*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63158 ***

                            HARRY JOSCELYN.

                               VOL. II.




                            HARRY JOSCELYN.


                                  BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT

                               AUTHOR OF

                   “The Chronicles of Carlingford,”

                               &c., &c.


                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                               VOL. II.


                                LONDON:
                    HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
                     13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
                                 1881.

                        _All rights reserved._




                            HARRY JOSCELYN.




CHAPTER I.

HARRY’S RESOLUTION.


There is nothing that grows and strengthens with thinking of it like the
sense of personal injury. Harry Joscelyn had been very angry when he
left home; but he was not half so angry at that moment as when he looked
out of the window of the railway carriage, as the train swept through
the valley, and saw in the distance the village roofs, over which, had
there been light enough, and had his eyes served him so far, he might
have seen the White House seated, firm and defiant, upon the Fellside.
And every mile that he travelled his wrath and indignation grew. When he
reached Liverpool he had formed his purpose beyond the reach of
argument, or anything that reason could say; and reason said very little
in the general excitement of his being. He had been turned out of his
home, he had been refused the money by which he thought he could have
made his fortune. He felt himself cast off by everybody belonging to
him. His mother had permitted that final outrage, he thought; for surely
she could have found means of help if she had chosen to exert herself.
His Uncle Henry had bought himself off, and got rid of a troublesome
applicant by the gift of that twenty pounds. They were all against him.
He thought of it and thought of it till they seemed to be all his
enemies, and at last he came to believe that they were glad to get quit
of him, to be done with him. This was the aspect under which he
contemplated his relations with his family when he got to Liverpool; and
the effect upon him was that of a settled disgust with all the ordinary
habits of his life, and its fashion altogether. When he thought of
returning to the office, to his former routine as clerk, the idea made
him sick. It seemed to him that he could do anything, or go anywhere,
rather than this. But though the impulse of abandoning all he had been
or done hitherto was instantaneous, he could not quite settle in a
moment, with the same rapidity, what he was to do, or be, in the future.
He crossed to the other side of the great river with his little bag of
“needments,” the linen Mrs. Eadie had bought for him and a few other
indispensable things which he had himself procured, and lived in one of
the villages there, which have now grown into towns, watching the ships
go by, and leaving his mind open to any wandering impulse that might lay
hold upon it. In these days the River Mersey was a great sight, as
probably it is still. To the idle young man, accustomed to some share in
the perpetual commotion of that coming and going, there was meaning in
every one of the multitudinous ships that lay at anchor in the great
stream, or glided out, full-sail, to the sea, or were poked and dragged
away by a restless, toiling little slave of a steam-tug, carrying off
its prey like one of the devils of the Inferno. He knew where they were
going, and what they had to bring from afar, and all about their bills
of lading and the passengers they carried. The river had not to him that
grandeur of prose which becomes poetry, and fact which turns to romance,
in less accustomed minds; but was only a huge highway, a big street
full of crowds coming and going, over which he brooded, wondering where
he should plunge into the tide of movement, and how take his first step
out of the horizons which hitherto had bounded him. He did not say, as
his mother might have done, “Oh, for the wings of a dove!” but he put
that profound breath of human impatience into nineteenth century prose,
and said to himself, “If I had but a steamboat, a yacht, anything to
take me out of reach of all of them, where they will never hear of me
again!” He was not rich enough, however, to hope for a yacht, so that
all he could really do was to decide what “boat” he would go with, and
whether he should turn his steps across the Atlantic, or choose another
quarter of the world in which to become another man.

He went to the office one day, as Philip Selby discovered, and asked for
the amount of salary due to him, and purchased a few more necessary
articles of clothing; and he wrote to the persons to whom he owed money,
telling them that he was about to leave Liverpool, but would send them
their money without fail within a certain period. He did not know how
this was to be done, but he was resolute to do it, and he had no more
doubt on the matter than he had that he should perfectly succeed in his
plunge into the unknown. But after he had done this he remained for some
days longer by the river-side with a self-contradictory impulse,
watching the ships go by, and putting off the execution of his project.
Where was he to go? To resolve to give up his own identity, to separate
himself for ever from his family, and all his belongings, and all his
antecedents, was easy; but to make up his mind which boat he was to go
by, and whither he was to betake himself, was much more difficult.
America was so hackneyed, he said to himself, with that fastidious
impatience and disgust which is one of the characteristics of a sick
soul: everybody goes to America; it would be the first idea that would
occur to everyone; and this made him throw away that first suggestion
angrily, as if it had been an offence; but if not to America, then
where? He tossed about various names in his mind, satisfied with none,
and when at last he made his decision, it was made in a moment, with the
same kind of sick disgust and impatience as had made him reject the
other ideas as they presented themselves. He was crossing the river to
Liverpool, leaning over the side of the ferry steamboat lest anybody
should see and recognize him, and in his own mind passing in review the
advantages and disadvantages of all the ships he passed. The Mersey was
very full and very bright, the sun shining, a brisk breeze blowing, the
sky blue, the great estuary throwing up white edges of spray and leaping
here and there against the bows of an out-going boat, in a manner which
boded little comfort to unaccustomed sailors outside the shelter of its
banks. The opposite shore was still clothed with trees beginning to grow
green in the earliest tints of spring, and not unpleasantly mingled with
the beginnings of docks and traces of mercantile invasion. Nature, as
yet, had not given up her harmonizing power; the touches of colour on
the masts, a national flag flying here and there, even the sailors’
washing fluttering among the yards, was an addition to the brilliancy of
the spring lights. The ferry-boat was full of people, though it was not
the hour for business men to be moving about. The freight was a more
varied one than that mass of black-coated figures which weighed it down
to the water’s edge in the morning. But Harry turned his back upon them
all, and looked over the side, watching in a dream the long trail of
water which slid under the bows and was caught and churned by the
paddle-wheel. The motion, as he watched it thus, soothed him, and took
the place of thinking in his mind, carrying him vaguely, he knew not
whither, just as he would fain have been carried beyond the ken of men.
He was waiting the guidance of chance, not caring what became of him.
Something caught his ear suddenly as the ferry-boat rustled along by the
side of a long low steamer with raking masts and short funnels, which
lay not far from the bank.

“I wouldn’t go in that boat for the world,” some one said. The remark
caught Harry’s ear, and roused him into mere wantonness of opposition.
“Why?” he said to himself aloud. It did not matter whether it was said
loud or low, nobody but himself could hear it as he leaned over the
rushing water. “I’ll go.” He was in such a condition of perversity that
this was all he wanted to fix his purpose.

He landed on the Liverpool side, no longer languidly, but with the air
of a man who has something to do, and went straight to examine the ship
and ascertain where to apply for his passage. She was bound for
Leghorn. He went stepping briskly forth to the office of the agent, and
then with a mixture of economy and gentility, still conscious of the
importance of the family from which he was about to cut himself off,
took a passage in what was called the second cabin.

“What name?” said the clerk. What name? he had not considered this
question. Should he give his own name, thus leaving a clue to anyone who
chose to inquire? The doubt, the question was momentary: “Isaac Oliver,”
he said, and looked the man in the face as if defying contradiction. But
the clerk had no idea of contradicting him; as well Isaac Oliver as
Harry Joscelyn to the stranger, who knew nothing about either. Five
minutes after he could not tell what had put this name into his head;
but his fate was decided, and beyond correction. He went home with a
curious feeling in his mind, not sure whether it was amusement, or
shame, or anger with himself and fate. It was all three together. He was
himself no longer, he had thrown away his birthright. What had tempted
him to take the name of Isaac Oliver he could not explain. He laughed,
but his laugh was not pleasant. He was annoyed and appalled and
disgusted with himself, but he could not alter that now. All the evening
he roamed about the riverbank, looking at the ships going out and in,
and the little steamers rustling and fuming across the gleaming water,
and all the many coloured symbols and ceaseless industry of the scene,
with a strange sense of having lost himself, of having so to speak died
in the middle of his life. He could not get over it. He was living in a
little inn which had been turned into a sort of suburban tea-garden,
instead of the little neat ale-house it once was. The weather was very
fine and warm, though it was so early in the season, and every steamboat
disgorged a crowd of visitors to sit under the half-open foliage of the
trees, and in the damp little arbours. Harry avoided all these visitors
in the fear of meeting some one who might know him. Harry! he was not
Harry any longer. The mere giving of the false name had changed him. He
did not know who he was. He was confused and confounded with the sudden
difference. Had some one called out Harry Joscelyn quickly, he thought
that it would no longer have occurred to him to answer. He was not Harry
Joscelyn; and who was he? The name he had chosen, or which some
malicious spirit had put into his head, seemed to float before him
wherever he went. He shuffled in his walk unconsciously as he fled from
himself along the margin of the great flood. What had he done? He had
abandoned not only his own name and family, but his own condition, his
place in life. Wherever he went, he would be known as a peasant, a
common countryman, he thought, never thinking in his pre-occupation that
the strangers among whom he was going knew just as much about Isaac
Oliver as about Harry Joscelyn. The night grew dark, and the great river
gleamed with a thousand sparkles of light like glowworms. Little
vessels, each with a coloured lantern, went darting across and across,
lights swung steadily with a sort of dreamy regular cadence from the
stationary ships. The stars above were not more manifold than those
little lamps below. The quiet of the night had hushed the sounds of the
great city on the other side, and all the heavy hammers and the din of
machinery: but still life was busy, coming and going, darting on a
hundred messages; pilot boats steaming out to sea, little dark tugboats
bringing back cargoes of souls out of the unknown. But Harry thought of
nothing save of the strange, unpremeditated step he had taken; that one
incident filled all the earth to him; a momentary impulse, a deed that
was scarcely his, and yet he felt that it would colour all his life. He
stayed out till the passenger boats had stopped and all the visitors
were gone. The little inn was shut up and dark, all but one little
querulous candle sitting up for him, when he went home: home! he called
this temporary refuge by that sacred name involuntarily--just such a
home he now said bitterly, as he would have for the rest of his life.
Fortunately next day the Leghorn boat was to sail, and his new start
would be made without time to think about it any more.

Isaac Oliver took possession of his berth next morning. He went on board
early, and lounged about the deck all day. For the first time this
morning it occurred to him that they might send after him, that his
departure could not have passed altogether without notice among his
friends. He had not thought of this before, but now it came upon him
with some force. They would try to stop him at the last moment. The very
name he had chosen would betray him, for who but Harry Joscelyn would
call himself Isaac Oliver? He kept on the further side of the ship,
leaning over the bulwarks, and watched everybody who went or came with
jealous eyes. Tardy passengers came on board one after another, bringing
luggage and new items of cargo and provisions; there was scarcely a
moment without some arrival, and every one of them, Harry felt, must be
for him. When at last the gangway was detached, the anchor weighed, the
latest idler or porter put on shore, and the very screw in motion, he
felt sure there must be some last attempt, some appeal from the quay.
“Have you one of the name of Harry Joscelyn there?” he thought he could
actually hear them calling; and saw the rapid examination of the list of
passengers, and the shaking of heads of the captain and his immediate
assistants, who were standing together high above all the others. When
there could be no longer any doubt that the steamboat was off, and that
no appeal of the kind had been made, a quick and hot sense of offence
came over Harry. He had been alarmed by the idea of being identified and
stopped at the outset of his voyage: but as soon as he was certain that
he was to be allowed to proceed peaceably on that voyage, his heart
burned within him with a sense of injury. Now it was indeed all ended
and all over, his life, his name, everything to which he had been
accustomed in the past. He went below to his berth, with a sense of
complete abandonment and desolation which it would be impossible to
describe. It appeared to him that until now he had only been playing
with the idea, amusing himself with all the preparations for a change
which would never really take place, which somehow would be stopped and
prevented at the end. But nobody had put forth a finger to stop him, and
now the end was accomplished and beyond all remedy. Up to the time he
came on shipboard he had not thought of being stopped, but now he felt
as if he had expected it all the time, and was grievously injured and
heartlessly abandoned by all the world and by all his relations, not one
of whom would lift a finger on his behalf. He went down to his shabby
berth in the second cabin, and felt much disposed, like his mother, to
turn his face to the wall. But, perhaps fortunately for Harry, the sea
was rough, and when the vessel steamed out of the Mersey and felt the
full commotion of the waves outside, he was sick, and not in a condition
to care for anything.

In this way he lost the thread of his trouble for the first two days:
and then novelty and excitement began to tell upon him, and he came
altogether to himself. No, not to himself: he did not feel clear about
who he was or what. He came to--Isaac Oliver, looking that new personage
in the face with a bewildered awe of him and wonder at him. Isaac
Oliver! who, he wondered vaguely, could he be? not a son of old Isaac,
who had only little children--a nephew or a cousin, some off-shoot of
the family, if the Olivers could be called a family, a suggestion at
which he smiled in spite of himself. That must be who he was, the
offspring of a race of peasants, no better blood, no other pretensions.
The Joscelyns were a very different class of people, but he had given
them up, he had shaken off all bonds between them and himself. “In for a
penny, in for a pound,” he said to himself, setting his face to it with
a smile, as the steamboat bore up along the Italian coast, and “the old
miraculous mountains hove in sight.” Harry did not feel any special
interest in Italy: he was of the class who never travel, and understand
but little why one place should be more interesting than another. And,
indeed, Leghorn does not sound like Italy to any traveller. What he
knew of it was that it was a busy sea-port, where there were merchants’
offices and a thriving trade. He did not interest himself much about
anything else. He had his living to make, alone and unbefriended in a
strange country: need was that he should collect himself and pluck up a
heart and think what he was to do, now that he was so near the place of
his destination--or, at least, not what he, but young Isaac Oliver, was
to do. Would any merchant take him in without character, without
introduction or testimonial? This thought was like a cold breath going
through and through him, when he began to think. But he had still a
little money in his pocket, and could afford to wait and look about him
for a week or two. There is always something turning up in a busy place.
And Harry, accustomed to occupation all his life, could not believe that
he would ever starve where there was anything to do.

They had touched at various other ports on the way, whose chief claims
to be visited were such as Harry had little understanding of, and the
eagerness of his fellow-passengers to get on shore and see these places
had surprised him. For his own part, he did not see the fun of going to
see a succession of churches and pictures. He had seen but few pictures
in his life, and he had never been taught that they were of much
importance. He had, indeed, privately, an honest contempt for such
things, though he said little about it. He was disposed to ask, “What
are you all staring at?” when he was brought face to face with an early
Master, a thing which he would have banished into the darkest corner had
it been his. But when he got into the harbour at Leghorn he began to
feel himself once more _dans son assiette_. He knew what the docks
meant, and appreciated the masts of the shipping better than if they had
been the most delicate works of art. It was nothing to Liverpool, but it
was something he could understand and felt at home with. He landed in
better spirits than he had experienced for a very long time. He felt a
moral certainty that he should “get on” here.

But what a shock it was when the unaccustomed Englishman stepped first
on shore, and found himself in the midst of a strange life, of which he
did not understand even the first word! He knew very well, of course,
that it was a foreign place, and that English was not spoken there; but
he never had realized that it would be impossible by speaking loudly, or
using a sort of broken English, or some other simple contrivance, to
make the barbarous natives understand. Even an individual much better
educated than poor Harry may be excused if the shock of that
extraordinary solitude and isolation which surrounds him when he finds
himself incapable of understanding a word of what is going on, is a
surprise and irritation as well as a discomfort. He stood on the quay
with his little portmanteau by him--after having been rowed over endless
links of basins, all full of clear green sea-water, cut like a great
jelly by the progress of the boat, to the landing-place--and stood there
aghast, and, indeed, agape, hustled by the crowd, and with a grinning
porter on each side of him making offers of incomprehensible service. He
would not deliver himself over into the hands of any such harpies he was
resolved, not even when they addressed him in a word or two of English,
though the sound was as balm to his ears. He stood over his portmanteau
and angrily pushed the facchini away, but at last got hold of a lad
whose appearance pleased him, who was tidier than the rest. To him
Harry said “Hotel?” in a sort of half-questioning, half-suggestive way;
but this was not enough to get him clear of the officious crowd, who
flew at him with names which conveyed no meaning to his ears. Harry felt
like a man caught in a hailstorm as he was pelted with those big
sonorous syllables. He grew furious with confusion and bewilderment. He
had not been thought specially strong on the Fells, but here his
North-country muscles told. He pushed away the crowd, who he thought
were making a joke of him, and took up his own portmanteau. “The
gentleman is all right,” said some one beside him; “you have no
education, you are without manners, you others,” and somebody took off a
hat and made a salutation, somebody who reached to about Harry’s elbow.
It was civil, and the first part of the sentence had been said in
English, so Harry, learning by experience, conquered his wrath, and was
civil too. “Can I perhaps indicate a hotel?” this new personage said;
“Mister is an English?” Harry stood still and looked down upon his new
acquaintance, not quite clear as to the meaning of what he said. He was
a little man, small and dainty, dressed with quaint care, with high
shirt-collars, and a large black cravat tied in a bow, and the most
shining of black hats, which he took off when he spoke. He was
olive-complexioned, with big, dark, soft Italian eyes. “Mister is an
English?” he said; “by paternity I am an English, too. I will indicate a
hotel if the gentleman chooses. It will deliver him from _la canaglia_,
what you call this rabbel,” he added, with an ingratiating smile, and a
great rattle of his _r’s_. It was mere good-nature, but Harry was by no
means sure of this, and he knew that foreigners were deceivers. “Thanks,
I won’t trouble you,” he said, abruptly, and lifting his portmanteau--it
was not a big one--strode away. He felt angry and depressed, yet
excited. The astonished look of the little man, who made him another
bow, and replaced his hat with a shrug of his shoulders at the
Englishman’s want of manners, added to his discomfiture. Perhaps he had
made a fool of himself by refusing those good offices which were offered
to him, Harry thought. Perhaps he would have been a bigger fool had he
accepted. Perhaps they were all in a conspiracy to rob him. He strode on
and on, somewhat ashamed of his own appearance with the portmanteau, as
if he were too poor to pay anyone to carry it, and thoroughly
bewildered altogether amid the sounds and sights which he did not
understand. But at the end he got into an inn where there was some one
who spoke English, not such a usual accomplishment in these days as it
is now; and where he got a room which was very strange of aspect to the
untravelled young man. The half hour which he passed there, seated upon
the odd little bed, with his portmanteau at his feet upon the tiled
floor, all so strange, so desolate to Harry, was as terrible a moment as
he had ever passed in his life. His very soul was discouraged, sunk low
in his breast with a kind of physical drop and downfall. It was all he
could do not to burst out crying in his forlornness and helplessness and
solitude. What could he do in a place where he did not understand a
word? In many cases novelty is delightful, but there are some in which
it is the most dreadful of all depressing circumstances. Everything,
from the dingy tiles under his feet, and the dark eating-room
downstairs, with its unaccustomed smells, up to the blaze of the Italian
noon, and the incomprehensible tongue that everybody spoke, weighed upon
Harry. He covered his face with his hands, sitting there upon his bed.
What evil fate had led him to this unknown place? What should he do
without even a name that belonged to him, without a friend? A gasp came
into his throat, and the hand that covered his eyes was wet. He felt
himself bowed down to the very ground.

After thus “giving way,” however, Harry braced himself up, and recovered
at least the appearance of courage. He made the best toilette he could
by the help of the small washing utensils, which were not so entirely
abhorrent to English customs then as they are now--for baths were not
very general, and washing-basins were but small, in the first quarter,
if not the first half, of this century. And then he sallied forth
refreshed--into a new world.




CHAPTER II.

A NEW WORLD.


Harry strayed about the town during the afternoon, losing his way, and
finding it again; but got back to the hotel before the important hour of
dinner, of which the English-speaking waiter had informed him. He was
less amused than depressed with all he saw. The perpetual talk that
seemed to be going on around him--sharp, varied, high-pitched,
incomprehensible--gave him at first a sense of offence, as if all these
people were doing it on purpose in order to bewilder him, and afterwards
a profound feeling of discouragement. He was not clever he was aware. He
had never been very great at his school work, and how was he to
accomplish the first preliminary, the very initial step of existence
here, the learning of the language, to which he had no clue, and of
which he could not make out one word? It seemed to him as if years must
elapse before he could master the very rudiments of the new tongue; and
how was he to seek for work, or to get work to do, not knowing the very
A B C of the life about him? Harry went doubling about the unfamiliar
streets, looking with wistful eyes at every passer-by who had the look
of an Englishman, and asking himself what he was to do. He did not seem
to have any spirit left for the uphill work of learning a language.
There rose up before him a vision of the exercises which he had once
laboured at, daubing himself with ink, and of the verbs which he had got
by heart overnight only to forget them in the morning. To think that he
could not even ask his way! Wherever he strayed he looked at the people
helplessly, as if he had been dumb, and anxiously examined all the
street corners, without venturing to approach any shop, or lay himself
open to any encounter. He was more fortunate than might have been
expected in this point, for he found the right street corner at last,
and the house, with its strange old courtyard, and the long dark _sala_
which looked into it, and in which the guests were already gathering.
The house had a good reputation, and the large room was nearly full.
Harry, who had never seen anything of the kind before, saw the people
take their places, each appropriating his own turned down chair, and
half finished bottle of wine, and looked for his own place with a
curious sense of the everyday character to the others of all these
proceedings, which to him were so unusual. Yesterday, at the same hour,
no doubt they had all been here, and last year, and as long as anybody
could recollect, munching a slice from the long Italian loaf, the yard
of bread which of itself astonished his simple-minded ignorance. To
think that with such an air of routine and long establishment this
dinner should have been happening methodically every day while he was
pursuing his work at Liverpool, or taking his holiday at home. At home!
The words sounded like a bitter sarcasm to the young man, who had no
home--who had now no identity, no self to fall back upon, but had begun
to exist, so to speak, only a few days ago. And to think this table,
with all its soils and steams, should have been waiting for him all this
time!

