CHAPTER III.

THE RIFT IN THE LUTE.

The villa was built on a ledge of ground between the road and the sea. There was a stone terrace in front of the windows of _salon_ and dining-room, below which the ground shelved steeply down to the rocks and the blue water. The low irregular-shaped house was screened from the road by a grove of orange and lemon trees, with a peach or a cherry here and there to give variety of colour. In one corner there was a whole cluster of peach-trees, which made a mass of purplish-pinky bloom. The ridges of garden sloping down from the stone terrace were full of white stocks and scarlet anemones. Clusters of red ranunculus made spots of flame in the sun, and the young leaves in the long hedge of Dijon roses wove an interlacing screen of crimson, through which the sun shone as through old ruby glass in a cathedral window. Everywhere there was a feast of perfume and colour and beauty. The little bay, the curving pier, the white-sailed boats, which, seen from the height above, looked no bigger than the gulls skimming across the blue; the quaint old houses of Villefranche on a level with the water, and rising tier above tier to the crest of the hill—pink and blue houses, white and cream-coloured houses, with pea-green shutters and red roofs. Far away to the left, the jutting promontory and the tall white lighthouse; and away southward, the sapphire sea, touched with every changing light and shadow. And this lovely little world at George Ransome’s feet, this paradise in miniature, was all the lovelier because of the great rugged mountain-wall behind it, the bare red and yellow hills baked in the sunlight of ages, the strange old-world villages yonder high up on the stony flanks of the hills, the far-away church towers, from which faint sound of bells came now and again as if from fairyland.

It was a delicious spot this little village of St. Jean, to which the Niçois came on Sundays and holidays, to eat bouillabaisse at the rustic tavern or to picnic in the shade of century-old olives and old carouba-trees, which made dark masses of foliage between the road and the sea. George Ransome loved the place, and could have been happy there if his wife would only have allowed him; but those halcyon days which marked the beginning of their retirement were too soon ended; and clouds lowered again over the horizon—clouds of doubt and discontent. There are women to whom domestic peace, a calm and rational happiness, is an impossibility, and Vivien was one of these women.

From the beginning her suspicious nature had been on the watch for some hidden evil. She had a fixed idea that the Fates had marked her for misery, and she would not open her heart to the sunlight of happiness.

Was her husband unkind to her? No, he was all kindness; but to her his kindness seemed only a gentleman-like form of toleration. He had married her out of pity; and it was pity that made him kind. Other women were worshipped. It was her fate to be tolerated by a man she adored.

She could never forget her own passionate folly, her own unwomanly forwardness. She had thrown herself into his arms—she who should have waited to be wooed, and should have made herself precious by the difficulty with which she was won.

“How can he help holding me cheap?” she asked herself—“I who cost him nothing, not even an hour of doubt? From the hour we first met he must have known that I adored him.”

Once when he was rowing her about the bay in the westering sunlight, while the fishermen were laying down their lines, or taking up their baskets here and there by the rocks, she asked him suddenly,

“What did you think of me, George, the first time you saw me—that night at Signora Vicenti’s party? Come, be candid. You can afford to tell me the truth now. Your fate is sealed; you have nothing to lose or to gain.”

“Do you think I would tell you less or more than the truth under any circumstances, Viva?” he asked gravely.

“O, you are horribly exact, I know!” she answered, with an impatient movement of her slender sloping shoulders, not looking at him, but with her dark dreamy eyes gazing far off across the bay towards the distant point where the twin towers of Monaco Cathedral showed faint in the distance, “but perhaps if the truth sounded very rude you might suppress it—out of pity.”

“I don’t think the truth need sound rude.”

“Well,” still more impatiently, “what impression did I make upon you?”

“You must consider that there were at least fifty young ladies in Signora Vicenti’s _salons_ that evening.”

“And about thirty old women; and I was lost in the crowd.”

“Not quite lost. I remember being attracted by a young lady who sat in a window niche apart—”

“Like ‘Brunswick’s fated chieftain.’ Pray go on.”

“And who seemed a little out of harmony with the rest of the company. Her manner struck me as unpleasantly ironical, but her small pale face interested me, and I even liked the mass of towzled hair brushed up from her low square forehead. I liked her black velvet gown, without any colour or ornament. It set off the thin white shoulders and long slender throat.”

“Did you think I was rich or poor, somebody or nobody?”

“I thought you were a clever girl, soured by some kind of disappointment.”

“And you felt sorry for me. Say you felt sorry for me!” she cried, her eyes coming back from the distant promontory, and fixing him suddenly, bright, keen, imperious in their eager questioning.

“Yes, I confess to feeling very sorry for you.”

“Did I not know as much? From the very first you pitied me. Pity, pity! What an intolerable burden it is! I have bent under it all my life.”

“My dear Viva, what nonsense you talk! Because I had mistaken ideas about you that first night, when we were strangers—”

“You were not mistaken. I was soured. I had been disappointed. My thoughts were bitter as gall. I had no patience with other girls who had so many blessings that I had never known. I saw them making light of their advantages, peevish, ill-tempered, self-indulgent; and I scorned them. Contempt for others was the only comfort of my barren life. And so my vinegar tongue disgusted you, did it not?”

