Shadows of Flames Part 46

"I--I always said you were an Old Sport.... Now I'll--I'll be hanged--if you ain't the sportiest Old Sport as ever was!"

She spun on her heel, and went out, clacking the door most unprofessionally. She went to have two minutes of what she called a "good blub." It was Sophy's joy, together with Chesney's sudden capitulation, that had upset Nurse Harding. She had become excessively attached to Sophy, and, in spite of all his fundamental brutality, she had a "soft spot" for her patient.

x.x.xII

The most extraordinary exhilaration came over Sophy from the moment that the little Channel steamer cast off, and she heard the surge of the sea about her and felt the keen tang of its breath upon her face: a sort of light-hearted sense of adventure, of the romance of a lonely setting forth for strange countries. Oddly enough she had never been either to France or to Italy. Now she was going to both those famous lands, and alone--her own courier--her own mistress. She felt what she had once heard an excited child call "journey-proud." And the sense that Cecil was in safe hands, was going of his own accord to a place where cure was certain, left her conscience-free to revel in this sense of delicious detachment. It was as if she had been reborn into some lighter, more tenuous body. She felt as one does in those dreams when, by only holding one's breath and springing upward, one floats delicately free of the law of gravitation--casting off all heaviness of mind and body.

She stayed on deck. Bobby and the two maids were below in a cabin. It was very calm. The sea spread flat and silken under a high moon. She did not feel lonely. This solitude of the sufficient self was ecstasy, after the long, feverish contact with others.

When they landed at Calais, the gay _pizzicato_ of the French tongue gave her such pleasure that she wanted to laugh out like a child suddenly tickled by light fingers. It was so fitting--so deliciously appropriate. Here was she reborn to a new heaven and a new earth. Of course there must be also a new language. How glad she was that her old governess had been French! It seemed that a kindly Fate had been long ago preparing her for this gay moment, as well as this moment for her.

She spoke pretty, clear French--had spoken it since babyhood. It was a fresh magic to find herself so well understood. That the day was overcast, as they went rushing on to Paris, through the wide, fenceless, hedgeless fields, did not damp her joyous mood. This greyness was so different from that of England--as different as moonstones from onyx---- She looked at the frail pallor of the sky, and thought of the moonstones of Ceylon, in whose watery silver there is a gleam of blue. She did not care if the sun of France veiled itself; so that Italy burst on her in floods of golden light she was content. She could not bear the thought of seeing Italy, for the first time, demure and grey. On the bright horizon of her fancy it floated like a magic island wrought of golden gla.s.s and lapis-lazuli--colonnaded with pale marble--hung round about with gardens like ancient Babylon--crowned with lilies like its own Florence--and with violets like Athens. The "blunt-nosed" bees of Theocritus hummed about it. Song-birds like living jewels flew above it.

Alas! She did not know that the inhabitants of her fairyland devour their song-birds.

But though she dreamed of the Italy of poets and painters, she had to go direct to practical Milan. Bellamy thought it important that a certain Dr. Johnson who lived there should see Bobby before she took him to Lago Maggiore for the remainder of the summer.

She found the town so hot and dusty that she decided not to go out until evening. The doctor was to see Bobby next day. She had a light dinner in her own room, then went downstairs to order an open cab. The night was lovely after the scorching day. She thought a drive about the streets would be amusing. Her gay, care-free mood was still upon her. This was Italy--Italy--and day after to-morrow she would be on one of its beautiful lakes. With this thought came the thought of Amaldi. She ought really to let him know that she was in Italy, was going to his own beloved lake. How pleasant it would be to see him again. How surprised he would be. Then, too, to meet his mother--that would be a new pleasure.

She stepped from the marble stairway into the hall of the hotel, remembering all at once that she did not have Amaldi's address. But then "Marchese Amaldi, Lago Maggiore" ought to be enough. Still, yes, it would be better to ask at the office of the hotel. They would doubtless be able to give it to her.

The head-clerk smiled affably as she asked, and made a sweeping gesture with his left arm.

"But, Madame, there is the Marchese himself," said he.

Sophy turned quickly.

Amaldi, who had just entered, was lighting a cigarette, his back turned towards her. Then he turned suddenly just as she had done, and saw her.

