SIGNOR RICORDO AND OLIVE
"That was a fine putt of yours, signore; did you win the match?" said Herbert Briarfield, as he came up.
"No, it was only halved. The game has to be played out yet."
"Signore, let me introduce you to Miss Castlemaine, to whose goodness we owe these links."
Olive looked at him eagerly. She half held out her hand, but the stranger did not offer to take it. He bowed low, placing his right hand on his fez; but he did not lift it.
"I am greatly honoured," he said, in low tones, and Briarfield thought he detected an accent which he had not noticed before.
"You are enjoying your visit here, signore, I hope," said Olive, looking towards him curiously.
"It is becoming more interesting each day," was his reply.
"I am very glad," said Olive. "Perhaps you felt the place rather strange at first, and now, as you find congenial acquaintances, you feel, as we English say, 'more at home.'"
"Yes, I am making acquaintances. This morning, for example, I have enlarged the circle, and I found Mr. Sprague and Mr. Purvis very interesting."
"Whom did you say?" asked Olive quickly.
"Mr. Sprague and Mr. Purvis," said Ricordo, emphasising their names just as a foreigner might do. "Ah, you know them? I think they are coming this way."
"I must get back, Mr. Briarfield," said Olive quickly. "Father is expecting me to lunch."
"I will walk back with you," said Briarfield.
"And I, too, if I may," said Ricordo.
"You are not playing this afternoon?" said Briarfield.
"No, I think I am lazy, or perhaps I am getting old. We Easterns, you know, love to sit in the sun rather than exercise in it. Not that I feel tired. The air here gives one vigour. Ah, Miss Castlemaine, you were a benefactress to the tired part of the people of your country when you built your homestead."
"Only to a small degree, I am afraid," replied Olive. "It is only the few who can take advantage of it."
"Ah, but if all, situated as you are, would do likewise——" remarked Ricordo. "But there, I must not complain, I am one of the few. Besides, I have more than my deserts. I have not been regarded as an alien. Ah, you must be very trustful to take a stranger in without asking questions."
"Miss Castlemaine is no respecter of nationalities," interposed Herbert Briarfield.
"Ah, no, to be poor, to be tired—that is enough. But Mr. Sprague and Mr. Purvis, whom I played the golf with, they did not look either poor or tired. But perhaps they know you—they spoke as though they did."
Olive did not reply, neither did she meet the eyes of Ricordo, which were lifted to her face. She wondered whether they had told this man anything of the past.
"And you like Vale Linden?" she asked presently, in order to break the silence.
"It is the Garden of Eden," replied Ricordo; "yes, the Garden of Eden before the serpent brought trouble."
She wanted to speak in reply; but nothing came to her to say. She felt that Herbert Briarfield was right. The man suggested mystery; she was not sure that he had favourably impressed her, and yet there was a kind of fascination in his presence.
"You know England?" she said presently; "you speak our language so well, you must have spent a good deal of time in the country."
"Can any man know a country?" asked Ricordo. "The geography, that is not difficult. An hour with a map, and even London can be known. But the fields, the hills, the roads, the towns, they do not make a country. The people of England, then? Ah, I am profoundly ignorant of the people."
"And yet we are not a difficult people to understand," remarked Olive.
"No, you think not? I do not know, I have never tried to know."
"No?"
"I am content to look on the surface."
"Is not that a strange attitude of mind for an Eastern?"
"I am afraid I do not follow you."
"Well, I have always been led to believe that people from the East are very philosophical and great seekers after truth."
"Ah, but years teach wisdom, signorina, and that wisdom says, 'Never seek the truth.'"
"Why?"
"Because truth is never worth the knowing."
He spoke quite naturally, and did not seem to be aware that he was making a cynical statement. Neither did he lift his eyes to her. He walked slowly, keeping his eyes on the ground.
