It’s nonsense, and you mustn’t—” He contrived to utter another laugh. “You are an astonishing young woman, I must say! Is your conception of ethics based solely upon the pleasing of the nearest available man?”
“Go on,” she said, not moving, nor letting her eyes fall from his. “‘The nearest available man,’ you say. Very well — insult me all you please! We both know that pleasing you is all I care about; but something you don’t know is that I’ve already pleased you more than anyone else ever did. I know it, though; and do you think that while I have that in my mind I’ll ever give up going on trying to please you? Do you?”
He seemed to struggle with an increasing pain. “Upon my word, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” she said, and her eyes grew brighter; her voice was tremulous but happy. “We both know.”
“Indeed I — I” Stammering, he made an effort to rise from his chair; but he had no strength, and, in difficulties with the table, could not at once get upon his feet. His sister, coming into the corridor at that moment, ran to help him.
“Charles!” she cried. “You might have fallen! Why didn’t you ask Miss Ambler to help you?” Claire answered her, but kept her eyes upon the flushed and panting invalid. “He knew I wouldn’t,” she said. “Not to help him get away!” And at that the stout and hearty Miss Orbison, after a sharper glance at both of them, looked seriously disturbed.
XVII
CLAIRE WAS TO see this troubled look upon the ruddy face of the English spinster repeated frequently. “What’s the matter with that woman?” the girl asked her mother one day in their small salon. “She looked so reliable and solid when they first came here — not that she looked happy, of course, if you caught her off her guard when her brother wasn’t looking — but anyhow she hadn’t that fretting expression you see about her eyes and mouth so much lately. It can’t be because Mr. Orbison’s health is worse, because it isn’t; he’s just the same.” Mrs. Ambler sighed. “I shouldn’t think one would need to seek far for the reason a sister would look troubled with a brother in that shattered condition — especially when the brother’s as lovely a man as hers is. I’ve discovered that since we’ve begun to see so much of them. He is lovely.”
“Yes,” Claire said absently. “But I meant something different — that expression she’s got just lately.”
“I haven’t noticed it.”
“Perhaps she only has it when she looks at me. Mother, you don’t think—”
“I don’t think what?”
Claire had paused, gazing out of the window dreamily; and her mother repeated the question.
“What is it I don’t think?”
“You don’t think that sometimes — they avoid us?”
“Good gracious!” Mrs. Ambler exclaimed, highly amused. “They don’t get much chance! You’ve taken pretty good care of that, I must say! We go to the refectory when they do; we come out to the corridor when they do; we go out to the garden with them; we’re everywhere that they are, at the same hour and in the same place. If we were a house party of four we couldn’t well see more of them, and so how could they avoid us, even if they did want to, poor things!”
“Yes; but that’s the point: Do you think they want to?”
“I haven’t seen any sign of it. They’re always cordial and he’s always interesting. Where’d you get the idea?”
Claire shook her head. “I don’t know, unless it’s that troubled expression she has when she looks at me. Once or twice I’ve thought she wanted to speak to me alone — she had that manner — but she doesn’t. Then of course there’s another thing rather queer.”
“What is it?”
“Well — it could hardly be a coincidence.”
“What couldn’t?”
Claire looked at her mother searchingly. “Have you noticed how much more constantly she’s with him than she was at first?”
“Is she?”
“She’s with him absolutely all the time he’s out of his room. She used to leave him, for an hour or so, quite often; but now she never does. It’s as if she didn’t want to leave him alone — alone with anybody else. I haven’t been alone with him since I don’t know how long!”
“My dear child! Why should you be alone with him? It strikes me you say some pretty personal things to him under conditions that might almost be called semi-public! I don’t know much more you could do if you were alone with him; and the poor man himself looks troubled enough when you do it, as it is!”
“Yes, but—” Claire said dreamily. “Do you think perhaps she has a kind of sisterly jealousy of me?”
