Very late that night Signor Oriole sat in the room which was called
his study, quite alone. He slept less and less as he grew older, and
he was left, as usual, with all the lower part of the house to himself
in a dead silence. His books and papers and writing materials were all
around him. His study was removed only by a narrow little anteroom
from that of Minna--her sitting-room and studio combined. These three
rooms were old, with low roofs, and beams across the ceilings; but the
original windows, small and high up in the wall, had been removed, and
French ones opening to the ground substituted for them. Of course the
three windows all commanded the same view, of a woodland glade and a
broad slope of grass like an avenue between thick walls of dark trees
which sloped upwards, climbing a hill. It was a portion of the park
belonging to Yewridge Hall--a part which the inhabitants of Minna’s
house were free to wander in as much as they chose.
After Minna and Rhoda had gone upstairs Signor Oriole went to his
study. The lamp was lighted, but the window was still open, and he went
to it, and stood there, looking out. The yellow lamplight was behind
him. Before him was the dark solemnity of the glade and wood, but that,
too, soon began to take a darkly silvery appearance. A strange light,
at once deep and pale, began to palpitate in the sky. His eyes were
riveted on the summit of the little hill, for the awakening, if one
may so call it, in the sky seemed to proceed from there. Whiter and
whiter it grew, clearer and clearer, till all nature seemed to wait
breathlessly for the visitor whose advent was thus foretold.
She came at last; the outline of the hill-top grew suddenly sharp and
clear, then a crisp white spark glittered on it--spread, grew, dilated,
enlarged into a gradually growing silver disc. All above, below,
around, is glorified, regalized, resplendent, as the moon floats up
with majesty into the clear dark spaces of the heavens.
‘Ah!’ said Signor Giuseppe to himself, as he watched the spectacle with
the beginning of a smile, and with the matter-of-fact eyes of a child
of the South, ‘it is a fine night.’
He nodded his head, whose white hairs had taken a reflected glitter
from the light without, and, leaving the blind up and the shutters
open, he turned again to his writing-table, took up his pen, and
resumed his work. He was writing about days long gone by; about old
Rome, and things that had happened in her. It was an employment in
which he succeeded, almost always, in finding repose for his mind,
peace for his thoughts.
He had written on for some time when he heard the hall-door open and
shut. He had no doubt as to who the visitor might be, but as a matter
of precaution he got up, opened the door, and looked forth into the
hall, where the light was still burning.
He had been right. Hans Riemann was there, hanging up his little
woollen cap upon a peg of the hatstand. His face was pale and angry.
When he saw Signor Giuseppe, he did not speak, but looked at him with
a curious expression.
‘You have fastened the door?’ asked the latter.
‘Yes, I’m off to bed. I think I shall be off altogether, very soon.
This is a dull hole when all is said and done.’
‘In the name of our hostess and her family I thank you for your kind
expressions,’ replied Signor Giuseppe, very politely and very cuttingly.
Hans’ face flushed.
‘Did it sound rude?’ he asked, in a tone of indifference which
heightened the said rudeness. ‘I’m sorry if it did. Good-night.’
He ran quickly up the stairs. Signor Oriole, shrugging his shoulders,
returned to his study and his work. After some time--he knew not how
long--the first sensation stole over him of something which he took
for weariness. At first he did not heed it, but wrote on, wishing to
finish a long paragraph in which he was engaged. The curious sensation
continued. He laid his pen down, and, resting one elbow on the table,
propped his head on his hand, and meditated a little. As he meditated,
he gradually grew conscious of the intense silence and stillness which
prevailed both inside and outside--conscious of it, and impressed by
it. It must have been working itself into his senses and his brain all
the time that he had been writing, and most likely irritating him.
Signor Giuseppe was a true Roman; he could work better, play better,
think, philosophize, yea, even sleep better, in a noise than in the
most idyllic silence ever known. Just now he shrugged his shoulders,
and muttered to himself: ‘Per Dio! what a deathly silence!’
