A NEW WORLD.
Harry strayed about the town during the afternoon, losing his way, and
finding it again; but got back to the hotel before the important hour of
dinner, of which the English-speaking waiter had informed him. He was
less amused than depressed with all he saw. The perpetual talk that
seemed to be going on around him--sharp, varied, high-pitched,
incomprehensible--gave him at first a sense of offence, as if all these
people were doing it on purpose in order to bewilder him, and afterwards
a profound feeling of discouragement. He was not clever he was aware. He
had never been very great at his school work, and how was he to
accomplish the first preliminary, the very initial step of existence
here, the learning of the language, to which he had no clue, and of
which he could not make out one word? It seemed to him as if years must
elapse before he could master the very rudiments of the new tongue; and
how was he to seek for work, or to get work to do, not knowing the very
A B C of the life about him? Harry went doubling about the unfamiliar
streets, looking with wistful eyes at every passer-by who had the look
of an Englishman, and asking himself what he was to do. He did not seem
to have any spirit left for the uphill work of learning a language.
There rose up before him a vision of the exercises which he had once
laboured at, daubing himself with ink, and of the verbs which he had got
by heart overnight only to forget them in the morning. To think that he
could not even ask his way! Wherever he strayed he looked at the people
helplessly, as if he had been dumb, and anxiously examined all the
street corners, without venturing to approach any shop, or lay himself
open to any encounter. He was more fortunate than might have been
expected in this point, for he found the right street corner at last,
and the house, with its strange old courtyard, and the long dark _sala_
which looked into it, and in which the guests were already gathering.
The house had a good reputation, and the large room was nearly full.
Harry, who had never seen anything of the kind before, saw the people
take their places, each appropriating his own turned down chair, and
half finished bottle of wine, and looked for his own place with a
curious sense of the everyday character to the others of all these
proceedings, which to him were so unusual. Yesterday, at the same hour,
no doubt they had all been here, and last year, and as long as anybody
could recollect, munching a slice from the long Italian loaf, the yard
of bread which of itself astonished his simple-minded ignorance. To
think that with such an air of routine and long establishment this
dinner should have been happening methodically every day while he was
pursuing his work at Liverpool, or taking his holiday at home. At home!
The words sounded like a bitter sarcasm to the young man, who had no
home--who had now no identity, no self to fall back upon, but had begun
to exist, so to speak, only a few days ago. And to think this table,
with all its soils and steams, should have been waiting for him all this
time!
“’Ere, Sarr, ’ere,” said the English-speaking waiter, his black eyes
rolling in his head with pride and pleasure in this exhibition of his
gift of languages. He was holding the back of a chair which had been
carefully turned down, and was placed between a fat old Italian, with an
enormous depth of double chin, and a small figure, which Harry
recognised at once as that of the man who had spoken to him on the quay.
“De gentelman speak English,” said the waiter, bowing with amiability
and pleasure. Harry, it is to be feared, did not appreciate the
exertions made in his behalf. The little stranger, on his side, was as
smiling and bland as the attendant, delighted to make himself agreeable.
They both thought it the most pleasant thing in the world to surprise
the sulky and speechless Englishman with a companion to whom he could
talk. “Mister have found his way after all to the Leone,” said his
friend, “I wish myself joy of it. It is what I most did desire. He is
the best hotel, the very best hotel in all Livorno. Most of the
strangers, what we call forestieri, find their ways here. Mister will
find himself very comfortable; the kitchen is excellent, and the
chambers--the chambers!” here the little man spread out his hands with
ecstatic admiration, “so clean, so comfortable; everything an
Englishman desire.”
Harry was cross, and he was suspicious. He thought the reappearance of
his first acquaintance looked like a conspiracy, and that probably
between the man and the waiter it was an understood thing that the
Englishman, who was so ignorant, should be made to pay for his
initiation into foreign ways. But he had no intention of being made to
pay if he could possibly help it. He had not the slightest understanding
of the waiter’s benevolent wish to make him comfortable, or the innocent
satisfaction of the other, at once in showing off himself and his
acquirements and showing kindness to a stranger. Harry did not realize
the national character in both, which made them pleased to serve him,
and anxiously on the watch for the look of pleasure which they
anticipated as their reward. An English servant would have looked on
with anticipations of another kind. He would have watched to see the
stranger’s hand stealing into his pocket: and on this point no doubt
Antonio had as sharp an eye as anyone; but his Italian soul, asked for
something more; he wanted to see a glow of pleasure in the face of the
person to whom he had just, as he thought, done a service. Harry
refused to pay in this wise. His countenance, somewhat dark before,
settled down into a heavier gloom. He drew in his chair to the table
roughly, losing part of his companion’s address: and he did not look at
the young man who was talking to him, or give him any recompense for the
effort he was making. After a while he made a remark, but it was not a
very civil one. “Why do you call me Mister?” was what he said.
