Part 4, Chapter XXVIII.
Signor Arthur.
“The sound of a voice that was still.”
Madame Cellini was not likely to be shy of making a new acquaintance, nor were her young companions accustomed to the profound seclusion in which Italian girls are usually trained. Rosa would have accepted an intimacy with a compatriot readily enough, and even Violante was used to a certain amount of intercourse with her father’s friends. Here at Caletto Madame Cellini had a few intimates, and when Arthur Spencer lingered on there she discovered that French formed a possible medium of communication, and took a great fancy to the pleasant-mannered young Englishman.
“Folly, Rosina!” she said, as Rosa ventured a remonstrance. “I read your fears. You think the Signor Inglese at the late looked too often above his music at our Violantina. Never fear! So will many another. And as for Signor Pinchere, talk to him yourself, Rosina!”
And the old lady gave an indescribably mischievous smile, and then laughed broadly. Rosa was angry, but she did not choose to enlighten Madame Cellini any further as to the real state of the case; and, unable to prevent the intercourse by Italian restrictions, nor to justify it by the more English manner of ignoring the possibility of a chance acquaintance signifying to anyone, she was obliged to leave it in the neutral ground of “being Madame Cellini’s way.”
She need not have alarmed herself. Arthur knew that it was all very amusing, and accepted it as an incident in his travels; but would not have cared if anything had turned his steps in another direction. Nothing, however, did turn them; so he tried to distract his thoughts by Madame Cellini’s wonderful stories, and to interest himself in her confidences about the young cantatrice whose career had been so suddenly checked. He had given the nearest town as an address where letters might find him, and having written to Hugh before his arrival he expected an answer. Somehow, Arthur’s thoughts turned to Hugh with a sort of fellow-feeling. He, too, was suffering; and perhaps would not only pity him, but would understand how no change of scene did him any good. If Hugh had but known! but he only thought that Arthur was well spared the sight of him.
Arthur, however, congratulated himself on having obtained some materials for a letter to Jem, a little less like a guide-book than his ordinary correspondence, describing old Madame Cellini, and telling the wrong end of Violante’s history. “She was to have made a great sensation, and married the manager, and the poor child lost her lover and her voice at once. So she looks sad and pathetic; and isn’t it a miserable little story for the sunny south? You write too anxiously about me. I am very well, and make a fair fight for it. If that poor little girl can hold up her head after such a storm, one ought to have better courage.”
Violante was as unconscious of the garbled form in which her story had reached the English stranger’s ears, and of the reflections which he drew therefrom for his own benefit, as she was of the connection of Signor Arthur—or Arturo, as he had taught Madame Cellini to call him, finding her conceptions of his surname beyond correction—with the chief actor in it. But she felt drawn towards him, and ceased to be shy of one so kindly in manner, while a sort of instinct of fellow-feeling made her say, after a few days, to Rosa: “She was sure Signor Arthur was unhappy, and she wondered why.”
“I think he seems very cheerful,” said Rosa, rather dryly.
“Still, I am sure,” persisted Violante; but news came to them at this time which put Signor Arthur entirely into the background. Rosa received a letter from her uncle, Mr Grey, which suggested a complete change in all the conditions of their existence. It bore date from his house in Kensington, and ran as follows:
“My dear Rosa,—
“Your aunt and I have been very sorry to hear of Violante’s illness and of the change it has made in her future prospects. Under the circumstances we have always felt that it was best that she should pursue the career that your father marked out for her, and have never entertained any prejudice against it. But as she has lost the exceptional power that made it expedient, and is still, I believe, under eighteen, it seems desirable that she should turn her mind in another direction. I do not know what openings your father could find for her in Italy; but as you write that things are somewhat at a stand-still with all of you, I wish very much that you and she should come and pay us a long visit, after which you might form such plans as seem desirable. If you were likely to remain in London I think I know where you could find pupils, and as for Violante, as she is so young, it is possible that she might make up her mind to finish her education at an excellent school, where her music and her Italian would be helpful, and where your aunt’s recommendation would be quite sufficient. However, this is for the future; and in the meantime your cousins will be delighted to see you both, as will also your aunt and myself. With love to Violante,—
“I am, your affectionate uncle,—
“Richard Grey.”
Rosa was sitting under the verandah of the cottage where they lodged as she read this letter. Great flowering creepers and large-leaved vines shaded her from the sun; before her stretched the fair Italian landscape, and at a little distance Violante was feeding and playing with a little white kid, the pet of the household; while two little brown-skinned girls, the children of their landlady, were chattering away to her at the top of their Italian voices. Violante had scarcely ever known a child in her limited life at Civita Bella, but she had taken to these little ones from the first of her coming to Caletto, and delighted in their society. With her short, curly hair and slender shape, she looked scarcely more than a child herself, and resembled nothing less than a disappointed prima donna.
Yet, after all her history, there seemed something ridiculous in the idea of sending her to school, something utterly incongruous in the thought of that Kensington house in a London atmosphere, with the blue southern skies and the marble palaces of her native town. It was strange; but Rosa—who had practically been very happy in an ordinary English life and was by far the best fitted of the party to resume it—could not help regarding the loss of Violante’s future, and of their somewhat rambling artistic career, with a half-sentimental regret. She felt, like her father, that it was a come-down, that something had been lost that could never be regained. She called to Violante and put the letter into her hand.
