A room of magnificent size; furnished with every conventional luxury
that money can buy; lavishly provided with newspapers and books of
reference; lighted by tall windows in the day-time, and by gorgeous
chandeliers at night, may be nevertheless one of the dreariest places of
rest and shelter that can be found on the civilised earth. Such places
exist, by hundreds, in those hotels of monstrous proportions and
pretensions, which now engulf the traveller who ends his journey on the
pier or the platform. It may be that we feel ourselves to be strangers
among strangers--it may be that there is something innately repellent in
splendid carpets and curtains, chairs and tables, which have no social
associations to recommend them--it may be that the mind loses its
elasticity under the inevitable restraint on friendly communication,
which expresses itself in lowered tones and instinctive distrust of
our next neighbour; but this alone is certain: life, in the public
drawing-room of a great hotel, is life with all its healthiest
emanations perishing in an exhausted receiver.
On the same day, and nearly at the same hour, when Ovid had left his
house, two women sat in a corner of the public room, in one of the
largest of the railway hotels latterly built in London.
Without observing it themselves, they were objects of curiosity to their
fellow-travellers. They spoke to each other in a foreign language.
They were dressed in deep mourning--with an absence of fashion and a
simplicity of material which attracted the notice of every other woman
in the room. One of them wore a black veil over her gray hair. Her hands
were brown, and knotty at the joints; her eyes looked unnaturally bright
for her age; innumerable wrinkles crossed and re-crossed her skinny
face; and her aquiline nose (as one of the ladies present took occasion
to remark) was so disastrously like the nose of the great Duke of
Wellington as to be an offensive feature in the face of a woman.
The lady’s companion, being a man, took a more merciful view. “She can’t
help being ugly,” he whispered. “But see how she looks at the girl with
her. A good old creature, I say, if ever there was one yet.” The lady
eyed him, as only a jealous woman can eye her husband, and whispered
back, “Of course you’re in love with that slip of a girl!”
She _was_ a slip of a girl--and not even a tall slip. At seventeen years
of age, it was doubtful whether she would ever grow to a better height.
But a girl who is too thin, and not even so tall as the Venus de’
Medici, may still be possessed of personal attractions. It was not
altogether a matter of certainty, in this case, that the attractions
were sufficiently remarkable to excite general admiration. The fine
colour and the plump healthy cheeks, the broad smile, and the regular
teeth, the well-developed mouth, and the promising bosom which form
altogether the average type of beauty found in the purely bred English
maiden, were not among the noticeable charms of the small creature in
gloomy black, shrinking into a corner of the big room. She had very
little colour of any sort to boast of. Her hair was of so light a brown
that it just escaped being flaxen; but it had the negative merit of
not being forced down to her eyebrows, and twisted into the hideous
curly-wig which exhibits a liberal equality of ugliness on the heads
of women in the present day. There was a delicacy of finish in her
features--in the nose and the lips especially--a sensitive changefulness
in the expression of her eyes (too dark in themselves to be quite in
harmony with her light hair), and a subtle yet simple witchery in
her rare smile, which atoned, in some degree at least, for want of
complexion in the face and of flesh in the figure. Men might dispute
her claims to beauty--but no one could deny that she was, in the common
phrase, an interesting person. Grace and refinement; a quickness of
apprehension and a vivacity of movement, suggestive of some foreign
origin; a childish readiness of wonder, in the presence of new
objects--and perhaps, under happier circumstances, a childish
playfulness with persons whom she loved--were all characteristic
attractions of the modest stranger who was in the charge of the ugly old
woman, and who was palpably the object of that wrinkled duenna’s devoted
love.
A travelling writing-case stood open on a table near them. In an
interval of silence the girl looked at it reluctantly. They had been
talking of family affairs--and had spoken in Italian, so as to keep
their domestic secrets from the ears of the strangers about them. The
old woman was the first to resume the conversation.
“My Carmina, you really ought to write that letter,” she said; “the
illustrious Mrs. Gallilee is waiting to hear of our arrival in London.”
Carmina took up the pen, and put it down again with a sigh. “We only
arrived last night,” she pleaded. “Dear old Teresa, let us have one day
in London by ourselves!”
Teresa received this proposal with undisguised amazement and alarm,
“Jesu Maria! a day in London--and your aunt waiting for you all the
time! She is your second mother, my dear, by appointment; and her house
is your new home. And you propose to stop a whole day at an hotel,
instead of going home. Impossible! Write, my Carmina--write. See, here
is the address on a card:--‘Fairfield Gardens.’ What a pretty place
it must be to live in, with such a name as that! And a sweet lady, no
doubt. Come! Come!”
