“Now we have found them let me face them by myself,” said Colin, to whom the interval of silence and consideration had been of use. They were both waiting in the hall of one of the hotels facing towards the Piazza del Popolo, to which they had{322} at last tracked Mr. Meredith, and Lauderdale acquiesced silently in Colin’s decision. The young man had already sent up his card, with a request that he might see not Alice but her father. After a considerable time, the servant who had taken it returned with an abrupt message that Mr. Meredith was engaged. When he had sent up a second time, explaining that his business was urgent, but with the same effect, Colin accompanied his third message with a note, and went with his messenger to the door of the room in which his adversary was. There could be no doubt of the commotion produced within by this third application. Colin could hear some one pacing about the room with disturbed steps, and the sound of a controversy going on, which, though he was too far off to hear anything that was said, still reached him vaguely in sound at least. When he had waited for about five minutes, the clergyman, whom he had not in the least thought of or expected to see, made his appearance cautiously at the door. He did not attempt to admit the young man, but came up to him on tiptoe, and took him persuasively, almost caressingly, by the arm. “My good friend, my excellent young friend,” said the puzzled priest, with a mixture of compunction and expostulation which in other circumstances would have amused Colin, “let us have a little conversation. I am sure you are much too generous and considerate to add to the distress of—of——” But here the good man recollected just in time that he had pledged himself not to speak of Alice, and made a sudden pause. “There in that room,” he went on, changing his tone, and assuming a little solemnity, “is a sorrowful father, mourning for his only son, and driven almost out of his senses by illness and weakness, and a sense of the shameful way in which his daughter has been neglected—not his fault, my dear Mr Campbell. You cannot have the heart to increase his sufferings by claims, however well founded, which have been formed at a time——”
“Stop,” said Colin, “it is not my fault if he has not done his duty to his children; I have no right to bear the penalty. He has cast the vilest imputations upon me—”
“Hush, hush, I beg of you,” said the clergyman, “my excellent young friend—”
Colin laughed in spite of himself. “If I am your excellent friend,” he said, “why do you not procure me admission to tell my own story? Why should the sight of me distress your sorrowing father? I am not an ogre, nor an enemy, but his son’s friend; and up to this day, I need not remind you,” said{323} the young man with a rising colour, “the only protector, along with my friend Lauderdale, whom his daughter has had. I do not say that he may not have natural objections to give her to a poor man,” said Colin, with natural pride; “but, at all events, he has no reason to hurry her away by stealth, as if I had not a right to be told why our engagement is interrupted so summarily. I will do nothing to distress Alice,” the young man went on, involuntarily lingering by the door, which was not entirely closed; “but I protest against being treated like a villain or an adventurer—”
“Hush, hush, hush,” cried the unlucky peacemaker, putting out his hand to close the unfastened door; and before he could do so, Mr. Meredith appeared on the threshold, flushed and furious. “What are you else, sir, I should like to know,” cried the angry British father, “to drag an unprotected girl into such an entanglement without even a pretence of consulting her friends; to take advantage of a deathbed for your detestable fortune-hunting schemes? Don’t answer me, sir! Have you a penny of your own? have you anything to live on? That’s the question. If it was not for other considerations, I’d indict you. I’d charge you with conspiracy; and even now, if you come here to disturb my poor girl——. But I promise you, you shall see her no more,” the angry man continued. “Go, sir, and let me hear no more of you. She has a protector now.”
Colin stood a moment without speaking after Mr. Meredith has disappeared, closing the door violently after him.
“I have not come to distress Alice,” said the young man. He had to repeat it to himself to keep down the hot blood that was burning in his veins; and as for the unfortunate clergyman, who was the immediate cause of all this, he kept his position by the door in a state of mind far from enviable, sorry for the young man, and ashamed of the old one, and making inarticulate efforts to speak and mediate between them. But the conference did not last very long outside the closed door. Though it did not fortunately occur to Colin that it was the interference of his present companion which had originated this scene, the young man did not feel the insult the less from the deprecatory half-sympathy offered to him. “It is a mistake—it is a mistake,” said the clergyman, “Mr. Meredith will discover his error. I said I thought you were imprudent, and indeed wrong; but I have never suspected you of interested motives—never since my first interview with the young lady;—but think of her sufferings, my dear young friend; think of her,” said the mediator, who{324} was driven to his wits’ end. As for Colin, he calmed himself down a little by means of pacing about the corridor—the common resource of men in trouble.
“Poor Alice,” he said, “if I did not think of her, do you think I should have stood quietly to be insulted? But look here—the abuse of such a man can do no harm to me, but he may kill her. If I could see her it might do some good.—Impossible? Do you suppose I mean to see her clandestinely, or to run away with her, perhaps? I mean,” said Colin, with youthful sternness, “that if I were permitted to see her I might be able to reconcile her a little to what is inevitable. Of course he is her father. I wish her father were a chimney-sweep instead;—but it is she I have to think of. Will you try to get me permission to see her?—only for ten minutes, if you like—in your presence, if that is necessary; but I must say one word to her before she is carried away.”
“Yes, yes, it is very natural—very natural,” said the peace-maker; “I will do all I can for you. Be here at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning; the poor dear young lady must have rest after her agitation. Don’t be afraid; I am not a man to deceive you; they do not leave till the afternoon for Civita Vecchia. You shall see her; I think I can promise that. I will take the responsibility on myself.”
Thus ended Colin’s attempt to bring back the Signorina, as he said. In the morning he had reached the hotel long before the hour mentioned, in case of an earlier departure; but everything was quiet there, and the young man hovered about, looking up at the windows, and wondering which might be the one which inclosed his little love, with sentiments more entirely lover-like than he had ever experienced before. But, when the hour of his appointment came, and he hurried into the hotel, he was met by the indignant clergyman, who felt his own honour compromised, and was wroth beyo............