Violante sat down on the step, and read it carefully through in silence.
“Well, Violante, what do you think?” said Rosa.
“I have been thinking—much,” said Violante softly.
“Indeed? What about?”
“Myself,” replied the girl. “Rosa, father would be happier without me now I cannot sing. When he sees me he thinks: ‘Ah, what she might have been!’ It breaks his heart, I know it.”
“I think father might do very well with out us for a time, and then he might himself come to England,” said Rosa.
“And,” said Violante, “I know nothing—nothing but my music, but I think now—now that is over, I could learn.”
“But you would not like to go to school, Violante?”
“It does not seem possible to have what we like,” said Violante; “but it would not be like acting.”
“No, indeed!”
“And I must work somehow. And, oh, Rosa mia! how my heart would ache if father every day looked at me and grieved, and we had no money.”
“Yes, my darling, that would be hard for you. But, oh, Violante! to think that all we hoped for you should end like this!”
“I am very sorry,” said Violante, meekly; “but I think our uncle will be kind, and—we cannot help it; let us go.”
So it was Violante who spoke the common-sense consenting words and recognised the new necessity. But, indeed, since all her faculties had not been absorbed in the effort to perform an impossibility, a new self-reliance seemed to have come upon her and her unreasoning terror had disappeared. Soft and clinging she must always be, as she laid her head on Rosa’s knee and whispered: “We shall both go, Rosa mia! we shall be together.” But the strange land seemed to have no terror for her. Either she feared her father and Civita Bella more, or some strange unrecognised attraction hung over her lover’s country. Did Hope, with her wings cut, still flutter feebly at the bottom of her heart; or was it merely that a glamour still hung over English life and English people that made the novelty attractive instead of dreadful? Did she think an English school-girl less removed from Hugh Crichton than an Italian cantatrice? She thought nothing of all this, but she recognised, without an effort, that it was right to accept her uncle’s invitation. Those secret unknown currents, below our wishes, below our sense of duty, below our resolutions, can float the ship against the wind, or hold it back, spite of a fair breeze and all sails unfurled.
“If an English winter should be too cold for you?” said Rosa.
“Oh, I am so much better. I don’t think it will hurt me. You know I never feel strong in the heat.”
“Well,” said Rosa, “I shall like to see the girls again very much.”
“You used to talk of Beatrice and Lucy.”
“Yes, Lucy is married, you know. Then there are Mary and Kitty, my pupils, a little older than you; and Charlie divides the two pairs of girls. Ned is the youngest. Yes—I shall like to see them all. How strange to be in England again!”
Rosa sat silent and thoughtful. After all, it was not four years since that English life of hers had ended abruptly with her mother’s death; and four years is not a very long time in which to lose vivid impressions. She had grown up almost ignorant of her parents and little sister; and when she was a bright, handsome girl of twenty, full of ardour and enthusiasm, she made, in the course of a set of private theatricals, the discovery that she had a taste and talent for acting of no ordinary kind. She did not love teaching, and reversed Violante’s subsequent history by trying with all her might and main to gain her uncle’s consent to earn her living on the stage. She was in the full tide of an enthusiasm which was only increased by opposition, and which no one expected in the good sedate girl who was her aunt’s right hand, when—a new acquaintance, a few weeks’ intercourse, a few opposing hints, and Rosa’s persistency drooped and faded, and her hot Italian nature took another turn.
He could not marry an actress. Poor Rosa! either circumstances were irresistible or she was deceived altogether; but she sacrificed ambition to love, for it was a sacrifice, and the love failed her too. She never knew what separated them; but it was well for her that the summons home took her right away from both disappointments, and gave her an object in life in Violante.
She was a brave, strong girl, and she had won the battle. How she had mistrusted and hated Hugh Crichton none could say! How she had dreaded her own fate for Violante! Now, when she thought of returning to England, that first ambition returned in a more moderate form to her mind. She felt fairly certain of her own powers, and the attraction of the life was undiminished; but she felt that it would be almost impossible to fix herself permanently in England, and that, now that Violante was useless, she would probably be obliged to take a larger share in earning the family living. She had expected that Violante would regard the idea of a visit to England with horror, and was relieved, though surprised, to find how easily she resigned herself to it.
Violante had a very clear picture in her mind of what it would be to go back to Civita Bella, idle and useless; freed, indeed, from the burden of her profession, but exposed to her father’s regrets and reproaches. Life had been very hard before, it would be very dreary and objectless now. The ghosts of happy and unhappy hours would alike haunt the familiar places; and England, over the thought of which a soft sweet halo rested, seemed like a refuge.
