“What was it?” said Meredith, who, indeed, would not have been sorry had his friend uttered a profanity which might give him occasion to speak, for perhaps the last time, “faithfully” to his soul.
“I wonder,” said Colin, whose voice was low, “whether our Master, who sees us both, though we cannot see each other, might tell you sometimes what your friend was doing. He, too, is a man. I mean no irreverence, Meredith. There were men for whom, above His tenderness for all, He had a special love. I should like to think it. I can know nothing of you; but then I am less likely to forget you, staying behind in this familiar world.”
And the two youths again clasped hands, tears filling the eyes of the living one, but no moisture in the clear orbs of him who was about to die.
“Let us be content to leave it all in His hands,” said Meredith. “God bless you, Colin, for your love; but think nothing of me; think of Him who is our first and greatest Friend.”
And then again came silence and sleep, and the night throbbed silently round the lighted chamber and the human creatures full of thought; and again there took place the perennial transformation, the gradual rising of the morning light, the noiseless entrance of the day, finding out, with surprised and awful looks, the face of the dying. This is how the last nights were spent. Down below in the convent there was a good friar, who watched the light in the window, and pondered much in his mind whether he should not go thither with his crucifix, and save the poor young heretic in spite of himself; but the Frate was well aware that the English resented such interruptions, and did better for Arthur; for he carried the thought of him through all his devotions, and muttered under his breath the absolution, with his eyes fixed upon the lighted window, and prayed, if he had any credit in heaven, through the compassionate saints, the Blessed Virgin, and by the aid of Him whose image he held up towards the unseen sufferer, that the sins which God’s servant had thusremitted on earth might be, even without the knowledge of the penitent, remitted in heaven. Thus Colin’s belief in priests was justified without his knowing it; and perhaps God judged the intercession of Father Francisco more tenderly than poor Arthur would have done. And with these private proceedings, which the world was unaware of, night after night passed on until the night came which was to have no day.
They had all assembled in the room, in which it seemed before morning so great an event was to happen—all worn and tired out with watching; the evidences of which appeared upon Colin and Alice, though Lauderdale, more used to exertion, wore his usual aspect. As usual, Meredith lay very solemnly in a kind of pathetic youthful state in his bed; struggling for every breath, yet never forgetting that he lay there before heaven and earth, a monument as he said of God’s grace, and an example of how a Christian could die. He called Alice, and the others would have withdrawn; but this he would not permit. “We have no secrets to discuss,” he said. “I am not able to say much now. Let my last words be for Christ. Alice, you are the last. We have all died of it. It is not very hard; but you cannot die in peace, as I do, unless you give yourself to Christ. These are my last words to my sister. You may not live long—you have not a moment to spare. Give yourself to Christ, my little Alice, and then your death-bed will be as peaceful as mine.”
“Yes,” said the docile sister, through her sobs, “I will never, never forget what you have said to me. Oh, Arthur, you are going to them all!”
“I am going to God,” said the dying man; “I am going to my Lord and Saviour—that is all I desire to think of now.”
And there was a momentary breathless pause. She had his hand in both of hers, and was crying with an utter despair and abandonment to which she had never given herself up before. “Oh, Arthur—papa!” the poor girl said, under her breath. If they had been less interested, or if the stillness had been a degree less intense, the voice was so low that the two other watchers could not have heard her. But the answer was spoken aloud.
“Tell him I forgive him, Alice. I can say so now. Tell him to repent while there is time. If you wish it, you can tell Colin and Lauderdale—they have been brothers to us. Come here, all of you,” said Meredith. “Hear my last words. Nothing is of any importance but the love of Christ. I have tried everything in the world—its pleasures and its ambitions—and—But everything except Christ is vanity. Come to Him while it is called to-day. And now come and kiss me, Alice, for I am going to die.”
“Oh, no, Arthur. Oh, Arthur, do not leave me yet!” cried the poor girl. Lauderdale drew her gently away, and signed to Colin to take the place by the bed. He drew her hand through his arm and led her softly into the great emptysalone, where there was no light except that of the moon, which came in in broad white bars at the side windows. “Whisht! it’ll no be yet,” said the kind guardian who had taken possession of Alice. No mother or lover could have been tenderer with the little forlorn creature in this hour which was the most terrible of all. He made her walk softly about with him, beguiling her awful suspense a little with that movement. “A little more strength, for his sake,” said Lauderdale; “another trial—and then nobody shall stop your tears. It’s for his sake; the last thing you can do for him.”
And then the poor little sister gave utterance to a bitter cry, “If he would say something kind for papa, I could bear it,” she said, smothering her painful sobs; and Lauderdale drew her closer on his arm, supporting and soothing her, and led her about, slowly and noiselessly, in the great empty room, lighted with those broad bars of moonlight, waiting till she had regained a little composure to return to the chamber of death.
Meredith lay silent for some time, with his great eyes gazing into the vacancy before him, and the last thrill of fever in his frame. He thought he was thus coming with all his faculties alert and vivid to a direct conscious encounter with the unknown might of death. “Get the book, Colin,” he said, with a voice which yet possessed a certain nervous strength; “it is now time to write the conclusion”—and he dictated with a steady voice the date of his last postscript:—“Frascati, midnight, May 16th.—The last hour of my life——”
Meredithdied the next day, after a struggle longer and harder than could have been anticipated, and very differently from the manner in which, when he dictated his last message to the world, he expected to die. Few human creatures are strong enough, except in books, to march thus solemnly and statelily to the edge of the grave. The last event itself was twenty-fourhours later than the anxious watchers expected it to be, and wore them all out more utterly than any previous part of their patient’s lingering illness. He dictated his postscript, lying in great exhaustion, but solemn calm, not without a certain pomp of conscious grandeur, victorious over death and the grave. “That great angel whom men call the last enemy is standing by my bedside,” the dying man said, giving forth his last utterance slowly word by word. “In an hour I shall be clay and ashes. I send you, friends, this last message. Death is not terrible to those who love Christ. I feel a strength in me that is not my own. I had fears and doubts, but I have them no longer. The gates of heaven are opening. I close my eyes, for I can no longer see the lights of this world; when I open them again it will be to behold the face of my Lord. Amen. This I say to all the world with my last breath. For those who love Christ it is not hard to die.”
