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.