Everybody who went to Audouin's picnic at the Alban lake agreed that it was one of the most delightful entertainments given at Rome during the whole of that season.
The winter—Hiram and Cohn's first winter in Italy—had worn away quickly enough. Hiram had gone every day, as in duty bound, to paint and be chidden at M. Seguin's studio; for Seguin was one of those exalted teachers who instruct rather by example than by precept; who seem to say perpetually to their pupils, 'See how much better I have done it or would have done it than you do;' and he never for a moment succeeded in inspiring the very slightest respect or enthusiasm in Hiram's simple, quiet, unostentatious, straightforward American nature. Of course Hiram worked hard; he felt he ought to work hard. Audouin expected it of him, and he would have done anything on earth to please Audouin; but his heart was not really in it for all that, though he wouldn't for the world have acknowledged as much even to himself, and he got on far less well than many other people would have done with half his talent and half his industry. He hated the whole artifice of drapery and models, and clever arrangement of light and shade, and marvellous minuteness of technical resources, in which his French master positively revelled. He longed for the beautiful native wildness of the American woodlands, or still more, even, for the green hedgerows and parks and meadows of that enchanted England, which he had seen but in a glimpse for two days in his whole lifetime, but in whose mellow beauty, nevertheless, his heart had immediately recognised its true fatherland. It may have been narrow and sectarian and unappreciative in Hiram; no doubt it was; but he couldn't for the life of him really care for Seguin's very greatest triumphs of artistic ingenuity. He recognised their extraordinary skill, he admitted their unrivalled cleverness astours de forceof painting, he even admired their studied grace and exquisite composition as bits of harmonious form and colour; but he never could fall down before them in the least as works of art in the highest sense, or see in them anything more than the absolute perfection of cold, hard, dry, unspiritualised mechanical aptitude.
As for Colin, now that Sam had gone back to England, on his way home to America (Sam used the expression himself quite naturally now), he had thrown himself with the utmost fervour into the work of Maragliano's studio, where he soon rose to the acknowledged position of the great master's most favourite pupil. The model of the Calabrian Peasant which he built up upon the blacksmith's framework was the last copy he had to do for Maragliano. As soon as it was finished, the master scanned the clay figure with his quick critical eye, and cried almost contemptuously, 'Why, this is mere child's play for such a man as you, I see, Churchill. You must do no more copying. To-morrow you shall begin modelling from the life.' Colin was well pleased indeed to go on to this new and untried work, and he made such rapid progress in it that even Maragliano himself was quite surprised, and said confidentially to Bazzoni more than once, 'The young Englishman will go far. He has the spark of genius in him, my friend; he is a born sculptor.'
It was all so different too in Rome, from London, where Colin had been isolated, unknown, and almost friendless. There was nobody there except Cicolari—and Minna; dear little woman, he had almost omitted her—with whom he could talk on equal terms about his artistic longings and ideas and interests. But at Rome it was all so different. There was such a great society of artists! Every man's studio was open to his fellows; a lively running fire of candid criticism went on continually about every work completed or in progress. To live in such an atmosphere of art, to move amongst it and talk about it all day long, to feast his eyes upon the grand antiques and glorious Michael Angelos of the Vatican—all this was to Colin Churchill as near an approach to unmixed happiness as it is given to human beings to know in this nether world of very mixed experiences. If only he had had Minna with him! But there! Colin Churchill loved art so earnestly and singlemindedly that for its sake he could well endure even a few years' brief absence in Rome away from poor, little, loving, sorrowing Minna.
Gwen meanwhile, in spite of the colonel, had managed to see a great deal from time to time both of Colin and of Audouin. The colonel had indeed peremptorily forbidden her in so many words to hold any further communications of any sort with either of them. Colin, he said, was a person clearly beneath her both in birth and education, while Audouin was the most incomprehensible prig of a Yankee fellow he had ever had the misfortune to set eyes upon in the whole course of his lifetime. But the colonel was one of those forcible-feeble people who are very vehement always in language, but very mild in actual fact; who threaten and bluster a great deal about what they will never do, or what they will never permit, but who do or permit it all the same on the very next occasion when opportunity arises. The consequence was that Gwen, who was a vigorous young lady with a will of her own, never took much serious notice of the colonel when he was in one of his denunciatory humours, but went her own way peacefully, and did as she chose to do herself the very next minute.
Now, at the same hotel where the Howard-Russells were stopping there was a certain Mrs. Wilmer, a lady with two daughters (perfect sticks, Gwen called them), to whom Gwen, being herself alone and motherless, thought it well to attach herself for purposes of society. It's so convenient, you know, to have somebody by way of a chaperon who can take you about and get invitations for you. Happily Mrs. Wilmer, though herself as commonplace a village Lady Bountiful as ever distributed blankets and read good books to the mothers' meeting every Wednesday, was suddenly seized at Rome, under the influence of the genius loci, with a burning desire to know something about art and artists; and Gwen made use of this new-born fancy freely to go round the studios with Mrs. Wilmer, and of course to meet at times with Colin and Audouin.
At last April came, and Audouin, who had been getting very tired of so much city life (for his hermit love for the woods and solitude was only one half affected), began to long once more for the lonely delights of his own beloved solitary Lakeside. He would have been gone long before, indeed, had it not been for a curious feeling which for the first time in his life, he felt growing up within him—Audouin was falling in love with Gwen Howard-Russell. The very first day he ever met her by the Lake of the Thousand Islands, he had greatly admired her frank bold English beauty, and since he had seen a little more of her at Rome, he had found himself insensibly gliding from admiration into a less philosophical and more human attitude. Yes, he had almost made up his mind that before he left Rome, he would ask Gwen whether she would do him the supreme honour of accompanying him back to America as the mistress of Lakeside.
'Papa,' Gwen said, one bright morning in April, 'Mrs. Wilmer wants me to go with her to-day to a picnic at the Lago d'Albano.'
'A picnic!' the colonel cried severely. 'And in the Campagna, too! My dear child, as sure as fate, you'll all get the Roman fever.'
'Albano isn't in the Campagna, papa,' Gwen answered quietly. 'At least it's right up ever so high among the mountains. And Mrs. Wilmer's going to call for me at halfpast eleven.'
