Minna had given Hans her address, and he one day called to see her. It
was getting near the end of her stay in London.
Her first reflection as he came into the room was perhaps slightly
irrelevant.
‘How old is Hans now? Let me see: he must be twenty-eight at least. He
might be anything, as far as looks go.’
He certainly might have been anything from twenty-eight to
thirty-eight, because he was dark and grave, with a certain
picturesqueness of figure and richness of colouring which made him
look older than he really was. There was nothing left in him of that
ingenuousness which she had known in him when he had been a youth. His
movements had a certain slowness and deliberation which was neither
languor nor effeminacy. His smile, very infrequent, was delightful when
it came, and it came now as he drew near to his cousin Minna, took her
hand, and bent his fine dark eyes upon her.
‘I have been remiss, Minna. I wanted to come before; but when one has
been two whole years outside one’s own country, and returned to London,
one is apt to find a good deal to do--to put it mildly.’
‘I can well believe it, and feel the privilege of receiving any visit
from you. To tell the truth, I thought you were booked to be abroad a
good deal longer.’
‘I had vaguely thought about staying longer. But I’m a vagrant--I got
tired of cloudless blue skies and endless unabashed sunshine, and all
at once began to long for some English damp and greenness.’
‘In London?’
‘I see you have not lost your old trick of taking a fellow up pretty
sharply. No, not in London--at least, only at first. I’m hoping soon
to be in the country. I shall spend the whole summer, at least, in
England, and I hope you will let me come and see you before it is over.’
‘Surely. I should think it very strange if you went away without coming
to see me. You don’t know our part of the country, either. Yes, you
must come. Come when you like. You must take us as you find us--Signor
Oriole and Rhoda and me.’
‘He is still with you, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it true that Mrs. Marchmont has an idea of going with you to look
at this place near yours?’
‘Yes. We go together the day after to-morrow. She says it is to be only
for one night.’
‘H’m. She knows Oriole is with you?’
‘Of course she knows. Hans, I must congratulate you on your picture. It
is odd that you and I should be hand-in-hand here, after Rome, isn’t
it? Those old days, I see, remained in your heart as well as in mine. I
felt quite a thrill when I saw it. I pointed it out to Mrs. Marchmont.’
‘Did you? What did she say?’
‘You are so popular now that I can afford to tell you exactly what she
said. “Very pretty, and very sentimental,” were her words. “He can do
better than that, and intends to.”’
Hans smiled slightly with eyes a little downcast, and pulled out the
fingers of the glove which he had removed from his right hand.
‘She has not grown sentimental, at any rate,’ he said, with the
faintest possible shrug of the shoulders.
‘No,’ said Minna slowly. ‘You go there often, I suppose?’ she added,
almost abruptly.
‘Oh no!’ replied Hans, lifting his eye at once, and looking straight
at her. ‘Very little. She is frightfully particular. Of course there
can be no sympathy between him and me, fiend that he is; and she simply
doesn’t encourage men about the place. Of course I call now and then,
so do a few others; but none of us go as often as we should like to.’
He spoke with a grave simplicity which had something almost boyish in
it, and which stirred Minna’s heart to a warm feeling for him. Her
expression at once became more cordial.
‘You see,’ he went on, ‘there’s no chaperon, no lady-companion, no
nothing. She’s all alone; Marchmont said he would have no one of the
sort about the house, so----’ He shrugged his shoulders again.
Minna thought to herself: ‘That is, she does not choose to have a
chaperon. Of course she could have one if she liked. But she has no
need of any such appendage. She is strong.’ All she said was:
‘Well, I dare say she is quite right. Then, Hans, you will let me know
when you want to come and stay with me. It is a simple place, you know.
Don’t expect the luxuries of your father’s palace down at Brighton.’
‘Don’t twit me with that,’ said Hans vexedly. ‘How I detest that place,
Minna! The horrible vulgarity of it, the smell of money, for it is
nothing else. The girls--have you seen any of the girls lately?’
‘Not very lately. Once or twice one of them has condescended to
penetrate to our Northern wilds, and astonish the natives with her
costumes, and her general tone of fashion and--what must one call
it?--_disinvoltura_. But you know they are not bad girls. Their bark is
far worse than their bite. It is their education.’
‘I don’t get on with them,’ said Hans candidly. ‘And they think me
a mooning, sentimental idiot. So there is a great sympathy between
us. The whole aspect of that place--the newness, the bareness, the
glass-houses, and the gravel drive; the organ, and the picture-gallery,
and--_tutti quanti_! No, I will promise you not to pine after it when I
am with you.’
