The Lesson of the Master, The Marriages, The Pupil, Brooksmith, The Solution, Sir Edmund Orme (New York & London: Macmillan & Co., 1892)/The Solution/Chapter 2
II.
In Rome, of a Sunday afternoon, every one went over to St. Peter's; I don't know whether the agreeably frivolous habit still prevails: it had little to do, I fear, with the spirit of worship. We went to hear the music—the famous vesper-service of the Papal choir, and also to learn the news, to stroll about and talk and look at each other. If we treated the great church as a public promenade, or rather as a splendid international salon, the fault was not wholly our own, and indeed practically there was little profanity in such an attitude. One's attitude was insignificant, and the bright immensity of the place protected conversation and even gossip. It struck one not as a particular temple, but as formed by the very walls of the faith that has no small pruderies to enforce. One early autumn day, in especial, we crossed the Tiber and lifted the ponderous leather curtain of the door to get a general view of the return of our friends to Rome. Half an hour's wandering lighted up the question of who had arrived, as every one, in his degree, went there for a solution of it. At the end of ten minutes I came upon Henry Wilmerding; he was standing still, with his head thrown back and his eyes raised to the far-arching dome as if he had felt its spell for the first time. The body of the church was almost clear of people; the visitors were collected in the chapel where service was held and just outside of it; the splendid chant and the strange high voices of some of the choristers came to us from a great distance. Before Wilmerding saw me I had time to say to him: "I thought you intended to remain at Frascati till the end of the week."
"I did, but I changed my mind."
"You came away suddenly, then?"
"Yes, it was rather sudden."
"Are you going back?" I presently asked.
"There's nothing particular to go back for."
I hesitated a moment. "Was there anything particular to come away for?"
"My dear fellow, not that I know of," he replied, with a slight flush in his cheek—an intimation (not that I needed it), that I had a little the air of challenging his right to go and come as he chose.
"Not in relation to those ladies?"
"Those ladies?"
"Don't be so unnaturally blank. Your dearest friends."
"Do you mean the Goldies?"
"Don't overdo it. Whom on earth should I mean?"
It is difficult to explain, but there was something youthfully bland in poor Wilmerding which operated as a provocation: it made him seem imperturbable, which he really was not. My little discussion with Montaut about the success with which he might be made to take a joke seriously had not, till this moment, borne any fruit in my imagination, but the idea became prolific, or at least it became amusing, as I stood face to face with him on those solemn fields of marble. There was a temptation to see how much he would swallow. He was candid, and his candour was like a rather foolish blank page, the gaping, gilt-edged page of an album, presenting itself for the receipt of a quotation or a thought. Why shouldn't one write something on it, to see how it would look? In this case the inscription could only be a covert pleasantry—an impromptu containing a surprise. If Wilmerding was innocent, that, no doubt, ought to have made one kind, and I had not the faintest intention of being cruel. His blandness might have operated to conciliate, and it was only the turn of a hair that it had the other effect. That hair, let me suppose, was simply the intrinsic brutality—or call it the high animal-spirits—of youth. If after the little experiment suggested by Montaut had fixed itself in my fancy I let him off, it would be because I pitied him. But it was absurd to pity Wilmerding—we envied him, as I have hinted, too much. If he was the white album-page seductive to pointed doggerel he was unmistakably gilt-edged.
"Oh, the Goldies," he said in a moment—"I wouldn't have stayed any longer for them. I came back because I wanted to—I don't see that it requires so much explanation."
"No more do I!" I laughed. "Come and listen to the singing." I passed my hand into his arm and we strolled toward the choir and the concourse of people assembled before the high doorway. We lingered there a little: till this hour I never can recall without an ache for the old days the way the afternoon light, taking the heavenly music and diffusing it, slants through the golden recesses of the white windows, set obliquely in the walls. Presently we saw Guy de Montaut in the crowd, and he came toward us after having greeted us with a gesture. He looked hard at me, with a smile, as if the sight of us together reminded him of his wager and he wanted to know whether he had lost or won. I let him know with a glance that he was to be quiet or he would spoil everything, and he was as quiet as he knew how to be. This is not saying much, for he always had an itch to play with fire. It was really the desire to keep his hands off Wilmerding that led me to deal with our friend in my own manner. I remember that as we stood there together Montaut made several humorous attempts to treat him as a great conqueror, of which I think Wilmerding honestly failed to perceive the drift. It was Montaut's saying "You ought to bring them back—we miss them too much," that made me prepare to draw our amiable victim away.