But Carmina still resisted. “I have never even seen my aunt,” she said.
“It is dreadful to pass my life with a stranger. Remember, I was only
a child when you came to us after my mother’s death. It is hardly six
months yet since I lost my father. I have no one but you, and, when I go
to this new home, you will leave me. I only ask for one more day to be
together, before we part.”
The poor old duenna drew back out of sight, in the shadow of a
curtain--and began to cry. Carmina took her hand, under cover of
a tablecloth; Carmina knew how to console her. “We will go and see
sights,” she whispered “and, when dinner-time comes, you shall have a
glass of the Porto-porto-wine.”
Teresa looked round out of the shadow, as easily comforted as a child.
“Sights!” she exclaimed--and dried her tears. “Porto-porto-wine!” she
repeated--and smacked her withered lips at the relishing words. “Ah,
my child, you have not forgotten the consolations I told you of, when
I lived in London in my young days. To think of you, with an English
father, and never in London till now! I used to go to museums and
concerts sometimes, when my English mistress was pleased with me. That
gracious lady often gave me a glass of the fine strong purple wine. The
Holy Virgin grant that Aunt Gallilee may be as kind a woman! Such a head
of hair as the other one she cannot hope to have. It was a joy to dress
it. Do you think I wouldn’t stay here in England with you if I could?
What is to become of my old man in Italy, with his cursed asthma, and
nobody to nurse him? Oh, but those were dull years in London! The black
endless streets--the dreadful Sundays--the hundreds of thousands of
people, always in a hurry; always with grim faces set on business,
business, business! I was glad to go back and be married in Italy. And
here I am in London again, after God knows how many years. No matter.
We will enjoy ourselves to-day; and when we go to Madam Gallilee’s
to-morrow, we will tell a little lie, and say we only arrived on the
evening that has not yet come.”
The duenna’s sense of humour was so tickled by this prospective view of
the little lie, that she leaned back in her chair and laughed. Carmina’s
rare smile showed itself faintly. The terrible first interview with the
unknown aunt still oppressed her. She took up a newspaper in despair.
“Oh, my old dear!” she said, “let us get out of this dreadful room, and
be reminded of Italy!” Teresa lifted her ugly hands in bewilderment.
“Reminded of Italy--in London?”
“Is there no Italian music in London?” Carmina asked suggestively.
The duenna’s bright eyes answered this in their own language. She
snatched up the nearest newspaper.
It was then the height of the London concert season. Morning
performances of music were announced in rows. Reading the advertised
programmes, Carmina found them, in one remarkable respect, all alike.
They would have led an ignorant stranger to wonder whether any such
persons as Italian composers, French composers, and English composers
had ever existed. The music offered to the English public was music of
exclusively German (and for the most part modern German) origin. Carmina
held the opinion--in common with Mozart and Rossini, as well as other
people--that music without melody is not music at all. She laid aside
the newspaper.
The plan of going to a concert being thus abandoned, the idea occurred
to them of seeing pictures. Teresa, in search of information, tried her
luck at a great table in the middle of the room, on which useful books
were liberally displayed. She returned with a catalogue of the Royal
Academy Exhibition (which someone had left on the table), and with the
most universally well-informed book, on a small scale, that has ever
enlightened humanity--modestly described on the title-page as an
Almanac.
Carmina opened the catalogue at the first page, and discovered a list of
Royal Academicians. Were all these gentlemen celebrated painters? Out
of nearly forty names, three only had made themselves generally known
beyond the limits of England. She turned to the last page. The works of
art on show numbered more than fifteen hundred. Teresa, looking over her
shoulder, made the same discovery. “Our heads will ache, and our feet
will ache,” she remarked, “before we get out of that place.” Carmina
laid aside the catalogue.
Teresa opened the Almanac at hazard, and hit on the page devoted
to Amusements. Her next discovery led her to the section inscribed
“Museums.” She scored an approving mark at that place with her
thumbnail--and read the list in fluent broken English.
The British Museum? Teresa’s memory of that magnificent building
recalled it vividly in one respect. She shook her head. “More headache
and footache, there!” Bethnal Green; Indian Museum; College of Surgeons;
Practical Geology; South Kensington; Patent Museum--all unknown to
Teresa. “The saints preserve us! what headaches and footaches in all
these, if they are as big as that other one!” She went on with the
list--and astonished everybody in the room by suddenly clapping her
hands. Sir John Soane’s Museum, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “Ah, but I
remember that! A nice little easy museum in a private house, and all
sorts of pretty things to see. My dear love, trust your old Teresa. Come
to Soane!”
