Meanwhile, under grey skies, in a gloomy room near Primrose Hill, another young man faced (with dismay) a definite tide in his affairs.
He sat in a shabby dressing-gown before a table covered with papers, sorted now in grim piles of unpaid bills, reading a writ.
Stephen Somerfield stared at it, his weak good-looking face drawn into lines of hopeless disgust.
"It's a deuce of a mess!" So he summed it up. "What an unlucky beggar I am!—I thought it was pretty bad, but this"—he threw down the document—"is the limit!"
For months past he had postponed a thorough survey of his liabilities, with the shallowness of his character, preferring to ignore the worst. Even now, when he found himself hopelessly involved in debt, he could raise no better reason for it than his own "chronic ill-luck!"
With this phrase he stifled his conscience. Where another man would have realized the necessity for immediate action, he sat there numbed, half unbelieving, a martyr in his own opinion.
He felt no spur toward work as a means to solve the enigma. He could only look back and vent his anger on those concerned in his career who had failed at length to come forward to the assistance of a wastrel.
He cursed his father, his hand clenched, his green eyes full of spite.
He could see him now, still erect despite the heavy burden of years, at that final painful interview, when heart-sore at his son's extravagance he had flatly refused further help.
He allowed Stephen two hundred a year, in addition to the eighty pounds his mother had left him, annually, considering this a fair arrangement, and had told him crudely to "go and work!"
But work was the last thing Stephen sought. He had had the misfortune when barely twenty to meet a rich widow, double his age, who had taken a fancy to the boy.
She had made him a home in her pleasant house, petted and fed him much in the fashion she would have treated a favourite spaniel, but secretly amused by his pretensions.
With his sentimental, greenish eyes under their long, fair lashes, his clear complexion and pointed chin he had seemed not unlike a pretty girl.
He suited her purpose very well, not important enough to cause scandal, and this rich and somewhat lonely woman had paid gladly for his companionship.
It suited Stephen Somerfield, too.
He escorted her everywhere, enjoying the luxury of her car, executing her commissions, buying theatre tickets and planning facilities for her continual round of pleasure.
But she never made the signal mistake of sharing her purse with the man. There were no "perquisites" to be gleaned, save an occasional lonely "fiver" handed over for Bridge at her house.
She paid his expenses only when with him; and, when she died suddenly, after a bare two days' illness, every penny of her money went back to her husband's people.
Before this disaster fell, Stephen had been caught up in the movement, then new, of Woman's Suffrage, in his liege lady's train.
He turned it to account in the lean days that followed, glad to augment his slender income by becoming the paid secretary to one of the most prominent branches.
Here fortune sent him Mrs. Uniacke, eager, hypnotized in turn by the shrill cry of woman's wrongs, but ignorant of business matters, glad to turn to him for advice. Little by little he strengthened the tie, slipping into her daily life; inwardly sore at the "chronic ill-luck" which forced him to accept her poor hospitality after a course of Ritz dinners, yet too shrewd to miss the economy, under the present heavy cloud.
But nothing could check his love of show. He ran up tailor bills galore; hatters and bootmakers learned to know him, credit was failing everywhere. Now the day of reckoning had dawned, tradesmen's patience at an end.
Something must be done at once. He swore moodily at his bills.
He got up from his seat at the table, went to the cupboard, found a cork-screw and opened a bottle of brandy there with this typical reflection:
"I'm jolly glad now I ordered a dozen! A stroke of luck meeting Charlie like that..." He referred to a school friend of narrow means who had lately entered a wine merchant's business and had run against Stephen in the street and parted from him with an order.
He filled his glass up with water—the grocer had flatly refused to deliver further syphons to his credit—and, on his way back to the table, he paused for a moment thoughtfully to study his pale face in the glass.
"I wonder?" He smiled at the reflection, smoothing back his sleek hair.
"You never know ... I've a mind to try it!—Women are queer kittle-cattle. It's just on the cards she'd rise to it. Anyhow, it can do no harm."
He sat down, drank thirstily, then took up his pen and with knit brows.
"Dear Mrs. Uniacke," he began at the top of a plain sheet of paper. (No date and no address; he was not without a certain method!)
