Ten days had passed, and during those ten days Gwen had met both Hiram and Colin on two or three occasions. Each time she saw them together she was careful to talk a great deal more with the young American than with his English companion. At last, one Sunday afternoon, both the young men 'had gone out to the Villa Panormi with Audouin, for a cup of afternoon tea in the garden; and after tea was over, they had stolen away in pairs down the long alleys of oranges, and among the broken statues and tazzas filled with flowers upon the mouldering balustraded Italian terraces. 'Come with me, Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen cried gaily to Hiram (with a side glance at Colin once more to see how he took it). 'I want to show you such a lovely spot for one of your pretty little watercolour sketches—a bower of clematis, with such great prickly pears and aloes for the foreground, that I'm sure you'll fall in love with the whole picture the moment you see it.'
Hiram followed her gladly down to the arbour, a little corner at the bottom of the garden, rather English than Italian in its first conception, but thickly overgrown with tangled masses of sub-tropical vegetation. It's very pretty,' he said, 'certainly very pretty. Just the sort of thing that Mr. Audouin would absolutely revel in.'
'Shall I call him?' Gwen asked, going to the door of the arbour and looking about her carelessly. 'He must be somewhere or other hereabout.'
'Oh no, don't, Miss Russell,' Hiram answered hastily. 'He's having a long talk with Churchill about art, from what I overheard. Don't disturb them. Mr. Audouin has a wonderful taste in art, you know: I love to hear him talk about it in his own original pellucid fashion.'
'You're very fond of him, aren't you?' Gwen asked, looking at him with her big beautiful eyes. 'Is he any relation of yours?' 'Relation!' Hiram cried, 'oh dear no, Miss Bussell. But he's been so kind to me, so very kind to me! You can't imagine how much I owe to Mr. Audouin.'
He said it so earnestly, and seemed to want so much to talk about him, that Gwen sat down upon the stone seat in the little arbour and answered with womanly interest, 'Tell me all about it, then, Mr. Winthrop. I should like to hear how you came to pick up with him.'
Thus encouraged, Hiram, to his own immense astonishment, let loose the floodgates of his pent-up speech, and began to narrate the whole story of his lonely childhood, and of his first meeting with Audouin in the primeval woods of Geauga County. He was flattered that Gwen should have asked him indirectly for his history: more flattered still to find that she listened to his hasty reminiscences with evident attention. He told her briefly about his early attempts at drawing in the blackberry bottom; how the deacon had regarded his artistic impulses as so many proofs of original sin; how he had followed the trappers out into the frozen woodland; how he had met Audouin there by accident; and how Audouin had praised his drawings and encouraged him in his fancies, being the first human being he had ever known who cared at all for any of these things. 'And when you spoke so kindly about my poor little landscape the other day, Miss Russell,' he added, looking down and hesitating, 'I felt more happy than I had ever felt before since that day so long ago, in the woods away over yonder in America.'
But Gwen only smiled back a frank smile of unaffected sympathy, and answered warmly, 'I'm so glad you think so much of my criticism, I'm sure, Mr. Winthrop.'
Then Hiram went on and told her how he had worked and struggled at school and college, and at the block-cutting establishment; and how he had longed to go to England and be an artist; and how he had never got the opportunity. And then he spoke of the first day he had ever seen Gwen herself by the Lake of the Thousand Islands.
Till that moment it hadn't struck Gwen how very earnest Hiram's voice was gradually growing; but as he came to that first chance meeting at Alexandria Bay, she couldn't help observing that his lips began to tremble a little, and that his words were thick with emotion. For a second she thought she ought to rise up and suggest that they should join the others over yonder in the garden: but then she changed her mind again, and felt sure she must be mistaken. The young American artist could never mean to have the boldness to propose to her on the strength of so little encouragement. And besides, his story was really so interesting, and she was so very anxious to hear out the rest of it to the very end.
'And so you liked England immensely?' she asked him, when he reached in due course that part of his simple straightforward confidences. 'I wonder you didn't stop there and take regularly to landscape painting.'
'I was sorely tempted to stop,' Hiram answered, daring to look her straight in the eyes now; for he almost flattered himself she knew what he was going to say to her next.
'I came away from England most reluctantly, at Mr. Audouin's particular request: but I longed at the time to remain, for I had borne two words ringing in my ears from America to England, and those two words were just two names—Gwen and Chester.'
Gwen started away suddenly with a half-frightened expression, and said to him in a colder tone, 'Why, what do you mean? Explain yourself, please, Mr. Winthrop. My name you know is Gwen, and papa and I used once to live in Chester.'
Hiram took her hand timidly in his with an air of gentle command, and made her sit down again once more for a minute upon the seat in the arbour. 'You must hear me out to the end now, Miss Bussell,' he said in a very soft, firm voice, 'whatever comes of it. You mustn't go away yet. I didn't mean to speak so soon, but I have been hurried into it. I've staked my whole existence on a single throw, and you mustn't run away and leave me in the midst of it undecided.'
Gwen turned pale with nervousness, and withdrew her hand, but sat quite still, and listened to him attentively.