The stranger looked at him, complacent still, but yet a trifle
abashed--“Because,” he said, stroking a small moustache, and fixing his
eyes upon Harry with a smiling yet deprecating glance, “I do not know
the gentleman’s name.”
“Even if you don’t know a fellow’s name,” said Harry, ruthless, “it
isn’t English to say Mister. Mister is a title of contempt.” Here the
horrified look of his new acquaintance made him pause. “I mean when it’s
used alone without the name. Low people sometimes use it so--but nobody
who speaks decent English,” Harry said. As he spoke the stranger’s olive
countenance caught flame and grew crimson. He laughed an embarrassed,
uncomfortable little laugh.
“It is that I am mistaken,” he said; “I have not spoke English moch. The
gentleman will pardon my error. My name is Paolo Thompson,” he said,
with a little wave of the hand, introducing himself.
“You would like to know my name,” said Harry.
The Italian-Englishman replied, not with any expression of offence, but
with a smiling bow.
“My name is----” he made a pause. He looked at the interested
countenance beside him, a sense of the ludicrous mingling with his
suspicious distrust of all strangers and foreigners. What did it matter
what he said to a little impostor like this? “Oliver,” he added, with a
laugh. He almost thought the little fellow, though not an Englishman,
must see the incongruity, the absurdity, of associating the name of
Oliver with such a person as Harry Joscelyn. It suddenly became a
practical joke to him, a masquerade which everyone must see through.
“O---- livr,” said little Thompson, with a long emphasis upon the first
letter, and a hurried slur over the rest; “that right? alright! Mister
O--lvr.”
“Not Mister,” said Harry, growing benevolent as he felt a little
amusement steal over him, and he tried to give his new acquaintance the
_nuance_ of sound which divides the Mr. of English use and wont from
the two distinct syllables of which Paolo was so fond. They grew friends
over this attempt at unity of pronunciation, or rather Harry permitted
himself to grow friendly, and to ask himself what harm this little
foreigner could do him--a little hop o’ my thumb, whom he could lift in
one hand. As he laughed over his new friend’s attempt to catch the
difference of sound, his friendly feeling increased. He felt his
superiority more and more, and in that superiority his suspicions melted
away. As for little Paolo he took everything amiably. He had no
objection to be laughed at.
“You mean not bad,” he said, “I know; you mean not to make angry. Laugh,
it is a way of us English. My father was an Englishman. I never know
him; he was died before I am born; but I too am an English by origin. It
is for that I have my place. I am Interpreter. I put what you say in
Italian. I put what one would say to you in English. Thus I please to
both,” said the little man with lively satisfaction; and he laughed when
Harry laughed with genuine good faith. Perhaps it was the reaction from
his past despondency which made Harry laugh so much, perhaps the little
bravado of a stranger feeling himself gazed at and isolated among a
crowd of people alien to him. He attracted the eyes of all the guests at
the table-d’hôte especially of some Americans who had come in late, and
one other Englishman who regarded him gloomily from the other end of the
table, and concluded that his countryman was having too much to drink,
but that it was not his business. Harry was not taking too much to
drink; he was making wry faces at the sour Nostrali, which was the only
wine provided without a special order. Harry did not understand any wine
except Port and Sherry, and he despised the sour stuff of which he took
one big gulp and no more; he did not know what else to order, and he did
not like to mix up Paolo in his affairs so far as to ask his advice on
this point. Paolo for his part was drinking a little of his wine in a
tumblerful of water, not without some alarm lest the _eau rougie_ should
go to his head. He told Harry all his story as they sat together. His
father had been an English clerk, sent out from England to an office in
Leghorn, who had married an Italian girl, and died in the first year of
their marriage. Paolo was very proud of that fine and aristocratic name
of Thompson, of which there was a Lord and many Sirs, he informed Harry
with great but smiling seriousness; his mother, though she had been so
young, would never re-marry herself, though pressed on all sides to do
so--such was her devotion to her youthful husband who was English, and
to the romantic and euphonious name which he had left her. The young man
grew every moment more friendly. Harry’s suspicions all floated away as
he listened to the story, and laughed at the accent and grammar of his
new acquaintance, who laughed too with perfect good-humour. Thompson--he
was a fit associate for an Oliver, Harry said to himself, knowing
nothing about any Oliver save Isaac whose name he had appropriated.
