“It is high handed,” said Mrs. Bowring. “It is like you — but I suppose you have a right to save your son from such trouble. But there is something else — do you know what has happened? He has been making love to Clare — he has asked her to marry him, and she has refused. She told me this morning — and I have told her the truth — that you and I were once married.”
She paused, and watched Sir Adam’s furrowed face.
“I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’m glad that it has all come out on the same day. He knows everything, and he has told me everything. I don’t know how it’s all going to end, but I want you to believe one thing. If he had guessed the truth, he would never have said a word of love to her. He’s not that kind of boy. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I believe you. But the worst of it is that she cares for him too — in a way I can’t understand. She has some reason, or she thinks she has, for disliking him, as she calls it. She wouldn’t tell me. But she cares for him all the same. She has told him, though she won’t tell me. There is something horrible in the idea of our children falling in love with each other.”
Mrs. Bowring spoke quietly, but her pale face and nervous mouth told more than her words.
Sir Adam explained to her shortly what had happened on the first evening after Brook’s arrival, and how Clare had heard it all, sitting in the shadow just above the platform. Mrs. Bowring listened in silence, covering her eyes with her hands. There was a long pause after he had finished speaking, but still she said nothing.
“I should like him to marry her,” said Sir Adam at last, in a low voice.
She started and looked at him uneasily, remembering how well she had once loved him, and how he had broken her heart when she was young. He met her eyes quietly.
“You don’t know him,” he said. “He loves her, and he will be to her — what I wasn’t to you.”
“How can you say that he loves her? Three weeks ago he loved that Mrs. Crosby.”
“He? He never cared for her — not even at first.”
“He was all the more heartless and bad to make her think that he did.”
“She never thought so, for a moment. She wanted my money, and she thought that she could catch him.”
“Perhaps — I saw her, and I did not like her face. She had the look of an adventuress about her. That doesn’t change the main facts. Your son and she were — flirting, to say the least of it, three weeks ago. And now he thinks himself in love with my daughter. It would be madness to trust such a man — even if there were not the rest to hinder their marriage. Adam — I told you that I forgave you. I have forgiven you — God knows. But you broke my life at the beginning like a thread. You don’t know all there has been to forgive — indeed, you don’t. And you are asking me to risk Clare’s life in your son’s hands, as I risked mine in yours. It’s too much to ask.”
“But you say yourself that she loves him.”
“She cares for him — that was what I said. I don’t believe in love as I did. You can’t expect me to.”
She turned her face away from him, but he saw the bitterness in it, and it hurt him. He waited a moment before he answered her.
“Don’t visit my sins on your daughter, Lucy,” he said at last. “Don’t forget that love was a fact before you and I were born, and will be a fact long after we are dead. If these two love each other, let them marry. I hope that Clare is like you, but don’t take it for granted that Brook is like me. He’s not. He’s more like his mother.”
“And your wife?” said Mrs. Bowring suddenly. “What would she say to this?”
“My wife,” said Sir Adam, “is a practical woman.”
“I never was. Still — if I knew that Clare loved him — if I could believe that he could love her faithfully — what could I do? I couldn’t forbid her to marry him. I could only pray that she might be happy, or at least that she might not break her heart.”
“You would probably be heard, if anybody is. And a man must believe in God to explain your existence,” added Sir Adam, in a gravely meditative tone. “It’s the best argument I know.”
CHAPTER XIV
BROOK JOHNSTONE HAD gone to his room when he had left his father, and was hastily packing his belongings, for he had made up his mind to leave Amalfi at once without consulting anybody. It is a special advantage of places where there is no railway that one can go away at a moment’s notice, without waiting tedious hours for a train. Brook did not hesitate, for it seemed to him the only right thing to do, after Clare’s refusal, and after what his father had told him. If she had loved him, he would have stayed in spite of every opposition. If he had never been told her mother’s history, he would have stayed and would have tried to make her love him. As it was, he set his teeth and said to himself that he would suffer a good deal rather than do anything more to win the heart of Mrs. Bowring’s daughter. He would get over it somehow in the end. He fancied Clare’s horror if she should ever know the truth, and his fear of hurting her was as strong as his love. He made no phrases to himself, and he thought of nothing theatrical which he should like to say. He just set his teeth and packed his clothes alone. Possibly he swore rather unmercifully at the coat which would not fit into the right place, and at the starched shirt-cuffs which would not lie flat until he smashed them out of shape with unsteady hands.
When he was ready, he wrote a few words to Clare. He said that he was going away immediately, and that it would be very kind of her to let him say good-bye. He sent the note by a servant, and waited in the corridor at a distance from her door.
A moment later she came out, very pale.
