Harry Joscelyn; vol. 2 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“That is what I have been thinking,” said Harry, “if I could get some nice rooms. You don’t understand about Englishmen. Dining every day at an hotel is a thing nobody would think of in England. We have our dinner at home, or, if the landlady is not a good cook, then perhaps—But for my part I always preferred a beefsteak at home, even if it were not the most perfect cookery in the world. Dining at an hotel is a thing no one thinks of, except on a great occasion perhaps.”

Paolo opened his eyes in surprise. “It is well,” he said, “you are more prudent when you are in your own country. This is what you must do, Isaack, amico. You will first find an appartamento. It is not always that one is so fortunate as me. This is perfect—non é vero? It is all one could want. A bed—ecco! a table, the sof-fa that has come from a palazzo, even a little tabouret for the feet—everything. And then the balcone! When it makes warm in the summer, in July and Agosto, it is, oh! fresco, freschissimo so fresh and cool here! The first thing is an appartamento. But in every way I am too fortunate. As soon I dress in the morning, there is a caffè in face—you can see it if you look down—where I can have my coffee in a moment. No waiting as when you go to a distance, but at the moment. They are about to send us now the coffee, amico, to clear our head. You will see how good it is. Then when the time come for the other breakfast—what you call lunch—there is a restaurant near the bureau. You have two very good dish, a dolce, and dessert; and very little to pay. I will lead you to-morrow to that place. And at last the dinner at the Leone. Figure to yourself so much comfort all in one day! And you see the journals for nothing, and hear what all the people say.”

“Bless us all,” said Harry, “in that way you are never at home.”

“At ’ome! I am at ’ome everywere,” the little Italian said; “all is friends; whatever goes on, everyone makes part of it to me. And when all is over you mount in your appartamento, you are tranquil, you light your lamp, you fume slowly your cigar on the balcone, you go to bed. And you make economies—great economies. Me even, that have not moche appointment, I become a little rich, what you call at my ease. And you, who will have moche more as me——”

“Why should I? You are a great deal more use than I am,” Harry said.

Paolo shook his head with a cheerful yet shrewd acceptance of the position. “Si, I am of more use,” he said. “I am good for something; you, caro, not good for moche yet. But look at you and look at me. That expliques itself. That is the world’s way—what you call the world’s way. Come; the first thing is an appartamento. You think, perhaps, it is too high up here? But smell the good air,” cried Paolo; “that is of itself refreshing—and the view! You will pay more scudi at the Leone in a week than for a month here. Ecco! here is the coffee, and though it is not yet quite dark, that amiable garzone, see, he has brought us a lamp.”

Then there entered, with a knock at the door, the man from the caffè opposite, holding upon the points of three fingers a tray containing two heavy cups of white porcelain and the small coffee-pot, flanked by a plate of cakes, which Paolo’s hospitality had added in honour of his friend. The waiter swung the lighted lamp in the other hand, holding it by the handle at the top, and in this way had come up five flights of stairs without spilling a drop of the coffee or jeopardizing the cups. He put the lamp on the table with a “Felicissima notte, Signori,” looking upon the two young men with looks as amiable as his wish. And, indeed, the wish has more reason in it at the beginning of the evening than at the end. Paolo was great as a host. He poured out his black coffee as if it had been the richest of drinks, and pressed upon Harry the odd little collection of cakes of every possible and impossible flavour. Some of them were excellent, but Harry thought he despised these innocent dainties. And he was not very fond of the black coffee: how much better he would have liked an English cup of tea! As he sat turning over the books which Paolo placed before him, and listened to his friend’s explanations, gulping, with a great effort not to make a wry face, occasional mouthfuls of coffee, there seemed to flit before him a vision of his mother’s parlour—the fragrant tea, the rich fresh cream, and herself, with that pale face which had not always seemed to him so attractive as it did now. Once, to tell the truth, Harry had thought his mother and sister heavy company, and in his heart had said that nothing could be more dull than the long evening in the parlour at home. Now that he was up here so near the sky in Paolo’s appartamento, his ideas were different. The bare tiles underfoot, the wide, vacant space, with the little bed in the corner, the dull old Margheritone staring him in the face, with a pair of round eyes looking out from its blackness—and all those knotty questions about the harbour dues to occupy him, made as great a contrast as could be conceived to the old curtains and carpets, and familiar walls, and cheerful fire, and the grey sweep of landscape showing from the windows, stretching far into the horizon. But he himself. Harry was very much the same, and in the one place as in the other he was unsatisfied. He thought it had been his surroundings that were to blame in the first instance, but now, after the excitement of all this new beginning, and the novelty of his new friends, and the new place, so unlike anything he had seen before, Paolo’s appartamento, and the thought of settling down in another such, brought him back, with a sort of mental gasp, to himself. Was that all that was to come of it? It was scarcely worth while renouncing his name and his family, and all his past, in order to settle down in a room upon the fifth floor, among the chimneypots, at Leghorn. While he was studying the dock regulations and harbour laws, his mind was busy about this other perplexing question. An appartemento! Was he never, he wondered, with an impatience that was almost comic in the humiliation and depression it caused him, to have a sitting-room again? never to get a meal save in public, in the grim sala of the Leone, or in a gaudy restaurant with little marble tables; never even a cup of tea to himself in his own place, as an Englishman loves to have it; never to have a carpet under his feet, but cold tiles; and nothing in the world that looked like home? He kept all this to himself, and tried hard to grasp at the laws and regulations about the free port of Leghorn, and its etiquettes and its dues; but his inner soul was crossed all the time by impulses of ill-humour and disappointment which he could with difficulty restrain. It is always difficult, after a period of agitation and excitement, to settle down again and resume a steady routine; and Harry could not think of this kind of settling with anything but annoyance. The inn was not any better. His little sleeping-room there was not so good as Paolo’s. In the sala there was always a sense of dinner combined with cigars; and in the other parts of the establishment the smell was of cigars impregnated with soup and divers odours of the kitchen. And these were the only places where he, with his English habits, had a chance of sitting down! He sighed for his little parlour, with its Kidderminster carpet, and red moreen curtains, at Liverpool. It was a palace to the appartamento, or anything that seemed possible here.

