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Title: Oriole's daughter, a novel, Volume 1 (of 3)

Author: Jessie Fothergill

Release date: June 3, 2025 [eBook #76215]

Language: English

Original publication: London: William Heinemann, 1893

Credits: Peter Becker, Ed Foster and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORIOLE'S DAUGHTER, A NOVEL, VOLUME 1 (OF 3) ***





ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER




_NEW LIBRARY NOVELS._


THE HEAVENLY TWINS.

      By SARAH GRAND, Author of ‘Ideala,’ etc.
      In 3 vols.
    ‘Every page is rife with wit and wisdom.’
        _Daily Telegraph._

KITTY’S FATHER.

      By FRANK BARRETT, Author of ‘The Admirable
      Lady Biddy Fane,’ etc. In 3 vols.
    ‘Mr. Barrett has the true gift of the story-teller.’
        _Speaker._

THE O’CONNORS OF BALLINAHINCH.

      By Mrs. HUNGERFORD, Author of ‘Molly Bawn,’
      etc. In 1 vol. 6s.
    ‘The humour of the book is delicious.’--_Daily Telegraph._

AVENGED ON SOCIETY.

        By H. F. WOOD, Author of ‘The Englishman of
        the Rue Caïn,’ etc. In 1 vol. 6s.
    ‘Powerfully written and deeply interesting.’
          _Manchester Examiner._


                                LONDON:

                WM. HEINEMANN, 21, BEDFORD STREET, W.C.




                           ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER

                               _A NOVEL_

                                   BY

                           JESSIE FOTHERGILL

                               AUTHOR OF
        ‘THE FIRST VIOLIN,’ ‘A MARCH IN THE RANKS,’ ‘PROBATION,’
                                  ETC.

                            IN THREE VOLUMES
                                VOL. I.

                    [Illustration: Decorative Image]

                                 LONDON
                           WILLIAM HEINEMANN
                                  1893
                        [_All rights reserved_]




ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER




CHAPTER I.


‘It is too annoying!’ said Minna Hastings aloud, looking darkly towards
the door which the _padrona_ had just closed behind her, more gently
than usual, on taking her departure.

Minna tapped her foot on the floor and frowned, resting her chin on her
hand as she leaned a little forward in her chair. Then she let her eyes
wander round the large, pleasant room, into which the south sun was
pouring warmly, and she frowned again. For a moment she felt a strong
impulse to spring up, hasten after Madame Vincenzini, take her by her
plump, good-natured shoulders and say, in firm, decided tones:

‘Signora, it will not do. It must not be. You must reconsider this most
annoying decision. You must think, not of yourself, but of me.’

It was a most natural impulse. It is the one that comes to nearly all
of us when people are going to act in such a manner as to cause us
inconvenience.

But Minna, of course, conquered the impulse, sank back into her chair,
and felt, with a sense of angry desolation, that her morning’s work was
simply ruined.

She was an Englishwoman of eight-and-twenty; she was blessed with an
independent, if modest, income, with decided artistic gifts, with
a will of her own, and with a certain beauty which, if not always
striking at the first moment, was there, and made itself felt by
degrees--growing upon the beholder or the acquaintance, as certainly
and as effectually as does some true and sure and noble work of art.
She was tall, and graciously formed as to figure; her movements had
a persuasive pliancy, yet there was power and strength in the nobly
planned limbs; her arms, hands and wrists, in particular, were strong,
flexible and beautifully formed. Sculpture was her art, or, perhaps
more truly said, her despair. It is the sternest but most glorious
of the arts. Now, in Minna’s appearance, at least, there was nothing
stern. Yet had she a true conception of her art, and a true veneration
for and appreciation of it.

Her face was by no means as strikingly beautiful as her figure. Her
forehead was wide and large; the thick, wavy, rather coarse auburn
hair sprang from it with a sort of wilfulness. The nose was by no
means classical in shape or indentation, but it was refined. The fine
thin nostrils were almost transparent, and expressed the extreme of
sensibility and a quick, nervous temperament. The eyebrows were brown
and the eyes dark gray, full of fire, full of dreaminess--artist’s
eyes. The mouth was large and mobile, and expressed--what did it
express? It could express any and every momentary emotion; on the other
hand, it could shut up close and keep its secrets to itself did its
owner so choose.

Minna at eight-and-twenty was nearly alone in the world. In Rome, in
Florence, in many another city in which art is studied and in which
the materials for that study abound, there are crowds of English
women, American women, and even German women, working in their own
studios or in those of their masters, and generally, of what age
soever, unmarried. One usually knows this by a certain something in
their aspect or manner--a something indefinable and indescribable.
That something was not present in Minna Hastings, and, indeed, there
was a plain gold ring, the only one she wore, on the third finger of
the left hand--a ring which had been placed there nine years ago by
Rupert Hastings, whom she had married, and who had been her husband
for exactly eighteen months, having then died very suddenly of an
inflammation of the lungs. Minna had always been a person who might
have had many friends--indeed, there were many who were ready and
wishful to be her friends. She had been, perhaps, less eager than they.
In the time of her trouble, however, she had clung to one, a distant
relative of her husband’s, a certain Mrs. Charrington, and with her she
had, after the first horror of her loss had somewhat abated, travelled,
seeking to forget enough to be able to take up something like an
everyday life again, that being the consummation most devoutly sought
after by most people whose lives and feelings have been crushed or
shaken out of that everyday life into a higher, rarer atmosphere.

Nine months after her husband’s death, in the month of September, she
had come with her friend to Rome. Mrs. Charrington lived there. Minna
had never seen the place before. In a short time the mighty spell of
the city of cities had begun its work, as was natural enough, on a girl
of barely one-and-twenty--eager, steeped to her soul in the inborn love
of art, and, despite the hard blows of Fate, filled to overflowing with
the strength, the interest, and the boundless elasticity of youth.
Her old love of modelling, in which she had been considered to have
a very pretty trick, returned. She began to study in earnest, under
a well-known modern sculptor, and from that hour her future seemed
settled.

Mrs. Charrington arranged herself in her beloved apartment again with a
mind at rest, and with the profound conviction that Minna was perfectly
well able to get on without her. They saw each other often, but were
perfectly independent of one another. Minna had never saddled herself
with any kind of chaperon or companion. She had character and will,
and was fond of much solitude. From that time she had lived on in Rome
without let or hindrance. It had been practically her home. She had
lived there in all seasons: hot and cold, summer and winter--while the
hordes of the _Forestieri_ overran it, when it was empty of almost all
save its native population, or those who knew it and loved it as well
as if they had been born within its bounds. Here, in Rome, she had
recovered her balance, her health of mind and body, after the great
stroke which had smitten her down; here she had worked, she had hoped,
and aspired; studied and despaired and hoped again; she felt herself an
integral part of the place. For the last three years she had considered
herself very happily situated as to dwelling, in her two or three
pleasant rooms, in a quiet street in the purlieus of Piazza di Spagna,
with Madame Vincenzini as _padrona_, and not a thought or a care as
respected housekeeping to trouble her. Now and then, it is true, she
had said to herself: ‘It is too good to last.’

This morning the prophecy had been fulfilled--the blow had fallen.
Signora Vincenzini had come to tell her that she had at last decided to
give up the cares of housekeeping and go to live with her daughter, who
was married to a well-to-do draper at Milano.

The house and its business would be carried on by her son Edoardo and
his wife Amelia, and the signora would find everything to go exactly
as it always had done--her comfort being the main study in life of the
younger Vincenzini, as it had been of their mother--_ecco!_

‘I am very sorry, Signora Vincenzini,’ was all, or nearly all, that
Minna said.

‘And so am I, signora--sorry to break our connection, which has always
been so pleasant and so smooth--no disputes, no disagreements. _Ma,
che vuole?_’--with a shrug, expressive of everything that could be said
upon the subject.

_Che vuole?_ indeed! Minna felt there was no reply to it. She let
the _padrona_ go, without having in any way committed herself on the
subject of her own future course, only in her mind was the very fixed
resolution that she would not at any price remain as the tenant of the
younger Vincenzini, who were marked examples of the deterioration of
a good stock. The wife was a colourless creature, given to flopping
about the house in a dressing-gown and curl-papers, and reading
greasy-looking paper-backed novels. The only time when she was tidy
was when she was dressed in florid splendour for the theatre, or
for some other entertainment. Her mind was not too far removed from
household things to make her above examining any box or drawer which
might have been incautiously left unfastened. The husband was Minna’s
peculiar detestation for many reasons, and she often wondered how the
excellent Signora Vincenzini came to have such a child. The worthy pair
were admirably adapted to cheat, rob, and neglect some innocent young
Englishman, not up to their ways, or some _deputato_ from the country,
who would need only bed and early cup of coffee in the house, and who
would take his more serious _colazione_ and dinner at some restaurant
in close vicinity to the Parliamentary building in Monte Citorio. Minna
resolved at once that she would not be the woman to prevent them from
securing such a prey.

Her chief object must be to get out of these rooms, and into others,
before the dowager signora should have taken her departure. Minna
was quite able to defend herself in any contest as to agreements and
prices; she knew exactly when to threaten the extortioner with the
_Questura_, and when gracefully to ignore the fact that she was being
cheated; but she was not fond of a row simply for its own sake, and
was morally convinced that she would have to encounter one should she
remain a day in the house after the departure of the present _padrona_.

After giving an hour or more to vexed consideration of the subject, she
at last rose, and with a heavy sigh went to her bedroom, put on her
outdoor things, and went forth to take her usual walk to her studio. It
was now late in November, and the rainy season had, more or less, set
in; but up to a week or ten days before it had been what dwellers in
less-favoured climes would call summer--high, hot summer. Minna thought
of it every now and then with a sigh of regret, and a great longing
for the skies and the atmosphere and the wonderful scintillating glory
of the heat which she had revelled in. In such weather the great
dark palaces are a joy; the marble halls are all one asks for; the
sculptures are instinct with life; one expects them every moment to
move and speak: but no, they remain there, keeping their secrets fast,
till the cold of winter sets in and they are once more statues--marble
statues, even to the most enthusiastic.

To-day sunshine and shower alternated. Minna noticed none of it as she
walked more slowly than usual towards her studio. On her way thither
she had occasion to walk along a certain street, and, happening to
glance upwards as she did so, she found herself opposite the door of a
well-known _pensione_ affected by some of the most highly respectable
English and American visitors. A thought struck her:

‘I could at any rate take a room there till I have been able to look
about me, and see what is best to be done.’

She climbed the stairs forthwith and rang the bell, resolved to settle
the matter at once, so that on her return she could tell Signora
Vincenzini in a firm and decided manner of her resolve.

Further disappointment awaited her. Mrs. Cartwright, the very
comfortable, self-satisfied-looking matron who conducted the
_pensione_, received her with calm and dignified indifference, an
indifference born partly of the fact that her house was full, partly
perhaps of the other fact that she knew Minna well by name and
sight, and had heard her give utterance to views about _pensioni_
and boarding-houses which were far from complimentary to such
establishments. At any rate, as soon as she heard what Mrs. Hastings
wanted--a large good room with the sun--she smiled a lofty smile,
folded her hands, and regretted, with every appearance of satisfaction,
that it was quite out of her power to oblige her with anything of the
kind. She had no such room free--no prospect of having such a room.

Minna wished her good-morning and went away with an outwardly
unruffled mien. She was not going to give way to the fit of exasperated
ill-humour which she felt was coming over her before that insolent
creature--not she. Within she was full of vexation. Rome, as she knew,
was ill-supplied with comfortable boarding-houses. She did not wish to
go to a hotel. It was altogether very annoying.

‘I wish I had never gone in,’ she muttered to herself with much
irritation. ‘No room for me indeed! The instant I saw her I felt what
a mistake I had made. I don’t know how I came to forget for a moment
that it would be impossible for me to live, even for a week, in a
_pensione_ like that, filled with English and Americans “doing” Rome.
Heavens! doesn’t one know what they are? Their one idea how to rush
round it with the least possible expenditure of time and money--the
day’s sightseeing a duty to be done; then the blessed relief of
evening--the comfort of being able to forget the statues and the ruins
and the churches, while they grumble at their ease over the badness
of the dinner, and compare the prices of things at all the different
places they have ever stayed at in their lives. Such memories they have
for things of that kind, and for the pastry-cooks, and the jewellers
and the milliners, and for the liveries of the Queen’s servants when
she drives out, and for nothing else! Bah! I have had a lucky escape!’

So she told herself, looking anything but delighted with her good
fortune. She walked now at a quicker pace, and with a heightened
colour. It was an indubitable fact that Minna Hastings was not
accustomed to be thwarted or contradicted, and that she did not take
kindly to the experience. Presently arriving at the house in which
her studio was situated, she walked in under the cavernous entrance,
climbed the many stairs to the two rooms in which she was accustomed
to work, or dream, or loiter away her time.

The first room was of moderate size and by no means luxuriously
furnished. It contained, however, an easy-chair and an old comfortable
sofa. There was a faded but well-tinted Oriental rug in front of the
sofa and coming almost up to a perfectly hideous black stove--a stove
which nevertheless was capable, as are not all Roman stoves, of giving
out some heat when the wood was fairly burning in it. Minna threw off
her hat, mantle and gloves, and then, opening the stove door, began
with practised hand to put into it small faggots of twigs, a little
torn paper, and some larger pieces of wood. Her beautiful strong hands
moved quickly and lithely backwards and forwards, and up and down, in
this process. Then she struck a match sharply, applied it at exactly
the right spot, shut the door of the stove with a little bang, and rose
from her knees, with still the same frown of vexation on her brow.

She stood still for a moment, a graceful, gracious figure, clad all
in a soft golden brown, and looked absently at the door of the stove,
till there came to her ear the welcome hollow sound which told her
that the fire was ‘drawing,’ and in a few minutes would be brightly
and safely blazing. Then she made a step or two forwards, pushed aside
a _portière_ which hung across a doorway without a door, and stepped
into the next room. It was her workroom, and was not distinguished by
being different from other sculptors’ studios. It was bare, it was
sunless, it was spacious, and quite devoid of any effort at adornment.
The usual paraphernalia lay about here and there, and the usual casts,
copies and gyps of different world-known works. There were one or two
things which she had begun and not finished. There were one or two
finished things--a bust, a fantastic figure or two: and these finished
specimens betrayed a certain strength and rugged power which scarcely
accorded with one’s first impression, at any rate, of their creator.

She glanced impatiently round, then advanced towards the middle of the
room, where stood something of a larger size than any of her other
efforts. It was not yet the marble--it was the clay model, enveloped
in its wet cloth. She approached it, and laid a hand on the outermost
cloth, lifting it, and then paused, before she had discovered to view
the work concealed by that drapery.

‘No,’ she said to herself, ‘I will never work at you, nor even look at
you while I am in an ill-humour, and that I assuredly am just now.’

She readjusted the cloth, turned her back upon the figure, and, without
vouchsafing a glance towards any of the other things, went back into
the first room.

The fire was burning bravely now. She heard its merry little roar,
opened the stove door, and let a delicious red glow of light and warmth
into the room, and over her own face, which still looked annoyed and
disgusted. She wheeled the easy-chair up in front of the fire, took a
book from the table, and composed herself, or tried to do so.

‘The idea of being such a fool about all this!’ she said to herself. ‘I
am ashamed of myself. Let me forget it.’

Her book was a volume of Tacitus through which, with a small amount
of schoolgirl Latin, and with the aid of a dictionary and a crib, she
was plodding her way. Even to-day it succeeded after a time in drawing
her mind away from its vexations. The time flew by; the fire diffused
a pleasant warmth. Minna now and then roused enough to stretch out her
hand to the wood-basket, and cast another log upon the flames, then
returned to her book. She was at last aroused by a knock at the outer
door.

‘Avanto!’ cried she, scarcely raising her eyes till someone wished her
good-day. Then she looked up. A tall, fresh-complexioned and handsome
young man, with something a little sarcastic in his smile, advanced
into the room.

‘Oh, Hans!’ she said, with a slight smile. ‘Good-day to you.’ She spoke
in German, and held out her hand. Hans Riemann was her cousin, the
son of an English mother and a German father. He bent over her hand,
touching it lightly with his lips, and saying:

‘If you are busy and I disturb you, say so, and I will at once go away.’

‘Not in the least, thank you. I am very glad to see you. By the way, it
is some time since I did see you. Where have you been?’

‘Out beyond Olevano, for more than a week sketching,’ he replied
carelessly. ‘It was glorious, Minna; I have found quite a decent inn
out there--at least, you who have no nonsense about you would think it
quite passable, I am sure. Let’s go out there, in spring some time,
shall we? I can find scenery, and you models to any extent, and quite
out of the common, too.’

‘With all my heart--in spring,’ she agreed, in a melancholy voice.

‘Why that sigh? You look much graver than usual, now I come to observe
you,’ he said, with a suddenly aroused interest.

She broke into a short, vexed laugh.

‘I may well look grave--cross would be nearer the mark,’ she said. Then
she told him what had happened.

‘I am desolated to hear such news,’ he assured her; ‘from purely
selfish motives, if from no others. Are those delightful little
evenings, then, over? No more talk, no more coffee, no more Chopin and
Schumann and Raff? Gott! how painful!’

‘I hope only for a time to be inhospitable,’ said she with a smile.
‘But I will tell you the truth. Something that happened after that
vexed me far more than even my _padrona’s_ perverse behaviour.’

Then she related the history of her fruitless application for board and
lodging at Mrs. Cartwright’s. Hans laughed loud and long at the recital.

‘Ach, was!’ he cried. ‘It is a mercy that she refused you. The idea
of you there! Why, they do not get enough to eat--so I am told--and
are expected to dress for dinner and appear in the drawing-room in the
evening, whether they wish it or not. Mrs. Cartwright is by way of
holding a kind of _salon_. Yes, you may laugh--it is true. And there
are people fools enough to like it, or to think they do, and to call
it “very nice.” That is what all the English girls say,’ he added,
looking gravely at Minna, as if he had been entirely free from any
English taint. ‘I have heard them so often--before the Dying Gaul, the
Apollo Belvedere, the Medusa Morente, the Apoxiomene, under the Dome
of the Pantheon, and under that of St. Peter--the effect of the two
being much the same--on the Appian Way, in front of the milliners’
windows--“very nice, oh, very nice!”’

‘Come, come, sir, and what of your German _Mädchen_? “Ach Gott, wie
reizend! nein, wie entzückend schön! Das ist ja zu nett.” I can cap you
at that game.’

They both laughed. Then he said suddenly:

‘Look here, Minna, why couldn’t you come and put up where I am
staying? Temporarily, I mean, unless you like it so much that you
decide to remain. I have often told you about it. It is central, it
is cosmopolitan, it is not too dear; in fact, it ain’t dear at all.
If it were, I should not be there, as you know, on the governor’s
allowance. It is anything but aristocratic, that is true. It isn’t even
_collet-montée_, though there’s nothing in the world that you need
fight shy of--and it is fun, which is a great thing. Mrs. Cartwright’s
isn’t. I can tell you that. I should be on the spot--your slave, as
ever, and ready to tramp all over Rome with you till you have found
what you want in the shape of an _appartamento_. Moreover, it is not
full to overflowing. It seldom is, though there are several people
there. There are some good rooms to let--they have good rooms there, if
they have nothing else. Come and try it.’