'From the first moment I ever saw you, Miss Russell,' he went on passionately, 'I felt you were the only woman I had ever loved or ever could love. I didn't know your full name, or who you were, or where you lived; but I heard your father call you Gwen, and I heard you say you had been at Chester. Those were the only two things I knew at all about you. And from the day when I saw you there looking over my sketch beside the Thousand Islands, I kept those two names of Gwen and Chester engraved upon my heart until I came to Europe. I keep one of them engraved there still until this very minute. And whatever you say to me, I shall keep it there unaltered until I die.... Oh, Miss Russell, I don't want you to give me an answer at once, I hope you won't give me an answer at once, because I can see from your face what that answer would most likely be: but I love you, I love you, I love you; and as long as I live I shall always, always love you.'
'I think, Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen said, slowly rising and hesitating, 'we ought to go back now and join the others.'
Hiram looked at her with a concentrated look of terror and despair that fairly frightened her. 'Not for one moment yet,' he whispered quite softly, 'not for one moment yet, I beg and pray of you. I have something else still to say to you.'
0122m
Gwen faltered for another second, and then stood still and listened passively.
'Miss Russell,' he began again, with white lips and straining eyeballs, 'I don't want you to give me an answer yet; but I do want you to wait a little and consider with yourself before you give me it. If you say no to me all at once, you will kill me, you will kill me. I have lived for so many weary years in this hope, so long deferred, that it has become a part, as it were, of my very being, and you can't tear it out of me now without lacerating and rending me. But I thought—I fancied—it was wildly presumptuous of me, but still I fancied—that this last week or two you had been more kind to me, more interested in me, more tolerant of me at least, than you used to be formerly.'
Gwen's heart smote her with genuine remorse when she heard that true accusation. Poor young fellow! She had undoubtedly led him into it, and she felt thoroughly ashamed of herself for the cruel ruse she had unwittingly practised upon him. Who would ever have thought, though, that the Yankee painter was really and truly so much in love with her?
She sighed slightly; for no woman can hear a man declare his heartfelt admiration for herself without emotion; and then she answered feebly, 'I... I... I only said I admired your pictures immensely, Mr. Winthrop.' Hiram could hardly gasp out a few words more. 'Oh, Miss Russell, don't give me an answer yet, don't give me an answer yet, I implore you. Wait and think it over a little while, and then answer me. You have never thought of me before in this way, I can see; you haven't any idea about me: wait and think it over, and remember that my whole life and happiness hangs upon it. Wait, oh! please wait and think it over.'
He pleaded with so much earnestness in his tone, and he looked so eagerly into her swimming eyes, that Gwen forgot for the moment his Yankee accent and his plain face and his unpolished manners, and saw him only as he was, an eager lover, begging her for mercy with all the restrained energy of a deep and self-contained but innately passionate nature. She could not help but pity him, he was so thoroughly and profoundly in earnest. For a moment her heart was really touched, not with love, but with infinite compassion, and she answered, half remorsefully, 'I'm afraid I can't hold you out much hope, Mr. Winthrop; but it shall be as you say; I will think it over, and let you have my full answer hereafter.' Hiram seized her hand eagerly. She tried to withdraw it, but he would not let her. 'Thank you,' he cried almost joyously; 'thank you, thank you! Then you don't refuse me utterly; you don't reject me without appeal; you will take my plea into consideration? I will not ask you again. I will not obtrude myself upon your notice unwillingly; but let me know in a fortnight. Do take a fortnight; my whole life is staked upon it; let it have a fortnight.'
Gwen's eyes were brimmed with two rising tears as she answered, trembling, 'Very well, it shall be a fortnight. Now we must go, Mr. Winthrop. We've stopped here too long. The others will be waiting for us.' And she drew her hand away from his as quietly as she was able, but not without a certain small inobtrusive sympathetic pressure. In her heart she pitied him.
As she passed out and joined the party at the far end of the garden, Hiram noticed that she didn't go up to speak at once to Colin Churchill. She let Audouin, nothing loth, lead her off down the alley of orange trees, and there she began speaking to him as if quite casually about Hiram.
'Your friend Mr. Winthrop has been telling me how kind you've been to him, and how much he owes to you,' she said, twirling a flower nervously between her fingers. 'How good of you to do all that you have done for him! Do you know, I quite envy you your opportunities for discovering such a genius in neglected places. I didn't know before, Mr. Audouin, that among all your other good qualities you were also a philanthropist. But yourprotégéthere is quite warm and enthusiastic about all your goodness and kindness to him both here and in America.'
She looked straight at him all unconsciously as she spoke, and her eyes, though of course she had hastily wiped them on leaving the arbour, glistened a little still with the two tears that had risen unbidden to their lids when she was talking a minute before with Hiram. Audouin noticed the glistening with a quiet delight, and naturally coupled that and her words together into a mistaken meaning. 'If only we were quite alone now,' he thought to himself regretfully, 'this would be the exact moment to say what I wish to her. But no matter; another opportunity will crop up before long, I don't doubt, and then I can speak to her quite at my leisure.'
