“But without doubt you go somewhere in the evening?” he said, with a mixture of wistfulness and triumphant pride. He was proud of Harry’s succès in society; but yet to have so little of him pained the faithful soul. He had bettered his English, but perhaps he had not much improved his happiness by his devotion to this stranger, to whom he had been so useful. Harry gave him very little of his company, and no demonstration of affection in return for his love.
“No; I want you to come to my rooms, Paolo. I want to consult you about something—we’ll have some coffee brought up there, and we’ll have a talk.”
“Benissimo!” said Paolo, glowing with pleasure. “However,” he added with simplicity, “there is little that I can instruct you in now. You know all—you are better as me. But if there is any case that is hard to understand——”
“You make me ashamed of myself,” said Harry; “do you really think I never want to see you but when I have something to ask? I don’t think I am quite so bad as that. Of course I have picked your brains constantly; but still I am not so bad as that.”
At this Paolo was up in arms, as if some terrible accusation had been brought against him.
“Pardon, pardon, Amico,” he said. “Do you think I am finding fault? do you think I make myself a censure over you (he meant censor, but this was unimportant)? It is all otherwise. To see you go into society makes me pleasure—the grandest pleasure. If not me, it is my friend—it is as good—better, as to go myself. You pick my brains—bene! my brains is glad to be pick.”
“I think you are the best fellow in the world,” Harry said, “and I am a beast always to take advantage of you—to come to you whenever I want you.”
“What then is a friend?” said Paolo, with that glistening of the eyes which Harry was always afraid of. And then the excellent fellow suppressed himself, knowing Harry’s objections to a scene. “I am a duffare,” he said, with a laugh, “if there is something I can do that makes me glad.”
“I want your advice, Paolo,” said Harry; “it is nothing about business; it is not information I want from you. I am in a difficulty—I am in trouble—and I want your advice.”
“In troouble!” Paolo’s face grew long, long as his arm; his lively imagination harped at various cases of “troouble” he had known: defalcations at the office, difficulties about money, fallings into temptation. His countenance clouded with anxiety and alarm. “Amico,” he said, “I am all at your disposition—all at your disposition! Troouble! let us not lose the time. That turns me the stomach, as you say. Thanks, thanks, Antonio; but take it away—I cannot more eat.”
“That’s nonsense, old fellow,” said Harry, plying his own knife and fork vigorously, “you see it don’t take away my appetite. Come, eat your dinner. I’ve not been going to the bad, if that’s what you think, you goose.”
“Go-ose? I am willing to be goose,” said Paolo, “if it’s all right; not anything in the bureau? not with accounts, or money, or nothing of the sort? Benissimo?—then I will have some of that dish, Antonio, and it is all right.”
“I wonder what you take me for,” said Harry, offended. “Money! do you think I am that sort? No, no, Paolo. When you’ve finished your dinner—you have eaten nothing but that maccaroni—we’ll go to my rooms and talk it over. It is something about myself.”
It was all Harry could do after this to persuade his friend not to gobble up everything that was offered to him in his anxiety to get his meal over. Paolo could not contain his curiosity and eager interest. He almost dragged his friend along the street when dinner was concluded, and clambered the long staircase like a cat, in his eagerness to know what Harry’s difficulty was, and to proceed immediately to smooth it over and ravel it out.
THE room was large, and low, and white. There was a little balcony hanging from the windows; the usual bright-coloured pattern on the walls; the usual sofa and chairs, and little rug on the tiled floor. Harry had not taken any particular care of his room or its decoration. The lamp burned with three little clear tongues of flame in the centre of the scene. Paolo sat in a large chair, thrown back, his little intelligent, intent face showing from the dark background; his feet flicking in front of him. As for Harry, he was too shy to sit still and tell his story under the light of his friend’s large, eager eyes, which leaped at the words before they were said. He was walking about from one end of the room to the other. On the table was the little coffee-pot, the thick, white cups upon a tray. Harry did not despise black coffee now. Sometimes he came up to the table, and poured it out and swallowed it hastily; while all the time Paolo, swinging his foot in front of him, and leaning back in his chair, never took from him his eager black eyes.
“And the short and the long of it,” said Harry, “is that I have fallen in love.” He turned his back to his companion as he spoke, and stood looking out from the open window. “I have been about the house so much, and seen the young lady so often, that without thinking, and without meaning it, I have just fallen in love. Jove! what a beautiful night it is!” said Harry; “I never saw the stars so bright: that’s just the position of affairs. She is quite out of my rank, I know, as impossible as the stars themselves: but that’s how it is.”
“Fallen—in lofe?” Paolo mused for a moment over the words. “It is droll, the English way of speaking. Is it then a deep, or a sea, or a precipice, that you—fall.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” cried Harry. “To be sure it is a deep, and a sea, and a precipice. Why, every fool knows that. You are never thinking of anything of the sort, going along quite quietly, minding your own business—when all in a moment down you go squash, and there’s no help for you any more.”
Paolo smiled a benevolent but somewhat tremulous smile.
“The young lady is very beautiful—that goes without saying,” he said. “I had thought you would have taken your freedom a little longer, and you wish to marry and range yourself. Bene! it will be what you call all oop with me,” said Paolo, with a slight quiver; “a wife—that goes not along with a friend—not a friend of the heart like me. It makes a beginning to many things, but also to some an end.”
“Good gracious!” cried Harry, “do you mean to say you don’t understand me? Am I in a condition to marry? I have not a penny. I have my little salary, and that is all. If I could jump up and ask her to marry me, above-board in our English way, do you think I’d ask any advice about it? I don’t want you to tell me she’s nice, I know that myself a great deal better than you could tell me. It is just because I can’t marry, and ought to hold my tongue and never say a a word about it—and yet can’t help seeing her continually, that I don’t know what to do.”
Paolo looked at him with a still more wistful, anxious face. He was terribly perplexed. There was an alternative which was not at all impossible to his imagination; but having on many occasions already come in contact forcibly with the English mind, as represented in Harry, he was afraid to state or refer to the other side of the question, which nevertheless was not at all terrible to himself. He looked very wistfully and earnestly in his friend’s face, trying hard to read and make out what was in it. What was in it? Did he mean——? Paolo could not tell whether he might venture to say what he would have said easily enough to many of his other friends.
“You would then—that understands itself; but to put it into words, above all with an English what you call Puritano—like you; you would then—make a little arrangement—you would then propose—without going to church.”
“Eh?” said Harry. He turned round upon his friend with blazing eyes. “Eh?” The monosyllable was more terrible than a whole chapter of invectives. Astonishment, non-comprehension, yet at the same time alarmed and furious understanding were in it. Paolo, who was a miracle of quick intelligence, saw all that was in Harry’s look almost before he himself was conscious of it, and he mended his indiscretion with the rapidity of lightning.
