The Point of View Part 2

"That sounds like a paradox," said Stella.

"I have just been thinking," he went on, without noticing the interruption, "it would be most agreeable to take a drive in my automobile late this after-noon, when your guardians have returned and are resting. If you feel you would care to come I will wait in this hall from five to six. You need not take the least notice of me, you can walk past, out of the hotel, then turn to the left, and there in the square, where there are a few trees, you will see a large blue motor waiting. You will get straight in, and I will come and join you.

Not anyone will see or notice you--because of the trees, one cannot observe from the windows. My chauffeur will be prepared, and I will return you safely to the same place in an hour."

Stella's brown eyes grew larger and larger. Some magnetic spell seemed to be dominating her, the idea was preposterous, and yet to agree to it was the strongest temptation she had ever had in all her life. She was filled with a wild longing to live, to do what she pleased, to be free to enjoy this excitement before her wings should be clipped, and her outlook all gray and humdrum.

"I do not know if they will rest--I cannot say--I--" she blurted out tremblingly.

The stranger had put down the Times, and was gazing into her face with a look almost of tenderness.

"There is no need to answer now," he said softly. "If fate means us to be happy, she will arrange it--I think you will come."

Miss Rawson started to her feet, and absently put her letter to her fiance--which contained merely the sentence that they had arrived in Rome--into its envelope and fastened it up.

"I must go now--good-bye," she said.

"It is not good-bye," the Russian answered gravely. "By six o'clock, we shall be driving in the Borghese Gardens and hearing the nightingales sing."

As Stella walked to the lift with a tumultuously beating heart, she asked herself what all this could possibly mean, and why she was not angry--and why this stranger--whose appearance outraged all her ideas as to what an English gentleman should look like--had yet the power to fascinate her completely. Of course, she would not go for a drive with him--and yet, what would be the harm? After September she would never have a chance like this again. There would be only Eustace Medlicott and parish duties--yes--if fate made it possible, she would go!

And she went on to her room with exhilarating sense of adventure coursing through her veins.

"I have found out the name of the peculiar-looking foreigner who sat near us last night," Canon Ebley said, as they drove to the Lateran in a little Roman Victoria, "it is Count Roumovski; I asked the hall porter--reprehensible curiosity I fear you will think, my dear Caroline, but there is something unaccountably interesting about him, as you must admit, although you disapprove of his appearance."

"I think it is quite dreadful," Mrs. Ebley sniffed, "and I hear from Martha that he has no less than two valets, and a suite of princely rooms and motor cars, and the whole pa.s.sage on the second floor is filled with his trunks."

Martha had been Mrs. Ebley's maid for twenty-five years, and as Stella well knew was fairly accurate in her recounting of the information she picked up. This luridly extravagant picture, however, did not appal her. And she found herself constantly dwelling upon it and the stranger all the time she followed her relations about in the gorgeous church.

Fate did not seem to be going to smile upon the drive project, however--for Mrs. Ebley, far from appearing tired, actually proposed tea in the hall when they got in--and there sat for at least half an hour, while Stella saw Count Roumovski come in and sit down and leisurely begin a cigarette, as he glanced at an Italian paper. He was so intensely still, always peace seemed to breathe from his atmosphere, but the very sight of him appeared to exasperate the Aunt Caroline more and more.

"I wonder that man is not ashamed to be seen in a respectable place,"

she snapped, "with his long hair and his bracelet--such effeminacy is perfectly disgusting, Erasmus."

"I really cannot help it, my dear," Canon Ebley replied, irritably, "and I rather like his face."

"Erasmus!" was all Mrs. Ebley could say, and prepared to return to her room. Dinner would be at a quarter to eight, she told Stella at her door, and recommended an hour's quiet reading up of the guide-book while resting to her niece.

It was quarter after six before Miss Rawson descended the stairs to the hall again. She had deliberately made up her mind--she would go and drive with the count. She would live and amuse herself, if it was only for this once in her life, come what might of it! And since he would be presented with all respectable ceremony at the English Emba.s.sy the following night, it could not matter a bit--and if it did--! Well, she did not care!

He was sitting there as immovable as before, and she thrilled as she crossed the hall. She was so excited and frightened that she could almost have turned back when she reached the street, but there, standing by the trees, was a large blue motor car, and as she advanced the chauffeur stepped forward and opened the door, and she got in--and before she had time to realize what she had done, Count Roumovski had joined her and sat down by her side.

"You have no wrap," he said. "I thought you would not have, so I had prepared this," and he indicated a man's gray Russian, unremarkable-looking cloak, which, however, proved to be lined with fine sable, "and here, also, is a veil. If you will please me by putting them on, we can then have the auto open and no one will recognize you--even should we meet your uncle and aunt; that is fun, is it not?"

Stella had thrown every consideration to the winds, except the determination to enjoy herself. Years of rebellion at the boredom of her existence seemed to be urging her on. So she meekly slipped into the cloak, and wrapped the veil right over her hat, and they started.

Her heart was thumping so with excitement she could not have spoken for a moment.

But as they went rapidly on through the crowded streets, her companion's respectful silence rea.s.sured her. There seemed to be some rapport between them, she was conscious of a feeling that he understood her thoughts, and was not misjudging her.

"You are like a little frightened bird," he said presently. "And there is nothing to cause you the least fear. We shall soon come to the lovely gardens, and watch the lowering sun make its beautiful effects in the trees, and we shall hear the nightingales throbbing out love songs--the world is full of rest and peace--when we have had enough pa.s.sion and strife and want its change--but you do not know anything of it, and this simple drive is causing you tumults and emotions--is it not so?"

