PAOLO.
Paolo came back from his labours in the evening, very curious to know
all about Harry’s interview with the Consul, and the origin and the
result of the acquaintance between them. But Harry was prudent. He was
prudent without any motive, from personal pride, rather than from any
consideration for the credit of Miss Bonamy, which he did not think to
be in the least involved. The women with whom Harry was acquainted were
not of a kind who would have been afraid to go anywhere in the evening,
and it did not occur to him that the reputation, even of a girl, in
Italy would be jeopardized by such an innocent benevolence as that of
going to visit a sick neighbour at night. Therefore it was simply pride
and English reserve, not any notion of prudence on Rita’s account, that
kept him silent on the subject. Paolo had a very different conception of
the affair. He was very anxious to find out what had been the immediate
effect upon Harry’s mind of the visit to the Consul’s house.
“There is a--young ladi there,” he said, watching Harry’s face. “You see
perhaps, yes? a young ladi, the daughter of the Signor.”
“Oh, yes, I saw Miss Bonamy,” Harry said.
“And you nevare--see her before?” This Paolo asked with a gleam of
mischief in his dark eyes, and the air of a man who knew a great deal
more than he said.
“Oh yes, I have met her before,” said Harry lightly. “They were quite
old friends. I did not in the least expect to meet people so like old
friends here.”
Paolo was bewildered by this speech, and did not know what to think.
“Ah,” he said in a tone of disappointment. “You know them in your
country? what you call at ’ome? But,” he added with a little triumph,
“there you could not meet Signorina Rita, because she is never to go to
England; her mother die in England, her mother was the daughter of an
English and Italian, like me for example; but she die in England when
she go, all young, when the Signorina was a bébé. The Signor Vice-Consul
was mad--Si! mad, there is no other word. It was a long time that it was
thought he die too--but no, he live, he go on living; but the Signorina
Rita never go to England, that is finished, that is fixed, nothing will
change it. It could not be that you meet her there.”
“Do you know Miss Bonamy very well,” said Harry with a little offence,
“that you call her by her Christian name?”
“I say Signorina Rita, it is our custom. If she were an old, I should
say Sora Rita; and the Vice-Consul he is Ser Giovanni, that is our
custom. Ser Isaack you, Ser Paolo me--but not for you, amico. When you
say Paul-o, that pleases me,” and Paolo laughed, showing his teeth,
which were very white and even. He added, after a moment, with a sudden
moistening of his brilliant eyes, “But what displeases me, after
becoming amici, as we are, is not to be able to serve you. I picture to
myself that I will do something; not moche, but yet something. I will
stand up and say, ‘I take him upon myself. He is without papers, but I
take him upon myself--me.’ Now I am without use. It is no matter to you
to have Paolo Thomp-sone for your friend. The Vice-Consul is moche
bettare--he is grand personage; he has power, not only the heart, like
me.”
“But, Paul-o,” said Harry, anxious to comfort him, and half touched,
half amused by his distress, “but for you I should never have gone near
the Vice-Consul: you put it into my head. But for you,” he added, with a
laugh, putting his hand lightly on Paolo’s shoulder, “I think I should
have turned tail altogether, and wandered off I don’t know where.”
Paolo’s face shone with delight. He would have rushed into Harry’s arms
had that been practicable, and thrown himself upon his breast. But
Harry, laughing, kept his friend at arm’s length. To have kissed, or to
have suffered himself to be kissed by, any man, seemed to him the height
of ridicule. Paolo, baffled in this impulse, sat down and looked at him
with radiant eyes. “Now I know that we are amici,” he said. “Aspetto!
There is still a way I can serve you. I well teach you to speak the
Italian. You shall know it so well that they shall say, Ecco un
Italiano. Me, I have been to school in Sienna. I know the real
Toscano--the best Italian. We shall begin this moment. That pleases to
you, Ser Isaack?” asked Paolo, tenderly, looking with humble and
deprecating eagerness into his face.
