Oriole's daughter, a novel, Volume 2 (of 3)

The visit was only as long as Fulvia had said it would be. Nothing that Minna could say prevailed upon her to stay two nights instead of only one. She passed the evening with her friend, and partly with Signor Oriole—that is, he dined with them, and joined them afterwards in the drawing-room for a short time, but afterwards went, as usual, to his study, to Minna’s great disappointment. She had indulged in vague, dim ideas and hopes on the subject of this meeting, desiring that it should, somehow or other, bring Fulvia and her father together. It had apparently done nothing of the kind. They were civil to one another, amiable, pleasant, and nothing more. Neither seemed oppressed by the other’s company, but, on the other hand, neither seemed anxious to be left alone with the other, or to be much together. It was perhaps quite natural, Minna owned with a sigh, as she saw Signor Giuseppe withdraw, leaving her and Fulvia together.

‘I think you will be awfully tired, Fulvia, if you return to-morrow afternoon.’

Fulvia laughed.

‘Tired. I am never tired. I am very strong,’ she said, raising her head and throwing her shoulders back. ‘To make fatigue an excuse for staying would be ridiculous indeed.’

On the following morning she went with Minna and her niece Rhoda, a rather awkward, ‘leggy’-looking girl, with a promise of future good looks, on an expedition to the Hall, to look at it and judge of its suitability for their purpose. She said little, but that little was favourable. Coming back to lunch, she expressed herself satisfied with all she saw of it and its appurtenances. The solicitor of the family who wished to let it was in London, and from him she could obtain all necessary particulars.

‘I shall give my husband a good account of it,’ she said. ‘I shall try to persuade him to come. And if we come, we shall come soon.’

When lunch was over, at which Signor Giuseppe was again present, the two women went together to Minna’s drawing-room, where they were alone. Rhoda and Signor Giuseppe, who were the firmest of friends, went away, first to do a Latin lesson, and then to take a long country walk. Fulvia looked thoughtful as she seated herself, and said:

‘Though he is so changed, he is just the same as ever. He makes all the young people happy who come near him. I see it is the same with that niece of yours. I could find it in my heart to envy her.’

‘He is assuredly very good to Rhoda. She is having a most unconventional bringing-up. Latin and Italian with Signor Oriole, some everyday grammar and geography and arithmetic with Mr. Howard, our old curate here. She gets some music lessons now and then. It is not her strong point. My brother teaches her something—a kind of social science, I think—and I——’

‘And you?’ asked Fulvia, with a smile.

Minna laughed.

‘My department may perhaps be that which in the well-known dame’s school was called, “Manners, twopence extra.”’

‘Rather more than manners, I think,’ said Fulvia, ‘if it is anything like what you did for me in Rome, so long ago.’

‘Don’t say I did it. I did what I could to comfort you, that was all. The root of the matter was in yourself, for it was only a short time that we were together. One could not tell then whether you were weak or strong. It seems strong.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Fulvia carelessly. ‘A great deal, I suppose, depends on one’s circumstances. Perhaps if I had been exposed to poverty and struggle, and disappointments of that kind, I might not have been so ‘strong’ as you call it. Some natures are strong in one way, some in another. The fact is,’ she went on, looking at Minna with the same open, candid smile, ‘I was not born for poverty, Mrs. Hastings, nor for obscurity. I don’t say it boastfully, but because I know it to be absolutely true. My mother knew my nature better than I did myself when she arranged my marriage.’

‘Fulvia!’

‘Well?’ said Fulvia, looking calmly at her. ‘You look appalled, amazed. What I say is perfectly true. I found it out—well, very soon after I was married; at the same time, in the same moment, I may say, as that in which I began to value my diamonds.’

‘No,’ said Minna in a tone of pain, ‘you do not think so. You are saying it just for—for——’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Ebbene! For what?’ asked Fulvia tranquilly. ‘Do you not like me to say it?’

‘I hate you to say it.’

‘What would you prefer me to say? That I have been and am a miserable woman? That I was crushed by my lot? That I had not the power to meet my circumstances, and with a strong hand to control them, instead of letting them control me? That is the only other thing that I could say. And yet you have just been praising me for being strong, a kind of praise which, I flatter myself, I deserve to a certain extent.’

