by Grant Allen
Cecca looked up at him once more haughtily. ‘You did?’ she said. ‘You did, did you? Well, that was all very well for a fellow like you, only fit to tend a horse or chop up rotten olive roots for firewood. But for me that sort of life didn’t answer. I prefer Rome, and fame, and art, and plenty.’ And as she said the last words she clinked the cheap silver bracelets that she wore upon her arm, and touched the thin gold brooch that fastened up the light shawl thrown coquettishly across her shapely shoulders.
‘You don’t,’ Giuseppe answered boldly.
‘You are not happy here, Cecca mia, as you were at Monteleone. You worry your heart out about your Englishman, and he does not love you. What does he think of you or care for you? You are to him merely a model, a thing to mould clay from; no more than the draperies and the casts that he works with so carelessly in his studio. And it is for that that you throw me over — me, Beppo, who loved you always so dearly at Monteleone.’
Cecca looked at him and laughed lightly. ‘You, Beppo!’ she cried, as if amused and surprised. ‘You, my friend! You thought to marry Cecca Bianchelli! Oh no, little brother; that would be altogether too ridiculous. There is no model in Rome, do you know, who has such a figure or earns so much money as I do.’
‘But you loved me once, or at least you said so, Signora Francesca.’
‘And you should hear how the excellencies admire me, and call me beautiful, Signor Giuseppe.’
‘Cecca, Cecca, you know I have come to Rome for your sake only. I don’t want you to love me, I only want to see you and be near you. Won’t you let me come and see you this evening?’
‘Very sorry, Signor Giuseppe. It would have given me the deepest satisfaction, but I have a prior engagement. A painter of my acquaintance takes me to the Circo Beale.’
‘But, Cecca, Cecca!’
‘Well, Beppo?’
‘Ah, that is good, “Beppo.” You relent then, Signora?’
‘As between old friends, Signor Giuseppe, one may use the diminutive.’
‘And you will let me come then tomorrow night and see you for half an hour — for half an hour only, Cecca?’
‘Well, you were a good friend of mine once, and I have need of you for a project of my own, at the moment. Yes, you may come if you like, Beppo.’
‘Ten thousand thanks, Signora. You are busy, I will not keep you. Good evening, Cecca.’
‘Good evening, my friend. You are a good fellow after all, Beppo. Good evening.’
CHAPTER XXXIV. HIRAM SEES LAND.
Upon my word,’ Gwen Howard-Russell thought to herself in the gardens of the Villa Panormi, ‘I really can’t understand that young Mr. Churchill. He’s four years older, and he ought to be four years wiser now, than when we were last at Rome, but he’s actually just as stupid and as dull of comprehension as ever; he positively doesn’t see when a girl’s in love with him. He must be utterly bound up in his sculpture and his artistic notions, that’s what it is, or else he’d surely discover what one was driving at when one gives him every possible sort of opportunity. One would have thought he’d have seen lots of society during these four winters that he’s been comparatively famous, and that he would have found out what people mean when they say such things to him. But he hasn’t, and I declare he’s really more polite and attentive even now to that little governess cousin of his, with the old-fashioned bonnet, than he is to me myself, in spite of everything.’
For it had never entered into Gwen’s heart to think that Colin might possibly be in love himself with the little gipsy-faced governess cousin.
‘Cousin Dick,’ Gwen said a few minutes later to Lord Beaminster, ‘I’ve asked Mr. Churchill and my two Americans to come up and have a cup of tea with us this afternoon out here in the garden.’
‘Certainly, my dear,’ the earl answered, smiling with all his false teeth most amiably; ‘the house is your own, you know. (And, by George, she makes it so, certainly without asking me. But who on earth could ever be angry with such a splendid high-spirited creature?) Bring your Americans here by all means, and give that man with the outlandish name plenty of tea, please, to keep him quiet. By Jove, Gwen, I never can understand for the life of me what the dickens the fellow’s talking about.’
In due time the guests arrived, and Gwen, who had determined by this time to play a woman’s last card, took great care during the whole afternoon to talk as much as possible to Hiram and as little as possible to Colin Churchill. She was determined to let him think he had a rival; that is the surest way of making a man discover whether he really cares for a woman or otherwise.
