CHAPTER XXIV.

Very late that night Signor Oriole sat in the room which was called his study, quite alone. He slept less and less as he grew older, and he was left, as usual, with all the lower part of the house to himself in a dead silence. His books and papers and writing materials were all around him. His study was removed only by a narrow little anteroom from that of Minna--her sitting-room and studio combined. These three rooms were old, with low roofs, and beams across the ceilings; but the original windows, small and high up in the wall, had been removed, and French ones opening to the ground substituted for them. Of course the three windows all commanded the same view, of a woodland glade and a broad slope of grass like an avenue between thick walls of dark trees which sloped upwards, climbing a hill. It was a portion of the park belonging to Yewridge Hall--a part which the inhabitants of Minna’s house were free to wander in as much as they chose.

After Minna and Rhoda had gone upstairs Signor Oriole went to his study. The lamp was lighted, but the window was still open, and he went to it, and stood there, looking out. The yellow lamplight was behind him. Before him was the dark solemnity of the glade and wood, but that, too, soon began to take a darkly silvery appearance. A strange light, at once deep and pale, began to palpitate in the sky. His eyes were riveted on the summit of the little hill, for the awakening, if one may so call it, in the sky seemed to proceed from there. Whiter and whiter it grew, clearer and clearer, till all nature seemed to wait breathlessly for the visitor whose advent was thus foretold.

She came at last; the outline of the hill-top grew suddenly sharp and clear, then a crisp white spark glittered on it--spread, grew, dilated, enlarged into a gradually growing silver disc. All above, below, around, is glorified, regalized, resplendent, as the moon floats up with majesty into the clear dark spaces of the heavens.

‘Ah!’ said Signor Giuseppe to himself, as he watched the spectacle with the beginning of a smile, and with the matter-of-fact eyes of a child of the South, ‘it is a fine night.’

He nodded his head, whose white hairs had taken a reflected glitter from the light without, and, leaving the blind up and the shutters open, he turned again to his writing-table, took up his pen, and resumed his work. He was writing about days long gone by; about old Rome, and things that had happened in her. It was an employment in which he succeeded, almost always, in finding repose for his mind, peace for his thoughts.

He had written on for some time when he heard the hall-door open and shut. He had no doubt as to who the visitor might be, but as a matter of precaution he got up, opened the door, and looked forth into the hall, where the light was still burning.

He had been right. Hans Riemann was there, hanging up his little woollen cap upon a peg of the hatstand. His face was pale and angry. When he saw Signor Giuseppe, he did not speak, but looked at him with a curious expression.

‘You have fastened the door?’ asked the latter.

‘Yes, I’m off to bed. I think I shall be off altogether, very soon. This is a dull hole when all is said and done.’

‘In the name of our hostess and her family I thank you for your kind expressions,’ replied Signor Giuseppe, very politely and very cuttingly.

Hans’ face flushed.

‘Did it sound rude?’ he asked, in a tone of indifference which heightened the said rudeness. ‘I’m sorry if it did. Good-night.’

He ran quickly up the stairs. Signor Oriole, shrugging his shoulders, returned to his study and his work. After some time--he knew not how long--the first sensation stole over him of something which he took for weariness. At first he did not heed it, but wrote on, wishing to finish a long paragraph in which he was engaged. The curious sensation continued. He laid his pen down, and, resting one elbow on the table, propped his head on his hand, and meditated a little. As he meditated, he gradually grew conscious of the intense silence and stillness which prevailed both inside and outside--conscious of it, and impressed by it. It must have been working itself into his senses and his brain all the time that he had been writing, and most likely irritating him. Signor Giuseppe was a true Roman; he could work better, play better, think, philosophize, yea, even sleep better, in a noise than in the most idyllic silence ever known. Just now he shrugged his shoulders, and muttered to himself: ‘Per Dio! what a deathly silence!’

Oppressed by it, he knew not why, he went towards the window with the half-formed intention of closing it. It was as if the immense silence of the night flowed in through the open window, and imposed itself upon that which reigned in the house also, and made it almost intolerable to him.

Standing there near the window, and looking out, and again oppressed by the silence, he recalled to himself the walk home with Minna one night, from her studio to Casa Dietrich, when she had spoken to him of the noise of Rome, and of how she delighted in it.

