Their tea was served in the garden, and whilst they were dallying over it, a footman brought Johannah a visiting-card.
She glanced at the card; and Will, watching her, noticed that a look of annoyance—it might even have been a look of distress—came into her face.
Then she threw the card on the tea-table, and rose. “I shan’t be gone long,” she said, and set out for the house.
The card lay plainly legible under the eyes of Will and Madame Dornaye. “Mr. George Aymer, 36, Boulevard Rochechouart” was the legend inscribed upon it.
“Tiens,” said Madame Dornaye; “Jeanne told me she had ceased to see him.”
Will suppressed a desire to ask, “Who is he?”
But Madame Dornaye answered him all the same.
“You have heard of him? He is a known personage in Paris, although English. He is a painter, a painter of great talent; very young, but already decorated. And of a surprising beauty—the face of an angel. With that, a thorough-paced rascal. Oh, yes, whatever is vilest, whatever is basest. Even in Montmartre, even in the corruptest world of Paris, among the lowest journalists and painters, he is notorious for his corruption. Johannah used to see a great deal of him. She would not believe the evil stories that were told about him. And with his rare talent and his beautiful face, he has the most plausible manners, the most winning address. We were afraid that she might end by marrying him. But at last she found him out for herself, and gave him up. She told me she had altogether ceased to see him. I wonder what ill wind blows him here.”
Johannah entered the drawing-room.
A man in grey tweeds, the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour gleaming in his buttonhole, was standing near a window: a man, indeed, as Madame Dornaye had described him, with a face of surprising beauty—a fine, clear, open-air complexion, a clean-cut, even profile, a sensitive, soft mouth, big, frank, innocent blue eyes, and waving hair of the palest Saxon yellow. He could scarcely have been thirty; and the exceeding beauty of his face, its beauty and its sweetness, made one overlook his figure, which was a trifle below the medium height, and thick-set, with remarkably square, broad shoulders, and long arms.
Johannah greeted him with some succinctness. “What do you want?” she asked, remaining close to the door.
“I want to have a talk with you,” he answered, moving towards her. He drawled slightly; his voice was low and soft, conciliatory, caressing almost. And his big blue eyes shone with a faint, sweet, appealing smile.
“Would you mind staying where you are?” said she. “You can make yourself audible from across the room.”
“What are you afraid of?” he asked, his smile brightening with innocent wonder.
“Afraid? You do yourself too much honour. One does not like to find oneself in close proximity with objects that disgust one,” she explained.
He laughed; but instead of moving further towards her, he dropped into a chair. “You were always brutally outspoken,” he murmured.
“Yes; and with advancing years I’ve become even more so,” said Johannah, who continued to stand.
“You’re quite sure, though, that you’re not afraid of me?” he questioned.
“Oh, for that, as sure as sure can be. If you’ve based any sort of calculations upon the theory that I would be afraid of you, you’ll have to throw them over.”
He flushed a little, as if with anger; but in a moment he said calmly, “You’ve come into a perfect pot of money since I last had the pleasure of meeting you.”
“Yes, into something like eight thousand a year, if the figures interest you.”
“I never had any head for figures,” he answered, smiling. “But eight thousand sounds stupendous. And a lovely place, into the bargain. The park, or so much of it as one sees from the avenue, could not be better. And I permitted myself to admire the façade of the house and the view of the sea.”
“They’re not bad,” Johannah assented.
“It’s heart-rending,” he remarked, “the way things are shared in this world. Here are you, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, you who have done nothing all your life but take your pleasure; and I, who’ve toiled like a galley-slave, I remain as poor as any church-mouse. It’s monstrous.”
Johannah did not answer.
“And now,” he went on, “I suppose you’ve settled down and become respectable? No more Bohemia? No more cakes and ale? Only champagne and truffles? A County Family! Fancy your being a County Family, all by yourself, as it were! You must feel rather like the reformed rake of tradition—don’t you?”
“I mentioned that I am not afraid of you,” she reminded him, “but that doesn’t in the least imply that I find you amusing. The plain truth is, I find you deadly tiresome. If you have anything special to say to me, may I ask you to say it quickly?”
Again he flushed a little; then again, in a moment, answered smoothly, “I’ll say it in a sentence. I’ve come all the way to England, for the purpose of offering you my hand in marriage.” And he raised his bright blue eyes to her face with a look that really was seraphic.
“I decline the offer. If you’ve nothing further to keep you here, I’ll ring to have you shown out.”
Still again he flushed, yet once more controlled himself. “You decline the offer!Allons donc!When I am prepared to do the right thing, and make an honest woman of you.”
“I decline the offer,” Johannah repeated.
“That’s foolish of you,” said he.
“If you could dream how remotely your opinion interests me, you wouldn’t trouble to express it,” said she.
His anger this time got the better of him. He scowled, and looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “You had better not exasperate me,” he said in a suppressed voice.
“Oh,” said she, “you must suffer me to be the mistress of my own actions in my own house. Now—if you are quite ready to go?” she suggested, putting her hand upon the bell-cord.
“I’m not ready to go yet. I want to talk with you. To cut a long business short, you’re rich. I’m pitiably poor. You know how poor I am. You know how I have to live, the hardships, the privations I’m obliged to put up with.”
“Have you come here to beg?” Johannah asked.
“No, I’ve come to appeal to your good-nature. You refuse to marry me. That’s absurd of you, but—tant pis!Whether you marry me or not, you haven’t the heart to leave me to rot in poverty, while you luxuriate in plenty. Considering our oldtime relations, the thing’s impossible on the face of it.”
“Ah, I understand. Youhavecome here to beg,” she said.
“No,” said he. “One begs when one has no power to enforce.”
“What is the use of these glittering aphorisms?” she asked wearily.
“If you are ready to behave well to me, I’ll behave handsomely to you. But if you refuse to recognise my claims upon you, I’m in a position to take reprisals,” he said very quietly.
Johannah did not answer.
“I’m miserably, tragically poor; you’re rich. At this moment I’ve not got ten pounds in the world; and I owe hundreds. I’ve not sold a picture since March. You have eight thousand a year. You can’t expect me to sit down under it in silence. As the French attorneys phrase it,cet état de choses ne peut pas durer.”
