Changed Man And Other Tales — Story 3 Alicia's Diary, Chapters 7-10

CHAPTER VII. --A SURPRISE AWAITS HER

Feb.

5. --Writing has been absolutely impossible for a long while; but I now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line.

Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid.

But a fearful complication of affairs attends it!

O what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive!

Charles has written reproachfully to me from Venice, where he is.

He says how can he fulfil in the real what he has enacted in the counterfeit, while he still loves me?

Yet how, on the other hand, can he leave it unfulfilled?

All this time I have not told her, and up to this minute she believes that he has indeed taken her for better, for worse, till death them do part.

It is a harassing position for me, and all three.

In the awful approach of death, one's judgment loses its balance, and we do anything to meet the exigencies of the moment, with a single eye to the one who excites our sympathy, and from whom we seem on the brink of being separated for ever.

Had he really married her at that time all would be settled now.

But he took too much thought; she might have died, and then he had his reason.

If indeed it had turned out so, I should now be perhaps a sad woman; but not a tempest-tossed one .

.

.

The possibility of his claiming me after all is what lies at the root of my agitation.

Everything hangs by a thread.

Suppose I tell her the marriage was a mockery; suppose she is indignant with me and with him for the deception--and then?

Otherwise, suppose she is not indignant but forgives all; he is bound to marry her;

and honour constrains me to urge him thereto, in spite of what he protests, and to smooth the way to this issue by my method of informing her.

I have meant to tell her the last month--ever since she has been strong enough to bear such tidings; but I have been without the power--the moral force.

Surely I must write, and get him to come and assist me.

March 14. --She continually wonders why he does not come, the five months of his enforced absence having expired; and still more she wonders why he does not write oftener.

His last letter was cold, she says, and she fears he regrets his marriage, which he may only have celebrated with her for pity's sake, thinking she was sure to die.

It makes one's heart bleed to hear her hovering thus so near the truth, and yet never discerning its actual shape.

A minor trouble besets me, too, in the person of the young Scripture reader, whose conscience pricks him for the part he played.

Surely I am punished, if ever woman were, for a too ingenious perversion of her better judgment!

April 2. --She is practically well.

The faint pink revives in her cheek, though it is not quite so full as heretofore.

But she still wonders what she can have done to offend 'her dear husband,' and I have been obliged to tell the smallest part of the truth--an unimportant fragment of the whole, in fact, I said that I feared for the moment he might regret the precipitancy of the act, which her illness caused, his affairs not having been quite sufficiently advanced for marriage just then, though he will doubtless come to her as soon as he has a home ready.

Meanwhile I have written to him, peremptorily, to come and relieve me in this awful dilemma.

He will find no note of love in that.

April 10. --To my alarm the letter I lately addressed to him at Venice, where he is staying, as well as the last one she sent him, have received no reply.

She thinks he is ill.

I do not quite think that, but I wish we could hear from him.

Perhaps the peremptoriness of my words had offended him; it grieves me to think it possible.

I offend him!

But too much of this.

I must tell her the truth, or she may in her ignorance commit herself to some course or other that may be ruinously compromising.

She said plaintively just now that if he could see her, and know how occupied with him and him alone is her every waking hour, she is sure he would forgive her the wicked presumption of becoming his wife.

Very sweet all that, and touching.

I could not conceal my tears.

April 15. --The house is in confusion; my father is angry and distressed, and I am distracted.

Caroline has disappeared--gone away secretly.

I

cannot help thinking that I know where she is gone to.

How guilty I seem, and how innocent she!

O that I had told her before now!

1 o'clock.

--No trace of her as yet.

We find also that the little waiting- maid we have here in training has disappeared with Caroline, and there is not much doubt that Caroline, fearing to travel alone, has induced this girl to go with her as companion.

I am almost sure she has started in desperation to find him, and that Venice is her goal.

Why should she run away, if not to join her husband, as she thinks him?

