CHAPTER IX.
WARNINGS AND CONSULTATIONS.
MRS. HUNSTANTON lingered after the visitors had gone away. She made a determined stand even against Mrs. Norton and Sophy, and outstayed them in spite of all their efforts. She said, with something of that breathlessness which betrays mental excitement, “I want to say a word to you, Diana. I want to warn you. Spectators always see more than the chief actors, and I have been a spectator all the evening. You must not play with edge-tools.”
“I play with edge-tools?” said Diana; “are there any in my way?”
“My dear,” said the elder lady, who was not addicted to phrases of affection, “I wish I could let you have a peep from my point of view without saying a word: but that is a thing which cannot be done. Diana—I don’t know if you have observed it,—but poor Pandolfini——”
Involuntarily, unawares, Diana raised her hand to stop the warning with which she had been threatened, and the colour rose in her face, flushing over cheeks and forehead, to her great distress and shame. But what could she do? Some women cannot help blushing, and those who are thus affected generally consider it as the most foolish and unpleasant of personal peculiarities. She tried to look unconscious, calmly indifferent, but the effort was entirely destroyed by this odious blush.
“Mr. Pandolfini?” she said, with an attempt at cheerful light-heartedness. “I hope it is not he who is your edge-tool. It does not seem to me a happy simile.”
“Oh, Diana,” cried Mrs. Hunstanton, too eager to be careful, “don’t treat a man’s happiness or misery so lightly! I never questioned you on such subjects, but a woman does not come to your age without knowing something of it. Don’t take his heart out of his hand and fling it to the dogs. Don’t——”
“I?” cried Diana, aghast. She grew pale and then red again, and the tears came to her eyes. “Am I such a monster? or is it only you who are rhetorical? What have I to do with Mr. Pandolfini’s heart?”
“You cannot deceive me, Diana,” said her friend. “You blushed—you know very well what I mean. Men may not see such things—but women, they understand.”
“We have no right to speak of a gentleman we know so little—or at least whom I know so little—in this way,” said Diana, very gravely. “It is an injury to him. You are kind—you mean him well—but even with that we have no right to discuss——”
“I don’t wish to discuss him, Diana. If there was any chance for him, poor man—oh no, you need not shake your head; I know well enough there is no chance for him; but don’t torture him at least,” cried Mrs. Hunstanton, getting up hastily, “this I may say——”
“It is the thing you ought least to say,” Diana said, accepting her good-night kiss perhaps more coldly than usual, for though she was perfectly innocent, she dared not dispute the fact pointed out to her. “No, I am not angry: but why should you accuse me so? Do I torture any one? You have made me very uncomfortable. If it is true, I shall have to break up and leave this nice place, which pleased me, and go back with you to England.”
“You are afraid of yourself,” cried Mrs. Hunstanton.
“I!”—— Diana did not say any more. Yes; she was too proud. It was not like a woman to be so determined, so immovable: and yet a woman whose colour went and came, whose eyes filled so quickly, who was so sensitive and easily moved, could she be hard? Mrs. Hunstanton did not quite know what she wished. She was a little proud of Diana—among all the girls who married, the one unmarrying woman, placed upon a pedestal, a virgin princess dispensing good things to all, and above the common weaknesses. One such, once in a way, pleased her imagination and her esprit de corps. And if Diana had willingly stepped down from her pedestal, a sense of humiliation would have filled her friend’s mind. But then poor Pandolfini! She was quick of wit and quick of speech, and would have been as ready as anybody to turn upon him, and ask who was he that he should have the Una, the peerless woman, he a penniless foreigner with nothing but a fine name? Probably had Diana melted, all this wilful lady’s impatient soul would have risen indignant at the idea of the English lady of the manor consenting to turn herself into a Madame Pandolfini. But all the same, as Diana had no such intention, her heart melted over the hopeless lover. Poor fellow! how good he was, how kind, how friendly! It was hard that by a mere accident, so to speak, because Diana had taken it into her head so suddenly to come here, that his whole life should be ruined for him. How hard it was that such things should be! As Mrs. Hunstanton went upstairs to her own floor she could not help remembering with some virulence that it was that absurd little Sophy’s sham cough which had brought Diana here, and done all the mischief. Little ridiculous creature, whom Diana would spoil so, and raise altogether out of her sphere! Mrs. Hunstanton was quite sure that it was entirely Sophy’s fault (and her aunt’s: the aunt was on the whole, being older, more ridiculous and more to be blamed than Sophy) that this misfortune had happened; though after all, she added to herself, how could Pandolfini expect that Diana was to be kept out of Italy, and shut up, so to speak, in England on his account, lest he should come to harm? That was out of the question too. Thus it will be seen the argument on her side was inconsistent, and indeed contradictory, as most such arguments must always be.
