CHAPTER V.

On the following morning Minna sallied forth immediately after breakfast, leaving word with Ettore that she was going to her studio, and would not be in for either lunch or dinner. She felt the need of getting away for a time from this atmosphere growing ever more imperious. She must go away, be alone, take counsel with herself as to what she was going to do.

She walked quickly to the studio, lighted the fire, and shut herself up. Once there, she breathed more freely, and felt as if released from some constantly pursuing influence. The hours of the day flew by with incredible swiftness, but, instead of coming to any decision, she shirked the question, What am I to do? and devoted herself instead to a minute study of some anatomical plates, and to some photographs of animals and birds in motion, and to a treatise on the same subject which bore directly upon her art.

It was very interesting, it was very delightful; but every now and then conscience told her that her thoughts ought to be differently occupied, and that at this rate she would return to Casa Dietrich no better prepared to face the next disagreeable scene than when she had left it. She did not, however, feel energy or inclination to go into the question, to get a clear view of the situation, and of her own position in it. It was much easier to reflect upon the order in which a horse’s legs were lifted as he ran, or upon the rhythm of the beat of a hawk’s wings as he flew.

Thus the time passed, and it was evening, and then night, almost before she knew it. She had not done an hour’s work throughout the day. She had taken the coverings from the clay cast which she was now modelling, and looked at it, and had given it a touch here and there, but without effecting anything real. The old woman who acted as portress downstairs, and who waited upon her on these occasions, as much as she required waiting upon, had brought her in some dinner from a _trattoria_, of which the residue, given to old Filomena, caused the poor creature’s eyes to glisten and blessings to fall from her lips.

Filomena had now gone away, and Minna was left to solitude and her own thoughts. She had lighted a lamp and put a shade over it. She had drawn her chair up towards the stove, and leaning back, with hands clasped loosely on her knee, she looked into the glow of the red-hot wood, and watched the flame which occasionally shot forth and then died down again. Her reverie was profound, and not altogether joyful. She was roused from it by a sharp, decided knock upon the door.

‘Hans--he need not have come, I don’t want him,’ she thought, frowning, and then cried, ‘Avanti!’ The door was opened, and she beheld, not Hans, but Signor Giuseppe.

She was surprised, and not altogether pleased, for she felt sure that the interview would be more or less painful. Yet she could not feel vexed; she tried to account to herself for her mixed sensations by telling herself, ‘It will be a bore, and very disagreeable, but perhaps it is best to get it over on neutral ground.’

All this flashed quickly through her mind as, after a hardly perceptible hesitation, she rose and said:

‘Signor Oriole!’

‘Good-evening, signora,’ he said, bowing as he advanced into the room. ‘I knew you were at your studio, and, as I am wishful to speak to you, I have taken the freedom of calling here. If I disturb you or my visit is inconvenient, you will at once send me away. I shall not be offended.’

This Signor Giuseppe was as different from the Signor Giuseppe who was engaged at Casa Dietrich as one man could possibly be from another. It is true, this man had the same outward appearance as the other, the same shabby dress, whose shabbiness was at present somewhat concealed by a comparatively new and good overcoat, and a respectable hat, held in his hand. But beyond this, all was different.

This was a gentleman of polite and gracious manner, dignified, but genial withal--a gentleman who met her on terms of equality, and whose apology was made more for form’s sake than because he felt such apology to be needful. It was an unspeakable relief to Minna to find him thus disposed, and she replied with cordiality as she extended her hand:

‘Indeed, signore, I am too glad that you care to come and pay me a visit here. If I had had the least idea that you would have taken so much trouble, I would have invited you before. You are welcome here.’

She pointed smilingly to the old sofa, and Signor Giuseppe took a seat upon it, and looked around him.

‘This is surely not your workroom,’ he said, without answering her polite speeches, as his eyes wandered from one object to another.

‘No. This is my sitting-room, business-room, reception-room, whatever you like to call it. Above all, it is the sanctuary to which I beat a retreat whenever I feel discouraged with my own miserable attempts inside there’ (she pointed slightingly in the direction of the workroom), ‘so discouraged that I can no longer remain amongst them and the ghosts of better things. A very useful room, this, I assure you.’

‘Ah, you feel like that,’ said Giuseppe, looking at her, ‘but not often, I imagine.’

‘Oftener than not, signore.’

‘I should not have thought it.’

‘Do I appear so very self-complacent?’

