The desire to break down his barriers, enter into his intimacy and master his secret quickened her love.
From the moment of her discovery of him, in those romantic circumstances which her imagination had made so much more romantic, Mrs. Aldwinkle had tried to take possession of Chelifer; she had tried to make him as much her property as the view, or Italian art. He became at once the best living poet; but it followed as a corollary that she was his only interpreter. In haste she had telegraphed to London for copies of all his books.
“When I think,” she would say, leaning forward embarrassingly close and staring into his face with those bright, dangerous eyes of hers, “when I think how nearly you were drowned. Like Shelley….” She shuddered. “It’s too appalling.”
And Chelifer would bend his full Egyptian lips into a smile and answer: “They’d have been inconsolable on the staff of the Rabbit Fancier,” or something of the sort. Oh, queer, queer, queer!
“He slides away from one,” Mrs. Aldwinkle complained to her young confidant of the small hours.
She might try to take his barriers by storm, might try to creep subtly into his confidence from the flank, so to speak; but Chelifer was never to be caught napping. He evaded her. There was no taking possession of him. It was for nothing, so far as Mrs. Aldwinkle was concerned, that he was the best living poet and she his prophetess.
He evaded her—evaded her not merely mentally and spiritually, but even in the flesh. For after a day or two in the Cybo Malaspina palace he developed an almost magical faculty for disappearing. One moment he’d be there, walking about in the garden or sitting in one of the saloons; something would distract Mrs. Aldwinkle’s attention, and the next moment, when she turned back towards the place where he had been, he was gone, he was utterly vanished. Mrs. Aldwinkle would search; there was no trace of him to be found. But at the next meal he’d walk in, punctual as ever; he would ask his hostess politely if she had had an agreeable morning or afternoon, whichever the case might be, and when she asked him where he had been, would answer vaguely that he’d gone for a little walk, or that he’d been writing letters.
After one of these disappearances Irene, who had been sent by her aunt to hunt for him, finally ran him to earth on the top of the tower. She had climbed the two hundred and thirty-two steps for the sake of the commanding view of the whole garden and hillside to be obtained from the summit. If he was anywhere above ground, she ought to see him from the tower. But when at last, panting, she emerged on to the little square platform from which the ancient marquesses had dropped small rocks and molten lead on their enemies in the court below, she got a fright that nearly made her fall backwards down the steps. For as she came up through the trap-door into the sunlight, she suddenly became aware of what seemed, to eyes that looked up from the level of the floor, a gigantic figure advancing, toweringly, towards her.
Irene uttered a little scream; her heart jumped violently and seemed to stop beating.
“Allow me,” said a very polite voice. The giant bent down and took her by the hand. It was Chelifer. “So you’ve climbed up for a bird’s-eye view of the picturesque beauties of nature?” he went on, when he had helped her up through the hatchway. “I’m very partial to bird’s-eye views myself.”