Beyond These Voices. M. E. Braddon
all things. He was sure of Vera's sympathy, and that certainty made it easy to talk of his girl, whose name had rarely passed his lips in the long half-year of mourning.
"I have never talked of her since Miss Thompson left me," he said; "there was no one who would understand or care. There were friends who were kind and would have pitied me; but I could not endure their pity. It was easier to stand alone, and keep an iron wall between my heart and the world. But you were her companion in those last weeks; you are of her own age; you seem a part of herself, as if you were really her sister, left behind to mourn her, almost as I do."
After this confidence he made no more apologies for the sad note in all his conversation, as he and Vera loitered in the place of graves, or walked in the lemon orchards and olive woods on the hill-side above the cemetery. It became a settled thing for them to walk together every afternoon in the half-hour before Lady Felicia's tea-time; and as the week that Provana had talked of drew near its close, their rambles took a wider range, always with Grannie's approval, and they visited the white towns on the hills where they had been with Giulia and her governess in the golden spring-time. It was rapture to Vera to tread the narrow mule-paths, winding through wood and orchard, to walk with light, quick feet through scenes where everything was beautiful and romantic; to visit wayside shrines, and humble chapels hidden in the silver grey of the century-old trees, or to talk to the country women tramping homeward, carrying their baskets of the ripe black fruit. Provana helped her in her talk with the women, and contrived that they should understand her shy little discourse, the broken words and stumbling sentences.
Lady Felicia, usually so severe a stickler for etiquette, was curiously lax at San Marco, and could see nothing strange or unseemly in these unchaperoned rambles with the Roman financier, who, as she observed to Dr. Wilmot, was so obviously correct in all his ideas, to say nothing of his being almost old enough to be Vera's grandfather.
"Say father," said the doctor, smiling. "But you are perfectly right in your appreciation of Provana. He is a man of the highest character, and you may very well waive all conventionality where he is concerned."
Signor Provana did not leave San Marco at the end of the week. He stayed from day to day; but he was always going to-morrow.
As time went by he and Vera found a world of ideas and experiences to talk about. In the confidence that grew with every hill-side ramble, with every half-hour spent among ruined convents or Roman remains, they became licensed egotists, and talked of themselves and their own feelings with unconscious self-absorption.
Led on from trifles to speak of vital things, Provana told Vera the story of his unloved youth, motherless before his sixth birthday, and soon under the subjection of a stepmother who disliked him.
"I was an ugly boy," he said, "and her only child was as beautiful as the Belvedere Apollo, a creature to be worshipped, and I was made to feel the contrast. I had inherited my English mother's plain features and plain ways. I had none of the graces that make children adorable. My father was not unkind, but he was indifferent, and left me to servants, or later to my tutor, a German, middle-aged, learned, and severely practical, a man to whom affection and emotion were unknown quantities. It was always kept before me that I was to succeed to a great business, to the certainty of wealth, and the paramount purpose of my education was to make me a money-spinning machine.
"My brother's death in the flower of boyhood hardened my father's heart against me; and the indifference to which I had resigned myself became undisguised dislike. I lived in a frozen atmosphere; and of sheer necessity had to devote all my energies to the barren ambition of the man whose task in life is to sustain and augment the fortune that others have created. That is where the emptiness of my career comes in, Vera. A fortune inherited from those who have gone before him can give no dignity to a man's life. He is no better than a clerk, succeeding to a stool in a counting-house. For a man who has laboured and invented, who has lived through long, slow years of hardship and self-denial, who has endured the world's contempt, and persevered in the teeth of disappointment, over such a man's career success may shed a golden glory. He is a conqueror who has fought and won, and may be proud even of a triumph that brings him nothing but money. But I could have no pride in a career that was mapped out for me before I was born. All I can ever be proud of is that personally caring nothing for riches, I have been a conscientious worker, and have done what I was expected to do."
He told Vera how his own unloved childhood had been in his mind when his wife died, and he took his motherless girl to his heart, and, while she sobbed against his breast, swore dumbly that she should never know the need of a mother's love; and that which had begun as a duty became afterwards the dominating purpose of his life—the thing for which he lived.
"There had been a time after her mother's death when my heart was frozen, and that sweet child's presence was something that called for fortitude rather than affection, but that lovely nature soon prevailed even over grief, and my daughter crept into my desolate heart, my consolation and my joy."
In those quiet walks these two mortals, so far apart in age, in experiences, and in mental tendencies, became curiously intimate, telling each other almost everything that could be told about two dissimilar existences, each interested in vivid pictures of an unknown world, the child's monotonous life with an old woman, her glimpses of more joyous houses, the young cousin, the Arab pony and family of dogs—the old English garden, steeped in the August sunshine; and again of the dull upstairs-room in London, and the solitary hours of silent play, in which childish fancies had to serve instead of playfellows, the doll that was almost alive, the toy train that travelled to fairyland, the old, old stories in the ragged books, "Cinderella" and the "Forty Thieves." Provana listened to these naïve revelations as if they had been the childish experiences of a Newton or a Shakespeare, while Vera hung enthralled upon his memories of the liberation of Italy, the tempestuous years of revolt and battle, Victor Emanuel, Garibaldi, Cavour, the giant of thought and will-power, whose bold policy had made a great kingdom.
Afternoon tea in Lady Felicia's salon had become an institution in that week which spun itself out to fifteen days, and tea-time generally lasted for an hour and a half, since Grannie wanted to hear everything that Signor Provana had heard or read of the world of action since yesterday. As a dweller in London for nearly half his life, he was as keenly interested and as instructed in English politics, literature, science, and art as any Englishman Grannie had ever known; and she seemed to feel an inexhaustible interest in his conversation. She was intelligent, and often said good things; so this appreciation must needs be flattering, and Provana was naturally gratified. Flowers and Tauchnitz novels were almost daily tributes to Grannie; but no tribute was offered to Vera, no tribute except the tender watchfulness of dark grey eyes, eyes that followed the fragile figure as she moved about the room, or went in and out through the window in the desultory half-hour when her duties at the tea-table were finished. She left him to devote himself to Grannie in this half-hour, and showed how much milder was her interest in the talk of the political world, and people of importance in London, than in Provana's personal reminiscences. It was his life that had interested her, not the lives of other people.
They had come to the evening before his last day at San Marco. He must be on his way to Rome the day after to-morrow—that was inevitable.
"I should like to take Vera a little farther afield to-morrow, Lady Felicia," Provana said, as he took up his hat to go. "She has never seen the Chocolate Mills, though the way to them is one of the most picturesque within range. One must ride or walk. There is no carriage road; but if you will let Vera come with me to-morrow afternoon, I will bring the surest-footed donkey in San Marco, and his owner for our guide. I shall go on foot. The walk will be nothing for me; but it would be too tiring for your granddaughter."
Lady Felicia hesitated, but only enough to make her consent seem the more gracious.
"The poor child has been pining to see the Chocolate Mills; but for me it was impossible," she concluded.
"We must start soon after your luncheon; and if you can give me time for a little conversation before we go, I shall be greatly obliged," Signor Provana said, with a curious gravity.
Vera wondered what he could have to say to Grannie that needed to be arranged for beforehand. She felt a thrill of horror at the