‘Perhaps not. I may have judged you wrongly. It is probably merely your position in general, which is a secure and comfortable one, which gives you that appearance of unruffled calm.’

‘But I do not always feel unruffled calm, by any means,’ she told him.

‘Not even when you encounter me engaged in the duties of a household servant, or a collector of rents and rates, or a supplementary cook--in short, in all the most ludicrous and undignified false positions in which a man can be placed--and smile serenely with cold amusement upon the spectacle,’ he said, plunging into the very heart of the uncomfortable topic.

Minna drew a deep breath.

‘I do not smile with cold amusement at you or at anything which I see causes you to suffer,’ she said in a clear, almost loud voice, as she looked him full in the face, thinking to herself, ‘Thank heaven! now we are going to have it out, in one way or another. Something must come of this.’

‘Signora, you could scarcely sit here and admit that what I say is true. Politeness demands of you that you should deny my assertion. Yet I have seen you smiling at me, or rather at my embarrassment, repeatedly--at the ridiculous dilemmas in which Fate has so often decreed that you should catch me.’

‘I wish I could make you understand how far from me it is to wish to laugh at what gives pain to another,’ she said. ‘I know I have smiled. I can’t help that. Heaven has given me a keen sense of the ridiculous. I cannot alter my nature.’

‘Just so; you admit all that I say; you find me ridiculous.’

‘No, I do not. Sometimes I am reminded of things which are ridiculous, or which seem ridiculous to me. I am reminded of them by the situations in which I see you,’ she went on boldly, in spite of the anger she saw rising in his face. ‘You don’t believe me. I will give you an example; then, perhaps, you will see what I mean. You have perhaps not forgotten that, last night, at dinner----’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed he, wincing visibly, as if someone had thrust a sharp pin into him. ‘Forgotten?’ he continued in a deep, tragic voice; ‘no, I have not forgotten!’

‘I thought so,’ Minna said to herself, and continued aloud: ‘When you were trying to bridge over the interval at dinner by talking about Tiberius and Caligula I admired you. It showed what topics your mind would run upon if it might follow its own bent. When you talked about Caligula’s assassination, I thought suddenly about a silly old lesson-book from which I used to be taught what they called Roman history in my childhood. My companions and I used to make jokes about it. One of those silly old jokes came into my mind; it all seemed so funny. I laughed. I was not laughing at you. You may believe me or not; I am telling you the truth. You have often thought I was laughing at you when I was not. You have often been angry with me when I did not in the least deserve it. You were yesterday, and I felt it.’

She spoke with considerable force and directness, looking at him steadily as she did so. And as she looked it came into her mind that seldom or never had she seen a more distinguished, intellectual head and face than those of her visitor. All the passionate unrest and irritation which consumed him throughout his life at Casa Dietrich had vanished--one could see now something of what Signor Giuseppe, in happier circumstances, might have looked.

There was the nameless grace and pride and high breeding which belongs to one of noble race who has been reared in the traditions of that race. He can never cast off the results of that early training. Though not a weak face, it was a sensitive, passionate one--the face of one whose impulse might now and then lead him into error; but his heart, never. He paused for some time after her energetic words, looking reflectively towards the floor; then, raising his eyes, dark, soft, and gentle, as she had never seen them before, said:

‘Signora, answer me one question: for what do you take me?’

‘For a gentleman,’ replied Minna, who had got very much excited, though she did not betray the excitement by any restlessness of manner; ‘for a gentleman, signore, with whom I would gladly be further acquainted and on more friendly terms, if he would allow it; but he will not. He renders it impossible by his harsh treatment of both himself and me.’

‘For a gentleman?’ said Signor Giuseppe sadly, but his face lighted up for all that; the words had been inexpressibly soothing to his irritated feelings; as to their sincerity he could have no manner of doubt. ‘Ah, signora, I was a gentleman once; that was when I was young and hated aristocracy, and thought one man was as good as another--and one woman. Destiny arranged that my theories should be put to a severe test. That test shattered them--scattered them to the winds in a thousand fragments. Shreds, rags, ribbons were all that was left of my glorious doctrines. When it was too late I realized that in flinging away my position and my inheritance, such as it was--not much, but enough to let me use it for others as well as for myself--in doing this I had done a fool’s deed. It had been kinder both to myself and to others had I remained Conte di San Malato, and kept my money and my estate. I might have improved my own dependents, my neighbours; my charity might have begun at home. Instead, I devoted it, as I hoped, to the good of Italy in general--the cause of humanity at large. When I knew by heart the mistake I had made, when I found the condition to which ignorance and trustfulness had reduced me, I set myself to work to forget that I had ever been what is called a gentleman. I cast in my lot with those to whom I had bound myself, in honour if not in law. I did not suppose that the least rag, the smallest vestige, was left--of what I used to be. Yet you say you can see some such remnants.’

