Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  However we brave it out, we men are a little breed!

  Upon my soul, when I come to think of it, I’m really and truly quite ashamed of myself.’

  Do you ever happen to have noticed that the very men who have the smallest possible leaven of littleness, or meanness, or selfishness, in their own natures are usually the exact ones who most often bitterly reproach themselves for their moral shortcomings in this matter?

  When the rector came to open the envelope by-and-by in his own study, he found it contained a letter in French from a Russian countess, then in London, who proposed spending the winter in Italy. ‘Madame had seen M. O’Donovan’s Advertisement in a journal of his country, and would be glad to learn from Monsieur some particulars about the young lady whom he desired to recommend to families. Madame required a governess for one little girl, and proposed a salary of 2,500 francs.’ The old man’s eyes brightened at the idea of so large an offer — one hundred pounds sterling — and then he laid down the letter again, and cried gently to himself, as old people sometimes do, for a few minutes. After that, he reflected that Georgey Wroe’s daughter was a very good girl, and deserved any advancement that he could get for her; and Georgey was a fine young fellow himself, and as clever a hand at managing a small smack in a squall off the Chesil as any fisherman, bar none, in all England. God bless his soul, what a run that was they had together, the night the ‘Sunderbund’ East Indiaman went to pieces off Deadman’s Bay, from Seaton Bar right round the Bill to Lulworth! He could mind even now the way the water broke over the gunwale into Georgey’s face, and how Georgey laughed at the wind, and swore it was a mere breeze, and positively whistled to it. Well, well, he would do what he could for Georgey’s daughter, and he must look out (with a stifled sigh) for some other good girl to take care of Lucy’s precious little ones.

  So he sat down and wrote off such a glowing account of Minna’s many virtues to the Russian countess in London — an account mainly derived from his own calm inner belief as to what a perfect woman’s character ought to be made up of — that the Russian countess wrote back to say she would engage Mdlle. Wroe immediately, without even waiting to see her. Till he got that answer, Mr. O’Donovan never said a word about the matter to Minna, for fear she might be disappointed; but as soon as it arrived, and he had furtively dried his eyes behind his handkerchief, lest she should see how sorry he was to lose her, he laid the two letters triumphantly down before her, and said, in a voice which seemed as though he were quite as much interested in the event as she was: ‘There you see, my dear, I’ve found somebody at last for you to go to Rome with.’ Minna’s head reeled and her eyes swam as she read the two letters to herself with some difficulty (for her French was of the strictly school-taught variety); but as soon as she had spelt out the meaning to her own intense satisfaction, she flung her arms round old Mr. O’Donovan’s neck, and kissed him twice fervently. Mr. O’Donovan’s eyes glistened, and he kissed her in return gently on her forehead. She had grown to be to him almost like a daughter, and he loved her so dearly that it was a hard wrench to part from her. ‘And you know, my dear,’ he said to her with fatherly tenderness, ‘you won’t mind my mentioning it to you, I’m sure, because I need hardly tell you how much interest I take in my old friend Georgey’s daughter; but I think it’s just as well the lady’s a foreigner, and especially a Russian, because they’re not so particular, I believe, about the conventionalities of society as our English mothers are apt to be; and you’ll probably get more opportunities of seeing young Churchill when occasion offers than you would have done if you’d happened to have gone abroad with an English family.’

  When Minna went away from the country rectory, at very short notice, some three weeks later, Mary the housemaid observed, with a little ill-natured smile to the other village gossips, that it wasn’t before it was time, neither; for the way that that there Miss Wroe, as she called herself, had been carrying on last month or two along of poor old master, and him a clergyman, too, and old enough to know better, but there, what can you expect, for everybody knows what an old gentleman is when a governess or anybody can twist him round her little finger, was that dreadful that really she often wondered whether a respectable girl as was always brought up quite decent and her only a fisherman’s daughter, too, as master hisself admitted, but them governesses, when they got theirselves a little eddication and took a sitooation, was that stuck-up and ridiculous, not but what she made her always keep her place, for that matter, for she wasn’t going to be put down by none of your governesses, setting themselves up to be ladies when they wasn’t no better nor she was, but at any rate it was a precious good thing she was gone now before things hadn’t gone no further, for if she’d stayed, why, of course, there wouldn’t have been nothing left for her to do, as had always lived in proper families, but to go and give notice herself afore she’d stop in such a sitooation.

  And Mrs. Upjohn, the doctor’s wife, smiled blandly when Mary spoke to her about it, and said in a grave tone of severe moral censure: ‘Well, there, Mary, you oughtn’t to want to meddle with your master’s business, whatever you may happen to fancy. Not but what Miss Wroe herself certainly did behave in a most imprudent and unladylike manner; and I can’t deny, of course, that she’s laid herself open to every word of what you say about her. But then, you know, Mary, she isn’t a lady; and, after all, what can you expect from such a person?’ To which Mary, having that profound instinctive contempt for her own class which is sometimes begotten among the essentially vulgar by close unconscious introspection, immediately answered: ‘Ah, what indeed!’ and went on unrebuked with her ill-natured gossip. So high and watchful is social morality amid the charming Arcadian simplicity of our outlying English country villages.

