Slowly, cautiously, as though he were stalking a shy bird, and with a reassuring air of being absorbed in anything rather than the pursuit of a runaway, Mr. Cardan walked after Miss Elver down the path. Between the leaves of the bushes he caught glimpses of her bright frock; sometimes, with infinite circumspection, and certain, it was clear, that she was escaping all notice, she peeped at Mr. Cardan round the edge of the bush. Gambolling round her, the dog continued to bark.
Arrived within five or six yards of Miss Elver’s hiding-place, Mr. Cardan halted. ‘Come now,’ he said cajolingly, ‘what’s there so frightening about me? Take a good look at me. I don’t bite. I’m quite tame.’
The leaves of the bushes shook; from behind them came a peal of shrill laughter.
‘I don’t even bark, like your stupid dog,’ Mr. Cardan went on. ‘And if you tied a bunch of flowers on to my tail I should never have the bad manners to get rid of them in the first two minutes like that rude animal.’
There was more laughter.
‘Won’t you come out?’
There was no answer.
‘Oh, very well then,’ said Mr. Cardan, in the tone of one who is deeply offended, ‘I shall go away. Good-bye.’ He retraced his steps for a few yards, then turned off to the right along a little path that led to the garden gate. When he was about three-quarters of the way along it, he heard the sound of hurrying footsteps coming up behind him. He walked on, pretending to notice nothing. There was a touch on his arm.
‘Don’t go. Please.’ Miss Elver’s voice spoke imploringly. He looked round, as though startled. ‘I won’t run away again. But you mustn’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ asked Mr. Cardan.
Miss Elver put up a screening hand and turned away. ‘Like I don’t know what,’ she said.
Mr. Cardan thought he perfectly understood; he pursued the subject no further. ‘Well, if you promise not to run away,’ he said, ‘I won’t go.’
Miss Elver’s face shone with pleasure and gratitude. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Should we go and look at the chickens? They’re round at the back.’
They went round to the back. Mr. Cardan admired the chickens. ‘You like animals?’ he asked.
‘I should think so,’ said Miss Elver rapturously, and nodded.
‘Have you ever had a parrot of your own?’
‘No.’
‘Or a monkey?’
She shook her head.
‘Not even a Shetland pony?’ asked Mr. Cardan on a note of astonishment.
Miss Elver’s voice trembled as she again had to answer ‘No.’ At the thought of all these enchanting things she had never possessed, the tears came into her eyes.
‘In my house,’ said Mr. Cardan, conjuring up fairy palaces as easily as Aladdin, ‘there are hundreds of them. I’ll give you some when you come to stay with me.’
Miss Elver’s face became bright again. ‘Will you?’ she said, ‘Oh, that would be nice, that would be nice. And do you keep bears?’
‘One or two,’ said Mr. Cardan modestly.
‘Well . . .’ Miss Elver looked up at him, her blank bright eyes opened to their fullest extent. She paused, drew a deep breath and let it slowly out again. ‘It must be a nice house,’ she added at last, turning away and nodding slowly at every word, ‘a nice house. That’s all I can say.’
‘You’d like to come and stay?’ asked Mr. Cardan.
‘I should think I would,’ Miss Elver replied decidedly, looking up at him again. Then suddenly she blushed, she put up her hands. ‘No, no, no,’ she protested.
‘Why not?’ asked Mr. Cardan.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ And she began to laugh.
‘Remember the bears,’ said Mr. Cardan.
‘Yes. But . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished. The old woman came to the back door and rang the bell for breakfast. Ungainly as a diving-bird on land, Miss Elver scuttled into the house. Her companion followed more slowly. In the dining-room, less tomb-like in the bright morning light, breakfast was waiting. Mr. Cardan found his hostess already eating with passion, as though her life depended on it.
‘I’m so hungry,’ she explained with her mouth full. ‘Phil’s late,’ she added.
‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said Mr. Cardan, as he sat down and unfolded his napkin.