‘Verily, you tempt me. It might be amusing. My rooms were so
comfortable that it was impossible to think of them in connection with
amusement. Let me see--what is it called?’

‘It is called Signora or Madame Dietrich--Casa Dietrich. She was
married to a German first.’

‘First? How many more times has she been married since the first?’

‘Not one. She’s a widow, is Signora Dietrich--a widow given to spending
more money than she has got. But that is a trifle. It is number
seventeen, Piazza Bocca della Verità----’

‘Bocca della Verità--really Hans, I don’t want to live next door to
Santa Maria in Cosmedin.’

‘It isn’t that one, of course. It has nothing to do with the old
Bocca della Verità; but in some respects we who live there consider
it rather a good name for it. Really and truly,’ he added earnestly,
‘it’s odd in many ways, undoubtedly. It is fundamentally Italian, but
there’s nothing really wrong there, according to Italian notions--and
you and I take the Romans as they are, I believe, and not as what
English philistinism says everyone all over the world ought to be. And
sometimes it is awfully amusing. Do come and try. If you didn’t like
it you could go to a hotel the very next day, and I would take all the
bother of it upon myself.’

She looked seriously reflective.

‘Of course I can’t possibly say anything till I have seen it for
myself. But I will see it--yes, I will look at it.’

‘All right. Suppose you were to come and have lunch there to-day. That
would give you some idea of it.’

‘With you, eh? Well, it might be a good plan. What time?’

‘In half an hour. It is close at hand. I’ll tell you what I will do.
I’ll run round now, and tell Giuseppe, and then come back here for you.’

‘Who is Giuseppe?’ she asked, as he made for the door.

He looked back at her, half laughing.

‘Giuseppe is--Giuseppe--well, I suppose one might call Giuseppe the
manager,’ he replied, and was gone.

Minna put on her things during his absence, and was ready, when he
returned, to accompany him.

‘I saw Giuseppe, and told him that a friend of mine was coming to
lunch, who would afterwards wish to see their best rooms. He said,
“Bene, bene! but don’t go to suppose that any rattle-pated student
friend of yours is going to be put up in the best rooms of Casa
Dietrich!” I did not explain. You will be explanation enough, as soon
as he sees you.’

‘I really think you are a very reckless young man,’ said Minna, as she
followed him out of the room and down the stairs.




CHAPTER II.


Hans Riemann led Minna through one or two narrow streets and alleys,
till they emerged in a small, quiet, but very pleasant-looking piazza,
the exact locality of which I am not going to reveal; it was one
of those which one is constantly coming upon in Rome in the most
unexpected way--nooks which surprise and delight the old inhabitant
almost as much as, perhaps more than, the hasty visitor, lying as they
often do close beside or behind some well-known street or quarter which
his steps have paced many a time, and with every winding of which he
thought he was acquainted. Quaint and quiet, hoary and old, they hide
themselves--known to those who inhabit them, and to few beside. It
was on the sunny side of this piazza that the great brown palace was
situated in which Madame Dietrich had a floor for her boarding-house.
It is a large palace, though not one that is found on Baedeker’s
plan of Rome, nor even is it mentioned in the compendious pages of
Gsell-Fells. It was all quite new to Minna, and its aspect pleased her;
a little quiet exclamation which broke from her lips as they entered it
showed that she felt its charm.

‘Not bad, is it?’ said Hans Riemann, catching the sound of approval.
‘Here it is--Piazza Bocca della Verità, and here is the entrance to
Casa Dietrich.’

He went in, under a great marble archway leading into a court, and she
followed him.

‘Casa Dietrich is on the first _piano_,’ he observed. ‘That is one of
its great merits. You will excuse me for thus singing its praises. You
will find out its defects quickly enough.’

They climbed the stairs, broad and well laid, of a grayish-white
marble, and dirty, of course, till they arrived at a door on the
first _piano_, on which door was a brass plate with the inscription
‘Signora Dietrich,’ and before which lay a very dirty mat turned wrong
way up, and inscribed ‘Salve.’ Hans Riemann pushed open the door, and
waved his hand to Minna to pass on. She did so, and found herself
in a large, well-proportioned hall, the floor of which was covered
with straw-matting in tolerably good repair. Doors opened from it, of
course, on all sides. There was a table in the middle of the space--at
one side of the hall a marble-topped table against the wall, crowded
with an array of lamps, large and small. This hall was a little dark,
but not unfriendly in appearance.

‘We’ll go and sit in the _salon_ till the bell has rung,’ said
Riemann, looking round and seeing no one. At that moment a waiter came
into the hall--a young man with a handsome, silly, sentimental face,
who looked vaguely round, and then gazed with bland benevolence on the
pair.

‘Has the bell rung, Ettore?’ asked Riemann.

‘Signorino, no,’ replied Ettore in a soft voice, and with a _primo
tenore_ kind of smile, and he shook his head.

‘Belongs to one of the oldest and noblest Florentine families,’ said
Hans in an explanatory manner to Minna, in English. ‘Like all the
rest of them, you know--_decaduto_. Italians and Irishmen are always
descended from princes, and the lower their station the greater were
the princes--in the days that are no more. It’s awfully sad! This way,
Minna, please. I should deceive you if I led you to expect much in the
way of punctuality here. I hope you are not famished.’

‘No,’ said Minna indifferently, as she followed him into the _salon_--a
fine, large, admirably proportioned room, with a slightly vaulted
ceiling and three windows. It was not at all surprising in Rome that a
palace, or rather part of one, should now be a boarding-house; there
was a fitness in the order of things which brought a nobly descended
Florentine into its halls as a waiter. But there was something pathetic
or exasperating--according to the temper of the observers--in the
contrast between the just proportions and pleasing form of the room
itself, which was so well designed to be furnished with stately
richness and splendour, and the order of things actually prevailing.
There was a piano, of course. There was a round table in the middle
of the room, with a heavy, hideous plush cover; the said table was
covered with trash of the meanest description--odd volumes of Tauchnitz
novels with torn backs; a ragged archaic Baedeker’s ‘Central Italy
and Rome’--for there are travellers who will take all the trouble
necessary to get to a new country, and will then be too mean and too
ignorant to buy themselves a new guide-book; a frightful blue-glass
vase, filled with artificial flowers; a monstrosity in the shape of
an inkstand (‘Does anyone ever write letters here?’ Minna wondered);
and other decorative trifles of a like nature. The walls were hung
with a series of the crudest chromo-lithographs of sentimental
pictures--a simpering young lady in a crinoline and chignon lifting a
bright green-upper skirt to show a dazzling white under one and ugly
little black boots with elastic sides is being handed by an equally
simpering young gentleman towards a close carriage, which looks much
too small to contain her crinoline alone, not to speak of her own
person and remaining garments, and those of the young gentleman. This
fascinating work of art is labelled ‘I nuovi sposi.’ On the other
side of a tarnished, distorting glass, which had once been a mirror,
hung as a companion picture, and an encouragement to matrimony, the
representation of a lovely being with an abnormally swan-like throat,
and flowing robes and veil of black crape, pouring copious tears upon
a little gravestone, with the perspective of which something had gone
hopelessly wrong; she is surrounded by crosses, cypresses, and other
accompaniments of a graveyard scene, and the exhilarating inscription
of this work of art is ‘La Madre desolata.’

‘That is the high-art side of the room,’ said Hans, kindly explaining.
‘Art, love and grief, the piano, the “Sposi” and the desolate
mother--you see the connection, I doubt not. Here is the frivolous, or
society department.’ He pointed where a stove reared itself, where the
sofas and easy-chairs, all more or less dingy-looking, congregated, and
where, on the walls, was a great collection of photographic likenesses
of ladies and gentlemen, in every variety of posture, size, and
costume, but mostly, as here represented, uninteresting, to use the
mildest term. In addition to these were hung up all kinds of rubbish
in the shape of little fancy baskets, boxes with handles, trumpery
‘ornamental’ cases and bottles, and unclassable, unusable trash of
every description. The wall-paper, against which were hung these gems
of art and fancy, was of a brilliant yellow; the carpet, now faded,
had once been dazzlingly, agonizingly variegated. The ruling _motif_,
as it were, of the furniture colour was of a deep, full rose, with a
suspicion of magenta in it. It had been also mercifully dimmed by time
and having been sat upon by the boarders of many seasons.

Minna looked round this _salon_ with a slow, scrutinizing,
comprehensive glance, taking it all in, nodding her head mournfully
now and then, as she recognised with experienced eye some decoration,
some ornament, or some piece of furniture common to this class of
establishment.

‘Yes,’ said Hans, laughing; ‘it is bad, I know; but it is Rome.
Because she has been first in everything--art and beauty included,
therefore--you know what I would say!’

‘Yes,’ Minna assented; ‘it is her curse now, of course.’

She seated herself in one of the dingy easy-chairs, Hans in another,
and after they had been talking together for a little time they became
aware of a series of lusty thumps and bangs, apparently on different
doors, which knocks gradually approached nearer to where they were,
till at last the door was flung open, and Ettore cried, much as ‘Ready’
is cried when the guard whistles and the train starts, ‘Lunch is
ready,’ and disappeared.

In ten minutes the entire company then staying at Casa Dietrich had
assembled in the dining-room, and were discussing their lunch, or
_colazione_, and the day’s doings or the morrow’s doings, with a loud
rattle of knives and forks, a clashing of plates and dishes, and a
consumption of thin red wine such as was going on at that same hour in
dozens of _pensioni_ and hotels all over the great city.

There was nothing very remarkable about any of the boarders at Casa
Dietrich, or if there were, their peculiarities were veiled by the
absorbing interest of the moment. Hans Riemann received a good many
nods and smiles of friendly greeting from the very mixed specimens of
nationalities who dropped in. Some glances of inquiry and interest
were bestowed upon his companion, but in the main everyone appeared
thoroughly interested in his or her own business. Next to Minna, on
her right, sat an intelligent-looking lady, with a clever face and
white hair drawn very tightly back from her forehead and twisted into
what Minna felt must be a painfully firm knob at the back. An English
upper servant would have sniffed at her dress as being too ugly and
badly made for anyone with a sense of self-respect to wear. Of course
she soon revealed herself as a German, and one who could give a good
account of herself in the matter of culture, no matter what her
shortcomings as to dressmaking might be. Riemann sat on Minna’s left
hand, and opposite to her was an empty place.

‘Well,’ said Minna to herself, ‘they are not distinguished-looking,
I must say. Some of them are decidedly odd. Those Americans up at
the end of the table are simply awful. The Italian men look a pretty
decent sort. The Englishwoman down there at the other end of the
table, with the red nose and the round hat and veil--unspeakable,
quite. The old Scotchman and his lady-wife are an odd-looking couple;
but I must say they don’t stare at one as if one were a wild beast,
nor look as if they would take a week to make up their minds whether
they should speak to one or not, as they certainly would have done at
Mrs. Cartwright’s.--Am I making a long stay?’ she added, turning with
a smile to the German lady, who had just asked her a question, and
explaining her situation to her.

‘Ah, so!’ said the latter as if much impressed; and Minna, turning
again to her plate, discovered that the empty seat opposite to her
was just being occupied by its rightful owner. He was at one and the
same time seating himself and looking with piercing earnestness at
her, Minna Hastings. Her quick first glance at him showed her a man
considerably above middle height, rather spare and muscular, age
apparently fifty at least, hair beginning, but only just beginning, to
be grizzled, eyes dark and brilliant, full of fire, and capable too of
softness, a mobile mouth, concealed by a heavy dark moustache, a fine
chin. It was in every respect a noble head. Every line of his figure
and face betrayed an eager, restless, nervous temperament, force of
intellect, force of will, while a certain perversity about the lines
which came from the nose to the mouth, and a certain biting of the lips
together, would seem to indicate powerful prejudices, strong passions.
The whole aspect of the man was outside the common run; as he looked
at her and she at him, Minna felt, without putting her feelings into
words, that whatever the rest of the company might be, one member of
it was beyond, perhaps above, the average. He gave her the impression
of bringing a different atmosphere into the whole place. Almost before
she had had time to form these conclusions, Hans Riemann, half rising
and addressing the new-comer and Minna, formally presented him to
her as Signor Giuseppe Oriole. As he rose again from his chair to
make her a profound bow, Minna noticed how exceeding shabby was his
dress of rusty black, the cloth worn to its foundation, pathetically
poverty-stricken, and how spotlessly clean on the other hand was his
white linen collar and shirt-front; he wore no cuffs. They were, as
she knew with lightning-like swiftness of intuition, far too great an
extravagance for everyday use.

She returned his bow and his greeting with a polite inclination of the
head, and replied to him in his own language.

‘Ah,’ said he, with another of the piercing looks, ‘you speak Italian!’

‘Surely,’ said she, smiling. ‘I have lived eight years in Rome.’

‘Really,’ said he, and then, looking at Riemann, who had become rather
red: ‘Where, then, is your friend, Riemann?’

‘The signora is my friend,’ said Hans, blushing more violently than
before. ‘We are cousins.’

‘Ah!’ said Signor Oriole with a decidedly haughty accent; ‘you did
not, then, tell me the truth. You said, “un mio amico.”’

Hans looked awkward, but not angry, and Signor Oriole, suddenly
relaxing his severity, said:

‘Well, well; boys will play tricks on old men to the end of time.’

With that he fell to vigorously on a dish of buttered eggs, which the
sentimental-looking Ettore now offered to him.

Minna was not particularly hungry. She leaned back in her chair and
looked at the company, and held a little conversation with the German
lady and a little with Hans, and in the intervals watched her opposite
neighbour with a kind of fascination which annoyed herself--she did
not know why. He did not address her again. His looks wandered, or,
rather, darted, sharply in every direction. The plaintive Ettore came
to him repeatedly, apparently for directions, which were given to
him in a low tone but with considerable agitation of manner; his eyes
flashed, his hands worked, his patience was evidently not of the most
elastic kind. Minna remembered what Hans had said, laughing, about
Signor Giuseppe--that he supposed he was the manager. Apparently
his surmise was right enough. His thoughts were evidently very much
engrossed with the serving of the repast, which was very Italian in
character and very slow in process. There was something incongruous and
absurd in the contrast between his appearance and his pursuit. She felt
inclined to laugh. Then, all at once, his sharp ear caught the import
of a discussion at some little distance from him, which was going on
between an English girl and her Italian neighbour, about the enormities
committed by Nero, and the burning of Rome in his reign. The English
young lady, whose entire views on the subject were evidently derived
from Baedeker and some extremely elementary guide to Roman history,
was duly shocked at the monster’s wickedness. Her neighbour, a young
Italian in training for an _avvocate_, or lawyer, was vague to the
last degree on the subject. Had the Emperor Nero, then, committed so
many atrocities? He did not know. He had seen Rossi act the part in a
play--oh, a long, very long play of five acts, most tedious! Rossi was
too old, too fat; he puffed, he grunted; impossible that any illusion
could exist with such a figure acting the principal part. In this
long dry play it seemed to him that Nero was a born coward, and there
had also been in it a woman, a most wearisome woman, who shouted and
scolded and threatened, and was hideously ugly to boot.

‘But that was a play; this is history,’ said the young lady.

‘Really! well, I do not know much history, sa!’ said the young
man, who then owned that for his part he had never been inside the
Colosseum, nor to the Palatine Hill, nor any of those tumble-down
places. He preferred Ronzi and Singers’ restaurant, or that of the
Milano in Monte Citorio.

‘Oh, signore!’ cried the young lady. ‘But you must have learnt at
school how wicked Nero was--the Christians--why, he----’

‘Do not be too sure of the wickedness of Nero, signorina mia,’ broke
in the voice of Signor Giuseppe. ‘Nero was an artist. Never forget
that. To an artist, much may be forgiven. He rebuilt Rome, and left it
far more beautiful than did Augustus, even after his great boast. His
feeling for the beautiful was keen, strong, intense; in art, in music,
in architecture, in sumptuous ideas, grandly carried out, he excelled.
He was an artist. Yes, that was, in the main, the character of Nero.’

Utterly abashed, and incapable, with her mere smattering of the
language, of replying to him, or dealing with this view of the
question, the young girl became crimson and remained silent. Hans
Riemann, good naturedly but mistakenly advancing to her rescue,
observed that Nero must have been a rather terrific kind of artist.

‘Che!’ snapped Signor Giuseppe, in great excitement, while the long
sinewy fingers of his left hand endeavoured, with the aid of a piece
of bread, to chase a piece of meat on to the point of a knife which he
held in his right. Then, with flashing eyes, he muttered, but not so
low that Minna could not hear it all:

‘Dio mio! These English! These Americans! These wearisome girls, as
ignorant as apes, who come and patronize us--patronize Rome! and give
forth their idiotic sentiments on her monuments and heroes. Bah! ugh!
It is too much--it is far too much! It turns one’s blood to gall.’

His angry passions had arisen. His colour had fled. His eyes
flashed--his lips moved in whispers, inarticulate, of contempt and
dislike. Minna, who was endowed with a strong sense of the ridiculous,
felt the blood rush to her face in the strong effort she made to
refrain from smiling. She felt that for some reason or other she
would not for the world that Signor Giuseppe should see her smiling.
Therefore, as a matter of course, he at once raised his eyes and
fixed them full upon her face, just as the smile refused to be any
longer utterly concealed, just as the recollection of his impassioned
defence of Nero and his equally impassioned indictment of her younger
countrywoman made the laughter bubble over, into her eyes and upon
her mouth, whether she would or no. She felt as if she had been a
schoolgirl caught laughing when she should have been respectfully
listening to the professor’s lecture. The crimson tide mounted higher
and higher--she found her situation embarrassing, and was enraged with
herself for doing so. Relief appeared from an unexpected quarter.
Ettore again came stealing softly round to Signor Oriole’s side, and
whispered something in his ear.

‘Che diavolo!’ cried Signor Giuseppe, and this time the matter appeared
to be one of such urgent importance that he sprang up, pushed his
chair back with a loud rattle, and with a quick, eager step and rusty
coat-tails flying behind him, followed Ettore round the table and out
through a door.

‘Where has he gone?’ asked Minna of Hans, in a low voice. She felt
almost hysterical in her effort not to laugh, not to betray how odd
she found the whole situation, and the astonishing part of it was, to
her, that the rest of the company sat so placidly in their places,
engrossed in their talk and jokes, and seemed scarcely to have seen
what had been going on in this particular corner.

‘To the kitchen,’ replied Hans, also betraying not the least surprise.
‘There is a new cook, the fifth in four months. He came yesterday,
and he has probably made a frightful mess of something--tumbled the
_compôte_ into the fire, or ruined the vegetables, or something, who
knows? I do not wish to conceal any of our shortcomings--and they are
many--from you.’

