“When was the first car really invented?” Susanna asked.
“Experiments were going on as early as 1805,” Fyfe answered, “but the first cars were really steam-carriages with mechanical legs.”
He laughed as he added,
“One of your countrymen, a Dr. Church, had in 1833 an enormous and highly decorated steam-carriage, which accommodated fifty passengers between London and Birmingham.”
He smiled as he continued,
“Then, of course, the traditional British caution came into play.”
“What do you mean by that?” Susanna asked.
“An Act of Parliament almost killed the development of all horseless carriages by imposing a speed limit of four miles per hour and two miles per hour in towns! They also required that a man should walk sixty yards ahead of every vehicle carrying a red flag.”
“Did the Americans take no precautions against such fiery monsters?” Susanna asked.
“We were far more advanced,” Fyfe laughed. “Our flagmen had to walk a hundred yards ahead! And our operators were expected to have an engineer’s licence, which required several years’ apprenticeship as a fireman.”
They both laughed and Fyfe went on to tell her how the internal combustion engine was invented, how at the Paris Exhibition in 1865 the Germans showed a free-piston engine and how eventually Daimler and Benz laid the foundations for the development of a successful petrol-engined car.
Susanna found herself becoming more and more excited over the development of the motor car.
She began to appreciate the tremendous battle that the enthusiasts had to fight to make the authorities realise that motor cars had really become a modern form of transport.
“By 1893,” Fyfe said, “Benz had a car that was a commercial proposition and was selling quite steadily, especially in France. Daimler formed a Company in Germany to build cars and in America there were factories in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“My father,” he went on, “was determined to build a high quality car and at the same time one which was within the reach of the average businessman’s pocket.”
“I can now see why,” Susanna interposed, “while most schoolboys were content with toy trains, you wanted to play with a real motor car.”
“That is true,” Fyfe smiled, “I also wanted to see how fast I could go.”
“With disastrous results!” she exclaimed. “I hope it has taught you that in future it is better to go slowly and to arrive.”
“It has taught me nothing of the sort,” he replied. “Like many people you don’t understand that for a car to prove itself and to excite the public into buying it, it has to do something sensational.”
“But it is dangerous!”
“Only at times. I was just unfortunate. Another time I shall doubtless be more lucky.”
She gave a little sigh of exasperation.
“But you cannot be so foolhardy as to go back and – risk your life another time.”
“I shall not attempt very high speeds until my eyes are really strong,” Fyfe answered, “but there is nothing to stop me from taking part in long endurance races.”
“I hate to think of you doing – either.”
“Would you really mind if I smashed myself up again?”
It was a question that Susanna knew she dare not answer and she had cleverly changed the subject without his being aware of it, she thought, that she had done so.
Now, as she went to fetch Mr. Chambers to him, she felt as she walked down the cool beautifully furnished corridor of the Villa, that every aspect of it was engraved on her mind for all time.
She knew that in the long years to come she would only have to close her eyes to see, as clearly as if they stood in front of her, every picture, every piece of furniture and every colourful rug that the Villa was furnished with.
But she could not think of Fyfe himself without her heart beating frantically and her love welling up inside her like a tidal wave.
She went into the room that Mr. Chambers used as an office but he was not there.
It was near the front hall and she thought that before she looked for him further that she might see if the postman had left a parcel of books that were still overdue.
The hall was decorated with furniture made by Florentine craftsmen hundreds of years earlier and the walls were decorated with ceramics that were characteristically lovely.
The Florentines were accomplished artists and everything made by them, mirrors, goblets, amphorae, lamps, braziers, had a beauty unsurpassed by those made by any other City in the world.
Beauty was in their blood and it was their tradition.
Susanna had already looked at everything in the hall so that it was imprinted on her mind, but even so every time she saw the ceramics, the statues that guarded the open doors and the gold chandelier hanging from the arched ceiling, she felt herself thrill again at the wonder of them.
The front door was open to let in the sunshine and, as she looked to see if there were any parcels on the carved table where the postman would have left them, she heard the sound of a carriage coming up the drive.
She saw the horses and knew that they were the inferior animals that plied for hire and not the excellent horseflesh behind which she and Mr. Chambers travelled into Florence.
She wondered who could be calling at the Villa and then, as the carriage came nearer, she glanced at the man sitting on the back seat.
He wore a tall hat and was sitting straight and upright, as if he thought that the vehicle he travelled in was not worthy of him.
Susanna’s eyes widened and then with a cry of sheer horror she turned and ran back the way she had come.
She pulled open the door of Fyfe’s bedroom and rushed across it to where he was sitting in his usual comfortable chair outside the window on the verandah.
By the time she reached him she was breathless, but he sensed her agitation and before she could speak he asked,
“What is the matter? What has upset you?”
“Oh, Fyfe! Fyfe!”