“I have make a mistake,” he said. “I have not understood. It is so sudden, I had no preparation. If you will perhaps tell me again?”
Harry stared with wide open eyes like a bull, not quite knowing whether to charge an adversary, or to turn away from an insignificant intruder. The more peaceable impulse prevailed. He had stood still gazing at Paolo, who, mentally trembling, though he put the best face he could outwardly upon the matter, met his friend’s gaze with a deprecating smile. After a minute he resumed his pacing about the floor.
“I see you don’t understand,” he said, with something between a groan and a sigh. “Well then, I’ll try again. Here are the circumstances. I am admitted to the house, a very nice house, in which I am very happy. The father puts faith in me; he trusts me like a friend; the young lady is—everything that is nice. Well! don’t you see? like a fool, instead of keeping quiet and enjoying all this, like a fool I have gone and fallen in love with her. And last night I was as near betraying myself—— Now if I go on I’ll be more and more tempted to betray myself. I can’t keep away from the house—it is not possible. I can’t offer to the young lady because I am not good enough for her, and I have no money. Now what am I to do?”
“You were at the house of the Signor Vice-Consul last night?”
“Never mind where I was,” said Harry sharply, “tell me what I am to do.”
“It would be well, amico mio, that your confidence was more great, or none at all,” said Paolo. “If it should happen that I possessed the acquaintance of the father and the daughter——” There was a little incipient smile upon his lip that drove Harry wild.
“I believe you think badly of every woman,” he cried; “all the worse for you if you do. I am not going to make any confidences of that sort. Look here—you know more about society than I do. You know how people are expected to behave here. Ought I just to cut the whole concern, though I don’t want to—and take myself off?”
Harry came to a sudden stop in front of his friend when he asked this question, and, for his part, Paolo almost screamed with alarm.
“Cut—the whole concern? That is to go away?”
“To go away,” said Harry, discharging all the breath out of his capacious chest in one great sigh, and throwing himself into the second great chair opposite Paolo. His friend grew pale; his olive cheeks were blanched; the lids were puckered round his anxious and almost despairing eyes.
“That is what you must not do—that is what you shall not do! It is not permitted to throw away, to make such a sacrifice,” cried Paolo, with a rapid succession of phrases, one broken sentence hurrying upon another. “No, no, no, no. Imagine to yourself that all goes so well. The world regards you with so favourable eyes; you are everywhere received, everywhere received!—a favourite, Isaack mio. But no, no; this must not be—for a girl—for a promise—for a caprice, you will not throw away your career.”
Harry did not say anything. He lay back drearily in his chair, his whole person making one oblique line from his head, which rested on the back of the chair, to the feet stretched out on the floor. He was not likely to talk about his career, but he felt to the bottom of his heart the dismal alternative: to go away; to throw up everything; to resign himself to another new and much less favourable beginning. His new start in Leghorn had been made in circumstances so extraordinarily favourable that they looked like a romance, and he himself could scarcely believe them true—all the more reason why he should not presume now upon the hospitality of the house which had taken him in; but he never could by any possibility hope for such another piece of good fortune. In all this he put Rita herself out of the question. Perhaps he did not feel, as a lover sometimes does, as if his entire life was involved in her acceptance of him. He was a sober-minded young man. It would cost him a great wrench, it would take the colour and the pleasure out of his life if he were banished from the happy rooms in which she reigned. But yet, honour requiring it, he could do this and live; he was not afraid of himself so far. But how to continue here in the enjoyment of his other advantages and withdraw from the house in which he had been received so kindly, he did not know. It would be impossible without explanations, and what explanation could he give?
“Look you ’ere,” said Paolo, rising in his turn, taking advantage of all the devices of oratory to move his friend, “lofe, that is one thing; life, that is another. For a capriccio I say nothing. We all have such; by times it will seem as though you live not but in possession of the object; but after, that will pass, and you will laugh, and all will go on as before.”
“Hold your tongue; you don’t know anything about it,” said Harry, with a contemptuous wave of the hand.
“I have had my experiences like another,” said Paolo, mildly. “I am not an ignorant. It is for a moment you suffer, you think all is ovare. But—oh, bah!—when it is ovare so many things remain. There is the bureau,” said Paolo, counting on his fingers, “there are the events of the day; there is the table—for you must always eat; there is society—which is made,” he added sententiously, “of other objects. In brief, amico mio, there is to live. That must be done all the same. For the moment it may be hard—but sooner or later the time of calm will arrive—What then? If it be certain that an hour will come when you will have had enough, when you will become weary——”
Harry sat up in his chair. “What are you talking about?” he said.
With his honest English imagination he did not know what the other meant. He had never read a French novel in his life (he could not, indeed, if he had wished), nor any English ones of that sort. According to him, when a man “fell in love” it was with the intention of marrying the girl he loved, and living happy ever after. The idea that it would last only for so long, and that there would come a time when you would have enough, and be weary—a moment which must arrive sooner or later—was such a thing as had no meaning to him. Paolo turned, too, when his friend said this, and gazed at him, startled and wondering. Suddenly the little Italian became aware that he was speaking another language, a tongue unknown to Harry. He did not know Harry’s tongue so far as this went, but being very quick and intelligent he perceived at once that it was not the same as his, and that in speaking as he did he had completely missed Harry’s comprehension. This took away from him the power of speech. How was he to find out Harry’s language? They remained for a full minute thus, baffled each by each, gazing at each other: Paolo, small and keen, trying hard to make his friend out; Harry, large, obtuse, confused, wondering what on heaven and earth this strange little being could mean.
“Look here,” he said at last, “I’m English, you know. I don’t follow you a bit. Perhaps you’re too refined, and all that. You don’t fathom my difficulty, and I don’t understand in the least what you mean. Here’s what I want: just listen. I am fond of a girl, but I daren’t tell her I’m fond of her, because you know I have nothing to marry on, and I am not such a cur as to ask her to bury herself up for years waiting for me; and besides, it wouldn’t be handsome to her father, who has been very kind to me. What am I to do? Ought I to go right away? I don’t want to do that. Or can you tell me how I’m to put a padlock on my tongue, and go on seeing her, and never betray myself? No, by Jove! I don’t think I am strong enough for that.”
“There is one thing will make it more easy,” said Paolo—he had dived deep into the records of his own experience to find precedents, but he found nothing which could throw any light upon so strange a case, and he was now casting about blindly for something to say—“there is one thing. This lady, this Signorina—is she then—what shall you call it? disposed to respond to you?”
Harry’s face grew crimson. He gave a rapid glance back upon all their intercourse. He seemed to see Rita’s unconscious, tranquil face. Even when he had made that foolish speech about taking her to England she had been moved not a hair’s breadth. She had taken it with perfect calm, as one who had never thought upon the subject might quite well do. “I don’t think so,” he said, quickly, not looking his friend in the face.