As for Gwen, when she found herself alone in her room that evening, she sat down in the easy-chair by the bedside, and took a most unconscionable time in unfastening her necklet and earrings, and putting them away one by one in the little jewel-case. 'He's very much in love with me, that's certain,' she said to herself meditatively. 'Who could ever have imagined it? I never should have talked to him so much if I had fancied he could possibly have misunderstood me. Poor fellow, I'm awfully sorry for him. And how dreadfully distressed he looked when I didn't answer him! It quite made me take a sort of fancy to him for the moment.... What a romantic history, too! Fell in love with me at first sight, that day by the Thousand Islands! And I never even so much as looked at him..... This necklet doesn't at all become me. I shall get another one next time I go down the Corso.... But he paints beautifully, and no doubt about it; and that charming Mr. Audouin says he's really quite an artistic genius. I'm positively grieved with myself that I shall have to refuse him. He'll break his heart over it, poor young man; I'm sure he'll break his heart over it. Of course one doesn't mind breaking most men's hearts one bit, because, you see, in the long run they're none the worse for it. But this young Mr. Winthrop's another sort of person; if you break his heart, just this one time only, that'll be the end of him at once and for ever.... And what an unhappy life he seems to have had of it, too! One would be quite sorry to add to it by making him miserable with a refusal..... Ah, well, he's really a very good sort of young man in his way. What a pity he should be an American!... And yet why should Americans differ so much from other people, I wonder? What a wistful look he gave me when he asked me not to answer him now immediately. Upon my word, in a sort of way I really do like him just a little bit, the poor young fellow.'
Have you brought me the medicine, Beppo?'
'The what, Signora Cecca? Oh, the medicine? I don't call it medicine: I call it ————'
Cecca clapped her hand angrily upon his lips. 'Fool,' she said, 'what are you babbling about? Give me the bottle and say no more about it. That's a good friend indeed. I owe you a thank-you for this, truly.'
'But, Cecca, what do you want it for? You must swear to me solemnly what you want it for. The police, you know——'
Cecca laughed merrily—a joyous laugh, with no sorcery in it. One would have said, the guileless merriment of a little simple country maiden. 'The police, indeed,' she cried, softly but gaily. 'What have the police got to do with it, I wonder? I want to poison a cat, a monster of a cat, that wails and screams every night outside my window; and you must go and wrap the thing up in as much mystery as if—— Well, there! it's lucky nobody at Rome can understand good sound Calabrian even if they overhear it, or you'd go and make the folks suspicious with your silly talking—and so loud, too.'
Giuseppe looked at her, and muttered slowly something inarticulate. Then he looked again in a stealthy, frightened fashion; and at last he made up his mind to speak out boldly.
'Cecca! stop! I know what you want that little phial for.'
Cecca turned and smiled at him saucily. 'Oh, you know!' she said in a light ironical tone. 'You know, do you? Then, body of God, it's no use my telling you, so that's all about it.'
'Cecca,' the young man said again, snatching at the tiny bottle, which she still held gingerly between her finger and thumb, as if toying with it and fondling it, 'I've been watching you round at the Englishman's studio, and I've found out what you want the—the medicine for.'
Cecca's forehead puckered up quickly into a scowling frown (as when she sat for Clytemnestra), and she answered angrily, 'You've been playing the spy, then, have you really? I thank you, Signor Giuseppe, I thank you.'
'Listen, Cecca. I have been watching the Englishman's studio. There comes an English lady there, a beautiful tall lady, with a military father—a lady like this:' and Giuseppe put on in a moment a ludicrous caricature of Gwen's gait and carriage and manner. 'You have seen her, and you are jealous of her.'
Quick as lightning, Cecca saw her opportunity, and caught at it instinctively with Italian cunning. Giuseppe was right in principle, there was no denying it; but he had mistaken between Gwen and Minna. He had got upon the wrong tack, and she would not undeceive him. Keeping her forehead still dexterously bent to the same terrible scowl as before, and never for a second betraying her malicious internal smile of triumph, she answered, as if angry at being detected, 'Jealous! and of her! Signor Giuseppe, you are joking.'
'I am not joking, Cecca. I can see you are jealous this very moment. You love the Englishman. What is the good of loving him? He will not marry you, and you will not marry him: you would do much better to take, after all, to poor old Beppo. But you're jealous of the tall lady, because you think the Englishman's in love with her. What does it matter to you or me whether he is or whether he isn't? And it is for her that you want the medicine.'
Cecca drew a long breath and pretended to be completely baffled. 'Give me the bottle,' she cried; 'give me the bottle, Beppo.'
Giuseppe held it triumphantly at arm's length above his head.
'Not till you swear to me, Cecca, that you don't want to use it against the tall lady.' Cecca wrung her hands in mock despair. 'You won't give it to me, Beppo? You won't give it to me? What do you want me to swear it by? The holy water—the rosary—the medal of the holy father?'
Giuseppe smiled a smile of contemptuous superciliousness.
'Holy water!—rosary!—Pope!' he cried, 'Much you care for them indeed, Signora. No, no; you must swear by something that will bind you firmly. You must swear on your own little pocket image of Madonna della Guardia of Monteleone.'
Cecca pouted. (To the daughter of ten generations of Calabrian brigands a detail like a little poisoning case was merely a matter for careless pouting and feminine vagaries.)
'You will compel me?' she asked hesitatingly.
Giuseppe nodded.
'Or else I don't give you the bottle,' he murmured.
Cecca drew the little silver image with well-simulated reluctance from inside her plaited bodice. 'What am I to swear?' she asked petulantly.
'Say the words after me,' Beppo insisted. 'I swear by the mother of God, Madonna della Guardia of Monteleone, and all holy saints, that I will not touch or hurt or harm the tall English lady with the military father. And if I do may the Madonna forget me.'