"They're not my property," Wilmerding replied, accepting the allusion this time as to the four English ladies.
"Ah, all of them, mon cher—I never supposed!" the Frenchman cried, with great merriment, as I broke up our colloquy. I laughed, too—the image he presented seemed comical then—and judged that we had better leave the church. I proposed we should take a turn on the Pincian, crossing the Tiber by the primitive ferry which in those days still plied at the marble steps of the Ripetta, just under the back- windows of the Borghese palace.
"Montaut was talking nonsense just then, but have they refused you?" I asked as we took our way along the rustic lane that used to wander behind the castle of St. Angelo, skirting the old grassy fortifications and coming down to the Tiber between market-gardens, vine yards and dusty little trellised suburban drinking-shops which had a withered bush over the gate.
"Have who refused me?"
"Ah, you keep it up too long!" I answered; and I was silent a little.
"What's the matter with you this afternoon?" he asked. "Why can't you leave the poor Goldies alone?"
"Why can't you, my dear fellow—that seems to me the natural inquiry. Excuse my having caught Montaut's tone just now. I don't suppose you proposed for all of them."
"Proposed?—I've proposed for none of them!"
"Do you mean that Mrs. Goldie hasn't seemed to expect it?"
"I don't know what she has seemed to expect."
"Can't you imagine what she would naturally look for? If you can't, it's only another proof of the different way you people see things. Of course you have a right to your own way."
"I don't think I know what you are talking about," said poor Wilmerding.
"My dear fellow, I don't want to be offensive, dotting my i's so. You can so easily tell me it's none of my business."
"It isn't your being plain that would be offensive—it's your kicking up such a dust."
"You're very right," I said; "I've taken a liberty and I beg your pardon. We'll talk about something else."
We talked about nothing, however; we went our way in silence and reached the bank of the river. We waited for the ferryman without further speech, but I was conscious that a bewilderment was working in my companion. As I relate my behaviour to you it strikes me, at this distance of time, as that of a very demon. All I can say is that it seemed to me innocent then: youth and gaiety and reciprocity, and something in the sophisticating Roman air which converted all life into a pleasant comedy, apologised for me as I went. Besides, I had no vision of consequences: my part was to prove, as against the too mocking Montaut, that there would be no consequences at all. I remember the way Wilmerding, as we crossed, sat on the edge of the big flat boat, looking down at the yellow swirl of the Tiber. He didn't meet my eye, and he was serious; which struck me as a promise of further entertainment. From the Ripetta we strolled to the Piazza del Popolo, and then began to mount one of the winding ways that diversify the slope of the Pincian. Before we got to the top Wilmerding said to me: "What do you mean by the different way 'we people' see things? Whom do you mean by us people?"
"You innocent children of the west, most unsophisticated of Yankees. Your ideas, your standards, your measures, your manners are different."
"The ideas and the manners of gentlemen are the same all the world over."
"Yes—I fear I can't gainsay you there," I replied.
"I don't ask for the least allowance on the score of being a child of the west. I don't propose to be a barbarian anywhere."
"You're the best fellow in the world," I continued; "but it's nevertheless true—I have been impressed with it on various occasions—that your country-people have, in perfect good faith, a different attitude toward women. They think certain things possible that we Europeans, cynical and corrupt, look at with a suspicious eye."
"What things do you mean?"
"Oh, don't you know them? You have more freedom than we."
"Ah, never!" my companion cried, in a tone of conviction that still rings in my ears.
"What I mean is that you have less," I said, laughing. "Evidently women, chez vous, are not so easily compromised. You must live, over there, in a state of Arcadian, or rather of much more than Arcadian innocence. You can do all sorts of things without committing yourselves. With a quarter of them, in this uncomfortable hemisphere, one is up to one's neck in engagements."
"In engagements?"
"One has given pledges that have in honour to be redeemed—unless a fellow chooses to wriggle out of them. There is the question of intentions, and the question of how far, in the eyes of the world, people have really gone. Here it's the fashion to assume, if there is the least colour for it, that they have gone pretty far. I daresay often they haven't. But they get the credit of it. That's what makes them often ask themselves—or each other—why they mayn't as well die for sheep as for lambs."