Colin, who wrote the words, trembled over them with a weakness like a woman’s; but Meredith’s broken and interrupted voice was shaken only by the last pangs of mortality, not by any faltering of the spirit. “I tell you, Colin, it is not hard,” he said, and smiled upon his friend, and composed himself to meet the last encounter; but such was not the end. The long night lingered on, and the dying man dozed a little, and woke again less dignified and composed. Then came the weary morning, with its dreadful daylight which made the heart sick, and then a long day of dying, terrible to behold, perhaps not so hard to bear. The two who were his brothers at this dreadful moment exercised all their power to keep Alice out of the room where this struggle was going on, but the gentle little girl was a faithful woman, and kept her place. He had had his moment of conscious victory, but now in its turn the human soul was vanquished. He became unconscious of their consoling presence, conscious of nothing but the awful restlessness, the intolerable languor and yet more intolerable nervous strength which kept him alive in spite of himself; and then the veiled and abstracted spirit awoke to matters of which, when in full possession of his faculties, Arthur had made no mention. He began to murmur strange words as he lay tossing in that last struggle. “Tell my father,” he said once or twice, but never finished the message. That death so clear and conscious, for which he had hoped, was not granted to him; and, when at last the deliverance came, even Alice, on her knees by the bedside, felt in her desolation a moment’s relief. It was almost dawn of the second morningwhen they raised her up and led her tenderly away to Sora Antonia, the kind Italian woman, who waited outside. Colin was scarcely less overwhelmed than she. The young man sank down by the table where, on the previous night, he had been Arthur’s secretary, and almost fainting dropped his head upon the book which still lay open there. Twenty-four hours only of additional hard labour added on to the ending life; but it looked as many years to the young inexperienced spirit which had thus, for the first time, followed another, so far as a spectator can, through the valley of the shadow of death.
Lauderdale, who knew better, and upon whose greater strength this dreadful strain of watching had made a less visible impression, had to do for Colin what the kind peasant woman was doing for the desolate sister—to take him away from the chamber of death, and make him lie down, and put aside altogether his own sensations on behalf of the younger and more susceptible sufferer. All that had to be done fell on Lauderdale; he made the necessary arrangements with a self-command which nothing disturbed, and, when he could satisfy himself that both the young worn-out creatures, who were his children for the moment, had got the momentary solace of sleep, as was natural, he threw himself into poor Arthur’s arm-chair and pondered with a troubled countenance on all that might follow. There he too slept and dozed, as Sora Antonia went softly to and fro, moved with pity. She had said her rosary for Arthur many a morning, and had done all she could to interest in his behalf that good St. Antonio of Padua, who was so charitable, and perhaps might not be so particular about a matter of doctrine as St. Paul or St. Peter; for Sora Antonia was kind to the bottom of her heart, and could not bear to think of more than a thousand years or so of Purgatory for the poor young heretic. “The Signorino was English and knew no better,” she said to her patron saint—and comforted herself with the thought that the blessed Antonio would not fail to attend to her recommendation, and that she had done the best she could for her lodger. From the room where Alice slept the deep sleep of exhaustion the good woman made many voyages into the silentsalone, where the shutters were closed upon the bare windows, though the triumphant sun streamed in at every crevice. She looked at Lauderdale, who dozed in the great chair, with curious looks of speculation and inquiry. He looked old and grey, thus sleeping in the daylight, and the traces of exhaustion in such a face as his were less touching than the lines in Alice’s gentle countenance or thefading of Colin’s brightness. He was the only member of the party who looked responsible to the eyes of Sora Antonia; and already she had a little romance in hand, and wondered much whether this uncle, or elder brother, or guardian, would be favourable to her young people. Thus, while the three watchers found a moment’s sad rest after their long vigil, new hopes and thoughts of life already began to play about them unawares. The world will not stand still even to see the act of death accomplished; and the act of death itself, if Arthur was right in his hopes, had not that already opened its brighter side upon the solitary soul which had gone forth alone?
The day after everything was finally over was Sunday—the gayest and brightest of summer festal days. Colin and Lauderdale, who had on the day before carried their friend to his grave, met each other sadly at the table, where it was so strange to take up again the common thread of life as though Arthur Meredith had never had any share in it. It was Sunday under its brightest aspect; the village was very gay outside, and neither of them felt capable of introducing their sombre shadows into the flowery and sunny festa, the gaiety of which jarred upon their sadness; and they had no heart to go about their usual occupations within. When they had swallowed their coffee together, they withdrew from each other into different corners, and tried to read, which was the only employment possible. Lauderdale, for his part, in his listlessness and fatigue, went to rummage among some books which a former occupant had left, and brought from among them—the strangest choice for him to make—a French novel, a kind of production utterly unknown to him. The chances are, he had forgotten it was Sunday; for his Scotch prejudices, though he held them lightly in theory, still held him fast in practice. When, however, he had pored over it vaguely for half an hour (for reading French was a laborious amusement to the imperfectly instructed scholar), Colin was roused out of studies which he, too, pursued with a very divided attention, by a sudden noise, and saw the little yellow volume spin through the air out of his friend’s vigorous fingers, and drop ignominiously in a corner. “Me to be reading stuff like that!” said Lauderdale, with grim accents of self disgust; “and him maybe near to see what a fool is doing!” As he said this, he got up from his chair, and began to pace about the quiet, lonely room, violently endeavouring to recover the composure which he had not been able to preserve. Though he was older and stronger than the others, watching and grief had told upon his strengthalso; and, in the glory of the summer morning which blazed all round and about, the soul of this wayfaring man grew sick within him. Something like a sob sounded into the silence. “I’m no asking if he’s happy,” Lauderdale burst forth; “I cannot feel as if I would esteem him the same if he felt nothing but joy to get away. You’re a’ infidels and unbelievers alike, with your happiness and your heaven. I’m no saying that it’s less than the supreme joy to see the face he hoped to see—but joy’s no inconsistent with pain. Will you tell me the callant, having a heart as you know he had, can think of us mourning for him and no care? Dinna speak of such inhuman imaginations to me.”