“You must learn to speak English better,” Harry said, with some
condescension. “I told you before you must not not say an English, but
an Englishman, and to say an old is nonsense--it should be an old woman,
or an old man, whichever it may be.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Paolo, “that is alright, that is understood. You
correct me when I say what is not just, and I teach you.”
“Come out now for a walk,” Harry said.
Paolo jumped up alert and delighted. It is true that it glanced across
the mind of the young Englishman that perhaps it was beneath the dignity
of a man who was a friend of the Vice-Consul’s, and thus, as it were, a
member of the best society, to walk about with Paolo hanging on to his
arm. But, though Harry was full of youthful conceits and the prejudices
of an ignorant Englishman, he yet had a heart in his capacious bosom,
and Paolo’s devotion had been so great as to touch that heart. He said
to himself, with a little effusion, that he never would turn his back
upon a little fellow who had been so anxious to help him. It might be
that it was presumption on the part of the little fellow to think
himself capable of serving Harry, but still it was well meant, and his
undisguised admiration showed a most just and well-judging spirit.
Nothing, he said to himself, would induce him to turn his back upon
Paolo, his first friend. Antonio had given his whole attention to the
two during the course of dinner. He had loitered behind them when he was
not actively pressing upon them all the choicest morsels, to the despair
of various less interesting guests who could not catch his eye, and who
shouted and stamped in vain. He kept shifting from one foot to another
in the restlessness of pure pleasure as he caught now and then a word of
the conversation between them, and rubbed his hands with delight in the
consciousness of being able to understand it. Now and then he would
punch a fat Italian, with whom he was familiar, in the shoulder, and
call his attention. “Ecco il giovane Inglese,” he would say, though
Harry was doing nothing more important than eating his dinner. Antonio
had got his five francs for a very short day, for naturally the time
passed in the Consul’s had given him no trouble except that of waiting,
and what was still more to the purpose than the five francs was the
importance of having such a witness to his power of English-speaking as
this new guest, who could arrange nothing for himself without his
(Antonio’s) help. He disregarded even the call of the chief butler, so
absorbed was he in his favourite stranger.
“Do you wish the young Inglese to starve,” he asked, indignantly, in his
native language, “when you know the Inglesi are the best customers the
padrone has, and always send millions more? Do you propose to yourself
that he should have nothing to eat, this young one that is no doubt made
of gold; and how can he have anything to eat if I am not there to serve
him?”
Thus he kept behind Harry’s chair with a countenance full of delighted
interest. Now and then he would put in a word. “Ze signori will do much
better to go to ze opera to-night,” he said. “Zey will hear La Catalina,
who is ze first in Italy. It is ze ‘Barbiere,’ Ser Paolo, which gives
itself to-night.”
Paolo looked up appealingly into his friend’s face, but Harry brushed
the suggestion away with a true British argument. “Oh, for heaven’s
sake,” he cried, “don’t let us go and box ourselves up in a hot theatre
on such a night.”
Paolo sighed, but obeyed. He repeated the sentiment in a superior tone
to Antonio, who was anxiously serving them with Cigare Scelte, arranged
in different kinds upon a wooden tray. “A hot theatre, Antonio mio! one
does not go there in a so warm evening. That goes well with the winter,
when it is cold; but in summer, we young have need of moche air and the
great world to keep us comfort-able. When you know more of real English
you will learn what they love.”
Antonio accepted this decision of his superiors with much respect, and
laid it up in his memory, to be produced on his own account when it
might accord with his pretensions as an Anglomane and person of high
sentiment to produce it. But in the meantime he could not but launch a
little criticism to the others who overheard this dignified rebuke.
“That little Paolino,” he said, as they went out, “to give himself the
air of a rich Inglese! He is neither one thing nor another. He is no
more than an abozzo--a sketch of an Inglese,” Antonio cried. He had been
in an artist’s studio in his day. “Me, I understand them, al fondo,” he
added, beating his breast.
Little Paolo had no notion that he was being called an abozzo. He
sallied forth, lighting his cigar, thrusting his arm through Harry’s
with the greatest delight and pride.
