"I always thought you would marry young Lord Newborough. You both
seemed very good friends."
"So we were--until he proposed to me."
And she looked me straight in the face with that clear gaze and those
splendid eyes wide open in wonderment, almost like a child's.
Her character was a strangely complex one. As a tall, willowy girl, in
those early days of our acquaintance, I knew her to be high-minded and
wilful, yet of that sweet affectionate disposition that endeared her to
every one with whom she came into contact. Her nature was so calm and
so sweet that in her love seemed an unconscious impulse. I had often
thought she was surely too soft, too good, too fair to be cast among the
briers of the world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life. The
world is just as cold and pitiless and just as full of pitfalls for the
young and unwary in Mayfair as in Mile End. Hence, to fulfil my promise
to that man now silent in his grave, it was my duty to protect her from
the thousand and one wiles of those who would endeavour to profit by sex
and inexperience.
Her early privations, her hard life in youth while her father was absent
at sea, and those weary months of tramping the turnpikes of England, all
had had their effect upon her. With her, love seemed to be scarcely a
passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a reverie which a
fairy spell dissolved or riveted at pleasure. So exquisitely delicate
was her character, just as was her countenance, that it seemed as if a
touch would profane it. Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes
floating by on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel
than hear, like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense
it charms, like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a
stain of earth, like the light surf severed from the billow which a
breath disperses--such was her nature, so full of that modesty, grace
and tenderness without which a woman is no woman.
As she stood there before me, a frail, delicate figure in her plain
black gown, and her hand in mine, thanking me for the investigation
which I was undertaking in her behalf, and wishing me _bon voyage_, I
shuddered to think of her thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies,
and amid all the corruptions and sharks of society, perhaps without
energy to resist, or will to act, or strength to endure. Alone in such
a case, the end must inevitably be desolation.
I wished her farewell, turning from her with a feeling that, loving her
as I admit I did, I was nevertheless unworthy of her. Yet surely I was
playing a dangerous game!
I had entertained a strong and increasing affection for her ever since
that winter's night down at Helpstone. Still, now that she was
possessor of vast wealth, I felt that the difference in our ages and the
fact that I was a poor man were both barriers to our marriage. Indeed,
she had never exerted any of the feminine wiles of flirtation towards
me; she had never once allowed me to think that I had captivated her.
She had spoken the truth. She regarded me as an elder brother--that was
all.
That same night, as I paced the deck of the Channel steamer in the teeth
of a wintry gale, watching the revolving light of Calais harbour growing
more and more distinct, my thoughts were full of her. Love is the
teacher, grief the tamer, and time the healer of the human heart. While
the engines throbbed, the wind howled and the dark seas swirled past, I
paced up and down puzzling over the playing-card in my pocket and
reflecting upon all that had occurred. The rich fancies of unbowed
youth, the visions of long-perished hopes, the shadows of unborn joys,
the gay colourings of the dawn of existence--what ever my memory had
treasured up, came before me in review, but lived no longer within my
heart.
I recollected that truism of Rochefoucauld's: "Il est difficile de
definer l'amour: ce qu'on en peut dire est que, dans l'ame, c'est un
passion de regner; dans les esprits, c'est une sympathie; et dans le
corps, ce n'est qu'une envie cachee et delicate de posseder ce que l'on
aime, apres beaucoup de mysteres." Yes, I loved her with all my heart,
with all my soul, but to me I recognised that it was not permitted. My
duty, the duty I had promised to fulfil to that dying man whose
life-story had been a secret romance, was to act as Mabel's protector,
and not to become her lover and thus profit by her wealth. Blair had
left his secret to me, in order, no doubt, to place me beyond the
necessity of fortune-hunting, and as it had been lost it was my duty to
him and to myself to spare no effort to recover it.
With these sentiments firmly established within my heart I entered the
_wagon-lit_ at Calais, and started on the first stage of my journey
across Europe from the Channel to the Mediterranean.
