“Don’t be angry with me,” she said; “it is so hard to know what to answer. If you would tell me one thing quite truly and frankly—Would it not do you a great deal of harm if this was to happen as you say?——”
“No,” said Colin. When he said the word he could not help remembering, in spite of himself, the change it would make in his young prospects, but the result was only that he repeated his negative with more warmth. “It can do me only good,” said Colin, yielding to the natural temptations of the moment, “and I think I might do something for your happiness too. It is for you to decide—do not decide against me, Alice,” said the young man; “I cannot part with you now.”
“Ah!—” said Alice with a long breath. “If it only would not do you any harm,” she added a moment after, once more with that inquiring look. The inquiry was one which could be answered but in one way, and Colin was not a man to remain unmoved by the wistful, sweet eyes thus raised to him, and by the tender dependence of the clinging arm. He set her doubts at rest almost as eloquently, and quite as warmly, as if she had indeed been that woman who had disappeared among the clouds for ever; and led her home to Sora Antonia with a fond care, which was very sweet to the forlorn little maiden, and not irksome by any means to the magnanimous knight. Thus the decisive step was taken in obedience to the necessities of the position, and the arrangements (as Colin had decided upon them) of Providence. When he met Lauderdale and informed him of the new event, the young man looked flushed and happy, as was natural in the circumstances, and disposed of all the objections of prudence with great facility and satisfaction to himself. It was a moonlight night, and Colin and his friend went out to the loggia on the roof of the house, and plunged into a sea of discussion, through which the young lover steered triumphantly the frailest bark of argument that ever held water. But, when the talk was over, and Colin, before he followed Lauderdale downstairs, turned round to take a parting look at the Campagna, which lay under them like a great map in the moonlight, the old apparition looked out once more from the clouds, pale and distant, and again seemed to wave to him a shadowy farewell. “Farewell! farewell! not in heaven nor in earth shall you ever find me,” sighed the woman of Colin’s imagination, dispersing into thin white mists and specks of clouds; and the young man went to rest with a vague sense of loss in his heart. The sleep of Alice was sweeter than that of Colin on this first night of their betrothal; but at that one period of existence, it often happens that the woman, for once in her life, has the advantage. And thus it was that the event, foreseen by Lauderdale on board the steamer at the beginning of their acquaintance, actually came to pass.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
This important decision, when at last finally settled, necessitated other steps more embarrassing and difficult than anything that could be discussed in the ilex avenue. Even Sora Antonia’s protection ceased to be altogether satisfactory to the suddenly-awakened mind of Alice, who at the same time was so unaccustomed to think or act for herself that she knew not what to do in the emergency. If Colin had been the kind of man who would have decided for her at once, and indicated what he thought she ought to do, Alice was the kind of woman to act steadily and bravely upon the indication. But, unfortunately, Colin did not understand how to dictate to a woman, having known most intimately of all womankind his mother, who was treated after an altogether different fashion; and Lauderdale, though sufficiently aware of the embarrassing nature of their position, belonged, notwithstanding his natural refinement, to a class which sets no great store by punctilio. Now that everything was settled between the “young folk,” Alice’s unprotected state did not distress him so much as formerly. The marriage, which must take place immediately, was already in his eyes a sufficient shelter for the solitary girl; and the indecorum of the whole business no longer occurred to him. As for Colin, he, as was natural, regarded with a certain excitement the strange step he was about to take, not knowing what anybody would think of it, nor how he was to live with his bride, nor what influence an act so unsuitable to his circumstances would have upon his prospects and position. It was of a piece with the rashness and visionary character of the whole transaction, that Alice’s money, which she had herself recurred to as “enough to live upon,” never entered into the calculations of the young man who was going to marry on his scholarship, without being at all convinced in his own mind that his scholarship could be held by a married man. A married man!—the title had an absurd sound as applied to himself, even in his own ears. He was just over one-and-twenty, and had not a penny in the world. But these considerations, after all, had not half so much effect upon him as the thought of his mother’s grave countenance when she should read his next letter, and the displeasure of his father, who perhaps already regarded with a not altogether satisfied eye the spectacle of a son of his gone abroad for his health. If Colin could but have made sure of the nature of the reception he was likely to meet with at Ramore, prudential considerations of any other character would have had but a momentary weight; but at present, amid his other perplexities, the young man felt a certain boyish confusion at the thought of asking his mother to receive and recognise his wife. However, the important letter had been written, and was on its way, and he could only hope that his previous letters had prepared the household for that startling intimation. Apart from Ramore, the matter had a less serious aspect; for Colin, who had been poor all his life, no more believed in poverty than if he had been a prince, and had a certain instinctive certainty of getting what he needed, which belonged to his youth. Besides, he was not a poor gentleman, hampered, and helpless, but knew, at the worst, that he could always work for his wife.
