'I was sorely tempted to stop,' Hiram answered, daring to look
her straight in the eyes now; for he almost flattered himself she knew
what he was going to say to her next.
'I came away from England most
reluctantly, at Mr. Audouin's particular request: but I longed at the time to
remain, for I had borne two words ringing in my ears from America to England,
and those two words were just two names--Gwen and Chester.'
Gwen
started away suddenly with a half-frightened expression, and said to him in a
colder tone, 'Why, what do you mean? Explain yourself, please, Mr. Winthrop.
My name you know is Gwen, and papa and I used once to live in
Chester.'
Hiram took her hand timidly in his with an air of gentle
command, and made her sit down again once more for a minute upon the seat in
the arbour. 'You must hear me out to the end now, Miss Bussell,' he said
in a very soft, firm voice, 'whatever comes of it. You mustn't go away
yet. I didn't mean to speak so soon, but I have been hurried into it.
I've staked my whole existence on a single throw, and you mustn't run
away and leave me in the midst of it undecided.'
Gwen turned pale with
nervousness, and withdrew her hand, but sat quite still, and listened to him
attentively.
'From the first moment I ever saw you, Miss Russell,' he
went on passionately, 'I felt you were the only woman I had ever loved or
ever could love. I didn't know your full name, or who you were, or where
you lived; but I heard your father call you Gwen, and I heard you say
you had been at Chester. Those were the only two things I knew at all
about you. And from the day when I saw you there looking over my
sketch beside the Thousand Islands, I kept those two names of Gwen and
Chester engraved upon my heart until I came to Europe. I keep one of
them engraved there still until this very minute. And whatever you say
to me, I shall keep it there unaltered until I die.... Oh, Miss Russell,
I don't want you to give me an answer at once, I hope you won't give me
an answer at once, because I can see from your face what that answer
would most likely be: but I love you, I love you, I love you; and as long as
I live I shall always, always love you.'
'I think, Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen
said, slowly rising and hesitating, 'we ought to go back now and join the
others.'
Hiram looked at her with a concentrated look of terror and
despair that fairly frightened her. 'Not for one moment yet,' he whispered
quite softly, 'not for one moment yet, I beg and pray of you. I have
something else still to say to you.'
[Illustration: 0122]
Gwen
faltered for another second, and then stood still and
listened passively.
'Miss Russell,' he began again, with white lips
and straining eyeballs, 'I don't want you to give me an answer yet; but I do
want you to wait a little and consider with yourself before you give me it.
If you say no to me all at once, you will kill me, you will kill me. I have
lived for so many weary years in this hope, so long deferred, that it has
become a part, as it were, of my very being, and you can't tear it out of
me now without lacerating and rending me. But I thought--I fancied--it
was wildly presumptuous of me, but still I fancied--that this last week
or two you had been more kind to me, more interested in me, more
tolerant of me at least, than you used to be formerly.'
Gwen's heart
smote her with genuine remorse when she heard that true accusation. Poor
young fellow! She had undoubtedly led him into it, and she felt thoroughly
ashamed of herself for the cruel ruse she had unwittingly practised upon him.
Who would ever have thought, though, that the Yankee painter was really and
truly so much in love with her?
She sighed slightly; for no woman can
hear a man declare his heartfelt admiration for herself without emotion; and
then she answered feebly, 'I... I... I only said I admired your pictures
immensely, Mr. Winthrop.' Hiram could hardly gasp out a few words more. 'Oh,
Miss Russell, don't give me an answer yet, don't give me an answer yet, I
implore you. Wait and think it over a little while, and then answer me. You
have never thought of me before in this way, I can see; you haven't any
idea about me: wait and think it over, and remember that my whole life
and happiness hangs upon it. Wait, oh! please wait and think it
over.'
He pleaded with so much earnestness in his tone, and he looked
so eagerly into her swimming eyes, that Gwen forgot for the moment
his Yankee accent and his plain face and his unpolished manners, and
saw him only as he was, an eager lover, begging her for mercy with all
the restrained energy of a deep and self-contained but innately
passionate nature. She could not help but pity him, he was so thoroughly
and profoundly in earnest. For a moment her heart was really touched, not
with love, but with infinite compassion, and she answered, half remorsefully,
'I'm afraid I can't hold you out much hope, Mr. Winthrop; but it shall be as
you say; I will think it over, and let you have my full answer hereafter.'
Hiram seized her hand eagerly. She tried to withdraw it, but he would not let
her. 'Thank you,' he cried almost joyously; 'thank you, thank you! Then you
don't refuse me utterly; you don't reject me without appeal; you will take my
plea into consideration? I will not ask you again. I will not obtrude
myself upon your notice unwillingly; but let me know in a fortnight. Do take
a fortnight; my whole life is staked upon it; let it have a
fortnight.'