At the same time a very different sort of conversation was going on in another room in this same Palazzo dei Sogni. As they went out, Mr. Hunstanton had seized Pandolfini by the arm. “Come upstairs and smoke a cigar with me: the night is young,” he said; “and there are lots of things I want to talk to you about. Now there are so many ladies on hand, I never see you. Come, you shall have some syrup or other, and I’ll have soda—and something—and a friendly cigar. What a business it is to be overdone with ladies! One never knows the comfort of a steady-going wife of one’s own—that is acquainted with one’s tastes and never bothers one—till a lot of women are let loose upon you. Diana there, Sophy here—a man does not know if he is standing on his head or his heels.”
“Pah! you like it,” said the Italian with a smile.
“Do I? Well, I don’t know but what I do. I like something going on. I like a little commotion and life, and I am rather fond, I confess, of helping things forward, and acting a friend’s part when I can. Yes, I’m very glad to be of use. You now, my dear fellow, if I could help you to a good wife.”
Pandolfini turned pale. Was it sacrilege this good easy Englishman was talking? The idea seemed too profane, too terrible to be even contradicted. He pretended not to have heard, and took up the “Galignani” which lay in Mr. Hunstanton’s private room—the room where he was supposed to write business letters, and do all his graver duties, but in which there was always a limp novel in evidence, from the press of Michel Levy, or Baron Tauchnitz, and where “Galignani” was the tutelary god.
“Sit down, and let us talk. You should come over to England, Pandolfini. The change would do you good. I like change, for my part. What is the good of staying for ever in one corner of the world, as if you were a vegetable and had roots? We say it is a grievance that we have to leave home every winter on Reginald’s account, and I suppose I grumble like other people; but no doubt, on the whole, I like it. There’s the hunting—of course one misses all that; but then I don’t hunt, so it matters less: change is always agreeable. And then you have got used to our little society. One abuses the women; but they are always pleasant enough. The worst is, one has a little too much of them in the country. Well, not so constantly as here; but they are our nearest neighbours, and toujours perdrix, you know.”
“Is it that you mean to persuade me to come, or not to come?” said Pandolfini, laughing.
“My dear fellow, how can you doubt? Of course we shall be delighted to see you, both I and my wife. We always feel together, she and I. Of course you will think me an old fool and all that for speaking with so little enthusiasm. I am past the age of les grandes passions; but a good wife is a very good thing, I can tell you, Pandolfini. It is astonishing how many worries a man is spared when he has somebody always by him who knows his ways, and sees that he is comfortable. Many a great calamity is easier put up with than having your tastes disregarded, and your customs broken in upon.”
“This may be very true, my good Hunstanton, but why to me—why say it to me? I have no—wife.” His voice changed a little, with a tone which would have been very instructive to the lady spoken of, but which conveyed no particular information to her husband. Mr. Hunstanton rubbed his hands: then he took his cigar out of his mouth in his energy, and puffed a large mouthful of smoke into his companion’s face.
“That is exactly the question—exactly the question. My dear fellow, that is just what I wanted to say to you. You ought to have a wife.”
Pandolfini gave a quick look up into his friend’s eyes. What he thought or hoped he might find there who can tell? Many things were possible to his Italian ideas that no Englishman would have thought possible. From whom might this suggestion come? His heart gave a wild leap upward, then sank with a sudden plunge and chill. What a fool, what a miserable vain fool he was! She to hold out a little finger, a corner of her handkerchief, to him or any man! His eyes fell, and his heart; he shook his head.
