Harry Joscelyn; vol. 2 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

Rita did not notice the blush on his face. The desire of her heart was to go to England, and this made her think. She had the credulity of her birthplace about wonderful elixirs and miraculous ways of doing a dangerous thing. She looked at him dreamily, yet eagerly, with her great eyes. “But how should you do it?” she repeated, “Mr. Oliver; if there is some particular way, will you tell me? For if you only knew—if you could only know how I wish to go to England——!”

“There is no particular way,” said Harry; “if I were ever to go back home, which I never shall—and if you were to go with me, which most likely you never would—then you should go, and no harm would happen to you; that is all I know.”

He spoke abruptly, and he was flushed and hasty. Rita did not think at the moment what it meant; she sat very quiet in her great chair, while her father came in and resumed the conversation—thinking over what he had said. Immediately there had risen before her a vision of the white cliffs she had heard of so often, and of green fields and red roofs, and of all the special features of English scenery which she had read of. What could it be that made him so sure? “If I were ever to go, which I never shall—and if you were to come with me, which most likely you never would—— Well, no,” Rita said to herself, with a half smile, “not much likelihood of that; how could I go with him? he means if we were to take him with us—he means——” and then she came to a pause, and a sudden reflection of the colour on Harry’s face wavered over hers for a minute; only a minute. She was not altogether inexperienced in life; she had already been the subject of several proposals addressed to her father, which he had declined after reference to Rita, so that she was aware that she was looked upon with favourable eyes by various persons, and that the love which is so much talked of in books might light upon her at any moment. Rita had, for her part, no particular objection; she had even left the door of her heart open, so that when he was thereabout that intrusive sentiment might come in if he pleased. But up to this moment he had not come in; the door had stood open, but nothing had entered except poetry and gentle thoughts. But Rita, after this conversation, experienced a very curious sensation. She felt not as if anyone had got in by the door, but as if some one passing had half stumbled against it, finding it closed, and, no answer being given, had gone his way. In the first haze of this idea she got up from her chair and said good night, and went off to her room, complaining that she was sleepy. But she was not sleepy; she sat down and began to think as soon as she had got within the protection of her chamber. It was not any personal feeling that moved her, far less any strong emotion; but all at once she was conscious of a keen and lively curiosity springing up in her mind, eager and lively as her nature. Did he mean——? What did he mean? “If I were to go to England—which I never shall—and if you were to come with me——” Why should she go with him? What reason could there be for such a thing, what excuse? He must be mad to make such a suggestion; but yet it kept coming back to her. “If I were to go, and if you were to come with me.” Certainly the door of that hidden chamber in her heart had swung to and closed, and somebody passing, a stranger, had run up against it, and shaken it, as if to try whether it would be easy to open. It was a very strange suggestion. Rita had been sought by persons of condition, by people who had something to offer, and who had made their proposals, as everybody who respects himself does in Italy, to the young lady’s father. But here was somebody who was nobody, and who took hold of the handle of that door of her heart, which she had believed to be open, but which had evidently closed of itself, and gave it a sharp shake, without thinking of her father or any consequences whatever. She thought of it for a long time, turning it over and over with the greatest curiosity. It was a new thing in her experience. He wanted a great many of the qualities which she considered indispensable in a man. First and chiefest of all he was not clever. He knew nothing about books, he scarcely knew a picture when he saw one. Instead of hunting about in the bric-à-brac shops as her father did, and as even little Paolo Thompson (whom Mr. Oliver called Paul-ó) was in the habit of doing, picking up wonderful things now and then, this stranger gazed with blank eyes at the treasures, and could not understand them. He was altogether a different kind of man from any she had ever seen, a homelier, duller sort of man; and yet he was not dull. The whole house was quiet and asleep when Rita suddenly sprang up from this long reverie, catching sight of her own big eyes in her looking-glass, and wondering at the wonder in them. She had got a new idea into her active little head. It was something novel and curious, and very amusing, but it did not seem to her at all necessary that it should ever come to anything. She wondered what he would say next, or how he would look, or what he would do. She was pleased on the whole to think that now perhaps she would have an opportunity of watching what a man looked like in such circumstances as these, which is a thing always interesting and, some people think, very amusing to see.