"I know perfectly well what you mean: that's precisely what makes me so careful," said Wilmerding.
I burst into mirth at this—I liked him even better when he was subtile than when he was simple. "You're a dear fellow and a gentleman to the core, and it's all right, and you have only to trust your instincts. There goes the Boccarossa," I said, as we entered the gardens which crown the hill and which used to be as pleasantly neglected of old as they are regulated and cockneyfied to-day. The lovely afternoon was waning and the good-humoured, blasé crowd (it has seen so much, in its time) formed a public to admire the heavy Roman coaches, laden with yellow principessas, which rumbled round the contracted circle. The old statues in the shrubbery, the colour of the sunset, the view of St. Peter's, the pines against the sky on Monte Mario, and all the roofs and towers of Rome between—these things are doubtless a still fresher remembrance with you than with me. I leaned with Wilmerding against the balustrade of one of the terraces and we gave the usual tribute of a gaze to the dome of Michael Angelo. Then my companion broke out, with perfect irrelevance:
"Don't you think I've been careful enough?"
It's needless—it would be odious—to tell you in detail what advantage I took of this. I hated (I told him) the slang of the subject, but I was bound to say he would be generally judged—in any English, in any French circle—to have shown what was called marked interest.
"Marked interest in what? Marked interest in whom? You can't appear to have been attentive to four women at once."
"Certainly not. But isn't there one whom you may be held particularly to have distinguished?"
"One?" Wilmerding stared. "You don't mean the old lady?"
"Commediante! Does your conscience say absolutely nothing to you?"
"My conscience? What has that got to do with it?"
"Call it then your sense of the way that—to effete prejudice—the affair may have looked."
"The affair—what affair?"
"Honestly, can't you guess? Surely there is one of the young ladies to whom the proprieties point with a tolerably straight ringer."
He hesitated; then he cried: "Heaven help me—you don't mean Veronica?"
The pleading wail with which he uttered this question was almost tragic, and for a moment his fate trembled in the balance. I was on the point of letting him off, as I may say, if he disliked the girl so much as that. It was a revelation—I didn't know how much he did dislike her. But at this moment a carriage stopped near the place where we had rested, and, turning round, I saw it contained two ladies whom I knew. They greeted me and prepared to get out, so that I had to go and help them. But before I did this I said to my companion: "Don't worry, after all. It will all blow over."
"Upon my word, it will have to!" I heard him ejaculate as I left him. He turned back to the view of St. Peter's. My ladies alighted and wished to walk a little, and I spent five minutes with them; after which, when I looked for Wilmerding, he had disappeared. The last words he had spoken had had such a sharp note of impatience that I was reassured. I had ruffled him, but I had won my bet of Montaut.
Late that night (I had just come in—I was never at home in the evening) there was a tinkle of my bell, and my servant informed me that the signorino of the "American embassy" wished to speak to me. Wilmerding was ushered in, very pale, so pale that I thought he had come to demand satisfaction of me for having tried to make a fool of him. But he hadn't, it soon appeared; he hadn't in the least: he wanted explanations, but they were quite of another kind. He only wished to arrive at the truth—to ask me two or three earnest questions. I ought of course to have told him on the spot that I had only been making use of him for a slight psychological experiment. But I didn't, and this omission was my great fault. I can only declare, in extenuation of it, that I had scruples about betraying Montaut. Besides, I did cling a little to my experiment. There was something that fascinated me in the idea of the supreme sacrifice he was ready to make if it should be come patent to him that he had put upon an innocent girl, or upon a confiding mother, a slight, a disappointment even purely conventional. I urged him to let me lay the ghost I had too inconsiderately raised, but at the same time I was curious to see what he would do if the idea of reparation should take possession of him. He would be consistent, and it would be strange to see that. I remember saying to him before he went away: "Have you really a very great objection to Veronica Goldie?" I thought he was going to reply "I loathe her!" But he answered:
"A great objection? I pity her, if I've deceived her."
"Women must have an easy time in your country," I said; and I had an idea the remark would contribute to soothe him.