They sat so late over their books that Paolo did not as usual insist upon accompanying Harry to the inn door. Paolo, for his part, had spent a very happy evening. He was learned in those bye-laws which so mystified Harry, and loved to enlarge upon them, and to impart information in any shape was a grateful exercise to him. He liked to do it, even when he was not—which he liked still better—doing a kindness to a friend; and he was proud of all the possessions which he had exhibited with such simple pleasure. It did not occur to him that his home, which he was so happy in, or the simple routine of life which he had set up for imitation, could fill any heart with dismay. He found himself perfectly comfortable in it, why should not his amico do the same? No doubt of the suitableness of this life to one as to another crossed his simple mind. He crunched the biscuits which Harry disdained, and drank the black coffee at which Harry made wry faces, and was much pleased with himself, and very happy to think that he was setting before his friend the best way to walk in. He was scarcely so pleased with himself however when he was over-persuaded to allow Harry to go back to the hotel alone. “No, I will re-conduct you,” he had said at first; but Harry laughed at the unnecessary ceremony. Paolo stood at the top of the great black well of a staircase and held the lucerna to light his friend downstairs, standing patiently with the heavy lamp dangling from his hand till he had heard the door close at the foot; and then he rushed to his balcony to watch lest Harry should turn the wrong way, ready to scream out to him if he did so. Even when he had made sure that his friend had turned to the right, and not to the left, Paolo still shook his head. “I should have re-conducted him,” he said to himself. It was the only drawback to the perfect blessedness of the night.

It was a glorious night out of doors; the Italian moon was shining with a warmth and glory unknown to northern skies. Harry tried to think the moon was as fine in England, but he could not succeed in this; everything else was a great deal better in England, but there was something to be said for the climate here, one was forced to admit—even though one might not admit anything more. Harry walked home (as he called it by force of nature) with much subdued irritation and despondency, consequent chiefly on the apparent impossibility of ever having a sitting-room, or any place it would be pleasant to sit in again. The inn, though he called it home, was not less obnoxious to him, and he asked himself, good heavens, was it possible he should never—— He had got as far as this when another picture suddenly rose up before him, and in a moment changed all his thoughts. It was of a dim room, cool and dark in the midst of the sunshine, with a whiteness of floating curtains about the windows, and tables covered with books, and a white figure in a corner, close upon the open dark space of a window closed by green persianis, through which the air was blowing softly. Ah! he said, drawing a long breath, there was a kind of paradise! That was very different from the appartamento. It was dark in his memory, as it had been when he had suddenly stepped into it out of the bright day with so much surprise that he could but dimly recollect the appearance of the place. He wondered how it would look when the persianis were open, when the daylight got in, or at night when the lamps were lighted, when the place was fully inhabited?

Instinctively, without knowing what he was about, he turned into the street which led to the Consulate. His heart gave a jump against his breast when he saw that the persianis were all opened now, and that the lights in the room made it partially visible from the street. Evidently there was a party going on, and he felt a little pang of mortification to think that he had not been asked. There was a sound of music and a great deal of talk, talk that sounded exhilarating and delightful to Harry, though he would have felt himself a fish out of water had he been in the midst of the polyglot conversation that went on in the Consul’s drawing-room. A white figure was seated near the window, faintly visible within the white curtains. He wondered if it was hers? He screwed his eyes together as if he had been short-sighted, to try to see a little better, but this was what he could not make out. The sudden glimpse of this little bright world from which he was shut out arrested Harry all at once in his discontented thoughts. Here was something which would make up for all deficiencies. He stood for a long time under the windows, trying to hear the voices within, with no eavesdropping intentions, but only to console himself by the recollection that he had far more in common with the Vice-Consul’s house and his society than with Paolo, though he was so good a friend. And then he stood opposite and watched, seeing figures vaguely glide across the room, figures which the white curtains, swaying softly in the air, kept indistinct. He could not distinguish her, he allowed to himself; sometimes he thought he had traced her, but only to find himself deceived. Some one in the background was playing the piano softly, though nobody paid much attention. Harry could not tear himself away from the window. That was life, he thought to himself; a man who had that house to go home to need never be dull; and then he remembered, with a glow of warm satisfaction and pleasure, that on Sunday, no further off, he was to go there. He turned after this with a resolute step, and went back to the hotel and his dreary little room, where he sat on his bed, gazing at the two little lights of the lucerna which had been given to him to light himself upstairs, for all the house was dark and at rest before he got back—and thinking of that warm and cheerful scene. The lamp burned on steadily, the only light in all the big hotel, and Harry sat and gazed at it unwinking. Sunday afternoon! here was something to look forward to. And that was a house which was worth calling a home, which was not an appartamento. He thought life must have an altogether different complexion there.