To Casa Dietrich that night the signora had returned, had summoned him to her rooms, and had told him that Marchmont had spoken to her about Fulvia, and that she intended to marry her to him. She had told him with the most accurate foreknowledge of the horror it would inspire in him; she had listened with smiling obstinacy to all his expostulations, reproaches and accusations, and had then told him:

‘You have yourself to thank for it. You have known for many years that I was not a woman to be played with with impunity. You have refused my reasonable wishes and demands; you must not be surprised and angry that when the time comes I act in the manner most convenient to my interests and to those of my daughter. Mio caro, I have waited a long time for freedom. This man offers it to me--freedom and independence. I shall take it. You can do what you like.’

‘You say I played with you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And you--what have you done with me? You say I have myself to thank for it all; and you--whom have you to thank, that you are now in this position, that you must sell your child disgracefully to get what you call your freedom? Bianca, give the child to me. I will work for her; I will provide for her. She shall be no burden to you.’

Bianca had laughed.

‘And I?’ she asked. ‘My daughter is no burden to me. She is the most valuable piece of property I have. No; I have made up my mind. Do not trouble yourself in the matter. It is all right.’

All this scene came back to him with the utmost vividness as he stood there in this English house, looking forth upon this English park, with the fresh damp English air blowing upon his forehead and face. He felt it not.

He was again steeped in a totally different atmosphere, in the soft, deliciously enervating air of Rome--the odour of the streets, of the houses; that peculiar, half-pungent, half-debilitating perfume which assails the senses there, and bathes them, and takes them captive, pervading everything, and which is like no other atmosphere in the world--this ichor he felt and imbibed now, and it was like new life to him.

The past, dark and mysterious beyond all words to describe, with its processions of Caesars, its armies of trained fighting men, its dream of fair women of every shade of vice and virtue, its holocausts of human victims--the blood-soaked, sun-soaked, art-soaked past; the vivid, noisy present, full of life and action, of battles fought and of grand hope for the future, in which his life had been passed--all these were summed up and concentrated as it were in that wondrously scented air of Rome, and in Rome he now was, with a fever in his veins, a passion of longing which tore his heart-strings, parted his lips, and drew from his heart a slight sound, between a groan and a sigh.

‘Dahin, dahin geht unser Weg-- O Vater, lass’ uns zieh’n!’

Not Mignon’s words, but Mignon’s thought was in his heart.

‘I must go. I must breathe that air once again before I die--all the agony and all the rapture of it. I must pace those streets again, and feel those stones beneath my feet, though every one were a burning coal that blistered them.’

The air blew in upon him in a rougher gust, both keen and damp, from the mountains of the North and her wild wastes of moorland; from her gray, monotonous sea, ‘the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea,’ and the nerves of the man of the South shuddered under its alien breath. It had awakened him from his dream; he opened his eyes and brought his thoughts once more to reality.

He laid his hand on the window to push it to, and as he did so it seemed to him that there was a slight sound outside it. Not a sound whose nature he could have specified--not a sigh, not a groan or a sob, and certainly not a cry or a spoken word, but perhaps something of them all. Nothing deterred by the eeriness of the thing, for he knew not fear, he drew the window more widely open, instead of closing it, and looked forth again. The scene had become even more beautiful than before. Arrested, he still looked, half gazing at the view before him, half listening for that indescribable sound to come again, when his eyes, long-sighted and keen, detected at some little distance from the house, moving hesitatingly and uncertainly along, and emerging from the shadow of the wood into the moonlit grass, a slight, ink-black woman’s figure. It paused suddenly, and perhaps turned. Of that he could not be sure in the uncertain light, but the figure was there. It moved about now quickly, now slowly. Now it looked as if its head were bowed; again, as though its face were raised; and once certainly it stretched its arms out with the gesture of one who wrings hands in dire distress.

Signor Giuseppe stood riveted to his place, not in the least afraid, but very curious. Now the figure had disappeared again into the shadow of the wood. He saw it no more, though he strained his eyes to discover it. He stood for some time, and was about to turn away--so dense are our outward senses, so doth this envelope of flesh conceal one spirit from another, though that other may be calling upon us, with agony unspeakable to bear, to help and to comfort.

Thus he stood, when, coming from his right hand, from under the shadow of the house, the figure in one second stood immediately in front of him, with the light of the lamp from within falling full upon its face.

That face was very pale, very drawn, very much worn with anguish and pain; the eyes which plunged themselves into his were haggard and glazed, and weary beyond description.

It was Fulvia’s face; those were Fulvia’s eyes, and Fulvia’s hands they were which were suddenly stretched out towards him; but it was no voice he had ever heard before which, in a hoarse, broken whisper, groaned forth:

‘Father!’

For a moment he stood motionless--petrified; then, stretching out his arms too, and making a step towards her, he finished the tearing asunder of the veil which she had at last rent.

‘My daughter!’

