They sat so late over their books that Paolo did not as usual insist upon accompanying Harry to the inn door. Paolo, for his part, had spent a very happy evening. He was learned in those bye-laws which so mystified Harry, and loved to enlarge upon them, and to impart information in any shape was a grateful exercise to him. He liked to do it, even when he was not—which he liked still better—doing a kindness to a friend; and he was proud of all the possessions which he had exhibited with such simple pleasure. It did not occur to him that his home, which he was so happy in, or the simple routine of life which he had set up for imitation, could fill any heart with dismay. He found himself perfectly comfortable in it, why should not his amico do the same? No doubt of the suitableness of this life to one as to another crossed his simple mind. He crunched the biscuits which Harry disdained, and drank the black coffee at which Harry made wry faces, and was much pleased with himself, and very happy to think that he was setting before his friend the best way to walk in. He was scarcely so pleased with himself however when he was over-persuaded to allow Harry to go back to the hotel alone. “No, I will re-conduct you,” he had said at first; but Harry laughed at the unnecessary ceremony. Paolo stood at the top of the great black well of a staircase and held the lucerna to light his friend downstairs, standing patiently with the heavy lamp dangling from his hand till he had heard the door close at the foot; and then he rushed to his balcony to watch lest Harry should turn the wrong way, ready to scream out to him if he did so. Even when he had made sure that his friend had turned to the right, and not to the left, Paolo still shook his head. “I should have re-conducted him,” he said to himself. It was the only drawback to the perfect blessedness of the night.
It was a glorious night out of doors; the Italian moon was shining with a warmth and glory unknown to northern skies. Harry tried to think the moon was as fine in England, but he could not succeed in this; everything else was a great deal better in England, but there was something to be said for the climate here, one was forced to admit—even though one might not admit anything more. Harry walked home (as he called it by force of nature) with much subdued irritation and despondency, consequent chiefly on the apparent impossibility of ever having a sitting-room, or any place it would be pleasant to sit in again. The inn, though he called it home, was not less obnoxious to him, and he asked himself, good heavens, was it possible he should never—— He had got as far as this when another picture suddenly rose up before him, and in a moment changed all his thoughts. It was of a dim room, cool and dark in the midst of the sunshine, with a whiteness of floating curtains about the windows, and tables covered with books, and a white figure in a corner, close upon the open dark space of a window closed by green persianis, through which the air was blowing softly. Ah! he said, drawing a long breath, there was a kind of paradise! That was very different from the appartamento. It was dark in his memory, as it had been when he had suddenly stepped into it out of the bright day with so much surprise that he could but dimly recollect the appearance of the place. He wondered how it would look when the persianis were open, when the daylight got in, or at night when the lamps were lighted, when the place was fully inhabited?
Instinctively, without knowing what he was about, he turned into the street which led to the Consulate. His heart gave a jump against his breast when he saw that the persianis were all opened now, and that the lights in the room made it partially visible from the street. Evidently there was a party going on, and he felt a little pang of mortification to think that he had not been asked. There was a sound of music and a great deal of talk, talk that sounded exhilarating and delightful to Harry, though he would have felt himself a fish out of water had he been in the midst of the polyglot conversation that went on in the Consul’s drawing-room. A white figure was seated near the window, faintly visible within the white curtains. He wondered if it was hers? He screwed his eyes together as if he had been short-sighted, to try to see a little better, but this was what he could not make out. The sudden glimpse of this little bright world from which he was shut out arrested Harry all at once in his discontented thoughts. Here was something which would make up for all deficiencies. He stood for a long time under the windows, trying to hear the voices within, with no eavesdropping intentions, but only to console himself by the recollection that he had far more in common with the Vice-Consul’s house and his society than with Paolo, though he was so good a friend. And then he stood opposite and watched, seeing figures vaguely glide across the room, figures which the white curtains, swaying softly in the air, kept indistinct. He could not distinguish her, he allowed to himself; sometimes he thought he had traced her, but only to find himself deceived. Some one in the background was playing the piano softly, though nobody paid much attention. Harry could not tear himself away from the window. That was life, he thought to himself; a man who had that house to go home to need never be dull; and then he remembered, with a glow of warm satisfaction and pleasure, that on Sunday, no further off, he was to go there. He turned after this with a resolute step, and went back to the hotel and his dreary little room, where he sat on his bed, gazing at the two little lights of the lucerna which had been given to him to light himself upstairs, for all the house was dark and at rest before he got back—and thinking of that warm and cheerful scene. The lamp burned on steadily, the only light in all the big hotel, and Harry sat and gazed at it unwinking. Sunday afternoon! here was something to look forward to. And that was a house which was worth calling a home, which was not an appartamento. He thought life must have an altogether different complexion there.
MR. BONAMY, the Vice-Consul, was a man who ought to have filled a very different position. He ought to have been Consul-General and a person of importance. He had been long in the service, and he had done good work, and there was nothing against him. But there are some people who never will “get on,” whatever may be the circumstances in their favour, just as there are some whom all the adverse circumstances in the world will not keep down. He was rash, as may have been seen by his reception of Harry, and he was one of those men upon whom experience has no power, who never learn—who having been deceived twenty times are just as ready to believe and be imposed upon the twenty-first. His own goodness and rectitude were such that he had kept his position fairly, and his talent and fine faculties had not been without acknowledgment; but he had not “got on.” There was another circumstance too which kept him in his present position. His history had been briefly told by Paolo, and was one which everybody knew. Eighteen years before he had married a beautiful girl, the daughter of an English merchant in Leghorn and his Italian wife. They had lived together for a year, and the little Rita had been born, when young Bonamy took his wife “home” with great delight and pride to exhibit her to his friends. She had scarcely touched English soil when she fell ill; it was an ungenial season, and the Italian girl was of a delicate constitution. The young husband, to whose mind danger or death never presented themselves as possible, always rash and venturesome, and ready to trust any gleam of sunshine, had been to blame in exposing her to the severities of the spring changes and the east winds, and the result was that he who had left Leghorn in the full zenith of happiness, returned a miserable man, alone, leaving his treasure in an English grave. For years after he had been so stunned with his grief that he was capable of little but the routine of necessary work, and this period of deadly depression occurred just when there might have been hopes of promotion for him. He did not want any promotion. When he began to revive with the growth of his little girl, and to find in her a substitute for the young mother whom he had scarcely had time to know, it became a settled principle, almost a superstition in his mind, that Rita must never leave her native soil; she, at least, should never be exposed to those east winds and chilling mists of England. It became a part of the training he gave her, a part of the religion which everybody round was bound to. Whatever happened, Rita was not to leave Italy; the risks her mother had succumbed to were never to touch her. His living, his expectations, his life itself, were nothing in comparison with this. He was not a man of a strong mind, as may be easily perceived. There was but one thing which was utterly precious to him, and that was naturally the first thing in his thoughts. She throve here in the place where she had been born, just as her mother had done before her; and if she were removed she would die. This made him accept cheerfully the neglect of his superiors; and he had made himself many friends in the place he had inhabited so long. The whole population knew him and his story, and sympathized, with the ready warmth of the race. It was known even to the dock-labourers, to the sailors in the port, that the Signorina Rita was never to go out of Italy. The people were all profoundly interested in her in consequence. It was a compliment to them, to their genial skies, and the health of the town, and the excellence of everything Italian, not to say Livornese, which went to their hearts; and the Vice-Consul and his daughter found themselves very happy in the place, which he would have left long ago had he been a more prosperous man.
