The Mysterious Mr. Miller

I smiled within myself at what the girl told me. He was evidently a popular man in Upper Wooton.

He had friends to stay with him sometimes, mostly men. Once or twice he had had foreign gentlemen among his visitors – gentlemen who had been in the post-office and could not speak English.

“My sister was ’ousemaid there till last Michaelmas,” she added. “So I’ve often been up to the ‘Glen’. When old Mrs Auker had it she used to ’ave us girls of the Friendly Society there to tea on the lawn.”

“I think that a friend of mine comes to visit Mr Gordon-Wright sometimes. His name is Miller. Do you remember him?”

“Mr Miller – a tall middle-aged gentleman. Of course, sir. ’E was here in the spring. I remember the name because ’e and Mr Wright gave a treat to the school children.”

“Was a lady with him – a young lady?”

“Yes, sir. His daughter, Miss Lucie.”

The girl knew little else, except, as she declared, Mr Gordon-Wright was a rich man and “a thorough gentleman.”

An hour later, while I was out in the yard of the inn watching Gibbs going round the car, we suddenly heard the whirr of an approaching motor, and down the street flashed the blue car which we had pursued so hotly on the previous day. It carried the same occupants, with the addition of one person – Mr Gordon-Wright.

The latter, in peaked cap and motor-coat, was driving, while behind were the two strangers, with Mr Murray and Ella.

The latter caught sight of me as she flashed past. Our eyes met for an instant, and then she was lost to me in a cloud of dust – lost for ever.

“They’re going back again, it seems,” I remarked to Gibbs.

“No, sir. I saw their man this morning. They’re going to Bristol. He’s heard from ’is master that it’s all right. The young gentleman and the lady are his master’s friends, after all – even though they’re such a queer pair,” and then he added: “Did you think of startin’ this morning, sir?”

“Yes. As soon as you are ready.”

“Where to, sir?”

“Back to Swanage.”

We ran across Devon and Dorset at a somewhat lower speed to what we had travelled when overtaking the 40 “Mercédès.” Gibbs had no desire to put in an appearance before any local bench. Indeed nowadays lit is useless to make an appearance. So prejudiced are magistrates, and such hard swearing is there on the part of the police, that motorists must pay up cheerfully. There is no justice for the pioneers of locomotion.

We returned by another road, which proved better than that by which we had come, and just before eleven at night I descended from the car at the “Lion,” and after some supper with the fat genial landlord, who took a deep interest in my journey and hardly credited that I had been into Cornwall and back, I went up to the room I had previously occupied.

Tired after the heat and dust of the road I slept well, but was up betimes, and at half-past nine walked out to the Manor House.

A maid-servant came to the door in response to my ring. “Mr Miller and the young lady have gone away, sir,” the girl replied to my inquiry. “They went up to London yesterday.”

“Are they staying in London?” I asked eagerly. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

“Is Miss Miller at home? If so, I’d like to see her.” And I handed her my card.

I was shown into the morning-room, and in a few minutes Miller’s sister appeared.

“I’m so sorry, Mr Leaf,” she said, in her thin, weak voice, “but my brother and his daughter left quite suddenly yesterday. He received a telegram recalling him.”

“Where?”

“To Italy. He left by the mail from Charing Cross last night – direct for Leghorn, I believe.”

“Is he likely to be away long?”

“He won’t be back, I suppose, before the spring.”

“And Miss Lucie has gone with him?”

“Of course. She is always with him.”

It was upon my tongue to ask her brother’s address in Leghorn, but I hesitated, for I recollected that, being an Englishman, he could be easily found.

The receipt of that telegram was suspicious. What new conspiracy was in progress, I wondered? Evidently something had occurred. Either he had been warned that the police were in search of him, and had escaped back to the Continent, or else certain of his plans had been matured earlier than he anticipated.

As I sat there in the old-fashioned room, with its punch-bowls full of sweet-smelling roses, I resolved to travel south to the Mediterranean, see Lucie, and endeavour to find some way in which to rescue my love from her father’s accomplice.

From that Dorsetshire village to the old sun-blanched port of Leghorn is a far cry – thirty-six hours in the express from Calais on the road to Rome – yet that night I was back in Granville Gardens; and hastily packing up my traps, chatting with Sammy the while, I next morning left London for Italy.

I told my friend but little. The circumstances were too complicated and puzzling, and the tragedy of it all was so complete that I preferred to remain silent.

I was going south, upon one of those erratic journeys I so very often took. I might return in a fortnight, or in six months. All depended upon the mood in which I found myself.

Therefore he accepted my explanation, knowing well as a constant traveller and thoroughgoing cosmopolitan himself, and he saw me off from Charing Cross, wishing me bon voyage.

The journey by way of Calais, Paris, Modane and Turin you yourself have done often, so why need I describe it? You have lunched between Calais and Paris, dined at the Gare de Lyon, turned into your narrow sleeping berth between Paris and the frontier, lunched in the wagon-restaurant between Modane and Busseleno, scrambled through your dinner in the big buffet at Genoa, and cursed those stifling tunnels between Genoa and Spezia, where between them you get your first glimpses of the moonlit Mediterranean, and you have alighted at old marble-built Pisa, the quaint dead city that contains one of the wonders of the world – the Leaning Tower.

From Pisa you have gone on to Rome, or to Florence, but I question if you have ever travelled over that ten-mile branch line down to the ancient seaport of the Medici, Leghorn. The English, save the mercantile marine and a stray traveller or two, never go to Livorno, as it is called in Italian, and yet it is in summer the Brighton of Italy, and one of the gayest places in Europe during the bathing season.

