“You shall go wherever you like. You shall be captain and commander of the Jersey Lily,” answered, bending down to kiss the beautiful hand that moved in slow measure, waving a feather fan. “She shall sail wherever you order her.”
They went into the house after this, and found Rosa Gresham yawning over her novel, and the poodle yawning on his bearskin rug. Nothing could have been less romantic than this final wooing; and if Gerard had not been too self-absorbed to observe keenly, he must have been struck by the contrast between Mrs. Champion’s manner to-night and in old days in Hertford Street.
They drove through the dust and shabbiness of the outskirts of Florence next day, and up to the hill-top, where Fiesole, the mother city, hangs like an eagle’s nest against a background of cloudless blue.
The day was steeped in sunshine and balmiest air, and it was a happiness to escape from Lenten Florence, with her solemn bells, to this winding road which went climbing upward by terraced gardens, and cypress hedges, and banks that glowed with tulips and anemones, and fields where the young corn shone tender-green in the sunlight.
Here, while the horses rested, Mrs. Gresham went to explore the cathedral, leaving Edith and Gerard free to climb the steep path to the little grove on the top of the hill, where a steep flight of rugged stone steps lead up to the Franciscan convent and the church of St. Alessandro. Slowly, and very slowly, Gerard mounted that stony way, leaning on Edith Champion’s arm, with sorely labouring breath. He stopped, breathless and exhausted, in front of an open shop, where an old man was mending shoes, who at once laid down his work, and brought out a chair for the tired Englishman. Edith entreated him to go no further, tried to persuade him that the view was quite as fine from the point they had reached as from the summit, but he persisted, and after resting for a few minutes, he tossed a five franc piece to the civil cobbler — leaving him overpowered at the largeness of the donation — and went labouring up the few remaining yards to the dusty little terrace, where a group of noisy Germans and a group of equally noisy Americans were expatiating upon the panorama in front of them.
He sank panting upon the rough wooden bench, and Edith sat by his side in silence, holding his hand, which was cold and damp.
A deadly chill crept into her heart as she sat there, hand in hand with the man whose life was so soon to be joined with her life. The same vague horror had crept over her two days ago, when she had stood face to face with her lover in the clear afternoon light, and had seen the ravages which less than a year had made in his countenance — had seen that which her fear told her was the stamp of death.
CHAPTER XXVIII. “COULD TWO DAYS LIVE AGAIN OF THAT DEAD YEAR.”
There were necessary delays which postponed the marriage till the end of the coming Easter week, and the panic caused by tolling bells and torchlight funerals having passed away, Gerard was less impatient, willing indeed that events should follow a natural course. Yet although the fever of impatience had spent itself, there was no looking backward, no remorseful thought of her whose character would be blasted for ever by this act of his, or of the unborn child whose future he might have shielded from the chances of evil. Not once did he contemplate the possibility of obtaining his release from Edith Champion, by a full confession of that other tie which to her womanly feeling would have been an insuperable bar to their marriage. All finer scruples, all the instincts of honour and of pity were lost in that tremendous self-love which, seeing life shrinking to narrowest limits, was intent on one thing only, to make the most of the life that remained to him, the life which was all.
He rallied considerably after that day at Fiesole, and was equal to being taken about from church to church by Edith and her eager cousin, who could not have enough of the Florentine churches in this sacred season. He met them at the great door of the cathedral on Good Friday, after they had satisfied their scruples as pious Anglicans by attending a service at the English church — service which Rosa denounced as hatefully low — and he went with them to hear a litany at the altar under Brunelleschi’s dome, a solemn and awe-inspiring function, a double semicircle of priests and choristers within the marble dado and glass screen that enclosed the altar — lugubrious chanting unrelieved by the organ — and at the close of the service a sudden startling clangour.
Then the doors open, and priests and acolytes pour out in swift succession, priests in rich vestments, violet and gold, scarlet tippets, white fur, black stoles, a motley train, vanishing quickly towards the sacristy.
