The Gambler Part 43

Clodagh's lips parted.

"But what----" she began impetuously; then she stopped.

Barnard continued to look at her.

"Isn't the inference of the smile somewhat obvious?"

Her glance fell.

"Oh!" she said--"oh! I suppose--I suppose I see."

"Precisely."

"But surely----" she began afresh; then again intuition interfered, though this time to a different end. It was not the moment--it was not the atmosphere--in which to parade one's sentiments! With the too ready facility of her nation for adapting itself to environment, she laughed suddenly and gaily at her own pa.s.sing prudery, and raised a bright face to Barnard's.

"And when he meets these interesting young married women?" she asked amusedly.

"Ah, there he dubs himself 'Sir Galahad'! Some people call him a saint, for keeping his eyes on the ground; others call him a sinner, for not picking up what he sees there. In reality, he is neither sinner nor saint; but just that enviable creation--a man who is self-sufficing."

While he spoke, and for some time after he had ceased to speak, Clodagh sat silent. She was leaning over the side of the gondola and looking down into the calm water, her warm face touched by a mischievous expression, her hazel eyes half closed. At last she spoke, but without raising her head.

"And you are all waiting for the person who will make him see the need for some one else?"

She waited for Barnard's answer, but it did not come. Sensitive to the silence, she raised her head. Then her self-consciousness left her, superseded by curiosity. As she looked up, she saw her companion lean forward and wave a cheerful greeting to the occupant of a gondola approaching them from the direction of the railway station.

Involuntarily she changed her position and her glance followed his.

The pa.s.sing of the two gondolas occupied no more than a minute. But the incidents comprised in some minutes remain with us all our lives. The approaching boat was a large one, rowed by two gondoliers; for, though it had only one pa.s.senger, it carried a pile of luggage, much travel-worn. Clodagh's eyes noted this, but they did so very briefly; for instantly the gondola drew level with her own, her glance lifted itself to the owner of the luggage--the man to whom Barnard had waved his greeting.

She saw him with great distinctness, for the early light in Italy is peculiarly penetrating; and her first thought--a purely instinctive one--was that he possessed a sailor's face. His strong, clean-cut features suggested a keen and intimate relationship with natural elements; his healthily clear skin was tanned by sun and wind; and his eyes looked out upon the world with the quiet reliance that seems a reflexion of the steadfast ocean. The first impression of the man was vaguely daunting. There was something self-contained, even cold, in the erect pose of his tall, muscular figure, in the manner in which he held his head. Then, quite unexpectedly, his critic gained a new impression of him. As the gondolas pa.s.sed each other, he leant forward in his seat and his lips parted in a very pleasant smile.

"Ubiquitous as usual, Barnard!" he called in a strong, fresh voice. "I might have known you would be the first man I should run across!"

He raised his cap, and Clodagh saw that his hair was crisp, close-cut, and very fair, giving an agreeable touch of youthfulness to his sunburnt face.

Barnard laughed, and responded with some words of welcome.

The stranger smiled and nodded.

"Come round and see me this afternoon!" he cried, as the gondolas drew apart. "I'm staying at the Danieli!"

"Who was that?" Clodagh asked involuntarily, as the stranger's boat glided out of sight. Then she blushed suddenly. "Why are you laughing?"

she demanded.

Barnard smiled.

"I am not laughing, Mrs. Milbanke," he murmured. "I a.s.sure you I am not laughing. It is the merest smile at nature's little bit of stage management. That interestingly bronzed young Englishman is Sir Walter Gore!"

CHAPTER VIII

This little incident--this small and yet significant interlude--in Clodagh's day of new-born freedom, possessed a weight and an importance all its own. It is quite possible that, taken as a mere note in the tuneful, inconsequent symphony of her social life in Venice, Barnard's expression of his sentiments might have glanced across her mind, leaving no definite impression. But the web of fate is wonderfully woven. Barnard had propounded those sentiments through the medium of a name--a name which was to be indelibly printed upon Clodagh's memory by the strangely opportune appearance of its owner.