“No,” said Colin, softly. “But worst of all would be to think he was here,” the young man continued, after a pause, “unable to communicate with us anyhow, by whatsoever effort. Don’t think so, Lauderdale; that is the most inhuman imagination of all.”
“I’m no so clear of that,” said the philosopher, subduing his hasty steps; “nae doubt there would be a pang in it, especially when there was information like that to bestow; but it’s hard to tell, in our leemited condition, a’ the capabilities of a soul. It might be a friend close by, and no yoursel’, that put your best thought in your head, though you saw him not. I wouldna say that I would object to that. It’s all a question of temperament, and, maybe, age,” he continued, calming himself entirely down, and taking a seat beside Colin in the window. “The like of you expects response, and has no conception of life without it; but the like of me can be content without response,” said Colin’s guardian; and then he regarded his companion with eyes in which the love was veiled by a grave mist of meditation. “I would not object to take the charge of you in such a manner,” he said, slowly. “But it’s awfu’ easy to dream dreams,—if anything on this earth could but make a manknow;”—and then there followed another pause. “He was awfu’ pleased to teach,” Lauderdale resumed, with an unsteady smile. “It’s strange to think what should hinder him speaking now, when he has such news to tell. I never could make it out, for my part. Whiles my mind inclines to the thought that it must be a peaceable sleep that wraps them a’ till the great day, which would account for the awfu’ silence; but there’s some things that go against that. This is what makes me most indignant at thae idiots with their spirit-rapping and gibberish. Does ony mortal with a heart within his bosom dare to think that, if Love doesna open their sealed lips, any power in the world can?” cried the philosopher, whose emotion again got beyond his control. He got up again, and resumed his melancholy march up and down the room. “It’s an awfu’ marvel, beyond my reach,” he said, “when a word of communication would make a’ the difference, why it’s no permitted—if it were but to keep a heart from breaking here and there.”
“Perhaps it is our own fault,” said Colin; “perhaps flesh and blood shrinks more than we are aware of from such a possibility; and perhaps—” here the young man paused a little, “indeed, it is not perhaps. Does not God Himself choose to be our comforter?” said the youthful pre-destined priest; upon which the older and sadder man once more composed himself with a groan.
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, “I can say nothing against that argument. I’m no denying it’s the last and the greatest. I speak the voice of a man’s yearning—but I’ve no intention of contravening the truth. He’s gone like many a one before him. You and me must bide our time. I’ll say no more of Arthur. The best thing you can do is to read a chapter. If we canna hear of him direct, which is no to be hoped for, we can take as good a grip as possible of the Friend that stands between us. It’s little use trying to forget—or trying no to think and inquire and question. There is but one thing in the world, so far as I can see, that a man can feel a kind of sure of. Callant, read a chapter,” said Lauderdale, with a long sigh. He threw himself back, as he spoke, in the nearest chair, and Colin took his Bible dutifully to obey. The contrast between this request, expressed as any Scotch peasant would have expressed it, and the speculations which preceded it, did not startle Colin, and he had opened the book by instinct in the latter part of St. John’s Gospel, when he was disturbed by the entrance of Alice, who came in softly from her room without any warning. Her long attendance on her brother had withdrawn the colour from her cheeks and the fulness from her figure so gradually, that it was only now in her mourning dress that her companions saw how pale and thin she had grown. Alice was not speculative, nor fanciful, nor addicted to undue exercise of the faculties of her own mind in any way. She was a dutiful woman, young and simple, and accepted God’s will without inquiry or remonstrance. Though she had struggled long against the thought of Arthur’s death, now that hewasdead she recognized and submitted to the event which it was no longer possible to avert or change, with a tender and sweet resignation of which some women are capable. A more forlorn and desolate creature than Alice Meredith did not exist on the earth, to all ordinary appearance, at this moment; but, as she wasnot at all thinking of herself, that aspect of the case did not occur to her.
She came out of her room very softly, with a faint smile on her face, holding some Prayer-books in her hands. Up to this sad day it had been their custom to read prayers together on the Sundays, being too far off Rome to make it practicable even for the stronger members of the party to go to church. Alice came up to Colin with her books in her hands—she said to him in a wistful whisper, “You will take his place,” and pointed out to him silently the marks she had placed at the lessons and psalms. Then she knelt down between the two awed and astonished men, to say the familiar prayers which only a week ago Arthur himself had read with his dying voice. Though at times articulation was almost impossible to Colin, and Lauderdale breathed out of his deep chest an Amen which sounded like a groan, Alice did not falter in her profound and still devotions. She went over the well-known prayers word by word, with eye and voice steadfast and rapt in the duty which was at the same time a consolation. There are women of such sweet loyalty and submission of spirit, but neither Lauderdale nor Colin had met with them before. Perhaps a certain passiveness of intellect had to do with it, as well as Alice’s steady English training and custom of self-suppression; but it made a wonderful impression upon the two who were now the sole companions and guardians of the friendless young woman, and gave her indeed for the moment an absolute empire over them, of which Alice was altogether unconscious, and of which, even had she known it, she could have made no further use. When the Morning Prayer was almost concluded it was she who indicated to Colin another mark in the Prayer-book, at the prayer for Christ’s Church militant on earth; and they could even hear the whisper of her voice broken by an irrestrainable sob at the thanksgiving for all “Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear,” which Colin read with agitation and faltering. When they rose from their knees, she turned from one to the other with her countenance for the first time disturbed. “You were very very good to him,” she said, softly. “God will bless you for it,” and so sank into sobbing and tears, which were not to be subdued any longer, yet were not passionate nor out of accordance with her docile looks. After that, Alice recovered her calm, and began to occupy herself with them as if she had been their mother. “Have you been out?” she said. “You must not stay in and make yourself ill.” This was addressed specially to Colin. “Pleasego out and take a walk; it will do you a great deal of good. If it had not have been a great festa it would not have been so bad; but, if you go up to the Villa Conti, you will find nobody there. Go up behind the terrace, into the alleys where it is shady. There is one on the way to the Aldobrandini; you know it, Mr. Campbell. Oh go, please; it is such a beautiful day, it will do you good.”
