Love and Lucia Read online

  For a moment she was not on earth, but in a spirit world to which her prayers and her love of her father had carried her.

  She was touched with the light of the Divine, which seemed to vibrate through her, giving her a radiance which the Marquis knew in some strange way was the same radiance which vibrated from her father’s pictures.

  It was life itself, the life which comes from God and which pours through all living things to a greater or lesser degree, according to their capabilities.

  As he looked at Lucia, her face seemed transparent, and he felt that if she slowly vanished before his eyes, he would not be in the least surprised.

  Then, as if she left the spheres to which her prayers and her love had carried her, she came back to earth.

  The radiance in her eyes vanished, to be replaced by sorrow and the misery of loss.

  She looked once again at her father, then bent forward to kiss gently his cold cheek.

  Slowly she rose to her feet, and as she did so seemed suddenly to be aware that the Marquis was there, waiting for her.

  Like a child who wishes to be comforted, she slipped her hand into his, and as she did so, with her eyes still on her father, she whispered,

  “He – is with – God.”

  She spoke softly, almost beneath her breath, and as the Marquis’s fingers closed over hers he replied in a voice which he did not recognise,

  “Of course he is – and with your mother!”

  *

  The Marquis drew Lucia across the room towards the makeshift screen behind which, on his first visit, he had sensed that she slept and kept her clothes and her few belongings.

  “Get what you want now,” he said quietly. “I will send somebody to pack up the rest later.”

  She looked at him a little uncertainly, and again because he had a perception which made him aware of what she was feeling, he knew she was finding it hard to come back to earth.

  “Are you – sure that is – what I should – do?”

  “Quite sure!” he said positively. “As you are well aware, there is nothing now to keep you here.”

  “Perhaps I should not – leave Papa.”

  “I think you know that he does not need you, and he would tell you to go with me.”

  As if he convinced her, Lucia let go of his hand and walked behind the screen.

  The Marquis looked around the attic, and as if he was seeing it for the first time, he thought how incongruous it was that such a sordid, drab place should have held Lucia and the pictures that Beaumont had painted.

  He thought that when they had both gone there would be nothing left behind but death, then was surprised at his own thoughts.

  Lucia came from behind the screen, and he saw that she was wearing a light shawl over her gown, and a bonnet of plain straw trimmed with blue ribbons on her fair hair.

  He thought it was somehow sensible of her not to insist on black the moment her father was dead.

  He remembered women he had known in London who draped themselves in crepe almost before their husbands were cold, in an effort to dramatise their mourning.

  “l am – ready,” Lucia said, “but – please – I must ask you once again – you are quite – sure you want me to – come with you?”

  “I am not only sure,” the Marquis replied, “but I intend to take you away with me.”

  He took her hand again as he spoke and drew her towards the door, and as they reached it, Lucia looked back with a last glance at her father.

  Then, as if she forced herself to act naturally and to control the tears which the Marquis was certain were not far from the surface, she walked beside him down the stairs.

  When they were in his gondola and were sitting side by side on the soft seats, she said in a very small voice,

  “When you – arrange Papa’s – funeral – will you please – deduct the money it will cost – from what you were – going to give – us for his – pictures?”

  Because it was the first thing she had said since leaving the house, there was a faint smile on the Marquis’s lips.

  It was somehow what he had expected Lucia might say, and he was aware how she was trying not to force herself upon him, or to be more of an encumbrance than she could help.

  He thought of how almost every woman he had ever known had expected him, because he was so rich, to pay for everything that concerned them.

  Now it flashed through his mind that Francesca would be waiting tonight to receive the emerald necklace he had promised her.

  “I told you to leave everything in my hands,” he said quietly, “and I am looking forward to your seeing your father’s pictures hung in the right type of background for them when you arrive at my Palazzo.”

  He saw Lucia’s eyes light up before she asked in a worried little voice,

  “Will there be a – lot of people there? And will they not think it – strange that I should be – arriving with – you?”

  “There will be no one there when we arrive,” the Marquis assured her.

  As he spoke he remembered that Francesca would be returning later in the evening, but thought that was a bridge he could cross later.

  He was immediately aware that Lucia relaxed a little on learning she need not be afraid of meeting a large number of strangers. Then she said,

  “You will tell me – please – what I am to – do and exactly how I should – behave? Mama would have – known – but I have never been in a big house – neither in England nor here – and I am aware that I am very – ignorant.”

  “Just be yourself,” the Marquis answered, “and I promise I will tell you what to expect, so that you will not feel shy.”

  “Thank – you.”

  Her tone expressed very much more than the actual words.

  They moved down the Grand Canal, and as they looked at the Rialto Bridge, the Marquis knew she was seeing it as her father had painted it.

  It was almost as if he could look through her eyes and see everything seeming to glow with life, the water, the Palazzos, the bridge ahead, the gondolas.

