PAOLO’S ADVICE.
The room was large, and low, and white. There was a little balcony
hanging from the windows; the usual bright-coloured pattern on the
walls; the usual sofa and chairs, and little rug on the tiled floor.
Harry had not taken any particular care of his room or its decoration.
The lamp burned with three little clear tongues of flame in the centre
of the scene. Paolo sat in a large chair, thrown back, his little
intelligent, intent face showing from the dark background; his feet
flicking in front of him. As for Harry, he was too shy to sit still and
tell his story under the light of his friend’s large, eager eyes, which
leaped at the words before they were said. He was walking about from one
end of the room to the other. On the table was the little coffee-pot,
the thick, white cups upon a tray. Harry did not despise black coffee
now. Sometimes he came up to the table, and poured it out and swallowed
it hastily; while all the time Paolo, swinging his foot in front of him,
and leaning back in his chair, never took from him his eager black eyes.
“And the short and the long of it,” said Harry, “is that I have fallen
in love.” He turned his back to his companion as he spoke, and stood
looking out from the open window. “I have been about the house so much,
and seen the young lady so often, that without thinking, and without
meaning it, I have just fallen in love. Jove! what a beautiful night it
is!” said Harry; “I never saw the stars so bright: that’s just the
position of affairs. She is quite out of my rank, I know, as impossible
as the stars themselves: but that’s how it is.”
“Fallen--in lofe?” Paolo mused for a moment over the words. “It is
droll, the English way of speaking. Is it then a deep, or a sea, or a
precipice, that you--fall.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” cried Harry. “To be sure it is a deep, and a sea,
and a precipice. Why, every fool knows that. You are never thinking of
anything of the sort, going along quite quietly, minding your own
business--when all in a moment down you go squash, and there’s no help
for you any more.”
Paolo smiled a benevolent but somewhat tremulous smile.
“The young lady is very beautiful--that goes without saying,” he said.
“I had thought you would have taken your freedom a little longer, and
you wish to marry and range yourself. _Bene!_ it will be what you call
all oop with me,” said Paolo, with a slight quiver; “a wife--that goes
not along with a friend--not a friend of the heart like me. It makes a
beginning to many things, but also to some an end.”
“Good gracious!” cried Harry, “do you mean to say you don’t understand
me? Am I in a condition to marry? I have not a penny. I have my little
salary, and that is all. If I could jump up and ask her to marry me,
above-board in our English way, do you think I’d ask any advice about
it? I don’t want you to tell me she’s nice, I know that myself a great
deal better than you could tell me. It is just because I can’t marry,
and ought to hold my tongue and never say a a word about it--and yet
can’t help seeing her continually, that I don’t know what to do.”
Paolo looked at him with a still more wistful, anxious face. He was
terribly perplexed. There was an alternative which was not at all
impossible to his imagination; but having on many occasions already come
in contact forcibly with the English mind, as represented in Harry, he
was afraid to state or refer to the other side of the question, which
nevertheless was not at all terrible to himself. He looked very
wistfully and earnestly in his friend’s face, trying hard to read and
make out what was in it. What was in it? Did he mean----? Paolo could
not tell whether he might venture to say what he would have said easily
enough to many of his other friends.
“You would then--that understands itself; but to put it into words,
above all with an English what you call Puritano--like you; you would
then--make a little arrangement--you would then propose--without going
to church.”
“Eh?” said Harry. He turned round upon his friend with blazing eyes.
“Eh?” The monosyllable was more terrible than a whole chapter of
invectives. Astonishment, non-comprehension, yet at the same time
alarmed and furious understanding were in it. Paolo, who was a miracle
of quick intelligence, saw all that was in Harry’s look almost before he
himself was conscious of it, and he mended his indiscretion with the
rapidity of lightning.
“I have make a mistake,” he said. “I have not understood. It is so
sudden, I had no preparation. If you will perhaps tell me again?”
Harry stared with wide open eyes like a bull, not quite knowing whether
to charge an adversary, or to turn away from an insignificant intruder.
The more peaceable impulse prevailed. He had stood still gazing at
Paolo, who, mentally trembling, though he put the best face he could
outwardly upon the matter, met his friend’s gaze with a deprecating
smile. After a minute he resumed his pacing about the floor.
