|When Gwen told the colonel the very same evening that she had actually
gone and got herself engaged to that shock-headed Yankee painter fellow,
the colonel's wrath and grief and indignation were really something
wonderful to observe and excellent to philosophise upon. The colonel
raved, and stamped, and fretted; the colonel fumed in impotent rage, and
talked grimly about his intentions and his paternal authority (just
as if he had any); the colonel even swore strange Hindustani oaths at
Gwen's devoted head, and supplemented them by all the choicest and
most dignified military expletives to be found in the vocabulary of
his native language. But Gwen remained perfectly unmoved by all the
colonel's threats and imprecations; she flatly remarked that his
testamentary dispositions were a subject in no way interesting or
amusing to her, and stuck firm to her central contention, that it was
she who was going to marry Hiram, and not her father, and that therefore
she was the only person whose tastes and inclinations in the matter
ought to be taken into any serious consideration. And though the colonel
persisted in declaring that he for his part would never allow that
Gwen was in any proper sense engaged to Hiram, Gwen herself stood to
it stoutly that she _was_ so engaged; and after all, her opinion on the
subject was really by far the most important and conclusive of any.
In fact, the more the colonel declaimed against Hiram, the more
profoundly convinced did Gwen become in her own heart that she
thoroughly loved and admired him. And the final consequence of the
colonel's violent opposition was merely this, that at the end of three
weeks or so Gwen was as madly in love with her American painter fellow
as any woman on this earth had ever yet been with a favoured lover.
As for poor Hiram, he was absolutely in the seventh heaven for the
time being, and though a little later on he began to reproach himself
bitterly at times for having tied down Gwen so prematurely to his own
exceedingly doubtful fortunes, he could think as yet of nothing on earth
but his delight at having actually won the love of the lady of his one
long impassioned daydream.
On the day after Gwen had accepted Hiram's timid offer, Colin Churchill
met Miss Howard-Russell accidentally in the Corso.
'Oh, Miss Russell,' he said, 'will you come on Sunday next to see my
model, Cecca, married to her old Calabrian lover? She's very anxious you
should come and assist, and she begged me most particularly to invite
you. She says you're a friend of hers, and that the other day you did
her and her lover a good service.'
'Tell her I'll be there, Mr. Churchill,' Gwen answered, smiling
curiously, 'and tell her too that I have acted upon her advice, and
she will understand you. Where's the wedding to be, and when must I be
there?'
'At ten o'clock, close by our house, at Santa Maria of the Beautiful
Ladies. She was to have been married a fortnight ago quite suddenly; but
she changed her mind in a hurry at the last moment, because she hadn't
got all her things ready. It'll be a dreadful loss to me, of course; for
when once a model marries, you can never get her to sit again half
as well as she used to do; but Cecca had a lover, it seems, who had
followed her devotedly to Rome all the way from Monteleone; and she
played fast-and-loose with him at first and rode the high horse, on the
strength of her being so much admired and earning so much money as a
model; and now she's seized with a sudden remorse, it appears, and wants
to make it all up with him again and get married immediately.'
Gwen smiled a silent smile of quiet comprehension. 'I see,' she said.
'One can easily understand it. I shall be there, Mr. Churchill; you
may depend upon me. And your cousin the--Miss Wroe, I mean--will she be
there also?'
'Oh yes,' Colin answered lightly, 'Minna's coming too. She and
Cecca have most mysteriously struck up quite a singular and sudden
friendship.'
'I shall be glad to meet her again,' Gwen said simply. Somehow, when
once one has settled firmly one's own affections, one feels a newborn
and most benevolent desire to expedite to the best of one's abilities
everybody else's little pending matrimonial arrangements.
So on Sunday Cecca was duly married, and the colonel and the earl were
induced by Gwen to be present at the ceremony; though the colonel had
his scruples upon the point, for, like most old Anglo-Indians of his
generation, he was profoundly evangelical in his religious views, and
regarded a Roman Catholic church as a place only to be visited under
protest, by way of a show, with every decent expression of distaste and
irreverence. Still, he knew his duty as a father; and when Gwen declared
that if he didn't accompany her she would take Cousin Dick alone, and go
without him, the colonel reflected wisely that she would probably meet
that shock-headed Yankee painter fellow after the ceremony, and have
another chance of talking over this absurd engagement she imagined she'd
contracted with him. So he went himself to mount guard over her, and to
give that Yankee fellow a piece of his mind if occasion offered.
And when the wedding was over, the whole party of guests, including
Hiram and Audouin, adjourned for breakfast to the big room at Colin
Churchill's studio, which had been laid out and decorated by Cecca and
Minna and the people at the trattoria the evening before for that very
purpose. And the Italian peasant folk sat by themselves at one end of
the long wooden table, and the English excellencies also by themselves
at the other. And Colin proposed the bride's health in his very best
Tuscan: and Giuseppe made answer with native Italian eloquence in the
nearest approach he could attain to the same exalted northerly dialect.
