He was in love with the little governess--the little governess
with the old-fashioned bonnet! And the little governess had been a
parlour-maid in London! And she herself, Gwen Howard-Russell, had been on the
very verge of putting herself in unworthy rivalry with her! She shuddered
to think of it, actually shuddered even to think of it. The very idea was
so horribly repugnant to her. And how many women of her own social status are
there in this realm of England who would not have sympathised therein with
Gwen Howard-Russell? Our pride is so much stronger than our Christianity, and
in this case, oddly enough, the one power brought about pretty much the same
practical result in the long run as the other.
As Gwen rose with red
eyes and flushed cheeks, to make her way back to her own bedroom, she saw, as
she passed along the shrubby orache hedge that separated the garden from the
high-road, a wistful face looking anxiously and eagerly from outside, in the
direction of the great villa. She knew in a moment whose it was: it was Hiram
Winthrop's. He had stolen away from his studio and the Capture of Babylon, to
come out that morning to the dusty roads of the suburbs, and see if he could
catch a passing glimpse anywhere of Gwen Howard-Russell. His face was pale
and anxious, and Gwen saw for herself in a second that he was wasted
with his eagerness in waiting for her deferred answer. Her heart went
forth for the moment to that sad devoted expression. 'Poor fellow,'
she muttered to herself compassionately, 4 he's very much in love with
me, very much in love with me. I wish to goodness I could only have
given him a favourable answer.'
CHAPTER XXXIX. GWEN'S
DECISION.
|There were five days yet to run before the expiration of the
fortnight which Gwen had promised to give to the consideration of
Hiram's proposal, and in the course of those five days Gwen met her
Yankee admirer again, quite accidentally, on two separate occasions,
though both times in company with other people. Half insensibly to
herself, since the sudden collapse of that little bubble fancy about
Colin Churchill, she had begun to take a somewhat different view of
poor Hiram's earnest entreaty. Of course she didn't in the least intend
to say _yes_ to him at last, in spite of Cecca's timely disclosures;
she wasn't the sort of girl to go and throw herself into the arms of
the very first man who happened to ask her, for no better reason in the
world than merely because she had just met with a first
serious disappointment; but still, she couldn't help reflecting to herself
how deeply the young American was in love with her, and contrasting
his eager, single-hearted, childlike devotion with the English
sculptor's utter insensibility and curious indifference. Ah, yes, there could
be no denying that much at any rate, that Hiram Winthrop was most
profoundly and desperately in love with her. Love at first sight, too! How
very romantic! He had carried away her image for ever with him through
all these long weary years, ever since the day when he first met her, so
long ago, by the merest accident, beside the Lake of the
Thousand Islands.
A first serious disappointment, did she say? Well,
well, that was really making a great deal too much, even to herself, of a
girl's mere passing maidenly fancy. She had never herself been actually in
love--not to say exactly _in love_, you know--with Mr. Colin Churchill. Oh,
no, she had never gone so far as that, of course, even in her most
unguarded moments of self-abandoned day-dreaming. Girls will have their
fancies, naturally, and one can't prevent them; you think a particular
young man is rather nice, and rather handsome, and rather agreeable;
and you imagine to yourself that if he were to pay you any very
marked attentions, don't you know--well there, one can't help having
one's little personal preferences, anyhow, now can one? But as to saying
she was ever really _in love_ with Mr. Churchill--why, how can you
possibly ever be in love with a man who never for a single moment takes as
much as the slightest notice of you? And yet--how odd!--men and women
must certainly be very differently constituted in these respects, when
one comes to think of it; for that poor little Mr. Winthrop had been
madly in love with her for years and years, almost without her ever even
so much as for one moment discovering it or suspecting it!
Oh, no, she
had never been in the least _in love_ with Mr. Colin Churchill. And even if
she had been (which she hadn't, but only--well, what you may call rather
struck with him, he was such a very clever sculptor, and she was always so
fond of artists' society)--but still, even if she had been (just to put the
case, you know), she couldn't think of going on with it any further now, of
course, for it wouldn't be Christian to try and entice that poor little
governess girl's lover away from her, even if it hadn't been the case that
she had been once upon a time a common servant. Poor little thing! though it
was a pity that Mr. Churchill should ever think of throwing himself away on
such an utter little nonentity as she was, still it would be very hard on
her undoubtedly, if, after she had taken the trouble to raise herself
as much as she could into his position in life, she should go and lose
her lover after all, that she had so long been looking up to. Yes, in
its own way it was a very proper arrangement indeed that Mr.
Churchill should end at last by marrying the poor little dowdy
governess.
And yet he was a very great sculptor, to be sure, and she,
Gwen, had always had a wonderful fancy for marrying an artist.
But Mr.
Winthrop's landscapes were really very beautiful too; and after all, painters
are so very much more human in the end than those cold, impassive,
marble-hearted sculptors. And what a lonely life Mr. Winthrop had always led!
and how he seemed to yearn and hunger and thirst, as he spoke to her, for
warm living and human sympathy! He had never had a sister, he said, and his
mother, crushed and wearied by hard farm life and his father's religious
sternness, had died while he was still a mere schoolboy. And he had never
known anybody he could love but Gwen, except only, of course, dear Mr.
