Works of Grant Allen, page 58
‘Miss Wroe,’ a small red-haired pupil called out, popping her shock head through the half-open doorway, and shouting out her message in her loudest London accent, ‘if yer please, ye’re ten minutes late for the fourth junerer, and Miss Woollacott, she says, will yer please come at once, and not keep the third junerer waitin’ any longer.’
Minna ran off hurriedly to her class, and tried to forget her troubles about Colin forthwith in the occult mysteries of the agreement of a relative with its antecedent.
But when she got back to Miss Woollacott’s lodgings at Kentish Town that evening, and had had her usual supper of bread and cheese and a glass of water — Miss Woollacott took beer, but Minna as a minor was restricted to the beverage of nature — and had heard prayers read, and had gone up by herself to her small bare bedroom, she sat down on the bedside all alone, and cried a little, and thought it all out, and tried hard to come to the right decision. It would be very sad indeed to lose Colin; she could scarcely bear that; and yet she knew that it was for Colin’s good; and what was for Colin’s good was surely for her own good too in the long-run. Well, was it? that was the question. Of course, she would dearly love for Colin to go to Rome, and learn to be a real sculptor, and get fame and glory, and come back a greater man than the vicar himself — almost as great, indeed, as the Earl of Beaminster. But there were dangers in it, too. Out of sight, out of mind; and it was a long way to Italy. Perhaps when Colin got there he would see some pretty Italian girl or some grand fine lady, and fall in love with her, and forget at once all about his poor little Minna. Ah, no, it wasn’t altogether for Minna’s good, perhaps, that Colin should go to Italy.
She sat there so long, ruminating about it on her bedside without undressing, that Miss Woollacott, who always looked under the door to see if the light was out and prevent waste of the candles, called out in quite a sharp voice, ‘Minna Wroe, how very long you are undressing!’ And then she blew out the candle in a hurry, and undressed in the dark, and jumped into bed hastily, and covered her head up with the bedclothes, and had a good cry, very silently; and after that she felt a little better. But still she couldn’t go to sleep, thinking about how very hard it would be to lose Colin. Oh, no, she couldn’t bear to tell him; she wouldn’t tell him; it wasn’t at all likely the place would suit him; and if he wanted to go to Rome and leave her, he must just go and find a way for himself; and so that was all about it.
And then a sudden glow of shame came over Minna’s cheeks, as she lay there in the dark on the little iron bedstead, to think that she should have been so untrue for a single moment to her better self and to Colin’s best and highest interests. She loved Colin! yes, she loved him! from her childhood onward, he had been her one dream and romance and ideal! She knew Colin could make things lovelier than any other man on earth had ever yet imagined; and she knew she ought to do her best to put him in the way of fulfilling his own truest and purest instincts. Should she selfishly keep him here in England, when it was only at Rome that he could get the best instruction? Should she cramp his genius and clip his wings, merely in order that he mightn’t fly away too far from her? Oh, it was wicked of her, downright wicked of her, to wish not to tell him. Come of it what might, she must go round and see Colin the very next day, and let him decide for himself about that dreadful upsetting advertisement. And having at last arrived at this conclusion, Minna covered her head a second time with the counterpane, had another good cry, just to relieve her conscience, and then sank off into a troubled sleep from which she only woke again at the second bell next morning.
All that day she taught with the dreadful advertisement weighing heavily on her mind, and interposing itself terribly between her and the rule of three, or the names and dates of the Anglo-Saxon sovereigns. She couldn’t for the life of her remember whether Ethel-bald came before or after Ethelwulf; and she stumbled horribly over the question whether this was a personal or a demonstrative pronoun. But when the evening came, she got leave from Miss Woollacott to go round and see her cousin (a designation which was strictly correct in some remote sense, for Minna’s mother and Cohn’s father were in some way related), and she almost ran the whole way to the Marylebone Road to catch Colin just before he went away for the night from Cicolari’s.
