Grant Allen - Babylon. Volume 3

So it came to pass that Minna let that first day at Rome slip by without having come to any understanding at all with Colin; and went home to Madame’s still in doubt in her own troubled little mind whether or not she was really and truly quite engaged to him. Did he love her, or did he merely like her? Was she his sweetheart, or merely an old friend whom he had known and confided in ever since those dim old days at Wootton Mandeville? Minna could have cried her eyes out over that abstruse and difficult personal question. And Colin never even knew that the question had for one moment so much as once occurred to her.

‘I may have one more kiss before you go, little woman,’ Colin said to her tenderly, as she was on the point of leaving. Minna’s eyes glistened brightly. ‘One more kiss, you know, dear, for old times’ sake, Minna.’ Minna’s eyes filled with tears, and she could hardly brush them away without his perceiving it. It was only for old times’ sake, then, for old times’ sake, not for love and the future. Oh, Colin, Colin, how bitter! how bitter!

‘As a cousin, Colin?’ she murmured interrogatively.

Cohn laughed a gay little laugh. ‘Strictly as a cousin,’ he answered merrily, lingering far longer on her lips, however, than the most orthodox cousinly affection could ever possibly have sufficed to justify.

Minna sighed and jumped away hastily. That night, in her own room, looking at Colin’s photograph, and thinking of the dreadful Italian woman, and all the dangers that beset her round about, she muttered to herself ever so often, ‘Strictly as a cousin, he said strictly as a cousin – for old times’ sake – strictly as a cousin.’

There was only one real comfort left for her in all the dreary, gloomy, disappointing outlook. At least that horrid high-born Miss Gwen Howard-Russell (ugh, what a name!) had disappeared bodily altogether from off the circle of Cohn’s horizon.

Lothrop Audouin and Hiram Winthrop were strolling arm in arm together down the Corso.

Audouin had just arrived from Paris, having crossed from America only a week earlier.

Four years had made some difference in his personal appearance; his beard and hair were getting decidedly grizzled, and for the first time in his life Hiram noticed that his friend seemed to have aged a great deal faster and more suddenly than he himself had. But Audouin’s carriage was still erect and very elastic; there was plenty of life and youth about him yet, plenty even of juvenile fire and originality.

‘It’s very disappointing certainly, Hiram,’ he said, as they turned into the great thoroughfare of the city together, ‘this delay in getting your talents recognised: but I have faith in you still; and to faith, you know, as the Hebrew preacher said, all things are possible. The great tardigrade world is hard to move; you need the pou sto of a sensation to get in the thin edge of your Archimedean lever. But the recognition will come, as sure as the next eclipse; meanwhile, my dear fellow, you must go on working in faith, and I surmise that in the end you will move mountains. If not Soracte just at once, my friend, well at any rate to begin upon the Monte Testaccio.’

Hiram smiled half sadly. ‘But I haven’t faith, you know, Mr. Audouin,’ he answered, in as easy a tone as he could well muster. ‘I begin to regard myself in the dismal light of a portentous failure. Like Peter, I feel myself sinking in the water, and have no one to take me by the hand and lift me out of it.’

Audouin answered only by an airy wave of his five delicate outspread fingers. ‘And Miss Russell?’ he asked after half a second’s pause. ‘Has she come to Rome yet? You know she said she would be here this winter.’

As he spoke, he looked deep into Hiram’s eyes with so much meaning that Hiram felt his face grow hot, and thought to himself, ‘What a wonderful man Mr. Audouin is, really! In spite of all my silence and reserve he has somehow managed to read my innermost secret. How could he ever have known that Miss Russell’s was the hand I needed to lift me out of the Sea of Gennesaret!’

But how self-contained and self-centred even the best of us are at bottom! for Audouin only meant to change the subject, and the deep look in his eyes when he spoke about Gwen to Hiram had reference entirely to his own heart and not to his companion’s.

‘I haven’t seen or heard anything of her yet,’ Hiram answered shyly, ‘but the season has hardly begun so far, and I calculate we may very probably find her at Rome in the course of the next fortnight.’

‘How he looks down and hesitates!’ Audouin thought to himself in turn as Hiram answered him. ‘How on earth can he have succeeded in discovering and recognising my unspoken secret?’

So we walk this world together, cheek by jowl, yet all at cross purposes, each one thinking mainly of himself, and at the same time illogically fancying that his neighbour is not all equally engrossed on his own similarly important personality. We imagine he is always thinking about us, but he is really doing quite otherwise – thinking about himself exactly as we are.

They walked on a few steps further in silence, each engaged in musing on his own thoughts, and then suddenly a voice came from a jeweller’s shop by the corner, ‘Oh, papa, just look! Mr. Audouin and his friend the painter.’

As Gwen Howard-Russell uttered those simple words, two hearts went beating suddenly faster on the pavement outside, each after its own fashion. Audouin heard chiefly his own name, and thought to himself gladly, ‘Then she has not forgotten me.’ Hiram heard chiefly the end of the sentence, and thought to himself bitterly, ‘And shall I never be more to her then than merely that – “his friend the painter”?’

‘Delighted to see you, Mr. Audouin,’ the colonel said stiffly, in a voice which at once belied its own spoken welcome. ‘And you too, Mr. – ur – Mr. – ’

‘Winthrop, papa,’ Gwen suggested blandly; and Hiram was grateful to her even for remembering it.

‘Winthrop, of course,’ the colonel accepted with a decorous smile, as who should gracefully concede that Hiram had no doubt a sort of right in his own small way to some kind of cognomen or other. ‘And are you still painting, Mr. Winthrop?’

‘I am,’ Hiram answered shortly. [The subject was one that did not interest him.] ‘And you, Miss Russell? Have you come here to spend the winter?’

‘Oh yes,’ Gwen replied, addressing herself, however, rather to Audouin than to Hiram. ‘You see we haven’t forgotten our promise. But we’re not stopping at the hotel this time, we’re at the Villa Panormi – just outside the town, you know, on the road to the Ponte Molle.

A cousin of ours, a dear stupid old fellow – ’

‘Gwen, my dear! now really you know – the Earl of Beaminster, Mr. Audouin.’

‘Yes, that’s his name; Lord Beaminster, and a dear old stupid as ever was born, too, I can tell you. Well, he’s taken the Villa Panormi for the season; it belongs to some poor wretched creature of a Roman prince, I believe (his grandfather was lackey to a cardinal), who’s in want of money dreadfully, and he lets it to my cousin to go and gamble away the proceeds at Monte Carlo. It’s just outside the Porta del Popolo, about a mile off; and the gardens are really quite delightful. You must both of you come there very often to see us.’

‘But really, Gwen, we must ask Beaminster first, you know, before we begin introducing our friends to him,’ the colonel interjected apologetically, casting down a furtive and uneasy glance at Hiram’s costume, which certainly displayed a most admired artistic disorder. ‘We ought to send him to call first at Mr. – ur – Winthrop’s studio.’