‘Into the kitchen!’ repeated Minna. ‘But isn’t there a Signora
Dietrich?’

‘Of course there is. But she and Fulvia, the _bambina_, are away just
now.’

‘So this poor gentleman is _facchino_ in ordinary, as well as manager,’
murmured Minna wonderingly. ‘What next?’

‘You’ve hit the right nail on the head when you say “this poor
gentleman,”’ replied Hans in a rapid, discreetly low tone. ‘He’s a
gentleman, and he’s poor, and----’

Here Signor Giuseppe reappeared, and went to his place, moving more
calmly, perhaps, with a face white from inner excitement of some kind,
probably painful. He seated himself in ominous silence. His lips moved
a little, but no sound came from them. Once or twice he glanced, with
eyes full of suppressed fire, towards the kitchen door. A great peace
and silence now reigned in that region. Again no one seemed in the
least struck by what had taken place. Again Minna felt a wild desire
to burst into a peal of laughter, but happening just at that moment
to glance towards Signor Giuseppe, she met his eyes fixed fully, and
probably accidentally, on her face. Though he was looking at her, she
did not feel as if he really saw her, and those eyes were full of such
sadness, such despondency; over the whole face, still pale from recent
excitement, there was a look of such resigned, all-enduring patience,
that all her desire to laugh vanished away. Instead, she could have
wept. She said nothing, but fixed her eyes firmly upon her plate, then,
with an effort, turned to the German lady, and carried on a trifling
conversation with her, until at last, to her intense relief, the
company began to move, rising from their chairs and dispersing quickly.

‘I suppose you will want to go now, or very soon,’ said Hans Riemann to
her.

‘Well, yes.’

‘Do you care to see the rooms, or not, after this specimen?’ he asked
her in a low voice, with a half-laugh.

Minna paused perceptibly ere she replied. Should she come here or not?
It was altogether very odd, and did not seem as if it would be very
comfortable. Then she looked up, and saw that Signor Giuseppe was
looking with the same piercing, almost suspicious, glance at her and
Hans as they spoke together. She took her decision at once.

‘Yes, I think I will look at the rooms.’

‘Are you at liberty, Signor Giuseppe?’ asked Hans, in a matter-of-fact
tone which jarred on Minna, though she felt it was ridiculous in her to
think anything about it. After all, the man was the ‘manager,’ and was
evidently heart and soul in his work.

‘At liberty for what?’ asked Signor Oriole, almost rudely.

‘Mrs. Hastings, you know, would like to see the rooms here, if you will
kindly show her what you have disengaged.’

‘Ah, yes, yes!’ he said, as if remembering himself. Then, with a look
upon his face expressive of extreme ill-temper, and dislike of everyone
and everything in general, he said coldly:

‘This way, signora, if you will favour me so far.’




CHAPTER III.


In a week from that day Minna Hastings left her lodgings and removed to
Casa Dietrich. She had stored her superfluous furniture in her studio
and the sitting-room belonging to it, and had taken possession of two
of the best rooms at Casa Dietrich, on the express understanding that
the arrangement was a temporary one, to be terminated by a week’s
notice on either side. She was persuaded that she would find it very
uncomfortable at the establishment in Piazza Bocca della Verità, and
that she should not stay there a day longer than was necessary for her
to find another private apartment which should suit her thoroughly. She
told her cousin Hans so, and he only laughed and hoped she might be
‘agreeably disappointed.’

As a matter of fact, at the end of that week, when she had been at
considerable trouble in settling herself into her rooms, had made
them look homelike and comfortable, and had begun to fall into the
routine of the house, she felt very unwilling to begin the onerous
work of searching for an apartment. Minna was naturally of a somewhat
indolent temperament. When roused or interested she was capable both
of vigorous thought and vigorous action, but she was not very easy to
be roused. She found Casa Dietrich amusing--at first, mildly so; then
more strongly fascinating and she could always, if amusement began to
pass subtly into ennui, leave the general company and retire to the
privacy of her own room, and as she was also much at her studio, she
had begun already to think that it might not be a bad plan to remain
all the winter where she was. So she appeared pretty regularly at
the principal meal--dinner--breakfasting in her own room, and often
lunching in her studio; and from her place at table in the evening she
surveyed the scene with a placid, good-humoured, impersonal kind of
amusement, which showed in her face more perhaps than she was aware,
and produced upon one or two persons an effect of which she was utterly
unconscious.

Signora Dietrich, with her daughter, continued to be away, visiting
relations of her late husband at Milan. She was seldom mentioned, but
there was a young Italian man who sometimes asked if good news had been
received of la signorina Fulvia.

When Minna had studied the entire company of the guests, and
then turned to the sole representative of the house itself, if
representative he were, who was not even a relation, she decided that
he was quite the most interesting person under that roof, the person
whose acquaintance was assuredly best worth having--and this even after
the wretched contretemps (whether his fault or hers she never could
decide) which had taken place on her arrival at the house.

She had come, soon after lunch one day, with a great deal of
luggage: two or three large trunks, and the usual accompaniment of
travelling-bags, hold-alls, umbrellas, sunshades, and cloaks. She was
received on the threshold by Signor Oriole, who opened the door wide,
as wide as it would go, and, smiling upon her, bade her welcome. He was
attired, as she perceived, in the same rusty black as on the day she
had first seen him; there was ever about him the same appearance of a
gentleman, and the bow he made her was a courtly one. All this Minna
saw vaguely, but her thoughts were taken up with her luggage, which was
being borne upstairs by two stout _facchini_. She had not the faintest
idea that Signor Giuseppe attached any importance to her coming, and
she replied to his greeting with a comprehensive, vague kind of bow,
and an absent expression, while she said quickly:

‘Oh, will you tell them into which room to put the luggage? It must all
go into the bedroom for the present, and I will decide afterwards what
to do with it.’

So engrossed was she with this important question, that she did not
clearly see--though she had a general impression to that effect--the
sudden violent change which came over Signor Giuseppe’s countenance.
The smile--the genial smile of welcome--faded from it; it flushed
angrily. His figure became stiff and rigid. Without bestowing another
look on Minna, he cried out in a sharp harsh tone:

‘Ettore!’

Ettore quickly appeared, running and attentive, in answer to this
summons. Signor Giuseppe waved his hand with an imperial gesture
towards the group near the door--the lady, the luggage, the
_facchini_--and in a commanding tone said:

‘Send the people here to take the orders of the signora about her
luggage. At once, do you hear?--at once!’ His voice trembled with
excitement.

‘Si, signore,’ replied the imperturbable one, with a glance from
his liquid eyes towards the arrival. ‘At once,’ he added, after a
thoughtful pause of some duration.

Before he could persuade himself to go and summon ‘the people,’ so
magnificently spoken of, and who consisted of a porter, a kitchen
boy, and a housemaid, Signor Giuseppe, flashing one fiery, withering
look towards Minna, and with a little bend of the head, as stiff and
scornful as his first had been gracious and benignant, had turned on
his heel and was gone. She saw his figure disappearing, head erect,
shoulders squared, rusty coat-tails flying behind him. But she was too
much concerned about the disposition of her luggage to pay much heed
to it all. At last everything was safely placed, and she, once in her
rooms, did not emerge from them again till Ettore had thumped upon her
door with the brief announcement ‘Pronto,’ much past the time at which
she had been told dinner was served.

When she went into the dining-room, she found her place to be, as
before, between Hans Riemann and the German lady, and opposite Signor
Giuseppe. She made a general bow to the company as she took her place,
and Signor Giuseppe was included in that bow. The merest movement of
his head returned her greeting, and as he ostentatiously went out of
his way not to speak to her during the entire repast, she decided
that he was a very rude person, and a foolish one to boot, since such
treatment was not exactly calculated to attract visitors to the house
which was under his management. It did not occur to her for a moment
to trouble herself, or to feel concerned about it. She conversed with
her neighbours on either hand, and saw incidentally that the same
pantomime went on between Signor Giuseppe and Ettore which she had
observed when she had lunched there a week before. Had she not been an
old Roman, and accustomed to Italian ways, she might have found the
whole repast a somewhat extraordinary affair, and she noticed that some
inexperienced English and American visitors had hard work not to break
into loud exclamations over the food which was offered to them, and the
profuse use of the toothpick, and the _degagés_ attitudes practised by
the Italian part of the company.

There was first of all a soup, of a somewhat thin and watery
consistency. This was followed by some roast meat, surrounded by
chopped-up vegetables of different kinds--_finocchi_, little hard
potatoes and small onions--savoury, perhaps, but scarcely tempting to
those accustomed to other things. It disappeared quickly, nevertheless.
The third course was tiny birds dexterously chopped in halves, very
hard, very spare in proportions, bearing, in fact, a suspicious
likeness to starving sparrows, caught unawares and sacrificed to make
a feast for Lucullus. Salad accompanied this dish. After it had been
eaten a long pause followed, during which the members of the company
entertained each other with conversation--conversation of a polyglot
description. The Americans, with nasal, unabashed and unabashable
distinctness, gave their views on the subject of Italy in general
and the Eternal City in particular. Rome did not please them--that
particular set of them--and they said so with characteristic courage.
They had been there nearly three weeks, and they guessed they were
almost through now, and should be ready to go in a few days. The
antiquities were interesting, they admitted, but the streets would be
a disgrace to the latest Western city in America; and the beggars were
a scourge. The ancient Roman didn’t know everything, and, for their
part, they thought Canova’s statue of the Princess Pauline Borghese
and the Carlo Dolcis in one or two of the picture-galleries were just
lovely--sweet, they were; and they were going to take home copies of
several of them.

‘Canova’s things,’ said one portly matron, ‘were beautiful--so soft;
they couldn’t be softer if they were cut out of butter or blanc-mange.’

‘Butter!’ murmured Hans Riemann, in an ecstasy; ‘dear woman, I thank
thee for that epithet! “The Butterman.” It supplies a long-felt want in
my vocabulary--a descriptive epithet for Canova. Do you call this feast
of reason nothing, Minna?’

‘I call it delightful,’ said Minna, whose eyes were brimming over
with laughter, and her cup of pleasure was now filled to the brim by
the spectacle of an American citizen refusing butter to his cheese,
remarking with closed eyes and an ineffable expression to his neighbour:

‘Butter, sir; no. I never touch butter outside Philadelphia.’

While this discourse was going on in a loud voice at the other end
of the table, an English party at the other extremity of it were
discreetly muttering their commonplaces beneath their breath. When any
of their remarks did rise to the surface, they were usually to the
effect that they thought the Pope ought to be made to show himself more
to the people; they believed they would have to go away without seeing
him at all. The Queen they had seen that afternoon driving on the
Pincio--such shabby liveries, such a poor turn-out altogether! Why, an
English squire would be ashamed--and so forth. Some Germans, in another
quarter, were exhausting themselves in delighted recollections of what
they had seen. As usual, they were far more thoroughly instructed than
either the English or the Americans of the same class in life, and had
gone about their sight-seeing in a methodical, systematic manner worthy
of all praise. They knew what they had seen. They knew what they wanted
to see. They were full of statistics and gutturals and enthusiasm; they
discussed ‘der Nero,’ ‘der August,’ and ‘der Hadrian’ with solid good
sense and deep interest, the while they valiantly struggled with the
tough roast-beef, and devoured bones and all the hapless sparrow-like
creatures which have been already described. The Italians, who were
exclusively men, some of them youths in business houses or professional
offices, and one or two older ones, appeared to be in their way decent
fellows enough. They spoke with the rapidity of lightning; their
dark eyes gleamed and their white teeth flashed. They were full of
_cortesia_, and at the same time brimming over with amusement and a
keen sense of the ridiculous. Nothing that was absurd in the rest of
the company escaped the piercing eyes of these young men.

Minna, who understood all about it, and was well acquainted with the
Italian quickness at grasping all that went on around them, admired
more than ever their presence of mind and unvarying politeness to
those who caused them so much amusement. With patient, polite gravity
they listened to the well-meant efforts of some English and Germans to
converse with them in their own language; nothing but an irrepressible
gleam in their eyes betrayed that they were secretly convulsed with
laughter at some of the wild mistakes and extraordinary turns of
expression of their interlocutors.

‘I dare say,’ thought Minna to herself, ‘that some of those
stupid-looking English and Germans, and those self-conceited
Americans, are thinking to themselves that “these foreigners” are a
set of chattering, grinning apes; I have so often heard them express
that discriminating opinion. Little do they think that to the apes they
appear more like clumsy clowns in a pantomime than anything else.’

There was only one Italian member of the company who seemed more
irritated than amused at the proceedings, and that member was,
of course, Signor Giuseppe, who, in a very bad temper, listened
nevertheless with avidity to what was going on around him, and, though
understanding very little English, or perhaps because he understood
very little English, still grasped enough of what was going on to
whet his impatience and anger, and who kept muttering uncomplimentary
remarks in idiomatic Roman to a young Italian who sat at his right
hand. One of these remarks came clearly to Minna’s ears.

‘Listen to that English girl,’ hissed Signor Giuseppe, in a fury, into
his neighbour’s ear, ‘with her _grécié_. Why do English people never
succeed in pronouncing _grazie_ as it ought to be spoken? _Grécié_,
_grécié_, between their clipped-in lips, as if they were afraid that
something bad would happen if they let the sound flow out. What a
language is theirs!--and they have voices, too, from whose sound cats
would fly in terror.’

Minna heard it all, and, resolved to bring him to book, fixed her eyes
calmly upon his face, and waited till he should look at her, as she was
convinced he would sooner or later. His neighbour laughed a little, in
some embarrassment, with a side-glance at Minna, whose blonde beauty
he admired extremely. He fully agreed with all that Signor Giuseppe
had said, and often had hard work himself not to laugh at that English
_grécié_, but he would have preferred to reserve the expression of
his amusement till later, when he could have made a good story of it
at the Circolo, and sent half a dozen fellows into fits of laughter by
his clever mimicry of the foreigners’ pronunciation of that important
little word.

Just then Signor Giuseppe lifted his head, and his eyes fell full upon
Minna’s face. He still looked angry and perturbed, but embarrassed,
repentant--not a jot.

She smiled, and, to let him know she had heard his complimentary
speech, said:

‘_Grazie_, signore.’

He reddened, looked angrily at her, and said ill-temperedly, and with a
shrug expressive of whole volumes of comments on the situation:

‘Già! You, signora, speak Italian like a Roman. What can I say more?
That very fact must make you aware of the shortcomings of most of your
compatriots in that respect.’

‘At least, they try to learn to speak your beautiful language with
their cat-like voices, poor things!’ said Minna quietly, but with an
ambiguous smile, all of which evidently irritated this very irritable
gentleman almost to madness. What might have happened next, in the
wordy war, who shall say?

At that moment Ettore, consciously or unconsciously, came to the
rescue, by appearing with the dish for which they had been waiting
so long--the most important dish of the feast, at any rate to a true
Italian--the sweet, the _dolce_.

‘May it sweeten some of our tempers!’ thought Minna to herself, with
a furtive smile, as she saw it borne round, and all eyes anxiously
fixed upon it. Unfortunately for her, it was a dish of which she had
never been able to overcome her dislike--a kind of heavy pastry in
the shape of a great tart, filled with an equally heavy, rich, creamy
mixture, yellow in colour, and containing chopped-up almonds, sweet to
sickliness.

It went its round, and met with various receptions as it slowly
proceeded. By the Italians it was greeted with acclamation, with
gleaming eyes, and only half-suppressed murmurs of delighted
appreciation; by the English with some distrust. They looked at it
suspiciously; they paused, they hesitated; finally, they cut off a
small piece and put it on their plates with an expression which said
plainly:

‘I don’t know what you are, but I’m hungry, and I’m going to try you,
at any rate.’

It had a warmer welcome from the Americans--themselves ardent lovers
of ‘candies’ and pastries. The Germans took it as a matter of
course--whether they liked it or not, it was part of the repast, which
would have to be paid for; and a repast was needed, and must be fully
discussed, in order that they might have strength for the next day’s
work. They ate it, and said nothing. When it was offered to Minna,
she simply refused it, and thought no more about it. She had seen it
before; she had tried it, and she disliked it. In a few moments a voice
from the other side of the table accosted her:

‘Signora!’

She looked up. The dish was now being handed to Signor Giuseppe.
His right hand held a knife suspended over it; his eyes were fixed
inquiringly upon Minna.

‘Can I not persuade you to change your mind?’ he said with dignified,
old-fashioned courtesy; ‘or do you dislike sweets?’

‘I do not like that sweet, signore,’ she replied, with an unguarded
candour for which a moment afterwards she could have bitten out her
tongue.

‘You do not like this sweet?’ he echoed, plunging the knife into
it, and cutting off an inordinately large slice, as if to show how
right-minded persons prized it. ‘Yet it is a distinctly Roman _plat_.
It is celebrated.’

‘I know,’ said Minna apologetically. ‘I am very sorry. I do not like
it, and never eat it.’

‘Dio mio!’ ejaculated Giuseppe, with another shrug, as he conveyed
the huge cutlet of paste and cream to his own plate with a look of
displeasure.

‘Another piece of English stupidity,’ observed Minna, smiling again.

But the _dolce_ seemed to have the wished-for effect on Signor
Giuseppe’s humour. He smiled benevolently, shook his head, and
responded:

‘Ah yes, there are so many of them! What is one amongst the rest?’

It was, intrinsically considered, an excessively rude remark, but Minna
felt it implied that her want of taste and Englishness were pardoned,
and, strange to say, the conviction was quite soothing to her.

Later in the evening she sat in the room she had made into a
sitting-room talking to Hans Riemann, whom she had invited in to hang
up some little pictures for her.

‘Hans,’ she asked suddenly, ‘what is Signor Giuseppe? Has he a business
outside, or does he devote his whole time to the management of this
extraordinary establishment?’

‘Oh, he has a place in some lawyer’s office I believe--something
very small! He gets about eighty pounds a year from it, all told, I
fancy. The hours are not long, and that gives him leisure to boss this
concern, do you see.’

‘Oh ... well, it seems odd to me! I am sure he is not a stupid man----’

‘Stupid? I should rather think not,’ cried Hans; ‘the very reverse.
There’s hardly a thing you can mention that old Giuseppe can’t tell you
something about: art, architecture, archæology, Church history, and
other history. Politics, philosophy, religion--he has studied them all.
Yes, he’s a first-rate all-round man is Giuseppe. If you ever want to
know anything about the ruins, you know, or the excavations--anything
about any of these old mosaics or wall-paintings, or about mythology,
or about Roman history, from the time of Romulus and Remus, or whatever
the creatures were, downwards, go to Signor Oriole and he’ll tell you.
I once went with him, I and another fellow, to the Palatine Hill,
and I can tell you I never heard anything so interesting in my life.
He made it all live again, beginning with those old walls, don’t you
know--those made of the big blocks of tufa when Rome was on the top
of the Palatine and nowhere else, and he pointed to Villa Mills and
shook his finger at it and said he had seen things beneath the convent
which would have raised ghosts--awful ghosts--before the eyes of any
but a set of cabbage-headed nuns: he swore he had seen the altar of the
Pelasgic Roma Quadrata there. He took us round the whole thing--what
one is allowed to see of it. It lasted for hours. We didn’t get back to
lunch; we never missed it,’ said Hans in an almost awestruck tone, and,
indeed, the fact was one worthy to be recorded in letters of gold. ‘All
through those palaces he took us, and into Livia’s house and all the
rest of it, and we followed him like lambs. I can tell you, if they had
made our Roman history as interesting as that when we were at school I
should have known more than I do now.’