'Who gives the picnic?'
Gwen bit her lip. 'Mr. Audouin,' she answered shortly.
'Mr. Audouin! What, that mad Yankee man again! Then, mind, Gwen, I say you're not to go on any account.'
'But, papa, Mrs. Wilmer has accepted for me.'
'Never mind. I say, I won't allow you. Not a word more upon the subject: I won't allow you. Now, remember, I positively forbid it, and pray don't re-open the question.'
At half-past eleven, however, Gwen came down, dressed and ready. 'Papa dear,' she said, as unconcernedly as if nothing at all had been said about it, 'here's Mrs. Wilmer waiting for me outside, and I must go. I hope we shan't be back late for dinner. Good morning.'
The colonel only muttered something inarticulate as she left the room, and turned to his cigar for consolation.
'What, you here, Mr. Churchill,' Gwen cried, as they all met together a few minutes later at the Central Railway Station. 'I had no idea you were to be of the party. I thought you were so perfectly wedded to art that you never took a minute's holiday.'
'I don't often,' Colin answered, smiling; 'I have so much leeway to make up that I have to keep always at it, night and morning. But Maragliano, who's the best and most considerate of men, when he heard that Mr. Audouin had been kind enough to invite me, insisted upon it that I must give myself a day's recreation. Besides, you see,' he added after a momentary pause, looking down as if by accident into Gwen's beautiful eyes, 'there were such very special attractions.'
Gwen made a little mock curtsey. 'What a pretty speech!' she said laughingly. 'Since you've come to Rome, Mr. Churchill, you seem to have picked up the Roman habit of paying compliments.'
Colin blushed, with some inward embarrassment. The fact was, Gwen had misunderstood his simple remark: he was thinking, not of her, but only of the tomb of Pompey and the old Roman Emissary. But Gwen noticed the faint crimson rising to his cheek, and said to herself, not without a touch of pardonable vanity, 'Our young sculptor isn't quite so wholly swallowed up in his art as he wants us to believe, then. He dreams already of flying high. If he flies high enough, who knows but he may be successful.'
What a handsome young fellow he was, to be sure, and what a natural gentleman! And what a contrast, too, in his easy unselfconscious manner, to that shy, awkward, gawky slip of a Yankee painter, Mr. Hiram Winthrop! Hiram! where on earth did he get the name from? It sounded for all the world just like a fancy character out of 'Martin Chuzzlewit.'
'And you too, Mr. Winthrop! Of course we should have expected you. I don't wonder you're always about so much with Mr. Audouin. I think him, you know, the most charming talker I've ever met with.'
Hiram could have sunk into the ground with mortification at having thus always to play second fiddle to Audouin, whose grizzling hair made him seem to Gwen so much a confirmed old bachelor that she didn't think there could be any danger at all in openly speaking out her admiration for his powers as a talker.
They went by train to the station at Albano, and then drove up to the shores of the lake in carriages which Audouin had ready in waiting. Recluse and hermit as he was, when he went in for giving an entertainment, he gave it regally; and the picnic was universally pronounced to be the most splendid success of the Roman season. After lunch they dispersed a little, as people always do at picnics (or else what would be the use of that form of reunion?) and Colin somehow found himself, he didn't quite know how, strolling with Gwen down the Galleria di Sopra, that beautiful avenue of shady evergreen oaks which leads, with innumerable lovely glimpses of the lake below, from Albano towards Castel Gandolfo. Gwen, however, knew well enough how it had all happened; for she had angled most cleverly so as to avoid the pressing attentions of Audouin, and to pair off in apparent unconsciousness with the more favoured Colin. Mrs. Wilmer, walking behind with another guest to do the proprieties, had acquiesced most heartily in this arrangement, and had even managed to promote it diligently: for did it not compel Mr. Audouin to link himself for the afternoon to dear Lilian, and was it not well known that Mr. Audouin, though an American, was otherwise a most unexceptionable and eligible person, with quite sufficient means of his own to marry most comfortably upon? Whereas this young Mr. Churchill, though no doubt wonderfully clever, and a most estimable young man in his own way, was a person of no family, and with all his fortune still to make by his own exertions. And Mr. Audouin had really hardly a trace, after all, of that horrid American singsong.
'Yes,' Gwen was saying, as they reached the point of view near the Emissario: 'Signor Maragliano told me that before many months were over, he should advise you to begin modelling a real life-size figure from the life of your own invention; for he thinks you would be only wasting your time in working much longer at mere copying or academy work. He wants to see you begin carrying out some of your own beautiful original conceptions. And so do I too, you know: for we feel in a way, papa and I, as if we had discovered you, Mr. Churchill.—Shall we sit down here awhile, under the oak trees? This broad shade is so very delicious.'
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She gave Colin her hand, to help her down the first bit of the side path to the old Roman conduit; and as she did so, she looked into his face with her lovely eyes, and smiled her thanks to him expressively. Cohn took her hand and helped her gently down. 'You're very good to interest yourself so much in my work,' he said, with no trace of shyness or awkwardness in his manner. 'I shall be glad indeed when I'm able to begin producing something worthy in real earnest.'
Gwen was really very beautiful and very kind and very cordial. He never for a moment remembered with her the original disparity of their stations, as he did with so many other grand ladies. She seemed to put him at his ease at once, and to be so frank and complimentary and even pressing. And then, her profile was magnificent, and her eyes were really splendid!
Ah, Minna, Minna, poor little Minna, in your big noisy schoolroom away over yonder in big noisy London, well may you tremble with a cold shiver running strangely through you, you know not why, and murmur to yourself, in your quaint old-world superstition, that somebody must be walking over your grave to-day somewhere or other!
'Rome's a perfect paradise to me, you know, Mr. Churchill,' Gwen went on, musingly. 'I never fully knew, before I came here, how much I loved art. I perfectly revel in the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, and in studios such as Signor Maragliano's. What a fortunate life yours will be—to live always among so much exquisite beauty! I should love an artist's life myself—only I suppose I should never get beyond the most amateur water-colours. But a sculptor, especially! A sculptor's career seems to me to be the grandest thing on earth a man can live for! I'd willingly give half my days, do you know, if only I could be a sculptor.'