Oppressed by it, he knew not why, he went towards the window with the
half-formed intention of closing it. It was as if the immense silence
of the night flowed in through the open window, and imposed itself upon
that which reigned in the house also, and made it almost intolerable to
him.
Standing there near the window, and looking out, and again oppressed by
the silence, he recalled to himself the walk home with Minna one night,
from her studio to Casa Dietrich, when she had spoken to him of the
noise of Rome, and of how she delighted in it.
To Casa Dietrich that night the signora had returned, had summoned him
to her rooms, and had told him that Marchmont had spoken to her about
Fulvia, and that she intended to marry her to him. She had told him
with the most accurate foreknowledge of the horror it would inspire in
him; she had listened with smiling obstinacy to all his expostulations,
reproaches and accusations, and had then told him:
‘You have yourself to thank for it. You have known for many years that
I was not a woman to be played with with impunity. You have refused my
reasonable wishes and demands; you must not be surprised and angry that
when the time comes I act in the manner most convenient to my interests
and to those of my daughter. Mio caro, I have waited a long time for
freedom. This man offers it to me--freedom and independence. I shall
take it. You can do what you like.’
‘You say I played with you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And you--what have you done
with me? You say I have myself to thank for it all; and you--whom have
you to thank, that you are now in this position, that you must sell
your child disgracefully to get what you call your freedom? Bianca,
give the child to me. I will work for her; I will provide for her. She
shall be no burden to you.’
Bianca had laughed.
‘And I?’ she asked. ‘My daughter is no burden to me. She is the most
valuable piece of property I have. No; I have made up my mind. Do not
trouble yourself in the matter. It is all right.’
All this scene came back to him with the utmost vividness as he stood
there in this English house, looking forth upon this English park, with
the fresh damp English air blowing upon his forehead and face. He felt
it not.
He was again steeped in a totally different atmosphere, in the soft,
deliciously enervating air of Rome--the odour of the streets, of the
houses; that peculiar, half-pungent, half-debilitating perfume which
assails the senses there, and bathes them, and takes them captive,
pervading everything, and which is like no other atmosphere in the
world--this ichor he felt and imbibed now, and it was like new life to
him.
The past, dark and mysterious beyond all words to describe, with its
processions of Caesars, its armies of trained fighting men, its dream
of fair women of every shade of vice and virtue, its holocausts of
human victims--the blood-soaked, sun-soaked, art-soaked past; the
vivid, noisy present, full of life and action, of battles fought and of
grand hope for the future, in which his life had been passed--all these
were summed up and concentrated as it were in that wondrously scented
air of Rome, and in Rome he now was, with a fever in his veins, a
passion of longing which tore his heart-strings, parted his lips, and
drew from his heart a slight sound, between a groan and a sigh.
‘Dahin, dahin geht unser Weg--
O Vater, lass’ uns zieh’n!’
Not Mignon’s words, but Mignon’s thought was in his heart.
‘I must go. I must breathe that air once again before I die--all the
agony and all the rapture of it. I must pace those streets again, and
feel those stones beneath my feet, though every one were a burning coal
that blistered them.’
The air blew in upon him in a rougher gust, both keen and damp, from
the mountains of the North and her wild wastes of moorland; from her
gray, monotonous sea, ‘the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea,’ and the
nerves of the man of the South shuddered under its alien breath. It
had awakened him from his dream; he opened his eyes and brought his
thoughts once more to reality.
He laid his hand on the window to push it to, and as he did so it
seemed to him that there was a slight sound outside it. Not a sound
whose nature he could have specified--not a sigh, not a groan or a sob,
and certainly not a cry or a spoken word, but perhaps something of
them all. Nothing deterred by the eeriness of the thing, for he knew
not fear, he drew the window more widely open, instead of closing it,
and looked forth again. The scene had become even more beautiful than
before. Arrested, he still looked, half gazing at the view before him,
half listening for that indescribable sound to come again, when his
eyes, long-sighted and keen, detected at some little distance from the
house, moving hesitatingly and uncertainly along, and emerging from the
shadow of the wood into the moonlit grass, a slight, ink-black woman’s
figure. It paused suddenly, and perhaps turned. Of that he could not
be sure in the uncertain light, but the figure was there. It moved
about now quickly, now slowly. Now it looked as if its head were bowed;
again, as though its face were raised; and once certainly it stretched
its arms out with the gesture of one who wrings hands in dire distress.
