Punctually at twenty minutes to eleven on Sunday mornings the fifty-six pupils and the seven mistresses would leave the great gate of the Villa Camellia and march into the town, along the esplanade under the grove12 of palm trees, then through the beautiful sheltered garden of the Hôtel Anglais, where many exotic flowers and shrubs13 were blooming and the white arum lilies were like an Easter festival, to the doorway14, under the jessamine-covered veranda15, that led to the Eglise anglaise et américaine. The school practically made half the congregation, but there were visitors from the various hotels, and a sprinkling of British residents who had houses at Fossato. When the service was over there followed a very pleasant quarter of an hour in the piazza16 of the hotel; the clergyman and his wife would speak personally to many of the girls, and any of the pupils who met friends were allowed to talk to them. Fossato was a popular week-end resort from Naples, so relatives often turned up on Sundays and there were many joyous17 reunions. Kind little Canon Clark and his small bird-like wife were great favorites at the Villa Camellia. They were always invited to school functions, and each term the girls, in relays of about ten at a time, were offered hospitality at the "Villa Bleue," a tiny dwelling18 that served as parsonage for the British chaplain. To go to tea at the dear wee house—color-washed blue, and with pink geraniums in its window-boxes—was considered a treat, and Irene and Lorna looked very glum19 indeed when[83] Miss Rodgers kept severely20 to their punishment, and substituted Agnes and Elsie for themselves in the next contingent21 of guests.
"You'll go later on," consoled Peachy. "Miss Rodgers is really very decent in that way. She'll see that you get your turn once in a term at any rate. Last time I went we had hot brown scones22 and molasses. Oh, they were good! There! I oughtn't to have told you that when your turn's off. Never mind. It will be something to look forward to. We always play paper games there, and they're such fun. There I am again! Well, if you went to-day it would be over and done with by to-morrow, and it's still all to come. That's one way of taking it."
"Oh, it's all very well to moralize!" grumped Lorna, who was feeling thoroughly23 cross. "It's easy enough to count up other people's blessings24. I'm a blighted25 blossom!"
"Poor little thing!
She lived all the winter
And died in the spring,"
quoted Peachy with an extra wide grin. "Cheer up! Don't you realize it's only ten days to half-term? Oh, do, for goodness' sake, look less like a statue of melancholy26! Do you know, child, that you're getting permanent wrinkles along that forehead of yours, and it makes you more like fifty than fifteen. You're too sedate27. That's what's the matter with you, Lorna Carson! It's a fault that ought to be over[84]come. Copy Delia and me. We know how to enjoy ourselves. There—my lecture is over and now let's talk of earthquakes."
"It's all very well for you, you've got everything you want," murmured Lorna bitterly under her breath. "Some people haven't half the luck, and it's hard to be content with a short allowance and pretend you're the same as every one else. It can't always be done."
She turned away as she said it, so Peachy only caught the sound of a grumble28 and did not hear the actual words. Had she done so she might possibly have exhibited more sympathy, for she was a very kind-hearted girl. Neither she nor anybody at the Villa Camellia understood Lorna in the least. So far their classmate had been somewhat of a chestnut-bur, and nobody in the Transition had ever penetrated29 her husk of reserve. There is generally a reason for most things in life, if we could only know it, and poor Lorna's morose30 and hermit31 attitude at school was really the result of matters at home. To get into her innermost confidence we must follow her to Naples on her half-term holiday and see for ourselves the peculiar32 circumstances amid which she had been placed, and the disadvantages that had caused her to differ from other girls.
Lorna's family was the smallest possible, for it consisted only of her father. Nobody at the Villa Camellia had ever seen Mr. Carson—not even Miss Rodgers. He had communicated with her by writing[85] when he wished to place his daughter at the school, but he had never paid a single visit to Fossato. He pleaded stress of business as the excuse for this remissness33, but Lorna herself knew only too well that he had no intention of coming. Except to the office at which he was employed he never went to any place where he would be likely to meet English visitors. The furnished rooms where he lived were in the strictly Italian portion of Naples, and not in the vicinity of the big hotels. Secretly Lorna dreaded34 her holidays. There was nothing for her to do while her father was at the office. She was not allowed to go out alone, and unless she could induce fat Signora Fiorenza, their landlady35, to be philanthropic and chaperon her to look at the shops, she was obliged to amuse herself in the house during the day as best she could. In the evening things were certainly better. Her father would take her to dine at an Italian restaurant, and would sometimes treat her to a performance at a theater or cinema close at hand, or would escort her for a lamplight walk along the streets, but these brief expeditions were evidently made out of a sense of duty, and Mr. Carson was plainly unhappy until he was once more ensconced in his own sitting-room36 with his favorite books and his reading-lamp. He had seen so little of his daughter during the five years they had lived at Naples that, though in a sense he was fond of her, she was more of an embarrassment37 to him than an asset. Lorna realized this only too keenly.[86] Her sensitive disposition38 shrank away from her father. She was shy in his presence, and never knew what to say to him. She seemed always aware of some enormous shadow that hung over their lives and darkened the daylight. What this was she had no means of guessing, but it was emphatically there. She had learned, by bitter experience, never to ask to be taken to the fashionable portions of the city; she knew that the sound of a voice speaking English at a neighboring table was enough to cause her father to finish his meal in a hurry and leave the restaurant. They never went to the British Church, and even such cosmopolitan39 spots as the aquarium40 or the museum were equally taboo41.