And now the crowd troop into the sanctuary, and ascend the steps of the altar, Gerard and his companions following, he curious only, they deeply impressed by that old-world ceremonial. And one by one devout worshippers bend to kiss the jasper slab of the altar, on which stands a golden cross, richly jewelled, which contains a fragment of that cross whereon the Man of Sorrows died for sinful, sorrowing man.
“I hope it was not wrong of me to do as the others did,” said Edith presently, as they left the cathedral, her eyes still dim with tears.
“Wrong!” ejaculated Rosa, who had performed the Romanistic rite with unction. “No, indeed. I look forward to the day when we shall have relics in our own churches.”
On Holy Saturday there was the spectacular display in front of the cathedra], and at this Gerard was constrained to assist, and to sit in a sunlit window for nearly an hour, watching the humours of the good-tempered crowd in the Piazza, while the great black tabernacle, covered with artificial roses, squibs, and Catherine wheels, awaited the sacred flame which was to set all its fireworks exploding — flame which descended in a lightning flash on the wings of a dove from the lamp of the altar within the cathedral, sacred light which a pious pilgrim had carried unextinguished from the temple in Jerusalem to this Tuscan city. The dove came rushing down the invisible guiding wire at the first stroke of noon, and then with much talk and laughter the crowd melted out of the Piazza, and the daily traffic was resumed, and Mrs. Champion’s landau came to the door of the umbrella shop over which she had hired her window, and they drove away to the Via Tornabuoni, and the house of Doney, where luncheon had been ordered and a room engaged for them, luncheon at which Mrs. Champion’s powdered slave officiated, and got in the way of the brisk waiters, to whom his slow and solemn movements were an abomination. Only out of England could there come such sad and solemn bearing, thought the waiters.
On Sunday there was High Mass at the Church of S. Maria Annunziata, and Gerard and the two ladies had seats under the dome, where Mozart’s Twelfth Mass was nobly sung by the best choir in Florence, and where priests in vestments of gold and silver, flashing with jewels, gorgeous with embroidery, officiated at the high altar; priests whose splendid raiment suggested the Priesthood of Egypt, in the days when Egyptian splendour was the crowning magnificence of the earth, to he imitated by younger nations, but never to be surpassed.
The music and the splendour, the strain on eye and ear wearied Gerard Hillersdon. He gave a sigh of relief as he took his seat in the landau opposite Edith and Mrs. Gresham, who regaled them with her raptures about the choir, the voices — that exquisite treble — that magnificent bass. She descanted on every number in the Mass, being one of those persons who wear every subject to tatters.
“And now I think we have had enough of churches,” said Gerard, “and we may spend the rest of our lives in the sunshine till we sail away to the Greek Archipelago.”
“And till I go back to Suffolk,” sighed Mrs. Gresham. “I shall be very glad to see my dear good man again; but, oh, how dismal Sandyholme will be after Florence! And you two happy creatures will be sailing from island to island, and your life will be one delicious dream of summer. Well, I can never be grateful enough to you, Edith, for having let me see Italy. Robert Browning said that if his heart were cut open Italy would be found written upon it; and so I’m sure it would upon mine, if any one thought such an insignificant person’s heart worth looking at. And Florence, dear Florence!”
“And the Via Tornabuoni where all the fa
shionable shops are — and Doney’s, and the English tea-parties, and the English Church. I think these things would be found to hold the highest rank in your Florentine heart, Mrs. Gresham, though they don’t belong to the Florence of the Medici,” said Gerard, glad to damp middle-aged enthusiasm.
“That shows how very little you understand my character, Mr. Hillersdon. As for the shops — they are very smart and artistic, but I would give all the shops in the Via Tornabuoni for Whiteley’s. I adore Florence most of all for her historical associations. To think that Catherine de Medici was reigning Duchess in that noble Palazzo Vecchio — who were the Vecchios, by-the-by? — some older family, I suppose — and that Dante died here, and that Giordino Bruno was burnt here, and Rossini lived here, and Browning! Such a flood of delightful memories!” concluded Rosa with a sigh.