“You are not really going, are you?” she asked, with wide and startled eyes. “You can’t be in earnest?”
“I’m all ready,” he answered, nodding slowly. “It’s much better. I only wanted to say good-bye, you know. It’s awfully kind of you to come out.”
“Oh — I wouldn’t have—” but she checked herself, and glanced up and down the long corridor. “We can’t talk here,” she added.
“It’s so hot outside,” said Brook, remembering how she had complained of the heat an hour earlier.
“Oh no — I mean — it’s no matter. I’d rather go out for a moment.”
She began to walk towards the door while she was speaking. They reached it in silence, and went out into the blazing sun. Clare had Brook’s note still in her hand, and held it up to shield the glare from the side of her face as they crossed the platform. Then she realised that she had brought him to the very spot whereon he had said good-bye to Lady Fan. She stopped, and he stood still beside her.
“Not here,” she said.
“No — not here,” he answered.
“There’s too much sun — really,” said she, as the colour rose faintly in her cheeks.
“It’s only to say good-bye,” Brook answered sadly. “I shall always remember you just as you are now — with the sun shining on your hair.”
It was so bright that it dazzled him as he looked. In spite of the heat she did not move, and their eyes met.
“Mr. Johnstone,” Clare began, “please stay. Please don’t let me feel that I have sent you away.” There was a shade of timidity in the tone, and the eyes seemed brave enough to say something more. Brook hesitated.
“Well — no — it isn’t that exactly. I’ve heard something — my father has told me something since I saw you—”
He stopped short and looked down.
“What have you heard?” she asked. “Something dreadful about us?”
“About us all — about him, principally. I can’t tell you. I really can’t.”
“About him — and my mother? That they were married and separated?”
The steady innocent eyes had waited for him to look up again. He started as he heard her words.
“You don’t mean to say that you know it too?” he cried. “Who has dared to tell you?”
“My mother — she was quite right. It’s wrong to hide such things
— she ought to have told me at once. Why shouldn’t I have known it?”
“Doesn’t it seem horrible to you? Don’t you dislike me more than ever?”
“No. Why should I? It wasn’t your fault. What has it to do with you? Or with me? Is that the reason why you are going away so suddenly?”
Brook stared at her in surprise, and the dawn of returning gladness was in his face for a moment.
“We have a right to live, whatever they did in their day,” said Clare. “There is no reason why you should go away like this, at a moment’s notice.”
With an older woman he would have understood the first time, but he did not dare to understand Clare, nor to guess that there was anything to be understood.
“Of course we have a right to live,” he answered, in a constrained tone. “But that does not mean that I may stay here and make your life a burden. So I’m going away. It was quite different before I knew all this. Please don’t stay out here — you’ll get a sunstroke. I only wanted to say good-bye.”
Man-like, having his courage at the striking-point, he wished to get it all over quickly and be off. The colour sank from Clare’s face again, and she stood quite still for a moment, looking at him. “Good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand, and trying hard to smile a little.
Clare looked at him still, but her hand did not meet his, though he waited, holding it out to her. Her face hardened as though she were making an effort, then softened again, and still he waited.
“Won’t you say good-bye to me?” he asked unsteadily.
She hesitated a moment longer.
“No!” she answered suddenly. “I — I can’t!”
And here the story comes to its conclusion, as many stories out of the lives of men and women seem to end at what is only their turning-point. For real life has no conclusion but real death, and that is a sad ending to a tale, and one which may as well be left to the imagination when it is possible.
Stories of strange things, which really occur, very rarely have what used to be called a “moral” either. All sorts of things happen to people who afterwards go on living just the same, neither much better nor much worse than they were in the beginning. The story is a slice, as it were, cut from the most interesting part of a life, generally at the point where that life most closely touches another, so that the future of the two momentarily depends upon each separately, and upon both together. The happiness or unhappiness of both, for a long time to come, is founded upon the action of each just at those moments. And sometimes, as in the tale here told, the least promising of all the persons concerned is the one who helps matters out. The only logical thing about life is the certainty that it must end. If there were any logic at all about what goes between birth and death, men would have found it out long ago, and we should all know how to live as soon as we leave school; whereas we spend our lives under Fate’s ruler, trying to understand, while she raps us over the knuckles every other minute because we cannot learn our lesson and sit up straight, and be good without being prigs, and do right without sticking it through other people’s peace of mind as one sticks a pin through a butterfly.
Taquisara
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER I.
“WHERE SHALL I sign my name?”
Veronica Serra’s thin, dark fingers rolled the old silver penholder nervously as she sat at one end of the long library table, looking up at the short, stout man who stood beside her.
“Here, if you please, Excellency,” answered Lamberto Squarci, with an affable smile.