In ten minutes more they were dressed, and on the steps of the hotel.
The bright sunlight, the pleasant air, invited them to walk. On the same
afternoon, when Ovid had set forth on foot for Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
Carmina and Teresa set forth on foot for Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Trivial
obstacles had kept the man away from the College. Would trivial
obstacles keep the women away from the Museum?
They crossed the Strand, and entered a street which led out of it
towards the North; Teresa’s pride in her memory forbidding her thus far
to ask their way.
Their talk--dwelling at first on Italy, and on the memory of Carmina’s
Italian mother--reverted to the formidable subject of Mrs. Gallilee.
Teresa’s hopeful view of the future turned to the cousins, and drew
the picture of two charming little girls, eagerly waiting to give their
innocent hearts to their young relative from Italy. “Are there only
two?” she said. “Surely you told me there was a boy, besides the girls?”
Carmina set her right. “My cousin Ovid is a great doctor,” she continued
with an air of importance. “Poor papa used to say that our family would
have reason to be proud of him.” “Does he live at home?” asked simple
Teresa. “Oh, dear, no! He has a grand house of his own. Hundreds of
sick people go there to be cured, and give hundreds of golden
guineas.” Hundreds of golden guineas gained by only curing sick people,
represented to Teresa’s mind something in the nature of a miracle: she
solemnly raised her eyes to heaven. “What a cousin to have! Is he young?
is he handsome? is he married?”
Instead of answering these questions, Carmina looked over her shoulder.
“Is this poor creature following us?” she asked.
They had now turned to the right, and had entered a busy street leading
directly to Covent Garden. The “creature” (who was undoubtedly following
them) was one of the starved and vagabond dogs of London. Every now and
then, the sympathies of their race lead these inveterate wanderers to
attach themselves, for the time, to some human companion, whom their
mysterious insight chooses from the crowd. Teresa, with the hard feeling
towards animals which is one of the serious defects of the Italian
character, cried, “Ah, the mangy beast!” and lifted her umbrella. The
dog starred back, waited a moment, and followed them again as they went
on.
Carmina’s gentle heart gave its pity to this lost and hungry
fellow-creature. “I must buy that poor dog something to eat,” she
said--and stopped suddenly as the idea struck her.
The dog, accustomed to kicks and curses, was ignorant of kindness.
Following close behind her, when she checked herself, he darted away in
terror into the road. A cab was driven by rapidly at the same moment.
The wheel passed over the dog’s neck. And there was an end, as a man
remarked looking on, of the troubles of a cur.
This common accident struck the girl’s sensitive nature with horror.
Helpless and speechless, she trembled piteously. The nearest open door
was the door of a music-seller’s shop. Teresa led her in, and asked for
a chair and a glass of water. The proprietor, feeling the interest in
Carmina which she seldom failed to inspire among strangers, went the
length of offering her a glass of wine. Preferring water, she soon
recovered herself sufficiently to be able to leave her chair.
“May I change my mind about going to the museum?” she said to her
companion. “After what has happened, I hardly feel equal to looking at
curiosities.”
Teresa’s ready sympathy tried to find some acceptable alternative.
“Music would be better, wouldn’t it?” she suggested.
The so-called Italian Opera was open that night, and the printed
announcement of the performance was in the shop. They both looked at
it. Fortune was still against them. A German opera appeared on the bill.
Carmina turned to the music-seller in despair. “Is there no music,
sir, but German music to be heard in London?” she asked. The hospitable
shopkeeper produced a concert programmed for that afternoon--the modest
enterprise of an obscure piano-forte teacher, who could only venture to
address pupils, patrons, and friends. What did he promise? Among other
things, music from “Lucia,” music from “Norma,” music from “Ernani.”
Teresa made another approving mark with her thumb-nail; and Carmina
purchased tickets.
The music-seller hurried to the door to stop the first empty cab that
might pass. Carmina showed a deplorable ignorance of the law of chances.
She shrank from the bare idea of getting into a cab. “We may run over
some other poor creature,” she said. “If it isn’t a dog, it may be
a child next time.” Teresa and the music-seller suggested a more
reasonable view as gravely as they could. Carmina humbly submitted to
the claims of common sense--without yielding, for all that. “I know I’m
wrong,” she confessed. “Don’t spoil my pleasure; I can’t do it!”
The strange parallel was now complete. Bound for the same destination,
Carmina and Ovid had failed to reach it alike. And Carmina had stopped
to look at the garden of the British Museum, before she overtook Ovid in
the quiet square.