This consoled him greatly for not getting on; indeed, he had lost ambition altogether, and given up all thought of advancement; he was satisfied with his life such as it was. It was a pleasant life enough, no press or hurry of business, no excessive responsibility, a friendly society round him, a number of people looking up to him, a kind of representative position which pleased his fancy. The shipping and the sea-captains who occupied so much of his time were not perhaps quite so delightful, but then there are some drawbacks in every lot. He had a pleasant house, which he had gradually filled with furniture and pictures such as might have made a connoisseur’s mouth water, and he had plenty of leisure time to enjoy the society of his daughter and of his friends. Unconsciously he had trained Rita to be his constant companion and confidant. He had not intended so to do; there had been no desire in him to withdraw her from younger companions, to keep her to himself; but when an intelligent child is made the companion of a mature mind, which is yet not too mature, but still capable of something of the indiscretion of youth, there is a charm in the intercourse which nothing else can equal. To a girl especially the attraction is great. Rita, almost before she had given up dolls and baby-houses, had begun to see the bigger world in glimpses through her father’s eyes. She began to be aware of a universe full of people, full of humour and meaning, appearing behind like an inexhaustible background. And if she did not absolutely find out books by the same means, yet she made the discovery of most things that were beautiful and important in them. His opinions, his ideas represented a whole new heaven and new earth to her, before which the nursery and its childish joys faded away. She had begun to know what he knew, to give an adoring echo to all his opinions, to understand his occupations, when other children are still resisting their first lessons, and resenting the interference of grown-up persons with all their pleasures. The Vice-Consul confided all his difficulties, when they arose, to her ears before she was twelve. She knew that the “F.O.” was sometimes unreasonable, and that the shippers were troublesome, before she had quite mastered English, which was not her native tongue. Then there came a further development, when Rita no longer echoed her father’s opinions, but had ideas of her own. This followed so quickly upon the first, and added such a delightful variety and animation to their intercourse, that the Vice-Consul fully believed she had been a critic in her cradle, and that all her lively views upon things in general had come to her direct by inspiration from above.
She was seventeen now, though she looked younger. For five years she had been everything that a grown-up companion can be, with something besides that no grown-up companion ever was. They were everything to each other. She reverenced him, and she laughed at him, and patronized his ideas, and thought him the first of created beings. Nothing but a child could so mingle veneration and superiority, the freedom of an equal, the keenness of a critic, the enthusiasm of adoring love. There was not a thing he said which she could not pull to pieces, nor any of his actions that were not subject to her comments. “I would not have done that, papa, if I had been you,” she would say; and yet she was of opinion that of all human creatures there was not one, on the whole, who came within a hundred miles of Her Britannic Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Leghorn. This was the result of Rita’s observations during the dozen years or so which she had unconsciously spent in accumulating materials upon which to form an opinion. And this was no small thing to say, for a clever child is the most close of observers, and far less likely to be blinded by partiality than any other human critic. As for the Vice-Consul, he had no such foundation of commonsense and close observation to support his certainty that such another as his Margherita had never been born to man. He worshipped his child without any reason at all. If she had been stupid, perhaps even if she had been unamiable, he would have loved her all the same; but he took it for a special instance of the goodness of God towards him that she was delightful, and lovely, and sweet, and clever—as well as that she was Rita, which last, however, was the chief and unspeakable claim to his love.
And the house in which these two lived together was a very happy house. It is the privilege of girls to exercise this sweet reconciling power, to make a father, or a mother, at peace with fate, reconciled to all the troubles of the past. Perhaps it is inconsistent with the greater self-assertion of young manhood to give so much thought, so much care to the elder generation; certainly it is only here and there a preternaturally excellent youth who ever fills such a place in the home and the life of his parents as Rita filled to her father; and she was not preternaturally good, but mischievous, and contradictory and impetuous, as well as bright, and tender, and gentle. She never tried to make her father happy, or thought of doing her duty to him, but only loved him and lived with him in the most natural unconscious freedom of word and thought. People may pass years under the same roof without ever living with each other; but Rita poured her young abundant life into the stream of her father’s without thinking that any other channel was possible. Everything that the one did was interesting to the other, everything that happened contributed to their more perfect union. It had never occurred as yet to either that this life of theirs might change or undergo any transformation until the time should come when it would be split in twain by death; and that was a contingency which, as applying to herself (to think that her father might die had scarcely occurred to her), seemed to Rita the least likely of all possibilities, while he, on his part, if he ever took it into consideration, did it tranquilly, thinking of his own death, as men in the midst of their lives, with good health and no appearance of failing, do think of that event, as of something too far off to trouble one’s-self about—inevitable, and bringing its own atmosphere of resignation with it, but too shadowy and distant to disturb anybody’s peace.
It may be imagined that the event of Harry’s appearance was much discussed between these two, who discussed everything. Rita had been very grateful to Harry; she had exalted him into a hero. The description she had given to her father, when she came rushing to his side on the night of the occurrence, white and panting after her run home, had been that of a demigod. She had described him as tall and straight as an arrow, towering head and shoulders over the common creatures about. She described the little voice in Italian which she had welcomed joyfully enough, and which had begun to intercede with her assailants with a troubled tone of politeness, and how it had been suddenly broken short by the strenuous English of the deliverer. Rita, when she got over her fright, cried and laughed together over the incident. She made it into a dramatic scene, setting Paolo’s tremulous entreaties to music—and then broke in upon the cadence with short sharp English monosyllables, “Let go that girl!” She put the most flowery Italian into Paolo’s mouth, then brought the other voice in, strong and brief in a masculine monotone. She did nothing but repeat this little entertainment all the evening after she had got over her fright, and when her father appeared with the hero, looking somewhat sheepish, but very strong, very English, and more good-looking than might have been hoped, Rita had been delighted. She did not take, however, the accident romantically, or with any high-flown interest in her deliverer. Discussing him afterwards, she allowed that he did not look particularly brilliant.
“But what of that?” she cried. “Heroes never need to be clever. It is a great deal more than we deserve that he should be so good-looking. He is very good-looking, handsome and heavy, just like a hero,” Rita said, “and with a story! It is a great deal more than we had any right to expect.” But the story itself did not make any such impression upon her as it did upon her father. Rita was cynical for the first time, and did not think much of the quarrel with the family. “There are so many stories like that,” she said, bending her brows a little; “it saves a great deal of explanation. But he is not clever enough to have invented it. He would have blushed and stammered, and even you, papa, could have found him out.”
“Even I!” said Mr. Bonamy; “you speak as if my stock of intelligence was the smallest you knew.”
“Not that,” said Rita, laughing, “but you know you are very easily taken in, papa; oh, yes, you cannot deny that.”