Nevertheless, the next day, early in the afternoon, being still uneasy, I went to his lodgings. I had had, by a rare chance, a busy morning, and this was the first moment I could spare. Wilmerding had delightful quarters in an old palace with a garden—an old palace with old busts ranged round an old loggia and an old porter in an old cocked hat and a coat that reached to his heels leaning against the portone. From this functionary I learned that the signorino had quitted Rome in a two-horse carriage an hour before: he had gone back to Frascati—he had taken a servant and a portmanteau. This news did not confirm my tranquillity in exactly the degree I could have wished, and I stood there looking, and I suppose feeling, rather blank while I considered it. A moment later I was surprised in this attitude by Guy de Montaut, who turned into the court with the step of a man bent on the same errand as myself. We looked at each other—he with a laugh, I with a frown—and then I said: "I don't like it—he's gone."
"Gone?—to America?"
"On the contrary—back to the hills."
Montaut's laugh rang out, and he exclaimed: "Of course you don't like it! Please to hand me over the sum of money that I have had the honour of winning from you."
"Not so fast. What proves to you that you've won it?"
"Why, his going like this—after the talk I had with him this morning."
"What talk had you with him this morning?"
Montaut looked at the old porter, who of course couldn't understand us, but, as if he scented the drift of things, was turning his perceptive Italian eye from one of us to the other. "Come and walk with me, and I'll tell you. The drollest thing!" he went on, as we passed back to the street. "The poor child has been to see me."
"To propose to you a meeting?"
"Not a bit—to ask my advice."
"Your advice?"
"As to how to act in the premises. Il est impayable."
"And what did you say to him?"
"I said Veronica was one of the most charming creatures I had ever seen."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"Tudieu, mon cher, so ought you, if you come to that!" Montaut replied, taking his hand out of my arm.
"It's just what I am. We're a pair of scoundrels."
"Speak for yourself. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
"You wouldn't have missed what?"
"His visit to me to-day—such an exhibition!"
"What did he exhibit?"
"The desire to be correct—but in a degree! You're a race apart, vous autres."
"Don't lump him and me together," I said: "the immeasurable ocean divides us. Besides, it's you who were stickling for correctness. It was your insistence to me on what he ought to do—on what the family would have a right to expect him to do—that was the origin of the inquiry in which (yesterday, when I met him at St. Peter's,) I so rashly embarked."
"My dear fellow, the beauty of it is that the family have brought no pressure: that's an element I was taking for granted. He has no claim to recognise, because none has been made. He tells me that the Honourable Blanche, after her daughter's escapade with him, didn't open her mouth. Ces Anglaises!"
"Perhaps that's the way she made her claim," I suggested. "But why the deuce, then, couldn't he be quiet?"
"It's exactly what he thinks—that she may have been quiet out of delicacy. He's inimitable!"
"Fancy, in such a matter, his wanting advice!" I groaned, much troubled. We had stopped outside, under the palace windows; the sly porter, from the doorway, was still looking at us.
"Call it information," said Montaut.
"But I gave him lots, last night. He came to me."
"He wanted more—he wanted to be sure! He wanted an honest impression; he begged me, as a favour to him, to be very frank. Had he definitely, yes or no, according to my idea, excited expectations? I told him, definitely, yes—according to my idea!"
"I shall go after him," I declared; "I shall overtake him—I shall bring him back."
"You'll not play fair, then."
"Play be hanged! The fellow mustn't sacrifice his life."
"Where's the sacrifice?—she's quite as good as he. I don't detest poor Veronica—she has possibilities, and also very pretty hair. What pretensions can he have? He's touching, but he's only a cotton-spinner and a blockhead. Besides, it offends an aimable Français to see three unmated virgins withering in a row. You people don't mind that sort of thing, but it violates our sense of form—of proper arrangement. Girls marry, que diable!"
"I notice they don't marry you!" I cried.
"I don't go and hide in the bushes with them. Let him arrange it—I like to see people act out their character. Don't spoil this—it will be perfect. Such a story to tell!"
"To tell? We shall blush for it for ever. Besides, we can tell it even if he does nothing."
"Not I—I shall boast of it. I shall have done a good action, I shall have assuré un sort to a portionless girl." Montaut took hold of me again, for I threatened to run after Wilmerding, and he made me walk about with him for half an hour. He took some trouble to persuade me that further interference would be an unwarranted injury to Veronica Goldie. She had apparently got a husband—I had no right to dash him from her lips.
"Getting her a husband was none of my business."
"You did it by accident, and so you can leave it."
"I had no business to try him."
"You believed he would resist."
"I don't find it so amusing as you," I said, gloomily.