“Come, come, Pandolfini! that is the way with all you foreign fellows. You are as afraid of marriage as if it were purgatory. You have had full time to have your fling surely. I don’t mean to insinuate anything against you. So far as I know, you have always been the most irreproachable of men. But supposing that you hadn’t, why, you have had time enough to have your fling. How old are you, forty? Well, then, it is time to range yourself as the French say. An English wife would be the making of you——”
“Hunstanton,” cried the Italian, “all this that you are saying is as blasphemy. Is it to me you speak of ranging myself, of accepting unwillingly marriage, of having an English wife offered to me like a piece of useful furniture? It is that you do not know me—do not know anything about me—notwithstanding buon amico, that you are my best friend.”
Mr. Hunstanton looked at him with complacent yet humorous eyes. “Aha!” he said, “didn’t I divine it! I knew, of course, how the wind was blowing. Bravo, Pandolfini! so you are hit, eh? I knew it, man! I saw it sooner than you did yourself.”
Pandolfini looked at the light-hearted yet sympathetic Englishman with a glow upon his dark face of more profound emotion than Mr. Hunstanton knew anything about. He held out his hands in the fulness of his heart. Instinct told him that this was not the man to whom to speak of Diana—although the Englishman was fond of Diana too in his way. But his heart melted to the friend who had divined his love. Mr. Hunstanton, too, was touched by a confession so frank yet so silent. He got up and patted his friend on the shoulder. “To be sure,” he said, his voice even trembling a little, “you mustn’t have any shyness with an old man. I divined it all the time.”
There was a little pause, during which this delightful and effusive confidant resumed his seat. He kept silence by sheer force of the emotion which he saw in the other’s face, though it was almost unintelligible to him. Why should he take it so very seriously? Mr. Hunstanton was on the very eve of bursting forth when Pandolfini himself began—
“But to what good? She is more young, more rich, more highly gifted than I. What hope have I to win her! She with all the world at her feet! I—nobody. Ah, it is not want of seeing. I see well—not what you say, my good friend, but what all your poets have said. That is what a woman is—a woman of the English. But, amico mio, do not let us deceive ourselves. What hope is there for such a one as I?”
“Hope! why, every hope in the world,” cried the cheerful counsellor. “Talk about the poets: what is it that Shakespeare says? Shakespeare, you know, the very chief of them—
‘She is a woman, therefore to be wooed;
She is a woman, therefore to be won.’
Tut! why should you be discouraged. Don’t you know our proverb, that ‘Faint heart never won fair lady’? Cheer up, man, and try. You can but lose at the worst, and then if you win——”
Pandolfini sat and looked at him with glowing eyes. He was gazing at Hunstanton; but he seemed to see Diana: not as she had been that evening, seated calmly, like a queen, in the centre of so many people who looked up to her—but as she appeared when he saw her first, when she shone upon him suddenly, with her black veil about her head, and when all the bells chimed Diana. What a revelation that had been to him! he did not even know her, nor did he know how, without knowing, he could be able to divine her as he felt he had done. He fell into a musing, his eyes all alit with the glow of passion and visionary happiness. He knew there was no hope for him: who was he that she should descend from her heights, and take him by the hand? The idea was too wonderful, too entrancing, to have any possibility in it; but it brought such a gleam of happiness to his mind as made him forget everything—even its folly. He paid no attention to Hunstanton gazing at him,—the substantial Englishman became as a mist, as a dream, to Pandolfini,—what he really saw was Diana, the revelation of that new unthought-of face rising upon him suddenly out of dimness and nothing! What a night that had been!—what a time of strange witchery ever since! He did not know how it had passed, or what he had done in it—was it not all Diana from beginning to end?
