This made Fanny angry. For as to singing-schools, there had been a time—a remote time long ago—and Dallas knew it. She had smiled in answer to Pierre’s murmured rapture; she now took his arm. To punish Dallas she turned her steps—on her plump little feet in their delicate kid boots—towards the still seated Rod, with the intention of asking him (for the fifth time) to dinner. This would not only exasperate Dallas, but it would please Bartholomew at the same stroke. Two birds, etc.
When they came up to the distant three, Mademoiselle glanced at Mrs. Churchill anxiously. But in the presence of the mistress of the villa, Rod did at last lift his long length from the wall.
This seemed, however, to be because he supposed they were about to leave the grove. “Is the walk over?” he said.
Pierre looked at Eva adoringly. He gave her the spray of orange buds.
IV
A week later Fanny’s daughter entered the bedroom which she shared with her mother.
From the girl’s babyhood the mother had had her small white-curtained couch placed close beside her own. She could not have slept unless able at any moment to stretch out her hand and touch her sleeping child.
Fanny was in the dressing-room; hearing Eva’s step, she spoke. “Do you want me, Eva?”
“Yes, please.”
Fanny appeared, a vision of white arms, lace, and embroidery.
“I thought that Rosine would not be here yet,” said Eva. Rosine was their maid; her principal occupation was the elaborate arrangement of Fanny’s brown hair.
“No, she isn’t there—if you mean in the dressing-room,” answered Fanny, nodding her head towards the open door.
“I wanted to see you alone, mamma, for a moment. I wanted to tell you that I shall not marry Pierre.”
Fanny, who had sunk into an easy-chair, at these words sprang up. “What is the matter? Are you ill?”
“Not in the least, mamma; I am only telling you that I cannot marry Pierre.”
“You must be ill,” pursued Fanny. “You have fever. Don’t deny it.” And anxiously she took the girl’s hands. But Eva’s hands were cooler than her own.
“I don’t think I have any fever,” replied Eva. She had been taught to answer all her mother’s questions in fullest detail. “I sleep and eat as usual; I have no headache.”
Fanny still looked at her anxiously. “Then if you are not ill, what can be the matter with you?”
“I have only told you, mamma, that I could not marry Pierre; it seems to me very simple.”
She was so quiet that Fanny began at last to realize that she was in earnest. “My dearest, you know you like Pierre. You have told me so yourself.”
“I don’t like him now.”
“What has he done—poor Pierre? He will explain, apologize; you may be sure of that.”
“He has done nothing; I don’t want him to apologize. He is as he always is. It is I who have changed.”
“Oh, it is you who have changed,” repeated Fanny, bewildered.
“Yes,” answered Eva.
“Come and sit down and tell mamma all about it. You are tired of poor Pierre—is that it? It is very natural, he has been here so often, and stayed so long. But I will tell him that he must go away—leave Sorrento. And he shall stay away as long as you like, Eva; just as long as you like.”
“Then he will stay away forever,” the girl answered, calmly.
Fanny waited a moment. “Did you like Gino better? Is that it?” she said, softly, watching Eva’s face.
“No.”
“Thornton Stanley?”
“Oh no!”
“Dear child, explain this a little to your mother. You know I think only of your happiness,” said Fanny, with tender solicitude.
Eva evidently tried to obey. “It was this morning. It came over me suddenly that I could not possibly marry him. Now or a year from now. Never.” She spoke tranquilly; she even seemed indifferent. But this one decision was made.
“You know that I have given my word to the old Count,” began Fanny, in perplexity.
Eva was silent.
“And everything was arranged.”
Eva still said nothing. She looked about the room with wandering attention, as though this did not concern her.
“Of course I would never force you into anything,” Fanny went on. “But I thought Pierre would be so congenial.” In her heart she was asking herself what the young Belgian could have done. “Well, dear,” she continued, with a little sigh, “you must always tell mamma everything.” And she kissed her.