‘Oh yes, I’ve been to Mr. Winthrop’s studio,’ she said in answer to Audouin’s inquiry, ‘and we admired so much a picture of a lake with such a funny name to it, didn’t we, papa? It was really beautiful, Mr. Winthrop. I’ve never seen anything of yours that I’ve been pleased with so much. Don’t you think it splendid, Mr. Audouin?’
‘A fine picture in its way — yes, certainly, Miss Russell; but not nearly so good, to my thinking, as the Capture of Babylon he’s now working on.’
‘You think so, really? Well, now, for my part I like the landscape better. There’s so much more originality and personality in it, I fancy. Mr. Winthrop, which do you yourself like the best of your performances?’
Hiram blushed with pleasure. Gwen had never before taken so much notice of him. ‘I’m hardly a good judge myself,’ he faltered out timidly. ‘I wouldn’t for worlds pit my own small opinion, of course, against Mr. Audouin’s. I’m trying my best at the Capture of Babylon, naturally, but I don’t seem to satisfy my own imaginary standard in historical painting, somehow, nearly as well as in external nature. For my own part, I like the landscapes best. I quite agree with you, Miss Russell, that Lake Chattawauga is about my high-water mark.’
(‘Lake Chattawauga!’ the earl interjected pensively — but nobody took the slightest notice of him. ‘Lake Chattawauga! Do you really mean to say you’ve painted the picture of a place with such a name as Lake Chattawauga? I should suppose it must be somewhere or other over in America.’)
‘I’m so glad to hear you say so,’ Gwen answered cordially, ‘because one’s always wrong, you know, in matters of art criticism; and it’s such a comfort to hear that one may be right now and again if only by accident. I liked Lake Chattawauga quite immensely; I don’t know when I’ve seen a picture that pleased me so much, Mr. Winthrop. — What do you say, Mr. Churchill?’
‘I think you and Winthrop are quite right, Miss Russell. His landscapes are very, very pretty, and I wish he’d devote himself to them entirely, and give up historical painting and figure subjects altogether.’
(‘The first time I ever noticed a trace of professional jealousy in young Churchill,’ thought Audouin to himself sapiently. ‘He doesn’t want Hiram, apparently, to go on with the one thing which is certain to lead him in the end to fame and fortune.’)
‘And there was a lovely little sketch of a Tyrolese waterfall,’ Gwen began again enthusiastically. ‘Wasn’t it exquisite, papa? You know you said you’d so much like to buy it for the dining-room.’
Hiram flushed again. ‘I’m so glad you liked my little things,’ he said, trembling with delight. ‘I didn’t think you cared in the least for any of my work, Miss Russell. I was afraid you weren’t at all interested in the big canvases.’
‘Not like your work, Mr. Winthrop!’ Gwen cried, with half a glance aside at Colin. ‘Oh yes, I’ve always admired it most sincerely! Why, don’t you remember, our friendship with you and Mr. Audouin began just with my admiring a little water-colour you were making the very first day I ever saw you, by the Lake of the Thousand Islands?’ (Hiram nodded a joyful assent. Why, how could he ever possibly forget it?) ‘And then you know there was that beautiful little sketch of the Lago Albano, that you gave me the day I was leaving Italy last. I have it hung up in our drawing-room at home in England, and I think it’s one of the very prettiest pictures I ever looked at.’
Hiram could have cried like
a child that moment with the joy and excitement of a long pent-up nature.
And so, through all that delightful afternoon, Gwen kept leading up, without intermission, to Hiram Winthrop. Hiram himself hardly knew what on earth to make of it. Gwen was very kind and polite to him to-day — that much was certain; and that, at least, was quite enough to secure Hiram an unwonted amount of genuine happiness. How he hugged himself over her kindly smiles and appreciative criticisms! How he fancied in his heart, with tremulous hesitation, that she really was beginning to care just a little bit for him, were it ever so little! In short, for the moment, he was in the seventh heaven, and he felt happier than he had ever felt before in his whole poor, wearisome, disappointed lifetime.