Mr Grey’s letter had been received on a Saturday, and on the Sunday morning Violante was sitting by herself on the terrace, doing what she called, with a reminiscence of her mother’s early training, “reading her chapter,” this being one of the few religious observances which had survived their unsettled life. Violante had a sort of half-superstitious reverence for the English Bible, her English mother’s gift. She always said her prayers in English, and dutifully read a chapter on Sunday. She was not very particular which; but since she had known Hugh Crichton she had indulged in some self-congratulation that her religion as well as her blood was English. Rosa had bestowed a small amount of technical instruction on her, but it fitted on to nothing; and as the elder sister had never thought it her duty to make Violante unhappy about the Sunday operas, which she could not have possibly avoided, and as Signor Mattei was nearly equally indifferent to his own religion and to theirs, Violante’s faith was chiefly negative. On this Sunday morning she sat, with her Bible in her hand, looking at the groups of peasants who were making their way to the little church, and listening to the bell tinkling softly through the murmur of the trees, and the sharper sound of the gay Italian voices. By-and-by they would dance under the trees. Violante began to wonder what Sunday would be like in England. She was surprised at herself for not having asked Rosa more questions about it; but her mind had been absorbed in its difficult present, and she had been first too passive for curiosity, and then too deeply-interested to express it.
As she mused Arthur Spencer came up the steps towards her, with that air of neatness and respectability that generally distinguishes an English traveller on Sunday. Violante perceived for the first time that he was in mourning, and was sufficiently interested to wonder why.
“Good morning, signorina,” he said.
“Good morning,” she answered. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
“Yes, very lovely, it will be getting cold at home, though.”
“I am going to England soon,” said Violante, with a sort of shy confidence, as she bethought her that here was a chance of satisfying her curiosity.
“Are you?” he said, rather surprised. “How is that?”
“We have an English uncle in London, and he has asked us to go and see him. Mamma was English,” said Violante, with a little unconscious pleasure.
“Ah, yes; so Madame Cellini told me. Do you think you shall like it?”
“Yes,” said Violante, “but I don’t know much about England. I wish you would tell me. I should like to seem like an English girl to my cousins.”
Arthur smiled.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said, kindly. “Does your uncle live in London?”
“Yes; he is a solicitor,” she said, repeating the well-known word with a little pride in its correctness. “But perhaps I am to go to school.”
“To school? You!” exclaimed Arthur, thinking of the opera and the manager-lover. “Should you like that?”
“I know nothing but music,” said Violante, blushing; “I never had any time. But I should like to learn. What is school like?”
Violante did not know why her companion turned away his head and made no answer for a moment.
“I can’t tell you much about girls’ schools,” he said presently. “I know one that must be rather a jolly place. I suppose the girls learn lessons, and go to walk, and have masters. I should think you would find it dull.”
“I should think it was peaceful,” said Violante, using a stronger word than she meant.
“Do you think so much of peace?” he said, rather sadly.
“It is because I have been so tired,” she answered simply, and he thought: “Poor little girl! she is fretting after the manager. But to send a prima donna to school; how ridiculous! Well, I won’t discourage her.”
“I know some school-mistresses who are very kind and lively. My sister goes there. She is very happy,” he added aloud, but thinking to himself that even the liberal Miss Vennings would hardly admit a disappointed opera-singer to their school.
“And on Sunday, what do they do in England on Sunday? Oh, yes,” noticing that he glanced at her Bible. “Yes, we are Protestants, like mamma; but I did not often go to the service at the Consulate, because, of course, Sunday was an opera night. What do English girls do on Sunday?”
Arthur’s involuntary laugh at her naïve statement died away as her question recalled the very sweetest, brightest picture of his English Mysie, in her white Sunday dress, walking down the churchyard path.
For long weeks he had never spoken of her, never seen anyone who had ever heard her name. He felt a strange impulse to speak of her now, to hear of her, though it could only be from his own lips. It was easier to do so in the simple language necessary to make Violante understand so unfamiliar a picture, and to an auditor who would, he thought, only receive the impression that he chose to give.
“I knew an English girl,” he said; and, leaning on the wall, with his face turned away, he tried to describe Mysie’s Sunday—how she “taught the little peasants,” “went to church,” “sang hymns,” “walked about among the flowers,” it had all been very commonplace once, but as Arthur told it now it sounded to him like the Lives of the Saints.
“And she is dead?” said Violante, softly.
“How can you tell?” he exclaimed, astonished.
“Ah, signor, it was in the sound of your voice,” she answered, with an interest that would have been how greatly intensified had she known to whom she was speaking.
“Yes, you are right,” said Arthur, and something in his voice, repressed and almost stern, made Violante start and flush and quiver, for he spoke with the very tone of “Signor Hugo.”
Neither for a moment noticed the other, and then Arthur, perceiving that she was agitated, and not wishing to say more about himself, said kindly:
“I hope you will be a very happy ‘English girl,’ signorina.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Violante, “there is too much in the world for happiness.”
“Or—too little! But see, there’s your sister; she is looking for you.”
Violante started up, and, perhaps a little conscious of how much she had implied, ran down the steps towards Rosa.
“What a brute that manager must be!” thought Arthur. “But that creature in a school would be like a hare in a rabbit-hutch. Even Flossy couldn’t tackle such an incongruity. What a queer incident it is!” and a sort of half-impatient feeling crossed Arthur’s mind because he could not be excited and amused by it. He was so young and bright-natured that he got tired of grief, and yet his grief held him fast.
“I wish there was an Italian war up, and I could get myself shot!” he thought, and then his mind glanced wearily over the consolations often thought out so hardly, and that sometimes, and slowly, were having their effect. He tried to be resigned, and he longed, poor boy! not only for his lost Mysie, but for his lost light-heartedness. He strolled back to the inn at last, with a deep sigh; and found himself wondering what new queer sort of Italian dishes his black-eyed talkative hostess would produce for dinner.
