Babylon. Volume 3

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.

‘Well, Minna,’ Colin said, looking at her so tenderly that even Minna herself half believed he must be still in earnest, ‘and so you’ve come to Italy, have you? My dear little girl, why didn’t you write and tell me all about it? You’ve broken in upon me so unexpectedly.’ (‘So I see,’ thought Minna.) ‘Why didn’t you write and let me know beforehand you were coming to see me?

Minna’s heart prompted her inwardly to answer with truth, ‘Because I wanted to surprise you, Colin;’ but she resisted the natural impulse, much against the grain, and answered instead with marked chilliness, ‘Because I didn’t know my movements were at all likely to interest you.’

As they two spoke, Hiram Winthrop noticed half unconsciously that Cecca’s eyes were steadily riveted upon the newcomer, and that the light within them had changed instantaneously from the quiet gleam of placid self-satisfaction to the fierce glare of rising anger and jealous suspicion.

Colin still held Minna’s hand half doubtfully in his, and looked with his open face all troubled into her pretty brown eyes, wondering vaguely what on earth could be the meaning of this unexpected coldness of demeanour.

‘Tell me at least how you got here, little woman,’ he began again in his soft, gentle voice, with quiet persuasiveness. ‘Whatever brought you here, Minna, I’m so glad, so very glad to see you. Tell me how you came, and how long you’re going to stop with me.’

Minna sat down blankly on the one chair that stood in the central area of the little studio, not because she wanted to stay there any longer, but because she felt as if her trembling knees were positively giving way beneath her. ‘I’ve taken a place as governess to a Russian girl, Colin,’ she answered shortly; ‘and I’ve come to Rome with my pupil’s mother.’

Colin felt sure by the faintness of her voice that there was something very serious the matter. ‘Minna dearest,’ he whispered to her half beneath his breath, ‘you aren’t well, I’m certain. I’ll send away my friend and my model, and then you must tell me all about it, like a dear good little woman.’

Minna started, and her face flushed suddenly again with mounting colour. ‘Your model,’ she cried, pointing half contemptuously towards the scowling Cecca. ‘Your model! Is that woman over there a model, then?’

‘Yes, certainly,’ Colin answered lightly.

‘This lady’s a model, Minna. We call her Cecca – that’s short for Francesca, you know – and she’s my model for a statue of a Spartan maiden I’m now working upon.’

But Cecca, though she couldn’t follow the words, had noticed the contemptuous tone and gesture with which Minna had scornfully spoken of ‘that woman,’ and she knew at once in her hot Italian heart that she stood face to face with a natural enemy. An enemy and a rival. For Cecca, too, had in her own way her small fancies and her bold ambitions.

‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?’ Hiram Winthrop put in timidly, for he saw with his keen glance that Cecca’s handsome face was growing every moment blacker and blacker, and he wanted to avert the coming explosion.

‘Well, not so very beautiful to my mind,’ Minna answered, with studied coolness, putting her head critically a little on one side, and staring at the model as if she had been made of plaster of Paris; ‘though I must say you gentlemen seemed to be admiring her immensely when I came into the room a minute or two ago. I confess she doesn’t exactly take my own personal fancy.’

‘What is the signorina saying?’ Cecca broke in haughtily, in Italian. She felt sure from the scornful tone of Minna’s voice that it must at least be something disparaging.

‘She says you are beautiful, Signora Cecca,’ Colin answered hurriedly, with a sidelong deprecatory glance at Minna. ‘Bella bella, bella, bellissima.’

‘Bellissima, si, bellissima,’ Minna echoed, half frightened, she knew not why; for she felt dimly conscious in her own little mind that they were all three thoroughly afraid in their hearts of the beautiful, imperious Italian woman.

‘It is a lie,’ Cecca murmured to herself quietly. 4 But it doesn’t matter. She was saying that she didn’t admire me, and the Englishman and the American tried to stop her. The sorceress! I hate her!’

CHAPTER XXXI. COUSINS

They stood all four looking at one another mutely for a few minutes longer, and then Colin broke the ominous silence by saying as politely as he was able, ‘Signora Cecca, this lady has come to see me from England, and we are relations. We have not met for many years. Will you excuse my dismissing you for this morning?’

Cecca made a queenly obeisance to Colin, dropped a sort of saucy Italian curtsey to Minna, nodded familiarly to Hiram, and swept out of the studio into the dressing-room without uttering another word.

‘She’ll go off to Bazzoni’s, I’m afraid,’ Hiram said, with a sigh of relief, as she shut the door noiselessly and cautiously behind her. ‘He’s downright anxious to get her, and she’s a touchy young woman, that’s certain.’

‘I’m not at all afraid of that,’ Colin answered, smiling; ‘she’s a great deal too true to me for any such tricks as those, I’m sure, Winthrop. She really likes me, I know, and she won’t desert me even for a pique, though I can easily see she’s awfully offended.’

‘Well, I hope so,’ Hiram replied gravely. ‘She’s far too good a model to be lost. Goodbye, Churchill. – Good morning, Miss Wroe. I hope you’ll do me the same honour as you’ve done your cousin, by coming to take a look some day around my studio.’

‘Well, Minna,’ Colin said as soon as they were alone, coming up to her and offering once more to kiss her – ‘why, little woman, what’s the matter? Aren’t you going to let me kiss you any longer? We always used to kiss one another in the old days, you know, in England.’

‘But now we’re both of us quite grown up, Colin,’ Minna answered, somewhat pettishly, ‘so of course that makes all the difference.’