“’Ere, Sarr, ’ere,” said the English-speaking waiter, his black eyes
rolling in his head with pride and pleasure in this exhibition of his
gift of languages. He was holding the back of a chair which had been
carefully turned down, and was placed between a fat old Italian, with an
enormous depth of double chin, and a small figure, which Harry
recognised at once as that of the man who had spoken to him on the quay.
“De gentelman speak English,” said the waiter, bowing with amiability
and pleasure. Harry, it is to be feared, did not appreciate the
exertions made in his behalf. The little stranger, on his side, was as
smiling and bland as the attendant, delighted to make himself agreeable.
They both thought it the most pleasant thing in the world to surprise
the sulky and speechless Englishman with a companion to whom he could
talk. “Mister have found his way after all to the Leone,” said his
friend, “I wish myself joy of it. It is what I most did desire. He is
the best hotel, the very best hotel in all Livorno. Most of the
strangers, what we call forestieri, find their ways here. Mister will
find himself very comfortable; the kitchen is excellent, and the
chambers--the chambers!” here the little man spread out his hands with
ecstatic admiration, “so clean, so comfortable; everything an
Englishman desire.”

Harry was cross, and he was suspicious. He thought the reappearance of
his first acquaintance looked like a conspiracy, and that probably
between the man and the waiter it was an understood thing that the
Englishman, who was so ignorant, should be made to pay for his
initiation into foreign ways. But he had no intention of being made to
pay if he could possibly help it. He had not the slightest understanding
of the waiter’s benevolent wish to make him comfortable, or the innocent
satisfaction of the other, at once in showing off himself and his
acquirements and showing kindness to a stranger. Harry did not realize
the national character in both, which made them pleased to serve him,
and anxiously on the watch for the look of pleasure which they
anticipated as their reward. An English servant would have looked on
with anticipations of another kind. He would have watched to see the
stranger’s hand stealing into his pocket: and on this point no doubt
Antonio had as sharp an eye as anyone; but his Italian soul, asked for
something more; he wanted to see a glow of pleasure in the face of the
person to whom he had just, as he thought, done a service. Harry
refused to pay in this wise. His countenance, somewhat dark before,
settled down into a heavier gloom. He drew in his chair to the table
roughly, losing part of his companion’s address: and he did not look at
the young man who was talking to him, or give him any recompense for the
effort he was making. After a while he made a remark, but it was not a
very civil one. “Why do you call me Mister?” was what he said.

The stranger looked at him, complacent still, but yet a trifle
abashed--“Because,” he said, stroking a small moustache, and fixing his
eyes upon Harry with a smiling yet deprecating glance, “I do not know
the gentleman’s name.”

“Even if you don’t know a fellow’s name,” said Harry, ruthless, “it
isn’t English to say Mister. Mister is a title of contempt.” Here the
horrified look of his new acquaintance made him pause. “I mean when it’s
used alone without the name. Low people sometimes use it so--but nobody
who speaks decent English,” Harry said. As he spoke the stranger’s olive
countenance caught flame and grew crimson. He laughed an embarrassed,
uncomfortable little laugh.

“It is that I am mistaken,” he said; “I have not spoke English moch. The
gentleman will pardon my error. My name is Paolo Thompson,” he said,
with a little wave of the hand, introducing himself.

“You would like to know my name,” said Harry.

The Italian-Englishman replied, not with any expression of offence, but
with a smiling bow.

“My name is----” he made a pause. He looked at the interested
countenance beside him, a sense of the ludicrous mingling with his
suspicious distrust of all strangers and foreigners. What did it matter
what he said to a little impostor like this? “Oliver,” he added, with a
laugh. He almost thought the little fellow, though not an Englishman,
must see the incongruity, the absurdity, of associating the name of
Oliver with such a person as Harry Joscelyn. It suddenly became a
practical joke to him, a masquerade which everyone must see through.

“O---- livr,” said little Thompson, with a long emphasis upon the first
letter, and a hurried slur over the rest; “that right? alright! Mister
O--lvr.”

“Not Mister,” said Harry, growing benevolent as he felt a little
amusement steal over him, and he tried to give his new acquaintance the
_nuance_ of sound which divides the Mr. of English use and wont from
the two distinct syllables of which Paolo was so fond. They grew friends
over this attempt at unity of pronunciation, or rather Harry permitted
himself to grow friendly, and to ask himself what harm this little
foreigner could do him--a little hop o’ my thumb, whom he could lift in
one hand. As he laughed over his new friend’s attempt to catch the
difference of sound, his friendly feeling increased. He felt his
superiority more and more, and in that superiority his suspicions melted
away. As for little Paolo he took everything amiably. He had no
objection to be laughed at.

“You mean not bad,” he said, “I know; you mean not to make angry. Laugh,
it is a way of us English. My father was an Englishman. I never know
him; he was died before I am born; but I too am an English by origin. It
is for that I have my place. I am Interpreter. I put what you say in
Italian. I put what one would say to you in English. Thus I please to
both,” said the little man with lively satisfaction; and he laughed when
Harry laughed with genuine good faith. Perhaps it was the reaction from
his past despondency which made Harry laugh so much, perhaps the little
bravado of a stranger feeling himself gazed at and isolated among a
crowd of people alien to him. He attracted the eyes of all the guests at
the table-d’hôte especially of some Americans who had come in late, and
one other Englishman who regarded him gloomily from the other end of the
table, and concluded that his countryman was having too much to drink,
but that it was not his business. Harry was not taking too much to
drink; he was making wry faces at the sour Nostrali, which was the only
wine provided without a special order. Harry did not understand any wine
except Port and Sherry, and he despised the sour stuff of which he took
one big gulp and no more; he did not know what else to order, and he did
not like to mix up Paolo in his affairs so far as to ask his advice on
this point. Paolo for his part was drinking a little of his wine in a
tumblerful of water, not without some alarm lest the _eau rougie_ should
go to his head. He told Harry all his story as they sat together. His
father had been an English clerk, sent out from England to an office in
Leghorn, who had married an Italian girl, and died in the first year of
their marriage. Paolo was very proud of that fine and aristocratic name
of Thompson, of which there was a Lord and many Sirs, he informed Harry
with great but smiling seriousness; his mother, though she had been so
young, would never re-marry herself, though pressed on all sides to do
so--such was her devotion to her youthful husband who was English, and
to the romantic and euphonious name which he had left her. The young man
grew every moment more friendly. Harry’s suspicions all floated away as
he listened to the story, and laughed at the accent and grammar of his
new acquaintance, who laughed too with perfect good-humour. Thompson--he
was a fit associate for an Oliver, Harry said to himself, knowing
nothing about any Oliver save Isaac whose name he had appropriated.
After dinner was over Paolo proposed that they should go for a stroll;
and though Harry had done nothing else but stroll all the afternoon with
very small advantage, yet he was quite willing to begin again with the
aid of his friend’s knowledge. It was less lonely than sitting in the
dreadful little room of which Paolo had ventured to say that it was so
comfortable, and exactly what an Englishman liked. Harry shuddered at
the thought; he had never been used to sit in his bedroom, and he could
not but feel it a sort of humiliation that he had no other room to sit
in. His new friend was a wonderful example of costume to the untrained
taste of Harry. He wore trousers of a large check, but a black evening
coat over them, a large shirt-front, a black ribbon at his neck tied in
a bow, and varnished shoes. He was very well contented with his
appearance. When he added an opera-hat to all this finery, the sensation
in his little bosom of thorough self-content was very warm. Harry could
not but laugh at the little exquisite, whose gorgeous apparel was so
unlike anything he had ever seen.

“I don’t know if I dare to walk out in my coloured clothes with such a
swell as you are, Thompson,” he said. Paolo looked down upon himself
delighted. He knew he was well-dressed.

“You are all right,” he said, “an English, that covers all; but when one
is only by origin, more must be done. Komm a-long.” He stretched up his
hand, which he had just clothed in light kid, to Harry’s arm, who had no
gloves, nor any other advantage. The Angelus was sounding from all the
churches as they set out. Harry could not but wonder if there was an
evening sermon, or if it was a series of prayer-meetings which were
going on. He was much surprised that foreigners should have such devout
habits. It surprised him, too, to see how soon it got dark; but as it
happened there was a brilliant moon which soon made the streets as light
as day. And as soon as the sacred hour of sunset, the fatal hour which
Italians dread, was over, the streets filled with a crowd which still
more surprised Harry. Before all the cafés the pavements were
crowded--not only men, but women, seated at the little tables enjoying
the freshness of the lovely evening, and making such a hum and babble of
talk as nothing but an unknown tongue can produce. A language which is
familiar to us never sounds so like an uproar and tumult as one that is
unintelligible. Harry’s first thought was that the people about him were
all quarrelling; his second that this chatter was the riotous and
boundless gaiety which he had always heard attributed to “foreigners;”
but the scene amused him, though it was so unintelligible, and by and by
a degree of toleration which years at home could not have conveyed to
him, began to penetrate his mind. Perhaps after all it was only the
different habits of these unknown people, and neither quarrelling nor
riot. Sometimes one would jump up in the midst of a conversation as if
impelled by a sudden outburst of fury, and address his friends,
gesticulating wildly; but after Harry had taken the alarm, and sat ready
to strike in if any harm happened, he noticed that the friends of the
violent person took it quite calmly, turning upon him looks which were
full of smiling placidity, and evidently fearing nothing. In the same
way when two men were threading their way along the street together, one
would suddenly drop the other’s arm, and standing still, discourse with
every mark of excitement for a minute, then resume his friend’s arm and
go on again as if there had been no interruption. An Englishman would
have knocked down his adversary with much less demonstration. Harry felt
himself obliged to pause too, and give an eye to these personages; and
when he also sat down with his companion at one of the little tables,
his attention to Paolo’s doubtful English was constantly interrupted by
the same supposed need of watchfulness in case the party next to them
should come to blows. But all the other people took it quite quietly, to
Harry’s great surprise.

“Why do these beggars jump up in that way and look as if they were going
to knock some other fellow down?” Harry said at last.

“Beggares?” said Paolo, looking round hastily; and then, for he was a
young man anxious to improve himself and quick of apprehension, he
jumped at the Englishman’s meaning. “Ah! that is English for questi
Signori, these gentlemen? beggares! capisco, capisco!” said Paolo,
clapping his hands as at an excellent joke; “they do nothing but make a
little conversation, what you call talk,--these beggares;” and he burst
forth once more into a genial peal.

Harry was half pleased to have achieved such a facile success, and half
alarmed lest perhaps Paolo might be laughing at him. He said with a
suppressed growl, “Conversation! do you call that conversation? I
thought they were going to fly at each other’s throats.”

“No, no, no--never fly at each other’s throats; they have too much
education,” said Paolo; “it is the Italian animation, that is all. An
English is what you call quiet. He talks down here, not out of his
mout,” and Paolo beat himself upon the breast, and pointed to about the
spot out of which Harry’s deep bass proceeded. Harry was by no means
pleased with this familiarity, but he reflected that the little man was
his only friend among all these strangers, and subdued his displeasure.
He did not know very well what to do with the pink syrup that was
furnished him to drink: that, and the sour wine, and the black coffee,
were all alike out of Harry’s way. Oh, that he could have had but one
mighty draught of English beer to clear all these cobwebs out of his
throat! But this was an indulgence, like so many others, to be hoped for
no more.

After Paolo had sipped the rosolio which Harry contemplated with such a
mingling of alarm and disgust, they got up and continued their walk.
By-and-bye, in the full moonlight, they strolled towards the port, and
walked about on the quays, among the shipping, which threw up its black
lines of masts, and dark lace of cordage against the silvery light of
which the sky was full. Harry was interested about all this, much more
than about churches or pictures. And he threaded his way among the
ropes, and piles of barrels and cases with which the quays were
encumbered, with a stir of curiosity and hope. Should he find his life
and work within the circle which surrounded these instruments of wealth?
He paid but little attention to the talk of his companion as they went
along. He seemed to see once more the new career before him which he had
been doubting an hour or two before. It was not a very magnificent
prospect: yet work that suited him might surely be found when there were
goods to be exported, and counting houses to look after these goods. He
did not know what might become of him in this strange place, but
whatever his fortune might be it was all he could look forward to, and
his mind seemed to take a new start from the appearance before him of a
possibility, a strain of existence which he understood. He forgot, as he
listened to Paolo’s chatter going on by his side--which filled him with
a vague, superficial sense of superiority--all about the new language to
be learned, and the difficulties which had almost overwhelmed him in the
afternoon. Thus he went on, allowing his companion to talk, and thinking
his own thoughts, till they emerged from the immediate regions of the
basins and docks and came back to the streets. They were crossing one
which was very dimly lighted, and which Paolo informed him led into the
better quarter of the town, when they came in sight, or, rather in
hearing, of a party of sailors in a noisy state of exhilaration. What
could they have been drinking, Harry wondered, thinking of the sour wine
and the rosolio, to make them so convivial? They were singing rude
choruses, and making night hideous with jokes and loud laughter, bearing
a wonderful family resemblance to noises of the same kind which Harry
had heard near the port of Liverpool--when there suddenly crossed the
moonlit-road, between the revellers and the two orderly passengers, a
couple of female figures moving rapidly, figures very easily identified
as those of an elder and younger woman--a sedate and ample personage,
with a girl clinging to her. Two of the sailors, with a holloa of
satisfaction, started forward in pursuit. They overtook the women when
they were close to Harry and his companion, and one of them seized the
girl by the arm. She gave a frightened cry, and the other woman,
throwing her arm round her, pushed the men away, pouring forth a volley
of rapid Italian, of which Harry of course did not understand a word. He
made a stride forward to the fray. Paolo, on his side, who was small and
not valorous, did his best to hold him back.

“It is not our business,” he said, with a certain faltering in his
voice.

“Tell them to let go the girl,” said Harry, with brief determination.

“It is not our business,” said the alarmed interpreter.

“Tell them they had better let go that girl,” repeated the young
Englishman.

Then little Paolo stood forth, with a courage which was not his own, and
addressed the sailors. He took off his hat with the utmost politeness
and remonstrated. Harry, beginning, by dint of hearing them repeated, to
distinguish the words, at last understood that “Questo Signor” must mean
himself; but the sailors treated the remonstrance with contempt. The
other one took hold of the girl by the other arm, while she screamed,
and her companion raved and scolded at them, pushing and struggling with
all her might. Harry stepped forward into the moonlight. He lifted up
his clenched fist and his big bass voice. “Let go that girl,” he shouted
in good English, with a voice that roused all the echoes. The men did
not know a word he said; but they understood him, which was more to the
purpose. They let go their hold in a minute, and stood staring at the
intruder as sheepishly as any Englishmen could have done, and perhaps
also with a touch of shame. Little Paolo, trembling yet triumphant, kept
close to the champion, while he stood and faced them, ready for
whatever might happen. It was not for nothing that Harry was a
Joscelyn. He stood well up to them with a watchful eye and a ready arm.
The women had escaped under cover of this unexpected interposition from
their first assailants, but another pursuer by this time had got upon
their track. “Let’s have a look at your face, my pretty lass,” this lout
said, as he rolled along. Harry’s blood was up in a moment. “Oh, by
Jove!” he cried, as if the sound of his native tongue had been the last
aggravation, “this is too much. I know what to say to you, at least, my
fine fellow,” and he turned upon his countryman like lightning, and
promptly knocked him down. “I am not going to stand any nonsense from
_you_,” he said.

It was the affair of a moment--no more. The women flew along the street,
disappearing up the nearest opening. Harry strode on after them with his
blood up, but walking with the most dignified tranquillity. He would not
even turn round to see what had happened. “If he thought I was going to
stand _him_,” he said, as he went along, “that fellow, by Jove! but he
was in the wrong box.” As for little Paolo, between fright and
admiration, he was at his wit’s end. He danced along, now hurrying
Harry on, now facing the other way, walking backwards to keep the other
party in sight, and uttering alarmed entreaties. “Run! run! What if you
’ave kill him?” he cried. “Vergene Santissima! they are coming. You ’ave
done it now, you ’ave done it, and no one to help. Per Bacco! and he
goes as if it were a festa. Run, Mister, run!”

“I told you not to call me Mister,” said Harry, walking on with perfect
coolness and at his ordinary pace. Paolo was half beside himself.
“Perhaps you have kill a man,” he cried, “and you stop to set right my
English--at such a moment----”

“Pooh!” said Harry; he would not have quickened his steps for a fortune.
“Don’t you know the beggar is an Englishman? A broken head won’t hurt
him. Let’s keep the women in sight, they might get into more trouble.”
Paolo followed him, trembling and hurried as they got further off; but
the noisy sailors were busy about their fallen comrade, and made no
attempt to follow. They were too much startled by the summary
proceedings of the stranger, and kept back by a certain sense of justice
which seldom fails in such an affray. The little Italian kept close to
Harry like a dog, rushing about him, now a little in advance, now a
little behind. “He ’ave pick himself up,” he said, looking back. “Dio!
how the English understand each other! He is not kill.”

“Killed!” cried Harry, contemptuously. “It takes more than that to kill
an Englishman, even a beast like that fellow. You may palaver with your
own kind, but I know what to do with mine. Come along, Thompson. Where
have those women gone?”

Here Paolo caught him by the arm, dragging him into the narrow street by
which the flying figures had disappeared. One side of it was in almost
perfect darkness, while the other was white and brilliant in the
moonlight. “You like to know who it was,” he said. “Per Bacco! I know.”

“It does not matter to me who it was,” said Harry, “so long as they are
safe, that is all I care for. Women have no business to be out so late
at night.”

At this Paolo nodded his head a great many times in assent. “But that is
English too,” he said. “How you are strange! You let a young lady go in
the street, and you kill a man, and never think more of it! and the man
when he is kill, get up and walk away instead of to avenge himself! You
are strange, very strange. I understand you very well, for I am an
English too.”

After this somewhat startling incident, however, they did not linger
long on their way. It had stirred the blood in Harry’s veins and given
him the new start he wanted. There is nothing like a new incident for
familiarising the mind with any great change in this life. Hitherto he
had thought of nothing but his own transmogrification. Now he had
something else to think of. He got back to his inn unmolested and
uninterrupted, and he found his dreary little room not so dreary when it
became a shelter for his fatigue, and a refuge in which to think over
the strange excitement of this first new day.




CHAPTER III.

SETTING OUT IN LIFE.


Next morning Harry was woke by the appearance of his little friend at
his bedside. For a moment it was all fantastic to him like a dream, the
narrow slip of room with its tall walls, and straight windows, and the
strange little figure by his bedside. “Hallo,” he said, “who are you,
and what do you want?” opening his sleepy eyes, and springing up in bed.
Paolo retreated with a little alarm.

“I go to the bureau,” he said, “but before I go I am here to say good
morning. What will you do without me?” the little man added with great
simplicity. “Get lost, get into what you call skrape. Antonio, he speak
a little. I come to advise that you take him with you. It will be only
five lire, not very moche for an English.”

“I wish you could remember,” said Harry pettishly, “to say an
Englishman. An English is no sense: you never hear _me_ say that.”

“Alright,” said Paolo good-humouredly. “I will remember; but it will be
better to take Antonio; he shows you everything, all the palaces and
streets, and you give him cinque lire--five,” holding up his fingers
spread out to show the sum, and counting them with his other hand, “and
you talk, he tell you things in Italian, you make a lesson out of him,”
he added with a grin, showing all his white teeth.

It was a sensible suggestion, but Harry was perverse. “That is all very
well,” he said, “but I don’t care about seeing your palaces; what I want
is to get something to do. Ain’t there a _Times_, or something with
advertisements? where a fellow could see what’s wanted?”

Paolo looked at him with a doubtful air, and his head on one side like a
questioning sparrow. He was so small and so spare, and Harry so big,
stretched out in the small bed which could not contain him, that the
simile held in all points. It appeared unnecessary that he should do
more than put out his hand to make an end altogether of his adviser, and
there seemed a consciousness of this in the little man himself, who,
recollecting last night, hopped a little farther off every time that
Harry advanced leaning on his elbow, and projecting himself out of bed.

“You bring letters, you are recommended?” he said. “No?” A cloud came
over Paolo’s face; then he brightened again. “You come with me,” he
said. “The Consul, that is the prince of the English--man. You come wid
me, and I will recommend you. I will introduce you. He have much
confidence, what you call trost, in me.”