“I see you don’t understand,” he said, with something between a groan
and a sigh. “Well then, I’ll try again. Here are the circumstances. I am
admitted to the house, a very nice house, in which I am very happy. The
father puts faith in me; he trusts me like a friend; the young lady
is--everything that is nice. Well! don’t you see? like a fool, instead
of keeping quiet and enjoying all this, like a fool I have gone and
fallen in love with her. And last night I was as near betraying
myself---- Now if I go on I’ll be more and more tempted to betray
myself. I can’t keep away from the house--it is not possible. I can’t
offer to the young lady because I am not good enough for her, and I have
no money. Now what am I to do?”
“You were at the house of the Signor Vice-Consul last night?”
“Never mind where I was,” said Harry sharply, “tell me what I am to do.”
“It would be well, amico mio, that your confidence was more great, or
none at all,” said Paolo. “If it should happen that I possessed the
acquaintance of the father and the daughter----” There was a little
incipient smile upon his lip that drove Harry wild.
“I believe you think badly of every woman,” he cried; “all the worse for
you if you do. I am not going to make any confidences of that sort. Look
here--you know more about society than I do. You know how people are
expected to behave here. Ought I just to cut the whole concern, though I
don’t want to--and take myself off?”
Harry came to a sudden stop in front of his friend when he asked this
question, and, for his part, Paolo almost screamed with alarm.
“Cut--the whole concern? That is to go away?”
“To go away,” said Harry, discharging all the breath out of his
capacious chest in one great sigh, and throwing himself into the second
great chair opposite Paolo. His friend grew pale; his olive cheeks were
blanched; the lids were puckered round his anxious and almost despairing
eyes.
“That is what you must not do--that is what you shall not do! It is not
permitted to throw away, to make such a sacrifice,” cried Paolo, with a
rapid succession of phrases, one broken sentence hurrying upon another.
“No, no, no, no. Imagine to yourself that all goes so well. The world
regards you with so favourable eyes; you are everywhere received,
everywhere received!--a favourite, Isaack mio. But no, no; this must not
be--for a girl--for a promise--for a caprice, you will not throw away
your career.”
Harry did not say anything. He lay back drearily in his chair, his whole
person making one oblique line from his head, which rested on the back
of the chair, to the feet stretched out on the floor. He was not likely
to talk about his career, but he felt to the bottom of his heart the
dismal alternative: to go away; to throw up everything; to resign
himself to another new and much less favourable beginning. His new start
in Leghorn had been made in circumstances so extraordinarily favourable
that they looked like a romance, and he himself could scarcely believe
them true--all the more reason why he should not presume now upon the
hospitality of the house which had taken him in; but he never could by
any possibility hope for such another piece of good fortune. In all this
he put Rita herself out of the question. Perhaps he did not feel, as a
lover sometimes does, as if his entire life was involved in her
acceptance of him. He was a sober-minded young man. It would cost him a
great wrench, it would take the colour and the pleasure out of his life
if he were banished from the happy rooms in which she reigned. But yet,
honour requiring it, he could do this and live; he was not afraid of
himself so far. But how to continue here in the enjoyment of his other
advantages and withdraw from the house in which he had been received so
kindly, he did not know. It would be impossible without explanations,
and what explanation could he give?
“Look you ’ere,” said Paolo, rising in his turn, taking advantage of all
the devices of oratory to move his friend, “lofe, that is one thing;
life, that is another. For a capriccio I say nothing. We all have such;
by times it will seem as though you live not but in possession of the
object; but after, that will pass, and you will laugh, and all will go
on as before.”
“Hold your tongue; you don’t know anything about it,” said Harry, with a
contemptuous wave of the hand.
“I have had my experiences like another,” said Paolo, mildly. “I am not
an ignorant. It is for a moment you suffer, you think all is ovare.
But--oh, bah!--when it is ovare so many things remain. There is the
bureau,” said Paolo, counting on his fingers, “there are the events of
the day; there is the table--for you must always eat; there is
society--which is made,” he added sententiously, “of other objects. In
brief, amico mio, there is to live. That must be done all the same. For
the moment it may be hard--but sooner or later the time of calm will
arrive--What then? If it be certain that an hour will come when you
will have had enough, when you will become weary----”
Harry sat up in his chair. “What are you talking about?” he said.
