Mr. Kyrle allowed himself to be monopolized almost unresistingly for several days. Not indeed as completely as at the Lido, but to a degree sufficient to prevent any satisfactory intercourse with Aimée. A sudden passion for excursions seemed to have seized the Joscelyns, who had hitherto seen as little as possible of the different places in which they had unwillingly sojourned, and who had seemed quite insensible to any claims of art or history upon their attention. Now, however, they discovered that the neighborhood of Venice abounded in places of interest; and Lydia arranged one excursion after another to the adjacent islands, excursions which Kyrle was invited to join, and during which he was carefully kept as much as possible apart from Aimée.
The tactics by which this was managed were beautifully simple. He found himself sitting by Miss Joscelyn’s side in a gondola, carrying her shawl, offering her his arm wheneverthe need for an arm arose, without in the least understanding how it all came about. But one of the lookers-on understood perfectly, and laughed to herself with an amusement not untinctured by malice. “He declined my aid,” Mrs. Meredith thought, “so I shall leave him to Lydia’s mercy. A man, poor creature, is so helpless in such a case!”
This man was certainly very helpless. There was not in him any of the tincture of brutality which exists in men who can release themselves from such a position by the simplest and most direct methods. He could not be deaf when a woman asked for assistance; he could not refuse to hold a parasol over her when she requested him to do so, nor leave her alone when, falling behind the others, she pleaded fatigue and begged to “rest a little.” They were all threadbare artifices, but still strong enough to hold one who to the instincts of a gentleman in such matters added a certain hopelessness with regard to his own affairs. For, after all, he said to himself, he had made up his mind not to compromise Aimée by attentions of a loverlike character,and it was well that Lydia Joscelyn should help him to keep this somewhat difficult resolution.
But it was a resolution which every day became more difficult, as every day the charm that breathed from her presence laid deeper hold upon him. Despite the vigilance of the Joscelyns, they had occasional opportunities for conversation, and every such opportunity seemed to him to strengthen that impression of a rare individuality which she had from their first acquaintance made upon him. Now and then there were glimpses of thoughts and feelings that lay usually hidden under the gentle composure with which she met the world; and these glimpses, he had a fancy, were given only to him. One of these rare occasions occurred on an excursion to one of the islands, where they encountered another group of tourists, who, proving to be acquaintances, distracted for a time the attention of the rest of the party and so made it possible for him to find Aimée alone. She was sitting, when he discovered her, under the shadow of the cloisters belonging to the ancient and partially desertedmonastic building they were supposed to be examining, gazing seaward; and as he approached unobserved, he was struck by the wistful, almost sad expression of her face. The expression vanished as she became conscious of his presence; only a slight shadow still lingered in her eyes as she turned them on him. But she spoke, with a smile:
“Does a scene like this,” she said, indicating the wide, beautiful marine picture spread before them, “ever rouse in you the expectation of seeing a sail rise up from ‘the underworld’ bringing some wonderful good fortune to you? I am always expecting it. I never look at an ocean horizon without saying to myself, ‘When will my sail come?’”
“I thought,” he said, as he sat down beside her, “that your sail had come, bearing what most people consider the best of good fortune.”
“You mean money?” she asked. “Yes, that came to me, and I am not so ungrateful as to underrate its value, though I can not say it has done much for me; but I am not thinking of anything so prosaic, in lookingfor my fairy sail. That will bring—ah, I know not what, but something that will give a different meaning to life. All things seem possible there”—she waved her hand toward the distant meeting-place of sea and sky; “one feels as if everything for which one longs might come out of that mysterious distance.”
“But if the magic fortune delays, why not go in search of it?” Kyrle asked, smiling at the fancifulness of the talk. “Shall we embark? Behind that dim line we may find all that we have lacked in life awaiting us.”
She shook her head. “No,” she answered; “I have no heart to search the unknown. I am one of those who can only sit on the shore and wait the coming of the sail, however much it may delay.”
Something in her tone, an unconscious echo of the sadness still lurking in her eyes, made Kyrle realize more fully than he had ever done before that her life was certainly not happy. How, indeed, could happiness in any positive degree exist in such an environment as hers? Physical well-being, the comfortand luxury of wealth were hers; but what besides, what love for the tender heart, what sympathy for the aspiring mind? No wonder that the dark, wistful eyes sought the horizon for the magic sail that should bring some meaning into her colorless days. A rush of pity made speech impossible to him for several minutes, and with pity came a longing like a passion to seize and bear her away from the odious people who surrounded and preyed upon her, into the sunshine of such a full and generous existence as her nature craved. It was the force of repression which he had to exert upon himself which made his voice sound almost stern, as he said:
“The most of us can do little more than sit on the shore and wait for sails that long delay in their coming. But I fear that what we chiefly look for them to bring is that prosaic fortune which you despise.”
