CHAPTER VII.

It was a long time before Minna slept that night. She was excited, but pleasantly so. In her gratification over what Signor Giuseppe had said to her about her work, and over his keen appreciation and comprehension of the different mental and emotional phases which had gone to the production of that work, she forgot the rest of the interview and its painfulness, or, if she did not quite forget, it became dim, it fell into the background. Her artist’s soul had been rejoiced, and a stimulus given to her to proceed with the work. She paid less heed than she would have done to poor Signor Giuseppe’s entreaty that she would go away, and to the misery he evidently felt that she should remain as the witness of his humiliation. No, she thought of her work--of the figure of youth and strength and delight in work which had so fascinated her, and felt that now she could go back to it and work at it with passion of pleasure and interest--that absorption which is the life and soul of works of art, and without having had which put into them they can never interest and delight others, let their technique be never so perfect, their proportions never so correct.

When at last she did go to sleep it was to dream pleasant dreams and wake refreshed, glad, and eager to begin again. She was ready to set out betimes, and was walking quickly along the passage, which went from her quarter of the house to the front door, when she encountered, coming slowly along towards her, a young girl, whom she had never heretofore seen in the house. She was tall, and had the early developed figure and air of a young Italian woman. She was probably not more than sixteen, though she looked twenty. She had an exquisitely beautiful complexion, fair but pale--almost without even the faintest rose-tinge. She had also splendid waving nut-brown hair, which had in it glints of gold; dark eyes, which might have been either gray or blue, or even black, but which were certainly not brown; thick dark eyebrows, a delicate little aquiline nose, and a mouth as yet undecided in expression, but agreeable rather than actually beautiful in shape. She was dressed quite as a girl--almost as a child. Her plain dark-blue woollen skirt came only just below her ankles, and showed very pretty, small, thoroughbred-looking feet, cased in shabby slippers, which had once been red, and were now no colour at all that can be classified. The loosely-made blouse bodice of her frock, for it could hardly be called a gown, showed a charming figure, rounded, but not yet full, graceful and lissom. An ugly hard leather belt clasped her round little waist, and two fingers of her right hand were thrust in between the belt and the waist as she came swinging slowly along in the direction of a table on which stood a cage containing two canary-birds. Her left hand hung loosely at her side, and held a bunch of green stuff--food for the birds, no doubt.

They and their cage had appeared since Minna had come in last night, and from this and other circumstances she concluded that this must be the Signorina Fulvia, the daughter of Signora Dietrich, who had returned with her.

The girl raised her eyes as she met Minna, and looked at her attentively, gravely, but not at all rudely. Each inclined her head, said _buon giorno_, and passed on her way.

‘What a beautiful girl!’ said Minna to herself, ‘and what a strange expression she has! Is it sulky or sad? What is it? It does not look ill-tempered to me; in fact, I should say she had a soul.... But she is very beautiful!’

She walked on to her studio, thinking of her work; but every now and then, in the midst of her new-born ardour and eagerness, the face and figure of the girl swam before her mind’s eye, and disappeared again in a way that caused her to pause once or twice and wonder what it meant.

She passed a busy, eager, happy day. No one called; no one disturbed her. She lunched at her studio, snatching the minutes from her now absorbing work in which to take the meal.

By-and-bye it grew too dark for her to work any more. She covered up the figure with tender care, and, after taking off her blouse and apron and cleansing her hands, returned to her little sitting-room, and, throwing herself down on the couch, clasped her hands behind her head, and was lost in a happy, glowing dream of present and future works of art.

Then it was time, if she meant to return to Casa Dietrich for dinner, that she should do so. Still in a dream, she put on her things and walked back to the house. As she mounted the stairs, once again the beautiful face of the girl, with its inexplicable trouble or anger or rebellion, and the sombreness of its eyes, presented itself before her mind’s eye. Once again she felt that she was in the real, practical, everyday world, and that in the world there was trouble.