Still Johannah answered nothing.
“You must come to my relief,” said he. “You must make it possible for me to go on. If you have any right feeling, you’ll do it spontaneously. If not—you know I can compel you.”
“Oh, then, for goodness’ sake, compel me, and so make an end of this entirely tedious visit,” she broke out.
“I’d immensely rather not compel you. If you will lend me a helping hand from time to time, I’ll promise never to take a step to harm you. I shall be moderate. You’ve got eight thousand a year. You’d never miss a hundred now and then. You might simply occasionally buy a picture. That would be the best way. You might buy my pictures.”
“I should be glad to know definitely,” remarked Johannah, “whether I have to deal with a blackmailer or a bagman.”
“Damn you,” he exploded, with sudden savagery, flushing very red indeed.
Johannah was silent.
After a pause, he said, “I’m staying at the inn in the village—at the Silver Arms.”
Johannah did not speak.
“I’ve already scraped acquaintance with the parson,” he went on. Then, as she still was silent, “I wonder what would become of your social position in this County if I should have a good long talk about you with the parson.”
“To a man of your intelligence, the solution of that problem can surely present no difficulty,” she replied wearily.
“You admit that your social position would be smashed up?”
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put it together again,” she said.
“I’m glad to find at least that you acknowledge my power,” said he.
“You have it in your power to tell people that I was once inconceivably simple enough to believe that you were an honourable man, that I once had the inconceivable bad taste to be fond of you. What woman’s character could survivethatrevelation?”
“And I could add—couldn’t I?—that you once had the inconceivable weakness to become my mistress?”
“Oh, you could add no end of details,” she admitted.
“Well, then?” he questioned.
“Well, then?” questioned she.
“It comes to this, that if you don’t want your social position, your reputation, to be utterly smashed up, you must make terms with me.”
“It’s a little unfortunate, from that way of looking at it,” she pointed out, “that I shouldn’t happen to care a rush about my social position—as you call it.”
“I think I’ll have a good long talk with the parson,” he said.
“Do by all means,” said she.
“You’d better be careful. I may take you at your word,” he threatened.
“I wish you would. Take me at my word—-and go,” she urged.
“You mean to say you seriously don’t care?”
“Not a rush, not a button,” she assured him.
“Oh, come! You’ll never try to brazen the thing out,” he exclaimed.
“I wish you’d go and have your long talk with the parson,” she said impatiently.
“It would be so easy for you to give me a little help,” he pleaded.
“It would be so easy for you to ’smash up’ my reputation with the parson,” she rejoined.
“You never used to be close-fisted. It’s incomprehensible that you should refuse me a little help. Look. I’m willing to be more than fair. Give me a hundred pounds, a bare little hundred pounds, and I’ll send you a lovely picture.”
“Thank you, I don’t want a picture.”
“You won’t give me a hundred pounds—a beggarly hundred pounds?” He looked incredulous.
“I won’t give you a farthing.”
“Well, then, by God, you jade,” he cried, springing to his feet, his face crimson, “by God, I’ll make you. I swear I’ll ruin you. Look out!”
“Are you really going at last?” she asked brightly.
“No, I’m not going till it suits my pleasure. You’ve got a sort of bastard cousin staying here with you, I’m told,” he answered.
“I would advise you to moderate your tone or your language,” said she. “If my sort of bastard cousin should by any chance happen to hear you referring to him in those terms, he would not be pleased.”
“I want to see him,” said he.
“I would advise you not to see him,” she returned.
“I want to see him,” he insisted.
“If you really wish to see him, I’ll send for him,” she consented. “But it’s only right to warn you that he’s not at all a patient sort of man. If I send for him, he will quite certainly make things disagreeable for you.”
“I’m not afraid of him. You know well enough that I’m not a coward.”
“My cousin is more than a head taller than you are,” she mused. “He would be perfectly able and perfectly sure to kick you. If there’s any other possible way of getting rid of you, I’d rather not trouble him.”
“I think I had better have a talk with your cousin, as well as with the parson,” he considered.
“I think you had better confine your attentions to the parson. I do, upon my word,” she counselled him.
“I am going to make a concession,” said Aymer. “I’m going to give you a night in which to think this thing over. If you care to send me a note, with a cheque in it, so that I shall receive it at the inn by to-morrow at ten o’clock, I’ll take the next earliest train back to town, and I’ll send you a picture in return. If no note comes by ten o’clock, I’ll call on the parson, and tell him all I know about you; and I’ll write a letter to your cousin. Now, good day.”
Johannah rang, and Aymer was shown out.
“|I shan’t be gone long,” Johannah had said, when she left Madame Dornaye and Will at tea in the garden; but time passed, and she did not come back. Will, mounting through various stages and degrees of nervousness, restlessness, anxiety, at last said, “What on earth can be keeping her?” and Madame Dornaye replied, “That is precisely what I am asking myself.” They waited a little longer, and then, “Shall we go back to the house?” he suggested. But when they reached the house they found the drawing-room empty, and—no trace of Johannah.
“She may be in her room. I’ll go and see,” said Madame Dornaye.
More time passed, and still no Johannah. Nor did Madame Dornaye return to explain her absence.
Will walked about in a state of acute misery. What could it be? What could have happened? What could this painter, this George Aymer, this thorough-paced rascal with the beautiful face, this man of whom Johannah, in days gone by, “had seen a great deal,” so that her friends had feared “she might end by marrying him”—what could he have called upon her for? What could have passed between them? Why had she disappeared? Where was she now? Where was he? Where was Madame Dornaye, who had gone to look for her? Could—could it possibly be—that he—this man notorious for his corruption even in the corruptest world of Paris—could it be that he was the man Johannah meant when she had talked of the man she was in love with? And Will, fatuous imbecile, had vainly allowed himself to imagine.... Oh, why did she not come back? Whatcouldbe keeping her away from him all this time?... “I have had a hundred, I have had a hundred.” The phrase echoed and echoed in his memory. She had said, “I have had a hundred love affairs.” Oh, to be sure, in the next breath, she had contradicted herself, she had said, “No, I haven’t.” But she had added, “Everybody has had at least one.” So she had had at least one. With this man, George Aymer? Madame Dornaye said she had broken with him, ceased to see him. But—it was certain she had seen him to-day. But—lovers’ quarrels are made up; lovers break with each other, and then come together again, are reunited. Perhaps... Perhaps... Oh, where was she? Why did she remain away in this mysterious fashion? What could she be doing? What could she be doing?