‘Don’t despise it, my good sir. It means ease and freedom from care
for you in days to come. You are an artist now; you may be a Mæcenas
some time.’
‘I don’t want to be either,’ he said, drawing his brows together.
‘Not wish to be an artist! Hans!’
‘Well, not that exactly. We always want what we haven’t got. My wishes
I tell to no one.’
He rose to take leave. She did not detain him. He repeated his promise
of writing to her, and departed. After he had gone she stood for a few
minutes, thoughtfully looking down, her hand resting on the mantelpiece.
‘I wonder if his wishes have any connection whatsoever with his
picture,’ she thought to herself, and shook her head. ‘I hope not.’
* * * * *
Fulvia kept her word, and met Minna at the railway-station on the
appointed day. She dismissed her servant, when he had attended to her,
saying:
‘You can go, Parkinson. Be sure you see Mr. Marchmont, and tell him it
was all right at the station, and that I will send a telegram to-morrow
to say at what time you are to meet me. It may be night.’
The man went away. Very soon the two women were alone together in the
carriage, and the train speeding swiftly Northwards.
They were not very talkative, but at last Fulvia said:
‘What did people think and say when Signor Oriole became part of your
household?’
Minna shrugged her shoulders.
‘My dear, what could they do or say? My well-known eccentricity was
considered to account for everything. One or two of them said it was
very funny, but I really did not care much what they said. Besides, I
had my brother to support me in all that I did. He quite approved.’
‘Your brother?’
‘Yes. I have one brother, and scarcely another relation in the world.
His daughter, my niece Rhoda, almost lives with me. My brother is a man
whom no one can despise or pooh-pooh. He is a very lucky man. He holds
extreme opinions (so called) on many questions, social and religious
and others, and yet he is accepted and respected as if he were the
most orthodox of the orthodox. You know, I am a much more commonplace,
conservative person than he is in reality, and yet I have the credit
of being reckless, impulsive and defiant of all the conventionalities,
while Mr. Hamilton, who despises conventionalities in a practical
way which I dare not attempt, is a tame cat in the most rigorously
respectable houses. Thus it is sometimes.’
‘Yes, I know. What did he do, then--Mr. Hamilton--to make things
straight?’
‘My dear Fulvia, I cannot admit that they needed making straight. But
if they did, this is how it was managed. Very soon after my return
home with Signor Oriole, Richard came to stay with me, bringing Rhoda
with him. He paid me a long visit. He was seen everywhere with Signor
Oriole. They got on splendidly. We were all together constantly. My
niece and your--and Signor Oriole are devoted to each other. His ways
with children and young people are fascinating--there are no fathers so
charming to their children as the Italian fathers. You have only to see
them together to know that at once. Then we all went away together, and
stayed a good while at my brother’s place--in fact, we live alternately
at each other’s houses. I returned, with Rhoda and Signor Oriole. He
has taught her Latin and Italian. There was really nothing to be said.
I do not know a single friend of mine who really knows him and dislikes
him.’
‘No,’ said Fulvia, in a low voice and with downcast eyes. ‘To know him
is to love him. If Beppo had had the destiny suited to him he would
have been the adored father of the happiest family of children the
world ever knew. I know it.’
She said no more about it, but something in her face told Minna that
she felt all this more deeply than, perhaps, she would have admitted.
Minna was thinking of the coming meeting all the time that she was
driving Fulvia in her pony-carriage from the station to her house, a
distance of some six miles. They drove through the lanes, whose hedges
were fresh with the brilliant green of early June, not yet white
with hawthorn--that is a bloom which rarely shows itself early in
Durham--clear-looking fields and pastures, great trees with polished
leaves shining as they rustled in the wind; along the highroads they
drove, elevated and giving great sweeps of landscape, chiefly huge
swells of moorland, purple under the changing sky, and in the far
distance a silver shimmer which was the sea. The air was fresh and
cool, the sun was bright, the pony was happy and willing. The six
miles were quickly covered, and then they stopped in front of a small
plain wicket from which a short footpath led to the deep porch of a
long-fronted two-storied house without any claims to architecture.
Windows had here and there been thrown out, to afford more room and
more light, quite regardless of neatness or any effort at appearance.