Ettore came round rather more punctually than usual with his thump on the door and his ‘_Pronto!_’ and Minna took her way to the dining-room.

Some people were already seated at the table, but there was a group near the door, standing round a rather small slight woman who was talking with animation and in an accent that was Roman of the Romans--in the accent that Minna loved to hear. And yet she did not altogether like this voice.

She had to pass this group as she went to her place, and as she did so it divided, and the lady who had been talking turned and saw her. It was, of course, Signora Dietrich, the mistress of the house. As she perceived Minna she made a kind of slide forward, graceful, but distinctly feline, and, in a much softer lower voice than is usual with her compatriots, greeted her with all the most flowery phrases of her flowery native tongue, bidding her welcome to her house, and regretting that she had not been able to do so before, though, she added, she had been quite aware of her presence there. Her friend, Signor Oriole, had told her of the _gentilissima Inglese_ who had come to them, and she hoped that the said _gentilissima_ and _illustrissima_ found everything to her liking, and used her, Signora Dietrich’s, house as though it were her own.

Minna, listening to it all, felt herself constrained to confess that the greater part of it was arrant lies. Signor Giuseppe, she felt certain, had never written any such things about her. Signora Dietrich had been told that an Englishwoman had come and had taken two of her best rooms without demurring to the price of them, and that it would be a desirable thing if she were to remain there for some time. This was her way of evincing esteem and politeness. Minna replied with a smile and a few vague phrases and went to her seat, from which she could survey the signora, who was not, at first sight, a very striking-looking person. She was of scarcely medium height; she had evidently once been pretty, in a blonde, fragile, _petite_ style; she was now very much _passée_, and distinctly faded in every respect. Some things she had lost, others she had preserved. Her figure was now nothing to boast of, whatever it might once have been; her complexion was sallow, which ill accorded with her pale-brown hair and light gray eyes. Moreover, the hair was by no means as abundant as it had been, and her brow was wrinkled; charms of youth, or even maturity, had left her and had begun to be merged in the defects of the period called elderly. What had not left her was the thin firm line of her lips, the white teeth which flashed when she smiled, the rapid glances of her eyes, full of indefinable meanings, the delicate white hands, and the marvellous power of expressing volumes by a single turn of her wrist and flash of her fingers.

These things had not left her, nor the strength of her will either. She had taken her place at the table, and everyone felt her presence, felt her power. The little faded woman who kept the _pensione_ was the most important person in the house.

She sat at one end of the long narrow table. On her right hand was her daughter, and when Minna saw the two together she saw how much family likeness there was between them, although in every detail they were so different. The young girl was dressed now in some bright-coloured gown: not a pretty gown, and still a morning, not an evening, garment. She looked perhaps a degree brighter than when Minna had met her in the morning, but still not quite happy. On the signora’s left hand was an unoccupied place. The rest of the company were dispersed as before. Signor Giuseppe was again Minna’s _vis-à-vis_. He came in rather late, and did not cast many glances towards the head of the table until, after the soup had gone round, the person arrived for whom the place beside Signora Dietrich seemed to have been reserved.

This was a young man whom Minna had never before seen at the house. He did not, however, appear to be an entire stranger, for he exchanged greetings with several of those present as he made his way up the room behind Signor Giuseppe to Fulvia, so that Minna, being opposite, had full opportunity for observing him, and, indeed, as he made his way along and his eyes fell upon her, he honoured her with an open and particularly impudent stare. He was not, physically considered, an attractive specimen of his kind, being short, thin to attenuation, and prematurely aged in face and figure. His dress was excessively neat, and a whiff of Es. Bouquet came across the table as he went his way. This inadequate figure supported a head rather large in proportion to it, with a face which revolted Minna to her inmost being the instant she saw it.