"Will you excuse my dining with you? I'm so sorry and disappointed, but the fact is I am faced to-night with harassing business of my own and really quite unfit for company.
"For some time past I've longed to tell you of all these painful worries of mine. You're so awfully kind andunderstanding..."
He broke off and drained his glass.
"She'll like that—they always do!" then picked up his pen again.
"I'm really in a dreadful hole. I think I explained to you once that my father has never been quite fair to me—a hard man, fond of his money—and my sister is his favourite child. I lost my mother years ago and have no one to turn to in my trouble except yourself—so I hope you'll forgive me—but I'm feeling so utterly wretched to-night.
"The fact is I can't go on living in London on my means. It's impossible with my small salary and the result is pressing debts.
"I'm seriously thinking of cutting it all——" ("She won't like that!"—he smiled as he wrote) "and trying again in a new land—Australia—perhaps, or Canada. This country is played out—the competition too strong—and, unless I can see my way clear to raising——"
he paused—"a hundred pounds ... (I daren't ask more at the start, and this would prove a useful sop...) I'm afraid I shall have to throw up my work and, what is more painful still—to say good-bye to my few real friends and start afresh overseas.
"I've written and written to my father!—but he simply ignores my prayer for help. If only my mother were alive how different life would be for me!"
He smiled sourly over the phrase. For Mrs. Somerfield's early death had been accelerated by drink—one of the many crushing blows his hard-working father had survived.
"I know," he started to write again, "you will treat this letter asstrictly private. I am bound to come in for a good round sum when my father dies, and with helpnowI could guarantee to return the loan—with the usual interest, of course.
"I feel I have not the slightest excuse for turning to you in my need—but I can't bear to think of parting with the one true friend life has brought me.
"You have beenmorethan ... a sister to me (I can't say 'Mother'—it's too absurd), and, if ever a man were grateful for it, that man is
"Your ... broken,"STEPHEN."
He read it through thoughtfully, smiling a little at the finale.
"'Broke' would be better!—but, on the whole, I think it's a pretty useful epistle."
He fastened and sealed it carefully, then glanced at the clock and rang the bell.
"It ought to catch Mrs. Uniacke before Jill gets back from college."
An untidy maid answered the summons, thrusting her head round the door, with a soiled collar, elaborate hair and a certain pretty anæmic fairness.
"Well—what now, Mr. Stephen?"
"Come here, Letty." He beckoned to her. "Would you like to do something for me?" He smiled, laying a hand on her arm. The girl coloured at his touch.
"You're always wantin' somethin'," she said.
"And get it sometimes—eh, Letty? There—don't be cross! Give us a kiss..."
But she drew herself away from him with a toss of her averted head.
"I'm not that sort—I've told you so." Her voice was sullen, her face strained.
"You've no call to talk like that—I'd lose my place if the Missus knew—it ain't fair..."
She wavered suddenly under the sentimental eyes.
"Well—I'll do it. A letter, I s'pose? To that 'ouse in the Terrace where you go night after night to meet yer ... 'Jill'!" She brought the name out with a snap.
"Wrong this time——" he still smiled, looking up at the moody face, faintly coloured under its curls of puffed-out, ashen hair.
"Jill is no friend of mine, my dear. She hates me—and it's mutual! This is a letter to her mother—business for the Woman's Cause."
The girl brightened visibly.
"Well—I 'ope we gets the vote. It's time we did and better wages. I'm sick of being called 'Skivvy! Skivvy!' by every shop boy in Chalk Farm. We'll makethem'skivvies' by-and-bye! I'm tired o' men—they're all alike! They gets the fun while we slave—it's a dog's life to be a girl!"
"Not always." Stephen answered softly. "Not when you're pretty—eh, Letty?"
He placed the letter in her hand, and, stooping quickly, stole a kiss.
She sprang back with a little cry. Then stood there, her lip quivering, tears not far from her hazel eyes.
"I told you ... I wouldn't. Never again!"
"Oh! a kiss!—what's a kiss?" He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "There—run away—can't you see I'm busy?" He sat down again at the table.
For a moment the child hesitated—for child she was by the test of time—love and resentment struggling within her; then, with tight lips, she flung away.
"Good Lord!" Stephen yawned. "Bother the girl. I've turned her head. I'd like to leave these beastly rooms—only there's that confounded bill. And Letty's useful, after a fashion."