Mr. Hunstanton was kind. After a minute or two he saw that the look which was apparently bent upon himself was a visionary gaze, seeing only into some land of dreams. He broke up the fascination of that musing by a hearty honest laugh, full of genuine enjoyment. “Are you so far gone as that?” he cried; “then, upon my word, Pandolfini, some one must interfere. If you are afraid to take it into your own hands, I’ll speak for you if you like. You may be sure I am not afraid. It isn’t our English way: but I’ll do it in a moment. Is that what you would like? We’re leaving soon, as I told you, and there is not much time to lose.”
“Oh, my best friend!” cried the Italian, with sudden eagerness. Then he paused. “No, Hunstanton, I dare not. Let me have the little time that remains to me. I can at least do as does your curate. I understand him. He, too, has not any hope; how should he, or I either? but I would not be sent away from her: banished for the little time that remains. No! let me keep what I have, lest I should get less and not more.”
“Stuff!” said Mr. Hunstanton. “The curate, Bill Snodgrass! that’s a different case altogether. Look here now, Pandolfini: you are ridiculously over-humble; there is no such difference as you suppose. Now, look here! You have some confidence in me, I know, and if ever one man wished to help another, I am that man. Will you leave the matter in my hands? Oh, don’t you fear. I shan’t compromise you if things look badly. I’ll feel my way. I shan’t go a step farther than I see allowable. You shan’t be banished, and so forth. Though that’s all nonsense. Will you leave it to me?”
Pandolfini fixed his eyes this time really upon Hunstanton’s face. “You are too honest to betray me,” he said, wistfully; “you would not ruin me by over-boldness, by going too far.”
“Who? I? Of course I should not. I have plenty of prudence, though you may not think so; besides, I know a few things which are not to be communicated outside my wife’s chamber. Oh, trust to me,—I know what I am doing! You don’t need to be afraid.”
“But I am,” said the other. “Hunstanton, Hunstanton, my good friend, let things remain as they are. I have not the courage.”
“Stuff!” said Mr. Hunstanton, getting up and rubbing his hands. “I tell you I know a thing or two. Betray what my wife tells me—never!—not if I were drawn by wild horses; but I know what I know. You had better leave it in my hands.”
Pandolfini searched the cheerful countenance before him with his eyes. He watched those noddings of the head, those little emphatic gestures of self-confidence and sincerity. Was it possible that this man could be in Diana’s confidence? No: but then his wife: that was a different matter: was it—could it be possible? He got up at last, and went to him with a certain solemnity. “Hunstanton,” he said, “good friend, if you have the power to say a word for me, to recommend me, to lay me most humble at her feet,”—he paused, his voice quivering,—“then I will indeed put myself in your hands.”
“That’s right—that is exactly what you ought to do. But you must not be so tremendously humble,” said Mr. Hunstanton. “Yes, yes, my dear fellow, I’ll undertake it; but don’t be down-hearted. If you are not as happy a fellow as any in Christendom by this time to-morrow night——”
“You—think so? Dio mio! You—think so?” said the Italian. His heart was too full to say any more. He wrung his friend’s hand, and snatched up his hat and went away with scarcely another word, stumbling down the long staircase, which was as black as night, his mind too distracted to think of anything. As he passed Diana’s door the glimmer of light which showed underneath stopped him, as if it had carried a message, a word of encouragement. He stopped short in spite of himself, and a wild fancy seized him. It was all he could do to keep himself from rushing into her presence, confessing everything, asking—ah! what was it that he could ask? Would she be but favourable—kind—nay, something more? Should he make the plunge himself without waiting for Hunstanton, and if such an unimaginable bliss could be, have it a day earlier? The impulse made him giddy, so strong was it, turning his brain round and round; but as he stood there, with his hand uplifted almost in the act of ringing the bell, Diana’s factotum, all unaware of who was standing outside, came to the door within and began to bar and bolt and shut up for the night. Pandolfini’s hand dropped as if he had been shot. He turned and made his way, without once pausing to take breath, into the open air beneath, on the side of Arno. The lamps twinkled reflected in the water, the stars from the sky; there was a quiver and tremor in the night itself, a little soft wistful melancholy breeze. Might this be the last night for him, the end of all sweet and hopeful days? or was it, could it be, only the tender beginning of a long heaven to come?