Clare Bowring went to her room that night feeling as though she had been at the theatre. She could not get rid of the impression made upon her by the scene she had witnessed, and over and over again, as she lay awake, with the moonbeams streaming into her room, she went over all she had seen and heard on the platform. It had, at least, been very like the theatre. The broad, flat stage, the somewhat conventionally picturesque buildings, the strip of far-off sea, as flat as a band of paint, the unnaturally bright moonlight, the two chief figures going through a love quarrel in the foreground, and she herself calmly seated in the shadow, as in the darkened amphitheatre, and looking on unseen and unnoticed.
But the two people had not talked at all as people talked on the stage in any piece Clare had ever seen. What would have been the “points” in a play had all been left out, and instead there had been abrupt pauses and awkward silences, and then, at what should have been the supreme moment, the lady in whitehad asked for a cigarette. And the two hasty little kisses that had a sort of perfunctory air, and the queer, jerky “good-byes,” and the last stop near the door of the hotel—it all had an air of being very badly done. It could not have been a success on the stage, Clare thought.
And yet this was a bit of life, of the real, genuine life of two people who had been in love, and perhaps were in love still, though they might not know it. She had been present at what must, in her view, have been a great crisis in two lives. Such things, she thought, could not happen more than once in a lifetime—twice, perhaps. Her mother had been married twice, so Clare admitted a second possibility. But not more than that.
The situation, too, as she reviewed it, was nothing short of romantic. Here was a young man who had evidently been making love to a married woman, and who had made her believe that he loved her, and had made her love him too. Clare remembered the desperate little sob, and the handkerchief twice pressed to the pale lips. The woman was married, and yet she actually loved the man enough to think of divorcing her husband in order to marry him. Then, just when she was ready, he had turned and told her in the most heartless way that it had been all play, and that he would not marry herunder any circumstances. It seemed monstrous to the innocent girl that they should even have spoken of marriage, until the divorce was accomplished. Then, of course, it would have been all right. Clare had been brought up with modern ideas about divorce in general, as being a fair and just thing in certain circumstances. She had learned that it could not be right to let an innocent woman suffer all her life because she had married a brute by mistake. Doubtless that was Lady Fan’s case. But she should have got her divorce first, and then she might have talked of marriage afterwards. It was very wrong of her.
But Lady Fan’s thoughtlessness—or wickedness, as Clare thought she ought to call it—sank into insignificance before the cynical heartlessness of the man. It was impossible ever to forget the cool way in which he had said she ought not to take it so tragically, because it was not worth it. Yet he had admitted that he had promised to marry her if she got a divorce. He had made love to her, there on the Acropolis, at sunset, as she had said. He even granted that he might have believed himself in earnest for a few moments. And now he told her that he was sorry, but that “it would not do.” It had evidently been all his fault, for he had found nothing with which to reproach her. If therehad been anything, Clare thought, he would have brought it up in self-defence. She could not suspect that he would almost rather have married Lady Fan, and ruined his life, than have done that. Innocence cannot even guess at sin’s code of honour—though sometimes it would be in evil case without it. Brook had probably broken Lady Fan’s heart that night, thought the young girl, though Lady Fan had said with such a bitter, crying laugh that they were not children and that their hearts could not break.
And it all seemed very unreal, as she looked back upon it. The situation was certainly romantic, but the words had been poor beyond her imagination, and the actors had halted in their parts, as at a first rehearsal.
Then Clare reflected that of course neither of them had ever been in such a situation before, and that, if they were not naturally eloquent, it was not surprising that they should have expressed themselves in short, jerky sentences. But that was only an excuse she made to herself to account for the apparent unreality of it all. She turned her cheek to a cool end of the pillow and tried to go to sleep.
She tried to bring back the white dreams she had dreamt when she had sat alone in the shadow before the other two had come out to quarrel. She did her best to bring back that vague, softjoy of yearning for something beautiful and unknown. She tried to drop the silver veil of fancy-threads woven by the May moon between her and the world. But it would not come. Instead of it, she saw the flat platform, the man and woman standing in the unnatural brightness, and the woman’s desperate little face when he had told her that she had never loved him. The dream was not white any more.
So that was life. That was reality. That was the way men treated women. She thought she began to understand what faithlessness and unfaithfulness meant. She had seen an unfaithful man, and had heard him telling the woman he had made love him that he never could love her any more. That was real life.
Clare’s heart went out to the little lady in white. By this time she was alone in her cabin, and her pillow was wet with tears. Brook doubtless was calmly asleep, unless he were drinking or doing some of those vaguely wicked things which, in the imagination of very simple young girls, fill up the hours of fast men, and help sometimes to make those very men “interesting.” But after what she had seen Clare felt that Brook could never interest her under imaginable circumstances. He was simply a “brute,” as the lady in white had told him, and Clare wished that some woman could make him sufferfor his sins and expiate the misdeeds which had made that little face so desperate and that short laugh so bitter.
She wished, though she hardly knew it, that she had done anything rather than have sat there in the shadow, all through the scene. She had lost something that night which it would be hard indeed to find again. There was a big jagged rent in the drop-curtain of illusions before her life-stage, and through it she saw things that troubled her and would not be forgotten.
She had no memory of her own of which the vivid brightness or the intimate sadness could diminish the force of this new impression. Possibly, she was of the kind that do not easily fall in love, for she had met during the past two years more than one man whom many a girl of her age and bringing up might have fancied. Some of them might have fallen in love with her, if she had allowed them, or if she had felt the least spark of interest in them and had shown it. But she had not. Her manner was cold and over-dignified for her years, and she had very little vanity together with much pride—too much of the latter, perhaps, to be ever what is called popular. For “popular” persons are generally those who wish to be such; and pride and the love of popularity are at opposite poles of the character-world. Proud charactersset love high and their own love higher, while a vain woman will risk her heart for a compliment, and her reputation for the sake of having a lion in her leash, if only for a day. Clare Bowring had not yet been near to loving, and she had nothing of her own to contrast with this experience in which she had been a mere spectator. It at once took the aspect of a generality. This man and this woman were probably not unlike most men and women, if the truth were known, she thought. And she had seen the real truth, as few people could ever have seen it—the supreme crisis of a love-affair going on before her very eyes, in her hearing, at her feet, the actors having no suspicion of her presence. It was, perhaps, the certainty that she could not misinterpret it all which most disgusted her, and wounded something in her which she had never defined, but which was really a sort of belief that love must always carry with it something beautiful, whether joyous, or tender, or tragic. Of that, there had been nothing in what she had seen. Only the woman’s face came back to her, and hurt her, and she felt her own heart go out to poor Lady Fan, while it hardened against Brook with an exaggerated hatred, as though he had insulted and injured all living women.