“Then it is moche more easy,” said Paolo. “There is nothing to do, amico mio, but to be silent—what you call hold your tongue: and all will be ovare. When the lady will respond it is different—when she will give you a glance, a smile, a permission to say what perhaps ought not to be said.”
“There is nothing of the kind in the whole business,” said Harry, bluntly; “you are thinking of your intrigues, and all that Italian nonsense. English girls don’t understand it any more than I do.”
“Then the Signorina—is English?” Paolo ventured here to give vent to a little laugh. “But you must not be too secure that she understands no more than you. Perhaps there is in the lady a little Italian blood!”
“Paolo,” said Harry, “you have the most unreasonable, idiotic, offensive prejudice against——”
And here he paused—for had he not been careful all this time to keep in the background the name of the lady? He stopped, and he looked at Paolo with curious, anxious, defiant eyes.
Paolo would have laughed had he dared: but he did not venture to laugh. It was too serious. “I have no prejudice,” he said. “It may be that I think a little in Italian, one cannot help one’s thoughts. But then why will you ask me? If the lady is indifferent where then is the difficulty of to hold your tongue? But if that is otherwise—listen. The papa, it is to him one speaks when it is of marriage. Love, that is another thing. You do not understand, amico,” said Paolo, with a plaintive tone, “the difference. There is great difference. They are two things all-together. Marriage,” once more he counted upon his fingers, “that will mean the papa; love—ah! that will mean the moment, the opportunity, the response.”
To these last words Harry paid no attention. He scarcely heard them. But the others seemed to throw a sudden light upon the whole subject. He rose up again and resumed his promenade about the room, biting his nails and knitting his brows. “By Jove,” he said, at last, “Paul-o, you’re not half such a foolish little beggar as you look. That is the thing to do. I wonder I never thought of it myself. To be sure, that’s the thing to do.”
“What is the thing to do?” Paolo asked, bewildered. But his friend made him no direct answer. After a good deal more of that pacing up and down, he came back and patted his counsellor on the back so vigorously that he almost took away Paolo’s breath.
“That is the very thing,” Harry said. “You are a clever little beggar after all. I should never have hit it out all by myself; but I see now, it’s the right thing to do. Not too easy though; I can’t say that I shall like it a bit; but one can see in a moment that it’s the right thing to do.”
“What is the right thing?” Paolo asked again; but he got no reply. Harry fell a-musing as he sometimes did, letting the little Italian go on with talk, to which his friend paid no attention; and afterwards he walked with Paolo to his rooms, paying just as little regard to what he said. It was another clear, starlight night, soft and cool as the nights are in an Italian spring. There was no chill to freeze the blood; but all was balmy and soft. He went along the streets with their high houses reaching almost up to the sky, looking up to the narrow lane of radiant blue above, all living and sweet with stars. He thought his problem over again, going step by step over the same way which he had traversed before—and it seemed to him that he had at last found the true and the only solution. He could not withdraw himself from the Vice-Consul’s house without an explanation; that would be impossible; therefore the only thing to be done was to go to the Vice-Consul himself, and tell him how the case stood. “I cannot be sure of myself if I go on seeing her every day; therefore I must give up seeing her every day, and you must know why.” Probably he would not tell his story so briefly as this; there would be explanations to give, and many digressions probably from the main theme; but that in effect would be all that Harry would have to say; and certainly it was the right thing to do. He took it for granted that Paolo had suggested it, though in reality it was an alternative of a much less satisfactory kind that Paolo had suggested; but all the rest that he had said vanished from Harry’s practical mind, leaving this one piece of advice behind, and no more. Paolo was no fool, though his way of thinking might not be much like an Englishman’s. Englishmen did not go to the father first, but to the daughter, to know what their chances were; but for once in a way the other mode was the best. He took a long walk after he left his friend, traversing all the streets which now he knew so well, and further still to where the salt air of the sea blew in his face, and refreshed his soul. He would not trifle with the occasion, but go at once to-morrow and get it off his mind. So he said to himself. And he came home past the house from which he was henceforward to be banished. It was late, and the sitting-rooms were all dark; but Harry knew that a little light in one window indicated Rita’s room—probably the faint little veilleuse which watched over her sleep; and that in another was the lamp by which the Vice-Consul was smoking his last cigar. He stood and looked piteously at the house. It had been a kind of home to him, in one way more than his own home had ever been. Standing outside in the night it appeared beautiful to him, as never house had appeared before. He had not appreciated the bric-à-brac, or known what to say about the pictures; but now each article of the furniture suddenly appeared to him in a new light. It was all beautiful; it was such a place as a palace might be—a house for a queen; and to think that he had almost lived in it for so long, and that now he was to enter there no more! Harry was not like the Peri at the gate of Paradise; he had a still more pathetic, a heart-rending sense of loss. He had been there yesterday; but he was not to be there again perhaps for ever. Why should he go away? and yet he must go away; he must keep himself at a distance from those dear doors. Slowly there gathered in his eyes a painful dew; it did not fall in tears, which he would have scorned himself for shedding, but it blurred and magnified all he saw. Yesterday so much at home, so familiar in the place, to-morrow with no entrance possible to him any more! and all by no fault of his or anyone’s; by no levity on her part, or presumption on his; all unawares, no one thinking of any danger. It seemed to Harry, standing outside there, as if there was something very hard in such a wayward accident of fate, as if some malign spirit must have taken pleasure in twisting the threads wrongly; in making trouble out of the most innocent situations in life. He had never meant to go further than liking—no one could help going as far as liking; but the unlucky fellow, without meaning it, had taken the step farther, and loved; and now all his card-castle of happiness had tumbled down, and everything was over. There was nothing wrong in it—no fault in it one way or another: and yet a great many faults would have produced less confusion and pain.