And everybody said it was a great success, and even Cecca herself
felt immensely proud and very happy. But I'm afraid my insular English
readers will still harbour an unworthy prejudice against poor simple
easy-going Calabrian Cecca, for no better reason than just because she
tried, in a moment of ordinary Italian jealousy, to poison Minna Wroe
in a cup of coffee. Such are the effects of truculent Anglo-Saxon
narrowness and exclusiveness.
When Gwen and Minna went into Cecca's dressing-room to take off their
bonnets (for Colin insisted that they should make a day of it), Gwen
was suddenly moved by that benevolent instinct aforesaid to make a
confidante of the pretty little governess--who, by the way, had got a
new and more fashionable bonnet from a Roman Parisian milliner expressly
for the happy occasion. Poor little thing! after all, it was very
natural she should be dreadfully in love with her handsome clever
sculptor cousin. 'I myself very nearly fell in love with him once,
indeed,' Gwen murmured to herself philosophically, with the calm inner
confidence of a newly-found affection. So she said to Minna with a
meaning look, after a few arch little remarks about Colin's success as a
rising sculptor, 'I have something to tell you, Miss Wroe, that I think
will please you. I tell it to you because I know the subject is one
you're much interested in; but, if you please you must treat it as a
secret--a very great secret. I'm--well, to tell you the truth, Miss
Wroe, I'm engaged to be married.'
Minna's face turned pale as death, and she gasped faintly, but she
answered nothing.
Gwen saw the cause of her anxiety at once, and hastened eagerly to
reassure her.
'And if you'll promise not to say a word about it to anybody on earth,
I'll tell you who it is--it's your cousin's American friend, Mr. Hiram
Winthrop.'
Minna looked at her for a second in a transport of joy, and then burst
suddenly into a flood of tears.
Gwen didn't for a moment pretend to misunderstand her. She knew what the
tears meant, and she sympathised with them too deeply not to show her
understanding frankly and openly. After all, the little governess was
really at heart just a woman even as she herself was. 'There, there,
dear,' she said, laying Minna's head upon her shoulder tenderly; 'cry
on, cry on; cry as much as ever you want to; it'll do you good and
relieve you. I know all about it, and I was sure you mistook me for a
moment, and had got a wrong notion into your head, somehow; and that was
why I took the liberty of telling you my little secret. It's all right,
dear; don't be in the least afraid about it. Here, Cecca, quick; a glass
of water!'
Cecca brought the water hastily, and then looking up with a wondering
look into the tall Englishwoman's clear-cut face, she asked sternly,
'What is this you have been saying to the dear little signorina?'
[Illustration: 0206]
Gwen laid Minna down in a chair, after loosening her bonnet, and bathing
her forehead with water; and then taking Cecca aside, she whispered to
her softly, 'It's all right. Don't be afraid that I had forgotten or
repented. I was telling her something that has pleased and delighted
her. I am--I am going to be married, too, Cecca; but not to the master,
to somebody else--to another artist, who has loved me for years, Signora
Cecca; only mind, it's a secret, and you mustn't say a word for worlds
to anybody about it.
Cecca smiled, and nodded knowingly. 'I see,' she said with a perfect
shower of gestures. 'I see. It is well, indeed. To the American!
Felicitations, signorina.'
'Hush, hush!' Gwen cried, putting her hand upon the beautiful model's
mouth hastily. 'Not a word about it, I beg of you! Well now, dear, how
are you feeling after the water? Are you better? are you better?'
'Thank you, Miss Russell; it was only a minute's faintness. I
thought---- It's all right now. I'm better, Miss Russell, I'm better.'
Gwen looked at her tenderly as if she had been a sister. 'Your name's
Minna, dear, I think,' she said; 'isn't it?'
Minna nodded acquiescence.
'And mine, I dare say you know, is Gwen. In future let us always call
one another Gwen and Minna.'
She held out her arms caressingly, and Minna, forgetful at once of all
her old wrath and jealousy of the grand young lady, nestled into them
with a childlike look of unspeakable gratitude. 'It's very kind of you,'
she cried, kissing Gwen's lull red lips two or three times over, 'so
very, very kind of you. You can't tell how much you've relieved me, Miss
Russell. You know--- I'm so very fond---- so very fond---- so very fond
of dear Colin.'
Gwen kissed her in return sympathetically.
'I know you are, dear,' she answered warmly.
'And you needn't be afraid; I'm sure he loves you, he can't help loving
you. You dear little thing, he must be a stone indeed if he doesn't love
you. Cecca says he does, and Cecca's really a wonderful woman at finding
out all these things immediately by a kind of instinct. But if ever you
dare to call me Miss Russell again from this very minute forward, why,
really, Minna, I solemnly declare I shall be awfully angry with you.'
Minna smiled and promised cheerfully. In truth, at that moment her
heart was full to overflowing. Her rivals--both of her real or imaginary
rivals--were at last safely disposed of, and if only now she could be
perfectly sure that Colin loved her! Gwen said so, and Cecca said so,
but Colin didn't. If only Colin would once say to her in so many words,
'Minna, I love you. Will you marry me?' Oh, how happy she would be, if
only he would say so!