It was a cry that came from her very heart.
Then, as he reached out his hand towards her, she clutched it in both of hers, clinging to it as if it was a lifeline to save her from drowning.
“What is the matter?” Fyfe asked again.
“It’s my – father! He has – just arrived – here! He must have – discovered where – I am and has – come to take me away!”
As she spoke, still holding onto Fyfe’s hand, she collapsed onto her knees at his side.
“Save – me! Save – me!” she pleaded. “If I go – back with him, Mama will – make me marry a man who has no – interest in me – except for my – money.”
“Is that why you ran away?”
“Yes – I could not do it – but they would have – made me. They would have – forced me to – marry and the whole idea was – horrible! Degrading!”
Susanna’s voice broke on the words and Fyfe’s fingers tightened on hers.
Then he said quietly,
“You say your father has arrived. Did he see you?”
“No. I was in the hall and I – came here at – once to you. Oh, Fyfe – what – can I do?”
It was a cry of despair and with tears now running down her cheeks Susanna stammered,
“If I go – back I am lost – whatever protests I make – no one will listen – to me.”
She was sobbing now unrestrainedly, thinking of her mother forcing her to marry the Duke, thinking that she would be looked at with the same disdain and contempt that had been so much a part of her existence before she had come to Florence.
Never had she been able to talk ordinarily and without embarrassment to a man as she had talked to Fyfe and she knew that no other man would want to talk to her in such a way because she was so plain.
She did not know what he could do to save her.
She only turned to him because she loved him and because at the moment he was the only secure and stable thing
in her whole life and he filled it to the exclusion of all else.
“Listen, Susanna,” Fyfe said quietly, “I want you to go into the garden and hide yourself. Stay away until I send for you. I will deal with this.”
“Papa – will insist on – seeing me.”
“Leave everything to me. I promise you need not be afraid.”
“Papa will be very – angry with me and – Mama will be – furious. How could they have – found me?”
“Just do as I tell you,” Fyfe urged, “and go at once. Otherwise if your father insists on seeing you he will find you here.”
His words made Susanna jump to her feet like a startled fawn.
Almost as if she could hear her father's footsteps coming down the passage, she looked towards the door apprehensively and then releasing her compulsive hold on Fyfe’s hand she slipped away into the garden.
She moved across the lawns and down through the shrubs and bushes until she found a seat concealed by trees and yet with a breathtaking view in front of it.
But for once when she reached the seat, Susanna was not interested in the loveliness that lay beneath her.
Instead she covered her face with her hands and sat wondering desperately how soon it would be before her father forced her to return with him.
She was sure, apart from anything else, that he would be very angry at having to leave London in the middle of the Season to travel to Italy to find her.
She trembled to think what her mother would say when she returned home.
However angry she might be, whatever recriminations and fury descended on her for her behaviour, that would not change one iota the plans that had been made for her future.
If it was not the Duke whom she was to marry, it would be some other Nobleman who would find her fortune attractive enough to put up with her and her shortcomings.
‘How can I possibly bear it?’ Susanna asked herself.
She knew that since she had known Fyfe and loved him it would be even more difficult and more horrifying to contemplate than before.
For the first time in her life she had been able to talk to someone near her own age as if she was a human being.
Miss Harding had instructed her and given her an insight into knowledge that she would always be grateful for. But Miss Harding had been over fifty and she had at all times been the teacher and Susanna the pupil.
But with Fyfe she had been on equal terms.
When they argued, duelled and sparred with each other and, what was even more important, laughed together, it had been an excitement and an enchantment that she had never known before.
Now it was over, not because Fyfe had no further use for her but because she would be forced to go back to a life that would enclose her like a prison and there would be no escape.
Any man her mother forced her to marry would be part of the frivolous pleasure-seeking Society that Lady Lavenham shone in like a glittering jewel.
The men in that particular Society were concerned only with sport and the women with flirtations and affaires de coeur, which occupied their minds to the point where they had no time for anything else.
Susanna knew that, as no one would want to flirt with her, her only asset would be her enormous bank balance.
She would in a short while become nothing but a pale ghost moving from house party to house party or entertaining in the Ducal mansion that had been restored with her money.
She would find herself hostess to people who would not speak to her unless they had to and she would have no interest in anything they did or said because it was in every way alien to her own taste.
‘Oh, God,’ she prayed, ‘save me from that! Make it possible for me to escape again even if I have to live alone and earn my living by going out to – scrub floors.’
But she knew even as she prayed that that too would be an impossibility.
Once she was back with her mother her will would be sapped and she would be married almost before she knew it was happening.
She suspected that the reason why her father had come to fetch her was that her mother had already arranged everything and disliked her plans being circumvented above all else.