The next moment she had given him her hand and was explaining how she happened to be in Milan in the dead of summer. Her explanations were a vague murmur to Amaldi. He was thinking that nothing less than Fate had ordered it. It was "meant" that she should come to Italy and that he should be holding her hand in his--after so many bitter dreams. Fate had brought her back into his life--the one woman he had ever desired with his whole being.

He had only a few moments with her, however, before the friend for whom he had called came downstairs. His mother was waiting outside in her carriage. Might she call on Mrs. Chesney next day? Sophy said that she had just been thinking what a pleasure it would be to meet the Marchesa.

She smiled at him as she said this and gave him her hand again. Amaldi, who was rather pale, bent and kissed it. Then he joined his mother's guest and they went out together.

Sophy wished that he could have driven with her that evening. He was even nicer than she remembered him.

"I wonder if he is like his mother?" she thought as she got into the little _carozza_ for her lonely outing. "I'm sure to like her if she is anything like him." And all during the drive she kept wishing that Amaldi could have come with her.

Next afternoon the Marchesa called. She was a tall, finely made woman of the Juno type, with beautiful, light brown, sparkling eyes under jet black eyebrows, and a fluff of silken, fox-grey hair that must have been gold-red when she was young. But then, as it was, youth unquenchable laughed from those shrewd, brilliant eyes, though she was sixty. Her little bonnet of white camellias with its big, black bow, that so became her, was all Paris in a hat-frame. She evidently had a "sweet-tooth" for confections in dress, just as some people have for actual bonbons.

She had not talked in her natural, easy, laughing way for ten minutes before Sophy thought her the most delightful woman she had ever known.

She asked almost at once to see Bobby--won his heart immediately. Told Sophy that she needn't worry in the least about doctors on the Lake--that there was an excellent one, an old friend of hers, at Stresa--Cesare Camenis.

"Eh!--the _tousin_ (little fellow) has adopted me for his Nonna!" she added, laughing again the next instant, as Bobby hauled himself up by her fan-chain and tried to pull off her bonnet, saying:

"Take off! Tay wiv Bobby!"

As for Sophy, if she had not fallen in love with Amaldi, she had certainly fallen in love with his mother. The feeling was mutual. The Marchesa had had two sons but no daughter. She had always longed for a little girl. Now she thought that she would like to have had a daughter as much like Sophy as possible. And, as this thought came to her, it brought another less agreeable.

The sad destiny of her Marco made the Marchesa very lenient in facing certain problems, though she was essentially a woman of broad, indulgent views. Since twenty-six (he was now thirty-one) he had lived like a widower whom some mistaken vow has cut off from re-marrying. Not that the Marchesa deceived herself with the credulity of the average Anglo-Saxon mother in such cases. She did not for one moment think that her son had led the life of an ascetic during this enforced widowhood.

Light _liaisons_ she knew well there had been; but Marco was not a sensualist. Such flitting fires could never really warm or console him.

And as she looked now at Sophy, thinking how pleasant it would be to have such a daughter, she also realised that this lovely, tall girl, with her spellbound looking grey eyes, and sensitive, romantic mouth, was the very type of woman to appeal to Marco with the threefold lure of spirit, mind, and flesh. Though he had spoken much of Sophy to his mother, since his return from England, with frank admiration and compa.s.sion for her sad fate in being married to such a man as Chesney, he had not given the slightest impression of being _amoureux d'elle_.

But there came over the Marchesa a strong prescience of danger--of something to be guarded against. Should Marco see too much of Mrs.

Chesney, should he become "in love" with her, why, then there was here no pa.s.sing _liaison_ to be considered, but something of the nature of tragedy. Not only was Marco bound by his disastrous marriage, but here was a woman doubly bound--not only by marriage, but by motherhood. A bad mother may make an enchanting mistress, but a bad mother will never make a true wife. The Marchesa knew her Marco well. She knew that, should he love a woman of Sophy's type, he would not want her for a mistress, but for a wife. That was what love--the one big, crowning love--would mean to Marco. Now if in future he should love this woman and she him, and should give up her son for him--she would not be what his love had imagined. If she should not give up her son--his love must burn out in bitterness.