It was probable that she was to see this man during several days to come. The idea struckher when she was almost asleep, and it waked her again, with a start. It was quite certain that he had stayed behind, when the others had gone down to the yacht, for she had heard the voices calling out “Good-bye, Brook!” Besides he had said repeatedly to the lady in white that he must stay. He was expecting his people. It was quite certain that Clare must see him during the next day or two. It was not impossible that he might try to make her mother’s acquaintance and her own. The idea was intensely disagreeable to her. In the first place, she hated him beforehand for what he had done, and, secondly, she had once heard his secret. It was one thing, so long as he was a total stranger. It would be quite another, if she should come to know him. She had a vague thought of pretending to be ill, and staying in her room as long as he remained in the place. But in that case she should have to explain matters to her mother. She should not like to do that. The thought of the difficulty disturbed her a little while longer. Then, at last, she fell asleep, tired with what she had felt, and seen, and heard.
The yacht sailed before daybreak, and in the morning the little hotel had returned to its normal state of peace. The early sun blazed upon the white walls above, and upon the half-moon, beach below, and shot straight into the recess inthe rocks where Clare had sat by the old black cross in the dark. The level beams ran through her room, too, for it faced south-east, looking across the gulf; and when she went to the window and stood in the sunshine, her flaxen hair looked almost white, and the good southern warmth brought soft colour to the northern girl’s cheeks. She was like a thin, fair angel, standing there on the high balcony, looking to seaward in the calm air. That, at least, was what a fisherman from Praiano thought, as he turned his hawk-eyes upwards, standing to his oars and paddling slowly along, top-heavy in his tiny boat. But no native of Amalfi ever mistook a foreigner for an angel.
Everything was quiet and peaceful again, and there seemed to be neither trace nor memory of the preceding day’s invasion. The English old maids were early at their window, and saw with disappointment that the yacht was gone. They were never to know whether the big man with the gold cigarette case had been the Duke of Orkney or not. But order was restored, and they got their tea and toast without difficulty. The Russian invalid was slicing a lemon into his cup on the vine-sheltered terrace, and the German family, having slept on the question of the Pope and Bismarck, were ruddy with morning energy, and were making an early start for aplace in the hills where the Professor had heard that there was an inscription of the ninth century.
The young girl stood still on her balcony, happily dazed for a few moments by the strong sunshine and the clear air. It is probably the sensation enjoyed for hours together by a dog basking in the sun, but with most human beings it does not last long—the sun is soon too hot for the head, or too bright for the eyes, or there is a draught, or the flies disturb one. Man is not capable of as much physical enjoyment as the other animals, though perhaps his enjoyment is keener during the first moments. Then comes thought, restlessness, discontent, change, effort, and progress, and the history of man’s superiority is the journal of his pain.
For a little while, Clare stood blinking in the sunshine, smitten into a pleasant semi-consciousness by the strong nature around her. Then she thought of Brook and the lady in white, and of all she had been a witness of in the evening, and the colour of things changed a little, and she turned away and went between the little white and red curtains into her room again. Life was certainly not the same since she had heard and seen what a man and a woman could say and be. There were certain new impressions, where there had been no impression at all, but only a maidenreadiness to receive the beautiful. What had come was not beautiful, by any means, and the thought of it darkened the air a little, so that the day was not to be what it might have been. She realised how she was affected, and grew impatient with herself. After all, it would be the easiest thing in the world to avoid the man, even if he stayed some time. Her mother was not much given to making acquaintance with strangers.
And it would have been easy enough, if the man himself had taken the same view. He, however, had watched the Bowrings on the preceding evening, and had made up his mind that they were “human beings,” as he put it; that is to say, that they belonged to his own class, whereas none of the people at the upper end of the table had any claim to be counted with the social blessed. He was young, and though he knew how to amuse himself alone, and had all manner of manly tastes and inclinations, he preferred pleasant society to solitude, and his experience told him that the society of the Bowrings would in all probability be pleasant. He therefore determined that he would try to know them at once, and the determination had already been formed in his mind when he had run after Clare to give her the shawl she had dropped.
He got up rather late, and promptly marched out upon the terrace under the vines, smoking a briar-root pipe with that solemn air whereby the Englishman abroad proclaims to the world that he owns the scenery. There is something almost phenomenal about an Englishman’s solid self-satisfaction when he is alone with his pipe. Every nation has its own way of smoking. There is a hasty and vicious manner about the Frenchman’s little cigarette of pungent black tobacco; the Italian dreams over his rat-tail cigar; the American either eats half of his Havana while he smokes the other, or else he takes a frivolous delight in smoking delicately and keeping the white ash whole to the end; the German surrounds himself with a cloud, and, god-like, meditates within it; there is a sacrificial air about the Asiatic’s narghileh, as the thin spire rises steadily and spreads above his head; but the Englishman’s short briar-root pipe has a powerful individuality of its own. Its simplicity is Gothic, its solidity is of the Stone Age, he smokes it in the face of the higher civilisation, and it is the badge of the conqueror. A man who asserts that he has a right to smoke a pipe anywhere, practically asserts that he has a right to everything. And it will be admitted that Englishmen get a good deal.
Moreover, as soon as the Englishman hasfinished smoking he generally goes and does something else. Brook knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and immediately went in search of the head waiter, to whom he explained with some difficulty that he wished to be placed next to the two ladies who sat last on the side away from the staircase at the public table. The waiter tried to explain that the two ladies, though they had been some time in the hotel, insisted upon being always last on that side because there was more air. But Brook was firm, and he strengthened his argument with coin, and got what he wanted. He also made the waiter point out to him the Bowrings’ name on the board which held the names of the guests. Then he asked the way to Ravello, turned up his trousers round his ankles, and marched off at a swinging pace down the steep descent towards the beach, which he had to cross before climbing the hill to the old town. Nothing in his outward manner or appearance betrayed that he had been through a rather serious crisis on the preceding evening.
That was what struck Clare Bowring when, to her dismay, he sat down beside her at the midday meal. She could not help glancing at him as he took his seat. His eyes were bright, his face, browned by the sun, was fresh and rested. There was not a line of care or thoughton his forehead. The young girl felt that she was flushing with anger. He saw her colour, and took it for a sign of shyness. He made a sort of apologetic movement of the head and shoulders towards her which was not exactly a bow—for to an Englishman’s mind a bow is almost a familiarity—but which expressed a kind of vague desire not to cause any inconvenience.
The colour deepened a little in Clare’s face, and then disappeared. She found something to say to her mother, on her other side, which it would hardly have been worth while to say at all under ordinary circumstances. Mrs. Bowring had glanced at the man while he was taking his seat, and her eyebrows had contracted a little. Later she looked furtively past her daughter at his profile, and then stared a long time at her plate. As for him, he began to eat with conscious strength, as healthy young men do, but he watched his opportunity for doing or saying anything which might lead to a first acquaintance.