“You make a great deal out of a very little,” said the Vice-Consul, almost angry; for it was his weak point, and consequently he was very susceptible to criticism. “Besides,” he said, in his usual tone, “when I am taken in, as you say I am, it is by regular humbugs, professors of the art. There was that fellow from Geneva, was there ever a better get-up? he would have taken in old Pam himself.” This was his synonym for astute and wary wisdom, as some people say Old Nick. “But Oliver has not a bit of get-up about him. Whatever he is, he is genuine, the least experienced could see as much.”
“I told you,” said Rita, “he is not clever enough to have invented a story; you always come round, papa, to what I say.”
“Yes,” said the Vice-Consul, “I am a great fool about you, Rita, everybody says that; no, he is not clever enough for a made-up story; and he is so much in earnest about it that it must be true.”
Rita did not reply. She had no desire to prove that her father was wrong: and, besides, for once in a way her observations confirmed his. She recalled to herself the big young fellow, with his ingenuous looks, and that air of confused and deprecating surprise, as if he could not understand why they should make so much of him; a humbug (she concluded) would have made the most of himself, and shown no surprise.
“Of course he will not be able to keep it up,” Mr. Bonamy said, “they will find him out. By the way, remember to keep a look out in the agony column, they will appeal to him through that. I. O.; they are rather queer initials.”
“What does I. stand for?” Rita asked.
“Isaac Oliver. It is an odd sort of name too for a young fellow like that.”
“Isaac! I don’t believe it can be his right name. He is no more like an Isaac than I am. Isaac ought to be a sort of soft old man, very nice and gentle, but a little silly, like Isaac in the Bible.”
“My Rita, you are rather profane. Now it sounds to me like an old Jew, which is to say an old humbug, up to everything, flattering and fawning, and ready to sell his soul if he had one.”
“It is you who are profane, papa; my Isaac, of course, was an old Jew; they were all Jews, all those people in the Bible: but he was more like you, a great deal, for it was he that was taken in. That cannot be his right name.”
“Whose right name? you jump so from the Bible to yesterday that you are confusing. I am obliged to you for the compliment about the patriarch. And as for our young fellow, I think it very likely that Oliver is not his name; but an alias is seldom carried so far as the Christian name; he must be Isaac, I am afraid, though it is disenchanting.”
“Poor Mr. Oliver,” Rita said. “There is not very much enchantment about him anyhow. Yes, yes, he is just the right thing for a hero: but there ought to be something behind, he ought to be a little clever, or witty, or poetical, or something, before there can be any enchantment. Oh yes, it was quite right to ask him for Sunday. He will be very tranquillizing, quite Sunday fare.”
“That was what I thought,” her father said. “You will try all your arts upon him, you will turn him inside out. In half-an-hour you will find out more than I would in a day.”
“I shall not want to find out,” said Rita; “if he is so secret, why should I try to penetrate his mystery? Mysteries, papa, I have often told you, are seldom worth finding out.” And they both laughed at this utterance of wisdom: but yet there was a kind of understanding, at all events on Rita’s side, that it was she who was the most prudent of the two.
Harry met them at church on Sunday morning. There were a great many people at the English Church, and they had the usual look of sectarianism and conventicalism which a small foreign community, holding its select little “diet of worship” (as we say in Scotland) in its separate church, in the midst of a large Catholic community, always has. It is hard to understand why the mere fact of not being able to say our prayers along with the mass of our fellow-creatures, should give everywhere that look of narrow superiority, yet lurking sense of disadvantage. Amid all the salutations at the church-doors, which showed how the little community hung together, Harry was shy of penetrating the mass, and held himself modestly apart, waiting in the background till his friends disengaged themselves from the crowd. A stranger was more remarked in that close circle than he would have been in towns more frequented by tourists; and his appearance was so distinctively, almost so ideally English, that he caught a great many eyes. A tall young fellow, muscular and strong, with curling fair hair, a light moustache, a ruddy complexion, and an English made coat, at once attracted the attention of the merchants and officials who made up the congregation. Who was he? When the Vice-Consul was seen to go up to him, and he walked off by Rita’s side, their fellow-worshippers soon came to a distinct conclusion on the subject. He was some young English swell who had brought letters from influential persons at home, and whom Mr. Bonamy would naturally make the most of. That was the best of an official position, was the commentary of more than one looker-on—that the best people were always sent to you—that whereas all the straggling tourists who were nobody, were recommended by troublesome acquaintances to ordinary residents in a town, the Consul had all the people of distinction, and though he himself held no particular rank, made acquaintance, and occasionally formed alliances, with very superior people indeed. Many looks were in consequence cast after Harry, as very happy, yet very humble, he walked off by Rita’s side. He thought that it was he who had the advantage, while the spectators considered him a distinguished visitor, and envied the Vice-Consul, whose position made his house the natural head-quarters for such fine people. He walked through the shady streets, saying very little, feeling himself quite happy without speech, and it seemed to him like the repetition of a dream when he came in again to the cool dining-room, and sat down once more between the father and daughter. It was only a few days since he had done that for the first time, coming in, like a man in a dream, to find an unknown world opened to him. Now the world was no longer unknown, he had got his place in it, he had the prospect before him of knowing it better and better, it was his home, as it was that of the others.
With a strange feeling of security and continuance he took his place at the table. He was never a great talker, and he allowed his entertainers to talk over him, not being so quick to understand their allusions, and all the shades of meaning in their rapid conversation, as he would have wished. Sometimes Rita would turn to him with a pleasant word, bringing him into the current, sometimes Mr. Bonamy would say something that made an answer needful; but for the most part he was silent, taking his share only with looks. He did the best he could for himself by this means, for his face was bright, brighter perhaps than his intelligence, and he had the pleasant art of being interested, whether he quite understood or not. His look, which was half wistful, half understanding, with a little eagerness in it, a desire to follow what was being said, and a naïve comprehension that it was slightly above him, caught Rita’s attention in spite of herself. So far as she was aware, this young woman was more fond of intellectual people and their discourse than of anything else in the world. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was her preference for this kind of society, her disdain of trivial minds, and the common chatter of the everyday world. And she had already expressed her opinion about Harry, that he would do very well for a hero of the muscular kind, but as for any special interest, a man required something more, a touch of poetry or intellect, or at least, if nothing else, cleverness, to recommend him to the attention. It happened, however, two or three times over, that when Rita’s eyes were travelling the length of the table to meet her father’s, with whom she was talking, they were caught by Harry’s, who sat at the side. Harry had uttered nothing that was not commonplace, and, indeed, he had not said much at all; but when he thus caught her eye, and forced her to look at him, his face was more eloquent than his tongue. It was not at any time an unmeaning face, and to-day it meant a great deal; it meant a conviction that he was very happily placed between two such bright and clever people; it meant great attention and admiration and interest. Rita was caught by it as if he had put forth his hand to stop her as she passed him. Stupid! how could she have thought him stupid? That look was not stupid, not even heavy or pre-occupied, like so many other young Englishmen, who looked distrait when anything was talked of beyond their own little capacities. Harry had not at all this aspect. If his mind was not quite up to the mark of their conversation his attention was. He wanted to listen and to understand. She looked at him, thus, once, twice, feeling each time more favourably disposed—and the third time she fairly stopped and turned round and addressed him.
