should be married as soon as possible after her school-books are closed,
Philip," Mrs. Churchill went on; "for then, don't you see, she can enter
society--which is always so dangerous--safely; well protected, and yet
quite at liberty as well. I mean, of course, in case she has a good
husband. That is the mother's business, the mother's responsibility, and
I think a mother who does not give her heart to it, her whole soul and
energy, and choose _well_--I think such a mother an infamous woman. In
this case I am sure I have chosen well; I am sure Eva will be happy with
Pierre de Verneuil. They have the same ideas; they have congenial
tastes, both being fond of music and art. And Pierre is a very lovable
fellow; you will think so yourself when you see him."
"And you say she likes him?"
"Very much. I should not have gone on with it, of course, if there had
been any dislike. They are not formally betrothed as yet; that is to
come soon; but the old Count (Pierre's father) has been to see me, and
everything is virtually arranged--a delightful man, the old Count. They
are to make handsome settlements; not only are they rich, but they are
not in the least narrow--as even the best Italians are, I am sorry to
say. The Verneuils are cosmopolitans; they have been everywhere; their
estate is near Brussels, but they spend most of their time in Paris.
They will never tie Eva down in any small way. In addition, both father
and son are extremely nice to _me_."
"Ah!" said Dallas, approvingly.
"Yes; they have the French ideas about mothers; you know that in France
the mother is and remains the most important person in the family." As
she said this, Mrs. Churchill unconsciously lifted herself and threw
back her shoulders. Ordinarily the line from the knot of her hair behind
to her waist was long and somewhat convex, while correspondingly the
distance between her chin and her belt in front was surprisingly short:
she was a plump woman, and she had fallen into the habit of leaning upon
a certain beguiling steel board, which leads a happy existence in
wrappings of white kid and perfumed lace.
"Not only will they never wish to separate me from Eva," she went on,
still abnormally erect, "but such a thought would never enter their
minds; they think it an honor and a pleasure to have me with them; the
old Count assured me of it in those very words."
"And now we have the secret of the Belgian success," said Dallas.
"Yes. But I have not been selfish; I have tried to consider everything;
I have investigated carefully. If you will stay half an hour longer you
can see Pierre for yourself; and then I know that you will agree with
me."
In less than half an hour the Belgian appeared--a slender, handsome
young man of twenty-two, with an ease of manner and grace in movement
which no American of that age ever had. With all his grace, however, and
his air of being a man of the world, there was such a charming
expression of kindliness and purity in his still boyish eyes that any
mother, with her young daughter's happiness at heart, might have been
pardoned for coveting him as a son-in-law. This Dallas immediately
comprehended. "You have chosen well," he said to Fanny, when they were
left for a moment alone; "the boy's a jewel."
Before the arrival of Pierre, Eva Churchill, followed by her governess,
had come out to join her mother on the terrace; Eva's daily lessons were
at an end, save that the music went on; Mlle. Legrand was retained as a
useful companion.
Following Pierre, two more visitors appeared, not together; one was an
Englishman of fifty, small, meagre, plain in face; the other an
American, somewhat younger, a short, ruddy man, dressed like an
Englishman. Mrs. Churchill mentioned their names to Dallas: "Mr.
Gordon-Gray." "Mr. Ferguson."
It soon appeared that Mr. Gordon-Gray and Mr. Ferguson were in the habit
of looking in every afternoon, at about that hour, for a cup of tea.
Dallas, who hated tea, leaned back in his chair and watched the scene,
watched Fanny especially, with the amused eyes of a contemporary who
remembers a different past. Fanny was looking dimpled and young; her tea
was excellent, her tea-service elaborate (there was a samovar); her
daughter was docile, her future son-in-law a Count and a pearl; in
addition, her terrace was an enchanting place for lounging, attached as
it was to a pink-faced villa that overlooked the sea.
Nor were there wanting other soft pleasures. "Dear Mrs.
Murray-Churchill, how delicious is this nest of yours!" said the
Englishman, with quiet ardor; "I never come here without admiring it."
Fanny answered him in a steady voice, though there was a certain
flatness in its tone: "Yes, it's very pretty indeed." Her face was red;
she knew that Dallas was laughing; she would not look in his direction.
Dallas, however, had taken himself off to the parapet, where he could
have his laugh out at ease: to be called Mrs. Murray-Churchill as a
matter of course in that way--what joy for Fanny!
