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Three Weeks

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<h2 id="id00916" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXII</h2> They did not go north, as Sir Charles intended, an unaccountable reluctance on Paul's part to return through Switzerland changed their plans. Instead, by a fortunate chance, the large schooner yacht of a rather eccentric old friend came in to Venice, and the father eagerly accepted the invitation to go on board and bring his invalid. The owner, one Captain Grigsby, had been quite alone, so the three men would be in peace, and nothing could be better for Paul than this warm sea air. "Typhoid fever?" Mark Grigsby had asked. "No," Sir Charles had replied, "considerable mental tribulation over a woman." "D—d kittle cattle!" was Captain Grigsby's polite comment. "A fine boy, too, and promising—" "Appears to have been almost worth while," Sir Charles added, "from what I gather—and, confound it, Grig, we'd have done the same in our day." But Captain Grigsby only repeated: "D—d kittle cattle!" And so they weighed anchor, and sailed along the Italian shores of the sun-lit Adriatic. These were better days for Paul. Each hour brought him back some health and vigour. Youth and strength were asserting their own again, and the absence of familiar objects, and the glory of the air and the blue sea helped sometimes to deaden the poignant agony of his aching heart. But there it was underneath, an ever-present, dull anguish. And only when he became sufficiently strong to help the sailors with the ropes, and exert physical force, did he get one moment's respite. The two elder men watched him with kind, furtive eyes, but they never questioned him, or made the slightest allusion to his travels. And the first day they heard him laugh Sir Charles looked down at the white foam because a mist was in his eyes. They had coasted round Italy and Sicily, and not among the Ionian Isles, as had been Captain Grigsby's intention. "I fancy the lady came from some of those Balkan countries," Sir Charles had said. "Don't let us get in touch with even the outside of one of them." And Mark Grigsby had grunted an assent. "The boy is a fine fellow," he said one morning as they looked at Paul hauling ropes. "He'll probably never get quite over this, but he is fighting like a man, Charles—tell me as much as you feel inclined to of the story." So Sir Charles began in his short, broken sentences: "Parson's girl to start with—sympathy over a broken collar-bone. The wife behaved unwisely about it, so the boy thought he was in love. We sent him to travel to get rid of that idea. It appears he met this lady in Lucerne—seems to have been an exceptional person—a Russian, Tompson says—a Queen or Princess incog., the fellow tells me—but I can't spot her as yet. Hubert will know who she was, though—but it does not matter—the woman herself was the thing. Gather she was quite a remarkable woman—ten years older than Paul." "Always the case," growled Captain Grigsby. Sir Charles puffed at his pipe—and then: "They were only together three weeks," he said. "And during that time she managed to cram more knowledge of everything into the boy's head than you and I have got in a lifetime. Give you my word, Grig, when he was off his chump in the fever, he raved like a poet, and an orator, and he was only an ordinary sportsman when he left home in the spring! Cleopatra, he called her one day, and I fancy that was the keynote—she must have been one of those exceptional women we read of in the sixth form." "And fortunately never met!" said Captain Grigsby. "I don't know," mused Sir Charles. "It might have been good to live as wildly even at the price. We've both been about the world, Grig, since the days we fastened on our cuirasses together for the first time, and each thought himself the devil of a fine fellow—but I rather doubt if we now know as much of what is really worth having as my boy there—just twenty-three years old." "Nonsense!" snapped Captain Grigsby—but there was a tone of regret in his protest. "Lucky to have got off without a knife or a bullet through him—dangerous nations to grapple with," he said. "Yes—I gather some pretty heavy menace was over their heads, and that is what made the lady decamp, so we've much to be thankful for," agreed Sir Charles. "Had she any children?" the other asked. "Tompson says no. Rotten fellow the husband, it appears, and no heir to the throne, or principality, or whatever it is—so when I have had a talk with Hubert—Henrietta's brother, you know—the one in the Diplomatic Service, it will be easy to locate her—gathered Paul doesn't know himself." "Pretty romance, anyway. And what will you do with the boy now, Charles?" Paul's father puffed quite a long while at his meerschaum before he answered, and then his voice was gruffer than ever with tenderness suppressed. "Give him his head, Grig," he said. "He's true blue underneath, and he'll come up to the collar in time, old friend—only I shall have to keep his mother's love from harrying him. Best and greatest lady in the world, my wife, but she's rather apt to jog the bridle now and then." At this moment Paul joined them. His paleness showed less than usual beneath the sunburn, and his eyes seemed almost bright. A wave of thankful gladness filled his father's heart. "Thank God," he said, below his breath. "Thank God." The weather had been perfection, hardly a drop of rain, and just the gentlest breezes to waft them slowly along. A suitable soothing idle life for one who had but lately been near death. And each day Paul's strength returned, until his father began to hope they might still be home for his birthday the last day of July. They had crept up the coast of Italy now, when an absolute calm fell upon them, and just opposite the temple of Paestum they decided to anchor for the night. For the last evenings, as the moon had grown larger, Paul had been strangely restless. It seemed as if he preferred to tire himself out with unnecessary rope-pulling, and then retire to his berth the moment that dinner was over, rather than go on deck. His face, too, which had been controlled as a mask until now, wore a look of haunting anguish which was grievous to see. He ate his dinner—or rather, pretended to play with the food—in absolute silence. Uneasiness overcame Sir Charles, and he glanced at his old friend. But Paul, after lighting a cigar, and letting it out once or twice, rose, and murmuring something about the heat, went up on deck. It was the night of the full moon—eight weeks exactly since the joy of life had finished for him. He felt he could not bear even the two kindly gentlemen whose unspoken sympathy he knew was his. He could not bear anything human. To-night, at least, he must be alone with his grief. All nature was in a mood divine. They were close enough inshore to see the splendid temples clearly with the naked eye. The sky and the sea were of the colour only the Mediterranean knows. It was hot and still, and the moon in her pure magnificence cast her never-ending spell. Not a sound of the faintest ripple met his ear. The sailors supped below. All was silence. On one side the vast sea, on the other the shore, with this masterpiece of man's genius, the temple of the great god Poseidon, in this vanished settlement of the old Greeks. How marvellously beautiful it all was, and how his Queen would have loved it! How she would have told him its history and woven round it the spirit of the past, until his living eyes could almost have seen the priests and the people, and heard their worshipping prayers! His darling had spoken of it once, he remembered, and had told him it was a place they must see. He recollected her very words: "We must look at it first in the winter from the shore, my Paul, and see those splendid proportions outlined against the sky—so noble and so perfectly balanced—and then we must see it from the sea, with the background of the olive hills. It is ever silent and deserted and calm, and death lurks there after the month of March. A cruel malaria, which we must not face, dear love. But if we could, we ought to see it from a yacht in safety in the summer time, and then the spell would fall upon us, and we would know it was true that rose-trees really grew there which gave the world their blossoms twice a year. That was the legend of the Greeks." Well, he was seeing it from a yacht, but ah, God! seeing it alone—alone. And where was she? So intense and vivid was his remembrance of her that he could feel her presence near. If he turned his head, he felt he should see her standing beside him, her strange eyes full of love. The very perfume of her seemed to fill the air—her golden voice to whisper in his ear—her soul to mingle with his soul. Ah yes, in spirit, as she had said, they could never be parted more. A suppressed moan of anguish escaped his lips, and his father, who had come silently behind him, put his hand on his arm. "My poor boy," he said, his gruff voice hoarse in his throat, "if only to God I could do something for you!" "Oh, father!" said Paul. And the two men looked in each other's eyes, and knew each other as never before. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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