NEXT morning Harry went to the office with an air of resolution about him which no one could have mistaken. He thought the others looked at him curiously with investigating eyes, which, indeed, was true enough; for his predecessor there never could make out how it was that the stranger had gained so much interest with the Consul, and Paolo, who was the only other person present, was full of the most anxious wonder and suspense. But, as it happened, Harry was kept so fully occupied all day that he could not say a word to the Vice-Consul, and his air of resolution and sense of being wound up for a great crisis, came to nothing. But he did not go near the Consulate in the evening. Had things been in their ordinary course he would, in the most natural way, and, indeed, with a semblance of necessity, have proceeded there to consult Mr. Bonamy about some matter of business, or to ask directions from him. But he forbore. He sat in his own rooms all the evening, feeling it unutterably long, trying to amuse himself with reading, and finding very little amusement in that somewhat unwonted exercise. He had been “reading up,” with a great deal of industry and some interest, books which he had heard discussed in the Vice-Consul’s house, and in this way had at least procured a good deal of information, the advantage of which was evident. But Harry had not read for enjoyment, and now that things had come to this pass, and that he was about to be compelled to give up the society of the Bonamys, and lose the gratification of pleasing Rita, it seemed to his practical mind that there was no great reason for continuing those studies. It was quite likely that he never would live among such people again, and why should he take so much trouble—trouble taken with the idea of pleasing them? it was no longer worth his while. He was driven back to his books indeed by the tedium of the long, unoccupied evening, for he had no heart to go out, to be waylaid by Paolo, and have questions put to him which he would find it very difficult to answer. But he yawned a great deal, and went to bed very early, and slept badly in consequence, tossing about for two hours and hearing the melancholy clocks peal. Next day he was resolved he must speak. Indeed, it would be indispensable that he should, as it was the day on which Rita received, and he had never yet been absent from her drawing-room on that special evening. He had a good opportunity this time, for the Vice-Consul called for him as soon as he appeared after his luncheon, and bade him bring certain papers to be examined. “I quite expected you to have brought them last night,” Mr. Bonamy said. “For two nights we have not seen you, Oliver. Rita was asking me to-day whether you were ill. I hope you are not ill. There’s no fever here that I know of; still it is always well to take care.”
“I am not ill, Sir,” said Harry, colouring high, and then growing pale; “but there was another reason. I should like to speak to you for a few minutes, about myself, if you could spare the time.”
“Certainly I can spare you the time,” said the Vice-Consul, readily; “but not now, you know. Come to me again as soon as the office is closed. Shall we talk your business over here, or in the house?”
“Here, if you please,” said Harry.
“Here be it, then. Do you know you excite my curiosity? you look so serious. But I hope it’s nothing disagreeable, nothing to interfere with our alliance?” said the Vice-Consul, good-humouredly. He thought he knew exactly what it was. No doubt the family had found him out, and Harry was about to be recalled to its bosom. This would give Mr. Bonamy himself a little regret, and he could understand that to leave a place where everybody had been kind to him would be a sort of trial to the young man; but at the same time it was far better for him that he should be reconciled to his family. So he went through his business with a little gentle interest, looking forward to the éclaircissement. It was like the third volume of a novel to the Vice-Consul, and even something more than that, more than the mere end of a story which had interested him—for it would also settle various questions in his mind, and prove if he had been right or not in the instantaneous opinion which he had formed about Harry’s concerns. He felt quite sure that he would prove to have been right. By the time Harry returned to him, after the work of the afternoon was done, he had made out within himself quite what the scene was to be. The young man would say: “My father is here;” or “My brother is here,” as might be; and a hale, hearty old country gentleman, or a young, ruddy, fresh-coloured youth, like Harry himself, would be brought in and presented to him, and he would give himself the gratification of saying, “This is precisely how I expected it would be; I have been looking for you this past year daily, though I had no notion who you were.” When Harry came back with the same face of serious excitement the Consul almost laughed. “Bring them in, bring them in,” he said, “I have nothing to say against you. You need not be afraid that I will give you a bad character.” Harry looked at him with that look of blank astonishment which so often turns into lofty superiority and disapproval of their seniors’ folly in youthful eyes.
“Bring—whom in?” he said.
“Your people, to be sure, my dear Oliver. Come, Oliver, I am not an old wife; you can’t conceal it from me.”
“I know nothing about my people,” said Harry, hastily; “I have nothing more to say about them than I have already told you. Things are exactly as they were between them and me. What I have got to tell you is a very different sort of thing. But you will see by it, at least, Sir, that I have no wish to conceal anything from you.”
“Bless my soul!” said the Vice-Consul, “what’s the matter? Have you got into any scrape? Have you come in contact with the police? What is the matter, my boy?”
“It is nothing outside of this house, Sir,” Harry said, with a grave smile; “the police have got nothing to say to it. If it is a scrape it is one I have got myself into, and I must get myself out of it. Anyhow, it is not likely to hurt anybody but myself,” and here, in spite of all his precautions, his lip quivered a little. At this moment, the very worst for such a strong wave of feeling, it suddenly came over him what a tremendous change it would be, and how much it would hurt himself—if nobody else.
“You alarm me,” said Mr. Bonamy, growing grave in his turn. “My dear fellow, I hope you feel that I take an interest in everything that concerns you, and that you may safely confide in me——”
“Yes, Sir, I am sure of that,” said Harry; and then he added; “all the more that it concerns you too.”
Mr. Bonamy pushed away his chair from the table, opened his eyes wide, and looked at Harry as if he thought him mad.
“I can’t come to your house any more, Sir,” said Harry, “that’s what I wanted to tell you. I’ve enjoyed it very much, and it has done me more good than anything else in my life—but I ought not to do it, and I can’t do it any longer. I hope you won’t think I am an ungrateful cur; I don’t think I am that. But I must give it up, Sir, and I hope you’ll excuse me for it. I’d rather not say any more.”
“Oliver,” said the Vice-Consul, greatly disturbed, “what is the meaning of this? Do you mean there is something in your past—something in your character and actions that makes you unfit to be my visitor? I have always trusted in your honour. If it’s that, and your conscience has been quickened to find it out, of course I have nothing more to say.”
“It’s not that,” said Harry, bluntly. “I am not afraid of my conscience. It says as much to me, I suppose, as to other people; but you might hear all it says and welcome. There is nothing against my character here or elsewhere. You know as much harm of me as there is to know.”
“I know no harm of you,” said the Vice-Consul. “Come, come, don’t alarm me. If you find we don’t suit you—though by your manner I should never have guessed it—why, then, give us up, my fine fellow, and there’s no more to be said.”
Harry laughed a somewhat tremulous laugh.
“I should think you did suit me,” he said. “I don’t believe I was ever half so happy before.”
“Then, in the name of wonder, what does this mean?” the Vice-Consul cried.
Harry cleared his throat; his lips were beginning to get parched and his throat was dry.
“Did you never hear, Sir,” he said, abruptly, “of a fellow falling in love—with a girl he’d no business to fall in love with?”
Mr. Bonamy half rose out of his chair, then changed his mind and dropped back again. His own face became suffused with colour. A sudden exclamation came from his lips it spite of himself.
“Is this what has happened to you?” he said.
“This is what has happened to me,” said Harry. “I’m very sorry—nobody can be more sorry—it shuts me out from a great deal I had got to be proud of, and happy in. I wish I had made any blunder in the world rather than this; but it’s done, and I can’t help it. So the only thing I have got to do now is—— well, either to stay away from the house, or to go away altogether, as you think best.”
“I suppose then that at my house you run the risk,” said the Vice-Consul, with suspicious breaks in his words, either of doubt or excitement, “of meeting—the young lady?”
Harry did not say a word; but he looked at him fixedly, with a deep colour flaming over his face. At this the Vice-Consul gazed at him with an alarmed expression, gradually catching fire too.