When they were going away, Gwen said once to Hiram (holding his hand in hers just a second longer than was necessary too, he fancied), ‘Now, remember, you must come again and see us very soon, Mr. Winthrop — and you too, Mr. Audouin. We want you both to come as often as you’re able, for we’re quite dull out here in the country, so far away from the town and the Corso.’ But she never said a single word of that sort to Cohn Churchill, who was standing close beside them, and heard it all, and thought to himself, ‘I wonder whether Miss Russell has begun to take a fancy at last to our friend Winthrop? He’s a good fellow, and after all she couldn’t do better if she were to search diligently through the entire British peerage.’ So utterly had Gwen’s wicked little ruse failed of its deceitful, jealous intention.
But as they walked Rome-ward together, to the Porta del Popolo, Audouin said at last musingly to Hiram, ‘Miss Russell was in a very gracious mood this afternoon, wasn’t she, my dear fellow?’
He looked at Hiram so steadfastly while he said it that Hiram almost blushed again, for he didn’t like to hear the subject mentioned, however guardedly, before a third person like Colin Churchill. ‘Yes,’ he answered shyly, ‘she spoke very kindly indeed about my little landscapes. I had no idea before that she really thought anything about them. And how good of her, too, to keep my water-colour of the Lago Albano in her own drawing-room!’
Audouin smiled a gently cynical little Bostonian smile, and answered nothing.
‘How strangely one-sided and egotistic we are, after all!’ he thought to himself quietly as he walked along. ‘We think each of ourselves, and never a bit of other people. Hiram evidently fancied that Miss Russell — Gwen — why not call her so? — wanted him to come again to the Villa Panormi. A moment’s reflection might have shown him that she couldn’t possibly have asked me, without at the same time asking him also! And it was very clever of her, too, to invite him first, so as not to make the invitation look quite too pointed. She was noticeably kind to Hiram to-day, because he’s my protégé. But Hiram, with all his strong, good qualities, is not keen-sighted — not deep enough to fathom the profound abysses of a woman’s diplomacy! I don’t believe even now he sees what she was driving at. But I know: I feel certain I know; I can’t be mistaken. It was a very good sign, too, a very good sign, that though she asked me (and of course Hiram with me) to come often to the villa, she didn’t think in the least of asking that young fellow Churchill. It’s a terribly presumptuous thing to fancy you have won such a woman’s heart as Gwen Howard-Russell’s; but I imagine I must be right this time. I don’t believe I can possibly be mistaken any longer. The convergence of the evidences is really quite too overwhelming.’
CHAPTER XXXV. MAN PROPOSES.
Ten days had passed, and during those ten days Gwen had met both Hiram and Colin on two or three occasions. Each time she saw them together she was careful to talk a great deal more with the young American than with his English companion. At last, one Sunday afternoon, both the young men ‘had gone out to the Villa Panormi with Audouin, for a cup of afternoon tea in the garden; and after tea was over, they had stolen away in pairs down the long alleys of oranges, and among the broken statues and tazzas filled with flowers upon the mouldering balustraded Italian terraces. ‘Come with me, Mr. Winthrop,’ Gwen cried gaily to Hiram (with a side glance at Colin once more to see how he took it). ‘I want to show you such a lovely spot for one of your pretty little watercolour sketches — a bower of clematis, with such great prickly pears and aloes for the foreground, that I’m sure you’ll fall in love with the whole picture the moment you see it.’
Hiram followed her gladly down to the arbour, a little corner at the bottom of the garden, rather English than Italian in its first conception, but thickly overgrown with tangled masses of sub-tropical vegetation. It’s very pretty,’ he said, ‘certainly very pretty. Just the sort of thing that Mr. Audouin would absolutely revel in.’
‘Shall I call him?’ Gwen asked, going to the door of the arbour and looking about her carelessly. ‘He must be somewhere or other hereabout.’
‘Oh no, don’t, Miss Russell,’ Hiram answered hastily. ‘He’s having a long talk with Churchill about art, from what I overheard. Don’t disturb them. Mr. Audouin has a wonderful taste in art, you know: I love to hear him talk about it in his own original pellucid fashion.’
‘You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?’ Gwen asked, looking at him with her big beautiful eyes. ‘Is he any relation of yours?’ ‘Relation!’ Hiram cried, ‘oh dear no, Miss Bussell. But he’s been so kind to me, so very kind to me! You can’t imagine how much I owe to Mr. Audouin.’