To tell the truth, however, he was in no hurry. He knew how to make himself comfortable, and it was an important element in his comfort to be seated next to the only persons in the place with whom he should care to associate. That point being gained, he was willing to wait for whatever was to come afterwards. He didnot expect in any case to gain more than the chance of a little pleasant conversation, and he was not troubled by any youthful desire to shine in the eyes of the fair girl beside whom he found himself, beyond the natural wish to appear well before women in general, which modifies the conduct of all natural and manly young men when women are present at all.
As the meal proceeded, however, he was surprised to find that no opportunity presented itself for exchanging a word with his neighbour. He had so often found it impossible to avoid speaking with strangers at a public table that he had taken the probability of some little incident for granted, and caught himself glancing surreptitiously at Clare’s plate to see whether there were nothing wanting which he might offer her. But he could not think of anything. The fried sardines were succeeded by the regulation braised beef with the gluey brown sauce which grows in most foreign hotels. That, in its turn, was followed by some curiously dry slices of spongecake, each bearing a bit of pink and white sugar frosting, and accompanied by fresh orange marmalade, which Brook thought very good, but which Clare refused. And then there was fruit—beautiful oranges, uncanny apples, and walnuts—and the young man foresaw the near end of the meal, and wished thatsomething would happen. But still nothing happened at all.
He watched Clare’s hands as she prepared an orange in the Italian fashion, taking off the peel at one end, then passing the knife twice completely round at right angles, and finally stripping the peel away in four neat pieces. The hands were beautiful in their way, too thin, perhaps, and almost too white from recent illness, but straight and elastic, with little blue veins at the sides of the finger-joints and exquisite nails that were naturally polished. The girl was clever with her fingers, she could not help seeing that her neighbour was watching her, and she peeled the orange with unusual skill and care. It was a good one, too, and the peel separated easily from the deep yellow fruit.
“How awfully jolly!” exclaimed the young man, unconsciously, in genuine admiration.
He was startled by the sound of his own voice, for he had not meant to speak, and the blood rushed to his sunburnt face. Clare’s eyes flashed upon him in a glance of surprise, and the colour rose in her cheeks also. She was evidently not pleased, and he felt that he had been guilty of a breach of English propriety. When an Englishman does a tactless thing he generally hastens to make it worse, becomes suddenly shy, and flounders.
“I—I beg your pardon,” stammered Brook. “I really didn’t mean to speak—that is—you did it so awfully well, you know!”
“It’s the Italian way,” Clare answered, beginning to quarter the orange.
She felt that she could not exactly be silent after he had apologised for admiring her skill. But she remembered that she had felt some vanity in what she had been doing, and had done it with some unnecessary ostentation. She hoped that he would not say anything more, for the sound of his voice reminded her of what she had heard him say to the lady in white, and she hated him with all her heart.
But the young man was encouraged by her sufficiently gracious answer, and was already glad of what he had done.
“Do all Italians do it that way?” he asked boldly.
“Generally,” answered the young girl, and she began to eat the orange.
Brook took another from the dish before him.
“Let me see,” he said, turning it round and round. “You cut a slice off one end.” He began to cut the peel.
“Not too deep,” said Clare, “or you will cut into the fruit.”
“Oh—thanks, awfully. Yes, I see. This way?”
He took the end off, and looked at her for approval. She nodded gravely, and then turned away her eyes. He made the two cuts round the peel, crosswise, and looked to her again, but she affected not to see him.
“Oh—might I ask you—” he began. She looked at his orange again, without a smile. “Please don’t think me too dreadfully rude,” he said. “But it was so pretty, and I’m tremendously anxious to learn. Was it this way?”
His fingers teased the peel, and it began to come off. He raised his eyes with another look of inquiry.
“Yes. That’s all right,” said Clare calmly.
She was going to look away again, when she reflected that since he was so pertinacious it would be better to see the operation finished once for all. Then she and her mother would get up and go away, as they had finished. But he wished to push his advantage.
“And now what does one do?” he asked, for the sake of saying something.
“One eats it,” answered Clare, half impatiently.
He stared at her a moment and then broke into a laugh, and Clare, very much to her own surprise and annoyance, laughed too, in spite of herself. That broke the ice. When two people have laughed together over something one ofthem has said, there is no denying the acquaintance.
“It was really awfully kind of you!” he exclaimed, his eyes still laughing. “It was horridly rude of me to say anything at all, but I really couldn’t help it. If I could get anybody to introduce me, so that I could apologise properly, I would, you know, but in this place—”
He looked towards the German family and the English old maids, in a helpless sort of way, and then laughed again.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Clare rather coldly.
“No—I suppose not,” he answered, growing graver at once. “And I think it is allowed—isn’t it?—to speak to one’s neighbour at a table d’hôte, you know. Not but what it was awfully rude of me, all the same,” he added hastily.
“Oh no. Not at all.”
Clare stared at the wall opposite and leaned back in her chair.
“Oh! thanks awfully! I was afraid you might think so, you know.”
Mrs. Bowring leaned forward as her daughter leaned back. Seeing that the latter had fallen into conversation with the stranger, she was too much a woman of the world not to speak to him at once in order to avoid any awkwardness when they next met, for he couldnot possibly have spoken first to her across the young girl.
“Is it your first visit to Amalfi?” she inquired, with as much originality as is common in such cases.
Brook leaned forward too, and looked over at the elder woman.
“Yes,” he answered, “I was with a party, and they dropped me here last night. I was to meet my people here, but they haven’t turned up yet, so I’m seeing the sights. I went up to Ravello this morning—you know, that place on the hill. There’s an awfully good view from there, isn’t there?”
Clare thought his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured expression. He was not in the least a “beauty” man—she thought he might be a soldier or a sailor, and a very good specimen of either. Furthermore, he was undoubtedly a gentleman, so far as a man is to be judged by his outward manner and appearance. In her heart she had already set him down as little short of a villain. The discrepancy between his looks and what she thought of him disturbed her. It wasunpleasant to feel that a man who had acted as he had acted last night could look as fresh, and innocent, and unconcerned as he looked to-day. It was disagreeable to have him at her elbow. Either he had never cared a straw for poor Lady Fan, and in that case he had almost broken her heart out of sheer mischief and love of selfish amusement, or else, if he had cared for her at all, he was a pitiably fickle and faithless creature—something much more despicable in the eyes of most women than the most heartless cynic. One or the other he must be, thought Clare. In either case he was bad, because Lady Fan was married, and it was wicked to make love to married women. There was a directness about Clare’s view which would either have made the man laugh or would have hurt him rather badly. She wondered what sort of expression would come over his handsome face if she were suddenly to tell him what she knew. The idea took her by surprise, and she smiled to herself as she thought of it.