“But you don’t know anything about me,” said Harry.

Paolo looked at him with an effusion of admiration and faith, “Siamo
amici,” he said, laying his hand upon his heart with a sentiment and air
which to the cynical Englishman were nothing less than theatrical. But
Harry did not understand what the words meant.

“That is all very well,” he said again, supposing that this was a mere
compliment without meaning. “But what could you say about me? nothing!
You don’t know me any more than the Consul does--or anybody here.”

“Between friends,” said Paolo, “there is not the need of explanation. I
understand you, Mister. Are you a Christian or a Protestant,” he added
quickly, “have you a name of baptism, perhaps?” Paolo did not want to
hurt the feelings of his new friend in case he was not provided with
this article. But Harry’s pride was wounded to the quick.

“A Christian,” he cried, “or a Protestant? I am both a Protestant and a
Christian! I never heard such horrible intolerance in all my life. It is
you who are not Christians, you papists praying to idols--worshipping
saints, and old bones, and all sort of nonsense.” Harry was so much in
earnest that his face grew crimson, and Paolo retreated yet another
step.

“You heat yourself; but it is not needed,” he said, waving his hand with
deprecating grace. “Me, I am above prejudices. Here one calls one’s self
Giovanni or Giacomo, or Paolo, as with me; and when the person is
respectable of years, Ser Giovanni or Ser Giacomo; but if one has not a
name of baptism, it is the same, that make no difference----”

“Do you take me for a heathen that never was christened?” cried Harry.
“My name is----” here he stopped and laughed, but grew redder, with a
dusky colour; but “in for penny in for a pound,” as he had already
remarked to himself--“my name is Isaac--Isaac Oliver, as I told you,”
he said.

“Bene, bene!” said Paolo. “It is enough, I will say to the consul: here
is Mister Isaac, who is my friend. He is English--man; yes, I
recollect--man; and I respond for him. He will be so condescending as to
take a situation; he will interpret like me; he will make the Italian
into the English, and the English into the Italian.”

“But how can I do that?” said Harry, “when I don’t understand one word
of your lingo? I can’t do that.”

Paolo’s countenance lengthened once more; but he speedily recovered
himself.

“That will teach itself,” he said. “I will talk; I will tell you
everything. Aspetto! there is now, presently, incessantly--an occasion.
Komm, komm along; something strikes me in the head. But silence, the
Vice-Consul, he it is that will settle all.”

Harry did not think much of Paolo’s recommendation; but yet the idea of
appealing to the Vice-Consul was worth consideration. The thought of an
Englishman to whom he could tell his story--or if not his story, yet a
story, something which would seem as an account of himself--was like a
rope thrown out to him amid a waste of waters. And, as an Englishman, he
would have a right to be listened to. English officials are not like
American, the natural vassals of their countrymen; but still, when a man
is at his wit’s end, there is something in the idea that a person of
authority, in whom he has a vested interest, is within reach, which is
consolatory. To be introduced to this functionary, however, by Paolo,
whose position did not seem to be very important, did not please Harry’s
pride. He sent the little fellow away with a vague promise of thinking
of it, which disappointed the friendly little man. Paolo could not
restrain his anxious desire to be of use. He went off to the Farmacia to
buy soap and tooth-powder for his amico, and even proposed to fetch him
the little bicchierino of acquavite, with which some people begin their
day, a proposal which filled Harry with horror. Paolo put his
dressing-table in order with the care of a woman, and lingered, anxious
to do something more. He would have brushed his friend’s clothes, if
Harry would have let him. He was proud of his new discovery, the big
Englishman, whom he had secured to himself, and whom he admired in
proportion to his own smallness and inconsiderableness. Something of
the pleasure of a nurse with an infant, and of a child with a new toy,
was in his bustling anxious delight. When at last, however, he was half
forced, half persuaded to go away, Paolo made a few steps back from the
door and held up a warning finger.

“Mister Isaack mio,” he said, “one must not any more knock down. It is
not understood in Livorno. That which can well do itself in England is
different: here--it is not understood.” His face had become very grave,
then a deprecatory smile of apology broke over it. “In Italy they are in
many things behind,” he said. “It is not--understood.”

“Don’t be afraid, Paul-o,” said Harry, laughing, “I shan’t knock down
anyone to-day. Even in England we don’t do it but when it is necessary.
You may trust me, I shall knock nobody down to-day.”

“Alright, alright!” said Paolo, with a beaming countenance. He turned
back again to instruct his friend at what hour it would be best to come
to the bureau. “I will speak, and you shall be expected. I will respond
for you,” the little man said.

At last he went away full of amiable intentions and zeal in his friend’s
cause, zeal which deserved a better reward. For Harry did not build
much upon the influence of Paolo. It hurt his pride to think of
presenting himself anywhere under the wing of this little Italian clerk.
He would stand upon his own qualities, he said to himself, not upon the
ready faith and rash undertaking of a stranger; but though he put it in
this way, it was not in reality because he objected to Paolo’s trust in
him, or thought it rash as another man might have done, but because he
felt himself Paolo’s social superior. It would be hard to say on what
this consciousness was founded. Harry’s only superiority had been his
family, and that he had put away. As he was dressing, he turned over a
great many things in his mind which he might say to the Vice-Consul. Few
young people understand how much better policy it is in all such cases
to speak the truth than to invent the most plausible of stories, and
Harry was not wiser than his kind. He made up various fictions about
himself explaining how it was that he thus presented himself alone and
unfriended in an altogether strange place--all of which he would have
stated with a faltering tongue and abashed countenance, so as to impress
the falsehood of them upon the hearer; for to invent excuses is one
thing, and to produce them with force and consistency another.
Successful lying, like everything else, wants practice; few men can
succeed in it who only do it once in a way. It requires study, and
careful consideration of probabilities, so that the artist shall not be
put entirely out by an unforeseen question: and it needs an excellent
memory, to retain all that has been said, so as not to contradict
previous statements. Harry possessed none of these qualities, but then
he was not aware of the want of them; and the thing which made him
depart from tale after tale was not any suspicion of their weakness, or
his weakness, but an inability to please himself in the details of his
romance. And then the thought of going as it were hat in hand, to ask
the Consul to provide him with employment, and the inevitable starting
forth of little Paolo to pledge himself for everything his friend might
say, discouraged him. He grew downhearted as he put himself into the
best apparel he had, and brushed his hair, and endeavoured to look his
best. Would it not be better to start off again, to go, though he had
made up his mind against it, to America after all? There, there would be
no language to learn, no difficulty in understanding what was said to
him. He went down and swallowed his breakfast, coffee and bread, which
seemed to him the most wretched fare, turning this over in his mind. But
for one thing he did not like to be beaten; no Englishman does, he said
to himself; and Harry was of the primitive, simple kind of Englishman
who clings to all national characteristics. He could not bear to be
beaten, to contradict himself as it were, and depart from his plan.
While he was thinking of all this, however, a brilliant expedient
occurred to him. Though he was reluctant to tell his own story, he was
not disposed to screen himself by any fiction of excuses from the
consequences of anything he had done; and it was undeniable that he had
“got into a row” on the previous night. No Englishman, he reflected,
would think the worse of a young fellow who had knocked down a drunken
sailor to prevent him from molesting a woman; but it would be as well to
go and tell the story of this little incident in case of any ulterior
proceedings. Harry fairly chuckled over his own wisdom in hitting upon
so admirable a way of presenting himself to the representative of his
country. He had never before felt himself so clever. He munched his dry
bread and drank his coffee with a wry face, but something like a mental
relish at least. Little Paolo’s friendly conscience would not need to be
strained. He would be able to bear witness of the facts in all
sincerity, and, if anything were to come of it, there would be at least
a friend in court, a valuable advocate secured. Antonio, the waiter,
drew near while Harry came to this conclusion, and watched him
dispatching his simple refreshment with friendly looks. The Italians
admired the young Englishman’s fine limbs, and height and strength, and
they made a pet of him because he was a stranger and helpless; perhaps
the waiter was not without an eye to substantial rewards, but he had at
the same time a most friendly eye to Harry’s helplessness, and an
amiable desire to make him comfortable. He stood and watched him eating
with sympathy.

“Ze gentleman would like an egg, perhaps, Sarr?” he said.

“I should like half-a-dozen,” said Harry with a sigh; “but no, no, never
mind--never mind; for the present this will do.”

“Ze gentlemen Italian eat no breakfast,” said Antonio; “ze eat--after;
but I will command for ze English gentleman, if it makes pleasure to
him, ze English breakfast. There is already one here.”

“One--breakfast!” said Harry, surprised.

“One,” said Antonio, with a finger in the air, “English-man, and two
tree Americans; ze eat of ze beef in ze early morning. It is
extraordinary: eat of ze beef when you comes out of your bed. But it is
the same--it is the same; that makes nothing to our padrone; and I will
command it for ze gentleman if he will.”

“I wish you would,” said Harry, “another time; dry bread is not much to
breakfast upon: and the bread is very queer stuff.”

“It is good bread,” said Antonio, “Sarr, very good bread; bettare far
than ze bread of London;” he nodded his head as he spoke with
self-satisfaction. “Ze gentleman would like me go wid him--show him all
ze places, and ze grand catedral, and all that ze English gentleman go
over ze world to see?”

“No, Antonio; I don’t care about cathedrals, but you can come with me to
the English Consul’s if you like, and show me the way.”

“I like very moche, Sarr,” said Antonio, with a grin. “Ze English
gentlemans please me. Zey is astonished at everyting. Ze pictures--O!
bellissimi! and ze palazzi, and ze churches. It is noting but O! and O!
as long as zey are walking about. But, Sarr,” said Antonio, coming
closer, “Livorno is not moche. It is a city of trade. Com to Firenze,
Sarr, if you would see beautiful pictures and beautiful houses. Ah! that
is something to see. Or to Venezia--better still. I am of Venezia, Sarr.
Ze gentleman will not say to Signor Paolo that I tell him so, but
Livorno--pouff!” Antonio blew it away in a puff of disdain. “Firenze and
Venezia, there is where you will see pictures--everyware--of Raphael and
Michael Angelo, and Tiziano, and----”

“I don’t care much about pictures,” said Harry, calmly. “I like the
shipping better. You can take me to the docks if you like. I don’t want
you to tell me about them. I like to see things I know about myself. But
I tell you what, Antonio, you may teach me the names in Italian, if you
like; that will always be making a little progress,” Harry said,
suddenly bethinking himself of Paolo’s suggestion.

Antonio’s face had lengthened by several inches. An English gentleman
who did not want to see pictures was a personage of whom he had no
understanding. He began to think that Harry was not a genuine
Englishman after all.

“Ze signor is perhaps Tedesco--no? Or Americain--no? I have known many
English,” said Antonio, gravely, “but zey all run after ze pictures. Ze
gentleman is what you call an original. Benissimo! that makes noting to
me. Ze sheeps in ze harbour are very fine sheeps. You will not see no
bettare--no, not in England. Ze signor wishes--eh?--perhaps to make
observations, to let ze Government--ze ministers know, Italy is now a
great country, and ze others are jealous. You fear we will take ze trade
all away?”

“Not so bad as that, Antonio,” said Harry, with a great laugh. “Where I
have come from I wish I could show you the docks; they are about ten
times as big as these.”

Antonio grinned from ear to ear. He did not believe a word of what Harry
said. “If it pleases to ze gentleman,” he said, laughing too. He was
perfectly tolerant of the joke, and glad to see his _protegé_ cheerful.
Then Harry jumped up from the table, poorly sustained for the business
he had in hand by his light meal, but somewhat anxious to get through
the ordeal he had proposed to himself. Antonio, however, who appeared
presently in the well-worn and assiduously brushed costume of a _laquais
de place_, could not quite let him off the inevitable sightseeing. He
led him to the Duomo and into the great Square with a pretence that this
was on the way to the Consul’s office, and made him look at again,
whether he would or not, the same public buildings which he had gazed at
dreamily as he wandered about the streets the day before, and looked at
languidly in the moonlight under Paolo’s active guidance. He had been
but twenty-four hours in Leghorn, and already he had associations with
the street-corners, which probably he would never forget. Already this
new world was acquiring known features of acquaintanceship; his life
beginning to put forth threads like a spider’s web, and twist and twine,
the new with the old. It startled Harry to feel that he was no longer a
stranger here, where he had landed so forlorn. After the round which
Antonio beguiled him into making, it was about eleven o’clock before
they reached the door over which the well-known British symbol was put
up. The outer office was full of people and business, sea-captains and
merchants’ clerks, and even a few examples of the kind of traveller who
is most common in Italy, he who travels for pleasure and not for
business. Harry had to wait among the rest who were seeking an audience
of the Vice-Consul. Here Antonio left him, and he could not see anything
like the olive-countenance and brilliant costume of Paolo; but it was an
English group among which he stood. The clerks even spoke English, if
one or two of them displayed the tongue-tied hesitation which is common
to all classes when they speak a language imperfectly understood. One of
the tourists did his best to draw Harry into conversation, lamenting the
cruel fate which had detained him in such a place. He was just starting
for Pisa, this pilgrim said, where there was really something to see.
“One might as well be in Liverpool as here,” he said. Harry did not make
any reply. This was just the reason why he himself approved of Leghorn
more than of any other place he had seen. When it came to his turn at
last, almost all the other appellants and petitioners had been seen and
dismissed. They all wanted something; and Harry’s new acquaintance had
talked and worried him so much with his dislike to a place where there
was so little to see, that he had almost forgot the manner in which he
had arranged with himself to open his own story; when at length
everybody else was despatched, and he had to go forward to his audience.
His heart beat a little faster as he went in. The Vice-Consul was a man
of a portly presence, something like an English merchant of the higher
class, with grizzled hair, and an aspect of great respectability and
authority. He was fully conscious of his dignity as the representative
of the British Government, and of Her Majesty herself, amid an alien and
inferior race. He did not think much of Italy or the Italian people, and
he felt it was his mission in life to keep them down. He was seated in
great state upon a large chair, which swung round with him when he
moved. His table, his papers, the manner in which he appeared over them,
with the air of a judge on the bench, was very imposing to a stranger,
especially when that stranger was in difficulty and came to ask help. He
made Harry a very formal bow, and pointed to a seat near, which had
something of the air of a seat for the prisoner at the bar.

“What can I do for you?” he said, with a dignified inclination of his
head; after the first glance his look softened. He was used to see a
great many people, and it was a compliment to Harry’s appearance that
it interested the Vice-Consul. He almost smiled upon him, with a
benignity in which he did not very often indulge.

Then it was that Harry’s real difficulties began; but how thankful he
was that it was a true story he was telling, and not a fictitious
account of himself!

“I came to tell you, Sir,” he said, “of something that occurred last
night--a scrape--that is to say a row I got into. I suppose I must call
it a row.”

“It is a great pity when strangers get into rows in a foreign town,
Mr.----Oliver. I think you said Oliver?”

What a fool I was thought Harry!--as he did after every new production
of that name; but his last chance of reclaiming his own was now over.

“What you say is quite true,” he said, “and I should not have been such
a fool but for urgent cause. I knocked down a fellow who was annoying a
lady. He deserved a great deal more than I gave him; if he had been an
Italian I might have hesitated, but he was an Englishman. So I just
knocked him down.”

“Very wrong, very wrong,” said the Vice-Consul, “and a curious way of
showing your preference for your fellow-countrymen. But you had better
tell me all about it. When did this occur, and where?”

Harry described the place as well as he could. “There was a lot of
them,” he said. “The Italians--if they were Italians--gave way when I
spoke to them. I’ll do them that justice. The English fellow, I did not
say anything to him. I was not going to argue with a brute like that. I
just quietly knocked him down. It was a young lady and a woman with her.
You see, if I had stood there talking, the others might have been up to
us, and have given her more annoyance. I daresay it did not hurt the
fellow much; and if he’s a man he’ll take it quietly, for he deserved
it; but I thought it was perhaps best to let you know.”

The Vice-Consul had started slightly when Harry described, as well as he
could, the locality in which this incident took place. Now he asked
quickly, “And the lady--did you know her? and did she get clean away?”

“Know her!” said Harry, “I only arrived here yesterday; besides I did
not want to know her: it might not have been pleasant for her. We
watched her safe out of reach; indeed we went on till we heard a door
shut where she lived, I suppose. No, it was not for that. It was to say
that if the fellow complained, or brought any action, or anything of
that sort--I wanted you, Sir, being the representative of England, to
know the real facts. That is how it was.”

There was a smile about the Vice-Consul’s mouth. “As it happens I have
heard about it already,” he said. “I’ll speak to you farther on the
subject by-and-bye--Don’t be alarmed, it will do you no harm; sit down
and rest yourself, and wait for a few minutes. I am going in to lunch
presently, and I’ll talk to you then,” the Vice-Consul said. Harry did
not know what to think. The consequences could not be very bad, since
this great functionary restrained a smile; but there was evidently a
second chapter to the adventure. Harry withdrew as he was directed to
the other end of the office, and there stood gazing at railway
timetables, and pictures of ships. There was all about a line of vessels
to America from Genoa which had lately been established, just the very
thing for him if he intended to do what he had been thinking of. But
Harry scarcely knew what he was looking at. All these questions seemed
things of the past. What was the Vice-Consul going to say to him? What
was to come of it? Till he knew this he could not think of anything
else.




CHAPTER IV.

THE VICE-CONSUL’S DAUGHTER.


A door in the Vice-Consul’s office opened into a long passage with a row
of windows on one side, which communicated with his house. When the hour
came at which, after the comfortable fashion of leisurely Italian towns,
the office was shut up for the midday meal, the Vice Consul made Harry
an amiable sign to follow. He led him through this passage, which looked
upon a courtyard full of plants, where a fountain trickled in the
sunshine, into a large cool room with all its _jalousies_ closed, and in
which for a minute or two he saw nothing. He was being introduced into a
sort of enchanted country it seemed, unlike anything he had ever known
or thought of; the tiled floor was almost covered with soft rugs,
according to a fashion not then known in England, and the furniture
dimly discerned in the gloom, was like rocks at sea to the stranger who
had no chart of the confused and intricate passage. Something white in a
corner, something which moved a little when they came in, was all he
saw, and he could not make out even what that was till his eyes had got
accustomed to the light. Then he perceived with a great tremor and shock
of shyness that it was a lady, a slight girl in a white dress who looked
up to nod to her father, then seeing a second figure behind him, rose
hastily with a shy grace. Harry was still more shy than she was. He was
not accustomed to the society of ladies. And he was dreadfully hungry,
having had nothing but that dry bread and coffee, a circumstance which
made him still more depressed and timid. He did not at all know why he
was introduced so suddenly into this other world. He thought he was only
going to an inner office, or perhaps--but that was a blessedness he
dared scarcely hope for--that the Consul in his kindness had meant to
give him some luncheon. But the drawing-room confused him wholly; he had
done nothing to merit such an introduction. He only half took in
accordingly the meaning of the words the Consul said, “Look here, Rita,
I have brought your champion of last night.”

“Oh!” That purely English exclamation sounded to Harry the sweetest
syllable he had ever heard. The white figure came a step forward. By
this time he began to see through the gloom, and what he saw was a very
young face, with two great dark eyes, lifted to him full of wonder and
pleasure. Then a hand was put out, “Was it you?” she said eagerly. “Oh,
yes, I remember!” And before he was aware the hand, smaller and softer
than any such article previously known to him, touched his for a moment.
Harry dropped into the chair which the Vice-Consul pointed to him in
utter confusion of surprise. He was not even able to notice what an
extraordinary advantage to him such an introduction was. He was simply
astonished more than words could say.

“This is Mr. Oliver,” said the Vice-Consul. “He came and told me all
about it without a notion who you were. And you see how surprised he is.
He thought, I suppose, I was taking him into a kind of genteel prison.
It must be added that, if you only arrived yesterday, you lost no time
in getting into a row.”

“Did you only arrive yesterday?” said the delightful little voice, in
which there was a flavour of something not English, though the English
was perfect. “Oh, how glad I am that you did arrive then! What would
have become of us otherwise? for no one but an Englishman wandering
about the most unlikely places could ever have found himself just
there.”

“And nobody but an English girl would have risked herself in such a
place,” said the father. “I hope you will take that to heart, my dear.
This girl,” he added, turning to the young man, “is by way of despising
all Italian precautions. She is an English girl, she tells everybody,
and she will not be a slave like the others: and old Benedetta is an old
fool and never goes against her. One of her pensioners was ill last
night, that was why the monkey was out at such an hour. When I am at the
Club there is nobody to put her to bed.”

“As if I was a little child to be put to bed! It was the dearest old
woman, and she would see me. The priest had been sent for and the
sacraments; could I refuse to go--now could I? And how was I to know men
were so dreadful? But you see, papa, there are always the good angels
about.”

“When I was young the angels were all feminine,” the Vice-Consul said,
“and we called the ladies by these pretty names, not the ladies us.”

“Perhaps you never did so much for any girl. Oh, how frightened I was
when that man took hold of my arm! and then to hear an English voice as
if it were coming from the skies, ‘Let go that girl!’”

“How did the fellow understand, I wonder?” the Vice-Consul said.