“No, I don’t,” Mrs. Ambler replied with emphasis. “She isn’t that type at all. She’s a good woman, generous I’m sure; and she thinks of nothing in the world but her brother’s welfare. By the way, speaking of welfare, the season here is getting rather late. Don’t you think it’s about time we were on our way back to Paris, as we planned? We’ve already been here a month longer than we intended to be when we came.”
“Oh, Paris!” the daughter said impatiently. “I don’t care if I never see Paris again!”
“We can’t stay here into the very hot weather. Nobody does.”
“Yes, but—” Claire murmured, and sat frowning. “Surely she can’t think that keeping me from ever being alone with him would do his welfare any good. I’ve told her myself that I’d do anything in the world for him.”
“You told her that, Claire?”
“Yes,” Claire said, and her softened eyes grew bravely moist, even under her mother’s direct gaze. “I told her I’d give my life to be of any use to him.
Then why does she—”
Mrs. Ambler, herself troubled, shook her head. “I don’t know, Claire.”
“I’m sure she believed me. It’s true — I would give my life in an instant. Mother, she must have believed me!”
This insistence implied a doubt that need not have existed; the Englishwoman had believed her, and at that same hour was forth upon an errand she would otherwise have spared herself. Having left her brother drowsing in his cell, Miss Orbison trudged sturdily through the long stone great street of Raona, passed under the archway of the ancient town gates, and went on for some hundreds of paces beyond the ruined medieval walls. Then she paused at the panelled green doorway of an enclosed garden, and pulled vigorously upon an iron chain. A rusty bell that hung upon a wrought-iron hoop above the door rang as heartily as she seemed to desire.
When the door opened, a swarthy little maid in an old-fashioned Raonese peasant’s costume appeared, a brilliant scarf about her dark head, a striped red-and-white shawl over her black bodice, gay embroideries encrusting her long green skirt. She stood smiling and bowing archly in the doorway. “Buoni, giorno, signora.”
“II signore è in casa?” Miss Orbison asked.
“Si, signora. Prego!” Then the little creature, barefooted, ran up the garden terraces to the white villa above, and disappeared within a Saracen door way. This was the entrance to the studio, Miss Orbison knew, and by the time she had ascended to it, Eugene Rennie had come out of it to welcome her.
“You’re painting?” she asked. “I’m interrupting?”
He would have liked to tell her the truth, which was that he wanted to go on working; but having taken note of her expression, he said that he had finished for the day; and they sat down together upon the wide marble steps of the topmost terrace.
“Something about Charles?” he said.
“Yes.”
“He’s no worse?”
“Of course every hour he’s an hour worse,” she said with a tremor in her voice; but she controlled it manfully. “He doesn’t look worse, hour by hour — he couldn’t well do that — but no matter how he looks, the end of his suffering is always just that much nearer in sight. The pain is never unbearable, and often he’s hardly conscious of it — perhaps because he’s so used to it. The doctors told me precisely how it would be, and everything’s confir
med them; I never doubted they were right. If only that specialist hadn’t told him!” She stretched her gloved hands convulsively in her lap, then sighed loudly and relaxed them. “But there! It’s done, and we have to make the best of it; but that isn’t what I’ve come to you about.”
“You know I’ll do anything,” Rennie said.
“Yes, I know you will. I’m afraid I’m here to ask you to do something difficult.”
“What is it?”
“Do you remember one morning when you and Charles and I were watching Miss Ambler and Don Arturo Liana as they sat by the railing of the hotel garden, and Charles looked so absurdly depressed?”
“Yes; he seemed gloomy about Arturo’s filling Miss Ambler’s heart. I was delighted.”
“I was rather pleased myself, Mr. Rennie. I thought it would be good for him to take a little interest in her, like that.”
“Don’t you think it has?”
“No,” she said. “If it had remained a little interest we’d have been right to be pleased.” She shook her head. “It hasn’t.”
“No?” Rennie looked puzzled. “You don’t think he’s serious about her?”
“I’m afraid he’s dangerously liable to be serious about her.”
