THE ARRIVAL.
To the reader who is better acquainted with the causes and character of
Frederick Eastwood’s detention on his journey than either his mother or
her Privy Councillor, the fears entertained by these ladies in respect
to his health will scarcely appear deserving of much consideration. His
health, indeed, very soon came right again. Two days’ rest at Pisa, the
substitution of the _vin du pays_ for champagne, and the absence of
other excitements, made him quite equal to contemplate the journey home
without anxiety, so far as his own interesting person was concerned. He
had difficulties enough, however, of another kind. He was obliged to
stay a day longer than he intended, in order to fit out his cousin with
various things pronounced by Mrs. Drainham to be indispensable. She had
to be clothed in something more fit for a journey than the thin black
frock which Niccolo had ordered for her at her father’s death. Pisa did
not afford much in the way of toilette; but still the dress and cloak
procured by Mrs. Drainham were presentable; and the fastidious young man
was extremely grateful to the physician’s pretty wife for clothing his
companion so that he should not be ashamed to be seen with her, which
would have been the case had the poor child travelled, as she intended,
in her only warm garment, the velvet cloak.
“It must have been a stage property in its day,” Frederick said, looking
at the many tints of its old age with disgust.
Innocent hid it away instantly in the depths of her old trunk, and sat
proudly shivering with cold in her thin frock through all the long
evening,--the cold, long, lingering night which preceded their
departure. She thought her cousin would have come to her; but Frederick
wisely reflected that he would have enough of her society for the next
few days, and preferred the Drainhams’ comfortable drawing-room instead.
Poor Innocent! she stood in the old way at the window, but not impassive
as of old, looking for some one this time, and trying with a beating
heart to make him out among the crowd that moved along the Lung’ Arno.
This expectation engrossed her so much that she forgot to think of the
change that was about to come upon her life. I do not know, indeed, that
she was capable of thinking of anything so complex as this change. She
had wandered from one place to another with her father, living always
the same dreary, secluded life, having such simple wants as she was
conscious of supplied, and nothing ever required of her. I believe, had
it been suggested to her unawakened mind that thenceforward she must do
without Niccolo, this would have been the most forcible way of rousing
her to thought of what was about to happen. And, indeed, this was
exactly the course which was about to be taken, though without any idea
on the part of Niccolo of the effect it would produce. He came in as
usual with his little tray, the salad heaped up, green and glistening
with oil just as he liked it himself. Beside it, as this was the last
evening, was a small, but smoking hot, dish of maccaroni, a morsel of
cheese on a plate, and a _petit pain_, more delicate than the dry
Italian bread. The usual small flask of red wine flanked this meal,
which Niccolo brought in with some state, as became the little festa
which he had prepared for his charge. Tears were in the good fellow’s
eyes, though his beard was divided in its blackness by the kind smile
which displayed his red lips and white teeth. He arranged it on the
little table close by the stove, placed the chair beside it, and trimmed
the lamp before he called upon his Signorina, whose position by the
window he had immediately remarked with a shrug of his shoulders. He had
taken care of her all her life; but I am not sure that the good Niccolo
was not glad to be relieved of a charge so embarrassing. His own
prospects were certainly brightened by her departure. He had served her
father faithfully and long with but poor recompense, and now the reward
of his faithfulness was coming to Niccolo in the shape of a better
place, with higher wages, and a position which was very splendid in his
eyes. Never was heart more disposed to entertain a romantic devotion for
the child he had nurtured; but it is difficult for the warmest heart to
give itself up in blind love to an utterly unresponsive being, whether
child or man, and as Innocent did not love Niccolo or any one else the
separation from her was less hard than it might otherwise have been.
Nevertheless there were tears in his eyes, and his heart was softened
and melting when he arranged her supper for her, and went to the cold
window to call her to her solitary meal. He touched her shoulder
caressingly with his hand.
“Santissima Madonna!” cried Niccolo, “you will die of cold, my poor
young lady; you have nothing but this thin dress, which cannot keep you
warm. Where in the name of all the saints is your cloak?”
