Chapter Four.The Farm on the Hill.Most people are acquainted with the sensation of being caught in a sudden and unexpected manner in some little eddy of society or circumstance, and how they are swept away before they know where they are. But if it is odd and startling to ourselves, it is much more so to those who are untouched by the currents; and when, at the appointed time on the next day, Ibbetson went off to Villa Carlina, he left Miss Cartwright a little perplexed at what he had told her, and at his newly-awakened interest.To himself the villa, when it came in sight, seemed full of pleasant and friendly expectations. He heard sounds before he saw where they came from; then Cartouche boldly plunged under the banksia arches, and there was a little cry of dismay, laughter, children’s voices. “This way,” some one called out, and when he reached them he found a gay little company sitting under the green shade, and was welcomed without formality.“Now we are all here, we will start directly,” said Bice. “Come, little children!”But the children were in a state of ecstatic delight over Cartouche’s amazement at the hundreds of gold fish which came crowding to the edge of the pond. He barked and snapped, snapped and barked in vain, and at last, in a frantic attempt to reach them, tumbled headlong into the pond, out of which he scrambled with his enthusiasm a little checked.Mrs Masters was not going; the walk, she said, was quite beyond her strength, and they left her strolling back to the house, where she gave them the hope she might employ herself in writing some letters which had long been waiting. The others set off merrily. There was Giovanni Moroni, a youth of two or three-and-twenty, dark, bright-eyed, with cropped hair, and a frank pleasant smile. It was to hispodere, high up the hill, that they were bound. There was also his sister, the Contessa, and her husband, who was grey-headed and fierce. The children were theirs; they came from Genoa, and were wild with delight at the country life and their escape from a dark old palace. Kitty and Cartouche speedily became their victims. Bice was kind, but, this afternoon at least, a little graver than the others, for many thoughts were rushing through her head as they went clambering and laughing up the hill.That little outline which old Andrea had given to Jack told as much of her story as there was, to all appearance, to tell. But to her own thinking a great deal remained unknown—problems, possibilities, were sweeping through the air, and troubling her with a hundred perplexing doubts and shadows, which it was left to her unaided to solve or to disperse—to her, little more than a child, as she was! Everything was simple and a little dull to Mrs Masters. She had gone through such ill-usage and insult as would have seared most women’s lives; and when it was all over, feathered out again with no more result than a mild assurance that from that time forward she had a right to whatever comfortable compensation she could get out of existence. Bice’s passionate little soul reached the same conviction through quite another road, through all sorts of fiery impulses, horror at her father’s cruelty, contempt, devotion, flinging of herself into the breach, heedless of anything she might have to suffer for her championship. So sad a warfare was it for a child to go through, that it was a wonder so much that was good and noble had survived it. She had always constituted herself her mother’s protector, and now that her father was dead she had a sort of odd notion that it was she who had to make up to her for the sufferings she had gone through. She was ready to accept Mr Masters, anything that could help them to forget the old life. She was glad that her mother bore another name, and insisted upon sharing it herself against all law and right, and the equally persistent obstinacy of old Andrea. It was this which brought a sudden flame of anger into her cheeks that very afternoon, as they climbed along a steep stony track, on one side shaded by hawthorn bushes, on the other falling away into fields, a valley, and a little stream.“One might be in England,” Ibbetson said, standing still to look round.“Is it so like?” asked Bice eagerly. “Kitty never told me that it was. I shall come here often.”“You have a great fancy for England, and yet you might be content with your own country,” said Jack smiling.“England is my country,” she said, and it was then the red began to deepen in her cheeks.“But you are a Capponi?”She stopped and faced him, her eyes flashing, her whole figure quivering.“Who told you so?” she cried angrily. “It was that old Andrea, I am certain. I will not have it. I am not Capponi any longer. I am English, and English only.”She kept away from him for some time after this outburst, though he tried more than once to make his peace. It was only after he had pointedly called her by her mother’s name that she relented and became friendly again.Thepoderelay some way up the hill which they were climbing. At last they reached it; a picturesque building well baked by the sun, with a low tower, tiled, a round arch or two, and deep eaves. Outside stood beautiful great oxen with wide-spreading horns, and two or three children were watching and ran eagerly to fetch the contadino. When he had come out and had spoken a few words to his padrone, young Moroni, the latter led the way to a door in the wall, within which was a kind of rough garden, full of fig-trees laden with fruit. One or two brown-faced boys came running with tables and chairs.“Ah! but this is truly idyllic, my Giovanni,” said the young countess, sinking into a chair. “If I must confess the truth, I could not have walked another ten steps.”She was not exactly pretty, but slender and fragile-looking, and she generally contrived to do as much as she liked and no more. Her fierce husband adored and petted her, and she was very fond of him and of the children, whom she expected him to keep in order or amuse as the case might be. Wherever she was she liked to form the centre, and now she managed to draw them all round her, except Bice. Bice strolled away alone towards the other end of the garden, here and there picking a rose, or one of the half-wild flowers which grew without care just as they had been stuck in. The girl was in a strange and dissatisfied mood that day; it seemed as if different strings were vibrating together, making odd discords and harmonies. Some had been set in motion by things which Ibbetson had said the day before, others had been touched and jarred, she scarcely knew how or why: questions and perplexities seemed to have awakened just at the moment when she had intended them to be silent. From that father from whose memory she shrank she had inherited many characteristics: among them a strong will, and a desire to thrust whatever was painful to her out of sight. “Why should I be obliged to remember now?” her heart cried out angrily, as she turned and looked at the gay little group, already beckoning to her to return to them. “Give is Kitty’s own brother, and she is not thinking about him, and Oliver has not come yet, and things are not worse than they were yesterday, when I was not half so unhappy. And to-day I meant to enjoy myself and to forget it all. Why does it come back now?”She was impatient at her own weakness and yet could not master it; tears rushed into her eyes, she turned hastily away, and laid her arms upon a low wall, heedless, for the moment, of anything but her own unhappiness.“You must not desert us in this way,” said some one behind. “We are waiting for you before we begin the great business of the day, which is much more formidable than I thought.” And then his voice changed, and, became very kind and grave. “Is anything the matter? Has anyone vexed you, that you go away and leave us?”For she had turned and looked him full in the face, careless that the tears were running down her cheeks. A desperate longing seized her to tell him her troubles and to ask his help. The poor child had so few from whom she could seek it, that it seemed to her as if this kind voice might give her aid in the labyrinth where she was losing herself. The longing was of course utterly foolish and unreasonable. Jack was an utter stranger, and the next moment her face burnt at the thought of what her impulse had been. He for his part could not understand the piteous appeal in her eyes, or the change in which it died out. She said quickly—“Vexed? Oh, no! I was unhappy because I was thinking of my brother Clive.”“Is he ill?”“No, not ill. He is in some trouble in England. I don’t quite know what it is myself,” she went on, looking frankly at him, “and I dare say that makes it worse. But it is nothing new, and I cannot think why it should come to me so strongly just now. Do you ever feel as if things seized you with a rush and without any reason?”Jack thought of his walk by the Arno the night before. This girl with her changing moods, her frank appeals, interested him. He felt a strong desire to help her—a desire which was perhaps made more vigorous by the consciousness of her wonderful beauty. He answered the first part of her speech.“You must have so many friends that it seems ridiculous to suppose that I can do anything about your brother. But can I?”A sudden gladness lit her eyes.“Could you?” she said, eagerly answering his question by another. “I daresay you could. You are very much mistaken if you suppose we have many friends; I don’t know that we have any at all.”It was said slowly and as if she were considering, and for that very reason it almost startled Jack. The words were strange, coming from such lips.“That is impossible,” he said decidedly. “But about your brother?”“It is a long story, you see. I couldn’t tell you now.”“No, I understand, of course you couldn’t. Come back to the other’s,” he went on kindly. “You can talk the matter over with your mother and your sister,”—Bice shook her head with an amused smile—“and tell me when you like. Then we will see what can be done.”The swift changes in her face and manner were certainly interesting. The cloud had passed; she was smiling, radiant, flashing out with odd unexpected speeches, playing with Cartouche, helping Giovanni to pick up the figs, helping everybody. Two or three boys ran up the tree like squirrels, and in a few minutes had brought great baskets full. All the Moroni party ate them Italian fashion, as a sandwich between raw ham and bread; the contessa teased Bice.“She knows there is nothing more delicious; it is only the Anglo-mania which prevents her doing as we do. I can forgive Kitty—but you, Bice!”Ibbetson thought that young Moroni looked annoyed. “Why should the signorina have Anglo-mania?” he said hotly. “At any rate the signore has just said there are no such figs in England.”“Ah, why, why, why?” cried out the girl gaily. “Do not let us ask questions or find fault. Do you know, Giovanni, that it is absolutely delicious here in your old farm garden. I did not think it had been half so pleasant.”“Yet you have been here before,” said the young man, flushing with delight.“Was it it like this? Then I must have forgotten. There is nothing so nice at ourpodere.”“Have you a farm?” Ibbetson asked Kitty.“Yes,” she said, with a little shy stiffness in her manner. “It is in another direction.”“And who manages it?”“Bice is really padrona. But the contadino, who is the tenant, manages it; you know that is the custom here. He pays us half of everything, the live stock and the crops.”So long a speech was almost too great an effort for Kitty, and she jumped up and took refuge with the children, who were sitting in a heap munching figs, and occasionally trying to thrust one down Cartouche’s throat. A boy in the tree over their heads tossed the cool green fruit into their laps.“Pippa has only eaten twelve,” said little Gigi, planting his white teeth in the rind. “Only twelve! That is because she is a girl, and so little!”Pippa plodded on sturdily, paying no attention to the insult. The broad leaves cast broken masses of shade upon the long grass, the clear whiteness of the western sky was changing to amber.“How well you speak our language!” said the little contessa graciously to Ibbetson. “Believe me, it is a compliment we all appreciate. Now when Bice’s other English friend is here, the Signore—Trent—how do you call him? we are obliged to fall back upon French. Eh, Bice, it is so, is it not?”“Yes,” said the girl shortly.She was grave again, as Ibbetson remarked. The changes in her manner and in her face were so rapid that he found himself watching and wondering. He had never met with anyone who showed so openly whatever passed across her mind.“Is he coming again soon? He is your relative, is he not?” persisted the contessa.“He is Kitty’s cousin.”It was the first time she had spoken as if Kitty and she were not absolutely one in their possessions, and her tone had an unwilling ring about it. Perhaps it piqued her friend’s curiosity, for she threw back her head, and said in a low amused voice—“You are mysterious,carina. Is the subject too sacred to be discussed?”The girl’s eyes flashed, she sprang up angry and impatient.“Are we going to stay here all our lives?” she cried with a sharpness which cut poor Giovanni to the heart. If he had heard what had just passed he might have been better satisfied, but he had been looking another way, choosing some of the best figs for the beautiful Eve who had praised his little Paradise, and he heard nothing until there came this sharp, scornful speech, which made a desert of it all. Yet how lovely she looked standing there, her head thrown up, the exquisite outline of her profile clear against the golden sky! And when she turned, and saw the young fellow’s frightened face, her own melted, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks.“Was I so rude, Giovanni?” she said gently, “I did not mean it, really. It has all been charming, delightful, only now it is time to go. Nina knows it, but she is lazy. I must be the one to tell you what is prudent. Come, Kitty, come, children, the reign of figs is over, but we will carry back a basket-full for mamma. She always says there are none like those which grow up here on Giovanni’s mountain.”All the way home she was softer and gentler than Ibbetson had yet seen her. Pippa was tired, and nothing would please her but that Bice should carry her. The little creature, with her curly black hair, fell asleep in her arms, and the girl would not have her moved or awakened, walking on firmly and strongly with her burden. She led them down by another path, in spite of the contessa’s complaints that it was both longer and steeper.