Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “Of course I could. I don’t remember ever seeing anything of that sort before, but I don’t believe that anybody could have done it better. I admired you more than anything just then, you know.” She laughed once more as she added the last words.

  “Oh, I don’t expect you to go on admiring me. I’m quite satisfied, and grateful, and all that.”

  “I’m glad you’re so easily satisfied. Couldn’t we talk seriously about something or other? It seems to me that we’ve been chaffing for half an hour, haven’t we?”

  “It hasn’t been all chaff, Miss Bowring,” said Johnstone. “At least, not on my side. “

  “Then I’m sorry,” Clare answered. They relapsed into silence, as they walked their beat, to and fro. The sun had gone down, and it was already twilight on that side of the mountains. The rain had cooled the air, and the far land to southward was darkly distinct beyond the purple water. It was very chilly, and Clare was without a shawl, and Johnstone was hatless, but neither of them noticed that it was cool. Johnstone was the first to speak.

  “Is this sort of thing to go on for ever, Miss Bowring?” he asked gravely.

  “What?” But she knew very well what he meant.

  “This — this very odd footing we are on, you and I — are we never going to get past it?”

  “Oh — I hope not,” answered Clare, cheerfully. “I think it’s very pleasant, don’t you? And most original. We are intimate enough to say all sorts of things, and I’m your enemy, and you say you are my friend. I can’t imagine any better arrangement. We shall always laugh when we think of it — even years hence. You will be going away in a few days, and we shall stay here into the summer and we shall never see each other again, in all probability. We shall always look back on this time — as something quite odd, you know. “

  “You are quite mistaken if you think that we shall never meet again,” said Johnstone.

  “I mean that it’s very unlikely. You see we don’t go home very often, and when we do we stop with friends in the country. We don’t go much into society. And the rest of the time we generally live in Florence.”

  “There is nothing to prevent me from coming to Florence — or living there, if I choose.”

  “Oh no — I suppose not. Except that you would be bored to death. It’s not very amusing, unless you happen to be fond of pictures, and you never said you were.”

  “I should go to see you.”

  “Oh — yes — you could call, and of course if we were at home we should be very glad to see you. But that would only occupy about half an hour of one day. That isn’t much.”

  “I mean that I should go to Florence simply for the sake of seeing you, and seeing you often — all the time, in fact.”

  “Dear me! That would be a great deal, wouldn’t it? I thought you meant just to call, don’t you know?”

  “I’m in earnest, though it sounds very funny, I dare say,” said Johnstone.

  “It sounds rather mad,” answered Clare, laughing a little. “I hope you won’t do anything of the kind, because I wouldn’t see you more than once or twice. I’d have headaches and colds and concerts — all the things one has when one isn’t at home to people. But my mother would be delighted. She likes you tremendously, you know, and you could go about to galleries together and read Ruskin and Browning — do you know the Statue and the Bust? And you could go and see Casa Guidi, where the Brownings lived, and you could drive up to San Miniato, and then, you know, you could drive up again and read more Browning and more Ruskin. I’m sure you would enjoy it to any extent. But I should have to go through a terrific siege of colds and headaches. It would be rather hard on me.”

  “And harder on me,” observed Brook, “and quite fearful for Mrs. Bowring.”

  “Oh no! She would enjoy every minute of it. You forget that she likes you.”

  “You are afraid I should forget that you don’t.”

  “I almost — oh, a long way from quite! I almost liked you yesterday when you thrashed the carter and tied him up so neatly. It was beautifully done — all those knots! I suppose you learned them on board of the yacht, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve yachted a good deal,” said Brook.

  “Generally with that party?” inquired Clare.

  “No. That was the first time. My father has an old tub he goes about in, and we sometimes go together.”

  “Is he coming here in his ‘old tub’?”

  “Oh no — he’s lent her to a fellow who has taken her off to Japan, I believe.”

  “Japan! Is it safe? In an ‘old tub’!”

  “Oh, well — that’s a way of talking, you know. She’s a good enough boat, you know. My father went to New York in her, last year. She’s a steamer, you know. I hate steamers. They are such dirty noisy things! But of course if you are going a long way, they are the only things.”

  He spoke in a jerky way, annoyed and discomfited by her forcing the conversation off the track. Though he was aware that he had gone further than he intended, when he proposed to spend the winter in Florence. Moreover, he was very tenacious by nature, and had rarely been seriously opposed during his short life. Her persistent refusal to tell him the cause of her deep-rooted dislike exasperated him, while her frank and careless manner and good-fellowship fascinated him more and more.

  “Tell me all about the yacht,” she said. “I’m sure she is a beauty, though you call her an old tub.”

  “I don’t want to talk about yachts,” he answered, returning to the attack in spite of her. “I want to talk about the chances of seeing you after we part here.”

  “There aren’t any,” replied the young girl carelessly. “What is the name of the yacht?”

  “Very commonplace— ‘Lucy,’ that’s all. I’ll make chances if there are none—”

  “You mustn’t say that ‘Lucy’ is commonplace. That’s my mother’s name.”