Audouin; and after all, say what you will of it, a man, you know, a man is
not a woman. Poor fellow, in her heart of hearts she was really sorry for
him. And what a rage papa would be in, too, if only she were to accept
him!
Papa would certainly be in a most dreadful temper; that was really
quite undeniable. Gwen hardly knew herself, in fact, what ever he would
do or say to her. He had a most unreasoning objection to artists in
the concrete, regarding them, in fact, as scarcely respectable, and he
had a still more unreasoning objection to all Americans, whom he hated,
root and branch, as a set of vulgar, obtrusive, upstart nobodies. To be
sure, Mr. Winthrop, now, was by no means obtrusive: quite the contrary;
nor was he even vulgar, though he _did_ certainly speak with a very
faint American accent; and as to his being a nobody, why, if it came to
that, of course it was papa himself who was really the nobody (though he
_was_ a Howard-Russell and a colonel in the line), while Mr. Winthrop was
a very clever and interesting artist. So in fact, if,--just to put
the case again--she ever _did_ decide upon accepting him, she wasn't
going to stand any nonsense of that sort from papa, you know, and that
was just the long and the short of it.
With a girl of Gwen's
high-spirited temperament it is probable that Hiram could hardly have had a
better ally in his somewhat hopeless suit than this dim hypothetical
consciousness on her part of the colonel's decided objection to Hiram as a
possible husband.
If you want very much to marry a girl like Gwen,
suggest to her incidentally, as you make your offer, that her parents will of
course be very much opposed to a marriage between you. If that doesn't decide
her to take your view of the matter, nothing on earth will, you may
depend upon it.
And so the fortnight sped away, and at the end of it,
Hiram Winthrop came up, as if by accident, one morning early to the Villa
Panormi. The earl and the colonel were having a quiet game, with
their after-breakfast cigars, in the billiard-room, and Hiram and Gwen had
the big salon entirely to themselves for their final interview.
As
Hiram entered, hardly daring to hope, and pale with restrained passion, Gwen
had already made up her mind beforehand that she must say no to him: but at
the very sight of his earnest face and worn eyelids her resolution suddenly
faltered. He was desperately in love with her:--that was certain; she could
hardly find it in her heart to dismiss him summarily. She would delay and
temporise with him just for the moment. Poor fellow, if she blurted it out to
him too bluntly and hastily, it might almost stun him. She would break her
refusal to him gently, very gently.
'Well, Miss Russell,' he said to
her eagerly, taking her hand as he entered with a faint hesitating pressure,
'you see I have come back for my answer; but before you give it to me, for
good or for evil, there are one or two matters yet that I want to talk over
with you very particularly.'
Gwen trembled a little as she seated
herself on the big centre ottoman, and answered nervously, 'Well, Mr.
Winthrop, then let me hear them.'
'I ought to plead for myself,' Hiram
went on in a feverish voice, looking down on the ground and then up in her
face alternately every half second. 'I ought to plead for myself with all my
power, and all my soul, and all my energy, Miss Russell; for though to you
this is only a matter of saying yes or no to one more suitor--and no doubt
you have had many--to me it is a matter of life and death, for I never in my
life for one moment imagined that I loved or could love any other woman; and
if you refuse me now, I never in my life shall love another. If you
refuse me, I shall lose heart altogether, and throw up this foolish
painting business at once and for ever, and go back again to drive the plough
and cut the corn once more in my own country. To that I have made my
mind up irrevocably; so I ought to plead for myself, seeing how much is
at stake, with all my heart and soul and energy.'
Gwen crumpled up the
corners of the oriental antimacassar in her tremulous fingers as she answered
very softly, 'I should be sorry to think you meant to do anything so unwise
and so unjust to the world and to yourself on my account, Mr.
Winthrop.'
'I ought to plead for myself, and to plead only,' Hiram went
on, like one who has got a message to deliver and feels impelled to deliver
it without heed of interruptions. 'I ought to say nothing that might in
any way interfere with any faint chance I may possibly possess of
winning your favour. I know how little likely I am to succeed, and I can't
bear to make my own case seem still weaker and feebler to you. But,
Miss Russell, before you answer me--and I'm not going to let you answer
me yet, until you have heard me to the end fully--there are one or
two things more I feel constrained to say to you. I want to make
you understand exactly what you will have to do and to put up with if by
any chance you promise to marry me.' (Gwen blushed slightly at the word,
so seriously spoken, but could not take her eyes away from his earnest
face as he still went on rapidly speaking.) 'In the first place, I am a
very poor painter, and I have nothing on earth but my art to live
upon.'
'If that were all,' Gwen said, unconsciously taking his part, as
it were, 'I don't think that to be an artist's wife, however poor he
may be, is a life that any woman on earth need be anything but proud
of.'
'Thank you,' Hiram said fervidly, looking up at her once more with
a sudden gleam of newborn hope upon his pale worn countenance. 'Thank
you, thank you. I know you are one of those who can value art at its
true worth, and I was sure before I spoke that that at least need be
no barrier between us. And as I am an American, and as proud of my
old Puritan New England ancestry as any gentleman in old England
could possibly be of his Norman forefathers or his broad acres, I
won't pretend to apologise to you on the score of birth, or connections,
or social position. That is a thing, if you will excuse my saying so,
Miss Russell, that no American can under any circumstances stoop to
do. Your father is proud, I know; but every descendant of the New
England pilgrims is indeed in his own democratic way a great deal
prouder.'
