by Grant Allen
‘How many acres of it does he own?’ I ask. You have never even inquired. I tear my hair but I get no further. Your information about him sums itself up in the two simple facts that he has a pretty name and is an agreeable person. I ask you, is that practical?”
Fede looked down and smiled, a little embarrassed smile, while she fingered the rose at her bosom somewhat nervously. “I saw so little of him, you see, papa,” she answered, lowering her eyes. “We — we only met, at most, half-a dozen times. And then, you know, we had so much else to talk about!”
“Yes, I know,” the Marchese answered, more amused than provoked, for he had Italian tolerance for the foibles of the young. “I know, exactly. You and Hubert went on talking pretty nothings to one another, and making love for love’s sake, precisely as if it were an intrigue, not a marriage, you were contemplating. A pure-blooded Italian girl wouldn’t behave like that, you know — not with a man she thought of making her husband. A married woman with her lover, I grant you — very right and proper; but a marriage is different; ’tis an affair of business. You have to take this man — he has to take this woman — for life and always. Therefore it becomes important to know precisely how much each can contribute to the family exchequer, and what sort of fortune each expects and possesses. If you were my daughter only, you would have inquired these things first about your precious Hubert. As you are also your mother’s, and have imbibed all sorts of romantic English ideas at Oxford, you inquire nothing of the sort; you merely come telling me that Hubert is charming, high-souled, handsome, clever, intellectual. Are those the qualities, I ask you, one demands in a husband?”
“They are — in England,” Fede answered, half smiling. For the Marchese, though practical, was a kindly-natured father.
“And what’s the consequence?” the Italian went on, holding one hand out oratorically. “I write to England, delicately suggesting these important preliminaries, and am met with a reserve which, I suppose, proceeds from English refinement, but which, in Italy, we should consider absurd and impracticable. We should call it mere shuffling. You tell me you’re ‘engaged,’ whatever that may mean, to Hubert. So I have no resource left except to write and inquire when and where I may meet Mr. Hubert. And where does the man propose to give me an appointment? In Paris, Milan, Florence, Venice, London, where either party could have access to proper legal opinions? Not a bit of it; he says he and his mother will be touring in Switzerland, and they will be delighted to meet us half-way, at a second-rate inn, in a sequestered valley, remote from all the conveniences and resources of civilization — they discuss the affair as though the element of contract didn’t enter into the question. And that’s what poses as a practical people! Pah! car a mia, it makes me ill to think of it!”
Fede smiled in turn. She had spent the five formative years of her life in England, first at school, and then at Somerville College; and though she was Italian still in speech and features, she was English to the core in her ideas and opinions. “That’s not quite the way people would look at it in England—” she began.
“I know it’s not,” the Marchese interrupted, good-humoredly; “and that’s just what I complain of!”
“They would think,” Fede went on, “this was an affair between two lovers, and that nothing could be more natural than for the lovers to settle it among these beautiful mountains and these lovely valleys, where the people most concerned could find abundant opportunities for seeing one another alone — after the English fashion.”
“Precisely,” her father echoed. “After the English fashion! In England, a marriage is still, to a great extent, an affair of the heart; in Italy, we see that it is an affair of the pocket.”
“Then I’m glad,” Fede murmured, “I’m going to marry an Englishman!”
“Oh, well,” the Marchese replied, shrugging his shoulders once more, “as you seem to have decided the question for yourself, without even so much as an inquiry as to your father, I really don’t know why I should have come all this way merely to give my consent to a preconceived arrangement, as to the terms of which I have not even been consulted!”
Fede took his hand in hers. “Dear papa,” she cried, “you know I couldn’t bear to do anything to displease you. You have always been the sweetest and best of fathers. You’ve been goodness itself to me. But Hubert is so nice, so kind, so lovable; I’m sure when you see him you can’t help loving him.”
The Marchese smiled in spite of himself. “Loving him!” he exclaimed, much amused. “There you are again, Fede. You insist upon treating it all as if it were a mere affair of passing affection. You forget it is proposed you should marry this man. And we don’t yet know whether he has anything to marry upon.”
