第35章 ALICIA'S DIARY(10)

My father,on learning the facts,bade me at once have everything ready by nine this evening,in time to drive to the train that meets the night steam-boat.This I have done,and there being an hour to spare before we start,I relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up my pen.He says overtake her we must,and calls Charles the hardest of names.He believes,of course,that she is merely an infatuated girl rushing off to meet her lover;and how can the wretched I tell him that she is more,and in a sense better than that--yet not sufficiently more and better to make this flight to Charles anything but a still greater danger to her than a mere lover's impulse.We shall go by way of Paris,and we think we may overtake her there.Ihear my father walking restlessly up and down the hall,and can write no more.

CHAPTER VIII.--SHE TRAVELS IN PURSUIT

April 16.Evening,Paris,Hotel --.--There is no overtaking her at this place;but she has been here,as I thought,no other hotel in Paris being known to her.We go on to-morrow morning.

April 18.Venice.--A morning of adventures and emotions which leave me sick and weary,and yet unable to sleep,though I have lain down on the sofa of my room for more than an hour in the attempt.Itherefore make up my diary to date in a hurried fashion,for the sake of the riddance it affords to ideas which otherwise remain suspended hotly in the brain.

We arrived here this morning in broad sunlight,which lit up the sea-girt buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork floating raft-like on the smooth,blue deep.But I only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene,and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station.When we got to the front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of the gondoliers so bewildered my father that he was understood to require two gondolas instead of one with two oars,and so I found him in one and myself in another.We got this righted after a while,and were rowed at once to the hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni where M.de la Feste had been staying when we last heard from him,the way being down the Grand Canal for some distance,under the Rialto,and then by narrow canals which eventually brought us under the Bridge of Sighs--harmonious to our moods!--and out again into open water.The scene was purity itself as to colour,but it was cruel that I should behold it for the first time under such circumstances.

As soon as I entered the hotel,which is an old-fashioned place,like most places here,where people are taken en pension as well as the ordinary way,I rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the hall,and in a moment I saw Charles's name upon it among the rest.

But she was our chief thought.I turned to the hall porter,and--knowing that she would have travelled as 'Madame de la Feste'--Iasked for her under that name,without my father hearing.(He,poor soul,was making confused inquiries outside the door about 'an English lady,'as if there were not a score of English ladies at hand.)'She has just come,'said the porter.'Madame came by the very early train this morning,when Monsieur was asleep,and she requested us not to disturb him.She is now in her room.'Whether Caroline had seen us from the window,or overheard me,I do not know,but at that moment I heard footsteps on the bare marble stairs,and she appeared in person descending.

'Caroline!'I exclaimed,'why have you done this?'and rushed up to her.

She did not answer;but looked down to hide her emotion,which she conquered after the lapse of a few seconds,putting on a practical tone that belied her.

'I am just going to my husband,'she said.'I have not yet seen him.

I have not been here long.'She condescended to give no further reason for her movements,and made as if to move on.I implored her to come into a private room where I could speak to her in confidence,but she objected.However,the dining-room,close at hand,was quite empty at this hour,and I got her inside and closed the door.I do not know how I began my explanation,or how I ended it,but I told her briefly and brokenly enough that the marriage was not real.

'Not real?'she said vacantly.

'It is not,'said I.'You will find that it is all as I say.'She could not believe my meaning even then.'Not his wife?'she cried.'It is impossible.What am I,then?'I added more details,and reiterated the reason for my conduct as well as I could;but Heaven knows how very difficult I found it to feel a jot more justification for it in my own mind than she did in hers.

The revulsion of feeling,as soon as she really comprehended all,was most distressing.After her grief had in some measure spent itself she turned against both him and me.

'Why should have I been deceived like this?'she demanded,with a bitter haughtiness of which I had not deemed such a tractable creature capable.'Do you suppose that ANYTHING could justify such an imposition?What,O what a snare you have spread for me!'I murmured,'Your life seemed to require it,'but she did not hear me.She sank down in a chair,covered her face,and then my father came in.'O,here you are!'he said.'I could not find you.And Caroline!''And were YOU,papa,a party to this strange deed of kindness?''To what?'said he.

Then out it all came,and for the first time he was made acquainted with the fact that the scheme for soothing her illness,which I had sounded him upon,had been really carried out.In a moment he sided with Caroline.My repeated assurance that my motive was good availed less than nothing.In a minute or two Caroline arose and went abruptly out of the room,and my father followed her,leaving me alone to my reflections.

I was so bent upon finding Charles immediately that I did not notice whither they went.The servants told me that M.de la Feste was just outside smoking,and one of them went to look for him,I following;but before we had gone many steps he came out of the hotel behind me.