Miss Grief and Other Stories (31 page)

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“That is gently spoken. It is your marriage present to me, and I feel the better for it.”

A minute later they had reached the ray and the door. He could see her face now. “How ill you look!” he said, involuntarily. “I noticed it last evening. It is not conventional to say so, but it is at least a real regret. He should take better care of you.”

The blind beggar, hearing their footsteps, had put out his hand. “Do not go yet,” said Morgan, giving him a franc. “See how it is raining outside. Walk with me once around the whole interior for the sake of the pleasant part of our Florentine days—for there
was
a pleasant part; it will be our last walk together.”

She assented silently, and they turned into the shadow again.

“I am going to make a confession,” he said, as they passed the choir; “it can make no difference now, and I prefer that you should know it. I did not realize it myself at the time, but I see now—that is, I have discovered since yesterday—that I was in love with you, more or less, from the beginning.”

She made no answer, and they passed under Michael Angelo's grand, unfinished statue, and came around on the other side.

“Of course I was fascinated with Beatrice; in one way I was her slave. Still, when I said to you, ‘Forgive me; I am in love with some one else,' I really think it was more to see what you would say or do than any feeling of loyalty to her.”

Again she said nothing. They went down the north aisle.

“I wish you would tell me,” he said, leaving the subject of himself and turning to her, “that you are fully and really happy in this marriage of yours. I hope you are, with all my heart; but I should like to hear it from your own lips.”

She made a gesture as if of refusal; but he went on. “Of course I know I have no right; I ask it as a favor.”

They were now in deep obscurity, almost darkness; but something seemed to tell him that she was suffering.

“You are not going to do that wretched thing—marry without love?” he said, stopping abruptly. “Do not, Margaret, do not! I know you better than you know yourself, and you will not be able to bear it. Some women can; but you could not. You have too deep feelings—too—”

He did not finish the sentence, for she had turned from
him suddenly, and was walking across the dusky space in the centre of the great temple whose foundations were so grandly laid six centuries ago.

But he followed her and stopped her, almost by force, taking both her hands in his. “You must not do this,” he said; “you must not marry in that way. It is dangerous; it is horrible; for you, it is a crime.” Then, as he stood close to her and saw two tears well over and drop from her averted eyes, “Margaret! Margaret!” he said, “rather than that, it would have been better to have married even me.”

She drew her hands from his, and covered her face; she was weeping.

“Is it too late?” he whispered. “Is there a possibility—I love you very deeply,” he added. And, cold and indifferent as Florence considered him, his voice was broken.

WHEN THEY CAME ROUND
to the ray again, he gave the blind beggar all the small change he had about him; the old man thought it was a paper golconda.

“You owe me another circuit,” he said; “you did not speak through fully half of the last one.”

So they went around a second time.

“Tell me when you first began to think about me,” he said, as they passed the choir. “Was it when you read that letter?”

“It was an absurd letter.”

“On the contrary, it was a very good one, and you know it. You have kept it?”

“No; I burned it long ago.”

“Not so very long! However, never fear; I will write you plenty more, and even better ones. I will go away on purpose.”

They crossed the east end, under the great dome, and came around on the other side.

“You said some bitter things to me in that old amphitheatre, Margaret; I shall always hate the place. But after all—for a person who was quite indifferent—were you not just a little
too
angry?”

“It is easy to say that now,” she answered.

They went down the north aisle.

“Why did you stop and leave the room so abruptly when you were singing that song I asked for—you know, the ‘Semper Fidelis'?”

“My voice failed.”

“No; it was your courage. You knew then that you were no longer ‘fidelis' to that former love of yours, and you were frightened by the discovery.”

They reached the dark south end.

“And now, as to that former love,” he said, pausing. “I will never ask you again; but here and now, Margaret, tell me what it was.”

“It was not ‘a fascination'—like yours,” she answered.

“Do not be impertinent, especially in a church. Mrs. Lovell was not my only fascination, I beg to assure you; remember, I am thirty-six years old. But now—what was it?”

“A mistake.”

“Good; but I want more.”

“It was a will-o'-the-wisp that I thought was real.”

“Better; but not enough.”

“You ask too much, I think.”

“I shall always ask it; I am horribly selfish; I warn you beforehand that I expect everything, in the most relentless way.”

“Well, then, it was a fancy, Trafford, that I mistook for—” And the Duomo alone knows how the sentence was ended.

As they passed, for the third time, on their way towards the door, the mural tablet to Giotto, Morgan paused. “I have a sort of feeling that I owe it to the old fellow,” he said. “I have always been his faithful disciple, and now he has rewarded me with a benediction. On the next high-festival his tablet shall be wreathed with the reddest of roses and a thick bank of heliotrope, as an acknowledgment of my gratitude.”

It was; and no one ever knew why. If it had been in “the season,” the inquiring tourists would have been rendered distracted by the impossibility of finding out; but to the native Florentines attending mass at the cathedral, to whom the Latin inscription, “I am he through whom the lost Art of Painting was revived,” remains a blank, it was only a tribute to some “departed friend.”