Part 4, Chapter XXIX.
No Good at All.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
That same Sunday afternoon Signor Mattei walked slowly into Caletto, and seeking the lodging where he knew that his daughters were staying sat down under the verandah, with the feelings of a man who has come to a period in his life from which he sees no particular means of progress. Rosa and Violante were out, and he rested after the hot walk he had taken from the point where the nearest public conveyance stopped, and thought over the events of the last few weeks.
Things had gone wrong—his highest hopes were destroyed, and his more moderate comforts and expectations had shared in their fall. He was angry with Violante, and as he sat waiting for her blamed her in his heart for their misfortunes, in a way that would have been intensely cruel and selfish had he cared what became of himself. But he did not cherish an unforgiving resentment against her because she could no longer make their fortune and her own, but because she had lost the career that he so honoured. He would not have forgiven her could she have brought him riches gained in another way; but, though she had disappointed the man’s high ideal and not his self-interest, the disappointment recoiled just as hardly on her.
Signor Vasari had insulted and dismissed him, “esteeming his own private grudge better than his orchestra, where he cannot supply my place,” thought Signor Mattei, with a contempt that almost neutralised his mortification. “Who can play the violin solos as I can?” he thought proudly. “But old Naldi at Florence understands real genius—could I go and leave the girls alone? Rosa has unparalleled discretion and Violante will have no lovers now. Eccola! She is coming.”
Violante came round the corner of the house and started with a surprise not altogether delightful. However, reminding herself that she could be in no disgrace now, she ran up to him and kissed him.
“Ah, padre mio! How hot and tired you look. You have come to see us? Rosa will be here directly; she is with Madame Cellini. I will get you some melon; that will be cool and nice.”
Her livelier manner, her more blooming looks, were evident at a glance, as she ran into the house and brought out a slice of melon and then a glass of light wine.
“Is it good?” she said, with smiling earnestness. “I will take your bat and stick.”
“You look well—have you tried your voice?” he said abruptly.
“No, father;” answered Violante, with a sudden droop into her old timid self and falling into silence.
“It must surely be returning—in a few weeks.”
“Father, there is Rosa,” interrupted Violante hastily, as her sister and Madame Cellini came up the path.
Signor Mattei assumed a less anxious air; he was sufficiently in awe of Rosa not to wish her to find him reverting to the forbidden subject; and he came in and drank chocolate, which was now provided, and allowed himself to be made comfortable after his journey. Violante fell into the background, leaving Rosa to make the communication of their uncle’s letter. Madame Cellini, willing to give them an opportunity for their discussion, strolled away to look at the sunset, and Rosa handed the letter to her father, leaving it to tell its own story. The little tawny children peeped at Violante from a distance, and showed her the kid with vine-leaves round its horns; but she shook her head at them, and sat down demurely in the window, with a sort of good-child air herself, to listen to her father’s decision.
Signor Mattei had never shown any jealousy of his daughter’s English relations. He loved his wife’s memory; and, though his brother-in-law’s mode of life would have been totally uncongenial to him and it was well that they never met, he rather liked to talk of “the uncle—of the highest respectability—who could command the London musical world,” a power which would much have astonished Mr Grey himself; and the fact that Rosa, coming from this uncle, had been prepared to like her home life had greatly tended to obviate any uncomfortable feelings. Besides, to put it plainly, he wanted just now to get rid of his daughters, and their uncle’s proposal was exceedingly convenient to him.
“It has come,” he said, rather sentimentally, “to help our fallen fortunes. Now, with you in the lap of luxury, I can bend to the storm and suffer hardships willingly.”
Violante looked distressed, but Rosa answered:
“We do not wish to be idle wherever we are, and should always come to you when you wanted us. But as my pupils seem to be dispersed, and they have behaved so ill to you at the opera, some change seems desirable.”
“Assuredly, Rosina,—assuredly. Make yourself easy; anything will do for me.”
“But, father, what shall you do?” said Rosa—not very uneasily, for she knew from her father’s manner that he had schemes in view.
“I?—I shall take my staff in my hand and make my way to Florence. Old Naldi, my friend there, is a true musician.”
“And you will get an engagement at the opera there?” said Rosa.
“Yes, yes, it may be so; and next spring, perhaps, an opening in London: I am not unknown there.”
“That would suit exactly,” said Rosa.
“If by that time I had found employment in London, and Violante—Violante! ah, she is no good at all,” said Signor Mattei, mournfully—“she can do nothing.”
“I will go to school and learn,” said Violante, her voice choking.
“Ah, foolish child! there is but one moment in life when success is possible: pass that—pass all! You threw your chance away—it is over.”
The words fell on Violante’s ears with a double sense: she hid her face in her hands, and ran out of the room, down through the olive trees, towards the lake. “Over for ever!”—and she but seventeen. Was she never to have another chance,—another love?
“Ah, never! never!” she cried, half aloud, as the sleeping passion, lulled by the passiveness of her recovery and by her easy life, woke suddenly in all its force. “I had better die, for it is all over for me! Ah, Hugo,—Hugo mio! ah!”