The dressing-bell rang, and he went to dress for dinner.
“Anyhow, I shall see her now, I shall see her at dinner,” he kept telling himself, as he dressed.
But when he came downstairs the drawing-room was still empty. He walked backwards and forwards.
“We shall have to dine without our hostess,” Madame Dornaye said, entering presently. “Jeanne has a bad headache, and will stay in her room.”
Will left the house early the next morning, and went out into the garden. The sun was shining, the dew sparkled on the grass, the air was keen and sweet with the odours of the earth. A mile away the sea glowed blue as larkspur; and overhead innumerable birds gaily piped and twittered. But oh, the difference, the difference! His eyes could see no colour, his ears could hear no music. His brain felt as if it had been stretched and strained, like a thing of india-rubber; a lump ached in his throat; his heart was sick with the suspense of waiting, with the questionings, the fears, suspicions, that had beset it through the night.
“Will!” Johannah’s voice called behind him.
He turned.
“Thank God!” The words came without conscious volition on his part. “I thought I was never going to see you again.”
“I have been waiting for you,” said she.
She wore her garden-hat and her white frock; but her face was pale, and her eyes looked dark and anxious.
He had taken her hand, and was clinging to it, pressing it, hard, so hard that it must have hurt her, in the violence of his emotion.
“Oh, wait, Will, wait,” she said, trying to draw her hand away; and her eyes filled with sudden tears.
He let go her hand, and looked into her tearful eyes, helpless, speechless, longing to speak, unable, in the confusion of his thoughts and feelings, to find a word.
“I must tell you something, Will. Come with me somewhere—where we can be alone. I must tell you something.”
She moved off, away from the house, he keeping beside her. They passed out of the garden, into the deep shade of the park.
“Doyou remember,” she began, all at once, “do you remember what I said yesterday, about my motto? That my motto was ’Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold’.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I am going to be very bold indeed now, Will. I am going to tell you something—something that will make you hate me perhaps—that will make you despise me perhaps,” she faltered.
“You could not possibly tell me anything that could make me hate you or despise you. But you must not tell me anything at all, unless it is something you are perfectly sure you will be happier for having told me,” he said.
“It is something I wish to tell you, something I must tell you,” said she. Then after a little pause, “Oh, how shall I begin it?” But before he could have spoken, “Do you think that a woman—do you think that a girl, when she is very young, when she is very immature and impressionable, and very impulsive, and ignorant, and when she is alone in the world, without a father or mother—do you think that if she makes some terrible mistake, if she is terribly deceived, if somebody whom she believes to be good and noble and unhappy and misunderstood, somebody whom she—whom she loves—do you think that if she makes some terrible mistake—if she—if she—oh, my God!—if——-” She held her breath for a second, then suddenly, “Can’t you understand what Imean?” she broke down in a sort of wail, and hid her face in her hands, and sobbed.
Will stood beside her, holding his arms out towards her. “Johannah! Johannah!” was all he could say.
She dropped her hands, and looked at him with great painful eyes. “Tell me—do you think that a woman can never be forgiven? Do you think that she is soiled, degraded, changed utterly? Do you think that when she—that when she did what she did—it was a sin, a crime, not only a terrible mistake, and that her whole nature is changed? Most people think so. They think that a mark has been left upon her, branded upon her; that she can never, never be the same again. Do you think so, Will? Oh, it is not true; I know it is not true. A woman can leave that mistake, that terror, that horror—she can leave it behind her as completely as she can leave any other dreadful thing. She can blot it out of her life, like a nightmare. Sheisn’tchanged—she remains the same woman. She isn’t utterly changed, and soiled, and defiled. In her own conscience, no matter what other people think, she knows, she knows she isn’t. When she wakes up to find that the man she had believed in, the man she had loved, when she wakes up to find that he isn’t in any way what she had thought him, that he is base and evil and ignoble, and when all her love for him dies in horror and misery—oh, do you think that she must never, never, as long as she lives, hold up her head again, never be happy again, never love any one again? Look at me, Will. I am myself. I am what God made me. Do you think that I am utterly vile because—because———” But her voice failed again, and her eyes again filled with tears.
“Oh, Johannah, don’t ask me what I think of you. I could not tell you what I think of you. You are as God made you. God never made—never made any one else so splendid.”
And in a moment his arms were round her, and she was weeping her heart out on his shoulder.
Would Madame like a little orange-flower water in her milk?” the waiter asked. Madame thought she would, and the waiter went off to fetch it.
We were seated on the terrace of a café at Rouen, a café on the quays. There was a long rank, three deep, of small marble tables, untenanted for the most part, sheltered by a bright red-and-white striped awning, and screened from the street by a hedge of oleanders in big green-painted tubs; so that one had a fine sense of cosiness and seclusion, of refreshing shade and coolness and repose. Beyond the oleanders, one was dimly conscious of hot sunshine, of the going and coming of people on the pavement, of the passing of carts and tram-cars in the grey road, and then of the river—the slate-coloured river, with its bridges and its puffing penny steamboats, its tall ships out of Glasgow or Copenhagen or Barcelona, its high green banks, farther away, where it wound into the country, and the pure sky above it. From all the interesting things the café provided, lucent-tinted syrups, fiery-hearted, aromatic cordials, Madame (with subtle feminine unexpectedness) had chosen a glass of milk. But the waiter had suggested orange-flower water, to give it savour; and now he brought the orange-flower water in a dark-blue bottle.