“It will not harm you,” Bice said quietly, “and you will see something worth seeing.”But it was not until they had turned a shoulder of the hill where, on a sort of stony terrace, a few old olives stood grey and shadowy in the midst of a flood of colour, that Ibbetson knew what she had brought him to see. For below, and stretched before him, spread that wonderful plain of Valdamo which is beyond the power of pen or pencil; and now, as it lay bathed in the radiance of the setting sun, he felt as if he had never before known its beauty. A haze, not of mist, but of colour, seemed to rest upon it, so delicate and so varied that its intensity was scarcely felt, and the villas and farms with which the plain is thickly studded gleamed like jewels in the midst of this wonderful setting. On the opposite hill rose Bellosguardo with its cypresses, those trees which throughout Italy give point and force to softer beauties; and below, the domes and towers of Florence lay in the full glory of the sunset lights.Only one of the party did not look at its beauty; young Moroni was looking at Bice instead. She still had the child in her arms, and he came to her side and said wistfully—“Let me take Pippa the rest of the way, she is too heavy for you;” and quite unexpectedly Bice gave her to him with a smile. She would not, however, walk by his side, as he had hoped; she would walk with nobody; she lingered behind, gathering here and there a flower which had survived the summer heats. The contessa claimed the other gentleman, Kitty had the children in charge and Cartouche, who was a little overwhelmed by an unusual sense of virtue, Bice straggled after them, singing to herself. Ibbetson, who was listening for it, could now and then hear a little break of song come flying down from behind in a tantalising manner. He began to hate the little contessa, who was not half so interesting as this girl with her contradictions, her odd moods. He waited his opportunity, but not until the villa was in sight could he make an excuse for pausing to join Bice. She was some distance in the rear, and came towards him very slowly. Then he saw that something was wrong.“What is the matter?” he asked quickly.“Nothing. Why did you wait?” she said with a touch of petulance of which he took no notice. He was looking at her hand, round which she had wrapt a handkerchief.“What have you done to your hand?”“I have told you it is nothing,” she said in the same tone. “I have run a thorn into it, that is all.”“A thorn would not give you so much pain.”“Well, it may be a little splinter; I think it is. Go on, please, and don’t say anything about it.”“Not to your sister?”“Oh, dear me, of course not!” she said with vexation. “Anything of this sort makes Kitty quite ill, don’t you understand? Please go to the villa, I shall be there presently.”“But I am not going to the villa,” said Jack quietly; “I am going to look at your hand.”“I can take it out myself.”“Ifyou please—”Bice was evidently unaccustomed to have her own will set aside; she stared at him in amazement, and a bright flush which looked like resistance rose to her cheek. Perhaps, however, she thought resistance undignified, or perhaps Jack’s waiting attitude took too much for granted; for after a momentary struggle she hastily unwrapped her hand and silently stretched it out. He could hardly repress the exclamation which rose to his lips. It was cruelly bruised and torn, and the suffering must have been great.“How could you have done it?” he said reproachfully.“I was standing on a stone to gather a little flower which I saw in a bush, and the stone slipped. I fell on my hand, and I think something caught in it and ran in.”She held her hand steadily for his inspection, but she had grown pale, and to tell the truth, the prospect of his amateur surgery made him very uncomfortable. He turned in his mind the possibilities of finding a doctor, but it was most improbable that one lived within a moderate distance, and the splinter was momentarily increasing the irritation. She would not hear of getting help from the house, and Jack hastily determined to do the best he could for her, uttering a fervent mental hope that she would not faint.He need not have feared. After the first sharp pain had made her shrink, she let her hand lie quite passive, and although persistently keeping her face turned away, from first to last uttered no sound. Perhaps this self-restraint made him nervous, perhaps he was inexperienced in the work, for he knew through every nerve in his own body that he was giving her sharp and even unnecessary pain. When the splinter was drawn out, his own face was nearly as white as hers. The girl noticed this as he straightened himself.“I am afraid you disliked it as much as Kitty,” she said remorsefully.“It was clumsy work,” said Jack; “I know that I hurt you horribly.”“Never mind,” said Bice. “Chiara shall put some of her healing herbs, and I think the pain is all over.”Was it so indeed? Did nothing whisper to her of another pain, a deeper smart, which this very moment was bringing? What sweet and tremulous pang seemed to smite her in the silence which fell for a moment? A moment—no more—and yet there are moments which go on for years.Bice drew back her hand without another word of thanks.The others, too, had had a little misadventure to detain them—the contessa had torn her dress, and it required consultations, laments, and pinnings; so that when they were finished, Jack and Bice were not far behind. They were all to dine at the villa, and went along straight stiff walks bordered by cypresses towards the little flower-garden by the breakfast-room. As they reached it, Cartouche growled angrily at a gentleman who was coming quickly down the steps. Moroni, still carrying the child, met him first, then came the contessa, who turned and beckoned gaily to Bice. The girl, when she saw him, half stopped. Ibbetson noticed that she became pale, and that her lips quivered.“Who is it?” he asked curiously.“It is Oliver Trent,” she said in an odd, frightened undertone.
Most people are acquainted with the sensation of being caught in a sudden and unexpected manner in some little eddy of society or circumstance, and how they are swept away before they know where they are. But if it is odd and startling to ourselves, it is much more so to those who are untouched by the currents; and when, at the appointed time on the next day, Ibbetson went off to Villa Carlina, he left Miss Cartwright a little perplexed at what he had told her, and at his newly-awakened interest.
To himself the villa, when it came in sight, seemed full of pleasant and friendly expectations. He heard sounds before he saw where they came from; then Cartouche boldly plunged under the banksia arches, and there was a little cry of dismay, laughter, children’s voices. “This way,” some one called out, and when he reached them he found a gay little company sitting under the green shade, and was welcomed without formality.
“Now we are all here, we will start directly,” said Bice. “Come, little children!”
But the children were in a state of ecstatic delight over Cartouche’s amazement at the hundreds of gold fish which came crowding to the edge of the pond. He barked and snapped, snapped and barked in vain, and at last, in a frantic attempt to reach them, tumbled headlong into the pond, out of which he scrambled with his enthusiasm a little checked.
Mrs Masters was not going; the walk, she said, was quite beyond her strength, and they left her strolling back to the house, where she gave them the hope she might employ herself in writing some letters which had long been waiting. The others set off merrily. There was Giovanni Moroni, a youth of two or three-and-twenty, dark, bright-eyed, with cropped hair, and a frank pleasant smile. It was to hispodere, high up the hill, that they were bound. There was also his sister, the Contessa, and her husband, who was grey-headed and fierce. The children were theirs; they came from Genoa, and were wild with delight at the country life and their escape from a dark old palace. Kitty and Cartouche speedily became their victims. Bice was kind, but, this afternoon at least, a little graver than the others, for many thoughts were rushing through her head as they went clambering and laughing up the hill.
That little outline which old Andrea had given to Jack told as much of her story as there was, to all appearance, to tell. But to her own thinking a great deal remained unknown—problems, possibilities, were sweeping through the air, and troubling her with a hundred perplexing doubts and shadows, which it was left to her unaided to solve or to disperse—to her, little more than a child, as she was! Everything was simple and a little dull to Mrs Masters. She had gone through such ill-usage and insult as would have seared most women’s lives; and when it was all over, feathered out again with no more result than a mild assurance that from that time forward she had a right to whatever comfortable compensation she could get out of existence. Bice’s passionate little soul reached the same conviction through quite another road, through all sorts of fiery impulses, horror at her father’s cruelty, contempt, devotion, flinging of herself into the breach, heedless of anything she might have to suffer for her championship. So sad a warfare was it for a child to go through, that it was a wonder so much that was good and noble had survived it. She had always constituted herself her mother’s protector, and now that her father was dead she had a sort of odd notion that it was she who had to make up to her for the sufferings she had gone through. She was ready to accept Mr Masters, anything that could help them to forget the old life. She was glad that her mother bore another name, and insisted upon sharing it herself against all law and right, and the equally persistent obstinacy of old Andrea. It was this which brought a sudden flame of anger into her cheeks that very afternoon, as they climbed along a steep stony track, on one side shaded by hawthorn bushes, on the other falling away into fields, a valley, and a little stream.
“One might be in England,” Ibbetson said, standing still to look round.
“Is it so like?” asked Bice eagerly. “Kitty never told me that it was. I shall come here often.”
“You have a great fancy for England, and yet you might be content with your own country,” said Jack smiling.
“England is my country,” she said, and it was then the red began to deepen in her cheeks.
“But you are a Capponi?”
She stopped and faced him, her eyes flashing, her whole figure quivering.
“Who told you so?” she cried angrily. “It was that old Andrea, I am certain. I will not have it. I am not Capponi any longer. I am English, and English only.”
She kept away from him for some time after this outburst, though he tried more than once to make his peace. It was only after he had pointedly called her by her mother’s name that she relented and became friendly again.
Thepoderelay some way up the hill which they were climbing. At last they reached it; a picturesque building well baked by the sun, with a low tower, tiled, a round arch or two, and deep eaves. Outside stood beautiful great oxen with wide-spreading horns, and two or three children were watching and ran eagerly to fetch the contadino. When he had come out and had spoken a few words to his padrone, young Moroni, the latter led the way to a door in the wall, within which was a kind of rough garden, full of fig-trees laden with fruit. One or two brown-faced boys came running with tables and chairs.
“Ah! but this is truly idyllic, my Giovanni,” said the young countess, sinking into a chair. “If I must confess the truth, I could not have walked another ten steps.”
She was not exactly pretty, but slender and fragile-looking, and she generally contrived to do as much as she liked and no more. Her fierce husband adored and petted her, and she was very fond of him and of the children, whom she expected him to keep in order or amuse as the case might be. Wherever she was she liked to form the centre, and now she managed to draw them all round her, except Bice. Bice strolled away alone towards the other end of the garden, here and there picking a rose, or one of the half-wild flowers which grew without care just as they had been stuck in. The girl was in a strange and dissatisfied mood that day; it seemed as if different strings were vibrating together, making odd discords and harmonies. Some had been set in motion by things which Ibbetson had said the day before, others had been touched and jarred, she scarcely knew how or why: questions and perplexities seemed to have awakened just at the moment when she had intended them to be silent. From that father from whose memory she shrank she had inherited many characteristics: among them a strong will, and a desire to thrust whatever was painful to her out of sight. “Why should I be obliged to remember now?” her heart cried out angrily, as she turned and looked at the gay little group, already beckoning to her to return to them. “Give is Kitty’s own brother, and she is not thinking about him, and Oliver has not come yet, and things are not worse than they were yesterday, when I was not half so unhappy. And to-day I meant to enjoy myself and to forget it all. Why does it come back now?”
She was impatient at her own weakness and yet could not master it; tears rushed into her eyes, she turned hastily away, and laid her arms upon a low wall, heedless, for the moment, of anything but her own unhappiness.
“You must not desert us in this way,” said some one behind. “We are waiting for you before we begin the great business of the day, which is much more formidable than I thought.” And then his voice changed, and, became very kind and grave. “Is anything the matter? Has anyone vexed you, that you go away and leave us?”
For she had turned and looked him full in the face, careless that the tears were running down her cheeks. A desperate longing seized her to tell him her troubles and to ask his help. The poor child had so few from whom she could seek it, that it seemed to her as if this kind voice might give her aid in the labyrinth where she was losing herself. The longing was of course utterly foolish and unreasonable. Jack was an utter stranger, and the next moment her face burnt at the thought of what her impulse had been. He for his part could not understand the piteous appeal in her eyes, or the change in which it died out. She said quickly—
“Vexed? Oh, no! I was unhappy because I was thinking of my brother Clive.”
“Is he ill?”
“No, not ill. He is in some trouble in England. I don’t quite know what it is myself,” she went on, looking frankly at him, “and I dare say that makes it worse. But it is nothing new, and I cannot think why it should come to me so strongly just now. Do you ever feel as if things seized you with a rush and without any reason?”