Gwen's eyes were brimmed with two rising tears as she
answered, trembling, 'Very well, it shall be a fortnight. Now we must go,
Mr. Winthrop. We've stopped here too long. The others will be waiting
for us.' And she drew her hand away from his as quietly as she was
able, but not without a certain small inobtrusive sympathetic pressure. In
her heart she pitied him.
As she passed out and joined the party at
the far end of the garden, Hiram noticed that she didn't go up to speak at
once to Colin Churchill. She let Audouin, nothing loth, lead her off down the
alley of orange trees, and there she began speaking to him as if quite
casually about Hiram.
'Your friend Mr. Winthrop has been telling me
how kind you've been to him, and how much he owes to you,' she said, twirling
a flower nervously between her fingers. 'How good of you to do all that you
have done for him! Do you know, I quite envy you your opportunities for
discovering such a genius in neglected places. I didn't know before, Mr.
Audouin, that among all your other good qualities you were also a
philanthropist. But your _protégé_ there is quite warm and enthusiastic about
all your goodness and kindness to him both here and in America.'
She
looked straight at him all unconsciously as she spoke, and her eyes, though
of course she had hastily wiped them on leaving the arbour, glistened a
little still with the two tears that had risen unbidden to their lids when
she was talking a minute before with Hiram. Audouin noticed the glistening
with a quiet delight, and naturally coupled that and her words together into
a mistaken meaning. 'If only we were quite alone now,' he thought to himself
regretfully, 'this would be the exact moment to say what I wish to her. But
no matter; another opportunity will crop up before long, I don't doubt, and
then I can speak to her quite at my leisure.'
As for Gwen, when she
found herself alone in her room that evening, she sat down in the easy-chair
by the bedside, and took a most unconscionable time in unfastening her
necklet and earrings, and putting them away one by one in the little
jewel-case. 'He's very much in love with me, that's certain,' she said to
herself meditatively. 'Who could ever have imagined it? I never should have
talked to him so much if I had fancied he could possibly have misunderstood
me. Poor fellow, I'm awfully sorry for him. And how dreadfully distressed he
looked when I didn't answer him! It quite made me take a sort of fancy to him
for the moment.... What a romantic history, too! Fell in love with me at
first sight, that day by the Thousand Islands! And I never even so much
as looked at him..... This necklet doesn't at all become me. I shall
get another one next time I go down the Corso.... But he paints
beautifully, and no doubt about it; and that charming Mr. Audouin says he's
really quite an artistic genius. I'm positively grieved with myself that
I shall have to refuse him. He'll break his heart over it, poor young man;
I'm sure he'll break his heart over it. Of course one doesn't mind breaking
most men's hearts one bit, because, you see, in the long run they're none the
worse for it. But this young Mr. Winthrop's another sort of person; if you
break his heart, just this one time only, that'll be the end of him at once
and for ever.... And what an unhappy life he seems to have had of it, too!
One would be quite sorry to add to it by making him miserable with a
refusal..... Ah, well, he's really a very good sort of young man in his way.
What a pity he should be an American!... And yet why should Americans differ
so much from other people, I wonder? What a wistful look he gave me when he
asked me not to answer him now immediately. Upon my word, in a sort of way I
really do like him just a little bit, the poor young
fellow.'
CHAPTER XXXVI. CECCA SHOWS HER
HAND.
|Have you brought me the medicine, Beppo?'
'The what,
Signora Cecca? Oh, the medicine? I don't call it medicine: I call it
--------'
Cecca clapped her hand angrily upon his lips. 'Fool,' she said,
'what are you babbling about? Give me the bottle and say no more about
it. That's a good friend indeed. I owe you a thank-you for this,
truly.'
'But, Cecca, what do you want it for? You must swear to me
solemnly what you want it for. The police, you know----'
Cecca laughed
merrily--a joyous laugh, with no sorcery in it. One would have said, the
guileless merriment of a little simple country maiden. 'The police, indeed,'
she cried, softly but gaily. 'What have the police got to do with it, I
wonder? I want to poison a cat, a monster of a cat, that wails and screams
every night outside my window; and you must go and wrap the thing up in as
much mystery as if---- Well, there! it's lucky nobody at Rome can understand
good sound Calabrian even if they overhear it, or you'd go and make the folks
suspicious with your silly talking--and so loud, too.'
Giuseppe looked
at her, and muttered slowly something inarticulate. Then he looked again in a
stealthy, frightened fashion; and at last he made up his mind to speak out
boldly.
'Cecca! stop! I know what you want that little phial
for.'
Cecca turned and smiled at him saucily. 'Oh, you know!' she said in
a light ironical tone. 'You know, do you? Then, body of God, it's no
use my telling you, so that's all about it.'
'Cecca,' the young man
said again, snatching at the tiny bottle, which she still held gingerly
between her finger and thumb, as if toying with it and fondling it, 'I've
been watching you round at the Englishman's studio, and I've found out what
you want the--the medicine for.'
