Kitabı oku: «The Mysterious Mr. Miller», sayfa 10
Chapter Twenty Three
Children of Circumstance
Was any man more pitiful, more foolish, more pathetically lonely, more grotesquely fooled by Fate than I?
Was all the world a lie?
Upon the face of my love was a trouble that for once clouded its wondrous beauty. I tried to touch her hair, but she avoided me by a gesture that made me shrink a little.
The years, the tranquil sorrow of my late life dropped from me; I became again only the fierce, fearless, thoughtless lover; the man who had walked with her and adored her beside that summer sea so long ago.
A madness of determination came to me. At all hazards she should be mine. Shacklock was a liar and a schemer, a thief and an adventurer. I would bear witness against him, even at risk of the vendetta which would inevitably fall upon me.
She saw my changed face, and for the first time clung to me.
“Godfrey!” she whispered hoarsely, “have pity upon me, and remain silent. Any word from you must reflect upon myself.”
“I will not allow you to make this self-sacrifice,” I cried fiercely. “Remember Blumenthal.”
“It was for my father’s sake,” she replied. “To save him.”
“And now?”
She did not answer for several moments. Then in a low voice broken by emotion she said: —
“To save myself.”
“But it is madness!” I cried. “In what manner can you be in the power of such a man? You surely know what he is?”
“Alas! I do – too well. If he had one grain of sympathy or feeling he would surely release me.”
“And your father approves of this shameful engagement?”
“He does, because he is ignorant of the truth.”
“Then I will tell him,” I said. “You shall never fall into that man’s hands. I love you, Ella – I love you with all the strength of my being – with all my soul. If you are beneath the thrall of this adventurer, it is my duty to extricate you.”
“Ah! you can’t – you can’t,” she cried. “If you only could, how gladly would I welcome freedom – freedom to love you, Godfrey!” and she clung to me tremblingly. “But it is all a vague dream of the unattainable,” she went on. “My whole life is on fire with shame, and my whole soul is sick with falsehood. Between your life and mine, Godfrey, there is a deep gulf fixed. I lied to you long ago – lied to save my dear father from ruin, and you have forgiven. And now – Oh! God! I shudder as I think – my life will be alone, all alone always.”
I held her trembling hand in silence, and saw the tears streaming down her white cheeks. I could utter no word. What she had said thrust home to me the bitter truth that she must bow to that man’s will, even though I stood firm and valiant as her champion. My defiance would only mean her ruin.
I had met my love again only to lose her in that unfathomable sea of plot and mystery.
All the dark past, those years of yearning and black bitterness, came back to me. I had thought her dead, and lived with her sweet tender remembrance ever with me. Yet in future I should know that she lived, the wife of an adventurer, suffering a good woman’s martyrdom.
My heart grew sick with dread and longing. Again I would mourn the dead indeed; dead days, dead love. It pressed upon my life like lead. What beauty now would the daybreak smile on me? What fragrance would the hillside bear for me as I roamed again the face of Europe?
I should see the sun for ever through my unshed tears. Around me on the summer earth of Italy or the wintry gloom of the Russian steppe there would be for ever silence. My love had passed beyond me.
Unconsciously we moved forward, I still holding her hand and looking into the tearful eyes of her whom I had believed dead. Was it not the perversity of life that snatched her again from me, even though we had met to find that we still loved one another? Yes, it was decreed that I should ever be a cosmopolitan, a wanderer, a mere wayfarer on the great highways of Europe, always filled with longing regrets of the might-have-been.
I remembered too well those gay Continental cities wherein I had spent the most recent years of my weary life; cities where feasts and flowers reign, where the golden louis jingle upon the green cloth, where the passionate dark faces of the women glow, where voices pour forth torrents of joyous words, where holiday dresses gleam gaily against the shadows; cities of frolic and brilliancy, of laughter and music, where vice runs riot hand in hand with wealth, and where God is, alas! forgotten. Ah! how nauseous was it all to me. I had lived that life, I had rubbed shoulders with those reckless multitudes, I had laughed amid that sorry masquerade, yet I had shut my eyes to shut out from me the frolic and brilliancy around, and stumbled on, sad, thoughtful, and yet purposeless.
The gladness made me colder and wearier as I went. The light and laughter would have driven me homeward in desolation, had I a home to shelter me.
But, alas! I was only a wanderer – and alone.
“Tell me, darling,” I whispered to my love, my heart bursting, “is there absolutely no hope? Can you never free yourself from this man?”
