"Do you think there are any other sons have such a mother?" she said.
"Why don't you ask yourself that question?"
The little old lady looked up with a twinkle in her eyes. "I thought perhaps you'd understand it better that way," she answered.
"Besides--it's easy to be a mother. You have only to have a son. It's not so easy to be a son, because you need more than a mother for that."
Jill looked at her tenderly, then bent and kissed her cheek.
"I think John's very like you," she whispered. She could not keep it back. And that was as much as the little old white-haired lady wanted; that was all she had been playing for. With her head high in triumph, she walked back with Jill to join the others.
Soon afterwards Jill declared she must go; that her friends would be waiting for her.
"But when----" the old people began in a breath, then stopped together.
"You say, my dear," said the old gentleman--"I can wait."
Oh, no--she would not hear of it. He began first. Let him say what he wanted to. He shook his head and bowed. John caught Jill's eye and they held their laughter.
"Then when----" they both began again together and this time, they finished out their sentence--"are we going to see you again?"
We share the same thoughts when we know each other well. But life runs along in its separate channels with most people. They may be many years beneath the shadow of one roof, yet for all they know of each other, they might live at opposite ends of the earth, so little is it given to human beings to understand humanity; so little do people study it except in the desires which are in themselves.
In these two old people, it was quite charming to see one standing out of the way to let the other pass on, as if they both were going in vastly different directions, and then, to find that one was but speaking the other's thoughts.
They all laughed, but their laughter died away again when Jill announced that in two days she was leaving Venice for Milan, passing through the Italian lakes on her way back to England.
"You only stay three days!" exclaimed the little old lady, and she looked quickly at John. But John had known of it. There was no surprise in his face. He breathed deeply; looked away out of the window over the old Italian garden--that was all.
They made her promise to come the next day to lunch--to tea again if she would--to stay with them the whole day. John looked to her appealingly for her answer.
"But I can't leave my friends all that time," she said reluctantly.
"I'll come to lunch--I'll try and stay to tea. I can't do more than that."
Then John took her down to her gondola. In the archway, before they stepped on to the _fondamenta_, he took her arm and held her near him.
"You're sure it's too late?" he said hoarsely, below his breath.
"You're sure that there is nothing I could do to make things different--to make them possible?"
She clung to him quietly. In the darkness, her eyes searched impenetrable depths; stared to the furthest horizons of chance, yet saw nothing beyond the track of many another woman's life before her.
"It is too late," she whispered--"Oh, I should never have come! I should never have seen these two wonderful old people of yours. Now I know all that the City of Beautiful Nonsense meant. You very nearly made them real to me that day in Fetter Lane; but now I know them. Oh, I don't wonder that you love them! I don't wonder that you would come every year--year after year to see them! If only my mother and father were like that, how different all of it would be then."
"You haven't the courage to break away from it all?" asked John quietly--"to make these old people of mine--to make them yours. If I couldn't support you over in London, you could live with them here, and I would do as much of my work here as possible."
Jill looked steadily into his eyes.
"Do you think I should be happy?" she asked. "Would you be happy if, to marry me, you had to give up them? Wouldn't their faces haunt you in the most perfect moments of your happiness? Wouldn't his eyes follow you in everything you did? Wouldn't those poor withered hands of hers be always pulling feebly at your heart? And if you thought that they were poor----?"
"They are," said John. He thought of the Treasure Shop; of that pathetic figure, hiding in the shadows of it, who would not sell his goods, because he loved them too well.
"Could you leave them to poverty then?" said Jill.
"So it's too late?" he repeated.
"I've given my word," she replied.
He lifted her hand generously to his lips and kissed it.
"Then you mustn't come to-morrow," he said quietly.
"Not see them again?" she echoed.
"No. You must send some excuse. Write to my mother. Say your friends have decided to stop at Bologna on their way to Milan and that they are going to start at once. She loves you too well--she counts on you too much already. It'll be a long time before I can drive out of her head the thought that you are going to be my wife. And I don't want to do it by telling her that you are going to be married to someone else. She wouldn't understand that. She belongs to an old-fashioned school, where ringlets and bonnets and prim little black shoes over dainty white stockings, make a wonderful difference to one's behaviour. She probably couldn't understand your wanting to see them under such a circumstance as that. She could scarcely believe that you cared for me and, if she did, would think that we shouldn't see each other, as perhaps, after this, we shan't. No, I shall have quite enough difficulty in driving you out of her mind as it is. You mustn't come and see them to-morrow.
She'll nearly break her heart when she hears it, but nearly is not quite."
"Shan't I ever see them again then?" she asked below her breath.
He shook his head.
"This is the last time you'll see any of us."
She put her hands on his shoulders. For a moment, she clung to him, her face closely looking into his as though she must store him in her memory for the rest of time. He shut his eyes. He dared not kiss her. When the lips touch, they break a barrier through which floods a torrent there is no quenching. John shut his eyes and held back his head, lest the touching of her hair or the warmth of her breath should weaken his resolve.
"How am I to do it?" she whispered. "I feel as though I must stay now; as though I never wanted to go back home again."
He said nothing. The very tone of his voice would have been persuasion to her then. Slowly, she unclasped her fingers; as slowly she drew herself away. That was the last moment when he could have won her.
Then she was his as the blood was rushing through him, as her pulses were throbbing wildly in time to his. But in love--it may be different in war--these things may not be taken so. Some vague, some mystical notion of the good does not permit of it.
"You must be going," said John gently. "We can't stay here."
She let him lead her to the door. As it came open to his hand and the greater light flooded in, he knew that it was all finished.
She stepped down into her gondola that was waiting, and the gondolier pushed off from the steps. Until it swayed out of sight, John stood motionless on the fondamenta, watching its passing. Sometimes Jill looked back over her shoulder and waved a little handkerchief. John bent his head acknowledging it.
But neither of them saw the two white heads that, close together in a window up above, were whispering to each other in happy ignorance of all the misery which that little white handkerchief conveyed.
"You see how long they took to get down the steps," whispered the old lady.
"Oh, I don't know that you can judge anything by that," replied her husband. "Those steps are very dark to anyone not accustomed to them."
She took his arm. She looked up into his face. Her brown eyes twinkled.
"They are," she whispered back--"very dark--nearly as dark as that little avenue up to the house where I lived when you first met me."
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE SIXTEENTH OF FEBRUARY--LONDON