FOR the next few days everything was merry as marriage-bells; and though Kate felt even the fondness and double consideration with which she was treated when she was alone with her aunt and cousin to belong somehow to the mystery, she had no excuse even to herself for finding fault with it. They were very good to her. Ombra, at least, had never been so kind, so tender, so anxious to please her. Why should she be anxious to please her? She had never done so before; it had never been necessary; it was a reversal of everything that was natural; and, like all the rest, it meant something underneath, something which had to be made up for by these superficial caresses. Kate did not go so far as this in her articulate thoughts; but it was what she meant in the confused and painful musings which now so often possessed her. But she could not remonstrate, or say, ‘Why are you so unnecessarily, unusually tender? What wrong have you done me that has to be made up for in this way?’ She could not say this, however much she might feel it. She had to hide her wonder and dissatisfaction in her own heart.
At last the day came for the visit to the Buoncompagni palace. They were to walk to Lady Caryisfort’s, to join her, and all had been arranged on the previous night. The ladies were waiting, cloaked and bonneted, when Bertie Eldridge made his appearance alone.
‘I hope I have not kept you waiting,’ he said; ‘that ridiculous cousin of mine won’t come. I don’t know what has come over him; he has taken some absurd dislike to poor Buoncompagni, who is the best fellow in the world. I hope you will accept my company alone.’
Ombra had been the first to advance to meet him, and he stood still holding her hand while he made his explanation. She dropped it, however, with an air of disappointment and annoyance.
‘Bertie will not come—when he knows that I—that we are waiting for him! What a strange thing to do! Bertie, who is always so good; how very annoying—when he knew we depended on him!’
‘I told him so,’ said the other,—‘I told him what you would say; but nothing had any effect. I don’t know what has come to Bertie of late. He is not as he used to be; he has begun to talk of work, and all sorts of nonsense. But to-day he will not come, and there is nothing more to be said. It is humbling to me to see how I suffer without him; but I hope you will try to put up with me by myself for one day.’
‘Oh! I cannot think what Bertie means by it. It is too provoking!’ said Ombra, with a clouded countenance; and when they got into the street their usual order of march was reversed, and Ombra fell behind with Kate, whose mind was full of a very strange jumble of feeling, such as she could not explain to herself. On ordinary occasions one or other of the Berties was always in attendance on Ombra. To-day she indicated, in the most decided manner, that she did not want the one who remained. He had to walk with Mrs. Anderson, while the two girls followed together. ‘I never knew anything so provoking,’ Ombra continued, taking Kate’s arm. ‘It is as if he had done it on purpose—to-day, too, of all days in the world!’
‘What is particular about to-day?’ said Kate, who, to tell the truth, was at this moment less in sympathy with Ombra than she had ever been before.
‘Oh! to-day—why, there is—— well,’ said Ombra, pausing suddenly, ‘of course there is nothing particular about to-day. But he must have known how it would put us out—how it would spoil everything. A little party like ours is quite changed when one is left out. You ought to see that as well as I do. It spoils everybody’s pleasure. It changes the feeling altogether.’
‘I don’t think it does so always,’ said Kate. But she was generous even at this moment, when a very great call was made on her generosity. ‘I never heard you call Mr. Hardwick Bertie before,’ she added, not quite generous enough to pass this over without remark.
‘To himself, you mean,’ said Ombra with a slight blush. ‘We have always called them the Berties among ourselves. But I think it is very ridiculous for people who see so much of each other to go on saying Mr. and Miss.’
‘Do they call you Ombra, then?’ said Kate, lifting her eyebrows. Poor child! she had been much, if secretly, exasperated, and it was not in flesh and blood to avoid giving a mild momentary prick in return.
‘I did not say so,’ said Ombra. ‘Kate, you, too, are contradictory and uncomfortable to-day; when you see how much I am put out——’
‘But I don’t see why you should be so much put out,’ said Kate, in an undertone, as they reached Lady Caryisfort’s door.