His eyes fell on the fire. He knew she stole many a lump of coal when his meagre scuttle failed—pitying the improvident man she had made the hero of her dreams; under the spell of his green eyes and careless familiarity.
Meanwhile, as he sat and smoked one of Mrs. Uniacke's cigarettes, with which he had carefully filled his case after his last meal with her, the servant crossed Primrose Hill, through the damp evening air, and, gaining the terrace near the park, delivered her lord's begging letter.
Jill had not yet returned home. Roddy was far away at school and a silence hung about the house with its dingy blinds and fogged windows.
Mrs. Uniacke was upstairs, mending the edge of a shabby skirt that had suffered during a rainy day from a long tramp in a procession.
Indeed, the wear and tear of 'the Cause' reflected itself in her very clothes; but the thin face, with its bird-like look of brightness and vivid emotion, its high cheek-bones, and quick flush, was filled with the inner fire of hope.
They were getting nearer to their goal. She said the words softly aloud as she bent her frail shoulders over the bed, pinning together the frayed edges.
"Pioneers, O Pioneers..." She could hear the throb of marching steps, see at last the faint line of the distant hills where freedom lay. What mattered, then, if the road were long, and the sharp rock cut her weary feet, when on the horizon a new day dawned—an era of justice for her sex?
Something achieved, something done...
There came a knock at her bedroom door and Lizzie entered with a letter between a dirty finger and thumb.
An odd premonition of disaster seized Mrs. Uniacke as she took it. She waited for the servant to go before she broke the careful seal. And, as she read, she gave a gasp. Stephen—leaving her? ... deserting the Cause...? Here was a shattering of her dreams, a swift blow out of the dark.
She left her sewing and sat down, the letter open on her knees.
One definite thought held her now—this must be stopped—at any cost!
But where was she to find the money? She crossed to the table by the window, unlocked a drawer and drew out her pass-book, turning the pages feverishly.
There was Roddy, clamouring for clothes, household bills in abeyance, Jill's music lessons to pay ... Then, like a flash, it came to her. Her diamond star! Yes—that must go.
Anything—to keep Stephen!
She felt like a man who for many months has moved on crutches and finds himself suddenly bereft of them, helpless, without support ...
But was it fair?—fair to Jill. The star had been her husband's gift—she had meant to leave it to her child.
The fight began. In reality, it resolved itself into a choice between the pair—Stephen, her friend, and Jill ... that "independent" daughter.
The adjective betrayed her mood.
For, proud as she was in her mother's heart of the bright young girl with her clever brain, the rankling fact was hidden there—her offspring had outgrown the nest.
She could not realize that the age was mainly responsible for the lack of what she called "proper respect"—that mid-Victorian subservience.
She held that whatsheconsidered fit was the natural guidance for the girl; that the latter should shape her every thought in the mould of the past generation.
Yet she, herself, had broken loose. It did not occur to her to weigh the question of militant suffrage in the same scales her own mother had used...
Marriage had given her the right to an independent judgment, she thought—the full authority of the woman.
She did not see that life had changed. That the youth of to-day asserted their claim to a freedom of thought unknown in her time, upheld by a sounder education.
She hated in secret the very word. It had been sufficient in her day for a girl to possess a smattering of surface knowledge from old-fashioned primers. A little French, history, grammar, needlework and "good manners": of music enough to produce "pieces" when required for home consumption. But no training for the brain—little logic or reasoning power—the arts neglected for fear they should bring an alarming hint of Bohemianism. And "what mother says is right." This was an axiom, weighty, approved; stifling all further argument, the Alpha and Omega of the question.
Jill's intensely modern attitude, fostered by her college life, her alarming tendency to revoke old standards of convention—even her religious doubts, honestly faced, shocked her mother and threatened her authority. She mourned in secret over her child.
Stephen, now—her face relaxed—was always attentive, glad to learn ... With a charming courtesy he bent to her will, respecting her every opinion.
With her delicate purity of intention it never occurred to her to see that the fact of sex was involved here, Nature at work in her hidden ways.
She would have shrunk from the suggestion that it flattered her woman's heart to find that a man, much younger than herself, could turn to her for inspiration.