“I would marry him without a penny,” Fede exclaimed impulsively.
“No doubt,” the Marchese replied; “and come back upon me in three years, without a penny, but with a couple of babies! Remember, Fede, I have the two boys to provide for. Luigi must have his allowance for the army; Carlo must continue to cultivate the family estate; so where I am to find any but the most modest dowry for you, I’m sure I don’t know. The first thing to be settled — the very first thing — is the question how much this young man is worth, and what arrangement he proposes to make for you. I shall speak of that at once — the first thing when I see them.”
Fede drew back, crimson-cheeked. “Oh, papa,” she cried, “I beg of you — not this evening!”
“Why not, my child? It’s most proper and businesslike.”
“Businesslike! That’s just it! Wait till to-morrow at least,” Fede pleaded, all her English feelings in revolt at the suggestion of such precipitancy.
“What, my dear, and let you spend an evening with him in my presence, on the footing of your future husband, before I’ve inquired whether the arrangement is practicable? My child, it would be impossible!”
Fede hesitated for a moment. Then a brilliant idea struck her. “Well, let us be businesslike,” she answered, conforming as far as she could to her father’s standpoint. “After all, they are English; and you must deal with Rome as Rome expects to be dealt with. If you speak to them to-night they will think it precipitate, and — and vulgar — and mercenary. They are not accustomed in England to that way of doing things. If you say out at once to them—’ How much is he worth?’ you will only succeed in setting them against you. Now, I don’t know whether Hubert is rich or poor; I — I had too many other things to discuss the few times I saw him — for you know it was all a very sudden engagement. But perhaps he is rich — so many English are; and at any rate he was an Oxford man, which means a good deal, you know, in England. Wouldn’t it be better worth while to wait just one night, and find out tomorrow, than to create a bad impression on a man who, after all, may be what you yourself would consider a very suitable son-in-law?”
She said it with a pretty smile, which showed at once how far she was modifying her own mode of thought to suit her father’s; and when Fede Tornabuoni smiled, she was simply irresistible. The Marchese looked at her with admiring eyes; he was proud and fond of her. “You’re a clever little humbug,” he answered, after a moment, “and I know you don’t mean it. But still, there’s something in what you say. I know these English and their absurd romanticisms. Well, let it be as you wish. ’Tis the true Tuscan way, domane, domane!”
They were bending over the second-floor balcony as they spoke, and the concierge was lounging on a garden bench below. Suddenly the Marchese leaned down and addressed him. “What mountain did you say Mr. Egremont had ascended to-day?” he inquired, with a curious air of interest.
“Signore, the Eselstein.”
“Most appropriate name! — the Donkeys’ Crag. Alone?”
“With a guide and two companions.”
The Marchese turned to Fede. “With a guide!” he murmured complacently. “That looks like money!”
“Hubert always did everything nicely,” Fede answered, with rapture; “and he dressed, oh, just charmingly!”
“What rooms?” the Marchese called out again.
“A salon and three bedrooms on the first floor,” the concierge answered. Then he added, maliciously, “They are very nice people.”
“Which means, they spend money freely,” the Marchese murmured lower, aside to Fede. “Still, that may be only their brag. They may think you’re an heiress, and well worth catching.”
“Oh, papa, Hubert’s not like that,” Fede answered, indignantly.
“They never are, my dear — till you find them out,” her father replied, with his cynical smile. “Well, well, we shall see. On the whole, though, I rather like the look of your Hubert.”
And on the veranda below, the concierge was observing that moment to Rosa, “Beggarly Italians, I expect, come here to marry their daughter off to a wealthy Englishman! Not much to be made out of them, I feel sure. He put the price he waited to pay for rooms in his telegram.”
“She’s all right,” Rosa answered, with a nod. “She’s half English, I can see; but he’s a regular Italian. Sort of man who’d stop at a hotel for six weeks, and then give you a franc at the end when he was leaving! I made my last winter season at Rome, and I had enough of them, I promise you. The year before, at the Paradis at Cannes, all the world was English, and the tips were just splendid. But at Rome — my hotel was Italian to the core, and, my faith, it was starvation!”