“You don’t mean to say——?” he cried, and then he was silent, and there ensued a confused and uncomfortable pause.
“Yes, Sir,” said Harry. He had looked his chief in the face all this time; but now he avoided the other’s eye, “that is just how it stands. I told you it was not my fault. I never thought of such a thing. It never,” he said, putting out his hand to a bundle of papers upon the table by which he was standing, and turning them vaguely over and over, “it never—happened to me before.”
When the Vice-Consul looked at him standing there, with that look of half-astonished simplicity on his face, and those artless words on his lips, it was all he could do to keep in an outburst of laughter. He thought he had never come in contact with so simple-minded, and candid, and honourable a fellow. He was startled and alarmed, and made uneasy by his confession; but yet he had the greatest desire to laugh. Yet why should he laugh? it was serious enough; his lively mind jumped to the possibility that his Rita might prefer this young stranger to himself. It would be an extraordinary choice, he could not but think; but yet, alas! that was how things often were in this strange world. A girl would prefer a man she had seen three or four times in a ball-room, to the father whose very existence she was; and nobody would be surprised at it; it was the course of nature; it was the way of the world. This idea chilled and alarmed him to the bottom of his heart; but yet he could hardly help laughing at Harry and his perturbed air. “I never thought of such a thing—it never happened before.” The Consul was almost too much amused to take in the seriousness of the event.
“I presume you have said nothing to her,” he said at last, looking portentously serious by reason of the inclination to untimely mirth, which he had to subdue.
“That is just the thing,” cried Harry, rousing up from his bashful pre-occupation. “No, I have not spoken—what you would call speaking; but on Monday night I just dropped a word——”
“Good Lord!” cried the Vice-Consul. He had no longer any inclination to laugh; what he was disposed to do was to take the young fellow by the throat.
“You can’t be more frightened than I was,” said Harry, ingenuously. “It was by that I found out. Of course I knew I admired—her more than anybody I had ever seen; but I had no more notion how far it had gone—— and then like a fool I began to speak of going home to England, and how I was sure I could take her all safe if she would go with me. That was all: I assure you that was all,” cried Harry, discomposed by Mr. Bonamy’s look and manner. He was alarmed by this look: the Vice-Consul had risen up, trembling with wrath.
“I would like to know,” he cried, “what more you could have said!—what more could you wish to say? And this is what you call love! To betray my child; to propose death to her—death! Oh, boy, boy, do you know what you are doing in your folly and simplicity; beguiling her to her death, and me to—— Good God! why should I always be such a fool? Why did I have this fellow here?”
“You are judging me too harshly, Sir,” cried Harry; “you think it was a great deal worse than really happened. She never took any notice of it; it hadn’t the least meaning to her. She asked me did I know something—some physic I suppose,” Harry said, in a kind of parenthesis, with disdain—“that would make it safe. That was all she thought of it; but as for me, as soon as I had said it I came to myself. I’ve had a dreadful time of it since,” he added once more, with that air of downright sincerity and solemnity which made the Vice-Consul wish to smile. “I’ve turned over every kind of plan in my mind. Sometimes I’ve thought of going right away; but that seemed hard, too, when I had just got settled here. And at the last the right thing seemed just to come and tell you. Of course I put myself in your hands. I’ll do whatever you think it proper I should do: give up the office; go away from the town; anything you please. I don’t want to leave you—or her,” cried Harry. “God knows! you have been so kind to me!”
And then the Vice-Consul, hearing the young fellow’s voice falter, and seeing that he kept his eyes down to conceal the water that had got into them, felt a little knot in his throat too, and was melted in spite of himself.
“Oliver,” he said, “I don’t want to be hard upon you. You said she took no notice—that is just like her; she is no coquette, my girl; she is very innocent. I daresay it never occurred to her that you meant anything.”
“I don’t think it did, Sir,” Harry said eagerly. Of course he had no clue to Rita’s retirement to her own room, or the amused consideration she gave to the subject there.
“I don’t want to be hard upon you,” Mr. Bonamy repeated, “if that is the case. Answer me one more thing, Oliver, and answer it on your honour. Have you any reason to think (that I should have to put such a question?) that if you had spoken out more plainly, she—— Heavens! I can’t put it into words.”
“How could I,” cried Harry, almost provoked, “have reason to think anything about it, when I never even suspected myself? It was that word that opened my eyes.”
And then there was another pause. Harry stood turning over and over that bundle of papers. He looked at them as if he thought they contained some secret of state. He took them in his hand as if anxious to know how many ounces they weighed. His face wore a look of the gravest stolid seriousness. He had now withdrawn from the consideration of his duty, or what he ought to do, and put it into another person’s hands. He was freed of the responsibility, and he had only to wait now to see what he should be told to do.
Then once more a sense of the humour of the situation intruded upon its seriousness in the Vice-Consul’s eyes. His anger and alarm were quenched in a sense of the absolute simplicity and honesty of the culprit, and a hope that no harm had been done. Mr. Bonamy began to breathe freely again, even to smile.
“Sit down,” he said, “and let us talk this over. I don’t blame you, Oliver. I can understand that you were not seriously to blame; and, if no harm is done—I suppose you will promise me that it shall not occur again.”
“Well, Sir,” said Harry, “that is just what I should like to be able to do; but seeing I was such a fool as to do it once, how can I tell that I may not be a greater fool again? especially as then I did not know anything about it, whereas I know all about it now.”
“That is just the reason,” said Mr. Bonamy. “Now you are on your guard, and you will know when to be watchful. I can’t give you permission to make love to—my daughter, Oliver. I suppose you did not expect I could?”
“Oh, no,” cried Harry, eagerly; “not in the least. I could not, of course, even if you did, for I have no money. I could no more marry than I could fly.”
“Marry!” cried the Vice-Consul. The young man said the word in the most matter-of-fact way, but it took away the other’s breath. “Do you know what you are doing?” he cried; “you are putting a knife to my throat. Marry! That means that if you could you would break up this home of mine in which you confess you have been received so kindly. You would rob me of all I have. You would take from me everything that makes life precious. For what, young man, for what? Because you admire a pretty face! You don’t know any more of her—I am not sure that you are able to appreciate any more of her. But she is everything in the world—she is all that makes life worth living—to me.”
Harry threw down the bundle of papers and looked across the table with the intensest astonishment. “Do you mean,” he said, “that you don’t intend her ever to be married at all? Is nobody to have the chance? Is she always to be kept up in one place, and never to settle, nor have her own choice and her own life?”
Mr. Bonamy felt as if he were being stoned—one solid, heavy fact tossed at him after another; and looked at his questioner with a sort of gasp between the blows. He faltered after a while, “She is very young. She has everything that her heart can desire. Why should she not be content, at least for years to come, in her father’s house?”