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when I alighted at the “Palace,” that great white hotel on the sea-front, and went to the room allotted to me – one with an inviting balcony overlooking the promenade and the fashionable bathing establishment of Pancaldi.

Livorno was full, the night-porter informed me. It was the height of the season, and there was not another vacant bed in any hotel in the town that night.

I knew the place well, therefore early next morning I went forth, and took a turn across at Pancaldi’s, which is a kind of stone pier built out upon the rocks into the clear sunlit waters. Though so early there were already quite a number of smartly dressed people; the men in clean white linen suits and the women in white muslins, mostly of the Italian aristocracy from Florence, Bologna, Milan and Rome.

It was delightful there, seated in a chair with the waves lapping lazily at one’s feet, and the brown sails of the anchovy and sardine boats showing afar against the dark purple island of Gorgona in the distance. On every hand was the gay chatter of men – for Italians are dreadful chatterboxes – the light laughter of pretty dark-eyed women, or the romping of a few children in the care of their nurses.

I was fatigued after my journey, and as I idled there my eyes were open about me to recognise any friends.

Suddenly, approaching me, I saw a stout elderly lady in white, accompanied by a slim young girl of seventeen, whom I recognised as the Countess Moltedo and her daughter Gemma. I rose instantly, removed my hat, and drawing my heels together in Italian fashion, bowed.

“Ah! my dear Signor Leaf!” cried the Countess in English merrily, for she was American born, and like so many other countesses in Italy had been attracted by a title, and had long ago found her husband to be a worthless fellow who had married her merely in order to replenish his impoverished purse. “Why, this is a surprise! Gemma was speaking of you only the other day, and wondered if you had deserted Italy entirely.”

“No, Countess,” I replied. “Once one really knows Italy, she is one’s mistress – and you can never desert her.”

And I took the young girl’s hand she offered, and bowed over it.

“You are here at your villa at Antigniano, I suppose?” I went on.

“Yes. We’ve been here already two months. It is too hot still to return to Rome. The season has been a most gay one, for the new spa, the Acque della Salute, has, they say, attracted nearly twenty thousand persons more than last year.”

“Leghorn in summer is always charming,” I said, as I drew chairs for them at the edge of the water, and they seated themselves. “And your villa is so very delightful, out there, beyond the noise and turmoil.”

“Yes, we find it very nice. Myself, I prefer the quiet village life of Antigniano to this place. We only come up here at rare intervals, when Gemma gets dull.”

The pretty dark-eyed young girl laughing at me said: —

“Mother likes all the old fogies, Mr Leaf, while I like to see life. Out yonder at Antigniano they are all old frumps, and the men never remain there. They always take the tram and come into Leghorn.”

Like a flash it occurred to me to make an inquiry of them.

“By the way,” I said, “you know all the Americans and English here. Do you happen to know a man named Miller?”

“Miller? No,” was the American woman’s reply.

“Haven’t you mistaken the name? There’s a man named Milner, who has a daughter, a tall, rather smart dark-haired girl.”

“Milner,” I repeated, recognising at once that in Leghorn the final “r” was added. “Yes, perhaps that’s the name. He’s a tall elderly man – a gentleman. His daughter’s name is Lucie.”

“I know her,” exclaimed Gemma quickly. “We’ve met them lots of times. They live in a flat at the other end of the promenade, towards the town.”

“I want to call. Do you know the number?”

“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.

“Because of a telegram. We left at once, with hardly an hour to pack up. But how did you know we had gone to Italy?”

“I called after you had left, and your aunt told me. I wanted to speak to you, Miss Miller,” I added, turning to her seriously. “I came here to Leghorn purposely to see you.”

“It’s surely a long way to travel,” she said, turning her soft dark eyes upon mine and regarding me with wonder.

“Yes. But the reason I am here is to consult you regarding something which very closely concerns myself – regarding Ella.”

“Ah! It was strange that she left us so suddenly,” she remarked, “and stranger still the events of that night. I wonder who attacked her? She recognised her assailant, otherwise she would have said something to me. I’ve thought over it several times. The whole thing is an utter enigma. She evidently left us because she feared that her assailant would either call to see her, or perhaps make another attempt upon her.”

“Then she said nothing to you?”

“Absolutely not a word, even though when she came in she was half fainting. I naturally concluded that you and she had had some words, and therefore I made no inquiry.”

“We had no words, Miss Miller,” I said, in a low, serious voice. “Our hearts were too full of tragedy for that.”

“Of tragedy?” she cried. “What do you mean?”

“Ella is already engaged to be married.”

“Engaged?” she cried. “Why, I thought she was to be yours? I was congratulating you both!”

“No,” I answered, my heart sinking. “Though we have come together again after that long blank in both our lives, we are yet held apart by a cruel circumstance. She is already engaged to be married to another man.”

“But she will break it, never fear. Ella loves you – you can’t doubt that.”

“I know. I know that. But it is an engagement she cannot break. She will be that man’s wife in a month.”

“You absolutely amaze me. She told me nothing of this, but on the contrary led me to believe that she was still free, and that you were to be her affianced husband.”

“There is some reason – some secret reason why I cannot be,” I said. “It was to discuss this point with you that I have travelled from London. I must ask you to forgive me, Miss Miller, for troubling you with my private affairs, but you are, you know, Ella’s most intimate and most devoted friend.”

“You are not troubling me in the least,” my companion declared. “We are friends, you and I, and if I can help you, I will with pleasure do so.”

“Then I want to ask you a few questions,” I said eagerly. “First, tell me how long you have known Mr Gordon-Wright?”