He could just hear the flutter of the light silk skirt as Mary crept out of the room.
“Is it because you are fond of that girl that you keep away from me, George?”
“For no other reason.”
“She is a fool. She told me that you asked her to be your wife, like an honest man, and that she refused. She told me her reasons, which to my mind were inadequate But, though she is such a gentle creature, she has plenty of will-power, and I could not move her. I am very fond of that girl; indeed, I believe I love her better than the average father loves his daughters. She has been to me as the favourite daughter, the chosen one — and I should like her to marry you or Austin.”
“I suppose it will be Austin. I know he is in love with her, though he doesn’t know it himself.”
“No, George. Her reasons for not marrying you will hold good with Austin.”
“If you will tell me what those reasons are, I shall understand better,” George said, more impatiently than he was wont to speak to his uncle.
“I will tell you nothing about her. If you ever hear her story it must be from her own lips. My troublesome doctor recommends the South for January and February, so Mary and I must take wing after Christmas. Rapallo, Spezia, Viareggio, anywhere along that sheltered coast, and in April to Rome. She has never seen Rome, which is an essential part of her education.”
“You think she ought to be educated?”
“I’m afraid I only think about myself. It has amused me to educate her, just to tell her what books she ought to read. She does the rest herself. She has a natural instinct for all that is best in literature and art.”
George stopped a long time after the servants had come in to switch on the lights, to pick up stray volumes and newspapers, attending to details which were generally the care of the reading girl. George stayed till seven o’clock, doing his utmost to amuse Mr. Field, but Mary did not come back. And he went away angry and despairing, just as he had left Madingley.
XVIII
LIFE drifted on with a tranquil monotony, for in England or in Italy life was the same for Conway Field — a succession of days that were always long, always empty of the things that make life worth living. The men who might have interested him, who might have beguiled him into thinking that he still had a share in the world’s history, were too busy, too absorbed in the bustle and worry of days that were never long enough for the work that had to be done in them to sit, were it only for half an hour, by the side of a helpless invalid. And it was only now and then that he found a pleasant variation of his monotonous days in the society of some man of leisure whom he had known in London and who had ventured to call upon him, ventured in the face of the general opinion that Field was too much of a bear and a misanthrope to be worth the trouble.
Such a man received a courteous welcome, and, if he had some tact and a good deal of sympathy, his conversation made an agreeable break in the long day, so that Field sometimes begged that the visit might be repeated.
And so the time went on, and Mary, who had known the enchantment of Venice, knew the grandeur of Rome, or knew as much as ruined walls, and pictures, and books written by clever men, could give of the glory of that ineffable past, when the Roman citizen Paul was telling the story of Christ.
Never did a young traveller enter Rome under more auspicious circumstances. Everything had been carefully thought out and arranged in advance for the reception of Conway Field and his reading girl. Pisa had been the last stage of the leisurely journey, and they came to Rome late in the afternoon, and found the station-master and a bevy of porters waiting for them on the arrival platform where the chair, which with three or four movements of screws and levers could be changed to a sofa, had only to be lifted out of the train and transferred to the ambulance that would take him and Mary to the villa on the hill above the Trinita del Monte, where the whole of the primo piano had been prepared for them. Such vast rooms — such noble windows — and such a view! All Rome lay at Mary’s feet in the sunset when she went upon the balcony and leant over the massive balustrade and stood there giddy with wonder and delight, drinking in the glory of a scene that has no parallel upon this earth. Not because there are no cities as wonderful as Rome, but because no other scene contains the history of all that is grandest in the life of civilized man — the history of religion, the history of thought.
“Well, Mary, are you disappointed? Will you call Rome a fraud, as I think my nieces did after their first visit? There had not been dances enough to satisfy them, and their friends in the embassies had been neglectful. You are not disappointed?”
“I am lost in wonder. It is all so familiar, and yet so new.”
“You have looked at too many pictures and read too many books. They have made Rome stale.”
“No, it is all the more wonderful because I have known it so long. I could name every dome and every tower; but to see them there is just as thrilling. I feel as if I had not believed in them, as if I had always supposed that they were only pictures.”
“Well, now you know that Rome is not a mirage. It has odours that will assure you of its substance when you drive about the streets to-morrow.”
Mary took up her daily task as quietly as if there were no cause for emotion, and this power of absolute tranquillity was one of her charms for the man whose nerves were so easily set on edge. He hated gush, and the other young persons who had hoped to win his regard had been mostly gushers, who sickened him by their praises of pictures that they pretended to understand and of books they could not read without yawning. Mary was a restful person. She could admire without talking.
He went about with her for a week, showing her all those things that were accessible for his carrying chair.
He had his valet and a Roman of stalwart proportions and inexhaustible guide-book knowledge which Mr. Field usually ordered him to keep to himself.
“We know all your books by heart, amico mio. So you need only answer our questions, and keep street-hawkers at bay.”
