Olive in Italy Part 23

"No." She sat on the divan and he stood before her, looking down into her eyes.

"I think I had better try to tell you about my wife," he said. "May I sit here? And may I smoke?"

"Yes." She drew her skirts aside to make room for him next to her. "I want to hear you," she said again.

"Imagine me, a boy of twenty-two, convalescing in country lodgings after an illness that seemed to have taken the marrow out of my bones.

Hilaire was in j.a.pan, and I--a callow fledgling from the nest--was very sick and sorry for myself. There were some people living in rather a large house at the other end of the village who took notice of me. They were the only ones, and I have thought since that my acquaintance with them really did for me with everyone else. They were not desirable--but--well, I was too young, and just then too physically weak to avoid their more pressing attentions. Old Seldon was one of those flushed, swollen men whose collars seem always to be too small for them. He tried to be pleasant, but it was not a great success. There were two daughters at home, and Gertrude was the eldest. She had been married, and the man had died, leaving her penniless. As you may suppose she had not come back to veal. I was sorry for her then because she seemed a good sort, and she was very kind to me; she was five years my senior--"

"Go on," Olive said.

"I used to go to the house nearly every evening. She sang well, and I used to play her accompaniments, while the old man hung about the sideboard. He never left us alone, and the younger girl, Violet, used to meet the rector's son in the stables then. I heard that afterwards.

They lived anyhow, and owed money to all the tradespeople round.

"One night I was awakened by a knocking outside; my landlady slept at the back, and she was deaf besides, so I went down myself. The wind put my candle out as I opened the door, but I saw a woman standing there in the rain, and I asked her what she wanted. She made no answer, but pushed past me into the pa.s.sage, and went into my sitting-room. I followed, of course.

"Well, perhaps you have guessed that it was Gertrude. Her yellow hair hung down and about her face; she was only half dressed, and her bare arms and shoulders were all wet. Her skirts were torn and stained with mud. She told me her father had turned her out of the house in a drunken fury and she had come to me. Even then I wondered why she had not gone to some woman--surely she might have found shelter--however, she had come to me. I was going to call up my landlady, but she would not allow it because she said that no one but I need ever know. She would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came in. One look at her face was enough. I understood that Gertrude had overslept herself too.

"The sequel was hateful. There was a frightful scandal, of course; the father raved, the women cried, the rector talked to me seriously, and--Olive, mark this--Gertrude would not say anything. I married her and we came away."

"It was a trap," cried Olive.

"We had not one single thing in common, and you know when there is no love s.e.x is a barrier set up by the devil between human souls. After some years of mutual misery I brought her here. Poor Hilaire has hated respectable women ever since--she was that, if that counts when there is nothing else. Just virtue, with no saving graces. She is living in London now, is much esteemed, and regularly exceeds her allowance."

"Was she pretty?"

Jean had let his pipe go out, and now he relit it. "Oh, yes," he said, "I suppose so. Frizzy hair and all that. I fancy she has grown stout now. She is the kind that spreads."

"Life is all so hateful," sighed the girl. Jean moved away from her and went to the window. Hilaire was limping across the terrace towards the garden steps. When he was gone out of sight Jean came back into the room.

"My brother is unhappy too. The woman he loved died. Oh, Olive, are we to be lonely always because the law will not give me a divorce from the woman who was never really my wife, never dear to me or near to me as you are? Joy is within our reach, a golden rose on the tree of life, and it is for you to gather it or to hold your hand. Don't answer me yet for G.o.d's sake. Wait!"

He went to the piano and opened it.

Rain ... rain dripping on the roof through the long hours of night, and the weary moaning of the wakeful wind. Thronging memories of past years, past youth, past joy, past laughter echoing and re-echoing in one man's hungry heart. Light footsteps of children never to be born ... and then the heavy tread of men carrying a coffin, and the last sound of all--the clanging of an iron door....

The grave ... the grave ... it held the boy who had loved her, and presently, surely, it would hold this man too, sealing his kind lips with earth, closing his brown eyes in an eternal darkness.

He played, as thousands had said, divinely, not only with his hands but with his soul. The music that had been a work of genius became a miracle when he interpreted it, and indeed it seemed that virtue went out of him. His face was drawn and pale and a pulse beat in his cheek.

