THE OFFICE.
Harry entered upon his work next day, and was in a few hours so entirely
bewildered by the novel character of the questions addressed to him, and
the information he was supposed to possess, that he went to the
Vice-Consul in the evening in dismay. “I don’t know a thing,” he said;
“I never knew before what an ignorant beast I was. It would only be
taking advantage of you if I were to stay.”
This hasty alarm and anxious honesty of purpose made Mr. Bonamy more and
more certain that he had judged rightly. “Don’t give in in such a
hurry,” he said, “you can’t be expected to know things of that sort
without learning. They are not part of a gentleman’s education. You
must get your friend Paolo to take you in hand. He is a perfect mine of
information. I have often to refer to him myself. Though he is not in a
very high position, he knows more about these special matters than all
the rest of us put together.”
And thus balm was diffused over Harry’s sore spirit. But he could not
help asking himself why the inequalities and injustices of this world
should be so marked in respect to Paolo. Why should he not be in a very
high position so far as the Vice-Consul’s office was concerned? He,
Harry, who was an ignoramus and knew nothing, was to have higher pay and
far more consideration than the other, who was a mine of knowledge. It
was true that Harry’s personal sense of superiority to Paolo was noways
weakened--but yet he felt the injustice. He had not been used to enter
into such questions, yet he could not but see that to bolster up the
ignorance of a well-looking Englishman, by the knowledge of a little
oddity of an Italian was somewhat hard so far as the Italian was
concerned. It was, accordingly, with a deprecating tone that he spoke to
Paolo at dinner. It even moved him to a little insincerity. What he had
said to the Vice-Consul in all good faith, and much dismay, he repeated
to Paolo, not meaning it at all. “I don’t know a thing,” he said, “not
one question could I answer. I never knew I was so ignorant. It is very
nice to be settled and have Mr. Bonamy for my chief, and you, Paolo, to
help me through: but a fellow must be honest--and when the beggars come
and ask me things, I can’t go on pretending to know.”
“You shall not pretend to know, Isaack mio,” cried Paolo, with a beaming
countenance. “Now is just come the moment which I was looking for, which
show that it is good to have a friend. How much does it matter whether
it is you that have it or I that have it? Listen then to me. You think
Paolo Thomp-sone a little nobody, and it is true; but listen--listen to
me. It is not to talk big or to brag that is necessary. _I_ know.”
“I am sure of that, Paolo,” said Harry, languidly, and with the look of
dejection which was half acting, though he did not intend it. “The
Vice-Consul said so. He told me you were a mine of knowledge. But why
should I pick your brains? Why should I mount up upon you and stand upon
your shoulders, and get all the credit of it? That is not just any more
than the other. I oughtn’t to take everything from you.”
Paolo could scarcely keep still upon his chair in his delight and
satisfaction. His face glowed and shone with happiness. “Are not you my
friend?” he cried; “all that which is to Paolo is to you, Ser Isaack. It
is my pride. We will begin to-night. It is better than to go out to the
Café to sit and sip Rosolio--to be idle like the others--moche bettare.
You shall come to my room, or I will go to yours--and then the books,
and to write the exercises, and to stoody. Yes, yes--I know. I have been
here all my life--I know moche, almost everything. Then we commence
to-night.”
“But, Paolo, how am I to accept all that from you? A week ago you did
not know me, and now you are going to sacrifice all your spare time and
your pleasure to me; that is not just, as you say. You must let me at
least,” said Harry, faltering, and, with a glimmering insight which was
quite new to him, watching his friend’s countenance, “you must let me at
least--consider you as--my master, you know; and we must settle--now
don’t be angry--a price.”
Paolo did not say a word; he turned his face away from his friend and
pretended to go on eating his dinner. There was no need for words to
show how deeply wounded he was. He turned his shoulder to Harry, and
called the smiling Antonio to the other side.
“Take it away! take it away!” he said in English, “it choke me!” and he
pushed his plate from him.
“Oh! Signor Paolo! Pertanto é buonissimo; don’t cry, Ser Paolo,” cried
the anxious waiter. “These Inglesi, they are brutes; they have no
sentiment; they give pain without knowing it. Pertanto, you must not
weep.”