And then there was the link between them—'the Cause'—daily growing stronger, and Jill's open scepticism, that cut her mother to the quick. Roddy, of course, was only a boy! Mrs. Uniacke smiled faintly. You expected your son to break away early or later from "home" opinions.
Never once in this tangled maze did she see the weakness of her position: a champion of woman's rights—refusing the same to her only daughter.
Again she read Stephen's letter. Then, with a determined hand, she drew her cheque book nearer to her. The parasite had gained the day. She told herself it was for the Cause. The faint suspicion of dishonesty she thrust rigidly from her mind, realizing subconsciously that to place her action on other grounds was to open up a dangerous question.
But, for the first time in her life, sentiment stole into the friendship. The fault—if it were—was an error of love; she could not bear to part from Stephen.
Then she raised her head and listened, hearing the front door open and shut, and Jill's voice, happy, young:
"Mother!—Mother ... Where are you, Mother?"
She slipped the cheque book in the drawer with the open letter and turned the key, her cheeks flushed, her head high. She did not need Jill's advice!
"Here I am——" she went to the stairs and the girl raced up, two steps at a time.
"Oh, Mother—I've got such a lot to tell you—it's been such a lovely day!"
Impulsively her arms went out, seizing the slight, waiting figure in a childish hug, her fresh mouth pressed upon her mother's cheek.
"There!—I'm feeling so happy. I got 'Excellent' for Ancient History and I'm top at Algebra this week. And Judy Severn's giving a party—and she wants me to come and bring a man. Peter's away, but I thought, perhaps, I'd ask Mr. Bethune—what do you think? It's on the 9th. A real dance." Madly she waltzed her mother round.
"Stop, Jill!" Mrs. Uniacke laughed—the girl's gaiety was infectious. She dropped breathless into a chair, Jill on her knees by her side.
"Isn't it ripping?" She pulled off her cap and threw it neatly on the bed, her dark, ruffled hair like a cloud round her excited, pretty face.
"Jill—your hat!" Her mother frowned.
"Well, it's so old—it can't hurt—and rabbit skin!"
Her happy laugh took the sting out of the words.
"But that reminds me—about my frock...? I've not a single thing to wear."
"And what about your white muslin?" An anxious look crept into Jill's eyes at the note in Mrs. Uniacke's voice.
"Oh—Mother—Ican't... not to Judy's party! And it'ssoshort—up to my knees." She sighed. "I wish I'd stop growing. I let it down, with a false hem, you remember—when Aunt Elizabeth came here?"
"It will have to do." Unconsciously, her mother glanced across the room to the locked drawer where the cheque lay, signed and payable to Stephen.
Jill drew away slightly. She clasped her hands round her knees, with a sombre face, staring down at her mended shoes and a darn in her stocking.
"Then I can't go." Her voice was hard. "I won't wear that old frock. It's so tight over the chest I can hardly breathe." She bit her lips.
Mrs. Uniacke, watching her, wavered. "You could make a fichu, couldn't you? I could find you a piece of lace, perhaps—and add a frill?"
Jill scowled.
"Sounds like an early Victorian picture." She rose to her feet. "With a crinoline and black mittens—thanks, awfully. I'll tell Judy the party's off."
This was the mood her mother disliked—slangy and impertinent. So she summed it up to herself, resenting her daughter's manner.
"It's entirely your own fault if you do. I am quite prepared to help you, Jill. We could easily alter the frock between us. It isn't as if you were really 'out.'"
Jill gave her a quick glance.
"I could make one myself for thirty shillings—I know I could. And it isn't much. I haven't had a new dress this year..." Her grey eyes were wistful.
"It can't be done." At this fresh attack Mrs. Uniacke's mouth tightened—"there's Roddy to think of beside yourself..."
"To say nothing of Stephen's expenses?"
The words escaped Jill against her will. Little she guessed their significance, but Mrs. Uniacke flushed crimson. For a moment she could have boxed Jill's ears.
"That will do." She turned away and, with hands that shook, took up her work, leaning over the torn skirt, her back turned to her daughter.
Jill closed the door behind her. She stood for a moment on the stairs, her dark brows drawn together, her mouth a narrow scarlet line.
