The Mysterious Mr. Miller

“Number nine in the Viale,” replied the Countess promptly, with her slight American accent. “Second floor. Where did you meet them?”

“In England. I returned from London only last night.”

“I don’t think they are here,” she said. “The week we arrived at the villa, nearly two months ago, Lucie called and said that they were going to spend the summer up at Roncegno, in the Trentino, a place that is becoming quite fashionable with the Italians. They left Leghorn, and I haven’t seen them since.”

“I believe they are back,” I said. “Anyhow I will leave a card.”

“Because the handsome Lucie has attracted you, eh?” asked the Countess, laughing mischievously.

“Not at all,” I protested. “I’m a confirmed bachelor, as you’ve known long ago.”

“Ah! men always say so,” she remarked. “Why do you take such an intense interest in Milner and his daughter?”

“Because they were kind to me in England,” I replied briefly.

“Well – he’s a peculiar man,” she said. “They have very few friends, I believe. He’s a gentleman, no doubt, but in very reduced circumstances. My own idea is that when Lucie’s dresses are paid for he has very great difficulty in making both ends meet. He’s a bit of a mystery, they say.”

“You surprise me,” I said. “I had no idea he was as poor as that.”

It was evident that James Harding Miller feigned poverty in Leghorn, in order to conceal his true calling.

“The house is sufficient indication that they are not overburdened by money. In fact, a couple of years ago Lucie used to give English lessons to Baroness Borelli’s two girls. Nowadays, however, Milner himself is away a great deal. I’ve often met him in the Corso in Rome, idling about outside the Aragno, and in Florence, Milan and other places, while Lucie stays at home with their old servant Marietta.”

“Why do you say he’s a peculiar man?”

“Well – I have heard it whispered among the Italians here that he associates with some queer people sometimes. Of course, he’s an Inglese, and quite in ignorance of what they really are. The better-class Italians have nothing to do with him, and as the English colony here is so very small, poor Lucie’s life can’t be a very gay one. Indeed, I’m often sorry for the girl. Except for visiting us sometimes, and going to the houses of two or three of the English business people here, they go nowhere. Milner, when he’s here, spends each morning alone on the Squarci baths, reading the newspaper, and in the evening takes one turn up and down the promenade.”

“Yes,” declared her daughter. “He’s a most lonely, melancholy man.”

“There’s some mystery behind him, I suppose,” remarked the Countess. “We have so many queer English and Americans out here nowadays. Italy is really becoming the dumping-ground for all people who, from some reason or other, find their own country too sultry for them. Take Rome, for instance: why, the place is simply full of people one can’t possibly know, while Florence is proverbial for undesirables.”

“But you don’t think this man Milner is an undesirable, do you? I mean you’ve never heard anything against him?”

“Well, nothing absolutely direct,” was her answer. “Only if I were you I wouldn’t be too friendly with them. It will go very much against you, more especially in Italian society.”

“Italian society, Countess, doesn’t interest me really very much,” I exclaimed. “I know you think me a terrible barbarian, but remember I’m only a wanderer and a Bohemian at that.”

“Ah!” she sighed, “you men are free. It is unfortunately not so with us women, especially with a woman like myself, who, though I love freedom, am compelled to exist in this narrow-minded little world of the Italian aristocracy. I need not tell you how exclusive we all are – you know us too well. Why, when an English royal prince or princess comes to an Italian city hardly any one ever goes out of his way to call. They actually wait for the royalty to make the first call! And if you hear three school-girls of fourteen talking together, you will most certainly hear them discussing the nobiltà, and sneering at their schoolfellows whose parents are without titles. Yes, Mr Leaf,” she sighed, “ours is a strange complex life here, in modern Italy.”

The Countess was, I knew, “hipped” and embittered. Her husband, a good-looking good-for-nothing fellow, who spent his days idling in the Via Tornabuoni, in Florence, and his nights gambling at the Florence club, possessed a large estate with a fine old castle, away in the Cresentino, but every metre of the land was mortgaged, and in order to redeem the place had married Mary Plant, of Boston, Mass., the daughter of a rich coal-owner. Within three years they had been separated, and now only at rare intervals they met, sometimes finding themselves at the same entertainment in one or other of the palaces in Rome or Florence and greeting each other as comparative strangers. Like thousands of other similar cases in Italy, she had bought her title very dearly, and now bitterly regretted that she had ever been attracted by a handsome face and elegant manner, that she had been entrapped by a man who had never entertained one single spark of affection for her, and who had, in his heart, despised her on account of her readiness to sacrifice herself and her money for the sake of becoming a Countess.

We continued to chat, for it was delightful there, with the clear blue waves lapping close to our feet. In the course of conversation she and her daughter told me several other interesting facts concerning the Millers. They had lived in Rome for two successive winter seasons, the Countess said, in a little furnished flat in the Via Grottino, one of those narrow streets that lead off the Corso.

