such a place for?"
"Tell me a little about that, if you don't mind," said the Englishman,
interested for the first time.
"M. de Verneuil wants us all to go to the Deserto some day soon," said
Fanny; "a lunch party. We shall be sure to enjoy it; M. de Verneuil's
parties are always delightful."
III
The end of the week had been appointed for Pierre's excursion.
The morning opened fair and warm, with the veiled blue that belongs to
the Bay of Naples, the soft hazy blue which is so different from the dry
glittering clearness of the Riviera.
Fanny was mounted on a donkey; Eva preferred to walk, and Mademoiselle
accompanied her. Pierre had included in his invitation the usual
afternoon assemblage at the villa--Dallas, Mark Ferguson, Bartholomew,
Gordon-Gray, and David Rod.
For Fanny had, as Dallas expressed it, "taken up" Rod; she had invited
him twice to dinner. The superfluous courtesy had annoyed Dallas, for of
course, as Rod himself was nothing, less than nothing, the explanation
must lie in the fact that Horace Bartholomew had suggested it.
"Bartholomew was always wrong-headed; always picking up some perfectly
impossible creature, and ramming him down people's throats," he thought,
with vexation.
Bartholomew was walking now beside Fanny's donkey.
Mark Ferguson led the party, as it moved slowly along the narrow paved
road that winds in zigzags up the mountain; Eva, Mademoiselle, Pierre,
Dallas, and Rod came next. Fanny and Bartholomew were behind; and
behind still, walking alone and meditatively, came Gordon-Gray, who
looked at life (save for the hunting) from the standpoint of the Italian
Renaissance. Gordon-Gray knew a great deal about the Malatesta family;
he had made a collection of Renaissance cloak clasps; he had written an
essay on the colors of the long hose worn in the battling,
leg-displaying days which had aroused his admiration, aroused it rather
singularly, since he himself was as far as possible from having been
qualified by nature to shine in such vigorous society.
Pierre went back to give some directions to one of the men in the rear
of their small procession.
When he returned, "So the bears sometimes get among the canes?" Eva was
saying.
"But then, how very convenient," said Pierre; "for they can take the
canes and chastise them punctually." He spoke in his careful English.
"They're sugar-canes," said Rod.
"It's his plantation we are talking about," said Eva. "Once it was a
military post, he says. Perhaps like Ehrenbreitstein."
"Exactly," said Dallas, from behind; "the same massive frowning stone
walls."
"There were four one-story wooden barracks once," said Rod;
"whitewashed; flag-pole in the centre. There's nothing now but a
chimney; we've taken the boards for our mill."
"See the cyclamen, good folk," called out Gordon-Gray.
On a small plateau near by a thousand cyclamen, white and pink, had
lifted their wings as if to fly away. Off went Pierre to get them for
Eva.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE DESERTO]
"Have you ever seen the bears in the canes yourself?" pursued Eva.
"I've seen them in many places besides canes," answered Rod, grimly.
"I too have seen bears," Eva went on. "At Berne, you know."
"The Punta Palmas bears are quite the same," commented Dallas. "When
they see Mr. Rod coming they sit up on their hind legs politely. And he
throws them apples."
"No apples; they won't grow there," said Rod, regretfully. "Only
oranges."
"Do you make the saw-mill go yourself--with your own hands?" pursued
Eva.
"Not now. I did once."
"Wasn't it very hard work?"
"That? Nothing at all. You should have seen us grubbing up the
stumps--Tipp and I!"
"Mr. Tipp is perhaps your partner?" said Dallas.
"Yes; Jim Tipp. Tipp and Rod is the name of the firm."
"Tipp--and Rod," repeated Dallas, slowly. Then with quick utterance, as
if trying it, "Tippandrod."
Pierre was now returning with his flowers. As he joined them, round the
corner of their zigzag, from a pasture above came a troop of ponies that
had escaped from their driver, and were galloping down to Sorrento; two
and two they came rushing on, too rapidly to stop, and everybody pressed
to one side to give them room to pass on the narrow causeway.
Pierre jumped up on the low stone wall and extended his hand to Eva.
"Come!" he said, hastily.
Rod put out his arm and pushed each outside pony, as he passed Eva,
forcibly against his mate who had the inside place; a broad space was
thus left beside her, and she had no need to leave the causeway. She had
given one hand to Pierre as a beginning; he held it tightly.
