Part 21 (1/2)
”I am not a gentleman, as you understand the word,” he said slowly. ”And yet I am certainly not of the cla.s.s to which my father belonged. My position is not defined. I could not marry a woman of your cla.s.s, and I should not care to marry one of any other. That is all. Is it not clear?”
”Yes,” answered Francesca. ”It is clear enough. But--”
She checked herself, and he looked into her face, expecting her to continue. But she said nothing more.
”You were going to find an objection to what I said,” he observed.
”No; I was not. I will say it, for you will understand me. What you tell me is true enough, and I am sorry that it should be so. Is it not to some extent my fault?”
”Your fault?” cried Reanda, leaning forward and looking into her eyes.
”How? I do not understand.”
”I blame myself,” answered Francesca, quietly. ”I have kept you out of the world, perhaps, and in many ways. Here you live, day after day, as though nothing else existed for you. In the morning, long before I am awake, you come down your staircase through that door, and go up that ladder, and work, and work, and work, all day long, until it is dark, as you have worked to-day, and yesterday, and for months. And when you might and should be out of doors, or a.s.sociating with other people, as just now, I sit and talk to you and take up all your leisure time. It is wrong. You ought to see more of other men and women. Do men of genius never marry? It seems to me absurd!”
”Genius!” exclaimed Reanda, shaking his head sadly. ”Do not use the word of me.”
”I will do as other people do,” answered Francesca. ”But that is not the question. The truth is that you live pent up in this old house, like a bird in a cage. I want you to spread your wings.”
”To go away for a time?” asked Reanda, anxiously.
”I did not say that. Perhaps I should. Yes, if you could enjoy a journey, go away--for a time.”
She spoke with some hesitation and rather nervously, for he had said more than she had meant to propose.
”Just to make a change,” she added, after a moment's pause, as he said nothing. ”You ought to see more of other people, as I said. You ought to mix with the world. You ought at least to offer yourself the chance of marrying, even if you think that you might not find a wife to your taste.”
”If I do not find one here--” He did not complete the sentence, but smiled a little.
”Must you marry a Roman princess?” she asked. ”What should you say to a foreigner? Is that impossible, too?”
”It would matter little where she came from, if I wished to marry her,”
he answered. ”But I like my life as it is. Why should I try to change it? I am happy as I am. I work, and I enjoy working. I work for you, and you are satisfied. It seems to me that there is nothing more to be said.
Why are you so anxious that I should marry?”
Donna Francesca laughed softly, but without much mirth.
”Because I think that in some way it is my fault if you have not married,” she said. ”And besides, I was thinking of a young girl whom I met, or rather, saw, the other day, and who might please you. She has the most beautiful voice in the world, I think. She could make her fortune as a singer, and I believe she wishes to try it. But her father objects. They are foreigners--English or Scotch--it is the same. She is a mere child, they say, but she seems to be quite grown up. There is something strange about them. He is a man of science, I am told, but I fancy he is one of those English enthusiasts about Italian liberty. His name is Dalrymple.”
”What a name!” Reanda laughed. ”I suppose they have come to spend the winter in Rome,” he added.
”Not at all. I hear that they have lived here for years. But one never meets the foreigners, unless they wish to be in society. His wife died young, they say, and this girl is his only daughter. I wish you could hear her sing!”
”For that matter, I wish I might,” said Reanda, who was pa.s.sionately fond of music.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SEVENTEEN years had scored their account on Angus Dalrymple's hard face, and one great sorrow had set an even deeper mark upon him--a sorrow so deep and so overwhelming that none had ever dared to speak of it to him.
And he was not the man to bear any affliction resignedly, to feed on memory, and find rest in the dreams of what had been. Sullenly and fiercely rebellious against his fate, he went down life, rather than through it, savage and silent, for the most part, Nero-like in his wish that he could end the world at a single blow, himself and all that lived. Yet it was characteristic of the man that he had not chosen suicide as a means of escape, as he would have done in his earlier years, if Maria Addolorata had failed him. It seemed cowardly now, and he had never done anything cowardly in his life. Through his grief the sense of responsibility had remained with him, and had kept him alive.