“I have put it away. It is ugly; it is not fit to wear,” cried Innocent.
“It is a thing of the theatre. Why did you let me wear it?” and she put
off his hand gently enough, but coldly, and continued her watch.
“A thing of the theatre!” cried Niccolo, indignant, “when I bought it
myself at the sale of the pittore Inglese, who died over the way; and
you looked like a princess when you put it on, and warm as a bird in a
nest. But I know who it is that turns you against your old dresses, and
your old way of living, and your poor old Niccolo. It is the cousin. I
hope he will be to you all we have been, Signorina. But in the meantime
my young lady is served, and if she does not eat, the maccaroni will be
cold. Cold maccaroni is good for no one. The cousin will not come
to-night.”
“You do not know,” said Innocent, turning a momentary look upon him,
which was half a defiance and half a question.
“But I do know,” said Niccolo; “he went to the house of the English
doctor half an hour ago, and bid me tell the Signorina to be prepared at
ten to-morrow. Come, then, to the maccaroni. When everything else fails
it is always good to have maccaroni to fall back upon. _Chi ha buon
pane, e buon vino, ha troppo un micolino._”
“I do not care for maccaroni,” said Innocent. She turned from the
window, however, with a dawning of the pride of a woman who feels
herself slighted. “Niccolo, I do not want anything: you can go away.”
“And this is how she parts with the old Niccolo!” he cried. “I have
carried her in my arms when she was little. I have dressed her, and
prepared for her to eat and drink all her life. I have taken her to the
festa, and to the church. I have done all for her--all! and the last
night she tells me, ‘I do not want anything, Niccolo; you may go away.’”
“The last night?” said Innocent, moved a little. She shivered with the
cold, and with the pang of desertion, and with that new-born sense of
her loneliness which had never struck her before. She knelt down by the
stove to get a little warmth, and turned her eyes inquiringly upon him.
She knew what he meant very well, and yet she did not know.
“The last night” said Niccolo. “To-morrow evening you will be upon the
great sea; you will be on your way to your relations, to your England,
which cannot be colder than your heart, Signorina. I weep, for I cannot
forget that you were once a little child, and that I carried you in my
arms. When I reflect that it is fifteen years, fifteen years that I have
taken care of you, from the moment your nurse left you, _disgraziata!_
and that after to-morrow I shall see you no more! Whatever has to be
done for you must be done by others, or will not be done at all, which
is more likely. When you want anything you may call ‘Niccolo, Niccolo;’
but there will be no Niccolo to reply. If I were to permit myself to
think of all this I should become _pazzo_, Signorina--though you don’t
care.”
Innocent said nothing; but slowly the reality of this tremendous
alteration in her lot made itself apparent to her. No Niccolo! She could
not realize it. With Niccolo, too, many other things would disappear.
She looked round the lofty bare walls, which, indeed, had few
attractions except those of use and wont, and faintly it dawned upon her
that her whole life and everything that was familiar to her was about to
vanish away. Large tears filled her eyes; she turned to Niccolo an
appealing, beseeching look. “I do not understand,” she cried, with a
panting breath; and put out her hands, and clung to him. He who was
about to be left behind was the emblem of all the known, the familiar--I
do not say the dear, for the girl’s heart and soul had been sealed up,
and she loved nothing. But she knew him, and relied upon him, and had
that child’s trust that he would never fail her, which is often all that
a child knows of love. No Niccolo! She did not understand how existence
was to go on without him. She clung to him with a look of sudden alarm
and dismay in her dilated eyes.