Again Minna was silent. Had she spoken the truth, given utterance to the feeling that was in her heart, deep down, she would have said: ‘Yes, I had rather in truth have heard that your bravery and strength were employed to conceal the saddest of hearts, than that you had no sadness to conceal. I would rather you had been sad to the last day of your life than that your conquering strength had crushed, not only your adverse circumstance, but your highest and best self, your soul, your heart. For that is what it comes to when you say you are satisfied. I do not wish you to be satisfied with this.’

‘I don’t mind telling you about it,’ Fulvia went on. ‘You were so kind to me when I was such a silly, miserable girl. I don’t forget old kindnesses, and I should like you to know me as I am—no better and no worse. I was miserable for ever so long—worse than miserable, dark, wretched, despairing. Oh, it was awful, that hard, dry wretchedness that eats into your soul like some hideous corroding disease! I made up my mind at once to cut myself adrift from my old life, absolutely and entirely. I did not even write to Beppo, as you know. I had been made to do what I didn’t want to do. We all hate that—naturally. I was vexed, cross, and even furiously angry. But I got over it. I found it was worth while to get over it, and that, on the other hand, to sulk and pout, and cry till my eyes were scarlet all round, and my nose like a beetroot, was not worth while. Do you know when I first felt that—that it was worth while to get over it?’

‘How can I know?’

‘It was at a great ball in London, at a very grand house to which we had been invited through an Australian Minister then staying in London, who could not afford to risk my husband’s displeasure. There was money in the question, of course; there always is,’ said Fulvia, smiling again. ‘We went to this ball. I was in a very bad humour. I had all sorts of silly, sentimental scruples about putting on my white satin and diamonds and pearls—a lamb dressed out for the sacrifice, a kind of Iphigenia, you know, and all the rest of it. Dio mio! what nonsense! What a self-important, self-conscious bambina, I was! I had to go, whether I liked it or not. I had been crying in the morning, and my husband was very angry with me. He had threatened me with all sorts of vague but terrible punishments if I did not, as he called it, rise to the occasion and pull myself together a bit. And I will tell you something else—a most ridiculous thing. I had just passed my seventeenth birthday; the fearful and wonderful hours at which the entertainments began, to which we went, were a physical trial to me. Things are late in Rome too, of course, but, then, I hadn’t been to any things, except occasionally. I was a mere child. I craved my sleep, my beautiful long, unbroken sleep that I had always enjoyed till then. Sometimes I used to fall asleep while my maid was dressing me for one of those functions, and had hard work not to do so when I got to them—not to yawn in the face of my partner at dinner or in a dance. This time, however, I was excited even before we arrived at —— House. It was all very new to me. I had never been at anything like that before. I was at first so shy and sad that I kept very quiet, and was thus saved from committing some solecism or making a fool of myself somehow. As the evening went on, I found that people were looking at me. I found that men were asking to be introduced to me. They were such wonderful men, it then seemed to me—so utterly different from any men I had ever seen before. I saw in their eyes that they found me beautiful. They talked to me, and when they found that I had to keep eking out my still scanty English with Italian, they were more than ever delighted with me. Some few of them spoke my native language more or less badly—generally more so, I must say. In short, I was a great success. I was introduced to a Royal Personage, who said some excessively commonplace things to me, and was himself excessively amused at my initiating several remarks; but he said he liked it, so my reputation for charming originality grew apace. I felt that I was a person of distinction. My husband came up to me once during the evening, and whispered into my ear, “You will do. Keep it up like this, and I’ll give you whatever present you like to ask for.” I could not quite tell what it all meant, but it made my head feel gay and excited. It took me away from my miseries. It was pleasanter to think of than——’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Our home life was not altogether enchanting. During the evening I was dancing in a quadrille with a very handsome young Englishman, and just opposite to us was a countrywoman of his. She also was very handsome. I saw that she looked at me a great deal, but of course did not speak to me. I never made her acquaintance, though I often saw her afterwards. I don’t know how one gets to know these things, but one always does. I discovered that the season before she had been one of the greatest beauties of the year. She had had a good many offers, and amongst them one from my husband, whom she had refused very unceremoniously. Now she was hearing, or rather guessing, that on all sides people were saying that Marchmont had married someone more beautiful than she was. And though she did not in the least regret, I am sure, having refused him, yet she did not like to hear—and to see—that his wife did really surpass her in beauty. Yes,’ pursued Fulvia, ‘it was that evening, in the light of the hundreds of wax candles, and amidst all the beautiful flowers, beautiful women, and fashionable or distinguished men at —— House, that I first realized it was worth while to wake up, to be strong, to preserve my beauty and make the most of myself. I understood it. It came to me like a revelation. That was the life I was born for, and I was soon at home in it. It suits me, and I do not wish to exchange it for any other.’