Originally, he had probably rejoiced in a rather delicate pink and white complexion; it was nothing to boast of now, but the features were regular and clearly cut; the eyes were bright, and he wore a diminutive light moustache, just shading his upper lip. Intrinsically there was nothing to find fault with in his features or in the colour of his eyes; many a man beside whom he would have appeared an Adonis on a small scale goes through the world and succeeds in pleasing, or, at least, in not offending. It was his expression which hung forth the flag of warning, before which Minna, with the instinct of a good woman not devoid of intelligence, shrank and mistrusted. The utter badness, vulgarity, and cynical self-satisfaction of the creature were patent to anyone who chose to see them.

Whatsoever he had originally been, whatsoever he had been as a child and a youth, this man had so lived, and had so misused his life, his powers, his means, and his intelligence, that now, feign he never so diligently, he could only look what he was, a _blasé_ little rake, unprincipled and unscrupulous. His tastes were evidently florid: several rings with stones in them decorated his little nervous, fleshless hands; a white rosebud was in his button-hole--type of beauty and virtue. He was in evening dress. Diamond shirt-studs glittered on his narrow expanse of shirt-front, and the hair which was left him was arranged with extreme care and attention.

‘What a horrible little reptile!’ thought Minna. ‘Who and what can he be? What language does he speak? He might be anything--or nothing. He will certainly never die for his country, if he have one.’

She watched how he made his way towards the head of the table; she watched how Fulvia Dietrich suddenly stiffened and seemed to freeze into lifelessness as he approached; how her mother, on the contrary, seeing him coming, leaned back in her chair, smiled a sweet smile of welcome, threw the glance of her curious eyes upwards towards him, and, stretching out both her hands and arms, bare to the elbow, cried in tones which, though not loud, were audible to all:

‘Ah, Marchmont, buona sera! Welcome! We are delighted to see you!’

‘Good-evening, signora. I’m late, but I have a good reason for it,’ he said, while Minna, with unreasoning annoyance, said to herself:

‘English--how utterly disgusting!’

‘How d’ya do?’ he went on in English, but with an accent which was not altogether English nor yet American. ‘What a time you’ve been away! Why on earth didn’t you come back sooner?’

‘Aha-ha!’ laughed the signora, always speaking Italian, ‘questo caro Marchmont. He will always pretend that I speak fluent English. So fond of his little jest! Of course I should have come home sooner; I hate to be separated so long from all my dear friends and guests.’ She looked round with a smile which was more impudent than complimentary to the said guests, and Minna was divided between amusement and indignation. ‘But business is business. Matters connected with my late husband’s affairs have kept me in Milan till now. Fulvia mia, what is the matter with you? Do you not hear that Signor Marchmont is speaking to you?’

She spoke caressingly, or perhaps wished to do so, but could not altogether prevent a sharp tone from coming into her voice, and her eyes looked threatening as she bent them upon her daughter.

Fulvia, thus apostrophized, stiffly made some little change in her rigid attitude, turned her head stiffly to one side and bowed to Mr. Marchmont, forced a constrained smile, and, as his hand was thrust close under her eyes and between them and her plate, lifted her own limply and also limply rested it for a second in his.

‘Now Rome will be itself again,’ said he gallantly, ‘now that the flower of Casa Dietrich has returned, looking more blooming than ever. Per Bacco! you have improved immensely while you have been away.’ He spoke Italian to her, a fluent and comprehensible, but very disagreeable and foreign Italian. ‘You make my flowers look faded, but they must get accustomed to that. See, I bought these in Via Condotti as I came along, for you--on purpose for you! They are scarce enough yet.’

He laid a spray or two of exquisite white lilac beside her plate. She looked anything but pleased, crimsoned to her temples as she muttered some words of thanks, it might be, and then grew gradually pale again. Her want of enthusiasm was amply atoned for by her mother’s superfluity of it.

‘Ah, lovely, most lovely!’ she cried, so that all the table could hear, first clasping her hands and then gesticulating with them. ‘Caro Marchmont, you are too generous. These must have cost a small fortune. You see the child is quite overcome. She does not know how to thank you for them.’