'It's a glorious profession, certainly,' Colin answered, with kindling eyes. 'It's such a grand thing to think one belongs, however humbly, to the same great troop as Pheidias, and Michael Angelo, and Gibson, and Thorwaldsen. That, alone, of course, is something in one's life to be really proud of.'
'Poor boy! he's obtuse,' Gwen thought to herself, commiseratingly. 'He doesn't follow up the openings one gives him. But never mind. He's very young still, and doesn't know when one's leading up to him. There's plenty of time yet. By-and-by he'll grow older and wiser.—What a beautiful reflection down there in the water, Mr. Churchill! No, not there: on the broader part beyond the Roman mason-work. I wish Mr. Winthrop could see it. It's just the thing he'd like so much to put on paper or canvas.'
'You're interested in Winthrop, then, are you?' Cohn asked innocently.
'Interested in him? Oh, yes, I'm interested in all art and in all artists—though not of course in all equally. I mean, I like sculpture even better than painting. But I saw a water-colour drawing of Mr. Winthrop's when I was in America, you know, where I first met him, which I thought very pretty. I can remember it yet—a sketch of blended trees and water among the channels of the Thousand Islands.'
'I've seen it,' Cohn answered: 'he's brought it with him, as well as several other American landscapes. Winthrop draws admirably, I know, and his treatment of foliage and water seems to me quite extraordinarily good. He'll make a fine artist, I'm quite confident, before he's done with it.'
Gwen pouted a little to herself. 'It's plain,' she thought, 'that Mr. Churchill isn't a person to be easily piqued by praising anybody else.' And must it not be candidly admitted that in most women's eyes such complete absence of jealousy is regarded rather as a fault in a man's nature than as a virtue? (Mind, fair and courteous reader, if I may for a moment address you personally, I say 'in most' not 'in all women's.' You yourself, like present company generally, always, of course, form one of the striking and praiseworthy exceptions to every vile masculine innuendo aimed at the real or supposed peculiarities of 'most women.' Indeed, it is on purpose to allow you that flattering loophole of escape that I always artfully employ the less exclusive or general expression.)
They sat for a while talking idly on the slope by the path that leads to the Emissary, till at last Audouin, having managed to shift off dear Lilian for a while upon another man of the party, strolled up as though by accident to join them. 'Do I intrude upon atete-a-tete?' he asked with apparent carelessness, as he sat down upon the rocky ledge beside them. 'Is Mr. Churchill discoursing high art to you, Miss Russell, and peopling the romantic glen below with yet unhewn Egerias and Faunuses? How well this Italian scenery lends itself to those pretty half-theatrical Poussinesque embellishments! and how utterly out of place they would all look among the perfectly unkempt native savagery of our American woods and waters!'
Gwen smiled. 'We weren't discussing high art, Mr. Audouin,' she said as she drew a circle in the dust with the tip of her parasol. 'In fact we want you here to throw a little touch of fancy and idealism into the conversation. To tell you the truth, Mr. Churchill and I were only pulling to pieces the Miss Wilmers' dresses.'
'Ah, but even dress itself is in its way a liturgy, Miss Russell,' Audouin went on quickly, glancing half aside as he spoke at her own dainty bodice and little frill of coffee-coloured laces. (Gwen hadn't the least idea what he meant by a liturgy in this connection; but she thought it was something very beautiful and poetical to say, and she felt sure it was meant for a compliment; so she smiled graciously at it). 'People sometimes foolishly say that young ladies think a great deal too much about dress. For my part, it often occurs to me, when I look atotherwomen; that they think a great deal too little of it. How rarely, after all, does one see art subservient here to nature—a beautiful woman whose dress rather expresses and accentuates than mars or clashes with her own individual type of beauty.'
'How complimentary he is,' thought Gwen; 'and at his age too! Why, I positively believe he must be very nearly forty!'
'Shall we go down and look at the Emissary?' Colin asked, interrupting Audouin's flow of pretty sentimentalities. 'It's very old, you know, Miss Russell: one of the oldest existing works of Roman engineering anywhere in Europe.'
Audouin jumped up again, and led the way down to the Emissary, where the guide was already standing, impatiently expecting so many visitors, with the little taper in his hands which he lights and sets floating down the stream in order to exhibit to the greatest advantage the full extent of the prehistoric tunnel. 'Can't I manage to shake off this fellow Churchill somehow or other,' Audouin thought to himself in inward vexation, and get half an hour's chat alone with Miss Bussell? I do believe the creature'll checkmate me now, all by his ridiculous English heavy persistency! And yet, what a scholars mate, too, to go and be shelved by such a mere hobbledehoy of a fellow as this young man Churchill!'
Half way down the steep path, they came unexpectedly upon a solitary figure, sitting with colour-box open and sheet of paper before him, just above the entrance to the old tunnel. Audouin started when he saw him. 'Why, Hiram,' he cried, 'so there you are! I've been hunting everywhere for you, my dear fellow. We couldn't, any of us, imagine where on earth you had evanished.'
Hiram didn't look up in reply, and Gwen's quick eye immediately caught the reason, though she couldn't guess at its explanation—the young American painter had certainly been crying! Sitting here alone by himself, and crying! Gwen's heart interpreted the tears at once after a true woman's fashion. He had left some little rustic sweetheart behind in America, and he didn't care to sit and chat gaily among so many other women, while she was alone without him; but had crept down here with his paint-box by himself, to make a small sketch in perfect solitude, and think about her. But who would ever have imagined that that gawky shock-headed American boy had really got so much romance in him!
'Oh, I just came down here, Mr. Audouin, to take a little view of the lake,' Hiram answered evasively, without raising his eyes. 'The bit was so pretty that, as I'd brought my things along, I couldn't resist painting it.'
'But what a shame of you,' Gwen cried, 'to run away and desert us, Mr. Winthrop. You might at least have given us the pleasure of watching you working. It's always so delightful to see a picture growing slowly into form and shape under the hands of the artist.'
Hiram's voice had a touch of gratitude in it as he answered slowly, 'I didn't know, Miss Russell, you were likely to care about it.'
