CHAPTER XVII.

Minna had given Hans her address, and he one day called to see her. It was getting near the end of her stay in London.

Her first reflection as he came into the room was perhaps slightly irrelevant.

‘How old is Hans now? Let me see: he must be twenty-eight at least. He might be anything, as far as looks go.’

He certainly might have been anything from twenty-eight to thirty-eight, because he was dark and grave, with a certain picturesqueness of figure and richness of colouring which made him look older than he really was. There was nothing left in him of that ingenuousness which she had known in him when he had been a youth. His movements had a certain slowness and deliberation which was neither languor nor effeminacy. His smile, very infrequent, was delightful when it came, and it came now as he drew near to his cousin Minna, took her hand, and bent his fine dark eyes upon her.

‘I have been remiss, Minna. I wanted to come before; but when one has been two whole years outside one’s own country, and returned to London, one is apt to find a good deal to do--to put it mildly.’

‘I can well believe it, and feel the privilege of receiving any visit from you. To tell the truth, I thought you were booked to be abroad a good deal longer.’

‘I had vaguely thought about staying longer. But I’m a vagrant--I got tired of cloudless blue skies and endless unabashed sunshine, and all at once began to long for some English damp and greenness.’

‘In London?’

‘I see you have not lost your old trick of taking a fellow up pretty sharply. No, not in London--at least, only at first. I’m hoping soon to be in the country. I shall spend the whole summer, at least, in England, and I hope you will let me come and see you before it is over.’

‘Surely. I should think it very strange if you went away without coming to see me. You don’t know our part of the country, either. Yes, you must come. Come when you like. You must take us as you find us--Signor Oriole and Rhoda and me.’

‘He is still with you, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it true that Mrs. Marchmont has an idea of going with you to look at this place near yours?’

‘Yes. We go together the day after to-morrow. She says it is to be only for one night.’

‘H’m. She knows Oriole is with you?’

‘Of course she knows. Hans, I must congratulate you on your picture. It is odd that you and I should be hand-in-hand here, after Rome, isn’t it? Those old days, I see, remained in your heart as well as in mine. I felt quite a thrill when I saw it. I pointed it out to Mrs. Marchmont.’

‘Did you? What did she say?’

‘You are so popular now that I can afford to tell you exactly what she said. “Very pretty, and very sentimental,” were her words. “He can do better than that, and intends to.”’

Hans smiled slightly with eyes a little downcast, and pulled out the fingers of the glove which he had removed from his right hand.

‘She has not grown sentimental, at any rate,’ he said, with the faintest possible shrug of the shoulders.

‘No,’ said Minna slowly. ‘You go there often, I suppose?’ she added, almost abruptly.

‘Oh no!’ replied Hans, lifting his eye at once, and looking straight at her. ‘Very little. She is frightfully particular. Of course there can be no sympathy between him and me, fiend that he is; and she simply doesn’t encourage men about the place. Of course I call now and then, so do a few others; but none of us go as often as we should like to.’

He spoke with a grave simplicity which had something almost boyish in it, and which stirred Minna’s heart to a warm feeling for him. Her expression at once became more cordial.

‘You see,’ he went on, ‘there’s no chaperon, no lady-companion, no nothing. She’s all alone; Marchmont said he would have no one of the sort about the house, so----’ He shrugged his shoulders again.

Minna thought to herself: ‘That is, she does not choose to have a chaperon. Of course she could have one if she liked. But she has no need of any such appendage. She is strong.’ All she said was:

‘Well, I dare say she is quite right. Then, Hans, you will let me know when you want to come and stay with me. It is a simple place, you know. Don’t expect the luxuries of your father’s palace down at Brighton.’

‘Don’t twit me with that,’ said Hans vexedly. ‘How I detest that place, Minna! The horrible vulgarity of it, the smell of money, for it is nothing else. The girls--have you seen any of the girls lately?’

‘Not very lately. Once or twice one of them has condescended to penetrate to our Northern wilds, and astonish the natives with her costumes, and her general tone of fashion and--what must one call it?--_disinvoltura_. But you know they are not bad girls. Their bark is far worse than their bite. It is their education.’

