The Lesson of the Master, The Marriages, The Pupil, Brooksmith, The Solution, Sir Edmund Orme (New York & London: Macmillan & Co., 1892)/The Solution/Chapter 4
IV.
In Rome I kept quiet three or four days, hoping to hear from Mrs. Rushbrook; I even removed myself as much as possible from the path of Guy de Montaut. I observed preparations going forward in the house occupied during the winter by Mrs. Goldie, and, in passing, I went so far as to question a servant who was tinkering a flower-stand in the doorway and from whom I learned that the padrona was expected at any hour. Wilmerding, however, returned to Rome without her; I perceived it from meeting him in the Corso—he didn't come to see me. This might have been accidental, but I was willing to consider that he avoided me, for it saved me the trouble of avoiding him. I couldn't bear to see him—it made me too uncomfortable; I was always thinking that I ought to say something to him that I couldn't say, or that he would say something to me that he didn't. As I had remarked to Mrs. Goldie, it was impossible for me now to allude in invidious terms to Veronica, and the same licence on his side would have been still less becoming. And yet it hardly seemed as if we could go on like that. He couldn't quarrel with me avowedly about his prospective wife, but he might have quarrelled with me ostensibly about something else. Such subtle ties however (I began to divine), had no place in his mind, which was presumably occupied with the conscientious effort to like Veronica—as a matter of duty—since he was doomed to spend his life with her. Wilmerding was capable, for a time, of giving himself up to this effort: I don't know how long it would have lasted. Our relations were sensibly changed, inasmuch as after my singular interview with Mrs. Goldie, the day following her daughter's betrothal, I had scruples about presenting myself at her house as if on the old footing.
She came back to town with the girls, immediately showing herself in her old cardinalesque chariot of the former winters, which was now standing half the time before the smart shops in the Corso and Via Condotti. Wilmerding perceived of course that I had suddenly begun to stay away from his future mother-in-law's; but he made no observation about it—a reserve of which I afterwards understood the reason. This was not, I may say at once, any revelation from Mrs. Goldie of my unmannerly appeal to her. Montaut amused himself with again taking up his habits under her roof; the entertainment might surely have seemed mild to a man of his temper, but he let me know that it was richer than it had ever been before—poor Wilmerding showed such a face there. When I answered that it was just his face that I didn't want to see, he declared that I was the best sport of all, with my tergiversations and superstitions. He pronounced Veronica très-embellie and said that he was only waiting for her to be married to make love to her himself. I wrote to Mrs. Rushbrook that I couldn't say she had served me very well, and that now the Goldies had quitted her neighbourhood I was in despair of her doing anything. She took no notice of my letter, and I availed myself of the very first Sunday to drive out to Albano and breakfast with her. Riding across the Campagna now suddenly appeared to me too hot and too vain.
Mrs. Rushbrook told me she had not replied to me because she was about to return to Rome: she expected to see me almost as soon as, with the Holy Father's postal arrangements, a letter would be delivered to me. Meanwhile she couldn't pretend that she had done any thing for me; and she confessed that the more she thought of what I wanted the more difficult it seemed. She added however that she now had a project, which she declined to disclose to me. She contradicted herself a little, for she said at one moment that she hadn't the heart to spoil poor Veronica's happiness and at the next that it was precisely to carry out her device (such a secret as it was, even from the girl!) that she had decided to quit Albano earlier than she had intended.
"How can you spoil Veronica's happiness when she won't have any happiness? How can she have any happiness with a man who will have married her in such absurd conditions?"
"Oh, he's charming, Mr. Wilmerding—everything you told me of him is true: it's a case of pure chivalry. He'll be very kind to her—he'll be sorry for her. Besides, when once he takes her away from her mother Veronica will be all right. Seeing more of them that way, before they left Frascati, I became ever so much interested in them. There's something in Veronica; when once she's free it will come out."
"How will she ever be free? Her mother will be on top of them—she'll stick to them—she'll live with them."
"Why so, when she has her other daughters to work for?"
"Veronica will be rich—I'm sure Mrs. Goldie will want to enjoy that."
"They'll give her money—Mr. Wilmerding won't haggle!"
"How do you know—have you asked him?"
"Oh, I know," smiled Mrs. Rushbrook. "You know I saw them again. Besides," she added, "he'll escape with his wife—he'll take her to America."
"Veronica won't go—she'll hate that part of it."
"Why will she hate it?"
"Oh, it isn't 'smart.'"
"So much the better. I should like to go there."
"Very good," said I. "I daresay I shall be sent there by the Foreign Office some day. I'll take you over."
"Oh, I don't want to go with you," said Mrs. Rushbrook, plainly. And then she added that she should try to get back to Rome by the Thursday.