Cohn couldn’t understand the meaning of this chilliness; for Minna’s late letters, written in the tremor of delight at the surprise she was preparing for him, had been more than usually affectionate; and it would never have entered into his head for a moment to suppose that she could have misinterpreted his remarks about Cecca, even if he had known that she had overheard them. To a sculptor, such criticism of a model, such enthusiasm for the mere form of the shapely human figure, seem so natural and disinterested, so much a necessary corollary of his art, that he never even dreams of guarding against any possible misapprehension. So Colin only bowed his head in silent wonder, and answered slowly, ‘But then you know, Minna, we’re cousins. Surely there can be no reason why cousins when they meet shouldn’t kiss one another.’ He couldn’t have chosen a worse plea at that particular moment; for as he said it, the blood rushed from Minna’s cheeks, and she trembled with excitement at that seeming knell to all her dearest expectations. ‘Oh, well, if you put it upon that ground, Colin,’ she faltered out half tearfully, ‘of course we may kiss one another – as cousins.’

Colin seized her in his arms at the word, and covered her pretty little gipsy face with a string of warm, eager kisses. Even little Minna, in her fright and anxiety, could not help imagining to herself that those were hardly what one could call in fairness mere everyday cousinly embraces. But her evil genius made her struggle to release herself, according to the code of etiquette which she had learnt as becoming from her friends and early companions; and she pushed Colin away after a moment’s doubtful acquiescence, with a little petulant gesture of half-affected anger. The philosophic observer may indeed note that among the English people only women of the very highest breeding know how to let themselves be kissed by their lovers with becoming and unresisting dignity. Tennyson’s Maud, when her cynic admirer kissed her for the first time, ‘took the kiss sedately.’ I fear it must be admitted that under the same circumstances Minna Wroe, dear little native-born lady though she was, would have felt it incumbent upon her as a woman and a maiden to resist and struggle to the utmost of her power.

As for Colin, having got rid of that first resistance easily enough, he soon settled in his own mind to his own entire satisfaction that Minna had been only a little shy of him after so long an absence, and had perhaps been playing off a sort of mock-modest coyness upon him, in order to rouse him to an effective aggression. So he said no more to her about the matter, but asked her full particulars as to her new position and her journey; and even Minna herself, disappointed as she was, could not help opening out her full heart to dear old Colin, and telling him all about everything that had happened to her in the last six weeks, except her inner hopes and fears and lamentations. Yes, she had come to Rome to live – she didn’t say ‘on purpose to be near you, Colin’ – and they would have abundant opportunities of seeing one another frequently; and Madame was very kind, for an employer, you know – as employers go – you can’t expect much, of course, from an employer. And Colin showed her all his busts and statues; and Minna admired them profoundly with a genuine admiration. And then, what prices he got for them! Why, Colin, really nowadays you’re become quite a gentleman! And Colin, to whom that social metamorphosis had long grown perfectly familiar, laughed heartily at the naïve remark and then looked round with a touch of professional suspicion, for fear some accidental patron might have happened to come in and overhear the simple little confession. Altogether, their conversation got very close and affectionate and cousinly.

At last, after they had talked about everything that most concerned them both, save only the one thing that concerned them both more than anything, Minna asked in as unconcerned a tone as she could muster up, ‘And this model, Colin – Cecca, I think you called her – what of her?’

Colin’s eye lighted up with artistic enthusiasm as he answered warmly, ‘Oh, she’s the most beautiful girl in all Rome, little woman. I found her out by accident last year, at a village in Calabria where Winthrop and I had gone for a Christmas holiday; and I induced her to come to Rome and go in for a model’s life as a profession. Isn’t she just magnificent, Minna?’

‘Very magnificent indeed, I dare say,’ Minna answered coldly; ‘but not to my mind by any means pleasing.’

‘I wonder you think that,’ Colin said in frank astonishment: for he was too much a sculptor even to suspect that Minna could take any other view of his model except the purely artistic one. ‘She was the original of that Nymph Bathing of mine that you see over yonder.’

Minna looked critically at the Nymph Bathing – a shameless hussy, truly, if ever there was one – and answered in a chilly voice, ‘I like it the least of all your statues, if you care to have my opinion, Colin.’

‘Well, now, I’m awfully sorry for that, Minna,’ Colin went on seriously, regarding the work with that despondent eye with which one always views one’s own performances after hearing by any chance an adverse criticism; ‘for I rather liked the nymph myself, you know, and I can generally rely upon your judgment as being about the very best to be had anywhere in the open market. There’s no denying, little woman, that you’ve got a born taste somehow or other for the art of sculpture.’

If only women would say what they mean to us! but they won’t, so what’s the use of bothering one’s head about it? They’ll make themselves and us unhappy for a twelvemonth together – lucky indeed if not for ever – by petting and fretting over some jealous fancy or other, some vague foolish suspicion, which, if they would but speak out frankly for a moment, might be dispelled and settled with a good hearty kiss in half a second. Our very unsuspiciousness, our masculine downrightness and definiteness, make us slow to perceive their endless small tiffs and crooked questions; slow to detect the real meaning that underlies their unaccountable praise and blame of other people, given entirely from the point of’ view of their own marvellous subjective universe. The question whether Cecca was handsome or otherwise was to Colin Churchill a simple question of external aesthetics; he was as unprejudiced about it as he would have been in judging a Greek torso or a modern Italian statue. But to Minna it was mainly a question between her own heart and Colin’s. If she had only told him then and there her whole doubt and trouble – confessed it, as a man would have confessed it, openly and simply, and asked at once for a straightforward explanation, she would have saved herself long weeks of misery and self-torture and internal questionings. But she did not; and Colin, never doubting her misapprehension, dropped the matter lightly as one of no practical importance whatsoever.

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.

CHAPTER XXXII. RE-ENTER GWEN

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.’