They had separated, and Sir Walter's eye was caught by a portrait.But he forgot it a moment later in passing interest of a blazoned coat of arms upon the frame - a golden bull's head on a red ground.The heraldic emblem was tarnished and inconspicuous, yet the spectator felt curiously conscious that it was not unfamiliar.It seemed that he had seen it already somewhere.He challenged Mary with it presently; but she had never observed it before to her recollection.
Sir Walter enjoyed his daughter's interest, and finding that his company among the pictures added to Mary's pleasure, while his comments caused her no apparent pain, he declared his intention of seeing more.
"You must tell me what you know," he said.
"It will be the blind leading the blind, dearest," she answered, "but my delight must be in finding things I think you'll like.The truth is that neither of us knows anything about what we ought to like.""That's a very small matter," he declared."We must begin by learning to like pictures at all.When Ernest comes, he will want us to live in his great touring car and fly about, so we should use our present time to the best advantage.Pictures do not attract him, and he will be very much surprised to hear that I have been looking at them.""We must interest him, too, if we can."
"That would be impossible.Ernest does not understand pictures, and music gives him no pleasure.He regards art with suspicion, as a somewhat unmanly thing.""Poor Mr.Travers!"
"Do not pity him, Mary.His life is sufficiently full without it.""But I've lived to find out that no life can be." In due course Ernest and Nelly arrived, and, as Sir Walter had prophesied, their pleasure consisted in long motor drives to neighboring places and scenes of interest and beauty.His daughter, in the new light that was glimmering for her, found her father's friends had shrunk a little.She could speak with them and share their interests less whole-heartedly than of old; but they set it down to her tribulation and tried to "rouse" her.Ernest Travers even lamented her new-found interests and hoped they were "only a passing phase.""She appears to escape from reality into a world of pictures and music," he said."You must guard against that, my dear Walter.These things can be of no permanent interest to a healthy mind."For a fortnight they saw much of their friends, and Mary observed how her father expanded in the atmosphere of Ernest and Nelly.They understood each other so well and echoed so many similar sentiments and convictions.
Ernest entertained a poor opinion of the Italian character.He argued that a nation which depended for its prosperity on wines and silk - "and such wines" - must have too much of the feminine in it to excel.He had a shadowy idea that he understood the language, though he could notspeak nor write it himself.
"We, who have been nurtured at Eton and Oxford, remember enough Latin to understand these people," he said, "for what is Italian but the emasculated tongue of ancient Rome?"Nelly Travers committed herself to many utterances as idiotic as Ernest's, and Mary secretly wondered to find how shadowy and ridiculous such solid people showed in a strange land.They carried their ignorance and their parochial atmosphere with them as openly and unashamedly as they carried their luggage.She was not sorry to leave them, for she and her father intended to stop for a while at Como before returning home again.
Their friends were going to motor over the battlefields of France presently, and both Ernest and Nelly came to see Sir Walter and his daughter off for Milan.Mr.Travers rushed to the door of the carriage and thrust in a newspaper as the train moved.
"I have secured a copy of last week's 'Field,' Walter," he said.
They passed over the Apennines on a night when the fire-flies flashed in every thicket under the starry gloom of a clear and moonless sky; and when the train stopped at little, silent stations the throb of nightingales fell upon their ears.
But circumstances prevented their visit to the Larian Lake, for at Milan letters awaited Sir Walter from home, and among them one that hastened his return.From a stranger it came, and chance willed that the writer, an Italian, had actually made the journey from Rome to London in order that he might see Sir Walter, while all the time the master of Chadlands happened to be within half a day's travel.Now, the writer was still in London, and proposed to stop there until he should receive an answer to his communication.He wrote guardedly, and made one statement of extraordinary gravity.He was concerned with the mystery of the Grey Room, and believed that he might throw some light upon the melancholy incidents recorded concerning it.
Sir Walter hesitated for Mary's sake, but was relieved when she suggested a prompt return.
"It would be folly to delay," she said."This means quite as much tome as to you, father, and I could not go to Como knowing there may be even the least gleam of light for us at home.Nothing can alter the past, but if it were possible to explain how and why - what an unutterable relief to us both!""Henry was to meet us at Menaggio."
"He will be as thankful as we are if anything comes of this.He doesn't leave England till Thursday, and can join us at Chadlands instead." "I only live to explain these things," confessed her father."I would give all that I have to discover reasons for the death of your dear husband.But there are terribly grave hints here.I can hardly imagine this man is justified in speaking of 'crime.' Would the word mean less to him than tous?"