When Colin saw the advertisement, and heard Minna’s suggestion, he turned it over a good many times in his own mind, and seemed by no means disinclined to try the chances of it. ‘It’s only a very small chance, of course, Minna,’ he said dubitatively, ‘but at any rate it’s worth trying. The great thing against me is that I haven’t been anything in that line for so very long, and I can’t get any character, except from Cicolari. The one thing in my favour is that I know a little Italian. I don’t suppose there are many young men of the sort who go to be valets who know Italian. Anyhow, I’ll try it. It’ll be a dreadful thing if I get it, having to leave you for so long, Minna,’ and Minna’s cheek brightened at that passing recognition of her prescriptive claim upon him; ‘but it’ll only be for a year or two; and when I come back, little woman, I shall come back very different from what I go, and then, Minna — why, then, we shall see what we shall see!’ And Colin stooped to kiss the little ripe lips that pretended to evade him (Minna hadn’t got over that point of etiquette yet), and held the small brown face tight between his hands, so that Minna couldn’t manage to get it away, though she struggled, as in duty bound, her very hardest.
So early next day Colin put on his best Sunday clothes — and very handsome and gentlemanly he looked in them too — and walked off to Ockenden Square, S.W., in search of Sir Henry Wilberforce.
Sir Henry was a tall, spare, wizened-up old gentleman, with scanty grey hair, carefully brushed so as to cover the largest possible area with the thinnest possible layer. He was sitting in the dining-room after breakfast when Colin called; and Colin was shown in by the footman as an ordinary visitor. ‘What name?’ the man asked, as he ushered him from the front door.
‘Colin Churchill.’
‘Mr. Colin Churchill!’ the man said, as Colin walked into the dining-room.
Sir Henry stared and rose to greet him with hand extended. ‘Though upon my word,’ he thought to himself, ‘who the deuce Mr. Colin Churchill may be, I’m sure I haven’t the faintest conception.’
This was decidedly awkward. Colin felt hot and uncomfortable; it began to dawn upon him that in his best Sunday clothes he looked perhaps a trifle too gentlemanly. But he managed to keep at a respectful distance, and Sir Henry, not finding his visitor respond to the warmth of his proposed reception, dropped his hand quietly and waited for Colin to introduce his business.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Colin said a little uncomfortably — he began to feel, now, how far he had left behind the Dook’s early lessons in manners— ‘I — I’ve come about your advertisement for a valet. I — I’ve come, in fact, to apply for the situation.’
Sir Henry glanced at him curiously. ‘The deuce you have,’ he said, dropping back chillily into his easy chair, and surveying Colin over from head to foot with an icy scrutiny. ‘You’ve come to apply for the situation! Why, Wilkinson said, “Mr. Colin Churchill.’” ‘He mistook my business, I suppose,’ Colin answered quietly, but with some hesitation. It somehow struck him already that he would find it hard to drop back once more into the long-forgotten position of a valet. ‘I came to ask whether it was likely I would suit you. I can speak Italian.’
That was his trump card, in fact, and he thought it best to play it quickly.
Sir Henry looked at him again. ‘Oh, you can speak Italian. Well, that’s good as far as it goes; but how much Italian can you speak, that’s the question?’ And he added a few words in the best Tuscan he could muster up, to test the applicant’s exact acquirements.
Colin answered him more quickly and idiomatically than Sir Henry had expected. In fact, Cicolari’s lessons had been sound and practical. Sir Henry kept up the conversation, still in Italian, for a few minutes, and then, being quite satisfied on that score, returned with a better grace to his native English. ‘Have you been out as a valet before?’ he asked.
‘Not for some years, sir.’ Colin replied frankly. ‘I went out to service at first, and was page and valet to a clergyman in Dorsetshire — Mr. Howard-Bussell, of Wootton Mandeville — —’
‘Knew him well,’ Sir Henry repeated to himself reflectively. ‘Old Howard-Russell of Wootton Mandeville! Dead these five years. Knew him well, the selfish old pig; as conceited, self-opinionated an old fool as ever lived in all England. He declared my undoubted Pinturicchio was only a Giovanni do Spagno. Whereas it’s really the only quite indubitable Pinturiccliio in a private gallery anywhere at all outside Italy.’
