‘I’m so glad you’ve come back,’ Miss Elver cried breathlessly, as she approached, ‘I was really afraid you were going right away.’ She shook his hand earnestly and looked up into his face. ‘You’ve not forgotten about the monkeys and the Shetland ponies, have you?’ she added, rather anxiously.
Mr. Cardan smiled. ‘Of course not,’ he answered; and he added gallantly: ‘How could I forget anything that gives you pleasure?’ He squeezed her hand and, bending down, kissed it.
Miss Elver’s face flushed very red, then, the moment after, became exceedingly pale. Her breath came quickly and unsteadily. She shut her eyes. A shuddering ran through her; she wavered on her feet, she seemed on the point of falling. Mr. Cardan caught her by the arm and held her up. This was going to be worse, he thought, than he had imagined; more Stavroginesque. To faint when he kissed her hand—kissed it almost ironically—that was too much. But probably, he reflected, nothing of the kind had ever happened to her before. How many men had ever so much as spoken to her? It was understandable.
‘My good child—really now.’ He slightly shook her arm. ‘Pull yourself together. If you’re going to faint like this I shall never be able to trust you with a bear. Come, come.’
Still, the understanding of a thing does not alter it. It remains what it was when it was still uncomprehended. Seventeen hundred and fifty per annum—but at this rate it looked as though that would hardly be enough.
Miss Elver opened her eyes and looked at him. Into their blankness had come that look of anxious, unhappy love with which a child looks at his mother when he thinks that she is going to leave him. Mr. Cardan could not have felt more remorseful if he had committed a murder.
What every weakness, every vice?
Tom Cardan, all were thine.
All the same, there were certain things the doing of which one felt to be an outrage. Still, one had to think of those seventeen hundred and fifty pounds; one had to think of old age in solitude and poverty.
Leaving Miss Elver to play by herself in the garden, Mr. Cardan went indoors. He found his host sitting behind closed jalousies in a greenish twilight, his head on his hand.
‘Feeling better?’ asked Mr. Cardan cheerfully; and getting no answer, he went on to tell a long, bright story of how he had searched for the grocer’s brother, only to find, at last, that he was away from home and would be away till to-morrow. ‘So I hope you won’t mind,’ he concluded, ‘if I trespass on your charming hospitality for another night. Your sister has most kindly told me that I might.’
Mr. Elver turned on him a glance of concentrated loathing and averted his eyes. He said nothing.
Mr. Cardan drew up a chair and sat down. ‘There’s a most interesting little book,’ he said, looking at his host with a genial twinkling expression, ‘by a certain Mr. W. H. S. Jones called “Malaria: a factor in the history of Greece and Rome,” or some such title. He shows how the disease may quite suddenly obtain a footing in countries hitherto immune and in the course of a few generations bring a whole culture, a powerful empire to the ground. Conversely he shows how it is got rid of. Drainage, quinine, wire-netting . . .’ The other stirred uneasily in his chair; but Mr. Cardan went on ruthlessly. When the bell rang for luncheon he was talking to Mr. Elver about the only way in which the Yellow Peril might be permanently averted.
‘First,’ he said, laying the forefinger of his right hand against the thumb of his left, ‘first you must introduce malaria into Japan. Japan’s immune, so far; it’s a crying scandal. You must start by remedying that. And secondly,’ he moved on to the index, ‘you must see that the Chinese never have a chance to stamp out the disease in their country. Four hundred million malarial Chinamen may be viewed with equanimity. But four hundred million healthy ones—that’s a very different matter. The spread of malaria among the yellow races—there’s a cause,’ said Mr. Cardan, rising from his chair, ‘a cause to which some good European might profitably devote himself. You, who take so much interest in the subject, Mr. Elver, you might find a much worse vocation. Shall we go into lunch?’ Mr. Elver rose, totteringly. ‘I have a tremendous appetite,’ his guest went on, patting him on his bent back. ‘I hope you have too.’
Mr. Elver at last broke silence. ‘You’re a damned bully,’ he whispered in a passion of misery and futile rage, ‘a damned stinking bully.’
‘Come, come,’ said Mr. Cardan. ‘I protest against “stinking.” ’
CHAPTER IX
Early the next morning Mr. Cardan and his hostess left the house and walked rapidly away through the fields in the direction of the lake. They had told the old woman that they would be back to a late breakfast. Mr. Elver was not yet awake; Mr. Cardan had left instructions that he was not to be called before half-past nine.
The ground was still wet with dew when they set out; the poplar trees threw shadows longer than themselves. The air was cool; it was a pleasure to walk. Mr. Cardan strode along at four miles an hour; and like a diver out of water, like a soaring bird reduced to walk the earth, Miss Elver trotted along at his side, rolling and hopping as she walked, as though she were mounted, not on feet, but on a set of eccentric wheels of different diameters. Her face seemed to shine with happiness; every now and then she looked at Mr. Cardan with shy adoration, and if she happened to catch his eye she would blush, turn away her head and laugh. Mr. Cardan was almost appalled by the extent of his success and the ease with which it had been obtained. He might make a slave of the poor creature, might keep her shut up in a rabbit-hutch, and, provided he showed himself now and again to be worshipped, she would be perfectly happy. The thought made Mr. Cardan feel strangely guilty.
‘When we’re married,’ said Miss Elver suddenly, ‘shall we have some children?’
Mr. Cardan smiled rather grimly. ‘The trouble about children,’ he said, ‘is that the bears might eat them. You can never be quite sure of bears. Remember Elisha’s bears and those bad children.’
Miss Elver’s face became thoughtful. She walked on for a long time in silence.
They came to the lake, lying placid and very bright under the pale early-morning sky. At the sight of it Miss Elver clapped her hands with pleasure; she forgot in an instant all her troubles. The fatal incompatibility between bears and children ceased to preoccupy her. ‘What lovely water!’ she cried, and bending down she picked up a pebble from the path and threw it into the lake.
But Mr. Cardan did not permit her to linger. ‘There’s no time to lose,’ he said, and taking her arm he hurried her on.
‘Where are we going to?’ asked Miss Elver.
He pointed to the village on the further shore of the lake. ‘From there,’ he said, ‘we’ll take some sort of cab or cart.’
The prospect of driving in a cart entirely reconciled Miss Elver to parting at such short notice with the lake. ‘That’ll be lovely,’ she declared, and trotted on so fast that Mr. Cardan had to quicken his pace in order to keep up with her.
While the little carriage was being made ready and the horse put in and harnessed—hastelessly, as these things are always done in Italy, with dignity and at leisure—Mr. Cardan went to visit the grocer’s brother. Now that he had come so far it would be foolish to miss the opportunity of seeing the treasure. The grocer’s brother was himself a grocer, and so like his relative that Mr. Cardan could almost fancy it was Miss Thriplow’s virtuous and simple friend from the hill-top to whom he was now speaking in the plain. When Mr. Cardan explained his business the man bowed, wreathed himself in smiles, laughed and blew acetylene into his face just as his brother had done. He expatiated on the beauty and the antiquity of his treasure, and when Mr. Cardan begged him to make haste and show him the sculpture,
