James Harding Miller1 was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan2 of most gentlemanly exterior3. His grey face was deeply lined and bore that curious washed-out look of a man who had lived many years in a hot climate. After ten years or so the fiery4 Italian sun no longer tans the face of the northerner, but on the contrary his hair goes prematurely5 grey, and each year as the burning summer comes he is less able to withstand the heat of the “lion” days. His leanness, his foreign-cut clothes, and the slight gesticulation as he spoke6 all showed him to be a man more at home in the bright Italian land of song and sunlight than there, in an English village, the proprietor7 of that charming old home of his honourable8 ancestors.
In reply to his question I was rather evasive, saying that I happened to be in Swanage, and had driven out to pay a complimentary9 call upon his sister. She was not to put herself out of the way in the least, I urged. I should remain in Swanage for some days and hoped to have the pleasure of calling again.
Then turning and glancing around, I exclaimed:—“What a delightful10 old room! To me it is a real pleasure to enter a thoroughly11 English home, as this is.”
“Why?” he inquired, eyeing me with some surprise. “Because I live almost always on the Continent, and after a time foreign life and foreign ways jar upon the Englishman. At least I’ve found it so.”
“Ah!” He sighed, rather heavily I thought. “And I, too, have found it so. I quite agree with you. One may travel the world over, as I have done these past twenty years, yet there’s no place like our much-abused old England, after all.”
“Oh, then you’ve been a rolling stone, like myself,” I remarked, delighted at the success of my ruse12.
“Yes. And I still am,” was his answer, given rather sadly. “Ever since my poor wife’s death, now nearly twenty years ago, I’ve been a wanderer. This place is mine, but I’m scarcely ever here. Why? I can’t for the life of me tell you. I’ve tried to settle down, but cannot. After a week here in this quiet rural dulness, the old fever sets up in my blood, a longing13 for action, a longing to go south to Italy—the country which seems to hold me in a kind of magnetism14 which I have never been able to resist.”
“And I, too, love Italy,” I said. “Is it not strange that most of us who have lived any length of time in that country of blossoming magnolias and gentle vines always desire to return to it. We may abuse its defects, we may revile15 its people as dishonest idlers, we may execrate16 its snail-like railways and run down its primitive17 hotels, yet all the same we have a secret longing to return to that glowing land where life is love, where art is in the very atmosphere, where the sun brings gladness to the heaviest heart, and the night silence is broken by love stornelli and the mandoline.”
“You are right,” he said, gazing straight out of the old leaded window and speaking almost as though to himself. “Byron found it so, Shelley, Smollet, Trollope, the Brownings and hosts of others. They were fascinated by the fatal beauty of Italy—just as a man is so often drawn18 to his doom19 by the face of a beautiful woman. And after all we are but straws on the winds of the hour.”
Then, turning to a cabinet, I bent20 and admired a fine old Lowestoft tea-set and a collection of old blue posset-pots, whereupon he said:—
“Ah! I see you are interested in antiques. Do you care for pictures? I have one or two.”
“I do. I should delight to see them,” I answered with enthusiasm; therefore he led me across the low old-fashioned hall with its great oak beams and open fireplace into a long gallery where the floor was polished, and along one side was hung a choice collection of masters of the Bolognese, Tuscan and Venetian schools.
At a glance I saw that they were of considerable value, and as I walked along slowly examining them I half feared lest I might come face to face with the daughter of the house.
Mine was a bold adventure, and surely it was fortunate for me that old Miss Catherine had a headache.
Through room after room he conducted me with all the pride of a collector showing his treasures. Indeed, I was amazed to find such a perfect museum of Italian art hidden away in that picturesque21 old Manor22 House. “Yes,” he said presently, as we entered the long old-fashioned drawing-room upholstered in antique rose-pattern chintz, “I’ve collected in Italy for a good many years. One can pick up bargains, even now, in the less frequented towns, say Ravenna, Verona, Bologna or Rimini; while in Leghorn there are still lots of genuine Sheraton and Chippendale which was imported from England by the English merchants of that time. I once made a splendid find of seventeenth-century English silver—two porringers and some spoons—in the Ghetto23 in Leghorn.”
I was at the moment looking at a circular Madonna on panel, evidently of the Bolognese school of the cinquecento, hanging at the end of the long pleasant old room when, in glancing round, my eye fell upon two small tables where stood photographs in frames.
In an instant I bent over one and recognised it as that of the girl who had come to me so mysteriously at Shepherd’s Bush.
“That is my daughter,” he remarked.
“Curious,” I said, feigning24 to reflect. “I think I’ve met her somewhere abroad. Perhaps it was in Italy. Could it have been in Leghorn?”
“You know Leghorn?”
“I’ve been there many times. I know the Camerons, the Davises, the Matthews, and most of the English colony there.”
“Then you may possibly have met her there,” he said. “We have a small flat on the sea-front, and my daughter often plays tennis.”
