This was not promising, and her annoyance increased.
"I want you to tell me you love me--over and over again," she whispered, controlling her voice.
"Women always ask these questions," he said to gain time. "They never take anything for granted as men do."
"No!" she flashed. "Not when a man"s actions point to the possibility of several other interpretations of his sentiments--then they want words to console them. But you give me neither."
"I am not a demonstrative person," he responded. "I will do all I can to make you happy, but do not ask me for impossibilities. You will have to put up with me as I am."
"I shall decide that!" And she s.n.a.t.c.hed away her hand angrily, and then controlled herself--the moment had not yet come. He should not have freedom, which now she felt he craved; he should remain tied until he had at all events paid the last price of humiliation. So for the rest of that day and those that followed she behaved with maddening capriciousness, keeping him waiting for every meal and every appointment--changing her mind as to what she would do--lavishing caresses upon him which made him wince, and then treating him with mocking coldness; but all with such extreme cleverness that she never once gave him the chance to bring things to an open rupture. She was beginning really to enjoy herself in this new game--it required even more skill to torture and hold than to attract and keep at arm"s length.
But at last John Derringham could bear no more.
They had continuous lunches and dinners with the gay party of Americans who had been of the company on the first evening, and there was never a moment"s peace. A life in public was as the breath of Cecilia Cricklander"s nostrils, and she did not consider the wishes of her betrothed. In fact, but for spoken sympathy over his shattered condition and inability to walk much, she did not consider him at all, and exacted his attendance on all occasions, whether too fatiguing for him or not.
The very last shred of glamour about her had long fallen from John Derringham"s eyes, and indeed things seemed to him more bald than they really were. His proud spirit chafed from morning to night--chafed hopelessly against the knowledge that his own action had bound him as no ordinary bond of an engagement could. His whole personality appeared to be changing; he was taciturn or cynically caustic, casting jibes at all manner of things he had once held sacred. But after a week of abject misery, he refused to bear any more, and when Mrs. Cricklander grew tired of Florence, and decided to move on to Venice, he announced his intention of taking a few days" tour by himself. He wished to see the country round, he said, and especially make an excursion to San Gimignano--that gem of all Italy for its atmosphere of the past.
"Oh! I am thoroughly tired of these moldy places," Mrs. Cricklander announced. "The Maulevriers are in Venice, and we can have a delightful time at the Lido; the new hotel is quite good--you had much better come on with me now. Moping alone cannot benefit anyone. You really ought to cheer up and get quite well, John."
But he was firm, and after some bickerings she was obliged to decide to go to Venice alone with Arabella, and let her _fiance_ depart in his motor early the next morning.
Their parting was characteristic.
"Good night, Cecilia," John Derringham said. No matter how capricious she could be, he always treated her with ceremonious politeness. "I am leaving so very early to-morrow, we had better say good-by now. I hope my going does not really inconvenience you at all. I want a little rest from your friends, and, when I join you at Venice again, I hope you will let me see more of yourself."
She put up her face, and kissed him with all the girlish rippling smiles she had used for his seduction in the beginning.
"Why, certainly," she said. "We will be regular old Darbys-and-Joans; so don"t you forget while you are away that you belong to me, and I am not going to give you up to anything or anybody--so long as I want you myself!"
And John Derringham had gone to his room feeling more chained than ever, and more bitterly resentful against fate.
As soon as he left her, she sat down at her writing-table and wrote out a telegram to be sent off the first thing the next day. It contained only three words, and was not signed.
But the recipient of it, Mr. Hanbury-Green, read it with wild emotion when he received it in his rooms in London--and immediately made arrangements to set off to Florence at once.
"I"ll beat him yet!" he said to himself, and he romantically kissed the pink paper. For, "You may come" was what he had read.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
An hour or so before sunset the next day John Derringham in his motor was climbing the steep roads which lead to San Gimignano, the city of beautiful towers, which still stands, a record of things mediaeval, untouched by the modernizing hand of men.
A helpless sense of bitterness mastered him, and destroyed the loveliness and peace of the view. Everything fine and great in his thoughts and aims seemed tarnished. To what stage of degradation would his utter disillusion finally bring him! Of course, when Cecilia Cricklander should once be his wife, he would not permit her to lead this life of continuous racket--or, if she insisted upon it, she should indulge in it only when she went abroad alone. He would not endure it in his home. And what sort of home would it be? He was even doubtful about that now. Since she had so often carelessly thrown off her mask, he no longer felt sure that she would even come up to the mark of what had hitherto seemed her chief charm, her power of being a clever and accomplished hostess. He could picture the scenes which would take place between them when their wishes clashed! The contemplation of the future was perfectly ghastly. He remembered, with a cynical laugh, how in the beginning, before that fateful Good Friday when the Professor first planted ruffling thoughts in his mind, and before the spell of Halcyone had fallen upon him, he had thought that one of the compensations for having to take a rich wife he had found in Cecilia. She would be his intellectual companion during the rather rare moments he would be able to spare for her from his work. He would be able to live with a woman cultured in all branches which interested him, capable of discussing with him any book or any thought, polished in brain and in methods. He had imagined them, when alone together, spending their time in a delightful and intellectual communion of ideas, which would make the tie of marriage seem as almost a pleasure. And what was the reality?--An absolute emptiness, and the knowledge that, unless Arabella Clinker continued her ministrations, he himself would have to play her part! He actually regretted his accession to fortune. But for it he could have broken off the engagement with decency, but now his hands were tied.
