Alas! Part 15

A burly monk receives them. He does not look at all a prey to the pensive sorrow one would expect at the desecration of his holy things and the dispersion of his fraternity. Probably, in his slow peasant mind there is room for nothing but self-congratulation at his being one of the few--only fifteen in all--left to end their days in the old home. He leads them stolidly through chapels and refectory--the now too roomy refectory, where the poor remnant of Carthusians dine together only on Sundays--through meagrely furnished cells, in one of which he matter-of-factly lets down the front flap of a cupboard to show what forms his daily dining-table except on the happy Sunday, to which he must look forward so warmly.

"Must not he love Sunday!" cries Elizabeth, with sparkling eyes. "Do not you long to know what they have for dinner on Sundays? Do you think he would mind telling us?"

Elizabeth's spirits are going up like quicksilver. It is evident, despite the delicate melancholy of her face, that she is naturally of an extremely joyous and enjoying nature, and gifted with a freshness of sensation which belongs ordinarily rather to the green age at which Jim first remembers her, than to the mature one which he knows for a certainty that she has now reached. She is filled with such a lively and surprised delight at all the little details of arrangement of the monastic life that he is at last impelled to say to her, something wonderingly:

"But you must have seen hundreds of monasteries before?"

"Not one."

"But there are, or were, such swarms of them all over Italy."

"I dare say. I was never in Italy before."

"Not really?"

She lifts up her hand, and waves it at him with an air of hasty deprecation of further question, growing suddenly grave.

"Don't ask me whether I have been here or there, or whether I have done this or that. I have never been anywhere or done anything."

Her desire for a cessation of all inquiries as to her doings is obviously so earnest that Jim of course complies with it. Once or twice before he has been struck by her strange want of acquaintance with facts and phenomena, which would have come as a matter of course within the range of observation of every woman of her age and station. Against his will, a horrid recollection flashes upon him of a novel he had once read, in which the hero exhibits a singular ignorance of any events or incidents that had occurred within the ten years preceding the opening of the story--an ignorance which towards the end of the third volume was accounted for by its transpiring that he has spent the intervening period in a convict prison! He drives the grotesque and monstrous idea with scourges out of his mind; but it recurs, and recurs to be displaced by another hardly less painful, if in some degree more probable. Can it be possible that the crus.h.i.+ng blow which has fallen upon the Le Marchant family, and upon Elizabeth in particular, whitening the mother's hair, and giving that tear-washed look to the daughter's sweet eyes--can it be possible that that heavy stroke was insanity? Can Elizabeth have been out of her mind? Can she have spent in confinement any of that past, from all allusion to which she s.h.i.+es away with a sensitiveness more shrinking than that of

"The tender horns of c.o.c.kled snails"?

He is so much absorbed in his tormenting speculations about her that for the moment he forgets her bodily presence; and it is only her voice, her soft sane voice, that brings him back to a consciousness of it. They have been led into a _salon_, in which, as their guide tells them, the confraternity used to receive any "personage" that came to visit them.

Alas, no personage ever visits the poor frocked remnant now! It is a charming lightsome room, that gives one no monastic idea, with pretty airy fancies of flower-wreaths and arabesques, and dainty dancing figures painted on wall and ceiling and doors. One of these latter is half open, and through it comes an exquisite sudden view of the hills, with their sharp-cut shadows and their sunlit slopes; of s.h.i.+ning Florence at their feet, of the laugh of young verdure, and the wedded gloom and glory of cypress and poplar filling the foreground. Upon Elizabeth's small face, turned suddenly towards him, seems reflected some of the ineffable radiance of the Tuscan light.

"When next I dream of heaven," she says, in her tender, vibrating voice, "it will be like this. Do you ever dream of heaven? I often do, and I always wake crying because it is not true; but"--with a joyful change of key--"I will not cry any more without better cause. Since I came here I have found earth beautiful and delightful enough for me!"

He looks back at her, hardly hearing her words, but chiding himself fiercely for the disloyal thought which he has entertained, however unwillingly; the thought that the foul fiend of madness could ever, even temporarily, have defiled the temple of those eyes whence reason and feeling, so sweetly wedded, are s.h.i.+ning out upon him, unworthy as he is of their rays.

"Since you came here?" he repeats in a sort of dreamy interrogation; "only since you came here?"

"You must not take me up so sharply!" she cries in a voice of playful remonstrance, in which there is a lilt of young gaiety. "I warn you that I will not be taken up so sharply! I did not say, '_only_ since I came here!' I said, 'Since I came here!'"

CHAPTER XIV.