“And you?” said Colin, who felt in his heart an inclination to kneel to her as if she had been a queen.
“I shall stay at home to-day,” said Alice. “I could not go out to-day; but I shall do very well. Sora Antonia will come in from mass presently. Oh, go out, please, and take a walk. Mr. Lauderdale, he will go if you tell him to go—you are both looking so pale.”
“Come, Colin,” said Lauderdale, “she shall have her pleasure done this day, at least, whatsoever she commands. If there was anything within my power or his—” said the philosopher, with a strange discord that sounded like tears in his voice; but Alice stopped him short.
“Oh yes,” she said, softly, “it is very good of you to do it because I ask you. Mr. Campbell, you did not read the right lesson,” she added, turning her worn face to Colin with a slight reproach.
“I read what I thought was better for us all, mourning as we are,” said Colin, startled; upon which the sad little representative of law and order did her best to smile.
“I have always heard it said how wonderful it was how the lesson for the day always suited everybody’s case,” said Alice. “Arthur never would make any change for circumstances. He—he said it was as if God could ever be wanting,” the faithful sister said, through her sobs; and then, again, put force upon herself:—“I shall be here when you come back,” she said, with her faint smile; and so, like a little princess, sent them away. The two men went their way up the slope and through the little town, in their black coats, casting two tall, sombre shadows into the sunshine and gaiety of the bright piazza. There had been a procession that morning, and the rough pavement was strewed with sprigs of myrtle and box, and the air still retained a flavour of the candles, not quite obliterated by the whiff of incense which came from the open doors of the Cathedral, where even the heavy leathern curtain, generally suspended across the entrance, had been removed by reason of the crowd. People were kneeling even on the steps; peasantsin their laced buskins, and Frascati women, made into countesses or duchesses, at the least, by the long white veils which streamed to their feet. The windows were all hung with brilliant draperies in honour of the morning’s procession and the afternoon’s Tombola. It was one of the very chief of Italian holydays, a festal Sunday in May, the month of Mary. No wonder the two sad Protestant Scotchmen, with mourning in their dress and in their hearts, felt themselves grow sick and faint as they went dutifully to the gardens of the Villa Conti, as they had been commanded. They did not so much as exchange a word with each other till they had passed through all that sunshine and reached the identical alley, a close arcade, overarched and shut in by the dense foliage of ilex-trees, to which their little sovereign had directed them. There was not a soul there as she had prophesied. A tunnel scooped out of the damp, dewy soil could scarcely have been more absolutely shut in from the sunshine, scarcely could have been stiller or cooler, or more withdrawn from the blazing noonday, with its noises and rejoicings, than this narrow sombre avenue. They strayed down its entire length, from one blue arch of daylight to the other, before they spoke; and then it was Lauderdale who broke the silence, as if his thoughts, generally so busy and so vagrant, had never got beyond Alice Meredith’s last words.
“Another time, Colin,” said the philosopher, “you’ll no make ony changes in the lesson for the day. Whiles it’s awfu’ hard to put up with the conditions o’ a leemited intellect; but whiles they’re half divine. I’m no pretending to be reasonable. She kens no more about reason than—the angels, maybe—I admit it’s a new development to me; but a woman like yon, callant, would keep a man awfu’ steady in the course of his life.”
“Yes,” said Colin; and then with a strange premonition, for which he himself could not account, he added—“She would keep a man steady, as you say; but he would find little response in her—not that I regard her less respectfully, less reverentially than you do, Lauderdale,” he went on, hurriedly, “but—”
“It wasna your opinion I was asking for,” said the philosopher somewhat morosely. “She’s like none of the women you and me ken. I’m doubtful in my own mind whether that dutiful and obedient spirit has ever been our ideal in our country. Intellect’s a grand gift, callant, baith to man and woman; but you’ll no fly in my face and assert that it’s more than second best.”
“I am not up to argument to-day,” said Colin; and theywalked back again the whole length of the avenue in silence. Perhaps a certain irritability, torn of their mutual grief, was at the bottom of this momentary difference; but somehow, in the stillness, in the subdued leafy shade, which at first sight had been so congenial to his feelings, an indescribable shadow stole over Colin’s mind—a kind of indistinct fear and reluctance, which took no definite shape, but only crept over him like a mist over the face of the sun. His heart was profoundly touched at once by the grief and by the self command of Alice, and by her utter helplessness and dependence upon himself and his friend. Never before had he been so attracted towards her, nor felt so much that dangerous softening sentiment of pity and admiration, which leads to love. And yet—; the two walked back silently under the dark ilex-trees, and across the piazza, which was now thronged with a gay and many-coloured crowd. The brighter the scene grew around them, the more they shut themselves up in their own silence and sorrow, as was natural; and Colin at length began to recognise a new element, which filled him with vague uneasiness—an element not in the least new to the perplexed cogitations of his guardian and anxious friend.