Mademoiselle meanwhile had climbed the wall like a cat. There were
twenty of the galloping little nags; they took a minute or two to pass.
Rod's out-stretched hands, as he warded them off, were seen to be large
and brown.
Eva imagined them "grubbing up" the stumps. "What is grubbing?" she
said.
"It is writing for the newspapers in a street in London," said Pierre,
jumping down. "And you must wear a torn coat, I believe." Pierre was
proud of his English.
He presented his flowers.
Mademoiselle admired them volubly. "They are like souls just ready to
wing their way to another world," she said, sentimentally, with her head
on one side. She put her well-gloved hand in Eva's arm, summoned Pierre
with an amiable gesture to the vacant place at Eva's left hand, and the
three walked on together.
The Deserto, though disestablished and dismantled, like many another
monastery, by the rising young kingdom, held still a few monks; their
brown-robed brethren had aided Pierre's servant in arranging the table
in the high room which commands the wonderful view of the sea both to
the north and the south of the Sorrento peninsula, with Capri lying at
its point too fair to be real--like an island in a dream.
"O la douce folie--
Aimable Capri!"
said Mark Ferguson. No one knew what he meant; he did not know himself.
It was a poetical inspiration--so he said.
[Illustration: AT THE DESERTO]
The lunch was delicate, exquisite; everything save the coffee (which the
monks wished to provide: coffee, black-bread, and grapes which were half
raisins was the monks' idea of a lunch) had been sent up from Sorrento.
Dallas, who was seated beside Fanny, gave her a congratulatory nod.
"Yes, all Pierre does is well done," she answered, in a low tone, unable
to deny herself this expression of maternal content.
Pierre was certainly a charming host. He gave them a toast; he gave them
two; he gave them a song: he had a tenor voice which had been admirably
cultivated, and his song was gay and sweet. He looked very handsome; he
wore one of the cyclamen in his button-hole; Eva wore the rest, arranged
by the deft fingers of Mademoiselle in a knot at her belt. But at the
little feast Fanny was much more prominent than her daughter: this was
Pierre's idea of what was proper; he asked her opinion, he referred
everything to her with a smile which was homage in itself. Dallas, after
a while, was seized with a malicious desire to take down for a moment
this too prosperous companion of his boyhood. It was after Pierre had
finished his little song. "Do you ever sing now, Fanny?" he asked,
during a silence. "I remember how you used to sing Trancadillo."
"I am sure I don't know what you refer to," answered Fanny, coldly.
Another week passed. They sailed to Capri; they sailed to Ischia; they
visited Pompeii. Bartholomew suggested these excursions. Eva too showed
an almost passionate desire for constant movement, constant action.
"Where shall we go to-day, mamma?" she asked every morning.
One afternoon they were strolling through an orange grove on the
outskirts of Sorrento. Under the trees the ground was ploughed and
rough; low stone copings, from whose interstices innumerable violets
swung, ran hither and thither, and the paths followed the copings. The
fruit hung thickly on the trees. Above the high wall which surrounded
the place loomed the campanile of an old church. While they were
strolling the bells rang the Angelus, swinging far out against the blue.
Rod, who was of the party, was absent-minded; he looked a little at the
trees, but said nothing, and after a while he became absent-bodied as
well, for he fell behind the others, and pursued his meditations,
whatever they were, in solitude.
"He is bothered about his Italians," said Bartholomew; "he has only
secured twenty so far."
Pierre joined Fanny; he had not talked with her that afternoon, and he
now came to fulfil the pleasant duty. Eva, who had been left with
Mademoiselle, turned round, and walking rapidly across the ploughed
ground, joined Rod, who was sitting on one of the low stone walls at
some distance from the party. Mademoiselle followed her, putting on her
glasses as she went, in order to see her way over the heaped ridges. She
held up her skirts, and gave ineffectual little leaps, always landing in
the wrong spot, and tumbling up hill, as Dallas called it. "Blue," he
remarked, meditatively. Every one glanced in that direction, and it was
perceived that the adjective described the hue of Mademoiselle's
birdlike ankles.
"For shame!" said Fanny.
But Dallas continued his observations. "Do look across," he said, after
a while; "it's too funny. The French woman evidently thinks that Rod
should rise, or else that Eva should be seated also. But her pantomime
passes unheeded; neither Eva nor the backwoodsman is conscious of her
existence."