Yet she could not help glancing at him again and again, as he talked across her with her mother, making very commonplace remarks about the beauty of the place. Very much in spite of herself, she wished to know him better, though she already hated him. His face attracted her strangely, and his voice was pleasant, closeto her ear. He had not in the least the look of the traditional lady-killer, of whom the tradition seems to survive as a moral scarecrow for the education of the young, though the creature is extinct among Anglo-Saxons. He was, on the contrary, a manly man, who looked as though he would prefer tennis to tea and polo to poetry—and men to women for company, as a rule. She felt that if she had not heard him talking with the lady in white she should have liked him very much. As it was, she said to herself that she wished she might never see him again—and all the time her eyes returned again and again to his sunburnt face and profile, till in a few minutes she knew his features by heart.
A chance acquaintance may, under favourable circumstances, develop faster than one brought about by formal introduction, because neither party has been previously led to expect anything of the other. There is no surer way of making friendship impossible than telling two people that they are sure to be such good friends, and are just suited to each other. The law of natural selection applies to almost everything we want in the world, from food and climate to a wife.
When Clare and her mother had established themselves as usual on the terrace under the vines that afternoon, Brook came and sat beside them for a while. Mrs. Bowring liked him and talked easily with him, but Clare was silent and seemed absent-minded. The young man looked at her from time to time with curiosity, for he was not used to being treated with such perfect indifference as she showed to him. He was not spoilt, as the phrase goes, but he had always been accustomed to a certain amount of attention, when he met new people, and, withoutbeing in the least annoyed, he thought it strange that this particular young lady should seem not even to listen to what he said.
Mrs. Bowring, on the other hand, scarcely took her eyes from his face after the first ten minutes, and not a word he spoke escaped her. By contrast with her daughter’s behaviour, her earnest attention was very noticeable. By degrees she began to ask him questions about himself.
“Do you expect your people to-morrow?” she inquired.
Clare looked up quickly. It was very unlike her mother to show even that small amount of curiosity about a stranger. It was clear that Mrs. Bowring had conceived a sudden liking for the young man.
“They were to have been here to-day,” he answered indifferently. “They may come this evening, I suppose, but they have not even ordered rooms. I asked the man there—the owner of the place, I suppose he is.”
“Then of course you will wait for them,” suggested Mrs. Bowring.
“Yes. It’s an awful bore, too. That is—” he corrected himself hastily—“I mean, if I were to be here without a soul to speak to, you know. Of course, it’s different, this way.”
“How?” asked Mrs. Bowring, with a brightersmile than Clare had seen on her face for a long time.
“Oh, because you are so kind as to let me talk to you,” answered the young man, without the least embarrassment.
“Then you are a social person?” Mrs. Bowring laughed a little. “You don’t like to be alone?”
“Oh no! Not when I can be with nice people. Of course not. I don’t believe anybody does. Unless I’m doing something, you know—shooting, or going up a hill, or fishing. Then I don’t mind. But of course I would much rather be alone than with bores, don’t you know? Or—or—well, the other kind of people.”
“What kind?” asked Mrs. Bowring.
“There are only two kinds,” answered Brook, gravely. “There is our kind—and then there is the other kind. I don’t know what to call them, do you? All the people who never seem to understand exactly what we are talking about nor why we do things—and all that. I call them ‘the other kind.’ But then I haven’t a great command of language. What should you call them?”
“Cads, perhaps,” suggested Clare, who had not spoken for a long time.
“Oh no, not exactly,” answered the young man, looking at her. “Besides, ‘cads’ doesn’t include women, does it? A gentleman’s son sometimes turns out a most awful cad, a regular ‘bounder.’ It’s rare, but it does happen sometimes. A mere cad may know, and understand all right, but he’s got the wrong sort of feeling inside of him about most things. For instance—you don’t mind? A cad may know perfectly well that he ought not to ‘kiss and tell’—but he will all the same. The ‘other kind,’ as I call them, don’t even know. That makes them awfully hard to get on with.”
“Then, of the two, you prefer the cad?” inquired Clare coolly.
“No. I don’t know. They are both pretty bad. But a cad may be very amusing, sometimes.”
“When he kisses and tells?” asked the young girl viciously.
Brook looked at her, in quick surprise at her tone.
“No,” he answered quietly. “I didn’t mean that. The clowns in the circus represent amusing cads. Some of them are awfully clever, too,” he added, turning the subject. “Some of those fiddling fellows are extraordinary. They really play very decently. They must have a lot of talent, when you think of all the different things they do besides their feats of strength—they act, and play the fiddle, and sing, and dance—”
“You seem to have a great admiration for clowns,” observed Clare in an indifferent tone.
“Well—they are amusing, aren’t they? Of course, it isn’t high art, and that sort of thing, but one laughs at them, and sometimes they do very pretty things. One can’t be always on one’s hind legs, doing Hamlet, can one? There’s a limit to the amount of tragedy one can stand during life. After all, it is better to laugh than to cry.”
“When one can,” said Mrs. Bowring thoughtfully.
“Some people always can, whatever happens,” said the young girl.
“Perhaps they are right,” answered the young man. “Things are not often so serious as they are supposed to be. It’s like being in a house that’s supposed to be haunted—on All Hallow E’en, for instance—it’s awfully gruesome and creepy at night when the wind moans and the owls screech. And then, the next morning, one wonders how one could have been such an idiot. Other things are often like that. You think the world’s coming to an end—and then it doesn’t, you know. It goes on just the same. You are rather surprised at first, but you soon get used to it. I suppose that is what is meant by losing one’s illusions.”
“Sometimes the world stops for an individualand doesn’t go on again,” said Mrs. Bowring, with a faint smile.
“Oh, I suppose people do break their hearts sometimes,” returned Brook, somewhat thoughtfully. “But it must be something tremendously serious,” he added with instant cheerfulness. “I don’t believe it happens often. Most people just have a queer sensation in their throat for a minute, and they smoke a cigarette for their nerves, and go away and think of something else.”
Clare looked at him, and her eyes flashed angrily, for she remembered Lady Fan’s cigarette and the preceding evening. He remembered it too, and was thinking of it, for he smiled as he spoke and looked away at the horizon as though he saw something in the air. For the first time in her life the young girl had a cruel impulse. She wished that she were a great beauty, or that she possessed infinite charm, that she might revenge the little lady in white and make the man suffer as he deserved. At one moment she was ashamed of the wish, and then again it returned, and she smiled as she thought of it.
She was vaguely aware, too, that the man attracted her in a way which did not interfere with her resentment against him. She would certainly not have admitted that he was interestingto her on account of Lady Fan—but there was in her a feminine willingness to play with the fire at which another woman had burned her wings. Almost all women feel that, until they have once felt too much themselves. The more innocent and inexperienced they are, the more sure they are, as a rule, of their own perfect safety, and the more ready to run any risk.