Eva was listening to the busy Mark Ferguson; he was showing her a little
silver statuette which he had unearthed that morning in Naples, "in a
dusty out-of-the-way shop, if you will believe it, where there was
nothing else but rubbish--literally nothing. From the chasing I am
inclined to think it's fifteenth century. But you will need glasses to
see it well; I can lend you a pair of mine."
"I can see it perfectly--thanks," said Eva. "It is very pretty, I
suppose."
"Pretty, Miss Churchill? Surely it's a miracle!" Ferguson protested.
Pierre, who was sitting near the mother, glanced across and smiled. Eva
did not smile in reply; she was looking vaguely at the blackened silver;
but when he came over to see for himself the miracle, then she smiled
very pleasantly.
Pierre was evidently deeply in love; he took no pains to conceal it; but
during the two hours he spent there he made no effort to lure the young
girl into the drawing-room, or even as far as the parapet. He was very
well bred. At present he stood beside her and beside Mark Ferguson, and
talked about the statuette. "It seems to me old Vienna," he said.
"Signor Bartalama," announced Angelo, Mrs. Churchill's man-servant,
appearing at the long window of the drawing-room which served as one of
the terrace doors; he held the lace curtains apart eagerly, with the
smiling Italian welcome.
Fanny had looked up, puzzled. But when her eyes fell upon the figure
emerging from the lace she recognized it instantly. "Horace Bartholomew!
Now from what quarter of the heavens do you drop _this_ time?"
"So glad you call it heaven," said the new-comer, as she gave him her
hand. "But from heaven indeed this time, Mrs. Churchill--I say so
emphatically; from our own great, grand country--with the permission of
the present company be it spoken." And he bowed slightly to the
Englishman and Pierre, his discriminating glance including even the
little French governess, who smiled (though non-comprehendingly) in
reply. "May I present to you a compatriot, Mrs. Churchill?" he went on.
"I have taken the liberty of bringing him without waiting for formal
permission; he is, in fact, in your drawing-room now. His credentials,
however, are small and puny; they consist entirely of the one item--that
I like him."
"That will do perfectly," said Fanny, smiling.
Bartholomew went back to the window and parted the curtains. "Come," he
said. A tall man appeared. "Mrs. Churchill, let me present to you Mr.
David Rod."
Mrs. Churchill was gracious to the stranger; she offered him a chair
near hers, which he accepted; a cup of tea, which he declined; and the
usual small questions of a first meeting, which only very original minds
are bold enough to jump over. The stranger answered the questions
promptly; he was evidently not original. He had arrived two days before;
this was his first visit to Italy; the Bay of Naples was beautiful; he
had not been up Vesuvius; he had not visited Pompeii; he was not afraid
of fever; and he had met Horace Bartholomew in Florida the year before.
"I am told they are beginning to go a great deal to Florida," remarked
Fanny.
"I don't go there; I live there," Rod answered.
"Indeed! in what part?" (She brought forward the only names she knew.)
"St. Augustine, perhaps? Or Tallahassee?"
"No; I live on the southern coast; at Punta Palmas?"
"How Spanish that is! Perhaps you have one of those old Spanish
plantations?" She had now exhausted all her knowledge of the State save
a vague memory of her school geography: "Where are the Everglades?"
"They are in the southern part of Florida. They are shallow lakes filled
with trees." But the stranger could hardly live in such a place as that.
"No," answered Rod; "my plantation isn't old and it isn't Spanish; it's
a farm, and quite new. I am over here now to get hands for it."
"Hands?"
"Yes, laborers--Italians. They work very well in Florida."
Eva and Mademoiselle Legrand had turned with Pierre to look at the
magnificent sunset. "Did you receive the flowers I sent this morning?"
said Pierre, bending his head so that if Eva should glance up when she
answered, he should be able to look into her eyes.
"Yes; they were beautiful," said Eva, giving the hoped-for glance.
"Yet they are not in the drawing-room."
"You noticed that?" she said, smiling. "They are in the music-room;
Mademoiselle put them there."
"They are the flowers for Mozart, are they not?" said
Mademoiselle--"heliotrope and white lilies; and we have been studying
Mozart this morning. The drawing-room, as you know, Monsieur le Comte,
is always full of roses."
"And how do you come on with Mozart?" asked Pierre.
"As usual," answered Eva. "Not very well, I suppose."
[Illustration: "'MRS. CHURCHILL, LET ME PRESENT TO YOU MR. DAVID ROD'"]
Mademoiselle twisted her handkerchief round her fingers. She was
passionately fond of music; it seemed to her that her pupil, who played
accurately, was not. Pierre also was fond of music, and played with
taste. He had not perceived Eva's coldness in this respect simply
because he saw no fault in her.