“I was not disgusted—concerned and interested, rather. Your conversation was original. I wanted to know more of you.”

“Did you think me pretty?”

“I was more impressed by your mental gifts than your physical—”

“That is only a polite way of saying you thought me plain.”

“Viva, you know better than that. If I thought of your appearance at all during that first meeting, be assured I thought you interesting—yes, and pretty. Only prettiness is a poor word to express a face that is full of intellect and originality.”

“You thought me pale, faded, haggard, old for my age,” she said decisively. “Don’t deny it. You must have seen what my glass had been telling me for the last year.”

“I thought your face showed traces of suffering.”

This was one of many such conversations, full of keen questioning on her part, with an assumed lightness of manner which thinly veiled the irritability of her mind. She had changed for the worse since they left Nice; she had grown more sensitive, more suspicious, more irritable. She was in a condition of health in which many women are despondent or irritable—in which with some women life seems one long disgust, and all things are irksome, even the things that have been pleasantest and most valued before—even the aspect of a lovely landscape, the phrases of a familiar melody, the perfume of a once favourite flower. He tried to cheer her by talking of their future, the time to come when there would be a new bond between them, a new interest in their lives; but she saw all things in a gloomy atmosphere.

“Who knows?” she said. “I may die, perhaps; or you may love your child better than you have ever loved me, and then I should hate it.”

“Viva, you cannot doubt that my love for our child will strengthen my love for you.”

“Will it?” she asked incredulously. “God knows it needs strengthening.”

This was hard upon a man whose tenderness and indulgence had been boundless, who had done all that chivalry and a sense of duty can do to atone for the lack of love. He had tried his uttermost to conceal the one bitter truth that love was wanting: but those keen eyes of hers had seen the gap between them, that sensitive ear had discovered the rift in the lute.

One afternoon they climbed the hill to the breezy common on which the lighthouse stands, and dawdled about in the sunshine, gathering the pale gray rosemary bloom and the perfumed thyme which grow among those hollows and hillocks in such wild luxuriance. They were sauntering near the carriage-road, talking very little—she feeble and tired, although it was her own fancy to have walked so far—when they saw a carriage driving towards them—a large landau, with the usual bony horses and shabby jingling harness, and the usual sunburnt good-tempered driver.

Two girls in white gowns and Leghorn hats were in the carriage, with an elderly woman in black. Their laps were full of wild flowers, and branches of wild cherry and pear blossom filled the leather hood at the back of the carriage. They were talking and laughing gaily, all animation and high spirits, as they drew near; and at sight of George Ransome one of them waved her hand in greeting, and called to the driver to stop. They were two handsome Irish girls who had made a sensation at the Battle of Flowers six weeks before. They were spoken of by some people as the belles of Nice. Mr. Ransome had pelted them with Parma violets and yellow rosebuds on the Promenade des Anglais, as they drove up and down in a victoria embowered in white stocks and narcissi. He had waltzed with them at the Cercle de la Méditerranée and the Palais Montano; had admired them frankly and openly, not afraid to own even to a jealous wife that he thought them beautiful.

Delia Darcy, the elder and handsomer of the two, leaned over the carriage-door to shake hands with him, while Vivien stood aloof, on a grassy knoll above the road, looking daggers. What right had they to stop their carriage and waylay her husband?

“Who would have thought of finding you in this out-of-the-way spot?” exclaimed Miss Darcy; “we fancied you had left the Riviera. Are you stopping at Monte Carlo?”

“No, I have taken a villa at St. Jean.”

“Is that near here?”

“Very near. You must have skirted the village in driving up here. And has Nice been very gay since we left?”

“No; people have been going away, and we have missed you dreadfully at the opera, and at dances, and at Rumpelmeyer’s. What could have induced you to bury yourself alive in a village?” she asked vivaciously, with that sparkling manner which gives an air of flirtation to the most commonplace talk.

“My wife has been out of health, and it has suited us both to live quietly.”

“Poor Mrs. Ransome—poor you!” exclaimed Miss Darcy, with a sigh. “O, there she is! How do you do, Mrs. Ransome?” gesticulating with a pretty little hand in a long wrinkled tan glove. “Do come and talk to us.”

Mrs. Ransome bowed stiffly, but did not move an inch. She stood picking a branch of rosemary to shreds with nervous restless fingers, scattering the poor pale blue-gray blossoms as if she were sprinkling them upon a corpse. The two girls took no further notice of her, but both bent forward, talking to Ransome, rattling on about this ball and the other ball, and a breakfast, and sundry afternoon teas, and the goings-on—audacious for the most part—of all the smart people at Nice. They had worlds to tell him, having taken it into their heads that he was a humorist, a cynic, who delighted in hearing of the follies of his fellow-man. He stood with his hat off, waiting for the carriage to drive on, inwardly impatient of delay, knowing with what jealous feelings Vivien had always regarded Delia Darcy, dreading a fit of ill-temper when the Irish girls should have vanished by and by below the sandy edge of the common. He listened almost in silence, giving their loquacity no more encouragement than good manners obliged.