‘You have never had any children?’ asked Minna quietly.

Fulvia started, surprised for a moment from her self-possession, and exclaimed, hastily and fervently:

‘No—no! Thank God, I never had a child. And now—I never shall.’

‘If the life suits you so admirably, it almost seems——’

‘Che! I am woman of fashion. What do women of fashion want with children? Lovers, on the other hand——’

‘Lovers! I hope you’ll never condescend to that.’

‘Oh, bah!’ said Fulvia, with superb amusement. ‘You don’t suppose I mean love in a serious sense? That is ridiculous. I suppose it exists—but not for people like me, not for people of my world. It would only hamper us——’

At this moment the door opened, and Signor Giuseppe walked into the room.

‘May I join you, as Fulvia is so soon leaving?’ he asked.

‘Oh, surely. Come in.’

He seated himself. ‘Do not let me interrupt you,’ he said to Fulvia. ‘I heard your voice as I was coming in. Go on.’

Fulvia hesitated a moment, looking almost embarrassed. Then, glancing down a little, she went on:

‘I was talking to Mrs. Hastings about my life and my occupations. As I was saying’—she looked again at Minna-‘falling in love would only be a great hindrance to us in our career. You see, everything is changed so—the relations of men to each other, of class to class, of order to order, and, above all, the relations of man and woman to each other. And the relations of women towards society and towards the world are changing wonderfully. It is recognised everywhere now—at least, by all who have their eyes open—that women are henceforward to play a different part in the world’s story. There is a class of woman now existing who will never marry, are never asked to marry, and are not a bit less happy on that account. And why? Because, though they will never marry, they have their clearly defined place in the world. There is a place for them now, though formerly there was none. They form one section, and a new one, of womankind—a sort of connecting link between men and women. I call them the third sex,’ pursued Fulvia to her silenced but not delighted hearers. ‘Then, again, there are the women who marry for love, for the purpose of living with their husbands in homes of their own, and having children, and perpetuating the practice and tradition of the great domestic virtues which are supposed to be so very firmly developed in this particular country.’ She smiled a little, not very genially. ‘They are valuable, too; in fact, we couldn’t very well do without them. But there are yet others who marry, sometimes consciously for position and influence and estate; sometimes unconsciously—sometimes they have it thrust upon them.’ She did not smile at all, and Minna felt that there was deadly earnest behind her calm manner. ‘At any rate, they enter upon that condition, and then they find that there is a world for them, too—a place for them, too, in public affairs, in the social parliament, in giving its tone to modern life in general. Such women necessarily have numbers of—well, whatever you like to call them: admirers, hangers-on, lovers—it’s an old-fashioned word. They know exactly what use to make of such a state of affairs; they know that feelings, and love, and all that kind of thing, are not for them. They have quite a distinct sphere—an influence and a world apart from all sentiment—except what happens to be fashionable at the time; and love no more enters into their calculations than it does into those of the women I first spoke of. They wield another kind of power. It is better suited to them, and better worth having—for them. In a vague, formless way everybody knows this. Some day it will be formulated and written about, and reduced to a system; and by that time fresh developments will be in the air. But sometimes one even of that order of women forgets herself, and somebody teaches her that she has a heart, and it runs away with her, and then——’

‘And then, there is the devil to pay,’ observed Signor Giuseppe, who had not lived for five years in England without picking up some terse native expressions, which he used often with singular point and correctness.

‘Exactly,’ replied Fulvia with a light, hard laugh, as she shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is because she is weak, then. She does not by nature belong to that order. The sooner that fact is proved, and she is relegated from it to another for which she is more suited, the better for her and everyone else.’

‘I think your doctrine a hard one, and a heartless one,’ said Minna, ever more and more constrainedly.

‘But—exactly!’ exclaimed Fulvia almost impatiently. ‘Have I not just been saying that heart is for one set of people only? There are others who are happier and better off without taking it into account. Surely it is better that they should know this, and should get the best out of their lives that is to be extracted from them, rather than spend their time in struggling after some impossible ideal, and dying discontented and misunderstood?’

Minna shook her head as she rang the bell for tea to be brought in. There was something wrong, fallacious and unreal about it, though it tripped glibly from Fulvia’s clever tongue. The most painful thing about it, to her, was that she could not make out whether Fulvia spoke in jest or earnest, for effect, or from a fully convinced heart.