"What's amusing is that he has had no equivalent," Montaut broke out.
"No equivalent?"
"He's paying for what he didn't have, I gather, eh? L'imbecile! It's a reparation without an injury."
"It's an injury without a provocation!" I answered, breaking away from him.
I went straight to the stables at which I kept my horse—we all kept horses in Rome, in those days, for the Campagna was an incomparable riding-ground—and ordered the animal to be brought immediately to Porta San Giovanni. There was some delay, for I reached this point, even after the time it took me to change my dress, a good while before he came. When he did arrive I sprang into the saddle and dashed out of the gate. I soon got upon the grass and put the good beast to his speed, and I shall never forget that rich afternoon's ride. It seemed to me almost historic, at the time, and I thought of all the celebrated gallops, or those of poetry and fiction, that had been taken to bring good news or bad, to warn of dangers, to save cities, to stay executions. I felt as if staying an execution were now the object of mine. I took the direction of the Appian Way, where so many panting steeds, in the succession of ages, had struck fire from the stones; the ghostly aqueducts watched me as I passed, and these romantic associations gave me a sense of heroism. It was dark when I strained up the hill to Frascati, but there were lights in the windows of Wilmerding's villa, toward which I first pressed my course. I rode straight into the court, and called up to him—there was a window open; and he looked out and asked in unconcealed surprise what had brought me from Rome. "Let me in and I'll tell you," I said; and his servant came down and admitted me, summoning another member of the establishment to look after my horse.
It was very well to say to Wilmerding that I would tell him what had brought me: that was not so easy after I had been introduced into his room. Then I saw that something very important had happened: his whole aspect instantly told me so. He was half undressed— he was preparing for dinner—he was to dine at Mrs. Goldie's. This he explained to me without any question of mine, and it led me to say to him, with, I suspect, a tremor in my voice: "Then you have not yet seen her?"
"On the contrary: I drove to their villa as soon as I got here. I've been there these two hours. I promised them to go back to dine—I only came round here to tidy myself a little." I looked at him hard, and he added: "I'm engaged to be married."
"To which of them?" I asked; and the question seemed to me absurd as soon as I had spoken it.
"Why, to Veronica."
"Any of them would do," I rejoined, though this was not much better. And I turned round and looked out of the window into the dark. The tears rose to my eyes—I had ridden heroically, but I had not saved the city.
"What did you desire to say to me?" Wilmerding went on.
"Only that I wish you all the happiness you deserve," I answered, facing him again.
"Did you gallop out here for that?" he inquired.
"I might have done it for less!" I laughed, awkwardly; but he was very mild—he didn't fly at me. They had evidently been very nice to him at the other house—well they might be! Veronica had shaken her hair in his eyes, and for the moment he had accepted his fate.
"You had better come back and dine with me," he said.
"On an occasion so private—so peculiar—when you want them all to yourself? Never in the world."
"What then will you do here—alone?"
"I'll wash and dress first, if you'll lend me some things."
"My man will give you everything you need."
His kindness, his courtesy, his extraordinary subjection to his unnecessary doom filled me with a kind of anguish, and I determined that I would save him even yet. I had a sudden inspiration—it was at least an image of help. "To tell the, truth, I didn't ride from Rome at such a rate only to be the first to congratulate you. I've taken you on the way; but a considerable part of my business is to go and see Mrs. Rushbrook."
"Mrs. Rushbrook? Do you call this on your way? She lives at Albano."
"Precisely; and when I've brushed myself up a bit and had a little bread and wine I shall drive over there."
"It will take you a full hour, in the dark."
"I don't care for that—I want to see her. It came over me this afternoon."
Wilmerding looked at me a moment—without any visible irony—and demanded, with positive solemnity: "Do you wish to propose to her?"
"Oh, if she'd marry me it would suit me! But she won't. At least she won't yet. She makes me wait too long. All the same, I want to see her."
"She's very charming," said Wilmerding, simply. He finished dressing and went off to dine with Veronica, while I passed into another room to repair my own disorder. His servant gave me some things that would serve me for the night; for it was my purpose, at Albano, to sleep at the inn. I was so horrified at what I had done, or at what I had not succeeded in undoing, that I hungered for consolation, or at least for advice. Mrs. Rushbrook shone before me in the gloom as a generous dispenser of that sort of comfort.