“That imports me nothing,” said Paolo, feebly. “It is again an illusion,
my good Antonio; but I cannot weep much, for it is too deep.”
“What are you two talking about? when you know I don’t understand your
confounded Italian!” cried Harry, at his wit’s end. “What’s the matter?
what have I done now? you will drive a poor beggar out of his senses!
Good Lord! you’re not a woman, that you should cry for what a fellow
says. I don’t know what you mean by your sentiment and all that; I want
to be honest, and not to take advantage of a good hearted duffer because
he is my friend.”
Paolo turned round with the tears still in his eyes.
“You call me duffere,” he said quickly; “beggare I understand, but
duffere I never heard.”
“It means,” said Harry, drawing on his imagination, “the best-hearted,
silly kind fellow in the world, always going out of his way to help
somebody, holding out his hand to a suspicious beast the moment he lands
in a strange place, never giving him up though he behaves like a brute,
giving everything like an idiot, but flaring up if you want to give him
anything in return.”
“Not that, not that,” said Paolo, laying his hand upon his friend’s arm.
“I give you my lofe, and I wait for your lofe in return. If there is a
thing you want I take it upon myself. Siamo amici! is there any more to
say? I know nothing; all is in that. If it is true that I am your amico,
then you are a beggare, you are a beast, you are all bad,” said Paolo,
with flashing eyes, “to be so base as to offer to pay me--money. Ah!
che! che! there is nothing too bad, nothing too dreadful to say. Inglese
brutale! false amico----!” Here he stopped all at once, and gazed
piteously into Harry’s face. “Forgive me, forgive me, my friend!” he
cried.
This all happened at dinner, at the _table-d’hôte_, which fortunately
was not very full that day. There was nobody sitting opposite, which was
a great relief to Harry’s mind; but he could see from the end of the
table the cynical Englishman, who had never taken any notice of him,
giving an amused glance now and then at the group of friends--Paolo
shedding tears into his plate, Antonio, with a face full of sympathy,
tenderly removing it, essaying to console the sufferer. This was a
greater trial to Harry’s temper than even the sentiment of Paolo. He
shot an answering glance of defiance at his countryman, who had never so
much as given the help of a kind word to the stranger.
“Let’s say no more about it, Paolo,” he said, “you and I are quite
different, you know. I daresay I am a brutal Englishman, but I can’t
help it. That’s our nature. We don’t think so much of a little thing as
you do, and we abhor making a fuss. Perhaps you don’t know what that
means?”
“I will nevare make a fuss more. I will learn to be a duffere, and do as
you do,” said Paolo, in all the tenderness of reconciliation.
Harry looked at him something as Joan looked at his mother. He had too
good a heart to despise his little friend, and he did not understand
him; but this sentiment was extremely inconvenient and very
troublesome--on that point there could be no doubt.
However, later in the evening, Paolo, who had inherited all the Italian
thrift, gave his friend some very sensible advice. Instead of going to
the Café, they went to Paolo’s _appartamento_, which was on the highest
floor of a high house in one of the narrow streets. Though he called it
an _appartamento_ it was a single room, with an odd little closet in the
shape of a kitchen, and offices attached to it. The room itself was
somewhat low in the roof, being so high up, but had three or four
windows, and a little balcony suspended over the street, into which it
made Harry dizzy to look down as into an Alpine ravine. The floor was of
tiles, the walls white, with a pattern in distemper, very graceful and
flowing, round the top and bottom. The bed was a very tiny and bare
article, put away in a corner. In another corner stood a table. A few
chairs, and an old, very straight-backed settee, with two arms, in old
gilding and brocade, stood against the wall. There was a tall, brass
_lucerna_, the lamp common throughout Italy, with its little bundle of
snuffers and extinguisher and scissors to trim the wick, hanging from it
by a chain, and a few books on a shelf. Nothing could be more bare.
There was a small rug by the bedside, but no other covering for the bare
area of tiles which was the chief feature in the room. Paolo had a
little picture of the Madonna, a bad copy of that which is called the
Madonna del Granduca, and a basin for holy water over his bed, which was
covered with a red and blue cotton coverlet. Everything about showed the
same bareness and absence both of comfort and ornament. But Paolo
regarded his _appartamento_ with eyes full of pleasure. He saw nothing
wanting in it. It housed him sufficiently of nights, and was cool and
pleasant in the summer mornings, when he rose, as most Italians do, in
the early daylight, to get through all the private work he might happen
to have. He looked round upon it with a gentle complaisance. Some old
prints, and one or two copies of famous pictures, hung on the walls. In
the best light was an old painting of a gloomy and uncertain aspect,
which Paolo believed to be a Margheritone. It might have been anything.
