AFTER this, Harry “settled down.” It was a somewhat disappointing, disenchanting process, but still it was better than it appeared at the first glance. Paolo, finding that his friend could not be happy without a sitting-room, which seemed to himself the most unnecessary of luxuries, exerted himself to procure an appartamento for him which should include this, and managed, after a little delay, to do so, at a price so modest that Harry was astonished, and the padrone di casa much disgusted and indignant when he found that he had actually suffered his rooms to go, at a rent extravagant only for Italians, to an Englishman. The landlord was so disappointed and annoyed by this that the occasion made him voluble; for “Ecco!” he said, “a countryman, that is—a countryman. He knows as much as we do. He is aware of everything. He can do what he pleases. That he should have the rooms cheap, that understands itself: that is all just. But a stranger! And, on the other hand, they want so much more, these strangers. They will demand breakfast, and even refreshments in the evening! They are so lazy they will not give themselves the pain to descend to the caffè for their coffee, which is the natural way, but will demand to have it here, which is endless trouble. I never could have believed that Ser Paolo, who is a person of education, would so have treated an old neighbour.” He said so much on the subject that Harry, with something of that impatience and careless magnificence which are (supposedly) the characteristics of the English, declared that, rather than be so persecuted, he would pay twenty lire a month more than had been asked of him, an offer which made the padrone think him a great fool, but a true Englishman, and which drove Paolo nearly out of himself with indignation. It may be understood by this fact that Harry soon picked up as much Italian as made him understand at least the tone of address, whether it was friendly or angry: and in smaller matters he was soon able to make himself understood.
The first night of his residence in his new quarters, when he heard Paolo close the door behind him, and felt himself left all alone at the top of a tall Italian house, without a soul within call, gazing round him at the four bare white walls, his lamp looking at him with three unwinking eyes, and not a trace of anything that looked like home—vain word!—the young fellow was altogether overcome, and staring round with a wild look of despair, was as near breaking into idle tears as ever man was. But what was the use? He had made his bed (or his people had made it for him, as he thought), and there he must lie. He had half a dozen books on the table: one upon the laws that affect shipping and the maritime code, another on International Law generally, the rest Italian grammars and dictionaries, a volume of easy little stories in the same language, and that well-known volume of Silvio Pellico, out of which so many people have learned their first Italian lessons. They were none of them very interesting to Harry. “Le Mie Prigioni,” when you have made it out with the aid of a dictionary, is not more tempting than any other book would be under these circumstances. They were as blank as the white walls, the silent room, the dead solitude of the place, to Harry. A yellow novel, if he could have got that, would have been precious to him. But he had not even that to fall back upon. He crept dismally to bed, unable to contemplate his fate, and turned his face to the wall, much as his mother was doing at home. But in the morning things were better; and though he never could reconcile himself to the gloom and solitude of his appartamento at night, during the day things went tolerably well with him when he began to know what was being said around him, and to wake up to the new insight which a new language confers. Gradually he began to take a little interest in the porter’s family, in the shrill padrona, shrieking her orders and her commentaries from the balcony of the fourth piano across the deep well of the courtyard, who was a terrible nuisance, yet by and by began to feel homelike, so that he missed her sharp peacock-cry when the arrival of a baby compelled a brief withdrawal from her usual active survey of the affairs of her tenants. And so the time went on, and months passed, and Harry became accustomed to his life.
There were times, however, in which those slow beginnings of content which soothed Harry’s mind, rose into something a great deal higher and brighter: and these were the hours which he spent in the private rooms at the Consulate, where, by degrees, he became very familiar, a sort of son of the house. Harry never knew how this happened, nor did the Bonamys themselves, who, bit by bit, opened their doors more completely to him. They had never done so before to any clerk. The office generally was held at arm’s length by the head of it. He was thought proud by the employés generally. What was he, many even asked, that he should give himself so many airs? But he never gave himself any airs to Harry. Even when they began to forget that romance about the young squire who had quarrelled with his family, which was entirely their own invention, they did not turn away from or cast off the stranger who, falling into their midst with no recommendations at all, had made himself so strong a footing amongst them, partly from accident, partly from imagination. Very soon, indeed, Harry came to be considered as part of the family; a ready hand to be appealed to for everything; a ready hearer, though he did not always understand: an invariably sympathetic and trustworthy friend of the house. To Mr. Bonamy it was a great advantage to have some one in the office whom he could treat upon this footing; to whom he could speak confidentially of all that occurred, and with whom, if need were, even in the bosom of society, he could confer on any accident of official business, sending Harry off to do this or that, even from the card-table where he was playing round games with the younger guests, or out of the heart of a valse, when need was. Harry liked the dance, and was merry and useful at the card-playing, but he never complained or grumbled if he were sent away. He had to come back late when the company was gone, to make his report, and that privilege atoned to him for the