Harry Joscelyn; vol. 3 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“That is true,” he said, thoughtfully. “I wonder if I ever shall be able to tell you—all about it?” The sight of Liddy and the sound of her name had worked upon him more than he had thought anything could.

“Do! do!” cried Rita, all eagerness, clasping his arm with both her hands.

He had never said so much to her before, and she, in fastidious delicacy, had not asked. He laughed now, but still with anxiety in his face.

“At present I must get ready for dinner,” he said.

“Ah! it is always like this,” cried Rita; “when you are in a humour to tell me, something happens, dinner, or something equally unimportant!” which was more like one of her early girlish outbursts than the matronly composure by which she liked to think herself distinguished now.

But at this moment her maid came to tell her that the carriage of the English Signori, who were coming to dinner, had just driven into the courtyard, and Rita had to give her skirts a last settling, and to hurry to the drawing-room. And Harry had failed in his tie; he had to take a new one, feeling his hands tremble a little. His mind was in a great ferment. Some months before he had seen the advertisement for Harry Joscelyn, or a certificate of his death, in the Times, where he was described as “supposed to have emigrated,” and this of itself had roused no small commotion in him. He was to hear of “something to his advantage.” Harry could not tell what that might be, and if for a moment now and then the temptation came over him to answer the appeal and understand the cause of it, it yielded immediately, not only to the old resentment, but to the new sense of alarm and apprehension with which the idea of breaking up his present life, and disclosing to those who knew him under one name another identity, filled his spirit. It appeared to him that, if he gave up his present standing ground by revealing another, his whole life, so happy, so sweet, so full of natural duty, work, and recompense, would break up and disappear from him. As Isaac Oliver he was at the head of the Consular business, known and named in all its affairs. As Isaac Oliver he was the husband of his wife. All the town knew him under that name, his children bore it. It had become almost dear to him, the name which he had picked up in bitter ridicule, and adopted with a perverse laugh, as he might have stuck a feather in his hat. The sound was familiar now to his ears, he liked it. It was Rita’s name. She called him Harry, as the name of his childhood, which he preferred, and he had been led to admit that the “Harry Joscelyn Isaac Oliver,” with which, for precaution sake, he had signed the register on his marriage, was his full baptismal name. He signed it now H. J. Isaac Oliver, and she was Mrs. Isaac Oliver. He liked it, and had a certain pride in it, as a name that was honest and without stain, and which should never suffer in his hands; and if he cut himself off from it, what would become of him? his identity would be gone. But the appearance of Liddy had made a very great impression on him. When she rose up suddenly, with a little start and cry, at the sound of his name, he had seen in a moment, in imagination, the real Isaac Oliver, shuffling like a crab along the North-country road, and a sense of the incongruity had struck him painfully, bringing a sensation of sudden shame and discomfiture; but in general he was not ashamed of the name to which he had grown familiar, and he felt as if, resuming the other, his pleasant life would all break up and disappear, and he would become another man.

Rita met the strangers with less composure than she would have done but for that two minutes’ talk. Even when she threw herself into Lady Brotherton’s arms, in the fervour of feeling which her Italian blood made a little more apparent than it would have been had she been all English, she cast an eye upon Lady Brotherton’s companion. Lydia was not looking her best in the confused and painful fever of suspense and expectancy which was upon her; but she looked younger than her real age, and almost childlike in her slightness and slimness beside the matronly form of Lady Brotherton. Even Rita, though still light and small, was rounder and fuller than of old, but Liddy looked eighteen though she was twenty-two, and there could be no doubt that if Harry had seen her before it must have been as a child. This somewhat composed the fanciful bosom of Harry’s wife. Liddy when she had made her curtsey to Mrs. Oliver, sat down behind backs, with a timidity which had come suddenly back to her, isolating herself as far as might be, especially from Lionel, whom she had avoided ever since their recent conversation. Harry had not yet come into the room, and she felt herself altogether in a strange place. Perhaps it was this that brought Paolo to her side; the little Italian thought her probably, a neglected demoiselle de compagnie whom nobody particularly cared to notice, and this was enough to bring him instantly to the rescue. “Miss Joscelyn is a stranger in Italy?” he said with an engaging and conciliatory smile. He spoke a great deal better English than when Harry had made acquaintance with him, and dressed with less abandon and devotion to the beautiful; but he was still a “funny little man,” in the eyes of the English girl; his kindness however could not be mistaken.

“Scarcely,” she said, “I have been in Italy all the winter; and now we are going home.”

“Ah, you are going ’ome, that always pleases; but I hope Mees Jos—lyn will retain a little memory that is pleasant of Italy too.”

“Oh, I have liked it so much,” said Liddy. She was disturbed at this moment by Harry’s entrance; and it occurred to her now for the first time as it had done to Lionel when he first saw him, that she had seen somebody very like him—who was it that was so like him? She paused in what she was saying to interpose this wondering question in her own mind.