The preparations for the wedding hung fire somehow. The day was again postponed. Mrs. Champion had discovered that it would be impossible for her to marry without an interview with her solicitor, and that gentleman had telegraphed his inability to arrive in Florence before the end of the following week.
“He is my trustee,” she explained to Gerard, “and I am so unbusinesslike myself that I am peculiarly dependent upon him. I know that I am rich, and that my income is derived from things in the City, railways and foreign loans, don’t you know. I write cheques for whatever I want, and Mr. Maddickson has never accused me of being extravagant, so I have no doubt I am very well off. But if I were to marry you without his arranging my affairs I don’t know what entanglement might happen.”
“What entanglement could there be? Am I not rich enough to live without touching your fortune?”
“My dear Gerard, I didn’t mean any doubt of you — not for one moment — but the more money we have the more necessary it must be to arrange things legally, must it not?”
“I don’t think so. To my mind we are as free as the birds of the air, and all these delays wound me.”
“Don’t say that, Gerard. Yon know how firmly I made up my mind not to marry for a year after poor James’ death; and if I give way upon that point to gratify a whim of yours —— — —”
“A whim! How lightly you speak! Perhaps you would rather we never married at all.”
He was white with anger. She reddened and averted her face.
“Is it so?” he asked.
“No, no, of course not,” she answered, “only I don’t want to be hustled into marriage.”
“Hustled, no, but life is short. If you can’t make up your mind to marry me within a fortnight from this day, we will cry quits for my three years’ slavery, and will bid each other good-bye. There is a woman in England who won’t set up imaginary impediments if I ask her to be my wife.”
His voice broke in a suppressed sob as he spoke the last words. Ah, that woman in England, that woman for whom love had been more than honour, that woman who was to be the mother of his child!
“How cruel you are, Gerard!” exclaimed Edith, scared at the thought of losing him; “no doubt there are hundreds of women in England who would like to marry you, with your wealth, just as there are hundreds of men who would pretend to be passionately in love with me, for the same motive. We can be married within a fortnight, I have no doubt. I’ll telegraph again to Mr. Maddickson, and tell him he must come. I am having my wedding-gown made. You would not like me to be married in black.”
“I don’t know that I should care. I want to make an end of senseless delays. The Jersey Lily is at Spezia, ready for us. Jermyn is to be here this afternoon.”
“Jermyn? How strange that you should be so fond of that uncanny personage.”
“I never said I was fond of him. He amuses me, that’s all. As for his uncanniness, that’s a mere fashion. I believe he has left off reading fate in faces. He is too clever to ride any hobby to death.”
“And he really got nothing for his fate-reading?”
“He got into society. I think that was all he wanted.”
“Bring him to dinner this evening, and he can tell our fortunes again, if he likes.”
“Not for me. I prefer a happy ignorance.”
Justin Jermyn brought a considerable relief to that party of three which had begun to feel the shadow of an overpowering ennui, Edith ashamed to be sentimental in Rosa Gresham’s presence, Rosa infinitely bored, and boring the other two. Mrs. Champion had shrunk from inviting her Florentine friends to meet her betrothed. He looked so wretchedly ill, his humours were so fitful and capricious, that she felt in somewise ashamed of her choice. She could not tell these people how handsome, how brilliant, how charming he had been two or three years ago. She could not inform the world that this intended marriage was the outcome of a girlish romance. She preferred to keep her little Florentine world in complete ignorance of the approaching event. It would be time enough for them to know when she and Gerard were wafted far away on the white wings of the Jersey Lily. And later, when he should have recovered his health and good looks, and easy, equable manners, later, when he and she had become leading lights in London society, she would be proud of him and their romantic union.
When he recovered his health? There were moments in which she asked herself shudderingly, would that ever be? He pretended to be confident about himself. He told her that to live he needed only happiness and a balmy climate; but she knew that it was a feature of that fatal malady for the patient to be hopeful in the very teeth of despair; and she had seen many indications that had filled her with alarm.