"I want to make up a party for the Deserto," he went on, "to lunch
there. Do you think Madame Churchill will consent?"
"Probably," said Eva.
"I hope she will. For when we are abroad together, under the open sky,
then it sometimes happens I can stay longer by your side."
"Yes; we never have very long talks, do we?" remarked Eva, reflectively.
"Do you desire them?" said Pierre, with ardor. "Ah, if you could know
how I do! With me it is one long thirst. Say that you share the feeling,
even if only a little; give me that pleasure."
"No," said Eva laughing, "I don't share it at all. Because, if we should
have longer talks, you would find out too clearly that I am not clever."
"Not clever!" said Pierre, with all his heart in his eyes. Then, with
his unfailing politeness, he included Mademoiselle. "She is clever,
Mademoiselle?"
"She is good," answered Mademoiselle, gravely. "Her heart has a
depth--but a depth!"
"I shall fill it all," murmured Pierre to Eva. "It is not that I myself
am anything, but my love is so great, so vast; it holds you as the sea
holds Capri. Some time--some time, you must let me try to tell you!"
Eva glanced at him. Her eyes had for the moment a vague expression of
curiosity.
This little conversation had been carried on in French; Mademoiselle
spoke no English, and Pierre would have been incapable of the rudeness
of excluding her by means of a foreign tongue.
II
The pink villa was indeed a delicious nest, to use the Englishman's
phrase. It crowned one of the perpendicular cliffs of Sorrento, its rosy
facade overlooking what is perhaps the most beautiful expanse of water
in the world--the Bay of Naples. The broad terrace stretched from the
drawing room windows to the verge of the precipice; leaning against its
strong stone parapet, with one's elbows comfortably supported on the
flat top (which supported also several battered goddesses of marble),
enjoying the shade of a lemon-tree set in a great vase of tawny
terra-cotta--leaning thus, one could let one's idle gaze drop straight
down into the deep blue water below, or turn it to the white line of
Naples opposite, shining under castled heights, to Vesuvius with its
plume of smoke, or to beautiful dark Ischia rising from the waves in the
west, guarding the entrance to the sea. On each side, close at hand, the
cliffs of Sorrento stretched away, tipped with their villas, with their
crowded orange and lemon groves. Each villa had its private stairway
leading to the beach below; strange dark passages, for the most part cut
in the solid rock, winding down close to the face of the cliff, so that
every now and then a little rock-window can let in a gleam of light to
keep up the spirits of those who are descending. For every one does
descend: to sit and read among the rocks; to bathe from the
bathing-house on the fringe of beach; to embark for a row to the
grottos or a sail to Capri.
[Illustration: SORRENTO]
The afternoon which followed the first visit of Philip Dallas to the
pink villa found him there a second time; again he was on the terrace
with Fanny. The plunging sea-birds of the terrace's mosaic floor were
partially covered by a large Persian rug, and it was upon this rich
surface that the easy-chairs were assembled, and also the low tea-table,
which was of a construction so solid that no one could possibly knock it
over. A keen observer had once said that that table was in itself a
sufficient indication that Fanny's house was furnished to attract
masculine, not feminine, visitors (a remark which was perfectly true).
"You are the sun of a system of masculine planets, Fanny," said Dallas.
"After long years, that is how I find you."
"Oh, Philip--we who live so quietly!"
"So is the sun quiet, I suppose; I have never heard that he howled. Mr.
Gordon-Gray, Mark Ferguson, Pierre de Vernueil, Horace Bartholomew,
unknown Americans. Do they come to see Eva or you?"
"They come to see the view--as you do; to sit in the shade and talk. I
give very good dinners too," Fanny added, with simplicity.
"O romance! good dinners on the Bay of Naples!"
"Well, you may laugh; but nothing draws men of a certain age--of a
certain kind, I mean; the most satisfactory men, in short--nothing draws
them so surely as a good dinner delicately served," announced Fanny,
with decision. "Please go and ring for the tea."
"I don't wonder that they all hang about you," remarked Dallas as he
came back, his eyes turning from the view to his hostess in her
easy-chair. "Your villa is admirable, and you yourself, as you sit
there, are the personification of comfort, the personification, too, of
gentle, sweet, undemonstrative affectionateness. Do you know that,
Fanny?"
Fanny, with a very pink blush, busied herself in arranging the table for
the coming cups.
