WITH HER FATHER.
Next morning Harry went to the office with an air of resolution about
him which no one could have mistaken. He thought the others looked at
him curiously with investigating eyes, which, indeed, was true enough;
for his predecessor there never could make out how it was that the
stranger had gained so much interest with the Consul, and Paolo, who was
the only other person present, was full of the most anxious wonder and
suspense. But, as it happened, Harry was kept so fully occupied all day
that he could not say a word to the Vice-Consul, and his air of
resolution and sense of being wound up for a great crisis, came to
nothing. But he did not go near the Consulate in the evening. Had things
been in their ordinary course he would, in the most natural way, and,
indeed, with a semblance of necessity, have proceeded there to consult
Mr. Bonamy about some matter of business, or to ask directions from him.
But he forbore. He sat in his own rooms all the evening, feeling it
unutterably long, trying to amuse himself with reading, and finding very
little amusement in that somewhat unwonted exercise. He had been
“reading up,” with a great deal of industry and some interest, books
which he had heard discussed in the Vice-Consul’s house, and in this way
had at least procured a good deal of information, the advantage of which
was evident. But Harry had not read for enjoyment, and now that things
had come to this pass, and that he was about to be compelled to give up
the society of the Bonamys, and lose the gratification of pleasing Rita,
it seemed to his practical mind that there was no great reason for
continuing those studies. It was quite likely that he never would live
among such people again, and why should he take so much trouble--trouble
taken with the idea of pleasing them? it was no longer worth his while.
He was driven back to his books indeed by the tedium of the long,
unoccupied evening, for he had no heart to go out, to be waylaid by
Paolo, and have questions put to him which he would find it very
difficult to answer. But he yawned a great deal, and went to bed very
early, and slept badly in consequence, tossing about for two hours and
hearing the melancholy clocks peal. Next day he was resolved he must
speak. Indeed, it would be indispensable that he should, as it was the
day on which Rita received, and he had never yet been absent from her
drawing-room on that special evening. He had a good opportunity this
time, for the Vice-Consul called for him as soon as he appeared after
his luncheon, and bade him bring certain papers to be examined. “I quite
expected you to have brought them last night,” Mr. Bonamy said. “For two
nights we have not seen you, Oliver. Rita was asking me to-day whether
you were ill. I hope you are not ill. There’s no fever here that I know
of; still it is always well to take care.”
“I am not ill, Sir,” said Harry, colouring high, and then growing pale;
“but there was another reason. I should like to speak to you for a few
minutes, about myself, if you could spare the time.”
“Certainly I can spare you the time,” said the Vice-Consul, readily;
“but not now, you know. Come to me again as soon as the office is
closed. Shall we talk your business over here, or in the house?”
“Here, if you please,” said Harry.
“Here be it, then. Do you know you excite my curiosity? you look so
serious. But I hope it’s nothing disagreeable, nothing to interfere with
our alliance?” said the Vice-Consul, good-humouredly. He thought he knew
exactly what it was. No doubt the family had found him out, and Harry
was about to be recalled to its bosom. This would give Mr. Bonamy
himself a little regret, and he could understand that to leave a place
where everybody had been kind to him would be a sort of trial to the
young man; but at the same time it was far better for him that he should
be reconciled to his family. So he went through his business with a
little gentle interest, looking forward to the _éclaircissement_. It was
like the third volume of a novel to the Vice-Consul, and even something
more than that, more than the mere end of a story which had interested
him--for it would also settle various questions in his mind, and prove
if he had been right or not in the instantaneous opinion which he had
formed about Harry’s concerns. He felt quite sure that he would prove to
have been right. By the time Harry returned to him, after the work of
the afternoon was done, he had made out within himself quite what the
scene was to be. The young man would say: “My father is here;” or “My
brother is here,” as might be; and a hale, hearty old country gentleman,
or a young, ruddy, fresh-coloured youth, like Harry himself, would be
brought in and presented to him, and he would give himself the
gratification of saying, “This is precisely how I expected it would be;
I have been looking for you this past year daily, though I had no notion
who you were.” When Harry came back with the same face of serious
excitement the Consul almost laughed. “Bring them in, bring them in,” he
said, “I have nothing to say against you. You need not be afraid that I
will give you a bad character.” Harry looked at him with that look of
blank astonishment which so often turns into lofty superiority and
disapproval of their seniors’ folly in youthful eyes.
“Bring--whom in?” he said.
“Your people, to be sure, my dear Oliver. Come, Oliver, I am not an old
wife; you can’t conceal it from me.”
“I know nothing about my people,” said Harry, hastily; “I have nothing
more to say about them than I have already told you. Things are exactly
as they were between them and me. What I have got to tell you is a very
different sort of thing. But you will see by it, at least, Sir, that I
have no wish to conceal anything from you.”