Cecca's forehead puckered up quickly
into a scowling frown (as when she sat for Clytemnestra), and she answered
angrily, 'You've been playing the spy, then, have you really? I thank you,
Signor Giuseppe, I thank you.'
'Listen, Cecca. I have been watching
the Englishman's studio. There comes an English lady there, a beautiful tall
lady, with a military father--a lady like this:' and Giuseppe put on in a
moment a ludicrous caricature of Gwen's gait and carriage and manner. 'You
have seen her, and you are jealous of her.'
Quick as lightning, Cecca
saw her opportunity, and caught at it instinctively with Italian cunning.
Giuseppe was right in principle, there was no denying it; but he had mistaken
between Gwen and Minna. He had got upon the wrong tack, and she would not
undeceive him. Keeping her forehead still dexterously bent to the same
terrible scowl as before, and never for a second betraying her malicious
internal smile of triumph, she answered, as if angry at being detected,
'Jealous! and of her! Signor Giuseppe, you are joking.'
'I am not
joking, Cecca. I can see you are jealous this very moment. You love the
Englishman. What is the good of loving him? He will not marry you, and you
will not marry him: you would do much better to take, after all, to poor old
Beppo. But you're jealous of the tall lady, because you think the
Englishman's in love with her. What does it matter to you or me whether he is
or whether he isn't? And it is for her that you want the
medicine.'
Cecca drew a long breath and pretended to be completely
baffled. 'Give me the bottle,' she cried; 'give me the bottle,
Beppo.'
Giuseppe held it triumphantly at arm's length above his
head.
'Not till you swear to me, Cecca, that you don't want to use it
against the tall lady.' Cecca wrung her hands in mock despair. 'You won't
give it to me, Beppo? You won't give it to me? What do you want me to
swear it by? The holy water--the rosary--the medal of the holy
father?'
Giuseppe smiled a smile of contemptuous
superciliousness.
'Holy water!--rosary!--Pope!' he cried, 'Much you care
for them indeed, Signora. No, no; you must swear by something that will bind
you firmly. You must swear on your own little pocket image of Madonna della
Guardia of Monteleone.'
Cecca pouted. (To the daughter of ten
generations of Calabrian brigands a detail like a little poisoning case was
merely a matter for careless pouting and feminine vagaries.)
'You will
compel me?' she asked hesitatingly.
Giuseppe nodded.
'Or else I
don't give you the bottle,' he murmured.
Cecca drew the little silver
image with well-simulated reluctance from inside her plaited bodice. 'What am
I to swear?' she asked petulantly.
'Say the words after me,' Beppo
insisted. 'I swear by the mother of God, Madonna della Guardia of Monteleone,
and all holy saints, that I will not touch or hurt or harm the tall English
lady with the military father. And if I do may the Madonna forget
me.'
Cecca repeated the words after him, severally and distinctly. It
was very necessary that she should be quite precise, lest the Madonna
should by inadvertence make any mistake about the particular person. If
she didn't make it quite clear at first that the oath only regarded
Gwen, the Madonna might possibly be very angry with her for poisoning
Minna, and that of course would be extremely awkward. It's a
particularly unpleasant thing for any one to incur the displeasure of such a
powerful lady as Madonna della Guardia at Monteleone.
'You may have
the bottle now if you like,' Beppo said, handing it back to her
carelessly.
Cecca pouted once more. 'What's the use of it now?' she asked
languidly. 'Except, of course, to poison the cat with!'
Beppo laughed.
To the simple unsophisticated Calabrian mind the whole episode only figured
itself as a little bit of Cecca's pardonable feminine jealousy. Women will be
women, and if they see a rival, of course, they'll naturally try to poison
her. To say the truth, Beppo thought the fancy pretty and piquant on Cecca's
part rather than otherwise. The fear of the Roman police was to him the only
serious impediment.
'I may come and see you again next Sunday, Cecca?'
he asked as he took up his bundle to leave the room. 'You owe me a little
courtesy for this.'
Cecca smiled and nodded in a very gay humour.
There was no need for deception now she had got the precious bottle securely
put away in the innermost pocket of her model's kirtle. 'Yes,' she answered
benignly. 'you may come on Sunday. You have deserved well of me.'
But
as soon as Beppo had left the room Signora Cecca flung herself down upon the
horsehair mattress in the corner (regardless of her back hair), and rolled
over and over in her wild delight, and threw her arms about, as if she were
posing for the Pythoness, and laughed aloud in her effusive southern joy and
satisfaction. 'Ha! ha!' she cried to herself gaily, 'he thought it was that
one! He thought it was that one, did he? He's got mighty particular since he
came to Rome, Beppo has--afraid of the police, the coward; and he won't have
anything to do even with poisoning a poor heretic of an Englishwoman. Madonna
della Guardia, I have no such scruples for my part! But he mistook the one:
he thought I was angry with the tall handsome one. No, no, she may do as she
likes for all I care for her. It's the ugly little governess with the
watery eyes that my Englishman's in love with. What he can see to admire in
her I can't imagine--a thing with no figure--but he's in love with
her, and she shall pay for it, the caitiff creature; she shall pay for it,
I promise her. Here's the bottle, dear little bottle! How bright and
clear it dances! Cecca Bianchelli, you shall have your revenge yet.
