In obedience to Clare’s expressed
wish, Johnstone made no mention that evening of the
rather serious adventure on the Salerno road.
They had fallen into the habit of shaking hands when
they bade each other good-night. When it was
time, and the two ladies rose to withdraw, Johnstone
suddenly wished that Clare would make some little sign
to him the least thing to show that this
particular evening was not precisely what all the
other evenings had been, that they were drawn a little
closer together, that perhaps she would change her
mind and not dislike him any more for that unknown
reason at which he could not even guess.
They joined hands, and his eyes met
hers. But there was no unusual pressure no
little acknowledgment of a common danger past.
The blue eyes looked at him straight and proudly,
without softening, and the fresh lips calmly said
good-night. Johnstone remained alone, and in a
singularly bad humour for such a good-tempered man.
He was angry with Clare for being so cold and indifferent,
and he was ashamed of himself for wishing that she
would admire him a little for having knocked down a
tipsy carter. It was not much of an exploit.
What she had done had been very much more remarkable.
The man would not have killed him, of course, but
he might have given him a very dangerous wound with
that ugly clasp-knife. Clare’s frock was
cut to pieces on one side, and it was a wonder that
she had escaped without a scratch. He had no right
to expect any praise for what he had done, when she
had done so much more.
To tell the truth, it was not praise
that he wanted, but a sign that she was not indifferent
to him, or at least that she no longer disliked him.
He was ashamed to own to himself that he was half in
love with a young girl who had told him that she did
not like him and would never even be his friend.
Women had not usually treated him in that way, so far.
But the fact remained, that she had got possession
of his thoughts, and made him think about his actions
when she was present. It took a good deal to
disturb Brook Johnstone’s young sleep, but he
did not sleep well that night.
As for Clare, when she was alone,
she regretted that she had not just nodded kindly
to him, and nothing more, when she had said good-night.
She knew perfectly well that he expected something
of the sort, and that it would have been natural,
and quite harmless, without any possibility of consequence.
She consoled herself by repeating that she had done
quite right, as the vision of Lady Fan rose distinctly
before her in a flood of memory’s moonlight.
Then it struck her, as the vision faded, that her
position was a very odd one. Personally, she liked
the man. Impersonally, she hated and despised
him. At least she believed that she did, and
that she should, for the sake of all women. To
her, as she had known him, he was brave, kind, gentle
in manner and speech, boyishly frank. As she
had seen him that once, she had thought him heartless,
cowardly, and cynical. She could not reconcile
the two, and therefore, in her thoughts, she unconsciously
divided him into two individualities her
Mr. Johnstone and Lady Fan’s Brook. There
was very little resemblance between them. Oddly
enough, she felt a sort of pang for him, that he could
ever have been the other man whom she had first seen.
She was getting into a very complicated frame of mind.
They met in the morning and exchanged
greetings with unusual coldness. Brook asked
whether she were tired; she said that she had done
nothing to tire her, as though she resented the question;
he said nothing in answer, and they both looked at
the sea and thought it extremely dull. Presently
Johnstone went off for a walk alone, and Clare buried
herself in a book for the morning. She did not
wish to think, because her thoughts were so very contradictory.
It was easier to try and follow some one else’s
ideas. She found that almost worse than thinking,
but, being very tenacious, she stuck to it and tried
to read.
At the midday meal they exchanged
commonplaces, and neither looked at the other.
Just as they left the dining-room a heavy thunderstorm
broke overhead with a deluge of rain. Clare said
that the thunder made her head ache, and she disappeared
on pretence of lying down. Mrs. Bowring went
to write letters, and Johnstone hung about the reading-room,
and smoked a pipe in the long corridor, till he was
sick of the sound of his own footsteps. Amalfi
was all very well in fine weather, he reflected, but
when it rained it was as dismal as penny whist, Sunday
in London, or a volume of sermons or all
three together, he added viciously, in his thoughts.
The German family had fallen back upon the guide book,
Mommsen’s History of Rome, and the Gartenlaube.
The Russian invalid was presumably in his room, with
a teapot, and the two English old maids were reading
a violently sensational novel aloud to each other by
turns in the hotel drawing-room. They stopped
reading and got very red, when Johnstone looked in.