That was a point of view that, to say the truth, had never
struck Gwen before as even possible; still, as Hiram said it, so boldly
and unaffectedly, she felt in her heart that it was really nothing more
than the truth, and though she couldn't quite understand it or
sympathise with the feeling, she respected him for it, and admired his
open manliness in saying it so straightforwardly.
'But while I think
nothing of what your own relations would doubtless consider the disparity in
our positions,' Hiram went on earnestly, 'I do think a great deal of
this--that I have at present absolutely no means of my own upon which to
marry. If you consent, as I begin to hope you will consent, to be my wife,
sooner or later, we may have to wait a long long time, perhaps even for
years, before we can marry. I have risked everything upon my success as a
painter. I have eaten up my capital to keep myself alive through my student
period. I can find no purchasers now for the pictures I am painting. And I
don't know whether the public will ever care to buy them at all, because I
can't make up my own mind, even, whether I really am or am not a tolerable
painter.'
'Upon that point, Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen said decidedly, 'I
haven't myself the very slightest doubt or hesitation. I _know_ you are a
painter, and a very touching one; and I'm sure the world must find it out
some day, sooner or later.'
Quite unconsciously to himself, Hiram was
playing his own game in the very surest possible manner by seeming to take
sides for the moment against himself, and so compelling Gwen, out of the mere
necessities of the conversation, to argue the case for the defence with all a
woman's momentary impetuosity.
'But I ought to have thought of all
this before I ever spoke to you at all,' he went on earnestly. 'I ought to
have reflected how cruel it was of me to ask you for a promise when I
couldn't even tell whether I might ever be in a position to enable you to
perform it. It was wrong of me, very wrong; and I felt angry with myself for
having been led into doing it, the minute after I left you. But I was
betrayed into my confession by the accidents of the moment. You must forgive
me, because I had loved you so long--and so silently. I wouldn't have spoken
to you even then if I hadn't imagined--it was ever so wrong and foolish of
me, but still I imagined--that you seemed just then to be a little more
interested than before in my work and my future. Oh, Miss Russell, I have
loved you desperately; and I ventured, therefore, in a moment of haste to
tell you that I loved you. But if you say _yes_ to me to-day, it may be years
and years, perhaps, before we can marry. I can't say when or how I may
ever begin to earn my livelihood at all by painting pictures.'
'If I
really loved a man, Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen answered in a lower voice, 'I
shouldn't be afraid to wait for him as long as ever circumstances compelled
it--if I really loved him. And apart altogether from that question, which you
say I am not at present to answer, I can't believe that the world will be
much longer yet in discovering that you have genius--yes, I _will_ say
genius. Mr. Churchill himself declares he is quite certain you have real
genius.
Hiram smiled and shook his head incredulously. 'Still,' he said,
'it is at least some comfort to me to know that, putting the matter in its
most abstract form, you have no absolute objection to a long engagement.
If you loved a man, you would be ready to wait for him. I knew you
would, indeed, like every brave and true woman. I didn't doubt that you
could be steadfast enough to wait; I only doubted whether it would be just
of any man to beg you to wait under such more than doubtful
circumstances. But, remember, Miss Russell, I have this excuse to plead in my
own case, that it wasn't the passing fancy of a moment, but a love that has
grown with me into my very being. There is only one more consideration
now before I go on to ask you that final answer to my question, and it
is this. You must reflect whether you would be willing to brave the
anger of your father. I can't disguise from myself the fact that
Colonel Howard-Russell would be very ill satisfied at the idea of your
waiting to marry a penniless unknown American painter.'
Gwen looked at
him proudly, almost defiantly, as she answered in a clear bold tone, 'If I
loved a man really, Mr. Winthrop, I would marry him and wait for him as long
as _I_ chose, even if my father cast me off for it for ever the very next
minute. If ever I marry I shall marry because I have consulted my own heart,
and not because I have consulted my father.'
'I knew that too,'Hiram
answered, with just a touch of triumph in his trembling voice. 'I only spoke
to you about it because I thought it right to clear the ground entirely for
my final question. Then, Gwen, Gwen, Gwen--I will call you Gwen for this once
in my life, if I never call you Gwen again as long as I live here; I have
thought of you as Gwen for all these years, and I will think of you so still,
whatever comes, till my dying minute--oh, Gwen, Gwen, Gwen, I ask
you finally--and all my life hangs upon the question--can you love me,
will you love me, do you love me?'
Gwen let him fold her passionately
in his arms as she murmured twice, almost inaudibly, 'I love you! I love
you!'
Yes, yes, she couldn't any longer herself withstand the conviction.
She loved him. She loved him.
As for Hiram, the blood thrilled through
his veins as though his heart would burst for very fulness. The dream of his
existence had come true at last, and he cared for nothing else on earth now
he had once heard Gwen say with her own dear lips that she loved him, she
loved him.