It was partly, I daresay, the sight of the dark-blue bottle, but it was chiefly, perhaps, the smell of the orange-flower water, that suddenly, suddenly, whisked my thoughts far away from Rouen, far away from 1897, back ten, twenty, I would rather not count how many years back in the past, to my childhood, to Saint-Graal, and to my grandmother’s room in our old rambling house there. For my grandmother always kept a dark-blue bottle of orange-flower water in her closet, and the air of her room was always faintly sweet with the perfume of it.
Suddenly, suddenly, a sort of ghost of my grandmother’s room rose before me; and as I peered into it and about it, a ghost of the old emotion her room used to stir in me rose too, an echo of the old wonder, the old feeling of strangeness and mystery. It was a big room—or, at least, it seemed big to a child—a corner room, on the first floor, with windows on two sides. The windows on one side looked through the branches of a great elm, a city of birds and squirrels, out upon the lawn, with the pond at the bottom of it. On the other side, the windows looked over the terrace, into the shrubberies and winding paths of the garden. The walls of the room were hung with white paper, upon which, at regular intervals, was repeated a landscape in blue, a stretch of meadow with cows in it, and a hillside topped by a ruined castle. In a corner, the inmost corner, stood my grandmother’s four-post bed, with its canopy and curtains of dark-green tapestry. Then, of course, there was the fireplace, surmounted by a high, slender mantelpiece, on which were ranged a pair of silver candlesticks, a silver tray containing the snuffers and the extinguisher, and, in the middle, a solemn old buhl clock. From above the mantelpiece a picture looked down at you, the only picture in the room, the life-size portrait of a gentleman in a white stock and an embroidered waistcoat—the portrait of my grandfather, indeed, who had died long years before I was born, when my mother was a schoolgirl. And then there was the rest of the furniture of the room—a chair at each window, and between the various windows my grandmother’s dressing-table, her work-table, her armoire-à-glace, her great mahogany bureau, a writing-desk above, a chest-of-drawers below. In two or three places—besides the big double door that led into her room from the outer passage—the wall was broken by smaller doors, doors papered over like the wall itself, and even with it, so that you would scarcely have noticed them. One of these was the door of my grandmother’s oratory, with its praying-desk and its little altar. The others were the doors of her closets: the deep black closet, where her innumerable dresses were suspended, and the closets where she kept her bandboxes and her sunshades and her regiment of bottles—chief among them the tall dark-blue bottle of orange-flower water.
I don’t know, I can’t think, why this room should always have awakened in me a feeling of strangeness and mystery, why it should always have set me off day-dreaming and wondering; but it always did. The mahogany bureau, the tapestried four-post bed, the portrait of my grandfather, the recurrent landscape on the wall-paper, the deep black closet where the dresses hung, the faint smell of orange-flower water—each of these was a surface, a curtain, behind which, on the impenetrable other side of which, vaguely, wonderingly, I divined strange vistas, a whole strange world. Each of these silently hinted to me of strange happenings, strange existences, strange conditions. And vaguely, longingly, I would try to formulate my feeling into some sort of distinct mental vision, try to translate into my own language their occult suggestions. They were hieroglyphs, full of meaning, if only I could understand. Was it because the things in my grandmother’s room were all old things, old-fashioned things? Was the strange world they spoke of simply the world as it had been in years gone by, before I came into it, before even my mother and father came into it, when people long since dead were alive, important, the people of the day, and when these faded, old-fashioned things were fresh and new? I doubt if it could have been entirely this. There were plenty of old things in our house at Saint-Graal—in the hall, the library, the garret, everywhere; the house itself was very old indeed; yet no other part of it gave me anything like the same emotion.
My Uncle Edmond’s room, for instance, gave me a directly contrary emotion, though here, too, all the furniture was old-fashioned. It gave me a sense of brisk, almost of stern, actuality; of present facts and occupations; of alert, busy manhood. As I followed Alexandre into it, in the morning, when he went to dust it and put it in order, I was filled with a kind of fearful admiration: the fear, the admiration, of the small for the big, of the weak for the strong, of the helpless for the commanding. The arrangement of the room, the lines of the room, the very colours of the room, seemed strong, and commanding, and severe. Yet, when you came to examine it, the only really severe-looking object was the bedstead; this being devoid of curtains, its four varnished pillars shone somewhat hard and bare. For the rest, there was just the natural furniture of a sleeping-room: a dressing-table, covered with a man’s toilet accessories—combs and brushes, razors, scissors, shoehorns, button-hooks, shirt-studs, and bottles enclosing I know not what necessary fluids; a bigger table, with writing-materials on it, with an old epaulette-box used now to hold tobacco, and endless pipes and little pink books of cigarette-papers; a bureau like my grandmother’s; a glazed bookcase; and the proper complement of chairs. The walls of the room were painted white, and ornamented by two pictures, facing each other: two steel-engravings, companion-pieces, after Rembrandt, I believe. “Le Philosophe en Contemplation” was the legend printed under one; and under the other, “Le Philosophe en Méditation.” I can only remember that the philosopher had a long grey beard, and that in both pictures he was seated in a huge easy-chair. My Uncle Edmond had been in the army when he was a young man, and in his closets (besides his ordinary clothes and his countless pairs of boots) there were old uniform coats, with silver buttons, old belts, clasps, spurs, and then, best of all, three or four swords, and a rosewood case or two of pistols. Needless to say whether my awe and my admiration mounted to their climax when I peeped in upon these historic trophies. And just as the smell of orange-flower water pervaded my grandmother’s room, so another, a very different smell, pervaded my Uncle Edmond’s, a dry, clean smell, slightly pungent, bitter, but not at all unpleasant. I could never discover what it came from, I can’t even now conjecture; but it seemed to me a manly smell, just the smell that a man’s room ought to have. In my too-fruitless efforts to imitate Uncle Edmond’s room in the organisation of my own, it was that smell, more than anything else, which baffled me. I could not achieve the remotest semblance of it. Of course, I was determined that when I grew up I should have a room exactly like my uncle’s in every particular, and I trusted, no doubt, that it would acquire the smell, with time.