‘All Mama wants,’ Susanna told herself, ‘is to get me off her hands and, of course, it will be a feather in her cap for her second daughter to be a Duchess.’
She could hear her sister sobbing, see May’s pale unhappy face and felt every nerve in her body tense at the thought of what was waiting for her.
She took her hands from her face and wondered how long she had been sitting on the seat and hiding as Fyfe had told her to do.
Perhaps Clint or one of the other servants was already searching for her to tell her that her father was waiting to take her back to London.
Now she could no longer cry for she was past tears.
She might have known, she thought, that her Fairytale would come to an end or rather that the ship which had come to carry her away from the enchanted island where she had been so happy with Fyfe would be a prison ship.
Once aboard it, a whole train of circumstances that she had no control over would be set in motion.
She wondered if it would be better to die than to endure such a life and then knew that she had not the courage to kill herself nor the means to do it.
‘Perhaps I should have drowned myself,’ she wondered, ‘when I was swimming in the pool last night.’
She had swum, as she always did, up and down for a long time enjoying the exercise as well as the beauty of the stars and the fireflies.
Then she had sat on the steps with her feet in the water thinking of Fyfe and how much she loved him.
Last night she had imagined that he had been Lorenzo the Magnificent in a previous incarnation and she had been the woman he had been faithful to for two years.
To be loved by Fyfe, she told herself, for two years, two months, or even two weeks would be worth all the misery and heartbreak that would follow.
‘I love him – I love him!’ she whispered to the stars, ‘and because I asked for love I must never be ungrateful or complain because it hurts me.’
She imagined that she might dare to ask Fyfe before the doctors took the bandages from his eyes to kiss her just once, knowing that he would never wish to do so after he had seen her.
If he kissed her, imagining her to be Venus, then perhaps nothing else after that would matter because she would have her memories.
Even if she went back to England and married the Duke, she told herself, she would still know that her lips had been possessed by Fyfe and she had given him her heart so that it was no longer there in her body to torture her.
Finally, after she had been sitting on the seat for a long time, she knew that what she had imagined under the stars was something that would never happen in reality.
She could not ask Fyfe to kiss her because it would be a betrayal of his trust in her.
‘I shall never be kissed by any man,’ Susanna thought with a little sob, ‘except perhaps by one who is thanking me because, as he does so, he is spending my money! Oh God, if only I could die!’
She said the words aloud and then was ashamed because she knew that it was wicked to take life, which in itself was so precious.
‘Perhaps one day there will be some compensation for what I must suffer,’ she told herself and wondered what it could possibly be.
Every instinct in her whole body shrank from what her mother had planned for her and yet with all her intelligence she could not think how she could avoid being pressured into marriage or escape again once she had been taken back to London in disgrace.
It suddenly struck her that her father might be rude and disagreeable to Fyfe.
‘Perhaps I should have stayed and told Papa that it was not his fault and he had no idea who I was,’ she told herself.
Then she thought that, even though his eyes were bandaged and he had nearly lost his life in a motor accident, Fyfe was not the sort of person to be bullied or be afraid of anyone
.
Equally it was as if the whole gossamer world that she had encased herself in since coming to Florence had fallen to pieces around her and she looked at it helplessly not knowing how to put it together again.
‘Perhaps I should go and pack,’ she thought despondently. ‘Papa will not like to be kept waiting and, whatever Fyfe may say, I shall have to go with him because I am under age and he is my Guardian.’
That was another matter she had lied about, she reflected, and now she would have to confess that she was very young and very inexperienced and, if the truth was known, very foolish.
‘Now Fyfe too will despise me,’ she thought miserably.
It was then she heard a whistle and knew at once that it was Clint looking for her.
He had a strange rather melodious way of whistling. He often whistled quietly when he moved about the Villa and, when she heard him calling for one of the other servants he whistled in a manner that was not unlike the call of a bird.
Slowly, feeling as if her legs would not carry her, Susanna stood up knowing that Clint was going to tell her that her father was waiting to see her.
She walked along the twisting path that led between the trees and back up an incline into the cultivated part of the garden.
As she expected, Clint was standing at the edge of the lawn whistling.
When he saw her, he waved his arm and, because she knew that he expected it, Susanna waved back.
Then, without waiting for her to reach him, Clint turned and walked back towards the Villa.
Somehow, although she knew that she should do so, Susanna could not move quickly.
It seemed almost as if her feet were determined to oppose her will and refuse to take her back to face what had to be faced.
Yet slowly and inevitably she crossed the lawn, passing the lilies that filled the air with their fragrance, but she did not even look at them.
She walked with her eyes staring straight ahead of her and she thought that the sunshine was dimmed and that darkness encompassed her.
She reached the verandah and now she drew in her breath, knowing that she would see her father either sitting by Fyfe’s chair or standing beside it.
202. Love in the Dark Page 12