have created. That is where the emptiness of my career comes in,
Vera. A fortune inherited from those who have gone before him can give
no dignity to a man's life. He is no better than a clerk, succeeding to
a stool in a counting-house. For a man who has laboured and invented,
who has lived through long, slow years of hardship and self-denial,
who has endured the world's contempt, and persevered in the teeth of
disappointment, over such a man's career success may shed a golden
glory. He is a conqueror who has fought and won, and may be proud even
of a triumph that brings him nothing but money. But I could have no
pride in a career that was mapped out for me before I was born. All I
can ever be proud of is that personally caring nothing for riches, I
have been a conscientious worker, and have done what I was expected to
do."
He told Vera how his own unloved childhood had been in his mind when
his wife died, and he took his motherless girl to his heart, and, while
she sobbed against his breast, swore dumbly that she should never know
the need of a mother's love; and that which had begun as a duty became
afterwards the dominating purpose of his life--the thing for which he
lived.
"There had been a time after her mother's death when my heart was
frozen, and that sweet child's presence was something that called for
fortitude rather than affection, but that lovely nature soon prevailed
even over grief, and my daughter crept into my desolate heart, my
consolation and my joy."
In those quiet walks these two mortals, so far apart in age, in
experiences, and in mental tendencies, became curiously intimate,
telling each other almost everything that could be told about two
dissimilar existences, each interested in vivid pictures of an unknown
world, the child's monotonous life with an old woman, her glimpses
of more joyous houses, the young cousin, the Arab pony and family of
dogs--the old English garden, steeped in the August sunshine; and again
of the dull upstairs-room in London, and the solitary hours of silent
play, in which childish fancies had to serve instead of playfellows,
the doll that was almost alive, the toy train that travelled to
fairyland, the old, old stories in the ragged books, "Cinderella" and
the "Forty Thieves." Provana listened to these naïve revelations as if
they had been the childish experiences of a Newton or a Shakespeare,
while Vera hung enthralled upon his memories of the liberation of
Italy, the tempestuous years of revolt and battle, Victor Emanuel,
Garibaldi, Cavour, the giant of thought and will-power, whose bold
policy had made a great kingdom.
Afternoon tea in Lady Felicia's _salon_ had become an institution in
that week which spun itself out to fifteen days, and tea-time generally
lasted for an hour and a half, since Grannie wanted to hear everything
that Signor Provana had heard or read of the world of action since
yesterday. As a dweller in London for nearly half his life, he was as
keenly interested and as instructed in English politics, literature,
science, and art as any Englishman Grannie had ever known; and she
seemed to feel an inexhaustible interest in his conversation. She was
intelligent, and often said good things; so this appreciation must
needs be flattering, and Provana was naturally gratified. Flowers and
Tauchnitz novels were almost daily tributes to Grannie; but no tribute
was offered to Vera, no tribute except the tender watchfulness of dark
grey eyes, eyes that followed the fragile figure as she moved about the
room, or went in and out through the window in the desultory half-hour
when her duties at the tea-table were finished. She left him to devote
himself to Grannie in this half-hour, and showed how much milder
was her interest in the talk of the political world, and people of
importance in London, than in Provana's personal reminiscences. It was
his life that had interested her, not the lives of other people.
They had come to the evening before his last day at San Marco. He must
be on his way to Rome the day after to-morrow--that was inevitable.
"I should like to take Vera a little farther afield to-morrow, Lady
Felicia," Provana said, as he took up his hat to go. "She has never
seen the Chocolate Mills, though the way to them is one of the most
picturesque within range. One must ride or walk. There is no carriage
road; but if you will let Vera come with me to-morrow afternoon, I
will bring the surest-footed donkey in San Marco, and his owner for
our guide. I shall go on foot. The walk will be nothing for me; but it
would be too tiring for your granddaughter."
Lady Felicia hesitated, but only enough to make her consent seem the
more gracious.
"The poor child has been pining to see the Chocolate Mills; but for me
it was impossible," she concluded.
"We must start soon after your luncheon; and if you can give me time
for a little conversation before we go, I shall be greatly obliged,"
Signor Provana said, with a curious gravity.
Vera wondered what he could have to say to Grannie that needed to be
arranged for beforehand. She felt a thrill of horror at the idea that
Lady Felicia's frequent reference to her small means might have given
him a wrong impression, and that he was going to offer to lend her
money.