“Of course,” Eva answered. And then she went away.
Fanny immediately rang the bell, and asked for Mademoiselle. But Mademoiselle knew nothing about it. She was overwhelmed with surprise and dismay. She greatly admired Pierre; even more she admired the old Count, whom she thought the most distinguished of men. Fanny dismissed the afflicted little woman, and sat pondering. While she was thinking, Eva re-entered.
“Mamma, I forgot to say that I should like to have you tell Pierre immediately. To-day.”
Fanny was almost irritated. “You have never taken that tone before, my daughter. Have you no longer confidence in my judgment?”
“If you do not want to tell him this afternoon, it can be easily arranged, mamma; I will not come to the dinner-table; that is all. I do not wish to see him until he knows.”
Pierre was to dine at the villa that evening.
“What can he have done?” thought Fanny again.
She rang for Rosine; half an hour later she was in the drawing-room. “Excuse me to every one but M. de Verneuil,” she said to Angelo. She was very nervous, but she had decided upon her course: Pierre must leave Sorrento, and remain away until she herself should call him back.
“At the end of a month, perhaps even at the end of a week, she will miss you so much that I shall have to issue the summons,” she said, speaking as gayly as she could, as if to make it a sort of joke. It was very hard for her, at best, to send away the frank, handsome boy.
Poor Pierre could not understand it at all. He declared over and over again that nothing he had said, nothing he had done, could possibly have offended his betrothed. “But surely you know yourself that it is impossible!” he added, clasping his hands beseechingly.
“It is a girlish freak,” explained the mother. “She is so young, you know.”
“But that is the very reason. I thought it was only older women who say what they wish to do in that decided way; who have freaks, as you call it,” said the Belgian, his voice for a moment much older, more like the voice of a man who has spent half his life in Paris.
This was so true that Fanny was driven to a defence that scarcely anything else would have made her use. “Eva is different from the young girls here,” she said. “You must not forget that she is an American.”
At last Pierre went away; he had tried to bear himself as a gentleman should; but the whole affair was a mystery to him, and he was very unhappy. He went as far as Rome, and there he waited, writing to Fanny an anxious letter almost every day.
In the meanwhile life at the villa went on; there were many excursions. Fanny’s thought was that Eva would miss Pierre more during these expeditions than at other times, for Pierre had always arranged them, and he had enjoyed them so much himself that his gay spirits and his gay wit had made all the party gay. Eva, however, seemed very happy, and at length the mother could not help being touched to see how light-hearted her serious child had become, now that she was entirely free. And yet how slight the yoke had been, and how pleasant! thought Fanny. At the end of two weeks there were still no signs of the “missing” upon which she had counted. She thought that she would try the effect of briefly mentioning the banished man. “I hear from Pierre almost every day, poor fellow. He is in Rome.”
“Why does he stay in Rome?” said Eva. “Why doesn�
��t he return home?”
“I suppose he doesn’t want to go so far away,” answered Fanny, vaguely.
“Far away from what? Home should always be the first place,” responded the young moralist. “Of course you have told him, mamma, that I shall never be his wife? That it is forever?” And she turned her gray eyes towards her mother, for the first time with a shade of suspicion in them.
“Never is a long word, Eva.”
“Oh, mamma!” The girl rose. “I shall write to him myself, then.”
“How you speak! Do you wish to disobey me, my own little girl?”
“No; but it is so dishonest; it is like a lie.”
“My dear, trust your mother. You have changed once; you may change again.”
“Not about this, mamma. Will you please write this very hour, and make an end of it?”
“You are hard, Eva. You do not think of poor Pierre at all.”
“No, I do not think of Pierre.”
“And is there any one else you think of? I must ask you that once more,” said Fanny, drawing her daughter down beside her caressingly. Her thoughts could not help turning again towards Gino, and in her supreme love for her child she now accomplished the mental somerset of believing that on the whole she preferred the young Italian to all the liberty, all the personal consideration for herself, which had been embodied in the name of Verneuil.
