The Complete Works of F. Marion Crawford
ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON
by
F. MARION CRAWFORD
With Frontispiece
"I SOMETIMES THINK THAT ONE'S PAST LIFE IS WRITTEN IN AFOREIGN LANGUAGE," SAID MRS. BOWRING, SHUTTING THE BOOK SHE HELD.]
P. F. Collier & SonNew York
Copyright 1895, 1896, 1897by F. Marion CrawfordAll Rights Reserved
ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON
CHAPTER I
"I sometimes think that one's past life is written in a foreignlanguage," said Mrs. Bowring, shutting the book she held, but keepingthe place with one smooth, thin forefinger, while her still, blue eyesturned from her daughter's face towards the hazy hills that hemmed thesea thirty miles to the southward. "When one wants to read it, one findsever so many words which one cannot understand, and one has to look themout in a sort of unfamiliar dictionary, and try to make sense of thesentences as best one can. Only the big things are clear."
Clare glanced at her mother, smiling innocently and half mechanically,without much definite expression, and quite without curiosity. Youth canbe in sympathy with age, while not understanding it, while notsuspecting, perhaps, that there is anything to understand beyond thestreaked hair and the pale glance and the little torture-lines whichpaint the portrait of fifty years for the eyes of twenty.
Every woman knows the calendar of her own face. The lines are years,one for such and such a year, one for such and such another; the streaksare months, perhaps, or weeks, or sometimes hours, where the tear-stormshave bleached the brown, the black, or the gold. "This littlewrinkle--it was so very little then!" she says. "It came when I doubtedfor a day. There is a shadow there, just at each temple, where the cloudpassed, when my sun went out. The bright hair grew lower on my forehead.It is worn away, as though by a crown, that was not of gold. There arehollows there, near the ears, on each side, since that week when lovewas done to death before my eyes and died--intestate--leaving hissubstance to be divided amongst indifferent heirs. They wrangle for whathe has left, but he himself is gone, beyond hearing or caring, and,thank God, beyond suffering. But the marks are left."
Youth looks on and sees alike the ill-healed wounds of the martyrdom andthe rough scars of sin's scourges, and does not understand. ClareBowring smiled, without definite expression, just because her mother hadspoken and seemed to ask for sympathy; and then she looked away for afew moments. She had a bit of work in her hands, a little bag which shewas making out of a piece of old Italian damask, to hold a needle-caseand thread and scissors. She had stopped sewing, and instinctivelywaited before beginning again, as though to acknowledge by a littleaffectionate deference that her mother had said something serious andhad a right to expect attention. But she did not answer, for she couldnot understand.
Her own young life was vividly clear to her; so very vividly clear, thatit sometimes made her think of a tiresome chromolithograph. All thefacts and thoughts of it were so near that she knew them by heart, aspeople come to know the patterns of the wall-paper in the room theyinhabit. She had nothing to hide, nothing to regret, nothing which shethought she should care very much to recall, though she rememberedeverything. A girl is very young when she can recollect distinctly everyfrock she has had, the first long one, and the second, and the third;and the first ball gown, and the second, and no third, because that isstill in the future, and a particular pair of gloves which did not fit,and a certain pair of shoes she wore so long because they were socomfortable, and the precise origin of every one of the few trinkets andbits of jewellery she possesses. That was Clare Bowring's case. Shecould remember everything and everybody in her life. But her father wasnot in her memories, and there was a little motionless grey cloud inthe place where he should have been. He had been a soldier, and had beenkilled in an obscure skirmish with black men, in one of England'sobscure but expensive little wars. Death is always very much the samething, and it seems unfair that the guns of Balaclava should still roar"glory" while the black man's quick spear-thrust only spells "dead,"without comment. But glory in death is even more a matter of luck thanfame in life. At all events, Captain Bowring, as brave a gentleman asever faced fire, had perished like so many other brave gentlemen of hiskind, in a quiet way, without any fuss, beyond killing half a dozen orso of his assailants, and had left his widow the glory of receiving asmall pension in return for his blood, and that was all. Some day, whenthe dead are reckoned, and the manner of their death noted, poor Bowringmay count for more than some of his friends who died at home from aconstitutional inability to enjoy all the good things fortune set beforethem, complicated by a disposition incapable of being satisfied withonly a part of the feast. But at the time of this tale they counted formore than he; for they had been constrained to leave behind them whatthey could not consume, while he, poor man, had left very little besidesthe aforesaid interest in the investment of his blood, in the form of apension to his widow, and the small grey cloud in the memory of hisgirl-child, in the place where he should have been. For he had beenkilled when she had been a baby.