"How was it you saw so much of them before they went away?" I suddenly inquired.
"Why, they returned my visit—the queer young couple. Mr. Wilmerding brought her over to see me the day after we breakfasted with him. They stayed three or four hours—they were charming."
"Oh, I see; he didn't tell me."
Mrs. Rushbrook coloured a little. "You say that in a tone! I didn't ask him not to."
"I didn't say you did. However, he has had very little chance: we've scarcely spoken since that day."
"You're very wrong—he's such a good fellow."
"I like the way you give me information about him, because you've seen him three times."
"I've seen him four—I've seen him five," Mrs. Rushbrook protested. "After they had been here I went over to Mrs. Goldie's."
"Oh, to speak to her?" I cried, eagerly.
"I spoke to her, of course—it was to bid her goodbye. Mr. Wilmerding was there—that made another time. Then he came here once again. In fact, the next day ———" Mrs. Rushbrook continued.
"He came alone?"
She hesitated a moment. "Yes, he walked over. He said he was so nervous."
"Ah, to talk it over, you mean?" I exclaimed.
"To talk it over?"
"Your interference, your rescue."
Mrs. Rushbrook stared; then she burst into merriment. "You don't suppose we've spoken of that! Imagine his knowing it!"
I stood corrected—I perceived that wouldn't have done. "But what then did he come for?" I asked.
"He came to see me—as you do."
"Oh, as I do!" I laughed.
"He came because he feels so awkward with the girl."
"Did he tell you that?"
"You told me yourself! We never spoke of Veronica."
"Then what did you speak of?"
"Of other things. How you catechise!"
"If I catechise it's because I thought it was all for me."
"For you—and for him. I went to Frascati again," said Mrs. Rushbrook.
"Lord, and what was that for?"
"It was for you," she smiled. "It was a kindness, if they're so uncomfortable together. I relieve them, I know I do!"
"Gracious, you might live with them! Perhaps that's the way out of it."
"We took another walk to Villa Mondragone," my hostess continued. "Augusta Goldie went with us. It went off beautifully."
"Oh, then it's all right," I said, picking up my hat.
Before I took leave of her Mrs. Rushbrook told me that she certainly would move to Rome on the Thursday—or on the Friday. She would give me a sign as soon as she was settled. And she added: "I daresay I shall be able to put my idea into execution. But I shall tell you only if it succeeds."
I don't know why I felt, at this, a slight movement of contrariety; at any rate I replied: "Oh, you had better leave them alone."
On the Wednesday night of that week I found, on coming in to go to bed, Wilmerding's card on my table, with "Good-bye—I'm off to-morrow for a couple of months" scrawled on it. I thought it an odd time for him to be "off"—I wondered whether anything had happened. My servant had not seen him; the card had been transmitted by the porter, and I was obliged to sleep upon my mystification. As soon as possible the next morning I went to his house, where I found a post-chaise, in charge of one of the old vetturini and prepared for a journey, drawn up at the door. While I was in the act of asking for him Wilmerding came down, but to my regret, for it was an obstacle to explanations, he was accompanied by his venerable chief. The American Minister had lately come back, and he leaned affectionately on his young secretary's shoulder. He took, or almost took, the explanations off our hands; he was oratorically cheerful, said that his young friend wanted to escape from the Roman past—to breathe a less tainted air, that he had fixed it all right and was going to see him off, to ride with him a part of the way. The General (have I not mentioned that he was a general?) climbed into the vehicle and waited, like a sitting Cicero, while Wilmerding gave directions for the stowage of two or three more parcels. I looked at him hard as he did this and thought him flushed and excited. Then he put out his hand to me and I held it, with my eyes still on his face. We were a little behind the carriage, out of sight of the General.
"Frankly—what's the matter?" I asked.
"It's all over—they don't want me."
"Don't want you?"
"Veronica can't—she told me yesterday. I mean she can't marry me," Wilmerding explained, with touching lucidity. "She doesn't care for me enough."
"Ah, thank God!" I murmured, with great relief, pressing his hand.
The General put his head out of the chaise. "If there was a railroad in this queer country I guess we should miss the train."
"All the same, I'm glad," said Wilmerding.
"I should think you would be."
"I mean I'm glad I did it."
"You're a preux chevalier."
"No, I ain't." And, blushing, he got into the carriage, which rolled away.