‘Oh, help me! help me!’ she said, in the same unnatural voice, as she fell, with the heavy gesture of one whose will no longer controls his movements, into his arms, broken, desperate, recking nothing of showing her mortal anguish, caring no more to hide anything from his eyes, at any rate.

He held her up in silence. Neither of them spoke for a long time after they had uttered those fateful words. Her hands grasped his shoulders with the clinging of one who has nothing else to hold by. Her head was prostrate, low upon his breast.

Signor Giuseppe’s white hairs mingled with the bright waves and coils of golden brown; his lips touched them, moved, but he uttered no words, till at last, as she raised her face, furrowed with suffering almost out of resemblance to her natural one, he said in a deep voice, coming from his inmost soul: ‘Mia figlia, stand here no more. Come in and tell me what has happened and what you wish.’

‘Oh, I believe you can do nothing, nothing for me, padre mio! I do not know why I am here--I did not mean to come. I did not mean to leave the side of the pond alive, and yet I came on and on here, because I have something to tell--there is something that someone must know. I am frightened! I had such a horrible dream. At least, I think it was a dream. Well, I will come in. No one will disturb us?’

‘No one; I am alone. There will be no interruption,’ said he. ‘Come in. Tell me your dream. Perhaps it was no dream after all.’

He drew her within the room, and closed the window at last. Fulvia gazed about her as if bewildered by the lamplight, and by the walls which surrounded her. He took her to a couch which stood against the wall, placed her upon it, and seated himself beside her. She took one of his hands between hers, and, drawing a long sigh, said:

‘How strange this all is! Father, my father, my father! There is someone, after all. Padre mio, what will you do for me?’

‘Child, anything--anything in the world, when you tell me what it is,’ said he, with love and anguish in his voice. There was something in her whole aspect which frightened him, or, rather, which filled him with vague alarm and apprehension.

Signor Giuseppe was not one of the people who are easily frightened. There was, however, something enigmatical in Fulvia’s demeanour--in her great excitement and breathless haste, and in the sudden strange pauses she made, when a curious, bewildered look came over her whole face, and her eyes looked as if they were seeking backwards in her heart for some clue, or purpose, or intention, which she had formed and then lost.

‘What time is it?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Two in the morning,’ he told her.

‘Two in the morning! Well, I want you to take me away, now at once, from this place. Isn’t it cruel of me to ask such a thing of you? But I cannot help it. I have been here long enough--too long. I have been here so long that I have--nearly--committed a frightful sin. It is late--it is a strange time to be getting up and going away, I know; but I will go, I must go--and you will come with me.’

She looked at him with an attempt at a smile, and pressed his hands convulsively. Signor Oriole had lived through many strange experiences, through scenes of ‘battle and murder and sudden death,’ through perils of every description, both active and passive. Many a thrill had shot through him in moments when his life had hung on a thread--thrills of excitement, thrills of nervous tension, of fierce exultation, of forlorn hope; but never had he experienced this thrill before--the thrill which is at the same time a cold chill, and which is fear.

‘I will go with you when you have told me one thing,’ he said, and all the blood left his face. ‘You were desperate to-night when you left your husband’s house. How did you leave it? Have you killed him?’

Fulvia rose erect from the bowed-down, crouching position of hopeless misery in which she had been sitting, rose as if electrified; he saw that her whole frame stiffened and grew rigid. Her eyes became fixed, her lips parted; she looked as if her spirit hung in the scales between reason and madness, and as if the balance might incline to madness at a second’s notice. There was some recollection of freezing horror in her soul, which his question, prompted by a flash of inspiration as to the worst that might have happened, had roused again in its full strength. He almost repented him of having asked it, and looked at her, trying to put an expression of tender kindness into his eyes while the awful fear tugged at his heart.

Suddenly the expression which so froze him relaxed. Her physical rigidity also gave way. Her very hands became limp and nerveless, and she replied, as if in answer to some everyday question:

‘No. I thought I would. I told him I was going to--and then--I did not. I came away. Now, father, let us go away--quite away.’

‘At once, with all my heart,’ said he promptly, as he rose and looked about him. The ghastly uncertainty was gone from his heart. The light of reason was in Fulvia’s eyes. He knew she had spoken the truth to him. He was now ready to give himself up to her lightest wish, but, as his eyes fell upon his work and papers, upon the quiet, almost solemnly peaceful room, as his ears again became conscious of the silence which had at first annoyed, but which now soothed them, as he saw, in a side-glance, the broken figure of Fulvia, a load like lead settled on his heart.

