“She is better,” he said to the Duchess one day, abruptly. “Her mind is full of activity. But why, at times, does she still look so miserable—like a person without hope or future?”
The Duchess looked pensive. They were sitting in the corner of one of the villa’s terraced walks, amid a scented wilderness of flowers. Above them was a canopy of purple and yellow—rose and wistaria; while through the arches of the pergola which ran along the walk gleamed all those various blues which make the spell of Como—the blue and white of the clouds, the purple of the mountains, the azure of the lake.
“Well, she was in love with him. I suppose it takes a little time,” said the Duchess, sighing.
“Why was she in love with him?” said Meredith, impatiently. “As to the Moffatt engagement, naturally, she was kept in the dark?”
“At first,” said the Duchess, hesitating. “And when she knew, poor dear, it was too late!”
“Too late for what?”
“Well, when one falls in love one doesn’t all at once shake it off because the man deceives you.”
“One should,” said Meredith, with energy. “Men are not worth all that women spend upon them.”
“Oh, that’s true!” cried the Duchess—“so dreadfully true! But what’s the good of preaching? We shall go on spending it to the end of time.”
“Well, at any rate, don’t choose the dummies and the frauds.”
“Ah, there you talk sense,” said the Duchess. “And if only we had the French system in England! If only one could say to Julie: ‘Now look here, there’s your husband! It’s all settled—down to plate and linen—and you’ve got to marry him!’ how happy we should all be.”
Dr. Meredith stared.
“You have the man in your eye,” he said.
The Duchess hesitated.
“Suppose you come a little walk with me in the wood,” she said, at last, gathering up her white skirts.
Meredith obeyed her. They were away for half an hour, and when they returned the journalist’s face, flushed and furrowed with thought, was not very easy to read.
Nor was his temper in good condition. It required a climb to the very top of Monte Crocione to send him back, more or less appeased, a consenting player in the Duchess’s game. For if there are men who are flirts and egotists—who ought to be, yet never are, divined by the sensible woman at a glance—so also there are men too well equipped for this wicked world, too good, too well born, too desirable.
It was in this somewhat flinty and carping mood that Meredith prepared himself for the advent of Jacob Delafield.
But when Delafield appeared, Meredith’s secret antagonisms were soon dissipated. There was certainly no challenging air of prosperity about the young man.
At first sight, indeed, he was his old cheerful self, always ready for a walk or a row, on easy terms at once with the Italian servants or boatmen. But soon other facts emerged—stealthily, as it were, from the concealment in which a strong man was trying to keep them.
“That young man’s youth is over,” said Meredith, abruptly, to the Duchess one evening. He pointed to the figure of Delafield, who was pacing, alone with his pipe, up and down one of the lower terraces of the garden.
The Duchess showed a teased expression.
“It’s like something wearing through,” she said, slowly. “I suppose it was always there, but it didn’t show.”
“Name your ‘it.’ ”
“I can’t.” But she gave a little shudder, which made Meredith look at her with curiosity.
“You feel something ghostly—unearthly?”
She nodded assent; crying out, however, immediately afterwards, as though in compunction, that he was one of the dearest and best of fellows.
“Of course he is,” said Meredith. “It is only the mystic in him coming out. He is one of the men who have the sixth sense.”
“Well, all I know is, he has the oddest power over people,” said Evelyn, with another shiver. “If Freddie had it, my life wouldn’t be worth living. Thank goodness, he hasn’t a vestige!”
“At bottom it’s the power of the priest,” said Meredith. “And you women are far too susceptible towards it. Nine times out of ten it plays the mischief.”
The Duchess was silent a moment. Then she bent towards her companion, finger on lip, her charming eyes glancing significantly towards the lower terrace. The figures on it were now two. Julie and Delafield paced together.
“But this is the tenth!” she said, in an eager whisper.
Meredith smiled at her, then flung her a dubious “Chi sa?” and changed the subject.
Delafield, who was a fine oar, had soon taken command of the lake expeditions; and by the help of two stalwart youths from Tremezzo, the four-oar was in use from morning till night. Through the broad lake which lies between Menaggio and Varenna it sped northward to Gravedona; or beneath the shadowy cliffs of the Villa Serbelloni it slipped over deep waters, haunted and dark, into the sunny spaces of Lecco; or it coasted along the steep sides of Monte Primo, so that the travellers in it might catch the blue stain of the gentians on the turf, where it sloped into the lucent wave below, or watch the fishermen on the rocks, spearing their prey in the green or golden shallows.
The weather was glorious—a summer before its time. The wild cherries shook down their snow upon the grass; but the pears were now in bridal white, and a warmer glory of apple-blossom was just beginning to break upon the blue. The nights were calm and moonlit; the dawns were visions of mysterious and incredible beauty, wherein mountain and forest and lake were but the garments, diaphanous, impalpable, of some delicate, indwelling light and fire spirit, which breathed and pulsed through the solidity of rock, no less visibly than through the crystal leagues of air or the sunlit spaces of water.
Yet presently, as it were, a hush of waiting, of tension, fell upon their little party. Nature offered
