THE Vice-Consul’s family still lived in the same house, with more frequent use than before of the succursale of the Villa, where the children spent so much of their time. Naturally, however, it was a changed house, brighter and happier in one sense, in another—perhaps not all that it had been. Perhaps Mr. Bonamy had found a more delicate and complete happiness in it when he and his little daughter lived there alone, in perfect companionship, he sharing every thought with his child, and finding an entire and sweet compensation for all the troubles of his life in that perfect union and sympathy. It was true that, as he was aware now, he had known very little of Rita all that happy time: but while it lasted he did not know this, and thought that he had everything. It is the lot of fathers and mothers. When this last exquisite dream of his life failed him, and his Rita went over to that amiable, well-disposed, and kind young enemy, who had conquered and supplanted her father, Mr. Bonamy had, it is needless to say, a certain struggle with himself. But the circumstances helped him to a large degree. He was ill, expecting to die, and glad to think that whatever happened to him he had secured a companion, a support for her. When, however, death dropped into the background, and he had to begin again, and to reconcile himself to a third person in his house, at his table, and in all the most intimate relations of his life, the Vice-Consul had found it hard; and very hard it was to see his Rita turn to this other man as a flower turns to the sun, with all the clinging and dependence she had once shown to her father, and with a constant reference to and consultation of his wishes. It was quite right that it should be so, oh, perfectly right! and she was happy, as happy as a young woman could be—but it jarred upon the man who was left out in the cold, and who had to share, nay to give up the best of, this love which had been the recompense of his life, to a stranger. It is the lot of the fathers and mothers; when they make any difficulty about consenting to it, we call them hard names; but yet once in a way it may be allowed, that it is a bitter thing to do. Mr. Bonamy on the whole had done it with a very good grace. He was, more or less, grateful to the interloper that his house was not left to him desolate: and he swallowed Harry with as few grimaces as possible, making in private those which he could not altogether suppress. On the whole no man could have occupied so invidious a position more genially, more inofficiously than Harry did. He was grateful and attached to his father-in-law, and he had a profound respect for him and his judgment, to which unfortunately Mr. Bonamy did not make much response. The Vice-Consul indeed had that half-painful, half-amused sense of being a better man than his son-in-law, which at once increases the pang of such a rivalry and makes it ludicrous. “Having known me to decline on a range of lower feelings, and a narrower heart than mine.” When a father utters in the depths of his own heart such a sentiment as this, it may be somewhat bitterly, but it must be with a sense that it is utterly ludicrous. Mr. Bonamy felt all through like the disappointed lover in the poem “Thou shalt lower to his level day by day;” for indeed Rita herself, when she became Mrs. Harry, soon came to have far less interest in matters above Harry’s level, than she had felt when it was her father’s level by which her eager young being was founded. Then she had been his leader sometimes, his little oracle, with a fineness of perception that filled him with wonder and admiration; now she avoided those fine questions and speculations in which her husband did not share. He was faultless, Mr. Bonamy was just enough to allow; he was not exacting, he would still look on with honest admiring looks when they went beyond his knowledge, and smile and listen to discussions in which he could not take any share. But what Harry did not feel for himself, Rita felt for him. She would not go beyond him. She limited her own impulsive eager steps, which had been so ready for every path of fancy in order to keep upon the beaten ground by his side. Perhaps it gave her a little prick of pain too to leave her father alone, to curb all her natural impulses, to keep to that steady solid pace which suited Harry; and she did it knowing that her father felt it was a decline. But nevertheless her delicate instinctive unspoken loyalty to her husband carried her through. She was “falsely true” as much as Lancelot though in so different a way, belying herself, for Harry’s sake, who did not want such a sacrifice; but Rita felt it to be his due. There, as in all cases where there is a divided duty, the happiness which they possessed was purchased by a little inevitable pain, it was no longer unalloyed. The interloper, the breaker up of that previous blessedness, was the one who felt least drawback in it. For one thing he was naturally very modest and humble about himself, and it did not at all hurt him to acknowledge himself less clever than his wife and father-in-law. He would not have objected had they gone on talking over his head. His taste was less fine, and his perceptions much less acute than Rita’s. And he got the advantage of that finesse of thought and feeling, that delicacy which was so much greater than anything he was capable of, really without knowing it, or being at all aware of the sacrifice she made.
Then the children, though they were a new bond, and a great pleasure to Mr. Bonamy (being good and healthy and smiling children, making the best of themselves, and looking merry and pretty, as children ought to do), gave a little wound also to his fantastical delicacy (for it was of course fantastical) about his daughter, whom he did not like to think of as involved in all the functions of motherhood. But the Vice-Consul, though perhaps not a very wise man by the head, was wise by the heart, and he would not do or say anything to throw the least cloud upon his child’s happiness; he accepted everything, allowing to himself that he was fantastical; and their home was pointed out to everybody as the emblem of a united house, full of love and mutual consideration, and the closest affection—which it was, though not the same home as of old.
On this particular day Rita was somewhat excited by the prospect of a visit from the Brothertons. Lady Brotherton had been one of the objects of her girlish devotion—that devotion which so often flows forth to an older woman before it turns to a lover. She had admired the beautiful lady as only a girl can admire, and had copied her in many a little matter, and still believed in her with all the delightful prejudice which clings to the friends of our youth. She was eager to show everything—her husband, her babies, her own maturity of life—to her old authority, and see how they looked through Lady Brotherton’s eyes. When she saw her husband before dinner she was full of this pleasant excitement.
“What a pity, what a pity that Ralph and Vanna are at the Villa” (Harry in his perversity had given his father’s name to his eldest boy, though he was of opinion that he hated his father), Rita cried, “I should have liked her to see them; but there is always Madge and baby. I wonder if she will think Madge like you, Harry. I wonder if she will think baby a beauty. English children are so big and red in the face; she may think ours pale; though I am sure they are quite strong. I wonder how she will think papa is looking. I wonder if she will approve of——”
“Me?” said Harry, with a somewhat uneasy smile; “she will think me not half good enough for you, and there I agree with her, so we shan’t quarrel on that subject. But listen, dear, there is some one with her, whom I want you to be a little on your guard with; a—a girl—a Miss Joscelyn——”
Rita looked up suddenly, with a keen light in her dark eyes. She had Italian blood in her, to which jealousy was quite possible. She looked up startled, ready to take fire; but Harry went on tying his neck-tie, not so much as conscious, in his honest simplicity, that such a sentiment as jealousy could enter into the possibilities.
“I have a kind of idea,” he said, “that she must belong to people—I used to know. I may be mistaken, but still I have a notion she does. So don’t say anything, darling; don’t let her enter upon the subject.”
“What subject?” said Rita, breathless. “Do you mean that you knew the—lady—in those old times that I know nothing about?”
“I can’t tell,” said Harry; “if I knew her, it was as a child. But, Rita, you are always generous; you never have bothered me with questions. Don’t say anything to her, or to any of them, if they should question you—about me.”
“About you!” Rita’s mind was partially relieved, but it was not in human nature to receive, without some retort, this curious commission. “What can I say about you? I know nothing,” she said, with a little bitterness. Then, as he turned and looked at her with unfeigned astonishment, “Oh, no, no, I do not mean that! I know everything, dear Harry, I know you; but nothing before you came here.”