“If I had not been so frightened I should have laughed. They did not
understand a bit! It might just as well have been Greek; but if it had
been Greek they would have understood,” cried Rita, putting her hands
together with grateful enthusiasm. All this time Harry had never spoken
a word; indeed, there had been no opening for him to speak.

“You must have thought me a big idiot to say anything at all,” he said.

“Oh! I thought you---- I won’t tell you what, or papa will say something
disagreeable. It was so grand the English voice; and then their hands
dropped as if I had been fire.”

“I should have broken every bone in their bodies,” cried Harry, with
unnecessary fervour, “if I had known it was _you_ they touched with
their filthy fingers!” He did not know why he made this violent speech,
which was far from elegant, and quite unsuitable to the refined and
still atmosphere in which he so unexpectedly found himself. As for Rita
she blushed a little, and laughed a little, in the soft green twilight,
finding it not unnatural that he should have been doubly indignant at
the idea that it was _she_ who was in danger. She was accustomed to
believe that anything disagreeable was doubly offensive when it happened
to her, and that she was about the most important little person in the
world. But she was one of the rare people whom such a knowledge does not
spoil. It seemed to her quite simple--was not she her father’s only
child, and only pleasure in life? She had been aware of this fact ever
since she was born.

“Hush, hush!” said the Vice-Consul; “we must have nothing more about
breaking bones: to knock down one fellow was quite enough. But I am very
much obliged to you, Oliver. I can’t make a stranger of you after this.
My little girl is all I have in the world, and whoever is good to her is
good to me. If you are going to stay in Leghorn, I hope you’ll let me be
of some use to you; but I don’t suppose that’s very likely. Meantime,
Rita, don’t you think we had better go to lunch?”

What welcome words these were to Harry! He was excited and pleased by
the adventure altogether; his head was a little turned by the enthusiasm
of gratitude with which he was received, and the atmosphere around this
young creature, who was a kind of mystic half revelation to him. He had
not yet made out her face quite distinctly, and yet he was admitted to
all the privileges of friendship: the strange sensation intoxicated him.
But yet when her father spoke of lunch, all that went out of his head.
Consider that he had eaten nothing but about half a yard of tasteless
bread that day! and it was one o’clock. But Harry was not without
manners; though the pangs of appetite made him faint, he got up politely
and made a pretence at taking leave. Needless to say that the
Vice-Consul was above taking advantage of his position, “No, no, no; we
are going to keep you to luncheon,” he said, with a _bonhomie_ which was
irresistible. Harry thought him the most delightful person in the world,
only a little less delightful than the other unknown being who made him
feel tremulous and abashed, though so happy. The dining-room was
lighted from the shady side of the courtyard, and there was accordingly
light enough to see by. The meal was not a foreign breakfast, but an
English luncheon of a substantial kind, and it is safe to say that Harry
had never been so happy in his life as when he had taken off the first
fierce edge of appetite, and had begun to be able to enjoy the novelty
and yet the familiarity of this unexpected scene. Mr. Bonamy (which was
the name of the Vice-Consul) without laying aside the dignity as of a
benevolent prince which was so remarkable in him, showed all the
condescension of a thoroughly amiable potentate; and Rita was---- Rita
was something of which Harry had no previous conception. She was about
sixteen--no more. Her face was the face of a child, but lighted up by
two beautiful large eyes which she had got from her Italian mother. She
knew, or seemed to know, everything her father knew, and was used to be
talked to about all that happened. If it were not Joan putting in her
word occasionally in a long discussion when her interference was seldom
received but with either blame or contempt, Harry had never been
accustomed to women who took any share in the conversation going on;
and to hear this child talk bewildered him. She had a slight girlish
figure, a small face almost without colour, the faint sweet flesh tints
of which were thrown up in the most delicate distinctness by the white
of her dress. She seemed all spirit, all life, a creature made of air
and sunshine rather than flesh and blood to Harry. And about himself
there was so much flesh and blood! He listened to the conversation
rather than joined in it, feeling himself an admiring audience rather
than a partaker in their talk. One thing only he felt moved to say, and
that was about his own appetite, which he feared they would think
preposterous. “I feel more like a wolf than a man,” he said. “I hope you
won’t think I’m always like this. I never was abroad before, and I don’t
know the ways. And I had no breakfast but some of their queer bread.
This bread is delightful,” Harry said, with enthusiasm. The father and
the daughter were delighted with him, appetite and all.

“I am so glad you never were abroad before,” said Rita; “now one sees
exactly what England is like. Oh, yes, papa, you need not laugh. I see
the English green, and the trees waving, and the winds blowing, all in
Mr. Oliver’s face. And there is a little sound of the sea, and a shadow
of hills--not big mountains, but nice, kind hills with sheep-bells
tinkling----”

“We have not many sheep-bells, Miss Bonamy, in my country,” said Harry;
“the hills are more grey than green, and there is a great deal of fog in
the winter, and east wind, and rain----”

“Oh, don’t tell me about the bad things, tell me about what is
pleasant,” said Rita. “The east wind is not so bad as the scirocco, and
the rain is delightful. I know all about that. As for the fog, the
painters say it is more picturesque than anything. They say there is
always a soft delicious sort of haze, and you never see things sharp cut
out against the sky as they look here.”

“Have you never been in England?” Harry said, with a little surprise;
and then he saw that a shade, a sort of cloud, come over the lively
table, and the two animated faces. Rita shook her head, and then began
to talk quickly to him about the neighbourhood, and all he would have to
see. Harry had protested to his humble friends that he wanted to see
nothing but the shipping, but he did not repeat this sentiment here. He
learned in a moment that to be fond of pictures was a necessity, and
that there were certain things which every Englishman in Italy had come
expressly to worship. Rita’s opinion “of course” convinced him in a
moment. He never made the slightest stand against it. Henceforward he
knew what was expected of him. When she went out of the room waving her
fingers to him in sign of goodbye, Harry suddenly became quite grave,
and felt all at once as if the light had gone out of the sky. And there
was more than sentiment in this feeling; for now he found himself face
to face with the Vice-Consul, and it was very evident that, so much
having passed between them, something more would now have to be said.
Mr. Bonamy offered the young man a cigar, and, lighting his own, leant
back in his chair, and evidently awaited some further disclosures of his
mind and purpose.

“You are thinking of staying in Leghorn,” he said.

“I am thinking,” said Harry, feeling his colour rise, “of trying to get
employment, if I can; a situation of some kind.”

“Employment!” said the Vice-Consul. It was impossible to deny that he
was disappointed. His voice had an accent which there was no mistaking.
Harry had not much refinement or education, but he had an air which
would have been perfectly consistent with the rank of a young squire, an
English country gentleman of simple mind, and no great amount of
culture, travelling for his pleasure, and perhaps with some vague idea
of improvement. Mr. Bonamy, who had received him so cordially, and who
had been pleased to be under an obligation to a young fellow of
attractive appearance and pleasant manners, was more cast down by this
intimation than might have been thought possible. Not a young squire:
nobody in particular: a penniless youth seeking employment. Such
visitors were not rare, but they seldom penetrated into the
carefully-guarded interior of the Vice-Consul’s house.

Harry felt very much abashed. He was sensible of the downfall. How he
longed to produce the glories of the Joscelyns, and convince his hearer
that, if he was humble now, his family had once sat with princes!
Perhaps Mr. Bonamy might not have been so impressed by these ancestors
as Harry thought; but as it was they looked at each other blankly,
mutually feeling that a great fall had taken place. Harry smiled in
that rigid way which is popularly called smiling at the wrong side of
the face.

“Yes,” he said, “employment. I don’t know that I am very good for
anything: but I have some little acquaintance with--business.”

This was worse and worse. Had he been possessed of a knowledge of law
business, or military drill, or anything likely to be of no real use to
him, the situation might have improved. But business! book-keeping, and
that sort of thing! no doubt he was a mere clerk after all.

“You have recommendations, I suppose, from your last employers,” Mr.
Bonamy said, coldly. “I shall be glad if I can be of any use, but----”

“To tell the truth,” said Harry--he was seized with an outburst of
frankness, feeling a kind of desperation seize him at sight of this cold
withdrawal of the sudden friendship which had made him so happy for the
moment--“to tell the truth I have no recommendations. If anyone will be
kind to me they must take me at my own word. All I have got to say for
myself is that I have quarrelled with my family. I cannot enter into the
question now. I have done it, and that is all I can say; and here I am,
and I must get employment. I am not going to push myself into your
acquaintance, Sir. It was an accident, nothing more than an accident;
and probably you thought me a person of more importance----”

“Importance or not has nothing to do with it,” said the Vice-Consul; and
again his countenance softened. A young man who has quarrelled with his
family is no doubt a person to be lectured and reproved, and brought
back to a sense of duty, but all the same he is quite different from a
commonplace clerk seeking a situation. Harry did not intend to throw any
halo of distinction over his own humble person, but he did it unawares.
Mr. Bonamy’s countenance gradually cleared. “My dear young fellow,” he
said, “I daresay you are impulsive and hot-headed, like so many other
young men. As being under obligations to you, I may allow myself to give
you good advice. No advantage ever springs from family quarrels. My
advice to you is, make it up.”

“Not for anything in the world,” said Harry, hotly. “I have been
treated--I can’t say how I have been treated. I will neither make it up,
nor will I go near them, or have any communication with them, till I am
altogether independent of them, and have worked out a position for
myself!”

“You must not be so violent,” said the Vice-Consul. “Come, come, let me
act the part of a real friend. Let me write.”

“Never!” said Harry, getting up to his feet. “I am very sorry, Sir, to
have troubled you with my affairs.”

“That is nonsense,” said Mr. Bonamy. “Sit down, sit down, and let us
talk it over. You have been hot-headed, I don’t doubt. What is it now?
tell me. Some foolish falling in love. You must want to marry somebody
they don’t approve.”

Harry smiled in spite of himself. “I am no more in love than you are,
Sir,” he said.

“That might be a dangerous affirmation,” said the Vice-Consul, shaking
his head, with a smile which was somewhat melancholy; “but I understand
what you mean. Then was it money? You have been foolish and got into
debt?”

“It was a little about money; but not because I had got into debt--and
that was the least of it,” Harry said. “You must pardon me, Sir; but
indeed I cannot tell you: it is a complicated business; and I can’t
depart from what I have said. I will never go home, never make it up
till I have made my own fortune. But if you will believe me,” he said
earnestly, with a flush of hot colour, “the fault was not mine. I have
nothing to conceal on my side.”

“Then why conceal it?” said the Vice-Consul. “I cannot act for you
unless I have full information; but if you will trust me with your
story----”

“I would trust you sooner than anyone I know; but I have promised that I
will never say a word on the subject,” said Harry, with all the
obstinacy of all the Joscelyns in his face, “until--I am independent, as
I have said.” He rose up a second time, all flushed and excited. “I am
going to try my luck at Leghorn,” he said. “I am much obliged to you,
Sir, for your kindness. I have felt myself again since I have been here;
but now I will not trouble you any more.” He held out his hand. He was a
handsome young fellow, tall and strong, with the sunburnt countenance
and well-developed limbs, and curling, fair locks, which are everywhere
identified with a young Englishman. He was not at all like a mere clerk
in an office; he was like a son of the fields and woods, one of those
whose training has been of the kind most prized and appreciated by all
Englishmen--an open-air youth; a rider, rower, swimmer,
cricketer--brought up in that way which involves leisure and space, and
all the appliances of country-life. Mr. Bonamy saw all this in Harry’s
vigorous form and movements. He felt sure that he could not be a nobody.
And after all, except that of being a nobody, there is in youth no
unpardonable sin.

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Sit down again, the office does not open for
another half-hour: and let me hear what there is to be done for you,” he
said.

This was a question more embarrassing than the Vice-Consul supposed, for
after all there did not seem much that Harry could do. He confessed that
he had almost forgotten what he knew at school, and he had never learned
any modern languages, and could speak no tongue but his own. He had a
little experience in business, he said; but this was the only knowledge
he could lay claim to. The Vice-Counsel did not know what to make of
him; but as he had started with the distinct hypothesis that Harry was a
squire’s son, it was not very difficult to fit in the facts to his
foregone conclusion. Many a young gentleman forgot all his school
learning by the time he was twenty. The difficult thing was that
knowledge of business which at first Harry had been strongly disposed to
put forward as the only faculty which he knew himself to be possessed
of. How had he acquired that? Mr. Bonamy ended by deciding that he must
have quarrelled with his family some time before, and that his
acquaintance with business had been the fruit of some attempt made in
England to maintain himself before he came here. Thus, without any
intention on Harry’s part, he managed to deceive his first influential
friend. He neither meant to do it, nor was he aware he had done it; but
still this was how things fell out. The conclusion of the interview was
that Mr. Bonamy engaged Harry to come back to him next day, when he
would have thought the whole matter over, and know what to say. They
parted with great friendship and cordiality, Mr. Bonamy having entirely
come round again to his own theory in respect to the young man who had
been so serviceable to his daughter. Everything seemed to prove this,
Harry’s very ignorance among the rest. “In these days every poor lad is
more or less educated; a gentleman’s son, who has something else to look
to than competitive examination, he is the only one that escapes that
sort of thing,” the Vice-Consul wisely said. Harry, on his part, went
off to his hotel with greatly exhilarated feelings. He had done nothing,
he said to himself, but make friends since ever he came to Leghorn. To
be sure in the light of the Vice-Consul’s friendship he felt that Paolo
was (as he had always felt) somewhat beneath his pretensions. But still
the poor fellow had been very kind. As he came out by the private door
of the Consul’s house, he saw Paolo at a little distance waiting till
the public door of the Consulate should be open. He saw Harry and rushed
at him, beckoning violently.

“Komm ’ere, komm ’ere; this is the place,” he said. “Komm along, I will
introduce you, I will respond for you; now is the time to find the
Vice-Consul amiable. He is always amiable when he has well breakfasted.”
He seized Harry by the arm, and tried to drag him back to the Consulate
with an anxious desire to serve his friend which merited a better
return. Harry shook himself free of the little man with good-natured
impatience.

“I’ve just come from the Vice-Consul,” he said with dignity, “we’re the
best of friends. I’ve been able to be of use to him, and he is going to
be of use to me. Many thanks to you, Paolo, all the same; but I’ve been
lunching there, and--and I’ve done my business. To-morrow I am to go
again,” Harry said, unconsciously holding his head high. Paolo gazed at
him with eyes and mouth that were like round O’s of wonder. He was much
crestfallen in his honest endeavours to be of service. But he soon
recovered his spirits.

“Bravo!” he said three times over, each time more satisfied than the
other. Then he rose to a “Bravissimo,” with a smile that lighted up his
olive face. “It would have made me pleasure to be of use to you, Ser
Isaack mio. I would have responded, I would have taken it all upon
me--what you call caution. But you are a true English, like the
Vice-Consul himself, and it is just that you should understand each
other. I am not disappointed--I am happy, very much happy that you have
not any need of me,” little Paolo said, smiling, but with tears in his
eyes.




CHAPTER V.

PAOLO.


Paolo came back from his labours in the evening, very curious to know
all about Harry’s interview with the Consul, and the origin and the
result of the acquaintance between them. But Harry was prudent. He was
prudent without any motive, from personal pride, rather than from any
consideration for the credit of Miss Bonamy, which he did not think to
be in the least involved. The women with whom Harry was acquainted were
not of a kind who would have been afraid to go anywhere in the evening,
and it did not occur to him that the reputation, even of a girl, in
Italy would be jeopardized by such an innocent benevolence as that of
going to visit a sick neighbour at night. Therefore it was simply pride
and English reserve, not any notion of prudence on Rita’s account, that
kept him silent on the subject. Paolo had a very different conception of
the affair. He was very anxious to find out what had been the immediate
effect upon Harry’s mind of the visit to the Consul’s house.

“There is a--young ladi there,” he said, watching Harry’s face. “You see
perhaps, yes? a young ladi, the daughter of the Signor.”

“Oh, yes, I saw Miss Bonamy,” Harry said.

“And you nevare--see her before?” This Paolo asked with a gleam of
mischief in his dark eyes, and the air of a man who knew a great deal
more than he said.

“Oh yes, I have met her before,” said Harry lightly. “They were quite
old friends. I did not in the least expect to meet people so like old
friends here.”

Paolo was bewildered by this speech, and did not know what to think.

“Ah,” he said in a tone of disappointment. “You know them in your
country? what you call at ’ome? But,” he added with a little triumph,
“there you could not meet Signorina Rita, because she is never to go to
England; her mother die in England, her mother was the daughter of an
English and Italian, like me for example; but she die in England when
she go, all young, when the Signorina was a bébé. The Signor Vice-Consul
was mad--Si! mad, there is no other word. It was a long time that it was
thought he die too--but no, he live, he go on living; but the Signorina
Rita never go to England, that is finished, that is fixed, nothing will
change it. It could not be that you meet her there.”

“Do you know Miss Bonamy very well,” said Harry with a little offence,
“that you call her by her Christian name?”

“I say Signorina Rita, it is our custom. If she were an old, I should
say Sora Rita; and the Vice-Consul he is Ser Giovanni, that is our
custom. Ser Isaack you, Ser Paolo me--but not for you, amico. When you
say Paul-o, that pleases me,” and Paolo laughed, showing his teeth,
which were very white and even. He added, after a moment, with a sudden
moistening of his brilliant eyes, “But what displeases me, after
becoming amici, as we are, is not to be able to serve you. I picture to
myself that I will do something; not moche, but yet something. I will
stand up and say, ‘I take him upon myself. He is without papers, but I
take him upon myself--me.’ Now I am without use. It is no matter to you
to have Paolo Thomp-sone for your friend. The Vice-Consul is moche
bettare--he is grand personage; he has power, not only the heart, like
me.”

“But, Paul-o,” said Harry, anxious to comfort him, and half touched,
half amused by his distress, “but for you I should never have gone near
the Vice-Consul: you put it into my head. But for you,” he added, with a
laugh, putting his hand lightly on Paolo’s shoulder, “I think I should
have turned tail altogether, and wandered off I don’t know where.”

Paolo’s face shone with delight. He would have rushed into Harry’s arms
had that been practicable, and thrown himself upon his breast. But
Harry, laughing, kept his friend at arm’s length. To have kissed, or to
have suffered himself to be kissed by, any man, seemed to him the height
of ridicule. Paolo, baffled in this impulse, sat down and looked at him
with radiant eyes. “Now I know that we are amici,” he said. “Aspetto!
There is still a way I can serve you. I well teach you to speak the
Italian. You shall know it so well that they shall say, Ecco un
Italiano. Me, I have been to school in Sienna. I know the real
Toscano--the best Italian. We shall begin this moment. That pleases to
you, Ser Isaack?” asked Paolo, tenderly, looking with humble and
deprecating eagerness into his face.

“You must learn to speak English better,” Harry said, with some
condescension. “I told you before you must not not say an English, but
an Englishman, and to say an old is nonsense--it should be an old woman,
or an old man, whichever it may be.”

“Yes, yes,” cried Paolo, “that is alright, that is understood. You
correct me when I say what is not just, and I teach you.”

“Come out now for a walk,” Harry said.

Paolo jumped up alert and delighted. It is true that it glanced across
the mind of the young Englishman that perhaps it was beneath the dignity
of a man who was a friend of the Vice-Consul’s, and thus, as it were, a
member of the best society, to walk about with Paolo hanging on to his
arm. But, though Harry was full of youthful conceits and the prejudices
of an ignorant Englishman, he yet had a heart in his capacious bosom,
and Paolo’s devotion had been so great as to touch that heart. He said
to himself, with a little effusion, that he never would turn his back
upon a little fellow who had been so anxious to help him. It might be
that it was presumption on the part of the little fellow to think
himself capable of serving Harry, but still it was well meant, and his
undisguised admiration showed a most just and well-judging spirit.
Nothing, he said to himself, would induce him to turn his back upon
Paolo, his first friend. Antonio had given his whole attention to the
two during the course of dinner. He had loitered behind them when he was
not actively pressing upon them all the choicest morsels, to the despair
of various less interesting guests who could not catch his eye, and who
shouted and stamped in vain. He kept shifting from one foot to another
in the restlessness of pure pleasure as he caught now and then a word of
the conversation between them, and rubbed his hands with delight in the
consciousness of being able to understand it. Now and then he would
punch a fat Italian, with whom he was familiar, in the shoulder, and
call his attention. “Ecco il giovane Inglese,” he would say, though
Harry was doing nothing more important than eating his dinner. Antonio
had got his five francs for a very short day, for naturally the time
passed in the Consul’s had given him no trouble except that of waiting,
and what was still more to the purpose than the five francs was the
importance of having such a witness to his power of English-speaking as
this new guest, who could arrange nothing for himself without his
(Antonio’s) help. He disregarded even the call of the chief butler, so
absorbed was he in his favourite stranger.

“Do you wish the young Inglese to starve,” he asked, indignantly, in his
native language, “when you know the Inglesi are the best customers the
padrone has, and always send millions more? Do you propose to yourself
that he should have nothing to eat, this young one that is no doubt made
of gold; and how can he have anything to eat if I am not there to serve
him?”

