"Eva," she began. She had intended to be severe, as severe as she
possibly could be; but the sight of Eva stopped her. The girl had flung
herself down upon the floor, her bowed head resting upon her arms on a
chair. Her attitude expressed a hopeless desolation.
"What is it?" said Fanny, rushing to her.
Eva raised her head. "He never once spoke of me--asked for me," she
murmured, looking at her mother with eyes so dreary with grief that any
one must have pitied her.
Her mother pitied her, though it was an angry pity, too--a
non-comprehending, jealous, exasperated feeling. She sat down and
gathered her child to her breast with a gesture that was almost fierce.
That Eva should suffer so cruelly when she, Fanny, would have made any
sacrifice to save her from it, would have died for her gladly, were it
not that she was the girl's only protector--oh, what fate had come over
their happy life together! She had not the heart to be stern. All she
said was, "We will go away, dear; we will go away."
"No," said Eva, rising; "let me stay here. You need not be afraid."
"Of course I am not afraid," answered Fanny, gravely. "My daughter will
never do anything unseemly; she has too much pride."
"I am afraid I have no pride--that is, not as you have it, mamma. Pride
doesn't seem to me at all important compared with---- But of course I
know that there is nothing I can do. He is perfectly indifferent. Only
do not take me away again--do not."
"Why do you wish to stay?"
"Because then I can think--for three days more--that he is at least as
near me as that." She trembled as she said this; there was a spot of
sombre red in each cheek; her fair face looked strange amid her
disordered hair.
Her mother watched her helplessly. All her beliefs, all her creed, all
her precedents, the experience of her own life and her own nature even,
failed to explain such a phenomenon as this. And it was her own child
who was saying these things.
The next day Eva was passive. She wandered about the terrace, or sat for
hours motionless staring blankly at the sea. Her mother left her to
herself. She had comprehended that words were useless. She pretended to
be embroidering, but in reality as she drew her stitches she was
counting the hours as they passed: seventy-two hours; forty-eight hours.
Would he ever be gone?
[Illustration: "SHE SAT DOWN AND GATHERED HER CHILD TO HER BREAST"]
On the second day, in the afternoon, she discovered that Eva had
disappeared. The girl had been on the terrace with Mademoiselle;
Mademoiselle had gone to her room for a moment, and when she returned
her pupil could not be found. She had not passed through the
drawing-room, where Fanny was sitting with her pretended industry; nor
through the other door, for Rosine was at work there, and had seen
nothing of her. There remained only the rock stairway to the beach.
Mademoiselle ran down it swiftly: no one. But there was a small boat not
far off, she said. Fanny, who was near-sighted, got the glass. In a
little boat with a broad sail there were two figures; one was certainly
David Rod, and the other--yes, the other was Eva. There was a breeze,
the boat was rapidly going westward round the cliffs; in two minutes
more it was out of sight.
Fanny wrung her hands. The French woman, to whom the event wore a much
darker hue than it did to the American mother, turned yellowly pale.
At this moment Horace Bartholomew came out on the terrace; uneasy, for
Fanny's missive had explained nothing, he had followed his letter
himself. "What is it?" he said, as he saw the agitation of the two
women.
"Your friend--_yours_--the man you brought here, has Eva with him at
this moment out on the bay!" said Fanny, vehemently.
"Well, what of that? You must look at it with Punta Palmas eyes, Fanny;
at Punta Palmas it would be an ordinary event."
"But my Eva is not a Punta Palmas girl, Horace Bartholomew!"
"She is as innocent as one, and I'll answer for Rod. Come, be sensible,
Fanny. They will be back before sunset, and no one in Sorrento--if that
is what is troubling you so--need be any the wiser."
"You do not know all," said Fanny. "Oh, Horace--I must tell
somebody--she fancies she cares for that man!" She wrung her hands
again. "Couldn't we follow them? Get a boat."
"It would take an hour. And it would be a very conspicuous thing to do.
Leave them alone--it's much better; I tell you I'll answer for Rod.
Fancies she cares for him, does she? Well, he is a fine fellow; on the
whole, the finest I know."
The mother's eyes flashed through her tears. "This from _you_?"