“And he is as much my friend as though he had not departed something over five centuries ago,” said Trafford; “of that I feel convinced.”

“I wonder if he knows any better, now, how to paint an angel leaning from the sky,” replied Margaret.

“
HAVE YOU ANY IDEA
why Miss Harrison invented that enormous fiction about you?” he said, as they drove homeward.

“Not the least. We must ask her.”

They found her in her easy-chair, beginning a new stocking. “I thought you were in Tadmor,” she said, as Trafford came in.

“I started; but came back to ask a question. Why did you tell me that this young lady was going to be married?”

“Well, isn't she?” said Miss Harrison, laughing. “Sit down, you two, and confess your folly. Margaret has been ill all summer with absolute pining—yes, you have, child, and it is a woman's place to be humble. And you, Trafford, did not look especially jubilant, either, for a man who has been immensely amused during the same space of time. I did what I could for you by inventing a sort of neutral ground upon which you could meet and speak. It is very neutral for the other man, you know, when the girl is going to be married; he can speak to her then as well as not! I was afraid last night that you were not going to take advantage of my invention; but I see that it has succeeded (in some mysterious way out in all this rain) better than I knew. It was, I think,” she concluded, as she commenced on a new needle, “a sort of experiment of mine—a Florentine experiment.”

Trafford burst into a tremendous laugh, in which, after a moment, Margaret joined.

“I don't know what you two are laughing at,” said Miss Harrison, surveying them. “I should think you ought to be more sentimental, you know.”

“To confess all the truth, Aunt Ruth,” said Trafford, going across and sitting down beside her, “Margaret and I have tried one or two of those experiments already!”

 

IN SLOANE STREET

….

“
W
ELL
,
I
'
VE SEEN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, AND
that's
over,” said Mrs. Moore, taking off her smart little bonnet and delicately drying with her handkerchief two drops which were visible on its ribbons. “And I think I'm very enterprising. You would never have got
Isabella
to go in such a rain.”

“Of course not. Isabella likes to stay at home and read
Memorials of a Quiet Life
; it makes her feel so superior,” answered Gertrude Remington.

“Superior?” commented Mrs. Moore, contemptuously. “Mary would not have gone, either.”

“No. But Mary—that's another affair. Mary would not touch the
Memorials
with the tip of her finger, and she wouldn't have minded the rain; but she doesn't care for galleries. With her great love for art, she prefers a book, or, rather, certain books, about pictures, to the pictures themselves. For she thinks that painters, as a rule, are stupid—have no ideas; whereas the art critics—that is, the two or three she likes—really know what a picture means.”

“Better than the painters themselves?”

“Oh, far!” answered Miss Remington. “Mary thinks that the work of the painters themselves is merely mechanical; it is the art critic—always her two or three—who discovers the soul in their productions.”

“The only art critics I know are Mrs. Jameson and Ruskin,” remarked Mrs. Moore, in a vague tone, as she drew off her closely fitting jacket by means of a contortion.

“To Mary, those two are Tupper and
Sandford and Merton
,” responded Miss Remington. “And I agree with her about Ruskin: all his later books are the weakest twaddle in the world—violent, ignorant, childish.”

But Mrs. Moore's interest in the subject was already exhausted. “It's too dreadful that we're forced to be at sea on Christmas day,” she said, complainingly. “Philip ought to have done something—arranged it in some other way. At home, already they are busy with the presents and everything. And by the 22d the whole house will be fragrant with the spices and the fruit and the wine for the plum-pudding. If we could only have some oysters, it would not be quite so dreadful. But I have not seen anything I could call an oyster since I came abroad.” She sat poised on the edge of the sofa, as though she intended to rise the next moment. Her small boots, splashed with mud, were visible under her skirt.

“The oysters are rather dwarfish,” replied Gertrude Remington. “But as England is the home of the plum-pudding, I dare say you can have that, if you like; we could anticipate Christmas by a week or two.”

“There's an idea! Do ring.” (To the entering servant.) “Oh, Banks, I should like to speak to Mrs. Sharpless for a moment. She is out? Then send up the cook.”

“Mrs. Pollikett, mum? Yes, mum,” answered Banks, disappearing.

Presently they heard a heavy step coming up the stairs. It stopped outside the door while Mrs. Pollikett regained her breath; then there was a knock.

“Come in,” said Mrs. Moore. “Oh, cook, we have taken a fancy to have a plum-pudding, as we shall be at sea on Christmas day! Do you think that you can give us a good one to-morrow night for dinner? Or, if that is not possible, the day after?”

“Hany time, mum; to-day, if you like,” responded Mrs. Pollikett, with the suggestion of a courtesy—it was little more than a trembling of the knees for a moment. She wore a print gown, and a cap adorned with cherry ribbons; her weight was eighteen stone, or two hundred and fifty-two pounds.