“Yes, there is some one else I think of,” Eva replied, in a low voice.
“In Rome?” said Fanny.
Eva made a gesture of denial that was fairly contemptuous.
Fanny’s mind flew wildly from Bartholomew to Dallas, from Ferguson to Gordon-Gray: Eva had no acquaintances save those which were her mother’s also.
“It is David Rod,” Eva went on, in the same low tone. Then, with sudden exaltation, her eyes gleaming, “I have never seen any one like him.”
It was a shock so unexpected that Mrs. Churchill drew her breath under it audibly, as one does under an actual blow. But instantly she rallied. She said to herself that she had got a romantic idealist for a daughter—that was all. She had not suspected it; she had thought of Eva as a lovely child who would develop into what she herself had been. Fanny, though far-seeing and intelligent, had not been endowed with imagination. But now that she did realize it, she should know how to deal with it. A disposition like that, full of visionary fancies, was not so uncommon as some people supposed. Horace Bartholomew should take the Floridian away out of Eva’s sight forever, and the girl would soon forget him; in the meanwhile not one word that was harsh should be spoken on the subject, for that would be the worst policy of all.
This train of thought had passed through her mind like a flash. “My dear,” she began, as soon as she had got her breath back, “you are right to be so honest with me. Mr. Rod has not—has not said anything to you on the subject, has he?”
“No. Didn’t I tell you that he cares nothing for me? I think he despises me—I am so useless!” And then suddenly the girl began to sob; a passion of tears.
Fanny was at her wits’ end; Eva had not wept since the day of her baby ills, for life had been happy to her, loved, caressed, and protected as she had been always, like a hot-house flower.
“My darling,” said the mother, taking her in her arms.
But Eva wept on and on, as if her heart would break. It ended in Fanny’s crying too.
V
Early the next morning her letter to Bartholomew was sent. Bartholomew had gone to Munich for a week. The letter begged, commanded, that he should make some pretext that would call David Rod from Sorrento at the earliest possible moment. She counted upon her fingers; four days for the letter to go and the answer to return. Those four days she would spend at Capri.
Eva went with her quietly. There had been no more conversation between mother and daughter about Rod; Fanny thought that this was best.
On the fourth day there came a letter from Bartholomew. Fanny returned to Sorrento almost gayly: the man would be gone.
But he was not gone. Tranquillized, glad to be at home again, Mrs. Churchill was enjoying her terrace and her view, when Angelo appeared at the window: “Signor Ra.”
Angelo’s mistress made him a peremptory sign. “Ask the gentleman to wait in the drawing-room,” she said. Then crossing to Eva, who had risen, “Go round by the other door to our own room, Eva,” she whispered.
The girl did not move; her face had an excited look. “But why—”
“Go, child; go.”
Still Eva stood there, her eyes fixed upon the long window veiled in lace; she scarcely seemed to breathe.
Her mother was driven to stronger measures. “You told me yourself that he cared nothing for you.”
A deep red rose in Eva’s cheeks; she turned and left the terrace by the distant door.
The mother crossed slowly to the long window and parted the curtains. “Mr. Rod, are you there? Won’t you come out? Or stay—I will join you.” She entered the drawing-room and took a seat.
Rod explained that he was about to leave Sorrento; Bartholomew had summoned him so urgently that he did not like to refuse, though it was very inconvenient to go at such short notice.
“Then you leave to-morrow?” said Fanny; “perhaps to-night?”
“No; on Monday. I could not arrange my business before.”
“Three days more,” Fanny thought.
