Part 2, Chapter XIV.
Left to Herself.
“As we have met, we shall not meet again
For ever, child, for ever!”
Left to herself! In the early morning Violante’s senses awoke from the confusion of disturbed and dreamy sleep; and, with burning eyes and throbbing temples, she sat upright and tried to think “for herself.”
“He will come and persuade father.” She repeated this watchword over and over again to herself; but the new confidence could hardly combat the old experience, and she could not realise that “father” would be over-persuaded—even by her lover. Childish as Violante was she had grown up too much in the constant discussion of ways and means not to be quite aware of the worldly advantages of Signor Vasari’s offer. Those attaching to Hugh Crichton’s were like a dim and distant dream, scarcely to be realised; nor had she, in the abstract, any sense that she would be unfairly treated by being deprived of her right of choice. Perhaps no creature ever entered on a conflict with less hope of success. She felt so sure that neither prayers nor tears would move her father that she never thought of trying their effect; while Signor Vasari seemed still more inexorable. If Hugh did not somehow set it right for her what remained but submission? “I had rather die; but I shall be so frightened, I shall say yes,” she thought. “They have always made me do what they wish. I could not help it! There’s no one to help me—no one!” Her cowardice and weakness had been so often cast in the poor child’s teeth that she had lost every scrap of confidence in her own powers. Her father said, “You shall give in,” Rosa said, “You cannot hold out;” and Violante knew nothing of a Strength not her own, of a Hand that would hold hers more firmly than sister’s or lover’s. Her love was the strongest thing about her: would it hold her up? She thought with a kind of ardour of resisting and refusing, of holding out and dying rather than yielding. But all the time she knew that she should yield; that she could not act and sing between the two fires of father and suitor; that the long days of conflict would not kill her all at once, but would each one be very miserable and hard to endure, and would each one wear out a little of her strength. For Violante had some experience of troublous times, and knew very well what it meant to be unhappy and in disgrace.
“He will come; he will help me.” She pushed aside the thought of what was to follow and resolved to please her father as much as possible, in the hope of protracting matters till Hugh should have time to interfere. So, to Rosa’s surprise, she appeared in a clean muslin dress and a pink ribbon and sat down to sing her scales, instead of lying in bed and crying, as inclination would have prompted. Nay, she carried her father his cup of chocolate, and kept her hand from trembling as he took it from her. Signor Mattei viewed all this as betokening intended submission: Rosa was puzzled. For the first time she could not understand Violante.
The morning hours wore away; there was, fortunately, no rehearsal. Violante sat in the window with some knitting in her lap. She did not say one word to Rosa of her fears or her intentions. Steps came up the stairs and across the corridor, and Signor Mattei ushered in the great Vasari himself. Rosa started up and came forward to receive him. Violante shrank into her corner; she grew white and cold, but she set her mouth, and under her long eyelashes her eyes looked hard and strange.
“Signor,” said Signor Mattei, “here is my daughter. I give her to you with profound pleasure, and assure you that she is sensible of the honour of your choice.”
Violante spoke not a word. She rose up, obedient to her father’s eye, and, perhaps, somewhat urged by the long habit of obedience to the manager. She dared not utter the refusal on her lips. What would they do to her; what would they say? It was better to submit—to submit till he came. Signor Vasari took her by the hand, bowed profoundly, and offered to her a handsome diamond cross and chain of pearls.
“Permit me, Signorina; they were the jewels of a princess.”
He fastened it on her neck, and then, putting his arm around her, drew her towards him as he had done before now—on the stage. Violante started and lifted her eyes. There stood Hugh Crichton within the door, his eyes fixed on her, his face as pale as hers.
“Signor Mattei, you were right, and I thank you,” he said in English, and in a hard, fierce voice. Then he turned and was gone, before anyone spoke a word.
Suddenly Violante wrenched herself out of Vasari’s grasp. She pulled the cross off her neck, scattering the pearls far and wide as she threw it on the floor.
“I hate you!” she said, “I hate you! And if you marry me I will kill you.”
“Signorina!” ejaculated the astonished manager.
“Violante, Violante!” cried Rosa.
“I hate, you!” she repeated, and then she threw herself on her knees.
“Father, father, father, kill me, kill me first.”
“Ungrateful, wicked child, you are driving a dagger into my breast!” cried Signor Mattei.
“I am deceived, I am deceived, but I will have my rival’s blood!” exclaimed Vasari.
“Signor Vasari, you are treading on that cross and spoiling it,” said Rosa. “Violante, for shame! You don’t know what you say.”
“I do know,” said Violante; but the quick reaction was coming, and she let Rosa lift her up and cowered into her arms, trembling and shivering. Her defiance was over, and had come, like the actions of most cowards, five minutes too late.
“Signor Vasari,” said Rosa, “I think you had better leave us and—and—come again when my sister is more herself. I will pick up the pearls, and—and, father, isn’t that best?”