‘Now,’ said Minna, smiling, but through a mist, ‘now you will really make me laugh at you. I suppose you never indulge in analysis of your own feelings and sentiments, or I would ask you, why do you feel miserable in your present circumstances? why do they jar upon you? why do you get so angry with me--unhappy me!--for seeing you engaged in duties which a servant ought to do? why have you come here now and talked to me thus, if not for that very reason, that a gentleman you always have been, a gentleman you are, and a gentleman you must remain, whatever may happen? It cannot be scorched out of the blood when once it is in it. Why should you care, except for that? You have lost your position outwardly, yet you did not wish me to misunderstand; you feared I might. But I have not done so, not for a moment, not from the very first. How could I?’

‘You mean,’ he said, in a tone of deep dejection, ‘that you did not, even for the first day or two that you were with us, take me for a hired steward, something like the head-waiter at a very third-rate hotel?’

‘Never. I saw you undertaking duties and doing work which struck me on the spot as utterly inappropriate to your proper condition. I at once concluded that you had excellent reasons for acting as you did. I did once make a mistake, in pure absence of mind, the day I arrived with all my luggage--do you remember? You came to the door, and I spoke about my boxes instead of letting you receive me as I now know you wished to do. I have been sorry for it many a time since. Now you know exactly what I have felt in the matter.’

‘You are right,’ he said in a low voice, and still dejectedly. ‘You are right in every word you say. The old folly has not been burnt out--the old feelings are not extinguished; since I made your acquaintance, I am sorry to say, they are stronger than before. That makes it so much the worse.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Surely it is all right now. Everything is explained.’

‘Far from it. I came to see you with a purpose. Once or twice during our conversation I have thought that purpose might be abandoned; but I see now that, on the contrary, it had better be carried out. I came here intending to ask a favour of you.’

‘And what is the favour?’ she asked gently.

‘Nothing more nor less than this: that you would leave Casa Dietrich.’

‘Leave--Casa--Dietrich?’ echoed Minna. It was the very thing which, for many days past, she had been telling herself she would do. Perhaps it was not altogether unprecedented that, when someone else asked her to do that which she had been telling herself she would do, she should feel angry, hurt, and offended. ‘Leave Casa Dietrich?’ she repeated; ‘and why?’

‘Because it is excessively painful to me that you should be there; very soon it will become still more painful to me. Yes; it is solely on my own account, for my own selfish reasons, that I ask you to leave Casa Dietrich.’

‘But why, now that we thoroughly understand one another, should it be more painful for you? Surely, now all will go well. You will not mistrust me; you will not misjudge me. As for me, my opinion of you is what it has been from the first, and I see no reason to suppose that it will ever alter; therefore it should be less, not more, painful for you if I remain.’

She was so intensely in earnest about it that she had not even time to be surprised at her own sublime inconsistency. She wished to remain at Casa Dietrich, but she wished that Signor Oriole should wish her to remain.

There was another long pause, during which he again studied the ground, and she saw that a struggle was going on in his mind. At last he looked up and said, in a low voice but clearly:

‘I see now; I have to-night added one more mistake to the many others of which my life has been composed. Seeing the groove I am now in, fast and immovable, I should have continued to travel in it without making a sign or a struggle. I wished to speak to you, because I--valued your opinion. There are things which may not and cannot be explained. I cannot explain openly to you why I wish you to go. If I go away now without further explanation, you set me down in your own mind as an imbecile, and justly so. I must say something. With your fine brilliant intelligence you will understand me more or less. Hitherto you have seen merely my degradation, my humiliation. That was bad enough, but now that we have had an explanation I could endure it. But from now, or from very soon after this day, you will be witness of my shame--of the irremediably wretched and degrading life to which I am bound in punishment of my own folly and weakness--a life which I must go on leading, which I can neither improve nor terminate, for reasons which it is utterly impossible to me to explain to you. You have seen me, a drudge, at my drudgery. Within a week--nay, it may be in a day or two--the drudge’s owner will return. My slavery will again be complete. My cup will have added to its bitterness the intolerable flavour of knowing that you are there looking on. You have pitied me hitherto; now I foresee that you will despise me. That I have deserved contempt, though I am now expiating my sin in dust and ashes, does not make it better. And,’ he started up from his chair and twisted his fingers into and out of each other, ‘I cannot live in your contempt; I cannot bear it; I ask you to go.’