But of all the rooms at Saint-Graal, the one that gave you the thrillingest, the most exquisite emotion, was my mother’s. If my grandmother’s room represented the silence and the strangeness of the past, and my uncle’s the actuality and activity of the present, my mother’s room represented the Eternal Feminine, smiling at you, enthralling you, in its loveliest incarnation; singing to you, amid delicate luxuries, of youth and beauty and happiness, and the fine romance of mirth. In my mother’s room, for example, so far from being old-fashioned, the furniture was of the very latest, daintiest design, fresh from Paris. The wallpaper was cream-coloured, with garlands of pink and blue flowers trailing over it, and here and there a shepherd’s hat and a shepherd’s pipes tied together by a long fluttering blue ribbon. The chairs and the sofa were covered with chintz, gayer even, if that were possible, than this paper: chintz on which pretty little bright-blue birds flew about among poppies, red as scarlet, and pale-green leaves. The window-curtains and the bed-curtains were of the same merry chintz; the bed-quilt was an eider-down of the softest blush-rose silk; the bedstead was enamelled white, and so highly polished that you could see an obscure reflection of your features in it. And then, the dressing-table, with its wide bevelled mirror, and the glistening treasures displayed upon it!—the open jewel-case, and the rings, brooches, bracelets, necklaces, that sparkled in it; the silver-backed brushes, the silver-topped bottles, the silver-framed hand-glass; the hundred shining trifles. One whole side of the room had been converted into a vast bay-window; this looked due south, over the floweriest part of our flower-garden, over the rich green country beyond, miles away, to where the Pyrenees gloomed purple. As a shield against the sun the window was fitted with Venetian blinds, besides the curtains; and every morning, when I crept in from my own adjoining room, to pay my mother a visit, it was given me to witness a marvellous transformation scene. At first all was dark, or nearly dark, so that you could only distinguish things as shadowy masses. But presently my mother’s maid, Aurélie, arrived with the chocolate, and drew back the curtains, filling the room with a momentary twilight; then she opened the Venetian blinds, and suddenly there was a gush of sunlight, and the room gleamed and glittered like a room in a crystal palace. Sweet airs came in from the garden, bird-notes came in, the day came in, dancing and laughing joyously; and my mother and I joyously laughed back at it. Another transformation scene, at which I was permitted to assist, took place in this room in the evening, when my mother dressed for dinner. I would sit at a distance, not to be in the way, and watch the ceremony with eyes as round as O’s doubtless, and certainly with an enravished soul; while Aurélie did my mother’s hair (sprinkling it, as a culmination, with a pinch of diamond-dust, according to the mode of the period), and moved to and from the wardrobe, where my mother’s bewildering confections of silks and laces were enshrined, and her satin slippers glimmered in a row on their shelf. And after the toilet was completed, and my mother, in dazzling loveliness, had kissed me good-bye and vanished, I would linger a little, to gaze about the temple in which such miracles could happen; taking up and studying one by one the combs, brushes, powder-puffs, or what not, as you would study the instruments employed by a conjurer; and removing the stoppers from the scent-bottles, to inhale their delicious fragrance....
“Don’t you think,” asked my companion, “that it’s time you paid the waiter and we were off?”
I looked up, and suddenly there was Rouen—Rouen, the café on the quays, Madame’s empty glass of milk, and Madame herself questioning me from anxious eyes.
“Yes,” I said, “I think it’s time we were off; and what’s more, I’ll tell you this: every room in the universe has not only its peculiar physiognomy and its peculiar significance, but it wakes a particular sentiment also, and has a special smell.”
“Oh, I see,” said Madame; “that’s why you’ve been silent all this while.”
So I paid the waiter, and we took the puffing little steamboat, down the river, between its green banks and its flowery islets, back to La Bouille.
Iwonder why I dreamed last night of Zabetta. It is years since she made her brief little transit through my life, and passed out of it utterly. It is years since the very recollection of her—which for years, like an accusing spirit, had haunted me too often—like a spirit was laid. It is long enough, in all conscience, since I have even thought of her, casually, for an instant. And then, last night, after a perfectly usual London day and evening, I went to bed and dreamed of her vividly. What had happened to bring her to my mind? Or is it simply that the god of dreams is a capricious god?
The influence of my dream, at any rate,—the bittersweet savour of it,—has pursued me through my waking hours. All day long to-day Zabetta has been my phantom guest. She has walked with me in the streets; she has waited at my elbow while I wrote or talked or read. Now, at tea-time, she is present with me by my study fireside, in the twilight. Her voice sounds faintly, plaintively, in my ears; her eyes gaze at me sadly from a pale reproachful face.... She bids me to the theatre of memory, where my youth is rehearsed before me in mimic show. There was one—no, there were two little scenes in which Zabetta played the part of leading lady.
Ido not care to specify the year in which it happened; it happened a terrible number of years ago; it happened when I was twenty. I had passed the winter in Naples,—oh, it had been a golden winter!—and now April had come, and my last Neapolitan day. Tomorrow I was to take ship for Marseilles, on the way to join my mother in Paris.
It was in the afternoon; and I was climbing one of those crooked staircase alleys that scale the hillsides behind the town, the salita—is there, in Naples, a Salita Santa Margherita? I had lunched (for the last time!) at the Café d’.urope, and had then set forth upon a last haphazard ramble through the streets. It was tremulous spring weather, with blue skies, soft breezes, and a tender sun; the sort of weather that kindles perilous ardours even in the blood of middle age, and turns the blood of youth to wildfire.
