“Only duty! Well, it was a dream, a lovely dream—and it is over.”
“Let it go with a smile, Lisa. You have so much to make life pleasant—a face that will charm everyone; a voice that may make your fortune.”
“I don’t care about fortune.”
“Ah, but you will find it very pleasant when it comes—carriages and horses, a fine house, jewels, laurel wreaths, applause, all that is most intoxicating in life. It is for that you have been working so hard.”
“No, it is not for that. I have been working only to please you; so that you should say by-and-by, ‘This poor little Lisa, for whom I have taken so much trouble, is something more than a common lace-worker, after all.’ ”
“This poor little Lisa is a genius, I believe, and will have the world at her feet, by-and-by. And now, Si’ora, I must say goodbye. I am going into the country tomorrow.”
“For long?”
“Till after my marriage, perhaps.”
“Till after your marriage! And when you are married will you ever come and see me?”
“Perhaps; if you will promise never again to talk as foolishly as you have talked today.”
“I promise. I promise anything in this world rather than not see you.”
“If I come, be sure I shall come as your true and loyal friend. Ah, here is your son,” as a babyish prattle made itself heard in the little vestibule.
First came a rattling of the handle, and then the door was burst open, and Paolo rushed in—a sturdy block of a boy, with flaxen hair and great black eyes—a curious compromise between the Saxon father and the Venetian mother; square-shouldered, sturdy, stolid, yet with flashes of southern impetuousness. He was big for his age, very big, standing straight and strong upon the legs of an infant Hercules. He excelled in everything but speech.
Vansittart lifted him in his arms, and looked long and earnestly into the cherubic countenance, which first smiled and then frowned at him. He was trying, in this living picture of the dead, to see whether he could discover any trace of the Marchant lineaments.
It might be that a foregone conclusion prompted the fancy—that the fear of seeing made him see—but in the turn of the eyebrow and the contour of cheek and chin he thought he recognized lines which were familiar to him in the faces of Eve and her sisters—lines which were not in Fiordelisa’s face.
He set the boy down with a sigh.
“Don’t spoil him, Signora,” he said to la Zia. “He looks like a boy with a good disposition, but a strong temper. He will want judicious training by-and-by.”
Lisa followed him to the vestibule, and opened the door for him.
“Tell me that you are not angry before you go,” she said imploringly.
“Angry? No, no; how could I be angry? I am only sorry that you should waste so much warmth of feeling on a man whose heart belongs to someone else.”
“What is she like—that someone else? Tell me that—I want to know.”
“Very lovely, very good, very gentle and tender and dear. How can I describe her? She is the only woman in the world for me.”
“Shall I ever see her?”
“I think not, Si’ora. It would do no good. There is that sad secret which you and I know, but which she does not know. I could not tell her about you without making her wonder how you and I had come to be such friends; and then—”
“You do not think that I would tell her?” exclaimed Lisa, with a wounded air.
“No, no; I know you would not. Only secrets come to light, sometimes, unawares. Let the future take care of itself. Once more, goodbye.”
“Once more, goodbye,” she echoed, in tones of deepest melancholy.
XVII
“She Was More Fair Than Words Can Say”
If Easter had been a time of happiness for Vansittart and Eve, bringing with it the revelation of mutual love, Whitsuntide was no less happy; happier, perhaps, in its serene security, and in the familiarity of a love which seemed to have lasted for a long time.
“Only seven weeks!” exclaimed Eve, in one of their wanderings among the many cattle-tracks on Bexley Hill, no sound of life or movement in all the world around them save the hum of insects and the chime of cow bells. “To think that we have been engaged only seven weeks! It seems a lifetime.”
“Because you are so weary of me?” asked Vansittart, with a lover’s fatuous smile.
“No; because our love is so colossal. How can it have grown so tremendous in so short a time?”
“Romeo and Juliet’s love grew in a single night.”
“Ah, that was in Italy—and for stage effect. I don’t think much of a passion that springs up in a night, like one of those great red fungi which one sees in this wood on an October morning. I should like our love to be as strong and as deep-rooted as that old oak over there, with its rugged grey roots cleaving the ground.”
“Why, so it is; or it will be by the time we celebrate our golden wedding.”
“Our golden wedding! Yes, if we go on living we must be old and grey some day. It seems hard, doesn’t it? How happy those Greek gods and goddesses were, to be forever young! It seems hard that we must change from what we are now. I cannot think of myself as an old woman, in a black silk gown and a cap. A cap!” she interjected, with ineffable disgust, and an involuntary movement of her ungloved hand to the coils of bright hair which were shining uncovered in the sun. “And you with grey hair and wrinkles! Wrinkles in your face! That is what your favourite Spencer calls ‘Unthinkable.’ Stay”—looking at him searchingly in the merciless summer light. “Why, I declare there is just one wrinkle already. Just one perpendicular wrinkle! That means care, does it not?”
“What care can I have when I have you, except the fear of losing you?”
“Ah, you can have no
