CHAPTER XXVI
NEWS FROM VENICE
MADELINE was sitting one afternoon with her mother in their little Chippendale flat, all inlaid mahogany and old-fashioned chintz, china in cabinets, and miniatures on crimson velvet; it was so perfectly in keeping that the very parlourmaid’s cap looked Chippendale, and it somehow suggested Hugh Thomson’s illustrations to Jane Austen’s books. Mrs. Irwin and Madeline were not, however, in the least degree like Miss Austen’s heroines and their mothers, except that Mrs. Irwin, though very thin and elegant, had this one resemblance to the immortal Mrs. Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice”: “the serious object of her life was to get her daughter married; its solace, gossiping and news.” Also she had much of the same querulousness, and complained every night of nerves, and each morning of insomnia.
Madeline was reading John Addington Symonds’ Renaissance and everything that she could get on the subject of Italian history and cinquecento art. These studies she pursued still as a sort of monument to Rupert, or as a link with him. And to-day, as she was waiting for Bertha to call and take her out, she received a letter from him, from Venice.
It was one of his long, friendly, cultured letters; making no allusion to any thoughts of becoming more than friends to each other, and no reference to the interlude of his proposal, or the episode of her engagement to Charlie. This memory seemed to have faded away, and he wrote in his old instructive way a long letter in his pretty little handwriting, speaking of gondoliers, Savonarola, hotels, pictures, lagoons, fashions and the weather. This last, he declared to be so unbearable that he thought of coming back to London before very long. He asked for an answer to his letter, and wished to know what she was reading, what concerts she had been to, and whether she had seen the exhibition at the Goupil Gallery.
But though it took her back to long before the period of his love-letter, and he appeared to wish the whole affair to be forgotten, it gave her considerable satisfaction. He wanted to hear of her, and, what was more, he was coming back. Of course Mrs. Irwin saw that the letter was from him, and she remarked that she had always said everyone had a right to their own letters, and that after twenty-one, nowadays, she supposed girls could do exactly what they liked, which she thought was only fair; that mothers, very rightly, hardly counted in the present day, were regarded as nobody, and were treated with no confidence of any kind, of which she thoroughly approved; that Madeline’s new coat and skirt suited her very badly and did not fit; and that grey had never been her colour.
Madeline’s reply to this was to place the long letter into her mother’s hand.
Having read it, Mrs. Irwin said she did not wish to force anybody’s confidence, and she was evidently disappointed at its contents. However, she advised her daughter to answer without loss of time.
The conversation was interrupted by Bertha’s arrival.
“You know my brother-in-law, Clifford?” she said. “The funny boy has ‘littery’ tastes and began writing an historical play! But he got tired of it and now he’s taken to writing verses. I’ve brought you one of his poems; they’re so funny I thought it would amuse you. Fancy if a brother of Percy’s should grow up to be a ‘littery gent’. I suspect it to be addressed to the mother of his beloved friend, Pickering. He is devoted to her.”