The mother and daughter were lonely, if not alone in the world; for whenone has no money to speak of, and no relations at all, the world is alonely place, regarded from the ordinary point of view--which is, ofcourse, the true one. They had no home in England, and they generallylived abroad, more or less, in one or another of the places of society'sdeparted spirits, such as Florence. They had not, however, entered intoLimbo without hope, since they were able to return to the social earthwhen they pleased, and to be alive again, and the people they met abroadsometimes asked them to stop with them at home, recognising the factthat they were still socially living and casting shadows. They were sureof half a hundred friendly faces in London and of half a dozenhospitable houses in the country; and that is not little for people whohave nothing wherewith to buy smiles and pay for invitations. Clare hadmore than once met women of her mother's age and older, who had lookedat her rather thoughtfully and longer than had seemed quite natural,saying very quietly that her father had been "a great friend of theirs."But those were not the women whom her mother liked best, and Claresometimes wondered whether the little grey cloud in her memory, whichrepresented her father, might not be there to hide away something morehuman than an ideal. Her mother spoke of him, sometimes gravely,sometimes with a far-away smile, but never tenderly. The smile did notmean much, Clare thought. People often spoke of dead people with a sortof faint look of uncertain beatitude--the same which many thinkappropriate to the singing of hymns. The absence of anything liketenderness meant more. The gravity was only natural and decent.
"Your father was a brave man," Mrs. Bowring sometimes said. "Your fatherwas very handsome," she would say. "He was very quick-tempered," sheperhaps added.
But that was all. Clare had a friend whose husband had died young andsuddenly, and her friend's heart was broken. She did not speak as Mrs.Bowring did. When the latter said that her past life seemed to bewritten in a foreign language, Clare did not understand, but she knewthat the something of which the translation was lost, as it were,belonged to her father. She always felt an instinctive desire to defendhim, and to make her mother feel more sympathy for his memory. Yet, atthe same time, she loved her mother in such a way as made her feel thatif there had been any trouble, her father must have been in the wrong.Then she was quite sure that she did not understand, and she held hertongue, and smiled vaguely, and waited a moment before she went on withher work.
Besides, she was not at all inclined to argue anything at present. Shehad been ill, and her mother was worn out with taking care of her, andthey had come to Amalfi to get quite well and strong again in the air ofthe southern spring. They had settled themselves for a couple of monthsin the queer hotel, w
hich was once a monastery, perched high up underthe still higher overhanging rocks, far above the beach and the busylittle town; and now, in the May afternoon, they sat side by side underthe trellis of vines on the terraced walk, their faces turned southward,in the shade of the steep mountain behind them; the sea was blue attheir feet, and quite still, but farther out the westerly breeze thatswept past the Conca combed it to crisp roughness; then it was less blueto southward, and gradually it grew less real, till it lost colour andmelted into a sky-haze that almost hid the southern mountains and thelizard-like head of the far Licosa.
A bit of coarse faded carpet lay upon the ground under the two ladies'feet, and the shady air had a soft green tinge in it from the youngvine-leaves overhead. At first sight one would have said that both weredelicate, if not ill. Both were fair, though in different degrees, andboth were pale and quiet, and looked a little weary.