"I can't help it; he is. Of course you do not think so. He has got no
money; he has never been anywhere that you call anywhere; he doesn't
know anything about the only life you care for nor the things you think
important. All the same, he is a man in a million. He is a man--not a
puppet."
Gentle Mrs. Churchill appeared for the moment transformed. She looked as
though she could strike him. "Never mind your Quixotic ideas. Tell me
whether he is in love with Eva; it all depends upon that."
"I don't know, I am sure," answered Bartholomew. He began to think. "I
can't say at all; he would conceal it from me."
"Because he felt his inferiority. I am glad he has that grace."
"He wouldn't be conscious of any inferiority save that he is poor. It
would be that, probably, if anything; of course he supposes that Eva is
rich."
"Would to Heaven she were!" said the mother. "Added to every other
horror of it, poverty, miserable poverty, for my poor child!" She sat
down and hid her face.
"It may not be as bad as you fear, nor anything like it. Do cheer up a
little, Fanny. When Eva comes back, ten to one you will find that
nothing at all has happened--that it has been a mere ordinary excursion.
And I promise you I will take Rod away with me to-morrow."
Mrs. Churchill rose and began to pace to and fro, biting her lips, and
watching the water. Mademoiselle, who was still hovering near, she waved
impatiently away. "Let no one in," she called to her.
There seemed, indeed, to be nothing else to do, as Bartholomew had said,
save to wait. He sat down and discussed the matter a little.
Fanny paid no attention to what he was saying. Every now and then broken
phrases of her own burst from her: "How much good will her perfect
French and Italian, her German, Spanish, and even Russian, do her down
in that barbarous wilderness?"--"In her life she has never even buttoned
her boots. Do they think she can make bread?"--"And there was Gino. And
poor Pierre." Then, suddenly, "But it _shall_ not be!"
"I have been wondering why you did not take that tone from the first,"
said Bartholomew. "She is very young. She has been brought up to obey
you implicitly. It would be easy enough, I should fancy, if you could
once make up your mind to it."
"Make up my mind to save her, you mean," said the mother, bitterly. She
did not tell him that she was afraid of her daughter. "Should you
expect _me_ to live at Punta Palmas?" she demanded, contemptuously, of
her companion.
"That would depend upon Rod, wouldn't it?" answered Bartholomew, rather
unamiably. He was tired--he had been there an hour--of being treated
like a door-mat.
At this Fanny broke down again, and completely. For it was only too
true; it would depend upon that stranger, that farmer, that unknown
David Rod, whether she, the mother, should or should not be with her own
child.
A little before sunset the boat came into sight again round the western
cliffs. Fanny dried her eyes. She was very pale. Little Mademoiselle,
rigid with anxiety, watched from an upper window. Bartholomew rose to go
down to the beach to receive the returning fugitives. "No," said Fanny,
catching his arm, "don't go; no one must know before I do--no one." So
they waited in silence.
Down below, the little boat had rapidly approached. Eva had jumped out,
and was now running up the rock stairway; she was always light-footed,
but to her mother it seemed that the ascent took an endless time. At
length there was the vision of a young, happy, rushing figure--rushing
straight to Fanny's arms. "Oh, mamma, mamma," the girl whispered, seeing
that there was no one there but Bartholomew, "he loves me! He has told
me so! he has told me so!"
For an instant the mother drew herself away. Eva, left alone, and
mindful of nothing but her own bliss, looked so radiant with happiness
that Bartholomew (being a man) could not help sympathizing with her.
"You will have to give it up," he said to Fanny, significantly. Then he
took his hat and went away.
Fifteen minutes later his place was filled by David Rod.
"Ah! you have come. I must have a few words of conversation with you,
Mr. Rod," said Fanny, in an icy tone. "Eva, leave us now."
"Oh no, mamma, not now; never again, I hope," answered the girl. She
spoke with secure confidence; her eyes were fixed upon her lover's face.
"Do you call this honorable behavior, Mr. Rod?" Fanny began. She saw
that Eva would not go.
"Why, I hope so," answered Rod, surprised. "I have come at once, as soon
as I possibly could, Mrs. Churchill (I had to take the boat back first,
you know), to tell you that we are engaged; it isn't an hour old yet--is
it, Eva?" He looked at Eva smilingly, his eyes as happy as her own.