Mrs. Rushbrook failed to give me the "sign" she promised, and two days after this I went, to get news of her, to the small hotel at which she intended to alight and to which she had told me, on my last seeing her at Albano, that she had sent her maid to make arrangements. When I asked if her advent had been postponed the people of the inn exclaimed that she was already there—she had been there since the beginning of the week. Moreover she was at home, and on my sending up my name she responded that she should be happy to see me. There was something in her face, when I came in, that I didn't like, though I was struck with her looking unusually pretty. I can't tell you now why I should have objected to that. The first words I said to her savoured, no doubt, of irritation: "Will you kindly tell me why you have been nearly a week in Rome without letting me know?"
"Oh, I've been occupied—I've had other things to do."
"You don't keep your promises."
"Don't I? You shouldn't say that," she answered, with an amused air.
"Why haven't I met you out—in this place where people meet every day?"
"I've been busy at home—I haven't been running about."
I looked round me, asked about her little girl, congratulated her on the brightness she imparted to the most banal room as soon as she began to live in it, took up her books, fidgeted, waited for her to say something about Henry Wilmerding. For this, however, I waited in vain; so that at last I broke out: "I suppose you know he's gone?"
"Whom are you talking about?"
"Veronica's promesso sposo. He quitted Rome yesterday."
She was silent a moment; then she replied—"I didn't know it."
I thought this odd, but I believed what she said, and even now I have no doubt it was true. "It's all off," I went on: "I suppose you know that."
"How do you know it?" she smiled.
"From his own lips; he told me, at his door, when I bade him good-bye. Didn't you really know he had gone?" I continued.
"My dear friend, do you accuse me of lying?"
"Jamais de la vie—only of joking. I thought you and he had become so intimate."
"Intimate—in three or four days? We've had very little communication."
"How then did you know his marriage was off?"
"How you cross-examine one! I knew it from Veronica."
"And is it your work?"
"Ah, mine—call it rather yours: you set me on."
"Is that what you've been so busy with that you couldn't send me a message?" I asked.
"What shall I say? It didn't take long."
"And how did you do it?"
"How shall I tell you—how shall I tell?"
"You said you would tell me. Did you go to Mrs. Goldie?"
"No, I went to the girl herself."
"And what did you say?"
"Don't ask me—it's my secret. Or rather it's hers."
"Ah, but you promised to let me know if you succeeded."
"Who can tell? It's too soon to speak of success."
"Why so—if he's gone away?"
"He may come back."
"What will that matter if she won't take him?"
"Very true—she won't."
"Ah, what did you do to her?" I demanded, very curious.
Mrs. Rushbrook looked at me with strange, smiling eyes. "I played a bold game."
"Did you offer her money?"
"I offered her yours."
"Mine? I have none. The bargain won't hold."
"I offered her mine, then."
"You might be serious—you promised to tell me," I repeated.
"Surely not. All I said was that if my attempt didn't succeed I wouldn't tell you."
"That's an equivocation. If there was no promise and it was so disagreeable, why did you make the attempt?"
"It was disagreeable to me, but it was agreeable to you. And now, though you goaded me on, you don't seem delighted."
"Ah, I'm too curious—I wonder too much!"
"Well, be patient,' said Mrs. Rushbrook, "and with time everything will probably be clear to you."
I endeavoured to conform to this injunction, and my patience was so far rewarded that a month later I began to have a suspicion of the note that Mrs. Rushbrook had sounded. I quite gave up Mrs. Goldie's house, but Montaut was in and out of it enough to give me occasional news of ces dames. He had been infinitely puzzled by Veronica's retractation and Wilmerding's departure: he took it almost as a personal injury, the postponement of the event that would render it proper for him to make love to the girl. Poor Montaut was destined never to see that attitude legitimated, for Veronica Goldie never married. Mrs. Rushbrook, somewhat to my surprise, accepted on various occasions the hospitality of the Honourable Blanche—she became a frequent visitor at Casa Goldie. I was therefore in a situation not to be ignorant of matters relating to it, the more especially as for many weeks after the conversation I have last related my charming friend was remarkably humane in her treatment of me—kind, communicative, sociable, encouraging me to come and see her and consenting often to some delightful rummaging Roman stroll. But she would never tolerate, on my lips, the slightest argument in favour of a union more systematic; she once said, laughing: "How can we possibly marry when we're so impoverished? Didn't we spend every penny we possess to buy off Veronica?" This was highly fantastic, of course, but there was just a sufficient symbolism in it to minister to my unsatisfied desire to know what had really taken place.