What did it mean? This little incident plunged her into a sea of thoughts. Up to this moment she had supposed Bertie Eldridge to be her cousin’s favourite, and had acquiesced in that arrangement. Somehow she did not like this so well. Kate had ceased for a long time to call Bertie Hardwick ‘my Bertie,’ as she had once done so frankly; but still she could not quite divest herself of the idea that he was more her own property than anyone else’s—her oldest friend, whom she had known before any of them. And he had been so kind the other morning, when the others had deserted her. It gave her a strange, dull, uncomfortable sensation to find him thus appropriated by her cousin. ‘I ought not to mind—it can be nothing to me,’ she said to herself; but, nevertheless, she did not like it. She was glad when they came to Lady Caryisfort’s door, and her tête-à-tête with Ombra was over; and it was even agreeable to her wounded amour-propre when Count Antonio came to her side, beaming with smiles and self-congratulations at having something to show her. He kept by Lady Caryisfort as they went on to the palazzo, which was close by, with the strictest Italian propriety; but when they had entered his own house the young Count did not hesitate to show that his chief motive was Kate. He shrugged his shoulders as he led them in through the great doorway into the court, which was full of myrtles and greenness. There was a fountain in the centre, which trickled shrilly in the air just touched with frost, and oleanders planted in great vases along a terrace with a low balustrade of marble. The tall house towered above, with all its multitudinous windows twinkling in the sun. There was a handsome loggia, or balcony, over the terrace on the first floor. It was there that the sunshine dwelt the longest, and there it was still warm, notwithstanding the frost. This balcony had been partially roofed in with glass, and there were some chairs placed in it and a small white covered table.
‘This is the best of my old house,’ said Count Antonio, leading them in, hat in hand, with the sun shining on his black hair. ‘Such as it is, it is at the service of ces dames; but its poor master must beg them to be very indulgent—to make great allowances for age and poverty.’ And then he turned and caught Kate’s eye, and bowed to the ground, and said, ‘Sia padrona!’ with the pretty extravagance of Italian politeness, with a smile for the others, but with a look for herself which made her heart flutter. ‘Sia padrona—consider yourself the mistress of everything,’—words which meant nothing at all, and yet might mean so much! And Kate, poor child, was wounded, and felt herself neglected. She was left out by others—banished from the love and confidence that were her due—her very rights invaded. It soothed her to feel that the young Italian, in himself as romantic a figure as heart could desire, who had been ‘out’ for his country, whose pedigree ran back to Noah, and perhaps a good deal further, was laying his half-ruined old house and his noble history at her feet. And the signs of poverty, which were not to be concealed, and which Count Antonio made no attempt to conceal, went to Kate’s heart, and conciliated her. She began to look at him, smiling over the wreck of greatness with respect as well as interest; and when he pointed to a great empty space in one of the noble rooms, Kate’s heart melted altogether.
‘There was our Raphael—the picture he painted for us. That went off in ’48, when my father fitted out the few men who were cut to pieces with him at Novara. I remember crying my eyes out, half for our Madonna, half because I was too small to go with him. Nevare mind’ (he said this in English—it was one of his little accomplishments of which he was proud). ‘The country is all the better; but no other picture shall ever hang in that place—that we have sworn, my mother and I.’
Kate stood and gazed up at the vacant place with an enthusiasm which perhaps the picture itself would scarcely have called from her. Her eyes grew big and luminous, ‘each about to have a tear.’ Something came into her throat which prevented her from speaking; she heard a little flutter of comments, but she could not betray the emotion she felt by trying to add to them. ‘Oh!’ she said to herself with that consciousness of her wealth which was at times a pleasure to her—‘oh! if I could find that Madonna, and buy it and send it back!’ And then other thoughts involuntarily rushed after that one—fancies, gleams of imagination, enough to cover her face with blushes. Antonio turned back when the party went on, and found her still looking up at the vacant place.
‘It is a sad blank, is it not?’ he said.
‘It is the most beautiful thing in all the house,’ said Kate; and one of the tears fell as she looked at him, a big blob of dew upon her glove. She looked at it in consternation, blushing crimson, ashamed of herself.
Antonio did what any young Italian would have done under the circumstances. Undismayed by the presence of an audience, he put one knee to the ground, and touched the spot upon Kate’s little gloved thumb with his lips; while she stood in agonies of shame, not knowing what to do.
‘The Signorina’s tear was for Italy,’ he said, as he rose; ‘and there is not an Italian living who would not thank her for it on his knees.’
