Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

"You are growing too horridly morbid, Vera. I am afraid you have taken up religion. It's very sweet of you, darling, but it's the way to lose your husband. Religion is the one thing a husband won't put up with. He hates it worse than a bad cook."

"No, I have not taken up religion."

"Then it's spiritualism, which is just as bad. It is all Mr. Symeon's doing. You live in a world of ghosts."

"There are ghosts that one loves. But there will be no ghosts where I shall be walking to-day. Only wild flowers and spring sunshine."

She watched Susan take her seat in the carriage—a vision of coquettish prettiness and expensive clothes. Susan's husband had gone back to London and Newmarket some time since, not being able to "stick" Rome after the Craven meeting. He had enjoyed some good runs with the Roman pack, and he had been shown St. Peter's and the Colosseum, and had played bridge with famous American players at Claude Rutherford's club; so what more was there for him to do?

Vera and her dog went to the Campagna by a roundabout way that avoided that noble road between the tombs of the mighty, by which the hunting men and their followers would go. She roamed in rural lanes, where violets and wild hyacinths were scenting the warm air, and sat in a solitary nook, musing over a volume of Carducci, while Boroo hunted the hedge and scratched the bank, in a wild quest of the rats that haunted his dreams as he sprawled on the Persian prayer-rug before the fire.

It was late afternoon when Vera left the quiet lane and turned into the dusty road that led to the tomb of Cecilia Metella; lingering on her way to admire a team of those magnificent fawn-coloured and cream-white oxen, whose beauty always went to her heart. She recalled Carducci's lovely sonnet, "Il Bove," those exquisite lines which Giulia Provana had repeated to her as they drove along the rural roads near San Marco, and which she learned from her friend's lips before she had ever seen a printed page of the Italian's verse.

All signs of horse and hound had disappeared before she came to Cecilia's tomb; there were no people in carriages, no loitering peasants or British bicyclists, waiting about on the chance of a ringing run, which would bring pack and field sweeping round the wide plain in sight of the starting-point. There was no one—only the vast expanse of greyish-green herbage, with here and there a heap of ruins that had been a palace or a tomb, and here and there a red-capped shepherd and his flock. Vera strolled along the grass, taking no heed of vehicles or foot-passengers on the higher level of the Appian Way. She had her time chiefly engaged in keeping Boroo to heel, where only duty could keep him, instinct and a passionate inclination urging him to make a raid on the sheep. Distance would have been as nothing. He would have crossed the expanse of rugged ground in a flash, if Vera's frown and Vera's threatening voice had not subjugated that which, next to fighting, was a master passion.

She was absorbed in her endeavour to keep the faithful beast under control, when the sound of laughter on the road above made her come to a sudden stop, and look, and listen.