David Harum Part 51

"Well," said John eagerly. She stood with her eyes downcast for a moment, one hand resting on the rail, and then she looked up.

"We expect to stay in Algiers about two months," she said, "and then we are going to Naples to visit some friends for a few days, about the time you told me you thought you might be there. Perhaps it would be better if we said good-bye to-night; but if after we get home you are to spend your days in Homeville and I mine in New York, we shall not be likely to meet, and, except on this side of the ocean, we may, as you say, never see each other again. So, if you wish, you may come to see me in Naples if you happen to be there when we are. I am sure after to-night that I may trust you, may I not? But," she added, "perhaps you would not care.

I am treating you very frankly; but from your standpoint you would expect or excuse more frankness than if I were a young girl."

"I care very much," he declared, "and it will be a happiness to me to see you on any footing, and you may trust me never to break bounds again." She made a motion as if to depart.

"Don't go just yet," he said pleadingly; "there is now no reason why you should for a while, is there? Let us sit here in this gorgeous night a little longer, and let me smoke a cigar."

At the moment he was undergoing a revulsion of feeling. His state of mind was like that of an improvident debtor who, while knowing that the note must be paid some time, does not quite realize it for a while after an extension. At last the cigar was finished. There had been but little said between them.

"I really must go," she said, and he walked with her across the hanging bridge and down the deck to the gangway door.

"Where shall I address you to let you know when we shall be in Naples?"

she asked as they were about to separate.

"Care of Cook & Son," he said. "You will find the address in Baedeker."

He saw her the next morning long enough for a touch of the hand and a good-bye before the bobbing, tubby little boat with its Arab crew took the Ruggleses on board.

CHAPTER XLVII.

How John Lenox tried to kill time during the following two months, and how time retaliated during the process, it is needless to set forth. It may not, however, be wholly irrelevant to note that his cough had gradually disappeared, and that his appet.i.te had become good enough to carry him through the average table d'hote dinner. On the morning after his arrival at Naples he found a cable dispatch at the office of Cook & Son, as follows: "Sixty cash, forty stock. Stock good. Harum."

"G.o.d bless the dear old boy!" said John fervently. The Pennsylvania property was sold at last; and if "stock good" was true, the dispatch informed him that he was, if not a rich man for modern days, still, as David would have put it, "wuth consid'able." No man, I take it, is very likely to receive such a piece of news without satisfaction; but if our friend's first sensation was one of gratification, the thought which followed had a drop of bitterness in it. "If I could only have had it before!" he said to himself; and indeed many of the disappointments of life, if not the greater part, come because events are unpunctual. They have a way of arriving sometimes too early, or worse, too late.

Another circ.u.mstance detracted from his satisfaction: a note he expected did not appear among the other communications waiting him at the bankers, and his mind was occupied for the while with various conjectures as to the reason, none of which was satisfactory. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Perhaps--a score of things! Well, there was nothing for it but to be as patient as possible and await events. He remembered that she had said she was to visit some friends by the name of Hartleigh, and she had told him the name of their villa, but for the moment he did not remember it. In any case he did not know the Hartleighs, and if she had changed her mind--as was possibly indicated by the omission to send him word--well----! He shrugged his shoulders, mechanically lighted a cigarette, and strolled down and out of the Piazza Martiri and across to the Largo della Vittoria. He had a half-formed idea of walking back through the Villa n.a.z.ionale, spending an hour at the Aquarium, and then to his hotel for luncheon. It occurred to him at the moment that there was a steamer from Genoa on the Monday following, that he was tired of wandering about aimlessly and alone, and that there was really no reason why he should not take the said steamer and go home. Occupied with these reflections, he absently observed, just opposite to him across the way, a pair of large bay horses in front of a handsome landau. A coachman in livery was on the box, and a small footman, very much coated and silk-hatted, was standing about; and, as he looked, two ladies came out of the arched entrance to the court of the building before which the equipage was halted, and the small footman sprang to the carriage door.

One of the ladies was a stranger to him, but the other was Mrs. William Ruggles; and John, seeing that he had been recognized, at once crossed over to the carriage; and presently, having accepted an invitation to breakfast, found himself sitting opposite them on his way to the Villa Violante. The conversation during the drive up to the Vomero need not be detailed. Mrs. Hartleigh arrived at the opinion that our friend was rather a dull person. Mrs. Ruggles, as he had found out, was usually rather taciturn. Neither is it necessary to say very much of the breakfast, nor of the people a.s.sembled.

It appeared that several guests had departed the previous day, and the people at table consisted only of Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles, Mary, Mr. and Mrs. Hartleigh and their two daughters, and John, whose conversation was mostly with his host, and was rather desultory. In fact, there was during the meal a perceptible air of something like disquietude. Mr.

Ruggles in particular said almost nothing, and wore an appearance of what seemed like anxiety. Once he turned to his host: "When ought I to get an answer to that cable, Hartleigh? to-day, do you think?"

