Adam Johnstone's Son Part 14

The carter took the mule by the head and started it gently enough. The creature understood, and was glad to go down hill; the wheels creaked, the cart moved, and the party went off, one of the carabineers marching on either side.

Clare drew a long breath as she stood looking after them for a moment.

"Let us go home," she said at last, and turned up the road.

For some minutes they walked on in silence.

"I think you probably saved my life at the risk of yours, Miss Bowring,"

said Johnstone, at last, looking up. "Thank you very much."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the young girl, and she tried to laugh.

"But you were telling me that you were not combative--that you always avoided a fight, you know, and that you were so mild, and all that. For a very mild man, Mr. Johnstone, who hates fighting, you are a good 'man of your hands,' as they say in the _Morte d'Arthur_."

"Oh, I don't call that a fight!" answered Johnstone, contemptuously.

"Why, my collar isn't even crumpled. As for my hands, if I could find a spring I would wash them, after touching that fellow."

"That's the advantage of wearing gloves," observed Clare, looking at her own.

They were both very young, and though they knew that they had been in great danger they affected perfect indifference about it to each other, after the manner of true Britons. But each admired the other, and Brook was suddenly conscious that he had never known a woman whom, in some ways, he thought so admirable as Clare Bowring, but both felt a singular constraint as they walked homeward.

"Do you know?" Clare began, when they were near Amalfi, "I think we had better say nothing about it to my mother--that is, if you don't mind."

"By all means," answered Brook. "I'm sure I don't want to talk about it."

"No, and my mother is very nervous--you know--about my going off to walk without her. Oh, not about you--with anybody. You see, I'd been very ill before I came here."

CHAPTER VIII

In obedience to Clare's expressed wish, Johnstone made no mention that evening of the rather serious adventure on the Salerno road. They had fallen into the habit of shaking hands when they bade each other good-night. When it was time, and the two ladies rose to withdraw, Johnstone suddenly wished that Clare would make some little sign to him--the least thing to show that this particular evening was not precisely what all the other evenings had been, that they were drawn a little closer together, that perhaps she would change her mind and not dislike him any more for that unknown reason at which he could not even guess.

They joined hands, and his eyes met hers. But there was no unusual pressure--no little acknowledgment of a common danger past. The blue eyes looked at him straight and proudly, without softening, and the fresh lips calmly said good-night. Johnstone remained alone, and in a singularly bad humour for such a good-tempered man. He was angry with Clare for being so cold and indifferent, and he was ashamed of himself for wishing that she would admire him a little for having knocked down a tipsy carter. It was not much of an exploit. What she had done had been very much more remarkable. The man would not have killed him, of course, but he might have given him a very dangerous wound with that ugly clasp-knife. Clare's frock was cut to pieces on one side, and it was a wonder that she had escaped without a scratch. He had no right to expect any praise for what he had done, when she had done so much more.

To tell the truth, it was not praise that he wanted, but a sign that she was not indifferent to him, or at least that she no longer disliked him.

He was ashamed to own to himself that he was half in love with a young girl who had told him that she did not like him and would never even be his friend. Women had not usually treated him in that way, so far. But the fact remained, that she had got possession of his thoughts, and made him think about his actions when she was present. It took a good deal to disturb Brook Johnstone's young sleep, but he did not sleep well that night.

As for Clare, when she was alone, she regretted that she had not just nodded kindly to him, and nothing more, when she had said good-night.

She knew perfectly well that he expected something of the sort, and that it would have been natural, and quite harmless, without any possibility of consequence. She consoled herself by repeating that she had done quite right, as the vision of Lady Fan rose distinctly before her in a flood of memory's moonlight. Then it struck her, as the vision faded, that her position was a very odd one. Personally, she liked the man. Impersonally, she hated and despised him. At least she believed that she did, and that she should, for the sake of all women. To her, as she had known him, he was brave, kind, gentle in manner and speech, boyishly frank. As she had seen him that once, she had thought him heartless, cowardly, and cynical. She could not reconcile the two, and therefore, in her thoughts, she unconsciously divided him into two individualities--her Mr. Johnstone and Lady Fan's Brook. There was very little resemblance between them. Oddly enough, she felt a sort of pang for him, that he could ever have been the other man whom she had first seen. She was getting into a very complicated frame of mind.