“Bless my soul!” said the Vice-Consul, “what’s the matter? Have you got
into any scrape? Have you come in contact with the police? What is the
matter, my boy?”
“It is nothing outside of this house, Sir,” Harry said, with a grave
smile; “the police have got nothing to say to it. If it is a scrape it
is one I have got myself into, and I must get myself out of it. Anyhow,
it is not likely to hurt anybody but myself,” and here, in spite of all
his precautions, his lip quivered a little. At this moment, the very
worst for such a strong wave of feeling, it suddenly came over him what
a tremendous change it would be, and how much it would hurt himself--if
nobody else.
“You alarm me,” said Mr. Bonamy, growing grave in his turn. “My dear
fellow, I hope you feel that I take an interest in everything that
concerns you, and that you may safely confide in me----”
“Yes, Sir, I am sure of that,” said Harry; and then he added; “all the
more that it concerns you too.”
Mr. Bonamy pushed away his chair from the table, opened his eyes wide,
and looked at Harry as if he thought him mad.
“I can’t come to your house any more, Sir,” said Harry, “that’s what I
wanted to tell you. I’ve enjoyed it very much, and it has done me more
good than anything else in my life--but I ought not to do it, and I
can’t do it any longer. I hope you won’t think I am an ungrateful cur; I
don’t think I am that. But I must give it up, Sir, and I hope you’ll
excuse me for it. I’d rather not say any more.”
“Oliver,” said the Vice-Consul, greatly disturbed, “what is the meaning
of this? Do you mean there is something in your past--something in your
character and actions that makes you unfit to be my visitor? I have
always trusted in your honour. If it’s that, and your conscience has
been quickened to find it out, of course I have nothing more to say.”
“It’s not that,” said Harry, bluntly. “I am not afraid of my
conscience. It says as much to me, I suppose, as to other people; but
you might hear all it says and welcome. There is nothing against my
character here or elsewhere. You know as much harm of me as there is to
know.”
“I know no harm of you,” said the Vice-Consul. “Come, come, don’t alarm
me. If you find we don’t suit you--though by your manner I should never
have guessed it--why, then, give us up, my fine fellow, and there’s no
more to be said.”
Harry laughed a somewhat tremulous laugh.
“I should think you did suit me,” he said. “I don’t believe I was ever
half so happy before.”
“Then, in the name of wonder, what does this mean?” the Vice-Consul
cried.
Harry cleared his throat; his lips were beginning to get parched and his
throat was dry.
“Did you never hear, Sir,” he said, abruptly, “of a fellow falling in
love--with a girl he’d no business to fall in love with?”
Mr. Bonamy half rose out of his chair, then changed his mind and dropped
back again. His own face became suffused with colour. A sudden
exclamation came from his lips it spite of himself.
“Is this what has happened to you?” he said.
“This is what has happened to me,” said Harry. “I’m very sorry--nobody
can be more sorry--it shuts me out from a great deal I had got to be
proud of, and happy in. I wish I had made any blunder in the world
rather than this; but it’s done, and I can’t help it. So the only thing
I have got to do now is---- well, either to stay away from the house, or
to go away altogether, as you think best.”
“I suppose then that at my house you run the risk,” said the
Vice-Consul, with suspicious breaks in his words, either of doubt or
excitement, “of meeting--the young lady?”
Harry did not say a word; but he looked at him fixedly, with a deep
colour flaming over his face. At this the Vice-Consul gazed at him with
an alarmed expression, gradually catching fire too.
“You don’t mean to say----?” he cried, and then he was silent, and there
ensued a confused and uncomfortable pause.
“Yes, Sir,” said Harry. He had looked his chief in the face all this
time; but now he avoided the other’s eye, “that is just how it stands. I
told you it was not my fault. I never thought of such a thing. It
never,” he said, putting out his hand to a bundle of papers upon the
table by which he was standing, and turning them vaguely over and over,
“it never--happened to me before.”
When the Vice-Consul looked at him standing there, with that look of
half-astonished simplicity on his face, and those artless words on his
lips, it was all he could do to keep in an outburst of laughter. He
thought he had never come in contact with so simple-minded, and candid,
and honourable a fellow. He was startled and alarmed, and made uneasy by
his confession; but yet he had the greatest desire to laugh. Yet why
should he laugh? it was serious enough; his lively mind jumped to the
possibility that his Rita might prefer this young stranger to himself.
It would be an extraordinary choice, he could not but think; but yet,
alas! that was how things often were in this strange world. A girl would
prefer a man she had seen three or four times in a ball-room, to the
father whose very existence she was; and nobody would be surprised at
it; it was the course of nature; it was the way of the world. This idea
chilled and alarmed him to the bottom of his heart; but yet he could
hardly help laughing at Harry and his perturbed air. “I never thought of
such a thing--it never happened before.” The Consul was almost too much
amused to take in the seriousness of the event.