‘Except the St. Sebastian at Knowle, of course,’ Colin put in, innocently.
Sir Henry turned round and stared at him again. ‘Except the St. Sebastian at Knowle,’ he echoed coldly. ‘Except the St. Sebastian at Knowle, no doubt. But how the deuce did he come to know the St. Sebastian at Knowle was a Pinturiccliio, I wonder? Anyhow, it shows he’s lived in very decent places. Well, and so you used to be with old Mr. Howard-Russell, did you? And since then — since then — what have you been doing?’
‘At present, sir,’ Cohn went on, ‘I’m working as a marble-cutter; but circumstances make me wish to go back again to service now, and as I happen to know Italian, I thought perhaps your place might suit me.’
‘No doubt, no doubt. I dare say it would. But the question is, would you suit me, don’t you see? A marble-cutter, he says — a marble-cutter! How deuced singular! Have you got a character?’
‘I could get one from Mr. Russell’s friends, I should think, sir; and of course my present employer would speak for my honesty and so forth.’
Sir Henry asked him a few more questions, and then seemed to be turning the matter over in his own mind a little. ‘The Italian,’ he said, speaking to himself — for he had a habit that way, ‘the Italian’s the great thing. I’ve made up my mind I’ll never go to Rome again with a valet who doesn’t speak Italian. Dobbs was impossible, quite impossible. This young man has some Italian, but can he valet, I wonder? Here, you! come into my bedroom, and let me see what you can do in the way of your duties.’
Colin followed him upstairs, and, being put through his paces as a body-servant, got through the examination with decent credit. Next came the question of wages and so forth, and finally the announcement that Sir Henry meant to start for Rome early in October.
‘Well, he’s a very fair-spoken young man,’ Sir Henry said at last, ‘and he knows Italian. But it’s devilish odd his being a marble-cutter. However, I’ll try him. I’ll write to your master, Churchill — what’s his name — I’ll write to him and enquire about you.’
Colin gave him Cicolari’s name and address, and Sir Henry noted them deliberately in his pocket-book. ‘Very good,’ he said; ‘I’ll write and ask about your character, and if everything’s all correct, I shall let you know and engage you.’
Colin found it rather hard to answer ‘Thank you, sir;’ but it was for Rome and art, and he managed to say it.
CHAPTER XVI. COLIN’S DEPARTURE.
When Minna learnt from Colin that he had finally accepted Sir Henry Wilberforce’s situation, her heart was very heavy. She wanted her old friend to do everything that would make him into a great sculptor, of course; but still, say what you will about it, it’s very hard to have your one interest in life taken far away from you, and to be left utterly alone and self-contained in the great dreary world of London. Have you ever reflected, dear sir or madam, how terrible is the isolation of a girl in Minna Wroe’s position — nay, for the matter of that, of your own housemaid, of cook, or parlour-maid, in that vast, unsympathetic, human ant-hill? Think, for a moment, of the warm human heart within her, suddenly cramped and turned in upon itself by the unspeakable strangeness of everything around her. She has come up from the country, doubtless, to take a ‘better’ place in London, and there she is thrown by pure chance into one situation or another, with two or three more miscellaneous girls from other shires, having other friends and other interests; and from day to day she toils on, practically alone, among so many unknown, or but officially known, and irresponsive faces. Is it any wonder that, under such circumstances, she looks about her anxiously for some living object round which to twine the tendrils of her better nature? — it may be only a bird, or a cat, or a lap-dog; it may be Bob the postman or policeman Jenkins. We laugh about her young man, whom we envisage to ourselves simply as a hulking fellow and a domestic nuisance; we never reflect that to her all the interest and sympathy of life is concentrated and focussed upon that one single shadowy follower. He may be as uninteresting a slip of a plough-boy, turned driver of a London railway van, as ever was seen in this realm of England; or he may be as full of artistic aspiration and beautiful imaginings as Colin Churchill; but to her it is all the same; he is her one friend and confidant and social environment; he represents in her eyes universal society; he is the solitary unit who can play upon the full gamut of that many-toned and exquisitely modulated musical instrument, her inherited social nature. Take him away, and what is there left of her? — a mere automatic human machine for making beds or grinding out arithmetic for junior classes.