He was very proud of it. “Ecco!” he said, when they went in, “my old
master. He is a little dark, but when you study him you will find much
in him. He is of the _trecento_--very early--very early. The painter
have seen the blessed father, San Francesco; that indicates how old it
must be.”
Harry did not make any reply to this. For his part he liked things
better for being new. The dark old picture had no charm for him at all,
and he thought the _appartamento_ rather worse as being larger than his
own little room at the hotel, which had hitherto seemed to him the last
example of bareness and dreariness. “A horrid little hole,” more adapted
for a dog than a man.
“I’ll tell you one other thing,” said Paolo, taking him affectionately
by the shoulders before they sat down by the table; “if you will make
economies, and do well, Isaack mio, you will not live always in the
hotel. Me I dine there; it is the best thing to do; but live all the
time--oh no! It is only for Englishmen to be so extravagant like that.”
“That is what I have been thinking,” said Harry, “if I could get some
nice rooms. You don’t understand about Englishmen. Dining every day at
an hotel is a thing nobody would think of in England. We have our dinner
at home, or, if the landlady is not a good cook, then perhaps--But for
my part I always preferred a beefsteak at home, even if it were not the
most perfect cookery in the world. Dining at an hotel is a thing no one
thinks of, except on a great occasion perhaps.”
Paolo opened his eyes in surprise. “It is well,” he said, “you are more
prudent when you are in your own country. This is what you must do,
Isaack, amico. You will first find an _appartamento_. It is not always
that one is so fortunate as me. This is perfect--non é vero? It is all
one could want. A bed--ecco! a table, the sof-fa that has come from a
palazzo, even a little tabouret for the feet--everything. And then the
balcone! When it makes warm in the summer, in July and Agosto, it is,
oh! fresco, freschissimo so fresh and cool here! The first thing is an
_appartamento_. But in every way I am too fortunate. As soon I dress in
the morning, there is a caffè in face--you can see it if you look
down--where I can have my coffee in a moment. No waiting as when you go
to a distance, but at the moment. They are about to send us now the
coffee, amico, to clear our head. You will see how good it is. Then when
the time come for the other breakfast--what you call lunch--there is a
restaurant near the bureau. You have two very good dish, a dolce, and
dessert; and very little to pay. I will lead you to-morrow to that
place. And at last the dinner at the Leone. Figure to yourself so much
comfort all in one day! And you see the journals for nothing, and hear
what all the people say.”
“Bless us all,” said Harry, “in that way you are never at home.”
“At ’ome! I am at ’ome everywere,” the little Italian said; “all is
friends; whatever goes on, everyone makes part of it to me. And when all
is over you mount in your _appartamento_, you are tranquil, you light
your lamp, you fume slowly your cigar on the balcone, you go to bed. And
you make economies--great economies. Me even, that have not moche
appointment, I become a little rich, what you call at my ease. And you,
who will have moche more as me----”
“Why should I? You are a great deal more use than I am,” Harry said.
Paolo shook his head with a cheerful yet shrewd acceptance of the
position. “Si, I am of more use,” he said. “I am good for something;
you, caro, not good for moche yet. But look at you and look at me. That
expliques itself. That is the world’s way--what you call the world’s
way. Come; the first thing is an _appartamento_. You think, perhaps, it
is too high up here? But smell the good air,” cried Paolo; “that is of
itself refreshing--and the view! You will pay more scudi at the Leone in
a week than for a month here. Ecco! here is the coffee, and though it is
not yet quite dark, that amiable garzone, see, he has brought us a
lamp.”
Then there entered, with a knock at the door, the man from the caffè
opposite, holding upon the points of three fingers a tray containing two
heavy cups of white porcelain and the small coffee-pot, flanked by a
plate of cakes, which Paolo’s hospitality had added in honour of his
friend. The waiter swung the lighted lamp in the other hand, holding it
by the handle at the top, and in this way had come up five flights of
stairs without spilling a drop of the coffee or jeopardizing the cups.