"You must allow that I have not let _les convenances_ stand in the way
of your enjoyment of Signor Provana's society," Lady Felicia said,
with her kindest smile, when the visitor had gone. "There are very
few men--even of his age--whom I could permit you to walk about with,
even in such a half-civilised place as San Marco; but Provana is an
exceptional man, a person whom scandal could never touch."
"And I think you like being with him," Grannie said, after a long
pause, in which she had reclined in her most reposeful attitude,
smiling at the after-glow above Bordighera.
It was not that fine promontory only, but all life and the world that
Lady Felicia saw before her bathed in golden light.
Certainly Grannie had been curiously indulgent, curiously heedless
of conventionalities, and curiously forgetful of the ways of the
world in which she had lived from youth upward, when she thought that
because San Marco was a quiet little place that had never basked in
the sunlight of fashion, there would be no ill-natured talk about her
granddaughter's _tête-à-tête_ rambles with the Roman millionaire.
To say that people had talked--the season visitors at the "Anglais,"
the spinsters and widows, the invalid parsons and their wives, who
were mostly languishing for something to talk about--to say that these
had talked about Vera and her millionaire would not have described the
situation. They had talked of nothing else; and the talk had grown more
and more animated and exciting with every day that witnessed another
audacious sauntering to the cemetery, or ascent of a mule-path through
the wood. Spinsters, whose thin legs had seldom carried them beyond the
parade, adipose widows, whose scantness of breath made the gentlest
ascent labour and trouble, took a sudden interest in the little white
chapels and shrines among the olives, and happened to meet Provana and
Vera returning from the hill, which made something to whisper about
with one's next neighbour at dinner, and was at least an agreeable
change from the daily grumbling about the bill of fare.
"Veal again! and as stringy as ever.--Yes, I came face to face with
them. He stalked past me in his gloomy way; and she did not even blush,
but just said, good afternoon, as bold as brass."
"How Lady Felicia can be so utterly regardless of etiquette!"
"Oh, it's just like the rest of the smart set. They think they can defy
the universe; and it's a surprise to them when they find themselves in
the divorce court!"
"I don't believe Lady Felicia was ever in the smart set. You have to
be rich for that. I put her down as poor and proud, and those sort are
generally ultra-particular."
"I believe she's playing a deep game," said the spinster, and then the
two friends looked down the long, narrow table to the corner where Vera
sat, silent and thoughtful, pale in her black evening frock.
"Do you think her so remarkably pretty?" asked the spinster, following
on a discussion in the drawing-room after luncheon, when the parsons
had expressed their admiration of Vera's delicate beauty.
"Far from it," answered the plethoric widow. "You may call her
ethereal," which one of the parsons had done; "I call her half-starved.
She has no complexion and no figure, and looks as if she had never had
enough to eat."
* * * * *
It mattered little to Lady Felicia next day--after a quarter of an
hour's grave conversation with Signor Provana, or to Vera, putting on
her hat in the sunny little front room, and hearing the donkey's bells
jingling in the garden below; it mattered really nothing to either
grandmother or granddaughter what the world, as represented by the
table d'hôte of the "Anglais," might think of them. Lady Felicia lay
back among her pillows, smiling at the sea and the far-off hills as
she had never smiled before; for, indeed, that lovely coast had taken
a new colour under a new light--not the light that never was on sea or
land, but the more mundane light of prosperity, a smiling future in
which there should be no more the year in year out effort to keep up
appearances upon inadequate means.
And yet that smiling future depended upon a girl's whim, and at a word
from Vera that cloud-built castle might vanish into thin air.
"She could never be such an idiot as to refuse him," mused Grannie,
disposed to be sanguine; "and, what is better, I believe she is really
in love with him. After all, he is her first admirer, and that goes for
a good deal. I was in love with an archbishop of seventy when I was
fifteen; and I remember him now as quite the most delightful man I ever
met."
* * * * *
Provana was walking about the garden, while the surest-footed donkey
in San Marco shook his bells and pawed up the loose gravel with the
forefoot of impatience, lazily watched by his owner, a sun-baked lad of
nineteen.
There were several pairs of eyes on the watch at various windows when
Vera came tripping out in her neat blue riding-skirt and sailor hat. It
was her kit for the riding-school near Bryanston Square, where Grannie
had given her a season's lessons, lest she should grow up without the
young lady's indispensable accomplishment of sitting straight on a
horse, and going over a fence without swinging out of her saddle.