Dallas smiled inwardly. "She thinks I am in love with her because I said
that about affectionateness," he thought. "Oh, the fatuity of women!"
At this moment Eva came out, and presently appeared Mr. Gordon-Gray and
Mark Ferguson. A little later came Horace Bartholomew. The tea had been
brought; Eva handed the cups. Dallas, looking at her, was again struck
by something in the manner and bearing of Fanny's daughter. Or rather he
was not struck by it; it was an impression that made itself felt by
degrees, as it had done the day before--a slow discovery that the girl
was unusual.
She was tall, dressed very simply in white. Her thick smooth flaxen hair
was braided in two long flat tresses behind, which were doubled and
gathered up with a ribbon, so that they only reached her shoulders. This
school-girl coiffure became her young face well. Yes, it was a very
young face. Yet it was a serious face too. "Our American girls are often
serious, and when they are brought up under the foreign system it really
makes them too quiet," thought Dallas. Eva had a pair of large gray eyes
under dark lashes: these eyes were thoughtful; sometimes they were dull.
Her smooth complexion was rather brown. The oval of her face was
perfect. Though her dress was so child-like, her figure was womanly; the
poise of her head was noble, her step light and free. Nothing could be
more unlike the dimpled, smiling mother than was this tall, serious
daughter who followed in her train. Dallas tried to recall Edward
Churchill (Edward Murray Churchill), but could not; he had only seen him
once. "He must have been an obstinate sort of fellow," he said to
himself. The idea had come to him suddenly from something in Eva's
expression. Yet it was a sweet expression; the curve of the lips was
sweet.
"She isn't such a very pretty girl, after all," he reflected, summing
her up finally before he dismissed her. "Fanny is a clever woman to have
made it appear that she is."
At this moment Eva, having finished her duties as cup-bearer, walked
across the terrace and stood by the parapet, outlined against the light.
"By Jove she's beautiful!" thought Dallas.
Fanny's father had not liked Edward Churchill; he had therefore left his
money tied up in such a way that neither Churchill nor any children whom
he might have should be much benefited by it; Fanny herself, though she
had a comfortable income for life, could not dispose of it. This
accounted for the very small sum belonging to Eva: she had only the few
hundreds that came to her from her father.
But she had been brought up as though she had many thousands; studiedly
quiet as her life had been, studiedly simple as her attire always was,
in every other respect her existence had been arranged as though a large
fortune certainly awaited her. This had been the mother's idea; she had
been sure from the beginning that a large fortune did await her
daughter. It now appeared that she had been right.
"I don't know what you thought of me for bringing a fellow-countryman
down upon you yesterday in that unceremonious way, Mrs. Churchill,"
Bartholomew was saying. "But I wanted to do something for him--I met him
at the top of your lane by accident; it was an impulse."
"Oh, I'm sure--any friend of yours--" said Fanny, looking into the
teapot.
Bartholomew glanced round the little circle on the rug, with an
expression of dry humor in his brown eyes. "You didn't any of you like
him--I see that," he said.
There was a moment's silence.
"Well, he is rather a commonplace individual, isn't he?" said Dallas,
unconsciously assuming the leadership of this purely feminine household.
"I don't know what you mean by commonplace; but yes, I do, coming from
_you_, Dallas. Rod has never been abroad in his life until now; and he's
a man with convictions."
"Oh, come, don't take that tone," said Mark Ferguson; "I've got
convictions too; I'm as obstinate about them as an Englishman."
"What did your convictions tell you about Rod, then, may I ask?" pursued
Bartholomew.
"I didn't have much conversation with him, you may remember; I thought
he had plenty of intelligence. His clothes were--were a little peculiar,
weren't they?"
"Made in Tampa, probably. And I've no doubt but that he took pains with
them--wanted to have them appropriate."
"That is where he disappointed me," said Gordon-Gray--"that very
appearance of having taken pains. When I learned that he came from
that--that place in the States you have just named--a wild part of the
country, is it not?--I thought he would be more--more interesting. But
he might as well have come from Clerkenwell."
"You thought he would be more wild, you mean; trousers in his boots;
long hair; knives."
All the Americans laughed.
"Yes. I dare say you cannot at all comprehend our penchant for that sort
of thing," said the Englishman, composedly. "And--er--I am afraid there
would be little use in attempting to explain it to you. But this Mr. Rod
seemed to me painfully unconscious of his opportunities; he told me
(when I asked) that there was plenty of game there--deer, and even bears
and panthers--royal game; yet he never hunts."