Olive felt a strange fascination in his presence; moreover, she could not feel that she was speaking to a stranger. She had a feeling that she had seen him before, heard him speak before. And yet everything about him was strange. His voice was not familiar to her, and it had a peculiar fluid tone which sounded un-English, and yet she fancied that she had heard it somewhere. As she listened, she found herself recalling the past, and thinking of the days before the dark shadow fell upon her life. Without knowing why, she found herself thinking of Leicester. The stranger's cynicism reminded her of the night when she first met him. She remembered how Leicester had dominated the gathering at her father's house, and that she had found herself admiring him, even while she had disagreed with everything he had said. The same thing was happening now. Herbert Briarfield, of whom she had thought a great deal during the last few days, seemed to have sunk in the background. He was one who did not matter, while the man who was a stranger had blotted him out. Perhaps this was because she found herself putting a double meaning on everything he said. Of course this might be because, owing to his Eastern associations, he would regard things differently from the way an Englishman would regard them; but she had spoken to men from the Orient before, and they had not impressed her in the same way. Still, she felt a kind of pleasure in matching her wits with his, even although she felt she might not come off best in the encounter.
"But would not your attitude of mind be fatal if it were universal, signore?" she asked.
"Pardon me, I think it is universal."
"You mean that we are not anxious to find the truth?"
"Exactly. Mind you, I do not say that you English people who boast of your honesty do not in theory hold that truth is the great thing to be sought after; but in action, in life, no. Let a man be true to truth and he is put down as a madman, a fool."
"Would you mind giving an example?"
"A dozen if you like. Here is one. It is a commonly accepted theory that well-being, happiness, depends not on what we possess, but on what we are. That 'to be' is more than 'to have.' How many are true to their creed? One in a million? Where one spends his energies in enriching his life, a million spend theirs on seeking to obtain what by common consent is evanescent. If half the energy were spent on beautifying character that is spent on 'getting on' in the ordinary acceptance of the term, what Christians call the millennium would come."
"Are you not assuming a great deal, signore?"
"But what, signorina?"
"That you understand the motives of the human heart?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"One judges by what one sees," he said. "And it is best to content oneself with that. The man who looks beneath the surface goes mad."
"And yet you are not mad?" and she laughed gaily.
"I am not sure," he said, and there was a quiet intensity in his tones—"no, I am not sure. Sometimes I think I am. But what then, signorina? We have our little lives to live, our little part to play on the world's stage."
Again she was reminded of Leicester, and as she thought of him a kind of shiver passed through her. This was Leicester over again; but another Leicester—a Leicester with a difference.
"But why play it, if it is so bad?"
"Ah, signorina, do you not think I have asked that question a thousand times? But then I have lived in the East. What can a man do against fate? The Arabians have got hold of a great truth: Kismet. Is not all philosophy centred in that?"
"No," she said, "I do not think so. If that is true, then every bad deed done would be the expression of God's will. Every murder, outrage, and abomination has His sanction, His benediction."
"Signorina has never lived in the East?"
"I do not see that that matters."
Signor Ricordo laughed quietly.
"It is refreshing to hear you," he said. "I can see into your mind now. You are thinking that the fatalistic doctrine destroys all virtue, all responsibility."
"Exactly."
"And yet are we responsible? Is not every action of life determined for us by circumstances, disposition, heredity, all forces over which we have no control?"
"And after you admit all that, every faculty of your being tells you you are responsible. After you have conceded every fatalist argument, you know that it is wrong. And more, you know that when you do wrong you are haunted by remorse, because you feel that you could have done right."
"Right! wrong!" said Ricordo, and he laughed in his soft, insinuating way.
"You do not believe in them?"
"Ah, signorina, let us cease to argue. Your faith is a tree which has borne such beautiful flowers and such wondrous fruits that you baffle logic. But then, signorina, you have never lived in hell."
Both Herbert Briarfield and Olive cast quick glances at him, but he did not alter his position; he walked quietly on, his eyes fixed on the ground.
"I say, Signor Ricordo," said Briarfield in an expostulating tone.
"That's why I am afraid of the truth," went on Ricordo, without seeming to notice Briarfield. "When a man has lived in hell for years, it upsets preconceived notions, it scatters logic to the winds, it makes conventional morality appear to be—what it is."