The young girl sat in the deep straw chair, hatless, with bare whitehands that held her work. Her thick flaxen hair, straightly parted andsmoothed away from its low growth on the forehead, half hid small freshears, unpierced. Long lashes, too white for beauty, cast very faintlight shadows as she looked down; but when she raised the lids, thedark-blue eyes were bright, with wide pupils and a straight look, quickto fasten, slow to let go, never yet quite softened, and yet nevermannishly hard. But, in its own way, perhaps, there is no look so hardas the look of maiden innocence can be. There can even be somethingterrible in its unconscious stare. There is the spirit of God's ownfearful directness in it. Half quibbling with words perhaps, but surelywith half truth, one might say that youth "is," while all else "hasbeen"; and that youth alone possesses the present, too innocent to knowit all, yet too selfish even to doubt of what is its own--too sure ofitself to doubt anything, to fear anything, or even truly to pray foranything. There is no equality and no community in virtue; it is onlyoriginal sin that makes us all equal and human. Old Lucifer, fallen,crushed, and damned, knows the worth of forgiveness--not young Michael,flintily hard and monumentally upright in his steel coat, a terror tothe devil himself. And youth can have something of that archangelicrigidity. Youth is not yet quite human.
But there was much in Clare Bowring's face which told that she was to bequite human some day. The lower features were not more than strongenough--the curved lips would be fuller before long, the small nostrils,the gentle chin, were a little sharper than was natural, now, fromillness, but round in outline and not over prominent; and the slenderthroat was very delicate and feminine. Only in the dark-blue eyes therewas still that unabashed, quick glance and long-abiding straightness,and innocent hardness, and the unconscious selfishness of theuncontaminated.
Standing on her feet, she would have seemed rather tall than short,though really but of average height. Seated, she looked tall, and herglance was a little downward to most people's eyes. Just now she was toothin, and seemed taller than she was. But the fresh light was already inthe young white skin, and there was a soft colour in the lobes of thelittle ears, as the white leaves of daisies sometimes blush all roundtheir tips.
The nervous white hands held the little bag lightly, and twined it andsewed it deftly, for Clare was clever with her fingers. Possibly theylooked even a little whiter than they were, by contrast with the darkstuff of her dress, and illness had made them shrink at the lower part,robbing them of their natural strength, though not of their grace. Thereis a sort of refinement, not of taste, nor of talent, but of feeling andthought, and it shows itself in the hands of those who have it, morethan in any feature of the face, in a sort of very true proportionbetween the hand and its fingers, between each finger and its joints,each joint and each nail; a something which says that such a hand couldnot do anything ignoble, could not take meanly, nor strike cowardly, norpress falsely; a quality of skin neither rough and coarse, nor oversmooth like satin, but cool and pleasant to the touch as fine silk thatis closely woven. The fingers of such hands are very straight and veryelastic, but not supple like young snakes, as some fingers are, and thecushion of the hand is not over full nor heavy, nor yet shrunken andundeveloped as in the wasted hands of old Asiatic races.
In outward appearance there was that sort of inherited likeness betweenmother and daughter which is apt to strike strangers more than personsof the same family. Mrs. Bowring had been beautiful in her youth--farmore beautiful than Clare--but her face had been weaker, in spite of theregularity of the features and their faultless proportion. Life had giventhem an acquired strength, but not of the lovely kind, and the complexionwas faded, and the hair had darkened, and the eyes had paled. Some facesare beautified by suffering. Mrs. Bowring's face was not of that class.It was as though a thin, hard mask had been formed and closely mouldedupon it, as the action of the sea overlays some sorts of soft rock with asurface thin as paper but as hard as granite. In spite of the hardness,the features were not really strong. There was refinement in them,however, of the same kind which the daughter had, and as much, thoughless pleasing. A fern--a spray of maiden's-hair--loses much of its beautybut none of its refinement when petrified in limestone or made fossil incoal.