Women sat combing their hair, and singing, and gossiping, before the doorways of their pink and yellow houses; children sprawled, and laughed, and quarrelled in the dirt. Pifferari, in sheep-skins and sandals, followed by prowling, gaunt-limbed dogs, droned monotonous nasal melodies from their bagpipes. Priests picked their way gingerly over the muddy cobble stones, sleek, black-a-vised priests, with exaggerated hats, like Don Basilio’s in theBarbiere. Now and then one passed a fat brown monk; or a soldier; or a white-robed penitent, whose eyes glimmered uncannily from the peep-holes of the hood that hid his face; or a comely contadina, in her smart costume, with a pomegranate-blossom flaming behind her ear, and red lips that curved defiantly as she met the covetous glances wildfire-and-twenty no doubt bestowed upon her—whereat, perhaps, wildfire-and-twenty halted and hesitated for an instant, debating whether to accept the challenge and turn and follow her. A flock of milk-purveying goats jangled their bells a few yards below me. Hawkers screamed their merchandise, fish, and vegetables, and early fruit—apricots, figs, green almonds. Brown-skinned, barelegged boys shouted at long-suffering donkeys, and whacked their flanks with sticks. And everybody, more or less, importuned you for coppers. “Mossou, mossou! Un piccolo soldo, per l’amor di Dio!” The air was vibrant with Southern human noises and dense with Southern human smells—amongst which, here and there, wandered strangely a lost waft of perfume from some neighbouring garden, a scent of jasmine or of orange flowers.
And then, suddenly, the salita took a turn, and broadened into a small piazza. At one hand there was a sheer terrace, dropping to tiled roofs twenty feet below; and hence one got a splendid view, over the town, of the blue bay, with its shipping, and of Capri, all rose and purple in the distance, and of Vesuvius with its silver wreath of smoke. At the other hand loomed a vast, discoloured, pink-stuccoed palace, with grated windows, and a porte-cochère black as the mouth of a cavern; and the upper stories of the palace were in ruins, and out of one corner of their crumbling walls a palm-tree grew. The third side of the piazza was inevitably occupied by a church, a little pearl-grey rococo edifice, with a bell, no deeper toned than a common dinner-bell, which was now frantically ringing. About the doors of the church countless written notices were pasted, advertising indulgences; beggars clung to the steps, like monster snails; and the greasy leathern portière was constantly being drawn aside, to let some one enter or come out.
It was here that I met Zabetta.
The heavy portière swung open, and a young girl stepped from the darkness behind it into the sunshine.
I saw a soft face, with brown eyes; a plain black frock, with a little green nosegay stuck in its belt; and a small round scarlet hat.
A hideous old beggar woman stretched a claw towards this apparition, mumbling something. The apparition smiled, and sought in its pocket, and made the beggar woman the richer by a soldo.
I was twenty, and the April wind was magical. I thought I had never seen so beautiful a smile, a smile so radiant, so tender.
I watched the young girl as she tripped down the church steps, and crossed the piazza, coming towards me. Her smile lingered, fading slowly, slowly, from her face.
As she neared me, her eyes met mine. For a second we looked straight into each other’s eyes....
Oh, there was nothing bold, nothing sophisticated or immodest, in the momentary gaze she gave me. It was a natural, spontaneous gaze of perfectly frank, of perfectly innocent and impulsive interest, in exchange for mine of open admiration. But it touched the wildfire in my veins, and made it leap tumultuously.
Happiness often passes close to us without our suspecting it, the proverb says.
The young girl moved on; and I stood still, feeling dimly that something precious had passed close to me. I had not turned back to follow any of the brazenly provocative contadine. But now I could not help it. Something precious had passed within arm’s reach of me. I must not let it go, without at least a semblance of pursuing it. If I waited there passive till she was out of sight, my regrets would be embittered by the recollection that I had not even tried.
I followed her eagerly, but vaguely, in a tremor or unformulated hopes and fears. I had no definite intentions, no designs. Presently, doubtless, she would come to her journey’s end—she would disappear in a house or shop—and I should have my labour for my pains. Nevertheless, I followed. What would you? She was young, she was pretty, she was neatly dressed. She had big bright brown eyes, and a slender waist, and a little round scarlet hat set jauntily upon a mass of waving soft brown hair. And she walked gracefully, with delicious undulations, as if to music, lifting her skirts up from the pavement, and so disclosing the daintiest of feet, in trim buttoned boots of glazed leather, with high Italian heels. And her smile was lovely—and I was twenty—and it was April. I must not let her escape me, without at least a semblance of pursuit.
She led me down the salita that I had just ascended. She could scarcely know that she was being followed, for she had not once glanced behind her.
At first I followed meekly, unperceived, and contented to remain so.
But little by little a desire for more aggressive measures grew within me. I said, “Why not—instead of following meekly—why not overtake and outdistance her, then turn round, and come face to face with her again? And if again her eyes should meet mine as frankly as they met them in the piazza....”
The mere imagination of their doing so made my heart stop beating.
I quickened my pace. I drew nearer and nearer to her. I came abreast of her—oh, how the wildfire trembled! I pressed on for a bit, and then, true to my resolution, turned back.
Her eyes did meet mine again quite frankly. What was more, they brightened with a little light of surprise, I might almost have fancied a little light of pleasure.
If the mere imagination of the thing had made my heart stop beating, the thing itself set it to pounding, racing, uncontrollably, so that I felt all but suffocated, and had to catch my breath.
She knew now that the young man she had passed in the piazza had followed her of set purpose; and she was surprised, but, seemingly, not displeased. They were wonderfully gentle, wonderfully winning eyes, those eyes she raised so frankly to my desirous ones; and innocent, innocent, with all the unsuspecting innocence of childhood. In years she might be seventeen, older perhaps; but there was a child’s fearless unconsciousness of evil in her wide brown eyes. She had not yet been taught (or, anyhow, she clearly didn’t believe) that it is dangerous and unbecoming to exchange glances with a stranger in the streets.
She was as good as smiling on me. Might I dare the utmost? Might I venture to speak to her?... My heart was throbbing too violently. I could not have found an articulate human word, nor a shred of voice, nor a pennyweight of self-assurance, in my body. .
So, thrilling with excitement, quailing in panic, I passed her again.
I passed her, and kept on up the narrow alley for half a dozen steps, when again I turned.
She was standing where I had left her, looking after me. There was the expression of unabashed disappointment in her dark eyes now, which, in a minute, melted to an expression of appeal.
“Oh, aren’t you going to speak to me, after all?” they pleaded.
Wooed by those soft monitors, I plucked up a sort of desperate courage. Hot coals burned in my cheeks, something flattered terribly in my breast; I was literally quaking in every limb. My spirit was exultant, but my flesh was faint. Her eyes drew me, drew me.... I fancy myself awkwardly raising my hat; I hear myself accomplish a half-smothered salutation.
