"And what were you doing 'down there,' besides making yourself sick, if I may ask?" said Ferguson.
"Oh, I went down for the hunting, of course. What else does one go to such a place for?"
"Tell me a little about that, if you don't mind," said the Englishman, interested for the first time.
"M. de Verneuil wants us all to go to the Deserto some day soon," said Fanny; "a lunch party. We shall be sure to enjoy it; M. de Verneuil's parties are always delightful."
III
The end of the week had been appointed for Pierre's excursion.
The morning opened fair and warm, with the veiled blue that belongs to the Bay of Naples, the soft hazy blue which is so different from the dry glittering clearness of the Riviera.
Fanny was mounted on a donkey; Eva preferred to walk, and Mademoiselle accompanied her. Pierre had included in his invitation the usual afternoon assemblage at the villa – Dallas, Mark Ferguson, Bartholomew, Gordon-Gray, and David Rod.
For Fanny had, as Dallas expressed it, "taken up" Rod; she had invited him twice to dinner. The superfluous courtesy had annoyed Dallas, for of course, as Rod himself was nothing, less than nothing, the explanation must lie in the fact that Horace Bartholomew had suggested it. "Bartholomew was always wrong-headed; always picking up some perfectly impossible creature, and ramming him down people's throats," he thought, with vexation.
Bartholomew was walking now beside Fanny's donkey.
Mark Ferguson led the party, as it moved slowly along the narrow paved road that winds in zigzags up the mountain; Eva, Mademoiselle, Pierre, Dallas, and Rod came next. Fanny and Bartholomew were behind; and behind still, walking alone and meditatively, came Gordon-Gray, who looked at life (save for the hunting) from the standpoint of the Italian Renaissance. Gordon-Gray knew a great deal about the Malatesta family; he had made a collection of Renaissance cloak clasps; he had written an essay on the colors of the long hose worn in the battling, leg-displaying days which had aroused his admiration, aroused it rather singularly, since he himself was as far as possible from having been qualified by nature to shine in such vigorous society.
Pierre went back to give some directions to one of the men in the rear of their small procession.
When he returned, "So the bears sometimes get among the canes?" Eva was saying.
"But then, how very convenient," said Pierre; "for they can take the canes and chastise them punctually." He spoke in his careful English.
"They're sugar-canes," said Rod.
"It's his plantation we are talking about," said Eva. "Once it was a military post, he says. Perhaps like Ehrenbreitstein."
"Exactly," said Dallas, from behind; "the same massive frowning stone walls."
"There were four one-story wooden barracks once," said Rod; "whitewashed; flag-pole in the centre. There's nothing now but a chimney; we've taken the boards for our mill."
"See the cyclamen, good folk," called out Gordon-Gray.
On a small plateau near by a thousand cyclamen, white and pink, had lifted their wings as if to fly away. Off went Pierre to get them for Eva.
"Have you ever seen the bears in the canes yourself?" pursued Eva.
"I've seen them in many places besides canes," answered Rod, grimly.
"I too have seen bears," Eva went on. "At Berne, you know."
"The Punta Palmas bears are quite the same," commented Dallas. "When they see Mr. Rod coming they sit up on their hind legs politely. And he throws them apples."
"No apples; they won't grow there," said Rod, regretfully. "Only oranges."
"Do you make the saw-mill go yourself – with your own hands?" pursued Eva.
"Not now. I did once."
"Wasn't it very hard work?"
"That? Nothing at all. You should have seen us grubbing up the stumps – Tipp and I!"
"Mr. Tipp is perhaps your partner?" said Dallas.
"Yes; Jim Tipp. Tipp and Rod is the name of the firm."
"Tipp – and Rod," repeated Dallas, slowly. Then with quick utterance, as if trying it, "Tippandrod."
Pierre was now returning with his flowers. As he joined them, round the corner of their zigzag, from a pasture above came a troop of ponies that had escaped from their driver, and were galloping down to Sorrento; two and two they came rushing on, too rapidly to stop, and everybody pressed to one side to give them room to pass on the narrow causeway.
Pierre jumped up on the low stone wall and extended his hand to Eva. "Come!" he said, hastily.
Rod put out his arm and pushed each outside pony, as he passed Eva, forcibly against his mate who had the inside place; a broad space was thus left beside her, and she had no need to leave the causeway. She had given one hand to Pierre as a beginning; he held it tightly. Mademoiselle meanwhile had climbed the wall like a cat. There were twenty of the galloping little nags; they took a minute or two to pass. Rod's out-stretched hands, as he warded them off, were seen to be large and brown.
Eva imagined them "grubbing up" the stumps. "What is grubbing?" she said.