"Eva is so fond of standing," explained Fanny. "I often say to her, 'Do
sit down, child; it tires me to see you.' But Eva is never tired."
Pierre, who had a spray of orange buds in his hand, pressed it to his
lips, and waved it imperceptibly towards his betrothed. "In everything
she is perfect--perfect," he murmured to the pretty mother.
"Rod doesn't in the least mean to be rude," began Bartholomew.
"Oh, don't explain that importation of yours at this late day,"
interposed Dallas; "it isn't necessary. He is accustomed to sitting on
fences probably; he belongs to the era of the singing-school."
This made Fanny angry. For as to singing-schools, there had been a
time--a remote time long ago--and Dallas knew it. She had smiled in
answer to Pierre's murmured rapture; she now took his arm. To punish
Dallas she turned her steps--on her plump little feet in their delicate
kid boots--towards the still seated Rod, with the intention of asking
him (for the fifth time) to dinner. This would not only exasperate
Dallas, but it would please Bartholomew at the same stroke. Two birds,
etc.
When they came up to the distant three, Mademoiselle glanced at Mrs.
Churchill anxiously. But in the presence of the mistress of the villa,
Rod did at last lift his long length from the wall.
This seemed, however, to be because he supposed they were about to leave
the grove. "Is the walk over?" he said.
Pierre looked at Eva adoringly. He gave her the spray of orange buds.
IV
A week later Fanny's daughter entered the bedroom which she shared with
her mother.
From the girl's babyhood the mother had had her small white-curtained
couch placed close beside her own. She could not have slept unless able
at any moment to stretch out her hand and touch her sleeping child.
Fanny was in the dressing-room; hearing Eva's step, she spoke. "Do you
want me, Eva?"
"Yes, please."
Fanny appeared, a vision of white arms, lace, and embroidery.
"I thought that Rosine would not be here yet," said Eva. Rosine was
their maid; her principal occupation was the elaborate arrangement of
Fanny's brown hair.
"No, she isn't there--if you mean in the dressing-room," answered Fanny,
nodding her head towards the open door.
"I wanted to see you alone, mamma, for a moment. I wanted to tell you
that I shall not marry Pierre."
Fanny, who had sunk into an easy-chair, at these words sprang up. "What
is the matter? Are you ill?"
"Not in the least, mamma; I am only telling you that I cannot marry
Pierre."
"You _must_ be ill," pursued Fanny. "You have fever. Don't deny it." And
anxiously she took the girl's hands. But Eva's hands were cooler than
her own.
"I don't think I have any fever," replied Eva. She had been taught to
answer all her mother's questions in fullest detail. "I sleep and eat as
usual; I have no headache."
Fanny still looked at her anxiously. "Then if you are not ill, what can
be the matter with you?"
"I have only told you, mamma, that I could not marry Pierre; it seems to
me very simple."
She was so quiet that Fanny began at last to realize that she was in
earnest. "My dearest, you know you like Pierre. You have told me so
yourself."
"I don't like him now."
"What has he done--poor Pierre? He will explain, apologize; you may be
sure of that."
"He has done nothing; I don't want him to apologize. He is as he always
is. It is I who have changed."
"Oh, it is you who have changed," repeated Fanny, bewildered.
"Yes," answered Eva.
"Come and sit down and tell mamma all about it. You are tired of poor
Pierre--is that it? It is very natural, he has been here so often, and
stayed so long. But I will tell him that he must go away--leave
Sorrento. And he shall stay away as long as you like, Eva; just as long
as you like."
"Then he will stay away forever," the girl answered, calmly.
Fanny waited a moment. "Did you like Gino better? Is that it?" she said,
softly, watching Eva's face.
"No."
"Thornton Stanley?"
"Oh no!"
"Dear child, explain this a little to your mother. You know I think only
of your happiness," said Fanny, with tender solicitude.
Eva evidently tried to obey. "It was this morning. It came over me
suddenly that I could not possibly marry him. Now or a year from now.
Never." She spoke tranquilly; she even seemed indifferent. But this one
decision was made.
"You know that I have given my word to the old Count," began Fanny, in
perplexity.
Eva was silent.
"And everything was arranged."
Eva still said nothing. She looked about the room with wandering
attention, as though this did not concern her.
"Of course I would never force you into anything," Fanny went on. "But I
thought Pierre would be so congenial." In her heart she was asking
herself what the young Belgian could have done. "Well, dear," she
continued, with a little sigh, "you must always tell mamma everything."