  “I beg your pardon. I couldn’t know that. It always struck me that it wasn’t much of a name for a yacht, you know. That was all I meant. He’s a queer old bird, my father; he always says he took it from the Bride of Lammermoor, Heaven knows why. But please — I really can’t go away and feel that I’m not to see you again soon. You seem to think that I’m chaffing. I’m not. I’m very serious. I like you very much, and I don’t see why one should just meet and then go off, and let that be the end — do you?”

  “I don’t see why not,” exclaimed Clare, hating the unexpected longing she felt to agree with him, and tell him to come and stay in Florence as much as he pleased. “Come — it’s too cold here. I must be going in.”

  CHAPTER IX

  BROOK JOHNSTONE HAD never been in the habit of observing his sensations nor of paying any great attention to his actions. He was not at all an actor, as Clare believed him to be, and the idea that he could ever have taken pleasure in giving pain would have made him laugh. Possibly, it would have made him very angry, but it certainly had no foundation at all in fact. He had been liked, loved, and made much of, not for anything he had ever taken the trouble to do, but partly for his own sake, and partly on account of his position. Such charm as he had for women lay in his frankness, good humour, and simplicity of character. That he had appeared to be changeable in his affection was merely due to the fact that he had never been in love. He vaguely recognised the fact in his inner consciousness, though he would have said that he had been in love half a dozen times; which only amounted to saying that women he had liked had been in love with him or had thought that they were, or had wished to have it thought that he loved them or had perhaps, like poor Lady Fan, been willing to risk a good deal on the bare chance of marrying one of the best of society’s matches in the end. He was too young to look upon such affairs very seriously. When he had been tired of the game he had not lacked the courage to say so, and in most cases he had been forgiven. Lady Fan might prove an exception, but he hoped not. He was enormously far removed from being a saint, it is true, but it is due to him to repeat that he had drawn the line rigidly a
t a certain limit, and that all women beyond that line had been to him as his own mother, in thought and deed. Let those who have the right to cast stones — and the cruelty to do so — decide for themselves whether Brook Johnstone was a bad man at heart, or not. It need not be hinted that a proportion of the stone-throwing Pharisees owe their immaculate reputation to their conspicuous lack of attraction; the little band has a place apart and they stand there and lapidate most of us, and secretly wish that they had ever had the chance of being as bad as we are without being found out. But the great army of the pure in heart are mixed with us sinners in the fight, and though they may pray for us, they do not carp at our imperfections — and occasionally they get hit by the Pharisees just as we do, being rather whiter than we and therefore offering a more tempting mark for a jagged stone or a handful of pious mud. You may know the Pharisee by his intimate knowledge of the sins he has never committed.

  Besides, though the code of honour is not worth much as compared with the Ten Commandments, it is notably better than nothing, in the way of morality. It will keep a man from lying and evil speaking as well as from picking and stealing, and if it does not force him to honour all women as angels, it makes him respect a very large proportion of them as good women and therefore sacred, in a very practical way of sacredness. Brook Johnstone always was very careful in all matters where honour and his own feeling about honour were concerned. For that reason he had told Clare that he had never done anything very bad, whereas what she had seen him do was monstrous in her eyes. She had not reflected that she knew nothing about Lady Fan; and if she had heard half there was to be known she would not have understood. That night on the platform Lady Fan had given her own version of what had taken place on the Acropolis at sunset, and Brook had not denied anything. Clare did not reflect that Lady Fan might very possibly have exaggerated the facts very much in her statement of them, and that at such a time Brook was certainly not the man to argue the case, since it had manifestly been his only course to take all the apparent blame on himself. Even if he had known that Clare had heard the conversation, he could not possibly have explained the matter to her — not even if she had been an old woman — without telling all the truth about Lady Fan, and he was too honourable a man to do that, under any conceivable circumstances.

  He was decidedly and really in love with the girl. He knew it, because what he felt was not like anything he had ever felt before. It was anything but the pleasurable excitement to which he was accustomed. There might have been something of that if he had received even the smallest encouragement. But, do what he would, he could find none. The attraction increased, and the encouragement was daily less, he thought. Clare occasionally said things which made him half believe that she did not wholly dislike him. That was as much as he could say. He cudgelled his brains and wrung his memory to discover what he could have done to offend her, and he could not remember anything — which was not surprising. It was clear that she had never heard of him before he had come to Amalfi. He had satisfied himself of that by questions, otherwise he would naturally enough have come near the truth and guessed that she must have known of some affair in which he had been concerned, which she judged harshly from her own point of view.

  He was beginning to suffer, and he was not accustomed to suffering, least of all to any of the mental kind, for his life had always gone smoothly. He had believed hitherto that most people exaggerated, and worried themselves unnecessarily, but when he found it hard to sleep, and noticed that he had a dull, unsatisfied sort of misery with him all day long, he began to understand. He did not think that Clare could really enjoy teasing him, and, besides, it was not like mere teasing, either. She was evidently in earnest when she repeated that she did not like him. He knew her face when she was chaffing, and her tone, and the little bending of the delicate, swan-like throat, too long for perfect beauty, but not for perfect grace. When she was in earnest, her head rose, her eyes looked straight before her, and her voice sank to a graver note. He knew all the signs of truth, for with her it was always very near the surface, dwelling not in a deep well, but in clear water, as it were, open to the sky. Her truth was evidently truth, and her jesting was transparent as a child’s.