Presently they pa.s.s into the still, cloistered garden, in whose unmown gra.s.s-squares gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose walks pale pink peonies are flus.h.i.+ng, and round whose well the grave rosemary bushes are set. Through the whole place is an atmosphere of deep peace, of silence, leisure, dignity. It is virtually a _tete-a-tete_, as their tonsured guide, seeing their evident harmlessness, has left them to their own devices; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat down to rest upon a camp-stool which Elizabeth has been carrying ever since they left the carriage. It has fidgeted Jim to see her burdened with it; for let a man be ever so little in love with a woman, his tendency always is to think her as brittle as spun gla.s.s, to believe that any weight, however light, will bruise her arm--any pebble, however tiny, wound her tender foot. He has offered to relieve her of it, but she has refused--playfully at first--telling him she is sure that he will lose it; and afterwards, when he insists, more gravely, though with gentle grat.i.tude, saying that it would never do for her to get into the habit of being waited upon, and that she always carries mammy's things. It is perhaps absurd that a woman of six-and-twenty should speak of her mother as "mammy," yet the homely and childish abbreviation seems to him to come "most fair and featously" from her lips.

They stay a long time in the sun-kissed garden, considering that there is after all not very much to see there. But Elizabeth's light steps, that to-day seem set to some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to leave it; she must smell the great new peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly perfumed; she must steal a sprig of rosemary "to put into her coffin when she dies," at which he catches his breath, shuddering; she must peep into the well. He insists on her holding his hand for safety as she leans over to do so; her little fingers grip his tight as she cranes her neck and bends her lissom body. But what a small handful they are, compared to those other fingers--those kind, useful, but undoubtedly solid fingers--which he has held perfunctorily through many a matter-of-fact hour. By-and-by they stray away together out of the bounteous air of the hilltop into a semi-underground church, to see the fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments, which look as fresh as if their marble had left its home in Carrara but yesterday. They stand looking down at those three kin who lie side by side before the high altar, each with head dropped a little sideways on the shoulder, as if overcome by sudden sleep. They step on into the side chapel, where that yet n.o.bler mitred figure, fas.h.i.+oned by Donatello's hand, stretches his p.r.o.ne length above his border of fruit and flowers, among which lies a carved skull, through whose empty eye-holes--strange and grisly fancy contrasting with so much beauty--a mocking ribbon runs. Elizabeth is perfectly silent the whole time, but no flood of talk could make Jim half so conscious of her presence, palpitating with sympathy and feeling, could give half the confidence he enjoys that she will introduce no allusion to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is but too probable that the excellent companion of most of his Florentine rambles would have done.

Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet at last she speaks. It is in the Chapter House, where, as most of us have done, they have suddenly come upon another tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on the pavement before the altar, with no separating edge of marble or wrought-iron railing to keep him from the foot of the pa.s.ser-by. He lies there, portrayed with such an extraordinary vividness of life about his prostrate figure and his severe, powerful face, that one feels inclined to speak low, lest he should lift his white lids and look rebuke at us.

In the lines about his mouth there is a hint of sardonic mirth. Is he--hearing our foolish chatter--touched with a grave contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt at it? Or is he keeping in his sleep the memory of some four hundred years old jest? Elizabeth has involuntarily crept close to Burgoyne's side, with the gesture of a frightened child.

"Are you sure that he did not stir?" she asks tremulously under her breath. Her next thought is that her mother must see him too, this wonderful living dead man, and they presently set forth to return to the garden to fetch her. But apparently she has grown tired of waiting for them, for, as they enter the cloistered _enceinte_, they see her advancing to meet them.

"I would not be left alone with him at night for the wealth of the Indies," Elizabeth is saying, with a half-nervous laugh. "Oh, mammy, you would never have forgiven me if I had let you go without seeing him!

Why, what is this?"--with a sudden change of key--"what has happened?"

For as they draw near to Mrs. Le Marchant they see that her walk is a staggering one, and that the usually healthy, clear pallor of her face is exchanged for a livid whiteness. "What is it, darling?" cries Elizabeth in an accent of terror. "Oh, Jim, she is going to faint!" In the agitation of the moment she has unconsciously returned to the familiar address which she used always to employ towards him in their boy-and-girl days. "Put your arm round her on that side, I can hold her up on this. Let us get her back to the camp-stool."

A camp-stool is neither an easy nor a luxurious seat upon which to deposit a half-swooning woman, but the joint exertions of her daughter and of Burgoyne presently succeed in replacing her on her rickety resting-place; their arms interlace each other behind her back, and their anxious eyes look interrogation at one another above her head, half dropped on Elizabeth's slight shoulder.

"Does she often faint? Is she apt to do it?" asks Jim, in a whisper.

"Never--never!" replies the girl in a heart-rent voice, raining kisses on her mother's white face. "Oh, darling, darling, what has happened to you?"

Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain of those warm kisses, but a little colour is certainly beginning to steal back into the elder woman's cheek, and she draws a long breath.