Now that I consider, there have been indications of this wish in her for days, as in birds of passage there lurk signs of their incipient intention; and yet I did not think she would have taken such an extreme step, unaided, and without consulting me.

I can only jot down the bare facts--I have no time for reflections.

But fancy Caroline travelling across the continent of Europe with a chit of a girl, who will be more of a charge than an assistance!

They will be a mark for every marauder who encounters them.

Evening: 8 o'clock.

--Yes, it is as I surmised.

She has gone to join him.

A note posted by her in Budmouth Regis at daybreak has reached me this afternoon--thanks to the fortunate chance of one of the servants calling for letters in town to-day, or I should not have got it until to-morrow.

She merely asserts her determination of going to him, and has started privately, that nothing may hinder her; stating nothing about her route.

That such a gentle thing should suddenly become so calmly resolute quite surprises me.

Alas, he may have left Venice--she may not find him for weeks--may not at all.

My father, on learning the facts, bade me at once have everything ready by nine this evening, in time to drive to the train that meets the night steam-boat.

This I have done, and there being an hour to spare before we start, I relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up my pen.

He says overtake her we must, and calls Charles the hardest of names.

He believes, of course, that she is merely an infatuated girl rushing off to meet her lover; and how can the wretched I tell him that she is more, and in a sense better than that--yet not sufficiently more and better to make this flight to Charles anything but a still greater danger to her than a mere lover's impulse.

We shall go by way of Paris, and we think we may overtake her there.

I hear my father walking restlessly up and down the hall, and can write no more.

CHAPTER VIII. --SHE TRAVELS IN PURSUIT

April 16. Evening, Paris, Hotel ---.

--There is no overtaking her at this place; but she has been here, as I thought, no other hotel in Paris being known to her.

We go on to-morrow morning.

April 18. Venice.

--A morning of adventures and emotions which leave me sick and weary, and yet unable to sleep, though I have lain down on the sofa of my room for more than an hour in the attempt.

I therefore make up my diary to date in a hurried fashion, for the sake of the riddance it affords to ideas which otherwise remain suspended hotly in the brain.

We arrived here this morning in broad sunlight, which lit up the sea-girt buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork floating raft-like on the smooth, blue deep.

But I only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station.

When we got to the front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of the gondoliers so bewildered my father that he was understood to require two gondolas instead of one with two oars, and so I found him in one and myself in another.

We got this righted after a while, and were rowed at once to the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni where M. de la Feste had been staying when we last heard from him, the way being down the Grand Canal for some distance, under the Rialto, and then by narrow canals which eventually brought us under the Bridge of Sighs--harmonious to our moods!

--and out again into open water.

The scene was purity itself as to colour, but it was cruel that I should behold it for the first time under such circumstances.

As soon as I entered the hotel, which is an old-fashioned place, like most places here, where people are taken en pension as well as the ordinary way, I rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the hall, and in a moment I saw Charles's name upon it among the rest.

But she was our chief thought.

I turned to the hall porter, and--knowing that she would have travelled as 'Madame de la Feste'--I asked for her under that name, without my father hearing.

(He, poor soul, was making confused inquiries outside the door about 'an English lady,' as if there were not a score of English ladies at hand.

) 'She has just come,' said the porter.

'Madame came by the very early train this morning, when Monsieur was asleep, and she requested us not to disturb him.

She is now in her room.'

Whether Caroline had seen us from the window, or overheard me, I do not know, but at that moment I heard footsteps on the bare marble stairs, and she appeared in person descending.

'Caroline!'

I exclaimed, 'why have you done this?'

and rushed up to her.

She did not answer; but looked down to hide her emotion, which she conquered after the lapse of a few seconds, putting on a practical tone that belied her.

'I am just going to my husband,' she said.

'I have not yet seen him.

I

have not been here long.'

She condescended to give no further reason for her movements, and made as if to move on.

I implored her to come into a private room where I could speak to her in confidence, but she objected.