“Buon’ giorno, Signorina.”
Her face lit up with that celestial smile of hers; and in a voice that was like ivory and white velvet, she returned, “Buon’ giorno, Signorino.”
And then I don’t know how long we stood together in silence.
This would never do, I recognised. I must not stand before her in silence, like a guilty schoolboy. I must feign composure. I must carry off the situation lightly, like a man of the world, a man of experience. I groped anxiously in the confusion ot my wits for something that might pass for an apposite remark.
At last I had a flash or inspiration. “What—what fine weather,” I gasped. “Che bel tempo!”
“Oh, molto bello,” she responded. It was like a cadenza on a flute.
“You—you are going into the town?” I questioned.
“Yes,” said she.
“May I—may I have the pleasure———” I faltered.
“But yes,” she consented, with an inflection that wondered. “What else have you spoken to me for?”
And we set off down the salita, side by side.
She had exquisite little white ears, with little coral earrings, like drops of blood; and a perfect rosebud mouth, a mouth that matched her eyes for innocence and sweetness. Her scarlet hat burned in the sun, and her brown hair shook gently under it. She had plump little soft white hands.
Presently, when I had begun to feel more at my ease, I hazarded a question. “You are a republican, Signorina?”
“No,” she assured me, with a puzzled elevation of the brows.
“Ah, well, then you are a cardinal,” I concluded.
She gave a silvery trill of laughter, and asked, “Why must I be either a republican or a cardinal?”
“You wear a scarlet hat—abonnet rouge", I explained.
At which she laughed again, crisply, merrily.
“You are French,” she said.
“Oh, am I?”
“Aren’t you?”
“As you wish, Signorina; but I had never thought so.”
And still again she laughed.
“You have come from church,” said I.
“Già,” she assented; “from confession.”
“Really? And did you have a great many wickednesses to confess?”
“Oh, yes; many, many,” she answered, simply.
“And now have you got a heavy penance to perform?”
“No; only twentyaves. And I must turn my tongue seven times in my mouth before I speak, whenever I am angry.”
“Ah, then you are given to being angry? You have a bad temper?”
“Oh, dreadful, dreadful,” she cried, nodding her head.
It was my turn to laugh now. “Then I must be careful not to vex you.”
“Yes. But I will turn my tongue seven times before I speak, if you do,” she promised.
“Are you going far?” I asked.
“I am going nowhere. I am taking a walk.”
“Shall we go to the Villa Nazionale, and watch the driving?”
“Or to the Toledo, and look at the shop-windows?”
“We can do both. We will begin at the Toledo, and end in the Villa.”
“Bene,” she acquiesced.
After a little silence, “I am so glad I met you,” I informed her, looking into her eyes.
He eyes softened adorably. “I am so glad too,” she said.
“You are lovely, you are sweet,” I vowed, with enthusiasm.
“Oh, no!” she protested. “I am as God made me.”
“You are lovely, you are sweet. I thought—when I first saw you, above there, in the piazza—when you came out of church, and gave the soldo to the old beggar woman—I thought you had the loveliest smile I had ever seen.”
A beautiful blush suffused her face, and her eyes swam in a mist of pleasure. “É vero?” she questioned.
“Oh, vero, vero. That is why I followed you. You don’t mind my having followed you?”
“Oh, no; I am glad.”
After another interval of silence, “You are not Neapolitan?” I said. “You don’t speak like a Neapolitan.”
“No; I am Florentine. We live in Naples for my father’s health. He is not strong. He cannot endure the cold winters of the North.”
I murmured something sympathetic; and she went on, “My father is a violinist. To-day he has gone to Capri, to play at a festival. He will not be back until to-morrow. So I was very lonesome.”
“You have no mother?”
“My mother is dead,” she said, crossing herself. In a moment she added, with a touch of pride, “During the season my father plays in the orchestra of the San Carlo.”
“I am sure I know what your name is,” said I.
“Oh? How can you know? What is it?”
“I think your name is Rosabella.”
“Ah, then you are wrong. My name is Elisabetta. But in Naples everybody says Zabetta. And yours?”
“Guess.”
“Oh, I cannot guess. Not—not Federico?”
“Do I look as if my name were Federico?”
She surveyed me gravely for a minute, then shook her head pensively. “No; I do not think your name is Federico.”
And therewith I told her my name, and made her repeat it till she could pronounce it without a struggle.
It sounded very pretty, coming from her pretty lips, quite Southern and romantic, with its r’s tremendously enriched.
“Anyhow, I know your age,” said I.
“What is it?”
“You are seventeen.”
“No—ever so much older.”
“Eighteen then.”
“I shall be nineteen in July.”
Before the brilliant shop-windows of the Toledo we dallied for an hour or more, Zabetta’s eyes sparkling with delight as they rested on the bright-hued silks, the tortoiseshell and coral, the gold and silver filagree-work, that were there displayed. But when she admired some one particular object above another, and I besought her to let me buy it for her, she refused austerely. “But no, no, no! It is impossible.” Then we went on to the Villa, and strolled by the sea-wall, between the blue-green water and the multicoloured procession of people in carriages. And by-and-by Zabetta confessed that she was tired, and proposed that we should sit down on one of the benches. “A café would be better fun,” submitted her companion. And we placed ourselves at one of the out-of-door tables of the café in the garden, where, after some urging, I prevailed upon Zabetta to drink a cup of chocolate. Meanwhile, with the ready confidence of youth, we had each been desultorily autobiographical; and if our actual acquaintance was only the affair of an afternoon, I doubt if in a year we could have felt that we knew each other better.
“I must go home,” Zabetta said at last.
“Oh, not yet, not yet,” cried I.
“It will be dinner-time. I must go home to dinner.”
“But your father is at Capri. You will have to dine alone.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t. Come with me instead, and dine at a restaurant.”
Her eyes glowed wistfully for an instant; but she replied, “Oh, no; I cannot.”
“Yes, you can. Come.”
“Oh, no; impossible.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because.”
“Because what?”
