“And what do you think about that?” Mr. Dunblane asked mockingly. “Do you not believe that a man should wish to excel and be first in anything he undertakes?”
“Of course men want to win at games and at sports,” Susanna replied. “There is no racehorse owner who does not wish to win the Derby or a game shot who does not wish to bring down more pheasants than anyone else.”
She was thinking of her father as she spoke and the enormous bags of birds that were killed at every shoot, starting with Sandringham where the King’s personal record two years ago had been seven thousand, two hundred and fifty-six birds in four days.
“So you allow that a man should win in sport,” Mr. Dunblane said, almost as if he was provoking her into an argument, “and what about his other achievements in life, a desire for a title, which is very prevalent in England and the fanatical struggle for money, which I expect you know persists in America? Surely all ambition is admirable?”
“I think it depends,” Susanna answered, after thinking for a moment, “exactly what one is ambitious for. Self-glory must always be questionable unless the power aimed at is for the purpose of helping others like Politicians who should use their fame to benefit the country. And where money is concerned, Francis Bacon wrote, money is like muck, no good except it be spread!”
Mr. Dunblane gave a little sound that she realised was a laugh.
“I see you have an answer for everything. Miss Brown,” he said, “and I imagine our readings are going to force me to polish up my brains if they have not all been smashed out of me!”
As Susanna did not reply, he went on,
“But you have an unfair advantage, you can look up what you want to say, I can see nothing but darkness.”
Again there was a note of depression in his voice which told Susanna that he was sorry for himself and he might at any moment revert to the railing against Fate which she was sure had made him send for her in the first place.
Aloud she said,
“I think perhaps Lorenzo is too controversial a subject for this hour of night, sir. I want you to listen to something different that I know by heart. Perhaps it will help you to relax and go to sleep, which I think you – ought to do.”
“Are you worried about me?”
“But, of course, like everyone else around you. We want to get you well and, although I am no doctor, I have always been convinced that to cure one part of the body every other part must co-operate in the healing process.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Our bodies are like a machine,” Susanna replied, “if one piece of it goes wrong, then it is easy to bring the whole thing to standstill.”
“I understand what you are saying. Go on with your recitation and I will try not to be intelligent about it.”
Susanna had not thought until that moment exactly what she would recite, but she decided quickly that it should be Byron’s Stanzas written on the Road between Florence and Pisa.
She began in her soft musical voice,
“Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story,
The days of our youth are the days of our glory,
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.”
She said the lines quietly and thought as she did so that she had never dreamt when she had learnt them with Miss Harding that she would be on her way to Florence and that the City which she had longed to see would be waiting for her!
The words seemed very appropriate at this moment, but she wondered as she continued verse after verse what her mother would think if she knew where she was, reciting in a fast-moving train to a blind man swathed in bandages while she was sitting beside his bed wearing only her dressing-gown!
Only as she said the line, ‘I knew it was love and I felt it was glory’, did she think that perhaps she should have chosen some other poem.
There was no doubt that it was extremely reprehensible to speak of love to a man she did not even know!
Then she realised that Mr. Dunblane was asleep.
She could hear his quiet even breathing and it was obvious too by the way that he was now relaxed with his head turned a little sideways on the pillow that her recitation had had the effect that she desired.
Very quietly she rose to her feet, moved out of the compartment and with a little difficulty managed to get back to her own drawing room and through that to her bed.
Only as she snuggled down again against the pillows and pulled the sheets over her shoulders, did she think that this was the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened to her.
Even May or Miss Harding would find it hard to believe it if ever she told them.
‘I wonder what he looks like?’ she questioned and had arrived at no answer before she fell asleep.
*
The next day was so exciting that the hours seemed to speed past as quickly as the train itself was moving.
Whenever she was not required to read to Mr. Dunblane, Susanna would sit in the drawing room looking out through the window anxious not to miss one glimpse of France as they thundered through it.
The huge cultivated fields without hedges or boundaries, so unlike England, were an enchantment in themselves.
The small villages each dominated by the spire of a Church were a joy and even the larger Stations with their platforms packed with people, who looked so different from those she had seen elsewhere, were an absorbing interest.
Because she thought it absurd to feel self-conscious about telling Mr. Dunblane what she could see, she talked about the countryside that they were passing through, looking out of the window of his compartment to describe the forests, the bullocks working in the fields and the peasants and their children.
When eventually they passed through the Alps, she found it impossible to repress her excitement at the sight of the snowy peaks and the deep shadowing valleys beneath them.
Mr. Dunblane did not tell her that he had no wish to hear what she could see although occasionally he spoke bitterly and in a manner that told her that he was suffering agonies of fear that he should be blind for ever.
