About this time-it will be remembered that I speak of the days when Mat and I were on the bright side of thirty-it happened that our firm contracted to supply six first-cla.s.s locomotives to run on the new line, then in process of construction, between Turin and Genoa. It was the first Italian order we had taken. We had had dealings with France, Holland, Belgium, Germany; but never with Italy. The connexion, therefore, was new and valuable-all the more valuable because our Transalpine neighbours had but lately begun to lay down the iron roads, and would be safe to need more of our good English work as they went on.
So the Birmingham firm set themselves to the contract with a will, lengthened our working hours, increased our wages, took on fresh hands, and determined, if energy and prompt.i.tude could do it, to place themselves at the head of the Italian labour-market, and stay there.
They deserved and achieved success. The six locomotives were not only turned out to time, but were shipped, despatched, and delivered with a prompt.i.tude that fairly amazed our Piedmontese consignee. I was not a little proud, you may be sure, when I found myself appointed to superintend the transport of the engines. Being allowed a couple of a.s.sistants, I contrived that Mat should be one of them; and thus we enjoyed together the first great holiday of our lives.
It was a wonderful change for two Birmingham operatives fresh from the Black Country. The fairy city, with its crescent background of Alps; the port crowded with strange shipping; the marvellous blue sky and bluer sea; the painted houses on the quays; the quaint cathedral, faced with black and white marble; the street of jewellers, like an Arabian Nights"
bazaar; the street of palaces, with its Moorish court-yards, its fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and friars; the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the singular lightness and brightness of the climate-made, altogether, such a combination of wonders that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind of bewildered dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was ended, being tempted by the beauty of the place and the liberality of the pay, we had agreed to take service with the Turin and Genoa Railway Company, and to turn our backs upon Birmingham for ever.
Then began a new life-a life so active and healthy, so steeped in fresh air and sunshine, that we sometimes marvelled how we could have endured the gloom of the Black Country. We were constantly up and down the line: now at Genoa, now at Turin, taking trial trips with the locomotives, and placing our old experiences at the service of our new employers.
In the meanwhile we made Genoa our headquarters, and hired a couple of rooms over a small shop in a by-street sloping down to the quays. Such a busy little street-so steep and winding that no vehicles could pa.s.s through it, and so narrow that the sky looked like a mere strip of deep-blue ribbon overhead! Every house in it, however, was a shop, where the goods encroached on the footway, or were piled about the door, or hung like tapestry from the balconies; and all day long, from dawn to dusk, an incessant stream of pa.s.sers-by poured up and down between the port and the upper quarter of the city.
Our landlady was the widow of a silver-worker, and lived by the sale of filigree ornaments, cheap jewellery, combs, fans, and toys in ivory and jet. She had an only daughter named Gianetta, who served in the shop, and was simply the most beautiful woman I ever beheld. Looking back across this weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I can and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to detect a flaw in her beauty. I do not attempt to describe her. I do not believe there is a poet living who could find the words to do it; but I once saw a picture that was somewhat like her (not half so lovely, but still like her), and, for aught I know, that picture is still hanging where I last looked at it-upon the walls of the Louvre. It represented a woman with brown eyes and golden hair, looking over her shoulder into a circular mirror held by a bearded man in the background. In this man, as I then understood, the artist had painted his own portrait; in her, the portrait of the woman he loved. No picture that I ever saw was half so beautiful, and yet it was not worthy to be named in the same breath with Gianetta Coneglia.
You may be certain the widow"s shop did not want for customers. All Genoa knew how fair a face was to be seen behind that dingy little counter; and Gianetta, flirt as she was, had more lovers than she cared to remember, even by name. Gentle and simple, rich and poor, from the red-capped sailor buying his earrings or his amulet, to the n.o.bleman carelessly purchasing half the filigrees in the window, she treated them all alike-encouraged them, laughed at them, led them on and turned them off at her pleasure. She had no more heart than a marble statue; as Mat and I discovered by-and-by, to our bitter cost.
I cannot tell to this day how it came about, or what first led me to suspect how things were going with us both; but long before the waning of that autumn a coldness had sprung up between my friend and myself. It was nothing that could have been put into words. It was nothing that either of us could have explained or justified, to save his life. We lodged together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we even took our long evening"s walk together, when the day"s labour was ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere looker-on could have detected a shadow of change. Yet there it was, silent and subtle, widening the gulf between us every day.
It was not his fault. He was too true and gentle-hearted to have willingly brought about such a state of things between us. Neither do I believe-fiery as my nature is-that it was mine. It was all hers-hers from first to last-the sin, and the shame, and the sorrow.
If she had shown a fair and open preference for either of us, no real harm could have come of it. I would have put any constraint upon myself, and, Heaven knows! have borne any suffering, to see Mat really happy. I know that he would have done the same, and more if he could, for me. But Gianetta cared not one sou for either. She never meant to choose between us. It gratified her vanity to divide us; it amused her to play with us.
It would pa.s.s my power to tell how, by a thousand imperceptible shades of coquetry-by the lingering of a glance, the subst.i.tution of a word, the flitting of a smile-she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our hearts, and lead us on to love her. She deceived us both. She buoyed us both up with hope; she maddened us with jealousy; she crushed us with despair. For my part, when I seemed to wake to a sudden sense of the ruin that was about our path and I saw how the truest friendship that ever bound two lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked myself whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me and I to him. But this was not often. I was readier to shut my eyes upon the truth than to face it; and so lived on, wilfully, in a dream.