The last cry dropped into startled commonplace as the branch of a tree caught her long muslin dress, and tore it right across, while she almost lost her footing with the shock.
“All, signorina, take care; you’ll hurt yourself,” said an unexpected voice; and “Signor Arthur” caught her by the hand and began to disentangle the unlucky dress.
“Dear me, I’m afraid it’s a good deal damaged,” he said, good-naturedly; “you should not run so fast.”
“I was—unhappy: so I did not see,” said Violante, simply.
The unhappiness was obvious, for Violante’s eyes were wet and her voice trembling. Yet Arthur could hardly help smiling at the utterly un-English confession. He thought she could only so have acknowledged some very childish sorrow.
“What makes you so unhappy?” he said, with equal directness.
“Because,” she answered, telling half a truth, “because my father is here, and I have lost my voice, signor; and he says I shall never have another chance in my life. All is gone in that one.”
Mistaken as Arthur was as to the facts of her story, he had heard enough to supplement her words; and the kindly impulse of consolation prompted him to say:
“Oh, no, you must not think that. There must be a great deal left in your life yet, and in England you can begin fresh. Perhaps your voice will get strong again there.”
“Ah, that may be,” said Violante, without any answering smile.
“Anyway, one must do the best one can and not vex other people,” he said, with a glance at a letter he held in his hand. Violante’s eyes followed his, but she only saw the bit of folded paper, little knowing that the mere sight of the writer’s name would have burst into her depression like a storm into mountain mist, and would have brought the past and the present together again; while Arthur went on, ignorant of how much vivid, unreasonable happiness he could with a few words have given to the creature he was trying so kindly to console. For even to hear of all Hugh’s recent troubles would have been better than not to hear of him at all; and the few reserved, incommunicative lines which had just disappointed Arthur would have seemed like a message from. Paradise.
“All sorts of pleasant things may come to you in England; so keep up a good heart, signorina.”
“Keep up a good heart,” repeated Violante, as if the expression was not quite familiar to her.
“Yes; don’t be frightened, you know, and never say die.”
Violante smiled now. The bright voice and look did put some heart into her; and Arthur, who had merely talked in the most cheering way he could think of, without considering, as Hugh would have done in like case, whether he had himself proved the truth of his words, felt all the brighter for his success.
“These are very unpeaceful olive-branches to have torn your dress so badly,” he said, after a pause, to turn her attention.
“Ah, yes; but I think I should like to keep a bit of them to remind me of keeping a good heart, and of never saying die,” said Violante, and the words sounded inexpressibly droll in her soft, lingering foreign accent. Arthur broke off a little piece and gave it to her.
“I might do the same,” he said. “I’m sure I need the motto.”
And so unconscious and so uncoquettish was Violante’s way that Arthur actually dropped the olive-leaves into his pocket-book without thinking of smiling at her proposal. “There,” he said, “we will remember.”
“I will try,” said Violante; “and there is Rosa. She will say it is late. Good night, Signor Arthur!”
“Good night!”
Violante repeated the advice, and showed her olive-leaves to her sister; but, though Rosa held her tongue by a great effort of discretion, Signor Arthur, on thinking over the transaction, was not very much surprised to find that he obtained no more private interviews with Violante. Perhaps Rosa was somewhat astonished that he did not seek any.
She had, however, much to occupy her in the arrangements for their journey. Signor Mattei, who was very far from selfish in practical matters, was quite ready to assign a sufficient portion of the money recently earned by Violante and himself to take his daughters respectably to England; and the whole party soon returned to Civita Bella to make preparations. Their small stock of furniture was to be sold, the ready-money being much more valuable to them. Violante tried to induce Rosa to pack up the china bowl among their private possessions, but Rosa refused steadily and a little harshly. She did not mean the old life to cling round her sister still.
“Give it to Maddalena,” she said. “We will not sell it, since you care so much.”
So Violante went to the old woman, whose grief at parting was, perhaps, really the most pathetic part of this break-up of home, and bid her keep the bowl “for her sake.”
“Ecco, carissima,” said Maddalena, “I have had a dream, and the dream-book tells me that it means a meeting and a joy, and thou shalt meet thy true-love, or another better, and then shall I give thee back the china bowl.”
Violante was not without some lingering belief herself in the dreams and visions which Maddalena had impressed on her all her life. So it helped her a little way on her new start in life when, the last night she slept on Italian soil, she dreamt that she gave Hugh an olive-branch and that he put it into the china bowl.
She needed every little help when she sobbed and wept at parting with her father, and begged him to forgive her all she had not done.
“Ah, child, you were no good,” he said. “But do not cry; be happy, since you will not be great.”
Signor Mattei turned away, when he was left to his solitude, with a certain sense of freedom. He laid his plans for going to Florence, and thought of the dream of his youth—an opera that he had never written, but which now, perhaps, might find its way from his brain to his fingers. But he could not lay his hand on the particular piece of music that he wanted, all the store of violin-strings were mislaid, his salad was made with bad oil, and he was so much at a loss for some one to find fault with that he rushed off to find old Maddalena in her new situation and accuse her of packing up his fiddle-strings in his daughters’ box. And Maddalena, having a sore heart of her own, reproached him so unreasonably with having driven her dear young ladies out of the country that she quite restored his self-complacency; and, having refreshed her spirits by this outbreak, she went back and found the violin-strings, and hinted that when il signor was settled at Florence he had better send for her to come and keep house for him.