As for Harry, he went home that evening with a sensation not less extraordinary, but much more definite than that of Rita. He had not thought of the meaning of what he was saying till he had said it; he had not been aware of meaning anything, and yet he knew now that he did mean it. What had he been doing? Without a name, without a home, without anything in the world, he had been so foolish as to fall in love with a girl who, in the best of circumstances, would have been above him. The Joscelyns thought a great deal of themselves; but when Harry thought of the parlour at the White House, and then of Rita’s drawing-room, he felt that she was immeasurably above him, and that to say such a thing to her was not only wrong, but mean and ungenerous. If you were to come with me—Good life, why had he suggested that to her? She come with him? It seemed ridiculous, more out of the question to Harry than it had done to Rita. He was angry beyond measure with himself for letting himself be run away with, so to speak, by the foolish impulse of the moment. For he had never meant to say it, or indeed to suggest any idea of the kind. He was full of sense, though passion had him in its power when it once got hold of him. In the meantime, however, there was no question of passion. It was the pleasure of his life to be with Rita, to see her, to do little services for her, to hear her talk; but when the idea was suddenly set before him that he might marry Rita and carry her away with him, Harry was more frightened than she was. He to think of such a thing! He walked home at such a pace, with such a swift, impatient step, that the few passengers in the streets turned about to look after him, wondering what business he might have in hand—if he were going for a doctor, or any such urgent occasion; but Harry was walking fast only to keep up with his thoughts, which had suddenly been let loose like colts in a pasture, and were all careering about wildly, so that it was impossible to catch or lay hold upon them. How could he have been so mad as to have let them loose! and he wondered had she understood him? But how could she understand him, a child like that? she was too innocent to understand. He hurried along to his apartment in full chase after that wild herd of thoughts and imaginations. If he had them but once safely shut up again under lock and key certainly it would be a strong temptation indeed that would tempt him to let them loose.

CHAPTER IX.
A REVELATION.

HARRY found himself thus brought up, and forced to give, to himself, an account of himself, such as he had never in his consciousness been compelled to make before. He was in an altogether new position, and it was indispensable that he should know where it was leading to, and what was meant by it. There had been no occasion to inquire into this before. He had plenty to do learning Italian, learning about the shipping, getting into the duties of his new life. The Consul’s house and the Consul’s daughter had been his little bit of happiness, his reward after his work, his diversion from those dismal sensations of utter solitude which had almost overwhelmed him at first; and he had not thought of any complication of interests or feelings. Nothing need have awakened him from this comfortable state if it had not been that unlucky conversation about going to England. Why should he have talked about going to England? He never meant to go back, or, if ever, not at least until he had grown rich and altogether independent of them and their kindness. But in the meantime there did not seem any immediate likelihood of growing rich, and why he should have stepped outside all the boundaries of his life and suggested the sudden possibility of going home and taking Miss Bonamy with him, baffled Harry’s comprehension. Sometimes we say and even do things which on looking back upon them we feel were not our doing at all, but that of some one else, rather our enemy than otherwise, some one making a distinct effort to get us into trouble. This was Harry’s sensation now; he was half angry and half frightened. It was some malign, mischievous traitor wanting to betray him, not himself, who had said that. He went home breathless, and when he had climbed all those dark stairs to his rooms, and lighted his lamp, he sat down, and, as it were, called a council of himself, to inquire who had done it. But it is a great deal easier to feel that some one has betrayed us in this way than it is to determine who has done it; for those internal traitors have no names, and cannot be brought to the bar. His investigation so far was fruitless; but it was fertile enough in other ways, in ways in which he did not feel any anxiety to investigate. Harry had never been brought into familiar intercourse with any girl before. He had seen them at a distance, in circumstances which made no approach possible, even if he had desired it; and he did not know that he had ever desired it. Once or twice he had been struck by a pretty face, and had felt a passing wish, mingled with reluctance, to make further acquaintance with it; that is he would have wished it if he had been able to get over his shyness, and the difficulty of knowing what to say, and the trouble of overcoming all the preliminary obstacles. But here none of these difficulties had existed; he had come quite naturally into Rita’s acquaintance at once, as if she had been a comrade of his own. There had been no shyness, no hesitation, but the easy talk of a table at which strangers were constantly appearing and disappearing, and a house in which this young creature, though so young, was the mistress, and used to all the exertions necessary to set people at their ease. He had admired her he said to himself, from the first—who could help admiring her? but it had been so clearly her part to entertain and amuse the people about her, and she had been so pleasantly indifferent, so innocently at her ease, so oblivious of his presence often, so kind when her attention was called to him, that all those little bulwarks of freedom, which boys and girls when they are made conscious of each other, set up instinctively, had been useless in this case. She was neither afraid of him nor solicitous about him. Sometimes she took no more notice than if he had been a cabbage, and at other times was as seriously confidential as if he had been eighty. Harry had liked all the ways of it. He had been piqued a little sometimes, but afterwards had found it quite natural, and liked her friendliness and indifference, and the occasional moment of household intimacy, when she would look at him to indicate some little service she wanted, as she might have looked at her brother, without words, taking his interest and compliance for granted. And gradually, without any thought, this had come to be the pleasure and support of Harry’s life. When he did not see her, when he was not at the house for a whole day, it was a dull day indeed; but still faintly illuminated by to-morrow, when he was sure to see her. When she went away upon a visit, which happened once, the Consul’s despondency kept him in countenance. Mr. Bonamy adopted Harry in her place. “Come in and help me to eat something,” he said, “I can’t bear her empty seat. When my Rita is away I feel inclined to hang myself.” Harry had almost betrayed himself (to himself) by the warmth of the sympathy which he bestowed upon the disconsolate father; but as Mr. Bonamy ended by a doleful laugh at himself as an old fool, Harry laughed too, and the catastrophe was averted, and so things had gone on for a whole long year.

