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.