“You must come and stop with us this summer,” said Arden, looking up at him with flushed and happy face. “You know how glad my brother always is to see you. Besides, you are an old friend of my wife’s, if any further reasons are necessary. She wants you to come too.”
“Of course I do,” said Laura, promptly, as she held out her hand.
Strange to say, she had felt far less of that unpleasant, half-timid, half-pained dislike for Ghisleri, since she had grown used to the idea of being Herbert Arden’s wife.
And now that her name was really changed, and she was forever bound to her husband, she felt it not at all. It was strange, considering the circumstances, that she should have the certainty that Arden could and would protect her, come what might. The poor little shrunken frame certainly did not suggest the manly strength to shield a woman in danger, which every woman loves to feel. The thin, white hand would have been but a bundle of threads in Ghisleri’s strong grip. And yet Laura Arden, as she now was to be called, knew that she would trust her husband to take her part and win against a stronger and a worse man than Ghisleri, should she ever be in need; and, what is more, Ghisleri saw that she did, and his admiration rose still higher. There must be something magnificent in a woman who could so wholly forget such outward frailness and deformity in the man she loved, as to forget also that sometimes in life a man’s hand may need that same common brute strength, just to match it against another’s, for a woman’s dear sake. Such love as that, thought Pietro, must be supremely noble, unselfish, and lasting. Being founded upon no outward illusion, there was no reason why anything should undermine it, nor why the foundation itself should ever crumble away.
That was his view, and, on the whole, it was not an unjust one. For the facts were true. If, when they drove away to the station, Herbert Arden had suddenly, by magic, been clothed in the colossal frame and iron strength of San Giacinto himself, Laura would have felt no safer nor more perfectly shielded and guarded from earthly harm than she really did while she was pulling up the window lest her husband should catch cold even in the mild April air, and lovingly arranging the heavy silk scarf about his neck.
They went southward by common consent, as indeed they did everything. They would go to England later in the year, in June perhaps, when it was warmer. In the meanwhile Arden’s brother had offered them his yacht, and they could cruise for a month in the Mediterranean, almost choosing their own climate day by day, and wholly independent of all the manifold annoyances, inconveniences, and positive sufferings which beset the path of young married couples who have not yachts at their disposal. What both most desired was to be alone together, to have enough of each other at last, free from the tiresome daily little crowd of social spectators, and this they could nowhere accomplish so pleasantly and completely as in the luxuriously fitted vessel lent them by Arden’s brother. The latter had not seen fit to come to the wedding, but Arden had in no way taken it amiss, though the world had found plenty to say on the subject, and not by any means to Arden’s credit. The said brother was a decidedly eccentric person of enormous wealth, who hated anything at all resembling publicity or public ceremony, and was, moreover, a very bad correspondent.
“I am very glad to hear of your engagement, my dear old brother,” he wrote. “They say Miss Carlyon is good and beautiful. I have no doubt she is, though I do not at this moment recollect knowing any woman who was both. I have sent the yacht to Naples for you, if you care for a cruise. Keep her as long as you like, and telegraph if you want her sent anywhere else — Nice, for instance, or Venice. Ask your wife to wear the pearls by way of making acquaintance at second hand. They are what I could find. I send a man with them, as they might get lost. Now good-bye, dear boy, enjoy yourself and come to us as soon as you can. Yours ever, Harry.
“P.S. As it is often such a bore to draw money in those funny Italian towns, I enclose a few circular notes which may be useful. Bess and the children are all well and send love and lots of congratulations. I suppose you have written to Uncle Herbert.”
The few circular notes thus casually alluded to amounted to two thousand pounds, and it would be unsafe to speculate on the value of the pearls which the messenger brought on his person and delivered safely into Arden’s hands. “Harry” was not over-lavish, except where his brother was concerned, and always inwardly regretted that Herbert needed so little and insisted upon living within his modest income. To “give things to Herbert” was one of the few real pleasures he extracted from his great fortune. On the present occasion Arden was glad to accept the money, for he had the very most vague notions of the expense of married life, and had anticipated real economy during his honeymoon, which, of course, could not be quite as pleasant to Laura as having plenty of money to spend. That last little difficulty being removed, he felt that he could give himself up light-hearted to the idyl of perfect love which Laura had brought into his existence.
And forthwith the idyl began, delicate, gentle, lovely as love’s life can be where soul and heart are in harmony, heart to soul, while purity teaches innocence what it is to be man and wife.