Olive Castlemaine felt that the man had thrown a kind of spell upon her. She did not realise that, to say the least, their conversation was not what was natural between people who had met for the first time. Had any one told her the previous day that on meeting a stranger of whom she knew nothing she would enter into a discussion with him on such topics, she would have laughed at it as impossible, yet she felt nothing of the incongruity of the situation. Somehow Ricordo seemed like a voice out of the past, and for a time she forgot things present.
"You have lived—that is——"
"Yes, Miss Castlemaine, I have lived in hell. I have been deeper into its depths than Dante ever saw. The flames which he saw have burnt me, the 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,' which Shakespeare spoke of have crushed out of me all those qualities natural to humanity. Nay, I forgot, not all, not all!"
Again Olive Castlemaine shivered. She thought of Leicester again, she knew not why. Lately the thought of him had less and less possessed her mind. A man who had died more than six years before had naturally become more and more only a memory. She could not have told why she thought of him, for this stranger, with his thick black beard and dark skin, bore little resemblance to the pale-faced, clean-shaven man she had known and loved years ago. Besides, the voice, the manner of speech were different. He was cast in a larger mould than Leicester, too, and was older by many years.
"I am afraid my speech is distasteful to you," went on Ricordo, "and I plead your forgiveness. I am not used to your ways, your modes of expression. And I trust I have not offended you. Believe me, such a thought, such a desire is far from me."
"By no means," she said quickly. "I—I am very interested. Doubtless the experiences of those who have lived in other lands are different from those who spend their lives in surroundings such as these."
Signor Ricordo cast his eyes quickly around, and beheld one of the fairest tracts of country on earth. Spring had come early, and the bursting life everywhere made one think of a universal resurrection. All nature seemed to be throwing off its grave-clothes. Woods and hedgerows, fields and gardens seemed to be clothing themselves in a magic mantle before their eyes, while the choirs of heaven were chanting for very joy.
"I think it must be easy to be good amidst surroundings like these, and on such a day as this," said Olive.
Ricordo stopped suddenly, and lifted his head. His eyes flamed with a new light, his face betrayed passion.
"What is it all but mockery?" he said—"a promise never to be realised, the fair skin which covers disease—rottenness? Signorina—forgive me. But there are spots on earth fairer than this—fairer, yes, a thousand times. Flowers, foliage, compared with which all that you see is but a suggestion. The sun! Great Allah! have you seen an Eastern sun, have you seen the prodigality with which nature scatters her beauty? But goodness! When did ever natural beauty help what you call moral goodness? In those places where nature has been most bountiful in her gifts, there you find the blackest and foulest lives. What is everything, if there is a canker at the heart; what matters if hell goes on burning in our lives? Forgive me, signorina; if there is one thing in which I have agreed with your Christian preachers, it is that natural beauty is powerless to cleanse the heart of what you call sin."
"But surely a man is affected by his circumstances," interposed Herbert Briarfield.
"Is not nature always laughing at us?" said Ricordo. "We dream our little dreams, make our little plans, and live in a fool's paradise. Let people be surrounded by beautiful things, we say; let them have works of art, fine pictures, music; let them live in the sunshine, and behold the beauties of nature, then they will live beautiful lives. I have heard your moral reformers preach this—this nonsense. Well, what happens? Is the morality of your west of London any better than the east? Ah, but I tell you I have lived in the most beautiful places on earth, but they have been hell all the same. Can you cure a cancer by placing a bunch of flowers in the room of your patient?"
"Then what is your antidote—your gospel?" asked Olive.
"Is there the one or the other?" asked Ricordo.
The party went on quietly for a few minutes. Ricordo seemed to be thinking deeply; now and then he lifted his eyes for a passing glance at his companions.
