CHAPTER XIX.

Before the end of June, Yewridge Hall had been taken by the Marchmonts for a year, and they were established in it, not without considerable noise and bustle, pomp and circumstance, all of which arose from Marchmont’s rather than from his wife’s inclinations. His stinginess, once so notorious, had yielded, or had been forced by circumstances to yield--at any rate, in the matter of outside appearances. Yewridge was a place requiring a large establishment, a staff of servants, plenty of carriages and horses, and much movement and opulence in its arrangements, to redeem it from the semblance, both inside and out, of some huge empty barrack, devoid of comfort or anything homelike. Perhaps it might have been considered quite excusable and justifiable had Marchmont decided to let it look as gloomy as might be, while he lived in the strict retirement called for by his state of health. He had, however, no such intention. Everything was arranged as though he had intended to keep open house, and Fulvia spoke of it to Minna and Signor Giuseppe during some of her frequent visits to the smaller house.

‘He says people will come to call, and we must be ready to receive them,’ she said, smiling slightly, with that perfectly impersonal smile which baffled Minna completely. It was as impersonal as the smile one sees on the lips of archaic heads, Greek, Egyptian, Etruscan--though a great deal more beautiful--the smile which is the same on the faces of gods and goddesses, warriors in the last agony or in the height of conflict, nymphs in repose, allegoric figures--everything; a smile conveying no expression, no meaning, and no soul--impersonal. Such was the smile with which Fulvia always spoke of her husband, of his sayings and doings, and of everything connected with him.

Minna looked at her as she said that Marchmont expected people to call. She was embarrassed to find an answer; at once vague and polite, to such a statement. Fulvia relieved her by continuing, in the same light and frivolous tone:

‘The county, I suppose he means. You see, signora mia, I am getting quite learned in all your English superstitions. “The county.” I know that is the object of every well-regulated, pious, and aspiring mind in the country in England--to be “in” with the county. And he thinks the county will rally round him--round us. Did you ever hear of such a delusion? But I don’t undeceive him. What would be the use? It occupies his mind, to make plans and cheat himself in this matter. He makes plans as to what he will do when the county has returned from town, and called upon us, and we upon it. He has made me send for some new dresses.’

She laughed lightly, not gaily.

‘He will very soon find that he is not strong enough to stand it, if the county came round him ever so much,’ said Minna deprecatingly.

Fulvia shrugged her shoulders.

‘Of course he is weak, in a way. But he would die in the effort to take any place that was open to him, in the right sort of society. And if he is weak, I have to be very strong; of course I am strong, naturally, but, you know, this constant sitting up and these broken nights begin to tell, even upon me.’

‘Do you not sleep?’ asked Signor Giuseppe abruptly.

‘I could if I might,’ replied Fulvia carelessly. ‘At two-and-twenty one must be very ill indeed to have lost one’s power of sleeping. It isn’t that. You see, night is the worst time with him. He often has pain then, and he sleeps wretchedly. He often could not sleep for months without morphia. They are always calling me up in the middle of the night to go and talk to him or pacify him.’

‘You ought not to go,’ said Minna. ‘How can you be well if you burn your candle at both ends in that way?’

‘Gia! Well, what can I do?’ asked Fulvia carelessly. ‘I often sit up with him till about two in the morning, and then go; but sometimes, you know, I am really so tired, and perhaps have a hard day before me--not here, of course, but in other places where we have been--that I can’t do it. So I just tell the nurse what to do. She leaves his room for a few minutes, and then goes back again, and says Mrs. Marchmont begs him to excuse her, and she will come and see him first thing in the morning, before breakfast. That always makes him very angry, but he is helpless now. His anger comes to nothing. And of course the nurse hasn’t been to me at all. I have told her beforehand that I must have a whole night’s rest. One must, you know, sometimes. And on those nights when I know I shall not be disturbed, don’t I sleep! I make up for hours and hours of wakefulness then, and my maid can hardly get my eyes open in the morning.’