Madonna della Guardia, good little Madonna, sweet little Madonna, you shall
have your candles. Don't be angry with me, I pray you, Madonna mia, I
shall not break my oath; it's the other one, the little governess,
dear Madonna! She's only a heretic--an Englishwoman--a heretic; an affair
of love, what would you have, Madonna? You shall get your candles, see
if you don't, and your masses too, your two nice little masses, in your
own pretty sweet little chapel on the high hill at
Monteleone!'
CHAPTER XXXVII. CECCA AND MINNA.
|It was
Tuesday afternoon at Colin Churchill's, and Minna had got her usual weekly
leave to go and visit her cousin at his own studio. 'I find her devotion
admirable,' said Madame, 'but then, this cousin he is young and handsome.
After all, there is perhaps nothing so very extraordinary in it,
really.'
Cecca was there, too, waiting her opportunity, with the little
phial always in her pocket: for who knows when Madonna della Guardia
may see the chance of earning her two promised masses? She is late
this afternoon, the English governess; but she will come soon: she
never forgets to come every Tuesday.
By and by, Minna duly arrived,
and Colin kissed her before Cecca's very eyes--the miscreant! and she took
off her bonnet even, and sat down and seemed quite prepared to make an
afternoon of it.
'Cecca,' Colin cried, 'will you ask them to make us
three cups of coffee?--You can stop, Minna, and have some coffee, can't
you?'
Cecca didn't understand the English half of the sentence, of
course, but she ran off quite enchanted to execute the little commission
in the Italian bent of it. A cup of coffee! It was the very thing;
Madonna della Guardia, what fortune you have sent me!
Colin and Minna
sat talking within while the coffee was brewing, and when it was brought in,
Cecca waited for her opportunity cautiously, until Minna had taken a cup for
herself, and laid it down upon the little bare wooden table beside her. It
would never do to put the medicine by mistake into the cup of the Englishman;
we must manage these little matters with all due care and circumspection. So
Cecca watched in the background, as a cat watches a mouse's hole with the
greatest silence and diligence, till at last a favourable chance occurred:
and then under the pretence of handing Minna the biscuits which came up
with the coffee, she managed cleverly to drop half the contents of the
phial into the cup beside her. Half was quite enough for one trial: she
kept the other half, in case of accident, to use again if
circumstances should demand it.
Just at that moment a note came in
from Maragliano. Could Colin step round to the other studio for a quarter of
an hour? A wealthy patron had dropped in, and wanted to consult with him
there about a commission.
Cohn read the letter through hastily; explained
its contents to Minna; kissed her once more: (Ha, the last time, the last
time for ever! he will never do that again, the Englishman!) and then ran out
to see the wealthy patron.
Minna was left alone for that half-hour in
the studio with Cecca.
Would she drink the coffee, now? that was the
question. No, as bad luck and all the devils would have it, she didn't seem
to think of tasting or sipping it. A thousand maledictions! The stuff would
get cold, and then she would throw it away and ask for another cupful.
Blessed Madonna of Monte-leone, make her drink it! Make her drink it! Bethink
you, unless she does, dear little Madonna, you do not get your candles or
your masses!
Still Minna sat quite silent and motionless, looking
vacantly at the beautiful model, whom she had forgotten now to feel angry or
jealous about. She was thinking, thinking vacantly; and her Italian was
so far from fluent that she didn't feel inclined to begin a
conversation off-hand with the beautiful model.
Just to encourage her,
then (there's nothing like society), Ceeca drew up her three-legged stool
close beside the signorina, and began to sip carelessly and unconcernedly at
her own cup of coffee. Perhaps the sight of somebody else drinking might
chance by good luck to make the Englishwoman feel a little
thirsty.
But Minna only looked at her, and smiled half-unconsciously. To
her great surprise, the Italian woman perceived that two tears were
slowly trickling down her rival's cheeks.
Italians are naturally
sympathetic, even when they are on the eve of poisoning you; and besides one
is always curious to know what one is crying for. So Cecca leaned forward
kindly, and said in her gentlest tone: 'You are distressed, signorina. You
are suffering in some way. Can I do anything for you?'
Minna started,
and wiped away the two tears hastily. 'It is nothing,' she said, 'I didn't
mean it. I--I fancied I was alone, I had forgotten.'
'What! you speak
Italian!' Cecca cried, a little astonished, and half anxious to enjoy her
triumph by anticipation. 'Ah, signorina, I know what is the matter. I have
guessed your secret: I have guessed your secret!'