Cecca repeated the words after him, severally and distinctly. It was very necessary that she should be quite precise, lest the Madonna should by inadvertence make any mistake about the particular person. If she didn't make it quite clear at first that the oath only regarded Gwen, the Madonna might possibly be very angry with her for poisoning Minna, and that of course would be extremely awkward. It's a particularly unpleasant thing for any one to incur the displeasure of such a powerful lady as Madonna della Guardia at Monteleone.
'You may have the bottle now if you like,' Beppo said, handing it back to her carelessly.
Cecca pouted once more. 'What's the use of it now?' she asked languidly. 'Except, of course, to poison the cat with!'
Beppo laughed. To the simple unsophisticated Calabrian mind the whole episode only figured itself as a little bit of Cecca's pardonable feminine jealousy. Women will be women, and if they see a rival, of course, they'll naturally try to poison her. To say the truth, Beppo thought the fancy pretty and piquant on Cecca's part rather than otherwise. The fear of the Roman police was to him the only serious impediment.
'I may come and see you again next Sunday, Cecca?' he asked as he took up his bundle to leave the room. 'You owe me a little courtesy for this.'
Cecca smiled and nodded in a very gay humour. There was no need for deception now she had got the precious bottle securely put away in the innermost pocket of her model's kirtle. 'Yes,' she answered benignly. 'you may come on Sunday. You have deserved well of me.'
But as soon as Beppo had left the room Signora Cecca flung herself down upon the horsehair mattress in the corner (regardless of her back hair), and rolled over and over in her wild delight, and threw her arms about, as if she were posing for the Pythoness, and laughed aloud in her effusive southern joy and satisfaction. 'Ha! ha!' she cried to herself gaily, 'he thought it was that one! He thought it was that one, did he? He's got mighty particular since he came to Rome, Beppo has—afraid of the police, the coward; and he won't have anything to do even with poisoning a poor heretic of an Englishwoman. Madonna della Guardia, I have no such scruples for my part! But he mistook the one: he thought I was angry with the tall handsome one. No, no, she may do as she likes for all I care for her. It's the ugly little governess with the watery eyes that my Englishman's in love with. What he can see to admire in her I can't imagine—a thing with no figure—but he's in love with her, and she shall pay for it, the caitiff creature; she shall pay for it, I promise her. Here's the bottle, dear little bottle! How bright and clear it dances! Cecca Bianchelli, you shall have your revenge yet. Madonna della Guardia, good little Madonna, sweet little Madonna, you shall have your candles. Don't be angry with me, I pray you, Madonna mia, I shall not break my oath; it's the other one, the little governess, dear Madonna! She's only a heretic—an Englishwoman—a heretic; an affair of love, what would you have, Madonna? You shall get your candles, see if you don't, and your masses too, your two nice little masses, in your own pretty sweet little chapel on the high hill at Monteleone!'
It was Tuesday afternoon at Colin Churchill's, and Minna had got her usual weekly leave to go and visit her cousin at his own studio. 'I find her devotion admirable,' said Madame, 'but then, this cousin he is young and handsome. After all, there is perhaps nothing so very extraordinary in it, really.'
Cecca was there, too, waiting her opportunity, with the little phial always in her pocket: for who knows when Madonna della Guardia may see the chance of earning her two promised masses? She is late this afternoon, the English governess; but she will come soon: she never forgets to come every Tuesday.
By and by, Minna duly arrived, and Colin kissed her before Cecca's very eyes—the miscreant! and she took off her bonnet even, and sat down and seemed quite prepared to make an afternoon of it.
'Cecca,' Colin cried, 'will you ask them to make us three cups of coffee?—You can stop, Minna, and have some coffee, can't you?'
Cecca didn't understand the English half of the sentence, of course, but she ran off quite enchanted to execute the little commission in the Italian bent of it. A cup of coffee! It was the very thing; Madonna della Guardia, what fortune you have sent me!
Colin and Minna sat talking within while the coffee was brewing, and when it was brought in, Cecca waited for her opportunity cautiously, until Minna had taken a cup for herself, and laid it down upon the little bare wooden table beside her. It would never do to put the medicine by mistake into the cup of the Englishman; we must manage these little matters with all due care and circumspection. So Cecca watched in the background, as a cat watches a mouse's hole with the greatest silence and diligence, till at last a favourable chance occurred: and then under the pretence of handing Minna the biscuits which came up with the coffee, she managed cleverly to drop half the contents of the phial into the cup beside her. Half was quite enough for one trial: she kept the other half, in case of accident, to use again if circumstances should demand it.
Just at that moment a note came in from Maragliano. Could Colin step round to the other studio for a quarter of an hour? A wealthy patron had dropped in, and wanted to consult with him there about a commission.
Cohn read the letter through hastily; explained its contents to Minna; kissed her once more: (Ha, the last time, the last time for ever! he will never do that again, the Englishman!) and then ran out to see the wealthy patron.
Minna was left alone for that half-hour in the studio with Cecca.
Would she drink the coffee, now? that was the question. No, as bad luck and all the devils would have it, she didn't seem to think of tasting or sipping it. A thousand maledictions! The stuff would get cold, and then she would throw it away and ask for another cupful. Blessed Madonna of Monte-leone, make her drink it! Make her drink it! Bethink you, unless she does, dear little Madonna, you do not get your candles or your masses!