As they sat there, side by side, mother and daughter, where they had satevery day for a week or more, they had very little to say. They hadexhausted the recapitulation of Clare's illness, during the first daysof her convalescence. It was not the first time that they had been inAmalfi, and they had enumerated its beauties to each other, and renewedtheir acquaintance with it from a distance, looking down from theterrace upon the low-lying town, and the beach and the painted boats,and the little crowd that swarmed out now and then like ants, very busyand very much in a hurry, running hither and thither, disappearingpresently as by magic, and leaving the shore to the sun and the sea. Thetwo had spoken of a little excursion to Ravello, and they meant to gothither as soon as they should be strong enough; but that was not yet.And meanwhile they lived through the quiet days, morning, meal times,evening, bed time, and round again, through the little hotel's programmeof possibility; eating what was offered them, but feasting royally onair and sunshine and spring sweetness; moistening their lips in strangesouthern wines, but drinking deep draughts of the rich southernair-life; watching the people of all sorts and of many conditions, whocame and stayed a day and went away again, but social only in eachother's lives, and even that by sympathy rather than in speech. A cornerof life's show was before them, and they kept their places on thevine-sheltered terrace and looked on. But it seemed as though nothingcould ever possibly happen there to affect the direction of their ownquietly moving existence.
Seeing that her daughter did not say anything in answer to the remarkabout the past being written in a foreign language, Mrs. Bowring lookedat the distant sky-haze thoughtfully for a few moments, then opened herbook again where her thin forefinger had kept the place, and began toread. There was no disappointment in her face at not being understood,for she had spoken almost to herself and had expected no reply. Nochange of expression softened or accentuated the quiet hardness whichoverspread her naturally gentle face. But the thought was evidentlystill present in her mind, for her attention did not fix itself upon herbook, and presently she looked at her daughter, as the latter bent herhead over the little bag she was making.
The young girl felt her mother's eyes upon her, looked up herself, andsmiled faintly, almost mechanically, as before. It was a sort of habitthey both had--a way of acknowledging one another's presence in theworld. But this time it seemed to Clare that there was a question in thelook, and after she had smiled she spoke.
"No," she said, "I don't understand how anybody can forget the past. Itseems to me that I shall always remember why I did things, said things,and thought things. I should, if I lived a hundred years, I'm quitesure."
"Perhaps you have a better memory than I," answered Mrs. Bowring. "ButI don't think it is exactly a question of memory either. I can rememberwhat I said, and did, and thought, well--twenty years ago. But it seemsto me very strange that I should have thought, and spoken, and acted,ju
st as I did. After all isn't it natural? They tell us that our bodiesare quite changed in less time than that."
"Yes--but the soul does not change," said Clare with conviction.
"The soul--"
Mrs. Bowring repeated the word, but said nothing more, and her still,blue eyes wandered from her daughter's face and again fixed themselveson an imaginary point of the far southern distance.
"At least," said Clare, "I was always taught so."
She smiled again, rather coldly, as though admitting that such teachingmight not be infallible after all.
"It is best to believe it," said her mother quietly, but in a colourlessvoice. "Besides," she added, with a change of tone, "I do believe it,you know. One is always the same, in the main things. It is the point ofview that changes. The best picture in the world does not look the samein every light, does it?"
"No, I suppose not. You may like it in one light and not in another,and in one place and not in another."
"Or at one time of life, and not at another," added Mrs. Bowring,thoughtfully.
"I can't imagine that." Clare paused a moment. "Of course you arethinking of people," she continued presently, with a little moreanimation. "One always means people, when one talks in that way. Andthat is what I cannot quite understand. It seems to me that if I likedpeople once I should always like them."
Her mother looked at her.
"Yes--perhaps you would," she said, and she relapsed into silence.
Clare's colour did not change. No particular person was in her thoughts,and she had, as it were, given her own general and inexperienced opinionof her own character, quite honestly and without affectation.
"I don't know which are the happier," said Mrs. Bowring at last, "thepeople who change, or the people who can't."
"You mean faithful or unfaithful people, I suppose," observed the younggirl with grave innocence.