She talked of various matters; she hoped that some one else would come in; but, by a chance, no one appeared that day, neither Dallas, nor Ferguson, nor Gordon-Gray. “What can have become of them?” she thought, with irritation. After a while she gave an inward start; she had become conscious of a foot-fall passing to and fro behind the half-open door near her—a door which led into the dining-room. It was a very soft foot-fall upon a thick carpet, but she recognized it: it was Eva. She was there—why? The mother could think of no good reason. Her heart began to beat more quickly; for the first time in her life she did not know her child. This person walking up and down behind that door so insistently, this was not Eva. Eva was docile; this person was not docile. What would be done next? She felt strangely frightened. It was a proof of her terror that she did not dare to close the door lest it should be instantly reopened. She began to watch every word she said to Rod, who had not perceived the foot-fall. She began to be extraordinarily polite to him; she stumbled through the most irrelevant complimentary sentences. Her dread was, every minute, lest Eva should appear.
But Eva did not appear; and at last, after long lingering, Rod went away. Fanny, who had hoped to bid him a final farewell, had not dared to go through that ceremony. He said that he should come again.
When at last he was gone the mother pushed open the half-closed door. “Eva,” she began. She had intended to be severe, as severe as she possibly could be; but the sight of Eva stopped her. The girl had flung herself down upon the floor, her bowed head resting upon her arms on a chair. Her attitude expressed a hopeless desolation.
“What is it?” said Fanny, rushing to her.
Eva raised her head. “He never once spoke of me—asked for me,” she murmured, looking at her mother with eyes so dreary with grief that any one must have pitied her.
Her mother pitied her, though it was an angry pity, too—a non-comprehending, jealous, exasperated feeling. She sat down and gathered her child to her breast with a gesture that was almost fierce. That Eva should suffer so cruelly when she, Fanny, would have made any sacrifice to save her from it, would have died for her gladly, were it not that she was the girl’s only protector—oh, what fate had come over their happy life together! She had not the heart to be stern. All she said was, “We will go away, dear; we will go away.”
“No,” said Eva, rising; “let me stay here. You need not be afraid.”
“Of course I am not afraid,” answered Fanny, gravely. “My daughter will never do anything
unseemly; she has too much pride.”
“I am afraid I have no pride—that is, not as you have it, mamma. Pride doesn’t seem to me at all important compared with— But of course I know that there is nothing I can do. He is perfectly indifferent. Only do not take me away again—do not.”
“Why do you wish to stay?”
“Because then I can think—for three days more—that he is at least as near me as that.” She trembled as she said this; there was a spot of sombre red in each cheek; her fair face looked strange amid her disordered hair.
Her mother watched her helplessly. All her beliefs, all her creed, all her precedents, the experience of her own life and her own nature even, failed to explain such a phenomenon as this. And it was her own child who was saying these things.
The next day Eva was passive. She wandered about the terrace, or sat for hours motionless staring blankly at the sea. Her mother left her to herself. She had comprehended that words were useless. She pretended to be embroidering, but in reality as she drew her stitches she was counting the hours as they passed: seventy-two hours; forty-eight hours. Would he ever be gone?
On the second day, in the afternoon, she discovered that Eva had disappeared. The girl had been on the terrace with Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle had gone to her room for a moment, and when she returned her pupil could not be found. She had not passed through the drawing-room, where Fanny was sitting with her pretended industry; nor through the other door, for Rosine was at work there, and had seen nothing of her. There remained only the rock stairway to the beach. Mademoiselle ran down it swiftly: no one. But there was a small boat not far off, she said. Fanny, who was near-sighted, got the glass. In a little boat with a broad sail there were two figures; one was certainly David Rod, and the other—yes, the other was Eva. There was a breeze, the boat was rapidly going westward round the cliffs; in two minutes more it was out of sight.
Fanny wrung her hands. The French woman, to whom the event wore a much darker hue than it did to the American mother, turned yellowly pale.
At this moment Horace Bartholomew came out on the terrace; uneasy, for Fanny’s missive had explained nothing, he had followed his letter himself. “What is it?” he said, as he saw the agitation of the two women.
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