Thus he kept behind Harry’s chair with a countenance full of delighted
interest. Now and then he would put in a word. “Ze signori will do much
better to go to ze opera to-night,” he said. “Zey will hear La Catalina,
who is ze first in Italy. It is ze ‘Barbiere,’ Ser Paolo, which gives
itself to-night.”

Paolo looked up appealingly into his friend’s face, but Harry brushed
the suggestion away with a true British argument. “Oh, for heaven’s
sake,” he cried, “don’t let us go and box ourselves up in a hot theatre
on such a night.”

Paolo sighed, but obeyed. He repeated the sentiment in a superior tone
to Antonio, who was anxiously serving them with Cigare Scelte, arranged
in different kinds upon a wooden tray. “A hot theatre, Antonio mio! one
does not go there in a so warm evening. That goes well with the winter,
when it is cold; but in summer, we young have need of moche air and the
great world to keep us comfort-able. When you know more of real English
you will learn what they love.”

Antonio accepted this decision of his superiors with much respect, and
laid it up in his memory, to be produced on his own account when it
might accord with his pretensions as an Anglomane and person of high
sentiment to produce it. But in the meantime he could not but launch a
little criticism to the others who overheard this dignified rebuke.
“That little Paolino,” he said, as they went out, “to give himself the
air of a rich Inglese! He is neither one thing nor another. He is no
more than an abozzo--a sketch of an Inglese,” Antonio cried. He had been
in an artist’s studio in his day. “Me, I understand them, al fondo,” he
added, beating his breast.

Little Paolo had no notion that he was being called an abozzo. He
sallied forth, lighting his cigar, thrusting his arm through Harry’s
with the greatest delight and pride.

Next day, at the hour appointed, Harry presented himself at the
Vice-Consul’s office, and was received with the same cordiality. Mr.
Bonamy had “made inquiries,” but, as nobody in Leghorn knew anything
about Harry, there was not much information to be procured. Neither did
the captain of the steamer in which he had arrived know anything about
him except that he was a passenger in the second cabin; although he
looked quite superior to the second cabin. “I set him down as somebody’s
son in disgrace with his family,” the captain said. This chimed in
sufficiently well with Mr. Bonamy’s observations. He met Harry after the
first consultation with a grave face. “You know I know nothing about
you, Mr. Oliver,” he said, “except--and that is not much--what you have
chosen to tell me.”

“That is quite true, Sir,” said Harry, growing serious too, and feeling
his heart sink, “and I have no right to expect you to take my word even
for that.”

“Therefore,” said the Vice-Consul, “(for you should never interrupt a
man in the middle of a sentence), I have the more claim upon you to
treat me in an honourable way. If you had come with all your papers, as
they say in this country, I should not have had the same right to put
you on parole, as it were. If you know no reason why I shouldn’t take
you into my office, and trust you with the Queen’s affairs, I mean to do
so. But if there is anything that would make you a discredit to Her
Majesty’s Service----”

“There is nothing, Sir,” said Harry, standing up. His face flushed, his
nostril dilated, an impulse of almost fierce self-justification came
upon him; but fortunately for him he was not used to defending himself,
and he could not say another word.

“Then that is enough,” said the Vice-Consul. “I take you on your own
parole.”

They were both silent for a minute or two after. It was not like a
common engagement. Harry’s heart was in his throat. What with surprise
at this extraordinary good fortune, and the emotion called forth by a
confidence in him which he could not help feeling to be as
extraordinary, he was quite beyond his own control. If he had said
anything he would have “made a fool of himself,” so he said nothing, but
sat still, almost disposed, like Paolo, to be tearful, which was the
most dreadful catastrophe he could think of. The good Vice-Consul was a
little affected too.

“But I don’t know a word of the language,” at last Harry said.

“We have more to do with Englishmen than Italians,” said Mr. Bonamy.
“Perhaps the fellow whom you knocked down ‘quietly,’ as you told me, may
come and make his complaint to you. Your knocking a man down quietly was
the thing that tickled me. I wonder what was his opinion of it. You must
learn the language of course, and some other things quite as important.
You must find out all about the harbour by-laws and dues, and all that
affects the shipping. These are things we have a great deal to do with.
You must master them, that is the most important thing; and when you
have been here for a little while you will find out other points. Do you
know anyone from whom you can get lessons? But I suppose, as a matter of
fact, you don’t know anyone here.”

Here Harry, finding his power of speech, told him of Paolo, with that
half laugh of commentary which implies a certain slight of the friend to
whom he had so much reason to be grateful. He felt that it was mean, but
he could not help it. How could he help implying a laugh at the droll
little person who held by him so faithfully, yet was so entirely out of
Harry’s way? However, the Vice-Consul took Paolo quite seriously. He
nodded his head with approval. “Nobody better--nobody better,” he said.
“I see you laugh at him; but he is as sound as a bell, that little
fellow, and always rings true. That he is not quite your equal,” Mr.
Bonamy added, “does not matter a bit in the circumstances. I am glad
that you have chanced so fortunately. To get hold by accident of such a
genuine person as Paolo is quite a piece of luck. I rather think you
must be a lucky person,” he added, with a laugh.

“Since I came to Leghorn,” said Harry, fervently, “nothing could be more
true than that.”

“Yes, I think you must be lucky,” said the Vice-Consul, “to hit upon a
perfectly honest person as your first acquaintance, then making haste to
get yourself into a row to have so good an excuse for it as my Rita, and
then----”

“And then,” said Harry, “to meet with such astonishing, such
unlooked-for kindness, to fall on my feet in such a wonderful way.”

“Well, perhaps,” said Mr. Bonamy, not displeased, “we may say that was
luck too; and one thing, Oliver,” he added quickly, “it will be so much
the better for you that employment in Her Majesty’s Service is a
disgrace to nobody; mind what I say. Of course, in the nature of events,
you and your family will not be at daggers drawn for ever; and when you
condescend to go back, or they find you out, and come to look for
you----”

“Neither, neither will happen,” cried Harry, shaking his head.

“We shall see; but if that day comes, there is nothing for them to find
fault with. A Consulate is not like a merchant’s office; anybody may
serve Her Majesty. None of us, I hope, are too good for that.”

“I assure you, Sir----” Harry cried, hastily.

“No, no, you need not assure me. I don’t want to know anything; unless,
indeed, your heart should be opened to tell me _everything_, which I
should really be glad of. Well,” he said, “come to-morrow morning and
begin. Your friend, Paolo, will tell you about the hours: and I hope,
Oliver, we shall always remain the best of friends,” the Vice-Consul
added, rising and holding out his hand. “I hope nothing will happen to
make me entertain a less opinion of you than I do now; that’s
understood. You shall have a card for Rita’s evening at-home, and I hope
you’ll come and see us occasionally in a friendly way. Let us say next
Sunday, perhaps? Sunday’s a dreary day for a young man by himself. Come
after church, and stay for the after noon; for the present, goodbye.”

Harry took his hat and made his best bow. He was really quite tremulous
with excitement, surprise, and pleasure. To be so speedily and so easily
established was more good fortune than he could realize. When he was at
the door Mr. Bonamy called him back.

“Oliver!” he cried, “one moment; I would not knock any more men down if
I were you; however quietly it is done, it is a little risky, and Her
Majesty’s Service, you know----”

“You needn’t fear, Sir; that’s what Paul-o has been preaching to me all
the time,” Harry said.

Upon which the Vice-Consul laughed benignly.

“Paul-o, as you call him, is as good an adviser as you could have,” he
said.

“What should I call him but Paul-o?” Harry said to himself; and he went
off with his head in the air. Lucky! indeed he had been lucky; only the
third day since his arrival and he had a situation and a sort of a home
and friends; to make up to him for all the evil that had happened to him
before, providence was taking special care of him now. Somehow this made
Harry think of his mother, of whom, hitherto, his thoughts had been
scarcely more kind than towards the others concerned; a little moisture
crept unawares to his eyes. “She’ll have been praying,” he said to
himself; and suddenly he seemed to see her, as he had seen her so often,
wringing her thin worn hands, her lips trembling with words that were
inaudible. He thought--it would be hard to trace the exact connection of
ideas, but there was one--that he would go in to the first church in
which there seemed to be service going on, on his way back to the inn.
It would not have occurred to him to go into a church where there was no
service, but when he heard the tinkle of a bell, and saw one or two
people creeping up and down the broad stone steps, he went in, though
with a little opposition in his mind, as well as a certain craving for
sympathy and utterance. But when he went in, Harry saw no signs of
public worship. The tinkle of the bell was coming from an altar in a
side chapel, where a great many candles were burning. In the body of the
church some people were seated quietly, others kneeling on the low
rush-bottomed chairs. He stood and gazed for a little with mingled
feelings, with a great opposition in his mind to the Papist ritual and
ceremonies (of which he saw nothing, and which, to tell the truth, he
had never seen, and knew nothing whatever about); and disapproval of the
people who were in the church for, as he thought, no purpose--mingled
with a curious sense of the grateful calm and quietness and seclusion of
the place, the serene coolness and breadth of its lofty roofs and silent
space. This stole upon him, he could not tell how. He would not have
knelt down, as the few people about were doing, to save his life: it
would have seemed to him like the famous bowing down in the house of
Rimmon, for the North was very Protestant in those days, and sympathy
with Rome was very rare. He would not even say a distinct prayer in his
heart, which would have seemed like yielding to temptation. But, as he
stood, there rose in him an unwilling devotion, and the thanks that had
been in his mind were perhaps not the less given that they were
arbitrarily refused utterance. For Harry’s prejudices were a part of his
training, not anything that originated in himself. When he went away the
moisture came again into the corners of his eyes. His mother was as
Protestant, more Protestant, than himself. She would have thought it
wrong to go into “a Catholic chapel.” She would scarcely have been able
to believe in the existence of a country not given over to all evil, in
which a Popish place of worship was not a Catholic chapel, but an
established church. Oh, the poor people! what benighted darkness they
must be in! she would have said, in her ignorance. But somehow, Harry
could not have told how, he felt as if he had approached his mother in
that foreign place. The silent church, with the silent people in it
praying, made him think of her as he had seen her, with her lips moving
and her hands clasped together. Often again he stole in for a moment to
renew that sentiment, which was so soft and pathetic. He held out
against his mother all the time obstinately, though he knew he was
condemning her to great suffering--and he entirely disapproved of the
church; but for all that the two had some subtle resemblance, a union
of two things he was hostile to, which went to his heart.

Paolo came to dinner in great triumph. He had placed a flower in his
button-hole and put on a brilliant new tie in honour of the great event,
and fairly threw himself upon his amico and kissed him with enthusiasm
before Harry could get out of this extremely embarrassing position.
Never young girl blushed more uncomfortably than the young man did as he
drew himself out of his enthusiastic friend’s embrace.

“What have I done to you that you make no response?” Paolo said, almost
weeping over this repulse.

“Hold your tongue, for goodness’ sake! Men don’t kiss each other in
England. Whatever you do, don’t be ridiculous,” Harry cried.

Poor little Paolo was wounded to the heart.

“I am an English myself,” he said. “Yes, yes, an English_man_, if you
will; I have not the courage to remember. I am a true English-man; but
it is cruel all the same. Should I then take no notice? when it is the
wish most dear of my heart that will be fulfilled? Always I have said to
myself--if the Santissima Virgin would send a real English-man, not one
that is what you call ’alf-and-’alf, like me. And when it is done, and
my amico whom I have chosen turns out to be he whom I have so much
desired, am not I to show a little that I am glad? I am ’appy that I am
an Italian,” said Paolo, with indignation, “if it is so.”

And there was a little suspension of intercourse between them. But this
did not last; Paolo was too good-humoured and too tender-hearted to
stand out; he begged his friend’s pardon in less than five minutes.
Harry, whose mind moved more slowly, had not had time to realize that he
had been unkind when this reversal of the position took place. Paolo did
all but weep in his penitence.

“I am good-for-nothing,” he said, “I am without sentiment, I have no
delicacy nor education. Who can say why you were so magnanimous as to
choose me, me! for your amico? and when you show the true dignity of an
English, me I am so without good-breeding, so common, so devoid of
sentiment, that I become angry! but if you will only forgive me, forgive
me this once----!”

“It is I who am a brute,” said Harry, penitent in his turn. But Paolo
protested with tears in his eyes, and would have thrown himself at his
friend’s feet, or on his neck again, in the excitement of the
reconciliation. And though he was usually very thrifty, calculating
every centissimo, he ordered a bottle of _champagne frappé_ to celebrate
the day. Nothing would prevail upon him to countermand this order.

“It is a festa,” cried the little man, “and it is a reparation: and we
will drink to our eternal friendship.” Paolo did not know that he was
guilty of plagiarism; he was heroically in earnest, and drank his wine,
which Antonio brought with great pride and many grins, triumphantly in
its pail, setting it on the table before them, and watching its
consumption with the most amiable interest. “And here is for a
bicchierino,” Paolo said, bestowing, a small coin upon Antonio with much
grandeur, “drink thou also the health of Ser Isaack, who is my amico,”
and he held out his foaming glass to touch that of his friend.

Paolo’s head was turned altogether by these unusual potations; and
Harry’s first office was to see his friend safe home and deliver him
from all the dangers of the streets, on this too triumphant night.




CHAPTER VI.

THE OFFICE.


Harry entered upon his work next day, and was in a few hours so entirely
bewildered by the novel character of the questions addressed to him, and
the information he was supposed to possess, that he went to the
Vice-Consul in the evening in dismay. “I don’t know a thing,” he said;
“I never knew before what an ignorant beast I was. It would only be
taking advantage of you if I were to stay.”

This hasty alarm and anxious honesty of purpose made Mr. Bonamy more and
more certain that he had judged rightly. “Don’t give in in such a
hurry,” he said, “you can’t be expected to know things of that sort
without learning. They are not part of a gentleman’s education. You
must get your friend Paolo to take you in hand. He is a perfect mine of
information. I have often to refer to him myself. Though he is not in a
very high position, he knows more about these special matters than all
the rest of us put together.”

And thus balm was diffused over Harry’s sore spirit. But he could not
help asking himself why the inequalities and injustices of this world
should be so marked in respect to Paolo. Why should he not be in a very
high position so far as the Vice-Consul’s office was concerned? He,
Harry, who was an ignoramus and knew nothing, was to have higher pay and
far more consideration than the other, who was a mine of knowledge. It
was true that Harry’s personal sense of superiority to Paolo was noways
weakened--but yet he felt the injustice. He had not been used to enter
into such questions, yet he could not but see that to bolster up the
ignorance of a well-looking Englishman, by the knowledge of a little
oddity of an Italian was somewhat hard so far as the Italian was
concerned. It was, accordingly, with a deprecating tone that he spoke to
Paolo at dinner. It even moved him to a little insincerity. What he had
said to the Vice-Consul in all good faith, and much dismay, he repeated
to Paolo, not meaning it at all. “I don’t know a thing,” he said, “not
one question could I answer. I never knew I was so ignorant. It is very
nice to be settled and have Mr. Bonamy for my chief, and you, Paolo, to
help me through: but a fellow must be honest--and when the beggars come
and ask me things, I can’t go on pretending to know.”

“You shall not pretend to know, Isaack mio,” cried Paolo, with a beaming
countenance. “Now is just come the moment which I was looking for, which
show that it is good to have a friend. How much does it matter whether
it is you that have it or I that have it? Listen then to me. You think
Paolo Thomp-sone a little nobody, and it is true; but listen--listen to
me. It is not to talk big or to brag that is necessary. _I_ know.”

“I am sure of that, Paolo,” said Harry, languidly, and with the look of
dejection which was half acting, though he did not intend it. “The
Vice-Consul said so. He told me you were a mine of knowledge. But why
should I pick your brains? Why should I mount up upon you and stand upon
your shoulders, and get all the credit of it? That is not just any more
than the other. I oughtn’t to take everything from you.”

Paolo could scarcely keep still upon his chair in his delight and
satisfaction. His face glowed and shone with happiness. “Are not you my
friend?” he cried; “all that which is to Paolo is to you, Ser Isaack. It
is my pride. We will begin to-night. It is better than to go out to the
Café to sit and sip Rosolio--to be idle like the others--moche bettare.
You shall come to my room, or I will go to yours--and then the books,
and to write the exercises, and to stoody. Yes, yes--I know. I have been
here all my life--I know moche, almost everything. Then we commence
to-night.”

“But, Paolo, how am I to accept all that from you? A week ago you did
not know me, and now you are going to sacrifice all your spare time and
your pleasure to me; that is not just, as you say. You must let me at
least,” said Harry, faltering, and, with a glimmering insight which was
quite new to him, watching his friend’s countenance, “you must let me at
least--consider you as--my master, you know; and we must settle--now
don’t be angry--a price.”

Paolo did not say a word; he turned his face away from his friend and
pretended to go on eating his dinner. There was no need for words to
show how deeply wounded he was. He turned his shoulder to Harry, and
called the smiling Antonio to the other side.

“Take it away! take it away!” he said in English, “it choke me!” and he
pushed his plate from him.

“Oh! Signor Paolo! Pertanto é buonissimo; don’t cry, Ser Paolo,” cried
the anxious waiter. “These Inglesi, they are brutes; they have no
sentiment; they give pain without knowing it. Pertanto, you must not
weep.”

“That imports me nothing,” said Paolo, feebly. “It is again an illusion,
my good Antonio; but I cannot weep much, for it is too deep.”

“What are you two talking about? when you know I don’t understand your
confounded Italian!” cried Harry, at his wit’s end. “What’s the matter?
what have I done now? you will drive a poor beggar out of his senses!
Good Lord! you’re not a woman, that you should cry for what a fellow
says. I don’t know what you mean by your sentiment and all that; I want
to be honest, and not to take advantage of a good hearted duffer because
he is my friend.”

Paolo turned round with the tears still in his eyes.

“You call me duffere,” he said quickly; “beggare I understand, but
duffere I never heard.”

“It means,” said Harry, drawing on his imagination, “the best-hearted,
silly kind fellow in the world, always going out of his way to help
somebody, holding out his hand to a suspicious beast the moment he lands
in a strange place, never giving him up though he behaves like a brute,
giving everything like an idiot, but flaring up if you want to give him
anything in return.”

“Not that, not that,” said Paolo, laying his hand upon his friend’s arm.
“I give you my lofe, and I wait for your lofe in return. If there is a
thing you want I take it upon myself. Siamo amici! is there any more to
say? I know nothing; all is in that. If it is true that I am your amico,
then you are a beggare, you are a beast, you are all bad,” said Paolo,
with flashing eyes, “to be so base as to offer to pay me--money. Ah!
che! che! there is nothing too bad, nothing too dreadful to say. Inglese
brutale! false amico----!” Here he stopped all at once, and gazed
piteously into Harry’s face. “Forgive me, forgive me, my friend!” he
cried.

This all happened at dinner, at the _table-d’hôte_, which fortunately
was not very full that day. There was nobody sitting opposite, which was
a great relief to Harry’s mind; but he could see from the end of the
table the cynical Englishman, who had never taken any notice of him,
giving an amused glance now and then at the group of friends--Paolo
shedding tears into his plate, Antonio, with a face full of sympathy,
tenderly removing it, essaying to console the sufferer. This was a
greater trial to Harry’s temper than even the sentiment of Paolo. He
shot an answering glance of defiance at his countryman, who had never so
much as given the help of a kind word to the stranger.

“Let’s say no more about it, Paolo,” he said, “you and I are quite
different, you know. I daresay I am a brutal Englishman, but I can’t
help it. That’s our nature. We don’t think so much of a little thing as
you do, and we abhor making a fuss. Perhaps you don’t know what that
means?”

“I will nevare make a fuss more. I will learn to be a duffere, and do as
you do,” said Paolo, in all the tenderness of reconciliation.

Harry looked at him something as Joan looked at his mother. He had too
good a heart to despise his little friend, and he did not understand
him; but this sentiment was extremely inconvenient and very
troublesome--on that point there could be no doubt.

However, later in the evening, Paolo, who had inherited all the Italian
thrift, gave his friend some very sensible advice. Instead of going to
the Café, they went to Paolo’s _appartamento_, which was on the highest
floor of a high house in one of the narrow streets. Though he called it
an _appartamento_ it was a single room, with an odd little closet in the
shape of a kitchen, and offices attached to it. The room itself was
somewhat low in the roof, being so high up, but had three or four
windows, and a little balcony suspended over the street, into which it
made Harry dizzy to look down as into an Alpine ravine. The floor was of
tiles, the walls white, with a pattern in distemper, very graceful and
flowing, round the top and bottom. The bed was a very tiny and bare
article, put away in a corner. In another corner stood a table. A few
chairs, and an old, very straight-backed settee, with two arms, in old
gilding and brocade, stood against the wall. There was a tall, brass
_lucerna_, the lamp common throughout Italy, with its little bundle of
snuffers and extinguisher and scissors to trim the wick, hanging from it
by a chain, and a few books on a shelf. Nothing could be more bare.
There was a small rug by the bedside, but no other covering for the bare
area of tiles which was the chief feature in the room. Paolo had a
little picture of the Madonna, a bad copy of that which is called the
Madonna del Granduca, and a basin for holy water over his bed, which was
covered with a red and blue cotton coverlet. Everything about showed the
same bareness and absence both of comfort and ornament. But Paolo
regarded his _appartamento_ with eyes full of pleasure. He saw nothing
wanting in it. It housed him sufficiently of nights, and was cool and
pleasant in the summer mornings, when he rose, as most Italians do, in
the early daylight, to get through all the private work he might happen
to have. He looked round upon it with a gentle complaisance. Some old
prints, and one or two copies of famous pictures, hung on the walls. In
the best light was an old painting of a gloomy and uncertain aspect,
which Paolo believed to be a Margheritone. It might have been anything.
He was very proud of it. “Ecco!” he said, when they went in, “my old
master. He is a little dark, but when you study him you will find much
in him. He is of the _trecento_--very early--very early. The painter
have seen the blessed father, San Francesco; that indicates how old it
must be.”