It was a dreary afternoon, and he
wished that something would happen. The fight
on the preceding day had stirred his blood and
other things perhaps had contributed to his restless
state of mind. He thought of Clare’s torn
frock, and he wished he had killed the carter outright.
He reflected that, as the man was attacking him with
a knife, he himself would have been acquitted.
Late in the afternoon the sky cleared
and the red light of the lowering sun struck the crests
of the higher hills to eastward. Brook went out
and smelled the earth-scented air, and the damp odour
of the orange-blossoms. But that did not please
him either, so he turned back and went through the
long corridor to the platform at the back of the hotel.
To his surprise he came face to face with Clare, who
was walking briskly backwards and forwards, and saw
him just as he emerged from the door. They both
stood still and looked at each other with an odd little
constraint, almost like anxiety, in their faces.
There was a short, awkward silence.
“Well?” said Clare, interrogatively,
and raising her eyebrows a very little, as though
wondering why he did not speak.
“Nothing,” Johnstone answered,
turning his face seaward. “I wasn’t
going to say anything.”
“Oh! you looked as though you were.”
“No,” he said. “I came out
to get a breath of air, that’s all.”
“So did I. I I think
I’ve been out long enough. I’ll go
in.” And she made a step towards the door.
“Oh, please, don’t!”
he cried suddenly. “Can’t we walk
together a little bit? That is, if you are not
tired.”
“Oh no! I’m not tired,”
answered the young girl with a cold little laugh.
“I’ll stay if you like just
a few minutes.”
“Thanks, awfully,” said Brook in a shy,
jerky way.
They began to walk up and down, much
less quickly than Clare had been walking when alone.
They seemed to have nothing to say to each other.
Johnstone remarked that he thought it would not rain
again just then, and after some minutes of reflection
Clare said that she remembered having seen two thunderstorms
within an hour, with a clear sky between, not long
ago. Johnstone also thought the matter over for
some time before he answered, and then said that he
supposed the clouds must have been somewhere in the
meantime an observation which did not strike
either Clare or even himself as particularly intelligent.
“I don’t think you know
much about thunderstorms,” said Clare, after
another silence.
“I? No why should I?”
“I don’t know. It’s
supposed to be just as well to know about things,
isn’t it?”
“I dare say,” answered
Brook, indifferently. “But science isn’t
exactly in my line, if I have any line.”
They recrossed the platform in silence.
“What is your line if
you have any?” Clare asked, looking at the ground
as she walked, and perfectly indifferent as to his
answer.
“It ought to be beer,”
answered Brook, gravely. “But then, you
know how it is one has all sorts of experts,
and one ends by taking their word for granted about
it. I don’t believe I have any line unless
it’s in the way of out-of-door things.
I’m fond of shooting, and I can ride fairly,
you know, like anybody else.”
“Yes,” said Clare, “you
were telling me so the other day, you know.”
“Yes,” Johnstone murmured
thoughtfully, “that’s true. Please
excuse me. I’m always repeating myself.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
Her tone changed a little. “You can be very
amusing when you like, you know.”
“Thanks, awfully. I should
like to be amusing now, for instance, but I can’t.”
“Now? Why now?”
“Because I’m boring you
to madness, little by little, and I’m awfully
sorry too, for I want you to like me though
you say you never will and of course you
can’t like a bore, can you? I say, Miss
Bowring, don’t you think we could strike some
sort of friendly agreement to be friends
without ‘liking,’ somehow? I’m
beginning to hate the word. I believe it’s
the colour of my hair or my coat or something that
you dislike so. I wish you’d tell me.
It would be much kinder. I’d go to work
and change it ”
“Dye your hair?” Clare
laughed, glad that the ice was broken again.
“Oh yes if you like,”
he answered, laughing too. “Anything to
please you.”
“Anything ’in reason’ as
you proposed yesterday.”
“No anything in reason
or out of it. I’m getting desperate!”
He laughed again, but in his laughter there was a
little note of something new to the young girl, a
sort of understreak of earnestness.
“It isn’t anything you
can change,” said Clare, after a moment’s
hesitation. “And it certainly has nothing
to do with your appearance, or your manners, or your
tailor,” she added.