Whenthey entered thesaloneon their return, the first object which met their eyes was the stately figure of Sora Antonia in full holiday costume, lately returned from mass. She had still her fan and her rosary depending from her wrist—adjuncts almost equally necessary to devotion, as that is understood at Frascati—and was still arrayed in the full splendours of the veil, which, fastened over her hair, fell almost to her feet behind, and gave grace and dignity to her tall and stately person. Sora Antonia was a dependent of the family Savvelli; scarcely a servant, though she had once belonged to the prince’s household. She had charge of the palace at Frascati, which was never occupied except by a solitary ecclesiastic, the prince’s brother, for whom the first-floor was kept sacred. Even this sanctity, however, was sometimes invaded when a good chance offered of letting thepiano nobileto some rich foreigner, which was the fate of all the other apartments in the house. Sora Antonia had charge of all the interests of the Savvelli in their deserted mansion. When the tenants did any damage shemade careful note of it, and did not in any respect neglect the interests of her master; nor was she inconsiderate of her own, but regarded it as a natural duty, when it proved expedient, to make a little money out of the Forestieri. “They give one trouble enough, the blessed Madonna knows,” the good woman said piously. But, notwithstanding these prudent cares, Sora Antonia was not only a very sensible woman according to her lights, but had a heart, and understood her duty to her neighbours. She made her salutations to the two friends when they entered with equal suavity, but addressed her explanations to Colin, who was not only her favourite in right of his youth and good looks, but made out her meaning more easily than his companion. The crisis was an important one, and Sora Antonia conducted herself accordingly; as soon as she had made her salutations she resumed her seat, which in itself was an act requiring explanation, especially as the table had been already arranged for dinner, and this was the last day in the world on which the strangers were likely to desire society. Sora Antonia took matters with a high hand, and in case of opposition secured for herself at least the first word.
“Pardon, caro Signore mio,” she said, “you are surprised to find me here. Very well; I am sorry to incommode the gentlemen, but I have to do my duty. The Signorina is very young, and she has no one to take care of her. The Signori are very good, very excellent, and kind. Ah yes, I know it—never was there such devotion to the poor sick friend; nevertheless, the Signori are but men,senza complimenti, and I am a woman who has been married and had children of my own, and know my duty. Until some proper person comes to take charge of the poor dear young lady, the Signori will pardon me, but I must remain here.”
“Does the Signorina wish it?” asked Colin, with wondering looks, for the idea of another protector for Alice confounded him, he scarcely knew why.
“The Signorina is not much more than a child,” said Sora Antonia, loftily. “Besides, she has not been brought up like an Italian young lady, to know what is proper. Poverina! she does not understand anything about it; but the Signori will excuse me—I know my duty, and that is enough.”
“Oh yes, certainly,” said Colin; “but then, in England, as you say, we have different ideas; and if the Signorina does not wish——”
Here, however, he was interrupted by Lauderdale, who, havingtardily apprehended the purport of Sora Antonia’s communication, took it upon himself to make instant response in the best Italian he could muster. “Avete molto buono, molto buono!” cried Lauderdale, intending to say that she was very kind, and that he highly approved, though a chronic confusion in his mind, as to which was which of the auxiliary verbs, made his meaning cloudy. “Grazie, Abbiamo contento! Grazie,” he added, with a little excitement and enthusiasm. Though he had used the wrong verb, Sora Antonia graciously comprehended his meaning. She was used to such little eccentricities of diction on the part of the Forestieri. She bowed her stately head to him with a look of approbation; and it would be vain to deny that the sense of having thus expressed himself clearly and eloquently in a foreign language conveyed a certain satisfaction to the mind of the philosopher.
“Bravo! The Signore will talk very well if he perseveres,” said Sora Antonia, graciously; “not to say that his Excellency is a man of experience, and perceives the justice of what I but propose. No doubt, it will occupy a great deal of my time, but the other Forestieri have not arrived yet, and how can one expect the Madonna Santissima and the blessed St. Antonio to take so much trouble in one’s concerns if one will not exert one’s self a little for one’s fellow-creatures? As the Signorina has not left her room yet, I will take away the inconvenience[2]for a few minutes. Scusa Signori,” said Sora Antonia, and she went away with stately bearing and firm steps which resounded through the house, to take off her veil and put aside her rosary. She had seated herself again in her indoor aspect, with the “Garden of the Soul” in her hand, before Alice came into the room; and, without doubt, she made a striking addition to the party. She was a Frascati woman born, and her costume consequently, was perfect—a costume not so brilliant in any of its details as that scarlet jacket of Albano, which is the most generally known of contadina dresses; but not less calculated to do justice to the ample bust and stately head of the Roman peasant. The dress itself, the actual gown, in this as in other Italian costumes, was an indifferent matter. The important particulars were the long and delicate apron of embroidered muslin, thebustomade of rich brocade and shaped to the exact Frascati model, and the large, soft, snowy kerchief with embroidered corners, which covered her full shoulders—not tospeak of the long heavy gold ear-rings and coral necklace which completed and enriched the dress. She sat apart and contemplated, if not the “Garden of the Soul,” at least the little pictures in borders of lace-paper which were placed thickly between the leaves, while the melancholy meal was eaten at the table—for Sora Antonia hadeducazione, and had not come to intrude upon the privacy of her lodgers. Alice, for her part, made no remark upon the presence of this new guardian; she accepted it as she accepted everything else, as a matter of course, without even showing any painful sense of the circumstances which in Sora Antonia’s opinion made this last precaution necessary. Her two companions, the only friends she seemed to have in the world, bore vicariously on her account the pain of such a visible reminder that she was here in a false position and had no legitimate protector; but Alice had not yet awaked to any such sense on her own behalf. She took her place at the table and tried to swallow a morsel, and interested herself in the appetite of the others as if she had been their mother. “Try to eat something; it will make you ill if you do not,” poor Alice said, in the abstraction and dead calm of her grief. Her own feeling was that she had been lifted far away from them into an atmosphere of age and distance and a kind of sad superiority; and to minister to some one was the grand condition under which Alice Meredith lived. As to the personal suffering, which was confined to herself, that did not so much matter; she had not been used to much sympathy, and it did not occur to her to look for it. Consequently, the only natural business which remained to her was to take a motherly charge of her two companions, and urge them to eat.
