CAPÍTULO 40.

 

            THE week in Florence had extended itself to ten days, when the expected letters arrived. It was an equal shock to both Margaret and Edmund to be recalled to the realities of their position by the sight of the hand-writing of those to whom they were bound by ties whether of friendship or blood. They had been so long all the world to each other, with their constant and intimate interchange of thoughts and feelings, and none to come between and restrain their mutual revelation of each to the other.

 

            Margaret had by degrees passed out of her intense quietism, and advanced half-way towards the position from which Noel surveyed the world; and she felt that it would be her greatest happiness, next to satisfying his longing with the impossible gift of herself, to stimulate and purify the ambition which was a part of his nature. For Noel was ambitious. He felt that

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he had powers within himself which he could use for immense good, could he but determine upon a direction in which to bend them. His ambition was of a selfish kind, doubtless, but not in the usual and bad sense of the term. It was ‘selfish,’ inasmuch as it had its basis and impulse in his own disposition and temperament; and he declined to expend himself on anything which, being in imperfect harmony with his nature, he felt he would not be able to do so well as something else that accorded with him better. He thus regarded native bias as constituting the only call which a man is entitled to reckon as divine.

 

            Noel’s favourite idea of greatness was to remain in obscurity, and by force of intellect to direct people and events to the end he deemed good. He disliked the idea of personal distinction, and the troublesome recognition of the multitude; but he regretted his failure to embark on any definite career, by which he might operate on mankind unseen. He would have given much to know certainly his special and peculiar bent. But, hitherto, existence with him had been a longing rather than an endeavour. His love of moral harmony made him long to ‘loose some music o’er the world’ that might overpower all prevailing discords whatever. His love of beauty prompted him to achieve some work, whether by chisel or by pen, that would reveal to people a beauty to be obtained only by beauty of character, and stimulate to all goodness and truth. His love of justice and freedom made him eager to strike some great and ancient wrong from its seat, and live in the memory of mankind as a deliverer and benefactor.

 

            Thus, it is no wonder that his love for Margaret, intensified and stimulated by the very necessity for its repression from love’s natural course and fulfilment, should combine, with the glories of art amid which they daily lived and moved, to make beauty seem to him the one thing needful, the be all and end all of existence. ‘Oh Margaret, Margaret!’ he exclaimed, as they emerged one day from a studio which they had come to prefer to any other in Florence, – for was it not the studio of Fede, the designer and maker of the ‘Italia’ and the ‘Polyxena’? – ‘had I but such a model as I have dreamed of, I would spend my life but I would make my ideal an imperishable reality.’ And she, divining the unspoken mystery of his longing, yearned to gratify him by any abandonment, provided it could be at her own sole cost.

 

            The expected letters were dated from Capri. Mr. Tresham,

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it appeared, had been more seriously ill than Edmund had any idea of, and it was even intimated by Sophia that he had had something very like a stroke of paralysis. But he was now better; and, in one of their excursions from Naples, had taken such a fancy to Capri that they determined to pass the summer there. The rest of the letters were taken up by expressions of delight at the return of Noel, and surprise at that of Margaret, and an eager affectionate welcome to the whole party to join them in their rocky home as soon as possible.

 

            It remained now to decide the route by which Naples was to be reached. The choice lay between posting overland through Siena and Rome, and going by steamer from Leghorn. Margaret’s suggestion, that they must not linger by the way now that they were expected, decided the question in favour of the sea route. Noel readily acquiesced, for he felt that it would be better not to visit Rome with her at all, they have to hurry through it as if it wore a mere railway-station. There was, moreover, a feeling in the minds of both, that Rome was in some sense the property of James, so far as Margaret was concerned, and that all her associations there belonged to him. But neither of them expressed this feeling to the other.

 

            So the evening of the next day but one found them gliding through the clear seas amid the lovely isles that skirt the Bay of Naples, while the fair city and its beautiful, capricious tyrant occupied the landscape beyond. Margaret and Edmund stood together upon the deck, gazing upon the wondrous scene. Both were profoundly sorrowful at the thought of the near ending of their happiness, and this sadness was intensified by the magic beauty around. All the warm bright colouring seemed to be withdrawn from their own lives to make the beauty without.

 

            As they approached the landing-place, Noel looked anxiously towards the people standing there, for he dreaded lest it should have occurred to Sophia to come over and meet them, and so rob him of a few more hours of his exclusive possession of Margaret. He had, however, been sufficiently vague in the letter by which he announced their early arrival at Capri, to prevent the calamity he feared; and he was thus enabled to deposit his treasure safely in his own old favourite rooms in the Hotel di Roma, where they could pass the evening away from the poise of the rattling streets, and gaze from the verandah, alternately upon the long streamers of lurid light which gleamed

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unbroken from the burning mountain across the smooth bay to their very feet, and upon each other.

 

            ‘What is to come after? what is to come after?’ murmured Margaret, breaking from her reverie with a deep sigh. ‘Oh, for chains to bind fast the present.’

 

            ‘I claim a boon for having brought you safe so far,’ said Edmund, with vivacity. She looked wonderingly at him, and waited for his proposition.

 

            ‘They cannot expect us on yonder rock for another day or two. We have already had so much sea between this and Mexico, that we may well be excused from having yet more of it than we can help. So I propose to take you by land to a point still nearer to Capri, and cross thence in a boat.’

 

            ‘And when do you propose to arrive?’

 

            ‘The second day after to-morrow. We shall have to make some excursions to Naples with Sophia, but I want to show you my most favourite spots by myself. So, if you will let me, I will engage a carriage to-morrow, and, after we have glanced round Naples, drive to Vesuvius and Pompeii, and so on to the point where we will take again to the water.’

 

            ‘Well, I will leave it all in your hands, trusting to you not to make the interval before we join our friends so long as to give them cause for surprise. We must remember that we are no longer invisible beings living in a world of our own.’

 

            ‘Thanks, darling. I think, then, that if you will leave it all to me, you will have no cause to regret it. A line to my uncle to say that we shall sleep at Amalfi on Thursday night, and cross to Capri the following morning, will make all easy.’

 

 

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