“Oh well, then, it’s evidently
something I’ve done, or said,” Brook murmured,
looking at her.
But she did not return his glance,
as they walked side by side; indeed, she turned her
face from him a little, and she said nothing, for she
was far too truthful to deny his assertion.
“Then I’m right,”
he said, with an interrogation, after a long pause.
“Don’t ask me, please!
It’s of no importance after all. Talk of
something else.”
“I don’t agree with you,”
Brook answered. “It is very important to
me.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Clare
tried to laugh. “What difference can it
make to you, whether I like you or not?”
“Don’t say that.
It makes a great difference more than I
thought it could, in fact. One one
doesn’t like to be misjudged by one’s friends,
you know.”
“But I’m not your friend.”
“I want you to be.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t,” said
Brook, in a lower tone, and almost angrily. “You’ve
made up your mind against me, on account of something
you’ve guessed at, and you won’t tell
me what it is, so I can’t possibly defend myself.
I haven’t the least idea what it can be.
I never did anything particularly bad, I believe,
and I never did anything I should be ashamed of owning.
I don’t like to say that sort of thing, you know,
about myself, but you drive me to it. It isn’t
fair. Upon my word, it’s not fair play.
You tell a man he’s a bad lot, like that, in
the air, and then you refuse to say why you think
so. Or else the whole thing is a sort of joke
you’ve invented if it is, it’s
awfully one-sided, it seems to me.”
“Do you really think me capable of anything
so silly?” asked Clare.
“No, I don’t. That
makes it all the worse, because it proves that you
have or think you have something
against me. I don’t know much about law,
but it strikes me as something tremendously like libel.
Don’t you think so yourself?”
“Oh no! Indeed I don’t.
Libel means saying things against people, doesn’t
it? I haven’t done that ”
“Indeed you have! I mean,
I beg your pardon for contradicting you like that ”
“Rather flatly,” observed
Clare, as they turned in their walk, and their eyes
met.
“Well, I’m sorry, but
since we are talking about it, I’ve got to say
what I think. After all, I’m the person
attacked. I have a right to defend myself.”
“I haven’t attacked you,”
answered the young girl, gravely.
“I won’t be rude, if I
can help it,” said Brook, half roughly.
“But I asked you if you disliked me for something
I had done or said, and you couldn’t deny it.
That means that I have done or said something bad
enough to make you say that you will never be my friend and
that must be something very bad indeed.”
“Then you think I’m not
squeamish? It would have to be something very,
very bad.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. Well, I thought it very bad.
Anybody would, I should fancy.”
“I never did anything very,
very bad, so you must be mistaken,” answered
Johnstone, exasperated.
Clare said nothing, but walked along
with her head rather high, looking straight before
her. It had all happened before her eyes, on the
very ground under her feet, on that platform.
Johnstone knew that he had spoken roughly.
“I say,” he began, “was
I rude? I’m awfully sorry.” Clare
stopped and stood still.
“Mr. Johnstone, we sha’n’t
agree. I will never tell you, and you will never
be satisfied unless I do. So it’s a dead-lock.”
“You are horribly unjust,”
answered Brook, very much in earnest, and fixing his
bright eyes on hers. “You seem to take a
delight in tormenting me with this imaginary secret.
After all, if it’s something you saw me do,
or heard me say, I must know of it and remember it,
so there’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t
discuss it.”
There was again that fascination in
his eyes, and she felt herself yielding.
“I’ll say one thing,”
she said. “I wish you hadn’t done
it!”
She felt that she could not look away
from him, and that he was getting her into his power.
The colour rose in her face.
“Please don’t look at
me!” she said suddenly, gazing helplessly into
his eyes, but his steady look did not change.
“Please oh, please
look away!” she cried, half-frightened and growing
pale again.
He turned from her, surprised at her manner.
“I’m afraid you’re
not in earnest about this, after all,” he said,
thoughtfully. “If you meant what you said,
why shouldn’t you look at me?”
She blushed scarlet again.
“It’s very rude to stare
like that!” she said, in an offended tone.
“You know that you’ve got something I
don’t know what to call it one can’t
look away when you look at one. Of course you
know it, and you ought not to do it. It isn’t
nice.”
“I didn’t know there was
anything peculiar about my eyes,” said Brook.