  But poor little Minna, waking up that very morning in the Via Clementina, never heeded their venomous backbiting one bit, and thought only of going to see her dear Colin. What a surprise it would be to him to see her, to be sure; for Minna, fearful that the scheme might fall through before it was really settled, had written not a word to him about it beforehand, and meant to surprise him by dropping in upon him quite unexpectedly at his studio without a single note of warning.

  ‘Ah, my dear,’ the countess said to her, when Minna, trembling, asked leave to go out and visit her cousin — that dim relationship, so inevitable among country folk from the same district, had certainly more than once done her good service— ‘you have then a parent at Rome, a sculptor? Yes, yes, I recall it; that good Mr. O’Donovan made mention to me of this parent. He prayed me to let you have the opportunity from time to time of visiting him. These are our first days at Rome. For the moment, Olga will demand her vacations: she will wish to distract herself a little with the town, before she applies herself seriously to her studies of English. Let us say to-day, then: let us say this very morning. You can go, my child: you can visit your parent: and if his studio encloses anything of artistic, you pass me the word, I go to see it. But if they have the instinct of the family strong, these English! I find that charming; it is delicious: it is all that there is of most pure and poetical. She wishes to visit her cousin, who is a sculptor and whom she has not seen, it is now a long time; and she blushes and trembles like a French demoiselle who comes from departing the day itself from the gates of the convent. One would say, a lover. I find it most admirable, this affection of the family, this lasting reminiscence of the distant relations. We others in Russia, we have it too: we love the parent: but not with so much empressement. I find that trait there altogether essentially English.’

  Mrs. Upjohn would have considered the countess ‘scarcely respectable,’ and would have avoided her acquaintance carefully, unless indeed she happened to be introduced to her by the squire’s lady, in which case, of course, her perfect propriety would have been sufficiently guaranteed: but, after all, which of them had the heart the most untainted? To the pure all things are pure: and contrariwise.

  So Minna hastened out into those unknown streets of Rome, and
by the aid of her self-taught Italian (which was a good deal better than her French, so potent a tutor is love) she soon found her way down the Corso, and off the side alley into the narrow sunless Via Colonna. She followed the numbers down to the familiar eighty-four of Colin’s letters, and there she saw upon the door a little painted tin-plate, bearing in English the simple inscription: ‘Mr. C. Churchill’s Studio.’ Minna’s heart beat fast for a moment as she mounted the stairs unannounced, and stood within the open door of Colin’s modelling room.

  A few casts and other sculptor’s properties filled up the space between the door and the middle of the studio. Minna paused a second, and looked timidly from behind them at the room beyond. She hardly liked to come forward at once and claim acquaintance: it seemed so strange and unwomanly so to announce herself, now that she had actually got to face it. A certain unwonted bashfulness appeared somehow or other to hold her back; and Minna, who had her little superstitions still, noted it in passing as something ominous. There were two people visible in the studio — both men; and they were talking together quite earnestly, Minna could see, about somebody else who was obviously hidden from her by the Apollo in the foreground. One of them was a very handsome young man in a brown velvet coat, with a loose Rembrandtesque hat of the same stuff stuck with artistic carelessness on one side of his profuse curls: her heart leaped up at once as she recognised with a sudden thrill that that was Colin —— transfigured and glorified a little by success, but still the same dear old Colin as ever, looking the very image of a sculptor, as he stood there, one arm poised lightly on his hip, and turning towards his companion with some wonderful grace that no other race of men save only artists can ever compass. Stop, he was speaking again now; and Minna, all unconscious of listening or prying, bent forward to catch the sound of those precious words as Colin uttered them.

  ‘She’s splendid, you know, Winthrop,’ Colin was saying enthusiastically, in a voice that had caught a slight Italian trill from Maragliano, unusual on our sterner English lips: ‘she’s grand, she’s beautiful, she’s terrible, she’s magnificent. Upon my word, in all my life I never yet saw any woman one-half so glorious or so Greek as Cecca. I’m proud of having discovered her; immensely proud. I claim her as my own property, by right of discovery. A lot of other fellows would like to inveigle her away from me; but they won’t get her: Cecca’s true metal, and she sticks to her original inventor. What a woman she is, really! Now did you ever see such a perfectly glorious arm as that one?’

  Minna reeled, almost, as she stood there among the casts and properties, and felt half inclined on the spur of the moment to flee away unseen, and never again speak or write a single word to that perfidious Colin. Cecca, indeed! Cecca! Cecca! Who on earth was this woman Cecca, she would like to know; and what on earth did the faithless Colin ever want with her? Splendid, grand, beautiful, glorious, terrible, magnificent! Oh, Colin, Colin, how could you break her poor little heart so? Should she go back at once to the countess, and not even let Colin know she had ever come to Rome at all to see him? It was too horrible, too sudden, too crushing, too unexpected!