Next day, at the hour appointed, Harry presented himself at the
Vice-Consul’s office, and was received with the same cordiality. Mr.
Bonamy had “made inquiries,” but, as nobody in Leghorn knew anything
about Harry, there was not much information to be procured. Neither did
the captain of the steamer in which he had arrived know anything about
him except that he was a passenger in the second cabin; although he
looked quite superior to the second cabin. “I set him down as somebody’s
son in disgrace with his family,” the captain said. This chimed in
sufficiently well with Mr. Bonamy’s observations. He met Harry after the
first consultation with a grave face. “You know I know nothing about
you, Mr. Oliver,” he said, “except--and that is not much--what you have
chosen to tell me.”
“That is quite true, Sir,” said Harry, growing serious too, and feeling
his heart sink, “and I have no right to expect you to take my word even
for that.”
“Therefore,” said the Vice-Consul, “(for you should never interrupt a
man in the middle of a sentence), I have the more claim upon you to
treat me in an honourable way. If you had come with all your papers, as
they say in this country, I should not have had the same right to put
you on parole, as it were. If you know no reason why I shouldn’t take
you into my office, and trust you with the Queen’s affairs, I mean to do
so. But if there is anything that would make you a discredit to Her
Majesty’s Service----”
“There is nothing, Sir,” said Harry, standing up. His face flushed, his
nostril dilated, an impulse of almost fierce self-justification came
upon him; but fortunately for him he was not used to defending himself,
and he could not say another word.
“Then that is enough,” said the Vice-Consul. “I take you on your own
parole.”
They were both silent for a minute or two after. It was not like a
common engagement. Harry’s heart was in his throat. What with surprise
at this extraordinary good fortune, and the emotion called forth by a
confidence in him which he could not help feeling to be as
extraordinary, he was quite beyond his own control. If he had said
anything he would have “made a fool of himself,” so he said nothing, but
sat still, almost disposed, like Paolo, to be tearful, which was the
most dreadful catastrophe he could think of. The good Vice-Consul was a
little affected too.
“But I don’t know a word of the language,” at last Harry said.
“We have more to do with Englishmen than Italians,” said Mr. Bonamy.
“Perhaps the fellow whom you knocked down ‘quietly,’ as you told me, may
come and make his complaint to you. Your knocking a man down quietly was
the thing that tickled me. I wonder what was his opinion of it. You must
learn the language of course, and some other things quite as important.
You must find out all about the harbour by-laws and dues, and all that
affects the shipping. These are things we have a great deal to do with.
You must master them, that is the most important thing; and when you
have been here for a little while you will find out other points. Do you
know anyone from whom you can get lessons? But I suppose, as a matter of
fact, you don’t know anyone here.”
Here Harry, finding his power of speech, told him of Paolo, with that
half laugh of commentary which implies a certain slight of the friend to
whom he had so much reason to be grateful. He felt that it was mean, but
he could not help it. How could he help implying a laugh at the droll
little person who held by him so faithfully, yet was so entirely out of
Harry’s way? However, the Vice-Consul took Paolo quite seriously. He
nodded his head with approval. “Nobody better--nobody better,” he said.
“I see you laugh at him; but he is as sound as a bell, that little
fellow, and always rings true. That he is not quite your equal,” Mr.
Bonamy added, “does not matter a bit in the circumstances. I am glad
that you have chanced so fortunately. To get hold by accident of such a
genuine person as Paolo is quite a piece of luck. I rather think you
must be a lucky person,” he added, with a laugh.
“Since I came to Leghorn,” said Harry, fervently, “nothing could be more
true than that.”
“Yes, I think you must be lucky,” said the Vice-Consul, “to hit upon a
perfectly honest person as your first acquaintance, then making haste to
get yourself into a row to have so good an excuse for it as my Rita, and
then----”
“And then,” said Harry, “to meet with such astonishing, such
unlooked-for kindness, to fall on my feet in such a wonderful way.”