Thus the autumn pa.s.sed away, and winter came-the strange, treacherous, Genoese winter, green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and bitter with storm. Still, rivals at heart and friends on the surface, Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo Balba. Still Gianetta held us with her fatal wiles and her still more fatal beauty. At length there came a day when I felt I could bear the horrible misery and suspense of it no longer. The sun, I vowed, should not go down before I knew my sentence. She must choose between us. She must either take me or let me go. I was reckless. I was desperate. I was determined to know the worst, or the best. If the worst, I would at once turn my back upon Genoa, upon her, upon all the pursuits and purposes of my past life, and begin the world anew. This I told her, pa.s.sionately and sternly, standing before her in the little parlour at the back of the shop, one bleak December morning.
"If it"s Mat whom you care for most," I said, "tell me so in one word, and I will never trouble you again. He is better worth your love. I am jealous and exacting; he is as trusting and unselfish as a woman. Speak, Gianetta; am I to bid you good-bye for ever and ever, or am I to write home to my mother in England, bidding her pray to G.o.d to bless the woman who has promised to be my wife?"
"You plead your friend"s cause well," she replied, haughtily. "Matteo ought to be grateful. This is more than he ever did for you."
"Give me my answer, for pity"s sake," I exclaimed, "and let me go!"
"You are free to go or stay, Signor Inglese," she replied. "I am not your jailor."
"Do you bid me leave you?"
"Beata Madre! not I."
"Will you marry me, if I stay?"
She laughed aloud-such a merry, mocking, musical laugh, like a chime of silver bells!
"You ask too much," she said.
"Only what you have led me to hope these five or six months past!"
"That is just what Matteo says. How tiresome you both are!"
"O, Gianetta," I said, pa.s.sionately, "be serious for one moment! I am a rough fellow, it is true-not half good enough or clever enough for you; but I love you with my whole heart, and an Emperor could do no more."
"I am glad of it," she replied; "I do not want you to love me less."
"Then you cannot wish to make me wretched! Will you promise me?"
"I promise nothing," said she, with another burst of laughter; "except that I will not marry Matteo!"
Except that she would not marry Matteo! Only that. Not a word of hope for myself. Nothing but my friend"s condemnation. I might get comfort, and selfish triumph, and some sort of base a.s.surance out of that, if I could. And so, to my shame, I did. I grasped at the vain encouragement, and, fool that I was! let her put me off again unanswered. From that day, I gave up all effort at self-control, and let myself drift blindly on-to destruction.
At length things became so bad between Mat and myself that it seemed as if an open rupture must be at hand. We avoided each other, scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences in a day, and fell away from all our old familiar habits. At this time-I shudder to remember it!-there were moments when I felt that I hated him.
Thus, with the trouble deepening and widening between us day by day, another month or five weeks went by; and February came; and, with February, the Carnival. They said in Genoa that it was a particularly dull carnival; and so it must have been; for, save a flag or two hung out in some of the princ.i.p.al streets, and a sort of festa look about the women, there were no special indications of the season. It was, I think, the second day when, having been on the line all the morning, I returned to Genoa at dusk, and, to my surprise, found Mat Price on the platform.
He came up to me, and laid his hand on my arm.
"You are in late," he said. "I have been waiting for you three-quarters of an hour. Shall we dine together to-day?"
Impulsive as I am, this evidence of returning good will at once called up my better feelings.
"With all my heart, Mat," I replied; "shall we go to Gozzoli"s?"
"No, no," he said, hurriedly. "Some quieter place-some place where we can talk. I have something to say to you."
I noticed now that he looked pale and agitated, and an uneasy sense of apprehension stole upon me. We decided on the "Pescatore," a little out-of-the-way trattoria, down near the Molo Vecchio. There, in a dingy salon, frequented chiefly by seamen, and redolent of tobacco, we ordered our simple dinner. Mat scarcely swallowed a morsel; but, calling presently for a bottle of Sicilian wine, drank eagerly.
"Well, Mat," I said, as the last dish was placed on the table, "what news have you?"
"Bad."
"I guessed that from your face."
"Bad for you-bad for me. Gianetta."
"What of Gianetta?"
He pa.s.sed his hand nervously across his lips.
"Gianetta is false-worse than false," he said, in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "She values an honest man"s heart just as she values a flower for her hair-wears it for a day, then throws it aside for ever. She has cruelly wronged us both."
"In what way? Good Heavens, speak out!"
"In the worst way that a woman can wrong those who love her. She has sold herself to the Marchese Loredano."
The blood rushed to my head and face in a burning torrent. I could scarcely see, and dared not trust myself to speak.
"I saw her going towards the cathedral," he went on, hurriedly. "It was about three hours ago. I thought she might be going to confession, so I hung back and followed her at a distance. When she got inside, however, she went straight to the back of the pulpit, where this man was waiting for her. You remember him-an old man who used to haunt the shop a month or two back. Well, seeing how deep in conversation they were, and how they stood close under the pulpit with their backs towards the church, I fell into a pa.s.sion of anger and went straight up the aisle, intending to say or do something: I scarcely knew what; but, at all events, to draw her arm through mine, and take her home. When I came within a few feet, however, and found only a big pillar between myself and them, I paused.
They could not see me, nor I them; but I could hear their voices distinctly, and-and I listened."
"Well, and you heard-"
"The terms of a shameful bargain-beauty on the one side, gold on the other; so many thousand francs a year; a villa near Naples-Pah! it makes me sick to repeat it."
And, with a shudder, he poured out another gla.s.s of wine and drank it at a draught.