‘Does your husband take any interest in all this?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Oh, my husband’s sole concern now is his ruined health, and his futile hopes of some time being well again. And in any case it does not much matter what he thinks about it. You know he was roturier to the backbone. He was nowhere in society. With all his money, he had no graces of his own with which to conquer a footing in it. It was I who did that for him,’ she said, raising her head a little, and both, as they looked at her wonderful beauty, pure in its outline, girlish still in its freshness, refined and proud, felt that what she said must certainly be true. ‘I won his place for him. It was for my sake that he was tolerated—yes, tolerated,’ she repeated, coolly meeting Minna’s eyes with unmoved calmness. ‘He knows it. Ill though he is, he does not wish to sink out of that world which it cost him so much money to enter. He does not quite like never to be able even to seem to hold the reins, but he would dislike it still more if I were to drop them, and put on a cap and apron, and settle down to nurse him, and never leave his bedside.’

Everything that she said, with such tranquil, quiet assurance, bore upon it the outward impress of truth. As Minna very well knew, such lives, such circumstances, did sometimes so adjust themselves, especially if the woman who was thrust into such a position proved herself strong and self-possessed. A weakling, in the circumstances, with this young woman’s beauty, temptations and absence of safeguards, would either have made some disastrous mess of her life, or would have sickened and pined away in sorrow. Fulvia Marchmont had done neither the one nor the other. She had strength of will and weight of brain, which had been ripened and developed with hothouse rapidity, very painfully and very early. Was that all? was the question which tormented Minna. Had the gentleness of her girl’s nature been quite killed? Was there no weak or vulnerable point, no bit of heart left unprotected by the steel mail of worldliness in which she had encased it? Was she happy, having really found what suited her nature and tastes and capacities? Or was the extreme contentment, amounting to complacency, at least half put on to conceal a void ‘behind the veil’? That was what Minna could not decide to her own satisfaction. The things which, in the whole conversation, had most perplexed and disheartened her had been Fulvia’s quiet statement that her mother had known best and decided wisely, her utter, cheerful calm in meeting Signor Giuseppe, and the bright, clear, dry glance with which she looked into his face, with its profound sadness—for profoundly sad it was, despite the softening influences of the last few years.

‘I shall try one more test,’ Minna decided within herself, and after a little while she said:

‘You must not go away without coming to see my particular den, Fulvia. Come with me now. It is where I oftenest spend my time, so you will know where to think of me. Come with us, won’t you?’ she added, taking Signor Oriole’s hand, and drawing him along with her. They went through the hall to the other side of the house, where were two or three moderately sized rooms opening one out of the other.

‘Here is my sanctum,’ said Minna. ‘I don’t do any more sculpture now—nothing to speak of. That is the almost last real piece of work that I finished—really finished, you know. Do you remember it?’

She pointed with her finger to the bust of Fulvia the girl, and led Fulvia the woman up to it, and made her stand in front of it.

For a moment her lips twitched, her eyebrows contracted. She did not speak for some time, but stood quite steadily and motionless before the bust, her hands lightly folded one over the other. At last she said:

‘I am sure it was an excellent likeness. I can see my present features exactly.’ She smiled, and drew her forefinger down the line of her nose. ‘And the eyes and the forehead, and the way the hair grows—it is myself exactly, even now. But the expression! Did I really look such a woebegone, sentimental, lackadaisical creature as that?’

She laughed, and turned inquiringly to Minna, who replied in a slow, sad voice:

‘Yes, you looked even so sad as that; and you felt even so sad as that.’

Again a little impatient shrug of the shoulders, and a smiling ‘Dio mio! I must have been a very depressing companion.’

She turned to find Signor Giuseppe standing just behind her, gazing with intense, wistful earnestness through his spectacles, alternately at her and at the likeness. His face was full of some kind of emotion. She resolutely declined to notice it, but said to Minna:

‘I think it is an awful pity that you do not work any more at such things as this. If you had been a poor woman you would have had to do it, and you would have earned name and fame.’

‘Possibly,’ replied Minna dryly, as they went out of the room.

Fulvia would not sit down again. She said it was high time to get ready for her drive to the station, as she would not miss the train on any account.

