Could it be Vivi? I sat up, staring after her in wonder. Her figure was perfect, her elegant cream gown was evidently the “creation” of one of the man-milliners of the Rue de la Paix, and I noticed that the women sitting around had turned and were admiring her for her general chic.
She turned into the gardens ere I could catch a glimpse of her face, and I sat back again, laughing at my own foolishness. Somehow, during the past three years, I had fancied I saw her a dozen times—in London, in Rome, in Paris, in Nice, and elsewhere. But I had always, alas! discovered it to be an illusion. The figure of this girl in cream merely resembled hers, that was all. I tried to convince myself of it, and yet I was unable to do so. Why, I cannot tell, but I had been seized with a keen desire to see her face. I half rose, but sat back again, ridiculing my own thoughts. And so five minutes passed, until, unable to resist longer, I rose, went forth into the gardens, and wandered among the palms in search of her.
At last I found her standing by a low wall, her face turned towards the sea. Alone, she had paused in her walk, and with her eyes turned across the bay she was in a deep reverie. Then, as she heard my footstep, she turned and faced me.
“Vivi!” I cried, rushing toward her.
“You!—George!” she gasped, starting back in sudden amazement.
“Yes,” I said madly. “At last, after all this long time, I have found you!”
She held her breath. Her beautiful countenance changed, her sweet mouth hardened; I fancied I saw tears welling in her great blue eyes that were so fathomless.
“I—I did not dream that you were here, or I would never have come,” she faltered. “Never!”
“Because you still wish to avoid me—eh? Your memory still remains to me—but, alas! only a memory,” I said sadly, taking her hand again and holding it firmly within my own. “I am only a chauffeur.”
Our eyes met. She looked at me long and steadily. Her chest rose and fell, and she turned her gaze from me, away to the purple mountains across the bay.
“Let me still remain only a memory,” she answered in a low, strained voice. “It is as painful to me to meet you—as to you.”
“But why? Tell me why?” I demanded, raising her soft hand again to my lips. “Do you remember that day on the Ripley road—the day when we parted?”
She nodded, and her chest rose and fell again, stirred by her own deep emotions.
“You would give me no reason for your sudden decision.”
“And I still can give you none.”
“But why?”
She was silent, standing there with the brilliant Southern afterglow falling full upon her beautiful face. Behind her was a background of feathery palms, and we were alone.
I still held her hand, though she endeavoured to withdraw it.
“Ah!” I cried, “you always withhold your reason from me. I am not rich like other men who admire and flatter you, yet I tell you—ah yes, I swear to you—that only you do I love. Ever since you came fresh from your school in Germany I admired you. Do you remember how many times you sat at my side on the old Panhard? Surely you must have known that? Surely you must have guessed the reason why I always preferred you in the front seat?”
“Yes—yes!” she faltered, interrupting me. “I know. I loved you, but I was foolish—very foolish.”
“Why foolish?”
She made no reply, but burst suddenly into tears.
Tenderly I placed my arm about her waist. What could I do, save to try and comfort her? In the three years that had passed she had grown into womanhood, and yet she still preserved that sweet girlishness that, in these go-ahead days, is so refreshing and attractive in a woman in her early twenties.
In those calm moments in the glorious Sicilian sundown I recollected those days when at seventeen she had admitted her love for me, and we were happy. Visions of that blissful past arose before me—and then the crushing blow I had received prior to our parting.
“Vivi, tell me,” I whispered at last, “why do you still hold aloof from me?”
“Because I—I must.”
“But why? You surely are now your own mistress?”
Her eyes were fixed upon me again very gravely for some moments in silence. Then she answered in a low voice—
“But I can never marry you. It is impossible.”
“No, I know. There is such a wide difference in our stations,” I said regretfully.
“No, it is not that. The reason is one that is my own secret,” was her answer, as she drew her breath and her little hands clenched themselves.
“May I not know it?”
“No—never. It—well, it concerns myself alone.”
“But you still love me, Vivi? You still think of me?” I cried.
“Occasionally.”
And then she turned away in the direction of the hotel.
I followed, and grasping her by the hand, repeated my question.
“My secret is my own,” was all the satisfaction she would give me.
And I was forced at last to allow her to walk back to the hotel, and to follow her alone.
What was the nature of her secret?
If ever a man’s heart sank to the depths of despair mine sank at that moment. She had been all the world to me, and, cosmopolitan adventurer that I had now become, I met a thousand bright-eyed chic and attractive women, yet I revered her memory as the one woman who was pure and perfect.
I watched her disappear into the green-carpeted hotel-lounge, where an orchestra of mandolinists were playing an air from La Bohème. Then I turned away, full of my own sad thoughts, and strolled in the falling twilight beside the grey sea.
Just before dinner, after re-entering the hotel, I wrote a note and gave it to the hall-porter to send to the Signorina.
“The Signorina and the Signora have left, Signore. They went down to the boat for Naples half an hour ago.”