Neither of the women answered the young man’s rather frivolous assertion for some moments. Then Mrs. Bowring looked at him kindly, but with a far-away expression, as though she were thinking of some one else.
“You are young,” she said gently.
“It’s true that I’m not very old,” he answered. “I was five-and-twenty on my last birthday.”
“Five-and-twenty,” repeated Mrs. Bowring very slowly, and looking at the distance, with the air of a person who is making a mental calculation.
“Are you surprised?” asked the young man, watching her.
She started a little.
“Surprised? Oh dear no! Why should I be?”
And again she looked at him earnestly, until, realising what she was doing, she suddenly shut her eyes, shook herself almost imperceptibly, and took out some work which she had brought out with her.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “I thought you might fancy I was a good deal older or younger. But I’m always told that I look just my age.”
“I think you do,” answered Mrs. Bowring, without looking up.
Clare glanced at his face again. It was natural, under the circumstances, though she knew his features by heart already. She met his eyes, and for a moment she could not look away from them. It was as though they fixed her against her will, after she had once met them. There was nothing extraordinary about them, except that they were very bright and clear. With an effort she turned away, and the faint colour rose in her face.
“I am nineteen,” she said quietly, as though she were answering a question.
“Indeed?” exclaimed Brook, not thinking of anything else to say.
Mrs. Bowring looked at her daughter in considerable surprise. Then Clare blushed painfully, realising that she had spoken without any intention of speaking, and had volunteered a piece of information which had certainly not been asked. It was very well, being but nineteen years old; but she was oddly conscious that if she had been forty she should have said so in just the same absent-minded way, at that moment.
“Nineteen and six are twenty-five, aren’t they?” asked Mrs. Bowring suddenly.
“Yes, I believe so,” answered the young man, with a laugh, but a good deal surprised in his turn, for the question seemed irrelevant and absurd in the extreme. “But I’m not good at sums,” he added. “I was an awful idiot at school. They used to call me Log. That was short for logarithm, you know, because I was such a log at arithmetic. A fellow gave me the nickname one day. It wasn’t very funny, so I punched his head. But the name stuck to me. Awfully appropriate, anyhow, as it turned out.”
“Did you punch his head because it wasn’t funny?” asked Clare, glad of the turn in the conversation.
“Oh—I don’t know—on general principles. He was a diabolically clever little chap, though he wasn’t very witty. He came out Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. I heard he had gone mad last year. Lots of those clever chaps do, you know. Or else they turn parsons and take pupils for a living. I’d much rather be stupid, myself. There’s more to live for, when you don’t know everything. Don’t you think so?”
Both women laughed, and felt that the man was tactful. They were also both reflecting, of themselves and of each other, that they were not generally silly women, and they wonderedhow they had both managed to say such foolish things, speaking out irrelevantly what was passing in their minds.
“I think I shall go for a walk,” said Brook, rising rather abruptly. “I’ll go up the hill for a change. Thanks awfully. Good-bye!”
He lifted his hat and went off towards the hotel. Mrs. Bowring looked after him, but Clare leaned back in her seat and opened a book she had with her. The colour rose and fell in her cheeks, and she kept her eyes resolutely bent down.
“What a nice fellow!” exclaimed Mrs. Bowring when the young man was out of hearing. “I wonder who he is.”
“What difference can it make, what his name is?” asked Clare, still looking down.
“What is the matter with you, child?” Mrs. Bowring asked. “You talk so strangely to-day!”
“So do you, mother. Fancy asking him whether nineteen and six are twenty-five!”
“For that matter, my dear, I thought it very strange that you should tell him your age, like that.”
“I suppose I was absent-minded. Yes! I know it was silly, I don’t know why I said it. Do you want to know his name? I’ll go and see. It must be on the board by this time, as he is stopping here.”
She rose and was going, when her mother called her back.
“Clare! Wait till he is gone, at all events! Fancy, if he saw you!”
“Oh! He won’t see me! If he comes that way I’ll go into the office and buy stamps.”
Clare went in and looked over the square board with its many little slips for the names of the guests. Some were on visiting cards and some were written in the large, scrawling, illiterate hand of the head waiter. Some belonged to people who were already gone. It looked well, in the little hotel, to have a great many names on the list. Some seconds passed before Clare found that of the new-comer.
“Mr. Brook Johnstone.”
Brook was his first name, then. It was uncommon. She looked at it fixedly. There was no address on the small, neatly engraved card. While she was looking at it a door opened quietly behind her, in the opposite side of the corridor. She paid no attention to it for a moment; then, hearing no footsteps, she instinctively turned. Brook Johnstone was standing on the threshold watching her. She blushed violently, in her annoyance, for he could not doubt but that she was looking for his name. He saw and understood, and came forward naturally, with a smile. He had a stick in his hand.
“That’s me,” he said, with a little laugh, tapping his card on the board with the head of his stick. “If I’d had an ounce of manners I should have managed to tell you who I was by this time. Won’t you excuse me, and take this for an introduction? Johnstone—with an E at the end—Scotch, you know.”
“Thanks,” answered Clare, recovering from her embarrassment. “I’ll tell my mother.” She hesitated a moment. “And that’s us,” she added, laughing rather nervously and pointing out one of the cards. “How grammatical we are, aren’t we?” she laughed, while he stooped and read the name which chanced to be at the bottom of the board.
“Well—what should one say? ‘That’s we.’ It sounds just as badly. And you can’t say ‘we are that,’ can you? Besides, there’s no one to hear us, so it makes no difference. I don’t suppose that you—you and Mrs. Bowring—would care to go for a walk, would you?”
“No,” answered Clare, with sudden coldness. “I don’t think so, thank you. We are not great walkers.”
They went as far as the door together. Johnstone bowed and walked off, and Clare went back to her mother.
“He caught me,” she said, in a tone of annoyance. “You were quite right. Then he showedme his name himself, on the board. It’s Johnstone—Mr. Brook Johnstone, with an E—he says that he is Scotch. Why—mother! Johnstone! How odd! That was the name of—”
She stopped short and looked at her mother, who had grown unnaturally pale during the last few seconds.
“Yes, dear. That was the name of my first husband.”
Mrs. Bowring spoke in a low voice, looking down at her work. But her hands trembled violently, and she was clearly making a great effort to control herself. Clare watched her anxiously, not at all understanding.
“Mother dear, what is it?” she asked. “The name is only a coincidence—it’s not such an uncommon name, after all—and besides—”
“Oh, of course,” said Mrs. Bowring, in a dull tone. “It’s a mere coincidence—probably no relation. I’m nervous, to-day.”
