On the following morning Minna sallied forth immediately after
breakfast, leaving word with Ettore that she was going to her studio,
and would not be in for either lunch or dinner. She felt the need
of getting away for a time from this atmosphere growing ever more
imperious. She must go away, be alone, take counsel with herself as to
what she was going to do.
She walked quickly to the studio, lighted the fire, and shut herself
up. Once there, she breathed more freely, and felt as if released from
some constantly pursuing influence. The hours of the day flew by with
incredible swiftness, but, instead of coming to any decision, she
shirked the question, What am I to do? and devoted herself instead to
a minute study of some anatomical plates, and to some photographs of
animals and birds in motion, and to a treatise on the same subject
which bore directly upon her art.
It was very interesting, it was very delightful; but every now and then
conscience told her that her thoughts ought to be differently occupied,
and that at this rate she would return to Casa Dietrich no better
prepared to face the next disagreeable scene than when she had left
it. She did not, however, feel energy or inclination to go into the
question, to get a clear view of the situation, and of her own position
in it. It was much easier to reflect upon the order in which a horse’s
legs were lifted as he ran, or upon the rhythm of the beat of a hawk’s
wings as he flew.
Thus the time passed, and it was evening, and then night, almost
before she knew it. She had not done an hour’s work throughout the
day. She had taken the coverings from the clay cast which she was
now modelling, and looked at it, and had given it a touch here and
there, but without effecting anything real. The old woman who acted as
portress downstairs, and who waited upon her on these occasions, as
much as she required waiting upon, had brought her in some dinner from
a _trattoria_, of which the residue, given to old Filomena, caused the
poor creature’s eyes to glisten and blessings to fall from her lips.
Filomena had now gone away, and Minna was left to solitude and her own
thoughts. She had lighted a lamp and put a shade over it. She had drawn
her chair up towards the stove, and leaning back, with hands clasped
loosely on her knee, she looked into the glow of the red-hot wood, and
watched the flame which occasionally shot forth and then died down
again. Her reverie was profound, and not altogether joyful. She was
roused from it by a sharp, decided knock upon the door.
‘Hans--he need not have come, I don’t want him,’ she thought, frowning,
and then cried, ‘Avanti!’ The door was opened, and she beheld, not
Hans, but Signor Giuseppe.
She was surprised, and not altogether pleased, for she felt sure that
the interview would be more or less painful. Yet she could not feel
vexed; she tried to account to herself for her mixed sensations by
telling herself, ‘It will be a bore, and very disagreeable, but perhaps
it is best to get it over on neutral ground.’
All this flashed quickly through her mind as, after a hardly
perceptible hesitation, she rose and said:
‘Signor Oriole!’
‘Good-evening, signora,’ he said, bowing as he advanced into the room.
‘I knew you were at your studio, and, as I am wishful to speak to
you, I have taken the freedom of calling here. If I disturb you or my
visit is inconvenient, you will at once send me away. I shall not be
offended.’
This Signor Giuseppe was as different from the Signor Giuseppe who was
engaged at Casa Dietrich as one man could possibly be from another. It
is true, this man had the same outward appearance as the other, the
same shabby dress, whose shabbiness was at present somewhat concealed
by a comparatively new and good overcoat, and a respectable hat, held
in his hand. But beyond this, all was different.
This was a gentleman of polite and gracious manner, dignified, but
genial withal--a gentleman who met her on terms of equality, and whose
apology was made more for form’s sake than because he felt such apology
to be needful. It was an unspeakable relief to Minna to find him thus
disposed, and she replied with cordiality as she extended her hand:
‘Indeed, signore, I am too glad that you care to come and pay me a
visit here. If I had had the least idea that you would have taken so
much trouble, I would have invited you before. You are welcome here.’
She pointed smilingly to the old sofa, and Signor Giuseppe took a seat
upon it, and looked around him.
‘This is surely not your workroom,’ he said, without answering her
polite speeches, as his eyes wandered from one object to another.
‘No. This is my sitting-room, business-room, reception-room, whatever
you like to call it. Above all, it is the sanctuary to which I beat
a retreat whenever I feel discouraged with my own miserable attempts
inside there’ (she pointed slightingly in the direction of the
workroom), ‘so discouraged that I can no longer remain amongst them and
the ghosts of better things. A very useful room, this, I assure you.’
‘Ah, you feel like that,’ said Giuseppe, looking at her, ‘but not
often, I imagine.’
‘Oftener than not, signore.’
‘I should not have thought it.’
‘Do I appear so very self-complacent?’
‘Perhaps not. I may have judged you wrongly. It is probably merely your
position in general, which is a secure and comfortable one, which gives
you that appearance of unruffled calm.’