However, the dining-room, close at hand, was quite empty at this hour, and I got her inside and closed the door.

I do not know how I began my explanation, or how I ended it, but I told her briefly and brokenly enough that the marriage was not real.

'Not real?'

she said vacantly.

'It is not,' said I. 'You will find that it is all as I say.'

She could not believe my meaning even then.

'Not his wife?'

she cried.

'It is impossible.

What am I, then?'

I added more details, and reiterated the reason for my conduct as well as I could; but Heaven knows how very difficult I found it to feel a jot more justification for it in my own mind than she did in hers.

The revulsion of feeling, as soon as she really comprehended all, was most distressing.

After her grief had in some measure spent itself she turned against both him and me.

'Why should have I been deceived like this?'

she demanded, with a bitter haughtiness of which I had not deemed such a tractable creature capable.

'Do you suppose that anything could justify such an imposition?

What, O what a snare you have spread for me!'

I murmured, 'Your life seemed to require it,' but she did not hear me.

She sank down in a chair, covered her face, and then my father came in.

'O, here you are!'

he said.

'I could not find you.

And Caroline!'

'And were you, papa, a party to this strange deed of kindness?'

'To what?'

said he.

Then out it all came, and for the first time he was made acquainted with the fact that the scheme for soothing her illness, which I had sounded him upon, had been really carried out.

In a moment he sided with Caroline.

My repeated assurance that my motive was good availed less than nothing.

In a minute or two Caroline arose and went abruptly out of the room, and my father followed her, leaving me alone to my reflections.

I was so bent upon finding Charles immediately that I did not notice whither they went.

The servants told me that M. de la Feste was just outside smoking, and one of them went to look for him, I following; but before we had gone many steps he came out of the hotel behind me.

I

expected him to be amazed; but he showed no surprise at seeing me, though he showed another kind of feeling to an extent which dismayed me.

I may have revealed something similar; but I struggled hard against all emotion, and as soon as I could I told him she had come.

He simply said 'Yes' in a low voice.

'You know it, Charles?'

said I. 'I have just learnt it,' he said.

'O, Charles,' I went on, 'having delayed completing your marriage with her till now, I fear--it has become a serious position for us.

Why did you not reply to our letters?'

'I was purposing to reply in person: I did not know how to address her on the point--how to address you.

But what has become of her?'

'She has gone off with my father,' said I; 'indignant with you, and scorning me.'

He was silent: and I suggested that we should follow them, pointing out the direction which I fancied their gondola had taken.

As the one we got into was doubly manned we soon came in view of their two figures ahead of us, while they were not likely to observe us, our boat having the 'felze' on, while theirs was uncovered.

They shot into a narrow canal just beyond the Giardino Reale, and by the time we were floating up between its slimy walls we saw them getting out of their gondola at the steps which lead up near the end of the Via 22 Marzo.

When we reached the same spot they were walking up and down the Via in consultation.

Getting out he stood on the lower steps watching them.

I watched him.

He seemed to fall into a reverie.

'Will you not go and speak to her?'

said I at length.

He assented, and went forward.

Still he did not hasten to join them, but, screened by a projecting window, observed their musing converse.

At last he looked back at me; whereupon I pointed forward, and he in obedience stepped out, and met them face to face.

Caroline flushed hot, bowed haughtily to him, turned away, and taking my father's arm violently, led him off before he had had time to use his own judgment.

They disappeared into a narrow calle, or alley, leading to the back of the buildings on the Grand Canal.

M.

de la Feste came slowly back; as he stepped in beside me I realized my position so vividly that my heart might almost have been heard to beat.

The third condition had arisen--the least expected by either of us.

She had refused him; he was free to claim me.

We returned in the boat together.

He seemed quite absorbed till we had turned the angle into the Grand Canal, when he broke the silence.

'She spoke very bitterly to you in the salle-a-manger,' he said.

'I do not think she was quite warranted in speaking so to you, who had nursed her so tenderly.'