Signor Giuseppe stood riveted to his place, not in the least afraid,
but very curious. Now the figure had disappeared again into the shadow
of the wood. He saw it no more, though he strained his eyes to discover
it. He stood for some time, and was about to turn away--so dense are
our outward senses, so doth this envelope of flesh conceal one spirit
from another, though that other may be calling upon us, with agony
unspeakable to bear, to help and to comfort.
Thus he stood, when, coming from his right hand, from under the shadow
of the house, the figure in one second stood immediately in front of
him, with the light of the lamp from within falling full upon its face.
That face was very pale, very drawn, very much worn with anguish and
pain; the eyes which plunged themselves into his were haggard and
glazed, and weary beyond description.
It was Fulvia’s face; those were Fulvia’s eyes, and Fulvia’s hands they
were which were suddenly stretched out towards him; but it was no voice
he had ever heard before which, in a hoarse, broken whisper, groaned
forth:
‘Father!’
For a moment he stood motionless--petrified; then, stretching out
his arms too, and making a step towards her, he finished the tearing
asunder of the veil which she had at last rent.
‘My daughter!’
‘Oh, help me! help me!’ she said, in the same unnatural voice, as she
fell, with the heavy gesture of one whose will no longer controls his
movements, into his arms, broken, desperate, recking nothing of showing
her mortal anguish, caring no more to hide anything from his eyes, at
any rate.
He held her up in silence. Neither of them spoke for a long time after
they had uttered those fateful words. Her hands grasped his shoulders
with the clinging of one who has nothing else to hold by. Her head was
prostrate, low upon his breast.
Signor Giuseppe’s white hairs mingled with the bright waves and coils
of golden brown; his lips touched them, moved, but he uttered no words,
till at last, as she raised her face, furrowed with suffering almost
out of resemblance to her natural one, he said in a deep voice, coming
from his inmost soul: ‘Mia figlia, stand here no more. Come in and tell
me what has happened and what you wish.’
‘Oh, I believe you can do nothing, nothing for me, padre mio! I do not
know why I am here--I did not mean to come. I did not mean to leave
the side of the pond alive, and yet I came on and on here, because I
have something to tell--there is something that someone must know. I
am frightened! I had such a horrible dream. At least, I think it was a
dream. Well, I will come in. No one will disturb us?’
‘No one; I am alone. There will be no interruption,’ said he. ‘Come in.
Tell me your dream. Perhaps it was no dream after all.’
He drew her within the room, and closed the window at last. Fulvia
gazed about her as if bewildered by the lamplight, and by the walls
which surrounded her. He took her to a couch which stood against the
wall, placed her upon it, and seated himself beside her. She took one
of his hands between hers, and, drawing a long sigh, said:
‘How strange this all is! Father, my father, my father! There is
someone, after all. Padre mio, what will you do for me?’
‘Child, anything--anything in the world, when you tell me what it is,’
said he, with love and anguish in his voice. There was something in her
whole aspect which frightened him, or, rather, which filled him with
vague alarm and apprehension.
Signor Giuseppe was not one of the people who are easily frightened.
There was, however, something enigmatical in Fulvia’s demeanour--in her
great excitement and breathless haste, and in the sudden strange pauses
she made, when a curious, bewildered look came over her whole face, and
her eyes looked as if they were seeking backwards in her heart for some
clue, or purpose, or intention, which she had formed and then lost.
‘What time is it?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Two in the morning,’ he told her.
