|And in a few weeks, Miss Russell, we shall all be scattered to the four
winds of heaven! You'll be gone to England, the Wilmers to Aix, I
to America, and except Winthrop and Churchill, our whole little
Anglo-American colony will have deserted Rome altogether for summer
quarters! I'm sorry for it, in some ways, for our winter has really been
a most enjoyable one.'
'And so am I, Mr. Audouin, very sorry. But we must all meet here again
some day or other. Papa's promised that in four years he'll bring me
back for another trip. His next three winters will be taken up with
his new duties at York, of course; but as soon as he's free again,
he's going to bring me to Rome for a second visit. Perhaps by that time
you'll be over once more, on a journey of inspection to look up your
clever young protégé, Mr. Winthrop.'
Audouin hesitated. Should he propose to her then and there, or should he
wait for four more long solitary American winters? he would lead up
to it tentatively, first of all, and see whether fortune favoured
his present adventure. 'Well,' he answered, dubiously, 'I hardly know
whether to say yes or no to that invitation, Miss Russell. I'm not
fond of cities, and I've longed many, many times this winter for the
expansive breadth of our American woodlands. I wasn't born to be in
populous city pent; I pine for the resinous smell of the primæval
forest. Only one thing, indeed, has kept me here so long this journey;
your presence at Rome, Miss Russell.'
He looked at her as he spoke those words to see whether there was any
response in her eyes or not; but Gwen only answered carelessly, 'What
pretty things you always say to one, Mr. Audouin! Our English young
men have quite lost the fine old-fashioned art of paying compliments,
I imagine; but you and Mr. Winthrop seem to have kept it up beyond
the Atlantic in a state of the highest original perfection. You almost
remind one of Sir Charles Grandison.'
Audouin's eyes dropped. Clearly there was no chance of pressing the
question with the beautiful Englishwoman just at present. Well, well,
she was very young yet; better wait a year or two for her ideas to
expand and ripen. Very young people always think anyone above thirty
so extremely ancient; as they grow older themselves, their seniors by
a decade or so seem to grow progressively younger, as if to meet them.
'Well, I'll close with your suggestion and make it an engagement, Miss
Russell,' he said, half sighing.
'If you'll come back to Rome in four years' time, I'll come back
the same winter to see how friend Hiram progresses with his artistic
studies. Four years is a short space of time in a human life, after all;
and if you contemplate being here at the end of that space, why, Rome
will at least have one more attraction for me then than ever.'
Gwen laughed, and turned off the conversation to the latest nothing of
Roman society.
A week later, Audouin went away to sail for America. But he carried
back with him a little memento which strangely surprised the servants at
Lakeside, when he set it up in a velvet-covered frame, among the Greek
vases and tiny Egyptian sardonyx mummies, on his study mantelpiece.
It was the photograph of a young lady in an English riding costume, by
Montabone of the Piazza di Spagna; and when the housemaid slipped it
out, 'jest to see who on airth could hev give it to him,' she found
on the back the little inscription, 'For Mr. Audouin, with Gwen
Howard-Russells best remembrances.'
Gwen herself, too, went before long; but before she went, she mentioned
casually to Colin Churchill that she expected to be back at Rome in
about four winters.
'We shall all be delighted to see you in Italy again, Miss
Howard-Russell,' Colin answered, with hardly more than mere formal
politeness. 'Won't we, Winthrop? Miss Russell is such a sincere admirer
of painting and sculpture.'
Was that man's heart as cold and hard as the marble from which he cut
his weeping nymphs and Calabrian peasants? Did he want a woman to go
down upon her knees before him, or didn't he see when she was making as
easy running for him as any man can expect from civilised society? He
was really too provoking.
The night before Gwen left Rome, however, a little oblong parcel arrived
at the hotel for her, containing a picture or something of the sort,
left at the door by an English signor, the porter said. Was it one of
Colin Churchill's designs for his unexecuted statues, Gwen wondered? She
cut the string hastily, and opened the packet with a little internal
flutter. No--wrong--evidently not from Mr. Churchill. It was a
watercolour sketch of the Emissario at the Lago d'Albano, carefully
finished in the minutest detail; and at the back was written in pencil,
somewhat shakily, 'With Hiram Winthrop's compliments.'
'How very polite of Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen said in a careless voice that
hardly hid her disappointment. 'He saw I was taken with the picture,
and he's finished it off beautifully, and sent it to me for a parting
present. It's a beautiful sketch, papa, isn't it? Come and see what Mr.
Winthrop has sent me, Mrs. Wilmer.'
'A very well-behaved young man indeed,' the colonel put in, looking
at the sketch casually, as if it were an object unworthy of a British
field-officer's serious attention. 'A very well-behaved young man,
although an American, and much less forward than that sculptor fellow,
who's always thrusting himself upon us on every conceivable occasion.'
Hiram Winthrop had no photographs, but he had a great many little pencil
sketches of a certain beautiful, proud-faced Englishwoman, which he
didn't display upon the mantelpiece of his attic bedroom down the narrow
Roman alley, because he preferred to keep them securely locked up in a
small box, whence he took them out religiously every night and morning
during the four years he spent in exile in that terrible, grimy,
unnatural city. It was a very clear-cut, sculpturesque face indeed, but
in spite of all Hiram's efforts at softening, it somehow managed to look
most terribly inexorable. If Gwen found Colin Churchill blind, Hiram
Winthrop found Gwen herself absolutely adamantine.