'O, but I think she was,' I answered.

'It was there I told her what had been done; she did not know till then.'

'She was very dignified--very striking,' he murmured.

'You were more.'

'But how do you know what passed between us,' said I. He then told me that he had seen and heard all.

The dining-room was divided by folding- doors from an inner portion, and he had been sitting in the latter part when we entered the outer, so that our words were distinctly audible.

'But, dear Alicia,' he went on, 'I was more impressed by the affection of your apology to her than by anything else.

And do you know that now the conditions have arisen which give me liberty to consider you my affianced?'

I had been expecting this, but yet was not prepared.

I

stammered out that we would not discuss it then.

'Why not?'

said he.

'Do you know that we may marry here and now?

She has cast off both you and me.'

'It cannot be,' said I, firmly.

'She has not been fairly asked to be your wife in fact--to repeat the service lawfully; and until that has been done it would be grievous sin in me to accept you.'

I had not noticed where the gondoliers were rowing us.

I suppose he had given them some direction unheard by me, for as I resigned myself in despairing indolence to the motion of the gondola, I perceived that it was taking us up the Canal, and, turning into a side opening near the Palazzo Grimani, drew up at some steps near the end of a large church.

'Where are we?'

said I. 'It is the Church of the Frari,' he replied.

'We might be married there.

At any rate, let us go inside, and grow calm, and decide what to do.'

When we had entered I found that whether a place to marry in or not, it was one to depress.

The word which Venice speaks most constantly--decay--was in a sense accentuated here.

The whole large fabric itself seemed sinking into an earth which was not solid enough to bear it.

Cobwebbed cracks zigzagged the walls, and similar webs clouded the window-panes.

A sickly-sweet smell pervaded the aisles.

After walking about with him a little while in embarrassing silences, divided only by his cursory explanations of the monuments and other objects, and almost fearing he might produce a marriage licence, I went to a door in the south transept which opened into the sacristy.

I glanced through it, towards the small altar at the upper end.

The place was empty save of one figure; and she was kneeling here in front of the beautiful altarpiece by Bellini.

Beautiful though it was she seemed not to see it.

She was weeping and praying as though her heart was broken.

She was my sister Caroline.

I beckoned to Charles, and he came to my side, and looked through the door with me.

'Speak to her,' said I. 'She will forgive you.'

I gently pushed him through the doorway, and went back into the transept, down the nave, and onward to the west door.

There I saw my father, to whom I spoke.

He answered severely that, having first obtained comfortable quarters in a pension on the Grand Canal, he had gone back to the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni to find me; but that I was not there.

He was now waiting for Caroline, to accompany her back to the pension, at which she had requested to be left to herself as much as possible till she could regain some composure.

I told him that it was useless to dwell on what was past, that I no doubt had erred, that the remedy lay in the future and their marriage.

In this he quite agreed with me, and on my informing him that M. de la Feste was at that moment with Caroline in the sacristy, he assented to my proposal that we should leave them to themselves, and return together to await them at the pension, where he had also engaged a room for me.

This we did, and going up to the chamber he had chosen for me, which overlooked the Canal, I leant from the window to watch for the gondola that should contain Charles and my sister.

They were not long in coming.

I recognized them by the colour of her sunshade as soon as they turned the bend on my right hand.

They were side by side of necessity, but there was no conversation between them, and I thought that she looked flushed and he pale.

When they were rowed in to the steps of our house he handed her up.

I fancied she might have refused his assistance, but she did not.

Soon I heard her pass my door, and wishing to know the result of their interview I went downstairs, seeing that the gondola had not put off with him.

He was turning from the door, but not towards the water, intending apparently to walk home by way of the calle which led into the Via 22 Marzo.

'Has she forgiven you?'

said I. 'I have not asked her,' he said.

'But you are bound to do so,' I told him.

He paused, and then said, 'Alicia, let us understand each other.