“You are not to mind me,” she said, with an attempt at a smile, after dinner. “This is Sunday, to be sure; but, after to-day, you are just to go on as you used to do, and never mind. Thank you, I should like it better. I shall always be here, you know, when you come back from Rome, or wherever you wish to go. But you must not mind for me.”
Lauderdale and Colin exchanged looks almost without being aware of it. “But you would like—somebody to be sent for—or something done?” said Lauderdale. He was a great deal more confused in having to suggest this than Alice was, who kept looking at him, her eyes dilated with weariness and tears, yet soft and clear as the eyes of a child. He could not say to her, in so many words, “It is impossible for you to remain with us.” All he could do was to falter and hesitate, and grow confused,under the limpid, sorrowful look which she bent upon him from the distant heaven of her resignation and innocence. “You would like your friends—somebody to be written to,” said Lauderdale; and then, afraid to have given her pain by the suggestion, went on hurriedly: “I’m old enough to be your father, and no a thought in my mind but to do you service,” he said. “Tell me what you would like best. Colin, thank God! is strong, and has little need of me. I’ll take you home, or do whatever you please; for I’m old enough to be your father, my poor bairn!” said the tender-hearted philosopher, and drew near to her, and put out his hand with an impulse of pitiful and protecting kindness which touched the heart of Alice, and yet filled her with momentary surprise. She, on her own side, was roused a little, not to think of herself, but to remember what appeared to her a duty unfulfilled.
“Oh, Mr. Lauderdale, Arthur said I might tell you,” said Alice. “Papa! you heard what he said about papa? I ought to write and tell him what has happened. Perhaps I ought to tell you from the beginning,” she continued, after composing herself a little. “We left home without his consent—indeed, he did not know. For dear Arthur,” said the poor girl, turning her appealing eyes from one to the other, could not approve of his ways. “He did something that Arthur thought was wrong. I cannot tell you about it,” said Alice through her tears; “it did not make so much difference to me. I think I ought to write and tell him, and that Arthur forgave him at the last. Oh, tell me, please, what do you think I should do?”
“If you would like to go home, I’ll take you home,” said Lauderdale. “He did not mean ony harm, poor callant, but he’s left an awfu’ burden on you.”
“Go home!” said Alice, with a slight shudder. “Do you think I ought—do you think I must? I do not care for myself; but Mrs. Meredith, you know—” she added with a momentary blush; and then the friends began to perceive another unforeseen lion in the way.
“Out of my own head,” said Lauderdale, who took the whole charge of this business on himself, and would not permit Colin to interfere, “I wrote your father a kind of a letter. If you are able to hear the—the event—which has left us a’ mourning—named in common words, I’ll read you what I have written. Poor bairn, you’re awfu’ young and awfu’ tender to have such affairs in hand! Are you sure you are able to bear it, and can listen to what I have said?”
“Ah, I have borne it,” said poor Alice. “I cannot deceive myself, nor think Arthur is still here. What does it matter then about saying it? Oh, yes, I can bear anything—there is only me to be hurt now, and it doesn’t matter. It was very kind of you to write. I should like to know what you have said.”
Colin, who could do nothing else for her, put forward the arm-chair with the cushions towards the table, and Sora Antonia put down the “Garden of the Soul” and drew a little nearer with her heavy, firm step, which shook the house. She comprehended that something was going on which would tax the Signorina’s strength, and brought her solid, steady succour to be in readiness. The pale little girl turned and smiled upon them both, as she took the chair Colin had brought her. She was herself quite steady in her weakness and grief and loneliness. Sora Antonia was not wanted there; and Colin drew her aside to the window, where she told him all about the fireworks that were to be in the evening, and her hopes that after a while the Signorina would be able to “distract herself” a little and recover her spirits; to which Colin assented dutifully, watching from where he stood the pale looks of the friendless young woman—friendless beyond disguise or possible self-deception, with a stepmother whom she blushed to mention reigning in her father’s house. Colin’s thoughts were many and tumultuous as he stood behind in the window, watching Alice and listening to Sora Antonia’s description of the fireworks. Was it possible that perhaps his duty to his neighbour required from him the most costly of all offerings, the rashest of all possible actions? He stood behind, growing more and more excited in the utter quiet. The thought that had dawned upon him under the ilex-trees came nearer and grew more familiar, and as he looked at it he seemed to recognise all that visible machinery of Providence bringing about the great event which youth decides upon so easily. While this vision grew before his mind, Alice was wiping off the tears which obliterated Lauderdale’s letter even to her patient eyes; for, docile and dutiful as she was, it was yet terrible to read in calm distinct words, which put the matter beyond all doubt, the announcement of “what had happened.” This is what Lauderdale had said:—
“Sir,—It is a great grief to me to inform you of an event for which I have no way of knowing whether you are prepared or not. Your son, Arthur Meredith, has been living here for the last three months in declining health, and on Thursday last diedin great comfort and constancy of mind. It is not for me, a stranger, to offer vain words of consolation, but his end was such as any man might be well content to have, and he entered upon his new life joyfully, without any shadow on his mind. As far as love and friendship could soothe the sufferings that were inevitable, he had both; for his sister never left his bedside, and myself and my friend Colin Campbell were with him constantly, to his satisfaction. His sister remains under our care. I who write am no longer a young man, and know what is due to a young creature of her tender years; so that you may satisfy yourself she is safe until such time as you can communicate with me, which I will look for as soon as a reply is practicable, and in the meantime remain,“Your son’s faithful friend and mourner,“W. Lauderdale.”