And she kissed her.
"Of course," Eva answered. And then she went away.
Fanny immediately rang the bell, and asked for Mademoiselle. But
Mademoiselle knew nothing about it. She was overwhelmed with surprise
and dismay. She greatly admired Pierre; even more she admired the old
Count, whom she thought the most distinguished of men. Fanny dismissed
the afflicted little woman, and sat pondering. While she was thinking,
Eva re-entered.
"Mamma, I forgot to say that I should like to have you tell Pierre
immediately. To-day."
Fanny was almost irritated. "You have never taken that tone before, my
daughter. Have you no longer confidence in my judgment?"
"If you do not want to tell him this afternoon, it can be easily
arranged, mamma; I will not come to the dinner-table; that is all. I do
not wish to see him until he knows."
Pierre was to dine at the villa that evening.
"What can he have done?" thought Fanny again.
She rang for Rosine; half an hour later she was in the drawing-room.
"Excuse me to every one but M. de Verneuil," she said to Angelo. She was
very nervous, but she had decided upon her course: Pierre must leave
Sorrento, and remain away until she herself should call him back.
"At the end of a month, perhaps even at the end of a week, she will miss
you so much that I shall have to issue the summons," she said, speaking
as gayly as she could, as if to make it a sort of joke. It was very hard
for her, at best, to send away the frank, handsome boy.
Poor Pierre could not understand it at all. He declared over and over
again that nothing he had said, nothing he had done, could possibly have
offended his betrothed. "But surely you know yourself that it is
impossible!" he added, clasping his hands beseechingly.
"It is a girlish freak," explained the mother. "She is so young, you
know."
"But that is the very reason. I thought it was only older women who say
what they wish to do in that decided way; who have freaks, as you call
it," said the Belgian, his voice for a moment much older, more like the
voice of a man who has spent half his life in Paris.
This was so true that Fanny was driven to a defence that scarcely
anything else would have made her use.
"Eva is different from the young girls here," she said. "You must not
forget that she is an American."
At last Pierre went away; he had tried to bear himself as a gentleman
should; but the whole affair was a mystery to him, and he was very
unhappy. He went as far as Rome, and there he waited, writing to Fanny
an anxious letter almost every day.
In the meanwhile life at the villa went on; there were many excursions.
Fanny's thought was that Eva would miss Pierre more during these
expeditions than at other times, for Pierre had always arranged them,
and he had enjoyed them so much himself that his gay spirits and his gay
wit had made all the party gay. Eva, however, seemed very happy, and at
length the mother could not help being touched to see how light-hearted
her serious child had become, now that she was entirely free. And yet
how slight the yoke had been, and how pleasant! thought Fanny. At the
end of two weeks there were still no signs of the "missing" upon which
she had counted. She thought that she would try the effect of briefly
mentioning the banished man. "I hear from Pierre almost every day, poor
fellow. He is in Rome."
"Why does he stay in Rome?" said Eva. "Why doesn't he return home?"
"I suppose he doesn't want to go so far away," answered Fanny, vaguely.
"Far away from what? Home should always be the first place," responded
the young moralist. "Of course you have told him, mamma, that I shall
never be his wife? That it is forever?" And she turned her gray eyes
towards her mother, for the first time with a shade of suspicion in
them.
"Never is a long word, Eva."
"Oh, mamma!" The girl rose. "I shall write to him myself, then."
"How you speak! Do you wish to disobey me, my own little girl?"
"No; but it is so dishonest; it is like a lie."
"My dear, trust your mother. You have changed once; you may change
again."
"Not about this, mamma. Will you please write this very hour, and make
an end of it?"
"You are hard, Eva. You do not think of poor Pierre at all."
"No, I do not think of Pierre."
"And is there any one else you think of? I must ask you that once more,"
said Fanny, drawing her daughter down beside her caressingly. Her
thoughts could not help turning again towards Gino, and in her supreme
love for her child she now accomplished the mental somerset of believing
that on the whole she preferred the young Italian to all the liberty,
all the personal consideration for herself, which had been embodied in
the name of Verneuil.
"Yes, there is some one else I think of," Eva replied, in a low voice.
"In Rome?" said Fanny.
Eva made a gesture of denial that was fairly contemptuous.
Fanny's mind flew wildly from Bartholomew to Dallas, from Ferguson to
Gordon-Gray: Eva had no acquaintances save those which were her
mother's also.
