An Italian Lesson
With all her childishness and perversity, Ermengarde was not
destitute of judgment and critical taste. Long before she reached
the end of "Storm and Stress" she perceived that it was a really fine
work, giving evidence of power and imagination and a knowledge of
human nature, hitherto dormant and unsuspected in her husband. There
was humour in it, unexpected flashes, that occasionally made little
bursts of laughter startle the quiet of her room, and pathos poignant
enough to bring hot, sudden tears to her eyes. She read on and on
through the night, too much engrossed in the drama to think of the
writer till overcome by sleep; and, when she woke, shivering in the
cool dawn, read on to the end instead of going to bed.
Then she remembered that all this moving drama of intense thought and
feeling, of insight into character, and vital, insoluble problems,
came from the mind and heart of the man at whose side she had lived
so long and so blindly, who had misunderstood her, and whom she had
misunderstood, with whose real inward life and thought she had never
once been in touch.
The man had lived a double life; he possessed two distinct selves,
one of which was entirely strange to her. The Arthur she knew, the
humdrum, irritating, fireside being of everyday life, could never
have written "Storm and Stress"; he was absolutely devoid of the
fire, the passion, and the imagination, the tenderness and poetry,
the refined humour and delicate fancy, contained in that fine novel.
He had never remotely hinted to her of the existence of these
intricate social and political questions, so forcibly presented in
this picture of actual life. And what could he know of the inner
workings of a mother's heart--he who had misunderstood and wounded
those of his own child's mother? Arthur, that cold, sarcastic being,
that ambulant wet blanket upon all enthusiasms? No; she had married
two men, and one was a stranger; she had unthinkingly mated with a
genius, and never found it out; she was the wife of a man carrying a
dark lantern that was always turned away from her.
It was humiliating; it was exasperating, the more so from the vague
and haunting sense of remorse it kindled within her. Yet she was
pleased, and in a way proud, to discover this rich mine of powerful
imagination and intellectual vigour in the man so near her. But the
thought that she was shut out and allowed no part in it chilled and
cut her to the heart, even while conscience asked rather grimly why
the publisher's parcel had remained so long unopened, receiving no
adequate reply.
She came down late to her open-air breakfast, and found a table in a
solitary corner, where she could take her coffee and roll unobserved
of the few late lingerers on the sunny terrace, whose voices came
clear upon the still and flower-scented air to her unheeding ears.
The beauty of that wide prospect of sea and mountain never staled;
every change of hour and weather gave variety; morning after
cloudless morning came always with a fresh surprise and novel charm.
Her corner was by the balustrade on the edge of the steep ravine,
whence a wall of rock fell steep and far beneath. She sat with the
morning sunlight behind her and the lemon terraces sinking away on
one side to the platane-shadowed torrent by the road, where the
people looked small as ants, and carts and waggons were toys, leading
to the clean, bright-walled town embowered in dark foliage, with
illimitable spaces of dark purple sea beyond it, all glowing in the
clear brilliance of southern sun. Sounds of cheerful labour rose
pleasantly from a saw-mill niched in the bottom of a narrow gorge,
from carpenters' hammers, mingling with washerwomen's voices, the
roll and clatter of wheels, the tramp of soldiers and confused noises
of the town, and floated up, softened and mellowed, above the faint
and far sea-murmurs. And before her, in the full morning light, so
soft though so strong, the white-walled monastery towered high on its
dark, wooded ridge, with gabled roof, quivering cypress flames and
feathery eucalyptus tops traced clear on the dark blue sky. What a
glow in the blue-black pine foliage, what mystery in the purply bloom
of those olive-woods, climbing the steep summit far above the vines!
How lovingly the golden light lay upon all, steeping it in splendour,
caressing it with warm radiance, and bringing out every detail of
shape and colour and shadowy distance. Contrasted with all this
joyous colour and radiance, how solemnly beautiful was the
convent-crested steep, and how grand and awe-inspiring the deep sweet
blue of the broad, unbounded sea sweeping far away into unseen space!
Her troubled spirit and unquiet heart were soothed and calmed by this
familiar but never-staling beauty; the sweet, sharp air, so light and
pleasant to breathe, kindled fresh life with every inspiration; she
seemed to drink it with her coffee and eat it with her crisp roll and
butter.