‘Two in the morning! Well, I want you to take me away, now at once,
from this place. Isn’t it cruel of me to ask such a thing of you? But
I cannot help it. I have been here long enough--too long. I have been
here so long that I have--nearly--committed a frightful sin. It is
late--it is a strange time to be getting up and going away, I know; but
I will go, I must go--and you will come with me.’
She looked at him with an attempt at a smile, and pressed his hands
convulsively. Signor Oriole had lived through many strange experiences,
through scenes of ‘battle and murder and sudden death,’ through perils
of every description, both active and passive. Many a thrill had shot
through him in moments when his life had hung on a thread--thrills
of excitement, thrills of nervous tension, of fierce exultation, of
forlorn hope; but never had he experienced this thrill before--the
thrill which is at the same time a cold chill, and which is fear.
‘I will go with you when you have told me one thing,’ he said, and all
the blood left his face. ‘You were desperate to-night when you left your
husband’s house. How did you leave it? Have you killed him?’
Fulvia rose erect from the bowed-down, crouching position of hopeless
misery in which she had been sitting, rose as if electrified; he saw
that her whole frame stiffened and grew rigid. Her eyes became fixed,
her lips parted; she looked as if her spirit hung in the scales between
reason and madness, and as if the balance might incline to madness at a
second’s notice. There was some recollection of freezing horror in her
soul, which his question, prompted by a flash of inspiration as to the
worst that might have happened, had roused again in its full strength.
He almost repented him of having asked it, and looked at her, trying
to put an expression of tender kindness into his eyes while the awful
fear tugged at his heart.
Suddenly the expression which so froze him relaxed. Her physical
rigidity also gave way. Her very hands became limp and nerveless, and
she replied, as if in answer to some everyday question:
‘No. I thought I would. I told him I was going to--and then--I did not.
I came away. Now, father, let us go away--quite away.’
‘At once, with all my heart,’ said he promptly, as he rose and looked
about him. The ghastly uncertainty was gone from his heart. The light
of reason was in Fulvia’s eyes. He knew she had spoken the truth to
him. He was now ready to give himself up to her lightest wish, but, as
his eyes fell upon his work and papers, upon the quiet, almost solemnly
peaceful room, as his ears again became conscious of the silence which
had at first annoyed, but which now soothed them, as he saw, in a
side-glance, the broken figure of Fulvia, a load like lead settled on
his heart.
Then he took heart again. There had been no crime, let the wretchedness
be what it might. His practical sense came forward once more; and began
to grapple with the real and almost grotesque problem, ‘What am I to do
with her? Where am I to take her?’
‘You will not see Minna?’ he asked. ‘I could awaken her and bring her
down here in a minute.’
Fulvia shook her head, with a sigh that was almost a shudder.
‘Not Minna--oh no! Let us go, and let us go alone.’
She was dressed, as he now observed, as if for travelling, in a very
plain, but trim, elegant black walking-dress, a small, closely
fitting, black straw bonnet trimmed with velvet; a so-called dust-cloak
which was in reality a costly thing of silk and lace, was hung over her
arm and had remained there through all the agitation and tragedy; long
soft gray gloves fitted her hands closely, and wrinkled over her wrists
and arms; everything she had on was quiet and unobtrusive to the last
degree theoretically, but elegant, fashionable, and noticeable from its
perfect fit and style, and from the beauty and individuality of the
woman who wore it.
And nothing that she had put on could have been otherwise. We may
change our clothes, we may transform ourselves as to outer covering, we
may exchange the masterpieces of a Worth for the botched performances
of a village Miss Smith, but if we are Fulvia Marchmont we can be no
one else. The reverse holds equally good. Signor Oriole was troubled,
not so much by the elegance and distinction which made itself apparent
through all the seeming simplicity of the costume--he was troubled to
know why she had that costume on at all.
‘Very well,’ he said, in answer to her last words. ‘You must excuse me
an instant, while I put one or two things in a bag and get some money.
And you--have you anything? Are you prepared? I hope at least you have
none of his money with you.’