  It looked a hopeless case, but he had no intention of considering it without hope, nor any inclination to relinquish his attempts. He did not tell himself in so many words that he wished to marry her, and intended to marry her, and would marry her, if it were humanly possible, and he assuredly made no such promises to himself. Nor did he look at her as he had looked at women in whom he had been momentarily interested, appreciating her good points of face and figure, cataloguing and compiling her attractions so as to admire them all in turn, forget none, and receive their whole effect.

  He had a restless, hungry craving that left him no peace, and that seemed to desire only a word, a look, the slightest touch of sympathy, to be instantly satisfied. And he could not get from her one softened glance, nor one sympathetic pressure of the hand, nor one word spoken more gravely than another, except the assurance of her genuine dislike.

  That was the only thing he had to complain of, but it was enough. He could not reproach her with having encouraged him, for she had told him the truth from the first. He had not quite believed her. So much the worse for him. If he had, and if he had gone to Naples to wait for his people, all this would not have happened, for he had not fallen in love at first sight. A fortnight of daily and almost hourly intercourse was very good and reasonable ground for being in love.

  He grew absent-minded, and his pipe went out unexpectedly, which always irritated him, and sometimes he did not take the trouble to light it again. He rose at dawn and went for long walks in the hills, with the idea that the early air and the lofty coolness would do him good, and with the acknowledged intention of doing his walking at an hour when he could not possibly be with Clare. For he could not keep away from her, whether Mrs. Bowring were with her or not. He was too much a man of the world to sit all day long before her, glaring at her in shy silence, as a boy might have done, and as he would have been content to do; so he took immense pains to be agreeable, when her mother was present, and Mrs. Bowring liked him, and said that he had really a most extraordinary talent for conversation. It was not that he ever said anything very memorable; but he talked most of the time, and always pleasantly, telling stories about people and places he had known, discussing the lighter books of the day, and affecting that profound ignorance of politics which makes some women feel at their ease, and encourages amusing discussion.

  Mrs. Bowring watched him when she was there with a persistency which might have made him nervous if he had not been wholly absorbed in her daughter. She evidently saw something in him which reminded her of some one or something. She had changed of late, and Clare was beginning to think that she must be ill, though she scouted the suggestion, and said that she was growing daily stronger. She had altogether relaxed her vigilance with regard to the two young people, and seemed willing that they should go where they pleased together, and sit alone together by the hour.

  “I dare say I watched him a good deal at first,” she said to her daughter. “But I have made up my mind about him. He’s a very good sort of young fellow, and I’m glad that you have a companion. You see I can’t walk much, and now that you are getting better you need exercise. After all, one can always trust the best of one’s own people. He’s not falling in love with you, is he, dear? I sometimes fancy that he looks at you as though he were.”

  “Nonsense, mother!” and Clare laughed intentionally. “But he’s very good company.”

  “It would be very unfortunate if he did,” said Mrs. Bowring, looking away, and speaking almost to herself. “I am not sure that we should not have gone away—”

  “Really! If one is to be turned out of the most beautiful place in the world because a young Englishman chooses to stop in the same hotel! Besides, why in the world should he fall in love with me? He’s used to a very different kind of people, I fanc
y.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh — the gay set— ‘a’ gay set, I suppose, for there are probably more than one of them. They are quite different from us, you know.”

  “That is no reason. On the contrary — men like variety and change — change, yes,” repeated Mrs. Bowring, with an odd emphasis. “At all events, child, don’t take a fancy to him!” she added. “Not that I’m much afraid of that. You are anything but ‘susceptible,’ my dear!” she laughed faintly.

  “You need not be in the least afraid,” answered Clare. “But, after all, mother — just supposing the case — I can’t see why it should be such an awful calamity if we took a fancy to each other. We belong to the same class of people, if not to the same set. He has enough money, and I’m not absolutely penniless, though we are as poor as church mice—”

  “For Heaven’s sake, don’t suggest such a thing!” cried Mrs. Bowring.

  Her face was white, and her lips trembled. There was a frightened look in her pale eyes, and she turned her face quickly to her daughter, and quickly away again.

  “Mother!” exclaimed the young girl, in surprise. “What in the world is the matter? I was only laughing — besides—” she stopped, puzzled. “Tell me the truth, mother,” she continued suddenly. “You know about his people — his father is some connection of — of your first husband — there’s some disgraceful story about them — tell me the truth. Why shouldn’t I know?”

  “I hope you never will!” answered Mrs. Bowring, in a low voice that had a sort of horror in it.

  “Then there is something?” Clare herself turned a little paler as she asked the question.

  “Don’t ask me — don’t ask me!”

  “Something disgraceful?” The young girl leaned forward as she spoke, and her eyes were wide and anxious, forcing her mother to speak.

  “Yes — no,” faltered Mrs. Bowring. “Nothing to do with this one — something his father did long ago.”