“Mr. Oliver,” she said, “we are very uncivil, papa and I. We are so used to talking to each other that, when there is anyone here, if he does not stop us and force us to listen to him, we just go on. I have felt how silly it was. I wish you would put a stop to us, and make us listen to you.”
“But I should not like that,” said Harry; “you talk a great deal better than I do. Talking was never any gift of mine; but I like to listen. I am picking up a great deal, though you may not think it. Everything is so new to me here.”
“Well, then, I will ask you a very silly question,” said Rita; “I will ask you what everybody will ask you, and of course you cannot tell yet how to answer; but you will answer all the same. How do you like Leghorn, Mr. Oliver? Do you think you will like us when you know us better? I hope you think that is a nice commonplace beginning,” said Rita, laughing; and a faint little colour came over her of half amusement and half self-reproach.
“Indeed, I don’t think it silly at all; I am commonplace myself,” said Harry, with a little sigh. “I wish I could be more remarkable, but I can’t. Yes, I like Leghorn very much, and I think I shall like all the people I know, more and more as I know them better. But I don’t know many people. Except Mr. Bonamy and yourself, who have been so kind to me, I have got but one friend.”
“One friend, hear him! as if that was a thing that could be picked up at every corner,” the Vice-Consul said.
“I never saw anything like him,” said Harry, “he is like a child—and very simple in his ways of thinking. He is twenty times better than I am, and yet I feel sometimes as if I must laugh. You don’t know what strange people we English are, Miss Bonamy. We can see how good a thing is, and yet we can’t help laughing if it is a little out of the way.”
“Then,” said Rita, “tell me why. I have no way of knowing but what people tell me. There are things said about Englishmen just as there are things said about women, in general. Now the women I know are quite unlike each other. I cannot imagine any one thing that they would all think or do. Are Englishmen all the same?”
“Now, Oliver, be on your guard,” said her father, “that’s one of her theories. She wants to push you into a corner and compel you to commit yourself. Women have this and that way of thinking, we all say, don’t we? and it’s quite true. ‘Really!’ says this little person, ‘I suppose, then, women are all exactly like each other?’ Have a care, my young friend; she looks innocent, but I don’t advise you to let yourself fall into her hands.”
“When I said Englishmen”—said Harry, faltering; then he gathered a little boldness—“We are not all like each other: but this is rather true of all of us—at least, so I think: we jeer at things we don’t understand.”
“Bravo,” said the Vice-Consul, clapping his hands, “I see you understand our dear countrymen.”
“We don’t mean much harm,” said Harry, led on beyond himself. “I suppose that in other countries just the same happens in different ways. When people act in a way we should not think of acting, we think it is so strange that we—laugh at them. It is wrong, I have no doubt, and silly, but still we do it. The first thing is, we laugh at them—Italians don’t seem to do so. They are most polite.”
“And the French don’t do it.”
“Papa, they do a great deal worse,” said Rita; “for the language, for instance, they are far more hard than you. When anyone speaks English badly, you laugh, but you don’t mind. The Frenchman doesn’t laugh, he is horribly polite—but he thinks the worse of you for ever after. I see what you mean. There is a kind of a way you have of looking at things in the same light, which does not mean that you are alike, or all thinking in the same way. Perhaps,” said Rita, meditatively, “that may be true of Englishmen—and women too. Yes, I see how that might be true. I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Oliver, for putting it in so clear a light.”
Harry could only stare at her with a mixture of amazement and gratification. He to be applauded for putting something in a clear light! and by Rita, who knew so much more than he did. He could not but laugh within himself at the unlikelihood of it; yet he was gratified by the thought.
AFTER this, Harry “settled down.” It was a somewhat disappointing, disenchanting process, but still it was better than it appeared at the first glance. Paolo, finding that his friend could not be happy without a sitting-room, which seemed to himself the most unnecessary of luxuries, exerted himself to procure an appartamento for him which should include this, and managed, after a little delay, to do so, at a price so modest that Harry was astonished, and the padrone di casa much disgusted and indignant when he found that he had actually suffered his rooms to go, at a rent extravagant only for Italians, to an Englishman. The landlord was so disappointed and annoyed by this that the occasion made him voluble; for “Ecco!” he said, “a countryman, that is—a countryman. He knows as much as we do. He is aware of everything. He can do what he pleases. That he should have the rooms cheap, that understands itself: that is all just. But a stranger! And, on the other hand, they want so much more, these strangers. They will demand breakfast, and even refreshments in the evening! They are so lazy they will not give themselves the pain to descend to the caffè for their coffee, which is the natural way, but will demand to have it here, which is endless trouble. I never could have believed that Ser Paolo, who is a person of education, would so have treated an old neighbour.” He said so much on the subject that Harry, with something of that impatience and careless magnificence which are (supposedly) the characteristics of the English, declared that, rather than be so persecuted, he would pay twenty lire a month more than had been asked of him, an offer which made the padrone think him a great fool, but a true Englishman, and which drove Paolo nearly out of himself with indignation. It may be understood by this fact that Harry soon picked up as much Italian as made him understand at least the tone of address, whether it was friendly or angry: and in smaller matters he was soon able to make himself understood.
The first night of his residence in his new quarters, when he heard Paolo close the door behind him, and felt himself left all alone at the top of a tall Italian house, without a soul within call, gazing round him at the four bare white walls, his lamp looking at him with three unwinking eyes, and not a trace of anything that looked like home—vain word!—the young fellow was altogether overcome, and staring round with a wild look of despair, was as near breaking into idle tears as ever man was. But what was the use? He had made his bed (or his people had made it for him, as he thought), and there he must lie. He had half a dozen books on the table: one upon the laws that affect shipping and the maritime code, another on International Law generally, the rest Italian grammars and dictionaries, a volume of easy little stories in the same language, and that well-known volume of Silvio Pellico, out of which so many people have learned their first Italian lessons. They were none of them very interesting to Harry. “Le Mie Prigioni,” when you have made it out with the aid of a dictionary, is not more tempting than any other book would be under these circumstances. They were as blank as the white walls, the silent room, the dead solitude of the place, to Harry. A yellow novel, if he could have got that, would have been precious to him. But he had not even that to fall back upon. He crept dismally to bed, unable to contemplate his fate, and turned his face to the wall, much as his mother was doing at home. But in the morning things were better; and though he never could reconcile himself to the gloom and solitude of his appartamento at night, during the day things went tolerably well with him when he began to know what was being said around him, and to wake up to the new insight which a new language confers. Gradually he began to take a little interest in the porter’s family, in the shrill padrona, shrieking her orders and her commentaries from the balcony of the fourth piano across the deep well of the courtyard, who was a terrible nuisance, yet by and by began to feel homelike, so that he missed her sharp peacock-cry when the arrival of a baby compelled a brief withdrawal from her usual active survey of the affairs of her tenants. And so the time went on, and months passed, and Harry became accustomed to his life.