‘She either does not know how or does not wish to do it,’ said Marchmont, with a simper which was not altogether fatuous; there was an edge, as it were, to its silliness--as one might say, weakness tempered with cruelty.

He made his way round to the empty place on the signora’s left hand, opposite to Fulvia, whose face had again grown stony during this dialogue between her mother and, it would seem, her admirer. Not her lover--surely not her declared lover, thought Minna, to whom the whole scene had been inexpressibly repugnant and painful. Behind the vulgarity and absurdity of the two speakers and the constrained silence of the girl, she seemed to read horrible possibilities.

The ‘spectre,’ as she had immediately dubbed Marchmont in her own mind, was now hidden from her sight, but she could see Fulvia and Fulvia’s mother, and she hardly knew what to make of the spectacle.

A performance something like that which had already taken place continued throughout the meal. The young girl was by turns haughty and disdainful, cross, sulky, embarrassed, and then, with an immense effort, superficially polite. In each phase she looked exceedingly handsome and attractive. Mr. Marchmont’s shrill voice, with its curious vulgar accent, was strident, and dominated the conversation at that end of the table. Now he spoke English, anon Italian, but in whichever tongue he spoke his theme was the same: his own belongings, possessions, wishes, intentions, and the great prices he had paid for the things he had, or intended to pay for those he meant to have.

Signora Dietrich listened ever with the same rapture of attention, the same fixedly smiling mouth, the same wandering, unmoved eyes, and the same loud expressions of delight in his conversation and affairs in general.

‘Horrible woman!’ thought Minna. ‘I wonder what she is up to. Does she take this fellow for a rich man, and think she can get him to marry her daughter? Preposterous! Rich or poor, he has seen the seamy side of life, he has seen more bad than good, and is fully alive to all the useful things he can buy with his money if he has it. Why, he can have position and good birth as well as beauty, if he will pay enough. He won’t marry the daughter of Signora Dietrich--lucky for her!’

She had become so intensely interested in the drama at that end of the table that she had absolutely forgotten her immediate neighbours. At this moment she happened, during a short pause in the conversation, to cast her eyes across the table, and she encountered those of Signor Giuseppe, fixed with a fascinated look on her face. His own expression seemed to question, to study, to interrogate her eyes, as if he would have forced them to confess plainly the thought that was in her mind. There was an anxious, wistful inquiry in his gaze which went to her heart, even while she started a little and coloured a little at being thus caught watching the proceedings at the end of the table with such interest.

With a sigh she recovered herself, and tried to enter into conversation with him. But the effort was not successful; Signor Giuseppe did not respond. There was no more of his old peevishness and mistrust towards herself; he had evidently crushed that once for all after their explanation of last night. This was not, either, his usual angry irritation with the misdoings of the servants or the shortcomings of the dinner. It was, as Minna keenly felt, something very much deeper, sadder, and more tragical than any of those feelings. His silence was the silence of profound and hopeless grief and disapprobation, and she presently ceased to make any effort to disturb it.

The rest of the company appeared to be as usual much interested in their own affairs, with the exception of a bad-tempered Polacca, who expressed her opinion audibly in very bad German, to the effect that that woman was as great a fool, and the girl as complete a ninny, as ever; and that a woman, whose business it was to make her living by keeping a hotel, had no right to dress herself out in silks and satins as if she had been the hostess of a private dinner-party. Minna suppressed a smile, but the next thing she heard interested her more. Mr. Marchmont was saying:

‘Signorina Fulvia, how long will it take you to make yourself ready for the opera? I have got the tickets here in my pocket. Took a box at a premium at Piales. It is _Lucia di Lammermoor_. Surely you want to go. Your mother looks as if she were ready for anything, as she always is--from a ride in a tramcar to a box at the opera.’