  Even the people themselves seemed to live and breathe, and in some way the Marquis could not understand, to reach out towards something higher and greater than themselves.

  It could only, he thought, be expressed in the way in which Lucia had looked when she had prayed at her father’s bedside.

  He was wondering how he could possibly know – or rather feel – such a thing, as Lucia was feeling, when he felt her slip her hand into his.

  “Thank – you,” she said again.

  The two words seemed to convey to him, like the touch of her fingers, the vibrations of life.

  Chapter Four

  The Funeral Service in the little Anglican Church of St. George was very quiet and moving.

  There were no other mourners apart from Lucia and the Marquis, and her father’s coffin was carried in state in an ornate funeral gondola with its canopy of black and silver.

  The Marquis understood how everything had been done so quickly when Mr. Johnson told him that the owner of the house in which the Beaumonts had rented the attic wanted the dead man removed as quickly as possible.

  “The Italians think it unlucky to have a corpse lying for long, my Lord,” Mr. Johnson explained, “and I therefore agreed that by paying a great deal extra the funeral could take place today. Fortunately, coffins in this part of the world are ready for just such emergencies.”

  The Marquis was not particularly interested in the details, but he knew that for Lucia’s sake it would be best for her not to worry about her father’s body being left unattended in the attic from which he had taken her.

  It was therefore after luncheon the following day that they watched Bernard Beaumont’s coffin carried down the dilapidated staircase and into the black gondola and then followed it down the Grand Canal to the Campo San Vio.

  The Marquis appreciated that Lucia was very brave during the Service and the subsequent funeral on the cemetery island of San Michele.
/>   She had not cried, and only when the coffin was lowered into the ground did he realise that she was fighting her tears, and took her hand in his.

  He felt her fingers tremble and knew she was exerting a control over herself and her behaviour which he admired.

  He had always disliked passionate expressions of grief and had endured enough dramatics from the King when he was young to last him, as he had said to Alastair, for the rest of his life.

  As they left the Churchyard Lucia had thanked the Parson in a quiet, calm voice.

  The Marquis thought there were few women, however well-bred or aristocratic, who would behave with the same fortitude.

  When they were moving away from the island back towards the City, he said quietly,

  “Your father would have been proud of you.”

  “I – hope so,” Lucia replied, “but I did not – feel it was Papa who was – buried in the ground – just his body.”

  She spoke almost as if to herself, and the Marquis said,

  “Now you have to think about yourself and your future.”

  She did not reply, but just looked ahead the way they were going, and he understood how terrifying it must feel to be alone with only strangers in such circumstances.

  He supposed, however, that she must have relatives in England and thought that later he would talk to her about them and help her to decide with whom she should get in touch before she arrived back in her own country.

  For the moment it would be best to speak of other things, and the obvious subject was Venice.

  The sunshine shimmering over the lagoon made it look as if it was part of a fairy-tale and without reality.

  Everywhere the Marquis looked he thought that this was the light which Beaumont should have immortalised on canvas, as Bellini, Carpaccio, Tiepolo and Canaletto had tried to do before him.

  There was no doubt that the light of Venice was different from that of any other place. It was a particularly clear light, but never, the Marquis thought, as sharp as that in Greece.

  In the evening it could have a rare apricot tinge. But whatever it was like, at whatever time of day, the Marquis acknowledged it had a mysterious enchantment.

  “It is the mystery of poetry,” he told himself, and thought the same words could apply to Lucia.

  Following the train of his thoughts, he asked her,

  “Have you ever tried to paint?”

  Lucia turned her eyes towards him and, as if she came back from a long distance, replied after a moment,

  “I have no – talent for it like – Papa’s.”

  “Then what are you good at?”

  “You are thinking that I must earn my living,” she replied. “That is something over which I too have been puzzling.”

  She paused before she said,

  “I can speak several languages, I can play the piano, but not well enough to be a professional. I can ride any horse, however obstreperous, and when I have to do so, I can sew.

  She gave a little laugh before she added,

  “It is not a very impressive-list of accomplishments, considering the years I have spent reading and learning. In fact I am rather ashamed of it.”

  The Marquis did not reply.

  He was thinking that all those things were admirable in a young lady of leisure, but none of them would be likely to enable Lucia to earn any money.

  Then she said,

  “I forgot to add that I can cook, and Papa was particular about what he ate. But I do not suppose anybody would employ me in their kitchens.”

  The idea of Lucia slaving over a hot stove or struggling to maintain authority over the scullions who the Marquis had always thought were a rough lot was ludicrous, and he said,

  “It would obviously be impossible for you to take a menial job of any sort.”

  “I do not know why you should say that,” she replied. “I looked after Papa, and naturally I had to clean the rooms in which we lived, and cook for him, when we could afford the food.”

  “I think you are arguing for the sake of argument,” the Marquis said with a smile. “I will find you something far more congenial than that. You can leave it to me.”