“Never,” was her despairing response.
And in that one single word was my future written upon my heart.
I spoke to her again. What I uttered I hardly knew. A flood of fierce, passionate words arose to my lips, and then bending I kissed her – kissed her with that same fierce passion of long ago, when we were both younger, and when we had wandered hand in hand beside the lapping waves at sunset.
She did not draw back, but, on the contrary, she kissed me fondly in return. Her thin white hand stroked my brow tenderly, as though she touched a child.
No words left her lips, but in her soft dear eyes I saw the truth – that truth that held me to her with a band that was indivisible, a bond that, though our lives lay apart, would still exist as strong as it had ever been.
“Ella,” I whispered at last, holding her slight, trembling form in my embrace, and kissing her again upon the lips, “will you not tell me the reason you dare not allow me to denounce this fellow? Is it not just that I should know?”
She shook her head sadly, and, sighing deeply, answered: —
“I cannot tell you.”
“You mean that you refuse?”
“I refuse because I am not permitted, and further, I – ”
“You what?”
“I should be revealing to you his secret.”
“And what of that?”
“If you knew everything, you would certainly go to the police and tell them the truth. They would arrest him, and I – I should die.”
“Die? What do you mean?” I asked quickly.
“I could not live to face the exposure and the shame. He would seek to revenge himself by making counter-charges against me – a terrible allegation – but – but before he could do so they would find me dead.”
“And I?”
“Ah! you, dear one! Yes, I know all that you must suffer. Your heart is torn like my own. You love just as fondly as I do, and you have mourned just as bitterly. To you, the parting is as hard as to myself. My life had been one of darkness and despair ever since that night in London when I was forced to lie to you. I wrecked your happiness because circumstances conspired against us – because it was my duty as a daughter to save my father from ruin and penury. Have you really in your heart forgiven me, Godfrey?”
“Yes, my darling. How can I blame you for what was, after all, the noblest sacrifice a woman could make?”
“Then let me go,” she urged, speaking in a low, distinct voice, pale almost to the lips. “We must part – therefore perhaps the sooner the better, and the sooner my life is ended the more swiftly will peace and happiness come to me. For me the grave holds no terrors. Only because I leave you alone shall I regret,” she sobbed.
“And yet I must in future be alone,” I said, swallowing the lump that arose in my throat. “No, Ella!” I cried, “I cannot bear it. I cannot again live without your presence.”
“Alas! you must,” was her hoarse reply. “You must – you must.”
Wandering full of grief and bitter thoughts, vivid and yet confused, the hours sped by uncounted.
To the cosmopolitan, like I had grown to be, green plains have a certain likeness, whether in Belgium, Germany or Britain. A row of poplars quivering in the sunshine looks much alike in Normandy or in Northamptonshire. A deep forest all aglow with red and gold in autumn tints is the same thing, after all, in Tuscany, as in Yorkshire.
But England, our own dear old England, has also a physiognomy that is all her own; that is like nothing else in all the world; pastures intensely green, high hawthorn hedges and muddy lanes, which to some minds is sad and strange and desolate and painful, and which to others is beautiful, but which, be it what else it may, is always wholly and solely English, can never be met with elsewhere, and has a smile of peace and prosperity upon it, and a sigh in it that make other lands beside it seem as though they were soulless and were dumb.
We had unconsciously taken a path that, skirting a wood, ran up over a low hill southward. To our left lay the beautiful Cornish country in the sweet misty grey of the morning light. The sun was shining and the tremulous wood smoke curled up in the rosy air from a cottage chimney.
Was that to be our last walk together, I wondered? I sighed when I recollected how utterly we were the children of circumstance.
Beside her I walked with a swelling heart. I consumed my soul in muteness and bitterness, my eyes set before me to the grey hills behind which the sun had risen.
Chapter Twenty Four
“I am not Fit!”
Of a sudden, she turned her head and glanced full in my eyes. Her thoughts were, like mine, of the past – of those glad and gracious days.
I stood still for a moment, and catching her hands kissed them; my own were burning.
We went on by the curving course outside the wood quite silent, for the gloom of the future had settled upon us.
The past! Those days when my Ella was altogether mine! I loved to linger on those blissful days, for they were lighted with the sweetest sunlight of my life. Never since, for me, had flowers blossomed, and fruits ripened, and waters murmured, and grasshoppers sung, and waves beat joyous music as in the spring and summer of that wondrous time.