‘And do you think Signor Oriole’s history was made very interesting for
him when he was at school?’ asked Minna with a touch of malice.

‘Now, Minna, that’s too bad of you! Am I not just trying to show that
he’s a genius and not an ordinary man? I believe he knows just as much
about it as any of these celebrated fellows, Lanciani or Roissieof,
or any of them. He’s immensely learned,’ Hans went on with youthful
enthusiasm. ‘He can always tell me everything I want to know.’

‘An infallible gauge to the depths of his learning,’ murmured Minna to
herself.

Hans went on:

‘He is a republican, you know, at heart. He has fought for his country.
He helped to plant the tricolour on Castel Sant’Angelo. He was in it
on that twentieth day of September. Yes, he has fought in the red
shirt. He has given up all he had. He comes of an awfully good Southern
Italian family with a title, duke or prince, but he won’t use it, and
gets very angry if anyone speaks to him about it. Says he is plain
citizen Giuseppe Oriole, and basta cosi! He’s a gentleman is Giuseppe,
if ever there was one.’

‘Then why does he waste his time and his powers and his brains and
irritate himself to madness, as I can see he does, by undertaking
the petty cares of the management of a second-class _pensione_ in
Rome--for that’s what it is, when all is said and done. For a small
salary a dozen men could be found to do it, and to do it better than he
does. Does Signora Dietrich pay him?’ she added suddenly.

Hans laughed, somewhat uncomfortably.

‘Pay him!’ he ejaculated; ‘not she. He does it to save her from having
to pay someone else, because she is poor and extravagant, and he
is--well, he is a very old and intimate friend of hers,’ he concluded
lamely.

There was a pause; then Minna said, in the tone of one to whom a single
word has cleared up a mystery.

‘Oh, I see ... and Signora Dietrich--what is she like?’

‘I decline to attempt any description of Signora Dietrich,’ replied
Hans. ‘I suppose she will be home before long, and then you can judge
for yourself.’

‘I don’t want a description,’ said Minna resolutely. ‘I only want a
word. Tell me--yes or no--do you like her?’

‘No,’ replied Hans.

‘Ah!’ said Minna, slowly moving her head once or twice, and then, in a
different tone, as of one who would say ‘Let this be forgotten,’ she
said, pointing to the wall: ‘That print of the “Gioconda” does not hang
quite straight; one touch to the left will make it right, if you don’t
mind.’

Hans rose to fulfil her behest, and, having put the picture straight,
observed that he had an appointment at Ronzi’s with two other fellows,
and wished her good-night. Perhaps he had quite forgotten, as Minna
assuredly had, that Signora Dietrich was not alone in her absence. Her
daughter Fulvia was with her.




CHAPTER IV.


One morning Minna, who breakfasted in her own room, having finished
sooner than usual, in consequence of the premature arrival of
Arcangela, the housemaid, with the meal, found herself also ready to go
out earlier than was her wont. She put on her outdoor things and went
towards the dining-room to see if perchance a young American girl, to
whom she had taken something of a liking, should be already there. It
was Friday, and she had promised the girl to drive with her some fine
Friday or Monday afternoon in Doria Pamfili Gardens. She thought she
might catch her at breakfast, and arrange the matter before going out.

She was about to enter the room, when the scene which was going on
there arrested her attention. She paused, and stood spellbound on the
threshold, watching it.

Several of the visitors of Casa Dietrich were seated at the table,
either breakfasting or waiting till their breakfasts should be
ready. Some were reading newspapers, some had letters, some were in
conversation. At the end of the table nearest the door were seated
a pair who, having been there a week, were this morning going away.
They had been at Rome before, and had merely been here this time, they
said, to refresh their memories. They were Scottish, sententious,
conventional and orthodox. The husband was elderly--verging on
old--with a queer, ruddy apple kind of face, surrounded with a bristly
little white beard, which made a sort of frame for it. His nose was red
at the tip, and his excessively near-sighted light-blue eyes looked
weak and watery. He somewhat resembled some aged and faithful Highland
retainer as seen on the stage; and one felt rather surprised than
otherwise to find, when he rose up, that he was clad, not in kilt and
sporran, but in a pair of black-and-white check trousers.

His lady-wife was more patriotic in her garb, and wore a gown of some
bright tartan, of rather a large pattern. A blue ribbon was tied
round her neck, and in her light hair--she was much younger than her
spouse--was always to be seen a pin of great dimensions, ever stuck
into the selfsame coil of the selfsame plait, and surmounted by one
large and flawless imitation pearl. Hans Riemann had dubbed her ‘the
Scotch Pearl’ within five minutes of first seeing her. The name by
which the couple was known to the world at large was Macdougall.

There they sat, having finished their meal, and held in conversation or
discussion no less a person than Signor Oriole. His back was turned
towards Minna, but she saw from his shoulders that he was vexed,
rasped, disgusted. His rusty frock-coat drooped mournfully towards his
knees; his head was thrown back. While he listened and answered, he was
engaged, as Minna saw with a sudden feeling of painful surprise, in
gathering together their cups and saucers, their plates and egg-cups,
and putting them on to a tray which stood in front of him. The husband
of the Scotch Pearl seldom interfered in his wife’s arrangements--it
was she who led the conversation, in something which, as Minna
gathered, was intended for French.

‘Nous partongs aujordwee,’ she remarked to Giuseppe, folding her arms
and looking at him, while the pearl gleamed from the plaits of auburn.
‘Angsee nous voulongs avwor notter congt. Est-il prête?’

‘Le voici, madame,’ replied Giuseppe, with the utmost promptitude,
producing an envelope from his pocket.

‘Ow! Mercy!’ said the Pearl, somewhat taken aback by this readiness of
retort. ‘Laisong nous vawr,’ she added, opening it, and perusing the
items, carefully checking them off with her fingers.

Signor Giuseppe’s long thin fingers were busy, as Minna saw, among the
plates and dishes. She instinctively drew a little back, but interest
and curiosity tied her to the spot. She knew that he was writhing under
the infliction. Wonderful to relate, the Pearl had no exception to take
to any of the details of her bill.

‘Wee,’ she remarked. ‘C’est jooste. My dear, have you your purse? I
want a hundred and twenty lire.’ Then, turning once more to Giuseppe,
with affable condescension: ‘Nous partongs a ongze oor. Voulez-vous
commingday oon voitoor poor nous, at ayay soing que tous les malles
sont ong bah de bonne oor.’

‘Non, madame, ce n’est pas mon métier a moi de commander des voitures
pour les voyageurs. Vous pouvez vous addresser au facchino,’ was the
reply, in a voice quivering with suppressed fury.

‘Commong?’ asked the lady inquiringly, not understanding this rapid
flow of words and at the same time she handed him notes for the hundred
and twenty lire.

‘Merci,’ said he with a haughty bow, as he swept the last piece of
crockery on to the tray with a trembling hand, and added: ‘I will at
once give you the receipt.’

Leaving the tray on the table for Ettore to remove, he came out into
the hall, where pen and ink were always to be found. Minna made a
hasty movement to go away, but it was too late. Signor Giuseppe’s
movements were not slow. He was out of the room and confronting her in
an instant. For one or two seconds they faced each other, Minna wishing
that the ground would open beneath her and swallow her up, Signor
Giuseppe very pale and very erect. At last he said in a low voice:

‘Signora.’

‘Signore,’ she began, but he interrupted her, saying in an icy voice:

‘You are earlier than usual this morning. Can I do anything for you?’

‘I--I wonder if Miss Scotson is there,’ said Minna confusedly, as with
a great effort she walked past him into the dining-room and looked
round.

Miss Scotson was not there, and Minna had lost all desire to speak to
her. Shaking her head, she came out of the room, giving an embarrassed,
timid glance to where at one side of the hall Signor Giuseppe was
writing out the receipt for the Scotch Pearl and her husband. She
longed to speak to him, but dared not be the first; he took absolutely
no notice of her as she went rapidly away out of the hall door,
down the steps and out, in the direction of her studio, but almost
unconscious of what she was doing.

‘Why did I go? What a fool I was! Why did I stand by the door when I
saw him there?... But why should it matter? If he can do the work of a
waiter before half a dozen others, why cannot he do it before me?’

She reached her studio, thus pondering, and tried to forget it all in
her work.

This was destined to be a day of contretemps. She returned to Casa
Dietrich for lunch, having an appointment in the middle of the
afternoon. At the meal Signor Giuseppe sat opposite to her as usual,
but did not notice her in any way, for which grace she was devoutly
thankful. The lunch went off peacefully enough. Ettore appeared to be
on his better behaviour, and less than an hour was consumed in the
entertainment.

Minna’s engagement that afternoon was at a reception given by her old
friend, Mrs. Charrington, a reception from which she dared not absent
herself, though not specially anxious to go there or anywhere. She knew
that some fifty or sixty guests had been invited, and that she must
appear more or less _en grande tenue_. She dressed herself therefore
with some care, and, a little after four, came from her room looking
very handsome and very attractive in a costume of gray silk and brown
fur. She was just throwing her fur cloak over her arm, knowing she
would want it as she drove to her friend’s house; and thus arrayed,
she went down a short passage which led into a long narrow kind of
ante-room, through which she had to pass to reach the entrance hall. No
sooner had she entered the ante-room than she saw that her ill-luck was
pursuing her. In the room were two persons in earnest, yea, passionate
discussion or dispute--Signor Giuseppe and Ettore. The subject of
their discourse was the week’s wash of household linen, which lay in
piles, neatly folded and fresh from the hands of the laundress, on the
tables, on the chairs, on the floor, and in every direction around
them. Signor Giuseppe held a long piece of paper covered with figures.
He had been reading out the list of the numbers of each article, and it
was Ettore’s duty to count them; to say _giusto_ if they were right,
and _non c’è_ if any of them were missing. The point in question now
was that some dinner-napkins were wanting, which, Ettore vowed, could
never have been sent to the wash at all, for that the woman who did the
washing was a very honest, upright woman, and, if they were not there,
it was an indisputable fact that they never had been there, let them
stand on the list as much as Signor Giuseppe or anyone else pleased.

‘You rascal!’ Giuseppe had just cried passionately. ‘Do you mean to
tell me I am a liar?’

The reply was a shrug expressing volumes.

‘Look again!’ ejaculated the irate gentleman. ‘Here are twenty-four
table-napkins on the list, and only twenty are to be found. Count
carefully. If they are not there, I will myself go and threaten the
wretched creature with the Questura and an exposure of her dishonesty.
Do you imagine I will let Signora Dietrich be thus plundered and not
lift a finger in her defence?’

Very unwillingly Ettore began his search all over again, and Giuseppe,
furious with his slowness, cast aside the list, and with his nervous
fingers turned over the things and began to help him. Minna was sorely
embarrassed. This was her only way of exit. She must either steal back
to her room and give up her party--for this was a business which would
not be over in five minutes--or she must brave the worst, walk through
the room, and take what came.

‘What a simpleton I am!’ she told herself. ‘I may turn my whole life
upside down if I am to be always thinking of things like this. I will
go straight through to the hall.’

She advanced with a faint hope of being able to slip unobserved past
the busy Signor Giuseppe--a vain aspiration. Whether he heard her step
or felt her presence, who shall say? He turned sharp upon her just
as she had come up to where he was, and stood there, looking angry
and excited, with a red colour in his cheeks. It was impossible to
quite ignore the situation--at least, for Minna it was. She forced an
embarrassed smile, and observed:

‘I see you are very busy.’

‘Yes,’ replied Signor Giuseppe with a horrid sneering laugh, as he
eyed her over from head to foot, ‘I am. This is my daily work. Yours,
I see, permits of more elegant arrangements in every way.’ He bowed
to her deeply, mockingly, and as she still hesitated, he added in the
same nasal sneering tone: ‘Gentilissima signora, pardon me if I remind
you that the time of the working man is precious, and our business
unfortunately takes up a good deal of room.’

She found absolutely nothing to say in reply to this. She saw how
angry he was. The veins on his forehead swelled, his eyes flashed, his
fingers worked. With a bow and a troubled look she passed out of the
room and into the hall. Seated in a little open carriage into which she
had stepped, and driving towards Mrs. Charrington’s house, she found
she was shaking with excitement, vexed and perturbed to her inmost
being.

‘I shall have to leave this place,’ she told herself. ‘It is an
impossible situation, and cannot continue. I am not going to have
my comfort ruined by a touchy man who chooses to set some perfectly
imaginary value on my opinion, and who is himself nothing to me--less
than nothing to me. I must go. What an unlucky moment that was in which
Signora Vincenzini came to me to tell me she was leaving Rome! I felt
at the time that it was the beginning of troubles, and so it was.’

She looked straight before her as they drove to one of the most
fashionable streets in a new quarter of the Quirinal, where her friend
lived. On setting off she had felt very angry with Signor Giuseppe
for annoying her by his evident vexation every time she saw him in a
position derogatory to his dignity.

‘It is senseless--so unreasonable,’ she said to herself. ‘It has to be;
I suppose he has chosen that it shall be so; and he ought to accept the
situation that he has created for himself. Anyone can see--at least,
I can--that he is a gentleman, and that this is a most unsuitable
occupation for him, but wouldn’t he be still more of a gentleman if he
took it quietly--dignified the office he has to fill instead of letting
its unpleasantnesses spoil his temper and make him look ridiculous? An
Englishman and English gentleman would do that. Of course he ought to
do it.’

But before she had arrived at her destination her thoughts had taken
another turn. She was no stranger in this land; she knew perfectly well
the passionate eagerness and excitability of these children of the
South; it was one of the traits which had endeared them to her. And
she knew that for all his undignified, unguarded, outspoken rebellion
against his position, Signor Oriole was none the less a gentleman, and
one of high degree. She knew, too, down in her secret heart, that his
uncontrollable vexation when she found him as to-day she had found him,
engaged in sordid, menial offices, arose from the fact that in his eyes
she was something above and beyond the herd of guests who filled the
_pensione_, and as to whose coming and going, seeing or not seeing,
commenting or not, upon his position, he was haughtily and superbly
indifferent.

She did not feel sure whether she was most pleased or most annoyed at
this fact; she knew it was a fact, and while she was trying to decide
what was her opinion upon it, her carriage stopped at the door of Mrs.
Charrington’s apartment. She dismissed it and went upstairs. In two
minutes she found herself in one of her friend’s lovely drawing-rooms,
which were filled with a dainty, perfumed, well-dressed crowd of
different nationalities. There were pretty girls, elegant women, and
a sprinkling of men of the most correct and irreproachable manner and
appearance. There were also a moderately well-developed ‘lion’ or two,
male and female, roaring just now as gently as any sucking-dove. The
trumpet tones of the American contingent were not wanting to complete
this specimen of the Englishwoman abroad and at home. Most of the
company were talking, laughing, and assiduously handing to each other
and consuming tea, cake, and liqueurs, discussing the last star at
the theatre or opera, the last scandal or gossip about the English
or American colony at Rome, the last novel; in a corner were two or
three who combined with fashion a passion for archæology, the last
discovery, the last fragment of a statue which had been unearthed in
any of the excavations, the possibility of more such discoveries on the
Palatine--if only one could get under the foundations of Villa Mills,
so jealously guarded by its nuns, what might not be found there? And
so forth. The winter daylight was almost over, the curtains had been
drawn, the lamps lighted. Soft rose-coloured or tender yellow silk
shades toned everything down, and made a kind of dreamland of the rooms
with their costly furniture and many treasures of art--with their soft
carpets, their rich rugs, and abundance of modern comforts.

Minna leaned back in the corner of a sofa, near a small table on which
stood one of these rose-shaded lamps. She had drunk her tea and was
idly holding the cup in her hand, her eyes fixed on the little drop
which remained at the bottom of it. She had been conversing for a short
time with a funny-looking little Scotch monsignore, who figured largely
at gatherings of this description, and of whom she was not particularly
fond. He had just removed his dapper little figure and blonde face with
its pink cheeks to the vicinity of a tall, handsome English girl, who
was more disposed than Minna to be gracious to him. Minna, as she sat
there, seemed to see Monsignore Macpherson’s figure fade away, and be
all at once replaced by another, which rose from the ground or appeared
in the air, forming itself gradually before her mental vision: a
finely-set head, and a countenance at once pale and bronzed, eyes that
flashed, lips that could be eloquent, nervously-moving white hands, and
a very shabby suit of clothes and rusty black coat.

‘What was he like before--when he was young? How did he ever come to be
in this pitiful condition? Surely no man with any will or spirit need
have drifted into such a state! There must have been a great weakness
somewhere, I am certain, which he now recognises. He knows it is his
own fault, and that is what makes him so abnormally irritable; yes,
abnormally, even for an irritable Italian, and----’

‘Minna Hastings, I have not been able to get a word with you until this
moment,’ said a clear, decided voice just at her elbow.

At the same moment, a white hand, on which flashed many rings, was laid
on her wrist, and Mrs. Charrington, in a billow of silk and lace, sat
down beside her. Minna sighed and looked up.

‘How could I expect to be distinguished above other women?’ she asked,
forcing a smile. ‘When you have fifty or sixty people to attend to some
must come short.’

‘Well, you see, I do my possible--and I have been well assisted by
my niece there, that pretty little thing with the yellow hair and
forget-me-not eyes. She has turned the head of every Italian man in the
room. She is going to spend the winter with me.’

‘Is she?’ said Minna vaguely.

Her hostess noticed her want of interest, but did not care just then to
remark upon it, so she proceeded:

‘Having spoken to everyone, I may now rest myself for a few minutes
beside you. You used to be the embodiment of rest and tranquillity.
What is this I hear about your having left your apartment?’

‘It is quite true. I left it because I had to. I was very much annoyed
about it. After revelling for so long in the comforts provided by
Signora Vincenzini, it is not easy to reconcile one’s self to anything
less.’

‘No, of course. And where are you now? Stay, I remember your note was
dated Piazza Bocca della Verità. I never heard of any place there. What
is it? A hotel, an apartment--what?’

‘What my cousin Hans, who introduced me to it, calls diggings,’ said
Minna, with a laugh not altogether unconstrained.

