|When Minna learnt from Colin that he had finally accepted Sir Henry
Wilberforce's situation, her heart was very heavy. She wanted her old
friend to do everything that would make him into a great sculptor, of
course; but still, say what you will about it, it's very hard to have
your one interest in life taken far away from you, and to be left
utterly alone and self-contained in the great dreary world of London.
Have you ever reflected, dear sir or madam, how terrible is the
isolation of a girl in Minna Wroe's position--nay, for the matter of
that, of your own housemaid, of cook, or parlour-maid, in that vast,
unsympathetic, human ant-hill? Think, for a moment, of the warm human
heart within her, suddenly cramped and turned in upon itself by the
unspeakable strangeness of everything around her. She has come up from
the country, doubtless, to take a 'better' place in London, and there
she is thrown by pure chance into one situation or another, with two or
three more miscellaneous girls from other shires, having other friends
and other interests; and from day to day she toils on, practically
alone, among so many unknown, or but officially known, and irresponsive
faces. Is it any wonder that, under such circumstances, she looks about
her anxiously for some living object round which to twine the tendrils
of her better nature?--it may be only a bird, or a cat, or a lap-dog;
it may be Bob the postman or policeman Jenkins. We laugh about her young
man, whom we envisage to ourselves simply as a hulking fellow and a
domestic nuisance; we never reflect that to _her_ all the interest
and sympathy of life is concentrated and focussed upon that one single
shadowy follower. He may be as uninteresting a slip of a plough-boy,
turned driver of a London railway van, as ever was seen in this realm
of England; or he may be as full of artistic aspiration and beautiful
imaginings as Colin Churchill; but to her it is all the same; he is her
one friend and confidant and social environment; he represents in her
eyes universal society; he is the solitary unit who can play upon
the full gamut of that many-toned and exquisitely modulated musical
instrument, her inherited social nature. Take him away, and what is
there left of her?--a mere automatic human machine for making beds or
grinding out arithmetic for junior classes.
Has not humanity rightly pitched, by common consent, for the main
theme of all its verse and all its literature, upon this one universal
passion, which, for a few short years at least, tinges with true romance
and unspoken poetry even the simplest and most commonplace souls?
Colin felt the sadness of parting, too, but by no means so acutely as
Minna. The door of fame was opening at last before him; Rome was looming
large upon the mental horizon; dreams in marble were crystallising
themselves down into future actuality; and in the near fulfilment of his
life-long hopes, it was hardly to be expected that he should take the
parting to heart so seriously as the little pupil-teacher herself had
taken it. Besides, time, in anticipation at least, never looks nearly
so long to men as to women. Don't we all know that a woman will cry her
eyes out about a few months' absence, which to a man seems hardly worth
making a fuss about? 'It's only for three or four years, you know,
Minna,' Colin said, as lightly as though three or four years were
absolutely nothing; and ah me, how long they looked to poor, lonely,
heartsick little Minna! She felt almost inclined to give up this up-hill
work of teaching and self-education altogether, and return once more to
the old fisherman's cottage away down at Wootton Mandeville. There at
least she would have some human sympathies and interests to comfort and
sustain her.
But Colin had lots of work to do, getting himself ready for his great
start in life; and he hardly entered to the full into little Minna's
fears and troubles. He had to refurbish his entire wardrobe on a scale
suited to a gentleman's servant--Minna was working hard in all her
spare hours at making new shirts for him or mending old ones: he had to
complete arrangements of all sorts for his eventful journey; and he had
to select among his books and drawings which ones should accompany
him upon his journey to Rome, and which should be consigned to the
omnivorous secondhand book-stall. Milton and Shelley and Bohn's
'Æschylus' he certainly couldn't do without; they were an integral part
of his stock-in-trade as a sculptor, and to have left them behind would
have been an irreparable error; but the old dog-eared 'Euripides' must
go, and the other English translations from the classics would have made
his box quite too heavy for Sir Henry to pay excess upon at Continental
rates--so Cicolari told him. Still, the Flaxman plates must be got in
somewhere, even if Shelley himself had to give way to them; and so
must his own designs for his unexecuted statues, those mainstays of his
future artistic career. Minna helped him to choose and pack them all,
and she was round so often at Cicolari's in the evening that prim Miss
Woollacott said somewhat sharply at last, 'It seems to me a very good
thing, Minna Wroe, that this cousin of yours is going to Rome at last,
as you tell me; for even though he's your only relation in London, I
don't think it's quite proper or necessary for you to be round at his
lodgings every other evening.' Colin took a few lessons, too, in his
future duties, from a gentleman's gentleman in Regent's Park. It wasn't
a pleasant thing to do, and he sighed as he put away his books and
sketches, and went out to receive his practical instruction from that
very supercilious and elegant person; but it had to be done, and so
he did it. Colin didn't care particularly for associating with the
gentleman's gentleman; indeed, he was beginning slowly to realise now
how wide a gulf separated the Colin Churchill of the Marylebone Road
from the little Colin Churchill of Wootton Mande-ville. He had lived
so much by himself since he came to London, he had seen so little of
anybody except Minna and Cicolari, and he had been so entirely devoted
to art and study, that he had never stopped to gauge his own progress
before, and therefore had never fully felt in his own mind how great was
the transformation that had insensibly come over him. Without knowing
it himself, he had slowly developed from a gentleman's servant into an
artist and a gentleman. And now he was being forced by accident or fate
to take upon him once more the position of an ordinary valet.