Jack thought of his walk by the Arno the night before. This girl with her changing moods, her frank appeals, interested him. He felt a strong desire to help her—a desire which was perhaps made more vigorous by the consciousness of her wonderful beauty. He answered the first part of her speech.
“You must have so many friends that it seems ridiculous to suppose that I can do anything about your brother. But can I?”
A sudden gladness lit her eyes.
“Could you?” she said, eagerly answering his question by another. “I daresay you could. You are very much mistaken if you suppose we have many friends; I don’t know that we have any at all.”
It was said slowly and as if she were considering, and for that very reason it almost startled Jack. The words were strange, coming from such lips.
“That is impossible,” he said decidedly. “But about your brother?”
“It is a long story, you see. I couldn’t tell you now.”
“No, I understand, of course you couldn’t. Come back to the other’s,” he went on kindly. “You can talk the matter over with your mother and your sister,”—Bice shook her head with an amused smile—“and tell me when you like. Then we will see what can be done.”
The swift changes in her face and manner were certainly interesting. The cloud had passed; she was smiling, radiant, flashing out with odd unexpected speeches, playing with Cartouche, helping Giovanni to pick up the figs, helping everybody. Two or three boys ran up the tree like squirrels, and in a few minutes had brought great baskets full. All the Moroni party ate them Italian fashion, as a sandwich between raw ham and bread; the contessa teased Bice.
“She knows there is nothing more delicious; it is only the Anglo-mania which prevents her doing as we do. I can forgive Kitty—but you, Bice!”
Ibbetson thought that young Moroni looked annoyed. “Why should the signorina have Anglo-mania?” he said hotly. “At any rate the signore has just said there are no such figs in England.”
“Ah, why, why, why?” cried out the girl gaily. “Do not let us ask questions or find fault. Do you know, Giovanni, that it is absolutely delicious here in your old farm garden. I did not think it had been half so pleasant.”
“Yet you have been here before,” said the young man, flushing with delight.
“Was it it like this? Then I must have forgotten. There is nothing so nice at ourpodere.”
“Have you a farm?” Ibbetson asked Kitty.
“Yes,” she said, with a little shy stiffness in her manner. “It is in another direction.”
“And who manages it?”
“Bice is really padrona. But the contadino, who is the tenant, manages it; you know that is the custom here. He pays us half of everything, the live stock and the crops.”
So long a speech was almost too great an effort for Kitty, and she jumped up and took refuge with the children, who were sitting in a heap munching figs, and occasionally trying to thrust one down Cartouche’s throat. A boy in the tree over their heads tossed the cool green fruit into their laps.
“Pippa has only eaten twelve,” said little Gigi, planting his white teeth in the rind. “Only twelve! That is because she is a girl, and so little!”
Pippa plodded on sturdily, paying no attention to the insult. The broad leaves cast broken masses of shade upon the long grass, the clear whiteness of the western sky was changing to amber.
“How well you speak our language!” said the little contessa graciously to Ibbetson. “Believe me, it is a compliment we all appreciate. Now when Bice’s other English friend is here, the Signore—Trent—how do you call him? we are obliged to fall back upon French. Eh, Bice, it is so, is it not?”
“Yes,” said the girl shortly.
She was grave again, as Ibbetson remarked. The changes in her manner and in her face were so rapid that he found himself watching and wondering. He had never met with anyone who showed so openly whatever passed across her mind.
“Is he coming again soon? He is your relative, is he not?” persisted the contessa.
“He is Kitty’s cousin.”
It was the first time she had spoken as if Kitty and she were not absolutely one in their possessions, and her tone had an unwilling ring about it. Perhaps it piqued her friend’s curiosity, for she threw back her head, and said in a low amused voice—
“You are mysterious,carina. Is the subject too sacred to be discussed?”
The girl’s eyes flashed, she sprang up angry and impatient.
“Are we going to stay here all our lives?” she cried with a sharpness which cut poor Giovanni to the heart. If he had heard what had just passed he might have been better satisfied, but he had been looking another way, choosing some of the best figs for the beautiful Eve who had praised his little Paradise, and he heard nothing until there came this sharp, scornful speech, which made a desert of it all. Yet how lovely she looked standing there, her head thrown up, the exquisite outline of her profile clear against the golden sky! And when she turned, and saw the young fellow’s frightened face, her own melted, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks.
“Was I so rude, Giovanni?” she said gently, “I did not mean it, really. It has all been charming, delightful, only now it is time to go. Nina knows it, but she is lazy. I must be the one to tell you what is prudent. Come, Kitty, come, children, the reign of figs is over, but we will carry back a basket-full for mamma. She always says there are none like those which grow up here on Giovanni’s mountain.”
All the way home she was softer and gentler than Ibbetson had yet seen her. Pippa was tired, and nothing would please her but that Bice should carry her. The little creature, with her curly black hair, fell asleep in her arms, and the girl would not have her moved or awakened, walking on firmly and strongly with her burden. She led them down by another path, in spite of the contessa’s complaints that it was both longer and steeper.
“It will not harm you,” Bice said quietly, “and you will see something worth seeing.”
But it was not until they had turned a shoulder of the hill where, on a sort of stony terrace, a few old olives stood grey and shadowy in the midst of a flood of colour, that Ibbetson knew what she had brought him to see. For below, and stretched before him, spread that wonderful plain of Valdamo which is beyond the power of pen or pencil; and now, as it lay bathed in the radiance of the setting sun, he felt as if he had never before known its beauty. A haze, not of mist, but of colour, seemed to rest upon it, so delicate and so varied that its intensity was scarcely felt, and the villas and farms with which the plain is thickly studded gleamed like jewels in the midst of this wonderful setting. On the opposite hill rose Bellosguardo with its cypresses, those trees which throughout Italy give point and force to softer beauties; and below, the domes and towers of Florence lay in the full glory of the sunset lights.
Only one of the party did not look at its beauty; young Moroni was looking at Bice instead. She still had the child in her arms, and he came to her side and said wistfully—
“Let me take Pippa the rest of the way, she is too heavy for you;” and quite unexpectedly Bice gave her to him with a smile. She would not, however, walk by his side, as he had hoped; she would walk with nobody; she lingered behind, gathering here and there a flower which had survived the summer heats. The contessa claimed the other gentleman, Kitty had the children in charge and Cartouche, who was a little overwhelmed by an unusual sense of virtue, Bice straggled after them, singing to herself. Ibbetson, who was listening for it, could now and then hear a little break of song come flying down from behind in a tantalising manner. He began to hate the little contessa, who was not half so interesting as this girl with her contradictions, her odd moods. He waited his opportunity, but not until the villa was in sight could he make an excuse for pausing to join Bice. She was some distance in the rear, and came towards him very slowly. Then he saw that something was wrong.
“What is the matter?” he asked quickly.
“Nothing. Why did you wait?” she said with a touch of petulance of which he took no notice. He was looking at her hand, round which she had wrapt a handkerchief.
“What have you done to your hand?”
“I have told you it is nothing,” she said in the same tone. “I have run a thorn into it, that is all.”
“A thorn would not give you so much pain.”
“Well, it may be a little splinter; I think it is. Go on, please, and don’t say anything about it.”
“Not to your sister?”
“Oh, dear me, of course not!” she said with vexation. “Anything of this sort makes Kitty quite ill, don’t you understand? Please go to the villa, I shall be there presently.”
“But I am not going to the villa,” said Jack quietly; “I am going to look at your hand.”
“I can take it out myself.”
“Ifyou please—”
Bice was evidently unaccustomed to have her own will set aside; she stared at him in amazement, and a bright flush which looked like resistance rose to her cheek. Perhaps, however, she thought resistance undignified, or perhaps Jack’s waiting attitude took too much for granted; for after a momentary struggle she hastily unwrapped her hand and silently stretched it out. He could hardly repress the exclamation which rose to his lips. It was cruelly bruised and torn, and the suffering must have been great.
“How could you have done it?” he said reproachfully.
“I was standing on a stone to gather a little flower which I saw in a bush, and the stone slipped. I fell on my hand, and I think something caught in it and ran in.”
She held her hand steadily for his inspection, but she had grown pale, and to tell the truth, the prospect of his amateur surgery made him very uncomfortable. He turned in his mind the possibilities of finding a doctor, but it was most improbable that one lived within a moderate distance, and the splinter was momentarily increasing the irritation. She would not hear of getting help from the house, and Jack hastily determined to do the best he could for her, uttering a fervent mental hope that she would not faint.
He need not have feared. After the first sharp pain had made her shrink, she let her hand lie quite passive, and although persistently keeping her face turned away, from first to last uttered no sound. Perhaps this self-restraint made him nervous, perhaps he was inexperienced in the work, for he knew through every nerve in his own body that he was giving her sharp and even unnecessary pain. When the splinter was drawn out, his own face was nearly as white as hers. The girl noticed this as he straightened himself.
“I am afraid you disliked it as much as Kitty,” she said remorsefully.
“It was clumsy work,” said Jack; “I know that I hurt you horribly.”
“Never mind,” said Bice. “Chiara shall put some of her healing herbs, and I think the pain is all over.”
Was it so indeed? Did nothing whisper to her of another pain, a deeper smart, which this very moment was bringing? What sweet and tremulous pang seemed to smite her in the silence which fell for a moment? A moment—no more—and yet there are moments which go on for years.
Bice drew back her hand without another word of thanks.
The others, too, had had a little misadventure to detain them—the contessa had torn her dress, and it required consultations, laments, and pinnings; so that when they were finished, Jack and Bice were not far behind. They were all to dine at the villa, and went along straight stiff walks bordered by cypresses towards the little flower-garden by the breakfast-room. As they reached it, Cartouche growled angrily at a gentleman who was coming quickly down the steps. Moroni, still carrying the child, met him first, then came the contessa, who turned and beckoned gaily to Bice. The girl, when she saw him, half stopped. Ibbetson noticed that she became pale, and that her lips quivered.
“Who is it?” he asked curiously.
“It is Oliver Trent,” she said in an odd, frightened undertone.