Her manner seemed unaccountable to her daughter, except on the supposition that she was ill. She very rarely spoke of her first husband, by whom she had no children. When she did, she mentioned his name gravely, as one speaks of dead persons who have been dear, but that was all. She had never shown anything like emotion in connection with the subject, and the young girl avoided it instinctively, as mostchildren, of whose parents the one has been twice married, avoid the mention of the first husband or wife, who was not their father or mother.
“I wish I understood you!” exclaimed Clare.
“There’s nothing to understand, dear,” said Mrs. Bowring, still very pale. “I’m nervous—that’s all.”
Before long she left Clare by herself and went indoors, and locked herself into her room. The rooms in the old hotel were once the cells of the monks, small vaulted chambers in which there is barely space for the most necessary furniture. During nearly an hour Mrs. Bowring paced up and down, a beat of fourteen feet between the low window and the locked door. At last she stopped before the little glass, and looked at herself, and smoothed her streaked hair.
“Nineteen and six—are twenty-five,” she said slowly in a low voice, and her eyes stared into their own reflection rather wildly.
Brook Johnstone’s people did not come on the next day, nor on the day after that, but he expressed no surprise at the delay, and did not again say that it was a bore to have to wait for them. Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time with the Bowrings, and the acquaintance ripened quickly towards intimacy, without passing near friendship, as such acquaintance sometimes will, when it springs up suddenly in the shallow ground of an out-of-the-way hotel on the Continent.
“For Heaven’s sake don’t let that man fall in love with you, Clare!” said Mrs. Bowring one morning, with what seemed unnecessary vehemence.
Clare’s lip curled scornfully as she thought of poor Lady Fan.
“There isn’t the slightest danger of that!” she answered. “Any more than there is of my falling in love with him,” she added.
“Are you sure of that?” asked her mother. “You seem to like him. Besides, he is very nice, and very good-looking.”
“Oh yes—of course he is. But one doesn’t necessarily fall in love with every nice and good-looking man one meets.”
Thereupon Clare cut the conversation short by going off to her own room. She had been expecting for some time that her mother would make some remark about the growing intimacy with young Johnstone. To tell the truth, Mrs. Bowring had not the slightest ground for anxiety in any previous attachment of her daughter. She was beginning to wonder whether Clare would ever show any preference for any man.
But she did not at all wish to marry her at present, for she felt that life without the girl would be unbearably lonely. On the other hand, Clare had a right to marry. They were poor. A part of their little income was the pension that Mrs. Bowring had been fortunate enough to get as the widow of an officer killed in action, but that would cease at her death, as poor Captain Bowring’s allowance from his family had ceased at his death. The family had objected to the marriage from the first, and refused to do anything for his child after he was gone. It would go hard with Clare if she were left alone in the world with what her mother could leave her. On the other hand, that little, or the prospect of it, was quite safe, and would make a great difference to her, as a married woman. Thetwo lived on it, with economy. Clare could certainly dress very well on it if she married a rich man, but she could as certainly not afford to marry a poor one.
As for this young Johnstone, he had not volunteered much information about himself, and, though Mrs. Bowring sometimes asked him questions, she was extremely careful not to ask any which could be taken in the nature of an inquiry as to his prospects in life, merely because that might possibly suggest to him that she was thinking of her daughter. And when an Englishman is reticent in such matters, it is utterly impossible to guess whether he be a millionaire or a penniless younger son. Johnstone never spoke of money, in any connection. He never said that he could afford one thing or could not afford another. He talked a good deal of shooting and sport, but never hinted that his father had any land. He never mentioned a family place in the country, nor anything of the sort. He did not even tell the Bowrings to whom the yacht belonged in which he had come, though he frequently alluded to things which had been said and done by the party during a two months’ cruise, chiefly in eastern waters.
The Bowrings were quite as reticent about themselves, and each respected the other’s silence. Nevertheless they grew intimate, scarcely knowinghow the intimacy developed. That is to say, they very quickly became accustomed, all three, to one another’s society. If Johnstone was out of the hotel first, of an afternoon, he moped about with his pipe in an objectless way, as though he had lost something, until the Bowrings came out. If he was writing letters and they appeared first, they talked in detached phrases and looked often towards the door, until he came and sat down beside them.
On the third evening, at dinner, he seemed very much amused at something, and then, as though he could not keep the joke to himself, he told his companions that he had received a telegram from his father, in answer to one of his own, informing him that he had made a mistake of a whole fortnight in the date, and must amuse himself as he pleased in the interval.
“Just like me!” he observed. “I got the letter in Smyrna or somewhere—I forget—and I managed to lose it before I had read it through. But I thought I had the date all right. I’m glad, at all events. I was tired of those good people, and it’s ever so much pleasanter here.”
Clare’s gentle mouth hardened suddenly as she thought of Lady Fan. Johnstone had been thoroughly tired of her. That was what he meant when he spoke of “those good people.”
“You get tired of people easily, don’t you?” she inquired coldly.
“Oh no—not always,” answered Johnstone.
By this time he was growing used to her sudden changes of manner and to the occasional scornful speeches she made. He could not understand them in the least, as may be imagined, and having considerable experience he set them down to the score of a certain girlish shyness, which showed itself in no other way. He had known women whose shyness manifested itself in saying disagreeable things for which they were sometimes sorry afterwards.
“No,” he added reflectively. “I don’t think I’m a very fickle person.”
Clare turned upon him the terrible innocence of her clear blue eyes. She thought she knew the truth about him too, and that he could not look her in the face. But she was mistaken. He met her glance fearlessly and quietly, with a frank smile and a little wonder at its fixed scrutiny. She would not look away, rude though she might seem, nor be stared out of countenance by a man whom she believed to be false and untrue. But his eyes were very bright, and in a few seconds they began to dazzle her, and she felt her eyelids trembling violently. It was a new sensation, and a very unpleasant one.It seemed to her that the man had suddenly got some power over her. She made a strong effort and turned away her face, and again she blushed with annoyance.
“I beg your pardon,” Johnstone said quickly, in a very low voice. “I didn’t mean to be so rude.”
Clare said nothing as she sat beside him, but she looked at the opposite wall, and her hand made an impatient little gesture as the fingers lay on the edge of the table. Possibly, if her mother had not been on her other side, she might have answered him. As it was, she felt that she could not speak just then. She was very much disturbed, as though something new and totally unknown had got hold of her. It was not only that she hated the man for his heartlessness, while she felt that he had some sort of influence over her, which was more than mere attraction. There was something beyond, deep down in her heart, which was nameless, and painful, but which she somehow felt that she wanted. And aside from it all, she was angry with him for having stared her out of countenance, forgetting that when she had turned upon him she had meant to do the same by him, feeling quite sure that he could not look her in the face.