Indeed, during the month that intervened between Colin's engagement by
Sir Henry Wilberforce and his start for Rome, he wrote to his brother
Sam over in America; and, shadowy memory as Sam had long since become
to him, though he told him of his projected trip, and enlarged upon his
hopes of attaining to the pinnacle of art in Rome, he was so ashamed of
his mode of getting there that he said nothing at all upon that point,
but just glided easily over the questions of means and method. He didn't
want his thriving brother in America to know that he was going to Rome,
with all his high ideals and beautiful dreams, in no better position
than as an old man's valet.
At last the slow month wore itself away gradually for Colin--how swift
and short it seemed to Minna!--and the day came when he was really to
set out for Paris, on his way to Italy. He was to start with his new
master from Charing Cross station, and he had taken possession of his
post by anticipation a couple of days earlier. Minna mustn't be at the
station to see him off, of course; that would be unofficial; and if
servants indulge in such doubtful luxuries as sweethearts, they must at
least take care to meet them at some seemly time or season; but at any
rate she could say good-bye to him the evening before, and that was
always something. Would he propose to her this time, at last, Minna
wondered, or would he go away for that long, long journey, and leave her
as much in doubt as ever as to whether he really did or didn't love her?
'It won't be for long, you see, little woman,' Colin said, kissing away
her tears in Regent's Park, as well as he was able; 'it won't be for
long, Minna; and then, when we meet again, I shall have come back a
real sculptor. What a delightful meeting we shall have, Minna, and how
awfully learned and clever you'll have got by that time! I shall be half
afraid to talk to you. But you'll write to me every week, won't you,
little woman? You'll promise me that? You _must_ promise me to write to
me every week, or at the very least every fortnight.'
It was some little crumb of comfort to Minna that he wanted her to write
to him so often. That showed at any rate that he really cared for her
just ever such a tiny bit. She wiped her eyes again as she answered,
'Yes, Colin; I'll take great care never to miss writing to you.'
'That's right, little woman. And look here, you mustn't mind my giving
you them; there's stamps enough for Italy to last you for a whole
twelvemonth--fifty-two of them, Minna, so that it won't ever be any
expense to you; and when those are gone, I'll send you some others.'
'Thank you, Colin,' Minna said, taking them quite simply and naturally.
'And you'll write to me, too, won't you, Colin?'
'My dear Minna! Why, of course I will. Who else on earth have I got to
write to?'
'And you won't forget me, Colin?'
'Forget you, Minna! If ever I forget you, may my right hand forget her
cunning--and what more dreadful thing could a sculptor say by way of an
imprecation than that, now!'
'Oh, Colin, don't! Don't say so! Suppose it was to come true, you know!'
'But I don't mean to forget you, Minna; so it won't come true. Little
woman, I shall think of you always, and have your dear little gipsy
face for ever before me. And now, Minna, this time we must really say
good-bye. I'm out beyond my time already. Just one more; thank you,
darling. Goodbye, good-bye, Minna. Good-bye, dearest. One more. God
bless you!'
'Good-bye, Colin. Good-bye, good-bye. Oh, Colin, my heart is breaking.'
And when that night Minna lay awake in her own bare small room at prim
Miss Woollacott's, she thought it all over once more, and argued the
pros and cons of the whole question deliberately to herself with much
trepidation. 'He called me “dearest,” she thought in her sad little
mind, 'and he said he'd never forget me; that looks very much as if he
really loved me: but, then, he never asked me whether I loved him or
not, and he never proposed to me--no, I'm quite sure he never proposed
to me. I should have felt so much easier in my own mind if only before
he went away he'd properly proposed to me!' And then she covered her
head with the bed-clothes once more, and sobbed herself to sleep, to
dream of Colin.
The very next evening, Colin was at Paris.