“I always understood, Sir,” said Harry, with his usual straightforwardness, “that the right thing for girls was to marry when they were young, and that parents were supposed to wish it.”
“To scheme for it, perhaps?” said Mr. Bonamy, furiously, “and put out all sorts of snares to catch young fellows like you—eh? To lay traps for you, and lead you on, and give you encouragement and opportunity, and so forth? Perhaps you think that’s what I’ve been doing—eh? God forgive me,” he said, “in my day I’ve said that sort of thing, and believed it myself; I’ve sneered and scoffed like the rest—and now I’ve got my punishment. You think there is nothing so fine for a girl as to get married—eh?”
Harry was struck with consternation by this attack; but yet, feeling that he had right on his side, he stood his ground. “I am not saying anything about you, Sir,” he said, “but surely it is thought the best thing that could happen. I’ve always heard it. Fathers and mothers, you know, Sir, don’t generally live as long as their children—at least, that is what is supposed—and they like to see their daughters settled, don’t they, before they die?”
This was what the French would call a brutal speech—for, in the first place, it was true; and then Mr. Bonamy was at an age which seemed old to Harry, but rather young than otherwise to himself, and he was not at all pleased to have it taken for granted that he must shortly be going to die. Yes, of course Rita would outlive him, would live long, he hoped, after him; but still the idea that there was any need to marry her off in haste, lest he might die and leave her before she was—settled, was most repugnant to him; it went to his heart, wounding him with a possibility which he had no desire to think of; and it made him hot and angry, as if it had been a personal insult. No one likes to be told that he has come to a period of life at which it is more likely than otherwise that he will shortly die, and that it is very necessary to take precautions against that event. It was all he could do to keep from bursting out upon Harry, crushing him with a bitter rejoinder. He to address his benefactor thus! He to speak in this tone to the man who had received him when nobody else would, who had lifted him out of all the difficulties of a stranger, and opened not only his office, which gave him bread, but his house, which gave him friends, and position, and everything a young man could wish for! These words were rushing to Mr. Bonamy’s lips, when fortunately a sense of his personal dignity, and of the impropriety of any such demonstration, came in and stopped him. Harry’s speech, after all, was good common sense, just the sort of thing that everybody says; the world was on that side of the question. Perhaps prudence and the foresight which love itself ought to possess was on that side too. So he was silent, repressing the first instinct of reply. When he was able to do it, he answered with as much self-possession as he could muster.
“I admire your prudence, Mr. Oliver. I hope you will always see your own duties with the same clearness which you display about those of others; and I have no doubt you are quite right; but it is a question which I don’t care to discuss. Let me say, before we finish this talk, that I think you have behaved very honourably, and as a gentleman should; and I quite accept your reason for coming to my house much less frequently. I will make your excuses to my daughter; and nothing that has passed need make any difference in our official relations,” he added, looking up with a smile that was sharp and cold, not like his usual sunshine, “in that respect there is no possible reason why everything should not go on as before.”
“Very well, Sir,” said Harry, getting up with some confusion. The conversation had been going on so long, and so much less indignation than he expected had been in the Vice-Consul’s air at the beginning, that this sudden sentence confounded him. He was quite ready, when he began, to be taken at his word; but somehow he was not now so ready; the bitterness had seemed to be past, and he had hoped that the indulgent and fatherly friend before him would have found some way by which he should still be permitted to come and go. But now all at once Harry found himself, in his own words, “shut up,” and had nothing to do but to stumble to his feet as quickly as he could, and take himself off, much subdued and astonished, to his desk in the outer office—where he gave his mind to his business, not too clearly, but with as much devotion as was practicable, for the rest of the day.
THESE two men, however, though they were disposed to think themselves the chief, or, indeed, only persons concerned, were by no means the masters of the situation, as they supposed. Rita took Harry’s absence from her drawing-room quite lightly at first, so lightly that her father’s mind was entirely relieved. He had been afraid that her astonishment, if nothing else, would have been great, and that she would have asked him a hundred questions—questions which it might have given him some trouble to answer. But she took it quite quietly, and said nothing about it for a week or two, till the Vice-Consul was of opinion that all danger was passed. About this time, however, Rita, by one of those accidents which occur perversely to heighten the embarrassment of every domestic crisis, met Harry suddenly on one of her walks, coming upon him round a corner without any warning to either party. Her usual attendant, Benedetta, was with the young lady, who looked up brightly with surprise and pleasure, and held out her hand.
“What has become of you all this time?” she said, in her kind, soft voice.
On Harry, for his part, the effect of so suddenly coming in sight of her, and of her frank accost, was too remarkable to escape Rita’s quick eye. He fell backward a step, swerved from his course, gave a glance round him, as if in search of some way of escape, then, seeing none, took her offered hand gingerly, just touched and dropped it, his face flushing crimson, his voice faltering.
“Oh, I am very well, thank you,” was the answer he made; and then stood and stared at her for a moment, and, without replying to any of her questions, went on again confusedly, leaving her standing still gazing after him in a state of mingled dismay and consternation.
“What can have happened to him?” Rita said to herself, unconsciously aloud: and “I think the gentleman must be mad,” said tranquilly the good Benedetta, who thought the English were all a little insane, and that it was nothing much out of the way. But that evening when dinner was over it was the Vice-Consul’s turn to be undeceived.
“Papa,” said Rita, suddenly (she had let him have his dinner first, which showed consideration), “what is the matter with Mr. Oliver?”
The Vice-Consul was like a ship at sea, into whose innocent hulk a sudden broadside is poured without any sort of warning; he dipped his sails, so to speak, all his timbers thrilled and shivered. He had not been in the least prepared for any such assault.
“Oliver?” he said, trying to put on an exaggerated look of innocence, “Oliver? what’s the matter with him? What should be the matter with him? He is all right for anything I know.”
“He is not all right,” said Rita; “he has not been here for a fortnight, he who used to come almost every night; and you should have seen him when I met him to-day; I thought he would have run away. He tried it, I declare. He looked all round to see if he could not make his escape, and when I cried out, ‘What has become of you?’ he said, ‘Very well, thank you!’ Was there ever anything so absurd? I like him for that, he is so English, and so absurd.”
“I don’t see anything absurd about it,” said the Vice-Consul, with a very grave countenance.
“Don’t you, papa? you are growing dull, you have been very dull for some time back. Since Mr. Oliver ran away! Perhaps it is because of that. Perhaps it is the same thing that has affected you both.”
“You pay me a high compliment,” said Mr. Bonamy, nettled, “to think that my dulness, as you are pleased to call it, should result from the withdrawal of Oliver; he is not such a shining light.”
“No, he is not a shining light,” said Rita, “he is perhaps just a little dull himself; that is why I like him. He never tries to say clever things, he is never a bit brilliant, he never even pretends to understand when he doesn’t understand, but looks at you with nice, round, wide-open, surprised sort of eyes. That is just what I like him for. He is always himself.”