With his honest English imagination he did not know what the other
meant. He had never read a French novel in his life (he could not,
indeed, if he had wished), nor any English ones of that sort. According
to him, when a man “fell in love” it was with the intention of marrying
the girl he loved, and living happy ever after. The idea that it would
last only for so long, and that there would come a time when you would
have enough, and be weary--a moment which must arrive sooner or
later--was such a thing as had no meaning to him. Paolo turned, too,
when his friend said this, and gazed at him, startled and wondering.
Suddenly the little Italian became aware that he was speaking another
language, a tongue unknown to Harry. He did not know Harry’s tongue so
far as this went, but being very quick and intelligent he perceived at
once that it was not the same as his, and that in speaking as he did he
had completely missed Harry’s comprehension. This took away from him the
power of speech. How was he to find out Harry’s language? They remained
for a full minute thus, baffled each by each, gazing at each other:
Paolo, small and keen, trying hard to make his friend out; Harry, large,
obtuse, confused, wondering what on heaven and earth this strange little
being could mean.
“Look here,” he said at last, “I’m English, you know. I don’t follow you
a bit. Perhaps you’re too refined, and all that. You don’t fathom my
difficulty, and I don’t understand in the least what you mean. Here’s
what I want: just listen. I am fond of a girl, but I daren’t tell her
I’m fond of her, because you know I have nothing to marry on, and I am
not such a cur as to ask her to bury herself up for years waiting for
me; and besides, it wouldn’t be handsome to her father, who has been
very kind to me. What am I to do? Ought I to go right away? I don’t want
to do that. Or can you tell me how I’m to put a padlock on my tongue,
and go on seeing her, and never betray myself? No, by Jove! I don’t
think I am strong enough for that.”
“There is one thing will make it more easy,” said Paolo--he had dived
deep into the records of his own experience to find precedents, but he
found nothing which could throw any light upon so strange a case, and
he was now casting about blindly for something to say--“there is one
thing. This lady, this Signorina--is she then--what shall you call it?
disposed to respond to you?”
Harry’s face grew crimson. He gave a rapid glance back upon all their
intercourse. He seemed to see Rita’s unconscious, tranquil face. Even
when he had made that foolish speech about taking her to England she had
been moved not a hair’s breadth. She had taken it with perfect calm, as
one who had never thought upon the subject might quite well do. “I don’t
think so,” he said, quickly, not looking his friend in the face.
“Then it is moche more easy,” said Paolo. “There is nothing to do, amico
mio, but to be silent--what you call hold your tongue: and all will be
ovare. When the lady will respond it is different--when she will give
you a glance, a smile, a permission to say what perhaps ought not to be
said.”
“There is nothing of the kind in the whole business,” said Harry,
bluntly; “you are thinking of your intrigues, and all that Italian
nonsense. English girls don’t understand it any more than I do.”
“Then the Signorina--is English?” Paolo ventured here to give vent to a
little laugh. “But you must not be too secure that she understands no
more than you. Perhaps there is in the lady a little Italian blood!”
“Paolo,” said Harry, “you have the most unreasonable, idiotic, offensive
prejudice against----”
And here he paused--for had he not been careful all this time to keep in
the background the name of the lady? He stopped, and he looked at Paolo
with curious, anxious, defiant eyes.
Paolo would have laughed had he dared: but he did not venture to laugh.
It was too serious. “I have no prejudice,” he said. “It may be that I
think a little in Italian, one cannot help one’s thoughts. But then why
will you ask me? If the lady is indifferent where then is the difficulty
of to hold your tongue? But if that is otherwise--listen. The papa, it
is to him one speaks when it is of marriage. Love, that is another
thing. You do not understand, amico,” said Paolo, with a plaintive tone,
“the difference. There is great difference. They are two things
all-together. Marriage,” once more he counted upon his fingers, “that
will mean the papa; love--ah! that will mean the moment, the
opportunity, the response.”
To these last words Harry paid no attention. He scarcely heard them. But
the others seemed to throw a sudden light upon the whole subject. He
rose up again and resumed his promenade about the room, biting his nails
and knitting his brows. “By Jove,” he said, at last, “Paul-o, you’re not
half such a foolish little beggar as you look. That is the thing to do.