Olive, gazing at him through a blur of tears, knew that she had never longed for anything in her life as she longed now to comfort this pain expressed in ripples, and low murmurings, and great crashing waves of the illimitable sea of sound. Her heart ached with the pity that is a woman's way of loving, and as he left the piano she rose too. He uttered a sort of cry as she swayed towards him, and clasped her in his arms.

"I love you," he said, his lips so close to hers that she felt rather than heard the words.

CHAPTER XII

Jean came to the villa a little before noon on the following day.

Hilaire, who was in the library, heard his voice in the hall calling the dogs, heard him whistling some little song tune as he opened and shut all the doors one after the other.

"'_O l'amor e' come un nocciuola Se non se apre non si pu mangiarla--_'"

"Hilaire, where are you? I thought I should find you on the terrace this fine morning. Where is she?" he added eagerly as he laid a great bunch of roses down on the table. "Is her headache better? Has not she come down yet?"

He looked across the room to where his brother's grey head just showed above the high carved back of his chair.

"Hilaire! Why don't you answer?"

In the silence that ensued he distinctly heard the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece and the falling of the soft wood ashes in the grate; the beating of his own heart sounded loud to him. One of the dogs was scratching at the door and whining to be let in.

"Hilaire."

"She is gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes. She left this letter for you."

"Ah, give it to me." He opened and read it hurriedly.

"I thought you meant dead at first," he said. His brown eyes had lost the light that had been in them and were melancholy as before; he stood still by the table looking down upon his roses. They would fade, and she would never see them now. Never ... never ...

"Come and sit by the fire and let's talk it over quietly," said Hilaire. "Oh, d.a.m.n women," he mumbled as he drew at his pipe--the fifth that morning. It was the first time in a week that he had uttered his pet expletive. "What does she say?"

"You can read her letter."

"Would she mind?"

"Oh, no," Jean said bitterly. "She loves you--what she calls loving--next best after me. She told me so."

Hilaire carefully smoothed the crumpled, blotted page out on his knee.

"MY DEAREST JEAN,--I am going away because I am a coward. I dare not live with you, and I dare not ask you to forgive me. Last night as I lay awake I thought and thought about my feeling for you and I was sure that it was love. I used to think of you often last summer and to wonder where you were and what you were doing, and I hoped you had not forgotten me. I did not love you then, but I suppose my thoughts of you kept my heart's door open for you, and certainly they helped to keep out someone else who came and tried to get admittance. Oh, one must suffer to keep love perfect, but isn't it worth while? You may not believe me now when I say that if I cared for you less I should stay, but it is true. Oh, Jean, even when we were so happy for a few minutes yesterday something in me looked beyond into the years to come and was afraid. Not of you; I trust you, dearest; but of the world. Men would stare at me and laugh and whisper together, and women would look away, and I know I should not be able to bear it. I am not brave like that. Oh, every word I write must hurt you, I know. Remember that I love you now and shall always.

Good-bye.--Your

"OLIVE."

"I should keep this."

"I am going to. Hilaire, did you know she was going? Did she tell you?"

The older man answered quietly: "Yes, I knew, and I sent her to the station in the motor. I had promised a strict neutrality, Jean, and she was right to go. Some women, good women, may be strong enough to bear all the suffering that is entailed upon them by a known irregularity in their lives. She is not. It would probably have killed her though I am not saying that she would not have been happy sometimes, when she could forget her shame."

Jean flinched as though his brother had struck him. "Don't use that word."

"Well, what else would it be? What else would the world call it? And women listen to what the world says. 'Good name in man or woman is the immediate jewel of their souls'; Oth.e.l.lo said something like that, and it's often true. Besides, you know, this woman is pure in herself, and from what she told me I understand that she has seen something of the seamy side of love lately--enough to inspire her with dread. She is afraid, and her fear is exquisite; a very fine and rare thing. It is the bloom on the fruit and should not be brushed off with an ungentle hand. Poor child! Don't blame her as she blames herself or I shall begin to think she is too good for you."

Jean sat leaning forward staring into the fire.