A very slight flush rose in Mrs. Bowring's thin cheeks, and the quieteyes grew suddenly hard, but Clare was busy with her work again and didnot see.
"Those are big words," said the older woman in a low voice.
"Well--yes--of course!" answered Clare. "So they ought to be! It isalways the main question, isn't it? Whether you can trust a person ornot, I mean."
"That is one question. The other is, whether the person deserves to betrusted."
"Oh--it's the same thing!"
"Not exactly."
"You know what I mean, mother. Besides, I don't believe that any one whocan't trust is really to be trusted. Do you?"
"My dear Clare!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring. "You can't put life into anutshell, like that!"
"No. I suppose not, though if a thing is true at all it must be alwaystrue."
"Saving exceptions."
"Are there any exceptions to truth?" asked Clare incredulously. "Truthisn't grammar--nor the British Constitution."
"No. But then, we don't know everything. What we call truth is what weknow. It is only what we know. All that we don't know, but which is, istrue, too--especially, all that we don't know about people with whom wehave to live."
"Oh--if people have secrets!" The young girl laughed idly. "But you andI, for instance, mother--we have no secrets from each other, have we?Well? Why should any two people who love each other have secrets? And ifthey have none, why, then, they know all that there is to be known aboutone another, and each trusts the other, and has a right to be trusted,because everything is known--and everything is the whole truth. It seemsto me that is simple enough, isn't it?"
Mrs. Bowring laughed in her turn. It was rather a hard little laugh, butClare was used to the sound of it, and joined in it, feeling that shehad vanquished her mother in argument, and settled one of the mostimportant questions of life for ever.
"What a pretty steamer!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring suddenly.
"It's a yacht," said Clare after a moment. "The flag is English, too. Ican see it distinctly."
She laid down her work, and her mother closed her book upon herforefinger again, and they watched the graceful white vessel as sheglided slowly in from the Conca, which she had rounded while they hadbeen talking.
"It's very big, for a yacht," observed Mrs. Bowring. "They are cominghere."
"They have probably come round from Naples to spend a day," said Clare."We are sure to have them up here. What a nuisance!"
"Yes. Everybody comes up here who comes to Amalfi at all. I hope theywon't stay long."
"There is no fear of that," answered Clare. "I heard those people sayingthe other day that this is not a place where a vessel can lie any lengthof time. You know how the sea sometimes breaks on the beach."
Mrs. Bowring and her daughter desired of all things to be quiet. Thevisitors who came, stayed a few days at the hotel, and went away again,were as a rule tourists or semi-invalids in search of a climate, andanything but noisy. But people coming in a smart English yacht wouldprobably be society people, and as such Mrs. Bowring wished that theywould keep away. They would behave as though the place belonged to them,so long as they remained; they would get all the attention of theproprietor and of the servants for the time being; and they would makeeverybody feel shabby and poor.
The Bowrings were poor, indeed, but they were not shabby. It was perhapsbecause they were well aware that nobody could mistake them for averagetourists that they resented the coming of a party which belonged to whatis called society. Mrs. Bowring had a strong aversion to making newacquaintances, and even disliked being thrown into the proximity ofpeople who might know friends of hers, who might have heard of her, andwho might talk about her and her daughter. Clare said that her mother'sshyness in this respect was almost morbid; but she had unconsciouslycaught a little of it herself, and, like her mother, she was often quiteuselessly on her guard against strangers, of the kind whom she mightpossibly be called upon to know, though she was perfectly affable and ather ease with those whom she looked upon as undoubtedly her socialinferiors.
They were not mistaken in their prediction that the party from the yachtwould come up to the Cappuccini. Half an hour after the yacht haddropped anchor the terrace was invaded. They came up in twos and threes,nearly a dozen of them, men and women, smart-looking people withhealthy, sun-burnt faces, voices loud from the sea as voices become on along voyage--or else very low indeed. By contrast with the frequentersof Amalfi they all seemed to wear overpoweringly good clothes andperfectly new hats and caps, and their russet shoes were resplendent.They moved as though everything belonged to them, from the wild crestsof the hills above to the calm blue water below, and the hotel servantsdid their best to foster the agreeable illusion. They all wanted chairs,and tables, and things to drink, and fruit. One very fair little ladywith hard, restless eyes, and clad in white serge, insisted upon havinggrapes, and no one could convince her that grapes were not ripe in May.