‘But I do not always feel unruffled calm, by any means,’ she told him.
‘Not even when you encounter me engaged in the duties of a household
servant, or a collector of rents and rates, or a supplementary cook--in
short, in all the most ludicrous and undignified false positions in
which a man can be placed--and smile serenely with cold amusement
upon the spectacle,’ he said, plunging into the very heart of the
uncomfortable topic.
Minna drew a deep breath.
‘I do not smile with cold amusement at you or at anything which I see
causes you to suffer,’ she said in a clear, almost loud voice, as she
looked him full in the face, thinking to herself, ‘Thank heaven! now we
are going to have it out, in one way or another. Something must come of
this.’
‘Signora, you could scarcely sit here and admit that what I say is
true. Politeness demands of you that you should deny my assertion.
Yet I have seen you smiling at me, or rather at my embarrassment,
repeatedly--at the ridiculous dilemmas in which Fate has so often
decreed that you should catch me.’
‘I wish I could make you understand how far from me it is to wish to
laugh at what gives pain to another,’ she said. ‘I know I have smiled.
I can’t help that. Heaven has given me a keen sense of the ridiculous.
I cannot alter my nature.’
‘Just so; you admit all that I say; you find me ridiculous.’
‘No, I do not. Sometimes I am reminded of things which are ridiculous,
or which seem ridiculous to me. I am reminded of them by the situations
in which I see you,’ she went on boldly, in spite of the anger she saw
rising in his face. ‘You don’t believe me. I will give you an example;
then, perhaps, you will see what I mean. You have perhaps not forgotten
that, last night, at dinner----’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed he, wincing visibly, as if someone had thrust a sharp
pin into him. ‘Forgotten?’ he continued in a deep, tragic voice; ‘no, I
have not forgotten!’
‘I thought so,’ Minna said to herself, and continued aloud: ‘When you
were trying to bridge over the interval at dinner by talking about
Tiberius and Caligula I admired you. It showed what topics your
mind would run upon if it might follow its own bent. When you talked
about Caligula’s assassination, I thought suddenly about a silly old
lesson-book from which I used to be taught what they called Roman
history in my childhood. My companions and I used to make jokes about
it. One of those silly old jokes came into my mind; it all seemed so
funny. I laughed. I was not laughing at you. You may believe me or not;
I am telling you the truth. You have often thought I was laughing at
you when I was not. You have often been angry with me when I did not in
the least deserve it. You were yesterday, and I felt it.’
She spoke with considerable force and directness, looking at him
steadily as she did so. And as she looked it came into her mind that
seldom or never had she seen a more distinguished, intellectual head
and face than those of her visitor. All the passionate unrest and
irritation which consumed him throughout his life at Casa Dietrich
had vanished--one could see now something of what Signor Giuseppe, in
happier circumstances, might have looked.
There was the nameless grace and pride and high breeding which belongs
to one of noble race who has been reared in the traditions of that
race. He can never cast off the results of that early training. Though
not a weak face, it was a sensitive, passionate one--the face of one
whose impulse might now and then lead him into error; but his heart,
never. He paused for some time after her energetic words, looking
reflectively towards the floor; then, raising his eyes, dark, soft, and
gentle, as she had never seen them before, said:
‘Signora, answer me one question: for what do you take me?’
‘For a gentleman,’ replied Minna, who had got very much excited, though
she did not betray the excitement by any restlessness of manner; ‘for
a gentleman, signore, with whom I would gladly be further acquainted
and on more friendly terms, if he would allow it; but he will not. He
renders it impossible by his harsh treatment of both himself and me.’
‘For a gentleman?’ said Signor Giuseppe sadly, but his face lighted
up for all that; the words had been inexpressibly soothing to his
irritated feelings; as to their sincerity he could have no manner of
doubt. ‘Ah, signora, I was a gentleman once; that was when I was young
and hated aristocracy, and thought one man was as good as another--and
one woman. Destiny arranged that my theories should be put to a severe
test. That test shattered them--scattered them to the winds in a
thousand fragments. Shreds, rags, ribbons were all that was left of my
glorious doctrines. When it was too late I realized that in flinging
away my position and my inheritance, such as it was--not much, but
enough to let me use it for others as well as for myself--in doing
this I had done a fool’s deed. It had been kinder both to myself and
to others had I remained Conte di San Malato, and kept my money and
my estate. I might have improved my own dependents, my neighbours; my
charity might have begun at home. Instead, I devoted it, as I hoped,
to the good of Italy in general--the cause of humanity at large. When
I knew by heart the mistake I had made, when I found the condition to
which ignorance and trustfulness had reduced me, I set myself to work
to forget that I had ever been what is called a gentleman. I cast in my
lot with those to whom I had bound myself, in honour if not in law. I
did not suppose that the least rag, the smallest vestige, was left--of
what I used to be. Yet you say you can see some such remnants.’