‘And so can Fulvia be ready, caro Marchmont,’ cried the signora, who had indeed wakened up in a marvellous manner at Marchmont’s announcement; ‘she can have her dress on in ten minutes. Girls, you know, need no long preparations--no “making up” like their unfortunate elders. Go, Fulvia, you will be ready by the time we have finished coffee. Go, carissima mia.’

‘I am tired, mamma,’ said the girl, and indeed she looked exceedingly weary.

‘Tired! who ever heard of a young girl being tired, when it is a question of a box at the opera? Why, Nilsson is singing; all Rome will be there. Absurd, my sweetest pet! Signor Marchmont has got the tickets--all we have to do is to enjoy the results.’

‘Oh, if she doesn’t want to go!’ came the strident voice, in accents of pique.

‘Of course she wants to go. It is the same as with the flowers. So many pleasures and attentions, coming at once after the quiet life we have been leading, bewilder her. Now go, carina,’ she added, bending towards Fulvia with the same unchanging, artificial smile on her face, but with, as Minna saw, a steely flash of resolution in her eyes. She laid her hand for a moment on her daughter’s wrist. It seemed to Minna as if her fingers tightened on it in a fashion not exactly tender.

Fulvia rose slowly. There was no smile at all on her lips. She came down the room, also slowly, and paused for a moment behind Signor Giuseppe’s chair, laid her hands on his shoulders, and said in a low voice, between pettishness and coaxing:

‘Beppino, can’t you hinder my having to go to the hateful theatre?’

His eyebrows contracted sharply. Minna felt her heart throb as she watched them.

‘I think you had better do as your mother wishes to-night,’ said he, also in a low voice.

‘What a perfectly miserable story!’ she said to herself, with an aching heart. ‘Beppino, forsooth. I suppose this child does not know what it all means; she is still a _bambina_, in many ways. Still, an Italian girl of sixteen----’

‘Cattivo!’ said Fulvia, giving him a little blow on the shoulder. ‘You will do nothing that I wish now. I am cross with you.’

She walked out of the room with the majesty of a queen. Minna plunged wildly into a conversation about she knew not what with her left-hand neighbour. She could not speak to Hans Riemann. She had met Fulvia’s eyes as she lifted her head after her colloquy with Signor Giuseppe, and she had seen in them that which made her sadder than before.

Coffee was served. Signora Dietrich, hastily swallowing hers, made a flowery apology to the company in general for leaving them, but put it to them whether she was not right to avail herself of Signor Marchmont’s princely generosity, and, with many a nod and beck, many a false and wreathed smile, she made her way from the room, followed by the gentleman of the princely generosity.

‘How painful, and horrid, and unpleasant it all is!’ said Minna to herself when she was alone in her own sitting-room; ‘and what is the meaning of it all?... I thank my God that my mother was not like that woman,’ she suddenly whispered to herself, clasping her hands involuntarily; and she was surprised to find herself stamping her foot on the floor, and choking down a sob.

Just then there was a tap on her door. Not wishful to admit anyone and everyone, she advanced to it and opened it. Hans Riemann stood there.

‘I got hold of that old print you wanted, Minna, yesterday, and I’ve come to show it you. The man actually let me bring it here for you to look at. He wants a lot for it, of course, but you may----’

‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door to admit him, and she turned the light up while he went to a table, unrolled the print and spread it before her.

‘It is beautiful,’ said she, forgetting everything else for the moment, as she bent over it and examined it. ‘Of course he will want a lot for it. How much may he ask?’

‘Two hundred lire.’

‘Oh, it is too much. I can’t afford it. Take it away, and don’t let me look at it any more.’ She pushed it away from her, and Hans laughed.

‘We shall get it for less, of course. You ought to have it for about half. We’ll offer him seventy-five. Would you give a hundred?’

‘Yes, a hundred, but not one centesimo more.... Oh Hans, sit down! My curiosity is on fire. Who and what is the awful creature who is taking the signora and her daughter to the opera to-night?’