Do you mean to tell me, once for all, that if your sister is willing to become my wife you absolutely make way for her, and will not entertain any thought of what I suggested to you any more?'

'I do tell you so,' said I with dry lips.

'You belong to her--how can I do otherwise?'

'Yes; it is so; it is purely a question of honour,' he returned.

'Very well then, honour shall be my word, and not my love.

I will put the question to her frankly; if she says yes, the marriage shall be.

But not here.

It shall be at your own house in England.'

'When?'

said I. 'I will accompany her there,' he replied, 'and it shall be within a week of her return.

I have nothing to gain by delay.

But I will not answer for the consequences.'

'What do you mean?'

said I. He made no reply, went away, and I came back to my room.

CHAPTER IX. --SHE WITNESSES THE END

April 20. Milan, 10. 30 p. m.

--We are thus far on our way homeward.

I,

being decidedly de trop, travel apart from the rest as much as I can.

Having dined at the hotel here, I went out by myself; regardless of the proprieties, for I could not stay in.

I walked at a leisurely pace along the Via Allesandro Manzoni till my eye was caught by the grand Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and I entered under the high glass arcades till I reached the central octagon, where I sat down on one of a group of chairs placed there.

Becoming accustomed to the stream of promenaders, I soon observed, seated on the chairs opposite, Caroline and Charles.

This was the first occasion on which I had seen them en tete-a-tete since my conversation with him.

She soon caught sight of me; averted her eyes;

then, apparently abandoning herself to an impulse, she jumped up from her seat and came across to me.

We had not spoken to each other since the meeting in Venice.

'Alicia,' she said, sitting down by my side, 'Charles asks me to forgive you, and I do forgive you.'

I pressed her hand, with tears in my eyes, and said, 'And do you forgive him?'

'Yes,' said she, shyly.

'And what's the result?'

said I. 'We are to be married directly we reach home.'

This was almost the whole of our conversation; she walked home with me, Charles following a little way behind, though she kept turning her head, as if anxious that he should overtake us.

'Honour and not love' seemed to ring in my ears.

So matters stand.

Caroline is again happy.

April 25. --We have reached home, Charles with us.

Events are now moving in silent speed, almost with velocity, indeed; and I sometimes feel oppressed by the strange and preternatural ease which seems to accompany their flow.

Charles is staying at the neighbouring town; he is only waiting for the marriage licence; when obtained he is to come here, be quietly married to her, and carry her off.

It is rather resignation than content which sits on his face; but he has not spoken a word more to me on the burning subject, or deviated one hair's breadth from the course he laid down.

They may be happy in time to come: I hope so.

But I cannot shake off depression.

May 6. --Eve of the wedding.

Caroline is serenely happy, though not blithe.

But there is nothing to excite anxiety about her.

I wish I could say the same of him.

He comes and goes like a ghost, and yet nobody seems to observe this strangeness in his mien.

I could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have resulted in less disquiet on his part, I believe.

However, I may be wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that Charles and Caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people.

Well, to- morrow settles all.

May 7. --They are married: we have just returned from church.

Charles looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill.

He said, 'No: only a slight headache;' and we started for the church.

There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.

4 p. m.

--They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but there is an unaccountable delay.

Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and has not yet returned.

Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am dreadfully afraid they will miss the train.

I suppose the trifling hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings .

.

.

Sept.

14. --Four months have passed; only four months!

It seems like years.

Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the fact of their marriage?

I am now an aged woman by comparison!

On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did not return.

At six o'clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father.

He had an interview with him in the study.

My father then rang his bell, and sent for me.

I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news.

Charles was no more.

The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something strange at the bottom.

He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body.

It is needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time.

Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.

We all feared for Caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say, her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief in sobbing and tears.

It came out at the inquest that Charles had been accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape painter in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed that he had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him farewell.

On this information the coroner's jury found that his death had been caused by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour that he was drowned while crossing the weir to relieve the old man.