‘Now,’ said Minna, smiling, but through a mist, ‘now you will really
make me laugh at you. I suppose you never indulge in analysis of
your own feelings and sentiments, or I would ask you, why do you feel
miserable in your present circumstances? why do they jar upon you?
why do you get so angry with me--unhappy me!--for seeing you engaged
in duties which a servant ought to do? why have you come here now and
talked to me thus, if not for that very reason, that a gentleman you
always have been, a gentleman you are, and a gentleman you must remain,
whatever may happen? It cannot be scorched out of the blood when once
it is in it. Why should you care, except for that? You have lost your
position outwardly, yet you did not wish me to misunderstand; you
feared I might. But I have not done so, not for a moment, not from the
very first. How could I?’
‘You mean,’ he said, in a tone of deep dejection, ‘that you did not,
even for the first day or two that you were with us, take me for a
hired steward, something like the head-waiter at a very third-rate
hotel?’
‘Never. I saw you undertaking duties and doing work which struck me on
the spot as utterly inappropriate to your proper condition. I at once
concluded that you had excellent reasons for acting as you did. I did
once make a mistake, in pure absence of mind, the day I arrived with
all my luggage--do you remember? You came to the door, and I spoke
about my boxes instead of letting you receive me as I now know you
wished to do. I have been sorry for it many a time since. Now you know
exactly what I have felt in the matter.’
‘You are right,’ he said in a low voice, and still dejectedly. ‘You are
right in every word you say. The old folly has not been burnt out--the
old feelings are not extinguished; since I made your acquaintance, I am
sorry to say, they are stronger than before. That makes it so much the
worse.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Surely it is all right now. Everything is
explained.’
‘Far from it. I came to see you with a purpose. Once or twice during
our conversation I have thought that purpose might be abandoned; but
I see now that, on the contrary, it had better be carried out. I came
here intending to ask a favour of you.’
‘And what is the favour?’ she asked gently.
‘Nothing more nor less than this: that you would leave Casa Dietrich.’
‘Leave--Casa--Dietrich?’ echoed Minna. It was the very thing which, for
many days past, she had been telling herself she would do. Perhaps it
was not altogether unprecedented that, when someone else asked her to
do that which she had been telling herself she would do, she should
feel angry, hurt, and offended. ‘Leave Casa Dietrich?’ she repeated;
‘and why?’
‘Because it is excessively painful to me that you should be there; very
soon it will become still more painful to me. Yes; it is solely on my
own account, for my own selfish reasons, that I ask you to leave Casa
Dietrich.’
‘But why, now that we thoroughly understand one another, should it
be more painful for you? Surely, now all will go well. You will not
mistrust me; you will not misjudge me. As for me, my opinion of you is
what it has been from the first, and I see no reason to suppose that it
will ever alter; therefore it should be less, not more, painful for you
if I remain.’
She was so intensely in earnest about it that she had not even time to
be surprised at her own sublime inconsistency. She wished to remain at
Casa Dietrich, but she wished that Signor Oriole should wish her to
remain.
There was another long pause, during which he again studied the ground,
and she saw that a struggle was going on in his mind. At last he looked
up and said, in a low voice but clearly:
‘I see now; I have to-night added one more mistake to the many others
of which my life has been composed. Seeing the groove I am now in, fast
and immovable, I should have continued to travel in it without making
a sign or a struggle. I wished to speak to you, because I--valued your
opinion. There are things which may not and cannot be explained. I
cannot explain openly to you why I wish you to go. If I go away now
without further explanation, you set me down in your own mind as an
imbecile, and justly so. I must say something. With your fine brilliant
intelligence you will understand me more or less. Hitherto you have
seen merely my degradation, my humiliation. That was bad enough, but
now that we have had an explanation I could endure it. But from now,
or from very soon after this day, you will be witness of my shame--of
the irremediably wretched and degrading life to which I am bound in
punishment of my own folly and weakness--a life which I must go on
leading, which I can neither improve nor terminate, for reasons which
it is utterly impossible to me to explain to you. You have seen me,
a drudge, at my drudgery. Within a week--nay, it may be in a day or
two--the drudge’s owner will return. My slavery will again be complete.