‘Oh! you may well ask,’ said Hans shrugging his shoulders. ‘Signor Marchmont--isn’t he a horror? “The skeleton,” I call him. It is a shame too, the way that woman chucks the girl at him! There’s no decency in it. Signora Dietrich is not a nice woman, as I think I have mentioned before.’

‘You said so--yes; and I can see it for myself. But what is he? Surely not an Englishman--nor yet an American.’

‘Oh Lord no! By all the rules of sensation novels, he ought to be a Russian prince who has ruined himself in Paris with absinthe and the other attractions of that capital. But he isn’t--he’s an Australian.’

‘An Australian?’

‘Yes. Father died when he was a mere child, leaving an enormous fortune, amassed chiefly by the sale of drink at various bars and canteens in town and country. This accumulated till he was one-and-twenty, of course, and grew into something fabulous. Then he was free, and then he began to use his freedom. He has led a life of _grand train_ ever since, and he must be at least five-and-thirty now. Sometimes he looks like a mummy five thousand years old.’

‘And has his fortune lasted all that time?’

‘Has it lasted? I should think so. He’s the meanest miser in existence. He wants everything and he gets everything, and manages to pay less for it than if he were a decent fellow worth five thousand a year. That man has lived in every capital in Europe, and knows everything there is bad in every one of them, and he has done it cheap. That’s the disgusting part of it,’ said Hans resentfully; and Minna, though she could have given no reason for it, felt resentful, too--so true is it that prodigality carries with it a certain charm, and that the man who ruins himself ‘royally,’ as one says, earns an amount of admiration and distinction, while the economical rake gets the full measure of condemnation for all his sins, and the hatred of all who know anything about him to boot.

‘Then he is really rich now? What brings him to a place like this?’

‘Oh, I can’t tell. It’s about six months since they met him somewhere or other, and he took an immense fancy to Fulvia, which is not returned, as you may see. I believe Signora Dietrich thinks that, if she angles cleverly and patiently enough, he will actually propose for the girl. Goodness knows what he will do. As you might hear to-night--he took care to let us know--he has been opening his purse-strings for bouquets and opera-boxes, which looks serious. He’s the most awful cad that ever walked this earth, and the hardness of him is something appalling.’

‘And Signor Oriole?’ said Minna in a low voice.

‘He loathes him,’ said Hans, reddening. ‘Oriole is a gentleman; you see what the other is. But what is he to do? He has no legal authority here. There’s nothing acknowledged as to their former relations. He has no money with which to bribe the signora, and that’s the only thing that touches her. She is over head and ears in debt, but I think even she will hardly get her debts paid by Marchmont. Altogether, it’s not a savoury story. Don’t you bother yourself about it.’

‘I cannot help thinking about that girl. She is so beautiful, and there’s something so sweet, and even stately, about her sometimes, child as she is. You must know all that, Hans. What do you think about it all? Don’t you admire her immensely?’

She looked at him searchingly. Hans shrugged his shoulders again and bit his lips and coloured.

‘You see too much,’ he said. ‘There are limits even to my folly. Poor little Fulvia! She is completely changed within the last few months. She used to be the gayest, jolliest girl--full of fun; not like the Italian _jeunes filles_ usually are, but with a real sense of humour, and such a healthy kind of nature. She used to chaff us all round, not a bit rudely, and say the most laughable things to us, and now one can hardly get a word out of her. It’s an awful pity!’

‘It is indeed,’ Minna assented mournfully. ‘That man is to me the most horrible creature I have ever seen. There’s something of the snake about him.’

‘There’s a bit of everything that’s nasty and contemptible,’ said Hans, rising to go. ‘It’s no good thinking about it. People have got to settle their own affairs. They must fight it out amongst themselves. Good-night, Minna. You look tired. I’ll offer him seventy-five, then, and I may go up to a hundred; is that it?’

‘Yes, please; thank you for saving me the trouble.’

‘Oh, it’s a pleasure!’ said Hans, going away.