Chapter Twenty Two.
The Unknown.
In winter the roads in Rutlandshire are none too good for cycling. When wet they are too heavy; when frosty they are apt to be rutty and dangerous. Once or twice Gemma had been out with the two daughters of the rector of a neighbouring parish, but as she could not understand half a dozen words they said, and discovered them to be of that frigid genus peculiar to the daughters-of-the-cloth, she preferred riding alone. In January the country around Uppingham is bleak, brown, and bare, different indeed from winter in her own sunny land, but it was the exhilarating sensation of cycling that delighted her, and she did not ride for the purpose of seeing the district. The hills around Lyddington were poor indeed after the wild grandeur of the Lucca Mountains, or the Apennines, but on bright mornings she found her ride very delightful, and always returned fresh, rosy, and hungry.
A fortnight had gone by since the night Charles Armytage had visited her, but she had received no word from him, because the address she gave was at the Poste Restante at Charing Cross and she had not been to London. The kiss he had given her before parting reassured her, and now, instead of being pensive, pale-faced, and wan, she had resumed something of her old reckless gaiety, and would go about the house humming to herself the chorus of that gay song, popular to every café-concert in Italy, “M’abbruscia, m’abbruscia, ’t capa, signurè,” or jingle upon the piano for the amusement of the Doctor and Mrs Nenci, “Pennariale,” “La Bicicletta,” “Signo’, dicite si,” and a host of other equally well-known ditties. Both Malvano, who always treated her with studied courtesy, and her female companion were surprised at her sudden change of manner. Neither, however, knew the truth. Armytage had evidently succeeded in leaving the house and gaining the road without having been seen by the servants.
The frosty wind was sweeping keen as a knife across the uplands one morning as she mounted her cycle, and with a laughing farewell to the Doctor, who was just ascending into his high trap to visit a patient some five miles away in an opposite direction, she allowed her machine to run rapidly down the hill for nearly a mile without pedalling. The roads were hard and rutty, but she eared nothing for that, and rode straight as an arrow, taking both hands from the handles in order to readjust the pin which held her neat little toque. Few women rode better than she, and few looked more graceful or pedalled more evenly. In the leafy Cascine at Florence, in the Public Gardens at Milan, in the Bois at Paris, and along the Viale at Livorno, her riding had been many times admired. But here, on these Rutlandshire highways there was no crowd of gossiping idlers, none to remark her beauty, none to whisper strange stories of “the pretty Contessa,” and for the first time for months she now felt free from the trammels of her past.
About a mile and a half from Lyddington, she turned off suddenly on to a byroad, rutty and ill-kept, and, still downhill, rode towards Seaton Station. The Doctor expected a small parcel of drugs from London, and, as it could be tied to her handle-bar, she had that morning made it the object of her ride. Malvano, however, had been compelled to scribble a line to the station-master for, as she could not speak English, and the local railway official could not be expected to have any knowledge of Tuscan, the note would obviate any complications.
Shortly before reaching the station, the road crossed the railway by a level-crossing kept by a lame man, one of the company’s servants, who had been injured years before, and who now led a life of comparative ease in his snug little cottage beside the line. As she approached, she saw that the great gates were closed, and, riding up to them, she dismounted and called to the cottager for the way to be opened.
The grey-headed old man appeared at the door in his shabby overcoat, shook his head, and cast a glance down the line. Then, almost next instant, the Continental express from Harwich to Birmingham flew past. The gatekeeper drew back one of the levers beside his door, entered the house for a moment, then came forth with something in his hand.
“This letter has been left for you, miss,” he said, politely touching his cap and handing a note to her. “It’s been here these four days, and I was told not to send it up to the Doctor’s, but to give it to you personally next time you passed alone.”