'Oh, he always loves solitude,' Audouin answered lightly, in a tone that cut Hiram to the quick. 'He doesn't care for society at all. I'm afraid, in that respect, Winthrop and I are both alike—lineal descendants of the old Red Indian. There's nothing he loves so much as to get away to a corner by himself, and commune with nature, with or without his colours, just as he's been doing now, in perfect solitude. And after all, solitude's really the best society: solitude's an excellent fellow by way of a companion. Even when we're most alone, we have, not only nature with us, but such a glorious company of glorified humanity that has gone before us. We walk with Shelley down the autumn avenues of falling leaves, or we meditate with Pascal beside the great breakers of Homer's much-resounding sea. We look with Claude at the shifting lights and shades on the craggy hillside opposite there, or we gaze upon the clouds and the sunset with something of the halo that flooded the dying eyes of Turner. Somebody has well said somewhere, Miss Russell, that without solitude no great thing was ever yet accomplished. When the regenerators of the world—the Messiahs and the Buddhas—wish to begin their mission as seer and founder, they first retire for forty days' fast and meditation in the lonely wilderness. And yet, I begin to think that our solitude oughtn't to be too profound or too continuous. (Perhaps mine has been so.) It ought to be tempered, I fancy, by continual congenial intercourse with some one other like-minded spirit. After all, there's a profound truth of human nature expressed in the saying of the old Hebrew cosmogonist—“It is not good that man should be alone.”'
'So I've always thought,' assented Colin Churchill gravely.
Audouin was vexed at the interruption, partly because he was just in the middle of one of his fluent, high-flown, transcendental periods, but still more because it came from that wretched interloper of a young English sculptor. He was just about to go on with a marked tone of continuity, when Gwen prevented him by taking up Hiram's unfinished picture. 'Why, this is beautiful!' she cried, with genuine enthusiasm. 'This is even better than the Alexandria Bay drawing, Mr. Winthrop: I like it immensely. What a lovely tint of purple on the crests of the little wavelets! and how beautifully you've done the steep sides of the old crater. Why, I do believe you ought to be a landscape painter, instead of going in for those dreadful historical pictures that nobody cares about. What a pity you've gone into Mr. Seguin's studio! I'm sure you'd do a thousand times better at this sort of subject.'
'We've considered very carefully the best place in which to develop my friend Winthrop's unusual powers,' Audouin answered in a cold tone; 'and we've both quite come to the conclusion that there's no teacher better for him anywhere than Seguin. Seguin's a really marvellous colourist, Miss Russell, and his mastery of all the technical resources of art is something that has never yet been approached, far less equalled, in the whole history of painting.'
Hiram looked up very shyly into Gwen's face, and said quite simply, 'I'msoglad you like it, Miss Russell. Your appreciation is worth a great deal to me.'
'More compliments!' Gwen thought to herself, smiling. 'They're all at it this afternoon. What on earth can be the meaning of it? My new poplin must be really awfully fetching.' But her smile was a kindly one, and poor Hiram, who hadn't much to treasure up in his soul, treasured it up sedulously for months to come among his dearest and most precious possessions.
In the end, as it happened, Audouin never got the chance of speaking alone with Gwen during the whole picnic. It was very annoying, certainly, for he had planned the little entertainment entirely for that very purpose; but really, as he reflected to himself at leisure in his own room that evening, it was after all only a postponement. 'In any case,' he thought, 'I wouldn't have insulted her by proposing to her to-day; for itisinsulting to a woman to ask her for her hand until you can see quite clearly that she really cares for you. A human soul isn't a thing of so light value that you can beg for the gift of it into your safe keeping on a shorter acquaintance than would warrant you in asking for the slightest favour. A woman's heart, a true and beautiful woman's heart, is a dainty musical instrument to be carefully learnt before one can play upon it rightly. To take it up by force, as it were, and to say at a venture, “Let me see whether perchance I can get a tune out of this anyhow,” is to treat it with far less tenderness and ceremony than one would bestow upon an unconscious Stradivarius. So perhaps it was wisely ordained by the great blind Caprice which rules this universe of ours that she and I should not speak alone and face to face together to-day at Albano.'
But Hiram lulled himself to sleep by thinking over and over again to himself that night, 'She smiled at me, and she admired my drawing.'
Away over in London, the winter had passed far less happily for poor little Minna than it had passed at Rome for Colin Churchill. While he had been writing home enthusiastically of the blue skies and invigorating air of that delicious Italy, the fogs in London had been settling down with even more than their customary persistency over the great grey gloomy winter city. While he had been filled with the large-hearted generosity of that noble fellow Maragliano—'May I not be proud, Minna,' he wrote, 'to have known such a man, to have heard his soft Genoese accents, to have watched his wonderful chisel at its work, to have listened to his glorious sentiments on art?'—she, poor girl, had found prim, precise, old-maidish Miss Woollacott harder to endure and more pernicketty to live with than ever. Now that Colin was gone, she had nobody to sympathise with her; nobody to whose ear she might confide those thousand petty daily personal annoyances which are to women (with all sympathetic reverence be it written) far more serious hindrances to the pursuit of happiness than the greatest misfortunes that can possibly overtake them. Worst of all, Colin, she was afraid, didn't even seem to miss her. She was so miserable in London without him; so full of grief and loneliness at his absence; while he was apparently enjoying himself in Rome quite as much without her as if she had been all the time within ten minutes' walk of his attic lodging. How perfectly happy he seemed to be in his intercourse with this Signor Maragliano that he wrote to her about! How he revelled in the nymphs, and the Apollos, and the Niobes! How his letters positively overflowed with life and enthusiasm! She was glad of it, of course, very glad of it. It was so nice to think that dear Colin should at last be mingling in the free artistic life for which she knew he was so well fitted: should be moving about among those splendid Greek and Roman things he was so very fond of. But still... well, Minna did wish that there was just alittlemore trace in his letters of his being sorry to be so very, very far away from her.