And yet--and yet, with what different eyes she once saw it. Where
was the mental elevation, the pure and healing emotion, of her first
sight of this large, fresh, foreign beauty of purple-shadowed
mountain and glowing sea? Talk about the gaming-tables, about petty
vices and sordid troubles, had filled her with incredulous disgust
then. But now? She had lost more than money on those green tables,
and bartered something more precious than jewels in the glittering
Monte Carlo shops; and here, in the pure and rose-scented air, some
subtle soul-perfume had floated away and vanished, she knew not how.
A little breeze, shaking the palm-foliage close by, had the sadness
of pattering rain, but it brought a wave of spiced carnation and
heliotrope and sweet geranium mixed with rose. Ermengarde sighed
with the breeze. Her unquiet breast told her that something was
wrong within; she could not, perhaps would not, say what; she had
fallen a little way from some height, but how she could not tell.
Only she was quite sure she ought to have opened the publisher's
parcel earlier; she was equally sure that she should have been given
some knowledge of the importance of its contents beforehand. In any
case, she had been the last to know of an event that altered the
whole tenor of her own and her husband's lives. Arthur must have
known at least that he had produced something of a higher quality,
and greater aim and scope, than he had ever done before; yet he had
lived under the same roof with her and never said a word; he had been
like a man in a dream, absorbed, preoccupied, moving in a world
apart, of which she had never been given the faintest glimpse.
Perhaps her darkest suspicions were justified. And now, in the full
blaze of a sudden fame, he had made no sign and given her no shadow
of participation in his changed fortune. No one could make a first
great success like that with indifference. He must have been deeply
moved, if only by the prospect of a fresh vista of mental activity
opening before him, or, less worthily, by the comparative wealth it
assured. Yes; those huge sales of which she heard must mean a solid
accretion of hard cash for the writer of the book, were publishers
never so rapacious.
And his short, scrappy letters gave no hint of what must be an epoch,
a turning-point, in his life. They were without address, because of
that mysteriously prolonged business tour; they were evidently
written some time before they reached her, while her answers,
addressed to the home he appeared never to have seen since they
parted, had presumably made long tours before he received them.
Where was Arthur?
An inquiry addressed to Herbert on the subject had met with an
unsatisfactory reply. Her father and mother only mentioned her
husband in answer to her questions; they had not seen him; he had not
yet returned; he was a notoriously bad letter-writer, conducting his
correspondence mainly by telegraph or telegrammatic post-cards, she
heard. Things undoubtedly were more serious, the breach between them
more deadly, than she had suspected. A very bad feature of the case
was his refusal to finance the tour of which she had stood in such
real need on the plea of poverty. Poverty! When he must have known
that he was on the brink of a gold-mine.
Men know men. No doubt Herbert and her father knew more than they
cared to say of the strained relations between husband and wife, and
of the causes that had produced this bitter state of affairs. Well,
at least Charlie was left. Poor little Charlie, whose short, stiff,
pot-hook letters, written with such laborious effort, expressed
nothing but that the child was executing a wearisome task, and whose
solitary sentence, "Farther cent a good big Kake; The fellers ett
it," was his sole allusion to him. Poor little Charlie!
Through tears evoked by the vision of a little, lonely, curly-headed
boy bending with inky fingers and knitted brows over toilsome
letters, all the bright and sunny beauty and the great peace of the
vast sea-plains darkening and glowing on that solid blue horizon rim
seemed full of rebuke and chiding. Snowy sails, flitting bird-like
on the deep-blue splendour, and black hulls, trailing their smoke
pennons above it, reproached her, and the quivering cypress-spires on
the monastery height condemned her. For what? Then the shining
lemon-foliage took up the tale, and rustled disapproval among the
gleaming yellow fruit, and the voices and low laughter of people
sitting in the sun vaguely excluded her, making her a thing apart
from general sympathy. But why?
There was nobody to consult or confide in; even the woman of mystery,
who, for all her presumable sins, was at least sincerely attached to
her, was absent, probably on some errand of dubious integrity. Not
that such sorrow as this could be confided to anybody except by vague
hints, though it might in some measure be divined by sympathy. Best
to go home. She had been growing more and more home-sick of late,
especially since that last and worst afternoon at the tables.