What a year that had been!—far the most wonderful of Harry’s life. So many new things had happened to him; he had been torn out of all his old habits, and made into another man with a new set of habits—as new as the light-coloured clothes in which alone it was possible to live on those southern coasts. And he had become so much the more of a man that he was now, so to speak, two men, one developed out of the other. He looked back upon the Henry Joscelyn of Liverpool with a mixture of amusement and pity. He had been a poor sort of limited creature, not knowing much; going half asleep between his office and his lodgings, now and then going to a poor theatre, walking about with small clerks in other offices, who knew nothing more than their own little gossip and the town news, and the fluctuations of trade. Perhaps it was a sign that Harry himself had not yet reached any great elevation, that he thought his present life so greatly superior. The reader knows he had not thought so always. He had compared his big, bare room, with its four white walls, most unfavourably with the carpeted and curtained parlour of his Liverpool experiences. But since that time his mind had undergone many transformations. His appartamento had become to him what Paolo’s was, a decent and tranquil shelter for the night. He had no longer thought of the respectabilities, of sitting there for a whole evening, of drinking tea, and having his friends to see him there. These were old customs at which he smiled. He had acquired a great many others which were now to him not only a second nature, but far more enjoyable, more lifelike, he thought, than the old. At all events, they were the habits of the present, not of the past. And amidst these changes, the advance in which might be questionable, were various other changes in Harry’s life of which the advantage was unquestionable. To live half his time in the Consul’s house, between a man of culture and education, and a young, fresh, intelligent girl, who had grown up knowing a world of things until then sealed books to Harry; and to have to do, not with mere bookkeeping, and sales, and goods of various descriptions, but with men, in a hundred little perplexities, out of which his skill, his patience, his superior knowledge, had to deliver them—were educating influences of the most active kind. He was a different man, and he felt himself to be so. How much he was the same man of course it was more difficult for Harry to see.

And here, in his new life, he had come to the first great difficulty; things had gone on smoothly, not a hitch anywhere. He had discharged all his duties to the satisfaction of his chief. He had acquired the very phraseology of a much higher class than that which he naturally belonged to, and talked of his chief as if he had been a fine gentleman in a public office. Many people, indeed, believed that Harry had been sent out by the “F.O.” with special instructions to keep Mr. Bonamy in order; and many more that he had come to Mr. Bonamy with the strongest recommendations from that dignified and mysterious power. Nobody guessed that he had been picked up off the streets, so to speak, by the mere generous caprice and mistaken romantic fancy of the rich official, who might, for all he knew, have been jeopardising the credit of the office by admitting a young adventurer to its sacred shelter. Mr. Bonamy had long ago forgotten that Harry had come to his present promotion in any illegitimate or irregular way, or that the appointment had occurred otherwise than in the ordinary course; and Oliver was his right hand, his constant refuge, his aide-de-camp in all things. He had even forgotten that he did not know all about the origin of the stranger who was now so freely admitted to his house. He was rash in that as in other matters, and though he would have given his life for his daughter it never occurred to him to take those precautions about her which the most selfish parent usually thinks it necessary to take. Everything had gone smoothly for Harry. At the Consul’s house he had met “the best people” that were to be found in Leghorn, the rich English merchants, and also many Italians, old traditionary friends of Rita’s mother, who was of Italian blood. By this time Harry had got a footing among them, and was asked to other houses, and known everywhere. Everything was going smoothly. He had no reason to be discontented or anxious about his future life. Everybody knew him, and nobody knew other than good of him. Whatever happened he would never again be the desolate stranger, with a new name, and no reputation, who had landed friendless on these shores.