“How I wish you would consult Dr. Wilson! “she said one day, when he sat breathless on the marble bench by the fountain, after ten minutes’ quiet walking. “He has immense experience in — in — all chest complaints. I am sure he would be of use to you.”
‘“I have my own doctor in London,” Gerard answered curtly. “Your Florentine doctor cannot tell me anything about myself that I don’t know; and as for treatment, my valet knows what to do for me. I shall be well when we get further south. Your Florence is as treacherous as her Medicis. The winds from the Apennines are laden with evil.”
Jermyn, under existing circumstances, was a decided acquisition.
His familiarity with Florence astonished and charmed the two ladies. He knew every church, every palace, every picture, the traditions of every great family that had helped to make the history of the city. Knowledge like this makes every stone eloquent He was asked to join in all their saunterings and in all their drives, and his presence gave an air of freshness to the simplest pleasures — to the afternoon tea in the garden, and the long evenings in the salon, when Mrs. Gresham played Chopin and Schubert to her heart’s content, while the other three sat afar off and talked.
“My cousin is better than an orchestrion,” said Mrs. Champion, “one has only to turn the handle and she will discourse excellent music the whole evening, and forgive us for not listening to her.”
“Yes, but I know that in her inmost heart Mrs. Gresham is pitying us for having a sense wanting,” said Jermyn, and then went on with his talk, caring no more for the most delicate rendering of a Rubinstein reverie, than if it had been a hurdy-gurdy grinding a tuneless polka in the road beyond the garden.
* * * * *
They all went to Spezia to look at the yacht, a railroad journey of some hours, through a hot, arid country, which tried Gerard severely, and bored the other three.
“Who would care to live at Pisa?” said Jermyn, while the train was stopping in the station outside that ancient city. “After one had looked at the Cathedral and Baptistry, the leaning tower and the Campo Santo one would feel that life was done. There is nothing more. And it is a misfortune for everybody but the Cook’s tourist that the four things are close together. One can’t even pretend to take a long time in seeing them.”
Mrs. Champion professed herself delighted with the yacht. She explored every cabin and corner. There was a French chef engaged, and an Italian butler, everything was ready for a tour in the Mediterranean, and the Mediterranean as see
n to-day in this sunlit harbour of Spezia, seemed a sea that could do no wrong. Jermyn showed Mrs. Champion her boudoir-dressing-room, with its ingenious receptacles for her gowns and other finery, and the cabin for her maid — an infinitesimal cabin, but full of comforts. He showed her the grand piano, the electric lamps, all the luxuries of modern yachting. There was to be no roughing it on board the Jersey Lily. The arrangements of this three-hundred-ton yacht left nothing to be regretted after the most perfect of continental hotels.
Edith was enchanted with everything; but even in the midst of her enthusiasm a chilling fear came over her at the thought of Gerard lying ill in that luxurious cabin, with its silken curtains and satin pillows, its white and gold Worcester, in which porcelain was made to imitate carved ivory. Sickness there — death there — in that narrow space tricked put for the Loves and Graces — disease, with its loathly details, playing havoc with all the beauty of life, illness tending inevitably towards death. She turned from that costly prettiness with a vague horror.
“Don’t you like the style?” asked Jermyn, quick to see that revulsion of feeling.
“No; it is much too fine. I think a yacht should be simpler. One does not want the colouring of the Arabian. Nights on the sea. Picture this cabin in a tempest — all this ornamentation tossed and flying about — a tawdry chaos.”
She glanced at Gerard, who stood by, unconcerned in the discussion, obviously caring very little whether she were pleased or not, looking with dull indifferent eye upon the arrangements which had been made for his wedding tour. He had these occasional lapses of abstraction, in which he seemed to drift out of the common life of those around him; moods of sullen melancholy, which made Edith Champion shiver.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 929