Only Cecilia could release him, and she did not seem to have the slightest intention of doing so.
He savagely clenched his white teeth when he remembered the ridiculous waiting lackey he had been made to turn into in the last week. Then he looked up and tried to take interest in the quaint gateway through which he was pa.s.sing and on up to the unique town and the square where is the ancient Podesta"s palace, now the hotel. But he was in a mood of rasping cynicism--even the exquisite evening sunlight seemed to mock at him.
His highly trained eye took in the wonderful old-world beauty around him with some sense of unconscious satisfaction, but the saintly calm of the place made no impression upon him. Santa Fina and her flowers could not soften or bring peace to his galled soul. The knowledge that the whole situation was the result of his own doings kept his bitterness always at white heat. The expression of his thin, haggard face was sardonic, and the groups of simple children, accustomed to ask any stranger for stamps for their collections--a queer habit of the place--turned away from him when once they had looked into his eyes.
He left his motor at the hotel and wandered into the square where the remains of the palazzos of the two great Guelph and Ghibelline families, the Ardingh.e.l.li and the Salvucci, frown at one another not fifty yards apart--shorn of their splendors, but the Salvucci still with two towers from which to hurl destruction at their enemies.
John Derringham looked up at the balcony whence Dante had spoken, and round to the Cathedral and the picturesque square. The few people who pa.s.sed seemed not in tune with his thoughts, so calm and saintly was the type of their faces--all in keeping with a place where a house of the sixteenth century is considered so aggressively modern as not to be of any interest. It was too late for him now to go into the Cathedral; nothing but the fortress battlements were possible, and he hobbled there, desiring to see the sunset from its superb elevation.
The gate-keeper, homely and simple, opened to him courteously, and he went in to the first little courtyard, with its fig tree in the middle and old gra.s.s-grown well surrounded by olives and lilac bushes; and then he climbed the open stairs to the bastion, from whose battlements there is to be obtained the most perfect view imaginable of the country, the like of which Benozzo Gozzoli loved to paint.
It has not changed in the least since those days, except that the tiles of the roofs, which are now dark gray with age, were then red and brilliant. But the cypress trees still surround the monasteries, and the high hills are still crowned with castellos, while the fields make a patchwork of different crops of olives and vines and grain.
John Derringham mounted the stairs with his head down, musing bitterly, so that, until he reached the top, he was not aware that a slender girl"s figure was seated upon the old stone bench which runs round the wall. Her hat lay upon the seat beside her, while she gazed out over the beautiful world. He paused with a wildly beating heart in which joy and agony fought for mastery, but, as she turned to see who this stranger could be, thus breaking in upon her solitude, his voice, hoa.r.s.e with emotion, said aloud her name:
"Halcyone!"
She started to her feet, and then sank back upon the bench again unsteadily, and he came forward to her side. They both realized that they were alone here in the sunset--alone upon this summit of the world.
He sat down beside her and then he buried his face in his hands, letting his cap fall; and all the pent-up misery and anguish of the past weeks seemed to vibrate in his voice as he murmured:
"Ah, G.o.d!--my love!"
Her soft eyes melted upon him in deepest tenderness and sorrow. To see him so pale and shattered, so changed from the splendid lover she had known!
But he was there--beside her--and what mattered anything else? She longed to comfort him and tend him with fond care. Had he been the veriest outcast he would ever have found boundless welcome and solace waiting for him in her loving heart.
"John!" she whispered, and put out gentle fingers and caressed his hair.
He shivered and let his hands fall from his haggard face.
"Darling," he said, "I am not worthy to touch the hem of your garment.
Why do you not turn from such a weakling and brute?"
"Hush! Hush," she exclaimed, aghast. "You must not speak so of yourself.
I love you always, as you know, and I cannot hear him whom I love abused."
And now he looked into her eyes while he took her slender hand, and there he saw the same wells of purity and devotion br.i.m.m.i.n.g with divine faith and tenderness that he had last seen glistening with happy love.
He folded her to his heart; the pa.s.sionate emotion each was feeling was too deep, too sacred for words; and then their eyes streamed with scorching tears.
They sat thus close for some seconds. The thirst and hunger of all these days of rack and anguish must be a.s.suaged before either could talk. But at last she drew a little back and looked up into his face.
"John," she said softly, "I read in an English paper a week ago that your wedding was fixed for the seventh of October--my birthday. Is it the truth?"
He clasped his hands in agony.
"It can never now be so," he said. "I cannot, I will not go through with it. Oh, Halcyone, my darling one, you would pity me, although you would despise me, if you knew--"
"I could never despise you," she answered, nestling once more in his arms. "John, for me nothing you could do would make any difference--you would still be my love; and if you were weak I would make you strong, and if cold and hungry, I would feed and comfort you, and if wicked, I would only see you good."
"Oh, my dear, my dear," he said, "you were always as an angel of sweetness. Listen to the whole degrading story, and tell me then of that which I must do."