It was one thing to act on impulse, and go, chaperoned as it were by
Hans Riemann, to Casa Dietrich, and make believe that she enjoyed
the flavour of Bohemianism there; it was quite another to give a
description of the place--a description which should sound in any way
credible or suitable to this keen-eyed woman of the world, who, however
much she might in her own heart detest conventionality, nevertheless
knew that it was the price which had to be paid for the enjoyment of a
certain position and consideration in the world, and who did not mean
to sacrifice that position and all its good things, let the price be
twice as heavy.

‘Diggings--a _pensione_, I suppose you mean? Does Riemann live there?
I always address to his studio; there he is, by the way, talking to
Kitty. I thought I knew of all the _pensioni_ in Rome which have any
pretensions to position--unhappily for me,’ said Mrs. Charrington.
‘Perhaps it is a new place. There’s ample scope for a good new
_pensione_ in Rome.’

‘Oh no, it is quite old, and very shabby and second-class. Hans does
live there, and I’m only staying till I find an apartment to suit
me. I am difficult to please,’ said Minna briskly. ‘You would be
horror-struck, I dare say, at some of the doings.... And, then, I am so
much at my studio,’ she added, with forced indifference.

‘Yes; are you busy just now?’ asked Mrs. Charrington, fixing her
critical hazel eyes upon Minna’s face and observing her attentively.

‘Yes--no--that is, I ought to be. I keep trying. Oh, you know, Mary,
how wretched I become when I get to a certain point in my work--always!
I begin with such hope, thinking that I have really, at last, hit
upon an idea that someone else has not had--and had in a better
shape--before. And then, some fine day, I walk into the Vatican or the
Campidoglio and look at things, and it is all over.’

‘Is this all over, then?’

‘Not yet--no.’

‘Then it can hardly be that which worries you.’

‘Worries me? I am not worried,’ said Minna hastily. ‘Why, do I look
worried?’

‘I said worried for want of a better name. You don’t look like
yourself. From what you say of your _pensione_ I should imagine that
you don’t get proper food at this precious establishment, and that it
is beginning to tell upon you.’

‘Oh, what nonsense!’ began Minna, when two guests, coming up, began a
profuse leave-taking.

Mrs. Charrington turned to them; she was quickly surrounded by other
people. Minna, she knew not why, breathed more freely, and presently
she also took her leave.

‘I am coming to see you soon,’ said Mrs. Charrington. ‘Must I come to
your studio or to Bocca della Verità?’

‘Come to whichever I am most likely to be found at at the time,’ said
Minna composedly.

‘Good; I shall look you up some day soon.’

She nodded. Minna went downstairs and walked till she met an open
carriage.

Rome was just beginning to spend the evening; it would continue at
that occupation till the small hours of the morning. The streets
would be vocal, the whips would be cracking, the crowd would be moving
nearly all through the night. Just now it looked gay, full of life and
brilliance, as she drove homewards through the brilliantly-lighted
streets and piazzas, past splashing Trevi, with its groups of loungers
outlined dark in the electric light against the shining wet marble
slabs, now past a row of shops illuminated by all the power of gas
which could be turned on, then suddenly a plunge into some obscure,
narrow street, again an open square, brightly lighted on every side,
and rising from the centre of it the solemn majesty of the Pantheon,
with its wondrous dome and its awful portico, seeming to say, ‘I stand
alone now, and have many thoughts, many memories, O ye little hurrying
children of to-day! Once I was one of a great company, some of whom
were grander than I; light your gas flames, spread your electricity,
multiply your scientific microscopes, but with them all ye shall never
read my secret nor the secret of them that made me. That is not for
the scientist to tell, but for the poet; and I observe that scientists
become more and poets fewer; yet I may stand to shelter him, though he
be another thousand years a-coming.’

It was a spot in which Minna had never yet found herself without a
secret thrill of pleasure. She felt it even now, preoccupied as she
was, and looked with grateful eyes at the huge building as she passed
it. In five minutes more she was at the door of Casa Dietrich.

When she entered the hall, she found it was much later than she had
imagined, and that the ubiquitous Ettore was even now on his way from
door to door, knocking on each one and uttering his customary chant of
‘Dinner is ready.’

Two disastrous encounters she had already had to-day with Signor
Giuseppe. She went into the dining-room in some trepidation, sincerely
hoping that a third might not take place. Should such a thing happen,
she would be forced to conclude that someone had looked at her with the
evil eye.

For a time all went well. She pointedly made a very polite bow to
Signor Giuseppe, which he returned in silence and with cold majesty,
and the meal began. The soup had gone round. Then came a dish of roast
meat which was first handed round Minna’s side of the table. She helped
herself to it and to the vegetables which followed, and had eaten
her portion before she noticed that anything had gone wrong. Then,
having finished, she beheld at the opposite side of the table a row of
anxious-looking, downcast faces. On the plates before them lay little
heaps of vegetables which had been there so long that they had ceased
even to steam.

There was no sign of any meat, and Ettore, as she soon perceived, was
conspicuous by his absence. There was, moreover, something portentous,
something which warned of coming disaster, in the very quietness and
stillness which prevailed at that side of the table. Something had
happened, or was happening, without the least doubt--something of
ill-omen. Minna felt the shock and the discomfort of it as strongly as
if she herself had been the person concerned. She would have given a
good deal not to be obliged to look at Signor Giuseppe at this moment;
but who is there who does not always at such a crisis involuntarily
look in the direction he would most eagerly avoid? It was only as
her eyes were dragged towards him that she became conscious that the
solitary voice she had for some time heard as in a dream, holding
forth, was that of Signor Giuseppe. She listened for a moment, her eyes
fixed upon her plate.

He was talking to a young Englishman who sat next him, a recent
arrival, whom he had taken into special favour on account of his
having taken the trouble to study Italian seriously, and because he was
really interested in certain periods of Roman history.

‘Yes,’ Signor Giuseppe was just now saying, ‘it is true. Tiberius was
an aristocrat, nothing else. Read what the German historian says of
him; how he despised the mob even more profoundly than he hated the
patricians. Yet even he dared not neglect the amusement of that mob.
Even he had to think out spectacles for that mob’s entertainment. There
was fear mingled with his contempt. “Bread and the games” was a word
now fairly established, and not to be neglected with impunity. He----’

Here Minna found her eyes, whether she would or not, fixed on Signor
Giuseppe’s face, and she knew in an instant that all this brave show
of historical instruction was put on; the whole thing was put on.
Young Mr. Humphreys was wondering secretly how long he was to wait for
his dinner. Signor Giuseppe, while he spoke, was crumbling bread with
one hand, dashing the other through his hair, and casting glances of
strained, anxious suspense towards the door leading to the kitchen
regions, through which the service came. But, engrossed though he was
with this, he of course knew in an instant that Minna’s attention had
been drawn to the proceedings--that she was looking at him. This time
he did not look angry, he looked agonized.

Such a fiasco in the proceedings was enough to make all the guests take
themselves off first thing to-morrow morning to other establishments
where they would be better served, and after all, though he hated and
despised these _forestieri_, or thought he did, he was dependent on
their money and their favour for--Signora Dietrich’s bread.

‘Yes,’ he continued, with a desperate effort at composure as he
wandered in his misery from one theme to another, scarce knowing what
he was saying; ‘there is no doubt that the gloomy-looking place you
speak of, overlooking the Forum, was the palace of Caligula, but as for
anyone being able to point out the exact corridor or vault in which
his assassination took place, as M. Boissie, the French archæologist,
pretends to do--that is a pure and simple impossibility, and----’

At this moment, at the prompting of some evil spirit or demon, there
flashed into Minna’s mind a reminiscence of the days of her youth,
and Brewer’s ‘Guide to Roman History,’ with its pragmatical questions
and sententious answers, one of which, relating to Caligula, had sunk
deeply into her mind.

‘How long,’ asked the ‘Guide to Roman History,’ ‘did this idiotic
monster reign?’

She tried to suppress the almost hysterical laugh which she felt was
surely coming--the laugh at the disappointed diners, the ridiculous
inadequacy of the service at this strange establishment, at Brewer’s
sweeping characterization of Caligula--the tears which were just as
ready to come at the thought what a long day of torture this must have
been to the poor fallen gentleman opposite to her, who even now could
think of nothing more trivial or amusing with which to tide over this
awful failure in the evening meal than dissertations on the character
of Tiberius and the ruins on the Palatine.

The two sensations combined were almost too much for her; she
suppressed any sound of laughter, but she could not altogether control
her expression of countenance. She felt she must speak--say something,
however idiotic, to someone--and she turned to Hans Riemann, intending
to ask him sharply if he had nothing to say for himself, but not
before Signor Giuseppe had seen first her look at himself, and then
what must have seemed the ill-concealed mirth on her countenance. A
flood of angry colour rushed over his face. He was evidently insulted
to his inmost being, and Minna felt paralyzed.

‘I must go,’ she said within herself. ‘I must get away from here, for I
can’t bear it.’

Once again her unconscious saviour in such moments came to the rescue.
Ettore emerged from the kitchen looking very grave, and stole round to
Signor Giuseppe as if anxious to hide himself from the view of all but
him. Arrived at his side he bent low and whispered something in his
ear--no long communication, but apparently a terrible one.

‘Maledetto!’ came from between Signor Oriole’s clenched teeth, and,
like a whirlwind, he passed round the table, through the door, and was
gone, followed by Ettore as by a pallid shadow.

Then broke loose the flood of talk, comment, question.

‘What is the meaning of all this? Are we going to have nothing to eat?
Has the food given out? Has Ettore let it fall and spoiled it all?
What a place is this! I never knew anything like it!’ from English and
Americans, while a deep bass chorus came from the German contingent.

‘Ach, um Gotteswillen, was ist denn geschehen? Kriegen wir weiter
nichts? Was soll das alles bedeuten?’

Hans Riemann uplifted his voice to soothe the impatient multitude.

‘Accidents will happen,’ he said. ‘It’s the cook, I know. He was new
two days ago, and is most likely drunk at this moment. It can’t be
helped.’

‘Very well for you--you have had your roast meat,’ replied young
Humphreys; ‘but what about us?’

‘Pazienza! You’ll get something,’ said Hans. ‘If nothing is to be
had here, they will send to the _trattoria_ close by. They do many
queer things here, but they have a sense of honour as regards people’s
dinners.’

Thus it happened. Signor Giuseppe did not return. Minna did not remain
in the room till the end of the meal. She had had enough in every way,
and retired to her own quarters early.

‘It is intolerable,’ she told herself for the fiftieth time. ‘To-morrow
I shall make preparations for leaving. I won’t stand any more of this.’

Indeed, it was long since she had been made to feel so uncomfortable,
and, as has been already intimated, she was a woman who had always
had a great deal of her own way, and who did not take kindly to this
experience--of being made uncomfortable.




CHAPTER V.


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?’




CHAPTER VI.


‘Oh!’ replied Minna hastily, ‘I have never done anything worth speaking
of, or calling work. People who wish to imagine that they are sculptors
should not come to Rome. It is the last place in the world for them to
be happy in.’

‘But you are surely working at something now?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Già,’ she said discontentedly.

‘You have bent me to your wish,’ he said; ‘will you not now bend to
mine, and let me see something? It would, moreover, appear odd to
people who should hear that I have been at your studio, but seen none
of your work.’

‘You are a critic. You are a connoisseur in these things,’ she said; ‘I
know it from many things I have heard you say--such just remarks! That
was when I was afraid to speak to you.’

‘And you are afraid of my criticism! If you have anything of the true
artist in you, you ought rather to welcome it.’

‘Yes, you are right. Very well. Pray come this way. Say the worst you
think about it. I dare say it will be only what I deserve.’

She rose, took the lamp in one hand, and a screen in the other to
control the light, and led the way into her studio.

She had not yet wrapped up the clay figure on which she was engaged,
but had merely thrown a cloth over it until she should be ready to go.
She placed the lamp on a table, saying:

‘This is all I can show you. The others are worth nothing.’

‘One moment, signora. Let me judge for myself,’ said he, and, taking
the lamp into his hand, he went round the room, looking at first one
thing and then another, saying, now and then, ‘This is a copy. That you
invented for yourself, did you not?’ to which Minna usually found she
had to reply, ‘Yes.’

He made no comment on any of the work, which annoyed her very much;
she was convinced he was filled with contempt for it. She tried to
reconcile herself to the situation by telling herself that, after what
had passed between them, she owed it to him to let him see her work,
and say anything or nothing, as he might think fit.

When he had gone the round of the room, he turned to her, saying:

‘And now for the _capo d’opera_. So far, it seems to me, you have not
patience enough to finish anything. You begin your thought, but you do
not carry it through.’

‘Don’t expect a _capo d’opera_,’ she said. ‘It may be worse than all
the rest. I only know it interests me the most. If you will take hold
of the cloth at that side, we can lift it off.’

They removed the covering from the figure, and the unfinished work
stood revealed. Minna’s heart was beating fast. He stood and looked at
the figure, and she, standing near him, tried to put herself, as it
were, outside herself, and judge of it as an intelligent outsider might
have done. The effort was useless, of course. She only succeeded in
confusing herself and coming to no conclusion.

Meantime, the work at which they looked was this: a nearly life-size
figure of a young man, somewhat above middle height, but not very tall.
His dress--what there was of it--was the dress of a nineteenth-century
working man; in this case, of an Italian working man. That is to say,
he had on something between a _culotte_ and trousers, short and rather
loose, of some thinnish linen, summer stuff, bound round his waist
with a leathern belt. His shirt had been taken off and was cast in a
little heap on the ground beside him. His sinewy naked feet seemed to
clasp the ground on which he stood, which ground was strewn with bits
of rough stone or pebble; he was standing erect; his right hand grasped
the handle of a stout shovel, the spade part of which was half sunk
in a heap of cindery-looking substance. His left arm was raised and
crooked; the hand drooped somewhat in a peculiar way, with its back
turned towards his forehead. The action was unmistakable: he had been
wiping the sweat from his forehead, and the face of this figure, with
the eyes raised, the head lifted, in the act of one who has suddenly
paused for an instant in a piece of long-continued, strenuous labour,
was filled with an expression of strength, resolution, energy, and at
the same time of patient endurance, which was magnificently conveyed.

It was not a particularly Italian face--that is, though an Italian
had served for its model, he had been one of the fair-haired,
clear-complexioned, blue-eyed men whom one encounters, not
unfrequently, but always with a thrill of surprise, in all parts of
Italy, especially in Rome or its surrounding country, in the most
unexpected way, amidst the swarthy children of a blazing sun and a
fertile earth. There was nothing particularly Southern any more than
particularly Northern in its features: there was a broad, rather rugged
forehead; level eyebrows; a nose of no particular order, unless it
might be called truculent; a mouth whose lips were hidden somewhat
under a little rough moustache; the expression was the expression of
the labouring man, full of life and strength, and not averse to his
work, all the world over.

Signor Giuseppe stood quite still for what seemed to Minna a very long
time, gazing in absolute silence at this figure, measuring it from head
to foot in its strength, its vigour, earnestness, and even brutality.

At last, ‘That is your own--all your own?’ he asked.

‘Yes--and yet no; nothing is quite our own. It was just a coincidence
that brought it about.’

‘Tell me about it. But first let me guess. It is hardly finished enough
yet to tell its own tale clearly. He is a working man with a spade. He
has been pausing in his work and wiping his brow. What is that stuff
into which he has been digging?’

‘Coal--engine coal,’ said Minna rather nervously.

‘Ah-h!’ Signor Giuseppe nodded his head. ‘Coal--bene! Well, what is to
become of the coal?’

‘Here,’ said Minna, pointing to a lump of clay as yet shapeless, near
to which the workman’s shirt was cast on the ground--‘here is to
be--when it is done--one of those strong coarse wicker baskets which he
is filling with coal. Each basket, when it is filled, will be carried
to the tender of the locomotive and emptied into it. He is the stoker.
He is helping because there is haste. I saw it one day when I was
rambling about near the station. I had turned aside to have a look at
my favourite bit of the Agger of Servius which is preserved there; you
know, signore, what I mean: I may as well confess my debts. A writer
of my country, a celebrated historian, who also loves very much many
things connected with your country, has written, amongst other things,
a little article on “The Walls of Rome,” which I have read so often
that I almost know it by heart. Are you tired, or do you want to hear
the whole history of this figure?’

‘I want to hear it all. Tell me about it.’

Minna took up a volume, bearing traces of having been much read, which
lay on a stool near her work. It was the ‘Historical and Architectural
Sketches’ of Freeman, and it opened of itself at the place she spoke
of. She read, translating rapidly into Italian as she did so.

‘This bit is from a sketch called “Mons Sacer,”’ she said; ‘it is not
the one about the walls. He says: “We set out along the Via Nomentana;
we pass by the gimcrack Colosseum of the Prince; we pass by the two
churches which have fared in such opposite ways at infallible hands;
we ask ourselves the purpose of the ruin which stands in their close
neighbourhood, and which, like so many others, bears the name of
Maxentius. But this time we do not turn back when we have reached the
basilica.... We are seeking a spot which tells us of days when as yet
Rome had no prince but her Princeps Senatus; no pontiff but the head
of the religion of Jupiter and Minerva. But before we altogether cast
the modern world behind us, we are forcibly reminded of its presence
as we cross the modern substitute for Appian and Flaminian Ways, the
network of railways which carry out the saying that all roads lead to
Rome. Nor is the reminder out of place,”’ Minna read slowly, and with
emphasis; ‘“the great works of ancient and modern engineering skill
have much in common. There is a likeness sometimes in their actual
appearance--always in the mighty spirit of enterprise, the boundless
command of physical resources, which is common to both and unknown to
intermediate ages.”’

She paused and looked at him, half closing the book. His eyes gleamed
with delight.

‘Bene, bene!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who is this man, this splendid fellow? I
could embrace him. No whining over modern progress as destructive of
ancient grandeur. This man takes hold of the thing at the right end.’

‘Oh, there is plenty of abuse--of things and people he doesn’t like!’
said Minna, laughing, and feeling excited and pleased. ‘Popes, for
instance; and Barberini and Borghesi meet with short shrift from him.’

‘All the better; that is still more after my own heart. If he had
included kings and princes in the list, better still. But go on!’

‘Well, you will understand that, knowing all this writing as I do,
the very words of it went through my mind as I stood leaning against
a railing near the siding at the railway-station, and looking at that
bit of the Agger inside it, and thinking of the ancient engineering
works and of what Freeman says about this weakest corner of the city;
weakest by nature, made specially strong by art. “Here, on the eastern
side, where there was no river to embank, no cliff to scarp, ran the
mighty Agger of Servius Tullius ... within the line of the Agger and
defended by a vast hornwork stood the Colline Gate.... Here was the
natural point of attack for every enemy.... Through the Colline Gate
the revolted army came back to overthrow the tyranny of the Decemvirs.
Over the Colline Gate, so the tale ran, Hannibal hurled his spear--a
tale wild enough, but one which still shows at which point men looked
for Hannibal to have entered Rome if he had entered it at all. And it
was by the Colline Gate that Rome fought her last battle for her being
against Italian enemies. It was there that Scilla saved her when the
last Pontius came to root up the wood which sheltered the wolves that
so long had ravaged Italy. On that day Rome fought, not for dominion,
but for life; she had not to fight for life again till the Colline
Gate and the Servian Agger had passed away, and till Rome had found
that she needed new ramparts to shield her from new enemies.”’