I seemed to make that out a little better when, before the winter had fairly begun, I learned from both of my friends that Mrs. Goldie had decided upon a change of base, a new campaign altogether. She had got some friends to take her house off her hands; she was quitting Rome, embarking on a scheme of foreign travel, going to Naples, proposing to visit the East, to get back to England for the summer, to promener her daughters, in short, in regions hitherto inaccessible and unattempted. This news pointed to a considerable augmentation of fortune on the part of the Honourable Blanche, whose conspicuous thrift we all knew to be funded on slender possessions. If she was undertaking expensive journeys it was because she had "come into" money—a reflection that didn't make Mrs. Rushbrook's refusal to enlighten my ignorance a whit less tormenting. When I said to this whimsical woman, as I did several times, that she really oughtn't to leave me so in the dark, her reply was always the same, that the matter was all too delicate—she didn't know how she had done, there were some transactions so tacit, so made up of subtle sousentendus, that you couldn't describe them. So I groped for the missing link without finding it—the secret of how it had been possible for Mrs. Rushbrook to put the key of Wilmerding's coffers into Mrs. Goldie's hand.
I was present at the large party the latter lady gave as her leave-taking of her Roman friends, and as soon as I stood face to face with her I recognised that she had had much less "feeling" than I about our meeting again. I might have come at any time. She was good-natured, in her way, she forgot things and was not rancorous: it had now quite escaped her that she had turned me out of the house. The air of prosperity was in the place, the shabby past was sponged out. The tea was potent, the girls had all new frocks, and Mrs. Goldie looked at me with an eye that seemed to say that I might still have Veronica if I wanted. Veronica was now a fortune, but I didn't take it up.
Wilmerding came back to Rome in February, after Casa Goldie, as we had known it, was closed. In his absence I had been at the American Legation on various occasions—no chancellerie in Europe was steeped in dustier leisure—and the good General confided to me that he missed his young friend as a friend, but so far as missing him as a worker went (there was no work), "Uncle Sam" might save his salary. He repeated that he had fixed it all right: Wilinerding had taken three months to cross the Atlantic and see his people. He had doubtless important arrangements to make and copious drafts to explain. They must have been extraordinarily obliging, his people, for Mrs. Goldie (to finish with her), was for the rest of her days able to abjure cheap capitals and follow the chase where it was doubtless keenest—among the lordly herds of her native land. If Veronica never married the other girls did, and Miss Goldie, disencumbered and bedizened, reigned as a beauty, a good deal contested, for a great many years. I think that after her sisters went off she got her mother much under control, and she grew more and more to resemble her. She is dead, poor girl, her mother is dead—I told you everyone is dead. Wilmerding is dead—his wife is dead.
The subsequent life of this ingenious woman was short: I doubt whether she liked America as well as she had had an idea she should, or whether it agreed with her. She had put me off my guard that winter, and she put Wilmerding a little off his, too, I think, by going down to Naples just before he came back to Rome. She reappeared there, however, late in the spring—though I don't know how long she stayed. At the end of May, that year, my own residence in Rome terminated. I was assigned to a post in the north of Europe, with orders to proceed to it with speed. I saw them together before I quitted Italy, my two good friends, and then the truth suddenly came over me. As she said herself—for I had it out with her fearfully before I left—I had only myself to thank for it. I had made her think of him, I had made her look at him, I had made her do extraordinary things. You won't be surprised to hear they were married less than two years after the service I had induced her to render me.
Ah, don't ask me what really passed between them—that was their own affair. There are "i's" in the matter that have never been dotted, and in later years, when my soreness had subsided sufficiently to allow me a certain liberty of mind, I often wondered and theorised. I was sore for a long time and I never even thought of marrying another woman: that "i" at least I can dot. It made no difference that she probably never would have had me. She fell in love with him, of course—with the idea of him, secretly, in her heart of hearts—the hour I told her, in my distress, of the beau trait of which he had been capable. She didn't know him, hadn't seen him, positively speaking; but she took a fancy to the man who had that sort of sense of conduct. Some women would have despised it, but I was careful to pick out the one to whom it happened most to appeal. I dragged them together, I kept them together. When they met he liked her for the interest he was conscious she already took in him, and it all went as softly as when you tread on velvet. Of course I had myself to thank for it, for I not only shut her up with Wilmerding—I shut her up with Veronica.
What she said to Veronica in this situation was no doubt that it was all a mistake (she appealed to the girl's conscience to justify her there), but that he would pay largely for his mistake. Her warrant for that was simply one of the subtle sousentendus of which she spoke to me when I attacked her and which are the medium of communication of people in love. She took upon herself to speak for him—she despoiled him, at a stroke, in advance, so that when she married him she married a man of relatively small fortune. This was disinterested at least. There was no bargain between them, as I read it—it all passed in the air. He divined what she had promised for him and he immediately performed. Fancy how she must have liked him then! Veronica believed, her mother believed, because he had already given them a specimen of his disposition to do the handsome thing. I had arranged it all in perfection. My only consolation was that I had done what I wanted; but do you suppose that was sufficient?