The good Niccolo was satisfied. He had not wished or attempted to rouse
that miserable, vague sense of desertion and abandonment of which he had
no comprehension; but he was satisfied to have brought out some evidence
of feeling, and also that his dramatic appeal had produced the due
effect. “My dearest young lady!” he said, wiping the great tears from
her eyes with his own red handkerchief, a service which he, indeed, had
performed many a time before. “Carissima Signorina mia! There will never
be a day of my life that I will not think of you, nor shall I ever enter
a church without putting the blessed Madonna in mind of my poor, dear,
well-beloved young lady who has no mother! Never, carina! never, my
child, my little mistress! You may always rely upon your old Niccolo;
and when my young lady marries a rich milordo she will come back to
Pisa, and seek out her old servant, and say to the handsome, beautiful
young husband, ‘This is my old Niccolo, that brought me up!’ Ah, carina
mia,” cried the good fellow, laughing and crying, and applying the red
handkerchief first to Innocent’s cheeks and then to his own, “that will
be a magnificent day to look forward to! The young milordo will say
immediately, ‘Niccolo shall be the maestro della casa; he shall live and
die in my service.’ Ah, my beautiful Signorina, what happiness! I will
go with you to England or anywhere. You were born to be our delight!”
cried Niccolo, carried away by his feelings, and evidently imagining
that the _giorno magnifico_ had arrived already. Innocent, however, did
not follow these rapid vicissitudes of feeling. To get one clear idea
into her mind was difficult enough. Sometimes she looked at him,
sometimes into the little fire, with its ruddy embers. Her head was
giddy, her heart dully aching. All was going away from her; the room,
the walls, seemed to turn slowly round, as if they would dissolve and
break up into vapour. The very dumbness of her heart made this vague
sense of misery the more terrible; she could say nothing. She could not
have told what she felt or what she feared; but all the world seemed to
be dissolving about her into coldness and darkness and loneliness; the
cold penetrated to her very soul; she was miserable, as we may imagine a
dumb animal to be, without any way of relieving itself of the confused
pain in its mind.
Niccolo, after a while, became alarmed, and devoted himself to her
restoration with all the tender kindness of his race. He rushed to the
trunk, and got out the old mantle, in which he wrapped her; he put the
scaldino into her hands, he brought her wine, and petted and smiled her
back into composure. He carried the largest scaldino in the house, full
of the reddest embers, into her stony bedroom. “It is not the cold,” he
said to himself, “it is the sorrow, poverina! poverina! Let no one say
after this that she has not a tender heart.” And when she went to bed
Niccolo stayed up all night--cheerful, yet sad--to finish the packing,
to set everything straight, and to leave the apartment in such order
that the Marchese Scaramucci might have no grievance against his tenant,
and as small a bill of repairs as possible. Good, kindly soul; he was
rather glad though, on the whole, that to-morrow he was going to the new
master, who was rich, and kept a number of servants, and who, being a
milordo, might perhaps be cheated now and then in a friendly way.
And next morning Innocent’s old world did break up into clouds and
vapours. For the last time she stole over to the little church in the
dark morning, and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then sat still, looking at
the little altar, where this time the candles were lighted, and a
priest saying mass. The mass had nothing to do with Innocent. The drone
of the monotonous voice, the gleam of the candles, made no sort of
impression upon her. Her imagination was as little awakened as her heart
was. If she thought of anything at all it was, with a sore sense of a
wound somewhere, that Frederick had left her, that he had not come near
her, that he was happy away from her; but all quite vague; nothing
definite in it, except the pang. And then Santa Maria della Spina, and
the high houses opposite, and the yellow river below, and the clustered
buildings about the Duomo, and all Pisa, in short, melted into the
clouds, and rolled away like a passing storm, and the new world began.