“Indeed I didn’t! Nobody ever told
me so, I’m sure. By Jove!” he exclaimed,
“I believe it’s that! I’ve probably
done it before and that’s why you ”
he stopped.
“Please don’t think me
so silly,” answered Clare, recovering her composure.
“It’s nothing of the sort. As for
that that way you have of looking I
dare say I’m nervous since my illness. Besides ”
she hesitated, and then smiled. “Besides,
do you know? If you had looked at me a moment
longer I should have told you the whole thing, and
then we should both have been sorry.”
“I should not, I’m sure,”
said Brook, with conviction. “But I don’t
understand about my looking at you. I never tried
to mesmerise any one ”
“There is no such thing as mesmerism.
It’s all hypnotism, you know.”
“I don’t know what they
call it. You know what I mean. But I’m
sure it’s your imagination.”
“Oh yes, I dare say,”
answered the young girl with affected carelessness.
“It’s merely because I’m nervous.”
“Well, so far as I’m concerned,
it’s quite unconscious. I don’t know I
suppose I wanted to see in your eyes what you were
thinking about. Besides, when one likes a person,
one doesn’t think it so dreadfully rude to look
at them at him I mean, at you when
one is in earnest about something does
one?”
“I don’t know,”
said Clare. “But please don’t do it
to me. It makes me feel awfully uncomfortable
somehow. You won’t, will you?” she
asked, with a sort of appeal. “You would
make me tell you everything and then I
should hate myself.”
“But I shouldn’t hate you.”
“Oh yes, you would! You would hate me for
knowing.”
“By Jove! It’s too
bad!” cried Brook. “But as for that,”
he added humbly, “nothing would make me hate
you.”
“Nothing? You don’t know!”
“Yes, I do! You couldn’t
make me change my mind about you. I’ve grown
to to like you a great deal too much for
that in this short time a great deal more
than is good for me, I believe,” he added, with
a sort of rough impulsiveness. “Not that
I’m at all surprised, you know,” he continued
with an attempt at a laugh. “One can’t
see a person like you, most of the day, for ten days
or a fortnight, without well, you know,
admiring you most tremendously can one?
I dare say you think that might be put into better
English. But it’s true all the same.”
A silence followed. The warm
blood mantled softly in the girl’s fair cheeks.
She was taken by surprise with an odd little breath
of happiness, as it were, suddenly blowing upon her,
whence she knew not. It was so utterly new that
she wondered at it, and was not conscious of the faint
blush that answered it.
“One gets awfully intimate in
a few days,” observed Brook, as though he had
discovered something quite new.
She nodded, but said nothing, and
they still walked up and down. Then his words
made her think of that sudden intimacy which had probably
sprung up between him and Lady Fan on board the yacht,
and her heart was hardened again.
“It isn’t worth while
to be intimate, as you call it,” she said at
last, with a little sudden sharpness. “People
ought never to be intimate, unless they have to live
together in the same place, you know.
Then they can’t exactly help it, I suppose.”
“Why should they? One can’t
exactly intrench oneself behind a wall with pistols
and say ‘Be my friend if you dare.’
Life would be very uncomfortable, I should think.”
“Oh, you know what I mean! Don’t
be so awfully literal.”
“I was trying to understand,”
said Johnstone, with unusual meekness. “I
won’t, if you don’t want me to. But
I don’t agree with you a bit. I think it’s
very jolly to be intimate in this sort of
way or perhaps a little more so.”
“Intimate enemies? Enemies
can be just as intimate as friends, you know.”
“I’d rather have you for
my intimate enemy than not know you at all,”
said Brook.
“That’s saying a great deal, Mr. Johnstone.”
Again she was pleased in a new way
by what he said. And a temptation came upon her
unawares. It was perfectly clear that he was beginning
to make love to her. She thought of her reflections
after she had seen him alone with Lady Fan, and of
how she had wished that she could break his heart,
and pay him back with suffering for the pain he had
given another woman. The possibility seemed nearer
now than then. At least, she could easily let
him believe that she believed him, and then laugh at
him and his acting. For of course it was acting.
How could such a man be earnest? All at once
the thought that he should respect her so little as
to pretend to make love to her incensed her.
