Beyond These Voices. M. E. Braddon
priests and nuns and picturesque villagers, and the sound of bells and swinging of censers—San Marco no longer meant only that level walk above the sluggish sea. It meant historical Italy. Her feelings about the place had altered utterly after the coming of the Provanas, and her mind was full of her lost friend when she alighted at the door of the Hôtel des Anglais, where Madame Canincio was waiting to receive honoured guests.
Inmates who stopped till the very end of the season, and who came again next year, were worthy of highest honour (albeit they paid the minimum second-floor pension; and though Canincio had audaciously declared that he lost money by the arrangement). Lady Felicia was a distinct asset, were it only for keeping the Cit's wife, Lady Jones, in her place.
Vera looked sadly along the spacious corridor, that had been so bright with flowers during the Provana occupation.
"Have you nice people on your first floor, Madame Canincio?" she asked.
"Alas, no, Mademoiselle. Our noble floor is empty. If we had six third floors and ten fourth floors, we could let every room—but for the first floor there is no one. Rich people do not come to San Marco. They want gambling-tables and pigeon-shooting, or the vulgarity of Nice."
"I suppose you have heard nothing of Signor Provana since he left?"
"Nothing, Mademoiselle, except that he is in Rome, and one of the greatest men there. And he was so simple and plain in his ways, and always so kind and courteous. He wanted so little for himself, and never once found fault with our chef, who, good as he is, must have been inferior to his own."
"I hope your chef did not give him risotto or chopped-up liver, or macaroni three times a week for luncheon," Lady Felicia said, sourly.
It was not till Grannie had been read to sleep that Vera was free to go where she liked. She had done her morning's work in the flower market, and at the so-called circulating library, where the Tauchnitz novels of the year before last were to be found by the explorer, stagnating on dusty shelves. This morning duty had to be done hurriedly, as Grannie liked to see the flower-vases filled, and a novel on her sofa-table when she emerged from her bedroom, ready to begin her monotonous day. Vera was secretary as well as reader, and had to write long letters to her aunts, at Grannie's dictation; letters which were not pleasant to her to write on account of the sense of injury and general discontent which was the Leit-Motiv running through them. In the beginning of her secretaryship she had sometimes ventured a mild remonstrance, such as, "Oh, Grannie, I don't think you ought to say that. I know Aunt Olivia is very fond of you," or "Aunt Mildred is very affectionate, and would be the last to neglect you." Whereupon Lady Felicia had told her that if she presumed to express an opinion, the letters should be written by Lidcott.
"Her spelling is as eccentric as the Paston letters; but I would rather put up with that than with your impertinence."
It was rather late in the afternoon before the drowsy Tauchnitz novel produced its soporific effect upon Grannie, though Vera had been reading in a semi-slumber; but at last the withered eyelids fell, and the grey head lay back upon the down pillow, and Vera might beckon to Lidcott, who crept in from the bedroom, with her work-basket, and seated herself by the open window most remote from Grannie, leaving Vera free to go out for her afternoon walk; only till five o'clock, when she must be at home to pour out Grannie's tea.
A church clock struck as she left the hotel garden, the garden where she had often sat with Giulia, who used to breakfast on the lawn, and only leave the garden to go to the carriage—spending as much of her life as possible under the blue sky.
All show of brightness had vanished from the stretch of thin grass and the ragged pepper trees—no pretty chairs or bright Italian draperies, no gaudy-plumaged cockatoo, or be-ribboned Blenheims. All was desolate, and tears clouded Vera's eyes, as she paused to look at the place where she had been happy.
"How could I ever forget that she was going to die?" she wondered.
"It was she herself who made me forget. She was so full of joy—so much alive—that I never really believed she was dying. I could not believe; I never did believe, till she was lying speechless, with death in her face."
She was going to the cemetery, to her friend's grave. It was almost as if she were going to Giulia. She could not believe the bright spirit was quenched, although the lovely form had passed into everlasting darkness. Somewhere between earth and heaven that happy soul was conscious of the beauty of the world she had loved, and of the love that had been given to her—somewhere, not utterly beyond the reach of those who loved her, that sweet spirit was floating—not dead, but emancipated.
Miss Thompson had told her of the heroic fortitude behind that light-hearted gaiety which had been Giulia's special charm. Although she was sustained by the unconsciousness of her doom, which goes so often with pulmonary disease, she had not been exempt from suffering. The sleepless night, the wearying cough, breathlessness, pain, exhaustion, fever, had all been borne with a sublime patience; and her only thought when the tardy morning stole at last upon the seeming endless night—had been of her father. He was never to be told she had slept badly—or had not slept at all—and it was her own cheerful voice that answered his inquiry as he stood at the half-open door: "Pretty well, Padre mio, si, si; not a bad night—a pretty good night—very good, upon the whole." No hint of the weariness, the suffering, of those long hours—and the nurse, though unwilling, had to indulge her, and allow the anxious father to be deceived. After all, as Miss Thompson said, a detail like that could not matter. He knew.
Remembering this, it seemed to Vera that Giulia's death meant emancipation—a blessed escape from the mortal frame that was fraught with suffering, to the freedom of the immortal spirit, winged for its flight to higher horizons, a being with new capacities, new joys—yet not unremembering those beloved on earth, nay, with a higher power to love the clay-bound creatures it had loved when it was clay.
In Vera's reverence for her father's genius, there had been much of the child's unquestioning faith in something it has been told to admire, for a considerable part of Lancelet Davis's poetry, and that which his review book showed to have been most appreciated by his critics, soared far beyond the limits of Vera's understanding. There were verses which she recited to herself again and again, with a delight in their music—verses where the words followed each other with an entrancing melodiousness—but for whose meaning she sought in vain. A Runic rhyme would have been as clear. She had repeated them dumbly in the dead hours of the night. Mellifluous lines that had a soothing charm. Lines that rose and fell like the waves of the sea; and lines drawn out in a slow monotony like the long, level stretch of wind-swept marshes—visions of white temples and strange goddesses; but they were shapeless as dreams to Vera—a confusion of lovely images without one distinct idea.
There were others of his poems that she understood and loved; the poems that the critics had mourned over as a disappointment, a falling away from the promise of a splendid career. There was his story of his courtship and wedded life, which Vera thought better than "Maud," written during his three happy years; and there was a poem called "Afterwards," written after her mother's death, which she thought better than "In Memoriam," a poem in which, after descending to the darkness of the grave, the poet soared to the gate of heaven, and told how where there is great love there is no such thing as death. The bond of love is also the bond of the dead and the living. Those who love with intensity cannot be parted. The spirit returns from behind the veil, and soul meets soul. Not in the crowded city—not within the sound of foolish voices, not amidst people or things that are of the earth earthy—but in the quiet graveyard, in the shadowy gloom of the forest, in lonely places by the starlit sea, or in the silence of sleepless nights, that other half of the soul is near, and, though there is neither voice nor touch, the beloved presence is felt, and the message of consolation is heard.
It was with her father's poem in her hand that Vera went to the white-walled enclosure under the hill, where the silver-grey of the olive woods shivered in the faint wind that could not stir a fibre of the cypress.
She had no trouble in finding Giulia's resting-place, for the picture of the spring morning when she had stood beside the open grave was in her mind, as if the funeral had been yesterday. It was at the farther end of the cemetery, in