He said it so earnestly, and seemed to want so much to talk about him, that Gwen sat down upon the stone seat in the little arbour and answered with womanly interest, ‘Tell me all about it, then, Mr. Winthrop. I should like to hear how you came to pick up with him.’
Thus encouraged, Hiram, to his own immense astonishment, let loose the floodgates of his pent-up speech, and began to narrate the whole story of his lonely childhood, and of his first meeting with Audouin in the primeval woods of Geauga County. He was flattered that Gwen should have asked him indirectly for his history: more flattered still to find that she listened to his hasty reminiscences with evident attention. He told her briefly about his early attempts at drawing in the blackberry bottom; how the deacon had regarded his artistic impulses as so many proofs of original sin; how he had followed the trappers out into the frozen woodland; how he had met Audouin there by accident; and how Audouin had praised his drawings and encouraged him in his fancies, being the first human being he had ever known who cared at all for any of these things. ‘And when you spoke so kindly about my poor little landscape the other day, Miss Russell,’ he added, looking down and hesitating, ‘I felt more happy than I had ever felt before since that day so long ago, in the woods away over yonder in America.’
But Gwen only smiled back a frank smile of unaffected sympathy, and answered warmly, ‘I’m so glad you think so much of my criticism, I’m sure, Mr. Winthrop.’
Then Hiram went on and told her how he had worked and struggled at school and college, and at the block-cutting establishment; and how he had longed to go to England and be an artist; and how he had never got the opportunity. And then he spoke of the first day he had ever seen Gwen herself by the Lake of the Thousand Islands.
Till that moment it hadn’t struck Gwen how very earnest Hiram’s voice was gradually growing; but as he came to that first chance meeting at Alexandria Bay, she couldn’t help observing that his lips began to tremble a little, and that his words were thick with emotion. For a second she thought she ought to rise up and suggest that they should join the others over yonder in the garden: but then she changed her mind again, and felt sure she must be mistaken. The young American artist could never mean to have the boldness to propose to her on the strength of so little encouragement. And besides, his story was really so interesting, and she was so very anxious to hear out the rest of it to the very end.
‘And so you liked England immensely?’ she asked him, when he reached in due course that part of his simple straightforward confidences. ‘I wonder you didn’t stop there and take regularly to landscape painting.’
‘I was sorely tempted to stop,’ Hiram answere
d, daring to look her straight in the eyes now; for he almost flattered himself she knew what he was going to say to her next.
‘I came away from England most reluctantly, at Mr. Audouin’s particular request: but I longed at the time to remain, for I had borne two words ringing in my ears from America to England, and those two words were just two names — Gwen and Chester.’
Gwen started away suddenly with a half-frightened expression, and said to him in a colder tone, ‘Why, what do you mean? Explain yourself, please, Mr. Winthrop. My name you know is Gwen, and papa and I used once to live in Chester.’
Hiram took her hand timidly in his with an air of gentle command, and made her sit down again once more for a minute upon the seat in the arbour. ‘You must hear me out to the end now, Miss Bussell,’ he said in a very soft, firm voice, ‘whatever comes of it. You mustn’t go away yet. I didn’t mean to speak so soon, but I have been hurried into it. I’ve staked my whole existence on a single throw, and you mustn’t run away and leave me in the midst of it undecided.’
Gwen turned pale with nervousness, and withdrew her hand, but sat quite still, and listened to him attentively.
‘From the first moment I ever saw you, Miss Russell,’ he went on passionately, ‘I felt you were the only woman I had ever loved or ever could love. I didn’t know your full name, or who you were, or where you lived; but I heard your father call you Gwen, and I heard you say you had been at Chester. Those were the only two things I knew at all about you. And from the day when I saw you there looking over my sketch beside the Thousand Islands, I kept those two names of Gwen and Chester engraved upon my heart until I came to Europe. I keep one of them engraved there still until this very minute. And whatever you say to me, I shall keep it there unaltered until I die.... Oh, Miss Russell, I don’t want you to give me an answer at once, I hope you won’t give me an answer at once, because I can see from your face what that answer would most likely be: but I love you, I love you, I love you; and as long as I live I shall always, always love you.’