To rise when all the world was flushed with the soft pink of the earliest dawn, and to go hand in hand with her through the breast-high corn with scarlet poppies clasping the gliding feet; to see the purple wraith of rain haunting the silvery fairness of the hills; to watch the shadows chase the sun rays over the wide-open mysterious sea; to feel the living light of the cloudless day beat us with a million pulses amid the hum of life all around; to go out into the lustre of the summer’s night; to breathe the air soft as the first kisses of our own new-found love, and rich as wine with the strong odours of a world of flowers. These had in those never-to-be-forgotten days been her joys and mine, joys at once of the senses and the soul.
I loved her so – God knows! and yet almost I hated her. She had, on that night in Bayswater, deceived me! She had deceived me!
This was the iron in my soul. It is an error so common. Women lie to men – and men to women for the matter of that – out of mistaken tenderness or ill-judged compassion, or that curious fear of recrimination from which the firmest courage is not exempt. A woman deceives a man with untruth, not because she is base, but because she fears to hurt him with the truth; fears his reproaches; fears a painful scene, and even when he is quite worthless she is reluctant to wound his weakness. It is an error so common in this everyday life of ours: an error that is fatal always.
Had she been quite frank with me on that night when we had parted we might not have found ourselves fettered as we now were – she held to a man who was clearly an adventurer and a blackguard to boot.
Yet how could I reproach her for what was a great and complete self-sacrifice. No. She had done what was, perhaps, strictly her duty, even though both our lives had been wrecked in consequence.
“My love!” I murmured passionately, as with a cry I caught her in my arms, and held her close to me, as a man will hold some dear dead thing. And was she not, alas! now dead to me?
Our lips met again, but she was still silent. How many moments went I do not know; as there are years in which a man does not live a moment, so there are moments in which one lives a lifetime.
Her soft blue eyes closed beneath my kisses, my sense grew faint, the world became dark, all light and life shut out from me – all dark. But it was the sweet warm darkness, as though of the balmy night in June; and even then I know I prayed, prayed to Him that she might still be mine.
The trance of passion passed. How long it lasted I cannot tell.
After a while, the cloud that had enveloped my senses seemed suddenly to lift; the sweet unconsciousness died away. I lifted my head and strained myself backward, still holding her, and yet I shivered as I stood.
I remembered.
She, with a quick vague fear awakening in her eyes, held herself from me.
“Why look at me like that?” she cried. “I – I cannot bear it. Let us part now – at once. I must return, or my absence will be known and I shall be questioned.”
I do not know what I said in answer. All madness of reproach that ever man’s tongue could frame left my lips in those blind cruel moments. All excuse for her; all goodness in her I forgot! Ah! God forgive me, I forgot! She had deceived me; that was all I knew, or cared to know.
In that mad moment all the pride in me, fanned by the wind of jealousy, flamed afresh, and burned up love. In that sudden passion of love and hate my brain had gone.
Yet she stood motionless, pale as death, and trembling, her eyes filled with the light of unshed tears.
I do not know what she said in response to my cruel bitter reproaches.
All I know is that I next became suddenly filled with shame. I knelt then before her, asking forgiveness, kissing her hands, her dress, her feet, pouring out to her in all the eager impetuousness of my nature the rapture, the woe, the sorrow, the shame and the remorse that turn by turn had taken possession of my heart.
“I love you, Ella!” I cried. “I love you and as I love am I jealous. Mine is no soulless vagary or mindless folly. You are mine – mine though you may be bound to this blackguard whose victim you have fallen. I am jealous of you, jealous of the wind that touches you, of the sun that shines upon you, of the air you breathe, of the earth you tread, for they are with you while I am not.”
Her head was bowed. She shut her ears to the pleading of my heart. She wrenched her hands from me, crying: —
“No, no, Godfrey! Enough – enough! Spare me this!”
And she struggled from my arms.
“My darling!” I cried, “I know! I know! Yet you cannot realise all that I suffer now that we are to part again and for ever. I hate that man. Ah! light of my eyes, when I think that you are to be his I – I would rather a thousand times see you lying cold and dead at my feet, for I would then know that at least you would be spared unhappiness.”
It seemed that she dared not trust herself to look on me. She flung back her head and eluded my embrace.