“‘Dangerously,’ Miss Orbison? You mean it might be dangerous for him to care for a rather flirtatious and light-headed young creàture who doesn’t care for him?”
“No. It’s because she does care for him.”
Rennie looked astonished. “You think she does?”
“She’s as much as told me so, and she was in earnest. She cares for him as deeply as it’s in her nature to care at her age, I’m quite positive; and that’s what is cruelly dangerous for Charles.”
“You think he could be really in love with her, do you?”
“He’s trying with all his poor broken strength not to be,” she answered unhappily. “Do you understand why he tries not to be in love with her? Do you understand why he mustn’t be, Mr. Rennie?”
“A little — perhaps,” he said doubtfully. “But it’s the very breath of romance to believe that the happiness found in mutual love makes even tragedy celestial.”
Miss Orbison projected an audible sniff from her nostrils. “Yes; it’s the very breath of romance,’ and it’s a wicked nonsense for human beings to believe it enough to act upon it! Don’t you see that Charles understands, and that he’s trying to save himself?”
“From what?”
“From agony, Mr. Rennie. From an absolutely useless and futile agony. We’ll look at it in a plain way — a matter-of-fact way, if you please — without any romance. He’d got through the worst of it when we came here; he’d no chance but to accept, and he was fairly well resigned to it. He’d been through his rebellion and he knew rebellion was no good. Sometimes you could see a little of it left — in his eyes, or in some impatient thing he said; but he’d nevertheless accepted what he knew was absolute and inevitable. He has it fixed in his mind that the end will be in the autumn; October, he thinks — he’s spoken of it several times. Well, he’d made himself almost placid about it. He’d loved life in the natural way most of us love it; but after all he felt he hadn’t a great deal to live for. The war had shut his career off short; and for people near his heart he had only some friends — and me.” She paused for a moment and her stout shoulders stiffened. “Well, a man can bear to die and leave a sister, Mr. Rennie.”
Rennie nodded sympathetically. “Yes.”
“If he had fallen a little in love with this pretty young thing,” she went on, “and if the girl hadn’t cared for him, it wouldn’t have mattered; it might even have helped him not to mind dying. But for him to see that she adores him — and I’m afraid she does — for him to recognize the fact that he cares for her and to find life offering him what he’d believe a glittering, glorious happiness in almost the moment when he has to be done with life forever — oh!” Miss Orbison cried. “That would be horrible, Mr. Rennie!”
“Yes,” Rennie said. “I think it would. The pain would outweigh the happiness.”
“‘Happiness,’ Mr. Rennie? Charles knows it wouldn’t be happiness at all; he knows it would be an unspeakable anguish to take this new beautiful thing into his life only to be wrenched from it! He’s trying so hard to spare himself that. He can bear dying; but he can’t bear dying unbearably! He’s doing everything he can to avoid believing that the girl cares for him and that he cares for her. You see, it’s her caring that is the peril. If he could believe her what we thought her at first, just a light-hearted young coquette flirting with these queer Raonese men and handsome boys like Liana, and not seriously troubling her head about him, he could still keep his grasp upon the resignation he feels slipping from him. It’s she who’s getting it away from him. I’ve done all I could to help him, to give her no opportunities to make him see what he tries so hard not to see. But she makes it more and more clear in spite of me, and in spite of Charles, Mr. Rennie.”
“You depict her as pretty brazenly forward, Miss Orbison.”
But the sturdy Englishwoman was just. “No,” she said. “Those things are different nowadays — customs have changed and anyhow, you see, it’s rather chivalrous of her. I don’t think she understands much about Charles; she doesn’t know his time is so short; but she sees that he’s a cripple and wouldn’t ask anybody to marry him. She does the courting because of that and because she wants to make the sacrifice. I haven’t a doubt she’d eagerly and happily devote her life to nursing him, — indeed I think she’d do anything for him. And she must do something for him, Mr. Rennie. She must!”
“What do you want her to do?” he asked.