CHAPTER XL. AFTER THE STORM.
|When Gwen
told the colonel the very same evening that she had actually gone and got
herself engaged to that shock-headed Yankee painter fellow, the colonel's
wrath and grief and indignation were really something wonderful to observe
and excellent to philosophise upon. The colonel raved, and stamped, and
fretted; the colonel fumed in impotent rage, and talked grimly about his
intentions and his paternal authority (just as if he had any); the colonel
even swore strange Hindustani oaths at Gwen's devoted head, and supplemented
them by all the choicest and most dignified military expletives to be found
in the vocabulary of his native language. But Gwen remained perfectly unmoved
by all the colonel's threats and imprecations; she flatly remarked that
his testamentary dispositions were a subject in no way interesting
or amusing to her, and stuck firm to her central contention, that it
was she who was going to marry Hiram, and not her father, and that
therefore she was the only person whose tastes and inclinations in the
matter ought to be taken into any serious consideration. And though the
colonel persisted in declaring that he for his part would never allow
that Gwen was in any proper sense engaged to Hiram, Gwen herself stood
to it stoutly that she _was_ so engaged; and after all, her opinion on
the subject was really by far the most important and conclusive of
any.
In fact, the more the colonel declaimed against Hiram, the
more profoundly convinced did Gwen become in her own heart that
she thoroughly loved and admired him. And the final consequence of
the colonel's violent opposition was merely this, that at the end of
three weeks or so Gwen was as madly in love with her American painter
fellow as any woman on this earth had ever yet been with a favoured
lover.
As for poor Hiram, he was absolutely in the seventh heaven for
the time being, and though a little later on he began to reproach
himself bitterly at times for having tied down Gwen so prematurely to his
own exceedingly doubtful fortunes, he could think as yet of nothing on
earth but his delight at having actually won the love of the lady of his
one long impassioned daydream.
On the day after Gwen had accepted
Hiram's timid offer, Colin Churchill met Miss Howard-Russell accidentally in
the Corso.
'Oh, Miss Russell,' he said, 'will you come on Sunday next to
see my model, Cecca, married to her old Calabrian lover? She's very anxious
you should come and assist, and she begged me most particularly to
invite you. She says you're a friend of hers, and that the other day you
did her and her lover a good service.'
'Tell her I'll be there, Mr.
Churchill,' Gwen answered, smiling curiously, 'and tell her too that I have
acted upon her advice, and she will understand you. Where's the wedding to
be, and when must I be there?'
'At ten o'clock, close by our house, at
Santa Maria of the Beautiful Ladies. She was to have been married a fortnight
ago quite suddenly; but she changed her mind in a hurry at the last moment,
because she hadn't got all her things ready. It'll be a dreadful loss to me,
of course; for when once a model marries, you can never get her to sit again
half as well as she used to do; but Cecca had a lover, it seems, who
had followed her devotedly to Rome all the way from Monteleone; and
she played fast-and-loose with him at first and rode the high horse, on
the strength of her being so much admired and earning so much money as
a model; and now she's seized with a sudden remorse, it appears, and
wants to make it all up with him again and get married
immediately.'
Gwen smiled a silent smile of quiet comprehension. 'I see,'
she said. 'One can easily understand it. I shall be there, Mr. Churchill;
you may depend upon me. And your cousin the--Miss Wroe, I mean--will she
be there also?'
'Oh yes,' Colin answered lightly, 'Minna's coming too.
She and Cecca have most mysteriously struck up quite a singular and
sudden friendship.'
'I shall be glad to meet her again,' Gwen said
simply. Somehow, when once one has settled firmly one's own affections, one
feels a newborn and most benevolent desire to expedite to the best of one's
abilities everybody else's little pending matrimonial arrangements.
So
on Sunday Cecca was duly married, and the colonel and the earl were induced
by Gwen to be present at the ceremony; though the colonel had his scruples
upon the point, for, like most old Anglo-Indians of his generation, he was
profoundly evangelical in his religious views, and regarded a Roman Catholic
church as a place only to be visited under protest, by way of a show, with
every decent expression of distaste and irreverence. Still, he knew his duty
as a father; and when Gwen declared that if he didn't accompany her she would
take Cousin Dick alone, and go without him, the colonel reflected wisely that
she would probably meet that shock-headed Yankee painter fellow after the
ceremony, and have another chance of talking over this absurd engagement she
imagined she'd contracted with him. So he went himself to mount guard over
her, and to give that Yankee fellow a piece of his mind if occasion
offered.
And when the wedding was over, the whole party of guests,
including Hiram and Audouin, adjourned for breakfast to the big room at
Colin Churchill's studio, which had been laid out and decorated by Cecca
and Minna and the people at the trattoria the evening before for that
very purpose. And the Italian peasant folk sat by themselves at one end
of the long wooden table, and the English excellencies also by
themselves at the other. And Colin proposed the bride's health in his very
best Tuscan: and Giuseppe made answer with native Italian eloquence in
the nearest approach he could attain to the same exalted northerly
dialect. And everybody said it was a great success, and even Cecca
herself felt immensely proud and very happy. But I'm afraid my insular
English readers will still harbour an unworthy prejudice against poor
simple easy-going Calabrian Cecca, for no better reason than just because
she tried, in a moment of ordinary Italian jealousy, to poison Minna
Wroe in a cup of coffee. Such are the effects of truculent
Anglo-Saxon narrowness and exclusiveness.