Part 4, Chapter XXX.
New Kensington.
“The days have vanished, tone and tint,
And yet, perhaps, the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint.”
Mr Grey lived in a good-sized house in one of the newest squares in South Kensington. He had prospered in the world since his sister’s marriage, and having himself married a lady with money, was, spite of his large family, comfortably off, and belonged to that large class of Londoners who, by clever contrivances and well-managed economies, mix very happily in a society which is created and upheld by people much richer than themselves. The girls went to balls in cabs, but they appeared at them very well dressed and very agreeable. They did a great many things for themselves which many of their friends depended for on their maids; but though they did not give many parties in the season their entertainments were always pleasant ones. They were acquainted with a sprinkling of artists, authors, and actors, and were themselves alive to a good many different interests. They were also very kind, and were ready heartily to welcome their Italian cousins, not wishing in the least to sink Signor Mattei’s occupation; but rather, in a warm-hearted and perfectly genuine way, willing to make capital of what they knew of Violante’s sad little story, and to think that a young cantatrice whose prospects had been so suddenly overclouded was a very interesting kind of cousin. Moreover, Rosa was an old friend, and had always made herself loved and respected.
In some households the father, and in some the mother, is the leading spirit; but at the Greys’ the most prominent people were certainly the girls. Not that they usurped any place or power that did not naturally belong to them; but somehow there were so many of them, they were so available for any kind of entertainment, so good-natured, and so popular, that they were apt to be the first object in making the acquaintance of the family. There had been for a short time four Miss Greys in the world at once—the eldest being about the age of Rosa Mattei, the youngest some seven years younger. They were very much alike, with pretty features, fair skins, and abundant hair. All were good-looking; not one was a beauty. All could sing nicely, dance well, read books intelligently, act pleasantly at private theatricals; but not one of them had any prominent or conspicuous talent. Never were girls so clever with their fingers, so skilful in little matters of dress and contrivance, so obliging and cheerful, so free from jealousies, and so united among themselves. One never grudged another her partners, or her lovers, nor detracted in any way from another’s charms. They exchanged confidences freely on the state of their affections and their prospects, which they felt bound to further whenever they could. Rosa, not being quite prepared for this free and easy confidence, had carefully hidden her experiences from her cousins’ eyes, and had by so doing possibly lost a chance of a happy ending to them.
Since her time Lucy, the second, had married, and Beatrice, the eldest, had been engaged, and again disengaged—a circumstance which she had borne with an amount of common-sense and courage more easy to despise than to imitate, having returned to the interests of young ladyhood with apparently undiminished fervour and invincible good-nature. Mary, the third, was slightly the cleverer of the four, and had aspirations in less obvious directions; consequently, she fulfilled the claims of her actual state in life a little less perfectly; while Kitty, the youngest, was the softest, prettiest, and most attractive of them all, and had the greatest claim to stand alone as a beauty. The eldest son, Charlie, was at Oxford, and the youngest, Ned, in the Navy. Such were the relations who were now preparing to welcome Rosa and Violante among them.
It was early in November; many a tint of gold and russet was still brightening the woods round Oxley, but in the squares of Kensington scarcely a leaf was lingering; fogs began to prevail, and the streets looked more cheerful after the gas was lit than during the hours of dim and struggling daylight. Nothing outside could make the Greys’ drawing-room otherwise than bright and cheerful. With its pink curtains, its bright fire, its variety of little tables and chairs, all in the most convenient situations, and its pleasant, cheerful, young ladyhood, it was a very popular place, and the Greys rarely drank their afternoon tea in solitude.
On the present occasion, however, their only visitor was their sister Lucy. Mrs Compton and they were anxiously discussing the expected cousins.
“You see, Lucy,” said Beatrice, “we are not going to make any mysteries. We have told everyone how Violante was making quite a success in Italy when she lost her voice, and she’ll be quite a little lion for us.”
“Oh, yes, quite a catch,” said Mrs Compton. “And she would get endless pupils.”
“Yes; but you see Rosa writes that she is so very shy and childish she does not think it would be possible for her to go about teaching.”
“And so,” said Mrs Grey, “I have been writing about her to Miss Venning. I thought it well to be prepared before they came.”
“Dear me, mamma! You don’t think of sending her to school. Why, she would set the whole place by the ears.”
“I think she would break her heart,” said Mary.
“Rosa speaks of her as such a child.”
“Oh, don’t you believe it, mother. A girl can’t have been on the Italian stage, and brought up for it, and remain a child.”
“Well, Miss Venning says: ‘Your proposal is somewhat startling, but I have great confidence in your judgment; and if you feel that your niece would be suitable in herself, I will accept her antecedents, as Florence is wild to have her, and, of course, her music and Italian will be very useful.’”
“Well, I wish them joy of her, and she of them, though nothing could be nicer than dear old Rosa.”
“Yes,” said Miss Grey; “but do you remember her passion for going on the stage? She used to walk up and down my room and spout poetry till her eyes would flash! I can quite imagine that the little one might make an actress. But I daresay reality has destroyed that vision.”