"Yes," said Stella, with a feeling that she had burnt all her ships.

"It is because you have never been allowed to be YOU, I suppose," he went on softly. "So doing a natural and simple thing seems frightful--because it would seem so to the rigid aunt. Now, I have been ME ever since I was born--I have done just what seemed best to me. Do you suppose I am not aware that the way my hair is cut is a shock to most civilized persons; and that you English would strongly disapprove of my watch and my many other things. But I like them myself--it is no trouble for one of my valets to draw a straight line with a pair of scissors--and if I must look at the time, I prefer to look at something beautiful. I am entirely uninfluenced by the thoughts or opinions of any people--they do not exist for me except in so far as they interest me and are instructive or amusing. I never permit myself to be bored for an instant."

"How good that must be," Stella ventured to say--her courage was returning.

"Civilized human beings turn existence into a prison," he went on, meditatively, "and loaded themselves with shackles, because some convention prevents their doing what would give them innocent pleasure.

If I had been under the dominion of these things we should not now be enjoying this delightful drive--at least, it is delightful to me--to be thus near you and alone out of doors."

Stella did not speak, she was altogether too full of emotion to trust herself to words just yet. They had turned into the Corso by now, and, as ever, it appeared as though it were a holiday, so thronged with pedestrians was the whole thoroughfare. Count Roumovski seemed quite unconcerned, but Miss Rawson shrank back into her corner, a new fear in her heart.

"Do not be so nervous," her companion said gently. "I always calculate the chances before I suggest another person's risking anything for me.

They are a million to one that anyone could recognize you in that veil and that cloak; believe me, although I am not of your country, I am at least a gentleman, and would not have persuaded you to come if there had been any danger of complications for you."

Stella clasped her hands convulsively--and he drew a little nearer her.

"Do put all agitating ideas out of your mind," he said, his blue eyes, with their benign expression, seeking hers and compelling them at last to look at him. "Do you understand that it is foolish to spoil what we have by useless tremors. You are here with me--for the next hour--shall we not try to be happy?"

"Yes," murmured Miss Rawson, and allowed herself to be magnetized into calmness.

"When we have pa.s.sed the Piazza del Popolo and the entrance to the Pincio, I will have the car opened; then we can see all the charming young green, and I will tell you of what these gardens were long ago, and you shall see them with new eyes."

Stella, by some sort of magic, seemed to have recovered her self-possession as his eyes looked into hers, and she chatted to him naturally, and the next half hour pa.s.sed like some fairy tale. His deep, quiet voice took her into realms of fancy that her imagination had never even dreamed about. His cultivation was immense, and the Rome of the Caesars appeared to be as familiar to him as that of 1911.

The great beauty of the Borghese Gardens was at its height at the end of the day, the nightingales throbbed from the bushes, and the air was full of the fresh, exquisite scents of the late spring, as the day grew toward evening and all nature seemed full of beauty and peace. It can easily be imagined what this drive meant, then, to a fine, sensitive young woman, whose every instinct of youth and freedom and life had been crushed into undeveloped nothingness by years of gray convention in an old-fashioned English cathedral town.

Stella Rawson forgot that she and this Russian were strangers, and she talked to him unrestrainedly, showing glimpses of her inner self that she had not known she possessed. It was certainly heaven, she thought, this drive, and worth all the Aunt Caroline's frowns.

Count Roumovski never said a word of love to her: he treated her with perfect courtesy and infinite respect, but when at last they were turning back again, he permitted himself once more to gaze deeply into her eyes, and Stella knew for the first time in her existence that some silences are more dangerous than words.

"You do not care at all now for the good clergy-man you are affianced to," he said. "No--do not be angry-I am not asking a question, I am stating a fact--when lives have been hedged and controlled and retenu like yours has been, even the feelings lose character, and you cannot be sure of them--but the day is approaching when you will see clearly and--feel much."

"I am sure it is getting very late," said Stella Rawson, and with difficulty she turned her eyes away and looked over the green world.

Count Roumovski laughed softly, as if to himself. And they were silent until they came to the entrance gates again, when the chauffeur stopped and shut the car.

"We have at least s.n.a.t.c.hed some moments of pleasure, have we not?" the owner whispered, "and we have hurt no one. Will you trust me again when I propose something which sounds to you wild?"

"Perhaps I will," Stella murmured rather low.

"When I was hunting lions in Africa I learned to keep my intelligence awake," he said calmly, "it is an advantage to me now in civilization--nothing is impossible if one only keeps cool. If one becomes agitated one instantly connects oneself with all other currents of agitation, and one can no longer act with prudence or sense."

"I think I have always been very foolish," admitted Stella, looking down. "I seem to see everything differently now."

"What we are all striving after is happiness," Count Roumovski said.

"Only we will not admit it, and nearly always spoil our own chances by drifting, and allowing outside things to influence us. If you could see the vast plains of snow in my country and the deep forests--with never a human being for miles and miles, you would understand how nature grows to talk to one--and how small the littlenesses of the world appear." Then they were silent again, and it was not until they were rushing up the Via n.a.z.ionale and in a moment or two would have reached their destination, that Count Roumovski said:

"Stella--that means star--it is a beautiful name--I can believe you could be a star to shine upon any man's dark night--because you have a pure spirit, although it has been m.u.f.fled by circ.u.mstances for all these years."