And yet, with all these advantages, and this progress, suddenly, in a moment, he was brought to a standstill by this discovery. What wonder if Harry was provoked beyond bearing with himself and that traitor in him, who would not be brought to book? There was something almost ludicrous in his dismay. Why couldn’t you hold your tongue? he said, indignantly, to that something within him. Who wanted to know what you were thinking? What is the good of it now you have let it out? It was a ridiculous discussion, there being no one to reply, but yet it gave expression to the self-provoked and impatient character of Harry’s dilemma. For how was he to banish it back again and go on as if that idiotic suggestion had never been made?

Love is not so simple a thing as people think, at least in these artificial days. In the old simple story-books, and, indeed, often still in life, when such a revelation as this comes to a man, he jumps at once to the natural conclusion, throws himself at once into the situation, wooes, proposes, and, if he is successful, ends by being at least—engaged. Sometimes he does this with a noble indifference to circumstances and possibilities, or, at least, an indifference which, when he has spirit enough to take the consequences upon himself, and boldly hew possibility out of impossibility, is noble. Sometimes he leaps the intervening steps and thinks of nothing but of marrying as the natural and inevitable conclusion. The woman invariably does this; love to her means marriage, or it means nothing at all. It is an offence to her delicacy to play with it, to keep any decision at arm’s length, as men often think themselves justified in doing; so that it remains more simple (unless she is a coquette) in her case than in his. But with a man, now-a-days, at least, to enjoy all the gratifications and delicate bloom of nascent love without coming to any crisis, which must make an entire change of all these relations and modes of living necessary, is often very desirable. But this reluctance to come to a decision, though sometimes selfish, is not so always; and in Harry’s case it was not selfish. He had not walked open-eyed into this snare which life is continually setting for young feet; he had tumbled into it unawares; and in his situation, being unlucky enough to have tumbled into it, his only policy, his only honourable course, was either to get out of it with as much expedition as possible, or to hold his tongue about it, and never to betray his plight to the other person involved. But Harry had been betrayed, to himself, at least, if not to her, and the question now was, what was he to do? He sat and thought over this question, as on the other side of it Rita was doing—though this he did not know, nor guess; but he could not for his part make anything of it. He could not keep away from the Consul’s house, or shut himself out from her society, without further betrayal. His situation was such that if he remitted his visits, if he failed to appear with all the ease and familiarity to which he had been admitted, and which had been growing for a year past, he could not fail to be questioned on the subject, and his secret drawn from him. Even if he kept a little aloof from Rita, avoided her as much as civility permitted, and avoided occasions of being with her, that also would be remarked. What was he to do? For now that he had once betrayed himself who could guarantee that, continuing to see her every day, as he had been doing, he might, on some other occasion, betray himself still more distinctly. His embarrassment and trouble grew the more he thought of it. It could not be, surely, that he would be compelled to go out upon the desert world again and begin anew? Surely, surely, that would not be necessary! And yet, what was he to do? The question on Rita’s side by no means interfered with her rest, save for that hour or so when she chose to think of it, instead of brushing her hair; but it took away Harry’s, upon whom all the responsibility rested. Her feeling on the matter came only the length of a certain amused interest and curiosity as to how he would conduct himself in the future, and what he meant by these odd speeches; but his affected all his life. Whether he should stay where he was, or go away; whether he should have to throw aside again all his hopes of advancement, all his comfort and renewed confidence in his fate, all hung in the balance. He turned uneasily on his bed all the night through, dozing and dreaming of it, and waking to ask the same question again. But the night brings counsel, and when he woke somewhat late the next morning from the sleep which overtook him at last in the midst of his deliberations, he woke with a new idea in his mind, as we so often do, after a long consideration. The first words he said to himself as he woke were, “I will ask Paolo.” For a moment he could not tell what the momentous subject was that he was to ask Paolo about.