“I presume you have said nothing to her,” he said at last, looking
portentously serious by reason of the inclination to untimely mirth,
which he had to subdue.
“That is just the thing,” cried Harry, rousing up from his bashful
pre-occupation. “No, I have not spoken--what you would call speaking;
but on Monday night I just dropped a word----”
“Good Lord!” cried the Vice-Consul. He had no longer any inclination to
laugh; what he was disposed to do was to take the young fellow by the
throat.
“You can’t be more frightened than I was,” said Harry, ingenuously. “It
was by that I found out. Of course I knew I admired--_her_ more than
anybody I had ever seen; but I had no more notion how far it had
gone---- and then like a fool I began to speak of going home to England,
and how I was sure I could take her all safe if she would go with me.
That was all: I assure you that was all,” cried Harry, discomposed by
Mr. Bonamy’s look and manner. He was alarmed by this look: the
Vice-Consul had risen up, trembling with wrath.
“I would like to know,” he cried, “what more you could have said!--what
more could you wish to say? And this is what you call love! To betray my
child; to propose death to her--death! Oh, boy, boy, do you know what
you are doing in your folly and simplicity; beguiling her to her death,
and me to---- Good God! why should I always be such a fool? Why did I
have this fellow here?”
“You are judging me too harshly, Sir,” cried Harry; “you think it was a
great deal worse than really happened. She never took any notice of it;
it hadn’t the least meaning to her. She asked me did I know
something--some physic I suppose,” Harry said, in a kind of parenthesis,
with disdain--“that would make it safe. That was all she thought of it;
but as for me, as soon as I had said it I came to myself. I’ve had a
dreadful time of it since,” he added once more, with that air of
downright sincerity and solemnity which made the Vice-Consul wish to
smile. “I’ve turned over every kind of plan in my mind. Sometimes I’ve
thought of going right away; but that seemed hard, too, when I had just
got settled here. And at the last the right thing seemed just to come
and tell you. Of course I put myself in your hands. I’ll do whatever
you think it proper I should do: give up the office; go away from the
town; anything you please. I don’t want to leave you--or her,” cried
Harry. “God knows! you have been so kind to me!”
And then the Vice-Consul, hearing the young fellow’s voice falter, and
seeing that he kept his eyes down to conceal the water that had got into
them, felt a little knot in his throat too, and was melted in spite of
himself.
“Oliver,” he said, “I don’t want to be hard upon you. You said she took
no notice--that is just like her; she is no coquette, my girl; she is
very innocent. I daresay it never occurred to her that you meant
anything.”
“I don’t think it did, Sir,” Harry said eagerly. Of course he had no
clue to Rita’s retirement to her own room, or the amused consideration
she gave to the subject there.
“I don’t want to be hard upon you,” Mr. Bonamy repeated, “if that is the
case. Answer me one more thing, Oliver, and answer it on your honour.
Have you any reason to think (that I should have to put such a
question?) that if you had spoken out more plainly, she---- Heavens! I
can’t put it into words.”
“How could I,” cried Harry, almost provoked, “have reason to think
anything about it, when I never even suspected myself? It was that word
that opened my eyes.”
And then there was another pause. Harry stood turning over and over that
bundle of papers. He looked at them as if he thought they contained some
secret of state. He took them in his hand as if anxious to know how many
ounces they weighed. His face wore a look of the gravest stolid
seriousness. He had now withdrawn from the consideration of his duty, or
what he ought to do, and put it into another person’s hands. He was
freed of the responsibility, and he had only to wait now to see what he
should be told to do.
Then once more a sense of the humour of the situation intruded upon its
seriousness in the Vice-Consul’s eyes. His anger and alarm were quenched
in a sense of the absolute simplicity and honesty of the culprit, and a
hope that no harm had been done. Mr. Bonamy began to breathe freely
again, even to smile.
“Sit down,” he said, “and let us talk this over. I don’t blame you,
Oliver. I can understand that you were not seriously to blame; and, if
no harm is done--I suppose you will promise me that it shall not occur
again.”
“Well, Sir,” said Harry, “that is just what I should like to be able to
do; but seeing I was such a fool as to do it once, how can I tell that I
may not be a greater fool again? especially as then I did not know
anything about it, whereas I know all about it now.”
“That is just the reason,” said Mr. Bonamy. “Now you are on your guard,
and you will know when to be watchful. I can’t give you permission to
make love to--my daughter, Oliver. I suppose you did not expect I
could?”
“Oh, no,” cried Harry, eagerly; “not in the least. I could not, of
course, even if you did, for I have no money. I could no more marry than
I could fly.”
“Marry!” cried the Vice-Consul. The young man said the word in the most
matter-of-fact way, but it took away the other’s breath. “Do you know
what you are doing?” he cried; “you are putting a knife to my throat.