CHAPTER III.
ENTER HUBERT.
A SHORT mile from the inn, Mrs. Egremont and Sir Emilius had come upon Hubert. The climber of peaks was walking alone, having dropped his guide at the village, while his two temporary companions had diverged by themselves from the base of the crag in the opposite direction, meaning to sleep, they said, at the Rhone Glacier.
The mother’s heart leaped up with pride as Hubert approached her. How carelessly handsome he looked in his mountaineering suit, swinging his stick as he went — how lithe, how supple! No costume sets a man off like flannel shirt and running-trousers, and Hubert was attired for a light climb below snow-level in that easy fashion. He was a well-built young fellow, after the English pattern, almost arrogantly healthy. Mrs. Egremont had never felt prouder of him before; so tall, so fresh, so strong — so like his father!
He hallooed to them from afar. “Not alarmed, I hope, mother?”
Mrs. Egremont prevaricated. “We thought we might as well stroll this way as any other,” she answered with a gasp, gulping down her inner joy and delight at recovering him. But she sank on a grassy knoll by the side of the path, and surveyed him with great eyes of relief and tenderness.
Hubert flung himself by her side on a bed of short clover. “Oh, it’s nothing of a climb,” he cried, reassuring her. “We just walked up and down. As easy as running. Quite a baby of a peak. Like Primrose Hill, I assure you.”
“Like Primrose Hill!” Sir Emilius echoed, with an incredulous laugh. “I looked at it through my glasses this morning, Julia — all ramping teeth of rock — and I call it a pretty stiff piece of climbing. My dear, that boy will stick a notice on the Jungfrau—’ This hill is dangerous to cyclists.’”
“Anybody else on the summit?” Mrs. Egremont inquired with forced interest, trying her best to seem occupied with that hateful climbing; though, to be honest, the one thing she ever cared to learn about a mountain jaunt was that her boy had got back again.
“Crowds of them!” Hubert answered. “A perfect Piccadilly!” He plucked a long grass and bit at it as he spoke. “Ten people on the Eselstein!”
“And you got some new specimens?” Mrs.
Egremont continued, with a wistful glance at his tin collecting case.
Hubert opened the little box. “Twoorthree Alpine beetles,” he answered—” rather odd varieties; and a pretty gentian that’s new to me. But I had to scramble for it; a cleft in the rock; I slipped and hung on, and cut my fingers in clinging.” He held them up-lacerated.
“Oh, Hubert,” his mother cried, shrinking back in spite of herself, “how can you bear to risk your life for nothing?”
“There was no risk, mother. A mere drop of ten feet. If I fell, I lighted on a perfect feather-bed of scented daphne. But I wanted the plant, because I rather think it’s a hybrid, and these natural hybrids are always interesting. They give one such clues to the workings of heredity.”
The mother fingered the plant with a sort of mute horror, as she might have fingered some sentient thing — an asp or a cobra — that had tried to lure her boy into danger. But she uttered not a word. She had schooled herself never to let Hubert see how deeply these mountain excursions terrified her.
“And the view?” she asked again, with maternal hypocrisy. Earth holds no hypocrite like your loving mother.
The poet in Hubert blossomed out. “The view,” he said, “was ineffable! I was in luck’s way, mother — we happened on a thunderstorm! It played all round us. Great dragons of black cloud flung themselves with huge claws and folds against the walls of the peak; we looked down upon them from above, and saw them shatter and destroy themselves on the precipices. They surged up, darkling, one after another, with curled tails and rampant backs, and rushed madly against the Eselstein. There they broke themselves in lightning as a wave breaks in foam. Great seas of white mist filled up the valleys. But away to the south, one strip of pale, blue sky broke the field of black; and against it, the Zermatt peaks stood out white and calm, showing their teeth with a smile, as if they disdained the thunder. They almost seemed to laugh at it — just a curl of contempt, no more, as to a base inferior. I never saw anything grander than the contrast between the blind rage of the storm-clouds, and the unheeding serenity of the placid Alps, smiling down on them with their white teeth, just touched with sunbeams.”