Has not humanity rightly pitched, by common consent, for the main theme of all its verse and all its literature, upon this one universal passion, which, for a few short years at least, tinges with true romance and unspoken poetry even the simplest and most commonplace souls?
Colin felt the sadness of parting, too, but by no means so acutely as Minna. The door of fame was opening at last before him; Rome was looming large upon the mental horizon; dreams in marble were crystallising themselves down into future actuality; and in the near fulfilment of his life-long hopes, it was hardly to be expected that he should take the parting to heart so seriously as the little pupil-teacher herself had taken it. Besides, time, in anticipation at least, never looks nearly so long to men as to women. Don’t we all know that a woman will cry her eyes out about a few months’ absence, which to a man seems hardly worth making a fuss about? ‘It’s only for three or four years, you know, Minna,’ Colin said, as lightly as though three or four years were absolutely nothing; and ah me, how long they looked to poor, lonely, heartsick little Minna! She felt almost inclined to give up this up-hill work of teaching and self-education altogether, and return once more to the old fisherman’s cottage away down at Wootton Mandeville. There at least she would have some human sympathies and interests to comfort and sustain her.
But Colin had lots of work to do, getting himself ready for his great start in life; and he hardly entered to the full into little Minna’s fears and troubles. He had to refurbish his entire wardrobe on a scale suited to a gentleman’s servant — Minna was working hard in all her spare hours at making new shirts for him or mending old ones: he had to complete arrangements of all sorts for his eventful journey; and he had to select among his books and drawings which ones should accompany him upon his journey to Rome, and which should be consigned to the omnivorous secondhand book-stall. Milton and Shelley and Bohn’s ‘Æschylus’ he certainly couldn’t do without; they were an integral part of his stock-in-trade as a sculptor, and to have left them behind would have been an irreparable error; but the old dog-eared ‘Euripides’ must go, and the other English translations from the classics would have made his box quite too heavy for Sir Henry to pay excess upon at Continental rates — so Cicolari told him. Still, the Flaxman plates must be got in somewhere, even if Shelley himself had to give way to them; and so must his own designs for his unexecuted statues, those mainstays of his future artistic career. Minna helped him to choose and pack them all, and she was round so often at Cicolari’s in the evening that prim Miss Woollacott said somewhat sharply at last, ‘It seems to me a very good thing, Minna Wroe, that this cousin of yours is going to Rome at last, as you tell me; for even though he’s your only relation in London, I don’t think it’s quite proper or necessary for you to be round at his lodgings every other evening.’ Colin took a few lessons, too, in his future duties, from a gentleman’s gentleman in Regent’s Park. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to do, and he sighed as he put away his books and sketches, and went out to receive his practical instruction from that very supercilious and elegant person; but it had to be done, and so he did it. Colin didn’t care particularly for associating with the gentleman’s gentleman; indeed, he was beginning slowly to realise now how wide a gulf separated the Colin Churchill of the Marylebone Road from the little Colin Churchill of Wootton Mande-ville. He had lived so much by himself since he came to London, he had seen so little of anybody except Minna and Cicolari, and he had been so entirely devoted to art and study, that he had never stopped to gauge his own progress before, and therefore had never fully felt in his own mind how great was the transformation that had insensibly come over him. Without knowing it himself, he had slowly developed from a gentleman’s servant into an artist and a gentleman. And now he was being forced by accident or fate to take upon him once more the position of an ordinary valet.
Indeed, during the month that intervened between Colin’s engagement by Sir Henry Wilberforce and his start for Rome, he wrote to his brother Sam over in America; and, shadowy memory as Sam had long since become to him, though he told him of his projected trip, and enlarged upon his hopes of attaining to the pinnacle of art in Rome, he was so ashamed of his mode of getting there that he said nothing at all upon that point, but just glided easily over the questions of means and method. He didn’t want his thriving brother in America to know that he was going to Rome, with all his high ideals and beautiful dreams, in no better position than as an old man’s valet.