‘Humph!’ snorted Signor Oriole, rising abruptly from his chair, and with a flash of his old rapid, irritable movement he left the room without a word to either of them.

‘He doesn’t like what I said,’ observed Fulvia with a heightened colour. ‘He is just the same as ever, though he looks so different. It is wonderful that he should have settled down here,’ she added, as if somewhat glad to turn the subject of her discourse. ‘I would never have believed it if anyone had told me. You know, in the bad times when he was exiled from Italy, along with a lot of the others, and when he was travelling about, doing all kinds of odd things to keep himself alive, he was in Malta and Greece and Turkey and the Crimea and Switzerland, but he never came to England, as so many of his compatriots did. I have thought of it many a time. He is so thoroughly Southern in every thought and feeling and impulse, and yet here he is, in this English house, in this cold, Northern English country.’

Minna laughed a little.

‘Yes, it’s quite true,’ she said; ‘it is wonderful; and yet, you know, the English and Italians are so much alike--the Romans, at any rate, in some deep, far-reaching substratum of their characters or temperaments. I have often been struck with it. It is only on the outside that we are so different.’

‘What does he do all day? What does he study now?’

‘What he always loved and always managed to study in the midst of his greatest troubles: archæology, and history, and ancient art and antiquarian things--what he calls the history of the dust of Rome.’

‘Rome,’ repeated Fulvia in a deep voice, all her lightness of tone and manner gone. She had clasped her hands round her knee. ‘Yes, he is Roman through and through: who could ever be anything else who had once been Roman? I also,’ she added dreamily, as she looked across the dazzling yellow green of the lawn in front of the house towards a wooded glade of the park, fringed by heavy trees of a deep shade of foliage--‘I also.’

She heaved a profound sigh, sadness itself, deep and beyond the power of words to describe. Minna thrilled to it. It told her what she knew well enough of these two, the unacknowledged father and daughter, that despite all that might happen, though Rome should be full of enemies for them, and the rest of the world swarming with friends; though utter poverty, and obscurity, and unspeakable hardships might be their lot there, and ease and distinction and consideration might await them elsewhere, yet their hearts were there, in their own city. They were genuine Romans.

They tolerated other places and people, they resigned themselves to endure them as best they might; but the true, unmistakable Roman spirit was in them--the exclusiveness which cares not for the stranger, but only, as it were, endures him on sufferance; the want of longing for any other life than that which they could lead within the walls of Aurelian; the haughty, yet not ill-natured, superb contempt for other towns, countries and peoples, which is, as it were, the hall-mark of your true Roman.

Minna knew it perfectly well, and resented it not in the least. She knew the fascination of the place, and had many a time said to herself: ‘If I were not an Englishwoman I would be a Roman; and if I were a Roman I should out-Roman all other Romans in my Romanness.’

So she knew perfectly well what Fulvia’s utterance of the word meant, and she sympathized with her to her heart’s core.

‘I suppose you have never had any communication with Rome since you left it?’ she asked seriously.

Fulvia comprehended in the flash of an eye.

‘You mean, with my mother?’ she said, in a cool, hard voice. ‘Oh, certainly not. I never shall--never, under any circumstances. There is one fatal obstacle to it.’

‘One more than others?’

‘Yes. I have always cared for the truth, and spoken the truth. Graf T----, a friend of ours at Vienna, told me it was the only obstacle in the way of my becoming an accomplished stateswoman. It is a sort of disease with me, you know, and I quite see how very much it is against me in many ways. I can never feel the same to people who tell lies as to those who tell the truth. The reason why I can be so much with you and Beppo now is because you always told me the truth. She lied to me. She told me I was to be happy. She told me lies about herself, about her situation, about Beppo. If she had been openly brutal about my marriage, and had told me the naked truth all the time; that she meant to have money and freedom and ease, and was going to sell me to get them, and that she did not care for my happiness or her own salvation, so that she had them, I could have forgiven her in the end, as things have turned out. As it is, I shall never forgive her. I shall never be able to--because she lied to me, and persisted in it, and went on lying to the end. I can never forgive those lies.’