"Oh!" she said—"I'd like ... I'd like——" she stamped her foot—"tomurderStephen!"
"Flower o' the peachDeath for us all and his own life for each."
McTaggart lay on the golden sands of Viareggio, warming himself, lazily, like a lizard, in the sun.
Before him stretched the broad, unbroken curve of the bay, a dazzling sheet of sapphire blue, save where the white "Molo," like a slender finger pointed from the basin of the docks, where the shipping yards lay, and masts and spars went up in a cluster of spear points, dark against the sky.
His eyes followed the line of the pier to the lighthouse at the end and wandered off through the haze to the distant shore, where a group of cypresses clustered, sombre and grim, like sentinels stationed, guarding the land. The dark, tapering trees in the brilliance of the sunshine held a hint of sadness like the presence of a grave; appropriate to the scene where that spirit of fire and air, the poet Shelley, had been sacrificed to the waves.
McTaggart rolled over, the sun too hot on his face, and, digging his elbows into the sand, his chin propped on his hands, felt the warm rays play on his bare, brown shoulders, above his scanty bathing dress.
Now he could see the other point of the silver crescent of shore. Here were noble heights as well as the sense of space. For the Carrara mountains rose against the sky, white and peaked and holy, with soft, curded wings like Delia Robbia angels against a blue font.
Below them came slopes in delicate silver point: olive trees quivering in the dazzling light, and, in the foreground, a low belt of pines, straggling out like a fringe round the sandy race course.
McTaggart's own bathing shed was one of the last of the hundreds that had sprung up, like mushrooms, on the beach; for, in the summer months, Viareggio was packed with a gay and fashionable Italian crowd.
Close to him, hand in hand, a circle of merry bathers, in brightly striped dresses of every shape and hue, were revelling in the water, with shrill bursts of laughter, splashing up and down, like children at play.
The men with their dark hair and wet olive skins, the women in bathing caps of gay knotted silk, with bare arms and necks and that flashing smile which seems the heritage of the white-toothed Southern race, suggested a frieze of laughing fauns and nymphs, gathered from the dusty walls of far Pompeii.
McTaggart himself was burnt the color of bronze. He looked the picture of health with his sinewy, well built frame and clean-cut face in which his blue eyes struck a curious Northern note, vivid and arresting.
He loved this out-door life, with the hot, dry days and the clear nights, pine scented, cooled by the breeze that blew across the mountains but lately cleared from snow.
It was more than a year now since the memorable day when he had bidden his aunt farewell in the villa at Fiesole, mistrustful of the web of intrigue drawing round his feet and Bianca, that dark-eyed, demure convent maiden.
For the memory of Cydonia had stood him in good stead. Although little by little his bitterness had waned, it left him mistrustful both of himself and others, tinged with the easy cynicism of youth.
He had spent the whole winter at his apartment in Rome, finding a warm welcome in that gay city, as he quickly mastered his mother's tongue and took his place in the social world that opened wide its doors to him.
With the naïveté of his years he clung to the theory that his heart still lay broken at Cydonia's feet, but this did not prevent him, as the days passed on, from various flirtations in the gay Roman crowd.
He avoided, however, a serious liaison.
The touch of Scottish puritanism in his nature guarded him from the advances of married women; certain high born ladies of easy morals, charmed by his manner and striking face.
He learned quickly, too, the perils of such a tie: that in Rome an erring husband is frequently forgiven, but an unfaithful lover placed beyond the pale. There seemed to be a curious reverence shown to these love affairs, illegally cemented, whereas mere marriage was lightly shelved as an arrangement made by parents in the interests of property and to ensure a lawful heir.
Altogether, Rome was amusing and instructive, especially in his own favoured case. With a fine old title and certain wealth, young, handsome and popular, the new Marquis threw himself into the social whirl with a cool head, a guarded heart and the flair of an ardent explorer.
England, that island in the North, foggy and grey, inhabited by "Cadells," seemed a dream of another world as he lay on the sunny Italian sands.
And yet...
He stirred, drawing up his knees, his hands clasped round them, his eyes far away. For there stung through his complacency a sudden shaft of desire—that haunting love of home which grips a man unawares, with a sense of exile in a foreign land.