‘Ai--i,’ came like a long sigh from Signor Giuseppe’s lips; his eyes,
his thoughts were far away. These words had roused again that passion
for his country and for her freedom which had been so intense--he lived
through his former struggles; he fought his battles o’er again.

‘Just then,’ said Minna, taking up her own narrative again, ‘while I
was thinking about all this, my eye fell upon an engine and tender
in the siding. There was the engine-driver, seated on a log of wood,
eating his supper; there was a boy, and there was a young man who was
the stoker, and they were talking. You see, I understand what they say.
I am better off than so many people who come here. There was some
discussion about coals being loaded into the tender. Someone who ought
to have been there then, helping, had not come, and there was some
haste. Suddenly this young man sprang up, seized a shovel, and fell to
upon the work. He got hot, he threw his shirt off, and worked with a
sort of fury. The sweat poured from him. The boy was working no less
vigorously, seizing the baskets and emptying them into the coal place
on the tender. I wished I could help them. They were splendid. Then
all at once this fellow stopped short, wiped his brow with his hand,
and stood still as you see him here. As he looked then, it seemed to
me that his pose was almost classical. For all his energy, there was
real rest and repose in the attitude. There flashed into my mind a
recollection of that figure of the ‘Chariot-driver’ in the _Sala della
Biga_ at the Vatican--you remember?’

He nodded.

‘A handsome lad, isn’t he? in all his elegant trappings, even if it
isn’t very precious as a work of art. He stands there with great calm
and self-possession, looking cool and comfortable; but all the same
one knows, one feels, that sometimes he must have had to exert himself
pretty hard, guiding his team of four or six, perhaps, or racing in
grim earnest round the amphitheatre, amidst the cheers and howls of the
greens and blues. He did not always look so cool and comfortable. I
don’t know how my thoughts followed one another, but suddenly there it
was--the connection, the analogue--that marble boy in the Vatican, and
these, the real chariot-drivers of to-day, with their surroundings. I
had always felt that there are things to-day as suited to be put into
marble or bronze, and to live as records of our times, as there were in
those other days which we study with such interest and delight. Only I
had never been quite able to hit upon the exact thing that I wanted.
Here it was, I thought--one instance of it, at any rate. The thought
in my mind was a grand and beautiful one. I fell to work at once, in a
fever of delight; then came doubts and difficulties, and that is all
the result--all there is to show for it.’

She looked dejectedly at the figure.

‘All,’ echoed Signor Giuseppe, and then continued in tones of decision;
‘it contains the material for a very good “all.” Defy that feeling
of discouragement. Work it out to the best of your power. You will
never be satisfied with it; what artist ever was satisfied with his
own embodiment of his own thought? But it has original power, it is
distinctly a work of art; it has a right to live, to fulfil its mission
of being exposed to view and giving pleasure and wakening thought in
others. You say there was something classical in the young man’s pose
as he paused in his toil. Well, as your work stands now, you have
succeeded in conveying that classical quality into this work of to-day.
It is the rarest good-fortune. You need wish for no higher praise than
that, and I give it you confidently because I know what I am talking
about.’

‘I cannot believe it. It seems impossible,’ said Minna, whose eyes were
shining and whose heart was beating.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whether you believe or not, it is so. What
do you intend to call it?’

‘I have thought of a great many names. The one that displeases me the
least is simply the words “In the sweat of thy brow”--with “Roma” and
the date when--if ever--it is finished. What do you think?’

She was astonished to find herself giving him such confidences; it was
generally almost impossible for her to talk about her work.

‘Good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Don’t admit the idea of any other name into
your mind. That fits it. That will do. Don’t soften it down, either
the work or the name. There is a tinge of ferocity underlying all its
repose. That is what gives it its character.’

‘You’ll turn my head with such praise.’

‘Che! Where did you get hold of the model for it?’

‘Oh, I was lucky in that. A young man to whose mother I had done some
little kindnesses came and stood for it. He was glad of the money and
interested in the whole thing; and there was a vast difference between
him and the professional ones who lounge about on the Spanish Steps.’

‘Then, this face is not the face of the man you originally saw, when
the idea occurred to you?’

‘No. That man was swarthy and black-browed--an unmistakable Italian.
This, as you may guess, is one of the fair-haired, light-complexioned
men whom I might see without surprise working on my brother’s land, or
digging in my own garden, at home. But I thought it was so much the
better. It is meant quite as much to be expressive of to-day, of work
in general, as of Italy, so I did not see the need of having a purely
Italian type.’

‘No; you were right,’ said Signor Giuseppe, helping her to envelop the
figure again it its damp cloths. ‘I congratulate you,’ he added very
gently, in a voice that shook Minna’s feelings somewhat. ‘Once,’ he
added, ‘I thought of devoting myself to art. But there were obstacles
in the way. I had to drop it. I had not time for even the least
attempts at such a thing.’

They went back into the sitting-room, and Minna began to put on her
bonnet.

‘Do you drive?’ he asked, ‘or may I escort you to the house?’

‘I will walk if you will walk with me,’ replied Minna; and in a
minute or two she had locked the door behind her, and they were going
downstairs.

It was a mild and beautiful night, and they went slowly along the
lighted streets and glittering _piazze_ towards Casa Dietrich. Rome
was awake and alive, as she always begins to be about that hour. It is
true, the turmoil never ceases for a moment throughout the day; but it
is at night that the particularly vivid, eager life starts up, that
crowds most do throng the streets, and pour in and out of the cafés,
the faces gleam keener, and wit flows more freely, and gesticulation is
more animated, and the cries are shriller of those who call newspapers
and matches and sermons of fashionable preachers, and sponges and
crockery, and miscellaneous toys and goods of every description, as
well as the thousand other things which are hawked through Roman
streets by stentorian Roman lungs.

Ever more piercing, ever more confounding to a sensitive set of nerves,
ever more delightful and inspiring, do they grow to this wondrous race,
which, while brimming over with life and eagerness and nervous force,
yet seem to be sublimely ignorant of the existence of nerves in the
sense of having them to be pained and wearied. It is unknown how many
hours of sleep the average Roman extracts from the twenty-four, but
probably fewer than the inhabitants of any other place in the world.

Minna knew the turmoil, the tumult, and the excitement, and loved
them. They came to her ever fresh, ever interesting, ever inspiring.
She loved them alike in these winter nights, in the spring evenings,
and late in summer nights, when the mighty world-city with its great
mystery had been during the burning hours of the day quelled into
silence, but at night rose up, and, as it were, adorned herself and
said, ‘I will go forth and wander in my gardens, and sit in my places
of entertainment, and rest beside my fountains, and listen to the mirth
of my children, for life is good.’ She loved it all, and loved to be
in it. And as she and Signor Giuseppe paced slowly along on their way
from her studio to the house, she tried to explain to him some of this
feeling that she had, and some of the emotions which the spectacle of
this mighty and throbbing life roused in her.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is dear to me, too. You think it noisy, as all
foreigners do, disturbing, clashing, shrill. Yet I often come and
wander about in it, to find quiet and peace. Then I study it, and every
time I study it it twines itself more firmly about my heart. The roots
of my love for it strike deeper and more inextricably into my being.
Sometimes I see its tragic side most plainly, sometimes its happier
one, but always it is wonderful and fascinating and indescribable, as
it always must be for those who can see more than the mere outside. My
city was once the mistress of the world. Times are changed since then;
she is barely mistress of herself now that she has choked and strangled
the power of her tyrants. But she has done it, and that power will
never lift its head again. I know that the same spirit is still in my
countrymen as was in them when that was built.’ He looked up at the
Pantheon, beside which they now emerged from a side-street.

In less than five minutes they had climbed the stairs of Casa Dietrich,
and stood within the hall. From the drawing-room was coming the usual
evening clatter. On the hall-table stood a kind of infernal machine,
miscalled a musical box, which, on being as it were fed with circular
pieces of cardboard, riddled with holes and labelled with the names
of different tunes--and on a handle being turned, ground forth the
semblance of the said tunes. It formed an unfailing source of delight
and recreation to at any rate the Italian portion of the company, one
of whom was even now industriously turning the handle and producing a
feeble and distorted version of the ‘Beautiful blue Danube’ waltzes--a
performance which it made Minna shudder to hear.

When the Italian boy saw them he waved his disengaged hand gaily,
wished them good-evening, and asked if the music was not charming. In a
distant dark corner a figure was gyrating gracefully all alone, humming
the notes of the air. As they advanced into the hall, its movements
ceased, it also came forward, smiling, and undulating still in its
walk--it was the fallen patrician Ettore, who bowed himself before
them, saying gently:

‘With the permission of the signorina yonder, I was diverting myself
and practising my dancing at the same time. I also wished to be on the
spot when the Signor Oriole should return, in order to tell him that
the signora and the Signorina Fulvia arrived an hour ago, and desired
to speak to him the instant he came in.’

‘The signora has returned,’ repeated Signor Giuseppe, in a tone almost
of bewilderment; and then, suddenly recovering himself:

‘Bene, bene! I will be with her in a moment.’

He turned to Minna with a face to which had returned, as she at once
saw, all its old look of vexation and discontent, and with an effort
wished her good-night. Then, as if wishful to get a bad business over
as quickly as might be, he strode off in the direction of Signora
Dietrich’s room, leaving Minna to go her own way.




CHAPTER VII.


It was a long time before Minna slept that night. She was excited, but
pleasantly so. In her gratification over what Signor Giuseppe had said
to her about her work, and over his keen appreciation and comprehension
of the different mental and emotional phases which had gone to the
production of that work, she forgot the rest of the interview and
its painfulness, or, if she did not quite forget, it became dim, it
fell into the background. Her artist’s soul had been rejoiced, and a
stimulus given to her to proceed with the work. She paid less heed than
she would have done to poor Signor Giuseppe’s entreaty that she would
go away, and to the misery he evidently felt that she should remain
as the witness of his humiliation. No, she thought of her work--of
the figure of youth and strength and delight in work which had so
fascinated her, and felt that now she could go back to it and work at
it with passion of pleasure and interest--that absorption which is the
life and soul of works of art, and without having had which put into
them they can never interest and delight others, let their technique be
never so perfect, their proportions never so correct.

When at last she did go to sleep it was to dream pleasant dreams and
wake refreshed, glad, and eager to begin again. She was ready to set
out betimes, and was walking quickly along the passage, which went
from her quarter of the house to the front door, when she encountered,
coming slowly along towards her, a young girl, whom she had never
heretofore seen in the house. She was tall, and had the early
developed figure and air of a young Italian woman. She was probably not
more than sixteen, though she looked twenty. She had an exquisitely
beautiful complexion, fair but pale--almost without even the faintest
rose-tinge. She had also splendid waving nut-brown hair, which had in
it glints of gold; dark eyes, which might have been either gray or
blue, or even black, but which were certainly not brown; thick dark
eyebrows, a delicate little aquiline nose, and a mouth as yet undecided
in expression, but agreeable rather than actually beautiful in shape.
She was dressed quite as a girl--almost as a child. Her plain dark-blue
woollen skirt came only just below her ankles, and showed very pretty,
small, thoroughbred-looking feet, cased in shabby slippers, which had
once been red, and were now no colour at all that can be classified.
The loosely-made blouse bodice of her frock, for it could hardly be
called a gown, showed a charming figure, rounded, but not yet full,
graceful and lissom. An ugly hard leather belt clasped her round little
waist, and two fingers of her right hand were thrust in between the
belt and the waist as she came swinging slowly along in the direction
of a table on which stood a cage containing two canary-birds. Her left
hand hung loosely at her side, and held a bunch of green stuff--food
for the birds, no doubt.

They and their cage had appeared since Minna had come in last night,
and from this and other circumstances she concluded that this must
be the Signorina Fulvia, the daughter of Signora Dietrich, who had
returned with her.

The girl raised her eyes as she met Minna, and looked at her
attentively, gravely, but not at all rudely. Each inclined her head,
said _buon giorno_, and passed on her way.

‘What a beautiful girl!’ said Minna to herself, ‘and what a strange
expression she has! Is it sulky or sad? What is it? It does not look
ill-tempered to me; in fact, I should say she had a soul.... But she is
very beautiful!’

She walked on to her studio, thinking of her work; but every now and
then, in the midst of her new-born ardour and eagerness, the face and
figure of the girl swam before her mind’s eye, and disappeared again in
a way that caused her to pause once or twice and wonder what it meant.

She passed a busy, eager, happy day. No one called; no one disturbed
her. She lunched at her studio, snatching the minutes from her now
absorbing work in which to take the meal.

By-and-bye it grew too dark for her to work any more. She covered up
the figure with tender care, and, after taking off her blouse and apron
and cleansing her hands, returned to her little sitting-room, and,
throwing herself down on the couch, clasped her hands behind her head,
and was lost in a happy, glowing dream of present and future works of
art.

Then it was time, if she meant to return to Casa Dietrich for dinner,
that she should do so. Still in a dream, she put on her things and
walked back to the house. As she mounted the stairs, once again the
beautiful face of the girl, with its inexplicable trouble or anger or
rebellion, and the sombreness of its eyes, presented itself before her
mind’s eye. Once again she felt that she was in the real, practical,
everyday world, and that in the world there was trouble.

Ettore came round rather more punctually than usual with his thump on
the door and his ‘_Pronto!_’ and Minna took her way to the dining-room.

Some people were already seated at the table, but there was a group
near the door, standing round a rather small slight woman who was
talking with animation and in an accent that was Roman of the
Romans--in the accent that Minna loved to hear. And yet she did not
altogether like this voice.

She had to pass this group as she went to her place, and as she did
so it divided, and the lady who had been talking turned and saw her.
It was, of course, Signora Dietrich, the mistress of the house. As
she perceived Minna she made a kind of slide forward, graceful, but
distinctly feline, and, in a much softer lower voice than is usual with
her compatriots, greeted her with all the most flowery phrases of her
flowery native tongue, bidding her welcome to her house, and regretting
that she had not been able to do so before, though, she added, she had
been quite aware of her presence there. Her friend, Signor Oriole, had
told her of the _gentilissima Inglese_ who had come to them, and she
hoped that the said _gentilissima_ and _illustrissima_ found everything
to her liking, and used her, Signora Dietrich’s, house as though it
were her own.

Minna, listening to it all, felt herself constrained to confess that
the greater part of it was arrant lies. Signor Giuseppe, she felt
certain, had never written any such things about her. Signora Dietrich
had been told that an Englishwoman had come and had taken two of her
best rooms without demurring to the price of them, and that it would
be a desirable thing if she were to remain there for some time. This
was her way of evincing esteem and politeness. Minna replied with
a smile and a few vague phrases and went to her seat, from which
she could survey the signora, who was not, at first sight, a very
striking-looking person. She was of scarcely medium height; she had
evidently once been pretty, in a blonde, fragile, _petite_ style; she
was now very much _passée_, and distinctly faded in every respect. Some
things she had lost, others she had preserved. Her figure was now
nothing to boast of, whatever it might once have been; her complexion
was sallow, which ill accorded with her pale-brown hair and light gray
eyes. Moreover, the hair was by no means as abundant as it had been,
and her brow was wrinkled; charms of youth, or even maturity, had left
her and had begun to be merged in the defects of the period called
elderly. What had not left her was the thin firm line of her lips, the
white teeth which flashed when she smiled, the rapid glances of her
eyes, full of indefinable meanings, the delicate white hands, and the
marvellous power of expressing volumes by a single turn of her wrist
and flash of her fingers.

These things had not left her, nor the strength of her will either. She
had taken her place at the table, and everyone felt her presence, felt
her power. The little faded woman who kept the _pensione_ was the most
important person in the house.

She sat at one end of the long narrow table. On her right hand was her
daughter, and when Minna saw the two together she saw how much family
likeness there was between them, although in every detail they were
so different. The young girl was dressed now in some bright-coloured
gown: not a pretty gown, and still a morning, not an evening, garment.
She looked perhaps a degree brighter than when Minna had met her in
the morning, but still not quite happy. On the signora’s left hand was
an unoccupied place. The rest of the company were dispersed as before.
Signor Giuseppe was again Minna’s _vis-à-vis_. He came in rather late,
and did not cast many glances towards the head of the table until,
after the soup had gone round, the person arrived for whom the place
beside Signora Dietrich seemed to have been reserved.

This was a young man whom Minna had never before seen at the house. He
did not, however, appear to be an entire stranger, for he exchanged
greetings with several of those present as he made his way up the room
behind Signor Giuseppe to Fulvia, so that Minna, being opposite, had
full opportunity for observing him, and, indeed, as he made his way
along and his eyes fell upon her, he honoured her with an open and
particularly impudent stare. He was not, physically considered, an
attractive specimen of his kind, being short, thin to attenuation, and
prematurely aged in face and figure. His dress was excessively neat,
and a whiff of Es. Bouquet came across the table as he went his way.
This inadequate figure supported a head rather large in proportion to
it, with a face which revolted Minna to her inmost being the instant
she saw it.

Originally, he had probably rejoiced in a rather delicate pink and
white complexion; it was nothing to boast of now, but the features
were regular and clearly cut; the eyes were bright, and he wore a
diminutive light moustache, just shading his upper lip. Intrinsically
there was nothing to find fault with in his features or in the colour
of his eyes; many a man beside whom he would have appeared an Adonis
on a small scale goes through the world and succeeds in pleasing, or,
at least, in not offending. It was his expression which hung forth the
flag of warning, before which Minna, with the instinct of a good woman
not devoid of intelligence, shrank and mistrusted. The utter badness,
vulgarity, and cynical self-satisfaction of the creature were patent to
anyone who chose to see them.

Whatsoever he had originally been, whatsoever he had been as a child
and a youth, this man had so lived, and had so misused his life, his
powers, his means, and his intelligence, that now, feign he never so
diligently, he could only look what he was, a _blasé_ little rake,
unprincipled and unscrupulous. His tastes were evidently florid:
several rings with stones in them decorated his little nervous,
fleshless hands; a white rosebud was in his button-hole--type of beauty
and virtue. He was in evening dress. Diamond shirt-studs glittered on
his narrow expanse of shirt-front, and the hair which was left him was
arranged with extreme care and attention.

‘What a horrible little reptile!’ thought Minna. ‘Who and what can he
be? What language does he speak? He might be anything--or nothing. He
will certainly never die for his country, if he have one.’

She watched how he made his way towards the head of the table; she
watched how Fulvia Dietrich suddenly stiffened and seemed to freeze
into lifelessness as he approached; how her mother, on the contrary,
seeing him coming, leaned back in her chair, smiled a sweet smile of
welcome, threw the glance of her curious eyes upwards towards him,
and, stretching out both her hands and arms, bare to the elbow, cried
in tones which, though not loud, were audible to all:

‘Ah, Marchmont, buona sera! Welcome! We are delighted to see you!’

