“And you?” said Colin, who felt in his heart an inclination to kneel to her as if she had been a queen.
“I shall stay at home to-day,” said Alice. “I could not go out to-day; but I shall do very well. Sora Antonia will come in from mass presently. Oh, go out, please, and take a walk. Mr. Lauderdale, he will go if you tell him to go—you are both looking so pale.”
“Come, Colin,” said Lauderdale, “she shall have her pleasure done this day, at least, whatsoever she commands. If there was anything within my power or his—” said the philosopher, with a strange discord that sounded like tears in his voice; but Alice stopped him short.
“Oh yes,” she said, softly, “it is very good of you to do it because I ask you. Mr. Campbell, you did not read the right lesson,” she added, turning her worn face to Colin with a slight reproach.
“I read what I thought was better for us all, mourning as we are,” said Colin, startled; upon which the sad little representative of law and order did her best to smile.
“I have always heard it said how wonderful it was how the lesson for the day always suited everybody’s case,” said Alice. “Arthur never would make any change for circumstances. He—he said it was as if God could ever be wanting,” the faithful sister said, through her sobs; and then, again, put force upon herself:—“I shall be here when you come back,” she said, with her faint smile; and so, like a little princess, sent them away. The two men went their way up the slope and through the little town, in their black coats, casting two tall, sombre shadows into the sunshine and gaiety of the bright piazza. There had been a procession that morning, and the rough pavement was strewed with sprigs of myrtle and box, and the air still retained a flavour of the candles, not quite obliterated by the whiff of incense which came from the open doors of the Cathedral, where even the heavy leathern curtain, generally suspended across the entrance, had been removed by reason of the crowd. People were kneeling even on the steps; peasants in their laced buskins, and Frascati women, made into countesses or duchesses, at the least, by the long white veils which streamed to their feet. The windows were all hung with brilliant draperies in honour of the morning’s procession and the afternoon’s Tombola. It was one of the very chief of Italian holydays, a festal Sunday in May, the month of Mary. No wonder the two sad Protestant Scotchmen, with mourning in their dress and in their hearts, felt themselves grow sick and faint as they went dutifully to the gardens of the Villa Conti, as they had been commanded. They did not so much as exchange a word with each other till they had passed through all that sunshine and reached the identical alley, a close arcade, overarched and shut in by the dense foliage of ilex-trees, to which their little sovereign had directed them. There was not a soul there as she had prophesied. A tunnel scooped out of the damp, dewy soil could scarcely have been more absolutely shut in from the sunshine, scarcely could have been stiller or cooler, or more withdrawn from the blazing noonday, with its noises and rejoicings, than this narrow sombre avenue. They strayed down its entire length, from one blue arch of daylight to the other, before they spoke; and then it was Lauderdale who broke the silence, as if his thoughts, generally so busy and so vagrant, had never got beyond Alice Meredith’s last words.
“Another time, Colin,” said the philosopher, “you’ll no make ony changes in the lesson for the day. Whiles it’s awfu’ hard to put up with the conditions o’ a leemited intellect; but whiles they’re half divine. I’m no pretending to be reasonable. She kens no more about reason than—the angels, maybe—I admit it’s a new development to me; but a woman like yon, callant, would keep a man awfu’ steady in the course of his life.”
“Yes,” said Colin; and then with a strange premonition, for which he himself could not account, he added—“She would keep a man steady, as you say; but he would find little response in her—not that I regard her less respectfully, less reverentially than you do, Lauderdale,” he went on, hurriedly, “but—”
“It wasna your opinion I was asking for,” said the philosopher somewhat morosely. “She’s like none of the women you and me ken. I’m doubtful in my own mind whether that dutiful and obedient spirit has ever been our ideal in our country. Intellect’s a grand gift, callant, baith to man and woman; but you’ll no fly in my face and assert that it’s more than second best.”
“I am not up to argument to-day,” said Colin; and they walked back again the whole length of the avenue in silence. Perhaps a certain irritability, torn of their mutual grief, was at the bottom of this momentary difference; but somehow, in the stillness, in the subdued leafy shade, which at first sight had been so congenial to his feelings, an indescribable shadow stole over Colin’s mind—a kind of indistinct fear and reluctance, which took no definite shape, but only crept over him like a mist over the face of the sun. His heart was profoundly touched at once by the grief and by the self command of Alice, and by her utter helplessness and dependence upon himself and his friend. Never before had he been so attracted towards her, nor felt so much that dangerous softening sentiment of pity and admiration, which leads to love. And yet—; the two walked back silently under the dark ilex-trees, and across the piazza, which was now thronged with a gay and many-coloured crowd. The brighter the scene grew around them, the more they shut themselves up in their own silence and sorrow, as was natural; and Colin at length began to recognise a new element, which filled him with vague uneasiness—an element not in the least new to the perplexed cogitations of his guardian and anxious friend.