The harmony was real. Laura and her husband had much in common, intellectually and morally. Not, indeed, that she made any pretence to superior intelligence or extended culture. Even had she possessed very remarkable capabilities, the surroundings in which she had been brought up had not been of a nature to develop them beyond the average. But she was not especially gifted, except perhaps in having a good memory and a somewhat unusually sound judgment in most matters. Yet she was not without taste, and such as she had was not only both healthy and refined, but coincided to an extraordinary degree with Arden’s own. Both liked the same authors, the same general kind of art, the same things in nature, and very generally the same people. Both were perhaps at that time somewhat morbidly inclined to a sort of semi-transcendentalism, Arden by nature and circumstances, and Laura by attraction. It must not be supposed that they went to any lengths in that direction. They did not speculate on spiritual marriage, nor did they agree with that famous philosopher who at the last was sure that the earth was turning into a bun and the sea into lemonade in order that man might eat, drink, and be happy without effort. They did not pursue improbable theories nor offer subtle perfumes before the altar of impossibility. But they felt a certain almost unnatural indifference to the concrete world, and lived in a world of ideas, thoughts, and affections which were quite their own. It was impossible to predict whether such an existence would last, or whether it would ultimately change into one more evidently stable, if also less removed from earth. For the present, at least, both were indescribably happy.
The question how far it is possible for one of two loving beings to forget and grow unconscious of very great physical defect in the other is in itself interesting as showing how far, in a well-organised nature, the immaterial can get the better of grosser things. To explain what Laura felt would be to explain the deepest impulses of humanity, and those may attempt it who feel themselves equal to the task and are attracted by it. The fact, as such, is undeniable. On the whole, too, it may be said that there is no great reason why a very refined intelligence should not overlook material considerations as completely as in the majority of cases the more coarsely planned consciousness forgets the existence of intellectual and moral deformity.
Such extreme refinement may not be durable. There is a refinement of nature, inborn, delicate, and sensitive, and there is a refinement which depends for its existence upon youth and innocence. Laura possessed all the latter, and something of the former as well. She would have been shocked and deeply wounded had she been told that she had married Herbert Arden out of pity, and yet pity had undeniably given the first impulse to her love.
The circumstances, too, were favourable for its growth. Neither had felt much regret in leaving Rome. Apart from her affection for her mother, Laura had never found much that was congenial in the city in which she had been brought up as though it had been her birthplace. As for Arden himself
, he was too much accustomed to travelling from place to place to prefer one city to another in any great degree. So the two were alone together and desired nothing beyond what they had, which, perhaps, is the ideal condition for lovers. To most people, however, the honeymoon is a terrible trial — probably because most young couples are not very desperately in love with each other. They wander aimlessly about in all directions, a sort of joint sacrifice, perpetually tortured and daily offered up on the altar of the diabolical courier, crushed beneath the ubiquitous Juggernaut hotel-keeper, bound continually in new and arid places to be torn by the vulture guide, and ultimately sent home more or less penniless, quite temperless, and perhaps permanently disgusted with one another and with married life. And yet the absurd farce is kept up, in ninety and nine cases out of a hundred, because custom sanctions it — as though the sanction of custom were necessary when two people wish to be harmlessly happy in their own way.
But with the Ardens it was quite different. They were quite beyond the regions of the guide, the courier, and the hotel-keeper, and they loved each other so much that neither ever irritated the other, a condition of existence probably closely resembling that of the saints in paradise.
Nothing could exceed Laura’s watchfulness and care where Arden’s health was concerned, and, fortunately for her, he was not one of those men who resent being constantly taken care of. Indeed, poor man, he needed all she gave him in that way, for the winter season with its unusual gaiety and the necessary exposure to a certain amount of night air in all weathers, had severely tried his constitution. But now the sea and the southern sun strengthened him, and sometimes there was even something like healthy colour in his face. Happiness, too, is said to be a good medicine, better perhaps than any in the world, and Arden had his share of it, and a most abundant share. Never, he said to himself, had a man been so blessed as he, nor at a time when he so little expected blessings, having made up his mind that all he could hope for had already been given him in this world. He almost forgot that he was a cripple, as he sat in his deep cane chair by Laura’s side, looking from her to the dancing light on the water, and from the blue water to her dark eyes again. He seemed to go every day through a round of beauty, from one delicious vision to another, returning between each to that one of all others which he loved best, and knew to be all his own. And those same eyes of Laura’s grew less sad than they had been in the beginning. The sunlight got into them, as into dark jewels, and made stars of light about their central depths. The soft wind blew on her clear white cheek and lent her natural, healthy pallor a warmth it had not before. Her very step grew more elastic, and the firm, well-shaped hands seemed more than ever strong. Almost beautiful before, there were moments when she was quite beautiful indeed, as innocent girlhood changed to pure womanhood in the sweet southern air.