Harry did not make any reply to this. For his part he liked things
better for being new. The dark old picture had no charm for him at all,
and he thought the _appartamento_ rather worse as being larger than his
own little room at the hotel, which had hitherto seemed to him the last
example of bareness and dreariness. “A horrid little hole,” more adapted
for a dog than a man.

“I’ll tell you one other thing,” said Paolo, taking him affectionately
by the shoulders before they sat down by the table; “if you will make
economies, and do well, Isaack mio, you will not live always in the
hotel. Me I dine there; it is the best thing to do; but live all the
time--oh no! It is only for Englishmen to be so extravagant like that.”

“That is what I have been thinking,” said Harry, “if I could get some
nice rooms. You don’t understand about Englishmen. Dining every day at
an hotel is a thing nobody would think of in England. We have our dinner
at home, or, if the landlady is not a good cook, then perhaps--But for
my part I always preferred a beefsteak at home, even if it were not the
most perfect cookery in the world. Dining at an hotel is a thing no one
thinks of, except on a great occasion perhaps.”

Paolo opened his eyes in surprise. “It is well,” he said, “you are more
prudent when you are in your own country. This is what you must do,
Isaack, amico. You will first find an _appartamento_. It is not always
that one is so fortunate as me. This is perfect--non é vero? It is all
one could want. A bed--ecco! a table, the sof-fa that has come from a
palazzo, even a little tabouret for the feet--everything. And then the
balcone! When it makes warm in the summer, in July and Agosto, it is,
oh! fresco, freschissimo so fresh and cool here! The first thing is an
_appartamento_. But in every way I am too fortunate. As soon I dress in
the morning, there is a caffè in face--you can see it if you look
down--where I can have my coffee in a moment. No waiting as when you go
to a distance, but at the moment. They are about to send us now the
coffee, amico, to clear our head. You will see how good it is. Then when
the time come for the other breakfast--what you call lunch--there is a
restaurant near the bureau. You have two very good dish, a dolce, and
dessert; and very little to pay. I will lead you to-morrow to that
place. And at last the dinner at the Leone. Figure to yourself so much
comfort all in one day! And you see the journals for nothing, and hear
what all the people say.”

“Bless us all,” said Harry, “in that way you are never at home.”

“At ’ome! I am at ’ome everywere,” the little Italian said; “all is
friends; whatever goes on, everyone makes part of it to me. And when all
is over you mount in your _appartamento_, you are tranquil, you light
your lamp, you fume slowly your cigar on the balcone, you go to bed. And
you make economies--great economies. Me even, that have not moche
appointment, I become a little rich, what you call at my ease. And you,
who will have moche more as me----”

“Why should I? You are a great deal more use than I am,” Harry said.

Paolo shook his head with a cheerful yet shrewd acceptance of the
position. “Si, I am of more use,” he said. “I am good for something;
you, caro, not good for moche yet. But look at you and look at me. That
expliques itself. That is the world’s way--what you call the world’s
way. Come; the first thing is an _appartamento_. You think, perhaps, it
is too high up here? But smell the good air,” cried Paolo; “that is of
itself refreshing--and the view! You will pay more scudi at the Leone in
a week than for a month here. Ecco! here is the coffee, and though it is
not yet quite dark, that amiable garzone, see, he has brought us a
lamp.”

Then there entered, with a knock at the door, the man from the caffè
opposite, holding upon the points of three fingers a tray containing two
heavy cups of white porcelain and the small coffee-pot, flanked by a
plate of cakes, which Paolo’s hospitality had added in honour of his
friend. The waiter swung the lighted lamp in the other hand, holding it
by the handle at the top, and in this way had come up five flights of
stairs without spilling a drop of the coffee or jeopardizing the cups.
He put the lamp on the table with a “Felicissima notte, Signori,”
looking upon the two young men with looks as amiable as his wish. And,
indeed, the wish has more reason in it at the beginning of the evening
than at the end. Paolo was great as a host. He poured out his black
coffee as if it had been the richest of drinks, and pressed upon Harry
the odd little collection of cakes of every possible and impossible
flavour. Some of them were excellent, but Harry thought he despised
these innocent dainties. And he was not very fond of the black coffee:
how much better he would have liked an English cup of tea! As he sat
turning over the books which Paolo placed before him, and listened to
his friend’s explanations, gulping, with a great effort not to make a
wry face, occasional mouthfuls of coffee, there seemed to flit before
him a vision of his mother’s parlour--the fragrant tea, the rich fresh
cream, and herself, with that pale face which had not always seemed to
him so attractive as it did now. Once, to tell the truth, Harry had
thought his mother and sister heavy company, and in his heart had said
that nothing could be more dull than the long evening in the parlour at
home. Now that he was up here so near the sky in Paolo’s _appartamento_,
his ideas were different. The bare tiles underfoot, the wide, vacant
space, with the little bed in the corner, the dull old Margheritone
staring him in the face, with a pair of round eyes looking out from its
blackness--and all those knotty questions about the harbour dues to
occupy him, made as great a contrast as could be conceived to the old
curtains and carpets, and familiar walls, and cheerful fire, and the
grey sweep of landscape showing from the windows, stretching far into
the horizon. But he himself. Harry was very much the same, and in the
one place as in the other he was unsatisfied. He thought it had been his
surroundings that were to blame in the first instance, but now, after
the excitement of all this new beginning, and the novelty of his new
friends, and the new place, so unlike anything he had seen before,
Paolo’s _appartamento_, and the thought of settling down in another
such, brought him back, with a sort of mental gasp, to himself. Was that
all that was to come of it? It was scarcely worth while renouncing his
name and his family, and all his past, in order to settle down in a room
upon the fifth floor, among the chimneypots, at Leghorn. While he was
studying the dock regulations and harbour laws, his mind was busy about
this other perplexing question. An _appartemento_! Was he never, he
wondered, with an impatience that was almost comic in the humiliation
and depression it caused him, to have a sitting-room again? never to get
a meal save in public, in the grim _sala_ of the Leone, or in a gaudy
restaurant with little marble tables; never even a cup of tea to himself
in his own place, as an Englishman loves to have it; never to have a
carpet under his feet, but cold tiles; and nothing in the world that
looked like home? He kept all this to himself, and tried hard to grasp
at the laws and regulations about the free port of Leghorn, and its
etiquettes and its dues; but his inner soul was crossed all the time by
impulses of ill-humour and disappointment which he could with difficulty
restrain. It is always difficult, after a period of agitation and
excitement, to settle down again and resume a steady routine; and Harry
could not think of this kind of settling with anything but annoyance.
The inn was not any better. His little sleeping-room there was not so
good as Paolo’s. In the _sala_ there was always a sense of dinner
combined with cigars; and in the other parts of the establishment the
smell was of cigars impregnated with soup and divers odours of the
kitchen. And these were the only places where he, with his English
habits, had a chance of sitting down! He sighed for his little parlour,
with its Kidderminster carpet, and red moreen curtains, at Liverpool. It
was a palace to the _appartamento_, or anything that seemed possible
here.

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.




CHAPTER VII.

THE BONAMYS.


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.




CHAPTER VIII.

HARRY’S PROGRESS.


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.




CHAPTER IX.

A REVELATION.


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.

“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.




CHAPTER X.

PAOLO’S ADVICE.


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.




CHAPTER XI.

WITH HER FATHER.


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.




CHAPTER XII.

RITA’S OPINION.


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.”

And then she sat a long time in the dark, and thought, and thought. It
was all very new and very strange. It roused her lively faculties with
the pleasure of a novel sensation. She had taken her proposals of
marriage with sedate contempt, and announced authoritatively to her
father on each occasion that she had no intention of ever marrying, and
that she liked him much better than any other man in the world, an
assurance which the poor Vice-Consul took great comfort in, though it
was not possible that any man in his senses could accept it as a matter
of serious faith. But now Rita could not deny to herself that this
strange new bewildering sensation was a pleasant one. Her former
suitors would no doubt have gladly adopted it had it been thought that
such an easy mode of love-making would have been permitted; but in their
cases it would not have moved the foolish girl. To see somebody standing
silent on the other side of the street, doing nothing to call her
attention, not wishing to be noticed, doing it only for a little comfort
to himself, was entirely different. That was the English way, she
thought with awe. To be able to give love up for the sake of honour, and
yet to have it so much at heart as to be driven to come and look at the
house in which the beloved object lived, standing about alone in a cold
night--Rita’s whole heart was penetrated by the sincerity, the modesty,
the self-restraint, yet self-abandonment, which were English, only
English, nothing else. It was not in the least a cold night: Harry
outside felt it to be warm and genial: but there was a cool little
night-breeze lifting the curtains, and she strove to call it cold to
heighten the effect. This was how the Vice-Consul had mismanaged
matters. He was not a happy man as he read his despatches; but he had no
idea of the mischief which was going on under cover of the night.




CHAPTER XIII.

A LOVER’S ORDEAL.


Rita said nothing more to her father on this subject for a day or two,
and the poor man, deceived once more, began to believe that it had made
little impression upon her, and was to be allowed to pass as of no
particular importance. He had even begun to congratulate himself on the
beneficial effects of his system of training, and the knowledge of the
world which her early initiation into life had given her. “Had I brought
Rita up as most girls are brought up,” he said to himself; “had she been
fresh from a convent, for instance, like some of her friends, or shut up
indoors as Italian girls are, her head would have been turned by the
first mention of a lover. But she has seen a great deal, though she is
so young. In our position she could not help seeing a great deal. She
knows how to discriminate, and can judge what is what. What a good thing
that I did not follow the advice of all these ladies, but was bold
enough to trust to my girl’s innocence and bring her up my own way!”
Thus artlessly did the Vice-Consul console himself. And his mind was a
great deal easier; for before he was always nervous lest she should
question him about Harry, and afraid of betraying himself, even afraid
of letting Rita perceive that there was something to betray. Now that he
had made a clean breast and got it over, his mind was relieved, and he
felt that he could carry his head as high as usual, and need not be
afraid to look any girl in the face. For the first day he rejoiced with
trembling, but after that had passed began to feel that he had really
secured his footing, and might take comfort that the danger was over.
Poor Vice-Consul! He had but just allowed this sensation of pleasure to
enter his mind when Rita, looking up at him suddenly from a book in
which she had all the air of being completely absorbed, addressed him
suddenly as follows--

“Papa! I have been thinking over what you told me the other day--What
is the matter?” she added, interrupting herself.

“Nothing, nothing,” said poor Mr. Bonamy, faintly. He had been lying
back in a very comfortable chair, whiffing gently at intervals a mild
cigarette, and giving himself up to the comfort, the ease of being done
with a subject in which he had foreseen trouble. When his daughter began
to speak, a presentiment of danger awoke in him, and he started up in
his chair when she had said these words. “Nothing, nothing,” he
repeated, letting himself drop again, but alas, with what different
feelings; with the languor of a conflict foreseen, in which he knew he
should be worsted. “What have you been thinking about, Rita?”

“About what you told me the other day. Of course it was not just an
ordinary thing that one could think nothing more about. Poor Mr. Oliver!
I think he has been badly treated. I want you to tell him just to come
as usual. He must be on his guard, you know; but in any case he would be
on his guard after speaking to you. He must not suppose that I know
anything about it.”

“But, my dear,” said the Vice-Consul, with a troubled face, “I don’t
think that would do at all; he would think that he had my permission
to--to pay you his addresses, as people used to say?”

“What are addresses?” said Rita, with much appearance of innocence. “You
must tell him, of course, that there is to be nothing of that kind; but
only just that he is to come as before. I don’t see that it need do him
any harm--I mean any further harm,” said the girl, correcting herself.
She spoke with unusual airiness and carelessness, so lightly indeed that
her indifference had the aspect of being somewhat studied.

“Him--harm! that was not the question,” the perplexed father said.

“I hope you don’t mean to infer that it would do _me_ any harm?” said
Rita, turning upon him with a smile of superb disdain. She even laughed
a little at the folly of the idea, opening and shutting a fan which she
held in her hand. “That would be too ridiculous--too ridiculous,” she
said.

“But, my dear child, you are young and inexperienced, and--”

“Don’t insult me, please, papa,” she said, fanning herself. If she had
been fifty she could not have looked more superior to any such
temptation. “And, on the other hand,” she added, “I don’t see why poor
Mr. Oliver should be punished, positively punished for liking me. It is
not a sin to like me. Of course he must learn to keep it to himself; it
will be a good lesson in self-control--which everybody is the better
for,” said this young oracle, “and especially, as I have always heard,
young men.”

This wisdom took away the Vice-Consul’s breath. “That is very true:” he
said “but I am not at all sure that this is a safe way of teaching it. I
think, if it is the same to you, Rita--”

“But it is not the same to me,” she cried, impatiently. “If you will not
set poor Mr. Oliver right and do him justice, I think I will go and pay
that visit my aunt Ersilia always wants me to make her. You said
yourself I must go one day or other. I will go now.”

Now if there was one thing more than another which Mr. Bonamy was afraid
of, it was this visit to her aunt Ersilia, her mother’s Italian sister,
with which she threatened him from time to time. He said hurriedly, “I
don’t think this is a good time for going further south, Rita. Of
course, if you wish it so much, I will gladly remove the embargo on
poor Oliver, who is a very good, honest sort of fellow; but I can’t have
him tormented, poor boy--and you must promise to be very distant with
him, which is the kindest thing you can do.”

“But not too distant, papa,” said Rita; “for I think it a great deal
better that he should suppose I do not know. Far better. I will behave
to him just as usual. I will withdraw gradually, bit by bit, that he may
not feel too much difference. Indeed, unless he is different to me, I
don’t see why I should be different to him. Of course he will be on his
guard. You see he _knows now_. Naturally he will be more careful. He
will understand that if you let him come back he is upon his honour. So,
on the whole, I will make very little difference. I think it is far
better that everything should have the look of being just the same as
before.”

With this Mr. Bonamy was obliged to be satisfied. He had known very well
when the discussion began that Rita’s will, whatever it might be, was
the thing that would be done. He had in his own mind a great many
troubled reflections, considering how he was to do it, so as not to
excite false hopes or vain expectations in the young man’s mind; but it
was, from the moment when she declared her sovereign will, a foregone
conclusion. He had not resolved the question how it was to be done, up
to the time he went into his office in the morning, and then thought it
best to leave it to chance and the inspiration of the moment. When he
sent for Harry to speak with him he had still but a very faint idea what
to say. The young man came in looking somewhat dull and depressed, as he
did always now, and no longer expectant of anything better, as he had
been at the first. It was a moment of leisure, and the Vice-Consul had
the air of a man with something disagreeable rather than something
pleasant to say. His look was artificial, and the smile which adorned
his face was forced and uncomfortable.

“Come in, Oliver, come in,” he said, with an air of affected geniality.
Harry thought he was going to receive his dismissal; he did not think
that anything less could give his kind and friendly patron an aspect so
little natural. “Sit down,” said the Vice-Consul, “I have something to
say before business begins this afternoon. Oliver, I have been going
through quite a passage of arms on your account.”

“On my account?” said Harry, feeling as if his heart stopped beating; he
thought within himself, that this passage of arms must have been with
some of the authorities of the F. O., who perhaps had been stirred up to
ask what a stranger, without recommendations, was doing there. It seemed
to him that the next thing which would be said must be, “I have no
further occasion for your services,” and braced himself for these words.

“Don’t be frightened; yes, you look frightened,” said Mr. Bonamy, still
with that false geniality, “but no harm has come of it. You met--my
daughter--the other day.”

“Yes.” Harry’s heart re-commenced beating, and went so fast that it
almost choked him. “It was an accident, Sir; I did not see Miss Bonamy
till I was close upon her, I could not escape.”

“Yes, she told me. And she asked what had become of you, and you
answered ‘Very well, thank you!’ You will allow that was strange. No
doubt she had been much puzzled by your disappearance before, and she
assailed me directly what was the meaning of it? I had to say all sorts
of things, that you were too busy to come, that you were otherwise
engaged, and I don’t know what; but the short and the long of it is,
Oliver, that, if you want to keep her from knowing all about it, you
must begin to come back again. Things cannot go on as they are now
without arousing her suspicions. This is her night, you know; you must
look in for an hour. Of course I don’t want to enter into explanations
with her,” said the Vice-Consul, becoming more at ease now he had made
out his statement, and done it, he thought with some complacence, very
cleverly. “You must really, by way of supporting what I have been
obliged to say, look in to-night.”

Harry’s heart was making up tremendously now for its momentary pause. He
felt as if it must be audible all over the house. A flush of warmth went
over him. He spoke with little breaks in his voice, so much excited and
disturbed was he.

“If you--have no objections, Sir. It cannot be but--a favour to me.”

“That’s a good fellow,” cried the Vice-Consul relieved. “I was afraid
you would tell me it was too painful, and leave me in the lurch.”

“If I did that, Sir,” said Harry, “I should be a worthless creature
indeed, however much it might cost me; but this--this---- If you have
no objections, Sir--you can’t have any doubt that I----”

Here he stopped, not knowing what to say more.

“You must understand, Oliver,” said Mr. Bonamy, gravely, “that if I have
no objections it is because I don’t want to enter into explanations with
Rita; and then I have missed you, I would never deny that. But you must
not suppose, because of this, that I mean you, you know, to depart from
our--bargain, or to do anything to change the position. In short, I
don’t intend, Oliver, that you should take advantage of the change
to--in short, to----”

This was not very explanatory, but Harry hastened to reply as if it had
been the clearest statement in the world.

“You may be sure I will take no advantage of the change,” he said.

“Well, that is just what I expected from you,” said the Vice-Consul,
falling into his natural tone; “but, my dear fellow,” he added, with a
little alarm, “I must be sure that you can depend upon yourself. You
told me you were afraid you would betray your feelings if you continued
to come; you told me even that you had done so, or almost done so----”

“Ah, Sir,” cried Harry, “that was when I found myself out! I know
exactly all about it now, and I am on my guard.”

“Bless me,” said the Vice-Consul, “that is exactly what----” here he
stopped short with the guiltiest look. He was just about to say--what
Rita said.

“You need not have any fear on my account,” said Harry: and then he
paused a little, and added with feeling, “and I am proud that you have
confidence in me. I will do nothing to shake it; you may be sure of
that. I should be a poor creature indeed if my heart did not respond to
such trust.”

This was a very fine speech for Harry. He was carried altogether beyond
himself by the emergency. These last lonely evenings had been wonderful
teachers for him. He had learned to read, he had learned to understand.
He had even learned many things more than reading and understanding in
these days of solitude. The thought of going back to her, to that little
world in which she reigned, was delightful to him, but he wondered what
change there would be in it to balance the strange change in his own
breast. It seemed to him that he was a new man, with deeper feelings
and an expanded mind. And she? Would she just be the same, and all the
things and people round her? Harry did not want her to be the least
different. He thought she was perfect, the most wonderful of all beings;
but he felt himself so much altered that he was excited by the thought
that she might be changed too. He went away from his audience not
knowing whether he walked on solid earth or air. Certainly he would not
take advantage; unquestionably he would be upright and honest, and bind
himself as with ropes rather than betray his kind friend’s confidence;
but with all this he was very much excited, and a glow of warmth and
hopefulness began to circulate in his veins. The new concession meant no
change in the circumstances; this the Vice-Consul had been anxious to
impress upon him; and he was equally anxious to assent, to assure Rita’s
father on the other hand that he expected nothing, scarcely desired
anything except this trust in him. But, nevertheless, it would be
impossible to deny that a something of hope, a trembling yet happy
expectation, had come into his heart.