“My love!” I cried, “all life in me is yearning for your life; for the softness of silent kisses; for the warmth of clasped hands; for the gladness of summer hours beside the sea. Do you remember them? Do you remember the passion and peace of our mutual love that smiled at the sun, and knew that heaven held no fairer joys than those which were its own, at the mere magic of a single touch?”
“Yes, dear,” she sighed, “I remember – I remember everything. And you have a right to reproach me as you will,” she added very gently.
She was still unyielding; her burning eyes were now tearless, and she stood motionless.
“But you have forgiven me, my love?” I cried humbly. “I was mad to have uttered those words.”
“I have forgiven, Godfrey,” she answered. A heavy sigh ran through the words and made them barely audible.
“And you still love me?”
All the glow and eagerness and fervour or passion had died off her face; it grew cold and colourless and still, with the impenetrable stillness of a desperate woman’s face that masks all pain.
“Do you doubt I loved you – I?”
That reproach cut me to the quick. I was passionate with man’s passion; I was cruel with children’s cruelty.
My face, I felt, flushed crimson, then grew pale again. I shrank a little, as though she had struck me a blow, a blow that I could not return.
“Then – then why should we part?” I asked, as all my love for her welled up in my faint heart. “Why should we not defy this man and let him do his worst? At least we should be united in one sweet, sacred and perfect faith – our love.”
For a few moments she made no reply, but looked at me very long – very wistfully, with no passion in those dear eyes, only a despair that was so great that it chilled me into speechless terror.
“No, no,” she cried at last, covering her face with her white hands, as though in shame, and bursting into a flood of tears. “You do not know all – I pray that you, the man I love so fondly, may never know! If you knew you would hate me and curse my memory. Therefore take back those words, and forget me – yes, forget – for I am not fit to be your wife!”
Chapter Twenty Five
By the Tyrrhenian Waters
Ella was all mine – all mine! Mine all the glad fearless freedom of her life; mine all the sweet kisses, the rapturous tenderness, the priceless passion of her love; mine all! And I had lost them.
The grave had given her back for those brief hours, but she was, alas! dead to me.
I stood there as a man in a dream.
I, athirst for the sound of her sweet voice as dying men in deserts for the fountains of lost lands.
But all was silence, save the lark trilling his song high above me in the morning air.
I turned upon my heel, and went forward a changed man.
At the inn I made further inquiries regarding the tenant of the “Glen.”
The stout yellow-haired maid-of-all-work who brought me in my breakfast was a native of the village and inclined to be talkative. From her I learned that Mr Gordon-Wright had had the place about four years. He spent only about three months or so each summer there, going abroad each year for the winter. To the poor he was always very good; he was chairman of the Flower Show Committee, chairman of the Parish Council, and one of the school managers as well as a church-warden.
I smiled within myself at what the girl told me. He was evidently a popular man in Upper Wooton.
He had friends to stay with him sometimes, mostly men. Once or twice he had had foreign gentlemen among his visitors – gentlemen who had been in the post-office and could not speak English.
“My sister was ’ousemaid there till last Michaelmas,” she added. “So I’ve often been up to the ‘Glen’. When old Mrs Auker had it she used to ’ave us girls of the Friendly Society there to tea on the lawn.”
“I think that a friend of mine comes to visit Mr Gordon-Wright sometimes. His name is Miller. Do you remember him?”
“Mr Miller – a tall middle-aged gentleman. Of course, sir. ’E was here in the spring. I remember the name because ’e and Mr Wright gave a treat to the school children.”
“Was a lady with him – a young lady?”
“Yes, sir. His daughter, Miss Lucie.”
The girl knew little else, except, as she declared, Mr Gordon-Wright was a rich man and “a thorough gentleman.”
An hour later, while I was out in the yard of the inn watching Gibbs going round the car, we suddenly heard the whirr of an approaching motor, and down the street flashed the blue car which we had pursued so hotly on the previous day. It carried the same occupants, with the addition of one person – Mr Gordon-Wright.
The latter, in peaked cap and motor-coat, was driving, while behind were the two strangers, with Mr Murray and Ella.
The latter caught sight of me as she flashed past. Our eyes met for an instant, and then she was lost to me in a cloud of dust – lost for ever.
“They’re going back again, it seems,” I remarked to Gibbs.
“No, sir. I saw their man this morning. They’re going to Bristol. He’s heard from ’is master that it’s all right. The young gentleman and the lady are his master’s friends, after all – even though they’re such a queer pair,” and then he added: “Did you think of startin’ this morning, sir?”
