Marianne and the Rebels

'You do? Then what is it?'

She cast about desperately for a plausible lie and said at last with an assumed carelessness:

'Nothing – or almost nothing. It's just that my stomach is a little delicate these days. It's – it's since – since I was a prisoner.'

Jason studied the pale face for a moment, mechanically chafing her icy hands as he did so. He was clearly only half convinced. Marianne was not the kind of woman to faint for nothing, swooning over the scent of a flower or the slightest emotion. Something about it worried him. However, he had no time to ask further questions.

The sound of approaching footsteps evidently indicated the return of Maddalena. Marianne sat up quickly and, evading his instinctive move to prevent her, got to her feet.

'What are you doing?'

'Oh, please, don't say that I was ill. I hate to have people fuss over me. Maddalena would only worry, and then I should have to put up with her cosseting.'

Jason's protests were lost in the click of heels as the Countess reappeared, bearing an oil-lamp with a thick glass shade. Warm yellow light spilled over the terrace and gleamed on her red hair and gently teasing smile.

'Would you rather it were dark?' she said. 'But here come my husband and Monsieur de Jolival. We are just going to dine. You'll stay, of course, Captain?'

The American inclined his tall person in an apologetic bow.

'I'm truly sorry, Countess, but I must return to my ship. We sail tomorrow.'

'So soon?'

'My repair work is finished and we have to reach Constantinople as quickly as possible. It grieves me to be obliged to rob you of the Princess so soon, but the sooner we are there the better. The frigates that are to escort us have many other calls on their time. I should not wish to detain them too long. You will have to excuse me.

As though in haste, suddenly, to be gone, he said his farewells and bowed over the hands of both ladies, letting his blue gaze dwell for a moment, with a faintly troubled look, on Marianne's. Then he went away through the garden, just as the voices of Jolival and Alamano made themselves heard inside the house.

'A strange man,' Maddalena remarked, looking thoughtfully after the captain's tall figure as it vanished into the darkness. 'But certainly attractive! Perhaps, all things considered, it's just as well he's not staying here too long. Every woman on the island would be mad for him. There is something masterful about his eyes that suggests he doesn't take kindly to being crossed.'

'You're quite right,' Marianne said, her mind elsewhere. 'He hates to be contradicted.'

The Countess smiled. 'That wasn't altogether what I meant,' she said. 'Shall we join the gentlemen indoors?'

Jolival was the very person Marianne needed to see just at that moment. This second spell of faintness had seriously alarmed her, for if she were to have many more like it life on board ship promised to become almost impossible. Meanwhile, Arcadius had practically disappeared. She had scarcely seen him since the night of her arrival and that, too, had worried her because it was not a good sign.

She sat through dinner with her anxieties undiminished. Jolival looked tired. He was making an effort, visible only to those who knew him well, to respond to his hostess's bright conversation, but his light easy chatter was belied by the troubled look in his eyes.

'He's failed,' Marianne thought. 'He hasn't been able to find what I need. He wouldn't look like that if he had.'

Even Maddalena's witty account of Marianne's nocturnal adventures failed to smooth the lines of care wholly from his face.

When he came to her room for a few moments, before retiring to his own, Marianne learned that he had indeed drawn a complete blank.

'I did hear of an old Greek woman, some kind of witch who lived in a hut on the side of Mount Pantocrator, but when I managed to find the place at last, this afternoon, there was nothing but a few mourners and an aged papas about to conduct her funeral. But don't despair,' he added, quickly, seeing her face fall. 'Tomorrow I'll go back to the Venetian tavern where I got the information and—'

Marianne sighed wearily.

'It's no good, Jolival. We are leaving tomorrow morning. Didn't you know? Jason came just now to tell me. He's in a hurry to leave Corfu… largely, I think, on account of my ridiculous adventure with Chahin Bey.'

'He knows of that?'

'The idiot wanted to go with us. He went and told Jason the whole story.'

There was a silence, occupied on Jolival's part by restless fiddling with the crystal rose-bowl on the table.

'How do matters stand between you?'

In a few words, Marianne described their last encounter on the terrace and the manner in which it had ended.

'He gave in sooner than I expected,' was Jolival's comment when it was done. 'He loves you very deeply, Marianne, in spite of all his temper and his rudeness and his fits of jealousy… I wonder if you wouldn't be better advised to tell him the truth.'

'The truth? About my condition?'

'Yes. You are not well. I was watching you at dinner. You're pale and nervous and you scarcely ate a thing. You'll suffer dreadfully on board ship. And there's that doctor, Leighton. He never takes his eyes off you. I'm not sure why, but you've made an enemy there who'll stick at nothing to be rid of you.'

'How do you know?'

'Gracchus tipped me the wink. Your coachman, in case you didn't know it, is beginning to discover his vocation as a seaman. He lives with the crew and he's found a friend who can speak French. Leighton has a few supporters among them who are always grumbling at the presence of a woman on board. Besides, he's a doctor. He may discover the truth about your illness.'

'I thought doctors were bound to secrecy by the rules of their profession,' Marianne said bluntly.

'So they are, but as I said, this one hates you and I'd judge him capable of a good deal. Listen to me, Marianne. Tell Beaufort the truth. He is capable of understanding, I'm sure of it.'

'And what do you think he'll say? I can tell you. He won't believe me! I'd never dare to tell him such a thing straight out.'

Like Jason on the terrace, earlier that evening, Marianne was pacing up and down her room, kneading a tiny lace handkerchief between her hands. In imagination she was picturing the scene she had conjured up of herself facing Jason, telling him that she was pregnant by her steward. Enough to make him shun her like the plague!

'You, who are always so brave, are afraid to have it out?' Jolival reproached her softly.

'I'm afraid of losing the man I love for ever, Arcadius. Just as any woman in love would be.'

'How do you know you would lose him? I've told you, he loves you, and perhaps—'

'There, you see!' Marianne interrupted him with a little hysterical laugh. 'You said perhaps. Perhaps that's what I don't want to risk.'

'And suppose he finds out? Suppose he guesses somehow?'

'Then he does. Let's say I'd rather play all or nothing, if you like. In a little more than a week, if all goes well, we'll be in Constantinople. I'll do what's necessary there. Until then, I'll try and hold out.'

With a sigh of resignation, Jolival rose from his chair and went to Marianne. Taking her face between his hands, he deposited a fatherly kiss on the forehead which was set just now in an obstinate frown.

'You may be right,' he said. 'I've no right to compel you. But – I suppose you wouldn't, well, accept the notion of letting me deal with the explanations that frighten you so much? Jason likes and, I believe, respects me. I expect he would believe me.'

'He'd believe that you are very fond of me and would stand up for me at all costs – and that I had spun you an enormous yarn! No, Arcadius. I won't let you. But I thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

He bowed, smiling a little sadly, and went to his own room, while for Marianne there began a sleepless night haunted, paradoxically, by the shadow hanging over the days to come and by the strange sense of quietude left over from the night before. The sense of fulfilment which had come to her in that fantastic interlude, outside time and ordinary reality, was still strong enough to engender in her a kind of private exultation, free from any feelings of shame or false modesty. In the arms of her anonymous lover, she had experienced a moment of exceptional beauty, made beautiful by the very fact that she still did not know who he was.