Miss Orbison rose. “I want her to let my brother die in peace, Mr. Rennie. Will you ask her? Will you make it clear to her? I’ve tried — but I couldn’t even begin; I’d have done nothing but cry if I’d tried to go any further with her. Will you do it, Mr. Rennie?” In return, he asked her a question as serious. “Do you think it’s possible for anyone to make such a thing clear to a girl of twenty-one in love?”
Miss Orbison looked up at him desperately. “We’ve got to try, haven’t we? Will you try?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll go this afternoon.”
XVIII
HE WATCHED HER short, strong figure as it descended the long flight of steps that separated his garden terraces and led to the green doorway. When she had gone out, he could see her gray felt hat below the top of the wall as she strode on toward the old gates and the town; and he sighed for her and the stout heart she carried so bravely in her stout body. Then he sighed for himself and the disturbing errand she had set him upon, and went indoors to change his clothes.
When he came forth again, he paused at the top of the steps. The point was high, and commanded the immense sweep of that great crescenting mountain coast. Below him the gray road wound out of the towered and cubed and angled stone masses of the town, and passed toward the vast corrugations of the volcano’s buttresses; there were stolid hamlets built of old lava among the convulsive shadows of these harsh slopes; and halfway to the nearest there was a haze of dust upon the road. It was moving toward
Raona, and within it there were glints of glitter and colour. Rennie distinguished the uniforms of mounted carabinieri. He stood looking down as they drew nearer, and he saw that two of the carabinieri rode in advance of a mule cart, with three others riding upon each side of it and two more just behind. Following them, a dozen or more men joggled along upon mules or donkeys, and a straggling little crowd of barefooted peasants ran in the dust — attendant spectators anxious to miss nothing.
Looking down from above, Rennie could see, upon a mattress in the cart, a bandaged figure; and seated upon a stool beside it, a man in gray linen clothes smoked a cigarette. The American recognized him as a friend of his, a Raonese surgeon. Moreover, beside the driver sat a priest.
Rennie ran down the steps, and, as this cortège passed, he detained one of the runners, a villager whom he knew.
“Luigi! For what reason so much excitement? Who has been hurt?”
Luigi wiped his wet brow with a bare forearm. “An accident,” he said, panting. “An accident of a peculiar appearance, it might be thought. This morning some of our people found Don Arturo Liana lying at the foot of the Salto. The Salto is a very bad little cliff — it is little but wicked, and foreigners should not use that path.”
“Liana!” Rennie exclaimed. “Was he badly hurt?”
“Yes, badly. His mother was sent for and she came with the priest, the carabinieri and the doctor from Raona, four hours ago. She has gone ahead in her automobile and they are taking him to the hospital in the cart because he must be kept lying down. Don Arturo talked to the carabinieri and to the doctor; I heard him myself, through a window. He told them he was walking to a meeting at Castrogirone last night, all alone. Ah! I think he should have been more careful! He said he met some men on the path, but in the darkness he could not tell who they were; he said perhaps they had too much wine. Don Arturo is a brave fellow; I willingly say as much as that for him. He is a foreigner from the North; but he understands the customs of our country and of course he would not tell the carabinieri who pushed him off the path.”
“So!” Rennie said. “Who did push him off the path, Luigi?”
Luigi opened his eyes until they showed an extreme amount of white below and above their topaz irises. “‘Pushed,’ signore! Who spoke of any pushing?”
“You did.”
“No, no!” Luigi protested. “When a man has such enemies as those belonging to Don Arturo Liana, no one is foolish enough to say the young gentleman was pushed from anywhere! Excuse, signore!”
Rennie let him go and he ran away, his brown bare feet flitting lightly over the gray dust. He had caught up with the ragged end of the procession before it passed through the gates; but the American went more slowly. Inside the town, he walked first to the wine shop of old Onorati, who had the habit of knowing the truth of whatever happened in Raona; but of course Onorati would not speak plainly to a foreigner of Don Arturo’s fall from the Salto.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 428