"Oh, if she could have a gla.s.s of water!" cries Elizabeth, greedily verifying these slight signs of returning consciousness. "Get her a gla.s.s of water! Oh, please get her a gla.s.s of water--quick! quick!"

Burgoyne complies, though it is not without reluctant misgivings that he withdraws the efficacious support of his own solid arm, and leaves Elizabeth's poor little limb to bear the whole weight of her mother's inert body.

Their guide has, as before mentioned, disappeared; and Jim has not the slightest idea in which direction to seek him. It is five good minutes before he discovers him, standing near the door of the monastery, in conversation with a visitor who is apparently just in the act of departure. The stranger is in clerical dress; and, as he turns to nod farewell to the monk, Jim recognises in his features those of the Devons.h.i.+re clergyman, whom he had last seen, and so unwillingly heard, by the well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In a second a light has flashed into his mind. Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that stranger--has seen him for the first time for ten years, since it is evident that the recognition of mother and daughter in the Via Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late rector had referred, could not have been reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having been brought suddenly and unpreparedly face to face with that mysterious past, which seems to be always blocking his own path to her friends.h.i.+p, that is to be attributed the poor woman's collapse. A rush of puzzled compa.s.sion flows over him as he realizes the fact, and his one impatient wish is to return with all the speed he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to rea.s.sure them as to the removal (even though it may only be a temporary one) out of their path of the object of their unexplained terror. Will the mother have imparted to her child the cause of her fainting, or will she have tried to keep it from her?

The first glimpse he gets when, having at length procured the desired gla.s.s of water, he comes into sight of them, answers the question for him. Mrs. Le Marchant is evidently partially recovered. She is sitting up, no longer supported by her daughter's arm, and that daughter is lying on her knees, with her head buried in her mother's lap. As he nears them, he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing her daughter's arm to warn her of his approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts her face. But such a face! He can scarcely believe it is the same that laid itself--hardly less bloomily fair than they--against the faint peony buds half an hour ago; a face out of which the innocent glad s.h.i.+ning has been blown by some gust of brutal wind--scared, blanched, miserable.

"Oh, yes, I am better, much better--quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le Marchant, pus.h.i.+ng away the offered gla.s.s, and speaking with a ghastly shadow of her former even cheerfulness. "Give it to Elizabeth, she needs it more than I do! You see, I gave her a terrible fright!"

He silently holds out the water to Elizabeth, and she, without attempting to take the tumbler into her own trembling hand, drinks. He looks with impotent pity from the bent blonde head to the prematurely snow-white one. How can he word his rea.s.surance to them without appearing to thrust himself with officious insolence into their confidence? It seems to himself that he solves the problem very clumsily.

"I am afraid you must have thought me but slow," he says, feeling that he is dragging in the piece of information he is anxious to give them with an awkward head-and-shoulder-ness: "but at first I couldn't find our monk, and when I did, he was engaged--he was talking to a visitor--a clergyman."

He pauses, conscious that at the last word a tremulous s.h.i.+ver has pa.s.sed over the kneeling figure.

"Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with nervous haste, hurrying to put them out of their pain; "an elderly, gray-haired, English clergyman, who was just in the act of going away; indeed, before I left, he had gone. I saw him drive off!"

Ere he has finished his sentence, he is seized by the apprehension that there must appear to his listeners something suspicious in the laboured details into which he is entering; presupposing, as they do, that he is aware of there being for them an interest attaching to the fact of the stranger's departure. And indeed, as he speaks, he is conscious that Mrs. Le Marchant's frightened eyes, which have been taking surrept.i.tious trips round the peaceful garden, now come home with a no less alarmed look to his face.

"Was he--was he--an acquaintance of yours?" she asks, with an attempt at a laugh--"this clergyman, I think you said he was--that you noticed him so particularly?"

"An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubtfully; "what is an acquaintance? a man whom one knew very little, and disliked a good deal, ten years ago; and who pa.s.ses one by without a gleam of recognition now--is that an acquaintance?"

Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, and hitherto she has seemed unconscious of the evening sunbeams smiting her uncovered head; now she stoops and picks it up.

"And you did not make yourself known to him then?" continues Mrs. Le Marchant, still with that painful effort at lightness of tone. "You let him drive off without telling him who you were? or asking him where he was staying? or how long his visit to Florence is to last? or--or anything?"

Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she speaks with a compa.s.sionate steadiness, under which hers quail waveringly. Is it possible that she can imagine that she is deceiving him by this miserable pretence of indifference?

"I have no doubt that I shall be able to find out if you wish to know,"

he answers gravely; "for I think he must be as much an acquaintance of yours as of mine, since it was only at the Moat that I ever met him."

He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant was already as colourless as a woman could be; but as he speaks, he sees her face take on a new degree of pallor. She struggles unsteadily to her feet.

"It is--it is getting late!" she says indistinctly; "we--ought--to be--going home!"