Still Minna sat quite silent and motionless, looking vacantly at the beautiful model, whom she had forgotten now to feel angry or jealous about. She was thinking, thinking vacantly; and her Italian was so far from fluent that she didn't feel inclined to begin a conversation off-hand with the beautiful model.
Just to encourage her, then (there's nothing like society), Ceeca drew up her three-legged stool close beside the signorina, and began to sip carelessly and unconcernedly at her own cup of coffee. Perhaps the sight of somebody else drinking might chance by good luck to make the Englishwoman feel a little thirsty.
But Minna only looked at her, and smiled half-unconsciously. To her great surprise, the Italian woman perceived that two tears were slowly trickling down her rival's cheeks.
Italians are naturally sympathetic, even when they are on the eve of poisoning you; and besides one is always curious to know what one is crying for. So Cecca leaned forward kindly, and said in her gentlest tone: 'You are distressed, signorina. You are suffering in some way. Can I do anything for you?'
Minna started, and wiped away the two tears hastily. 'It is nothing,' she said, 'I didn't mean it. I—I fancied I was alone, I had forgotten.'
'What! you speak Italian!' Cecca cried, a little astonished, and half anxious to enjoy her triumph by anticipation. 'Ah, signorina, I know what is the matter. I have guessed your secret: I have guessed your secret!'
Minna blushed. 'Hush,' she said eagerly. 'Not a word about it. My friend may return. Not a word about it.'
But still she didn't touch her coffee.
Then Cecca began to talk to her gently and soothingly, in her best soft Italian manner. Poor thing, she was evidently very sad. So far away from her home too. Cecca was really quite sorry for her. She tried to draw her out and in her way to comfort her. The signorina hadn't long to live: let us at least be kind and sympathetic to her.
For, you see, an Italian woman is capable of poisoning you in such a perfectly good-humoured and almost affectionate fashion.
At first, Minna didn't warm very much to the beautiful model: she had still her innate horror of Italian women strong upon her; and besides she knew from her first meeting that Cecca had a terrible vindictive temper. But in time Cecca managed to engage her in real conversation, and to tell her about her own little personal peasant history. Yes, Cecca came from Calabria, from that beautiful province; and her father, her father was a fisherman.
Minna started. 'A fisherman! How strange. And my father too, was also a fisherman away over yonder in England!'
It was Cecca's turn to start at that. A fisherman! How extraordinary. She could hardly believe it. She took it for granted all along that Minna, though a governess, was a grand English lady; for the idea of a fisher man's daughter dressing and living in the way that Minna did was almost inconceivable to the unsophisticated mind of a Calabrian peasant woman. And to wear a bonnet, too! to wear a bonnet!
'Tell me all about it,' Cecca said, drawing closer, and genuinely interested (with a side eye upon the untasted coffee). 'You came to Rome then,' jerking her two hands in the direction of the door, 'to follow the Englishman?' 'Signora Cecca,' Minna said, with a sudden vague instinct, in her tentative Italian, 'I will trust you. I will tell you all about it. I was a poor fisherman's daughter in England, and I always loved my cousin, the sculptor.' Cecca listened with the intensest interest. Minna lifted her cup for the first time, and took a single sip of the poisoned coffee.
'Good!' thought Cecca calmly to herself. 'If she takes a first sip, why of course in that case she will certainly finish it.'
Then Minna went on with her story, shortly and in difficulty, pieced out every here and there by Cecca's questions and ready pantomime. Cecca drank in all the story with the deepest avidity. It was so strange that something should just then have moved the Englishwoman to make aconfidanteof her. A poor fisherman's daughter, and neglected now by her lover who had become a grand and wealthy sculptor! Mother of God, from the bottom of her heart, she really pitied her.
'And when he came to Rome,' Cecca said, helping out the story of her own accord, 'he fell in with the grand English ladies like the one with the military papa; and they made much of him; and you were afraid, my little signorina, that he had almost forgotten you! And so you came to Rome on purpose to follow him.'
Minna nodded, and her eyes filled with tears a second time.
'Poor little signorina!' Cecca said earnestly.
'It was cruel of him, very cruel of him. But when people come to Rome they are often cruel, and they soon forget their lovers of the province.' Something within her made her think that moment of poor Giuseppe, who had followed her so trustfully from that far Calabria.
Minna raised the cup once more, and took another sip at the poisoned coffee. Cecca watched the action closely, and this time gave a small involuntary sigh of relief when Minna set it down again almost untasted. Poor little thing! after all she was only a fisherman's daughter, and she wanted her lover, her lover of the province, to love her still the same as ever! Nothing so very wrong or surprising in that! Natural, most natural.... But then, the Englishman, the Englishman! she mustn't be allowed to carry off the Englishman.... And Giuseppe, poor Giuseppe.... Well, there, you know; in love and war these things will happen, and one can't avoid them.
'And you knew him from a child?' she asked innocently.
'Yes, from a child. We lived together in a little village by the sea-shore in England; my father was a fisherman, and his a gardener. He used to go into the fields by the village, and make me little images of mud, which I used to keep upon my mantelpiece, and that was the first beginning, you see, of his sculpture.'
Mother of heaven, just like herself and Giuseppe! How they used to play together as children on the long straight shore at Monteleone. 'But you were not Christians in England, you were pagans, not Christians!'