When Gwen and Minna went
into Cecca's dressing-room to take off their bonnets (for Colin insisted that
they should make a day of it), Gwen was suddenly moved by that benevolent
instinct aforesaid to make a confidante of the pretty little governess--who,
by the way, had got a new and more fashionable bonnet from a Roman Parisian
milliner expressly for the happy occasion. Poor little thing! after all, it
was very natural she should be dreadfully in love with her handsome
clever sculptor cousin. 'I myself very nearly fell in love with him
once, indeed,' Gwen murmured to herself philosophically, with the calm
inner confidence of a newly-found affection. So she said to Minna with
a meaning look, after a few arch little remarks about Colin's success as
a rising sculptor, 'I have something to tell you, Miss Wroe, that I
think will please you. I tell it to you because I know the subject is
one you're much interested in; but, if you please you must treat it as
a secret--a very great secret. I'm--well, to tell you the truth,
Miss Wroe, I'm engaged to be married.'
Minna's face turned pale as
death, and she gasped faintly, but she answered nothing.
Gwen saw the
cause of her anxiety at once, and hastened eagerly to reassure
her.
'And if you'll promise not to say a word about it to anybody on
earth, I'll tell you who it is--it's your cousin's American friend, Mr.
Hiram Winthrop.'
Minna looked at her for a second in a transport of
joy, and then burst suddenly into a flood of tears.
Gwen didn't for a
moment pretend to misunderstand her. She knew what the tears meant, and she
sympathised with them too deeply not to show her understanding frankly and
openly. After all, the little governess was really at heart just a woman even
as she herself was. 'There, there, dear,' she said, laying Minna's head upon
her shoulder tenderly; 'cry on, cry on; cry as much as ever you want to;
it'll do you good and relieve you. I know all about it, and I was sure you
mistook me for a moment, and had got a wrong notion into your head, somehow;
and that was why I took the liberty of telling you my little secret. It's all
right, dear; don't be in the least afraid about it. Here, Cecca, quick; a
glass of water!'
Cecca brought the water hastily, and then looking up
with a wondering look into the tall Englishwoman's clear-cut face, she asked
sternly, 'What is this you have been saying to the dear little
signorina?'
[Illustration: 0206]
Gwen laid Minna down in a chair,
after loosening her bonnet, and bathing her forehead with water; and then
taking Cecca aside, she whispered to her softly, 'It's all right. Don't be
afraid that I had forgotten or repented. I was telling her something that has
pleased and delighted her. I am--I am going to be married, too, Cecca; but
not to the master, to somebody else--to another artist, who has loved me for
years, Signora Cecca; only mind, it's a secret, and you mustn't say a word
for worlds to anybody about it.
Cecca smiled, and nodded knowingly. 'I
see,' she said with a perfect shower of gestures. 'I see. It is well, indeed.
To the American! Felicitations, signorina.'
'Hush, hush!' Gwen cried,
putting her hand upon the beautiful model's mouth hastily. 'Not a word about
it, I beg of you! Well now, dear, how are you feeling after the water? Are
you better? are you better?'
'Thank you, Miss Russell; it was only a
minute's faintness. I thought---- It's all right now. I'm better, Miss
Russell, I'm better.'
Gwen looked at her tenderly as if she had been a
sister. 'Your name's Minna, dear, I think,' she said; 'isn't
it?'
Minna nodded acquiescence.
'And mine, I dare say you know, is
Gwen. In future let us always call one another Gwen and Minna.'
She
held out her arms caressingly, and Minna, forgetful at once of all her old
wrath and jealousy of the grand young lady, nestled into them with a
childlike look of unspeakable gratitude. 'It's very kind of you,' she cried,
kissing Gwen's lull red lips two or three times over, 'so very, very kind of
you. You can't tell how much you've relieved me, Miss Russell. You know---
I'm so very fond---- so very fond---- so very fond of dear
Colin.'
Gwen kissed her in return sympathetically.
'I know you
are, dear,' she answered warmly.
'And you needn't be afraid; I'm sure he
loves you, he can't help loving you. You dear little thing, he must be a
stone indeed if he doesn't love you. Cecca says he does, and Cecca's really a
wonderful woman at finding out all these things immediately by a kind of
instinct. But if ever you dare to call me Miss Russell again from this very
minute forward, why, really, Minna, I solemnly declare I shall be awfully
angry with you.'
Minna smiled and promised cheerfully. In truth, at that
moment her heart was full to overflowing. Her rivals--both of her real or
imaginary rivals--were at last safely disposed of, and if only now she could
be perfectly sure that Colin loved her! Gwen said so, and Cecca said
so, but Colin didn't. If only Colin would once say to her in so many
words, 'Minna, I love you. Will you marry me?' Oh, how happy she would be,
if only he would say so!