‘I have not a penny, carissimo. All that I have of his are these
clothes which I have on, as one may not go about the world without
them. As soon as we get somewhere where you can buy me some others, I
will be without these too. I have nothing--absolutely nothing. I will
sit here and wait for you.’
He went out of the room, and softly upstairs, along a long, rambling
passage which led to his own room, and another, both of which were
rather remote from the rest of the house. The other room was that
occupied by Richard Hamilton, and upon its door Signor Oriole knocked
softly.
Hamilton appeared to be a light sleeper, for his answer came at once,
‘Who’s there?’
‘I,’ said Signor Giuseppe, opening the door, which was not locked, and
going just within the room. ‘Hamilton, I want to speak to you.’
‘You--are you ill, sir?’ asked the other, in quick alarm. He struck a
match, lighted a candle, and sat up in bed, looking at his visitor.
‘No, I am not ill. Listen, and speak softly. Something has happened,
as to which it pleases me to take you into my confidence. I can trust
you.... My daughter is downstairs----’
He paused for a moment; Hamilton stared at him as if fascinated, and
then said, almost in a whisper:
‘Fulvia?’
‘Yes, Fulvia; she is in dire distress. Something which she does not
choose to explain to me yet, or which she cannot explain, has happened.
She has left her house; I do not call it her home----’
‘No, you are right,’ said Hamilton in a deep voice. ‘Well?’
‘She has chosen to break down the barrier which has always hitherto
been between us. She has claimed my help, and has required that I shall
take her away from here at once, now, you understand. It is her right,
and it is my pleasure to do it. She refuses to see Minna. I think she
is too much broken to be able to endure even Minna’s sympathy. I leave
everything loose that belongs to me. I look to you to make all clear,
and to explain to your sister why I leave thus.’
‘But where are you going? What are you going to do?’ asked Hamilton in
his clear tones, which always sounded so cold, and which yet were so
much to be trusted.
‘I don’t know. I suppose we are two pilgrims to----’
‘That is madness. Look here: you must do something, or she will be
worse off than ever.’
‘I shall take her to Italy,’ said Signor Giuseppe, after a moment’s
pause.
‘Not to Rome, I hope?’
‘No, not to Rome. I will take her to Sicily, to my home there which
she has never seen.’
‘That is right--yes, that is the right thing to do; and to set about
it you must go to London; and there is a train to London in two hours
from now, at ---- Junction, which is six miles away. I will drive you
there,’ said Hamilton with utter _sang-froid_, as he cast the
bedclothes from him and prepared to get up. ‘Do you go and pack up
whatever you may wish to take, and in five minutes I will be ready.
This is a business which needs speed.’
‘You are right. Your head is clear,’ said Signor Oriole, with the ghost
of his old smile, at once sarcastic and approving. He left the room
and went to his own, where he collected all he could think of into a
small portmanteau, stowed away his pocket-book, some notes and gold,
and a cheque-book on his London bankers, and was ready. As he emerged
from his room after this occupation, Hamilton came out of his, looking
as cool, as self-possessed, and as fit as if he were going down to
breakfast in the everyday way.
‘I have written a note to Minna,’ he said: ‘I will put it outside her
door, so she will have it when she is called. Now let us go downstairs.
Of course Mrs. Marchmont will hate me for being in at this, but there’s
nothing else for it.’
Softly they went downstairs, and the slumbering inmates of the rambling
old house knew nothing of what was going on. Without hesitation or
explanation they went straight to Signor Oriole’s study.
There the lamp was still burning; there Fulvia still sat, her hands
folded one over the other on her knees, her eyes fixed on the opposite
wall. She looked up with a hungry eagerness to be gone as they came
in, and her eyes dilated with a haughty displeasure as she saw Richard
Hamilton.
‘Mrs. Marchmont,’ said he in the most matter-of-fact tone, ‘Signor
Oriole tells me he is taking you to Sicily, and that you have excellent
reasons for wishing to set off at once. If you will have a few moments’
indulgence for us, we will harness the little carriage, and I will
drive you to--to catch the London mail.’
