To gain his lodgings and lock himself into his studio was scarcely the work of five minutes; then flinging himself upon the first seat that came in his way, he gave himself up to bitter thoughts. Two years ago he had fled his country, had quitted all who were dear to him, because his fiery passions were beyond his control—because he had loved too deeply and hated too bitterly. He had plunged into a life of wild adventure to dissipate his feelings; he had schooled his heart in solitude; he had devoted all his energies to the acquirement of an art; nay, he had devoted the first efforts of the skill he had thus gained to embody a visible representation of the danger of ill-bestowed love and the curse of gratified revenge; and this was the result!
He remained for a few minutes with his head resting on his hands, apparently stunned by his conflicting feelings; then rousing himself by an effort, he heaved a deep sigh and drew out the glove. As his eye fell upon the stain of blood, he shuddered, and hastily putting it from him, began pacing up and down the apartment. An antique lamp hung by a chain from the ceiling, throwing its light strongly on the two pictures from the “Giaour.” Involuntarily Lewis paused before them, and remained gazing from one to the other with an expression of remorse and horror. “Am I indeed about to realise these creations of my gloomy fancy?” he murmured; “shall I become that human tiger, that stony, soulless image of impenitent despair! Revenge, how I have thirsted for it, how, when writhing under that man’s insults, I have pictured to myself the day of reckoning, and deemed life itself would be a cheap sacrifice for one hour of unlimited vengeance; and now, when this coveted boon lies within my grasp, I see it in its true light, and own this wished-for blessing to be a dark, consuming curse. Seen through the distorted medium of outraged feeling, retribution appeared an act of justice. The demon wore an angel’s form. But viewed in its true aspect, the sentiment is that which leads to murder, and the deed, with its sickening details, revolting butchery. Yet, seeing this clearly, knowing to what it will lead, I must go on: I owe him satisfaction. Satisfaction!” and he smiled at the mocking term. “Yes,” he resumed, “I must go on, even if I wished to turn back. If I could forego my revenge and forgive him, it is now too late. Well, be it so; ’tis weakness to repine at the inevitable. I will meet my fate boldly, be it what it may; and for him, he has brought the punishment upon his own head, and must abide the issue!” He resumed his walk up and down the apartment; then a new idea struck him. “What a strange expression her features wore when she ventured to address me,” he said; “and in the crowd she did not shrink from me, but trusted herself to me with a gentle, child-like confidence.” He paused, pressed his hand to his forehead, then exclaimed, “O God, if I have wronged her—if”—and here his voice sank almost to a whisper—“if, Heaven help me, she should have loved me after all!”
Completely overwrought by these conflicting emotions, Lewis sank into a chair, and burying his face in his hands, struggled in vain for composure, a deep-drawn, choking sob from time to time attesting his mental agony. How long he remained in this position he never knew. It might have been minutes, for he took no note of things external; it might have been hours, for a lifetime of heartfelt desolation appeared crowded into that dark reverie. He was aroused at length by a tap at the door, which, as at first he could scarcely collect his ideas sufficiently to attend to such sublunary matters, soon grew into a loud and impatient knocking with the handle of a stick or umbrella. Imagining it to be one of his artist friends, come probably to bring him information in regard to the late disturbances, he replied in Italian that he was particularly engaged and could not see any one.
“Polite and encouraging, certainly,” muttered a deep-toned voice, at the first sound of which Lewis sprang from his seat and listened with an eager yet half incredulous expression of countenance. “A thousand and one pardons, Signor,” continued the person on the outside, speaking in Italian, with a peculiarity of accent which proved him to be unaccustomed to pronounce the language, or probably even to hear it spoken; “but you really must condescend to see me, even if Diabolus himself is supping with you, and there is only macaroni enough for two.”
Without a moment’s hesitation Lewis flung open the door, and there in proprio persono stood Richard Frere and the cotton umbrella!
“Frere, dear old fellow! is it, can it indeed be you?” exclaimed Lewis joyfully, forgetting for the moment everything in the surprise of welcoming such an unexpected visitant.
“Yes, it’s me,” returned Frere, squeezing and shaking his friend’s hand as if he had a design of reducing it to a jelly. “Richard’s himself, and no mistake. Lewis isn’t himself, though, it seems, but Signore Luigi, forsooth. I had hard work to find you, I can tell you. But good gracious! what has happened to the man?” he exclaimed, catching sight of Lewis’s bearded face and pale, haggard features, “why, he has turned into somebody else, bodily as well as in name. You look just like one of these horrid Italian fellows, with the proper tragic expression of countenance which they get up by way of advertising that they are ready and willing to cut throats at half-a-crown a windpipe, country orders punctually executed, and the business performed in a neat and tradesman-like manner; but tell me seriously, you’re not ill?”
“Not in body, nor usually in mind either,” was the reply; “but today events have occurred which have thoroughly unmanned me, still I shall ‘win through it,’ somehow; and now tell me of yourself, of Rose, of my mother—they are well?”
“A good deal better than you seem to be,” growled Frere, who during this speech had been attentively observing his friend’s features; “however, I’ll soon satisfy your curiosity—and then you shall satisfy mine,” he added in an undertone, and removing a wonderful species of travelling cap, he followed Lewis, who led the way to his inner apartment, and then listened eagerly to Frere’s account of the various events which had taken place since he had quitted his native land. Rose, by Frere’s special desire, had, in writing to her brother, hitherto forborne to allude to her engagement; the worthy bear, with a characteristic mixture of deep-seated humility and surface vanity, fearing that Lewis might not think him a fitting match for his sister, and therefore feeling anxious that the matter should be disclosed to him in the wisest and most judicious manner possible—by himself viva voce. Thus, after having spoken of various less important matters, Frere was gradually working his way towards the interesting disclosure with a degree of nervous diffidence quite unusual to him, when Lewis, whose attention began to flag, brought him to the point by exclaiming, “And about Rose, what is she doing: she tells me in her letters she still writes for some magazine; but is she looking well? does she seem happy? though I suppose,” he continued, trying to hide his state of mind by falling in with his friend’s jesting mode of speech, “these are minor particulars into which it never occurs to your wisdom to inquire. I know your old habit of practically ignoring the existence of women as a sex, regarding them as a race of unscientific nonentities fitted only ‘to suckle fools and chronicle small beer.’”
Frere for a moment looked rather disconcerted; then veiling his discomfiture under an affectation of rough indifference, he replied, “I can tell you one ‘minor particular,’ as you call it, and that is the fact of the young lady in question being engaged to be married.”