Besides, what dreadful note of warning was this that sounded so ominously on Sunday mornings, when she had half an hour later to lie in bed and read over all Colin's back letters—for she kept them religiously? What dreadful note of warning was this that recurred so often?—'Miss Howard-Russell, a niece of the old vicar's, and a cousin of Lord Beaminster's, who, I told you, came with me from Paris to Rome in the same carriage'... And then again, 'Miss Howard-Russell, whose name I daresay you remember'—oh, didn't she?—'came into the studio this morning and was full of praise of my figure in the clay from the living model.' And now here once more, in to-day's letter, 'Miss Howard-Russell was at the picnic, looking very pretty,' (oh, Colin, Colin, how could you!) 'and I took her round through a beautiful gallery of oaks' (Italianisai for avenue, already, but uncritical little Minna never spotted it) 'to an old Roman archway where Winthrop was painting a clever water-colour. I believe Winthrop admires her very much' (Minna fervently hoped his admiration would take a practical form:) 'but she doesn't seem at all to notice him.' Why, how closely Colin must have watched her! Minna wasn't by any means satisfied with the habits and manners of this Miss Howard-Russell. And the insolence of the woman too! to go and be a cousin to the Earl of Beaminster! Unless you happen to have lived in the western half of Dorsetshire yourself, you can have no idea how exalted a personage a cousin of the Earl of Beaminster appeared in the eyes of the Wootton Mande-ville fisherman's daughter.
'Minna Wroe,' Miss Woollacott observed in her tart voice, as the little pupil-teacher came down to breakfast on the Sunday morning after the picnic, 'you're nearly seven minutes late—six minutes and forty-nine seconds, to be precisely accurate: and I've been all that time sitting here with my hands before me waiting prayers for you. And, Minna Wroe, I've noticed that since that young man you describe as your cousin went to Rome, you've had a letter with a foreign stamp upon it every Sunday. And when those letters arrive I observe that you're almost invariably late for breakfast. Now, Minna Wroe, I should advise you to write to yourcousin'—with a strong emphasis of sarcastic doubt upon the last word—'asking him to make his communications a little less frequent: or else not to lie in bed quite so late in the morning reading yourcousin'sweekly effusions. Family affection's an excellent thing in its way, no doubt, but it may go a little too far in the table of affinities.'
Instead of answering, to Miss Woollacott's great surprise, poor little Minna burst suddenly into an uncontrollable flood of tears.
Now Miss Woollacott wasn't really cruel or ill-natured, but merely desiccated and fossilised, after the fashion of her kind, by the long drying-up process incidental to her unfortunate condition and unhappy calling: and moreover, she shared the common and pardonable inability of all women (I say 'all' this time advisedly) to see another woman crying without immediately kneeling down beside her, and taking her hands in hers, and trying with all her heart to comfort and console her.
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So in a few minutes, what with Miss Woollacott saying 'There, there, dear, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' and smoothing Minna's hair tenderly with her skinny old fingers (worn to the bone in the hard struggle), and muttering to herself audibly, 'I hadn't the least idea thatthatwas what was really the matter,'—Minna was soon restored to equanimity for the present at least, and Miss Woollacott, forgetting even to read prayers in her discomposure ('Which it's the only time, mum,' said Anne the slavey to the landlady, 'as ever I know'd the ole cat to miss them since fust she come here') went on with the breakfast, beaten all along the line, and trying to pass off 'this unpleasantness' by pretending to talk as unconcernedly as possible about every distracted idea that happened to come uppermost in her poor old scantily-furnished and disconnected cranium. But when breakfast was over, and Minna had positively kissed Miss Woollacott (an unheard-of liberty), and begged her not to trouble herself any more about the matter, for she wasn't really offended, and didn't in the least mind about it she went off upstairs to her own room alone, and sat down, and had a good cry all by herself with Colin's letters, and sent down word by Anne the slavey, that if Miss Woollacott would kindly excuse her she didn't feel equal to going to church that morning. 'And the ole cat, she acshally up and says, you'd hardly believe it, mum, says she, “Well, Anne, an' if Miss Wroe doesn't feel equal to it,” says she, “I think as how she'd better lie down a bit and rest herself, poor thing,” says she: and when she said it, mum, you could 'a knocked me down with a feather, a'most, I was that took aback at the ole cat's acshally goin' and sayin' it. Which I do reely think she must be goin' to be took ill or somethin', or else what for should she go an' answer one back so kind and chrischun-like, mum, if she didn't feel her end was a comin'?'
And old Miss Woollacott, putting on her thin-worn thread gloves for Church upon her thin-worn skinny fingers, felt softened and saddened, and remembered with a sigh that though she had never positively had a lover herself—not a declared one, that is to say—for who knows how many hearts she may have broken in silence?—she was once young herself, and fancied she might some day have one of her own, just as well as her sister Susan, who married the collector of water-rates; and if so, she was dimly conscious in her own poor old shrivelled feminine heart, much battered though it was in its hard struggle for life till it had somewhat hardened itself on the strictest Darwinian principles in adaptation to the environment, that she too under the same circumstances would have acted very much as Minna Wroe did.
But as Minna lay on her bed alone through that Sunday morning, only for a short time disturbed by the obtrusive sympathy of Anne the slavey, she began to think to herself that it was really very dangerous after all to let Colin remain at Rome without her; and that she ought to try sooner or later to go over and join him there. And as she turned this all but impossible scheme over in her head (for if even Cohn found it hard to get over to Italy, how could she, poor girl, ever expect to find the money for such a long journey, or subsistence afterwards?), a sudden glorious and brilliant possibility flashed all unexpectedly upon her bewildered mental vision:—
Why not try to go to Rome as a governess?
It was a wild and impossible idea—too impossible to be worth discussing almost—and yet, the more she thought about it, the more feasible did it seem to become to her excited imagination. Not immediately, of course: not all at once and without due preparation. Minna Wroe had learnt the ways of the world in too hard a school of slow self-education not to know already how deep you must lay your plans, and how long you must be prepared to work them, if you hope for success in any difficult earthly speculation. But she might at least make a beginning and keep her eyes open. The first thing was to get to be a governess; the next was, to look out for openings in the direction of Italy.