She thought about him and finally he gave her the opportunity of saying what was in her mind.
It was on the evening of the second day and, as darkness fell, and it was impossible for Susanna to see anything more through the window, Clint came in to draw down the blinds.
“I presume it’s dark,” Mr. Dunblane said in a disagreeable tone as the valet left.
“Yes, it’s dark,” Susanna replied, “and so the Cook’s tour, which I am giving you, of a journey to Florence, will have to wait until tomorrow.”
He did not reply and after a moment she said,
“You must – tell me if you would – rather I did not talk about what I can see.”
“As I may have to use your eyes or someone else’s for the rest of my life, I might as well get used to it!” Mr. Dunblane answered her savagely.
He paused a moment before he continued,
“You are so busy being imaginative. Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like if you were blind? If you sat in darkness and had to accept second hand descriptions of everything you longed to see for yourself! ”
“If that happened to me,” Susanna replied, “I hope I should have the sense and the courage – to develop my Third Eye.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
The question was so rough as to be almost violent and Susanna felt herself tremble a moment before she went on bravely,
“Have you never heard of the Third Eye? The Egyptians knew all about it.”
“Are you talking about the Cyclops, who I thought were monsters and if I remember correctly only had one eye in the middle of their foreheads?”
“No, I am not talking about them, but the Ancient Egyptians when they were at the height of their glory and their Priests understood mysteries that were kept for the initiated or the Pharaohs.”
“I suppose you had better tell me about them,” Mr. Dunblane muttered surlily.
“They indicated the Third Eye on the statues of their Gods by a knob on the forehead,” Susanna began. “They trained people in the use of this psychic centre in the ancient temple of Ma-at.”
She paused a moment to see if Mr. Dunblane would say anything and, when he did not, speak she went on,
“The God of Ma-at was vulture-headed because vultures have a sight so keen as to be almost clairvoyant. When people responded to the training of the Priests, they became seers or psychics.”
“A lot of damned nonsense!” Mr. Dunblane murmured.
Susanna ignored his remark and went on,
“The seers could see with their trained Third Eye right through the body, as an X-ray does, and diagnose disease. All over the East I believe you can find statues with a knob on the forehead indicating the Third Eye.”
Her voice had a lilt in it now as she went on,
“When I first read about it, I went with my Governess to the British Museum and we found several statues with a knob on their foreheads. It was very exciting!’
“You think that is what you would get if you developed your Third Eye?” Mr. Dunblane asked scornfully.
“No, but I think everybody has the capacity to use their own intuition but most people neglect it.”
“In what way?”
“When you engage a servant, do you judge him on what you see or feel about him or do you rely entirely on his references?”
“I want references and they had better be good ones!”
“Then you have let your Third Eye grow lazy and inactive,” Susanna said. “And surely you have met people whom you have liked instinctively and found them very congenial, almost as if they have meant something in your life before.”
“I cannot think of anyone.”
“Then perhaps you have hated someone for no good reason; disliked them as soon as they came into the room. There might have been nothing unusual about them on the surface and yet your instinct told you that they were untrustworthy and perhaps wicked.”
“How are you suggesting that I should develop this rather doubtful quality?”
“I think this is a great opportunity,” Susanna replied, “because at the moment you cannot judge by what you see and therefore what you feel is intensified. For instance what do your vibrations think of mine while we are talking to each other?”
She was not being personal but was merely developing her argument as she had done so often with Miss Harding.
“Tell me what you feel,” her Governess had often said. “Not what your brain tells you you should think about it, but how your subconscious, if you like, reacts.”
“If you want compliments,” Mr. Dunblane said, “I am not going to give them to you!”
“Oh! I did not mean it like that,” Susanna exclaimed almost in horror, “and you are accusing me of being feminine – which I am not!”
“Why not?”
“For a lot of reasons, but mostly because Mr. Chambers said that you did not really want a woman in this post. However, as there were no other applicants who had any qualifications, I promised him that I would not be aggressively feminine and it is something I have no intention of being anyway.”
“But you are still a woman whether you like it or not!”
Now his voice was amused.
“Something that has never troubled me in the past and certainly does not concern me in the future.”
“That is a ridiculous statement, but I presume by the way you speak, you have never been in love.”
“No, of course not!”
“Why so vehement? It will happen one day and then you will marry and settle down and doubtless have a large family of tiresome children.”
“I shall never marry!”
“Why ever not?”
“For reasons that are my – own.”
Susanna closed her book with a little snap and added,
“I think it is time for me to get ready for dinner, I would not wish to keep Mr. Chambers waiting.”
“Chambers can wait if I wish him to!”
Susanna had risen to her feet.