When he came down at last, it was in the guise of a cleric so obviously unfrocked, so deplorably seedy and broken-down that Mr. Cardan felt almost sorry for him.
‘Nothing like good strong coffee,’ he said cheerfully, as he filled his host’s cup. Mr. Elver looked on, feeling too melancholy and too ill to speak. For a long time he sat motionless in his chair, without moving, lacking the strength to stretch out his hand to his cup.
‘Why don’t you eat, Phil?’ asked his sister, as she decapitated her second egg. ‘You generally eat such a lot.’
Goaded, as though by a taunt, Philip Elver reached for his coffee and swallowed down a gulp. He even took some toast and buttered it; but he could not bring himself to eat.
At half-past ten Mr. Cardan left the house. He told his host that he was going in search of his sculpture; and he comforted Miss Elver, who, seeing him put on his hat and take his walking stick, had begun to whimper, by assuring her that he would be back to luncheon. Following the old woman’s directions, Mr. Cardan soon found himself on the shores of the shallow lake of Massaciuccoli. A mile away, on the further shore, he could see the clustering pink and whitewashed houses of the village in which, he knew, the grocer’s brother lived and kept his treasure. But instead of proceeding directly to the goal of his pilgrimage, Mr. Cardan lighted a cigar and lay down on the grass at the side of the path. It was a bright clear day. Over the mountains floated great clouds, hard-edged against the sky, firm and massive as though carved from marble and seeming more solid than the marble mountains beneath. A breeze stirred the blue water of the lake into innumerable dazzling ripples. It rustled among the leaves of the poplars and the sound was like that of the sea heard from far off. In the midst of the landscape lay Mr. Cardan, pensively smoking his cigar; the smoke of it drifted away along the wind.
Twenty-five thousand pounds, Mr. Cardan was thinking. If one were to invest them in the seven per cent. Hungarian Loan, they would bring in seventeen hundred and fifty a year. And if one lived in Italy that went a long way; one could consider oneself rich on that. A nice house in Siena, or Perugia, or Bologna—Bologna he decided would be the best; there was nothing to compare with Bolognese cooking. A car—one could afford to keep something handsome. Plenty of nice books, nice people to stay with one all the time, jaunts in comfort through Europe. A secure old age; the horrors of decrepitude in poverty for ever averted. The only disadvantage—one’s wife happened to be a harmless idiot. Still, she’d obviously be most devoted; she’d do her best. And one would make her happy, one would even allow her a domesticated bear.
In fact, Mr. Cardan assured himself, it was the poor creature’s only chance of happiness. If she stayed with her brother, he’d find some substitute for the inefficient anopheles sooner or later. If she fell into the hands of an adventurer in need of her money, the chances were that he’d be a great deal more of a scoundrel than Tom Cardan. In fact, Mr. Cardan saw, he could easily make out a case for its being his bounden duty, for the poor girl’s sake, to marry her. That would do very nicely for romantic spirits like Lilian Aldwinkle. For them, he’d be the gallant rescuer, the Perseus, the chivalrous St. George. Less enthusiastic souls might look at the twenty-five thousand and smile. But let them smile. After all, Mr. Cardan asked himself, a grin more or less—what does it matter? No, the real problem, the real difficulty was himself. Could he do it? Wasn’t it, somehow, a bit thick—an idiot? Wasn’t it too—too Russian? Too Stavroginesque?
True, his motive would be different from the Russian’s. He would marry his idiot for comfort and a placid old age—not for the sake of strengthening his moral fibres by hard exercise, not in the voluptuous hope of calling new scruples and finer remorses into existence, or in the religious hope of developing the higher consciousness by leading a low life. But on the other hand, nothing could prevent the life from being, in point of fact, thoroughly low; and he couldn’t guarantee his conscience against the coming of strange qualms. Would seventeen hundred and fifty per annum be a sufficient compensation?
For more than an hour Mr. Cardan lay there, smoking, looking at the bright lake, at the ethereal fantastic mountains and the marbly clouds, listening to the wind