  “I have not yet – thanked you for – Papa’s funeral which I – left to you,” Lucia said in a low voice. “It was very – beautiful – and very – competently done.”

  She was silent. Then she said with a note of pain in her voice,

  “If it had not been for you he would have had a pauper’s grave, and that would have been horrifying and shaming.”

  “But I was there,” the Marquis added, “and, as you have already said, I arrived at just the right time, so it was obviously meant. Therefore stop worrying about what you would have done if things had been different.”

  “I must try,” Lucia agreed meekly.

  Once again she was looking ahead, and the Marquis, seeing her perfect profile against the water, thought that Beaumont must have been, as he had looked, extremely well-bred.

  He tried to remember if he had known any Beaumonts, but could not recall anybody of that name.

  “When I get a chance, I will talk to her about her family,” he decided, “but this is not the right moment.”

  He had expected her to wear black for her father’s funeral, although it was a very warm day, and the dark drab threadbare gown she was wearing when he had first seen her in the Piazza San Marco had been black.

  But to his surprise she was wearing a gown of white muslin which was not new and not expensive, but in good taste.

  Her bonnet was trimmed with white ribbons, and as if Lucia knew he was looking at her in surprise she said, when she came into the room where he was waiting for her,

  “I – I hope you will not think it very – strange that I am not wearing – black for Papa – but it is something he greatly disliked.”

  The Marquis raised his eyebrows and she went on,

  “He did not believe in death. To him everything was alive, which was why he painted as he did – and when Mama – died, he would not let me wear anything – black because he said it was an – insult to our belief that we would see her again.”

  The Marquis felt he had never heard anything appertaining to the Next World expressed so well.

  Although he had often doubted whether Heaven or hell existed, and whether there was any life to come after the one he was living now, he thought the way Lucia spoke was very touching.

  So he said what he knew she would expect,

  “I am sure your father was right, and may I say that I am certain you look exactly as he would have wished you to on such a lovely day.”

  “I thought – you would – understand,” she said softly.

  Then she walked down the stairs beside him to where the gondola was waiting for them.

  Now, as they moved on towards the Grand Canal, the Marquis found himself thinking how lovely she would look if she were dressed by one of the great gownmakers who dressed the beauties in London as if they were Queens.

  He felt that he would like to see Lucia, entirely from an artistic point of view, in gowns of silk and satin embroidered with silver or gold, and with wreaths of flowers in her hair which also decorated the hems of her gowns.

  He was quite certain that even as she was, her beauty would attract attention simply because she was so different.

  But well-dressed she would, he decided, be a sensation, and would eclipse any of the Incomparables or the Social Beauties in the Beau Monde.

  Then he wondered if he was being beguiled by her and the background of Venice, just as her father’s pictures had beguiled him in a way that perhaps nobody else would appreciate.

  As if she knew he was thinking about her, Lucia turned to look at him and say,

  “You have not – changed your mind – my Lord? You would not – prefer me to leave in a ship for England – rather than – incommode you by staying with – you in your Palazzo?”

  “I have already told you that it does not incommode me,” the Marquis rep
lied, “and I have every intention of taking you safely to England. I have a feeling, Lucia, that you will not be able to manage by yourself.”

  She gave a little shiver and said,

  “It would be very – very frightening. At the same time I have been – thinking that now I have lost both Papa and Mama I must learn to be efficient – and you are – quite right to say that I must find – employment of some sort.”

  “I should not have brought up the subject,” the Marquis said, “because we have a great deal to talk about first, and it will be some time before we reach England.”

  “Nevertheless the question is there,” Lucia said in a practical manner, “and I must think about what I can do, and prepare myself to do it.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then, almost as if she was speaking to herself, she said,

  “I had very intelligent teachers to educate me. Mama would not employ a Governess, because she said she was always sorry for them as they never seemed to fit in.”

  “I suppose that is true,” the Marquis agreed, “but I think, Lucia, you are too young to be a Governess.”

  “Perhaps that is so, but I have had a much better education than most Governesses have.”

  She thought he looked at her sceptically, and she said,

  “Papa was very insistent that I should be as well read and as knowledgeable as both he and Mama were. He gained a degree at Oxford, and Mama was so clever that Papa wanted her to write a book.”

  “Why did she not do so?” Lucia gave a little laugh.

  “She said she refused to waste time which she could spend with Papa and me, but I think if Papa had died first, that is what she would have done.”

  “What would she have written about?”

  “There were dozens of subjects on which she was very knowledgeable, such as philosophy, the native customs of Europe, and the inferior position that women occupy all over the world.”

  The Marquis was astounded.

  “How could your mother know about such things?” he enquired.

  To his surprise, instead of giving him an explanation Lucia looked away from him, and as had happened once before, a faint flush crept up her pale cheeks.

  He was aware without her saying so that she thought she had said too much, and instead of answering his question, she said,