Beyond These Voices. M. E. Braddon
she not look like a poet's daughter?" she asked her father, and Provana assented with smiling interest.
"All Giulia's geese are swans," he said; "but I believe she has found a real swan this time."
Vera's shyness wore off after two or three excursions in that ideal spring-time. The weather had been exceptionally mild this season, and there had been no unkind skies or cruel mistral to gainsay Dr. Wilmot's praise of San Marco. It might almost seem as if Provana had been able to buy sunshine as well as other luxuries. Day after day the friendly little company of four set out upon some new excursion, to spots whose very name seemed a poem. To Santa Croce, to Dolce Aqua, to Finalmarina, to Colla, the little white town among the mountains, where there were a church and a picture gallery, or by the Roman Road to the Tower of Mostaccini, on a high plateau crowned with fir trees, with its view over sea and shore, valley and wood, and far-off horizon; a place for a picnic luncheon, and an afternoon of delicious idleness. To Vera such days were unspeakably sweet. Could it be strange that she loved the girl who had begun by loving her, and who was her first girl friend? If she was not so impulsive as Giulia, she was as sensitive and as sympathetic, and Giulia's sad history had interested her before they met.
As friendship ripened in the familiarity of daily companionship, her interest in Giulia's father grew stronger day by day. His devotion to his daughter was the most beautiful thing she had ever known. He was the first man with whom she had ever lived in easy intimacy—for the uncles by blood or by marriage in whose houses she had been a visitor had always held her at arm's length, and her shyness had been increased by their coldness. The only creature of that superior sex with whom she had ever been at her ease was her young cousin, Claude Rutherford. He had been kind to her, and with him she had been happy; but that friendship was of a long time ago—ages and ages, it seemed to her, when she conjured up a vision of delicious days in the Park, hairbreadth escapes in Claude's dinghy, and thrilling rides on his Arabian pony.
Vera noticed that Signor Provana did not often join in the animated conversation which Giulia and her governess kept up untiringly during their morning drives. He was silent for the most part, and always meditative. His dark grey eyes seemed to be seeing things that were far away.
"You see Papa sitting opposite us, cara," said Giulia; "but you must not think he is really with us. He is in London, or in Paris, negotiating a loan that may mean war. He has to provide the sinews of war sometimes; and I tell him he is responsible for the lives of men. His thoughts are a thousand miles away, and he doesn't hear a word of our foolish talk. Non è vero, Padre?"
He looked at her with his fond parental smile. "I hear something like the songs of birds," he said; "and it helps me to think. Go on talking, anima mia. I like the sound, if I miss the sense."
"I have been telling Vera about Browning. She knows nothing of Browning, though she is a poet's daughter. Is not that dreadful?"
"I have had only Grannie's books, and she does not think there has been an English poet since Byron. We are birds of passage, and Grannie has only her poor little travelling library—but it has always seemed to me that Byron and my father were enough. I have never wearied of their poetry."
"Oh, but we shall widen your horizon," said Giulia; "You shall read all my books, and you must lend me your father's poems."
"I shall be very glad if you will read some of my favourites."
"All, all! When I admire I am insatiable."
Giulia was generally silent on their homeward journeys, wearied by the day's pleasure, in spite of the watchful care that had spared her every exertion. When the carriage had to stop at the foot of some grassy hill, at the top of which they were to take their picnic luncheon, or from which some vaunted view was to be seen, Provana would take his daughter in his arms and carry her up the slope—and once when Vera watched him coming slowly down such a hill with the tender form held by one strong arm, and the fair head nestling on his shoulder, she was reminded of that Divine Figure of the Shepherd carrying a lamb, the pathetic symbol of superhuman love. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him, holding the frail girl with such tender solicitude, walking with such care; and in the homeward drive, when Giulia was reclining among her pillows with closed eyes, Vera saw the profound melancholy in the father's face, and realised the effort and agony of every day in which he had to maintain an appearance of cheerfulness. These pilgrimages to exquisite scenes, under a smiling sky, were to him a kind of martyrdom, knowing all that lay before him, counting the hours that remained before the inevitable parting.
Vera knew what was coming. Dr. Wilmot had told her that the end could not be far off. The most famous physician in Rome had come to San Marco one afternoon. Passing through on his way to a patient at Nice, Provana had told his daughter, and coming casually to take his luncheon at the hotel—and the great man had confirmed Wilmot's worst augury. The end was near.
But even after this Giulia rallied, and the picnics in romantic places were gayer than ever, though Dr. Wilmot went with them, armed with restoratives for his patient, and pretending to be frivolous.
It was on the morning after a jaunt that had seamed especially delightful to Giulia that Lidcott came into Vera's room, with a dismal countenance, yet a sort of lugubrious satisfaction in being the first to impart melancholy news.
"I'm afraid it's all over with your poor young friend, Miss. She was taken suddenly bad at ten o'clock last night—with an hæmorrhage. Dr. Wilmot was here all night. I saw the day-nurse for a minute just now, as she was taking up her own breakfast tray—they're always short-handed in this house, Signor Canincio being that mean—and the nurse says her young lady's a little better this morning—but she'll never leave her bed again. She's quite sensible, and she doesn't think she's dangerously ill, even now, and all her thought is to prevent her father worrying about her. Worrying! Nurse says he sits near her bedroom door, with his face hidden in his hands, listening and waiting, as still as if he were made of stone."
"Would they let me see her?" Vera asked.
"I think not, Miss. She's to be kept very quiet, and not to be allowed to speak."
Vera went down to the corridor, directly she was dressed, and sat there, near the salon doors, waiting patiently, on the chance of seeing one of the nurses, or Miss Thompson. She would not thrust herself upon Signor Provana's sorrow even by so much as an inquiry or a message; but she liked to wait at his door—to be near if Giulia wanted her. They had been like sisters, in these few weeks that seemed so long a space in her life; and she felt as if she were losing a sister.
She had been sitting there nearly an hour when Signor Provana came out with a packet of letters for the post. He had been obliged to answer the business letters of the morning. The machinery of his life could not be stopped for an hour, for any reason, not even if his only child were dying. There was a look in his face that froze Vera's heart. What the nurse had said of him was true. He was like a man turned to stone.
He took no notice of Vera. He did not see her, though he passed close to her, as he went downstairs to post his letters—a matter too important to be trusted to a servant.
Vera was standing at the end of the corridor when he came back, and this time he saw her, and stopped to speak. "Ah, Miss Davis, the hour I have foreseen for a long time has come. I have thought of it every day of my life, and I have dreamt of it a hundred times; but the reality is worse than my worst dream."
He was passing her, and turned back.
"We dare not let her speak—every breath is precious. To-day she must see no one but her nurse—not even me; but if she should be a shade better to-morrow, will you come to her? I know she will want to see you."
"I will come at any hour, night or day. I hope you know how dearly I love her," Vera answered, and then broke down completely and sobbed aloud.
When she uncovered her face Provana was gone, and she went slowly back to the upper floor, where Grannie was waiting for her to sympathise with her indignation at certain offensive—or supposed to be offensive—remarks in the letters of a sister-in-law, a niece, and a dear friend.
"But indeed, dear Grannie, that could not be meant unkindly,"