For the idea of images had suggested to Cecca's naïve mind the notion of the Madonna.
Minna almost laughed, in spite of herself, at the curious misapprehension, and drew out from her bosom the little cross that she always wore instead of a locket. 'Oh yes,' she said simply, without dwelling upon any minor points of difference between them; 'we are Christians—Christians.'
The girl examined the cross reverently, and then looked back at the coffee with a momentary misgiving. After all, the Englishwoman was very gentle and human-like and kind-hearted. It was natural she should want to keep her country lover. And besides she was really, it seemed, no heretic in the end at all, but a good Christian.
'When people come to Rome and become famous,' she repeated musingly, 'they do wrong to be proud and to forget the lovers of their childhood.' Giuseppe loved her dearly, there was no denying it, and she used to love him dearly, too, down yonder on the shore at Monteleone.
Minna raised her cup of coffee a third time, and took a deeper drink. Nearly a quarter of the whole was gone now; but not much of the poison, Cecca thought to herself, thank heaven; that was heavy and must have sunk to the bottom. If only one could change the cups now, without being observed! Poor little thing, it would be a pity, certainly, to poison her. One oughtn't to poison people, properly speaking, unless one has really got some serious grudge against them. She was a good little soul, though no doubt insipid, and a Christian, too; Madonna della Guardia, would the bargain hold good, Cecca wondered silently, seeing the Englishwoman had miraculously turned out to be after all a veritable Christian. These are points of casuistry on which one would certainly like to have beforehand the sound opinion of a good unprejudiced Calabrian confessor.
'You think he makes too much of the tall signorina!' Cecca said lightly, smiling and nodding. (Cecca had, of course, an immense fund of sympathy with the emotion of jealousy in other women.)
Minna blushed and looked down timidly without answering. What on earth could have possessed her to make so free, at this particular minute, with this terrible Italian model woman? She really couldn't make it out herself, and yet she knew there had been some strange unwonted impulse moving within her. (If she had read Von Hartmann, she would have called it learnedly the action of the Unconscious. As it was, she would have said, if she had known all, that it was a Special Providence.)
So wishing merely to change the subject, and having nothing else to say at the moment, she looked up almost accidentally at the completed clay of the Nymph Bathing, and said simply: 'That is a beautiful statue, Signora Cecca.'
Cecca smiled a majestic smile of womanly gratification, and showed her double row of even regular pearl-white teeth with coquettish beauty. 'I posed for it,' she said, throwing herself almost unconsciously into the familiar attitude. 'It is my portrait!'
'It is a splendid portrait,' Minna answered cordially, glancing quickly from the original to the copy, 'a splendid portrait of a very beautiful and exquisitely formed woman.'
'Signorina!' Cecca cried, standing up in front of her, and roused by a sudden outburst of spontaneous feeling to change her plan entirely, 'you are quite mistaken; the master does not love the tall lady. I know the master well, I have been here all the time, I have watched him narrowly. He does not love the tall lady: she loves him, I tell you, but he does not care for her; in his heart of hearts he does not love her; I know, for I have watched them. Signorina, I like you, you are a sweet little Englishwoman, and I like you dearly. Your friend from the village in England shall marry you!' ('Oh, don't talk so!' Minna cried parenthetically, hiding her face passionately between her hands.)
'And if the tall lady were to try to come between you and him,' Cecca added vigorously, 'I would poison her—I would poison her—I would poison her! She shall not steal another woman's lover, the wretched creature. I hate such meanness, signorina, I will poison her.'
As Cecca said those words, with an unfeigned air of the deepest and most benevolent sympathy, she managed to catch her long loose scarf as if by accident in the corner of the light table where Minna's half-finished cup of coffee was still standing, and to upset it carelessly on to the floor of the studio. The cup with a crash broke into a hundred pieces.
At that very moment Colin entered. He saw Minna rising hastily from the settee beside the overturned table, and Cecca down on her knees upon the floor, wiping up the coffee hurriedly with one of the coarse studio towels. Cecca looked up in his face with a fearless glance as if nothing unusual had happened. 'An accident, signor,' she cried: 'my scarf caught in the table. I have spilt the signorina's cup of coffee. But no matter. I will run down immediately and tell them below to make her another.'
'Cecca and I have been talking together, Colin,' Minna said, replacing the fallen table hastily, 'and, do you know, isn't it strange, she's a fisherman's daughter in Calabria? and oh! Colin, I don't believe after all she's really half such a bad sort of girl as I took her to be when I first saw her. She's been talking to me here quite nicely and sympathetically.'
'Italians are all alike,' Colin answered, with the usual glib English faculty for generalisation about all 'foreigners.' 'They'll be ready to stab you one minute, and to fall upon your neck and kiss you the very next.'
Going out of the studio to order more coffee from the trattoria next door, Cecca happened to meet on the doorstep with her friend Giuseppe.
'Beppo,' she said, looking up at him more kindly than had been her wont of late: 'Beppo, I want to tell you something—I've changed my mind about our little difference. If you like, next Sunday you may marry me.'
'Next Sunday! Marry you!' Beppo exclaimed, astonished. 'Oh, Cecca, Cecca, you cannot mean it!'
'I said, next Sunday, if you like, you may marry me. That's good ordinary sensible Calabrian, isn't it? If you wish, I'll give it you in Tuscan: you can understand nothing but Tuscan, it seems, since you came to Rome, my little brother.'