They met in the morning and exchanged greetings with unusual coldness.

Brook asked whether she were tired; she said that she had done nothing to tire her, as though she resented the question; he said nothing in answer, and they both looked at the sea and thought it extremely dull.

Presently Johnstone went off for a walk alone, and Clare buried herself in a book for the morning. She did not wish to think, because her thoughts were so very contradictory. It was easier to try and follow some one else's ideas. She found that almost worse than thinking, but, being very tenacious, she stuck to it and tried to read.

At the midday meal they exchanged commonplaces, and neither looked at the other. Just as they left the dining-room a heavy thunderstorm broke overhead with a deluge of rain. Clare said that the thunder made her head ache, and she disappeared on pretence of lying down. Mrs. Bowring went to write letters, and Johnstone hung about the reading-room, and smoked a pipe in the long corridor, till he was sick of the sound of his own footsteps. Amalfi was all very well in fine weather, he reflected, but when it rained it was as dismal as penny whist, Sunday in London, or a volume of sermons--or all three together, he added viciously, in his thoughts. The German family had fallen back upon the guide book, Mommsen's _History of Rome_, and the _Gartenlaube_. The Russian invalid was presumably in his room, with a teapot, and the two English old maids were reading a violently sensational novel aloud to each other by turns in the hotel drawing-room. They stopped reading and got very red, when Johnstone looked in.

It was a dreary afternoon, and he wished that something would happen.

The fight on the preceding day had stirred his blood--and other things perhaps had contributed to his restless state of mind. He thought of Clare's torn frock, and he wished he had killed the carter outright. He reflected that, as the man was attacking him with a knife, he himself would have been acquitted.

Late in the afternoon the sky cleared and the red light of the lowering sun struck the crests of the higher hills to eastward. Brook went out and smelled the earth-scented air, and the damp odour of the orange-blossoms. But that did not please him either, so he turned back and went through the long corridor to the platform at the back of the hotel. To his surprise he came face to face with Clare, who was walking briskly backwards and forwards, and saw him just as he emerged from the door. They both stood still and looked at each other with an odd little constraint, almost like anxiety, in their faces. There was a short, awkward silence.

"Well?" said Clare, interrogatively, and raising her eyebrows a very little, as though wondering why he did not speak.

"Nothing," Johnstone answered, turning his face seaward. "I wasn't going to say anything."

"Oh!--you looked as though you were."

"No," he said. "I came out to get a breath of air, that's all."

"So did I. I--I think I've been out long enough. I'll go in." And she made a step towards the door.

"Oh, please, don't!" he cried suddenly. "Can't we walk together a little bit? That is, if you are not tired."

"Oh no! I'm not tired," answered the young girl with a cold little laugh. "I'll stay if you like--just a few minutes."

"Thanks, awfully," said Brook in a shy, jerky way.

They began to walk up and down, much less quickly than Clare had been walking when alone. They seemed to have nothing to say to each other.

Johnstone remarked that he thought it would not rain again just then, and after some minutes of reflection Clare said that she remembered having seen two thunderstorms within an hour, with a clear sky between, not long ago. Johnstone also thought the matter over for some time before he answered, and then said that he supposed the clouds must have been somewhere in the meantime--an observation which did not strike either Clare or even himself as particularly intelligent.

"I don't think you know much about thunderstorms," said Clare, after another silence.

"I? No--why should I?"

"I don't know. It's supposed to be just as well to know about things, isn't it?"

"I dare say," answered Brook, indifferently. "But science isn't exactly in my line, if I have any line."

They recrossed the platform in silence.

"What is your line--if you have any?" Clare asked, looking at the ground as she walked, and perfectly indifferent as to his answer.

"It ought to be beer," answered Brook, gravely. "But then, you know how it is--one has all sorts of experts, and one ends by taking their word for granted about it. I don't believe I have any line--unless it's in the way of out-of-door things. I'm fond of shooting, and I can ride fairly, you know, like anybody else."

"Yes," said Clare, "you were telling me so the other day, you know."

"Yes," Johnstone murmured thoughtfully, "that's true. Please excuse me.

I'm always repeating myself."

"I didn't mean that." Her tone changed a little. "You can be very amusing when you like, you know."

"Thanks, awfully. I should like to be amusing now, for instance, but I can't."

"Now? Why now?"