To this the Vice-Consul made no reply, but, hoping to change the conversation, said, “By the way, I’ve got you that book you were talking so much about; nobody had it here, so I sent to Paris——”
“That was very good of you, papa; but I can’t let you run off like that. Let us finish one subject before we begin another. What is the matter with Mr. Oliver? Why did he come every night, and then leave off coming all at once?”
“What a fool I was to think I was going to be let off so easily!” Mr. Bonamy breathed to himself. “My dear Rita,” he said, “I don’t see why you should be so anxious about Oliver. It was a mistake having him here so much at the first.”
“Why was it a mistake? you never thought it was a mistake till now. What has happened? I am more and more puzzled with every word you say. Papa!” cried Rita, stamping her little foot on the floor, “don’t trifle with me, for I am determined to find it out.”
“Then you must just find it out your own way,” cried the Vice-Consul, angry with the anger of impotence; for he knew very well he could not resist her, and that it was only a matter of minutes how long she would take to find the necessary clue.
“Do you mean to say you will not tell me?” cried Rita, with wondering, wide-open eyes.
“My dear child,” said the unfortunate Vice-Consul, “you are making it of far too much importance. What does it matter about this young fellow one way or the other? He came, he has gone; we ought not, perhaps, to have given him so readily the run of the house.”
“Has anything—wrong—been found out about him, papa?”
“Bless my soul, no! nothing wrong; on the contrary!” cried poor Mr. Bonamy; “for I won’t take away a man’s character behind his back—he has behaved like a gentleman, quite like a gentleman; about that there is not a word to say.”
“Of course,” said Rita, “he would behave like a gentleman, for he is a gentleman; but on what pretext, then, have you banished him from the house?”
“Rita,” cried her father, “I wish you would not talk of things you don’t understand! Am I the sort of man to banish a young fellow from my house? If you will know, it was he that did it himself.”
Rita opened her eyes wider than ever. She laughed, though a little angry colour came to her face.
“I suppose it was he, then, who disapproved of us?” she said.
What was the Vice-Consul to do?
“That is nonsense,” said he, “he neither disapproved of us, nor did I disapprove of him; but there might be other reasons. We thought, both of us, both he and I, that it was as well—he should not come—so often—for a time, at least.”
“So often? but he never comes at all,” cried the inquisitive girl, “and when I met him he wanted to run away. Don’t you see all this is absurd, papa? If you want me to believe you, tell me the right reason. I will not be satisfied till you tell me the right reason. Do you think I can be taken in with pretences of that sort?”
“Rita, you annoy me very much, you distress me. I don’t know why you should drive me into a corner like this,” the Vice-Consul said piteously.
“But I want to drive you into a corner, I must drive you into a corner; for I insist now upon knowing what it is. I might have let it pass before, but now I insist upon it, you must tell me, papa.”
The poor man gave a deep sigh.
“You take a very unfair advantage,” he said; “you compel me to betray poor Oliver and to distress myself. And I warn you that it will make you blush, that you will feel very uncomfortable.”
“I don’t mind blushing,” Rita said; and as she spoke a sudden suffusion of heat and colour came all over her. She blushed from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. It was a strange sensation, but it was not altogether disagreeable. The girl had as little idea of any painful or shameful occasion for blushing as if she had been a baby; and she met the father’s eyes quite steadily all the same.
“I never saw a creature so pertinacious,” said poor Mr. Bonamy. “Well, then, if you must know. It is because of you that young Oliver is not coming here any more.”
“Because of me!” She was too much astonished to blush now, and then she had already had her blush out.
“Just because of you. He has been so silly as to fall in love with you, and feeling that it would be dishonourable to me to continue to come here, this being the case, he has explained it all and withdrawn. There is now the short and the long of it, Rita. You have no right to say a word against poor Oliver. He has paid you, as people say, the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and he has acted in the most honourable way to me; feeling that he cannot be quite sure of not betraying himself if he continues to come, he has ceased to come. He would have left the place altogether if I had asked such a sacrifice of him. He has behaved in the most gentlemanly, honourable way. He tells me he did say something, but he did not know whether you understood it or not.”
Rita was struck dumb. She sat and gazed at her father silently while he spoke, too curious and strongly interested even to be abashed by this strange news. She blushed no more. Having paid that one tribute of startled maidenliness to the new revelation, she was too much impressed and overwhelmed by it for any lighter feeling. She sat in an attitude of the most absorbed attention, her eyes fixed upon her father’s face, her lips a little apart, the breath coming quickly. She was astonished, yet not so much astonished as overawed, penetrated by the news. When her father ceased speaking, she continued the same rapt aspect of attention. He thought she would have been shame-faced, blushing, shy of it, unable to look him in the face; but he was not prepared for this curious, absorbed interest. By and by she repeated to herself softly, “So silly as to fall in—love:—with me—would have left the place altogether.” Then she made a pause, and, putting her hands softly together, said, with a sigh of satisfaction at having found out one problem: “Then that was what he meant!”
“What was what he meant? He told me you took no notice; he thought you hadn’t understood what he said.”
“I did not understand it,” said Rita, softly, “I only wondered. It was about going to England——”
“Rita, Rita! you would not, for a new lover, a man you scarcely know, a being quite untried—you would not break my heart and go and risk your life—your life that is above all things precious to me?”
Rita scarcely seemed to hear this interpolation—this interruption of her thoughts.
“That there would be no danger, he said, and he would take care—he would take care—that was not much; but I did wonder. I will tell you the truth, papa. I had a great anxiety to know what he meant.”
“Young idiot!” her father said, with hotly-rising wrath, “he meant nothing—nothing, my love! only a brag that he could do more, and know better—a boy, an uninstructed fool—than those who have watched over you all your life.”
Even this made no impression upon the girl. “It is curious,” she said, still to herself, “very curious—quite different from—the other way. I suppose this is the English way? Benedetta always says the English are half mad. I suppose instead of asking about the dot, and that kind of thing, you know, papa—I suppose this is the English way?”
“It is the foolish way,” cried the father. “Come, it is nothing to you, Rita. You don’t mean to say—no, no, my darling; I know better—you don’t mean to make me believe that you, so clever as you are, and knowing so much, could think twice about any notion that came into the noddle of such an empty-headed young man.”
“Is he empty-headed?” said Rita, reflectively. “He does not know much, that is quite true; he is not a bit clever; but I think it is a little unjust to call him empty-headed. He was always just himself; he never pretended to anything else. Sometimes he understood—very often he didn’t; but he never pretended, papa. Don’t you think it is a little hard upon him?” she said, turning round upon her father suddenly, and fixing him with her large, serious, impartial eyes. “Don’t you think it is hard to take advantage of what he has said himself, and turn him out like this?”