There were times, however, in which those slow beginnings of content which soothed Harry’s mind, rose into something a great deal higher and brighter: and these were the hours which he spent in the private rooms at the Consulate, where, by degrees, he became very familiar, a sort of son of the house. Harry never knew how this happened, nor did the Bonamys themselves, who, bit by bit, opened their doors more completely to him. They had never done so before to any clerk. The office generally was held at arm’s length by the head of it. He was thought proud by the employés generally. What was he, many even asked, that he should give himself so many airs? But he never gave himself any airs to Harry. Even when they began to forget that romance about the young squire who had quarrelled with his family, which was entirely their own invention, they did not turn away from or cast off the stranger who, falling into their midst with no recommendations at all, had made himself so strong a footing amongst them, partly from accident, partly from imagination. Very soon, indeed, Harry came to be considered as part of the family; a ready hand to be appealed to for everything; a ready hearer, though he did not always understand: an invariably sympathetic and trustworthy friend of the house. To Mr. Bonamy it was a great advantage to have some one in the office whom he could treat upon this footing; to whom he could speak confidentially of all that occurred, and with whom, if need were, even in the bosom of society, he could confer on any accident of official business, sending Harry off to do this or that, even from the card-table where he was playing round games with the younger guests, or out of the heart of a valse, when need was. Harry liked the dance, and was merry and useful at the card-playing, but he never complained or grumbled if he were sent away. He had to come back late when the company was gone, to make his report, and that privilege atoned to him for the self-sacrifice. On such occasions, when the great salone was still all alight, and Rita reposing upon the sofa, or buried in a great chair, after her exertions, while the Vice-Consul had already put on the light dressing-gown in which he smoked his evening cigar, the young man, returning, had the pleasantest welcome. Mr. Bonamy put towards him his box of cigarettes; the windows were all open; the warm Italian night glowing out of doors; the stars shining, and every breath of the soft air a delight. In that Italian room the light smoke was not thought out of place. Rita had been used to it all her life. She might have taken one of these little cigarettes herself and nobody thought any harm; but, fortunately for Harry’s feelings, to whom it would have been a very terrible profanation of a girl’s lips, she did not. But she lay back in her chair, her pale face and dark locks relieved upon the soft, rich old damask, and watched the two men with a smile. The Consul, who loved everything that was beautiful, had his smoking-coat also made of damask—a piece of brocade, in colours which Harry thought faded—and he, too, threw himself negligently back in his chair and listened to his young aide-de-camp’s report, with his fine head on one side, like a benevolent prince listening to the information collected for him by a young prime minister, all visionary, and eager in his plans for the benefit of their people. Perhaps it was only a refractory ship-captain whom Harry had talked into submission, or an impatient Englishman whose suspicions of extortion had got him into trouble; and sometimes the three would laugh over the characteristic follies of their countrymen, and incapacity to understand the grandiloquence of the Italian authorities. When Harry got to be sufficiently strong in the language, he would himself make very merry over the sentimento magnifico of the professional pillagers whose charges here and there drove a stranger wild, but who always professed the noblest superiority to all interested motives. Rita, who was more than half an Italian, was sometimes piqued by the laughter in which her father joined, and would stand up for the kindly race to whom she owed half her blood and all her training. She would shine out from the soft background when she thus roused herself in defence of her people, her great dark eyes glowing, her white little figure all alive with energy. “You are all made up of suspicions, you English,” she said. “You think everyone wants to cheat you, to get your money from you. Yes, and it is you who want to get what they have from them. I wonder who it is who picks up the pictures, and the bric-à-brac, and shakes his head” (which she did with a good imitation of her father’s benevolent regret), “and complains that all the little dealers are beginning to know the value of the things they have to sell, eh, papa? Old Leonardi showed his sentimento magnifico when he let you have that little Ghirlandajo for next to nothing.”
“I don’t believe it is a Ghirlandajo—of his school, that is all,” said the Consul, blandly, “and he lets me have it cheap—not for nothing: he lets me have it cheap because he thinks the English travellers will see it here and will go to him to be fleeced, that is the best reason he has, I fear.”
“And if it is, you take advantage of it,” cried Rita. “Which is worst? There was that piece of lace the other day. I said (it was quite true) what shall I do with it, Signor Giovanni? it is not enough for a dress; and he said, in the prettiest way, the Signorina shall put it upon her handkerchief to remind her of old Leonardi. I took it; what could I do? it would have made him angry if I had refused it after that. Was not that the sentimento magnifico, Mr. Oliver—you who don’t believe in my Italians? If I had offered him money for it he would never have spoken to me again.”
“I thought he was an old Jew,” said Harry; “but I see he is a fine old fellow, and I shall go and buy something from him to-morrow. He will cheat me; but I shan’t mind after what you have said.”
“He will cheat you,” said the Vice-Consul, with equanimity; “though he has a fine sense of the proper time to be honest, and the proper time to be liberal all the same; but let us hear how you got your Englishman out of his clutches, for that is the business immediately in hand.”
And then Harry returned to his story, and told how the poor tourist had raved and blasphemed, how he had bought a picture which was vouched for as genuine, and it was found to be a flagrant copy; and how old Leonardi had perjured himself over and over again, and sworn by all the saints that there could be no doubt of its authenticity, holding up his fine old Italian head in the very presence of the painter, who had made the copy, and denying all knowledge of it. The tourist, whose settled conviction it was that “the natives” everywhere were in league against him, was, however, the chief point in Harry’s report. He had rather thought so himself when he landed in Leghorn, and the feeling which had made him refuse Paolo’s first offer of service, and carry his own portmanteau, and hunt out the hotel for himself, still lingered in his bosom. He understood the character so well that he set it forth with great power before his audience; and Harry was so much gratified by his success, and by the gradual blowing away of the cloud which was on Rita’s countenance, and the delightful laughter with which she chimed in after a while, that he rose into higher heights. He himself was just beginning to awake to the humours of the Englishman abroad, and it was very pleasant to find himself superior to them, as one who understood the language and knew the people, and could explain a good many mistakes and misapprehensions away.
“Mr. Oliver, you are very English,” Rita said gravely, after the story and the laughter were over. She was apt to change in a moment, and with the smile just disappearing from her lips, to produce the most serious remark.
“Am I?” said Harry, a little crestfallen; for he rather thought he had made it apparent that he was very superior to the English—that is the common English who travel, and who are often, as we all hasten to tell our foreign friends, so little credit to the race. Then he added with more spirit, “I suppose I am very English. What else could I be? I have only been a year away.”
“Do you call this ‘away?’” she said, with a somewhat startled tone. “Yes, of course it is ‘away.’ Over there is what you have always been used to—that is home—of course;” but the idea seemed to be new to Rita, and not to give her pleasure. The Vice-Consul had gone off to his business-room to get something that was wanted, and the two young people were alone.
“It may be home,” said Harry, with a roused and almost irritated tone; “but I shall never see it again. Home has so many meanings. I shall say presently I am going home, and I shall mean my appartamento—as Paolo calls it—not very much of a home,” he said, with a sharp laugh.
“Isn’t it? I say home, too, when I speak of England; but I shall never see it. Do you know I am never to be allowed to go to England, Mr. Oliver? That makes me like to hear everything about it. Then you and I are the same in that; but you will change your mind.”