‘I will wait, but you will be quick?’ she said, as her expression again
grew quieter. ‘I don’t want to be here when the day really begins, that
is all.’
‘When the day really begins I hope to be putting you in the train for
King’s Cross,’ said he, as he left the room with Signor Oriole.
How the thing was done with such incredible speed and silence and
accuracy they never knew. Circumstances were favourable. All the
household were in their deepest sleep. The stable and offices were away
from the house. The matter was accomplished very soon. Signor Oriole
returned to the house, took his daughter’s hand, and said ‘Come!’
She rose and followed him. In the yard they found Hamilton throwing
some shawls and rugs into the carriage, which was a low, open one, but
had a box for the driver.
‘Here,’ said he, ‘get in, Mrs. Marchmont. Put on your cloak--so; and
wrap all these things about you’--he was doing it himself as fast as he
could--‘for the morning air is sharp, and it will be cold on the open
road.’
He helped her in, and she mechanically submitted to everything he did.
Signor Oriole got in beside her. Hamilton wrapped him too in a rug,
got on to the box, and, not much caring now how much noise he made,
whipped up the horse. In ten minutes they were nearly a mile away from
West Wall, and by dint of good driving arrived at ---- Junction with
ten minutes to spare, just as a wild primrose and purple sunrise was
flaming over the violet wastes of the German Ocean, which rose and fell
and sobbed and moaned under it like some living monster disturbed in
its sleep.
The few last hurried words were exchanged. Signor Oriole promised
to write from London and tell all he intended to do. He swore that
he would never lose sight of his friends in this Northern land; he
would not forget them, he would not be silent to them. As for seeing
them, that time alone would decide, and--he gave a quick side-glance
at Fulvia, who was pacing about with head downcast and in utter
abstraction, her only glances being occasionally in the direction from
which the express ought to come.
It did come at last. It made only a very brief stoppage at that small
junction. There was an empty first-class compartment, into which the
travellers got. At the last moment, as Hamilton, standing with bared
head, looked at Fulvia and wished her good-bye, without even holding
out his hand to intrude upon her grief, she roused for a moment, held
out hers with an impulsive movement, and said:
‘Good-bye, Mr. Hamilton. You have been a true friend to me to-day. I’ll
never forget it.’
‘Then say “a rivederci,”’ he besought her, with a sudden change of
expression.
‘Willingly--in a happier hour, if one should come to me--a rivederci.’
He clasped her hand, and looked into her eyes, and dropped from the
footboard, as the train was in motion. Soon it was out of sight.
As he turned again to the outside of the station, the fleeting glory
of that sunrise was over. The heaven was gray; every splendour had
departed. From the leaden sky, a drizzling rain had begun to fall into
a slate-coloured sea which moaned and growled like the ‘fierce old
mother’ that she was.
Hamilton collected all the rugs and shawls, folded them neatly into a
bundle, and covered them up with a mackintosh. One he reserved to fold
round his own knees as he drove back, in the teeth of a raw wind which
not even August could make warm. His face was as gray as the day; his
thoughts resembled both.
‘So! She is gone! And gone for what, and to what? If only that d----l
would die! But he won’t. I wonder what happened--I wonder what drove
her to this? Something horrible, I haven’t a doubt--not a doubt! Oh,
Lord, what a world it is--what a world! And how we are handicapped who
have scruples about playing off our own bat and letting all the rest go
hang. Hans didn’t mind, and so perhaps she is lost to me for ever.’
It was seven o’clock when he drove into the stableyard of his sister’s
house, and confronted the astonished youth who was Minna’s only
man-servant, and whom horror and amaze at what he believed to have been
the stealing of the property committed to his charge had reduced to
such a state of imbecility that its reappearance only served to more
thoroughly bewilder and terrify him. Hamilton threw the reins to him,
bade him look to the horse, and went into the house, leaving him to
recover as best he might from his stupor.