So far, all was extremely plain. The trouble was that he could not find any answers to the questions. He could not in the least be sure that he was falling in love, because he knew that he had never really been in love in his life. And as for saying at once that Clare was, or was not, the girl whom he should like to marry, how in the world could he tell that, unless he fell in love with her? Of course he did not wish to marry her unless he loved her. But he conceived it possible that he might fall in love with her and then not wish to marry her after all, which, in his simple opinion, would have been entirely despicable. If there were any chance of that, he ought to go away at once. But he did not know whether there were any chance of it or not. He could go away in any case, in order to be on the safe side; but then, there was no reason in the world why he should not marry her, if he should love her, and if she would marry him. The question became very badly mixed, and under the circ.u.mstances he told himself that he was splitting hairs on the mountains he had made of his molehills. He determined to stay where he was. At all events, judging from all signs with which he was acquainted, Clare was very far indeed from being in love with him, so that in this respect his sense of honour was perfectly safe and undisturbed.
Having set his mind at rest in this way, he allowed himself to talk with her as he pleased. There was no reason why he should hamper himself in conversation, so long as he said nothing calculated to make an impression--nothing which could come under the general head of "making love." The result was that he was much more agreeable than he supposed.
Clare"s innocent eyes watched him, and her mind was divided about him.
She was utterly young and inexperienced, but she was a woman, and she believed him to be false, faithless, and designing. She had no idea of the broad distinction he drew between all good and innocent women like herself, and all the rest whom he considered lawful prey. She concluded therefore, very rashly, that he was simply pursuing his usual tactics, a main part of which consisted in seeming perfectly unaffected and natural while only waiting for a faint sign of encouragement in order then to play the part of the pa.s.sionate lover.
The generalisations of youth are terrible. What has failed once is despicably d.a.m.ned for ever. What is true to-day is true enough to-morrow to kill all other truths outright. The man whose hand has shaken once is a coward; he who has fought one battle is to be the hero of seventy.
Life is a forest of inverted pyramids, for the young; upon every point is balanced a gigantic weight of top-heavy ideals, spreading base-upwards.
To Clare, everything Johnstone said or did was the working of a faithless intention towards its end. It was clear enough that he sought her and stayed with her as long as he could, day by day. Therefore he intended to make love to her, sooner or later, and then, when he was tired, he would say good-bye to her just as he had said good-bye to Lady Fan, and break her heart, and have one story more to laugh over when he was alone. It was quite clear that he could not mean anything else, after what she had seen.
All the same, he pleased her when he was with her, and attracted her oddly. She told herself that unless he had some unusual qualities he could not possibly break hearts for pastime, as he undoubtedly did, from year"s end to year"s end. She studied the question, and reached the conclusion that his strength was in his eyes. They were the most frank, brave, good-humoured, clear, unaffected eyes she had ever seen, but she could not look at them long. There was no reason why she should, indeed, but she hated to feel that she could not, if she chose. Whenever she tried, she at once had the feeling that he had power over her, to make her do things she did not wish to do. That was probably the way in which he had influenced Lady Fan and the other women, probably a dozen, thought Clare. If they were really as honest as they seemed, she thought she should have been able to meet them without the least sensation of nervousness.
One day she caught herself wishing that he had never done the thing she so hated. She was too honest to attribute to him outward defects which he did not possess, and she could not help thinking what a fine fellow he would be if he were not so bad. She might have liked him very much, then. But as it was, it was impossible that she should ever not hate him. Then she smiled to herself, as she thought how surprised he would be if he could guess what she thought of him.
But there was no probability of that, for she felt that she had no right to know what she knew, and so she treated him always, as she thought, with the same even, indifferent civility. But not seldom she knew that she was wickedly wishing that he might really fall in love with her and find out that men could break their hearts as well as women. She should like to fight with him, with his own weapons, for the glory of all her s.e.x, and make him thoroughly miserable for his sins. It could not be wrong to wish that, after what she had seen, but it would be very wrong to try and make him fall in love, just with that intention. That would be almost as bad as what he had done; not quite so bad, of course, because it would serve him right, but yet a deed which she might be ashamed to remember.
She herself felt perfectly safe. She was neither sentimental nor susceptible, for if she had been one or the other she must by this time have had some "experience," as she vaguely called it. But she had not.
She had never even liked any man so much as she liked this man whom she hated. This was not a contradiction of facts, which, as Euclid teaches us, is impossible. She liked him for what she saw, and she hated him for what she knew.
One day, when Mrs. Bowring was present, the conversation turned upon a recent novel in which the hero, after making love to a woman, found that he had made a mistake, and promptly made love to her sister, whom he married in the end.
"I despise that sort of man!" cried Clare, rather vehemently, and flashing her eyes upon Johnstone.
For a moment she had thought that she could surprise him, that he would look away, or change colour, or in some way betray his most guilty conscience. But he did not seem in the least disturbed, and met her glance as calmly as ever.
"Do you?" he asked with an indifferent laugh. "Why? The fellow was honest, at all events. He found that he didn"t love the one to whom he was engaged, and that he did love the other. So he set things straight before it was too late, and married the right one. He was a very sensible man, and it must have taken courage to be so honest about it."
"Courage!" exclaimed the young girl in high scorn. "He was a brute and a coward!"
"Dear me!" laughed Brook. "Don"t you admit that a man may ever make a mistake?"