“I have not turned him out. Rita, this is mere folly. I will not have you led away by your feelings. If any man were to kill me, I believe you would say he didn’t mean it, poor fellow, it would be hard upon him to hang him. Come, child, let us be done with this.”
“But, papa,” said Rita, “there is no evidence against him but his own confession. I have often heard you say that one should not take advantage of that. Kill you—who wants to kill you? There could not be a more different question. I am not led away by my feelings. I have no feelings but right and justice. I don’t think you ought to have taken that advantage of him. It must be very hard upon him, papa, to shut him out. Think! he will have nowhere else to go to. I dare say he spends his evenings in the cafés. He can’t know what to do with himself at nights.”
“As if I had anything to do with his entertainment in the evening! I wish to heaven he had never set foot within my house!”
“Ah! but that is past praying for. I don’t see why you should wish such a thing; but still, if you do wish it, it is a pity, for it is too late. He has set foot within your house, and we have a responsibility about him. We have a responsibility,” said Rita, very gravely shaking her head. “He is young, and he is very simple-minded, and he might, as you are always saying, take a wrong turn; and then whose fault would it be?”
“Not mine,” cried the persecuted man, “certainly not mine—that I’ll swear to. Am I the fellow’s keeper? Rita, for heaven’s sake be done with all that nonsense. If you can talk of nothing more sensible, you had much better go to bed.”
“Yes,” said Rita, calmly, going on with her argument, “you are his guardian in a kind of way, papa. It was you that took him up first. You did it of your own free will, nobody persuaded you. You settled him here, and you opened your doors to him, and said, Come on Sunday, come as often as you please. Do you think you are justified in casting him away now, as if it was of no importance? never thinking where he will go instead, or if he has anywhere else to go to? Do you think you are justified? for no other reason than that you think he might perhaps do or say something you would not like? I do not.”
“Then you think, I suppose, that I ought to have him back and beg his pardon, and tell him he is quite free to make love to my daughter if he likes? Bless my soul! why should I interfere with such a pretty amusement? That’s what you think. Rita, don’t sit there, my dear, talking nonsense: say no more about this young fool, but go to bed.”
“Papa, I am sorry to see you are so deaf to sound argument,” said Rita, with judicial composure; “you always bring in the personal question, as if that had anything to do with it. On the face of it, to deprive a stranger of the benefits you have been heaping upon him, and leave him in a moment to his own resources, all because you are afraid of a distant and unlikely thing he thinks he wants to do, is dreadfully unjustifiable; my dear papa,” said Rita, looking down from the heights of youthful superiority, “I never expected to find you inaccessible to reason, especially on such an important point as this.”
“Inaccessible to fiddlesticks,” the Vice-Consul said; but he was entirely shaken in his conviction of having done what was right and kind, both to one party and the other. He got up and walked about the room. He was a man who wanted moral support; he wanted to be approved of, and to feel that the opinion of those around him went with his. And especially he had learned to prop himself up by Rita’s opinion. He was always uneasy when she differed from him. Even in this matter, which concerned herself, and in which her judgment might justly be doubted, he was not comfortable. He was unfortunately too accessible to reason, so that nothing could be more unjust than this reproach. “Go to bed, my love; go to bed,” he said, faintly. “It is getting very late; another time we can talk of this.”
“Then do you think, papa,” said Rita, still magisterial, “that it is right to postpone a matter which concerns other people’s comfort to another time?”
“Don’t worry me to death,” said Mr. Bonamy, stretching out his hands with a half-despairing appeal. “I never thought I was going to be led into such a discussion—don’t worry me to death!”
But she showed no signs of mercy, and there is no telling what might have happened to Her Majesty’s humble representative had he not been called away at this moment to receive a messenger with despatches from the Consulate-General and important instructions. Mr. Bonamy hurried away with a sigh of thankfulness; never was culprit suddenly delivered from the bar more glad of his escape. He knew, indeed, that it was only for a time: but yet even for a time it was well to get out of her hands. At least he could collect materials for his defence.
Rita, for her part, after sitting for some time waiting for her father’s return, and sharpening up various arguments for his complete discomfiture, got tired, and made up her mind to take his advice and go to bed. But she had a great deal too much to think about to have any desire to go to sleep. When she had sent Benedetta away she sat by her window in her white dressing-gown, with her hair about her shoulders, a romantic little figure, and felt a little like Juliet. She had never felt like Juliet before. She had, even with the flippancy of her age, been disposed to think of Juliet as of a very forward and bold young woman. People who have been accustomed to hear of marriage as a matter of convenience, so much dot, so many advantages, and who have even been negotiated for in this way, are apt to think but poorly of that ideal impersonation of youthful passion. But now that Romeo had appeared on the scene, Rita, at the window, thought upon Juliet with a little secret wonder, and awe, and pleasure. Romeo—well, there is no evidence that Romeo was clever. He was only one of the gallants of the period, one of the swash-bucklers who sometimes talk just as badly as their kind, though often they forget themselves and talk Shakespeare. There was nothing extraordinary about him till love and the poet got hold of him, and put divine words into his mouth. Very likely that gay Mercutio was the cleverest of the two. Sitting thus at her window, Rita all at once was sensible of a figure on the pavement looking up at the house from the opposite side of the street. There was nothing but a little night-light burning on a table in the corner, nothing to betray her figure where she sat. And nothing could be more common-place and absurd than that Harry should come there and stare at the windows. He was not by any means in the habit of doing so; but yet when he was out, taking his forlorn walk, he would allow himself to take that turn through the street in which the Consulate was, and fix a wistful eye upon it for a moment. When Rita saw him she darted back with a movement of fright and wonder, and mirth and shyness, all in one; and sat out of sight for a few moments, panting, blushing, with the same overwhelming flush of sudden warmth which had come over her for the first time when her father spoke to her. Then, in the dark and the silence, she gave vent to a little low laugh, at which she was frightened when she heard it, and became suddenly as solemn and serious as an old picture. Then she returned shyly to the corner of the window, peeping, though she ought to have known that it was impossible he could see her. The figure opposite was in the act of passing on; it gave a long look back as it went slowly away, lingering as if reluctant to be out of her neighbourhood. Rita drew back this time with a kind of awe. She knew he would have thought no more of climbing the garden wall, however high it had been—if there had been a garden wall and a balcony, and she out upon it discoursing to the moon—than Romeo did. “But there is the difference,” Rita said to herself; “he may be in love with me, but I am not in love with him. I would never stand out there and sigh Romeo, Romeo. No,” she went on, with a little shriek of a laugh, “not Romeo. Oh, Isaac, Isaac, wherefore art thou Isaac? That is too ridiculous; it is all too ridiculous. I don’t wonder at what Benedetta says, that the English are half-mad.”