“You are much more likely to change your mind,” said Harry. “I—have good reason——”
“And do you think I have not good reason too? When my mother went there, she died.”
“She might have died anywhere,” Harry said.
“It is harsh of you to say so. Yes, to be sure she might have died anywhere: but they say it is so cold in England,” said Rita, with a little shiver; the night air seemed all at once to have grown chilly. She looked at the big window close to her and shivered again. Harry got up and closed it without a word.
“It is cold, when you expect it to be cold,” said Harry; “that is pretty often, to be sure: but it does not take you in an underhand way like this. In England it is all above-board; it blows right in your face, it does not steal in like that behind your back and chill you. Things are honest at home. I think I could take you all over England, and you would get no harm.”
“Could you?” said Rita eagerly; “do you know a way? but how then, Mr. Oliver? tell me, do you know a way?”
“It would be just to take care of you,” said Harry, with a blush. “I know that way. I should understand that you wanted taking care of, and I would take care of you. For my part, I should not be a bit afraid.”
Rita did not notice the blush on his face. The desire of her heart was to go to England, and this made her think. She had the credulity of her birthplace about wonderful elixirs and miraculous ways of doing a dangerous thing. She looked at him dreamily, yet eagerly, with her great eyes. “But how should you do it?” she repeated, “Mr. Oliver; if there is some particular way, will you tell me? For if you only knew—if you could only know how I wish to go to England——!”
“There is no particular way,” said Harry; “if I were ever to go back home, which I never shall—and if you were to go with me, which most likely you never would—then you should go, and no harm would happen to you; that is all I know.”
He spoke abruptly, and he was flushed and hasty. Rita did not think at the moment what it meant; she sat very quiet in her great chair, while her father came in and resumed the conversation—thinking over what he had said. Immediately there had risen before her a vision of the white cliffs she had heard of so often, and of green fields and red roofs, and of all the special features of English scenery which she had read of. What could it be that made him so sure? “If I were ever to go, which I never shall—and if you were to come with me, which most likely you never would—— Well, no,” Rita said to herself, with a half smile, “not much likelihood of that; how could I go with him? he means if we were to take him with us—he means——” and then she came to a pause, and a sudden reflection of the colour on Harry’s face wavered over hers for a minute; only a minute. She was not altogether inexperienced in life; she had already been the subject of several proposals addressed to her father, which he had declined after reference to Rita, so that she was aware that she was looked upon with favourable eyes by various persons, and that the love which is so much talked of in books might light upon her at any moment. Rita had, for her part, no particular objection; she had even left the door of her heart open, so that when he was thereabout that intrusive sentiment might come in if he pleased. But up to this moment he had not come in; the door had stood open, but nothing had entered except poetry and gentle thoughts. But Rita, after this conversation, experienced a very curious sensation. She felt not as if anyone had got in by the door, but as if some one passing had half stumbled against it, finding it closed, and, no answer being given, had gone his way. In the first haze of this idea she got up from her chair and said good night, and went off to her room, complaining that she was sleepy. But she was not sleepy; she sat down and began to think as soon as she had got within the protection of her chamber. It was not any personal feeling that moved her, far less any strong emotion; but all at once she was conscious of a keen and lively curiosity springing up in her mind, eager and lively as her nature. Did he mean——? What did he mean? “If I were to go to England—which I never shall—and if you were to come with me——” Why should she go with him? What reason could there be for such a thing, what excuse? He must be mad to make such a suggestion; but yet it kept coming back to her. “If I were to go, and if you were to come with me.” Certainly the door of that hidden chamber in her heart had swung to and closed, and somebody passing, a stranger, had run up against it, and shaken it, as if to try whether it would be easy to open. It was a very strange suggestion. Rita had been sought by persons of condition, by people who had something to offer, and who had made their proposals, as everybody who respects himself does in Italy, to the young lady’s father. But here was somebody who was nobody, and who took hold of the handle of that door of her heart, which she had believed to be open, but which had evidently closed of itself, and gave it a sharp shake, without thinking of her father or any consequences whatever. She thought of it for a long time, turning it over and over with the greatest curiosity. It was a new thing in her experience. He wanted a great many of the qualities which she considered indispensable in a man. First and chiefest of all he was not clever. He knew nothing about books, he scarcely knew a picture when he saw one. Instead of hunting about in the bric-à-brac shops as her father did, and as even little Paolo Thompson (whom Mr. Oliver called Paul-ó) was in the habit of doing, picking up wonderful things now and then, this stranger gazed with blank eyes at the treasures, and could not understand them. He was altogether a different kind of man from any she had ever seen, a homelier, duller sort of man; and yet he was not dull. The whole house was quiet and asleep when Rita suddenly sprang up from this long reverie, catching sight of her own big eyes in her looking-glass, and wondering at the wonder in them. She had got a new idea into her active little head. It was something novel and curious, and very amusing, but it did not seem to her at all necessary that it should ever come to anything. She wondered what he would say next, or how he would look, or what he would do. She was pleased on the whole to think that now perhaps she would have an opportunity of watching what a man looked like in such circumstances as these, which is a thing always interesting and, some people think, very amusing to see.
As for Harry, he went home that evening with a sensation not less extraordinary, but much more definite than that of Rita. He had not thought of the meaning of what he was saying till he had said it; he had not been aware of meaning anything, and yet he knew now that he did mean it. What had he been doing? Without a name, without a home, without anything in the world, he had been so foolish as to fall in love with a girl who, in the best of circumstances, would have been above him. The Joscelyns thought a great deal of themselves; but when Harry thought of the parlour at the White House, and then of Rita’s drawing-room, he felt that she was immeasurably above him, and that to say such a thing to her was not only wrong, but mean and ungenerous. If you were to come with me—Good life, why had he suggested that to her? She come with him? It seemed ridiculous, more out of the question to Harry than it had done to Rita. He was angry beyond measure with himself for letting himself be run away with, so to speak, by the foolish impulse of the moment. For he had never meant to say it, or indeed to suggest any idea of the kind. He was full of sense, though passion had him in its power when it once got hold of him. In the meantime, however, there was no question of passion. It was the pleasure of his life to be with Rita, to see her, to do little services for her, to hear her talk; but when the idea was suddenly set before him that he might marry Rita and carry her away with him, Harry was more frightened than she was. He to think of such a thing! He walked home at such a pace, with such a swift, impatient step, that the few passengers in the streets turned about to look after him, wondering what business he might have in hand—if he were going for a doctor, or any such urgent occasion; but Harry was walking fast only to keep up with his thoughts, which had suddenly been let loose like colts in a pasture, and were all careering about wildly, so that it was impossible to catch or lay hold upon them. How could he have been so mad as to have let them loose! and he wondered had she understood him? But how could she understand him, a child like that? she was too innocent to understand. He hurried along to his apartment in full chase after that wild herd of thoughts and imaginations. If he had them but once safely shut up again under lock and key certainly it would be a strong temptation indeed that would tempt him to let them loose.