The mountains, where the marble lay in cool jagged quarries, vanished from his sight and in their place came a picture of London: her busy, grimy streets with the ceaseless throb of her beating heart, as the fight went on, obstinate, merciless, the struggle for success—for money and power...
And that other London: the crowded Park, Hurlingham, Ascot—he drew a deep breath!
And London by night with the cries of the newsboys—the block of taxis in the long line theatreward, the lights of that Circus where the Criterion leers at his gaily lit neighbour, the Pavilion.
A sudden nostalgia seized McTaggart. The shrill laughter of the merry bathing group, the cloudless glare of sea and sky grew wearisome. He rose quickly to his feet.
"Mario!" He called to his man who was seated in the shade thrown by the osier fence, studying tips for the coming races.
"Mario—I shall dress now." The olive face flashed into a smile as the man sprang nimbly to his feet. For Mario adored his young master, a welcome change from the elderly Marquis with his fads and fancies and uncertain temper.
"Sissignore—at once! signore." Still he lingered, deferential.
"A thousand excuses, but does he remember the Princess Doria lunches with us to-day? The Signore has but his grey suit in the shed. It would be better to dress at the villa."
"Va bene—I had forgotten her!Andthe new Poet——" he added, aside, "I can't stand that effeminate ass, but she never goes two steps without him!"
He slipped on a long bath towel garment, screening his scanty bathing gown, and drew the hood down over his head while Mario produced slippers with soles of twisted hemp, and tied them on to his master's feet.
Now, not unlike a Dominican friar, in this primitive costume, he crossed the beach and turned along the country road until he came to the first pines, Mario in the rear, carrying his clothes.
Here they took a sandy foot path where scanty patches of coarse grass and clusters of wild pansy marked the borders of the straggling wood.
It led to a clearing in the trees and a villa, painted strawberry pink, with a tiled terrace and veranda, wreathed about with Bourgainvillia.
McTaggart paused on the threshold and rang a bell, answered quickly by a servant.
"Bring me a vermouth—di Torino—and the time-table." He sat down in a wicker chair, his face thoughtful—"and—Stefano!—" he called him back—"Asti for the Principessa. Lunch at twelve-thirty to-day—we shall be five instead of three—you can add an 'omelette au surprise.' And see that the quails aren't overdone."
"Very good, sir. There are letters come since the Signore left."
He returned with a silver tray on which lay his master's correspondence.
McTaggart took them, with a yawn, turning them over indifferently.
From somewhere through the drowsy heat came a distant sound of chopping wood and a man's voice raised musically, singing over his morning work. McTaggart drank his glass of vermouth, then choosing an envelope directed in a round hand, broke it open with a smile.
It was long since he had heard from Jill. He glanced at the date. The letter had lain at his London rooms and was now sent on to Italy by the faithful Bethune.
"Dear Peter," it began.
"I wonder where you are now? and if you'reevercoming home! It's ages since you last wrote, and I've been meaning to reply—only I've beensoworried. You'll understand when I tell you my news—about Mother. She's gone to prison."
McTaggart jumped. The very word seemed sinister in the heart of that peaceful drowsy wood, lapped by the indolent Southern sea.
"Poor old Jill!" He read on, his face growing steadily graver.
"I daresay you saw in the papers of the latest Suffragette attempt!—that bomb in Downing Street, I mean. Well, Mother was in it, with Stephen. And now she's gone to Holloway—isn't itdreadful? She's refused bail and declares she means to hunger strike!—I've been nearly off my head about it.
"For she'll never stand it—she hasn't the strength. It will simply kill her——" a smudged word suggested to the reader a tear, hastily blotted off the paper.
Before McTaggart a vision rose of the grey eyes with their frank gaze, fringed by lashes, dark and curled, and the eager face of his school girl friend.
"Mr. Bethune's been awfully kind. He actually arranged for bail, but Mother wouldn't hear of it and there she is—in Holloway Prison.
"Roddy's home. He went to the Head and asked leave to come back to me. He's simply furious about it all—wants to have it out with Stephen. Needless to say,he'sfree! You bet Stephen looks after himself. I suppose he thinks thatonemartyr (in the Bible, I mean) is good enough!"
McTaggart laughed grimly aloud at the typical line as he thought of Jill. He could almost see her saying the words, the delicate nostrils curled with scorn.