“Yes. As soon as you are ready.”
“Where to, sir?”
“Back to Swanage.”
We ran across Devon and Dorset at a somewhat lower speed to what we had travelled when overtaking the 40 “Mercédès.” Gibbs had no desire to put in an appearance before any local bench. Indeed nowadays lit is useless to make an appearance. So prejudiced are magistrates, and such hard swearing is there on the part of the police, that motorists must pay up cheerfully. There is no justice for the pioneers of locomotion.
We returned by another road, which proved better than that by which we had come, and just before eleven at night I descended from the car at the “Lion,” and after some supper with the fat genial landlord, who took a deep interest in my journey and hardly credited that I had been into Cornwall and back, I went up to the room I had previously occupied.
Tired after the heat and dust of the road I slept well, but was up betimes, and at half-past nine walked out to the Manor House.
A maid-servant came to the door in response to my ring. “Mr Miller and the young lady have gone away, sir,” the girl replied to my inquiry. “They went up to London yesterday.”
“Are they staying in London?” I asked eagerly. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”
“Is Miss Miller at home? If so, I’d like to see her.” And I handed her my card.
I was shown into the morning-room, and in a few minutes Miller’s sister appeared.
“I’m so sorry, Mr Leaf,” she said, in her thin, weak voice, “but my brother and his daughter left quite suddenly yesterday. He received a telegram recalling him.”
“Where?”
“To Italy. He left by the mail from Charing Cross last night – direct for Leghorn, I believe.”
“Is he likely to be away long?”
“He won’t be back, I suppose, before the spring.”
“And Miss Lucie has gone with him?”
“Of course. She is always with him.”
It was upon my tongue to ask her brother’s address in Leghorn, but I hesitated, for I recollected that, being an Englishman, he could be easily found.
The receipt of that telegram was suspicious. What new conspiracy was in progress, I wondered? Evidently something had occurred. Either he had been warned that the police were in search of him, and had escaped back to the Continent, or else certain of his plans had been matured earlier than he anticipated.
As I sat there in the old-fashioned room, with its punch-bowls full of sweet-smelling roses, I resolved to travel south to the Mediterranean, see Lucie, and endeavour to find some way in which to rescue my love from her father’s accomplice.
From that Dorsetshire village to the old sun-blanched port of Leghorn is a far cry – thirty-six hours in the express from Calais on the road to Rome – yet that night I was back in Granville Gardens; and hastily packing up my traps, chatting with Sammy the while, I next morning left London for Italy.
I told my friend but little. The circumstances were too complicated and puzzling, and the tragedy of it all was so complete that I preferred to remain silent.
I was going south, upon one of those erratic journeys I so very often took. I might return in a fortnight, or in six months. All depended upon the mood in which I found myself.
Therefore he accepted my explanation, knowing well as a constant traveller and thoroughgoing cosmopolitan himself, and he saw me off from Charing Cross, wishing me bon voyage.
The journey by way of Calais, Paris, Modane and Turin you yourself have done often, so why need I describe it? You have lunched between Calais and Paris, dined at the Gare de Lyon, turned into your narrow sleeping berth between Paris and the frontier, lunched in the wagon-restaurant between Modane and Busseleno, scrambled through your dinner in the big buffet at Genoa, and cursed those stifling tunnels between Genoa and Spezia, where between them you get your first glimpses of the moonlit Mediterranean, and you have alighted at old marble-built Pisa, the quaint dead city that contains one of the wonders of the world – the Leaning Tower.
From Pisa you have gone on to Rome, or to Florence, but I question if you have ever travelled over that ten-mile branch line down to the ancient seaport of the Medici, Leghorn. The English, save the mercantile marine and a stray traveller or two, never go to Livorno, as it is called in Italian, and yet it is in summer the Brighton of Italy, and one of the gayest places in Europe during the bathing season.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when I alighted at the “Palace,” that great white hotel on the sea-front, and went to the room allotted to me – one with an inviting balcony overlooking the promenade and the fashionable bathing establishment of Pancaldi.
Livorno was full, the night-porter informed me. It was the height of the season, and there was not another vacant bed in any hotel in the town that night.
I knew the place well, therefore early next morning I went forth, and took a turn across at Pancaldi’s, which is a kind of stone pier built out upon the rocks into the clear sunlit waters. Though so early there were already quite a number of smartly dressed people; the men in clean white linen suits and the women in white muslins, mostly of the Italian aristocracy from Florence, Bologna, Milan and Rome.