Laura read aloud a great deal in the intervals of conversation, and the days passed almost too quickly. The vessel was a large steam-yacht, of the modern type, comfortable in the extreme, and capable of accommodating a large party — for two persons it was almost palatial. Whatever the weather, cool or hot, rainy or dry, rough or fair, there was always a place where they could install themselves in the morning or the afternoon, and talk and read to their hearts’ content. They had no fixed plan either in their wanderings, but went where their fancy took them, to Palermo, to Messina, to Syracuse. They sat together in the vast ruined theatre above magic Taormina, and gazed on the sunlit sea and Etna’s snowy crest. They went to Malta, they drove, side by side, through the lovely gardens of Corfu. They ran in fair weather up to the lagoons of Venice, and wandered in a gondola through the wide canals and narrow water lanes of the most beautiful city in the world. Then down the long Adriatic again, past Zara and Xanthe, round Matapan to the Piræus — then, when they had had their fill of Athens, away by one long run to Sicily again, to Algiers next, and then to Barcelona and the Spanish coast, homeward bound at last, towards England. For the weather was growing warm now, and Laura noticed that she saw less often in Arden’s face the colour she had watched with such pleasure during the first weeks. There was no cause for anxiety, she thought, but it was possible that he needed always an even temperature, neither cold nor hot, and it was time to reach England, before the July sun had scorched the southern land.
And throughout all this quiet time the song of happiness was ever in their ears. The world they cared so little for, and which had taken the trouble to say such disagreeable things about them, was left infinitely far behind in their new life. From time to time letters reached Laura from Rome, and Arden had one from Ghisleri, containing little detailed news, but full of angry threats at a kind of general undefined enemy, which might be humanity taken all together, or might be some one particular person whom the writer had in his mind. Pietro generally wrote in that way. Rarely, indeed, did he mention people by name, and then only when he had something to say to their credit. It was a part of what Arden called his absurd reticence, and which, absurd or not, was certainly exaggerated. Possibly Ghisleri had, at some time in his youth, experienced the extremely unpleasant consequences of being indiscreet, and had promised himself not to succumb to that form of weakness again. At all events, he found that though Arden sometimes laughed at him, he never got into trouble through being discreet, and other people were not disposed to be merry at his expense. It was a long time since he had quarrelled with any one, and, having turned peaceable, the world promptly accused him of cynicism and indifference, an accusation which did not annoy him at all. Indeed, it was rather convenient than otherwise, that people should think of him as they did, since the result was that less was expected of him than of most people.
Laura’s mother wrote loving letters, full of simple household news, and of solicitude for her daughter and Arden, asking many questions as to their plans for the future, and continually expressing the hope that they would spend the coming winter in Rome.
“What do you think of it?” Laura asked one day, as they sat together on deck in the sunshine.
“That is one of those things which you must decide, dear,” answered Arden. “Of course I suppose I ought to spend the winter in the south as usual. I do not believe I could stand England in December and January. There are lots of delightful southern places where we could stay a few months, besides Rome — but then, in Rome you will have your mother. That makes a great difference.”
“You are first now, love,” said Laura. “You come before my mother — much as I love her.”
“Darling — how good you are!” He took her hand and kissed it softly.
“Not half as good as I ought to be. But there are two things to be considered, dear. There is the climate, as you say, and then there is a social question we have never talked about — it seems so far away now. In the first place, does Rome really suit you? Are you always well there, as you were last winter?”
“Oh, yes. I have always been perfectly well in Rome, and I like the place immensely, besides.”
“And you have your friend, Signor Ghisleri, too. That is another point. On the other hand, I do not think either of us would ever wish to stay a whole winter with my mother and step-father. We must live somewhere by ourselves, and we shall have to live very quietly.”
“The more quietly the better. Is that the social question, darling?”
“No,” answered Laura, “but it is connected with it. There is something I never spoke of. Did it ever strike you, when you first knew me, that somehow I was not so much liked as other girls in society? Do not think I ask the question out of any sort of vanity. I want to know what your impression was. Tell me quite frankly, will you?”
“Of course I will. It did strike me — I never knew whether you were aware of it. I even tried to find out the reason of it, and to some extent I believe I did.”
“Did you?” asked Laura, with sudden interest. “I wish I knew — I have so often thought about it all.”
Arden laughed, leaning back in his chair and looking at her face.
&nb
sp; “It is the most absurd story I ever heard,” he said. “I ought not even to say I heard it, for I guessed it from little things that happened. People think that your step-sister’s husband, Savelli, is in love with you, and I suppose they imagine that you have something to do with it — encouraged him, and that sort of thing. I am quite sure that Donna Adele — am I to call her Adele now? — is jealous, for I have witnessed the manifestation with my own eyes. It is all too utterly ridiculous, but as you are quite English you were at a disadvantage, and were not as popular as you ought to have been.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 601