I wonder I never thought of it myself. To be sure, that’s the thing to
do.”
“What is the thing to do?” Paolo asked, bewildered. But his friend made
him no direct answer. After a good deal more of that pacing up and down,
he came back and patted his counsellor on the back so vigorously that he
almost took away Paolo’s breath.
“That is the very thing,” Harry said. “You are a clever little beggar
after all. I should never have hit it out all by myself; but I see now,
it’s the right thing to do. Not too easy though; I can’t say that I
shall like it a bit; but one can see in a moment that it’s the right
thing to do.”
“What is the right thing?” Paolo asked again; but he got no reply. Harry
fell a-musing as he sometimes did, letting the little Italian go on with
talk, to which his friend paid no attention; and afterwards he walked
with Paolo to his rooms, paying just as little regard to what he said.
It was another clear, starlight night, soft and cool as the nights are
in an Italian spring. There was no chill to freeze the blood; but all
was balmy and soft. He went along the streets with their high houses
reaching almost up to the sky, looking up to the narrow lane of radiant
blue above, all living and sweet with stars. He thought his problem over
again, going step by step over the same way which he had traversed
before--and it seemed to him that he had at last found the true and the
only solution. He could not withdraw himself from the Vice-Consul’s
house without an explanation; that would be impossible; therefore the
only thing to be done was to go to the Vice-Consul himself, and tell him
how the case stood. “I cannot be sure of myself if I go on seeing her
every day; therefore I must give up seeing her every day, and you must
know why.” Probably he would not tell his story so briefly as this;
there would be explanations to give, and many digressions probably from
the main theme; but that in effect would be all that Harry would have to
say; and certainly it was the right thing to do. He took it for granted
that Paolo had suggested it, though in reality it was an alternative of
a much less satisfactory kind that Paolo had suggested; but all the rest
that he had said vanished from Harry’s practical mind, leaving this one
piece of advice behind, and no more. Paolo was no fool, though his way
of thinking might not be much like an Englishman’s. Englishmen did not
go to the father first, but to the daughter, to know what their chances
were; but for once in a way the other mode was the best. He took a long
walk after he left his friend, traversing all the streets which now he
knew so well, and further still to where the salt air of the sea blew in
his face, and refreshed his soul. He would not trifle with the occasion,
but go at once to-morrow and get it off his mind. So he said to himself.
And he came home past the house from which he was henceforward to be
banished. It was late, and the sitting-rooms were all dark; but Harry
knew that a little light in one window indicated Rita’s room--probably
the faint little _veilleuse_ which watched over her sleep; and that in
another was the lamp by which the Vice-Consul was smoking his last
cigar. He stood and looked piteously at the house. It had been a kind of
home to him, in one way more than his own home had ever been. Standing
outside in the night it appeared beautiful to him, as never house had
appeared before. He had not appreciated the _bric-à-brac_, or known what
to say about the pictures; but now each article of the furniture
suddenly appeared to him in a new light. It was all beautiful; it was
such a place as a palace might be--a house for a queen; and to think
that he had almost lived in it for so long, and that now he was to enter
there no more! Harry was not like the Peri at the gate of Paradise; he
had a still more pathetic, a heart-rending sense of loss. He had been
there yesterday; but he was not to be there again perhaps for ever. Why
should he go away? and yet he must go away; he must keep himself at a
distance from those dear doors. Slowly there gathered in his eyes a
painful dew; it did not fall in tears, which he would have scorned
himself for shedding, but it blurred and magnified all he saw. Yesterday
so much at home, so familiar in the place, to-morrow with no entrance
possible to him any more! and all by no fault of his or anyone’s; by no
levity on _her_ part, or presumption on his; all unawares, no one
thinking of any danger. It seemed to Harry, standing outside there, as
if there was something very hard in such a wayward accident of fate, as
if some malign spirit must have taken pleasure in twisting the threads
wrongly; in making trouble out of the most innocent situations in life.
He had never meant to go further than liking--no one could help going as
far as liking; but the unlucky fellow, without meaning it, had taken the
step farther, and loved; and now all his card-castle of happiness had
tumbled down, and everything was over. There was nothing wrong in it--no
fault in it one way or another: and yet a great many faults would have
produced less confusion and pain.