Chapter Fifteen.
One day, two days, passed. Mrs Brodrick and Teresa felt like conspirators watching for a sign. As they did not get one, the telling Sylvia on the appointed day grew more disquieting in prospect. Evidently she was not quick enough to read faces, or she must have discovered for herself that something was wrong, that Wilbraham was gloomy, Teresa angry, and her grandmother uneasy. On Tuesday they were to go to Syracuse.
“And we shall see him depart in another direction,” said Teresa with decision.
“If,” said her grandmother—“if all this had never happened, do you believe you might some day have liked him?”
The question had been on her lips more than once. The young marchesa hesitated.
“Perhaps,” she answered frankly. “Perhaps—I don’t know. I liked him better at Assisi.”
“He has been a fool,” thought Mrs Brodrick, turning away.
At this moment Sylvia came hurriedly into the room.
“Is Mary here?” she asked.
“No; she is watching Peppina pack. Where are you going?”
Teresa with a heavy heart tried to speak playfully, and failed.
“Past the cemetery, and down towards the sea.”
“Ah, I never get you to myself nowadays.”
“But you know I love you, don’t you, Teresa?” said the girl anxiously.
“My dear!” cried the marchesa, still with a poor pretence at gaiety. She looked at her grandmother.
“Must you go? Or can you first come to my room for half an hour?” asked Mrs Brodrick in a voice a little tremulous, and with lines showing suddenly in her face.
“Oh, I can’t, granny, I can’t now,” Sylvia returned; “Walter is waiting for me. When I come back I shall have plenty of time. Oh, please!”
“Well, go then,” said Mrs Brodrick with a sigh.
Sylvia went down the long room, putting one or two things in tidy order as she passed. Wilbraham was waiting for her in the little look-out place behind the hotel. The ground, dotted with great prickly-pear clumps, fell very steeply towards the water, and folds of blue hills stretched from Monte Venere towards Messina. Across a radiant sea, snow gleamed on Aspromonte. Two fishermen were coming up a narrow pathway.
“Where are we going? By the cemetery?” asked Sylvia.
Wilbraham roused himself with a start.
“That’s as good a way as any—and the end of all things,” he muttered under his breath, so that she did not hear. “But if she had heard,” he reflected bitterly, “she would not have understood.” He scarcely now took the trouble to conceal things from her, always feeling secure that she would not understand.
They went away together down stony tracks. The gate of the little burying-place was open; they could see its great bushes of scarlet geranium, and yellow daisies, and ugly staring tombs lying in sunshine. Sylvia wondered a great deal, as usual, whether people lived a long time at Taormina, whether there was a doctor, whether the children went to school. To all, Wilbraham answered impatiently that he did not know.
Every now and then, however, she was silent, which was unusual, but struck him as a relief.
They skirted the wall, fennel towering high on the other side, and turned into a small steep path running down through flowery banks and fields, sheeted with red and blue vetches.
“How funny it is to have fields like these!”
Sylvia’s remarks were above all things wanting in suggestiveness. Answers did not spring from them, but had to begin an altogether separate existence.
“Are you tired?” asked Wilbraham, “or shall we go down to the shore? I think you wanted to see the caves?”
“I wanted so much to see a flying-fish. I think it must look so odd, don’t you? But then, of course, if we went, we might not see one. Shall we sit on this bank?”
“If you like.”
“And talk?”
“That too—if you like.”
“I wanted to say something.”
He bit his lip, used to Sylvia’s utterances.
“Well, my dear child, I’m listening.”
He was not thinking of her. His mind had shot away to Teresa, Teresa with an angry light in her eyes, for which he loved her the more. Hopeless, he would not have had her different; but different—to him—what might she not have been! Suddenly, unexpectedly, a word of Sylvia’s caught his attention.
“I don’t think that people ought to marry unless they love each other. Every one always says they ought not,” she was remarking in a nervously excited voice. “I think we had better give it up.”
“Give it up? Do you mean break off our engagement?” he faltered. “Sylvia!”
She was twisting a few blades of grass into a plait, and looking down at that. But his words evidently distressed her.
“Oh, don’t you think we had better?” she exclaimed, with the appeal of a child.
He had been conscious of so exquisite a relief that his honour took alarm.
“Why?” he said, leaning forward. “What is your reason?”
She looked up at him, evidently troubled; the prettiness of her face pathetically touched with the quite new struggle to explain a feeling.
“Don’t you know what I mean? I can’t say it exactly, Walter. I thought you would be sure to understand. Don’t you know? People must be very fond of each other, mustn’t they?”
All the better part of him was quickened by a perception of her sweetness and humility. But the devil set him answering with conscious untruth, and almost roughness—
“So, Sylvia, you’ve never cared for me!”
Her distress shamed him.
“I did, I did, you know I did, Walter! Of course I did. And I have been so happy! Oh, please, don’t say you don’t think so. What can I say, what can I do, to make you know? Do know, do understand.”
All her body was working with quick excited movements, all her heart was in her eyes. Wilbraham covered his own.
“God forgive me, you poor little girl!” he groaned brokenly.
“Ah! then you do know,” she said in a voice that was almost pleased. A little pride in her rose up, because she had been able to convince him, for generally she never attempted to argue, accepting dutifully whatever view of the situation he or Teresa took. This time it was she herself who had made the impression. She put her hand into his.
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” she said consolingly.
“But if you—if you love me?”