She had gone, almost promising to return and bring her husband to Yewridge Hall. Minna, back again in her own house, went straight to her den, threw aside her hat and gloves, sat down in a chair directly in front of the bust—the work of her own hands—and looked intently at it, interrogating it, entreating it. So sad—so unspeakably sad and grieved—that girl’s face! So firm, so bright, so apparently untouched by grief or care, untroubled by any wish save for power, and conscious pleasure in possessing a great deal of it, that of the woman! Yet the cold marble, with the look of one who was sad unto death, was not really as lifeless as the living woman, who smiled and talked and spoke brightly and took a superficial interest in all that was going on.

Minna started, and her eyes dilated. Had she at last got the clue to the transformation? What were the words that tried to take shape in her mind as she looked at the immovable marble, and thought of the marble endowed with life now on her way to London? The name of an old play, the words of some old proverb—‘Killing no Murder.’

‘That is it!’ she exclaimed aloud, and then, looking again and again at the sweet sad lips which she herself had carved, she said in a whisper to herself:

‘No, it is worse than that; it is murder no killing! That is the answer to the enigma; I know it is. It was her own mother who did it. Oh, horrible, horrible! She murdered, without killing her! Her soul is dead—that’s what it is—poor little Fulvia’s beautiful soul and warm, beating heart—murdered; while her body and her brain are left to live on alone. How I used to wonder, just after she was married, how it would end, what turn it would take with her—crush her, or harden her, or kill her! It has been the moral death. She is murdered, and is yet living.’

There are moments in the lives of most of us in which some great truth comes home to us with overpowering force. It may be uttered by other lips, and may from them strike straight into our souls, as the answer to some strange and puzzling problem over which we have been brooding. The sight of a picture; the notes of a song, or of some instrument of music; the prospect of clouds in the heaven, or rain sweeping across the fields; the wail of the wind on a stormy day or night: any or all of these may, with a lightning-quick flash of intuition, crystallize the idea which has been floating in a state of solution in our minds. Such intuitions have the value of spiritual revelations—they are beyond proof; they may even be disproved theoretically—they can never be the less true and real to those who have experienced them; and although every voice on earth should uplift itself and pronounce them false, it were useless. He or she who has been thus, as it were, smitten in the face, in the heart, and in the soul, by one of these flashes of spiritual insight, never more has the power to disbelieve it.

Such a revelation came at that moment into the heart of Minna Hastings, as she sat with her hands clasped round her knees, and looked up at her own handiwork, standing on its pedestal, and gazing forth with nameless sadness into life.

Minna had never had a child of her own; she had, however, above all things, a mother’s heart, and craved with unspeakable craving for motherhood. All children and young things were dear to her: they all loved her and confided in her. She had known many girls since her own girlhood; had heard from their own lips the histories of their griefs and joys, their hopes and fears; had loved them, counselled them, admonished them, been patient and kind and helpful to them; but she had never loved one of them with such a love as that which she had borne to Fulvia Dietrich. Of all the girls she had known, Fulvia was the one whom she would most have desired to be her own child. It swept over her heart now, this deep love, like a great wave, strong as ever, pitiful, yearning as ever, and she knew how Fulvia’s lot had saddened her own bright life. She realized what that sudden meeting with her had meant. As she looked and looked, her sadness increased, till it was almost more than she could bear. Great tears gathered in her eyes, fell from them, rolled down her cheeks and into her hands, and before she knew what was happening she was shaking with sobs—the sobs of an endless pity and compunction, the sobs of one who would fain help to overthrow some great wrong, heal some immense grief and injustice, and who cannot.

Without her being aware of it, the door of the room had been opened by someone who had knocked twice and received no answer. It was Signor Giuseppe, who came in and first made her aware of his presence by laying his hand upon her shoulder.

‘Why are you weeping?’ he asked in a husky voice. ‘I could not wait any longer. Why do you weep? Has she been complaining? Has she told you her griefs?’

‘No,’ said Minna sadly. ‘I wish she had; it would have been better. I should have felt happier if she were crying all day, than that she should have become what she is. You will see; you must know what I mean.’

‘I know what you think,’ he said slowly.

‘And don’t you think the same?’

‘I don’t know. We shall see, as you say. She practically promised me to come here.’

‘Promised you? When?’

‘I saw her alone for a few minutes,’ he said with a smile. ‘It was before lunch—before she made that brilliant dissertation to you on the subject of women and their spheres. I diritti della donna,’ he added with a little laugh. ‘It sounded very well. She is a brave girl, that Fulvia! She will come here and be near us.’

But Minna, looking at the marble likeness of Fulvia Dietrich, shook her head, and her heart misgave her.

END OF VOL. II.


BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.