I tore up the note, and next day left Palermo.
Next night I was in Naples, but could find no trace of them. So I went on to Rome, where I was equally unsuccessful. From the Eternal City I took the express to Calais, and on to London, where I learnt that the Viscount her father had died six months before, and that she was travelling on the Continent with her aunt.
Nearly a year passed without any news of my love.
I spent the spring at Monte Carlo, and in May, the month of flowers, found myself back at Bindo’s old villa in Florence, gloomy to me on account of my own loneliness. The two English dogs barked me welcome, and Charlie Whitaker that night came and dined; for Bindo was away.
After dinner we sat in the long wicker chairs out in the garden beneath the palms, taking our coffee in the flower-scented air, with the myriad fire-flies dancing about us.
At table Charlie had been in his best mood, telling me all the gossip of Florence, but out in the garden, with his face in the shadow, he seemed to become morose and uncommunicative. I asked how he had got on during my absence, for I knew he was friendless.
“Oh, fairly well,” was his answer. “A bit lonely, you know. But I used to come up here every day and take the dogs out for a run. An outsider like I am can’t expect invitations to dinners and dances, you know;” and he sighed, and drew vigorously at his cigar.
“By the way,” I said presently, “you remember you once mentioned that you knew Vivi Finlay in the old days in town. I met her in Palermo in the winter.”
He started from his chair, and leaning towards me, echoed—
“You met her!—you? Tell me about her. How did she look? What is she doing?” he asked, with an earnest eagerness that surprised me.
Briefly I explained how I had walked and chatted with her in the gardens of the Igiea at Palermo, though I did not tell him the subject of our conversation. I tried, too, to induce
him to tell me what he knew of her, but he would say nothing beyond what I already knew.
“I wonder she don’t marry,” I remarked at last; but to this he made no response, though I fancied that in the half light I detected a curious smile upon his face, as though he was aware that we had been lovers.
He deftly turned the conversation, though he became more bitter, as if his life was now even more soured than formerly. Then, at midnight, he took his hat and stick, and I opened the gate of the drive and let him out upon the road.
As he left, he grasped my hand warmly, and in a voice full of emotion said—
“Good-night, Ewart. May you be rewarded one day for keeping from starvation a good-for-nothing devil like myself!”
And he passed on into the darkness beneath the trees, on his way back to his high-up humble room down in the heart of the town.
At eight o’clock next morning, when I met Pietro, Bindo’s man, I noticed an unusual expression upon his face, and asked him what had happened.
“I have bad news for you, Signor Ewart,” he answered with hesitation.“At four o’clock this morning the Signor Whitaker was found by the police lying upon the pavement of the Lung Arno, close to the Porta San Frediano. He was dead—struck down with a knife from behind.”
“Murdered!” I gasped.
“Yes, Signore. It is already in the papers;” and he handed me a copy of the Nazione.
Dumbfounded, unnerved, I dressed myself quickly, and driving down to the police-office, saw the head of the detective department, a man named Bianchi.
The sharp-featured little man sitting at the table, after taking down a summary of all I knew regarding my poor friend, explained how the discovery had been made. The body was quite cold when found, and the deep wound between the shoulders showed most conclusively that he had fallen by the hand of an assassin. I was then shown the body, and looked upon the face of poor Charlie, the “outsider,” for the last time.
“He had no money upon him,” I told Bianchi. “Indeed, before leaving me he had remarked that he was almost without a soldo.”
“Yes. It is that very fact which puzzles us. The motive of the crime was evidently not robbery.”
In the days that succeeded the police made most searching inquiries, but discovered nothing. My only regret—and it was indeed a deep one—was that I had lost the letter he had given me with injunctions to open it after his death. Did he fear assassination? I wondered. Did that letter give any clue to the assassin?
But the precious document, whatever it might be, was now irretrievably lost, and the death of “Mr. Charles Whitaker, late of the Stock Exchange,” as the papers put it, remained one of the many murder-mysteries of the city of Florence.
* * * *
Months had gone by—months of constant travel and loneliness, grief and despair.
I was in my room at the Hotel Bonne Femme in Turin, having a wash after a dusty run with the “forty,” when the waiter announced Mr. Bianchi, and the sharp-featured, black-haired little man, recently promoted from Florence to watch the Anarchists in Milan.
“I am very glad, Signor Ewart, that I have been able to catch you here; you are such a bird of passage, you know,” he said in Italian. “But in searching the house of a thief in Florence the other day our men found this letter, addressed to you;” and he produced from his pocket the missive that Charlie had on that hot night entrusted to my care.
I broke the black seal and read it eagerly. Its contents held me speechless in amazement.
“Do you know anything of a young man named Giovanni Murri, a Florentine?” I inquired quickly.
“Murri?” he repeated, knitting his brows. “Why, if I remember aright, a young man of that name was found drowned in the Arno on the same day that your friend the Signor Whitaker was discovered dead. He had been a waiter in London, it was said.”