Minna blushed.
'Hush,' she said eagerly. 'Not a word about it. My friend may return. Not a
word about it.'
But still she didn't touch her coffee.
Then Cecca
began to talk to her gently and soothingly, in her best soft Italian manner.
Poor thing, she was evidently very sad. So far away from her home too. Cecca
was really quite sorry for her. She tried to draw her out and in her way to
comfort her. The signorina hadn't long to live: let us at least be kind and
sympathetic to her.
For, you see, an Italian woman is capable of
poisoning you in such a perfectly good-humoured and almost affectionate
fashion.
At first, Minna didn't warm very much to the beautiful model:
she had still her innate horror of Italian women strong upon her; and
besides she knew from her first meeting that Cecca had a terrible
vindictive temper. But in time Cecca managed to engage her in real
conversation, and to tell her about her own little personal peasant history.
Yes, Cecca came from Calabria, from that beautiful province; and her
father, her father was a fisherman.
Minna started. 'A fisherman! How
strange. And my father too, was also a fisherman away over yonder in
England!'
It was Cecca's turn to start at that. A fisherman! How
extraordinary. She could hardly believe it. She took it for granted all along
that Minna, though a governess, was a grand English lady; for the idea of
a fisher man's daughter dressing and living in the way that Minna did
was almost inconceivable to the unsophisticated mind of a Calabrian
peasant woman. And to wear a bonnet, too! to wear a bonnet!
'Tell me
all about it,' Cecca said, drawing closer, and genuinely interested (with a
side eye upon the untasted coffee). 'You came to Rome then,' jerking her two
hands in the direction of the door, 'to follow the Englishman?' 'Signora
Cecca,' Minna said, with a sudden vague instinct, in her tentative Italian,
'I will trust you. I will tell you all about it. I was a poor fisherman's
daughter in England, and I always loved my cousin, the sculptor.' Cecca
listened with the intensest interest. Minna lifted her cup for the first
time, and took a single sip of the poisoned coffee.
'Good!' thought
Cecca calmly to herself. 'If she takes a first sip, why of course in that
case she will certainly finish it.'
Then Minna went on with her story,
shortly and in difficulty, pieced out every here and there by Cecca's
questions and ready pantomime. Cecca drank in all the story with the deepest
avidity. It was so strange that something should just then have moved the
Englishwoman to make a _confidante_ of her. A poor fisherman's daughter, and
neglected now by her lover who had become a grand and wealthy sculptor!
Mother of God, from the bottom of her heart, she really pitied
her.
'And when he came to Rome,' Cecca said, helping out the story of her
own accord, 'he fell in with the grand English ladies like the one with
the military papa; and they made much of him; and you were afraid, my
little signorina, that he had almost forgotten you! And so you came to Rome
on purpose to follow him.'
Minna nodded, and her eyes filled with
tears a second time.
'Poor little signorina!' Cecca said
earnestly.
'It was cruel of him, very cruel of him. But when people come
to Rome they are often cruel, and they soon forget their lovers of
the province.' Something within her made her think that moment of
poor Giuseppe, who had followed her so trustfully from that far
Calabria.
Minna raised the cup once more, and took another sip at the
poisoned coffee. Cecca watched the action closely, and this time gave a
small involuntary sigh of relief when Minna set it down again almost
untasted. Poor little thing! after all she was only a fisherman's daughter,
and she wanted her lover, her lover of the province, to love her still
the same as ever! Nothing so very wrong or surprising in that! Natural,
most natural.... But then, the Englishman, the Englishman! she mustn't
be allowed to carry off the Englishman.... And Giuseppe, poor
Giuseppe.... Well, there, you know; in love and war these things will happen,
and one can't avoid them.
'And you knew him from a child?' she asked
innocently.
'Yes, from a child. We lived together in a little village by
the sea-shore in England; my father was a fisherman, and his a gardener.
He used to go into the fields by the village, and make me little images
of mud, which I used to keep upon my mantelpiece, and that was the
first beginning, you see, of his sculpture.'
Mother of heaven, just
like herself and Giuseppe! How they used to play together as children on the
long straight shore at Monteleone. 'But you were not Christians in England,
you were pagans, not Christians!'
For the idea of images had suggested to
Cecca's naïve mind the notion of the Madonna.
Minna almost laughed, in
spite of herself, at the curious misapprehension, and drew out from her bosom
the little cross that she always wore instead of a locket. 'Oh yes,' she said
simply, without dwelling upon any minor points of difference between them;
'we are Christians--Christians.'
The girl examined the cross
reverently, and then looked back at the coffee with a momentary misgiving.
After all, the Englishwoman was very gentle and human-like and kind-hearted.
It was natural she should want to keep her country lover. And besides she was
really, it seemed, no heretic in the end at all, but a good
Christian.
