THE brilliant winter morning had an intoxicating quality in it, after
the heavy rain which had fallen in the night, and Paul Griggs felt that
it was good to be alive as he threaded the narrow streets between his
lodging and the Piazza Colonna. He avoided the Corso; for he did not
know whom he might meet, and he had no desire to meet any one, except
Angelo Reanda.
Naturally enough, his first honourable impulse was to go to the artist,
to tell him something of the truth, and to give him an opportunity of
demanding the common satisfaction of a hostile meeting. It did not occur
to him that Reanda would not wish to exchange shots with him and have
the chance of taking his life. Griggs was not the man to refuse such an
encounter, and at that moment he felt so absolutely sure of himself that
the idea of being killed was very far removed from his thoughts. It was
without the slightest emotion that he enquired for Reanda at the
latter's house, but he was very much surprised to hear that the painter
had gone out as usual at his customary hour. He hesitated a moment and
then decided not to leave a card, upon which he could not have written
a message intelligible to Reanda which should not have been understood
also by the servant who received it. Griggs made up his mind that he
would write a formal note later in the day. He took it for granted that
Reanda must be searching for his wife.
It was necessary to find a better lodging than the one in the Via della
Frezza, and to provide as well as he could for Gloria's comfort. He was
met by a difficulty upon which he had not reflected as yet, though he
had been dimly aware of it more than once during the past twelve hours.
He was almost penniless, and he had no means of obtaining money at short
notice. The payments he received from the newspapers for which he worked
came regularly, but were not due for at least three weeks from that day.
Alone in his bachelor existence he could have got through the time very
well and without any greater privations than his capriciously ascetic
nature had often imposed upon itself.
He was not an improvident man, but in his lonely existence he had no
sense of future necessities, and the weakest point in his judgment was
his undiscriminating generosity. Of the value of money as a store
against possible needs, he had no appreciation at all, and he gave away
what he earned beyond his most pressing requirements in secret and often
ill-judged charities, whenever an occasion of doing so presented
itself, though he never sought one. For himself, he was able to subsist
on bread and water, and the meagre fare was scarcely a privation to his
hardy constitution. If he chanced to have no money to spare for fuel, he
bore the cold and buttoned up his old pea-jacket to the throat while he
sat at work at his table. His self-respect made him wise and careful in
regard to his dress, but in other matters many a handicraftsman was
accustomed to more luxury than he. At the present juncture he had been
taken unawares, and he found himself in great difficulty. He had left
himself barely enough for subsistence until the arrival of the next
remittance, and that meant but a very few scudi; and yet he knew that
certain expenses must be met immediately, almost within the twenty-four
hours. The very first thing was to get a lodging suitable for Gloria. It
would be necessary to pay at least one month's rent in advance. Even if
he were able to do that, he would be left without a penny for daily
expenses. He had no bank account; for he cashed the drafts he received
and kept the money in his room. He had never borrowed of an
acquaintance, and the idea was repulsive to him and most humiliating.
Had he possessed any bit of jewelry, or anything of value, he would have
sold the object, but he had nothing of the kind. His books were
practically valueless, consisting of such volumes as he absolutely
needed for his daily use, chiefly cheap editions, poorly bound and well
worn. He needed at least fifty scudi, and he did not possess quite ten.
Three weeks earlier he had sent a hundred, anonymously, to free a
starving artist from debt.
His position was only very partially enviable just then, but the bright
north wind seemed to blow his troubles back from him as he faced it,
walking home from his ineffectual attempt to meet Reanda. It was very
unlike the man to return to his lodging without having accomplished
anything, but he was hardly conscious of the fact. The face of the
ancient city was suddenly changed, and it seemed as though nothing could
go wrong if he would only allow fortune to play her own game without
interference. He walked lightly, and there was a little colour in his
face. He tried to think of what he should do to meet his present
difficulties, but when he thought of them they were whirled away,
shapeless and unrecognizable, and he felt a sense of irresistible power
with each breath of the crisp dry air.
As he went along he glanced at the houses he passed, and on some of the
doors were little notices scrawled in queer handwritings and telling
that a lodging was to let. Occasionally he paused, looked up and
hesitated, and then he went on. The difficulty was suddenly before him,
and he knew that even if he looked at the rooms he could not hire them,
as he had not enough money to cover the first month's rent. Immediately
he attempted to devise some means of raising the sum he needed, but
before he had reached the very next corner the clear north wind had
blown the trouble away like a cobweb. With all his strength and industry
and determination, he was still a very young man, and perplexity had no
hold upon him since passion had taken its own way.
He reached the corner of his own street and stood still for a few
moments. He could almost have smiled at himself as he paused. He had
been out more than an hour and had done nothing, thought out nothing,
made no definite plan for the future. His present poverty, which was
desperate enough, had put on a carnival mask and laughed at him, as it
were, and ran away when he tried to grapple with it and look it in the
face. Gloria was there, upstairs in that tall house on which the morning
sun was shining, and nothing else could possibly matter. But if anything
mattered, it would be simple to talk it over together and to decide it
in common.
Suddenly he felt ashamed of himself and of the confusion of his own
intelligence. There was something meek and childish in standing still at
the street corner, watching the people as they went by, listening to the
regularly recurring yell of the man who was selling country vegetables
from a hand-cart, and looking into the faces of people who went by, as
though expecting to find there some solution of a difficulty which his
disturbed powers of concentration did not clearly grasp. He could not
think connectedly, much less could he reason sensibly. He made a few
steps forward towards his house, and then stopped again, asking himself
what he was going to do. He felt that he had no right to go back to
Gloria until he had decided something for the future. He felt like a boy
who has been sent on an errand, and who comes back having forgotten what
he was to do. All at once he had lost his hold upon the logic of
common-sense, and when he groped for a thread that might lead him, he
was suddenly dazzled by the blaze of his happiness and deafened by the
voice of his own joy.