“But it was dangerous, surely?” Mrs. Egremont exclaimed — and then hated herself for saying it. “Alone, at that height, with the lightning all round you.”
“It was grand, I know,” Hubert answered, gazing up at the rosy glow on the summit of the Himmelberg. “You could see it playing about the smaller peaks, while the glacier-clad heights and white crystalline needles rose perfectly unconcerned into the dazzling sunlight.”
“Capital for those who like it!” Sir Emilius put in, drily. “But you must have got wet, Hubert; though at your age a wetting seems to promote digestion.”
There was a minute’s pause, during which Mrs. Egremont gazed at her son fondly.
“Fede not come, I suppose?” Hubert began again, stretching himself and fondling his muscle.
“Why, no,” Sir Emilius interposed. “We don’t expect them till to-morrow.”
“I know that; but I thought—”
“Yes, lovers will think things,” Sir Emilius said, sardonically.
“I thought perhaps Fede would beg her father not to sleep at Milan, but come straight through by the morning train; and then of course she’d be disappointed if I was not at the inn when she arrived, to meet her.”
Sir Emilius smiled the wise smile of middle age. “Much more likely she’d want to get a good night’s rest,” he remarked, “so as to look fresh and well before she met you. “I’ve three girls of my own, and I know the ways of them.”
“Milly and Hilda and Effie — oh, yes,” Hubert said, with just a tinge of disrespect; “but then, Fede’s quite different.”
“They always are quite different!” Sir Emilius admitted. “Everybody’s girl is the one girl in the world. ‘There is none like her, none,’ says Tennyson’s lover in Maud; which shows, not that Maud was an exceptional creature, but that Tennyson had independently arrived at the same generalization as to the psychology of lovers.”
Hubert lay back on the grass and surveyed the sky for a while in silence. Then he addressed himself to his mother. “I often think,” he said, in a very musing voice, “how wonderfully all these things are ordered. It almost makes one believe at times in the old idea of an over-ruling providence.”
“I never left off believing in that old idea,” Mrs. Egremont murmured, gently.
Hubert clasped her hand in his. “That’s your charm,” he said, with real tenderness. “In spite of everything, mother, you stilt believe in the universe! And really it almost looks like deliberate design, when you think of the strange coincidences which had to exist before I could ever arrange things with Fede.”
“As which?” Sir Emilius asked, with a skeptical twinkle. Sir Emilius declined to believe in anything.
“Oh, I’m not talking to you, Uncle Mill,” the young man answered, half flushing with pride. “I’m talking to my mother. And you see, mother, I could never had fallen so much in love with Fede if she hadn’t been a Florentine.
To be Dante’s fellow-townswoman, you know — what a privilege! It’s the Italian strain in her that gives her half her attractiveness, and the English the other half. Then, I couldn’t have met her if she hadn’t come to England. And if her mother hadn’t happened to be an Englishwoman married to an Italian, Fede would never have been sent to Oxford. Again, if I had taken that scholarship at Trinity instead of at Balliol, I would have settled down at Cambridge, and therefore never have met Fede. So see by how beautiful a concatenation of events it’s all been arranged that Fede and I, the exact two people intended by nature for one another, should meet at the right time, and spring at one another like magnet to magnet.”
Mrs. Egremont sighed. A thought flashed through her mind. “The very words,” she said to herself, “his father would have spoken!” And she sighed inaudibly.
But the man of science was up in arms at once. “Now, for a physiologist,” Sir Emilius said, with didactic forefinger— “and you are a physiologist — I call that about as absurd an idea as ever was ventilated. Unsubstantial, gaseous! What’s the matter with you is, that the poet in you keeps getting the better of the anatomist. Can’t you see, my dear Hubert, the instinct is the only fundamental reality in all this business? — the instinct to mate and to continue the species? The particular object on which it expends itself is all pure accident. A bud reaches the stage at which the flower must expand, and it expands accordingly. A man reaches the stage at which he must fall in love, and he falls in love accordingly. There’s no more in it than that — a common result of pure human heredity.”