"Yes, I should say so without doubt," was the reply, "if it's answered promptly, and in fact there's plenty of time. Remember that we are about six hours earlier than New York by the clock, and it's only about seven in the morning over there."

Coffee was served on the bal.u.s.traded platform of the flight of marble steps leading down to the grounds below.

"Mary," said Mrs. Hartleigh, when cigarettes had been offered, "don't you want to show Mr. Lenox something of La Violante?"

"I shall take you to my favorite place," she said, as they descended the steps together.

The southern front of the grounds of the Villa Violante is bounded and upheld by a wall of tufa fifty feet in height and some four hundred feet long. About midway of its length a semicircular bench of marble, with a rail, is built out over one of the b.u.t.tresses. From this point is visible the whole bay and harbor of Naples, and about one third of the city lies in sight, five hundred feet below. To the left one sees Vesuvius and the Sant' Angelo chain, which the eye follows to Sorrento.

Straight out in front stands Capri, and to the right the curve of the bay, ending at Posilipo. The two, John and his companion, halted near the bench, and leaned upon the parapet of the wall for a while in silence. From the streets below rose no rumble of traffic, no sound of hoof or wheel; but up through three thousand feet of distance came from here and there the voices of street-venders, the clang of a bell, and ever and anon the pathetic supplication of a donkey. Absolute quiet prevailed where they stood, save for these upcoming sounds. The April sun, deliciously warm, drew a smoky odor from the hedge of box with which the parapet walk was bordered, in and out of which darted small green lizards with the quickness of little fishes.

John drew a long breath.

"I don't believe there is another such view in the world," he said. "I do not wonder that this is your favorite spot."

"Yes," she said, "you should see the grounds--the whole place is superb--but this is the glory of it all, and I have brought you straight here because I wanted to see it with you, and this may be the only opportunity."

"What do you mean?" he asked apprehensively.

"You heard Mr. Ruggles's question about the cable dispatch?" she said.

"Yes."

"Well," she said, "our plans have been very much upset by some things he has heard from home. We came on from Algiers ten days earlier than we had intended, and if the reply to Mr. Ruggles's cable is unfavorable, we are likely to depart for Genoa to-morrow and take the steamer for home on Monday. The reason why I did not send a note to your bankers," she added, "was that we came on the same boat that I intended to write by; and Mr. Hartleigh's man has inquired for you every day at Cook's so that Mr. Hartleigh might know of your coming and call upon you."

John gave a little exclamation of dismay. Her face was very still as she gazed out over the sea with half-closed eyes. He caught the scent of the violets in the bosom of her white dress.

"Let us sit down," she said at last. "I have something I wish to say to you."

He made no rejoinder as they seated themselves, and during the moment or two of silence in which she seemed to be meditating how to begin, he sat bending forward, holding his stick with both hands between his knees, absently prodding holes in the gravel.

"I think," she began, "that if I did not believe the chances were for our going to-morrow, I would not say it to-day." John bit his lip and gave the gravel a more vigorous punch. "But I have felt that I must say it to you some time before we saw the last of each other, whenever that time should be."

"Is it anything about what happened on board s.h.i.+p?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes," she replied, "it concerns all that took place on board s.h.i.+p, or nearly all, and I have had many misgivings about it. I am afraid that I did wrong, and I am afraid, too, that in your secret heart you would admit it."

"No, never!" he exclaimed. "If there was any wrong done, it was wholly of my own doing. I was alone to blame. I ought to have remembered that you were married, and perhaps--yes, I did remember it in a way, but I could not realize it. I had never seen or heard of your husband, or heard of your marriage. He was a perfectly unreal person to me, and you--you seemed only the Mary Blake that I had known, and as I had known you. I said what I did that night upon an impulse which was as unpremeditated as it was sudden. I don't see how you were wrong. You couldn't have foreseen what took place--and----"

"Have you not been sorry for what took place?" she asked, with her eyes on the ground. "Have you not thought the less of me since?"

He turned and looked at her. There was a little smile upon her lips and on her downcast eyes.

"No, by Heaven!" he exclaimed desperately, "I have not, and I am not sorry. Whether I ought to have said what I did or not, it was true, and I wanted you to know----"

He broke off as she turned to him with a smile and a blush. The smile was almost a laugh.

"But, John," she said, "I am not Mrs. Edward Ruggles. I am Mary Blake."

The parapet was fifty feet above the terrace. The hedge of box was an impervious screen.

Well, and then, after a little of that sort of thing, they both began hurriedly to admire the view again, for some one was coming. But it was only one of the gardeners, who did not understand English; and confidence being once more restored, they fell to discussing--everything.

"Do you think you could live in Homeville, dear?" asked John after a while.

"I suppose I shall have to, shall I not?" said Mary. "And are you, too, really happy, John?"