Chapter Five.The Ilex Walk.Ibbetson was not quite himself the next morning, Miss Cartwright thought with a gentle uneasiness. He did not always hear when he was addressed, and he did not say much about the event which was filling her own mind—the arrival of the travellers. They were to come from Bologna by the evening train, and Miss Cartwright would willingly have talked of nothing else. Miss Preston, whose delight it was to paint darkly the characters of her friend’s friends, had shaken her head with great energy over all she had gathered of the villa, and Jack’s conduct in absenting himself there, but Miss Cartwright was altogether impervious to the most direct innuendoes. She was very glad he had made pleasant friends, and seen a little of Italian villa life; she was very sorry for the two fatherless young things, and when Phillis came, perhaps they might all drive out together to Villa Carlina; worst of all, she was quite sure Miss Preston would enjoy the change. As for any danger to Phillis’s happiness, the idea never crossed her simple and loyal mind.Nor, after all, was there much danger as yet Jack was struck, interested, touched, but the feelings kept themselves where they started, not having run on into any thrill of love. Whether if he had been free when he saw Beatrice matters might not have been different, one cannot say. Perhaps. But he, too, was loyal. To him his engagement was a fact, and his word a bond; and bonds and facts do exert an influence over an honourable man, let passion say what it will against them. That there was a certain peril cannot be denied, and it lay in the fact that he did not love Phillis. He felt a sort of attraction, a pitying tenderness, a conviction that to marry her was the best way of bringing a skein or two out of their tangle, but this was not love. And, meanwhile, the white villa set on the hillside, with its flowers, its sweets, its Italian charm; the girl with her beauty, her passionate nature, and yet her revolt against that very nature, interested him. Who was this man, this Oliver Trent, who had so suddenly appeared among them? A red-faced, hard-featured man, the cousin, as, they said, of Kitty. But it was not Kitty whom he had watched when they sat on the steps the evening before. It was not Kitty who had seemed the most disturbed at his coming. Jack said to himself that it was all nothing to him, still he could not help feeling curious, and of course common courtesy demanded that he should go that morning to the villa in order to inquire for the injured hand. After that morning he would not be so completely his own master.This, it will be seen, was the man’s view of the matter, neither more nor less. His imagination had been touched, but his mind was clear enough to see things as they were, uncoloured by any strange and dream-like tints. For the girl’s, it was different.Think at what a time of ferment he had suddenly touched her life. She had grown through a childhood, saddened by that dreariest sorrow which can befall a child—want of faith in those it should love—to a womanhood from which it seemed as if all the sweetest belongings of her age—care, watchfulness, guiding, were withdrawn. Its brightness was darkened by memories, burdened by pledges. No doubt her state of feeling was exaggerated, but through what strivings, seekings after light, yearnings for justice, had that poor bent shoot struggled upwards. The girl had an instinctive hatred of oppression, a longing to protect, to deliver; the sort of spirit which has made heroines before now, but also has often wrecked a woman’s own peace. For those who have it sometimes give up what is not theirs to give, the happiness of others—or their own hearts, when they have passed from their keeping.They have, too, their moments of revulsion, such a moment as had come to Bice. She had believed that she had the strength to do anything which could shield her mother or Kitty—whom she loved with all her heart—from trouble, and the trouble was there like a threatening cloud. Clive Masters, Kitty’s brother, had gone to England, and the lad, never very wise, had fallen into some scrape such as the women out at the Florentine villa did not understand and could but tremble over, when Oliver Trent hinted darkly at its consequences. How darkly, only Bice knew. It had been a revelation to him to note the eagerness, the anxiety with which she listened when first he let drop the suggestion that all was not going well with Clive; a revelation and—a temptation. Nothing of his had touched her before beyond the surface; he had felt with sharp bitterness that the girl in her beauty and her simplicity was absolutely inaccessible. But not now. The tears would spring into her beautiful eyes, a mute anguish of pleading would rise in her face when he talked to her about Clive, the dangers of his position, the probability of some dreadful discovery and disgrace. And then he would gently let fall hints of his own efforts, of how his was the only hand which could restrain the lad, his the one influence staving off exposure and ruin. Very often he wondered at the readiness with which his inventions were received, but what did Beatrice know of the world—such a world as he described? To her it was all vague, unreal, far off; for her, alas, it was not difficult to believe in its wickedness!But it was only by little and little, by subtile touches on the strings of gratitude and hope, by a gradual coiling round her of a net made up of threads so fine that they were scarcely palpable, that he dared hint at his purpose. If he had shown his hand too openly, and asked her to be his wife as the price of his saving Clive, she might have yielded; but all the generosity of her nature would have risen in revolt against his meanness, she would have married and have hated him. Oliver wanted something better than that for himself, and felt sure of gaining it. To do so he would risk anything, and it seemed as if his purpose were on the verge of accomplishment; Bice knew what he wanted, knew it in a manner which let it seem the most natural thing in the world, and then Oliver Trent made his great mistake. He went back to England, believing that reflection and solitude, and the judicious letters he would write, would all work for him, believing that he had skilfully provided against all emergencies.But how could he provide against Cartouche frightening a turkey to death?If it is strange that two days’ acquaintanceship with another man should have been enough to shake his influence, and to awaken the revulsion which has been hinted at, surely the strangeness is not improbable. Oliver’s influence had been a power from without, a bewildering mist raised with which he had hidden or distorted one thing after another, and skilfully enveloped Bice’s perceptions, but there was nothing in her nature which was in sympathy with his; nay, rather there was something which drew back shuddering. She might have been stirred to a blind leap for those she loved, but to walk slowly along towards the gulf made it seem a hundred times more terrible. And when—though as it were only in passing—she came face to face with a man out of whose eyes looked truth and straightforward honesty, the contrast affected her, although she hardly knew how. Although she had believed Oliver, she had never really trusted him, and Jack was a person whom you could not help trusting absolutely. Certain characteristics write their signs in a face with unerring accuracy. That night, in the shadowy fragrance of the garden, Oliver Trent, jealously and uneasily watching the girl, did not know that she too was watching him, noting, comparing, growing stiller and sadder as she did so. A wild longing to escape and to burst her bonds had seized her; horror at what she had done, hope that Ibbetson might find a way to help them; none of them knew what a tumult was driving through her heart as she sat silent.When the two girls went up to their room, Bice hurriedly pushed back the outer persiennes, and knelt down with her arms on the ledge. A sweet cool air came up laden with the delicious sent of tuberoses, water splashed dreamily in the distance, the grating croak of frogs and the saw of thegrilligave a little sharp invigoration to the softness of the evening. Presently one of the odd little owls which Italians callcivettebegan to hoot and call, and Kitty answered it back.“I wish Pasquale would get us acivetta,” she said. “Why don’t you tell him to do it, Bice? Pasquale never minds what I say, and they are the dearest, wisest little things in the world. By the by, did you hear Nina telling Oliver that Italians call a girl who jilts her lover acivetta? And then—”Kitty hesitated. Bice, still kneeling at the window, turned her head towards her sister, with her cheek resting on her crossed arms—“And then?” she repeated inquiringly.“I don’t quite like to tell you. Sometimes Nina is horrid. Well, she gave a little nod towards you, as if Oliver should take care. Wasn’t it a shame?”No answer came. Bice was looking out into the night again. Kitty, who was very affectionate, but not quick in her perceptions, went on with her small ripple of talk.“What business has Nina to know anything? I can’t think how she is clever enough to find out, she has not seen much of Oliver. And why should she trouble herself about it?”“Don’t you know?” said Bice, in a proud and bitter voice, “she is afraid of Giovanni.”“Of Giovanni? Oh, nonsense! Why—he is a boy, he is nobody but just—Giovanni! She can’t be quite so silly. Bice, I do think you must be mistaken; besides, why should she be afraid?”Kitty’s merry laugh rang out childlike and confident. Bice started to her feet and turned round with a gesture that was almost fierce.“You don’t understand; you don’t know anything about the world, you are only a girl. Why should she be afraid?—because we are poor, and Nina is a contessa living in a palace, and so she has found out that there is nothing in all the world so good as money; and as she is fond of Giovanni, she wants him to have a greatdolawith his wife. That is all, if you want to know.”“Then she is a silly,” said Kitty, unmoved by this outburst. “As if Giovanni were good enough for you!—or as if money were everything!”“Perhaps it is more than we think,” said Bice, still bitterly; “sometimes I feel almost sure it is.”“It would give us some new dresses, to be sure,” Kitty said, with a general readiness to assent to her sister’s ideas, “and a piano. I should enjoy a piano.”“It would do more than that,” Bice said abruptly. And then her voice softened, the beautiful eyes grew wistful; she put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, and looked into her face. “Oh, Kitty,” she said, “if we only had a little money, you or I, we could save poor Clive without—”She stopped suddenly, and Kitty looked startled, for something in Bice’s manner thrilled through her.“But,” she said hesitatingly, “Oliver will do that. He has promised, hasn’t he?”“Yes,” said Bice, very slowly.Alas! but it was she who had to promise also. “Then it’s all right. Oliver can do anything.”“Only if he is to do this, I must marry him.”She still spoke slowly, but her voice sounded strained and unnatural. Kitty answered cheerfully—“Yes, I know. But you like him, don’t you? You made up your mind the last time he was here, and there has been nothing to make you change. And you always wanted to live in England. I don’t think Oliver would be at all a bad sort of person to marry.”“I have never said I would marry him,” interrupted her sister.“No,” said Kitty doubtfully, “not exactly. Still you intended it.”“What has Clive done?” said Bice, looking at her with troubled eyes. “We know very little about it all. Oliver always says we cannot understand, and that it is better for us that he should not attempt to explain; but I think it would be better if hedidexplain; for now it is like some dreadful dark shadow of disgrace hanging over us, never off one’s mind day and night.” Kitty’s eyes filled with tears.“Is it so bad for you, dear?” she said sadly. “I have not troubled myself much about it since Oliver said he would arrange. Surely he knows best, and he is the only person to do anything.”“Why shouldn’t Mr Ibbetson help us?” said Bice in a low voice. Her sister cried out in astonishment, but the girl persisted. “There are kind people in the world,” she said, as her eyes brightened. “If you or I saw anyone in trouble we should do what we could; and he is a man, he knows about England and this world into which poor Clive has tumbled—he might advise us.”“Not better than Oliver!” exclaimed Kitty, amazed. “Oh, I’m tired of Oliver,” cried Bice with petulant impatience. Her heart was rising up in revolt against its fate till it burned within her. She was angry with Clive, with Oliver, with Kitty, who could only praise him; most of all with herself, the self which had grown all of a sudden discontented, frightened, and indignant. How was it that the change had come, if it was a change and not rather an awakening? How was it that life had in a few hours blossomed into a hundred possibilities? She had thought of Oliver Trent before with a sort of dull satisfaction, as a means of helping Clive and of averting sorrow from those she loved; and as he had skilfully managed to make himself necessary to her, her feelings towards him were passive. But this calm was at an end. All that evening she had been comparing, watching, reflecting; a light seemed suddenly to have been turned upon him; she saw things written in his features which she had never discovered before—some, very likely, which were not there at all. “His eyes are close together, and there is a broad piece of face beyond them—that is not good, I know,” said the critic, “and his face is red and hard.” And all the time, joined with this revolt, some strong new hope seemed to have leapt into her heart, uncalled for and inexplicable. “There are kind people in the world,” she had said to Kitty, but what had brought her the sudden conviction? Is it not pathetic sometimes to see how little will win a heart, and yet how much fails to touch it? We take some trifling trouble, and, lo, an affection is laid at our feet which years cannot change or parting cool. And then, again, we give our life blood, and the gift is scorned. Jack had felt attracted and touched, and had looked and spoken as he felt—kindly, but it was no more than the commonest kindness, though to her it seemed altogether special and delightful.When Ibbetson reached Villa Carlina that morning, only Mrs Masters, in her usual condition of good-natured drowsiness, was in the breakfast-room, eating grapes from a great golden bunch which had just been brought in with stalk and leaves attached; but before he had had much time to ponder where he should find the others, Bice came, flushed and smiling, and carrying a great bunch of flowers, jack felt himself again wondering at her beauty. She had a white dress—indeed, as yet, he had seen her in no other colour—but over her head she had flung a veil of black lace, Milanese fashion, and the bright flowers in her hands—big scarlet lilies, blue larkspurs, and another blue flower with green spikes—made a brilliant flash of colour against the cool white folds. Mrs Masters said plaintively—“Where can you have been, Bice? They have been looking for you everywhere until Oliver is quite vexed; go and find them in the garden, and say that you are come.”“There is no hurry,” said the girl lightly; “they do not want me.”“But where have you been?”“To gather flowers for the Virgin’s niche; and they are so scarce at this time of the year, that I had to go a long way.”“So it is you who keep the flowers supplied?” said Ibbetson, remembering that on the day he first saw the villa he had wondered whose hand had placed the pretty nosegay.