Presently the thin man emerged from the lemon-foliage, and, seeing
her, raised his hat and passed on with friendly smile and halting
step. He had been a father to her, but for this emergency was
probably supplied with no paternal counsels. Pacing the walk on the
monastery ridge under the cypresses, the spare figure of Mr. Mosson,
the philanthropist, was visible. That benefactor to his species
appeared to be absorbed as usual in his morning devotions, intently
perusing the red book that Mr. Welbourne had pronounced to be no Book
of Hours or Breviary, as she had rashly conjectured. Should she
throw herself upon his charity, and seek balm of him for at least one
of her troubles? That something must be done before long to this
effect was absolutely certain. The eighteen-guinea serge gown could
not well be pawned, besides having lost some of its pristine
freshness in excursions on the Azure Shore, and the jewel-box was
perilously near emptiness.
The American lady was kind and cordial; but a marked indisposition to
plank down indiscriminate dollars had always formed a feature in an
estimate of trans-Atlantic character as conceived from early
childhood; moreover, divorce laws being so varied by locality, and so
light-heartedly sought and obtained, in the United States, citizens
of that Republic could not logically be credited with sound views
upon matrimonial duties and relationships.
The only person whom it was possible to consult upon questions of
that delicate complexion, besides being absent and unattainable,
happened to be the very person whose conduct was arraigned for
judgment, and the most rabid democrat has not yet gone so far as to
allow the criminal to be his own judge and jury.
Suddenly a light step on the gravel and a blithe "Bon jour, Madame,"
broke this current of melancholy thought, and evoked responsive
brightness on her clouded face, as the laughing eyes and gay
personality of M. Isidore appeared above the sun-steeped flowers.
Madame was perhaps too tired for the usual Italian lesson, he
conjectured.
"Do I look tired?" she asked, smiling cheerfully, and heard that
there was a shadow on her face as of one who had not slept well.
What depth of sympathetic insight in this charming young fellow, the
general utility person of the hotel!
"I have not slept at all," she replied gaily. "I sat up reading all
night. That is why I am haggard and fishy-eyed this morning."
The appropriateness of these adjectives was promptly and warmly
denied, with remarks to the effect that some faces only acquire fresh
and spiritualized charm under the shadow of fatigue. There was
further, she heard in elegant idiomatic French, a special quality of
beauty peculiar to sadness and another to gaiety. Madame, it was
thoughtfully averred, usually gave the impression of possessing
gaiety and _joie de vivre_.
"We all have our dark moods at times," she sighed, in Italian so
outrageous that M. Isidore was obliged to repeat the sentence in an
amended form, which he did with a sigh and an accent that made it the
expression of his own intimate feelings.
Upon this the pupil commented that we live in a vale of tears.
Having corrected this proposition, the teacher contradicted it as
flatly as was consistent with politeness and good Italian.
"We live, on the contrary," he added, opening _Le mie Prigioni_ at a
turned-down page with a view to reading it aloud--"we others at Les
Oliviers--we live in an earthly Paradise. Yes?" he asked, smiling
and indicating all the sunny beauty with a sweep of the hand. "But,"
he added, with a deep sigh, and in wild Italian, "Paradise had its
serpent and the Garden of the Hesperides its dragon. So also our
Paradise here."
"Very true," the pupil corroborated, wondering what the serpent of
the Oliviers Paradise was.
The thin man, she remembered, once said it was frogs. Miss Boundrish
thought it was the absence of fashion shops. Her father considered
it to be the badness of foreign tobacco and the late arrival of Money
Market intelligence. Her mother held the inferiority of butcher's
meat, together with the presence of foreigners, a fair equivalent for
the Enemy of Mankind. A German Baron had been heard to mutter that
it was the impossibility of escaping from "diese verrückten
Engländer," and a Frenchman, the ubiquity of "_ces Miss Anglaises
maigres et à dents enormes_."
After a thoughtful pause, M. Isidore hinted darkly in correct and
melancholy French at griefs too poignant for expression, and entirely
peculiar to Les Oliviers. The place, he added, lay under the spell
of a powerful enchantment. Personally, he was unable to resist it.
In some respects, he confessed, he was weak, powerless as an infant
even. But he was fully aware that, as Madame had been gracious
enough to observe, this was no place for him. His relations
continually counselled, even commanded him, to leave it, but in vain.