‘No. But that would not deter you from going to Rome again?’

‘No.’ She glanced down at her wrist, on which was a narrow gold bangle, with a flat disc hanging from it, which bracelet she always wore. Suddenly she looked up and held out her hand and arm.

‘Would you believe me capable of such sentimentality?’ she said.

Minna examined the trinket, as she was evidently expected to do so. On the disc was engraved the very common device, in large thin letters one word above the other--_Roma_, _Amor_.

Minna smiled at first. Her eyes, her heart smiled, and smiled with delight. She possessed some such baubles herself, and loved them, though she never wore them. She smiled, therefore, looked up, and met Fulvia’s eyes.

The young woman still held out her hand and arm, steady and untrembling. She was not smiling. There was no alteration in the grave, firm line of her lips, in the straight sweep of her eyebrows, no deeper hue on her cheek or brow; but the light within her eyes and the expression which softened every line of her face startled Minna with a great shock. That was not a touch of girlish sentiment, that was not a bright mist of tender tears. No grief or regret, but an immense joy, lay behind that look. What had joy to do there?

‘Did you buy it?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Buy it!’ Fulvia laughed. ‘No; one does not buy trumpery things like that--at least, I don’t. Had I been buying, I would have got something more elegant, in better taste--more _recherchée_ in every respect. I did not buy it. It was given to me--bought off a second-hand dealer’s stall in the Campo dei Fiori, at the price that was asked for it, to the utter despair of the seller. I am sure that man will die with an unhealed wound in his heart, caused by the conviction that had he asked three times as much from the fool of a foreigner he could have got it.’

She laughed again, and pushed the bangle further up her firm white wrist.

Minna smiled constrainedly, wishing she did not feel that disagreeable little thrill run down her spine on hearing this avowal; wishing also that the scene in the picture-gallery, when she had met Fulvia and Hans Riemann, had not flashed with such swiftness into her mind.

It was evening, towards half-past seven, and after the little pause which ensued upon her last words Fulvia said she must go or she would not be home again and dressed in time for dinner. They dined at eight, as Minna was aware. Marchmont insisted upon being wheeled into the great dining-room where the meal was set out in state, and where, at one end of the table, waited upon by his own servant, he made the kind of meal which he was permitted to have, while his wife, at the other end of the board, in _demie-toilette_, ate her dinner under the auspices of a butler and a footman of the gravest type.

It was, as she had told Minna more than once, a ghastly entertainment; ‘but,’ she always concluded, ‘it seems to afford him some kind of comfort or to gratify his love of display, or something, so I make no objection.’

Minna, as a rule, dined somewhat earlier, but to-day she was expecting her brother, who could not arrive in time for her to dine before eight or after.

‘I will go with you to the gate,’ she said, rising also; and they passed out of the room.

‘Where has Signor Oriole gone, I wonder!’ speculated Fulvia.

Minna had noticed several times of late, when he did not present himself some time during her visit, or appear about the time of her departure, she looked round as if she missed him, and generally asked where he was.

‘He will, perhaps, be somewhere in the garden,’ she said, as they went along the hall towards the front-door.

Just before they reached it was heard a loud crunching of the gravel and rumbling of wheels, and a waggonette drove up and stopped before the door, looking very big, and making a huge barrier before the low, old-fashioned entrance.

‘Aunt Minna!’ cried a shrill, excited voice from the waggonette. ‘There they are; I met them on the road.’

‘They!’ repeated Minna. ‘Is the child out of her senses?’

She came to a dead stop, staring at the party in the waggonette. Then she bestowed one swift glance upon Fulvia, and hated herself for not being able to prevent herself from doing so. Fulvia’s face did not change; only she looked very grave and quiet.