“Yes. But we are English, and belong to the English Church,” said Beatrice quickly. “You will see us in Florence to-morrow. Only it seemed so sad to leave that little shrine in the wall desolate after flowers had been laid there for so many years; and the poor peasants who come along that dusty road like to see something fresh and pretty when they look up and pray; and so I am going there now,” she said smiling; “and you may come if you will, just to see how they get into the grating.”“But there is Oliver,” said Mrs Masters anxiously. “He has Kitty,” Bice answered. “Or, if that does not content you, they are in the garden, for I heard their voices, and it is there we are going.”Nevertheless Ibbetson fancied that she led him along paths which looked mossy and unfrequented. There was a gloom about these paths even on this bright day; dark ilexes shut out the sun overhead, long leaves of narcissus straggled about, weedy-looking and untidy, amid the undergrowth; one or two mutilated statues kept desolate ward over the silence and dimness. The girl glanced round her and shivered.“I wish I had not brought you here,” she said uneasily; “there is something in this walk which always oppresses me.”“If I had not seen it you would not have made me believe there was so cheerless a spot so near the villa. But then, if you had not told me the contrary, I could not have thought there was any dark shadow near you in your happy country life.”Foolish, kind Jack! Ever since he had seen the tears in her eyes he had felt that he should like to help her.Bice stopped and looked earnestly at him.“That is why I asked you to come with me,” she said with a simple straightforwardness which he had noticed in her before. “I thought if I could tell you about Clive you might advise us what to do. I fancied I understood, but it has all got into a tangle in my head. May I really tell you?”If Ibbetson had been less interested than he was, it would have been impossible to have remained untouched by the frank simplicity of her appeal.“You may depend upon me,” he said gravely.Then she told her little story in a quiet voice, trying to put it into as few words as possible. Clive was their brother, a lad of twenty-one. About two years before, he had gone to London, having, by Oliver’s help, got into some great business house; “because we are poor, and it was necessary he should do something to make money,” she explained. At first things had seemed to go well; he was quick and pleased his employers, so that lately he had been promoted, but since then all had been unsatisfactory. Oliver had been the kindest friend, and was the first to give them a warning that the young fellow was not going on so steadily. They had written imploring letters, and Clive had answered them with such a frank acknowledgment that he had been wrong, and such a clearly-expressed determination to turn over a new leaf, that they had been happier. But, alas, six weeks ago Oliver Trent had come out from England and had brought the worst news with him. He persistently refused to tell them in plain words what had happened, but he hinted at conduct on the part of Clive which had come to his knowledge though not as yet to his employers, conduct which—known—must bring terrible disgrace and ruin. The poor women were overwhelmed. He was not Mrs Masters’ son, but he was Kitty’s brother, and the others entirely accepted him as their own. What was to be done? Bice’s first impulse had been to write and question Clive, but that Mr Trent had absolutely forbidden. Clive must not know that he was aware of his guilt, or it would be impossible for him to help him. Whatever was done must be done through himself alone, and this at a great risk. Bice could not understand what plan Mr Trent had in his head; he did not confide it to her: she imagined only that there was some man whose silence he meant to buy; at any rate he had promised to help them provided everything was left in his hands. She flushed and looked down as she said these words, and Ibbetson, whose suspicions had been awakened the night before, guessed that there was another “provided” which had received a tacit acquiescence. But, good heavens, what was he to say! He had not bargained for a story like this, for being asked to assist in condoning a felony—to which it all pointed. Probably the unfortunate boy had forged a signature, and Trent held the proofs, and meant to use them. He remained altogether silent.In the trouble of her own feelings the girl was not at first conscious of his dismay. She was walking along and looking down, but as he did not speak she glanced at him and stopped with a little cry.“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I shouldn’t have told you, I have only set you against him. I should have believed Oliver when he said that no one must know.”“You need not fear me,” said the young man gravely. “I mayn’t be able to help, but you may be sure I will never betray your trust. And if I can’t help, perhaps I may at least advise.”She stood still and began nervously to pick off the leaves of a branch of ilex and to roll them together.“If there is any way by which we could save him from disgrace,” she began hurriedly, when Ibbetson interrupted her—“But if I understand you rightly, that is just what Mr Trent has promised to do?”The girl became very pale.“Yes,” she said at last with an effort. “You are right. I don’t know why I appealed to you. Forget it, and don’t let us say any more.”Her voice was proud and hurt. She looked straight before her, and was moving forwards when Jack detained her.“You must let me give you my advice,” he said kindly. “It will not be the same as Mr Trent’s, and I fear you mayn’t like it so well, but if I had a brother in the same position as your brother, I should not rest until—”“Until—?” she asked with eagerness.“Until I had induced him to make a clean breast of it.”“You mean to us?”“No: I mean to his employers.”The girl started as if she had been stung. She stood still, her breast heaved, the burning colour rushed into her face.“But that is the very disgrace we are trying to avoid!” she cried with a sharp ring in her voice. “It is cruel to mock me with such words. Why, why that is the worst that could happen, and you speak of it as calmly as if—”“Mock you!” cried Jack, hurt in his turn. “Have I ever said anything which should make you think me such a brute? At least hear me until I have explained myself. This affair, whatever it is, if it is covered up and concealed in the manner in which you have hinted, will hang over your heads with a never-ending dread. Something may always bring it to light, and your brother will be haunted by fear of it. But if he takes courage and speaks openly, his employers will be at once half won over, I am sure of it; they will think of his youth, of his inexperience—even business men have hearts, Miss Masters. Believe me, it is the most honourable way.”She listened very quietly, though her face was still flushed, and when he had finished she remained silent. Suddenly, at a little distance, they heard voices, and Bice said hurriedly—“This is your only advice?”“I can think of nothing else.”“I must have time for considering it, and I don’t want Oliver to guess that we have been talking: if you will go straight along this path you will come to a door in the wall by which you can get into the road. Do not be vexed with me for sending you away.”“One word—how is your hand?”“Oh, almost well.”“And when shall I see you again?”“When you like to come,” said Bice smiling; “or, perhaps, to-morrow in Florence. We shall be there, as I said, for the service.”“Then will you come afterwards to luncheon at my aunt’s—Casa Giulia? She is longing to make your acquaintance, and I shall feel sure you have forgiven me.”“Oh, I have forgiven you,” said Bice, after a pause, “Well, we will come—”
Ibbetson was not quite himself the next morning, Miss Cartwright thought with a gentle uneasiness. He did not always hear when he was addressed, and he did not say much about the event which was filling her own mind—the arrival of the travellers. They were to come from Bologna by the evening train, and Miss Cartwright would willingly have talked of nothing else. Miss Preston, whose delight it was to paint darkly the characters of her friend’s friends, had shaken her head with great energy over all she had gathered of the villa, and Jack’s conduct in absenting himself there, but Miss Cartwright was altogether impervious to the most direct innuendoes. She was very glad he had made pleasant friends, and seen a little of Italian villa life; she was very sorry for the two fatherless young things, and when Phillis came, perhaps they might all drive out together to Villa Carlina; worst of all, she was quite sure Miss Preston would enjoy the change. As for any danger to Phillis’s happiness, the idea never crossed her simple and loyal mind.
Nor, after all, was there much danger as yet Jack was struck, interested, touched, but the feelings kept themselves where they started, not having run on into any thrill of love. Whether if he had been free when he saw Beatrice matters might not have been different, one cannot say. Perhaps. But he, too, was loyal. To him his engagement was a fact, and his word a bond; and bonds and facts do exert an influence over an honourable man, let passion say what it will against them. That there was a certain peril cannot be denied, and it lay in the fact that he did not love Phillis. He felt a sort of attraction, a pitying tenderness, a conviction that to marry her was the best way of bringing a skein or two out of their tangle, but this was not love. And, meanwhile, the white villa set on the hillside, with its flowers, its sweets, its Italian charm; the girl with her beauty, her passionate nature, and yet her revolt against that very nature, interested him. Who was this man, this Oliver Trent, who had so suddenly appeared among them? A red-faced, hard-featured man, the cousin, as, they said, of Kitty. But it was not Kitty whom he had watched when they sat on the steps the evening before. It was not Kitty who had seemed the most disturbed at his coming. Jack said to himself that it was all nothing to him, still he could not help feeling curious, and of course common courtesy demanded that he should go that morning to the villa in order to inquire for the injured hand. After that morning he would not be so completely his own master.
This, it will be seen, was the man’s view of the matter, neither more nor less. His imagination had been touched, but his mind was clear enough to see things as they were, uncoloured by any strange and dream-like tints. For the girl’s, it was different.
Think at what a time of ferment he had suddenly touched her life. She had grown through a childhood, saddened by that dreariest sorrow which can befall a child—want of faith in those it should love—to a womanhood from which it seemed as if all the sweetest belongings of her age—care, watchfulness, guiding, were withdrawn. Its brightness was darkened by memories, burdened by pledges. No doubt her state of feeling was exaggerated, but through what strivings, seekings after light, yearnings for justice, had that poor bent shoot struggled upwards. The girl had an instinctive hatred of oppression, a longing to protect, to deliver; the sort of spirit which has made heroines before now, but also has often wrecked a woman’s own peace. For those who have it sometimes give up what is not theirs to give, the happiness of others—or their own hearts, when they have passed from their keeping.
They have, too, their moments of revulsion, such a moment as had come to Bice. She had believed that she had the strength to do anything which could shield her mother or Kitty—whom she loved with all her heart—from trouble, and the trouble was there like a threatening cloud. Clive Masters, Kitty’s brother, had gone to England, and the lad, never very wise, had fallen into some scrape such as the women out at the Florentine villa did not understand and could but tremble over, when Oliver Trent hinted darkly at its consequences. How darkly, only Bice knew. It had been a revelation to him to note the eagerness, the anxiety with which she listened when first he let drop the suggestion that all was not going well with Clive; a revelation and—a temptation. Nothing of his had touched her before beyond the surface; he had felt with sharp bitterness that the girl in her beauty and her simplicity was absolutely inaccessible. But not now. The tears would spring into her beautiful eyes, a mute anguish of pleading would rise in her face when he talked to her about Clive, the dangers of his position, the probability of some dreadful discovery and disgrace. And then he would gently let fall hints of his own efforts, of how his was the only hand which could restrain the lad, his the one influence staving off exposure and ruin. Very often he wondered at the readiness with which his inventions were received, but what did Beatrice know of the world—such a world as he described? To her it was all vague, unreal, far off; for her, alas, it was not difficult to believe in its wickedness!
But it was only by little and little, by subtile touches on the strings of gratitude and hope, by a gradual coiling round her of a net made up of threads so fine that they were scarcely palpable, that he dared hint at his purpose. If he had shown his hand too openly, and asked her to be his wife as the price of his saving Clive, she might have yielded; but all the generosity of her nature would have risen in revolt against his meanness, she would have married and have hated him. Oliver wanted something better than that for himself, and felt sure of gaining it. To do so he would risk anything, and it seemed as if his purpose were on the verge of accomplishment; Bice knew what he wanted, knew it in a manner which let it seem the most natural thing in the world, and then Oliver Trent made his great mistake. He went back to England, believing that reflection and solitude, and the judicious letters he would write, would all work for him, believing that he had skilfully provided against all emergencies.
But how could he provide against Cartouche frightening a turkey to death?
If it is strange that two days’ acquaintanceship with another man should have been enough to shake his influence, and to awaken the revulsion which has been hinted at, surely the strangeness is not improbable. Oliver’s influence had been a power from without, a bewildering mist raised with which he had hidden or distorted one thing after another, and skilfully enveloped Bice’s perceptions, but there was nothing in her nature which was in sympathy with his; nay, rather there was something which drew back shuddering. She might have been stirred to a blind leap for those she loved, but to walk slowly along towards the gulf made it seem a hundred times more terrible. And when—though as it were only in passing—she came face to face with a man out of whose eyes looked truth and straightforward honesty, the contrast affected her, although she hardly knew how. Although she had believed Oliver, she had never really trusted him, and Jack was a person whom you could not help trusting absolutely. Certain characteristics write their signs in a face with unerring accuracy. That night, in the shadowy fragrance of the garden, Oliver Trent, jealously and uneasily watching the girl, did not know that she too was watching him, noting, comparing, growing stiller and sadder as she did so. A wild longing to escape and to burst her bonds had seized her; horror at what she had done, hope that Ibbetson might find a way to help them; none of them knew what a tumult was driving through her heart as she sat silent.
When the two girls went up to their room, Bice hurriedly pushed back the outer persiennes, and knelt down with her arms on the ledge. A sweet cool air came up laden with the delicious sent of tuberoses, water splashed dreamily in the distance, the grating croak of frogs and the saw of thegrilligave a little sharp invigoration to the softness of the evening. Presently one of the odd little owls which Italians callcivettebegan to hoot and call, and Kitty answered it back.