Three days later I was strolling up the Via Tornabuoni, in Florence,
that thoroughfare of mediaeval palaces, banks, consulates and chemists'
shops that had been so familiar to me each winter, until I had taken to
hunting in England in preference to the sunshine of the Lung' Arno and
the Cascine. Indeed, some of my early years had been spent in Italy,
and I had grown to love it, as every Englishman does. In that bright
February morning as I passed up the long, crooked street, filled by the
nonchalant Florentines and the wealthy foreigners out for an airing, I
passed many men and women of my acquaintance. Doney's and Giacosa's,
the favourite lounges of the men, were agog with rich idlers sipping
cocktails or that seductive _petit verre_ known in the Via Tornabuoni as
a _piccolo_, the baskets of the flower-sellers gave a welcome touch of
colour to the grim grey of the colossal Palace of the Strozzi, while
from the consulates the flags of various nations, most conspicuous of
all being that of the ever-popular "Major," reminded me that it was the
_festa_ of Santa Margherita.
In the old days, when I used to live _en pension_ with a couple of
Italian artillery officers and a Dutch art-student in the top floor of
one of those great old palaces in the Via dei Banchi, the Via Tornabuoni
used to be my morning walk, for there one meets everybody, the ladies
shopping or going to the libraries, and the men gossiping on the kerb--a
habit quickly acquired by every Englishman who takes up his abode in
Italy.
It was astonishing, too, what a crowd of well-known faces I passed that
morning--English peers and peeresses, Members of Parliament, financial
magnates, City sharks, manufacturers, and tourists of every grade and of
every nation.
His Highness the Count of Turin, returning from drill, rode by laughing
with his aide-de-camp and saluting those he knew. The women mostly wore
their smartest toilettes with fur, because a cold wind came up from the
Arno, the scent of flowers was in the air, bright laughter and incessant
chatter sounded everywhere, and the red-roofed old Lily City was alive
with gaiety. Perhaps no city in all the world is so full of charm nor
so full of contrasts as quaint old Florence, with her wonderful
cathedral, her antique bridge with rows of jewellers' shops upon it, her
magnificent churches, her ponderous palaces, and her dark, silent,
mediaeval streets, little changed, some of them, since the days when
they were trodden by Giotto and by Dante. Time has laid his hand
lightly indeed upon the City of Flowers, but whenever he has done so he
has altered it out of all recognition, and the garish modernity of
certain streets and piazzas surely grates to-day upon those who, like
myself, knew the old city before the Piazza Vittorio--always the Piazza
Vittorio, synonym of vandalism--had been constructed, and the old
Ghetto, picturesque if unclean, was still in existence.
Two men, both of them Italian, stopped to salute me as I walked, and to
wish me _ben tomato_. One was an advocate whose wife was accredited one
of the prettiest women in that city where, strangely enough, the most
striking type of beauty is fair haired. The other was the Cavaliere
Alinari, secretary to the British Consul-General, or the "Major," as
everybody speaks of him.
I had only arrived in Florence two hours before, and, after a wash at
the _Savoy_, had gone forth with the object of cashing a cheque at
French's, prior to commencing my inquiries.
Meeting Alinari, however, caused me to halt for a moment, and after he
had expressed pleasure at my return, I asked--
"Do you, by any chance, happen to know any one by the name of
Melandrini--Paolo Melandrini? His address is given me as Via San
Cristofano, number eight."
He looked at me rather strangely with his sharp eyes, stroked his dark
beard a moment, and replied in English, with a slight accent--
"The address does not sound very inviting, Mr. Greenwood. I have not
the pleasure of knowing the gentleman, but the Via San Cristofano is one
of the poorest and worst streets in Florence, just behind Santa Croce
from the Via Ghibellina. I should not advise you to enter that quarter
at night. There are some very bad characters there."
"Well," I explained, "the fact is I have come down here expressly to
ascertain some facts concerning this person."
"Then don't do it yourself," was my friend's strong advice. "Employ
some one who is a Florentine. If it is a case of confidential
inquiries, he will certainly be much more successful than you can ever
be. The moment you set foot in that street it would be known in every
tenement that an Inglese was asking questions. And," he added with a
meaning smile, "they resent questions being asked in the Via San
Cristofano."