Then he took heart again. There had been no crime, let the wretchedness be what it might. His practical sense came forward once more; and began to grapple with the real and almost grotesque problem, ‘What am I to do with her? Where am I to take her?’

‘You will not see Minna?’ he asked. ‘I could awaken her and bring her down here in a minute.’

Fulvia shook her head, with a sigh that was almost a shudder.

‘Not Minna--oh no! Let us go, and let us go alone.’

She was dressed, as he now observed, as if for travelling, in a very plain, but trim, elegant black walking-dress, a small, closely fitting, black straw bonnet trimmed with velvet; a so-called dust-cloak which was in reality a costly thing of silk and lace, was hung over her arm and had remained there through all the agitation and tragedy; long soft gray gloves fitted her hands closely, and wrinkled over her wrists and arms; everything she had on was quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree theoretically, but elegant, fashionable, and noticeable from its perfect fit and style, and from the beauty and individuality of the woman who wore it.

And nothing that she had put on could have been otherwise. We may change our clothes, we may transform ourselves as to outer covering, we may exchange the masterpieces of a Worth for the botched performances of a village Miss Smith, but if we are Fulvia Marchmont we can be no one else. The reverse holds equally good. Signor Oriole was troubled, not so much by the elegance and distinction which made itself apparent through all the seeming simplicity of the costume--he was troubled to know why she had that costume on at all.

‘Very well,’ he said, in answer to her last words. ‘You must excuse me an instant, while I put one or two things in a bag and get some money. And you--have you anything? Are you prepared? I hope at least you have none of his money with you.’

‘I have not a penny, carissimo. All that I have of his are these clothes which I have on, as one may not go about the world without them. As soon as we get somewhere where you can buy me some others, I will be without these too. I have nothing--absolutely nothing. I will sit here and wait for you.’

He went out of the room, and softly upstairs, along a long, rambling passage which led to his own room, and another, both of which were rather remote from the rest of the house. The other room was that occupied by Richard Hamilton, and upon its door Signor Oriole knocked softly.

Hamilton appeared to be a light sleeper, for his answer came at once, ‘Who’s there?’

‘I,’ said Signor Giuseppe, opening the door, which was not locked, and going just within the room. ‘Hamilton, I want to speak to you.’

‘You--are you ill, sir?’ asked the other, in quick alarm. He struck a match, lighted a candle, and sat up in bed, looking at his visitor.

‘No, I am not ill. Listen, and speak softly. Something has happened, as to which it pleases me to take you into my confidence. I can trust you.... My daughter is downstairs----’

He paused for a moment; Hamilton stared at him as if fascinated, and then said, almost in a whisper:

‘Fulvia?’

‘Yes, Fulvia; she is in dire distress. Something which she does not choose to explain to me yet, or which she cannot explain, has happened. She has left her house; I do not call it her home----’

‘No, you are right,’ said Hamilton in a deep voice. ‘Well?’

‘She has chosen to break down the barrier which has always hitherto been between us. She has claimed my help, and has required that I shall take her away from here at once, now, you understand. It is her right, and it is my pleasure to do it. She refuses to see Minna. I think she is too much broken to be able to endure even Minna’s sympathy. I leave everything loose that belongs to me. I look to you to make all clear, and to explain to your sister why I leave thus.’

‘But where are you going? What are you going to do?’ asked Hamilton in his clear tones, which always sounded so cold, and which yet were so much to be trusted.

‘I don’t know. I suppose we are two pilgrims to----’

‘That is madness. Look here: you must do something, or she will be worse off than ever.’

‘I shall take her to Italy,’ said Signor Giuseppe, after a moment’s pause.

‘Not to Rome, I hope?’

‘No, not to Rome. I will take her to Sicily, to my home there which she has never seen.’

‘That is right--yes, that is the right thing to do; and to set about it you must go to London; and there is a train to London in two hours from now, at ---- Junction, which is six miles away. I will drive you there,’ said Hamilton with utter _sang-froid_, as he cast the bedclothes from him and prepared to get up. ‘Do you go and pack up whatever you may wish to take, and in five minutes I will be ready. This is a business which needs speed.’

‘You are right. Your head is clear,’ said Signor Oriole, with the ghost of his old smile, at once sarcastic and approving. He left the room and went to his own, where he collected all he could think of into a small portmanteau, stowed away his pocket-book, some notes and gold, and a cheque-book on his London bankers, and was ready. As he emerged from his room after this occupation, Hamilton came out of his, looking as cool, as self-possessed, and as fit as if he were going down to breakfast in the everyday way.