“I wish Pasquale would get us acivetta,” she said. “Why don’t you tell him to do it, Bice? Pasquale never minds what I say, and they are the dearest, wisest little things in the world. By the by, did you hear Nina telling Oliver that Italians call a girl who jilts her lover acivetta? And then—”
Kitty hesitated. Bice, still kneeling at the window, turned her head towards her sister, with her cheek resting on her crossed arms—
“And then?” she repeated inquiringly.
“I don’t quite like to tell you. Sometimes Nina is horrid. Well, she gave a little nod towards you, as if Oliver should take care. Wasn’t it a shame?”
No answer came. Bice was looking out into the night again. Kitty, who was very affectionate, but not quick in her perceptions, went on with her small ripple of talk.
“What business has Nina to know anything? I can’t think how she is clever enough to find out, she has not seen much of Oliver. And why should she trouble herself about it?”
“Don’t you know?” said Bice, in a proud and bitter voice, “she is afraid of Giovanni.”
“Of Giovanni? Oh, nonsense! Why—he is a boy, he is nobody but just—Giovanni! She can’t be quite so silly. Bice, I do think you must be mistaken; besides, why should she be afraid?”
Kitty’s merry laugh rang out childlike and confident. Bice started to her feet and turned round with a gesture that was almost fierce.
“You don’t understand; you don’t know anything about the world, you are only a girl. Why should she be afraid?—because we are poor, and Nina is a contessa living in a palace, and so she has found out that there is nothing in all the world so good as money; and as she is fond of Giovanni, she wants him to have a greatdolawith his wife. That is all, if you want to know.”
“Then she is a silly,” said Kitty, unmoved by this outburst. “As if Giovanni were good enough for you!—or as if money were everything!”
“Perhaps it is more than we think,” said Bice, still bitterly; “sometimes I feel almost sure it is.”
“It would give us some new dresses, to be sure,” Kitty said, with a general readiness to assent to her sister’s ideas, “and a piano. I should enjoy a piano.”
“It would do more than that,” Bice said abruptly. And then her voice softened, the beautiful eyes grew wistful; she put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, and looked into her face. “Oh, Kitty,” she said, “if we only had a little money, you or I, we could save poor Clive without—”
She stopped suddenly, and Kitty looked startled, for something in Bice’s manner thrilled through her.
“But,” she said hesitatingly, “Oliver will do that. He has promised, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Bice, very slowly.
Alas! but it was she who had to promise also. “Then it’s all right. Oliver can do anything.”
“Only if he is to do this, I must marry him.”
She still spoke slowly, but her voice sounded strained and unnatural. Kitty answered cheerfully—
“Yes, I know. But you like him, don’t you? You made up your mind the last time he was here, and there has been nothing to make you change. And you always wanted to live in England. I don’t think Oliver would be at all a bad sort of person to marry.”
“I have never said I would marry him,” interrupted her sister.
“No,” said Kitty doubtfully, “not exactly. Still you intended it.”
“What has Clive done?” said Bice, looking at her with troubled eyes. “We know very little about it all. Oliver always says we cannot understand, and that it is better for us that he should not attempt to explain; but I think it would be better if hedidexplain; for now it is like some dreadful dark shadow of disgrace hanging over us, never off one’s mind day and night.” Kitty’s eyes filled with tears.
“Is it so bad for you, dear?” she said sadly. “I have not troubled myself much about it since Oliver said he would arrange. Surely he knows best, and he is the only person to do anything.”
“Why shouldn’t Mr Ibbetson help us?” said Bice in a low voice. Her sister cried out in astonishment, but the girl persisted. “There are kind people in the world,” she said, as her eyes brightened. “If you or I saw anyone in trouble we should do what we could; and he is a man, he knows about England and this world into which poor Clive has tumbled—he might advise us.”
“Not better than Oliver!” exclaimed Kitty, amazed. “Oh, I’m tired of Oliver,” cried Bice with petulant impatience. Her heart was rising up in revolt against its fate till it burned within her. She was angry with Clive, with Oliver, with Kitty, who could only praise him; most of all with herself, the self which had grown all of a sudden discontented, frightened, and indignant. How was it that the change had come, if it was a change and not rather an awakening? How was it that life had in a few hours blossomed into a hundred possibilities? She had thought of Oliver Trent before with a sort of dull satisfaction, as a means of helping Clive and of averting sorrow from those she loved; and as he had skilfully managed to make himself necessary to her, her feelings towards him were passive. But this calm was at an end. All that evening she had been comparing, watching, reflecting; a light seemed suddenly to have been turned upon him; she saw things written in his features which she had never discovered before—some, very likely, which were not there at all. “His eyes are close together, and there is a broad piece of face beyond them—that is not good, I know,” said the critic, “and his face is red and hard.” And all the time, joined with this revolt, some strong new hope seemed to have leapt into her heart, uncalled for and inexplicable. “There are kind people in the world,” she had said to Kitty, but what had brought her the sudden conviction? Is it not pathetic sometimes to see how little will win a heart, and yet how much fails to touch it? We take some trifling trouble, and, lo, an affection is laid at our feet which years cannot change or parting cool. And then, again, we give our life blood, and the gift is scorned. Jack had felt attracted and touched, and had looked and spoken as he felt—kindly, but it was no more than the commonest kindness, though to her it seemed altogether special and delightful.
When Ibbetson reached Villa Carlina that morning, only Mrs Masters, in her usual condition of good-natured drowsiness, was in the breakfast-room, eating grapes from a great golden bunch which had just been brought in with stalk and leaves attached; but before he had had much time to ponder where he should find the others, Bice came, flushed and smiling, and carrying a great bunch of flowers, jack felt himself again wondering at her beauty. She had a white dress—indeed, as yet, he had seen her in no other colour—but over her head she had flung a veil of black lace, Milanese fashion, and the bright flowers in her hands—big scarlet lilies, blue larkspurs, and another blue flower with green spikes—made a brilliant flash of colour against the cool white folds. Mrs Masters said plaintively—
“Where can you have been, Bice? They have been looking for you everywhere until Oliver is quite vexed; go and find them in the garden, and say that you are come.”
“There is no hurry,” said the girl lightly; “they do not want me.”
“But where have you been?”
“To gather flowers for the Virgin’s niche; and they are so scarce at this time of the year, that I had to go a long way.”
“So it is you who keep the flowers supplied?” said Ibbetson, remembering that on the day he first saw the villa he had wondered whose hand had placed the pretty nosegay.
“Yes. But we are English, and belong to the English Church,” said Beatrice quickly. “You will see us in Florence to-morrow. Only it seemed so sad to leave that little shrine in the wall desolate after flowers had been laid there for so many years; and the poor peasants who come along that dusty road like to see something fresh and pretty when they look up and pray; and so I am going there now,” she said smiling; “and you may come if you will, just to see how they get into the grating.”
“But there is Oliver,” said Mrs Masters anxiously. “He has Kitty,” Bice answered. “Or, if that does not content you, they are in the garden, for I heard their voices, and it is there we are going.”
Nevertheless Ibbetson fancied that she led him along paths which looked mossy and unfrequented. There was a gloom about these paths even on this bright day; dark ilexes shut out the sun overhead, long leaves of narcissus straggled about, weedy-looking and untidy, amid the undergrowth; one or two mutilated statues kept desolate ward over the silence and dimness. The girl glanced round her and shivered.
“I wish I had not brought you here,” she said uneasily; “there is something in this walk which always oppresses me.”
“If I had not seen it you would not have made me believe there was so cheerless a spot so near the villa. But then, if you had not told me the contrary, I could not have thought there was any dark shadow near you in your happy country life.”
Foolish, kind Jack! Ever since he had seen the tears in her eyes he had felt that he should like to help her.
Bice stopped and looked earnestly at him.
“That is why I asked you to come with me,” she said with a simple straightforwardness which he had noticed in her before. “I thought if I could tell you about Clive you might advise us what to do. I fancied I understood, but it has all got into a tangle in my head. May I really tell you?”
If Ibbetson had been less interested than he was, it would have been impossible to have remained untouched by the frank simplicity of her appeal.
“You may depend upon me,” he said gravely.
Then she told her little story in a quiet voice, trying to put it into as few words as possible. Clive was their brother, a lad of twenty-one. About two years before, he had gone to London, having, by Oliver’s help, got into some great business house; “because we are poor, and it was necessary he should do something to make money,” she explained. At first things had seemed to go well; he was quick and pleased his employers, so that lately he had been promoted, but since then all had been unsatisfactory. Oliver had been the kindest friend, and was the first to give them a warning that the young fellow was not going on so steadily. They had written imploring letters, and Clive had answered them with such a frank acknowledgment that he had been wrong, and such a clearly-expressed determination to turn over a new leaf, that they had been happier. But, alas, six weeks ago Oliver Trent had come out from England and had brought the worst news with him. He persistently refused to tell them in plain words what had happened, but he hinted at conduct on the part of Clive which had come to his knowledge though not as yet to his employers, conduct which—known—must bring terrible disgrace and ruin. The poor women were overwhelmed. He was not Mrs Masters’ son, but he was Kitty’s brother, and the others entirely accepted him as their own. What was to be done? Bice’s first impulse had been to write and question Clive, but that Mr Trent had absolutely forbidden. Clive must not know that he was aware of his guilt, or it would be impossible for him to help him. Whatever was done must be done through himself alone, and this at a great risk. Bice could not understand what plan Mr Trent had in his head; he did not confide it to her: she imagined only that there was some man whose silence he meant to buy; at any rate he had promised to help them provided everything was left in his hands. She flushed and looked down as she said these words, and Ibbetson, whose suspicions had been awakened the night before, guessed that there was another “provided” which had received a tacit acquiescence. But, good heavens, what was he to say! He had not bargained for a story like this, for being asked to assist in condoning a felony—to which it all pointed. Probably the unfortunate boy had forged a signature, and Trent held the proofs, and meant to use them. He remained altogether silent.
In the trouble of her own feelings the girl was not at first conscious of his dismay. She was walking along and looking down, but as he did not speak she glanced at him and stopped with a little cry.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I shouldn’t have told you, I have only set you against him. I should have believed Oliver when he said that no one must know.”
“You need not fear me,” said the young man gravely. “I mayn’t be able to help, but you may be sure I will never betray your trust. And if I can’t help, perhaps I may at least advise.”
She stood still and began nervously to pick off the leaves of a branch of ilex and to roll them together.
“If there is any way by which we could save him from disgrace,” she began hurriedly, when Ibbetson interrupted her—
“But if I understand you rightly, that is just what Mr Trent has promised to do?”
The girl became very pale.
“Yes,” she said at last with an effort. “You are right. I don’t know why I appealed to you. Forget it, and don’t let us say any more.”
Her voice was proud and hurt. She looked straight before her, and was moving forwards when Jack detained her.
“You must let me give you my advice,” he said kindly. “It will not be the same as Mr Trent’s, and I fear you mayn’t like it so well, but if I had a brother in the same position as your brother, I should not rest until—”
“Until—?” she asked with eagerness.
“Until I had induced him to make a clean breast of it.”
“You mean to us?”
“No: I mean to his employers.”
The girl started as if she had been stung. She stood still, her breast heaved, the burning colour rushed into her face.
“But that is the very disgrace we are trying to avoid!” she cried with a sharp ring in her voice. “It is cruel to mock me with such words. Why, why that is the worst that could happen, and you speak of it as calmly as if—”
“Mock you!” cried Jack, hurt in his turn. “Have I ever said anything which should make you think me such a brute? At least hear me until I have explained myself. This affair, whatever it is, if it is covered up and concealed in the manner in which you have hinted, will hang over your heads with a never-ending dread. Something may always bring it to light, and your brother will be haunted by fear of it. But if he takes courage and speaks openly, his employers will be at once half won over, I am sure of it; they will think of his youth, of his inexperience—even business men have hearts, Miss Masters. Believe me, it is the most honourable way.”