“There is my cat. She will have nothing to eat.”
“Your cook will give her something.”
“My cook!” laughed Zabetta. “My cook is here before you.”
“Well, you must be a kind mistress. You must give your cook an evening out.”
“But my poor cat?”
“Your cat can catch a mouse.”
“There are no mice in our house. She has frightened them all away.”
“Then she can wait. A little fast will be good for her soul.”
Zabetta laughed, and I said, “Andiamo!”
At the restaurant we climbed to the first floor, and they gave us a table near the window, whence we could look out over the villa to the sea beyond. The sun was sinking, and the sky was gay with rainbow tints, like mother-of-pearl.
Zabetta’s face shone joyfully. “This is only the second time in my life that I have dined in a restaurant,” she told me. “And the other time was very long ago, when I was quite young. And it wasn’t nearly so grand a restaurant as this, either.”
“And now what would you like to eat?” I asked, picking up the bill of fare.
“May I look?” said she.
I handed her the document, and she studied it at length. I think, indeed, she read it through. In the end she appeared rather bewildered.
“Oh, there is so much. I don’t know. Will you choose, please?”
I made a shift at choosing, and the sympathetic waiter flourished kitchenwards with my commands.
“What is that little green nosegay you wear in your belt, Zabetta?” I inquired.
“Oh, this—it is rosemary. Smell it,” she said, breaking off a sprig and offering it to me.
“Rosemary—that’s for remembrance,” quoted I.
“What does that mean? What language is that?” she asked.
I tried to translate it to her. And then I taught her to say it in English. “Rrosemérri—tsat is forr rremembrrance.”
“Will you write it down for me?” she requested. “It is pretty.”
And I wrote it for her on the back of one of my cards.
After dinner we crossed the garden again, and again stood by the sea-wall. Over us the soft spring night was like a dark sapphire. Points of red, green, and yellow fire burned from the ships in the bay, and seemed of the same company as the stars above them. A rosy aureole in the sky, to the eastward, marked the smouldering crater of Vesuvius. Away in the Chiaja a man was singing comic songs, to an accompaniment of mandolines and guitars; comic songs that sounded pathetic, as they reached us in the distance.
I asked Zabetta how she wished to finish the evening.
“I don’t care,” said she.
“Would you like to go the play?”
“If you wish.”
“What doyouwish?”
“I think I should like to stay here a little longer. It is pleasant.”
We leaned on the parapet, close to each other. Her face was very pale in the starlight; her eyes were infinitely deep, and dark, and tender. One of her little hands lay on the stone wall, like a white flower. I took it. It was warm and soft. She did not attempt to withdraw it. I bent over it and kissed it. I kissed it many times. Then I kissed her lips. “Zabetta—I love you—I love you,” I murmured fervently.—Don’t imagine that I didn’t mean it. It was April, and I was twenty.
“I love you, Zabetta. Dearest little Zabetta! I love you so.”
“É vero?” she questioned, scarcely above her breath.
“Oh, si; é vero, vero, vero,” I asseverated. “And you? And you?”
“Yes, I love you,” she whispered.
And then I could say no more. The ecstasy that filled my heart was too poignant. We stood there speechless, hand in hand, and breathed the air of heaven.
By-and-by Zabetta drew her bunch of rosemary from her belt, and divided it into two parts. One part she gave to me, the other she kept. “Rosemary—it is for constancy,” she said. I pressed the cool herb to my face for a moment, inhaling its bitter-sweet fragrance; then I fastened it in my buttonhole. On my watch-chain I wore—what everybody in Naples used to wear—a little coral hand, a little clenched coral hand, holding a little golden dagger. I detached it now, and made Zabetta take it. “Coral—that is also for constancy,” I reminded her; “and besides, it protects one from the Evil Eye.”
At last Zabetta asked me what time it was; and when she learned that it was half-past nine, she insisted that she really must go home. “They shut the outer door of the house we live in at ten o’clock, and I have no key.”
“You can ring up the porter.”
“Oh, there is no porter.”
“But if we had gone to the theatre?”
“I should have had to leave you in the middle of the play.”
“Ah, well,” I consented; and we left the villa and took a cab.
“Are you happy, Zabetta?” I asked her, as the cab rattled us towards our parting.
“Oh, so happy, so happy! I have never been so happy before.”
“Dearest Zabetta!”
“You will love me always?”
“Always, always.”
“We will see each other every day. We will see each other to-morrow?”
“Oh, to-morrow!” I groaned suddenly, the actualities of life rushing all at once upon my mind.
“What is it? What of to-morrow?”
“Oh, to-morrow, to-morrow!”
“What? What?” Her voice was breathless with suspense, with alarm. “Oh, I had forgotten. You will think I am a beast.”
“What is it? For heaven’s sake, tell me.”
“You will think I am a beast. You will think I have deceived you. To-morrow—I cannot help it—I am not my own master—I am summoned by my parents—to-morrow I am going away—I am leaving Naples.”
“You are leaving Naples?”
“I am going to Paris.”
“To Paris?”
“Yes.”
There was a breathing-space of silence. Then, “Oh, Dio!” sobbed Zabetta; and she began to cry as if her heart would break.
I seized her hands; I drew her to me. I tried to comfort her. But she only cried and cried and cried.
“Zabetta... Zabetta.... Don’t cry... Forgive me.... Oh, don’t cry like that.”
“Oh, Dio! Oh, caro Dio!” she sobbed.
“Zabetta—listen to me,” I began. “I have something to say to you....”
“Cosa?” she asked faintly.
“Zabetta—do you really love me?”
“Oh, tanto, tanto!”
“Then, listen, Zabetta. If you really love me—come with me.”
“Come with you. How?”
“Come with me to Paris.”
“To Paris?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
There was another instant of silence, and then again Zabetta began to cry.
“Will you? Will you? Will you come with me to Paris?” I implored her.
“Oh, I would, I would. But I can’t. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I can’t.”
“Why? Why can’t you?”
“Oh, my father—I cannot leave my father.”
“Your father? But—if you love me———”
“He is old. He is ill. He has no one but me. I cannot leave him.”