Minna sat as if rooted to her chair. She felt a surging in her ears, and things were indistinct for a moment or two before her eyes. Partially, if not completely, she comprehended the situation, and understood that for him it was an agonizing one. Of his relations to Signora Dietrich she had no manner of doubt in her own mind. She was no child; she knew a good deal of the world, and had a considerable tolerance for many human weaknesses. She had no difficulty in understanding that the bond which kept Giuseppe tied at his present post must be a strong one. As to its nature, on one side, at any rate, she was quite certain in her own mind. That her presence and society had roused in him feelings of interest and admiration long dormant, there could be also no manner of doubt, and those reawakened feelings had caused him to feel more poignantly than ever the misery of the position to which circumstances or his own weakness in time past had reduced him.

Minna was not a vain woman, but a very proud one. She would gladly have sacrificed any incense to her vanity, to her sense of power of attraction, afforded by the present situation, if by so doing she could have eased the misery of poor Signor Giuseppe’s heart. But no action of hers would ease that misery, whereas the idea of beating a retreat before the oncoming Signora Dietrich made her turn hot and cold, and hot again, with a nameless feeling of anger and indignation.

‘I could never despise you, Signor Oriole. It is not in my nature to despise those who are suffering. You have been pained by what is now past, because you mistrusted me and did not see things as they were. I am not so bad as you thought. Now you mistrust me again. You want me to go away because you think I shall be hard or censorious, or something odious.’

‘No, it is not that,’ he almost groaned. ‘It is not that. It is quite different. It is again a selfish reason.’

‘Would it not be better, since now all is clear between us, to trust me thoroughly, and let me stay?’ she said, softly and persuasively. ‘We are friends, are we not?’

He stopped suddenly in his restless pacing about the room, and stood in front of her.

‘You are--you would--you could take me for your friend!’ he exclaimed.

‘Why not, if you will have me for yours?’

‘You do not know what that would mean to me. You know--you must know, from your own observation, that mine is a ruined life--a wreck. But you would be my friend?’

‘If you will be mine, as I said,’ she replied.

‘If--ah, signora! I shall never doubt you any more--never. Your hand on the bargain.’

Unhesitatingly she placed her hand within his, and he, holding it, bent his dark eyes upon her with an expression of mingled pride and sadness, and said:

‘I have found a treasure I never more expected to know--a friend, a good, true, gentle, yet spirited woman, my friend.... And you will yield to my foolish wish, and will leave me to struggle alone with my unhappy position. The thought that you are my friend will help me along, and the knowledge that you are happy, and in your true and natural surroundings, and out of these utterly false ones, will console me many a time when I should otherwise be utterly despondent.’

‘You say you trust me--that you will never mistrust me again; and in the same breath you show the greatest possible mistrust of me--you bid me go,’ said Minna, with tears in her voice.

‘Signora----’ he stammered.

‘That is not trusting me,’ she pursued coldly. ‘To bid me fly, beat a retreat--I, your friend--simply because Signora Dietrich is coming home! I am not afraid of Signora Dietrich--are you?’

Oriole dropped her hand, and she saw his face turn pale all over. He seemed scarcely able to breathe for a few minutes, then said deliberately:

‘I have truly no reason to fear her. I have no wish to see you in the same house with her. It will be painful to me. I would fain have spared all pain to you. Remain, signora, since that is your wish. I have not another word to say on the subject.’

‘But, don’t you see----’

He arrested her words with a gesture so decided and haughty that she felt herself dominated by it.

‘It is quite decided--è fatto,’ he said quickly. ‘Let us not waste words on it. I am at your service (alla sua disposizione).’

She felt some of the joy of victory, but almost more strongly the usual victor’s cruel generosity of wishing to make the conquered think that he has the best of it. But she was tongue-tied, somehow, and began to wonder with a thrill whether she had done well--that she had done womanly did not occur to her, though it struck Signor Oriole strongly. She felt that the interview, in so far as this subject was concerned, was over. His dejection seemed to have vanished, and he had the air of now being master of the situation. Minna felt as if she did not quite know what she had done, or what the end of it might be.

There was a silence, on her part of some embarrassment. He broke it by saying in a matter-of-fact voice:

‘Will you not show me your studio--your work?’