She listened very quietly, though her face was still flushed, and when he had finished she remained silent. Suddenly, at a little distance, they heard voices, and Bice said hurriedly—
“This is your only advice?”
“I can think of nothing else.”
“I must have time for considering it, and I don’t want Oliver to guess that we have been talking: if you will go straight along this path you will come to a door in the wall by which you can get into the road. Do not be vexed with me for sending you away.”
“One word—how is your hand?”
“Oh, almost well.”
“And when shall I see you again?”
“When you like to come,” said Bice smiling; “or, perhaps, to-morrow in Florence. We shall be there, as I said, for the service.”
“Then will you come afterwards to luncheon at my aunt’s—Casa Giulia? She is longing to make your acquaintance, and I shall feel sure you have forgiven me.”
“Oh, I have forgiven you,” said Bice, after a pause, “Well, we will come—”
Chapter Six.Cartouche Interrupts.When Ibbetson had left her, Bice hastened to that part of the wall where was the niche to which she was carrying the flowers. A little terrace ran along by means of which she could reach and open the grating, and take out the vase with its withered blossoms. She carried it to a small fountain close by, filled it with clear water, and put in her flaming lilies. Then she took it back to the niche, closed the grating, came down from the terrace, and after a moment’s consideration walked slowly towards the place where she had heard the voices.Kitty and Mr Trent were standing under a large acacia tree, and turned quickly round to greet her. Kitty poured out her questions—Where had she been? what had she been doing? did she know they had been looking for her?“Mamma told me,” said Bice carelessly; “surely you two might have amused each other for an hour. And it would not have required any superhuman sagacity, Kitty, to guess that I had gone for the flowers.”“If you are cross, I shall go to the terrace and leave Oliver to his fate,” said Kitty, laughing and escaping.The two who were left looked at each other as she ran off—he with open admiration, she with a tremulous quiver of her lips not lost upon him. Oliver Trent was a man of about five and thirty, tall and thin, with dead, dusty-coloured hair; his features were not ill-looking, but, as Bice had remarked, hard in their lines, and he spoke with a slow sweetness curiously out of keeping with his face. He now slowly repeated—“To my fate. I wonder if Kitty quite understood what happy prognostications lay in her words? Yes, this is the fate I have been looking forward to all these weary weeks; and I began to think, Bice, that you delighted in cruelty, or else had learned the woman’s art of tantalising. Come and sit here in the shade.”She followed him more readily than he, perhaps, expected, for he half-suspected that she was bent upon avoiding atête-à-tête; but in actual truth she had scarcely heard his words, or at any rate had not taken in their meaning. Another thought possessed her. As they sat down she turned and looked steadily into his face.“What is Clive’s exact position?” she said sharply.He hesitated. She repeated the question.“You had better not ask for particulars, for they can only give you pain.”“I can bear pain.”“Yes,” he said, glancing at her hand, “such pain as that; but there are other and worse pangs, and from those, Bice, I shall always endeavour to shield you. Clive has been doing his utmost to ruin himself and make you all miserable; I am trying to save him. It is a hard task, and unless you trust me and follow my directions, I tell you honestly that I have no chance of success.”“You threaten us with shadows,” said the girl moodily.“Oh, Bice,” he said—and his voice became yet softer and more slow—“you are not yourself to-day. What has changed you? I have often found you hasty, wilful, unreasonable, but never before ungenerous. Is it I that threaten? Is it not rather I that at any cost am trying to keep the danger a shadow? Once let me remove my hand, and it will be real and tangible enough—”She could not endure such a reproach; it seemed horrible to her, and also true. She stretched out her hand to him with a quick gesture of kindness.“You have been our very good friend, I know, Oliver,” she said, looking at him gratefully, “and I ought to be content and not tease you. Only tell me, is it absolutely necessary there should be this secrecy?”“Absolutely. I am obliged to use the greatest caution.”“Out here, how would it be possible for us to interfere with any plans?”He began to be vexed with her unusual importunity, but allowed no trace of his vexation to appear in his face or voice. On the contrary, he said with a smile, “Excuse me; if there were no other way, I should feel by no means certain what you and Kitty might not write to Clive. No. Complete ignorance is the safest state of things for you; for of one thing I am sure, nature never intended either of you for a conspirator.”Bice turned and looked at him thoughtfully. He felt uneasy, for her eyes seemed to be asking whether it was for that he was intended. He said more abruptly than he had yet spoken—“Do you not care any longer that Clive should be saved?”“Do I not care!”The sudden fire which leapt into her eyes answered him. He had at last touched the right string.“You have considered it thoroughly?” he said, speaking deliberately again. “I particularly desire that you should do so. If this act of Clive’s is brought home to him, it means dishonour and disgrace; I cannot hide it from you. Your mother is very fond of Clive, she will never hold up her head again. As for Kitty, you know best whether she will care or not. It may not be so bad for you, it is true, because you bear another name.”Bice interrupted him in a low passionate voice. “You shall not say that!”“You refuse to separate yourself from them? Well, then, for you too the shame and the disgrace. And poor Clive, so young, so foolish, not wicked, but led away. He writes to you all, I know, as if nothing had happened, but if you could see him as I do, you would long to save him!”“You must save him.”The girl’s voice was choked. Oliver leant forward and looked at her.“At all costs?”“At all costs.”“And by all means, whether right or wrong?”“Whether right or wrong.”He leant forward still further and forced her to look at him.“I will,” he said slowly. “For you.”They were silent after that for a time. He felt that he had won a victory, but her moods were so changeful that he was afraid of endangering it by trying to push his advantage further. And yet he wanted more. More than ever since this other man, of whom he felt insanely jealous, had appeared on the scene. At this moment, when her feelings were all stirred and thrilled, he knew that skilfully led she would be capable of any self-sacrifice, that it would even have an attraction for her. Once get her to make a definite promise, and he felt certain the generosity of her nature would keep her to it. And once his—he looked at her beautiful face, grew pale, and set his teeth—he would make her love him: his work should not be left half done.Now, if ever, was his time.He said presently, in a pained and gloomy tone—“I could almost envy Clive.”“Why?” she said, looking round quickly.“Clive, and Kitty, and your mother. Do you ever think of anyone else? Would you care if I—we—the rest of the world were swept away in a common deluge? Would it matter to you in the least, supposing you four were safe?”“You are very unjust, Oliver,” she said in a low tone, and he saw tears shining in her eyes.“I think not,” he said gently. “So long as I can save Clive you are quite willing for me to run any risk—and the risk is great, remember. I am a chancery barrister, working upwards with quite my share of difficulties. Suppose my attempt fails—yes, it is always necessary to look what one undertakes in the face.”“Clive would be ruined,” she said as he paused. Then, as he did not speak, she looked at him again and saw him smiling. “What do you mean?” she said half angrily.“What did I tell you?” he answered. “It was not of Clive that I was speaking at that moment but of myself. I should be ruined as effectually as Clive, but that, of course, is not worth mentioning.” She started from her seat as if she had been stung, but he laid his hand on her arm and drew her down again beside him. “Wait a moment, Bice,” he said in a changed voice, “wait and listen; I have a right at least to ask so much from you. I am not saying this to you because I have any dream of retracting my promise; it is given, and there is an end of scruple. It is dangerous, perhaps wrong; I shall have to use means that I detest, and mix myself up with scoundrels who will be on the look-out to catch me tripping—never mind. I have promised. Only understand what it is you ask me to do, and understand also that I do it for you—solely and entirely for you. What is Clive to me? Nothing. Do you suppose that one’s cousins are so dear that one would risk reputation and honour for them. But what are you to me? Everything. Everything in the whole world, and you know it, you know it. Have you no word for me? Am I to sacrifice everything and to have nothing in return? Bice, Bice, can’t you give anything for Clive?”She was looking straight before her, the colour had faded out of her face; his voice, dangerously low and sweet, sounded in her ears. All her life long she never forgot that moment. Long afterwards, if she shut her eyes, she could see the great leaves of the trees of Paradise swaying backwards and forwards against the deep blue sky; a vine, golden in the sunshine; a pumpkin with its odd parti-coloured gourds flinging itself down a steep bank; a clump of lilac crocuses breaking through the grass—her eyes wandered over them all while he waited for her answer. She knew quite well what it must be; her poor little generous untaught heart had felt all the time he was speaking that he had a right so to speak, that it was not for her to hold back. Never before had it seemed to her so terrible—Oliver would have been bitterly disappointed had he known—but not for that could she hesitate. She hated herself because the sacrifice seemed so unendurable. Why did she not speak? What years were dragging slowly by while he waited, holding her hand in his—waited, waited!There was a rush, a swoop. A great black dog came tearing through the bushes, springing upon Bice. Old Andrea followed, breathless and panting.“He is a demon, that dog of the English signore,” he cried, “and he has lost his master. Signorina, for pity’s sake take him where he is, or he will knock the house down. He has been in my kitchen and gobbled up a heap ofamoretti, and broken half the eggs, and upset the milk, and before that he had frightened the padrona out of her senses.Che, che, che, we cannot have such doings! Signorina, where is his master?”“He is gone,” said Bice, jumping up; “he has been gone a long time. What shall we do, Andrea? Can one of the men take him into Florence?”“Would he go?—the signorina should rather ask that question. Otherwise the cart from thepodereis here, going in with a couple of pigs that have been sold. But the creature would not follow.”“Then we must tie him to the back.”“Già,già, that is it, the signorina has always got her ideas.” Old Andrea, who had recovered his good humour, stood shaking his broad shoulders and pointing at Cartouche, who kept close to Beatrice. “And he really is clever, too, he knows he has found a friend. Come along, come along, signorina mia.”“You will not go?” said Oliver, holding her back. He was furious with the dog, with the old cook, and with the knowledge that Ibbetson had already been there that morning. One other moment and the girl would have been his, he had known it, and now—It seemed to Bice as if a weight had fallen from her, she caught her hand from his and stood breathing quickly.“Yes, I must go,” she said, almost angrily. “Don’t you see they cannot manage him by themselves. Come, Cartouche; come, Andrea.”She ran towards the house, the dog followed her, leaping and barking. Oliver turned sharply away and went to the Virgin’s niche. He wanted to see if she had really taken fresh flowers there. Had Ibbetson helped her; was she playing a double game? He stood for some time thinking, his head bent and a frown on his face; and while he was there, a cart came jolting down the white and stony road. Behind it, and dragged unwillingly along, was poor Cartouche on his way to his home. Bice was walking by his side to console him for a little part of the road by encouraging words. She did not see Oliver Trent, nor hear his exclamation of rage, but she looked like a creature who had escaped to freedom, and had thrown off a burden. He was half disposed to follow her, but something seemed to warn him that the spell was broken, and must be re-woven before he could succeed.Perhaps people do not very often—except, indeed, in books—lay those elaborate schemes, those widely-spread toils of villainy, which are supposed to belong to a bad man’s career. It is probable that they open out to them almost as unexpectedly as to us, time and opportunity seeming to throw themselves on their side. Certainly Trent, who was growing more involved week by week, had laid no such plans when he took his first step; nay, more, he was made very uneasy by a clear perception of the dangers to which he was exposing himself as he went on. He would gladly have pulled himself up before, and looked forward almost feverishly to laying down the net which he told himself he was forced to weave, with the full intention of never again engaging in such rash work. He had no dislike of Clive to make it easier to do him a mischief, though he salved his conscience in the curious short-sighted way in which that work is often done, telling himself that the means he was obliged to use would not really injure the young man, although they might seem to cloud his prospects for a time:—nay, he sometimes almost succeeded in assuring himself that they were likely to work for Clive’s advantage, giving him just the lesson he needed, and putting him through a wholesome time of trial. But as this view of himself as a kind of abstract justice was one which no effort could keep always in the position where he would have liked to find it, he was subject to fits of impatience, wishing very heartily that he could reach his end and wash his hands of all this miserable business, which both irritated and annoyed him. When he had reached the villa he had confidently looked forward to being free in a week. And already he was feeling as if his acts were turning into scourges. Yet he had no thought of giving up Bice; the more he saw her, the more determined he grew to make her his wife, and when he was in her company all compunctions for Clive and fears for himself vanished in reckless resolution.