'When people come to Rome and become famous,' she repeated
musingly, 'they do wrong to be proud and to forget the lovers of their
childhood.' Giuseppe loved her dearly, there was no denying it, and she used
to love him dearly, too, down yonder on the shore at Monteleone.
Minna
raised her cup of coffee a third time, and took a deeper drink. Nearly a
quarter of the whole was gone now; but not much of the poison, Cecca thought
to herself, thank heaven; that was heavy and must have sunk to the bottom. If
only one could change the cups now, without being observed! Poor little
thing, it would be a pity, certainly, to poison her. One oughtn't to poison
people, properly speaking, unless one has really got some serious grudge
against them. She was a good little soul, though no doubt insipid, and a
Christian, too; Madonna della Guardia, would the bargain hold good, Cecca
wondered silently, seeing the Englishwoman had miraculously turned out to be
after all a veritable Christian. These are points of casuistry on which one
would certainly like to have beforehand the sound opinion of a good
unprejudiced Calabrian confessor.
'You think he makes too much of the
tall signorina!' Cecca said lightly, smiling and nodding. (Cecca had, of
course, an immense fund of sympathy with the emotion of jealousy in other
women.)
Minna blushed and looked down timidly without answering. What on
earth could have possessed her to make so free, at this particular
minute, with this terrible Italian model woman? She really couldn't make it
out herself, and yet she knew there had been some strange unwonted
impulse moving within her. (If she had read Von Hartmann, she would have
called it learnedly the action of the Unconscious. As it was, she would
have said, if she had known all, that it was a Special Providence.)
So
wishing merely to change the subject, and having nothing else to say at the
moment, she looked up almost accidentally at the completed clay of the Nymph
Bathing, and said simply: 'That is a beautiful statue, Signora
Cecca.'
Cecca smiled a majestic smile of womanly gratification, and
showed her double row of even regular pearl-white teeth with coquettish
beauty. 'I posed for it,' she said, throwing herself almost unconsciously
into the familiar attitude. 'It is my portrait!'
'It is a splendid
portrait,' Minna answered cordially, glancing quickly from the original to
the copy, 'a splendid portrait of a very beautiful and exquisitely formed
woman.'
'Signorina!' Cecca cried, standing up in front of her, and roused
by a sudden outburst of spontaneous feeling to change her plan entirely,
'you are quite mistaken; the master does not love the tall lady. I know
the master well, I have been here all the time, I have watched him
narrowly. He does not love the tall lady: she loves him, I tell you, but he
does not care for her; in his heart of hearts he does not love her; I
know, for I have watched them. Signorina, I like you, you are a sweet
little Englishwoman, and I like you dearly. Your friend from the
village in England shall marry you!' ('Oh, don't talk so!' Minna
cried parenthetically, hiding her face passionately between her
hands.)
'And if the tall lady were to try to come between you and him,'
Cecca added vigorously, 'I would poison her--I would poison her--I
would poison her! She shall not steal another woman's lover, the
wretched creature. I hate such meanness, signorina, I will poison
her.'
As Cecca said those words, with an unfeigned air of the deepest and
most benevolent sympathy, she managed to catch her long loose scarf as if
by accident in the corner of the light table where Minna's
half-finished cup of coffee was still standing, and to upset it carelessly on
to the floor of the studio. The cup with a crash broke into a hundred
pieces.
At that very moment Colin entered. He saw Minna rising hastily
from the settee beside the overturned table, and Cecca down on her knees
upon the floor, wiping up the coffee hurriedly with one of the coarse
studio towels. Cecca looked up in his face with a fearless glance as if
nothing unusual had happened. 'An accident, signor,' she cried: 'my scarf
caught in the table. I have spilt the signorina's cup of coffee. But no
matter. I will run down immediately and tell them below to make her
another.'
'Cecca and I have been talking together, Colin,' Minna said,
replacing the fallen table hastily, 'and, do you know, isn't it strange,
she's a fisherman's daughter in Calabria? and oh! Colin, I don't believe
after all she's really half such a bad sort of girl as I took her to be
when I first saw her. She's been talking to me here quite nicely
and sympathetically.'
'Italians are all alike,' Colin answered, with
the usual glib English faculty for generalisation about all 'foreigners.'
'They'll be ready to stab you one minute, and to fall upon your neck and kiss
you the very next.'
Going out of the studio to order more coffee from
the trattoria next door, Cecca happened to meet on the doorstep with her
friend Giuseppe.
'Beppo,' she said, looking up at him more kindly than
had been her wont of late: 'Beppo, I want to tell you something--I've changed
my mind about our little difference. If you like, next Sunday you may marry
me.'
'Next Sunday! Marry you!' Beppo exclaimed, astonished. 'Oh,
Cecca, Cecca, you cannot mean it!'
'I said, next Sunday, if you like,
you may marry me. That's good ordinary sensible Calabrian, isn't it? If you
wish, I'll give it you in Tuscan: you can understand nothing but Tuscan, it
seems, since you came to Rome, my little brother.'