At the same time, in the midst of all the seriousness of the position—with all his tender affection for Alice, and reverence for her helplessness, and even notwithstanding that inexpressible blank and sense of disappointment in his heart which even his affection could not quite neutralize,—a curious sense of humour, and feeling that the whole matter was a kind of practical joke on a grand scale, intruded into Colin’s ideas from time to time, and made him laugh, and then made him furious with himself; for Alice, to be sure, saw no joke in the matter. She was, indeed, altogether wanting in a sense of humour, if even her grief would have permitted her to exercise it, and was sufficiently occupied by the real difficulties of her position, secluding herself in Sora Antonia’s apartments, and wavering in an agony of timidity and uncertainty over the idea of leaving that kind protector and going somewhere else, even though among strangers, in order to obey the necessary proprieties. She had not a soul to consult about what she should do except Sora Antonia herself and Lauderdale, neither of whom now thought it necessary to suggest a removal on the part of either of the young people; and though thoughts of going into Rome, and finding somebody who would give her shelter for a week or two till Colin’s arrangements were complete, hovered in the mind of Alice, she had no courage to carry out such an idea, being still in her first grief, poor child, although this new excitement had entered into her life.
As for Colin, affairs went much less easily with him when he betook himself to the English clergyman to ask his services. The inquiries instituted by this new judge were of a kind altogether unforeseen by the thoughtless young man. To be sure, a mourning sister is not usually married a few weeks after her brother’s death, and the questioner was justified in thinking the circumstance strange. Nor was it at all difficult to elicit from Colin a story which, viewed by suspicious and ignorant eyes, threw quite a different colour on the business. The young lady was the daughter of Mr. Meredith of Maltby, as the clergyman, who had laid Arthur in his grave, was already aware. She was young, under age, and her father had not been consulted about her proposed marriage; and she was at present entirely in the hands and under the influence of this young Scotchman, who, though his manners were considered irreproachable by Miss Matty Frankland, who was a critic in manners, still lacked certain particulars in his general demeanour by which the higher class of Englishmen are distinguished. He took more interest in things in general, and was more transparent, more expressive than he would probably have been had he been entirely Alice’s equal; and he was slightly wanting in calmness and that soft haze of impertinence which sets off good breeding—in short, he had not the full ring of the genuine metal; and a man who lived in Rome, and was used to stories of adventurers and interested marriages, not unnaturally jumped at the conclusion that Colin (being a Scotchman beside, and consequently the impersonation, save the mark! of money-getting) was bent upon securing to himself the poor little girl’s fortune. Before the cross-examination was done Colin began somehow to feel himself a suspicious character; for it is astonishing what an effect there is in that bland look of superior penetration and air of seeing through a subject, however well aware the person under examination may be that his judge knows nothing about it. Then the investigator turned the discussion upon pecuniary matters, which after all was the branch of examination for which Colin was least prepared.
“Miss Meredith has some fortune, I presume?” he said. “Is it at her own disposal? for on this, as well as on other matters, it appears to me absolutely necessary that her father should be consulted.”
“I have already told you that her father has been consulted,” said Colin, with a little vexation, “and you have seen the answer to my friend’s letter. I have not the least idea what her fortune is, or if she has any. Yes, I recollect she said she had enough to live upon; but it did not occur to me to make any inquiries on the subject,” said the young man; which more than ever confirmed his questioner that this was not a member of the higher class with whom he had to deal.
“And you?” he said. “Your friends are aware, I presume—and your means are sufficient to maintain—”