It was delightful there, seated in a chair with the waves lapping lazily at one’s feet, and the brown sails of the anchovy and sardine boats showing afar against the dark purple island of Gorgona in the distance. On every hand was the gay chatter of men – for Italians are dreadful chatterboxes – the light laughter of pretty dark-eyed women, or the romping of a few children in the care of their nurses.
I was fatigued after my journey, and as I idled there my eyes were open about me to recognise any friends.
Suddenly, approaching me, I saw a stout elderly lady in white, accompanied by a slim young girl of seventeen, whom I recognised as the Countess Moltedo and her daughter Gemma. I rose instantly, removed my hat, and drawing my heels together in Italian fashion, bowed.
“Ah! my dear Signor Leaf!” cried the Countess in English merrily, for she was American born, and like so many other countesses in Italy had been attracted by a title, and had long ago found her husband to be a worthless fellow who had married her merely in order to replenish his impoverished purse. “Why, this is a surprise! Gemma was speaking of you only the other day, and wondered if you had deserted Italy entirely.”
“No, Countess,” I replied. “Once one really knows Italy, she is one’s mistress – and you can never desert her.”
And I took the young girl’s hand she offered, and bowed over it.
“You are here at your villa at Antigniano, I suppose?” I went on.
“Yes. We’ve been here already two months. It is too hot still to return to Rome. The season has been a most gay one, for the new spa, the Acque della Salute, has, they say, attracted nearly twenty thousand persons more than last year.”
“Leghorn in summer is always charming,” I said, as I drew chairs for them at the edge of the water, and they seated themselves. “And your villa is so very delightful, out there, beyond the noise and turmoil.”
“Yes, we find it very nice. Myself, I prefer the quiet village life of Antigniano to this place. We only come up here at rare intervals, when Gemma gets dull.”
The pretty dark-eyed young girl laughing at me said: —
“Mother likes all the old fogies, Mr Leaf, while I like to see life. Out yonder at Antigniano they are all old frumps, and the men never remain there. They always take the tram and come into Leghorn.”
Like a flash it occurred to me to make an inquiry of them.
“By the way,” I said, “you know all the Americans and English here. Do you happen to know a man named Miller?”
“Miller? No,” was the American woman’s reply.
“Haven’t you mistaken the name? There’s a man named Milner, who has a daughter, a tall, rather smart dark-haired girl.”
“Milner,” I repeated, recognising at once that in Leghorn the final “r” was added. “Yes, perhaps that’s the name. He’s a tall elderly man – a gentleman. His daughter’s name is Lucie.”
“I know her,” exclaimed Gemma quickly. “We’ve met them lots of times. They live in a flat at the other end of the promenade, towards the town.”
“I want to call. Do you know the number?”
“Number nine in the Viale,” replied the Countess promptly, with her slight American accent. “Second floor. Where did you meet them?”
“In England. I returned from London only last night.”
“I don’t think they are here,” she said. “The week we arrived at the villa, nearly two months ago, Lucie called and said that they were going to spend the summer up at Roncegno, in the Trentino, a place that is becoming quite fashionable with the Italians. They left Leghorn, and I haven’t seen them since.”
“I believe they are back,” I said. “Anyhow I will leave a card.”
“Because the handsome Lucie has attracted you, eh?” asked the Countess, laughing mischievously.
“Not at all,” I protested. “I’m a confirmed bachelor, as you’ve known long ago.”
“Ah! men always say so,” she remarked. “Why do you take such an intense interest in Milner and his daughter?”
“Because they were kind to me in England,” I replied briefly.
“Well – he’s a peculiar man,” she said. “They have very few friends, I believe. He’s a gentleman, no doubt, but in very reduced circumstances. My own idea is that when Lucie’s dresses are paid for he has very great difficulty in making both ends meet. He’s a bit of a mystery, they say.”
“You surprise me,” I said. “I had no idea he was as poor as that.”
It was evident that James Harding Miller feigned poverty in Leghorn, in order to conceal his true calling.
“The house is sufficient indication that they are not overburdened by money. In fact, a couple of years ago Lucie used to give English lessons to Baroness Borelli’s two girls. Nowadays, however, Milner himself is away a great deal. I’ve often met him in the Corso in Rome, idling about outside the Aragno, and in Florence, Milan and other places, while Lucie stays at home with their old servant Marietta.”