She said the words tenderly, banter as they were, in their own native dialect: and Beppo saw at once that she was really in earnest.
'But next Sunday,' he exclaimed. 'Next Sunday, my little one! And the preparations?'
'I am rich!' Cecca answered calmly. 'I bring you a dower. I am the most favourite model in all Rome this very moment.'
'And the Englishman—the Englishman? What are you going to do with the Englishman?'
'The Englishman may marry his sweetheart if he will,' the girl replied with dogged carelessness.
'Cecca! you did not give the.... medicine to the Englishman?'
Cecca drew the half-empty bottle from her pocket and dashed it savagely against the small paving-stones in the alley underfoot. 'There,' she cried, eagerly, as she watched it shiver into little fragments. 'See the medicine! That is the end of it.'
'And the cat, Cecca?'
Cecca drew a long breath. 'How much of it would hurt a human being—a woman?' she asked anxiously. 'Somebody has drunk a little by mistake—just so much!' And she measured the quantity approximately with the tip of her nail upon her little finger.
Giuseppe shook his head re-assuringly, shrugged his shoulders, and opened his hands, palms outward, as if to show he was evidently making no mental reservation. 'Harmless!' he said. Quite harmless. It would take a quarter of a phial at least to produce any effect worth speaking of.'
Cecca clasped her silver image of the Madonna ecstatically. 'That's well, Beppo,' she answered with a nod. 'I must go now. On Sunday, little brother! On Sunday. Beppo—Beppo—it was all a play. I love you. I love you.'
But as she went in to order the coffee the next second, she said to herself with a regretful grimace: 'What a fool I was after all to waste the medicine! Why, if only I had thought of it. I might have used it to poison the other one, the tall Englishwoman. She shall not be allowed to steal away the little signorina's lover!'
In the gardens of the Villa Panormi, Gwen Howard-Russell was walking up and down by herself one morning, a few days later, among the winter flowers (for it was now January), when she saw a figure she fancied she could recognise entering cautiously at the main gate by the high road to the Ponte Molle. Why, yes, she couldn't be mistaken. It was certainly the woman Cecca, the beautiful model down at Mr. Colin Churchill's studio! How very extraordinary and mysterious! What on earth could she be coming here for?
Gwen walked quickly down to meet the girl, who stood half hesitating in the big central avenue, and asked her curiously what she wanted.
'Signorina,' Cecca answered, not unrespectfully, 'I wish to speak with you a few minutes in private.'
Gwen was surprised and amused at this proposal, but not in the least disconcerted. How deliciously Italian and romantic! Mr. Churchill had sent her a letter, no doubt—perhaps a declaration—and he had employed the beautiful model to be the naturally appropriate bearer of it. There's something in the very air of Rome that somehow lends itself spontaneously to these delightful mystifications. In London, now, his letter would have been delivered in the ordinary course of business by the common postman! How much more poetical, and antique, and romantic, to send it round by the veritable hands of his own beautiful imaginary Wood Nymph!
'Come this way,' she said, in her imperious English fashion; 41 will speak with you down here in the bower.'
Cecca followed her to the bower in silence, for she resented our brusque insular manners: and somewhat to Gwen's surprise when she reached the bower, she seated herself like an equal upon the bench beside her. These Italians have no idea of the natural distinctions between the various social classes.
'Well,' Gwen asked, after a moment's pause. 'What do you want to say to me? Have you brought me any message or letter?'
'No, signorina,' the girl answered somewhat maliciously. 'Nothing: nothing. I come to speak to you of my own accord solely.'
There was another short pause, as though Cecca expected the English lady to make some further inquiry: but as Gwen said nothing, Cecca began again: 'I want to tell you something, signorina. You know the little English governess, the master's cousin?'
'Yes, I know her. That is to say, I have met her.'
'Well, I have come to tell you something about her. She is a fisherman's daughter, as I am, and she was brought up, far away, in a village in England, together with the master.'
'I know all about her,' Gwen answered somewhat coldly. 'She was a servant afterwards at a house in London, and then she became a teacher in a school, and finally a governess. I have heard all that before, from a friend of mine in England.'
'But I have something else to tell you about her,' Cecca continued with unusual self-restraint for an Italian woman. 'Something else that concerns you personally. She was brought up with the master, and she used to play with him in the meadows, when she was a child, where he made her little images of the Madonna in clay; and that was how he first of all began to be a sculptor. Then she followed him from her village to a city: and there he learned to be more of a sculptor. By-and-by, he came to Rome: but still, the little signorina loved him and wished to follow him. And at last she did follow him, because she loved him. And the master loves her, too, and is very fond of her. That is all that I have to tell you.'
She kept her eye fixed steadily on Gwen while she spoke, and watched in her cat-like fashion to see whether the simple story was telling home, as she meant it to do, to Gwen's intelligence. As she uttered the words she saw Gwen's face grow suddenly scarlet, and she knew she had rightly effected her intended purpose. She had struck the right chord in Gwen's pride, and Minna now would have nothing more to fear from the tall Englishwoman. 'Safer than the poison,' she thought to herself reflectively, 'and as it happens, every bit as useful and effectual, without half the trouble or danger.'
Gwen looked at her steadily and without flinching. 'Why do you say all this tome?' she asked haughtily.