“Sir,—It is a great grief to me to inform you of an event for which I have no way of knowing whether you are prepared or not. Your son, Arthur Meredith, has been living here for the last three months in declining health, and on Thursday last diedin great comfort and constancy of mind. It is not for me, a stranger, to offer vain words of consolation, but his end was such as any man might be well content to have, and he entered upon his new life joyfully, without any shadow on his mind. As far as love and friendship could soothe the sufferings that were inevitable, he had both; for his sister never left his bedside, and myself and my friend Colin Campbell were with him constantly, to his satisfaction. His sister remains under our care. I who write am no longer a young man, and know what is due to a young creature of her tender years; so that you may satisfy yourself she is safe until such time as you can communicate with me, which I will look for as soon as a reply is practicable, and in the meantime remain,
“Your son’s faithful friend and mourner,“W. Lauderdale.”
Alice lingered over this letter, reading it, and crying, and whispering to Lauderdale a long time, as Colin thought. She found it easier, somehow, to tell her story fully to the elder man. She told him that Mrs. Meredith had “come home suddenly,” which was her gentle version of a sad domestic history,—that nobody had known of her father’s second marriage until the stepmother arrived, without any warning, with a train of children. Alice’s mild words did not give Lauderdale any very lively picture of the dismay of the household at the unlooked-for apparition, but he understood enough to condemn Arthur less severely than he had been disposed to do. This sudden catastrophe had happened just after the other misery of the bank failure, which had ruined so many; and poor Meredith had no alternative between leaving his sister to the tender mercies of an underbred and possibly disreputable stepmother, or bringing her with him when he retired to die; and Alice, though she still cried for “poor papa,” recoiled a little from the conclusion of Lauderdale’s letter. “I have enough to live upon,” she said, softly, with an appealing glance at her companion. “If you were to say that I was quite safe, would not that be enough?” and it was very hard for Lauderdale to convince her that her father’s judgment must be appealed to in such a matter. When she saw he was not to be moved on this point, she sighed and submitted; but it was clearly apparent that as yet, occupied as she was by her grief, the idea that her situation here was embarrassing to her companions or unsuitable for herself had not occurred to Alice. When she retired, under the escort of Sora Antonia,the two friends had a consultation over this perplexing matter; and Lauderdale’s sketch—filled in, perhaps, a little from his imagination—of the home she had left, plunged Colin into deeper and deeper thought. “No doubt he’ll send some answer,” the philosopher said. “He may not be worthy to have the charge of her, but he’s aye her father. It’s hard to ken whether it’s better or worse that she should be so unconscious of anything embarrassing in her position; which is a’ the more wonderful, as she’s a real honest woman, and no way intellectual nor exalted. You and me, Colin,” said Lauderdale, looking up in his young companion’s face, “must take good care that she does not find it out from us.”
“Of course,” said Colin, with involuntary testiness; “but I do not see what her father has to do with it,” continued the young man. “She cannot possibly return to such a home.”
“Her father is the best judge of that,” said Lauderdale; “she canna remain with you and me.”
And there the conversation dropped—but not the subject. Colin was not in love with Alice; he had, indeed, vague but bright in the clouds before him, an altogether different ideal woman; and his heart was in the career which he again saw opening before him—the life in which he meant to serve God and his country, and which at the present moment would admit of no rashly formed ties. Was it in consequence of these hindrances that this new thing loomed so large before Colin’s inexperienced eyes? If he had longed for it with youthful passion, he would have put force on himself and restrained his longing; but the temptation took another shape. It was as if a maiden knight at the outset of his career had been tempted to pass by a helpless creature and leave her wrongs unredressed. The young Bayard could do anything but this.
Inthe meantime at least a fortnight must pass before they could expect an answer to Lauderdale’s letter. During that time they returned to all their old habits, with the strange and melancholy difference, that Arthur, once the centre of all, was no longer there. Every day of this time increased the development of Colin’s new thoughts, until the unknown father of Alice hadgrown, in his eyes, into a cruel and profligate tyrant, ready to drag his daughter home and plunge her into depraved society without any regard for either her happiness or her honour. Colin had, indeed, in his own mind, in strictest privacy and seclusion of thought, indited an imaginary letter, eloquent with youthful indignation, to inform this unworthy parent that his deserted daughter had found a better protector; but he was very silent about these cogitations of his, and did not share them even with Lauderdale. And there were moments when Colin felt the seriousness of the position, and thought it very hard that such a necessity should meet him in the face at the beginning of his career. Sometimes in the sudden darkening, out of the rosy clouds which hung over the Campagna, the face of the impossible woman, the ideal creature—she who could have divined the thoughts in his mind and the movements in his heart before they came into being, would glance suddenly out upon him for an instant, and then disappear, waving a shadowy farewell, and leaving in his mind a strange blank, which the sight of Alice rather increased than removed. That ineffable mate and companion was never to be his, the young man thought. True, he had never met her, nor come upon any trace of her footsteps, for Matty Frankland at her best never could have been she. But yet, as long as he was unbound by other tie or affection, this vision was the “not impossible She” to Colin as to all men; and this he had to give up—for Alice, dutiful and sweet Alice, forsaken by all friends and yet so steadfast in her gentle self-possession, whom it was not in the heart of man to be otherwise than tender of; she who had need of him, and whom his very nature bound him to protect and cherish—was not that woman. At other moments he thought of his own life, for which still so much training was necessary, and which he should have entered in the full freedom of his youth; and was profoundly aware of the incumbered and helpless trim in which he must go into the battle, obliged to take thought not of his work only, and the best means of doing it, but of those cares of living which lie so lightly on a young man alone.