“That is a very selfish remark,” she said, “and you are obviously not using your intuition about him. He is almost killing himself worrying about you and so I think you should be grateful.”
Only as she went from the compartment before Mr. Dunblane could reply did she think that it was not at all the way that she should have spoken to her employer.
‘Perhaps he will send me home immediately we arrive,’ she thought apprehensively.
But she knew because she was using her intuition that the conversations when they seemed to duel with each other had, if nothing else, roused him from the dull despair that he was feeling when they had started out on the journey.
Now already he spoke more quietly and she could feel that he responded to her even when she made him angry.
‘All the same, I must be careful,’ she told herself. ‘I could not bear to be sent back to England doubtless without a reference.’
As she went to bed that night, she found herself thinking over the conversations that she had had with Mr. Dunblane during the last two days and hoping that when they reached Florence there would not be dozens of other people to talk to him.
Then she remembered that Mr. Chambers had said that he was to be quiet and that was a consolation in itself.
‘I must think up new ideas and I must stimulate his mind. I must somehow make him rise above his physical sufferings.’
She did not quite know how she could do so, but she felt that was what she should try to do.
‘One thing,’ she thought, ‘there will be plenty to talk about in Florence.’
Then she felt her heart leap at the idea of viewing the pictures that she had always longed to see and naturally Florence itself, which her books had told her was one of the loveliest places in the whole world.
*
Susanna awoke early because it was impossible to sleep knowing that they had arrived and the sun, which was creeping beneath the curtains in her bedroom, was shining over the City where four centuries ago Lorenzo the Magnificent had reigned supreme.
She had remembered reading in a book in the library at Lavenham Park that Florence was not only famous for Palaces and Churches, which were so much part of its history.
“Florence is the bells in the morning,” she read, “the moon coming up over the San Miniato, the narrow streets that are hardly more than slots, the over-hanging eaves of the Palaces and the clop-clop of the donkeys coming into the market in the early dawn.”
That was the Florence she wanted to see besides the Florence of the sculptures, the pictures and the buildings that she had seen rising above them as they drove through the streets after arriving late last night at the Railway Station.
She had thought then that the smell of Florence was different from what she had known anywhere else.
She thought that she could distinguish the fragrance of the mauve wisteria that hung over many of the walls, the aroma of roasting coffee and the damp wet smell that came from the River Arno as they drove beside it.
Mr. Chambers had already told her that Mr. Dunblane’s Villa was not in the City but a little way outside on a hill.
There were hills all around Florence covered with cypress trees pointing like dark fingers up to the sky.
Susanna was speechless when they reached the Villa and she saw how beautiful it was.
Mr. Chambers told her that once it had been a Convent and Mr. Dunblane’s father had changed it into a Villa where he had spent the remaining years of his life.
She was entranced by the long white building with its tiled roof that seemed to radiate holiness and also a mystery that was an intrinsic part of Florence.
“His father’s collection of pictures and furniture has made the Villa one of the finest private homes to be found anywhere in Italy,” Mr. Chambers had told her. “And the garden,
which he devoted himself to until he died, is beautiful beyond description.”
‘I must see it,’ Susanna told herself now and jumped out of bed to pull back the curtains to find her breath taken away by the stunning view that she could see from the window.
There rising above the houses was the huge dome of the Cathedral, which had been built by Brunelleschi in 1420 and, as she had read, “it had to reach such a height and magnificence that one could not expect anything more noble or more beautiful from human handiwork.”
But that had been a long time ago and she had not expected to see it still dominating the whole of Florence and to feel, as had been intended all those years ago, to lift her heart into the sky.
Then she saw the garden. It was a blaze of colour and there were flowers that appeared to have come from Heaven itself, even though they had been planted by human hands.
“It is lovely! It is so lovely!” Susanna exclaimed.
Because she could not wait to see more she washed in cold water and started to dress herself.
She realised with delight that she could put away all the thick dresses she had worn in London and could wear one of the cool thin gowns that her mother had bought her in anticipation that the weather in June and July might be very hot.
She slipped out of the Villa, which seemed very quiet, although she was certain that the smiling Italian servants, who had greeted them when they arrived last night, were already busy in the kitchen.
Mr. Dunblane had been too tired to do anything but, Clint told her with satisfaction, fall asleep as soon as he was in bed.
She and Mr. Chambers had dined alone at an old refectory table in a room that once must have exuded the austerity of a Convent.
Now with the floor covered with magnificent rugs, the walls hung with tapestries and lit with huge candles in gold carved candlesticks that might once have stood in a Church, it had an opulent beauty.
Other rooms were even more breathtaking, Susanna had discovered, but she had been too tired to see many of them last night.
202. Love in the Dark Page 6