‘I don’t get on with them,’ said Hans candidly. ‘And they think me a mooning, sentimental idiot. So there is a great sympathy between us. The whole aspect of that place--the newness, the bareness, the glass-houses, and the gravel drive; the organ, and the picture-gallery, and--_tutti quanti_! No, I will promise you not to pine after it when I am with you.’

‘Don’t despise it, my good sir. It means ease and freedom from care for you in days to come. You are an artist now; you may be a Mæcenas some time.’

‘I don’t want to be either,’ he said, drawing his brows together.

‘Not wish to be an artist! Hans!’

‘Well, not that exactly. We always want what we haven’t got. My wishes I tell to no one.’

He rose to take leave. She did not detain him. He repeated his promise of writing to her, and departed. After he had gone she stood for a few minutes, thoughtfully looking down, her hand resting on the mantelpiece.

‘I wonder if his wishes have any connection whatsoever with his picture,’ she thought to herself, and shook her head. ‘I hope not.’

* * * * *

Fulvia kept her word, and met Minna at the railway-station on the appointed day. She dismissed her servant, when he had attended to her, saying:

‘You can go, Parkinson. Be sure you see Mr. Marchmont, and tell him it was all right at the station, and that I will send a telegram to-morrow to say at what time you are to meet me. It may be night.’

The man went away. Very soon the two women were alone together in the carriage, and the train speeding swiftly Northwards.

They were not very talkative, but at last Fulvia said:

‘What did people think and say when Signor Oriole became part of your household?’

Minna shrugged her shoulders.

‘My dear, what could they do or say? My well-known eccentricity was considered to account for everything. One or two of them said it was very funny, but I really did not care much what they said. Besides, I had my brother to support me in all that I did. He quite approved.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Yes. I have one brother, and scarcely another relation in the world. His daughter, my niece Rhoda, almost lives with me. My brother is a man whom no one can despise or pooh-pooh. He is a very lucky man. He holds extreme opinions (so called) on many questions, social and religious and others, and yet he is accepted and respected as if he were the most orthodox of the orthodox. You know, I am a much more commonplace, conservative person than he is in reality, and yet I have the credit of being reckless, impulsive and defiant of all the conventionalities, while Mr. Hamilton, who despises conventionalities in a practical way which I dare not attempt, is a tame cat in the most rigorously respectable houses. Thus it is sometimes.’

‘Yes, I know. What did he do, then--Mr. Hamilton--to make things straight?’

‘My dear Fulvia, I cannot admit that they needed making straight. But if they did, this is how it was managed. Very soon after my return home with Signor Oriole, Richard came to stay with me, bringing Rhoda with him. He paid me a long visit. He was seen everywhere with Signor Oriole. They got on splendidly. We were all together constantly. My niece and your--and Signor Oriole are devoted to each other. His ways with children and young people are fascinating--there are no fathers so charming to their children as the Italian fathers. You have only to see them together to know that at once. Then we all went away together, and stayed a good while at my brother’s place--in fact, we live alternately at each other’s houses. I returned, with Rhoda and Signor Oriole. He has taught her Latin and Italian. There was really nothing to be said. I do not know a single friend of mine who really knows him and dislikes him.’

‘No,’ said Fulvia, in a low voice and with downcast eyes. ‘To know him is to love him. If Beppo had had the destiny suited to him he would have been the adored father of the happiest family of children the world ever knew. I know it.’

She said no more about it, but something in her face told Minna that she felt all this more deeply than, perhaps, she would have admitted.

Minna was thinking of the coming meeting all the time that she was driving Fulvia in her pony-carriage from the station to her house, a distance of some six miles. They drove through the lanes, whose hedges were fresh with the brilliant green of early June, not yet white with hawthorn--that is a bloom which rarely shows itself early in Durham--clear-looking fields and pastures, great trees with polished leaves shining as they rustled in the wind; along the highroads they drove, elevated and giving great sweeps of landscape, chiefly huge swells of moorland, purple under the changing sky, and in the far distance a silver shimmer which was the sea. The air was fresh and cool, the sun was bright, the pony was happy and willing. The six miles were quickly covered, and then they stopped in front of a small plain wicket from which a short footpath led to the deep porch of a long-fronted two-storied house without any claims to architecture. Windows had here and there been thrown out, to afford more room and more light, quite regardless of neatness or any effort at appearance. Different kinds of roses clambered over the porch and up to the windows, and a thick mass of ivy covered all one side of the house. At the sound of their wheels a gardener’s boy had come from some hidden region, grinning from ear to ear, to hold the pony. A waiting maid in a lilac print gown and a white apron came flying forth from the kitchen side of the house, smiling a welcome.