"It is David Rod," Eva went on, in the same low tone. Then, with sudden
exaltation, her eyes gleaming, "I have never seen any one like him."
It was a shock so unexpected that Mrs. Churchill drew her breath under
it audibly, as one does under an actual blow. But instantly she rallied.
She said to herself that she had got a romantic idealist for a
daughter--that was all. She had not suspected it; she had thought of Eva
as a lovely child who would develop into what she herself had been.
Fanny, though far-seeing and intelligent, had not been endowed with
imagination. But now that she did realize it, she should know how to
deal with it. A disposition like that, full of visionary fancies, was
not so uncommon as some people supposed. Horace Bartholomew should take
the Floridian away out of Eva's sight forever, and the girl would soon
forget him; in the meanwhile not one word that was harsh should be
spoken on the subject, for that would be the worst policy of all.
This train of thought had passed through her mind like a flash. "My
dear," she began, as soon as she had got her breath back, "you are right
to be so honest with me. Mr. Rod has not--has not said anything to you
on the subject, has he?"
"No. Didn't I tell you that he cares nothing for me? I think he despises
me--I am so useless!" And then suddenly the girl began to sob; a passion
of tears.
Fanny was at her wits' end; Eva had not wept since the day of her baby
ills, for life had been happy to her, loved, caressed, and protected as
she had been always, like a hot-house flower.
"My darling," said the mother, taking her in her arms.
But Eva wept on and on, as if her heart would break. It ended in Fanny's
crying too.
V
Early the next morning her letter to Bartholomew was sent. Bartholomew
had gone to Munich for a week. The letter begged, commanded, that he
should make some pretext that would call David Rod from Sorrento at the
earliest possible moment. She counted upon her fingers; four days for
the letter to go and the answer to return. Those four days she would
spend at Capri.
Eva went with her quietly. There had been no more conversation between
mother and daughter about Rod; Fanny thought that this was best.
On the fourth day there came a letter from Bartholomew. Fanny returned
to Sorrento almost gayly: the man would be gone.
But he was not gone. Tranquillized, glad to be at home again, Mrs.
Churchill was enjoying her terrace and her view, when Angelo appeared at
the window: "Signor Ra."
Angelo's mistress made him a peremptory sign. "Ask the gentleman to wait
in the drawing-room," she said. Then crossing to Eva, who had risen, "Go
round by the other door to our own room, Eva," she whispered.
The girl did not move; her face had an excited look. "But why--"
"Go, child; go."
Still Eva stood there, her eyes fixed upon the long window veiled in
lace; she scarcely seemed to breathe.
Her mother was driven to stronger measures. "You told me yourself that
he cared nothing for you."
A deep red rose in Eva's cheeks; she turned and left the terrace by the
distant door.
The mother crossed slowly to the long window and parted the curtains.
"Mr. Rod, are you there? Won't you come out? Or stay--I will join you."
She entered the drawing-room and took a seat.
Rod explained that he was about to leave Sorrento; Bartholomew had
summoned him so urgently that he did not like to refuse, though it was
very inconvenient to go at such short notice.
"Then you leave to-morrow?" said Fanny; "perhaps to-night?"
"No; on Monday. I could not arrange my business before."
"Three days more," Fanny thought.
She talked of various matters; she hoped that some one else would come
in; but, by a chance, no one appeared that day, neither Dallas, nor
Ferguson, nor Gordon-Gray. "What can have become of them?" she thought,
with irritation. After a while she gave an inward start; she had become
conscious of a foot-fall passing to and fro behind the half-open door
near her--a door which led into the dining-room. It was a very soft
foot-fall upon a thick carpet, but she recognized it: it was Eva. She
was there--why? The mother could think of no good reason. Her heart
began to beat more quickly; for the first time in her life she did not
know her child. This person walking up and down behind that door so
insistently, this was not Eva. Eva was docile; this person was not
docile. What would be done next? She felt strangely frightened. It was a
proof of her terror that she did not dare to close the door lest it
should be instantly reopened. She began to watch every word she said to
Rod, who had not perceived the foot-fall. She began to be
extraordinarily polite to him; she stumbled through the most irrelevant
complimentary sentences. Her dread was, every minute, lest Eva should
appear.
But Eva did not appear; and at last, after long lingering, Rod went
away. Fanny, who had hoped to bid him a final farewell, had not dared to
go through that ceremony. He said that he should come again.