“What an extraordinary idea!”
she exclaimed rather scornfully. “You would
rather be hated, than not known!”
“I wasn’t talking generalities I
was speaking of you. Please don’t misunderstand
me on purpose. It isn’t kind.”
“Are you in need of kindness
just now? You don’t exactly strike one in
that way, you know. But your people will be coming
in a day or two, I suppose. I’ve no doubt
they’ll be kind to you, as you call it whatever
that may mean. One speaks of being kind to animals
and servants, you know that sort of thing.”
Nothing can outdo the brutality of
a perfectly unaffected young girl under certain circumstances.
“I don’t class myself
with either, thank you,” said Brook, justly
offended. “You certainly manage to put things
in a new light sometimes. I feel rather like
that mule we saw yesterday.”
“Oh I thought you
didn’t class yourself with animals!” she
laughed.
“Have you any particular reason
for saying horridly disagreeable things?” asked
Brook coldly.
There was a pause.
“I didn’t mean to be disagreeable at
least not so disagreeable as all that,” said
Clare at last. “I don’t know why it
is, but you have a talent for making me seem rude.”
“Force of example,” suggested Johnstone.
“No, I’ll say that for you you
have very good manners.”
“Thanks, awfully. Considering
the provocation, you know, that’s an immense
compliment.”
“I thought I would be ‘kind’
for a change. By the bye, what are we quarrelling
about?” She laughed. “You began by
saying something very nice to me, and then I told
you that you were like the mule, didn’t I?
It’s very odd! I believe you hypnotise me,
after all.”
“At all events, if we were not
intimate, you couldn’t possibly say the things
you do,” observed Brook, already pacified.
“And I suppose you would not
take the things I say, so meekly, would you?”
“I told you I was a very mild
person,” said Johnstone. “We were
talking about it yesterday, do you remember?”
“Oh yes! And then you illustrated
your idea of meekness by knocking down the first man
we met.”
“It was your fault,” retorted
Brook. “You told me to stop his beating
the mule. So I did. Fortunately you stopped
him from sticking a knife into me. Do you know?
You have awfully good nerves. Most women would
have screamed and run up a tree or something.
They would have got out of the way, at all events.”
“I think most women would have
done precisely what I did,” said Clare.
“Why should you say that most women are cowards?”
“I didn’t,” answered
Brook. “But I refuse to quarrel about it.
I meant to say that I admired you I mean,
what you did well, more than anything.”
“That’s a sweeping sort
of compliment. Am I to return it?” She glanced
at him and smiled.
“You couldn’t, with truth.”
“Of course I could. I don’t
remember ever seeing anything of that sort before,
but I don’t believe that anybody could have done
it better. I admired you more than anything just
then, you know.” She laughed once more
as she added the last words.
“Oh, I don’t expect you
to go on admiring me. I’m quite satisfied,
and grateful, and all that.”
“I’m glad you’re
so easily satisfied. Couldn’t we talk seriously
about something or other? It seems to me that
we’ve been chaffing for half an hour, haven’t
we?”
“It hasn’t been all chaff,
Miss Bowring,” said Johnstone. “At
least, not on my side.”
“Then I’m sorry,”
Clare answered. They relapsed into silence, as
they walked their beat, to and fro. The sun had
gone down, and it was already twilight on that side
of the mountains. The rain had cooled the air,
and the far land to southward was darkly distinct
beyond the purple water. It was very chilly,
and Clare was without a shawl, and Johnstone was hatless,
but neither of them noticed that it was cool.
Johnstone was the first to speak.
“Is this sort of thing to go
on for ever, Miss Bowring?” he asked gravely.
“What?” But she knew very well what he
meant.
“This this very odd
footing we are on, you and I are we never
going to get past it?”
“Oh I hope not,”
answered Clare, cheerfully. “I think it’s
very pleasant, don’t you? And most original.
We are intimate enough to say all sorts of things,
and I’m your enemy, and you say you are my friend.
I can’t imagine any better arrangement.
We shall always laugh when we think of it even
years hence. You will be going away in a few days,
and we shall stay here into the summer and we shall
never see each other again, in all probability.
We shall always look back on this time as
something quite odd, you know.”
“You are quite mistaken if you
think that we shall never meet again,” said
Johnstone.