Rhoda had scrambled down from the vehicle in a state of high glee. Following her was a tall man with a pale face and a certain severity in his expression. This was Mr. Hamilton, whom everyone accused of being the reverse of severe, given to far too great a leniency in matters as to which society held certain unshakable traditional opinions. His grave face relaxed as his eyes fell upon Minna and upon the joyous figure of his young daughter. Rising from his seat, to get out after Mr. Hamilton, was Hans Riemann.

After a moment’s silence Minna advanced. Fulvia remained somewhat in the background, gravely waiting. The brother and sister greeted each other. Then he said:

‘My dear Minna, look here!’ He turned to where Hans Riemann stood in the doorway, half smiling, not in the least deprecatory, not in the least embarrassed. ‘Hans turned up at my place last night, not knowing I was coming here, and intending to pay me a visit. So, as I know you have plenty of room, I just brought him on, and hope it is all right.’

It was not all right. Minna felt most distinctly that it was not all right; but, even had it been a great deal more wrong than it was, the appeal to her hospitality would have disarmed her. She smiled.

‘Come in, Hans; there is room for you, of course,’ she said. She could not speak the words, ‘I am glad to see you,’ but she held out her hand, and said, ‘If you can transfer your affections from South to North with such rapidity it is very well. You know Mrs. Marchmont?’ she added coldly, though she was far from feeling so. She was inwardly furious at not being able to pass it all lightly by, as if it had been nothing. Scarcely giving Hans time even to shake hands with Fulvia, she drew her brother forward, and said:

‘Richard, you have often heard me speak of Mrs. Marchmont, whom I am lucky enough to have now as a neighbour, and she has heard of you from me many a time. I want you to know one another.’

Mr. Hamilton’s calm, rather tired-looking eyes rested openly and scrutinizingly upon the young woman. He was older than Minna, and scarcely resembled her at all in appearance. His hair was more than grizzled; it had a distinct powdering of white in it. Yet the face was almost the face of a young man. All its lines, though thin, were not mean. He wore neither beard nor moustache. It was a curious and unusual face, and few there were who at first sight considered it an attractive one.

‘Yes, I have heard of you,’ he said, not smiling at all, as he held out his hand. Fulvia put hers within it, but did not speak. This man’s face and eyes and voice troubled and somewhat repelled her.

It was now the turn of Hans, who came forward with his calmly insouciant manner, offered his hand, and bowed low over hers. As he did so, the little gold bangle with its jangling disc, its ‘_Roma_, _Amor_,’ slipped down, almost over her hand. As he lifted his head their eyes met.

‘You are quite established here, then?’ he asked.

‘For the present, yes.’

‘Ah! I shall hope, then, to see something of you.’

‘We must see,’ said Fulvia quietly. She then turned towards Minna.

‘Dear Mrs. Hastings, I must wait no longer. I will run to the Hall by a short path. Good-evening. A rivederci.’

Without looking again at the two men, she walked quickly out, through the front-door and away.

* * * * *

Scarcely had she left the garden of Minna’s house, and got into the grounds which strictly belonged to her own, than she saw Signor Giuseppe coming towards her, apparently returning from his walk or wherever he had gone when he left them so suddenly.

‘You are going home?’ he asked, stopping.

‘Yes; it is late. The brother and the cousin of Mrs. Hastings have arrived,’ said she, and, rapidly though she had been walking, she also paused. It was very rarely that they exchanged words when no one else was present.

Signor Giuseppe seemed to forget that he also ought to be going in, that dinner--imperious dinner--would be ready immediately at the small house as well as at the great one. And Fulvia, though she knew full well that nothing so much exasperated her husband as waiting for this function, and though she made it her study not to cross him in things of that kind--Fulvia also betrayed no haste. Her face changed and grew softer. Signor Giuseppe was looking very earnestly, yea, even wistfully, at her. She did not return his glance. On the contrary, her eyes were downcast--it almost appeared as if she had not the courage to meet his gaze.

‘I will go with you to the Hall, if I may,’ he said.

