When Colin saw the advertisement, and heard Minnas 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. Its only a very small chance, of course, Minna, he said dubitatively, but at any rate its worth trying. The great thing against me is that I havent been anything in that line for so very long, and I cant get any character, except from Cicolari. The one thing in my favour is that I know a little Italian. I dont suppose there are many young men of the sort who go to be valets who know Italian. Anyhow, Ill try it. Itll be a dreadful thing if I get it, having to leave you for so long, Minna, and Minnas cheek brightened at that passing recognition of her prescriptive claim upon him; but itll 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 hadnt got over that point of etiquette yet), and held the small brown face tight between his hands, so that Minna couldnt 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, Im sure I havent 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 Dooks early lessons in manners I Ive come about your advertisement for a valet. I Ive 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. Youve 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, thats good as far as it goes; but how much Italian can you speak, thats the question? And he added a few words in the best Tuscan he could muster up, to test the applicants exact acquirements.
Colin answered him more quickly and idiomatically than Sir Henry had expected. In fact, Cicolaris 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 its 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 hes 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, Im 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, dont you see? A marble-cutter, he says a marble-cutter! How deuced singular! Have you got a character?
I could get one from Mr. Russells 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 Italians the great thing. Ive made up my mind Ill never go to Rome again with a valet who doesnt 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, hes a very fair-spoken young man, Sir Henry said at last, and he knows Italian. But its devilish odd his being a marble-cutter. However, Ill try him. Ill write to your master, Churchill whats his name Ill write to him and enquire about you.
Colin gave him Cicolaris name and address, and Sir Henry noted them deliberately in his pocket-book. Very good, he said; Ill write and ask about your character, and if everythings 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. COLINS DEPARTURE
When Minna learnt from Colin that he had finally accepted Sir Henry Wilberforces 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, its 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 Wroes 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. Dont 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? Its 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 fishermans 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 Minnas fears and troubles. He had to refurbish his entire wardrobe on a scale suited to a gentlemans 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 Bohns Æschylus he certainly couldnt 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 Cicolaris 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 hes your only relation in London, I dont think its 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 gentlemans gentleman in Regents Park. It wasnt 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 didnt care particularly for associating with the gentlemans 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 gentlemans 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 Colins 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 didnt 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 mans valet.
At last the slow month wore itself away gradually for Colin how swift and short it seemed to Minna! and the day came when he was really to set out for Paris, on his way to Italy. He was to start with his new master from Charing Cross station, and he had taken possession of his post by anticipation a couple of days earlier. Minna mustnt be at the station to see him off, of course; that would be unofficial; and if servants indulge in such doubtful luxuries as sweethearts, they must at least take care to meet them at some seemly time or season; but at any rate she could say good-bye to him the evening before, and that was always something. Would he propose to her this time, at last, Minna wondered, or would he go away for that long, long journey, and leave her as much in doubt as ever as to whether he really did or didnt love her?
It wont be for long, you see, little woman, Colin said, kissing away her tears in Regents Park, as well as he was able; it wont be for long, Minna; and then, when we meet again, I shall have come back a real sculptor. What a delightful meeting we shall have, Minna, and how awfully learned and clever youll have got by that time! I shall be half afraid to talk to you. But youll write to me every week, wont you, little woman? Youll promise me that? You must promise me to write to me every week, or at the very least every fortnight.
It was some little crumb of comfort to Minna that he wanted her to write to him so often. That showed at any rate that he really cared for her just ever such a tiny bit. She wiped her eyes again as she answered, Yes, Colin; Ill take great care never to miss writing to you.
Thats right, little woman. And look here, you mustnt mind my giving you them; theres stamps enough for Italy to last you for a whole twelvemonth fifty-two of them, Minna, so that it wont ever be any expense to you; and when those are gone, Ill send you some others.
Thank you, Colin, Minna said, taking them quite simply and naturally. And youll write to me, too, wont you, Colin?
My dear Minna! Why, of course I will. Who else on earth have I got to write to?
And you wont forget me, Colin?
Forget you, Minna! If ever I forget you, may my right hand forget her cunning and what more dreadful thing could a sculptor say by way of an imprecation than that, now!
Oh, Colin, dont! Dont say so! Suppose it was to come true, you know!
But I dont mean to forget you, Minna; so it wont come true. Little woman, I shall think of you always, and have your dear little gipsy face for ever before me. And now, Minna, this time we must really say good-bye. Im out beyond my time already. Just one more; thank you, darling. Goodbye, good-bye, Minna. Good-bye, dearest. One more. God bless you!
Good-bye, Colin. Good-bye, good-bye. Oh, Colin, my heart is breaking.