It seems easy enough at first sight to be a governess; the occupation is one open to any woman who knows how to spell decently, which is far from being a rare or arduous accomplishment; and yet Minna Wroe felt at once that in her case the difficulties to be got over were practically almost insuperable. If she had only been a man, now, nobody would have asked who she was, or where she came from: they would have been satisfied with looking at her credentials and reading over the perfunctory testimonials of her pastors and masters to her deserts and merits. But as she was only a woman, they would of course want to inquire all about her; and if once they discovered that she had been in a place as a servant, it would be all up with her chances of employment for ever. The man who rises makes for himself his own position; but the woman who rises has to fight all her life long to keep down the memory of her small beginnings. That is part and parcel of our modern English Christian conception of the highest chivalry.
Little Minna Wroe, however, with her round gipsy face and pretty black eyes, was not the sort of person to be put down in what she proposed to do by any amount of initial difficulty. If the thing was possible, she would stoutly fight her way through to it. So the very next morning, during recess time, she determined to strike while the iron was hot, and went off bravely through the rain to a neighbouring Governesses' Agency. It was one of the wretched places where some lazy hulking agent fellow, assisted by his stout wife, makes a handsome living by charging poor helpless girls ten per cent, on their paltry pittance of a first year's salary, in return for an introduction to patrons too indolent to hunt up a governess for themselves by any more humane and considerate method. These are the relatively honest and respectable agencies: the dishonest and disreputable ones make a still simpler livelihood by charging an entrance-fee beforehand, and never introducing anybody anywhere.
Minna put her name down upon the agent's list, but was wise enough not to be inveigled into paying the preliminary two-and-sixpence. The consequence was that the agent, seeing his only chance of making anything out of her lay in the result of getting her a situation, sent her from time to time due notice of persons in want of a nursery governess. Minna applied to several of these in rotation, her idea being, first to get herself started in a place anyhow, and then to look out for another in a family who were going to Italy. But as she made it a matter of principle to tell inquiring employers frankly that she had once been out at service, before she went to the North London Birkbeck Girls' School, she generally found that they, one and all, made short shrift of her. Of course it's quite impossible (and in a Christian land, too,) to let one's children be brought up by a young person who has once been a domestic servant.
One day, however, before many weeks, Minna received a note from the agency, asking her whether she could call round at half-past eleven, to see two persons who were in want of nursery governesses. It was recess-hour, luckily, so she buttoned up her neat plain cloth jacket, and put on her simple straw hat, and went round to meet the inquiring employers.
The first inquiry, the agent said, was from a clergyman—Reverend Walton and wife, now waiting in the ante-room. Reverend Walton, Miss Wroe: Miss Wroe, Reverend Walton and Mrs. Walton.
Minna bowed. The Reverend Walton (as the agent described him with official brevity), without taking the slightest notice of Minna, whispered audibly to his wife: 'This one really looks as if she'd do, Amelia. Dress perfectly respectable. No ribbons and laces and fal-lal tomfoolery. Perfectly presentable, perfectly.'
Minna coloured violently; but the Reverend Walton's wife answered in the same stage aside: 'Quite a proper young woman as far as appearance goes, certainly, Cyril.Andfifteen pounds a year, Mr. Coppinger said, would probably suit her.'
Minna coloured still more deeply. It couldn't be called a promising beginning. (She had sixteen pounds already, by the way, when she had been a parlour-maid. Such are the prizes of the higher education for women in the scholastic profession.)
They whispered together for a little while longer, less audibly, and then Mrs. Walton began closely to cross-question the little pupil-teacher. Minna answered all her questions satisfactorily—she had been baptised, confirmed, was a member of the Church of England, played the piano, could teach elementary French, had an excellent temper, didn't mind dining with the children, would go to early communion, could mend dresses and tuckers, wasn't particular about her food, never read books of an irreligious tendency, and would assist in the housework of the nursery whenever necessary.
'In fact,' Minna said, with as much quiet dignity as she could command, 'I'm not at all afraid of house-work, because (I think I ought to tell you) I was out at service for some years before I went to the Birkbeck Schools.' Reverend Walton lifted his eyebrows in subdued astonishment. Mrs. Walton coughed drily. Then they held another whispered confabulation for a few minutes, and at the end of it Mrs. Walton suggested blandly, in a somewhat altered tone of voice, 'Suppose in that case we were to say fourteen pounds and all found, and were to try to do altogether without the nursemaid?'
Though Minna saw that this was economy with a vengeance—cutting her down another pound, and saving the whole of the nursemaid's wages—she was so anxious to find some chance of rejoining Colin that she answered somewhat reluctantly, 'If you think that would be best, I shouldn't mind trying it.'
'Oh, if it comes to that,' Mrs. Walton said loftily, 'we don't want anybody to come to us by way of a favour. Whoever accepts our post must accept it willingly, thankfully, and in a truly religious spirit, as a door thrown open to them liberally for doing good in.'
Minna bowed faintly. 'I would accept the situation,' she said as well as she was able, though the words stuck in her throat (for was she not taking it as a horrid necessity, for Colin's sake only?) 'in just that spirit.'
Mrs. Walton nodded her triumph. 'That'll do then,' she said 'What did she say her name was, Cyril? We'll inquire about you of this Miss Jigamaree.'
Reverend Walton took out a pencil and note-book ostentatiously to put down the address.
'My name is Minna Wroe,' the poor girl said, colouring once more violently.
'Minna!' Reverend Walton said, biting the end of his pencil with a meditative frown. 'You must mean Mary. You can't have been christened Minna, you know, can you?'
'Yes, I was,' Minna answered defiantly.
'I was christened Minna, quite simply. M-I-N-N-A, Minna.'
Reverend Walton entered it in his notebook under protest. 'M-I-N-N-A,' he said, 'Minna; R-O-W-E, Rowe, I suppose.'
'No,' Minna answered, 'not R-O-W-E: W-R-O-E, Wroe.'
Reverend Walton sucked the other end of his pencil in evident hesitation. 'Never heard of such a name in all my life,' he said, dubitatively. 'Must be some mistake somewhere.
All the Rowes I ever heard of were R-O-W-E's.'
Minna didn't tell him that the names Rowe and Wroe are perfectly distinct in origin and meaning, because she wasn't aware of that interesting fact in the history and etymology of English nomenclature: but she did answer stoutly, with some vehemence, 'My family have always spelt the name as I spell it.'