He put the lamp on the table with a “Felicissima notte, Signori,”
looking upon the two young men with looks as amiable as his wish. And,
indeed, the wish has more reason in it at the beginning of the evening
than at the end. Paolo was great as a host. He poured out his black
coffee as if it had been the richest of drinks, and pressed upon Harry
the odd little collection of cakes of every possible and impossible
flavour. Some of them were excellent, but Harry thought he despised
these innocent dainties. And he was not very fond of the black coffee:
how much better he would have liked an English cup of tea! As he sat
turning over the books which Paolo placed before him, and listened to
his friend’s explanations, gulping, with a great effort not to make a
wry face, occasional mouthfuls of coffee, there seemed to flit before
him a vision of his mother’s parlour--the fragrant tea, the rich fresh
cream, and herself, with that pale face which had not always seemed to
him so attractive as it did now. Once, to tell the truth, Harry had
thought his mother and sister heavy company, and in his heart had said
that nothing could be more dull than the long evening in the parlour at
home. Now that he was up here so near the sky in Paolo’s _appartamento_,
his ideas were different. The bare tiles underfoot, the wide, vacant
space, with the little bed in the corner, the dull old Margheritone
staring him in the face, with a pair of round eyes looking out from its
blackness--and all those knotty questions about the harbour dues to
occupy him, made as great a contrast as could be conceived to the old
curtains and carpets, and familiar walls, and cheerful fire, and the
grey sweep of landscape showing from the windows, stretching far into
the horizon. But he himself. Harry was very much the same, and in the
one place as in the other he was unsatisfied. He thought it had been his
surroundings that were to blame in the first instance, but now, after
the excitement of all this new beginning, and the novelty of his new
friends, and the new place, so unlike anything he had seen before,
Paolo’s _appartamento_, and the thought of settling down in another
such, brought him back, with a sort of mental gasp, to himself. Was that
all that was to come of it? It was scarcely worth while renouncing his
name and his family, and all his past, in order to settle down in a room
upon the fifth floor, among the chimneypots, at Leghorn. While he was
studying the dock regulations and harbour laws, his mind was busy about
this other perplexing question. An _appartemento_! Was he never, he
wondered, with an impatience that was almost comic in the humiliation
and depression it caused him, to have a sitting-room again? never to get
a meal save in public, in the grim _sala_ of the Leone, or in a gaudy
restaurant with little marble tables; never even a cup of tea to himself
in his own place, as an Englishman loves to have it; never to have a
carpet under his feet, but cold tiles; and nothing in the world that
looked like home? He kept all this to himself, and tried hard to grasp
at the laws and regulations about the free port of Leghorn, and its
etiquettes and its dues; but his inner soul was crossed all the time by
impulses of ill-humour and disappointment which he could with difficulty
restrain. It is always difficult, after a period of agitation and
excitement, to settle down again and resume a steady routine; and Harry
could not think of this kind of settling with anything but annoyance.
The inn was not any better. His little sleeping-room there was not so
good as Paolo’s. In the _sala_ there was always a sense of dinner
combined with cigars; and in the other parts of the establishment the
smell was of cigars impregnated with soup and divers odours of the
kitchen. And these were the only places where he, with his English
habits, had a chance of sitting down! He sighed for his little parlour,
with its Kidderminster carpet, and red moreen curtains, at Liverpool. It
was a palace to the _appartamento_, or anything that seemed possible
here.