He was rooted to the spot; he was bound to the ridge with unbreakable
chains; he had, under the terrible spell cast upon him, long ceased
to be master of himself. Of course, he was fully aware that he ought
not to make revelations of a character so intimate. He was abusing
the angelic goodness of Madame; he was trespassing upon the gracious
consideration, the sympathetic interest, she had been so obliging as
to manifest for him; but, in short, he could not help it.
How well emotion became this handsome young foreigner; how natural
and unaffected, how perfectly free from self-consciousness and false
shame he was! The French certainly are a most fascinating people--at
least, when young and good-looking, and of another sex--Madame
reflected. "But I do wish the poor boy wasn't quite so hard hit. It
might be awkward too."
"Pray don't apologize, dear M. Isidore," she replied, in the best
English and the kindest possible manner. "You honour me by your
confidence; it interests me exceedingly. It touches me. Don't
hesitate," she added, in dulcet accents, suddenly remembering his
lack of English, and speaking French, "to tell me anything that is on
your mind, if--if it affords you the slightest relief.--For if," she
reflected, "he really is so madly in love with me, he had better out
with it at once, and I can laugh it off as a boy's fancy, and at the
same time let him see how much higher and holier English views of
such feelings and relationships are. It may be the turning-point,
the beginning of a new era, a higher life to this young and ardent
nature.--Tell me," she said with a gentle smile, "as you would tell
your own mother."
"I have told my own mother. I went to Monte Carlo yesterday on
purpose," he returned, with perfect simplicity. "And she entirely
disapproves of my sentiments--of the whole affair, in short."
"Oh!" murmured Ermengarde, rather taken aback.
"But what would you?" he added. "Mothers are like that. It is
perfectly natural. She counsels me to take refuge in flight. But
there are sentiments, and those of the most sacred, the most
exalted--there are crises of the soul--for which flight is of no
avail."
"It depends----"
"There are enchantments that are only deepened and intensified by
absence."
She had to confess that this was indubitable, and added vaguely that
it was sad.
"My mother declares my passion to be an infatuation, a madness----"
"Perhaps it is, or a folly, or only a boy's fancy," she said, smiling
softly, and then shrinking back in sudden terror.
For all at once he sprang to his feet, stamping and gesticulating,
his face darkened and distorted with fury, clutching his head with
both hands, with blazing eyes and gestures of indescribable scorn and
anger. "Boy," he shouted, "boy! What immature, what puerile, breast
could endure the strain of a passion so virile, so invincible, so
beyond all conception, so far transcending anything that can possibly
be imagined by any female mind, as this? Such a passion as mine is
not to be trifled with, Madame; it is too mighty, too terrible in its
virile power. Ah! if women did but know what depths they have power
to stir in male hearts, what inextinguishable fires they have power
to kindle!-- Pardon me, Madame," he added, gasping, and all at once
perceiving the deadly pallor and terrified gaze of Ermengarde's
shrinking face, and the gestures with which she seemed to be vainly
seeking some way of bodily escape from the explosion. "My transports
render me ferocious, forgetful of the consideration due to your sex
and weakness. There is more of the tiger than the boy in my ardent
nature; my passionate adoration frightens you, as it devours,
consumes, destroys me. Reassure yourself, dear Madame, I implore
you. See, I am calm, penitent, desolated to have occasioned a
momentary emotion of terror in a breast so gentle, in a heart so
adorable, to which all homage, and consideration the most tender, is
due."
So speaking, he sank gracefully before her, his voice now sweet and
low, his gestures supplicatory, even caressing. "Pardon me," he
murmured, with clasped hands and a face all sunshine, while poor
Ermengarde was white and trembling and as scared as some small and
mischievous boy meddling with prohibited gunpowder and hearing it
bang and go off in all directions--"pardon me. The overwhelming
force of my passion is my one, my ample, excuse."
She murmured faintly that there was nothing to pardon; only she hoped
he would not do it again, and would he be so obliging as to rise from
his penitential posture upon one knee? This he did with infinite
grace, bowing low over her hand, which he appeared to kiss, wholly
oblivious of the fact that the spot upon which this scene was enacted
was raked by the fire of two blazing dark eyes from the office window.