Long and often did Lorna puzzle over this idiosyncrasy of her father. She retained vague memories of her early childhood, when he had surely been utterly different and would come into the nursery to romp42 with her. It had not been altogether her mother's death; that had happened when she was only six years old, and there were bright memories after it of happy times together. No—it was when she was ten years old that the unknown catastrophe43 must have occurred which had ruined her father's life. She could remember plainly the visit of several gentlemen, and of loud angry voices talking inside the drawing-room; she was standing44 on the stairs as they came out into the hall, and her father had told her roughly to run away. Then had followed a hasty removal, and they had left their comfortable[87] home in London and had come to live in Naples. After a dreary45 time in a second-rate Italian boarding-house she had been sent to the Villa Camellia, and all link with England was lost and broken. No aunt or cousins ever wrote to her, and the earlier portion of her life seemed a period that was utterly ended.
So far Lorna had never had the courage to make any inquiries46 into the why and wherefore of this unsatisfactory state of affairs. If a question rose to her lips the sight of her father's forbidding face effectually curbed47 her curiosity. That some tragedy had been concealed48 from her she was positive. The suspicion, nay49 the absolute certainty, was sufficient to place a division between herself and other girls. She would hear her schoolfellows discussing their homes, relations, and friends, and when she contrasted their gay doings with her own barren holidays she shrank into her shell, and would make no allusion50 to her private affairs.
"Lorna's an absolute oyster51, you can get nothing out of her," was the universal verdict of her form.
But if she said little she thought a great deal. She would listen jealously to the accounts of other people's fun, and a bitter feeling had grown in her heart. Why should her life be so shadowed? She had as much right to happiness as the rest of the school. Why should she seem singled out by a vindictive52 fate and separated from her companions?
In justice to the girls at the Villa Camellia it is[88] only fair to say that any separation was entirely53 of Lorna's own making. Had she been more expansive she would have readily enough found friends. No one knew of the misery54 of her home life, and she was simply judged as what her schoolfellows thought her—a queer-tempered crank who refused to join in the general fun of the place, and in consequence was left out of most things.
Irene, pleasant and hail-fellow-well-met with all comers, had at once noticed this attitude of the others towards Lorna. At the drawing of lots in the sorority she had somehow realized that everybody was extremely thankful to have escaped having her unpopular chum as a buddy55. Chance remarks and slight allusions56, hardly noticed at the time, but remembered later, had confirmed this.
"They're not exactly unkind, but they're down on that girl," she had concluded. "I haven't made up my mind yet whether I altogether like her, but I'm going to be decent to her all the same."
As the very first who had treated her on a real equality of girlhood Irene had been placed on a pedestal in Lorna's empty heart. The separation between the two added to the loneliness of the latter's brief half-term holiday. She had never missed school so much before, or hated her surroundings so entirely. The long week-end dragged itself slowly away. Sunday was wet and they stayed all day in the little sitting-room, Mr. Carson reading as usual, and Lorna trying to amuse herself with Italian maga[89]zines and fidgeting as much as she dared. Towards evening the rain cleared a little and her father went out, refusing, however, to allow her to accompany him. At the end of an hour he returned and flung himself heavily into his chair. He was in a state such as she had never witnessed before, violently excited, with glaring eyes and twitching57 hands.
"Lorna!" he exclaimed in quick panting accents, "I have met my enemy. The man who ruined me! Yes, the man who deliberately58 blackened and ruined me!"
Lorna turned to him half frightened.
"What is it, Father?" she asked. "Have you an enemy? You've never let me know before. Oh, I wish you'd tell me! I'm fifteen now, and surely old enough to hear. It's so horrible to feel there's something you're always keeping from me."
"I suppose you'll find out some time, so I may as well tell you myself," replied Mr. Carson grimly. "I'm a wronged, ruined man, Lorna, suffering for the sin of another who goes scotfree. The world judged me guilty of embezzlement59, but before God I am innocent! I never touched a penny of the money. Do you believe me innocent? Surely my own daughter won't turn against me?"