Different kinds of roses clambered over the porch and up to the
windows, and a thick mass of ivy covered all one side of the house. At
the sound of their wheels a gardener’s boy had come from some hidden
region, grinning from ear to ear, to hold the pony. A waiting maid in a
lilac print gown and a white apron came flying forth from the kitchen
side of the house, smiling a welcome.
‘Take the things, Mary. Put that bag in the blue room for Mrs.
Marchmont. Is Signor Oriole in?’
‘Yes, ma’am. At least, he was writing in his study half an hour ago.’
‘Come, Fulvia,’ said Minna, gently taking her hand, and leading her
into the house. The front door stood wide open, showing a broad tiled
passage, square, like a hall full of shade, but with rays of sunshine
pouring down also from a landing window at the head of a short flight
of shallow stairs. Minna paused a moment, and then said:
‘You will come and speak to him at once, won’t you?’
‘Oh yes, please,’ replied Fulvia, almost nervously. ‘At once. Then it
will be done with.’
‘This way, then. Shall I go away, and leave you with him?’
‘No, oh no, my dear Mrs. Hastings!’ she exclaimed almost imploringly.
‘Come with me, and stay all the time; I am strong, but I am not made of
iron.’
‘I will stay,’ was all that Minna said, leading her along a passage,
and through a sort of little anteroom to a door at which she knocked. A
voice from within cried, ‘Avanti.’ Fulvia was pale as death, still and
rigid. Without pausing, Minna opened the door and went in, drawing her
companion with her by the hand.
Facing them, and just rising from his place before a table covered
with writing materials, papers, and books, was Signor Oriole, a
white-headed, white-bearded man with a pale face, but with thick
eyebrows, scarcely touched with the frost of years, and flashing dark
eyes, clear and brilliant as ever, belying his look of age. Minna felt
Fulvia’s hand spring aside within hers. She divined the shiver of
emotion which must be shaking her soul; she quietly released the hand,
and, blotting out her presence as much as possible, said simply:
‘Here is Fulvia, signore.’
Fulvia stood, looking pale and rigid still. Mechanically she allowed
him to take her hand; they were both very grave as they looked one
another in the eyes. Their last interview had been that in which Oriole
had offered to take Fulvia away with him and hide them both from her
mother’s iron resolution--that in which his whole heart had gone to
her, and in which she, white, trembling, agonized, but resolute, had
strung herself up to refuse the offer--to stay, and take what should
come. At parting she had flung herself into his arms with a wail of
despair, and he had strained her to his heart and kissed her without a
word. It had been the moment in which they had come nearest to flinging
aside all concealment, but they had parted even then without the final
word.
It could not be that moments such as that were not distinctly present
in the consciousness of both. But now, after a few seconds of what
seemed paralyzed silence, Fulvia’s figure lost its rigid look. She
smiled, just the same sweet, cool smile that Minna knew so well, and
said:
‘After so long we meet. It is only a week since I knew you lived here
with Mrs. Hastings. Let me tell you, caro signore, I find you look
much better here than you used to do in Rome.’
‘Good heavens! Is that all she has to say?’ muttered Minna beneath her
breath.
‘And you, Fulvia, are indeed changed,’ was his reply, as he bent his
eyes upon her piercingly, but apparently without much emotion. ‘It is
true, you have grown five years older since I saw you--a long time in a
young woman’s life.’
He lifted her hand to his lips and bowed over it with courtly,
old-fashioned grace. They spoke quietly and steadily, but Minna noticed
that they both spoke Italian, and addressed each other in Roman fashion
with _voi_ instead of _lei_[A] and she drew her own conclusions from
these facts.
[A] _Voi_, you; _lei_, thee. The latter is the usual mode of address
when any politeness or formality is exacted. The former betokens some
familiarity, but is much more used, even by acquaintances, in Southern
than in Northern Italy.
It did not last much longer. Minna made a move to leave the room,
saying she would show Fulvia her bedroom, and send her a cup of tea
there. They all moved away. The meeting was over. The emotions,
whatever they might have been, had been well choked down, resolutely
repressed from motives of common-sense and decent self-control.
Thus, under this foreign but friendly Northern roof, did the father and
daughter meet--children of the South and of its hot impulses, eager
quickness, passionate loves and hates--both beaten by circumstances
into a demeanour and a conduct utterly different from that which would
have been natural to them; both, in spite of all the past, in spite of
all that had been lived out and battled through by them, in spite of
every attracting link of sorrow and suffering, ‘strangers yet.’