CHAPTER XLI. AUDOUIN'S
MISTAKE.
|Lothrop Audouin walked round a little tremblingly to the
Villa Panormi. He wasn't generally a shy or nervous man, but on
this particular afternoon he felt an unwonted agitation in his breast, for
he was bound to the Villa on a very special errand; and he was glad when
he saw Gwen Howard-Russell walking about alone in the alleys of the
garden, for it saved him the necessity of having to make a formal call upon
her in the big salon. Gwen saw him coming, and moved towards the heavy
iron gate to meet him.
She gave him her hand with one of her sunniest
smiles, and Audouin took it, as he always did, with antique Massachusetts
ceremoniousness. Then he turned with her, almost by accident as it were, down
the path bordered by the orange-trees, and began to talk as he loved so well
to talk, about the trees, and the flowers, and the green-grey lizards,
that sat sunning themselves lazily upon the red Roman tiles which formed
the stiff and formal garden edging.
'Though these are not my own
flowers, you know, Miss Russell,' he said at last, looking at her a little
curiously. 'These are not my own flowers; and indeed everything here in Rome,
even nature itself, always seems to me so overlaid by the all-pervading
influence of art that I fail to feel at home with the very lilies and violets
in this artificial atmosphere In America, you know, my surroundings are so
absolutely those of unmixed nature: I lead the life of a perfect hermit in
an unsophisticated and undesecrated wilderness.'
'Mr. Winthrop has
told me a great deal about Lakeside,' Gwen answered lightly, and Audouin took
it as a good omen that she should have remembered the very name of his
woodland cottage. 'You live quite among the primæval forest, don't you, by a
big shallow bend in Lake Ontario?'
'Yes, quite among the primæval forest
indeed; from my study window I look out upon nothing but the green pines, and
the rocky ravine, and the great blue sheet of Ontario for an infinite
background. Not a house or a sign of life to be seen anywhere, except the
flying-squirrels darting about among the branches of the
hickories.'
'But don't you get very tired and lonely there, with nobody
but yourself and your servants? Don't you feel dreadfully the want of
congenial cultivated society?'
Audouin sighed pensively to hide the
beating of his heart at that simple question.
Surely, surely, the
beautiful queenly Englishwoman was leading up to his hand! Surely she must
know what was the natural interpretation for him to put upon her last
inquiry! It is gross presumptuousness on the part of any man to ask a woman
for the priceless gift of her whole future unless you have good reason to
think that you are not wholly without hope of a favourable answer; but Gwen
Howard-Russell must certainly mean to encourage him in the bold plunge he was
on the verge of taking. It is hard for a chivalrous man to ask a woman that
supreme question at any time: harder still when, like Lothrop Audouin, he has
left it till time has begun to sprinkle his locks with silver. But Gwen was
evidently not wholly averse to his proposition: he would break the ice
between them and venture at last upon a declaration.
'Well,' he
answered slowly, looking at Gwen half askance in a timid fashion very unlike
his usual easy airy gallantry, 'I usen't to think it so, Miss Howard; I
usen't to think it so. I had my books and my good companions--Plato, and
Montaigne, and Burton, and Rabelais. I loved the woods and the flowers and
the living creatures, and all my life long, you know, I have been a fool to
nature, a fool to nature. Perhaps there was a little spice of misanthropy,
too, in my desire to fly from a base, degrading, materialised civilisation. I
didn't feel lonely in those days;--no, in those days, in those days, Miss
Russell, I didn't feel lonely.'
He spoke hesitatingly, with long
pauses between each little sentence, and his lips quivered as he spoke with
girlish tremulousness and suppressed emotion. He who was usually so fluent
and so ready with his rounded periods--he hardly managed now to frame his
tongue to the few short words he wished to say to her. Profoundly and
tenderly respectful by nature to all women, he felt so deeply awed by Gwen's
presence and by the magnitude of the favour he wished to ask of her, that he
trembled like a child as he tried to speak out boldly his heart's desire. It
was not nervousness, it was not timidity, it was not diffidence; it was
the overpowering emotion of a mature man, pent up till now, and
breaking over him at last in a perfect inundation through the
late-opened floodgates of his repressed passion. For a moment he leaned his
hand against the projecting rockery of the grotto for support; then he
spoke once more in a hushed voice, so that even Gwen vaguely suspected
the real nature of his coming declaration.
'In those days,' he
repeated once more, with knees failing under him for trembling, 'in those
days I didn't feel lonely; but since my last visit to Rome I have felt
Lakeside much more solitary than before. I have tired of my old crony Nature,
and have begun to feel a newborn desire for closer human companionship. I
have begun to wish for the presence of some kind and beautiful friend to
share its pleasures with me. I needn't tell you, Miss Russell, why I date the
uprising of that feeling from the time of my last visit to Italy. It was then
that I first learned really to know and to admire you. It is a great thing to
ask, I know, a woman's heart--a true noble woman's whole heart and affection;
but I dare to beg for it--I dare to beg for it. Oh, Miss Russell--oh, Gwen,
Gwen, will you have pity upon me? will you give it me? will you give it me?'
As he spoke, the tall strong-knit man, clutching the rock-work
passionately for support, he looked so pale and faint and agitated that Gwen
thought he would have fallen there and then, if she gave him the only
possible answer too rudely and suddenly.
So she took his arm gently in
hers, as a daughter might take a father's, and led him to the seat at the far
end of the orange alley by the artificial fountain. Audouin followed her with
a beating heart, and threw himself down half fainting on the slab of
marble.