How carefully he dressed himself that night! Never in all his life had
he made so careful a toilette before. And Paolo, having heard what had
happened (which Harry, reticent as he was, could not keep from him), was
excited too, and came and sat by him while he dressed, and wanted to
help him, as if they had been two girls. Paolo ran out and bought him a
bouquet for his button-hole. He brought in a fresh bottle of
eau-de-Cologne. He was very anxious to lend him something to wear--his
studs, which were little cameos set in gold, or a ring, with a doubtful
gem in it, of which he was very proud, thinking it a genuine antique.
“It is not brilliant like a diamond,” said Paolo, “but it is art, which
is more precious, and pleases much to the Signorina. Take it, amico mio,
you have no ring, which is an absence that is felt; and the studs, that
will make your appearance so much more perfect--what you call finished.”
Harry rejected these aids to the effectiveness of his dress, but he took
great pains about his tie, and rebrushed his coat himself, and gave
particular attention to the arrangement of his hair. He said to himself,
as he walked along in the summer dusk, that all this was very foolish,
that he was not on his promotion, when it might have been wise to make
the best of all his advantages, that he was going only because he was
nobody, because the Vice-Consul was not afraid of him, and thought it
wiser to run the risk of him than to disturb Rita’s mind about any such
petty suitor. It was very much like giving him the crumbs from the
table, but he was willing to accept these, or anything. He went into the
lighted room with his heart beating. Several of the ladies who were
_habituées_ exclaimed on his entrance, and made haste to tell him that
they had thought he was gone altogether, and to ask where he had been.
Rita took no part in these questions, but she gave him her left hand as
a sign of friendship, and smiled and nodded to him without stopping her
conversation with somebody else. Indeed, she treated him as if there had
been no break in their intercourse, as though they had met yesterday and
were to meet again to-morrow. This pleased Harry, and yet it wrung his
heart. Was he of so little importance to her that she had not even
noticed his absence? But that could not be. He began to wonder whether
it was perhaps a good sign. She _had_ noticed his absence, speaking to
her father about it. Was it perhaps--? His heart began to beat again as
at first. But Rita took very little notice of him all the evening. She
was perfectly sweet and smiling, and when she did address him did it
with all her old friendliness; but Harry could not persuade himself that
she had remarked him and his careful tie, and his well-brushed curls at
all.

After that there ensued a time of mingled torture and happiness, when
Rita played with the young man as a cat plays with a mouse. She was more
interested in him than she had ever been in any young man before. He was
a study to her of the most attractive kind. A young man who was in
love--not a young man who was wanting to marry, a species of which she
had seen several specimens--but one who was actually, really, warmly in
love--and with herself. She wanted to see how such a person behaved. It
was as good as a play to her. She would laugh to herself secretly,
thinking of it, so much amused was she; and it seemed to her almost a
duty to try him in every way, to see how far this love would carry him,
and how long he would manage to keep it under. It did not occur to Rita
that this was a somewhat cruel process, or that Harry was pledged in
honour to her father not to betray himself. The cat most likely has no
idea of cruelty in her play with the mouse. Sometimes Rita would take no
notice of him at all, neglecting all the wistful attention which poor
Harry felt it was within his bond to bestow so long as he looked for
nothing in return. For a whole evening she would not so much as look at
him; then would suddenly turn with her most cordial smile, with a few
words more sweet than he thought she had ever bestowed upon him before.
Sometimes she would call him to her side, and ply him with seductions
which poor Harry did not know how to resist; sometimes she would devote
all her efforts to the task of making him betray himself, tempting him
with all sorts of opportunities. But Harry stood fast. He had given his
promise, and nothing would make him break it. He wavered like a tree in
the wind, but he never yielded. Sometimes she made him think that she
was ready to listen to anything he might say, and another time would
take the first opportunity of showing him that he was nothing to her. It
was hard upon the mouse; yet we doubt whether he would have exchanged
this agitated existence for the most happy calm. He went to the
Consulate with a continued expectation, with his heart always beating
loudly, not knowing what he was to look for; but a more calm level of
kindness would not have given him those variations of feeling, that
dramatic interest in his life; so that, perhaps, there was not much harm
done, the tortured liking the play as much as the torturer. As for Rita
she was very much interested too; the pursuit amused her--it was a new
sensation. She wanted above all things to overcome his resolution, and
make him betray himself. But here her efforts were vain against the rock
of Harry’s invincibility. He would not, whatever she might do, break his
promise. He kept a watch upon himself which was not to be overcome.

The Vice-Consul did not know what to make of the business altogether. It
gave him a great deal of thought. He watched the young man with a
jealous eye: but Harry met every scrutiny with an unflinching front. And
Mr. Bonamy did what he could to watch his daughter, but that was not so
easy. She was amusing herself, but whether she was going too far in her
trial of Harry’s constancy he could not tell. She bewildered her father,
which was not difficult; but what was more wonderful, after a while,
this venturous person began to bewilder herself. She thought she was
tired of Harry, who could not be got to swerve out of the right way. She
began to think that it was all a fiction, or that this love after the
English fashion was far too self-commanded and restrained for a half
Italian girl. She had thought at first that it would be quite easy and
extremely amusing to make him betray himself. And she had resolved in
such a case that his downfall should do him no harm; she would not
betray him; she would keep his secret. But she had not supposed that he
would stand out, that he would be able to resist her: and at length she
got confused about her own notions, and about his conduct and everything
around her, and knew no longer what to think.




CHAPTER XIV.

A CRISIS.


It was like a play the intercourse which went on between these two; the
perpetual aggressions of the girl and defences of the young man, the
troubled spectatorship of the father, who saw that slave of his word
resisting, fighting always, more or less feebly, but yet resisting all
the _agaceries_, all the temptations, which a spirit of mischief could
throw in his way. Sometimes the sight was laughable, sometimes it was
almost tragic, to the looker on; and he was much disturbed at the same
time on his own account, not knowing what Rita meant by it all. “Take
care what you are doing,” he would say to her, with mingled pity and
alarm--pity for the young man, alarm for himself and her. “What am I
doing, papa?” Rita would ask, with the greatest innocence. “That is
exactly what I can’t tell,” poor Mr. Bonamy said. But his warnings never
came to more than this. And nothing in all her life had so amused Rita
as her torture of this unfortunate young man. One day they happened to
be alone for a little while, Mr. Bonamy having been called away. It was
on a Sunday evening, after dinner, a day when the Bonamys, following the
old-fashioned English rule, were always alone. Harry had avoided
opportunities of being alone with Rita as much as lovers generally
scheme for that privilege, but to-day there was no help for it. She was
seated at the open window in her usual dress of vapoury white; the
summer was advancing, and it would soon be time for the removal of the
household to the country, where they went every year. Mr. Bonamy had
been called away, quite unexpectedly, to his own dreadful vexation and
the terror of Harry, but to Rita’s secret delight. The night-air puffed
the white curtains over her head and about her white, half-visible
figure. The window looked out upon the garden, and there was a little
moisture of the sea in the air. Harry was standing at the other side of
the window, half concealed by the floating veil of the curtain. Rita
was half buried in a great chair. A shaded lamp stood on a table in the
other part of the room, but that was all, not light enough to see each
other by. There had been a somewhat long silence, and Harry was trying
hard to break loose from this enchantment and go away. But his heart was
faint with the sweetness of it, poor fellow! and he could not get free,
especially now that they were alone. If it could have been helped, he
would not have stayed; but he had not been able to help it, and it was
sweet. He was snatching a fearful joy, not saying anything, scarcely
daring to breathe. Then into the soft silence came her voice.

“Mr. Oliver, they tell me summer nights in England are so much sweeter
than here. What are those long twilights? I have read about them, but I
don’t understand it. Tell me.” He could make out that she leaned forward
in her chair, putting her hands together, which was a way she had.

“I don’t think,” said Harry, catching his breath, “that anything can be
sweeter than the evenings here.”

“Ah, but there is a difference; tell me. You know that I am never to go
to England,” said Rita, plaintively; “though I remember you said you
would not be afraid to take me. What made you say that, Mr. Oliver?
perhaps you forget that you ever did.”

“Oh, no; I don’t forget.”

“You never would enter into any particulars; but I am glad at least that
you don’t forget. Now papa is away, we may talk of it. It always hurts
papa when I speak of England. So tell me--tell me quick--how was it that
you thought you could make it safe? Ah, how I wish you could!” she said,
clasping her hands.

Harry said never a word. His heart was thumping so against his breast
that he thought every moment it would burst forth from that uneasy
house. Now it got into his throat, and seemed to choke him; he could not
speak.

“You don’t say anything,” said Rita, with again a little tone of
complaint. “Do you think that is kind, or fair? You rouse my
expectations, and then you never say another word. I have thought of it
all this time, and always wondered if you would ever tell me. How could
Mr. Oliver manage to take me to England without danger? that is what I
have always been saying to myself. What, Mr. Oliver! won’t you say a
word?”

Here there burst a cry from Harry’s breast. “Don’t torture me,” he said;
then collecting all his strength, “It was my presumption. I thought only
that to take--the most precious care of you----”

His voice shook, and at last his little torturer felt that she had got
almost to the end of his powers.

“That is a very pretty way of saying it, Mr. Oliver; precious care; it
is not slang, is it? I am sure you would be kind--very, very kind.”

“Oh, _kind_!” cried poor Harry, grasping unconsciously the white
curtains that kept blowing between him and her, in his strong, hot
hands.

“Don’t you like the word? I think it is such a nice word. There is
nothing like it in Italian, and you can apply it so widely. You can be
kind to a horse or a dog; and then to children, and sick people and poor
people; and then--to everybody--me. You have always been, ever since I
knew you, very kind to me.”

“Don’t say so--don’t say so--not that word,” Harry cried.

“But there is no other word half so good. Other words express other
feelings; kind means, just kind. There is nothing else expresses it.
English is a wonderfully fine language. It is so strong and so
trustworthy. You feel as if you could believe it, every word. Mr.
Oliver,” said Rita, in her little, soft, insinuating voice, “did you
really, really believe that--that I might go to England, if--someone
were to take care of me, such care as you call precious; but, then, who
would do that? not papa, for he is so frightened. No one I know.”

“Miss Bonamy, I must say good night,” said Harry, very shortly, taking
himself out of the floating curtain, almost tearing it down in his
agitation.

“Good night! before papa comes back? Oh, but that would be _un_kind.
Don’t. Why should you run off in such a hurry in the very middle of our
talk?”

“Because,” he said, with the crushed curtain like a wisp in his hands,
“I can’t stay--I mustn’t stay. Forgive me, and, if you will, excuse me:
and--good night!”

He was rushing away, when she put out her hand. He saw that, though
there was so little light. He could not refuse to shake hands with her;
and instead of leaving the pressure to him, she took hold of his hand
for a second, lightly but firmly detaining him. “Mr. Oliver,” she said,
with that little plaintive tone, “you should not run away.”

Harry was hoarse with agitation and distress. That soft, light touch of
detention made him wild. “I must fly,” he said, “fly! Do you think I
want to go? I must fly, and come no more.”

And he turned and disappeared like an arrow, as swift, but not so
noiselessly, stumbling through the dark room. She lay back in her chair
and listened to him all the way rushing down the stairs, shutting the
great door with a clang. Then his steps were audible along the street
hurrying away. The very foot, Rita thought, spoke English among the
other footsteps. She seemed to hear them ever so far off, hurrying,
flying. She was a spoiled child. She had not succeeded in her wicked
attempt, and some other feeling mingled with the childish disappointment
which provoked and mortified her. When the Vice-Consul came back, not
without a great deal of anxiety in his mind, he found her still sitting
there, crying as if her perverse heart would break. It gave him a
mingled sense of fright and relief to see that there was no one else in
the room; but when he found that Rita was crying, his foolish, fatherly
heart was melted altogether. He hurried across the half-lighted room.
“What is the matter, my darling, what is the matter? Where is Oliver? Is
it his fault?” he said.

“Papa,” cried Rita, with sobs, “do not speak to me of Mr. Oliver; he is
a clod, he is a stone. It is not a bit true what you told me of him. He
must have been laughing at you--or perhaps at me. It is not a bit true.”

“What is it that is not true? My pet, this young fellow has been saying
something to vex you? Bless my heart! he shall go to-morrow if he has
broken his word and said anything to annoy you.”

And the Vice-Consul, very wroth, drew a chair to the side of Rita’s, and
put his arm round her, soothing her with soft words and caresses, and
launching thunderbolts of anger at the supposed culprit. Rita cried
softly for some time on her father’s shoulder. Then she interrupted him,
putting her hand upon his mouth.

“Papa, don’t; you don’t know. What provokes me is different. It is not
because he said anything. Listen,” said Rita, putting her lips to his
ear; “I _know_ it is not true what he said to you. It can’t be true,
because I have tried him and tried him, and he _won’t_ say anything. He
has no feeling at all in him, and it cannot be true.”

“Rita! Rita! what are you saying?” Mr. Bonamy cried.

The horror in his voice brought her to herself. She sat up suddenly,
drying her eyes. “Well, papa, it is your fault. You gave me a puzzle to
make out. I thought it would be fun; but it is not fun. As for Mr.
Oliver, he is just an excellent, trustworthy Englishman. You need not
fear that he will ever be carried away. As for feeling, I don’t think he
knows what it is. He is English--English all over.” She clapped her
hands together to give emphasis to her sentence, like a true Italian,
which by turns she was.

“Yes, he is English--very English. I thought you liked everything that
was English,” the surprised father said.

“And so I do; but what does it matter if you will never, never let me go
to England? Take me to England, papa!”

“My darling! when you know what my feeling is on that subject--anything
but that, Rita; ask me anything but that.”

“Well,” she replied, “Mr. Oliver said there would be no difficulty about
it; he said he would take the most precious care of me. Is that slang,
papa?”

“Slang? bless my heart, it sounds like something quite different to me,”
cried the Vice-Consul, frowning. But Rita once more put her hand upon
his mouth.

“You know better than I do,” she said, demurely. “I could not be sure
which it was; but you may make yourself quite comfortable, papa, for Mr.
Oliver is very conscientious, and never said a word. I begin,” she said
pensively, “to understand English now.”

“Rita, I think you must be taking leave of your senses. You begin to
understand English! your own language!”

She nodded her head a great many times in reply.

“Yes, I begin to understand it,” she said. And this was all he could get
out of her. She began presently to talk upon other subjects, and kept
him amused all the rest of the evening, and Harry was not mentioned
again between them.

But Harry himself, poor fellow, went home like the wind, or rather like
a straw blown before the wind; hastening, without any apparent movement
of his own, to the bare rooms which were his only refuge. He arrived
there panting like a man pursued, and shut his door as if it were a
fence between him and his pursuers. He could not have explained to
himself why he did this, for Rita, though she had certainly assailed
him, had not come after him through the streets, as by his appearance
one might have thought she had done, forcing him to his best speed. But
when he sat down and thought it all over, though Harry was excited to
the highest degree, it could scarcely be said of him that he was
unhappy. He was breathless with the excitement of his escape. He said to
himself that he must not go again; that he would not run such risks
again, that another time he must betray himself; but all the time,
underneath everything, he had the consciousness that his very flight had
told his story as effectually as words could have done it, and that she
could not now be at any loss to know what was the moving spring of all
his recent life. He felt that she had suspected him all these days. He
knew that she had meant to surprise his secret somehow, whether in
simple love of mischief and curiosity, or whether with some other
motive, who could tell? but certainly this was what she had been doing:
and there dawned upon him a light of something which was not exactly
hope, but which yet warmed and brightened his horizon, and made the
whole world somehow a better, a less heavy and tedious place. He did not
say even to himself that anything definite was in his hope; what he said
was that he could not go back, that he would run no more risks, that,
whatever might be said to him on the subject, his policy was to keep
away. But this had no such tragic meaning to him as it had on the
previous occasion, when his life had been cut off in half, and his
heart, he thought, rent in twain. If he was ever made to go back
again--a thought which made Harry’s heart jump, but which he did not
feel, as before, was impossible--then it would not be to hold his
tongue. And whatever happened there was one thing which he could not be
doubtful about. He had saved his honour, hard as had been the trial, and
yet she _knew_. She could not, he was sure, either mistake him or ignore
him any longer. Reject him, yes; allow him to languish far from her,
which would be the kindest thing, unless---- but certainly now she knew.

And then a week or more elapsed. After the first twenty-four hours Harry
began to have heats and chills, wondering if he would be forbidden to go
again. He did not intend to go, but yet to be sent away is different;
and he awaited a summons to the Vice-Consul with feelings of alarm. But
though he was constantly summoned to the Vice-Consul’s presence, he
heard nothing upon this all-interesting subject. Mr. Bonamy looked
coldly upon him for the first day, but said nothing save about business.
And afterwards Harry went on just as before. Rita’s “night” came round,
but Harry did not go. He dressed himself as if he were going, and got
rid of Paolo, who had been greatly disappointed by the total absence of
confidence in him which his friend showed. Naturally, after his
exertions on Harry’s behalf, the offer of the ring and the studs, the
purchase of the flower and the eau-de-cologne, Paolo had felt that he
had a right to hear all that had taken place, and how the lady had been
won, which he did not think would be a difficult matter. The idea that
his friend could be called back without the lady being won, did not
occur to his swift Italian mind. And after that critical moment when he
linked his arm in Harry’s, and led him eagerly off to the quietest
promenade he could think of, to hear all about it, Paolo had treated
Harry’s indignant denial that there was anything to tell with the
contempt it deserved. “Nothing?” he had said, with an astonishment
almost beyond speech. “Nothing? But that means that you do not wish to
tell me--that you will not give your confidence to me.” When Harry
disclaimed this, Paolo had only shook his head. “I see that you have not
trust in me,” he said, and he had retired in his turn for a few days
from his friend’s society, and a little coolness and momentary
estrangement had ensued.

But some time had elapsed since then, and one of those reconciliations
of which Harry was afraid had followed, and Paolo’s interest was warmer
than ever. He watched his friend’s looks and noted every visit he paid,
so that it required nothing less than the effort of dressing and setting
out for the Vice-Consul’s to shake himself free from Paolo’s society and
remarks. Harry went to the very street, to the opposite side, to watch
the windows, and to get a glimpse if he could of the little white
figure, which was the central point in the world to him. But long before
the usual hour the party broke up, and Harry was surprised by a sudden
outpouring of groups of people in evening dresses--ladies with scarfs
thrown over their heads, and satin slippers, not adapted for the rough
pavement. Some of these groups, departing guests, perceived him, before
he was aware. “Oh! are you going to the Bonamys?” said a lady; “don’t
go; the Vice-Consul has been taken ill; he has had a fit or something.
You may see how early we are coming away.” The whole street was soon
full of a babble of voices, all talking of this. The Vice-Consul had
been suddenly taken ill; he had fainted in the midst of the assembly,
and the doctor had been sent for in haste. When Harry looked up at the
windows they were all deserted--the lights still burning, the white
curtains faintly swaying about, but the rooms entirely empty. In a
moment all had become miserable and neglected. Life had ebbed out of the
room, and left everything cold and silent. He felt with a chill at his
heart as if death had come in instead to fill up the vacant place; he
went to the door to inquire about his kind patron, his trustful master,
his fatherly friend, with a heart out of which all the previous thoughts
had departed for the moment. He thought of Rita, indeed, with instant
anxiety; but yet her father was foremost in his mind. “Very bad, sir,”
the servant said, who was an Englishman, “very bad,” holding the door
wide open as he said so; and Harry went in in his evening clothes,
looking as if he had meant to go to the party. He was a little scared
afterwards to think that Rita never could know that he did not mean to
come to the party. He went upstairs into the empty drawing-room; there
were a few signs of hasty disturbance about it, evidences of the sudden
interruption; a card-table set out with all the cards as they had been
dealt round it; groups of chairs standing together, and a tray of ices
on a side-table. Such a forsaken room always raises an infinite crowd of
suggestions. It is such a lesson upon the dangers and changes of life as
no sermon can read. Harry stood in the midst of it, feeling as if he had
seen the writing on the wall which startled the ancient king in the
midst of his revel. It had been an innocent revel--nothing in it to
offend earth or heaven; but the touch of a sudden calamity makes even
the most innocent pleasure-making seem vain. He stood there feeling as
if on the edge of a tomb, hearing in the distance muffled yet hasty
steps running to and fro, and all the excitement of a sudden illness.
And he had plenty of time to indulge these thoughts, for nobody came
near the room for, he thought, hours; though, of course, this was a
mistaken estimate of the time that really passed. At last Harry heard
measured steps and voices coming downstairs, and hurrying to the door
found the English doctor in company with one of the ladies of the
English community who had known Rita all her life. They told him that
the Vice-Consul’s attack was a very serious one, that he was still
unconscious, and that no one as yet could say how it would turn. “I have
told him for some time he ought to go away. He was struggling foolishly,
when he ought to have given in as so many people do.” “And poor little
Rita, what is to become of her?” the lady said.

Harry stood with his heart in his mouth, ready for any service. Alas!
what can a young man do in such a case? An old woman is of more use. He
was sent off, however, to fetch a nurse, and to get various articles
that were necessary, and this gave him occupation. He was about the
house all the night, hearing with faint pleasure that Rita would not
leave her father’s bedside, and glad to share her vigil. He would have
liked to be there too to help, not caring what he did. The Vice-Consul
was very ill for many days, during which time Harry threw himself into
the business of the office, and worked like a slave. He thought neither
of reward nor of the manner in which his behaviour was being
contemplated by the little community around, all as much interested as
the population of a village, though they formed an important part of a
large and busy town. He thought nothing of all this; his new life
absorbed him so that he had no faculty or thought that was free for
anything else. He did not seem to require either rest or regular meals,
but took up Mr. Bonamy’s work during the day, and ran about on any
errand of the sick-room all the night.