Reverend Walton sneered visibly. 'Probably,' he said, 'your family didn't know any better. Nothing's more common in country parishes than to find that people don't know even how to spell their own names. At any rate, while you remain a member of our household, you'd better arrange to call yourself Mary Bowe, R-O-W-E, spelt in the ordinary proper civilised manner.'
Poor Minna's smothered indignation could restrain itself no longer. 'No,' she said firmly, with flashing eyes (in spite of her guaranteed good temper), 'I'll call myself nothing of the sort. I'm not ashamed of my name, and I won't change it.' (A rash promise that, on the part of a young lady.) 'And you needn't take the trouble to apply to Miss Woollacott, thank you, for on further consideration I've come to the conclusion that your place won't suit me. And so good morning to you.'
Reverend Walton and wife conferred together in a loud whisper with one another for a few minutes more, and then with a profound salutation walked with dignity in perfect silence out of the ante-room. 'And I think, Cyril,' Mrs. Walton observed in a stage aside as they held the door ajar behind them, 'we're very lucky indeed to have seen the young woman in one of her exhibitions of temper, for besides her unfortunate antecedents, dear, I'm quite convinced, in my own mind, that she isn't a really Christian person.'
'Won't do, that lot?' the agent said, popping his head in at the door to where Minna stood alone and crimson; 'ah, I thought not. Too much in this line, aren't they?'—and the agent cleverly drove in an imaginary screw into the back of his left hand with a non-existent screw-driver in his right. 'Well, well, one down, t'other come on. You'll see Reverend O'Donovan, now, miss, won't you?' 'What, another clergyman?' Minna cried a little piteously. 'Oh, no, not now, if you please, Mr. Coppinger. I feel so flurried and frightened and agitated.'
'Bless your heart, miss,' the agent said, not unkindly, 'you needn't be a bit afraid, you know, of Reverend O'Donovan. He's a widower, he is—four children—nice old fatherly person—you needn't be a bit afraid of seeing him. Besides, he's waiting for you.' Thus reassured, Minna consented with some misgivings to go through the ordeal of a further interview with the Reverend O'Donovan.
In a minute the agent returned, ushering into the room a very brutal-looking old gentleman, the most surprising that Minna remembered ever to have seen in the whole course of her experience. In spite of his old-fashioned clerical dress, she could hardly believe that he could really be a clergyman. He seemed to her at first sight the exact model of the Irish villain of Mr. Tenniel's most distorted fancy in the 'Punch' cartoons. She couldn't make out all his features at once, she was so much afraid of him; but she saw immediately that what made his face so especially ugly was the fact that he had a broken nose, just like a prizefighter. Minna quite shrank from him as he came in, and felt she should hardly have courage to get through the interview.
But the old clergyman put a chair for her with old-fashioned politeness, and then said in a gentle musical voice which quite astonished her coming from such a person, 'Pray be seated, Miss Wroe; I learned your name from Mr. Coppinger. We may have to talk over matters at a little length—I'm an old man and prosy—so we may as well make ourselves comfortable together beforehand. That's my name, you see, Cornelius O'Donovan; a very Irish one, isn't it? but we don't live in Ireland; in fact I've never been there. We live at a very quiet little country village in the weald of Surrey. Do you like the country?'
There was something so sweet and winning in the old clergyman's cultivated voice, in spite of his repulsive appearance, that Minna plucked up heart a little, and answered timidly, 'Oh, yes, I'm a country girl myself, and I'm awfully fond of the country, though I've had to live for some years in London. I come from Dorsetshire.'
'From Dorsetshire!' Mr. O'Donovan answered in the same charming gentle accent.
'Why, that's quite delightful—indeed, almost providential. I was born in Dorsetshire myself, Miss Wroe; my father had a parish there, a sweet little fisher village parish—Moreton Freshwater: do you happen to know it?'
'Moreton!' Minna repeated warmly. 'Moreton! oh yes, of course I do. Why, it's just close to our home. My folks live at Wootton Mandeville.'
'God bless my soul!' exclaimed the old clergyman with a little start. 'This is really providential, quite providential. I knew Wootton Mandeville when I was a boy—every stone in it. Dear me! and so you come from Wootton Mandeville, do you? Ah, well, I'm afraid all the people I knew at Wootton must be dead long ago. There was old Susan who sold apples at the corner by the Buddie, where the coach used to stop to set down passengers; she must have been dead, well, before you were born, I should say, certainly. And old Jack Legge that drove the coach; a fine old fellow, he was, with a green patch on the eye that Job Puddicombe blinded; I can remember his giving me a lift, as what we used to call a super—defrauding his employers, I'm sorry to say; but in the West Country, you know, in the old days, people did those things and thought no harm of them. And Ginger Radford, the smuggler; I'm afraid he was a bad lot, poor man, but by Jove, what a fine, hearty, open, manly fellow. Ah yes, capital people, even the worst of them, those good old-fashioned West Country folks.'
The old clergyman paused a moment to wipe his glasses, and looked at Minna pensively. Minna began to notice now that, though his face was so very dreadful to look at, his eyes were tender and bright and fatherly. Perhaps after all he wasn't really quite so terrible as she at first imagined him.
'Ah,' Mr. O'Donovan went on, replacing his spectacles, 'and there was Dick Churchill and his son Fiddler Sam, too, who used to draw pictures. You might have known Fiddler Sam; though, bless my heart, even Sam must be an old man nowadays, for he was older than I was. And then there was Fisherman Wroe, and his son Geargey; fine young fellow, Geargey, with a powerful deal of life and spirit in him—why.... God bless my soul, they said your name was Miss Wroe, didn't they? If I may venture to ask you, now—excuse me if I'm wrong—you don't happen to be a daughter of George Wroe's of Wootton, do you?'
'Yes,' Minna answered, warming a little towards the old gentleman, in spite of his repulsive countenance (it didn't look half so bad already, either, and she noticed that when once you got accustomed to the broken nose, it began to beam with courtesy and benevolence.) 'I'm George Wroe's daughter.'