After dinner was over Paolo proposed that they should go for a stroll;
and though Harry had done nothing else but stroll all the afternoon with
very small advantage, yet he was quite willing to begin again with the
aid of his friend’s knowledge. It was less lonely than sitting in the
dreadful little room of which Paolo had ventured to say that it was so
comfortable, and exactly what an Englishman liked. Harry shuddered at
the thought; he had never been used to sit in his bedroom, and he could
not but feel it a sort of humiliation that he had no other room to sit
in. His new friend was a wonderful example of costume to the untrained
taste of Harry. He wore trousers of a large check, but a black evening
coat over them, a large shirt-front, a black ribbon at his neck tied in
a bow, and varnished shoes. He was very well contented with his
appearance. When he added an opera-hat to all this finery, the sensation
in his little bosom of thorough self-content was very warm. Harry could
not but laugh at the little exquisite, whose gorgeous apparel was so
unlike anything he had ever seen.
“I don’t know if I dare to walk out in my coloured clothes with such a
swell as you are, Thompson,” he said. Paolo looked down upon himself
delighted. He knew he was well-dressed.
“You are all right,” he said, “an English, that covers all; but when one
is only by origin, more must be done. Komm a-long.” He stretched up his
hand, which he had just clothed in light kid, to Harry’s arm, who had no
gloves, nor any other advantage. The Angelus was sounding from all the
churches as they set out. Harry could not but wonder if there was an
evening sermon, or if it was a series of prayer-meetings which were
going on. He was much surprised that foreigners should have such devout
habits. It surprised him, too, to see how soon it got dark; but as it
happened there was a brilliant moon which soon made the streets as light
as day. And as soon as the sacred hour of sunset, the fatal hour which
Italians dread, was over, the streets filled with a crowd which still
more surprised Harry. Before all the cafés the pavements were
crowded--not only men, but women, seated at the little tables enjoying
the freshness of the lovely evening, and making such a hum and babble of
talk as nothing but an unknown tongue can produce. A language which is
familiar to us never sounds so like an uproar and tumult as one that is
unintelligible. Harry’s first thought was that the people about him were
all quarrelling; his second that this chatter was the riotous and
boundless gaiety which he had always heard attributed to “foreigners;”
but the scene amused him, though it was so unintelligible, and by and by
a degree of toleration which years at home could not have conveyed to
him, began to penetrate his mind. Perhaps after all it was only the
different habits of these unknown people, and neither quarrelling nor
riot. Sometimes one would jump up in the midst of a conversation as if
impelled by a sudden outburst of fury, and address his friends,
gesticulating wildly; but after Harry had taken the alarm, and sat ready
to strike in if any harm happened, he noticed that the friends of the
violent person took it quite calmly, turning upon him looks which were
full of smiling placidity, and evidently fearing nothing. In the same
way when two men were threading their way along the street together, one
would suddenly drop the other’s arm, and standing still, discourse with
every mark of excitement for a minute, then resume his friend’s arm and
go on again as if there had been no interruption. An Englishman would
have knocked down his adversary with much less demonstration. Harry felt
himself obliged to pause too, and give an eye to these personages; and
when he also sat down with his companion at one of the little tables,
his attention to Paolo’s doubtful English was constantly interrupted by
the same supposed need of watchfulness in case the party next to them
should come to blows. But all the other people took it quite quietly, to
Harry’s great surprise.
“Why do these beggars jump up in that way and look as if they were going
to knock some other fellow down?” Harry said at last.