Poor, frightened Ermengarde gasped a little, for it is one thing to
be the object of a boy's distant, poetic homage and quite another to
be raved at by a demented and exacting person, who describes himself
as a tiger and his feelings as ferocious. She looked aimlessly over
the lemons and olives to the deep dark blueness that glowed to a firm
and rounded intensity against a pale sky, quite unable to put two
words together, while M. Isidore, his eyes full of soft, inward
light, and his features calm and composed as a sleeping babe's,
looked as if nothing could disturb the sunny peace of his soul, and
composedly suggested that they should continue to follow the
melancholy experiences of "this poor M. Pellico," with which
intention he took a seat at her side, and, placing the open book on
the table between and before them, began to read aloud to ears
confused with terror and remorse.
At this juncture the approach of Heinrich, the porter, not yet in his
smart gold and green livery, but green-baize-aproned and
shirt-sleeved, as his morning duties required, and with a curious
smile in his great, soft, dark eyes, put a final stop to the Italian
lesson by conveying a summons to the teacher to transact some homely
business in those obscure back premises whither no visitor ever
penetrated.
"Peste!" cried the impassioned lover, with darkening brows. "Zese
dampt duties," he added in English, with a little shrug and a sunny
smile, to the still pale and terrified Mrs. Allonby. "Our poor
lesson! Madame excuses? Yes? _A rivederla!_" and with a bow and
smile he was gone, and Ermengarde began to breathe more freely.
She looked at the monastery sitting on the wooded hill, at the
velvety blue above it, the peacock blue below, at the violet-veined
mountain peaks around; she watched great bees and hawk-moths plunging
into the petals of stocks, and butterflies fluttering above the heads
of people reading and basking in the blue and golden morning, drawing
long breaths and wondering why everything seemed vaguely to accuse
her. She turned to the towered village throned and shadowy beneath
the eastern peak, and that, too, seemed to despise her. She felt
unworthy of the very flower scents. Yet she had done nothing, and
had meant so well. Could any reasonable being have foreseen this?
Who, stroking the soft fur of some gamesome fireside pet, could
expect the growl and clawing of a full-sized tiger?
Oh, for a good, full-flavoured, suffocating mouthful of London fog,
for firelight dancing on china and polished surface in the murky
noonday at home, instead of this perpetual, unnatural, homeless glare!
She went into the house, and, remembering something she wanted at the
office, turned aside to the ever-open door, and found Mlle. Geneviève
on duty at the desk.
But what had come to the young woman that she should receive her
gentle address with scowling brow and eyes of smouldering flame, and,
instead of replying, should turn her back upon her, and, calling
something down a speaking-tube, walk slowly through the opposite door
into private regions?
Ermengarde waited, uncertain for a moment whether to give up the
trifling matter on which she had come, or to ring sharply for
attendance. She was about to turn away, too full of inward disquiet
to mind a small discourtesy, when the opposite door opened,
disclosing the majestic presence of Madame Bontemps, to whom she
listlessly made her request.
Silently then a drawer was opened, stamps and postcards silently
handed out, money received and change returned, in dread and ominous
stillness. Then was fulminated this bolt from the blue; she was
informed in a dry and level voice, and with much regret, that her
room would be required for another guest at the expiration of the
week.
"But what do you mean?" cried Ermengarde. "People can't be allowed
to take my room. Besides, I don't intend to give it up."
"Pardon me. Madame is mistaken. The room is already reserved for
the date indicated, and there is no other in the house suitable to
the requirements of Madame."
"Why, you are positively turning me out," she cried, incredulous with
amazement.
The Padrone crossed her arms upon her ample breast and smiled a
cast-iron smile. "It is not for me to contradict the assertion of
Madame," she replied, with a fierce shrug and a stony eye.
Ermengarde turned white, and looked steadily in the hard and hostile
face for a second.
"I see that I have been mistaken in the character of this house," she
said coldly. "Be good enough to accept my notice to leave at my
earliest convenience." Then, without waiting for a reply, she went
out into the sunshine and paced slowly through the garden, her skirts
brushing scent from oak-leaf geraniums and her cheek tapped by the
rounded coolness of lemons on the garden boughs, and came out upon
the path that led over the open mountain ridge, drawing a long breath.
"The insolence!" she burst out to an old woman, harmlessly knitting
and leading her goat, who nodded and smiled in return, under the
impression that kind remarks were being addressed to her--"the
incredible insolence! All the people seem to have gone out of their
senses this morning, or else I've gone out of mine."