"It is the custom to ask permission," said Fanny, stiffly.
"I have never heard of the custom, then; that is all I can say,"
answered Rod, with good-natured tranquillity, still looking at the
girl's face, with its rapt expression, its enchanting joy.
"Please to pay attention; I decline to consent, Mr. Rod; you cannot have
my daughter."
"Mamma--" said Eva, coming up to her.
"No, Eva; if you will remain here--which is most improper--you will have
to hear it all. You are so much my daughter's inferior, Mr. Rod, that I
cannot, and I shall not, consent."
At the word "inferior," a slight shock passed over Eva from head to
foot. She went swiftly to her lover, knelt down and pressed her lips to
his brown hand, hiding her face upon it.
He raised her tenderly in his arms, and thus embraced, they stood there
together, confronting the mother--confronting the world.
Fanny put out her hands with a bitter cry. "Eva!"
The girl ran to her, clung to her. "Oh, mamma, I love you dearly. But
you must not try to separate me from David. I could not leave him--I
never will."
"Let us go in, to our own room," said the mother, in a broken voice.
"Yes; but speak to David first, mamma."
Rod came forward and offered his arm. He was sorry for the mother's
grief, which, however, in such intensity as this, he could not at all
understand. But though he was sorry, he was resolute, he was even stern;
in his dark beauty, his height and strength, he looked indeed, as
Bartholomew had said, a man.
At the sight of his offered arm Mrs. Churchill recoiled; she glanced all
round the terrace as though to get away from it; she even glanced at the
water; it almost seemed as if she would have liked to take her child and
plunge with her to the depths below. But one miserable look at Eva's
happy, trustful eyes still watching her lover's face cowed her; she took
the offered arm. And then Rod went with her, supporting her gently into
the house, and through it to her own room, where he left her with her
daughter. That night the mother rose from her sleepless couch, lit a
shaded taper, and leaving it on a distant table, stole softly to Eva's
side. The girl was in a deep slumber, her head pillowed on her arm.
Fanny, swallowing her tears, gazed at her sleeping child. She still
saw in the face the baby outlines of years before, her mother's eye
could still distinguish in the motionless hand the dimpled fingers of
the child. The fair hair, lying on the pillow, recalled to her the short
flossy curls of the little girl who had clung to her skirts, who had had
but one thought--"mamma."
[Illustration: "FANNY PUT OUT HER HANDS WITH A BITTER CRY"]
"What will her life be now? What must she go through, perhaps--what
pain, privation--my darling, my own little child!"
The wedding was to take place within the month; Rod said that he could
not be absent longer from his farm. Fanny, breaking her silence,
suggested to Bartholomew that the farm might be given up; there were
other occupations.
"I advise you not to say a word of that sort to Rod," Bartholomew
answered. "His whole heart is in that farm, that colony he has built up
down there. You must remember that he was brought up there himself, or
rather came up. It's all he knows, and he thinks it the most important
thing in life; I was going to say it's all he cares for, but of course
now he has added Eva."
Pierre came once. He saw only the mother.
When he left her he went round by way of the main street of Sorrento in
order to pass a certain small inn. His carriage was waiting to take him
back to Castellamare, but there was some one he wished to look at first.
It was after dark; he could see into the lighted house through the low
uncurtained windows, and he soon came upon the tall outline of the young
farmer seated at a table, his eyes bent upon a column of figures. The
Belgian surveyed him from head to foot slowly. He stood there gazing
for five minutes. Then he turned away. "_That_, for Americans!" he
murmured in French, snapping his fingers in the darkness. But there was
a mist in his boyish eyes all the same.
The pink villa witnessed the wedding. Fanny never knew how she got
through that day. She was calm; she did not once lose her self-control.
They were to sail directly for New York from Naples, and thence to
Florida; the Italian colonists were to go at the same time.
"Mamma comes next year," Eva said to everybody. She looked indescribably
beautiful; it was the radiance of a complete happiness, like a halo.
By three o'clock they were gone, they were crossing the bay in the
little Naples steamer. No one was left at the villa with Fanny--it was
her own arrangement--save Horace Bartholomew.