Was it while there, I wondered, that Lucie had become acquainted with the great politician, Nardini – the man who had died refusing to give her her liberty?

I longed to approach the subject, yet there were matters upon which I could not touch while Gemma was present.

So I sat there idling, laughing and chatting, and recalling the last occasion we had met, up in the pine woods of Camaldoli in the previous August, when I was staying at their hotel, where we had many mutual friends.

I had known the Countess fully ten years, when Gemma was but a child in the nursery, and when she was still a very pretty young woman.

Somehow I saw that she was anxious that I should not know the Milners. Why, I could not discern.

“If I were you,” she said, in a low, confidential tone, when she had sent her daughter along to the kiosque for a newspaper, “I shouldn’t call upon that man. I haven’t told Gemma, but I’ve dropped the girl. After she called upon me the last time I sent her a letter hinting that I should prefer that she did not call again.”

“Why?” I asked, much surprised.

“Well, I have a reason,” was her response. “Quite lately I’ve discovered something that requires a good deal of explaining away. To tell you the truth, I believe Milner is sailing under entirely false colours, and besides I have no intention that Gemma should associate with his daughter any further. Take my advice, Godfrey, and don’t go near them.”

“Then what have you heard?”

“I’ve heard a good deal that surprises me,” replied the Countess. “In fact, the whole affair is a very grave scandal, and I, for one, don’t mean to be dragged into it.”

Chapter Twenty Six

The Home of the Mysterious Englishman

At half-past five o’clock that same afternoon, heedless of the Countess Moltedo’s mysterious warning, I was standing by Lucie’s side at the long French window that opened upon the balcony. Below, hundreds of visitors, mostly dressed in white, as is the mode of Leghorn, were promenading in the little pine wood that lies between the roadway and the sea, while beyond stretched the broad glassy Mediterranean aglow in the fiery rays of the Tuscan sunset, the mystic islands showing dark purple on the far-off horizon.

It was the hour when all Leghorn was agog after the siesta, that period from two o’clock till five, when all persiennes are closed, the streets are silent and deserted, and the city dazzlingly white lies palpitating beneath the blazing sun that blanches everything – the hour for the evening bath, and the stroll and gossip before dinner.

Perhaps nowhere else in all Europe can be seen such a living panorama of beautiful girls as there, upon the Passeggio at Leghorn on a summer’s evening at six o’clock, those dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome-featured children of the people walking in twos and threes, with figure and gait perfect, and each with her santuzza, or silken scarf of pale blue, mauve, pink, or black, twisted around her head with the ends thrown carelessly over the shoulders.

As the white veil is part of the costume of the Turkish woman so is the santuzza part of that of the merry, laughing coral-pickers, milliners and work-girls of Leghorn. It enhances their marvellous beauty and is at the same time the badge of their servitude.

Of all the people in the whole of proud old Tuscany assuredly none were so easy-going and vivacious, none so light-hearted and full of poetry as those Livornese people passing to and fro below us. The more I had dwelt among the Tuscan people the more I loved them. There is surely no other people on the face of the earth so entirely lovable, even with their many sad faults, as they; none so gregarious, so neighbourly, so courteous, kindly or poetic, none so content upon the most meagre fare that ever held body and soul together.

Your popolano even in his rags will bring a flower to a woman with the air of a king, and he will resent an insult with a withering scorn to which no regal trappings could lend further dignity. It is the land where Love still reigns just as supreme as it did in the days of La Fiammetta, of Beatrice, of Laura, or of Romeo – the Land of Amore– the sun-kissed land where even in this prosaic century of ours men and women live and die – often by the knife-thrust, be it said – for “amore,” that king who is greater and more powerful even than good Vittorio Emanuele himself.

At Lucie’s side I stood in silence, gazing down upon the gay scene below. In those people’s eyes were always dreams, and in the memories there was always greatness.

A writer has asked with deep truth, who, having known fair Tuscany, can forsake her for lesser love? Who, having once abode with her, can turn their faces from the rising sun and set the darkness of the Pisan mountains betwixt herself and them?

Yes. I had been back again in Tuscany for those few brief hours only, yet the glamour of Italy had again fallen upon me, that same glamour that holds so many of the English-speaking race – irrevocably compelling them to return again and again to those amethystine hills and mystical depths of seven-chorded light – the land that is grey-green with sloes and rich with trailing vines, the land of art and antiquity, of youth and of loveliness.

“And your father went on from Pisa?” I said at last, turning to my neat-waisted little companion. “He did not come home with you?”

“No. He has some urgent business down in Rome, and sent me back here to wait for him.”

“When does he arrive?”

“He does not know. His business is very uncertain always. Sometimes when he goes away he’s absent only three days, and at other times three months. Dear old dad is awfully tiresome. He never writes, and Marietta and I wait and wait, and wonder what’s become of him.”

“Is he staying with friends in Rome?”

“With Dr Gavazzi, a great friend of ours.”

“You left Studland very suddenly,” I said.