HARRY found himself thus brought up, and forced to give, to himself, an account of himself, such as he had never in his consciousness been compelled to make before. He was in an altogether new position, and it was indispensable that he should know where it was leading to, and what was meant by it. There had been no occasion to inquire into this before. He had plenty to do learning Italian, learning about the shipping, getting into the duties of his new life. The Consul’s house and the Consul’s daughter had been his little bit of happiness, his reward after his work, his diversion from those dismal sensations of utter solitude which had almost overwhelmed him at first; and he had not thought of any complication of interests or feelings. Nothing need have awakened him from this comfortable state if it had not been that unlucky conversation about going to England. Why should he have talked about going to England? He never meant to go back, or, if ever, not at least until he had grown rich and altogether independent of them and their kindness. But in the meantime there did not seem any immediate likelihood of growing rich, and why he should have stepped outside all the boundaries of his life and suggested the sudden possibility of going home and taking Miss Bonamy with him, baffled Harry’s comprehension. Sometimes we say and even do things which on looking back upon them we feel were not our doing at all, but that of some one else, rather our enemy than otherwise, some one making a distinct effort to get us into trouble. This was Harry’s sensation now; he was half angry and half frightened. It was some malign, mischievous traitor wanting to betray him, not himself, who had said that. He went home breathless, and when he had climbed all those dark stairs to his rooms, and lighted his lamp, he sat down, and, as it were, called a council of himself, to inquire who had done it. But it is a great deal easier to feel that some one has betrayed us in this way than it is to determine who has done it; for those internal traitors have no names, and cannot be brought to the bar. His investigation so far was fruitless; but it was fertile enough in other ways, in ways in which he did not feel any anxiety to investigate. Harry had never been brought into familiar intercourse with any girl before. He had seen them at a distance, in circumstances which made no approach possible, even if he had desired it; and he did not know that he had ever desired it. Once or twice he had been struck by a pretty face, and had felt a passing wish, mingled with reluctance, to make further acquaintance with it; that is he would have wished it if he had been able to get over his shyness, and the difficulty of knowing what to say, and the trouble of overcoming all the preliminary obstacles. But here none of these difficulties had existed; he had come quite naturally into Rita’s acquaintance at once, as if she had been a comrade of his own. There had been no shyness, no hesitation, but the easy talk of a table at which strangers were constantly appearing and disappearing, and a house in which this young creature, though so young, was the mistress, and used to all the exertions necessary to set people at their ease. He had admired her he said to himself, from the first—who could help admiring her? but it had been so clearly her part to entertain and amuse the people about her, and she had been so pleasantly indifferent, so innocently at her ease, so oblivious of his presence often, so kind when her attention was called to him, that all those little bulwarks of freedom, which boys and girls when they are made conscious of each other, set up instinctively, had been useless in this case. She was neither afraid of him nor solicitous about him. Sometimes she took no more notice than if he had been a cabbage, and at other times was as seriously confidential as if he had been eighty. Harry had liked all the ways of it. He had been piqued a little sometimes, but afterwards had found it quite natural, and liked her friendliness and indifference, and the occasional moment of household intimacy, when she would look at him to indicate some little service she wanted, as she might have looked at her brother, without words, taking his interest and compliance for granted. And gradually, without any thought, this had come to be the pleasure and support of Harry’s life. When he did not see her, when he was not at the house for a whole day, it was a dull day indeed; but still faintly illuminated by to-morrow, when he was sure to see her. When she went away upon a visit, which happened once, the Consul’s despondency kept him in countenance. Mr. Bonamy adopted Harry in her place. “Come in and help me to eat something,” he said, “I can’t bear her empty seat. When my Rita is away I feel inclined to hang myself.” Harry had almost betrayed himself (to himself) by the warmth of the sympathy which he bestowed upon the disconsolate father; but as Mr. Bonamy ended by a doleful laugh at himself as an old fool, Harry laughed too, and the catastrophe was averted, and so things had gone on for a whole long year.
What a year that had been!—far the most wonderful of Harry’s life. So many new things had happened to him; he had been torn out of all his old habits, and made into another man with a new set of habits—as new as the light-coloured clothes in which alone it was possible to live on those southern coasts. And he had become so much the more of a man that he was now, so to speak, two men, one developed out of the other. He looked back upon the Henry Joscelyn of Liverpool with a mixture of amusement and pity. He had been a poor sort of limited creature, not knowing much; going half asleep between his office and his lodgings, now and then going to a poor theatre, walking about with small clerks in other offices, who knew nothing more than their own little gossip and the town news, and the fluctuations of trade. Perhaps it was a sign that Harry himself had not yet reached any great elevation, that he thought his present life so greatly superior. The reader knows he had not thought so always. He had compared his big, bare room, with its four white walls, most unfavourably with the carpeted and curtained parlour of his Liverpool experiences. But since that time his mind had undergone many transformations. His appartamento had become to him what Paolo’s was, a decent and tranquil shelter for the night. He had no longer thought of the respectabilities, of sitting there for a whole evening, of drinking tea, and having his friends to see him there. These were old customs at which he smiled. He had acquired a great many others which were now to him not only a second nature, but far more enjoyable, more lifelike, he thought, than the old. At all events, they were the habits of the present, not of the past. And amidst these changes, the advance in which might be questionable, were various other changes in Harry’s life of which the advantage was unquestionable. To live half his time in the Consul’s house, between a man of culture and education, and a young, fresh, intelligent girl, who had grown up knowing a world of things until then sealed books to Harry; and to have to do, not with mere bookkeeping, and sales, and goods of various descriptions, but with men, in a hundred little perplexities, out of which his skill, his patience, his superior knowledge, had to deliver them—were educating influences of the most active kind. He was a different man, and he felt himself to be so. How much he was the same man of course it was more difficult for Harry to see.
And here, in his new life, he had come to the first great difficulty; things had gone on smoothly, not a hitch anywhere. He had discharged all his duties to the satisfaction of his chief. He had acquired the very phraseology of a much higher class than that which he naturally belonged to, and talked of his chief as if he had been a fine gentleman in a public office. Many people, indeed, believed that Harry had been sent out by the “F.O.” with special instructions to keep Mr. Bonamy in order; and many more that he had come to Mr. Bonamy with the strongest recommendations from that dignified and mysterious power. Nobody guessed that he had been picked up off the streets, so to speak, by the mere generous caprice and mistaken romantic fancy of the rich official, who might, for all he knew, have been jeopardising the credit of the office by admitting a young adventurer to its sacred shelter. Mr. Bonamy had long ago forgotten that Harry had come to his present promotion in any illegitimate or irregular way, or that the appointment had occurred otherwise than in the ordinary course; and Oliver was his right hand, his constant refuge, his aide-de-camp in all things. He had even forgotten that he did not know all about the origin of the stranger who was now so freely admitted to his house. He was rash in that as in other matters, and though he would have given his life for his daughter it never occurred to him to take those precautions about her which the most selfish parent usually thinks it necessary to take. Everything had gone smoothly for Harry. At the Consul’s house he had met “the best people” that were to be found in Leghorn, the rich English merchants, and also many Italians, old traditionary friends of Rita’s mother, who was of Italian blood. By this time Harry had got a footing among them, and was asked to other houses, and known everywhere. Everything was going smoothly. He had no reason to be discontented or anxious about his future life. Everybody knew him, and nobody knew other than good of him. Whatever happened he would never again be the desolate stranger, with a new name, and no reputation, who had landed friendless on these shores.