“Oh, no,” she answered, quickly, “I am not so foolish nor, as I have said, so ungrateful as to despise wealth. But if I do not rate its power as high as most people seem to do, that is natural. My fortune has really broughtme very little personal good. I have often thought that I should have been happier without it. Yet that seems ungrateful; and my family would think it sheer profanity,” she added, with a smile.
“I wish,” said Kyrle, with an energy that was fairly startling, “I wish to Heaven that I were a rich man! Shall I tell you what I would do? It is understood that we are in fairyland, you know. I would have a yacht—a very sea-gull for swiftness and beauty—at my bidding, and I would take you—”
“Oh, here she is!” said a voice at a little distance—the far from welcome voice of Percy Joscelyn. “Aimée, we are waiting for you.”
It chanced that Kyrle was thinking of this conversation and all that it had suggested the next day as, having left the party in a church engaged in inspecting, with blank amazement, some frescoes of Carpaccio which Mr. Ruskin has held up to the admiration of the world, he went out on the little piazza before the church and sat down on the steps which led down to the canal, to wait for them. As hesat there in the soft Venetian sunlight he was of two moods—one to go quickly, at once, out of a temptation which had become overmastering; the other, to cast all scruples to the winds, and show these people—who fancied, forsooth, that their stratagems and devices had any power to restrain him—how little such barriers of straw would stand in his way did he once resolve to take that way. Some one, who came quietly out of the church and sat down beside him, thought that at this moment he looked more like the old, masterful Lennox Kyrle than he had looked since she had seen him under these new conditions.
“I wonder,” said Fanny Meredith, “if you are by this time aware that you are a very foolish man?”
He turned and looked at her. “I have been aware of it for a long time,” he answered, quietly.
“And is not the knowledge of folly the beginning of wisdom? Are you not sorry now that you refused my good offices?”
“Did I refuse them? I am not sure of it. But, if so, the reason holds good now as then,which made it impossible for me to accept them. You urged me to come forward as a suitor to your cousin, and I told you that I was too poor a man to think of doing so. My position has not changed since then.”
“But if you don’t see the folly ofthat, you are not at the beginning of wisdom,” said she, impatiently. “Why, according to your fancy, only rich people should ever marry rich people; when, on the contrary, it should really be the other way! The proper equalizing of wealth demands that rich persons should marry poor ones.”
He was not in a mirthful mood, but to refrain from laughing at this was impossible. “It is a new thing for you to appear in the character of a political economist,” he said. “Your theory is well enough, and I find no fault with those who practice it. But I must decline to be one of the poor persons who aid in the equalization of wealth by such means.”
“Well,Iam one of them,” said Fanny, quite unabashed, turning a diamond ring round on her finger so that its flashing splendor lent emphasis to the assertion, “and I can assureyou that it is a very good means. Pride is the matter with you,” she went on, remorselessly, “and I call it a very selfish thing—much worse than the mercenary spirit, which I presume you feel very virtuous in despising! You don’t deny that you are in love with Aimée; you dare not say that she is not worth a thousand times more than her fortune; and yet you are prepared to lethergo, for the sake of the money you profess to hold in such scorn, and because the Joscelyns might call you a fortune-hunter.”
This was certainly very plain speech, and contained a kernel of truth which struck Kyrle sharply. “If I have held money in scorn,” he said, “it has only been with regard to myself. I know well what its value is in the eyes of others. And it is true that I think too much of my own pride, perhaps; but this is a point on which I have always been peculiarly sensitive—”
“As if I did not know that!” she interposed, with a note of that curious old resentment against his culpable indifference to mercenary considerations in her voice. “Youwere so afraid of being suspected of paying court to your uncle, that you behaved outrageously to him. Oh, it was a very fine thing to show your spirit, your independence, your scorn of groveling souls that cared for money! So you lost a fortune which a little compliance with an old man’s whims would have secured to you; and now you are enjoying the fine results thereof, and preparing to be guilty of the same folly, only in an aggravated form, over again!”
Some people, leaning in the windows of one of the tall, old houses across the canal, and watching the little scene curiously, remarked among themselves that the pretty foreign lady seemed to be a terrible scold, and that the poor man—her husband, probably—had little to say under her rating. “He has deserved it, no doubt,” remarked one woman, enlightened by her own experience. “It is a case of jealousy, most likely.”
“What a vindictive creature you are!” Kyrle was meanwhile saying, with a smile. “Why can not my old follies—for which, as you justly observe, I am now suffering—beallowed to rest? I grant you that I was foolish, impracticable, full of pride—”
“As you are yet,” she interpolated.
“Granted again. But a fortune-hunter—to be suspected of seeking a woman for her wealth—that is something I should feel very deeply. Yet Miss Vincent is indeed worth so much more than her fortune, that to speak of it in connection with her seems an insult. If she were only rid of it—”
“But she is not,” said practical Fanny; “and you can hardly expect her to give it or throw it away in order to oblige you.”