They did Saint Peter’s exhaustively, and Mary was allowed to go up to the dome with Garland and the guide, while Mr. Field sat in one of the chapels — that chapel where the kings who never reigned are made immortal in marble. They went to Saint John Lateran, and Saint Peter in Carcere, and they spent two long mornings in the Vatican looking at Greek statues, and busts of Roman Empresses.
“You see by their elaborate hair-dressing that they were not a whit wiser than the women of Mayfair,” said Mr. Field, and he was full of light discursive talk while they were moving through the wilderness of sculpture in the great halls, but when they came to the Belvedere he was silent, and lay quiet as death gazing at the Apollo, while Mary gazed as at something whereof all the reproductions she had seen had left her absolutely ignorant. This was verily the spirit of youth and gladness, the perfection of manhood in the dawn of life. Could any mother with a son in his adolescence look at this divine countenance without emotion?
Very few women are highly appreciative of sculpture. They miss the colour that charms and dazzles in the great pictures. They can see the Dying Gladiator without tears, and they prefer the Medici Venus to the Venus of Milo. Mary had never known till she saw the Gladiator and the Apollo what consummate art meant in sculpture.
They came back to the Vatican often, for it was easier for Mr. Field than any other gallery in Rome, and it amused him to look at all those Roman beauties, and to tell Mary their histories, their caprices, but even here he talked as a kind father would have talked to an intelligent daughter, and when they came upon the most notorious of those Roman ladies he did not expatiate.
“Here is Faustina. The less we say about her the better;” and again: “No doubt you have heard people talk of Messalina as an example of feminine impropriety, not knowing anything about her. Very handsome, is she not? and her hair must have taken two hours to dress in that elaborate style — but she did not make her husband happy. Here is Calphurnia who ought to have been above suspicion but was not.”
Conway Field was more cheerful in those first weeks in Rome than Mary had ever known him to be except in briefest intervals. There is something exhilarating in the air of the Seven Hills — so much to think of, so much to talk about. Imperishable memories, glorious ghosts, of which the world can never be weary — the learned, the heroic, the magnificently wicked, they are all there in the same glamour, and who can escape their magic? In those halls of Caracalla, within those majestic walls that Shelley loved, Mr. Field showed Mary the most stupendous relic of Imperial splendour.
“Remember, that most of the sculpture you have looked at in the Vatican, the Lateran, and the Capitol was brought from these halls and that it was here only seen dimly across the steam of a Sybarite’s bath,” Mr. Field said, looking up at the crumbling walls that had once been so rich in consummate art.
When Rome was exhausted, or so much of Rome as Mr. Field could visit with his protégée, there were new worlds to explore beyond the gates of the city, and the invalid carriage served to convey Mr. Field as far as Frascati without over much fatigue.
The air on those April days seemed buoyant enough to give strength and lightness to limbs that had long been powerless, to revive a life that was ebbing. For Mary knew that the life that had been so sad was drifting down the river. There had been too many signs of weakness within the last half year to escape the watchful eyes of affection. Mary knew that the rich man’s martyrdom was nearing the end, nor was the martyr unconscious of his decay.
It had been his stoic’s pride to avoid all discussion of his malady, all talk of symptoms. Only once had he even hinted at his failing powers. It was in the gallery at Warburton House one wintry afternoon when he had been wheeled about by the valet from picture to picture, gazing at each with concentrated attention.
He had stopped longer than usual in front of the Raphael, which he himself considered the priceless pearl in his collection, the one unsurpassable gem. “Il faut quitter tout cela,” he murmured with a sigh.
“That is what Mazarin said, wandering in the night among his treasures, ‘Il faut quitter!’ That astute old Italian, soldier, priest, diplomat, had had a good time, and had fought hard for it,” he said to Mary, who was standing by his side. “He had known the worst and the best that life can give, poverty, disgrace, the triumph of his enemies, and he had conquered all and enjoyed all; and now he wandered about in the night conscious that all was over — the long fight, the long victory. The great Judge had given him a long day — but the night was coming. Poor old grey fox — poor old grey wolf.”
The old Scotch physician, who was the cleverest, if not the most fashionable doctor in Rome, came every other day, and sat by the patient and talked with him; but until she came to understand Dr. Macpherson and his ways, it seemed to Mary that his visits were of no use, a mere pretence, and an easy way of earning a fee. But one day, when she happened to look up suddenly, and saw the Scotsman’s keen grey eyes, after scanning his patient s face, glance from the wasted features at the attenuated hands lying idly upon the soft white rug, that shrewd look with so much of serious thought in it frightened Mary.
And on the following afternoon she took what seemed the desperate step of calling upon Dr. Macpherson.
Mr. Field had sent her to the Barberini Palace to spend an hour among the famous pictures with Garland, and as the doctor lived near the Barberini the thing could easily be done. She knew she could trust Garland.
The doctor’s car was at the door, and he saw her as he came out of the house and stopped instantly.
“Were you coming to see me, Miss Smith?” he asked in his brisk way.
“If you are not in a hurry and will give me a few minutes.”
“Ten minutes more or less won’t hurt my patients. They are mostly old women with nothing the matter with them. Come into the hall. My rooms are at the top of the house and there’s no lift.”