He was perfectly serious, without the least sense that there could be anything ridiculous or embarrassing in the situation; but it may be imagined what was the effect upon the English party, all with a natural horror of a scene.
Lady Caryisfort, I am sorry to say, showed herself the most ill-bred upon this occasion—she pressed her handkerchief to her lips, but could not altogether restrain the very slightest of giggles. Ombra opened her eyes, and looked at her mother; while poor Kate, trembling, horrified, and overwhelmed with shame, shrank behind Mrs. Anderson.
‘It was not my fault,’ she gasped.
‘Don’t think anything of it, my love,’ whispered Mrs. Anderson, in consolation. ‘They mean nothing by it—it is the commonest thing in the world.’ A piece of consolation which was not, however, quite so consolatory as it was intended to be.
But she kept her niece by herself after this incident as long as it was practicable; and so it came about that the party divided into three. Lady Caryisfort and Antonio went first, Mrs. Anderson and Kate next, and Ombra and Bertie Eldridge last of all. As Kate moved gradually on, she heard that a very close and low-toned conversation was going on behind her; and Ombra did not now seem so much annoyed by Bertie Hardwick’s absence as she had been a little while ago. Was she—an awful revelation seemed to burst upon Kate—was Ombra a coquette? She dismissed the thought from her mind as fast as possible; but after feeling so uncomfortable about her cousin’s sudden interest in Bertie, she could not help feeling now a certain pity for him, as if he too, like herself, were slighted now. Not so would Kate herself have treated anyone. It was not in her, she said to herself, to take up and cast down, to play with any sentiment, whether friendship or anything else; and in her heart she condemned Ombra, though secretly she was not sorry. She was a coquette—that was the explanation. She liked to have both the young men at her feet, without apparently caring much for either. This was a sad accusation to bring against Ombra, but somehow Kate felt more kindly disposed towards her after she had struck this idea out.
When they reached the loggia, the table was found to be covered with an elegant little breakfast, which reminded Kate of the pretty meals to be seen in a theatre, which form part of so many pretty comedies. It was warm in the sunshine, and there was a scaldina, placed Italian fashion, under the table, for the benefit of the chilly; and an old man, in a faded livery, served the repast, which he had not cooked, solely because it had been ordered from an hotel, to poor old Girolamo’s tribulation. But his master had told him the reason why, and the old servant had allowed that the expenditure might be a wise one. Kate found, to her surprise, that she was the special object of the old man’s attention. He ran off with a whole string of ‘Che! che’s,’ when he had identified her, which he did by consultation of his master’s eye. ‘Bella Signorina, this is from the old Buoncompagni vineyards,’ he said, as he served to her some old wine; and, with another confidential movement, touched her arm when he handed her the fruit, ‘From the gardens, Signorina mia,’ he whispered; and the honey ‘from Count Antonio’s own bees up on the mountains;’ and, ‘Cara Signorina mia, this the Contessa’s own hands prepared for those beautiful lips,’ he said, with the preserves. He hung about her; he had eyes for no one else.
‘What is the old man saying to you, Kate?’ said her aunt.
‘Nothing,’ answered Kate, half amused and half distressed; and she met Count Antonio’s eye, and they both blushed, to the admiration of the beholders.
This was how the visit terminated. Old Girolamo followed them obsequiously down the great staircase, bowing, with his hand upon his breast, and his eyes upon the young English lady, who was as rich as the Queen of Sheba, and as beautiful as the Holy Mother herself. And Kate’s heart beat with all the little magic flutter of possibilities that seemed to gather round her. If her heart had been really touched, she would not have divined what it all meant so readily; but it was only her imagination that was touched, and she saw all that was meant. It was the first time that she had seen a man pose himself before her in the attitude of love, and (though no doubt it is wrong to admit it) the thing pleased her. She was not anxious, as she ought to have been, to preserve Antonio’s peace of mind. She was flattered, amused, somewhat touched. That was what he meant. And for herself, she was not unwilling to breathe this delicate incense, and be, as other women, wooed and worshipped. Her ideas went no further. Up to this moment it was somewhat consolatory, and gave her something pleasant to think of. Poor old Girolamo! Poor old palace! She liked their master all the better for their sake.