self-sacrifice. On such occasions, when the great salone was still all alight, and Rita reposing upon the sofa, or buried in a great chair, after her exertions, while the Vice-Consul had already put on the light dressing-gown in which he smoked his evening cigar, the young man, returning, had the pleasantest welcome. Mr. Bonamy put towards him his box of cigarettes; the windows were all open; the warm Italian night glowing out of doors; the stars shining, and every breath of the soft air a delight. In that Italian room the light smoke was not thought out of place. Rita had been used to it all her life. She might have taken one of these little cigarettes herself and nobody thought any harm; but, fortunately for Harry’s feelings, to whom it would have been a very terrible profanation of a girl’s lips, she did not. But she lay back in her chair, her pale face and dark locks relieved upon the soft, rich old damask, and watched the two men with a smile. The Consul, who loved everything that was beautiful, had his smoking-coat also made of damask—a piece of brocade, in colours which Harry thought faded—and he, too, threw himself negligently back in his chair and listened to his young aide-de-camp’s report, with his fine head on one side, like a benevolent prince listening to the information collected for him by a young prime minister, all visionary, and eager in his plans for the benefit of their people. Perhaps it was only a refractory ship-captain whom Harry had talked into submission, or an impatient Englishman whose suspicions of extortion had got him into trouble; and sometimes the three would laugh over the characteristic follies of their countrymen, and incapacity to understand the grandiloquence of the Italian authorities. When Harry got to be sufficiently strong in the language, he would himself make very merry over the sentimento magnifico of the professional pillagers whose charges here and there drove a stranger wild, but who always professed the noblest superiority to all interested motives. Rita, who was more than half an Italian, was sometimes piqued by the laughter in which her father joined, and would stand up for the kindly race to whom she owed half her blood and all her training. She would shine out from the soft background when she thus roused herself in defence of her people, her great dark eyes glowing, her white little figure all alive with energy. “You are all made up of suspicions, you English,” she said. “You think everyone wants to cheat you, to get your money from you. Yes, and it is you who want to get what they have from them. I wonder who it is who picks up the pictures, and the bric-à-brac, and shakes his head” (which she did with a good imitation of her father’s benevolent regret), “and complains that all the little dealers are beginning to know the value of the things they have to sell, eh, papa? Old Leonardi showed his sentimento magnifico when he let you have that little Ghirlandajo for next to nothing.”
“I don’t believe it is a Ghirlandajo—of his school, that is all,” said the Consul, blandly, “and he lets me have it cheap—not for nothing: he lets me have it cheap because he thinks the English travellers will see it here and will go to him to be fleeced, that is the best reason he has, I fear.”
“And if it is, you take advantage of it,” cried Rita. “Which is worst? There was that piece of lace the other day. I said (it was quite true) what shall I do with it, Signor Giovanni? it is not enough for a dress; and he said, in the prettiest way, the Signorina shall put it upon her handkerchief to remind her of old Leonardi. I took it; what could I do? it would have made him angry if I had refused it after that. Was not that the sentimento magnifico, Mr. Oliver—you who don’t believe in my Italians? If I had offered him money for it he would never have spoken to me again.”
“I thought he was an old Jew,” said Harry; “but I see he is a fine old fellow, and I shall go and buy something from him to-morrow. He will cheat me; but I shan’t mind after what you have said.”
“He will cheat you,” said the Vice-Consul, with equanimity; “though he has a fine sense of the proper time to be honest, and the proper time to be liberal all the same; but let us hear how you got your Englishman out of his clutches, for that is the business immediately in hand.”
And then Harry returned to his story, and told how the poor tourist had raved and blasphemed, how he had bought a picture which was vouched for as genuine, and it was found to be a flagrant copy; and how old Leonardi had perjured himself over and over again, and sworn by all the saints that there could be no doubt of its authenticity, holding up his fine old Italian head in the very presence of the painter, who had made the copy, and denying all knowledge of it. The tourist, whose settled conviction it was that “the natives” everywhere were in league against him, was, however, the chief point in Harry’s report. He had rather thought so himself when he landed in Leghorn, and the feeling which had made him refuse Paolo’s first offer of service, and carry his own portmanteau, and hunt out the hotel for himself, still lingered in his bosom. He understood the character so well that he set it forth with great power before his audience; and Harry was so much gratified by his success, and by the gradual blowing away of the cloud which was on Rita’s countenance, and the delightful laughter with which she chimed in after a while, that he rose into higher heights. He himself was just beginning to awake to the humours of the Englishman abroad, and it was very pleasant to find himself superior to them, as one who understood the language and knew the people, and could explain a good many mistakes and misapprehensions away.
“Mr. Oliver, you are very English,” Rita said gravely, after the story and the laughter were over. She was apt to change in a moment, and with the smile just disappearing from her lips, to produce the most serious remark.
“Am I?” said Harry, a little crestfallen; for he rather thought he had made it apparent that he was very superior to the English—that is the common English who travel, and who are often, as we all hasten to tell our foreign friends, so little credit to the race. Then he added with more spirit, “I suppose I am very English. What else could I be? I have only been a year away.”