"You mustn"t abuse the murky skies," said Brian, smiling. "If the sun had been shining, the collision would never have occurred. Oh, Erica!
What a life time it seems since that day in Gower Street! I little thought then that I should have to wait more than seven years to tell you of my love, or that at last I should tell you in a Roman amphitheatre under these blue skies. Erica, I think you have known it of late. Have you, my darling? Have you known how I loved you?"
"Yes," she said, looking down at her sketch book with glowing cheeks.
"Oh! If you knew what a paradise of hope you opened to me that day last December and how different life has been ever since! Those were gray years, Erica, when I dared not even hope to gain your love. But lately, darling, I have hoped. Was I wrong?"
"No," she said with a little quiver in her voice.
"You will love me?"
She looked up at him for a moment in silence, a glorious light in her eyes, her whole face radiant with joy.
"I do love you," she said softly.
He drew nearer to her, held both her hands in his, waiting only for the promise which would make her indeed his own.
"Will you be my wife, darling?"
But the words had scarcely pa.s.sed his lips when a look of anguish swept over Erica"s face; she s.n.a.t.c.hed away her hands.
"Oh! G.o.d help me!" she cried. "What have I done? I"ve been living in a dream! It"s impossible, Brian! Impossible!"
A gray look came over Brian"s face.
"How impossible?" he asked in a choked voice.
"I can"t leave home," she said, clasping her hands tightly together. "I never can leave my father."
"I will wait," said Brian, recovering his voice. "I will wait any time for you only give me hope."
"I can"t," she sobbed. "I daren"t!"
"But you have given it me!" he exclaimed. "You have said you loved me!"
"I do! I do!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "But, oh, Brian! Have pity on me don"t make me say it again I must not think of it I can never be your wife."
Her words were broken with sobs which she could not restrain.
"My darling," he said growing calm and strong again at the sight of her agitation, and once more possessing himself of her hand, "you have had a great many troubles lately, and I can quite understand that just now you could not leave your father. But I will wait till less troubled times; then surely you will come to me?"
"No," she said quickly as if not daring to pause, "It will always be the same; there never will be quiet times for us. I can"t leave my father.
It isn"t as if he had other children I am the only one, and must stay."
"Is this then to be the end of it all?" cried Brian. "My darling, you can not be so cruel to me. It can not be the end there is no end to love and we know that we love each other. Erica, give me some future to look to some hope."
The terrible pain expressed in every line of his face wrung her heart.
"Oh, wait," she exclaimed. "Give me one moment to think."
She buried her face in her hands, shutting out the sunny Italian landscape, the very beauty of which seemed to weaken her powers of endurance. Truly she had been living lately in a golden dream, and the waking was anguish. Oh, if she had but realized before the meaning of it all, then she would have hidden her love so that he never would have guessed it. She would have been to him the Erica of a year ago, just a friend and nothing more. But now she must give him the worst of pain, perhaps ruin his whole life. If she might but give him some promise.
What was the right? How were love and duty to be reconciled?
As she sat crouched up in her misery, fighting the hardest battle of her life, the bell in the campanile of the village church began to ring.
It was twelve o"clock. All through the land, in remembrance of the hour when the true meaning of love and sacrifice was revealed to the human race, there swept now the music of church bells, bidding the people to pause in their work and pray. Many a peasant raised his thoughts for a moment from sordid cares or hard labor, and realized that there was an unseen world. And here in the Roman amphitheatre, where a conflict more painful than those physical conflicts of old time was going on, a soul prayed in agony for the wisdom to see the right and the strength to do it.
When at length Erica lifted her face she found that Brian was no longer beside her, he was pacing to and fro in the arena; waiting had grown unbearable to him. She went down to him, moving neither quickly nor hurriedly, but at the steady "right onward" pace which suited her whole aspect.
"Brian," she said in a low voice, "do you remember telling me that day that I must try to show them what the Father is? You must help me now, not hinder. You will help me just because you do indeed love me?"
"You will give me no promise even for the most distant future?"
"I can"t," she replied, faltering a little as she saw him turn deadly white. "If there were any engagement between us, I should have to tell my father of it; and that would only make our trouble his and defeat my whole object. Oh, Brian, forgive me, and just leave me. I can have given you nothing but pain all these years. Don"t let me spoil your whole life!"
His face caught something of the n.o.ble purpose which made hers shine in spite of the sadness.
"Darling," he said quickly, "I can thank G.o.d for you though you are never to be mine. G.o.d bless you, Erica."
There was a moment"s pause; he still kept her hands in his.
"Tell your father I"ve gone for a walk over to those hills that I shall not be home till evening." He felt her hands tremble, and knew that he only tortured her by staying. "Will you kiss me once, Erica?" he said.
She lifted a pale steadfast face and quivering lips to his, and after that one long embrace they parted. When he turned away Erica stood quite still for a minute in the arena listening to his retreating footsteps.
Her heart, which had throbbed painfully, seemed now only to echo his steps, to beat more faintly as they grew less audible. At last came silence, and then she crept up to the place where she had left her sketch book and paint box.
The whole world seemed sliding away aching desolation overwhelmed her.
Brian"s face with its pa.s.sion and pain rose before her dry, burning eyes. Then darkness came, blotting out the sunshine; the little stream trickling into its stony basin seemed to grow into a roaring cataract, the waters to rush into her ears with a horrid gurgling; while the stones of the amphitheatre seemed to change into blocks of ice and to freeze her as she lay.
A few minutes later she gasped her way painfully back to life. All was very peaceful now; the water fell with its soft tinkling sound, there was a low hum of insects; beside her stony pillow grew some stars of Bethlehem, and in between their delicate white and green she could see the arena and the tiers of seats opposite, and out beyond the green encircling hills. Golden sunshine lighted up the dark pines and spirelike cypresses; in the distance there was an olive garden, its soft, gray-green foliage touched into silvery brightness.
The beauty of the scene, which in her struggle had seemed to weaken and unnerve her, stole now into her heart and comforted her; and all the time there rang in her ears the message that the bells had brought her "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross."
"Taking a siesta?" said a voice above her. She looked up and saw her father.
"I"ve rather a headache," she replied.
"Enough to give you one, my child, to lie there in the sun without an umbrella," he said, putting up his own to shelter her. "Such a May noonday in Italy might give you a sunstroke. What was your doctor thinking of to allow it?"
"Brian? Oh, he has gone over to those hills; we are not to wait for him, he wanted a walk."
"Quite right," said Raeburn. "I don"t think he ought to waste his holiday in Italian cities, he wants fresh air and exercise after his London life. Where"s your handkerchief?"
He took it to the little stream, put aside the overhanging bushes, dipped it in the water, and bringing it back laid it on her burning forehead.
"How you spoil me, PADRE MIO," she said with a little laugh that was sadder than tears; and as she spoke she slipped down to a lower step and rested her head on his knee, drawing down one of his strong hands to shade her eyes. He talked of his sketch, of his word-skirmish with the basket women, of the view from the amphitheatre; but she did not much hear what he said, she was looking at the hand that shaded her eyes.
That strong hand which had toiled for her when she was a helpless baby, the hand to which she had clung when every out her support had been wrenched away by death, the hand which she had held in hers when she thought he was dying, and the children had sung of "Life"s long day and death"s dark night."
All at once she drew it down and pressed it to her lips with a child"s loving reverence. Then she sat up with a sudden return of energy.