At the moment when the gondolas pa.s.sed, at the moment when Barnard laughingly explained the stranger's ident.i.ty, the name of Walter Gore took on a new significance, became a personal element in touch with her own existence.

In studying the effect of this incident upon her actions, it must be borne in mind that Clodagh's moral position was strangely incongruous--a position to which not one amongst her new acquaintances possessed a key. She was a married woman with the vitality, the curiosity, the sense of adventure of a girl in her first season. She was like a plant that, having been shut for long in dark places, is suddenly exposed to the influences of warmth and light. She glowed, she blossomed, she expanded under every pa.s.sing touch.

As she leant back against the cushions of the gondola and met the amused and quizzical glance that accompanied Barnard's explanation, her thoughts sprang forward under a certain stimulus of excitement; her blood--the blood of a reckless, adventurous race--leaped suddenly in response to a new idea. She looked up at her companion, her face glowing, her hands clasped lightly in her lap.

"Mr. Barnard," she said, "will Sir Walter Gore be at the Palazzo Ugochini to-night?"

Barnard met her glance. For a moment he studied her whimsically, then he responded by putting a question of his own.

"Mrs. Milbanke," he asked, "is it true that when you dare an Irishwoman to do a certain thing, that thing is as good as done?"

Clodagh's lashes fluttered, and she coloured hotly; then with the nave defiance, the intoxication of youthful a.s.surance, she lifted her eyes again and gave another bright, clear laugh.

"Two unanswered questions should be as good as one reply!" she said, looking straight into his face.

All that day Clodagh went about her concerns with a delightful, furtive sense of things to come. In the evening she came down to dinner arrayed in a dress of lace and embroidery that had come from Vienna only three weeks before. The dress possessed sweeping lines that defined her slight figure; and above the jewelled lace of the bodice her graceful shoulders, smooth as ivory, and as warm in tone, showed bare of any ornament. The faint olive of her skin was enriched by the neutral colour of her dress, and in the bright light of the hotel rooms, the underlying gleam of gold was distinctly visible in her brown hair. Her whole appearance as she entered the dining-room was subtly attractive; and in every detail of her expression pleasure and antic.i.p.ation gleamed like tangible things. From the colour that wavered in her cheeks to the dilated pupils that turned her eyes from hazel to black, she was the embodiment of eager expectation.

Neither Deerehurst, Serracauld, nor Barnard dined at the hotel that night, but from the eyes of more than one stranger she read the a.s.surance that she had not arrayed herself in vain; and youthfully conscious of a subtle, impersonal success, her eager spirits rose high.

Regardless of Milbanke's monosyllabic answers, she kept up a stream of conversation; and at last, when she rose with the general company, she did not leave the room, but paused with her hand on the back of his chair.

"I am going for my cloak, James," she said. "Mr. Barnard is to call for me. Shall we say good-night now?" Her face, as she bent forward, leaning over his shoulder, was filled with a bright preoccupation.

The scene was no new one--nor was its lesson new. It merely expounded the eternal disparity between the present generation and the past. On the one hand, was the patient surrender of the being who has known life with its poor compensations and its tardy requitals; on the other, the impatience, the ardour, the egotism of the being who longs to understand, to tear the bandage from his blind, curious eyes, to shake the fetters from his eager, groping hands. It was a scene that is enacted every day of every year by fathers and daughters, mothers and sons. A scene in which, daily and yearly, a merciful nature mitigates the tragic truth by means of a blessed sanity--an instinctive renunciation. But this was no case for natural healing balm; this was no case of father and daughter, but of husband and wife.

"Shall we say good-night?" Clodagh asked again.

Milbanke started and looked up; and something in her warm beauty--something in her gracious youth affected him.

"Clodagh," he said timidly. "Clodagh, are you--are you very anxious?

Will you enjoy this party very much?"

Clodagh looked down on him in frank surprise.

"Why, of course!" she said. "Why do you ask?"

His gaze wavered before her level glance. He looked round at the fast emptying room.

"No reason, my dear!" he murmured--"no reason, I a.s.sure you! Go to your party. Enjoy yourself!"

At his words she bent quickly and brushed his forehead with her lips, but so lightly, so unthinkingly that the act was valueless.