‘I have written a note to Minna,’ he said: ‘I will put it outside her door, so she will have it when she is called. Now let us go downstairs. Of course Mrs. Marchmont will hate me for being in at this, but there’s nothing else for it.’

Softly they went downstairs, and the slumbering inmates of the rambling old house knew nothing of what was going on. Without hesitation or explanation they went straight to Signor Oriole’s study.

There the lamp was still burning; there Fulvia still sat, her hands folded one over the other on her knees, her eyes fixed on the opposite wall. She looked up with a hungry eagerness to be gone as they came in, and her eyes dilated with a haughty displeasure as she saw Richard Hamilton.

‘Mrs. Marchmont,’ said he in the most matter-of-fact tone, ‘Signor Oriole tells me he is taking you to Sicily, and that you have excellent reasons for wishing to set off at once. If you will have a few moments’ indulgence for us, we will harness the little carriage, and I will drive you to--to catch the London mail.’

‘I will wait, but you will be quick?’ she said, as her expression again grew quieter. ‘I don’t want to be here when the day really begins, that is all.’

‘When the day really begins I hope to be putting you in the train for King’s Cross,’ said he, as he left the room with Signor Oriole.

How the thing was done with such incredible speed and silence and accuracy they never knew. Circumstances were favourable. All the household were in their deepest sleep. The stable and offices were away from the house. The matter was accomplished very soon. Signor Oriole returned to the house, took his daughter’s hand, and said ‘Come!’

She rose and followed him. In the yard they found Hamilton throwing some shawls and rugs into the carriage, which was a low, open one, but had a box for the driver.

‘Here,’ said he, ‘get in, Mrs. Marchmont. Put on your cloak--so; and wrap all these things about you’--he was doing it himself as fast as he could--‘for the morning air is sharp, and it will be cold on the open road.’

He helped her in, and she mechanically submitted to everything he did. Signor Oriole got in beside her. Hamilton wrapped him too in a rug, got on to the box, and, not much caring now how much noise he made, whipped up the horse. In ten minutes they were nearly a mile away from West Wall, and by dint of good driving arrived at ---- Junction with ten minutes to spare, just as a wild primrose and purple sunrise was flaming over the violet wastes of the German Ocean, which rose and fell and sobbed and moaned under it like some living monster disturbed in its sleep.

The few last hurried words were exchanged. Signor Oriole promised to write from London and tell all he intended to do. He swore that he would never lose sight of his friends in this Northern land; he would not forget them, he would not be silent to them. As for seeing them, that time alone would decide, and--he gave a quick side-glance at Fulvia, who was pacing about with head downcast and in utter abstraction, her only glances being occasionally in the direction from which the express ought to come.

It did come at last. It made only a very brief stoppage at that small junction. There was an empty first-class compartment, into which the travellers got. At the last moment, as Hamilton, standing with bared head, looked at Fulvia and wished her good-bye, without even holding out his hand to intrude upon her grief, she roused for a moment, held out hers with an impulsive movement, and said:

‘Good-bye, Mr. Hamilton. You have been a true friend to me to-day. I’ll never forget it.’

‘Then say “a rivederci,”’ he besought her, with a sudden change of expression.

‘Willingly--in a happier hour, if one should come to me--a rivederci.’

He clasped her hand, and looked into her eyes, and dropped from the footboard, as the train was in motion. Soon it was out of sight.

As he turned again to the outside of the station, the fleeting glory of that sunrise was over. The heaven was gray; every splendour had departed. From the leaden sky, a drizzling rain had begun to fall into a slate-coloured sea which moaned and growled like the ‘fierce old mother’ that she was.

Hamilton collected all the rugs and shawls, folded them neatly into a bundle, and covered them up with a mackintosh. One he reserved to fold round his own knees as he drove back, in the teeth of a raw wind which not even August could make warm. His face was as gray as the day; his thoughts resembled both.

‘So! She is gone! And gone for what, and to what? If only that d----l would die! But he won’t. I wonder what happened--I wonder what drove her to this? Something horrible, I haven’t a doubt--not a doubt! Oh, Lord, what a world it is--what a world! And how we are handicapped who have scruples about playing off our own bat and letting all the rest go hang. Hans didn’t mind, and so perhaps she is lost to me for ever.’

It was seven o’clock when he drove into the stableyard of his sister’s house, and confronted the astonished youth who was Minna’s only man-servant, and whom horror and amaze at what he believed to have been the stealing of the property committed to his charge had reduced to such a state of imbecility that its reappearance only served to more thoroughly bewilder and terrify him. Hamilton threw the reins to him, bade him look to the horse, and went into the house, leaving him to recover as best he might from his stupor.