"It is writing for the newspapers in a street in London," said Pierre, jumping down. "And you must wear a torn coat, I believe." Pierre was proud of his English.
He presented his flowers.
Mademoiselle admired them volubly. "They are like souls just ready to wing their way to another world," she said, sentimentally, with her head on one side. She put her well-gloved hand in Eva's arm, summoned Pierre with an amiable gesture to the vacant place at Eva's left hand, and the three walked on together.
The Deserto, though disestablished and dismantled, like many another monastery, by the rising young kingdom, held still a few monks; their brown-robed brethren had aided Pierre's servant in arranging the table in the high room which commands the wonderful view of the sea both to the north and the south of the Sorrento peninsula, with Capri lying at its point too fair to be real – like an island in a dream.
"O la douce folie —
Aimable Capri!"
said Mark Ferguson. No one knew what he meant; he did not know himself. It was a poetical inspiration – so he said.
The lunch was delicate, exquisite; everything save the coffee (which the monks wished to provide: coffee, black-bread, and grapes which were half raisins was the monks' idea of a lunch) had been sent up from Sorrento. Dallas, who was seated beside Fanny, gave her a congratulatory nod.
"Yes, all Pierre does is well done," she answered, in a low tone, unable to deny herself this expression of maternal content.
Pierre was certainly a charming host. He gave them a toast; he gave them two; he gave them a song: he had a tenor voice which had been admirably cultivated, and his song was gay and sweet. He looked very handsome; he wore one of the cyclamen in his button-hole; Eva wore the rest, arranged by the deft fingers of Mademoiselle in a knot at her belt. But at the little feast Fanny was much more prominent than her daughter: this was Pierre's idea of what was proper; he asked her opinion, he referred everything to her with a smile which was homage in itself. Dallas, after a while, was seized with a malicious desire to take down for a moment this too prosperous companion of his boyhood. It was after Pierre had finished his little song. "Do you ever sing now, Fanny?" he asked, during a silence. "I remember how you used to sing Trancadillo."
"I am sure I don't know what you refer to," answered Fanny, coldly.
Another week passed. They sailed to Capri; they sailed to Ischia; they visited Pompeii. Bartholomew suggested these excursions. Eva too showed an almost passionate desire for constant movement, constant action. "Where shall we go to-day, mamma?" she asked every morning.
One afternoon they were strolling through an orange grove on the outskirts of Sorrento. Under the trees the ground was ploughed and rough; low stone copings, from whose interstices innumerable violets swung, ran hither and thither, and the paths followed the copings. The fruit hung thickly on the trees. Above the high wall which surrounded the place loomed the campanile of an old church. While they were strolling the bells rang the Angelus, swinging far out against the blue.
Rod, who was of the party, was absent-minded; he looked a little at the trees, but said nothing, and after a while he became absent-bodied as well, for he fell behind the others, and pursued his meditations, whatever they were, in solitude.
"He is bothered about his Italians," said Bartholomew; "he has only secured twenty so far."
Pierre joined Fanny; he had not talked with her that afternoon, and he now came to fulfil the pleasant duty. Eva, who had been left with Mademoiselle, turned round, and walking rapidly across the ploughed ground, joined Rod, who was sitting on one of the low stone walls at some distance from the party. Mademoiselle followed her, putting on her glasses as she went, in order to see her way over the heaped ridges. She held up her skirts, and gave ineffectual little leaps, always landing in the wrong spot, and tumbling up hill, as Dallas called it. "Blue," he remarked, meditatively. Every one glanced in that direction, and it was perceived that the adjective described the hue of Mademoiselle's birdlike ankles.
"For shame!" said Fanny.
But Dallas continued his observations. "Do look across," he said, after a while; "it's too funny. The French woman evidently thinks that Rod should rise, or else that Eva should be seated also. But her pantomime passes unheeded; neither Eva nor the backwoodsman is conscious of her existence."
"Eva is so fond of standing," explained Fanny. "I often say to her, 'Do sit down, child; it tires me to see you.' But Eva is never tired."
Pierre, who had a spray of orange buds in his hand, pressed it to his lips, and waved it imperceptibly towards his betrothed. "In everything she is perfect – perfect," he murmured to the pretty mother.
"Rod doesn't in the least mean to be rude," began Bartholomew.
"Oh, don't explain that importation of yours at this late day," interposed Dallas; "it isn't necessary. He is accustomed to sitting on fences probably; he belongs to the era of the singing-school."