“Well, perhaps,” said Mr. Bonamy, not displeased, “we may say that was
luck too; and one thing, Oliver,” he added quickly, “it will be so much
the better for you that employment in Her Majesty’s Service is a
disgrace to nobody; mind what I say. Of course, in the nature of events,
you and your family will not be at daggers drawn for ever; and when you
condescend to go back, or they find you out, and come to look for
you----”
“Neither, neither will happen,” cried Harry, shaking his head.
“We shall see; but if that day comes, there is nothing for them to find
fault with. A Consulate is not like a merchant’s office; anybody may
serve Her Majesty. None of us, I hope, are too good for that.”
“I assure you, Sir----” Harry cried, hastily.
“No, no, you need not assure me. I don’t want to know anything; unless,
indeed, your heart should be opened to tell me _everything_, which I
should really be glad of. Well,” he said, “come to-morrow morning and
begin. Your friend, Paolo, will tell you about the hours: and I hope,
Oliver, we shall always remain the best of friends,” the Vice-Consul
added, rising and holding out his hand. “I hope nothing will happen to
make me entertain a less opinion of you than I do now; that’s
understood. You shall have a card for Rita’s evening at-home, and I hope
you’ll come and see us occasionally in a friendly way. Let us say next
Sunday, perhaps? Sunday’s a dreary day for a young man by himself. Come
after church, and stay for the after noon; for the present, goodbye.”
Harry took his hat and made his best bow. He was really quite tremulous
with excitement, surprise, and pleasure. To be so speedily and so easily
established was more good fortune than he could realize. When he was at
the door Mr. Bonamy called him back.
“Oliver!” he cried, “one moment; I would not knock any more men down if
I were you; however quietly it is done, it is a little risky, and Her
Majesty’s Service, you know----”
“You needn’t fear, Sir; that’s what Paul-o has been preaching to me all
the time,” Harry said.
Upon which the Vice-Consul laughed benignly.
“Paul-o, as you call him, is as good an adviser as you could have,” he
said.
“What should I call him but Paul-o?” Harry said to himself; and he went
off with his head in the air. Lucky! indeed he had been lucky; only the
third day since his arrival and he had a situation and a sort of a home
and friends; to make up to him for all the evil that had happened to him
before, providence was taking special care of him now. Somehow this made
Harry think of his mother, of whom, hitherto, his thoughts had been
scarcely more kind than towards the others concerned; a little moisture
crept unawares to his eyes. “She’ll have been praying,” he said to
himself; and suddenly he seemed to see her, as he had seen her so often,
wringing her thin worn hands, her lips trembling with words that were
inaudible. He thought--it would be hard to trace the exact connection of
ideas, but there was one--that he would go in to the first church in
which there seemed to be service going on, on his way back to the inn.
It would not have occurred to him to go into a church where there was no
service, but when he heard the tinkle of a bell, and saw one or two
people creeping up and down the broad stone steps, he went in, though
with a little opposition in his mind, as well as a certain craving for
sympathy and utterance. But when he went in, Harry saw no signs of
public worship. The tinkle of the bell was coming from an altar in a
side chapel, where a great many candles were burning. In the body of the
church some people were seated quietly, others kneeling on the low
rush-bottomed chairs. He stood and gazed for a little with mingled
feelings, with a great opposition in his mind to the Papist ritual and
ceremonies (of which he saw nothing, and which, to tell the truth, he
had never seen, and knew nothing whatever about); and disapproval of the
people who were in the church for, as he thought, no purpose--mingled
with a curious sense of the grateful calm and quietness and seclusion of
the place, the serene coolness and breadth of its lofty roofs and silent
space. This stole upon him, he could not tell how. He would not have
knelt down, as the few people about were doing, to save his life: it
would have seemed to him like the famous bowing down in the house of
Rimmon, for the North was very Protestant in those days, and sympathy
with Rome was very rare. He would not even say a distinct prayer in his
heart, which would have seemed like yielding to temptation. But, as he
stood, there rose in him an unwilling devotion, and the thanks that had
been in his mind were perhaps not the less given that they were
arbitrarily refused utterance. For Harry’s prejudices were a part of his
training, not anything that originated in himself. When he went away the
moisture came again into the corners of his eyes. His mother was as
Protestant, more Protestant, than himself. She would have thought it
wrong to go into “a Catholic chapel.” She would scarcely have been able
to believe in the existence of a country not given over to all evil, in
which a Popish place of worship was not a Catholic chapel, but an
established church. Oh, the poor people! what benighted darkness they
must be in! she would have said, in her ignorance. But somehow, Harry
could not have told how, he felt as if he had approached his mother in
that foreign place. The silent church, with the silent people in it
praying, made him think of her as he had seen her, with her lips moving
and her hands clasped together. Often again he stole in for a moment to
renew that sentiment, which was so soft and pathetic. He held out
against his mother all the time obstinately, though he knew he was
condemning her to great suffering--and he entirely disapproved of the
church; but for all that the two had some subtle resemblance, a union
of two things he was hostile to, which went to his heart.