He went on again and came to his own door. The one-eyed cobbler was at
work, astride of his little bench with a brown pot of coals beside him.
From time to time, when he had drawn the waxed yarn out through the
leather on both sides, he blew into his black hands. Griggs stood still
and looked at him in idle indetermination, and only struggling against
the power that drew him towards the stairs.
"A fine north wind," observed Griggs, by way of salutation.
"It seems that it must be said," grunted the old man, punching a fresh
hole in the sole he was cobbling. "To me, my fingers say it. It has
always been a fine trade, this cobbling. It is a gentleman's trade
because one is always sitting down."
"I am going to change my lodging," said Griggs.
The cobbler looked up, resting his dingy fists upon the bench on each
side of the shoe, his awl in one hand, the other half encased in a
leathern sheath, black with age.
"After so many years!" he exclaimed. "The world will also come to an
end. I expected that it would. Now where will you take lodging?"
"Where I can find one. I want a little apartment--"
"It seems that your affairs go better," observed the old man,
scrutinizing the other's face with his one eye.
"No. No better. That is the trouble. I want a little apartment, and I do
not want to pay for it till the end of the first month."
"Then wait till the end of the month before you move to it, Signore."
"That is impossible."
"Then there is a female," said the cobbler, without the slightest
hesitation. "I understand. Why did you not say so?"
Griggs hesitated. The man's guess had taken him by surprise. He
reflected that it could make no difference whether the old cobbler knew
of Gloria's coming or not.
"There is a signora--a relation of mine--who has come to Rome."
"A fair signora? Very beautiful? With a little eye of the devil? I have
seen. Thanks be to heaven, one eye is still good. You are dark, and your
family is fair. How can it interest me?"
"What? Has she gone out?" asked Griggs, in sudden anxiety. "When?"
"I had guessed!" exclaimed the cobbler, with a grunting laugh, and he
ran the delicate bristles, which pointed the yarn, in opposite
directions through the hole he had made, caught one yarn round the knot
on the handle of the awl and the other round the leather sheath on his
left hand. He drew the yarn tight to his arm's length with a vicious
jerk.
"When did the signora go out?" enquired Griggs, repeating his question.
"It may be half an hour ago. Apoplexy! If your relations are all as
beautiful as that!"
But Griggs was already moving towards the staircase. The cobbler called
him back, and he stood still at the foot of the steps.
"There is the little apartment on the left, on the third floor," said
the man. "The lodgers went away yesterday. I was going to ask you to
write me a notice to put up on the door. As for paying, the padrone will
not mind, seeing that you are an old lodger. It is good, do you know?
There is sun. There is also a kitchen. There are five rooms with the
entry."
[Illustration: "The horror of poverty smote him."--Vol. II., p. 123.]
"I will take it," said Griggs, instantly, and he ran up the stairs.
He was breathless with anxiety as he entered his work-room, and looked
about him for something which should tell him where Gloria was gone.
Almost instantly his eyes fell upon a sheet of paper lying before his
accustomed seat. The writing on it was hers.
"I have gone to tell him. I shall be back soon."
That was all it said, but it was enough to blacken the sun that streamed
through the windows upon the old carpet. Griggs sat down and rested his
head in his hand. With the cloud that came between him and happiness,
his powers of reason returned, and he saw quickly, in the pre-vision of
logic, a scene of violence and anger between husband and wife, a
possible reconciliation, and the instant wreck of his storm-driven love.
It was impossible to know what Gloria would tell Reanda.
At the same instant the difficulties of his position rushed upon him and
demanded an instant solution. He looked about him at the poor room, the
miserable furniture, and the worn-out carpet, and the horror of poverty
smote him in the face. He had allowed Gloria to come to him, and he knew
that he could not support her decently. He had never found himself in
so desperate a position in the course of his short and adventurous life.
He could face anything when he alone was to suffer privation, but it was
horrible to force misery upon the woman he loved.
Then, too, he asked himself what was to happen to Gloria if Reanda
killed him, as was possible enough. And if he were not killed, there was
Dalrymple, her father, who might return at any moment. No one could
foretell what the Scotchman would do. It would be like him to do nothing
except to refuse ever to see his daughter again. But he, also, might
choose to fight, though his English traditions would be against it. In
any case, Gloria ran the risk of being left alone, ruined and
unprotected.
But the present problem was a meaner one, though not less desperate in
its way. He reproached himself with having wasted even an hour when the
case was so urgent. Without longer hesitation, he began to write letters
to the editors for whom he worked, requesting them as a favour to
advance the next remittance. Even then, he could scarcely expect to have
money in less than ten days, and there was no one to whom he would
willingly turn for help. Under ordinary circumstances he would have gone
without food for days rather than have borrowed of an acquaintance, but
he realized that he must overcome any such false pride within a day or
two, at the risk of making Gloria suffer.
In those first hours he was not conscious of any question of right or
wrong in what had taken place. Honour, in a rather worldly sense, had
always supplied for him the place of all other moral considerations. The
woman he loved had been ill-treated by her husband, and had come to him
for protection. He had done his best, in spite of his love, to make her
go back, and she had known how to refuse. Men, as men, would not blame
him for what he was doing. Gloria, as a woman, could never reproach him
with having tempted her. He might suffer for his deeds, but he could
never blush for them.