She had brought a handful of sugar for the donkey, and he had to be
fed and patted and talked about before Signor Provana was allowed to
take the slender foot in his broad hand while she sprang lightly to the
saddle; and then the little company moved away, Vera on her great grey
donkey, bells jingling, red and blue tassels flying, Provana walking
beside her, and the sunburnt youth at the donkey's head, ready to hold
the bridle when they came to the narrow hill-tracks.
"Do they take that lad with them to play propriety?" asked the sourest
of all the spinsters, with a malevolent giggle--a question which nobody
answered--while the two parsons agreed that little Miss Davis looked
prettier than ever in her riding clothes.
Provana walked for a long time in absolute silence, while Vera prattled
with the donkey-driver, exchanging scraps of Italian and insisting upon
the donkey's biography.
"How did he call himself?" "Sancho." "Was he called after Don
Quixote's Sancho?" "_Perdona, Signorina--Non so_." "How old was he?
Was he always good? Was he always kindly treated?" His driver assured
her that the beast lived in a land of milk and honey, and seldom felt
the sting of a whip, to emphasise which assurance his driver gave a
sounding whack on Sancho's broad back. The only comfort was that the
back was broad and the animal seemed well fed.
"I would not have let you ride a starveling," Provana said; "but these
people to whom God has given the loveliest land on earth have waited
for the sons of the North to teach them common humanity."
After this he walked on in silence till they were far away from the
"Anglais," slowly climbing a stony ascent that called upon all Sancho's
sure-footedness and the guide's care.
Suddenly, in the silence of the wood, where the light fell like golden
rain between the silver-grey leaves, Provana laid his hand on Vera's,
and said in a low voice:
"I feel as if you and I were going to the end of the world together;
but in half an hour we shall be at the mill, and after that there will
be the short down-hill journey home, and Grannie's tea-table, and the
glory of my last day will be over."
Vera looked at him wonderingly in a shy silence. The words seemed
to mean more than anything he had ever said before. His tone had an
underlying seriousness that was melancholy, and almost intense.
They did not give much time to the mill and the processes of
chocolate-making. The picturesque gorge, the waterfall leaping from
crag to crag, the blue plane of sunlit sea, and the pale grey glimmer
on the purple horizon that was said to be Corsica--these were the
things they had come to look at, and they looked in silence, as if
spell-bound.
"Let us sit here and talk of ourselves, while Tomaso gives Sancho a
rest and a mouthful of oats," Provana said; and he and Vera seated
themselves on a stony bank above the waterfall, while Tomaso and Sancho
retired to a distance of twenty yards, where a bend in the path hid
donkey and driver.
It was not usual for Provana to be silent when they two were alone
together. There always seemed too much that he wanted to say in the
short space of time; but now the minutes went by, seeming long to Vera
in the unusual silence, which she broke at last by asking him, "Were
you ever in Corsica?"
"Often; but we won't talk of that, Vera," taking her hand suddenly. "I
have a question to ask you, and the longer I think about it, the more
difficult it will seem--a question that means my future existence. I
can't wait for eloquent speech. I have no words to-day. Vera, will you
be my wife?"
She looked at him as if she thought he was joking.
"Yes, it has come to that. My happiness depends upon a girl of
eighteen, who thinks that such an offer must be a jest--something to
laugh at when she tells Grannie how foolish Signor Provana was this
afternoon. For me it is life or death. In all those days that we
were together last year never a thought of love came into my mind.
I watched the two faces side by side, and wondered which was the
lovelier, but my mind was too full of sorrow for any other feeling than
gratitude to the girl who helped to make those last days happy for my
dearest. She was my dearest, the only creature I had cared for since
her mother's death. There was no room in my heart for anything but the
father's despairing affection for the child he was soon to lose. It
was when I met you by my darling's grave that your face came back to
me with a strange flash of joy, unexpected, incomprehensible. I had
thought of you seldom in the half year that had parted us; yet in that
moment it seemed to me that I had been longing for you all the time.
And the next day, and the next, with every hour that we were together,
with every time I looked into your sweet face, the more I realised that
the happiness of all my days to come depended upon you. My love did not
expand like a flower creeping slowly through dull earth into beauty and
light. It rose like a flame, instantaneous, unquenchable.
"Will you make me happy, Vera? Will you trust your life to me? Answer,
love, can you trust me?"
Her murmured "Yes" was the nearest thing to silence; but he heard it,
and she was folded in his arms, and felt with a sudden thrill what it
was to be loved with all the strength of a man's passionate heart.