They spoke little during the remainder of themeal, for Clare was quite willing to show that she was angry, though she had little right to be. After all, she had looked at him, and he had looked at her. After dinner she disappeared, and was not seen during the remainder of the evening.
When she was alone, however, she went over the whole matter thoughtfully, and she made up her mind that she had been hasty. For she was naturally just. She said to herself that she had no claim to the man’s secrets, which she had learned in a way of which she was not at all proud; and that if he could keep his own counsel, he, on his side, had a right to do so. The fact that she knew him to be heartless and faithless by no means implied that he was also indiscreet, though when an individual has done anything which we think bad we easily suppose that he may do every other bad thing imaginable. Johnstone’s discretion, at least, was admirable, now that she thought of it. His bright eyes and frank look would have disarmed any suspicion short of the certainty she possessed. There had not been the least contraction of the lids, the smallest change in the expression of his mouth, not the faintest increase of colour in his young face.
So much the worse, thought the young girl suddenly. He was not only bad. He was alsoan accomplished actor. No doubt his eyes had been as steady and bright and his whole face as truthful when he had made love to Lady Fan at sunset on the Acropolis. Somehow, the allusion to that scene had produced a vivid impression on Clare’s mind, and she often found herself wondering what he had said, and how he had looked just then.
Her resentment against him increased as she thought it all over, and again she felt a longing to be cruel to him, and to make him suffer just what he had made Lady Fan endure.
Then she was suddenly and unexpectedly overcome by a shamed sense of her inability to accomplish any such act of justice. It was as though she had already tried, and had failed, and he had laughed in her face and turned away. It seemed to her that there could be nothing in her which could appeal to such a man. There was Lady Fan, much older, with plenty of experience, doubtless; and she had been deceived, and betrayed, and abandoned, before the young girl’s very eyes. What chance could such a mere girl possibly have? It was folly, and moreover it was wicked of her to think of such things. She would be willingly lowering herself to his level, trying to do the very thing which she despised and hated in him, trying to outwit him, to out-deceive him, to out-betray him. One side ofher nature, at least, revolted against any such scheme. Besides, she could never do it.
She was not a great beauty; she was not extraordinarily clever—not clever at all, she said to herself in her sudden fit of humility; she had no “experience.” That last word means a good deal more to most young girls than they can find in it after life’s illogical surprises have taught them the terrible power of chance and mood and impulse.
She glanced at her face in the mirror, and looked away. Then she glanced again. The third time she turned to the glass she began to examine her features in detail. Lady Fan was a fair woman, too. But, without vanity, she had to admit that she was much better-looking than Lady Fan. She was also much younger and fresher, which should be an advantage, she thought. She wished that her hair were golden instead of flaxen; that her eyes were dark instead of blue; that her cheeks were not so thin, and her throat a shade less slender. Nevertheless, she would have been willing to stand any comparison with the little lady in white. Of course, compared with the famous beauties, some of whom she had seen, she was scarcely worth a glance. Doubtless, Brook Johnstone knew them all.
Then she gazed into her own eyes. She didnot know that a woman, alone, may look into her own eyes and blush and turn away. She looked long and steadily, and quite quietly. After all, they looked dark, for the pupils were very large and the blue iris was of that deep colour which borders upon violet. There was something a little unusual in them, too, though she could not quite make out what it was. Why did not all women look straight before them as she did? There must be some mysterious reason. It was a pity that her eyelashes were almost white. Yet they, too, added something to the peculiarity of that strange gaze.
“They are like periwinkles in a snowstorm!” exclaimed Clare, tired of her own face; and she turned from the mirror and went to bed.
The first sign that two people no longer stand to each other in the relation of mere acquaintances is generally that the tones of their voices change, while they feel a slight and unaccountable constraint when they happen to be left alone together.
Two days passed after the little incident which had occurred at dinner before Clare and Johnstone were momentarily face to face out of Mrs. Bowring’s sight. At first Clare had not been aware that her mother was taking pains to be always present when the young man was about, but when she noticed the fact she at once began to resent it. Such constant watchfulness was unlike her mother, un-English, and almost unnatural. When they were all seated together on the terrace, if Mrs. Bowring wished to go indoors to write a letter or to get something she invented some excuse for making her daughter go with her, and stay with her till she came out again. A French or Italian mother could not have been more particular or careful, but a French or Italian girl would have been accustomedto such treatment, and would not have seen anything unusual in it. But Mrs. Bowring had never acted in such a way before now, and it irritated the young girl extremely. She felt that she was being treated like a child, and that Johnstone must see it and think it ridiculous. At last Clare made an attempt at resistance, out of sheer contrariety.
“I don’t want to write letters!” she answered impatiently. “I wrote two yesterday. It is hot indoors, and I would much rather stay here!”
Mrs. Bowring went as far as the parapet, and looked down at the sea for a moment. Then she came back and sat down again.
“It’s quite true,” she said. “It is hot indoors. I don’t think I shall write, after all.”
Brook Johnstone could not help smiling a little, though he turned away his face to hide his amusement. It was so perfectly evident that Mrs. Bowring was determined not to leave Clare alone with him that he must have been blind not to see it. Clare saw the smile, and was angry. She was nineteen years old, she had been out in the world, the terrace was a public place, Johnstone was a gentleman, and the whole thing was absurd. She took up her work and closed her lips tightly.
Johnstone felt the awkwardness, rose suddenly, and said he would go for a walk. Clare raisedher eyes and nodded as he lifted his hat. He was still smiling, and her resentment deepened. A moment later, mother and daughter were alone. Clare did not lay down her work, nor look up when she spoke.
“Really, mother, it’s too absurd!” she exclaimed, and a little colour came to her cheeks.
“What is absurd, my dear?” asked Mrs. Bowring, affecting not to understand.
“Your abject fear of leaving me for five minutes with Mr. Johnstone. I’m not a baby. He was laughing. I was positively ashamed! What do you suppose could have happened, if you had gone in and written your letters and left us quietly here? And it happens every day, you know! If you want a glass of water, I have to go in with you.”
“My dear! What an exaggeration!”
“It’s not an exaggeration, mother—really. You know that you wouldn’t leave me with him for five minutes, for anything in the world.”
“Do you wish to be left alone with him, my dear?” asked Mrs. Bowring, rather abruptly.
Clare was indignant.
“Wish it? No! Certainly not! But if it should happen naturally, by accident, I should not get up and run away. I’m not afraid of the man, as you seem to be. What can he do to me? And you have no idea how strangely you behave,and what ridiculous excuses you invent for me. The other day you insisted on my going in to look for a train in the time-tables when you know we haven’t the slightest intention of going away for ever so long. Really—you’re turning into a perfect duenna. I wish you would behave naturally, as you always used to do.”