When Ibbetson had left her, Bice hastened to that part of the wall where was the niche to which she was carrying the flowers. A little terrace ran along by means of which she could reach and open the grating, and take out the vase with its withered blossoms. She carried it to a small fountain close by, filled it with clear water, and put in her flaming lilies. Then she took it back to the niche, closed the grating, came down from the terrace, and after a moment’s consideration walked slowly towards the place where she had heard the voices.
Kitty and Mr Trent were standing under a large acacia tree, and turned quickly round to greet her. Kitty poured out her questions—Where had she been? what had she been doing? did she know they had been looking for her?
“Mamma told me,” said Bice carelessly; “surely you two might have amused each other for an hour. And it would not have required any superhuman sagacity, Kitty, to guess that I had gone for the flowers.”
“If you are cross, I shall go to the terrace and leave Oliver to his fate,” said Kitty, laughing and escaping.
The two who were left looked at each other as she ran off—he with open admiration, she with a tremulous quiver of her lips not lost upon him. Oliver Trent was a man of about five and thirty, tall and thin, with dead, dusty-coloured hair; his features were not ill-looking, but, as Bice had remarked, hard in their lines, and he spoke with a slow sweetness curiously out of keeping with his face. He now slowly repeated—
“To my fate. I wonder if Kitty quite understood what happy prognostications lay in her words? Yes, this is the fate I have been looking forward to all these weary weeks; and I began to think, Bice, that you delighted in cruelty, or else had learned the woman’s art of tantalising. Come and sit here in the shade.”
She followed him more readily than he, perhaps, expected, for he half-suspected that she was bent upon avoiding atête-à-tête; but in actual truth she had scarcely heard his words, or at any rate had not taken in their meaning. Another thought possessed her. As they sat down she turned and looked steadily into his face.
“What is Clive’s exact position?” she said sharply.
He hesitated. She repeated the question.
“You had better not ask for particulars, for they can only give you pain.”
“I can bear pain.”
“Yes,” he said, glancing at her hand, “such pain as that; but there are other and worse pangs, and from those, Bice, I shall always endeavour to shield you. Clive has been doing his utmost to ruin himself and make you all miserable; I am trying to save him. It is a hard task, and unless you trust me and follow my directions, I tell you honestly that I have no chance of success.”
“You threaten us with shadows,” said the girl moodily.
“Oh, Bice,” he said—and his voice became yet softer and more slow—“you are not yourself to-day. What has changed you? I have often found you hasty, wilful, unreasonable, but never before ungenerous. Is it I that threaten? Is it not rather I that at any cost am trying to keep the danger a shadow? Once let me remove my hand, and it will be real and tangible enough—”
She could not endure such a reproach; it seemed horrible to her, and also true. She stretched out her hand to him with a quick gesture of kindness.
“You have been our very good friend, I know, Oliver,” she said, looking at him gratefully, “and I ought to be content and not tease you. Only tell me, is it absolutely necessary there should be this secrecy?”
“Absolutely. I am obliged to use the greatest caution.”
“Out here, how would it be possible for us to interfere with any plans?”
He began to be vexed with her unusual importunity, but allowed no trace of his vexation to appear in his face or voice. On the contrary, he said with a smile, “Excuse me; if there were no other way, I should feel by no means certain what you and Kitty might not write to Clive. No. Complete ignorance is the safest state of things for you; for of one thing I am sure, nature never intended either of you for a conspirator.”
Bice turned and looked at him thoughtfully. He felt uneasy, for her eyes seemed to be asking whether it was for that he was intended. He said more abruptly than he had yet spoken—
“Do you not care any longer that Clive should be saved?”
“Do I not care!”
The sudden fire which leapt into her eyes answered him. He had at last touched the right string.
“You have considered it thoroughly?” he said, speaking deliberately again. “I particularly desire that you should do so. If this act of Clive’s is brought home to him, it means dishonour and disgrace; I cannot hide it from you. Your mother is very fond of Clive, she will never hold up her head again. As for Kitty, you know best whether she will care or not. It may not be so bad for you, it is true, because you bear another name.”
Bice interrupted him in a low passionate voice. “You shall not say that!”
“You refuse to separate yourself from them? Well, then, for you too the shame and the disgrace. And poor Clive, so young, so foolish, not wicked, but led away. He writes to you all, I know, as if nothing had happened, but if you could see him as I do, you would long to save him!”
“You must save him.”
The girl’s voice was choked. Oliver leant forward and looked at her.
“At all costs?”
“At all costs.”
“And by all means, whether right or wrong?”
“Whether right or wrong.”
He leant forward still further and forced her to look at him.
“I will,” he said slowly. “For you.”
They were silent after that for a time. He felt that he had won a victory, but her moods were so changeful that he was afraid of endangering it by trying to push his advantage further. And yet he wanted more. More than ever since this other man, of whom he felt insanely jealous, had appeared on the scene. At this moment, when her feelings were all stirred and thrilled, he knew that skilfully led she would be capable of any self-sacrifice, that it would even have an attraction for her. Once get her to make a definite promise, and he felt certain the generosity of her nature would keep her to it. And once his—he looked at her beautiful face, grew pale, and set his teeth—he would make her love him: his work should not be left half done.
Now, if ever, was his time.
He said presently, in a pained and gloomy tone—“I could almost envy Clive.”
“Why?” she said, looking round quickly.
“Clive, and Kitty, and your mother. Do you ever think of anyone else? Would you care if I—we—the rest of the world were swept away in a common deluge? Would it matter to you in the least, supposing you four were safe?”
“You are very unjust, Oliver,” she said in a low tone, and he saw tears shining in her eyes.
“I think not,” he said gently. “So long as I can save Clive you are quite willing for me to run any risk—and the risk is great, remember. I am a chancery barrister, working upwards with quite my share of difficulties. Suppose my attempt fails—yes, it is always necessary to look what one undertakes in the face.”
“Clive would be ruined,” she said as he paused. Then, as he did not speak, she looked at him again and saw him smiling. “What do you mean?” she said half angrily.
“What did I tell you?” he answered. “It was not of Clive that I was speaking at that moment but of myself. I should be ruined as effectually as Clive, but that, of course, is not worth mentioning.” She started from her seat as if she had been stung, but he laid his hand on her arm and drew her down again beside him. “Wait a moment, Bice,” he said in a changed voice, “wait and listen; I have a right at least to ask so much from you. I am not saying this to you because I have any dream of retracting my promise; it is given, and there is an end of scruple. It is dangerous, perhaps wrong; I shall have to use means that I detest, and mix myself up with scoundrels who will be on the look-out to catch me tripping—never mind. I have promised. Only understand what it is you ask me to do, and understand also that I do it for you—solely and entirely for you. What is Clive to me? Nothing. Do you suppose that one’s cousins are so dear that one would risk reputation and honour for them. But what are you to me? Everything. Everything in the whole world, and you know it, you know it. Have you no word for me? Am I to sacrifice everything and to have nothing in return? Bice, Bice, can’t you give anything for Clive?”
She was looking straight before her, the colour had faded out of her face; his voice, dangerously low and sweet, sounded in her ears. All her life long she never forgot that moment. Long afterwards, if she shut her eyes, she could see the great leaves of the trees of Paradise swaying backwards and forwards against the deep blue sky; a vine, golden in the sunshine; a pumpkin with its odd parti-coloured gourds flinging itself down a steep bank; a clump of lilac crocuses breaking through the grass—her eyes wandered over them all while he waited for her answer. She knew quite well what it must be; her poor little generous untaught heart had felt all the time he was speaking that he had a right so to speak, that it was not for her to hold back. Never before had it seemed to her so terrible—Oliver would have been bitterly disappointed had he known—but not for that could she hesitate. She hated herself because the sacrifice seemed so unendurable. Why did she not speak? What years were dragging slowly by while he waited, holding her hand in his—waited, waited!
There was a rush, a swoop. A great black dog came tearing through the bushes, springing upon Bice. Old Andrea followed, breathless and panting.
“He is a demon, that dog of the English signore,” he cried, “and he has lost his master. Signorina, for pity’s sake take him where he is, or he will knock the house down. He has been in my kitchen and gobbled up a heap ofamoretti, and broken half the eggs, and upset the milk, and before that he had frightened the padrona out of her senses.Che, che, che, we cannot have such doings! Signorina, where is his master?”
“He is gone,” said Bice, jumping up; “he has been gone a long time. What shall we do, Andrea? Can one of the men take him into Florence?”
“Would he go?—the signorina should rather ask that question. Otherwise the cart from thepodereis here, going in with a couple of pigs that have been sold. But the creature would not follow.”
“Then we must tie him to the back.”
“Già,già, that is it, the signorina has always got her ideas.” Old Andrea, who had recovered his good humour, stood shaking his broad shoulders and pointing at Cartouche, who kept close to Beatrice. “And he really is clever, too, he knows he has found a friend. Come along, come along, signorina mia.”
“You will not go?” said Oliver, holding her back. He was furious with the dog, with the old cook, and with the knowledge that Ibbetson had already been there that morning. One other moment and the girl would have been his, he had known it, and now—
It seemed to Bice as if a weight had fallen from her, she caught her hand from his and stood breathing quickly.
“Yes, I must go,” she said, almost angrily. “Don’t you see they cannot manage him by themselves. Come, Cartouche; come, Andrea.”
She ran towards the house, the dog followed her, leaping and barking. Oliver turned sharply away and went to the Virgin’s niche. He wanted to see if she had really taken fresh flowers there. Had Ibbetson helped her; was she playing a double game? He stood for some time thinking, his head bent and a frown on his face; and while he was there, a cart came jolting down the white and stony road. Behind it, and dragged unwillingly along, was poor Cartouche on his way to his home. Bice was walking by his side to console him for a little part of the road by encouraging words. She did not see Oliver Trent, nor hear his exclamation of rage, but she looked like a creature who had escaped to freedom, and had thrown off a burden. He was half disposed to follow her, but something seemed to warn him that the spell was broken, and must be re-woven before he could succeed.
Perhaps people do not very often—except, indeed, in books—lay those elaborate schemes, those widely-spread toils of villainy, which are supposed to belong to a bad man’s career. It is probable that they open out to them almost as unexpectedly as to us, time and opportunity seeming to throw themselves on their side. Certainly Trent, who was growing more involved week by week, had laid no such plans when he took his first step; nay, more, he was made very uneasy by a clear perception of the dangers to which he was exposing himself as he went on. He would gladly have pulled himself up before, and looked forward almost feverishly to laying down the net which he told himself he was forced to weave, with the full intention of never again engaging in such rash work. He had no dislike of Clive to make it easier to do him a mischief, though he salved his conscience in the curious short-sighted way in which that work is often done, telling himself that the means he was obliged to use would not really injure the young man, although they might seem to cloud his prospects for a time:—nay, he sometimes almost succeeded in assuring himself that they were likely to work for Clive’s advantage, giving him just the lesson he needed, and putting him through a wholesome time of trial. But as this view of himself as a kind of abstract justice was one which no effort could keep always in the position where he would have liked to find it, he was subject to fits of impatience, wishing very heartily that he could reach his end and wash his hands of all this miserable business, which both irritated and annoyed him. When he had reached the villa he had confidently looked forward to being free in a week. And already he was feeling as if his acts were turning into scourges. Yet he had no thought of giving up Bice; the more he saw her, the more determined he grew to make her his wife, and when he was in her company all compunctions for Clive and fears for himself vanished in reckless resolution.