Marry! That means that if you could you would break up this home of mine
in which you confess you have been received so kindly. You would rob me
of all I have. You would take from me everything that makes life
precious. For what, young man, for what? Because you admire a pretty
face! You don’t know any more of her--I am not sure that you are able to
appreciate any more of her. But she is everything in the world--she is
all that makes life worth living--to me.”
Harry threw down the bundle of papers and looked across the table with
the intensest astonishment. “Do you mean,” he said, “that you don’t
intend her ever to be married at all? Is nobody to have the chance? Is
she always to be kept up in one place, and never to settle, nor have her
own choice and her own life?”
Mr. Bonamy felt as if he were being stoned--one solid, heavy fact tossed
at him after another; and looked at his questioner with a sort of gasp
between the blows. He faltered after a while, “She is very young. She
has everything that her heart can desire. Why should she not be content,
at least for years to come, in her father’s house?”
“I always understood, Sir,” said Harry, with his usual
straightforwardness, “that the right thing for girls was to marry when
they were young, and that parents were supposed to wish it.”
“To scheme for it, perhaps?” said Mr. Bonamy, furiously, “and put out
all sorts of snares to catch young fellows like you--eh? To lay traps
for you, and lead you on, and give you encouragement and opportunity,
and so forth? Perhaps you think that’s what I’ve been doing--eh? God
forgive me,” he said, “in my day I’ve said that sort of thing, and
believed it myself; I’ve sneered and scoffed like the rest--and now I’ve
got my punishment. You think there is nothing so fine for a girl as to
get married--eh?”
Harry was struck with consternation by this attack; but yet, feeling
that he had right on his side, he stood his ground. “I am not saying
anything about _you_, Sir,” he said, “but surely it is thought the best
thing that could happen. I’ve always heard it. Fathers and mothers, you
know, Sir, don’t generally live as long as their children--at least,
that is what is supposed--and they like to see their daughters settled,
don’t they, before they die?”
This was what the French would call a brutal speech--for, in the first
place, it was true; and then Mr. Bonamy was at an age which seemed old
to Harry, but rather young than otherwise to himself, and he was not at
all pleased to have it taken for granted that he must shortly be going
to die. Yes, of course Rita would outlive him, would live long, he
hoped, after him; but still the idea that there was any need to marry
her off in haste, lest he might die and leave her before she
was--settled, was most repugnant to him; it went to his heart, wounding
him with a possibility which he had no desire to think of; and it made
him hot and angry, as if it had been a personal insult. No one likes to
be told that he has come to a period of life at which it is more likely
than otherwise that he will shortly die, and that it is very necessary
to take precautions against that event. It was all he could do to keep
from bursting out upon Harry, crushing him with a bitter rejoinder. He
to address his benefactor thus! He to speak in this tone to the man who
had received him when nobody else would, who had lifted him out of all
the difficulties of a stranger, and opened not only his office, which
gave him bread, but his house, which gave him friends, and position, and
everything a young man could wish for! These words were rushing to Mr.
Bonamy’s lips, when fortunately a sense of his personal dignity, and of
the impropriety of any such demonstration, came in and stopped him.
Harry’s speech, after all, was good common sense, just the sort of thing
that everybody says; the world was on that side of the question. Perhaps
prudence and the foresight which love itself ought to possess was on
that side too. So he was silent, repressing the first instinct of reply.
When he was able to do it, he answered with as much self-possession as
he could muster.
“I admire your prudence, Mr. Oliver. I hope you will always see your own
duties with the same clearness which you display about those of others;
and I have no doubt you are quite right; but it is a question which I
don’t care to discuss. Let me say, before we finish this talk, that I
think you have behaved very honourably, and as a gentleman should; and I
quite accept your reason for coming to my house much less frequently. I
will make your excuses to my daughter; and nothing that has passed need
make any difference in our official relations,” he added, looking up
with a smile that was sharp and cold, not like his usual sunshine, “in
that respect there is no possible reason why everything should not go on
as before.”
“Very well, Sir,” said Harry, getting up with some confusion. The
conversation had been going on so long, and so much less indignation
than he expected had been in the Vice-Consul’s air at the beginning,
that this sudden sentence confounded him. He was quite ready, when he
began, to be taken at his word; but somehow he was not now so ready; the
bitterness had seemed to be past, and he had hoped that the indulgent
and fatherly friend before him would have found some way by which he
should still be permitted to come and go. But now all at once Harry
found himself, in his own words, “shut up,” and had nothing to do but to
stumble to his feet as quickly as he could, and take himself off, much
subdued and astonished, to his desk in the outer office--where he gave
his mind to his business, not too clearly, but with as much devotion as
was practicable, for the rest of the day.