"When a man makes a mistake of that sort, he should either cut his throat, or else keep his word to the woman and try to make her happy."
"That"s a violent view--really! It seems to me that when a man has made a mistake the best thing to do is to go and say so. The bigger the mistake, the harder it is to acknowledge it, and the more courage it needs. Don"t you think so, Mrs. Bowring?"
"The mistake of all mistakes is a mistake in marriage," said the elder woman, looking away. "There is no remedy for that, but death."
"Yes," answered Clare. "But don"t you think that I"m right? It"s what you say, after all--"
"Not exactly, my dear. No man who doesn"t love a woman can make her happy for long."
"Well--a man who makes a woman think that he loves her, and then leaves her for some one else, is a brute, and a beast, and a coward, and a wretch, and a villain--and I hate him, and so do all women!"
"That"s categorical!" observed Brook, with a laugh. "But I dare say you are quite right in theory, only practice is so awfully different, you know. And a woman doesn"t thank a man for pretending to love her."
Clare"s eyes flashed almost savagely, and her lip curled in scorn.
"There"s only one right," she said. "I don"t know how many wrongs there are--and I don"t want to know!"
"No," answered Brook, gravely enough. "And there is no reason why you ever should."
CHAPTER VII
"You seemed to be most tremendously in earnest yesterday, when we were talking about that book," observed Brook on the following afternoon.
"Of course I was," answered Clare. "I said just what I thought."
They were walking together along the high road which leads from Amalfi towards Salerno. It is certainly one of the most beautiful roads in Europe, and in the whole world. The chain of rocky heights dashes with wild abruptness from its five thousand feet straight to the dark-blue sea, bristling with sharp needles and spikes of stone, rough with a chaos of brown boulders, cracked from peak to foot with deep torn gorges. In each gorge nestles a garden of orange and lemons and pomegranates, and out of the stones there blows a perfume of southern blossom through all the month of May. The sea lies dark and clear below, ever tideless, often still as a woodland pool; then, sometimes, it rises suddenly in deep-toned wrath, smiting the face of the cliff, booming through the low-mouthed caves, curling its great green curls and combing them out to frothing ringlets along the strips of beach, winding itself about the rock of Conca in a heavily gleaming sheet and whirling its wraith of foam to heaven, the very ghost of storm.
And in the face of those rough rocks, high above the water, is hewn a way that leads round the mountain"s base, many miles along it, over the sharp-jutting spurs, and in between the boulders and the needles, down into the gardens of the gorges and past the dark towers whence watchmen once descried the Saracen"s ill-boding sail and sent up their warning beacon of smoke by day and fire by night.
It is the most beautiful road in the world, in its infinite variety, in the grandeur above and the breadth below, and the marvellous rich sweetness of the deep gardens--pa.s.sing as it does out of wilderness into splendour, out of splendour into wealth of colour and light and odour, and again out to the rugged strength of the loneliness beyond.
Clare and Johnstone had exchanged idle phrases for a while, until they had pa.s.sed Atrani and the turn where the new way leads up to Ravello, and were fairly out on the road. They were both glad to be out together and walking, for Clare had grown stronger, and was weary of always sitting on the terrace, and Johnstone was tired of taking long walks alone, merely for the sake of being hungry afterwards, and of late had given it up altogether. Mrs. Bowring herself was glad to be alone for once, and made little or no objection, and so the two had started in the early afternoon.
Johnstone"s remark had been premeditated, for his curiosity had been aroused on the preceding day by Clare"s words and manner. But after she had given him her brief answer she said no more, and they walked on in silence for a few moments.
"Yes," said Johnstone at last, as though he had been reflecting, "you generally say what you think. I didn"t doubt it at the time. But you seem rather hard on the men. Women are all angels, of course--"
"Not at all!" interrupted Clare. "Some of us are quite the contrary."
"Well, it"s a generally accepted thing, you know. That"s what I mean.
But it isn"t generally accepted that men are. If you take men into consideration at all, you must make some allowances."
"I don"t see why. You are much stronger than we are. You all think that you have much more pride. You always say that you have a sense of honour which we can"t understand. I should think that with all those advantages you would be much too proud to insist upon our making allowances for you."
"That"s rather keen, you know," answered Brook, with a laugh. "All the same, it"s a woman"s occupation to be good, and a man has a lot of other things to do besides. That"s the plain English of it. When a woman isn"t good she falls. When a man is bad, he doesn"t--it"s his nature."
"Oh--if you begin by saying that all men are bad! That"s an odd way out of it."
"Not at all. Good men and bad women are the exceptions, that"s all--in the way you mean goodness and badness."
"And how do you think I mean goodness and badness? It seems to me that you are taking a great deal for granted, aren"t you?"
"Oh, I don"t know," said Brook, growing vague on a sudden. "Those are rather hard things to talk about."
"I like to talk about them. How do you think I understand those two words?"
"I don"t know," repeated Johnstone, still more vaguely. "I suppose your theory is that men and women are exactly equal, and that a man shouldn"t do what a woman ought not to do--and all that, you know. I don"t exactly know how to put it."
"I don"t see why what is wrong for a woman should be right for a man,"
said Clare. "The law doesn"t make any difference, does it? A man goes to prison for stealing or forging, and so does a woman. I don"t see why society should make any distinction about other things. If there were a law against flirting, it would send the men to prison just like the women, wouldn"t it?"
"What an awful idea!" laughed Brook.