“I mean that it’s very
unlikely. You see we don’t go home very
often, and when we do we stop with friends in the
country. We don’t go much into society.
And the rest of the time we generally live in Florence.”
“There is nothing to prevent
me from coming to Florence or living there,
if I choose.”
“Oh no I suppose
not. Except that you would be bored to death.
It’s not very amusing, unless you happen to
be fond of pictures, and you never said you were.”
“I should go to see you.”
“Oh yes you
could call, and of course if we were at home we should
be very glad to see you. But that would only
occupy about half an hour of one day. That isn’t
much.”
“I mean that I should go to
Florence simply for the sake of seeing you, and seeing
you often all the time, in fact.”
“Dear me! That would be
a great deal, wouldn’t it? I thought you
meant just to call, don’t you know?”
“I’m in earnest, though
it sounds very funny, I dare say,” said Johnstone.
“It sounds rather mad,”
answered Clare, laughing a little. “I hope
you won’t do anything of the kind, because I
wouldn’t see you more than once or twice.
I’d have headaches and colds and concerts all
the things one has when one isn’t at home to
people. But my mother would be delighted.
She likes you tremendously, you know, and you could
go about to galleries together and read Ruskin and
Browning do you know the Statue and the
Bust? And you could go and see Casa Guidi, where
the Brownings lived, and you could drive up to San
Miniato, and then, you know, you could drive up again
and read more Browning and more Ruskin. I’m
sure you would enjoy it to any extent. But I should
have to go through a terrific siege of colds and headaches.
It would be rather hard on me.”
“And harder on me,” observed
Brook, “and quite fearful for Mrs. Bowring.”
“Oh no! She would enjoy
every minute of it. You forget that she likes
you.”
“You are afraid I should forget that you don’t.”
“I almost oh, a long
way from quite! I almost liked you yesterday when
you thrashed the carter and tied him up so neatly.
It was beautifully done all those knots!
I suppose you learned them on board of the yacht,
didn’t you?”
“I’ve yachted a good deal,” said
Brook.
“Generally with that party?” inquired
Clare.
“No. That was the first
time. My father has an old tub he goes about
in, and we sometimes go together.”
“Is he coming here in his ’old tub’?”
“Oh no he’s
lent her to a fellow who has taken her off to Japan,
I believe.”
“Japan! Is it safe? In an ’old
tub’!”
“Oh, well that’s
a way of talking, you know. She’s a good
enough boat, you know. My father went to New
York in her, last year. She’s a steamer,
you know. I hate steamers. They are such
dirty noisy things! But of course if you are
going a long way, they are the only things.”
He spoke in a jerky way, annoyed and
discomfited by her forcing the conversation off the
track. Though he was aware that he had gone further
than he intended, when he proposed to spend the winter
in Florence. Moreover, he was very tenacious
by nature, and had rarely been seriously opposed during
his short life. Her persistent refusal to tell
him the cause of her deep-rooted dislike exasperated
him, while her frank and careless manner and good-fellowship
fascinated him more and more.
“Tell me all about the yacht,”
she said. “I’m sure she is a beauty,
though you call her an old tub.”
“I don’t want to talk
about yachts,” he answered, returning to the
attack in spite of her. “I want to talk
about the chances of seeing you after we part here.”
“There aren’t any,”
replied the young girl carelessly. “What
is the name of the yacht?”
“Very commonplace ’Lucy,’
that’s all. I’ll make chances if there
are none ”
“You mustn’t say that
‘Lucy’ is commonplace. That’s
my mother’s name.”
“I beg your pardon. I couldn’t
know that. It always struck me that it wasn’t
much of a name for a yacht, you know. That was
all I meant. He’s a queer old bird, my
father; he always says he took it from the Bride of
Lammermoor, Heaven knows why. But please I
really can’t go away and feel that I’m
not to see you again soon. You seem to think that
I’m chaffing. I’m not. I’m
very serious. I like you very much, and I don’t
see why one should just meet and then go off, and let
that be the end do you?”
“I don’t see why not,”
exclaimed Clare, hating the unexpected longing she
felt to agree with him, and tell him to come and stay
in Florence as much as he pleased. “Come it’s
too cold here. I must be going in.”