And here he paused—for had he not been careful all this time to keep in the background the name of the lady? He stopped, and he looked at Paolo with curious, anxious, defiant eyes.
Paolo would have laughed had he dared: but he did not venture to laugh. It was too serious. “I have no prejudice,” he said. “It may be that I think a little in Italian, one cannot help one’s thoughts. But then why will you ask me? If the lady is indifferent where then is the difficulty of to hold your tongue? But if that is otherwise—listen. The papa, it is to him one speaks when it is of marriage. Love, that is another thing. You do not understand, amico,” said Paolo, with a plaintive tone, “the difference. There is great difference. They are two things all-together. Marriage,” once more he counted upon his fingers, “that will mean the papa; love—ah! that will mean the moment, the opportunity, the response.”
To these last words Harry paid no attention. He scarcely heard them. But the others seemed to throw a sudden light upon the whole subject. He rose up again and resumed his promenade about the room, biting his nails and knitting his brows. “By Jove,” he said, at last, “Paul-o, you’re not half such a foolish little beggar as you look. That is the thing to do. I wonder I never thought of it myself. To be sure, that’s the thing to do.”
“What is the thing to do?” Paolo asked, bewildered. But his friend made him no direct answer. After a good deal more of that pacing up and down, he came back and patted his counsellor on the back so vigorously that he almost took away Paolo’s breath.
“That is the very thing,” Harry said. “You are a clever little beggar after all. I should never have hit it out all by myself; but I see now, it’s the right thing to do. Not too easy though; I can’t say that I shall like it a bit; but one can see in a moment that it’s the right thing to do.”
“What is the right thing?” Paolo asked again; but he got no reply. Harry fell a-musing as he sometimes did, letting the little Italian go on with talk, to which his friend paid no attention; and afterwards he walked with Paolo to his rooms, paying just as little regard to what he said. It was another clear, starlight night, soft and cool as the nights are in an Italian spring. There was no chill to freeze the blood; but all was balmy and soft. He went along the streets with their high houses reaching almost up to the sky, looking up to the narrow lane of radiant blue above, all living and sweet with stars. He thought his problem over again, going step by step over the same way which he had traversed before—and it seemed to him that he had at last found the true and the only solution. He could not withdraw himself from the Vice-Consul’s house without an explanation; that would be impossible; therefore the only thing to be done was to go to the Vice-Consul himself, and tell him how the case stood. “I cannot be sure of myself if I go on seeing her every day; therefore I must give up seeing her every day, and you must know why.” Probably he would not tell his story so briefly as this; there would be explanations to give, and many digressions probably from the main theme; but that in effect would be all that Harry would have to say; and certainly it was the right thing to do. He took it for granted that Paolo had suggested it, though in reality it was an alternative of a much less satisfactory kind that Paolo had suggested; but all the rest that he had said vanished from Harry’s practical mind, leaving this one piece of advice behind, and no more. Paolo was no fool, though his way of thinking might not be much like an Englishman’s. Englishmen did not go to the father first, but to the daughter, to know what their chances were; but for once in a way the other mode was the best. He took a long walk after he left his friend, traversing all the streets which now he knew so well, and further still to where the salt air of the sea blew in his face, and refreshed his soul. He would not trifle with the occasion, but go at once to-morrow and get it off his mind. So he said to himself. And he came home past the house from which he was henceforward to be banished. It was late, and the sitting-rooms were all dark; but Harry knew that a little light in one window indicated Rita’s room—probably the faint little veilleuse which watched over her sleep; and that in another was the lamp by which the Vice-Consul was smoking his last cigar. He stood and looked piteously at the house. It had been a kind of home to him, in one way more than his own home had ever been. Standing outside in the night it appeared beautiful to him, as never house had appeared before. He had not appreciated the bric-à-brac, or known what to say about the pictures; but now each article of the furniture suddenly appeared to him in a new light. It was all beautiful; it was such a place as a palace might be—a house for a queen; and to think that he had almost lived in it for so long, and that now he was to enter there no more! Harry was not like the Peri at the gate of Paradise; he had a still more pathetic, a heart-rending sense of loss. He had been there yesterday; but he was not to be there again perhaps for ever. Why should he go away? and yet he must go away; he must keep himself at a distance from those dear doors. Slowly there gathered in his eyes a painful dew; it did not fall in tears, which he would have scorned himself for shedding, but it blurred and magnified all he saw. Yesterday so much at home, so familiar in the place, to-morrow with no entrance possible to him any more! and all by no fault of his or anyone’s; by no levity on her part, or presumption on his; all unawares, no one thinking of any danger. It seemed to Harry, standing outside there, as if there was something very hard in such a wayward accident of fate, as if some malign spirit must have taken pleasure in twisting the threads wrongly; in making trouble out of the most innocent situations in life. He had never meant to go further than liking—no one could help going as far as liking; but the unlucky fellow, without meaning it, had taken the step farther, and loved; and now all his card-castle of happiness had tumbled down, and everything was over. There was nothing wrong in it—no fault in it one way or another: and yet a great many faults would have produced less confusion and pain.
CHAPTER XI.
WITH HER FATHER.
NEXT morning Harry went to the office with an air of resolution about him which no one could have mistaken. He thought the others looked at him curiously with investigating eyes, which, indeed, was true enough; for his predecessor there never could make out how it was that the stranger had gained so much interest with the Consul, and Paolo, who was the only other person present, was full of the most anxious wonder and suspense. But, as it happened, Harry was kept so fully occupied all day that he could not say a word to the Vice-Consul, and his air of resolution and sense of being wound up for a great crisis, came to nothing. But he did not go near the Consulate in the evening. Had things been in their ordinary course he would, in the most natural way, and, indeed, with a semblance of necessity, have proceeded there to consult Mr. Bonamy about some matter of business, or to ask directions from him. But he forbore. He sat in his own rooms all the evening, feeling it unutterably long, trying to amuse himself with reading, and finding very little amusement in that somewhat unwonted exercise. He had been “reading up,” with a great deal of industry and some interest, books which he had heard discussed in the Vice-Consul’s house, and in this way had at least procured a good deal of information, the advantage of which was evident. But Harry had not read for enjoyment, and now that things had come to this pass, and that he was about to be compelled to give up the society of the Bonamys, and lose the gratification of pleasing Rita, it seemed to his practical mind that there was no great reason for continuing those studies. It was quite likely that he never would live among such people again, and why should he take so much trouble—trouble taken with the idea of pleasing them? it was no longer worth his while. He was driven back to his books indeed by the tedium of the long, unoccupied evening, for he had no heart to go out, to be waylaid by Paolo, and have questions put to him which he would find it very difficult to answer. But he yawned a great deal, and went to bed very early, and slept badly in consequence, tossing about for two hours and hearing the melancholy clocks peal. Next day he was resolved he must speak. Indeed, it would be indispensable that he should, as it was the day on which Rita received, and he had never yet been absent from her drawing-room on that special evening. He had a good opportunity this time, for the Vice-Consul called for him as soon as he appeared after his luncheon, and bade him bring certain papers to be examined. “I quite expected you to have brought them last night,” Mr. Bonamy said. “For two nights we have not seen you, Oliver. Rita was asking me to-day whether you were ill. I hope you are not ill. There’s no fever here that I know of; still it is always well to take care.”
“I am not ill, Sir,” said Harry, colouring high, and then growing pale; “but there was another reason. I should like to speak to you for a few minutes, about myself, if you could spare the time.”
“Certainly I can spare you the time,” said the Vice-Consul, readily; “but not now, you know. Come to me again as soon as the office is closed. Shall we talk your business over here, or in the house?”