My cup will have added to its bitterness the intolerable flavour of
knowing that you are there looking on. You have pitied me hitherto;
now I foresee that you will despise me. That I have deserved contempt,
though I am now expiating my sin in dust and ashes, does not make it
better. And,’ he started up from his chair and twisted his fingers
into and out of each other, ‘I cannot live in your contempt; I cannot
bear it; I ask you to go.’
Minna sat as if rooted to her chair. She felt a surging in her ears,
and things were indistinct for a moment or two before her eyes.
Partially, if not completely, she comprehended the situation, and
understood that for him it was an agonizing one. Of his relations to
Signora Dietrich she had no manner of doubt in her own mind. She was
no child; she knew a good deal of the world, and had a considerable
tolerance for many human weaknesses. She had no difficulty in
understanding that the bond which kept Giuseppe tied at his present
post must be a strong one. As to its nature, on one side, at any rate,
she was quite certain in her own mind. That her presence and society
had roused in him feelings of interest and admiration long dormant,
there could be also no manner of doubt, and those reawakened feelings
had caused him to feel more poignantly than ever the misery of the
position to which circumstances or his own weakness in time past had
reduced him.
Minna was not a vain woman, but a very proud one. She would gladly
have sacrificed any incense to her vanity, to her sense of power of
attraction, afforded by the present situation, if by so doing she could
have eased the misery of poor Signor Giuseppe’s heart. But no action
of hers would ease that misery, whereas the idea of beating a retreat
before the oncoming Signora Dietrich made her turn hot and cold, and
hot again, with a nameless feeling of anger and indignation.
‘I could never despise you, Signor Oriole. It is not in my nature to
despise those who are suffering. You have been pained by what is now
past, because you mistrusted me and did not see things as they were. I
am not so bad as you thought. Now you mistrust me again. You want me to
go away because you think I shall be hard or censorious, or something
odious.’
‘No, it is not that,’ he almost groaned. ‘It is not that. It is quite
different. It is again a selfish reason.’
‘Would it not be better, since now all is clear between us, to trust me
thoroughly, and let me stay?’ she said, softly and persuasively. ‘We
are friends, are we not?’
He stopped suddenly in his restless pacing about the room, and stood in
front of her.
‘You are--you would--you could take me for your friend!’ he exclaimed.
‘Why not, if you will have me for yours?’
‘You do not know what that would mean to me. You know--you must know,
from your own observation, that mine is a ruined life--a wreck. But
you would be my friend?’
‘If you will be mine, as I said,’ she replied.
‘If--ah, signora! I shall never doubt you any more--never. Your hand on
the bargain.’
Unhesitatingly she placed her hand within his, and he, holding it, bent
his dark eyes upon her with an expression of mingled pride and sadness,
and said:
‘I have found a treasure I never more expected to know--a friend, a
good, true, gentle, yet spirited woman, my friend.... And you will
yield to my foolish wish, and will leave me to struggle alone with
my unhappy position. The thought that you are my friend will help me
along, and the knowledge that you are happy, and in your true and
natural surroundings, and out of these utterly false ones, will console
me many a time when I should otherwise be utterly despondent.’
‘You say you trust me--that you will never mistrust me again; and in
the same breath you show the greatest possible mistrust of me--you bid
me go,’ said Minna, with tears in her voice.
‘Signora----’ he stammered.
‘That is not trusting me,’ she pursued coldly. ‘To bid me fly, beat
a retreat--I, your friend--simply because Signora Dietrich is coming
home! I am not afraid of Signora Dietrich--are you?’
Oriole dropped her hand, and she saw his face turn pale all over.
He seemed scarcely able to breathe for a few minutes, then said
deliberately:
‘I have truly no reason to fear her. I have no wish to see you in the
same house with her. It will be painful to me. I would fain have spared
all pain to you. Remain, signora, since that is your wish. I have not
another word to say on the subject.’
‘But, don’t you see----’
He arrested her words with a gesture so decided and haughty that she
felt herself dominated by it.
‘It is quite decided--è fatto,’ he said quickly. ‘Let us not waste
words on it. I am at your service (alla sua disposizione).’
She felt some of the joy of victory, but almost more strongly the usual
victor’s cruel generosity of wishing to make the conquered think that
he has the best of it. But she was tongue-tied, somehow, and began
to wonder with a thrill whether she had done well--that she had done
womanly did not occur to her, though it struck Signor Oriole strongly.
She felt that the interview, in so far as this subject was concerned,
was over. His dejection seemed to have vanished, and he had the air of
now being master of the situation. Minna felt as if she did not quite
know what she had done, or what the end of it might be.
There was a silence, on her part of some embarrassment. He broke it by
saying in a matter-of-fact voice:
‘Will you not show me your studio--your work?’