What kind of a strange phantasmagoric world this was, full of glares of
light and long stretches of darkness; of black, plunging, angry waves,
ready to drown the quivering, creaking, struggling vessel, which carried
her and her fortunes; then of lights again wavering and dancing before
the eyes, which were still unsteady from the sea; and once more the long
sweep of the railway through the night, more lights, more darkness,
succeeding and succeeding each other like the changes in a dream--we
need not attempt to describe. It was four days after their start from
Pisa, when her strength was quite worn out by the continuous and unusual
fatigue both to body and mind, her nerves shaken, and all her powers of
sensation dulled, when, shuddering at the sight, she came again to the
short but angry sea which had to be crossed to England. It was not a
“silver streak” that day. There are a great many days in the year, as
the traveller knows, in which it is anything but a “silver streak.” In
short, few things wilder, darker, more tempestuous, and terrible could
be conceived than the black belt of Channel across which Innocent fought
her way in the Dover steamboat to where a darker shadow lay upon the
edge of the boiling water, a shadow which was England. For a wonder, she
was not sea-sick. Frederick, whose self-control under such circumstances
was dubious, had established her in a corner, and then had left her, not
coming near her again till they entered the harbour, which was no
unkindness on his part, but an effort of self-preservation, which the
most _exigeant_ would have approved. He had been very good to her on the
journey, studying her comfort in every way, taking care of her almost as
Niccolo had done, excusing all her little misadventures with her
hand-bag, and the shawl she carried over her arm. He had let her head
rest upon his shoulder; he had allowed her to hold his hand fast when
the steamboat went up and down on the Mediterranean. These days of
fatigue had been halcyon days of perfect repose and confidence in her
companion. The poor child had never known any love in her barren life,
and this kindness, which she did not know either, seemed in her eyes
something heavenly, delicious beyond power of description. It had never
been possible for her to cling to any one before, and yet her nature
and breeding both made her dependent and helpless in her ignorance.
Frederick appeared to her in such a light as had as yet touched nothing
else in earth or heaven. Her heart woke to him and clung to him, but
went no further. Her eyes searched all the dark figures on the deck in
search of him when self-preservation drove him from her side. A
cloud--an additional cloud--came on the world when he was absent. She
felt no interest in the darksome England which loomed out of the mists;
no curiosity even about the home it enclosed, or the unknown women who
would hereafter so strangely affect her happiness. She gazed blankly at
the cliffs rising through the fog, at the lights blown about by the
wind, which shone out upon the stormy sea, and the bustle on the shore
of the crowd which awaited the arrival of the steamer. All that she felt
was again that ache (but slighter than before) to think that Frederick
liked to be away from her, chose to leave her. For her part, she felt
only half living and not at all real when he was not near enough to be
touched. He was all she had left of reality out of the dissolving views
into which the past had broken up; she might be dreaming but for him.
When he came to her side at last in Dover Harbour, she caught at his arm
and clasped it, and stood close up to him, holding on as to an anchor in
the midst of all her confusion. Frederick did not dislike the heavy
claim thus made upon him. The girl was very young, and almost beautiful
in her strange way. She was ice except to him. She had thrown herself
into his arms the first time they met, and a certain complacency of
superiority, which was very sweet, mingled with the sense of protecting
and sustaining care with which he looked upon the creature thus entirely
dependent on him.
“Now the worst of our troubles is over,” he said cheerfully, though he
was very white and even greenish in colour after the last hour’s
sufferings. “Two hours more and we shall be at home.”
Innocent made no answer. She did not think at all of home; she only
clung a little closer to him, as the only interpreter of all the vague
and misty wonders which loomed about her. They were just about to step
out of the boat, she always clinging to him, when Frederick heard
himself called in a coarse but jovial voice, which at first bewildered
him with surprise before he recognized it, and then gave him anything
but a pleasant sensation.
“Glad to see you again, Mr. Eastwood,” it said. “Horrid passage, sir; a
thing not to be endured if one could help it. I’ve been as sick as a
dog, and, judging by your colour, so have you.”
“No,” said Frederick coldly; but it is not easy to be politely calm to a
man who has you in his power, and who could “sell you up” to-morrow if
he liked without benefit of clergy. He shivered as he replied, feeling
such a terror of the consequences as I should vainly attempt to
describe. It was like the death’s head at the feast, suddenly presenting
itself when his mind was for the moment free from all dread of it. He
turned round (though he had recognized the voice) with supercilious
surprise, as if he could not imagine who the speaker was.
“Oh, Mr.----! You have been in Paris, I presume, ever since I saw you
there?”
“Just so,” said Batty, “and some jolly evenings we’ve managed to have
since, I can tell you. Not your way--unlimited, you know; but in
moderation. By Jove! your way was too good to last. Made out your
journey comfortable, eh, Mr. Eastwood? Got a companion now, I see.”