"Well—that settles it!" He finished the letter and picked up the time-table with a frown.
"I might be able to help the child——" He turned the pages thoughtfully.
"I can catch the express at Genoa and go straight through next Friday—I think. I shall get back in time for Henley. It ought to be jolly in London now."
This settled, he dressed for lunch and informed Mario of his departure, somewhat to the latter's chagrin, who had various ties at Viareggio.
"The Signore will not be here for the races?"
The man's voice was so doleful that McTaggart hesitated, remembering they were fixed for Sunday.
"Well—we might stay over the week-end, and go on Monday—perhaps that's better."
The man blessed him audibly with the gentle familiarity that seems to exist in that old land between the nobility and their servants.
"You can take a holiday on Sunday—so long as you get my packing done—and say good-bye to Lucia?" He laughed at the man's guilty face.
"Ahi!—Thatfor the women!" Mario, recovering himself, gave an expressive, scornful shrug—"But the races are a different matter!—and I hear 'La Luna' is sure to win."
McTaggart smiled, cutting short the man's chatter, and went down to receive his guests, a little bored by the coming lunch.
His fears were amply justified.
The poet was in a sombre mood, the Principessa plainly anxious.
"It's his new Tragedy," she whispered as they settled themselves at the table—"he is so sensitive, my dear—the penalty of genius."
McTaggart, with a solemn face, received these subtle confidences, somewhat relieved by the presence of his other neighbour, graceful and young.
But the Countess Marco Viviani was not in her usual high spirits. A slim brunette, with a wonderful figure, and much admired in the Roman set, she could not brook in any form opposition to her will.
She explained in an audible aside her quarrel—a new-born affair—with her husband, who faced McTaggart and watched the pair with insolent eyes.
It seemed that he had required of her an alteration in the days, arranged between them, when they should appear side by side at the Casino.
Wednesdays and Saturdays had been fixed in order to allow the Count Tuesdays and Fridays to himself to parade there his latest theatrical fancy.
Now "La Carlotta" was making trouble. She wanted to interfere with the rule. But the Countess was adamant. She would not bend before the actress.
"It will make a scandal," she announced. "Everyone knows those aremydays! I would prefer to leave the place and go to Bagni di Luca."
But the villa at Viareggio belonged to the Count and he clearly saw that economy forbade a rupture which would mean a second establishment. So he sulked, undecided still, hating his handsome, captious wife—who had known the existence of many "Carlottas" and was plainly unreasonable!
McTaggart felt that the atmosphere was charged with electricity. The poet never opened his mouth, the Principessa was openly troubled. The only person who seemed unmoved by the depression in the air was Don Cesare, her youngest son, who made an unexpected sixth. A handsome youth of seventeen with a black moustache and charming manner—already that of a man of the world—he chattered gaily, enjoying his lunch.
"I wish you would come with me this evening," he said to his host eagerly—"into the marshes and bring your gun—I'm going out after 'beccaccini.' I've had a special punt made for the narrow waterways to the lake. It's a beauty—I want to try it—I'm sure we should have some capital sport."
"All right—what time?" McTaggart liked his youngest guest.
"About five. If we find it's hot we can lie up somewhere in the dykes."
He referred to the curious intricate scheme of irrigation in the plain that lies between the hills and sea—the famous draining of the marshes.
For the low land looks like a chequer board, crossed and recrossed by narrow streams that widen into two big lakes—a favorite haunt for wild fowl.
"I've always wanted to explore those long ditches in a boat. I tried once and was nearly poisoned—my keel kept sticking in the mud."
"Exactly—that's the trouble—the smell!" Don Cesare nodded gaily. "That's why I've had this punt made flat bottomed and very narrow. In the deep parts you can use a paddle and where it's shallow a long pole—against the bank—notin the water!"
He turned to the Countess with a smile.
"Do come and see us off—and we'll take you a little way to try it. Further on there are low boughs, not designed to suit ladies' hats."
The pretty woman smiled back, looking at him with her wide, dark eyes.
"I'm so sorry—but I can't—it's my evening with Marco for the Casino."
She flung the challenge across the table. The Count wearily shrugged his shoulders while the Poet, with saturnine face, seemed to enjoy the situation.