‘Take the things, Mary. Put that bag in the blue room for Mrs. Marchmont. Is Signor Oriole in?’

‘Yes, ma’am. At least, he was writing in his study half an hour ago.’

‘Come, Fulvia,’ said Minna, gently taking her hand, and leading her into the house. The front door stood wide open, showing a broad tiled passage, square, like a hall full of shade, but with rays of sunshine pouring down also from a landing window at the head of a short flight of shallow stairs. Minna paused a moment, and then said:

‘You will come and speak to him at once, won’t you?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ replied Fulvia, almost nervously. ‘At once. Then it will be done with.’

‘This way, then. Shall I go away, and leave you with him?’

‘No, oh no, my dear Mrs. Hastings!’ she exclaimed almost imploringly. ‘Come with me, and stay all the time; I am strong, but I am not made of iron.’

‘I will stay,’ was all that Minna said, leading her along a passage, and through a sort of little anteroom to a door at which she knocked. A voice from within cried, ‘Avanti.’ Fulvia was pale as death, still and rigid. Without pausing, Minna opened the door and went in, drawing her companion with her by the hand.

Facing them, and just rising from his place before a table covered with writing materials, papers, and books, was Signor Oriole, a white-headed, white-bearded man with a pale face, but with thick eyebrows, scarcely touched with the frost of years, and flashing dark eyes, clear and brilliant as ever, belying his look of age. Minna felt Fulvia’s hand spring aside within hers. She divined the shiver of emotion which must be shaking her soul; she quietly released the hand, and, blotting out her presence as much as possible, said simply:

‘Here is Fulvia, signore.’

Fulvia stood, looking pale and rigid still. Mechanically she allowed him to take her hand; they were both very grave as they looked one another in the eyes. Their last interview had been that in which Oriole had offered to take Fulvia away with him and hide them both from her mother’s iron resolution--that in which his whole heart had gone to her, and in which she, white, trembling, agonized, but resolute, had strung herself up to refuse the offer--to stay, and take what should come. At parting she had flung herself into his arms with a wail of despair, and he had strained her to his heart and kissed her without a word. It had been the moment in which they had come nearest to flinging aside all concealment, but they had parted even then without the final word.

It could not be that moments such as that were not distinctly present in the consciousness of both. But now, after a few seconds of what seemed paralyzed silence, Fulvia’s figure lost its rigid look. She smiled, just the same sweet, cool smile that Minna knew so well, and said:

‘After so long we meet. It is only a week since I knew you lived here with Mrs. Hastings. Let me tell you, caro signore, I find you look much better here than you used to do in Rome.’

‘Good heavens! Is that all she has to say?’ muttered Minna beneath her breath.

‘And you, Fulvia, are indeed changed,’ was his reply, as he bent his eyes upon her piercingly, but apparently without much emotion. ‘It is true, you have grown five years older since I saw you--a long time in a young woman’s life.’

He lifted her hand to his lips and bowed over it with courtly, old-fashioned grace. They spoke quietly and steadily, but Minna noticed that they both spoke Italian, and addressed each other in Roman fashion with _voi_ instead of _lei_[A] and she drew her own conclusions from these facts.

[A] _Voi_, you; _lei_, thee. The latter is the usual mode of address when any politeness or formality is exacted. The former betokens some familiarity, but is much more used, even by acquaintances, in Southern than in Northern Italy.

It did not last much longer. Minna made a move to leave the room, saying she would show Fulvia her bedroom, and send her a cup of tea there. They all moved away. The meeting was over. The emotions, whatever they might have been, had been well choked down, resolutely repressed from motives of common-sense and decent self-control.

Thus, under this foreign but friendly Northern roof, did the father and daughter meet--children of the South and of its hot impulses, eager quickness, passionate loves and hates--both beaten by circumstances into a demeanour and a conduct utterly different from that which would have been natural to them; both, in spite of all the past, in spite of all that had been lived out and battled through by them, in spite of every attracting link of sorrow and suffering, ‘strangers yet.’