"No, no, Father! Indeed I believe you innocent. Tell me how it happened. Was it when we left London? I seem to remember the trouble there was then, though you never explained. We had a different name then, hadn't we?"[90]
"You were too young at the time to understand, and it wasn't a subject I wished to revive. Briefly60, a big sum, for which I was responsible, disappeared. The head of the firm believed me guilty, but for the sake of old associations he would not prosecute61; he simply told me to go. I consulted my lawyer, and, if there had been the slightest chance of clearing myself, I'd have fought the matter to a finish, but he told me my case hadn't a leg to stand on, and that, if I were foolish enough to bring it into court, I should certainly be convicted of embezzlement, and sent to penal62 servitude; that it was only the clemency63 of my chief's attitude that saved me, and that he advised me to go abroad while I could. So I left England in a hurry, a disgraced man, disowned by his family and his friends. I changed my name to Carson, and through the kindness of a business acquaintance I was offered a clerkship in an Italian counting-house in Naples, which post I have kept ever since. How I should otherwise have made a living God only knows! It's always my haunting fear that some one in Naples will recognize me and tell them at the office who I am. If that old story leaks out I may once more be ruined."
"But who did it, Father?" asked Lorna. "Had you no clew at all?"
"Not enough to convict, only a strong suspicion, so strong that it is practically a certainty. The man who ruined me was once my friend. Now for five long years, he has been my bitterest enemy. We[91] were both heads of departments in the firm of Burgess and Co. Probably he's a partner now, as I ought to have been. I've never heard news of him since I left London, but to-day I saw him in the Corso. I saw him plainly without any possibility of mistake. What is he doing in Naples? Has he come here to ruin me again?"
"No, no, Dad, surely not! Perhaps he doesn't know you're in Italy. Probably he's only taking a holiday and will go back to England soon," faltered64 Lorna, suddenly realizing that in her father's excited nervous condition she ought to offer consolation65 and soothe66 him instead of adding to his agitation67. "It's very unlikely that he would find you out. Dad, don't grieve so, please!"
She went near to her father's chair and laid a timid hand on his shoulder. An immense gush68 of pity for him flooded her heart. If she had known this story before, she would have understood, and instead of thinking him unkind and misanthropic69 she would have tried to be a better daughter to him. The new-found knowledge illuminated70 all the past and seemed to draw them closely together.
"Mother would have believed in you, Dad," she ventured to say.
"Thank God she never knew! She was spared that at any rate. I raged against Providence71 when I lost her, but afterwards I felt she had been 'taken away from the evil to come.' Her relations thought me guilty. I went to them and explained, but they[92] practically told me I was lying. When I went abroad I never sent them my address. I just wished to vanish. I don't suppose they have ever troubled to inquire for me. Who cares about a ruined and disgraced man?"
"I care, Dad," said Lorna. "I'm only fifteen and I can't understand everything, but if you'll let me the least little bit take Mother's place, may I try? I'm not much, but perhaps I'm better than nobody, and we two seem all alone in the world."
For the first time in five years the barrier between them was down, and Lorna was hugging her father as in the old happy childish days. To know all is to forgive all, and her resentment72 against his treatment of her turned into a deep pitying love. She would never be frightened of him again. A new impulse seemed to have come to her. If she could in any way comfort him for what he had suffered, it would be something to live for.
"He's my father, and I'll stick to him through thick and thin," she said to herself fiercely, as she went to bed that night. "I don't know who this enemy is, but if ever I meet him I'll hate him and all belonging to him. I say it, and I don't go back on my word. I'll be my own witness as nobody else is present. Lorna Carson, you've taken up a feud73 and you've got to carry it through. May all the bad luck in the world come down upon you if you break your oath."
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1
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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deprivation
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| n.匮乏；丧失；夺去，贫困 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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maneuvering
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| v.移动，用策略( maneuver的现在分词 )；操纵 | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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13
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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piazza
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| n.广场；走廊 | |
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17
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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glum
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| adj.闷闷不乐的，阴郁的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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scones
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| n.烤饼，烤小圆面包( scone的名词复数 ) | |
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23
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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24
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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25
blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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26
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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27
sedate
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| adj.沉着的，镇静的，安静的 | |
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28
grumble
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| vi.抱怨；咕哝；n.抱怨，牢骚；咕哝，隆隆声 | |
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29
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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morose
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| adj.脾气坏的，不高兴的 | |
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hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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remissness
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| n.玩忽职守；马虎；怠慢；不小心 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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35
landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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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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aquarium
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| n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸 | |
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taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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romp
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| n.欢闹；v.嬉闹玩笑 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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curbed
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| v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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buddy
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| n.（美口）密友，伙伴 | |
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allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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embezzlement
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| n.盗用，贪污 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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prosecute
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| vt.告发；进行；vi.告发，起诉，作检察官 | |
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62
penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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63
clemency
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| n.温和，仁慈，宽厚 | |
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64
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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68
gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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misanthropic
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| adj.厌恶人类的，憎恶（或蔑视）世人的；愤世嫉俗 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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71
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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| n.长期不和；世仇；v.长期争斗；世代结仇 | |
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