“Still, we’ve both got to do it, haven’t we?” she said, and looked at him doubtfully. Was she perhaps mistaken after all? Walter had believed her when she reassured him, and so—if he were to say the same to her, well, then certainly she must believe him, too. And how glad she would be! How very very glad! She looked at him again. He was sorry, not pleased.
“Walter?” She hesitated.
“Yes, Sylvia?”
“Will you tell me?”
“What?”
“If I am right. I want to do what’s right, but it’s so funny, it doesn’t seem to be quite easy. I thought one always knew.”
She sighed—an odd disjointed little sigh, and any sigh was so unlike Sylvia, that Wilbraham cursed himself again. But what a question she was putting.
“How can I help you? Ask your own heart.”
Always literal, she tried to obey him, but in a few minutes turned a puzzled face.
“I don’t think I know how to do it. My heart doesn’t say anything different—at least, I don’t say anything, if that’s the same thing? It is, isn’t it? It’s you that must tell me.”
“I’ll make you happy. I swear I will!”
And he meant it.
“Yes,” said the girl, speaking more slowly than was usual with her. “Oh, I should be happy, of course.”
“Well, then?”
“But that isn’t it, is it? It isn’t my being happy—I wish you could help me,” she added, twisting her fingers nervously, and frowning—“I wish you could tell me.”
He started up, then flung himself down by her side, burying his face.
“For God’s sake, Sylvia, what do you want me to say?”
“Why, what you would like, of course,” she returned simply. “We ought both of us to love each other, oughtn’t we?”
He made a slight movement of his head.
“One—isn’t enough?”
Silence. But Sylvia must always have an answer.
“Is it, Walter?”
He twisted himself.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Why, you know everything,” she said proudly. “Of course you know. And please tell me, because I get so puzzled when I have to settle things for myself—”
Suddenly he caught her hands.
“You told no one what you were going to say to me?”
“There was no one I could quite ask,” she replied drearily. “I thought granny would be too old.”
Teresa’s name she did not mention. Why not? he wondered guiltily.
“And so it is you who must tell me. Have you forgotten what it is?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten,” he stammered, hot with shame. “If I don’t love you as much as I should, Sylvia, I—I think we should get along all right. I’d do my best.”
“Oh! of course you would.” She looked away. “I suppose people can’t always help making those mistakes, can they? How funny it is they should!”
She sighed, trying to smile.
“And there is something else to ask you.”
He felt as if another of these problems would drive him mad.
“What shall I call you now?” said Sylvia, staring at him. “I suppose I mustn’t say Walter, and Mr Wilbraham sounds so odd!”
The pathos and the pettiness of it! The little mind casting about for props, and following so faithfully where those she had guided her!
“Sylvia,” he blurted out, “I’ve been a brute—try me once more, dear. I’ll do better, I swear it.”
She shook her head, smiling sadly.
“You see, I’m not clever like Teresa; but I am quite sure no two people ought to marry unless they love each other very much. I thought you meant you did, and so I don’t suppose I asked you questions enough. Then we might have found out, of course; but I didn’t. We needn’t say any more about it, need we?”
“I’ll rid you of my company to-morrow.”
“Won’t you come to Syracuse? Oh, but you wanted to see something there, didn’t you? It seems such a pity you should not see it! If you come, I shan’t tease you, indeed. Granny will be very glad to have me to walk with her. And if once or twice I do forget and call you Walter, I hope you won’t mind much?”
“My God, Sylvia,” he cried, “you punish me!”
“Punish you! Oh!” she exclaimed in distress—“but haven’t I explained rightly? I thought we should all be just as we were before Assisi. You used to walk about with us then, don’t you know, and I don’t see why this should make any difference.” She stood up. “Shall we go back, or did you want to go on farther?”
Go on! He had a revulsion of feeling which swept remorse into the background. If she could say all this—if there was no more than a bare surface an inch deep to be stirred, he need not scourge himself with having troubled it for a few weeks. She could suggest his remaining with them, could bear to see him day by day, could ask at this moment whether he would not like to walk farther! This was not love. To lose this could cost nothing. She was a little pale—that was all.
“I think we had better go back,” he said in a cold voice.
As they clambered up the steep flowery path—Sylvia in her pretty pale green frock, chosen carefully by Teresa, looking the very creature to be moving through this flower-laden earth—he was already feeling a breezy exultation, a sense of freedom, which sent the blood coursing joyfully. And gradually, as this possessed him, other possibilities rushed into his vision. Surely Teresa would see for herself, would understand, that he was not so much to blame? She, if any one, must be aware of Sylvia’s shallowness, must recognise that a man could not be content to pass through life with no other companion, would excuse, forgive—ah, if he could but make her love him, how much would not she forgive?
And poor Sylvia—already forgotten, because she had not the power of impressing her little individuality—stumbled in front, while he walked on air behind. She was so unhappy that now and then she could not see the path for tears which blurred her eyes; but her only fear was lest Wilbraham might find them out and blame himself. There was something heroic—or, if you will, true womanly—about the simple, unaffected manner in which she had done what she had determined ought to be done. She threw no thought at her own wrongs; cast no reproach at Wilbraham; did not look forward or shudder at the picture of dull grey days, such as have been known to drive women to despair; did not exaggerate her sorrows.
And so, perhaps, even in hearing her story, there are few who will pity her.
They had met no one, and had only noticed a few peasants working in the fields; yet, as they again passed the cemetery gate, a man was walking not far behind. A labourer, gnawing a root of fennel, paused as he saw him, and made a movement of his head.
“That way,” he said significantly.
“I know,” returned the man, without quickening his steps.