Paolo came to dinner in great triumph. He had placed a flower in his
button-hole and put on a brilliant new tie in honour of the great event,
and fairly threw himself upon his amico and kissed him with enthusiasm
before Harry could get out of this extremely embarrassing position.
Never young girl blushed more uncomfortably than the young man did as he
drew himself out of his enthusiastic friend’s embrace.
“What have I done to you that you make no response?” Paolo said, almost
weeping over this repulse.
“Hold your tongue, for goodness’ sake! Men don’t kiss each other in
England. Whatever you do, don’t be ridiculous,” Harry cried.
Poor little Paolo was wounded to the heart.
“I am an English myself,” he said. “Yes, yes, an English_man_, if you
will; I have not the courage to remember. I am a true English-man; but
it is cruel all the same. Should I then take no notice? when it is the
wish most dear of my heart that will be fulfilled? Always I have said to
myself--if the Santissima Virgin would send a real English-man, not one
that is what you call ’alf-and-’alf, like me. And when it is done, and
my amico whom I have chosen turns out to be he whom I have so much
desired, am not I to show a little that I am glad? I am ’appy that I am
an Italian,” said Paolo, with indignation, “if it is so.”
And there was a little suspension of intercourse between them. But this
did not last; Paolo was too good-humoured and too tender-hearted to
stand out; he begged his friend’s pardon in less than five minutes.
Harry, whose mind moved more slowly, had not had time to realize that he
had been unkind when this reversal of the position took place. Paolo did
all but weep in his penitence.
“I am good-for-nothing,” he said, “I am without sentiment, I have no
delicacy nor education. Who can say why you were so magnanimous as to
choose me, me! for your amico? and when you show the true dignity of an
English, me I am so without good-breeding, so common, so devoid of
sentiment, that I become angry! but if you will only forgive me, forgive
me this once----!”
“It is I who am a brute,” said Harry, penitent in his turn. But Paolo
protested with tears in his eyes, and would have thrown himself at his
friend’s feet, or on his neck again, in the excitement of the
reconciliation. And though he was usually very thrifty, calculating
every centissimo, he ordered a bottle of _champagne frappé_ to celebrate
the day. Nothing would prevail upon him to countermand this order.
“It is a festa,” cried the little man, “and it is a reparation: and we
will drink to our eternal friendship.” Paolo did not know that he was
guilty of plagiarism; he was heroically in earnest, and drank his wine,
which Antonio brought with great pride and many grins, triumphantly in
its pail, setting it on the table before them, and watching its
consumption with the most amiable interest. “And here is for a
bicchierino,” Paolo said, bestowing, a small coin upon Antonio with much
grandeur, “drink thou also the health of Ser Isaack, who is my amico,”
and he held out his foaming glass to touch that of his friend.
Paolo’s head was turned altogether by these unusual potations; and
Harry’s first office was to see his friend safe home and deliver him
from all the dangers of the streets, on this too triumphant night.