‘It will give me the greatest pleasure if you will,’ was her low-voiced response, and they moved on. But there was no haste in her step now. Signor Oriole, though no weakling, was now an old man, and his griefs and troubles had added to the years which by nature were his. No doubt he would have walked quickly, and hastened, had she shown herself in a hurry. But she did not. She waited till she found out his pace, and then accommodated herself to it. She was silent, but still her eyes were downcast, and Fulvia Marchmont, in the flush of her womanhood and in all her glorious beauty, with that expression of greater softness relaxing its usual smiling, cold composure, was as lovely a thing as man or woman could wish to look upon, be the same father or mother, lover, husband or friend.

‘You are glad to be here, near Mrs. Hastings?’ he asked her. They spoke Italian.

‘As glad as I can be of anything,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘I can look forward to the summer now with peace, at any rate. And it is better to be here in this quiet English country place than in some German bath or French watering-place, or----’

‘Or even some nook in Italian hills,’ he continued for her.

‘Yes, the two first would be a weariness, with their endless monotony of fashions, and bands, and entertainments; and the last----’

‘And the last--Frascati, for instance, or further afield: Olevano, or Subiaco, or Rocco di Papa. Olevano--would not Olevano Romano please you now?’

Signor Giuseppe, though speaking quietly, had forgotten himself and his great self-restraint. He had forgotten the stately _voi_, and had called her ‘thee’ in a tone which seemed to stir some feeling at her inmost heart--who should say what feeling, what recollection of her childish days at Casa Dietrich, when she had hung on his arm, and teased him, and called him Beppo, and said ‘Cattivo!’ when he would not indulge her in some whim? She became very white, and looked at him speechlessly for a moment from a pair of wide-open, dry eyes, full of a pain that stabbed his own heart.

‘Don’t!’ was all she said, but humbly, deprecatingly, not sharply.

‘Carina, forgive me!’ he exclaimed in great distress, thereby making bad worse. He stopped again. ‘It is unwise; we had better not talk. I wish to spare your feelings, not to hurt them,’ he said quickly. ‘I will return now. Good-night.’

He refrained from even holding out his hand. Fulvia, with a white face and a wan smile, bowed her head, returned his valediction almost in a whisper, then darted onwards at a rapid pace. Soon she turned a corner, and was hidden from his view by a great clump of immense evergreen trees.

Signor Giuseppe turned back and went homewards. His head was sunk, his hands were clasped behind him, his walk was dejected.

‘If I might go away while she is here--go away, and not see it all!’ was the thought in his heart, which was filled to bursting with a great pain and a great anger.

‘Coward!’ then he told himself. ‘In spite of her white face, and her grief at my stupid mistake, I know that she prefers me to be here. If she were asked, she would not have me go. Ah, poverina! I wonder if she thinks I do not know--a stupid old fellow, engrossed in his studies, who cannot understand a young human heart, and its pain and its woe and its peril. Can I not see that heart, and understand both its weakness and its strength? Do I not know that she has fronted the storm, and come through it strong and proud, entitled to mock at weaker ones? Poor Minna is always pained by what she thinks my child’s cynicism--a skin-deep cynicism. Altro! She is steeled to meet all misfortune with a smile, that superb smile which only they smile who have gone through the worst, and who know that all else which may befall them is but trivial. Grief and hatred and unhappiness will neither bend nor break her--she is used to them and despises them. But love, but worship, but adoration from one whom she too could love--ah!’

He raised his head, and looked up into the deep-blue sky, with its rolling white clouds, and thought deeply, as if trying to recollect something. Then--

‘Yes, I remember--a lesson lies before her when she could so well do with a respite. She is like my Rome, described by the historian from whom Minna long ago read me the description of its walls--a mighty city and a strong, defended on three sides by nature as well as art, but on the fourth, where there was “no river to embank, no cliff to scarp,” weak and vulnerable. Servius made it strong by artificial means--the city. And she too--per Dio! A mighty defence am I, and a virtuous example!’

He laughed sarcastically at his own reflections as he entered the house.