“I hope so,” said Mrs Grey, “for I have heard of a very nice engagement for her after Christmas. Mrs Bosanquet’s little girls, you know, Lucy. Nothing would be better.”
“Well,” said Mrs Compton, “I always had an idea about Rosa. Do you remember that civil engineer—years ago—Dick Hamilton? He danced very well—was a partner of yours, Trixie. I always thought Rosa liked him.”
“I daresay she did,” said Miss Grey, calmly. “What became of him? He was very ugly, but had a sort of way—I remember.”
“Oh, I believe he went to India. I haven’t heard of him for ages. We met him, I recollect, at one of those delightful parties at the Stanforths. How are those dear people, by the way?”
“Very well. Mr Stanforth is doing some wonderful pictures. One always meets nice people there. Mary and Kitty made a new acquaintance the last time they went, and he has ripened very fast. He’s in a public office and adores art and music. Kitty sings him German songs.”
“He’s going to get up theatricals with the Stanforths—one of us is to help,” said Kitty.
“Oh, and you wish that ‘one’ may be you, I suppose,” said the married sister.
“What’s your friend’s name, and where does he belong?”
“Crichton—Spencer Crichton. I don’t know where he comes from. I don’t think his friends live in London.”
“Violante Mattei will cut you out, Kit,” said Mrs Compton, lazily.
“I daresay,” said Kitty. “It’s all right if she does. But we thought the Stanforths would be a good place to begin taking her to. They’re so kind and jolly, and they like oddities.”
“And you expect them any time now?”
“Yes; almost at any moment. I do hope we shall all get on together.”
“Oh, no fear,” said Kitty. “We can just let each other alone if we don’t.”
These good-natured girls fully intended their cousins to have a fair share of all their little amusements and excitements, including the admiration of their acquaintances and the possibility—it seemed a very distant one for these foreign, penniless girls—of admiration growing to something more, where the ground was not preoccupied. But, at any rate, Rosa and Violante should have their share of attention and pleasure, and should do their share in making the house and drawing-room the most agreeable in Kensington.
Being so agreeable, it was not strange that James Crichton, the most sociable of civil servants, should put it on his list of pleasant houses for dropping in at; since his own lodgings were about the last place where Jem ever thought of spending an evening; but it was, perhaps, a curious turn of fate that brought him to the Greys on this particular occasion, with some tickets for a popular play, right into the midst of the discussion on the Italian cousins. James had so many acquaintances in all sorts of worlds, that he had always orders and tickets, magazines and new books, with which to repay the civilities of his friends; and he was proceeding to criticise the actress whom they were going to see when Mary Grey said:
“We must take Violante.”
Jem’s attention was so evidently arrested by the name that Mrs Grey said:
“We are expecting some Italian cousins, Mr Crichton. My husband’s sister married an Italian gentleman devoted to music. His daughters, Rosa and Violante Mattei, are coming to stay with us. We expect them to-night.”
Words would fail to express James’s utter amazement. He said:
“Indeed—exactly so. Are they?” in tones of conventional interest. He would have been scarcely more surprised if the blue china cat on the cabinet before him had jumped off and purred in his face.
The solemn and sorrowful events that had occurred since his tour in Italy had greatly obliterated from his mind the recollection of his brother’s holiday romance. It seemed to have no connection with anything that had come before or after it; and James was of opinion that they were all well out of a great difficulty in which Hugh’s inconvenient intensity of feeling had nearly plunged them. His remembrance had been revived by Arthur’s letter about Violante, which he had answered with great caution, merely stating that he had seen Violante act, and that Hugh had attended her father’s singing classes—the last place where Arthur would have expected to hear of him. For Jem regarded Hugh with some awe, and Hugh’s feelings as a sort of tinder that might flame up on the smallest provocation. But evidently she had not married the manager, whom James had frequently blessed in his heart as a perfect safeguard. What would Hugh say when he knew this—would Arthur tell him? James was not in the habit of corresponding with Hugh; if he wrote him a letter on purpose it would look as if he thought the encounter of consequence. However, as the letter was consolatory as regarded Arthur’s health and spirits, he satisfied his conscience by sending it on to Hugh, merely writing across it, “Odd, isn’t it? How people do turn up!” and Hugh had made no response to the communication at all!
But this turn of affairs was certainly odder still.
“I have seen those young ladies,” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “I joined my brother last May in Civita Bella, and I saw Mademoiselle Mattei make her first appearance.”
“Indeed, did you really? Ah, poor child! Her health failed and she lost her voice. Such a destruction to her prospects! Everything seemed turning out well for her. However, we hope she may ultimately return to Italy and to her profession.”
“Does that mean the manager?” thought Jem, while one of the girls said:
“Do tell us what she is like.”
“I only saw her once off the stage,” said Jem, in a dry way, unlike his usual effusive manner. “Her voice was very beautiful.”
“Oh, but you will be quite an old friend among strangers. And your brother—but he doesn’t live in London, I think?”
“No; in the country,” said Jem, for once incommunicative. “My people don’t often come to London, and lately we have been in trouble at home. But I shall be in your way if there is any chance of their arriving to-night. Mrs Grey, let me wish you good evening.”
“Well, you must look in some day and talk about Italy to my nieces.”
“Oh, thanks—very happy—I’m sure,” said Jem, getting away as fast as he could, in a much-disturbed frame of mind.