‘Good-evening, signora. I’m late, but I have a good reason for it,’ he
said, while Minna, with unreasoning annoyance, said to herself:

‘English--how utterly disgusting!’

‘How d’ya do?’ he went on in English, but with an accent which was not
altogether English nor yet American. ‘What a time you’ve been away! Why
on earth didn’t you come back sooner?’

‘Aha-ha!’ laughed the signora, always speaking Italian, ‘questo caro
Marchmont. He will always pretend that I speak fluent English. So fond
of his little jest! Of course I should have come home sooner; I hate to
be separated so long from all my dear friends and guests.’ She looked
round with a smile which was more impudent than complimentary to the
said guests, and Minna was divided between amusement and indignation.
‘But business is business. Matters connected with my late husband’s
affairs have kept me in Milan till now. Fulvia mia, what is the matter
with you? Do you not hear that Signor Marchmont is speaking to you?’

She spoke caressingly, or perhaps wished to do so, but could not
altogether prevent a sharp tone from coming into her voice, and her
eyes looked threatening as she bent them upon her daughter.

Fulvia, thus apostrophized, stiffly made some little change in her
rigid attitude, turned her head stiffly to one side and bowed to Mr.
Marchmont, forced a constrained smile, and, as his hand was thrust
close under her eyes and between them and her plate, lifted her own
limply and also limply rested it for a second in his.

‘Now Rome will be itself again,’ said he gallantly, ‘now that the
flower of Casa Dietrich has returned, looking more blooming than
ever. Per Bacco! you have improved immensely while you have been
away.’ He spoke Italian to her, a fluent and comprehensible, but very
disagreeable and foreign Italian. ‘You make my flowers look faded, but
they must get accustomed to that. See, I bought these in Via Condotti
as I came along, for you--on purpose for you! They are scarce enough
yet.’

He laid a spray or two of exquisite white lilac beside her plate. She
looked anything but pleased, crimsoned to her temples as she muttered
some words of thanks, it might be, and then grew gradually pale again.
Her want of enthusiasm was amply atoned for by her mother’s superfluity
of it.

‘Ah, lovely, most lovely!’ she cried, so that all the table could hear,
first clasping her hands and then gesticulating with them. ‘Caro
Marchmont, you are too generous. These must have cost a small fortune.
You see the child is quite overcome. She does not know how to thank you
for them.’

‘She either does not know how or does not wish to do it,’ said
Marchmont, with a simper which was not altogether fatuous; there was an
edge, as it were, to its silliness--as one might say, weakness tempered
with cruelty.

He made his way round to the empty place on the signora’s left hand,
opposite to Fulvia, whose face had again grown stony during this
dialogue between her mother and, it would seem, her admirer. Not her
lover--surely not her declared lover, thought Minna, to whom the
whole scene had been inexpressibly repugnant and painful. Behind the
vulgarity and absurdity of the two speakers and the constrained silence
of the girl, she seemed to read horrible possibilities.

The ‘spectre,’ as she had immediately dubbed Marchmont in her own mind,
was now hidden from her sight, but she could see Fulvia and Fulvia’s
mother, and she hardly knew what to make of the spectacle.

A performance something like that which had already taken place
continued throughout the meal. The young girl was by turns haughty
and disdainful, cross, sulky, embarrassed, and then, with an immense
effort, superficially polite. In each phase she looked exceedingly
handsome and attractive. Mr. Marchmont’s shrill voice, with its
curious vulgar accent, was strident, and dominated the conversation
at that end of the table. Now he spoke English, anon Italian, but in
whichever tongue he spoke his theme was the same: his own belongings,
possessions, wishes, intentions, and the great prices he had paid for
the things he had, or intended to pay for those he meant to have.

Signora Dietrich listened ever with the same rapture of attention, the
same fixedly smiling mouth, the same wandering, unmoved eyes, and the
same loud expressions of delight in his conversation and affairs in
general.

‘Horrible woman!’ thought Minna. ‘I wonder what she is up to. Does she
take this fellow for a rich man, and think she can get him to marry
her daughter? Preposterous! Rich or poor, he has seen the seamy side
of life, he has seen more bad than good, and is fully alive to all the
useful things he can buy with his money if he has it. Why, he can have
position and good birth as well as beauty, if he will pay enough. He
won’t marry the daughter of Signora Dietrich--lucky for her!’

She had become so intensely interested in the drama at that end of the
table that she had absolutely forgotten her immediate neighbours. At
this moment she happened, during a short pause in the conversation,
to cast her eyes across the table, and she encountered those of Signor
Giuseppe, fixed with a fascinated look on her face. His own expression
seemed to question, to study, to interrogate her eyes, as if he would
have forced them to confess plainly the thought that was in her mind.
There was an anxious, wistful inquiry in his gaze which went to her
heart, even while she started a little and coloured a little at being
thus caught watching the proceedings at the end of the table with such
interest.

With a sigh she recovered herself, and tried to enter into conversation
with him. But the effort was not successful; Signor Giuseppe did
not respond. There was no more of his old peevishness and mistrust
towards herself; he had evidently crushed that once for all after
their explanation of last night. This was not, either, his usual angry
irritation with the misdoings of the servants or the shortcomings of
the dinner. It was, as Minna keenly felt, something very much deeper,
sadder, and more tragical than any of those feelings. His silence was
the silence of profound and hopeless grief and disapprobation, and she
presently ceased to make any effort to disturb it.

The rest of the company appeared to be as usual much interested in
their own affairs, with the exception of a bad-tempered Polacca, who
expressed her opinion audibly in very bad German, to the effect that
that woman was as great a fool, and the girl as complete a ninny,
as ever; and that a woman, whose business it was to make her living
by keeping a hotel, had no right to dress herself out in silks and
satins as if she had been the hostess of a private dinner-party. Minna
suppressed a smile, but the next thing she heard interested her more.
Mr. Marchmont was saying:

‘Signorina Fulvia, how long will it take you to make yourself ready for
the opera? I have got the tickets here in my pocket. Took a box at
a premium at Piales. It is _Lucia di Lammermoor_. Surely you want to
go. Your mother looks as if she were ready for anything, as she always
is--from a ride in a tramcar to a box at the opera.’

‘And so can Fulvia be ready, caro Marchmont,’ cried the signora,
who had indeed wakened up in a marvellous manner at Marchmont’s
announcement; ‘she can have her dress on in ten minutes. Girls, you
know, need no long preparations--no “making up” like their unfortunate
elders. Go, Fulvia, you will be ready by the time we have finished
coffee. Go, carissima mia.’

‘I am tired, mamma,’ said the girl, and indeed she looked exceedingly
weary.

‘Tired! who ever heard of a young girl being tired, when it is a
question of a box at the opera? Why, Nilsson is singing; all Rome
will be there. Absurd, my sweetest pet! Signor Marchmont has got the
tickets--all we have to do is to enjoy the results.’

‘Oh, if she doesn’t want to go!’ came the strident voice, in accents of
pique.

‘Of course she wants to go. It is the same as with the flowers. So many
pleasures and attentions, coming at once after the quiet life we have
been leading, bewilder her. Now go, carina,’ she added, bending towards
Fulvia with the same unchanging, artificial smile on her face, but
with, as Minna saw, a steely flash of resolution in her eyes. She laid
her hand for a moment on her daughter’s wrist. It seemed to Minna as if
her fingers tightened on it in a fashion not exactly tender.

Fulvia rose slowly. There was no smile at all on her lips. She came
down the room, also slowly, and paused for a moment behind Signor
Giuseppe’s chair, laid her hands on his shoulders, and said in a low
voice, between pettishness and coaxing:

‘Beppino, can’t you hinder my having to go to the hateful theatre?’

His eyebrows contracted sharply. Minna felt her heart throb as she
watched them.

‘I think you had better do as your mother wishes to-night,’ said he,
also in a low voice.

‘What a perfectly miserable story!’ she said to herself, with an aching
heart. ‘Beppino, forsooth. I suppose this child does not know what it
all means; she is still a _bambina_, in many ways. Still, an Italian
girl of sixteen----’

‘Cattivo!’ said Fulvia, giving him a little blow on the shoulder. ‘You
will do nothing that I wish now. I am cross with you.’

She walked out of the room with the majesty of a queen. Minna plunged
wildly into a conversation about she knew not what with her left-hand
neighbour. She could not speak to Hans Riemann. She had met Fulvia’s
eyes as she lifted her head after her colloquy with Signor Giuseppe,
and she had seen in them that which made her sadder than before.

Coffee was served. Signora Dietrich, hastily swallowing hers, made
a flowery apology to the company in general for leaving them, but
put it to them whether she was not right to avail herself of Signor
Marchmont’s princely generosity, and, with many a nod and beck, many a
false and wreathed smile, she made her way from the room, followed by
the gentleman of the princely generosity.

‘How painful, and horrid, and unpleasant it all is!’ said Minna to
herself when she was alone in her own sitting-room; ‘and what is the
meaning of it all?... I thank my God that my mother was not like
that woman,’ she suddenly whispered to herself, clasping her hands
involuntarily; and she was surprised to find herself stamping her foot
on the floor, and choking down a sob.

Just then there was a tap on her door. Not wishful to admit anyone and
everyone, she advanced to it and opened it. Hans Riemann stood there.

‘I got hold of that old print you wanted, Minna, yesterday, and I’ve
come to show it you. The man actually let me bring it here for you to
look at. He wants a lot for it, of course, but you may----’

‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door to admit him, and she turned the
light up while he went to a table, unrolled the print and spread it
before her.

‘It is beautiful,’ said she, forgetting everything else for the moment,
as she bent over it and examined it. ‘Of course he will want a lot for
it. How much may he ask?’

‘Two hundred lire.’

‘Oh, it is too much. I can’t afford it. Take it away, and don’t let me
look at it any more.’ She pushed it away from her, and Hans laughed.

‘We shall get it for less, of course. You ought to have it for about
half. We’ll offer him seventy-five. Would you give a hundred?’

‘Yes, a hundred, but not one centesimo more.... Oh Hans, sit down! My
curiosity is on fire. Who and what is the awful creature who is taking
the signora and her daughter to the opera to-night?’

‘Oh! you may well ask,’ said Hans shrugging his shoulders. ‘Signor
Marchmont--isn’t he a horror? “The skeleton,” I call him. It is a shame
too, the way that woman chucks the girl at him! There’s no decency in
it. Signora Dietrich is not a nice woman, as I think I have mentioned
before.’

‘You said so--yes; and I can see it for myself. But what is he? Surely
not an Englishman--nor yet an American.’

‘Oh Lord no! By all the rules of sensation novels, he ought to be a
Russian prince who has ruined himself in Paris with absinthe and the
other attractions of that capital. But he isn’t--he’s an Australian.’

‘An Australian?’

‘Yes. Father died when he was a mere child, leaving an enormous
fortune, amassed chiefly by the sale of drink at various bars
and canteens in town and country. This accumulated till he was
one-and-twenty, of course, and grew into something fabulous. Then he
was free, and then he began to use his freedom. He has led a life of
_grand train_ ever since, and he must be at least five-and-thirty now.
Sometimes he looks like a mummy five thousand years old.’

‘And has his fortune lasted all that time?’

‘Has it lasted? I should think so. He’s the meanest miser in existence.
He wants everything and he gets everything, and manages to pay less
for it than if he were a decent fellow worth five thousand a year.
That man has lived in every capital in Europe, and knows everything
there is bad in every one of them, and he has done it cheap. That’s the
disgusting part of it,’ said Hans resentfully; and Minna, though she
could have given no reason for it, felt resentful, too--so true is it
that prodigality carries with it a certain charm, and that the man who
ruins himself ‘royally,’ as one says, earns an amount of admiration
and distinction, while the economical rake gets the full measure of
condemnation for all his sins, and the hatred of all who know anything
about him to boot.

‘Then he is really rich now? What brings him to a place like this?’

‘Oh, I can’t tell. It’s about six months since they met him somewhere
or other, and he took an immense fancy to Fulvia, which is not
returned, as you may see. I believe Signora Dietrich thinks that,
if she angles cleverly and patiently enough, he will actually
propose for the girl. Goodness knows what he will do. As you might
hear to-night--he took care to let us know--he has been opening his
purse-strings for bouquets and opera-boxes, which looks serious. He’s
the most awful cad that ever walked this earth, and the hardness of him
is something appalling.’

‘And Signor Oriole?’ said Minna in a low voice.

‘He loathes him,’ said Hans, reddening. ‘Oriole is a gentleman; you
see what the other is. But what is he to do? He has no legal authority
here. There’s nothing acknowledged as to their former relations. He has
no money with which to bribe the signora, and that’s the only thing
that touches her. She is over head and ears in debt, but I think even
she will hardly get her debts paid by Marchmont. Altogether, it’s not
a savoury story. Don’t you bother yourself about it.’

‘I cannot help thinking about that girl. She is so beautiful, and
there’s something so sweet, and even stately, about her sometimes,
child as she is. You must know all that, Hans. What do you think about
it all? Don’t you admire her immensely?’

She looked at him searchingly. Hans shrugged his shoulders again and
bit his lips and coloured.

‘You see too much,’ he said. ‘There are limits even to my folly. Poor
little Fulvia! She is completely changed within the last few months.
She used to be the gayest, jolliest girl--full of fun; not like the
Italian _jeunes filles_ usually are, but with a real sense of humour,
and such a healthy kind of nature. She used to chaff us all round, not
a bit rudely, and say the most laughable things to us, and now one can
hardly get a word out of her. It’s an awful pity!’

‘It is indeed,’ Minna assented mournfully. ‘That man is to me the most
horrible creature I have ever seen. There’s something of the snake
about him.’

‘There’s a bit of everything that’s nasty and contemptible,’ said Hans,
rising to go. ‘It’s no good thinking about it. People have got to
settle their own affairs. They must fight it out amongst themselves.
Good-night, Minna. You look tired. I’ll offer him seventy-five, then,
and I may go up to a hundred; is that it?’

‘Yes, please; thank you for saving me the trouble.’

‘Oh, it’s a pleasure!’ said Hans, going away.




CHAPTER VIII.


Hans Riemann had advised Minna not to ‘bother herself’ about the drama
which was going on in the house, but she thought about it a great
deal. She had been greatly attracted by Fulvia Dietrich, and there was
something, too, in the anomalous, unhappy position of Signor Giuseppe
with regard to the girl which wrung her heart. She was destined soon to
know more of the affair. She went to her studio on the morning after
her conversation with Hans, without having seen anyone belonging to
the house. She did not come in to lunch, but returned early in the
afternoon with the intention of writing some letters before dinner.

As she went to her rooms her eye fell upon the two canary birds in
their cage, and it struck her that it was not a particularly good
position for the little creatures to be in. The cage stood on the broad
ledge of a window high up in the wall of the corridor, which was cold
and draughty. It was, moreover, a window which never got any sun, and
was altogether a cheerless place. A chair which had always stood just
under the window had now been removed to some little distance from
it, doubtless to make the birds safe from any attempts on the part
of Gatto, the cat, an important personage in an Italian house, to
make nearer acquaintance with them. Yesterday and this morning Minna
had noticed that they twittered cheerfully, but this afternoon they
were quite silent and sad. She could just see them sitting each on a
separate perch, dejected-looking, little yellow balls, without a chirp
to offer between them. Something was wrong. It was the work of a moment
to move the chair under the window again, spring upon it, and look
into the cage.

‘Poor little things! you may well be silent,’ she said aloud.

Their little water-pots were empty, there was neither seed nor
greenstuff of any kind in the cage, which from all appearances had been
cleared of food and water for some time.

‘Water you shall certainly have,’ said Minna, ‘and I’ll try if I can’t
get you some food too.’

She chirped to them and they moved uneasily. She looked round to
calculate where to step when she should have the cage in her hands, and
beheld Fulvia Dietrich standing there with green leaves and a little
tin of sand.

‘Ah, good-day, signorina!’ said Minna, with all the cordiality she
could put into her voice. ‘Pray excuse my taking this liberty. I
thought they were so very silent that----’

‘That I was going to let them starve to death,’ said Fulvia, her
beautiful pale face looking up into Minna’s. ‘And you were quite right.
They have been neglected since yesterday morning. But now I am going to
attend to them.’

‘May I lift the cage down, and will you not come into my sitting-room,
and fill the glasses there, and put in the food? It will be more
convenient, and I think they are a little cold up there.’

‘Thank you,’ said Fulvia, with a faint smile. ‘You are very kind. But I
fear it will disturb you.’

‘Not in the least. This way,’ said Minna, carefully stepping off the
chair, with the cage in her hands. Fulvia opened the door of the
sitting-room, and they went in.

‘Oh, how pleasant it is here!’ exclaimed the girl as they entered the
room, which certainly looked cosy and homelike, and which felt warm and
genial.

‘I am glad you like it,’ replied Minna, placing the cage upon a table.
‘See! I will bring some water from the other room, and you can give
them all they want. It would be a good thing to let them stay here for
awhile,’ she added. ‘It is so much warmer than outside.’

‘I know it is not good for them on that window-ledge, but I have
nowhere else for them. In the salon people tease them so--people are
so silly,’ said Fulvia, with an impatient look and a shrug of the
shoulders. ‘In the dining-room and our own room mamma will not allow
them. So I put them up there. I am so sorry they have been neglected
to-day.--Ah, carini, carissimi!’ she added, chirping to them, and
putting seed into the glass, and thrusting the green salad leaf and a
bit of sugar between the bars.

Minna had brought a bottle of water from the next room, and now she
watched Fulvia while the girl took out the little water-tank and the
bath, and filled them both with fresh water, talking the while to the
birds in the most caressing tones, and yet with a peculiar accent in
her voice of hardness, or strain, or suffering--of something that was
far from peace of mind or lightness of heart.

She made a charming spectacle while thus ministering to the little
things, who soon began to revive. They evidently knew her, and hopped
about, and even perched on one of the fingers which she held out to
them. Fulvia’s head, with its thick glistening hair, bent over them.
She again wore her plain dark-blue flannel frock and leather belt, and
her feet were once more encased in the shabby little once-red slippers.
Her face Minna could not see, but she felt sure that, in spite of all
her caressing words and gestures addressed to the birds, she was not
smiling, not happy.

Presently she looked up, saying:

‘Thank you for letting me come here. I will not intrude upon you any
more. And you must not think I am in the habit of forgetting my birds.
It is very unusual with me.’

‘I am sure it is. But won’t you leave them here for a time? Why should
they not stay here altogether? It would be much more healthy for them
than in the cold window-ledge, and you can come in and attend to them
whenever you please.’

‘It would be very troublesome for you?’ said Fulvia, who, however,
flushed with pleasure.

‘Not in the least. I am such a selfish person that I should not offer
it if I did not think I should like it. See; we will put them here,
on this empty table near the window. There they will be quite happy.
Listen; he is beginning a little song even now.’