Yes, she must watch; she must be wise as many serpents and harmless as a flock of doves; but she must also be prepared, at the first sign of real danger, to give Marco a word of serious warning. This action on her part would have all the more weight with him as she rarely, almost never, interfered in his personal affairs.

And all the time that she was thus reflecting, she smoked Sophy's gold-tipped cigarettes and chatted pleasantly.

Sophy heard with delight that the Marchesa was returning to the Lake the next afternoon by the same train on which she also was going.

She was early at the station. It thrilled her to read the placards with such lovely, well-known names on them. _Como!_--They pa.s.sed that sign on their way to the carriages bound for Lago Maggiore. It seemed very odd to see that name of romance written upon a railway carriage.

Amaldi and his mother joined her shortly. As they settled down comfortably in the queer little carriage, Amaldi bought copies of the leading Milan papers and handed them in through the window. To Sophy's surprise, when he entered the carriage a few minutes later, he laid a fresh copy of _Harper's_ on the seat beside her, smiling at her astonished look.

"We're very 'up to date,' as you say, in Milan," he laughed.

But Sophy could not read. She was too excited. She sat in a lazy, happy trance gazing from the window.

The Marchesa dozed frankly. Bobby was sound as a top. Sophy had never felt more keenly, vividly awake in her life. She began to day-dream.

And as she sat there, now glancing out of window, now watching the pleasant smile which sleep had drawn on the Marchesa's face, now the soles of Bobby's st.u.r.dy shoes protruding from under the arm of the seat as he lay with his red curls on Miller's lap, now noticing how sharp-cut was Amaldi's dark, irregular profile against the flashing green outside, she found herself suddenly thinking:

"Suppose this dear, charming woman were my mother-in-law instead of Lady Wychcote--suppose _he_ were my husband--suppose I were Sophy Amaldi instead of Sophy Chesney--going for a happy summer to the Villa Amaldi--sure of kindness, sure of sympathy, sure of love----"

This fancy did not form itself into regular phrases such as these, but came in a flashing, involuntary impression. She started with dismay and glanced around nervously. Amaldi was looking at her. She bent forward, lifting up one of the papers that had fallen to the floor. Her hand touched the Marchesa's foot. That lady started wide awake.

"Oh, _Dio_!" she exclaimed, glancing out. "We're nearly there! Marco, my umbrella, please--and Mrs. Chesney's. You'd better tell the maids to get ready."

She looked tenderly at Bobby. "What a shame to wake the _tousin_!" she said.

Now they were rattling round a great haunch of mountain--the southern flank of the Sa.s.so di Ferro. They had reached Laveno. Lago Maggiore lay before them. The lake spread milkily iridescent. The sky was the colour of periwinkle, with towards the zenith a flight of silver cloud wings.

The glimpse of Alps beyond Baveno was a hush of violet. It was one of those delicately veiled afternoons when the Lake is at its best. It looked mysterious, promising, like the tempered beauty of a woman beneath a gauzy _yashmak_.

Amaldi saw the maids and luggage safely on the little steamer that was waiting at the _imbarcadero_. Sophy and Bobby were to go with the Marchesa in the steam-launch.

As into a mirage the little launch shot forth across the Lake. Sophy sat with Bobby in her arms.

But there was something wistful, faintly sorrowful in this aerial beauty. There was a soul in it, a yearning as in all souls. She put down her cheek on Bobby's head, and, thus unseen, the tears came stealing.

"Poor child," thought the Marchesa, who divined those tears she could not see, "poor child ... but I must speak to-night--I must--I really must."

When they reached Baveno, the Marchesa insisted on getting out and going up to the hotel with Sophy to see that she was given nice rooms.

Something about the young woman, all alone with her little son, went to her heart. The Marchesa herself had not been very happy in her marriage.

Her fullest life had been lived as the mother of her two boys. Thus Sophy and Bobby touched her very nearly.

"She seems quite worn out all of a sudden, poor child," said she, as she rejoined Amaldi. Without apparently looking at her son, she saw the quick change that came over his face when she said that Sophy seemed worn out. He made the _Meccanico_ sit in the bow, and himself steered the little _Fretta_ all the way to "Le Vigne." He talked very little on the way home, chiefly about the farm and the weather. He was afraid it might be going to rain to-morrow. There were clouds slowly rising behind the Sa.s.so.