IT seems I was destined to hear of nothing but this Italian. I had not kept faith to him, certainly. I had been startled and thrown back by finding out how the idea of him got to be involved in Sarah’s trouble; and really I did not care much about the Countess Sermoneta, whom I had never heard of. I had been interested in him, I allow; but how could I keep up an interest in strangers, with so much closer an anxiety near home?
However, just the next day after I had spoken to Carson, Dr. Roberts called. Dr. Roberts was our rector; not a relation, but a kind of family connection, somehow, I really could not tell how. For three or four generations, at least, a Roberts had held our family living. There were so few of us Mortimers, as I have already explained, that the living could never be of any use to us; and our great-great-grandfathers had happened to be intimate, and so it came about that the living was as much an hereditary thing to the Robertses as our property was to us. Dr. Roberts was the best of good, easy, quiet men.{124} He preached us a nice little sermon every Sunday. He would dine with the people who were in a condition to ask him, and make himself as agreeable as possible. He patted the children on the head, and wondered how it was that he had forgotten their names. Of course he had his own way of doing most things, and seldom varied; but then one could always calculate on what he would do and say, and wasn’t that a comfort? On the whole, he was the most excellent, good drowse of a man I ever knew. He led a very quiet life, with little interruption, except when, now and then, a storm seized upon him, in the shape of a new curate with advanced ideas. In such cases Dr. Roberts generally bowed to the tempest till its force was exhausted. He laughed in his quiet way at the young men. “They are all for making a fuss when they begin,” he said to me, confidentially; “but depend upon it, when they come to our age, Miss Milly, they’ll find the advantage of just getting along.” That was his favourite mode of progress. He was too stout and easy to make much haste. He loved to get along quietly; and really, as ours was a small parish, and nothing particular to make a commotion about, I don’t suppose there was much harm done.
But only to think of Dr. Roberts becoming one of my assailants! I never could have expected any such thing. He came in, bringing some books from Miss Kate, who was as unlike him as possible. She was very active in the parish, and had something to do, with or for, everybody. She was rather Low-Church, and sent us books to read, to do us good, which, for my part, I always read faithfully, being very willing to have good done me, as far as it was practicable. Dr. Roberts sat down with a little sigh in the round easy chair, his particular chair, which Ellis wheeled out for him; not with a sentimental sigh, good man; but the road to the Park ascends a little, and the doctor, for the same reason as Hamlet, was a little scant of breath.
We were all as usual. Sarah, in the shadow of the screen, with her knitting-pins in her hands, and her basket of wools and patterns at her side; myself opposite, commanding a view of the door and the great mirror, and all the room; little Sara, half a mile off, reading at one of the windows—for it was very mild for February, and really one did not feel much need of a fire. Dr. Roberts wandered on in his comfortable way for half an hour at least; he complimented Miss Mortimer on always being so industrious, and me upon my blooming looks! only think of that! but I dare say he must have forgotten that it{125} was Sarah who was the beauty; and he gave us a quiet opinion upon the books he had brought us, that they were “very much in Kate’s style, you know;” and had a word to say about the curate—just one of his comfortable calls, when he has something to say about everybody; nothing more.
“But, by-the-bye,” said the good Doctor, “I had almost forgotten the principal thing. There’s something romantic going on among us just now, Miss Milly. Where is little Miss Cresswell? she ought to hear this.”
“What is it, Doctor?” I asked, rather startled at this beginning.
“Well, the fact is, I have had a strange sort of visitor,” said the Doctor, with a soft little laugh; “or rather two, I should say,” he continued, after a little pause, “ha! ha! I had Hubert to him, who pretends to speak Italian, you know, ha! ha! He could speak Dante, perhaps; but he can’t manage the Transteverine. I can’t say that I did not enjoy it a little. These young fellows, Miss Milly, are so happy in their own good opinion. Poor Hubert was terribly put out.”
“Who are you speaking of?” asked I again.
“Well, of a visitor I had; or two, as I have just said,—the master and the man. The master speaks English very tolerably; the man is the real, native, original article, newly imported. I am in good condition myself,” said the good Doctor, giving a quiet unconscious pinch on his plump wrist; “but anything like that, you know, goes quite beyond me. You would have laughed to see poor young Hubert, poor fellow, talking to him in his high Dantesque way, and the fat fellow dashing in through the midst of it all, helter skelter, in real Italian. Ha! ha! it was a most amusing scene.”
“Italian?” said I, scarcely venturing to speak above my breath, my consternation was so great.
“Yes,” said Dr. Roberts, calmly, with still a little agitation of laughter about his voice—the discomfiture of the curate amused him excessively—............