She said the words
tenderly, banter as they were, in their own native dialect: and Beppo saw at
once that she was really in earnest.
'But next Sunday,' he exclaimed.
'Next Sunday, my little one! And the preparations?'
'I am rich!' Cecca
answered calmly. 'I bring you a dower. I am the most favourite model in all
Rome this very moment.'
'And the Englishman--the Englishman? What are you
going to do with the Englishman?'
'The Englishman may marry his
sweetheart if he will,' the girl replied with dogged
carelessness.
'Cecca! you did not give the.... medicine to the
Englishman?'
Cecca drew the half-empty bottle from her pocket and dashed
it savagely against the small paving-stones in the alley underfoot. 'There,'
she cried, eagerly, as she watched it shiver into little fragments. 'See
the medicine! That is the end of it.'
'And the cat,
Cecca?'
Cecca drew a long breath. 'How much of it would hurt a
human being--a woman?' she asked anxiously. 'Somebody has drunk a little
by mistake--just so much!' And she measured the quantity approximately
with the tip of her nail upon her little finger.
Giuseppe shook his
head re-assuringly, shrugged his shoulders, and opened his hands, palms
outward, as if to show he was evidently making no mental reservation.
'Harmless!' he said. Quite harmless. It would take a quarter of a phial at
least to produce any effect worth speaking of.'
Cecca clasped her
silver image of the Madonna ecstatically. 'That's well, Beppo,' she answered
with a nod. 'I must go now. On Sunday, little brother! On Sunday.
Beppo--Beppo--it was all a play. I love you. I love you.'
But as she
went in to order the coffee the next second, she said to herself with a
regretful grimace: 'What a fool I was after all to waste the medicine! Why,
if only I had thought of it. I might have used it to poison the other one,
the tall Englishwoman. She shall not be allowed to steal away the little
signorina's lover!'
CHAPTER XXXVIII. GWEN HAS A
VISITOR.
|In the gardens of the Villa Panormi, Gwen Howard-Russell was
walking up and down by herself one morning, a few days later, among the
winter flowers (for it was now January), when she saw a figure she fancied
she could recognise entering cautiously at the main gate by the high
road to the Ponte Molle. Why, yes, she couldn't be mistaken. It was
certainly the woman Cecca, the beautiful model down at Mr. Colin
Churchill's studio! How very extraordinary and mysterious! What on earth
could she be coming here for?
Gwen walked quickly down to meet the
girl, who stood half hesitating in the big central avenue, and asked her
curiously what she wanted.
'Signorina,' Cecca answered, not
unrespectfully, 'I wish to speak with you a few minutes in
private.'
Gwen was surprised and amused at this proposal, but not in the
least disconcerted. How deliciously Italian and romantic! Mr. Churchill
had sent her a letter, no doubt--perhaps a declaration--and he had
employed the beautiful model to be the naturally appropriate bearer of
it. There's something in the very air of Rome that somehow lends
itself spontaneously to these delightful mystifications. In London, now,
his letter would have been delivered in the ordinary course of business
by the common postman! How much more poetical, and antique, and
romantic, to send it round by the veritable hands of his own beautiful
imaginary Wood Nymph!
'Come this way,' she said, in her imperious
English fashion; 41 will speak with you down here in the bower.'
Cecca
followed her to the bower in silence, for she resented our brusque insular
manners: and somewhat to Gwen's surprise when she reached the bower, she
seated herself like an equal upon the bench beside her. These Italians have
no idea of the natural distinctions between the various social
classes.
'Well,' Gwen asked, after a moment's pause. 'What do you want to
say to me? Have you brought me any message or letter?'
'No,
signorina,' the girl answered somewhat maliciously. 'Nothing: nothing. I come
to speak to you of my own accord solely.'
There was another short pause,
as though Cecca expected the English lady to make some further inquiry: but
as Gwen said nothing, Cecca began again: 'I want to tell you something,
signorina. You know the little English governess, the master's
cousin?'
'Yes, I know her. That is to say, I have met her.'
'Well,
I have come to tell you something about her. She is a fisherman's daughter,
as I am, and she was brought up, far away, in a village in England, together
with the master.'
'I know all about her,' Gwen answered somewhat coldly.
'She was a servant afterwards at a house in London, and then she became a
teacher in a school, and finally a governess. I have heard all that before,
from a friend of mine in England.'
'But I have something else to tell
you about her,' Cecca continued with unusual self-restraint for an Italian
woman. 'Something else that concerns you personally. She was brought up with
the master, and she used to play with him in the meadows, when she was a
child, where he made her little images of the Madonna in clay; and that was
how he first of all began to be a sculptor. Then she followed him from her
village to a city: and there he learned to be more of a sculptor. By-and-by,
he came to Rome: but still, the little signorina loved him and wished
to follow him. And at last she did follow him, because she loved him.