“La Signorina has no lack of passion when it suits her turn,” said Vasari, with a sneer. “Yes, I will go—but, as to coming again, that is another matter.”
Then Signor Mattei broke out into a perfect storm of invective and adjuration, calling the Saints to witness his own honest dealing, and speaking of and to Violante in terms of such anger and contempt as were hardly calculated to excuse her to her lover. Violante shook like a leaf, but made no attempt at an answer, and Rosa at last pulled her away from the room, leaving her father still in the full flow of his eloquence and Signor Vasari stiff and upright with offended dignity, yet casting involuntary and half-unconscious glances at his scattered pearls.
Hugh Crichton, on the other hand, had suffered since his interview with Signor Mattei, from a kind of doubt, not unnatural to a man treading on unknown ground. He would have had far more confidence in Violante had she been the Miss Katie Clinton whose cause his mother advocated, little as he would have believed anyone who had echoed the sentiment; and when Mr Tollemache came in before dinner and said that all the world was talking of Mademoiselle Mattei’s great good luck in her encasement to Signor Vasari, Hugh turned visibly pale, and James said:
“Is it a fact or a rumour, Mr Tollemache?”
“A fact, I believe. I had it from young Contarini, who haunts the musical world; and he said Vasari had told him of it himself.” Neither looked at Hugh, who sat still for a moment and then got up and went away. James could not help a look of consternation, and Mr Tollemache said:
“I assure you, Crichton, I had no notion anything serious was going on. Hugh’s the last fellow I should have suspected of—of—”
“Making such a fool of himself?” said James. “Well—you see he never could take things in moderation.”
“He’s well out of the scrape, in my opinion.”
“Yes, poor old boy, I suppose he is. The rest of us are, at any rate.”
Dinner passed, of course, with no reference to the subject; nor did Hugh mention it till the next morning, when, alone with Jem, he said, with a nervous laugh but an odd twitch in his voice:
“Jem, you profess to understand young women. Which should you have said was the favoured one?”
Jem was driven into a corner. He certainly had thought that Violante had favoured Hugh. He thought so still, and felt pretty sure that she was not a free agent; but he did not wish to say so, and yet he could not but be touched by the eager wistful look with which Hugh regarded him.
“Well,” he said, “I thought she looked graciously on you; but you see the—”
“If so,” interrupted Hugh, “I’d marry her to-morrow, spite of them all.”
“Good heavens, Hugh!” cried Jem. “Don’t think of such a thing! I don’t believe Tollemache would consent. It’s impossible!”
“Tollemache?”
“British Consul, you know. You can’t get married out here as if it was Gretna Green; and I won’t have a hand in it; I declare, Hugh, I won’t,” cried Jem. “It’s all very well, but I won’t, you know; and there’s an end of it.”
“I did not ask you,” said Hugh, coldly, but becoming conscious that to marry Violante without the consent of her friends or his was, under the circumstances, utterly impossible.
He said no more to James, but resolved to see Violante once again at all hazards. How he saw her, and what effect the scene he beheld had on a mind already full of doubts and suspicions, has been already told. Anger, intensified by the recollection of how he had once before been treated, swallowed up every other feeling. He went back to the Consulate and met his brother on the stairs.
“I shall go home, Jem,” he said. “I cannot stay here. You can explain and follow when you like. Yes, it’s all at an end. Never speak of it any more.”
James could obtain no word of explanation—no single particular—as he tried to help Hugh to pack up his things and to arrange some decent sort of leave-taking. Hugh was too desperate to care who was surprised at his proceedings. The ladies were out, and he wrote three lines of courteous thanks to Mrs Tollemache, but wished her son good-bye without any reason given, and never gave his brother a chance of sympathising with or restraining him.
“I am going straight home,” he said, as he went away.
“Well!” exclaimed Mr Tollemache, “who could have expected such a tornado?”
“Oh,” said Jem, “Hugh never could take circumstances into consideration. I believe the poor little thing was as much in love with him as she knew how. How could he expect her to tell the truth about the manager? Of course she liked Hugh, and of course she told fibs, and now she will cry her eyes out, and then marry Vasari after all. What else can she do, poor little victim? And then there’s Hugh, who won’t dance four times with a girl for fear of ‘exciting false expectations,’ has gone and broken her heart—if hearts ever are broken. Much he knows about the tricks girls will play to avoid an uproar! Poor little, pretty thing!”
“I don’t care for the girl,” said Mr Tollemache, “but it’s no joke about Hugh.”
“Poor old fellow, no; but those things pass off, you know; and, after all, anything’s better than that he should have married her.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Mr Tollemache.
“Poor little child!” repeated Jem, with a not unkindly pity, but which yet made small account of Violante beside the other interests involved.
And so Hugh Crichton went away from Civita Bella, and Violante was left behind him.