"She won't mind being poor," he said, consolingly, "she won't mind
anything--with _him_. It is one of those sudden, overwhelming loves that
one sometimes sees; and after all, Fanny, it is the sweetest thing life
offers."
"And the mother?" said Fanny.
THE STREET OF THE HYACINTH
I
It was a street in Rome--narrow, winding, not over-clean. Two vehicles
meeting there could pass only by grazing the doors and windows on either
side, after the usual excited whip-cracking and shouts which make the
new-comer imagine, for his first day or two, that he is proceeding at a
perilous speed through the sacred city of the soul.
But two vehicles did not often meet in the street of the Hyacinth. It
was not a thoroughfare, not even a convenient connecting link; it
skirted the back of the Pantheon, the old buildings on either side
rising so high against the blue that the sun never came down lower than
the fifth line of windows, and looking up from the pavement was like
looking up from the bottom of a well. There was no foot-walk, of course;
even if there had been one no one would have used it, owing to the easy
custom of throwing from the windows a few ashes and other light trifles
for the city refuse-carts, instead of carrying them down the long stairs
to the door below. They must be in the street at an appointed hour, must
they not? Very well, then--there they were; no one but an unreasonable
foreigner would dream of objecting.
But unreasonable foreigners seldom entered the street of the Hyacinth.
There were, however, two who lived there one winter not long ago, and
upon a certain morning in the January of that winter a third came to see
these two. At least he asked for them, and gave two cards to the Italian
maid who answered his ring; but when, before he had time to even seat
himself, the little curtain over the parlor door was raised again, and
Miss Macks entered, she came alone. Her mother did not appear. The
visitor was not disturbed by being obliged to begin conversation
immediately; he was an old Roman sojourner, and had stopped fully three
minutes at the end of the fourth flight of stairs to re-gain his breath
before he mounted the fifth and last to ring Miss Macks's bell. Her card
was tacked upon the door: "Miss Ettie F. Macks." He surveyed it with
disfavor, while the little, loose-hung bell rang a small but exceedingly
shrill and ill-tempered peal, like the barking of a small cur. "Why in
the world doesn't she put her mother's card here instead of her own?" he
said to himself. "Or, if her own, why not simply 'Miss Macks,' without
that nickname?"
But Miss Macks's mother had never possessed a visiting-card in her life.
Miss Macks was the visiting member of the family; and this was so well
understood at home, that she had forgotten that it might not be the same
abroad. As to the "Ettie," having been called so always, it had not
occurred to her to make a change. Her name was Ethelinda Faith, Mrs.
Macks having thus combined euphony and filial respect--the first title
being her tribute to aesthetics, the second her tribute to the memory of
her mother.
"I am so very glad to see you, Mr. Noel," said Miss Macks, greeting her
visitor with much cordial directness of voice and eyes. "I have been
expecting you. But you have waited so long--three days!"
Raymond Noel, who thought that under the circumstances he had been
unusually courteous and prompt, was rather surprised to find himself
thus put at once upon the defensive.
"We are not always able to carry out our wishes immediately, Miss
Macks," he replied, smiling a little. "I was hampered by several
previously made engagements."
"Yes; but this was a little different, wasn't it? This was something
important--not like an invitation to lunch or dinner, or the usual idle
society talk."
He looked at her; she was quite in earnest.
"I suppose it to be different," he answered. "You must remember how
little you have told me."
"I thought I told you a good deal! However, the atmosphere of a
reception is no place for such subjects, and I can understand that you
did not take it in. That is the reason I asked you to come and see me
here. Shall I begin at once? It seems rather abrupt."
"I enjoy abruptness; I have not heard any for a long time."
"That I can understand, too; I suppose the society here is all finished
off--there are no rough ends."
"There are ends. If not rough, they are often sharp."
But Miss Macks did not stop to analyze this; she was too much occupied
with her own subject.
"I will begin immediately, then," she said. "It will be rather long; but
if you are to understand me you ought, of course, to know the whole."
"My chair is very comfortable," replied Noel, placing his hat and gloves
on the sofa near him, and taking an easy position with his head back.