And yet, with all these advantages, and this progress, suddenly, in a moment, he was brought to a standstill by this discovery. What wonder if Harry was provoked beyond bearing with himself and that traitor in him, who would not be brought to book? There was something almost ludicrous in his dismay. Why couldn’t you hold your tongue? he said, indignantly, to that something within him. Who wanted to know what you were thinking? What is the good of it now you have let it out? It was a ridiculous discussion, there being no one to reply, but yet it gave expression to the self-provoked and impatient character of Harry’s dilemma. For how was he to banish it back again and go on as if that idiotic suggestion had never been made?
Love is not so simple a thing as people think, at least in these artificial days. In the old simple story-books, and, indeed, often still in life, when such a revelation as this comes to a man, he jumps at once to the natural conclusion, throws himself at once into the situation, wooes, proposes, and, if he is successful, ends by being at least—engaged. Sometimes he does this with a noble indifference to circumstances and possibilities, or, at least, an indifference which, when he has spirit enough to take the consequences upon himself, and boldly hew possibility out of impossibility, is noble. Sometimes he leaps the intervening steps and thinks of nothing but of marrying as the natural and inevitable conclusion. The woman invariably does this; love to her means marriage, or it means nothing at all. It is an offence to her delicacy to play with it, to keep any decision at arm’s length, as men often think themselves justified in doing; so that it remains more simple (unless she is a coquette) in her case than in his. But with a man, now-a-days, at least, to enjoy all the gratifications and delicate bloom of nascent love without coming to any crisis, which must make an entire change of all these relations and modes of living necessary, is often very desirable. But this reluctance to come to a decision, though sometimes selfish, is not so always; and in Harry’s case it was not selfish. He had not walked open-eyed into this snare which life is continually setting for young feet; he had tumbled into it unawares; and in his situation, being unlucky enough to have tumbled into it, his only policy, his only honourable course, was either to get out of it with as much expedition as possible, or to hold his tongue about it, and never to betray his plight to the other person involved. But Harry had been betrayed, to himself, at least, if not to her, and the question now was, what was he to do? He sat and thought over this question, as on the other side of it Rita was doing—though this he did not know, nor guess; but he could not for his part make anything of it. He could not keep away from the Consul’s house, or shut himself out from her society, without further betrayal. His situation was such that if he remitted his visits, if he failed to appear with all the ease and familiarity to which he had been admitted, and which had been growing for a year past, he could not fail to be questioned on the subject, and his secret drawn from him. Even if he kept a little aloof from Rita, avoided her as much as civility permitted, and avoided occasions of being with her, that also would be remarked. What was he to do? For now that he had once betrayed himself who could guarantee that, continuing to see her every day, as he had been doing, he might, on some other occasion, betray himself still more distinctly. His embarrassment and trouble grew the more he thought of it. It could not be, surely, that he would be compelled to go out upon the desert world again and begin anew? Surely, surely, that would not be necessary! And yet, what was he to do? The question on Rita’s side by no means interfered with her rest, save for that hour or so when she chose to think of it, instead of brushing her hair; but it took away Harry’s, upon whom all the responsibility rested. Her feeling on the matter came only the length of a certain amused interest and curiosity as to how he would conduct himself in the future, and what he meant by these odd speeches; but his affected all his life. Whether he should stay where he was, or go away; whether he should have to throw aside again all his hopes of advancement, all his comfort and renewed confidence in his fate, all hung in the balance. He turned uneasily on his bed all the night through, dozing and dreaming of it, and waking to ask the same question again. But the night brings counsel, and when he woke somewhat late the next morning from the sleep which overtook him at last in the midst of his deliberations, he woke with a new idea in his mind, as we so often do, after a long consideration. The first words he said to himself as he woke were, “I will ask Paolo.” For a moment he could not tell what the momentous subject was that he was to ask Paolo about.
Paolo had continued to be Harry’s faithful friend; but their intercourse had been disturbed by the society at the Consulate, for, except on some special occasion, he was not important enough to be introduced to all the fine company that assembled there; only now and then when all the employés were asked, and a little semipublic fête for them banished the fine people, did Paolo enter these enchanted walls, and talk with the young mistress of the house. He had scarcely ever talked to Harry of the Signorina, but when he did mention her there had been a slightly cynical tone in his remarks. To tell the truth, Paolo had never got over that first appearance of the Vice-Consul’s daughter in the street at night. He had recognized her, clinging to her old attendant, hurrying away, while Harry, all unconscious of what was to come of it, had stopped the Italians who were pursuing her, and summarily knocked down the Englishman. Paolo was not ill-natured, nor given to ill-thinking, but he was an Italian, and he could not imagine any perfectly virtuous motive which could have taken a young lady out of her house at that hour. That love or intrigue had something to do with it he was convinced, and all the proof in the world could not have persuaded him otherwise. But he did not wish to throw any indiscreet light upon her proceedings, or to betray her to the world. With some sense of this, though without ever explaining to himself how it was that he had such a feeling, Harry had refrained from telling him the climax of the story. He had left the Consul’s sudden friendship unexplained, Paolo requiring no explanation of it, and feeling it the most simple and natural thing in the world. But during the whole interval there had been in Paolo’s tone a note of unexpressed warning against the Vice-Consul’s daughter; he had not said anything, but he had left something to be inferred. This Harry had sometimes resented, sometimes laughed at, but he had never taken the warning or been moved by the tone. He thought it was a prejudice such as one person sometimes feels quite unaccountably against another; or that perhaps it was some pique; perhaps that Paolo himself had admired too much the young princess who was so entirely out of his reach: but whatever was the cause, he was conscious enough that Paolo was not favourable to the lady of his thoughts. And he resolved accordingly to ask the advice of his friend on the grand question only. He would not give him any special information, or even indicate, however vaguely, who the lady was. That he should speak to Paolo at all on the subject showed that a change had come over Harry’s thoughts. It would be too much to say that he did not entertain still a somewhat contemptuous estimate of the little “foreigner” who had sworn eternal friendship at first sight, and had wept, and even kissed his friend, in his rapture at his good fortune. When Harry recalled that embrace he grew red still, with the undying indignation which moves a man when he has been made ridiculous. And he still treated Paolo de haut en bas, with a careless superiority. But by this time he had learned to know that Paolo was on some things a much better authority than himself, and that, though he might be trivial and absurd on questions which Englishmen consider themselves judges of, yet there were other matters, chiefly touching his own countrymen, which he knew better than any Englishman. To have attained to this conviction was in a way a moral advance for Harry, who formerly had looked down upon “foreigners,” not thinking them worth the trouble of studying, or esteeming the knowledge which was only concerned with them and their ways. He had no opportunity of speaking to Paolo till dinner. They were both of them faithful, more or less, to the table-d’hôte at the Leone, where they had first become friends: but Harry’s attendance there now was irregular, and when he entered the dining-room Paolo’s face became radiant with pleasure. He seized his friend’s arm and gave it a squeeze of satisfaction.