“I think you exaggerate,” said Mrs. Bowring. “I never leave you alone with men you hardly know—”
“You can’t exactly say that we hardly know Mr. Johnstone, when he has been with us, morning, noon, and night, for nearly a week, mother.”
“My dear, we know nothing about him—”
“If you are so anxious to know his father’s Christian name, ask him. It wouldn’t seem at all odd. I will, if you like.”
“Don’t!” cried Mrs. Bowring, with unusual energy. “I mean,” she added in a lower tone and looking away, “it would be very rude—he would think it very strange. In fact, it is merely idle curiosity on my part—really, I would much rather not know.”
Clare looked at her mother in surprise.
“How oddly you talk!” she exclaimed. Then her tone changed. “Mother dear—is anything the matter? You don’t seem quite—what shall I say? Are you suffering, dearest? Has anything happened?”
She dropped her work, and leaned forward, her hand on her mother’s, and gazing into her face with a look of anxiety.
“No, dear,” answered Mrs. Bowring. “No, no—it’s nothing. Perhaps I’m a little nervous—that’s all.”
“I believe the air of this place doesn’t suit you. Why shouldn’t we go away at once?”
Mrs. Bowring shook her head and protested energetically.
“No—oh no! I wouldn’t go away for anything. I like the place immensely, and we are both getting perfectly well here. Oh no! I wouldn’t think of going away.”
Clare leaned back in her seat again. She was devotedly fond of her mother, and she could not but see that something was wrong. In spite of what she said, Mrs. Bowring was certainly not growing stronger, though she was not exactly ill. The pale face was paler, and there was a worn and restless look in the long-suffering, almost colourless eyes.
“I’m sorry I made such a fuss about Mr. Johnstone,” said Clare softly, after a short pause.
“No, darling,” answered her mother instantly. “I dare say I have been a little over careful. I don’t know—I had a sort of presentiment that you might take a fancy to him.”
“I know. You said so the first day. But Isha’n’t, mother. You need not be at all afraid. He is not at all the sort of man to whom I should ever take a fancy, as you call it.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Mrs. Bowring thoughtfully.
“Of course—it’s hard to explain.” Clare smiled. “But if that is what you are afraid of, you can leave us alone all day. My ‘fancy’ would be quite, quite different.”
“Very well, darling. At all events, I’ll try not to turn into a duenna.”
Johnstone did not appear again until dinner, and then he was unusually silent, only exchanging a remark with Clare now and then, and not once leaning forward to say a few words to Mrs. Bowring as he generally did. The latter had at first thought of exchanging places with her daughter, but had reflected that it would be almost a rudeness to make such a change after the second day.
They went out upon the terrace, and had their coffee there. Several of the other people did the same, and walked slowly up and down under the vines. Mrs. Bowring, wishing to destroy as soon as possible the unpleasant impression she had created, left the two together, saying that she would get something to put over her shoulders, as the air was cool.
Clare and Johnstone stood by the parapet andlooked at each other. Then Clare leaned with her elbows on the wall and stared in silence at the little lights on the beach below, trying to make out the shapes of the boats which were hauled up in a long row. Neither spoke for a long time, and Clare, at least, felt unpleasantly the constraint of the unusual silence.
“It is a beautiful place, isn’t it?” observed Johnstone at last, for the sake of hearing his own voice.
“Oh yes, quite beautiful,” answered the young girl in a half-indifferent, half-discontented tone, and the words ended with a sort of girlish sniff.
Again there was silence. Johnstone, standing up beside her, looked towards the hotel, to see whether Mrs. Bowring were coming back. But she was anxious to appear indifferent to their being together, and was in no hurry to return. Johnstone sat down upon the wall, while Clare leaned over it.
“Miss Bowring!” he said suddenly, to call her attention.
“Yes?” She did not look up; but to her own amazement she felt a queer little thrill at the sound of his voice, for it had not its usual tone.
“Don’t you think I had better go to Naples?” he asked.
Clare felt herself start a little, and she waited a moment before she said anything in reply. She did not wish to betray any astonishment in her voice. Johnstone had asked the question under a sudden impulse; but a far wiser and more skilful man than himself could not have hit upon one better calculated to precipitate intimacy. Clare, on her side, was woman enough to know that she had a choice of answers, and to see that the answer she should choose must make a difference hereafter. At the same time, she had been surprised, and when she thought of it afterwards it seemed to her that the question itself had been an impertinent one, merely because it forced her to make an answer of some sort. She decided in favour of making everything as clear as possible.
“Why?” she asked, without looking round.
At all events she would throw the burden of an elucidation upon him. He was not afraid of taking it up.
“It’s this,” he answered. “I’ve rather thrust my acquaintance upon you, and, if I stay here until my people come, I can’t exactly change my seat and go and sit at the other end of the table, nor pretend to be busy all day, and never come out here and sit with you, after telling you repeatedly that I have nothing on earth to do. Can I?”
“Why should you?”
“Because Mrs. Bowring doesn’t like me.”
Clare rose from her elbows and stood up, resting her hands upon the wall, but still looking down at the lights on the beach.
“I assure you, you’re quite mistaken,” she answered, with quiet emphasis. “My mother thinks you’re very nice.”
“Then why—” Johnstone checked himself, and crumbled little bits of mortar from the rough wall with his thumbs.
“Why what?”
“I don’t know whether I know you well enough to ask the question, Miss Bowring.”
“Let’s assume that you do—for the sake of argument,” said Clare, with a short laugh, as she glanced at his face, dimly visible in the falling darkness.
“Thanks awfully,” he answered, but he did not laugh with her. “It isn’t exactly an easy thing to say, is it? Only—I couldn’t help noticing—I hope you’ll forgive me, if you think I’m rude, won’t you? I couldn’t help noticing that your mother was most awfully afraid of leaving us alone for a minute, you know—as though she thought I were a suspicious character, don’t you know? Something of that sort. So, of course, I thought she didn’t like me. Do you see? Tremendously cheeky of me to talk in this way, isn’t it?”
“Do you know? It is, rather.” Clare was more inclined to laugh than before, but she only smiled in the dark.
“Well, it would be, of course, if I didn’t happen to be so painfully respectable.”
“Painfully respectable! What an expression!” This time, Clare laughed aloud.
“Yes. That’s just it. Well, I couldn’t exactly tell Mrs. Bowring that, could I? Besides, one isn’t vain of being respectable. I couldn’t say, Please, Mrs. Bowring, my father is Mr. Smith, and my mother was a Miss Brown, of very good family, and we’ve got five hundred a year in Consols, and we’re not in trade, and I’ve been to a good school, and am not at all dangerous. It would have sounded so—so uncalled for, don’t you know? Wouldn’t it?”
“Very. But now that you’ve explained it to me, I suppose I may tell my mother, mayn’t I? Let me see. Your father is Mr. Smith, and your mother was a Miss Brown—”