Miss Macks thought that he ought to have said, "The longer it is, the
more interesting," or something of that sort. She had already described
him to her mother as "not over-polite. Not rude in the least, you
know--as far as possible from that; wonderfully smooth-spoken; but yet,
somehow--awfully indifferent." However, he was Raymond Noel; and that,
not his politeness or impoliteness, was her point.
"To begin with, then, Mr. Noel, a year ago I had never read one word you
have written; I had never even heard of you. I suppose you think it
strange that I should tell you this so frankly; but, in the first place,
it will give you a better idea of my point of view; and, in the second,
I feel a friendly interest in your taking measures to introduce your
writings into the community where I lived. It is a very intelligent
community. Naturally, a writer wants his articles read. What else does
he write them for?"
"Perhaps a little for his own entertainment," suggested her listener.
"Oh no! He would never take so much trouble just for that."
"On the contrary, many would take any amount just for that. Successfully
to entertain one's self--that is one of the great successes of life."
Miss Macks gazed at him; she had a very direct gaze.
"This is just mere talk," she said, not impatiently, but in a
business-like tone. "We shall never get anywhere if you take me up so.
It is not that your remarks are not very cultivated and interesting,
and all that, but simply that I have so much to tell you."
"Perhaps I can be cultivated and interesting dumbly. I will try."
"You are afraid I am going to be diffuse; I see that. So many women are
diffuse! But I shall not be, because I have been thinking for six months
just what I should say to you. It was very lucky that I went with Mrs.
Lawrence to that reception where I met you. But if it had not happened
as it did I should have found you out all the same. I should have looked
for your address at all the bankers', and if it was not there I should
have inquired at all the hotels. But it was delightful luck getting hold
of you in this way almost the very minute I enter Rome!"
She spoke so simply and earnestly that Noel did not say that he was
immensely honored, and so forth, but merely bowed his acknowledgments.
"To go back. I shall give you simply heads," pursued Miss Macks. "If you
want details, ask, and I will fill them in. I come from the West.
Tuscolee Falls is the name of our town. We had a farm there, but we did
not do well with it after Mr. Spurr's death, so we rented it out. That
is how I come to have so much leisure. I have always had a great deal of
ambition; by that I mean that I did not see why things that had once
been done could not be done again. It seemed to me that the point
was--just determination. And then, of course, I always had the talent. I
made pictures when I was a very little girl. Mother has them still, and
I can show them to you. It is just like all the biographies, you know.
They always begin in childhood, and astonish the family. Well, I had my
first lessons from a drawing-teacher who spent a summer in Tuscolee. I
can show you what I did while with him. Then I attended, for four years,
the Young Ladies' Seminary in the county-town, and took lessons while
there. I may as well be perfectly frank and tell the whole, which is
that everybody was astonished at my progress, and that I was myself. All
sorts of things are prophesied out there about my future. You see, the
neighborhood is a very generous-spirited one, and they like to think
they have discovered a genius at their own doors. My telling you all
this sounds, I know, rather conceited, Mr. Noel. But if you could see my
motive, and how entirely without conceit my idea of myself really is,
you would hold me free from that charge. It is only that I want you to
know absolutely the whole."
"I quite understand," answered her visitor.
"Well, I hope you do. I went on at home after that by myself, and I did
a good deal. I work pretty rapidly, you see. Then came my last lessons,
from a third teacher. He was a young man from New York. He had
consumption, poor fellow! and cannot last long. He wasn't of much use to
me in actual work. His ideas were completely different from those of my
other teachers, and, indeed, from my own. He was unreliable, too, and
his temper was uneven. However, I had a good deal of respect for his
opinion, and _he_ told me to get your art-articles and read them. It
wasn't easy. Some of them are scattered about in the magazines and
papers, you know. However, I am pretty determined, and I kept at it
until I got them all. Well, they made a great impression upon me. You
see, they were new." She paused. "But I doubt, Mr. Noel, whether we
should ever entirely agree," she added, looking at him reflectively.
"That is very probable, Miss Macks."
Miss Macks thought this an odd reply. "He is so queer, with all his
smoothness!" she said to her mother afterwards. "He never says what you
think he will say. Now, any one would suppose that he would have
answered that he would try to make me agree, or something like that.
Instead, he just gave it right up without trying! But I expect he sees
how independent I am, and that I don't intend to _reflect any_ one."