  The other man looked towards the unseen Cecca — Minna somehow felt in her heart that Cecca was there, though she couldn’t see her — and answered with an almost imperceptible American accent, ‘She’s certainly very beautiful, Churchill, very beautiful. My dear fellow, I sincerely congratulate you.’

  Congratulate you! What! had it come to that? Oh horror! oh shame! had Colin been grossly deceiving her? Had he not only made love in her absence to that black-eyed Italian woman of whom she had always been so much afraid, but had he even made her an offer of marriage, without ever mentioning a word about it to her, Minna? The baseness, the deceit, the wickedness of it! And yet — this Minna thought with a sickening start — was it really base, was it really deceitful, was it really wicked? Colin had never said he would marry her; he had never been engaged to her — oh no, during all those long weary years of doubt and hesitation she had always known he wasn’t engaged to her — she had known it, and trembled. Yes, he was free; he was his own master; he could do as he liked: she was only his little cousin Minna: what claim, after all, had she upon him?

  At that moment Colin turned, and looked almost towards her, without seeing her. She could have cried out ‘Colin!’ as she saw his beautiful face and his kindly eyes — too kindly to be untrue, surely — turned nearly upon her; but Cecca, Cecca, the terrible unseen Cecca, somehow restrained her. And Cecca, too, had actually accepted him. Didn’t the Yankee man he called Winthrop say, ‘I congratulate you’? There was only one meaning possible to put upon such a sentence. Accept him! Why, how could any woman conceivably refuse him? as he moved forward there with his delicate clear-cut face, a face in which the aesthetic temperament stood confessed so unmistakably — Minna could hardly blame this unknown Cecca if she fell in love with him. But for herself — oh, Colin, Cohn, Colin, it was too cruel.

  She would at least see Cecca before she stole away unperceived for ever; she would see what manner of woman this was that had enticed away Colin Churchill’s love from herself, if indeed he had ever loved her, which was now at least far more than doubtful. So she moved aside gently behind the clay figures, and came in sight of the third person.

  It was the exact Italian beauty of her long-nursed girlish terrors! A queenly dark woman, with supple statuesque figure and splendidly set head, was standing before the two young artists in an attitude half studied pose, half natural Calabrian peasant gracefulness. Her brown neck and arms were quite bare; her large limbs were scarcely concealed below by a short and clinging sculpturesque kirtle. She was looking towards Colin with big languishing eyes, and her smile — for she was smiling — had something in it of that sinister air that northerners often notice among even the most beautiful women of the Mediterranean races. It was plain that she couldn’t understand what her two admirers were saying in their foreign language; but it was plain also that she knew they were praising her extraordinary beauty, and her eyes flashed forth accordingly with evident pride and overflowing self-satisfaction. Cecca was beautiful, clearly beautiful, both in face and figure, with a rich, mature southern beauty (though in years perhaps she was scarcely twenty), and Minna was forced in spite of herself to admire her form; but she felt instinctively there was something about the girl that she would have feared and dreaded, even if she hadn’t heard Colin Churchill speaking of her with such unstinted and unhesitating admiration. So this was Cecca! So this was Cecca! And so this was the end, too, of all her long romantic day-dream!

  As she stood there, partly doubting whether to run away or not, Cecca caught sight of her half hidden behind the Apollo, and turning to Colin, cried out sharply in a cold, ringing, musical voice as clear and as cold as crystal, ‘See, see; a signorina! She waits to speak with you.’

  Colin looked round carelessly, and before Minna could withdraw his eyes met hers in a sudden wonder.

  ‘Minna!’ he cried, rushing forward eagerly to meet her, ‘Minna! Minna! Why, it must be Minna! How on earth did you manage to get to Rome, little woman? and why on earth didn’t you let me know beforehand you were really coming?’

  He tried to kiss her as he spoke, but Minna, half doubtful what she ought to do, with swimming brain and tearful eyes, held him off mechanically by withdrawing herself timidly a little, and gave him her hand instead with strange coldness, much to his evident surprise and disappointment.

  ‘She’s too modest to kiss me before Winthrop and Cecca,’ Colin thought to himself a little nervously; ‘but no matter — Winthrop, this is my cousin from England, Miss Wroe, that I’ve so often spoken to you about.’

  His cousin from England! His cousin!! His cousin!!! Ah, yes, that was all he meant by it nowadays clearly. He wanted to kiss her, but merely as a cousin; all his heart, it seemed, was only for this creature he called Cecca, who stood there scowling at her so savagely from under her great heavy eyebrows. He had gone to Rome, as she feared so long ago, and had fallen into the
clutches of that dreaded terrible Italian woman.