“I expect nothing,” he answered impatiently. “And I do not understand why you should talk as if I had only to put out my hand and grasp a prize which I am sure would, under any circumstances, be far beyond my reach.”
“Your humility does you credit,” she said. “But in my opinion there is no reason why you should not grasp the prize if you would only resolve to make the effort. It is not on your own account that I urge you in this manner,” she added, quickly, “but because I want to rescue Aimée. You do not understand,andshehardly understands, in what a bondage she is held. If those people can prevent it, she will never marry anybody, unless it be Percy Joscelyn. By every possible means they keep suitors away from her; and if I had not been here, you would never have been allowed to approach her near enough to bow to her. Through me you have a chance that no other man has had before. But if you are so blind, if you throw it away for a mere scruple, if you think more of your own pride than of saving her—then you may go! I have nothing more to say to you.”
She rose as she uttered the last words, and Kyrle, who had listened to the latter part of her speech with amazement, could scarcely believe that it was Fanny Meredith who was leaving him with such an air of dignity. He rose too, and made a step after her. There was a sensible quickening of interest among the heads at the windows opposite, as the scene promised to become more dramatic. “It must be a lover’s quarrel,” some one suggested. “If he were her husband he would not follow her.”
“Stop a minute,” Kyrle said. “If you have nothing more to say to me, at least let me say something to you. I have never looked at the matter in exactly the light in which you have put it. But if you will have patience, if you will give me a little time to consider, I will tell you my final decision before to-day is ended.”
“In your place, I would tell mine in five minutes,” said Fanny, scornfully.
“Very likely,” said he, humbly, “but you must make allowances for the slowness of the masculine mind. Can I see you—will you be at home this afternoon?”
“No,” she replied, after a moment’s consideration, “for Mr. Meredith would likely be at home also, and we could not speak freely. But you may meet me at the top of the Campanile about sunset.”
She had hardly said this, and Kyrle had no more than time to assent, when Miss Joscelyn emerged from the church and came toward them with an air of surprise.
“I have been wondering what had become of Mr. Kyrle,” she said. “You really shouldnot have kept him from studying those extraordinary frescoes of Carpaccio.”
“They are certainly extraordinary,” said Fanny, dryly, “but I have not kept Mr. Kyrle from them. I found him here when I came out for a little relief of sunshine. I hope that we are done with Carpaccio now, and that we are going home. It is time for lunch, and I am hungry.”
This seemed to be the general sentiment of the party, which, with a somewhat stupefied appearance—as of having taken art in rather too large a dose—now emerged from the church. The major was shaking his head. “Mr. Ruskin is, no doubt, a fine judge of painting,” he was saying, “but, really—ah—hum—to send one to see such pictures as these!”
Aimée, who was walking behind with Percy, looked tired and pale, and when Kyrle met her eyes he was about to step to her side, but a hand was suddenly laid on his arm.
“Do be kind enough to raise this parasol for me,” said Miss Joscelyn. “The sun is positively blinding.”
Kyrle raised the parasol, and, accepting his fate, assisted her into the waiting gondola. But then, instead of following, he stepped back, and, lifting his hat quietly, bade the party adieu “until to-morrow.”
“You will not join us this afternoon?” inquired Lydia, with some surprise and evident concern.
“I am sorry that I can not have that pleasure,” he answered. “I have a budget of correspondence to read, and another budget to dispatch.”
“Then we will defer the excursion to Murano till to-morrow,” said she, positively.
Kyrle did not answer, but watched the gondola, as it moved away, with a very grave face. The moment of temptation had come now in earnest. Ought he to think of himself and his own pride, when it was a question of rescuing the fair and gentle creature who had won his heart from such a bondage as that which Fanny described? If it were true that by a singular chance he had been enabled to approach her more nearly than any other man had ever approached her, or was likely in thefuture to do, did it not seem as if Fate pointed him out as her rescuer? Yet, for him, by comparison a poor man, to woo so rich a woman, to meet the insults of her friends, and bear the brand of a fortune-hunter in the eyes of the world—that was a bitter necessity to face; and, revolving it in his mind, he went slowly home.
He had been strictly within the limit of the truth when he told Miss Joscelyn that he had a budget of correspondence to read, for the accumulation of several weeks had reached him only that morning, and he had not taken time to wade through it before going out. After a lightdéjeuner, he set himself to the task, partly because it was a necessity, and partly to distract his mind from the question which he was constantly asking and altogether unable to answer.
So, after going through several letters with a very distracted attention, he took up and opened one which was addressed in a strange handwriting and bore the stamp of a legal firm. “How can I—I, who have nothing!” was the refrain echoing through his brain ashe broke the seal. But a minute later he uttered a great exclamation, and sat staring incredulously at the paper before him.
Instead of having nothing, this letter informed him that he possessed a fortune of not less than a million and a half dollars.