This made Fanny angry. For as to singing-schools, there had been a time – a remote time long ago – and Dallas knew it. She had smiled in answer to Pierre's murmured rapture; she now took his arm. To punish Dallas she turned her steps – on her plump little feet in their delicate kid boots – towards the still seated Rod, with the intention of asking him (for the fifth time) to dinner. This would not only exasperate Dallas, but it would please Bartholomew at the same stroke. Two birds, etc.
When they came up to the distant three, Mademoiselle glanced at Mrs. Churchill anxiously. But in the presence of the mistress of the villa, Rod did at last lift his long length from the wall.
This seemed, however, to be because he supposed they were about to leave the grove. "Is the walk over?" he said.
Pierre looked at Eva adoringly. He gave her the spray of orange buds.
IV
A week later Fanny's daughter entered the bedroom which she shared with her mother.
From the girl's babyhood the mother had had her small white-curtained couch placed close beside her own. She could not have slept unless able at any moment to stretch out her hand and touch her sleeping child.
Fanny was in the dressing-room; hearing Eva's step, she spoke. "Do you want me, Eva?"
"Yes, please."
Fanny appeared, a vision of white arms, lace, and embroidery.
"I thought that Rosine would not be here yet," said Eva. Rosine was their maid; her principal occupation was the elaborate arrangement of Fanny's brown hair.
"No, she isn't there – if you mean in the dressing-room," answered Fanny, nodding her head towards the open door.
"I wanted to see you alone, mamma, for a moment. I wanted to tell you that I shall not marry Pierre."
Fanny, who had sunk into an easy-chair, at these words sprang up. "What is the matter? Are you ill?"
"Not in the least, mamma; I am only telling you that I cannot marry Pierre."
"You must be ill," pursued Fanny. "You have fever. Don't deny it." And anxiously she took the girl's hands. But Eva's hands were cooler than her own.
"I don't think I have any fever," replied Eva. She had been taught to answer all her mother's questions in fullest detail. "I sleep and eat as usual; I have no headache."
Fanny still looked at her anxiously. "Then if you are not ill, what can be the matter with you?"
"I have only told you, mamma, that I could not marry Pierre; it seems to me very simple."
She was so quiet that Fanny began at last to realize that she was in earnest. "My dearest, you know you like Pierre. You have told me so yourself."
"I don't like him now."
"What has he done – poor Pierre? He will explain, apologize; you may be sure of that."
"He has done nothing; I don't want him to apologize. He is as he always is. It is I who have changed."
"Oh, it is you who have changed," repeated Fanny, bewildered.
"Yes," answered Eva.
"Come and sit down and tell mamma all about it. You are tired of poor Pierre – is that it? It is very natural, he has been here so often, and stayed so long. But I will tell him that he must go away – leave Sorrento. And he shall stay away as long as you like, Eva; just as long as you like."
"Then he will stay away forever," the girl answered, calmly.
Fanny waited a moment. "Did you like Gino better? Is that it?" she said, softly, watching Eva's face.
"No."
"Thornton Stanley?"
"Oh no!"
"Dear child, explain this a little to your mother. You know I think only of your happiness," said Fanny, with tender solicitude.
Eva evidently tried to obey. "It was this morning. It came over me suddenly that I could not possibly marry him. Now or a year from now. Never." She spoke tranquilly; she even seemed indifferent. But this one decision was made.
"You know that I have given my word to the old Count," began Fanny, in perplexity.
Eva was silent.
"And everything was arranged."
Eva still said nothing. She looked about the room with wandering attention, as though this did not concern her.
"Of course I would never force you into anything," Fanny went on. "But I thought Pierre would be so congenial." In her heart she was asking herself what the young Belgian could have done. "Well, dear," she continued, with a little sigh, "you must always tell mamma everything." And she kissed her.
"Of course," Eva answered. And then she went away.
Fanny immediately rang the bell, and asked for Mademoiselle. But Mademoiselle knew nothing about it. She was overwhelmed with surprise and dismay. She greatly admired Pierre; even more she admired the old Count, whom she thought the most distinguished of men. Fanny dismissed the afflicted little woman, and sat pondering. While she was thinking, Eva re-entered.
"Mamma, I forgot to say that I should like to have you tell Pierre immediately. To-day."
Fanny was almost irritated. "You have never taken that tone before, my daughter. Have you no longer confidence in my judgment?"
"If you do not want to tell him this afternoon, it can be easily arranged, mamma; I will not come to the dinner-table; that is all. I do not wish to see him until he knows."
Pierre was to dine at the villa that evening.
"What can he have done?" thought Fanny again.
She rang for Rosine; half an hour later she was in the drawing-room. "Excuse me to every one but M. de Verneuil," she said to Angelo. She was very nervous, but she had decided upon her course: Pierre must leave Sorrento, and remain away until she herself should call him back.