The Principessa, stirring herself, broke the pregnant silence that followed.
"Cara Emilia," she said, "have you heard of Bellanti's misfortune?"
"No——" the Countess turned quickly—"what has happened?" Don Cesare watched her, a mischievous light in his black eyes, as she went on languidly. "His sister is my dearest friend and she hasn't written to me for weeks! I was really beginning to wonder if she were ill. What is the matter?"
"He's ruined." The Princess turned up her hands with an eloquent gesture of finality. "He was always gambling, as you know, and then he took to borrowing money—enormous sums, I am told—on the strength of his Aunt's fortune—Donna Teresa Bellanti."
"Did you ever meet her?" She paused in her story to open her fan and, lazily, wafted it backward and forward before her pale middle-aged face.
"I don't think so." The Countess smiled, feeling across the narrow table her husband's persistent glance and the silence of the rest of the party.
"She did not care for society—she was always very religious, you know—and has never married—so everyone thought she would leave her money to her nephew."
"Well!" The Countess was impatient. McTaggart felt a shade of pity. He guessed the Princess was amusing herself by prolonging the other's anxiety.
"She's taken the veil," said the older woman. "You know she's stayed for the last two years at her favourite convent—Our Lady of Loretto—and it seems she was finishing her novitiate. And all her wealth is to go to the Church."
She folded her fan carefully. "It's a fearful blow for Bellanti—I hear he's quite at his wits' end."
The pretty Countess bit her lip; under the table her hands were clenched.
"I can't pity him," said the Poet. He spoke with an air of authority. "'A fool and his money' ... you know the proverb?" His eyes sparkled vindictively.
"Oh—Gabriele!" The Princess was shocked. "And you so 'simpatico,' too!"
"He has no brains," the Poet declared—"and he lives a base, material life."
"I'mawfullysorry," McTaggart frowned. "He's the best rider to hounds I know. I'll never forget a run I had with him last winter in the Campagna. And a jolly nice fellow too."
He glanced across at Don Cesare, who was eyeing the Poet with disgust.
"We shall miss Bellanti," said the Countess. Her voice was calm. "I must write to his sister. Poor Bice! She was always so fond of him. I don't say he was intellectual"—she looked at the Poet thoughtfully—at his ugly, weak little face—"but so good looking—a thoroughman."
The Principessa followed her gaze.
Don Cesare laughed aloud. "Well—give me good looks any day—and a good seat. I'm for Bellanti."
The Countess gave him a grateful nod.
"And so's Emilia——" he kissed the tips of his fingers to her across the table—"and so's Marco." Wickedly he turned his head toward the Count.
"Exactly—" that worthy watched his wife, moved by a subtle idea. "I was thinking, my dear," he addressed the latter—"We might ask the poor fellow here?"
"Pourquoi pas?" A shade of impertinence lay in the quick French response, and between the pair of dark eyes a silent, menacing challenge passed.
For the Count knew that his wife knew that he ... knew!
It was a bribe to settle the strained situation vis-à-vis with "La Carlotta."
And watching this matrimonial by-play McTaggart felt a growing scorn for the shallowness of the social life in which he found himself involved.
This Princess with her puny poet, who ruled her with a rod of iron, and Cesare, a mere school boy, eager for the latest scandal. The pretty woman by his side, playing her lover against her husband, and the Count, deliberately sacrificing his wife's morals to his own intrigues.
England might be dull, he thought, but at least the men and women there held a sterner code of honour. A glow stole through him at the contrast. People might talk of the laxity of conduct in the upper classes, but the latter had the decency to veil their occasional lapses from virtue.
And, as a whole, the national standard took a lot of beating, he decided. Love was still reverenced and marriage more than a legal tie to cover innumerable intrigues!
He watched his noble guests depart without regret, then sat down to write a hurried line to Jill, full of heart-felt sympathy. He wondered—not without a smile—if Countess Marco Viviani would go to prison for Bellanti—like Mrs. Uniacke for the Cause!
He signed the page "Peter McTaggart," with an amused breath of relief. He liked it better than "Maramonte" for all its air of high romance.
And, as he drew a steady line under the purely British name, unconsciously he made his choice and ran up the Union Jack!