"It's quite absurd!" she objected. "Of course they're ripe! We had themost beautiful grapes at breakfast at Leo Cairngorm's the other day, soof course they must have them here. Brook! Do tell the man not to beabsurd!"
"Man!" said the member of the party she had last addressed. "Do not beabsurd!"
"Si, Signore," replied the black-whiskered Amalfitan servant withalacrity.
"You see!" cried the little lady triumphantly. "I told you so! You mustinsist with these people. You can always get what you want. Brook,where's my fan?"
She settled upon a straw chair--like a white butterfly. The otherswalked on towards the end of the terrace, but the young man whom shecalled Brook stood beside her, slowly lighting a cigarette, not fivepaces from Mrs. Bowring and Clare.
"I'm sure I don't know where your fan is," he said, with a short laugh,as he threw the end of the match over the wall.
"Well then, look for it!" she answered, rather sharply. "I'm awfullyhot, and I want it."
He glanced at her before he spoke again.
"I don't know where it is," he said quietly, but there was a shade ofannoyance in his face.
"I gave it to you just as we w
ere getting into the boat," answered thelady in white. "Do you mean to say that you left it on board?"
"I think you must be mistaken," said the young man. "You must have givenit to somebody else."
"It isn't likely that I should mistake you for any one else--especiallyto-day."
"Well--I haven't got it. I'll get you one in the hotel, if you'll havepatience for a moment."
He turned and strode along the terrace towards the house. Clare Bowringhad been watching the two, and she looked after the man as he movedrapidly away. He walked well, for he was a singularly well-made youngfellow, who looked as though he were master of every inch of himself.She had liked his brown face and bright blue eyes, too, and somehow sheresented the way in which the little lady ordered him about. She lookedround and saw that her mother was watching him too. Then, as hedisappeared, they both looked at the lady. She too had followed him withher eyes, and as she turned her face sideways to the Bowrings Clarethought that she was biting her lip, as though something annoyed her orhurt her. She kept her eyes on the door. Presently the young manreappeared, bearing a palm-leaf fan in his hand and blowing a cloud ofcigarette smoke into the air. Instantly the lady smiled, and the smilebrightened as he came near.
"Thank you--dear," she said as he gave her the fan.
The last word was spoken in a lower tone, and could certainly not havebeen heard by the other members of the party, but it reached Clare'sears, where she sat.
"Not at all," answered the young man quietly.
But as he spoke he glanced quickly about him, and his eyes met Clare's.She fancied that she saw a look of startled annoyance in them, and hecoloured a little under his tan. He had a very manly face, square andstrong. He bent down a little and said something in a low voice. Thelady in white half turned her head, impatiently, but did not look quiteround. Clare saw, however, that her expression had changed again, andthat the smile was gone.
"If I don't care, why should you?" were the next words Clare heard,spoken impatiently and petulantly.
The man who answered to the name of Brook said nothing, but sat down onthe parapet of the terrace, looking out over his shoulder to seaward. Afew seconds later he threw away his half-smoked cigarette.
"I like this place," said the lady in white, quite audibly. "I think Ishall send on board for my things and stay here."
The young man started as though he had been struck, and faced her insilence. He could not help seeing Clare Bowring beyond her.
"I'm going indoors, mother," said the young girl, rising ratherabruptly. "I'm sure it must be time for tea. Won't you come too?"
The young man did not answer his companion's remark, but turned his faceaway again and looked seaward, listening to the retreating footsteps ofthe two ladies.
On the threshold of the hotel Clare felt a strong desire to look backagain and see whether he had moved, but she was ashamed of it and wentin, holding her head high and looking straight before her.
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