“Of course!” I exclaimed, as though the mention of tennis brought back to me full recollection of the incident. “It was at tennis that I saw her—last season when I was at the Palace Hotel. I remember now, quite well. Our Mediterranean26 fleet were lying there at the time, and there were lots of festivities, as there are every summer. Is your daughter now in England?”
“Oh, yes. She’s up in London, but returns to-morrow.”
“And are you going back to Italy soon?” I inquired.
“I hardly know. My movements are never very certain. I’m quite a creature of circumstances, and nowadays drift about with the wind of chance,” he laughed.
“But this is a lovely old place,” I remarked. “If I had it I should certainly not prefer a flat in a sun-baked Italian town, like Leghorn.”
“Circumstances,” he remarked simply, with a mysterious smile upon his grey face.
What, I wondered, was his meaning?
Did he really intend to convey that the circumstances of his dishonourable profession compelled him to hide himself in a small flat in that somewhat obscure town—obscure as far as English life went?
When he learnt that I knew some of his friends in Leghorn he became enthusiastic, and began to discuss the town and its notabilities. What did I think of the English parson? And whether I did not think that seeing the small English congregation the church ought not to be removed to some town with a larger English colony. It was absurd to keep a parson there for half a dozen people.
And while my sharp eyes were busy examining the photographs set among vases of fresh-cut flowers, I made replies and sometimes laughed at his witty27 criticisms of persons known to both of us in “the Brighton of Italy.”
“What a contrast is the quiet rural life here, with all its old-world English tranquillity28, to that of the gay, garish29, sun-blanched passeggiata of Leghorn, with its bright-eyed women, its oleanders, its noise, movement, the glare and strident music of the café-chantants, and the brightness of the newly discovered spa,” I said.
He sighed, pursing his lips.
“Yes, Mr Leaf, you are quite right,” he answered. “I love Italy, but I confess I very often long to be back here at Studland, in my own quiet old home. Lucie is always begging me to forsake30 the Continent and return. But it is impossible—utterly impossible.”
“Why impossible?” I asked, looking into his deeply furrowed31 face.
“Well—there is a reason,” was his response. “A strong reason, one of health, which induces—nay, compels me to live abroad. And I greatly prefer Italy to any other country.”
Little did he dream that I had that secret document of the Italian Detective Department in my possession, or that I had learnt the truth from my friend Sampson, the friend of the young Chilian Carrera.
We were chatting on, having halted at the open window which looked across the old-fashioned garden with its rose arbours, moss-grown terrace and grey weather-beaten sundial, away to the park beyond, when I suddenly crossed to another table, whereon were other photographs.
One of them I thought I recognised even in the distance.
Yes! I was not mistaken! I took it in my trembling hand with a word of apology, and looked into the picture intently. Sight of it staggered me.
“Who is this?” I asked hoarsely32, and my host must, I think, have noticed the great change in my countenance33.
“A friend of my daughter’s, I think. Do you know her?”
“I knew her,” I replied in a hard, low tone, for sight of that smiling face brought back to me all the bitter remembrance of a part that I would have fain forgotten. “It is Ella Murray!”
“Ah!—yes, that’s her name. I recollect25 now,” he said; and I saw by his face that he was interested. “I think they were at school together.”
Again I looked upon the portrait of my dear dead love, my eyes fascinated, for I beheld34 there, at her throat, the small brooch I had given her on her birthday, a green enamelled heart with two hearts in diamonds entwined upon it.
Those sweet, wide-open eyes, clear blue and wondering like a child’s, gazed out upon me; her well-formed lips were slightly parted, as though she were speaking again, uttering those soft words that had so charmed me when she was mine, and mine only. I recollected35 the dress, too, one she had worn one night at dinner at the big country-house where we had been fellow-guests. Every feature of that lovely face was indelibly photographed upon my memory. Through those dark years, after that paroxysm of grief that had overtaken me when I discovered her false, I had, sleeping and waking, seen that smiling countenance as before my vision. Even in death Ella was still mine.
That smile! Ah! did it not mock me? Had not Avarice36 and Death cheated me out of Happiness? A great darkness was over my mind, like the plague of an unending night.
I set my teeth, swallowed the lump that arose in my throat, and with a sigh replaced the photograph upon the table.
“A pretty face,” remarked the man whose police record was in my possession.
“Yes, very,” I remarked casually37.
Ah! what a storm of bitter recollections surged through my burning brain.
Had she but lived and loved how different would my own wasted, aimless life have been!
Yes. She was, after all, my dear dead love—my Ella!
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1
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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6
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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7
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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8
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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complimentary
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| adj.赠送的，免费的，赞美的，恭维的 | |
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10
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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12
ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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13
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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14
magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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15
revile
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| v.辱骂，谩骂 | |
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16
execrate
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| v.憎恶；厌恶；诅咒 | |
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17
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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20
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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24
feigning
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| 假装，伪装( feign的现在分词 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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29
garish
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| adj.华丽而俗气的，华而不实的 | |
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30
forsake
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| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
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31
furrowed
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| v.犁田，开沟( furrow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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32
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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33
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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34
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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35
recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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37
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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