"At the end of a month, perhaps even at the end of a week, she will miss you so much that I shall have to issue the summons," she said, speaking as gayly as she could, as if to make it a sort of joke. It was very hard for her, at best, to send away the frank, handsome boy.
Poor Pierre could not understand it at all. He declared over and over again that nothing he had said, nothing he had done, could possibly have offended his betrothed. "But surely you know yourself that it is impossible!" he added, clasping his hands beseechingly.
"It is a girlish freak," explained the mother. "She is so young, you know."
"But that is the very reason. I thought it was only older women who say what they wish to do in that decided way; who have freaks, as you call it," said the Belgian, his voice for a moment much older, more like the voice of a man who has spent half his life in Paris.
This was so true that Fanny was driven to a defence that scarcely anything else would have made her use.
"Eva is different from the young girls here," she said. "You must not forget that she is an American."
At last Pierre went away; he had tried to bear himself as a gentleman should; but the whole affair was a mystery to him, and he was very unhappy. He went as far as Rome, and there he waited, writing to Fanny an anxious letter almost every day.
In the meanwhile life at the villa went on; there were many excursions. Fanny's thought was that Eva would miss Pierre more during these expeditions than at other times, for Pierre had always arranged them, and he had enjoyed them so much himself that his gay spirits and his gay wit had made all the party gay. Eva, however, seemed very happy, and at length the mother could not help being touched to see how light-hearted her serious child had become, now that she was entirely free. And yet how slight the yoke had been, and how pleasant! thought Fanny. At the end of two weeks there were still no signs of the "missing" upon which she had counted. She thought that she would try the effect of briefly mentioning the banished man. "I hear from Pierre almost every day, poor fellow. He is in Rome."
"Why does he stay in Rome?" said Eva. "Why doesn't he return home?"
"I suppose he doesn't want to go so far away," answered Fanny, vaguely.
"Far away from what? Home should always be the first place," responded the young moralist. "Of course you have told him, mamma, that I shall never be his wife? That it is forever?" And she turned her gray eyes towards her mother, for the first time with a shade of suspicion in them.
"Never is a long word, Eva."
"Oh, mamma!" The girl rose. "I shall write to him myself, then."
"How you speak! Do you wish to disobey me, my own little girl?"
"No; but it is so dishonest; it is like a lie."
"My dear, trust your mother. You have changed once; you may change again."
"Not about this, mamma. Will you please write this very hour, and make an end of it?"
"You are hard, Eva. You do not think of poor Pierre at all."
"No, I do not think of Pierre."
"And is there any one else you think of? I must ask you that once more," said Fanny, drawing her daughter down beside her caressingly. Her thoughts could not help turning again towards Gino, and in her supreme love for her child she now accomplished the mental somerset of believing that on the whole she preferred the young Italian to all the liberty, all the personal consideration for herself, which had been embodied in the name of Verneuil.
"Yes, there is some one else I think of," Eva replied, in a low voice.
"In Rome?" said Fanny.
Eva made a gesture of denial that was fairly contemptuous.
Fanny's mind flew wildly from Bartholomew to Dallas, from Ferguson to Gordon-Gray: Eva had no acquaintances save those which were her mother's also.
"It is David Rod," Eva went on, in the same low tone. Then, with sudden exaltation, her eyes gleaming, "I have never seen any one like him."
It was a shock so unexpected that Mrs. Churchill drew her breath under it audibly, as one does under an actual blow. But instantly she rallied. She said to herself that she had got a romantic idealist for a daughter – that was all. She had not suspected it; she had thought of Eva as a lovely child who would develop into what she herself had been. Fanny, though far-seeing and intelligent, had not been endowed with imagination. But now that she did realize it, she should know how to deal with it. A disposition like that, full of visionary fancies, was not so uncommon as some people supposed. Horace Bartholomew should take the Floridian away out of Eva's sight forever, and the girl would soon forget him; in the meanwhile not one word that was harsh should be spoken on the subject, for that would be the worst policy of all.
This train of thought had passed through her mind like a flash. "My dear," she began, as soon as she had got her breath back, "you are right to be so honest with me. Mr. Rod has not – has not said anything to you on the subject, has he?"
"No. Didn't I tell you that he cares nothing for me? I think he despises me – I am so useless!" And then suddenly the girl began to sob; a passion of tears.
Fanny was at her wits' end; Eva had not wept since the day of her baby ills, for life had been happy to her, loved, caressed, and protected as she had been always, like a hot-house flower.
"My darling," said the mother, taking her in her arms.
But Eva wept on and on, as if her heart would break. It ended in Fanny's crying too.