“That was the man. He killed my poor friend, and then committed suicide;” and I briefly explained how Whitaker had given me the letter which two hours afterwards had been stolen from me.
“The thief was the son of Count di Ferraris’ gardener—a bad character. Finding that it was addressed to you, he evidently intended to return it unopened, and forgot to do so,” Bianchi said. “But may I not read the letter?”
“No,” I replied firmly. “It concerns a purely private affair. All that I can tell you is that Murri killed my friend. It explains the mystery.”
Three nights later, I stood with my well-beloved in the elegant drawing-room of a house just off Park Lane, where she was living with her aunt.
I had placed the dead man’s letter in her hand, and she was reading it breathlessly, her sweet face blanched, her tiny hands trembling.
“Mr. Ewart,” she faltered hoarsely, her eyes downcast as she stood before me, “it is the truth. I ought to have told you long ago. Forgive me.”
“I have already forgiven you. You must have suffered just as bitterly as I have done,” I said, taking her hand.
“Ah yes. God alone knows the wretched life I have led, loving you and yet not daring to tell you my secret. As Charlie has written here, the young Italian, my father’s valet, fell in love with me when I came home from school in Germany, and once I foolishly allowed him to kiss me. From that moment he became filled with a mad passion for me, and though I induced my father to dismiss him, he haunted me. Then I met Charlie Whitaker, and fancied that I loved him. Every girl is anxious to secure a husband. He was rich, kind, good-looking, and all that was eligible, save that he was not of the nobility, and for that reason he knew that my father would discountenance him. He, however, induced me to take a step that I afterwards bitterly regretted. I met him one morning at the registry office at Kensington, and we were married. We lunched together at the Savoy, and then I drove home again. That very afternoon the crash came, and on that same night he was compelled to leave England for the Continent, a ruined man.”
“He must have known of the impending crisis,” I remarked simply.
“I fear he did,” was her reply. “But it was only a week later that you, who had known me so long, spoke to me. You told me of your love, alas! too late. What could I reply? What irony of Fate!”
“Yes, yes. I see. You could not tell me the truth.”
“No. For several reasons. I loved you, yet I knew that if you were in ignorance you would remain Charlie’s friend. Ah! you cannot know the awful suspense, and the thousand and one subterfuges I had to adopt. Murri, who was still in London, employed at the Carlton Club, continued to pester me with his passionate letters—the letters of an imbecile. Somehow, a year later, he discovered our marriage, by the official record, I think, and then he met me in secret one day and vowed a terrible vengeance.”
“His threat he carried out,” I said; “and you, my darling, are at last free.”
Her head fell upon my shoulder, her chiffons rose and fell again, and our lips met in a long, hot, passionate caress, by which I knew that she was still mine—still my own sweet love.
But I was merely a chauffeur—and an adventurer.
That is why I have not married.
CHAPTER X
THE LADY IN A HURRY
“Ah! your London is such a strange place. So dull, so triste—so very damp and foggy.”
“Not always, mademoiselle,” I replied. “You have been there in winter. You should go in June. In the season it is as pleasant as anywhere else in the world.”
“I have no desire to return. And yet—”
“Well?”
“And yet I have decided to go straight to Boulogne, and across the Channel.”
I had met Julie Rosier under curious circumstances only a few hours before. I was on a run alone, with the forty “Napier,” from Limoges to London, and on that particular winter’s night had pulled up at the small station of Bersac to sen
d a telegram. I had written out the message, leaving the car outside, and was walking along the platform, when the stationmaster, who had been talking with a tall, dark-haired, good-looking girl, approached me, cap in hand.
“Excuse me, m’sieur, but a lady wishes to ask a great favour of you.”
“Of me? What is it?” I inquired, rising.
Glancing at the tall figure in black, I saw that she was not more than twenty-two at the outside, and that she had the bearing and manner of a lady.
“Well, m’sieur, she will explain herself,” the man said; whereupon the fair stranger approached, bowing, and exclaimed—
“I trust M’sieur will pardon me for what I am about to ask. I know it is great presumption on my part, a total stranger, but the fact is that I am bound to get to Paris to-morrow morning. It is imperative—most imperative—that I should be there and keep an appointment. I find, however, that the last train has gone. I thought—” and she hesitated, with downcast eyes.
“You mean that you want me to allow you to travel in the car, mademoiselle?” I said, with a smile.
“Ah! m’sieur, if you would—if you only would! It would be an act of friendship that I would never forget.”
She saw my hesitation, and I detected how anxious she became. Her gloved hands were trembling, and she seemed agitated and pale to the lips.
Again I scrutinised her. There was nothing of the police spy or adventuress about her. On the contrary, she seemed a very charmingly modest young woman.
“But surely it would be rather wearisome, mademoiselle?” I said.
“No, no, not at all. I must get to Paris at all costs. Ah! m’sieur, you will allow me to do as I ask, will you not? Do, I implore you!”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 36