His fingers were dark, too, but not thin, and they were smooth and dingy and very pointed, a fact which the young princess noticed with dislike, as he indicated the spot on the broad sheet of rough, hand-made paper, where he wished her to sign. A thrill of repulsion that was strong enough to be painful ran through her, and she rolled the penholder still more quickly and nervously, so that she almost dropped it, and a little blot of ink fell upon the sheet before she had begun to write.
“Oh! It is of no importance!” said the Neapolitan notary, in a reassuring tone. “A little ink more or less!”
He had some pink blotting-paper ready, and was already applying a corner of it to the ink-spot, with the neat skill of a professional scribe.
“I will erase it when it is dry,” he said. “You will not even see it.
Now, if your Excellency will sign — that will make the will valid.”
Three other persons stood around Donna Veronica as she set the point of her pen to the paper, and two of them watched the characters she traced, with eager, unwinking eyes. The third was a very insignificant personage just then, being but the notary’s clerk; but his signature was needed as a witness to the will, and he patiently waited for his turn. The other two were husband and wife, Gregorio and Matilde, Count and Countess Macomer; and the countess was the young girl’s aunt, being the only sister of Don Tommaso Serra, Prince of Acireale, Veronica’s dead father. She looked on, with an eager, pleased expression, standing upright and bending her head in order to see the point of the pen as it moved over the rough paper. Her hands were folded before her, but the uppermost one twitched and moved once or twice, as though it would go out to get possession of the precious document which left her all the heiress’s great possessions in case of Donna Veronica’s death. It was a bit of paper well worth having.
The girl rose, slight and graceful, when she had written her name, and the finely chiselled lips had an upward curve of young scorn, as she turned from the table, while the notary and his clerk proceeded to witness the will. Immediately, the countess smiled, very brightly, showing beautiful teeth between smooth red lips, and her strong arms went round her young niece. She was a woman at least forty years of age, but still handsome.
“I thank you with all my heart!” she cried. “It is a proof of affection which I shall never forget! You will live a hundred years — a thousand, if God will it! But the mere wish to leave me your fortune is a token of love and esteem which I shall know how to value.”
Donna Veronica kissed her aunt’s fresh cheek coldly, and drew back as soon as she could.
“I am glad that you are pleased,” she answered in a cool and colourless voice.
She felt that she had said enough, and, so far as she expected any thanks, her aunt had said too much. She had made the will and had signed it, for the sake of peace, and she asked nothing but peace in return. Ever since she had left the convent in which she had been educated and had come to live with her aunt, the question of this will had arisen at least once every day, and she knew by heart every argument which had been invented to induce her to make it. The principal one had always been the same. She had been told that if, in the inscrutable ways of Providence, she should chance to die young, unmarried and childless, the whole of the great Acireale property would go to relations whom she had never seen and of whom she scarcely knew the names. This, the Countess Macomer had insisted, would be a terrible misfortune, and as human life was uncertain, even when one was very young, it was the duty of Veronica to provide against it, by leaving everything to the one remaining member of the Serra family who, with herself, represented the direct line, who had taken a moth
er’s place and duties in bringing up the orphan girl, and who had been ready to sacrifice every personal consideration for the sake of the child’s welfare.
Veronica did not see clearly that the Countess Macomer had ever really sacrificed anything at all in the execution of her trust as guardian, any more than the count himself, who, with Cardinal Campodonico, was a joint trustee, had ever been put to any inconvenience, beyond that of being the uncle by marriage of one of the richest heiresses in Italy. It was natural that when she had signed the will at last, she should receive her aunt’s effusive thanks rather coldly, and that she should show very little enthusiasm when her uncle kissed her forehead and expressed his appreciation of her loving intention. The plain truth was that if she had refused any longer to sign the will, the two would have made her life even more unbearable than it was already.
She knew that there was no reason why her life should be made hard to bear. She was not only rich, and a princess in her own right. She was young and, if not pretty, at least fairly well endowed with those gifts which attract and please, and bring their possessor the daily little satisfactions that make something very like happiness, before passion throws its load into the scales of life on the right side or the wrong. She knew that, at her age, she might have been married already, and she wondered that her aunt should not have proposed to marry her before now. Yet in this she was not displeased, for her best friend, Bianca Campodonico, had been married two years already to Corleone, of evil fame, and was desperately unhappy. Veronica dreaded a like fate, and was in no haste to find a husband. The countess told her always that she should be free to choose one for herself within reasonable limits of age, name, and fortune. Such an heiress, with such a fortune, said Matilde Macomer, could marry whom she pleased. But so far as Veronica had been allowed to see the world, the choice seemed anything but large.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 818