And the master loves her, too, and is very fond of her. That is all that
I have to tell you.'
She kept her eye fixed steadily on Gwen while she
spoke, and watched in her cat-like fashion to see whether the simple story
was telling home, as she meant it to do, to Gwen's intelligence. As she
uttered the words she saw Gwen's face grow suddenly scarlet, and she knew she
had rightly effected her intended purpose. She had struck the right chord in
Gwen's pride, and Minna now would have nothing more to fear from the tall
Englishwoman. 'Safer than the poison,' she thought to herself reflectively,
'and as it happens, every bit as useful and effectual, without half the
trouble or danger.'
Gwen looked at her steadily and without flinching.
'Why do you say all this to _me?_' she asked haughtily.
'Because I
knew it closely concerned you,' Cecca replied, in her coolest tone: 'and I
see from your face, too, signorina, whatever you choose to say, that I was
not mistaken.'
And indeed, in that one moment, the whole truth about
Minna and Colin, never before even suspected by her, had flashed suddenly
across Gwen's mind with the most startling vividness. She saw it all now, as
clear as daylight. How could she ever have been foolish enough for a moment
not to have understood it? Colin Churchill didn't make love to her for
the very best of all possible reasons, because he was already in love
with another person: and that other person was nobody else but the
little governess with the old-fashioned bonnet. She reeled a little at
the suddenness of the revelation, but she managed somehow or other to
master her confusion and even to assume externally a careless
demeanour.
'But what interest have _you_ in telling me this?' she asked
again of Cecca haughtily.
'Because I like the little signorina,' Cecca
answered quite truthfully, 'and I was anxious to do anything on earth I could
to serve her.'
After all, except for her casual little provincial leaning
towards the use of poison (quite pardonable in a pretty Calabrian), Cecca was
really not a bad sort of girl at bottom, as girls go in this strange and
oddly blended universe of ours.
'Is that all you have to say to me?'
Gwen enquired after another short pause, with ill-affected languor, of the
beautiful model.
'That is all, signorina. I see you understand me. Good
morning.'
'Stop!' Gwen said, taking out her purse uneasily. 'You have
done me, too, a service, my girl. Take that for your trouble in coming
here.'
Cecca drew herself up proudly to her full height. She was an
Italian peasant woman, and yet she could resist an offer of money. 'No,
no, signorina,' she answered as haughtily as Gwen herself. 'I want
no reward: I am rich, I am the queen of the models. I did it for love
of the little lady.' And she walked with a stately salute out of the
bower and down the solid marble steps of the great garden.
When she
was gone, Gwen buried her face in her hands for a moment, and cried bitterly.
It was not so much the disappointment that she felt, though she had really
been very much in love with Colin Churchill, as the humiliation of knowing
that Cecca had discovered both her secret and her disappointment. And indeed,
Cecca's short disclosure had given a sudden death-blow to all Gwen's dearest
and most deeply-rooted projects. In the inmost depths of her proud heart,
Gwen Howard-Russell felt with instinctive unquestioning resolution that it
would be impossible now under any circumstances for her to marry Colin
Churchill. If it had been any other woman in the world save only little
simple Minna, Gwen might have taken a sort of keen delight of battle in
winning her sweetheart's love cleverly away from her. She might have fought
her for her lover all along the line with feminine strategy, and enjoyed the
victory all the better in the end because she had had to struggle hard for
it. For though our hypocritical varnished civilisation is loth to confess it,
in Europe at least it is always the women who are competing covertly
among themselves for the small possible stock of husbands. How can it
be otherwise when for every 'eligible' man in our society there are
usually about half a dozen marriageable women? But the moment Gwen knew
and realised that Colin was in love with Minna, or even that Minna was
in love with Colin, she felt immediately that the game was now
rendered absolutely impossible; for Minna had once been a servant, a
common servant, a London parlour-maid, and Gwen Howard-Bussell could
not for one moment bring down her proud head to treat a servant as even
a conceivable rival. Oh, no, as soon as she thought it possible that
Minna might even in her own heart aspire to marry Colin Churchill, there
was nothing on earth left for her but to retire immediately from the
utterly untenable position.
She could have married Colin himself, of
course, in spite of all his past, as humble even as Minna's, for he had
genius; and in a man genius is universally allowed to atone for everything. A
woman may stoop to marry a man below her own position in the social scale by
birth, if it is generally understood that she does it as a graceful and
appreciative tribute to literary, scientific, or artistic greatness. But to
put herself in rivalry as it were with a woman, not even a genius, and
born beneath her, in a struggle for the hand of such a man, who ought
rather of course to receive hers gratefully, as a distinguished
favour--why, the whole thing is obviously an absolute impossibility. So Gwen
dried her eyes as well as she was able, with her little dainty cambric
pocket-handkerchief, and settled with herself at once and finally that the Colin
Churchill day-dream was now at last dispelled for
ever. |
|
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