"He never hunts, because he has something better to do," retorted
Bartholomew.
"Ah, better?" murmured the Englishman, doubtfully.
Bartholomew got up and took a chair which was nearer Fanny. "No--no
tea," he said, as she made a motion towards a cup; then, without further
explaining his change of position, he gave her a little smile. Dallas,
who caught this smile on the wing, learned from it unexpectedly that
there was a closer intimacy between his hostess and Bartholomew than he
had suspected. "Bartholomew!" he thought, contemptuously.
"Gray--spectacles--stout." Then suddenly recollecting the increasing
plumpness of his own person, he drew in his out-stretched legs, and
determined, from that instant, to walk fifteen miles a day.
"Rod knows how to shoot, even though he doesn't hunt," said
Bartholomew, addressing the Englishman. "I saw him once bring down a mad
bull, who was charging directly upon an old man--the neatest sort of a
hit."
"He himself being in a safe place meanwhile," said Dallas.
"On the contrary, he had to rush forward into an open field. If he had
missed his aim by an eighth of an inch, the beast--a terrible
creature--would have made an end of him."
"And the poor old man?" said Eva.
"He was saved, of course; he was a rather disreputable old darky.
Another time Rod went out in a howling gale--the kind they have down
there--to rescue two men whose boat had capsized in the bay. They were
clinging to the bottom; no one else would stir; they said it was certain
death; but Rod went out--he's a capital sailor--and got them in. I
didn't see that myself, as I saw the bull episode; I was told about it."
"By Rod?" said Dallas.
"By one of the men he saved. As you've never been saved yourself,
Dallas, you probably don't know how it feels."
"He seems to be a modern Chevalier Bayard, doesn't he?" said
good-natured Mark Ferguson.
"He's modern, but no Bayard. He's a modern and a model pioneer--"
"Pioneers! oh, pioneers!" murmured Gordon-Gray, half chanting it.
None of the Americans recognized his quotation.
"He's the son of a Methodist minister," Bartholomew went on. "His
father, a missionary, wandered down to Florida in the early days, and
died there, leaving a sickly wife and seven children. You know the sort
of man--a linen duster for a coat, prunella shoes, always smiling and
hopeful--a great deal about 'Brethren.' Fortunately they could at least
be warm in that climate, and fish were to be had for the catching; but I
suspect it was a struggle for existence while the boys were small. David
was the youngest; his five brothers, who had come up almost laborers,
were determined to give this lad a chance if they could; together they
managed to send him to school, and later to a forlorn little Methodist
college somewhere in Georgia. David doesn't call it forlorn, mind you;
he still thinks it an important institution. For nine years now--he is
thirty--he has taken care of himself; he and a partner have cleared this
large farm, and have already done well with it. Their hope is to put it
all into sugar in time, and a Northern man with capital has advanced
them the money for this Italian colonization scheme: it has been tried
before in Florida, and has worked well. They have been very
enterprising, David and his partner; they have a saw-mill running, and
two school-houses already--one for whites, one for blacks. You ought to
see the little darkies, with their wool twisted into twenty tails, going
proudly in when the bell rings," he added, turning to Fanny.
"And the white children, do they go too?" said Eva.
"Yes, to their own school-house--lank girls, in immense sun-bonnets,
stalking on long bare feet. He has got a brisk little Yankee
school-mistress for them. In ten years more I declare he will have
civilized that entire neighborhood."
"You are evidently the Northern man with capital," said Dallas.
"I don't care in the least for your sneers, Dallas; I'm not the Northern
man, but I should like to be. If I admire Rod, with his constant driving
action, his indomitable pluck, his simple but tremendous belief in the
importance of what he has undertaken to do, that's my own affair. I do
admire him just as he stands, clothes and all; I admire his creaking
saw-mill; I admire his groaning dredge; I even admire his two hideously
ugly new school-houses, set staring among the stumps."
"Tell me one thing, does he preach in the school-houses on Sundays and
Friday evenings, say?" asked Ferguson. "Because if he does he will make
no money, whatever else he may make. They never do if they preach."
"It's his father who was the minister, not he," said Bartholomew. "David
never preached in his life; he wouldn't in the least know how. In fact,
he's no talker at all; he says very little at any time; he's a
doer--David is; he _does_ things. I declare it used to make me sick of
myself to see how much that fellow accomplished every day of his life
down there, and thought nothing of it at all."
"And what were you doing 'down there,' besides making yourself sick, if
I may ask?" said Ferguson.