They sat so late over their books that Paolo did not as usual insist
upon accompanying Harry to the inn door. Paolo, for his part, had spent
a very happy evening. He was learned in those bye-laws which so
mystified Harry, and loved to enlarge upon them, and to impart
information in any shape was a grateful exercise to him. He liked to do
it, even when he was not--which he liked still better--doing a kindness
to a friend; and he was proud of all the possessions which he had
exhibited with such simple pleasure. It did not occur to him that his
home, which he was so happy in, or the simple routine of life which he
had set up for imitation, could fill any heart with dismay. He found
himself perfectly comfortable in it, why should not his amico do the
same? No doubt of the suitableness of this life to one as to another
crossed his simple mind. He crunched the biscuits which Harry disdained,
and drank the black coffee at which Harry made wry faces, and was much
pleased with himself, and very happy to think that he was setting before
his friend the best way to walk in. He was scarcely so pleased with
himself however when he was over-persuaded to allow Harry to go back to
the hotel alone. “No, I will re-conduct you,” he had said at first; but
Harry laughed at the unnecessary ceremony. Paolo stood at the top of the
great black well of a staircase and held the lucerna to light his friend
downstairs, standing patiently with the heavy lamp dangling from his
hand till he had heard the door close at the foot; and then he rushed to
his balcony to watch lest Harry should turn the wrong way, ready to
scream out to him if he did so. Even when he had made sure that his
friend had turned to the right, and not to the left, Paolo still shook
his head. “I should have re-conducted him,” he said to himself. It was
the only drawback to the perfect blessedness of the night.
It was a glorious night out of doors; the Italian moon was shining with
a warmth and glory unknown to northern skies. Harry tried to think the
moon was as fine in England, but he could not succeed in this;
everything else was a great deal better in England, but there was
something to be said for the climate here, one was forced to
admit--even though one might not admit anything more. Harry walked home
(as he called it by force of nature) with much subdued irritation and
despondency, consequent chiefly on the apparent impossibility of ever
having a sitting-room, or any place it would be pleasant to sit in
again. The inn, though he called it home, was not less obnoxious to him,
and he asked himself, good heavens, was it possible he should never----
He had got as far as this when another picture suddenly rose up before
him, and in a moment changed all his thoughts. It was of a dim room,
cool and dark in the midst of the sunshine, with a whiteness of floating
curtains about the windows, and tables covered with books, and a white
figure in a corner, close upon the open dark space of a window closed by
green persianis, through which the air was blowing softly. Ah! he said,
drawing a long breath, there was a kind of paradise! That was very
different from the _appartamento_. It was dark in his memory, as it had
been when he had suddenly stepped into it out of the bright day with so
much surprise that he could but dimly recollect the appearance of the
place. He wondered how it would look when the persianis were open, when
the daylight got in, or at night when the lamps were lighted, when the
place was fully inhabited?
Instinctively, without knowing what he was about, he turned into the
street which led to the Consulate. His heart gave a jump against his
breast when he saw that the persianis were all opened now, and that the
lights in the room made it partially visible from the street. Evidently
there was a party going on, and he felt a little pang of mortification
to think that he had not been asked. There was a sound of music and a
great deal of talk, talk that sounded exhilarating and delightful to
Harry, though he would have felt himself a fish out of water had he been
in the midst of the polyglot conversation that went on in the Consul’s
drawing-room. A white figure was seated near the window, faintly visible
within the white curtains. He wondered if it was _hers_? He screwed his
eyes together as if he had been short-sighted, to try to see a little
better, but this was what he could not make out. The sudden glimpse of
this little bright world from which he was shut out arrested Harry all
at once in his discontented thoughts. Here was something which would
make up for all deficiencies. He stood for a long time under the
windows, trying to hear the voices within, with no eavesdropping
intentions, but only to console himself by the recollection that he had
far more in common with the Vice-Consul’s house and his society than
with Paolo, though he was so good a friend. And then he stood opposite
and watched, seeing figures vaguely glide across the room, figures which
the white curtains, swaying softly in the air, kept indistinct. He could
not distinguish her, he allowed to himself; sometimes he thought he had
traced her, but only to find himself deceived. Some one in the
background was playing the piano softly, though nobody paid much
attention. Harry could not tear himself away from the window. That was
life, he thought to himself; a man who had that house to go home to need
never be dull; and then he remembered, with a glow of warm satisfaction
and pleasure, that on Sunday, no further off, he was to go there. He
turned after this with a resolute step, and went back to the hotel and
his dreary little room, where he sat on his bed, gazing at the two
little lights of the lucerna which had been given to him to light
himself upstairs, for all the house was dark and at rest before he got
back--and thinking of that warm and cheerful scene. The lamp burned on
steadily, the only light in all the big hotel, and Harry sat and gazed
at it unwinking. Sunday afternoon! here was something to look forward
to. And _that_ was a house which was worth calling a home, which was not
an _appartamento_. He thought life must have an altogether different
complexion there.