Indeed, the bird was trilling a low song of thanks and pleasure on
feeling the good effect of the warmth and food.

‘And now,’ added Minna, rapidly and eagerly pursuing her real object,
‘you will stay with me a little while, while I have some tea. I am
English, you know. I must always have my cup of tea at this hour. Do
you ever drink it?’

‘I have drunk it,’ said Fulvia; ‘and in any case I am at your disposal,
signora.’

‘Then here. Sit in this armchair. You look tired. You should not be
tired--a girl like you,’ said Minna playfully, as she laid her hand for
a moment on Fulvia’s shoulder, and tried to smile into the beautiful
forlorn face.

‘I am not tired,’ replied Fulvia at once, rather proudly. ‘I am never
tired. I am very young and very strong. But my head feels tired
sometimes,’ she added inconsistently.

Minna went about the room, having cast off her wraps and hat, and
she prepared the tea with the spirit-lamp and things she always had
in readiness. Fulvia watched her, and gradually her curious, rigid
attitude somewhat relaxed. A look of repose came over her face, which
had been so hard and set. She leaned back in the easy-chair in an
attitude of languor which seemed to say that it was long since she had
thus unbent.

Presently the tea was ready. Fulvia had accepted a cup of it, but very
much diluted, crying out with unfeigned horror at the strength of the
beverage offered to her by Minna.

‘Signora, why do you ask me to sit with you?’ she presently demanded.

‘Because I love to have young people and young things, happy things,
about me.’

‘But you are very happy yourself. You look so,’ said Fulvia, in
curious, abrupt little sentences.

‘Yes, my child. I am very happy. I do not know why I should be so
happy, and have a life so free from grief and care as mine is, but I
am very grateful for it.’

‘But have you ever been sad?’

‘Very--once in my life. Sadder than you can imagine.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Fulvia quickly. Then she added: ‘But, of
course, I am happy too. At least, I ought to be; for I am to have, it
seems, everything that I like best.’

‘I wonder what you do like best?’ asked Minna with a smile.

‘A great deal of money to do what I like with. I hate to be poor. A
beautiful house of my own, not like this, filled with strangers who
come and go, and are often rude and greedy and impertinent. I don’t
mean you,’ she added quickly. ‘You are quite different from most of
them, and I should not be telling you these things if you were like all
the rest of them. As I say, a beautiful private house of my own, full
of lovely furniture; the couches will be covered with satin, and the
chairs with the same, I dare say. There will be brocaded curtains, as
beautiful as those in the gallery of the Palazzo Doria, to which I once
went with Beppo to see the pictures. There will be mirrors in every
room, and any of the things which I have so often seen in the windows
of the best shops in the Corso and Via Condotti I can have by merely
going in and ordering them. Think of it!’ she continued in a voice of
animation, and with a smile which Minna tried not to see was ghastly.
‘Me? I am just over sixteen. I shall soon be able to do all that. Ah,
what will Gemma Barbensi and Bianca Sant’otto say? As for dresses--you
see this?’ She touched it scornfully, and flicked a frayed portion
near the cuff with contemptuous fingers. ‘You would never guess how
long I have had this dress. More than two years. And I have grown so
much that it has had to be altered again and again. I am so tired of
this horrible old blue woollen gown. No more of such things. I can go
to madame, or can send to Paris, if it pleases me, and order just what
I like--silk and velvet things, or satin. Do you not like soft silken
things? Yes, I’m sure you do. All your things are soft and flowing.
This woollen dress you have on now’--she stretched out her hand and
touched it--‘has a petticoat of silk under it. I like that--don’t you?’

Without giving Minna time to reply, she went on:

‘Then, there will be my evening dresses too. They will be lovely. I
delight in evening dresses--gauze and silk, and all kinds of devices
for making people look beautiful. And, then, evening is the time for
jewellery. I am so fond of jewels. Diamonds are the most beautiful,
after all. Do you think I should look well in, say, velvet--white
velvet, with a long train, and quantities of fine white lace upon
it--and a diamond necklace, diamonds in my hair, diamond earrings,
diamond rings--what a lot of diamonds one could use to be sure, if
one tried! I think diamond shoe-buckles also would be charming, and a
diamond tassel to the string of my fan, which would be of ivory and
white lace. How do you think I should look in such a costume?’

She sat up, facing Minna, and smiling the same fixed smile, the muscles
of her face moving in obedience to her will, but no inner merriment or
pleasure or anticipation present to give any light to her eyes or any
expression to her smile.

‘My dear,’ said Minna, ‘you would look very beautiful in such a
costume, I have no doubt. My opinion is, that beautiful clothes and
jewels always look more beautiful still when worn by beautiful persons,
and perhaps you have heard before now that you are beautiful.’

‘I have heard it a great many times, especially lately,’ replied
Fulvia, in a hard, rasping voice. ‘But you look very grave. You do not
speak as if you would like to see me in such a dress--wearing such
ornaments.’

‘To tell the truth, I would rather see you still simply dressed, even
in this old blue frock which you so much dislike.’ (She noticed that
Fulvia started, and looked down with a half-frightened expression at
the folds of her old gown.) ‘You are very, very young. Velvet and
diamonds worn by women mean a great many things--generally, amongst
others, that they have a position to maintain and responsibilities to
fulfil--for which you are very young. I should think you might be very
happy for some time yet in your youth, enjoying yourself, and studying
a little, perhaps, because, of course, you can’t know everything yet.’
She smiled kindly.

‘Oh, pooh!’ cried Fulvia, with a toss of her head. ‘I have been shut
up so long. There is all the world to see, and it is quite time I
began. I am a Roman girl,’ she went on, lifting her head with a superb
gesture. ‘We Roman people do not wait so long to begin our lives as
you cold people in your cold country. Beppo told me that. He knows
everything. I often go and sit with him in his little room while he is
reading. What learned, profound books he reads!’ she went on. ‘He is a
scholar indeed, and he has taught me some things from his books. The
other day--before we went away, that is--I was reading in a book which
he had from the library, translated from the German, about ancient
customs here and about what became of Roman girls long ago, when there
were emperors here and slaves, and when this city was the mistress of
the world--and of your country too.’

She looked defiantly at Minna, who only smiled, saying:

‘Yes, I know it was a great thing for our country that your city and
your emperors were its masters once. Well?’

‘I read how by the time a girl was thirteen or fourteen, at the latest,
she was married. She went straight home to her husband’s house, and was
immediately the most important person in it. Her husband called her
Domina; she had power unlimited to amuse herself, to interest herself,
to do what she liked. She had even the power of life and death over her
slaves, and many members of her household----’

‘And it did her no good,’ interposed Minna hastily. ‘If you had read
further you would most likely have found that these young ladies, so
early promoted, did not turn out the best of characters afterwards.’

Ignoring this, Fulvia went on:

‘And I am rather more than sixteen, so I think it is high time that I
began to follow this good example. Mamma, moreover, says that I am to
do so. She has arranged it all.’

‘How?’ asked Minna, almost breathlessly.

‘She says I am to be married,’ replied Fulvia, whose lips were dry,
despite the glowing picture she had just been painting.

‘Married!--may I ask to whom?’

‘Oh yes. To Signor Marchmont. He has been in love with me, he says,
ever since he first saw me. He is fabulously rich. We went to the opera
with him last night. He talked to me all the time. This morning, very
early, he came to see mamma. Just before lunch he went away, and she
called me, and told me he had asked her for my hand, and that she had
promised it to him.’

‘She did not ask you whether you wished him to have it?’

‘Ask me? Che! She can do as she likes,’ said Fulvia, across whose face
a dreadful expression was creeping, which turned Minna’s heart cold.

‘But--but----’

‘She told me all that I have told you. I am to have all these things I
have been describing to you, and many more--carriages and horses, and
men-servants. And I am to travel, and go to Australia, that he may show
his friends there what a beautiful wife he has got. But I am not to
live there. I shall live in London or Paris.’

‘Not in Rome?’

‘No, not in Rome,’ replied Fulvia, a cold despair in her voice.
‘It seems he objects to Rome; and he told mamma he did not want my
relations--he wanted me.’

‘But, my child, there is something all wrong in this. Why do you look
at me in that way if----’

‘Oh, it is all right, of course,’ said Fulvia, with a little grating
laugh. ‘It is so surprising, that is all. Why do I trouble you with
it? Because you are kind--because I heard Beppo say that you were
noble-minded. Because you were kind to my poor little birds, so I was
sure you would be kind to me, and----’

Almost simultaneously they rose from their chairs. Minna advanced
towards Fulvia, who was looking at her now with undisguised despair,
with distended eyes full of horror.

‘Fulvia, I only saw you yesterday morning for the first time, but I
knew in a moment that you were not happy. I saw it again last night
at dinner. You are not happy, in spite of all that you tell me about
dresses, and jewels, and so forth. Speak out! You do not wish to marry
this man. You are not satisfied about it.’

‘Oh, signora!’ cried Fulvia, in a hollow voice, clasping her hands
and looking at Minna. ‘Wish to marry him? I hate him! I hate him! Is
he not too dreadful? Oh, what must I do? Oh-h!’ Her sigh ended in a
shudder, which shook her from head to foot. ‘I have to hold myself
tight, like this,’ and she gathered herself in till she looked about
half her natural size, ‘whenever I think about it, or I should begin to
scream and cry and talk nonsense. Ah, Dio mio! what have I done that
this should have happened to me? Have I really been so bad? And I am
afraid--afraid----’ she went on in a freezing whisper, looking around
the room with a wild uncontrollable terror in her eyes. ‘It cannot
be, it must not be; but it will--that’s the worst! There’s no way out
of it. Even Beppo will not help me. I rushed to him and besought him.
“Take me away!” I said. “Do not let this happen! I won’t speak to
him--I won’t marry him.”’ She suppressed a cry of horror. ‘And he said
he could do nothing. I think I am going mad; I feel as if I must run
about all over the house, and say to everyone, “Do you know Signor
Marchmont? I’m going to be married to him. Don’t you envy me?”’

She burst into a paroxysm of laughing and sobbing combined, hysterical,
frantic.

‘Something must be done,’ said Minna beneath her breath, as she looked
at her. Then, as a sudden thought crossed her mind, she went up to
Fulvia again, put one arm about her shoulder, and with the other drew
her head upon her bosom, stroking the bright hair and touching it with
her lips.

‘Fulvia mia, one word. Do you love somebody else?’

‘Somebody else? No!’ said Fulvia, suddenly lifting her head, and
looking at Minna with her clear, truthful eyes. ‘Why should I? If I
loved someone else, and someone else loved me, I should not be afraid.
He would no doubt be kind to me, and would kill me rather than let it
happen. Now I must do for myself anything that has to be done. Oh, it
is so horrible to be afraid! It is the most horrible thing there can
be, I am sure. And do you know what it is that I am afraid of--most
afraid of, that is?’

‘No, cara mia; tell me.’

‘That if this very worst should happen--if nothing comes to save
me, and I am actually married to him, he may be stronger than I am,
and--and--I was reading in some of Beppo’s books--they are the only
books I ever see--that strong natures put their own stamp on weaker
ones--if in time he were to put the stamp of his nature upon me; if
some time I, who only wish to be good and do no harm to anybody, should
become bad--oh, my God! there is such a long time in life--everything
can happen! If this can happen, why should not that happen also?’

Minna’s heart seemed to freeze within her. Decidedly this was no
common, tame-natured girl. There was passion, and the capacity for
infinite suffering, in her. Perhaps too, by the same rule, the strength
to struggle with that suffering. Who should say? But it was no light or
frivolous soul which had felt itself on the verge of madness from the
contemplation of that possibility.

‘No, no, impossible!’ said Minna brokenly, not knowing what else to say.

‘I never used to have such thoughts,’ pursued Fulvia; ‘it is all since
twelve o’clock to-day. I can feel myself turning from a child into a
woman. Yesterday I was a _bambina_, as Beppo always called me. To-day I
feel quite old.’

She looked indeed ten years older than she had done the night before.
Suddenly she added:

‘But I had a thought this afternoon. It came into my mind quite
suddenly, and gave me comfort.’

‘What was it?’

‘You know we went to the opera last night. It was _Lucia di
Lammermoor_. I have also read the romance of the “Bride of Lammermoor”
translated into our language. Lucia found a way to escape when her
mother was cruel to her, and so can I.’

‘Hush! it won’t be necessary. It shall not be necessary!’ exclaimed
Minna hastily.

‘I asked mamma why, when she had been kind to me all my life, she
should now all at once become hard and cruel. She said she was doing
me the truest kindness--that I could be no judge in the matter, and
that if I had any affection for her I should gladly make this little
sacrifice, if it were a sacrifice. Then she told me she was deeply in
debt. Our visitors, it seems, do not make her fortune. By my marriage
she will be released from every care, and will also have a large sum of
money to do as she pleases with. For the first time since I was born,
she says, she will know what freedom and self-respect mean.’

‘At the price of her daughter’s slavery, dishonour, and hopeless
degradation,’ said Minna to herself.

‘That, of course, is something,’ pursued Fulvia. ‘I must do all I can
for my mother, naturally. But is it not awful? Oh! why is Beppo not
rich? If he had plenty of money he would have given it all to mamma
to pay her debts, and he would have saved me. He told me there was
nothing strong in the world now except money, and that it always had
been so from the earliest times, since first money was invented. It
can do everything, and those who have it can make other people good
or bad, just as they please, all because they have a few yellow lumps
more than the others have. He was rough--quite rough and hard to me. He
almost pushed me away when I knelt down and begged him to make things
different. He said, “Go, child! you are in your mother’s hands, not
mine.” “But you can talk to mamma--you can persuade her,” I said. He
laughed. Beppo laughed. Everything is so strange that I no longer know
what anything means.’

Minna knew by instinct the agony which that laugh had concealed.

‘Do not mistrust him,’ she said soothingly. ‘He may perhaps even now
find a way out of it.’

Fulvia pushed her hair back, and looked around her with a bewildered
expression. ‘It seems so strange. I feel so curious. At one moment
it seems as if I had been miserable for thousands of years and never
should be anything else. Then, all in a moment, I feel as if it were a
dream--all nonsense--and that I had imagined it all. Perhaps it will
turn out to be so.’

She looked desolately at Minna.

‘Has--has anything been said about the time of this? Did he want to be
married soon?’

‘As soon as possible, but he is obliged to go away for a little while
first, to London, where his business is. And there was something about
lawyers and settlements. I don’t know what; I don’t understand it.’

‘Is he coming again to-night?’

‘Yes, I believe so. But not to dinner. Yes, he is coming to-night,’ she
said in an apathetic voice, as if the last point of emotion had been
reached, and she was past feeling anything more. ‘I suppose he will
come every night until he goes away.’

Minna was silent. All sorts of wild plans and projects went careering
through her mind. So far as she could gather, the bargain, though
clinched between the two parties in authority--Marchmont and Signora
Dietrich--had not yet been formally ratified in presence of the object
of barter--Fulvia, to wit. That part of the affair was probably to
come off to-night, when the victim would be adorned for the sacrificial
altar, and crowned, so to speak, with garlands. What was to be done?
She kept stupidly repeating to herself, ‘Something must be done!’ but
she knew perfectly well that the something did not exist, could not be
done, could not be brought about by anything short of a miracle.

Fulvia Dietrich, legally and by the iron traditions of her nationality,
was as absolutely her mother’s chattel, and at her mother’s disposal,
as if she had been a basket of oranges which the signora had bought
in the market. It was the mother’s duty to see the girl provided for,
either by marriage, or by sending her into a convent, or by disposing
of her in some way, decently and in order. And in the proposed
arrangement everything necessary had been attended to--everything
outwardly necessary, that is. There was money, something which for
want of a better name might be called position, honourable marriage, a
future free from pecuniary cares, if from nothing else.

It was most fortunate that the dispenser of all these things should
make the impression upon nine persons out of ten of being a horror--a
sort of moral reptile--to be whose wife must be, for any decent girl,
hell upon earth.

Minna felt it to her inmost soul. That, however, did not help, did not
give her the power to arrest the action of Signora Dietrich, and could
effect nothing towards the saving of Fulvia from her fate.

‘I suppose he is received in respectable society,’ she thought darkly.
‘I’ve never met him anywhere; but--surely--have I heard people talking
about some rich, vulgar colonial millionaire? I’ve been so little out
lately. I must begin to stir myself up and go about a little more
amongst my fellow-creatures. Can he be an impostor?’ She gave a
joyful start. ‘Who knows what he is? I’m sure in looks the most stagey
_roué_ that ever played the villain’s part in a transpontine melodrama
could not exceed him. He looks just the man to have a wife concealed
somewhere. No doubt he has. Oh yes, that must be the case. We must find
it out, and expose him. Even the signora could not get over such an
awkward little fact as that, in addition to which her daughter could
not be legally married to him, and could have no claims upon his money.
Really, I am becoming acute and ingenious, driven by necessity.’

She had been sitting still all this time, her hand resting upon that of
Fulvia; and looking up now, she perceived the girl’s eyes fixed upon
her with wistful solicitude. In an instant Minna knew that all her
thoughts and suspicions amounted to practically nothing--counted for
nothing, would effect nothing.

‘Fulvia,’ she said in a deep voice, ‘it is a difficult matter. I am
not clever enough to grapple with it at once. All I can say to you is,
that I shall think about it continually, and if I can find a means of
helping you I shall do it. I know this is cold comfort for you, but I
am only human--I can do no more.’

‘Ah!’ said Fulvia, ‘I am sure you would if you could. So would Beppo.
Poor Beppo! He has no money, you know, or he would give every penny of
it to mamma to set me free. And I should let him do it, because then I
could pay him for it by working for him with my own hands. We should
be so happy, even in an attic--I with my work, he with his books--we
should never think of anything dreadful.’

‘You love Signor Giuseppe?’ hazarded Minna.

‘Love him! Ah, how good he is! and how kind, and how wise ... and how
sad!’ she added in a lower voice.

Yes; Minna knew it, and felt that she must not pursue the subject any
further. It was like prying into a man’s secrets behind his back.

‘Now I must go,’ said Fulvia. ‘You have been very kind to me. I like
being here.’

‘You must come often. I shall always be glad when you do. You will have
to come, you know, to look after the birds.’

Fulvia nodded gravely.

‘Yes, I must go now to mamma’s room. She will wonder already where I
have been so long.’

She put her hand within that which Minna extended to her, carried the
latter to her lips, and then, lifting her head, and with a forlorn
smile, went quietly out of the room.


END OF VOL. I.


BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Changes made to text:

 On page 4, changed “eight-and twenty” to “eight-and-twenty”

 On page 23, near “Medusa Morente”, the original spelling of
    “Apoxiomene” has been retained

 On page 24, inserted missing period after “Come and try it”

 On page 126, added missing period after “of what I used to be”

 On page 140, near “she said discontentedly”, changed “Giá” to “Già”

 On page 213, added missing period after “almost breathlessly”

 On page 222, added missing period after “She looked desolately at Minna”





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