There may be some of Colin’s friends who will think the less of him for this struggle in his mind; and there may be many who will think with justice that, unless he could have offered love to Alice, he had no right to offer her himself and his life—an opinion in which his historian fully agrees. But then this gift though less than the best, was a long waysuperior to anything else which, at the present moment, was likely to be offered to the friendless girl. If he could have laid at her feet the full heart, which is the only true offering under such circumstances, the chances are that Alice, in her simplicity and gentleness, would have been sadly puzzled what to do with that passionate and ungovernable thing. What he really could offer her—affection, tenderness, protection—was clearly comprehensible to her. She had no other idea of love than was included in those attributes and phases of it. These considerations justified Colin in the step which he contemplated—or rather in the step which he did not contemplate, but felt to be necessary and incumbent upon him. It sometimes occurred to him how—if he had been prudent and taken Lauderdale’s advice, and eschewed at the beginning that close connexion with Meredith and his sister, which he had entered into with his eyes open, and with a consciousness even that it might affect his life—this embarrassing situation might never have come into being; and then he smiled to himself, with youthful superiority, contemplating what seemed so plainly the meaning of Providence, and asking himself how he, by a momentary exercise of his own will, could have overthrown that distinct celestial intention? On the whole, it was comforting to think that everything had been arranged beforehand by agencies so very clear and traceable; and with this conclusion of the argument he left off, as near contented as possible, and not indisposed to enjoy the advantages which were palpably before him; for, though they were not the eyes he had dreamed of, there was a sweetness very well worthy of close study in Alice Meredith’s eyes.
The days passed very quietly in this time of suspense. The society of the two strangers, who were more to her in her sorrow than all her kindred, supported the lonely girl more than she was aware of—more than any one could have believed. They were absent during the greater part of the day, and left her unmolested to the tears that would come, notwithstanding all her patience; and they returned to her in the evening with attention and cares to which she had never been accustomed, devoting two original and powerful minds, of an order at once higher and more homely than any which she had ever encountered, to her amusement and consolation. Alice had never known before what it was to have ordinary life and daily occurrences brightened by the thick-coming fancies, the tender play of word and thought, which now surrounded her. Shehad heard clever talk afar off, “in society,” and been awe-stricken by the sound of it; and she had heard Arthur and his friends uttering much fine-sounding language upon subjects not generally in her way; but she was utterly unused to that action of uncommon minds upon common things which gives so much charm to the ordinary intercourse of life. All they could think of to lighten the atmosphere of the house in which she sat in her deep mourning, absorbed for hours together in those thoughts of the dead to which her needlework afforded little relief, they did with devotion, suspending their own talk and occupations to occupy themselves with her. Colin readIn Memoriamto her till her heart melted and relieved itself in sweet abundant tears; and Lauderdale talked and told her many a homely history of that common course of humanity, full of sorrows sorer than her own, which fills young minds with awe. Between them they roused Alice to a higher platform, a different atmosphere, than she had known before; and she raised herself up after them with a half-bewildered sense of elevation, not understanding how it was; and so the long days which were so hard, and which nothing in the world could save from being hard, brightened towards the end, not certainly into anything that could be called pleasure, but into a sad expansion and elevation of heart, in which faintly appeared those beginnings of profound and deep happiness which are not incompatible with grief, and yet are stronger and more inspiring than joy.
While this was going on, unconsciously to any one concerned, Sora Antonia, in her white kerchief and apron, sometimes knitting, sometimes with her distaff like a buxom Fate, sat and twisted her thread and turned her spindle a little behind yet not out of reach, keeping a wary eye upon her charge. She too interposed, sometimes with her own comments upon life and things in general, and took part in the conversation; and, whether it was that Sora Antonia’s mind was really of a superior order, or that the stately Roman speech threw a refining colour upon her narratives, it is certain that the interpellations of the Italian peasant fell without any sensible derogation into the strain of lofty yet familiar talk which was meant to wean Alice from her special grief. Sora Antonia told them of the other Forestieri who had lived like themselves in the Savelli palace; who had come for health and yet had died, leaving the saddest mourners—helpless widows and little children, heart-broken fathers and mothers, perhaps the least consolable of all. Life was such, she said solemnly, bowing herstately head. She herself, of a hardy race, and strong, as the Signori saw, had not she buried her children, for whom she would have gladly died? But the good God had not permitted her to die. Alice cried silently as she heard all this; she kissed Sora Antonia, who, for her part, had outlived her tears, and with a natural impulse turned to Colin, who was young, and in whose heart, as in her own, there must live a natural protest against this awful necessity of separation and misery; and thus it came to be Colin’s turn to interpose, and he came on the field once more withIn memoriam, and with other poems which were sweet to hear, and soothed her even when she only partially entered into their meaning. A woman has an advantage under such circumstances. By means of her sympathy and gratitude, and the still deeper feeling which grew unconsciously in her heart towards him who read, she came to believe that she too understood and appreciated what was to him so clear and so touching. A kind of spiritual magnetism worked upon Alice, and, to all visible appearance, expanded and enlarged her mind. It was not that her intellect itself grew, or that she understood all the beautiful imaginations, all the tender philosophies thus unfolded to her; but she was united in a singular union of affectionate companionship with those who did understand, and even to herself she appeared able to see, if not with her own eyes, at least with theirs, the new beauties and solemnities of which she had not dreamt before.
This strange process went on day by day without any one being aware of it; and even Lauderdale had almost forgotten that their guardianship of Alice was only for the moment, and that the state of affairs altogether was provisionary and could not possibly continue, when an answer reached him to his letter. He was alone when he received it, and all that evening said nothing on the subject until Alice had retired with her watchful attendant; then, without a word of comment, he put it into Colin’s hand. It was written in a stilted hand, like that of one unaccustomed to writing, and was not quite irreproachable even in its spelling. This was what Lauderdale’s correspondent said:—