If the story had concerned anyone but his brother he would have liked nothing better than an encounter with a beautiful girl with this semi-sentimental tie between them—with half-allusions to the past, sympathy, confidence, mutual recollections—the shadowy lover would have made the flirtation both safe and interesting. “But,” as he said to himself, “there was never any knowing how old Hugh would take things!” he had not seen him for some time, as Hugh had declined various invitations to London, and had remained entirely by himself at the Bank House. It was Mrs Spencer Crichton’s intention to spend Christmas at Bournemouth, where George and Frederica were to join her for the holidays, Hugh preferring to remain at Oxley; but directly afterwards she had determined to return to Redhurst and begin home life again.
“After his taking no notice of the letter,” thought Jem, as he came into the club, “must I go and insist on forcing them on him? What can have brought them to England? Any idea of finding him, I wonder? I think I’ll run down and mention it casually. Wish I’d never got acquainted with those people. Hallo! why, Hugh—Hugh! What brings you here?”
“I was obliged to come up on business, and I thought I should find you here—sooner or later,” said Hugh, thinking his brother’s excitement unnecessary.
“Of course. Delighted to see you! Do you go back to-night? You’ll have some dinner? Here, waiter!”
While James gave his orders and uttered various inconsecutive remarks he furtively watched his brother, whom he had not seen since they had parted in the general break-up nearly three months before. He thought that Hugh looked aged, and, though he did not appear to be exactly ill or miserable, there was an absence of brightness or comfortableness about him, which Jem hardly thought accounted for by the fact that he was probably cold and hungry.
But Hugh, by word and letter, was imperturbably silent as to the history of those three solitary months, their morbid imaginings, their tortures of self-reproach, their loneliness and dulness, without the cheerful family life to which he was unconsciously accustomed. Hugh began by thinking that he was too miserable to care for anything external, and ended, though he was for from admitting it, by missing the children’s croquet and his mother’s wool-work and all the framework of home life. But he still felt a sort of fierce satisfaction in punishing himself, and would have been ashamed to grasp at the slightest relaxation, even if it had been without the knowledge of those whom he felt himself to have injured.
However, he allowed Jem to exercise his hospitality, which was an improvement on his old housekeeper’s mutton chops; and, in fact, was sufficiently well-occupied not to notice his brother’s unusual silence. At last James said:
“So, mother’s coming home after Christmas?”
“Yes, so she says.”
“I wonder what Arthur will do.”
“I don’t know,” returned Hugh, gravely.
“He writes in tolerable spirits. Odd, wasn’t it, his coming across those girls?”
“Very odd.”
“Things are—awfully odd. I’ve made a sort of acquaintance lately—some people called Grey—live at Kensington. They’re very musical and know all sorts of people.”
“Indeed!” said Hugh.
“Yes, I was there to-night. Such a nice house they have! One of the pleasantest places to drop in at—no stiffness or formality. They’ve got some cousins—Italians.” Here James began to stir the salt violently. “They’re expecting them to stay. Just imagine my surprise when I heard they were the two Matteis!”
Hugh set down his wine-glass, and looked entirely confounded. He did not speak a word, but fixed his eyes on his brother in silence.
“She lost her voice, it seems,” said James; “and they asked her to come for a change with her sister.”
“Is she still engaged to be married?” said Hugh, hurriedly.
“Why, that’s what I can’t make out,” said Jem. “Arthur thought not, you see; but, from what her aunt told me, I think there may be some idea of it. I don’t think it’s impossible—”
“You need not alarm yourself,” suddenly interrupted Hugh. “The danger’s over. Whatever right I once thought I had to please myself in that way I have none now, and my life must have other objects.”
James was so horrified with this view of Hugh’s situation that he began vehemently to controvert it, and was ready to recommend a renewal of the acquaintance rather than the rejection of it on such a motive.
“What would they not be justified in saying now?” said Hugh—“and if not—I’m not the same man that—that—”
Hugh paused and drooped his head low, a sudden rush of recollection revealing how much of the same man remained.
“I’ve got to catch the Oxley train,” he said, getting up.
“Why, you’re never going back to-night! And I say, Hugh, you’ve been there by yourself quite long enough. Shall I run down, or why don’t you go to Bournemouth?”
“I don’t want any change, thank you,” said Hugh. “Good night,” and he was gone before Jem had time to mutter to himself, “I don’t know how it would be if he saw her, though!”
But Hugh, as he went out into the cold night, felt his brain in a whirl. He had had a change, whether he wished for one or not—a change of thought, and feeling, and association; a wave of feeling that seemed to make him conscious of what he used to be like at that time that seemed now like his whole past. But it was past, so completely that he did not even argue with himself against its return. His words were so far true that he could not have pushed his recent life aside, and sought out Violante again.
Only, now and then, as the days went by, she seemed to steal like a vision into his solitary rooms. He saw her finger the quaint old ornaments of his grandmother’s drawing-room at the Bank House, or sit on its narrow window-seats at work. But Redhurst and all his outer life was haunted by another vision—haunted as truly as if a spirit with wet white dress and covered face had really wandered over the frosty autumn meadows, or seemed to float on the dull waters, which no summer sun awoke to sparkling light.