There was plenty of room in the hall, and a fine old carved cherry-wood bench with a cushion covered with velvet so worn and faded and threadbare that it might have been there when the Barberini Fornarina was selling bread.
“Well, now, is it about yourself or Mr. Field you have come to see me?”
“Only about him. Your expression while you watched him this morning seemed to mean so much. Please tell me the truth about him, however cruel the truth may be.” Her ashen pallor and tremulous lips told him that she was in earnest. Here was no time-server, waiting for a legacy and anxious to know how soon it would come. Here was a woman who loved that poor wreck of humanity. “You seem to be greatly attached to him?”
“You wouldn’t wonder if you knew half his kindness to me. I am only his hired reader and I have not been with him very long, yet he has treated me as if I were his daughter.”
She stopped, and Alexander Macpherson, who was made of hard wood, was moved by the emotion in the voice of this affectionate creature. He had often looked at her critically in the course of his many visits, and he had made up his mind that this young woman with the pale expressive face and dark grey eyes was not made of the same stuff as that variety of melancholy spinsters, companions, secretaries, lady-nurses whom he had met with in his practice, which lay mostly among peevish, elderly women who had come to finish their lives in Florence or Rome. Dr. Macpherson had lived and practised in both cities. No, there was very little of the paid dependent in this girl, and strange as it might seem, she loved the frail invalid to whom she ministered so tenderly.
“Well, my dear, I will tell you just as much of the truth as I know myself, but in this peculiar case my knowledge is only guesswork. Mr. Field’s existence is something like a miracle. He told me that the accident which crippled him happened more than thirty years ago, and that he should have lived in his helpless condition through those years is nearly as wonderful as anything in the Acts of the Apostles — and there are a good many strange things in that book. Mr. Field is the last word in medical science; we shall never go farther till we raise the dead. It is so astounding that he has lived so long that I cannot venture to predict how much longer he may go on living. If he had been a poor man he would have died within a month of his fall, and people would have been amazed at his having lived a day — wealth and science have done all the rest. It is difficult for me to form an opinion, as a stranger, but I can tell you that the lamp of life is burning feebly, and that the end may be sudden — and soon.”
Mary clasped her hands over her face, and her head drooped almost to her knees as she sat by the doctor’s side, motionless, wordless, but with no sound of weeping, I no touch of hysteria.
When she uncovered her face and looked at him, Dr. Macpherson saw that every vestige of colour was gone.
“My dear young lady, it is a bad moment for you, but be brave and face it,” he said, as he gave her a bottle of strong salts that he kept in his breast pocket for such emergencies.
“We have been so happy together,” Mary faltered.
“And you may go on being happy together longer than seems likely just at present. His weakness may be only a passing phase. I warned you that my opinion must be guesswork.”
“I have seen the change in him ever since we came to this place. I have seen the ebbing life. What can I do for him? Tell me what I ought to do.”
“Get him back to London, where he will have the doctor who has been attending him for the last ten years, as he told me. He called the man a fool, but a fool who knows his constitution may be better than the wisest of us who are strangers to him. And if he has any near relation whom he likes — a man — I think you would do well to send for him. Let him help you in getting the patient home. This is all I can advise — and you had better say nothing about this little talk behind the patient’s back. He might be offended.”
“He would be offended,” Mary said sadly. “He hates anything like fuss or officiousness. Please never let him know that I have questioned you.”
“You may trust me, my dear. So if you can trust your maid, out there—”
Dr. Macpherson looked at her as he shut the carriage door, and he felt that Garland could be trusted.
An interesting case, he thought, as his car rolled away to the new quarter.
“Very interesting. I hope our millionaire has left this charming creature a substantial annuity. Three hundred a year at least. He has all the air of a great gentleman, who would treat a dependent handsomely.”
Mary telegraphed to Austin before she went home, telling him what Dr. Macpherson had said to her, and begging him to come at once, but to treat his arrival as a casual and spontaneous matter.
“He must not know that you were sent for.”
She could trust Austin’s tact and Austin’s affection for his uncle. Nothing but good could come of his presence.
XIX
THEY were re-established in the old rooms, in the old life, regulated as if by machinery, measured by hours and minutes, and every movement in the household adjusted to Mr. Field’s ways. Any new servant before he began service in that large household had to be instructed in Mr. Field’s ways. It was Mrs. Tredgold’s duty to give those instructions, and she delighted in the task. It maintained her importance in the house. She felt like the prime minister of an absolute sovereign, second only in sovereignty to her master. The butler had been inclined to dispute this right with her, had told her that the footmen were his servants, and should look to him for their training.
“Not as regards Mr. Field,” Mrs. Tredgold replied solemnly; and then she reminded Mr. Drayson that when she, the widow of a churchman who might have been a bishop had he been spared to enjoy a dignity for which he was especially adapted, had consented to assume a subordinate and in a manner servile position, it had, been on the distinct understanding as between herself and Mr. Field that she came to that house to minister to his well-being, and that her authority was to be paramount j in all details that concerned his comfort.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1020
