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.