'Because I knew it closely concerned you,' Cecca replied, in her coolest tone: 'and I see from your face, too, signorina, whatever you choose to say, that I was not mistaken.'
And indeed, in that one moment, the whole truth about Minna and Colin, never before even suspected by her, had flashed suddenly across Gwen's mind with the most startling vividness. She saw it all now, as clear as daylight. How could she ever have been foolish enough for a moment not to have understood it? Colin Churchill didn't make love to her for the very best of all possible reasons, because he was already in love with another person: and that other person was nobody else but the little governess with the old-fashioned bonnet. She reeled a little at the suddenness of the revelation, but she managed somehow or other to master her confusion and even to assume externally a careless demeanour.
'But what interest haveyouin telling me this?' she asked again of Cecca haughtily.
'Because I like the little signorina,' Cecca answered quite truthfully, 'and I was anxious to do anything on earth I could to serve her.'
After all, except for her casual little provincial leaning towards the use of poison (quite pardonable in a pretty Calabrian), Cecca was really not a bad sort of girl at bottom, as girls go in this strange and oddly blended universe of ours.
'Is that all you have to say to me?' Gwen enquired after another short pause, with ill-affected languor, of the beautiful model.
'That is all, signorina. I see you understand me. Good morning.'
'Stop!' Gwen said, taking out her purse uneasily. 'You have done me, too, a service, my girl. Take that for your trouble in coming here.'
Cecca drew herself up proudly to her full height. She was an Italian peasant woman, and yet she could resist an offer of money. 'No, no, signorina,' she answered as haughtily as Gwen herself. 'I want no reward: I am rich, I am the queen of the models. I did it for love of the little lady.' And she walked with a stately salute out of the bower and down the solid marble steps of the great garden.
When she was gone, Gwen buried her face in her hands for a moment, and cried bitterly. It was not so much the disappointment that she felt, though she had really been very much in love with Colin Churchill, as the humiliation of knowing that Cecca had discovered both her secret and her disappointment. And indeed, Cecca's short disclosure had given a sudden death-blow to all Gwen's dearest and most deeply-rooted projects. In the inmost depths of her proud heart, Gwen Howard-Russell felt with instinctive unquestioning resolution that it would be impossible now under any circumstances for her to marry Colin Churchill. If it had been any other woman in the world save only little simple Minna, Gwen might have taken a sort of keen delight of battle in winning her sweetheart's love cleverly away from her. She might have fought her for her lover all along the line with feminine strategy, and enjoyed the victory all the better in the end because she had had to struggle hard for it. For though our hypocritical varnished civilisation is loth to confess it, in Europe at least it is always the women who are competing covertly among themselves for the small possible stock of husbands. How can it be otherwise when for every 'eligible' man in our society there are usually about half a dozen marriageable women? But the moment Gwen knew and realised that Colin was in love with Minna, or even that Minna was in love with Colin, she felt immediately that the game was now rendered absolutely impossible; for Minna had once been a servant, a common servant, a London parlour-maid, and Gwen Howard-Bussell could not for one moment bring down her proud head to treat a servant as even a conceivable rival. Oh, no, as soon as she thought it possible that Minna might even in her own heart aspire to marry Colin Churchill, there was nothing on earth left for her but to retire immediately from the utterly untenable position.
She could have married Colin himself, of course, in spite of all his past, as humble even as Minna's, for he had genius; and in a man genius is universally allowed to atone for everything. A woman may stoop to marry a man below her own position in the social scale by birth, if it is generally understood that she does it as a graceful and appreciative tribute to literary, scientific, or artistic greatness. But to put herself in rivalry as it were with a woman, not even a genius, and born beneath her, in a struggle for the hand of such a man, who ought rather of course to receive hers gratefully, as a distinguished favour—why, the whole thing is obviously an absolute impossibility. So Gwen dried her eyes as well as she was able, with her little dainty cambric pocket-handkerchief, and settled with herself at once and finally that the Colin Churchill day-dream was now at last dispelled for ever.
He was in love with the little governess—the little governess with the old-fashioned bonnet! And the little governess had been a parlour-maid in London! And she herself, Gwen Howard-Russell, had been on the very verge of putting herself in unworthy rivalry with her! She shuddered to think of it, actually shuddered even to think of it. The very idea was so horribly repugnant to her. And how many women of her own social status are there in this realm of England who would not have sympathised therein with Gwen Howard-Russell? Our pride is so much stronger than our Christianity, and in this case, oddly enough, the one power brought about pretty much the same practical result in the long run as the other.
As Gwen rose with red eyes and flushed cheeks, to make her way back to her own bedroom, she saw, as she passed along the shrubby orache hedge that separated the garden from the high-road, a wistful face looking anxiously and eagerly from outside, in the direction of the great villa. She knew in a moment whose it was: it was Hiram Winthrop's. He had stolen away from his studio and the Capture of Babylon, to come out that morning to the dusty roads of the suburbs, and see if he could catch a passing glimpse anywhere of Gwen Howard-Russell. His face was pale and anxious, and Gwen saw for herself in a second that he was wasted with his eagerness in waiting for her deferred answer. Her heart went forth for the moment to that sad devoted expression. 'Poor fellow,' she muttered to herself compassionately, 4 he's very much in love with me, very much in love with me. I wish to goodness I could only have given him a favourable answer.'