“Beggares?” said Paolo, looking round hastily; and then, for he was a
young man anxious to improve himself and quick of apprehension, he
jumped at the Englishman’s meaning. “Ah! that is English for questi
Signori, these gentlemen? beggares! capisco, capisco!” said Paolo,
clapping his hands as at an excellent joke; “they do nothing but make a
little conversation, what you call talk,--these beggares;” and he burst
forth once more into a genial peal.
Harry was half pleased to have achieved such a facile success, and half
alarmed lest perhaps Paolo might be laughing at him. He said with a
suppressed growl, “Conversation! do you call that conversation? I
thought they were going to fly at each other’s throats.”
“No, no, no--never fly at each other’s throats; they have too much
education,” said Paolo; “it is the Italian animation, that is all. An
English is what you call quiet. He talks down here, not out of his
mout,” and Paolo beat himself upon the breast, and pointed to about the
spot out of which Harry’s deep bass proceeded. Harry was by no means
pleased with this familiarity, but he reflected that the little man was
his only friend among all these strangers, and subdued his displeasure.
He did not know very well what to do with the pink syrup that was
furnished him to drink: that, and the sour wine, and the black coffee,
were all alike out of Harry’s way. Oh, that he could have had but one
mighty draught of English beer to clear all these cobwebs out of his
throat! But this was an indulgence, like so many others, to be hoped for
no more.
After Paolo had sipped the rosolio which Harry contemplated with such a
mingling of alarm and disgust, they got up and continued their walk.
By-and-bye, in the full moonlight, they strolled towards the port, and
walked about on the quays, among the shipping, which threw up its black
lines of masts, and dark lace of cordage against the silvery light of
which the sky was full. Harry was interested about all this, much more
than about churches or pictures. And he threaded his way among the
ropes, and piles of barrels and cases with which the quays were
encumbered, with a stir of curiosity and hope. Should he find his life
and work within the circle which surrounded these instruments of wealth?
He paid but little attention to the talk of his companion as they went
along. He seemed to see once more the new career before him which he had
been doubting an hour or two before. It was not a very magnificent
prospect: yet work that suited him might surely be found when there were
goods to be exported, and counting houses to look after these goods. He
did not know what might become of him in this strange place, but
whatever his fortune might be it was all he could look forward to, and
his mind seemed to take a new start from the appearance before him of a
possibility, a strain of existence which he understood. He forgot, as he
listened to Paolo’s chatter going on by his side--which filled him with
a vague, superficial sense of superiority--all about the new language to
be learned, and the difficulties which had almost overwhelmed him in the
afternoon. Thus he went on, allowing his companion to talk, and thinking
his own thoughts, till they emerged from the immediate regions of the
basins and docks and came back to the streets. They were crossing one
which was very dimly lighted, and which Paolo informed him led into the
better quarter of the town, when they came in sight, or, rather in
hearing, of a party of sailors in a noisy state of exhilaration. What
could they have been drinking, Harry wondered, thinking of the sour wine
and the rosolio, to make them so convivial? They were singing rude
choruses, and making night hideous with jokes and loud laughter, bearing
a wonderful family resemblance to noises of the same kind which Harry
had heard near the port of Liverpool--when there suddenly crossed the
moonlit-road, between the revellers and the two orderly passengers, a
couple of female figures moving rapidly, figures very easily identified
as those of an elder and younger woman--a sedate and ample personage,
with a girl clinging to her. Two of the sailors, with a holloa of
satisfaction, started forward in pursuit. They overtook the women when
they were close to Harry and his companion, and one of them seized the
girl by the arm. She gave a frightened cry, and the other woman,
throwing her arm round her, pushed the men away, pouring forth a volley
of rapid Italian, of which Harry of course did not understand a word. He
made a stride forward to the fray. Paolo, on his side, who was small and
not valorous, did his best to hold him back.
“It is not our business,” he said, with a certain faltering in his
voice.
“Tell them to let go the girl,” said Harry, with brief determination.
“It is not our business,” said the alarmed interpreter.
“Tell them they had better let go that girl,” repeated the young
Englishman.
