SIGNOR VERGILIO MANNETTI
Sir Walter persisted in his purpose and went to Florence.He believed that here Mary might find distractions and novelties to awaken interest which would come freshly into her life without the pain and poignancy of any recollection to lessen the work of peace.For himself he only desired to see her returning to content.Happiness he knew must be a condition far removed from her spirit for many days.
They stood one evening on the Piazza of Michelangelo and saw Florence, like a city of dim, red gold extended beneath them.The setting sunlight wove an enchantment over towers and roofs.It spread a veil of ineffable brightness upon the city and tinged green Arno also, where the river wound through the midst.
Sir Walter was quietly happy, because he knew that in a fortnight his friends, Ernest and Nelly Travers, would be at Florence.Mary, too, prepared to welcome them gladly, for her father's sake.He left his daughter largely undisturbed, and while they took their walks together, the old man, to whom neither music nor pictures conveyed much significance, let her wander at will, and the more readily because he found that art was beginning to exercise a precious influence over Mary's mind.There was none to guide her studies, but she pursued them with a plan of her own, and though at first the effort sometimes left her weary, yet she persisted until she began to perceive at least the immensity of the knowledge she desired to acquire.
Music soothed her mind; painting offered an interest, part sensuous, part intellectual.Perhaps she loved music best at first, since it brought a direct anodyne.In the sound of music she could bear to think of her brief love story.She even made her father come and listen presently to things that she began to value.
Their minds inevitably proceeded by different channels of thought, and while she strove resolutely to occupy herself with the new interests, and put away the agony of the past, till thinking was bearable again and a road to peace under her feet once more, Sir Walter seldom found himselfpassing many hours without recurrence of painful memories and a sustained longing to strip the darkness which buried them.To his forthright and simple intelligence, mystery was hateful, and the reflection that his home must for ever hold a profound and appalling mystery often thrust itself upon his thoughts, and even inclined him, in some moods, to see Chadlands no more.Yet a natural longing to return to the old environment, in which he could move with ease and comfort, gradually mastered him, and as the spring advanced he often sighed for Devonshire, yet wondered how he could do so.Then would return the gloomy history of the winter rolling over his spirit like a cloud, and the thought of going home again grew distasteful.
Mary, however, knew her father well enough, and at this lustrous hour, while Florence stretched beneath them in its quiet, evening beauty, she declared that they must not much longer delay their return.
"Plenty of time," he said."I am not too old to learn, I find, and a man would indeed be a great fool if he could not learn in such a place as this.But though art can never mean much to me now, your case is different, and I am thankful to know that these things will be a great addition and interest to your future life.I'm a Philistine, and shall always so remain, but I'm a repentant one.I see my mistake too late.""It's a new world, father," she said, "and it has done a great deal for an unhappy woman - not only in taking my thoughts off myself, but in lessening my suffering, too.I do not know why, or how, but music, and these great, solemn pictures painted by dead men, all touch my thoughts of dear Tom.I seem to see that there are so many more mighty ones dead than living.And yet not dead.They live in what they have made.And Tom lives in what he made - that was my love for him and his for me.He grows nearer and dearer than ever when I hear beautiful music.I can better bear to think of him at such times, and it will always help me to remember him.""God bless art if it does so much," he said."We come to it as little children, and I shall always be a child and never understand, but for you the valuable message will be received.May life never turn you away from these things in years to come.""Never! Never!" she assured him."Art has done too much for me.I shall not try to live my life without it.Already I feel I could not.""What have you seen to-day?" he asked.
"I was at the Pitti all the morning.I liked best Fra Bartolommeo's great altar piece and Titian's portrait of Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici.You must see him - a strange, unhappy spirit only twenty-three years old.Two years afterwards he was poisoned, and his haunted, discontented eyes closed for ever.And the 'Concert' - so wonderful, with such a hunger- starved expression in the soul of the player.And Andrea del Sarto - how gracious and noble; but Henry James says he's second-rate, because his mind was second-rate, so I suppose he is, but not to me.He never will be to me.To-morrow you must come and see some of the things I specially love.I won't bore you.I don't know enough to bore you yet.Oh, and Allori's 'Judith' - so lovely, but I wonder if A]lori did justice to her? Certainly his 'Judith' could never have done what the real Judith did.And there's a landscape by Rubens - dark and old - yet it reminded me of our woods where they open out above the valley."He devoted the next morning to Mary, and wandered among the pictures with her.He strove to share her enthusiasm, and, indeed, did so sometimes.Then occurred a little incident, so trivial that they forgot all about it within an hour, yet were reminded of it at a very startling moment now fast approaching.