And at last the patient began to get better. The seizure had been a very
bad one, but he mended, and was at last able to be removed. He was too
confused even then to know what was being done for him, or to realise
the state into which his work must have got but for the strenuous and
anxious deputyship of his clerk. He was taken away even without
knowing, without being able to say a word to Harry. But Rita, who had so
tortured him, who even in the midst of her watch had heard without
knowing it how Harry had taken her father’s place, and how he had made
himself the servant of the house, did not leave him without a token of
her gratitude. One day, while he was sitting absorbed in business, but
not able to keep himself from thinking now and then wistfully whether he
should see either of them before they went away, there came a soft
little knock at the door of communication by which the Vice-Consul had
introduced him first into his house. Harry was at Mr. Bonamy’s own
table, taking his place, and feeling himself already so much at home in
the work that the appeals which he had dreaded at first no longer
affected him. But when he heard this knock his whole frame quivered. He
did not know what to expect. He got up trembling from his chair, and
opened the door. In the passage stood Rita, very worn and pale, with
dark lines round the eyes that seemed to fill up all her face. She had
scarcely left her father’s bedside, he had heard, watching over him
night and day. Her slight little figure, always so slim and girlish,
seemed to have shrunk to nothing. There was not a trace of colour in her
face. “Miss Bonamy!” he said, with a sharp tone of surprise, though he
was not surprised; the moment he had heard the knock he had been aware
that Rita, and no other, must have made that appeal. The touch on the
door had conveyed a plaintive sound to him like her voice. She smiled,
but did not say anything. Her eyes filled suddenly with tears, and the
soft lines of her mouth quivered. She came into the office, where he
stood gazing at her, and held out to him both her hands, smiling up in
his face like a child. “I have come to thank you,” she said, at last,
the two big tears dropping like drops of rain in a thunder shower, “for
all your--kindness.” She paused a little before that last word, and
through the tears, through the angelical, pathetic smile, which wrung
poor Harry’s heart, there came something that was like a ghost of
mischief. She remembered their last conversation, though so much had
happened since, and could not refrain, though her heart was moved to its
depths, from throwing this ghost of a malicious shaft at him. Somehow
the effect upon Harry was of a different kind from before. Perhaps he
felt that he had now a standing-ground which no one could undervalue or
take from him. At all events he kept her hands in his, and looked at her
with a gaze under which her eyes swerved. “It was not kindness,” he
said.

Rita drew back a step, though her hands were held fast. Her eyes
drooped, she could not meet his, though Harry’s eyes were insignificant
English eyes in comparison with those great dreamy lights that shone out
of her little pale face. Then she gave one sudden glance at him,
wavering and trembling. “I know it was not,” said Rita, with a great
effort to steady her voice.




CHAPTER XV.

THE VICE-CONSUL’S RESOLUTION.


The Bonamys had a little country-house near the sea, one of those grey
houses, with its vineyard and its fields, which are so common in Italy,
so homely, having so little of the picturesque grace which is suggested
by everything Italian to our minds. The rooms were large and sparely
furnished, one of them, the only pleasant one, opening upon a terrace
which overlooked the sea. Here the Vice-Consul was brought, and laid
upon a couch in the long warm days, after the sun had gone off the
house, to breathe in the pleasant saltness, and refresh himself with
that profound Mediterranean blue which is like nothing else. At first he
was able for no mental, and not much physical, effort, but by degrees
life came back to him; and with the earliest gleams of revival came the
recollection of all that had dropped out of his hands, his work, the
office, all that had depended upon him. When this first crisis came,
which had been much dreaded by the doctors, Rita had to meet it alone.
It came in a moment, after a day of listless enjoyment. There had been
some cool breezes, and a little breath of more vigorous life had got
into his relaxed and feeble frame. He had fallen asleep in the
afternoon, his daughter sitting by him. All was tranquil round about, as
became the surroundings of a convalescent, the air breathing softly, the
violent sun, which is in Italy an enemy of the feeble, happily gone out
of sight, the sea sounding softly upon the rocks, the cicala shrill in
the trees. It was the only sharp note in all that quiet, but Rita, for
one, no more knew of the existence of a country landscape without the
shrill tones of the cicala, than an English girl could realise one
without the birds. There were no great trees about, nothing but those
which were useful according to the frugal custom of wealthy Tuscany,
where everything is expected to bear fruit. The lattice-work overhead
was partly covered with a vine, which made a green roof over one part
of it; but the sick man wanted all the air he could get, so he was not
below the pergola, but in the open part, the soft breeze blowing freely
about him. He lay with his fine head turned towards the sea, a beard,
the growth of his illness, softening the gauntness of the lower part of
his face, sleeping with that utter _abandon_ of weakness which seems to
restore something of the charm of childhood to the sick. Rita sat by,
with a book in her hands which she was not reading. It would be hard to
tell what she was doing; not thinking either;--scenes in the past,
scenes in the future, were gliding through her dreamy mind. Which was
most real she could not tell. She was standing on the edge of fate, not
knowing what a day or a moment might bring forth. All the world had
paused with her in that suspense which was sweet. She did not want to be
done with it or to shorten it, or to make anything advance a step
faster; indeed she did not know what it was that was going to come. But
_it_ would not end there, she said sometimes to herself; it was
impossible that it could end there; one thing or another must come of
it. But what it was she wanted to come of it, Rita, even to herself,
would not venture to say.

When all at once, everything being so quiet, the Vice-Consul suddenly
woke up. He opened his eyes with more energy than usual, and made a
little movement to rise, with an impulse of active life, such as he had
not shown before.

“Ah, you are there, my pet,” he said. “I was dreaming that we were at
home; that there had been despatches. I fear I have been sadly idle. How
long have I been ill? It is too early for us to be here.”

“No, papa,” said Rita, alarmed. “Oh, not at all too early--at this time
we are always here.”

He raised himself on his arm, and a startled look came upon his face.

“How long have I been ill?” he said.

“Never mind, papa--a--good while. You are not to think of that; but to
get better, and not to trouble yourself.”

“That is nonsense, my dear; there is the office that must be thought of;
if you knew the arrears that accumulate even in a few days. I seem to
have lost count of time; oddly enough. I can’t remember anything. How
many--days is it?”

His eyes opened wide, his under lip quivered a little, and a flush of
weakness and excitement came upon his cheek. Rita threw down her book
and came hastily to his side, kneeling down by the sofa.

“Papa! you must not be anxious; you must not ask any questions yet. This
I can tell you, there are no arrears. Mr. Oliver has got the charge of
everything, and he is doing it all so well, so well, Mr. Henderson told
me. He said, ‘If it was not so heart-breaking to miss his dear face,’
and here Rita gave her father a sudden kiss to conceal, and at the same
time to express, her own agitation, ‘one could scarcely see the
difference. Mr. Oliver has behaved like--nobody ever behaved so well.’”

“Bless my soul!” said Mr. Bonamy, putting up his hand to stroke his
daughter’s face, “here is enthusiasm! I did not know you thought so much
of Oliver.” Then it suddenly occurred to him to look at that hand. He
held it up and contemplated it, at first with amusement, afterwards with
a little alarm. “Here is a poor old claw,” he said, “that looks like----
why, Rita, it looks like a very bad bout; it looks like a--long illness.
Good heavens! am I deceiving myself. How long have I been ill?” this he
said in a very peremptory tone.

“Papa,” Rita said, putting her arms around him, “Mr. Oliver has managed
everything, there is nothing to trouble yourself about. Mr. Henderson
said so, and so did the man from Florence--that man, I forget his name.”

A look of anguish came upon Mr. Bonamy’s face. To come under the
reproof, or subject himself to the interference of the Consul-General at
Florence, had always been the terror of his official life. He had kept
the danger at bay hitherto, acting with great independence, and being
permitted to do so in an astonishing way; but he had known, or thought
he knew, that they were ready to pounce upon him at the first
opportunity. The idea of a man from Florence was bitter to him beyond
conception. A dark colour came over his face, a sort of purple hue,
which made Rita wild with terror.

“What--what--what?” he cried, stammering. Rita thought he was going to
have another fit; she called out for Benedetta, Benedetta! and with
anxious hands, caressing, yet half forcing him back upon his pillows,
began to fan him with a great fan which lay on his sofa. He allowed her
to lay him down, and perhaps the sight of her anxiety moved him to exert
all his powers of self-control. He subdued the rising confusion of
passionate mortification within him; in which effort he was helped by
his weakness, which made any great convulsion of feeling impossible.
By-and-bye he looked up at her with a half-smile. Benedetta had come at
her call, and was bringing water and vinegar, and bandages of linen to
put on his head. He waved all these appliances away with his hand.

“Don’t be afraid, I am not going to be--worse,” he said feebly. “I may
be bad enough, but not worse. When did the man from Florence come? Tell
me everything now.”

Then Rita, hesitating and faltering, told him the story of his illness,
and all the long history burst confusedly upon his brain. He had thought
he had been a few days, perhaps a week ill, and he had been six weeks.
He had been preparing himself for a great deal to do when he should get
well, and he found himself replaced, put aside. There were points in the
story which consoled him. It was no man from Florence who had been doing
his work--that was a wonderful comfort--but his own friend, the young
fellow whom he had taken up and been kind to, who was the creature of
his bounty. The Consul-General had not found a word to say; he had
approved, and sanctioned, and authorised everything, and the character
of Mr. Bonamy’s work had been kept up. He lay still and kept himself
quiet, and listened to every word. Benedetta, who did not understand the
English, stood by with all her appliances, her cold compresses, her
bandages, the soft white folds of linen in which his hot forehead was to
be bound. But the patient eluded her. He kept himself quiet in spite of
all temptations.

“You can send her away, Rita,” he said. “What are you frightened for? I
must have known sooner or later. It is far better that I should know. I
have been surrounded by friends, everybody has been good to me; and if
you have no objection, my darling, I should like to see Oliver here.”

“I don’t know,” said Rita, “why you should think I could have any
objection to--anything you wished, papa.”

There was almost a glow of amusement in the Consul’s eyes. “My dear, you
are very dutiful,” he said. And then the time came when he had to be
carried back again in his couch indoors before the hour of sunset, which
is feared throughout Italy, and to have his invalid meal brought to him.
The evening was marked by a great event, for that night the Vice-Consul
walked to bed, which was a thing which never had happened before. And
from this time Mr. Bonamy began to accustom himself to all that had
happened, and when the doctor came he extracted from him the full
history of his illness, which interested him very greatly, and gave him
something to think about. It was not unnatural that he should be
startled. “It is a thing that is sure to recur again?” he asked.

“Well, we do not say that anything is sure to recur again. We say that,
given the same disposition, the same symptoms might reappear.”

“And the third time kills?” the Vice-Consul said.

“My dear Bonamy, that again is not a thing we say. Every repetition of
course weakens the patient,” said the judicious doctor.

The sick man laughed, but when he was alone his countenance was very
grave. He lay and reflected upon everything, and thought how lonely his
child would be when he was taken from her. She had some relations, but
his anxiety to keep her from going to England had made him negligent of
his own family at home; and he had something to leave her; he had not
left his child altogether without provision. But what a change it would
be to Rita, from the house where she was queen, where everybody
worshipped and served her, where everything she said was reckoned wiser,
and everything she did more wonderful, than any other sayings or doings,
to be a semi-dependant in the house of her Aunt Ersilia, or some other
of the Italian kindred, with their different ways! This thought filled
Mr. Bonamy’s mind as he lay in the long unoccupied hours of his
convalescence with his face turned to the blue Italian sea. Two days
after he made a request to his child. “Will you write a note to Oliver,”
he said, “and ask him to come and see me? But not if you have any
objection.” He watched her intently, and he saw a quick, faint colour
flash over her face.

“Why should I have any objection? I told you I had not any, papa; and if
I had what would it matter?” she said.

“It would matter a great deal to me. But you do not dislike poor Oliver,
Rita?”

“Dislike him! Do you think I am made of stone? He has done everything,
_everything_, while you have been ill. I should be a demon if I did
not--if I disliked him as you say.”

“But there is a great difference,” said the Vice-Consul, “between
dislike and--I don’t know, my pet, what word to use.”

“Yes, there is a great difference,” she said, demurely; and having her
paper neatly arranged before her, she proceeded to write the note which
follows:--

         “Dear Mr. Oliver,

     “Papa is a great deal better. He thinks he would like to see you on
     Sunday if you would be so good as to come out here. He has been
     very much touched to hear of all you have been doing for him. And
     so am I. He wants to know all about it, and to thank you. But do
     not think you will be troubled with any thanks from me, for I know
     that you do not mean to be kind to us, though on the outside it
     looks like it.

                           “Truly yours,
                                    “MARGHERITA BONAMY.”

Here was once more her malice, which she could not put out of the
question between them. She was glad that her father did not ask to see
her note, and she put it up and sent it away with a little quickening of
all her pulses. Sunday was the next day, but she felt sure enough that
Harry would let no engagement prevent him accepting this invitation.
They sat in silence for some time after that letter was despatched. Rita
felt her whole life quickened, her horizon wider, the day of more
importance, the passing moments more weighty. She sat quite silent, her
mind being full of so many thoughts. At last the Vice-Consul spoke, as
if no pause had occurred. “Notwithstanding,” he said, “you know Oliver
is not clever, Rita; that must be taken into account.”

On this Rita, not perceiving that she betrayed the strain of her own
thoughts by receiving the remark without surprise, answered, with a
little sigh of regret, “No, he is not clever; but perhaps there are some
things that are better than being clever,” she added, in a doubtful
tone.

Mr. Bonamy laughed a little, faintly. “Are you coming to see that?” he
said.

“I don’t know if I am coming to see it, papa. I think I always saw it.
One does not think much whether the people one cares for are clever or
not.” Then perceiving the inference which might be drawn from her words,
Rita blushed wildly, and turned suddenly upon her father defiant eyes.
But he did not make any remark, half because he was weak, half because
of a mingled pang of satisfaction and pain to think that “the people she
cared for” now included other relations than those of the earliest stage
in life. A father, perhaps, feels it more than a mother when his
daughter’s heart goes away from him to another man: there is a keener
jealousy in it, a sharper sense of contrast. He had concentrated all his
happiness in his child; and, lo! in a moment there appeared a stranger
in her life who would be more to her than he was. The first shock of
this discovery is always painful; and as he lay there bearing this and
thinking over all that was before him, an infinite sadness came into the
Vice-Consul’s smile. It was not only natural that this blossom of his
life should detach itself from him, but it was well. To preside at and
assist in the replacement of one’s self by another, preparing as it were
the preliminary ceremonials of one’s own funeral, is a curious
experience; but Mr. Bonamy felt, with a little melancholy that this was
the thing which it now remained for him to do. He could not help making
comparisons between himself and Harry. Harry was not clever; he was a
good fellow who sat and gaped when the conversation took anything beyond
a practical turn. Yes: he was a very good fellow; he had been a saviour
in trouble; but yet--Mr. Bonamy smiled sadly at the idea of stepping
down from his throne, and bidding Harry mount in his place; he could not
promote him to his vice-consulship, but he could promote him to the
throne of Rita, which was more. And it would be well--the best thing
that could happen. Having once had an “attack,” which was how he put it
euphemistically--a man was sure to have more; and the third kills.
Therefore, how needful it was, how essential to have some one to care
for Rita, somebody in whose hands he could leave her--when he died!
“When I die”--these are words which it is hard to say without some faint
shiver. When one is far off from all appearance of that conclusion, they
may be easy; but when the preliminaries of the end have already taken
place, and the clouds are gathering towards the great final tableau and
termination, then the very cadence of them has something in it that
gives a tingle to all the nerves. “When I die.” Mr. Bonamy was not much
over fifty; he had not thought of anything of the kind. But here it was
looking him in the face whether he would or not.

Harry came at the summons without a moment’s delay. He brought a full
report of all the business to lay before his chief. The Vice-Consul,
notwithstanding his dreary thoughts, was making unmistakable progress.
He was better every day. He was able to take an interest in all that his
deputy had to tell him, and to feel the gratification which all the
office had shared in baffling the man from Florence, and showing him a
state of affairs with which no fault could be found.

“I told him, Sir, that your business was always in too perfect order to
break down with such a little trial. I showed him how we had only to
follow your rule, and all was clear.” Mr. Bonamy laid his thin hand upon
the young fellow’s shoulder, and patted it softly.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you would say as much for me if I had no
daughter?”

“Yes,” said Harry, with the utmost energy; “don’t think, Sir, that I had
any interested motive.” This pleased the Vice-Consul; and it pleased
him too that Harry resented with scorn, and almost indignation, the idea
that he might not return to his work, or that this illness of his was a
break up, as in his heart Mr. Bonamy believed it to be. Harry knew
nothing whatever about medicine, but his light-hearted certainty that
his patron would be in the office again in October as well as ever, gave
a cheer to the sick man’s failing heart, as shouts of encouragement from
the shore, and the sight of all the eager assistants ready to help and
watching every struggle, cheer a vessel which is trying to reach a
dangerous harbour. There began to steal into his heart a feeling that,
perhaps--after all. Notwithstanding he held by his first resolution. He
had a long conversation with Harry, which had nothing to do with
business. The young man never forgot that half hour’s talk, with the sea
air blowing softly over all the sweetness of the garden, the cicala in
the trees, the sound of the Mediterranean beyond. Harry thought that
once or twice he saw in the dim room beyond a little white figure appear
in the distance, opening a door, looking wistfully to see if the
conference was nearly at an end, then disappearing again. And though the
Vice-Consul was opening the gates of heaven to him, at that moment even
Mr. Bonamy seemed tedious. The last time the apparition showed the
Vice-Consul had gripped Harry’s hand with those long worn fingers, which
he called claws, not without a certain justice. “And you must give me
your word never to take her to England,” he was saying, in a low and
earnest voice. But before Harry could reply, Rita, impatient, had come
across the dim room indoors, and was standing in the window with a
pucker in her forehead, and a tone of querulous impatience.

“You ought to have had your beef-tea, and your champagne, and your
tonic, and all your nourishments,” said Rita. “I have looked in a dozen
times, but you were always so busy! What can you have to say to Mr.
Oliver all this time? He ought not to keep you so long--when you know an
invalid wants feeding constantly,” she said, turning with petulance to
Harry. “How could you be so thoughtless, Mr. Oliver? that was not kind
at all.”

Harry did not reply anything to this tirade. He looked at her as if the
mere sight of her was enough for him; as if nothing that could be said
made any difference. As for Rita, she was not tranquil, but excited, and
half angry. It was impossible to suppose that they had not been talking
about her, and like many other people she objected mightily to being
talked over. She came out and in with a nervous, irritable haste,
bringing trays with food and medicine which she would permit no one to
touch. Harry, when he offered his help, was driven from her with
contumely, and even Benedetta, making her appearance behind, had the cup
of jelly she carried snatched from her hands and was sent summarily
away.

“I will have no one serve papa but myself,” Rita said. Perhaps there was
a little compunction in it. When the heat of devotion has cooled do not
we sometimes add all manner of observances to make up outside for what
is wanting within? She was nervously conscious of Harry’s presence, and
aware of the approaching moment when he would insist upon speaking for
himself. And now compunction had seized her capricious soul. She was
angry with her lover because he had stolen her heart from its first
owner. And she would fain have persuaded that first owner even in the
act of betraying him that she was his entirely, and that everything
which withdrew her from him was a pain and irritation to her. Harry,
being simple, was deceived and greatly discouraged; but the Consul,
having more insight, was never deceived.

And in the evening the inevitable explanation came. It could not be
delayed any longer. The _Curiosa Impertinente_ reaped the consequences
of all her tricks, and all the trials to which she had subjected Harry.
She fell into the pit which she had herself digged. She might even have
been said to be at his mercy, but for his simple devotion, which thought
of no vengeance, and her own spirit and pride, which would have carried
her through any reprisals, and still might have turned the tables upon
him: but in the evening, when the Consul had gone to bed, they wandered
about the terrace under the soft Italian stars, and understood each
other.

“There is only one thing,” Rita said. “Nothing in the world shall induce
me to call you Isaac. Choose another name, choose any name you please;
but Isaac you are not going to be. What could tempt anybody to call a
child Isaac? it is dreadful. Godfathers and godmothers ought to be
within the reach of the law.”

Then there suddenly seemed to encircle Harry for a moment the atmosphere
of a very different place. Grey hills rose around him, the stars took a
cold, yet a kinder sparkle; the blue depths of the sea faded away into a
misty valley full of vapours.

“When I was a child,” he said, “they called me Harry.” He did not make
any further explanations, nor did he feel that any were necessary. For a
moment he seemed to see his mother, with her two thin hands clasped
together, and to hear her voice calling him: but this was but a phantom,
a pale vision, a thing that had passed away for ever. Next moment he was
back again in the warm Italian night, with the cicala chirping, and
Rita, in a little burst of enthusiasm and pleasure, calling him by that
familiar unrelinquished name.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13 Poland Street.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Harry Joscelyn; vol. 2 of 3, by 
Mrs. Margaret Oliphant

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 63158 ***