Then little Paolo stood forth, with a courage which was not his own, and
addressed the sailors. He took off his hat with the utmost politeness
and remonstrated. Harry, beginning, by dint of hearing them repeated, to
distinguish the words, at last understood that “Questo Signor” must mean
himself; but the sailors treated the remonstrance with contempt. The
other one took hold of the girl by the other arm, while she screamed,
and her companion raved and scolded at them, pushing and struggling with
all her might. Harry stepped forward into the moonlight. He lifted up
his clenched fist and his big bass voice. “Let go that girl,” he shouted
in good English, with a voice that roused all the echoes. The men did
not know a word he said; but they understood him, which was more to the
purpose. They let go their hold in a minute, and stood staring at the
intruder as sheepishly as any Englishmen could have done, and perhaps
also with a touch of shame. Little Paolo, trembling yet triumphant, kept
close to the champion, while he stood and faced them, ready for
whatever might happen. It was not for nothing that Harry was a
Joscelyn. He stood well up to them with a watchful eye and a ready arm.
The women had escaped under cover of this unexpected interposition from
their first assailants, but another pursuer by this time had got upon
their track. “Let’s have a look at your face, my pretty lass,” this lout
said, as he rolled along. Harry’s blood was up in a moment. “Oh, by
Jove!” he cried, as if the sound of his native tongue had been the last
aggravation, “this is too much. I know what to say to you, at least, my
fine fellow,” and he turned upon his countryman like lightning, and
promptly knocked him down. “I am not going to stand any nonsense from
_you_,” he said.
It was the affair of a moment--no more. The women flew along the street,
disappearing up the nearest opening. Harry strode on after them with his
blood up, but walking with the most dignified tranquillity. He would not
even turn round to see what had happened. “If he thought I was going to
stand _him_,” he said, as he went along, “that fellow, by Jove! but he
was in the wrong box.” As for little Paolo, between fright and
admiration, he was at his wit’s end. He danced along, now hurrying
Harry on, now facing the other way, walking backwards to keep the other
party in sight, and uttering alarmed entreaties. “Run! run! What if you
’ave kill him?” he cried. “Vergene Santissima! they are coming. You ’ave
done it now, you ’ave done it, and no one to help. Per Bacco! and he
goes as if it were a festa. Run, Mister, run!”
“I told you not to call me Mister,” said Harry, walking on with perfect
coolness and at his ordinary pace. Paolo was half beside himself.
“Perhaps you have kill a man,” he cried, “and you stop to set right my
English--at such a moment----”
“Pooh!” said Harry; he would not have quickened his steps for a fortune.
“Don’t you know the beggar is an Englishman? A broken head won’t hurt
him. Let’s keep the women in sight, they might get into more trouble.”
Paolo followed him, trembling and hurried as they got further off; but
the noisy sailors were busy about their fallen comrade, and made no
attempt to follow. They were too much startled by the summary
proceedings of the stranger, and kept back by a certain sense of justice
which seldom fails in such an affray. The little Italian kept close to
Harry like a dog, rushing about him, now a little in advance, now a
little behind. “He ’ave pick himself up,” he said, looking back. “Dio!
how the English understand each other! He is not kill.”
“Killed!” cried Harry, contemptuously. “It takes more than that to kill
an Englishman, even a beast like that fellow. You may palaver with your
own kind, but I know what to do with mine. Come along, Thompson. Where
have those women gone?”
Here Paolo caught him by the arm, dragging him into the narrow street by
which the flying figures had disappeared. One side of it was in almost
perfect darkness, while the other was white and brilliant in the
moonlight. “You like to know who it was,” he said. “Per Bacco! I know.”
“It does not matter to me who it was,” said Harry, “so long as they are
safe, that is all I care for. Women have no business to be out so late
at night.”
At this Paolo nodded his head a great many times in assent. “But that is
English too,” he said. “How you are strange! You let a young lady go in
the street, and you kill a man, and never think more of it! and the man
when he is kill, get up and walk away instead of to avenge himself! You
are strange, very strange. I understand you very well, for I am an
English too.”
After this somewhat startling incident, however, they did not linger
long on their way. It had stirred the blood in Harry’s veins and given
him the new start he wanted. There is nothing like a new incident for
familiarising the mind with any great change in this life. Hitherto he
had thought of nothing but his own transmogrification. Now he had
something else to think of. He got back to his inn unmolested and
uninterrupted, and he found his dreary little room not so dreary when it
became a shelter for his fatigue, and a refuge in which to think over
the strange excitement of this first new day.