“Why don’t you come to the next dance at the Cercle de la Méditerranée?” said Delia coaxingly; “there are so few good dancers left, and your step is just the one that suits me best. There are to be amateur theatricals to begin with—scenes from _Much Ado_; and I am to be Beatrice. Won’t that tempt you?” she asked, with the insolence of an acknowledged beauty, spoiled by the laxer manners of a foreign settlement, lolling back in the carriage, and smiling at him with brilliant Irish gray eyes, under the shadow of her Leghorn hat, with a great cluster of daffodils just above her forehead, the yellow bloom showing vividly against her dark hair.

The other sister was only a paler reflection of this one, and echoed her speeches, laughing when she laughed.

“Surely you will come to see Delia act Beatrice?” she said. “I can’t tell you how well she does it. Sir Randall Spofforth is the Benedict.”

“My dears, we shall have no time to dress for dinner!” expostulated the duenna, feeling that this kind of thing had lasted long enough. “_En avant, cocher._”

“Won’t you come?” pleaded the pertinacious Delia; “it is on the twenty-ninth, remember—next Thursday week.”

The carriage rolled slowly onward.

“I regret that I shall not be there,” said Ransome decisively.

Delia shook her parasol at him in pretended anger.

He rejoined his wife. She stood surrounded by the shreds of rosemary and thyme which she had plucked and scattered while he was talking. She was very pale; and he knew only too well that she was very angry.

“Come, Viva, it is time we turned homeward,” he said.

“Yes, the sun has gone down, has it not?” she exclaimed mockingly, as she looked after the carriage, which sank below the ragged edge of heather and thyme yonder, as if it had dropped over the cliff.

“Why, my love, the sun is above our heads!”

“Is it? _Your_ sun is gone down, anyhow. She is very lovely, is she not?”

The question was asked with sudden eagerness, as if her life depended upon the reply. She was walking quickly in her agitation, going down the hill much faster than she had mounted it.

“Yes, they are both handsome girls, feather-headed, but remarkably handsome,” her husband answered carelessly.

“But Delia is the lovelier. _She_ is your divinity.”

“Yes, she is the lovelier. The other seems a copy by an inferior hand.”

“And she is so fond of you. It was cruel to refuse her request, when she pleaded so hard.”

“How can you be so foolish or so petty, Vivien? Is it impossible for me to talk for five minutes with a handsome girl without unreasonable anger on your part?”

“Do you expect me to be pleased or happy when I see your admiration of another woman—admiration you do not even take the trouble to conceal? Do you suppose I can ever forget last winter—how I have seen you dancing with that girl night after night? Yes, I have had to sit and watch you. I was not popular, I had few partners; and it is bad form to dance more than once with one’s husband. I have seen her in your arms, with her head almost lying on your shoulder, again and again, as if it were her natural place. ‘What a handsome couple!’ I have heard people say; ‘are they engaged?’ Do you think _that_ was pleasant for me?”

“You had but to say one word, and I would have left off dancing for ever.”

“Another sacrifice—like your marriage.”

“Vivien, you would provoke a saint.”

“Yes, it is provoking to be chained to one woman when you are dying for another.”

“How much oftener am I to swear to you that I don’t care a straw for Miss Darcy?”

“Never again,” she answered. “I love you too well to wish you to swear a lie.”

They had come down from the common by this time, and were now upon a pathway nearer home—a narrow footpath on the edge of the cliff opposite Beaulieu; the gently-curving bay below them, and behind and above them orchards and gardens, hill and lighthouse. It was one of their chosen walks. They had paced the narrow path many an afternoon when the twin towers of Monaco showed dark in the shadow of sundown.

“Vivien, I think you are the most difficult creature to live with that ever a man had for his wife,” said Ransome, stung to the quick by her persistent perversity.

“I am difficult to live with, am I?” she cried. “Why don’t you go a step further—why don’t you say at once that you wish I were dead?” she cried, with a wild burst of passion. “Say that you wish me dead.”

“I own that when you torment me, as you are doing to-day, I have sometimes thought of death—yours or mine—as the only escape from mutual misery,” he answered gloomily.

He had been sauntering a few paces in front of her along the narrow path between the olive-garden and the edge of the cliff, she following slowly—both in a desultory way, and talking to each other without seeing each other’s face. The cliff sank sheer below the pathway, with only a narrow margin of rushy grass between the footpath and the brink of the precipice. It was no stupendous depth, no giddy height from which the eye glanced downward, sickening at the horror of the gulf. One looked down at the jewel-bright waves and the many-hued rocks, the fir-trees growing out of the crags, without a thought of danger; and yet a false step upon those sunburnt rushes might mean instant death.

He came to a sudden standstill after that last speech, and stood leaning with both hands upon his stick, angry, full of gloom, feeling that he had said a cruel thing, yet not repenting of his cruelty. He stood there expectant of her angry answer; but there was only silence.

Silence, and then a swift rushing sound, like the flight of a great bird. He looked round, and saw that he was alone!