Mr. O'Donovan's face lighted up at once with a genial smile of friendly recognition. 'George Wroe's daughter!' he cried, with much animation. 'George Wroe's daughter! Why, this is really most providential, my dear. God bless my soul, we don't need any introduction to one another. I knew your father well: many's the time we've been out fishing for whiting pollock on the Swale Daze together; a fine young fellow as ever lived, my dear, your father. When you see him again—he's living, I trust—that's well; I'm glad to hear it—whenever you see him again, my child, just you ask him whether he remembers Con O'Donovan (that's my name, you see, Cornelius; fifty years ago they used to call me Con O'Donovan). And just you ask him, too, whether he remembers how we got chased by the revenue cutter from Portland Roads mistaking us for the gig of the French smack, that brought over brandy (smuggled, I'm sorry to say—ah, dear me, dear me!) to tranship into old Gingery Radford's “Lively Sally “; and how we ran, and the cutter chased us, and we put on all sail, and made for Golden Cap, and the cutter went fifteen miles out of her way bearing down upon us, and caught us at last, and overhauled us, and found after all we'd nothing aboard but a small cargo of lob-worms and launces! Ah, bless my soul, that was a splendid run, that was! Oh, ho, ho! a splendid run, that one!' and Mr. O'Donovan laughed to himself a big, gentle, good-humoured laugh at the recollection of the boisterous jokes of fifty years ago, and of the captain of the cutter, who swore at them most terribly, in a varied and extensive assortment of English profanity, after the fashion of the United Service at the beginning of the present century.
'And now, my dear,' he went on, after another short pause—'I won't call you Miss Wroe any longer, if you're my old friend Geargey's daughter—excuse our plain old Dorsetshire dialect. So you want to be a governess? Well, well, tell me all about it, now. How did it all happen?'
By this time Minna had got so far accustomed to the old gentleman, that she began her whole story from the very beginning, and told it without shame or foolish hesitation. When Mr. O'Donovan had heard it through with profound attention, he looked at the little gipsy face with a look of genuine admiration, and then murmured to himself quite softly, 'God bless my soul, what a very remarkable plucky young lady! Quite a worthy daughter of my dear brave old friend Geargey! Went out to service to begin with; perfectly honourable of her; the Wroes were always a fine, manly, honest, courageous, self-respecting lot, but never above doing a turn of decent work either, whenever it was offered to them. And then turned schoolmistress; and now wants to better herself by being a governess. Most natural, most natural; and very praiseworthy. A most excellent thing, honest domestic service—too many of our girls nowadays turn up their noses at it—but not of course at all suitable for a young lady of your attainments and natural refinement, my dear; oh no, no—far from it, far from it.' 'Well, my dear,' he continued, looking at her gently once more, 'this is just what the matter is. We want a nursery governess for four little ones—girls—the eldest nine; motherless—motherless.'
As Mr. O'Donovan repeated that word pathetically, as if to himself, Minna saw that his face would have been quite handsome but for the broken nose which disfigured it for the first twenty minutes of an acquaintance only. 'Are they your daughters, sir?' she ventured to ask, with a sympathetic tinge of feeling in her voice.
'No, my dear, no,' Mr. O'Donovan answered, with the tears standing in the corners of his bright eyes. 'Granddaughters, granddaughters. I never had but one child, their mother; and she, my dear——' he pointed above, and then, turning his hand vaguely eastward, muttered softly, 'India.'
There was a moment's silence, before Minna went on to ask further particulars; and as soon as the old clergyman had answered all her questions to her perfect satisfaction, he asked in a quiet, assured sort of tone, 'Then I may take it for granted, may I, that you'll come to us?'
'Why, certainly,' Minna answered, her heart throbbing a little, 'if you'll take me, sir.' 'Take you!' Mr. O'Donovan echoed. 'Take you! God bless my soul, my dear, why, of course we'll be only too glad to get my old friend Geargey's daughter. And when you're writing to your father, my child, just you mention to him that you're going to Con O'Donovan's, and ask him if he remembers——'
But the remainder of Mr. O'Donovan's reminiscence about how that astonishingly big conger-eel bit the late vicar in the hand ('I never laughed so much in my life, my dear, as to see the astonishment and indignation of that pompous self-satisfied old fellow—a most exemplary man in every respect, of course, but still, we must admit, an absurdly pompous old fellow ') has no immediate connection with the general course of this history.
However, before Minna finally closed with the old rector's offer, she felt it incumbent upon her to tell him the possibility of her leaving her situation in the course of time, in order to go to Rome; and the rector's face had now grown so peculiarly mild in her eyes, that Minna even ventured to hint indirectly that the proposed visit was not wholly unconnected with the story of her cousin Colin, which story she was thereupon compelled to repeat forthwith to the patient old man with equal minuteness. Mr. O'Donovan smiled at her that placid gentle smile, devoid of all vulgar innuendo or nonsense, with which an old gentleman can sometimes show that he reads the secret of a young girl's bosom.
'And are you engaged to your cousin Colin, my dear?' he asked at last, quite innocently and simply.
'Not exactly engaged, you know,' Minna answered, blushing, 'but——'
'Ah, yes, quite so, quite so; I know all about it,' Mr. O'Donovan replied with a kindly gesture. 'Well, my dear, I don't see why you shouldn't come and live with us for the present, at least as a stop-gap; and meanwhile, I'll try my best to look out for some family who are going to Rome for you. We might advertise in theGuardian; capital paper for advertisements of that sort, theGuardian. Anyhow, meanwhile, you'll come and take us as we are; and very providential, too, very providential. To think I should have been lucky enough, quite by accident (as the world says), to hit upon a daughter of my old friend Geargey! And I'm so glad you're not afraid of me, either, because of my misfortune. A great many people are, just at first, especially. But it wears off, it wears off with habituation. A cricket-ball, my dear, that's all—when I was under twenty; off Sam Churchill's bat, too; but no fault of his, of course—I was always absurdly short-sighted. You'll get accustomed to it in time, my child, as I myself have.'
But Minna didn't need time to get accustomed to it, for she could now see already that old Mr. O'Donovan's face was really a very handsome, gentle, and cultivated one; and that even in spite of the broken nose, you felt at once how handsome it was, as soon as it was lighted up by his genial smile and the pleasant flash of his bright old eyes. And in one month from that morning, she was comfortably installed, under Mr. O'Donovan's guidance, in the delightful ivy-covered parsonage of a remote and beautiful little Surrey village.