“I wish you would not talk,” said Colin roughly, and opened Alice’s little letter again, and read it and put it to his lips. If he had never been impassioned before he was so now; and so they went on, dashing across the long level Campagna roads, where there was nothing to break the sunshine but here and there a nameless pile of ruins.
The sunshine began to fall low and level on the plain before they reached the gates. “One thing at least is certain—he cannot take her out of Rome to-night,” said Colin. It was almost the only word that was spoken between them until they began their doubtful progress from one hotel to another, through the noisy resounding streets.
CHAPTER XL.
“Now we have found them let me face them by myself,” said Colin, to whom the interval of silence and consideration had been of use. They were both waiting in the hall of one of the hotels facing towards the Piazza del Popolo, to which they had at last tracked Mr. Meredith, and Lauderdale acquiesced silently in Colin’s decision. The young man had already sent up his card, with a request that he might see not Alice but her father. After a considerable time, the servant who had taken it returned with an abrupt message that Mr. Meredith was engaged. When he had sent up a second time, explaining that his business was urgent, but with the same effect, Colin accompanied his third message with a note, and went with his messenger to the door of the room in which his adversary was. There could be no doubt of the commotion produced within by this third application. Colin could hear some one pacing about the room with disturbed steps, and the sound of a controversy going on, which, though he was too far off to hear anything that was said, still reached him vaguely in sound at least. When he had waited for about five minutes, the clergyman, whom he had not in the least thought of or expected to see, made his appearance cautiously at the door. He did not attempt to admit the young man, but came up to him on tiptoe, and took him persuasively, almost caressingly, by the arm. “My good friend, my excellent young friend,” said the puzzled priest, with a mixture of compunction and expostulation which in other circumstances would have amused Colin, “let us have a little conversation. I am sure you are much too generous and considerate to add to the distress of—of——” But here the good man recollected just in time that he had pledged himself not to speak of Alice, and made a sudden pause. “There in that room,” he went on, changing his tone, and assuming a little solemnity, “is a sorrowful father, mourning for his only son, and driven almost out of his senses by illness and weakness, and a sense of the shameful way in which his daughter has been neglected—not his fault, my dear Mr Campbell. You cannot have the heart to increase his sufferings by claims, however well founded, which have been formed at a time——”
“Stop,” said Colin, “it is not my fault if he has not done his duty to his children; I have no right to bear the penalty. He has cast the vilest imputations upon me—”
“Hush, hush, I beg of you,” said the clergyman, “my excellent young friend—”
Colin laughed in spite of himself. “If I am your excellent friend,” he said, “why do you not procure me admission to tell my own story? Why should the sight of me distress your sorrowing father? I am not an ogre, nor an enemy, but his son’s friend; and up to this day, I need not remind you,” said the young man with a rising colour, “the only protector, along with my friend Lauderdale, whom his daughter has had. I do not say that he may not have natural objections to give her to a poor man,” said Colin, with natural pride; “but, at all events, he has no reason to hurry her away by stealth, as if I had not a right to be told why our engagement is interrupted so summarily. I will do nothing to distress Alice,” the young man went on, involuntarily lingering by the door, which was not entirely closed; “but I protest against being treated like a villain or an adventurer—”
“Hush, hush, hush,” cried the unlucky peacemaker, putting out his hand to close the unfastened door; and before he could do so, Mr. Meredith appeared on the threshold, flushed and furious. “What are you else, sir, I should like to know,” cried the angry British father, “to drag an unprotected girl into such an entanglement without even a pretence of consulting her friends; to take advantage of a deathbed for your detestable fortune-hunting schemes? Don’t answer me, sir! Have you a penny of your own? have you anything to live on? That’s the question. If it was not for other considerations, I’d indict you. I’d charge you with conspiracy; and even now, if you come here to disturb my poor girl——. But I promise you, you shall see her no more,” the angry man continued. “Go, sir, and let me hear no more of you. She has a protector now.”
Colin stood a moment without speaking after Mr. Meredith has disappeared, closing the door violently after him.
“I have not come to distress Alice,” said the young man. He had to repeat it to himself to keep down the hot blood that was burning in his veins; and as for the unfortunate clergyman, who was the immediate cause of all this, he kept his position by the door in a state of mind far from enviable, sorry for the young man, and ashamed of the old one, and making inarticulate efforts to speak and mediate between them. But the conference did not last very long outside the closed door. Though it did not fortunately occur to Colin that it was the interference of his present companion which had originated this scene, the young man did not feel the insult the less from the deprecatory half-sympathy offered to him. “It is a mistake—it is a mistake,” said the clergyman, “Mr. Meredith will discover his error. I said I thought you were imprudent, and indeed wrong; but I have never suspected you of interested motives—never since my first interview with the young lady;—but think of her sufferings, my dear young friend; think of her,” said the mediator, who was driven to his wits’ end. As for Colin, he calmed himself down a little by means of pacing about the corridor—the common resource of men in trouble.