'Mr. Audouin,' Gwen began gently, for she pitied his
evident overpowering emotion from the bottom of her heart, 'I can't tell you
how sorry I am to have to say so, but it cannot possibly be; it can
never be, never, so it's no use my trying to talk about it.'
A knife
struck through Audouin's bosom at those simple words, and he grew still paler
white than ever, but he merely bowed his head respectfully, and, crushing
down his love with iron resolution, murmured slowly, 'Then forgive me,
forgive me.' His unwritten creed would not have permitted him in such
circumstances to press his broken suit one moment longer.
'Mr.
Audouin,' Gwen went on, 'I'm afraid I have unintentionally misled you. No, I
don't want you to go yet,' she added with one of her imperious gestures, for
he seemed as if he would rise and leave her; 'I don't want you to go until I
have explained it all to you. I like you very much, I have always liked you;
I respect you, too, and I've been pleased and proud of the privilege of your
acquaintance. Perhaps in doing so much, in seeking to talk with you and enjoy
your society, I may have seemed to have encouraged you in feelings which it
never struck me you were at all likely to harbour. I--I liked you so
sincerely that I never even dreamt you might fancy I could love you.' 'And
why, Miss Russell?' Audouin pleaded earnestly. 'If you dismiss me so
hopelessly, let me know at least the reason of my dismissal. It was
very presumptuous of me, I know, to dare to hope for so much happiness;
but why did you think me quite outside the sphere of your possible
suitors?'
'Why, Mr. Audouin,' Gwen said in a low tone, 'I have always
looked upon you rather as one might look upon a father than as one might look
upon a young man of one's own generation. I never even thought of you
before to-day except as somebody so much older and wiser, and
altogether different from myself, that it didn't occur to me for a
single moment you yourself wouldn't feel so also.' Audouin's despairing
face brightened a little as he said, 'If that is all, Miss Russell,
mayn't I venture to look upon your answer as not quite final; mayn't I hope
to leave the question open yet a little, so that you may see what time
may do for me, now you know my inmost feeling? Don't crush me hopelessly
at once; let me linger a little before you utterly reject me. If you
only knew how deeply you have entwined yourself into my very being,
you wouldn't cast me off so lightly and so easily.'
Gwen looked at him
with a face full of unfeigned pity. 'Mr. Audouin,' she answered, 'I know how
truly you are speaking. I should read your nature badly if I didn't see it in
your very eyes. But I cannot hold you out any hope in any way. I like you
immensely; I feel profoundly sorry to have to speak so plainly to you. I know
how great an honour you confer upon me by your offer; but I can't accept
it--it's quite impossible that I can ever accept it. I like you, and respect
you more than I ever liked or respected any other person, except one; but
there is one person I like and respect even more, so you see at once why
it's quite impossible that I should listen to you about this any
longer.'
'I understand,' Audouin answered slowly. 'I understand. I see it
all now. Colin Churchill has been beforehand with me. While I hesitated,
he has acted.'
Gwen's lips broke for a moment into a quiet smile, and
she murmured softly, 'No, not Colin Churchill, Mr. Audouin, not Colin
Churchill, but Hiram Winthrop. I think, as I have said so much, I ought to
tell you it is Hiram Winthrop.'
Audouin's brain reeled round madly in
grief and indignation at that astonishing revelation. Hiram Winthrop! His own
familiar friend; his dearest ward and pupil! Was it he, then, who had stolen
this prize of life, unseen, unsuspected, beneath his very eyesight? If Gwen
had never fancied that Audouin could fall in love with her, neither could
Audouin ever have suspected it of Hiram Winthrop. If Gwen had looked
upon Audouin as a confirmed old bachelor of the elder generation,
Audouin had looked upon Hiram as a mere boy, too young yet to meddle with
such serious fancies. And now the boy had stolen Gwen from him unawares,
and for half a second, all loyal as he was, Audouin felt sick and angry in
soul at what he figured to himself as Hiram's cruel and
ungrateful duplicity.
'Hiram Winthrop!' he muttered angrily. 'Hiram
Winthrop! How unworthy of him! how unkind of him! how unjust of him to come
between me and the one object he ever knew me set my heart
upon!'
'But, Mr. Audouin,' Gwen cried in warmer tones, 'Hiram no more
dreamt of this than I did; he took it for granted all along that you knew he
loved me, but he never spoke of it because you know he is always
reserved about everything that concerns his own personal
feelings.'
The marble seat reeled and the ground shook beneath Audouin's
feet as he sat there, his brow between his hands, and his elbows upon his
knees, trying to realise the true bearings of what Gwen was saying to him.