Oh, how Frederick blessed that companion for the opaqueness of her
observation, for her want of interest in what was done and said around.
“Yes, my cousin,” he said in a quiet undertone; and added, “Now I must
get her into the train, and find a place for her. I am sorry I have no
time to talk to you just now. Don’t be afraid that I shall forget
the--the business--between us.”
“No, I don’t think you will,” said Batty, with a horse-laugh. “You
couldn’t if you would, and I shouldn’t let you if you wanted to. And, by
the way,” he said, keeping them back from the wished-for landing, “I
recollected after I left you that I had never given you my address. Stop
a moment, I’ll find it directly.”
“I will come back to you,” cried Frederick, desperate, “as soon as I
have placed this lady in the train.”
“Just a moment,” said the man, pulling out his pocket-book. “I have your
address, you know. There I have the advantage,” he added, with a leer
into Frederick’s face.
Perhaps there is no ill-doing in this world which escapes punishment one
way or other. Frederick had escaped a great deal better than he had any
right to hope for till this moment. But now the Fates avenged
themselves. Though he was cold and shivering, he grew red to his hair
with suppressed passion.
“Let me pass, for Heaven’s sake!” he cried, bursting into involuntary
entreaty.
“Here it is,” said Mr. Batty, thrusting a card into his hand, and with a
chuckle he turned round to some people behind, who were with him, and
let his victim go. Frederick hurried his silent companion on shore in a
tumult of miserable and angry feeling. It was the first time he had felt
the prick of the obligation under which he lay. He did not make the kind
and pleasant little speech which he had intended to make to Innocent as
he led her on to English soil. It had been driven out of his head by
this odious encounter. Heavens! he thought, if it had been Nelly instead
of Innocent! and next time it might be Nelly. He hurried the girl into
the train without one word, and threw in his coat, and went off to get
some brandy to restore his nerves and his courage. “Hallo! Eastwood!”
some one else called out to him. “Bless my life, how green you are! been
ill on the crossing, eh?” This is not a confession which the young
Englishman is fond of making in a general way, but Frederick nodded and
hurried on, ready to confess to anything, so long as he could be left
alone. The brandy did him good, driving out the shuddering cold and
putting some sort of spirit into him; for indeed it was quite true that,
in addition to the mental shock, he had been ill on the crossing too.
Innocent had paid no attention to this colloquy; she received into her
passive memory the voice and face of the man who had addressed her
cousin; but she was not herself aware that she had done so. She was
grieved when Frederick left her, and glad when he came back in a few
minutes to ask if she would have anything. “No; only if you will come,”
she said, putting out her hand. That was all she thought of. A kind of
tremor had taken possession of her, not of expectation, for she was too
passive to speculate--a thrill of the nerves as she approached the end
of her journey. “You will not go away from me when we get there?” she
said piteously. What with his disagreeable acquaintances, and his too
clinging charge, poor Frederick had enough on his hands.
“Of course, I shall not go away; but, Innocent, you must put me in the
second place now,” he said, patting her shoulder kindly as he sat down
beside her. The answer she made was to put her hand softly within his
arm. I don’t think Mrs. Eastwood would have approved of it, and
Frederick found it rather embarrassing, and hoped the old lady did not
observe it who was in the other corner of the railway carriage; she
dozed all the way to town, and he did not know her; but still a man does
not like to look ridiculous. Otherwise it was not unpleasant of itself.
And then Innocent’s bewildered eyes were dazzled by a blaze of lights,
and noise, and crowding figures. Out of that she was put into the
silence of a dingy cab, and left there, feeling unutterably lonely, and
not at all sure that now at the last moment he had not forsaken her,
while Frederick was absent looking after the luggage, that dismal
concluding piece of misery after a long journey. By the time he came
back to her she was crying, and sick with suspense and terror. And then
came a last quick drive, through gleaming lights and intervals of
darkness, by shop-windows and through dim lanes, till at last a door
flew open in the gloom, sending forth light and warmth, and two figures
rushed out of it and took her passive into their arms. She held
Frederick fast with one hand while she gazed at them. This was how she
came home.