Again Olive Castlemaine thought of Leicester. Memories of those days which he spent at The Beeches came rushing back to her. She thought of the happiness which was hers, when she hoped and prayed that she should be the means whereby the man she loved should be brought to faith—to God. In some subtle way which she could not understand, the stranger made him real, ay, and more, he made her feel that she had been harsh and unfair to the man whose wife she had promised to be. After all, was it not her pride he had wounded? Moreover, Ricordo had interested her in himself, in a way that she had been interested in no other man for a long time. It was not so much because of what he said. Rather, it lay in the fascination of the man himself. He made such as Herbert Briarfield seem small and commonplace. She felt sure that he had lived in a realm of thought and being to which the young squire was a stranger.
The essence of interest is mystery. It is rather in the things not seen, than in the things seen, that fascination lies. We are for ever longing to explore new regions, to tread ground hitherto untrodden. The secret chamber of a house is of infinitely more interest than those chambers which are open to inspection; that is why we care little about those people in whose life there is no secret chamber of thought and experience.
"I wonder you don't write a book, Signor Ricordo," said Briarfield presently.
"And why, Mr. Briarfield?"
"You must have a wonderful story to tell."
"Yes, a wonderful story, perhaps; but would you have me lay open my soul to the gaze of the vulgar crowd?"
"Other men have."
"Why?"
"Perhaps to make money, perhaps to obtain renown or to do good. Dante gave the world his vision of hell, and of heaven; why not you?"
"Because I am not a poet, and because—well, every man has his own way of telling his story. Besides, if ever I were to tell the story of my life I should choose my audience."
They had by this time reached the gate which opened the way into the grounds of The Homestead, and as if by one consent the trio stopped.
"Are you staying here long, signore?" asked Olive.
"I do not know. I am given to understand that there is an unwritten rule that no visitor shall stay at your beautiful home for the poor, and the tired, for more than a month, Miss Castlemaine," he said. "The rule is just and wise. Your desire is to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number, and therefore it is not right that I should stay more than a month. Still, because the place seems to grow more beautiful, and more interesting every day, I may take rooms in some farmhouse. On the other hand, I may leave at the end of next week."
He looked up at her as he spoke, and watched her attentively out of his half-closed eyes.
"I hope I may have the privilege of seeing you again before I go, whether my stay be long or short," he added presently.
She knew not why, and she wondered afterwards whether she had done right. She had seen him that day for the first time. All she knew of him was that he was an Eastern stranger, who from his own confession had a strange past, and held opinions which to say the least of them seemed dangerous, yet yielding on the impulse of the moment she expressed the hope that she should see him at Vale Linden.
"Ah, signorina," said Ricordo, "I am not worthy of so great an honour; nevertheless, I accept it before you have time to repent, and withdraw your invitation." At this moment he stopped at the gates of The Homestead.
Again she half held out her hand, but again he did not notice it. He lifted his fez slightly, and then, with a somewhat exaggerated bow, he passed into the garden. But he did not stay to notice those who were sitting in the warm spring sunshine: he seemed to be eager to get to his rooms. Arrived there, he sat for a long time staring into vacancy. His eyes were no longer half closed, but were wide open, and there was an expression which, had Olive Castlemaine seen, would have made her shudder. For in them was the fierce glare of a madman. The old look of cynical melancholy, or placid indifference, was gone. He was no longer a fatalist philosopher, the thoughtful Eastern gentleman who laughed quietly at conventional notions. His hands clenched and unclenched themselves, his features worked with passion. Presently he rose and paced the room; it seemed as though the volcanic passions of his being could no longer be repressed; his whole body trembled, his eyes became almost lurid.
"She has forgotten, forgotten," he said presently. "She is happy as Lady Bountiful, and she has half made up her mind to marry that heavy-headed, heavy-limbed squire. But——"
He stopped speaking and threw himself into a chair again.
"I am invited up to the great house," he continued presently. "There I shall meet—who knows?"
He turned to a mirror, and looked at himself long and steadily. At first there was a curious look in his eyes, as though he wanted to be sure about something; but presently the look of curiosity changed to one of satisfaction.
When he went down to the dining-room, and mingled with the other guests, his face was perfectly placid again, while his eyes became half closed, as though he had not enough interest in life to open them wide.