Yes, he saw it all plainly now; it dawned upon him slowly: in his
foolish, selfish, blind preoccupation, he had been thinking only of his own
love, and wholly overlooking Gwen's and Hiram's. 'What a short-sighted fool
I have been, Miss Russell!' he cried, broken-spirited. 'Yes, yes; Hiram
is not to blame. I only am to blame for my own folly. If Hiram loves
you, and you love Hiram, I have only one duty left before me: to leave
you this moment, and to do whatever in me lies to make you and Hiram
as happy as I can. No two people on this earth have ever been dearer to
me. I must try to change my attitude to you both, and learn that I am
old enough to help even now to make you happy.' In his perfect
loyalty, Audouin almost forgot at once his passing twinge of distrust for
Hiram, and thought only of his own blindness. He rose slowly from the
marble seat, and Gwen noticed that as he rose he seemed to have aged
visibly in those few minutes. The suddenness and utterness of the
disappointment had unmistakably crushed him. He staggered a little as he
rose; then in a faltering voice he said, 'Good-bye, good-bye, Miss Russel.'
Gwen turned away her face, and answered regretfully, 'Good-bye, Mr.
Audouin.'
He raised his hat, with a touch of old-fashioned courtesy in
his formal bow, and walked away quickly, out of the garden, and back towards
the hotel where he had been then stopping. For some time his
disappointment sat upon him so heavily that he could only brood over it in a
vague, half unconscious fashion; but at last, as he passed the corner of
the big piazza a thought seemed to flash suddenly across his dazzled
brain, and he turned round at once, in feverish haste, pacing back
moodily towards the Villa Panormi. 'How selfish of me!' he said to himself
in angry self-expostulation, 'how selfish and cruel of me to have
forgotten it! How small and narrow and petty we men are, after all! In
my dejection at my own disappointment, I have quite overlooked poor
Hiram. Love may be all that the poets say about it--I don't know, I
can't say--how should I, a lonely wild man of the woods, who know not
the ways of women? But one thing I do know: it's a terrible absorbing
and self-centring passion. A man thinks only of him and her, and
forgets all the rest of the world entirely, as though he were a solitary
savage wooing in the gloom his solitary squaw. And yet they write about it
as though it were the very head and front of all the beatitudes!'
He
walked, or almost ran, to the Villa Panormi, and looked anxiously for Gwen in
the alleys of the garden. She wasn't there: she had gone in evidently. He
must go to the door and boldly ask for her. Was the signorina at home, he
enquired of the servant. Yes, the signorina had just come in: what name,
signor? Audouin handed the man his card, and waited with a burning heart in
the long open salon.
In a minute Gwen sent down word by her English maid:
she was very sorry; would Mr. Audouin kindly excuse her?--she was suffering
from headache.
'Tell Miss Russell,' Audouin answered, so earnestly that
the girl guessed at once something of his business, 'that I _must_ see her
without delay. The matter is important, immediate, urgent, and of more
interest to her than even to me.'
He waited again for fully ten
minutes. Then Gwen sailed into the room, queen-like as ever, and advanced
towards him smiling; but he saw she had been crying, and had bathed her eyes
to hide it, and he felt flattered in his heart even then at that womanly
tribute of sympathy to his bitter disappointment. 'Miss Russell,' he said,
with all the sincerity of his inner nature speaking vividly in his very
voice, 'I am more sorry than I can say that I'm compelled to come back so
soon and speak with you again after what has just happened. We may still be
always firm friends, I'm sure; I shall try to feel towards you always as an
elder brother: but I know you would have liked a day or two to pass before we
met again on what is to me at least a new footing. Still, I felt compelled to
come back and tell you something which it is of great importance that
you should know at once. Miss Bussell, you mustn't on any account breathe
a word of all this in any way to Hiram. Don't think I'm speaking
without good reason. As you value your own happiness, don't breathe a word of
it to Hiram.'
Gwen saw from his exceeding earnestness that he had some
definite ground for this odd warning, and it piqued her curiosity to know
what that ground could possibly be. 'Why, Mr. Audouin?' she asked
simply.
'Because it would cause you great distress, I believe,' Audouin
answered evasively. 'Because it would probably prevent his ever marrying you.
Oh, Miss Russell, do please promise me that you'll say nothing at all to
him about it.'
'But I can't promise, Mr. Audouin,' Gwen answered
slowly. 'I can't promise. I feel I ought to tell him. I think a woman ought
to tell her future husband everything.'
'Miss Russell,' Audouin went
on, still more solemnly than before, 'I beg of you, I implore you, I beseech
you, for the sake of your own future and Hiram's, don't say a word to him of
this.'
'But why, why, Mr. Audouin? You give me no reason, no explanation.
If you won't explain to me, you'll only frighten me the more into
telling Hiram, because your manner seems so excited and so mysterious. I
can't promise or refuse to promise until I understand what you mean by
it.'
'I had rather not explain to you,' Audouin went on hesitatingly.
'I should prefer not to have told you. Indeed, unless you compel me, I
will never tell you. But from my own knowledge of Hiram's character I
feel sure that if you let him know about this he will never, never marry
you. He is so unselfish, so good, so delicately self-sacrificing, that if
he hears of this he will think he mustn't claim you. I have known him,
Miss Russell, longer than you have; I can count better on what he would
do under any given circumstances. Most men are selfish and blind in love;
I was so just now: I have been all along, when in my personal eagerness to
win your esteem I never noticed what was indeed as clear as daylight, that
Hiram must have been in love with you too. But Hiram is not selfish and
blind, even in love; of that I'm certain. He would never marry you if he
thought that by so doing he was putting himself in rivalry with
me.' |
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