Burtborough was the small market town that supplied the necessities of Hartley Manor House. The Hartleys had represented Burtborough for two generations, but Hubert had withdrawn from the political arena, disgusted at the turn of events, and finding more pleasure in turnips and prize cattle than in the art of legislation. He had never been brilliant either as an orator or debater, and he thought he had done his duty by country and party when he had secured the election of a conscientious Liberal for Burtborough. Marriage had helped to make him lazy. He loved his home; stable and gardens; farm and woods; his pretty wife and cooing baby. His brother-in-law thought him the most enviable among men.
“He has all the desires of his heart,” thought Vansittart. “He has not an unsatisfied ambition. He has a clear conscience, can look his fellow-men straight in the face and say, ‘I have injured no man:’ as I cannot, God help me: as I never can so long as I live. At every turn of the road I expect to meet someone whom I have injured—a mother who may have loved that man as my mother loves me—a sister whose life has been made desolate by his death, reprobate though he was. No man stands alone in the world. Whoever he may be, when he falls, he will drag down someone.”
And then he thought of Fiordelisa, with her sunny Italian eyes, and her lighthearted acceptance of such good things as Fate threw in her way—the lodgings on the Rialto, the mandoline lessons, the fine dress and good food. She had taken these things as if they were manna from heaven; and assuredly no rigid principle, no adherence to her Church Catechism, would restrain her from seeking manna from new sources. What had she become, he wondered, in the years that had made his crime an old memory? An artist’s model, or something worse? In these days of photography that beautiful face of hers would have less value than in the golden age of Tintoret and Veronese.
He had done his best to forget that scene at Florian’s; but the image of Fiordelisa returned to his memory very often, harden himself as he might against the pangs of remorse, and the thought of her always saddened him. He had the same kind of sorrow for having spoilt her life as he might have felt had he been cruel to a child. Her ignorance, her friendlessness appealed so strongly to his pity—and even the old aunt, who so placidly accepted the situation, did not appear to him as odious as a hardheaded Englishwoman would have appeared under the same conditions.
Nearly three years had passed, and he knew no more about the man he stabbed than he had known when the dagger dropped from his hand warm with the stranger’s lifeblood. The most watchful attention to the newspapers had resulted in no further knowledge. There had been an occasional paragraph about the fatal brawl in Venice. He was thankful to observe that no one had written of his crime as murder. The fact that the dagger had been bought within an hour of its fatal use—the accidental nature of the encounter—and the brutality of the unknown’s attack had been discussed at length, and there had been a good deal of speculation as to his own character and social status. Had the event happened a few years later some keen-witted special correspondent would doubtless have contrived to interview Fiordelisa; and the girl’s artless prattle and her Venetian environment would have furnished material for a spirited article.
The interest in the death of a nameless Englishman soon died out, and the newspapers found no more to say about the fatal brawl in the Piazza, and as the years went by Vansittart told himself that this dark chapter in his life was closed forever, that the mother who loved him would never know that his conscience was burdened with the death of a fellow-creature.
Looking backward he remembered an occasion in his boyhood when a sudden impulse of fury had brought disgrace upon him, and had caused his mother much distress of mind. It was at a time when he was reading hard at home with a private tutor, shortly before he went to Oxford. A groom had ill-used one of his horses, or Vansittart believed he had, and the young man had attacked and belaboured him severely. The lad had been able to defend himself, and the two had been fairly matched as to weight and size, but Vansittart had all the science on his side, and he felt afterwards that he had disgraced himself by the encounter. His mother’s distress grieved him deeply; and he went so far as to apologize to the vanquished hireling, which apology raised him to the pinnacle of honour in the opinion of the stable generally.
“There’s plenty of young masters as would chuck a sovereign to a lad he’d whacked, but it’s only a thoroughbred one that would say, ‘I beg your pardon, Bates; I ought to have known better,’ ” said the old family coachman, who had driven Master Jack to be christened.
The burden upon his conscience was an old burden by this time, and he was able to carry his load so that no one suspected evil under that pleasant, openhearted aspect of a man who fulfilled all the social duties. He was a good son, a kind and affectionate brother, a generous landlord and master. As the world saw his life there was no flaw in it. He had troops of friends, an honourable status, plenty of money, everything that this world can give of good, in that moderate measure which the poet-philosopher has taught
